August 19, 2025 • 20 mins
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)
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Chapter fourteen of The Promised Land. This LibriVox recording is
in the public domain. Recording by bridget Gage. The Promised
Land by Mary Anton, chapter fourteen 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
(00:22):
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 tomorrow, 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.
(00:44):
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,
(01:05):
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 sized vehicle with a more animated
dolly was turned over to her constant care. The Wheeler
(01:28):
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
(01:49):
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,
(02:11):
but from which they cannot like her run away. 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
(02:35):
not realized before, that Wheeler Street was a crooked lane
connecting a corner saloon on Shauma 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
(02:57):
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 eleven, 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
(03:18):
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 moonlight
splendor of the arc lamp just in front of the saloon.
(03:41):
The space illumined by the 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 Shawmah 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
(04:03):
it was great fun to see the motorman's angry face
turned scared when he thought I was going to be
shaved this time Shore. 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 door post so like a damp leaf
(04:23):
to a twig and blubb or 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
(04:47):
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 eleven. 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
(05:09):
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 practiced gestures
(05:29):
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.
(05:49):
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
(06:12):
knock kneed men with purple noses, bristling chins, and no collars,
who slouched in skeptically and sat tentatively on the edge
of the rear settees at the beginning of the concert,
moved nearer the front as the program went on, and
openly joined in the applause at the end. Scowling fellows
who came in with defiant faces occasionally slunk out shamefaced,
(06:33):
and both the knock need and the defiant sometimes remained
to hear Brother Tompkins pray and preach. And it was
all due to Brother Hotchkins's masterly program. The children behaved
very well for the most part. The few tufts 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
(06:57):
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.
(07:19):
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 sentries of his outcast existence, to distrust any one
(07:40):
who spoke of God by any other name than add
and I. 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 me from the yoke of credulity. An uncompromising atheist,
(08:01):
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 prolonged 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
(08:23):
the next number on our program will be a musical
selection by, et cetera, et cetera, 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,
(08:44):
after which a little louder refreshments will be served in
the vestry. I will ask Brother Tompkins too. 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
(09:06):
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
(09:26):
there for in the midst of those crooked alleys, those saloons,
those pawn shops, 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
(09:47):
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 all deserved standing room
in the workshop of sweating humanity. It is only the
(10:09):
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.
(10:32):
I swept and washed dishes. Dora minded the baby. For
the rest, we amused ourselves as best we could. Father
and mother were preoccupied for 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
(10:55):
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,
(11:17):
was a 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
(11:37):
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
(11:59):
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
(12:22):
social intercourse. They had no standards to go by, seeing
that America was not Polotsk. In their bewilderment and uncertainty,
they must needs 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.
(12:45):
The result was that laxity of domestic organization, that inversion
of normal relations, which makes for friction, and which sometimes
ends in breaking 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
(13:08):
process of Americanization and 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
(13:29):
her breast, so the bent and heartsore immigrant frigates, 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 practice raise suicide, cooked, washed,
(13:52):
and ate, slept from two to four in a bed
in windowless bedrooms, quarreled in the gray morning and made
up in the smoky earning. 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,
(14:14):
disorder packed the inner spaces. The center 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 sheep. The narrow sidewalk was crowded. What were
(14:38):
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, flecked mostly to
the clubs. The little girls to sew cook, dance and
play games. The little boys to hammer and paste, mend chairs,
(14:59):
deep b 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 the window. My brother, my sister Dora,
and I were introduced to some of the clubs by
(15:20):
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 Polatzk, whom we lodged as
a matter of course, till they found a permanent home.
What with such company and the size of our tenement,
we needed to get out almost as much as our
(15:42):
neighbor's children, I say almost For our parlor we managed
to keep pretty clear, and the lamp on our center
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 some cooking, so I joined a
dancing club, and even here I was a failure. I
(16:05):
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 when a game of checkers,
although formerly I used to beat my father at it.
(16:26):
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
(16:49):
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,
(17:10):
the ambitious, suddenly grown so shy and meek. Why was
the candidate for encyclopediac immortality over awed 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
(17:31):
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.
(17:53):
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
center 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
(18:15):
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 and
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
(18:36):
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 a sense of the
magnitude of my troubles and of the romantic nature of
the rendezvous. Who that was even half awake when he
(18:58):
was growing up does not know what all these symptoms betoken.
