Wards of liberty

LI B ERT Y

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Myra Kelly

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IN MEMORIAM

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WARDS OF LIBERTY

BY

MYRA KELLY

Author of Little Citizens

ILLUSTRATIONS BY FREDERIC DORR STEELE

NEW YORK

THE MCCLURE COMPANY
MCMVII

Copyright, 1907, by The McClure Company
Published, October, 1907

REPLACING

IN MEMOR1AM

Copyright, 1906, 1907. by The S. S. McClure Company

TO

THE MEMORY OF
A LITTLE CHILD

FOREWORD

I HAVE often been asked how, now that I
have left the East Side, I find my material
for stories of life in that quarter. In publish
ing this second collection of tales about
" Little Citizens," I welcome the opportunity
to answer this question, since it enables me
to speak directly to all my readers, whose
interest in my work, so often and so gen
erously expressed, has meant much to me.
Of course, although I am no longer a teach
er, I have by no means severed all connec
tion with the East Side. I frequently go
back to visit my friends of the Ghetto, who
have not, I am grateful to say, altogether
[vii]

M141461

FOREWORD

forgotten me if I may judge by the letters I
occasionally receive from Morris Mogilew-
sky, Sadie Gonorowsky, and their associates.
Other friends, in the schools or not, write me
incidents and keep me posted concerning
events which they know will be of interest to
me. And I still have a store of note-books
and of memories.

I think no one can come in contact with
these people — really try to know them; to
understand their difficulties and their strug
gles; their sufferings and their patience—
without remembering all their lives long.
These impressions do not fade. Rather,
they grow clearer and deeper as one learns
more about other lives. But the deepest can
never be written out by one of an alien race.
The lives being lived in those crowded
streets are so diverse, so different in end and
[ viii ]

FOREWORD

in aim that no mere observer can hope to see
more than an insignificant vista of the whole
seething, swarming mass of hope, disillusion,
growth, and decay.

The opening through which I saw my
vista was the school-room. I taught these
babies and I loved them. The larger
problems of maturity passed far from Room
8, but their shadow crossed its sunshine.
This was inevitable in a community where
all the life of a family, eating, sleeping,
cooking, working, illness, death, birth, and
prayer is often crowded into one small room.

I am frequently asked whether I was not
myself the model from which Constance
Bailey was drawn. I admit regretfully that
I was not. " What I aspired to be and was
not" Constance Bailey was. Only her mis
takes are mine and her very earnest effort to
[be]

FOREWORD

set the feet of the First Reader Class firmly
in the path which leads " through the years,
maybe," as Mrs. Mogilewsky used to say, to
American Citizenship.

The other characters in these pages are as
real and unadorned as words of mine could
leave them. If I have even to a degree suc
ceeded in making others see what I have
seen I shall have contributed something to
the quickening of intelligent interest in the
poor and unfortunate of an alien race which
is crowding into our great cities until whole
districts turn foreign, squalid and over
crowded with a rapidity beyond all belief.
For the newly arrived Jew must go to the
Ghetto. Only there shall he find his lan
guage understood, only there shall he find
his orthodox synagogue and the food pre
scribed by his religion, only there shall he
[x]

FOREWORD

find work for his unskilled, untrained
hands.

I find great pleasure and reward in the
testimony, which those most qualified by in
timate knowledge and wide experience to
pass judgment upon them, have borne to the
essential truth of these stories. In this con
nection I am happy to be able to present,
with the writer's permission, the following
letter from one whose position as the head of
this nation does not prevent him from taking
the same interest in the problems of his own
municipality as when he was locally con
cerned in the regulation of its affairs. No
one knows better than the President how
deeply the problems of a city are those of the
nation itself and how tremendous a trust has
been committed to it in making it the
"Mother of the Wards of Liberty."
[xi]

FOREWORD

OYSTER BAY, N. Y.
July 26, 1905.

MY DEAR Miss KELLY :

Mrs. Roosevelt and I and most of the chil
dren know your very amusing and very pa
thetic accounts of East Side school-children
almost by heart, and I really think you must
let me write and thank you for them. While
I was Police Commissioner I quite often
went to the Houston Street public school and
was immensely interested and impressed by
what I saw there. I thought there were a
good many Miss Bailies there, and the work
they were doing among their scholars (who
were so largely of Russian- Jewish parentage,
like the children you write of) was very much
like what your Miss Bailey has done.

Now, a word of preaching, not to Miss

Kelly but to Miss Bailey. The scrape into

which Miss Bailey got by following too

closely Messrs. Froebel and Pestalozzi (and

[xii]

FOREWORD

these eminent men, like most other human
beings, diluted their good work with bad
work) was because of not seeing, and
therefore not telling, the plain, wholesome
truth. To try to teach her pupils that there
should never be any appeal to force, when
they lived under conditions which meant
reversion to the primitive cave man if it were
not for the continually exercised ability of
the father of Patrick Brennan to cope with
the Uncle Abys, amounted merely to the
effort to give them ideals which would not
work for one moment when they got outside
of the school-room, and I think it is an abom
ination to teach people ideals that will not
work, because, instead of understanding as
they ought to that it is only false ideals which
do not work, they in such cases generally
jump to the conclusion that no ideals at all
will work. Teach them that the wrong is
not in fighting, but in fighting for a wrong
[xiii]

FOREWORD

cause or without full and adequate cause,
and you teach them what is true and right
and what they can act up to. But teach
them that all fighting is wrong, that the wars
of Washington and Napoleon are of the same
stamp; that Lincoln and Attila are on the
same ethical level, and the result is either
vicious or nil. If Miss Bailey's "steady,"
the Doctor, would not knock down a man
who had insulted her, I would have a mighty
poor opinion of him ; but if he were brutal to
the weak, or a bully, or a tyrant, I would
have an even worse opinion of him.

There! I suppose I have been preaching
again, when I only meant to write a word of
thanks and appreciation.
Sincerely yours,

THEODORE ROOSEVELT."

This letter refers to the story entitled
"In Loco Parentis," which I have placed
[xiv]

FOREWORD

first in this collection. Pedagogically con
sidered that story is atheism. So, I fear,
is "A Soul Above Buttons," and "The
Gifts of the Philosophers," is entirely with
out the pale. But Emile is educated — and
dead. "The Child" has passed away or
has lost its "tabula rasa," while Yetta
Aaronsohn comes to school to learn "the
style," and the Boss has no time " to fool
with his arms and legs."

MYRA KELLY.

OLDCHESTER, NEW JERSEY,
October, 1907.

[xv]

CONTENTS
IP

PAGE

FOREWORD vii

IN Loco PARENTIS 3

A SOUL ABOVE BUTTONS .... 49

THE SLAUGHTER OF THE INNOCENTS 91

A PERJURED SANTA GLAUS . . . 137

LITTLE BO-PEEP 177

THE WILES OF THE WOOER . . . 213

THE GIFTS OF THE PHILOSOPHERS . 255

STAR OF BETHLEHEM ... . 285

IN LOCO PARENTIS

IN LOCO PARENTIS

Cinderella had a Fairy- Godmother; Aladdin
had a Wonderful Lamp; Isidore Belchatosky
had an Uncle Abraham. Uncle Abraham
combined the power of the genii with the
complaisance of the godmother, and was fur
ther distinguished by a settled place of resi
dence and a distracting generosity of cast-
off clothes. The more purely mythical per
sonages, with accounts of whose beneficence
Miss Bailey was wont to entertain her charges,
were not entirely convincing. Giants, genii,
fairies, conversational animals might or might
not be; but who could question the existence
of Isidore's Uncle Abraham ? Excerpts of
[3]

WARDS OF LIBERTY

his views upon men and
events adorned Isidore Bel-
chatosky's conversation and
examples of his taste in
"gents' furnishings" adorned
Isidore Belchatosky's per
son.

The speckled vest which
shrouded Isidore's form had once belonged
to Uncle Abey. It was crossed by a steel
watch chain, the gift of Uncle Abey. Its
pocket waited — open-mouthed — for a fat
and noisy watch, promised by Uncle Abey.
The bold plaid trousers which reached from
Isidore's ankles to his armpits, and showed
so pleasingly through the opening of the
speckled vest, had but lately graced the limbs
of Uncle Abey.

"These is nicer nor that velvet suit you
[4]

IN LOCO PARENTIS

used to wear," said Patrick Brennan judic
iously. "Them was sissy clothes."

"These is fer mans suits," Isidore proudly
informed him. "I gets 'em from off of mine
Uncle Abey. The lady by our floor she makes
pants fer her little boy mit the legs, und I
puts me on mit the rest."

"Your uncle could to be awful big," com
mented Morris Mogi-
lewsky.

"Sure is he big."

"Is he high?"

"Sure is he high.
Like a house is he

high.-

"Und fat?"
"He is fat like
blocks from houses."
"Did you ever,"

[5]

WARDS OF LIBERTY

asked Patrick, "see Father Burke over to
St. Mary's ? Is your uncle as fat as him ?"

"Fatter," Isidore maintained. "Say, you
open me the back of this waist und I shows
you how is mine uncle fat."

Morris undid the buckle; Isidore removed
safety-pins and shook out reefs until the
vest hung, in voluminous folds, to its ex
tinguished wearer's knees.

"Fill it up from coats," he commanded,
"und you could to see how is mine Uncle
Abey fat."

It was recess time. The yard was swarm
ing with little boys, and the discrepancy in
girth between Isidore and his uncle was soon
overcome. Coats, caps, mufflers, even lunch
eons, were pressed into service, until Isidore,
looking like the most backward tilted of
pouter pigeons, turned to Patrick.
[6]

WARDS OF LIBERTY

"Mine uncle is fat like that," said he. "I
guess nobody in that world could to be fat
how mine Uncle Abey is."

"You lie," cried Patrick Brennan. "No
sheeny could be as fat as a priest."

"You lie," retorted Isidore; "mine Uncle
Abey is."

Whereupon they fought. It was a little
unfortunate that the bell should have rung
just then and that the owners of Isidore's
embonpoint should have forcibly and hurried
ly reclaimed it. For Patrick's science was
upset by the alarming shrinkage of his op
ponent while Isidore's aim and nerve were
disturbed by frequent, even by simultaneous,
tugs at his person. The relative avoirdupois
of priest and Levite was still undetermined
when a large monitor dragged the kick
ing combatants to Room 18 and delivered

[8]

IN LOCO PARENTIS

them to Miss Bailey, their long-suffering
teacher.

"Mine uncle is fatter," Isidore persisted,
even when Miss Bailey had consigned him to
the corner near the book-case. "He's fat-
ter'n blocks from houses und bunches from
priests."

"Then why don't he come round ?" taunt
ed Patrick from durance vile under the desk.
"Why don't he never come round?"

"He's comin'," said Isidore, who knew
that he was lying.

;< You lie," said Patrick, who guessed it.

"Say, Teacher," cried Eva Gonorowsky,
in whose care — for their greater debasement
-these two rivals for her favor had been
placed. "Teacher, Missis Bailey, Patrick
und Izzie begins mit themselves some more.
They says they lies."

[9]

WARDS OF LIBERTY

"He is comin'," Isidore maintained.

And, strangely enough, he did emerge
from the invisibility which had held him.
Isidore's youth was leaving him. His seventh
birthday was even then approaching, and
Uncle Abraham craved — by formal note -
Miss Bailey's permission to mark the flight
of time by giving a party to the First Reader
Class. The Principal was consulted; stipu
lated only that the celebration should take
place after school hours ; and Uncle Abraham
was informed --by formal note — that Room
18 would be at his hospitable service at a
quarter after three upon the anniversary of
Isidore's nativity.

There never had been a more successful
party. The guests all knew one another;
there was neither embarrassment nor con
straint; and the host, who arrived at the ap-
[10]

IN LOCO PARENTIS

pointed hour in gleaming raiment and great
heat, was observed by all observers to be a
man of wealth and of importance. Also the
refreshment promised well. It was contained

" 'It's hoky poky,' pronounced Sarah Schodsky, whose word upon
all social matters was law and final "

in three dirty, moist, and enticing pails and
several cardboard boxes. There was much
pink string and a suggestion of festivity

WARDS OF LIBERTY

about them, and the First Reader Class was
properly impressed.

"It's hoky poky," pronounced Sarah
Schodsky, whose word upon all social matters
was law and final. "It's hoky poky. A man
by our block he sells it. You gets a awful
little bit fer a penny. I seen how Ikey Bor-
rachsohn buys some once."

" Cake costs money, too, und candy," said
Isidore. "On'y mine uncle he don't care.
He's got lots. He's got kind feelin's over me,
too, und so he makes a party over mine birth
day. Say, he's awful rich."

"He's stylish, too," said Eva. "Ain't you
seen how he makes all things what is polite
mit Teacher ? I never in my world seen how
he is polite."

Neither had Miss Bailey. She was rather
at a loss as to the means of entertaining so
[12]

IN LOCO PARENTIS

very impressive a guest and the easy formal
ity of his manner took her entirely by sur
prise. When, however, they had discussed
Isidore's virtues and had together minister
ed to the fifty-six assembled and clamoring
appetites she found herself beginning to un
derstand the admiration in which Isidore held
this precious relative. There was a dexterity
in the turn of his wrist, a finish and precision
about all he did, that seemed to promise
great capacity, and the tender pride which
shone in his eyes when he looked at or spoke
of his small nephew showed that Isidore's
love was not lavished in vain.

When the more carnal wants of the First
Reader Class had been satisfied Uncle Abey
turned his attention to the spirit.

"Will you let them sing?" he asked, and
they sang selections from the class repertoire.
[13]

WARDS OF LIBERTY

Gradually the control of events passed from
Miss Bailey's hands into Uncle Abey's, until
Teacher sat at her own desk, the guest of
Uncle Abraham, while he marshaled her own
charges for her entertainment.

Under the spell of his persuasiveness the
dazed Miss Bailey, who had delved in mem
ory and music books for songs sufficiently
simple to be learned and understood by her
small people, listened to Sadie Gonorowsky's
polished rendering of "Hello, Central, Give
me Heaven," to Patrick Brennan's recita
tion of "Kelly at the Bat," to Morris Mogi-
lewsky's interpretation of the classic, "She
May Have Seen Better Days." At one stage
of the symposium Uncle Abraham made a
speech which, though it began with Isidore,
soon wandered over to Miss Bailey and
stayed there. Other songs and recitations
[14]

IN LOCO P A R E N T I S

followed, all well received, but perhaps the
most popular number of the program was

" Morris Mogilcwsky's interpretation of the classic : ' She May
Have Seen Better Days ' "

Eva Gonorowsky's singing, with appropriate
gestures, of "The Hotel Windsor Fire." The

[15]

WARDS OF LIBERTY

audience was hanging spellbound upon the
voice of Yetta Aaronsohn when Teacher
rose suddenly and announced that it was time
to say good-bye. One verse of Yetta's selec
tion, whose refrain was "She's More to be
Pitied than Censured," had been quite enough
for Miss Bailey.

As Isidore, still miles from the ground of
common things, was being led home by a
proud uncle, that relative turned to him and
demanded :

"Who is that teacher what you've got?"

"That's Missis Bailey. Ain't she a nice
teacher ?"

"Nice!" repeated Uncle Abey. "She's
fine. All silk and a yard wide."

"Missis Blake is wider," Isidore was
forced to admit, "but Missis Bailey is nicer.
Ain't I tell you from long how she says all
[16]

1 Nice I ' repeated Uncle Abey. ' She 's /me.
All silk and a yard wide' "

WARDS OF LIBERTY

things what is nice over them clothes what

you gives me."

" I've got some more for you," announced

the uncle. "You wear 'em to-morrow and

tell her where you got
'em."

On the next morn
ing Isidore, in in
credible grandeur,
presented Miss Bailey
with a large magenta
photograph album
and Uncle Abraham's
regards. And in the

-A large magenta photograph first enwreathed aper-

album and Uncle Abraham's » . . ,1

regards » ture for pictures there

was a polished and edited version of Uncle
Abraham's most bland expression. Decor
ously but sadly Miss Bailey returned the gift.
[18]

IN LOCO PARENTIS

In the afternoon Isidore, with his morn
ing's glory still upon him and a large and
inflexible four-in-hand necktie added there
unto, presented Miss Bailey with a pair of
impressive earrings dangling on a card. De
corously also, and sadly too, Miss Bailey
returned them.

Uncle Abraham, surprised but not dis
couraged, made other attempts to guess
Miss Bailey's taste in jewelry and love tokens,
until Isidore would have been, at almost
any time, worthy of the attention of the
Clinton Street gang. For always on his way
to school he bore gifts proffered by Uncle
Abraham, and always on his way from school
he bore gifts rejected by Miss Bailey. And
then Teacher wrote a short, polite, but clear
statement of her wishes. She would allow
Uncle Abraham to do as many kind and
[19]

WARDS OF LIBERTY

gracious things as he might choose for the
First Reader Class, but his generosity could
not extend to its teacher. His nephew's
classmates were quite ready to serve as
objects of his beneficence. His nephew's
teacher was not.

Uncle Abraham pondered heavily over this
extraordinary sentiment, and Isidore watched
his cogitations and repented that he had been
the bearer of a letter which seemed to be dis
tressing to the kindest of uncles and of men.

"Teacher ain't mad ?" Uncle Abey asked.

"No. She has kind feelin's," Isidore as
sured him. " All times she says what is polite
over that party."

"Then why don't she take the things I
send her ? Why don't she want diamonds
and books and perfumery ?"

The question was large, but Isidore grap-
[20]

IN LOCO PARENTIS

pled with it. After prayerful and long
consideration he delivered himself of the
opinion :

"I guess, maybe, she's hungry. She don't
needs she should wear somethings ; she don't
needs she should look on somethings; she
don't needs even she should smell some
things. She needs she should eat."

"Gott!" said Uncle Abraham. "That's
fierce. We'll have to have another party
right away. An' I'll have ice-cream and cake
for you kids, but for her I'll have something
filling. Don't you suppose she gets enough
to eat at home ?"

"Well," said Isidore, "she ain't so awful
big und she ain't so awful fat. She's skinny.
She says all times how you is nice und fat.
She says she ain't never seen no clothes what
is big like yours is."

[21]

WARDS OF LIBERTY

"Then we'll have that party right away,"
said Uncle Abraham.

"But I ain't got no more birthdays,"
Isidore objected. "You can't have a party
'out no birthday."

" She's got to have something to eat. She's
got to have a party. You ask her when her
birthday is."

Isidore asked and crestfallenly reported
that Teacher would remain at her present
years until July. "Und in July there ain't
no school und in the school there ain't no
birthdays."

"Gott!" said Uncle Abraham again. "We
can't wait till July. She don't look healthy
enough to last that long. We'll have a party
without a birthday."

But a party for no reason at all was, Miss
Bailey informed her would-be provider, too
[22]

IN LOCO PARENTIS

grave an infringement of class routine to be
permitted. The letter went on to say that
Room 18 was very grateful, that Miss Bailey
was very grateful, and that she deeply re
gretted being obliged to interfere with Mr.
Abrahamowsky's kind intentions.

Again Uncle Abraham fell to pondering
upon the eternally incomprehensible femi
nine, but his reflections served only to in
crease his bewilderment. Nor were Isidore's
reports cheering. Whether the thought were
father to the observation or whether the long
confinement and insufficient ventilation were
having their natural effect upon Constance
Bailey's not too hardy frame, is uncertain.
But certain it is that Isidore met his uncle's
constant queries with :

"She don't looks healthy. She is awful
white on the face."

[23]

WARDS OF LIBERTY

There were days during January when
Miss Bailey deserted Room 18 and a substi
tute reigned in her stead. But not peacefully
and never — willingly — twice. Then would
Isidore report to -his anxious uncle:

" We didn't haver no teacher to-day. We had
a substiteacher, und Patrick Brennan says
cheek on her. So-o-oh, she sends him on the
Principal's office. Patrick had a awful mad."
"Where is Miss Bailey?"
"She's sick. Comes a from-doctor's letter
on the Principal. He comes und tells us how
she is sick und Eva Gonorowsky she cries
over it."

"Too bad, too bad," muttered Uncle
Abraham. "A roast goose would fix her right
up, and she won't have it."

"Not 'out birthdays," Isidore acquiesced.
" Und I had mine und hers don't never come."
[24]

IN LOCO PARENTIS

But Isidore had reckoned without George
Washington. His birthday was neither past
nor distant, and American public spirit gave
Uncle Abraham the opportunity which he
had sought and even attempted to manu
facture. Once more there was an interchange
of letters and Mr. Abrahamowsky set to
work to design and order a repast worthy of
the occasion — festive yet nourishing. Miss
Bailey meanwhile devoted much energy to
that "Training in Citizenship" to which
February with its Washington and Lincoln
celebrations is so eminently suited. She found
rather surprising historical conceptions abroad
in the land and did battle with them to the
best of her ability, but with less success than
had rewarded her efforts in other directions.
A large picture of "The Father of his Coun
try" was conspicuously hung; American
[25]

WARDS OF LIBERTY

flags were draped on window and wall and the
American spirit was fostered in the hearts of
these newest American citizens.

Stories of George Washington in all stages
of virtue took the place of the fairy tales with
which Miss Bailey had been wont to diversify
the afternoons. The First Reader Class
listened — open-mouthed — to accounts of
his love of truth, his affection for his mother,
his exploits with the hatchet. But of his
middle years, of the wars he fought, the homes
he made forever desolate, she said nothing.
There is nothing which can explain this part
of a man's work to a child's mind; no way of
correlating the war of the Revolution with the
Golden Rule. Of his later days, when peace
had been bought so dearly, of the good he
did, the laws he made, the country he as
sembled out of chaos, she tried to give these

IN LOCO PARENTIS

future Americans some idea. But the work
was hard and the results discouraging.

Even as George Washington transcended
Isidore Belchatosky in fame and in glory,
so did Uncle Abraham's second celebration
transcend his first. The ice-cream was red
and white and blue. So were the cakes. So
were the ribbons, presented by the host,
which adorned the First Reader breast and
rose and fell over excited First Reader hearts.
Red, white and blue was Uncle Abraham's
necktie, his vest, his handkerchief, his socks,
and the solid bouquet which he presented,
with great empressement and many speeches,
to Miss Bailey. Patriotism shone through him
and was reflected in Isidore's vest — lent for
the occasion and to be returned pure and un
spotted on pain of instant disinheritance -
of blue and white plaid with red buttons.
[27]

WARDS OF LIBERTY

Even the roast goose was embedded in parti
colored paper napkins, and when Mr.
Abrahamowsky had forced it upon Miss
Bailey's puzzled acceptance he felt only
chagrin that his country boasted and toasted
but one relative. He would have gladly made
festivals for a national family tree.

Upon this occasion everything was ar
ranged, orderly, glaringly American. Even
the songs and recitations were selected, re
hearsed, and patriotic. There were solos;
there was a grand chorus of an utterly unin
telligible version of "My Country 'tis of
Thee." Patrick Brennan had learned from
his father and now informed the First Reader
Class — and Eva Gonorowsky, who was won
derfully edified — that " a government by the
people, of the people, and for the people"
would do the people a lot of good. Nathan
[28]

IN LOCO PARENTIS

Spiderwitz loudly, but somewhat indistinctly,
"swore allegiance to his flag and to the Re
public for which it stands," etc.

And then Uncle Abraham took the floor.
This speech began with a laudation of Miss
Bailey, and it was not until he had effect
ually banished the "white looks" whose
persistence had so troubled him that he de
voted his eloquence to " the day we celebrate."
Teacher had forgotten this possibility, else
would she have imparted to Mr. Abraham-
owsky the warning against presenting "the
war thought" to the mind of the Child, which
Messrs. Froebel and Pestalozzi and assorted
professors had impressed upon her. But Uncle
Abraham waited for no advice. After a few
introductory remarks he asked with oratori
cal eloquence:

"Who was George Washington ?" and
[29]

WARDS OF LIBERTY

every hand in Room 18, except only Miss
Bailey's, sprang into the air. He had not ex
pected or desired an answer, but it was thrust
upon him.

"A God from off of Krishts," answered
Ignatius Aloysius Diamantstein. "He's got
gold buttons und a horse."

"I seen him on a p'rade," cried Morris
Mogilewsky. "Him und Cap. Dreyfus rides
by side themselves. George Wash' ton has
awful stylish looks."

"He is the papa off of the country where
flowers und Fresh Air Funds stands," sub
mitted Eva Gonorowsky.

" He has two birthdays," said Isidore Bel-
chatosky enviously. "To-morrow is one und
Christmas is one. It could to be awful nice."

"He never tells no lies," was Sadie Gon-
orowsky's contribution to the fund of his-
[30]

IN LOCO PARENTIS

toric data. "He hooks a great big all of
cherries from off of his papa's push-cart.
Und sooner his papa hollers on him he tells it
right out how he takes 'em und he gives 'em
back."

