Up, Up, and Away: Helping Reading Haters Become Reading Lovers

Copyright © 2012 by Dr. Mary Moore Nance.

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ISBN: 978-1-4497-6135-6 (sc)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2012914093

WestBow Press rev. date: 09/27/2012

Contents

Foreword

Preface

To The Individual / To The Teacher

Stories

Setting Out 5.2-10.6

Sophie By Emily Carr

The Ten Commandments of How to Get Along with People By Ann Landers

Voice for Freedom: John Bunyan By Charles and Ruby Treadway

A Sad Story’s Happy Ending: Nate Saint By Charles and Ruby Treadway

Christmas Story By Mary Moore Nance

The World for a Classroom: Frank Laubach (Discovering How to Use One’s Talents) By Charles and Ruby Treadway

Helen Keller and Anne Sullivan By Helen Keller

Thong (Tong) See By Mary Moore Nance

A Song in the Heart: Antonio Stradivarius By Charles and Ruby Treadway

Founded Sunday School in a Kitchen: Robert Raikes By Charles and Ruby Treadway

Cast Down Your Bucket: George Washington Carver By Charles and Ruby Treadway

Her Faith Found an Answer: Jane Merchant By Charles and Ruby Treadway

Lottie Moon Monologue By Mary Moore Nance

God Implanted His Song: George Beverly Shea By Charles and Ruby Treadway

Alone: Excerpts from May II and June I By Richard E. Byrd

The Whole World Sings Her Song: Charlotte Elliott By Charles and Ruby Treadway

The Trouble with X By C. S. Lewis

The Night of Sorrow: This, Too, Shall Pass By Chester Swor

STORIES

Entering the Middle 11.0-16.8

Don’t Park by Your Religious Experiences By C. William Fisher

Speak Words of Blessing: Enjoying the Positive Results of Your Words By J. Matthew Nance

If You Cannot Cross the Ocean: Mary Slessor By Charles and Ruby Treadway

Why Do We Need a Free Medical Clinic? By Dennis E. Coker

Katherine von Bora Luther: The Matriarch of the Protestant Parsonage (1499-1552) By Edith Deen

A Modern Miracle By John I. Nance

Unzen By Shusako Endo

William Knibb Emancipator of Slaves By Benjamin Browne

Driving with the Handbrake On By Chester Swor

Catherine Booth: Mother of the Salvation Army (1829-1890) By Edith Deen

Charles Haddon Spurgeon: Prince of Preachers By Benjamin Browne

Susanna Wesley: Mother of John and Charles Wesley (1669-1742)

By Edith Deen

The Famous Five: Recognition Sought for Heroes of ‘Persons Case’ By Vicki Barnett

I Have a Dream By Martin Luther King, Jr.

God Still Answers Prayer By Catherine Marshall

The Gettysburg Address By Abraham Lincoln

The World Has Changed, and We Must Change With It. By Barack Obama

Sturdy Baptist Pioneers: Their Meeting Houses, Baptisms, and Discipline

By Benjamin Browne

STORIES

The Final Stretch 17.0-22.9

Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God By Jonathan Edwards

Closed Doors: Hindrance or Help? By Chester Swor

Take My Life: Ida Scudder By Charles and Ruby Treadway

Helen Barrett Montgomery: A Distinguished Woman Among Baptists By Benjamin Browne

The Deaths of the Apostles from Foxe’s Book of Martyrs By John Foxe

My Intense Longing to Learn to Read from Up from Slavery1

By Booker T. Washington

Separation of Church and State The American Boy By Theodore Roosevelt

Ben Franklin on Sloth Compiled and Edited by Jerry Newcombe from Poor Richard’s Almanack1

