The Wellington enterprise. [volume] (Wellington, Ohio) 1867-188?, 1883-06-27
The Fresh-Air Fund.

dismal street, stands big shed, in which
eighteen families eat and sleep. 1t is a
quarter of New York where decent peo-
pie are seldom seen. On every side
there are shsnties and rookeries, and
the air is heavy with sickening smells
from slaughter-houses. Dirt is every
where; foul ooze of garbage and stand
ing water in the gutter; solid layers of
dust in dark entries which are never
scratched by broom; heaps of unclean
straw serving for pillow and bed in the
closets which are known as bedrooms;
and thick coatings of CRIME, ancient
and modern, on the hands and faces of
the children swarming about the door
ways, as well as in the shreds, tatters,
and patches with which they are scan
tily clothed. The midsummer sun heats
up the piles of refuse until they steam
with foul vapors, which are caught up
by the windows; and when the doors
leading into the halls are opened for a
draught of fresh air, there is a sitting
sense of closeness and dampness, which
makes the babies sneeze and the moth
ers cough. The long wooden building,
with its three floors and rickety stair
cases, is so unsteady and tottering that
one who watches it in the noontime heat
of a July day fairly holds his breath,
expecting to hear sudden crash and
to see its ragged roof and dingy walls
fall TO pieces, disappearing in cloud Of
dust.
That ugly shed is known as "The
Barracks" Rubbish heap though it
be, it contains within its patched and
Shiny shell eighteen homes, with as
many as sixty children. On each of its
three floors there are six families, and
no household has more than two rooms,
one of than being barely larger than q
closet, and as dark as night even in the
daytime. In these two rooms the cook
ing and washing for the family are done,
and at night the father. mother, and
sometimes as many as six or eight chill
dren, have to sleep close together, like
sardines in a box. 1.-THE Barracks is
but one of the hundreds of tenement
houses where the children of the poor
live all the year round.
The children in these tenement houses
always look older than they really are.
The childhood which accords with
their years, If not with their faces, can
not be permanently restored to them,
for poverty is their birthright, and every
season brings with it privations and
misery. But If they can be helped to
be children for two weeks in the year,
the memories of their holiday and the
renewed health which it gives to them
will make them younger as well as
healthier and happier. If, when the
scorching midsummer sun falls with a
white glare upon the thin roofs and
flimsy walls of their tenement homes,
the children can be taken out of the
narrow closets where they sleep, and
the steaming cutters where they swarm
like big black flies, and set down in the
center of the children's ground,
which is the county, a new glow will
be kindled in their cheeks, and they
will be the children they were meant to
be-not little old men and little old
women.
Now, this is the work of what is
called " The Tribune Fresh-Air Fund. y"
People who are rich or have moderate
means furnish the money for the chill
dren's travelling expenses, sending it to
the Tribune newspaper. Last summer
there were more than fifteen hundred
generous persons, many of them chill
dren themselves, who gave money for
this purpose, the contributions amount
ing to $21, ,556.91. With this sum, 5,599
of the poor children of New York were
taken into the country, given a holiday
of two weeks, and carried back to their
tenement homes. While their travelling
expenses were paid by the contributors
to the Fund, the children were the in
vited guests of farmers and other hos
pitable people living in the country.
During the spring, seventy-five public
meetings were held in as many villages
| in New York, Connecticut, New jersey,
| Massachusetts, Vermont, and other
States, and arrangements were made
with committees and clergymen in as
many other localities and when the
kind-hearted entertainers in the country
were ready to receive them, the children
were sent out from the city in large
| companies, and distributed among the
villages.
The manager of the Fresh-Air Fund
| Is Willard Parsons, bachelor clergy
| man, who has adopted the poor children
of New York for his own. Hale and
hearty, with ruddy face and an eye
| twinkling with good humor, he has a
heart brlmful of kindness for neglected
children, and the energy of twenty men.
| He it was who devised this simple and
effective plan of entertaining in the
country the poorest Of poor children
living in New York and Brooklyn. The
experiment was tried six years ago,
when he had a country parish in Penn
| sylvania, and now he Is making this the
business of his life. The first year,
sixty children were taken into the
country. Last year, 5000 children had
an outing in green fields and pastures
new. 1t is charity rs popular as it il
beautiful, for every heart is touched by
the sorrows of neglected childhood. IL
Il NJ Eia.-rI -,