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Samuel A. Barnett.

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By Mrs. S. A. Barnett.

January, 1886.

ssss1From “The Toynbee Journal”.

Certainly a great deal of entertaining goes on in Toynbee Hall. From the half-hours spent in the little room, where its Entertainment Committee meets, there issue some prominent if not exactly big results, and, perhaps, its members are not without a hope that deep consequences as well may follow. This method of helping people has not been without its critics, one of whom uttered the opinion, “that the Toynbee Hall plan was to save the people’s souls alive by pictures, pianos, and parties,” and though the remark was made derisively, there may be some doubt if it was altogether without truth: only the speaker should have added that it was one of the Toynbee Hall plans, instead of using only the definite article.

If the Toynbee Hall aim is to help to make it possible that men should carry out the command given long ago of “Be ye perfect,” and if, as a modern lover of righteousness has put it, “the power of social life and manners is one of the great elements in our humanization, and unless we cultivate it we are incomplete”; then it is not an error that “pictures, pianos, and parties” should be pressed into service to fill up some of the incompleteness in the East London dweller’s life, and to help him to “save his soul alive”.