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leaving a salary of $25 a week for whatever the fates provided. It turned out to be $6 a month for a long time, which that splendid heroic soul accepted laughingly, saying she didn't know what she'd do with it. For myself there was a roof and food; but both of us were so happy that people commented upon it.

But a day dawned that had no happiness for me and much bitterness the bitterness that comes from having your most cherished ideals utterly misunderstood. That day my fashionable board met. They came, exquisitely dressed, with their quiet, reposeful manners, the insignia of good breeding, to do their duty by the hospital-school. Their duty, as they saw it, was to put a trained, scientific worker in my place.

"You aren't a trained nurse, you know," they told me. "You haven't been educated in approved schools to carry on the work you started. You are useful and devoted and we appreciate you thoroughly, but we think the hospitalschool should be managed by one who has made a scientific study of these things."

The tumult that arose in my breast I shall never be able to describe. I suffered terribly to be so misunderstood. It was out of my very own deep, sad experience that I was enabled to do for children crippled and maimed the things that were not being done and that cried to me to be done. With trembling knees and dry lips I rose to answer the fashionable board. If I could only make them realize a little of what I knew, they would understand, I thought.

"What these children need, above all things, is love and understanding." I told them. "Especially the little crippled poor yearn to be loved and cared for and nursed and at the same time to have their selfesteem increased, to be made to feel that they have useful futures. They need to be made to feel that they have a place in Society and to that end they must be taught to do useful things with which they can. earn bread and happiness and self-respect in the future."

As I spoke to them I felt myself passionately moved to plead to the utmost of my powers, because I was a cripple plead

ing for cripples. I was protesting against the cold, statistical charity that systematizes and tabulates and classifies everything in the interests of order, and forgets that it is dealing with living, feeling, human beings. I told them that I was willing to give up my life to have my ideas for crippled children carried out, and that only as the head of the hospital-school would this be possible. They persisted, and I did a thing the boldness of which makes me shiver to think of now - I dismissed the fashionable board outright.

There were seven children in the home at the time, a big grocery bill, a month's rent due, and other expenses. I conferred with Miss O'Neill.

"There is just $10 in the treasury," she said, "and that is not a very secure backing."

"No," I answered, feeling the need to justify myself and raise her courage; "but $10 and God is a very comfortable backing, and I'm going to stake my life's hopes and ambitions on it."

I told her that I did not know much about the public, nor how they would regard me under such circumstances, but that I did know physicians and that I felt confident our children would not be left without medical attendance.

And they were not.

The board or ex-board, to be exact sent out notices telling of their severed connections with the hospital-school. One of these reached the city editor of one of the papers, and he sent a reporter to get the story. Of course they made a "good story" of it, coming out with a wordpicture of two women fighting the world for their crippled dependents. This led to many newspaper articles about our children. Reporters came often from all the papers. They seemed to think we yielded interesting material and the publicity did us a great deal of good. One article achieved big headlines on the front page in this striking phrase:

"Little Hazel Welch dances in her shroud.”

It was true, and out in Hazel's hometown of Adrian the papers copied it with cheerful comments. It brought me a check for $100 the next day. The facts

were that the doctors had given up Hazel to the extent that her mother had made her an exquisite little white dress for a shroud. Hysterical paralysis was doing its worst for the little girl. She couldn't walk a step. People were especially stirred by her plight, because of her beauty, which has the fairy-like quality of a Greuze painting. It was simply a case of building up her body and restoring her courage.

