Each child
is obliged to take a bath on the establishment once a-week. Their answers
in geography and history were extremely good. In the afternoon the elder
girls are employed in tailoring and dressmaking, and receive so much work
that this branch of the school is self-supporting.
I visited another industrial school, in a very bad part of the town,
adjoining the Bowery, where the parents are of the very worst description,
and their offspring are vicious and unmanageable. I think that I never saw
vice and crime so legibly stamped upon the countenances of children as
upon those in this school. The teachers find it extremely difficult to
preserve discipline at all; and the pilfering habits of the pupils are
almost incorrigible. They each receive a pint of excellent soup and an
unlimited quantity of bread for dinner; but they are discontented and
unthankful.
The common school system will be enlarged upon in a succeeding chapter;
but I cannot forbear noticing one school which I visited, It was a lofty,
four-storied building of red brick, with considerable architectural
pretensions. It was faced with brown stone, and had a very handsome
entrance-hall and staircase. The people of New York vie with each other in
their hospitality to strangers, and in showing them the objects of
interest within their city in the very best manner; and it was under the
auspices of Dr. Wells, one of the commissioners of education, that I saw
this admirable school, or rather educational institution.