Love is Good for Your Health By Terry Gilbert

The Celestial Railroad1 By Nathaniel Hawthorne

Address upon Receiving the Nobel Prize for Literature

Stockholm, December 10, 1950 By William Faulkner

The American’s Creed By William Tyler Page

Don’t Park by Your Resentments By C. William Fisher

Wars are Not Won by Evacuations By Winston Churchill

Who’s Boss at Your House? By John I. Nance

The Shepherd of the Senate By Catherine Marshall

Washington’s Thanksgiving Proclamation By President George Washington

Appendices

Appendix A Inventory of Student Reading Experience and Interests

Appendix B

Graded Copy of Appendix A, Part B for the Convenience of the

Teacher in Curriculum Planning

Appendix C Daily Class Discussion Assignment

Appendix D Follow Up Assignment: Final Reflection Journal

Appendix E Graded Curriculum List for Teacher Planning

Bibliography

Dedication

In memory of Dr. George Labercane, my mentor.

Special thanks to my husband, John I. Nance, who supported me in learning and applying this reading approach, as well as his patient word processing.

To my descendants, who have unbelievable belief in my possibilities.

To each teacher and reader, with God’s blessings.

All of this undertaking is dedicated to the glory of our all wise and loving Father.

Foreword

As I consider the honor of being asked to write the foreword to this book by such a dear lady, I am reminded of those first days in the college program at the Canadian Southern Baptist College and Seminary. I went to seminary with a great deal of fear, and the conviction that God had called me there; and at 29 years of age, with a wife and 2 small boys, I was not sure what I had gotten myself into. Before then, the most I had written, beyond the occasional card to my wife, was to fill out my truck driver’s logbook (which was mostly lines and numbers). And the most I had read were a few fiction books when time allowed… far from an avid reader… and even further from any kind of writer!

My fears were realized only days into my seminary experience when, after turning in my first written paper, that a professor looked at me in shock and said, I’m surprised that a truck driver can write! I know this individual meant it as a compliment—but at the time, it sure did not feel like one. I felt defeated and lost before I had really gotten started… but someone changed all of that…

Dr. Nance did not see a truck driver who could not read or write well—she saw potential. And as I reflect back, I must say that I am not sure I can do justice to the difference her work has done in my life. I cannot really comment on the technical side of what she did, and I cannot tell you how or what she did—but whatever it was—it obviously worked. For she transformed a truck driver who had done little reading into someone who finished his bachelor’s, master’s, and has now completed a doctoral degree! What I do know is that her kind spirit and gentle encouragement spurred me onward towards a thirst for reading and learning all I can.

The simple reality is this: the work Dr. Mary Nance has done . . . works!

I am living proof.

I pray that her work will go on to help many others in the years ahead, as it has helped me.

God bless you, Dr. Nance in this endeavor.

Ashley

Dr. Ashley Olinger

Senior Pastor

First Baptist Church

Williston, ND 58801

Preface

Welcome to new possibilities regarding reading, writing, and discussion! I discovered my students’ literacy needs through a standardized university entrance examination. After years of frustration, I formulated a reading curriculum which helped even my adult students with minimalist attitudes toward their reading assignments to become persons who enjoyed reading, writing, and discussion. One of these students, who grappled with his first experience in academics beyond high school, has now completed his doctoral degree! In his own words, Who would have dreamed that I am doing this!

As the center of my case study research, this curriculum project comprised the core of my doctoral studies at The University of Calgary in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. I am sincerely grateful for my patient and proficient supervisor, the late Dr. George D. Labercane, who guided me through the project. My ESL and English First Language students at the Canadian Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and Canadian Baptist College, which is a subsidiary of the Canadian Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, became my research subjects. Over several years they were the warp and woof of this curriculum development as I helped them meet literacy needs for their studies in a culturally integrated higher education classroom. My six teaching assistants during those years lovingly helped meet grammar, composition, and spelling needs in a remedial English course as I put the development of this reading curriculum at front and center. This course, in turn, became an English 100 class for Canadian Baptist College.

It is indeed, my pleasure to offer this reading development possibility to you. May my efforts blend with yours to open doors for aspiring readers, doors which those readers may have surmised were locked tight, with no entry possible. ENJOY!