"His papa gives him hacks," said Isidore
Belchatosky.

"A axe," corrected Patrick Brennan. "Me
pop wouldn't give me no axe. I asked him."

Miss Bailey listened in dismay, and, while
Mr. Abrahamowsky went placidly on to an
swer his own question, she determined upon
frequent reviews and much explanation. Uncle
Abey began with the secure ground of Wash
ington's virtuous youth and drew ennobling
morals therefrom. But before Teacher could
stem his eloquence he was launched upon the
war thought, and the eliminating and expur
gating of weeks was undone. He swam
[31]

WARDS OF LIBERTY

through seas of blood. He cracked his hear
er's ears with cannon. He undermined their
nerves with cries of agony and death. Miss
Bailey stopped him when she could and
trusted that the First Reader Class would
understand as little of his eloquence as they
had of hers. They looked absorbedly inter
ested, but that they always did. They were
eagerly ready to answer questions, but that,
too, they always were. And their answers
were, as always, startling.

This habit stood Miss Bailey in good stead
when she had made up her mind to interrupt
Mr. Abrahamowsky at the first pause in his
address. He was describing the devotion
of the soldiers, their suffering and their
bravery. "We must always remember what
George Washington, the Father of our
Country, did for our country," he charged his
[32]

IN LOCO PARENTIS

hearers, "but we must remember too that
he was not alone. The army was back of
him. He had colonels and majors and cap
tains and generals and soldiers to help him.
Always remember the soldiers. There were
thousands and thousands of soldiers. And
when any one asks you who made your
country a free country, you must say ' George
Washington and- ' Here Uncle Abraham
paused to give due effect to the next word,
and the First Reader Class, feeling itself
challenged, answered as one man:

"Cap. Dreyfus."

And Uncle Abraham's astounded silence
was Teacher's opportunity.

When it was over and Room 18 was emptied
of all save Teacher, the corps of monitors, the
roast goose, and Isidore Belchatosky, the lat
ter began to carry out his uncle's instructions :
[33]

WARDS OF LIBERTY

"Parties like that costs whole bunches of
money," he remarked.

"Indeed they do," Miss Bailey agreed. "It
was a beautiful party, a beautiful, beautiful
party."

"Whole bunches of money they costs,"
continued Isidore. "But mine uncle he don't
care, he likes you should have parties. He is
got kind feelings over me, und you, and
George Wash'ton. He's got whole bunches of
money, too."

"Surely he must have. Does he keep a
store all of his own ?"

"Noma'an."

"Does he work in one ?"

" Mine uncle ? No ma' an. Mine uncle don't
work. He plays."

" The piano ? How nice ! And does he get
all his money for that ?"
[34]

IN LOCO PARENTIS

"No ma' an, he don't plays pianos."
"At the theater, then ? Is he an actor ?"
"No ma'an."

"Well, then, what does he play ?"
"He don't plays nothings. He just plays."
"Did you ever see him doing it?" asked
the puzzled Miss Bailey.

"No ma'an. I ain't seen. He plays by night
und I lays then on mine bed. Comes mans
und comes ladies und plays mit mine Uncle
Abey. They gives him whole bunches of
money the while he plays mit 'em so nice."

Miss Bailey and Doctor Ingraham were
discussing things and events some evenings
later when it occurred to her to inquire:

"Among the powers with which you come
in contact at Gouverneur Hospital did you
ever meet a Mr. Abraham Abrahamowsky ? "
[35]

WARDS OF LIBERTY

"No," said the doctor. "But 'tis a sweet
name. What is he ?"

"A rival of yours," she laughed. "He lav
ishes gifts of price — jewelry and roast geese
- upon me, and ice-cream upon the class."

"Rich?"

"Apparently. He supports his small or
phaned nephew who, by the way, adores him."

"Rather decent of the chap to work for
other people's children."

" But according to the nephew, he toils not,
neither does he spin, and yet Solomon in all
his glory never equaled Abraham in his. You
never saw such clothes."

"Perhaps he makes them."

"No. He never works. 'Just plays,' Isidore
tells me."

"Acts?"

"No. I suggested that. He is neither an
[36]

IN LOCO PARENTIS

actor nor a musician. The nephew reports:
'Mans und ladies they comes by our house
by nights und mine uncle he plays mit them.'
Now what do you suppose that means ? I
can't imagine."

"I can," said the doctor grimly. "Tell me
that name again."

' ' Abraham Abrahamo wsky . ' '

"And the address? I might get a few
fellows together some night and go to play
with him."

" I don't remember. I shall send it to you."

It was some days later yet that Room 18
was deserted by its Leader of the Line. At
about ten o'clock he arrived, attended by his
mother in evident haste and dishabille.

"Patrick wouldn't come late, without me,"
Mrs. Brennan explained. "And I couldn't
[37]

WARDS OF LIBERTY

get him ready in time. We're that upset. His
father was brought home to me last night,
miss, shot in the leg."

" Mr. Brennan ? I'm ever so sorry. He's
not badly hurt, I hope."

"No, miss. They say he'll be well in a
couple of weeks."

"But how did it happen ? Let me give the
children something to do while we are talking.
I want to hear all about it."

"Well," Mrs. Brennan began, when the
First Reader Class had been supplied with
the means of keeping Satan at bay, "it was
in a little raid. You know, miss, that there
is gambling and all sorts going on round
about. Sometimes the officers can do some
thing — shut the house up or arrest the peo
ple in 'em. Sometimes they can't; friends
higher up, you know. But yesterday one of
[38]

IN LOCO PARENTIS

the young doctors in Gouverneur handed in a
report of a place. Nobody seemed to know
the man, so they raided his joint last night.
Me husband got shot when the man got ugly
and pulled his gun on the officers. But they
locked him up an he'll get a nice long rest on
the Island. They'll learn him not to shoot
an officer."

When Miss Bailey and her corps of moni
tors were leaving the school that afternoon
they found Isidore Belchatosky, who had
not graced Room 18 during the day, in
copious tears upon the big steps. He was
wonderfully unkempt and bedraggled, and
Teacher paused an appreciable moment be
fore she sat close beside him and gathered
his dejected little body to her.

"What is it, honey?" she crooned.
" What's the matter with the poor old boy ? "
[39]

WARDS OF LIBERTY

"Oh, mine uncle," wailed Isidore, "mine
poor uncle."

"Your Uncle Abraham?"
'Yiss ma' an. I ain't got no more uncle,
on'y him. I ain't got no mama nor no papa
nor nothin' on'y mine uncle, und now they
takes him away. I ain't got nobody. The lady
by our floor is nice on'y I ain't lovin' so awful
much mit her. I needs mine Uncle Abey."

"Poor Izzie," cried Eva Gonorowsky, and
stooped to take the sufferer's hand. By so
doing she disclosed the sturdy figure of her
satellite, Patrick Brennan, and Isidore's
grief was quickly changed to wrath.

"Think shame how your papa makes mit
mine uncle," he raged. "Mine uncle he
don't makes nothing mit him und extra he
commences. Anyway mine uncle he shoots
him mit pistols in the leg."
[40]

WARDS OF LIBERTY

"Not your uncle," Miss Bailey corrected
him. "Patrick's mother came to see me this
morning and told me about poor Mr. Bren-
nan. But it was not your uncle who shot
him. It was a man who kept — well, I
can't explain the kind of a man it was. But
not your uncle."

"It was mine uncle," Isidore maintained.
" I lays on mine bed in sleep when comes a
great big all of mans --your fellow was
mit — "

"No," cried Teacher; "not Doctor In-
graham!"

"Teacher, yiss ma' an, your fellow."

"Oh, Isidore, Isidore!" wailed Teacher,
and fell to crying as bitterly as the boy.
"It is all my fault and he was so good to

us."

Yiss ma' an, he had feelings. He makes
[42]

IN LOCO PARENTIS

on me und you und George Wash'ton,
parties. He is kind mans."

"Huh!" snorted Patrick, "he shot me
pop."

"'Cause your papa was rubberin' round.
Your papa is awful nosy. He comes mit
that all of mans und they takes mine uncle's
chips und his cards und a table what he had
mit turning wheels. Mine poor uncle he
feels awful bad, und your papa und Teacher's
fellow they says cheek on him on'y he don't
says nothings. On'y by a while they makes
they shall take where mine uncle's money is
und he hits a man --a little bit of man --a
hack. Sooner the all of mans they hits
mine uncle und they takes his money und
they chases him around und they holds
the mans und the ladies what was playin'
mit mine uncle --the ladies they hollers
[43]

WARDS OF LIBERTY

somethin' fierce. So-o-oh mine uncle he takes
his shootin' pistol und he shoots Patrick
Brennan's nosy papa in the leg."

"That was very wrong of him," said
Teacher.

"Ain't George Wash'ton made shoots
mit pistols ?" demanded Isidore.

"Yes, he did," admitted Miss Bailey.

"Ain't he hit a great big all of mans?
Und ain't they made him presidents over
it unds papas off of countries where flowers
stands und birds sings ?"

"Und where the Fresh Air Fund is," sup
plemented Eva.

" Well, not exactly because he hit so many
men. And besides it all happened long and
long ago. They don't make presidents that
way any more."

"Ain't Teddy Rosenfelt hit mans? Und
[44]

IN LOCO PARENTIS

ain't they made him presidents over it ?
On'y that ain't how they makes mit mine
uncle. They don't makes him presidents nor
papas neither. They takes und puts some
things from iron on his hands so he couldn't
to talk even. They puts him in a wagon und
they says they sends him over the water."

"Where?" asked Teacher.

"Over the water where Islands is und
prisons stands. That's how they makes mit
him the while he hits somebody mit pistols.
I guess they don't know 'bout George und
Teddy. They makes them - - mine uncle
tells you how they makes George und Teddy
- presidents und papas over it."

"But that was from long, Izzie," Eva re
minded him.

"And altogether different," added Miss
Bailey.

[45]

WARDS OF LIBERTY

" An' me pop wasn't there. He'd
'a pinched 'em," said Patrick.

"Und George had his gang
along," observed Nathan Spi-
derwitz.

"Und Izzie," said Morris Mogilewsky,
summing the matter up, " George Wash'ton
he ain't hit mans in legs mit shootin' pistols
'out killin' 'em. You couldn't to be presi
dents und papas over that. George Wash'
ton he kills 'em all bloody und dead. He
kills bunches of tousens of mans. Why ain't
your uncle kill somebody ?"

" He hits him in the leg," reiterated Isidore
sadly.

"But he ain't killed 'em. Und, Izzie,
sooner you ain't killed somebody bloody und
dead, you couldnt to be presidents und
papas off of countries."
[46]

A SOUL ABOVE BUTTONS

A SOUL ABOVE BUTTONS

HE Boss staggered down the
cellar steps and dropped the
pile of coats from his small
shoulder to the floor. The
"boarders," for a breath's
space, ceased from sewing
buttons upon other coats and turned expectant
eyes toward their employer, their landlord,
their gaoler, and their only source of news.

But he brought no tidings of the outer
world on this particular afternoon. He had
been through crowded blocks where the very
air was full of war and murder and his only
report was the banality:
[49]

WARDS OF LIBERTY

"The day is upon me wherein I must go to
school."

No one was interested. Even the mother of
the Boss, frying fish in one corner of the cel
lar, was busy with her own gloomy preoccu
pations and reached her son's communica
tion only after a long delay. Then she asked
dully:

"Why?"

"For learn the reading and the writing of
the English. A man at the factory where I
waited for my turn told me of how he had
learned these things and he showed me the
card he had won by his learning. 'It is from
the Union,' he told me, and behold ! when he
stood before the manager he received gents'
vests for the finishing. The pay is good for
that work. So when my turn came I, too,
asked for finishing to do. But the manager
[50]

A SOUL ABOVE BUTTONS

laughed. 'Are you of the Union ?' he de
manded, 'show me then your card!' And
I, having no card, received only buttons.
For such a card I shall go to school. "

On the next morning he waited upon the
Principal of the nearest Public School and
proved a grievous trial to that long-suffering
official. The Boss's alert and well formulat
ed knowledge of the world of the streets was
only exceeded by his blandly abysmal ignor
ance of the world of books. And it was after
careful deliberation and with grave misgiv
ing that the Principal sent for the roll-book
of the First Reader Class and consigned the
newcomer to Miss Bailey's dominion.

Teacher welcomed him with careful pa
tience but his advent created something akin
to a riot in Room 18. There was hardly a
child within its walls who was not familiar
[51]

WARDS OF LIBERTY

with his history and awed by his proximity.
They all knew how his father had finished
gents' garments and his own tired life in a
cellar under Henry Street, and how the son,
having learned the details of the business by
acting as his father's messenger, was now the
successful manager of that dead father's
business. They knew how he had induced
his mother to work for him, though she had
at first preferred — sensibly enough — to
die. How he had then impressed a half
witted sister into service, had acquired an
uncanny dexterity with his own needle, and
had lately enlarged his establishment to in
clude three broken-spirited exiles who paid
for their board and lodging by their ceaseless
labor.

And now ne had come to their school!
Was in the First Reader Class ! No wonder
[52]

Eca Ganorowsky

A SOUL ABOVE BUTTONS

that Eva Gonorowsky
tingled with excite
ment and preened the
butterfly bow which
threatened her right
eye. No wonder that
Sarah Schodsky, Moni
tor of Fashionable
Intelligence, broke
through all restrictions, and the belt of
her apron, in her eagerness to impart these
biographical details to Miss Bailey. No won
der that Patrick Brennan pondered how far
a Leader of the Line might safely boss a
professional Boss. No wonder that Morris
Mogilewsky, Monitor of Goldfish and of
Manners, was obliged to call Teacher's atten
tion to the extent to which the "childrens
longed out their necks und rubbered."
[53]

WARDS OF LIBERTY

The Boss cared little for the commotion of
which he was the cause. His red-lidded eyes
were everywhere, saw everything, but found
no trace of the "Cards off of Unions" of
which he was in search. Nothing else inter
ested him, and he grew uneasy as the class fell
into its morning routine. An interval of
Swedish Exercises prompted him to remon
strate.

" Say, missus, ain't you goin' to learn us to
read ? I ain't got no time to fool with me legs

an' arms.'

"We shall have reading in a few mo
ments," Teacher assured him. "Are you so
fond of it?"

"Don't know nothings about it," the Boss
answered. "When are ye goin' to quit your
f oolin' an' learn us some ? '

Teacher turned to survey her newest
[54]

A SOUL ABOVE BUTTONS

charge. Stripped of his authority and re
moved from his cellar, the Boss was only a
little more stunted of stature and crafty of

" '/ ain't got no time to fool with me legs an' arms ' '

eye than his nine years of life on the lower

East Side of New York entitled him to be.

[55]

WARDS OF LIBERTY

And yet his criticism impressed itself through
Constance Bailey's armor of pedagogic
self- righteousness and left her rather at a loss.

"We shall have reading in a few mo
ments," she repeated. "But first we must try
a little arithmetic. Wouldn't you like that ?"
And out of an ignorance as great as his ambi
tion he answered tentatively:

"I'll try it. But I comes for learn readin'
an' writ in'."

He didn't like arithmetic at all. It struck
him as being a shade more inane than Swe
dish Exercises, and almost as bad as singing
and praying. The Boss who could calculate,
entirely without written figures, the number
of boarders necessary to make his business a
paying one and the number of hours and
dollars he could allow his mother to devote
to domesticity, the Boss who had already es-
[56]

A SOUL ABOVE BUTTONS
timated the depressing sum which the vaga
ries of the official Course of Study had thus
far cost him, listened in contemptuous
amazement to the problems proposed to his
consideration by this Teacher's words and
the Boss's thoughts followed one another in
some such sequence as :

" I had ten dollars and I spent six dollars
for a dress -

" Gee, ain't she easy !"

"Two dollars for a waist -

"For her size! It was stealinV

"Fifty cents for a belt and fifty cents for
three handkerchiefs. Who can tell me how
much I had left?"

"I kin," said the Boss, "but that's no

way to do. You'd ought to count your change.

An' I kin tell you, too, you was skinned when

you paid six dollars fer that dress. I ain't

[57]

WARDS OF LIBERTY

seen the coat but I kin tell by the skirt. An'
that waist ain't worth no two dollars. I could
show you a place where you'd get your
money's worth. The man what owns half of
it is a friend of mine. "

But before he had arranged details he
was swept into silence by the First Reader
Class's divergent estimates of Teacher's
present financial standing.

'You've got nineteen dollars left," cried
the optimistic Eva Gonorowsky, while Ig
natius Aloysius Diamantstein, with a pecu
niary pessimism contracted from his Irish
stepmother, shrieked the evil tidings:

'You're dead broke. You ain't got noth-
in' at all."

Finally the unashamed Miss Bailey set
her extravagances in neat figures upon the
blackboard and the Boss's spirits rose. This
[58]

A SOUL ABOVE BUTTONS

was the sort of thing he had come for. This
was like business. And he marveled much
that so idiotic a shopper could be "smart"
enough to write with so easy a grace.

After further waiting and other wilful
waste of time the readers were at last dis
tributed, and the mouse-colored head of the
Boss, which might have been sleeker if the
latest "boarder" had had greater skill or a
sharper pair of scissors, was buried between
the pages of a book. A half hour of the most
desperate mental exertion left him spent,
hot-eyed, gasping, but master of the fact that
certain black marks upon a wrhite surface
proclaimed to those desiring tickets off of
Unions that:

"Baby's eyes are blue. Baby's cheeks
are pink. Baby has a ball. See the pretty
ball."

[59]

WARDS OF LIBERTY

Followed days of ceaseless effort and
nights of sleepy toil. Followed headaches,
hunger, weariness. But followed, too, a dim
understanding of a relationship between let
ters and sounds. This Teacher called reading.

Writing he found even more difficult, but
here Miss Bailey was able to manage some
of that "correlation with the environment"
which educators preach. While more frivo
lous First Readers wrote of flowers and
birds and babies, the Boss stuck tongue in
pallid cheek and traced: "Buttons are
round," "Pants have pockets," and other
legends calculated to make straight the way
to Cards and Unions.

During his first week at school he managed
to reimburse himself for some of his wasted
hours. On the afternoon of his second day
he spared time from his cellar to ask :
[60]

A SOUL ABOVE BUTTONS

"Say, Mrs. Bailey, did you spend that
other dollar yit ?"

'''What dollar?" asked that improvident
young woman.

"The dollar you had left over when you
bought that waist an' suit."

"No, I'm keeping that," Miss Bailey in
formed him, "to buy a house on Fifth Ave

nue.'

"Where do you live now?" the Boss in
quired, and Teacher told him a combination
of numbers which conveyed nothing to his
mind.

"Alone?"

"No, with my family. "

"An' they let you fool round down here all
the time ? Don't they need you home ?"

"Not very much. They don't mind."

"I guess not," the Boss acquiesced. "I
[61]

WARDS OF LIBERTY

guess you don't help much. Your hands
don't look like you did. Say, do you get
pay fer teachin' ?"

"Very good pay," she answered meekly,
though she did not always think so.

"Then you'd better go right on livin' at
home. You don't want to buy no real estate.
You stay with the old folks an' buy a hat
with that dollar. You'd ought to have a
stylish hat to wear with that new suit. "

"But a dollar seems so much for just one
hat," Miss Bailey objected. "A whole dol
lar!"

"I might be able to fix you so you could
git it fer less," the Boss encouraged her; "I
know a lady what sells hats, an' she might
let you have something cheap if I saw her
about it. "

"Oh, would you really!" cried the
[62]

"An old crony of his mother's who kept a millinery establishment
neatly combined with a candy counter and a barrel of sauerkraut "

WARDS OF LIBERTY

guileless young person, "that is very good of
you," and thereupon fell into consideration
of a suitable color scheme.

:*You leave me 'tend to it," the Boss ad
vised. "I'll fix you up all right, all right."

On his way to the cellar he stopped to visit
an old crony of his mother's who kept a mil
linery establishment neatly combined with a
candy counter and a barrel of sauerkraut.
With tales of the approaching birthday of the
weak-minded sister he induced this lady to
part — at the reduced rate of thirty -four
cents — with a combination of purple and
parrot-green velveteen and diamond sun
bursts. Departing with this grandeur he
made the provident stipulation that unless
the mind of the weak-minded sister were
reached and pleasured the whole transac
tion might be rescinded.
[64]

Miss Bailey cheerfully paid ninety cents for the head-gear

WARDS OF LIBERTY

And before school had formally opened on
the next morning, Miss Bailey cheerfully
paid ninety cents for the head-gear and for a
lesson in the sharpest bargaining of which
she had ever dreamed.

Teacher was as new and puzzling a type
to the Boss as he was to her. He had seen
ladies like her in fashion-plates, but he had
never imagined that the road to Cards and
Unions was adorned by such sentinels. He
had not expected that a very soft hand would
guide his own work-roughened one in the
formation of strange letters: that a very
gentle accent would guide his own street-
toughened one in the pronunciation of strange
words. But least of all had he expected to
enjoy these things and to work as much for
the lady's commendation as for Cards and
Unions, to be interested in her impossible
[66]

A SOUL ABOVE BUTTONS

stories, to admire her clothes, to entrap her
into ill-advised purchases, and to be heavy of
heart when his early doubts grew into sad cer-

"He had not expected that a very soft hand would guide
his own work-roughened one "

tainties and he knew that Constance Bailey,
so gay, so gullible, so friendly, so good to look
upon, was woefully weak in mentality.

And yet what other explanation could
[67]

WARDS OF LIBERTY

there be of her wastefulness of time and effort
and material. Why spend hours in the
painting of a flower or the learning of a string
of words which — when they meant any
thing at all — meant lies. Why close her
ears to truth ? Why reject his answer, found
ed upon fact and observation, to her ques
tion: "Where did you come from, Baby
dear?" in favor of Isidore Belchatosky's
inane doggerel: " Out of the everywhere into
the here. "

Then there was her Board of Monitors.
The sons and daughters of great men were
entrusted to her care and she allowed them
to languish in officeless obscurity while Mor
ris Mogilewsky, Yetta Aaronsohn, Eva Gon-
orowsky, Nathan Spiderwitz and Patrick
Brennan basked in favor and high places.
Was not Isaac Borrachsohn, the son of an
[68]

Yetta

A SOUL ABOVE BUTTONS

Assemblyman and the
grandson of a Rabbi, bet
ter fitted to " make good "
than the daughter of a
man who peddled notions
" on the country," or a boy
whose father even then
was looking for a job ?

But the saddest proof of her mental con
dition was her passion for washing. She
was always at it. She had established a basin
and a heap of towels in one corner of Room
18 and there she would wash a First Reader
for no reason at all, or because of a mere ob
scurity of feature which might have been
easily cleared away by the application of a
slightly moistened coat cuff or the damp
ened hem of an apron. In a paroxysm of
cleanliness she washed the Boss, though his
[69]

WARDS OF LIBERTY

morning canvass of his person had shown
him to be, with careful usage, good for at
least a week. She washed paint brushes, desk
covers, glasses, even pencils. All was fish
that came to her net and she put it all in
water.

There was one phase of her conversation
which refused to classify itself either as fact
or fiction. In the Course of Study it was
described as "Moral Training," and Con
stance Bailey devoted a daily half hour to
this part of her duty. She combined ethics
with biography, and showed that virtue not
. only was its own cold reward but that the
virtuous always held preferred stock in the
business of life, and might realize at a mo
ment's notice. There was Jack the Giant
Killer and Abey Lincoln; King Alfred the
Great and the Light Brigade; King Arthur
[70]

A SOUL ABOVE BUTTONS

and the David who slew Goliath; and -- but
this was the Boss's contribution to the gal
axy of heroism - - there was his own country
man Schonsky who had licked Paddy, The
Terrible and many others. All these bright
stars of history, all these examples of the
good and true, had reaped great renown and
profit from their purity and prowess; had
triumphed over wrong; had demonstrated
beyond the shadow of a doubt that "honesty
is the best policy" and that "fortune favors
the brave."

So things progressed in Room 18 until the
Friday afternoon of the Boss's second week .
in the high halls of learning. On the preced
ing Friday he had been detained in the cellar
by the sudden collapse of a boarder. But
during the second week he had been constant
in his attendance and Teacher handed him a

WARDS OF LIBERTY

blue ticket which announced to whom it
might concern — and who could read it -
that the punctuality, the application, and the
deportment of the Boss had been all that
could have been desired. She smiled approv
ingly when she gave it to him; she even laid
an appreciative hand for an appreciable mo
ment on the mouse-colored head and added
a word of encouragement.

