" by Jane Addams
(1860-1935) From: Twenty Years at Hull-House with
Autobiographical Notes. by Jane Addams. New York: The MacMillan
Company, 1912 (c.1910) pp. 342-370.
[Editor: Mary Mark Ockerbloom]
CHAPTER XV
THE VALUE OF SOCIAL CLUBS
From the early days at Hull-House, social clubs composed of
English speaking American born young people grew apace. So eager
were they for social life that no mistakes in management could
drive them away. I remember one enthusiastic leader who read
aloud to a club a translation of "Antigone," which she had
selected because she believed that the great themes of the Greek
poets were best suited to young people. She came into the club
room one evening in time to hear the president call the restive
members to order with the statement, "You might just as well keep
quiet for she is bound to finish it, and the quicker she gets to
reading, the longer time we'll have for dancing." And yet the
same club leader had the pleasure of lending four copies of the
drama to four of the members, and one young man almost literally
committed the entire play to memory.
On the whole we were much impressed by the great desire for
self-improvement, for study and debate, exhibited by many of the
young men. This very tendency, in fact, brought one of the most
promising of our earlier clubs to an untimely end.
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