nation of a group of
young Italians who were coming up the steps. As she slammed the machine
door and was driven away, I felt somewhat bewildered--very much alone
in a hallway of hundreds of boys whom I did not know, but who jostled
me, went by me, up and down the stairs with a great hollow stamping of
feet, an echoing laughter, a loud excitement of regathering after the
summer's recess. None of them paid the slightest attention to me.

A deep-voiced gong sounded through the hall and up the wide stair-well.
It was the signal to disperse to our classrooms.

I had a card in my hand, assigning me to room 7 on the third floor. I
climbed the stairs fearfully, my heart beating faster than usual, my
knees trembling a little. I was entering a strange and mystic land that
I had dreamed of, yet had never seen.

Room 7, third floor. It was a big, bare room, void of almost everything
excepting sunshine. There were desks, low and set decently apart. Along
the wall, behind gleaming glass, were cases of seashells and botanical
specimens. The teacher's desk, at the further end, was on a small,
shabby dais. Only a few of the boys had arrived, and the big room rang
with the echo of unfilled space.

I heard them telling each other what they had been doing over the
summer. One of them, brown and sturdy, was telling of Maine and the camp
he had attended there. Another, in ragged clothes, and of a thin, pale
face, spoke of the heated city during July and August, and of how he
had been swimming when he could get away from his summer job--swimming
in the East River. It shocked me to hear that. I had a picture of the
East River as I had seen it from the Brooklyn Bridge, a brown, littered
flood, choked with scurrying tugboats and the floating trails of refuse.
I hated that boy for a long while after I heard his story. But he had a
sharp, kindly face, and I wondered to see how popular he was with those
who knew him.

Coming, as I did, from a distant grammar school, it chanced that there
were no boys of my acquaintance in the classroom. I was absolutely
alone--a stranger to them all.

The teacher, on his dais, tapped with thin, white knuckles against the
side of his desk. He was a little, timid man with one of the saddest
faces I have ever seen. Mr. Levi, he said his name was.

The boy next to me stirred in his seat. "A Jew for a teacher! What do
you think of that!" he said to me. "A Jew for--" Then he stopped short
and looked at me. "Oh,