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LITTLE ALIENS
by
MYRA KELLY
Author of "Little Citizens," "Wards of Liberty,"
"The Golden Season," Etc., Etc.
Illustrated
[Illustration: Together they retrieved it]
New York
Charles Scribner's Sons
1910
Copyright, 1910, by
Charles Scribner's Sons
Published April, 1910
[Decoration]
To
D. M. R.
CONTENTS
PAGE
"EVERY GOOSE A SWAN" 1
"GAMES IN GARDENS" 25
"A BRAND FROM THE BURNING" 63
FRIENDS 107
THE MAGIC CAPE 143
"BAILEY'S BABIES" 163
"THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES" 195
THE ETIQUETTE OF YETTA 227
A BENT TWIG 261
ILLUSTRATIONS
Together they retrieved it _Frontispiece_
FACING
PAGE
"I guess games in gardens ain't so awful healthy for
somebody," said Yetta 32
"I never in my world seen how they all makes" 60
"I must refuse to translate it to you" 70
She staggered back into a chair, fortunately of heavy
architecture, and stared at the apparition before her 140
Patrick was making discipline impossible 178
"What you think we got to our house?" 198
Rosie threw herself into a very ecstasy of her art 246
"EVERY GOOSE A SWAN"
An ideal is like a golden pheasant. As soon as the hunter comes up with
one he kills it in more or less bloody fashion, tears its feathers off,
absorbs what he can of it, and then sets out, refreshed, in pursuit of
another. Or if, being a tender-hearted hunter, he tries to keep it in a
cage to tame it, to teach it, to show it to his friends, it very soon
loses its original character so that beholders disparagingly exclaim:
"Why, it's only a little brown hen! Hardly worth the trouble of
hunting."
But among the pheasant and the trout of the ideal hunting-fields the
true relation between home and school flits ever along the horizon, a
very sea-serpent. Every one has heard of it. Some have pursued it. Some
even vow they have seen it. Almost any one is ready to describe it.
Expeditions have gone forth in search of it, and have come back
empty-handed or with the haziest of kodak films. And the most
conservative of insurance companies would consider it a safe "risk."
In every-day and ordinary conditions this relation between home and
school is really a question of mother and teacher, with the child as its
stamping-ground. Two very busy women, indifferent, hostile, or strangers
to each other, are engaged in the formulated and unformulated education
of the child. To the mother this child is her own particular Mary or
Peter. To the teacher it is the whole generation, of which Peter and
Mary are such tiny parts.
The ideal teacher is as wise as Solomon, as impartial as the telephone
directory, as untiring as a steam-engine, as tender as a sore throat,
as patient as a glacier, as immovable as truth, as alert as a mongoose,
and as rare as a hen's tooth. But her most important qualification is
the power to combine her point of view with the parental one, and to
recognize and provide for the varieties of character, temperament,
mentality, and physical well-being of the children intrusted to her
care.
The average teacher--nearly as elusive as the ideal--is, to a surprising
and ever-increasing extent, learning to do this. It is, in fact, a very
large part of the law and the prophets in modern pedagogy. The teacher
is expected to know, and she generally does know, what, in hospital
parlance, is called the "history" of her pupils, and the newer schools
are equipped with apparatus for making thorough physical examinations
upon which the pupil's curriculum will largely depend.
As rare perhaps as the dodo-bird is the mother who takes an intelligent
and helpful interest in the school life of her offspring. She generally
regards the school as a safe house of detention, a sort of day nursery
of larger growth. Mrs. O'Rourke will send Tim and Pat and Biddy and
Jimmy and Mike and Delia, so that she may have leisure to take care of
the twins and the baby, and to do the washing; while Mrs. Fitz-Jones
will send Robert Albert Walter Fitz-John Fitz-Jones, so that she may
be--to quote Browning, and since he's dead whatever he wrote must be
considered proper--"safe in her corset lacing," ere she sallies out to
bridge. Occasionally the two powers for good and evil in the child's
world meet. A large mother will drag a reluctant boy to school, and
loudly bewail herself for that she can do nothing with him. He has been
dismissed as unteachable by another teacher.
"He ain't, so to speak, bad, miss. He's just naturally ugly an' stoopid.
Look at him now," and she directs the general attention to the writhings
of her victim. "Would you think I just washed and combed him an' came
around--leavin' my housework, too--to ask you to try him? He don't
appreciate nothin' I do for him. Just naturally ugly and stoopid."
It may take a week to undo the effects of this introduction and to gain
the little chap's confidence. Then the teacher wheedles him through the
physical examination and seeks further speech with the mother.
"Your little boy--" she will begin.
"He's been botherin' you, too, most likely. Him and me will have a
settlin' this afternoon----"
"No, not that, please. I hardly know how to tell you. I'm afraid you
have--we all have--been misjudging him. But have you ever had his eyes
examined?"
"What fur?"
"His sight. He is--I hope you will be strong and brave about it--very
nearly blind in his left eye, and the right is affected, too."
It has, on several occasions, been my unhappy duty to make some such
announcement, and never has it been received twice in the same way. Some
ladies entirely disbelieve, and set it down to the natural officiousness
of teachers--"buttin' in where they ain't got no call." Others will fall
away into hysterics. Yet others will remark that their own eyes were
unsatisfactory in earlier stages: "It's just growin', I guess. I outgrew
the trouble before I was twelve." One mother accepted the facts frankly,
took the child to an oculist, bought the glasses he prescribed, and
applied the drops he recommended, until she inadvertently used the
dropper to fill her fountain-pen. Soon the boy lost his glasses, and the
incident was closed.
