"Bailey's Babies"

________________________________________________
Title:     "Bailey's Babies"
Author: Myra Kelly [More Titles by Kelly]

"Miss Bailey," said Miss Blake, entering Room 18 during the lunch hour of a day in January, shortly after school had recovered from the Christmas holidays, "might I come in for a few moments this afternoon to observe your children? I suppose I shall be having them next term. Too bad you first-grade teachers never know what you are going to get down here! It's different up town, where the kids nearly all go to kindergarten. Down here they sweep them right in off the street."

Miss Bailey extended a cordial invitation to her colleague and neighbor to visit Room 18 at any convenient hour. And as she proceeded with her solitary luncheon, she was conscious of a heaviness in the region of her heart not due to indigestion. She had committed the folly of growing fond of that term's crop of little First Readers. Room 18 without Patrick Brennan, Morris Mowgelewsky, Eva Gonorowsky, and all her other aide-de-camps and monitors would be a desolate place. And Miss Bailey, as she munched a chicken sandwich, objected strongly to Miss Blake's expressive phrase, "sweep them right in off the street." Yet it was quite true. The children of whom she was now so fond had been swept in to her in September, and she remembered that a considerable portion of the street would seem to have been swept in with them. They had since learned the art of scraping their small shoes on intervening stairs and through intervening halls, but as recruits they had been all that she dreaded in their successors. Miss Blake would now reap the benefit of this and other improvements, while Miss Bailey devoted her energies to a new invoice of seedlings.

Such, of course, was life. Especially a teacher's life. But Miss Bailey was new to her trade and had not yet learned the philosophic, impersonal view-point of the gardener. She loved her little plants individually, and she shrank from the idea of pulling them out of their places under the protecting glass of her care, and handing them over to the ministrations of another.

The promise of new seedlings did not comfort her. She felt outraged by it, as a man bereaved of a fox terrier may feel toward the friend to whom a dog is a dog, and who boasts that he knows where he can get another worth two of the dear departed.

In the afternoon Miss Blake appeared, and the unsuspecting First Readers were put through their paces. They sang, they marched, they read, and they wrote. They would have gone gallantly on through all the other subjects in their curriculum if she had found time to stay, but she had left Room 19 in charge of a monitor, and that monitor's inability to preserve order made itself heard through door and wall, so that presently she declared herself quite satisfied, and retired to her own kingdom. A deadly silence followed upon her arrival there.

"They has awful 'fraids over her," Sarah Schodsky remarked. "A girl by her class tells me how she throws rulers once on a boy."

"I'd have a 'fraid over her too," cried Yetta Aaronsohn. "I don't like I shall have no teachers what is big like that. I have all times 'fraids over big teachers."

"You've never had one," laughed Miss Bailey, "so don't talk nonsense. Big teachers are much nicer than little ones."

"They ain't fer me," Yetta maintained. "I ain't never had no teacher on'y you, and I don't needs I shall never have no teacher on'y you."

From these conversational straws Miss Bailey gathered that it would be unwise to insist too strongly upon the personal element in "developing the promotion thought." Promotion had formed no part in the experience or the vocabulary of the First Readers Class before Miss Bailey somewhat guilefully introduced it.

The children were delighted. They always loved things vague and looming, and Miss Bailey--animated by duty--spoke so enthusiastically of promotion that they all thrilled to experience it. The phrase, "when I'm 'moted," grew very fashionable. No one knew exactly what it meant, but it was something more imminent than the "when I'm big" of the boys, and the "when I git married" of the girls. It was something, too, in which one's prowess as a reader and writer was to count for righteousness; "For of course," Miss Bailey explained, "we can't expect to be promoted if we don't know how to read: 'see the leaves fall from the tree.'" (It was easier to read than to do in January on the lower East Side.)

