The Girl and the Kingdom Part 2

When I requested Ella to be a pony it immediately became a span, for she never moved without Hans. If the children chose Hans for the father-bird, Ella intrusively and suffragistically fluttered into the nest, too, sadly complicating the family arrangements. They seldom spoke, but sat stolidly beside each other, laying the same patterns with dogged pertinacity.

One morning a new little boy joined our company. As was often the case he was shy about sitting down. It would seem as if the spectacle of forty children working tranquilly together, would convince new applicants that the benches contained no dynamite, but they always parted with their dilapidated hats as if they never, in the nature of things, could hope to see them again, and the very contact of their persons with the benches evoked an uncontrollable wail, which seemed to say: "It is all up with us now! Let the portcullis fall!"

The new boy's eye fell on Hansanella and he suddenly smiled broadly.

"Sit mit Owgoost!" he said.

"We haven't any 'August'," I responded, "that is Hans Dorflinger."

"Sit mit Owgoost," he repeated thickly and firmly.

"Is this boy a friend of yours, Hans?" I inquired, and the twins nodded blandly.

"Is your other name August, Hans?"

This apparently was too complicated a question for the combined mental activities of the pair, and they lapsed comfortably into their ordinary state of coma.

The Corporal finally found the boy who originally foisted upon our Paradise these two dullest human beings that ever drew breath. He explained that I had entirely misunderstood his remarks. He said that he heard I had accepted Hansanella Dorflinger, but they had moved with their parents to Oakland; and as they could not come, he thought it well to give the coveted places to August and Anna Olsen, whose mother worked in a box-factory and would be glad to have the children looked after.

"What's the matter mit 'em?" he asked anxiously. "Ain't dey goot?"

"Oh, yes they are good," I replied, adding mysteriously. "If two children named August and Anna allow you to call them Hansanella for five weeks without comment, it isn't likely that they would be very fertile in evil doing!"

I had a full year's experience with the false Hansanella and in that time they blighted our supremest joys. There was always a gap in the circle where they stood and they stopped the electric current whenever it reached them. I am more anxious that the Eugenic Societies should eliminate this kind of child from the future than almost any other type.

It has chalk and water instead of blood in its veins. It is as cold as if it had been made by machinery and then refrigerated, instead of being brought into being by a mother's love; and it never has an impulse, but just pa.s.ses through the world mechanically, taking up s.p.a.ce that could be better occupied by some warm, struggling, erring, aspiring human creature.

How can I describe Jacob Lavrowsky? There chanced to be a row of little Biblical characters, mostly prophets sitting beside one another about half way back in the room:--Moses, Jeremiah, Ezekial, Elijah and Elisha, but the greatest of these was Jacob. He was one of ten children, the offspring of a couple who kept a secondhand clothing establishment in the vicinity. Mr. and Mrs. Lavrowsky collected, mended, patched, sold and exchanged cast-off wearing apparel, and the little Lavrowsky's played about in the rags, slept under the counters and ate Heaven knows where, during the term of my acquaintance with them. Jacob differed from all the other of my flock by possessing a premature, thoroughly unchildlike sense of humor. He regarded me as one of the most unaccountable human beings he had ever met, but he had such respect for what he believed to be my good bottom qualities that he constantly tried to conceal from me his feeling that I was probably a little insane. He had large expressive eyes, a flat nose, wide mouth, thin hair, long neck and sallow skin, while his body was so thin and scrawny that his clothes always hung upon him in shapeless folds. His age was five and his point of view that of fifty. As to his toilettes, there must have been a large clothes-bin in the room back of the shop and Jacob must have daily dressed himself from this, leaning over the side and plucking from the varied a.s.sortment such articles as pleased his errant fancy. He had no prejudices against bits of feminine attire, often sporting a dark green cashmere basque trimmed with black velvet ribbon and gilt b.u.t.tons. It was double breasted and when it surmounted a pair of trousers cut to the right length but not altered in width, the effect would have startled any more exacting community than ours. Jacob was always tired and went through his tasks rather languidly, greatly preferring work to play. All diversions such as marching and circle games struck him as pleasant enough, but childish, and if partic.i.p.ated in at all, to be gone through with in an absent-minded and supercillious manner. There were moments when his exotic little personality, standing out from all the rest like an infant Artful Dodger or a caricature of Beau Brummel, seemed to make him wholly alien to the group, yet he was docile and obedient, his only fault being a tendency to strong and highly colored language. To make the marching more effective and develope a better sense of time, I inst.i.tuted a very simple and rudimentary form of orchestra with a triangle, a tambourine, and finally a drum. When the latter instrument made its first appearance Jacob sought a secluded spot by the piano and gave himself up to a fit of fairly courteous but excessive mirth. "_A drum!_" he exclaimed, between his fits of laughter. "_What'll yer have next? This is a h--l of a school!_"

