 Chapter 9 The Promised Land Having made such good time across the ocean, I ought to be able to proceed no less rapidly on terra firma, where after all I am more at home. And yet here is where I falter, not that I hesitated, even for the space of a breath in my first steps in America. There is no time to hesitate. The most ignorant immigrant on landing proceeds to give and receive greetings, to eat, sleep, and rise after the manner of his own country, wherein he is corrected, admonished, and laughed at, whether by interested friends, or the most indifferent strangers, and his American experience is thus begun. The process is spontaneous on all sides, like the education of the child by the family circle. While the most stupid nursery maid is able to contribute her part toward the result, we do not expect an analysis of the process to be furnished by any member of the family, least of all by the engaging infant. The philosophical maiden and alone, or some other witness, equally psychological and aloof, is able to trace the myriad efforts by which the little Johnny, or Nelly, acquires a secure hold on the disjointed parts of the huge plaything, life. Now I was not exactly an infant when I was set down, on a May day some fifteen years ago, in this pleasant nursery of America. I had long since acquired the use of my faculties, and had collected some bits of experience, practical and emotional, and had even learned to give an account of them. Still, I had very little perspective, and my observations and comparisons were superficial. I was too much carried away to analyze the forces that were moving me. In my pilotsk I knew well before I began to judge it and experiment with it. America was bewilderingly strange, unimaginably complex, delightfully unexplored. I rushed impetuously out of the cage of my provincialism, and looked eagerly about the brilliant universe. My question was, what have we here? Not, what does this mean? That query came much later. When I now become retrospectively introspective, I fall into the predicament of the centipede in the rhyme, who got along very smoothly, until he was asked, which leg came after which? Whereupon he became so rattled that he couldn't take a step. I know I have come on a thousand feet, on wings, winds, and American machines. I have leaped and run and climbed and crawled, but to tell which step came after which I find a puzzling matter. Plenty of maiden ants were present during my second infancy, and the guise of immigrant officials, school teachers, settlement workers, and sundry other unprejudiced and critical observers. Their statistics I might properly borrow to fill the gaps in my recollections, but I am prevented by my sense of harmony. The individual we know is a creature unknown to the statistician, whereas I undertook to give the personal view of everything. So I am bound to unravel, as well as I can, the tangle of events, outer and inner, which made up the first breathless years of my American life. During his three years of probation, my father had made a number of false starts in business. His history for that period is the history of thousands who come to America, like him, with pockets empty, hands untrained to the use of tools, minds cramped by centuries of repression in their native land. Dozens of these men pass under your eyes every day, my American friend, too absorbed in their honest affairs, to notice the looks of suspicion which you cast at them, the repugnance with which you shrink from their touch. You see them shuffle from door to door, with a basket of spools and buttons, or bending over the sizzling irons in a basement tailor shop, or rummaging in your ash-can, or moving a push-cart from curb to curb at the command of the burly policeman—the Jew peddler, you say—and dismiss him from your premises and from your thoughts, never dreaming that the sordid drama of his days may have a moral that concerns you. What if the creature with the untidy beard carries in his bosom his citizenship papers? What if the cross-legged tailor is supporting a boy in college who is one day going to mend your state constitution for you? What if the ragpickers' daughters are hastening over the ocean to teach your children in the public schools? Think every time you pass the greasy alien on the street that he was born thousands of years before the oldest Native American, and he may have something to communicate with you when you too shall have learned a common language. Remember that his very physiognomy is a cipher the key to which behooves you to search for most diligently. By the time we joined my father he had surveyed many avenues of approach toward the coveted citadel of fortune. One of these, here before untried, he now proposed to assay, armed with new courage, and cheered on by the presence of his family. In partnership with an energetic little man who had an English chapter in his history he prepared to set up a refreshment booth on Crescent Beach. But while he was completing arrangements at the beach we remained in town, where we enjoyed the educational advantages of a thickly populated neighborhood, namely Wall Street and the West End of Boston. Anybody who knows Boston knows that the West and North Ends are the wrong ends of that city. They form the Tenement District, or in the newer phrase, the slums of Boston. Anybody who is acquainted with the slums of any American metropolis knows that that is the quarter where poor immigrants foregather to live for the most part as unkempt, half-washed, toiling, unaspiring foreigners, pitiful in the eyes of social missionaries, the despair of boards of health, the hope of word politicians, the touchstone of American democracy. The well-versed metropolitan knows the slums as a sort of house of detention for poor aliens where they live on probation till they can show a certificate of good citizenship. He may know all this, and yet not guess how Wall Street in the West End appears in the eyes of a little immigrant from Polotsk. What would the sophisticated sightseer say about Union Place off Wall Street where my new home waited for me? He would say that it is no place at all but a short box of an alley. Two rows of three-storey tenements are at sides, a stingy strip of sky is at slid, a littered pavement is the floor, and a narrow mouth its exit. But I saw a very different picture on my introduction to Union Place. I saw two imposing rows of brick buildings, loftier than any dwelling I had ever lived in. Brick was even on the ground for me to tread on, instead of common earth or boards. Many friendly windows stood open, filled with uncovered heads of women and children. I thought the people were interested in us, which was very neighborly. I looked up to the topmost row of windows, and my eyes were filled with a May blue of an American sky. In our days of affluence in Russia we had been accustomed to upholstered parlours, embroidered linen, silver spoons and candlesticks, goblets of gold, kitchen shelves shining with copper and brass. We had feather beds heaped halfway to the ceiling, we had clothes presses, dusky with velvet and silk, and fine woolen. The three small rooms into which my father now ushered us, up one flight of stairs, contained only the necessary beds, with lean mattresses, a few wooden chairs, a table or two, a mysterious iron structure which later turned out to be a stove, a couple of unornamental kerosene lamps, and a scanty array of cooking utensils and crackery. And yet we were all impressed with our new home and its furniture. It was not only because we had just passed through our seven lean years, cooking in earthen vessels, eating black bread on holidays, and wearing cotton. It was chiefly because these wooden chairs and tin pans were American chairs and pans that they shone glorious in our eyes. And if there was anything lacking for comfort or decoration we expected it to be presently supplied. At least we children did. Perhaps my mother alone of us newcomers appreciated the shabbiness of the little apartment and realized that for her there was as yet no laying down of the burden of poverty. Our initiation into American ways began with the first step on the new soil. My father found occasion to instruct or correct us even on the way from the pier to Wall Street, which journey we made crowded together in a rickety cab. He told us not to lean out of the windows, not to point, and explained the word greenhorn. We did not want to be greenhorns and gave the strictest attention to my father's instructions. I do not know when my parents found opportunity to review together the history of Polotsk in the three years past, for we children had no patience with the subject. My mother's narrative was constantly interrupted by irrelevant questions, interjections, and explanations. The first meal was an object lesson of much variety. My father produced several kinds of food, ready to eat, without any cooking, from little tin cans that had printing all over them. He attempted to introduce us to a queer, slippery kind of fruit, which he called banana, but had to give it up for the time being. After the meal he had better luck with a curious piece of furniture on runners, which he called rocking chair. There were five of us newcomers, and we found five different ways of getting into the American machine of perpetual motion, and as many ways of getting out of it. One born and bred, to the use of a rocking chair, cannot imagine how ludicrous people can make themselves when attempting to use it for the first time. We laughed immoderately over the various experiments with the novelty, which was a wholesome way of letting off steam after the unusual excitement of the day. In our flat we did not think of such a thing as storing the coal in the bathtub. There was no bathtub. So in the evening of the first day my father conducted us to the public baths. As we moved along in a little procession I was delighted with the illumination of the streets. So many lamps, and they burned until morning my father said, and so people did not need to carry lanterns. In America then everything was free, as we heard in Russia. Light was free, the streets were as bright as a synagogue on a holy day. Music was free. We had been serenaded, to our gaping delight, by a brass band of many pieces, soon after our installation on Union Place. Education was free, that subject my father had written about repeatedly, as comprising his chief hope for us children, the essence of American opportunity, the treasure that no thief could touch, not even misfortune or poverty. It was the one thing that he was able to promise us when he sent for us, sure, safer than bread or shelter. On our second day I was thrilled with the realization of what this freedom of education meant. A little girl from across the alley came and offered to conduct us to school. My father was out, but we five between us had a few words of English by this time. We knew the word school, we understood. This child, who had never seen us till yesterday, who could not pronounce our names, who was not much better dressed than we, was able to offer us the freedom of the schools of Boston. No application made, no questions asked, no examinations, rulings, exclusions, no machinations, no fees. The door stood open for every one of us. The smallest child could show us the way. This incident impressed me more than anything I had heard in advance of the freedom of education in America. It was a concrete proof, almost the thing itself. One had to experience it to understand it. It was a great disappointment to be told by my father that we were not to enter upon our school career at once. It was too near the end of the term, he said, and we were going to move to Crescent Beach in a week or so. We had to wait until the opening of the schools in September. What a loss of precious time, from May till September. Not that the time was really lost, even the interval on Union Place was crowded with lessons and experiences. We had to visit the stores and be dressed from head to foot in American clothing. We had to learn the mysteries of the iron stove, the washboard, and the speaking tube. We had to learn to trade with the fruit peddler through the window, and not to be afraid of the policemen. And above all, we had to learn English. The kind people who assisted us in these important matters form a group by themselves in the gallery of my friends. If I had never seen them from those early days till now, I should still have remembered them with gratitude. When I enumerate the long list of my American teachers, I must begin with those who came to us on Wall Street and taught us our first steps. To my mother, in her perplexity over the cookstove, the woman who showed her how to make the fire was an angel of deliverance. A fairy