make a festive appearance. The teachers find that city children who
spend the five months in the open air are well equipped with
elementary ideas in physical geography and astronomy. Their mental
equipment is better, indeed, in all fields of thought, their
physical health is improved, as well as their ethical motives and
conduct.

To realize the full extent of these wholesale efforts (for put
children into close contact with nature and they will improve in all
directions), it is well to take a ride on the North belt line
(elevated steam railroad), the trains of which start from the
Friedrich's street depot and bring one back after a ride of an hour
and a half. Then one may do the same on the South belt line. On
these two trips one will see, not hundreds, but tens of thousands of
such "arbor gardens" full of happy women and children at work or
play. The men come out on the belt line when their work in town is
done. The writer was riding through the city on an open cab, and
seeing hardly any children on the streets and in the parks, he
asked, "How is it that we see no children out?" "Ah, sir," was the
reply, "if you will see the children of Berlin you must go out to
the arbor colonies outside of the city. There is where our children
are." Subsequent visits to these colony gardens showed that Berlin
is by no means a childless city. To judge from the multitudinous
arbors to be seen from the windows of the belt line cars there must
be 50,000 to 75,000 of them. As far as the eye reaches the
flagpoles, the orderly fences, and the little structures can be
seen; and since the city has 2,000,000 inhabitants, it is very
likely that an estimate made by a city official of several hundred
thousands of children thus living in the open air, is not excessive.
The most beautiful and best-arranged gardens are not found in the
vicinity of railroads, but several miles out toward the north and
the south of the city. Here, where the soil is better, fine crops
are raised.

If we turn our eyes homeward and contemplate the many thousands of
small efforts made in this country toward the alleviation of city
children's misery, we can say truthfully that we in America are
perhaps fully alive to the necessity which has prompted the people
of Berlin to action; we only need to be reminded of Mayor Pingree's
potato patches on empty city lots, our children's outing camps, our
occasional children's excursions, and the like. Still, there is
nothing i