THE FRESH AIR FUND.
[To TEN Eorron or Tax "SrxrrarOn."1
Sra,—To give poor children even a single day each year in the pure air and ameliorating influences of the country is to do a great good. It is for this reason that the Fresh Air Fund is a charity which all should support, partly because of its object, and partly because there is no amity of which it can be so truly said that every little not only helps, but goes a very long way. The Fresh Air Fund has been very properly described as the cheapest charity. There is no kindly irony, but merely truth, in the phrase. The moneys subscribed are devoted to the object for which the givers gave. All the expenses are borne by the promoters. Food and fares are the only items on which the moneys subscribed are spent, and as 9d. covers the cost of taking a child into the country for one day of pure enjoyment, eagerly anticipated, and as fondly cherished, the cost of taking a party of two hundred children, with the necessary attendants, is £8 2s., and the cost of making a thousand little souls—the average day's party—supremely happy for one day at least, not to mention the joys of anticipation, which extend over many days, and of memory, which are lasting, is £40 108.
The Fresh Al:- Fund knows nothing of creed; it regards only circumstances. The sole aim of its conductors is to give those children a holiday in the country who would, without its aid, be debarred from such joy. In the first years of its existence the Fresh Air Fund gave twenty thousand London children a day in the country. In the second year it extended its sphere of operations, and five thousand children in Manchester, Liverpool, Glasgow, and Birmingham were made happy. Since then its sphere has constantly widened, until at the present time it gives days in the country to the slum children of the forty-three largest towns in Britain, and fortnights by the sea to the most weakly at a coat of 10s. each. This summer it is hoped to be able to send at least two hundred and fifty thousand children for day trips and six thousand for a fortnight. You have most kindly allowed me to put the case for the Fresh Air Fund before the readers of your influential paper. I trust that many of them may be touched by the need of the children, and may feel that they would like to help the Fresh Air Fund to relieve that need. All contributions will be at once acknowledged by the Hon. Secretary of the Fund, and should be sent to him at 23 St. Bride Street, London, E.C.—
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