r first pupils go from her school into their own homes to take up the
battle of life, "sometimes a teacher, while conducting a class, is also
fashioning, from some soft white material, a shroud for some little one
whose parents can provide none themselves. When a child dies of a disease
that is not contagious, its classmates gather around the coffin and sing
in German or English, 'I am Jesus's little lamb.' Sometimes the children's
hymn and the Lord's Prayer are the only service." Her life work has been
among the poorest Germans on the East Side. "Among our young men," she
reports, "I know of only three who have become drunkards, and many are
stanch temperance men. I have never known of one of our girls drinking to
excess. I have looked carefully over our records, and can truly say that,
so far as I can learn, not one girl who remained with us until over
seventeen lived a life of shame."

What teaching meant to this woman the statement that follows gives an idea
of: "Shrove Tuesday evening is a time when all Germans plan for a frolic;
they call it 'Fastnacht.' Twenty years ago I gave the young people of the
evening school a party on that evening, and at the suggestion of one of
the girls decided to have a reunion every year at that time. So each year
our married girls and boys, and those still unmarried, who have grown
beyond us in other ways, come 'home.' We sing the old songs, talk over old
times, play games, drink coffee and eat doughnuts, and always end the
evening with 'Auld Lang Syne.' Last spring, two of the young men stood at
the stairway and counted the guests as they went to the supper-room: they
reported over four hundred. Letters came from Boston, Chicago,
Philadelphia, Washington, Texas, Idaho, and Wyoming from those who would
gladly have been with us. All who live within a radius of fifty miles try
to be here."

"Among our grown girls," she adds, "we have teachers, governesses,
dressmakers, milliners, trained nurses, machine operators, hand sewers,
embroiderers, designers for embroidering, servants in families,
saleswomen, book-keepers, typewriters, candy packers, bric-a-brac packers,
bank-note printers, silk winders, button makers, box makers, hairdressers,
and fur sewers. Among our boys are book-keepers, workers in stained glass,
painters, printers, lithographers, salesmen in wholesale houses, as well
as in many of our largest retail stores, typewriters, stenographers,
commission merchants, farmers, elec