There were thirty-odd little girls in this cottage ranging in age from five to thirteen years. The supper, which was served by the older girls under the supervision of the assistant matron, consisted of canned salmon, bread cut in hunks, and sweet milk. The tables were bare, unpainted, and as dingy as the floors. Indeed they looked to be a piece of the floor. The crockery was of the cheapest, nicked and sticky, and there were no napkins. Since that day I have visited many tenement homes. I have been in the homes of New York City’s poorest. In none of them did I find less attempt made to humanize the unlovely sordid surroundings. Even in the home of the drunken Irish mother, who had sold every stick of furniture excepting a broken table and the mattress she and her children huddled on, I saw a picture of the Virgin. St. Rose’s Home for Girls was conducted by a church claiming to follow the teachings of Him who said: “Suffer the little children to come unto Me.” On my remarking to one of the older girls that they all took such dainty helpings, she explained that each child had to clean its plate. That was the rule, now, she said. This seemed such a good rule that I told the table, in a way I imagined to be humorous, that Mr. Hoover would be glad to know how much they were helping him. Though they knew all about Mr. Hoover there was no smile, and I noticed that two of the older girls exchanged glances and lifted their eyebrows. A minute or so later a slight disturbance at a table behind me attracted my attention. The assistant matron was standing over a little girl, forcing her to eat food left on her plate at lunch, and using her forefinger in the operation. It was the longest and boniest forefinger I had ever seen. And that plate of cold spaghetti was about as appetizing as some of the messes dished up to the waitresses at the Hotel Sea Foam. Now, I belong to a family noted for good health and perfect digestion. So much so that humorous friends declare we can, one and all, digest flint rocks. Yet I do not believe that I could have swallowed, much less digested, that mass of cold, sloppy, bluish spaghetti. The victim of this economic tyranny was a delicate little girl of about six years. Her cheeks were colorless, her lips were almost as white, and there were dark circles about her eyes. Glancing around my eyes took in the sordid unloveliness of the whole scene—and the little children with meekly bowed heads, forcing down food which I could see few if any relished. A lump rose in my throat, and a mist obscured my sight. How could any woman! How could Miss Pugh! She was not a blonde. As though feeling my stare the assistant matron relinquished her hold on the girl’s shoulder, and straightening up, faced me. “This is Mrs. Bossman’s order,” she said. “She found it a most satisfactory disciplinary measure in her reformatory work. You knew she had been in that work, didn’t you?”