Ella, a little schoolgirl of the sixties

by Eva March Tappan

There were many other times when Ella felt a little 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 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 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 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.