 CHAPTER XII. It was not always an admiration that the finger was pointed at me. One day I found myself the center of an excited group in the middle of the schoolyard, with a dozen girls interrupting each other to express their disapproval of me. For I had coolly told them, in answer to a question, that I did not believe in God. How had I arrived at such a conviction? How had I come, from prayer and fasting and psalm singing, to extreme impiety? Alas, my backsliding had cost me no travail of spirit. Always weak in my faith, playing at sanctity as I played at soldiers, just as I was in the mood or not, I had neglected my books of devotion and given myself up to profane literature at the first opportunity in Vitebsk, and I never took up my prayer book again. On my return to Polotsk, America loomed so near that my imagination was fully occupied, and I did not revive the secret experiments with which I used to test the nature and intention of deity. It was more to me that I was going to America than that I might not be going to heaven. And when we joined my father, and I saw that he did not wear the sacred fringes, and did not put on the philacteries and pray, I was neither surprised nor shocked, remembering the Sabbath night when he had with his own hand turned out the lamp. When I saw him go out to work on Sabbath, exactly as on a weekday, I understood why God had not annihilated me with his lightnings at that time when I purposely carried something in my pocket on Sabbath. There was no God, and there was no sin. And I ran out to play, pleased to find that I was free, like other little girls in the street, instead of being hemmed about with prohibitions and obligations at every step. And yet if the golden truth of Judaism had not been handed me in the motley rags of formalism, I might not have been so ready to put away my religion. It was Rachel Goldstein who provoked my avowal of atheism. She asked if I wasn't going to stay out of school during Passover, and I said no. Wasn't I a Jew? She wanted to know. No I wasn't. I was a free thinker. What was that? I didn't believe in God. Rachel was horrified. Why, Kitty Maloney believed in God, and Kitty was only a Catholic. She appealed to Kitty. Kitty Maloney, come over here. Don't you believe in God? There now, Mary Anton. Mary Anton says she doesn't believe in God. Rachel Goldstein's horror is duplicated. Kitty Maloney, who used to mock Rachel's Jewish accent, instantly becomes her valuable ally and proceeds to annihilate me by plying me with crucial questions. You don't believe in God? Then who made you, Mary Anton? Nature made me. Nature made you? What's that? It's everything. It's the trees. No, it's what makes the trees grow. That's what it is. But God made the trees, Mary Anton, from Rachel and Kitty in Chorus. Maggie O'Reilly, listen to Mary Anton. She says there isn't any God. She says the trees made her. Rachel and Kitty and Maggie, Saity and Annie and Becky, made a circle around me and pressed me with questions and mocked me and threatened me with hell flames and utter extinction. I held my ground against them all obstinately enough, though my argument was exceedingly lame. I glibly repeated phrases I had heard my father use. But I had no real understanding of his atheistic doctrines. I had been surprised into this dispute. I had no spontaneous interest in the subject. My mind was occupied with other things. But as the number of my opponents grew and I saw how unanimously they condemned me, my indifference turned into a heat of indignation. The actual point to issue was as little as ever to me, but I perceived that a crowd of free Americans were disputing the right of a fellow citizen to have any kind of God she chose. I knew from my father's teaching that this persecution was contrary to the Constitution of the United States, and I held my ground as befitted the defender of a cause. George Washington would not have treated me as Rachel Goldstein and Kitty Maloney were doing. This is a free country. I reminded them in the middle of the argument. The excitement in the yard amounted to a toy riot. When the squabble rang and the children began to file in, I stood out there as long as any of my enemies remained, although it was my habit to go to my room very promptly. And as the foes of American liberty crowded and pushed in the line, whispering to those who had not heard that a heretic had been discovered in their mist, the teacher who kept the line in the corridor was obliged to scold and pull the noisy ones into order. And Sadie Cohen told her, in tones of awe, what the commotion was about. This bland waited till the children had filed in, before she asked me, in a tone encouraging confidence, to give my version of the story. This I did, huskily but fearlessly, and the teacher, who was a woman of tact, did not smile or commit herself in any way. She was sorry that the children had been rude to me, but she thought they would not trouble me any more if I let the subject drop. She made me understand, somewhat as Miss Dillingham had done, on the occasion of my whispering during prayer, that it was proper American conduct to avoid religious arguments on school territory. I fell honored by this private initiation into the doctrine of the separation of church and state, and I went to my seat with a good deal of dignity, my alarm about the safety of the Constitution, allayed by the teacher's calmness. This is not so strictly the story of the second generation that I may not properly give a brief account of how it fared with my mother, when my father undertook to purge his house of superstition. The process of her emancipation, it is true, was not obvious to me at the time, but what I observed of her outward conduct has been interpreted by my subsequent experience. So that today I understand how it happens that all the year round my mother keeps the same day of rest as her gentile neighbors. But when the ramshorn blows on the day of atonement, calling upon Israel to cleanse its heart from sin and draw nearer to the God of its fathers, her soul was stirred as of old, and she needs must join in the ancient service. It means I have come to know that she has dropped the husk and retained the kernel of Judaism. But years were required for this process of instinctive selection. My father, in his ambition to make Americans of us, was rather headlong and strenuous in his methods. To my mother, on the eve of departure for the New World, he wrote boldly that progressive Jews in America did not spend their days in praying, and he urged her to leave her wig in Polotsk as a first step of progress. My mother, like the majority of women in the pail, had all her life taken her religion on authority, so she was only fulfilling her duty to her husband when she took his hint, and set out upon her journey in her own hair. Not that it was done without reluctance, the Jewish faith in her was deeply rooted, as in the best of Jews it always is. The law of the fathers was binding to her, and the outward symbols of obedience, inseparable from the spirit. But the breath of revolt against orthodox eternals was at this time beginning to reach us in Polotsk from the greater world, notably from America. Sons whose parents had impoverished themselves by paying the fine for non-appearance in military duty, in order to save their darlings from the inevitable sins of violated Judaism well in the service, with their faces shaved, and the grieved old fathers and mothers, after offering up special prayers for the renegades and giving charity in their name, exhibited the significant portraits on their parlor tables. My mother's own nephew went no farther than Vilna, ten hours journey from Polotsk, to learn to cut his beard, and even within our town limits, young women of education were beginning to reject the wig after marriage. A notorious example was the beautiful daughter of Laza the Rav, who was not restrained by her father's conspicuous relation to Judaism, from exhibiting her lovely black curls like a maiden. And it was a further sign of the times that the Rav did not disown his daughter. What wondered then that my poor mother, shaken by these foreshadowings of revolution in our midst, and by the express authority of her husband, gave up the emblem of matrimonial chastity with but a passing struggle? Considering how the heavy burdens which she had borne from childhood had never allowed her time to think for herself at all, but had obliged her always to tread blindly in the beaten paths, I think it greatly to her credit that in her puzzling situation she did not lose her poise entirely. Bred to submission, submit she must, and when she perceived a conflict of authorities, she prepared to accept the new order of things under which her children's future was to be formed. Wherein she showed her native adaptability the readiness to fall into line, which is one of the most charming traits of her gentle, self-effacing nature. My father gave my mother very little time to adjust herself. He was only three years from the old world with its settled prejudices. Considering his education he had thought out a good deal for himself, but his line of thinking had not as yet brought him to include women in the intellectual emancipation for which he himself had been so eager even in Russia. This was still in the day when he was astonished to learn that women had written books, had used their minds, their imaginations, unaided. He still rated the mental capacity of the average woman as only a little above that of the cattle she tended. He held it to be a wife's duty to follow her husband in all things. He could do all the thinking for the family he believed, and being convinced that to hold to the outward forms of orthodox Judaism was to be hampered in the race for Americanization, he did not hesitate to order our family life on unorthodox lines. There was no conscious despotism in this. It was only making manly haste to realize the unideal, the nobility of which there was no one to dispute. My mother, as we know, had not the initial impulse to depart from ancient usage that my father had in his habitual skepticism. He had always been a nonconformist in his heart. She bore lovingly the yoke of prescribed conduct. Individual freedom to him was the only tolerable condition of life. To her it was confusion. My mother, therefore, gradually divested herself at my father's bidding of the mantle of orthodox observance, but the process caused her many a pain because the fabric of that venerable garment was interwoven with the fabric of her soul. My father did not attempt to touch the fundamentals of her faith. He certainly did not forbid her to honor God by loving her neighbor, which is perhaps not far from being the whole of Judaism. If his loud denials of the existence of God influenced her to reconsider her creed, it was merely an incidental result of the freedom of expression he was so eager to practice after his life of enforced hypocrisy. As the opinions of a mere woman on matter so abstract as religion did not interest him in the least, he counted it no particular triumph if he observed that my mother weakened in her faith as years went by. He allowed her to keep a Jewish kitchen as long as she pleased, but he did not want us children to refuse invitations to the table of our Gentile neighbors. He would have no bar to our social intercourse with the world around us, for only by freely sharing the life of our neighbors could we come into our full inheritance of American freedom and opportunity. On the holy days he bought my mother a ticket for the synagogue, but the children he sent to school. On Sabbath Eve my mother might light the consecrated candles, but he kept the store open until Sunday morning. My mother might believe and worship as she pleased, up to the point where her orthodoxy began to interfere with the American progress of the family. The price that all of us paid for this disorganization of our family life has been levied on every immigrant Jewish household where the first generation clings to the traditions of the old world, while