# Where Charity Begins

Extracted from Harper's magazine, vol91, 1895, pp. 268–272.
WHERE CHARITY BEGINS
BY OWEN WISTER
AT the threshold, outside which we stood before entering, the small natives of the street had gathered themselves, and, partly curious, mainly derisive, considered the premises with suspicion. The door was open for any that might wish to look further; and this, together with the light that burned in the hall and showed stairs leading to parts unknown, was plainly, in the opinion of these seasoned sceptics, a mild and transparent decoy.
If you own no father or mother in particular, and have been hopping about the curb-stones for some dozen years, you may not be able to read or write, but your knowledge of traps and how to escape them is full-fledged. To your widely watchful mind any stranger, and almost any friend, may suddenly turn into the policeman, or come out from behind something and beat you or cheat you, and you pass your shrewd, self-sufficient days in alertness against mankind. And so this crowd of boys hovering at the threshold or near it on the dark pavement, full of the inevitable unhappy cleverness that life had taught each one, and with the feeling clear among them that a mere open door and a light were by no means enough to catch such accomplished birds as they. Now and then they jeered, or fell into a light skirmish; sometimes some eight-year-old would make an observation older in wit than the hills; or another would grow impatient of watching, and with an "A-ah!" of depreciation and baffled inquiry would slouch whistling away to his slums. Yet skirmishing and all gave way to new curiosity when from time to time some one passed through the door. It might be a Harry or a Sam, one of themselves; then they called comments at him, and questions born of satire. But when it was a young lady in a cloak, satire died away; and I think this sight more than any other wrought upon the curious birds at the door. A man, even with gloves and a good coat, could not so strike the street eye and imagination; for with such they had dealt in one way and another—blacking their boots at a corner, for example; but a young lady in a cloak on familiar terms with Harry and Sam was almost as unlikely as those pink and flaxen creations that slowly pivot behind plate-glass, unfolding the new fashions.
How such a being was regarded by those who decided to explore and defy the trap I saw almost at once. The threshold crowd stood apart for us and watched us go inside. And when we came to the stairs, we found, half-way up, a strayer, who had been evidently lured thus far one step at a time, and was debating over what next. We stopped on his particular stair, and I saw his small face quicken to distrust. He told his name grudgingly with a latent defiance, and his age, and his intentions, which were adverse. No, he did not belong to the Evening Home. No, he never came there. His brother did. He came around with his brother. This in a tone indicating that the brother might succumb, but deceit with him would be futile. I suppose he was eight or nine; very dirty, and his knee-breeches ragged. Like the crowd at the door, he was collarless, and with no shirt to speak of. He eyed the lady in the cloak strangely, a little drawing back, and a little held by bewilderment. She, somewhat in the same way that a host offers meat without urging it, told him he had better come and be a member, patted his shoulder, which from his look I take to have been a new experience to him, and so we left him on the stairs, side wise, and halting against the banisters.
Upon our entrance to the Evening Home's main room I noticed instantly two things—the quite spontaneous removing of hats, and the great proportion of collars. These were birds of the same feather with those at the threshold, but they had been coming to the Home through the nights of several years. I succeeded in counting seventy-five of them, but there were more—a company showing various styles of orderliness and self-respect, made from the humblest, the very humblest, of the homeless and the penniless—boys who had often not got so far as selling papers, who had never done a coherent thing in their lives, and who came into this place of their own free-will, and had learned better without rules. For no rules exist here, printed, written, or unwritten. The new-comer meets no restriction more formulated than those which the more lucky of us began with in the homes of our childhood. And yet one boy among the seventy-five was pointed out to me as the only one who had ever been impertinent. The wise absence of rules is, of course, the secret of this. They troop about the room, these uncompelled guests, with all their native suspicions upon the watch. They look at the walls, the benches, the piano, the books, strange and uneasy at first, ready to resist somebody or something. They see groups of their fellows seated apart playing some game like twenty questions, while others are at checkers, and a few—only a few, to be sure—are reading. No spy seems to be at hand; the evening goes on of itself without apparent constraint or direction; coming, going, and staying are equally simple; you do what you please—in short, there is nothing to resist, no authority, no person with a club. The most belligerent cannot wage war without some enemy to complete the bargain, and thus the stranger in the Evening Home settles on a bench with blankness at first in his spirit, and presently with the dawn of a new idea—that here are a number of people known to him who are finding enjoyment in a manner not known to him, and he will investigate how this is managed, and why some of them wear badges.
