232 



THE GARDEN MAGAZINE 



December, 1907 



a way was found in the organization of a 

 committee of women at a meeting of King's 

 Daughters in the old Broadway Tabernacle, 

 to take the flowers in charge. We estab- 

 lished headquarters in Henry Street, and 

 within a year a chance to render an impor- 

 tant service to the poor came our way. The 

 Board of Health's summer doctors needed 

 help. There were but fifty of them for nearly 

 fifty thousand tenements, and eight weeks of 

 hot weather in which to ferret out all the sick 

 babies. At best they must hurry from door 

 to door and when the prescription had been 

 written the even more important work of 

 nursing, of teaching the mothers how, of tak- 

 ing the children out in the fields and in the 

 sunlight had to be left. There were no city 

 nurses and no Nurses' Settlement then. So 

 we joined hands with the doctors, and for 

 many summers filled that gap, which, but 

 for the daisies of the fields and the little 

 frozen weed would have been left open. 



good man. No one like that ever came here 

 before." Don't you think the flowers I left 

 in her hand spoke to her in a tongue it was 

 good to have raised in that place ? Coal and 

 groceries you might have planted there on 

 the dollar-a-week plan and they would have 

 grown the crop of shiftlessness and suspicion 

 the Philistines looked for. They might, I 

 say, according to the spirit of the gift. For 

 you get pretty much what you look for in a 

 tenement as in all the rest of the world. They 

 are not so unlike. And the flower brings 

 forth fruit after its kind. 



The children — they were like those who 

 waylaid me at the ferry. Sometimes they 

 reached for the flowers with both hands; 

 there are not so many things given away in 

 their life that you need wonder at it. And 

 they loved the flowers. At the outset, I 

 sometimes suspected them — was a Philistine 

 myself. But after the episode of the little 

 fellow with the crippled sister I never did. 



'Within a stone's throw of the place where we first bunched our flowers 



Could we have drafted the Philistines into 

 that service, my friend would never have been 

 waylaid and discouraged. Their tribe would 

 have ceased to be. But none of that kind 

 applied. I suppose ours was mushy-headed 

 philanthropy that pauperized the people. 

 Think of pauperizing anyone with a flower! 

 All the same it helped where there was no 

 one else to help, and did it in such a way that 

 it left no sting and no ingratitude behind, 

 but hope and good will in their place. That 

 was the work of the flowers. Always they 

 opened the door, and after that it was never 

 closed. I remember as if it were yesterday, 

 the dark tenement hallway I came through 

 one hot July day, and filled with the fragrance 

 of sweet roses from a rich man's garden up 

 in the Hudson River hills — for the daisies 

 drew after them garden and hot-house 

 indiscriminately; wherever there were hearts 

 there they found followers. And I remember 

 the hearty Irish voice that came out of the 

 darkness: "God bless you; but you are a 



He held one handful of daisies behind his 

 back and begged hotly for another and when 

 I sternly reproved him, he pleaded "for me 

 little sister." 



"If you have a little sister" I said, harden- 

 ing my heart, " bring her here and I will give 

 her all she wants, " and boring his way through 

 the swarming pack of youngsters he was off 

 down the street. When I had quite for- 

 gotten about him, half-way down the block 

 I saw him coming toiling up, dragging a little 

 hunchback girl in a wagon made of a soap- 

 box on wooden wheels. My flowers were 

 nearly out and the anxious clamor for posies 

 was rising shrill, but the crowd gave way 

 readily to let them in as he pulled up before 

 me, tears and perspiration furrowing his 

 dirty brown cheeks in little rivers, for he was 

 afraid he was too late. And not a child in 

 that wild mob reached forth a hand till the 

 little girl's lap was filled. 



Back of my office in Mulberry Street there 

 was a row of tenements at the end of Cat 



Alley, where some very poor people lived. 

 The children there were in clover those 

 days, sometimes literally, for great bunches 

 of red and white clover came often with the 

 daisies. They were old friends and came in 

 quite familiarly, sometimes like other people, 

 sometimes turning handsprings through the 

 door and walking on their hands. But one 

 day a delegation that was quite different 

 arrived, begging flowers for " the old lady in 

 the back." They were so very quiet and sub- 

 dued-like, that my curiosity was aroused and 

 I followed them to see what they were up to. 

 Way back in a dingy rear basement, I found 

 " the old lady " lying dead. She was a scrub- 

 woman, aged and crippled, whom I had seen 

 going in and out for years, and sometimes I 

 had noticed her the victim of the children's 

 rough horseplay. Whether it was a desire 

 to make up for it now she was dead, or just 

 the courtesy of the tenement, I do not know; 

 but this I know that no fashionable funeral 

 went out of New York that day that could 

 have seemed to me half so solemn as that 

 of the old scrub-woman, though her's went 

 to the Potter's Field in the city's dead-wagon. 

 But it was decked with daisies as was no 

 poor millionaire's, and behind it walked the 

 children, two and two, through the alley to 

 the street. As the dead-wagon was driven 

 away they lined up by the gutter and gave 

 it a rousing cheer for a good-by, swinging 

 their caps as it disappeared around the 

 corner. Perhaps it was not according to all 

 the rules, but it was well-meant, of that there 

 was no doubt. 



Out of the friendships that grew in the 

 path of the flowers came, when the first 

 summer was over, a natural wish to be near 

 those to whom we had come close in their 

 homes and in their lives as Philistines never 

 do, and so we stayed. And in the course of 

 •time there grew up the Social Settlement at 

 48 and 50 Henry Street, within a stone's 

 throw of the place where we first bunched our 

 flowers, to which in later years was given 

 my name. And there it stands to-day, a big 

 beautiful building, freed from debt by the 

 friends we made for the Other Half among 

 the Half up on the avenues who live in hand- 

 some houses but have not for that cause 

 hardened hearts. Freed from debt and " set 

 apart in the service of all God's children," 

 whether of Christian or Jew or pagan, if 

 any there be. That shall be its spirit for all 

 time, please God. And all of it, every bit — 

 clubs, kindergartens, gymnasium and the 

 sea-breezes and green meadows out on Twin 

 Island where in summer our mothers and 

 babies go and are happy — all of it, every 

 whit, is just the doings of a handful of daisies 

 gathered by children's hands "for the poors," 

 and of one little frozen, forsaken dandelion 

 that came with the sun of Easter morning to 

 teach its lesson of faith and hope and love 

 and goes on teaching it, all through the years, 

 where hope was almost dead. All the work 

 of one little wild flower, grateful for being 

 saved from death in the snow and cold. Is 

 it hard now, "to trace any benefit" from the 

 giving of flowers, even if they did it, with 

 some other things we have almost forgotten, 

 to our loss, in the Middle Ages? 



