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teachers. Miss McCorriston, the geography teacher, inspired me to devote much time at home in drawing and colouring maps to pinpoint certain places. Miss Kelley determined that we should know English grammar backwards and forwards and had us forever parsing and diagramming. Miss Davis was an avid horsewoman who stood tall and erect as she whipped up our speed in doing arithmetic mentally while she called out the numbers in quick succession. I cannot recall what Mrs. Crockett taught, but it was in her class that Miss Daniels (who was later married to Charles King), a part-Hawaiian singer of some size and weight and exuding the warmth and joviality of her race, came once in several weeks to lead us in singing Hawaiian songs, using a tuning fork to keep us in key. I cannot recall who my history teacher was. Last but not least of the teachers was Miss Gertrude Whiteman, quite elderly and often the butt of laughter from some of the girls when she adjusted her wig. She was especially kind to me, probably because she knew my Father and also had special affection for the Chinese, having raised a Chinese girl as her foster child. I missed four months of the last year because of our trip to China, but I was able to graduate with the rest of my classmates in June, 1920.
The transition from elementary to secondary school was not easy. There was much less involvement between teacher and student, and the relationship between them was quite impersonal. As a freshman, I was completely crushed by my English teacher, Dorothy Stendahl, who was also my Sunday School teacher and an intimate friend of Mary Lam, one of my early playmates. Miss Stendahl selected many of us Chinese for her class. She was not only stern and exacting, but also very sarcastic, and I felt she was picking on me unnecessarily. As a result, I had a miserable year and dreaded going to her class. Some years later, I had occasion to meet her socially, but I could not warm to her. Perhaps she did not realize that I had come from a protected home, was exceedingly shy and sensitive, and was not able to deal with aggressive mannerisms.
I had two years of Latin with Clara Ziegler, who would urge me on with my translation of Caesar in Gaul by jabbing her left palm with a finger of her right hand in rapid succession and would finally comment, in frustration, "You are not like Me Lan!" My sister had preceded me in her class and had been an excellent student. To myself, I would respond, "Who wants to be like Me Lan?" It was poor psychology on Miss Ziegler's part, as it only made me more determined to prove myself.