Ears and teeth, tonsils and adenoids, frequently furnish
stumbling-blocks to education, but the teacher who reports them to the
home authorities does so at the risk of wasting her time, or of being
accused of causing or inventing the conditions. Recently the boards of
education in the larger cities have been legislating for appropriations
to be applied to free glasses, free dentistry, free professional
services of all kinds to the children of the public schools. And the
gratitude of the parents--whose duties are being attended to--takes
fearful and wonderful forms.
Philosophers, in their slow and doddering way, may question the exact
part played by heredity in the formation of human character. Not so the
mother. She has reduced the problem to a formula. All that is bad,
hateful, and spiteful in the child is the direct contribution of his
father or his father's house. All that is appealing, lovable,
interesting, and most especially all that is "cute," is directly
inherited from the female side. The only exception to this rule is the
half-orphan. In his case one or two good qualities may be inherited from
the deceased parent.
Once I taught a Gwendolin. She was a peculiarly abominable individual,
as, poets to the contrary notwithstanding, a child may sometimes be. The
class was large, the school was a public one, and the curriculum
prescribed from on high. There was no time for private instructions, and
Gwendolin lagged far in the rear. She was late by habit; lazy by nature;
and tearful by policy and experience. I spent hours which should have
been devoted to the common good in setting down Gwendolin's tardiness,
listening to her excuses, and drying her tears. Finally I sent for the
mother, and a large, blonde, lackadaisical person responded to my call.
She came, contrary to regulations, during class hours, and Gwendolin
promptly began to howl at sight of her. It is, by the way, noted by most
teachers and explained by few parents, that the sight of a face from
home will generally produce hysterics.
Well, I allowed Mrs. Marks to undo the effect of her appearance, and
with Gwendolin almost buried in the exuberances of the maternal costume
and figure, she proceeded to explain that dear Gwendolin was always
deliberate. It was her nature. We all, she hoped, were entitled to our
natures. Gwendolin's dear father was always late for breakfast, and they
never did, by any chance, see the first act of a play. She thought she
would step around and explain this to me, knowing that I would make
allowances for the sweet child. "For I always tell her," she beamed on
me, "that her dear teacher would rather have her late every day in the
year than ruin her stomach by eating too quickly." And as to her crying,
well, Mrs. Marks opined, it was a very strong commentary on the manners
and natures of the other children in the class. Of course Gwendolin
cried. Her mother cried. On the slightest provocation. Never could help
it. Never hoped to be able to help it. Why, it was only that morning
that Mr. Marks had remarked that any one who cried over the newspaper
should wait until after breakfast to read it.
I controlled my true feelings sufficiently to ask her what effect an
epidemic of Gwendolin's little characteristics would have upon my class.
I urged her imagination to picture fifty children late every morning
because their fifty fathers always missed the first act of a play, and
fifty voices always raised in howls because fifty mothers wept upon one
hundred poached eggs on toast.
"Oh, but dear me," purred Mrs. Marks, as she heaved herself to the
perpendicular, shedding Gwendolin, a pocket-book, a handkerchief, and a
fan--"oh, but dear me, my sweet Gwendolin is such an exceptional child."
There is another class of parent from whom teachers suffer much. It
generally has but one child, and that child is generally a pitiful,
conscientious, earnest little creature in sombre hair ribbons and
"Comfort" shoes. Very frequently this parent has been, in some
prehistoric age, a teacher of mathematics in a high-school. Now, a
spiritualistic seance at which Messrs. Froebel, Pestalozzi, Herbart,
Locke, and Spencer should appear and explain their theories of
education, and at which Professor James should come from Harvard to
preside, while Professor John Dewey looked in to make a few remarks,
would never persuade that parent that her child's progress was not to be
gauged by an ability to spell obsolete words, and to worry her way
through complicated problems in long division.
"Why, she's been to school every day for seven months; rain, nor snow,
nor sleet has daunted her. She has an umbrella, a mackintosh, and a pair
of rubbers. And yet with all these aids to education she cannot spell
'parallel.'" If you are rash you will inform her that the rubbers, the
mackintosh, and the umbrella may travel to school for yet another seven
months, and the child may still remain unable to spell "parallel." If
you are patient and "so disposed," you would deliver a little lecture
on the new methods of teaching reading, in which first a whole sentence
is used as a unit; later a phrase; later still a word; and last of all a
letter; but do not hope for a favorable reception of this theory. The
ex-teacher of high-school mathematics, who, in her own far-distant
youth, excelled at spelling-bees, could name the capital of every State
in the Union and every country in the world; who could recite the names
and dates of the Presidents, "The Village Blacksmith," "The Old Oaken
Bucket," "The Psalm of Life," and the Declaration of Independence, is
not prepared to accept a method of teaching based upon the interests and
the reason of the child, and never upon its mechanical memory. "Things,"
she will tell you, "are changed since my day," and she allows you very
thoroughly to understand that they are changed most mournfully for the
worse.
