Misunderstandings of this sort are a natural part of the order of the day in class rooms such as Room 18, where children, alien to every American custom, and prejudiced by religion and precept against most of them, are undergoing their training in citizenship. Generations of muffling and swaddling were behind Eva's shocked little face. Her ancestors had not taken their recreation in running or rowing or swimming. And the scene at Madison Square Garden was as foreign to the First Readers' traditions as a warm afternoon in Athens during the age of Pericles would have been to a New England spinster. It was the sort of misunderstanding which must be faced instantly, and immediately after assembly on the next morning Miss Bailey faced it.
"Isaac Borrachsohn has told you all," she commenced pleasantly, marshalling the wavering eyes before her with her own, steady and clear, "of how he went to Madison Square Garden with his father and saw the games."
"And he told you," she continued, "how he saw men and boys running races, and trying how far they could throw a big heavy hammer and a big iron ball. Isaac didn't quite understand what they were doing, but they were not trying to hit any one, and not trying to catch one another, and there was no thought at all of a fight. The boy who ran fastest got a prize, the boy who threw the hammer farthest got a prize. And there were a great many other prizes for jumping and all kinds of things. And," she continued, redoubling the concentration in her eyes, "did Isaac tell you how those boys were dressed?"
A gasp and a shiver swept through Room 18.
"Well, if he didn't, I will. They wore the very lightest clothes they could get. They wanted to be free and cool. They couldn't run fast or jump far with all their heavy every-day clothes on. Exercise makes people very warm, you know. It was a great help to those boys to be dressed in cool white clothes.
"I was at the games," she continued, "as I was telling some of the boys yesterday afternoon, and I enjoyed them ever so much. I was just wishing that you were all there too. The girls could have sat with me, and the boys could have run in the ring. I've watched you all playing in the yard, and I know what good runners some of you are. And then when they gave you prizes we, the girls and I, would have waved our flags and cheered just like the ladies Isaac told you about. Now wouldn't that be grand?" she cried, and the First Readers vociferously agreed with her, though Yetta Aaronsohn, the hypochondriacal, was still of the opinion that "wind on the legs ain't healthy for nobody."
Cold indeed would be the heart of any masculine First Reader who could see, unmoved, the picture conjured up of Teacher's words. They were well accustomed to impromptu races, run on a course all thick beset with push-carts, ash cans, and humanity. Other tests of physical strength, with the exception by an occasional hand-to-hand conflict, neither determined, scientific, nor conclusive, were practically unknown. But to run on a prepared course surrounded by a stationary and admiring audience, of which Miss Bailey and the feminine First Readers formed an important part, was quite a different thing. Then, too, "prizes" was an alluring word. Teacher had shown it to mean articles of price and great attractiveness. The "clean-hands-for-a-week" prize, won by Sadie Gonorowsky, with Isidore Applebaum as a close second, had been a little clasp pin of the American flag in enamel, and the "cleanest-shoes-for-a-month" prize had been a pair of roller skates.
The masculine element of the Room 18's Board of Monitors met that afternoon in the cellar of a recently burned tenement to discuss the situation. If it would pleasure Miss Bailey to see her adherents racing round a garden in abbreviated costumes, there was, they decided, no very serious reason against giving her that pleasure. It was only a shade more unreasonable than other desires of hers to which they had bent their energies, and since there was question of reward, it became even more a duty and a pleasure to oblige her.
"But we ain't got no Gardens," Nathan Spiderwitz pointed out.