The charity visitor may blame the women for lack of gentleness toward their children, for being hasty and rude to them, until she learns that the standard of breeding is not that of gentleness toward the children so much as the observance of certain conventions, such as the punctilious wearing of mourning garments after the death of a child.  The standard of gentleness each mother has to work out largely by herself, assisted only by the occasional shame-faced remark of a neighbor, “That they do better when you are not too hard on them”; but the wearing of mourning garments is sustained by the definitely expressed sentiment of every woman in the street.  The mother would have to bear social blame, a certain social ostracism, if she failed to comply with that requirement.  It is not comfortable to outrage the conventions of those among whom we live, and, if our social life be a narrow one, it is still more difficult.  The visitor may choke a little when she sees the lessened supply of food and the scanty clothing provided for the remaining children in order that one may be conventionally mourned, but she doesn’t talk so strongly against it as she would have done during her first month of experience with the family since bereaved.

The subject of clothes indeed perplexes the visitor constantly, and the result of her reflections may be summed up somewhat in this wise:  The girl who has a definite social standing, who has been to a fashionable school or to a college, whose family live in a house seen and known by all her friends and associates, may afford to be very simple, or even shabby as to her clothes, if she likes.  But the working girl, whose family lives in a tenement, or moves from one small apartment to another, who has little social standing and has to make her own place, knows full well how much habit and style of dress has to do with her position.  Her income goes into her clothing, out of all proportion to the amount which she spends upon other things.  But, if social advancement is her aim, it is the most sensible thing she can do.  She is judged largely by her clothes.  Her house furnishing, with its pitiful little decorations, her scanty supply of books, are never seen by the people whose social opinions she most values.  Her clothes are her background, and from them she is largely judged.  It is due to this fact that girls’ clubs succeed best in the business part of town, where “working girls” and “young ladies” meet upon an equal footing, and where the clothes superficially look very much alike.  Bright and ambitious girls will come to these down-town clubs to eat lunch and rest at noon, to study all sorts of subjects and listen to lectures, when they might hesitate a long time before joining a club identified with their own neighborhood, where they would be judged not solely on their own merits and the unconscious social standing afforded by good clothes, but by other surroundings which are not nearly up to these.  For the same reason, girls’ clubs are infinitely