Recently I noticed that our little office girl, so anaemic and nervous when she left school that we hesitated to employ her, was becoming rosy and spirited. The child herself explained the change: "I like it better. I have more money to spend. I get more outdoor exercise, and then, oh, the room is so much sunnier and there is more air and the people are all so nice!" And these were just the necessities which were lacking in the school from which she came. Moreover, it is a fair commentary on the school work and the school hygiene in too many of our towns and cities to-day. "I like it better" means that school work is not adapted to the dominant interests of the child, that the curriculum includes subjects remote from the needs and ambitions of the modern school child, and fails to include certain other subjects which it recognizes as useful and necessary, and therefore finds interesting. "I have more money to spend" means that this little girl was able to have certain things, like a warm, pretty dress, rubbers, or an occasional trolley ride, which she longed for and needed. "I get more outdoor exercise" means that there was no open-air playground for her school, that "setting up" exercises were forgotten, that recess was taken up in rushing home, eating lunch, and rushing back again, and that "after school" was filled up with "helping mother with the housework." "The office is so much sunnier and I get more air" accounts for the increase in vitality; and "the people are all so nice," for the happy expression and initiative which the undiscriminating discipline at school had crushed out. [Illustration: BONE TUBERCULOSIS IS ONE OF THE PENALTIES FOR DRY SWEEPING AND FEATHER DUSTERS] For such unsanitary conditions crowded sections of great cities have no apologies to make to rural districts. A wealthy suburb recently learned that there was overcrowding in every class room, and that one school building was so unsanitary as to be a menace to the community. Unadjustable desks, dry sweeping, feather dusters, shiny blackboards, harassing discipline that wrecks nerves, excessive home study and subjects that bore, are not peculiar to great cities. In a little western town a competition between two self-governing brigades for merit points was determined by the amount of home study; looking back fifteen years, I can see that I was encouraging anaemic and overambitious children to rob themselves of play, sleep, and vitality. Many a rural school violates with impunity more laws of health than city factories are now permitted to transgress.