mes near being the biggest and strongest factor in it all
to-day; and as for the five or ten thousand dollars put in for "the
looks" of things where the slum had trodden every ideal and every atom
of beauty into the dirt, I expect to live to see that prove the best
investment a city ever made.

We are getting the interest now in the new pride of the boy in "his
school," and no wonder. When I think of the old Allen Street school,
with its hard and ugly lines, where the gas had to be kept burning even
on the brightest days, recitations suspended every half-hour, and the
children made to practice calisthenics so that they should not catch
cold while the windows were opened to let in fresh air; of the dark
playground downstairs, with the rats keeping up such a racket that one
could hardly hear himself speak at times; or of that other East Side
"playground" where the boys "weren't allowed to speak above a whisper,"
so as not to disturb those studying overhead, I fancy that I can make
out both the cause and the cure of the boy's desperation. "We try to
make our schools pleasant enough to hold the children," wrote the
Superintendent of Schools in Indianapolis to me once, and added that
they had no truant problem worth bothering about. With the kindergarten
and manual training firmly ingrafted upon the school course, as they are
at last, and with it reaching out to enlist also the boy's play through
playground and vacation schools, I shall be willing to turn the boy who
will not come in over to the reformatory. They will not need to build a
new wing to the jail for his safekeeping.

[Illustration: Public School No. 153, the Bronx.]

All ways lead to Rome. The reform in school building dates back, as does
every other reform in New York, to the Mulberry Bend. It began there.
The first school that departed from the soulless old tradition, to set
beautiful pictures before the child's mind as well as dry figures on the
slate, was built there. At the time I wanted it to stand in the park,
hoping so to hasten the laying out of that; but although the Small Parks
law expressly permitted the erection on park property of buildings for
"the instruction of the people," the officials upon whom I pressed my
scheme could not be made to understand that as including schools.
Perhaps they were right. I catechised thirty-one Fourth Ward girls in a
sewing school, about that time, twenty-six of whom had attended the
public schools of the district