THE LIFE WORTH LIVING. 169 



environment it is necessary to influence them 

 in some other way than the offer of purely 

 physical or economical advantages. Proba- 

 bly but very little can be done in this field 

 except through the children, and the value 

 of the work accomplished by the Children's 

 Aid Society in sending out waifs picked out 

 from the streets to green fields and pastures 

 new in the far West, cannot be overestimated. 

 With the average young man or young woman, 

 who finds ample enjoyment in the gossip of the 

 shops and is inclined to pity any one condemned 

 to country life, I am inclined to think that the 

 case is almost equally hopeless. The man 

 who takes nothing into the country with him, 

 intellectually speaking, ought not to go there ; 

 -he will be lonely. I was strongly impressed 

 with this phase of the matter when I made 

 some visits among the cheap shops which line 

 Grand Street, east of the Bowery. There are 

 large shops here, employing hundreds of clerks 

 of both sexes. Work begins early and lasts 

 until seven or eight o'clock in the evening. In 

 many of the shops it is so dark that gas or 

 electric lights have to be used at mid-day. 

 The neighborhood is alive with people of the 



