"No, I won't take him. I tell you his language is awful. I can't let the other children hear him."

"But I shall see that he swears no more. We taught him for a joke. I'll stop him."

"I'm afraid you can't."

"Well, you try him. Try him for two weeks. He is a good boy; he will swear no more."

"Very well," was Teacher's ungracious acquiescence; "I shall try him again. And if he should swear—"

"You will not wash out his mouth—"

"I shall, and this time I shall use hot water and sapolio and washing soda."

Mr. Borrachsohn smiled blandly and turned to explain this dictum to his clan. And the dazed Miss Bailey saw the anger and antagonism die out of the faces before her and the roses above them, heard Mr. Borrachsohn's gentle, "We would be much obliged if you will so much accommodate us," saw the Rabbi lift grateful eyes to the ceiling and clasp his hands, saw Mrs. Borrachsohn brush away a tear of joy, and felt Isaac's soft and damp little palm placed within her own by the hand of his royal sire, saw the jetted capes, the flounced skirts, and befeathered hats follow the blue and brass buttons of the janitor, the broadcloth of the Assemblyman and the alpaca of the Rabbi, heard the door close with a triumphant bang, saw the beaming face of the returning janitor, and heard his speech of congratulation:

"I heard it all; I was afraid to leave you alone with them. Will you excuse me, Miss Bailey, if I just pass the remark that you're a living wonder?"

Still densely puzzled and pondering as to whether she could hope ever to understand these people, she sought the Principal and told him the whole story. "And now why," she asked, "did he make such a fuss about the washing only to yield without a struggle at the end?"

The Principal laughed. "You are mistaken," said he. "Mr. Borrachsohn gained his point and you most gracefully capitulated."

"I," cried Teacher; "I yield to that horrid man! Never! I said I should use soda and sapolio—"

"Precisely," the Principal acquiesced. "And both soda and sapolio are kosher—lawful, clean. Miss Bailey, oh, Miss Bailey, you can never be haughty and lofty again, for you met 'that horrid man' in open battle and went weakly down before him."



THE LAND OF HEART'S DESIRE



Isaac Borrachsohn, that son of potentates and of Assemblymen, had been taken to Central Park by a proud uncle. For weeks thereafter he was the favourite bard of the First Reader Class and an exceeding great trouble to its sovereign, Miss Bailey, who found him now as garrulous as he had once been silent. There was no subject in the Course of Study to which he could not correlate the wonders of his journey, and Teacher asked herself daily and in vain whether it were more pedagogically correct to encourage "spontaneous self-expression" or to insist upon "logically essential sequence."

But the other members of the class suffered no such uncertainty. They voted solidly for spontaneity in a self which found expression thus:

"Und in the Central Park stands a water-lake, und in the water-lake stands birds—a big all of birds—und fishes. Und sooner you likes you should come over the water-lake you calls a bird, und you sets on the bird, und the bird makes go his legs, und you comes over the water-lake."

"They could to be awful polite birds," Eva Gonorowsky was beginning when Morris interrupted with:

"I had once a auntie und she had a bird, a awful polite bird; on'y sooner somebody calls him he couldn't to come the while he sets in a cage."

"Did he have a rubber neck?" Isaac inquired, and Morris reluctantly admitted that he had not been so blessed.

"In the Central Park," Isaac went on, "all the birds is got rubber necks."

"What colour from birds be they?" asked Eva.

"All colours. Blue und white und red und yellow."

"Und green," Patrick Brennan interjected determinedly. "The green ones is the best."

"Did you go once?" asked Isaac, slightly disconcerted.

"Naw, but I know. Me big brother told me."

"They could to be stylish birds, too," said Eva wistfully. "Stylish und polite. From red und green birds is awful stylish for hats."

"But these birds is big. Awful big! Mans could to ride on 'em und ladies und boys."

"Und little girls, Ikey? Ain't they fer little girls?" asked the only little girl in the group. And a very small girl she was, with a softly gentle voice and darkly gentle eyes fixed pleadingly now upon the bard.

"Yes," answered Isaac grudgingly; "sooner they sets by somebody's side little girls could to go. But sooner nobody holds them by the hand they could to have fraids over the rubber-neck-boat-birds und the water-lake, und the fishes."

"What kind from fishes?" demanded Morris Mogilewsky, Monitor of Miss Bailey's Gold-Fish Bowl, with professional interest.

"From gold fishes und red fishes und black fishes"—Patrick stirred uneasily and Isaac remembered—"und green fishes; the green ones is the biggest; und blue fishes und all kinds from fishes. They lives way down in the water the while they have fraids over the rubber-neck-boat- birds. Say, what you think? Sooner a rubber-neck-boat-bird needs he should eat he longs down his neck und eats a from gold fish."

"'Out fryin'?" asks Eva, with an incredulous shudder.

"Yes, 'out fryin'. Ain't I told you little girls could to have fraids over 'em? Boys could to have fraids too," cried Isaac; and then spurred on by the calm of his rival, he added: "The rubber-neck-boat-birds they hollers somethin' fierce."

"I wouldn't be afraid of them. Me pop's a cop," cried Patrick stoutly. "I'd just as lief set on 'em. I'd like to."

"Ah, but you ain't seen 'em, und you ain't heard 'em holler," Isaac retorted.

"Well, I'm goin' to. An' I'm goin' to see the lions an' the tigers an' the el'phants, an' I'm goin' to ride on the water-lake."

"Oh, how I likes I should go too!" Eva broke out. O-o-oh, how I likes I should look on them things! On'y I don't know do I need a ride on somethings what hollers. I don't know be they fer me."

"Well, I'll take ye with me if your mother leaves you go," said Patrick grandly. "An' ye can hold me hand if ye're scared."

"Me too?" implored Morris. "Oh, Patrick, c'n I go too?"

"I guess so," answered the Leader of the Line graciously. But he turned a deaf ear to Isaac Borrachsohn's implorings to be allowed to join the party. Full well did Patrick know of the grandeur of Isaac's holiday attire and the impressionable nature of Eva's soul, and gravely did he fear that his own Sunday finery, albeit fashioned from the blue cloth and brass buttons of his sire, might be outshone.

At Eva's earnest request, Sadie, her cousin, was invited, and Morris suggested that the Monitor of the Window Boxes should not be slighted by his colleagues of the goldfish and the line. So Nathan Spiderwitz was raised to Alpine heights of anticipation by visions of a window box "as big as blocks and streets," where every plant, in contrast to his lanky charges, bore innumerable blossoms. Ignatius Aloysius Diamantstein was unanimously nominated a member of the expedition; by Patrick, because they were neighbours at St. Mary's Sunday-school; by Morris, because they were classmates under the same Rabbi at the synagogue; by Nathan, because Ignatius Aloysius was a member of the "Clinton Street gang"; by Sadie, because he had "long pants sailor suit"; by Eva, because the others wanted him.

Eva reached home that afternoon tingling with anticipation and uncertainty. What if her mother, with one short word, should close forever the gates of joy and boat-birds? But Mrs. Gonorowsky met her small daughter's elaborate plea with the simple question:

"Who pays you the car-fare?"

"Does it need car-fare to go?" faltered Eva.

"Sure does it," answered her mother. "I don't know how much, but some it needs. Who pays it?"

"Patrick ain't said."

"Well, you should better ask him," Mrs. Gonorowsky advised, and, on the next morning, Eva did. She thereby buried the leader under the ruins of his fallen castle of clouds, but he struggled through them with the suggestion that each of his guests should be her, or his, own banker.

"But ain't you got no money 't all?" asked the guest of honour.

"Not a cent," responded the host. "But I'll get it. How much have you?"

"A penny. How much do I need?"

"I don't know. Let's ask Miss Bailey."

School had not yet formally begun and Teacher was reading. She was hardly disturbed when the children drove sharp elbows into her shoulder and her lap, and she answered Eva's—"Missis Bailey—oh, Missis Bailey," with an abstracted—"Well dear?"

"Missis Bailey, how much money takes car-fare to the Central Park?"

Still with divided attention, Teacher replied—"Five cents, honey," and read on, while Patrick called a meeting of his forces and made embarrassing explanations with admirable tact.

