20 - 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 nineteen of The Promised Land. This LibriVox recording is
in the public domain. Recording by bridget Age The Promised
Land by Mary Anton, chapter nineteen, 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

(00:21):
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

(00:43):
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 pleas kitchen,
such a cozy, friendly rum, that when Frida and I

(01:04):
were left alone. I was perfectly happy just to sit there.
Frieda had a beautiful parlor with plushed 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.

(01:27):
Her eager questions doubled the meaning of the lines I read.
Poor Frida 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

(01:48):
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 mister Hurd
and the Humbler guests stared in admiration at her 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

(02:10):
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

(02:32):
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 a learned and bathed
in the crystal fountains of youth, sometimes climbed the sublimest
peak in my sister's humble kitchen, there caught the unfaltering

(02:55):
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

(03:17):
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 Eneid, the Passage, and 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

(03:37):
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

(03:57):
always boast of some acquaintance with Virgil, that scrap of
the Eneid made memorable by my sister's enjoyment of it. Truly,
my education was not entirely in the hands of the
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.
Mister Casey of the second floor, who was drunk whenever

(04:20):
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 and
promiscuous flirtation with the cock eyed youths of the neighborhood
unconsciously revealed to me the eternal secrets of adolescence. My

(04:41):
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 ca could not digest it all at
the time, but in later years, when my destiny had

(05:04):
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 knights of tormenting anxiety, I count the

(05:25):
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

(05:48):
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, and the pearl
misty morning and 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

(06:09):
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 schoolhouses, harmoniously disposed around a spacious triangle called

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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 pasted 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,

(06:54):
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 and alien, Mine, though I lived
on Dover Street, My palace mine. I loved to lean

(07:18):
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 lines
at the top, with an eye on the aged policemen
down below. Spectacled scholars came slowly down the stairs, loaded

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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,

(08:01):
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 reppt hours studying the abbey pictures.

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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 Cheffonese series around the main
staircase I did not enjoy for years. I thought the

(08:43):
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

(09:05):
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 sandaled feet through the glistening marble porticoes of Athens,
I expected to see if I looked over my shoulder,

(09:25):
a bearded philosopher in a drooping mantle, surrounded by beautiful
youths with wreathed flocks. 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 Polatsk,
the better to bring out the wonder of my life.

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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,

(10:09):
This was a romance more thrilling than poet ever sung.
Surely I was rocked in an enchanted cradle. 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,

(10:30):
though I hope he was a worthy man. My friend
was no less a man than the Honorable Senator Roe
from Wooster, whose letters to me, written under the embossed
letterhead 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,

(10:53):
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.

(11:13):
In Boston. You are a schoolgirl 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

(11:33):
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 capital, and the glorious flag that floats

(11:56):
above it, all gathered down 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,

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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

(12:38):
citizens met to devise a measure for the public wheel,
he was a third. Wherever a worthy cause needed a champion,
Doctor 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

(12:59):
the lost alleys and backways where the great man went
in search of the lame and body who could not
join the public assembly, and quest of the maimed in
spirit who feared to show their faces in the open.
If all the little children who have sat on doctor
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,

(13:22):
over Harvard Bridge, and away beyond to remoter landmarks. Then
I met doctor Hale, as 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

(13:44):
her breast. A day or two after our first meeting,
I called on Doctor 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 more for
the fact that, when so many people were still asleep,

(14:06):
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 Doctor 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

(14:28):
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 the 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

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happened that the Tulips and 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

(15:11):
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 doctor Hale a present, a copy of a
story of mine that had been printed in a journal,

(15:32):
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

(15:52):
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
their son 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

(16:15):
troubled came comforted, the fallen came uplifted, the noble came inspired.
My explorations of doctor 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

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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. When I came home from my talk
with Miss Hale, I studied myself long in the blotched
looking glass. I saw just what I expected. My face

(16:56):
was too thin, my nose too large, my complexion to dull.
My hair, which was cruy 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.

