, 1889-12-19
Maids Of New York Who Help
the Poor.
THE COLLEGE SETTLEMENT.
Beautiful Girls Who Keep Open
House in the Slums Of the
Great City.
New York Mail and Exprcss.l


whence issued stately matrons rustling
in brocades in the days when fashion
had her temple on tho now squalor-
stricken East side, pass morning and
night seven slender sweet-faced girls. To
the one side of them Is a cellar groggery,
to the other synagogue now being con-
verted to- other uses and across the way
and all about them are cheap shops and
dismal. unclean lodging-houses, where
want joins hands with vice and hope
lessness in a strange, uncanny dance OF
suffering; but the seven frcsh-faced
girls in their dainty little gowns, with
spotess gloves and boots. such as Riving-
ton street had utterly forgotten, and
theii exquisitcly simple bonnets, hall
revealing and half concealing the bright
abundance of rippling hair, look out
from under the level brows on dirt,
despair and drunkenness and are not
afraid.
Within the house Is an atmosphere OF
warmth and light and color, such rs
should pervade the cozy home nest OF
any seven happy-heartod young women.
| A round little maid with short black
hair and an immaculate pinatore opens
the door for you. She used to 20 with
toes out of her boots and to be innocent
of the bath tub, bun the seven girls have
worked the change. She will show you
into roomy, high-ceiled sitting room,
with carved columns of the old days,
where the tinted walls, white and gold
hanging at the windows, rugs on the
stained floors, rows of bookshelves, and
odd and artistic chairs, some In oak and
some in bamboo, are all delightfully."-
CHEEKY and comfortable; and you will be
greeted by Miss Jeanette Gurney Fine,
the presiding genius of the establish.
ment Chat is, Ii it is Friday, and you
are a college woman), who Will explain
to you that this is II college settlement,
and that its girl inmates are simply try
ing to be neighborly with the women
! There are only two other such colonies
in the world of cultivated people living
in the slums; one is Toynbee Hall,
which was founded by university men
in the east end of London, and the
other is in Chicago, and was started 10y
a wealthy woman this summer on hear
ing of the project of the seven college
girls.
GRADUATE or SMITH COLLEGE.
Miss Fine is girl of great personal
beauty and with wonderful charm in
her earnest eyes. She comes from
Smith college and gives up position in
an aristocratic private school up town to
get acquainted with her livingston
street fellow beings. One of her sisters
in the colony is studying medicine in
the school which was founded by DR..
Elizabeth Blackwell. Another-her
name is DR.. Caroline Hamilton-has
Just received her degree as physician,
and brought her skill to be OF use TO
this weary, toiling neighborhood, and
Al Ill
halls and is studying tor her second de-
gree. These are four Who will remain in
the colony for year, for there are per-
manents and transients among the
young settlers. Tho transieuts come for
two months at a time and the three
who have been there since the house was
opened at the beginning of October will
be replaced by other Nassar aud Smith
and Wellesley girls rs soon as December
comes in. 'a.I h
Between the transients and the per.
manents there are other differences than
those of duration and stay. The per-
manents attend 70 their own business in
the day time that they may not seem to
pose AS missionaries, but may he ac.
cepted on an every day footing Just as
any family of manual workers moving
into the district might be. They give
to Rivington street only their evenings.
The transients, on the other hand, be-
being visitors and at leisure, are on
duty all day. And the duty2 Well, it's
housework not inlrequently, for it
wouldn't do to stand OIL ones dignity,
or good.by to the hopes and success of
the colony. The seven girls have Il
matron who superintends the cooking
and the little maid who minds the bell.
Whatever else needs doing they do with
their own fingers, these enthusiastic
young women who beg to be alowcd to
leave homes of refinement and luxury
that they may wait upon themselves,
surrounded by ignorance and degreda-
tion, in the Tenth ward. Isn't it
hair-brained idea2
Each OF the seven girls has her own
room and they divide the housekeeping
expenses among themselves. They at
tempt no religious work or tract distrib-
uting OF any description, and their pua-
zled neighbors, who first discovered that
they were somehow different when
little child who delivered a bundle ran
home with buiging eyes and feet winged
by amazoment to report TO its mother,
who housed six children and two board
ers In single room, that they hadn't
a single bed on the whole first floor"
were first stupelied with astonishnent
over such sinful waste of room, then
set the new comers down as house of
the Kings Daughters, then as Methodist
gave up the puzzle and waited for devel-
opments with surprised curiosity.
''BATHs, FIVE CENTS"
The first clew to the mystery discov-
cred by the neighborhood WAS little
gilt sign, Baths, 3 Cents" The inter-
est aroused was languid. On election
day one woman came. 1t was Il holiday
she explained, and only on holidays had
Rivington street women any time for
bathing She was told she could come
in the evening, and slowly the news
tr'ckled through the tenement house
factories. One night last week there
were live women who applied at one
time
Rivington street children made the
next discovery. If they played on the
steps they were not ordered away. On
the contrary, pretty girls opened the
door and invited them inside. Once in
the fairylsnd of a parlor they had pic
ture books to look at, wonderful toys to
play with, nice things to eat, and when
they went home they were asked TO
come again and bring some more chill
dren next time. fl
After the children came mother or
two. These found out that the young
housewives wanted TO be friends. You
know how In country village the
women run back and forth and exchange
receipts for curing Group and making
savory dishes and turning and refurbish-
ing old clothes. Well, the Rivington
street people discovered that these rosy
those terms of ncighborly intimacy with
them that they liked TO make calls and
be called OH. and that, instead of setting
up for proselyters, they would chat lust