THE PROMISED LAND
Having made such good time across the ocean, I ought to be able to
proceed no less rapidly on _terra firma_, where, after all, I am more
at home. And yet here is where I falter. Not that I hesitated, even
for the space of a breath, in my first steps in America. There was no
time to hesitate. The most ignorant immigrant, on landing proceeds to
give and receive greetings, to eat, sleep and rise, after the manner
of his own country; wherein he is corrected, admonished, and laughed
at, whether by interested friends or the most indifferent strangers;
and his American experience is thus begun. The process is spontaneous
on all sides, like the education of the child by the family circle.
But while the most stupid nursery maid is able to contribute her part
toward the result, we do not expect an analysis of the process to be
furnished by any member of the family, least of all by the engaging
infant. The philosophical maiden aunt alone, or some other witness
equally psychological and aloof, is able to trace the myriad efforts
by which the little Johnnie or Nellie acquires a secure hold on the
disjointed parts of the huge plaything, life.
Now I was not exactly an infant when I was set down, on a May day some
fifteen years ago, in this pleasant nursery of America. I had long
since acquired the use of my faculties, and had collected some bits of
experience practical and emotional, and had even learned to give an
account of them. Still, I had very little perspective, and my
observations and comparisons were superficial. I was too much carried
away to analyze the forces that were moving me. My Polotzk I knew well
before I began to judge it and experiment with it. America was
bewilderingly strange, unimaginably complex, delightfully unexplored.
I rushed impetuously out of the cage of my provincialism and looked
eagerly about the brilliant universe. My question was, What have we
here?--not, What does this mean? That query came much later. When I
now become retrospectively introspective, I fall into the predicament
of the centipede in the rhyme, who got along very smoothly until he
was asked which leg came after which, whereupon he became so rattled
that he couldn't take a step. I know I have come on a thousand feet,
on wings, winds and American machines,--I have leaped and run and
climbed and crawled,--but to tell which step came after which I find a
puzzling matter. Plenty of maiden aunts were present during my second
infancy, in the guise of immigrant officials, school-teachers,
settlement workers, and sundry other unprejudiced and critical
observers. Their statistics I might properly borrow to fill the gaps
in my recollections, but I am prevented by my sense of harmony. The
individual, we know, is a creature unknown to the statistician,
whereas I undertook to give the personal view of everything. So I am
bound to unravel, as well as I can, the tangle of events, outer and
inner, which made up the first breathless years of my American life.
During his three years of probation, my father had made a number of
false starts in business. His history for that period is the history
of thousands who come to America, like him, with pockets empty, hands
untrained to the use of tools, minds cramped by centuries of
repression in their native land. Dozens of these men pass under your
eyes every day, my American friend, too absorbed in their honest
affairs to notice the looks of suspicion which you cast at them, the
repugnance with which you shrink from their touch. You see them
shuffle from door to door with a basket of spools and buttons, or
bending over the sizzling irons in a basement tailor shop, or
rummaging in your ash can, or moving a pushcart from curb to curb, at
the command of the burly policeman. "The Jew peddler!" you say, and
dismiss him from your premises and from your thoughts, never dreaming
that the sordid drama of his days may have a moral that concerns you.
What if the creature with the untidy beard carries in his bosom his
citizenship papers? What if the cross-legged tailor is supporting a
boy in college who is one day going to mend your state constitution
for you? What if the ragpicker's daughters are hastening over the
ocean to teach your children in the public schools? Think, every time
you pass the greasy alien on the street, that he was born thousands of
years before the oldest native American; and he may have something to
communicate to you, when you two shall have learned a common language.
Remember that his very physiognomy is a cipher the key to which it
behooves you to search for most diligently.
* * * * *
By the time we joined my father, he had surveyed many avenues of
approach toward the coveted citadel of fortune. One of these,
heretofore untried, he now proposed to essay, armed with new courage,
and cheered on by the presence of his family. In partnership with an
energetic little man who had an English chapter in his history, he
prepared to set up a refreshment booth on Crescent Beach. But while he
was completing arrangements at the beach we remained in town, where we
enjoyed the educational advantages of a thickly populated
neighborhood; namely, Wall Street, in the West End of Boston.
Anybody who knows Boston knows that the West and North Ends are the
wrong ends of that city. They form the tenement district, or, in the
newer phrase, the slums of Boston. Anybody who is acquainted with the
slums of any American metropolis knows that that is the quarter where
poor immigrants foregather, to live, for the most part, as unkempt,
half-washed, toiling, unaspiring foreigners; pitiful in the eyes of
social missionaries, the despair of boards of health, the hope of ward
politicians, the touchstone of American democracy. The well-versed
metropolitan knows the slums as a sort of house of detention for poor
aliens, where they live on probation till they can show a certificate
of good citizenship.
