Chapter 7 AN ADVENTURE IN PHILANTHROPY

Katherine became officially a member of the Winnebago Camp Fire Group at the first Ceremonial after the circus, with the Fire Name of Iagoonah, the Story Maker. The name itself was an accident and the manner of its bestowing is cherished in the chronicles of the Winnebagos as one of the group's best jokes. Just about the time Katherine was to be installed as a Winnebago, word was received that the Chief Guardian of the city was going to be present at the meeting and would take charge of the Ceremonial.

Katherine had chosen the name, "Prairie Dandelion," because she came from the plains, and because her hair was so fly-away. During the supper which preceded the Ceremonial meeting Katherine made such funny speeches and told such outrageous yarns about her life in the West that Nyoda said jestingly: "Your name ought to be Iagoo, the Marvellous Story Teller." And the others began calling her Iagoo in fun. The Chief Guardian heard them calling her Iagoo and supposed that was the Camp Fire name she wished to take. So, when she was receiving Katherine into the ranks, she said: "Your name is Iagoo, isn't it?"

Katherine, sobered and almost voiceless from the solemnity of the occasion, mumbled half-inarticulately, "Iagoo? Nah!"

And before anyone knew what had happened she had been officially installed as Iagoonah! The joke was so good that the name stuck, and Katherine was known to the Winnebago Circle as Iagoonah to the end of the chapter, although they did consent to change the interpretation to Story Maker instead of Story Teller as being more dignified and not so suggestive.

Katherine was one of the most enthusiastic Camp Fire Girls that ever lived, and her inspirations led the girls into more activities and adventures than they had ever dreamed of before. It was Katherine who started the Philanthropic Idea. They had been talking about the different things Camp Fire Girls could do together for the good of the community.

"Girls," said Katherine, standing in her favorite attitude beside the fireplace, with her toes turned in and her elbow on the shelf, "I don't believe we're doing all we ought. We're having a royal good time among ourselves and learning no end of things to our own advantage, but what are we doing for others? Nothing, that I can see."

"We gave a Thanksgiving basket to Katie, the laundress," said Hinpoha, "and we collected a barrel of clothes for the Shimky's when their house burned down, and we gave a benefit performance to pay little Jane Goldman's expenses in the hospital, and we send toys and scrapbooks to the Sunshine Nursery every Christmas."

"And I earned three dollars and gave it to the Red Cross," said Sahwah. "Don't you call that doing something for other people? We haven't meant to be selfish, I'm sure. By the way, Katherine, your elbow's in the fudge."

Katherine shoved the dish away absently and returned to her subject. "Yes," she admitted, "the Winnebagos have done a great deal that way, but it's all been giving something. We haven't done anything. It's easy enough to pack a basket and hand it to someone, and collect a lot of old clothes from people who are anxious to get rid of them anyway, or pay the bill for somebody else to do something. But I think we ought to do something ourselves-give up our own time and put our own touch into it."

"What do you mean we should do?" asked Gladys, hunting through the dish for a piece of fudge that had not been demolished by Katherine's elbow.

"Well, there's the Foreign Settlement," said Katherine. "I'm sure we could find something to do there. It's a grand and noble thing to show the foreigners how to live better." And she launched into such an eloquent plea in behalf of the poor overburdened washerwomen who had to neglect their babies while they went to work that the girls wiped their eyes and declared it was a cruel world and things weren't fairly divided, and surely they must do what they could to lighten the burdens of their sisters in the Settlement.

"What will we do, and when will we do it?" asked Hinpoha, all on fire to get the noble work started.

"Tomorrow's Saturday," answered Katherine. "We ought to go out into the Settlement and see what's to be done. We'll make a survey, sort of, and then we'll step in and see where we're needed most."

Nyoda, appealed to for advice, told them to go ahead. She liked the idea of their trying to find out for themselves what needed a helping hand. She could not go with them to the Settlement on Saturday morning, but it was all right for them to go by themselves in daylight.

So, full of a generous desire to help somebody else, the Winnebagos followed Katherine's lead toward the Settlement the next day. The Settlement, as it was called, embraced some three or four square miles of land adjacent to several large factories. In it dwelt some few thousand Slovaks, Poles and Bohemians, packed like sardines in narrow quarters. The Settlement had its own churches, stores, schools, theaters, dance halls and amusement gardens, and looked more like an old world city than a section of a great American Metropolis, with its queer houses and signs in every language but English. The girls wandered up and down the narrow dirty streets, filled with chickens and children, and tried to decide what they should do first. They met the village baker, carrying a washbasket full of enormous round loaves of rye bread without a sign of a wrapping. He was going from house to house, delivering the loaves, and if no one came to the door he laid the loaf on the doorstep and went on.

Before one house, which had a small front yard, between twenty and twenty-five men were lounging on the steps, on the two benches and against the fence. "What do you suppose all those men are doing in front of that house?" whispered Hinpoha curiously.

Just then a woman came from the house carrying in her hand a huge iron frying-pan full of pancakes. She passed it around and each man took a pancake in his hand and ate it where he stood.

