“Sibyl, my dear,” said Aunt Fanny one morning, “I have only just found
out that you and Belle make my bed. You need not do it again; I always
make it at home, and I should have done it here, but you have been too
quick for me.”
“We shall not give you a chance, Aunt Fanny; we shall not let you.”
“But when do you do it, you little witches; you are always at breakfast
and at prayers; and when I go up into my room, it is all in order. I
supposed Delia did it while we were at breakfast.”
Then, with much joking, it was made clear that every day, while Aunt
Fanny saw George and Nahum off, and spoke to the butcher in the kitchen,
Sibyl and Belle slipped up stairs, and “did” her room.
“That is a piece of your dear mother’s training,” said Aunt Fanny, as she
patted Sibyl’s head.
“As it happens, it is, Aunt Fanny,” said Belle. “But dear mamma said even
she got points from Miss Homans, and I am sure Sibyl and I both learned
the reasons of some things at the Kindergarten that we did not know
before.”
“Reasons for making a bed,” said Aunt Fanny. “Why, you do not tell me
that you learn to make beds at school.”
“We did not, because mamma had taught us. But the kitchen Kindergarten
was such fun that we liked to go; and if you like to see it, we will take
you.” So Aunt Fanny was taken to see that very pretty sight. And she
understood at once, how even very little children can be taught housework
thoroughly, and taught to like it too. Each child had a doll’s bed to
make, and to unmake; and each child, in unison with thirty or forty
others, made it and unmade it, singing little songs and going through
other such exercise as made the thing amusing, while it was methodical.
In the same way each child set a baby house table with the most perfect
precision, and swept a floor, and dusted a room. It was play to them, but
they learned what they never forgot, as Aunt Fanny had occasion to see
every day in the neat order of her dear brother’s orphaned household.
Thus was it that it happened that when Aunt Fanny took home in April her
little flock of orphans, she did not bring to their wholly new life four
mere cumberers of the ground.
NOTE.—In preparing this little sketch of “Industrial Education in
Boston,” at Dr. Flood’s request, I have selected what seem to me,
on the whole, the most important branches of such education for
illustration. It has not seemed advisable to introduce too much
detail.
1. The instruction in sewing is given in all public schools to
all girls.
2. The instruction in carpenter work has been attempted only in
two public schools. A central school is now to be established,
where classes of volunteers from the different grammar schools
will be received. The full course described, of eight hours a
day, for four days a week, of thirteen weeks, is one of the
Technology courses, and there is a fee for instruction.
3. The Cooking Schools are under the direction of a society for
that purpose. It also maintains Normal Classes for teachers of
cooking. Different churches and charitable societies maintain
free cooking classes, and free carpenter classes.