He may know all this and yet not guess how Wall Street, in the West
End, appears in the eyes of a little immigrant from Polotzk. What
would the sophisticated sight-seer say about Union Place, off Wall
Street, where my new home waited for me? He would say that it is no
place at all, but a short box of an alley. Two rows of three-story
tenements are its sides, a stingy strip of sky is its lid, a littered
pavement is the floor, and a narrow mouth its exit.
But I saw a very different picture on my introduction to Union Place.
I saw two imposing rows of brick buildings, loftier than any dwelling
I had ever lived in. Brick was even on the ground for me to tread on,
instead of common earth or boards. Many friendly windows stood open,
filled with uncovered heads of women and children. I thought the
people were interested in us, which was very neighborly. I looked up
to the topmost row of windows, and my eyes were filled with the May
blue of an American sky!
In our days of affluence in Russia we had been accustomed to
upholstered parlors, embroidered linen, silver spoons and
candlesticks, goblets of gold, kitchen shelves shining with copper and
brass. We had featherbeds heaped halfway to the ceiling; we had
clothes presses dusky with velvet and silk and fine woollen. The three
small rooms into which my father now ushered us, up one flight of
stairs, contained only the necessary beds, with lean mattresses; a few
wooden chairs; a table or two; a mysterious iron structure, which
later turned out to be a stove; a couple of unornamental kerosene
lamps; and a scanty array of cooking-utensils and crockery. And yet we
were all impressed with our new home and its furniture. It was not
only because we had just passed through our seven lean years, cooking
in earthen vessels, eating black bread on holidays and wearing cotton;
it was chiefly because these wooden chairs and tin pans were American
chairs and pans that they shone glorious in our eyes. And if there was
anything lacking for comfort or decoration we expected it to be
presently supplied--at least, we children did. Perhaps my mother
alone, of us newcomers, appreciated the shabbiness of the little
apartment, and realized that for her there was as yet no laying down
of the burden of poverty.
Our initiation into American ways began with the first step on the new
soil. My father found occasion to instruct or correct us even on
the way from the pier to Wall Street, which journey we made crowded
together in a rickety cab. He told us not to lean out of the windows,
not to point, and explained the word "greenhorn." We did not want to
be "greenhorns," and gave the strictest attention to my father's
instructions. I do not know when my parents found opportunity to
review together the history of Polotzk in the three years past, for we
children had no patience with the subject; my mother's narrative was
constantly interrupted by irrelevant questions, interjections, and
explanations.
[Illustration: UNION PLACE (BOSTON) WHERE MY NEW HOME WAITED
FOR ME]
The first meal was an object lesson of much variety. My father
produced several kinds of food, ready to eat, without any cooking,
from little tin cans that had printing all over them. He attempted to
introduce us to a queer, slippery kind of fruit, which he called
"banana," but had to give it up for the time being. After the meal, he
had better luck with a curious piece of furniture on runners, which he
called "rocking-chair." There were five of us newcomers, and we found
five different ways of getting into the American machine of perpetual
motion, and as many ways of getting out of it. One born and bred to
the use of a rocking-chair cannot imagine how ludicrous people can
make themselves when attempting to use it for the first time. We
laughed immoderately over our various experiments with the novelty,
which was a wholesome way of letting off steam after the unusual
excitement of the day.
In our flat we did not think of such a thing as storing the coal in
the bathtub. There was no bathtub. So in the evening of the first day
my father conducted us to the public baths. As we moved along in a
little procession, I was delighted with the illumination of the
streets. So many lamps, and they burned until morning, my father
said, and so people did not need to carry lanterns. In America, then,
everything was free, as we had heard in Russia. Light was free; the
streets were as bright as a synagogue on a holy day. Music was free;
we had been serenaded, to our gaping delight, by a brass band of many
pieces, soon after our installation on Union Place.
Education was free. That subject my father had written about
repeatedly, as comprising his chief hope for us children, the essence
of American opportunity, the treasure that no thief could touch, not
even misfortune or poverty. It was the one thing that he was able to
promise us when he sent for us; surer, safer than bread or shelter. On
our second day I was thrilled with the realization of what this
freedom of education meant. A little girl from across the alley came
and offered to conduct us to school. My father was out, but we five
between us had a few words of English by this time. We knew the word
school. We understood. This child, who had never seen us till
yesterday, who could not pronounce our names, who was not much better
dressed than we, was able to offer us the freedom of the schools of
Boston! No application made, no questions asked, no examinations,
rulings, exclusions; no machinations, no fees. The doors stood open
for every one of us. The smallest child could show us the way.
