Books: Little Citizens
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Myra Kelly >> Little Citizens
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At last the leader was called upon to set a day and appointed a Saturday
in late May. He was disconcerted to find that only Ignatius Aloysius
would travel on that day.
"It's holidays, all Saturdays," Morris explained; "und we dassent to
ride on no cars."
"Why not?" asked Patrick.
"It's law, the Rabbi says," Nathan supplemented. "I don't know why is
it; on'y rides on holidays ain't fer us."
"I guess," Eva sagely surmised; "I guess rubber-neck-boat-birds rides
even ain't fer us on holidays. But I don't know do I need rides on
birds what hollers."
"You'll be all right," Patrick assured her. "I'm goin' to let ye hold
me hand. If ye can't go on Saturday, I'll take ye on Sunday--next
Sunday. Yous all must meet me here on the school steps. Bring yer money
and bring yer lunch too. It's a long way and ye'll be hungry when ye
get there. Ye get a terrible long ride for five cents."
"Does it take all that to get there?" asked the practical Nathan. "Then
how are we goin' to get back?"
Poor little poet soul! Celtic and improvident! Patrick's visions had
shown him only the triumphant arrival of his host and the beatific joy
of Eva as she floated by his side on the most "fancy" of boat-birds.
Of the return journey he had taken no thought. And so the saving and
planning had to be done all over again. The struggle for the first
nickel had been wearing and wearying, but the amassment of the second
was beyond description difficult. The children were worn from long
strife and many sacrifices, for the temptations to spend six or nine
cents are so much more insistent and unusual than are yearnings to
squander lesser sums. Almost daily some member of the band would confess
a fall from grace and solvency, and almost daily Isaac Borrachsohn was
called upon to descant anew upon the glories of the Central Park.
Becky, the chaperon, was the most desultory collector of the party.
Over and over she reached the proud heights of seven or even eight
cents only to lavish her horde on the sticky joys of the candy cart
of Isidore Belchatosky's papa or on the suddy charms of a strawberry
soda.
Then tearfully would she repent of her folly, and bitterly would the
others upbraid her, telling again of the joys and wonders she had
squandered. Then loudly would she bewail her weakness and plead in
extenuation: "I seen the candy. Mouses from choc'late und Foxy Gran'pas
from sugar--und I ain't never seen no Central Park."
"But don't you know how Isaac says?" Eva would urge. "Don't you know
how all things what is nice fer us stands in the Central Park? Say,
Isaac, you should better tell Becky, some more, how the Central Park
stands."
And Isaac's tales grew daily more wild and independent of fact until
the little girls quivered with yearning terror and the boys burnished
up forgotten cap pistols. He told of lions, tigers, elephants, bears
and buffaloes, all of enormous size and strength of lung, so that
before many days had passed he had debarred himself, by whole-hearted
lying, from the very possibility of joining the expedition and seeing
the disillusionment of his public. With true artistic spirit he omitted
all mention of confining house or cage and bestowed the gift of speech
upon all the characters, whether brute or human, in his epic. The
merry-go-round he combined with the menagerie into a whole which was
not to be resisted.
"Und all the am'blins," he informed his entranced listeners; "they
goes around, und around, und around, where music plays und flags is.
Und I sets on a lion und he runs around, und runs around, und runs
around. Say--what you think? He has smiling looks und hair on the neck,
und sooner he says like that 'I'm awful thirsty,' I gives him a peanut
und I gets a golden ring."
"Where is it?" asked the jealous and incredulous Patrick.
"To my house." Isaac valiantly lied, for well he remembered the scene
in which his scandalized but sympathetic uncle had discovered his
attempt to purloin the brass ring which, with countless blackened
duplicates, is plucked from a slot by the brandishing swords of the
riders upon the merry-go-round. Truly, its possession had won him
another ride--this time upon an elephant with upturned trunk and wide
ears--but in his mind the return of that ring still rankled as the
only grief in an otherwise perfect day.
Miss Bailey--ably assisted by Aesop, Rudyard Kipling, and Thompson
Seton--had prepared the First Reader Class to accept garrulous and
benevolent lions, cows, panthers, and elephants, and the exploring
party's absolute credulity encouraged Isaac to higher and yet higher
flights, until Becky was strengthened against temptation.
