14 - Promised Land by Mary Antin

In the late 19th century, being a Jew in Russia came with its own set of challenges and dangers. Facing persecution for their faith, many sought solace in their rich cultural traditions. When Mary Antins father decided to abandon these customs, he discovered that he no longer belonged in Russia. Thus, he emigrated to America with his family. While life presented its own struggles, Mary recalls her childhood in Boston with an almost idyllic sense of wonder. A bright and resilient young girl, she finds beauty in adversity and shares her inspiring journey through her captivating autobiography. Join Bridget as she brings Marys story to life, allowing you to experience her trials and triumphs firsthand. (Summary by Stav Nisser)

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Chapter thirteen of The Promised Land. This LibriVox recording is
in the public domain. Recording by bridget Age. The Promised
Land by Mary Anton, Chapter thirteen, A Child's Paradise. All
this while that I was studying and exploring in the
border land between the old life and the new, leaping
at conclusions and sometimes slipping, finding inspiration in common things

(00:23):
and interpretations in dumb things, eagerly scowling the latter of
learning my eyes on star diademed peaks of ambition, building
up friendships that should support my youth and enrich my womanhood,
learning to think much of myself and much more of
my world. While I was steadily gathering in my heritage,
sewed in the dim past and ripened in the sun

(00:44):
of my own day. What was my sister doing? Why
what she had always done, keeping close to my mother's side,
Keeping close to my mother's side, on the dreary marches
of a humdrum life, sensing sweet gardens of forbidden joy,
but never turn from the path of duty. I cannot
believe but that her sacrifices tasted as dust and ashes

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to her at times. For Frida was a mere girl
whose childhood on the whole had been gray. While her
appetite for happy things was as great as any normal girl's.
She had a fine sense for what was best in
the life about her, though she could not articulate her appreciation.
She longed to possess the good things, but her position
in the family forbidding possession. She developed a talent for

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vicarious enjoyment, which I never in this life hoped to imitate,
and her simple mind did not busy itself with self analysis.
She did not even know why she was happy. She
thought life was good to her. Still, there must have
been moments when she perceived that the finer things were
not in themselves unattainable, but were kept from her by
a social tyranny. This I can only surmise, as in

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our daily intercourse she never gave a sign of discontent.
We continued to have a part of our life in
common for some time. After she went to work, we
formed ourselves into an evening school, she and I and
the two youngsters, for the study of English and arithmetic.
As soon as the supper dishes were put away, we
gathered around the kitchen table with books borrowed from school

(02:13):
and pencils supplied by my father with eager willingness. I
was the teacher, the others the diligent pupils, and the
earnestness with which we labored was worthy of the great
things we meant to achieve. Whether the results were commensurate
with their efforts, I cannot say. I only know that
Frida's cheeks flamed with the excitement of reading English monosyllables,
and her eyes shone like stars on a moonless night

(02:36):
when I explained to her how she and I and
George Washington were fellow citizens together. Inspired by our studious evenings,
what Frida Anton would not be glad to set all
day bent over the needle that the family should keep
on its feet and Mary continue at school. The morning
ride on the ferry boat, when spring winds dimpled the
river may have stirred her heart with nameless longings, But

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when she took her place at the machine, her lot
was glorified to her, and she wanted to sing for
the girls. The foreman, the boss all talked about Mary Anton,
whose poems were printed in an American newspaper. Wherever she
went on her humble business, she was sure to hear
her sister's name, for with characteristic loyalty. The whole Jewish

(03:18):
community claimed kinship with me simply because I was a Jew,
and they made much of my small triumphs and pointed
to me with pride, just as they do when a
Jew distinguishes himself in any worthy way. Frieda going home
from work at sunset, when rosy buds beaded the shining stems,
may have felt the weariness of those who toil for bread.
But when we opened our books after supper, her spirit

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revived afresh, and it was only when the lamp began
to smoke that she thought of taking rest. At bedtime,
she and I chatted as we used to do when
we were little girls in Polatsk, only now, instead of
closing our eyes to see imaginary wonders, according to a
bedtime game of ours, we exchanged anecdotes about the marvelous
adventures of our American life. My contributions on these occasions

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were boastful accounts. I have no doubt of what I
did at school and in the company of school committeemen, editors,
and other notables. And Frida's delight in my achievements was
the very flower of her fine sympathy. As formerly, when
I had been naughty, and I invited her to share
in my repentance. She used to join me in spiritual
humility and solemnly dedicate herself to a better life. So now,