:'You have done beautifully this week,"
she vouchsafed him, " I am very proud of my
new little boy."

The new little boy retreated silently to
his place and watched. He noted the joy and
eagerness of such children as received tickets,
the dejection of those who got none. He did
not quite understand the details of the sys
tem but its general principles were familiar
to him, so he waited until he and Miss Bailey
[72]

A SOUL ABOVE BUTTONS

were alone and she had given him such
private instruction as their scanty leisure
allowed. Then he drew out his certificate of
merit and asked:

" Where do I git it cashed ?"

"You don't get it cashed," said Teacher.
"You take it home to show that you were a
good litt'eboy."

" Then where do I git me pay ? "

"Your pay for being good!" Miss Bailey
reproved him.

"Naw, " said the Boss, "me pay fer sew-
in'. Didn't I make ye a book-mark an' mat,
an' a horse reins fer a kid ?"

" But not for pay, " Teacher remonstrated.
"You did it for -

"Fer me health?" queried the Boss.
" Well I guess nit. I done the work an' I done
it good, an' I want me pay. If you don't fix
[73]

WARDS OF LIBERTY

me up I'll report you and have your whole -
shop raided."

In view of this awful threat and of the
bursting indignation of the Boss, Teacher
temporized with the hopeful-sounding but
most doubting suggestion :

"Wouldn't you like to take the things
home with you now ? You will get all your
sewing at promotion time, but if you would
like to have those three pieces to-day I might
let you take them.

"No you don't," said the good little boy
grimly. "You don't work me with none of
your con games. I done the work an' I want
me pay."

Gently, but firmly, Miss Bailey explained
the by-laws of the Board of Education to
him. Stubbornly he refused to accept the
explanation.

[74]

A SOUL ABOVE BUTTONS

'You git your pay all right, all right,"
he unchivalrously reminded her. 'You git
your pay an' now you're try in' to welsh on
them poor little kids. Why, I wouldn't treat
the greenest Greenie in my cellar like you
treat them kids what you're paid to treat
right."

Miss Bailey appealed to his common sense,
to his thirst for learning, to the integrity of
all her former dealings with her good little
boy. In vain, again in vain. The commer
cialism of the Boss was rampant and vigi
lant. At the first pause in her justification he
broke in with:

" An' I folded papers f er you, too. Don't I
git no pay f er that ? I don't know the rates on
that kind of a job but a young lady friend of
mine works to a paper-boxes factory an' she
gets good money. What are you goin' to do
[75]

WARDS OF LIBERTY

about the house I folded for you ? A house
an' a barn, an' a darn fool bird. (I won't
charge you nothin' on that bird 'cause it didn't
look like nothin'.) But I want me pay on
them other things, an' you'll be sorry if you
don't fix me up now. I'll queer yer good and
plenty if you don't. I - " and here the con
tempt and the maturity of the Boss were
wonderful to see - "I don't want the crazy
truck. I don't want no book-mark — I
ain't got no book. Nor I don't want no paper
house an' barn. An' do I look like I wanted a
horse reins with bells on it ? Bells on me!"
cried the Boss who had his own reasons for
going softly all his days. "Well I guess nit!"
Of course compromise, after attempted
intimidation, was impossible, and Miss
Bailey went home that afternoon in a most
uncomfortable frame of mind. For the Boss
[76]

A SOUL ABOVE BUTTONS

had interested her. She had enjoyed working
for and gaining his slow regard, was attract
ed by his independence. And she wras sorry
for the little chap with his tiny body and his
great responsibilities. While he was pitying
her for the omission of mind from her consti
tution she was grieving over him as a child
defrauded of his childhood. But in this
matter of paying children for the work they
did at school, there was nothing she could
say to make him understand her position.

On Monday morning the lowering expres
sion of the Boss's visage and the truculent
carriage of the corduroy head had become
epidemic in Room 18. All the dark eyes,
which for nearly a whole term had regarded
Miss Bailey as a judicious combination of
angel, Fairy-tale, and Benevolent Society,
were now darker still with disillusionment
[77]

WARDS OF LIBERTY

and suspicion. Sulkily, the First Reader
Class obeyed the voice of authority. Slowly,
the First Reader Class cast off the spell
which had held them. Stealthily, the First
Reader Class watched the mouse-colored
crest of its new commander and waited for
his signal to revolt. It came with the sewing
hour in the late morning. Fat needles and
gay worsted were distributed and the work
ing-drawing of a most artistic iron-holder
was traced upon the blackboard. The work
was ready, but the workers were militantly
not so. Teacher turned to Morris Mogilew-
sky:

" Is this a Jewish holiday ? " she asked him,
out of her disheartening experience of the en
forced idleness of those frequent festivals.

"No, ma'am, this ain't no holiday," Mor
ris answered. "On'y we dassent to sew fer
[78]

A SOUL ABOVE BUTTONS

you fer nothings, the while we likes we shall
make mit you a hit. "

"That is slang, dear," Teacher warned
him. "But you could make much more of a
hit with me by doing your sewing like good
children."

''We dassent. The new boy he makes we
shall make a swear over it. It's a fierce

swear.'1

"Come here," Teacher commanded, and
the Boss, abandoning a lurking desire to use
his desk as a barricade and to entrench him
self behind it, rose upon unsteady legs and
obeyed. Teacher looked less harmless than
he had expected as she demanded:

''What kind of a hit is this supposed to
be?"

"It ain't no hit. It's a strike. I told the
kids what their work is worth an' they feel
[79]

WARDS OF LIBERTY

like I do about doin' it fer nothin'. I guess
you'll be sorry you turned me down, Fri
day," and for a baffled moment Teacher
wished that the turning might be across her
knee and accompanied with vigorous in
fringement of the by-laws. Here was a model
class of the school, her pride, her enthusiasm,
almost her creation, given over to mutiny
and sedition. For a moment she thought of
using coercion and then determined upon a
coup d'etat. Very gravely she stood beside
her desk and made an address of farewell.

She touched upon the little joys and sor
rows which had visited Room 18. She made
artful allusions to flowers, canaries, goldfish,
and rabbits. She cast one regretful eye back
to the Christmas tree and she cast the other
forwards to the proposed 'scursion to Cen
tral Park. She concluded, as well as she
[80]

A SOUL ABOVE BUTTONS

could through the satisfactory veil of tears
which had enveloped the Class:

"But since you feel that I have treated you
badly, since you feel that you should have
been paid for learning those things which
will help to make you useful when you are
big and to keep you happy while you are
little, I must ask you to take your hats and
coats and everything which belongs to you
and to leave your desks for the little boys and
girls — there are plenty of them — who will
be glad to come to school in Room 18 and
who won't have to be paid for coming. "

A long and wavering wail from the moni
tor of pencil points ended Miss Bailey's val
edictory and was echoed by the monitors of
goldfish and of buttons.

"I don't want I shall be promoted,"
snuffled Ignatius Aloysius Diamantstein with
[81]

WARDS OF LIBERTY

a damp cuff against a damper nose. "I
have a fraid over Miss Blake und I likes it
here all right. "

"You won't be promoted," Miss Bailey
comforted him. "You will stay at home or
play on the street. You won't have to go to
school at all."

"I don't likes it, I don't likes it!" wailed
Morris Mogilewsky. "I don't need I shall
be no rowdy what plays by blocks. I likes
I shall stay by your side und make what is
healthy mit them f rom-gold fishes. "

" Very well, you may stay if you care to, "
Miss Bailey remarked with a coldness hither
to unknown in her dealings with this, the
most devoted of her charges. " But the others
must take their things and go at once."

But no one wanted to go. Teacher was
buried under a landslide of moistly com-
[82]

A SOUL ABOVE BUTTONS

punctious First Readers which launched it
self upon her defenseless person with tearful
pledges of fealty. When it was at last dif
ferentiated and driven back to the desks
Miss Bailey delivered her ultimatum:

" The children who will stay at school only
if they are paid for their work here may —
Stand!"

Only the Boss arose. Fear, or love, or
gratitude, or public opinion held the others
in their seats and the Boss surveyed them
with hot scorn. He had not reached that
stage of Moral Training which would have
taught him that the way of the reformer is
as hard as that of the transgressor, and that
the wages of the man who tries to awaken
his fellow is generally derision and often
death.

So he shared the lot of many leaders and
[83]

•L

A SOUL ABOVE BUTTONS

stood without followers when the time for
action had come.

"You're a bunch of sissies," he informed
the neat and serried ranks of the First Read
ers. "You're a bunch of softies. You're a
bunch of scabs."

"You really mustn't say such words,"
Teacher reproved him. "You just wait in
the hall for a moment while I give the chil
dren something to do; I want to talk to you. "

Some compromise between the Boss, Miss
Bailey, and the By-laws might have been
effected, but when Teacher had supplied her
reclaimed and repentant charges with occu
pation, when she had placed Patrick Bren-
nan in command and had uncoiled sundry
penitent embraces which had again fastened
upon her, she followed the Boss and found
the hall empty.

[85]

WARDS OF LIBERTY

Scouts were despatched and returned
baffled. The truant officer was no more suc
cessful. Miss Bailey visited the cellar and
retired discomfited, for she could neither
breathe the air, believe the disclaimers, nor
speak the speech which she encountered
there. Other First Readers from time to
time reported fleeting glimpses of the al
ways fleeing Boss. But what could the in
experienced eyes of Constance Bailey, the
hurried inspection of the truant officer, the
innocent regard of the First Readers avail
against his trained and constant watchful
ness. More than ever now did he go softly
all his days and many of his nights.

For he had presented himself before his
friend, the manager of the shop, as one de
siring examination in the elements of Eng
lish Literature and Composition and had dis-
[86]

A SOUL ABOVE BUTTONS

covered that his two weeks had furthered him
not at all upon the way to Cards off of
Unions and that buttons were still to be his
portion.

"Ain't this writin' ?" he demanded and
offered for his friend's inspection some mystic
marks of whose meaning — in the absence of
a copy - - he was a little unsure.

"No, it ain't. It's foolin'," said the candid
friend.

"She learned me that," the Boss main
tained. "An' she learned me too, 'Honesty
is the best Policy.' What's that?"

"That's a lie," the candid one informed
him.

"An' she learned us about Jack the Giant
Killer an' King Arthur. Who was they ?"

"Fakes," was the verdict of candor. "She
worked you for all you was worth. "
[87]

WARDS OF LIBERTY

"She fooled me all right, all right," the
rueful Boss admitted. "But say, you'd ought
to see her. She sure looks like the real thing. "
"Sure she does," acquiesced the friend,
who combined worldly wisdom with his
frankness. "The slickest always does."

And so the Boss avoided the high halls of
learning and all associated therewith. For
had he not bent thirstily over the Pierian
Spring expecting to quaff inspiration to
Cards and to Unions, and had he not found
that it flowed forth
misinformation, Swe
dish Exercises, unpaid
labor, and that it bub
bled disgustingly with
soap and water?

[88]

THE SLAUGHTER
OF THE INNOCENTS

THE SLAUGHTER OF THE
INNOCENTS

"No, Yetta, I think not, " answered Teacher.
'You have a very nice place of your own.
Why should you want to sit near me?"

" I could to hold your pencil, " the Monitor
of Buttons suggested with a pale hopeful
ness.

'Thank you, dear, but it stays very safely
on my desk," replied Teacher. "We will go
on with our reading. You were doing very
nicely, Morris. See the waves break on the —
what do waves break on, Morris ?" But the
Monitor of the Goldfish Bowl could not re
member having been on intimate terms with
a body of water larger than that in which
[91]

WARDS OF LIBERTY

his charges were even then lazily sinking and
floating with mouths agape and fins trailing.
His lip began to tremble.

"Look carefully at the word," Teacher
encouraged him. "Try to remember the
sounds of the letters."

Morris hissed and sputtered in obedient
effort and finally delivered himself of the
statement: "The waves break on the store."

Hands sprang up in all directions: some
were almost shaken free from connecting
wrists in the eagerness of superior knowledge.

"You've been to Coney Island, Isaac,"
said Teacher. 'You may help Morris.
' The waves break on the -

"Swimming ladies," cried Iky Borrach-
sohn promptly. "I seen 'em last Sunday.
Mine uncle takes me for see them. They
hollers somethin' fierce."
[92]

SLAUGHTER OF THE INNOCENTS

"No, no, no, dear,
Morris was more
nearly right than you
are. I'll write the word
on the board. Now;
who knows it ? Every
body ! Good babies !
Well, you read it,
Yetta Aarcnsohn."

"I holds up mine
hand," explained the
unabashed Yetta,
"the while I likes I
shall set by your side."
" Don't be silly, Yetta, " answered Teacher ;
for she was very tired; the day was very hot
and interruptions very unwelcome. "This is
a reading lesson. Eva, you read the word. "
"Shore," announced that most reliable of
[93]

Yetta

WARDS OF LIBERTY

small persons. And so the lesson progressed.
At every appeal to the opinion of the popu
lace Yetta's hand clawed the atmosphere of
Room 18, but always her information con
sisted of the rumor that she fain would sit
at Teacher's knee upon the Kindergarten
chair sacred to those undergoing a cotton and
camphor treatment for toothache or awaiting
beneficent action of dilute Jamaica Ginger.

"But you have no toothache," remon
strated Miss Bailey, upon the sixth of such
interruptions. "Why can't you be happy at
your own desk ?"

" Don't you likes you shall set by my
side ?" questioned Eva Gonorowsky.

"I likes," suggested Yetta, "I likes I
shall hold Teacher's handcher."

" Thank you so much, but I prefer to keep
it in my pocket," said Miss Bailey, restoring
[94]

SLAUGHTER OF THE INNOCENTS

it to that receptacle of her trim white linen
costume.

" ' Don't you likes you shall set by my side ? ' '

And thereupon the Monitor of Buttons
laid her head upon her own disprized desk
and wept quietly.

[95]

WARDS OF LIBERTY

'You won't lets me I shall hold your
pencil," she whimpered when Miss Bailey
bent over her and essayed comfort. "You
won't lets me I shall hold your handcher, you
won't lets me I shall hold your hand. You
won't lets me I shall just set."

"Well, of course," Teacher relented, "if
you think it would do you good to simply sit
in the little chair -

' Yiss, ma' an, that's healthy for me. "

" Then, of course, you may, " said Teacher.
"Just try to let it make you a little fat and a
little pink. You are a very white little Yetta. "

"Yiss, ma' an, "Yetta acquiesced."! ain't
so awful healthy."

At recess time Teacher detained the
small sufferer and made a superficial ex
amination. A shade of fever, a general sense
of malaise, a great weariness without much
[96]

SLAUGHTER OF THE INNOCENTS

desire to sleep, a persistent headache, a little
difficulty in hearing, almost bloodless gums
and inner eyelids, were the symptoms at
which she arrived. And when the First
Readers filed back, after fifteen minutes of
decorous relaxation and refreshment in the
dim but stuffy coolness of the school-yard,
they found Yetta in the enjoyment of the
Kindergarten chair and the large doll reserved
for acute or surgical cases. A patch of ab
sorbent cotton soaked in alcohol was bound
to her brow with a gauze bandage and held
in place by a safety-pin chosen by the patient
from Teacher's store, and announcing by its
size and authority that the suffering to which
it was applied was of the most severe and
serious nature.

At intervals of the school routine, Miss
Bailey would make polite inquiries; "How
[97]

WARDS OF LIBERTY

is it now, Yetta ? Shall I put more alcohol on
the bandage ?" And Yetta's invariable reply
was: "It's worster," in the most pathetic of
suffering inflections. She enjoyed her indis
position and regarded herself as entitled to
all first-aids to the injured which the desk
afforded. She was, therefore, very indignant
when she detected Jacob Spitsky in a bloody
attempt upon her position.

"Teacher," she interrupted a bout of men
tal arithmetic to warn Miss Bailey, "Teach
er, Jacob Spitsky pulls his tooth extra loose
the while he wants he shall set here. Und my
head ain't healthy yet."

"It's a lie," yelled the outraged Jacob.
" Mine tooth was over yesterday in the mor
ning loose. It bleeds all over mine jumper und
it spoils mine necktie. My papa says I don't
needs it no more."

[98]

SLAUGHTER OF THE INNOCENTS

"Don't take it out here," Miss Bailey
charged him, with a memory of several such
hari-kari performances and a prevision of
the probable result to her spotless linen.
" If you do, I shall certainly send you home.
I'm taking care of Yetta now. It is not your
turn to be sick. You had an earache last
week." And fortified by this successful en
counter Yetta's watchful eyes, under the
gauze bandage, roamed the serried ranks of
the First Readers and warned Teacher of
impending danger.

Thus the long hot afternoon passed and
brought three o'clock and leisure. Jacob
Spitsky and the rank and file of First Read
ers retired with undiminished teeth. Room 18
was left to its Teacher and its monitors who
straightway busied themselves with unsub
stantial tea-cups and an alcohol kettle. The
[99]

WARDS OF LIBERTY

children loved the vicarious hospitality of
these afternoons when ladies and gentlemen
visited Teacher, wore interesting clothes,
made unintelligible comments, and shed an
air of "stylishness" upon the class-room.
Generally Yetta shared in this enthusiasm,
but to-day she sat upon her Kindergarten
chair — moved now into a patch of sunshine
— and shivered. Nothing roused her to more
than a languid interest. The Monitor of
Pencil Points tendered her an outworn pen
cil. Morris Mogilewsky, Guardian of the
Goldfish Bowl, prescribed a small quantity
of fish food from his official store. Nathan
Spiderwitz, who held the Portfolio of Win
dow-Boxes, offered her a withered blossom
and a crinkled leaf. She accepted these
ameliorations with gentle, silent gratitude,
but she was still huddled close to the heat
[100]

SLAUGHTER OF THE INNOCENTS

when steps sounded in the hall. Teacher
flushed quickly, the door opened, and Dr.
Ingraham came in. The Principal was with
him and they were evidently in search of tea.
At least such seemed to be the quest of the
Principal. The Board of Monitors had long
ago decided that other interests prompted
Dr. Ingraham to so frequently desert the suf
ferers in the neighboring Gouverneur Hos
pital for the calm groves of Nathan's tending.
But they had, also, as time passed and Teach
er remained with them, voted him harmless
and accepted his friendship, his visits, and
his largesse. In his survey of Room 18 and
its occupants he, of course, discovered Yetta.

"Another?" he asked.

"I fear so," answered Teacher. 'The
tenth this week in this class, and the other

teachers tell me

[101]

WARDS OF LIBERTY

The Principal groaned audibly and con
sumed hot tea to an extent which paralyzed
the eyes and the manners of Morris Mogilew-
sky.

"The other classes in the Primary Depart
ment," said he, " are just as bad. Such reports
of average attendance ! And such slow stupid
ity when they do come ! The teachers dis
couraged, the District Superintendent puz
zled, the Board watchful. And here am I
trying to keep up the standard of the school
against such odds and in such weather."

"Really, do you know," Miss Bailey
commented, "I think there is some subtle
connection between their noses and their
brains. I've noticed a decided improvement
in the youngsters who have received treat
ment."

"Of course," replied the Doctor. "Noth-
[102]

SLAUGHTER OF THE INNOCENTS

ing is more clearly or more easily proved.
How can you expect the kidlets to think
properly unless they can breathe properly.
Try it yourselves and see. Health comes
first, I tell you. And then," with a laughing
bow to Miss Bailey and the Principal, " then
knowledge. "

"I'm not so sure," the Principal insisted;
"a little knowledge might lead them to
health. An inkling of physiology, a few
laws of hygiene -

"And the means of carrying out the laws,"
suggested Miss Bailey. " You men always
grow theoretical. Please stick to practicalities
and tell me what to do for this baby"; and
she called to her patient patient: "Yetta,
honey, come here. "

The Monitor of Buttons tore herself away
from the sunshine and obeyed. Leaning
[103]

WARDS OF LIBERTY

against Teacher's knee she shivered forlornly
and waited.

" I want you to tell me, dear," Miss Bailey
began, " what you generally have for break
fast."

Yetta regarded the kind eyes above hers
for a puzzled second before she answered
gently :

"Coffee."

"Nothing else?"

"No, ma'am."

"And for dinner?"

"Coffee."

"And for supper."

"Coffee."

The Principal groaned again and turned

to the doctor, who had eyes for nothing but

the white clad girl arid the bedraggled child

before them. "And there are thousands of

[104]

' 'When I couldn't to sew no more I lays in sleep* "

WARDS OF LIBERTY

such cases," he marveled, for he never grew
reconciled, " thousands of such little lives -
and deaths." But Miss Bailey had not
finished.

" And when do you go to bed ?"
"Teacher, I don't goes to bed. I helps my
mama. When I couldn't to sew no more I
lays in sleep. Sooner I wakes and helps
some more. TJnd by times I goes on the yard
fer water fer make coffee. I ain't got time
I shall put me the clothes off and lay by the
bed. I ain't no baby."

"No, indeed, dear, you are — How old
are you, Yetta ?"

"I'm seven. I will become eight."
" Of course you're not a baby. I want you
to show how big and brave a girl you are by
going over to the window with Dr. Ingraham,
and letting him look at your throat. "
[106]

" ' 7 goes on the yard fer water

WARDS OF LIBERTY

"It ain't healthy," Yetta warned this tall
young man with the kind eyes and the strong
hands. "I guess maybe I'm got a sickness.
Mine head aches. Und mine neck aches,
und I likes I shall make nothings on'y just
set mit cold feelings in mine heart und tears
in mine eyes."

The Doctor's examination, though more
thorough and professional than Teacher's,
led to the same diagnosis.

"Adenoids, of course, and a rather aggra
vated case, " was his decision ; " but one which
good food, fresh air and sunshine would
cure. But failing these, an operation is the
only thing."

"Just as I say," maintained the Principal.
"If we could only reach the parents and
educate them -

"Or as / say," Dr. Ingraham countered;
[108]

WARDS OF LIBERTY

" if we could force them to observe a few of
the laws of health."

"But neither knowledge nor health alone
will solve the problem," amended Teacher.
"You must have both and something else
besides. "

"What else ?" demanded the Doctor, but
Miss Bailey laughed and looked at the Prin
cipal. " I'll tell you when I'm sure I'm
right," she promised, and the conversation
veered to other things.

Since this blight had been discovered in
the school Miss Bailey had spent the major
ity of her afternoons in calling upon the
parents of afflicted children and urging
them to action or even to interest. The task
had been a trying one. East Side mothers
are too busy and too resigned to demand a
high standard of ruggedness or ruddiness in
[HO]

SLAUGHTER OF THE INNOCENTS

their offspring, and a child who can stand,
walk, climb stairs and get into its clothes
without help is a well and buxom child. An
utter lack of appetite makes rather for econ
omy than for uneasiness, and a lack of interest
is no disadvantage when the days, from their
dawning to their dark, hold no event of
pleasure and but few of variety. The mothers
were generally courteously apathetic and
blandly surprised that young women -
for all the teachers were involved in the
campaign — of educational and social ad
vantages had no better sense nor occupation
than to busy themselves with obscure ana
tomical observations and to expect others
to share their folly.

Some mothers of course there were whose
means and information prompted them to in
stant action. A local doctor was consulted;

[in]

WARDS OF LIBERTY

fifty cents changed hands ; a scholar was ab
sent for a few days ; returned with reports of
bloody details ; was a hero for a brief space,
and then gave place to a later victim. The
vast majority, however, paid very little
attention to this latest manifestation of
pedagogic hysteria. They classed it with
the mothers' meetings fad, the clean hand
crusade, the kindness to animals agitation,
all of which had to be endured as the price
of an education nominally free.

Miss Bailey accompanied Yetta to her
abode and, through the interpretation of
that small sufferer, delivered an address
on the nature, growth and danger of the
affliction with which the preceding weeks had
made her drearily familiar. Mrs. Aaronsohn
was carefully attentive to Yetta's translation
of her symptoms, but her attention was due
[112]

SLAUGHTER OF THE INNOCENTS

to a very real and grateful regard for Miss
Bailey rather than to alarm. When the case
had been fully stated she pondered for some
space, but she still made buttonholes with a
horrible dexterity. In all her numerous
visits Miss Bailey had never seen Mrs.
Aaronsohn empty-handed, resting, holding a
child, or even standing free from the mound
of unfinished garments which encompassed
her nether limbs. Still sewing, she now asked
Teacher, via Yetta:

"How much costs that 'peration ?"

"Fifty cents to have it done by the doctor
down-stairs. Nothing at the hospital. "

These health quotations were imparted
and Mrs. Aaronsohn made regretful and
lengthy answer.

