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THE PAVEMENT OF HELL

It Is Revealed in Blundering Efforts to Do Good "Regardless."

Danger in Benevolence Without Consideration Behind it -- Overturning the Existing Order.

There is no charitable industry -- if that expression may be used -- more energetically conducted in Omaha and In Nebraska than the finding of homes for homeless children, or the accuring of good homes for children who live in poor ones. This is, undoubtedly, a sensible, practical and beautiful charity. But it is one in which the most careful judgment needs to be exercised. The point of view of the person who makes a profession of charity is not always the best. Long familiarity with misery in many forms and the nose for economizing time, strength and money leads such person, however excellent they may be, to take a perfunctory view of their duties. They are apt to evolve theories which rapidly crystalize into dogmas And these dogmas are lived up to with unflinching faithfulness, and are liable to be inflicted upon the beneficiaries -- or the victims -- of their benevolence, with something akin to tyranny. It is not difficult to see how it all comes about. At first, it is true, they feel for each suffering man and woman They make a study of his or her needs -- they give not only of time and money, but of themselves. But after a time, dismayed at the extent of the task before them, they reduce their charity to a system, degenerate into statistics and talk about "cases" instead of men and women. It is when homefinding for children reaches this point in the minds of chronically benevolent persons, that the time comes to temper common sense with sentiment.

What I mean is this. In the eagerness to adjust wrong conditions, to keep children from growing up amid vicious surroundings, to save them from privation and uncleanliness, they are taken from their natural homes and put in others. Their condition is probably benefited. The professional benefactor goes around with a virtuous feeling in his or her breast and never [?] to remember that that which God hath joined together has been put asunder.

Scientific charity is very well, education, sanitation, Christianity and good clothes are very well. But older than any of these things, reaching down into the deepest mysteries of human existence, reaching up to link man with God, binding us all in the bundle of life together with thongs stronger than life or death, is the love that links a mother to her child.

I say now, candidly, that I think there is a tendency to find too many homes for children. I think there is too much attempt made to persuade poverty stricken parents to give up their children; I think wrong doing girls too frequently resign their babies to the ready accommodation of convenient charities; I think we are too disregardful of the natural ties.

These self-sacrificing philanthropists say, not wihout some reason, that a child is better off in a well-kept, Christian, refined home than in a dirty, pagan and ignorant one.

Do you know, I am not sure that the premises are absolutely correct? I am rather inclined to the opinion that it is an open question, and that the dirty, pagan and ignorant home may be where the child is happiest.

And the constitution of the United States insures to every child, as well as to every man and woman, the right to the pursuit of happiness. No one has a right to make us prosperous, or refined, or Christian against our will. If any little child among us prefers to shiver over the scant fire in a shanty on the river bottoms, half clothed and half fed, for the sake of seeing the face of a rough, tired, loving mother at night, then that little child has a right to stay there, and no one has a moral right to take her away and put her in the midst of good people, good furniture, good books and good influences.

Of course, everyone will affirm that this is a debatable point. And I admit the privilege and benefits of debate. But since the societies of charity and the charitable persons have their dogmas, I may also have mine. And I say a little child would rather be beaten by its own mother than to live unbeaten with a woman not its mother And I say again that the child has a right to its pursuit of happiness.

Why does my little boy sit and gaze at me with happy eyes -- why does he run his fingers over my face with an eloquence of touch in them? Why does he nestle close to me with smiles and say, "Mine, mine!" if anybody else touches me? Not because I am any better to him than "several other persons I am not very much with him; I am not always patient. I sometimes punish him, I refuse him a great many things that he wants. He does not therefore love me better than he loves anyone "else for any good reason. He loves me from instinct -- instinct bound up in each fibre of his dimpled and beautiful body -- instinct lying in the mystic cells of his busy brain -- instinct throbbing and surging with the blood of his passionate little heart.

Now supposing that I were even more unworthy of him than I am, that his future would suffer materially from his association with me, would it be best to take him from me? If you want a tree to bear fruit, is it best to cut of the roots close to the trunk and leave them bleeding?

The philosophic person with good furniture and a fund of respectability will reply that there is a difference between the child in my home and the child in the home of the scrub woman whose husband is a drunkard, and whose life is encumbered with repulsive cares I don't believe it. I think dirty, rough little hands hold as tight to mother's skirts as white, dimpled little hands I believe that the thrill that runs up from such a clutch, along the dress skirt to the mother's heart, is just as delicious when the gown is of work-soiled cotton as when it is of azure silk.