Just behind Jacob sat two little pink-cheeked girls five and four years old, Violet and Rose Featherstone. Violet brought the younger Rose every day and was a miracle of sisterly devotion. I did not see the mother for some months after the little pair entered, as she had work that kept her from home during the hours when it was possible for me to call upon her, and she lived at a long distance from the kindergarten in a neighborhood from which none of our other children came.

I had no anxiety about them however, as the looks, behavior, and clothing of all my children was always an absolute test of the conditions prevailing in the home. What was my surprise then, one day to receive a note from a certain Mrs. Hannah Googins, a name not in my register.

She said her Emma Abby had been bringing home pieces of sewing and weaving of late, marked "Violet Featherstone." She would like to see some of Emma Abby's own work and find out whether she had taken that of any other child by mistake. A long and puzzling investigation followed the receipt of this letter and I found that the romantic little Emma Abby Googins, not caring for the name given her by her maternal parent, had a.s.sumed that of Violet Featherstone. Also, being an only child and greatly desiring a sister, she had plucked a certain little Nellie Taylor from a family near by, named her "Rose Featherstone" and taken her to and from the kindergarten daily, a distance of at least half a mile of crowded streets. The affair was purely one of innocent romance.

Emma Abby Googins never told a fib or committed the slightest fault or folly save that of burying her name, a.s.suming a more distinguished one, and introducing a sister to me who had no claim to the Googins blood.

Her mother was thoroughly mystified by the occurrence and I no less so, but Emma Abby simply opened her blue eyes wider and protested that she "liked to be Violet" and Rose liked to be Rose, and that was the only excuse for her conduct, which she seemed to think needed neither apology nor explanation.

Now comes the darling of the group, the heart's ease, the nonesuch, the Rose of Erin, the lovely, the indescribable Rosaleen Clancy.

We were all working busily and happily one morning when a young woman tapped at the door and led in that flower and pearl of babyhood, the aforesaid Rosaleen.

The young woman said she knew that the kindergarten was full, and indeed had a long waiting list, but the Clancy family had just arrived from Ireland; that there were two little boys; a new baby twenty-four hours old; Mr. Clancy had not yet found work, and could we take care of Rosaleen even for a week or two?

As I looked at the child the remark that we had not a single vacant seat perished, unborn, on my lips. She was about three and a half years old, and was clad in a straight, loose slip of dark blue wool that showed her neck and arms. A little flat, sort of "pork pie" hat of blue velveteen sat on the back of her adorable head, showing the satiny rings of yellow hair that curled round her ears and hung close to her neck. (No wonder!) She had gray-blue eyes with long upper and under lashes and a perfect mouth that disclosed the pearly teeth usually confined to the heroines of novels. As to her skin you would say that Jersey cream was the princ.i.p.al ingredient in its composition.

The children had stopped their weaving needles and were gazing open-mouthed at this vision of beauty, though Rosaleen had by no means unmasked all her batteries. She came nearer my chair, and without being invited, slipped her hand in mine in a blarneyish and deludthering way not unknown in her native isle. The same Jersey cream had gone into its skin, there were dimples in the knuckles, and baby hand though it was, its satin touch had a thrill in it, and responded instantly to my pressure.

