That was the way we safeguarded that prop under the boy, who is father to the man, and we reaped as our reward crooked citizenship. New York is but the type of the rest of our cities in this as in so much else. We are at last taking the kindergarten seriously; here and there “play-schools” are being opened in the long summer vacations. In New York, we have built half a dozen play-piers out into the river, where the little ones dance to the music of brass bands in the evening. I told you how we put brass bands up on the schoolhouse roofs and invited the neighborhood in. Boston has “play-rooms” for indoor fun in crowded neighborhoods. We shall yet have “play-houses” for the children’s use as well as for the grown folk; but it is still a running fight. Twice in the past year have I been appealed to to help save the kindergarten from ignorant town boards, who could not see what good there was in it that the people should be taxed for its support. The dawn of common sense has set in, but it will be sometime yet to the broad daylight. There are other props which we have hardly recognized as such. There is the respect for law that means respect for the majesty of the commonwealth, of the state. What have we made of that? Of the compulsory education law, until within the last half dozen years, we made a laughing stock. Of the factory law, said a legislative committee that looked us over, we made a mess of perjury and child labor. The excise law became a vehicle of blackmail and corruption. This is how we tended that prop, forgetting that to bring contempt upon the law is the shortest cut to civic cynicism, which is a death-blow to the republic: it lives but in the people’s hopes and high ideals. The very enforcement of law has sometimes seemed a travesty: the boy who steals fifty cents is sent to the house of correction; the man who steals a railroad goes free. So the lad, robbed of every chance and with the fact dinned into his ears unceasingly by those who would make capital of his plight, takes to the street and throws stones and mud at the order of society that gave him no show; at the church, with its pride and pomp; at the citizen in a good coat and a silk hat; at the policeman, when his back is turned and he is far enough away; at anything that stands for the order of society in which he was allowed no place.