THE INDUSTRIAL SCHOOLS OF BOSTON.

By E. E. HALE.

I.

It was the morning after the funeral. Aunt Fanny had tried to make the breakfast seem cheerful to the children, or at least tolerable. She had herself gone into the kitchen to send up some trifle a little out of the way for the family meal. She talked to the children of the West, of the ways in which her life in Wisconsin differed from their lives in Boston. And Aunt Fanny succeeded so far that George passed his plate for oatmeal a second time, and little Sibyl did not ask leave to go before her aunt had poured out her second cup of coffee.

Aunt Fanny made the breakfast as long as she could. Then she folded her napkin slowly, and led the children into the other room for morning prayer. They read the last chapter of Proverbs, and then all knelt down and said the Lord’s Prayer. Then Aunt Fanny took Nahum’s hand and took little Sibyl on her lap, and she said to all four of the children, “It is very hard for us all, dear children, but I must tell you all about what the plans are. I have a letter from Uncle Cephas, and you know I had a long talk with Mr. Alfred after he came here yesterday. We will not break up here yet.”

“Oh, I am so glad of that,” said poor, sturdy Belle, who generally said so little.

“No, we will not break up here yet. In the spring we will all go to Wisconsin, and you shall learn to like my home at Harris as much as you like Roxbury.” So spoke Aunt Fanny, as cheerfully as she could. And not daring to wait a reply, she hurried on: “See here, Uncle George writes that I may stay till late in March, or early in April, if I think best, but that then we must all be ready to go on.”

You must know that the four children were orphans. Their father had died in April, and now, in the middle of December, their mother had died. Aunt Fanny had been with them for the last month. But she knew, and they knew, that their pleasant home was to be broken up forever.

“And now,” she said, “we must all see what we have to do this winter, to be ready for Wisconsin. Belle and Sibyl, you may come up stairs with me, and we will look through your clothes and the boys’. I must not be lazy this winter, and I will have it for my morning work to put everything in order.”

And when they came up stairs, and this business like, energetic Belle took their frocks and underclothes from the drawers, Aunt Fanny was indeed surprised. The girl was grave beyond her years; so long had her poor mother been ill, and so much of the care of the family had fallen on her. “I should think you were an old housekeeper,” said Aunt Fanny, in admiration, as Belle explained how she had mended this, and, on the whole, determined to retain that. And when Belle took her into the little room which she called the “sewing room,” and showed her drawers, and even shirts for the boys, which she had under way, Aunt Fanny squarely told her that she was quite her own equal in such management.

“How did ever come to be such a thorough seamstress?” said she. “Dear Mary has been sick so long that I had somehow imagined that such things as these must slip by.”

“Oh! of course mamma told us everything. But you know we learn this at school.”

“I do not know any such thing,” confessed Aunt Fanny, promptly.

“Oh, yes,” said Belle, “we learn more or we learn less. But so soon as I found I could help mamma about it I went into the advanced class. There we learned to cut shirts and to make them. I can make a shirt now as well as anybody,” said the girl, laughing. “But of course I do not in practice.”

“Why of course?” persisted Aunt Fanny.

Belle opened her eyes as much as to say, “How little these people in Wisconsin know.” But she did not say so in words, she only said: “Oh, I can buy my collars and wristbands and fronts ready made a great deal cheaper than I can make them, if my time is worth anything. And you must not laugh, Aunt Fanny, but papa said my time is worth a good deal.”

Aunt Fanny did not laugh. She smiled very kindly, and drew Belle to her and kissed her.

“You see, the boys run the machine for me, and Sibyl can do perfectly well any plain sewing we need. We do not think a set of shirts such a very heavy job,” said the little matron, quite unconscious of the amusement she was giving Aunt Fanny.

“Do you mean that every girl in Boston learns to do this?”

“Why yes, if she goes to a public school. She learns it, or she may. I think perhaps she might shirk a good deal. But if the teacher sees you are interested, and you do as well as you can, she helps you on. I know a great many girls who have made dresses for their friends. And I know there are girls who went directly to dress-makers from schools, and earned good wages at once. Some girls, you know, have a gift for cutting and fitting.”

II.

It must be confessed that Aunt Fanny went down stairs a little relieved in mind after this talk with Belle. Here was one, at least, of her little charges, who would be worth her weight in the new home to which they were to be transferred. As the boys came in from school, she had another such lesson. She asked Nahum who would be a good man to whom to send her trunk, which needed some repair. The boy gave her his views, and then asked what she wanted to have done. Aunt Fanny explained that in coming on she had, wisely or not, left the dress tray of her trunk at home. In going back she was sure she would need a tray, and she must have a new one made.

“Is that all?” said Nahum. “I should never send to Sage’s for that.”

“What would you do?” asked Aunt Fanny.

