Produced by Phil McLaury, Juliet Sutherland, Charles Franks
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
LITTLE CITIZENS
The Humours of School Life
BY MYRA KELLY
ILLUSTRATED BY W. D. STEVENS
TO MY MOTHER
CONTENTS
A Little Matter of Real Estate
The Uses of Adversity
A Christmas Present for a Lady
Love Among the Blackboards
Morris and the Honourable Tim
When a Man's Widowed
H.R.H. The Prince of Hester Street
The Land Of Heart's Desire
A Passport to Paradise
The Touch of Nature
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
"Say, Teacher, I got something for you". Frontispiece
Isidore Belchatosky, the Adonis of the class
"I got two swollen legs over her"
"My dear little chap, you mustn't cry like that"
"Dismissed with the common herd at three o'clock"
"I must ask you to leave this room"
"Teacher, I tells you 'scuse"
"So you want lick, so you can lick"
"She's a beautiful yonge uptown lady, but easy scared. Oh, awful easyscared!"
"Don't you dast to touch me," he yelled
"Look at your back!"
"You'll wish you minded your own —— business before I get throughwith you."
Morris Mogilewsky
"I washes me the face"
"Ain't you never comin' on the school for to see mine teacher?"
A LITTLE MATTER OF REAL ESTATE
Four weeks of teaching in a lower East Side school had deprivedConstance Bailey of many of the "Ideals in Education" which, duringfour years at college, she had trustingly acquired. But, despite manydiscouragements, despite an unintelligible dialect and an autocratic"Course of Study," she clung to an ambition to establish harmony inher kingdom and to impress a high moral tone upon the fifty-eightlittle children of Israel entrusted to her care. She was thereforetroubled and heavy of heart when it was borne in upon her that two ofher little flock—cousins to boot, and girls—had so far forgotten theGolden Rule as to be "mad on theirselves und wouldn't to talk even,"as that Bureau of Fashionable Intelligence, Sarah Schrodsky, dulyreported.
"Und Teacher," Sarah continued, "Eva Gonorowsky's mamma has a mad onSadie Gonorowsky's mamma, und her papa has a mad on her papa, und hergran'ma has a mad on both of papas und both of mammas, und her gran'pahas a mad somethin' fierce on both of uncles, und her auntie—"
Here Miss Bailey sent the too communicative Sarah to her place andcalled the divided house of Gonorowsky to her desk for instant judgment.And as she held forth she was delighted to see that her words werefalling upon good ground, for the dark and dainty features of herhearers expressed a flattering degree of conviction and of humility. Shewas admiring the wonderful lashes lying damp and dark on Eva's smoothcheek when the beautiful eyes unclosed, gazed straight across the deskat Sadie, and Eva took a flying leap into Teacher's lap to cling witharms and knees and fingers to her chosen refuge.
"Oh, Teacher, Teacher,"