San Antonio light. [volume] (San Antonio, Tex.) 1911-1993, 1924-03-23

Couldn't you have taken those or
phanage babies in detachments Of
twenty or twenty-five, paid q good
motherly woman, or two good mother
" women, to help you give them
days that would have made all the
other children in the neighborhood
envy the orphanage children? Imag-
inc the wading-pool. the out-of-door
dining-room, the rocking horses and
the bicycles that might be had for
a thousand dollars a day!
That would have been building, in
the true sense. Mary Smith would
have been so busy building little
American brains and bodies, button
ing aprons, butterIng bread, bandag-
ing bumps that she wouldn't have
erred whether she lived or died. There
Mary Smith then, "he shall not taste
death forever"
For the real kind of building is
after all the only vital thing We
know. TO the men and women who
are giving their lives to that building
they are very few and far between
there is never any question ..vdt
death, and the necessity for fighting
death away, simply because death
has become one of the things that
don't matter any longer.
Talk to one of them. One of the
women who is doing more with dol
lar a day than this other woman
could do with her thousand. Perhaps
it is little shadow-like nun, slip
ping in ana out of infected, crowded,
wretched places as if she were really
as invisible as she is unself-conscious.
Perhaps it is young ovcaOr, sweat
haps one of those pale, inspired girls
who fling themselves into the work
of uplift with passion perfectly in
comprehensive TO us others, who see
so much less clearly. l remember
q talk with such young woman, not
long ago. She was superintendent of
pure-mila bureau, where young
mothers from the slums were helped
to help their babies
Hcc manner with the rather unre-
sponsive ca.lers-most of them foreign
born-was pleading, affectionate, Gag
er. Tears same to her eyes at the
sight of an uncomfortable, rashy, hot
little baby. She took him gently into
her arms, with a look almost divine
in its love and pity.
"Oh, If they'd only GOMEZ" she said
10 me breathlessly. "If we could only
begin really to build the work into
something stable-somcthing perina-
nent, with all the mothers really
helping us. following the formulas. and
bringing the babies in to be weighed
and started right! Why, we could
make this the most wonderful Diock
IN the world in three or four years!"
she said. looking out at the somewhat
unpromising tumble of heat, flies,
garbage cans. decaying food, tailors',
bakers, butchers and grocers' shops,
swarming. hot children, crowding hot
passerby that constituted the neigh
borhood.
Meanwhile don't kill yourself try
ing to do it," I suggested.
She looked at me vaguely. She had
not heard me. She burst forth again
presently about sanitation and sponge
baths and light clothing. No threat
of death worried her. What she found
to do in this particular life was
enough for her. And Thought of an
other Promise; Perfect love casteth
out fear"
"But of course we are building"
she said hopefully.
Building! There was the fatal
word again. but it was word OF
promise here. So used it did l"M le-
fer to arches and balconies and false
renelllng and marble mantles.
IF we had six thousand dollars"
said my fiery little pure-milk martyr,
we could"
diln'r hear the rest. ask days in
comet l said in my sould. Mon
day to Saturday-any week in any
one of those forty years-any one
of those more than two thousand
weeks would have done it! And at
the worst you would only have risked
going to your Henry. Mary Smith.
and perhaps would have saved your
sensitive old suspicious self from be-
ing the laughing stock of the new
generation.
And being in a moralizing mood I
thought of still another phrase, surely
as much as ever was said in four
words;
"The deceitfulness of riches"
ScalloDs.
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