The doors leading into the tank room were kept under lock and key and were only opened once a day and that at the noon hour. The youngest children, up to the age of twelve years, when they had learned their lessons both in the forenoon and afternoon went into the gymnasium to play, and by those means the children are physically well developed and knowing how to swim are not liable to become frightened if thrown into the water and know what to do to save others from drowning. They are taught reading, writing, arithmetic, geography, typewriting, typesetting and practical geometry, so as to draw lines, angles and circles and find their volumes and areas, but algebra, astronomy, grammar, geology, physiology, biology and metaphysics are reserved for the high schools, where every boy and girl is sent when they are fifteen years of age and kept there for three years at the expense of the government. The high school is located in the district reserve as near the center of the district as conditions will permit in the vicinity of the court house and the Governor's residence and has adjoining it not less than one thousand acres, according to the population of the district, so as to make it as self-sustaining as possible and to teach the students agriculture, horticulture and the care and management of stock and poultry. "We have a foundry, machine shop, woolen mill, cotton mill and chemical works at every high school, and while both sexes are taught farming and gardening the boys are taught mechanical trades and the girls knitting, spinning, weaving, cooking, housekeeping and nursing, so as to know how to take care of the sick and injured, and at the age of eighteen years the boys are drafted into the army and serve three years, building railways, levees, canals, irrigation ditches, docks, warehouses and other public buildings, and the girls are sent to the chemical factories, woolen mills, cotton mills, paper mills, flax mills, sugar mills and tobacco factories. No exceptions are made from service; all must serve. Both boys and girls are dressed in military uniform and are drilled two hours in rifle practice, firing ten shots at an imitation enemy in a military suit, stuffed with straw, in different positions, from one hundred to one thousand yards distance, every Sunday weather permitting and in actual war one brigade of girls is assigned to every division of the army to carry off the wounded and nurse them and to assist in the defense whenever it is necessary, and also to garrison and hold the lines of communication and their presence in the field has been so inspiring to our boys that they never have turned their backs to the enemy." CHAPTER VIII. THE WAR DEPARTMENT. My next trip was to the War Department, where I was shown the Rules and Regulations governing the army, and navy.