Friendly Visiting among the Poor: A Handbook for Charity WorkersRichmond, Mary Ellen
General
Friendly Visiting among the Poor: A Handbook for Charity Workers
Richmond, Mary Ellen
Friendly visiting
The prejudice against fresh air, especially night air, is a difficult
one to overcome. One mother, who kept her children scrupulously clean,
could never understand the value of fresh air until a visitor explained
to her how air was polluted by the soiled air that we {98} breathed
out, just as water was polluted when we washed our hands in it. When
the children breathed this soiled air in again it made them "dirty
inside"; and this homely statement left such an unpleasant picture in
the mother's mind that her rooms were always well ventilated afterward.
It is difficult to ventilate a small room without making a draft, but,
next to the chimney, the upper sash is the simplest ventilator, and
should not be immovable, as it is in many small houses. A board about
five inches wide under the lower sash will make a current of air
between the upper and lower sashes, and, better still, two pieces of
elbow pipe with dampers, fixed in the board, will throw a good current
of air upward into the room. Another ventilator can be made by tacking
a strip of loosely woven material to the upper sash and to the top of
the window-frame. When the upper sash is dropped, the stuff is drawn
taut over the opening, and, while permitting air to pass through,
breaks the current.
Equal in importance with fresh air inside the house is exercise out of
doors. I was {99} shocked some years ago to find that, of six
Sunday-school boys who went with me on a little trip to our largest
city park, five had never been there before. This had not been due to
lack of time or money, though they had very little of either; but its
sole cause had been lack of enterprise.
There is an impatient and popular saying that soap and water are cheap;
like many other popular sayings, it is only half true. Personal
cleanliness is rather expensive when one takes into account the time,
energy, and frequent changes of clothing required to keep the body
daintily clean. Visitors should realize this in any effort to
introduce a higher standard of personal neatness, and should not be
impatient when they do not immediately succeed. Cleanliness and health
are so nearly related, however, that the effort is very well worth
making. A visitor who hesitated to complain to a mother about her
little girl's neglected condition, borrowed the child to spend the day,
and brought her home at night sweet, clean, and rosy, with her hair
well brushed and curled. The hint was taken.
{100}
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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