There ensued weeks of struggle and economy for the exploring party, to which had been added a chaperon in the large and reassuring person of Becky Zalmonowsky, the class idiot. Sadie Gonorowsky's careful mother had considered Patrick too immature to bear the whole responsibility, and he, with a guile which promised well for his future, had complied with her desires and preserved his own authority unshaken. For Becky, poor child, though twelve years old and of an aspect eminently calculated to inspire trust in those who had never heldspeech with her, was a member of the First Reader Class only until such time as room could be found for her in some of the institutions where such unfortunates are bestowed.

Slowly and in diverse ways each of the children acquired the essential nickel. Some begged, some stole, some gambled, some bartered, some earned, but their greatest source of income, Miss Bailey, was denied to them. For Patrick knew that she would have insisted upon some really efficient guardian from a higher class, and he announced with much heat that he would not go at all under those circumstances.

At last the leader was called upon to set a day and appointed a Saturday in late May. He was disconcerted to find that only Ignatius Aloysius would travel on that day.

"It's holidays, all Saturdays," Morris explained; "und we dassent to ride on no cars."

"Why not?" asked Patrick.

"It's law, the Rabbi says," Nathan supplemented. "I don't know why is it; on'y rides on holidays ain't fer us."

"I guess," Eva sagely surmised; "I guess rubber-neck-boat-birds rides even ain't fer us on holidays. But I don't know do I need rides on birds what hollers."

"You'll be all right," Patrick assured her. "I'm goin' to let ye hold me hand. If ye can't go on Saturday, I'll take ye on Sunday—next Sunday. Yous all must meet me here on the school steps. Bring yer money and bring yer lunch too. It's a long way and ye'll be hungry when ye get there. Ye get a terrible long ride for five cents."

"Does it take all that to get there?" asked the practical Nathan. "Then how are we goin' to get back?"

Poor little poet soul! Celtic and improvident! Patrick's visions had shown him only the triumphant arrival of his host and the beatific joy of Eva as she floated by his side on the most "fancy" of boat-birds. Of the return journey he had taken no thought. And so the saving and planning had to be done all over again. The struggle for the first nickel had been wearing and wearying, but the amassment of the second was beyond description difficult. The children were worn from long strife and many sacrifices, for the temptations to spend six or nine cents are so much more insistent and unusual than are yearnings to squander lesser sums. Almost daily some member of the band would confess a fall from grace and solvency, and almost daily Isaac Borrachsohn was called upon to descant anew upon the glories of the Central Park. Becky, the chaperon, was the most desultory collector of the party. Over and over she reached the proud heights of seven or even eight cents only to lavish her horde on the sticky joys of the candy cart of Isidore Belchatosky's papa or on the suddy charms of a strawberry soda.

Then tearfully would she repent of her folly, and bitterly would the others upbraid her, telling again of the joys and wonders she had squandered. Then loudly would she bewail her weakness and plead in extenuation: "I seen the candy. Mouses from choc'late und Foxy Gran'pas from sugar—und I ain't never seen no Central Park."

"But don't you know how Isaac says?" Eva would urge. "Don't you know how all things what is nice fer us stands in the Central Park? Say, Isaac, you should better tell Becky, some more, how the Central Park stands."

And Isaac's tales grew daily more wild and independent of fact until the little girls quivered with yearning terror and the boys burnished up forgotten cap pistols. He told of lions, tigers, elephants, bears and buffaloes, all of enormous size and strength of lung, so that before many days had passed he had debarred himself, by whole-hearted lying, from the very possibility of joining the expedition and seeing the disillusionment of his public. With true artistic spirit he omitted all mention of confining house or cage and bestowed the gift of speech upon all the characters, whether brute or human, in his epic. The merry-go-round he combined with the menagerie into a whole which was not to be resisted.

"Und all the am'blins," he informed his entranced listeners; "they goes around, und around, und around, where music plays und flags is. Und I sets on a lion und he runs around, und runs around, und runs around. Say—what you think? He has smiling looks und hair on the neck, und sooner he says like that 'I'm awful thirsty,' I gives him a peanut und I gets a golden ring."

"Where is it?" asked the jealous and incredulous Patrick.

"To my house." Isaac valiantly lied, for well he remembered the scene in which his scandalized but sympathetic uncle had discovered his attempt to purloin the brass ring which, with countless blackened duplicates, is plucked from a slot by the brandishing swords of the riders upon the merry-go-round. Truly, its possession had won him another ride—this time upon an elephant with upturned trunk and wide ears—but in his mind the return of that ring still rankled as the only grief in an otherwise perfect day.

Miss Bailey—ably assisted by Aesop, Rudyard Kipling, and Thompson Seton—had prepared the First Reader Class to accept garrulous and benevolent lions, cows, panthers, and elephants, and the exploring party's absolute credulity encouraged Isaac to higher and yet higher flights, until Becky was strengthened against temptation.

At last, on a Sunday in late June, the cavalcade in splendid raiment met on the wide steps, boarded a Grand Street car, and set out for Paradise. Some confusion occurred at the very beginning of things when Becky Zalmonowsky curtly refused to share her pennies with the conductor. When she was at last persuaded to yield, an embarrassing five minutes was consumed in searching for the required amount in the nooks and crannies of her costume where, for safe-keeping, she had cached her fund. One penny was in her shoe, another in her stocking, two in the lining of her hat, and one in the large and dilapidated chatelaine bag which dangled at her knees.

Nathan Spiderwitz, who had preserved absolute silence, now contributed his fare, moist and warm, from his mouth, and Eva turned to him admonishingly.

"Ain't Teacher told you money in the mouth ain't healthy fer you?" she sternly questioned, and Nathan, when he had removed other pennies, was able to answer:

"I washed 'em first off." And they were indeed most brightly clean. "There's holes in me these here pockets," he explained, and promptly corked himself anew with currency.

"But they don't tastes nice, do they?" Morris remonstrated. Nathan shook a corroborative head. "Und," the Monitor of the Gold-Fish further urged, "you could to swallow 'em und then you couldn't never to come by your house no more."

But Nathan was not to be dissuaded, even when the impressional and experimental Becky tried his storage system and suffered keen discomfort before her penny was restored to her by a resourceful fellow-traveller who thumped her right lustily on the back until her crowings ceased and the coin was once more in her hand.

At the meeting of Grand Street with the Bowery, wild confusion was made wilder by the addition of seven small persons armed with transfers and clamouring—all except Nathan—for Central Park. Two newsboys and a policeman bestowed them upon a Third Avenue car and all went well until Patrick missed his lunch and charged Ignatius Aloysius with its abstraction. Words ensued which were not easily to be forgotten even when the refreshment was found—flat and horribly distorted—under the portly frame of the chaperon.

Jealousy may have played some part in the misunderstanding, for it was undeniable that there was a sprightliness, a joyant brightness, in the flowing red scarf on Ignatius Aloysius's nautical breast, which was nowhere paralleled in Patrick's more subdued array. And the tenth commandment seemed very arbitrary to Patrick, the star of St. Mary's Sunday-school, when he saw that the red silk was attracting nearly all the attention of his female contingent. If Eva admired flaunting ties it were well that she should say so now. There was yet time to spare himself the agony of riding on rubber-neck-boat-birds with one whose interest wandered from brass buttons. Darkly Patrick scowled upon his unconscious rival, and guilefully he remarked to Eva:

"Red neckties is nice, don't you think?"

"Awful nice," Eva agreed; "but they ain't so stylish like high-stiffs. High-stiffs und derbies is awful stylish."

Gloom and darkness vanished from the heart and countenance of the Knight of Munster, for around his neck he wore, with suppressed agony, the highest and stiffest of "high-stiffs," and his brows—and the back of his neck—were encircled by his big brother's work-a-day derby. Again he saw and described to Eva the vision which had lived in his hopes for now so many weeks: against a background of teeming jungle, mysterious and alive with wild beasts, an amiable boat-bird floated on the water-lake; and upon the boat-bird, trembling but reassured, sat Eva Gonorowsky, hand in hand with her brass-buttoned protector.

