A LABOR OF LOVE.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXIX, Issue 4, 24 January 1901, Page 5

A LABOR OF LOVE.

The paper on ' Civic Helpfulness,' written by Theodore Rooseveldt and published in the October Century, treats with high commenda tion the quiet work done by ' the really hard-working philanthro piats, who spend their lives in doing good to their neighbors.' Ha says that only those who have seen Romething of such work at close quarters realise how much of it goes on without the slightest outside show, and how much it represents to many lives that else would be passed in gray squalor. He Binglea out for special notice a Paulist Father, now dead, and he also paya the following high tribute to Sisters whose community will be readily recognised, although unnamed by him : ' Let ma call to mind an institution, not in New York City, but in Albany, where the Sisters of a religious organisation devote their entire lives to helping girls who either have slipped, and would go down to be trampled underfoot in the blackest mire if they were not helped, or who. by force of their surroundings, would surely slip if the hand were not held out to them in time. It is the kind of work the doing of which ia of infinite importance, both from the standpoint of the atate and from the standpoint of the individual ; yet it is a work which, to be successful, must emphatically be a labor of love. Most men and women, even among those who appreciate the need of the work and who are not wholly insensible to the demands made upon them by the spirit of brotherly lore for mankind, lack either the time, the opportunity, or the moral and mental qualities to succeed in anoh work ; and to very many the sheer distaste of it would prevent their doing it well. There is nothing attractive ia it save for those who are entirely earnest and disinterested. There is no reputation, there is not even any notoriety, to be gained from it. Surely people who realise that such a work ought to be done, and realise also how exceedingly distasteful it would be for them to do it, ought to feel a sense of the most profound gratitude to those who with wholehearted sincerity have undertaken it, and should support them in every way. This particular institution is under the management of a creed not my own, but few things gave me greater pleasure than to sign a bill increasing its power and usefulness.'