Dear Little Schoolmate:

If you have read the story of Pilarica and Rafael in sunny Spain, you know that these “Stories for Little Schoolmates” are being written about the child you might have been, if your father and mother—or your grandfathers and grandmothers—had stayed in Spain, or some other far country, instead of coming across the sea to live in America. “In Sunny Spain” told you what you might have been doing a few years ago, if you had been a Spanish child during the Cuban war; and now this new book will tell you how children work and play in Greece.

There are not yet many school children with Greek names in the United States, for most of the Greeks who have come to America have been young unmarried men, or else like Ulysses they have left their wives and children in Greece and mean to go back to them. Of course you know about Ulysses and his wife Penelope and his son Telemachus. He is the hero of a long and delightful poem called the Odyssey, a Greek tale of wanderings and adventures by sea and land. There is a story about him in Hawthorne’s “Tanglewood Tales” which I think you must have read; but if you haven’t, why not read it now? These modern Greeks who love to sail away to new countries make me think of Ulysses, although their adventures are not always as exciting as his were. But lately, more and more of them are bringing their families across the sea, and that means that they will make America their home, and presently we shall have boys and girls with pretty Greek names, Constantine, and Iason, and Chryseis, in our schools.

In the old days, too, not all the Greeks were like Ulysses; they used to make colonies and homes in other lands; it is no new thing with them, for Greece has always been a tiny country, not nearly big enough to hold all her people, nor fertile enough to feed them. There were Greeks in Italy and Sicily and Asia Minor, in ancient times; and there were many Greek children in Constantinople, but they—poor little ones!—were there against their will, for in the fifteenth century Turkey conquered Greece, and as it was the custom in those days for the conquered people to pay a tax to their conquerors, Greece had to pay a tax to Turkey. But not a tax of money. No; Turkey demanded a tax of children. Year by year, one-fifth of all the little Christian boys in Greece were taken away from their fathers and mothers and carried off to Constantinople, where they were educated to be the servants, or clerks, or soldiers of the Turks.

If you have read Charles Kingsley’s book of “Greek Heroes,” this story of Turkey and the little Greek boys will remind you of the old legend of the Minotaur, that cruel, man-eating monster who made the Greeks send him a shipful of young men and maidens every year, until at last there rose up a hero named Theseus, who was brave enough and strong enough to slay the dreadful beast. For nearly three hundred years Turkey was a sort of minotaur, but instead of eating the children she made them serve her, and she would not let them worship in Christian churches. The story called “The Finding of the Cave” in this new book of ours by Madame Dragoumis, tells us something of the War for Independence which the Greeks fought, in the nineteenth century, against the Turks, when they at last set themselves free and were no longer obliged to pay the wicked child-tax. Lord Byron, the English poet, fought in that war, to help the Greeks, and died at Missolonghi.

But the Greeks, in the old days, who went to Sicily and Italy and other countries around the Mediterranean Sea, usually did so of their own will; and of their own will they are coming to America to-day. You will wonder, perhaps, why they did not come long ago; why, if they loved adventure and sea-faring, they did not come with De Soto and Sir Walter Raleigh, and Champlain, and Captain John Smith, and all those other gallant gentlemen. But you must remember that in those years, when America was being settled, Greece was under Turkey’s yoke; she was no longer rich and free, like Spain, or England, or even France; she could not afford to risk money for ships and expeditions on an unknown ocean and in lands so far away. Later, when she had won her independence, she was kept busy putting her home affairs in order, choosing a king, and trying to earn her own living—which is, of course, what every nation as well as every man should want to do. But it is because Greece has not yet been very successful in earning her own living that her people have begun to come to America.

One of the ways in which she tried to live was by selling currants to France. As far back as 1863—half a century ago—a pest attacked the grapevines in France, so that there were not enough grapes to make the wine which all the world buys, and France had to use currants with her grapes. Now currants grow very well in Greece, and the eager Greeks immediately set to work to raise them for the French market. But they were so eager that they did a foolish thing: they neglected their other crops for the sake of the currants; they put all their eggs in one basket—as the saying goes; and when after many years and much experimenting, France at last got rid of her grapevine pest and no more currants were needed to make French wine, the Greek farmers were left with their currants on their hands. This is one of the reasons why, since the beginning of the twentieth century, so many Greeks have come to the United States.

