f the
kindness that asked no reward, has not been lost either. One very striking
fact this charity has brought out that is most hopeful. It emphasizes the
difference I pointed out between the material we have here to work upon in
these children and that which is the despair of philanthropists abroad, in
England for instance. We are told of children there who, coming from their
alleys into the field, "are able to feel no touch of kinship between
themselves and Mother Nature"[19] when brought into her very presence. Not
so with ours. They may "guess" that the sea is salt because it is full of
codfish; may insist that the potatoes are home-made "cause I seen the
garding;" both of which were actual opinions expressed by the Bath Beach
summer boarders; but the interest, the sympathy, the hearty appreciation
of it, is there always, the most encouraging symptom of all. Down in the
worst little ruffian's soul there is, after all, a tender spot not yet
pre-empted by the slum. And Mother Nature touches it at once. They are
chums on the minute.

CHAPTER XI.

THE KINDERGARTENS AND NURSERIES

If the influence of an annual cleaning up is thus distinctly traced in the
lives of the children, what must be the effect of the daily teaching of
the kindergarten, in which soap is always the moral agent that leads all
the rest? I have before me the inventory of purchases for a single school
of this kind that was started a year ago in a third loft of a Suffolk
Street tenement. It included several boxes of soap and soap-dishes, 200
feet of rope, 10 bean-bags, 24 tops, 200 marbles, a box of chalk, a
base-ball outfit for indoor use, a supply of tiddledywinks and "sliced
animals," and 20 clay pipes. The pipes were not for lessons in smoking,
but to smooth the way for a closer acquaintance with the soap by the
friendly intervention of the soap-bubble. There were other games and no
end of colored paper to cut up, the dear delight of childhood, but made in
the hands and under the eyes of the teacher to train eye and hand while
gently but firmly cementing the friendship ushered in by the gorgeous
bubble. No wonder, with such a stock, a mother complained that she had to
whip her Jimmie to keep him home.

Without a doubt the kindergarten is one of the longest steps forward that
has yet been taken in the race with poverty; for in gathering in the
children it is gradually, but surely, conquering also the street with its
power for mischief. The