Changed they emphatically are, whether for worse or better. Almost every
scientific, medical, and sociological discovery of the century has
influenced the school. The single theory of the microbe as the cause of
disease has well-nigh revolutionized it. It does not require a very long
memory to reach back to the days of slates and slate rags, with their
attendant horrors of sliminess and sucked pencils. In those dark ages,
too, a school-book was used by successive generations of children for as
long as its print was legible to the keenest eye. Lead-pencils were
collected at the end of the day and dealt out again promiscuously, and,
marvellous to reflect upon, several children survived their schooling.
In these days the well-equipped and well-managed school-room is as
sanitary as a hospital ward; sterilizing and fumigating are part of the
regular work, and every book and pencil undergoes such treatment before
being transferred from one child to another. The number of cubic feet of
air, per child, per hour, is calculated and provided for. The designing
of seats for school children is a matter which occupies the attention of
men whose reputation is international, and whole schools of philosophy
busy themselves to determine the sequence in which the different formal
studies shall be presented.
In these halcyon days when Botany doffs her cap and gown and associates
with ordinary mortals in the friendly guise of "How to Know the Wild
Flowers," "Nature's Garden," and other enticing disguises; when
ornithology takes such friendly shapes as "A Kentucky Cardinal" and
"Bird Life"; when physiology becomes "How to Grow Young" and "What Ails
the Baby"; when even political economy reaches the ordinary plane at the
hands of Messrs. Lincoln Steffens, Ray Stannard Baker, and Charles
Edward Russell--we soon expect psychology to burst its academic bonds.
It has already made one or two tentative appearances, and it was
moderately well received; but some day, and soon, a prophet will arise
to preach it with a yet more popular voice.
Then shall mother and teacher sweetly lisp of the "fringe of
apperception," "the stream of consciousness," "inhibition," "ideal motor
action," and "the tabula raza." Psychology has, I am aware, an
unappealing sound. But let no one imagine that it is not or, rather,
cannot be made interesting. We cannot always catch a bird, find a
flower, or unearth a social evil; but every one, under all conditions
and at all times, has a psychology in full working order concealed
about him, and the art of teaching in its last analysis is applied
psychology.
How many mothers have heard of the theory, formulated and vouched for by
most distinguished scientists, that the individual during the normal
progress of his existence passes through the whole history of the
development of his race? That he has, in turn, the instincts and the
wants which animated all his ancestors, from the age of chaos to the day
of the flying-machine? Upon this theory the whole scheme of education is
based. Its essential principle is that if you can catch the child at the
stone-age point of its development, you can then most readily teach him
the rather restricted sum of knowledge by which the stone man steered
his daily course. The difficulty lies in catching what is then most
literally "the psychologic moment," at which a raw root dug up with a
stone hammer will strike the young learner as a square meal.
Any interested outsider will testify that the new baby confirms this
theory. It is an absolute savage. No head-hunter of Borneo could be more
destitute of the "self-knowledge, self-reverence, self-control" which
characterize the civilized man. Observe the small boy taking care of his
small sister, and you will see the spirit of the Inquisition reproduced
in all its ingenuity for torture. Note the length of time which a boy
will spend in a green-shaded swimming-hole on a summer day, and you will
see him dating back to his jelly-fish ancestors. A little girl will
lavish all the passion and absorption of motherhood upon a bath towel
and a croquet-ball. Hundreds of Davids have gone forth against their
Goliaths. Thousands of knights in short stockings have kept the law of
the Table Round. The most pampered of lads and lassies, left to their
own devices, will revert to the cuisine of the cave man and sustain
themselves upon mud pies.
Whole volumes, learned, authoritative, but so far ponderous, have been
devoted to determining the age at which the different impulses which
prompt or qualify human action are added unto the individual. Reason,
honor, self-control, knowledge, religion, the sense of right and wrong
and of responsibility, hate, envy, love, joy--all the forces developed
in the race through immemorial ages--are born and reach maturity in the
individual during the little span of one short life.
Whether this theory be right or wrong, no one can question that it is
interesting and suggestive. It is but one of dozens with which the
teacher is supposed to be at least on speaking terms. There is another
large field of experiment and accomplishment in what is known as the
manual-training movement, the marvellous and so long unrecognized
connection between the development of the hand and the development of
the mind and morals. Any one craving greater marvels than are furnished
in modern romance can find them in the reports of reformatories,
prisons, lunatic asylums, or schools for the defective, in which manual
training has been introduced.
The whole trend of education changed when the "three R's" ceased to be
its war-cry, and it behooves the modern mother to realize this change
and to adapt herself to it. For the school and the home are but two
agencies in the training of the child, two powers which should work
together for good; and the ideal relation between the two is that they
should be as one. It was a very great Teacher who taught that "no man
can serve two masters." Then let the mother conform her rule and her
judgments to the laws of the sister kingdom.
Let her hold, for instance, that the principle of self-activity is
stronger than blind obedience ever was; that emulation as a spur to
effort is the abomination of desolation; that a sound mind in a sound
body is more to be valued than riches; that a keen eye for color and
form, a steady hand to guide a pencil or a tool, a mind alert, eager,
and reasonable, a heart which feels its brotherhood with all living,
growing things, a free, frank speech, a generous nature, and an honest
tongue, are in themselves a Declaration of Independence and a Psalm of
Life.