As the car sped up the Bowery the children felt that they were indeed adventurers. The clattering Elevated trains overhead, the crowds of brightly decked Sunday strollers, the clanging trolley cars, and the glimpses they caught of shining green as they passed the streets leading to the smaller squares and parks, all contributed to the holiday upliftedness which swelled their unaccustomed hearts. At each vista of green they made ready to disembark and were restrained only by the conductor and by the sage counsel of Eva, who reminded her impulsive companions that the Central Park could be readily identified by "the hollers from all them things what hollers." And so, in happy watching and calm trust of the conductor, they were borne far beyond 59th Street, the first and most popular entrance to the park, before an interested passenger came to their rescue. They tumbled off the car and pressed towards the green only to find themselves shut out by a high stone wall, against which they crouched and listened in vain for identifying hollers. The silence began to frighten them, when suddenly the quiet air was shattered by a shriek which would have done credit to the biggest of boat-birds or of lions, but which was—the children discovered after a moment's panic—only the prelude to an outburst of grief on the chaperon's part. When the inarticulate stage of her sorrow was passed, she demanded instant speech with her mamma. She would seem to have expressed a sentiment common to the majority, for three heads in Spring finery leaned dejectedly against the stone barrier while Nathan removed his car-fare to contribute the remark that he was growing hungry. Patrick was forced to seek aid in the passing crowd on Fifth Avenue, and in response to his pleading eyes and the depression of his party, a lady of gentle aspect and "kind looks" stopped and spoke to them.

"Indeed, yes," she reassured them; "this is Central Park."

"It has looks off the country," Eva commented.

"Because it is a piece of the country," the lady explained.

"Then we dassent to go, the while we ain't none of us got no sickness," cried Eva forlornly. "We're all, all healthy, und the country is for sick childrens."

"I am glad you are well," said the lady kindly; "but you may certainly play in the park. It is meant for all little children. The gate is near. Just walk on near this wall until you come to it."

It was only a few blocks, and they were soon in the land of their hearts' desire, where were waving trees and flowering shrubs and smoothly sloping lawns, and, framed in all these wonders, a beautiful little water-lake all dotted and brightened by fleets of tiny boats. The pilgrims from the East Side stood for a moment at gaze and then bore down upon the jewel, straight over grass and border, which is a course not lightly to be followed in park precincts and in view of park policemen. The ensuing reprimand dashed their spirits not at all and they were soon assembled close to the margin of the lake, where they got entangled in guiding strings and drew to shore many a craft, to the disgust of many a small owner. Becky Zalmonowsky stood so closely over the lake that she shed the chatelaine bag into its shallow depths and did irreparable damage to her gala costume in her attempts to "dibble" for her property. It was at last recovered, no wetter than the toilette it was intended to adorn, and the cousins Gonorowsky had much difficulty in balking Becky's determination to remove her gown and dry it then and there.

Then Ignatius Aloysius, the exacting, remembered garrulously that he had as yet seen nothing of the rubber-neck-boat-birds and suggested that they were even now graciously "hollering like an'thing" in some remote fastness of the park. So Patrick gave commands and the march was resumed with bliss now beaming on all the faces so lately clouded. Every turn of the endless walks brought new wonders to these little ones who were gazing for the first time upon the great world of growing things of which Miss Bailey had so often told them. The policeman's warning had been explicit and they followed decorously in the paths and picked none of the flowers which, as Eva had heard of old, were sticking right up out of the ground. And other flowers there were dangling high or low on tree or shrub, while here and there across the grass a bird came hopping or a squirrel ran. But the pilgrims never swerved. Full well they knew that these delights were not for such as they.

It was, therefore, with surprise and concern that they at last debouched upon a wide green space where a flag waved at the top of a towering pole; for, behold, the grass was covered thick with children, with here and there a beneficent policeman looking serenely on.

"Dast we walk on it?" cried Morris. "Oh, Patrick, dast we?"

"Ask the cop," Nathan suggested. It was his first speech for an hour, for Becky's misadventure with the chatelaine bag and the water-lake had made him more than ever sure that his own method of safe-keeping was the best.

"Ask him yerself," retorted Patrick. He had quite intended to accost a large policeman, who would of course recognize and revere the buttons of Mr. Brennan pere, but a commander cannot well accept the advice of his subordinates. But Nathan was once more beyond the power of speech, and it was Morris Mogilewsky who asked for and obtained permission to walk on God's green earth. With little spurts of running and tentative jumps to test its spring, they crossed Peacock Lawn to the grateful shade of the trees at its further edge and there disposed themselves upon the ground and ate their luncheon. Nathan Spiderwitz waited until Sadie had finished and then entrusted the five gleaming pennies to her care while he wildly bolted an appetizing combination of dark brown-bread and uncooked salmon.

Becky reposed upon the chatelaine bag and waved her still damp shoes exultantly. Eva lay, face downward beside her, and peered wonderingly deep into the roots of things.

"Don't it smells nice!" she gloated. "Don't it looks nice! My, ain't we havin' the party-time!"

"Don't mention it," said Patrick, in careful imitation of his mother's hostess's manner. "I'm pleased to see you, I'm sure."

"The Central Park is awful pretty," Sadie soliloquized as she lay on her back and watched the waving branches and blue sky far above. "Awful pretty! I likes we should live here all the time."

"Well," began Ignatius Aloysius Diamantstein, in slight disparagement of his rival's powers as a cicerone; "well, I ain't seen no lions, nor no rubber-neck-boat-birds. Und we ain't had no rides on nothings. Und I ain't heard no hollers neither."

As if in answer to this criticism there arose upon the road beyond the trees a snorting, panting noise, growing momentarily louder and culminating just as East Side nerves were strained to breaking point, in a long, hoarse and terrifying yell. There was a flash of red, a cloud of dust, three other toots of agony, and the thing was gone. Gone, too, were the explorers and gone their peaceful rest. To the distant end of the field they flew, led by the panic-stricken chaperon, and followed by Eva and Patrick, hand in hand, he making show of a bravery he was far from feeling, and she frankly terrified. In a secluded corner, near the restaurant, the chaperon was run to earth by her breathless charges.

"I seen the lion," she panted over and over. "I seen the fierce, big red lion, und I don't know where is my mamma."

Patrick saw that one of the attractions had failed to attract, so he tried another.

"Let's go and see the cows," he proposed. "Don't you know the po'try piece Miss Bailey learned us about cows?"

Again the emotional chaperon interrupted. "I'm loving much mit Miss Bailey, too," she wailed. "Und I don't know where is she neither." But the pride of learning upheld the others and they chanted in singsong chorus, swaying rhythmically the while from leg to leg:

"The friendly cow all red and white, I love with all my heart: She gives me cream with all her might, To eat with apple-tart Robert Louis Stevenson."

Becky's tears ceased. "Be there cows in the Central Park?" she demanded.

"Sure," said Patrick.

"Und what kind from cream will he give us? Ice cream?"

"Sure," said Patrick again.

"Let's go," cried the emotional chaperon. A passing stranger turned the band in the general direction of the menagerie and the reality of the cow brought the whole "memory gem" into strange and undreamed reality.

Gaily they set out through new and always beautiful ways; through tunnels where feet and voices rang with ghostly boomings most pleasant to the ear; over bridges whence they saw—in partial proof of Isaac Borrachsohn's veracity—"mans und ladies ridin'." Of a surety they rode nothing more exciting than horses, but that was, to East Side eyes, an unaccustomed sight, and Eva opined that it was owing, probably, to the shortness of their watch that they saw no lions and tigers similarly amiable. The cows, too, seemed far to seek, but the trees and grass and flowers were everywhere. Through long stretches of "for sure country" they picked their way, until they came, hot but happy, to a green and shady summer house on a hill. There they halted to rest, and there Ignatius Aloysius, with questionable delicacy, began to insist once more upon the full measure of his bond.

"We ain't seen the rubber-neck-boat-birds," he complained. "Und we ain't had no rides on nothings."

"You don't know what is polite," cried Eva, greatly shocked at his carping spirit in the presence of a hard-worked host. "You could to think shame over how you says somethings like that on a party."

"This ain't no party," Ignatius Aloysius retorted. "It's a 'scursion. To a party somebody gives you what you should eat; to a 'scursion you brings it. Und, anyway, we ain't had no rides."

"But we heard a holler," the guest of honour reminded him. "We heard a fierce, big holler from a lion. I don't know do I need a ride on something what hollers. I could to have a fraid maybe."

