o the
neighborhood after school hours. I remember that the question was asked
who would keep order, and the answer, "The police will be glad to." I
recalled without trouble the time when they had to establish patrol
posts on the tenement roofs in defence against the roughs whom the
street had trained to rebellion against law and order. But I was a
police reporter; they were not. They didn't understand. The playschool
came; the indoor playgrounds were thrown open evenings under the
pressure they brought in their train. And at that point we took a day
off, as it were, to congratulate one another on how wondrous smart and
progressive we had been. The machinery we had started we let be, to run
itself.

It ran into the old rut. The janitor got it in tow, and presently we
heard from the "play centres" that "the children didn't avail
themselves" of their privileges. On the roof playground the janitor had
turned the key. The Committee on Care of Buildings spoke his mind: "They
were of little use; too hot in summer and too cold in winter." We were
invited to quit our fooling and resume business at the old stand of the
three R's, and let it go with that. That was what schools were for. It
takes time, you see, to grow an idea, as to grow a colt or a boy, to its
full size.

President Burlingham, who in his day drew the bill that made it lawful
to use the schools for neighborhood purposes other than the worship of
those same three R's, went around with me one night to see what ailed
the children who would not play.

In the Mulberry Bend school the janitor had carefully removed the
gymnastic apparatus the boys were aching for, and substituted four
tables, around which they sat playing cards under the eye of a
policeman. They were "educational" cards, with pictures of Europe and
Asia and Africa and America on, but it required only half a minute's
observation to tell us that they were gambling--betting on which
educational card would turn up next. What the city had provided was a
course in scientific gambling with the policeman to see that it was done
right. And over at Market and Monroe streets, where they have an acre or
more of splendid asphalted floor--such a ball room!--and a matchless
yard, the best in the city, twoscore little girls were pitifully cooped
up in a corner, being _taught_ something, while outside a hundred
clamored to get in, making periodic rushes at the door, only to
encounter there a janitor's assistant with