While you are here in this beautiful schoolroom, learning to read and write and draw and sing, there are thousands of other children who never saw a schoolhouse, and who will grow up to be men and women without even learning to read.
You can read stories about these people, and as you grow older perhaps you will know more about them, but they will probably never hear of you.
Of course, there are many thousands of children everywhere who are in school this morning.
Think of all the boys and girls in every town in the whole United States, who see the flag with its stars and stripes floating over their schoolhouses, and who learn to sing “America.”
In France the children wave a flag of red, white and blue, and learn a song about their country, but their flag is not like yours, and you could not understand one word of their French song.
The little English children sing a song about their country and their king which you could understand, and they read in books like yours. But then, there are the children who live in Germany, and learn to read in German, and the children who live in Italy and read Italian books, and many, many others.
Oh, there are so many children in the world!
In Japan and China the children use the queerest books that you ever saw. The words go up and down the page, and the stories begin at the end of the book, and at the bottom of the page. The words look like this:—
Did you ever see such funny words?