The Girl and the Kingdom

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

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

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

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

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

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

"It is marvellous! I could adopt twenty of them! I cannot account for it," said another of the Trustees.

"I can," I answered. "Any tolerably healthy child under six who is clean, busy, happy and in good company looks as these do. Why should they not be attractive? They live for four hours a day in this sunny, airy room; they do charming work suited to their baby capacities—work, too, which is not all pure routine, but in a simple way creative, so that they are not only occupied, but they are expressing themselves as creative beings should. They have music, stories and games, and although they are obliged to behave themselves (which is sometimes a trifle irksome) they never hear an unkind word. They grow in grace, partly because they return as many of these favors as is possible at their age. They water the plants, clean the bird's cage and fill the seed cups and bath; they keep the room as tidy as possible to make the janitor's work easier; they brush up the floor after their own muddy feet; the older ones help the younger and the strong look after the weak. The conditions are almost ideal; why should they not respond to them?"

California children are apt to be good specimens. They suffer no extremes of heat or cold; food is varied and fruit plentiful and cheap; they are out of doors every month in the year and they are more than ordinarily clever and lively. Still I refuse to believe that any other company of children in California, or in the universe, was ever so unusual or so piquantly interesting as those of the Silver Street Kindergarten, particularly the never-to-be-forgotten "first forty."

As I look back across the lapse of time I cannot understand how any creature, however young, strong or ardent, could have supported the fatigue and strain of that first year! No one was to blame, for the experiment met with appreciation almost immediately, but I was attempting the impossible, and trying to perform the labor of three women. I soon learned to work more skillfully, but I habitually squandered my powers and lavished on trivial details strength that should have been spent more thriftily. The difficulties of each day could be surmounted only by quick wit, ingenuity, versatility; by the sternest exercise of self-control and by a continual outpour of magnetism. My enthusiasm made me reckless, but though I regret that I worked in entire disregard of all laws of health, I do not regret a single hour of exhaustion, discouragement or despair. All my pains were just so many birth-pangs, leaving behind them a little more knowledge of human nature, a little wider vision, a little clearer insight, a little deeper sympathy.

There were more than a thousand visitors during the first year, a circumstance that greatly increased the nervous strain of teaching; for I had to train myself, as well as the children to as absolute a state of unconsciousness as possible. I always jauntily described the visitors as "fathers and mothers," and told the children that there would soon be other schools like ours, and people just wanted to see how we sang, and played circle games, and modelled in clay, and learned arithmetic with building blocks and all the rest of it. I paid practically no attention to the visitors myself and they ordinarily were clever enough to understand the difficulties of the situation. Among the earliest in the late autumn of 1878 were Prof. John Swett and Mrs. Kincaid of the San Francisco Normal School who thereafter sent down their students, two at a time, for observation and practical aid. The next important visitor in the spring of 1879 was Mrs. Sarah B. Cooper. She possessed the "understanding heart" and also great executive ability, so that with the help of her large Bible class she was able to open a second free Kindergarten on Jackson Street in October, 1879. Soon after this date the desert began to blossom as the rose. I went to the Eastern cities during my summer vacation and learned by observation and instruction all that I could from my older and wiser contemporaries Miss Susan Blow of St. Louis, Dr. Hailman of LaPorte, Mrs. Putnam of Chicago and Miss Elizabeth Peabody and Miss Garland of Boston. Returning I opened my own Kindergarten Training School and my sister Miss Nora Archibald Smith joined me both in the theoretical and practical spreading of the gospel.

Thirty-seven years have passed, but if I were a portrait painter I could reproduce on canvas every nose, eye, smile, hand, curl of hair, in that group. I often close my eyes to call up the picture, and almost every child falls into his old seat and answers to his right name. Here are a few sketches of those in the front row:

Willy Beer, dubbed Wriggly Beer by the older boys in his street, because of a slight nervous affection that kept him in a state of perpetual motion. He was not uncomely; indeed, when I was telling a story it was a pleasure to watch his face all twitching with interest; first nose, then eyes, then mouth, till the delight spread to his fat hands, which clasped and unclasped as the tale proceeded. He had a perfect sense of time and tunes and was indefatigable in the marching and games. His mother sent me this unique letter when he had been with me a month:

"Yung lady:

"Willy seems to be onto his foot most of the time. These is all the butes Willy will half to Krissmus. Can you learn him settin' down?

Respeckfully,            "Mrs. Beer."

Sitting next to Willy, and rhyming with him, was Billy—Billy Prendergast—a large boy for his years with the face and voice of a man of thirty.

Billy Prendergast taught me a very good lesson in pedagogy when I was making believe teach him other things!

One of our simple morning songs ended with the verse:

"All ye little children, hear the truth we tell.

God will ne'er forget you, for he loves you well."

One day in the gentle lull that succeeded the singing of that song, Billy's growling baritone fell on my ear:

"Why will he never get yer?" he asked, his strange rough voice bringing complete silence, as it always did.

"What do you mean, Billy?"

"That's what it says: 'God will never get yer, for he loves you well."

Consternation overcame me. Billy, and goodness knows how many others, had been beginning the day with the puzzling theological statement: "God will never get yer (ne'er forget you) for he loves you well."

I chose my verses more carefully, after that experience, avoiding all e'ers and ne'ers and other misleading abbreviations.

Hansanella Dorflinger now claims attention.

Hansanella sounds like one word but they were twins, and thus introduced to me by a large incoherent boy who brought them to the kindergarten. He was in a hurry and left them at my door with scant ceremony, save the frequent repetition of the watchword "Hansanella."

After some difficulty I succeeded in deciding which was Hans and which was Ella, though there was practically no difference between them excepting that the ash blonde hair of Hans was cropped still more closely than that of Ella.

They had light blue glassy eyes, too far apart, thin lips, chalky skins and perennial colds in the head. They breathed together, smiled and wept together, rose and sat down together and wiped their noses together—none too frequently. Never were such 'twinneous' twins as Hansanella, and it was ridiculous to waste two names on them, for there was not between them personality enough for one child.

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 passes through the world mechanically, taking up space 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 assortment 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 buttons. 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 participated 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 instituted 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 assumed 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, assuming 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 principal 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 assent 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 sex 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 shining 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.