were kindly and friendly in spirit and most courteous and polite, much more so than most American children in similar schools. They certainly appreciated warmly what we were doing for them and were most anxious to do as the children do in American schools. They lacked the life and tendency to mischief of American children. After a few weeks there was little trouble about discipline or order, and they learned to control themselves better and to pay better attention. It took months to break the habit of studying aloud, and will take years to instil habits of perseverance and self-reliance.

The most helpful means of training in attention, instant obedience and self-control were the daily calisthenic exercises, which they all enjoyed and entered into with spirit.

Space permits only hasty reference to other lessons taught without books in our school, lessons in self-respect. Every child was expected to pay a small tuition, in money or labor, only a peseta, equivalent to twelve American cents, a week, but enough to inculcate the feeling that they were paying for what they got. At first it was hard to get the money. They had to be reminded again and again, but week by week they became more regular and seemed to take more pride in handing the teacher each Tuesday morning their silver coin. Much to our surprise there was, toward the last, very little delay or difficulty in getting the tuition.

In the Santurce school a sewing-class was organized to give fifteen very poor girls, all colored, an opportunity to "earn their tuition,"—as we told them—by sewing for us an hour or two every Saturday. Most of them had rarely handled a needle. They did not make many garments, but they learned considerable about sewing, were as regular as clockwork every Saturday morning, and appreciated better the education which they thus earned. Wasn't this better than some book lessons?

Another lesson in self-respect came from the idea—which the children gained without a word from us—that those who attended the American school must be clean and must have clothes and shoes and stockings. At least half of the children at the Santurce school came from the poorer classes, most of them from the shack district. A walk through this section would show most of the children under seven absolutely naked, and nine-tenths of the parents and older children barefooted, the girls and women bareheaded, with only indispensable clothing, often ragged and dirty. A glance into our schoolrooms or at the company trooping out at noon or at four o'clock showed only children with shoes and stockings, as neatly dressed, as clean as those coming from any school in the States. The dirty or ragged or barefooted would not come. Before or after school, or on Saturdays or Sundays, some of them could scarcely be recognized in their home-clothes. The good clothes and the shoes were often worn only at school and at the fiestas or on holidays.

How many times, looking up absent children, we found that they were away because of dirty clothes, or because the one good suit was being washed, or because shoes were worn out. Frequently we furnished them with shoes or clothes, trying to devise some way by which they could work for them, earn them. This education in neatness and self-respect was not book education, but it was more valuable than much learned from books.