I think I saw several in this state, boys who had but lately set foot inside the door, and sat unoccupied, still confused by the presence of an influence which they had never met before, and could not name now. I was myself a little dazed by the visible progress and action of this force. There were boys upon whom it had been at work for seven or eight years—since the beginning; the first boys, now grown into young men, with a bond and a pride uniting them, a sense of owing something to themselves and the Home, monitors to check the riot when too riotous, secretaries to keep the minutes of the little inside societies formed for their occupation and enlightenment, singers who had as principal characters or chorus mastered successively Pinafore, The Pirates of Penzance, and Iolanthe, many of them still unable to read music, and the younger ones scarce able to read plain English; yet they had sung the operas through to audiences who came each year, and hope to come again. Then from the older ones, shaped by this influence of several years, I could turn to the more formless, and so run the scale down to the most recent vagrants, untidy, unpromising, waiting to be rebellious, and with nothing to rebel against but this invisible power, this pervading unwritten discipline which they need not obey, and which had redeemed their elder comrades from the plight of the gutter that themselves were in. For, let me repeat, this good work was being spent upon the nethermost, those whose need of help is the extremest, who in general do not even ply the simplest of street trades, but run unhoused and motherless, eating where they happen, sleeping where they can, vagabonding the alleys, making themselves ready for the reform school and the jail. Here in this room they sat, kept out of the streets, in the presence at least of decency, and in some of them certainly crime was being nipped in the bud. The best part of it was that they were not aware of this. They were being taught nothing that they did not desire, and only the simplest knowledge then. I looked in upon a department of the industry, a night school for somewhat older boys, who sat round a table ciphering upon slates, and handing their sums to the lady who sits with them, and devotes herself to helping them read, write, and figure—the three old "r's." I will instance among them one student: a young man who lost his work last summer has at present an employment not quite sufficient to feed him, sleeps in an empty house he found convenient, begs his breakfast each morning on his way to work, and each night comes to the lady in the Evening Home to learn arithmetic.
But teaching, either mental or manual, is not the central aim of this place, and the Evening Home and Library Association, of Chestnut and Aspen streets, Philadelphia, stands alone of its kind in our country, and, so far as I know, has but one counterpart anywhere, which is the People's Palace in London. There, too—but only there—some wise and devoted people have got hold of a notion that lies below reading and arithmetic and carpentering. Our cities are full of institutions where trade knowledge is well taught, but none of them are meant to fill the lack for which the Evening Home stands, and that is simply home influence for those who have never known it. Not even religion enters specifically here into the learning that these waifs receive, but the wider thing that every true religion stands for. I do not suppose that it lies in the imagination of most of us to conceive what we should have been like had we begun our lives alone and uncared for by a single human being, and I believe that the sense of being valued by somebody is inestimable in the making of character; and with the making of character it is that the Evening Home concerns itself—to begin early with the boys to destroy that sheeplike herding dependence upon some leader, to start the springs of independent thought, to create the power of sustained attention—these are matters that come before arithmetic, and are achieved neither in schools of manual training nor along the street. It is the lack of independence and persistence far more than scanty book-learning which brings most men to begging and the penitentiary, and in this experiment that is being tried with gathering success at Chestnut and Aspen streets the street boy is found invariably devoid of application. No matter how sharp his wits may be, how naturally apt for acquisition—and many have excellent brains—never a one begins with the slightest notion of sticking to a thing. At the effort to understand a printed page and retain something of it in his memory his unaccustomed mind recoils. After the first poor minute of attempt at collecting his dishevelled faculties he sickens with fatigue and disgust, and then quickly throws the book at the teacher's head. Not especially in rage at her, but in his intolerable restlessness at constraint, and she is naturally the first target of his young displeasure.
This book-throwing has been a common manifestation at the Evening Home, and before I come to Pinafore I shall briefly recount the methods devised for catching the waif's attention and winning him to some sort of regularity. For without the power of attention, be it well remembered, the manual training schools will accomplish nothing for him. He will not sit still long enough, but, having strayed in, will directly, upon discovering himself to be bored, stray out again to pervade the streets and mature himself in evil.
