Little Citizens: The Humours of School Life Part 21

"Sure could you," Eva repeated solemnly. "There ain't no place where you couldn't to go mit it."

"I'll go on the country," said Yetta.

That evening Mrs. Aaronsohn joined her neighbours upon the doorstep for the first time in seven years. For Yetta was lost. The neighbours were comforting but not resourceful. They all knew Yetta; knew her to be sensible and mature for her years even according to the exacting standard of the East Side. She would presently return, they a.s.sured the distraught Mrs. Aaronsohn, and pending that happy event they entertained her with details of the wanderings and home comings of their own offspring. But Yetta did not come. The reminiscent mothers talked themselves into silence, the deserted babies cried themselves to sleep. Mrs. Aaronsohn carried them up to bed--she hardly knew the outer aspect of her own door--and returned to the then deserted doorstep to watch for her first-born. One by one the lights were extinguished, the sewing-machines stopped, and the restless night of the quarter closed down. She was afraid to go even as far as the corner in search of the fugitive. She could not have recognized the house which held her home.

All her hopes were centered in the coming of Miss Bailey. When the children of happier women were setting out for school she demanded and obtained from one of them safe conduct to Room 18. But Teacher, when Eva Gonorowsky had interpreted the tale of Yetta's disappearance, could suggest no explanation.

"She was with me until half-past three. Then she and Eva walked with me to the corner. Did she tell you, dear, where she was going?"

"Teacher, yiss ma'an. She says she goes on the country for see her papa und birds und flowers."

When this was put into Jewish for Mrs. Aaronsohn she was neither comforted nor rea.s.sured. Miss Bailey was puzzled but undismayed. "We'll find her," she promised the now tearful mother. "I shall go with you to look for her. Say that in Jewish for me, Eva."

The Princ.i.p.al lent a subst.i.tute. Room 18 was deserted by its sovereign: the pencils were deserted by their monitor: and Mrs. Aaronsohn, Miss Bailey and Eva Gonorowsky, official interpreter, set out for the nearest drug-store where a telephone might be. They inspected several unclaimed children before, in the station of a precinct many weary blocks away, they came upon Yetta. She was more dirty and bedraggled than she had ever been, but the charm of her manner was unchanged and, suspended about her neck, she wore a policeman's b.u.t.ton.

"One of the men brought her in here at ten o'clock last night," the man behind the blotter informed Miss Bailey, while Mrs. Aaronsohn showered abuse and caress upon the wanderer. "She was straying around the Bowery and she gave us a great game of talk about her father bein'

a bird. I guess he is."

"My papa und birds is on the country. I likes I shall go there," said Yetta from the depths of her mother's embrace.

"There, that's what she tells everyone. She has a card there with a Christian name and no address on it. I was going to try to identify her by looking for this Miss Constance Bailey."

"That is my name. I am her teacher. I gave her the card because--"

"I'm monitors. I should go all places what I wants the while I'm good girls und Teacher writes it on pieces from paper. On'y I ain't want I should come on no cops' house. I likes I should go on the country for see my papa und birds und flowers. I says like that on a cop--I shows him the paper even--und he makes I shall come here on the cops'

house where my papa don't stands und birds don't stands und flowers don't stands."

"When next you want to go to the country," said Teacher, "you ought to let us know. You have frightened us all dreadfully and that is a very naughty thing to do. If you ever run away again I shall have to keep the promise I made to you long and long ago when you used to come late to school. I shall have to tolerate you."

But Yetta was undismayed. "I ain't got no more a scare over that,"

said she with a soft smile towards the bra.s.s-b.u.t.toned person behind the blotter. "Und I ain't got no scare over cops neither; I never in mine world seen how they makes all things what is polite mit me und gives me I should eat."

"Well," cautioned Teacher "you must never do it again," and turned her attention to the very erratic spelling of Sergeant Moloney's official record of the flight of Yetta Aaronsohn.

"Say," whispered Eva, and there was a tinge of jealousy in her soft voice; "say, who gives you the b.u.t.ton like Patrick Brennan's got?"

"THE COP," answered Yetta, pointing a dirty but reverential finger towards her new divinity. "I guess maybe I turns me the dress around.

b.u.t.toned-in-front-mit-from-gold-b.u.t.ton-suits is awful stylish. He's got 'em."

"Think shame how you says," cried Eva, with loyal eyes upon the neatly b.u.t.toned and all unsuspecting back of Miss Bailey, "Ain't you seen how is Teacher's back?"

"Ain't I monitors off of it?" demanded Yetta. "Sure I know how is it.

On'y I don't know be they so stylish. Cops ain't got 'em und, oh Eva, Cops is somethin' grand! I turns me the dress around."

