 17 The Landlady From sunrise to sunset the day was long enough for many things beside school, which occupied five hours. There was time for me to try to earn my living, or at least the rent of our tenement. Rent was a standing trouble. We were always behind, and the landlady was very angry, so I was particularly ambitious to earn the rent. I had had one or two poems published since the celebrated eulogy of George Washington, but nobody had paid for my poems yet. I was coming to that, of course, but in the meantime I could not pay the rent with my writing. To be sure, my acquaintance with men of letters gave me an opening. A friend of mine introduced me to a slightly literary lady who introduced me to the editor of the Boston Searchlight, who offered me a generous commission for subscriptions to his paper. If our rent was three and one-half dollars per week, payable on strong demand, and the annual subscription to the Searchlight was one dollar, and my commission was fifty percent. How many subscribers did I need? How easy! Seven subscribers a week, one a day. Anybody could do that. Mr. James C. Editor said so. He said I could get two or three any afternoon between the end of school and supper. If I worked all Saturday, my head went dizzy computing the amount of my commissions. It would be rent and shoes and bonnets and everything for everybody. Bright and early one Saturday morning in the fall, I started out canvassing, in my hand a neatly folded copy of the Searchlight, in my heart, faith in my lucky star and goodwill towards all the world. I began with one of the great office buildings on Tremont Street, as Mr. James had advised. The first half hour I lost, wandering through the corridors, reading the names on the doors. There were so many people in the same office. How should I know when I entered? Which was Wilson and Reed, solicitors, and which C. Jenkins Smith, mortgages and bonds? I decided that it did not matter. I would call them all sir. I selected a door and knocked. After waiting some time, I knocked a little louder. The building buzzed with noise. Swift footsteps echoed on the stone floors. Snappy talk broke out with the opening of every door. Bells tinkled, elevators hummed. No wonder they did not hear me knock. But I noticed that other people went in without knocking, so after a while I did the same. There were several men and two women in the small, brightly lighted room. They were all busy. It was very confusing. Should I say sir to the roomful? Excuse me, sir, I began. That was a very good beginning, I felt sure, but I must speak louder. Lately my voice had been poor in school, gave out sometimes in the middle of a recitation. I cleared my throat, but I did not repeat myself. The back of the bald head that I had addressed revolved and presented its compliment, a bald front. Will you, would you like, I'd like? I stared in dismay at the bald gentleman, unable to recall a word of what I meant to say, and he stared in impatience at me. Well, well, he snapped. What is it, what is it? That reminded me. It's the Boston search light, sir. I take sub. Take it away, take it away, we're busy here. He waved me away over his shoulder, the back of his head once more presented to me. I stole out of the room in great confusion. Was that the way I was going to be received? Why Mr. James had said nobody would hesitate to subscribe. It was the best paper in Boston, the search light, and no businessman could afford to be without it. I must have made some blunder. Was mortgages and bonds a business? I'd never heard of it, and very likely I had spoken to C. Jenkins Smith. I must try again. Of course I must try again. I selected a real estate office next. A real estate broker I knew for certain was a businessman. Mr. George A. Hooker must just be waiting for the Boston search light. Mr. Hooker was indeed waiting, and he was telling Central about it. Yes, Central. Waiting. Waiting. What? Yes, yes, ring for. What's that? Since when? Why didn't you say so at first, then, instead of keeping me on the line? What? Oh, is that so? Well, never mind this time, Central. I see, I see. All right. I had become so absorbed in this monologue that when Mr. Hooker swung around on me in his revolving chair, I was startled, feeling that I had been caught eavesdropping. I thought he was going to rebuke me, but he only said, What can I do for you, Miss? Encouraged by his forbearance, I said, Would you like to subscribe to the Boston search light, sir? Sir was safer, after all. It's a dollar a year. I was supposed to say that it was the best paper in Boston, etc., but Mr. Hooker did not look interested, though he was not cross. No, thank you, Miss. No new papers for me. Excuse me, I am very busy. And he began to dictate to his chauffeur. Well, that was not so bad. Mr. Hooker was at least polite. I must try to make a better speech next time. I stuck to real estate now. Oh, Lare and Kennedy were both in, in my next office, and both apparently enjoying a minute of relaxation, tilted back in their chairs behind a low rallying. Said I, determined to be businesslike at last, and addressing myself to the whole firm. Would you like to subscribe to the Boston search light? It's a very good paper. No businessman can afford it, afford to be without it, I mean. It's only a dollar a year. Both men smiled at my break, and I smiled too. I wondered, would they subscribe separately, or would they take one copy for the firm? The Boston search light repeated one of the partners. Never heard of it. Is that the paper you have there? He unfolded the paper I gave him, looked it over, and handed it to his partner. Ever heard of the search light, oh, Lare? What do you think? Can we afford to be without it? I guess we'll make out somehow, replied Mr. Lare, handing me back my paper. But I'll buy this copy of you, miss," he added, from second thoughts. And I'll go partner on the bargain, said Mr. Kennedy. But I objected. This is a sample, I said. I don't sell single papers. I take subscriptions for the year. It's one dollar. And no businessman can afford it, you know. Mr. Kennedy winked as he said it, and we all smiled again. It would have been stupid not to see the joke. I'm sorry I can't sell my sample, I said, with my hand on the doorknob. That's all right, my dear," said Mr. Kennedy, with a gracious wave of the hand. And his partner called after me. Better luck next door. Well, I was getting on. The people grew friendlier all the time. But I skipped next door. It was mortgages and bonds. I tried insurance. The best paper in Boston, is it? remarked Mr. Thomas F. Dix, running over my sample. And who told you that, young lady? Mr. James was my prompt reply. Who is Mr. James? The editor. Oh, I see. And do you also think the search fight, the best paper in Boston? I don't know, sir. I like the Herald much better, and the transcript. At that Mr. Dix laughed. That's right, he said. Business is business, but you tell the truth. One dollar, is it? Here you are. My name is on the door. Good day. I think I spent twenty minutes copying the name and room number from the door. I did not trust myself to read plain English. What if I made a mistake, and the search fight went astray, and good Mr. Dix remained unilluminated. He had paid for the year. It would be dreadful to make a mistake. Emboldened by my one success, I went into the next office without considering the kind of business announced on the door. I tried brokers, lawyers, contractors, and all, just as they came around the quarter, but I copied no more addresses. Most of the people were polite. Some men waved me away, like C. Jenkins Smith. Some looked impatient at first, but excused themselves politely in the end. Almost everybody said, We're busy here, as if they suspected I wanted them to read a whole year's issue of the search fight at once. At last one man told me he did not think it was a nice business for a girl, going through the offices like that. This took me aback. I had not thought anything about the nature of the business. I only wanted the money to pay the rent. I wandered through miles of stone corridors, unable to see why it was not a nice business, and yet reluctant to go on with it, with a doubt in my mind. Intent on my new problem. I walked into a messenger boy, and looking back to apologize to him, I collided softly, with a cushion-shaped gentleman getting off an elevator. I was making up my mind to leave the building forever when I saw an office door standing open. It was the first open door I had come across since morning. It was past noon now, and it was assigned to me to keep on. I must not give up so easily. Mr. Frederick A. Strong was alone in the office, surreptitiously picking his teeth. He had been to lunch. He heard me out good naturedly. How much is your commission, if I may ask? It was the first thing he had said. Fifty cents, sir. Well, I'll tell you what I will do. I don't care to subscribe, but here's a quarter for you. If I did not blush, it was because it is not my habit. But all of a sudden I choked. A lump jumped into my throat. Almost the tears were in my eyes. That man was right, who said it was not nice to go through the offices. I was taken for a beggar. A stranger offered me money for nothing. I could not say a word. I started to go out. But Mr. Strong jumped up and prevented me. Oh, don't go like that, he cried. I didn't mean to offend you. Upon my word I didn't. I beg your pardon. I didn't know. You see, won't you sit down a minute to rest? That's kind of you. Mr. Strong was so genuinely repentant that I could not refuse him. Besides, I felt a little weak. I had been on my feet since morning and had had no lunch. I sat down and Mr. Strong talked. He showed me a picture of his wife and little girl, and said I must go and see them sometime. Pretty soon I was chatting, too, and I told Mr. Strong about the Latin school. And, of course, he asked me if I was French, the way people always did when they wanted to say that I had a foreign accent. So we got started on Russia, and had such an interesting time that we both jumped up, surprised, when a fine young lady in a beautiful hat came in to take possession of the idol typewriter. Mr. Strong introduced me very formally, thanked me for an interesting hour, and shook hands with me at the door. I did not add his name to my short subscription list, but I counted it a greater triumph that I had made a friend. It would have been seeking an anticlimax to solicit any more in the building. I went out into the roar of Tremont Street and across the common, still green and leafy. I rested a while on a bench, debating where to go next. It was past two by the clock on Park Street Church. I had had a long day already, but it was too early to quit work, with only one half dollar of my own in my pocket. It was Saturday. In the evening the landlady would come. I must try a little longer. I went out along Columbus Avenue, a popular route for bicyclists at that time. The bicycle stores all along the way looked promising to me. The people did not look so busy as in the office building. They would at least be polite. They were not particularly rude, but they did not subscribe. Nobody wanted the searchlight. They had never heard of it. They made jokes about it. They did not want it at any price. I began to lose faith in the paper myself. I got tired of its name. I began to feel dizzy. I stopped going into the stores. I walked straight along, looking at nothing. I wanted to go back, go home, but I wouldn't. I felt like doing myself spite. I walked right along, straight as the avenue ran. I did not know where it would lead me. I did not care. Everything was horrid. I would go right on until night. I would get lost. I would fall in a faint on a strange doorstep and be found dead in the morning and be pitied. Wouldn't that be interesting? The adventure might even end happily. I might faint at the door of a rich old man's house who would take me in and order his housekeeper to nurse me, just like in the storybooks. In my delirium, of course I would have a fever, I would talk about the landlady and how I had tried to earn the rent, and the old gentleman would wipe his spectacles for pity. Then I would wake up and ask plaintively, where am I? And when I got strong after a delightfully long convalescence, the old gentleman would take me to Dover Street in a carriage, and we would all be reunited and laugh and cry together. The old gentleman, of course, would engage my father as his steward on the spot, and we would all go to live in one of his houses with a garden around it. I walked on and on, gleefully aware that I had not eaten since morning. Wasn't I beginning to feel shaky? Yes, I should certainly faint before long. But I didn't like the houses I passed. They did not look fit for my adventure. I