Your Friend and Fellow Educator,

Dr. Mary Moore Nance

To The Individual / To The Teacher

How to Use This Book

To The Individual

Gather friends seeking reading help and find a teacher. Convene twice a week.

To The Teacher

(Please Use Explanatory Tables 1 through 6 on pages 194 to 200.)

Welcome to the world of reader response. Do you know someone who hates to read? Would you like to help that person to reach the point where they love to read?

Among 22 million American secondary students, six million struggle to read and write.¹

This book shares with you how you can help reading haters to become reading lovers. One of my students grudgingly read on a grade level five in the beginning of his post high school study. After using the reading approach found in this book, he is now really enjoying reading on higher levels and he has completed his doctorate! In each trial of this curriculum and method, my remedial reading class became an accelerated learning class, covering grade levels 5 through 22 in a single semester.

This book applies the reader response approach. This approach can help your students raise their reading level. It can help students develop a deep interest in the plight of humanity. Louise Rosenblatt formulated the reader response approach. She observed:

Our society needs… to make possible the growth of personalities sufficiently sensitive, intelligent, and humane to be capable of creative literary experience… developing critically minded, emotionally liberated individuals who possess the energy and the will to create a happier way of life for themselves and for others. ²

Louise Rosenblatt, an intelligence officer, worked on a team during World War Two. This team looked for holes in the text to find hidden meanings in enemy radio texts and their published documents. She applied this approach to enable readers when she returned to the reading classroom after the War.³ As a teacher of non English major first year university students, Rosenblatt thus formulated the reader response approach. She felt that students need to enjoy and to assimilate literature. She fostered human interest discussions. Students brought their life experiences to the text, transacted with it, and made meaning through a lived through experience, which Rosenblatt termed the poem. ⁴

The reader response approach allows an integrated class of students who grew up speaking English and of students who learned English as a second language. Students can rely on their life experiences for making meaning from material which they are reading. In this approach, students read the text and then formulate class discussion questions. The students use these formulated questions in the next class meeting for unstructured free discussion. After that second class, each student writes a summary statement regarding individual experience with the text and discussion and then submits it to the teacher at the subsequent class session. Thus this approach uses reading of the text, formulating class discussion questions, participating in free class discussion and then writing a summary statement.

STUDENT NEEDS: The First Consideration

Knowing students’ needs is the first consideration in any curriculum planning. I used a standard college entrance examination from the University of Wisconsin to determine student English placement and reading comprehension. In my remedial program I also tested spelling, using a list of the most often misspelled words at the school, as well as an essay. If student needs have already been determined before your students come to you, you will not need to spend time testing.

The teacher must also consider student interests. In order to meet your students’ interest needs, this book provides a choice of three stories on each reading level from grades five through twenty-two. Students appreciate the cafeteria of text choices and the voice given them in planning the curriculum in a democratic classroom. (See and use Appendix A: INVENTORY OF STUDENT READING EXPERIENCE AND INTERESTS.) Part A: A Reading Autobiographical Sketch has thirteen questions which give the teacher valuable information on each student’s personal reading background. Appendix A: Part B: PLEASE SELECT TEXTS FOR READER RESPONSE CLASS provides the teacher valuable information on each student’s reading interest. Ask each student to indicate a first, second, and third story preference under each interest category during the first class session. The story titles offered in this copy of the Inventory of Student Reading Experience and Interests do not provide the grade level of each story. The grade level information is not pertinent at this point since Appendix A is only intended for students to indicate their interest. After this first class session, the teacher should use the students’ background and interest responses revealed on this inventory for curriculum planning. After students have completed Appendix A: PART A, have students turn to Appendix A: PART B, Please select texts for reader response class. Ask the students to select three texts in each of the nine categories. Notice that this student sheet does not have the grade levels.

APPENDIX B: GRADED COPY OF APPENDIX A: PART B FOR THE CONVENIENCE OF THE TEACHER IN CURRICULUM PLANNING shows story grade levels for teacher planning convenience. The reading level is also included by the title of each story in this document. Students usually pay no notice to this level declaration on the individual stories. Now that you, as the teacher, have an acquaintance with the objectives, materials, and methods, let’s plan the first class.