The First Readers were hardly daunted when they learned that a barrier, known as "zamnation," was to be stretched between them and the "'moted" state. "Zamnation," when first Miss Bailey pronounced it, caused something akin to panic in Room 18. It differed in no perceptible degree from a word which they all understood to be taboo ever since Ikey Borrachsohn had addressed it, in the heat of argument, to a classmate. In the lower grades an examination does not greatly differ from an ordinary recitation, and so the First Readers, protected from stage fright by complete ignorance of what they were undergoing, passed the ordeal in triumph, and fell out at the other side victorious almost to a man, and First Readers never more.

There came an afternoon when Miss Bailey, somewhat huskily, explained this to them. "Zamnation" was over. The fair pages of the Second Readers lay before them. In the morning they would be promoted. She was very proud of them. One or two children had not worked quite hard enough. They would have to try again, but the rank and file had achieved promotion, and she hoped they would be very happy, and they were to remember that she would always and ever be glad to see them, and glad to hear that they were good.

The children who had taken their examinations so blandly, took their promotion in quite a different spirit. Miss Bailey, laboring as best she could with fifty little new-comers, could not be unaware of the disturbance--almost the tumult--on the other side of the wall. When ten-thirty brought the recess hour and she went down to the yard with her new responsibilities, the tumult met her there.

"I don't likes it, und I don't needs that 'motion," cried Sarah Schodsky; "I likes I shall be by your room."

"But you can't, honey. You're too big," said Miss Bailey. "You just stop crying for your lost youth and try to make the best of Room 19."

"But we don't likes that room," cried Morris Mowgelewsky, ex-monitor of Miss Bailey's Gold Fish Bowl. "It don't stands no fish theaytre in it nor no flowers. Nathan Spiderwitz, he has awful mads over it" (Nathan Spiderwitz had been Monitor of Miss Bailey's window-boxes), "und Patrick Brennan says maybe his papa could to arrest Missis Blake. She says cheek on him. She calls him Irisher."

"Oh, no!" remonstrated Miss Bailey.

"Teacher, yiss ma'am, she says cheek," Morris maintained. "She says cheek on all of us; she says we is Bailey's Babies. She says it on Miss Rosen. Me und Nathan, we hears how she says on her. 'What you think I got?' she says on Miss Rosen, und Miss Rosen, she says, 'she don't knows,' und Missis Blake, she says, 'I got a bunch of Bailey's Babies.'"

"Then you must have been bad, Morris," Miss Bailey reproved him; "you must have been behaving like babies."

"Teacher, no ma'am," Morris answered. "We don't make nothings like that. She makes Eva Gonorowsky und Yetta Aaronsohn shall stand in corners the whiles they cries. She says, 'What is mit them?' und they says, 'They likes they shall look upon your face,' und extra she stands them in corners. She is awful cross teachers! Und anyway, she's too big."

Although Miss Bailey appreciated this tribute she could understand Miss Blake's failure to do so, and she explained to Morris that, upon pain of being instantly cast out from her heart of hearts, he must learn to love Miss Blake.

But Morris had had a severe lesson in the perils of unrequited affection, and at the age of seven had formulated the axiom, "It's a foolishness you shall make what is lovin' mit somebody sooner somebody don't makes what is lovin' mit you," and Miss Bailey found it difficult to induce him to regard Miss Blake with affection.

Other members of the former cabinet and staff were equally refractory, and at three o'clock every afternoon, save on the regrettably frequent occasions when Miss Blake was obliged to require their continued presence in Room 19, they flocked back to their old posts of duty. They fell upon the window-boxes, the aquarium, the pencils, and the blackboards with endearments and caresses, and they utterly swept away and annihilated the slow-footed new-comers whom Miss Bailey was trying to initiate in their duties. A clumsy boy named David Boskowitz had succeeded to the portfolio of Gold Fishes. Now a gold fish, even of eighteen-carat quality, is not warranted to endure the endearments and refreshments lavished upon it by fifty emotional members of a race whose ancestors once wandered to adoration of a Golden Calf. During Morris's tenure of office Miss Bailey had frequently been obliged to renew his charges. And some mysterious tragedy was played in the fish theatre one night shortly after David Boskowitz took office. Morris, slipping into Room 18 before school hours, to bestow a defunct carnation upon Teacher, found a gold fish floating, wrong side up, among the seaweed in the shining bowl.