must keep up till I reach a better neighborhood. Anybody who knows Boston knows how cheaply my adventure ended. Columbus Avenue leads out to Roxbury Crossing. When I saw that the houses were getting shabbier, instead of finer, my heart sank. When I came out on the noisy, thrice-common-place street car-center, my spirit collapsed utterly. I did not spoon. I woke up from my foolish childish dream with a shock. I was disgusted with myself and frightened besides. It was evening now, and I was faint and sick and good earnest, and I did not know where I was. I asked a starter at the transfer station the way to Dover Street, and he told me to get on a car that was just coming in. I'll walk, I said, if you will please tell me the shortest way. How could I spend five cents out of the little I had made? But the starter discouraged me. You can't walk it before midnight the way you look, my girl. Better hop on that car before it goes. I could not resist the temptation. I rode home in the car and felt like a thief when I paid the fare. Five cents gone to pay for my folly. I was grateful for a cold supper. Thrice grateful to hear that Mrs. Hutch, the landlady, had been and gone, content with two dollars that my father had brought home. Mrs. Hutch seldom succeeded in collecting the full amount of the rents from her tenants. I suppose that made the bookkeeping complicated, which must have been wearing on her nerves, and hence her temper. We lived on Dover Street in fear of her temper. Saturday had a distinct quality about it, derived from the imminence of Mrs. Hutch's visit. Of course I awoke on Saturday morning with a no-school feeling, but the grim thing that leaped to its feet and glowered down on me, while the rest of my consciousness was still yawning on its back, was the Mrs. Hutch's coming and there's no rent feeling. It is hard, if you are a young girl, full of life and inclined to be glad, to go to sleep in anxiety and awake in fear. It is apt to interfere with the circulation of the vital ether of happiness and the young, which is damaging to the complexion of the soul. It is bitter when you are middle-aged and unsuccessful to go to sleep in self-reproach and awake unexonerated. It is likely to cause fermentation in the sweetest nature. It is certain to breed gray hairs and a premature longing for death. It is pitiful if you are the homekeeping mother of an impoverished family, to drop in your traces helpless at night and awake unstrengthened in the early morning. The haunting consciousness of rooted poverty is an improper bedfellow for a woman who still bears. It has been known to induce physical and spiritual malformations in the babies she nurses. It did require strength to lift a burden of life in the gray morning on Dover Street, especially on Saturday morning. Perhaps my mother's pack was the heaviest to lift. To the man of the house, poverty is a bulky dragon with gripping talons and a poisonous breath, but he bellows in the open and it is possible to give him nightly battle with the full swing of the angry arm that cuts to the enemy's vitals. To the house wife, Wand is an insidious myriapod creature that crawls in the dark, mates with its own offspring, breeds all the year round, persists like leprosy. The woman has an endless, inglorious struggle with the pest. Her triumphs are too petty for applause. Her failures too mean for notice. Care to the man is a hound to be kept in leash and mastered. To the woman, care is a secret parasite that infects the blood. Mrs. Hutch, of course, was only one symptom of the disease of poverty, but there were times when she seemed to me the sharpest tooth of the gnawing canker. Surely a sorrow trails behind sin Saturday evening brought Mrs. Hutch. The landlady did not trail. Her movements were anything but impassive. She climbed the stairs with determination and landed at the top with emphasis. Her knock on the door was clear, sharp, unfaltering. It was impossible to pretend not to hear it. Her good evening announced business. Her manner of taking a chair suggested the throwing down of the gauntlet. Invariably she asked for my father, calling him Mr. Anton, and refusing to be corrected. Almost invariably he was not at home, was looking for work. Had he left her the rent? My mother's gentle, no, ma'am, was a signal for the storm. I do not want to repeat what Mrs. Hutch said. It would be hard on her, and hard on me. She grew red in the face, her voice grew shriller with every word. My poor mother hung her head where she stood. The children stared from their corners. The frightened baby cried. The angry landlady rehearsed our sins like a prophet foretelling doom. We owed so many weeks' rent. We were too lazy to work. We never intended to pay. We lived on others. We deserved to be put out without warning. She reproached my mother for having too many children. She blamed us all for coming to America. She enumerated her losses through nonpayment of her rents, told us that she did not collect the amount of her taxes, showed us how our irregularities were driving a poor widow to ruin. My mother did not attempt to excuse herself, but when Mrs. Hutch began to rail against my absent father, she tried to put in a word in his defense. The landlady grew all the shriller at that, and silenced my mother impatiently. Sometimes she addressed herself to me. I always stood by if I was at home to give my mother the moral support of my dumb sympathy. I understood that Mrs. Hutch had a special grudge against me, because I did not go to work as a cash girl and earn three dollars a week. I wanted to explain to her how I was preparing myself for a great career, and I was ready to promise her the payment of the arrears as soon as I began to get rich. But the landlady would not let me put in a word, and I was sorry for her, because she seemed to be having such a bad time. At last Mrs. Hutch got up to leave, marching out as determinedly as she had marched in. At the door she turned, in undiminished wrath, to shoot her parting dart. And if Mr. Anton does not bring me the rent on Monday, I will serve notice of eviction on Tuesday, without fail. We breathed when she was gone. My mother wiped away a few tears, and went to the baby, crying in the windowless, airtight room. I was the first to speak. Isn't she queer, Mama? I said. She never remembers how to say our name. She insists on saying, Anton, Anton. Celia, say Anton. And I made the baby laugh by imitating the landlady, who had made her cry. But when I went to my little room, I did not mock Mrs. Hutch. I thought about her, thought long and hard, and to a purpose. I decided that she must tear me out once. She must understand about my plans, my future, my good intentions. It was too irrational to go on like this. We living in fear of her, she and distrust of us. If Mrs. Hutch would only trust me, and the tax collectors would trust her, we could all live happily forever. I was the more certain that my argument would prevail with the landlady, if only I could make her listen, because I understood her point of view. I even sympathized with her. What she said about the babies, for instance, was not all unreasonable to me. There was this last baby, my mother's sixth, born on Mrs. Hutch's premises, yes, in the windowless, airtight bedroom. Was there any need of this baby? When May was born two years earlier on Wheeler Street, I had accepted her, after a while I even welcomed her. She was born an American, and it was something to me to have one genuine American relative. I had to sit up with her the whole of her first night on earth, and I questioned her about the place she came from, and so we got acquainted. As my mother was so ill that my sister Frida, who was a nurse, and the doctor from the dispensary, had all they could do to take care of her, the baby remained in my charge a good deal, and so I got used to her. But when Celia came I was two years older, and my outlook was broader. I could see around a baby's charms and discern the disadvantages of possessing the baby. I was supplied with all kinds of relatives now. I had a brother-in-law and an American-born nephew who might become a president. Moreover, I knew there was not enough to eat before the baby's advent, and she did not bring any supplies with her that I could see. The baby was one too many. There was no need of her. I resented her existence. I recorded my resentment in my journal. I was pleased with my broad-mindedness that enabled me to see all sides of the baby question. I could regard even the rent question disinterestedly, like a philosopher reviewing natural phenomena. It seemed not unreasonable that Mrs. Hutch should have a craving for the rent as such. A schoolgirl dotes on her books, a baby cries for its rattle, and a landlady yearns for her rents. I could easily believe that it was doing Mrs. Hutch spiritual violence to withhold the rent from her, and hence the vehemence with which she pursued the arrears. Yes, I could analyze the landlady very nicely. I was certainly qualified to act as a peacemaker between her and my family. But I must go to her own house and not on a rent-day. Saturday evening, when she was embittered by many disappointments, was no time to approach her with diplomatic negotiations. I must go to her house on a day of good omen. And I went, as soon as my father could give me a week's rent to take along. I found Mrs. Hutch in the gloom of a long, faded parlor. Divested of the ample black coat and widow's bonnet in which I had always seen her, her presence would have been less formidable had I not been conscious that I was a mere rumpled sparrow fallen into the lion's den. When I had delivered the money I should have begun my speech. But I did not know what came first of all there was to say. While I hesitated Mrs. Hutch observed me. She noticed my books and asked about them. I thought this was my opening, and I showed her eagerly my Latin grammar, my geometry, my Virgil. I began to tell her how I was to go to college, to fit myself to write poetry and get rich and pay the arrears. But Mrs. Hutch cut me short at the mention of college. She broke out with her old reproaches, and worked herself into a worse fury than I had ever witnessed before. I was all alone in the tempest, and a very old lady was sitting on a sofa, drinking tea, and the tidy on the back of the sofa was sliding down. I was so bewildered by the suddenness of the onslaught I felt so helpless to defend myself that I could only stand and stare at Mrs. Hutch. She kept on rallying without stopping for breath, repeating herself over and over. At last I ceased to hear what she said. I became hypnotized by the rapid motions of her mouth. Then the moving tidy caught my eye and the spell was broken. I went over to the sofa with a decided step, and carefully replaced the tidy. It was now the landlady's turn to stare, and I stared back, surprised at my own action. The old lady also stared, her teacup suspended under her nose. The whole thing was so ridiculous. I had come on such a grand mission, ready to dictate the terms of a noble piece. I was met with anger and contumely. The dignity of the ambassador of peace rubbed off at a touch, like the golden dust from the butterfly's wing. I took my scolding like a meek child. And then, when she was in the middle of a trenchant phrase, her eye fixed dagger-like on mine, I calmly went to put the enemy's house in order. It was ridiculous, and I laughed. Immediately I was sorry. I wanted to apologize, but Mrs. Hutch didn't give me a chance. If she had been harsh before, she was terrific now. Did I come there to insult her? She wanted to know. Wasn't it enough that I and my family lived on her? That I must come to her on purpose to rile her with my talk about college? College, these beggars! And laugh in her face! What did you come for? Who sent you? Why do you stand there staring? Say something. College, these beggars! And do you think I'll keep you till you go to college? You, learning geometry. Did you ever figure out how much rent your father owes me? You were all too lazy. Don't say a word. Don't speak to me. Coming here to laugh in my face. I don't believe you can say one sensible word. Latin. And French. Oh, these beggars! You ought to go to work. If you know enough to do one sensible thing. College, go home and tell your father never to send you again. Laughing in my face, and staring. Why don't you say something? How old are you? Mrs. Hutch actually stopped, and I jumped into the pause. I'm seventeen, I said quickly, and I feel like seventy. This was too much, even for me who had spoken. I had not meant to say the last. It broke out, like my wicked laugh. I was afraid if I stayed any longer. Mrs. Hutch would have the apoplexy, and I felt that I was going to cry. I moved towards the door, but the