Cambridge sketches
Estelle M. H. Merrill, Ed.

To object to the methods of the Associated Charities as involving too much red tape and the exposure of sacred details is as childish as it would be to object to a physician who informs himself about his patient's symptoms and writes a prescription instead of impulsively administering a dose of medicine at haphazard. To hold aloof on the assumption that the old-time patronage and dole-giving has only taken another form is to underestimate the calibre of the mental and moral force which is everywhere at work on this idea.

There are, at this writing, four centres for conference, known by the districts in which they meet respectively as the Old Cambridge, the North Cambridge, the Cambridgeport and the East Cambridge conference. The central office is in the Central Square Building in Cambridgeport. At one or another of these points it is the duty of every individual, as well as of every organization, religious or secular, which aims to relieve suffering caused by poverty, to give and seek information about every applicant for aid. When this is heartily and thoroughly done the work of the Association will be relieved of its most irksome impediment to success, and the money which is now worse than wasted in ill-considered attempts to alleviate poverty will go far towards supporting schools for higher education in this important branch of learning.

Two kinds of sufferers appeal preeminently and eternally to our sympathies — the sick, and the children deprived of natural protectors. Cambridge has made good provision for meeting both the needs here suggested.