godmother to us children was she who led us to a wonderful country called Uptown, where in a dazzlingly beautiful palace called a department store, we exchanged our hateful homemade European costumes, which pointed us out as greenhorns to the children on the street, for real American machine-made garments, and issued forth glorified in each other's eyes. With our despised immigrant clothing we shed also our impossibly Hebrew names. A committee of our friends, several years ahead of us in American experience, put their heads together and concocted American names for us all. Those of our real names that had no pleasing American equivalents, they ruthlessly discarded, content if they retained the initials. My mother, possessing a name that was not easily translatable, was punished with the undignified nickname of Annie. Petka, Joseph and Deborah, issued as Frida, Joseph and Dora, respectively. As for poor me, I was simply cheated. The name they gave me was hardly new. My Hebrew name being Marasha in full, Moshka for short, Russianized into Maria. My friends said that it would hold good in English as Mary, which was very disappointing, as I longed to possess a strange sounding American name like the others. I am forgetting the consolation I had in this matter of names from the use of my surname, which I have had no occasion to mention until now. I found on my arrival that my father was Mr. Anton, on the slightest provocation, and not, as in Polotsk, on state occasions alone. And so I was Mary Anton, and I felt very important to answer to such a dignified title. It was just like America, that even plain people should wear their surnames on weekdays. As a family we were so diligent under instruction, so adaptable, and so clever in hiding our deficiencies, that when we made the journey to Crescent Beach, in the wake of our small wagon load of household goods, my father had very little occasion to admonish us on the way. And I am sure he was not ashamed of us. So much we had achieved toward our Americanization during the two weeks since our landing. Crescent Beach is a name that is printed in very small type on the maps of the environs of Boston. But a life-sized strip of sand curves from Winthrop to Lynn, and that is historic ground in the annals of my family. The place is now a popular resort for holiday crowds, and is famous under the name of Revere Beach. When the reunited Antons made their stand there, however, there were no boulevards, no stately bathhouses, no hotels, no gaudy amusement places, no illuminations, no showmen, no tawdry rabble. There was only the bright clean sweep of sand, the summer sea, and the summer sky. At high tide the whole Atlantic rushed in, tossing the seaweeds in his mane. At low tide he rushed out, growling and gnashing his granite teeth. Between tides a baby might play on the beach, digging with pebbles and shells, till it lay asleep on the sand. The whole sun shone by day, troops of stars by night, and the great moon in its season. Into this grand cycle of the seaside day I came to live and learn and play. A few people came with me, as I have already intimated. But the main thing was that I came to live on the edge of the sea. I, who had spent my life inland, believing that the great waters of the world were spread out before me in the Divina. My idea of the human world had grown enormously during the long journey. My idea of the earth had expanded with every day at sea. My idea of the world outside the earth now budded and swelled during my prolonged experience of the wide and unobstructed heavens. Not that I got any inkling of the conception of a multiple world. I had had no lessons in cosmogony, and I had no spontaneous revelation of the true position of the earth in the universe. For me, as for my fathers, the sun set and rose, and I did not feel the earth rushing through space. But I lay stretched out in the sun, my eyes level with the sea, till I seemed to be absorbed bodily by the very materials of the world around me, till I could not feel my hand as separate from the warm sand in which it was buried. Or I crouched on the beach at full moon, wondering, wondering between the two splinters of the sky and the sea. Or I ran out to meet the incoming storm, my face full in the wind, my being a tingle with an awesome delight to the tips of my fog-medded locks flying behind, and stood clinging to some stake or upturned boat shaken by the roar and rumble of the waves. So clinging I pretended that I was in danger and was deliciously frightened. I held on with both hands and shook my head, exalting in the tumult around me, equally ready to laugh or sob. Or else I sat on the stillest days, with my back to the sea, not looking at all, but just listening to the rustle of the waves on the sand, not thinking at all, but just breathing with the sea. Thus courting the influence of the sea and sky and variable weather, I was bound to have dreams, hints, imaginings. It was no more than this, perhaps, that the world as I knew it was not large enough to contain all that I saw and felt, that the thoughts that flashed through my mind, not half understood, unrelated to my utterable thoughts, concerned something for which I had as yet no name. Every imaginative growing child has these flashes of intuition, especially one that becomes intimate with some one aspect of nature. With me it was the growing time, that idle summer by the sea, and I grew all the faster because I had been so cramped before. My mind, too, had so recently been worked upon by the impressive experience of a change of country, that I was more than commonly alive to impressions, which are the seed of ideas. Let no one suppose that I spent my time entirely, or even chiefly, in inspired solitude. By far the best part of my day was spent in play. Frank, hearty, boisterous play, such as comes natural to American children. In Pilotsk I had already begun to be considered too old for play, accepting set games or organized frolics. Here I found myself included with children who still played, and I willingly returned to childhood. There were plenty of play-fellows. My father's energetic little partner had a little wife and a large family. He kept them in the little cottage next to ours, and that the shanty survived the tumultuous presence of that brood is a wonder to me to-day. The young wilderness included an assortment of boys, girls, and twins, of every possible variety of age, size, disposition, and sex. They swarmed in and out of the cottage all day long, wearing the door sill hollow, and trampling the ground to powder. They swung out of windows like monkeys, slid up the roof like flies, and shot out of trees like fowls. Even a small person like me couldn't go anywhere without being run over by a Wilner. And I could never tell which Wilner it was, because none of them ever stood still long enough to be identified. And also because I suspect that they were in the habit of interchanging conspicuous articles of clothing, which was very confusing. You would suppose that the little mother must have been utterly lost, bewildered, tried and down in this horde of urchins. But you are mistaken. Mrs. Wilner was a positively majestic little person. She ruled her brood with the utmost coolness and strictness. She had even the biggest boy under her thumb, frequently under her palm, if they enjoyed the wildest freedom outdoors. In doors the young Wilners lived by the clock. And so at five o'clock in the evening, on seven days in the week, my father's partner's children could be seen in two long rows around the supper table. You could tell them apart on this occasion, because they all had their faces washed. And this is the time to count them. There are twelve little Wilners at table. I managed to retain my identity in this multitude somehow, and while I was very much impressed with their numbers, I even dared to pick and choose my friends among the Wilners. One or two of the smaller boys I liked best of all, for a game of hide-and-seek, or a frolic on the beach. We played in the water like ducks, never taking the trouble to get dry. One day I waited out with one of the boys to see which of us dared to go farthest. The tide was extremely low, and we had not wet our knees when we began to look back to see if familiar objects were still in sight. I thought we had been waiting for hours, and still the water was so shallow and quiet. My companion was marching straight ahead, so I did the same. Suddenly a swell lifted us almost off our feet, and we clutched at each other simultaneously. There was a lesser swell, and little waves began to run, and a sigh went up from the sea. The tide was turning. Perhaps a storm was on its way, and we were miles, dreadful miles, from dry land. Boy and girl turned without a word, four determined bear legs plowing through the water, four scared eyes straining toward the land. Through an eternity of toil and fear they kept dumbly on, death at their heels, pride still in their hearts. At last they reached high water mark, six hours before full tide. Each has seen the other afraid, and each rejoices in the knowledge. But only the boy is sure of his tongue. You was scared, weren't you, he taunts. The girl understands so much, and is able to reply. You can swim in, I not. Bet your life I can swim in, the other mocks. And the girl walks off, angry and hurt. And I can walk on my hands, the tormentor calls after her. Say you, Greenhorn, why don't you look? The girl keeps straight on, vowing that she would never walk with that rude boy again, neither by land nor sea, not even though the water should part at his bidding. I am forgetting the more serious business, which had brought us to Crescent Beach. While we children desported ourselves like mermaids and mermen on the surf, our respective fathers dispensed cold lemonade, hot peanuts, and pink popcorn, and piled up our respective fortunes, nickel by nickel, penny by penny. I was so very proud of my connection with the public life of the beach. I greatly admired our shining soda fountain, the rows of sparkling glasses, the pyramids of oranges, the sausage chains, the neat white counter, and the bright array of tin spoons. It seems to me that none of the other refreshments stands on the beach. There were a few, were half so attractive as ours. I thought my father looked very well in a long white apron and shirt sleeves. He dished out ice-cream with enthusiasm, so I suppose too is getting rich. It never occurred to me to compare his present occupation with a position for which he had been originally destined. Or if I thought about it, I was just as well content, for by this time I had heard my father saying, America is not Polotsk. All occupations were respectable. All men were equal in America. If I admired the soda fountain and the sausage chains, I almost worshipped the partner, Mr. Wilner. I was content to stand for an hour at a time, watching him make potato chips. In his cook's cap and apron, with a ladle in his hand and a smile on his face, he moved about with the greatest agility, whisking his raw materials out of nowhere, dipping into his bubbling kettle with a flourish, and bringing forth the finished product with a caper. Such potato chips were not to be had anywhere else on Crescent Beach. Thin is tissue paper, crisp is dry snow, and salty is the sea. Such thirst-producing, lemonade-selling, nickel-bringing potato chips only Mr. Wilner could make. On holidays, when dozens of family parties came out by every train from town, he could hardly keep up with the demand for his potato chips. And with a waiting crowd around him, our partner was at his best. He was as valuable as he was skillful, and as witty as he was valuable, at least so I guessed from the laughter that frequently drowned his voice. I could not understand his jokes, but if I could get near enough to watch his lips and his smile and his merry eyes, I was happy. That anyone could talk so fast and in English was marvel enough, but that this prodigy should belong to our establishment was a fact to thrill me. I had never seen anything like Mr. Wilner, except a wedding-juster, but then he spoke common-yiddish. So proud was I of the talent and good taste displayed at our stand that if my father beckoned to me in the crowd and sent me on an errand, I hoped the people noticed that I, too, was connected with the establishment. And all this splendor and glory and distinction came to a sudden end. There was some trouble about a license, some fee or fine. There was a storm in the night that damaged the soda-fowen and other fixtures. There was talk and consultation between the houses of Anton and Wilner, and the promising partnership was dissolved. No more would the merry partner gather the crowd on the beach. No more would the twelve young Wilners