ement of my captor, the janitor, his school has been
thrown open to the children in the summer vacation, and in the winter
they put a boys' club in to worry him. What further indignities there
are in store for him, in this day of "frills," there is no telling. The
Superintendent of Schools told me only yesterday that he was going to
Boston to look into new sources of worriment they have invented there.
The world does move in spite of janitors. In two short years our school
authorities advanced from the cautious proposition that it "was the
sense" of the Board of Superintendents that the schoolhouses might well
be used in the cause of education as neighborhood centres, etc., (1897),
to the flat declaration that "every rational system of education should
make provisions for play" (1899). And to cut off all chance of relapse
into the old doubt whether "such things are educational," that laid so
many of our hopes on the dusty shelf of the circumlocution office, the
state legislature has expressly declared that the commonwealth will take
the chance, which Boards of Education shunned, of a little amusement
creeping in. The schools may be used for "purposes of recreation." To
the janitor it must seem that the end of all things is at hand.

So the schools and their playgrounds were thrown open to the children
during the long vacation, with kindergarten teachers to amuse them, and
vacation schools tempted the little ones from the street into the cool
shade of the classrooms. They wrought in wood and iron, they sang and
they played and studied nature,--out of a barrel, to be sure, that came
twice a week from Long Island filled with "specimens"; but later on we
took a hint from Chicago, and let the children gather their own
specimens on excursions around the bay and suburbs of the city. That was
a tremendous success. And there is better still coming, as I shall show
presently. It sometimes seems to me as if we were here face to face with
the very thing we are seeking and know not how to find. The mere hint
that money might be lacking to pay for the excursions set the St.
Andrew's Brotherhood men on Long Island to devising schemes for inviting
the school children out on trolley and shore trips. What if they all,
the Christian Endeavor, the Epworth League, and the other expressions of
the same human desire to find the lost brother, who are looking about
for something to try their young strength and enthusiasm on--what if
they were to