"Do you think we can make room for her, children?" I asked.

Every small boy cried rapturously: "Look Miss Kate! Here's room! I kin scrooge up!" and hoped the Lord would send Rosaleen his way!

"We can't have two children in one seat;" I explained to Rosaleen's sponsor, "because they can't have proper building exercises nor work to good advantage when they're crowded."

"I kin set on the pianner stool!" gallantly offered Billy Prendergast.

"Perhaps I can borrow a little chair somewhere," I said. "Would you like to stay with us Rosaleen?"

Her only answer (she was richer in beautiful looks than in speech) was to remove her blue velveteen hat and tranquilly placed it on my table.

If she was lovely with her hair covered she was still lovelier now; while her smile of a.s.sent disclosing as it did, an irresistible dimple, completed our conquest; so that no one in the room (save Hansanella, who went on doggedly with their weaving) would have been parted from the new comer save by fire and the sword.

At one o'clock Bobby Green came back from the noon recess dragging a high chair. It was his own outgrown property and he had asked our Janitor to abbreviate its legs and bring it up stairs.

When Rosaleen sat in it and smiled, a thrill of rapture swept through the small community. The girls thrilled as well as the boys, for Rosaleen's was not a mere s.e.x appeal but practically a universal one.

There was one flaw in our content. Bobby Green's mother arrived shortly after one o'clock in a high state of wrath, and I was obliged to go out in the hall and calm her nerves.

"I really think Bobby's impulse was an honest one," I said. "He did not know I intended to buy a chair for the new child out of my own salary this afternoon. He probably thought that the high chair was his very own, reasoning as children do, and it was a gallant, generous act. I don't like to have him punished for it, Mrs. Green, and if we both tell him he ought to have asked your permission before giving the chair away, and if I buy you a new one, won't you agree to drop the matter?--Think how manly Bobby was and how generous and thoughtful! If he were mine I couldn't help being proud of him. Just peep in and look at the baby who is sitting in his chair, a little stranger, just come from Ireland to San Francisco."

Mrs. Green peeped in and saw the sun s.h.i.+ning on Rosaleen's primrose head. She was stringing beads, while Bobby, Pat and Aaron knelt beside her, palpitating for a chance to serve.

"She's real cute!" whispered Mrs. Green. "Does Bobby act very often like he's doin' now?"

"He's one of the greatest comforts of my life!" I said truly.

"I wish I could say the same!" she retorted. "Well, I came round intendin' to give him a good settlin' but he'd had two already this week and I guess I'll let it go! We ain't so poverty-struck as some o'

the folks in this neighborhood and I guess we can make out to spare a chair, it's little enough to pay for gettin' rid of Bobby."

Two years that miracle of beauty and sweetness, Rosaleen Clancy stayed with us, just as potent an influence as the birds or the flowers, the stories I told, or the music I coaxed from the little upright piano. Her face was not her only fortune for she had a heart of gold. Ireland did indeed have a grievance when Rosaleen left it for America!

This is just a corner of my portrait gallery, which has dozens of other types hanging on the walls clamoring to be described. Some were lovely and some interestingly ugly; some were like lilies growing out of the mud, others had not been quite as able to energize themselves out of their environment and bore the sad traces of it ever with them;--still, they were all absorbingly interesting beyond my power to paint. Month after month they sat together, working, playing, helping, growing--in a word learning how to live, and there in the midst of the group was I, learning my life lesson with them.

The study and the practice of the kindergarten theory of education and of life gave me, while I was still very young, a certain ideal by which to live and work, and it has never faded.--Never, whether richer or poorer, whether better or worse, in sickness or in health, in prosperity or adversity, never wholly to lose my glimpse of that "celestial light"

that childhood-apparalled "Meadow, grove and stream, the earth and every common sight:" and to hold that att.i.tude of mind and heart which gives to life even when it is difficult something of "the glory and the freshness of a dream!"

[Ill.u.s.tration]