The mother, an intelligent and neat Irishwoman, complained that she could not keep the medicine prescribed for one of these children. The youngest member of her family, a two-year-old baby, persisted in drinking it. She had scolded and punished the baby, but in spite of all she could do it had drained three bottles of the medicine. As it was a question of keeping it out of the reach of the baby and yet having it where the mother might easily lay her hands on it, I glanced around her two bare rooms. “Here you are!” I exclaimed joyfully, and reaching a little above my head I removed a little plaster figure from a little shelf in the corner. “This is out of your baby’s reach, and your saint can stand over here.” So saying I stood the figure on a corner of a lower shelf. That was a terrible mistake. The woman snatched the little figure and placed it back on the high shelf. No saint would ever forgive a person who moved it from a higher to a lower shrine—I think she said shrine. Her agitation was genuine. I left her on her knees, telling her beads before that little unbeautiful figure of plaster. She was explaining to the saint that it was I, not she, who had committed the crime. She implored the saint not to curse her or her children for my deed. I’m not at all sure she didn’t call me a devil. Another woman did, all because of a scapular. I had learned about wearing scapulars, for a cousin of my mother married a descendant of Charles Carroll, of Carrollton, and I grew up with their children. Of course they all wore scapulars, so beautifully embroidered that I used to advise them to wear them outside their clothes. And while this growing up together was going on I went to school with Clarence Horton. Clarence was a son of our nearest neighbor, and at school he was famous for two reasons—he wore a little bag of assafœtida around his neck and he ate goose-eggs, hard-boiled goose-eggs. Because of the goose-eggs nobody cared to trade lunch with Clarence, and because of the assafœtida nobody would sit with him. However we might be enjoying ourselves, when Clarence joined us we went elsewhere. During my service as a social worker I called at the flat of a woman who had been a Bellevue patient. Her baby was sick and she had not had an opportunity to go out and get the medicine ordered by the doctor, because he had cautioned her against taking the baby out and letting it take more cold. I offered to hold the baby while she ran to the corner drug-store and got the medicine. The child was feverish and very fretful. Soon after taking it on my lap I noticed that it was tugging at a dirty string around its neck. To the string I found attached what I took to be a dirty little bag. Instantly there flashed into my mind memories of Clarence and his bag of assafœtida. Snapping the string I dropped the whole arrangement into the coal-bucket.