A KINGDOM IN THE SLUMS
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. Frieda 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
cosey, friendly room--that when Frieda and I were left alone I was
perfectly happy just to sit there. Frieda had a beautiful parlor, with
plush chairs and a velvet carpet and gilt picture frames; but we
preferred the homely, homelike kitchen.
I read aloud from Longfellow, or Whittier, or Tennyson; and it was as
great a treat to me as it was to Frieda. Her attention alone was
inspiring. Her delight, her eager questions doubled the meaning of the
lines I read. Poor Frieda 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. Miss
Dillingham came, and Mr. Hurd; and the humbler guests stared in
admiration at our school-teachers and editors. But I had so many
delightful things that I could not bring to Frieda--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 the 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 "Æneid," the passage in the fourth book
describing the death of Dido. I read the Latin first, and then my own
version in English hexameters, that I had prepared for a recitation at
school. Frieda forgot her sewing in her lap, and leaned forward in
rapt 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 "Æneid" made memorable by my sister's enjoyment of
it.
Truly my education was not entirely in the hands of 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
school-books. 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, in
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 curbstone with the scabby
baby in her bedraggled lap, had things to say about the fine ladies
who came in carriages to inspect the public bathhouse 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 aureola 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 some day I should cross on my way to Radcliffe
College, was one of my favorite palaces, whither 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
school-houses, 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 State House 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, patting the great stone lions 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-browed 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 rapt hours 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 Chavannes 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 sandalled 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 locks. 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 liked to remind myself of Polotzk, the better to bring
out the wonder of my life. That I who was 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 was 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.
[Illustration: BATES HALL, WHERE I SPENT MY LONGEST HOURS IN THE
LIBRARY]
From the Public Library to the State House is only a step, and I found
my way there without a guide. The State House 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
Roe, from Worcester, whose letters to me, written under the embossed
letter head 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 State House 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 State House; and
it occurs to him that he and his eminent colleagues and the stately
capitol 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 State House; 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 weal, 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 alleys
and back ways where the great man went in search of the lame in body,
who could not join the public assembly, in 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 four abreast, there would be a lane
of merry faces across the Common, out to the Public Library, over
Harvard Bridge, and away beyond to remoter landmarks.
That I met Dr. Hale is no wonder. It was as inevitable as that I
should be a year older every twelvemonth. 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 the 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 good-bye 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 a 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 Copley Square
opened that day, and shone in the sun like lighted lamps.
Any one 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 roam 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 was 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 pillared 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 there 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 for 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.
[Illustration: THE FAMOUS STUDY, THAT WAS FIT TO HAVE BEEN
PRESERVED AS A SHRINE]
When I came home from my talk with Miss Hale, I studied myself long in
my 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 Miss 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 Miss
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 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 Miss 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 Miss 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 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
Miss 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 their portraits they usually paid 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 Miss 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 the landlady
happy. Very possibly Miss 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. Miss
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 analyses of persons and motives;
while the portrait went steadily on.
It was Miss 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. Miss 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 altar piece 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
reciting 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 nay
journal, or wrote forty-page letters to my friends. 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 got in 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 this for the
consideration of part payment, with the 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 payment 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
triumph at 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. Antin's daughter had won at school, bidding her take
example from Mary, if she would also go far in education.
"Hear 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. Antin read what she writes in the paper. Long
pieces--"
"You don't understand what he reads, ma," Goldie interrupts
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 Antin, 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 Antin--study hard, put your mind on it."
"Oh, I know it, 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 "back-hand" as she went, without losing a
single jackstone. "I hate long lessons," she said. "When I graduate
grammar 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.--Beckie! Beckie
Hurvich! Where 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 fulfilment 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 meagre
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. Let the
City Fathers strike the balance.
Of course this is wretched 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 any one was
drawing morals from his manner of conducting his little store, and yet
it is from men like him that I learn 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. "_Na!_" 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 room on 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 patent 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 to-morrow; the wings of future
adventures rustled 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 noblest dreams shall have been realized I shall
meet with nothing finer, nothing more remote from the commonplace,
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
pretence, 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 finger tips, 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 practised 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 Applepie
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 short-cut--we found a
short-cut! And the route we took from the tenements of the stifling
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 trans-scribed 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 after life, 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.