"She says that's five hundred button
holes," Yetta translated to Teacher, "und
[113]

WARDS OF LIBERTY

she says she ain't got time for take me on
the hospital, und she says, anyway, I ain't
never a fleshy child, und mine face is all
times white. Und she likes she shall look
on them things what you says is growin' in

me.):

So Yetta climbed upon the barricade of
"knee pants," and submitted herself to
another inspection, while Constance Bailey
labored with the choking atmosphere and
wished alternately for millions to spend in
combat with such conditions as these and
for her old-time happy ignorance that these
conditions could exist. For here was a child
languishing for want of sunlight and God's
fresh air. A charming child, gentle-eyed,
soft-voiced, brave-hearted and devoted. And
patient beyond all imagining.

Mrs. Aaronsohn meanwhile ceased from
[114]

SLAUGHTER OF THE INNOCENTS

sewing for a moment's space. She investi
gated Yetta's throat as far down as unaided
vision would allow: investigated Yetta's
nose up to the same satisfactory limit, and
declared the prospect to differ in no material
detail from other anatomies.

"She says she don't see no biles," the
patient reported, when she had climbed to the
floor, and when Mrs. Aaronsohn had re
sumed her sewing. "She says it's healthy for
me I shall be cold in mine hands und white
on mine face. Sooner I gets hot and red she
could to have a fraid. That's how our other
baby dies. We got two left. " And in her pride
of exhibiting the remaining babies and
pointing out the reassuring pallor of their
faces and clamminess of their hands, she al
lowed her role of invalid to fall from her.

So many of the teaching staff reported a
[115]

WARDS OF LIBERTY

like lethargy in the homes of their charges,
that the Principal appealed to headquarters.
The Board of Education applied to the man
agement of a large Jewish hospital and the
Principal was informed that upon a certain
day a staff of doctors and of nurses would
attend to and operate, free of all charge or
officialdom, upon such cases of adenoid
growth as should present themselves —
with certificates signed by parents or guar
dians — for treatment.

Other interviews between parents and
teachers ensued and, since they made no de
mands for time or money, were crowned
with success. For the East Side parent has
learned to trust the Board of Education as it
trusts no other of the powers concerned in its
care and guidance. If such a proposition had
been made by the Gerry Society or the Board
[116]

SLAUGHTER OF THE INNOCENTS

of Health it would have been received with
contumely and rejected with scorn. For was
it not well and generally understood that
these forces are in the employ and command
of the long-armed Czar of Russia and that
they go secretly — sometimes even openly -
up and down the world seeking to reek his
vengeance upon the people he was bent
upon exterminating. And is it not further
clearly known and easily demonstrated that
the Fire Department, the Police Force, and
the Commissioners of Street Cleaning are
further manifestations of the same dread
power ?

But the Board of Education was a different
thing. Respected, trusted and omnipresent,
it took such mild and beneficent forms as
gentle lady teachers, free lunches, night-
schools, roof -gardens, recreation piers and
[117]

WARDS OF LIBERTY

lectures in the vernacular. Its occasional
unreasonableness and "foolishnesses" made
it only the more human and lovable. The
teachers carried on their campaigns, an ex
traordinary collection of autographs ac
cumulated upon the Principal's desk, the
day was set, patients warned and cheered,
and all things were put in readiness.

This new and unpronounceable disorder,
its detection, danger and cure, formed the
topic of conversation on corners, on crowded
crossings, on stairs, in the class-rooms and
at teachers' meetings. Even the local papers
found space for its mention between reports
of fresh massacres and new treacheries in
Russia, the increased price of food, and the
report of the weather bureau, giving no hope
of coolness or of rain.

Mesdames Spiderwitz and Mogilewsky
[118]

SLAUGHTER OF THE INNOCENTS

discussed the question in all its bearings upon
the sylvan spot where East Broadway and
Grand Street intersect, and were forcibly
removed — still discussing it — by the crews
of several stalled cable cars and an irate
truckman. The recently united houses of
Gonorowsky were almost shaken into dis
cord when Sadie was turned away as free
from nasal obstruction, while Eva was
granted a card which declared her to be in
the enjoyment of a perfect obstacle race
course between her lungs and the circum
ambient air. Mrs. Brennan called upon Miss
Bailey to explain that, while her Patrick -
thank God! — was free from any respira
tory disease more serious than that childish
disorder commonly called the snuffles, she
and Mr. Brennan considered the present
opportunity an excellent one to have three
[119]

WARDS OF LIBERTY

large warts removed from their son's right
hand and to ask the doctors if they couldn't
anyways at all bleach out the mole on his
cheek and straighten the finger what was
crooked ever since his grandfather- "the
saints be his bed — let have at him with the
poker an' him no bigger than no size at all
at the time."

But it is an exceedingly good wind which
blows nobody ill. The feud between the
Board of Health and the small East Side prac
titioner is old and bitter, and much of the
alien's sullen distrust of official relief is due
to the efforts of the man to whom every case
of illness treated gratis by the Board's rep
resentatives means a potential patient de
flected and a problematical fee turned aside.
Such accustomed interference had been
hard enough, but if up-town hospitals were to
[120]

SLAUGHTER OF THE INNOCENTS

enter the arena, armed with internes and
nurses, what would be left to local talent ?

Appointment after appointment was can
celled as the teachers continued their cru
sade, and parent after parent explained that
Jacob, or Rachel, or Isidore would be made
healthy, free of fifty cent charges, at school;
until at last one worm turned. He was young
and ambitious and very poor, and the temp
tation to make a last effort to turn his van
ishing half dollars back in his direction was
stronger than his conscience or his powers
of prophecy. And he addressed the poor,
ignorant drudge, who was the third in one
morning to rescind earlier arrangements for
his attendance upon her offspring:

"So you choose that the Christians shall
cut the throat of your son. So be it. He is not
my child."

[121]

WARDS OF LIBERTY

Instantly the mind of the mother leaped to
credit this worst of horrors. Had not the
papers been full of such stories? Was not
her brother even then crouched in wordless
misery behind the stove in her half-roomed
home because his wife and their three children
had been tortured to death in Russia not
six weeks ago ? Was not anything possible
except happiness ? Everything to be expected
except good ? In the quiet of the house and
in the presence of the angry man she bore the
news in silence, but once in the glare and
clamor of the streets, she broke into dis
tracted wailing. Tearing her hair, beating
her breast or shaking clenched hands at the
strip of relentless sky far above her, she
shrieked :

"They are murdering our babies, they are
slaughtering our young, they are cutting
[122]

SLAUGHTER OF THE INNOCENTS

the throats of our children." Instantly she
was joined by other mothers as ignorant and
as fearful as she, and a groundless rumor,
arising from one man's cupidity, became the
bitter cry of distracted thousands.

"They are murdering our babies, they are
slaughtering our young, they are cutting
the throats of our children."

The few mothers whose children attended
the school in which the health crusade was
in progress, credited the report as eagerly as
did the thousands and thousands of mothers
whose children attended other schools where
the affliction was unknown or disregarded,
and momentarily the crowd increased in
fierceness and in numbers. All through the
steaming streets, the sweltering tenements,
the rumor spread and, spreading, grew.
The cries as they grew louder, grew wilder,
[123]

WARDS OF LIBERTY

too. "They are working for the Czar! Re
member Kishinef ! They are burying our
children, with foul rites, in their cellars. To
the schools ! To the schools ! "

The crowd, unkempt, half-clothed, wild
with panic and tortured by fear, poured out
into the narrow streets and surged and yelled
and foamed at its thousand mouths. The
local police force, taken unawares, was
paralysed and perplexed, for the cries, when
they were articulate, were in Yiddish and
gave no hint of cause or chance of answer.
And presently the schools were surrounded.

" Our children, our children," yelled the
mothers; and threw stones, bricks, vegeta
bles — anything they could pick up or tear up
— at the grated windows and the heavy doors.

In Room 18 a singing lesson was progress
ing with as much spirit as could be expected
[124]

SLAUGHTER OF THE INNOCENTS

under the lamentable breathing equipment
of many of the class. The First Readers were
demanding shrilly and quite uncomprehend-
ingly: "Oh, say can you see by the dawn's
early light ?" when the storm broke against
the school walls with a hoarse reverberation.
A stone crashed through the window, laid
Morris Mogilewsky's "fish theayter" waste,
and rolled across the empty space toward
Teacher's desk. It promptly stopped the
singing.

"I don't know what kind from noise is
that," whimpered Yetta Aaronsohn. "I
never in my world heard nothings like it."

" I did, " cried that Ulysses, Isaac Barrach-
sohn. "In Coney Island the waves is like
it." But Teacher knew that this was no
moment for conversation. Rather it was the
time for discipline, swift and sharp. The
[125]

WARDS OF LIBERTY

howling in the crowded streets outside was
beginning to find echo in the crowded rooms
within and hurrying feet clattered through
the halls.

"Stand," she commanded. "Mark time!
. One, two, three, four . . . Sing
. Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean."

Waver ingly at first, but with growing
confidence as the song drowned the tumult,
the First Reader Class obeyed. Constance
Bailey wondered what she would be called
upon to face in the next few moments.
Something, she knew. The heavy air was
full of threatening, and the wailing rage of
thousands of women is not often heard.
But, once heard, it is unlikely to be forgotten.
She knew that her duty was to keep the chil
dren calm and ready to obey orders when
they should come. And as she watched the
[126]

SLAUGHTER OF THE INNOCENTS

timorous faces and startled fawn-like eyes
before her, she found herself wishing, with
surprising fervency, for the brave and blue
regard of Patrick Brennan. But the Leader
of the Line had heard of his parents' prepa
rations for his Renaissance, and Room 18
should know him no more until doctors
should have come and gone. His understudy
Abey Ashnewsky was a poor and tame substi
tute.

The telephone in the Principal's office add
ed its shrill note to all the other clamor as
that over-burdened official communicated
with police headquarters and with other
principals similarly besieged. One of his
staff, a Jewess, stood just within the grated
window^ and translated what she could un
derstand of the crowd's hoarse demands:

"They want their children."
[127]

WARDS OF LIBERTY

"Well, I'm sure I don't," snapped the
harassed man. "Are they giving any rea
sons ?"

"None clear at all. There is something
about the Czar and murdering babies. I
don't quite understand. They seem deter
mined to get their children. "

And reports from other schools corrobo
rating this, a rapid dismissal was decided
upon.

Miss Bailey's charges were of the smallest
and her class, according to the regulations,
was the first to leave the building. She had
expected some such action and the First
Readers were still marking time with feet and
hands, and still chanting patriotism, when
the summons came.

Out into the hall she led them, and other
children, hearing the singing, joined in the
[128]

SLAUGHTER OF THE INNOCENTS

refrain which spread from room to room,
through hall and stairs, until the whole build
ing rocked to it.

Three cheers for the red, white and blue,
Three cheers for the red, white and blue,
The army and navy forever,
Three cheers for the red, white and blue.

When the First Readers reached the wide
main entrance the janitor opened the doors
and a roar of mingled rage, relief and longing
struck Teacher like a blow. Abey recoiled
before it, the columns faltered, turned to
Teacher and she, sunny-haired, slim and
white-robed, stepped out into the sunlight
and faced the mob, leading Abey by the hand.
There on the highest step she stood, still
marking time and still exhorting by voice
and gesture the long lines of children who
followed her, clapping their hands, and all
[129]

WARDS OF LIBERTY

singing in tune or out of tune, as the case
might be:

Three cheers for the red, white and blue,
Three cheers for the red, white and blue,
The army and navy forever,
Three cheers for the red, white and blue.

The uproar increased rather than dimin
ished as the parents most remote from the
building clamored for some particular child
or made frantic efforts to reach the scene of
action. Several hand to hand encounters
occurred, several women fell and were tram
pled upon, more missiles were thrown, and
Mr. Brennan, Senior, who was on duty, re
duced himself to the very confines of apoplexy
by exhorting:

" Bulge out there, bulge out I tell you, and
lave the kids run through yez and then bulge
back to where yez were agin. " But the horde
[130]

SLAUGHTER OF THE INNOCENTS

declined to bulge and a woman near him
threw a jagged brick at the slim, white
figure on the steps. Mr. Brennan saw its
direction and bellowed a warning to the
janitor:

"Take her in out of that," he roared. The
janitor was quick to obey; but not quite
quick enough.

"They have struck her," cried Mr. Bren
nan. " By the Holy Saint Dennis and Father
McGauley they've struck the little lady."

The school being empty now of children,
the doors were quickly shut and the rioters
were left to some very unreserved treatment
at the hands of the police reserves.

Upon the next afternoon the Principal,

Dr. Ingraham, and Miss Bailey were again

having tea in Room 18. Everything was

as it had been upon the last occasion of

[131]

WARDS OF LIBERTY

such entertaining, except that the hostess'
right arm was in a sling. The Principal's
optimism was in what appeared to be per
manent eclipse and Dr. Ingraham was in a
smoldering rage.

"But it was only temporary," Miss Bailey
assured her hearers. " A little madness made
by the heat. And truly it is enough to cause
anything, and there was nothing personal
about that brick. I wager the woman who
threw it was ever so sorry afterwards."

"She ought to be hanged," growled the
Doctor, "the lawless, ungrateful brute."

"How changeable you are," commented
Teacher. " Is hanging the way to health ?
And isn't health your panacea for all these
evils ? Health, according to you — and
knowledge" -she added, turning to the
Principal. But he repudiated the theory.
[132]

SLAUGHTER OF THE INNOCENTS

" How are we going to give them knowl
edge," he questioned. "You saw them yes
terday. Did they strike you as being teach
able?"

"They certainly struck me," said Miss
Bailey, as the Monitor of Buttons, in the
agony of solicitude, adjusted Teacher's sling
for the thousandth time that day; while the
Monitor of Window-Boxes held her cup and
saucer, and the Monitor of the Goldfish
Bowl hung solicitously in the background.

"Knowledge and health," the Doctor
repeated. "Are you ready yet to tell us the
remedy you had in mind ?"

" Every member of the class was here this
morning," said Teacher. "The sick children
underwent the treatment with the quietness
of the stoic and the patience of the lamb.
A procession of parents has filed through
[133]

WARDS OF LIBERTY

the room to explain and disclaim the events
of yesterday."

"And yet," said the Doctor. "I don't
quite see "

" Oh, Teacher, Teacher, " whimpered Eva
Gonorowsky, deserting her pencils to bestow
smudgey embraces upon Miss Bailey's un
injured side. " Teacher, mine heart it breaks
the while your arm ain't healthy. I am loving
so much with you. "

"There you have it," said Miss Bailey to
her visitors. "The third thing I hinted at
was love. "

" But I thought you didn't believe in that, "
marveled the Doctor, while the Principal
tactfully withdrew.

[134]

A PERJURED SANTA CLAUS

A PERJURED SANTA CLAUS

"You're crazy, " said Mike Dwyer, out of the
deep experience of his eight and a half years.
"You're crazy, I tell you.
Nobody gives you nothing
for nothing."

"But ain't I told you
that he does," his friend
Patrick Brennan assured
him. "Ain't I telling you
what he give me last year ?
A fire-engine, a prayer-book, and a bag of
candy. "

"An' you ain't pay'd nothin' for 'em?"
marveled Mike.

[137]

Mike

WARDS OF LIBERTY

"Not a cent."

"Ain't nobody never came 'round to
collect on 'em?"

"Not a one."

Mike pondered a moment and then de
manded :

"Have you got em now?"

"Well," Pat admitted, "I ain't got all of
'em, but I've got three wheels and one of
the horses. The rest busted when it fell
off the fire-escape. An' me mother has the
prayer-book."

"There wasn't any sense to them things
anyway," said Mike. "Crazy truck, fire-en
gines, prayer-books, and candy. Gee, if he was
going to give youse somethin' why couldn'
he give you somethin' youse could use?"

"They wasn't foolish, they was what I
wanted," Patrick maintained.
[138]

A PERJURED SANTA CLAUS

"How did the old guy know what you
wanted ?"

" Didn't I write and tell him ? I wrote
it on a piece of paper, an' I pinned it to the
shelf over the stove, an' he come down the
chimney an' got it."

"Down the chimney!" exclaimed Mike
incredulously, "that's the craziest yet. If
you don't look out you'll get put in the
funny wagon. A lady in our block, she
thought her man was Czar of Russia, and
they put her in the funny wagon and they
took her away and we ain't never seen her
again. You better shut up about your old
man Sandy Claws, or somethin' like that'll
happen to you."

" Christmas is next week," Pat announced
in grim finality. "What do you bet, I don't
get an express-wagon and cap pistol ? I
[139]

WARDS OF LIBERTY

wrote Sandy Claws about 'em last night,
an' put the letter on the mantelpiece, an'
this morning it was gone; and I've got a
picture of him in a book — I'll show it to
you if you come round to our block — and
Teacher tells us about him at school and we
know songs about him, and po'try pieces.
I tell you what: you come to school just
one day, an' Teacher'll learn you about him."

"Aw, I ain't got no time to go to school,"
said Mike contemptuously. "I've got my
business to tend to and I guess maybe I'd
better tend to it now. But say, that's a
good one about the old gent coming down
the chimney. I was up and down them lots
of times and it's hard enough for me to get
through, and I ain't much for size. "

'You come round to my house on Christ
mas Day," said the militant Patrick, "an'
[140]

A PERJURED SANTA CLAUS

I'll leave you look at my express-wagon and
hold my pistol."

When Michael boasted an exhaustive
acquaintance with the inside of chimneys,
he did not speak lightly or without truth.
It was some years since he had abandoned
the scholarly career, which his pious mother
had hoped would lead to his consecration to
the priesthood, in favor of the more active
life of "odd boy" in a local hardware store
where he was "helper" in the stove depart
ment. That he would ever have made a
priestly man was a moot point, but no one
could conscientiously deny that he was an odd
boy.

His hair, once red, was darkened by his

avocations and his hygienic convictions to

an indescribable sooty brown. His clothes

matched his hair, and his skin struck no dis-

[141]

WARDS OF LIBERTY

cordant note in the subdued color scheme.
But there was nothing subdued about his
spirit, nor his eyes, nor his startlingly bril
liant smile. And there was nothing which
could subdue his adoration for his mother.
He and she had suffered many sorrows
in common, and almost in silence, though
their pleasures they took more noisily.
Sickness and babies had come, had been
born and tended in patience, and had passed
away leaving them chums and partners still.
He and she had journeyed to Calvary or
to Coney Island always together and al
ways alone. For Mr. Dwyer had devoted
his great energy and his scanty gleanings
from the profession of "fence" -the go-
between for small pickpocket and pawn
broker — to drinking himself from one fit
of delirium tremens into another. He was
[142]

A PERJURED SANTA CLAUS

as familiar an inmate of Bellevue or the
Island as he was of the home which he had
laid desolate. As familiar and as welcome.

On the evening of his enlightening con
versation with his staunch admirer, Patrick
Brennan, Michael appealed to his mother
for information.

" Say, maw, did youse ever hear of a gent
what goes round in sort of fancy fixin's an'
gives kids things for noth'ng ?"

Mrs. Dwyer turned from the window,
whence she had been watching for what
she always dreaded, and answered quickly:

"Yes, dear. Santa Claus."

:< That's the name Patsy Brennan called
him. He showed me his picture on a book,
but I thought he was guying me. I never
heard of him. Don't he never come round
here?"

[143]

WARDS OF LIBERTY

"Not lately, dear. But when you were
quite little, he brought you a rocking-horse
and a fire-engine. "

"That's him!" her son exclaimed in high
excitement. "I knew him by the fire-engine.
That's him. Say, maw, what ever happened
to them things ? Did I bust 'em ?"

"No," answered the woman, who, still
watchful, had transferred her vigilance from
eyes to ears, and now listened shrinkingly
for an unsteady step upon the stairs: "No,
Mike, you didn't; they — went. "

It was a familiar explanation in that
house, but the woman never made it easily.
So many things — went. The few relics
of her more prosperous youth, her street
clothes, little refinements with which she
tried to dignify or disguise her poverty,
little comforts or necessities given by kind
[144]

A PERJURED SANTA CLAUS

neighbors in times of stress, her own meager
earnings in an uptown laundry, or Mike's,
still more meager in the hardware store.
For Mr. Dwyer, though meeting in the
course of his professional labors with many
proofs that stealing could be successfully
practised upon absolute strangers, still be
lieved in the prior claim of family, and had
so far confined his own active operations to
the home circle. It was a safe practice ground
and he could always flatter himself that he
would one day broaden his field to include
such gentlemen — if he could find them en
tirely unprotected and unobserved - - who
had reached that degree of intoxication
which raised his envy and his courage al
most to the point of action.

Nothing could accustom Mrs. Dwyer to
this system of petty pilfering and the deceits
[145]

WARDS OF LIBERTY

it forced upon her, for through all vicissi
tudes of neglect, ill-treatment, and abuse,
she persevered in her fierce determination
that the boy should never know, so long
as she could keep the knowledge from him,
his father.

And all the time the boy knew much more
clearly than she, and was often forced to
allow her panic-stricken vigilance to con
tinue when he could have told her that the
voice she dreaded was enlivening the al
coholic wards of Bellevue, or that the foot
she feared was marching in decorous lock-
step upon Blackwell's Island. But he was as
fiercely resolved that his mother should
never know, so long as he could keep the
knowledge from her, her husband, and he
was always careful to receive this explana
tion as satisfying and quite natural.
[146]

A PERJURED SANTA CLAUS

" Well, Patrick was talkin' about it to
day. He got a fire-engine, candy, an' a
prayer-book, an' he says he's goin' to have
a express-wagon an' a pistol this time. Do
you think it's on the level ?"

"Of course it's true. Why, when I was
your age he used to bring me the loveliest
things, and they always seemed to be ex
actly what I wanted -

"But Patsy writes an' tells him what to
bring. He gits what he wants every time.
I wonder what I'd better write for ?"

And then, wistfully, Mrs. Dwyer set to
work to destroy the faith she had estab
lished. It was unlikely, she pointed out to
her son, after a rapid survey of her own finan
cial position, that the gentleman, having
for so long neglected them, should remem
ber them now. He was always, she delicately
[147]

WARDS OF LIBERTY

hinted, a little snobbish in his tastes, and was
more inclined to add to a store already
amassed than to lay the cornerstone of a
property. But these reflections affected her
son not at all.

"He give you stuff when you was as big
as me. He gives it to Patsy. He used to give
it to me. I guess I kin git somethin' off of
him all right, all right. "

Then was Mrs. Dwyer forced to disclose
the fact that there were some persons of up
right lives and minds who utterly refused to
credit even the existence of such a person,
and to hint that doubts of such a nature
had sometimes visited her gentle breast.
But Mike's faith, founded largely upon the
coincidence of fire-engines, held firm against
all attacks. And then he knew of a reason,
happily hidden from his mother, that might
[148]

A PERJURED SANTA CLAUS

cause fastidious gentlemen to avoid Mr.
Dwyer's abode.

On the next afternoon he came upon
Santa Glaus suffering quite humanly from
cold, standing at the corner of Grand and
Essex Streets, wearing his white beard and
other "fancy fixin's." He was guarding
a three-legged iron pot into which the pros
perous cast pennies and the unprosperous -
in overwhelming majority -- longing looks.
The pot hung upon a metal tripod bearing
a printed appeal for contributions to aid
the Salvation Army in supplying a Christ
mas dinner to all such as should approach
the hospitable boards to be spread in Madi
son Square Garden on December 25th. The
shower of coin was not very heavy and Mike
seized his courage and a propitious moment
to remark:

[149]

A PERJURED SANTA CLAUS

"You don't get round to all the houses
every year, do you ?"

"Well no," answered the old gentleman
in a surprisingly young voice, "not down
here. There are quite a number of houses
in this neighborhood and quite a number of
children in every house."

"Every other year, do you ?"

"Just about."

"Well, you've skipped me quite a while.
I was wondering if you was plannin' to take
in our house this year. "

"Sure," the old man answered, after he
had acknowledged a contribution and breath
ed upon his freezing fingers, "where do
you live ?"

Mike told him. " On the top floor, " he am
plified, "back. If you drop around to-night,
I'll have the list ready on the mantelpiece. "
[151]

WARDS OF LIBERTY

"Please don't make your order too big.
I'm a little strapped this year. You don't
want a house an' lot, do you ?"

"No, but I'd like a lady's hat," the boy
announced, " an I'd like some real, good tea,
an' I'd like a good, warm shawl. Can I have
all that?"

"Sure," Santa Glaus agreed, "anything
you say, my boy. You're the doctor. "

"Then I'd like enough dress-goods to
make a dress for a lady — a small lady -
I'd like it red with black spots on it. Can
I have that?"

"Oh, I guess so. I owe you something for
back years, don't I?"