Suspicion, as I have said, is the cardinal taint in these young people, and to allay suspicion is the first effort of the volunteers. It is a volunteer's custom to select a group of about ten boys, and tell them his or her name, and on what evenings he or she will be at the Evening Home. Next comes the offer to read to them, or play games, if they will ask it. These wild colts are not even led to the water, for they would be off on the instant. They are shown where the water is, and the rest is tactfully left to them. After the first early acquaintance and removal of reticence each boy is asked a little about himself, how long he has been coming, how often, and if he is a member. He tells the classes and clubs that he has attended or would like to join; he names his favorite book, if he knows of such a thing. Then comes the paper, the Chronicle, published by the boys each month. Does he read it regularly? And does he keep an account with the Stamp Saving Fund? This thrifty device has found its way even among some of the parents and relatives, when there are any. It was begun two years ago, after it had proved a success in several large cities. The Home has merely established an agency for the sale of stamps and the issue of deposit cards. The would-be saver buys the stamps—one, two, three cents, and higher, according to the sum of his deposit—and pastes them upon his card. The amount can be withdrawn in whole or in part by giving notice and presenting the card, upon which the stamps are cancelled. I took some of these to look at, and it was strange to count at sight how various were the inclinations to save. Here was a book full of five-cent stamps, while the next contained a single deposit of a cent. A small boy stood by, and informed the volunteer, in a determined manner, that he preferred spending his money. She abstained from over-advising him, but dropped an observation upon the prudence of certain other boys.
When the volunteer has somewhat learned the character of each individual, his special enjoyments and needs, he is recommended to what seems appropriate for him. He must join the Home, become a member for fifteen cents a year, and wear the club button. Then he has waiting for him many clubs and classes: the night schools, the manual training school, the cooking school, military drill, debating club, fife and drum corps, and last, but in many cases undoubtedly best for persuading him to system and discipline, music, which he can take in the form of singing, piano, guitar, and banjo. For in everything that he tries to learn he is opposed inveterately by his own mental incoherence. Reading and writing are, I suppose, the most distasteful to him; but even modelling the Lucerne Lion in clay does not generally hold him long absorbed at the outset; and though I saw heads of animals and angels that showed evident facility, and were the promise of a future livelihood for their designer, the main room was filled with little vacant idlers who could make up their minds to nothing but noise, until, at the end of the evening, they were gathered to the piano; then, indeed, the marvellous power that music has for them was made plain. At first they were unwilling to be silent; they romped, they scrambled, they jibed in masses, drowning the player's accompaniment; it seemed a hopeless bedlam. Yet the music went on. A little fellow was induced to sing. He sang many lyrics of an extreme and—to him, I must think—utterly incomprehensible pathos. One in particular, which reiterated "Take back the engagement ring," followed by a lugubrious waltz chorus, seemed quite incompatible with the emotions of thirteen summers. Yet it was overloaded sentiment that they desired to hear, and they listened and joined with fervor and solemnity. Steadily the noise and skylarking were forgotten; they watched the musician intently, and the spell was obviously at work. Why they should wish melancholy songs, and a moral where virtue is reproachful and magnanimous, I cannot clearly guess; I suppose the melody and half-comprehended words make some dim appeal to that spark of the divine which I have the happiness to believe is implanted somewhere in all of them. At any rate, it was this characteristic of theirs that brought Pinafore. Music could keep them attentive; they should be set to learning music, and words that went with it.
