HOLIDAYS FOR POOR CHILDREN.
(TO THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR.")
SIR,—Many of those who read Miss Stephen's letter on this sub- ject in the ,Sptetator on the 13th ult. must have been seized with a longing desire to rent and furnish a cottage in a country village, and to receive in it poor London children as guests. But I believe that the majority of your readers, while admiring the plan at a distance, would yet find it too much of an undertaking to carry out personally. A letter from the Rev. S. Barnett, a Whitechapel clergyman, in the Guardian of the 24th ult. points out, if not a more excellent, at least a simpler and cheaper way of helping those little Londoners who never get a whiff of country air.
The proposition is simply an. extension of the boarding-out system, by pl,lcing two or three children at a time in the family of a country cottagtr, for a few weeks' change. One week would give a holiday, three or four weeks would probably be of radical service to health. Homes have easily been found in the small village where I live for several little ones, at a payment of five shillings a week. Upper-class homes would readily be forth- coming, at a slightly increased rate of payment. Of course, for children who have been seriously ill, a convalescent home may be more suitable, but there are hundreds of children who, though not actually ill, would, to quote the letter to which I have before referred, be much the better for "a run in the fields," and for the joy which a knowledge of country things would add to their lives. The change of food, too, would be only an advantage. Even supposing the little Londoner did not at first take to "white meat instead of brown," as one of our little visitors described the pork common in the village, there is plenty of good, wholesome food,—country milk, instead of London skim ; fresh fruit and vegetables, instead of the refuse of a costermonger's stall, which has been hawked through the streets through a long summer's day. And in the case of a child of very delicate appetite, surely in most villages there are tempting odds and ends to be got from the kitchen of the rectory or squire's house.
Perhaps some of the well-to-do, who are just off to Scotch moors or Swiss mountains, may think it will add to their own pleasure to remember that they have left a small sum in the hands of their clergyman, dieter, or other friend who knows and visits the poor, to be spent on holidays in the country for delicate children. Such holidays, arranged in the way suggested, would be neither troublesome nor expensive.—I am, Sir, &c., S. L.
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