Reiteration of this statement cannot rightly be criticised, for it is the ever-recurring theme on which the development of social harmony is being built.
The restless energy of children often provokes the remark, "Oh! if the energy the little ones expend could only be gathered and stored for useful application, we grown folks might take it easy." True enough! and what we propose, as a means towards a quarantine that will prevent in some degree any misdirection of this God-given and irrepressible energy, can accomplish the wish. Many separate movements have been instituted to take children out of unwholesome surroundings and give them new views of life. The New York Life and The Daily News, of Chicago, have championed fresh air funds for the purpose of giving infants days or weeks of outing at lake or sea side, or on farms, and have built commodious pavilions for their comfort. The Rev. Doctor Gray of the Forward Movement takes many separate squads of little ones into the country each summer for a two weeks' season of camping, while the residents on the shores of beautiful Lake Geneva, Wis., take out over five hundred waifs—ninety at a time—from Chicago and give them a two weeks' summer vacation at the "Holiday Home," located in the midst of their villas.
In this year of 1898 provision has been made by the Board of Education of Chicago for a two months' school session during vacation, where the instruction chiefly includes courses of art and nature-study. Provision was made for two thousand children, but the applications numbered more than four thousand and the disappointment of the rejected ones was pitiful to see.[5] The parental farms established in Massachusetts and elsewhere throughout the land have done a wonderful work and show a crying need for many more of them.[6]
These are but a few of the experiments that are being made which lead to a recognition of the necessity of complete advantages that will effect a perfect social quarantine against the influence of evil suggestions by giving an ample supply of good ones. But the greatest good will come only when these institutions have become systematic instead of spasmodic; complete instead of partial. Then, and only then, will the progress of reform have been relieved of uncivilized obstruction.
Governor Pingree of Michigan and Mayor Jones of Toledo, Ohio, are making experiments in the same direction, but all such spontaneous effort on the part of individual altruists is pioneering and leads the way to systematic warfare, by peaceful means, against the forces of evil and neglect that beset infancy and childhood in their helplessness.
[4] ] Vacant lots in cities can even be used for the purpose of nature study by planting potatoes in them, as demonstrated by the Governor of Michigan.
[5] ] Note.—We have learned since the above has been in type that the fund supporting the Summer Vacation School was raised through the sale of little national flags, promoted by Miss Mary E. McDowell of the University of Chicago Settlement.
[6] ] Note.—And now, August, 1898, Ex-President Cleveland, gives practical emphasis to his oft-repeated advice relative to the training of junior citizens, by the donation of a valuable farm in New Jersey for the uses of a farm-cottage-school for the waifs of Greater New York.
QUARANTINE AGAINST MISUNDERSTANDING
"The beginning and end of all culture must be character, and its outcome is conduct. 'Conduct,' says Matthew Arnold, 'is three-fourths of life.' The state's concern in education is to rear virtuous, law-abiding, self-governing citizens."—Sarah B. Cooper, before the National Conference of Charities and Correction.