Up to this time summer rest, save for the rich, had been regarded as a needless luxury. Increased knowledge of sanitary laws had demonstrated that change of air might be as vital a necessity for poor as for rich. But that this applied also to the lowest and most helpless classes had no place save in the mind of a practical philanthropist here and there. Nor had it yet become a part of the creed of such workers, and, far less, a subject of common discussion among those who sought the most practical methods of help, that the children were the ones to whom such help would mean the most. Charity concerned itself chiefly with alleviation, and looked in more and more hopeless dismay on the ever-increasing numbers of this army of incapables. It was evident to all who walked through city streets as August sunshine blazed on squalid home and reeking gutter, and gaunt women and pale, unchildlike children came and went in noisome street and alley, that something must be done, but what? A good woman had opened a summer home for very young children on Staten Island, and in 1873 transferred its management to the Children’s Aid Society on the understanding that four thousand dollars should be collected to insure its success. The founder, Mr. A. P. Stokes, at once gave half the amount, and the rest was quickly made up, the headquarters for the new home being made at Bath, Long Island, where the work still goes on with largely increased facilities. Beginning with the rental of a private house, in which every inch of space was so utilized that the parlors became a sleeping room for twenty-four persons, and the carriage house was so made over as to contain nearly sixty beds, it has grown into one of the most efficient and beneficent of charities. A week is given to each detachment, chosen most generally from the members of the industrial schools under the direction of the Children’s Aid Society. The children are abundantly fed, the dietary including milk, bread, butter, oatmeal, fruits, vegetables, fish and meats. The salt water is almost at the door, while on the other side are woods and wild flowers, and the children change even in a week of such life, sometimes almost beyond recognition. But there are objections to these homes, beautiful as is their mission in many points, and a writer in the New York _Evening Post_, after faithful examination of this and other summer homes, writes: “Neither the excursions, which are only for a day, nor the seaside homes quite reach the best results. What the pinched sufferers in alley-ways and courts, garrets and basements need is to be sent to the country. It is not enough to give them a day on the river, though that is good as far as it goes. Even in seaside homes they are housed with children of their own sort; they have the same conversation, the same plays, the same depressing companionship with disease and want. What they need is to meet the healthy life of the country; to make acquaintance with nature, to