to be a case of one convinced
against his will being "of the same opinion still," for, though the
Superintendent of Schools speaks of that bar to the jail as
preposterously inadequate, nothing is done to strengthen it.

[Footnote 38: After two attempts that were not shining successes,
the politicians at Albany and New York calmly dropped the matter,
and for four years ignored the law. The Superintendent of Schools is
at this writing (June, 1902) preparing to have the police take the
child census, without which it is hard to see how he can know the
extent of the problem he is wrestling with. Half-day classes are a
fair index of the number of those anxious to get in; but they tell
us nothing of the dangerous class who shun the schools.]

Nothing on that tack. But there is a long leg and a short leg on the
course, and I fancy Superintendent Snyder does the tacking on the long
leg. Mr. Snyder builds New York's schools, and he does that which no
other architect before his time ever did or tried; he "builds them
beautiful." In him New York has one of those rare men who open windows
for the soul of their time. Literally, he found barracks where he is
leaving palaces to the people. If any one thinks this is overmeasure of
praise, let him look at the "Letter H" school, now become a type, and
see what he thinks of it. The idea suggested itself to him as meeting
the demands of a site in the middle of a block, while he was poking
about old Paris on a much-needed vacation, and now it stands embodied in
a dozen beautiful schools on Manhattan Island, copies, every one, of the
handsomest of French palaces, the Hotel de Cluny. I cannot see how it is
possible to come nearer perfection in the building of a public school.
There is not a dark corner in the whole structure, from the splendid
gymnasium under the red-tiled roof to the indoor playground on the
street floor, which, when thrown into one with the two yards that lie
enclosed in the arms of the H, give the children nearly an acre of
asphalted floor to romp on from street to street; for the building sets
right through the block, with just such a front on the other street as
it shows on this one. If there be those yet upon whom the notion grates
that play and the looks of the school should be counted in as
educational factors, why, let them hurry up and catch on. They are way
behind. The play through which the child "first perceives moral
relations" co