a big club and a roar like a
bull to frighten them away. "Orders," he told us. The yard was dark and
dismal. That was the school by the way, whence the report came that they
"hadn't availed themselves" of the opportunity to play.

It helped, when that story was told. There is nothing in our day like
the facts, and they came out that time. There was the roof-garden on the
Educational Alliance Building with its average of more than five
thousand a day, young and old, last summer (a total of 344,424 for the
season), in flat contradiction of the claim that the children "wouldn't
go up on the roof." Not, surely, if it was only to encounter a janitor
with a club there. But a brass band now? There were a few professional
shivers at that, but our experience with the one we set playing in the
park on Sunday, years ago, came to the rescue. When it had played its
last piece to end and there burst forth as with one voice from the
mighty throng, "Praise God from whom all blessings flow!" some doubts
were set at rest for all time. They were never sensible, but after that
they were silly.

So the janitor was bidden bring out his key. Electric lights were
strung. "We will save the money somewhere else," said Mayor Low. The
experiment was made with five schools, all on the crowded East Side.

I was at dinner with friends at the University Settlement, directly
across from which, on the other corner, is one of the great new schools,
No. 20, I think. We had got to the salad when through the open window
there came a yell of exultation and triumph that made me fairly jump in
my chair. Below in the street a mighty mob of children and mothers had
been for half an hour besieging the door of the schoolhouse. The yell
signalized the opening of it by the policeman in charge. Up the stairs
surged the multitude. We could see them racing, climbing, toiling,
according to their years, for the goal above where the band was tuning
up. One little fellow with a trousers leg and a half, and a pair of
suspenders and an undershirt as his only other garments, labored up the
long flight, carrying his baby brother on his back. I watched them go
clear up, catching glimpses of them at every turn, and then I went up
after.

I found them in a corner, propped against the wall, a look of the
serenest bliss on their faces as they drank it all in. It was _their_
show at last. The band was playing "Alabama," and fifteen hundred boys
and girls were dancing, hopping, p