gamble like mermen and mermaids in the surf. And the last numerous tribe of Anton must also say farewell to the jolly seaside life. For men in such humble business as my father's carry their families, along with their other earthly goods, wherever they go, after the manner of the gypsies. We had driven a feeble stake into the sand. The jealous Atlantic, in conspiracy with the Sunday law, had torn it out. We must seek our luck elsewhere. In Polotsk we had supposed that America was practically synonymous with Boston. When we landed in Boston the horizon was pushed back and we annexed Crescent Beach. And now, espying other lands of promise, we took possession of the province of Chelsea in the name of our necessity. In Chelsea, as in Boston, we made our stand in the wrong end of the town. Arlington Street was inhabited by poor Jews, poor Negroes, and a sprinkling of poor Irish. The side streets leading from it were occupied by more poor Jews and Negroes. It was a proper locality for a man without capital to do business. My father rented a tenement with a store in the basement. He put in a few barrels of flour and of sugar, a few boxes of crackers, a few gallons of kerosene, an assortment of soap of the Save the Coupon brands, in the cellar a few barrels of potatoes, and a pyramid of kindling wood. In the showcase, an alluring display of penny candy, he put out his sign with a gilt-lettered warning of strictly cash and proceeded to give credit indiscriminately. That was the regular way to do business on Arlington Street. My father, in his three years' apprenticeship, had learned the tricks of many trades. He knew when and how to bluff. The legend of strictly cash was a protection against notoriously irresponsible customers, while none of the good customers, who had a record for paying regularly on Saturday, hesitated to enter the store with empty purses. If my father knew the tricks of the trade, my mother could be counted on to throw all her talent and tact into the business. Of course she had no English yet, but as she could perform the acts of weighing, measuring, and mental computation of fractions mechanically, she was able to give her whole attention to the dark mysteries of the language, as in her course with her customers gave her opportunity. In this she made such rapid progress that she soon lost all sense of disadvantage, and conducted herself behind the counter, very much as if she were back in her old store in Polatsk. It was far more cozy than Polatsk, at least so it seemed to me, for behind the store was the kitchen, where in the intervals of slack trade she did her cooking and washing. Arlington Street customers were used to waiting while the storekeeper salted the soup, or rescued a loaf from the oven. Once more Fortune favored my family with a thin little smile, and my father, in reply to a friendly inquiry, would say, one makes a living with the shrug of the shoulders they added, but nothing to boast of. It was characteristic of my attitude toward bread and butter matters that this contented me, and I felt free to devote myself to the conquest of my new world. Looking back to those critical first years, I see myself always behaving like a child let loose in a garden to play, and dig and chase the butterflies. Occasionally indeed I was stung by the wasp of family trouble, but I knew a healing ointment, my faith in America. My father had come to America to make a living. America, which was free and fair and kind, must presently yield him what he sought. I had come to America to see a new world, and I followed my own ends with the utmost assiduity, only as I ran out to explore, I would look back to see if my house were in order behind me, if my family still kept its head above water. In after years, when I passed as an American among Americans, if I was suddenly made aware of the past that lay forgotten, if a letter from Russia, or a paragraph in the newspaper, or a conversation overheard in the streetcar, suddenly reminded me of what I might have been. I thought it a miracle that I, Moshka, the granddaughter of Raphael the Russian, born to a humble destiny, should be at home in an American metropolis, be free to fashion my own life, and should dream my dreams in English phrases. But in the beginning my admiration was spent on more concrete embodiments of the splendors of America, such as fine houses, gay shops, electric engines, and apparatus, public buildings, illuminations, and parades. My early letters to my Russian friends were filled with boastful descriptions of these glories of my new country. No native citizen of Chelsea took such pride and delight in its institutions as I did. It required no fife and drum-core, no fourth of July procession, to set me tingling with patriotism. Even the common agents and instruments of municipal life, such as the letter-carrier and the fire-engine, I regarded with a measure of respect. I know what I thought of people who said that Chelsea was a very small, dull, unaspiring town, with no discernible excuse for a separate name or existence. The apex of my civic pride and personal contentment was reached on the bright September morning when I entered the public school. That day I must always remember, even if I live to be so old that I cannot tell my name. To most people, their first day at school is a memorable occasion. In my case, the importance of the day was a hundred times magnified, on account of the years I had waited, the road I had come, and the conscious ambitions I entertained. I am wearily aware that I am speaking in extreme figures, in superlatives. I wish I knew some other way to render the mental life of the immigrant child of reasoning age. I may have been ever so much an exception and acuteness of observation, powers of comparison, and abnormal self-consciousness. Nonetheless were my thoughts and conduct typical of the attitude of the intelligent immigrant child toward American institutions. And what the child thinks and feels is a reflection of the hopes, desires, and purposes of the parents who brought him overseas, no matter how precocious and independent the child may be. Your immigrant inspectors will tell you what poverty the foreigner brings in his baggage, what want in his pockets. Let the overgrown boy of twelve, reverently drawing his letters in the baby class, testify to the noble dreams and high ideals that may be hidden beneath the greasy kaftan of the immigrant. Speaking for the Jews, at least, I know I am safe in inviting such an investigation. Who were my companions on my first day at school? Whose hand was in mine, as I stood, overcome with awe by the teacher's desk, and whispered my name as my father prompted. Was it Frieda's steady, capable hand? Was it her loyal heart that throbbed, beat for beat with mine, as it had done through all their childish adventures? Frieda's heart did throb that day, but not with my emotions. My heart pulsed with joy and pride and ambition, and her heart longing fought with abnegation, for I was led to the school room, with its sunshine and its singing, and the teacher's cheery smile. While she was led to the workshop, with its foul air, caravine faces, and the foreman's stern command. Our going to school was the fulfillment of my father's best promises to us, and Frieda's share in it was to fashion and fit the calico frocks in which the baby sister and I made our first appearance in a public school room. I remember to this day the gray pattern of the calico, so affectionately did I regard it, as it hung upon the wall, my consecration robe awaiting the beatific day, and Frieda, I am sure, remembers it too, so longingly did she regard it as the crisp, starchy breaths of it slid between her fingers. But whatever were her longings, she said nothing of them. She bent over the sewing machine, humming an old world melody. In every straight, smooth seam, perhaps she tucked away some lingering impulse of childhood. But she matched the scrolls and flowers with the utmost care. If a sudden shock of rebellion made her straighten up for an instant, the next instant she was bending to adjust a ruffle to the best advantage. And when the momentous day arrived, and the little sister and I stood up to be arrayed, it was Frieda herself who patted and smoothed my stiff new calico, who made me turn round and round to see that I was perfect, who stooped to pull out a disfiguring basting thread. If there was anything in her heart besides sisterly love and pride and goodwill as we parted that morning, it was a sense of loss and a woman's acquiescence in her fate, for we had been close friends, and now our ways would lie apart. Longing she felt, but no envy. She did not grudge me what she was denied. Until that morning we had been children together. But now, at the fiat of her destiny, she became a woman, with all a woman's cares, whilst I, so little younger than she, was bitten to dance at the May Festival of Untroubled Childhood. I wish for my comfort that I could say that I had some notion of the difference in our lots, some sense of the injustice to her, of the indulgence to me. I wish I could even say that I gave serious thought to the matter. There had always been a distinction between us rather out of proportion to the difference in our years. Her good health and domestic instincts had made it natural for her to become my mother's right hand, in the years preceding the emigration, when there were no more servants or dependents. Then there was the family tradition that Mary was the quicker, the brighter of the two, and that hers could be no common lot. Frida was relied upon for help, and her sister for glory. And when I failed as a milliner's apprentice, while Frida made excellent progress at the dress-makers, our fates indeed were sealed. It was understood, even before we reached Boston, that she would go to work and eye to school. In view of the family prejudices, it was the inevitable course. No injustice was intended. My father sent us hand in hand to school before he had ever thought of America. If in America he had been able to support his family unaided, it would have been the culmination of his best hopes to see all his children at school, with equal advantages at home. But when he had done his best, and was still unable to provide even bread and shelter for us all, he was compelled to make us children self-supporting as fast as it was practicable. There was no choosing possible. Frida was the oldest, the strongest, the best prepared, and the only one who was of legal age to be put to work. My father has nothing to answer for. He divided the world between his children in accordance with the laws of the country and the compulsion of his circumstances. I have no need of defending him. It is myself that I would like to defend, and I cannot. I remember that I accepted the arrangements made for my sister and me without much reflection, and everything that was planned for my advantage I took as a matter of course. I was no heartless monster, but a decidedly self-centered child. If my sister had seemed unhappy it would have troubled me. But I am ashamed to recall that I did not consider how little it was that contented her. I was so preoccupied with my own happiness that I did not half perceive the splendid devotion of her attitude towards me, the sweetness of her joy in my good luck. She not only stood by approvingly when I was helped to everything, she cheerfully waited on me herself, and I took everything from her hand as if it were my due. The two of us stood a moment in the doorway of the Tenement House on Arlington Street that wonderful September morning when I first went to school. It was I that ran away on winged feet of joy and expectation. It was she whose feet were bound in the treadmill of daily toil, and I was so blind that I did not see that the glory lay on her and not on me. Father himself conducted us to school. He would not have delegated that mission to the President of the United States. He had awaited the day with impatience equal to mine, and the visions he saw as he hurried as over the sun-flect pavements transcended all my dreams. Almost his first act on landing on American soil three years before had been his application for naturalization. He had taken the remaining steps in the process with eager promptness, and at the earliest moment allowed by the law he became a citizen of the United States. It is true that he had left home in search of bread for his hungry family, but he went blessing the necessity that drove him to America. The boasted freedom of the New World meant to him far more than the right to reside, travel, and work wherever he pleased. It meant the freedom to speak his thoughts, to throw off the shackles of superstition, to test his own fate, unhindered by political or religious tyranny. He