Two memories of this first party stand out sharply: the songs the children sang,—“She’s More to be Pitied than Censured,” and “Judge, Forgive Him, ’Tis His First Offense,”—painfully revealing a precocious knowledge, and their ecstasy at the sight of a wonderful dogwood tree. Now, when the settlement children go on day parties, they have another repertory, and the music they learn in the public schools reflects the finer thought for the child. [Illustration] During the two years that Miss Brewster and I lived in the Jefferson Street house we frequently made up impromptu parties to visit the distant parks, usually on Sunday afternoons when we were likely to be free. After a while it was not difficult to secure comradeship for the children from men and women of our acquaintance, and the parties were multiplied. In the winter, rumors of “a fine hill all covered with snow” on Riverside Drive would be a stimulus to secure a sled or improvise a toboggan, and we found that, given opportunity and encouragement, the city tenement boys threw themselves readily into venturesome sport. [Illustration: AND THEIR ECSTASY AT THE SIGHT OF A WONDERFUL DOGWOOD TREE] Happily some of the early prejudice against ball-playing on Sunday has vanished. We were perplexed in those days to explain to the lads why, when they saw the ferries and trains convey golfers suitably attired and expensively equipped for a day’s sport, their own games should outrage respectable citizens and cause them to be constantly “chased” by the police. The saloons could be entered, as everybody knew, and I remember a father, defending his eight-year-old son from an accusation of theft, instancing as proof of the child’s trustworthiness that “all the Christians on Jackson Street sent him for their beer on Sundays.” In our search for a place where the boys might play undisturbed, one of the settlement residents, a never-failing friend of the young people, invoked the Federal Government itself, and secured for them an unused field on Governor’s Island. Now, in summer time, many of the organized activities of the settlement are removed from the neighborhood. Early in the season the “hikers” begin their walks with club leaders. I felt a glow of happiness one Sunday morning when I stood on the steps of our house and watched six different groups of boys set off for the country, with ball and bat and sandwiches, each group led by a young man who had himself been a member of our early parties and had been first introduced to trees and open spaces, and the more active forms of healthful play by his settlement friends. [Illustration]