[Illustration: SEWING-KIT FURNISHED TO GIRL PUPILS OF THE PHILADELPHIA PUBLIC SCHOOLS. SAMPLES OF WORK.] Leaving the New Haven tables we came to the grand exhibit made by the school-children of Philadelphia. In that city, there are twenty-five thousand girls studying plain sewing every week of the school year. The piled-up tables loaded with sewing showed only a small part of the work. On other tables we could see excellent designs and work in hammered brass, fine carvings, and even furniture and stamped leather-work. Then there was one very interesting table. On the wall above it were working drawings showing how wooden joints of all kinds are made; and on the table itself were dovetails, mortises and tenons admirably done in wood. There too were pieces of cast iron chipped and filed into various shapes. Very few workmen in shops could do better, and yet all we saw was the work of public-school boys. [Illustration: SAMPLES OF JOINING-WORK IN WOOD AND METAL, SENT BY THE PHILADELPHIA MANUAL TRAINING SCHOOL.] As we turned away from those tables, we saw another marked “St. Louis.” Here was shown more work by little hands, more drawings, too, and all proving that those Western youngsters are having happy times in school with busy fingers. Next, we came upon some excellent drawings by pupils of a South End Industrial School at Boston. The boys of that school have a printing-press, and the girls can make bread as well as trim bonnets, for they exhibited both the hats and the loaves. Jamestown, in New York, is also teaching its boys and girls to work with their hands, and some of their work in the exhibition is excellent. Did you ever think what it is to be blind?—to be unable to tell whether the paper you hold in your hand is white or blue or some other color. How could we do anything if we could not see? But in the Children’s Exhibition, on a table covered with knitting and fancy work of blind children, was the strangest display of all—kindergarten work made by a hundred blind girls and boys! No bad work in it either; it all was neat and perfect. Yet those children have never seen the work their young hands have made. [Illustration: PART OF THE EXHIBIT SENT BY THE MANUAL TRAINING SCHOOL OF CHICAGO.] A boy may lose a foot or a leg and be a cripple all his life. Shall he give up in despair and do nothing, or beg, which would be even worse? No. He has his hands and a brave heart. He will have a manly spirit even if he has a broken body. Well, on a table near the blind children’s work, was a collection of brooms and brushes,—new, well-made brushes, as good as you can find, and all made by the young workmen of the Crippled Boys’ Brush Shop in New York.