The duty once recognised, the method becomes plain. Every one, even those whose work does not take them among the poor, can manage to be introduced to some who are leading pleasure-barren lives, and to employers of labour in factories or trades it is especially easy. The introduction made, the rest follows naturally, and though pleasure is in itself so great a good that I would hold the thing worth doing if this alone were obtained, yet I think a prophet’s eye is not needed to see the other possible good resulting from such gatherings. The wider interests, the seeds of culture, the introduction to simple recreations, the suggestion of ideal beauty, the possession of happy memories, the class relationships, are the advantages one can rapidly count off as accruing to the entertained, and as important are the gains of the entertainers. The rich, coming face to face with the poor, have seen patience which puts their restlessness to shame; endurance about which poems have yet to be written; hope which is deep and springing from the roots of their being; charity which never faileth, including, as it often does, the adoption of the orphan child or the sharing of the room with a lone woman, compared to which the biggest subscription is as nothing; kindliness which, though unthinking, spareth not itself. Each class has its virtues, but, as yet, they are unknown to each other. It is for the rich to take the first step towards knowing and being known; it is for them to say if the class hatreds, which like other ‘warfare comes from misunderstanding,’ shall exist in our midst. It is for them to make the way of friendship through the wall of gold now dividing the rich from the poor. It is for them to give fellowship which, crushing envy, takes the sting out of poverty. And all this can be done, by spending some thought, a little money, and some afternoons in being ‘At Home’ to the poor. Great ends these to follow the small trouble and expense of a garden party. It will not, though, be the first time in history that good has been done by means which seemed contemptible, and it will not seem strange to those who have learnt that it is a Life and not a law, friendships and not organisations, which have taught the world its greatest lessons. HENRIETTA O. BARNETT. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ VI. _UNIVERSITY SETTLEMENTS._[1] [1] Reprinted, by permission, from the _Nineteenth Century_ of February 1884.