the life of the family. The key to the problem lay there.
Many similar experiences might be cited as testimony to the importance of the home and the people living in it as a means of developing an understanding of an individual and his adjustments. It is toward the home and the family that the earliest steps—usually the first—should be taken in seeking an acquaintance with the person in trouble.
Our efforts should not end there. A man's other associates should be consulted. The importance of this is illustrated by the unsuccessful way in which at first the predicament of Esther Hansen was approached and the method by which later an understanding of her difficulty was obtained.
Miss Hansen had asked the father of one of her former schoolmates to lend her three hundred dollars. She was the only support of her parents, both well advanced in years, and of an invalid sister. At a time when houses were difficult to rent, she had been compelled to buy her home or lose it, and now the problem of meeting the interest upon the mortgage had become too great. She had no negotiable assets and no one among her
