By Myra Kelly is a delightful collection of short stories that capture the quirks, challenges, and joys of school life in early 20th-century New York. Through the eyes of young students, Kelly paints a vibrant picture of cultural diversity, childhood innocence, and the transformative power of education. Her witty and heartwarming tales resonate with readers of all ages, making it a delightful read for anyone who has ever stepped foot in a classroom.

But among the pheasant and the trout of the ideal hunting-fields the true relation between home and school flits ever along the horizon, a very sea-serpent. Everyone has heard of it. Some have pursued it. Some even vow they have seen it. Almost any one is ready to describe it. Expeditions have gone forth in search of it, and have come back empty-handed or with the haziest of kodak films. And the most conservative of insurance companies would consider it a safe "risk." In every-day and ordinary conditions this relation between home and school is really a question of mother and teacher, with the child as its stamping-ground. Two very busy women, indifferent, hostile, or strangers to each other, are engaged in the formulated and unformulated education of the child. To the mother this child is her own particular Mary or Peter. To the teacher it is the whole generation, of which Peter and Mary are such tiny parts. The ideal teacher is as wise as Solomon, as impartial as the telephone directory, as untiring as a steam-engine, as tender as a sore throat, as patient as a glacier, as immovable as truth, as alert as a mongoose, and as rare as a hen's tooth. But her most important qualification is the power to combine her point of view with the parental one, and to recognize and provide for the varieties of character, temperament, mentality, and physical well-being of the children entrusted to her care. The average teacher—nearly as elusive as the ideal—is, to a surprising and ever-increasing extent, learning to do this. It is, in fact, a very large part of the law and the prophets in modern pedagogy. The teacher is expected to know, and she generally does know, what, in hospital parlance, is called the "history" of her pupils, and the newer schools are equipped with apparatus for making thorough physical examinations upon which the pupil's curriculum will largely depend.

Purchase one of 1st World Library's Classic Books and help support our free internet library of downloadable eBooks. Visit us online at www.1stWorldLibrary.ORG - - Four weeks of teaching in a lower East Side school had deprived Constance Bailey of many of the "Ideals in Education" which, during four years at college, she had trustingly acquired. But, despite many discourage-ments, despite an unintelligible dialect and an autocratic "Course of Study," she clung to an ambition to establish harmony in her kingdom and to impress a high moral tone upon the fifty-eight little children of Israel entrusted to her care. She was therefore troubled and heavy of heart when it was borne in upon her that two of her little flock - cousins to boot, and girls - had so far forgotten the Golden Rule as to be "mad on theirselves und wouldn't to talk even," as that Bureau of Fashionable Intelligence, Sarah Schrodsky, duly reported. "Und Teacher," Sarah continued, "Eva Gonorowsky's mamma has a mad on Sadie Gonorowsky's mamma, und her papa has a mad on her papa, und her gran'ma has a mad on both of papas und both of mammas, und her gran'pa has a mad somethin' fierce on both of uncles, und her auntie - "

This is a collection of eight short stories all set in early twentieth-century America. The first one concerns the Lady Hyacinths Shirt Waist Club. This is a sewing group aiming to help new settlers in the area. One day they decide to put on a play for their amusement and entertainment, and far from unanimously, choose to put on "Hamlet".