"Ye wouldn't be afraid on the boats when I hold yer hand, would ye?" Patrick anxiously inquired, and Eva shyly admitted that, thus supported, she might be undismayed. To work off the pride and joy caused by this avowal, Patrick mounted the broad seat extending all around the summer-house and began to walk clatteringly upon it. The other pilgrims followed suit and the whole party stamped and danced with infinite enjoyment. Suddenly the leader halted with a cry of triumph and pointed grandly out through one of the wistaria-hung openings. Not De Soto upon the banks of the Mississippi nor Balboa above the Pacific could have felt more victorious than Patrick did as he announced:

"There's the water-lake!"

His followers closed in upon him so impetuously that he was borne down under their charge and fell ignominiously out upon the grass. But he was hardly missed; he had served his purpose. For there, beyond the rocks and lawns and red japonicas, lay the blue and shining water-lake in its confining banks of green. And upon its softly quivering surface floated the rubber-neck-boat-birds, white and sweetly silent instead of red and screaming—and the superlative length and arched beauty of their necks surpassed the wildest of Ikey Borrachsohn's descriptions. And relying upon the strength and politeness of these wondrous birds there were indeed "mans und ladies und boys und little girls" embarking, disembarking, and placidly weaving in and out and round about through scenes of hidden but undoubted beauty.

Over rocks and grass the army charged towards bliss unutterable, strewing their path with overturned and howling babies of prosperity who, clumsy from many nurses and much pampering, failed to make way. Past all barriers, accident or official, they pressed, nor halted to draw rein or breath until they were established, beatified, upon the waiting swan-boat.

Three minutes later they were standing outside the railings of the landing and regarding, through welling tears, the placid lake, the sunny slopes of grass and tree, the brilliant sky and the gleaming rubber-neck-boat-bird which, as Ikey described, "made go its legs," but only, as he had omitted to mention, for money. So there they stood, seven sorrowful little figures engulfed in the rayless despair of childhood and the bitterness of poverty. For these were the children of the poor, and full well they knew that money was not to be diverted from its mission: that car-fare could not be squandered on bliss.

Becky's woe was so strong and loud that the bitter wailings of the others served merely as its background. But Patrick cared not at all for the general despair. His remorseful eyes never strayed from the bowed figure of Eva Gonorowsky, for whose pleasure and honour he had striven so long and vainly. Slowly she conquered her sobs, slowly she raised her daisy-decked head, deliberately she blew her small pink nose, softly she approached her conquered knight, gently and all untruthfully she faltered, with yearning eyes on the majestic swans: "Don't you have no sad feelings, Patrick. I ain't got none. Ain't I told you from long, how I don't need no rubber-neck-boat-bird rides? I don't need 'em! I don't need em! I"—with a sob of passionate longing—"I'm got all times a awful scare over 'em. Let's go home, Patrick. Becky needs she should see her mamma, und I guess I needs my mamma too."



A PASSPORT TO PARADISE

School had been for some months in progress when the footsteps of Yetta Aaronsohn were turned, by a long-suffering Truant Officer, in the direction of Room 18. During her first few hours among its pictures, plants and children, she sadly realized the great and many barriers which separated her from Eva Gonorowsky, Morris Mogilewsky, Patrick Brennan, and other favoured spirits who basked in the sunshine of Teacher's regard. For, with a face too white, hair too straight, dresses too short and legs too long one runs a poor chance in rivalry with more blessed and bedizened children.

Miss Bailey had already appointed her monitors, organized her kingdom, and was so hedged about with servitors and assistants that her wishes were acted upon before a stranger could surmise them, and her Cabinet, from the Leader of the Line to the Monitor of the Gold-Fish Bowl, presented an impregnable front to the aspiring public.

During recess time Yetta learned that Teacher was further entrenched in groundless prejudice. Sarah Schrodsky, class bureau of etiquette and of savoir faire, warned the new-comer:

"Sooner you comes on the school mit dirt on the face she wouldn't to have no kind feelin's over you. She don't lets you should set by her side: she don't lets you should be monitors off of somethings: she don't lets you should make an'thing what is nice fer you."

Another peculiarity was announced by Sadie Gonorowsky: "So you comes late on the school, she has fierce mads. Patrick Brennan, he comes late over yesterday on the morning und she don't lets he should march first on the line."

"Did she holler?" asked Yetta, in an awed whisper.

"No. She don't need she should holler when she has mads. She looks on you mit long-mad-proud-looks und you don't needs no hollers. She could to have mads 'out sayin' nothings und you could to have a scare over it. It's fierce. Und extra she goes und tells it out to Patrick's papa—he's the cop mit buttons what stands by the corner—how Patrick comes late und Patrick gets killed as anything over it."

"On'y Patrick ain't cried," interrupted Eva Gonorowsky. She had heard her hero's name and sprang to his defence. "Patrick tells me how his papa hits him awful hacks mit a club. I don't know what is a club, on'y Patrick says it makes him biles on all his bones."

"You gets biles on your bones from off of cops sooner you comes late on the school!" gasped Yetta. "Nobody ain't tell me nothings over that. I don't know, neither, what is clubs—"

"I know what they are," the more learned Sarah Schrodsky began. "It's a house mit man's faces in the windows. It's full from mans by night. Ikey Borrachsohn's papa's got one mit music inside."

"I don't likes it! I have a fraid over it!" wailed Yetta. "I don't know does my mamma likes I should come somewheres where cops mit buttons makes like that mit me. I don't know is it healthy fer me."

"Sooner you don't comes late on the school nobody makes like that mit you," Eva reminded the panic-stricken new-comer, and for the first three days of her school life Yetta was very early and very dirty.

Miss Bailey, with gentle tact, delivered little lectures upon the use and beauty of soap and water which Eva Gonorowsky applied to and discussed with the new-comer.

"Miss Bailey is a awful nice Teacher," she began one afternoon. "I never in my world seen no nicer teacher. On'y she's fancy."

"I seen how she's fancy," Yetta agreed. "She's got her hair done fancy mit combs und her waist is from fancy goods."

"Yes, she's fancy," Eva continued. "She likes you should put you on awful clean. Say, what you think, she sends a boy home once—mit notes even—the while he puts him on mit dirty sweaters. She says like this: 'Sweaters what you wears by nights und by days ain't stylish fer school.' Und I guess she knows what is stylish. I ain't never in my world seen no stylisher teacher."

"I don't know be buttoned-in-back dresses the style this year," ventured Yetta. The same misgiving had visited Eva, but she thrust it loyally from her.

"They're the latest," she declared.

"It's good they're the style," sighed Yetta. "Mine dress is a buttoned-in-back-dress, too. On'y I loses me the buttons from off of it. I guess maybe I sews 'em on again. Teacher could to have, maybe, kind feelings, sooner she sees how I puts me on mit buttons on mine back und—"

"Sure could she!" interrupted the sustaining Eva.

"Could she have kind feelings sooner I puts me on clean mit buttons on mine back und makes all things what is nice fer me? Oh, Eva, could she have feelin's over me?"

"Sure could she," cried Eva. "Sooner you makes all them things she could to make you, maybe, monitors off of somethings."

"Be you monitors?" demanded Yetta in sudden awe.

"Off of pencils. Ain't you seen how I gives 'em out and takes 'em up? She gives me too a piece of paper mit writings on it. Sooner I shows it on the big boys what stands by the door in the yard, sooner they lets me I should come right up by Teacher's room. You could to look on it." And, after unfolding countless layers of paper and of cheese-cloth handkerchief, she exhibited her talisman. It was an ordinary visiting card with a line of writing under its neatly engraved "Miss Constance Bailey," and Yetta regarded it with envying eyes.

"What does it says?" she asked.

"Well," admitted Eva with reluctant candour, "I couldn't to read them words but I guess it says I should come all places what I wants the while I'm good girls."

"Can you go all places where you wants mit it?"

"Sure could you."

"On theaytres?"

"Sure."

"On the Central Park?"

"Sure."

"On the country? Oh I guess you couldn't to go on the country mit it?"

"Sure could you. All places what you wants you could to go sooner Missis Bailey writes on papers how you is good girls."

"Oh, how I likes she should write like that fer me. Oh, how I likes I should be monitors off of somethings."

"I tell you what you want to do: wash your hands!" cried Eva, with sudden inspiration. "She's crazy for what is clean. You wash your hands und your face. She could to have feelin's."

