91 REVERE STREET
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unreconstructed textbook written by Miss Manice's father. There, I
battled with figures of speech and Greek terminology:
Chiasmus,
the arrangement of corresponding words in opposite order;
Brachy–
ology,
the failure to repeat an element that is supplied in more or
less modified form. Then all this pedantry was nullified by the in–
troduction of a new textbook which proposed to lift the face of
syntax by using game techniques and drawings.
Physical instruction in the lower school was irregular, spon–
taneous, and had nothing of that swept and garnished barrack-room
cameraderie of the older girls' gymnasium exercises. On the roof of
our school building, there was an ugly concrete area that looked as
if it had been intended for the top floor of a garage. Here we
played tag, drew lines with chalk, and chose up sides for a kind of
kids' soccer. On bright spring days, Mr. Newell, a submerged young
man from Boston University, took us on botanical hikes thr01:lgh the
Arboretum. He had an eye for inessentials-read us Martha Wash–
ington's poems at the Old State House, pointed out the roof of
Brimmer School from the top of the Custom House, made us count
the steps of the Bunker Hill Monument, and one rainy afternoon
broke all rules by herding us into the South Boston Aquarium in
order to give an unhealthy, gossipy, little lecture on the digestive facul–
ties of the conger eel. At last Miss Manice seemed to have gotten wind
of Mr. Newell's moods. For an afternoon or two she herself served
as his substitute. We were walked briskly past the houses of Park–
man and Dana, and assigned themes on the spunk of great persons
who had overcome physical handicaps and risen to the top of the
ladder. She talked about Elizabeth Barrett, Helen Keller; her pet
theory, however, was that "women simply are not the equals of
men." I can hear Miss Manice browbeating my white and sheepish
father, "How can we stand up to you? Where are our Archimedeses,
our Wagners, our Admiral Simses?" Miss Manice adored "Sir Walter
Scott's
big bow-wow,"
wished "Boston had banned the morbid
novels of the Brontes," and found nothing in the world "so simpa–
tico" as the "strenuous life" lived by President Roosevelt. Yet the ex–
travagant hysteria of Miss Manice's philanthropy meant nothing;
Brimmer was entirely a woman's
world-dumkopf,
perhaps, but
not in the least Quixotic, Brimmer was ruled by a woman's obvious
aims and by her naive pragmatism. The quality of this regime, an
