Along the middle of the library ran a glass case showing manuscripts, proof-sheets, and pictures that went to the making of “The Youth’s Companion” and “Harper’s Young People.” They had already seen a similar display of material for “St. Nicholas” in the publishers’ rooms, where they had been the day before. It was a keen pleasure thus to see “how the wheels go round,” and to realize that the stories had an existence in pen and ink fresh from the authors’ hands.
At one end of the room several bookcases contained books for or about children, from the earliest to the most modern. One book of the seventeenth century was bound in sheepskin and illustrated with odd little woodcuts to show different trades and pursuits. Near these older books were arranged autograph letters from Longfellow, Frank R. Stockton, Palmer Cox, Mrs. Cleveland, Colonel Higginson, Edward Eggleston, Bayard Taylor, George MacDonald, Christina G. Rossetti, Edward Everett Hale, Miss Alcott, Dr. Holmes, Helen Hunt Jackson, D. C. Gilman, and others, of whom Philip and Harry knew more or less. In the library Philip also noticed a picture of Henry D. Thoreau, and reminiscent views of Walden Pond.
THE LIBRARY: CHILDREN’S BUILDING.
Up-stairs, too, was Miss Huntington’s “Kitchen-Garden,” a school meant to teach the children of poor people in the city how to do well and cheerfully their household work. The little folks sang songs while making beds, setting tables, or sweeping rooms, and learned how to make and how to enjoy a neat home. In another corner was a school where deaf children were reciting as if they could hear, and were reading from the motions of their teacher’s lips what she said.
When Philip and Harry went into this room, a big boy was writing upon the blackboard. They heard the teacher tell him to put down five words.
He watched her lips while she spoke, and after some consideration wrote slowly the word “Money.” The teacher told him to go on; but, after a long pause, the boy said that he couldn’t think of any more. A little girl named Grace put up her hand, showing that she had thought of some; and the boy turned to her, very willing to be helped. So Grace took up his task, and wrote, “Truth, Care, Happy, Mirth”—quite a different kind of words from the sort the boy had chosen. To these short words the pupils added endings, as “Truth-ful=truthful full of truth,” “Care-less=careless=without care,” defining the words thus made.
TEACHING THE DEAF:
CHILDREN’S BUILDING.
Philip found it hard to remember that these scholars were deaf; but, as the two cousins were leaving the room, they saw at the door a little girl not nearly so far advanced. The teacher was showing her how to pronounce words, touching the child’s nose when she did not properly sound the letter “n,” and otherwise teaching her the very elements of speech. This sight made it easier for them to understand the difficulties the older pupils had overcome, and they went out with a better idea of the value of sound hearing.