THE FIRST CLASS SESSION GUIDELINES

At the very first session, the teacher:

1) Allows time for students to complete and to submit Appendix A: Part A—Inventory of Student Reading Experience and Interests. Appendix A contains two parts—A and B. Part A: A READING AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH and Part B: please select texts for reader response class. Give ample time for students to carefully think and complete these two sections in class.

2) Assigns a story from the curriculum in this book, based on any knowledge of stu-

dent abilities. The grade 5 levels are high interest. I have not had students insulted with that level as a first assignment. This simplicity helps prime the students for the routine. APPENDICES B and E are valuable in planning story assignments. Appendix B: GRADED copy of appendix a: part b, for the convenience of the teacher in CURRICULUM PLANNING is vital for meeting the interests of the students, but the grade level of the text must be carefully considered. APPENDIX E: GRADED CURRICULUM LIST FOR TEACHER PLANNING is vital to meeting the grade level needs of the students. The teacher should begin on the lowest reading level and gradually raise the level throughout the term.

3) Surveys and instructs the students in how to use the daily class Discussion Assignment in Appendix C: DAILY CLASS DISCUSSION ASSIGNMENT. The student is expected to bring three discussion questions about the assigned story to each class session. Appendix C: DAILY CLASS DISCUSSION ASSIGNMENT feeds class participation at each subsequent class session.

After the first class session, the teacher continues to use student responses on APPENDIX A: INVENTORY OF STUDENT READING EXPERIENCE AND INTERESTS as a vital part of lesson planning.

The teacher continually has flexibility in choosing the level of reading. Appendix B: GRADED COPY OF APPENDIX A: PART B, will continue to be convenient for teacher planning.

THE ASSIGNMENT:

THE FIRST THREE OF SIX STEPS OF APPLIED INSTRUCTION

In preparation for every subsequent class, each student should:

1) Read the text of the newly assigned piece of literature.

2) Complete all of the Written Reflection Assignment, as prescribed with each story. This Written Reflection Assignment should be submitted to the teacher after class discussion at the end of each class.

3) Write Class Discussion Questions for personal use in the next class session. These Written Class Discussion Questions should be presented to the teacher after the student has used the questions in class discussion. APPENDIX C gives guidelines for DAILY CLASS DISCUSSION ASSIGNMENT.

The teacher marks each written assignment and returns it to the student at the next class.

Note: Each of the three Grade Five level lessons, the lowest level in this curriculum, has only one writing assignment. The higher levels have two writing assignments. Students need to think and to write in response to each and every question in the assignment. This individual thinking dimension is vital to interactive reading.

STEPS FOUR, FIVE AND SIX OF APPLIED INSTRUCTION

How does the teacher deal with Class Discussion? At each subsequent class session, the teacher uses Appendix C: DAILY CLASS DISCUSSION ASSIGNMENT in the book to encourage student thinking for the discussion. With time and democratic teacher encouragement, students progress to carrying the conversational ball in this Interpretive Community in the interactive classroom! The teacher will likely want to insert a paper clip on the Appendix C: DAILY CLASS DISCUSSION ASSIGNMENT page, so it will be easily found and used for coaching, as needed, in each discussion session. The teacher can become more in the background as the term progresses and students become confident in their enablement.

At this next class session, the student:

4) Participates in student centered class discussion.

The students use their prepared Daily Class Discussion Assignment questions, as well as spontaneous thoughts spawned from classroom discussion interaction. Each student should make notes on classmates’ oral observations. These observations can feed thinking for the final written reflection assignment for this text.

As the class discussion reaches a conclusion, before the class dismisses, the teacher:

5) Makes the follow up assignment, as outlined in Appendix D: FOLLOW UP ASSIGNMENT: FINAL WRITTEN REFLECTION. This student writing should include broadening of vision and interest which has occurred through interaction with the text, class discussion and creative thinking.