" I might let you have a little money on the
goods. Not an awful lot, but if fifteen cents
would help you any I could let you have it. "

"Fork it out, put it in the pot."
[152]

A PERJURED SANTA CLAUS

"I can't let you have it now. I ain't got
it in me clothes, but I'll put it with the list
on the mantelpiece to-night, and you come
down an' git 'em. Say, a kid told me you
come down chimneys. Is that right ?"

" That's how I come when I come. "

" How do you git through the stove ?
That's what I want to know," said Mike,
with professional interest.

"Well, I can't tell you that. You don't
belong to the union. And don't you wait
up for me. I may be a little late, and if that
fifteen cents is there in the morning you'll
know it's because I can't fill your order.
I just have to look over my stock, you know,
before I take a deposit on the goods. "

After one hour of intense exertion, mental
and physical, Michael evolved the list;
laid it upside down upon the mantelpiece;
[153]

WARDS OF LIBERTY

weighted it with three five-cent pieces;
cautioned his mother against disturbing it,
and vanished into his sleeping-closet. Mrs.
Dwyer bent over the pathetic little scrawl
and scanned it tearfully. This tiny rift of
fancy in her boy's prosaic life was doomed
to such bitter disappointment, and she was
so powerless to prevent it. And even as
she read the list of feminine fancies, and
knew them designed for her, the vigil of
the last three peaceful weeks ended. The
heavy step she dreaded sounded on the stairs.
The heavy hand she dreaded turned the
handle of the door, and Mr. Dwyer, in a
state of intoxication very creditable to one
without popularity and without steady source
of income, lurched in. He ignored empty
forms of greeting, and began at once upon
the object of his visit.

[154]

A PERJURED SANTA CLAUS

"Where's that boy of yours?" he de
manded. "Where's, where is he?" and
then as she did not answer, he enforced his
question with a curse which made her re
treat behind the table. Her posture as she
crouched there was more eloquent than any
words.

"Never here when I want him"; Mr.
Dwyer rambled on in one of the rapid
emotional changes common to his state.
"Never any good to me. Never stands a
drink to hard-working father. Rotten with
money, that kid, and never a nickel for
suffering parent. Suffering, incurable par
ent. Where's he now?" he repeated with
a fresh oath which terrified the woman into
the monosyllabic lie :

"Out,"

"Always out," complained Mr. Dwyer,
[155]

WARDS OF LIBERTY

aggrieved almost to tears. "Hard-working
father come home, wants see ungrateful
son; wants press his hand, wants give him
father's blessing, dying father's, dying bless
ing, not here."

In keen appreciation of his own mournful
eloquence, Mr. Dwyer made his shivering
way to the stove, and maudlin in his grief,
laid his head upon the mantelpiece and wept
miserably. Now it chanced that his des
pondency led him to his desire, and that
he had no sooner bowed his forehead in sor
row than he raised it in joy. There, under
his eyes, lay three nickels on a dingy piece
of paper. Three nickels meaning much
stimulant and unlimited free lunch. Gloat
ingly he wrapped the coins in the paper, and
pocketed them, and straightway he de
camped, leaving his wife shaken with fear,
[156]

A PERJURED SANTA CLAUS

repugnance and wrath and tortured by that
old, old question, What, what, could she tell
the boy ? What could she ever tell the boy ?
She fell asleep in her chair still wondering.
And in the morning she told the boy -
nothing.

The days that remained before Christmas
were full of breathless excitement to Mike.
He made all sorts of vague promises to his
mother. He asked her again and again if,
in the event of her having an entirely new
gown, she shouldn't prefer one of a good,
bright red with black spots. He planned
excursions for her. Wouldn't she like to go
to High Mass on Christmas Day ? What
were her views on a visit to the Eden Musee ?
Did any of the current theatrical attractions
appeal to her ? Wouldn't a red dress with
black spots be the most suitable thing to
[157]

WARDS OF LIBERTY

wear when they should go to see that classic
drama, "The Withered Wedding Wreath" ?

He even condescended to discuss Heaven
ly visitants with Patrick Brennan, and to
hint at the nature of his demands. The idea
of vicarious generosity was new to Patrick,
but he adopted it with energy and pinned
a new list to the mantelpiece. It puzzled
his always puzzled parents, for it com
manded a set of doll's dishes and a silver
thimble, extra small size.

In the grey dawn of Christmas morning,
Mike was astir, and there upon the mantel
piece he found, not the red and black-spotted
gown, not the shawl, not the hat, but a very
shield and buckler of an Ascot tie, imper
vious to pin or tenpenny nail, and of a
most becoming yellow. For some space he
was dumfounded, absolutely speechless with
[158]

A PERJURED SANTA CLAUS

disappointment. " He played me for a sucker
and he- won out," was his vengeful thought.
"He's got me good money, an' I've got his
dirty truck. I ain't goin' to stand for no such
deal." His abhorrence of the yellow Ascot
distressed his gentle mother, for the satin
atrocity represented to her many an act of
self-denial, many an hour of work or even of
hunger. He refused to touch it; to allow it to
touch him; to see any beauty in its shiny im-
passiveness or to agree that it was, after all, a
satisfactory proof of the existence of the old
gentleman. Upon the whole that Christmas
morning could not be said to have brought
peace and good-will to the modest home of
the Dwyers.

Late in the afternoon, Michael came upon
Patrick Brennan seated in his express-
wagon, flourishing his cap pistol and being
[159]

WARDS OF LIBERTY

drawn through the crowds of Henry Street
by a young lady who wore on the thumb
of her uncovered right hand, a silver thimble
— extra small size. Almost instantly the
two Hibernian gentlemen appeared to be at
sword's points. And Miss Gonorowsky,
waiving the ceremony of a formal intro
duction, was all voluble concern.

"It's something fierce," Eva sympathized.
"In all my world I ain't heard how it is
fierce. He takes bunches of money from
off of you and don't gives you nothings only
neckties that you don't needs. "

"That's what he done, " said Mike grimly.
"He played me for a sucker."

"Und mit Patrick," Eva continued, "he

makes all things what is polite. He gives

him cap pistols, und wagons, und doll's

dishes, und thimbles — Patrick gives me

[160]

WARDS OF LIBERTY

the dishes und thimbles. From long, a
man makes like that with my papa. He
takes money und he don't send goods, and
my papa he goes where judges and lawyers
sets and they arrests the man and they
makes him he shall give back the money on
my papa. Do you know where them judges
und lawyers sets ?"

Michael pondered on the suggestion. He
was familiar with the workings of the law, and
had assisted at evictions, man hunts, raids
and riots, and had often been present at the
Essex Market Police Court when his own
disreputable father stood before the magis
trate. On the following morning, therefore,
he approached the court-house and demand
ed audience with the judge, who had always
taken a kindly interest in his small for
tunes. And Mr. Dwyer, senior, never knew
[162]

A PERJURED SANTA CLAUS

that his commitments were somewhat longer
than his offenses demanded, simply be
cause the judge was interested in the strug
gle which a small, honest-eyed boy was
making, and had endeavored to remove —
as effectually as might be — the stumbling-
blocks or the stumbling parent which stood
in his way. Michael's charge was explicit:

" A swell guy wid white whiskers done me
dirt," he announced.

"Go on," said the judge, as the clerk of
the court prepared to record the testimony,
and some ladies in search of local color got
out their note-books.

" Go on, what did he do to you ? "

"He took an order for goods, he took me
coin, and he delivered this here necktie."

"A very fine necktie. It seems warm,
and it ought to be becoming."
[163]

A PERJURED SANTA CLAUS

"It ain't what I ordered," said Mike,
"and it ain't what I wanted."

"What was your order?" asked the
majesty of law.

"A lady's hat, some good tea, a lady's
shawl, and black and red dress-goods for
a lady's dress — a small lady. "

The clerk of the court made careful entry
of this haberdashery, and the ladies in search
of local color marveled audibly until the
judge restrained them.

"A yellow satin necktie," he solemnly
agreed, "does not occur in this invoice, but
I should think it might perhaps be a little
more useful to you. "

" Me," exclaimed the boy, in quick scorn.
" Say, did youse think I wanted them fixin's
for me ?"

"For some friend, perhaps ?"
[165]

WARDS OF LIBERTY

"I wanted them things for me mudder,"
Michael asserted belligerently. "She's too
much in the house, she is. I want to take her
to the theayter, and round to see the sights,
and show her a little life. "

" Bless his heart, " murmured an emotional
tourist from the upper West Side. " Bless his
little heart of gold."

"Madam," the judge sternly reminded
her, " this is the court-room — not a
church"; and then of the boy, he asked:

"How large a deposit did you send with
this invoice ?"

" I left fifteen cents for him with the order
and he came and got it."

"And you don't regard the yellow satin
necktie as covering that amount ?"

"It ain't worth nothin' at all, 'cause I
don't want it. I want the things I ordered
[166]

A PERJURED SANTA CLAUS

or I want me money back, an' I want you
to arrest that Foxy Gran'pa, an' make him
act on the level."

"For whom shall I issue the warrant.
What is the name of the accused ?"

"Sandy Claws. That's his name. An'
Mr. Sandy Claws is a crook for fair. "

There was a fresh outbreak on the part
of the fair pilgrims from the West Side, and
the judge quelled them sternly:

"Mr. Crothers," he began, addressing one
of the lawyers, who had been an interested
spectator of the scene, "may I ask you
to attend to this case ? The clerk will hand
you a copy of the original invoice and,
until we locate the accused, the expenses
will be defrayed by the court. "

The harassed Mr. Crothers was ruefully
examining the list when one of the tourists
[167]

WARDS OF LIBERTY

stepped forward and asked permission to
address the court. She had borne no
part in the recent enthusiasm, she looked
capable and calm. The judge folded his
arms and nodded acquiescence and she
laid a card before him. He waited with
a new consideration until she began to
speak, and the card's effect upon both Mr.
Crothers and the clerk of the court was
remarkable.

"I am, as you see," she began, "the
representative of Mr. Santa Glaus."

"I have often, Madam," said the judge,
" heard of you in that connection, but your
name occurs most frequently upon the
records of the court much higher than this. "

" And we were obliged to take on a num
ber of new packers for the holiday rush sea
son and regret that several mistakes of this
[168]

A PERJURED SANTA CLAUS

sort have occurred. The gentleman who
ordered this necktie called at the warehouse
early this morning and reported that some
lady's furnishings had been left at his apart
ment. It is altogether regrettable, as the
gentleman had planned to wear these goods
at his wedding yesterday, and in consequence
of their non-delivery was obliged to retain
his overcoat throughout the ceremony. He
was very indignant, and Mr. Santa Glaus
was greatly distressed. If this customer will
withdraw his complaint and if the court will
grant me the custody of the goods now in
his possession, I shall see that the mistake is
rectified."

The judge turned to Michael, whose
naturally sharp expression had grown stead
ily sharper since the intervention of this
alien female.

[169]

WARDS OF LIBERTY

"Do you agree to this proposition?" he
asked.

"Naw," said Mike, "I don't. An', yer
honor, don't let her bunco you like the old
gent done me. He fooled me out of me
fifteen cents but the old lady don't get
nothing as long as she don't give me nothin'.
They's all in the same gang, I tell you. If
they think such a awful lot about the gent's
yellow tie, why don't they bring me mudder's
hat, an' tea, an' shawl, an' dress-goods ?
I'll trade quick enough."

"I should suggest," was the urbane ruling
of the bench, "that this plan be adopted.
I will set over this hearing for two hours,
and I direct that both the plaintiff and the
representative of the defendant shall then
appear before me. Next. "

Throughout the hearing of intervening
[170]

A PERJURED SANTA CLAUS

cases, Michael held the disprized necktie
with watchful care. It shone like a slab
of petrified butter through its tissue paper
wrappings. The transaction was evidently
puzzling him a little, and his eyes narrowed
suddenly with new suspicion when the lady
reappeared, still calm and still alert, followed
by Mr. Crothers, still impressed, but now
laden with bundles.

The judge reopened the case by ordering
that the bundles should be opened and their
contents compared with the list, and sub
mitted to Mike. They were all perfectly
satisfactory, and Mike, still puzzled, released
the yellow necktie and gathered up his
treasures. The lady was the first to leave
the court-room, and Mike paused for a last
word with his friend.

;<Your honor," said he, "do you think
[171]

WARDS OF LIBERTY

the old gent tried to work a con game on
me ? It don't seem to me like all this song
and dance about mistakes was on the level. "

"Oh, I think so, Michael," the judge re
plied. "I have heard of Mr. Santa Claus
for a number of years, and I never knew him
to get into trouble before."

"Well, maybe you're right," agreed Mike,
"but the thing looks funny to me. It seems
to me like the lady was in the game with
the old gent. Perhaps she's his wife; you
can't tell, and she got scared that you and
me would pinch their joint. It is good I
came to see you. And say," he cried, "you
seen me mudder once, didn't you?" And
the judge's memory traveled back to his
one ineffectual attempt to induce a panic-
stricken little woman to testify against her
useless husband. No array of brass buttons
[172]

A PERJURED SANTA CLAUS

or of officialdom could force her to admit
discord in the music of their life. Terrified
but loyal, she resisted all cross-examining
and persisted in denying to all her world
what all her world knew.

'Yes," said the judge, "I remember."
"Well," Mike continued, "she wasn't
feeling just right that day. But just the
first time I can get an hour off, I'll get her
to fix up in these here fixin's and I'll bring
her round and let you see how she can look.
She sure is a daisy. "

"Do," said the judge, "I shall be honor-
ed. Next."

[173]

LITTLE BO-PEEP

LITTLE BO-PEEF

" Say, Teacher, what you think ?" demanded
Eva Gonorowsky, oblivious to everything
save the marvelous news which had bubbled
all day beneath her butterfly bow: "What
you think? Little Bo-Peep is cousins mit me.5'

"That must be very nice," Miss Bailey
responded. No geneological announcement
could surprise her since Abraham Abraham-
owsky had claimed kinship with Abraham
Lincoln. "That must be very nice, dear."

"It's awful nice," said Eva. "She lives
now in Russia, only it ain't healthy for her
there no more, und so she comes soon on my
house."

[177]

"'Will she bring
her sheeps mit?' in
quired Morris "

WARDS OF LIBERTY

:< W i 1 1 she bring her
sheeps mit ?" inquired Mor
ris Mogilewsky, whose pas
sion for Nature Study
persisted through all sorts
of discouragements. " I likes
I shall see a sheep, all in
one, mit its hair on. I ain't
never seen that."

"I guess she brings it all right, all right.
She is lovin' much mit amblins. In Russia
her papa is got more'n fifty hundred und
three lambs, und fifty million und six sheeps.
Und mine little cousins she plays all times
mit lambs. She is like me. She is all the
childrens what her mama's got. She brings
her papa und her mama, too."

"Is her papa got elflints ? " asked
Morris.

[178]

LITTLE BO-PEEP

"Is his name Barnum?" asked Patrick
Brennan.

But Eva was conversing with Miss Bailey

"Little Bo-Peep 'her picture what comes out of Russia13''

and refused to be distracted. "Mine uncle
is awful rich, und mine cousin is awful sty
lish. You could to look on her picture what

[179]

WARDS OF LIBERTY

comes out of Russia. She is mine rich und
stylish cousin."

Rich and stylish the youngster certainly
looked. Hard ruffles of stiff lace encrusted
all her velvet outlines; rings and bracelets
adorned her pudgy hands; her coiffure was
incredible, and her air was self-conscious.
Two lambs were stiffly posed at her feet, and
she held a beribboned shepherd's crook in
her jeweled grasp.

" Bo-Peep indeed ! " exclaimed Miss Bailey.

"Und she ain't lost them sheeps 't all.
' She let 'em alone und they comes by the
house,' ' quoted Morris, who loved facts
above rhythm.

"Rich und stylish," repeated Eva unctu
ously. "Sheeps is all the style in Russia
this year. "

"I'm got a kitten," volunteered Saran
[180]

LITTLE BO-PEEP

Schodsky. "They is stylish, too"; but no
one seemed impressed.

The advent of that cousin affected all the
relations of Eva's life. She was a possession
to be lived up to, and Eva's spirit exalted
itself daily to reach the standard fixed by
the photograph. She carried it with her al
ways, and in imagination she marched her
friends and companions past the gaudy
little figure and watched them shrivel into
insignificance. Even her own Sabbath finery
lost its power to uphold her through un
adorned week-days, and the gleam of Pat
rick's official costume grew dim.

"I don't know," she pondered, as loyalty
did battle with reason, " I don't know what
is the style in Russia. Mine cousin could
to think that Patrick is rowdy, und Yetta is
poor, und mine best dress is old."
[181]

WARDS OF LIBERTY

One of these fears was shared by Mrs.
Gonorowsky, who straightway devoted some
of her scanty funds and leisure to the con
struction of a toilet which should spare Eva
the agony of "shamed feelings" when the
stylish cousin should arrive. Teacher was,
of course, informed; shown the sample of the
much washed adult skirt which was to be
the new costume's chief ingredient; was even
allowed to contribute lace for its neck and
sleeves, wide ribbon for its sash, and to be
present at a dress rehearsal.

Week after week dragged itself across the
calendar on Miss Bailey's desk, and brought
no stylish cousin out of Russia to share the
seat and the heart which Eva had emptied
for her. She cast away all such treasures
and friendships as were unsuited to one set
apart to associate with rank and fashion.
[182]

LITTLE BO-PEEP

The broken tin soldiers, the labyrinth of
string, the fragmentary china doll, and its

" ' Yetta, you could to take
mine dolly . . . I ain't
got no more time no more I
shall play mil nobody on'y
mine little cousin mil lambs

. . You ain't got mads ? ' '

cradle which had once been a baby's shoe,
she bestowed upon that element of her

[183]

WARDS OF LIBERTY
acquaintance with which she felt constrained
to part, with some such little speech as :

"Yetta, you could to take mine dolly,
the while I ain't got no more time for play
mit her. I ain't got no more time no more
I shall play mit nobody on'y mine little
cousin mit lambs what comes out of Rus
sia. I am loving much mit you, Yetta,
and I am loving much mit mine dolly,
on'y I couldn't to play no more mit nobody
on'y mine cousin und lambs. You ain't got
mads?"

"Can I have the dolly's bed, too ?" Yetta
demanded, before disclosing her emotional
condition.

"Sure you can, und two pieces from
pencils."

"An' a string for mine hair ?" insisted the
usurer.

[184]

LITTLE BO-PEEP

"Two strings."

"Then I ain't got mads," Yetta conceded.
"I have kind feelings."

Only Patrick refused to let either threats
or bribes affect him. He entirely misunder
stood Eva's anxiety and even increased it by
his attitude of admiring protection.

" It don't make no difference to me if you
have got a greenhorn cousin," he assured
her. "It makes no difference at all. Why,
I'd just as lieves treat the two of youse to
hoky-poky — if I'd the penny — an' I tell ye
no one would dast to guy yer cousin if I was
'round."

And Eva's heart whispered: "He don't
puts him on so stylish as mine cousin, but
anyways his papa is cops, and Patrick's best
suit is got from sure gold buttons. "

Every morning she appeared despairing
[185]

WARDS OF LIBERTY

and in her ordinary attire; toward lunch-
time her spirits and her expectations reached
fever heights; at one o'clock she returned
to Room 18 crestfallen; but at three o'clock
she was all jubilant again and trotted off
with the rank and file of the First Readers
as though she were not a member of the
cabinet.

And so no one was surprised when, one
morning, she failed to answer to the roll-call.
Miss Bailey rejoiced that her favorite's
long vigil was over and the First Reader
Class glued its eyes upon the door and
prepared to have them dazzled. Yet the
morning passed uneventfully away. One
o'clock came; Eva did not, and, as the next
day brought no sign of her, Miss Bailey went
to investigate, remonstrate, and congratulate.
Eva opened the door; but such a crushed,
[186]

LITTLE BO-PEEP

tear-stained, white-faced Eva! Teacher
promptly gathered her up and held her
against the shoulder that had been her refuge
in so many lesser griefs.

"What is it, sweetheart ?" she questioned.
"Didn't the stylish little cousin come out
of Russia ?"

Eva clasped her frantically. "It ain't
cousins," she wailed. "It ain't stylish. It
ain't Bo-Peep. I ain't never seen nothing
like it. I don't know what it is, on'y I have
a fraid, I have a fraid, I have a fraid !"

"Is your mother in?" asked Teacher,
when she found she could not bring Eva to
anything like self-control. "Tell her, dear,
that I want to speak with her," and she set
the child upon the floor and tried to reduce
her to some semblance of the smart Monitor
of Pencil Points. Eva crept to the door of
[187]

What is it, sweetheart? Didn't the stylish little cousin
come out of Russia?' "

LITTLE BO-PEEP

the dark closet which was bedroom, store
room, dressing-room — everything which the
single outer room was not — and beat upon
it.

"Mama! Mama!" she panted, and then
cowered behind Teacher and hid her eyes in
Teacher's dress.

The door opened slowly, and Mrs. Gono-
rowsky came quietly out. Constance Bailey
had heard of anguish and despair, but she
had never seen them until she met Mrs.
Gonorowsky's eyes.

" What is it ?" was all she could say. " Oh,
Mrs. Gonorowsky, what is it ? Didn't your
people come ?"

" The little girl comes " - Mrs. Gonorow
sky was beginning, when Eva, her hands
still before her eyes, broke out -

"It ain't little girls. It ain't cousins. It
[189]

WARDS OF LIBERTY

ain't got no lambs. I don't know what it is,
but I have a fraid over it. "

"But your sister and her husband?"
asked Miss Bailey.

"They don't comes," said Mrs. Gono-
rowsky. She was quite passive, and yet
Constance had often seen her in hysterics
of neighborly vituperation. "They don't
never comes," she repeated dully.

"And the child came all alone ?"

"A friend from mine sister und from me,
he brings her on the house. You like you
shall see her, maybe. You don't needs you
shall ask over mine sister sooner you looks
on that child."

"It ain't no child," wailed Eva. "It ain't!
It ain't! It ain't! I wants mine stylish little
cousin what I had pictures off of. "

Teacher followed Mrs. Gonorowsky into
[190]

LITTLE BO-PEEP

the tiny inner room, lighted only by a candle
and not aired at all, and there on a heap of
clothing lay a creature - - Eva was right : it
was not a child — who gazed blankly at
them. Its head had been shaved, perhaps
on the steamer, perhaps to escape identifi
cation, and its lips never stopped moaning,
panting, whispering one sentence.

"That is the child," said Mrs. Gonorow-
sky simply.

"But what is she saying?" queried Con
stance. "Is she asking for any one ?"

"She says," Mrs. Gonorowsky interpret
ed, " 'I am Christian! I kiss the Cross!'
They learn her to say that. I show you how
they learn her," and she took the little body
on her lap and began to unswathe the ban
dages in which it was wrapped. The back
was uncovered first.

[191]

WARDS OF LIBERTY

"I kiss the Cross!" shrieked the baby as
the last dressing was removed. "I kiss the
Cross !"

"The knout," said Mrs. Gonorowsky,
very quietly. "We learn to know its mark,
we women of the Jews. Now see another way
they learn her," and she deftly turned the
child upon its back.

" Oh, God in Heaven ! Did men do that ?"
cried Constance Bailey.

"Christian!" moaned the baby. "I kiss
the Cross!"

"Und you ask where is her mama?"
commented Mrs. Gonorowsky.

A week passed before Eva came again to
Room 18; but Miss Bailey had seen her fre
quently during the interval and had done
what she could to pave the way for her re
turn. Eva's cousin, she explained to the
[192]

* TJie knout,' said Mrs. Gonorowsky, very quietly "

WARDS OF LIBERTY

First Readers, had been ill and could not
be expected to shine resplendent in foreign
fashions for, perhaps, a month; and Eva,
upon her return, was not to be questioned
or bothered. Miss Bailey was very serious
and very earnest in these commands, and
the First Readers swore to do her bidding
and almost did it when Eva slipped into her
accustomed place in her accustomed clothes.

"It ain't cousins," she whispered to Miss
Bailey. "It ain't girls, und it ain't got no
lambs, but I finds a kitty on the street und
I gives it to it, und I ain't got no more a fraid
over it. Last night I gives it a hair ribbon, und
it smiled. It began to have a glad, so I ain't
got no more f raids. "

Gradually the reports grew more cheering ;
until one day the cousin came to school. Eva
led her in in triumph, and Miss Bailey, who
[194]

One day the cousin came to school. Eva led
her in in triumph "

WARDS OF LIBERTY

was accustomed to many pitiful appeals to
her understanding of small hearts, now
found herself quite speechless as she turned
to greet this newest charge. The baby was
still heartbreakingly thin; but her eyes were
gentle and human; her shaven head was
covered with a fluted, lace-trimmed baby's
bonnet; a miserable kitten was clasped in
her arms, and she wore, oh, miracle of loving
kindness ! Eva's reception gown. Of course,
she spoke no word of English, but at Eva's
whispered injunction she entrusted a little
hand to Teacher's clasp and allowed herself
to be established at Eva's side.

