Christmas is a sad season in prison, because it is, perhaps of all days, the one when thoughts most surely circle around home and when pictures of past happy days shine out in vivid contrast to the lonely narrow cell with its bare walls and heavy barred door. But if it is a sad day for the men within the walls it is equally so for many of the families who have to abandon the thought of any Christmas cheer to brighten their poverty.

Naturally fathers in prison, whose little ones are still intensely dear to them, grieve much over their inability to do anything towards the cheering and gladdening of the children's Christmas. We have for several years now made our Christmas greeting to the families of our "boys" a special feature of our work. We have a big book in which a list of our families is carefully recorded, every child's sex and age, and, as far as possible, size, can be found therein. Besides this we send to the New York and New Jersey prisons some weeks before the holidays, and ask all men who know that their dear ones are in poverty, to send us the home address that we may visit them, and in this way compile a very complete list of those who need help. Naturally this has proved a great cheer to the men themselves, and in many instances has touched hearts that were hardened against any religious influence. Kindness breaks down barriers that preachment or argument would only cause to close the tighter.

A man who had been quite indifferent as to himself and full of ridicule and abuse towards members of our prison league, was talking to some fellow-prisoners about the dire poverty of his family, distressing news of which had just reached him through the mail. A League member overhearing, said, "Why don't you write and tell the Little Mother?" "Much notice she would take of it," he answered. "Why, I am not a member of the League—she don't know me—I would get no answer to my letter." The V. P. L. boy persisted and at last the other said, "Well I'll test it, but I don't expect anything." Sometime afterwards he received a very happy letter from his wife telling of the big parcel of things received, food, clothing and toys for the children. He was deeply touched, and acknowledging this to the boy who had advised him, he added, "Look here—it's time I made a man of myself. I've neglected my family and made them suffer, and here are strangers who think enough of them to help them. It's time I did the same." He joined the League and became a most earnest member, getting ready to be the kind of man who could on his return make a happy home, where in the past he had only brought sorrow and misery.

Our preparations for Christmas have to begin several weeks beforehand. Our idea has never been to prepare a big banquet to which the hungry are bidden for one good meal. Many of our families are out of town or scattered from one end to the other of this long island, and even could we gather them all together, we want our help to be more lasting. The Christmas tree decked for the children is a treat always enjoyed by little ones, but even that sends them back to a very gloomy home that seems all the colder with its fireless stove and empty cupboard, after the glitter and brightness of the festivity. Our idea is to make the home, poor though it may be, the centre of rejoicing. By visiting beforehand and by our close knowledge of the circumstances, we can tell just the needs of each family and can prepare accordingly. Our plan is to give to each child one good suit of clothing,—to provide a supply of groceries, a turkey and money sufficient for fuel and vegetables. Some needed article of clothing for the mother is added and then toys and candies for the children. We could hardly send the mothers instructions to hang up the stockings for us to fill, for sometimes the nuts, candy and oranges, would drop through these much-worn articles, and often there would be no stockings to hang up. We therefore buy stockings wholesale and fill them at our office. Not only do we attach its mate to each filled stocking, but we add another pair so that every child may have a change. I could not speak of the need of the Christmas season without speaking also of the way our friends have helped us to meet it. The girls of Vassar and Smith Colleges have year after year dressed dolls and collected toys for us. Many of the children in happy homes have done likewise, as also in some of the private schools. Boxes containing these gifts commence arriving in the weeks before Christmas and each new supply is received with acclamation by the little staff of workers who know the joy that it will bring to the hearts of our Christmasless little ones. The chapter of "King's Daughters and Sons of Hartford, Connecticut"—organized three years ago to help my work, is especially generous in its Christmas effort. Barrels of clothing and toys can always be relied on to come from that source, and so much personal work and careful thought is expended on the gifts that they seem doubly valuable.

We raise a Christmas fund by newspaper appeal and from our regular donors, and then follow our shopping trips armed with a list of the ages and sizes of my many boys and girls and babies. I descend on the stores to amaze the salesgirls with the size of my family, which proves a mystery until they find out who I am. Trousers for ninety or a hundred boys, dresses for an equal number of little girls—sweaters by the score and baby outfits by the dozen, are soon chosen, and our storeroom at headquarters becomes almost like a department store. We spend about a hundred dollars for shoes of various sizes and always lay in a large supply of toboggan caps, which are a special delight to the boys.

The work of packing is not easy, where the special garments and toys must always be assigned to needs and ages. When the parcels for distant families are ready, they are shipped by express, but all within reach are given out personally. Our Hope Hall wagon goes from home to home the whole day before Christmas.

The poverty revealed is pitiful in the extreme and the gratitude of mothers who receive this Christmas cheer is pathetic in its intensity. To many of the little ones it has been explained that no Santa Claus can come to their home because father is away, so the surprise is all the greater. One family we heard of through the letter of the eldest child, a ten year old boy, in which he told us that their "Santa Claus was dead." He had a baby brother thirteen months old, another aged six years and three little sisters. The child added, "Mother goes out working but she can't get us anything." You can imagine the joy that the Christmas gifts caused, when we resurrected Santa Claus in that top floor tenement.