For some mornings thereafter Yetta was clean—and late. Miss Bailey overlooked the cleanliness, but noted the tardiness, and treated the offender with some of "the mads 'out sayin' nothings" which Sadie had predicted. Still, the "cop mit buttons und clubs" did not appear, though Yetta lived in constant terror and expected that every opening of the door would disclose that dread avenger.

On the fourth morning of her ablutions Yetta reached Room 18 while a reading lesson was absorbing Teacher's attention:

"Powers above!" ejaculated Patrick Brennan, with all the ostentatious virtue of the recently reformed, "here's that new kid late again!"

The new kid, in copious tears, encountered one of the "long-mad-proud-looks" and cringed.

"Why are you late?" demanded Miss Bailey.

"I washes me the face," whimpered the culprit, and the eyes with which she regarded Eva Gonorowsky added tearfully: "Villain behold your work!"



"So I see, but that is no reason for being late. You have been late twice a day, morning and afternoon, for the last three days and your only excuse has been that you were washing your face. Which is no excuse at all."

"I tells you 'scuse," pleaded Yetta. "I tells you 'scuse."

"Very well, I'll forgive you to-day. I suppose I must tolerate you."

"No-o-oh ma'an, Teacher, Missis Bailey, don't you do it," screamed Yetta in sudden terror. "I'd have a awful frightened over it. I swear, I kiss up to God, I wouldn't never no more come late on the school. I don't needs nobody should make nothings like that mit me."

"Oh, it's not so bad," Miss Bailey reassured her. "And you must expect something to happen if you will come late to school for no reason at all."

And Yetta was too disturbed by the danger so narrowly escaped to tell this charming but most strangely ignorant young person that the washing of a face was a most time-consuming process. Yetta's one-roomed home was on the top floor, the sixth, and the only water supply was in the yard. Since the day her father had packed "assorted notions" into a black and shiny box and had set out to seek his very elusive fortunes in the country, Yetta had toiled three times a morning with a tin pail full of water. This formed the family's daily store and there was no surplus to be squandered. But to win Teacher's commendation she had bent her tired energies to another trip and, behold, her reward was a scolding!

Eva Gonorowsky was terribly distressed, and the plaintive sobs which, from time to time, rent the bosom of Yetta's dingy plaid dress were as so many blows upon her adviser's bruised conscience. Desperately she cast about for some device by which Teacher's favour might be reclaimed and all jubilantly she imparted it to Yetta.

"Say," she whispered, "I tell you what you want to do. You leave your mamma wash your dress."

"I don't know would she like it. I washes me the face fer her und she has a mad on me."

"She'd like it, all right, all right; ain't I tell you how she is crazy fer what is clean? You get your dress washed and it will look awful diff'rent. I done it und she had a glad."

Now a mamma who supports a family by the making of buttonholes, for one hundred of which she receives nine cents, has little time for washing, and Yetta determined, unaided and unadvised, to be her own laundress. She made endless trips with her tin-pail from the sixth floor to the yard and back again, she begged a piece of soap from the friendly "janitor lady" and set valiantly to work. And Eva's prophecy was fulfilled. The dress looked "awful diff'rent" when it had dried to half its already scant proportions. From various sources Yetta collected six buttons of widely dissimilar design and colour and, with great difficulty since her hands were puffed and clumsy from long immersion in strong suds, she affixed them to the back of the dress and fell into her corner of the family couch to dream of Miss Bailey's surprise and joy when the blended plaid should be revealed unto her. Surely, if there were any gratitude in the hearts of teachers, Yetta should be, ere the sinking of another sun, "monitors off of somethings."

That Teacher was surprised, no one who saw the glance of puzzled inquiry with which she greeted the entrance of the transformed Yetta, could doubt. That she had a glad, Yetta, who saw the stare replaced by a smile of quick recognition, was proudly assured. Eva Gonorowsky shone triumphant.

"Ain't I tell you?" she whispered jubilantly as she made room upon her little bench and drew Yetta down beside her. "Ain't I tell you how she's crazy fer what is clean? Und I ain't never seen nothings what is clean like you be. You smells off of soap even."

It was not surprising, for Yetta had omitted the rinsing which some laundresses advise. She had wasted none of the janitor lady's gift. It was all in the meshes of the flannel dress to which it lent, in addition to its reassuring perfume, a smooth damp slipperiness most pleasing to the touch.

The athletic members of the First Reader Class were made familiar with this quality before the day was over, for, at the slightest exertion of its wearer, the rain-bow dress sprang, chrysalis-like, widely open up the back. Then were the combined efforts of two of the strongest members of the class required to drag the edges into apposition while Eva guided the buttons to their respective holes and Yetta "let go of her breath" with an energy which defeated its purpose.

These interruptions of the class routine were so inevitable a consequence of Swedish exercises and gymnastics that Miss Bailey was forced to sacrifice Yetta's physical development to the general discipline and to anchor her in quiet waters during the frequent periods of drill. When she had been in time she sat at Teacher's desk in a glow of love and pride. When she had been late she stood in a corner near the book-case and repented of her sin. And, despite all her exertions and Eva's promptings, she was still occasionally late.

Miss Bailey was seriously at a loss for some method of dealing with a child so wistful of eyes and so damaging of habits. A teacher's standing on the books of the Board of Education depends to a degree upon the punctuality and regularity of attendance to which she can inspire her class, and Yetta was reducing the average to untold depths.

"What happened to-day?" Teacher asked one morning for the third time in one week, and through Yetta's noisy repentance she heard hints of "store" and "mamma."

"Your mamma sent you to the store?" she interpreted and Yetta nodded dolefully.

"And did you give her my message about that last week? Did you tell her that she must send you to school before nine o'clock?" Again Yetta nodded, silent and resigned, evidently a creature bound upon the wheel, heart broken but uncomplaining.

"Well, then," began Miss Bailey, struggling to maintain her just resentment, "you can tell her now that I want to see her. Ask her to come to school to-morrow morning."

"Teacher, she couldn't. She ain't got time. Und she don't know where is the school neither."

"That's nonsense. You live only two blocks away. She sees it every time she passes the corner."

"She don't never pass no corner. She don't never come on the street. My mamma ain't got time. She sews."

"But she can't sew always. She goes out, doesn't she, to do shopping and to see her friends?"

"She ain't got friends. She ain't got time she should have 'em. She sews all times. Sooner I lays me und the babies on the bed by night my mamma sews. Und sooner I stands up in mornings my mamma sews. All, all, ALL times she sews."

"And where is your father? Doesn't he help?"

"Teacher, he's on the country. He is pedlar mans. He walk und he walk und he walk mit all things what is stylish in a box. On'y nobody wants they should buy somethings from off of my papa. No ma'an, Missis Bailey, that ain't how they makes mit my poor papa. They goes und makes dogs should bite him on the legs. That's how he tells in a letter what he writes on my mamma. Comes no money in the letter und me und my mamma we got it pretty hard. We got three babies."

"I'm going home with you this afternoon," announced Miss Bailey in a voice which suggested neither mads nor clubs nor violence.

After that visit things were a shade more bearable in the home of the absent pedlar, and one-half of Yetta's ambition was achieved. Teacher had a glad! There was a gentleness almost apologetic in her attitude and the hour after which an arrival should be met with a long-proud-mad-look was indefinitely postponed. And, friendly relations being established, Yetta's craving for monitorship grew with the passing days.

When she expressed to Teacher her willingness to hold office she was met with unsatisfying but baffling generalities.

"But surely I shall let you be monitor some day. I have monitors for nearly everything under the sun, now, but perhaps I shall think of something for you."

"I likes," faltered Yetta; "I likes I should be monitor off of flowers." "But Nathan Spiderwitz takes care of the window boxes. He won't let even me touch them. Think what he would do to you."

"Then I likes I should be monitors to set by your place when you goes by the Principal's office."

"But Patrick Brennan always takes care of the children when I am not in the room."

"He marches first by the line too. He's two monitors."

"He truly is," agreed Miss Bailey. "Well, I shall let you try that some day."

It was a most disastrous experiment. The First Reader Class, serenely good under the eye of Patrick Brennan, who wore one of the discarded brass buttons of his sire pinned to the breast of his shirt-waist, found nothing to fear or to obey in his supplanter, and Miss Bailey returned to her kingdom to find it in an uproar and her regent in tears.

