[AN ITALIAN SCHOOL.]
A PAPER FOR GIRLS.
BY F. E. FRYATT.
If the young readers of this paper had only known of it in time, some of them might have heard six hundred little Italian children sing the "Carnival of Venice" in the merriest and most charming fashion possible, and they would not have had to go to Italy either.
It was sung in English, a little broken, but very sweet, in one of those out-of-the-way places that many New York and other children have never heard of; so I mean to tell them all about it.
The Italian school is in a very poor neighborhood. You may stand in its porch, and, unless you look up at the blue sky, see nothing pleasant whatever; in one direction, that awful prison-house, the "Tombs," meets the eye; in another, a crooked, shabby street in which dwell half the organ-grinders and monkeys of New York; and everywhere else, miserable, rickety dwellings.
DRESSED IN HER BEST.
Inside, however, the school building is so spacious, cheerful, and neat that it seems almost, if not quite, a palace to the scores of little folks who spend their days there, for most of them come from homes so wretched and dreary that it makes one shudder to hear of them.
Imagine a great square room lighted by three long windows; at one end a dozen sewing-machines (for, remember, this is an industrial school, where children work as well as study); in the middle several long low tables, benches, and the teacher's desk; by the side of the wall another long table, piled with bundles and boxes, and at the lower end of the apartment a tall dresser or closet—and you will see the work-room as I saw it.