It was an unknown name then, but through Dr. Eggleston, then on the point of sailing for Europe, interest was roused. The Erie Railway officers proved that corporations have sometimes a soul, and full fares were reduced to half fares, and half fares to quarter fares, and a pass was given to Mr. Parsons, and on July 19th went out the first group of nine. They were mere wraiths of children, crippled, in consumption, enfeebled from whooping cough; each one stamped with disease and pinched and thin for want of food. It was doubtful how they could bear the journey. The children who swarmed out next day “to catch raspberries” proved perfectly manageable, and when their two weeks ended, returned home transformed from sad-eyed, prematurely old little figures, into live children, loaded with gifts and crying to stay longer. The story has become a familiar one, but it can never become tedious. The second group gave less anxiety. The work was better understood. Seventeen boys and girls, each wearing a blue ribbon bow as the badge of “country week” children, gathered from all quarters, and all, delicate, half-starved, suffering with hip-disease, asthma, and a dozen ailments, met at the Erie train. The diary of the summer’s work runs over with small absurdities, with pathos, with promise. Sixty in all shared the good provided for them at a total cost of only one hundred and eighty-seven dollars and sixty-two cents. But for New York as for Philadelphia, it was easier to get the money than to get the children. Often a pale and care-worn child was the breadwinner. “Sometimes the mother had a fear of separation, or the feeble, childish hands must tend baby and do the housework while mother goes out by the day. ‘It is harder for Jack than for any one else when the baby comes,’ one mother said. ‘The care comes on him.’ Baby was in her arms as she spoke, but Jack was close by, thirteen years old, under size, and washing stockings at the tub!” In many cases the children made friends for life, in a few the attachment formed being so strong that adoption followed. For all of them was the same experience; a fortnight or more of bliss and revelation and a return, loaded down with bundles and boxes and bags of the things that each one chose to gather. That ticks had to be washed and straw burned after the occupation of many of them, made no apparent difference, and even to-day, when it is all an old story, and board must in many cases be paid, there is unfailing consideration for the tastes and whims of the strangers. Now and then there was fright and tears and long wails for mother, soon quieted. Now and then rebellion and ingratitude; sometimes lying and petty thefts, but all yielding to kindness.