was only a young man when he landed, thirty-two, and most of his life he had been held in leading strings. He was hungry for his untasted manhood. Three years passed and sorted struggle and disappointment. He was not prepared to make a living even in America, where the day laborer eats wheat instead of rye. Apparently the American flag could not protect him against the pursuing nemesis of his limitations. He must expiate the sins of his fathers who slept across the seas. He had been endowed at birth with a poor constitution, a nervous restless temperament, and an abundance of hindering prejudices. In his boyhood his body was starved, that his mind might be stuffed with useless learning. In his youth this dearly-gotten learning was sold, and the price was the bread and salt which he had not been trained to earn for himself. Under the wedding canopy he was bound for life to a girl whose features were still strange to him, and he was bitten to multiply himself that sacred learning might be perpetuated in his sons to the glory of the God of his fathers. All this while he had been led about as a creature without a will, a chattel, an instrument. In his maturity he awoke and found himself poor in health, poor in purse, poor in useful knowledge, and hampered on all sides. At first not of opportunity he broke away from his prison, and strove to atone for his wasted youth by a life of useful labour. While at the same time he sought to lighten the gloom of his narrow scholarship by freely partaking of modern ideas. But his utmost endeavour still left him far from his goal. In business nothing prospered with him. Some faults of hand or mind or temperament led him to failure where other men found success. Wherever the blame for his disabilities he placed he reaped their bitter fruit. Give me bread, he cried to America. What will you do to earn it, the challenge came back. And he found that he was master of no art, of no trade, that even his precious learning was of no avail, because he had only the most antiquated methods of communicating it. So in his primary quest he had failed. There was left him the compensation of intellectual freedom, that he sought to realise in every possible way. He had very little opportunity to prosecute his education, which in truth had never been begun. His struggle for a bare living left him no time to take advantage of the public evening school, but he lost nothing of what was to be learned through reading, through attendance at public meetings, through exercising the rights of citizenship. Even here he was hindered by a natural inability to acquire the English language. In time indeed he learned to read, to follow a conversation or lecture. But he never learned to write correctly, and his pronunciation remains extremely foreign to this day. If education, culture, the higher life were shining things to be worshipped from afar, he had still a means left whereby he could draw one step nearer to them. He could send his children to school, to learn all those things that he knew by fame to be desirable. The common school at least, perhaps high school, for one or two, perhaps even college. His children should be students, should fill his house with books and intellectual company, and thus he would walk by proxy in the Eleasian fields of liberal learning. As for the children themselves, he knew no sure way to their advancement and happiness. So it was with a heart full of longing and hope that my father led us to school on that first day. He took long strides in his eagerness, the rest of us running and hopping to keep up. At last the four of us stood around the teacher's desk, and my father, in his impossible English, gave us over to her charge, with some broken word of his hopes for us that his swelling heart could no longer contain. I venture to say that Miss Nixon was struck by something uncommon in the group we made, something outside of Semitic features and the abashed manner of the Elean. My little sister was as pretty as a doll, with her clear pink and white face, short golden curls, and eyes like blue violets when you caught them looking up. My brother might have been a girl, too, with his cherubic countours of face, rich red colour, glossy black hair, and fine eyebrows. Whatever secret fears were in his heart, remembering his former teachers, who had taught with the rod, he stood up straight and uncringing before the American teacher, his cap respectfully doffed. Next to him stood a starved-looking girl, with eyes ready to pop out, and short dark curls that would not have made much of a wake for a Jewish bride. All three children carried themselves rather better than the common run of green pupils that were brought to Miss Nixon. But the figure that challenged attention to the group was the tall, straight father, with his earnest face and fine forehead, nervous hands eloquent in gesture, and a voice full of feeling. This foreigner who brought his children to school, as if it were an act of consecration, who regarded the teacher of the primer class with reverence, who spoke of visions like a man inspired in a common school room, was not like other aliens who brought their children in dull obedience to the law, was not like the native fathers who brought their unmanageable boys, glad to be relieved of their care. I think Miss Nixon guessed what my father's best English could not convey. I think she divined that by the simple act of delivering our school certificates to her he took possession of America. CHAPTER 10 It is not worthwhile to refer to voluminous school statistics to see just how many green pupils entered school last September, not knowing the days of the week in English, who next February will be reclaiming patriotic verses in honor of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, with a foreign accent indeed, but with plenty of enthusiasm. It is enough to know that this hundredfold miracle is common to the schools in every part of the United States where immigrants are received. And if I was one of Chelsea's hundred in 1894, it was only to be expected, since I was one of the older of the green children, and had had a start in my irregular schooling in Russia, and was carried along by a tremendous desire to learn, and had my family to cheer me on. I was not a bit too large for my little chair and desk in the baby class, but my mind, of course, was too mature by six or seven years for the work. So as soon as I could understand what the teacher said in class, I was advanced to the second grade. This was within a week after Miss Nixon took me in hand. But I do not mean to give my dear teacher all the credit for my rapid progress, nor even half the credit. I shall divide it with her on behalf of my race and my family. I was drew enough to have an aptitude for language in general, and to bend my mind earnestly to my task. I was antin' enough to read each lesson with my heart, which gave me an inkling of what was coming next, and so carried me along by leaps and bounds. As for the teacher, she could best explain what theory she followed in teaching us foreigners to read. I can only describe the method, which was so simple, that I wish holiness could be taught in the same way. There were about half a dozen of us beginners in English in age from six to fifteen. Miss Nixon made a special class of us, and aided us so skillfully and earnestly in our endeavors to see a cat, and hear a dog bark, and look at the hen, that we turned over page after page of the ravishing history, eager to find out how the common world looked, smelled, and tasted in a strange speech. The teacher knew just when to let us help each other out with a word in her own tongue. It happened that we were all Jews, and so, working all together, we actually covered more ground in a lesson than the native classes, composed entirely of the little tauts. But we stuck, stuck fast, at the definite article, and sometimes the lesson resolved itself into a species of lingual gymnastics, in which we all looked as if we meant to bite our tongues off. Miss Nixon was pretty, and she must have looked well with her white teeth showing in the act. But at the time I was too solemnly occupied to admire her looks. I did take great pleasure in her smile of approval, whenever I pronounced well, and her patience and perseverance in struggling with us over that thick little word are becoming to her even now. After fifteen years, it is not her fault, if any of us today, give a buzzing sound to the dreadful English thuh. I shall never have a better opportunity to make public declaration of my love for the English language. I am glad that American history runs, chapter for chapter, the way it does. For thus America came to be the country I loved so dearly. I am glad, most of all, that the Americans began by being Englishmen. For thus did I come to inherit this beautiful language in which I think. It seems to me that in any other language happiness is not so sweet. Logic is not so clear. I am not sure that I could believe my neighbors as I do if I thought about them in un-English words. I could almost say that my conviction of immortality is bound up with the English of its promise. And as I am attached to my prejudices, I must love the English language. Whenever the teachers did anything special to help me over my private difficulties, my gratitude went out to them, silently. It meant so much to me that they halted the lesson to give me a lift, that I needs must love them for it. Dear Miss Carol, of the second grade, would be amazed to hear what small things I remember. All because I was so impressed at the time with her readiness and sweetness in taking notice of my difficulties. Says Miss Carol, looking straight at me. If Johnny has three marbles, and Charlie has twice as many, how many marbles has Charlie? I raise my hand for permission to speak. Teacher, I don't know but is twice. Teacher beckons me to her and whispers to me the meaning of the strange word, and I am able to write the sum correctly. It's all in the day's work with her. With me it's a special act of kindness and efficiency. She whom I found in the next grade became so dear a friend that I can hardly name her with the rest, though I mention none of them lightly. Her approval was always dear to me, first because she was teacher, and afterwards as long as she lived, because she was my Miss Dillingham. Great was my grief, therefore, when shortly after my admission to her class, I incurred discipline. The first and next to the last time in my school career. The class was repeating in chorus the Lord's prayer, heads bowed on desks. I was doing my best to keep up by the sound. My mind could not go beyond the word hallowed, for which I had not found the meaning. In the middle of the prayer a Jewish boy across the aisle tried on my foot to get my attention. You must not say that, he admonished in a solemn whisper. It's Christian. I whispered back that it wasn't, and went on to the amen. I did not know but what he was right, but the name of Christ was not in the prayer, and I was bound to do everything that the class did. If I had any Jewish scruples, they were lagging away behind my interests in school affairs. How American this was, two pupils side by side in the school room, each holding to his own opinion, but both submitting to the common law, for the boy at least bowed his head as the teacher ordered. But all Miss Dillingham knew of it was that two of her pupils whispered during morning prayer, and she must discipline them. So I was degraded from the honor row to the lowest row, and it was many a day before I forgave that young missionary. It was not enough for my vengeance that he suffered punishment with me. Teacher, of course, hurt us both defend ourselves. But there was a time and a place for religious arguments, and she meant to help us remember that point. I remembered to this day what a struggle we had over the word water. Miss Dillingham and I. It seemed as if I could not give the sound of W. I said, Votter, every time, patiently my teacher worked with me, inventing mouth exercises for me, to get my stubborn lips to produce that W. And when at last I could say village and water, and rapid alternation, without misplacing the two initials, that memorable word was sweet on my lips, for we had conquered and teacher was pleased. Getting a language in this way, word by word, has a charm that may be set against the disadvantages. It is like gathering a posy, blossom by blossom. Bring the bouquet into your chamber, and these nesterniums stand for the whole flaming carnival of them tumbling over the fence out there. These yellow pansies recall the velvet crescent of color, glowing under the bay window. This spray of honeysuckle smells like the wind-tossed masses of it on the porch, ripe and