My particular bugbear was a Board School in the Pandemonium Road, a still noisier street than the one chosen for the hospital patients. During school hours there is seldom a lull in the infernal din. And there was no conceivable reason why the school should not have been built at the back, except that the School Board wanted to shine before men, and to allow the passer-by to see the magnificence of a Manchester Board School. The noise of the street was so overwhelming, that arrangements were made to work the school in “shifts,” each class taking one month of noise in a class-room facing the street, and a month of comparative quiet on the opposite side of the building. On the noisy side you might see the teachers, with careworn faces and outstretched necks, striving to make their voices cut through the cross waves of sound; and you would see the children, with knitted brows and open mouths, straining their ears to catch what was said, and at times shaking their heads in despair, and sinking back into their seats with resignation, as who should say, “I have done my best, but after all it is your look-out more than mine.” There were two other schools, both Board (or Council) schools, in the same plight: many were but slightly less tormented. Some had been planted in remote streets, and the electric tram lines had broken in on their retirement, not only destroying their peace, but threatening the children with dismemberment. The obvious remedy was wood pavement outside the schools. This was conceded to churches and chapels, that were open two or three times on Sundays, and once or twice in the week: but schools, that were at work for five hours and a half five days a week, and where it was important that one should hear what was said, were denied so much relief. Remonstrance was in vain. The inordinate self-satisfaction of Manchester was never more apparent than in this instance: “Just look at our traffic.” Their traffic! If they could only see Oxford Street, or the Strand, and take the evidence of men who remembered the old granite pavement there!