the second generation leads the life of the new. Nothing more pitiful could be written in the annals of the Jews. Nothing more inevitable. Nothing more hopeful. Hopeful, yes, a like for the Jew and for the country that has given him shelter. For Israel is not the only party that has put up a forfeit in this contest. The nations may well sit by and watch the struggle, for humanity has a stake in it. I say this, whose life has borne witness, whose heart is heavy with revelations it has not made, and I speak for thousands, O, for thousands. My gray hairs are too few for me to let these pages trespass the limits I have set myself. That part of my life which contains the climax of my personal drama I must leave to my grandchildren to record. My father might speak and tell how, in time, he discovered that in his first violent rejection of everything old and established, he cast from him much that he afterwards missed. He might tell to what extent he later retraced his steps, seeking to recover what he had learned to value anew, how it fared with his avowed irreligion when put to the extreme test. To what, in short, his emancipation amounted. And he, like myself, would speak for thousands. My grandchildren, for all I know, may have a graver task than I have set them. Perhaps they may have to testify that the faith of Israel is a heritage that no heir in the direct line has the power to alienate from his successors. Even I, with my limited perspective, think it doubtful if the conversion of the Jew to any alien belief or disbelief is ever thoroughly accomplished. What positive affirmation of the persistence of Judaism in the blood of my descendants may have to make, I may not be present to hear. It would be superfluous to state that none of these hints and prophecies troubled me at the time when I horrified the schoolyard by denying the existence of God on the authority of my Father and defended my right to my atheism on the authority of the Constitution. I considered myself absolutely, eternally, delightfully emancipated from the yoke of indefensible superstitions. I was wild with indignation and pity when I remembered how my poor brother had been cruelly tormented because he did not want to sit in header and learn what was after all false or useless. I knew now why poor Reb Leba had been unable to answer my questions. It was because the truth was not whispered outside America. I was very much in love with my enlightenment and eager for opportunities to give proof of it. It was Miss Dillingham, she who helped me in so many ways, who unconsciously put me to an early test, the result of which gave me a shock that I did not get over for many a day. She invited me to tea one day, and I came in much trepidation. It was my first entrance into a genuine American household, my first meal at a Gentile, yes, a Christian, bored. Would I know how to behave properly? I do not know whether I betrayed my anxiety. I am certain only that I was all eyes and ears, that nothing should escape me which might serve to guide me. This after all was a normal state for me to be in. So I suppose I looked natural, no matter how much I stared. I had been accustomed to consider my table manners irreproachable, but America was not pilotsk, as my father was ever saying. So I proceeded very cautiously with my spoons and forks. I was cunning enough to try to conceal my uncertainty by being just a little bit slow. I did not get to any given spoon until the others at table had shown me which it was. All went well, until a platter was passed with a kind of meat that was strange to me. Some mischievous instinct told me that it was ham, forbidden food, and I, the liberal, the free, was afraid to touch it. I had a terrible moment of surprise, mortification, self-contempt, but I helped myself to a slice of ham nevertheless, and hung my head over my plate to hide my confusion. I was furious with myself for my weakness. I, to be afraid of a pink piece of pig's flesh, who had defied at least two religions in defense of free thought, and I began to reduce my ham to indivisible atoms, determined to eat more of it than anybody at the table. Alas, I learned that to eat in defense of principles was not so easy as to talk. I ate, but only a newly abnegated Jew can understand with what squirming, what protesting of the inner man, what exquisite abhorrence of myself, that Spartan boy who allowed the stolen fox hidden in his bosom, to consume his vitals, rather than be detected in the theft, showed no such miracle of self-control as did I, sitting there at my friend's tea-table, eating un-Jewish meat. And to think that so ridiculous a thing as a scrap of meat should be the symbol and test of things so august, to think that in the mental life of a half-grown child should be reflected the struggles and triumphs of ages. Over and over and over again I discovered that I am a wonderful thing, being human, that I am the image of the universe, being myself, that I am the repository of all the wisdom in the world, being alive and sane at the beginning of this twentieth century. The error of the ages am I, and all that has been is in me, and shall continue to be in my immortal self. CHAPTER XIII. A CHILD'S PARADISE All this while that I was studying and exploring in the borderland between the old life and the new, leaping at conclusions and sometimes slipping, finding inspiration in common things, and interpretations in dumb things, eagerly scaling the ladder of learning, my eyes on star dyademed peaks of ambition, building up friendships that should support my youth and enrich my womanhood, learning to think much of myself and much more of my world, while I was steadily gathering in my heritage, sewed in the dim past, and ripened in the sun of my own day. What was my sister doing? Why, what she had always done, keeping close to my mother's side, keeping close to my mother's side on the dreary marches of a humdrum life, sensing sweet gardens of forbidden joy, but never turning from the path of duty. I cannot believe but that her sacrifices tasted as dust and ashes to her at times. For Frida was a mere girl whose childhood, on the whole, had been gray, while her appetite for happy things was as great as any normal girl's. She had a fine sense for what was best in the life about her, though she could not articulate her appreciation. She longed to possess the good things, but her position in the family forbidding possession, she developed a talent for vicarious enjoyment which I never in this life hoped to imitate. And her simple mind did not busy itself with self-analysis. She did not even know why she was happy. She thought life was good to her. Still, there must have been moments when she perceived that the finer things were not in themselves unattainable, but were kept from her by a social tyranny. This I can only surmise, as in our daily intercourse she never gave a sign of discontent. We continued to have a part of our life in common for some time after she went to work. We formed ourselves into an evening school. She and I and the two youngsters, for the study of English and arithmetic. As soon as the supper dishes were put away, we gathered around the kitchen table, with books borrowed from school, and pencils supplied by my father with eager willingness. I was the teacher, the others the diligent pupils, and the earnestness with which we labored was worthy of the great things we meant to achieve. Whether the results were commensurate with their efforts I cannot say. I only know that Frida's cheeks flamed with the excitement of reading English monosyllables, and her eyes shone like stars on a moonless night when I explained to her how she and I and George Washington were fellow citizens together. Inspired by our studious evenings, what Frida Anton would not be glad to set all day bent over the needle that the family should keep on its feet and marry continue at school. The morning ride on the ferry boat, when spring winds dimpled the river, may have stirred her heart with nameless longings. But when she took her place at the machine her lot was glorified to her, and she wanted to sing. For the girls, the foreman, the boss, all talked about Mary Anton, whose poems were printed in an American newspaper. Wherever she went on her humble business she was sure to hear her sister's name, for with characteristic loyalty the whole Jewish community claimed kinship with me simply because I was a Jew, and they made much of my small triumphs, and pointed to me with pride, just as they do when a Jew distinguishes himself in any worthy way. Frida, going home from work at sunset, when rosy buds beaded the shining stems, may have felt the weariness of those who toil for bread. But when we opened our books after supper, her spirit revived afresh, and it was only when the lamp began to smoke that she thought of taking rest. At bedtime she and I chatted as we used to do when we were little girls in Polotsk. Only now, instead of closing our eyes to see imaginary wonders, according to a bedtime game of ours, we exchanged anecdotes about the marvelous adventures of our American life. My contributions on these occasions were boastful accounts, I have no doubt, of what I did at school, and in the company of school committeemen, editors, and other notables. And Frida's delight in my achievements was the very flower of her fine sympathy. As formerly, when I had been naughty and I invited her to share in my repentance, she used to join me in spiritual humility and solemnly dedicate herself to a better life. So now, when I was full of pride and ambition, she too felt the crown on her brows, and heard the applause of future generations murmuring in her ear. And so partaking of her sister's glory, what Frida Anton would not say that her portion was sufficient reward for a youth of toil. I did not, like my sister, earn my bread in those days. But let us say that I earned my salt by sweeping, scrubbing and scouring on Saturdays when there was no school. My mother's housekeeping was necessarily irregular, as she was pretty constantly occupied in the store. So there was enough for us children to do to keep the bare room shining. Even here Frida did the lion's share. It used to take me all Saturday to accomplish what Frida would do with half a dozen turns of her capable hands. I did not like housework, but I loved order, so I polished windows with a will, and even got some fun out of scrubbing, by laying out the floor in patterns, and tracing them all around the room in a lively flurry of soap suds. There is a joy that comes from doing common things well, especially if they seem hard to us. When I faced a day's housework, I was half paralyzed with a sense of inability, and I wasted precious minutes walking around it to see what a very hard task I had. By having pitched in and conquered, it gave me an exquisite pleasure to survey my work. My hair tousled, and my dress tucked up, streaked arms bare to the elbow, I would step on my heels over the damp, clean boards, and pass my hands over the chair-round and table-legs to prove that no dust was left. I could not wait to put my dress in order before running out into the street to see how my windows shone. Every workman who carries a dinner pail has these moments of keen delight in the product of his drudgery. Men of genius likewise, in their hours of relaxation from their loftier tasks, prove this universal rule. I know a man who fills a chair at a great university. I have seen him hold a rum of otherwise restless youths spellbound for an hour, while he discoursed about the respective inhabitants of the earth and sea at a time when nothing walked on fewer than four legs. And I have seen this scholar, his ponderous tomes shelved for a space, turning over and over with cherishing hands a letter box that he had made out of cardboard and paste, and exhibiting it proudly to his friends. For the hand was the first instrument of labor, that distinctive accomplishment by which man finally raised himself above his cousins, the lower animals, and a respect for the work of the hand survives as an