Already in men of the Leighton type and in their works, he saw signs of the revival. He had more than one occasion to visit the Children’s Court. Its quarters near Third Avenue were cramped, but it was soon to be fittingly housed, and already here especially adapted magistrates, acting as judge, jury, and parent, conducted in kindly, quiet, and colloquial fashion the cases of fourteen thousand children in one year. These, all of them under the age of sixteen, were no longer herded with mature criminals that completed their education in vice, though their offenses ranged from mere waywardness to burglary. Their judges were patient and sympathetic men. One was the president of a society called the Big Brothers, the duty of whose members was to act in fraternally helpful fashion to boys less fortunate than they themselves had been; and some of the women probation officers of this court belonged to a similar organization known as the Big Sisters. There were twenty-six probation officers, some men and some women, and into their care were given all the little offenders for whom the court entertained any hope of reformation.
Luke concluded that the public schools, because of bettered conditions, were turning out fewer candidates for the Children’s Court than ever before. He saw with high hope the Washington Irving High School for Girls, the result of an agitation begun by pupils. Here was a building eight stories high, and Luke, with the American love for size and numbers, wrote enthusiastically home to his sister that it was the largest school in the world.
"It cost half a million dollars," he told her; "it has a hundred and sixty rooms and it holds six thousand pupils. Think of that! Six thousand,—not your pasty-faced, moping diggers either, but all noisy, laughing, healthy girls. The equipment is wonderful—just wonderful: you girls from the old Americus High School would think you were in Heaven if you came here. There are two big restaurants, chemical and physical laboratories, a conservatory, a zoological garden and a roof-garden, and laundries. There’s a regular theater—stage, scenery, and all that—a store, a bank, a housekeeping department, and an employment bureau. They have an orchestra, and they dance. There are nurseries with real babies in them—babies that can cry—and there is a five-room model house, a hospital, and a section where they train nurses. They use all these things really to _teach_, and this is in addition to languages and the usual unpractical stuff. They teach librarians’ work, shorthand, typewriting, bookbinding, costume-designing, and dressmaking. Why, Jane, the girls are taught to make their own clothes. Every girl is expected to make her own graduation dress, and only a few of the dresses cost more than a dollar apiece. I’ll bet you wouldn’t like that part of it!"