And just herein lies the kernel of my creed for cripples. Often their discouragement is akin to despair. It is one of the most appalling tragedies in the world. They feel their self-abasement directly because their families and Society generally condemn them to lives of burdensome inefficiency. And think how utterly false and unjust such a position is! Hazel is one of the many proofs we have to offer. We began, of course, by building up her body. She responded magically. She has a keen mind and a sensitive emotional nature. We restored her courage aroused her fighting blood. With the increase of her strength came the desire to run and romp. Little by little she gained control over the muscles of her legs. I sent her to dancing school, a dancing master having offered to take my children into his classes. I let the reporter see her dance and he described her pirouetting lightly over the floor as the sun made topaz lights in her yellow hair.

even

There is Marjorie, who came to us emaciated and blind from neglect. She is a dimpled cherub now, and the doctors say that she will see in time. Esther was left on our doorstep one miserable night. She weighed six pounds and looked like nothing so much as one of those unfeathered sparrows who fall from their nests in the spring time. Such havoc had malnutrition and exposure wrought that it taxed our care to the utmost to restore her. Now Botticelli would like to paint her, so soft and round are her contours. The reporters wrote about all these children, and about many others; and every story brought a check or more.

But it was hard getting along, and most of the time Miss O'Neill and I managed to forget about such things as salaries. Then many people urged me to get another

board. I yielded and my heart-breaking scene with the first one was re-enacted. But if, as a board, these ladies were unwilling to hazard the untried; if, as responsible directors, they were inclined to regard me as visionary, and my Utopia for Cripples such stuff as dreams are made of, I am happy to say they held an entirely different attitude as individuals. Nearly all of them pledged themselves to stand by me through my struggles.

But with the coming of winter there were the faintest warnings of the wolf's menacing snarl. There was little money, and twenty-three crippled children in the house. It was a rented house that I had secured for $35 a month, although it was worth much more, and a well known young society woman with a big independent fortune of her own paid that rent for many months. But I was terribly harassed for funds, and fearfully I approached another rich woman I knew, for the loan of $500. I did not have to beg for it.

"My husband and I will give it to you not as a loan, for you have worries enough without thinking of paying it back, but as a gift because we believe in you," she told me.

So there was an occasional glimpse of silver lining in the dark clouds that floated over us.

The next embarrassing incident had its humorous angle. At least the papers saw it that way if we didn't. The esthetic sensibilities of a neighborhood were bruised at the sight of physically sub-normal children playing out on the lawn or about the porch of the house where we lived. It was not an ultra-smart neighborhood, either, but one where the air was pure, and considered desirable by young parents bringing up their children. The papers

poked good-natured fun at the superesthetic feelings of these patrician neighbors of our family of little cripples and so killed, by their facetious comments, an entanglement that might otherwise have gotten into court.

Everything pointed to the need of a home of our very own. But where to get the money? It was then that I started the hospital-school magazine, not only

for the sake of revenue, but that I might, in straightforward editorials, let the public know just what we were doing and what our ideals were. The best writers in town contributed to our pages. Mr. Edgar A. Guest, the poet of the Detroit Free Press, whose daily column is a favorite with thousands of readers, often writes for the magazine a bit of verse about children. Now the magazine has a circulation of more than 5,000 and is a financial help directly and indirectly. My "Story of the Children's Ward," largely autobiographical, also helped out, for it was published in book form and sold pretty well. But, although I worked joyously and eagerly for my great cause, I am a cripple and weak, and the strain was terrible. But it was a joy to me to see that the hospital-school was becoming a sort of pet among those who knew most about it. Especially the younger people enjoyed helping me. The members of the Delta Alpha Delta sorority of the most fashionable girls' school in town started the practice of doing something "extra" for the children every week.

One young woman who is wonderfully skilful with her needle is teaching Zella to use her magic fingers to make exquisite embroideries. Zella will never be able to leave her rolling chair- but she is no longer wretched about that, because she knows the dignity and happiness of being really useful.

Another girl is teaching music to little Tootsie, who has a plaintive voice and a talent for mimicry. I truly believe that in a few years' time she will be able to support herself as an entertainer, after the manner of Kitty Cheatham.