This incident impressed me more than anything I had heard in advance
of the freedom of education in America. It was a concrete
proof--almost the thing itself. One had to experience it to understand
it.
It was a great disappointment to be told by my father that we were not
to enter upon our school career at once. It was too near the end of
the term, he said, and we were going to move to Crescent Beach in a
week or so. We had to wait until the opening of the schools in
September. What a loss of precious time--from May till September!
Not that the time was really lost. Even the interval on Union Place
was crowded with lessons and experiences. We had to visit the stores
and be dressed from head to foot in American clothing; we had to learn
the mysteries of the iron stove, the washboard, and the speaking-tube;
we had to learn to trade with the fruit peddler through the window,
and not to be afraid of the policeman; and, above all, we had to learn
English.
The kind people who assisted us in these important matters form a
group by themselves in the gallery of my friends. If I had never seen
them from those early days till now, I should still have remembered
them with gratitude. When I enumerate the long list of my American
teachers, I must begin with those who came to us on Wall Street and
taught us our first steps. To my mother, in her perplexity over the
cookstove, the woman who showed her how to make the fire was an angel
of deliverance. A fairy godmother to us children was she who led us to
a wonderful country called "uptown," where, in a dazzlingly beautiful
palace called a "department store," we exchanged our hateful homemade
European costumes, which pointed us out as "greenhorns" to the
children on the street, for real American machine-made garments, and
issued forth glorified in each other's eyes.
With our despised immigrant clothing we shed also our impossible
Hebrew names. A committee of our friends, several years ahead of us in
American experience, put their heads together and concocted American
names for us all. Those of our real names that had no pleasing
American equivalents they ruthlessly discarded, content if they
retained the initials. My mother, possessing a name that was not
easily translatable, was punished with the undignified nickname of
Annie. Fetchke, Joseph, and Deborah issued as Frieda, Joseph, and
Dora, respectively. As for poor me, I was simply cheated. The name
they gave me was hardly new. My Hebrew name being Maryashe in full,
Mashke for short, Russianized into Marya (_Mar-ya_), my friends said
that it would hold good in English as _Mary_; which was very
disappointing, as I longed to possess a strange-sounding American name
like the others.
I am forgetting the consolation I had, in this matter of names, from
the use of my surname, which I have had no occasion to mention until
now. I found on my arrival that my father was "Mr. Antin" on the
slightest provocation, and not, as in Polotzk, on state occasions
alone. And so I was "Mary Antin," and I felt very important to answer
to such a dignified title. It was just like America that even plain
people should wear their surnames on week days.
As a family we were so diligent under instruction, so adaptable, and
so clever in hiding our deficiencies, that when we made the journey to
Crescent Beach, in the wake of our small wagon-load of household
goods, my father had very little occasion to admonish us on the way,
and I am sure he was not ashamed of us. So much we had achieved toward
our Americanization during the two weeks since our landing.
Crescent Beach is a name that is printed in very small type on the
maps of the environs of Boston, but a life-size strip of sand curves
from Winthrop to Lynn; and that is historic ground in the annals of my
family. The place is now a popular resort for holiday crowds, and is
famous under the name of Revere Beach. When the reunited Antins made
their stand there, however, there were no boulevards, no stately
bath-houses, no hotels, no gaudy amusement places, no illuminations,
no showmen, no tawdry rabble. There was only the bright clean sweep of
sand, the summer sea, and the summer sky. At high tide the whole
Atlantic rushed in, tossing the seaweeds in his mane; at low tide he
rushed out, growling and gnashing his granite teeth. Between tides a
baby might play on the beach, digging with pebbles and shells, till it
lay asleep on the sand. The whole sun shone by day, troops of stars by
night, and the great moon in its season.
Into this grand cycle of the seaside day I came to live and learn and
play. A few people came with me, as I have already intimated; but the
main thing was that _I_ came to live on the edge of the sea--I, who
had spent my life inland, believing that the great waters of the world
were spread out before me in the Dvina. My idea of the human world had
grown enormously during the long journey; my idea of the earth had
expanded with every day at sea; my idea of the world outside the earth
now budded and swelled during my prolonged experience of the wide and
unobstructed heavens.