landlady got in another speech before I had escaped. Seventeen, seventy, and looks like twelve. The child is silly, can't even tell her own age. No wonder, with her Latin and French and— I did cry when I got outside, and I didn't care if I was noticed. What was the use of anything? Everything I did was wrong. Everything I tried to do for Mrs. Hutch turned out bad. I tried to sell papers for the sake of the rent, and nobody wanted the searchlight. And I was told it was not a nice business. I wanted to take her into my confidence, and she wouldn't hear a word, but scolded and called me names. She was an unreasonable, ungrateful landlady. I wish she would put us out. Then we should be rid of her. But wasn't it funny about that tidy? What made me do that? I never meant to. Curious, the way we sometimes do things we don't want to at all. The old lady must be deaf. She didn't say anything all that time. Oh, I have a whole book of the need to review, and it's getting late. I must hurry home. It was impossible to remain despondent long. The landlady came only once a week. I reflected as I walked home, and the rest of the time I was surrounded by friends. Everybody was good to me, at home, of course, and at school, and there was Miss Dillingham, and her friend who took me out in the country to see the autumn leaves, and her friend's friend who lent me books, and Mr. Herd, who put my poems in the transcript, and gave me books almost every time I came, and a dozen others who did something good for me all the time, besides a several dozen who wrote me such nice letters. Friends, if I named one for every block I passed, I should not get through before I reached home. There was Mr. Strong, too, and he wanted me to meet his wife and little girl. And Mr. Pastor, I had almost forgotten Mr. Pastor. I arrived at the corner of Washington and Dover streets on my way home, and looked into Mr. Pastor's showy drugstore as I passed, and that reminded me of the history of my latest friendship. My cough had been pretty bad, kept me awake nights. My voice gave out frequently. The teachers had spoken to me several times, suggesting that I ought to see a doctor. Of course, the teachers did not know that I could not afford a doctor, but I could go to the free dispensary, and I did. They told me to come again, and again, and I lost precious hours sitting in the waiting-room watching for my turn. I was examined, thumped, studied, and sent out with prescriptions and innumerable directions. All that was said about food, fresh air, sunny rooms, et cetera, was of course impossible, but I would try the medicine. A bottle of medicine was a definite thing with a fixed price. You either could or could not afford it on a given day. Once you began with milk and eggs and such things, there was no end of it. You were always going around the corner for more, till the grocer said he could give no more credit. No, the medicine bottle was the only safe thing. I had taken several bottles, and was told that I was looking better, when I went one day, to have my prescription renewed. It was just after a hard rain, and the pools on the broken pavements were full of blue sky. I was delighted with the beautiful reflections. There were even white clouds moving across the blue, there at my feet on the pavement. I walked with my head down all the way to the drugstore, which was all right, but I should not have done it going back, with the new bottle of medicine in my hand. In front of a cigar store, halfway between Washington Street and Harrison Avenue, stood a wooden Indian with a package of wooden cigars in his hand. My eyes on the shining rain-pools. I walked plump into the Indian, and the bottle was knocked out of my hand, and broke with a crash. I was horrified at the catastrophe. The medicine cost fifty cents. My mother had given me the last money in the house. I must not be without my medicine. The dispensary doctor was very emphatic about that. It would be dreadful to get sick and have to stay out of school. What was to be done? I made up my mind in less than five minutes. I went back to the drugstore and asked for Mr. Pastor himself. He knew me. He often sold me postage stamps, and joked about my large correspondence, and heard a good deal about my friends. He came out on this occasion from his little office in the back of the store, and I told him of my accident, and that there was no more money at home, and asked him to give me another bottle, to be paid for as soon as possible. My father had a job as a night watchman in a store. I should be able to pay very soon. Certainly, my dear, certainly, said Mr. Pastor. Very glad to oblige you. It's doing you good, isn't it? That's right. You're such a studious young lady, with all those books, and so many letters to write. You need something to build you up. There you are. Oh, don't mention it, any time at all, and look out for wild Indians. Of course, we were great friends after that. And this is the way my troubles often ended on Dover Street. To bump into a wooden Indian was to bump into good luck a hundred times a week. No wonder I was happy most of the time. I entered on a new chapter of adventures, even more remote from the cash girl's career than Latin and geometry. But I ought not to name such harsh things as landlady's at the opening of the fairy story of my girlhood. I have reached what was the second transformation of my life, as truly as my coming to America was the first great transformation. Robert Louis Stevenson, in one of his delightful essays, credits the lover with a feeling of remorse and shame at the contemplation of that part of his life, which he lived without his beloved, content with his bare in existence. It is with just such a feeling of remorse that I look back to my bookworm days, before I began to study the natural history outdoors, and with a feeling of shame akin to the lovers, I confess how late in my life nature took the first place in my affections. The subject of nature study is better developed in the public schools today than it was in my time. I remember my teacher in the Chelsea Grammar School, who encouraged us to look for different kinds of grasses and the empty lots near home, and to bring school samples of the cereals we found in her mother's pantries. I brought the grasses and cereals, as I did everything else the teacher ordered, but I was content when nature study was over and the arithmetic lesson began. I was not interested, and the teacher did not make it interesting. In the boys' books I was fond of reading, I came across all sorts of heroes, and I sympathized with them all. The boy who ran away to sea, the boy who delighted in the society of ranchmen and cowboys, the stage-struck boy whose ambition was to drive a paste-board chariot in a circus, the boy who gave up his holidays in order to earn money for books, the bad boy who played tricks on people, the clever boy who invented amusing toys for his blind little sister, all these boys I admired. I could put myself in the place of any one of these heroes and delight in their delights. But there was one sort of hero I never could understand, and that was the boy whose favorite reading was natural history, who kept an aquarium, collected beetles, and knew all about a man by the name of a gauze. This style of boy always had a seafaring uncle, or a missionary aunt, who sent him all sorts of queer things from China and the South Sea islands, and the conversation between this boy and the seafaring uncle home on a visit, I was perfectly willing to skip. The impossible hero usually kept snakes in a box in the barn, where his little sister was fond of playing with her little friends. The snakes escaped at least once before the end of the story, and the things the boy said to the frightened little girls about the harmless and fascinating qualities of snakes was something I had no patience to read. No, I did not care for natural history. I would read about travels, about deserts, and nameless islands and strange peoples. But snakes and birds and minerals and butterflies did not interest me in the least. I visited the Natural History Museum once or twice, because it was my way to enter every open door, so as to miss nothing that was free to the public. But the curious monsters that filled the glass cases and adorned the walls and ceilings failed to stir my imagination, and the slimy things that floated in glass vessels were too horrid for a second glance. Of all the horrid things that ever passed under my eyes when I lifted my nose from my book, spiders were the worst. Mice were bad enough, and so were flies and worms and june bugs. But spiders were absolutely the most loathsome creatures I knew. And yet it was the spider that opened my eyes to the wonders of nature, and touched my girlish happiness with the hues of the infinite. And it happened at Hale House. It was not Dr. Hale, though it might have been, who showed me the way to the settlement house on Garland Street, which bears his name. Hale House is situated in the midst of a labyrinth of narrow streets and alleys that constitutes the slum of which Harrison Avenue is the backbone, and of which Dover Street is a member. Bearing in mind the fact that there are almost no playgrounds in all this congested district, you will understand that Hale House has plenty of work on its hands to carry a little sunshine into the grimy tenement homes. The beautiful story of how that is done cannot be told here, but what Hale House did for me I may now omit to mention. It was my brother Joseph who discovered Hale House. He started a debating club and invited his chums to help him settle the problems of the Republic on Sunday afternoon. The club held its first session in our empty parlor on Dover Street, and the United States government was in a fair way to be put on a sound basis at last, when the numerous babies belonging to our establishment broke up the meeting, leaving the administration in suspense as to its future course. The next meeting was held in Isaac Malinsky's parlor, and the orators were beginning to jump to their feet and shake their fists at each other in excellent parliamentary form. When Mrs. Malinsky salied in to smile at the boy's excitement, but at the sight of seven pairs of boy's boots scuffling on her cherished parlor carpet, the fringed cover of the center table hanging by one corner, and the plush photograph album unceremoniously laid aside, indignation took the place of good humor in Mrs. Malinsky's ample bosom, and she ordered the boys to clear out, threatening Ike with dire vengeance if ever again he ventured to enter the parlor with un-gentle purpose. On the following Sunday, Harry Rubenstein offered the club the hospitality of his parlor, and the meeting began satisfactorily. The subject on the table was the tariff, and the pros and aunties were about evenly divided. Congress might safely have taken a nap with the hub-debating club to handle its affairs, if Harry Rubenstein's big brother, Jake, had not interfered. He came out of the kitchen, where he had been stuffing the baby with peanuts, and stood in the doorway of the parlor and winked at the dignified chairman. The chairman turned his back on him, whereupon Jake pelted him with peanut shells. He mocked the speakers and called them kids, and wanted to know how they could tell the tariff from a sun-stroke anyhow. We've got to have free trade, he mocked. Pa, listen to the kids. In the interest of the American laborer, hooray, listen to the kids, Pa. Flesh and blood could not bear this. The political reformers adjourned indefinitely, and the club was in danger of extinction for want of a sheltering roof, when one of the members discovered that Hale House, on Garvin Street, was waiting to welcome the club. How the debating club prospered in the genial atmosphere of the settlement house. How from a little club it grew to be a big club, as the little boys became young men. How Joseph and Isaac and Harry and the rest won prizes in public debates. How they came to be a part of the multiple influence for good that issues from Garvin Street. All this is a piece of the history of Hale House, whose business in the slums is to mold the restless children on the street corners, into noble men and women. I brought the debating club into my story, just to show how naturally the children of the slums drift toward their salvation, if only some island of safety lies in the course of their innocent activities. Not a child in the slum is born to be lost. They are all born to be saved, and the raft that carries them unharmed through the perilous torrent of tenement life is the child's unconscious aspiration for the best. But there must be lighthouses to guide him midstream. Dora followed Joseph to Hale House, joining a club for little girls which has since become