THE TOUCH OF NATURE

"There is," wrote the authorities with a rare enthusiasm, "no greater power for the mental, moral and physical uplifting of the Child than a knowledge and an appreciation of the Beauties of Nature. It is the duty and the privilege of the teacher to bring this elevating influence into the lives of the children for whom she is responsible."

There are not many of the Beauties of Nature to be found on the lower East Side of New York, and Miss Bailey found this portion of her duty full of difficulty. Excursions were out of the question, and she discovered that specimens conveyed but crudely erroneous ideas to the minds of her little people. She was growing discouraged at the halting progress of the First Reader Cla.s.s in Natural Science, when, early in October, the Princ.i.p.al ushered into Room 18, Miss Eudora Langdon, Lecturer on Biology and Nature Study in a Western university, a shining light in the world of education, and an orator in her own conceit.

"I shall leave Miss Langdon with you for a short time, Miss Bailey,"

said the Princ.i.p.al when the introductions had been accomplished. "She is interested in the questions which are troubling you, and would like to speak to the children if you have no objection."

"Surely none," replied Miss Bailey; and when the Princ.i.p.al had retired to interview parents and book-agents, she went on: "I find it difficult to make Nature Study real to the children. They regard it all as fairy-lore."

"Ah, yes," the visitor admitted; "it does require some skill. You should appeal to their sense of the beautiful."

"But I greatly fear," said Teacher sadly, "that the poor babies know very little about beauty."

"Then develop the ideal," cried Miss Langdon, and the eyes behind her gla.s.ses shone with zeal. "Begin this very day. Should you like me to open up a topic?"

"If you will be so very good," said Teacher, with some covert amus.e.m.e.nt, and Miss Langdon, laying her note-book on the desk, turned to address the cla.s.s. Immediately Nathan Spiderwitz, always on the alert for bad news, started a rumour which spread from desk to desk--"Miss Bailey could to be goin' away. This could be a new teacher."

"My dears," Miss Eudora began, with deliberate and heavy coyness; "I'm _so_ fond of little children! I've always loved them. That's why your kind Princ.i.p.al brought me here to talk to you. Now, wasn't that good of him?"

At this confirmation of their fears the First Reader Cla.s.s showed so moderate a joy that Miss Langdon hurried on: "And what would you like me to tell you about?"

"Lions," said Patrick Brennan promptly. "Big hairy lions with teeth."

The visitor paused almost blankly while the children brightened. Miss Bailey struggled with a rebellious laugh, but Miss Langdon recovered quickly.

"I shall tell you," she began serenely, "about Beauty. Beauty is one of the greatest things in the world. Beauty makes us strong. Beauty makes us happy. I want you all to think--think hard--and tell me what we can do to make our lives more beautiful."

Fifty-eight pairs of troubled eyes sought inspiration in the face of the rightful sovereign. Fifty-eight little minds wrestled dumbly.

"Well, I suppose I must help you," said Miss Eudora with elephantine sprightliness. "Now, children, in the first place you must always read beautiful books; then, always look at beautiful things; and lastly, always think beautiful thoughts."

"Miss Langdon," Teacher gently interposed, "these children cannot read very much--twenty-five words perhaps--and for the majority of them, poor little things, this school-room is the prettiest place in the world."

"Oh, that's all right. My text is right there," said the visitor, with a nod towards a tree, the only large one in the district, which was visible through the window. It had not yet lost its leaves, and a shower during the preceding night had left it pa.s.sably green. Turning to the children, now puzzled into fretful unhappiness, she clasped her hands, closed her eyes in rapture, and proceeded:

"You all know how Beauty helps you. How it strengthens you for your work. Why, in the morning when you come to school you see a beautiful thing which cheers you for the whole day. Now, see if you can't tell me what it is."

Another heavy silence followed and Miss Langdon turned again to Teacher.

"Don't you teach them by the Socratic method?" she asked loftily.

"Oh, yes," Miss Bailey replied, and then, with a hospitable desire to make her guest feel quite at home, she added: "But facts must be closely correlated with their thought-content. Their apperceiving basis is not large."

"Ah, yes; of course," said the expert vaguely, but with a new consideration, and then to the waiting cla.s.s: "Children, the beautiful thing I'm thinking of is green. Can't you think of something green and beautiful which you see every morning?"

Eva Gonorowsky's big brown eyes fixed solemnly upon Teacher, flamed with sudden inspiration, and Teacher stiffened with an equally sudden fear. For smoothly starched and green was her whole shirtwaist, and carefully tied and green was her neat stock.

Eva whispered jubilantly to Morris Mogilewsky, and another rumour swept the ranks. Intelligence flashed into face after face, and Miss Bailey knew that her fear was not unfounded, for, though Miss Langdon was waving an explanatory arm towards the open window, the gaze of the First Reader Cla.s.s, bright with appreciation and amus.e.m.e.nt, was fixed on its now distracted teacher.