The Girl and the Kingdom
LEARNING TO TEACH
WRITTEN BY
KATE DOUGLAS WIGGIN
Presented to the
Los Angeles City Teachers Club
to Create an Educational Fund
to Be Used in Part for the
Literacy Campaign of
The California Federation of
Women's Clubs
Cover Designed by Miss Neleta Hain
The Girl and the Kingdom
LEARNING TO TEACH
long, busy street in San Francisco. Innumerable small shops lined itfrom north to south; horse cars, always crowded with passengers, hurriedto and fro; narrow streets intersected the broader one, these built upwith small dwellings, most of them rather neglected by their owners. Inthe middle distance other narrow streets and alleys where taller housesstood, and the windows, fire escapes, and balconies of these, addedgreat variety to the landscape, as the families housed there kept mostof their effects on the outside during the long dry season.
Still farther away were the roofs, chimneys and smoke stacks of mammothbuildings—railway sheds, freight depots, power houses and thelike—with finally a glimpse of docks and wharves and shipping. This, orat least a considerable section of it, was the kingdom. To the ordinarybeholder it might have looked ugly, crowded, sordid, undesirable, but it[Pg 6]appeared none of these things to the lucky person who had been investedwith some sort of modest authority in its affairs.
The throne from which the lucky person viewed the empire was humbleenough. It was the highest of the tin shop steps at the corner of Silverand Third streets, odd place for a throne, but one commanding a fineview of the inhabitants, their dwellings, and their activities. Theactivities in plain sight were somewhat limited in variety, but thesigns sported the names of nearly every nation upon the earth. TheShubeners, Levis, Ezekiels and Appels were generally in tailoring orsecondhand furniture and clothing, while the Raffertys, O'Flanagans andMcDougalls dispensed liquor. All the most desirable sites were occupiedby saloons, for it was practically impossible to quench the thirst ofthe neighborhood, though many were engaged in a valiant effort to do so.There were also in evidence, barbers, joiners, plumbers, grocers,fruit-sellers, bakers and venders of small wares, and there was thelargest and most splendidly recruited army of do-nothings that the sunever shone upon. These forever-out-of-workers, leaning against everylamp post, fence picket, corner house, and barber pole in the vicinity,were all male, but they were mostly mated to women fully worthy of them,their wives doing nothing with equal assiduity in the back[Pg 7] streets hardby.—Stay, they did one thing, they added copiously to the world'spopulation; and indeed it seemed as if the families in the communitythat ought to have had few children, or none at all, (for theircountry's good) had the strongest prejudice to race