Redmond, a new student at New York City's Public School Ninety, is unfairly singled out for harsh treatment by the principal of his school, who forms an unwarranted prejudice against him at their first meeting. But our hero does not whine, complain, or adopt the attitude of a persecuted victim (at least not too much). Instead, acting upon the good advice from his teacher and from a close friend, Redmond, rather than blaming others, looks at himself, recognizes his personal failings, admits his own contribution to the faulty relationship with the principal, and, with God's help, works to overcome his failings and become a better man.
Mrs. Frank Lee—born Mary Chappell Skeel in Kingston, Ulster County, New York, in 1849—is probably the greatest writer the average reader never heard of; and, in this novel (we believe her second), her personal experience as a New York schoolteacher was used to form the setting for the story and also, based on a clue in the eighteenth chapter, the particulars of the story itself: "Redmond," she hints, was in fact a real boy and Mrs. Lee his teacher, the real-life "Miss Allen" from the novel.
Published originally in 1897, this 49,000-word novel about the New York School System in the 19th century is precious both for the fascinating story and for the glimpse into the way American schools used to be run—unfortunately inviting unfavorable comparisons to the way they are run now.
Preparing old books for digital publication is a labor of love at Travelyn Publishing. We hold our digital versions of public domain books up against any others with no fear of the comparison. Our conversion work is meticulous, utilizing a process designed to eliminate errors, maximize reader enjoyment, and recreate as much as possible the atmosphere of the original book even as we are adding the navigation and formatting necessary for a good digital book. While remaining faithful to a writer's original words, and the spellings and usages of his era, we are not above correcting obvious mistakes. If the printer became distracted after placing an 'a' at the end of a line and then placed another 'a' at the beginning of the next line (they used to do this stuff by hand you know!), what sort of mindless robots would allow that careless error to be preserved for all eternity in the digital version, too? Not us. That's why we have the audacity to claim that our re-publications are often better than the originals.