bee laden, the whole garden in a glass tumbler. So it is with one who gathers words, loving them. Regular words remain associated with important occasions in the learner's mind. I could thus write a history of my English vocabulary that should be at the same time an account of my comings and goings, my mistakes and my triumphs, during the years of my initiation. If I was eager and diligent, my teachers did not sleep. As fast as my knowledge of English allowed, they advanced me from grade to grade, without reference to the usual schedule of promotions. My father was right, when he often said in discussing my prospects, that ability would be promptly recognized in the public schools. Rapid as was my progress, on account of the advantages with which I started, some of the other green pupils were not far behind me, within a grade or two, by the end of the year. My brother, whose childhood had been one hideous nightmare, what with the stupid reba, the cruel whip, and the general repression of life in the pale, surprised my father by the progress he made under intelligent, sympathetic guidance. Indeed, he soon had a reputation in the school that the American boys envied, and all through the school course, he more than held his own with pupils of his age. So much for the right and wrong way of doing things. There is a record of my early progress in English much better than my recollections, however accurate and definite these may be. I have several reasons for introducing it here. First, it shows what the Russian Jew can do with an adopted language. Next, it proves that vigilance of our public school teachers of which I spoke. And last, I am proud of it. That is an unnecessary confession, but I could not be satisfied to insert the record here, with my vanity, unavowed. This is the document, copied from an educational journal, a tattered copy of which lies in my lap as I write, treasured for fifteen years, you see, by my vanity. Editor, primary education. This is the uncorrected paper of a Russian child, twelve years old, who had studied English only four months. She had never, until September, been to school even in her own country, and has heard English spoken only at school. I shall be glad if the paper of my pupil and the above explanation may appear in your paper. M. S. Dillingham. Chelsea, Massachusetts. Snow. Snow is frozen moisture which comes from the clouds. Now the snow is coming down in feather flakes which makes nice snowballs. But there is still one kind of snow more. This kind of snow is called snow crystals, for it comes down in little curly balls. These snow crystals aren't quite as good for snowballs as feather flakes, for they, the snow crystals are dry, so they can't keep together as feather flakes do. The snow is dear to some children, for they like slaying. As I said at the top, the snow comes from the clouds. Now the trees are bare, and no flowers are to see in the fields and gardens. We all know why. And the whole world seems like a sleep without the happy bird songs which left us till spring. But the snow which drove away all these pretty and happy things, try, as I think, not to make us at all unhappy. They cover up the branches of the trees, the fields, the gardens, and houses. And the whole world looks like dressed in a beautiful white, instead of green, dress, with the sky looking down on it with a pale face. And so the people can find some joy in it too, without the happy summer. Mary Anton. And now that it stands there, with her name over it, I am ashamed of my flippant talk about vanity. More to me than all the praise I could hope to win by the conquest of fifty languages is the association of this dear friend with my earliest efforts at writing. And it pleases me to remember that to her I owe my very first appearance in print. Vanity is the least part of it when I remember how she called me to her desk one day after school was out and showed me my composition, my own words that I had written out of my own head, printed out, clear black and white, with my name at the end. Nothing so wonderful had ever happened to me before. My whole consciousness was suddenly transformed. I suppose that was the moment when I became a writer. I always loved to write. I wrote letters whenever I had an excuse. Yet it had never occurred to me to sit down and write my thoughts for no person in particular, merely to put the word on paper. But now, as I read my own words, in a delicious confusion, the idea was born. I stared at my name. Mary Anton. Was that really I? The printed characters composing it seemed strange to me all of a sudden. If that was my name and those were the words out of my own head, what relation did it all have to me, who was alone there with Miss Dillingham, and the printed page between us? Why, it meant that I could write again and see my writing printed for people to read. I could write many, many, many things. I could write a book. The idea was so huge, so bewildering, that my mind scarcely could accommodate it. I do not know what my teacher said to me, probably very little. It was her way to say only a little, and look at me, and trust me to understand. Once she had occasion to lecture me about living a shut-up life, she wanted me to go outdoors. I had been repeatedly scolded and reproved on that score by other people, but I had only laughed, saying that I was too happy to change my ways. But when Miss Dillingham spoke to me, I saw that it was a serious matter, and yet she only said a few words, and looked at me with that smile of hers that was only half a smile, and the rest a meaning. Another time she had a great question to ask me, touching my life to the quick. She merely put her question and was silent, but I knew what answer she expected, and not being able to give it then, I went away sad and reproved. Years later I had my triumphant answer, but she was no longer there to receive it. And so her eyes look at me, from the picture on the mantle there, with a reproach I no longer merit. I ought to go back and strike out all that talk about vanity. What reason have I to be vain, when I reflect how at every step I was petted, nursed, and encouraged? I did not even discover my own talent. It was discovered first by my father in Russia, and next by my friend in America. What did I ever do but write when they told me to write? I suppose my grandfather, who drove a spavent horse through lonely country lanes, sat in the shade of crisp-leaved oaks to refresh himself with a bit of black bread, and an acorn falling beside him, in the immense stillness, shook his heart with the echo, and left him wondering. I suppose my father stole away from the synagogue one long festival day, and stretched himself out in the sun-warmed grass, and lost himself in dreams that made the world of men unreal when he returned to them. And so what is there left for me to do, who do not have to drive a horse, nor interpret ancient lore, but put my grandfather's question into words, and set to music my father's dream? The tongue am I of those who lived before me, as those that are to come will be the voice of my unspoken thoughts. And so who shall be applauded if the song be sweet, if the prophecy be true? I never heard of anyone who was so watched and coaxed, so passed along from hand to helping hand, as was I. I always had friends, they spring up everywhere, as if they had stood waiting for me to come. So here is my teacher, the moment she saw that I could give a good paraphrase of her talk on snow, bent on finding out what more I could do. One day she asked me if I had ever written poetry. I had not, but I went home and tried. I believe it was more snow, and I know it was wretched. I wish I could produce a copy of that early effusion. It would prove that my judgment is not severe. Wretched it was, worse a great deal than realms of poetry that is written by children about whom there is no fuss made. But Miss Dillingham was not discouraged. She saw that I had no idea of meter, so she proceeded to teach me. We repeated miles of poetry together, smooth lines that sing themselves, mostly out of longfellow. Then I would go home and write, oh, about the snow in our backyard. But when Miss Dillingham came to read my verses, they limped and they lagged and they dragged, and there was no tune that would fit them. At last the moment of illumination I saw were my trouble lay. I had supposed that my lines matched when they had an equal number of syllables, taking no account of accent. Now I knew better, now I could write poetry. The everlasting snow melted at last, and the mud puddles dried in the spring sun, and the grass on the common was green, and still I wrote poetry. Again I wish I had some example of my springtime rhapsodies, the various rubbish of the sort that ever a child perpetrated. Lizzie McDee, who had red hair and freckles, and a Sunday school manner on weekdays, and was below me in the class, did a great deal better. We used to compare verses, and while I do not remember that I ever had the grace to own that she was the better poet, I do know that I secretly wondered why the teachers did not invite her to stay after school and study poetry, while they took so much pains with me. But Soa always was with me. Somebody did something for me all the time. Making fair allowance for my youth, retarded education, and strangeness to the language, it must still be admitted that I never wrote a good verse. But I loved to read it. My half hours with Miss Dillingham were full of delight for me, quite apart from my newborn ambition to become a writer. But then was my joy, when Miss Dillingham, just before locking up her desk one evening, presented me with a volume of long fellow's poems. It was a thin volume of selections, but to me it was a bottomless treasure. I had never owned a book before. The sense of possession alone was a source of bliss, and this book I already knew and loved. And so Miss Dillingham, who was my first American friend, and who first put my name in print, was also the one to start my library. It was my regret when I considered that she was gone before I had given much of an account of all her gifts of love and service to me. About in the middle of the year I was promoted to the grammar school. Then it was that I walked on air, for I said to myself that I was a student now, in earnest, not merely a schoolgirl learning to spell and cipher. I was going to learn out of the way things, things that had nothing to do with ordinary life, things to know. And I walked home afternoons, with a great big geography book under my arm. It seemed to me that the earth was conscious of my step. Sometimes I carried home half the books in my desk, not because I should need them, but because I loved to hold them, and also because I loved to be seen carrying books. It was a badge of scholarship, and I was proud of it. I remembered the days in Vitepsk when I used to watch my cousin Herschel start for school in the morning. Every thread of his student's uniform, every worn copy in his satchel, glorified in my envious eyes. And now I was myself as he, I greater than he, for I knew English, and I could write poetry. If my head was not turned at this time, it was because I was so busy from morning till night. My father did his best to make me vain and silly. He made much of me to every chance-caller, boasting of my progress at school, and of my exalted friends, the teachers. For a schoolteacher was no ordinary mortal in his eyes. He was a superior being, set above the common run of men by her irredition and devotion to higher things. That a schoolteacher could be shallow or petty, or greedy for pay, was a thing that he could not have been brought to believe at this time. And he was right if he could only have stuck to it in later years when a newborn pessimism, fathered by his perception that in America, too, some things need mending, threw him to the opposite extreme of opinion, crying that nothing in the American scheme of society or government was worth tinkering. He surely was right in his first appraisal of the teacher. The mean sort of teachers are not teachers at all. They are self-seekers who take up teaching as a business, to support themselves and keep their hands white. These same persons, did they keep store or drive a milk wagon or wash babies for a living, would be respectable. As trespassers on a noble profession, they are worth no more than the books and slates and desks over which they preside. So much furniture to be had by the gross. They do not love their work. They contribute nothing to the higher development of their pupils. They busy themselves, not with research into the science of teaching, but with organizing political demonstrations to advance the cause of selfish candidates for public office who promise them rewards. The