anæmic, fertile fields for the sowing of tuberculosis and other diseases, if, indeed, the seeds have not been planted under the favorable conditions that have prevailed throughout the winter.

The indictments that can be drawn against the average school building are many. The most serious, however, are the lack of fresh air and the prevalence of improper methods of heating, ventilating, and cleaning the rooms. The maintenance of an adequate supply of fresh air is in a measure dependent upon the methods of heating and ventilating employed, but even where these are faulty it is not necessary to do entirely without air.

In any group of eighty to one hundred or more children, such as is often to be found sitting in a single room, there are very likely to be some who are suffering from tuberculosis. In some cities, as in New York and Chicago, following the inauguration of medical inspection, separate departments have been established for such children in rooms the windows of which are never closed. Here the children sit, warmly wrapped, in even the coldest weather. They gain in weight, improve in health and appearance, and make more rapid progress in their studies than do the pupils in the regular schools who are not suffering under the handicap of disease, but who are forced to breathe air lacking in oxygen, and to work in a temperature better suited to the production of hot-house plants than of active minds and bodies. It seems the height of the ridiculous that we should deny to children who are well and strong, and who ought to be permitted to remain so, the advantage of a liberal supply of fresh air, which works such marked improvement in their less vigorous fellows, but this is the condition that prevails in even the most advanced communities.

In too many school-rooms the teacher herself is afraid of fresh air. One or two

windows opened a few inches from the top are relied upon to let in air enough for scores of children to breathe. Meanwhile the janitor makes superhuman exertions to maintain the torrid temperature which is the bane of American homes and public buildings. From time to time the pupils march about the room, stirring up the germ-laden dust which floats about in the hot, dry atmosphere until every child has full opportunity to inhale a generous amount of it. At night, when the rooms are vacant, brooms are brought into play to stir up the death-bearing dust once more, allowing it to settle on desks, window-sills, and wall projections. In the morning before school begins dusters are brought into play to get the dust once more thoroughly into circulation for the benefit of the children as they come in for the day.

Many improvements in school architecture have been made, including improved methods of ventilation, but such improvements can be introduced only slowly, for no community has the courage to throw away an antiquated school plant as the enterprising manufacturer discards out-ofdate machinery. But all school-rooms have windows that can be opened by the teacher who has the intelligence and courage to do it; and effective appliances for removing dust and dirt without blowing it hither and thither through the rooms can be installed at no overwhelming expense. One may be a conservative in most things and yet be willing to work and pray for a revolution in our educational methods and mechanism that would lead to the giving of some attention to the physical side of the child's upbringing, that would give to the boy and girl who enter school physically deficient a chance to improve their condition, and that would permit those endowed at the beginning with good health and strong vitality to emerge with these unimpaired.

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Na nook in one of the gloomy halls of the old Cleveland Infirmary or Almshouse an aged, crippled woman in a wheel-chair was comfortably smoking. As we approached she slipped the pipe under her apron, but, seeing that she was too late, for the last puff of smoke was still wreathing itself about her rugged, wrinkled face, she said in the most bewitching way, It's me only comfort." She was born on Achill Island, off the west coast of Ireland, and her lot was one of constant drudgery from earliest childhood. Left an orphan at five years of age, she tells us that she was obliged to make her own way and that she never had a chance to go to school. She worked in the fields tilling the soil, digging the peat, cutting the hay, and at all kinds of

hard labor. Now, eighty years old and crippled with rheumatism, with husband and children gone, Mrs. Madden, with her careworn, kindly face, was smiling and cheerful.

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The alte Grossmutter" of the Almshouse was one hundred years old. Seamed and wrinkled by years of care and toil, her face had the mingled pathos and beauty of a Rembrandt. Her home was in Constance, on the Bodensee. In eightytwo years she had never passed beyond the borders of her ancestral town. Although surrounded by children and grandchildren, her heart yearned for the one boy who had come to America, until at length her mother-love drove her forth over land and sea to a foreign shore. Eight years after she came to this country

her son, who was a musician, shot himself, leaving his mother, then ninety years old, alone and desolate in a strange land, with no other refuge than the city's home for the unfortunate.

As we entered her room, she, with the old spirit of hospitality, arose and insisted that one should sit in her chair and another on her bed, while she herself stood. She remembered seeing Napoleon, and at the mention of his name her eyes brightened, her bent figure became more erect, and there flashed forth something of the defiant military spirit which, as a child, she must have felt. With a shrill and trembling voice she sang the "Lorelei " and the "Wacht am Rhein." In all weather she insists on going out daily for a short walk. For ten years the Almshouse had

been her home, and each year she had grown a little weaker, a little more bent, a little more helpless, until, as she herself said, "I can no longer sew, or mend, or read, or knit, for my head is always dizzy; I can only pray, and that do I all the day long."

Seated in her favorite corner was the witty Mary, at times demented. She spoke with a Scotch accent, and told a rambling story of a quiet village and the bonnie heather growing on the moor. She cunningly concealed her real name. As she was recounting in a disconnected way her girlhood and her marriage in the village church, thinking to find out her secret, I suddenly said to her, " Whom did you marry, Mary?" Quickly she answered, "I married me mither-in-law's son."

"Granny " Bone came to greet us with her hospitable Irish welcome. She had had two boys, one wild and the other always thoughtful of his old mother. The good boy died, and her mind was unbalanced. She was still expecting her John to come home again, and was often hunting for the t'akettle so that "we can have a cup of t'a together when my boy comes home." Looking intently into our faces, she asked, "Have you seen my John lately?"

Out in the yard we met "Jumbo," big, good-natured, simple-minded, loosejointed Jumbo, willing and ready as a child to run errands, to carry ice in summer and shovel snow in winter, but utterly irresponsible and unable to care for himself. In striking contrast to him was Mr. Nord, small of stature and of a nervous and

His

excitable temperament. parents were wealthy and gave to their son every advantage. After graduating from one of our Eastern colleges, he spent several years in a polytechnic school in Vienna, becoming an expert naturalist. He could speak fluently several languages and converse with intelligence and even brilliancy on many subjects. With the culture of extensive reading and wide travel, but broken in health and unable to cope with the practical world, he also found a home with the city's poor.

Sitting at his bench in the basement was an old man making the wooden buckets and tubs used in the institution. In his younger days in Germany he was a worker in wood, with an intense passion for carving. His untrained skill wasted