"I don't likes it. I don't likes it," Yetta wailed. "All the boys shows a fist on me. All the girls makes a snoot on me. All the childrens say cheek on me. I don't likes it. I don't likes it."

"Then you sha'n't do it again," Teacher comforted her. "You needn't be a monitor if you don't wish."

"But I likes I shall be monitors. On'y not that kind from monitors."

"If you can think of something you would enjoy I shall let you try again. But it must be something, dear, that no one is doing for me."

But Yetta could think of nothing until one afternoon when she was sitting at Teacher's desk during a Swedish drill. All about her were Teacher's things. Her large green blotter, her "from gold" inkstand and pens, her books where Fairies lived. Miss Bailey was standing directly in front of the desk and encouraging the First Reader Class—by command and example—to strenuous waving of arms and bending of bodies.

"Forward bend!" commanded, and bent, Miss Bailey and her buttoned-in-back-waist followed the example of less fashionable models, shed its pearl buttons in a shower upon the smooth blotter and gave Yetta the inspiration for which she had been waiting. She gathered the buttons, extracted numerous pins from posts of trust in her attire, and when Miss Bailey had returned to her chair, gently set about repairing the breach.

"What is it?" asked Miss Bailey. Yetta, her mouth full of pins, exhibited the buttons.

"Dear me! All those off!" exclaimed Teacher. "It was good of you to arrange it for me. And now will you watch it? You'll tell me if it should open again?"

Yetta had then disposed the pins to the best advantage and was free to voice her triumphant:

"Oh, I knows now how I wants I should be monitors! Teacher, mine dear Teacher, could I be monitors off of the back of your dress?"

"But surely, you may," laughed Teacher, and Yetta entered straightway into the heaven of fulfilled desire.

None of Eva's descriptions of the joys of monitorship had done justice to the glad reality. After common mortals had gone home at three o'clock, Room 18 was transformed into a land where only monitors and love abounded. And the new monitor was welcomed by the existing staff, for she had supplanted no one, and was so palpitatingly happy that Patrick Brennan forgave her earlier usurpation of his office and Nathan Spiderwitz bestowed upon her the freedom of the window boxes.

"Ever when you likes you should have a crawley bug from off of the flowers; you tell me und I'll catch one fer you. I got lots. I don't need 'em all."

"I likes I shall have one now," ventured Yetta, and Nathan ensnared one and put it in her hand where it "crawlied" most pleasingly until Morris Mogilewsky begged it for his Gold-Fish in their gleaming "fish theaytre." Then Eva shared with her friend and protege the delight of sharpening countless blunted and bitten pencils upon a piece of sand-paper.

"Say," whispered Yetta as they worked busily and dirtily, "Say, I'm monitors now. On'y I ain't got no papers."

"You ask her. She'll give you one."

"I'd have a shamed the while she gives me und my mamma whole bunches of things already. She could to think, maybe, I'm a greedy. But I needs that paper awful much. I needs I shall go on the country for see mine papa."

"No, she don't thinks you is greedy. Ain't you monitors on the back of her waist? You should come up here 'fore the childrens comes for see how her buttons stands. You go und tell her you needs that paper."

Very diplomatically Yetta did. "Teacher," she began, "buttoned-in-back-dresses is stylish fer ladies."

"Yes, honey," Miss Bailey acquiesced, "so I thought when I saw that you wear one."

"On'y they opens," Yetta went on, all flushed by this high tribute to her correctness. "All times they opens, yours und mine, und that makes us shamed feelings."

Again Miss Bailey acquiesced.

"So-o-oh," pursued Yetta, with fast beating heart; "don't you wants you should give me somethings from paper mit writings on it so I could come on your room all times for see how is your buttoned-in-back-dresses?"

"A beautiful idea," cried Teacher. "We'll take care of one another's buttons. I'll write the card for you now. You know what to do with it?"

"Yiss ma'an. Eva tells me all times how I could come where I wants sooner you writes on papers how I is good girls."

"I'll write nicer things than that on yours," said Miss Bailey. "You are one of the best little girls in the world. So useful to your mother and to the babies and to me! Oh yes, I'll write beautiful things on your card, my dear."

When the Grand Street car had borne Miss Bailey away Yetta turned to Eva with determination in her eye and the "paper mit writings" in her hand.

"I'm goin' on the country for see my papa und birds und flowers und all them things what Teacher tells stands in the country. I need I should see them."

"Out your mamma?" Eva remonstrated.

"'Out, 'out my mamma. She ain't got no time for go on no country. I don't needs my mamma should go by my side. Ain't you said I could to go all places what I wants I should go, sooner Teacher gives me papers mit writings?"

"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 assured 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 reassured. 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 Principal lent a substitute. 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 button.

"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 brass-buttoned 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 button 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. Buttoned-in-front-mit-from-gold-button-suits is awful stylish. He's got 'em."

"Think shame how you says," cried Eva, with loyal eyes upon the neatly buttoned 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 Class in Natural Science, when, early in October, the Principal 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 Principal 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 Principal 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 glasses 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 amusement, and Miss Langdon, laying her note-book on the desk, turned to address the class. 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 Principal brought me here to talk to you. Now, wasn't that good of him?"

At this confirmation of their fears the First Reader Class 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 passably 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 class: "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 Class, bright with appreciation and amusement, was fixed on its now distracted teacher.

"You can see this beautiful green joy sometimes when you are in the street," Miss Langdon ambled on; "but you see it best when you are here."

Three hands shot up into the quiet air.

"And I don't think the children in the other rooms see it as well as you do."

"No ma'am," cried a delighted chorus, and eight more hands were raised. Prompting was reckless now and hands sprang up in all directions.

"No, I don't think they do," Miss Langdon agreed. "I think perhaps that Heaven meant it just for you. Just for the good little boys and girls in this room."

The enthusiasm grew wild and general. Miss Langdon turned a glance of triumph upon Miss Bailey, and was somewhat surprised by the very scarlet confusion which she saw.

"It's all in the method," she said with pride, and, to the class: "Now, can you tell me the name of this beautiful green thing which makes us all so happy?"

And the answer was a great, glad cry of: "Teacher's jumper!"

"What?"

"Teacher's jumper!" shouted the children as before, and Eva Gonorowsky, who had been the first to guess the jocular lady's meaning, put it more plainly.

"Missis Bailey's got a green waist. Green is all the style this year."

Miss Langdon sat down suddenly; stared; gasped; and then, as she was a clever woman, laughed.

"Miss Bailey," she said, "you have a problem here. I wish you all success, but the apperceiving basis is, as you say, very limited."

To the solving of this problem Teacher bent all her energies. Through diligent research she learned that the reading aloud of standard poems has been known to do wonders of mental and moral uplifting. But standard poems are not commonly adapted to minds six years old and of foreign extraction, so that Miss Bailey, though she explained, paraphrased, and commented, hardly flattered herself that the result was satisfactory. In courteous though puzzled silence the First Reader Class listened to enough of the poetry of the ages to have lifted them as high as Heaven. Wordsworth, Longfellow, Browning, any one who had seen and written of the beauty of bird or growing thing, was pressed into service. And then one day Miss Bailey brought her Shelley down and read his "Ode to the Skylark."

"Now, don't you think that's a pretty thing?" she asked. "Did you hear how the lark went singing, bright and clear, up and up and up into the blue sky?"

The children were carefully attentive, as ever, but not responsive. Morris Mogilewsky felt that he had alone understood the nature of this story. It was meant to amuse; therefore it was polite that one should be amused.

"Teacher fools," he chuckled. "Larks ain't singin' in skies."

"How do you know?" asked Miss Bailey.

"'Cause we got a lark by our house. It's a from tin lark mit a cover."

"A tin lark! With a cover!" Miss Bailey exclaimed. "Are you sure, dear, that you know what you are talking about?"

"Teacher, yiss ma'an, I know," Morris began deliberately. "My papa, he has a lark. It's a from tin lark mit a cover. Und its got a handle too. Und my papa he takes it all times on the store for buy a lark of beer."

"Lager beer! Oh, shade of Shelley!" groaned Miss Bailey's spirit, but aloud she only said: "No, my dear, I wasn't reading about lager beer. A lark is a little bird."

"Well," Morris began with renewed confidence, "I know what is a bird. My auntie she had one from long. She says like that, she should give it to me, but my mamma she says, 'No, birds is foolishness.' But I know what is a bird. He scups on a stick in a cage."

