no step. She was changed to stone, within and without. Yet tears continued to flow; and, borne on a whirlwind to her native mountain, she still remains, a mass of rock, from which a trickling stream flows, the tribute of her never-ending grief.

HAPPY ENDING IN REAL LIFE

By OTTO MCFEELY.

Mr. McFeely tells a story of reality. It is realism that shows the way out of one of the jungles of life and reports the first act in what appears to be the greatest reform since the public school took the place of the charity school.

In the first week of June, 1911, a woman with three children, two clinging to her skirts and one snuggling in her lap, sat in a straight-back chair before a judge in the juvenile court of Chicago. This court room was across the street from Hull house, and a block from the Mary Crane Day nursery. A dozen agents of organized charity were there to aid in solving the problem of the destitute mother. A probation officer reported on the "case." The destitute mother, in court terminology, is a "case."

*

Mrs. Brian was a typical "case." Eight months before her husband had been injured while at work in the steel mills. He lived a few weeks and then died. The woman had gone through the grade and high schools and had hope of a decent life. When

*The identity of this mother is concealed under a fictitious name.

the accident occurred they had $500 saved up, and were about to buy a home on the installment plan.

The doctors and living expenses, before the workman died, took part of this hoard, so painfully gathered. After the funeral Mrs. Brian set out to earn a living for herself and her three children, the oldest under five years, and one an infant. Like thousands of other women, she thought of keeping roomers, and used the last of her savings to pay an installment on a furnished house in the poor district, where she expected to shelter homeless working people at so much per week.

The business failed, as it was destined to do. A woman with three children cannot keep up a rooming house even for poorly paid working people. One after another of the guests left, and this bright day in June found her in the dingy juvenile court, where she had been taken by agents of organized charity.

One of these agents reported: "Your Honor, this woman is about to be set out on the street. She can not pay her rent. But she is able to work and we plan to place her children in an institution, so she can go to work somewhere."

"I don't know what to do," said the mother to the judge. "This lady said, when I asked her for help, that I would have to put my children away' and go to work. I wish there was some other way," and she held her baby closer and tried to include the two standing at her knee in the protecting embrace.

"Did you collect anything from the steel company?" asked the judge.

"Not yet; my case comes up in about three months," she said, hopefully, but the distracted face of the judge did not reflect that hope. He knew the courts and the steel business too well.

He had been on that bench for three years. Almost daily he held conference with the world's most famous charity workers. All Protestant and Catholic churches of the great city had paid agents there to help. Thousands were raised by charity, ostensibly to relieve just such persons as Mrs. Brian.

The judge, probation officers and charity agents held a little conference.

They knew no other way. Not one of these court officers, nor charity experts, could conceive of any other way than to break up the family — taking these children away from their mother, the supreme crime of civilization, punishment worse than death for the offense of poverty.

For three years the judge had seen this thing go on. His face was haggard, he looked as if he was ready for the hospital. He was too humane to do this awful thing day after day and not to feel it. The charity workers appeared to be less affected.

To send the babies to an institution would cost the county $10 a month for each child - $30 in all. They were ready to pay this sum to an asylum for taking care of these poverty-stricken children, but there was no way the money could be paid to the mother for

performing the functions for which nature intended her, and for which she was so well prepared.

The ax was about to fall. The wagon was backed up at the door. Trim nurses entered to take the babies from their mother's arms, in all probability forever, when something happened.

During the progress of the "trial" two men entered. One of them was Judge Henry Neil, who for a year had been watching this destruction of families-- the punishment of women and children for poverty, and all in the name of "kindness."

That very week Governor Deneen had signed a bill that was to revolutionize the practice of the juvenile court and to prevent the separation of mothers and their children in the name of sweet charity – a habit that had become so common that it was then a vested right of the charity organizations.

Neil had presented the bill to the legislature, and it was such a little thing that it crept through almost unnoticed. Organized charity experts knew nothing of it. It was an amendment to the juvenile court act in these words:

"If the parent or parents of such dependent or neglected child are poor and unable to properly care for said child, but are otherwise proper guardians, and it is for the welfare of such child to remain at home, the court may enter an order finding such facts. and fixing the amount of money necessary to enable the parent or parents to properly care for such child, and thereupon it shall be the duty of the county board, through its county agent, or otherwise, to pay to such

parent or parents, at such times as said order may designate, the amount so specified for the care of such dependent or neglected child until the further order of the court."

This law was to go into force July 1, 1911. The Brian family was to be broken up, nevertheless, because poverty can not wait three weeks. Neil conferred with the judge. He agreed to pay Mrs. Brian $25 a month until the pension law went into effect, and on July 1, the very day the act became useful, Mrs. Brian was pensioned, the first woman who ever drew a pension for being a mother. She still lives with her own children, and since then almost 2,000 mothers have been pensioned in Chicago alone, and the system to-day is at work from the Atlantic to the Pacific.

THE MOTHER

BY ROBERT HAVEN SCHAUFFLER

All day her watch had lasted on the plateau above the town. And now the sun slanted low over the dull, blue sheen of the western sea, playing changingly with the angular mountain which rose abruptly from its surge.

The young matron did not heed the magic which was transforming the theater of hills to the north and lingering lovingly at last on the eastern summit. Nor had she any eyes for the changing hue of the ivyclad cubes of stone that formed the village over which her hungry gaze passed, sweeping the length and breadth of the plain below.