famous in the Hale House District. The leader of this club, under pretense of teaching the little girls the proper way to sweep and make beds, artfully teaches them how to beautify a tenement home by means of noble living. Joseph and Dora were so enthusiastic about Hale House that I had to go over and see what it was all about. And I found the Natural History Club. I do not know how Miss Black, who was then the resident, persuaded me to try the Natural History Club in spite of my aversion for bugs. I suppose she tried me in various girls' clubs and found that I did not fit any more than I fitted in the dancing club that I attempted years before. I dare say she decided that I was an old maid and urged me to come to the meetings of the Natural History Club which was composed of adults. The members of this club were not people from the neighborhood I understood, but workers at Hale House and their friends, and they often had eminent naturalists, travelers, and other notables lecture before them. My curiosity to see a real live naturalist probably induced me to accept Miss Black's invitation in the end. For up to that time I had never met anyone who enjoyed the creepy society of snakes and worms, except in books. The Natural History Club sat in a ring around the reception room, facing the broad doorway of the adjoining room. Mrs. Black introduced me, and I said, glad to meet you, all around the circle, and sat down in a kindergarten chair beside the piano. It was Friday evening, and I had the sense of leisure which pervades the schoolgirl's consciousness when there is to be no school on the morrow. I liked the pleasant room, pleasanter than any at home. I liked the faces of the company I was in. I was prepared to have an agreeable evening, even if I was a little bored. The tall, lean gentleman with the frank blue eyes got up to read the minutes of the last meeting. I did not understand what he read, but I noticed that it gave him great satisfaction. This man had greeted me as if he had been waiting for my coming all his life. What did Mrs. Black call him? He looked and spoke as if he was happy to be alive. I liked him. Oh, yes! This was Mr. Winthrop. I let my thoughts wander with my eyes all around the circle, trying to read the characters of my new friends in their faces. But suddenly my attention was arrested by a word. Mr. Winthrop had finished reading the minutes and was introducing the speaker of the evening. We are fortunate in having with us Mr. Emerson, whom we all know as an authority on spiders. Spiders. What hard luck! Mr. Winthrop pronounced the word spiders with unmistakable relish as if he doted on the horrid creatures. But I, my nerves contracted into a tight knot. I gripped the arms of my little chair, determined not to run, with all those strangers looking on. I watched Mr. Emerson to see when he would open a box of spiders. I recalled a hideous experience of long ago, when putting on a dress that had hung on the wall for weeks, I felt a thing with a hundred legs crawling down my bare arm, and shook a spider out of my sleeve. I watched the lecturer, but I was not going to run. It was too bad that Mrs. Black had not warned me. After a while, I realized that the lecturer had no menagerie in his pockets. He talked, in a familiar way, about different kinds of spiders and their ways, and as he talked, he wove across the doorway, where he stood, a gigantic spider's web, unwinding a ball of twine in his hand, and looping various lengths on invisible tacks he had ready in the door frame. I was fascinated by the progress of the web. I forgot my terrors. I began to follow Mr. Emerson's discourse. I was surprised to hear how much there was to know about a dusty little spider, besides that he could spin his webs as fast as my broom could sweep them away. The drama of the spider's daily life became very real to me as the lecturer went on. His struggle for existence, his wars with his enemies, his wiles, his traps, his patient labors, the intricate safeguards of his simple existence, the fitness of his body for his surroundings, of his instincts for his vital needs. The whole picture of the spider's pursuit of life under the direction of definite laws filled me with a great wonder, and left no room in my mind for repugnance or fear. It was the first time the natural history of a living creature had been presented to me under such circumstances that I could not avoid hearing and seeing, and I was surprised at my dullness in the past when I had rejected books on natural history. I did not become an enthusiastic amateur naturalist at once. I did not at once begin to collect worms and bugs, but on the next sweeping day I stood on a chair, craning my neck, to study the spider webs I discovered in the corners of the ceiling, and one or two webs of more than ordinary perfection I suffered to remain undisturbed for weeks, although it was my duty as a house cleaner to sweep the ceiling clean. I began to watch for the mice that were wanting to scurry across the floor when the house slept and I alone waked. I even placed a crust for them on the threshold of my room, and cultivated a breathless intimacy with them, when the little gray beast acknowledged my hospitality by nibbling my crust in full sight, and so by degrees I came to a better understanding of my animal neighbors on all sides, and I began to look forward to the meetings of the Natural History Club. The club had frequent field excursions, in addition to the regular meetings, at the seashore, in the woods, in the fields, at high tide and low tide, in summer and winter, by sunlight and by moonlight, the marvelous story of orderly nature was revealed to me, and fragments that allured the imagination and made me beg for more. Some of the members of the club were school teachers, accustomed to answering questions. All of them were patient. Some of them took special pains with me, but nobody took me seriously as a member of the club. They called me the club mascot, and appointed me curator of the club museum, which was not in existence, at a salary of ten cents a year, which was never paid, and I was well pleased with my unique position in the club, delighted with my new friends, and raptured with my new study. More and more, as the seasons rolled by, and page after page of the book of nature was turned before my eager eyes, did I feel the wonder and thrill of the revelations of science, till all my thoughts became colored with the tints of infinite truths. My days arranged themselves around the meetings of the club as a center. The whole structure of my life was transfigured by my novel experiences outdoors. I realized, with a shock at first, but afterwards with complacency, that books were taking a secondary place in my life, my irregular studies in natural history holding the first place. I began to enjoy the natural history rooms, and I was obliged to admit to myself that my heart hung with a more thrilling suspense over the fate of some beans I had planted in a window-box, than over the fortunes of the classic hero about whom we were reading at school. But for all my enthusiasm about animals, plants, and rocks, for all my devotion to the natural history club, I did not become a thorough naturalist. My scientific friends were right not to take me seriously. Mr. Winthrop, in his delightfully frank way, called me a fraud, and I did not resent it. I dipped into zoology, botany, geology, or mythology, and an infinite number of other allergies, as the activities of the club, or of particular members of it gave me opportunity, but I made no systematic study of any branch of science, at least not until I went to college. For what enthralled my imagination in the whole subject of natural history was not the orderly array of facts, but the glimpse I caught, through this or that fragment of science, of the grand principles underlying the facts. By asking questions, by listening when my wise friends talked, by reading, by pondering and dreaming, I slowly gathered toward the kaleidoscopic bits of the stupendous panorama which is painted in the literature of Darwinism. Everything I had ever learned at school was illumined by this new knowledge. The worlds lay newly made under my eyes. Vastly as my mind had stretched to embrace the idea of a great country when I exchanged pilotsk for America, it was no such enlargement as I now experienced, when in place of the measurable earth, with its paltry tale of historic centuries, I was given the illimitable universe to contemplate, with the numberless ands of infinite time. As the meaning of nature was deepened for me, so was its aspect beautified. Hitherto I had loved in nature the spectacular, the blazing sunset, the whirling tempest, the flush of summer, the snow wonder of winter. Now for the first time my heart was satisfied with the microscopic perfection of a salatory blossom. The harmonious murmur of autumn woods broke up into a hundred separate melodies as the pelting acorn, the scurrying squirrel, the infrequent chirp of the lingering cricket, and the soft speed of ripe pine cones through dense grown branches, each struck its discriminant cord in the scented air. The outdoor world was magnified in every dimension, inanimate things were vivified, living things were dignified. No two persons set the same value on any given thing, and so it may very well be that I am boasting of the enrichment of my life through the study of natural history to ears that hear not. I need only recall my own obtuseness to the subject, before the story of the spider sharpened my senses, to realize that these confessions of a nature lover may bore every other person who reads them. But I do not pretend to be concerned about the reader at this point. I never hope to explain to my neighbor the exact value of a winter sunrise in my spiritual economy. But I know that my life has grown better since I learned to distinguish between a butterfly and a moth, that my faith in man is the greater because I have watched for the coming of the song in the spring, and my thoughts of immortality are the less wavering because I have cherished the winter duckweed on my lawn. Those who find their greatest intellectual and emotional satisfaction in the study of nature are apt to refer their spiritual problems also to science. That is how it went with me. Long before my introduction to natural history I had realized, with an uneasy sense of the breaking of peace, that the questions which I thought to have been settled years before were beginning to tease me anew. In Russia I had practiced a prescribed religion, with little faith in what I professed, and a restless questioning of the universe. When I came to America I lightly dropped the religious forms that I had half mocked before, and contented myself with a few novel phrases employed by my father in his attempt to explain the riddle of existence. The busy years flew by, when from morning till night I was preoccupied with the process of becoming an American, and no question arose in my mind that my books or my teachers could not fully answer. Then came a time when the ordinary business of my girl's life discharged itself automatically, and I had leisure once more to look over and around things. This period coinciding with my moody adolescence I rapidly entangled myself in a net of doubts and questions, after the well-known manner of a growing girl. I asked once more, how did I come to be? And I found that I was no wit wiser than poor Reb Leba whom I had despised for his ignorance. For all my years of America and schooling I could give no better answer to my clamoring questions than the teacher of my childhood. Whence came the fair world? Was there a God after all? And if so, what did he intend when he made me? It was always my way, if I wanted anything, to turn my daily life into a pursuit of that thing. Have you seen the treasure I seek? I asked of every man I met, and if it was God that I desired, I made all my friends search their hearts for evidence of his being. I asked all the wise people I knew what they were going to do with themselves after death. And if the wise failed to satisfy me, I questioned the simple, and listened to the babies talking in their sleep. Still the imperative clamor of my mind remained unallayed. Was all my life to be a hunger and a questioning? I complained of my teachers, who stuffed my heads with facts, and gave my soul no crumb to feed on. I blamed the stars for their silence. I set up nights brooding over the emptiness of knowledge, and praying for revelations. Sometimes I live for days in a chimera of doubts, feeling that it was hardly worthwhile living at all if I was never to know why I was born and why I could not live forever. It was in one of these prolonged moods that I heard that a friend of mine, a distinguished man