Not that I got any inkling of the conception of a multiple world. I
had had no lessons in cosmogony, and I had no spontaneous revelation
of the true position of the earth in the universe. For me, as for my
fathers, the sun set and rose, and I did not feel the earth rushing
through space. But I lay stretched out in the sun, my eyes level with
the sea, till I seemed to be absorbed bodily by the very materials of
the world around me; till I could not feel my hand as separate from
the warm sand in which it was buried. Or I crouched on the beach at
full moon, wondering, wondering, between the two splendors of the sky
and the sea. Or I ran out to meet the incoming storm, my face full in
the wind, my being a-tingle with an awesome delight to the tips of my
fog-matted locks flying behind; and stood clinging to some stake or
upturned boat, shaken by the roar and rumble of the waves. So
clinging, I pretended that I was in danger, and was deliciously
frightened; I held on with both hands, and shook my head, exulting in
the tumult around me, equally ready to laugh or sob. Or else I sat, on
the stillest days, with my back to the sea, not looking at all, but
just listening to the rustle of the waves on the sand; not thinking at
all, but just breathing with the sea.
Thus courting the influence of sea and sky and variable weather, I was
bound to have dreams, hints, imaginings. It was no more than this,
perhaps: that the world as I knew it was not large enough to contain
all that I saw and felt; that the thoughts that flashed through my
mind, not half understood, unrelated to my utterable thoughts,
concerned something for which I had as yet no name. Every imaginative
growing child has these flashes of intuition, especially one that
becomes intimate with some one aspect of nature. With me it was the
growing time, that idle summer by the sea, and I grew all the faster
because I had been so cramped before. My mind, too, had so recently
been worked upon by the impressive experience of a change of country
that I was more than commonly alive to impressions, which are the
seeds of ideas.
Let no one suppose that I spent my time entirely, or even chiefly, in
inspired solitude. By far the best part of my day was spent in
play--frank, hearty, boisterous play, such as comes natural to
American children. In Polotzk I had already begun to be considered too
old for play, excepting set games or organized frolics. Here I found
myself included with children who still played, and I willingly
returned to childhood. There were plenty of playfellows. My father's
energetic little partner had a little wife and a large family. He kept
them in the little cottage next to ours; and that the shanty survived
the tumultuous presence of that brood is a wonder to me to-day. The
young Wilners included an assortment of boys, girls, and twins, of
every possible variety of age, size, disposition, and sex. They
swarmed in and out of the cottage all day long, wearing the door-sill
hollow, and trampling the ground to powder. They swung out of windows
like monkeys, slid up the roof like flies, and shot out of trees like
fowls. Even a small person like me couldn't go anywhere without being
run over by a Wilner; and I could never tell which Wilner it was
because none of them ever stood still long enough to be identified;
and also because I suspected that they were in the habit of
interchanging conspicuous articles of clothing, which was very
confusing.
You would suppose that the little mother must have been utterly lost,
bewildered, trodden down in this horde of urchins; but you are
mistaken. Mrs. Wilner was a positively majestic little person. She
ruled her brood with the utmost coolness and strictness. She had even
the biggest boy under her thumb, frequently under her palm. If they
enjoyed the wildest freedom outdoors, indoors the young Wilners lived
by the clock. And so at five o'clock in the evening, on seven days in
the week, my father's partner's children could be seen in two long
rows around the supper table. You could tell them apart on this
occasion, because they all had their faces washed. And this is the
time to count them: there are twelve little Wilners at table.
I managed to retain my identity in this multitude somehow, and while I
was very much impressed with their numbers, I even dared to pick and
choose my friends among the Wilners. One or two of the smaller boys I
liked best of all, for a game of hide-and-seek or a frolic on the
beach. We played in the water like ducks, never taking the trouble to
get dry. One day I waded out with one of the boys, to see which of us
dared go farthest. The tide was extremely low, and we had not wet our
knees when we began to look back to see if familiar objects were still
in sight. I thought we had been wading for hours, and still the water
was so shallow and quiet. My companion was marching straight ahead, so
I did the same. Suddenly a swell lifted us almost off our feet, and we
clutched at each other simultaneously. There was a lesser swell, and
little waves began to run, and a sigh went up from the sea. The tide
was turning--perhaps a storm was on the way--and we were miles,
dreadful miles from dry land.
Boy and girl turned without a word, four determined bare legs
ploughing through the water, four scared eyes straining toward the
land. Through an eternity of toil and fear they kept dumbly on, death
at their heels, pride still in their hearts. At last they reach
high-water mark--six hours before full tide.
Each has seen the other afraid, and each rejoices in the knowledge.
But only the boy is sure of his tongue.
