weight of the myriads of little feet which climbed up and clown those
steep ascents every day. Everything was of wood. The interior looked
like the realized dream of a professional incendiary.

The classrooms were high and well-lighted, with many large windows,
never either very clean or very dirty, which let in a flood of our
uncompromisingly brilliant American daylight upon the rows of little
seats and desks screwed, like those of an ocean liner, immovably to
the floor, as though at any moment the building was likely to embark
upon a cruise in stormy waters.

Outwardly the rows of clean-faced, comfortably dressed, well-shod
American children, sitting in chairs, bore no resemblance to
shaven-headed, barefooted little Arabian students, squatting on the
floor, gabbling loud uncomprehended texts from the Koran; but the
sight of Sylvia's companions bending over their school-books with
glazed, vacant eyes, rocking back and forth as a rhythmical aid to
memorizing, their lips moving silently as they repeated over and over,
gabblingly, the phrases of the printed page, might have inclined a
hypothetical visitor from Mars to share the bewildered amusement of
the American visitors to Moslem schools. Sylvia rocked and twisted a
favorite button, gabbled silently, and recited fluently with the rest,
being what was known as an apt and satisfactory pupil. In company with
the other children she thus learned to say, in answer to questions,
that seven times seven is forty-nine; that the climate of Brazil is
hot and moist; that the capital of Arkansas is Little Rock; and that
"through" is spelled with three misleading and superfluous letters.

What she really learned was, as with her mates, another matter--for,
of course, those devouringly active little minds did not spend six