Celia Murray is a lonely young lady in the big city of Philadelphia, who works at a ribbon counter and lives in a cheap boardinghouse. She'd love nothing more to than to bring her aunt Hannah to live with her. Hannah had raised her after her own parents' death, and is now stuck with Celia's ungrateful cousin Nettie, her husband, and her bratty kids out in the suburbs. Celia discovers that she is the heir of a family legacy from her late father's great uncle, which will give her enough income to buy the boardinghouse that she's living in and bring her aunt Hannah out to run it. Together, they plan on starting a little mission in the heart of the city: they'll fix up the boardinghouse, give the boarders decent meals and a nice place to live, and will encourage them to find religion. Their cause is greatly helped when one of the first new boarders to arrive is Horace Stafford, a missionary minister who's planting a new church nearby.

Aunt Hannah reminded me strongly of Aunt Crete. She's a kindly woman who has been sorely tried and tested by ungrateful relatives for most of her life. Hannah had planned to become a missionary as a young woman, with her theology student fiancé, before said fiancé's tragic death after he graduated from seminary. Once upon a time she wanted to go and save foreign heathens; she's delighted by the idea of having the chance to save some native heathens instead. She jumps in with two feet to make over the boardinghouse and minister to the boarders, of whom she grows quite fond.

Celia, on the other hand, basically falls at the first hurdle. She can talk the talk but she fails quite miserably at walking the walk. One of the boarders comes home drunk one night, and she's so horrified and afraid that she roundly ignores him, a young man she'd previously been quite friendly with. She overhears Horace talking to him and is unhappy that they are laughing together - Celia believes he should be preaching at him about his sins. Aunt Hannah tries to interest Celia in helping another of their boarders, a very young girl who works in a three-cent store and seems to admire Celia, but Celia is disdainful of her (the girl asks for beauty tips, how dare she!) and more or less only grudgingly assists her, all the time whining about how this is no way to bring new souls over to God. Aunt Hannah tries to explain that God works in mysterious ways, but for most of the book, Celia is having none of that.

She also makes a complete cake of herself, because she finds a picture of a beautiful young woman in Horace Stafford's room and immediately assumes that this is his sweetheart, so she acts cold and distant around him even though she's in love with him. When one of the boarders tells her that it'd be nice if they got married, Celia gets actively angry at the idea. Of course, the girl in the picture is not Horace's sweetheart, and Celia - quite rightly! - feels like a complete idiot when she learns the truth.

The boarders are a found family, and I enjoyed the parts of the story about fixing up the boardinghouse. I really liked aunt Hannah; if she had been the main character instead of Celia, my rating would've been higher. There are strands of romance, mostly blink-and-you'll-miss-them, but what's there is sweet.

This was originally published in 1900 by the American Sunday School Union, which should tell you all you need to know, LOL. This is one of GLH's earliest works and oof, does it show. It's almost written like fanfic, with long quoted passages of verses, songs, poems, etc. There's even a note at the beginning from GLH's daughter, warning readers that it's an early work and that her mother hadn't yet "developed her mature writing style" o.O I'd say that this one is for GLH completionists only. ( )

A story that was contemporary when it was written, it shows many of the mores and prejudices that were common among the genteel impoverished, as do many of her novels of the turn of the century. ( )