Keeping the reports was not only a responsible but a complicated matter. To begin with, there were “whole failures” and “half failures.” A downright “I don’t know” was a whole failure. A slightly muddled recitation, not all wrong and not all right, was a half failure. Then, too, there were extras to be considered and taken account of. Sometimes these were promised in advance, but generally they were given unexpectedly for some specially good piece of work. A particularly good map, an unusually clear recitation of some difficult point, sometimes won from one to ten extras. On one never-to-be-forgotten day, when there was a very hard lesson in grammar, the assistant gave to every one who did not fail ten good solid extras, thus deeply arousing the regret of those who would have studied harder if they had guessed what she meant to do.
Grammar was in the hands of the assistant, and it was whispered among awestruck children that the author of the grammar—author of a printed book!—had said that he wished he could teach his own book as well as she. Could there be greater glory? In the lower rooms, a smaller grammar was used; but on entering the Second Room this larger textbook came to its own, and was used every day for two years and a half. It never occurred to any one that the children might cease to be interested and that it would be better to make a change every little while. The grammar was there to be learned, and learned thoroughly.
When they came to the list of prepositions, Ella was appalled. She had never had the training of the lower grades in learning unrelated words, and to learn this list of sixty-four was much worse than lists of productions. She asked the assistant:
“Why do we have to learn that list?”
“So that you will recognize a preposition when you come to it.”
“But I always do.”
“How do you know one?”
“Just the same way I know a kitten. If it behaves like a kitten, it is a kitten. If it behaves like a preposition, it is a preposition.”
The assistant laughed. “It is true that you always do know a preposition,” she said thoughtfully. “The others learned that list in the lower rooms, and without it I am afraid some of them would not know a preposition from a kitten. We’ll talk this over some day.”
Ella wisely concluded that she need not learn the list, but that she must not tell any one of her privilege. Her experience at the seminary as a “faculty child” had taught her never to reveal faculty secrets, and this one was never told. The assistant did not mention the matter again, but Ella noticed that one day when the embarrassing question would naturally have fallen to her, it was given to some one else.