There was much illness, unemployment, and consequent suffering the next winter. One day, when I visited a school in the neighborhood, the principal asked the pupils if they knew me. She doubtless anticipated some reference to the material services which the settlement had rendered, but the answer to her question was a glad chorus of, “Yes, ma’am, yes, ma’am, she’s our scupping teacher.” “Teacher” was a generic term for the residents, and nothing that the settlement had contributed to the life of the neighborhood impressed the children as had the playground. It is worth reminding those who are associated with young people that the power to influence is given to those who play with, rather than to those who only teach, them. Our children on the East Side are not peculiar in this respect. To this day I receive letters from men and women who try to recall themselves to my memory by saying that they once played in our back yard. [Illustration] An organized propaganda for outdoor gymnasia and playgrounds crystallized in 1898 in the formation of the Outdoor Recreation League, in which the settlement participated. The tireless president of the League eventually succeeded in obtaining the use of a large space in our neighborhood, originally purchased by the city, during a brief reform administration, for a park. Some very undesirable tenement houses had been destroyed, and when a Tammany administration returned to power a hot summer was allowed to pass with nothing done to accomplish the original purpose. Unsightly holes, once cellars, remained to fill with stagnant water, amputated sewer- and gas-pipes were exposed, and among these the children played mimic battles of the Spanish-American War, then in progress. The accident that the Commissioner of Health, a semi-invalid, felt gratitude to a trained nurse who had cared for him, gave me an opportunity to approach him on the subject. He promised (and he kept his promise) to use his influence to get an appropriation on the score of the menace to the health of the city. The appropriation was sufficient to fill in the space and surround it with a fence, and the Outdoor Recreation League was able to demonstrate the value of playgrounds. In 1902 the Board of Estimate and Apportionment of Mayor Seth Low’s reform administration, at its first meeting, appropriated money for the equipment and maintenance of Seward Park, as it was named,—the first municipal playground in New York City. So much interest had been aroused in this phase of city government that two city officials left the board meeting while it was in progress to telephone to the settlement that the appropriation had been passed.