Said a wealthy tax-payer to me recently, as he paid me his monthly kindergarten subscription: "Mrs. Cooper, this work among the children is the best work that can be done. I give you this aid most gladly. I consider it an investment for my children. I would rather give five dollars a month to educate these children than to have my own taxed ten times that amount by and by to sustain prisons and penitentiaries." This was the practical view of a practical business man--a man of wise forethought and of generous, genial impulses. Many needy children have been turned back into the street, to learn all its vice and crime, who could not find accommodation in the different charity kindergartens. I tell you this is a fact of momentous import to any community. Remember that from a single neglected child in a wealthy county in the State of New York there has come a notorious stock of criminals, vagabonds and paupers, imperilling every dollar's worth of property and every individual in the community. Not less than twelve hundred persons have been traced as the lineage of six children who were born of this one perverted and depraved woman, who was once a pure, sweet, dimpled little child, and who, with proper influences thrown about her at a tender age, might have given to the world twelve hundred progeny who would have blest their day and generation. Look at the tremendous fact involved! In neglecting to train this one child to ways of virtue and well-doing, the descendants of the respectable neighbors of that child have been compelled to endure the depredations, and support in almshouses and prisons, scores of her descendants for six generations! If the people of this country would protect the virtue of their children, their persons from murder, their property from theft, or their wealth from a heavy tax to support paupers and criminals, they must provide a scheme of education that will not allow a single youth to escape its influence. And, to effect the surest and best results, these children must be reached just as early in life as possible. The design of the kindergarten system is to prevent criminals. And what estimate shall be placed upon an instrumentality which saves the child from becoming a criminal, and thus not only saves the State from the care and expense incident to such reform, but also secures to the State all that which the life of a good citizen brings to it? Think of the vast difference in results, had there been twelve hundred useful, well-equipped men and women at work in that county in New York, building it up in productive industries, instead of twelve hundred paupers and criminals tearing down and defiling the fair heritage! We have but to look at this significant fact to estimate the value of a single child to the commonwealth.