First of all--and this is a lesson that visitors are slow to learn--it is very unwise, especially in the first months of acquaintance, for friendly visitors to give money or commodities to the families they visit, though they may find it necessary to see that relief is sent from some other source. "If one of our visitors finds her family in dire distress, and there is no time to go to the office and have aid secured in some other way, she of course, like any one else, furnishes it at once from her own pocket. But except in these rare emergencies, our visitors do not themselves give relief to those they visit. We believe this is a wise rule, and after eight years' experience we would not change it. If a stranger offered you a gift, you would feel insulted and refuse it Suppose you were constrained by necessity to accept it--would it not make a certain bar between you and that stranger very difficult to break down? Imagine yourself of a different temper, that you wanted all you could get. Would you {143} not be likely to talk more freely or truthfully to one who you knew would give you nothing than to one from whom you hoped a plausible tale would draw a dollar? For the visitor's sake also the rule is a good one. We are apt to think our duty done if we have given money, and if we cannot do that, we are forced to use our ingenuity to find other and better ways of helping." [1] It is eleven years since the foregoing passage was written, but the experience of almost every practical worker in charity will confirm it. Friendly visitors are human, and their task, as it has been described in this book, is not an easy one. It is so much easier to give. But the history of many volunteers in charity is that, starting out with excellent intentions, they were tempted to give relief to the families they visited. First it was clothing for the children, then the rent, then groceries, then more clothing, and the family's needs, strange to say, seemed to increase, until, finding their suggestions unheeded, and {144} the people no better off, the volunteers deserted their post, and, still worse, carried away a false, distorted idea of what poor people are like. The poor, too, learn to distrust a charitable interest that is not continuous. A little self-restraint, a little more determination to keep their purpose clearly in mind, would save the charitable and the poor from an experience that is hardening to both.