The first trial, Pinafore, was something at which the mere contemplation staggers. They would not learn the lines. They assured their leader that they could not possibly remember all that stuff. To give them books would have disbanded them on the spot. Teaching began orally word by word. They listened for two minutes, marched out of the door, and roamed the town for several days. They were made to know that plenty were ready to fill their places, and this brought them casually back to see what was going on. They saw the indomitable leader standing at the piano, striking the keys with one hand, waving the other, and shouting melody to the chorus, who shouted, "We sail the ocean blue," in response. Then the recalcitrant sat down once more, and succeeded in committing some lines to memory. This was the only argument used to them: "You said you could not learn anything by heart. You have learned that, and therefore can learn some more." Again some of them went away, but returned, to find the leader eternally shouting by the piano, and the chorus replying, "Sir Joseph's barge is seen." By this time the music, and possibly the drama, began to interest them, and they caught at the sentiment of "Fair moon, to thee I sing." Pinafore was now creeping from chaos, when a sudden twist in the boy nature cropped out and threatened to tangle the whole enterprise. The big boys of seventeen would not sing with the small ones of twelve. They could not submit their dignity to this affront. So they sat in a corner together and looked on cynically. The worst of it was that this first set of boys had not been long enough under the influence of the Home to acquire any sort of independence. They herded with their leader; and if Jim came in and sincerely wanted to sing, but discovered that Jack had decided not to sing, he too forsook the troupe and sat in the corner. It was explained to them all that little boys are necessary, because only they can sing treble, but this technicality had no weight with them. And then Josephine and Little Buttercup struck on the issue of petticoats. Still the leader stood by the piano, week in and week out; and at length, in the spring, Pinafore was actually given. To say it was astonishing is pale comment. The audience of polite "grown-ups" that came to hear it went home entirely amazed. But the best of Pinafore was that it established two fundamental precedents. They knew now that they could learn and remember out of a book, and the chorus who finally sang made their first step in independence. When The Pirates of Penzance came there were Jims ready to sing, whether the Jacks refused or not. Moreover, tin; printed book was now dared. How much of Mr. Gilbert's polished idiom reached their comprehension I cannot say. I have laughed at many a Major-General, not only in the song about the hypothenuse, but at a certain prose speech of contrition for telling a lie that he makes to his ancestors in his recently bought chapel. Frederic reminds him that they are not his ancestors, and he replies (I quote from memory): "Frederic, in this chapel are ancestors. I do not know whose they were, but I know whose they are; and I shudder to think that their descendant by purchase, if I may so style myself, should have brought a blot upon what I have no doubt was an unstained escutcheon." The effect of this from the Major-General of the Evening Home surpassed any I have heard. Iolanthe was a still greater undertaking, but the company acquitted itself admirably, and now we are looking for more. The dread of the printed book is now healed.
These comic operas have served a good end, for they have worked in with the chief aims of the Home, greatly helping to teach the boys attention and independence. I might say something of the coffee-room, where cups are to be had for three cents, and other refreshments for similar small sums; and I could speak of the library, and the Happy Thought Club, and the baseball nine. But I do not wish to burden my page with statistics. It may be said that the Home is open every night in the week from the 1st of October until the 1st of May. The nightly attendance varies from fifty to two hundred and fifty, with ages ranging from twelve to forty. In a recent season the whole attendance upon the general assembly room was 17,997 boys and 2953 men; upon the manual training school, 2000 boys; and upon the cooking-school, 560 girls. Only boys are now taken in the cooking-school.
I cannot think of a more useful or more simple charity than this early appeal to the better instincts of our poor, this forestalling of evil while the waif is still unhardened. After each one of us has learned to walk and talk and spell, and perhaps be president of something, and the mansion of self is crowded from floor to roof with business and recreation, still some room is left in the heart of nearly every man, vacant of his own concerns, ready for another's use—a sort of lodging for strangers, in fact, the spare room of benevolence. It is here that we order the extra turkeys at Christmas, and here that we draw checks when Chicago burns or Johnstown is wasted by a flood. In no other place can we acquire the sorrowful wholesome knowledge of how many upon this earth directly need our help, and what various help they call for, day and night. Yet if a man the year round did nothing else than minister to the thousand shapes in which Want roams among us, he could not reach all or the half; and so it happens that many become bewildered in the presence of this army of starved souls and bodies, and either leave off altogether, or dispense their kindness without plan, firing random shots of generosity. To put hand in pocket for the passing beggar undoubtedly blesses him that gives, and I would not go a month without this self-indulgence; but the street penny cuts at the root of no evil, and the cure of one empty stomach seems a fleeting benefit to the race when you might be preventing a dozen from ever going hungry. You must reach the vagrant at the dawn of his day, before he has walked the streets too long, before they have taught him too much. That is the great work to aim at, and nothing I know of hits it so true as the Evening Home of Philadelphia. If this work spreads elsewhere, our jails and our penitentiaries will certainly have fewer in them, more of the destitute will have started upon life with something like a home; and it is there, I think, that charity begins.
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1929.
The longest-living author of this work died in 1938, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 85 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
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