of letters, whom I greatly admired, was coming to Boston for a short visit. A terrific New England blizzard arrived some hours in advance of my friend's train, but so intent was I on questioning him that I disregarded the weather and struggled through towering snowdrifts in the teeth of the wild wind to the railroad station. There I nearly perished of weariness while waiting for the train, which was delayed by the storm. But when my friend emerged from one of the snow-crusted cars I was rewarded, for the blizzard had kept the reporters away, and the great man could give me his undivided attention. No doubt he understood the pressing importance of the matter to me from the trouble I had taken to secure an early interview with him. He heard me out very soberly, and answered my questions as honestly as a thinking man could. Not a word of what he said remains in my mind, but I remembered going away with the impression that it was possible to live without knowing everything after all, and that I might even try to be happy in a world full of riddles. In such ways as this I sought peace of mind, but I never achieved more than a brief truce. I was coming to believe that only the stupid could be happy, and that life was pretty hard on the philosophical, when the great new interest of science came into my life, and scattered my blue devils as the sun scatters the night-damps. Some of my friends in the Natural History Club were deeply versed in the principles of evolutionary science, and were able to guide me in my impetuous rush to learn everything in a day. I was in a hurry to deduce, from the conglomeration of isolated facts that I picked up in the lectures, the final solution of all my problems. It took both patience and wisdom to check me, and at the same time satisfy me, I have no doubt, but then I was always fortunate in my friends. Wisdom and patience in plenty were spent on me, and I was instructed and inspired and comforted. Of course my wisest teacher was not able to tell me how the original spark of life was kindled, nor to point out, on the starry map of heaven my future abode. The bread of absolute knowledge I do not hope to taste in this life. But all creation was remodeled on a grander scale by the utterances of my teachers, and my problems, though they deepened with the expansion of all nameable phenomena, were carried up to the heights of the impersonal, and ceased to torment me. Seeing how life and death, beginning and end, were all parts of the process of being. It mattered less in what particular ripple of the flux of existence I found myself. If past time was a trooping of similar yesterdays, back over the unbroken millenniums, to the first moment, it was simple to think of future time as a trooping of knowable todays, on and on, to infinity. Possibly also, the spark of life that had persisted through the geological ages, under a million million disguises, was vital enough to continue for another earth age, in some shape as potent as the first or last. Thinking in eons and in races, instead of in years and individuals, somehow lightened the burden of intelligence, and filled me anew with a sense of youth and well-being, that I had almost lost in the pit of my narrow personal doubts. No one who understands the nature of youth will be misled by the summary of my intellectual history, into thinking that I actually arranged my newly acquired scientific knowledge into any such orderly philosophy as, for the sake of clearness, I have outlined above. I had long passed my teens, and had seen something of life that is not revealed to poetizing girls, before I could give any logical account of what I read in the book of Cosmogony. But the high peaks of the promised land of evolution did flash on my vision in the earlier days, and with these to guide me I rebuilt the world, and found it much nobler than it had ever been before, and took great comfort in it. I did not become a finished philosopher from hearing a couple of hundred lectures on scientific subjects. I did not even become a finished woman. If anything, I grew rather more girlish. I remembered myself as very merry in the midst of my serious scientific friends, and I can think of no time when I was more inclined to play the tomboy than when off for a day in the woods in quest of botanical and zoological specimens. The freedom of outdoors, the society of congenial friends, the delight of my occupation, all acted as a strong whine on my mood, and sent my spirits soaring to immoderate heights. I am very much afraid I made myself a nuisance at times to some of the more sedate of my grown-up companions. I wish they could know that I have truly repented. I wish they had known at the time that it was the exuberance of my happiness that played tricks, and no wicked desire to annoy kind friends. But I am sure that those who were offended have long since forgotten or forgiven, and I need remember nothing of those wonderful days, other than that a new sun rose above a new earth for me, and that my happiness was likened to the iridescent dues. End of CHAPTER XIII I did not always wait for the natural history club to guide me to delectable lands. Some of the happiest days of that happy time I spent with my sister in East Boston. We had a merry time at supper, Moses making clever jokes, without cracking a smile himself, and the baby romping in his high chair, eating what wasn't good for him. But the best of the evening came later, when father and baby had gone to bed, and the dishes were put away, and there was not a crumb left on the red and white checked tablecloth. Frida took out her sewing, and I took a book, and the lamp was between us, shining on the table, on the large brown roses on the wall, on the green and brown diamonds of the oil cloth on the floor, on the baby's rattle on a shelf, and on the shining stove in the corner. It was such a pleasant kitchen, such a cozy friendly room, that when Frida and I were left alone I was perfectly happy just to sit there. Frida had a beautiful parlor with plush chairs and a velvet carpet and gilt picture frames, but we preferred the homely, home-like kitchen. I read aloud from Longfellow, or Whittier, or Tennyson, and it was as great a treat to me as it was to Frida. Her attention alone was inspiring. Her delight, her eager questions doubled the meaning of the lines I read. Poor Frida had little enough time for reading, unless she stole it from the sewing, or the baking, or the mending. But she was hungry for books, and so grateful when I came to read to her that it made me ashamed to remember all the beautiful things I had and did not share with her. It is true I shared what could be shared. I brought my friends to her, at her wedding were some of the friends of whom I was most proud. Ms. Dillingham came, and Mr. Herd, and the humbler guests, stared in admiration at her school teachers and editors. But I had so many delightful things that I could not bring to Frida, my walks, my dreams, my adventures of all sorts. And yet when I told her about them, I found that she partook of everything. For she had her talent for vicarious enjoyment, by means of which she entered as an actor into my adventures, was present as a witness at the frolic of my younger life. Or if I narrated things that were beyond her, on account of her narrower experience, she listened with an eager longing to understand that was better than some people's easy comprehension. My world ever rang with good tidings, and she was grateful, if I brought her the echo of them, to ring again within the four walls of the kitchen that bounded her life. And I, who lived on the heights, and walked with a learned, and bathed in the crystal fountains of youth, sometimes climbed the sublimest peak in my sister's humble kitchen. There caught the unfaltering accents of inspiration, and rejoiced in silver pools of untried happiness. The way she reached out for everything fine was shown by her interest in the incomprehensible Latin and French books that I brought. She liked to hear me read my Cicero, pleased by the movement of the sonorous periods. I translated Ovid and Virgil for her, and her pleasure illumined the difficult passages, so that I seldom needed to have recourse to the dictionary. I shall never forget the evening I read to her, from the Aeneid, the passage in the fourth book describing the death of Daito. I read the Latin first, and then my own version in English hexameters, that I had prepared for a recitation at school. Frida forgot her sewing in her lap, and leaned forward and wrapped attention. When I was through, there were tears of delight in her eyes, and I was surprised myself at the beauty of the words I had just pronounced. I do not dare to confess how much of my Latin I have forgotten, lest any of the devoted teachers who taught me should learn the sad truth. But I shall always boast of some acquaintance with Virgil, through that scrap of the Aeneid made memorable by my sister's enjoyment of it. Truly my education was not entirely in the hands of the persons who had licenses to teach. My sister's fat baby taught me things about the origin and ultimate destiny of dimples that were not in any of my schoolbooks. Mr. Casey of the second floor, who was drunk whenever his wife was sober, gave me an insight into the psychology of the beer mug that would have added to the mental furniture of my most scholarly teacher. The bold-faced girls who passed the evening on the corner, and promiscuous flirtation with the cock-eyed youths of the neighborhood, unconsciously revealed to me the eternal secrets of adolescence. My neighbor of the third floor, who sat on the curb-stone with the scabby baby in her bedraggled lamp, had things to say about the fine ladies who came in carriages to inspect the public bath house across the street that ought to be repeated in the lecture halls of every school of philanthropy. Instruction poured into my brain at such a rate that I could not digest it all at the time. But in later years, when my destiny had led me far from Dover Street, the emphatic moral of those lessons became clear. The memory of my experience on Dover Street became the strength of my convictions, the illumined index of my purpose, the areola of my happiness, and if I paid for those lessons with days of privation and dread, with nights of tormenting anxiety, I count the price cheap. Who would not go to a little trouble to find out what life is made of? Life in the slums spins busily as a schoolboy's top, and one who has heard its humming never forgets. I look forward to telling when I get to be a master of language, what I read in the crooked cobblestones when I revisited Dover Street the other day. Dover Street was never really my residence, at least not the whole of it. It happened to be the nook where my bed was made, but I inhabited the city of Boston. In the pearl misty morning, in the ruby red evening, I was empress of all I surveyed from the roof of the tenement house. I could point in any direction and name a friend who would welcome me there. Off towards the northwest, in the direction of Harvard Bridge, which someday I should cross on my way to Radcliffe College, was one of my favorite palaces wither I resorted every day after school. A low, wide-spreading building, with a dignified granite front it was, flanked on all sides by noble old churches, museums, and schoolhouses, harmoniously disposed around a spacious triangle, called Copley Square. Two thoroughfares that came straight from the green suburbs swept by my palace, one on either side, converged at the apex of the triangle, and pointed off, past the public garden, across the historic common, to the domed statehouse, sitting on a height. It was my habit to go very slowly up the low, broad steps to the palace entrance, pleasing my eyes with the majestic lines of the building, and lingering to read again the carved inscriptions. Public library, built by the people, free to all. Did I not say it was my palace? Mine, because I was a citizen. Mine, though I was born an alien. Mine, though I lived on Dover Street. My palace, mine. I loved to lean against a pillar in the entrance hall, watching the people go in and out. Groups of children hushed their chatter at the entrance, and skipped, whispering and giggling in their fists, up the grand stairway, padding the great stone lines at the top, with an eye on the aged policemen down below. Spectacled scholars came slowly down the stairs, loaded with books, heedless of the lofty arches that echoed their steps. Visitors from out of town lingered long in the entrance hall, studying the inscriptions and symbols on the marble floor. And I loved to stand in the midst of all this, and remind myself that I was there, that I had a right to be there, that I was at home there. All these eager children, all