true teachers are of another strain. Apostles all of an ideal. They go to their work in a sphere of love and inquiry, seeking not comfort, not position, not age-old pensions, but truth that is the soul of wisdom, the joy of big-eyed children, the food of hungry youth. They were the true teachers who used to come to me on Arlington Street, so my father had reason to boast of the distinction brought upon his house. For the school teacher, in her trim, unostentatious dress, was an uncommon visitor in our neighborhood, and the talk that passed in the bare little parlor over the grocery store would not have been entirely comprehensible to our next-door neighbor. In the grammar school I had as good teachings as I had in the primary. It seems to me in retrospect that it was as good on the whole as the public school ideals of the time made possible. When I recall how I was taught geography, I see indeed that there was room for improvement occasionally both in the substance and in the method of instruction, but I know of at least one teacher of Chelsea who realized this, for I met her eight years later at a great metropolitan university that holds a summer session for the benefit of school teachers who want to keep up with the advance in their science. Very likely they no longer teach geography entirely within doors, and by row as I was taught. Fifteen years is plenty of time for progress. When I joined the first grammar grade, the class had had half years' start of me, but it was not long before I found my place near the head. In all branches except geography, it was genuine progress. I overtook the youngsters in their study of numbers, spelling, reading, and composition. In geography I merely made a bluff, but I did not know it. Neither did my teacher. I came up to such tests as she put me. The lesson was on Chelsea, which was right. Geography, like charity, should begin at home. Our texts ran on for a paragraph or so on the location, boundaries, natural features, and industries of the town with a bit of local history thrown in. We were to learn all these interesting facts, and be prepared to write them out from memory the next day. I went home and learned. Learned every word of the text, every comma, every footnote. When the teacher had read my paper, she marked it E-E. E was for excellent, but my paper was absolutely perfect, and must be put in a class by itself. The teacher exhibited my paper before the class, with some remarks about the diligence that could overtake in a week, pupils who had half a year's start. I took it all as modestly as I could, never doubting that I was indeed a very bright little girl, and getting to be very learned to boot. I was perfect in geography, a most erudite subject. But what was the truth? The words that I repeated so accurately on my paper had about as much meaning to me as the words of the Psalms I used to chant in Hebrew. I got an idea that the city of Chelsea, and the world in general, was laid out flat, like the common, and shaved off at the ends, to allow the north, south, east, and west to snuggle up close, like the frame around a picture. If I looked at the map, I was utterly bewildered. I could find no correspondence between the picture and the verbal explanations. With words I was safe, I could learn any number of words by heart, and some time or other they would pop out of the medley, clothed with meaning. Chelsea, I read, was bounded on all sides. Bounded appealed to my imagination, by various things that I had never identified, much as I had roomed about the town. I immediately pictured these remote boundaries as a six-foot fence in a good state of preservation, with the Mystic River, the towns of Everett and Revere, and East Boston Creek, rejoicing on the south, west, north, and east of it, respectively, that they had gotten side, while the rest of the world peeped in enviously through a knothole. In the middle of this cherished area, piano factories, or was it shoe factories, proudly reared their chimneys, while the population promenaded on a rope walk saluted at every turn by the benevolent inmates of the soldier's home on the top of Powder Horn Hill. Perhaps the fault was partly mine, because I would always reduce everything to a picture. Partly it may have been because I had not had time to digest the general definitions and explanations at the beginning of the book. Still, I can take but little of the blame when I consider how I fared through my geography right to the end of the grammar-school course. I did in time disentangle the symbolism of the orange revolving on a knitting needle from the astronomical facts in the case, but it took years of training under a master of the subject to rid me of my distrust of the map as a representation of the earth. To this day I sometimes blunder back to my early impression that any given portion of the earth's surface is constructed upon a skeleton consisting of two crossed bars, terminating in arrowheads which pin the cardinal points into place, and if I want to find any desired point of the compass, I am inclined to throw myself flat on my nose, my head due north, and my outstretched arms seeking the east and west respectively. For in the school room, as far as the study of the map went, we began with a symbol and stuck to the symbol. No teacher of geography I ever had, except the master I referred to, took the pains to a certain whether I had any sense of the facts for which the symbol stood. Outside the study of maps, geography consisted of statistics, tables of population, imports and exports, manufacturers, and degrees of temperature, dimensions of rivers, mountains, and political states, with lists of minerals, plants, and plagues native to any given part of the globe. The only part of the whole subject that meant anything to me was the description of the aspect of foreign lands and the manners and customs of their peoples, the relation of physiography to human history, what might be called the moral of geography, was not taught at all, or was touched upon in an unimpressive manner. The prevalence of this defect in the teaching of school geography is borne out by the surprise of the college freshman, who remarked to the professor of geology that it was curious to know how all the big rivers and harbors on the Atlantic coastal plain occurred in the neighborhood of large cities. A little instruction in the elements of chartography, a little practice in the use of the compass and the spirit level, a topographical map of the town common, an excursion with a road map, would have given me a fat round earth and place of my paper ghost, would have illumined the one dark alley in my school life. End of Chapter 10. Chapter 11 of The Promised Land. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain, recording by Bridget Gage, The Promised Land by Mary Anton. Chapter 11. My Country. The public school has done its best for us foreigners and for the country when it has made us into good Americans. I am glad it is mine to tell how the miracle was wrought in one case. You should be glad to hear of it, you born Americans. For it is the story of the growth of your country, of the flocking of your brothers and sisters from the far ends of the earth to the flag you love, of the recruiting of your armies of workers, thinkers, and leaders. And you will be glad to hear of it, my comrades in adoption. For it is a rehearsal of your own experience, the thrill and wonder of which your own hearts have felt. How long would you say, wise reader, it takes to make an American? By the middle of my second year in school, I had reached the sixth grade, when after the Christmas holidays we began to study the life of Washington, running through a summary of the Revolution and the early days of the Republic. It seemed to me that all my reading and study had been idle until then. The reader, the arithmetic, the songbook that had so fascinated me until now, became suddenly sober exercise books. Tools were with to hew away to the source of inspiration. When the teacher read to us out of a big book with many bookmarks in it, I sat rigid with attention in my little chair, my hands tightly clasped on the edge of my desk, and I painfully held my breath to prevent size of disappointment escaping, as I saw the teacher skip the parts between bookmarks. When the class read, and it came my turn, my voice shook and the book trembled in my hands. I could not pronounce the name of George Washington without a pause. Never had I prayed, never had I chanted the songs of David, never had I called upon the most holy, in such utter reverence and worship, as I repeated the simple sentences of my child's story of the patriot. I gazed with adoration at the portraits of George and Martha Washington, till I could see them with my eyes shut, and whereas formerly my self-consciousness had bordered on conceit, and I thought myself an uncommon person, parading my schoolbooks through the streets, and swelling with pride when a teacher detained me in conversation, now I grew humble all at once, seeing how insignificant I was beside the great. As I read about the noble boy, who would not tell a lie to save himself from punishment, I was for the first time truly repentant of my sins. Finally I had fasted and prayed, and made sacrifice on the days of atonement, but it was more than half play in mimicry of my elders. I had no real horror of sin, and I knew so many ways of escaping punishment. I am sure my family, my neighbors, my teachers in Palatsk, all my world in fact, strove together by example and precept, to teach me goodness. Saintliness had a new incarnation in about every third person I knew. I did respect the saints, but I could not help seeing that most of them were a little bit stupid, and that mischief was more fun than piety. Goodness, as I had known it, was respectable, but not necessarily admirable. The people I really admired, like my uncle Solomon and cousin Rachel, were those who preached the least and laughed the most. My sister Frida was perfectly good, but she did not think the less of me because I played tricks. What I loved in my friends was not inimitable. One could be downright good, if one really wanted to. One could be learned if one had books and teachers. One could sing funny songs and tell anecdotes if one traveled about and picked up such things, like one's uncles and cousins. But a human being strictly good, perfectly wise, and unfailingly valent, all at the same time, I had never heard or dreamed of. This wonderful George Washington was as inimitable as he was irreproachable. Even if I had never, never told a lie, I could not compare myself to George Washington. Before I was not brave, I was afraid to go out when snowballs whizzed, and I could never be the first president of the United States. So I was forced to revise my own estimate of myself, but the twin of my newborn humility, paradoxical as it may seem, was a sense of dignity I had never known before. For if I found that I was a person of small consequence, I discovered at the same time that I was more nobly related than I had ever supposed. I had relatives and friends who were notable people by the old standards. I had never been ashamed of my family. But this George Washington, who died long before I was born, was like a king in greatness, and he and I were fellow citizens. There was a great deal about fellow citizens in the patriotic literature we read at this time, and I knew from my father how he was a citizen through the process of naturalization, and how I also was a citizen by virtue of my relation to him. Undoubtedly I was a fellow citizen, and George Washington was another. It thrilled me to realize what sudden greatness had fallen on me, and at the same time it sobered me, as with a sense of responsibility. I strove to conduct myself as befitted a fellow citizen. Before books came into my life I was given to stargazing and daydreaming. When books were given me I fell upon them as a glun pounces on his meat after a period of enforced starvation. I lived with my nose in a book, and took no notice of the alternations of the sun and stars. But now, after the advent of George Washington and the American Revolution, I began to dream again. I strayed on the common after-school and set up hurrying home to read. I hung on fence-rails, my pet book forgotten under my arm, and gazed off to the yellow-streaked February sunset, and beyond, and beyond. I was no longer the central figure of my dreams. The dry weeds in the lane crackled beneath the tread of heroes. What more could America give a child? Ah, much more. As I read how the Patriots planned the Revolution, and the woman gave their sons to die in battle, and the heroes led to victory, and the rejoicing people set up the Republic, it dawned on me gradually