6) Assigns the next text for students to process, as in steps 1) through 3), for the next class. Steps one through three begin the same process with this next text as was used with the first text. This new assignment overlaps steps 4 through 5 on the story assignment discussed that day. The pattern of instruction is now set.

HERE’S THE HEART OF THE MATTER:

ABOUT THE WRITTEN REFLECTION ASSIGNMENT

The Written Reflection Assignment gives students opportunity for creative thinking as they make meaning from the text. The text being read, the reader’s background, and the classroom climate will affect variation in readers’ responses. The ideas for the response invitations are a distillation of theory and practice from Probst, Greco, Iser, and Rosenblatt.

Writing From, Of and About Literature ⁵

1) Writing From Literature: Readers use their imagination in creative writing.

HAVE YOU EVER… . ? aids the student in writing about the personal meaning of a text. This question leads the student toward knowledge of self and knowledge of others. At the invitation to reflect upon a time in their lives (or in the life of someone they know) when they faced a choice, situation, a barricade, major illness, injustice, problem, conflict, doubts, handicap, choice, value shift, turning point, adversity, crisis, decision counter to expert advice, et. al., as did a person in the text. In The Trouble With ‘X’, C. S. Lewis writes about bothersome people in our lives. In Writing From Literature students are asked, have you or someone you know ever had a bothersome person in your life? Relive this trying circumstance as you write reflectively.

2) Writing to Explore Points of View.

This approach is helpful whenever the text is about another period of history or about a different culture. The text comes to life as the reader assumes the identity and viewpoint of a person contemporary with the text presented.⁶ It helps the development of empathy and insight, as well as self expression and imaginative writing. Students can assume the identity and viewpoint of a story character in order to explore that person’s point of view. In Don’t Park by Your Religious Experiences by C. William Fisher, in paragraph 8 the author observes, that some people aspire to be intellectual giants and are content to be spiritual pygmies. Students are invited: If you know someone like this, enter into their skin and write of this life stance as if it were your own. Think about this person’s values, including their responsibility to society, to self, and to God.

3) Writing to Fill Gaps or Spaces: Reader contributes to the reality of the senses.

Since most modern narration tends to leave gaps in the story line, students can fill in these gaps or spaces as an aid to making meaning. This approach can be helpful in dealing with a strange culture. In the lesson entitled, A Modern Miracle, the reader is invited to build upon the historical account. Take the role of a missionary father or mother, or a missionary child. Your mass grave has been dug. You know you are on the Communists’ death list… bare your thoughts.

4) Writing to Reflect Upon Silences. ⁷

The reader builds upon facts of the story. In the second Written Reflections Assignment for Alone by Richard E. Byrd, the student is asked to build upon a statement by Byrd when he writes that each of us needs the affection and understanding of… family… an everlasting anchorage… in the moorings of pride and loyalty. Byrd was isolated from all of civilization at this point: especially his family. Take the identity of Byrd’s son, who has not had contact with his daddy for, in a child’s-eye view, a long time. Write as if you are that child. Break the silence as you speak your mind and express your yearning to spend time with your absent daddy. Flesh out your writing with activities you would love to share with him. Make it live.

5) Writing About Literature.

Reflection focuses upon the characters’ attitudes and values; the ethical positions presented in the text; . . . dilemmas in the plot—the characters’ problems and choices, . . . ⁸ issues which the adult student is apt to bring to the text. This type of response opens opportunity for expository writing. In The Famous Five: Recognition Sought for Heroes of ‘Persons Case’, students are asked to think upon the attitudes and values, as well as ethical positions, which are presented in the text. Were values presented here similar or different from yours? As an aware person, reflect upon how your life can count, as did the lives of these women."

The above guidelines afford the teacher ample opportunity to invite response in keeping with the needs of developmental reading students.

ASSESSMENT: CAN STUDENTS FARE WELL IN THIS REGIME?