"You was scared, warn't you?" he taunts.
The girl understands so much, and is able to reply:--
"You can schwimmen, I not."
"Betcher life I can schwimmen," the other mocks.
And the girl walks off, angry and hurt.
"An' I can walk on my hands," the tormentor calls after her. "Say, you
greenhorn, why don'tcher look?"
The girl keeps straight on, vowing that she would never walk with that
rude boy again, neither by land nor sea, not even though the waters
should part at his bidding.
I am forgetting the more serious business which had brought us to
Crescent Beach. While we children disported ourselves like mermaids
and mermen in the surf, our respective fathers dispensed cold
lemonade, hot peanuts, and pink popcorn, and piled up our respective
fortunes, nickel by nickel, penny by penny. I was very proud of my
connection with the public life of the beach. I admired greatly our
shining soda fountain, the rows of sparkling glasses, the pyramids of
oranges, the sausage chains, the neat white counter, and the bright
array of tin spoons. It seemed to me that none of the other
refreshment stands on the beach--there were a few--were half so
attractive as ours. I thought my father looked very well in a long
white apron and shirt sleeves. He dished out ice cream with
enthusiasm, so I supposed he was getting rich. It never occurred to me
to compare his present occupation with the position for which he had
been originally destined; or if I thought about it, I was just as well
content, for by this time I had by heart my father's saying, "America
is not Polotzk." All occupations were respectable, all men were equal,
in America.
If I admired the soda fountain and the sausage chains, I almost
worshipped the partner, Mr. Wilner. I was content to stand for an hour
at a time watching him make potato chips. In his cook's cap and apron,
with a ladle in his hand and a smile on his face, he moved about with
the greatest agility, whisking his raw materials out of nowhere,
dipping into his bubbling kettle with a flourish, and bringing forth
the finished product with a caper. Such potato chips were not to be had
anywhere else on Crescent Beach. Thin as tissue paper, crisp as dry
snow, and salt as the sea--such thirst-producing, lemonade-selling,
nickel-bringing potato chips only Mr. Wilner could make. On holidays,
when dozens of family parties came out by every train from town, he
could hardly keep up with the demand for his potato chips. And with a
waiting crowd around him our partner was at his best. He was as voluble
as he was skilful, and as witty as he was voluble; at least so I
guessed from the laughter that frequently drowned his voice. I could
not understand his jokes, but if I could get near enough to watch his
lips and his smile and his merry eyes, I was happy. That any one could
talk so fast, and in English, was marvel enough, but that this prodigy
should belong to _our_ establishment was a fact to thrill me. I had
never seen anything like Mr. Wilner, except a wedding jester; but then
he spoke common Yiddish. So proud was I of the talent and good taste
displayed at our stand that if my father beckoned to me in the crowd
and sent me on an errand, I hoped the people noticed that I, too, was
connected with the establishment.
And all this splendor and glory and distinction came to a sudden end.
There was some trouble about a license--some fee or fine--there was a
storm in the night that damaged the soda fountain and other
fixtures--there was talk and consultation between the houses of Antin
and Wilner--and the promising partnership was dissolved. No more would
the merry partner gather the crowd on the beach; no more would the
twelve young Wilners gambol like mermen and mermaids in the surf. And
the less numerous tribe of Antin must also say farewell to the jolly
seaside life; for men in such humble business as my father's carry
their families, along with their other earthly goods, wherever they
go, after the manner of the gypsies. We had driven a feeble stake into
the sand. The jealous Atlantic, in conspiracy with the Sunday law, had
torn it out. We must seek our luck elsewhere.
In Polotzk we had supposed that "America" was practically synonymous
with "Boston." When we landed in Boston, the horizon was pushed back,
and we annexed Crescent Beach. And now, espying other lands of
promise, we took possession of the province of Chelsea, in the name of
our necessity.
In Chelsea, as in Boston, we made our stand in the wrong end of the
town. Arlington Street was inhabited by poor Jews, poor Negroes, and a
sprinkling of poor Irish. The side streets leading from it were
occupied by more poor Jews and Negroes. It was a proper locality for a
man without capital to do business. My father rented a tenement with a
store in the basement. He put in a few barrels of flour and of sugar,
a few boxes of crackers, a few gallons of kerosene, an assortment of
soap of the "save the coupon" brands; in the cellar, a few barrels of
potatoes, and a pyramid of kindling-wood; in the showcase, an alluring
display of penny candy. He put out his sign, with a gilt-lettered
warning of "Strictly Cash," and proceeded to give credit
indiscriminately. That was the regular way to do business on Arlington
Street. My father, in his three years' apprenticeship, had learned the
tricks of many trades. He knew when and how to "bluff." The legend of
"Strictly Cash" was a protection against notoriously irresponsible
customers; while none of the "good" customers, who had a record for
paying regularly on Saturday, hesitated to enter the store with empty
purses.
