IV.
“Sibyl, my dear,” said Aunt Fanny one morning, “I have only just found out that you and Belle make my bed. You need not do it again; I always make it at home, and I should have done it here, but you have been too quick for me.”
“We shall not give you a chance, Aunt Fanny; we shall not let you.”
“But when do you do it, you little witches; you are always at breakfast and at prayers; and when I go up into my room, it is all in order. I supposed Delia did it while we were at breakfast.”
Then, with much joking, it was made clear that every day, while Aunt Fanny saw George and Nahum off, and spoke to the butcher in the kitchen, Sibyl and Belle slipped up stairs, and “did” her room.
“That is a piece of your dear mother’s training,” said Aunt Fanny, as she patted Sibyl’s head.
“As it happens, it is, Aunt Fanny,” said Belle. “But dear mamma said even she got points from Miss Homans, and I am sure Sibyl and I both learned the reasons of some things at the Kindergarten that we did not know before.”
“Reasons for making a bed,” said Aunt Fanny. “Why, you do not tell me that you learn to make beds at school.”
“We did not, because mamma had taught us. But the kitchen Kindergarten was such fun that we liked to go; and if you like to see it, we will take you.” So Aunt Fanny was taken to see that very pretty sight. And she understood at once, how even very little children can be taught housework thoroughly, and taught to like it too. Each child had a doll’s bed to make, and to unmake; and each child, in unison with thirty or forty others, made it and unmade it, singing little songs and going through other such exercise as made the thing amusing, while it was methodical. In the same way each child set a baby house table with the most perfect precision, and swept a floor, and dusted a room. It was play to them, but they learned what they never forgot, as Aunt Fanny had occasion to see every day in the neat order of her dear brother’s orphaned household.
Thus was it that it happened that when Aunt Fanny took home in April her little flock of orphans, she did not bring to their wholly new life four mere cumberers of the ground.
Note.—In preparing this little sketch of “Industrial Education in Boston,” at Dr. Flood’s request, I have selected what seem to me, on the whole, the most important branches of such education for illustration. It has not seemed advisable to introduce too much detail.
1. The instruction in sewing is given in all public schools to all girls.
2. The instruction in carpenter work has been attempted only in two public schools. A central school is now to be established, where classes of volunteers from the different grammar schools will be received. The full course described, of eight hours a day, for four days a week, of thirteen weeks, is one of the Technology courses, and there is a fee for instruction.
3. The Cooking Schools are under the direction of a society for that purpose. It also maintains Normal Classes for teachers of cooking. Different churches and charitable societies maintain free cooking classes, and free carpenter classes.
4. Drawing is taught in all public schools.
5. Schools of design and of carving are maintained by different societies.
I have confined myself to instruction which is to a certain extent training in handiwork, and in this I have not included musical or other artistic performance.