At last, on a Sunday in late June, the cavalcade in splendid raiment
met on the wide steps, boarded a Grand Street car, and set out for
Paradise. Some confusion occurred at the very beginning of things when
Becky Zalmonowsky curtly refused to share her pennies with the
conductor. When she was at last persuaded to yield, an embarrassing
five minutes was consumed in searching for the required amount in the
nooks and crannies of her costume where, for safe-keeping, she had
cached her fund. One penny was in her shoe, another in her stocking,
two in the lining of her hat, and one in the large and dilapidated
chatelaine bag which dangled at her knees.
Nathan Spiderwitz, who had preserved absolute silence, now contributed
his fare, moist and warm, from his mouth, and Eva turned to him
admonishingly.
"Ain't Teacher told you money in the mouth ain't healthy fer you?" she
sternly questioned, and Nathan, when he had removed other pennies, was
able to answer:
"I washed 'em first off." And they were indeed most brightly clean.
"There's holes in me these here pockets," he explained, and promptly
corked himself anew with currency.
"But they don't tastes nice, do they?" Morris remonstrated. Nathan
shook a corroborative head. "Und," the Monitor of the Gold-Fish further
urged, "you could to swallow 'em und then you couldn't never to come
by your house no more."
But Nathan was not to be dissuaded, even when the impressional and
experimental Becky tried his storage system and suffered keen discomfort
before her penny was restored to her by a resourceful fellow-traveller
who thumped her right lustily on the back until her crowings ceased
and the coin was once more in her hand.
At the meeting of Grand Street with the Bowery, wild confusion was
made wilder by the addition of seven small persons armed with transfers
and clamouring--all except Nathan--for Central Park. Two newsboys and
a policeman bestowed them upon a Third Avenue car and all went well
until Patrick missed his lunch and charged Ignatius Aloysius with its
abstraction. Words ensued which were not easily to be forgotten even
when the refreshment was found--flat and horribly distorted--under the
portly frame of the chaperon.
Jealousy may have played some part in the misunderstanding, for it was
undeniable that there was a sprightliness, a joyant brightness, in the
flowing red scarf on Ignatius Aloysius's nautical breast, which was
nowhere paralleled in Patrick's more subdued array. And the tenth
commandment seemed very arbitrary to Patrick, the star of St. Mary's
Sunday-school, when he saw that the red silk was attracting nearly all
the attention of his female contingent. If Eva admired flaunting ties
it were well that she should say so now. There was yet time to spare
himself the agony of riding on rubber-neck-boat-birds with one whose
interest wandered from brass buttons. Darkly Patrick scowled upon his
unconscious rival, and guilefully he remarked to Eva:
"Red neckties is nice, don't you think?"
"Awful nice," Eva agreed; "but they ain't so stylish like high-stiffs.
High-stiffs und derbies is awful stylish."
Gloom and darkness vanished from the heart and countenance of the
Knight of Munster, for around his neck he wore, with suppressed agony,
the highest and stiffest of "high-stiffs," and his brows--and the back
of his neck--were encircled by his big brother's work-a-day derby.
Again he saw and described to Eva the vision which had lived in his
hopes for now so many weeks: against a background of teeming jungle,
mysterious and alive with wild beasts, an amiable boat-bird floated
on the water-lake; and upon the boat-bird, trembling but reassured,
sat Eva Gonorowsky, hand in hand with her brass-buttoned protector.
As the car sped up the Bowery the children felt that they were indeed
adventurers. The clattering Elevated trains overhead, the crowds of
brightly decked Sunday strollers, the clanging trolley cars, and the
glimpses they caught of shining green as they passed the streets leading
to the smaller squares and parks, all contributed to the holiday
upliftedness which swelled their unaccustomed hearts. At each vista
of green they made ready to disembark and were restrained only by the
conductor and by the sage counsel of Eva, who reminded her impulsive
companions that the Central Park could be readily identified by "the
hollers from all them things what hollers." And so, in happy watching
and calm trust of the conductor, they were borne far beyond 59th Street,
the first and most popular entrance to the park, before an interested
passenger came to their rescue. They tumbled off the car and pressed
towards the green only to find themselves shut out by a high stone
wall, against which they crouched and listened in vain for identifying
hollers. The silence began to frighten them, when suddenly the quiet
air was shattered by a shriek which would have done credit to the
biggest of boat-birds or of lions, but which was--the children
discovered after a moment's panic--only the prelude to an outburst of
grief on the chaperon's part. When the inarticulate stage of her sorrow
was passed, she demanded instant speech with her mamma. She would seem
to have expressed a sentiment common to the majority, for three heads
in Spring finery leaned dejectedly against the stone barrier while
Nathan removed his car-fare to contribute the remark that he was growing
hungry. Patrick was forced to seek aid in the passing crowd on Fifth
Avenue, and in response to his pleading eyes and the depression of his
party, a lady of gentle aspect and "kind looks" stopped and spoke to
them.
