The Girl and the Kingdom | Page 4

and she says the cleaner she is the cleaner they'll be.... No, 'tain't goin' to be no Sunday School," said the voluble Corporal. "No, 'tain't goin' to be no Mission; no, 'tain't goin' to be no Lodge! She says it's a new kind of a school, that's all I know, and next Monday'll see it goin' full blast!"
It was somewhat in this fashion, that I walked joyously into the heart of a San Francisco slum, and began experimenting with my newly-learned panaceas.
These were early days. The kindergarten theory of education was on trial for its very life; the fame of Pestalozzi and Froebel seemed to my youthful vision to be in my keeping, and I had all the ardor of a neophyte. I simply stepped into a cockle-shell and put out into an unknown ocean, where all manner of derelicts needed help and succor. The ocean was a life of which I had heretofore known nothing; miserable, overburdened, and sometimes criminal.
My cockle-shell managed to escape shipwreck, and took its frail place among the other craft that sailed in its company. I hardly saw or felt the safety of the harbor or the shore for three years, the three years out of my whole life the most wearying, the most heart-searching, the most discouraging, the most inspiring; also, I dare say, the best worth living.
"Full blast," the Corporal's own expression, exactly described the setting out of the cockle-shell; that is, the eventful Monday morning when the doors of the first free kindergarten west of the Rockies threw open its doors.
The neighborhood was enthusiastic in presenting its offspring at the altar of educational experiment, and we might have enrolled a hundred children had there been room. I was to have no assistant and we had provided seats only for forty-five, which prohibited a list of more than fifty at the outside. A convert to any inspiring idea being anxious to immolate herself on the first altar which comes in the path of duty, I carefully selected the children best calculated to show to the amazed public the regenerating effects of the kindergarten method, and as a whole they were unsurpassed specimens of the class we hoped to benefit.
Of the forty who were accepted the first morning, thirty appeared to be either indifferent or willing victims, while ten were quite the reverse. These screamed if the maternal hand were withdrawn, bawled if their hats were taken away, and bellowed if they were asked to sit down. This rebellion led to their being removed to the hall by their mothers, who spanked them vigorously every few minutes and returned them to me each time in a more unconquered state, with their lung power quite unimpaired and their views of the New Education still vague and distorted. As the mothers were uniformly ladies with ruffled hair, snapping eyes, high color and short temper, I could not understand the childrens' fear of me, a mild young thing "in white"--as the Corporal would say--but they evidently preferred the ills they knew. When the last mother led in the last freshly spanked child and said as she prepared to leave: "Well, I suppose they might as well get used to you one time as another, so good-day, Miss, and God help you!" I felt that my woes were greater than I could bear, for, as the door closed, several infants who had been quite calm began to howl in sympathy with their suffering brethren. Then the door opened again and the Corporal's bright face appeared in the crack.
"Goodness!" she ejaculated, "this ain't the new kind of a school I thought 'twas goin' to be!--Stop your cryin', Jimmy Maxwell, a great big boy like you; and Levi Isaacs and Goldine Gump, I wonder you ain't ashamed! Do you 'spose Miss Kate can do anything with such a racket? Now don't let me hear any more o' your nonsense!--Miss Kate," she whispered, turning to me: "I've got the whole day off for my uncle's funeral, and as he ain't buried till three o'clock I thought I'd better run in and see how you was gettin' on!"
"You are an angel, Corporal!" I said. "Take all the howlers down into the yard and let them play in the sand tables till I call you."
When the queue of weeping babes had been sternly led out by the Corporal something like peace descended upon the room but there could be no work for the moment because the hands were too dirty. Co?peration was strictly Froebelian so I selected with an eagle eye several assistants from the group--the brightest-eyed, best-tempered, and cleanest. With their help I arranged the seats, the older children at the back tables and the babies in the front. Classification was difficult as many of them did not know their names, their