“Do you know why all the girls are dropping away from the class? It’s because they have too much sense to waste themselves on the ‘De Coverley Papers.’ Us four girls are four fools. We could learn more in the streets. It’s dirty and wrong, but it’s life. What are the ‘De Coverley Papers’? Dry dust fit for the ash can.” “Perhaps you had better tell the board of education your ideas of the standard classics,” she scoffed, white with rage. “Classics? If all the classics are as dead as the ‘De Coverley Papers,’ I’d rather read the ads in the papers. How can I learn from this old man that’s dead two hundred years how to live my life?” That was the first of many schools I had tried. And they were all the same. A dull course of study and the lifeless, tired teachers--no more interested in their pupils than in the wooden benches before them--chilled all my faith in the American schools. More and more the all-consuming need for a friend possessed me. In the street, in the cars, in the subways, I was always seeking, ceaselessly seeking, for eyes, a face, the flash of a smile that would be light in my darkness. I felt sometimes that I was only burning out my heart for a shadow, an echo, a wild dream. But I couldn’t help it. Nothing was real to me but my hope of finding a friend. One day my sister Bessie came home much excited over her new high-school teacher. “Miss Latham makes it so interesting!” she exclaimed. “She stops in the middle of the lesson and tells us things. She ain’t like a teacher. She’s like a real person.” At supper next evening, Bessie related more wonder stories of her beloved teacher. “She’s so different! She’s friends with us.... To-day, when she gave us out our composition, Mamie Cohen asked from what book we should read up and she said, ‘Just take it out of your heart and say it.’” “Just take it out of your heart and say it.” The simple words lingered in my mind, stirring a whirl of hidden thoughts and feelings. It seemed as if they had been said directly to me. A few days later Bessie ran in from school, her cheeks flushed, her eyes dancing with excitement. “Give a look at the new poem teacher gave me to learn!” It was a quotation from Kipling: “Then only the Master shall praise us, And only the Master shall blame, And no one shall work for money, And no one shall work for fame; But each for the joy of the working, And each in his separate Star, Shall draw the thing as he sees it For the God of things as they are.” Only a few brief lines, but in their music the pulses of my being leaped into life. And so it was from day to day. Miss Latham’s sayings kept turning themselves in my mind like a lingering melody that could not be shaken off. Something irresistible seemed to draw me to her. She beckoned to me almost as strongly as America had on the way over in the boat. I wondered, “Should I go to see her and talk myself out from my heart to her?