it had certainly taught
"Lame Lena."

The free kindergarten movement is not yet old enough to begin to show
its effects to any perceptible degree in the factory and workshop.
Henrietta Manners and Phoebe Arlington and little Angelina were born too
soon: they did not know the joy of the kindergarten; they did not know
the delight of sitting in a little red chair in a great circle of other
little red chairs filled with other little girls, each and all learning
the rudimentary principles of work under the blissful delusion that they
were at play. These joys have been reserved for their little sisters,
who, sooner or later, will step into their vacant places in the
box-factory. What was denied Angelina it is the blessed privilege of
Angelina's baby to revel in.

Angelina's baby--the little baby that she kept in the day-nursery when
we worked together at Springer's--now goes to a free kindergarten. I
happen to know this because not long ago I met Angelina. She did not
recognize me--indeed, she had difficulty in recalling vaguely that I had
worked with her once upon a time; for Angelina's memory, like that of a
great majority of her hard-worked class, is very poor,--a fact I mention
because it is very much to the point right here. My solicitous inquiry
for the baby brought forth a burst of Latin enthusiasm as to the
cunningness and sweetness of that incipient box-maker, who, Angelina
informed me, goes to kindergarten in a free hack along with a crowd of
other babies. But Angelina, bless her soul! is down on the kindergarten.
She says, with a pout and a contemptuous shrug, "they don't teach you're
kid nothing but nonsense, just cutting up little pieces of paper and
singing fool songs and marching to music." Angelina admitted, however,
that her _bambino_ was supremely happy there,--so happy, in fact, that
she hadn't the heart to take her away, even though she does know that it
is all "tomfoolishness" the "kid" is being taught by a mistaken
philanthropy.

It is fair to suppose that in the factory and workshop of every
description the kindergarten is bound to work incalculable results.
Indeed, I sometimes wonder if the kindergarteners themselves can quite
realize how well they are building--can fully comprehend the very great
need in the working woman of the identical principles which they are so
patiently and faithfully inculcating into the tender minds of these
forlorn babies gathered up in the courts and alleys.

Another