One of the things upon which we spend most time and thought is trying to discover the least inkling of a talent or a particular liking for some special kind of work in our little cripples. It all works out with a success that I cannot describe or explain. I have been criticised because I repudiate routine. Well, I admit frankly that I loathe with all my heart and soul the red tape and institutionalism which cramp the individual and nip the child's exuberant happiness in the bud. I have been criticised because the visitor

who comes here always finds the children in the halls, on the stairs, everywhere -getting all the joy that life offers them. I know the institutions through and through, and I know at what a sacrifice of children's happiness the great shining halls and formal, undisturbed order of the rooms are achieved. I remember with a shudder seeing the toys taken from a very sick child because visitors were expected and the battered playthings looked mussy on the spotless bed. Nor did they bother to return the toys when the fastidious visitors were gone. And it doesn't soften the ugliness of this picture to remember that the child died a few days afterward. That was an institution famed and praised for the perfect clockwork system by which it was run. But red tape and system are a monster into whose maw many a little child's happiness is fed.

I have been criticised because I will not investigate the circumstances under which children come to me. I never will. I don't believe in it. What do I care if a child has a father who drinks or gambles? A mother who is shiftless or worthless? All the more reason that I should help him; all the more reason that I should not keep him waiting in an environment that is destructive to him while I waste precious time and precious money in investigation which leads nowhere. Why need I know more when I know that the child needs help and a chance?

My one thought, my one aim, my one hope, is that children shall be given a chance for happiness, for usefulness, for self-expression. For centuries the world has looked upon cripples as deadwood. It has regarded them as essentially useless, a burden on society. That is wrong, untrue. Cripples are often full of lofty ambitions for service, and not only are they ambitious but variously gifted in ways that lie outside the beaten paths. Cultivate their gifts, give their ambitions to be useful a spur, and you have, instead of wretched idleness, joyous productiveness. This is the beginning and the end of my ideal for cripples. I believe that if once I could make the world understand what I know, there would no longer be a problem to solve.

THE COMING CITY

THE REMARKABLE WORK OF MR. JOHN NOLEN TO MAKE MORE THAN TWENTY
AMERICAN MUNICIPALITIES MORE CONVENIENT AND MORE BEAUTIFUL-
A RAPIDLY GROWING NATIONAL MOVEMENT TO CORRECT THE EVILS
OF CARELESS GROWTH AND TO INSURE THAT THE CITIES OF

I

THE FUTURE SHALL BE DEFINITELY PLANNED TO
SERVE AND PLEASE THEIR CITIZENS

BY

JOHN S. GREGORY

IN SPITE of our bewailing it, the growth of the cities goes on. You preach the advantages of country life, but the people of the country continue flocking to town. Isn't it clear that, babble o' green fields as we will, we have got to admit that men are going to live in town? Isn't it possible that we are mistaken about it mistaken in thinking that city life is necessarily noisy and crowded and bereft of green freshness-mistaken in thinking that we must flee to the country really to live? Isn't it, really, a faint-hearted, cowardly act to abandon the city, shirk its problems, and yield it over to the dingy, jostling, jangling conditions that prevail there that our own neglect has permitted to prevail there?

"Besides, what right have we to come to the city to make money and then hurry to the country to spend it? Many are obliged to live in town. They cannot desert the dreary scene. Isn't it ignoble of any of us to do so?"

The speaker (let us follow the excellent fashion of the old-fashioned novel) - the speaker was Mr. John Nolen.

The "City Beautiful" idea is not a new one, even in America. It had a delightful vogue a dozen years ago. But it has been scarcely half that long since that there came the very practical realization that convenience, comfort, and economy in city life the life that men and women apparently prefer and resolve to liveis worth planning for. And while that more substantial idea has spread fast and far and won many disciples, it has had one chief apostle Mr. John Nolen; John

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Nolen, a landscape architect, with a social conscience and vision. A patient man.

A positive man

but modest, so modest

as

that thousands who have learned his thoughts have never heard of him yet. A man who has once or twice demonstrated that one can very deliberately make his own life what he will, and is now demonstrating in a score of states that a city can deliberately make itself what it will.