If my father knew the tricks of the trade, my mother could be counted
on to throw all her talent and tact into the business. Of course she
had no English yet, but as she could perform the acts of weighing,
measuring, and mental computation of fractions mechanically, she was
able to give her whole attention to the dark mysteries of the
language, as intercourse with her customers gave her opportunity. In
this she made such rapid progress that she soon lost all sense of
disadvantage, and conducted herself behind the counter very much as if
she were back in her old store in Polotzk. It was far more cosey than
Polotzk--at least, so it seemed to me; for behind the store was the
kitchen, where, in the intervals of slack trade, she did her cooking
and washing. Arlington Street customers were used to waiting while the
storekeeper salted the soup or rescued a loaf from the oven.
Once more Fortune favored my family with a thin little smile, and my
father, in reply to a friendly inquiry, would say, "One makes a
living," with a shrug of the shoulders that added "but nothing to boast
of." It was characteristic of my attitude toward bread-and-butter
matters that this contented me, and I felt free to devote myself to the
conquest of my new world. Looking back to those critical first years,
I see myself always behaving like a child let loose in a garden to play
and dig and chase the butterflies. Occasionally, indeed, I was stung by
the wasp of family trouble; but I knew a healing ointment--my faith in
America. My father had come to America to make a living. America, which
was free and fair and kind, must presently yield him what he sought. I
had come to America to see a new world, and I followed my own ends with
the utmost assiduity; only, as I ran out to explore, I would look back
to see if my house were in order behind me--if my family still kept its
head above water.
In after years, when I passed as an American among Americans, if I was
suddenly made aware of the past that lay forgotten,--if a letter from
Russia, or a paragraph in the newspaper, or a conversation overheard
in the street-car, suddenly reminded me of what I might have been,--I
thought it miracle enough that I, Mashke, the granddaughter of Raphael
the Russian, born to a humble destiny, should be at home in an
American metropolis, be free to fashion my own life, and should dream
my dreams in English phrases. But in the beginning my admiration was
spent on more concrete embodiments of the splendors of America; such
as fine houses, gay shops, electric engines and apparatus, public
buildings, illuminations, and parades. My early letters to my Russian
friends were filled with boastful descriptions of these glories of my
new country. No native citizen of Chelsea took such pride and delight
in its institutions as I did. It required no fife and drum corps, no
Fourth of July procession, to set me tingling with patriotism. Even
the common agents and instruments of municipal life, such as the
letter carrier and the fire engine, I regarded with a measure of
respect. I know what I thought of people who said that Chelsea was a
very small, dull, unaspiring town, with no discernible excuse for a
separate name or existence.
The apex of my civic pride and personal contentment was reached on the
bright September morning when I entered the public school. That day I
must always remember, even if I live to be so old that I cannot tell
my name. To most people their first day at school is a memorable
occasion. In my case the importance of the day was a hundred times
magnified, on account of the years I had waited, the road I had come,
and the conscious ambitions I entertained.
I am wearily aware that I am speaking in extreme figures, in
superlatives. I wish I knew some other way to render the mental life
of the immigrant child of reasoning age. I may have been ever so much
an exception in acuteness of observation, powers of comparison, and
abnormal self-consciousness; none the less were my thoughts and
conduct typical of the attitude of the intelligent immigrant child
toward American institutions. And what the child thinks and feels is a
reflection of the hopes, desires, and purposes of the parents who
brought him overseas, no matter how precocious and independent the
child may be. Your immigrant inspectors will tell you what poverty the
foreigner brings in his baggage, what want in his pockets. Let the
overgrown boy of twelve, reverently drawing his letters in the baby
class, testify to the noble dreams and high ideals that may be hidden
beneath the greasy caftan of the immigrant. Speaking for the Jews, at
least, I know I am safe in inviting such an investigation.
Who were my companions on my first day at school? Whose hand was in
mine, as I stood, overcome with awe, by the teacher's desk, and
whispered my name as my father prompted? Was it Frieda's steady,
capable hand? Was it her loyal heart that throbbed, beat for beat with
mine, as it had done through all our childish adventures? Frieda's
heart did throb that day, but not with my emotions. My heart pulsed
with joy and pride and ambition; in her heart longing fought with
abnegation. For I was led to the schoolroom, with its sunshine and its
singing and the teacher's cheery smile; while she was led to the
workshop, with its foul air, care-lined faces, and the foreman's stern
command. Our going to school was the fulfilment of my father's best
promises to us, and Frieda's share in it was to fashion and fit the
calico frocks in which the baby sister and I made our first appearance
in a public schoolroom.
