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I do not scruple to affirm, that if the play-grounds of infant schools are cut off from the system, they will from that moment cease to be a blessing to the country.
The play-grounds of some schools are paved with bricks, which I have found to answer very well, as they absorb the rain so quickly, that ten minutes after a shower, the place is dry enough for the children to play in; which, perhaps, would not be the case with any other kind of paving.
I do not refer now to the settle ment house, which I am ready to help make and maintain as the best in the country, but I have in mind a system to be carried out with the consent and aid of the municipal government, of play-grounds, baths, parks, places of recreation, and hospitals, for the benefit of the people, which will put our city in the very forefront of progress.
The fighting instinct is very near the surface in ambitious and energetic children, and in the play-grounds it asserts itself all the more in reaction after indoor discipline, then excitement grows, and the weaker suffer, and the stronger are exasperated by friction.
In the ample grounds of Girard College, looking up at its five massive marble edifices, strolling in its shady walks or by its verdant play-grounds, or listening to the cheerful cries of the boys at play, the most sympathetic and imaginative of men must pause before censuring the sterile and unlovely life of its founder.
I am not made of the proper material to make a nun of. I love the social domestic circle; I love my father and mother, and all our domestics, even the dogs and the cats, pigeons, and canaries, the fish-ponds, play-grounds, gardens, rivers, and landscapes, mountain and ocean, all the works of God I love.
If any person doubts the propriety of this plan, I can only say we leave many play-grounds thus ornamented: and instead of proving a temptation to the children, it has so far become the means of confirming principles of honesty in them, that they never touch a single flower or even a leaf in the garden.
There are girl prefects; cricket teams are formed sometimes of both sexes, but often the sexes matched against each other; one play-yard, a dual staff of teachers, and friendships between the boys and girls are not tabooed, etc. In other schools the sexes meet perhaps in recitation only, have separate rooms for study, entrances, play-grounds, and their relations are otherwise restricted.
That the schools should have a sufficiency of ground properly enclosed around them, for the play-grounds, and that no other natives than the scholars should be admitted within those precincts, except in the presence of the master, when relatives come to see each other; but that on no account should any natives be permitted to encamp or sleep within the school grounds. 3rdly.
What the Park is worth to us to-day is, we trust, but a trifle to what it will be worth when the bulk of our hard-working people, of our over-anxious Marthas, and our gutter-skating children shall live nearer to it, and more generally understand what it offers them, when its play-grounds are ready, its walks more shaded, when cheap and wholesome meals, to the saving, occasionally, of the dreary housewife's daily pottering, are to be had upon it, when its system of cheap cabs shall have been successfully inaugurated, and when a daily discourse of sweet sounds shall have been made an essential part of its functions in the body-politic.
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