190 NATURE STUDY REVIEW [10:5-May, 1914 



To her amazement, many boys and girls the size of herself 

 crowded into the room. Miss Knott, the little kindergartner 

 across the hall, told her that the children had to go to school 

 until they were sixteen whether they wanted to or not. Some of 

 the boys and girls had been in the room for three years; if they 

 stayed out, the truant officer brought them back again. 



Trouble began early. "Cat-calls" and groans greeted her when 

 she assigned her first lesson. Whispers of she's a "lefter" reached 

 her ears when she turned to write on the blackboard. "She 

 won't stay long. Bet we can get her bawling, like we did the 

 ones last year." Josephine Lacy turned about and faced Mary 

 Hogan, the biggest girl in the room. The girl met the teacher's 

 stem look with a bold stare which boded no good for the teacher. 



The principal informed her that the school had been pretty 

 unruly in the past, but he had promoted Ed Potts, the worst 

 boy in the room, and he hoped that she might have no trouble. 

 Miss Knott told her after school that night that the principal 

 had undertaken to straighten out the gang the previous year by 

 severely thrashing Ed Potts. The parents promptly had the 

 principal arrested and rather than have the incident aired in the 

 newspapers, he had pleaded guilty and paid his fine. 



"I don't believe anyone really expects me to stay!" She 

 raised her head as the scrub-woman passed her door. "She, too 

 is pitying me," the girl thought bitterly. "I'm not big enough 

 to 'beat them up' as the janitor tells me to do, so I must devise 

 some other means of getting hold of them. I simply must not 

 fail for mother's sake." 



In the two weeks that had passed, the girl had tried every 

 means she could think of to get her school interested. All to no 

 avail, they would not work. It wasn't because they were d\ill 

 that they didn't get their lessons. Far from it. Miss Lacy some- 

 times wished that they were less bright. They, at least, could 

 not think of so many schemes to annoy her, and she would have 

 more time to devote to real teaching. With the exertion of 

 sheer will power alone, she had managed to maintain fairly good 

 order but when her back was turned things happened. One day, 

 dining the drawing period, Miss Lacy left the room for a minute, 

 and Mary Hogan had the school in an uproar by painting a face 

 on the back of Will Doolittle's head who sat in front of her. 

 Nearly every child in the room was craning the neck to see, — 