"Indeed, yes," she reassured them; "this is Central Park."
"It has looks off the country," Eva commented.
"Because it is a piece of the country," the lady explained.
"Then we dassent to go, the while we ain't none of us got no sickness,"
cried Eva forlornly. "We're all, all healthy, und the country is for
sick childrens."
"I am glad you are well," said the lady kindly; "but you may certainly
play in the park. It is meant for all little children. The gate is
near. Just walk on near this wall until you come to it."
It was only a few blocks, and they were soon in the land of their
hearts' desire, where were waving trees and flowering shrubs and
smoothly sloping lawns, and, framed in all these wonders, a beautiful
little water-lake all dotted and brightened by fleets of tiny boats.
The pilgrims from the East Side stood for a moment at gaze and then
bore down upon the jewel, straight over grass and border, which is a
course not lightly to be followed in park precincts and in view of
park policemen. The ensuing reprimand dashed their spirits not at all
and they were soon assembled close to the margin of the lake, where
they got entangled in guiding strings and drew to shore many a craft,
to the disgust of many a small owner. Becky Zalmonowsky stood so closely
over the lake that she shed the chatelaine bag into its shallow depths
and did irreparable damage to her gala costume in her attempts to
"dibble" for her property. It was at last recovered, no wetter than
the toilette it was intended to adorn, and the cousins Gonorowsky had
much difficulty in balking Becky's determination to remove her gown
and dry it then and there.
Then Ignatius Aloysius, the exacting, remembered garrulously that he
had as yet seen nothing of the rubber-neck-boat-birds and suggested
that they were even now graciously "hollering like an'thing" in some
remote fastness of the park. So Patrick gave commands and the march
was resumed with bliss now beaming on all the faces so lately clouded.
Every turn of the endless walks brought new wonders to these little
ones who were gazing for the first time upon the great world of growing
things of which Miss Bailey had so often told them. The policeman's
warning had been explicit and they followed decorously in the paths
and picked none of the flowers which, as Eva had heard of old, were
sticking right up out of the ground. And other flowers there were
dangling high or low on tree or shrub, while here and there across the
grass a bird came hopping or a squirrel ran. But the pilgrims never
swerved. Full well they knew that these delights were not for such as
they.
It was, therefore, with surprise and concern that they at last debouched
upon a wide green space where a flag waved at the top of a towering
pole; for, behold, the grass was covered thick with children, with
here and there a beneficent policeman looking serenely on.
"Dast _we_ walk on it?" cried Morris. "Oh, Patrick, dast we?"
"Ask the cop," Nathan suggested. It was his first speech for an hour,
for Becky's misadventure with the chatelaine bag and the water-lake
had made him more than ever sure that his own method of safe-keeping
was the best.
"Ask him yerself," retorted Patrick. He had quite intended to accost
a large policeman, who would of course recognize and revere the buttons
of Mr. Brennan _pere_, but a commander cannot well accept the advice of
his subordinates. But Nathan was once more beyond the power of speech,
and it was Morris Mogilewsky who asked for and obtained permission to
walk on God's green earth. With little spurts of running and tentative
jumps to test its spring, they crossed Peacock Lawn to the grateful
shade of the trees at its further edge and there disposed themselves
upon the ground and ate their luncheon. Nathan Spiderwitz waited until
Sadie had finished and then entrusted the five gleaming pennies to her
care while he wildly bolted an appetizing combination of dark
brown-bread and uncooked salmon.
Becky reposed upon the chatelaine bag and waved her still damp shoes
exultantly. Eva lay, face downward beside her, and peered wonderingly
deep into the roots of things.
"Don't it smells nice!" she gloated. "Don't it looks nice! My, ain't
we havin' the party-time!"
"Don't mention it," said Patrick, in careful imitation of his mother's
hostess's manner. "I'm pleased to see you, I'm sure."
"The Central Park is awful pretty," Sadie soliloquized as she lay on
her back and watched the waving branches and blue sky far above. "Awful
pretty! I likes we should live here all the time."
"Well," began Ignatius Aloysius Diamantstein, in slight disparagement
of his rival's powers as a cicerone; "well, I ain't seen no lions, nor
no rubber-neck-boat-birds. Und we ain't had no rides on nothings. Und
I ain't heard no hollers neither."