instinct in all of us. The stretch of weeks from June to September, when the schools were closed, would have been hard to fill in had it not been for the public library. At first I made myself a calendar of the vacation months, and every morning I tore off a day, and comforted myself with the decreasing number of vacation days. But after I discovered the public library, I was not impatient for the reopening of school. The library did not open till one o'clock in the afternoon, and each reader was allowed to take out only one book at a time. Long before one o'clock I was to be seen on the library steps, waiting for the door of paradise to open. I spent hours in the reading room, pleased with the atmosphere of books, with the order and quiet of the place, so unlike anything on Arlington Street. The sense of these things permeated my consciousness, even when I was absorbed in a book, just as the rustle of pages turned, and the tiptoe tread of the library and reached my ear, without distracting my attention. Anything so wonderful as a library had never been in my life. It was even better than school in some ways. One could read and read, and learn and learn as fast as one knew how, not being obliged to stop for stupid little girls and in a ton of little boys to catch up with the lesson. When I went home from the library I had a book under my arm, and I would finish it before the library opened next day, no matter till what hours of the night I burned my little lamp. What books did I read so diligently? Pretty nearly everything that came to my hand. I dare say the librarian helped me select my books. But curiously enough I do not remember. Everything must have directed me, for I read a great many of the books that are written for children. Of these I remember with the greatest delight Louisa Elcott's stories. A less attractive series of books was of the Sunday School type. In volume after volume, a very naughty little girl by the name of Lulu was always going into tempers that her father might have opportunity to lecture her and point to her angelic little sister Gracie as an example of what she should be, after which they all felt better and prayed. Next to Louisa Elcott's books and my esteem were boys' books of adventure, many of them by Horatio Elger, and I read all I suppose of the Rolo books by Jacob Abbott. But that was not all. I read every kind of printed rubbish that came into the house by design or accident. A weekly story paper of a worse-than-worthless character that circulated widely in our neighborhood because subscribers were rewarded with a premium of a diamond ring, warranted I don't know how many carrots. Occupied me for hours. The stories in this paper resembled, in breathlessness of plot, abundance of horrors, and improbability of characters, the things I used to read in Vitebsk. The text was illustrated by frequent pictures, in which the villain generally had his hands on the heroine's throat, while the hero was bursting in through a graceful drapery to the rescue of his beloved. If a bundle came into the house wrapped in a stained old newspaper, I laboriously smoothed out the paper and read it through. I enjoyed it all, and found fault with nothing that I read. And as in the case of the Vitebsk readings, I cannot find that I suffered any harm. Of course, reading so many better books, there came a time when the diamond-ring story paper disgusted me. But in the beginning my appetite for print was so enormous that I could let nothing pass through my hands unread, while my taste was so crude that nothing printed could offend me. Good reading matter came into the house from one other source besides the library. The Yiddish newspapers of the day were excellent, and my father subscribed to the best of them. Since that time Yiddish journalism has sadly degenerated, through imitation of the vicious yellow journals of the American press. There was one book in the library over which I poured very often, and that was the Encyclopedia. I turned usually to the names of famous people, beginning of course with George Washington. Often as of all, I read the biographical sketches of my favorite authors, and felt that the worthys must have been glad to die just to have their names and histories printed out in the Book of Fame. It seemed to me the apotheosis of glory to be even briefly mentioned in an Encyclopedia, and there grew in me an enormous ambition that devoured all my other ambitions, which was no less than this, that I should live to know that after my death my name would surely be printed in the Encyclopedia. It was such a prodigious thing to expect that I kept the idea a secret even from myself, just letting it lie where it sprouted, in an unexplored corner of my busy brain. But it grew on me in spite of myself, till finally I could not resist the temptation to study out the exact place in the Encyclopedia where my name would belong. I saw that it would come not far from Elcott, Louisa M., and I covered my face with my hands to hide the silly baseless joy in it. I practised saying my name in the Encyclopedic form, Anton Mary, and I realised that it sounded chopped off and wondered if I might not annex a middle initial. I wanted to ask my teacher about it, but I was afraid I might betray my reasons. For infatuated though I was with the idea of greatness I might live to attain, I knew very well that thus far my claims to post humus fame were ridiculously unfounded, and I did not want to be laughed at for my vanity. Spira of all childhood, forgive me, forgive me, for so lightly betraying a child's dream secrets. I that smile so scoffingly to-day at the unsophisticated child that was myself, have I found any nobler thing in life than my own longing to be noble? Would I not rather be consumed by ambitions that can never be realised than live in stupid acceptance of my neighbor's opinion of me? The statue in the public square is less a portrait of a mortal individual than a symbol of the immortal aspiration of humanity. So do not laugh at the little boy playing at soldiers if he tells you how he was going to hew the world into good behaviour when he gets to be a man. And do, by all means, write my name in the Book of Fame saying, She was one who aspired, for in that condensed form is the story of the lives of the great. Summer days are long, and the evenings we know are as long as the lampwick, so with all my reading I had time to play, and with all my studiousness I had the will to play. My favourite playmates were boys. It was but mild fun to play theatre in Bessie Finkelstein's backyard, even if I had leading parts, which I made impressive by recitations in Russian. No word of which was intelligible to my audience. It was far better sport to play hide and seek with the boys, for I enjoyed the use of my limbs, what there was of them, I was so often reproached and teased for being little that it gave me great satisfaction to be a five-foot boy to the goal. Once a great, hulky-coloured boy, who was the torment of the neighbourhood, treated me roughly while I was playing on the street. My father, determined to teach the rascal a lesson for once, had him arrested and brought to court. The boy was locked up overnight, and he emerged from his brief imprisonment with the respect for the rights and persons of his neighbours. But the moral of this incident lies not herein. What interested me more than my revenge on a bully was what I saw of the way in which justice was actually administered in the United States. Here we were gathered in the little courtroom, bearded Arlington Street against wool-headed Arlington Street, accused and accuser, witnesses, sympathisers, sightseers, and all. Nobody cringed, nobody was bullied, nobody lied who didn't want to. We were all free, and all treated equally, just as it was said in the Constitution. The evildoer was actually punished, and not the victim, as might very easily happen in a similar case in Russia. Liberty and justice for all, three cheers for the red, white, and blue. There was one occasion in the week when I was ever willing to put away my book, no matter how entrancing were its pages. That was on Saturday night when Bessie Finkelstein called for me, and Bessie and I, with arms entwined, called for Sadie Rabinovich, and Bessie and Sadie and I, still further entwined, called for Annie Riley, and Bessie, et cetera, et cetera, inextricably wound up, marched up Broadway, and took possession of all we saw, heard, guessed, or desired, from end to end of that main thoroughfare of Chelsea. Parading all abreast, as many as we were, only breaking ranks to let people pass, leaving the imprints of our noses and fingers on plate glass windows ablaze with electric lights and alluring with display, inspecting tons of cheap candy to find a few pennies worth of the most enduring kind, the same to be sucked and chewed by the company, turn and turn about, as we continued our promenade. Loitering wherever a crowd gathered, or running for a block or so, to cheer on the fire engine or police ambulance, getting into everybody's way, and just keeping clear of serious mischief. We were only girls. We enjoyed ourselves as only children can, whose fathers keep a basement grocery store, whose mothers do their own washing, and whose sisters operate a machine for five dollars a week. Had we been boys, I suppose Bessie and Sadie and the rest of us would have been a gang, and would have popped into the Chinese laundry to tease Chinky Chinaman, and been chased by the cops from comfortable doorsteps, and had a bully time of it. Being what we were, we called ourselves a set, and we had a lovely time, as people who passed us on Broadway could not fail to see. And here, for we were at the giggling age, and Broadway on Saturday night was full of giggles for us. We stayed out till all hours, too, for Arlington Street had no strict domestic program, not even in the nursery, the inmates of which were as likely to be found in the gutter as in their cots, at any time this side of one o'clock in the morning. There was an element in my enjoyment that was yielded neither by the sights, the adventures, nor the chewing candy. I had a keen feeling for the sociability of the crowd. All plebeian Chelsea was abroad, and a bourgeois population is nowhere unneighborly. Women shapeless with bundles, their hats awry over thin, eager faces, gathered in knots on the edge of the curb, boasting of their bargains. Little girls in curlpapers, and little boys in brimless hats clung to their skirts, whining for pennies, only to be silenced by absent-minded cuffs. A few disconsolate fathers strayed behind these family groups, the rest being distributed between the barber shops and the corner lamp posts. I understood these people, being one of them, and I liked them, and I found it all delightfully sociable. Saturday night is the work man's wife's night, but that does not entirely prevent my lady from going abroad, if only to leave an order at the florists. So it happened that Bellingham Hill and Washington Avenue, the aristocratic sections of Chelsea, mingled with Arlington Street on Broadway, to the further enhancement of my enjoyment of the occasion. For I always loved a mixed crowd. I loved the contrasts, the highlights, and deep shadows, and the gradations that connect the two and make all life one. I saw many, many things that I was not aware of seeing at the time. I only found out afterwards what treasures my brain had stored up. When coming to the puzzling places in life, light and meaning would suddenly burst on me, the hidden fruit of some experience that had not impressed me at the time. How many times, I wonder, did I brush past my destiny on Broadway, foolishly staring after it, instead of going home to pray? I wonder, did a stranger collide with me, and put me patiently out of his way, wondering why such a might was not at home and a bed at ten o'clock in the evening, and never dreaming that one day he might have to reckon with me? Did someone smile down on my childish glee? I wonder, unworned of a day when we should weep together. I wonder, I