I remember to this day the gray pattern of the calico, so
affectionately did I regard it as it hung upon the wall--my
consecration robe awaiting the beatific day. And Frieda, I am sure,
remembers it, too, so longingly did she regard it as the crisp,
starchy breadths of it slid between her fingers. But whatever were her
longings, she said nothing of them; she bent over the sewing-machine
humming an Old-World melody. In every straight, smooth seam, perhaps,
she tucked away some lingering impulse of childhood; but she matched
the scrolls and flowers with the utmost care. If a sudden shock of
rebellion made her straighten up for an instant, the next instant she
was bending to adjust a ruffle to the best advantage. And when the
momentous day arrived, and the little sister and I stood up to be
arrayed, it was Frieda herself who patted and smoothed my stiff new
calico; who made me turn round and round, to see that I was perfect;
who stooped to pull out a disfiguring basting-thread. If there was
anything in her heart besides sisterly love and pride and good-will,
as we parted that morning, it was a sense of loss and a woman's
acquiescence in her fate; for we had been close friends, and now our
ways would lie apart. Longing she felt, but no envy. She did not
grudge me what she was denied. Until that morning we had been children
together, but now, at the fiat of her destiny, she became a woman,
with all a woman's cares; whilst I, so little younger than she, was
bidden to dance at the May festival of untroubled childhood.
I wish, for my comfort, that I could say that I had some notion of the
difference in our lots, some sense of the injustice to her, of the
indulgence to me. I wish I could even say that I gave serious thought
to the matter. There had always been a distinction between us rather
out of proportion to the difference in our years. Her good health and
domestic instincts had made it natural for her to become my mother's
right hand, in the years preceding the emigration, when there were no
more servants or dependents. Then there was the family tradition that
Mary was the quicker, the brighter of the two, and that hers could be
no common lot. Frieda was relied upon for help, and her sister for
glory. And when I failed as a milliner's apprentice, while Frieda made
excellent progress at the dressmaker's, our fates, indeed, were
sealed. It was understood, even before we reached Boston, that she
would go to work and I to school. In view of the family prejudices, it
was the inevitable course. No injustice was intended. My father sent
us hand in hand to school, before he had ever thought of America. If,
in America, he had been able to support his family unaided, it would
have been the culmination of his best hopes to see all his children at
school, with equal advantages at home. But when he had done his best,
and was still unable to provide even bread and shelter for us all, he
was compelled to make us children self-supporting as fast as it was
practicable. There was no choosing possible; Frieda was the oldest,
the strongest, the best prepared, and the only one who was of legal
age to be put to work.
My father has nothing to answer for. He divided the world between his
children in accordance with the laws of the country and the compulsion
of his circumstances. I have no need of defending him. It is myself
that I would like to defend, and I cannot. I remember that I accepted
the arrangements made for my sister and me without much reflection,
and everything that was planned for my advantage I took as a matter of
course. I was no heartless monster, but a decidedly self-centred
child. If my sister had seemed unhappy it would have troubled me; but
I am ashamed to recall that I did not consider how little it was that
contented her. I was so preoccupied with my own happiness that I did
not half perceive the splendid devotion of her attitude towards me,
the sweetness of her joy in my good luck. She not only stood by
approvingly when I was helped to everything; she cheerfully waited on
me herself. And I took everything from her hand as if it were my due.
The two of us stood a moment in the doorway of the tenement house on
Arlington Street, that wonderful September morning when I first went
to school. It was I that ran away, on winged feet of joy and
expectation; it was she whose feet were bound in the treadmill of
daily toil. And I was so blind that I did not see that the glory lay
on her, and not on me.
* * * * *
Father himself conducted us to school. He would not have delegated
that mission to the President of the United States. He had awaited the
day with impatience equal to mine, and the visions he saw as he
hurried us over the sun-flecked pavements transcended all my dreams.
Almost his first act on landing on American soil, three years before,
had been his application for naturalization. He had taken the
remaining steps in the process with eager promptness, and at the
earliest moment allowed by the law, he became a citizen of the United
States. It is true that he had left home in search of bread for his
hungry family, but he went blessing the necessity that drove him to
America. The boasted freedom of the New World meant to him far more
than the right to reside, travel, and work wherever he pleased; it
meant the freedom to speak his thoughts, to throw off the shackles of
superstition, to test his own fate, unhindered by political or
religious tyranny. He was only a young man when he landed--thirty-two;
and most of his life he had been held in leading-strings. He was
hungry for his untasted manhood.
