Some of her perplexed neighbors accept this explanation as simple and offering a solution of this vexed problem.

Doubtless many of them have a glimpse of the real state of affairs, of the love and patience which ministers to need irrespective of worth.

But the standard is too high for most of them, and it sometimes seems unfortunate to break down the second standard, which holds that people who "rush the growler" are not worthy of charity, and that there is a certain justice attained when they go to the poorhouse.

It is certainly dangerous to break down the lower, unless the higher is made clear.
Just when our affection becomes large enough to care for the unworthy among the poor as we would care for the unworthy among our own kin, is certainly a perplexing question.

To say that it should never be so, is a comment upon our democratic relations to them which few of us would be willing to make.
Of what use is all this striving and perplexity?
Has the experience any value?
It is certainly genuine, for it induces an occasional charity visitor to live in a tenement house as simply as the other tenants do.
It drives others to give up visiting the poor altogether, because, they claim, it is quite impossible unless the individual becomes a member of a sisterhood, which requires, as some of the Roman Catholic sisterhoods do, that the member first take the vows of obedience and poverty, so that she can have nothing to give save as it is first given to her, and thus she is not harassed by a constant attempt at adjustment.
Both the tenement-house resident and the sister assume to have put themselves upon the industrial level of their neighbors, although they have left out the most awful element of poverty, that of imminent fear of starvation and a neglected old age.
The young charity visitor who goes from a family living upon a most precarious industrial level to her own home in a prosperous part of the city, if she is sensitive at all, is never free from perplexities which our growing democracy forces upon her.
We sometimes say that our charity is too scientific, but we would doubtless be much more correct in our estimate if we said that it is not scientific enough.