Civic Helpfulness 83 



for in country life it is necessary to guard, not 

 against mental fever, but against lack of mental 

 stimulus and interests. 



In cities the conditions are very different, both 

 as regards the needs and as regards the way it is 

 possible to meet these needs. There is much less 

 feeling of essential community of interest, and pov 

 erty of the body is lamentably visible among great 

 masses. There are districts populated to the point 

 of congestion, where hardly any one is above the 

 level of poverty, though this poverty does not by any 

 means always imply misery. Where it does mean 

 misery it must be met by organization, and, above 

 all, by the disinterested, endless labor of those who, 

 by choice, and to do good, live in the midst of it, 

 temporarily or permanently. Very many men and 

 women spend part of their lives or do part of their 

 life-work under such circumstances, and conspicu 

 ous among them are clergymen and priests. 



Only those who have seen something of such work 

 at close quarters realize how much of it goes on 

 quietly and without the slightest outside show, and 

 how much it represents to many lives that else would 

 be passed in gray squalor. It is not necessary to 

 give the names of the living, or I could enumerate 

 among my personal acquaintance fifty clergymen 

 and priests, men of every church, of every degree 

 of wealth, each of whom cheerfully and quietly, year 



