Rensselaer Republican, Volume 22, Number 4, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 September 1889 — Knapsacks for Books. [ARTICLE]

Knapsacks for Books.

The German doctors are exhorting parents to provide young girls between the ages of eleven and fourteen with knapsacks for carrying their schoolbooks, as the tendency of carrying them under the arm or in portfolios or bags hung from the arm is to distort their figures. In many parts of Germany this equipment is already in use, and to the unaccustomed eye of the stranger nothing is more comical than suddenly to come upon a crowd of little girls trooping out of school, each provided with a knapsack for the march. The next funniest thing to be seen among school children on the continent is the long pipe or the bilious cigarette of the diminutive Dutch boy.