"GAMES IN GARDENS"
Isaac Borrachsohn, Room 18's only example of the gilded youth, could
never be described as a brilliant scholar, but on a morning in early
April Miss Bailey found him more trying even than was his wont. He was
plainly the centre of some sub-evident interest. First Readers nudged
one another and whispered together, casting awed or envious looks upon
him, and when the hour for recess came he formed the centre of an
excited and gesticulating crowd. But Isaac Borrachsohn had never quite
outgrown his distrust for his Krisht teacher. It was fostered by all his
womankind at home, and was insisted upon almost as an article of faith
by his grandfather the Rabbi. It was not to him, therefore, that Miss
Bailey looked for an explanation of the general excitement, though she
knew that before the day should pass she would hear several accounts of
it.
It was after three o'clock; the prescribed school work was over and
friendly converse was the order of the hour. The Board of Monitors,
closing the door carefully upon the last unofficial First Reader,
gathered solemnly round Teacher and proceeded to relate Isaac
Borrachsohn's saga of his latest adventure.
"He says like that," said Eva Gonorowsky, Monitor of Pencil Points, in
awed and envious tones. "He says he goes by his papa's side in a
carriage on Games in Gardens."
"I guess maybe he lies," Nathan Spiderwitz, Monitor of Window Boxes,
suggested with some disparagement. "I was to Gardens--Summer
Gardens--mit my papa und no games stands in 'em. Stands bottles from
beer und pretzels on'y. I ain't seen nothings like how Ikey says."
"And what does Ikey say?" asked Miss Bailey.
"Well," began Morris Mowgelewsky, Monitor of the Gold Fish Bowl, "Ikey
says Gardens is a house mit thousens und thousens from mans und ladies.
Und they all sets by side theirselves, und they yells somethin' fierce.
Und in Gardens there ain't no upstairs, on'y thousens und thousens from
lights. Ikey says on the Bowery even he ain't never seen how there is
lights in Gardens."
"Yes, dear, Ikey was quite right," said Miss Bailey, beginning to
discern the outline of Madison Square Garden with inter-scholastic
athletic games in progress. "The mans and ladies" were, of course, the
proud parents, sweethearts, relations, and various colleagues, and the
"yells" were their unconfined joy and triumph.
"And flags," supplemented Patrick Brennan, Monitor of Blackboards and
Leader of the Line. "I says to that show-off, Ikey Borrachsohn, 'Is
there any flowers in that garden?' And he says he didn't see none 'cept
what the ladies had on 'em. And all the rest was flags. Flags hangin'
down out of the sky. Flags up in the lights, and everybody wavin' flags.
Gee! It was pretty if it's true."
"It's quite true, dear," Miss Bailey assured him. "I was there one night
last week, and it was just as Isaac says."
"You dun'no all what Ikey says," Morris intervened. "He says a man comes
mit a great big hammer--a awful big hammer mit a long handle. Und he
takes that hammer--Missis Bailey this is how Ikey says--und he makes it
shall go round und round by his head. Und then he takes und he throws
it where some mans stands, und Ikey says he had mad looks, he was red on
the face even, over somethings."
"If any one got fresh with hammers on my pop's beat," Patrick Brennan
interrupted, "they'd get pinched so quick they wouldn't know what struck
'em, and Ikey says they was lots of police officers standin' around
doin' nothin'. Ain't he the liar!"
"Not this time," said Miss Bailey; "he was telling you the truth."
Then Nathan Spiderwitz took up the tale.
"Und sooner that man makes, like Morris says, mit hammers, comes more
mans mit more hammers, und they throws 'em. Und comes more mans mit from
iron balls so big like Ikey's head, und they throws 'em, und the ladies
und the mans they stands und yells, und music plays, und the ladies make
go their flags und scups up und down on their seats. Und the mans mit
those balls und hammers they has awful mads. They is red on the face,
und they tries und they tries--Missis Bailey, Ikey says it's somethin'
fierce how they tries--und they couldn't never to hit nobody."
"They weren't trying to," Miss Bailey tried to explain, but Isaac's
picturesque recital was not lightly to be effaced.
[Illustration: "I guess games in gardens ain't so awful healthy for
somebody," said Yetta]
"I guess games in gardens ain't so awful healthy for somebody," was
Yetta Aaronsohn's pronouncement. "My mamma says you could to make
yourself a sickness sooner you runs awful hard, on'y Ikey, he says a
whole bunch from mans und boys they chases theirselves like an'thing.
They runs und they runs, und all the times the mans und the ladies scups
und yells und makes go their flags. Ikey says it looks like a awful
fight is comin', on'y these boys und mans they couldn't never run to
catch theirselves, und so there ain't no fight. Ikey had a awful sad
over it."
It was evident all through this recital that Eva Gonorowsky had a
communication of a more important and confidential nature upon her
conscientious little mind. When at last the other Monitors had scattered
to their duties, and Room 18 was in a satisfactory stage midway 'twixt
chaos and order, Eva drew Miss Bailey into the corner between the window
and the bookcase.
"Nobody ain't told you _all_ what Ikey says," she whispered, with much
the same gusto as she had seen her elders display as they gathered close
about the very heart of a scandal. "Everybody has fraids over telling
you."
"Afraid!" repeated Miss Bailey in surprise, well knowing this to be the
last feeling she inspired. "Afraid to tell me!"