With howls he pointed it out to Miss Bailey. Together they retrieved it. Then Teacher wrapped it reverently in tissue paper and commissioned Morris to go forth and give it decent burial in the nearest ash barrel.

But Morris did nothing of the kind. He carried it about with him for days, and stirred up sentiments of wildest revolution in the hot hearts of his contemporaries by showing them the limp body of their pet, foully done to death by "them new kids what Teacher had."

Miss Blake found "Bailey's Babies" astonishingly unmanageable. The difficulty lay in the different conception of the art of teaching held by these two exponents. Miss Bailey, as has been said, was of the garden school. She regarded the children as plants, knowledge as water; her part in the scheme of things to understudy the sunshine, and to coax the plants to absorb the water. Miss Blake was of the carpenter school. She held that facts were hard and straight; minds not quite so hard, and never straight; her duty to saw and bore, sand-paper and file the minds until the facts could be smoothly glued upon them.

"Bailey's Babies" felt this difference though they did not understand it. In fact life was getting generally incomprehensible. For were not Hymie Solomon, the greenhorn, who had not yet learned English, Jakey Fishandler, who was so bad that no teacher except Miss Bailey would have him in her class, and Becky Zalmanowsky, who--though the First Readers did not appreciate it--was a perfect type of the criminal idiot, were not these allowed to bask in Miss Bailey's presence, while self-respecting, hard-working First Readers were thrown into outer darkness?

There was, indeed, weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth, and, contributed by Patrick Brennan, an uninterrupted flow of minor disturbances and insubordinations, culminating in a heated interview between Miss Blake and the Principal, in which the lady insisted that Patrick was making discipline impossible, that his writing was a blot upon civilization, and that he should be returned whence he came.

The beginning of every term is marked by several such falls from grace on the part of erstwhile model pupils, who do not easily adjust themselves to their new environment. The Principal was surprised but complacent, and very formally on the next morning Miss Blake delivered her ultimatum to that unruly son of the Kings of Ulster and the policeman on the beat. Its immediate cause was the unoffending but offensive gold fish. For three days it had preached its silent sermon of sedition and puzzled the olfactory nerves of Miss Blake, who after ten years of East Side teaching had flattered herself that she was beyond any new sensation of that nature. After a heated interview which led to the disintegration of the venerable corse, Miss Blake gathered her black serge draperies closely about her and issued her command.

"Take your things," said she; "I won't have you in this room another minute." Patrick's eyes grew large, he hesitated about returning to the paternal and official roof-tree with the tidings that he had been expelled. "Take your hat and everything you own and come with me."

Patrick gathered together a miscellaneous collection, consisting of a wad of chewing-gum, the soul of a mouth-organ, a cap, and one rubber overshoe, and prepared to march upon East Broadway.

"You are a disgrace to the school," said Miss Blake loftily, "and I am going to take you to the only place you are fit for--back to the First Reader Class. We'll see what Miss Bailey will say to you, young man."

Well, Patrick followed her. It was the first command of hers to which he had given favorable ear. He even went with alacrity--and the novices in the Second Reader gazed wildly upon one another. They may not have been quick to memorize incomprehensible and unexplained "memory gems," or to carry in their heads long strings of figures unconnected with anything in sea or sky. But Miss Bailey's training had made them experts in recognizing cause and effect, and such an epidemic of lawlessness and mischief swept over Room 19 as even Miss Blake's ten years' experience had never paralleled. "Bailey's Babies" went suddenly and unanimously to the dogs. The energy which they had expended in being "'moted" was as nothing to the delirious determination with which they fought for retrogradation. They dutifully called to mind all Miss Bailey's precepts, and then crashed through them, one by one. They fell from grace, from truth, from cleanliness, from all the moral heights upon which Teacher had perched them, and, as they fell, they set in motion the machinery provided by the Board of Education. Mesdames Gonorowsky, Mowgelewsky and Borrachsohn, and other matrons began to find the tenor of their days interrupted by incomprehensible post-cards, and a regrettably comprehensible Truant Officer. "Bailey's Babies" were running amuck, and their cries as they committed moral hara-kiri echoed as far as the marble halls of the Board of Education on remote Park Avenue.

