Then comes a trio of good-morning songs, with cordial handshakes and scores of kisses wafted from finger-tips....  “Good-Morning, Merry Sunshine,” follows, and the sun, encouraged by having some notice taken of him in this blind and stolid world, shines brighter than ever....  The song, “Thumbs and Fingers say ‘Good-Morning,’” brings two thousand fingers fluttering in the air (10 x 200, if the sum seems too difficult), and gives the eagle-eyed kindergartners an opportunity to look for dirty paws and preach the needed sermon.

It is Benny’s birthday; five years old to-day.  He chooses the songs he likes best, and the children sing them with friendly energy....  “Three cheers for Benny,—­only three, now!” says the kindergartner....  They are given with an enthusiasm that brings the neighbors to the windows, and Benny, bursting with pride, blushes to the roots of his hair.  The children stop at three, however, and have let off a tremendous amount of steam in the operation.  Any wholesome device which accomplishes this result is worthy of being perpetuated....  A draggled, forsaken little street-cat sneaks in the door, with a pitiful mew. (I’m sure I don’t wonder! if one were tired of life, this would be just the place to take a fresh start.) The children break into the song, “I Love Little Pussy, Her Coat is so Warm,” and the kindergartner asks the small boy with the great lunch pail if he wouldn’t like to give the kitty a bit of something to eat.  He complies with the utmost solemnity, thinking this the queerest community he ever saw....  A broken-winged pigeon appears on the window-sill and receives his morning crumb; and now a chord from the piano announces a change of programme.  The children troop to their respective rooms fairly warmed through with happiness and good will.  Such a pleasant morning start to some who have been “hustled” out of a bed that held several too many in the night, washed a trifle (perhaps!), and sent off without a kiss, with the echo of a sick mother’s wails, or a father’s oaths, ringing in their ears!

After a few minutes of cheerful preparation, all are busily at work.  Two divisions have gone into tiny, “quiet rooms” to grapple with the intricacies of mathematical relations.  A small boy, clad mostly in red woolen suspenders, and large, high-topped boots, is passing boxes of blocks.  He is awkward and slow.  The teacher could do it more quietly and more quickly, but the kindergarten is a school of experience where ease comes, by and by, as the lovely result of repeated practice....  We hear an informal talk on fractions, while the cube is divided into its component parts, and then see a building exercise “by direction.”

In the other “quiet room” they are building a village, each child constructing, according to his own ideas, the part assigned him.  One of them starts a song, and they all join in—­

  “Oh! builders we would like to be,
    So willing, skilled, and strong;
  And while we work so cheerily,
    The time will not seem long.”