ar a large public school, but directly on the main
route of the children going to and from it. My chief pleasure during
that shut-in winter was watching those children. Four times a day--at
half-past eight, at half-past twelve, at half-past one, and at half-past
three--I would take the window to see them going by. They were of many
ages and sizes; from the kindergarten babies to the boys and girls of
the ninth grade. None of them could possibly have been described as
"creeping like snail unwillingly to school." As a usual thing, they came
racing pell-mell down the three streets that converged at my corner;
after school they as tumultuously went racing up, homeward. I never
needed to consult the clock in order not to miss seeing the children.
When I heard from outside distant sounds of laughing and shouting, I
knew that a school session had just ended--or was about to begin. Which,
I could only tell by noting the time. The same joyous turmoil heralded
the one as celebrated the other. Clearly, these children, at least, did
not "hate to go to school"!

One of them, a little boy of nine, a friend and near neighbor of mine,
liked it so well that enforced absence from it constituted a punishment
for a major transgression. "Isn't your boy well?" I inquired of his
mother when she came to call one evening. "A playmate of his who was
here this afternoon told me that he had not been in school to-day."

"Oh, yes, he is perfectly well!" my friend exclaimed. "But he is being
disciplined--"

"Disciplined?" I said. "Has he been so insubordinate as that in school?"

"Not in school," the boy's mother said; "at home." Then, seeing my
bewilderment, she elucidated. "When he is _very_ naughty at home, I keep
him out of school. It punishes him more than anything else, because he
loves to go to school."

Another aspect of the subject presented itself to my mind. "I should
think he would fall behind in his studies," I commented.

"Oh, no," she replied; "he doesn't. Children don't fall behind in their
studies in these days," she added. "They don't get a chance. Every
single lesson they miss their teachers require them to 'make up.' When
my boy is absent for a day, or even for only half a day, his teacher
sees that he 'makes up' the lessons lost before the end of the week.
When I was a child, and happened to be absent, no teacher troubled about
_my_ lost lessons! _I_ did all the troubling! I laboriously 'made them
up'; the thought of examin