Little Folks At Sewing School

LITTLE FOLKS A SEWING SCHOOL

Sixty-five Girls Learning The Useful Art

Delighted to Attend -- Surprise Mother With Quality of Work

Sixty-five heads bent over sixty-five pieces of work, while fingers are busy sewing long white seams, or piecing tiny quilts, or hemming aprons, is a typical Saturday picture at the Sewing school, which for twenty-five years has held its weekly sessions, teaching the children and the mothers who were children, the art of the needle. Ever since it first started in connection with a temperance school, Miss Matilde Brown has earnestly taken hold of the work, and has evolved if not created the present day prosperity and popularity of the school. "I cannot get my children to sew an hour at home," said a tired mother, "but I cannot keep them away from sewing on Saturday, at the school." The oldest girl now present in the school is 15 and the youngest is 6. There are between 80 and 90 members, 25 of whom belong to the primary class, which is always initiated into the magic of needle work by each little "primary" making a bed quilt for her doll. Awkward, needle pricked, choppy little fingers, labor faithfully and with patience, until the "sewing" which the mothers have no time to teach, assumes comeliness and form.

Many a mother has been surprised with an apron done better than the work of her own hands, and good report says that many a mother will be surprised again, when Santa comes. The children are animated and interested with never a bored one among them, though there are many complexities with needle and thread. "Do you come because mama makes you," was asked a shock-headed child. "Want to come," was the quick answer. Ten girls in the school walk a mile to get there and are seldom absent, and one little boy whose tiny sister cannot come alone, comes with her every Saturday. The pleasant room, the company of children, the knowledge of doing something, all give attractiveness to this Saturday assembly, that many a more pretentious gathering fails to win. And not least of interest to the children is the ten minute talk that always follows the folding up of the "work." This is given by Miss Brown or some friend of the school, who makes no attempt to moralize or philosophize or christianize the school, but gives little heart to heart talks which the children often take part in and often repeat to the mothers in the home. They are going to have their annual holiday dinner, which is being prepared for 100 of them and will be given the day after New Year's, Jan. 2, 1904. Every little girl who sews in the school may claim the invitation to come and eat and be merry.