Last Christmas, in all the homes visited, not one could boast of fire or fuel. It would have been mockery to give out the turkeys and chickens without also giving the wherewithal to cook them.

In one home just under the shadow of the Brooklyn Bridge was found a mother and her three little girls. They had nothing to eat in the cupboard and no fire to drive the damp chill from the two rooms they called home. Everything however was neat and clean. The woman was found weak from sickness and starvation. She had just buried a two days' old baby. When the gifts were displayed, she was too overcome to speak but her tears showed how strong was her feeling. The children were wild with delight but when the eldest commenced to tell something, the mother tried to hush her; urged to go on, she said—"This morning we had just three cents left—we went out and got tea with it and made it good and strong for we could have nothing to eat." This is the mother's letter received a day or two afterwards—

"I am very thankful to you for your kindness to my children and myself. It was a big surprise to us, as it is three weeks since we had a good substantial meal. I have given birth to a girl baby and buried her a day after she was born. I was laid up two weeks and not able to work, nor could I provide the necessary things for her burial, but the children of the neighborhood made up a collection for it. You can see what a hard struggle I have had to fight. If you could possibly get me some sewing to do, so as to make my rent, it would be a relief to my heart."

One Christmas, when I was able to do the work of distribution personally, I entered a home on the fifth floor of a big tenement. There was a small living room and kitchen combined and a windowless bedroom not much more than a cupboard in size. A mother and five children lived there. There was no fire in the stove. The cupboard door was off its hinges and it certainly was not needed, for there was not even a loaf of bread in the house. The only occupant of the room when I entered, was a little girl of about eight years. She sat at the table with her doll. It had neither legs nor arms and, having lost its wig, there was a terrible looking cavity in its head. She was trying to cover its far from handsome body with a piece of red flannel. I was glad to know that a beautifully dressed doll would be hers when the Christmas parcels were opened. The mother when visited a year before had said to us in her broken English, "No happy Christmas till he come home," pointing to the picture on the wall of the father who was in prison. Is it a wonder that her face looked hopeless, and the tears fell fast when we asked her how long that day would be in coming, and she had to answer "Twenty years."

Late one Christmas eve, when the work of distribution was nearly over, the officer who had charge of that duty for the upper part of the city, climbed up the many gloomy stairs of a great tenement and knocked at the rear door. All was dark and quiet, but when the knock was repeated she heard a child-voice answer, "Wait a minute, please." In a few moments the door was opened, and in the light stood a lovely child. She was about six years old and clad in her little white night-dress, with the halo effect of her golden curls, she looked like an angel. The child seemed surprised to see a visitor but with much natural courtesy she asked her in, placed a chair for her, and then with an "excuse me, please" she flitted into the inner room to slip on her dress and shoes, explaining also that she must "see to the children." The bedroom revealed two other little ones—a boy of about four and a baby of some sixteen months whom the little girl tucked in again very tenderly after dressing her brother, with the instruction "You must keep covered up, baby dear." Then she returned to talk to the visitor. Mother, it seemed, was out trying to collect some money which was owing her for work. Did she know about Santa Claus? Oh! yes, she knew all about him, only mother said he could not call at their house this year. A look around, however, showed that he was much needed. There was neither food nor fuel in the house, but it was scrupulously clean and the children's clothing, which was very threadbare and much patched, showed that the mother's loving fingers had done all that could be done to keep them neat and clean. Waxing confidential on the subject of Santa Claus, the little girl added, "Johnny and I have been listening and we thought we heard him whistling down the chimney. Didn't we, Johnny?" Johnny, round-eyed and wide awake by now assented, and then the interest of both children was riveted on the visitor by her startling announcement that Santa Claus' wagon was down below in the street. On being asked if she would like a doll, if such a treasure could be found in the wonderful wagon, her little face lighted up with joy and she cried impetuously, "Oh, yes!" But immediately checking herself she added, "No thank you, ma'am, I think I am too old, but baby would like it, I am sure." Poor tiny mother with the care of the children on her shoulders, she had already learned to sacrifice, and to realize how short a childhood is the lot of the children of the poor. The scene can be imagined better than described, when parcel after parcel was piled up on the table and the children, joined even by the baby, danced around in an expectancy of delight. It was a happy Christmas after all, and the father in his prison cell, heard the echo of it afterwards. He has been home now some time and the little family is prosperous once more. They have now no fear that Santa Claus will only "whistle down the chimney" in passing as he whirls by to the more fortunate ones to leave them hungry, cold and forgotten.

