was told to take his seat, which was about
every ten seconds, he would perform the feat with great readiness by
climbing over the back of the chair as a dog climbs over a fence, to the
consternation of the teacher, whose reproachful "O Alexander!" he disarmed
with a cheerful "I'm all right, Miss Brown," and an offer to shake hands.

Let it not be inferred from this that the kindergarten is the home of
disorder. Just the reverse. Order and prompt obedience are the cardinal
virtues taught there, but taught in such a way as to make the lesson seem
all fun and play to the child. It sticks all the better. It is the
province of the kindergarten to rediscover, as it were, the natural
feelings the tenement had smothered. But for its appeal, the love of the
beautiful might slumber in those children forever. In their homes there is
nothing to call it into life. The ideal of the street is caricature,
burlesque, if nothing worse. Under the gentle training of the
kindergartner the slumbering instinct blossoms forth in a hundred
different ways, from the day the little one first learns the difference
between green and red by stringing colored beads for a necklace "for
teacher," until later on he is taught to make really pretty things of
pasteboard and chips to take home for papa and mamma to keep. And they do
keep them, proud of the child--who would not?--and their influence is felt
where mayhap there was darkness and dirt only before. So the kindergarten
reaches directly into the home, too, and thither follows the teacher, if
she is the right kind, with encouragement and advice that is not lost
either. No door is barred against her who comes in the children's name. In
the truest and best sense she is a missionary to the poor.

Nearly all the kindergartens in this city are crowded. Many have scores of
applicants upon the register whom they cannot receive. There are no
truants among their pupils. All of the New York Kindergarten Association's
schools are crowded, and new are added as fast as the necessary funds are
contributed. The Association was organized in the fall of 1889 with the
avowed purpose of engrafting the kindergarten upon the public school
system of the city, through persistent agitation. There had been no
official recognition of it up till that time. The Normal School
kindergarten was an experiment not countenanced by the School Board. The
Association has now accomplished its purpose, but its work, far from being
ended,