The plan of the Fresh Air Fund is practically unchanged from the day it was first conceived. The neediest and poorest are made welcome. Be they Protestants, Catholics, Jews, or heathen, it matters not if an invitation is waiting. The supply is governed entirely by the demands that come from the country. Sometimes it is a Catholic community that asks for children of that faith, sometimes prosperous Jews, who would bring sunlight and hope even to Ludlow Street; rarely yet Italians seeking their own. The cry of the missionary, from the slums in the hot July days: "How shall we give those babies the breath of air that means life?--no one asks for Italian children," has not yet been answered. Prejudice dies slowly. When an end has been made of this at last, the Fresh Air Fund will receive a new boom. To my mind there are no more tractable children than the little Italians, none more grateful for kindness; certainly none more in need of it. Against colored children there is no prejudice. Sometimes an invitation comes from Massachusetts or some other New England State for them, and then the missions and schools of Thompson Street give up their pickaninnies for a gleeful vacation spell. With the first spring days of April a canvass of the country within a radius of five hundred miles of New York has been begun. By the time the local committees send in their returns--so many children wanted in each town or district--the workers from the missions, the King's Daughters' circles, the hospitals, dispensaries, industrial schools, nurseries, kindergartens, and the other gates through which the children's host pours from the tenements, are at work, and the task of getting the little excursionists in shape for their holiday begins. [Illustration: SUMMER BOARDERS FROM MOTT STREET.]