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,
(19:22):
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
(19:44):
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 on the
(20:07):
destiny of man, and not know what is going on
in my own heart end of chapter fourteen,
Chapter fourteen of The Promised Land. This LibriVox recording is
in the public domain. Recording by bridget Gage. The Promised
Land by Mary Anton, chapter fourteen 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
(00:22):
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 tomorrow, 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.
(00:44):
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,
(01:05):
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 sized vehicle with a more animated
dolly was turned over to her constant care. The Wheeler
(01:28):
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
(01:49):
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,
(02:11):
but from which they cannot like her run away. 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
(02:35):
not realized before, that Wheeler Street was a crooked lane
connecting a corner saloon on Shauma 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
(02:57):
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 eleven, 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
(03:18):
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 moonlight
splendor of the arc lamp just in front of the saloon.
(03:41):
The space illumined by the 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 Shawmah 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
(04:03):
it was great fun to see the motorman's angry face
turned scared when he thought I was going to be
shaved this time Shore. 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 door post so like a damp leaf
(04:23):
to a twig and blubb or 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
(04:47):
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 eleven. 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
(05:09):
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 practiced gestures
(05:29):
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.
(05:49):
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
(06:12):
knock kneed men with purple noses, bristling chins, and no collars,
who slouched in skeptically and sat tentatively on the edge
of the rear settees at the beginning of the concert,
moved nearer the front as the program went on, and
openly joined in the applause at the end. Scowling fellows
who came in with defiant faces occasionally slunk out shamefaced,
(06:33):
and both the knock need and the defiant sometimes remained
to hear Brother Tompkins pray and preach. And it was
all due to Brother Hotchkins's masterly program. The children behaved
very well for the most part. The few tufts 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
(06:57):
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.
(07:19):
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 sentries of his outcast existence, to distrust any one
(07:40):
who spoke of God by any other name than add
and I. 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 me from the yoke of credulity. An uncompromising atheist,
(08:01):
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 prolonged 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
(08:23):
the next number on our program will be a musical
selection by, et cetera, et cetera, 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,
(08:44):
after which a little louder refreshments will be served in
the vestry. I will ask Brother Tompkins too. 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
(09:06):
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
(09:26):
there for in the midst of those crooked alleys, those saloons,
those pawn shops, 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
(09:47):
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 all deserved standing room
in the workshop of sweating humanity. It is only the
(10:09):
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.
(10:32):
I swept and washed dishes. Dora minded the baby. For
the rest, we amused ourselves as best we could. Father
and mother were preoccupied for 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
(10:55):
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,
(11:17):
was a 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
(11:37):
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
(11:59):
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
(12:22):
social intercourse. They had no standards to go by, seeing
that America was not Polotsk. In their bewilderment and uncertainty,
they must needs 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.
(12:45):
The result was that laxity of domestic organization, that inversion
of normal relations, which makes for friction, and which sometimes
ends in breaking 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
(13:08):
process of Americanization and 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
(13:29):
her breast, so the bent and heartsore immigrant frigates, 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 practice raise suicide, cooked, washed,
(13:52):
and ate, slept from two to four in a bed
in windowless bedrooms, quarreled in the gray morning and made
up in the smoky earning. 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,
(14:14):
disorder packed the inner spaces. The center 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 sheep. The narrow sidewalk was crowded. What were
(14:38):
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, flecked mostly to
the clubs. The little girls to sew cook, dance and
play games. The little boys to hammer and paste, mend chairs,
(14:59):
deep b 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 the window. My brother, my sister Dora,
and I were introduced to some of the clubs by
(15:20):
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 Polatzk, whom we lodged as
a matter of course, till they found a permanent home.
What with such company and the size of our tenement,
we needed to get out almost as much as our
(15:42):
neighbor's children, I say almost For our parlor we managed
to keep pretty clear, and the lamp on our center
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 some cooking, so I joined a
dancing club, and even here I was a failure. I
(16:05):
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 when a game of checkers,
although formerly I used to beat my father at it.
(16:26):
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
(16:49):
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,
(17:10):
the ambitious, suddenly grown so shy and meek. Why was
the candidate for encyclopediac immortality over awed 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
(17:31):
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.
(17:53):
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
center 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
(18:15):
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 and
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
(18:36):
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 a sense of the
magnitude of my troubles and of the romantic nature of
the rendezvous. Who that was even half awake when he
(18:58):
was growing up does not know what all these symptoms betoken.
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,
(19:22):
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
(19:44):
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 on the
(20:07):
destiny of man, and not know what is going on
in my own heart end of chapter fourteen,
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