FRESH AIR FUND.

Dominion, Volume 6, Issue 1714, 3 April 1913, Page 6

FRESH AIR FUND.

Contributions continue to como to hand in aid oi' tho Fresh Air Fund, which has i'or some years past been bringing health and joy to thousands of littie slum children. Up to the present we havo ou the present occasion received donations sufficient to provide lor a holiday outing i'or something like <0 children. Last year the donations we received and forwarded to London enabled several hundred children to be taken into the country, and no doubt by . the time tho list is closed a similar result will be achieved this year. An extract l'rom tho annual report oi the Fresh Aid Fund Committee may serve to indicate how tho little ones are provided for with the funds forwarded:— "One must go down to the golden sands of Bognor to understand fully wiiat a miracle may be worked'through a subscription to tho Fresh Air Fund. The holiday home is a big red house, a kind of castle, with battlements and tower, flower borders, lawns, and playgrounds— behind, the long lino of .the rolling Suilh Downs—before, the sea, the blue English Channel. Down the path from the castellated house you may tee, early on a summer morning, a troop of children , romping to. the sands. They are paie and wan, perhaps, if they have newly arrived, weak in the legs, washed out mites of humanity, products of a vaunted civilisation which allows the existence of fetid courts and alleys and. slum streets. But they" are happy enough as they ( make for the white hut on the beach, a fairyland of toys, of spade's, and buckets, .shrimping nets, cricket bats, and all things wliicli can improve the seaside as a playground. Nurses go with the children, Who havo one supremo duty—to teach. the art of v happiness. They organise games, pleasure alter- pleasure, and supervise the puddling and bathing. AVhen it is time to go til dinner the children are hungry with a healthy sea-air hunger, quite different to the semi-starvation.which is the common lot ,of many oi them, llow they enjoy their good dinner of roast meat, potatoes, and milk pudding. Faces which were white in the morniug are now applered: to-morrow they will lie tanned brown. It is wonderful to watch how health creeps into the children's systems as their fortnight wears on. The afternoon pa'sses as a dream, the children trooping again to tile sands, to rest ill groups while fairy tales are told them, to build new castles for the sea to v.ash away, to shout, sing, and dance. They enjoy themselves as never before. Then comes a tea picnic, and last of all each goes to a little white bed, with the luxury of sno\j-white sheets and softest pillows, the bis windows of tho cubicles standing open day and night, so that the f'esli sea-salt winds may do their healing work.. These children are'tho sickliest and neediest of all tho-children to-whom tho Fresh Air Fund ministers." It'might be explained that the children above referred, to arc those who aro specially selected on account of ill-health for a fortnight at the seaside—a change which their-parents could never hope to givo tliem, and yet which in many cases means a matter of life and death for the littlo ones. ' . Tho latest subscriptions received at The Dominion Olfico for tho fund are as follow:—Three Sympathisers, 155.; X.Y.Z., 55.; N.E.8., 2s. Gd.; A.N.F., Is.; L.B.', Is.; K.M.L., Is.; W.J.U.E., Us C.E., 2s. Ud. ■