Batesville Guard

RESPONSE TO
CHARITY CALL

We feel so grateful for the response being made to our appeals for funds with which to provide Christmas cheer at the approaching Christmas season, and for the relief of poverty and distress throughout the coming year.

If you would go with us, you would see that there is need for every penny we can raise. Yes, yesterday, Miss Torrance and I went to spread to some of the very poor people, and we found in one home three little children under six, as barefooted on that bitter cold day.

In another widow's home, we found some little ones under 6, with no sign of underwear and only two thin little summer slips on. We visited another home, only two rooms, the direst poverty. The old grandparents in rags and both afflicted, two little children, a boy four and a girl two years old. She had on some little cloth shoes the mother had sewed together for them, not a thing to cover her little body but a summer dress.

There is almost no light in that house; one of the two windows is boarded up to keep out the cold. They offered us one of the two bottomless chairs; the old grandmother could not get up out of hers.

You will have to see these things to realize the suffering and distress right here in our town. We went into another little house of one room and a shed room; this house shelters two families, a widow and her son, and another family of six.

When they all sleep I can't see how, there is only two beds, then only 2 chairs. We had to go around to the back door as there were no steps at the front. These little homes are so cheerless and pitiful; how glad we are that you have made it possible to bring some comfort and joy to them.

A full list of cash contributions will be published tomorrow. If you have not made your donation, give it to Miss Robt. Ellen Case at the Chamber of Commerce any time.

Lula G. Parse, Sec. United Charities.