I suggest to you as teacher in this school to undertake some improvements in the grounds. I consider the above sketch to be a zero case. If improvements can be developed here, it is reasonable to suppose that the same can be repeated where conditions are primarily better. The possibilities are sufficient to warrant the undertaking. The victory will add to your strength. The lives of the children will be better filled for the part they may do, and you will have started a public improvement. [Illustration: _Fig. 293. "The girls organized themselves into a tug-of-war team."_] I should not appeal to the parents for help. You have a fountain of power in the children. It is necessary only to inspire and guide them. This is no theory of mine. It is a result that has been worked out in many instances. The beautiful city of Rochester is proud of its schools. The development of the town made the construction of new school buildings necessary to such an extent that little money remained for the improvement of the grounds. Some of them were located in the breadwinners' districts. The grounds were as the contractor left them; your imagination can picture their condition. The interiors were well nigh perfect. The exterior was sometimes a Sahara of mud and builders' rubbish. The principal of one of the schools--a woman, by the way,--knowing the force in children, set about to apply it to the improvement of the surroundings. Her method was first to inspire, and then to direct. Her success was ample. Both boys and girls participated. The girls organized themselves into a tug-of-war team (Fig. 293). By fastening ropes to sticks and beams, these things were hauled out of sight. The boys leveled the hummocks and brought fertile soil from some distance. This principal confined her improvements to small areas--so small that the children wanted to do more when they were through. From the time school opened until the rigors of winter stopped the juvenile improvements, only part of the space from the front of the building to the street was graded. Some of the boys brought chaff from a haymow, which was raked in as lawn grass seed. The following spring quite as many weeds appeared as grass, but the children gave the weeds the personification of robbers and made their career short. The promoters had a just pride in what they had accomplished; and that meagre bit of lawn meant vastly more to them than had it been made by a high-salaried landscape gardener.