George Madden Martin

“ But the time was long, and the day was warm, and the sobs grew slower, and the breath began to come in long-drawn, quivering sighs, and the next Emmy Lou knew she was sitting upright, trembling in every limb, and someone coming up the stairs—she could hear the slow, heavy footfalls, and a moment after she saw The Man—the Recess Man, the low, black-bearded, black-browed, scowling Man—with the broom across his shoulder, reach the hallway, and make toward the open doorway of the First-Reader room. ”

“ But when Emmy Lou took up her slate there was a whole side filled with digits in soldierly rows across, so her heart grew light and free from the weight of digits, and she gave her time to the washing of her desk, a thing in which her soul revelled, and for which, patterning after her little girl neighbors, she kept within that desk a bottle of soapy water and rags of a gray and unpleasant nature, that never dried, because of their frequent using. ”

“ Here Emmy Lou had spent the year in strenuously guiding a squeaking pencil across a protesting slate, or singing in chorus, as Miss Clara’s long wooden pointer went up and down the rows of words on the spelling-chart: “A-t, at; b-a-t, bat; c-a-t, cat,” or “a-n, an; b-a-n, ban; c-a-n, can.” Emmy Lou herself had so little idea of what it was all about, that she was dependent on her neighbor to give her the key to the proper starting-point heading the various columns—“a-t, at,” or “a-n, an,” or “e-t, et,” or “o-n, on;” ”

“ It was when the little girl brought a note from home because her ears were boxed. Miss Lizzie tore the note in pieces and threw them on the floor.
One lived in dread of her changing. One watched in order to know the thing she wanted. Emmy Lou knew every characteristic 139feature of her face—the lean nose that bent toward the cheek, the thin lips that tightened and relaxed, the cold survey that travelled from desk to desk.
Miss Lizzie’s thin hands were never still any more than were her eyes. Most often her fingers tore bits of paper into fine shreds while she heard lessons.
Life is strenuous. ”

“ And at home, it was Emmy Lou’s joy to gather her doll children in line, and giving out past lessons, recite them in turn for her children. And so did Emmy Lou know by heart her Second Reader as far as she had gone; she often gave the lesson with her book upside down. And an old and battered doll, dearest to Emmy Lou’s heart, was always head, and Hattie, the newest doll, was next. Even the Emmy Lous must square with Fate somehow. ”

“ Bryan? What about?
Mr. Bryan went out. He closed the door. It closed sharply.
Then everything came at once. Hot weather, and roses and syringa piling Miss Fanny’s desk, and Reviews for Examination, and Confirmations.
Mary Agatha asked them to her confirmation. Rosalie and Emmy Lou went. The great doors at Mary Agatha’s church opened and closed behind them; it was high and dim; there were twinkling lights and silence, and awe, and colour. Something quivered. It burst forth. It was music. It was almost as if it hurt. One drew a deep breath and shut one’s eyes a moment because it hurt ”

“ Mary Agatha drew back; Mary Agatha was Emmy Lou’s newest friend. “It’s Friday,” said Mary Agatha.
“Of course,” said Rosalie, “I forgot.” Rosalie put her biscuit back.
“It’s ham,” said Rebecca Steinau.
Emmy Lou was hurt. It seemed almost like preconcerted reflection on her biscuits and her ham.
Hattie took Emmy Lou aside. “It’s their religion,” said Hattie, in tones of large tolerance. “We can eat anything, you and I, ’Piscopalians and Presbyterians.”
“But Rosalie,” said Emmy Lou; Rosalie, like Emmy Lou, was Episcopalian. ”

“ Reading over the needs of the Third Reader printed on the slips of paper, Emmy Lou found them so complicated and lengthy she realised one thing—she would have to have a new 85school-bag, a larger, stronger one, to accommodate them.
Now, there is a difference between a Real Teacher and a Substitute. The Real Teacher loves mystery and explains grudgingly. The Real Teacher stands aloof, with awe and distance between herself and the inhabitants of the rows of desks she holds dominion over. ”

