The idea of the story hour was broached several years ago and at first it was taken up as an experiment.  Stereopticon slides were made of several of the more famous pictures in the Museum, and Mrs. Cronan, who was at the time achieving a well earned success at the Public Library, was asked to take charge of the story telling.  The plan became a success at once.

Later Mrs. Scales was called in to take afternoon classes, and now more than 1000 children go to the Museum each week during July and August and hear stories told entertainingly that fix in their minds the best pictures of the world.  Following the stories they are taken through the halls of the Museum and are given short talks on some art subject.  One day it may be some interesting thing on Thibetan amulets, or on tapestries or on some picture, Stuart’s Washington or Turner’s Slave Ship, or a colorful canvas of Claude Monet.

It is hoped that the movement may result in greater familiarity with and love for the Museum, for it is intended by the officials that these children shall come to love the Museum and to care for the collection and not to think of it, as many do, as a cold, unresponsive building containing dark mysteries, or haughty officials, or an atmosphere of “highbrow” iciness.

“I believe,” says Mrs. Cronan, “that our little talks are doing just this thing.  And although some of them, of course, can’t get the idea quite all at once, most of these children will have a soft spot hereafter for Donatello’s St. George.”

At least some of them were not forgetting it, for as they filed out the wistful little boy was still talking about it.

“Ya,” he said to the scoffer, “you mightn’t a seen him at the Zoo.  That’s all right, but you never went over to the ’quarium.  Probably they got one over there.  Gee!  I wish I could see a dragon.  What color are they?”

But the smallest boy of all, who had hold of Miss Hayes’s hand and who had been an interested listener to all this, branched out mentally into other and further fields.

“Aw,” said he, “I know a feller what’s got a ginny pig wit’ yeller spots on ’im and he—­” And they all trailed out the door.

* * * * *

(Christian Science Monitor)

One illustration, a half-tone reproduction of a photograph showing the interior of the greenhouse with girls at work.

WHERE GIRLS LEARN TO WIELD SPADE AND HOE

To go to school in a potato patch; to say one’s lessons to a farmer; to study in an orchard and do laboratory work in a greenhouse—­this is the pleasant lot of the modern girl who goes to a school of horticulture instead of going to college, or perhaps after going to college.

If ever there was a vocation that seemed specially adapted to many women, gardening would at first glance be the one.  From the time of

    “Mistress Mary, quite contrary,
    How does your garden grow?”