FullReads

Whenever I said “Pat” or “Aaron” or “Billy” in a pleading tone it meant “Help! or I perish!” and it was so construed. No, I was never left without succor when I was in need of it! I remember so well an afternoon in late October when the world had gone very wrong! There had been a disagreeable argument with Mrs. Gump, who had sent Goldine to mingle with the children when she knew she had chicken pox; Stanislas Strazinski had fallen down stairs and bruised his knee; Mercedes Pulaski had upset a vase of flowers on the piano keys and finally Petronius Nelson had stolen a red woolen ball. I had seen it in his hand and taken it from him sadly and quietly as he was going down the stairs. I suggested a few minutes for repentance in the play-room and when he came out he sat at my knee and sobbed out his grief in pitiful fashion. His tears moved my very heart. “Only four years old,” I thought, “and no playthings at home half as attractive as the bright ones we have here, so I must be very gentle with him.” I put my arm around him to draw him to me and the gesture brought me in contact with his curiously knobby, little chest. What were my feelings when I extracted from his sailor blouse one orange, one blue, and two green balls! And this after ten minutes of repentant tears! I pointed the moral as quickly as possible so that I might be alone, and then realizing the apparent hopelessness of some of the tasks that confronted me I gave way to a moment of hysterical laughter, followed by such a flood of tears as I had not shed since I was a child. It was then and there the Corporal found me, on her way home from school. She flung her books on the floor and took my head on her kind, scrawny, young shoulder.

“What have they been doin’ to you?” she stormed. “You just tell me which one of ’em ’tis and I’ll see’t he remembers this day as long as he lives. Your hair’s all mussed up and you look sick abed!”

She led me to the sofa where we put tired babies to sleep, and covered me with my coat. Then she stole out and came back with a pitcher of hot, well-boiled tea, after which she tidied the room and made everything right for next day. Dear Old Corporal!

The improvement in these “little teachers” in capacity as well as in manner, voice, speech and behavior, was almost supernatural, and it was only less obvious in the rank and file. There was little “scrubbing” done on the premises now, for nearly all the mothers who were not invalids, intemperate, or incurable slatterns, were heartily in sympathy with our ideals. At the end of six weeks when various members of the Board of Trustees began to drop in for their second visit they were almost frightened by our attractive appearance.

“The subscribers will think the children come from Nob Hill,” one of them exclaimed in humorous alarm. “Are you sure you took the most needy in every way?”

“Quite sure. Sit down in my chair, please, and look at my private book. Do you see in the first place that thirteen are the children of small liquor sellers and live back of the saloons? Then note that ten are the children of widows who support large families by washing, cleaning, machine sewing or shop-keeping. You will see that one mother and three fathers on our list are temporarily in jail serving short terms. We may never have quite such a picturesque class again, and perhaps it would not be advisable; I wish sometimes that I had taken humanity as it ran, good, bad and indifferent, instead of choosing children from the most discouraging homes. I thought, of course, that they were going to be little villains. They ought to be, if there is anything either in heredity or environment, but just look at them at this moment–a favorable moment, I grant you–but just look at them! Forty pretty-near-angels, that’s what they are!”