wonder, a million threads of life and love and sorrow was the common street, and whether we would or not, we entangled ourselves in a common maze, without paying the homage of a second glance to those who would someday master us. Too dull to pick that face from out the crowd which one day would bend over us in love or pity or remorse. What company of skipping laughing little girls is to be reproached for careless hours when men and women on every side stepped heedlessly into the traps of fate. Small sin it was to annoy my neighbor by getting in his way, as I stared over my shoulder. If a grown man knew no better than to drop a word in passing, that might turn the course of another's life, as a boulder rolled down from the mountainside deflects the current of a brook. So went the life in Chelsea for the space of a year or so, then my father, finding a discrepancy between his assets and liabilities on the wrong side of the ledger, once more struck-tent, collected his flock, and set out in search of richer pastures. There was a charming simplicity about these proceedings. Here today, apparently rooted, there to-morrow, and just as much at home. Another basement grocery, with a freshly painted sign over the door, the broom in the corner, the loaf on the table. These things made home for us. There were rather more Negroes on Wheeler Street, in the lower south end of Boston, than there had been on Arlington Street, which promised more numerous outstanding accounts. But they were a neighborly folk, and they took us strangers in, sometimes very badly. Then there was the school three blocks away, where America was sung to the same tune as in Chelsea, and geography was made as dark a mystery. It was impossible not to feel at home. And presently, lest anything be lacking to our domestic bliss, there was a new baby in a borrowed crib, and little Dora had only a few more turns to take with her battered doll carriage, before a life-sized vehicle, with a more animated dolly, was turned over to her constant care. The Wheeler Street neighborhood is not a place where a refined young lady would care to find herself alone, even in the cheery daylight. If she came all, she would be attended by a trusty escort. She would not get too close to people on the doorsteps, and she would shrink away in disgust and fear from a bleary-eyed creature careering down the sidewalk on many jointed legs. The delicate damsel would hasten home to wash and purify and perfume herself till the foul contact of Wheeler Street was utterly eradicated, and her wanted purity restored. And I do not blame her. I only wish that she would bring a little soap and water and perfumery into Wheeler Street next time she comes, for some people there may be smothering in the filth, which they abhor as much as she, but from which they cannot, like her, run away. Many years after my escape from Wheeler Street, I returned to see if the place was as bad as I remembered it. I found the narrow street grown even narrower, the sidewalk not broad enough for two to walk abreast. The gutter choked with dust and refuse, the dingy row of tenements on either side unspeakably gloomy. I discovered what I had not realized before, that Wheeler Street was a crooked lane connecting a corner saloon on Shawma Avenue, with a block of houses of ill-repute on Corning Street. It had been the same in my day, but I had not understood much, and I lived unharmed. On this later visit I walked slowly up one side of the street and down the other, remembering many things. It was eleven o'clock in the evening, and sounds of squabbling coming through doors and windows, informed my experienced ear that a part of Wheeler Street was going to bed. The grocery store in the basement of number eleven, my father's old store, was still open for business, and in the gutter in front of the store to be sure was a happy baby, just as there used to be. I was not alone on this tour of inspection. I was attended by a trusty escort. But I brought soap and water with me. I am applying them now. I found no fault with Wheeler Street when I was fourteen years old. On the contrary, I pronounced it good. We had never lived so near the car tracks before, and I delighted in the moon-like splendor of the arc lamp just in front of the saloon. The space illumined by the slamp, and enlivened by the passage of many thirsty souls, was the favourite playground for Wheeler Street youth. On our street there was not room to turn around. Here the sidewalk spread out wider as it swung around to Shawma Avenue. I played with the boys by preference, as in Chelsea. I learned to cut across the tracks in front of an oncoming car, and it was great fun to see the motorman's angry face turn scared when he thought I was going to be shaved this time sure. It was amusing too to watch the side door of the saloon, which opened right opposite the grocery store, and see a drunken man put out by the bartender. The fellow would whine so comically, and cling to the door-post, so like a damp leaf to a twig, and blubber so like a red-faced baby, that it was really funny to see him. And there was Morgan Chapel. It was worth coming to Wheeler Street just for that. All the children of the neighbourhood, except the most rowdy-ish, flocked to Morgan Chapel at least once a week. This was on Saturday evening, when a free entertainment was given, consisting of music, recitations, and other parlor accomplishments. The performances were exceedingly artistic, according to the impartial judgment of Juvenile Wheeler Street. I can speak with authority for the crowd of us from number eleven. We hung upon the lips of the beautiful ladies who read or sang to us, and they in turn did their best, recognizing the quality of our approval. We admired the miraculously clean gentleman who sang or played, as heartily as we applauded their performance. Sometimes the beautiful ladies were accompanied by ravishing little girls, who stood up in a glory of golden curls, frilled petticoats, and silk stockings, to recite pathetic or comic pieces, with trained expression, and practiced gestures, that seemed to us the perfection of the elocutionary art. We were all a little bit stage-struck after these entertainments, but what was more, we were genuinely moved by the glimpses of a fairer world than ours, which we caught through the music and poetry, the world in which the beautiful ladies dwelt with the fairy children and the clean gentleman. Brother Hodgkins, who managed these entertainments, knew what he was there for. His programs were masterly. Classics of the lighter sort were judiciously interspersed with the favorite street songs of the day. Nothing that savored of the chapel was there. The hour was honestly devoted to entertainment. The total effect was an exquisitely balanced compound of pleasure, wonder, and longing. Knock-need men with purple noses, bustling chins, and no collars, who slouched in skeptically, and sat tentatively on the edge of the rear settees at the beginning of the concert, moved nearer the front as the program went on, and openly joined in the applause at the end. Scowling fellows, who came in with defiant faces, occasionally sunk out, shame-faced. And both the knock-need and the defiant sometimes remained to hear Brother Tompkins pray and preach. And it was all due to Brother Hodgkins' masterly program. The children behaved very well, for the most part. The few tufts who came in on purpose to make trouble were promptly expelled by Brother Hodgkins and his lieutenants. I could not help admiring Brother Hodgkins. He was so eminently efficient in every part of the hall, at every stage of the proceedings. I always believed that he was the author of the alluring notices that occupied the Bulletin Board every Saturday, though I never knew it for a fact. The way he handled the bad boys was masterly. The way he introduced the performers was inimitable. The way he did everything was the best way. And yet I did not like Brother Hodgkins. I could not. He was too slim, too pale, too fair. His voice was too encouraging. His smile was too restrained. The man was a missionary, and it stuck out all over him. I could not abide a missionary. That was the Jew in me, the European Jew, trained by the cruel centuries of his outcast existence to distrust anyone who spoke of God by any other name than Adonai. But I should have resented the suggestion that inherited distressed was the cause of my dislike for good Brother Hodgkins, for I considered myself freed from racial prejudices by the same triumph of my infallible judgment which had lifted me from the yoke of credulity. An uncompromising atheist, such as I was at the age of fourteen, was bound to scorn all those who sought to implant religion in their fellow men, and thereby prolong the reign of superstition. Of course, that was the explanation. Brother Hodgkins, happily unconscious of my disapproval of his confliction, arose at intervals behind the railing to announce from a slip of paper that the next number on our program will be a musical selection by, etc., etc., until he arrived at, I am sure you will all join me in thanking the ladies and gentlemen who have entertained us this evening. And as I moved towards the door with my companions, I would hear his voice raised for the inevitable. You are all invited to remain to a short prayer service, after which, a little louder, refreshments will be served in the vestry. I will ask Brother Hodgkins, too. The rest was lost in the shuffle of feet about the door, and the roar of electric cars glancing past each other on opposite tracks. I always got out of the chapel before Brother Hodgkins could do me any harm, as if there was anything he could steal from me, now that there was no God in my heart. If I were to go back to Morgan Chapel now, I should stay to hear Brother Tompkins, and as many other brethren as might have anything to say. I would sit very still in my corner seat, and listen to the prayer, and silently join in the Amen. For I know now what Wheeler Street is, and I know what Morgan Chapel is there for, in the midst of those crooked alleys, those saloons, those pawn shops, those gloomy tenements. It is there to apply soap and water, and it is doing that all the time. I have learned since my deliverance from Wheeler Street that there is more than one road to any given goal. I should look with respect at Brother Hodgkins applying soap and water in his own way, convinced at last that my way is not the only way. Men must work with those tools to the use of which they are best fitted by nature. Brother Hodgkins must pray, and I must bear witness, and another must nurse a feeble infant. We are all honest workmen, and all deserve standing-room in the workshop of sweating humanity. It is only the idle scoffers who stand by in jeer at our efforts to cleanse our house that should be kicked out of the door as Brother Hodgkins turned out the rowdies. It was characteristic of the looseness of our family discipline at this time that nobody was seriously interested in our visits to Morgan Chapel. Our time was our own, after school duties and household tasks were done. Joseph sold newspapers after school. I swept and washed dishes. Dor reminded the baby. For the rest, we amused ourselves as best we could. Father and mother were preoccupied with the store day and night, and not so much with weighing and measuring and making change as with figuring out how long it would take the outstanding accounts to ruin the business entirely. If my mother had scruples against her children resorting to a building with a cross on it, she did not have time to formulate them. If my father heard us talking about Morgan Chapel, he dismissed the subject with a sarcastic characterization and wanted to know if we were going to join the Salvation Army next. But he did not seriously care, and he was willing that the children should have a good time. And if my parents had objected to Morgan Chapel, was a sidewalk in front of the saloon a better place for us children to spend the evening? They could not have argued with us very long, so they