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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

(17:39):
artist be able to make an interesting picture of me.
I had done it with the brum 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

(18:01):
move around in 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

(18:23):
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

(18:44):
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

(19:07):
that wonderful old house. One big 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 the portraits,
they usually paid the artist instead of the artists paying them.

(19:30):
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

(19:53):
the rent sooner or later, because I was always asking
my friends what a girl could do to make a
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

(20:14):
Hale was not a stranger like mister 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 analysis 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

(20:36):
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

(20:56):
the infant that lies in the lantern light brooded over
by the mother's divine sorrow of love. In the beautiful
altarpiece in doctor 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

(21:17):
a Christian picture. A busy life I led on Dover Street,
a happy busy life. When I was not resetting 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 my journal

(21:37):
or wrote forty page letters to my friend. It was
a happy thing that poor missus 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

(21:59):
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 Missus 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

(22:20):
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 Missus

(22:41):
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

(23:02):
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

(23:24):
hearty in spite of what they eat, and all of
this for the consideration of part payment, with the faintest
prospect of a future settlement in full. Mister 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

(23:46):
risky to give us credit. Nevertheless, he gave us credit
by the week, by the month, accepted partial payments with thanks,
and let the balance stand by the year. We owed
him as much as the landlady, I suppose every time
he did allanst 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

(24:09):
as missus 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

(24:31):
upon me with harsh words of flame. 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. Missus 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

(24:54):
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 jack Stones on the curb, Missus Rosenblum pulled her
into the store do hear what distinction mister Anton's daughter
had won at school, bidding her take example from Mary,
if she would also go far in education. Here you, Goldie,

(25:19):
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 mister Anton read what she writes in
the paper long pieces. You don't understand what he reads, Ma, Goldie,

(25:44):
interrupted mischievously. And I want to laugh, but I refrain.
Mister 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

(26:04):
you would put your mind on it and study hard,
like Mary Anton, 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? Mister Rosenblum promptly replies, a look of aspiration
in his deep eyes. Only show yourself worthy, Goldie, and

(26:27):
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 Anton, study hard, put your mind on it. Oh,

(26:48):
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

(27:08):
long lessons, she said. When I graduate summer 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, Becky,
becky hurvitch, where are you going? Wait a minute, I'll
go along, And she was off, leaving her ambitious parents
to shake their heads over her flightiness. Mister Rosenblum gave

(27:32):
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

(27:54):
understood he was himself an immigrant jew of the type
that values education and set 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 fulfillment of the promise. That is what

(28:14):
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 meager present for the sake of that
opulent future. If there was but one child in a
family of twelve who promised to achieve an intellectual career,

(28:35):
the other eleven and father and mother and neighbors must
devote themselves to that one child's welfare, and feed in clothed,
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

(28:55):
Avenue by the people who pitch rubbish through their windows.
Let the city fill 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

(29:17):
he would puzzle out the moral Mister 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 learned 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. Nah, he said,
smiling across the counter. You can carry that much around

(29:40):
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 shamefaced reference to the unpaid balance, mister 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.

(30:00):
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 Romandovern Street,
I reached out for the world, and the world came
to me through books, through the conversation of noble men

(30:22):
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 tuttle unaided,

(30:43):
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 up 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 mark toward my goal. The most
unfriendly witness of my life will not venture to deny

(31:05):
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.

(31:25):
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 tomorrow. The wings
of future adventures wrestled 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

(31:47):
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 sir, 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

(32:09):
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 pretense, whose lips mocked nothing wholly.
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,

(32:31):
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,

(32:52):
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

(33:16):
success in his eyes. He must take his family with
him as he rises. So when I refuse to be
adopted by a rich old man and clung to my
family and 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

(33:36):
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 practiced 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

(33:58):
immigrant and his ways. I lived the life, and the
moral took care of itself. And after Dover Street came
apple Pie Alley, Letterbox Lane, and other evil corners of
the slums of Boston, till it must have looked for
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

(34:19):
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 transcribed 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,

(34:42):
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

(35:05):
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

(35:27):
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

(35:49):
waiting to be led to the throne. End of Chapter
nineteen