"Teacher, yiss, ma'am. They has fraids. It's somethin' fierce what Ikey
says. He says like that: all those mans what couldn't to catch nothings
und couldn't to hit nothings. He says somethin' fierce over all those
mans." And here Eva pressed her professionally soiled hand over her
mouth and regarded Miss Bailey with scandalized eyes.
"Go on, dear," said Miss Bailey encouragingly. "If Isaac has told you
and Morris and the others I might as well know it too."
Eva removed her hand. "Ikey Borrachsohn, he dun'no what is polite for
him," she made reply. "He tells it on everybody--in the yard even, where
the babies is--he tells it out. He needs he shall get hit off of
somebody."
"Now you tell me," said Miss Bailey, "and I'll see about Isaac."
"He says," whispered Eva, "how all those mans they don't puts them on
_like_ mans mit suits und hats und pants und coats--no, ma'am, that
ain't how they makes--they puts them on like ladies und like little
girls. On'y," and Miss Bailey had to stoop to catch this last
overwhelming sentence--"on'y they don't puts them on so much."
"Why of course not, Eva," answered Miss Bailey, repressing with stern
effort an inclination to wild laughter. This repression she knew to be
the corner-stone of the First Reader's faith in her. She never, openly,
laughed at their little confidences. She was a serious-minded person,
always ready to discuss a serious problem seriously. Quite gravely now
she pointed out to Eva the difficulty of violent exertion in street
attire.
"You yourself," she amplified, "take off your coat and hat when you come
to school, and yet you only read and write a little, and do quiet things
like that. Now these men and boys, dear, that Isaac Borrachsohn has been
telling about were running and exercising just as hard as they could;
you know how hot we sometimes get here when we only stand in our places
and exercise our arms and legs."
Eva was impressed, but not yet quite convinced.
"It ain't," she insisted, a gentle last word, unanswerable,
overwhelming, "it ain't hats und coats what Ikey Borrachsohn says them
mens in Gardens takes off."
* * * * *
Misunderstandings of this sort are a natural part of the order of the
day in class rooms such as Room 18, where children, alien to every
American custom, and prejudiced by religion and precept against most of
them, are undergoing their training in citizenship. Generations of
muffling and swaddling were behind Eva's shocked little face. Her
ancestors had not taken their recreation in running or rowing or
swimming. And the scene at Madison Square Garden was as foreign to the
First Readers' traditions as a warm afternoon in Athens during the age
of Pericles would have been to a New England spinster. It was the sort
of misunderstanding which must be faced instantly, and immediately after
assembly on the next morning Miss Bailey faced it.
"Isaac Borrachsohn has told you all," she commenced pleasantly,
marshalling the wavering eyes before her with her own, steady and clear,
"of how he went to Madison Square Garden with his father and saw the
games."
Isaac squirmed in his place.
"And he told you," she continued, "how he saw men and boys running
races, and trying how far they could throw a big heavy hammer and a big
iron ball. Isaac didn't quite understand what they were doing, but they
were not trying to hit any one, and not trying to catch one another, and
there was no thought at all of a fight. The boy who ran fastest got a
prize, the boy who threw the hammer farthest got a prize. And there were
a great many other prizes for jumping and all kinds of things. And," she
continued, redoubling the concentration in her eyes, "did Isaac tell you
how those boys were dressed?"
A gasp and a shiver swept through Room 18.
"Well, if he didn't, I will. They wore the very lightest clothes they
could get. They wanted to be free and cool. They couldn't run fast or
jump far with all their heavy every-day clothes on. Exercise makes
people very warm, you know. It was a great help to those boys to be
dressed in cool white clothes.
"I was at the games," she continued, "as I was telling some of the boys
yesterday afternoon, and I enjoyed them ever so much. I was just wishing
that you were all there too. The girls could have sat with me, and the
boys could have run in the ring. I've watched you all playing in the
yard, and I know what good runners some of you are. And then when they
gave you prizes we, the girls and I, would have waved our flags and
cheered just like the ladies Isaac told you about. Now wouldn't that be
grand?" she cried, and the First Readers vociferously agreed with her,
though Yetta Aaronsohn, the hypochondriacal, was still of the opinion
that "wind on the legs ain't healthy for nobody."
Cold indeed would be the heart of any masculine First Reader who could
see, unmoved, the picture conjured up of Teacher's words. They were well
accustomed to impromptu races, run on a course all thick beset with
push-carts, ash cans, and humanity. Other tests of physical strength,
with the exception by an occasional hand-to-hand conflict, neither
determined, scientific, nor conclusive, were practically unknown. But to
run on a prepared course surrounded by a stationary and admiring
audience, of which Miss Bailey and the feminine First Readers formed an
important part, was quite a different thing. Then, too, "prizes" was an
alluring word. Teacher had shown it to mean articles of price and
great attractiveness. The "clean-hands-for-a-week" prize, won by
Sadie Gonorowsky, with Isidore Applebaum as a close second, had
been a little clasp pin of the American flag in enamel, and the
"cleanest-shoes-for-a-month" prize had been a pair of roller skates.
The masculine element of the Room 18's Board of Monitors met that
afternoon in the cellar of a recently burned tenement to discuss the
situation. If it would pleasure Miss Bailey to see her adherents racing
round a garden in abbreviated costumes, there was, they decided, no very
serious reason against giving her that pleasure. It was only a shade
more unreasonable than other desires of hers to which they had bent
their energies, and since there was question of reward, it became even
more a duty and a pleasure to oblige her.