hardly argued at all. In Pilotsk we had been trained and watched, our days had been regulated, our conduct prescribed. In America suddenly we were let loose on the street. Why? Because my father having renounced his faith, and my mother being uncertain of hers, they had no particular creed to hold us to. The conception of a system of ethics independent of religion could not at once enter as an active principle in their life, so that they could give a child no reason why to be truthful or kind. And as with religion, so it fared with other branches of our domestic education. Chaos took the place of system, uncertainty, inconsistency undermined discipline. My parents knew only that they desired us to be like American children. And seeing how their neighbors gave their children boundless liberty, they turned us also loose, never doubting but that the American way was the best way. In public deportment, in etiquette, in all matters of social intercourse, they had no standards to go by. Seeing that America was not Polotsk, in their bewilderment and uncertainty, they must needstrust us children to learn from such models as the tenements afforded. More than this, they must step down from their throne of parental authority, and take the law from their children's mouths, for they had no other means of finding out what was good American form. The result was that laxity of domestic organization, that inversion of normal relations, which makes for friction, and which sometimes ends in breaking a family that was formerly united and happy. This sad process of disintegration of home life may be observed in almost any immigrant family of our class, and with our traditions and aspirations. It is part of the process of Americanization, and upheaval preceding the state of repose. It is the cross that the first and second generations must bear, an involuntary sacrifice for the sake of the future generations. These are the pains of adjustment, as racking as the pains of birth, and as the mother forgets her agonies in the bliss of clasping her babe to her breast, so the bentened heart sore immigrant forgets exile and homesickness and ridicule and loss and estrangement, when he beholds his sons and daughters moving as Americans among Americans. On Wheeler Street there were no real homes. There were miserable flats of three or four rooms, or fewer, in which families that did not practice race suicide, cooked, washed, and ate, slept from two to four in a bed, in windowless bedrooms, quarreled in the gray morning, and made up in the smoky evening, tormented each other, supported each other, saved each other, drove each other out of the house. But there was no common life in any form that means life. There was no room for it, for one thing, beds and cribs took up most of the floor space, disorder packed the inner spaces. The center table in the parlor was not loaded with books. It held invariably a photograph album and an ornamental lamp with a paper shade, and the lamp was usually out of order. So there was as little motive for a common life as there was room. The yard was only big enough for the perennial rubber sheep. The narrow sidewalk was crowded. What were the people to do with themselves? There were the saloons, the missions, the libraries, the cheap amusement places, and the neighborhood houses. People selected their resorts according to their tastes. The children let it be thankfully recorded, flacked mostly to the clubs. The little girls to sew, cook, dance, and play games, the little boys to hammer and paste, mend chairs, debate, and govern a toy republic. All these, of course, are forms of baptism by soap and water. Our neighborhood went in search of salvation to Morgan Memorial Hall, Barnard Memorial, Morgan Chapel, aforementioned, and some other clean places that lighted a candle in their window. My brother, my sister Dora, and I were introduced to some of the clubs by our young neighbors, and we were glad to go. For our home also gave us little besides meals in the kitchen and beds in the dark. What would the six of us and the store and the baby, and sometimes a greener or two from Pilotsk, whom we lodged as a matter of course, till they found a permanent home? What would such company and the size of our tenement? We needed to get out almost as much as our neighbor's children. I say almost. For our parlor we managed to keep pretty clear, and the lamp on our center-table was always in order, and its light fell often on an open book. Still it was part of the life of Wheeler Street to belong to clubs, so we belonged. I didn't care for sewing or cooking, so I joined a dancing club, and even here I was a failure. I had been a very good dancer in Russia, but here I found all the steps different, and I did not have the courage to go out in the middle of the slippery floor and mince it and toe it in front of the teacher. When I retired to a corner and tried to play dominoes, I became suddenly shy of my partner, and I never could win a game of checkers, although formerly I used to beat my father at it. I tried to be friends with a little girl I had known in Chelsea, but she met my advances coldly. She lived on Appleton Street, which was too aristocratic to mix with Wheeler Street. Geraldine was studying elocution, and she wore a scarlet cape and hood, and she was going on the stage by and by. I acknowledged that her sense of superiority was well founded, and retired farther into my corner for the first time conscious of my shabbiness and lowliness. I looked on at the dancing until I could endure it no longer. Overcome by a sense of isolation and unfitness, I slipped out of the room, avoiding the teacher's eye, and went home to write melancholy poetry. What had come over me? Why was I, the confident, the ambitious, suddenly grown so shy and meek? Why was the candidate for encyclopediaic immortality overawed by a scarlet hood? Why did I, a very tomboy yesterday, suddenly find my playmate stupid, and hide and seek a bore? I did not know why. I only knew that I was lonely and troubled and sore, and I went home to write sad poetry. I shall never forget the pattern of the red carpet in our parlor. We had achieved a carpet since Chelsea days, because I lay for hours face down on the floor, writing poetry on a screechy slate. When I had perfected my verses and copied them fair on the famous blue-lined note paper, and saw that I had made a very pathetic poem indeed, I felt better, and this happened over and over again. I gave up the dancing club, I ceased to know the rowdy little boys, and I wrote melancholy poetry oftener, and felt better. The center table became my study. I read much, and mooned between chapters, and wrote long letters to Miss Dillingham. For some time I wrote to her almost daily. That was when I found in my heart such depths of woe as I could not pack into rhyme. And finally there came a day when I could utter my trouble in neither verse nor prose, and I implored Miss Dillingham to come to me and hear my sorrowful revelations. But I did not want her to come to the house. In the house there was no privacy. I could not talk. Would she meet me on Boston Common at such and such a time? Would she? She was a devoted friend and a wise woman. She met me on Boston Common. It was a gray autumn day, wasn't not actually drizzling, and I was cold sitting on the bench. But I was thrilled through and through with the sense of the magnitude of my troubles, and of the romantic nature of the rendezvous. Who that was even half awake when he was growing up does not know what all these symptoms betoken. Miss Dillingham understood, and she wisely gave me no inkling of her diagnosis. She let me talk and kept a grave face. She did not belittle my troubles. I made specific charges against my home, members of my family, and life in general. She did not say that I would get over them. That every growing girl suffers from the blues. That I was, in brief, a little goose stretching my wings for flight. She told me rather that it would be noble to bear my sorrows bravely, to soothe those who irritated me, to live each day with all my might. She reminded me of great men and women who have suffered, and who overcame their troubles by living and working. And she sent me home amazingly comforted, my pettiness and self-consciousness routed by the quiet influence of her gray eyes searching mine. This or something like this had to be repeated many times, as anybody will know who is present at the slow birth of his manhood. From now on, for some years, of course, I must weep and laugh out of season, stand on tiptoe to pluck the stars in heaven, love and hate immoderately, propound theories on the destiny of man, and not know what is going on in my own heart. In intervals of harkening to my growing pains, I was, of course, still a little girl. As a little girl, in many ways immature for my age, I finished my course in the grammar school, and was graduated with honors, four years after my landing in Boston. Wheelish Street recognizes five great events in a girl's life, namely, christening, conformation, graduation, marriage, and burial. These occasions all require full dress for the heroine, and full dress is forthcoming, no matter if the family goes into debt for it. There was not a girl who came to school in rags all the year round that did not burst forth in sudden glory on graduation day. Fine muslin frocks, lace-trimmed petticoats, patent leather shoes, perishable hats, gloves, parasols, fans—every girl had them. A mother who had scrubbed floors for years to keep her girl in school was not going to have her shamed in the end for want of a pretty dress. So she cut off the children's supply of butter and worked nights, and borrowed and fell into arrears with a rent, and on graduation day she felt magnificently rewarded, seeing her Mamie as fine as any girl in the school, and in order to preserve for posterity this triumphant spectacle, she took Mamie after the exercises to be photographed, with her diploma in one hand, a bouquet in the other, and the gloves, fan, parasol, and patent leather shoes in full sight around a fancy table. Truly the follies of the poor are worth studying. It did not strike me as folly, but as the fulfillment of the portent of my natal star, when I saw myself on graduation day, a raid like unto a princess, frills, lace, patent leather shoes, I had everything. I even had a sash with silk fringes. Did I speak of folly? Listen, and I will tell you quite another tale. Perhaps when you have heard it, you will not be too hasty to run and teach the poor. Perhaps you will admit that the poor may have something to teach you. Before we had been two years in America, my sister Frida was engaged to be married. This was under the old dispensation. Frida came to America too late to avail herself of the gifts of an American girlhood. Had she been two years younger, she might have dodged her circumstances, evaded her old world fate. She would have gone to school and imbibed American ideas. She might have clung to her girlhood longer instead of marrying at seventeen. I am so fond of the American way that it has always seemed to me a pitiful accident that my sister should have come so near and missed by so little the fulfillment of my country's promise to woman. A long girlhood, a free choice in marriage, and a brimful world are the precious rights of an American woman. My father was too recently from the old world to be entirely free from the influence of its social traditions. He had put Frida to work out of necessity. The necessity was hardly lifted when she had an offer of marriage. But my father would not stand in the way of what he considered her welfare. Let her escape from the workshop if she had a chance, while the roses were still in her cheeks. If she remained for ten years more bent over the needle, what would she gain? Not even her personal comfort, for Frida never called her earnings her own, but spent everything on the family, denying herself all but the necessities. The young man who sued for her was a good workman, earning fair wages, a very approachable