and physiologists came out gravely and earnestly, and fortified
their positions with statistics from which there was no appeal. Thomas
Wentworth Higginson, whose words have with the light, graceful beauty of
the Damascus blade its swift sureness in cleaving to the heart of things,
wrote an article for the "Atlantic Monthly" called "The Murder of the
Innocents," which we wish could be put into every house in the United
States. Some changes in school organizations resulted from these protests;
in the matter of ventilation of school-rooms some real improvement was
probably effected; though we shudder to think how much room remains for
further improvement, when we read in the report of the superintendent of
public schools in Brooklyn that in the primary departments of the grammar
schools "an average daily number of 33,275 pupils are crowded into
one-half the space provided in the upper departments for an average daily
attendance of 26,359; or compelled to occupy badly lighted, inconvenient,
and ill-ventilated galleries, or rooms in the basement stories."

But in regard to the number of hours of confinement, and amount of study
required of children, it is hard to believe that schools have ever been
much more murderously exacting than now.

The substitution of the single session of five hours for the old
arrangement of two sessions of three hours each, with a two-hours interval
at noon, was regarded as a great gain. So it would be, if all the
brain-work of the day were done in that time; but in most schools with
the five-hours session, there is next to no provision for studying in
school-hours, and the pupils are required to learn two, three, or four
lessons at home. Now, when is your boy to learn these lessons? Not in the
morning, before school; that is plain. School ends at two. Few children
live sufficiently near their schools to get home to dinner before half
past two o'clock. We say nothing of the undesirableness of taking the
hearty meal of the day immediately after five hours of mental fatigue; it
is probably a less evil than the late dinner at six, and we are in a
region where we are grateful for _less_ evils! Dinner is over at quarter
past three; we make close estimates. In winter there is left less than two
hours before dark. This is all the time the child is to have for out-door
play; two hours and a half (counting in his recess) out of twenty-four.
Ask any farmer, even the stupidest, how well his colt or his lamb