Twelve years ago Mr. Nolen was the secretary of what called itself the American Society for the Extension of University Teaching, an organization of seriousminded people of Philadelphia, with a high purpose, which never quite realized itself. Mr. Nolen was living comfortably on his moderate salary; he had married him a wife, built him a house, and begotten a son. It may have been in sticking in shrubbery about his house, or somehow or other, that he saw the possibility of a career in landscape gardening. He sold the house, carried his wife and baby to Cambridge, the three of them covenanting to live as economically as possible till the head of the family, with his last penny spent, should have learned all that Frederick Law Olmsted could teach him about landscape gardening.

The covenant was kept so faithfully, the proceeds of the sale of the house were husbanded so carefully, that after the landscape course there was a year in Germany, partly at the University of Munich, partly on travels afoot in many German cities.

Mr. Nolen prospered as a landscape artist. He "did" his share of estates

and suburban land enterprises, and he got out a delightful book, founded on Repton. But there was an idea working in his head all the while, an idea that no doubt had begun to germinate in Germany. It was that of the possibility of pleasant cities instead of dreadful ones. Little by little he worked up a practice among park commissioners and such-like city clients. And wherever Mr. Nolen was engaged to advise a commission about a park or a school-ground, that commission found itself with a full-grown scheme for a transformed city on its hands. You see, the park called for approaches, and that meant extension of streets — why not new streets, and why not, while we are about it, rationalize the city's whole street plan?

--

I hope I suggest nothing that would offend the ethics of the landscape architects' profession, for Mr. Nolen is the soul of conscience, with a soberness and dread of exaggeration as notable as that of the worthy John Woolman himself, and I am sure he took the utmost pains never to transcend his instructions or powers in so far as his sense of what would be good for the city in question allowed him. But the facts stand out that to-day this editor of Repton and graduate in landscape describes himself on his stationery as John Nolen, City Planner, and that he has worked out specifications for the remaking of a score or more American cities.

In no other country, except perhaps in England, do people look upon cities as places to escape from as soon as possible. They don't do that in Germany, nor in other countries of Continental Europe, nor in South America. When one visits Germany, no matter what the season, he doesn't visit the country; he visits the cities. For the Germans have learned how to make the cities beautiful, comfortable, and pleasurable, as well as highly successful centres for trade and commerce. They have built cities in which they have abolished crowding and noise and discomfort, retained the freshness of trees and flowing waters, made outdoor life possible, while at the same time they have multiplied the particular exclusive advantages of the city-the social institutions which

the country cannot have: theatres, public music, museums, well-supplied markets, noble parks, perfect pavements and roads, swift and easy and inexpensive transit.

The Germans have done no one thing for which humanity ought to be more grateful than this: they have demonstrated that the city is not necessarily ugly. "Ah!" is a rejoinder sometimes made, "German cities are old; in America our cities have grown so fast." The truth is, German cities have grown as fast as ours. Berlin is as new as Chicago. Take Düsseldorf: in 1870 it had 70,000 people; to-day it has 300,000. It has grown as fast as Pittsburgh, and it is, industrially, the Pittsburgh of Europe. Physically, it is one of the loveliest towns in which men and women have ever gathered to live. Though without the splendid and natural scenery that Pittsburgh has so sadly misused, built on a flat plain with a yellow river flowing past it, Düsseldorf, while it was gathering to itself furnaces, foundries, boiler-works, and machine factories, managed at the same time to create a city of leaf and fountain, with noble houses and ample spaces for play, and every a pleasing prospect. Look at the photographs shown on pages 96 and 97-views taken almost at random, and faithfully representing the general atmosphere of the whole city of Düsseldorf, and ask yourself why Pittsburgh is not like that.

The answer is, Mr. Nolen would tell you, because American cities are not planned. The founders of a town draw a checkerboard on the soil totally irrespective of the natural features of the place, and the real estate gentlemen who lay out successive "additions" draw more checkerboards, and presently a city finds itself sprawling along a characterless extension of blocks; with a few streets crowded by impossible traffic and a great many more empty except for an occasional cart; with no parks or playgrounds and no longer a possibility of them except at gigantic expense; the river banks in the hands of the railroads which, like as not, have a right of way through the heart of the city; the railroad stations badly placed, the public buildings scattered

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