"But we ain't got no Gardens," Nathan Spiderwitz pointed out.
"We'll use my yard," said Patrick. "When me mother has company she
always calls our yard a garden. It's got a tree in it, and we can get
some flags to hang on the clothes line. I was askin' me big brother last
night, and he knows all about them games. He'll tell us mor'n Ikey
Borrachsohn can about how the thing goes, and when we get it fixed just
right, we'll have Miss Bailey and the girls come round some Saturday
morning and see us run and jump. Say, it'll be great! I can run faster
than any feller in the class; an' I bet I can jump higher too, an' I bet
I can throw things farther, too, an' I bet I can lick ye all
pole-vaultin', too. Me brother was tellin' me about that."
"I don't know what is 'pole-vaultin' even," said Morris, and asked with
some natural curiosity what parts he and other possible competitors were
to take in these Games in Gardens.
"Oh, you," answered Patrick, with happy condescension, "you all is goin'
to get licked. That's what you're goin' to do. Don't you worry."
But this role did not appeal strongly to either of his colleagues.
"I don't know do I likes gettin' licked," Morris objected with some
reason.
"Und I don't know _will_ I get licked," said Nathan Spiderwitz, the
valorous. "I jumped once, und I run too. I jumped off of a wagon. A
awful big grocery wagon, mit crackers on it. Und I jumped when it was
goin'. Und I run like an'thin'."
"You was throwed off," taunted Patrick, "you was throwed off by the man
when he seen you hookin' crackers."
"Ye lie," said Nathan frankly. "I jumped as soon as he seen me, und I
guess I can jump some more. You ain't the only boy what can run und
jump, you old-show-of-freshy Irisher."
It was with difficulty that the peaceful Monitor of the Gold Fish Bowl
restored harmony, and time was added unto difficulty before the Games in
Gardens were satisfactorily arranged.
Had it been possible to consult Miss Bailey, all would have been plain
and simple sailing. She was the First Reader's home port, but she was
now blockaded for her own benefit. The suggestions of Patrick's big
brother were overwhelming and technical. And Isaac Borrachsohn, through
constant questionings, grew at once so extravagant and so hazy in his
recollections as to be practically useless. Patrick's mother, when
applied to for a morning's use of her yard, was curt and kind.
"Use it if ye will," said she, "but don't clutter it, an' don't fall out
of me pear tree."
It was at about the time of the densest discouragement that Miss Bailey,
all unknowing, came to their relief. She brought to Room 18 and passed
about among the First Readers a copy of an illustrated "Weekly"
containing pictures of the later and more important contest than that
which Isaac had witnessed. And Ignatius Aloysius Diamentstein, by that
time admitted to the track team, appropriated it at the lunch hour, and
thereafter it served as "The Complete Guide to Games in Gardens."
The day was set. A Saturday morning in late May. The guests in ordinary
were invited. In other words the feminine First Readers had been told
that they would be admitted to Patrick Brennan's yard at ten o'clock on
that May morning, on condition that each would bring a flag and say
nothing to the uninvited boys. The free-for-all spirit was not endorsed
by Patrick, and the contestants were only seven, picked and chosen, be
it said, with a nice adjustment to Patrick's own prowess, for "I ain't
goin' to be licked in me own yard," had been his steadfast determination
throughout.
Nathan Spiderwitz was given to inspirations always inconvenient and
distressing. He experienced one at this eleventh hour when all the
arrangements were completed, and it remained only to invite the guest of
honor.
"Who gives the prizes?" he demanded, as he and Patrick were
superintending the construction of a grand stand made of soap-boxes and
a broken sofa. "Where is the prizes, and who gives 'em?" he repeated.
"Mind your own business," was Patrick's useful answer. It showed a bold
front and left time for thought.
"Who gives 'em?" insisted Nathan.
"Don't _you_ worry 'bout prizes," muttered Patrick darkly, "they ain't
none of _your_ business. You got a swell chanst to git any prizes in my
yard. Not when I'm in it, ye don't."
Thus with Nathan. But with Morris he was more frank.
"There's one thing," said he, when he found that crack long-jumper in
the boys' yard at luncheon time, "what I'm going to let _you_ do."
"Is it nice for me?" queried the Custodian of Gold Fish.
"Great!" answered Patrick. "I'm goin' to let ye ast Miss Bailey to the
party."
Morris glowed with pride and importance. "I likes that," he breathed.
"Well, you can do it. Ye don't want to tell her what kind of a party it
is. Just go up to her after school and say that 'we invites her to come
to my yard at ten o'clock in the mornin', and bring seven prizes with
her.'"
"Oh--oh-h-h! I couldn't to say nothings like that," Morris remonstrated.
"I guess you don't know what is polite. I don't know has Missis Bailey
got seven prizes."
"She'll get 'em all right, all right," Patrick assured him; "ain't she
always givin' 'em around? You just tell her 'ten o'clock and seven
prizes.' It's all right, I tell you. I could'a showed ye the picture on
that paper of a lady standin' up givin' out the prizes. An' Miss
Bailey's the only lady goin' to be there."
"It ain't polite," Morris maintained. But he had during these last
athletic weeks broken so many of his canons and his laws that he
accepted this last command with more docility than Patrick had expected.