character, and refined manners. My father had known him for years. So Frida was to be released from the workshop. The act was really in the nature of a sacrifice on my father's part, for he was still in the woods financially and would sorely miss Frida's wages. The greater the pity, therefore, that there was no one to counsel him to give America more time with my sister. She attended the night school. She was fond of reading. In books, in a slowly ripening experience, she might have found a better answer to the riddle of a girl's life than a premature marriage. My sister's engagement pleased me very well. Our confidences were not interrupted, and I understood that she was happy. I was very fond of Moses Rifkin myself. He was the nicest young man of my acquaintance, not at all like other workmen. He was very kind to us children, bringing us presents and taking us out for excursions. He had a sense of humor, and he was going to marry our Frida. How could I help being pleased? The marriage was not to take place for some time, and in the interval Frida remained in the shop. She continued to bring home all her wages. If she was going to desert the family, she would not let them feel it sooner than she must. Then all of a sudden she turned to spend thrift. She appropriated, I do not know what fabulous sums, to spend just as she pleased for once. She attended bargain sales, and brought away such finery as had never graced our flat before. Home from work in the evening, after a hurried supper, she shot herself up in the parlor, and cut and snipped, and measured and basted, and stitched, as if there were nothing else in the world to do. It was early summer, and the air had a wooing touch, even on Wheeler Street. Moses Rifkin came, and I suppose he also had a wooing touch. But Frida only smiled, and shook her head, and as her mouth was full of pins, it was physically impossible for Moses to argue. She remained all evening in a white disorder of tucked breaths, curled ruffles, dismembered sleeves, and swirls of fresh lace, her needle glancing in the lamp light, and poor Moses picking up her spools. Her trezot, was it not? No, not her trezot. It was my graduation dress on which she was so intent. And when it was finished and was pronounced a most beautiful dress, and she ought to have been satisfied, Frida went to the shops once more, and bought the sash with the silk fringes. The improvidence of the poor is a most distressing spectacle to all right-minded students of sociology. But please spare me your homily this time. It does not apply. The poor are the poor in spirit. Those who are rich in spiritual endowment will never be found bankrupt. Graduation day was nothing less than a triumph for me. It was not only that I had two pieces to speak, one of them an original composition. It was more because I was known in my school district, as the smartest girl in the class, and all eyes were turned on the prodigy, and I was aware of it. I was aware of everything. That is why I am able to tell you everything now. The assembly hall was crowded to bursting, but my friends had no trouble in finding seats. They were ushered up to the platform, which was reserved for guests of honor. I was very proud to see my friends traded with such distinction. My parents were there, and Frida, of course, Miss Dillingham, and some others of my Chelsea teachers. A dozen or so of my humbler friends and acquaintances were scattered among the crowd on the floor. When I stepped up on the stage to read my composition, I was seized with stage fright. The floor under my feet, in the air around me, were oppressively present to my senses. While my own hand I could not have located. I did not know where my body began or ended. I was so conscious of my gloves, my shoes, my flowing sash, my wonderful dress, in which I had taken so much satisfaction, gave me the most trouble. I was suddenly paralyzed by a conviction that it was too short, and it seemed to me I stood on absurdly long legs. And ten thousand people were looking up at me. It was horrible. I suppose I know more than cleared my throat before I began to read, but to me it seemed that I stood petrified for an age, an awful silence booming in my ears. My voice, when at last I began, sounded far away. I thought that nobody could hear me, but I kept on mechanically, for I had rehearsed many times. And as I read I gradually forgot myself, forgot the place and the occasion. The people looking up at me heard the story of a beautiful little boy, my cousin, whom I had loved very dearly, and who died in far distant Russia some years after I came to America. My composition was not a masterpiece. It was merely good for a girl of fifteen. But I had written that I still loved the little cousin, and I made a thousand strangers feel it. And before the applause there was a moment of stillness in the great hall. After the singing and reading by the class there were the customary addresses by distinguished guests. We girls were reminded that we were going to be woman, and happiness was promised to those of us who had aimed to be noble women. A great money trite and obvious things. A great deal of the rhetoric appropriate to the occasion. Compliments, applause, general satisfaction, so went the program. Much of the rhetoric, many of the fine sentiments, did not penetrate to the thoughts of us for whom they were intended, because we were in such a flutter about our ruffles and ribbons, and could hardly refrain from openly prinking. But we applauded very heartily every speaker and every would-be speaker, understanding that by a consensus of opinion on the platform we were very fine young ladies, and much was to be expected of us. One of the last speakers was introduced as a member of the school board. He began like all the rest of them, but he ended differently. Abandoning generalities he went on to tell the story of a particular school girl, a pupil in a Boston school, whose phenomenal career might serve as an illustration of what the American system of free education and the European immigrant could make of each other. He had not got very far when I realized, to my great surprise and no small delight, that he was telling my story. I saw my friends on the platform beaming behind the speaker, and I heard my name whispered in the audience. I had been so much of a celebrity, in a small local way, that identification of the speaker's heroine was inevitable. My classmates, of course, guessed the name, and they turned to look at me, and nudged me, and all but pointed at me, their new muslin's rustling, and silk ribbon's hissing. One or two of the nearest me forgot etiquette so far as to whisper to me. Mary Anton, they said, as the speaker sat down, amid a burst of the most enthusiastic applause. Mary Anton, why don't you get up and thank him? I was dazed with all that had happened. Bursting with pride I was, but I was moved, too, by no blur feelings. I realized in a vague far off way what it meant to my father and mother to be sitting there and seeing me held up as a paragon. My history made the theme of an eloquent discourse. What it meant to my father to see his ambitious hopes thus gloriously fulfilled, his judgment of me verified. What it meant to Frida to hear me all but named with such honor. With all these things choking my heart to overflowing, my wits forsook me, if I had had any at all that day. The audience was stirring and whispering so that I could hear. Who is it? Is that so? And again they prompted me. Mary Anton, get up. Get up and thank him, Mary. And I rose where I sat, and in a voice that sounded thin as a flies after the oratorical base of the last speaker I began. I want to thank you. That is as far as I got. Mr. Swan, the principal, waved his hand to silence me. And then, and only then, did I realize the enormity of what I had done. My eulogist had had the good taste not to mention names, and I had been brazenly forward, deliberately calling attention to myself when there was no need. Oh, it was sickening. I hated myself. I hated with all my heart the girls who had prompted me to such immodest conduct. I wished the ground would yawn and snap me up. I was ashamed to look up at my friends on the platform. What was Miss Dillingham thinking of me? Oh, what a fool I had been. I had ruined my own triumph. I had disgraced myself, and my friends, and poor Mr. Swan, and the Winthrop School. The monster vanity had sucked out my wits and left me a staring idiot. It is easy to say that I was making a mountain out of a molehill, a catastrophe out of a mere breach of good manners. It is easy to say that. But I know that I suffered agonies of shame. After the exercises, when the crowd pressed in all directions in search of friends, I tried in vain to get out of the hall. I was mobbed, I was lionized. Everybody wanted to shake hands with the prodigy of the day, and they knew who it was. I had made sure of that. I had exhibited myself. The people smiled on me, flattered me, passed me on from one to another. I smirked back, but I did not know what I said. I was wild to be clear of the building. I thought everybody mocked me. All my roses had turned to ashes, and all through my own brazen conduct. I would have given my diploma to have Miss Dillingham know how the thing had happened. But I could not bring myself to speak first. If she would ask me. But nobody asked. Nobody looked away from me. Everybody congratulated me, my father and mother, and my remotest relations. But the sting of shame smarted just the same. I could not be consoled. I had made a fool of myself. Mr. Swan had publicly put me down. Ah, so that was it. Vanity was the vital spot again. It was wounded vanity that writhed and squirmed. It was not because I had been bold, but because I had been pronounced bold, that I suffered so monstrously. If Mr. Swan, with an eloquent gesture, had not silenced me, I might have made my little speech. Good heavens, what did I mean to say? And probably called it another feather in my bonnet. But he had stopped me promptly, disgusted with my forwardness, and he had shown before all those hundreds what he thought of me. Therein lay the sting. With all my talent for self-analysis, it took me a long time to realize the essential pettiness of my trouble. For years, actually for years after that eventful day of mingled triumph and disgrace, I could not think of the unhappy incident without inward squirming. I remember distinctly how the little scene would suddenly flash upon me at night as I lay awake in bed, and I would turn over impatiently as if to shake off a nightmare, and this so long after the occurrence that I myself was amazed at the persistence of the nightmare. I had never been reproached by anyone for my conduct on graduation day. Why could I not forgive myself? I studied the matter deeply. It worries me to remember how deeply. Till at last I understood that it was wounded vanity that hurt so, and no nobler remorse. Then and only then was the ghost laid. If it ever tried to get up again after that, I only had to call it names to see it scurry back to its grave and pull the sod down after it. Before I had laid my ghost, a friend told me of a similar experience of his boyhood. He was present at a small private entertainment and violinist who should have played being absent. The host asked for a volunteer to take his place. My friend, then a boy in his teens, offered himself, and actually stood up with the violin in his hands, as if to play. But he could not even hold the instrument properly. He had never been taught the violin. He told me he never knew what possessed him to get up and to make a fool of himself before a room full of people. But he was certain that ten thousand imps possessed him and tormented him for years and years after if only he remembered the incident. My friend's confession was such a consolation to me that I could not help thinking I might do some other poor wretch a world of good by offering him my company and that of my friend in his misery. For if it took me a long time to find out that I was a vain fool, the corollary did