104

A WORD WITH THE WOMEN

(By Elia W Peattie)

Since Chicago has grown to be a [real?] great city fresh air relief funds have become a necessary part of its benevolent work. Ten years ago the Chicago Daily News started a fresh air relief fund and since that time it has never ceased in summer to be the vehicle for the charitably disposed to give the children of the tonements their summer outings. There are other fresh air funds too and they are all needed because Chicago though not a very hot city is certainly a very crowded one in some parts. There is a home at Olenova Lake where boys and girls are taken for a two weeks vacation, there is the sanitarium at Lincoln park, where sick babies go by the dozens in June and by the hundreds in August there is a system of distributing children among kind farmers for two weeks each and many more [?] for giving the children a vacation.

A great deal of the money used for these purposes comes from other children who make small sacrifices in a personal way and [for?] to buy candy or rubber balls, or cracker jack that they may drop their pennies in the little glass jars which stand all about the city as receptacles for the fresh air contributions. But no little girl in Chicago has raised so much as Myra Bradwell Helmer. She is the granddaughter of Judge Bradwell for many years associated with the legal and political history of Chicago and of Myra Bradwell who is now dead but who was for many years the president of the Legal News company who bored the distinction of being the first woman lawyer in the west who was a capable newspaper woman along her line and a writer of books on law. Little Myra Bradwell Helmers mother is now the president of the Legal News company and like her distinguished mother combines home virtues with business ability. So she wrote down the stories her 6 year-old daughter told her and made a note of her wise remarks which Judge Bradwell had published in a little crimson covered book, and which sells for 25 cents. Every mother knows that a book of delicious humor could be written from the chance sayings of any child and as this little girl seems to have been a bit funnier than most children the book has sold so well in its very few weeks of existence that Myra [?] has a few hundred dollars to give to the poor children who need to be taken from their squalld homes. Here is the preface to the little book.

I am a little girl 6 years old. Grand papa and mamma give me money and sometimes I put it in the glass gloves down town for the sick babies but I never earn any money myself so I thought I would make a book. I talked it and mamma wrote it down just as I talked it. Grandpa said he would have it printed and take his pay out in kiss and I'm going to take $1 out for the Eugene Field memorial fund. All the rest is for orphaned and sick babies. The book is [?] I hope I will make lots of money.

Not to go into the wisdom of the book or any ext one must quote what Myra thinks about [?] The [?] it seems were sick, and a doctor was called it.

He told the fairy godmother all about [?] and germs and told her to boil the water. The fairy godmother asked if a hair was a fairy sidewalk for a [?] He said Oh no! They are much smaller.

The fairy godmother said she didn't understand. If the gum had the fever, why didn't the fever which killed the boys and girls kill the germ and if the germ didn't have the fever how could it give the fever? How could a thing give a thing it didn't have? The doctor said Nobody knows but God."