Page:Boy Scouts and What They Do.djvu/51

 a door or a skirting board; how to mix paint and how to put it on. Next week perhaps will come a paper-hanger, and the boys will paper a room or "wash" a ceiling. Next week maybe there will be a visit to the blacksmith's shop. On another night the tinker's man may come and expound the mysteries of soldering and pot-mending, and after him perhaps the tailor to show how a torn coat may be patched or how a pair of football "shorts" may be cut out.

Of all the many points that struck me as novel and good in a tour of this remarkable night school the chief one was the keenness of the boys to attend such classes. They come voluntarily, of course, and in their own time, and pay a shilling for each class they attend. Some of the boys are still attending day school. Others are at work. For some of the classes, there are more applicants than vacancies, and in view of this fact, the Manchester City Council have lately decided to hold similar classes in a different part of the city—for one school for handy-men is proving quite insufficient for Manchester's needs. And when one sees schoolboys, especially in working-class districts, yawning drearily through geometry lessons and the like and rushing eagerly, even in their leisure hours, to classes in cookery, joinery, and handymanship, it makes one wonder whether these subjects might not with value be substituted for some of the more elaborate things a working-class boy is now taught—as a rule only to forget. For after all, it is these homely, useful arts rather than geometry that are likely to fall in his path in later life.