Little Citizens

Excerpt

Four weeks of teaching in a lower East Side school had deprived Constance Bailey of many of the “Ideals in Education” which, during four years at college, she had trustingly acquired.  But, despite many discouragements, despite an unintelligible dialect and an autocratic “Course of Study,” she clung to an ambition to establish harmony in her kingdom and to impress a high moral tone upon the fifty-eight little children of Israel entrusted to her care.  She was therefore troubled and heavy of heart when it was borne in upon her that two of her little flock—­cousins to boot, and girls—­had so far forgotten the Golden Rule as to be “mad on theirselves und wouldn’t to talk even,” as that Bureau of Fashionable Intelligence, Sarah Schrodsky, duly reported.