Chapter 11

There is always time to do the thing that _ought_ to be, that _must_ be done, and for that matter who shall fix the limit to our powers of helpfulness? It is the unused pump that wheezes. If our bounty be dry, cross, and reluctant, it is because we do not continually summon and draw it out. But if, like the patriarch Jacob's, our well is deep, it cannot be exhausted. While we draw upon it, it draws upon the unspent springs, the hill-sides, the clouds, the air, and the sea; and the great source of power must itself suspend and be bankrupt before ours can fail.

The kindergarten is not for the poor child alone, a charity; neither is it for the rich child alone, a luxury, corrective, or antidote; but the ideas of which it tries to be the expression are the proper atmosphere for every child.

It is a promise of health, happiness, and usefulness to many an unfortunate little waif, whose earthly inheritance is utter blackness, and whose moral blight can be outgrown and succeeded by a development of intelligence and love of virtue.

The child of poverty and vice has still within him, however overlaid by the sins of ancestry, a germ of good that is capable of growth, if reached in time. Let us stretch out a tender strong hand, and touching that poor germ of good lifting its feeble head in a wilderness of evil, help it to live and thrive and grow!

End of Project Gutenberg's Children's Rights