Immediately upon our return from the mountains I entered high school. My aunt did her duty by accompanying me to the office of the principal and assuring him that I was an honest and upright boy, aged fourteen.

It had been her ambition to have me attend one of the fashionable boarding schools in Connecticut. I do not think she had me much in mind when she made the attempt to enroll me at the St. Gregory Episcopalian Institute. She told so many of her friends of this intention—and told them it with such an evident pride—that I fear she was more concerned with her own social prestige than with my education. And when St. Gregory, through a personal visit from its headmaster, discovered that Mrs. Haberman had no right to aspire to the exquisite preference which God accords Episcopalians, and later sent us a polite but cursory letter of regret that its roster's capacity was full for the year, she bore it as a direct insult upon her ancestors. (Though, of course, even so sharp a hurt to her pride would not let her admit openly that all of those ancestors were Jews.)

At any rate, I went to the high school as a sort of a last resort. My aunt dreaded the company I might have to keep there—all the public riffraff, she called it. That was really why she accompanied me, that first day, to assure herself that I was going to be placed among a "perfectly horrid set of rude ruffians—ghetto boys, and the like!" and to have something tangible and definite to worry about during the next few years.

The principal, busy with the hundred details of school's opening, gave us as much time and courtesy as he could afford. As I look back upon it, I think he was remarkably patient with my aunt.

She told him her fears in a fretful, supercilious way; it was in exactly the same tone that she ordered things from the butcher and grocer each morning over the telephone. The principal heard her through—in fact, prompted her whenever she faltered, nodded appreciatively when something she said was most flagrantly out of place. When she was finished, he turned to look very steadily at me.

"If you have such objections to the class of boys in a public high school, why do you send your nephew here?" he asked.

"Because it—it is convenient," she stammered."I must confess, I wanted him to go to a boarding-school."

"Which one?"

"St. Gregory Episcopalian Institute."

The principal's mouth quivered with the smile he could hardly suppress:

"Episcopalian? The boy is a Jew, is he not?"

Mrs. Haberman sat up very straight. "His parents had Jewish affiliations, I believe. They are both dead."

"I see." And I am sure he really did see! For a moment later he put a deft end to the interview.

"Madam," he said, "this boy must take his chances like any other boy in the school. He must make his own friends from among his own sort. He must fight his own adversaries among those who are unlike him. That is the law of life as well as of every school. If he is attracted to the undesirable element, he would find it and mingle with it at St. Gregory's as quickly as he would here. I have a fine lot of youths here. I am proud of them—even of those who fail to come up to the standards. I won't try to talk to you about the splendid spirit of democracy—because you evidently don't want the boy to be democratic. You don't want him to stand on his own merits as a Jew. If he did that, he would be putting up an honest, spirited battle. I only know that all men and all boys like an honest stand and a fair fight for the things worth protecting. I know that if I were a Jew, I should never—well, that's your business, not mine." He took out of his desk a little leather-covered book. "It may interest you to know that this high school is ranked very high scholastically." He turned the pages. "Also that the St. Gregory Institution is ranked among the most unsuccessful schools in the country in the matter of scholarship." He showed her a table of figures, then closed the book and put it away, smiling. "Also," he finished, "that I am an Episcopalian, and that I should rather send a son or a nephew of mine to prison than to so harmful a place as St. Gregory."

His remarks did not altogether convince my aunt, of course; and he said no more, except to assure her that he would follow my course in his school with much interest, and would do all in his power to make me manly. To Mrs. Haberman, the promise to make a man of me meant little.

She left me at the school door, stepping gingerly across the pavement into her limousine in order to escape the contamination of a group of young Italians who were coming up the steps. As she slammed the machine door and was driven away, I felt somewhat bewildered—very much alone in a hallway of hundreds of boys whom I did not know, but who jostled me, went by me, up and down the stairs with a great hollow stamping of feet, an echoing laughter, a loud excitement of regathering after the summer's recess. None of them paid the slightest attention to me.