" Und any way, " said the Monitor of Pen
cil Points, as she surveyed her new relation,
"und any way she don't look like nobody
else und the childrens could to think, maybe,
that caps from babies is the style in Russia."
[196]

LITTLE BO -PEEP

After that she came every day, and grad
ually the strained look left her little face,
and once or twice, as Eva pointed out to
Miss Bailey, she smiled. And all went
well in Room 18; until the evil day set
aside by the Board of Health for the vac
cination of the scholars in that particular
school.

Even then disaster might have been avert
ed if Miss Bailey had not been obliged to
stay in Room 18 with the majority, while
little squads of five or six were taken to the
Principal's Office to be examined and, if
needs were, vaccinated, bandaged, and re
turned to their teachers in pride or in hysterics
as their sex or nature prompted. It was near
ly three o'clock when Eva, Patrick, the new
cousin, the kitten, and two of the rank and
file set out together, and they had not been
[197]

WARDS OF LIBERTY

more than ten minutes absent when Patrick
came dashing back.

"Gimme me hat," he cried as he dived
under his desk. " Gimme me hat ! That fool
Greeny run away."

Miss Bailey wasted no time in setting out
for the scene of excitement, and on the way
encountered Eva Gonorowsky quite dis
tracted.

"Oh, Teacher! Teacher!" she wailed.
"Mine cousin she runs on the block, und
she don't know where she is, und she don't
know where she lives, und she don't know
nothings. She couldn't to talk, even. "

"Oh, the poor child! Why should she
run away?"

"I couldn't to tell," said Eva. "I holds
her in mine hand. On'y sooner she seen how
the doctor makes blood come out of Sarah
[198]

LITTLE BO-PEEP

Schodsky, she yells something fierce over
crosses und Christs, und she runs on the
street."

Down to the big door rushed Eva and
Miss Bailey; but there was no sign of the
white-bonneted stylish cousin in all the mov
ing crowd. They were just in time to catch a
glimpse of the vanishing Patrick Brennan;
and surely no knight of old had ever, for a
lady's sake, pricked his way on a more peril
ous adventure than this small knight of
Ulster had embarked upon. Miss Bailey
hurried back to her kingdom, dismissed her
class, and followed Patrick's example. Mrs.
Gonorowsky, Mr. Brennan, pere, Morris
Mogilewsky, Yetta Aaronsohn, in fact the
whole executive of Room 18, joined in the
quest; but far in advance of them all fared
Patrick Brennan.

[199]

WARDS OF LIBERTY

"I sure am up against it," he communed.
"What would de gang tink if dey seen
me wastin' me time chasin' a darn fool
Greeny ?"

Meanwhile the greeny was adrift on a
sea of troubles. The panic in which she left
the school grew momentarily worse. Every
thing terrified her, but nothing stopped her;
and her pursuers heard many disquieting
rumors of her flight.

"A little girl in a cap ?" said the police
man on the corner of Henry and Essex
Streets, in answer to Miss Bailey's inquiry:
4 Yes. I seen her runnin' to beat the band
towards the river. I stopped her long enough
to ask her where she was going, and she
tore out of me hands like an eel and told me
something in Yiddish. 'Twas none of my
business if she wanted to do steeplechases
[200]

LITTLE BO-PEEP

over and under the push-carts, and so I let
her go. She had a kitten with her. "

"'A little girl in a cap?' said the policeman . .
seen her runnin' . . . towards the river

Yes. I

'Yes. She went by here," said the jani
tor of a neighboring school. "She looked
[201]

WARDS OF LIBERTY

so little and so scared that I tried to stop her,
but that seemed to scare her worse, and
so I let her go. She was going towards the
river." But no one could direct them to
the darkness between an uptilted push-cart
with one wheel and the wall against which
it leaned, where little Bo-Peep crouched, one
tiny incarnation of terror. She watched,
through the crack where cart met sidewalk,
the feet of her pursuers. Thousands of them
passed, and yet others always followed.
Some went briskly, as though they still had
far to go. Some moved more slowly as
guessing their quarry to be near. Some stood
in sodden groups, as having discovered her
hiding-place and knowing that they might
seize her when they would. It was only by
frantic repetitions of her exorcism that she
averted a thousand deaths. "I am Chris-

LITTLE BO-PEEP

tian," she whispered to the cold stones upon
which she cowered. " I am Christian, I kiss
the Cross." And the feet always passed.

Most terrifying of all were a pair of feet
- enormous, heavy-shod, and turned up
at the toes --which went deliberately and
noisily across her field of vision time and
time again. Above the ponderous feet a
section of blue trousers showed, as Mr.
Brennan, pere, patrolled his beat and ques
tioned every possible informant. Once a
pair of small and shiny shoes held parley
with these heavy ones just beside the push
cart.

"Still no news ?" asked Constance Bailey.

"None at all, miss. The earth opened

and swallowed her. A couple of women

seen her running along here towards the

river. A man on the corner seen her turn

[203]

WARDS OF LIBERTY

down this block. But what became of her,
I'm durned if I know. But don't you git
worked up about it: them kids always turns
up. ' Let them alone and they'll come home,'
as the song says."

At the juncture of East Broadway and
Clinton Street, Miss Bailey encountered
Mrs. Gonorowsky.

"Mine Gott!" wailed that distracted
matron. "Ain't you find her ?"

"No," answered Constance, "but I saw
a man who had seen her. "

"Every one seen her," cried Mrs. Gon
orowsky. " O'ny nobody wass smardt enough
they shall stop her. Everybody says : ' Sure,
I seen a girl mit kittens und baby's hats.
She runs by the river.'

Out of the crowd of Grand Street, Patrick
bore down upon them.

[204]

LITTLE BO-PEEP

"The whole gang is chasin' her," he
panted. " One of the fellers seen her makin'
fer de river. Don't youse fuss. We'll git her. "
Always that ominous phrase "towards the
river. " Yet there was no trace of the fugitive
along the dirty docks and warehouses of the
river-front. Stevedores and loungers were ac
costed in vain. Neighboring police stations
had heard nothing of her. Gouverneur
Hospital had no news of her. And so the
short afternoon faded into evening.

Meanwhile the baby, cold, hungry, torn
by fear and sobbing, clung to her patch of
darkness until all the world grew dark.
The kitten had long ago escaped from her
strangling embrace, and she was utterly
desolate. And gradually a fear greater than
all those which she had endured crept over
her and benumbed all lesser fears into one
[205]

WARDS OF LIBERTY

unreasoning panic. She was afraid of the
dark. She was out in the dark. Alone.

So little Bo-Peep crept out of her hiding-
place and lost herself in the dreaded crowd.
Back and forth she strayed in search of light,
but still in quaking terror of people. She
was clinging to the bright window of a
gloriously illuminated glass house on a
corner when a woman stopped and accosted
her in the old familiar language, but with an
unfamiliar harshness.

" What are you doing here ?" she demand
ed. "Don't you know that you ought to be
in bed ? Go home to your mother, you bad
little girl. She will be watching for you. "

Little Bo-Peep shrank into an empty hall,

and the woman went upon her preoccupied

way. But there was no rest for the small

fugitive. Feet were still searching for her.

[206]

LITTLE BO -PEEP

They began to come down the dirty stairs,
and they drove her blindly on again, out into
the night.

Light without people was now her prayer,
and presently she found a narrow window-
less lane at the further end of which a light
burned dimly, over a door hung all askew.
The lane was long, and it seemed easier to
crawl than to fall so often, but at last she
reached the step under the light, where there
were no people and where the sound of the
pursuing footsteps came very faintly.

When she awoke, she was in the dark
again. "Mother, mother," she whimpered,
as her baby habit was. But her head rested
upon cold stone, and no reassuring arm en
folded her. Terror took her for its own again,
and she was scrambling to her feet, when a
familiar sound arrested her. Pressed close
[207]

WARDS OF LIBERTY

to the door, she listened with her whole small
body. Yes, she was right. It came again, a
soft "crunch, crunch, crunch." Little Bo-
Peep pressed her nose to a crack and sniffed
cautiously. Again she was right. There were
soft breathings in the dark enclosure; soft
movings ; and as she wondered, a wavering
bleat changed quickly to a soft whinny of
contentment.

The space between the gate and the
threshold was cruelly narrow, and the baby,
despite all Mrs. Gonorowsky's care, still
bore the marks of her conversion red upon
her. But outside the gate were fear and
darkness, and inside there was Home.

And very early on the morning of the

next day, the local Rabbi coming to make

his inspection, as by Jewish law prescribed,

found a limp little figure in the corner far-

[208]

LITTLE BO-PEEP

thest from the gate. The face in its border of
limp muslin frills was white and still, and a
deep stain was stiffening and darkening all
Eva's reception gown — even the nearest
fleece was red. But little Bo-Peep had found
Home at last, and had lain down to sleep
with her lambs.

[209]

THE WILES OF THE WOOER

THE WILES OF THE WOOER

A store in Grand Street was the goal towards
which Mr. Goldstone had been crawling
through many dark and devious ways and
years. What wife and children were to other
men, his business was to him, and he dwelt
happy and solitary in a neighboring garret
conscious of no unfulfilled desire, for his
name glittered in pleasing though unstable
porcelain letters upon the window of his em
porium and was repeated in gold and black
above its door. "Samuel Goldstone," he
knew the larger letters spelled, though he was
quite unlearned in English print or script.
"Samuel Goldstone"; and then, in smaller
[213]

WARDS OF LIBERTY

type, the explanatory if ambiguous phrase,
"Ladies, Gents, Houses and Children Fur
nished at Reduced Rates."

Within the store he had accumulated
great treasure from the wrecks of neighbor
ing and rival concerns, from fire sales, from
sheriff's sales, from auctions, and even from
enterprising burglars. To guard and dis
tribute his hoard he had secured a cash-
registering machine, a young lady and a
young gentleman. The machine took care
of the money, the young lady "furnished"
the ladies and children, the young gentle
man ministered to the gents and houses,
while Mr. Goldstone stood proudly upon the
sidewalk and chanted:

"Step right in, lady; step right in! This
is our bargain day. Ladies furnished. All
the latest styles. Babies and children at half.
[214]

THE WILES OF THE WOOER

Step right in! This is the place for big
values!"

And the lady, weakly yielding to his
persuasions, or to the detaining hand with
which he reinforced them, would find herself
simultaneously and suddenly in the shop
and in the way. For the two assistants, young,
lonely, and often idle, found time for many
a confidential interview between onslaughts
upon the customers delivered into their
hands.

It was an afternoon in early October. The
store was empty, a confidential interview
was in progress ; Esther Mogilewsky's golden
head rested against a pile of "flannel oppor
tunities," as she listened absorbed, en
tranced, while Isaac Blumberg, scholar and
salesman, read aloud in the clear voice which
had won him a medal at a recent night-school
[215]

WARDS OF LIBERTY

oratory competition. He read of the fall
sales of larger establishments as set forth in
that morning's paper.

"And think of this, Miss Mogilewsky!"
he cried. "Moleskin three quarter length
coats at $1,000! Think of it! And last
week they were $999. The Fur Trust, of
course!"

Esther wrinkled her pretty forehead in
obedient effort, but since she had been but a
few years in America and had never heard
of a mole, her reflections led her no further
than that Mr. Blumberg was a learned
youth and that Mr. Goldstone's store, with
its counters along each side and its center
tables piled high with bargains, was a
pleasant place. But Mr. Goldstone's face,
as he peered suddenly over the "Sacrificed
All-from-Wool Underwear," could hardly
[216]

THE WILES OF THE WOOER

be called pleasant, and during the next few
minutes, in a mixture of English and Yiddish,
with copious profanity in both, he favored
his assistants with startling versions of their
biographies for that they had, as they guiltily
came to understand, allowed two potential
shoppers to escape unshopped. In vain
Esther wept. In vain Isaac explained and
apologized. Mr. Goldstone set an extrava
gant value upon the possible outlay of the
lost quarry and vowed to deduct it from the
wages of his staff.

"A lady mit no hat und a vorn vaist!
For the vaist, forty-seven und a half cents;
for the hat, sixty-nine und three-fourths
cents. That money you lose me. Und a little
girl mit no shoes und stockings. For the shoes,
thirty-five cents; for the stockings -- ain'd
you lucky we're sellin' off our stockings ?
[217]

WARDS OF LIBERTY

— seven und a half cents. That you lose
me, too. That is altogether one dollar fifty-
nine und three-fourths cents. You pay me
each half. That you pay for foolin' !"

"He wasn't foolin'. He was readin'."
Esther interrupted, loyally.

"Und ain'd readin' foolin' ?" sneered the
boss. "Readin' is vorse than foolin'. I charge
you extra, maybe, for readin'. Und what
foolishness was you readin' ?"

And so, to divert his attention and to
stem his eloquence, they told him. Isaac
read of liquidation sales, of clearances, of
special importations, of glove sacrifices, of
a lace week and of a hosiery event. The eyes
of the listening Mr. Goldstone glittered with
a new purpose.

'You read 'em good," he commented.
"Can you write 'em too ?"
[218]

THE WILES OF THE WOOER

"'Sure," answered Isaac proudly.

Gradually the name of Samuel Goldstone
spread throughout the East Side. It began
to appear, heralding clearances, cut rates
and other words of charm, in the polyglot
papers — English, Russian, Polish and Jew
ish — most popular in the district. So elo
quently did Isaac paint the advantages which
ladies, gents, houses, and children must
derive from being furnished by Samuel
Goldstone, that the public, which had fought
wildly against physical persuasion, yielded
in weak hordes to the magic of the pen.

Then did mad self-reviling and vain re
grets rend the bosom of Mr. Blumberg. He
had destroyed his Eden, had made confi
dential interviews impossible, solitude un
known. The shop was never empty now.
Esther never at leisure, himself rarely free
[219]

WARDS OF LIBERTY

from women who wanted to see the "broken
sets of china" or the "cuts in curtains";
from the men who wanted to buy either the
groundwork or the accessories to their
costumes. But he quickly found that there
were trials more searching than attendance
upon the men who demanded furnishing.
The articles of strictly masculine nature
were in what he proudly called his "provi
dence," but over the co-sartorial ground of
gloves Esther presided.

It was when he first saw her with a brew
ery-driver's huge hand between her two
slender ones as she, greatly to her customer's
delight, tried innumerable and inordinately
large gloves upon it, that he realized how
dear she was to him and how inimical to his
desire the patronage of the sterner sex might
prove. From that day the advertisements of
[220]

THE WILES OF THE WOOER

Samuel Goldstone's emporium threw heavy
emphasis upon the ladies, the children and
the houses, but slighted or ignored the gents.
From that day, too, there was a new warmth
in Isaac's few conversations with his collea
gue, and a new sting in his remorse as he
noticed her growing weariness and pallor.
The boom increased. The expurgated
advertisements continued. One morning
Esther, coming early to the store, found a
black-browed, black-haired, smiling and
waxen lady hiding coyly behind the door
and making an urgent though silent appeal
for the services of a maid. Miss Mogilewsky
had reduced her to the borders of conven
tionality before Mr. Blumberg arrived, and
together they made place for her in th^e
crowded window, hung a price upon every
garment of her attire, and drove a stupendous
[221]

WARDS OF LIBERTY

trade. She drew smiling attention to the
"Sappho skirt with tailor tucked circular
flounce effect," which Esther had dexter
ously fitted to the slender figure; to the
"millinery opening," of which she wore a
sample upon her dainty head; to the "Pride
of the Avenue Bolero Eton Jacket," which
afforded so alluring a vista of the "Reduced
Ladies' Like-Linen Shirt-waist" beneath.

Mr. Goldstone was delighted with the
new acquisition. She smiled at him gently
through the window, and was profitable as
well as ornamental. He lavished affection
and bargains upon her, and it became Miss
Mogilewsky's duty and pleasure to array her
in varied but always gorgeous attire. When
the weather allowed it was his custom to
request the honor of the young person's
society upon the sidewalk, and for these

THE WILES OF THE WOOER

occasions she had a purple street costume,
gloves, veil and muff complete, and was
most carefully watched over by her admiring
owner.

Esther had dressed her one morning in
full bridal regalia — a sale of ladies' light
weight dresses was in progress — and had
then withdrawn the screen behind which
these rites were performed and called Isaac
to inspect and to set prices on the glowing
vision. It was early and they were alone.

"Beautiful!" he cried. "Beautiful! But
when I think of a bride she is not like
this."

"What is mit her? Ain'd she fine?"
Esther urged. "Ain'd she stylish? Ain'd I
fix her right?"

:< You fixed her out o' sight, Miss Mogilew-
sky — out of sight. But her hair is too dark.
[223]

WARDS OF LIBERTY

When I think of a bride her hair is always
golden."

"So? "asked Esther.

:<Yes, so. Black-eyed and golden-haired
she is, the girl I love."

"So," repeated Esther, with a gasp.

"Yes, so. And some day when I have a
store with my name on it I will tell her how I
love her and it will be our partnership store —
mine and Esther's. Her name will be on it too."

"So," sighed Esther, happily. Her Eng
lish was limited, but her eyes were eloquent.

Isaac's wooing had reached this happy
but unsettled point when a new difficulty
arose. On a day when " A holocaust of Laces,
designed for the costumes of European
royalty and secured by our special Paris
representative," had been featured, the
crowd was so dense that Mr. Goldstone first
[ 224 ]

THE WILES OF THE WOOER

pressed into service Miss Mogilewsky's small
nephew, who had come to the store with the
lunch for which she had not found time to
go home, and had then --the clamor con
tinuing — been constrained to desert his
post upon the sidewalk and to assume charge
of the center tables. There he did some
eccentric measuring of laces, and juggling of
change, and so much did he appreciate the
opportunities of an indoor career that he
determined to devote all his time to it. To
that end he hung upon the breast of the
waxen lady, over the "Facings of pure silk,
emphasized with applications of Zaza braid
and outlined with French dots," a card bear
ing the legend:

WANTED

A STRONG PULLER-IN
ITALION MAN

WARDS OF LIBERTY

The strong Italian man applied, dozens
of him, some with heavy Tipperary brogues.
Mr. Goldstone selected one and was repaid
by such an influx of indignant and shang
haied customers as he had never been able
to corral. But then he had never been " likely
heavy-weight material," had never swung a
shillalah at an Irish fair — was not, in short,
astrong Italian " puller-in," born in Kilcashel
and trained in the Fourth Ward.

Mr. Goldstone was now at leisure to study
the internal economy of his establishment.
For a few days he suffered the pangs of
despised love, for his dark-browed divinity
turned her back persistently upon him in
the pursuit of her calling, but he soon came
to Mr. Blumberg's way of thinking, and saw
that the changing graces of Esther Mogilew-
sky were more attractive than the fixed,

THE WILES OF THE WOOER

even if amiable, complaisance of his former
favorite. And Isaac, seeing that he had
added a dangerous rival to the list of his
miseries, cursed the days he had learned to
write and had laid this accomplishment at
his employer's service.

Upon an evil day Mr. Goldstone bought,
at some incredible discount, the stock of a
small manufacturer of men's fleece-lined
gloves, and commanded that an advertise
ment, setting forth their beauty and comfort,
their economy and "single spear backs,"
should be sent to all the papers. "A great
man's week" was to be inaugurated. The
ladies, the children and the houses were to
be thrust into the background. All the
emphasis and the lime-light of publicity
were to be centered upon the nobler sex.
Fleece-lined, single-spear-back gloves, with

WARDS OF LIBERTY

divertisements of fancy vests, Ascots, rubbers,
and flannels, were to form the moral of Isaac's
contribution to the press.

But the tried spirit of Mr. Blumberg
revolted. His poet's vision showed him the
store full of men, Esther at the service of
men, Esther smiling upon men; himself
fitting rubbers to the feet of men, and Esther
looking upon him in that position. It was
more than he could endure. But Mr. Gold-
stone was not lightly to be disobeyed. Only
through guile could his commands be set at
naught, and the evil star of Mr. Blumberg
showed him a way of keeping the shop empty
of men and Esther at leisure to listen to his
suit.

Isaac wrote the advertisement in his most
fluent style. It bristled with capital letters,
it painted the Ascots and the vests in every

THE WILES OF THE WOOER

color of the rainbow, it represented the
heating power of the gloves and flannels as
equal to that of tons of coal. It was a triumph,
and Mr. Goldstone made elaborate prepara
tions for the expected multitude. The black-
haired young person in the window was
coyly smiling in the most fancy of the fancy
vests, the most vivid of the four-in-hands,
the smallest of the calorific gloves, and she
carried in the hollow of her arm a discreetly
folded scarlet bundle. Miss Mogilewsky
wore an "almost alpaca Irene shirt-waist,
with modish stock," and Mr. Blumberg
gleamed in specimens of all the "features,"
whose price had been forcibly deducted from
his salary.

The sale was to begin upon a Monday
morning. The day came; the populace did
not. The Italian Puller-in worked vigorously

WARDS OF LIBERTY

but to little purpose, and Mr. Goldstone
fumed and wondered. At ten o'clock a large
wagon was backed almost across the side
walk and two Board of Health officials dis
embarked. At sight of the blue cloth and
brass buttons the strong Italian reversed his
function and became a shover-out; but the
men overawed that stalwart son of Tuscany
and entered the emporium. Mr. Goldstone,
with visions of vests and neckties sold at
prices as fancy as themselves, bustled for
ward, and a look of horrified enlightenment
dawned upon the face of Mr. Blumberg.

" Are you the proprietor ? " asked one of the
visitors. Mr. Goldstone beamed and bowed.

"Then we've come for the goods men
tioned in the advertisement," announced
the other, drawing out Mr. Blumberg's
latest effusion.

[230]

THE WILES OF THE WOOER

"All of them?" cried Mr. Goldstone,
and he thought that his prayers had been
answered and the yearnings of a lifetime
fulfilled. "All of them?"

"Every last one of them. Get them out
quick. You've got to come to headquarters
to explain. You must have been crazy when
you put that advertisement in the papers."

"Crazy!" echoed the amazed proprietor.
"Crazy ? Sure not. I got the goods here all
right. It's for sure great man's week. Who's
crazy ?"

"You are, I guess. Hurry up, now; no
nonsense. We are going to quarantine the
place and take away all the infected stuff.
Where is it?"

"What stuff?" shrieked the frightened
and desperate Mr. Goldstone.

"This, of course," answered the officer,
[231]

WARDS OF LIBERTY

and read the finale of Isaac's swan-song,
printed in small and unobtrusive type,—
16 We are offering these goods at epoch mark
ing rates because they are from the stock of
the late Mr. Jacob Abrahams. He died of
smallpox on North Brother Island, and his
family needs the money."

For a moment blank bewilderment ban
ished all expression from the face of the
betrayed Samuel Goldstone. His eyes roved
wildly over his domain until they fell upon
the foresworn Mr. Blumberg, who, frantic
of face and gesture, was trying to explain the
situation to Esther.

"It was the men," he was reiterating. "I
could not bear that they should come, Miss
Mogilewsky. I could not bear to see the men
about you. But I never thought of this -
I swear I didn't — I swear it."

THE WILES OF THE WOOER

It was sheer waste of energy on Mr. Blum-
berg's part to swear in the sputtering pres
ence of his boss. Nothing was left to be said
by any rival blasphemer. Even the strong
Italian, who had deserted his post in the
hope of a "mill," was impressed, and Esther
covered her ears in terror.

"But didn't you write the thing ?" queried
the Inspector, "and didn't you know that
something would happen ?"

Murder and comprehension flamed into
Mr. Goldstone's face. With an inarticulate
snarl he rushed upon the bard of his bar
gains, and in an instant the shop was full of
scurrying and pursuing forms. The boss
chased Isaac; the Inspector, fearing blood
shed, chased the boss; the Puller-in, scenting
battle, chased the other three. The Assistant
Inspector, a knight at heart, caught Esther
[233]

WARDS OF LIBERTY

as she reeled before the onrush of the chase
and threw her on the high-heaped " Egyptian
Balbriggan Underwear," of the center table;
climbed after her; drew her to her feet, and
from that commanding but insecure position
they watched the progress of the battle be
neath.