these fine-broad women, all these scholars going home to write learned books. I and they had this glorious thing in common, this noble treasure house of learning. It was wonderful to say. This is mine. It was thrilling to say. This is ours. I visited every part of the building that was open to the public. I spent wrapped hour studying the abbey pictures. I repeated to myself lines from Tennyson's poem before the glowing scenes of the Holy Grail. Before the prophets in the gallery above I was mute. But echoes of the Hebrew Psalms I had long forgotten throbbed somewhere in the depths of my consciousness. The Chevenese series around the main staircase I did not enjoy for years. I thought the pictures looked faded, and their symbolism somehow failed to move me at first. Bates Hall was the place where I spent my longest hours in the library. I chose a seat far at one end so that looking up from my books I would get the full effect of the vast reading room. I felt the grand spaces under the soaring arches as a personal attribute of my being. The courtyard was my sky-roofed chamber of dreams. Slowly strolling past the endless pillars of the Colonnade, the fountain murmured in my ear of all the beautiful things in all the beautiful world. I imagined that I was a Greek of the classic days, treading on sandaled feet through the glistening marble porticoes of Athens. I expected to see, if I looked over my shoulder, a bearded philosopher in a drooping mantle, surrounded by beautiful youths with wreathed flocks. Everything I read in school, in Latin or Greek, everything in my history books was real to me here, in this courtyard, set about with stately columns. Here is where I like to remind myself of Polotsk the better to bring out the wonder of my life. That I who is born in the prison of the pale should roam at will in the land of freedom was a marvel that it did me good to realize. That I who is brought up to my teens almost without a book should be set down in the midst of all the books that ever were written was a miracle as great as any on record. That an outcast should become a privileged citizen. That a beggar should dwell in a palace. This was a romance more thrilling than Poet ever sung. Surely I was rocked in an enchanted cradle. From the public library to the Statehouse is only a step, and I found my way there without a guide. The Statehouse was one of the places I could point to, and say that I had a friend there to welcome me. I do not mean the representative of my district, though I hope he was a worthy man. My friend was no less a man than the honorable Senator Rowe from Wooster, whose letters to me, written under the embossed letterhead of the Senate Chamber, I could not help exhibiting to Florence Connolly. How did I come by a senator? Through being a citizen of Boston, of course, to be a citizen of the smallest village in the United States, which maintains a free school and a public library, is to stand in the path of the splendid processions of opportunity. And as Boston has rather better schools, and a rather finer library than some other villages, it comes natural there for children in the slums, to summon gentlemen from the Statehouse to be their personal friends. It is so simple in Boston, you are a school girl, and your teacher gives you a ticket for the annual historical lecture in the Old South Church on Washington's birthday. You hear a stirring discourse on some subject in your country's history, and you go home with a heart bursting with patriotism. You sit down and write a letter to the speaker who so moved you, telling him how glad you are to be an American. Explaining to him, if you happen to be a recently made American, why you love your adopted country so much better than your native land. Perhaps the patriotic lecturer happens to be a senator, and he reads your letter under the vast dome of the Statehouse, and it occurs to him that he and his eminent colleagues, and the stately capital, and the glorious flag that floats above it, all gathered on the hill above the common, do his country no greater honor than the outspoken admiration of an ardent young alien. The senator replies to your letter, inviting you to visit him at the Statehouse, and in the renowned chamber where the august business of the State is conducted, you, an obscure child from the slums, and he, a chosen leader of the people, seal a democratic friendship based on the love of a common flag. Even simpler than to meet a senator, was it to become acquainted with a man like Edward Everett Hale, the grand old man of Boston the people called him, from the manner of his life among them. He kept open house in every public building in the city. Wherever two citizens met to devise a measure for the public wheel, he was a third. Wherever a worthy cause needed a champion, Dr. Hale lifted his mighty voice. At some time or another his colossal figure towered above an eager multitude from every pulpit in the city, from every lecture-platform. And where is the map of Boston that gives the names of the lost allies and back ways, where the great man went in search of the lame in body, who could not join the public assembly, and quest of the maimed in spirit, who feared to show their faces in the open. If all the little children who have sat on Dr. Hale's knee were started in a procession on the State House steps, standing fore abreast, there would be a lane of merry faces across the common, out to the public library, over Harvard Bridge, and away beyond to remote landmarks. That I met Dr. Hale is no wonder. It was as inevitable as that I should be a year older every twelve month. He was a part of Boston, as the salt wave is a part of the sea. I can hardly say whether he came to me or I came to him. We met, and my adopted country took me closer to her breast. A day or two after our first meeting I called on Dr. Hale, at his invitation. It was only eight o'clock in the morning, you may be sure, because he had risen early to attend to a hundred great affairs. And I had risen early, so as to talk with a great man before I went to school. I think we liked each other a little more for the fact that when so many people were still asleep, we were already busy, in the interests of citizenship and friendship. We certainly liked each other. I am sure I did not stay more than fifteen minutes, and all that I recall of our conversation was that Dr. Hale asked me a great many questions about Russia, in a manner that made me feel that I was an authority on the subject. And with his great hand in goodbye he gave me a bit of homely advice, namely, that I should never study before breakfast. That was all, but for the rest of the day I moved against the background of grandeur. There was a noble ring to Virgil that day, that even my teacher's firm translation had never brought out before. Obscure points in the history lesson were clear to me alone of the thirty girls in the class, and it happened that the tulips in Kopli Square opened that day, and shone in the sun, like lighted lamps. Anyone could be happy a year on Dover Street, after spending half an hour on Highland Street. I enjoyed so many half hours in the great man's house that I do not know how to convey the sense of my remembered happiness. My friend used to keep me in conversation a few minutes in the famous study that was fit to have been preserved as a shrine, after which he sent me to Rome about the house and explore his library and take away what books I pleased. Who would feel cramped in a tenement with such royal privileges as these? Once I brought Dr. Hale a present, a copy of a story of mine that had been printed in a journal, and from his manner of accepting it you might have thought that I was a princess dispensing gifts from a throne. I wish I had asked him, that last time I talked with him, how it was that he who is so modest made those who walked with him so great. Modest as the man was the house in which he lived, a gray old house of a style that New England no longer builds, with a pillard porch curtained by vines, set back in the yard behind the old trees. Whatever cherished flowers glowed in the garden behind the house, the common daisy was encouraged to bloom in front, and was their sun or snow on the ground, the most timid hand could open the gate, the most humble visitor was sure of a welcome. Out of that modest house the troubled came comforted, the fallen came uplifted, the noble came inspired. My explorations of Dr. Hale's house might not have brought me to the gables, but from my friend's daughter, the artist, who had a studio at the top of the house. She asked me one day if I would sit for a portrait, and I consented with the greatest alacrity. It would be an interesting experience, and interesting experiences were the bread of life to me. I agreed to come every Saturday morning, and felt that something was going to happen to Dover Street. When I came home from my talk with Ms. Hale, I studied myself long in the blotched-looking glass. I saw just what I expected. My face was too thin, my nose too large, my complexion too dull. My hair, which was curly enough, was too short to be described as luxurious tresses, and the color was neither brown nor black. My hands were neither white nor velvety. The fingers ended decidedly, instead of tapering off like rosy dreams. I was disgusted with my wrists. They showed too far below the tight sleeves of my dress of the year before last, and they looked consumptive. No, it was not for my beauty that Ms. Hale wanted to paint me. It was because I was a girl, a person, a piece of creation. I understood perfectly. If I could write an interesting composition about a broom, why should not an artist be able to make an interesting picture of me? I had done it with the broom, and the milk wagon, and the rain spout. It was not what a thing was that made it interesting, but what I was able to draw out of it. It was exciting to speculate as to what Ms. Hale was going to draw out of me. The first sitting was indeed exciting. There was hardly any sitting to it. We did nothing but move around in the studio and move the easel around. And try on ever so many backgrounds and ever so many poses. In the end, of course, we left everything just as it had been at the start, because Ms. Hale had had the right idea from the beginning. But I understood that a preliminary tempest in the studio was the proper way to test that idea. I was surprised to find that I should not be obliged to hold my breath and should be allowed to wink all I wanted. Posing was just sitting with my hands in my lap and enjoying the most interesting conversation with the artist. We hit upon such out-of-the-way topics. Once I remember, we talked about the marriage laws of different states. I had a glorious time and I believe Ms. Hale did too. I watched the progress of the portrait with utter lack of comprehension and with perfect faith in the ultimate result. The morning flew so fast that I could have sat right on into the afternoon without tiring. Once or twice I stayed to lunch and sat opposite the artist's mother at table. It was like sitting face-to-face with Martha Washington I thought. Everything was wonderful in that wonderful old house. One big thing disturbed my enjoyment of those Saturday mornings. It was a small thing, hardly as big as a pen wiper. It was a silver coin which Ms. Hale gave me regularly when I was going. I knew that models were paid for sitting, but I was not a professional model. When people sat for the portraits, they usually paid to the artist instead of the artist paying them. Of course I had not ordered this portrait, but I had such a good time sitting that it did not seem to me I could be earning money. But what troubled me was not the suspicion that I did not earn the money, but that I did not know what was in my friend's mind when she gave it to me. Was it possible that Ms. Hale had asked me to sit on purpose to be able to pay me so that I could help pay the rent? Everybody knew about the rent sooner or later because I was always asking my friends what a girl could do to make a landlady happy. Very possibly Ms. Hale had my landlady in mind when she asked me to pose. I might have asked her. I dearly loved explanations which cleared up hidden motives. But her answer would not have made any real difference. I should have accepted the money just the same. Ms. Hale was not a stranger, like Mr. Strong when he offered me a quarter. She knew me, she believed in my cause, and she wanted to contribute to it. Thus I, in my hair-splitting analysis of persons and motives, while the portrait went steadily on. It was Ms. Hale who first found a use for our superfluous baby. She came to Dover Street several times to study our tiny celia in swaddling clothes improvised by my mother after the fashion of the old