MANNA
So went the life in Chelsea for the space of a year or so. Then my
father, finding a discrepancy between his assets and liabilities on
the wrong side of the ledger, once more struck tent, collected his
flock, and set out in search of richer pastures.
There was a charming simplicity about these proceedings. Here to-day,
apparently rooted; there to-morrow, and just as much at home. Another
basement grocery, with a freshly painted sign over the door; the broom
in the corner, the loaf on the table--these things made home for us.
There were rather more Negroes on Wheeler Street, in the lower South
End of Boston, than there had been on Arlington Street, which promised
more numerous outstanding accounts; but they were a neighborly folk,
and they took us strangers in--sometimes very badly. Then there was
the school three blocks away, where "America" was sung to the same
tune as in Chelsea, and geography was made as dark a mystery. It was
impossible not to feel at home.
And presently, lest anything be lacking to our domestic bliss, there
was a new baby in a borrowed crib; and little Dora had only a few more
turns to take with her battered doll carriage before a life-size
vehicle with a more animated dolly was turned over to her constant
care.
The Wheeler Street neighborhood is not a place where a refined young
lady would care to find herself alone, even in the cheery daylight. If
she came at all, she would be attended by a trusty escort. She
would not get too close to people on the doorsteps, and she would
shrink away in disgust and fear from a blear-eyed creature careering
down the sidewalk on many-jointed legs. The delicate damsel would
hasten home to wash and purify and perfume herself till the foul
contact of Wheeler Street was utterly eradicated, and her wonted
purity restored. And I do not blame her. I only wish that she would
bring a little soap and water and perfumery into Wheeler Street next
time she comes; for some people there may be smothering in the filth
which they abhor as much as she, but from which they cannot, like her,
run away.
[Illustration: WHEELER STREET, IN THE LOWER SOUTH END OF BOSTON]
Many years after my escape from Wheeler Street I returned to see if
the place was as bad as I remembered it. I found the narrow street
grown even narrower, the sidewalk not broad enough for two to walk
abreast, the gutter choked with dust and refuse, the dingy row of
tenements on either side unspeakably gloomy. I discovered, what I had
not realized before, that Wheeler Street was a crooked lane connecting
a corner saloon on Shawmut Avenue with a block of houses of ill repute
on Corning Street. It had been the same in my day, but I had not
understood much, and I lived unharmed.
On this later visit I walked slowly up one side of the street, and
down the other, remembering many things. It was eleven o'clock in the
evening, and sounds of squabbling coming through doors and windows
informed my experienced ear that a part of Wheeler Street was going to
bed. The grocery store in the basement of Number 11--my father's old
store--was still open for business; and in the gutter in front of the
store, to be sure, was a happy baby, just as there used to be.
I was not alone on this tour of inspection. I was attended by a trusty
escort. But I brought soap and water with me. I am applying them now.
I found no fault with Wheeler Street when I was fourteen years old. On
the contrary, I pronounced it good. We had never lived so near the car
tracks before, and I delighted in the moonlike splendor of the arc
lamp just in front of the saloon. The space illumined by this lamp and
enlivened by the passage of many thirsty souls was the favorite
playground for Wheeler Street youth. On our street there was not room
to turn around; here the sidewalk spread out wider as it swung around
to Shawmut Avenue.
I played with the boys by preference, as in Chelsea. I learned to cut
across the tracks in front of an oncoming car, and it was great fun to
see the motorman's angry face turn scared, when he thought I was going
to be shaved this time sure. It was amusing, too, to watch the side
door of the saloon, which opened right opposite the grocery store, and
see a drunken man put out by the bartender. The fellow would whine so
comically, and cling to the doorpost so like a damp leaf to a twig,
and blubber so like a red-faced baby, that it was really funny to see
him.
And there was Morgan Chapel. It was worth coming to Wheeler Street
just for that. All the children of the neighborhood, except the most
rowdyish, flocked to Morgan Chapel at least once a week. This was on
Saturday evening, when a free entertainment was given, consisting of
music, recitations, and other parlor accomplishments. The performances
were exceedingly artistic, according to the impartial judgment of
juvenile Wheeler Street. I can speak with authority for the crowd of
us from Number 11. We hung upon the lips of the beautiful ladies who
read or sang to us; and they in turn did their best, recognizing the
quality of our approval. We admired the miraculously clean gentlemen
who sang or played, as heartily as we applauded their performance.
