Turn of the century girl's school story. Sarah, brought up in Pennsylvania Dutch country, heads off to boarding school. She's rather pointlessly nice, her persecutors are meanies, everyone is swayed by anti-Sarah rumors. Eventually her classmates decide Sarah is OK, she receives the accolades of her teachers, the end.

Sarah Wenner, who was fifteen years old, but who did not look more than twelve, hesitated in the doorway between the kitchen and the best room, a great tray of tumblers and cups in her hands. "Those knives and forks we keep always in here, Aunt Mena. We do not use them for every day." Her aunt, Mena Illick, lifted the knives from the drawer where she had laid them. One could see from her snapping black eyes that she did not enjoy being directed by Sarah. But order was order, and no one ever justly accused a Pennsylvania German housewife of not putting things where they belonged. She laid the...

Excerpt from Ellen Levis: A Novel On a dismal day in March, four years before Ellen Levis was born or dreamed of, the slight acquaintance of Stephen Lanfair and Edward Levis was quickened by an unpleasant incident into friendship. Both attended the University Medical School in Philadelphia and both were ambitious, but there the resemblance between them ended. Stephen, an underclassman, the only son of a physician, had been started early and well in his career, and was the youngest student; Levis, a Senior, had fended for himself and was almost the oldest. Stephen had an allowance which was...