what was meant by my country. The people all desiring noble things, and striving for them together, defying their oppressors, giving their lives for each other. All this it was that made my country. It was not a thing that I understood. I could not go home and tell Frida about it, as I told her other things I learned at school. But I knew one could say, my country, and feel it, as one felt God or myself. My teachers, my schoolmates, mis-dilling him, George Washington himself could not mean more than I when they said, my country, after I had once felt it, for the country was for all the citizens, and I was a citizen. And when we stood up to sing America, I shouted the words with all my might. I was in very earnest proclaiming to the world my love for my newfound country. I loved thy rocks and rills, thy woods and templeed hills. Boston Harbor, Crescent Beach, Chelsea Square, all was hallowed ground to me, as the days approached when the school was to hold exercises in honor of Washington's birthday. The halls resounded at all hours with the strains of patriotic songs, and I, who was a model of the Aten of Pupil, more than once lost my place in the lesson as I strained to hear, through closed doors, some neighbor in class rehearsing, the star-spangled banner. If the doors happened to be open and the chorus broke out unveiled, oh, say does that star-spangled banner yet wave, or the land of the free and the home of the brave, delicious tremors ran up and down my spine, and I was faint with suppressed enthusiasm. Where had been my country until now? What flag had I loved? What heroes had I worshipped? The very names of these things had been unknown to me. Well I knew that Pylotsk was not my country. It was Goloth, exile. On many occasions in the year we prayed to God to lead us out of exile. The beautiful Passover service closed with the words. Next year may we be in Jerusalem. On childish lips indeed those words were no conscious aspiration. We repeated the Hebrew syllables after our elders, but without their hope in longing. Still not a child among us was too young to feel in his own flesh the lash of the oppressor. We knew what it was to be Jews in exile, from the spiteful treatment we suffered at the hands of the smallest urchin who crossed himself. And thence we knew that Israel had good reason to pray for deliverance. But the story of the Exodus was not history to me in the sense that the story of the American Revolution was. It was more like a glorious myth, a belief in which had the effect of cutting me off from the actual world by linking me with the world of phantoms. Those moments of exaltation, which the contemplation of the biblical past afforded us, allowing us to call ourselves the children of princes, served but to tinge with a more poignant sense of disinheritance, the long, humdrum stretches of our life. In very truth we were a people without a country. Surrounded by mocking foes and detractors, it was difficult for me to realize the persons of my people's heroes, or the events in which they moved. Except in moments of abstraction from the world around me, I scarcely understood that Jerusalem was an actual spot on the earth, where once the kings of the Bible, real people, like my neighbors in Polotsk, ruled in Poussaint majesty. For the conditions of our civil life did not permit us to cultivate a spirit of nationalism. The freedom of worship that was grudgingly granted within the narrow limits of the pale by no means included the right to set up openly any idea of a Hebrew state, any hero other than the Tsar. What we children picked up of our ancient political history was confused with the miraculous story of the creation, with the supernatural legends and hazy associations of Bible lore. As to our future, we Jews in Polotsk had no national expectations, only a life-worn dreamer here and there hoping to die in Palestine. If Fetka and I sang with my father, first making sure of our audience, Zion, Zion, holy Zion, not forever is it lost. We did not really picture to ourselves Judea restored. So it came to pass that we did not know what my country could mean to a man, and as we had no country, so we had no flag to love. It was by no far-fetched symbolism that the banner of the House of Romanoff became the emblem of our latter-day bondage in our eyes. Even a child would know how to hate the flag that we were forced, on pain of severe penalties, to hoist above our housetops in celebration of the advent of one of our oppressors. And as it was with country and flag, so it was with heroes of war, we hated the uniform of the soldier to the last brass button. On the person of a Gentile, it was the symbol of tyranny. On the person of a Jew, it was the emblem of shame. So a little Jewish girl in Polotsk was apt to grow up hungry-minded and empty-hearted, and if, still in her outreaching youth, she was set down in a land of outspoken patriotism, she was likely to love her new country with a great love, and to embrace its heroes in a great worship. Naturalization, with us Russian Jews, may mean more than the adoption of the immigrant by America. It may mean the adoption of America by the immigrant. On the day of the Washington celebration, I recited a poem that I had composed in my enthusiasm. But composed is not the word. The process of putting on paper the sediments that seethed in my soul was really very discomposing. I dug the words out of my heart, squeezed the rhythms out of my brain, forced the missing syllables out of their hiding places in the dictionary. May I never again know such travail of the spirit as I endured during the fevered days when I was engaged on the poem. It was not as if I wanted to say that snow was white or grass was green. I could do that without a dictionary. It was a question now of the loftiest sediments, of the most abstract myths, the names of which were very new in my vocabulary. It was necessary to use polysyllables, and plenty of them, and where to find rhymes for such words as tyranny, freedom, and justice, when you had less than two years acquaintance with English. The name I wished to celebrate was the most difficult of all. Nothing but Washington rhymed with Washington. It was a most ambitious undertaking, but my heart could find no rest till it had proclaimed itself to the world. I wrestled with my difficulties and spared not ink, till inspiration perched on my pinpoint, and my soul gave up its best. When I had done, I was myself impressed with the length, gravity, and nobility of my poem. My father was overcome with emotion as he read it. His hands trembled as he held the paper to the light, and the mist gathered in his eyes. My teacher, Miss Dwight, was plainly astonished at my performance, and said many kind things, and asked many questions, all of which I took very solemnly, like one who had been in the clouds and returned to earth with a sign upon him. When Miss Dwight asked me to read my poem to the class on the day of celebration, I readily consented. It was not in me to refuse a chance to tell my schoolmates what I thought of George Washington. I was not a heroic figure when I stood up in front of the class to pronounce the praises of the father of his country. Thin, pale, and hollow, with a shadow of short black curls on my brow, and the staring look of prominent eyes, I must have looked more frightened than imposing. My dress added no grace to my appearance. Plads were in fashion, and my frock was of a red and green plaid that had a ghastly effect on my complexion. I hated it when I thought of it, but on the great day I did not know I had any dress on. Heels clapped together, and hands glued to my sides. I lifted up my voice in praise of George Washington. It was not much of a voice. Like my hollow cheeks, it suggested consumption. My pronunciation was faulty, my declamation flat, but I had the courage of my convictions. I was face-to-face with two-score fellow-citizens, in clean blossoms and extra frills. I must tell them what George Washington had done for their country, for our country, for me. I can laugh now at the impossible meters, the grandiose phrases, the verbose repetitions of my poem. Years ago I must have laughed at it, when I threw my only copy into the waste-basket. The copy I am now turning over was loaned to me by Ms. Dwight, who faithfully preserved it all these years. For the sake, no doubt, of what I strove to express when I laboriously hitched together those dozen and more ungraceful stanzas. But to the forty fellow-citizens sitting in rows in front of me, it was no laughing matter. And the bad boys sat in attitudes of attention, hypnotized by this solemnity of my demeanor. If they got any inkling of what the hail of big words was about, it must have been through a cult suggestion. I fixed their eighty eyes with my single stare, and gave it to them, stanza after stanza, with such emphasis as the lameness of the lines permitted. He whose courage, will, amazing bravery, did free his land from a despot's rule, from man's greatest evil, almost slavery, and all that's taught in tyranny's school. Who gave his land its liberty? Who was he? Twas he who ere will be our pride, immortal Washington, who always did in truth confide, we hail our Washington. The best of the verses were no better than these, but the children listened, they had to. Presently I gave them news, declaring that Washington, wrote the famous Constitution, sacreds the hand, that this blessed guide to man had given, which says, one and all of mankind are alike, excepting none. This was received in respectful silence, possibly because the other fellow-citizens were as hazy about historical facts as I at this point. Hurrah for Washington they understood, and three cheers for the red, white, and blue was only to be expected on that occasion. But there ran a special note through my poem, a thought that only Isra Rubinstein or Becky Aronovich could have fully understood besides myself, for I made myself the spokesman of the luckless sons of Abraham, saying, Then we weary Hebrew children at last found rest, in the land where reigned freedom and like a nest. To homeless birds your land proved to us, and therefore will we gratefully sing your praise evermore. The boys and girls, who had never been turned away from any door because of their father's religion, say as if fascinated in their places. But they woke up and applauded heartily when I was done. Blowing the example of Miss Dwight, who wore the happy face which meant that one of her pupils had done well. The recitation was repeated by request before several other classes, and the applause was equally prolonged at each repetition. After the exercises I was surrounded, praised, questioned, and made much of, by teachers as well as pupils. Plainly I had not poured my praise of George Washington into deaf ears. The teachers asked me if anybody had helped me with the poem. The girls invariably asked, Mary Anton, how could you think of all those words? None of them thought of the dictionary. If I had been satisfied with my poem in the first place, the applause with which it was received by my teachers and schoolmates convinced me that I had produced a very fine thing indeed. So the person, whoever it was, perhaps my father, who suggested that my tribute to Washington ought to be printed, did not find me difficult to persuade. When I had achieved an absolutely perfect copy of my verses, at the expense of a dozen sheets of blue-ruled note paper, I crossed the Mystic River to Boston and boldly invaded Newspaper Row. It never occurred to me to send my manuscript by mail. In fact, it has never been my way to send a delicate where I could go myself. Consciously or unconsciously I have always acted on the motto of a wise man, who was one of the dearest friends that Boston kept for me until I came. Personal presence moves the world, said the great Dr. Hale, and I went in person to beard the editor in his arm chair. From the ferry slip to the offices on the Boston transcript, the way was long, strange, and full of perils, but I kept resolutely up on Hanover Street, being familiar with that part of my route, till I came to a puzzling corner. There I stopped, utterly bewildered by the tangle of streets, the roar of traffic, the giddy swarm of pedestrians. With the precious manuscript tightly clasped, I balanced myself on the curb-stone, afraid to plunge into the boiling vortex of the crossing. Every time I made a start, a clinging streetcar snatched up the way. I could not even pick out my street, the unobtrusive street signs were lost to my unpracticed sight, and the glaring confusion of store signs and advertisements. If I accosted a pedestrian to ask the way, I had to speak several times before I was heard. Jews hurrying by with bearded chins on their bosoms and