To feel young and able to take on new duties and perform them
satisfactorily at the age of 73 should put heart into every discouraged
person who is nearing the seventies. Such a person was the matron of
the “rest home” for working girls, Arrity Hale.
When Arrity Hale was seventy-three years old, her husband having
died some time before, she began to find it hard work keeping
her small house going. She never told any one of this, but
neighbors began to suspect it. A well-known New York family had
a country-place near the village, and they had always been on
friendly terms with Mrs. Hale. One member of this family was
connected with the Working Girls’ Vacation Society, and she,
with some other women, was contemplating the foundation of a
home in the neighborhood as a branch of the society.
The woman in question and her friends interested with her in
the project, were all alumnæ of Miss Green’s school in this
city. Miss Green was a famous preceptress a generation or so
ago, and she numbered in her classes at No. 1 Fifth Avenue
many of the girls who are now the society matrons of the city.
After teaching three generations of pupils, and when she was
considerably more than seventy years old, she decided to give up
her work.
Her old pupils determined to do something in her honor,
something that would be a lasting tribute to her, and acting
upon a suggestion from her, they determined to purchase a
cottage in the country to be used as a rest-home for working
girls during their summer vacations. That was how the “L. M.
Green Cottage” was established.
Knowing that Arrity Hale was not in the best of circumstances,
they approached her with an offer to buy her farm and establish
her in it as matron. She eagerly accepted, and the plan was at
once put in operation. Some of the members of the society were
rather dubious about putting a woman over seventy years old
in charge of a houseful of girls, but in a season or two this
feeling had entirely disappeared. Mrs. Hale had no trouble at
all.
Every girl who visited the Green Cottage left with a regret that
she could not spend all her life there. (Text.)
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