ter morning, while a flat, white
moon awaited the dawn and wind-driven clouds flung faint scudding
shadows across the snow, two little girls, cloaked, shawled, hooded
out of all recognition, plodded heavily along a Vermont mountain
road. Each carried a dangling dinner pail.

The road was lonely. Once they passed a farmhouse, asleep save for a
yellow light in a chamber. Somewhere a cock crowed. A dog barked in
the faint distance.

Where the road ascended the mountain--a narrow cut between dark,
pointed firs and swaying white-limbed birches--the way was slushy
with melting snow. The littler girl, half dozing along the
accustomed way, slipped and slid into puddles.

At the top of the mountain the two children shrank back into their
mufflers, before the sweep of the wet, chill wind; but the mill was
in sight--beyond the slope of bleak pastures outlined with stone
walls--sunk deep in the valley beside a rapid mountain stream, a dim
bulk already glimmering with points of light. Toward this the two
little workwomen slopped along on squashy feet.

They were spinners. One was fifteen. She had worked three years.
The other was fourteen. She had worked two years. The terse record
of the National Child Labor Committee lies before me, unsentimental,
bare of comment:

"They both get up at four fifteen A.M. and after breakfast start for
the mill, arriving there in time not to be late, at six. Their home
is two and one-half miles from the mill. Each earns three dollars a
week--So they cannot afford to ride. The road is rough, and it is
over the mountains."

(6)

(_Providence Journal_)

HOW TO SING THE NATIONAL SONGS

To Interpret the Text Successfully the Singer Must Memorize,
Visualize, Rhythmize, and Emphasize

BY JOHN G. ARCHER

The weary eye of the toastmaster looks apologetically down long rows
of tables as he says with a sorry-but-it-must-be-done air, "We will
now sing 'The Star Spangled Banner'"; the orchestra starts, the
diners reach frantically for their menus and each, according to his
musical inheritance and patriotic fervor, plunges into the unknown
with a resolute determination to be in on the death of the sad rite.

Some are wrecked among the dizzy altitudes, others persevere through
uncharted shoals, all make some kind of a noisy noise, and lo