The Poor in Great Cities

New Zealand Mail, Issue 906, 12 July 1889, Page 9

The Poor in Great Cities

The work of the Kyrle Society in seizing hold of every strip of open space they could lay their hands on in London, and transforming it into a fair garden, where children can play and where the tired men and women can sit at rest after, or in tho intervals of, their day’s labour under the shade of trees and surrounded by the sight and perfume of flowers, has been not only one of tho greatest blessings to the over-crowded and overworked population, but has also been one of the most reforming and civilizing influences which has ever been brought to bear upon them. The plan of annexing disused churchyards and making them into gardens has been erowned with success. In many parts of London an open space would be an im* possible thing to find, but everywhere there are, or rather there used to be, thoße terrible eyesores of damp, neglected churchyards, with rickety, tumble-down tombstones covered with mildew. One by one these eyesores to our metropolis are being improved away ; trim gardens, with smooth turf and flower beds, are taking their places ; the dessert is .being made to blossom like the rose, and very soon it will, I hope, be Impossible to find a London church-yard such as Dickens described in * Bleak House ’ under the name of Tom-all-Alones. The poor of our great cities always remind me of a child who haß been brought up apart from other children, and who has to be taken by the hand and literally taught to play. Like such a child, the poor need to be taught to enjoy themselves, to see the loveliness of nature and of art. - -

The bitter struggle for existence has made them blind, deaf and dumb to aught save toil. But all work and no play not only makes Jack a dull boy, but an ill-tempered one into the bargain, and therefore such work as that done by the Kyrle Society Bhould be looked upon, not only a 3 being an effort in the right direction on the part of the rich to pay their debt to the poor, but also as one of the best antidotes to the poison of Socialistic doctrines that show of late years such a tendency to spread. In the fair Tuscan * City of Flowers,’ Florence, there is a street called the ‘ Borgo degii Allegri’ the ‘Street of the Joyful Ones,’ and it received its name from the fact that it was here that the people first had the joy of seeing Cimabue’s greac picture of the ‘ Virgin and Cnild ’ They were made joyful by the sight of beauty and fer vour in art. The beauty came to them as a revelation, the fervour was theirs already ; for those were the simple days of strong and ohildlike beliefs. But though most of that simplicity and lighfc-heartedness has de* parted from the world, the oonsolations of beauty, whether in art or in nature, remain ; and to those who try ‘ to the utmost of our power' (to quote the motto of the Kyrle Society) to share those consolations with their less fortunate brethren, all honour is due for their gallant efforts to lighten the darkness of sorrow, misery and toil.—Gertrude E. Campbell’s London letter to the N.Y. World.