Within easy walk of every home, not too far for little feet or weary mothers, there should be a neighborhood playground, preferably about the school house. When I was a pastor in Brooklyn, I used my own big church yard for a playground for my Sunday school boys of nine to sixteen, on Monday afternoons, playing with them "Association" football, in which the players kick the ball and not each other. Those games brought me a rich chairman for my church trustees, who, as a stranger, had looked on at one of our church football games and thought he would like to work with a preacher who played with his boys. And most of the boys were won to church membership by a religion whose gladness expressed itself in a church playground. Miss Jennie B. Merrill told in the Outlook of an uptown church in New York City which opened its church yard to mothers and their babies. Better than any "keep off the grass" park reserved as an outdoor parlor is a playground that serves as the outdoor nursery of many homes. Every playground needs its adult "Master of Revels" for wise and winsome leadership. It is even a better place for men to serve as "big brothers" than after a boy gets into police court. Neighborliness in Cities It is too much assumed to be impracticable if not impossible to develop on a city street that delightful neighborliness which is common in villages and among farmers. But there was in Washington a street of new houses, the occupants of which were about all strangers to each other when they came, where there was developed a beautiful neighborliness rarely equalled in village life—probably due to one unusually lovable personality. When she was about to go away for a summer vacation, and all three of her children and her husband became sick-not sick From Painting by James Elder Christie enough to give up the trip but sick enough to hinder the preparations for the journey, eleven of the neighbors came in of their own accord to pack her trunks and dress her babies and administer remedies and to bring a tasty lunch. and order a carriage and baggage wagon; and she got off on schedule time. Later when a neighbor, with a newborn babe, had a boy imprisoned upstairs with scarlet fever, the lady of lovable personality kept the prisoner supplied for days with tasty foods suited to his case. When this lady had occasion to go shopping, neighbors were ever ready to take her three little ones to their homes. That city neighborhood of well-to-do families was like one big family. Through Neighborhood Associations both the positive and negative sides of neighborliness should be studied, including that growing menace to health and happiness, unnecessary noises. In a neighborhood in the National Capital many were daily robbed of necessary sleep by two neighborhood nuisances, a rooster and a piano pupil, both of whom began their noises at early daylight. The tortured victims agreed on a series of letters to the daily press, knowing that other neighborhoods also needed protection. The first letter against early piano playing was a gentle plea for mercy and was signed "Mercury." The torture continued and another victim wrote a more urgent protest and signed it "Jupiter." And when that failed a warlike blast was signed "Mars," and mailed to the house of the offender, and that nuisance ceased. But the rooster (which has no business in a crowded city) still crowed lustily not only at early dawn but whenever any window in range of his vision was lighted up at night. After enduring this too long, a brave woman undertook the task of facing the female owner of the bird in defense of the suffering neighborhood. Calling at the door BOYS AT THE START OF AN EARNEST RACE By Permission of Playgrounds and Recreation Association of America where its owner lived, she said with a sweet smile, "Please eat your rooster." It proved to be the "word to the unwise" that is often sufficient. If there had been a neighborhood association, the right to sleep might perhaps have been vindicated more promptly and more permanently by a discussion. When I was pastor in New York City, taking as my motto, "Not that we have dominion over your faith, but are helpers of your joy," I preached on "Religion Adapted to Flats," and said to an audience living mostly in the middle grade apartment houses, "The reason why the family that is living under you is moving out is not because they want a better apartment, but because you have thoughtlessly stamped around so much over their heads that they must find better neighbors." "Some automobile horns suggest nothing so much as the cries of dying animals in the slaughter-house, and when these raucous noises, added to the shrill announcement of street vendors of merchandise, the prolonged howling of factory whistles, and the interminable puffing and blowing of engines in the railroad yards, continue throughout the twenty-four hours, it is comparatively easy to understand how the recovery of patients is retarded." With this summing up of the situation, a Nurses' Club of Philadelphia took preliminary steps in the inauguration of a campaign for the suppression of unnecessary noises. In some cases legal action by city or State may be necessary, but the campaign for reasonable quiet in our homes. should usually be promoted as a neighborly issue. The Bootblack's Algebra A Yale professor visiting in Hartford, who employed an Italian bootblack at the railway station, noticed that |