About a year after Mrs. Caspar took in the Manning family, her sister-in-law, Mrs. Stephen, died suddenly, leaving four girls. One of these was adopted by another sister, but the other three were promptly taken into Mrs. Caspar's family, who retained charge of the two children of her own sister. Stephen, like Manning, was shiftless and intemperate, giving nothing toward the support of the children, and keeping entirely away from them except when he was in need of a place to sleep. He also died within a short time from a hemorrhage following an attack of pneumonia.
The oldest of the Stephen children went into the res taurant with her aunt, earning three dollars a week to wait on the cooks. Here they remained for nearly ten years, until the restaurant went out of business. As Mrs. Caspar's health was then very much broken she was per suaded to secure a lighter kind of work.
The task of caring for the small children fell upon Julia Manning, and Mrs. Caspar said that the fact that they have all turned out to be such good girls is due to the ten der care given them by Julia. As soon as Julia was old enough she was put to work, but after only a few months her health failed, and it was at this period that the family came under the care of the society.
The youngest of the Stephen family has had hip disease from birth, and has been treated almost continually at an orthopaedic hospital. A brace was purchased for her at a cost of $12, which was paid for by Mrs. Caspar on the instalment plan at fifty cents a week. Another of the Stephen children is also delicate, and has had frequent medical care. There has scarcely been a week during the eleven years in which Mrs. Caspar has not been under expense for doctor's bills, medicines, and other expenses due to illness. After application for relief was made, something was done to lighten her burden, but it seems insignificant when compared with the heroic efforts made by Mrs. Caspar herself and the children whom she has trained.
Notwithstanding these home burdens, Mrs. Caspar has always found time to care for a sick neighbor, and to see that the girls attended regularly to their church duties. During the past year Julia, whose health has rapidly failed, has been visited every week by her priest. If there were a possibility of saving her life thereby, she would be sent to a mountain sanatorium, but her aunt, her priest, and her physician are averse to this, in view of the probability that she has but a few weeks to live. Carrie Stephen, the one who was taken in charge by her mother's sister, also has consumption, and is at present in a country sanatorium.
Extraordinary burdens, borne with still more extraordi nary fortitude, are set forth in this story of Mary Caspar. The history has its greatest value in the heroic qualities shown by Mrs. Caspar and by the niece whom she reared, and who afterward shared with her the responsibility for the younger children. It exhibits the frightful ravages from pulmonary tuberculosis sometimes witnessed in a single family. The neighborliness of the poor to each
other is shown no less conspicuously than the readiness still found, although more rarely under the severe economic conditions of the city, to receive orphaned children and to care for them as if for one's own.
The growth of institutional care for children, and the placing out of children in foster-homes through societies formed for the purpose, has doubtless aided the tendency to hesitate to accept these added responsibilities. On the farm, or in villages, the actual cost in money of an addi tional child is relatively much less than in the tenement of a great city. When to this is added the possibility of securing ready commitment of the child to an institution, where the physical and religious conditions of training are supposed to be exceptionally favorable, it is not surpris ing that the natural absorption of orphan and half-orphan children in the community is seriously checked. The case of Mrs. Caspar, and many others that could be cited, show that this absorption does, however, still take place, and of course the majority of such instances do not come under the notice of charitable societies.
Sydney, Philip. A family whose difficulties were so com plicated and who offered a problem so nearly unsolvable as to justify description as a desperate case, is that of a col ored West Indian, his white wife, and their three children. The first difficulty, which, in a sense, includes most of the others, is that this unfortunate negro is afflicted with lep rosy. Four years ago one of his feet was amputated, and his first experience with charitable agencies was as a pa tient in the hospital where the amputation was performed. Here he was found by a visitor to the public hospitals, who became sufficiently interested in his situation to raise the money with which to purchase for him an artificial foot. It was expected that with this need supplied he would be able to support himself and his family, which at that time consisted only of his wife and a two-year-old child. There was at first some timidity about visiting the family, espe cially about holding conversation with the leper, but the physicians speedily gave assurance that this was not dan gerous ; in spite of which assurance, it may be recorded parenthetically, the clerks in the office of the Health Board developed a mild panic when the leper himself, in response to such assurances, expressed his pleasure and then first made it known to those whom he was addressing that his inquiries related to himself. The best medical opinion which could be obtained was that leprosy, at least in this climate, is not contagious in the ordinary sense, but that, nevertheless, it is communicable, and that risks would be involved if one were to come into physical contact with the leper, especially if one happened to have even a slight open wound, or such opportunity for infection, as, for example, a hangnail.