Page 76 - 1923 Hartridge

Prize Essay
Ten Minutes’ Grace
rime— 11.05 o’clock, Tuesday morning, January, nineteen hundred and twenty-three.
Setting— In front of a large, ominous-looking yellow building on Seventh Street, Plainfield, New Jersey.
It is a cold, dreary, hopeless-looking day. The skies are heavy and leaden. About the building hangs a dull, doleful atmosphere and a silence broken only by the harsh, rasping croak of a dilapidated black starling as he perches In the lonesome pine tree standing by the drive, its winter- browned branches bending to shelter the little “No parking Inside the drive” sign beneath It. Sometimes a slow-moving car passes by on the
ice-sheeted roadway and with a spluttering cough and a clank of chains is gone.
Suddenly, from within the building comes the shrilling of a bell, fol­ lowed by the tramp of many feet. An occasional cry of “Out door?” “Good-night!” Boats out. A moment later groups of heavy-coated girls
Biter out of the door to stand around and shiver and ask if it isn’t time to go in. Then one larger group bursts out, each girl carrying a red note­ book plainly marked Algebra III and, parking on the steps begins to
shriek at one another for answers that no one has. A small, fur-coated
Bgure resembling a gray teddy-bear hurries to and fro trying to stir the
passive girls to energy and sometimes stopping to wonder where the seniors are.
n
At last, to the relief of everyone, an angel in a white apron steps and her little tin bell rin^s joyfully. A mad rush, a violent pushing, slam of the big door and the starling Is left again to his solitary vigil,
the Hartridge School recess Is over.
25.
M. S.;“Isn’tthatasmallpieceofmeatyouarefeedingthatlion?”
Keeper: “Itmay look small to you. Ma’am, but it looks big to the lion.
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