"If you make children happy now, you will make them happy twenty years hence by the memory of it."  
The next morning when I reached the little tin shop on the corner,—a blessed trysting-place, forever sacred, where the children waited for me in sunshine, rain, wind, and storm, unless forbidden,—there on the step sat faithful Patsy, with a clean and shining morning face, all glowing with anticipation. How well I remember my poor lad's first day! Where should I seat him? There was an empty space beside little Mike Higgins, but Mike's character, obtained from a fond and candid parent, had been to the effect "that he was in heaven any time if he could jest lay a boy out flat"! And there was a place by Moses, but he was very much of a fop just then, owing to a new "second-hand" coat, and might make scathing allusions to Patsy's abbreviated swallow-tail.
 
But a pull at my skirt and a whisper from the boy decided me.
 
"Please can't I set aside o' you, Miss Kate?"
 
"But, Patsy, the fun of it is I never do sit."
 
"Why, I thought teachers never done nothin' but set!"
 
"You don't know much about little boys and girls, that's sure! Well, suppose you put your chair in front and close to me. Here is Maggie Bruce on one side. She is a real little Kindergarten mother, and will show you just how to do everything. Won't you, Maggie?"
 
We had our morning hymn and our familiar talk, in which we always "outlined the policy" of the new day; for the children were apt to be angelic and receptive at nine o'clock in the morning, the unwillingness of the spirit and weakness of the flesh seldom overtaking them till an hour or so later. It chanced to be a beautiful day, for Helen and I were both happy and well, our volunteer helpers were daily growing more zealous and efficient, and there was no tragedy in the immediate foreground.
 
In one of the morning songs, when Paulina went into the circle and threw good-morning kisses to the rest, she wafted a dozen of them to the ceiling, a proceeding I could not understand.
 
"Why did you throw so many of your kisses up in the air, dear?" I asked, as she ran back to my side.
 
"Them was good-mornings to Johnny Cass, so 't he wouldn't feel lonesome," she explained; and the tender bit of remembrance was followed out by the children for days afterward. Was it not enough to put us in a gentle humor?
 
Patsy was not equal to the marching when, later on, the Lilliputian army formed itself in line and kept step to the music of a lively tune, and he was far too shy on the first day to join in the play, though he watched the game of the Butterfly with intense interest from his nook by the piano.
 
After the tiny worm had wriggled itself realistically into a cocoon it went to sleep; and after a moment of dramatic silence, the little one chosen for the butterfly would separate herself from the still cocoon and fly about the circle, sipping mimic honey from the child-flowers.
 
To see Carlotty Griggs "being a butterfly," with utter intensity of joy and singleness of purpose, was a sight to be remembered. For Carlotty was a pickaninny four years old, and blacker than the Ace of Spades! Her purple calico dress, pink apron, and twenty little woolly braids tied with bits of yellow ribbon made her the most tropical of butterflies; and the children, having a strong sense of color and hardly any sense of humor, were always entirely carried away by her antics.
 
Carlotty Griggs "being a Butterfly."
 
Carlotty Griggs "being a Butterfly."
 
Carlotty had huge feet,—indeed, Carlotty "toed in," for that matter; but her face shone with delight; her eyes glistened, and so did her teeth; and when she waved her ebony hands and flitted among the children, she did it as airily as any real butterfly that ever danced over a field of clover blossoms.
 
And if Patsy's joy was great in the play, it was greater still in the work that came afterward. When Helen gave him a scarlet and gold mat to weave, his fingers trembled with eagerness; and the expression of his face caused that impulsive young person to fly to my side and whisper, "Oh, why should one ever 'want to be an angel' when one can be a Kindergartner!"
 
From this time on, Patsy was the first to come in the morning and the last to leave at night. He took the whole institution under his guardianship, and had a watchful eye for everybody and everything belonging to it.
 
He soon learned the family history of every child in the school, and those family histories, I assure you, were of an exciting nature; but so great were Patsy's prudence and his idea of the proprieties that he never divulged his knowledge till we were alone. Then his tongue would be loosed, and he would break into his half-childlike, half-ancient and reflective conversation.
 
He had a stormy temper, which, however, he was fast learning to control, and he was not always kind and gentle with his little playfellows; for he had been raised in a hard school, and the giving and taking of blows was a natural matter, to him the only feasible manner of settling a misunderstanding.
 
His conduct to me, however, was touching in its devotion and perfect obedience; and from the firs............