is not alone in the field. The American Female Guardian
Society conducts twelve such day schools, and individual efforts in the
same direction are not wanting. The two societies' schools last year
reached a total enrolment of nearly fifteen thousand children, and an
average attendance of almost half that number. Slum children, all of them.
Only such are sought and admitted. The purpose of the schools, in the
language of the last report of the Children's Aid Society, whose work,
still carried on with the aggressive enthusiasm that characterized its
founder, may well be taken as typical and representative in this field,
"is to receive and educate children who cannot be accepted by the public
schools, either by reason of their ragged and dirty condition, or owing to
the fact that they can attend but part of the time, because they are
obliged to sell papers or to stay at home to help their parents. The
children at our schools belong to the lowest and poorest class of people
in the city." They are children, therefore, who to a very large extent
speak another language at home than the one they come to the school to
learn, and often have to work their way in by pantomime. It is encouraging
to know that these schools are almost always crowded to their utmost
capacity.

A census of the Society's twenty-one day schools, that was taken last
April, showed that they contained that day 5,132 pupils, of whom 198 were
kindergarten children under five years of age, 2,347 between five and
seven, and 2,587 between eight and fourteen years of age. Considerably
more than ten per cent.--the exact number was 571--did not understand
questions put to them in English. They were there waiting to "catch on,"
silent but attentive observers of what was going on, until such time as
they should be ready to take a hand in it themselves. Divided according to
nativity, 2,082 of the children were found to be of foreign birth. They
hailed from 22 different countries; 3,050 were born in this country, but
they were able to show only 1,009 native parents out of 6,991 whose
pedigrees could be obtained. The other 5,176 were foreign born, and only
810 of them claimed English as their mother-tongue. This was the showing
the chief nationalities made in the census:

-------------+---------+--------
Born in. |Children.|Parents.
-------------+---------+--------
United States| 3,050 | 1,009
-------------+---------+--------
Italy | 1,066 |