At first they came only for what they could get. As soon as they had made a little money, by keeping candy shops and ice cream parlours and fruit stands, all the husbands and fathers and big brothers would hurry across the sea again, to spend their earnings at home in Greece. Little brothers had a harder time. Hundreds of little brothers, fourteen and fifteen years old, and younger, were sent over to America by their parents, to earn money as bootblacks. In Greece many little boys are bootblacks. One of the stories in this book, “Alexander the Son of Philip,” is all about a young Greek lad who blacked shoes for a living in Athens. Madame Dragoumis, who tells the story, has also written me a letter, in which she says:—

“The third story concerns a little newspaper seller and shoeblack, which two trades are nearly always combined in Athens. In order to make this last story clearer to you I must tell you that these little ‘loustro’ boys as they are called (‘loustro’ meaning polish and by extension of meaning polishers or shoe blacks) are a well-known institution in Athens. They nearly all come from Megaloupolis in the Peloponnesus, and are noted for their honesty. They are employed as messenger boys as well, and in the mornings you may see them in numbers bringing provisions home from the market—which the master of the house or the cook has bought and sent home by these boys. Examples of dishonesty are almost unknown amongst them and so jealous are they of their good reputation that woe betide any boy who might endanger it—the others would half kill him. A literary and scientific club, the ‘Parnassos’ has organized a night school for these boys where they are well taught for their class and receive money prizes at the end of the year. The various members take interest in the boys and give them treats at Easter and on Independence Day (March 25). They do not wear exactly a uniform but nearly all are dressed in a tunic and trousers of a striped gray material which is made in Greece and very cheap.”

But the bootblacks who come to America are not so well taken care of as those who stay in Athens. Perhaps if their fathers and mothers knew what a hard life they were to lead in the United States they would not send them. But I am quite sure that little Constantine and Aleko and the others come eagerly, and are proud to be able to help support the family. Poor little fellows! They are hired out—sold is nearer the truth—for a certain number of years, to some older, craftier countryman who has an American shoe-blacking parlour; and there they work all day, and far into the night, with never a holiday. Our Government is trying to put a stop to this hard life, and there is a law which says that children under sixteen must not come to America without their parents; but these persistent little fellows do get in, somehow. Ever since the Greeks got inside the walls of Troy town, hundreds of years ago, by hiding inside a great wooden horse, they have found it easy to make their way into other people’s cities whenever they wished to. But now that Greek men are beginning to bring their wives and families with them to America, perhaps the little bootblacks will not have such a hard time, for their parents will find out how badly they have been treated.

Perhaps also, now that Greeks are making a second home in America, they will no longer think only of what they can get out of her, but will want to give as well as to get. We cannot make a home without giving something to it; every bird who builds a nest knows that. And the Greeks have great gifts which America needs.

They have the gift of beauty. If you live in New York or Boston or Chicago, or any other city where there is an Art museum, no doubt you often go on Saturday afternoons to see the casts of famous statues in the museum,—there may even be a cast hanging on your school-room wall,—and you know that the most beautiful statues, and the most famous, are those which the Greeks made, hundreds of years ago. With all our added years of skill and knowledge we have never been able to make any statues more beautiful than those early Grecian ones. If the Greeks bring us this gift of beauty, surely America must some day be a beautiful place to live in, free from crowded tenements, and lovely with fair dwellings.

And the gift of wisdom is theirs; for no philosophers are greater than those ancient Greeks, Socrates and Plato; no poets are greater than Homer, who told the story of Ulysses, or Æschylus who wrote a play about how Prometheus brought fire from heaven and gave it to man. Some day I hope you will read some of this Greek poetry and philosophy; you will never be a really well-educated man, or woman, unless you do.

Thirdly, they can give us the key to the out-of-doors. In the ancient days they were great athletes, they raced and wrestled and leaped, for the pure joy of motion. What does Marathon mean, little schoolmate? Why do we call a race a Marathon? Find out! The Greeks can tell you. To-day they are not such lovers of active sports as they used to be, perhaps, but they still love to live out-of-doors. At home, many of them are farmers, growing currants and olives and lemons; they are shepherds, herding sheep and goats upon the steep hillsides. When I see them trudging along our gray streets shoving their pushcarts of fruit, I cannot help wondering if they do not miss their olive orchards and lemon groves. Even the Greeks who lived in cities, before they came to us, must long for a glimpse of the Athenian acropolis, sometimes.

Do you not think we ought to make our American cities beautiful, so that the immigrants who come to us from more beautiful places need not be too homesick?

And now this homesickness of the Greek, this loyalty to his native land, brings me to the greatest gift he can give us. No matter how far away from Greece he goes, he carries the love of his country with him in his heart forever; and whenever she needs him he is ready to fly to her aid and to spend his money and himself in her service. He is a great patriot, and his children, born in America, ought to be even greater than he, for they must carry the love of two countries in their hearts, and the love of all the races which mingle to make the man we call an American.

But I have talked long enough. I know you are in a great hurry to read the stories which Madame Dragoumis has written for you about the joys and sorrows of the Greek children who might have been your brothers and sisters, if you lived in Greece to-day. You will find them very like you in many ways; very lively and noisy and lovable; patient in work (are you?); full of courage; fond of play; fond of moving picture shows, just as you are, for in Athens where once the people used to go to see the greatest plays in the world acted in the theatre, the plays of the poet Sophocles and Æschylus and Aristophanes, to-day there are cheap moving pictures for amusement, just as there are in New York or Chicago or San Francisco. But we must look forward to the day when our theatres and our plays shall be as great as those of Greece used to be, and the Greek children must help us to make them great.

Affectionately yours,
Florence Converse.