Mrs. Gonorowsky paid the exorbitant price of a cent to have her official postcard read by an interpreter. Neighbors volunteered for this service, but she would have none of them. She wanted an authoritative reading, and having got it, she sat down to await the return of Eva.

"So-o-oh," ran the maternal greeting, "you comes three times late on the school mit dirty faces." Eva hung her guilty head. "And I wash you every day the face, und send you on the block plenty time? Hein?" Eva nodded the guilty head. "Und now comes such a card from off the school sayin' how you comes late und dirty, und the Principal, he wants he shall see me to-morrow, quarter after three." A silence followed these thunderous words. Eva's guilt engulfed her, although hers was the clearest conscience among all the candidates for return tickets. Her gentle spirit had been unequal to the orgy in which braver souls were wallowing.

"I wants," she whispered now, "I wants I shall be put back. I don't likes it by Miss Blakeses room. I ain't monitors off of nothings, und Miss Blake she hollers on me, und Patrick he is put back. I likes I shall be put back too."

"Sooner you feels like that," said Mrs. Gonorowsky with sound logic, "why aind you stayed back by Miss Bailey's room? Aind you told me how you wants you shall be 'moted, and learn off a new book?"

"Not 'out Miss Bailey," Eva protested. "I couldn't to learn 'out Miss Bailey. I want Miss Bailey shall be 'moted too."

"Und why ain't she 'moted?" demanded the voice of reason.

At this question--its answer had long been torture to her loyal little heart--Eva broke into wild tears. Changing over to the voice of love, Mrs. Gonorowsky soothed and cuddled and petted her until Eva found speech again.

"It's somethin' fierce," she whispered. "In all my world I ain't never seen how it is fierce. I shall better, maybe, whisper mit you in the ear. It's like this: She ain't smart enough. Becky Zalmanowsky, she ain't smart enough, und Hymie Solomon, he ain't smart enough, und Jakey Fishandler, he is a greeney, und Teacher, she gets left back mit them."

"Gott!" cried Mrs. Gonorowsky, "who says she ain't smart enough?"

"The Principal, maybe," wailed Eva.

"All right," said her mother, whose admiration for Miss Bailey was great and of long standing. "I goes on the school to-morrow for see him at quarter after three."

When Mrs. Gonorowsky reached the big school-house, she found that her audience with the Principal was not to be a private one, for a dozen or more mothers were gathered in the yard. A regular investigation was on foot. Every one concerned had recognized that there was some organization about Room 19's sedition, and Miss Blake had first repudiated the acquaintance and friendship of Miss Bailey, and had then gone on to repudiate all responsibility for what she now termed "Bailey's Brats."

"I refuse--I must refuse--to teach that class," said she to the harassed Principal. "If you can't arrange to exchange me with some other teacher, I shall apply for a transfer to an up-town school. If that Miss Bailey is so crazy about these children, why don't you let her keep them for another term? Every one seems to think she's a crackerjack teacher, so I guess she can get along in second term work, and I can take that new class of hers."

"I'll think of it," said the Principal, as the janitor came to tell him that the mothers were overflowing his office.

Before his interview with them, he turned into Room 18, and there he found the ringleaders of Room 19's rebellion. Though beatified they wore a chastened, propitiatory air, for Miss Bailey had just been lecturing them. She looked as distressed as she was by the whole situation.

"I just stepped in," the Principal explained, "to see how many of them were still chained to their oars. Rather a luxurious galley this, don't you think?"

"I can't think at all," answered Constance Bailey. "They were a fine class, and Miss Blake is a fine teacher."