The safe environment of the classroom can aid students in overcoming their initial fear. No one is under judgment here. We are a congenial community. Social growth can be evidenced as an easy camaraderie develops among the students. They can learn the art of carrying the ball in discussion without teacher mediation. I have never had students disrespect this unpressured teacher leadership.

The writing assignment can promote additional thinking. It can enable them to get into another person’s shoes. Writing will likely become less painful as the term progresses. As a result of reasoning together in discussion, individuals offer broadened views in their final written reflections.

The two weeks spent on each text can provide thinking time, although there is a new text for each class. Students will be overlapping the thinking time on two texts simultaneously.

Surface reading can be left behind as they enjoy a transaction of closer reading and reflective writing. Connection can be made between literature and their world. They can grow in cross cultural interaction. Most of all, they can grow in reading ability and can learn to really enjoy reading!

These guidelines afford the teacher ample opportunity to invite response in keeping with the needs of developmental reading students.

EVALUATION: BUT WHAT DO I PUT IN THE GRADE BOOK?

First off, you have daily grades on your students’ writing assignments and their input on daily discussions. These student efforts tell you much about their reading comprehension. True, you do not have the counting and percentages to rely on, which you might have in a curriculum which looks for one pat answer. Life is made of relationships of persons and ideas. This curriculum meets persons in the midst of life and relationships. The following information furnishes guidance on assessing your students’ growth, not only in the basics of reading comprehension, but also in the all important life relationships with others, and with God.

Tables 1 through 6 aid the teacher in evaluation of each student. The following information can help the teacher in using those tables.

Table 1. The Efferent (Information) / Aesthetic (Pleasure) Continuum sets a standard of factual and pleasure interplay in reading comprehension. Louise Rosenblatt espouses this Efferent / Aesthetic Continuum. In this Continuum, persons can mix varying degrees of reading for pleasure (the aesthetic stance) and reading for information (the efferent stance). Readers can make a mix of the reading for pleasure and the reading for facts approach. This mix can help them make sense of what they are reading. The Efferent Stance embraces the facts of meaning. The Aesthetic Stance embraces the personal aspects of meaning. A reader’s scope of attention can simultaneously make use of the efferent and the aesthetic stance in various combinations. A person who reads a historical novel for pleasure, can draw upon historical knowledge to make the text come alive. Conversely, a person reading a history book can draw upon past pleasure reading and experiences to enliven the reading experience.

Table 2. Samples of Class Response on the Five Point Efferent / Aesthetic Continuum, shows how one class played out this Continuum, using some of the texts provided in this book. Students brought the text and its context into their life situations. This approach takes memory beyond hard facts and brings it into learning consciousness. The teacher can determine student progress using the guidelines in this table. Students progress from mere facts to practical life applications.

Table 3. Levels of Engagement presents student reading development progressing from a businesslike transaction through intertextuality (correlating this text with others), extending beyond the text, and all the way to developing insight and empathy needed in our society.

Table 4. Samples of Class Responses on the Levels of Engagement, shares samples of class responses on the Levels of Engagement from one class which used some of the curriculum in this book.

A further Assessment tool is found in Table 5. Levels of Personal Understanding. This table is a more simplified rendition of the more developed earlier tables. It shows a progression from literal meaning, to interpretation of story events and the understanding of these story events through analogy to self or the world as they reach a generalized belief or understanding about life.

Table 6. Samples of Class Response on the Levels of Personal Understanding shares responses from some students who used some of the curriculum in this book.

You may want to review Notes To The Teacher periodically as you teach. The depth and breadth of your use of these assessment tools is left to your discretion and the system in which you teach.

ENJOY!

1. Maryiana Haynes, The Federal Role in Confronting the Crisis in Adolescent Literacy. Education Digest, April 2011, 10.

2. Louise Rosenblatt, Literature as Exploratoni. New York: D. Appleton-Century Company, Inc., 1938, 28.

3. Nicolas J. Karolides. Theory and Practice: An Interview with Louise M. Rosenblatt, Language Arts, 77, No. 2, Nov. 1999, 159.

