Morning journal and courier., 1883-11-16
Hs I1. T Nov. 15, 1883. Recording Secretary.
HOLLY TREE COFFEE HOUSE.

The report regarding this branch of the charitable work is, like the others indicative of continued effort to do good and continued success. This is the eleventh year of the Holly Tree Coffee House down in the old custom house. It has been self supporting despite the very much greater competition now in this field than when the house vas first opened. The report says: "Then there was but one other restaurant in the vicinity of the coffee house; now there are ten be- tween Water and Chapel streets in the i'm mediate vicinity of State street and seven of these are temperance houses. We have a very comfortable restaurant on the first floor where meals can be obtained at any hour through the day from early morning till ten o'clock in the evening. There is small reading room adjoining the restaurant where we furnish the New Haven daily papers, the New York Herald and Harpers Illustrated Weekly and Monthly. We have few books and friends send in maga enjoyed by the men Sunday evenings and af- ter dinner when they gre smoking Others enjoy playing checkers, dominoes and par chesi. In the rear of the restaurant Is the kitchen where the meals are prepared. Mir. Hollis, our superintendent, has had charge of the house eight years and half. He en- ploys a cook and assistant. two walters and a woman comes Ill to LaK6 care or bAo 1OUS1pS rooms. In the third story and attic of the same building we have twelve lodging roems. They are mostly single rooms and rent for twenty-fiV cents per night or $ 25 per week. A man nearly seventy years old has occupied one of these attic rooms for dearly five years. Some of the lodgers take all their meals in our dining room and others only occasionally. There is great variety on the bill of fare and the prices are very low; a very good dinner can be had for twenty cents and many dishes are only five and ten cents The first customer st the restaurant when it was opened is still regu lar boarder. All nations are represented there, many coming directly to the house on arriving in the city. The report further speaks of the usefulness of this department. At this coffee house 49, 731 meals were served during the year, the price received averaging IA 34 cents, and 3,36O lodgings were fur- nished. For the six months that coffee house No. 1 Con Water street, near steam boat wharf, was open IF, 533 meals were serv- ed at like average price. On account of lack of funds this coffee house was given up May 1st.
 "THE BoYs' CLUB"
 In this report it is stated that the club was opened Nov. 21 last for the season Gin the basement of the State House) under the su- perintendence of Mir. O. B. Willis The room has been much improved. and generous friend gave eight dozen chairs and ten tables of ash and chestnut. There was large at tendance of the boys and they were enter tained and morally benefited, and the rudest were made better. After MT. Willis left this city MT. F. Woodland took charge, and has done his work well. The boys are kept in- terested, and this branch of the work is pro- ductiVe of fine results.
 REPORT OF THE ALMsHoUsE VISITING COMMIT
 TEE.
 From this report space permits only this extract: 'FThere are at present at the alms- house 239 persons, of whom there are in the women's house 94 and in the mems 114. Of the children there are 30 in ages from four to ten. For these little ones we would plead. We are glad 8 home has been planned for them, where they shall be separated from those who bear the name of mother, but in so many cases unfitted for it's duties. We only regret, and that very earnestly, that these little ones are not taken at an earlier age than that proposed-of two years-or at least that distinction is not made between those belonging to mothers whose poverty alone obliges them to go there for care, and who are willing and anxious to house and care for themselves as soon as possible, and those illegitimate ones whose mothers in so many cases will stay ss long as permitted, then go out to repeat their crime and return, in some cases having not only 8 mother, but grandmother then showing four generations of hereditary crime and poverty! The law allows these women with their infants to remain in the almshouse for six months, but by some authority they do stay for one, two and three years. All this time in aImUst absolute idlenessI Ought not something to be done by our town aathori- ties to prevent this condition of thinge? When the new town house is built shall not a regular work house be planned for and these women made to work and that steadily all the while they are there?
 Perhaps many of them will not then be quite so ready to run into crime and disgrace Knowing that hard work is at the end of it! The large proportion of these are foreigners; sometimes we find an American girl or wo- man among them. But we do maintain and believe that this is one way to hinder this evil tendency and break into the hereditary instinct to crime which the child imbibes at a very early age, and wish very earnestly tEat the age for removing them had been fixed for three months instead of two years When we know that eighteen of these little creatures with twenty-seVen adults sleep in one room, larger it is true, do you wonder that we urge different system in their behalf, and we are glad to know that after January 1Et, 1884. some of these will breath different atmosphere. There are now in the house ten OF twelve infants from the one of five weeks to that of one or two years These children owing to the watchfulness and frmness of Mrs. Sanford, the wife of the