"These misunderstandings happen," said the Principal, "in schools just as they do in marriages. I'm going down now to interview the mothers of most of these young people here. Do you mind staying and keeping the children for a few moments? I must get this thing straightened out."

"We shall all be here when you come back," Miss Bailey promised.

Eva Gonorowsky had but reflected the general opinion when she told her mother that Miss Bailey had been left back "because she wasn't smart enough," and the Principal found himself in the midst of an indignation meeting. In Yiddish, in English, in all grades and dialects between the two, the mothers protested against this ruling.

There was hardly one of them who did not owe Miss Bailey some meed of gratitude--and they were of a race which still practises that virtue.

So they made ovation, fervid, gesticulatory, and obscure. But through much harping on one theme they made their meaning clear.

"So you think," said the Principal, "that Miss Bailey is still teaching the smallest children because she is not as clever as the other teachers. You never were more mistaken in your lives. The hardest child to teach and manage, as all of you very well know, is the smallest child. The very best teaching should come at the very beginning."

This statement, when it was translated by those who understood it to those who did not, met with a cordial rumble of approval.

"Your children," he went on, "are old enough now to be taught by an ordinary teacher. Miss Blake is much more than that."

This translated was not very well received. Stout inarticulate mothers drew their shawls more closely about them and grunted dissent.

"But although they are old enough they haven't been proving themselves good enough, and so I have decided--as you express it--to promote Miss Bailey too, and to let her have charge of them until the end of the year. I shall notify Miss Blake to-morrow. Meanwhile, if you ladies will go up to Room 18 I think you will find your children there, and I know you will find Miss Bailey. Perhaps," he added with a smile, "she would be glad to receive your congratulations upon her promotion."

The mothers steamed and streamed away, led by Mrs. Mowgelewsky whose wig was very much awry, and by Mrs. Gonorowsky, whose mind was in a triumphant flame, while far in the rear there pattered the grandmother of Isidore Applebaum, whose mind was quite unchanged by the events of the afternoon.

Isidore had managed to explain Miss Bailey's disabilities to her, but her almost complete deafness left her quite unmoved by the Principal's eloquence in either original or translated form. She only knew that Miss Bailey had been at last allowed to retain the guardianship of Isidore.

Fifteen unintelligible congratulations are rather overwhelming, and Miss Bailey was accordingly overwhelmed by the inrush.

The mothers fell upon her bodily and pinned her to her chair. They kissed her hands. They kissed her gown. They patted her back. They embraced or chastised their offspring with equal violence. They admired the pictures, stood enraptured before the aquarium, touched the flowers with hungry appreciation, and enjoyed themselves immensely.

Mrs. Gonorowsky was a very champion among the hosts. She put Eva's misconduct upon the basis of etiquette. Surely it was not polite, she pointed out, that Eva should allow herself to be exalted over her teacher. As Mrs. Gonorowsky lucidly phrased it:

"Eva, she gets put back the whiles she don't wants you shall think she shows off that she iss smarter als Teacher--somethin's like that aind polite. Und anyway now the Pincipal says Eva aind smarter."

"That's very kind of him," remarked Miss Bailey, trying to understand for the third time a whispered communication from Isidore Applebaum's grandmother. The speech, whatever it meant, was clearly of a cheerful and encouraging nature, and at the close of each repetition the old lady patted Teacher encouragingly upon the shoulder, and winked and nodded to an amazing extent.

Isidore was dragged from his lair and pressed into service as interpreter.

"She says like this out of Jewish," he began, "she says you don't have to care what nobody says over how you is smart or how you ain't smart. She says that don't makes nothings mit her the whiles you is lovin' mit childrens."

Again the old lady patted Teacher's shoulder, nodding and smiling the while with a knowing and encouraging air.

"Und she says," Isidore went on translating the hint with some delicacy, "she says we got a boarder by our house what ain't so awful smart, und"--here Isidore whispered--"he studies nights."

Miss Bailey took the old lady's hand and shook it gratefully.

[The end]
Myra Kelly's short story: "Bailey's Babies"

________________________________________________



GO TO TOP OF SCREEN