As if in answer to this criticism there arose upon the road beyond the
trees a snorting, panting noise, growing momentarily louder and
culminating just as East Side nerves were strained to breaking point,
in a long, hoarse and terrifying yell. There was a flash of red, a
cloud of dust, three other toots of agony, and the thing was gone.
Gone, too, were the explorers and gone their peaceful rest. To the
distant end of the field they flew, led by the panic-stricken chaperon,
and followed by Eva and Patrick, hand in hand, he making show of a
bravery he was far from feeling, and she frankly terrified. In a
secluded corner, near the restaurant, the chaperon was run to earth
by her breathless charges.
"I seen the lion," she panted over and over. "I seen the fierce, big
red lion, und I don't know where is my mamma."
Patrick saw that one of the attractions had failed to attract, so he
tried another.
"Let's go and see the cows," he proposed. "Don't you know the po'try
piece Miss Bailey learned us about cows?"
Again the emotional chaperon interrupted. "I'm loving much mit Miss
Bailey, too," she wailed. "Und I don't know where is she neither." But
the pride of learning upheld the others and they chanted in singsong
chorus, swaying rhythmically the while from leg to leg:
_"The friendly cow all red and white,
I love with all my heart:
She gives me cream with all her might,
To eat with apple-tart Robert Louis Stevenson."_
Becky's tears ceased. "Be there cows in the Central Park?" she demanded.
"Sure," said Patrick.
"Und what kind from cream will he give us? Ice cream?"
"Sure," said Patrick again.
"Let's go," cried the emotional chaperon. A passing stranger turned
the band in the general direction of the menagerie and the reality of
the cow brought the whole "memory gem" into strange and undreamed
reality.
Gaily they set out through new and always beautiful ways; through
tunnels where feet and voices rang with ghostly boomings most pleasant
to the ear; over bridges whence they saw--in partial proof of Isaac
Borrachsohn's veracity--"mans und ladies ridin'." Of a surety they
rode nothing more exciting than horses, but that was, to East Side
eyes, an unaccustomed sight, and Eva opined that it was owing, probably,
to the shortness of their watch that they saw no lions and tigers
similarly amiable. The cows, too, seemed far to seek, but the trees
and grass and flowers were everywhere. Through long stretches of "for
sure country" they picked their way, until they came, hot but happy,
to a green and shady summer house on a hill. There they halted to rest,
and there Ignatius Aloysius, with questionable delicacy, began to
insist once more upon the full measure of his bond.
"We ain't seen the rubber-neck-boat-birds," he complained. "Und we
ain't had no rides on nothings."
"You don't know what is polite," cried Eva, greatly shocked at his
carping spirit in the presence of a hard-worked host. "You could to
think shame over how you says somethings like that on a party."
"This ain't no party," Ignatius Aloysius retorted. "It's a 'scursion.
To a party somebody _gives_ you what you should eat; to a 'scursion
you _brings_ it. Und, anyway, we ain't had no rides."
"But we heard a holler," the guest of honour reminded him. "We heard
a fierce, big holler from a lion. I don't know do I need a ride on
something what hollers. I could to have a fraid maybe."
"Ye wouldn't be afraid on the boats when I hold yer hand, would ye?"
Patrick anxiously inquired, and Eva shyly admitted that, thus supported,
she might be undismayed. To work off the pride and joy caused by this
avowal, Patrick mounted the broad seat extending all around the
summer-house and began to walk clatteringly upon it. The other pilgrims
followed suit and the whole party stamped and danced with infinite
enjoyment. Suddenly the leader halted with a cry of triumph and pointed
grandly out through one of the wistaria-hung openings. Not De Soto
upon the banks of the Mississippi nor Balboa above the Pacific could
have felt more victorious than Patrick did as he announced:
"There's the water-lake!"
His followers closed in upon him so impetuously that he was borne down
under their charge and fell ignominiously out upon the grass. But he
was hardly missed; he had served his purpose. For there, beyond the
rocks and lawns and red japonicas, lay the blue and shining water-lake
in its confining banks of green. And upon its softly quivering surface
floated the rubber-neck-boat-birds, white and sweetly silent instead
of red and screaming--and the superlative length and arched beauty of
their necks surpassed the wildest of Ikey Borrachsohn's descriptions.
And relying upon the strength and politeness of these wondrous birds
there were indeed "mans und ladies und boys und little girls" embarking,
disembarking, and placidly weaving in and out and round about through
scenes of hidden but undoubted beauty.
Over rocks and grass the army charged towards bliss unutterable,
strewing their path with overturned and howling babies of prosperity
who, clumsy from many nurses and much pampering, failed to make way.
