“Rooming in a home where many mothers have still many more children, one would feel at first like escaping from the noise and commotion caused by crying babies, and yet here are some opportunities of service.  It is never a wise plan to leave children to the entire care of ayahs.  A very profitable hour may be spent in directing games when the little people build with their bricks gates and bridges, houses and castles, and the older ones listen with interest to some story of adventure.  An hour spent in the open air under shady trees in this way would draw many a grateful heart, for there would be less crying, fewer quarrels, and a little more peace for all around.

“In these days when strikes are so common, many opportunities for social service offer themselves.  It may be a postal strike.  Now, not many of us like to be kept waiting for our mail, and, if the postmen are not bringing us our letters, we very soon contrive some means of getting them.  I grant it isn’t a very enviable job to be standing outside a delivery window awaiting the sorting of letters by a crew of girl guides and boy scouts, who are not any too serious about their work.  But once the letters are secured and delivered at the neighboring homes of friends and others, it is something done, besides the satisfaction of being able to sit down and read your own letters as well as having the grateful appreciation from others.

“Again, a picnic has been planned to some far away hill.  The party arrives; tiffin baskets are placed in some shady spot.  One of the party wanders away to a little village not far off.  She is soon surrounded by a group of scrubby children, who watch her with eyes full of curiosity and wonder.  She dips her hand into the bag she has been carrying and brings out a handful of nuts and oranges, and, before sharing them with the children, she invites them to wash their scrubby, little hands and faces in the sparkling stream of clear, crystal water that is flowing through the valley.  She gets to talking to them, and asks about their homes, and one little child leads her to a meagre, little, grassy hut in which her sick sister is lying.  She hasn’t any medicine with her, but she opens wide the door of the hut and lets the bright sunlight in.  She strokes the little one’s feverish brow, and sets to, and fixes up the bed and soon gets the sickroom, such as it is, clean and tidy.  The mother is touched by the gentle kindliness of the stranger and confides her sorrows to her.  Other homes are visited.  People expecting the kind visitor brush up and tidy their huts.

“So the picnic excursion ends leaving a cleaner and happier spot nestling in among those mountainsides.  Several visits are paid to the little village.  The stranger is no longer a stranger, for she is now known and loved and is greeted by clean, happy, smiling children, and blessed by grateful mothers.  And so in the home and in the office and in God’s out-of-doors we can find opportunities for helping others.”