Off the Straight and Narrow

New York: Lee Furman, Inc.. Very Good+. (c.1937). First Edition. Hardcover. ight(no dust jacket) [solid, well-bound copy, very light bumping at corners, slight fraying to cloth at spine ends]. This is "the story of one woman's adventures on the other side of the track." A woman of "wealth and social position," Mrs. Colgate decided to devote her time to "befriending some who scoffed at friendship -- wayward men, delinquent children, prisoners, and inmates of various institutions." Most of her field work was done between 1912 and 1923, and took her to "juvenile courts, houses of correction, reformatories, state and county prisons, prison farms, and boys' clubs." Lest you think that this is just the sort of woman the term "do-gooder" was invented to describe, however, the jacket blurber [quoted from another copy; the jacket is not present on this book] hastens to point out that Mrs. Colgate was "an observing realist, not a sentimental uplifter," and that she was neither "a sour-faced reformer or a grim crusader." (Her husband, by the way, was definitely one of "those" Colgates.) .