We need the artistic spirit, the spirit of beauty in social work. It is not opposed to, but surely very different from, the spirit of science which I have been emphasizing in the earlier chapters of this book. I must confess my impression that, on the whole, thus far, social work has been ugly. Social workers have not kept beauty and the sense of beauty in the foreground of their work. Beauty and joy always tend to drop out in social work, but this must not be. There is an old story of an inspired social assistant in Boston who had been working for a long time with a needy family who were at that time much discouraged. One day she had an idea: "What that woman needs is a blue dress. She is extraordinarily fond of that color. She has not had a new dress for a long time." And it was true. She was given a blue dress, and the history of that family afterwards began to show signs of the sort of change and upward constructive effort which had long been lacking. We cannot neglect that sort of thing, slight or sentimental though it may seem. I remember another family in which flowers, and money spent on giving the children a chance to grow flowers, played a beneficent rôle; and still another discouraged family in which a canary bird seemed an essential element in the social work done. There is something certainly very divine about the present moment. We shall never have it again. We are apt to think that next year we shall do something great. Then, we think, at last we shall gather up all the forces of our soul and do something worthy. But I do not believe we can tell ourselves too often in social work that _now is the time_, and that the opportunity of the present moment is priceless. Hence, after trying to exemplify the backgrounds which we ought to seek out when a fellow being comes to us in trouble, I must now correct that overemphasis by paying homage to that state of mind which sees foregrounds. What we want is _presence of mind_--a very familiar and hackneyed phrase, but one which may grow precious to us after analysis. My complaint against the preoccupied, solemn look in the social worker's face is that the person's mind is not there with his fellow beings; it is aloof with his own troubles. He is not "in it," not all there on the spot. The necessity of joy in one's work, and the necessity of seeing the momentary and infinitely precious opportunities, come to the same thing. If you are "in it," you get _your chance_. To have sufficient presence of mind to seize one's chance is surely the crucial act in social work or anywhere else, for that chance does not recur.