there was something that ella wanted even more than she had wanted the box of tin soldiers or the ride in a swan boat, and this was that she might go to the public school. it was quite the custom for a public school girl to invite a younger child to go with her for half a day. if the child behaved well, the teacher made no objection, and perhaps gave her a book of pictures to look at. if her notions of order were not quite up to the mark, the teacher would draw the little hostess aside and say:
“i don’t believe you’d better bring her again till she is older. she is rather too young to have to keep quiet so long.”
oddly enough, it had happened that ella had never visited the public school, and all the glory of something unknown was about it. of course she had heard many school stories from her playmates. she knew that it was carried on in a businesslike fashion, that children did not choose their books by the color of the covers or recite what they pleased and when they pleased, and go home whenever they liked; but that lessons had to be learned, and had to be recited when the time for recitation had come. she knew that once in a while the superintendent of schools came to[pg 95] examine the pupils, and that he listened to their answers as if whether they were right or wrong was really an important matter. one day, after his kindly examination of a class in which were several of ella’s playmates, they came home at noon in great glee. after his examination, he had said to the teacher—but quite loud enough for the whole room to hear,
“the children in your class have done so well that i am going to ask you if you won’t take them out to the grove this afternoon for a little picnic.”
they had asked the teacher if ella might go with them, but she did not care to be responsible for any more children and had said no, the picnic was for the pupils only.
now ella was free every afternoon and could have gone to a picnic six days in the week, if there had been one to go to; but somehow this was different, and the tears really came into her eyes that day when she thought of the whole class having such a good time from which she herself was shut out. some of these same little picnickers envied her for coming home at one o’clock or even earlier; but nothing would have induced them to express such a thought. the city was very proud of her public schools. there was a general feeling that the work of private schools was not so good; and these little girls held their heads very high because they were parts of the great public school system.
there were many other times when ella felt a little[pg 96] shut out of things. she played with the other children and went to their simple parties. they came to see her saturday afternoons and she went to see them; but they were always speaking of little events in school that she knew nothing about. she did so wish that she could speak in such familiar fashion about the delight of “getting up head” and the mortification of losing a place in the class because a word was left out in a recitation. in ella’s class of one, there was no head and no foot; and when the other children talked of such things, she felt dull and stupid and out of the magic circle.
everything about their schools was different. at recess, ella slipped into the big library and read a story. they marched out into the yard for a blissful quarter of an hour of play. she thought it would be delightful to march out in line with her hands down at her sides, one little girl before her and another behind her. in short, ella wanted to be “in things.” it never occurred to her to boast of studying french and latin and of reciting with “young ladies” many years older than she. she wanted to be just like other little girls, to study just what they studied, and to do just what they did. she did not know what “conventional” meant, but that was what she wanted to be.
now the time had passed for which the mother had agreed to take charge of the “private school for young ladies,” and she, too, was thinking about[pg 97] public schools, and wondering a little how the small daughter, who had gone on her own way as independently as if she was the only child in the world, would get on with walking between parallel lines and being bound to do just what other children were doing. there was no private school at hand that was at all promising, and it really was quite a dilemma. one day she asked ella how she would like to go to the public school.
“i’d rather go there than anywhere else in the whole world, except to norway or switzerland,” she exclaimed. “may i go? may i go really?”
“we’ll think it over,” said the mother; and indeed it needed to be thought over. here was a little girl almost twelve years old. other children of twelve had been in school seven years; but this child’s school life consisted thus far of one year with an hour a day of arithmetic and french, and the rest of the time spent out of doors with a big dog for company; of a year and a half more with the same studies and a few months of latin, but with much freedom as to her coming and going, short sessions, and long play hours.
she had, then, a smattering of french; she had read “fables” in latin; she had learned whatever chanced to strike her fancy in the yellow geography and the pink grammar; and she was far beyond her age in arithmetic. she could sketch fairly well, she could play on the piano as well as children of her age were expected to do; she could knit and crochet and do[pg 98] almost anything with her hands; she could win the heart of cat or dog or bird; she could climb a mountain; and she had read many hundreds of books, ranging all the way from “songs for little ones at home” to a volume of the “religions of the world,” which she had discovered in an attic and thought more interesting than the sunday school “question book.” she had never been prepared for any school, and how would she stand with other children who had had seven years of regulation training? “suppose that she was put into a class of children much younger than herself,” thought the mother. she could not have the child humiliated and unhappy. what was the best thing to do?
