Proceedings of International Congress of Charities, Correction and Philanthropy, Chicago, 1893, especially volumes on "Care of Children" and "Organization of Charities." Published by Johns Hopkins Press, Baltimore. "Homes of the London Poor," Octavia Hill. For sale by New York State Charities Aid Association, 25 cents. "Essays," Octavia Hill. For sale by Boston Associated Charities; price, 10 cents. "Rich and Poor," Mrs. Bernard Bosanquet. "How to help the Poor," Mrs. James T. Fields. "Public Relief and Private Charity," Mrs. Josephine Shaw Lowell. "American Charities," A. G. Warner. "Hull House Maps and Papers." {1} FRIENDLY VISITING AMONG THE POOR CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION There is a certain development in the English novel of which I have long seemed to be vaguely conscious. At one time I hoped to set myself the task of tracing it, though I have since relinquished all thought of this as too ambitious. The movement--if, indeed, there be such a movement--has always pictured itself to my mind as the march of the plain and common people into the foreground of English fiction. I venture to introduce the idea here, though it may appear foreign to my subject, as illustrating another and equally important movement in the development of charitable work. Should any one ever turn over the pages of our two centuries' stock of novels, with a view {2} to tracing this gradual development of interest in the poor and unfortunate, he would find, of course, that facts have a tantalizing way of moving in zigzags whenever one is anxious that they should move forward in a straight line; but he would probably find also that, in the earlier attempts of the novel writer to picture the poor, they were drawn as mere puppets on which the richly endowed heroes and heroines exercised their benevolence. Very likely he would discover that, when at last the poor began to take an important part in the action of the story, we were permitted to see them at first only through a haze of sentimentality, so that, allowing for great advances in the art of novel writing between the time of Richardson and the time of Dickens, we still should find the astonishing characterizations of "Pamela" reflected in the impossible virtues and melodramatic vices of Dickens' poor people. To Miss Edgeworth and Scott first, perhaps, and to George Eliot most of all, we should find ourselves indebted for faithful studies of plain people,--studies made with an eye single to {3} the object, and leaving, therefore, no unlovely trait slurred over or excused, yet giving us that perfect understanding of every-day people which is the only true basis of sympathy with them. In America we are indebted to such conscientious artists as Miss Jewett and Octave Thanet for a similar enlargement of our sympathies through their life-like pictures of the less sophisticated people of our own time.