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most practical form of recreative exercise for girls in city schools, it
became necessary to spread the dancing, and for this more teachers
were necessary. To secure teachers, the Girl's Branch of the
Public Schools Athletic League offered class instruction in folk
dancing free to any woman public school teacher who in return
would pledge herself to give at least one hour a week to the conduct
of an after-school athletic club for girls in her own school, or fur-
nish music for club practice. The teachers began at once to respond
to this offer, and they felt such pleasure and benefit from the work
that they were willing and eager to pass it on to the children; so
that now 900 teachers, under Miss Burchenal's supervision, are in-
structing 20,000 girls in 300 of New York's public schools how to
be happy and grow up strong and healthy.

The culmination of the season for these girls' athletic clubs of the
elementary schools has for four years been a fete of folk dancing
and games on the meadows of the great parks of the city. These
park fetes have come to be among the most impressive events in the
life of the city, bringing together as they do thousands of girls and
illustrating a civic work of far-reaching significance. Instead of
reading what I am writing, I wish that you could be seeing the park
meadows on one of these great play days, with thousands of children
dotted in groups over the green grass. The sight of fifteen acres of
happy girls, all dancing at the same time, is a more stirring and beau-
t i f u l one than can be easily described.

So New York has solved the problem of recreation for girls under
the restricted conditions of city surroundings. The movement so
started here has been taken up by the Playground Association of
America, and by the Russell Sage Foundation, the influence of which
is nation-wide; so that all the other big cities of America which are
awakening to their responsibilities toward their "little mothers" are
watching New York and learning the value of folk dancing as a
civic movement.

E M M A BURCHE.N'AL.