SUMMER COLONIES FOR CITY PEOPLE 269 



Many colonies reach into the woods, and naturally are of a 

 different character from those in the open, for there tents 

 are used instead of wooden structures. For protection during 

 the night watchmen pace up and down the lanes; this 

 before the war entailed a cost of 1\ cents a month to each 

 family. The season lasts from May 1 to October 1. 



The school-going population meanwhile attend their 

 schools, which used to be reached by means of the elevated 

 cars or surface tramways for 2 cents and much cheaper 

 if they have commuters' tickets. Many schools are near 

 enough to be reached on foot. The children do not loiter 

 on the way, but when school is out they hurry "home" to 

 begin work in the garden, or to sit down to a meal on the 

 veranda, which is relished far more than a meal in a city 

 tenement house filled with fetid air and wanting in light. 

 Nearly every one of these gardens has a flagpole, and at 

 night a Japanese paper lantern with a tallow dip in it il- 

 luminates the veranda. These, with flags by day, make a 

 festive appearance. The teachers find that city children 

 who spend the five months in the open air are well equipped 

 with elementary ideas in physical geography and astronomy. 

 Their mental equipment is better, indeed, in all fields of 

 thought, their physical health is unproved, as well as their 

 ethical motives and conduct. 



To realize the full extent of these wholesale efforts (for 

 put children into close contact with nature and they will 

 improve in all directions), it is well to take a ride on the 

 North belt line (elevated steam railroad), the trains of which 

 start from the Friedrich's street depot and bring one back 

 after a ride of an hour and a half. Then one may do the same 

 on the South belt line. On these two trips one will see, not 

 hundreds, but tens of thousands of such "arbor gardens" 