country. Ms. Hale wanted a baby for a picture of the nativity which she was doing for her father's church. And of all the babies in Boston, our celia, our little Jewish celia, was posing for the Christ child. It does not matter in this connection that the infant that lies in the lantern light brooded over by the mother's divine sorrow of love in the beautiful altarpiece in Dr. Hale's church was not actually painted from my mother's baby in the end. The point is that my mother, in less than half a dozen years of America, had so far shaken off her ancient superstitions that she feared no evil consequence from letting her child pose for a Christian picture. A busy life I led on Dover Street, a happy, busy life, when I was not resetting lessons nor writing midnight poetry, nor selling papers, nor posing, nor studying sociology, nor pickling bugs, nor interviewing statesmen, nor running away from home. I made long entries in my journal, or wrote forty page letters to my friend. It was a happy thing that poor Mrs. Hutch did not know what sums I spent for stationery and postage stamps. She would have gone into consumption, I do believe, from inexpressible indignation, and she would have been in the right to be indignant, not to go into consumption. I admit it, she would have been justified from her point of view. From my point of view, I was also in the right. Of course I was. To make friends among the great was an important part of my education, and was not to be accomplished without a liberal expenditure of paper and postage stamps. If Mrs. Hutch had not repulsed my offer of confidences, I could have shown her long letters written to me by people whose mere signature was prized by autograph hunters. It is true that I could not turn those letters directly into rent money, or if I could I would not, but indirectly my interesting letters did pay a week's rent now and then. Through the influence of my friends, my father sometimes found work that he could not have gotten any other way. These practical results of my costly pursuit of friendships might have given Mrs. Hutch confidence in my ultimate solvency. Had she not remained obstinately deaf to my plea for time, her heart being set on direct, immediate, convertible cash payment. That was very narrow-minded, even though I say it who should not. The grocer on Harrison Avenue, who supplied our table, could have taught her to take a more liberal view. We were all anxious to teach her, if she only would have listened. Here was this poor grocer, conducting his business on the same perilous credit system which had driven my father out of Chelsea and Wheeler Street, supplying us with tea and sugar and strong butter. Milk freely splashed from rusty cans, potent yeast, and bananas done to a turn, with everything in short that keeps a poor man's family hearty in spite of what they eat. And all of this for the consideration of part payment, with a faintest prospect of a future settlement in full. Mr. Rosenblum had an intimate knowledge of the financial situation of every family that traded with him, from the gossip of his customers around his herring-barrel. He knew without asking that my father had no regular employment, and that consequently it was risky to give us credit. Nevertheless, he gave us credit by the week, by the month, accepted partial payments with thanks, and let the balance stand by the year. We owed him as much as the landlady, I suppose, every time he balanced our account. But he never complained. Nay, he even insisted on my mother's taking almonds and raisins for a cake for the holidays. He knew, as well as Mrs. Hutch, that my father kept a daughter at school, who was of age to be put to work. But so far was he from reproaching him for it, that he detained my father by the half-hour, inquiring about my progress and discussing my future. He knew very well did the poor grocer, who it was that burned so much oil in my family. But when I came in to have my kerosene can filled, he did not fall upon me with harsh words of blame. Instead, he wanted to hear about my latest triumphant school, and about the great people who wrote me letters, and even came to see me. And he called his wife from the kitchen behind the store to come and hear of these grand doings. Mrs. Rosenblum, who could not sign her name, came out in her faded calico wrapper, and stood with her hands folded under her apron, shy and respectful before the embryo scholar. And she nodded her head sideways in approval, drinking in, with envious pleasure, her husband's Yiddish version of my tale. If her black-eyed Goldie happened to be playing jackstones on the curb, Mrs. Rosenblum pulled her into the store, to hear what distinction Mr. Anton's daughter had won at school, bidding her take example from Mary, if she would also go far in education. Here, you Goldie, she has the best marks in everything Goldie, all the time. She is only five years in the country, and she'll be in college soon. She beats them all in school, Goldie. Her father says she beats them all. She studies all the time, all night, and she writes. It is a pleasure to hear. She writes in the paper, Goldie. You ought to hear Mr. Anton read what she writes in the paper. Long pieces. You don't understand what he reads, ma. Goldie interrupted mischievously, and I want to laugh, but I refrain. Mr. Rosenblum does not fill my can. I am forced to stand and hear myself eulogized. Not understand? Of course I don't understand. How should I understand? I was not sent to school to learn. Of course I don't understand. But you don't understand, Goldie, and that's a shame. If you would put your mind on it and study hard, like Mary Anton, you would also stand high, and you would go to high school and be somebody. Would you send me to high school, Pa? Goldie asks, to test her mother's promises. Would you really? Sure as I am a Jew, Mr. Rosenblum promptly replies, a look of aspiration in his deep eyes. Only show yourself worthy, Goldie, and I'll keep you in school till you get to something. In America, everybody can get to something, if he only wants to. I would even send you farther than high school, to be a teacher, maybe. Why not? In America, everything is possible. But you have to work hard, Goldie, like Mary Anton. Study hard, put your mind on it. Oh, I know what Pa, Goldie exclaims, her momentary enthusiasm extinguished at the thought of long lessons indefinitely prolonged. Goldie was a restless little thing, who could not sit long over her geography book. She wriggled out of her mother's grasp now, and made for the door, throwing a backhand as she went, without losing a single jackstone. I hate long lessons, she said. When I graduate summer school next year, I'm going to work in Jordan Marsh's big store, and get three dollars a week, and have lots of fun with the girls. I can't write pieces in the paper anyhow. Becky, Becky Hervich, where are you going? Wait a minute, I'll go along. And she was off, leaving her ambitious parents to shake their heads over her flightiness. Mr. Rosenblum gave me my oil. If he had had postage stamps in stock, he would have given me all I needed, and felt proud to think that he was assisting in my important correspondences. And he was a poor man, and had a large family, and many customers, who paid as irregularly as we. He ran the risk of ruin, of course, but he did not scold, not us at any rate, for he understood. He was himself an immigrant Jew of the type that values education, and sets a great price on the higher development of the child. He would have done in my father's place just what my father was doing. Borrow, beg, go without, run in debt, anything to secure for a promising child the fulfillment of the promise. That is what America was for, the land of opportunity it was, but opportunities must be used, must be grasped, held, squeezed dry. To keep a child of working age in school was to invest the meager present for the sake of the opulent future. If there was but one child in a family of twelve who promised to achieve an intellectual career, the other eleven, and father and mother, and neighbors must devote themselves to that one child's welfare, and feed and clothe and cheer it on, and be rewarded in the end by hearing its name mentioned with the names of the great. So the poor grocer helped to keep me in school, for I do not know how many years. And this is one of the things that is done on Harrison Avenue by the people who pitch rubbish through their windows, but the city fathers strike the balance. Of course this is retro economics. If I had a son who wanted to go into the grocery business, I should take care that he was well grounded in the principles of sound bookkeeping and prudence. But I should not fail to tell him the story of the Harrison Avenue Grocer, hoping that he would puzzle out the moral. Mr. Rosenblum himself would be astonished to hear that anyone was drawing morals from his manner of conducting his little store. And yet it is from men like him that I learned the true values of things. The grocer weighed me out a quarter of a pound of butter, and when the scales were even, he threw in another scrap. Nah, he said, smiling across the counter. You can carry that much around the corner. Plainly he was showing me that if I have not as many houses as my neighbor, that should not prevent me from cultivating as many graces. If I made some shame-faced reference to the unpaid balance, Mr. Rosenblum replied, I guess you're not thinking of running away from Boston yet. You haven't finished turning the libraries inside out, have you? In this way he reminded me that there were things more important than conventional respectability. The world belongs to those who can use it to the best advantage, the grocer seemed to argue. And I found that I had the courage to test this philosophy. From my little Roman Dover Street I reached out for the world, and the world came to me. Through books, through the conversation of noble men and women, through communion with the stars in the depth of night, I entered into every noble chamber of the Palace of Life. I employed no charm to win admittance. The doors opened to me because I had a right to be within. My pattern of nobility was the longing for the abundance of life with which I was endowed at birth, and from the time I could toddle, unaided, I had been gathering into my hand everything that was fine in the world around me. Given health and standing-room, I should have worked out my salvation even on a desert island. Being set down in the Garden of America, where opportunity waits on ambition, I was bound to make my days a triumphal march toward my goal. The most unfriendly witness of my life will not venture to deny that I have been successful. For aside from subordinate desires for greatness or wealth or specific achievement, my chief ambition in life has been to live, and I have lived. A glowing life has been mine, and the fires that blazed highest in all my days were kindled on Dover Street. I have never had a dull hour in my life. I have never had a livelier time than in the slums. In all my troubles I was thrilled through and through with a prophetic sense of how they were to end. A halo of romance floated before every tomorrow. The wings of future adventures wrestled in the dead of night. Nothing could be quite common that touched my life because I had a power for attracting uncommon things. And when my noble streams shall have been realized, I shall meet with nothing finer, nothing more remote from the common place than some of the things that came into my life on Dover Street. Friends came to me bearing noble gifts of service, inspiration, and love. There came one to talk with whom was to double the volume of life. She left roses on my pillow when I lay ill, and in my heart she planted a longing for greatness that I have yet to satisfy. Another came whose soul was steeped in sunshine, whose eyes saw through every pretense, whose lips mocked nothing holy. And one came who carried the golden key that unlocked the last secret chamber of life for me. Friends came trooping from everywhere, and some were poor and some were rich, but all were devoted and true, and they left no niche in my heart unfilled and no want unsatisfied. To be alive in America, I found out long ago, is to ride on the central current of the river of modern life, and to have a conscious purpose is to hold the rudder that steers the ship of fate. I was alive to my fingertips back there on Dover Street, and all my girlish purposes served one main purpose. It would have been amazing if I had stuck in the mire of the slum. By every law of my nature I was bound to soar above it to attain the fairer places that wait for every emancipated immigrant. A characteristic thing about the aspiring immigrant is the fact that he is not content to progress