Around and around the shop flew Mr.
Blumberg, his breath coming heavily, his
heart laboring under the mockery of his
fancy vest. After him — under counters,
over tables — followed the boss, the In
spector and the Puller-in. Spaces were narrow
and the bargain display was insecure. Heap
after heap tottered and fell until the path of
flight was strewn. The crash of tinware
heralded the fall of the boss as he plunged
into a maze of coffee-pots and dish-pans,
and came ponderously to earth. The In-
[234]

THE WILES OF THE WOOER

spector joined him. The Puller- in forcibly
extricated the combatants, and Esther clung
tremblingly to the assistant. And then, as
Isaac, once more on his feet, sped toward
freedom and the door, and wondered if he
might outstrip vengeance, the handle turned,
the door opened, and Morris Mogilewsky,
with a message to his aunt, stood upon the
threshold. But brief was his stand. Mr.
Blumberg escaped over the prostrate form
of his angel of deliverance and vanished,
hatless and panting, into the moving Grand
Street crowd.

The specific charge against Samuel Gold-
stone was not proved, but weeks of official
dom and of inquiry followed. Torrents of
disinfectants ruined the character of the
store, the confidence of the public, the tem
per of the boss, much of the stock, the
[235]

WARDS OF LIBERTY

assurance of the hot-headed Puller-in, and
the peace of Esther's days.

For Isaac was gone, and she was very lone
ly in the transformed store, which smelled
so acidly of chemicals; nor was its gloom
relieved by the constant companionship of
the soured and abusive Mr. Goldstone. He
had long suspected that he had a rival in his
clerk and was handicapped by no chivalric
scruples against speaking ill of the absent.
He spent hours at it; he railed at and abused
the vanished Isaac bitterly and unceasingly.

" Und for why did he write that fool words ?
For why ? For why ? It ain'd business und
it ain'd sense. I buy them gloves from off
my friend Goldmark. Is Goldmark dead ?
Sure not. You seen him in de store yesterday.
He ain'd died nowheres, und he says he died
by Islands. Ain'd he crazy ? Gott ! I ain'd
[236]

THE WILES OF THE WOOER

never seen such a foolishness ! It's goot he
goes."

But to Esther it was very bad. For the
first few days she suffered agonies of un
certainty as to his fate; and the sight of his
deserted derby under the hosiery counter
was almost more than she could bear. Then
her doubts were resolved into an even more
cruel certainty. Morris, her small nephew,
appeared one afternoon with a tiny note,
which he delivered to her when the eyes of
the boss were not upon him. "The sales
man gives it to me/' he whispered. "I seen
him by the corner."

The note was short. "Meet me at Grand,
corner Essex, to-night. Give the boy a penny
if you have it. Isaac."

'You seen him. What kind from looks
did he have?" asked Esther wistfully.
[237]

WARDS OF LIBERTY

"Well," Morris admitted, "he ain't got
no more stylish looks. He has looks off of
poor mans. Say, he puts him on mit a little
bit of hat. It ain't no fer man's hat, und it
makes him awful funny looks. Hangs a
ribbon on it."

"So," was Esther's only comment. Then
she added, "You shall tell him I'll be there
at seven. Und Morris, here's a penny for
you. You don't needs you shall tell your
mama how you makes mit me and --Mr.
Blumberg."

The eyes of love are never keen, else would
Esther have discovered the large part that
clothes had played in the making of her man,
for the figure which awaited her coming at
the corner of Grand and Essex Streets that
evening bore little resemblance to the dapper
Mr. Blumberg of the emporium. Gone was
[238]

THE WILES OF THE WOOER

his assurance and his color, gone his ingra
tiating manner and his fancy vest. He was
shrunk to half his former size, and the little
Scotch cap perched rakishly over one of his
hollow eyes added largely to the change in
his appearance. But Esther saw none of these
things. She saw only that he was thin, and
ill, and miserable. She had thoughtfully
brought his derby in a paper bag and when
it was once more upon his head he seemed
to recover some of his spirits. Nevertheless
his report was gloomy and his hope at lowest
ebb. He was out of work, could find no open
ing, had eaten nothing all day, wished that he
was dead, and had asked Esther to meet him
that he might bid her an eternal farewell,
since his chances in Jew York were gone,
and he must emigrate.

"But where will you go ?" asked his lady
[239]

WARDS OF LIBERTY

through her tears. "Are you going far
away ?"

''Very far," replied Isaac. "I may never
see you again. I am going to Harlem."

"Mein Gott! So far!" wailed Esther. "So
awful, awful far. Und the store mit our
names on it — where is that little store ?"

"It ain't nowhere." Isaac groaned from
the depths of a depression to which only one
of his race could reach. "It ain't nowhere,
at all. It was a lie, that little store; only a
lie."

"A lie — und I think so much of it. Ah,
Isaac, that makes me cold in mine heart und
tears in mine eyes."

"What else can I say?" asked her lover.
"I have no money and no job. What can I
say, but farewell ?"

When Esther reached home, heavy of eye
[240]

THE WILES OF THE WOOER

and sick at heart, Morris was watching for
her. Mr. and Mrs. Mogilewsky had gone to
a ball, to which Esther had been invited,
but from the very thought of which she
shrank.

"Did you see him?" Morris eagerly in
quired. "Didn't he have funny looks ? What
kind from hats was it ? '

His adored auntie, instead of answering,
threw herself face downward upon the bed
behind the door in a wild paroxysm of weep
ing. The boy was beside her in a moment,
apologizing, explaining, comforting. Deftly
and tenderly he removed her hat and jacket,
murmuring the while —

"Don't you have sad feelings, auntie.

Don't you cry. I guess maybe I don't know

what is stylish hats for mans. I guess it was

a awful tony hat, only I ain't never seen none

[241]

WARDS OF LIBERTY

like it. Don't you have sad feelings over
your fellow. He's a awful nice fellow."

Gradually Esther's sobs ceased and she
allowed herself to be soothed and quieted by
Morris's endearments and caresses, so that
when the elder Mogilewskys returned from
scenes of revelry, they found aunt and nephew
asleep and peaceful.

Weeks went by; they grew to months; and
no word came from Isaac. He had evidently
deserted Esther, whose sorrow gradually
changed to resentment. Why, she asked her
self, did he not write to her ? Why make no
sign of love or remembrance ? Slowly she
came to believe that his farewell had been
final, and slowly the vision of him, which
in the first weeks of her bereavement had
haunted the whole store, faded and died.

Mr. Goldstone was not an impetuous

THE WILES OF THE WOOER

wooer. He had waited for his store and was
content to wait for Esther. He was patient,
but assured. For what girl, he asked himself

- and Esther — could refuse the induce
ments he had to offer. " Some day," he would
remark, "you can come in the store und buy
all you want at half price — that is when you
promise to marry mit me. Some day you
come in the store and take all you want free

- that is when you marry mit me."
After a time, too, home influence was

brought to bear, for Morris, whose eye for
romance was always keen, had informed his
mother that Mr. Goldstone held his assistant
in admiring and sentimental regard.

"Sooner he looks on her, sooner he has

glad looks," Morris reported, "und sooner

she looks on him, sooner he has proud looks.

I guess, maybe, he could to have kind feelings

[243]

WARDS OF LIBERTY

over her. Say, what you think, he gives me
a necktie mit funny smells und a spot on it
the whiles she's aunties mit me."

"Und how does your auntie make? Has
she feelings ?" asked the match-making Mrs.
Mogilewsky.

"I couldn't to tell," answered Morris. "I
don't know, even."

Neither did Mr. Goldstone. Neither,
sometimes, did Esther. She did not intend
to spend her life in mourning for a faithless
lover, and yet — and yet - - But Mrs. Mo
gilewsky did not approve of procrastination
in an affair so important and so advanta
geous. She visited the Grand Street store;
she invited the proprietor to spend an eve
ning at her apartment. And Mr. Goldstone,
divested of his derby and overcoat — a guise
in which Esther had never seen him — proved
[244]

THE WILES OF THE WOOER

so affable and was so devoted that Esther
felt that it might be pleasant to put away
all thoughts save those of duty, and to be
stow this very powerful and desirable brother-
in-law upon her house. Her dreams that
night were all of pomp and pride. She saw
herself released from daily toil and living in
the four-roomed flat over the Grand Street
store. Mr. Goldstone had promised to en
gage it for her so soon as another engage
ment should be agreed upon. And there,
with all her wants supplied and all her wishes
granted, she should live in peace and plenty.
Should she do it, she wondered, should she
do it ?

On the next morning Morris, on an early

visit to the bakery, met the long lost Isaac,

and came tearing back to his auntie with a

letter. " He sees me on the block," he panted.

[245]

WARDS OF LIBERTY

"He's awful stylish now, und he says like
this: 'Ain't your auntie got no letters off
of me?' Und I says, 'No,' und he says
-'cuse me — 'Damn Goldstone. I writes
your auntie whole bunches of lovin' letters.
I guess Goldstone don't gives them to her
when she comes by the store.' Sooner he
gives me a quarter und this letter fer you."
The letter was a masterpiece. The elo
quence which had once swayed thousands,
was centered now upon one. In flights of
adjectives and flocks of capital letters, Isaac
poured out his heart. He upbraided Esther
for her disregard of his devotion, her un-
responsiveness to his former appeals. He
told her of his altered fortunes and of his
unchanged heart. He announced his attain
ment to the post of floor-walker in a Sixth
Avenue establishment, and laid at her feet
[246]

THE WILES OF THE WOOER

his love, his hand, his two-roomed home and
a position in the millinery department of his
new field.

Esther reached Mr. Goldstone's emporium
in a flutter of happiness, and under the ro
mantic influence of her "loving letter," she
once more dressed the brown-browed lady
in full bridal array.

Mr. Goldstone, arriving somewhat later,
and still under the spell of the evening's joy,
added the finishing touch. Sending Esther
to the cellar upon some improvised errand,
he plucked off the bridal veil and wreath,
twisted the black locks into a hard knot,
substituted an auburn wig from his stock of
"human hair goods, all naturally curled,"
readjusted the veil and wreath, and awaited
Esther's return. That she was moved he could
not doubt. That she would not accept his
[247]

WARDS OF LIBERTY

attentions was also made clear to him, and
from this disinclination he could not move
her, even by his gracious assurance that she
might wear that identical costume, "as is"
upon their nuptial day. He was puzzled and
disappointed, but quite determined that she
should either change her mind that very day
or feel the weight of his displeasure.

Meanwhile Isaac, that impetuous lover,
had decided not to wait for a written reply,
but to venture bravely into the enemy's coun
try and to watch for his divinity outside the
Grand Street store. To that end he secured
a half-hour's grace from his new employ
ment and cautiously approached the scene
of his joys and sorrows. From the opposite
side of the street he reconnoitered. There
was the gold and black sign, there the smil
ing lady and there the strong Italion. He
[248]

THE WILES OF THE WOOER

could see clearly into the shop, for the door
was unobscured, but it seemed unaccount
ably empty. There were the high piled bar
gain tables, there the hanging samples of
ladies' and gents' attire, the glittering heaps
of tinware, the dangling rainbows of ribbon,
but not a sign of life.

And yet one corner of the shop was full of
action. Between the wood backing of the
window space and the jewelry counter Esther
Mogilewsky cowered before the vituperation
of Mr. Goldstone who, having found his
blandishments of no avail, had changed his
tactics and was now screaming at his terrified
assistant —

"Ten cents is gone, don't I tells you ! Ten

cents what I took from off a lady und lays by

the towels counter. Who takes it ? You. I'll

get you arrested und sent by the Island. You

[249]

WARDS OF LIBERTY

is thief s. You is robbers. Where is that police
man?"

Her pitiful attempts at propitiation and
explanation drove him further into fury, for
he knew much more clearly than she could
that the money was in his own pocket and
that he had invented the charge to punish
her coldness and exhibit his power. His face
was distorted with rage and his gesticulations
verged so closely upon blows that Esther
cringed before them.

But Isaac saw none of this and his courage
grew. Carefully he crossed the street, gin
gerly he approached, promptly he was seized
by the strong Italion Puller-in, and vigorously
he was dragged into the shop by the official
he had added to the establishment, but who
failed to recognize him in his official Prince
Albert. And then Esther was yielding to
[250]

THE WILES OF THE WOOER

wild hysterics, while the Italion, with Celtic
curses, was shaking Mr. Goldstone like a rat,
and "landing" wherever land might be.

'Ye ould devil," he cried, with charac
teristic Latin warmth, "I'd like to shake the
black heart out of yer black carcass. Find
her hat, my boy -- find the poor child's hat
- and put some of those fancy fixin's upon
her. We'll have the weddin' this minute of
time and I'll lock this swine in here till it's

over."

And by an alien power, without pomp or
ceremony, Isaac and Esther were married.
They were attended by that most sustaining
of bridesmaids, most encouraging of grooms
men and proudest of witnesses - - Terence
O'Toole, the Italion Puller-in.

Mr. Goldstone's emporium is now for
Gents' Furnishing Exclusively, but his life is
[251]

WARDS OF LIBERTY

not quite without female influence. In his
garret he enjoys the companionship of a
smiling, placid, silent lady, black of eye and
black of hair, in full bridal regalia.

THE GIFTS OF THE
PHILOSOPHERS

THE GIFTS OF TH E
PHILOSOPHERS

The morning prayer was over and a hymn
in progress when the door of the Katharine
Wellwood Mission Kindergarten opened
cautiously, and a small, dark head with
bright eyes and yellow cigar-ribboned braids
presented itself. Concetta Maddalena Sal-
vatori looked her first upon the scene of
many future joys and sorrows. For a space
she watched the circle of singing children,
the goldenrod in its center, the birds in their
cages, the plants in the windows, the sun
shine pouring in. She turned her attention
next to the teachers : to Miss Knowles, fresh
and cheery in her white linen dress ; to Miss
[255]

WARDS OF LIBERTY

Parker, hard-featured and stern of expres
sion; lastly, to Miss Martin. And slowly
Concetta raised a short arm in a yellow satin
sleeve, waved it encouragingly into the dark
ness of the hall, and ushered in Maria
Annunciata Salvatori, her mother. Again
Concetta encouraged seemingly empty space
until Pietro Giuseppe Salvatori, husband
and father, joined and completed the smiling
family group.

Miss Martin disengaged herself from the
embraces of her two neighbors in the circle
and approached to interview the visitors.
The manner of Pietro Giuseppe was wonder
ful and perfect — in which it bore little re
semblance to the staring curiosity with which
the Katharine Wellwood Mission Kinder
garten was regarding him and his in defiance
of the whispered remonstrances of Miss
[256]

GIFTS OF THE PHILOSOPHERS

Knowles and the Medusa glare of Miss
Parker.

" Get on to the Dagos," began John Healy,
while Pietro explained in florid English that
the lady was his wife, newly arrived from
Italy, and the bambina his daughter, sim
ultaneously imported. Here the clan of
Salvatori bobbed in unison and beamed in
concert. And now, Pietro further set forth,
their prayer was this: Might the blessing of
a free education, beginning with the ladies
and bird-cages before him, and culminat
ing in college hall or convent cloister, be
brought to bear upon the diminutive but
"ver smarta" head of Concetta Maddalena
Salvatori ?

Again they beamed. Again they bobbed,
arid Miss Martin yielded. Pietro Giuseppe
kissed her hand, gathered his wife to his
[257]

WARDS OF LIBERTY

side, and withdrew, leaving Miss Martin
face to face with a bambina of four summers,
a bewitching smile, and not one word of
English.

But if she was backward in the language
of the land, she was well versed in the lan
guage of love. Miss Martin stretched forth
an encouraging hand; the bambina kissed it
rapturously, pressed it to the square bosom
of her red and black apron, and laid a velvet
cheek upon it. All blithely she allowed herself
to be led to the circle, all blissfully she dis
posed a "ver shorta" yellow satin skirt upon
her little chair, all happily she crossed her
[258]

GIFTS OF THE PHILOSOPHERS

small hands in the lap of the red and black
apron and set about enjoying herself. She
was quite in the dark as to the words she
heard, but she caught the spirit quickly and
listened with sudden gurglings of delight to
the story told by the teacher, to the shy con
tributions of Becky Kastrinsky, to the sledge
hammer witticism of Isidore Lavinsky. Words
were nothing to her, but here were flowers
and playfellows, and Love.

When the children's vocabulary had been
sufficiently paraded and enriched, Miss Mar
tin swung the bambina to a point of observa
tion on the piano's flat top and struck a
[259]

WARDS OF LIBERTY

resounding chord of command. The children
sprang to their feet and Concetta's heart
leaped within her breast. Another chord
reverberated through the room — and
through the small candidate for college
honors — and the bambina's eyes rolled
widely until Becky Jacower laid a soothing
hand upon one of the purple stockings and
whispered the comforting but uncompre-
hended words:

"Don't you have no 'fraid, little Dago
girl" -Becky was three years and a half
old and small beyond belief- "it's on'y
music. It ain't a-goin' to hurt you."

" Ah-ah-ah !" gurgled Concetta, and, being
thus reassured, began to suck her thumb.

She was later lifted down into a country
of beauty and delight, a country where
gracious ladies played upon pianos or sang
[260]

GIFTS OF THE PHILOSOPHERS

songs --with gentle swayings of arms and
bodies — or danced and ran about with a
grace and an abandon wonderful to see.
And in this country there were children of
lesser but still surprising charm and courtesy,
who, following the example of the ladies,
sang and marched and played enchanting
games.

Before twelve o'clock the bambina was on
terms of caressment with the youngest assist
ant, and of friendliness with all the world,
with the possible exception of Miriam Sos-
nowsky, who had torn off and forcibly re
tained one of the yellow cigar ribbons. But
that had occurred early in the morning, and
Concetta forgot it as she worked her way,
densely puzzled but supremely happy,
through scenes of wonder and enchantment.
Miss Martin was delighted. Here was proof
[261]

WARDS OF LIBERTY

positive of the atmospheric influence disasso
ciated from and independent of the speech
medium. Here was a child who had heard
no understandable word for three long hours,
and who was nevertheless happy as a lark and
alert as a fox-terrier. Concetta was, as the
sociological assistant learnedly remarked:
"A thorough Latin. So quick in yielding
to a thought current, so ready to grasp an
idea."

When the good-by song had been sung,
and the babies were filing past their teachers
with unsteady bows and awkward hand
shakes, Jacob Abrahamowsky whispered to
Miss Martin: "Say, I guess the Ginny don't
know what's polite. She's hookin' all things.
I says I should tell you, und she makes a
snoot on me und hooks some more."

And he was right. Concetta Maddalena
[262]

GIFTS OF THE PHILOSOPHERS

had not confined herself to ideas. Sadly Miss
Martin detained the "thorough Latin" and
reclaimed the kindergarten property by her
secreted, while the flippant assistant knelt
by the small culprit's side and essayed con
solation, and the sociological assistant made
an entry in her note-book : " Mem. — To look
up racial morality in Italy. Honesty ?" But
Miss Martin knew that she was face to face
with an honest misunderstanding sufficiently
difficult to explain to English-speaking chil
dren, but which she despaired of ever making
clear to the "ver smarta" head resting
against her shoulder.

For how could she make clear to this baby
Herr FroebePs definition of the word gift ?
How persuade her to go gratefully home with
her thought content enriched by the idea of
cube and sphere while the real box and ball
[263]

WARDS OF LIBERTY

were put back into the closet ? How convince
her that there had been sincerity and not
guile in the smile of the lady who was now
trying to reclaim the presents she had so
graciously bestowed a few hours before ?

And the bambina wept — not with the
noisy vehemence of the Jewish babyhood to
which the Mission was accustomed, but with
large, slow tears and heavy sobs most dis
quieting to the hearers' nerves. Miss Martin
rocked the sufferer in her kind arms and
murmured endearments the while. The
scientific assistant took copious notes. The
flippant assistant brought a large spray from
the bowl of goldenrod and pinned it to the
front of the red and black apron. Gradu
ally Concetta was soothed; her sobs died
away; her smiles were restored; but she was
a sadder and a wiser child when she rushed
[264]

GIFTS OF THE PHILOSOPHERS

upon her mother who had come to fetch her
and broke into liquid Italian baby-talk.

Miss Martin did not know the Italian of
"Indian giver," but she read the idea very
plainly in Concetta's glance of disillusioned
farewell. Under its blighting power she
relinquished her claim upon the rainbow
paper which Concetta had taken unto herself
- she even added a few strands of dyed
raffia and a little red ball. There were more
bobbing courtesies, much pantomimic grati
tude and more kissing of hands before Mrs.
Salvatori wrapped the bambina in a circular
knitted cape of pink and purple, and the
kindergarten room was left to its rulers.

"A charming baby!" cried Miss Martin
warmly.

"And with such taking ways!" added the
flippant assistant.

F265]

WARDS OF LIBERTY

But the sociological assistant wrote in her
note-book: "Mem. --Are we ever really
justified in compromising upon a moral
point?"

Weeks passed, and Concetta learned all
the customs and laws of the kindergarten
except that of coming at a seasonable hour.
Miss Martin's remonstrances were careful,
copious and vain. This one of her charges
who stood most in need of the language
training of the morning circle was always
late for it. Other children were sometimes
absent, sometimes delayed, as when Simon
Siskousky's father's sister was married, and
Simon went on a family spree which marked
the ceremony; or when small brothers and
sisters of other students fell ill — or down
stairs — and required tendance. These things
Miss Martin could understand, deplore,
[266]

GIFTS OF THE PHILOSOPHERS

forgive, but the unfailing irregularity of
Concetta was more difficult to cope with.
At some varying hour between nine-thirty
and eleven she would come trippingly in -
all beaming smiles and gleaming safety-pins.
Always Miss Martin's glance of pained
remonstrance changed the smiles to puckers
of contrition; always the flippant assistant
comforted her favorite; always Miss Martin
relented; always the learned assistant added
to the data she was collecting for a paper to
be used before the Federation of Mothers'
Clubs on "The Futility of Sporadic Disci
pline in Primary Education."

Concetta unconsciously contributed to the
psychologic literature of the day. The other
children were typical, but she was a variation,
and the workings of the "ver smarta" head
were observed and analysed with an eager
[267]

WARDS OF LIBERTY

hunger. C. M. S. — in psychologic as in
medical literature the patient is initially
ident fied -- belonged to the visual sensory
class of psycho-organisms. Under her tightly-
twisted and firmly- tied braids the genetic
unfolding of the emotional soul - " Gemuth"
- went bravely on through the second or
separat ve stage of the Ego. When Miss
Knowles heard these tidings her concern
was very great.

;< You're quite sure it won't hurt her?"
she asked. "And where is she going next ?"

"Back to the Gifts. Out of the Derivative
we pass back to the Originative through the
Point."

The "Gemuth" was just then unfolding
on the floor, and the flippant assistant picked
it up and cuddled it.

"Ego, dear," she began.
[268]

GIFTS OF THE PHILOSOPHERS

"Dago," Nathan Balcowitsky politely
corrected.

"What?" asked the flippant assistant.
"What did you say, Nathan?"

"Well, Missis Parker she says we dassent
to call her that, und we dassent to call her
Ginny, neither. But anyway, it ain't Ago.
It's Dago. She don't likes you should call her
that. She could to cry."

:< Then I won't," Miss Knowles promised
demurely. "And thank you for reminding

me."

* You're welcome, all right," responded
the boy; and Miss Knowles turned to the
placid bambina.

"Do you know where you're going?"

she demanded. "Aren't you lucky to be

neither a rich man nor a camel ? For

you --my child, I hope you appreciate

[269]

WARDS OF LIBERTY

your privileges — are going through the
Point."

" Si, signorina mia," lisped the " Gemiith,"
and gurgled entrancingly.

But there was one stage of unfolding to
which the bambina persistently objected. She
could not be reconciled to parting with the
Froebelian gifts at twelve o'clock each day.
Daily the tendrils of her being clambered
and clung to the "type solids/' and daily
the "gift thought" had to be repeated for
her rebellious ear. What did it profit to her
that cubes and spheres had done their subtle
service and were "bending back towards the
Point?" She wanted to take them home,
wanted to show the smooth wooden treasures
to her mother, wanted, more than all else,
to take them to bed with her. Her master
pieces of sewing, folding and painting were
[270]

GIFTS OF THE PHILOSOPHERS

pasted in a book, but she did not understand
that, in the fulness of time, she would be
come sole proprietor of her collected works.
Even had she known she would still have
been far from contented. She wanted things
now.

When she could forget her depraved
yearnings after carnal things she found the
kindergarten a very pleasant place. The
children understood her through the inartic
ulate language of childhood. Little blossoms
of Italian began to adorn the English of Miss
Martin and of the flippant assistant. Little
sprigs of English sprang up in Concetta's
soft Tuscan. And to make the close bond
between school life and the home which
educators advocate and teachers suffer,
Concetta's mother washed curtains and
towels for Miss Martin and did sewing for
[271]

WARDS OF LIBERTY

Miss Martin's mother, until a great and
mutual admiration bound the house of Sal-
vatori to the house of Martin.

