The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1915-07-20

music came down the street and pass ed beneath the window, accompanied
 by the care free shuf1ing of pair of
 old shoes scuff1ng syncopations on the cement sidewalk. It passed into the distance; became faint and blurred:
 was gone. Emotion stirred in Penrod
 a great and poignant desire, but Oer-
 haps fortunately no fairy godmother
 made her appearance. Otherwise Pen
 rod would have gone down the street in a black skin, playing the mouth or
 gan, and an unprepared colored youth
 would have found himself enjoying educational advantages for which he had no ambition whatever.
 1 Reused from perfect apa thy, the boy cast about the schoo1room an eye wearfed to nausea by the perpetual vision of the neat teacher upon the platform, the backs of the heads of the pupils in front of him ands the mo- notonous stretches of blackboard threatenfngly defaced by arithmetical k formula and other insignia of torture. Above the blackboard the walls of the
 high room were of white plaster
 white with the qualified whiteness of
 old snow in soft coal town. This
 dismal expanse was broken by four
 Photographic portraits, votive offerings of a thoughtful publisher. The DOT traits were of good and great men, kind men, men who loved children. Their faces were noble and benevo- lent. But the lithogra phs offered the
 only rest for the eyes of children fla tigued by the everlasting sameness of the schoolroom Long day after long
 day, interminable week in and inter-
 uainable week out, vast month on vast
 month, the pupils sat with those four portraits beaming kindness dc wn upon them The faces became permanent in the consciousness of the children; they became an obsession. In and out of school the children were never free of them The four faces haunted the minds of children falling asleep. They j hung upon the minds of children walk ing at night; they rose forebodingly in i the minds of children waking in the morning; they becale monstrously alive in the minds of children lying sick of fever. Never while the chil- l dren of that schoolroom lived would l they be able to forget one detail of the four Autographs. The hand of Long fellow was fixed for them forever in his beard And by a simple and un- conscious association of ideas Penrod Schoheld was accommodating an antipa- thy for the gentle Longfellow, and for James Russell Lowell, and for Oliver Wendell Holmes, and for John Green i leaf Whittier which would never per l init him to peruse a work of one or those great New Englanders without feeling of personal resentment
 His eyes fell slowly and tnimica1ly from the brow of Whittier to the braid of reddish hair belonging to victorine Rfordan. the little octoroon girl who sat directly in front of him. Victo- rine's back was as familiar to Penrod as the necktie of Oliver Wendell Holmes. So was her gayly eolored plaid waist He hated the waist as he hated vietorine herself without knowing why Enforced companion ship in large quantities and on an equal basis between the sexes appears to steriIize the affections, and schoolroom ronances are few.
 Vfctorine's hair was thick and the brickish glints in it were beautiful, but Penrod was very tired of it. A tiny knot of green ribbon finished off the l braid and kept it from unraveling, and ] sbeneath the. ribbon there was final wisp of hasr which was just long enough to repose upon Penrod's desk when Vfctorine leaned back in her seat It was there now. Thoughtful ly he took the braid between thumb and forefinger and, without disturbing Victorine, dipped the end of it and the green ribbon into the inkwell of his desk. He brought hair and ribbon forth dripping purple ink and partially dried them on a blotter, though, a mo ment later, when Victorine leaned for ward, they were still able to add a few picturesque touches to the plaid waist.
 Rudolph. Krauss, across the aisle from Penrod, watched the operation with protuberant eyes, fascinated. In- spired to imitation, he took piece of chalk from his pocket and wrote Rats across the shoulder blades of the boy in front of him, then looked across appeaIingiy to Penrod for to- kens Of congratulatfon. Penrod yawned
 Half the members of the class pass ed out to a recitation room, the eIn- purpled Victorine among them, and Miss Spence started the remaining half through the ordeal of trial by mathe- matics. Several boys and girls were sent to the blackboard, and Penrod. spared for the moment, followed their operations little while with his eyes, but not with his mind; then, sinking deeper in his seat, Imply abandoned the effort. His eyes remained open. but saw nothing. The routine of the arithmetic lesson reached his ears in familiar, meaningless sounds, but he heard nothing, and yet, this time, he was profoundly occupied. He had drifted away from the painful land of facts, and foated now in q new sea of fancy which he had just discovered.
 Maturity forgets the marvellous real ness of a boys day dreams, how color
 fuI they glow, rosy and living and how opaque the curtain closing down between the dreamer and the actual world. That curtain is almost sound proof, too, and causes more throat trouble among parents than is sus- pected