Page:Labour and childhood.djvu/199

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THE SCHOOL DOCTOR IN OTHER LANDS
173

draw out-of-doors with a will, as the Bushmen drew, and as the great Eastern artists still sometimes draw. Even the first "R" is learned rapidly outside. (In many a church and chapel magazine, missionaries tell how quickly the Red Indians and others learn reading in the open.) Out in the open, doubtless, every little hand would eagerly project itself. There everything invites, impels even, to self-projection. There tools are made eagerly. There the whole value of play declares itself, and exercise does not consist in formal walking or mere aimless running! In short, out of doors the healthy child finds (in good weather, at least) the ideal school! It is not easy to see how it can quickly be restored to all, or even to many. Who knows how many years may pass before we can even give a roof playground to all the pale-faced children of the cities? For a long time, as it appears, we must be content, in our climate, to build schools for rude weather, to think of fog, and frost, and rain, and trust a very great deal to the power of pictures, of good ventilation, and of symbols.

Already however the sickly children gathered out of the school population of Charlottenburg and Mulhausen are at their beneficent work. They are showing, as the feeble have always shown, where the new light falls. They are drawing us back, as is