The girls of the old Twelfth Street School of forty and fifty years ago were entertained by the 2,188 girls and the members of the Washington Irving High School Association in the old schoolhouse at 34 1/2 East Twelfth Street yesterday afternoon. The old girls, many of whom are grandmothers now, told the young girls all about the school days before and just after the civil war, and they frankly admitted that in their younger days they were just as mischievous and knew just as many ways to worry teachers as do the younger girls who have taken their places a half century later.

Mrs. Susan Ketchum Bourne, who has a daughter now teaching in the High School, and who is the President of the Lydia F. Wadleigh Association, which has the perpetuation of the memory of the woman who will go down in history as the "Foster Mother of the Twelfth Street Girls," was the mistress of ceremonies and spoke from the same stand that she used to declaim from before the war.

There were over a hundred of the old girls present, some of them coming from a distance. Among them were Mrs. D.F. Merritt of the class of '68, Mrs. Mary A. Fisher of the class of '59, Mrs. Thomas E. Wren of the class of '55. Mrs. Edward Townsend, who was a member of the class from which began the present Normal College; Mrs. F.H. Smith, '62; Mrs. Alexander Nesbitt, '60: Mrs. S.O. Howe, '64; Mrs. Kilbourne Tompkins, Mrs. Julia May Holbrook of the Normal College's first class, Mrs. James P. Burwell, '66; Mrs. Herbert G. Torrey, '65: Mrs. Frances L. Russell, Mrs. N.T. Hart, '70; Mrs. P. M. Vidal, '62; Mrs. Franklin Ward, '64; Mrs. J.C. Turner, '63; Mrs. Ernest Seward, '65; Mrs. Elizabeth L. Demarest, '62; Mrs. W.V.B. Travis, '63; Mrs. T.A. Pratt, '70, and Mrs. W. Stebbins Smith, '63.

Many made speeches in which they told the stories of their school-day pranks and anecdotes of the famous Miss Wadleigh. They all agreed that Miss Wadleigh was a great teacher, and that she was boss of the Old Twelfth Street School every minute of the day during the years that she was its head.

Mrs. Travis referred to the great number of rats that used to find a home in the Old Twelfth Street School. The rats in those days, she said, were as tame as kittens and almost as big. Every one of them, she added, had a long curly tall. Before she sat down she admitted that she, as well as most of the other old girls, were just as afraid of a rat as are their more modern sisters afraid of mice.

Mrs. Williams, who was introduced as Carroll Robinson, said she had been looking for slate pencil marks on the old steps, but admitted sadly that the marks were missing. In the olden days, she explained, when they had sanitary slate pencils, the girls used to sharpen them on the old rock steps. Another speaker who was introduced as the girl who before her marriage was Mary Willett, said etymology was a mighty important study in the Wadleigh days, while still another took as her subject George Washington, and told the girls that if Washington had not had a mother the United States would never have had him as President.

After the exercises in the main auditorium the visitors were taken through the classrooms to see how the girls of today do their work. There was a typewriting contest, which a demure little maid, who doesn't want her name used won. Then there were some dainty dishes served that had been prepared by the cooking class, and which everybody that tasted them said were very good. Folk-dances, singing, and how to keep house according to the most modern plans were also shown by the schoolgirls. Then there were athletic exercises.

The Board of Estimate has recently voted $600,000 for a new Washington Irving High School in Irving Place. and soon the work of construction will begin, and then the Old Twelfth Street School will pass into history. It is a quaint-looking old structure.