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when I was full of pride and ambition, she too
felt the crown on her brows, and heard the applause
of future generations murmuring in her ear, and so partaking
of her sister's glory. What Frieda Anton would not say
that her portion was sufficient reward for a youth of toil.
I did not like my sister earn my bread in
those days, but let us say that I earned my

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salt by sweeping, scrubbing, and scouring on Saturdays when there
was no school. My mother's housekeeping was necessarily irregular, as
she was pretty constantly occupied in the store, so there
was enough for us children to do to keep the
bare room shining. Even here Frida did the lion's share.
It used to take me all Saturday to accomplish what
Frieda would do with half a dozen turns of her

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capable hands. I did not like housework, but I loved order,
so I polished windows with a will, and even got
some fun out of scrubbing by laying out the floor
in patterns and tracing them all around the rum in
a lively flurry of soap SuDS. There is a joy
that comes from doing common things well, especially if they
seem hard to us. When I faced a day's housework,

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I was half paralyzed with a sense of inability, and
I wasted precious minutes walking around it to see what
a very hard task I had. By having pitched in
and conquered it, gave me an exquisite pleasure to survey
my work, my hair tousled and my dress tucked up, streaked,
arms bare to the elbow. I would step on my
heels over the damp clean boards and pass my hands

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over the chair rounds and table legs to prove that
no dust was left. I could not wait to put
my dress in order before running out into the street
to see how my windows shone. Every workman who carries
a dinner pail has these moments of keen delight in
the product of his drudgery. Men of genius, likewise, in
their hours of relaxation from their loftier tasks, prove this

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universal rule. I know a man who fills a chair
at a great university. I have seen him hold a
rum of otherwise restless youths spellbound for an hour while
he discoursed about the respective inhabitants of the earth and sea,
at a time when nothing walked on fewer than four legs.
And I have seen this scholar, his ponderous tomes shelved
for a space, turning over and over with cherishing hands,

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a letter box that he had made out of cardboard
and paste, and exhibiting it proudly to his friends. For
the hand was the first instrument of labor, that distinctive
accomplishment by which man finally raised himself above his cousins
the lower animals, and a respect for the work of
the hand survives as an instinct in all of us.

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The stretch of weeks from June to September when the
schools were closed would have been hard to fill in
had it not been for the public library. At first,
I made myself a calendar of the vacation months, and
every morning I tore off a day and comforted myself
with the decreasing number of vacation days. But after I
discovered the public library, I was not impatient for the

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reopening of school. The library did not open till one
o'clock in the afternoon, and each reader was allowed to
take out only one book at a time. Long before
one o'clock I was to be seen on the library
steps waiting for the door of paradise to open. I
spent hours in the reading room, pleased with the atmosphere
of books, with the order and quiet of the place

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so unlike anything on Arlington Street. The sense of these
things permeated my consciousness, even when I was absorbed in
a book, just as the rustle of pages turned and
the tiptoe tread of the librarian reached my ear without
distracting my attention. Anything so wonderful as a library had
never been in my life. It was even better than

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school in some ways. One could read and read and
learn and learn as fast as one knew how, without
being obliged to stop for stupid little girls, and in
a ton of little boys to catch up with the lesson.
When I went home from the library, I had a
book under my arm, and I would finish it before
the library opened next day, no matter till what hours
of the night I burned my little lamp. What books

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did I read so diligently, pretty nearly everything that came
to my hand. I dare say the librarian helped me
select my books, but curiously enough I do not remember.
Something must have directed me, for I read a great
many of the books that are written for children. Of these,
I remember with the greatest delight Louisa Elcott's stories, a

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less attractive series of books, was of the Sunday school type.
In volume after volume, a very naughty little girl by
the name of Lulu was always going into tempers that
her father might have opportunity to lecture her and point
to her angelic little sister Grace as an example of
what she should be, after which they all felt better
and prayed. Next to Luisa Elcott's books and my esteem

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were boy's books of adventure, many of them by Horatio Elger.
And I read all I suppose of the Rollo books
by Jacob Abbott. But that was not all. I read
every kind of printed rubbish that came into the house
by design or accident. A weekly story paper of a
worse than worthless character that circulated widely in our neighborhood
because subscribers were rewarded with the premium of a diamond