Sometimes the beautiful ladies were accompanied by ravishing little
girls who stood up in a glory of golden curls, frilled petticoats, and
silk stockings, to recite pathetic or comic pieces, with trained
expression and practised gestures that seemed to us the perfection of
the elocutionary art. We were all a little bit stage-struck after
these entertainments; but what was more, we were genuinely moved by
the glimpses of a fairer world than ours which we caught through the
music and poetry; the world in which the beautiful ladies dwelt with
the fairy children and the clean gentlemen.
Brother Hotchkins, who managed these entertainments, knew what he was
there for. His programmes were masterly. Classics of the lighter sort
were judiciously interspersed with the favorite street songs of the
day. Nothing that savored of the chapel was there: the hour was
honestly devoted to entertainment. The total effect was an exquisitely
balanced compound of pleasure, wonder, and longing. Knock-kneed men
with purple noses, bristling chins, and no collars, who slouched in
sceptically and sat tentatively on the edge of the rear settees at the
beginning of the concert, moved nearer the front as the programme went
on, and openly joined in the applause at the end. Scowling fellows who
came in with defiant faces occasionally slunk out shamefaced; and both
the knock-kneed and the defiant sometimes remained to hear Brother
Tompkins pray and preach. And it was all due to Brother Hotchkins's
masterly programme. The children behaved very well, for the most part;
the few "toughs" who came in on purpose to make trouble were promptly
expelled by Brother Hotchkins and his lieutenants.
I could not help admiring Brother Hotchkins, he was so eminently
efficient in every part of the hall, at every stage of the
proceedings. I always believed that he was the author of the alluring
notices that occupied the bulletin board every Saturday, though I
never knew it for a fact. The way he handled the bad boys was
masterly. The way he introduced the performers was inimitable. The way
he did everything was the best way. And yet I did not like Brother
Hotchkins. I could not. He was too slim, too pale, too fair. His voice
was too encouraging, his smile was too restrained. The man was a
missionary, and it stuck out all over him. I could not abide a
missionary. That was the Jew in me, the European Jew, trained by the
cruel centuries of his outcast existence to distrust any one who spoke
of God by any other name than _Adonai_. But I should have resented the
suggestion that inherited distrust was the cause of my dislike for
good Brother Hotchkins; for I considered myself freed from racial
prejudices, by the same triumph of my infallible judgment which had
lifted from me the yoke of credulity. An uncompromising atheist, such
as I was at the age of fourteen, was bound to scorn all those who
sought to implant religion in their fellow men, and thereby prolong
the reign of superstition. Of course that was the explanation.
Brother Hotchkins, happily unconscious of my disapproval of his
complexion, arose at intervals behind the railing, to announce, from a
slip of paper, that "the next number on our programme will be a
musical selection by," etc., etc.; until he arrived at "I am sure you
will all join me in thanking the ladies and gentlemen who have
entertained us this evening." And as I moved towards the door with my
companions, I would hear his voice raised for the inevitable "You are
all invited to remain to a short prayer service, after which--" a
little louder--"refreshments will be served in the vestry. I will ask
Brother Tompkins to--" The rest was lost in the shuffle of feet about
the door and the roar of electric cars glancing past each other on
opposite tracks. I always got out of the chapel before Brother
Tompkins could do me any harm. As if there was anything he could steal
from me, now that there was no God in my heart!
If I were to go back to Morgan Chapel now, I should stay to hear
Brother Tompkins, and as many other brethren as might have anything to
say. I would sit very still in my corner seat and listen to the
prayer, and silently join in the Amen. For I know now what Wheeler
Street is, and I know what Morgan Chapel is there for, in the midst of
those crooked alleys, those saloons, those pawnshops, those gloomy
tenements. It is there to apply soap and water, and it is doing that
all the time. I have learned, since my deliverance from Wheeler
Street, that there is more than one road to any given goal. I should
look with respect at Brother Hotchkins applying soap and water in his
own way, convinced at last that my way is not the only way. Men must
work with those tools to the use of which they are best fitted by
nature. Brother Hotchkins must pray, and I must bear witness, and
another must nurse a feeble infant. We are all honest workmen, and
deserve standing-room in the workshop of sweating humanity. It is
only the idle scoffers who stand by and jeer at our efforts to cleanse
our house that should be kicked out of the door, as Brother Hotchkins
turned out the rowdies.
