100 years ago: City schoolchildren celebrate end of year with ‘Speaking Day’

From the Lawrence Daily Journal-World for June 4, 1911:

  • “This is the last day of school. The long summer vacation begins tomorrow for Lawrence kiddies. This is ‘speaking’ day in every room of all ward buildings, and a great crowd of parents have flocked to the schools to hear their young hopefuls declaim. All the rooms are decorated with flags, pictures, and specimen work today. The schools have been very successful this year. In the higher grades the percentage of failures is only about one-sixth, and in the primary classes it is even less.”
  • “The senior class of the University of Kansas will revive the custom of planting a tree on the campus as a part of the class day exercises this year. James. N. Davis, a graduate of the University, has sent an Oregon grape, a small cedar tree and a small fir tree to be planted by the graduating class.”
  • “SWELTERING TODAY. Kansas Is Baked in One Big Heat Wave. No Relief In Sight and Crops Will Soon Be Suffering Severely. — At 11 o’clock the temperature registered at the local Kansas City bureau, twelve stories above the street, was 91. At St. Joseph it was 88, Topeka 91, Wichita 88.”