"They're having their dinner!" exclaimed Gladys. "It's just a little past noon. That's one way of disposing of the dishwashing problem. I'll store up that idea for use the next time it's my turn to cook supper at a meeting. What a large family that woman has, though. I wonder if they are all her husbands?"

"Gracious no," said Katherine. "These people aren't poly-poly-you know what I mean, even if they are foreigners. Those men are boarders. Every family has some. Let's go into that big house over there and ask if there are any babies the mothers would like to leave with us while they go washing."

They picked their way across the muddy road toward a large building which opened right on to the sidewalk. The hall door stood open and they went in. There were more than a dozen doors leading from the hall on the first floor. "Gracious, what a number of people live here!" said Gladys, putting her arm through Katherine's.

While they stood there, trying to make up their minds at which door to knock, one was opened and a barefooted woman came out, carrying a pan of dishwater, which she threw out on the sidewalk. At the same time another door opened and out came another woman, who stopped short when she saw the first one, and began to talk in a harsh foreign tongue. The second woman replied angrily and the girls could see that they were quarreling. Before long they were shaking fists in front of each other's noses and shouting at the tops of their voices. Doors everywhere flew open and the hall was soon filled with excited women who took sides with one or the other and shook fists at each other while the girls huddled under the stairway, expecting to be set upon and beaten. The quarrel was waxing more violent, when the girls spied a door at the end of a hallway which had been opened to let in some of the shouting women. As quickly and as quietly as they could they darted down this passageway and out of the door which brought them into the back yard of the place. Terrified, they fled up the street and stood on the corner, discouraged and irresolute. Hinpoha was for going home right away. But Katherine talked her out of it.

"Let's go up to the Neighborhood Mission on the hill and ask them for something to do," suggested Katherine, when the rest inquired what they should do next. So they turned their footsteps toward the white building at the end of the street.

"If you really want to do something," said the mission worker to whom they explained their errand, "come down here next Saturday morning and help take care of the children that are left with us. Two of the nurses will be away and we will be short-handed."

The Winnebagos were charmed with the idea. "Oh, may we each take one home for the day?" begged Katherine, "if we promise to bring them back all right?"

Permission was granted for the next Saturday and Katherine was jubilant over the good beginning of their work. "I thought it best that we each take one home and take care of it by ourselves," she explained. "We'll have such fun telling experiences and comparing notes afterward."

Promptly at nine o'clock the next Saturday morning the four Winnebagos, Katherine, Gladys, Hinpoha and Sahwah, presented themselves at the Neighborhood Mission and drove away ten minutes later in Gladys' automobile, each with a youngster in tow.

At eight that night there was a lively experience meeting in the House of the Open Door. "Oh, girls, you never saw such a dirty baby as the one I had," cried Gladys, with a little shiver of disgust at the remembrance.

"It couldn't have been any worse than the one I had," broke in Hinpoha.

"But I gave him a bath," said Gladys, with a satisfied air, "and put all new clothes on him, and he was as sweet as a rose when I took him home."

"Mine beat them all," said Katherine, when she was able to get in a word edgewise. "He had a little fur tail of some kind tied around his neck on a string. I suppose it was meant for a 'pacifier,' for he was sucking it all the while."

"Why, mine had one of those on, too," said Gladys.

"So did mine," said Hinpoha.

"There must have been a million germs on it," continued Katherine. "I took it off and burned it up."

"So did I," said Gladys.

"So did I," echoed Hinpoha.

After all things were talked over the Winnebagos decided that they had done pretty good work that day in cleaning up the dirty babies and unanimously voted to take them again the next Saturday.

When they arrived at the Neighborhood Mission the next Saturday morning they were met on the walk by half a dozen excited women with handkerchiefs on their heads, who formed a circle around them, shouting in a foreign tongue and making fierce gestures.

"What is the matter? What are they saying?" gasped Hinpoha in terror to Katherine, struggling to pull away from the hand that was clutching her coat lapel.

"I don't know," answered Katherine, completely at sea and vainly trying to understand the gibberish that was being uttered by the brown-skinned woman dancing up and down before her.

A startled group of workers ran from the Mission to see what the trouble was, and, forcing themselves through the circle, drew the frightened girls inside the fence of the Mission. Then from the group of women outside there arose a voice in broken English, demanding angrily: "Where is the charm that hung on the neck of my Stefan? The charm to keep away the fever and the sore eyes? I give you my boy to watch, you steal away the charm. Give it back! Give it back!" Here the angry shouting and gesticulating began again and threatening hands were waved over the fence.

"What does she mean?" asked Hinpoha. "What charm?"

"We didn't steal any charms," said Katherine indignantly. "We didn't take a thing off the babies except some dirty old rabbits' tails that were full of germs. We burned them up, and a good thing it was, too."