not escape me. There must be other vain fools. What was it not? Dover Street was my fairest garden of girlhood, a gate of paradise, a window facing on a broad avenue of life. Dover Street was a prison, a school of discipline, a battlefield of sordid strife. The air in Dover Street was heavy with evil odors of degradation, but a breath from the uppermost heavens rippled through, whispering of infinite things. In Dover Street the dragon poverty gripped me for a last fight, but I overthrew the hideous creature and sat on his neck as on a throne. In Dover Street I was shackled with a hundred chains of disadvantage, but with one free hand I planted little seeds, right there in the mud of shame, that blossomed into the honeyed rows of widest freedom. In Dover Street there was often no loaf on the table, but the hand of some noble friend was ever in mine. The night in Dover Street was rent with the cries of wrong, but the thunders of truth crashed through the pitiful clamor and died out in prophetic silences. Outwardly Dover Street is a noisy thoroughfare cut through a south-end slum, and every essential the same as Wheeler Street. Turn down any street in the slums at random, and call it by whatever name you please. You will observe there the same fashions of life, death, and endurance. Every one of those streets is a rubbish heap of damaged humanity, and it will take a powerful broom and an ocean of soapseds to clean it out. Dover Street is intersected near its eastern end where we lived, by Harrison Avenue. That street is to the south end, what Salem Street is to the north end. It is the heart of the south end ghetto, for the greater part of its length, although its northern end belongs to the realm of Chinatown. Its multifarious business bursts through the narrow shop doors, and overruns the basements, the sidewalk, the street itself, and push carts and open-air stands. Its multitude and its population burst through the greasy tenement doors, and floods the corridors, the doorsteps, the gutters, the side streets, pushing in and out among the push carts, all day long and half the night besides. Rarely as Harrison Avenue is caught asleep, even more rarely is it found clean. Nothing less than a fire or flood would cleanse a street. Even Passover cannot quite accomplish this feat, for although the tenements may be scrubbed to their remotest corners, on this one occasion the cleansing stops at the curb-stone. A great deal of the filthy rubbish accumulated in a year is pitched into the street, often through the windows, and what the ashman on his daily round does not remove is left to be trampled to powder, in which form it steals back into the houses from which it was so lately removed. The city fathers provide soap and water for the slums, in the form of excellent schools, kindergarten and branch libraries. And there they stop, at the curb-stone of the people's life. They cleanse and discipline the children's minds, but their bodies they pitch into the gutter. For there are no parks and almost no playgrounds in the Harrison Avenue district. In my day there were none, and such as there are have been wrenched from the city by public-spirited citizens who have no offices in City Hall. No wonder the ashman is not more thorough. He learns from his masters. It is a pity to have it so, in a queen of enlightened cities like Boston. If we of the twentieth century do not believe in baseball as much as philosophy, we have not learned the lesson of modern science, which teaches, among other things, that the body is the nursery of the soul, the instrument of our moral development, the secret chart of our devious progress from worm to man. The great achievement of recent science, of which we are so proud, has been the deciphering of the hieroglyphic of organic nature. To worship the facts and neglect to the implications of the message of science is to applaud the drama without taking the moral to heart. And we certainly are not taking the moral to heart when we try to make a hero out of the boy by such foreign appliances as grammar and algebra, while utterly despising the fittest instrument for his uplifting, the boy's own body. We had no particular reason for coming to Dover Street. It might just have well been Apple Pie Alley, for my father had sold, with the goods, fixtures, and goodwill of the Wheeler Street store, all his hopes of ever making a living in the grocery trade. And I doubt if he got a silver dollar to the more for them. We had to live somewhere, even if we were not making a living. So we came to Dover Street, where tenements were cheap, by which I mean that rent was low. The ultimate cost of life in those tenements, in terms of human happiness, is high enough. Our new home consisted of five small rooms up two flights of stairs, with a right of way through the dark corridors. In the parlor, the dingy paper hung in rags, and the plaster fell in chunks. One of the bedrooms was absolutely dark and airtight. The kitchen windows looked out on a dirty court, at the back of which was the rear tenement of the estate. To us belonged, along with the five rooms and the right of way aforesaid, a block of upper space, the length of a polyline across this court, and the width of an arc described by a windy Monday's washing in its remotest wanderings. The little front bedroom was assigned to me, with only one partner, my sister Dora. A mouse could not have led a cat much of a chase across this room. Still, we found space for a narrow bed, a crazy bureau, and a small table. From the window there was an unobstructed view of a lumberyard, beyond which frowned the blackened walls of a factory. The fence of the lumberyard was gay with theatre posters and illustrated advertisements of tobacco, whiskey, and patent baby foods. When the window was open, there was a constant clang and whir of electric cars, varied by the screech of machinery, the clatter of empty wagons, or the rumble of heavy trucks. There was nothing worse in all this than we had had before since our exile from Crescent Beach, but I did not take the same delight in the prop iniquity of electric cars and arc lights that I had till now. I supposed the tenement began to pale on me. It must not be supposed that I enjoyed any degree of privacy because I had half a room to myself. We were six in the five rooms. We were bound to be always in each other's way, and as it was within our flat, so it was in the house as a whole. All doors beginning with the street door stood open most of the time, or if they were closed, the tenants did not wear out their knuckles knocking for admittance. I could stand at any time in the unswept entrance hall and tell, from an analysis of the medley of sounds and smells that issued from doors ajar, what was going on in the several flats from below up. That guttural, scolding voice, unremittant as the hissing of a steam pipe, is Mrs. Rinozki. I make a guess that she is chastising the infant Isaac for taking a second lump of sugar in his tea. Spam, bam, yes, and she is rubbing in her objections with the flat of her hand. That blubbering and moaning, accompanying an elfantine tread, is fat Mrs. Casey. Second floor, home drunk from an afternoon out, in fear of the vengeance of Mr. Casey, to propitiate whom she is burning a pan of bacon, as the choking fumes and outrageous sizzling testify. I hear a feeble whining, interrupted by long silences. It is that scabby baby on the third floor, fallen out of bed again, with nobody home to pick him up. To escape these various horrors I ascend to the roof, where bacon and babies and child-beating are not. But there I find two figures and calico wrappers, with bare red arms akimbo, a basket of wet clothes in front of each, and only one empty clothes line between them. I do not want to be dragged in as a witness in case of assault and battery, so I descend to the street again, grateful to know, as I pass, that the third floor baby is still. In front of the door I squeeze through a group of children. They are going to play tag, and are counting to see who should be it. My mother and your mother went out to hang clothes. My mother gave your another a punch in the nose. If the children's couplet does not give a vivid picture of the life, manners, and customs of Dover Street, no description of mine can ever do so. Frida was married before we came to Dover Street, and went to live in East Boston. This left me the eldest of the children at home. Whether on this account, or because I was outgrowing my childish carelessness, or because I began to believe on the cumulative evidence of the Crescent Beach, Chelsea, and Wheeler Street Adventures, that America, after all, was not going to provide for my father's family. Whether for any or all of these reasons, I began at this time to take bread and butter matters more to heart, and to ponder ways and means of getting rich. My father saw employment wherever work was going on. His health was poor. He aged very fast. Nevertheless, he offered himself for every kind of labor. He offered himself for a boy's wages. Here he was found too weak. Here too old. Here his imperfect English was in the way. Here his Jewish appearance. He had a few short terms of work at this or that. I do not know the name of the form of drudgery that my father did not practice. But all told, he did not earn enough to pay the rent in full, and buy a bone for the soup. The only steady source of income, for I do not know what years, was my brother's earnings from his newspapers. Shortly this was the time for me to take my sister's place in the workshop. I had had every fair chance until now. School, my time to myself, liberty to run and play and make friends. I had graduated from grammar school. I was of legal age to go to work. What was I doing sitting at home and dreaming? I was minding my business, of course. With all my might I was minding my business. As I understood it, my business was to go to school, to learn everything there was to know, to write poetry, become famous, and make the family rich. Surely it was not shirking to lay out such a program for myself. I had boundless faith in my future. I was certainly going to be a great poet. I was certainly going to take care of the family. Thus mused I, in my arrogance. And my family? They were as bad as I. My father had not lost a whit of his ambition for me. Since graduation day, into the school committee man's speech, and half a column about me in the paper, his ambition had soared even higher. He was going to keep me at school till I was prepared for college. By that time he was sure I would more than take care of myself. It never for a moment entered his head to doubt the wisdom or justice of this course. And my mother was just as loyal to my cause, and my brother, and my sister. It is no wonder if I got along rapidly. I was helped, encouraged, and upheld by everyone. Even the baby cheered me on. When I asked her whether she believed in higher education, she answered without a moment's hesitation. Ducca ducca da. Against her I remember only that one day, when I read her a verse out of a most pathetic piece I was composing. She laughed right out, a most disrespectful laugh, for which I revenge myself by washing her face at the faucet, and rubbing it red on the roller-towel. It was just like me, when it was debated whether I would be best fitted for college at the high or the Latin school, to go in person to Mr. Tetlow, who was principal of both schools, and so get the most expert opinion on the subject. I never send a messenger you may remember, where I can go myself. It was vacation time, and I had to find Mr. Tetlow at his home. A way out to the wilds of Roxbury, I found my way, perhaps half an hour's ride on the electric car from Dover Street. I grew an inch taller and broader between the corner of Cedar Street and Mr. Tetlow's house. Such was the charm of the clean green suburb on a cramped wave from the slums. My faded calico dress, my rusty straw sailor-hat, the color of my skin and all bespoke the wave, but never a bit daunted was I. I went up the steps to the porch, rang the