“ That very afternoon Aunt Louise began to help Emmy Lou with her lessons, and Aunt Cordelia went around and asked Hattie’s mother to let Hattie come and get her lessons with Emmy Lou.
And at school Dear Teacher, walking up and down the aisles, would stop, and her fingers would close over and guide the labouring digits of Emmy Lou, striving to copy within certain ruled lines upon her slate the writing on the blackboard:
The pen is the tongue of the mind. ”

“ Was Miss Fanny treating their religions with levity? What is levity?
It was Emmy Lou who asked the others when they sought to pin the accusation to Miss Fanny.
Mary Agatha looked it up in the Dictionary. Then she reported: “Lightness of conduct, want of weight, inconstancy, vanity, frivolity.” She told it off with low and accusing enunciation.
It sounded grave. Emmy Lou was troubled. Could Miss Fanny be all this? Could she be guilty of levity?
It was soon after that Mary Agatha brought a note; she told Rosalie and Emmy Lou about it; it asked that Mary Agatha be allowed a seat to herself. ”

“ And Hattie looked pityingly upon Rosalie’s way of life, and Rosalie laughed lightly at Hattie.
Miss MacLauren admired Hattie, but, secretly, she envied Rosalie. If she had known how, she herself would have much preferred Boys to Brains; one is only a Minerva as second choice. ”

“ They laughed. But Dear Teacher did not laugh. The recess-bell rang. And Dear Teacher, holding Emmy Lou’s hand, sent them all out. Everyone must go. Desks and slates to be scrubbed, mattered not. Everyone must go. Then Dear Teacher lifted Emmy Lou to her lap. And when she was sure they were every one gone, Emmy Lou cried. And after a while Dear Teacher explained about A and do, so that Emmy Lou understood. And then Dear Teacher said, “You may come in.” And the crack of the door widened, and in came Hattie. Emmy Lou was glad she was a nintimate friend. Hattie had not laughed. ”

“ Aunt Cordelia looked shocked. Aunt Louise looked stern. Uncle Charlie looked at Emmy Lou.
“That sounds more natural,” said Uncle Charlie, but nobody listened.
“She’s been missing,” said Aunt Louise.
“She’s growing too fast,” said Aunt Cordelia, who had just been ripping two tucks out of Emmy Lou’s last winter’s dress; “she can’t be well.” ”

“ Each seeks to be victor in some Field of Achievement, but each is jealous of the other’s Field. Hattie thought Rosalie frivolous, and Rosalie scribbled notes under the nose of Hattie’s brilliant recitations. Miss MacLauren, on the neutral ground of a non-combatant, was expected by each to furnish the admiration and applause. ”

“ Yet there is a law in the high school superior to that of the teacher. At the dictates of a gong, classes arise in the face of a teacher’s incompleted peroration and depart. As for the pupils, there is no rest for the soles of their feet; a freshman in the high school is a mere abecedarian part of an ever-moving line, which toils, weighted with pounds of text-books, up and down the stairways of knowledge, climbing to the mansard heights for rhetoric, to descend, 228past doors to which it must later return, to the foundation floor for Ancient History. ”

“ The day before Examination, Miss Jenny told every little girl to clear out her desk and carry all her belongings home. Then she went around and looked in each desk, for not a scrap of paper even must remain.
Miss Jenny told them that she trusted them, it was not that, it was because it was the rule.
“To cheat at Examination,” said Miss Jenny, “is worse even than to lie. ”

“ Should an Emily Louise then turn traitor to her father, or should she desert an Aunt Cordelia and an Aunt Louise?
Life is complex. At twelve a pucker of absorption and concentration begins to gather between the brows.
On the homeward way, William was waiting at the corner. “What is a person when they are not either Democrat or Republican?” Emily Louise asked as they went along. ”

“ Hattie liked to lead. She could lead Sadie. Generally she could lead Emmy Lou, not always.
But all the while slowly a conviction was taking hold in Emmy Lou’s mind. It was a conviction concerning Miss Lizzie.
Near Emmy Lou in the Fourth Reader room sat a little girl named Lisa—Lisa Schmit. Once Emmy Lou had seen Lisa in a doorway—a store doorway hung with festoons of linked sausage. Lisa had told Emmy Lou it was her papa’s grocery store.
One day the air of the Fourth Reader room seemed unpleasantly freighted. As the stove grew hotter, the unpleasantness grew assertive. ”

