The little child lived for several weeks, and then, in spite of every care, died.  It was decided to have it buried by the county authorities, and the wagon was to arrive at eleven o’clock; about nine o’clock in the morning the rumor of this awful deed reached the neighbors.  A half dozen of them came, in a very excited state of mind, to protest.  They took up a collection out of their poverty with which to defray a funeral.  The residents of Hull-House were then comparatively new in the neighborhood and did not realize that they were really shocking a genuine moral sentiment of the community.  In their crudeness they instanced the care and tenderness which had been expended upon the little creature while it was alive; that it had had every attention from a skilled physician and a trained nurse, and even intimated that the excited members of the group had not taken part in this, and that it now lay with the nursery to decide that it should be buried as it had been born, at the county’s expense.  It is doubtful if Hull-House has ever done anything which injured it so deeply in the minds of some of its neighbors.  It was only forgiven by the most indulgent on the ground that the residents were spinsters, and could not know a mother’s heart.  No one born and reared in the community could possibly have made a mistake like that.  No one who had studied the ethical standards with any care could have bungled so completely.

We are constantly underestimating the amount of sentiment among simple people.  The songs which are most popular among them are those of a reminiscent old age, in which the ripened soul calmly recounts and regrets the sins of his youth, songs in which the wayward daughter is forgiven by her loving parents, in which the lovers are magnanimous and faithful through all vicissitudes.  The tendency is to condone and forgive, and not hold too rigidly to a standard.  In the theatres it is the magnanimous man, the kindly reckless villain who is always applauded.  So shrewd an observer as Samuel Johnson once remarked that it was surprising to find how much more kindness than justice society contained.

On the same basis the alderman manages several saloons, one down town within easy access of the city hall, where he can catch the more important of his friends.  Here again he has seized upon an old tradition and primitive custom, the good fellowship which has long been best expressed when men drink together.  The saloons offer a common meeting ground, with stimulus enough to free the wits and tongues of the men who meet there.

He distributes each Christmas many tons of turkeys not only to voters, but to families who are represented by no vote.  By a judicious management some families get three or four turkeys apiece; but what of that, the alderman has none of the nagging rules of the charitable societies, nor does he declare that because a man wants two turkeys for Christmas, he is a scoundrel who shall never be allowed to eat turkey again.  As he does