eyes and tent shrugged to their shoulders at the name transcript, and shrugged till they were out of sight. Italians sauntering behind their fruit carts entered my inquiry with a lift of the head that made their earrings gleam, and a wave of the hand that referred me to all four points of the compass at once. I was trying to catch the eye of the tall policeman who stood grandly in the middle of the crossing, a stout pillar around which the waves of traffic broke when deliverance bellowed in my ear. Herald, globe, record, traveller, eh, what's your want, sis? The tall newsboy had to stoop to me. Transcript? Sure, and in half a twinkling he had picked me out a paper from his bundle. When I explained to him, he good-naturedly tucked the paper in again, piloted me across, unraveled the end of Washington Street for me, and with much pointing out of landmarks, headed me for my destination, my nose seeking the spire of the Old South Church. I found the transcript building a waste of corridors tunneled by a maze of staircases. On the glazed glass doors were many signs, with the names or nicknames of many persons, city editor, beggars and peddlers not allowed. The nameless world not included in these categories was warned off, forbidden to be or do. Private, no admittance, don't knock, and the various inhospitable legends on the doors and walls were punctuated by frequent cuspidors on the floor. There was no sign anywhere of the welcome which I, as an author, expected to find in the home of a newspaper. I was descending from the top story to the street for the seventh time, trying to decide what kind of editor a patriotic poem belonged to, when an untidy boy carrying broad paper streamers and whistling shrilly, in defiance of an express prohibition on the wall, bustled through the quarter and left a door ajar. I slipped in behind him and found myself in a room full of editors. I was a little surprised at the appearance of the editors. I had imagined my editor would look like Mr. Jones, the principal of my school, whose coat was always buttoned and whose fingernails were beautiful. These people were in shirt sleeves, and they smoked, and they didn't politely turn in their revolving chairs when I came in and ask, what can I do for you? The room was noisy with typewriters, and nobody heard my, please, can you tell me? At last one of the machines stopped, and the operator thought he heard something in the pause. He looked up through his own smoke. I guess he thought he saw something, for he stared. It troubled me a little to have him stare so. I realized suddenly that the hand in which I carried my manuscript was moist, and I was afraid it would make marks on the paper. I held out the manuscript to the editor, explaining that it was a poem about George Washington, and would he please print it in the transcript. There was something queer about that particular editor. The way he stared and smiled made me feel about eleven inches high, and my voice kept growing smaller and smaller as I neared to the end of my speech. At last he spoke, laying down his pipe and sitting back at his ease. So you have brought us a poem, my child. It's about George Washington, I repeated impressively. Don't you want to read it? I should be delighted, my dear, but the fact is he did not take my paper. He stood up and called across the room. Say, Jack. Here is a young lady who has brought us a poem about George Washington. Wrote it yourself, my dear? Wrote it all herself. What shall we do with her? Mr. Jack came over and another man. My editor made me repeat my business, and they all looked interested, but nobody took my paper from me. They put their hands into their pockets, and my hand kept growing clammyer all the time. The three seemed to be consulting, but I could not understand what they said or why Mr. Jack laughed. A fourth man, who had been writing busily at a desk nearby, broke in on the consultation. That's enough, boys, he said. That's enough. Take the young lady to Mr. Herd. Mr. Herd, it was found, was away on a vacation, and of several other editors in several offices, to whom I was referred, none proved to be the proper editor to take charge of a poem about George Washington. At last an elderly editor suggested that as Mr. Herd would be away for some time, I would do well to give up the transcript and try the Herald across the way. A little tired by my wanderings, and bewildered by the complexity of the editorial system, but still confident about my mission, I picked my way across Washington Street and found the Herald offices. Here I had instant good luck. The first editor I addressed took my paper and invited me to a seat. He read my poem much more quickly than I could myself, and said it was very nice, and asked me some questions, and made notes on a slip of paper which he pinned to my manuscript. He said he would have my piece printed very soon, and would send me a copy of the issue in which it appeared. As I was going, I could not help giving the editor my hand, although I had not experienced any handshaking in newspaper row. I felt that as author and editor, we were on a very pleasant footing, and I gave him my hand in the token of comradeship. I had regained my full stature and something over during this cordial interview, and when I stepped out into the street and saw the crowd intently studying the bulletin board, I spelled out of all proportion, for I told myself that I, Mary Anton, was one of the inspired brotherhood who had made newspapers so interesting. I did not know whether my poem would be put upon the bulletin board, but at any rate it would be in the paper, with my name at the bottom, like my story about snow and Miss Dillingham School Journal, and all these people in the streets, and more, thousands of people, all Boston, would read my poem and learn my name, and wonder who I was. I smiled to myself in delicious amusement when a man deliberately put me out of his path as I dreamed my way through the jostling crowd, if only he knew whom he was treating so unceremoniously. When the paper with my poem in it arrived, the whole house pounced upon it at once. I was surprised to find that my verses were not all over the front page. The poem was a little hard to find, if anything, being tucked away in the middle of the voluminous sheet. But when we found it, it looked wonderful, just like real poetry, not at all as if somebody we knew had written it. It occupied a gratifying amount of space, and was introduced by flattering biographical sketch of the author. The author, the material for which the friendly editor had artfully drawn from me during that happy interview. And my name, as I had prophesied, was at the bottom. When the excitement in the house had subsided, my father took all the change out of the cash drawer and went to buy up the herald. He did not count the pennies. He just bought heralds all he could lay his hands on, and distributed them gratis to all our friends, relatives, and acquaintances, to all who could read, and to some who could not. For weeks he carried a clipping from the herald in his breast pocket, and few were the occasions when he did not manage to introduce it into the conversation. He treasured that clipping as for years he had treasured the letters I wrote him from Polotsk. Although my father bought up most of the issue containing my poem, a few hundred copies were left to circulate among the general public, enough to spread the flame of my patriotic ardor, and to enkindle a thousand sluggish hearts. Really, there was something more solemn than vanity in my satisfaction. Pleased as I was with my notoriety, and nobody but I knew how exceedingly pleased, I had a sober feeling about it all. I enjoyed being praised and admired and envied. But what gave a divine flavor to my happiness was the idea that I had publicly borne testimony to the goodness of my exalted hero, to the greatness of my adopted country. I did not discount the homage of Arlington Street because I did not properly rate the intelligence of its population. I took the admiration of my schoolmates without a grain of salt. It was just so much honey to me. I could not know that what made me gray in the eyes of my neighbors was that there was a piece about me in the paper. It mattered very little to them what the piece was about. I thought they really admired my sediments. On the street in the schoolyard I was pointed out. The people said, That's Mary Anton. She had her name in the paper. I thought they said, This is she who loves her country and worships George Washington. To repeat, I was well aware that I was something of a celebrity, and took all possible satisfaction in the fact, yet I gave my schoolmates no occasion to call me stuck up. My vanity did not express itself in strutting or wagging the head. I played tag and puss in the corner in the schoolyard, and did everything that was comrade-like. But in the schoolyard I conducted myself gravely, as befitting one who is preparing for the noble career of a poet. I am forgetting Lizzie McDee. I am trying to give the impression that I behaved with at least outward modesty during my schoolgirl triumphs, whereas Lizzie could testify that she knew Mary Anton as a vain, boastful, curly-headed little Jew. For I had a special style of deportment with Lizzie. If there was any girl in the school besides me, who could keep near the top of the class all the year through, and give bright answers when the principal or the school committee popped sudden questions, and write rhymes that almost always rhymed, I was determined that the ambitious person should not soar unduly in her own estimation. So I took care to show Lizzie all my poetry, and when she showed me hers I did not admire it too warmly. Lizzie, as I have already said, was in a Sunday-school mood even on weekdays, her verses all had morals. My poems were about the crystal snow, and the ocean blue, and sweet spring, and fleecy clouds. When I tried to drag in a moral, it kicked so that the music of my lines went out in a groan. So I had a sweet revenge when Lizzie one day volunteered to bolster up the eloquence of Mr. Jones, the principal, who was lecturing the class for bad behavior by comparing the bad boys in the schoolroom to the rotten apple that spoils the beryphal, the groans, coughs, ahems, feet shufflings, and paper pellets that filled the room as St. Elizabeth sat down. Even in the principal's presence were sweet balm to my smart of envy. I didn't care if I didn't know how to moralize. When my teacher had visitors, I was aware that I was the show pupil of the class. I was always made to recite, my compositions were passed around, and often I was called up on the platform—oh, climax of exaltation—to be interviewed by the distinguished strangers, while the class took advantage of the teacher's distraction, to hold forbidden intercourse on matters not prescribed in the curriculum. When I returned to my seat, after such public audience with a great, I looked to see if Lizzie McDee was taking notice. And Lizzie, who was a generous soul, her Sunday school heirs notwithstanding, generally smiled, and I forgave her her rhymes. Not but what I paid a price for my honors. With all my self-possession I had a certain capacity for shyness. Even when I arose to recite before the customary audience of my class, I suffered from incipient stage fright, and my voice trembled over the first few words. When visitors were in the room I was even more troubled. And when I was made the special object of their attention, my triumph was marred by acute distress. If I was called up to speak to the visitors, forty pairs of eyes pricked me in the back as I went. I stumbled in the aisle, and knocked down things that were not in my way at all. And my awkwardness increasing my embarrassment, I would gladly have changed place with Lizzie or the bad boy in the back row, anything, only to be less conspicuous. When I found myself shaking hands with an august school committeeman, or a teacher from New York, the remnants of my self-possession vanished in awe. And it was in a very husky voice that I repeated, as I was asked, my name, lineage, and personal history. On the whole, I do not think that the school committeeman found a very forward creature in the solemn-faced little girl, with the tight curls and the terrible red-and-green plaid. These awful audiences did not always end with a handshaking. Sometimes the great personages asked me to write to them, and exchanged addresses with me. Some of these correspondences continued through the years, and were the source of much pleasure, on one side at least. And Arlington Street took notice when I received letters, with important-looking or aristocratic-looking letterheads. Lizzie McDee also took notice. I saw to that. End of Chapter 11