Here the angry shouts of the women gave way to wails of despair. "They burned the rabbits' tails!" groaned one woman, who could talk English, lifting her hands heavenward, "the rabbits' tails that the Wonder Woman tied about their necks on Easter Sunday! Now Stefan will get the fever and the sore eyes and the teeth will not come through!" And she beat her breast in despair. Then her anger blazed forth again and she fell to berating the girls in her own language, and the other women fell in with her until there was a perfect hubbub. The workers at the Mission hustled the girls inside the building and the women finally departed, shaking fists at the Mission and raging at all the dwellers.

"It was nothing but a dirty old rabbit's tail," declared Hinpoha tearfully, as the shaken Winnebagos hastened homeward. "I hate foreigners! I guess we'll never try to do anything for them again."

"Oh, yes, we will," answered Katherine optimistically; "we'll learn not to make mistakes in time."

"Look at that donkey over there," said Sahwah. "Doesn't he remind you of Sandhelo?"

"Poor old Sandhelo," mourned Hinpoha. "I wonder what became of him? We certainly had fun with him, even if he never would go unless he heard music."

"Seems to be characteristic of the donkey tribe not to want to go," observed Katherine. "That one over there is balking, too. Doesn't the fellow that's trying to drive him look like a pirate, though? I wouldn't go for him either, if I were a donkey."

"O look!" cried Sahwah in amazement, and they all stopped still.

A small boy was coming down the street blowing lustily on a wheezy horn, and as soon as the donkey heard it he wheeled around, facing the music, pricked up his ears, uttered a squeal of rapture and rose up on his hind legs, almost upsetting the queer little cart to which he was harnessed.

"Katherine! I do believe it is Sandhelo," cried Sahwah, excitedly gripping Katherine's arm.

The man sprang from the cart and seizing the donkey by the bit brought him down to earth with a rough pull that almost jerked his head off, shouting abuse at him in a foreign tongue. The little boy, frightened at the uproar, ran away, taking his music with him. The man got into the cart again and tried to drive away. The donkey refused to move. The man began to beat him unmercifully.

"Oh, girls, we must do something to stop him!" cried Hinpoha, hopping up and down in distress.

"Here, you, stop that!" shouted Katherine, running forward and waving her muff at him threateningly. "I'll have the law on you!" The man either did not understand, or did not care, for he paid not the slightest heed to her words. "Stop it, stop it, I say!" she commanded, stamping her foot angrily and wildly wishing she were a man, that she might beat this bully even as he was beating the poor little beast.

The man looked at her and grinned derisively. "Who says so?" he growled.

"I say so!" said a voice behind Katherine, and she turned to see the Captain standing beside her. "You stop beating that donkey or I'll punch your head." He put his fingers to his lips and uttered a long shrill whistle which the girls recognized as the call of the Sandwiches, and the next minute the other boys came running up the side street, Bottomless Pitt, Monkey, Dan, Peter and Harry, with Slim trailing along in the rear, puffing violently in his efforts to keep up with the rest. They surrounded the cart threateningly and the man sulkily left off beating the donkey.

Sahwah went forward and stroked the little animal's head and then she uttered a triumphant cry.

"It is Sandhelo!" she exclaimed. "Here's part of his red, white and blue cockade still sticking in his hair."

"That's our donkey," cried all the girls and boys, pressing close around. "Where did you get him?"

"He is not," declared the man angrily. "I raise him myself since he was young."

"That is not true," said Sahwah shrewdly. "If you had had him very long you would know how to make him go. It seems to me that this is the first time you've ever tried to drive him."

"He is mine, he is mine," declared the man. "I know how to make him go. He always go for me."

"Then make him go," said Sahwah coolly.

The man tried to urge the donkey forward, but in vain.

"Now, we'll show you how to make him go," said Sahwah. "Where's that boy with the horn?" She ran up the street a distance and found the boy seated on a doorstep and bribed him with a few pennies to let her take the horn. Then, walking along ahead of Sandhelo she played a half dozen lively notes, such as had sent him flying round the circus ring. No sooner had she started than he started at a great rate. When she stopped he stopped.

"It's Sandhelo without mistake," they all cried, and the last doubt vanished when he came up alongside of Sahwah and laid his head on her shoulder the way he always had done.

"He belongs to us," said the Captain, looking the man in the eye, "and you'll have to give him up."

The man shifted his gaze. "I give him to you for five dollar," he muttered. "I pay so much for him."

"Not much," said the Captain. "Nobody sold you a donkey for five dollars and you can't get that much out of us. Now you either give him to us or we'll report it to the police." The man protested loudly, but he was evidently thinking all the while that a donkey that only went when he heard music was not such a good bargain after all, even if he did get it by the simple and inexpensive method of finding it in his dooryard and tying it up. So, after growling some more that they were robbing him, he suffered Sandhelo to be unharnessed from the cart and led away in triumph in the wake of the horn.

"Well, our charitable enterprise didn't turn out so badly, after all," said Katherine, when Sandhelo was once more established in his cozy stall in the House of the Open Door. "If it hadn't been for that fuss about the babies we wouldn't have been on the street in time to see Sandhelo. And if we hadn't wanted to help those people there wouldn't have been any fuss. It does really seem that virtue is its own reward and one good turn deserves another. Let's do it some more."

And as usual the others agreed with her.