“I should make the tray myself,” said Nahum, quite unconsciously. “When Belle made her famous visit to Swampscott, she found that that trunk she has now would not take in some dandy-jack hat she wanted to carry. And I made a new tray for her.” So he brought his aunt to the “trunk closet,” dragged out Belle’s trunk, and showed her a neat tray, made of white-wood, and very perfectly fitted. “Is that good enough?” asked the boy.

Of course it was good enough, and Aunt Fanny explained that she had not known that Nahum was fond of tools.

“Oh, I might have been as fond of tools as of candy,” said Nahum. “But that would not have come out for much. I learned to handle tools at school.”

“School!” said Aunt Fanny.

“Yes, they wanted to try it at the Dwight, where I was. So they got some benches put into the Ward Room, which is in their building, and is only used by the voters twice a year. They had a first rate teacher, Mr. Batchelder. We had one lesson a week. They would not let us go on unless we kept up in the regular school lessons. So it made the fellows spur up, I tell you, because we all liked the shop, though that was extra.”

“How many lessons have you had?” said Aunt Fanny.

“Oh, I was in the first class, and so I had only one year’s course. It was eighteen lessons. The first day we tried to strike square blows with the hammer. Some of us did not strike very square, I tell you. All the beginning with nails came the first day. The last lesson was ‘planing and squaring, marking, making tenon, making mortise, and fastening mortise and tenon.’ I wrote a letter to another fellow, and I copied it from the school regulations.”

So Nahum went out to his own work shop in the shed, which, as it happened, Aunt Fanny had never seen before, because Nahum kept it under his own key. In the afternoon the tray was made.

“This will make you no end of comfort in Wisconsin, Nahum.”

“But if I am to do carpenter work, really,” said the boy, “I ought to go to the Technology.”

He meant to the Institute of Technology.

“Would you like to go there?”

“Of course I would. Why, if I went there I could make the frame of my own house, and raise it, if the neighbors would help.”

Nor was the boy wrong. And his Aunt Fanny and Uncle Asaph determined he should go, and go he did. He spent three months of that winter there, four days of every week; and worked steadily eight hours a day. Still it was different from what it would have been had he gone to a carpenter as an apprentice. For then he would have had to do whatever the carpenter was doing; and he would have had to take his chance for instruction. But at the Technology he had regular teachers and regular practical lessons. Of course he needed practice, and in the long run, it is only practice which makes a first rate workman. But at the end, he had seen every important part of a good carpenter’s work done, he knew why it was done, and had had a hand in the doing of it.

The Institute of Technology is not a public school as the Dwight School is, where Nahum had picked up his elementary instruction; and for his lessons here they had to pay thirty dollars. But when, the next summer, all the barns on his uncle’s farm in Harris were carried fourteen miles by a tornado, and Nahum found himself directing the framing of a new barn, and doing half the work, he and his aunt thought that those thirty dollars had been well invested.

She took very good care that George should go into the carpenter’s class at the Dwight School while they staid in Boston. He would not have been obliged to go. No scholar took this course, excepting as an extra, but he took it because he wanted to. And, as Nahum had said, they were obliged to keep in good standing in their other studies.

As for little Sibyl, Aunt Fanny judged, after full consultation with her confidential adviser, Belle, that Sibyl had better stay where she was—at the Grammar School. Aunt Fanny went down and made a state call on Miss Throckmorton, the teacher of the school, and also saw Miss Bell, the sewing teacher. She explained to them that while she did not want to break any school rules, she should be well pleased to have as much attention as possible given to Sibyl’s sewing. Miss Bell was really pleased with the attention. She said a good many parents did not seem to care anything about it. But if Sibyl would really give her mind to it, she would see that she was able, before she left them in the spring, to cut and fit a frock for Aunt Fanny or for her sister. And before they went to Wisconsin, it proved that Miss Bell was as good as her word to her little friend, and Sibyl made a very pretty dress for Aunt Fanny, before she left school.

III.

As Aunt Fanny herself made her inquiries into these practical matters, she resolved to try an experiment, which she would have laughed at when she left Wisconsin. She was asked to a lunch party of ladies one day, and was a little amused and a little amazed at first, when she observed how much they said about what they had to eat. Aunt Fanny had been trained to a little of the western ridicule of Boston, and had supposed that a bubble rechauffée or a fried rainbow was the most material article that anybody would discuss. And here these ladies were volubly telling of the merits of oysters in batter and oysters in crumbs—of one and another way to serve celery—in a detail which Aunt Fanny found quite puzzling, and, indeed, quite out of place in the manners to which she had been bred, which had taught her never to criticise what was on the table.

Perhaps her silence showed her surprise. This is certain, that all of a sudden a very pretty and gay Mrs. Fréchette turned round and said, “Here is Mrs. Turnbull, horrified because we talk so much of what we eat. Dear Mrs. Turnbull, it is not what we eat, it is the cooking we care for. You must know we have all been to the Cooking Schools—all who are not managers.”