It was characteristic of the looseness of our family discipline at
this time that nobody was seriously interested in our visits to Morgan
Chapel. Our time was our own, after school duties and household tasks
were done. Joseph sold newspapers after school; I swept and washed
dishes; Dora minded the baby. For the rest, we amused ourselves as
best we could. Father and mother were preoccupied with the store day
and night; and not so much with weighing and measuring and making
change as with figuring out how long it would take the outstanding
accounts to ruin the business entirely. If my mother had scruples
against her children resorting to a building with a cross on it, she
did not have time to formulate them. If my father heard us talking
about Morgan Chapel, he dismissed the subject with a sarcastic
characterization, and wanted to know if we were going to join the
Salvation Army next; but he did not seriously care, and he was willing
that the children should have a good time. And if my parents had
objected to Morgan Chapel, was the sidewalk in front of the saloon a
better place for us children to spend the evening? They could not have
argued with us very long, so they hardly argued at all.
In Polotzk we had been trained and watched, our days had been
regulated, our conduct prescribed. In America, suddenly, we were let
loose on the street. Why? Because my father having renounced his
faith, and my mother being uncertain of hers, they had no particular
creed to hold us to. The conception of a system of ethics independent
of religion could not at once enter as an active principle in their
life; so that they could give a child no reason why to be truthful or
kind. And as with religion, so it fared with other branches of our
domestic education. Chaos took the place of system; uncertainty,
inconsistency undermined discipline. My parents knew only that they
desired us to be like American children; and seeing how their
neighbors gave their children boundless liberty, they turned us also
loose, never doubting but that the American way was the best way. In
public deportment, in etiquette, in all matters of social intercourse,
they had no standards to go by, seeing that America was not Polotzk.
In their bewilderment and uncertainty they needs must trust us
children to learn from such models as the tenements afforded. More
than this, they must step down from their throne of parental
authority, and take the law from their children's mouths; for they had
no other means of finding out what was good American form. The result
was that laxity of domestic organization, that inversion of normal
relations which makes for friction, and which sometimes ends in
breaking up a family that was formerly united and happy.
This sad process of disintegration of home life may be observed in
almost any immigrant family of our class and with our traditions and
aspirations. It is part of the process of Americanization; an upheaval
preceding the state of repose. It is the cross that the first and
second generations must bear, an involuntary sacrifice for the sake of
the future generations. These are the pains of adjustment, as racking
as the pains of birth. And as the mother forgets her agonies in the
bliss of clasping her babe to her breast, so the bent and heart-sore
immigrant forgets exile and homesickness and ridicule and loss and
estrangement, when he beholds his sons and daughters moving as
Americans among Americans.
On Wheeler Street there were no real homes. There were miserable flats
of three or four rooms, or fewer, in which families that did not
practise race suicide cooked, washed, and ate; slept from two to four
in a bed, in windowless bedrooms; quarrelled in the gray morning, and
made up in the smoky evening; tormented each other, supported each
other, saved each other, drove each other out of the house. But there
was no common life in any form that means life. There was no room for
it, for one thing. Beds and cribs took up most of the floor space,
disorder packed the interspaces. The centre table in the "parlor" was
not loaded with books. It held, invariably, a photograph album and an
ornamental lamp with a paper shade; and the lamp was usually out of
order. So there was as little motive for a common life as there was
room. The yard was only big enough for the perennial rubbish heap. The
narrow sidewalk was crowded. What were the people to do with
themselves? There were the saloons, the missions, the libraries, the
cheap amusement places, and the neighborhood houses. People selected
their resorts according to their tastes. The children, let it be
thankfully recorded, flocked mostly to the clubs; the little girls to
sew, cook, dance, and play games; the little boys to hammer and paste,
mend chairs, debate, and govern a toy republic. All these, of course,
are forms of baptism by soap and water.