4. Louise Rosenblatt, The Reader, the Text, and the Poem. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois Press, 1978, 12.

5. R. Probst, Writing From, Of and About Literature. In N. Karolides (Ed.). Reader response in the classroom: Evoking and Interpreting meaning in literature. New York: Longman, 1992, 117-127.

6. W. Iser. The Act of Reading: A theory of Aesthetic Response. London: The John Hopkins University Press, 1978, 48.

7. N. Greco. Re-creating the Literatary Text: Practice and Theory. English Journal, 79, 6, 34-40.

8. R. Probst. Writing From, Of and About Literature. Ibid., 124-125.

Stories

PART ONE

Setting Out

5.2-10.6

Sophie

By Emily Carr

5.2

1 Sophie knocked gently on my Vancouver studio door.

Baskets. I got baskets.

2 They were beautiful, made by her own people, West Coast Indian baskets. She had big ones in a cloth tied at the four corners and little ones in a flour-sack.

3 She had a baby slung on her back in a shawl, a girl child clinging to her skirts, and a heavy-faced boy plodding behind her.

4 I have no money for baskets.

5 Money no matter, said Sophie. Old clo’ ‘waum’s skirt—good fo’ basket.

6 I wanted the big round one. Its price was eight dollars.

7 Next month I am going to Victoria. I will bring back some clothes and get your basket.

8 I asked her in to rest a while and gave the youngsters bread and jam. When she tied up her baskets she left the one I coveted on the floor.

9 Take it away, I said. it will be a month before I can go to Victoria. Then I will bring clothes back with me and come to get the basket.

10 You keep now. Bymby pay, said Sophie.

11 Where do you live?

12 North Vancouver Mission.

13 What is your name?

14 Me Sophie Frank. Everybody knows me.

15 Sophie’s house was bare but clean. It had three rooms. Later when it got cold Sophie’s Frank would cut out all the partition walls. Sophie said, Thlee ‘loom, thlee stobe. One ‘loom, one stobe. The floor of the house was clean scrubbed. It was chair, table, and bed for the family. There was one chair; the coal-oil lamp sat on that. Sophie pushed the babies into corners, spread my old clothes on the floor to appraise them, and was satisfied. So, having tested each other’s trade-straightedness, we began a long, long friendship—forty years. I have seen Sophie glad, sad, sick, and drunk. I have asked her why she did this or that thing—Indian ways that I did not understand—her answer was invariably, Nice ladies always do. That was Sophie’s ideal—being nice.

16 Every year Sophie had a new baby. Almost every year she buried one. Her little graves were dotted all over the cemetery. I never knew more than three of her twenty-one children to be alive at one time. By the time she was in her early fifties every child was dead and Sophie had cried her eyes dry. Then she took to drink.

17 I got a new baby. I got a new baby.

18 Sophie, seated on the floor of her house, saw me coming through the open door and waved the papoose cradle. Two little girls rolled round on the floor; the new baby was near her in a basket-cradle. Sophie took off the cloth tented over the basket and exhibited the baby, a lean, poor thing.

19 Sophie herself was small and square. Her black hair sprang thick and strong on each side of the clean, straight parting and hung in twin braids across her shoulders. Her eyes were sad and heavy-lidded. Between prominent, rounded cheekbones her nose lay rather flat, broadening and snubby at the tip. Her wide upper lip pouted. It was sharp-edged, puckering over a row of poor teeth—the soothing pucker of lips trying to ease an aching tooth or to hush a crying child. She had a soft little body, a back straight as honesty itself, and the small hands and feet of an Indian.

20 Sophie’s English was good enough, but when Frank, her husband, was there she became dumb as a plate.

21 Why won’t you talk before Frank, Sophie?

22 Frank he learn school English. Me, no. Frank laugh my English words.

23 When we were alone she chattered to me like a sparrow.

24 In May, when the village was white with cherry blossom and the blue water of Burrard Inlet crept almost to Sophie’s door—just a streak of grey sand and a plank walk between—and when Vancouver city was more beautiful to look at across the water than to be in,—it was then I loved to take the ferry to the North Shore and go to Sophie’s.