"So he does," agreed Miss Bailey, rightly inferring from Morris's expressive pantomime that to "scup" was to swing. "But sometimes he flies up into the sky in the country, as I was reading to you. Were you ever in the country?"

"What country?" asked Morris. "Russia? I comes out of Russia."

"No, not Russia. Not any particular country. Just the open country where the flowers grow."

"No ma'an, I ain't seen it," said the child gently. "But I was once to Tompkins Square. On'y it was winter und snow lays on it. I ain't seen no flowers."

"And do none of you know anything about the country?" asked Teacher sadly.

"Oh, yiss ma'an, I know," said Eva Gonorowsky. "The country is the Fresh Air Fund."

"Then you've been there," cried Miss Bailey. "Tell us about it, Eva."

"No ma'an, I ain't seen it," said Eva proudly. "I'm healthy. But a girl on my block she had a sickness und so she goes. She tells me all times how is the country. It's got grass stickin' right up out of it. Grass und flowers! No ma'an, I ain't never seen it: I don't know where is it even, but oh! it could to be awful pretty!"

"Yes, honey, it is," said Teacher. "Very, very pretty. When I was a little girl I lived in the country."

"All day?" asked Morris.

"Yes, all day."

"Und all night?"

"Yes, dear."

"Oh, poor Miss Bailey," crooned Eva. "It could to be a awful sickness what you had."

"No, I was very well. I lived in the country because my father had a house there, and I played all day in the garden."

"Weren't you scared of the lions?" asked Patrick in incredulous admiration.

"We had no lions," Miss Bailey explained apologetically. "But we had rabbits and guinea pigs and a horse and a cow and chickens and ducks and—and—"

"Und eleflints," Morris suggested hope-fully.

"No, we had no elephants," Teacher was forced to admit. "But we had a turtle and a monkey."

"Did your papa have a organ?" asked Sadie Gonorowsky. "Organs mit monkeys is stylish for mans."

"Think shame how you says!" cried her cousin Eva reproachfully. "Teacher ain't no Ginney. Organs ain't for Sheenies. They ain't for Krishts even. They all, all for Ginneys."

"So's monkeys," said Sadie, unabashed. "Und organs mit monkeys is stylish."

The children's deep interest in the animal kingdom gave Miss Bailey the point of departure for which she had been seeking. She abandoned Wordsworth and Shelley, and she bought a rabbit and a pair of white mice. The First Reader Class was enchanted. A canary in a gilded cage soon hung before the window and "scupped" most energetically while gold-fish in their bowl swam lazily back and forth. From these living texts, Miss Bailey easily preached care and kindness towards all creatures, and Room 18 came to be an energetic though independent branch of the S.P.C.A.

The most sincere and zealous worker in the new field was Morris Mogilewsky, Monitor of the Gold-Fish Bowl. Day after day he earned new smiles and commendations from his liege lady by reports of cats and kittens fed and warmed, and of dogs rescued from torment. He was awakened one night by the cries of an outcast cat and followed the sounds to the roof of his tenement only to find that they came from another roof further down the block. The night was wet and blustering, but Morris was undismayed. He crawled over walls and round chimneys until he reached the cat and dragged her back to safety and refreshment. When, in the early dark of the next morning, Mrs. Mogilewsky discovered that the elements of the family breakfast had been lavished on the wanderer, she showed some natural resentment, but when she understood that such prodigally was encouraged, even rewarded, in high places, her wrath was very great.

"So-o-oh, you foolishness like that on the school learns!" she fumed. "Und your teacher she learns you you should like so mil your papa's breakfast und cats make! She is then fine teacher!"

"She's a awful nice teacher," cried Morris, with hot loyalty. "Awful nice. Sooner you seen her sooner you could to be loving mit her too. Ain't you never comin' on the school for to see mine teacher?"

"No!" his mother almost shrieked. "No! I seen her on the street once und she had looks off of Krishts. I don't need no Krishts. You don't need them neither. They ain't for us. You ain't so big like I could to tell you how they makes mit us in Russia. I don't like you should hold so much over no Krisht. For us they is devils."

"Teacher ain't no devil," cried Morris, and he would have laid down his loyal life to have been able to add now, as he had some months earlier, "she ain't no Krisht neither," but he knew that his mother had guessed truly. Teacher was a Christian, she had told him so, and he had sworn to protect her secret.

His mother's constant though generally smouldering hostility towards Miss Bailey troubled and puzzled him. In fact, many things were beyond his understanding. Night after night he lay in his corner behind the stove and listened while his father and his father's friends railed against the Christians and the Czar. He had seen strange meetings of grim and intent men, had listened to low reading of strange threats and mad reviling. And always he gathered that the Christian was a thing unspeakable, unknowable, without truth, or heart or trust. A thing to be feared and hated now but, in the glorious future, when the God of Israel should be once more remindful of his people, a thing to be triumphed over and trampled on.

Yet each morning Morris waited at the big school door for the smile of a lady's face, the touch of a lady's hand, and each day he learned new gentleness and love, new interests and new wonders under her calm-eyed dominion. And behold, the lady was a Christian, and he loved her and she was very good to him!

For his bright service to the cause of Nature in the matter of the cat, she had decorated him, not with a button or a garter—though neither would have been inappropriate—but with a ring bearing his initials gorgeously entwined. Then proud and happy was Morris Mogilewsky, and wild was the emulation of other members of the First Reader Class. Then serious was Teacher's account with a jeweller over in Columbia Street and grave her doubts as to Herr Froebel's blessing on the scheme. But the problem was solved. Of all the busy hours in Room 18's crowded day, there was none more happy than that devoted to "Nature Study—Domestic Animals and Home Pets."

And then one morning Morris failed to answer to the roll-call. Never had he been absent since his first day at school, and Miss Bailey was full of uneasiness. Nathan Spiderwitz, Morris's friend and ally, was also missing, but at half-past nine he arrived entirely breathless and shockingly untidy.

"Nathan," said Teacher reprovingly, "you are very late."

"Yiss ma'an. I tells you 'scuse," gasped Nathan. "On'y Morris—"

"Where is he?" cried Miss Bailey. "Is there anything the matter with him?"

"Yiss ma'an. He ain't got no more that golden ring what you gives him over that cat."

A murmur of commiseration swept through the room. "Oh, poor Morris!" sighed Eva Gonorowsky. "Ain't that fierce! From sure gold rings is awful stylish und they cost whole bunches of money."

"Morris is a silly little boy," said Teacher crossly, for she had been frightened, as it now seemed, to no purpose. "I'll measure his finger for a new ring when he comes in."

"He ain't comin'," said Nathan briefly.

"Not coming to school simply because he lost a ring! Nonsense! Nathan, you just run back to Morris's house and tell him he must come. Tell him I'll give him a new ring and—"

"But he ain't to his house," Nathan objected. "I seen how he goes away."

"Well, then, how did he go away?"

"Teacher, it's like this. Me und Morris we stands by our block when comes the baker's wagon. Und the baker he goes in the groc'ry store to sell bread und his wagon und horse stands by us. Und, say, on the horse's face is something, from leather, so the horse couldn't to eat. He couldn't to open his mouth even. But all times he longs out his neck like he should eat und he looks on me und Morris. So Morris he says: 'Ain't it fierce how that bad man makes mit that horse? Something from leather on the face ain't healthy for horses. I guess I takes it off.'"

"But he didn't, Nathan?"

"Yiss ma'an, he takes it off. He says like that: 'You know how Teacher says we should make all times what is lovin' mit dogs und cats und horses.' Und say, Teacher, Missis Bailey, that's how you says. He had a ring over it. A from sure gold ring mit his name—"

"But the horse?" Miss Bailey interrupted. "The horse with the muzzle. I remember, dear, what I said, but I hope Morris didn't touch that baker's horse."

"Sure did he," cried Nathan. "He buttons out that thing what I told you from leather, on the horse's face, und the horse he swallows the golden ring."

"Why, I never heard of such a thing," gasped Miss Bailey. And Nathan explained.

"Morris, he gives the horse a sweet potato und the horse he swallows the golden ring. He swallows it way, way, WAY down. Und it was from sure gold-"

"But it must have been very loose or it wouldn't have come off his finger so easily."