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ring warranted. I don't know how many carrots occupied me
for hours. The stories in this paper resembled in breathlessness
of plot, abundance of horrors, and improbability of characters the
things I used to read in Vitebsk. The text was
illustrated by frequent pictures in which the villain generally had
his hands on the heroine's throat while the hero was

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bursting in through a graceful drapery to the rescue of
his beloved. If a bundle came into the house wrapped
in a stained old newspaper, I laboriously smoothed out the
paper and read it through. I enjoyed it all and
found fault with nothing that I read. And as in
the case of the Viteps Greetings, I cannot find that
I suffered any harm. Of course, reading so many better books,

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there came a time when the Diamond Rings story paper
disgusted me. But in the beginning my appetite for print
was so enormous that I could let nothing pass through
my hands unread, while my taste was so crude that
nothing printed could offend me. Good reading matter came into
the house from one other source besides the library. The
Yiddish newspapers of the day were excellent, and my father

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subscribed to the best of them. Since that time, Yiddish
journalism has sadly degenerated through imitation of the vicious yellow
journals of the American press. There was one book in
the library over which I poured very often, and that
was the Encyclopedia. I turned usually to the names of
famous people, beginning of course, with George Washington. Often, as

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of all, I read the biographical sketches of my favorite authors,
and felt that the worthies must have been glad to
die just to have their names and histories printed out
in the book of fame. It seemed to me the
apotheosis of glory to be even briefly mentioned in an encyclopedia.
And there grew in me an enormous ambition that devoured
all my other ambitions, which was no less than this,

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that I should live to know that after my death,
my name would surely be printed in the Encyclopedia. It
was such a prodigious thing to expect that I kept
the idea a secret, even from myself, just letting it
lie where it sprouted in an unexplored corner of my
busy brain. But it grew on me in spite of myself,
till finally I could not resist the temptation to study

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out the exact place in the encyclopedia where my name
would belong. I saw that it would come not far
from Elcott Louisa m and I covered my face with
my hands to hide the silly, baseless joy in it.
I practicing my name in the encyclopediac form Anton Mary,
and I realized that it sounded chop off, and wondered

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if I might not annex a middle initial. I wanted
to ask my teacher about it, but I was afraid
I might betray my reasons for infatuated though I was
with the idea of greatness I might live to attain.
I knew very well that thus far my claims to
posthumous fame were ridiculously unfounded. And I did not want
to be laughed at for my vanity, Spira of all childhood,

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forgive me, forgive me for so lightly betraying a child's
dream secrets. I that smile so scoffingly to day at
the unsophisticated child that was myself? Have I found any
nobler thing in life than my own longing to be noble?
Would I not rather be consumed by ambitions that can
never be realized, than live in stupid acceptance of my

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neighbor's opinion of me. The statue in the public square
is less a portrait of a mortal individual than a
symbol of the immortal aspiration of humanity. So do not
laugh at the little boy playing at soldiers if he
tells you how he is going to hew the world
into good behavior when he gets to be a man.
And do, by all means write my name in the
book of Fame, saying she was one who aspired for

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In that condensed form is the story of the lives
of the great summer days are long, and the evenings
we know are as long as the lamp wick. So
with all my reading, I had time to play, and
with all my studiousness, I had the will to play.
My favorite playmates were boys. It was but mild fun
to play theater in Bessy Finkelstein's back yard, even if

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I had leading parts, which I made impressive by recitations
in Russian, no word of which was intelligible to my audience.
It was far better sport to play hide and seek
with the boys. For I enjoyed the use of my
limbs what there was of them. I was so often
reproached and teased for being little, that it gave me
great satisfaction to be a five foot boy to the goal. Once,

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a great, hulky colored boy who was the torment of
the neighborhood treated me roughly while I was playing on
the street. My father determined to teach the rascal a lesson,
for once had him arrested and brought to court. The
boy was locked up over night, and he emerged from
his brief imprisonment with a respect for the rights and
persons of his neighbors. But the moral of this incident

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lies not herein What interested me more than my revenge
on a bully was what I saw of the way
in which justice was actually administered in the United States.
Here we were gathered in the little courtroom, bearded Arlington
Street against wool headed Arlington Street, accused and accuser, witnesses, sympathizers, sightseers,
and all nobody cringed, nobody was bullied, nobody lied who

