88 WORCESTER COUNTY HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. [1899. 



trained upward into the sunlight of truth and right ! Think of 

 the power that comes into the hands of the older children whom 

 he meets on the playground, to turn his life toward good or 

 evil. (1 do not mean that his character will be formed during 

 the next three years, but I do believe it will receive a bent that 

 will probably be followed.) How much of the time is their 

 play supervised? Who knows what that older child is telling 

 the little ones as they cluster around him in the sunny corner? 

 I believe the city and village school-children are Jiiore fortunate 

 than those of the country district-school in the respect of super- 

 vised [)layyards. These " ragged beggars sunning," generally 

 in some secluded spot, often with no human habitation within 

 sight or hearing, afford every opportunity to the bad boy or 

 girl to vitiate the whole school. Thus isolated, the children are 

 shut in to the influence which there prevails, whether good or 

 bad. The homelife may be narrow, but there is little chance of 

 help reaching them from the more cultivated centres. The 

 closing of these outlying schools and bringing the pupils to the 

 village is a blessing to the country children living on the out- 

 skirts of the town, in my opinion. 



The village hoodlum is getting to be as grave a problem as 

 the city tough, fully as much to be feared. Often he is not a 

 foreio;ner, but a descendant of the first settlers, havinjj had the 

 advantages of country life and district-school training. Cowper 

 may sigh " for a lodge in some vast wilderness," but it certainly 

 is not a good place in which to bring up children, or to build a 

 district schoolhouse. The attempt of some cities to provide 

 playgrounds for the children during the summer by opening 

 the schoolyards is good. It is very good, because suitable per- 

 sons either volunteer or are hired to care for the little ones and 

 oversee their play. 



An ideal plan, it seems to me, for the early education of little 

 children, that could easily be carried out in the country, but in 

 the city would be a little more difficult, would be to have them 

 enter school at about eight years of age. In the city, parks 

 reasonably accessible to the children should be provided, not 

 beautifully-kept parks, with smoothly-shaven lawns decorated 