alone. Solitary success is imperfect success in his eyes. He must take his family with him as he rises. So when I refused to be adopted by a rich old man and clung to my family in the slums, I was only following the rule, and I can tell it without boasting, because it is no more to my credit than that I wake refreshed after a night's sleep. This suggests to me a summary of my virtues, through the exercise of which I may be said to have attracted my good fortune. I find that I have always given nature a chance. I have used my opportunities, and have practiced self-expression. So much my enemies will grant me. More than this my friends cannot claim for me. In the Dover Street days I did not philosophize about my private character, nor about the immigrant and his ways. I lived the life and the moral took care of itself, and after Dover Street came Apple Pie Alley, Letterbox Lane, and other evil corners of the slums of Boston, till it must have looked to our neighbors, as if we meant to go on forever exploring the underworld. But we found a shortcut. We found a shortcut, and the route we took from the tenements of the stiffling alleys to a darling cottage of our own, where the sun shines in at every window, and the green grass runs up to our very doorstep, was surveyed by the pilgrim fathers who transcribed their field notes on a very fine parchment, and called it the Constitution of the United States. It was good to get out of Dover Street. It was better for the growing children, better for my weary parents, better for all of us, as the clean grass is better than the dusty pavement. But I must never forget that I came away from Dover Street with my hands full of riches. I must not fail to testify that in America a child of the slums owns the land and all that is good in it. All the beautiful things I saw belonged to me if I wanted to use them. All the beautiful things I desired approached me. I did not need to seek my kingdom. I had only to be worthy, and it came to me, even on Dover Street. Everything that was ever to happen to me in the future had its germ or impulse in the conditions of my life on Dover Street. My friendships, my advantages and disadvantages, my gifts, my habits, my ambitions— these were the materials out of which I built my afterlife, in the open workshop of America. My days in the slums were pregnant with possibilities. It only needed the ripeness of events to make them fruit forth in realities. Steadily as I worked to win America, America advanced to lie at my feet. I was an heir on Dover Street, awaiting maturity. I was a princess, waiting to be led to the throne. End of Chapter 19 Chapter 20 of The Promised Land This Librivox recording is in the public domain, recording by Bridget Gage, The Promised Land by Mary Anton, Chapter 20 The Heritage One of the inherent disadvantages of premature biography is that it cannot go to the natural end of the story. This difficulty threatened me in the beginning, but now I find I do not need to tax my judgment to fix the proper stopping place. Sudden qualms of reluctance warn me where the past and present meet. I have reached a point where my yesterdays lie in a quick heap and I cannot bear to prod and turn them and set them up to be looked at. For that matter, I am not sure that I should add anything really new, even if I could force myself to cross the line of discretion. I have already shown what a real thing is this American freedom that we talk about, and in what manner a certain class of aliens make use of it. Anything that I might add of my later adventures would be a repetition, in substance of what I have already described. Having traced the way an immigrant child may take from the ship through the public schools, passed on from hand to hand by the ready teachers, through free libraries and lecture halls, inspired by every occasion of civic consciousness, dragging through the slums the weight of private disadvantage, but heartened for the effort by public opportunity, welcomed at a hundred open doors of instruction, initiated with pomp and splendor and flags unfurled, seeking in American minds the American way, and finding it in the thoughts of the noble, striving against the odds of foreign birth and poverty, and winning, through the use of abundant opportunity, a place as enviable as that of any native child. Having traced the footsteps of the young immigrant, almost to the college gate, the rest of the course may be left to the imagination. Let us say that from the Latin school on, I lived very much as my American schoolmates lived, having overcome my foreign idiosyncrasies, and the rest of my outward adventures. You may read in any volume of American feminine statistics. But lest I be reproached for a sudden affectation of reserve, after having trained my reader to expect the fullest particulars, I am willing to add a few details. I went to college as I proposed, though not to Radcliffe. Receiving an invitation to live in New York that I did not like to refuse, I went to Barnard College instead. There I took all the honors that I deserved, and if I did not learn to write poetry, as I once supposed I should, I learned at least to think in English without an accent. Did I get rich? You may want to know, remembering my ambition to provide for the family. I can reply that I have earned enough to pay Mrs. Hutch the arrears, and satisfy all my wants. And where have I lived since I left the slums? My favorite abode is a tent in the wilderness, where I shall be happy to serve you a cup of tea out of a tin kettle and answer further questions. And is this really to be the last word? Yes, though a long chapter of the romance of Dover Street is left untold. I could fill another book with anecdotes, telling how I took possession of Beacon Street, and learned to distinguish the Lord of the Manor from the butler in full dress. I might trace my steps from my bare room overlooking the lumberyard, to the satin drawing rooms of the back bay, where I drink afternoon tea with gentle ladies, whose hands were as delicate as their porcelain cups. My journal of those days is full of comments on the contrasts of life, that I copied from my busy thoughts in the evening, after a visit to my aristocratic friends. Coming straight from the cushioned refinement of Beacon Street were the maid who brought my hostess her slippers, spoken softer accents than the finest people on Dover Street. I sometimes stumbled over poor Mr. Casey, lying asleep in the corridor, and the shock of the contrast was like a search light turned suddenly on my life, and I pondered over the revelation, and wrote touching poems, in which I figured as a heroine of two worlds. I might quote from my journals and poems, and build up the picture of that double life. I might rehearse the names of the gracious friends who admitted me to their tables, although I came direct from the reeking slums. I might enumerate the priceless gifts they showered on me, gifts bought not with gold, but with love. It would be a pleasant task to recall the high things that passed in the gilded drawing rooms over the afternoon tea. It would add a splendor to my simple narrative, to weave in the portraits of the distinguished men and women who busied themselves with the humble fortunes of a schoolgirl. And finally it would relieve my heart of a burden of gratitude to publish once for all the amount of my indebtedness to the devoted friends who took me by the hand when I walked in the paths of obscurity, and led me by a pleasanter lane that I could have found myself to the open fields where obstacles thinned and opportunities crowded to meet me. Outside America I should hardly be believed if I told how simply, in my experience, Dover Street merged into the back bay. These are matters to which I long to testify, but I must wait till they recede into the past. I can conjure up no better symbol of the genuine, practical equality of all our citizens than the Hail House Natural History Club, which played an important part in my final emancipation from the slums. For all as I was regarded as a plaything by the serious members of the club, the attention and kindness they lavished on me had a deep significance. Every one of those earnest men and women unconsciously taught me my place in the Commonwealth, as the potential equal of the best of them. Few of my friends in the club, it is true, could have rightly defined their benevolence toward me. Perhaps some of them thought they befriended me for charity's sake, because I was a starved waif from the slums. Some of them imagined they enjoyed my society, because I had much to say for myself, and a gay manner of meeting life. But all these were only secondary motives. I myself, in my unclouded perception of the true relation of things that concerned me, could have told them all why they spent their friendship on me. They made way for me because I was their foster sister. They opened their homes to me, that I might learn how good Americans lived. In the least of their attentions to me, they cherished the citizen in the making. The Natural History Club had spent the day at Nahant, studying marine life in the tide pools, scrambling up and down the cliffs, with no thought for decorum, bent only on securing the starfish, limpets, sea urchins, and other trophies of the chase. There had been a merry lunch on the rocks, with talk and laughter between sandwiches, and strange jokes, intelligible only to the practicing naturalist. The tide had rushed in at its proper time, stealing away our seaweed cushions, drowning our transparent pools, spouting in the crevices, booming and hissing, and tossing high the snowy foam. From the deck of the jolly excursion steamer, which was carrying us home, we had watched the rosy sun dip down below the sea. The members of the club, grouped in twos and threes, discussed the day's successes, compared specimens, exchanged field-notes, or watched the western horizon in sympathetic silence. It had been a great day for me. I had seen a dozen new forms of life, had caught a hundred fragments of the song of nature by the sea, and my mind was seething with meanings that crowded in. I do not remember to which of my learned friends I addressed my questions on this occasion, but he surely was one of the most learned, for he took up all my fragments of dawning knowledge in his discourse, and welded them into a solid structure of wisdom, with windows looking far down the past, and a tower overlooking the future. I was so absorbed in my private review of creation, that I hardly realized when we landed, or how we got into the electric cars, till we were a good way into the city. At the public library I parted from my friends, and stood on the broad stone steps, my jar of specimens in my hand, watching the car that carried them glide out of sight. My heart was full of a stirring wonder. I was hardly conscious of the place where I stood, or of the day, or the hour. I was in a dream, and the familiar world around me was transfigured. My hair was damp with sea-spray, the roar of the tide was still in my ears. Mighty thoughts surged through my dreams, and I trembled with understanding. I sink down on the granite ledge beside the entrance to the library, and for a mere moment I covered my eyes with my hand. In that moment I had a vision of myself, the human creature, emerging from the dim places where the torch of history has never been, creeping slowly into the light of civilized existence, pushing more steadily forward to the broad plateau of modern life, and leaping at last, strong and glad, to the intellectual summit of the latest century. What an awful stretch of years to contemplate! What a weighty pass to carry in memory! How shall I number the days of my life, except by the stars of the night, except by the salt drops of the sea? But hark to the clamor of the city all about! This is my latest home, and it invites me to a glad new life. The endless ages have indeed throbbed through my blood, but a new rhythm dances in my veins. My spirit is not tied to the monumental past, any more than my feet were bound to my grandfather's house below the hill. The past was only my cradle, and now it cannot hold me, because I am grown too big. Just as the little house in Pilotsk once my home has now become a toy of memory, as I move about at will in the wide spaces of this splendid palace, whose shadow covers acres. No, it is not I that belong to the past, but the past that belongs to me. America is the youngest of the nations, and inherits all that went before in history. And I am the youngest of America's children, and into my hands is given all her priceless heritage, to the last white star aspired through the telescope, to the last great thought of the philosopher. Mine is the whole majestic past, and mine is the shining future.