"A party!" cried Miss Bailey, "now isn't that nice? And for to-morrow
morning. Of course I'll be there. And what kind of a party is it to be,
dear?"
"It's something you says you likes you shall see. Und on the party you
shall see it. Und you shall have a s'prise over it."
"You grow more interesting every moment," said Teacher. "Tell me more. I
love surprises."
"There ain't no more," Morris answered, "on'y," and he took his
conversational running-jump, "on'y maybe you shall bring seven prizes
mit. I says maybe you ain't got seven prizes. On'y Patrick says I shall
say it out like that, 'you shall come on the party und bring seven
prizes.'"
"Seven!" reflected Teacher. "That is rather a large order, but I think I
can manage it. Have you any idea, Morris, of what kind they should be?"
"Teacher, yiss, ma'am," Morris answered, "'fer-boys' prizes."
"I think I understand," and Miss Bailey smiled at him. "You may tell
Patrick that I and 'seven fer-boys' prizes' will be at his house in the
morning."
She regarded the subject as closed. Not so Morris. Through all the
succeeding occupations of the afternoon an idea persisted with him, and
when the Teacher left the building at last she found him waiting for her
on the wide steps.
"You want me, dear?" she asked.
"I shall tell you somethings," Morris began in evident embarrassment.
"Yes, dear."
"It's over those prizes."
"Yes, Morris."
"Miss Bailey, it's like this. You don't need to care sooner you ain't
got on'y _six_ prizes. Seven prizes I guess costs bunches und bunches
from money. So six prizes comes on Patrick's yard, that's all right.
Stands one boy what don't needs no prize."
"He must be a strange little boy," commented Teacher. "I never before
heard of a boy who didn't like prizes."
"Oh, he likes 'em; _how_ he likes 'em. I ain't said he ain't got
feelin's over 'em. On'y it's like this: he don't needs you shall buy
prizes for him the whiles you got to buy six prizes already."
"I think I understand, dear," Teacher answered, and she set out for the
shopping district and bought six prizes of great glitter and little
worth. But the seventh was such a watch as a boy might use and treasure
through all the years of his boyhood.
The great day dawned bright and clear. Miss Bailey's entrance, punctual
and parcel-laden, in a festive frilly frock and a flowery hat, caused
something almost like silence to fall upon the scene of the coming
tournament. Eva Gonorowsky clasped Teacher's unoccupied hand, Sarah
Schodsky and Yetta Aaronsohn relieved her of her bundles. Sadie
Gonorowsky gesticulated madly from the place upon the sofa which she was
reserving with all the expanse of her outspread skirt.
Teacher approached the grand stand and took her place. The feminine
First Readers swarmed upon the soap boxes. But neither leg nor arm nor
even eye was moved by the seven masculine First Readers drawn up in the
centre of the yard. Flags waved in such profusion and such uniformity
that even Miss Bailey's obligation to her hosts could not blind her to
the fact that she had at last found the fifty-two American flags pasted
together by the First Reader Class when Washington's Birthday was in the
air and the offing. Two weeks ago she had missed them out of the
cupboard, and neither janitor nor Monitor could give her tidings of
them. They looked very well, she was forced to admit, dangling from high
fence and clothes line. And very bright and joyant was the whole scene.
The little girls in their bright colors. The sky so blue. Mrs. Brennan's
pear tree in sturdy bloom. All was brilliant with a sense of Spring save
the seven dark-clothed figures in the centre of the yard.
"Can you guess what kind from party it is?" shrieked Sadie Gonorowsky
from the top of a tottering soap box to which she had withdrawn.
"Why, it's--" Teacher began, recognizing some elements of the scene, but
made uncertain by the seven dark little figures, "of course it's----"
"It's 'Games in Gardens,'" shouted the little girls, waving their flags
like mad and "scupping" so energetically that two disappeared, "it's
Games in Gardens, und you're goin' to have a s'prise."
One of the dark and silent figures found speech and motion.
"Set down an' shut up," commanded Patrick Brennan. "We're goin' to
begin."
The shutting up would have been effected automatically by the next
proceeding of the seven. They laid violent hands upon themselves and in
an instant a flat little heap of dark clothes marked the centre of the
yard, and Patrick Brennan, Ignatius Aloysius Diamentstein, Isidore
Applebaum, Nathan Spiderwitz, Isidore Wishnewsky, Isaac Belchatosky, and
Morris Mowgelewsky stood forth in costumes reported by Isaac
Borrachsohn, sanctioned by Miss Bailey, and owned by members of the
audience.
A moment of tense silence followed. Every eye sought Teacher, and
Constance Bailey knew that upon her first word or look depended success
or failure, pride or everlasting shame. There was no time to wonder how
the mistake arose. No time to remember what she had said that could
possibly have been interpreted to mean this. They were her gallant
little knights doing her uncomprehended bidding, and trying--at what
sacrifice she guessed--to pleasure their liege lady.
Again she had blundered. Again she had failed to quite bridge the
distance. The wrong word lay somewhere back in her effort to undo Isaac
Borrachsohn's mischief. And she had wrought mischief ten times worse.
The most devoted of her charges stood there in the clear May sunshine;
the funniest, most pathetic, most ridiculous little figures, with their
thin little arms and legs and their long little necks: proud,
embarrassed, wistful.
"My dear boys," she cried suddenly, "how fine you look! How beautiful
and--and--clean you are," she went on a little bit at random. "And now
we are going to have games, and the girls and I will cheer the winners."
