ed, even though
it represents so much clear gain in the not distant future.

At the present time there are Evening Schools, but this system does
not work well. All busy people are well aware that after a hard day's
work neither brain nor body is in the best possible condition for two
or three hours of serious mental effort. The child who has spent the
day in factory or shop has really pretty nearly used up all his or her
available mental energy, and after the evening meal is naturally
heavy, stupid, irritable, and altogether in a bad condition for
further effort. The evenings ought to be reserved for recreation, for
the gymnasium, the singing class, the swimming bath, and even for the
concert and the theatre.

The system of "half-timing" during ordinary school life does not work
well, and it would be a great pity should a similar system be
introduced in the hope of furthering the education of boys and girls
who are just entering industrial life. There is reason to hope that a
great improvement in education will be secured by Mr. Hayes Fisher's
bill.

Another subject to which the attention of patriots and philanthropists
ought to be turned is the sort of employment open to children at
school-leaving age. The greatest care should be taken to diminish the
number of those who endeavour to achieve quasi-independence in those
occupations which are well known as "blind alleys." In England it is
rare that girls should seek these employments, but in Scotland there
is far too large a number of girl messengers. In this particular, the
case of the girl is superior to that of the boy. The "tweeny" develops
into housemaid or cook; the young girls employed in superior shops to
wait on the elder shopwomen hope to develop into their successors, and
the girls who nurse babies on the doorsteps are, after all, acquiring
knowledge and dexterity that may fit them for domestic service or for
the management of their own families a few years later.

The girls of the richer classes have not the same difficulties as
their poorer sisters. They generally remain at school until a much
later age, and subsequently have the joy and stimulus of college life,
of foreign travel, of social engagements, or of philanthropic
enterprise. Still, a residue remains even of girls of this class whose
own inclinations, or whose family circumstances, lead to an aimless,
purposeless existence, productive of much injury to both body and
mind, and only too likely t