“ Miss Clara, the teacher, lacked Aunt Cordelia’s optimism, also her plumpness. “No doubt she can,” agreed Miss Clara, politely, but without enthusiasm. Miss Clara had stepped from the graduating rostrum to the school-room platform, and she had been there some years. And when one has been there some years, and is already battling with seventy little boys and girls, one cannot greet the advent of a seventy-first with acclaim. Even the fact that one’s hair is red is not an always 5sure indication that one’s temperament is sanguine also. ”

“ At Grammar School Emmy Lou continued to learn things. The pupils of a grammar school abjure school bags; a Geography now being a folio volume measurable in square feet, it is the thing to build upon its basic foundation an edifice of other text-books, and carry the sum total to and fro on an aching arm. ”

“ Young ladies whose minds are given to boys and frivolity, are not the material of which to make a literary society.
268As she spoke, Miss Kilrain looked steadily at two members sitting side by side. Both had voted for the Debate, and both had been seen by Miss Kilrain, one, at least, laughing frivolously, in company with—a boy. The two members, moving uneasily beneath Miss Kilrain’s gaze, were Hattie and Miss MacLauren.
Miss Kilrain then went on to say, that she had taught in another school, a school where the ideals of Higher Education were being realised by the use of Modern Methods. ”

“ To give in a mark above what you feel yourself entitled, is to tell worse than a story, it is to tell a falsehood, and a falsehood is a lie. I shall leave it to you. I believe in trusting my pupils, and I shall take no note of your standing. Each will be answerable for herself.” Miss Jenny was very young.
The class sat weighted with the awfulness of the responsibility. It was a conscientious class, and Miss Jenny’s high ideals had worked upon its sensibilities. No little girl dared to be “six.” ”

“ But many things are strange when one is ten. One learns to put many strange things aside.
There were more worrisome things nearer. The screw was loose which secured the iron foot of Emmy Lou’s desk to the floor. Now the front of one desk formed the seat to the next.
Muscles, even in the atmosphere of a Miss Lizzie’s rigid discipline, sometimes rebel. The little girl sitting in front of Emmy Lou was given to spasmodic changes of posture, causing unexpected upheavals of Emmy Lou’s desk. ”

“ And Rosalie’s laugh was touched with gratification, for the notes were official, inviting them, too, to become Platonians.
“Thinking it over,” said Hattie, “I’ll join; one owes something to class-spirit.”
253“It’s so alluring—the sound,” said Rosalie. “A secret anything.”
Miss MacLauren, thinking it over, herself, after she reached home that day, suddenly laughed.
It was at dinner. Uncle Charlie looked up at his niece, whom he knew as Emmy Lou, not, as yet, having met Miss MacLauren. He had heard her laugh before, but not just that way; generally she had laughed because other people laughed. ”

“ Her skirts trail softly and her hair is ruddy where it is not brown; she forgets, and when she rises her handkerchief is always fluttering to the floor. Emily loves to be the one to jump and pick it up. Miss Beaton’s 239handkerchiefs are fine and faintly sweet and softly crumpled, and Emily loves the smile when Miss Beaton’s absent gaze comes back and finds her waiting. ”

“ Sadie was weeping wildly.
130Emmy Lou with the courage of despair cried out in the grasp of the threatening man, but the man lifting her into the carriage, was speaking himself, and to the driver. “Keep an eye on them—separated from the family,” he was explaining, and a moment later Hattie and Sadie were lifted after Emmy Lou into the carriage, and as the door banged, their carriage moved with the rest up the street.
“Now,” said Hattie, and Hattie sprang to the farther door.
It would not open. Things never will in dreadful dreams. ”

“ Now she was alone, so she stopped.
“Get any valentines?”
27“Yes,” said Emmy Lou. Then moved to confidence by the little girl’s friendliness, she added, “It has reading on it.”
“Pooh,” said the little girl, “they all have that. My mamma’s been reading the long verses inside to me.”
“Can you show them—valentines?” asked Emmy Lou.
“Of course, to grown-up people,” said the little girl.
The gas was lit when Emmy Lou came in. Uncle Charlie was there, and the aunties, sitting around, reading.
“I got a valentine,” said Emmy Lou. ”