Past all barriers, accident or official, they pressed, nor halted to
draw rein or breath until they were established, beatified, upon the
waiting swan-boat.
Three minutes later they were standing outside the railings of the
landing and regarding, through welling tears, the placid lake, the
sunny slopes of grass and tree, the brilliant sky and the gleaming
rubber-neck-boat-bird which, as Ikey described, "made go its legs,"
but only, as he had omitted to mention, for money. So there they stood,
seven sorrowful little figures engulfed in the rayless despair of
childhood and the bitterness of poverty. For these were the children
of the poor, and full well they knew that money was not to be diverted
from its mission: that car-fare could not be squandered on bliss.
Becky's woe was so strong and loud that the bitter wailings of the
others served merely as its background. But Patrick cared not at all
for the general despair. His remorseful eyes never strayed from the
bowed figure of Eva Gonorowsky, for whose pleasure and honour he had
striven so long and vainly. Slowly she conquered her sobs, slowly she
raised her daisy-decked head, deliberately she blew her small pink
nose, softly she approached her conquered knight, gently and all
untruthfully she faltered, with yearning eyes on the majestic swans:
"Don't you have no sad feelings, Patrick. I ain't got none. Ain't I
told you from long, how I don't need no rubber-neck-boat-bird rides?
I don't need 'em! I don't need em! I"--with a sob of passionate
longing--"I'm got all times a awful scare over 'em. Let's go home,
Patrick. Becky needs she should see her mamma, und I guess I needs my
mamma too."
A PASSPORT TO PARADISE
School had been for some months in progress when the footsteps of Yetta
Aaronsohn were turned, by a long-suffering Truant Officer, in the
direction of Room 18. During her first few hours among its pictures,
plants and children, she sadly realized the great and many barriers
which separated her from Eva Gonorowsky, Morris Mogilewsky, Patrick
Brennan, and other favoured spirits who basked in the sunshine of
Teacher's regard. For, with a face too white, hair too straight, dresses
too short and legs too long one runs a poor chance in rivalry with
more blessed and bedizened children.
Miss Bailey had already appointed her monitors, organized her kingdom,
and was so hedged about with servitors and assistants that her wishes
were acted upon before a stranger could surmise them, and her Cabinet,
from the Leader of the Line to the Monitor of the Gold-Fish Bowl,
presented an impregnable front to the aspiring public.
During recess time Yetta learned that Teacher was further entrenched
in groundless prejudice. Sarah Schrodsky, class bureau of etiquette
and of _savoir faire_, warned the new-comer:
"Sooner you comes on the school mit dirt on the face she wouldn't to
have no kind feelin's over you. She don't lets you should set by her
side: she don't lets you should be monitors off of somethings: she
don't lets you should make an'thing what is nice fer you."
Another peculiarity was announced by Sadie Gonorowsky: "So you comes
late on the school, she has fierce mads. Patrick Brennan, he comes
late over yesterday on the morning und she don't lets he should march
first on the line."
"Did she holler?" asked Yetta, in an awed whisper.
"No. She don't need she should holler when she has mads. She looks on
you mit long-mad-proud-looks und you don't needs no hollers. She could
to have mads 'out sayin' nothings und you could to have a scare over
it. It's fierce. Und extra she goes und tells it out to Patrick's
papa--he's the cop mit buttons what stands by the corner--how Patrick
comes late und Patrick gets killed as anything over it."
"On'y Patrick ain't cried," interrupted Eva Gonorowsky. She had heard
her hero's name and sprang to his defence. "Patrick tells me how his
papa hits him awful hacks mit a club. I don't know what is a club,
on'y Patrick says it makes him biles on all his bones."
"You gets biles on your bones from off of cops sooner you comes late
on the school!" gasped Yetta. "Nobody ain't tell me nothings over that.
I don't know, neither, what is clubs--"
"I know what they are," the more learned Sarah Schrodsky began. "It's
a house mit man's faces in the windows. It's full from mans by night.
Ikey Borrachsohn's papa's got one mit music inside."
"I don't likes it! I have a fraid over it!" wailed Yetta. "I don't
know does my mamma likes I should come somewheres where cops mit buttons
makes like that mit me. I don't know is it healthy fer me."
"Sooner you don't comes late on the school nobody makes like that mit
you," Eva reminded the panic-stricken new-comer, and for the first
three days of her school life Yetta was very early and very dirty.
Miss Bailey, with gentle tact, delivered little lectures upon the use
and beauty of soap and water which Eva Gonorowsky applied to and
discussed with the new-comer.
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