A deep-voiced gong sounded through the hall and up the wide stair-well. It was the signal to disperse to our classrooms.

I had a card in my hand, assigning me to room 7 on the third floor. I climbed the stairs fearfully, my heart beating faster than usual, my knees trembling a little. I was entering a strange and mystic land that I had dreamed of, yet had never seen.

Room 7, third floor. It was a big, bare room, void of almost everything excepting sunshine. There were desks, low and set decently apart. Along the wall, behind gleaming glass, were cases of seashells and botanical specimens. The teacher's desk, at the further end, was on a small, shabby dais. Only a few of the boys had arrived, and the big room rang with the echo of unfilled space.

I heard them telling each other what they had been doing over the summer. One of them, brown and sturdy, was telling of Maine and the camp he had attended there. Another, in ragged clothes, and of a thin, pale face, spoke of the heated city during July and August, and of how he had been swimming when he could get away from his summer job—swimming in the East River. It shocked me to hear that. I had a picture of the East River as I had seen it from the Brooklyn Bridge, a brown, littered flood, choked with scurrying tugboats and the floating trails of refuse. I hated that boy for a long while after I heard his story. But he had a sharp, kindly face, and I wondered to see how popular he was with those who knew him.

Coming, as I did, from a distant grammar school, it chanced that there were no boys of my acquaintance in the classroom. I was absolutely alone—a stranger to them all.

The teacher, on his dais, tapped with thin, white knuckles against the side of his desk. He was a little, timid man with one of the saddest faces I have ever seen. Mr. Levi, he said his name was.

The boy next to me stirred in his seat. "A Jew for a teacher! What do you think of that!" he said to me. "A Jew for—" Then he stopped short and looked at me. "Oh, gee! You're one yourself, ain't you?"

I felt my face grow very hot. I thought of the words which the principal had only just spoken.... Could I stand up and fight like a man?I wanted to—I really do believe that I wanted to. But somehow the impulse that came to me to face this seatmate squarely and to tell him that—yes, I was a Jew, too—and proud of it—dwindled away into a gulp and a whimper and a sickly smile.

This other boy was red-headed, freckled. He was very tall, but I saw a crutch at his side. Later on, when he rose, I could see that he was very lame; also that around his neck (for he wore no collar) was a little leather thong and tab. I did not know then—and I did not learn for many months—that it was the scapular of a Roman Catholic.

He looked at me surlily, but laughing.

"You are a Jew, ain't you?" he demanded.

I hung my head, wondering how to evade the directness of the question. The lame boy seemed to be waiting for my reply.

"Well, no—not exactly." I stuttered. But I could feel my face flushing again.

"What d'yer mean, not exactly? What's yer mom and pop?"

"My mother and father? They are dead."

That did not seem to check him. "Well, if you ain't a Jew, you look like one. You look more like one than the teacher does." Whereupon, much to my relief, he branched off the subject. "He don't seem to be such a bad fellow, even with a name like Levi. Oi, oi, oi, Levi!" And he chuckled with delight at the thought of how he would annoy and tease this teacher at some future date.

There are some boys of whom we can know at a glance that they are bullies and mischief makers. This boy, whose name was Geoghen, was one of them. He used his very lameness as an excuse to boss and bully his classmates. He was very strong, though as I was to learn only too soon—and his size made him an undisputed leader.

There were no lessons this first day. There were only a speech of welcome from the teacher, and an assignment of home work for the next morning.

But when we were dismissed and had started for the door, Geoghen limped up to me.

"So you ain't a Jew, eh?" he chuckled, looking hard into my face.

So as to avoid the retort, I fled from him, down the stairs into the main hall. I was just about to gain the street when the principal, coming out of his office, saw me.

"What's this?" he said in his deep likable voice. "Running away so soon?"

"Yes, sir. We're dismissed for today."

"Oh, I see. Well, I suppose you've already begun to fight like a man, haven't you? I hope so.""Oh, yes, sir!"

But, as I went, I knew in my heart that it was not true. The whole first day had been false.