to see life from any other standpoint. The goblin or bugaboo, feared by
the more fortunate child, in his mind, has come to be the need of coal
which caused his father hysterical and demonstrative grief when it
carried off his mother's inherited linen, the mosaic of St. Joseph, and,
worst of all, his own rubber boots. He once came to a party at
Hull-House, and was interested in nothing save a gas stove which he saw
in the kitchen. He became excited over the discovery that fire could be
produced without fuel. "I will tell my father of this stove. You buy no
coal, you need only a match. Anybody will give you a match." He was
taken to visit at a country-house and at once inquired how much rent was
paid for it. On being told carelessly by his hostess that they paid no
rent for that house, he came back quite wild with interest that the
problem was solved. "Me and my father will go to the country. You get a
big house, all warm, without rent." Nothing else in the country
interested him but the subject of rent, and he talked of that with an
exclusiveness worthy of a single taxer.

The struggle for existence, which is so much harsher among people near
the edge of pauperism, sometimes leaves ugly marks on character, and the
charity visitor finds these indirect results most mystifying. Parents
who work hard and anticipate an old age when they can no longer earn,
take care that their children shall expect to divide their wages with
them from the very first. Such a parent, when successful, impresses the
immature nervous system of the child thus tyrannically establishing
habits of obedience, so that the nerves and will may not depart from
this control when the child is older. The charity visitor, whose family
relation is lifted quite out of this, does not in the least understand
the industrial foundation for this family tyranny.

The head of a kindergarten training-class once addressed a club of