STUDENT VOLUNTEER WORK.

The report of the Director of the Student Volunteer Committee which is about to be published, contains a comprehensive account of the work of the committee, its history and its present method of assisting the philanthropic enterprises carried out by Harvard students. Following is a review of the report:

A meeting historical in its relation to student life at Harvard was held in Sanders Theatre two years ago. President Eliot said at the time the meeting was probably without parallel in the history of education.

It was a spontaneous uprising of students of every creed and no creed to declare that, caring no less than ever for self-culture, the Harvard student of today cared also to be of service to the poor and the unfortunate. President Eliot, Professor Peabody, Bishop Lawrence, Dr. McKenzie, the late Ex-Governor Russell and half a dozen students spoke at this unique meeting, and the Student Volunteer Work was launched.

A permanent committee of students was organized. E. H. Warren, '95 was appointed chairman for the first year, and C. E. Noyes, '95, secretary and treasurer, R. W. Emmons, T. R. Kimball, W. W. Comfort, and A. Whiteside, Jr. from the class of '95, have served on the committee. From '96 J. C. Fairchild, H. E. Addison, W. T. Denison; J. L. O'Brian and E. V. Frothingham, from '97 D. Fales, Jr., G. Gleason, E. E. Rice; from '98 G. C. Ward, W. H. Wheelock, from, '99 M. Donald, F. R. Stoddard, and from the graduate and professional schools, R. Calkins, L. K. Morse, J. H. Ropes, F. N. Robinson, A. C. Garrett, L. H. Roots, H. C. Wright, H. A. Eaton, T. A. Mullen.

By election of the committee, several professors and graduates have served as Advisory Members. Professors Peabody, Palmer and Cummings, Dean Hodges, Mr. Ely of the Prospect Union, and Messrs. George Wigglesworth, '74 and Harvey H. Baker, '90, of the Suffolk Bar.

Mr. Charles W. Birtwell '82, general secretary of the Boston Children's Aid Society, chairman of the Committee on Charities and Correction of the Boston Municipal League, and member of the Mayor's Advisory Board on the Public Institutions of Boston, was asked to give a portion of his time to the direct administration of the work. $1200 was quickly raised to meet the expenses of the first year, and a year later $600 for the year that ends this month.

Weekly consultation hours were arranged when any student could advise with the director as to how he could best take a hand in benevolent work. Through the director's knowledge of the intricate net-work of Boston Charities, and his understanding as a graduate of Harvard of the conditions under which students must engage in philanthropic activity, the men have been helped to make a wise choice of work. The interviews with the director are personal and confidential, and the resulting choice of work by the student is influenced by many considerations as to his situation, his tastes,, and his expected business or profession and the time at his disposal. So, too, from time to time, as the men prosecute their work they can go to the director for information or advice. In six different Ward Conferences of the Associated Charities of Boston, as well as for the Associated Charities of Cambridge, men have acted as volunteer visitors in poor families. In the Children's Aid Society more than a dozen men have regularly superintended Home Libraries.- small libraries placed in the homes of poor families and constantly renewed, the membership of each library including ten children from the neighborhood, and the volunteer visitor meeting with the group in the home of the librarian weekly. Half a dozen boys' clubs in the poorest parts of Boston and Cambridge have been partly manned by students.

Men have been supplied at the Prospect Union to fill vacancies in the teaching staff, and teachers have been found for special classes in English and German at the Italian Mission, the North End Union and Parker Memorial, all in Boston. Volunteers have visited three hospitals. Occasionally a man has been added to the groups that have been working at the Sailor's Mission, the Chinese Mission, the Industrial Temporary Home and the John Howard Home. Committees from the religious societies have obtained information from the director that has aided them in the selection of the agencies with which they might usefully connect themselves. There are so-called charitable enterprises on which students would only waste their energies, learn worse than nothing, and get only disappointment for their pains, and from such the director has warned them.

Extensive collections of clothing from the students of the University have been made by the committee semi-annually. Each collection has yielded seven or eight hundred articles, which have been turned over for distribution to the poor by such responsible agencies as the Associated Charities of Cambridge, the Boston Provident Association, the Roxbury Charitable Society, and several other agencies and churches that deal with the poor.

Entertainments by "troupes," -the "Vocal Troupe," the "Sleight-of-Hand Troupe" and the "Student Volunteer Orchestra," -have been given in institutions where monotony or suffering makes such diversions peculiarly welcome-the Cambridge Almshouse, the Boston Home for Incurables, the Boston Insane Hospital, the Suffolk County Parental School (truant school), the Lyman school (state reform school), the Lyman school (state reform school), the Massachusetts School for the Feeble-Minded, and other institutions.

Twice a year conferences are held of the students actually engaged in these different lines of work. Men tell what they have been doing. These gatherings have met at the homes of Professor Peabody and Profossor Palmer. The varied experiences of the students have been full of pathos and reality, and have revealed, as nothing else could, the nature and value of this Student Volunteer work.

The Volunteer Committee for the present year is as follows:

C. E. Noyes, Chairman; F. R. Stoddard, '99, Secretary; D. Fales, Jr., '97, Treasurer; W. W. Comfort, Gr., M. Donald, '99, A. C. Garrett, Instr.; G. Gleason, '97, E. E. Rice, '97, J. H. Ropes, Instr.; G. C. Ward, '98, W. H. Wheelock, '98.

The consultation hours of Mr. Birtwell, the director, are every Tuesday morning from nine till eleven in Grays 17. All men are cordially invited to call on the Director whether or not they intend to engage in volunteer work.