Our neighborhood went in search of salvation to Morgan Memorial Hall,
Barnard Memorial, Morgan Chapel aforementioned, and some other clean
places that lighted a candle in their window. My brother, my sister
Dora, and I were introduced to some of the clubs by our young
neighbors, and we were glad to go. For our home also gave us little
besides meals in the kitchen and beds in the dark. What with the six
of us, and the store, and the baby, and sometimes a "greener" or two
from Polotzk, whom we lodged as a matter of course till they found a
permanent home--what with such a company and the size of our tenement,
we needed to get out almost as much as our neighbors' children. I say
almost; for our parlor we managed to keep pretty clear, and the lamp
on our centre table was always in order, and its light fell often on
an open book. Still, it was part of the life of Wheeler Street to
belong to clubs, so we belonged.
I didn't care for sewing or cooking, so I joined a dancing-club; and
even here I was a failure. I had been a very good dancer in Russia,
but here I found all the steps different, and I did not have the
courage to go out in the middle of the slippery floor and mince it and
toe it in front of the teacher. When I retired to a corner and tried
to play dominoes, I became suddenly shy of my partner; and I never
could win a game of checkers, although formerly I used to beat my
father at it. I tried to be friends with a little girl I had known in
Chelsea, but she met my advances coldly. She lived on Appleton Street,
which was too aristocratic to mix with Wheeler Street. Geraldine was
studying elocution, and she wore a scarlet cape and hood, and she was
going on the stage by and by. I acknowledged that her sense of
superiority was well-founded, and retired farther into my corner, for
the first time conscious of my shabbiness and lowliness.
I looked on at the dancing until I could endure it no longer. Overcome
by a sense of isolation and unfitness, I slipped out of the room,
avoiding the teacher's eye, and went home to write melancholy poetry.
What had come over me? Why was I, the confident, the ambitious,
suddenly grown so shy and meek? Why was the candidate for encyclopædic
immortality overawed by a scarlet hood? Why did I, a very tomboy
yesterday, suddenly find my playmates stupid, and hide-and-seek a
bore? I did not know why. I only knew that I was lonely and troubled
and sore; and I went home to write sad poetry.
I shall never forget the pattern of the red carpet in our parlor,--we
had achieved a carpet since Chelsea days,--because I lay for hours
face down on the floor, writing poetry on a screechy slate. When I had
perfected my verses, and copied them fair on the famous blue-lined
note paper, and saw that I had made a very pathetic poem indeed, I
felt better. And this happened over and over again. I gave up the
dancing-club, I ceased to know the rowdy little boys, and I wrote
melancholy poetry oftener, and felt better. The centre table became my
study. I read much, and mooned between chapters, and wrote long
letters to Miss Dillingham.
For some time I wrote to her almost daily. That was when I found in my
heart such depths of woe as I could not pack into rhyme. And finally
there came a day when I could utter my trouble in neither verse nor
prose, and I implored Miss Dillingham to come to me and hear my
sorrowful revelations. But I did not want her to come to the house. In
the house there was no privacy; I could not talk. Would she meet me on
Boston Common at such and such a time?
Would she? She was a devoted friend, and a wise woman. She met me on
Boston Common. It was a gray autumn day--was it not actually
drizzling?--and I was cold sitting on the bench; but I was thrilled
through and through with the sense of the magnitude of my troubles,
and of the romantic nature of the rendezvous. Who that was even half
awake when he was growing up does not know what all these symptoms
betokened? Miss Dillingham understood, and she wisely gave me no
inkling of her diagnosis. She let me talk and kept a grave face. She
did not belittle my troubles--I made specific charges against my home,
members of my family, and life in general; she did not say that I
would get over them, that every growing girl suffers from the blues;
that I was, in brief, a little goose stretching my wings for flight.
She told me rather that it would be noble to bear my sorrows bravely,
to soothe those who irritated me, to live each day with all my might.
She reminded me of great men and women who have suffered, and who
overcame their troubles by living and working. And she sent me home
amazingly comforted, my pettiness and self-consciousness routed by the
quiet influence of her gray eyes searching mine. This, or something
like this, had to be repeated many times, as anybody will know who was
present at the slow birth of his manhood. From now on, for some years,
of course, I must weep and laugh out of season, stand on tiptoe to
pluck the stars in heaven, love and hate immoderately, propound
theories of the destiny of man, and not know what is going on in my
own heart.