bell, and asked for the great man with as much assurance as if I were a daily visitor on Cedar Street. I calmly awaited the appearance of Mr. Tetlow in the reception room, and stated my errand without trepidation. And why not? I was a solemn little person for the moment, earnestly seeking advice on a matter of great importance. That is what Mr. Tetlow saw, to judge by the gravity with which he discussed my business with me, and the courtesy with which he showed me to the door. He saw, too, I fancy, that I was not the least bit conscious of my shabby dress, and I am sure he did not smile at my appearance, even when my back was turned. A new life began for me when I entered the Latin School in September. Until then I had gone to school with my equals, and as a matter of course. Now it was distinctly a feat for me to keep in school, and my schoolmates were socially so far superior to me that my poverty became conspicuous. The pupils of the Latin School, from the nature of the institution, are an aristocratic set. They come from refined homes, dress well, and spend the recess hour talking about parties, bows, and the matinee. As students they are either very quick or very hard working, for the course of study in the lingo of the school world is considered stiff. The girl with half her brain asleep or with too many bows drops out by the end of the first year, or a one and only bow may be the fatal element. At the end of the course the weeding process has reduced the once numerous tribe of academic candidates to a cozy little family. By all these tokens I should have had serious business on my hands as a pupil in the Latin School, but I did not find it hard. To make myself letter perfect in my lessons required long hours of study, but that was my delight. To make myself at home in an alien world was also within my talents. I had been practicing at day and night for the past four years. To remain unconscious of my shabby and ill-fitting clothes when the rustle of silk petticoats in the school room protested against them was a matter still within my moral reach. Half a dress a year had been my allowance for many seasons, even less. For as I did not grow much I could wear my dresses as long as they lasted. And I had stood before editors and exchanged polite calls with school teachers, untroubled by the detestable colors and archaic designs of my garments. To stand up and recite Latin declensions without trembling from hunger was something more of a feat, because I sometimes went to school with little or no breakfast. But even that required no special heroism. At most it was a matter of self-control. I had the advantage of a poor appetite, too. I really did not need much breakfast. Or if I was hungry it would hardly show. I coughed so much that my unsteadiness was self-explained. Everything helped, you see. My schoolmates helped. Aristocrats, though they were, they did not hold themselves aloof from me. Some of the girls who came to school in carriages were especially cordial. They raided me by my scholarship and not by my father's occupation. They teased and admired me by turns for learning the footnotes in the Latin grammar by heart. They never reproached me for my ignorance of the latest comic opera. And it was more than good-breeding that made them seem unaware of the incongruity of my presence. It was a generous appreciation of what it meant for a girl from the slums to be in the Latin school, on the way to college. If our intimacy ended on the steps of the schoolhouse, it was more my fault than theirs. Most of the girls were democratic enough to have invited me to their homes. Although to some, of course, I was impossible. But I had no time for visiting, schoolwork and reading, and family affairs occupied all the daytime and much of the nighttime. I did not go with any of the girls in the schoolgirl sense of the phrase. I admired some of them, either for good looks or beautiful manners, or more subtle attributes, but always at a distance. I discovered something inimitable in the way the back-bay girls carried themselves, and I should have been the first to perceive the incongruity of Commonwealth Avenue and twining arms with Dover Street. Someday, perhaps, when I should be famous and rich, but not just then. So my companions and I parted on the steps of the schoolhouse, in mutual respect, they guiltless of snobby-nish, I innocent of envy. It was a graciously American relation, and I am happy to this day to recall it. The one exception to this rule of friendly distance was my chum, Florence Connolly. But I should hardly have said chum. Florence and I occupied adjacent seats for three years. But we did not walk arm in arm, nor call each other nicknames, nor share our lunch, nor correspond in vacation time. Florence was quiet as a mouse, and I was reserved as an oyster. And perhaps we too had no more in common fundamentally than those two creatures in their natural state. Still, as we were both very studious and never strayed far from our desks at recess, we practiced a sort of intimacy of propiniquity. Although Florence was of my social order, her father presiding over a cheap lunchroom, I did not on that account feel especially drawn to her. I spent more time studying Florence than loving her, I suppose. And yet I ought to have loved her. She was such a good girl. I was perfect in her lessons. She was so modest that she recited in a noticeable tremor, and had to be told frequently to raise her voice. Florence wore her light brown hair brushed flatly back and braided in a single plate at a time when pompadours were six inches high and braids hung in pairs. Florence had a pocket in her dress for her handkerchief in a day when pockets were repugnant to fashion. All these things ought to have made me feel the kinship of humble circumstances, the comradeship of intellectual earnestness, but they did not. The truth is that my relation to persons and things depended neither on social distinctions nor on intellectual or moral affinities. My attitude at this time was determined by my consciousness of the unique elements in my character and history. It seemed to me that I had been pursuing a single adventure since the beginning of the world. Through highways and byways underground overground by land by sea ever the same star had guided me, I thought, ever the same purpose had divided my affairs from other men's. What that purpose was, where the fixed horizon beyond which my star would not recede, was an absorbing mystery to me. But the current moment never puzzled me. Would I chose instinctively to do, I knew to be right and in accordance with my destiny. I never hesitated over great things, but answered promptly to the call of my genius. So what was it to me whether my neighbors spurned or embraced me if my way was no man's way? Nor should anyone ever reject me whom I chose to be my friend, because I would make sure of a kindred spirit by the coincidence of our guiding stars. When, where, in the harem scarum life of Dover Street was there time or place for such self-commuting? In the night when everybody slept, on a solitary walk, as far from home as I dared to go. I was not unhappy on Dover Street, quite the contrary. Everything of consequence was well with me. Poverty was a superficial, temporary matter. It vanished at the touch of money. Money in America was plentiful. It was only a matter of getting some of it, and I was on my way to the Mint. If Dover Street was not a pleasant place to abide in, it was only a wayside house. And I was really happy, actively happy, in the exercise of my mind in Latin, mathematics, history, and the rest, the things that suffice a studious girl in the middle teens. Still, I had moments of depression when my whole being protested against the life of the slum. I resented the familiarity of my vulgar neighbors. I felt myself defiled by the indecencies I was compelled to witness. Then it was I took to running away from home. I went out in the twilight and walked for hours, my blind feet leading me. I did not care where I went, if I lost my way so much the better. I never wanted to see Dover Street again. But behold, as I left the crowds behind and the broader avenues were spanned by the open sky, my grievances melted away, and I felt a dreaming of things that neither hurt nor pleased. A fringe of trees against the sunset became suddenly the symbol of the whole world. And I stood and gazed and asked questions of it. The sunset faded, the trees withdrew, the wind went by, but dropped no hint in my ear. The evening star leaped out between the clouds and sealed the secret with a seal of splendor. A favorite resort of mine after dark was the South Boston Bridge, across South Bay and the old colony railroad. This was so near home that I could go there at any time when the confusion in the house drove me out, or I felt the need of fresh air. I liked to stand leaning on the bridge railing and look down on the dim tangle of railroad tracks below. I could barely see them branching out, elbowing, winding, and sliding out into the night in pairs. I was fascinated by the dotted lights, the significant red and green of signal lamps. These simple things stood for a complexity that it made me dizzy to think of. Then the blackness below me was split by the fiery eye of a monster engine. His breath enveloped me in blinding clouds, his long body shot by, rattling a hundred claws of steel, and he was gone with an imperative shriek that shook me where I stood. So would I be, swift on my rightful business, picking out my proper track from the million that cross it, pausing for no obstacles, sure of my goal. After my watch is on the bridge, I often state up to write or study. It is late before Dover Street begins to go to bed. It is past midnight before I feel that I am alone. Seated in my stiff little chair, before my narrow table, I gather in the night sounds through the open window, curious to assort and define them. As little by little, the city settles down to sleep, the volume of sound diminishes, and the qualities of particular sounds stand out. The electric car lurches by with silent gong, taking the empty track by leaps, humming to itself in the invisible distance. A benighted team swings restlessly around the corner, sharp under my rattling windowpains. The staccato pelting of hoofs on the cobblestones changed suddenly to an even pounding on the bridge. A few pedestrians hurry by, their heavy boots all out of step. The distant thoroughfares have long ago ceased their murmur, and I know that a million lamps shine idly in the idle streets. My sister sleeps quietly in the little bed. The rhythmic dripping of a faucet is audible through the flat. It is so still that I can hear the paper crackling on the wall. Silence upon silence is added to the night. Only the kitchen clock is the voice of my brooding thoughts. Ticking, ticking, ticking. Suddenly the distant whistle of a locomotive breaks a stillness with a long drawn wail. Like a threatened trouble the sound comes nearer, piercingly near. Then it dies out in a mangled silence complaining to the last. The sleepers stir in their beds, somebody sighs, and the burden of all his trouble falls upon my heart. A homeless cat cries in the alley in the voice of a human child. And the ticking of the kitchen clock is the voice of my troubled thoughts. Many things are revealed to me as I sit and watch the world asleep, but the silence asks me many questions that I cannot answer. And I am glad when the tide of sound begins to return, by little and little, and I welcome the clatter of tin cans that announces the milkman. I cannot see him in the dusk, but I know his wholesome face has no problem in it. It is one flight up to the roof. It is a leap of the soul to the sunrise. The morning mist rests lightly on chimneys and roofs and walls, wreathes the lampposts and floats and gauzy streamers down the streets. Distant buildings are massed like palace walls, with turrets and spires lost in the rosy clouds. I love my beautiful city spreading all about me. I love the world. I love my place in the world.