Library Collections: Document: Full Text

That Boston is not indifferent to its pauper institutions is made evident by the changes for the better effected in them within the last few years, such as: Paid attendants for the sick and a visiting staff of physicians; preparation of the food by an experienced cook; removal of insane patients to the proper asylums; discontinuance of labor by prisoners from Deer Island; a suitable semblance for the transportation of the sick; more comfortable chairs for the aged; and benches out of doors. Still further changes along similar lines are recommended by the Board of Trustees in their annual report. The more important of these recommendations are: Additional kitchen and laundry accommodations; ventilation of the men's building; employment of more paid officers; extension of the nurses training school; new male ward in the hospital; and isolating ward for contagious diseases.

The problem of the dependent poor, of which the functions and conduct of almshouses is but a part, gains in importance and in dignity the longer it is studied. Of the finer aspects of this general problem, as well as of the qualities required in those who would aid in its solution, Rev. Frederick H. Wines beautifully says: "Charity has been often characterized as a religious duty, and its administration as a branch of applied science. But it is also an art, one of the fine arts, comparable with music, painting and sculpture. There are in it unsuspected possibilities of beauty and grace, depending upon the symmetry of its proportions and the combination of its elements. As we feel the beauty of rhythm in poetry when wedded to noble or tender conceptions, or of melody and harmony in music, or of unity, simplicity and variety in a picture or a statue, so charity to excite our admiration should exhibit unity in diversity in its design, be true to nature and to life and be instinct with a love pure as the snows, deathless as the skies, and consecrated to humanity and to God. Ruskin's seven lamps of architecture are also the lights by which its radiant pathway can alone be traced; the lamps of sacrifice, of truth, of power, of beauty, of life, of memory, and of obedience."