"He says," whispered Eva, "how all those mans they don't puts them on
_like_ mans mit suits und hats und pants und coats--no, ma'am, that
ain't how they makes--they puts them on like ladies und like little
girls. On'y," and Miss Bailey had to stoop to catch this last
overwhelming sentence--"on'y they don't puts them on so much."

"Why of course not, Eva," answered Miss Bailey, repressing with stern
effort an inclination to wild laughter. This repression she knew to be
the corner-stone of the First Reader's faith in her. She never, openly,
laughed at their little confidences. She was a serious-minded person,
always ready to discuss a serious problem seriously. Quite gravely now
she pointed out to Eva the difficulty of violent exertion in street
attire.

"You yourself," she amplified, "take off your coat and hat when you come
to school, and yet you only read and write a little, and do quiet things
like that. Now these men and boys, dear, that Isaac Borrachsohn has been
telling about were running and exercising just as hard as they could;
you know how hot we sometimes get here when we only stand in our places
and exercise our arms and legs."

Eva was impressed, but not yet quite convinced.

"It ain't," she insisted, a gentle last word, unanswerable,
overwhelming, "it ain't hats und coats what Ikey Borrachsohn says them
mens in Gardens takes off."

* * * * *

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."

Isaac squirmed in his place.

"And he told you," she continued, "how he saw men