Three years passed in sordid struggle and disappointment. He was not
prepared to make a living even in America, where the day laborer eats
wheat instead of rye. Apparently the American flag could not protect
him against the pursuing Nemesis of his limitations; he must expiate
the sins of his fathers who slept across the seas. He had been endowed
at birth with a poor constitution, a nervous, restless temperament,
and an abundance of hindering prejudices. In his boyhood his body was
starved, that his mind might be stuffed with useless learning. In his
youth this dearly gotten learning was sold, and the price was the
bread and salt which he had not been trained to earn for himself.
Under the wedding canopy he was bound for life to a girl whose
features were still strange to him; and he was bidden to multiply
himself, that sacred learning might be perpetuated in his sons, to the
glory of the God of his fathers. All this while he had been led about
as a creature without a will, a chattel, an instrument. In his
maturity he awoke, and found himself poor in health, poor in purse,
poor in useful knowledge, and hampered on all sides. At the first nod
of opportunity he broke away from his prison, and strove to atone for
his wasted youth by a life of useful labor; while at the same time he
sought to lighten the gloom of his narrow scholarship by freely
partaking of modern ideas. But his utmost endeavor still left him far
from his goal. In business, nothing prospered with him. Some fault of
hand or mind or temperament led him to failure where other men found
success. Wherever the blame for his disabilities be placed, he reaped
their bitter fruit. "Give me bread!" he cried to America. "What will
you do to earn it?" the challenge came back. And he found that he was
master of no art, of no trade; that even his precious learning was of
no avail, because he had only the most antiquated methods of
communicating it.
So in his primary quest he had failed. There was left him the
compensation of intellectual freedom. That he sought to realize in
every possible way. He had very little opportunity to prosecute his
education, which, in truth, had never been begun. His struggle for a
bare living left him no time to take advantage of the public evening
school; but he lost nothing of what was to be learned through reading,
through attendance at public meetings, through exercising the rights
of citizenship. Even here he was hindered by a natural inability to
acquire the English language. In time, indeed, he learned to read, to
follow a conversation or lecture; but he never learned to write
correctly, and his pronunciation remains extremely foreign to this
day.
If education, culture, the higher life were shining things to be
worshipped from afar, he had still a means left whereby he could draw
one step nearer to them. He could send his children to school, to
learn all those things that he knew by fame to be desirable. The
common school, at least, perhaps high school; for one or two, perhaps
even college! His children should be students, should fill his house
with books and intellectual company; and thus he would walk by proxy
in the Elysian Fields of liberal learning. As for the children
themselves, he knew no surer way to their advancement and happiness.
So it was with a heart full of longing and hope that my father led us
to school on that first day. He took long strides in his eagerness,
the rest of us running and hopping to keep up.
At last the four of us stood around the teacher's desk; and my father,
in his impossible English, gave us over in her charge, with some
broken word of his hopes for us that his swelling heart could no
longer contain. I venture to say that Miss Nixon was struck by
something uncommon in the group we made, something outside of Semitic
features and the abashed manner of the alien. My little sister was as
pretty as a doll, with her clear pink-and-white face, short golden
curls, and eyes like blue violets when you caught them looking up. My
brother might have been a girl, too, with his cherubic contours of
face, rich red color, glossy black hair, and fine eyebrows. Whatever
secret fears were in his heart, remembering his former teachers, who
had taught with the rod, he stood up straight and uncringing before
the American teacher, his cap respectfully doffed. Next to him stood a
starved-looking girl with eyes ready to pop out, and short dark curls
that would not have made much of a wig for a Jewish bride.
All three children carried themselves rather better than the common
run of "green" pupils that were brought to Miss Nixon. But the figure
that challenged attention to the group was the tall, straight father,
with his earnest face and fine forehead, nervous hands eloquent in
gesture, and a voice full of feeling. This foreigner, who brought his
children to school as if it were an act of consecration, who regarded
the teacher of the primer class with reverence, who spoke of visions,
like a man inspired, in a common schoolroom, was not like other
aliens, who brought their children in dull obedience to the law; was
not like the native fathers, who brought their unmanageable boys, glad
to be relieved of their care. I think Miss Nixon guessed what my
father's best English could not convey. I think she divined that by
the simple act of delivering our school certificates to her he took
possession of America.