25 Behind the village stood mountains topped by the grand old Lions, twin peaks, very white and blue. The nearer mountains were every shade of young foliage, tender grey-green, getting greener and greener till, when they were close, you saw that the village grass outgreened them all. Hens strutted their broods, papooses and pups and kittens rolled everywhere—it was good indeed to spend a day on the Reserve in spring.

26 Sophie and I went to see her babies’ graves first. Sophie took her best plaid skirt, the one that had three rows of velvet ribbon round the hem, from a nail on the wall, and bound a yellow silk handerchief round her head. No matter what the weather, she always wore her great shawl, clamping it down with her arms, the fringe trickling over her fingers. Sophie wore her shoes when she walked with me, if she remembered.

27 Across the water we could see the city. The Indian Reserve was a different world—no hurry, no business.

28 We walked over the twisty, up-and-down road to the cemetery. Casamin, Tommy, George, Rosie, Maria, Emily, and all the rest were there under a tangle of vines. We rambled, seeking out Sophie’s graves. Some had little wooden crosses, some had stones. Two babies lay outside the cemetery fence: they had not faced life long enough for baptism.

29 See! Me got stone for Rosie now.

30 It looks very nice. It must have cost lots of money, Sophie.

31 Grave man make cheap for me. He said, ‘You got lots, lots stone from me, Sophie. Maybe bymby you get some more died baby, then you want more stone. So I make cheap for you.

32 Sophie’s kitchen was crammed with excited women. They had come to see Sophie’s brand-new twins. Sophie was on a mattress beside the cook stove. The twin girls were in small basket papoose cradles, woven by Sophie herself. The babies were wrapped in cotton wool which made their dark little faces look darker; they were laced into their baskets and stuck up at the edge of Sophie’s mattress beside the kitchen stove. Their brown, wrinkled faces were like potatoes baked in their jackets, their hands no bigger than brown spiders.

33 They were thrilling, those very, very tiny babies. Everybody was excited over them. I sat down on the floor close to Sophie.

34 Sophie, if the baby was a girl it was to have my name. There are two babies and I have only one name. What are we going to do about it?

35 The biggest and the best is yours, said Sophie.

36 My Em’ly lived three months. Sophie’s Maria lived three weeks. I bought Em’lys tombstone. Sophie bought Maria’s.

37 Sophie’s mad rampaged inside her like a lion roaring in the breast of a dove.

38 Look see, she said, holding a red and yellow handkerchief, caught together at the corners and clinking with broken glass and bits of plaster of Paris. Bad boy bloke my glave flower! Cost five dollars one, and now boy all block fo’ me. Bad, bad boy! You come talk me fo’ p’liceman?

39 At the City Hall she spread the handkerchief on the table and held half a plaster of Paris lily and a dove’s tail up to the eyes of the law, while I talked.

40 My mad fo’ boy bloke my plitty glave flower, she said, forgetting, in her fury, to be shy of the English words.

41 The big man of the law was kind. He said, It’s too bad, Sophie. What do you want me to do about it?

42 You make boy buy more this plitty kind for my glave.

43 The boy has no money but I can make his old grandmother pay a little every week.

44 Sophie looked long at the broken pieces and shook her head.

45 That ole, ole woman got no money. Sophie’s anger was dying, soothed by sympathy like a child, the woman in her tender towards old Granny. My bloke no matter for ole woman, said Sophie, gathering up the pieces. You scold boy big, Policeman? No make glanny pay.

46 I sure will, Sophie.

47 There was a black skirt spread over the top of the packing case in the center of Sophie’s room. On it stood the small white coffin. A lighted candle was at the head, another at the foot. The little dead girl in the coffin held a doll in her arms. It had hardly been out of them since I had taken it to her a week before.