"Be ye s'prised?" yelled Patrick in irrepressible pride.
"Dreadfully!" she answered. "Dreadfully, Patrick dear."
"Then we'll begin," answered the master of ceremonies. "_One_, git in
yer places! _Two_, fer a show! _Three_, to make ready! And _four_ to
_GO_."
Upon his final word the "Games in Gardens" began. The two Isidores and
Ignatius Aloysius Diamentstein rushed madly round the yard. Patrick
tried to urge the others to follow, but Morris had elected the long
jump--and the long jump he would perform, all protests to the contrary
notwithstanding. Nathan Spiderwitz grasped the clothes pole and vaulted
with great accuracy into the left wing of the grand stand. Isaac
Belchatosky had secured a dilapidated ball from an abandoned
bowling-alley, and he "put the shot" in all directions to his own
satisfaction and the audience's terror until run into and overturned by
Ignatius Aloysius Diamentstein.
Shrill cries went up from the audience. The two boys arose unhurt, but
the feelings of Bertha Binderwitz and Eva Kidansky were not thereby
soothed.
"I guess I gets killed off of my mamma," wailed Bertha when she saw that
one whole side of Isaac Belchatosky was smeared with mud. And when
Nathan Spiderwitz was reclaimed from the soap boxes, with a long piece
of cambric ruffle trailing behind him, Sadie Gonorowsky fell into such
an agony of apprehension that Miss Bailey felt called upon for a promise
to repair the damage ere another sun should set. Meantime Patrick was
not idle. Disdaining competition, he went through all the "events," one
after another until the perspiration was thick upon his forehead, and
Eva Gonorowsky was trembling with excitement.
"My mamma don't know," she informed Miss Bailey over and over again. But
owing perhaps to her watchful care, perhaps to a natural aptitude for
athletics, Patrick escaped unspotted and unscathed.
He turned hand-springs upon the heap of clothes. He stood upon his head
upon the same rostrum until his eyes bulged, and Miss Bailey implored
him to desist. He wrested the shot from Isidore Wishnewsky, a person of
no spirit, and then he "put" it neatly into the waist line of its owner,
who promptly sat back gasping.
"Don't you dast to set, Isidore Wishnewsky," shrilled Sarah Schodsky in
a panic. "I guess you dunno what is polite for you. Sooner somebody
lends you somethings it ain't polite you should set on it! Ain't it
fierce how he makes, Missis Bailey?"
"It is a little rude," Miss Bailey admitted in a voice as unsteady as
Isidore Wishnewsky.
"I never in my world seen how they all makes," said Yetta Aaronsohn,
that authority on Hygiene and the Care of the Body. "They could to make
themselves awful sicknesses over it--home sicknesses, even, und
lay-on-the-bed sicknesses, und comes-the-doctor sicknesses."
"Oh, I hope not!" Teacher rallied the pessimistic Yetta, "though they
certainly do seem to be getting very tired."
By this time the track team of the First Reader Class had exhausted
itself and its repertoire, and came forward, hot but confident, for its
laurels. There was something for each one, and for each a little word
of special commendation. And if Teacher's voice was more tender, her
eyes more gentle when Morris's turn came, she still was gentle and
tender enough with all of them.
At the end she made a short address to victors and audience alike. She
thanked them for their great effort to give her pleasure, and for the
great pleasure they had given her, and then added:
"When I brought your prizes this morning I had no idea what the party
was to be like, and so of course I didn't get just what I would have
given you if I had known. But now that I do know how wonderfully our
boys can jump and run, I shall bring for each boy on Monday morning a
regular running suit, and whenever you have 'Games in Gardens' again you
won't have to borrow anything. Perhaps the Principal would like you to
have 'Games in Gardens' on the roof some afternoon, and you could
invite the other classes. I am sure they'd love it."
[Illustration: "I never in my world seen how they all makes"]
"You liked it all right, all right, didn't you, Teacher?" demanded
Patrick.
"Liked it!" she echoed. "Why, I was simply delighted."
"Und s'prised?" questioned Morris.
"I was never more so in all my long, long life," answered Constance
Bailey with entire conviction.
"A BRAND FROM THE BURNING"
"Where did you get him?" said the Principal.
"In the back yard of one of those double-deckers down by the river,"
answered the Truant Officer. "Ain't he the bird!" he added in
professional enthusiasm. "I've been chasing him for two or three days.
He's just about as easy to handle as an eel, and to-day he bit me as we
were coming along. He's a beauty, he is!"
"And you say he doesn't speak Yiddish?" queried the Principal.
"He don't speak the kind I do," the other answered. "I get on all right
with the rest of the folks around here, and I certainly never expected
to have trouble rounding up a kid that ain't knee-high to a
grasshopper. No, you don't, sonny!" he broke off as his charge was
sliding toward the door. "You've got to stay here now and have a nice
lady learn you how to read and write and cipher."
The boy looked up at his captor with the wide, desperate eyes of an
animal at bay, recognizing his helplessness, but determined to bite and
fight to the very end.
"Will you look at that now?" the Truant Officer exclaimed; "he thinks
every one's going to hurt him. That's the way some of those kids feel."
"Oh, he'll soon get over that here," the Principal laughed. "I've seen
them much wilder on their first appearance. The teachers know how to
handle them."