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In the best-conducted schools, the play-ground is now regarded as the uncovered school-room, where the real dispositions and habits of the pupils are more palpably developed, and can be more wisely trained, than under the restraint of an ordinary school-room. These grounds are provided with circular swings, and are large enough for various athletic games.
To be sure they missed the games in the play-ground before and after school; but this was no such loss as the reader, remembering his own childhood, might be disposed to think.
"Well, Catherine," said Miss Arden, after considering a little, "I will do what I can for you I mean if Miss Damer approves; for I dare not trust to my own judgment. Meet me in the school-room early to-morrow morning, and I well tell you how it is to be." When the friends met in the play-ground, they talked the subject over.
Did you ever see a play-ground where the ants have their recreation just as we have ball fields and dancing halls? Did you ever hear of a colony of ants keeping a cow? It is a well-known fact that they do, and they will take their cow out to pasture and bring it in and milk it and then lock it up for the night just as you might do if you were a farm boy.
When the sun had descended behind the mountain which screened our play-ground from his evening rays, we commonly amused ourselves in foot-races, and other pastimes, of which running was an important part. In this exercise I had no equal. I could also jump higher and farther than any boy in school, except one, and that one was not Balty Mahu. "His ill-will was not slow in manifesting itself.
The play-ground bully, the swindler of the corn exchange, who is the more virtuous? dolls with life, babies with genius, which the more sensible? Even baby has its "pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake," and is lulled to sleep with visions of a coach and six little ponies. Dreams, dreams of self, that man wraps himself in like the swathing of a mummy.
Dismounting, he steps inside them, one after the other, but finds each and all unoccupied neither man, woman, nor child within; nor without, either in the alleys between, or on the large open space around which the frail tenements are set, that has served as a loitering-place for the older members of the tribe, and a play-ground for the younger.
You will find a glorious stretch of velvet turf, seven acres of living carpet, level and green as a huge billard-table, skirted on the one hand by a rolling landscape, and hedged on the other by a row of primeval oaks. Flags flaunt from the flag-staffs, and the play-ground is guarded by guidons.
That evening when supper was over and the hour of recreation had arrived, I walked to the end of the pillared hall, where our new pupil stood gazing aimlessly out of a window that looked into our summer play-ground, at the rear of the convent, she did not hear my approaching step, apparently, for she never moved until I slipped my arm gently within her own and whispered: "I have come to thank you for the great service you have done me to-day."
Besides this, during the continuance of the penalty the culprit was not allowed to go upon the play-ground, or to speak to any one, nor was any one allowed to speak to him, under the penalty of being himself similarly punished. The punishment was, of course, a severe one in itself, and was very mortifying to a boy of high spirit.
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