Only so shall we make of our schools
real corner-stones of our liberties. So, also, we shall through
neighborhood pride restore some of the neighborhood feeling, the
_home_ feeling that is now lacking in our cities to our grievous
loss. Half the tenement-house population is always moving, and
to the children the word "home" has no meaning. Anything that will
help change that will be a great gain. And that old Board is gone
long since, anyhow.
The club prevailed in the end. At least one school let it in, and
though the boys did break a window-pane that winter with a ball,
they paid for it like men, and that ghost was laid. The school
playground holds aloof yet from the neighborhood except in the long
vacation. But that last is something, and the rest is coming. It
could not be coming by any better road than the vacation schools,
which are paving the way for common sense everywhere. "Everything
takes ten years." said Abram S. Hewitt, when he took his seat as
the chairman of the Small Parks Committee. Ten years before, when
he was Mayor, he had put through the law under which the Mulberry
Bend had been at last wiped out.
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