Aunt Fanny confessed that she had been puzzled a little, and Mrs. Fréchette and Mrs. Champernom, her hostess, explained. In point of fact this very lunch had been cooked, “From egg to apple,” as the Romans would say, by Mrs. Champernom and her two daughters. It may be worth while, therefore, to give the bill of fare:

Raw Oysters on the shell. Bouillon in cups. Scalloped Lobster in its own shell. Quails on Toast, with White Sauce. Sweet Breads, with Green Peas. Capons, with Salad. Ice Creams. Frozen Pudding. Jelly. Fruit. Coffee.

How good cooks the mother and daughters had been before, they did not explain. But these particular results were due to their training at the Cooking School. They had made the rolls as well.

“I came out of it so well,” said Mrs. Champernom, laughing, “and Mary Flannegan approved the results so well, that when I told her and Ellen Flynn, my waiter girl, that if they liked to go to the cooks’ class, which is a class for special instruction to servant girls, I would pay half, they both consented to go; Mary Flannegan to keep Ellen Flynn company, and to see that she was not taught wrong. The cooks’ class is twelve lessons, and costs three dollars each. I shall pay a dollar and a half for each of them, and as Ellen Flynn is a bright girl, I shall have four good cooks in the house instead of three. For really,” she said, “there is nothing that Hester and Maria can not do. They went down to the beach with their father and the boys, and for a week they cooked everything that was eaten. They made the boys wash the dishes.”

This started Aunt Fanny herself. She found there were four classes she could attend:

1. The Cooks’ Class, for people who had some experience. Twelve lessons would have cost three dollars.

2. The Beginners’ Class of twenty lessons, for which she must pay eight dollars. Here she would be trained to make bread, and to prepare the ordinary dishes for family use at breakfast and dinner and supper.

3. The Second Class, also of twenty lessons, but more advanced. Here she must pay twelve dollars. But here more elegant dishes, what Mrs. Fréchette called “company dishes,” were part of the program.

4. What Mrs. Fréchette called “The Swell Course.” Here every lady paid fifteen dollars for her twenty lessons. Per contra, they had what they cooked, and very jolly parties they seemed to make, when they dared ask their friends to their entertainments.

Aunt Fanny was a good housekeeper, but she thought she should like to astonish her friends at Harris with some of the best seaboard elegancies, so she and Belle entered the “second class.” And pleasant and profitable they found it.

IV.

“Sibyl, my dear,” said Aunt Fanny one morning, “I have only just found out that you and Belle make my bed. You need not do it again; I always make it at home, and I should have done it here, but you have been too quick for me.”

“We shall not give you a chance, Aunt Fanny; we shall not let you.”

“But when do you do it, you little witches; you are always at breakfast and at prayers; and when I go up into my room, it is all in order. I supposed Delia did it while we were at breakfast.”

Then, with much joking, it was made clear that every day, while Aunt Fanny saw George and Nahum off, and spoke to the butcher in the kitchen, Sibyl and Belle slipped up stairs, and “did” her room.

“That is a piece of your dear mother’s training,” said Aunt Fanny, as she patted Sibyl’s head.

“As it happens, it is, Aunt Fanny,” said Belle. “But dear mamma said even she got points from Miss Homans, and I am sure Sibyl and I both learned the reasons of some things at the Kindergarten that we did not know before.”

“Reasons for making a bed,” said Aunt Fanny. “Why, you do not tell me that you learn to make beds at school.”

“We did not, because mamma had taught us. But the kitchen Kindergarten was such fun that we liked to go; and if you like to see it, we will take you.” So Aunt Fanny was taken to see that very pretty sight. And she understood at once, how even very little children can be taught housework thoroughly, and taught to like it too. Each child had a doll’s bed to make, and to unmake; and each child, in unison with thirty or forty others, made it and unmade it, singing little songs and going through other such exercise as made the thing amusing, while it was methodical. In the same way each child set a baby house table with the most perfect precision, and swept a floor, and dusted a room. It was play to them, but they learned what they never forgot, as Aunt Fanny had occasion to see every day in the neat order of her dear brother’s orphaned household.

Thus was it that it happened that when Aunt Fanny took home in April her little flock of orphans, she did not bring to their wholly new life four mere cumberers of the ground.

Note.—In preparing this little sketch of “Industrial Education in Boston,” at Dr. Flood’s request, I have selected what seem to me, on the whole, the most important branches of such education for illustration. It has not seemed advisable to introduce too much detail.

1. The instruction in sewing is given in all public schools to all girls.

2. The instruction in carpenter work has been attempted only in two public schools. A central school is now to be established, where classes of volunteers from the different grammar schools will be received. The full course described, of eight hours a day, for four days a week, of thirteen weeks, is one of the Technology courses, and there is a fee for instruction.

3. The Cooking Schools are under the direction of a society for that purpose. It also maintains Normal Classes for teachers of cooking. Different churches and charitable societies maintain free cooking classes, and free carpenter classes.

4. Drawing is taught in all public schools.

5. Schools of design and of carving are maintained by different societies.

I have confined myself to instruction which is to a certain extent training in handiwork, and in this I have not included musical or other artistic performance.