Nor do I think that evil surroundings necessarily make a child evil, just as I am very sure that good surroundings do not always make a child good. I know of the case of a boy who grew up in one of the worst sections of Chicago. His companions were boys of filthy habits, who were never so decent as when they were engaged in street fights with each other The public school which he attended had the reputation of being the "toughest" school in Chicago His own home was poverty stricken and in many ways uninviting. He was poorly and often ridiculously dressed. But all the evil he heard only filled the little boy's mind with disgust and he took to finding his companions among books. Some of these were as bad as the companions but had played with upon the streets. He read everything that came along There he went out to work, with his common school education but half completed And he spent a good part of his money on the theater. He sat in the gallery night after night, and saw everything that appeared on the boards. The appropriate ending to such a tale would naturally be that the boy went to the "demnition bow-wows." Every write of fiction for the Sunday school libraries would certainly make that the end of such a career. But this is the age of verities, and we do not write so much about how things ought to be as how they are. And the truth about this boy is that he educated himself. He had furnished himself with contrasts, and having a well made mind, he deliberately made his selections When he grew up the men who sought him and loved him were gentlemen, and some of them were scholars, the women who admired him and were proud of his friendship, were gentlewomen with fine thoughts and dainly, fair lives, and today his enemies as well as his friends know that he never took a cent which belonged to another that he has never betrayed a friend, that he has loved one woman and her alone and that his mind is stored with many riches.

I know another man of about the same age, brought up in the same city but in the most undeniably respectable part of town. He was given the benefits of the best schools, and of the best society, surrounded with refinements, allowed, to read only "good" books, to see "good" plays and to go to "good" places. That young man lived a lie for years, broke his wife's heart, cheated his partner and covered his mother with shame. And his mind is filled with saw dust. He can no more hold a conversation worth listening to than he can make a promise which he will keep.

Perhaps there are those who can explain all this. But I cannot. I only see some mysterious soul-force triumphing over influences of ancestry, environment and education.

All of which persuades me that the problems of life bear very little resemblance to problems in arithmetic, and that there is no rule by which they can be solved.

For these reasons it seems to me that one should be very careful about "busting up a home," as a little girl said to me the other day. Her mother had grown tired washing for sixteen years, and taking care of the children her husband had deserted, and she went raving mad, and died so, within a week after her seizure. The four children clung together tenaciously.

"You won't let them bust up the home, will you," the oldest girl, said. Yet every dictate of reason says it would be better all around if the children were all placed in comfortable, protected homes. But, though my brain might approve of that, my heart would be haunted by the thought of how the home would seem after it was "busted," and how lonesome and strange the children would feel in alien homes, separated forever, and unconscious even of each other's whereabouts.

It is the habit among those who furnish protection to unfortunate young women during their time of sorest trial, to relieve them of their children if they so desire, and to find good homes for them. The erring girl goes free, can make her own living, is not dragged down by shame, and the baby grows up without the reproach of being a bastard. All of which sounds very well and appears to be the sensible thing.

But as a matter of fact there are some of those "reasonable" girls who give up their babies who never know what it is to sleep at night without dreaming of baby arms around their necks, and who are haunted in the day by the sound of a baby voice and the patter of baby feet.

I know this is so because I have been told so by one whose empty arms ached with longing for the child she thought a shame to have. And as for the baby -- I wonder if there was not always something unsatisfied in its little heart?

The modern times are wonderful times, and scientific clarity may be one of its best developments; but nature must never be lost sight of; the laws of God must not be disregarded. We must not be dogmatic and arrogant in our charity. We must not insist that those we strive to benefit must do our way or be forever cursed. We must not place economy above human love, nor common sense above human instinct. In our zeal for the benefaction of mankind and the best development of the commonwealth, let us not forget that the lowest, meanest creatures that lives has its rights. Let us remember that the ties of nature are sacred, and that to "bust up a home" may be a greater crime than letting a child grow up and vicious surroundings. ELIA W. PEATTIE.

FOR LENTS SOBER DAYS.

A Plain but Artistic Gown Which Combines Necessary Qualities

The melancholy days of Lent are come -- those when we wear sad hued clothes and a mock expression and go to church and bethink of our sins! Flippant? Well, perhaps so, but not in the deepest sense. Women cannot afford for a moment to lose sight of the mighty question of dress that they fail in the

[Drawing]
FOR [?] DAYS.

becoming To go gayly attired in Lent is neither fashionable nor seemly for the churchwoman. It is not alone that she follow the vogue but the true lenten spirit decrees that her mind be free from the burden of laces and fripperies and be set upon higher things for a season given over to soberer thought [?[ it has come to pass that at the