In the beginning of December, Concetta
Maddalena Salvatori, who had labored
darkly through November and the " Thanks
giving Thought," around which all true
kindergartners know that the October and
November suns do roll, found herself in
familiar and peaceful waters. Pumpkins,
corn, snowy landscapes, Puritans in queer
costumes but accustomed amity, the enticing
and deceptive cranberry, all vanished and
gave place to sweet-eyed Madonnas — old
favorites of Concetta's and associated in
her memory with incense, and soft bells,
and chanting choirs, arid white-robed pro
cessions.

Life was gradually set to a faster and yet
: . . . [ 272 ]

GIFTS OF THE PHILOSOPHERS

faster measure. Occupations lost their sym
bolic nature and degenerated, so the socio
logical assistant noted with disgust, into the
pasting of endless chains and ornaments for
the decoration of the Christmas tree. There
were no more songs of dogs and fishes and
birds.

The pictures on the wall were different,
too. They showed forth in distracting repeti
tion a stout old gentleman with a very red
suit, and a very red nose to match it. Con-
cetta was told that this person's name was
Santa Glaus. In vain she looked for the halo
of sanctity about his head, for the calm eyes,
the decorous robes of her own familiar
galaxy of saints. In vain, too, she questioned
her mother as to this gentleman's place in
the Litany. There was no such saint, Mrs.
Salvatori maintained; yet there were his
[273]

WARDS OF LIBERTY

pictures all about the kindergarten. Between
Abraham Lincoln and Sir Galahad, between
her own Madonna and the flags of all nations,
between the Colossi of Memnon and George
Washington, this new saint was driving
horses with ears like trees, climbing down
chimneys, looking benignly upon sleeping
children, laughing, winking, scrambling up
the side of the house. Never had the bambina
dreamed of such undignified sanctity !

It was yet ten or twelve days before the
Christmas of the calendar when the change
in the spirit of the kindergarten reached its
climax. The Christmas celebration of the
school always antedates that of the world.
Concetta arrived one morning to find a large
tree in the middle of the room and excitement
and desire in the air. If she had been in time
she might have understood that Froebel's
[274]

GIFTS OF THE PHILOSOPHERS

definition of "gift" was to be superseded, on
this one occasion, by that of Webster. But
she was late, and the distribution of presents
had already begun when she slipped into her
place in the circle; and to her the treasures
with which Miss Martin filled her lap dif
fered only in attractiveness from the other
temptations with which her ways had been
beset. But the difference was great and hard
to resist, for in her arms she held a doll: a
smiling doll with tiny teeth, a large, immov
able bonnet, and eyes that opened and shut.
The conscience which had withstood
Froebel's whole series, which had passed
unscathed out of the Derivative, back to
the Originative, and through the Point, fell
down before this pink and white bambina
staring so pleasingly with her wide blue eyes
and smelling so alluringly of fresh glue and
[275]

WARDS OF LIBERTY

varnish and of new satine. Other toys lay
upon the floor, but Concetta hardly glanced at
them. All her eyes were for the pink bambina
and all her heart was in her eyes. Stealthily
she left her place in the circle; stealthily she
crept to the closet and found her gay blue
reefer ; stealthily she buttoned it over her own
fast-beating heart and the bambina's change
less smile; stealthily she reached the door of
the school-room and escaped.

" Dagos is funny. They don't know what's
polite," commented Isidore Lavinsky. "She
don't say 'thanks' nor nothin'. She just
scoots. She don't takes all her presents even.
Crazy little Dago!"

"She will come back for the rest," the
flippant assistant prophesied while the socio
logical assistant noted "the dawn of the
mother-soul in C. M. S."
[276]

GIFTS OF THE PHILOSOPHERS

Mrs. Salvatori had been notified of the
Christmas holidays and was quite prepared
for Concetta's refusal to go to school on the
next morning. She also unhesitatingly ac
cepted her small daughter's announcement
that the beautiful bambina with the eyes
that shut, the teeth that showed, the bonnet
so wide and so immovable, had been pre
sented by Miss Martin. And Concetta, with
a theft and a lie upon her conscience, loved
the smiling cause of all her sinning so per
sistently and so demonstratively that the
pink bonnet grew dissipated in its outline
and the pink skirt limp and dowdy in its
folds. But Concetta saw nothing of her idol's
waning until, under the stress of a paroxysm
of affection, the bambina shed its arms and
legs and drooped its head forlornly upon an
appalling length of elastic neck.
[277]

WARDS OF LIBERTY

Then wild was the terror of Concetta
Maddalena, and wild her attempts to rein
carnate her joy. All vainly and all sobbingly
she tried to recombine the fragments of
which, moment by moment, she grew more
shudderingly afraid. Confession brought no
assuagement of her grief, for when Mr. and
Mrs. Salvatori understood that their Con
cetta was qualifying for prison cells, rather
than for college halls or convent cloisters,
they fell into one another's arms and wept,
nor ceased from their bewailings until the
stairway was blocked by sympathizing neigh
bors. And thus into the new-born mother-
soul of Concetta the world-old mother-sor
row entered.

On the evening of that same day — and it
was Christmas Eve — the house of Martin
was in festal array. Dinner was over, the
[278]

GIFTS OF THE PHILOSOPHERS

tree was lighted, and the small nephews and
nieces in the full tide of enjoyment, when
Miss Elizabeth was summoned to the hall.

Under the mistletoe and holly she found
the clan of Salvatori gathered in a dejected
group. The mother carried a tear-stained
bambina. The father carried a paper bag.
At the sight of Miss Martin in a soft and
low-necked gown of white, Concetta's weep
ing broke out afresh. She was prepared to
cling for comfort and forgiveness to the
shirt-waisted Miss Martin of the kindergar
ten, to kneel in confession and repentance
at a tailor-made knee. But this transforma
tion terrified her. In deep abasement Pietro
began his explanation, while Maria Annun-
ciata's conflicting love and anger led her
alternately to soothe and slap the "ver
smarta" head in the hollow of her arm.
[279]

WARDS OF LIBERTY

When Concetta's depravity had been ex
plained and mourned Pietro slowly drew out
the ghastly sections of the disintegrated pink-
robed doll.

And Miss Martin, after a moment's puzzle
ment, caught the bambina from Mrs. Sal-
vatori's arms and fell to crooning over her
and to rebuking Mr. Salvatori in one in
coherent address :

"Poor little baby," she began, "did her
nasty old teacher give her a nasty old break
able doll ? Nonsense, Mr. Salvatori, Concetta
never would steal. And did she come to her
teacher for another doll ? You might have
guessed that it was a present! Well, Miss
Martin will give her a much better doll, with
longer curls and brighter eyes, and clothes
that come on and off. I should have expected
you to know your own child. I tell you she
[280]

GIFTS OF THE PHILOSOPHERS

is as honest as she is dear. Come and see the
Christmas tree, darling, and get some more
presents. And you and Mrs. Salvatori must
come, too. There are presents enough here
for every one. "

But Concetta had learned her lesson.
\Yhen the joys of Heaven had been showered
upon her and it was time to go away, she laid
her treasures at Miss Martin's feet and en
couraged her parents to do likewise. And
suddenly Miss Martin understood. In deep
abasement and contrition she undid the
training in stoicism to which she had devoted
so much time. She even persuaded Concetta
that the "Indian giver" attitude was not
her constant one, and reduced that mysti
fied young criminal to a state of tremulous
but happy puzzlement. She stood upon her
threshold and watched the departure of her
[281]

WARDS OF LIBERTY

guests, and when they had disappeared, still
chattering and gesticulating, she apostro
phized the land of stars in which benign
philosophers may be supposed to dwell.

"Herr Froebel oh, Herr Froebel!" she
sighed; "we have made a dreadful mistake,
you and I. Consider what we have done to
that flower of a baby. But you didn't know
English, I don't know German, neither of us
knew Italian, and which of us could ever
hope to understand the heart of a little
child?"

STAR OF BETHLEHEM

STAR OF BETHLEHEM

"Lord God of Israel, hear my wrongs," the
rabbi prompted; "grant me vengeance on the
accursed Christian."

"No, grandpa; I don't needs I should
say mine wrongs prayers," Isidore pleaded;
"I don't needs them."

"Recite thy wrongs," the rabbi com
manded; "stand upright and begin."

" ' Lord God of Israel, hear my wrongs, '
Isidore began in measured and sonorous
Hebrew. " 'Let thine ear be attentive and
thine arm swift to avenge. Look down upon
thy servant and mark his suffering. Out of
the town of a far country where we dwelt in
[285]

WARPS OF LIBERTY

love and peace with all men, out of the tem
ple where my grandfather spent the years of
his long life, out of the house wherein my
mother was born and wherein she bore me,
away from the friends who loved us, away
from the friends we loved, the tyrant drove
us. We came to the tyrant's land. Behold,
there was no other place. With curses they
received us; with indignities they welcomed
us. And my mother - ' Rabbi Meirkoff
covered his eyes with one long thin hand
and half sobbed, half groaned, "Thy mo
ther!" Always at this point in the "wrongs
prayers" he did these things, and Isidore,
understanding as little of what he was saying
as many another six-year-old understands of
the Lord's Prayer, regarded this interrup
tion as essential to the proceedings. So he
resumed :

[286]

STAR OF BETHLEHEM

'My mother, the only child and daugh
ter of this old man, they carried off to be
their plaything for such time as her beauty
should endure. My father they foully slew,
and there remains of our ancient house a
man too old for vengeance and a child too
young. Cast, then, thine eyes upon me, and
hasten the day of my strength.' Now can I
go by the block ?"

'Yea," said the rabbi, weakly; for no
repetition could dull the agony which, at
each newr recital of his wrongs, tore his tired
old heart with savage hatred and black
despair. Each evening Isidore dragged him
again through the scenes of that night whose
evening left him in his stately library sur
rounded by his books and by his little family,
and whose morning found him with other
fugitives fleeing toward the frontier, a crying
[287]

"The Block"

STAR OF BETHLEHEM

child beneath his cloak and a great fear in all
his being. Five years had passed since then,
and he was still afraid; still dazed; still, too
often, hungry.

"Can I go by the block ?" asked Isidore.

"If thou wilt shun the oppressor, hold
no communion with him, and touch not of
his food. And woe to them upon whom that
monster of fire and flame which they call
fire-engine comes suddenly! Go now, and
with my blessing."

Isidore clattered out into the squalid hall
and a door at the farther end opened cau
tiously. With a rapturous chuckle he threw
himself into the darkness beyond it and was
caught in a close embrace.

"Boy of my heart," whispered a fond
old voice, "how are you to-night ?"

"I'm healthy," Isidore replied as his
[289]

WARDS OF LIBERTY

hostess closed the door and lighted an inch-
long candle which shone upon them redly
from the cracked sides of what had once been
a sanctuary lamp. " I'm healthy and I guess
I goes by the block. "

"Is it like that you'd go ?" Mrs. Keating
demanded. "I'll have to wash your face
first."

"But you washed it yesterday," the boy
objected. "I don't needs you shall wash
it some more."

"Then you can't go out," said she.

"Then I'll stay in, "said he.

Which was exactly what Mrs. Keating
desired.

They spent a delightful evening: one of

many, many such. The hostess entertained

the guest with reminiscences of far-off days

in Connemara when her heart and her life

[290]

STAR OF BETHLEHEM

were young. She was a relic of the time when
East Broadway and all its environs had been
a prosperous Irish quarter, and the years
which had changed these stately homes to
squalid tenements had changed her: once
the gracious mistress of one of them: to
the worn and fragile sweeper of St. Mary's
Church.

"My mother," she told the boy, "was a
lovely girl; her hair was as black as the night,
and her eyes were as blue as the sky."

"Mine mama had from the gold hair,"
the guest interrupted, "mine grandpa he
tells me. From the gold hair, mit curls. On'y
somethings comes by nights and takes my
mama away."

"The saints preserve us! What kind of a
thing?"

"I don't know what kind from a thing
[291]

WARDS OF LIBERTY

he was. I don't know the name from him
out of English; on'y he kills my papa, and
he takes away my mama, and he hits my
grandpa a fierce hack. I guess maybe he
had looks off the fire-engines. My grandpa
he has a' awful fraid over fire-engines."

Mrs. Keating crossed herself devoutly.
"And it was walking around alone?" she
asked.

"Walkin' andyellin'."

"And it never touched you ?"

"It ain't seen me; I sneaks behind my
papa where he lays on the floor; they had
a fraid from him, and while he was dead,
blood comes out of him. It goes on mine
dress. That's what my grandpa says."

"That's right, my dear; that's right,"
said the old woman. "Your dress was stiff
with it when I found you."

STAR OF BETHLEHEM

"Tell me about how you found me some
more," Isidore pleaded; "it is a' awful nice
story."

"Well, I will," Mrs. Keating promised.
"But first I must show you what I've got
for you. I found it when I was sweeping
the church." And she bestowed upon him
a limp and shrunken paper bag containing
six peanuts. As he rested happily on her
knee and consumed this light refreshment,
she began the story of which he, being the
hero, never tired.

"It is five years ago this December, on
a snowy night just like this, that I found
you crying in the next room. You were all
alone and very cold."

"Und I had a mad," the subject of this
biography added with a chastened pride.

"You were as cross as two sticks," said
[293]

WARDS OF LIBERTY

his friend; "and you were dirty, and your
dress was torn, and -

"It had blood from off my papa ?"

"Well, I didn't mind any of those things;
I wanted a little boy, and I was glad to get
him — glad to get even a dirty little boy."

Isidore's sensitive face flushed and his
lip quivered. This was a digression and not
at all to his mind.

"I was a baby," he urged; "a little bit
of baby. I couldn't to wash mine self, und
mine grandpa he had a sad."

"Dear heart, that's a joke. I was only too
glad to see you. You were as welcome as the
flowers of May; and I picked you up and
brought you here, where I had everything
ready for you, because I knew that you were
coming. I had waited years for you. I had
prayed to Holy Mary for you."
[294]

STAR OF BETHLEHEM

" Holy-Marv-Mother-Mild," said Isidore,
devoutly.

"'Mother of God,' I used to pray to her,
'you see that I am lonely; you know that
empty arms can ache. Send me something
to take care of ; send me -

"And she sent you kittens," the en
thralled audience interrupted. "She sent
six crawly kittens mitout no eyes and mit
whiskers by the face. She was awful good."

"The woman on the next floor was moving
and gave them to me. But they soon grew
up, and I was as badly off as ever."

"So you prayed some more," he said.

"I did, indeed; and Mary -

"Holy-Mary-Mother-Mild," he again in
sisted.

" Send me a little boy to take care of."

"Und you lays me on your bed, und you
[295]

WARDS OF LIBERTY

gives me I should eat, und you makes me
I should sleep, und by mornings comes my
grandpa mit fierce mads."

"Glory be to God! he was the maddest
thing I ever saw; I thought he would have
had a fit. First he cried over you, and then
he cursed me — I didn't understand a word
he said, but I knew by the look of him — until
he was as weak as a kitten."

" On'y Holy-Mary-Mother-Mild ain't sent
him ?" the boy interposed again.

"Indeed, she did not. And then he took
you away into the next room and warned
me — I didn't understand a word he said,
but I knew by the look of him — never to
go near you or to touch you again."

" And it makes mit you nothings ? " laughed
the boy.

"Nothing at all; when he was out I'd
[296]

STAR OF BETHLEHEM

go and take care of you and feed you and
dress you in the little shirts and things I
made you out of Father Burke's old sur
plice and the tail of Father Jerome's cassock.
And your grandfather, poor old gentleman !
so queer in his head and so wild in his ways,
walked up and down Grand Street all day
long — a sandwich-man, God help him ! -
and came home too tired to notice the clothes
that were on you or to ask where they came
from."

"He never says nothings on'y prayers,"
said Isidore, sadly. "All times he says pray
ers. I don't know what he says — they is out
of Jewish; on'y they makes him awful mad."

" Dearie, you mustn't bother him when he's
like that. Just try to take care of him, like a
good boy. Because if you're a good boy now
you'll grow up to be a good man."
[297]

WARDS OF LIBERTY

"Und I'll go and kill that thing what kills
my papa und steals my mama away — my
mama what had from the gold hair, und a
light face, und was loving so much mit my
grandpa und mit me."

"Of course," said Mrs. Keating, "you
must kill the beast — and oh, it must be a
cruel beast to harm a lovely lady! I know
she was a lovely lady," she explained as she
laid her hand upon his golden head and
turned his beautiful little face up to her own
loving one; "I know she was lovely because
a little bird told me so."

"I guess she was," Isidore agreed, "the
while she was loving much mit us und my
grandpa was loving much mit her; her name
stands like that Leah, und all times my
grandpa he makes prayers over it. By times
he makes sad prayers over it; by times he
[298]

STAR OF BETHLEHEM

makas mad prayers over it; by times he don't
says no prayers at all, on'y ' Leah, Leah,
Leah!' My poor grandpa! He has it pretty
hard."

"He has, indeed," said the hostess; "and
he'll be no better as long as the beast lives.
So you must grow as strong and as fast as
you can, and then go home and kill it. And
you'll never grow at all if you stay up late
like this, talking to a foolish old woman. So
come and say the prayer I taught you, and
then go to bed. But first I'll light the altar."

Isidore helped her; it was his greatest
joy, this little altar whose foundation was
a three-legged table and whose crowning
glory was a much defaced and faded but
still beautiful copy of a Raphael Madonna.
There were other holy pictures of lesser size,
several cracked red-glass bowls, some broken
[299]

WARDS OF LIBERTY

vases, a paper flower or so, a spray of dried
grass, bits of tinsel and scraps of lace-edged
linen.

Isidore was supplied with a broken-
spirited taper and spent five minutes of
reverent joy in lighting the innumerable
candle-ends which his hostess had fixed to
pieces of broken china or to circles of tin
cut from the tops of corn- and tomato-cans.

Then the tinsel shone, the linen gleamed,
the red-glass glowed, and the gentle-eyed
Madonna looked down upon a little face
as fair and as pure as that resting against
her breast, as Isidore knelt before her to say
his evening prayer :

Gentle Jesus, meek and mild,
Look on me, a little child;
Pity mine and pity me,
And suffer me to come to thee

[300]

STAR OF BETHLEHEM

At the door he turned. "Good-night,
dear Lady-Friend," said he; and then, to
the painted family over the altar, "Good
night, Holy-Mary-Mother-Mild; good-night,
Gentle- Jesus- Meek-and -Mild." "Mild" he
had decided was the surname of the holy
family.

Upon his return to his own room Isidore
was greeted by his grandfather's sad eyes
and the constant question, "Thou hast held
no communion with the oppressor?"

"No, grandpa," answered Isidore; "I
ain't seen him even."

"There is time," said the Rabbi Meir-
koff; "thou art as yet too young. But the
God of Israel will grant thee vengeance. For
has He not written, * An eye for an eye, and
a tooth for a tooth ' ? Aye, but what for such
wrongs as ours ?"

[301]

WARDS OF LIBERTY

"Boy of my heart," said Mrs. Keating
some mornings later, when Isidore knocked
at her door, "is the old gentleman gone ?"

"Sure he is," answered Isidore; "he puts
him on mit them boards and he goes by
Grand Street. He won't never let me put
me on mit boards. I likes I shall wear them.
Und my grandpa he don't likes he wear
them. He has a fraid over the streets. He
likes he shall sit where no noises und no
peoples is. He has it pretty hard."

" God be good to him, indeed he has. A
sandwich man afraid of the streets and want
ing a little bit of quiet to end his days in.
The saints pity him ! But I have a treat for
you, my darling, to-day. I'm going over to
the church to help with the crib and I'm
going to take you with me. You will be good
and quiet won't you ?"

[302]

STAR OF BETHLEHEM

"Sure will I," said Isidore in his un
changing form of assent, and he began to
be quiet and good upon the instant. He sat
upon a cushion which once had graced a
prie-dieu and still smelt faintly of dead in
cense while his friend bonneted and shawled
herself. He loved the church. To his mind,
the only place approaching it in attractive
ness was a stable, two blocks away, where a
dejected horse and three dejected dogs lived
in peace and unison with a dejected pedlar.
They were all his friends, though Mrs.
Keating frowned upon the intimacy.

But of the church she approved and in
the church he was happy. The peace, the
coolness, the spaciousness of it appealed to
the innate refinement of his little soul. The
mystery of its dim-lit arches, its high gal
leries and choir, its sometimes sounding
[303]

WARDS OF LIBERTY

organ, and its one high lamp pleased the
poet in him. And everything interested
the boy he was. But most of all he loved the
flowers. The only other flowers he knew
were in a florist's window with cold glass
interposed between them and their small
lover. But in the church were less distant
flowers, and one might touch them, smell
them, fondle them, if one was so fortunate
as to have a Lady-Friend whose privilege
it was to dust the altar. Also there was a bell
— a wonderful bell three stories high and of
an entrancing brightness — and from it one
might extract booming responses with a small
tight knuckle when the attention of one's
Lady-Friend was centered upon dusty cush
ions.

But to-day there were other things to
watch and to wonder at. There were lights
[304]

STAR OF BETHLEHEM

and people inside the high gold railing which
separated the altar from the common ground.
A noise of hammering echoed strangely
through the silence which had never in his
experience been disturbed save by the distant
jangle of a horse-car or the rumble of a truck.
And when Isidore's dazzled eyes grew clear
he saw that the small altar where Holy-
Mary-Mother-Mild had always stood had
undergone a transformation. It was no longer
an altar: it was a stable. And Isidore was
very glad, for his Lady-Friend could never
again object to his visits to the pedlar, the
dejected horse, and the three dejected dogs;
since here was the whole heavenly choir as
sembled in a barn, benignly associating with
a very small, very large-eared horse, a wide-
horned cow, and three woolly lambs. Holy-
Mary-Mother-Mild, discarding her crown
[305]

WARDS OF LIBERTY

and lily, had come down from her pedestal
to kneel beside the manger. Behind her stood
Holy- Joseph-Father-Mild; while three other
gentlemen whom Isidore knew to be saints
because they wore " like ladies clothes and
from the gold somethings on their heads,"
offered gifts of price. Two long-winged
angels knelt at the end of the manger, and in
it, lying on shining straw, was Gentle-Jesus-
Meek-and-Mild. Isidore was entranced.
Mrs. Keating opened the golden gate and
led him into the quiet group of adorers,
where he knelt as reverently as any one of
them and looked as much a part of the pic
ture. His Lady-Friend knelt by his side, and
they said their prayers together, while high
above them the great star of Bethlehem
shone with an unsteady luster.

Now the star of Bethlehem was used only
[306]

STAR OF BP:THLEHEM
on great festivals and its attachment was in
secure. As Isidore and Mrs. Keating prayed,
a decorator at the main altar threw a heavy-
green garland over the high-hung gas-pipe
which crossed the chancel. There was a
quick cry of warning and Isidore looked up
in time to see that the star of Bethlehem had
broken loose and his dear Friend was in
peril. The heavy blazing iron crashed down
upon her thin shoulders but Isidore's little
body bore the brunt.

Some hours later he opened his eyes upon
the scene of all his joy and cherishment.
Holy-Mary-Mother-Mild smiled down upon
him from her accustomed frame and he lay
in his Lady-Friend's arms.

"Boy of my heart," she greeted him,
"you shouldn't have done it."
[307]

WARDS OF LIBERTY

"It was polite," he said. "Stars on the
neck ain't healthy for you, und so I catches
it. Qn'y say, it makes me a sickness. "

"Go to sleep, dear," said Mrs. Keat
ing. "Shut your pretty eyes and go to
sleep."

Obediently Isidore closed them, and then
suddenly reminded her:

" I ain't said mine prayers. "

"Say them, then, sweetheart," she hu
mored him. And, when he had reconciled
himself to a stiff unresponsiveness of his
body which forbade his kneeling or even
folding his hands, he turned his face to the
lights and began:

Gentle Jesus, meek and mild.
Look on me, a little child;
Pity mine and pity me,
And suffer me to come to thee.

[308]

STAR OF BETHLEHEM

"To come to thee!" Mrs. Keating echoed.
" Dear God to come to thee ! "

"Und now," said Isidore, after some
pause, "I guess I says mine wrongs pray
ers," and addressed the Lady of the
altar in the tongue which had been hers
in the days of her white virginity at Naza
reth:

' Lord God of Israel, hear my wrongs !
Grant me vengeance upon the accursed
Christian! We came unto their land. With
curses they received us; with indignities
they welcomed us -

"Go to sleep, my darling," crooned his
Lady-Friend and kissed him. "You can
finish your prayers -- later. "

And presently she laid him — quite still
-among the lights and the paper flow
ers on the altar of that faith whose symbol
[309]

WARDS OF LIBERTY

had crushed him, whose perversion had
crushed his people, but whose truth had
made all the happiness which his short life
had known.

THE END

[310]

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