"It didn't come off," said Nathan patiently. "The horse he swallowed the finger too—four fingers—und it was from sure gold ring mit his name scratched in on it, what he had off of you, Teacher, for present over that cat."

"Oh, you must be wrong," cried Miss Bailey, "it can't be as bad as you say."

"Yiss ma'an, from sure gold nut—"

"But his hand. Are you sure about his hand?"

"I seen it," said Nathan. "I seen how comes blood on the sidewalk. I seen how comes a great big all of people. I seen how comes Morris's mamma und hollers like a fair theayter. I seen how comes Patrick Brennan's papa—he's a cop—und he makes come the amb'lance. Und sooner the doctor seen how comes blood on the sidewalk he says like this: so Morris bleeds four more inches of blood he don't got no more blood in his body. Say, I seen right into Morris He's red inside. So-o-oh, the doctor he bandages up his hand und takes him in the amb'lance, und all times his mamma hollers und yells und says mad words on the doctor so he had a mad over her. Und Morris he lays in the amb'lance und cries. Now he's sick."

School dragged heavily that morning for the distressed and powerless Miss Bailey. She thought remorsefully of the trusty armour of timidity which she had, plate by plate, stripped from her favourite, and of the bravery and loving kindness which she had so carefully substituted and which had led the child—Where?

"Nathan," she called as the children were going home, "do you know to what hospital Morris was taken? Did you see the doctor?"

"Sure did I."

"Was he a tall doctor? Had you ever seen him before?"

"No ma'an," answered Nathan with a beautiful directness. "It wasn't your fellow We ain't seen him from long. But Morris he goes on the Guv'neer Hospital. I ain't never seen the doctor, but I knows the driver und the horse."

Shortly after three o'clock that afternoon Miss Bailey and Doctor Ingraham were standing beside a little bed in Gouverneur Hospital.

"Nathan is a horrible little liar," said the doctor genially. "Morris will be as well as ever in a week or so. The horse stood on his foot and bruised it rather badly, but he has all his fingers and his ring too. Haven't you, old man?"

"Yiss ma'an, yiss sir; I got it here," answered the boy, as, with his uninjured hand, he drew up his battered trophy, hung about his neck on a piece of antiseptic gauze. "It's from sure gold und you gives it to me over that cat. But say, Teacher, Missis Bailey, horses ain't like cats."

"No, dear, I know; that was a wicked horse."

"Yiss ma'an; I guess you don't know 'bout horses. You said boys should make all times what is loving mit horses, but horses don't make what is lovin' mit boys. Und my mamma she says it's a foolishness you should make what is lovin' mit somebody sooner somebody don't make what is loving mit you."

"That," said Dr. Ingraham, with a reproachful eye upon Miss Bailey, "is one of the truest truths in all the laws and the prophets. 'A foolishness' it certainly is."

"That's how my mamma says," Morris plaintively continued. "Und I guess she knows. I done it und now I'm got a sickness over it."

"Of course you have," acquiesced the doctor. "So have I. We all get it at times and its name is—"

"Don't listen to him, honey," Miss Bailey interrupted. "You will be all right again in a few weeks."

"Years," interposed the doctor.

"And while you are here I shall come to see you every day to bring you books and candy and to tell you stories."

"Tell me one now," Morris implored. "Take off your hat so I can put mine head at your necktie, und then you should tell me that story over, 'Once upon some time when that world was young.'"

It was nearly five o'clock when Miss Bailey gently disengaged herself and set out upon her uptown way. She passed from the hush of the hospital walls and halls into another phase of her accountability. Upon the steps, a woman, wild-eyed and dishevelled, was hurling an unintelligible mixture of pleading and abuse upon the stalwart frame of Patrick Brennan's father, the policeman on the beat. The woman tore her hair, wept, and beat her breast, but Mr. Brennan's calm was impassive.

"You can't see him," he remarked. "Didn't they tell you that Thursday was visiting day? Well, and isn't this Choos-day? Go home now and shut up."

"Mine Gott, he will die!" wailed the woman.

"Not he," said Mr. Brennan. "Go home now and come back on Thursday. There's no good standing there. And there's no good in coming back in half an hour. You'll not see him before Thurs-day."

The woman fell to wild weeping and her sympathetic neighbours followed suit.

"Ach, mine little boy!" she wailed. "Mine arme little Morris!" And "arme little Morris" the neighbours echoed.

"Morris Mogilewsky?" asked Miss Bailey.

"Yes ma'an," answered Mr. Brennan with a shrug.

"Yes ma'an," cried the neighbours in shrill chorus.

"Yes ma'an," wailed the woman. "Mine Morris. They makes I shouldn't to see him. They takes him here the while he gets killed off of a horse."

"Killed und chawed off of a horse," shrieked the comforting neighbours.

"And are you his mother?" pursued Miss Bailey.

"Yes ma'an," they all answered as before.

"Very well, I think I can take you to see him. But not if you are going to be noisy."

A stillness as of death settled upon Mrs. Mogilewsky as she sank down at Miss Bailey's feet in dumb appeal. And Constance Bailey saw in the eyes, so like Morris's, fixed upon her face, a world of misery which she had surely though innocently wrought.

Dr. Ingraham was summoned and bent to Miss Bailey's will. A few moments later Morris's languid gaze embraced his mother, his teacher, and his doctor. The latter found Mrs. Mogilewsky's woe impervious to any soothing. "Chawed off of a horse!" she whimpered. "All the child what I got, chawed off of a horse!"

"Wicked old horse!" ejaculated Teacher.

"Crazy old Teacher!" snorted Mrs. Mogilewsky. "Fool old Teacher! I sends my little boy on the school so he should the English write und talk und the numbers learn so he comes—through the years maybe —American man, und she learns him foolishness over dogs und cats und horses. Crazy, crazy, crazy!"

"Oh, come now. That's rather strong," remonstrated Doctor Ingraham, with a quizzical glance at Miss Bailey. Mrs. Mogilewsky wheeled towards her benefactress.

"Do you know Morris's teacher?" she asked eagerly. "Ach, lady, kind lady, tell me where is her house; I like I shall tell her how she make sickness on my little boy. He lays on the bed over her. I like I should tell her somethings."

"Mrs. Mogilewsky," began Miss Bailey, gently, "there is nothing you could say to her that would make her more sorry than she is. She is broken-hearted already, and if you don't stop talking like that you will make her cry. And then Morris would surely cry too; shouldn't you, dearie?"

"Teacher, yiss ma'an," quavered Morris.

"You!" groaned Mrs. Mogilewsky. "Be you Morris's teacher? Gott, how I makes mistakes! So you learn him that foolishness extra so he gets chawed off of horses?"

"Nonsense," interposed the doctor. "Miss Bailey is ridiculously fond of that child of yours."

"So-o-oh," began Mrs. Mogilewsky. "So-o-oh, she ain't done it extra?"

"Purposely? Of course not," answered the doctor.

"Ach, well, I should better maybe, excuse her." Mrs. Mogilewsky, placated and bland, resumed: "I excuse her the while she ain't so awful old. She makes, sometimes, mistakes too. I like you should come—the both—on my house for see me some day. That makes me glad in mine heart."

"Oh mamma, mamma," cried Morris, "they couldn't to come by our house. They is Krishts. She is Krishts und he is Krishts. From long she tells me. Und you says, you says—"

"Think shame," his mother admonished him. "Ain't you seen how she is lovin' mit you? Und Morris, mine golden one, I am all times lovin' mit somebody what is lovin' mit you. Ain't I excused her over it und made her invitation on my house?

"And we shall be delighted," said the doctor, as he led the speechless Miss Bailey away. "It is uncommonly good of you to have forgiven her. But, as you, with keenest insight, discern, she is not very old. Perhaps she will reform."

"Reform! I hate the very word," sighed Miss Bailey, for the day had been trying and her discouragement was great. "I've been trying to reform these people ever since I came down here. I've failed and failed and failed; misunderstood time and time again; made mistake after mistake. And now I've nearly killed that boy. The woman was right. It was all my fault."

"It might be better—" began the Doctor and halted. "You might be happier if you—"

"Resigned?" suggested Teacher. "Yes, sometimes I think I shall." "Do," said Doctor Ingraham. "That's a capital beginning."

THE END