ella herself had been troubled all her life about her own ignorance. when she was only five, she had begged to go to school because the older children had assured her that she would grow up to be a dunce—whatever that might be—if she did not go. later, she would have been even more anxious if there had not been so many books to read and so many interesting things to do and to think about. now when the mother asked, “what should you do if you were put into a class of little girls much younger than yourself?” she had her answer all ready, “i’d study and study and study, till i knew so much they wouldn’t have me there, and they would have to put me up higher.”
the mother concluded that the little girl would make her way, and the public school was decided[pg 99] upon. she saw the principal of the school, and he said, “send her down monday morning, and we will see where she belongs.”
when monday morning came, ella started for school at the same time with the other girls and walked down the same street with them. this in itself was a delight. at last she was within the circle, and soon she would be able to talk about the mysteries of school life as easily as they.
she wore a cheery little red dress, a soft gray hat trimmed with a bit of black velvet and a red quill. she carried a rather large paper slate. it was made like a book and contained three sheets of firm stiff paper slated on both sides. this was the very latest thing in slates, and she was proud of it. she had one possession, however, that made her feel even more elegant than the slate, and that was her new slate pencil. common slate pencils were hard and inclined to scratch. ella’s was made of wood, soft and agreeable to the touch, and had “leads” of clay, which could be pushed up and down by moving a little peg in a groove, just as if it had been a pencil of solid gold. ella dearly loved all things of the nature of tools or machines, and she had saved her money for many days to buy this pencil. surely, such a choice article as this ought to give one courage.
cora was the oldest of the little group. there were six rooms in the school building, and she was in number two, the next to the highest. as they drew near[pg 100] to the schoolhouse, cora began to give the new pupil some good advice.
“the principal thinks you don’t know anything if you can’t do examples,” she said, “and he’ll give you some awfully hard ones. girls that come here from private schools don’t know very much, and you’ll probably be put in the sixth room. if you work hard, you can be promoted, maybe before the end of the year.”
ella began to feel so humble that she never thought of saying, “i can do cube root, and you are only in denominate numbers,” and they went silently up the stairs.
“that’s the room,” said cora. “that’s the principal sitting at the large desk, and there is the assistant at the smaller one.”
ella wished that cora would go in with her, but the older girl went off to her own room, and ella stood on the threshold, a rather shy but exceedingly expectant little girl. fortunately the assistant looked up and came to her.
“this is ella, i am sure,” she said. “i know your mother, and i am glad to have her little daughter in the school.”
then she introduced ella to the principal. the girls and boys were all afraid of him, and when ella looked fearlessly up into his face as if he was an old friend, and laid her hand in his, he really felt a little awkward. he was not used to being treated in that way by children.
[pg 101]
“after the opening exercises we will see what you can do,” he said. he motioned her to a chair just beyond the farther end of the platform, near that of the pleasant assistant, and ella seated herself, so radiantly happy that she had no dread of even the hard examples that were to come.
she looked about the room. it had many windows, and it seemed to her enormously large. blackboards ran around the four sides wherever the windows and doors would permit, and on these blackboards were maps and examples. best of all, there were twenty-four desks—she counted them over and over—and at each desk sat two girls or two boys, as the case might be.
none of them paid the least attention to her, for this was the highest class in the building. they would go to the high school in the spring, and what did they care about a small newcomer who might for all they knew, be condemned to the sixth room, or even be sent to the intermediate school a little way off? they were only two or three years older than ella, but two or three years count for a great length of time when one is not yet twelve, and she looked at them with a deference that she had never felt for any grown-up. grown-ups belonged to a queer world of their own. they had different notions and different ways of looking at things; but these boys and girls, venerable as they were by age and position, were nevertheless of her own world, and could be judged by standards that she could understand.
[pg 102]
it is to be feared that ella did not pay very close attention to the “opening exercises,” but older folk have sometimes paid no more, even though with much smaller temptation.
but the assistant was beckoning to her and was handing her a paper.
“do these examples,” she said; “or as many of them as you can,” she added, for she, too, was of cora’s opinion in regard to the children who came from private schools.
the slate pencil that behaved like a gold one and the little girl who wielded it worked their way rather scornfully through addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. then came fractions, decimals, compound numbers, interest, and square root; but now the principal and the assistant called a halt and held a conference. ella heard snatches of their rather emphatic remarks.
“she won’t be twelve for two weeks—altogether too young for this room.”
“the third room would be only play for her.”
“she has studied french and latin,” said the assistant, “but she knows very little of geography and grammar.”
“never mind,” declared the principal decidedly. “if she can do arithmetic, she can do anything. put her into the second room.”