Our representative who has for two years taken the greatest interest in this work writes as follows:

"This is the size of the baby's shoes. The mother had put the baby's foot on a piece of paper marking around it with a pencil and forwarded it to Mrs. Booth with the above explanation. The baby got the shoes. There is no way however in which we can mark the size of the hearts that went out in pity and compassion to bring a happy Christmas into the homes of hundreds of poor mothers and little children where the man of the house was gone. Often the little ones had said, 'Oh! mamma, where is papa?' The mother with aching heart and tearful eyes gave an evasive answer, for the father was in prison. Whatever may have been the guilt of the man behind the bars, there can be no doubt about the misery and wretchedness of these poor creatures, bereft of the bread winner. The struggle to keep the gaunt wolf—poverty—from the door was greatly enhanced last winter by the scarcity of coal. In nearly all the houses I visited in New York City the fire was out. In some coal was only a memory—driftwood, broken boxes and cinders from ash heaps having been used. Some children doing nothing but search from morning till night for anything that could be made to burn.

"In one family the old grandfather, too old to work, keeps the house, a boy of thirteen works in a Broadway store and he is the sole support of the family. Another brother of seven forages for fuel all day, and the little sister of five goes to school.

"On the upper east side, among other things we gave a little girl not only a doll but a beautiful little trunk full of clothes that had been sent with it. Her brother of ten received a sled and they both got new clothes. These two children simply went mad with joy. Running into a back room, they stood and screamed aloud to vent their feelings and the good woman, a hard worker, said with tears in her eyes, 'My man will be home this time next year.' For five years she had fought the wolf alone. This woman walked the streets of New York (being evicted the very day her husband was sentenced) all night long, with her two little children clinging to her skirts. Finally she procured a room—a wash tub and an old stove, and she and her little ones lay upon the bare floor every night for six weeks with nothing to cover them but the mother's skirts.

"Christmas was made happy for another woman and her two children. She works in a box factory and in good times earns three dollars and a half a week. The poor are kind to each other. This woman said after we had given her her gifts, 'I wish you could do something for the woman in the cellar. She is worse off than I am.' In the cellar we found a forlorn starving creature with a baby and a boy of seven. The husband was paralyzed in one arm. He made only one dollar the week before. We attended to the immediate wants of this family and since then have sent clothing, for the woman and children were practically naked. The help she received was so unexpected that she walked up and down the miserable foul cellar pressing her baby to her breast, and saying over and over again like one in a dream, 'I never expected it.'

"We turn into a side street and stop at a house—one of the kind Dickens liked to describe. No one lived on the ground floor—at least all was dark, and the front door without a lock banged upon its hinges. Rails upon the staircase were partly gone and the cold wind rushed through the hall. At the top of the stairs is a smoky oil lamp with broken chimney. We knock at the first door to the left and a young girl timidly opens it. Two little children, five and seven respectively, peer out suspiciously from behind their sister, who is in this case mother of the house. She is eighteen years old, and when we explain our mission, the door swings wide open, for food, coal, and clothing mean a happy Christmas. The little ones set up an impromptu dance and the girl stepping back, shades her eyes with her hands. She is crying but it is because she is glad. Each of the little ones has a doll by now and one has crept off to the corner and is talking to hers in mysterious doll language. They do not worry any more about the visitor because they are absorbed in their treasure. Finally we get them interested in sundry little dresses that the man from the wagon below is bringing, with a turkey and other good things, until the little mother of the house hardly knows what to say but she says as we hand her a good sized bill, 'Oh! thank you sir.' I can never tell you all that the 'thank you, sir!' expressed. So with a merry Christmas we left them all overwhelmed with joy.

"Near the top of a tenement on the west side I find a mother and two little girls and a tiny baby. No fire—two bare rooms cold and cheerless. They all have scared faces. One can see they expect good from no one. After a little, we gain the confidence of the poor mother. We bring out dresses, stockings, warm undergarments, things to eat, chickens, and besides that, we leave some substantial help to warm the room. Then the mother begins to cry softly and the little girls are so wild with delight that, smiling through her tears, the mother tries to quiet them saying, 'children, have you gone mad?' As I turned away from home after home they sent back the message, 'May God bless Mrs. Booth and may she never be hungry,' and wished for me the same good blessing. Never be hungry! that is the key-note, the best thing that these poor souls can wish to the more fortunate, is that you may never be hungry. What a story there is in that sentence."

When this message from the chilly cheerless homes was brought to me by our officer, strong man as he was, the tears were in his eyes, and to my heart the words opened up a whole vista of struggle and suffering. "May you never be hungry!" We should never think of giving such a wish to our friends. Why? Because we have never known the horror of the struggle with that gaunt wolf at the door. With these poor mothers he is an ever present nightmare. It takes all their strength, all their time and thought, to hold him at bay. Should they lose their work or be laid aside through sickness, he will force an entrance and some of them have seen that dark day more than once, when his cruel fangs have been at the throats of their best beloved and he has crushed the little ones to the ground beneath him. To them, that wish embraces a condition of rest and satisfaction, of comfort and safety, almost beyond their imaginings. So to those who are kind to them they wish the best they can think of. May they never be hungry! Never know the dread and anguish, the weakness and struggle, of starvation.