Connecticut western news., 1910-01-27
.HARTFORD'S NEW
 OPEN-AIR SCHOOL
VERY INTERESTING EXPERIMENT
Thirty Children Study, Sleep, Eat and Play Outdoors in Bleak January Weather-"Courant" Reporter Tells What He Saw and Heard.

What He Saw and Heard.
 A writer for the Hartford Courant made trip to the new open-air school now being conducted in that city and gives the result of his investigation in the following words.
 The reporter had gone to "visit school" with a rather vague impression that he would see a lot of emaciatcd, hollow checked, weary eyed youngsters, stepping over their desks or taking some form or other of mollycodlian exercises in a dispirited and melancholy way. When he arrived there was strange and almost uncanny silence about the place that confirmed his fears. To his surprise the tent was empty and there was not n sound of m ordinary growing boy or girl within 100 yards. He might have fancied them to have been play ing quietly" in tho dell at the foot of the hill upon which the tent stood, but the dell was deep with drifted snow and look showed him that there was no one there. Miss Pausch, the principal, explained.
 They are up s;airs in the house, sleeping, she said. And that was at l:l5 o'clock in the afternoon! "Every day after dinner" she explained "we send them all up into the room that was finished off especially for that pur. pose and to give them playroom when
 it storms too hard for them to stay in the tent, and have them rest for an lour"
 Up the quaint winding stairs of the
 i'd Sigourney house, the reporter fcl-
 owed Miss Pausch, and tiptoed into the
 ong light room where thirty little boys
 md girls reclined on as many steamer
 hairs, each wrapped snugly in an army blanket and a comfortable. The win lows were many and were all wide open. The walls were papered in light green, and the white woodwork and white ceiling harmoniZed we'll and
 tlGed to the peaceful quiet of the room.
 Through the windows one looked upon Bushnell Park. A more pleasant place for a siesta one could hardly wish for.
 For the first day or two, Miss Pausch said, hardly any of the children went to sleep. It was new experience, taking nap in the afternoon. On the second
 lay a couple went off into dreamland, aud each day sees a few more succumb tug to the temptation to slumber. Eleven slt pt during the reporters visit. O. the rest, although it was no fair con. dition to judge, all wrapped up as they were and practically in bed, they looked D happy and cheerful, so full of life and spirits that the reporter was astonished.
 It was sht rtly afterwards, while he was looking over the individual weight charts in Miss Pausch's office, and learn, ing that in a single week one boy had gained seven and one-quarter pounds, another six and one half and third five and one. fourth, while all of the thirty had something to show on the scales us result of the outdoor life, that the time for sleeping expired and the fifteen boys and thirteen girls came down stairs in an orderly fashion, it is true, but still with enough of the joy of living in theIr conduct to convince any one that life was far from being q melancholy waste to them. The sixteenth little boy was not with them.
 "John was sleeping so soundly that l did not want to awaken him, said Miss Stella Houghmaster, the assistant, "so 1 left him there and he will come down when he wakes up" It somehow struck the reporter that of the many excellent features of this unique school this per sonal attention and thoughtfulness for each individual was by no means the least valuable.
 Out i'll the tent schoolroom there was no one sleeping. The children had tied themselves into their sitting-up bags, brown canvas sack-like affairs. lined with heavy felt, which are fastened up about them, leaving only their heads and arms visible. Some of them, how ever, had views of their own about the amount of clothing they needed, and were quite out of the bags disdaining the blankets that were provided. The registered four degrees above freezing.
 A stove at one end of the room sug- gested warmth, but it gave none, for the fires burn but in the morning and then for the purpose of drying out the tent. After that the flap is opened and the eastern side rolled up so that two sides are quite open to the air. Facing Bushnell Park the view from the tent is