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didn't want to. We were all free, and all treated equally.
Just as it said in the Constitution, the evil doer
was actually punished, and not the victim, as might very
easily happen in a similar case in Russia. Liberty and
justice for all three cheers for the Red, White, and Blue.
There was one occasion in the week when I was

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ever willing to put away my book, no matter how
entrancing were its pages. That was on Saturday night, when
Bessie Finkelstein called for me, and Bessie, and I, with
arms entwined, called for Sadie Rabinovitch, and Bessie and Sadie,
and I, still further entwined, called for Annie, Riley and Bessie,
et cetera, et cetera, inextricably wound up, marched up Broadway,

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and took possession of all we saw, heard, guessed, or
desired from end to end of that main thoroughfare of Chelsea,
parading all abreast as many as we were, only breaking
ranks to let people pass, leaving the imprints of our
noses and fingers on plate glass windows ablaze with electric lights,
and alluring with display, inspecting tons of cheap candy to

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find a few pennies worth of the most enduring kind,
the same to be sucked and chewed by the company,
turn and turn about as we continued our promenade, loitering
wherever a crowd gathered, or running for a block or
so to cheer on the fire engine or police ambulance,
getting into everybody's way, and just keeping clear of serious mischief.
They were only girls. We enjoyed ourselves as only children

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can whose fathers keep a basement grocery store, whose mothers
do their own washing, and whose sisters operate a machine
for five dollars a week. Had we been boys, I
suppose Bessie and Sadie and the rest of us would
have been a gang and would have popped into the
Chinese laundry to tease Chinky Chinaman and been chased by
the cops from comfortable doorsteps, and had a bowly time

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of it. Being what we were, we called ourselves a set,
and we had a lovely time, as people who passed
us on Broadway could not fail to see. And here,
for we were at the giggling age, and Broadway on
Saturday night was full of giggles for us. We stayed
out till all hours, too, for Arlington Street had no
strict domestic program, not even in the nursery, the inmates

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of which were as likely to be found in the
gutter as in their cots at any time this side
of one o'clock in the morning. There was an element
in my enjoyment that was yielded neither by the sights,
the adventures, nor the chewing candy. I had a keen
feeling for the sociability of the crowd. All plebeian Chelsea
was abroad, and a bourgeois population is nowhere on Neighborly

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women shapeless with bundles, their hats awry over thin, eager faces,
gathered in knots on the edge of the curb, boasting
of their bargains. Little girls in curl papers and little
boys in brimless hats clung to their skirts, whining for pennies,
only to be silenced by absent minded cuffs. A few
disconsolate fathers strayed behind these family groups, the rest being

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distributed between the barber shops and the corner lamp posts.
I understood these people, being one of them, and I
liked them, and I found it all delightfully sociable. Saturday
night is the workman's wife's night, but that does not
entirely prevent my lady from going abroad, if only to
leave an order at the florists. So it happened that
Bellingham Hill and Washington Avenue, the aristocratic sections of Chelsea,

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mingled with Arlington Street on Broadway, to the further enhancement
of my enjoyment of the occasion. For I always loved
mixed crowd. I left the contrasts, the high lights and
deep shadows, and the gradations that connect the two and
make all life one. I saw many, many things that
I was not aware of seeing at the time. I

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only found out afterwards what treasures my brain had stored
up when coming to the puzzling places in life, light
and meeting would suddenly burst on me the hidden fruit
of some experience that had not impressed me at the time.
How many times, I wonder, did I brush past my
destiny on Broadway, foolishly staring after it instead of going
home to pray? I wonder, did a stranger collide with

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me and put me patiently out of his way, wondering
why such a light was not at home and a
bed at ten o'clock in the evening, and never dreaming
that one day he might have to reckon with me?
Did some one smile down on my childish glee? I
wonder unwarned of a day when we should weep together.
I wonder, I wonder. A million threads of life and
love and sorrow was the common street. And whether we

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would or not, we entangled ourselves in a maze, without
paying the homage of a second glance to those who
would some day master us, too dull to pick that
face from out the crowd, which one day would bend
over us in love or pity or remorse. What company
of skipping, laughing little girls is to be reproached for
careless hours when men and women on every side stepped

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heedlessly into the traps of fate. Small sin it was
to annoy my neighbor by getting in his way as
I stared over my shoulder. If a grown man knew
no better than to drop a word in passing that
might turn the course of another's life. As a boulder
rolls down from the mountain side, deflects the current of
a brook. End of Chapter thirteen.