of this Association, which threw itself heartily into the task of arousing public opinion to the perception of the need and value of manual training, are due not only the Teachers' College of New York City and the Burnham Industrial Farm, which it founded, but also such institutions as Pratt, Drexel, and Armour Institutes. The addition of vacation schools, kindergartens, sewing classes, and manual-training high schools to the public-school system also follows the impulse given by its efforts. The first kitchen-garden was the invention, or perhaps more truly the discovery, of Miss Emily Huntington, who came twenty-five years ago to take charge of a mission school for girls on the East Side of New York. She had lived among the thrifty, capable housewives of New England, and the ignorance of her new neigh bors in all household ways seemed most pitiable to her. The girls who came to the mission school all had to help at home, yet when called into the mission kitchen they did not even know how to peel a potato properly. The new head of the mission could not bear the thought of their growing up to know no more than the housekeeping, or rather the house-unkeeping, of their mothers. To an earnest mind the perception of a wrong or a need always brings the question, How can I help? and Miss Huntington pondered over the problem of instructing these children in housework. One or two at a time she could take and teach, but that took too long; how could many be taught at once? While she was puzzling over the problem, she was invited to attend a kindergarten exhibition, and there the thought flashed into her mind that the children might be taught housework by means of toys, learning the practical in a game, as in the kindergarten a principle is given in a song. At once she began planning the utensils for the children to use, investing in doll's teasets, experimenting with little wooden tubs and bedsteads, and trying to find manufacturers who would make the little spoons and saucers and gravy-dishes that were necessary for a well-set dinnertable. The songs sang themselves in her mind, and the lessons outlined themselves, until she had written a book that held the course of lessons, questions, music, and all, so that any one who would might teach groups of children. Boys The Classes were at once formed at the Wilson Mission, and a number of young ladies, the "society girls" of the day, whom Miss Huntington had interested in the project, volunteered to help as teachers. This was long before the time of Settlements and "slum" work, and the coming of a carriage to the East Side Mission caused as much excitement as an ambulance does now. followed it along the street. passers-by gaped at the novel visitors, and it was some months before it was thought safe for two or three of the teachers to come together on a street-car. Perhaps nothing could have lent more dignity to toil in the children's minds than the fact that their instructors in the simple household tasks were these bright creatures from afar. One child was overheard saying to a companion: "My teacher wears a silken gown, and she knows how to work." One day there came to the founder of the kitchen-garden a friend who asked, "What can I do to bring up my little daughter to be thoughtful of others? She is an only child, and has so much money that we are dreadfully afraid she will be spoiled." They consulted together, and as a result a row of twenty-four hooks was placed in the breakfast-room of a certain mansion, and there every Saturday morning came twenty-four little girls, who had been collected by the city missionary for a lesson in kitchen-gardening which the little hostess and a friend had previously taken and now gave to their guests. A governess was always present to assist and to accompany the songs, but the two little girls were the teachers. Every week from the greenhouse the gardener would send a little bouquet for each child, and it would be hard to say which learned the most, the two little teachers or their pupils. The work of kitchen-gardening divides. itself into twelve lessons: first, one on wood, in which the children learn how to light a fire; a folding lesson teaches them how to fold properly the pieces of white paper that represent sheets and tablecloths and napkins; the sweeping lesson combines delightful marching maneuvers with brooms adorned by bows of ribbon with practical directions for the banishment of dust and for the care and use of broom, whisk-broom, hair-brush, feather duster, cloth, and dustpan. To the question, "How do you dust a chair?" they repeat in concert: "First the back, then the seat, Next the rungs, and then the feet." In table-setting the children, instead of placing the coffee-pot, as the tallest object, in the center, with everything else around it, learn to lay neatly each one's place for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Last, and perhaps most enjoyed of all, is the mud-pie play, in which, with modeling-clay, the children knead loaves of bread, roll out biscuits, and cover pie-plates holding imaginary apples or pumpkins. Through all the lessons there is constant appeal to the imagination of the child, as box-covers must represent sideboard or kitchen table or ironing-board. The frequent exercises prevent the children from becoming weary of sitting still; the songs give them means of happy expression, and, as they scrub with imaginary soapsuds dolls' garments in the little wooden tubs, and sing as they form a circle around which one child walks, "Go round and round the circle, We're cleaning house today; Go in and out the window, We're cleaning house today," they are learning unconsciously, not only prac "WE PASS THE TRAY LIKE THIS, WE PASS THE TRAY LIKE THAT, TRY TO HOLD IT, ALWAYS HOLD IT, VERY, VERY FLAT" tical directions which will always be of use to them, but the dignity and beauty inherent in all simple household tasks. In New York City kitchen-garden classes are held at the Pro-Cathedral, the Wilson Mission, the New York Orphan Asylum, the Sullivan and Mott Street Industrial Schools, nearly all the Church Missions, and at some of the schools of the Children's Aid Society. They have not yet been provided as generously as might be for children who are not in need of free instruction. A little girl taken to see one of the classes whispered to her mother: "Mamma, I want to go and play with those little girls." "Hush!" was the answer; "sit still and watch them." The child tried to, but the play was too enticing, and again she begged to join the group. "Hush!" she was told; "those are poor little girls; you have a roomful of toys at home." "But not those toys." "I will get you some." The child subsided, saying, with a sigh that was audible all over the room, "I wish my papa would fail, and then I could play that !" All the kitchen-garden materials may be obtained from Miss Emily Huntington, at 105 East Twenty-second Street, New York City. Miss Huntington gives a lecture called "Seedtime and Harvest or, What Came of Industrial Beginnings," illustrated by seventy slides, which tells of the first kitchen-garden work, the boys' clubs and day nurseries which resulted from it, and of its later developments in the grown-up kitchen-garden at Northfield Seminary, the housekeeping trunks among the Indians, and the cooking-schools in Virginia. With all the broader work which has grown out of the first kitchen-garden class, the need for its simple domestic lessons remains. In every Home for children, in every settlement, every mission, every organization where there are children to be taught the rudiments of housekeeping and home-making, there is a place for the kitchen-garden. Its methods can be modified to meet the requirements of Indian, Negro, and Alaskan, as they have been adapted to the children in India and Japan. There can hardly be a more direct and simple means of improving the home life of the people than that used by those who gather around them groups of children for a kitchen-garden, whose name frames the hope of its founder—that the "homely, every-day necessities of life might blossom like a garden." An Hour with Thee My heart is tired, so tired to-night; How endless seems the strifeDay after day the restlessness Of all this weary life! I come to lay the burden down That so oppresseth me, And, shutting all the world without, To spend an hour with Thee, Dear Lord, To spend an hour with Thee. I would forget a little while The bitterness of tears, A foolish, wayward child, I know, A weak, complaining child-but, oh! And fold me to thy loving breast— One little hour with Thee! The busy world goes on and on, I cannot heed it now, The anxious thought that crowds my life, Thy sacred hand is laid upon The buried hopes of years; Forget that woman's weary toil My patient care must be. A tired child I come to-night To spend an hour with Thee, One little hour with Thee. My aching, throbbing brow. Life's toil will soon be past, and then, From all its sorrow free, How sweet to think that I shall spend Eternity with Thee, Dear Lord, Eternity with Thee! |