Blessed ourselves with "In The Name Of The Father" put our hands together in prayer and said an Our Father and Hail Mary. Sister turned to face us and said. Good Morning children be seated. There was about forty kids in the class and the first thing every day was "Poetry"'We followed sister as she recited a poem .We did this every day till we all could recite it from memory. Than we started to remember a new poem. Following "Poetry" we learned "Penmanship". We learned how to print the alphabet and the numbers. Here below, is my favorite poem I never forgot to this day. When I reached third grade and we started to learn Palmer Penmanship or as they called it "cursive"This poem was the first words I ever wrote that were not printed but in Cursive .The teacher of "Cursive" was not a "sister" but a "Miss McAndrew". She kept yanking the pen out of my Left Hand and pushing it into my right hand. Nothing worked. I could not write a word with my right hand that could be read.
The Mother Superior called my mother and they met. They decided to let me write with my left hand but to straighten the hook to make me write with a straight up and down hand. I am probable the only "Lefty" you will meet that writes with a straight up and down hand with the paper not tilted.
The House With Nobody In It
by Joyce Kilmer
(also the author of the world famous poem--- Trees.)
Whenever I walk to Suffern along the Erie track
I go by a poor old farmhouse with its shingles broken and black.
I suppose I've passed it a hundred times, but I always stop for a minute
And look at the house, the tragic house, the house with nobody in it.
I never have seen a haunted house, but I hear there are such things;
That they hold the talk of spirits, their mirth and sorrowings.
I know this house isn't haunted, and I wish it were, I do;
For it wouldn't be so lonely if it had a ghost or two.
This house on the road to Suffern needs a dozen panes of glass,
And somebody ought to weed the walk and take a scythe to the grass.
It needs new paint and shingles, and the vines should be trimmed and tied;
But what it needs the most of all is some people living inside.
If I had a lot of money and all my debts were paid
I'd put a gang of men to work with brush and saw and spade.
I'd buy that place and fix it up the way it used to be
And I'd find some people who wanted a home and give it to them free.
Now, a new house standing empty, with staring window and door,
Looks idle, perhaps, and foolish, like a hat on its block in the store.
But there's nothing mournful about it; it cannot be sad and lone
For the lack of something within it that it has never known.
But a house that has done what a house should do,
a house that has sheltered life,
That has put its loving wooden arms around a man and his wife,
A house that has echoed a baby's laugh and held up his stumbling feet,
Is the saddest sight, when it's left alone, that ever your eyes could meet.
So whenever I go to Suffern along the Erie track
I never go by the empty house without stopping and looking back,
Yet it hurts me to look at the crumbling roof and the shutters fallen apart,
For I can't help thinking the poor old house is a house with a broken heart.