y.

The two little fellows were Italians. In justice to our frightened
friends, it should be said that it was not their nationality, but their
rags, to which they objected; but not very many seasons have passed since
the crowding of the black-eyed brigade of "guinnies," as they were
contemptuously dubbed, in ever-increasing numbers, into the ragged schools
and the kindergartens, was watched with regret and alarm by the teachers,
as by many others who had no better cause. The event proved that the
children were the real teachers. They had a more valuable lesson to impart
than they came to learn, and it has been a salutary one. To-day they are
gladly welcomed. Their sunny temper, which no hovel is dreary enough, no
hardship has power to cloud, has made them universal favorites, and the
discovery has been made by their teachers that as the crowds pressed
harder their school-rooms have marvellously expanded, until they embrace
within their walls an unsuspected multitude, even many a slum tenement
itself, cellar, "stoop," attic, and all. Every lesson of cleanliness, of
order, and of English taught at the school is reflected into some wretched
home, and rehearsed there as far as the limited opportunities will allow.
No demonstration with soap and water upon a dirty little face but widens
the sphere of these chief promoters of education in the slums. "By 'm by,"
said poor crippled Pietro to me, with a sober look, as he labored away on
his writing lesson, holding down the paper with his maimed hand, "I learn
t' make an Englis' letter; maybe my fadder he learn too." I had my doubts
of the father. He sat watching Pietro with a pride in the achievement that
was clearly proportionate to the struggle it cost, and mirrored in his own
face every grimace and contortion the progress of education caused the
boy. "Si! si!" he nodded, eagerly. "Pietro he good a boy; make Englis',
Englis'!" and he made a flourish with his clay-pipe, as if he too were
making the English letter that was the object of their common veneration.

Perhaps it is as much his growing and well-founded distrust of the
middle-man, whose unresisting victim he has heretofore been, and his need
of some other joint to connect him with the English-speaking world that
surrounds him, as any personal interest in book-learning, that impels the
illiterate Italian to bring his boy to school early and see that he
attends it. Greed has something to do with it too. In their anxiety to