I am forgetting the more serious business which had brought us to Crescent Beach. While we children disported ourselves like mermaids and mermen in the surf, our respective fathers dispensed cold lemonade, hot peanuts, and pink popcorn, and piled up our respective fortunes, nickel by nickel, penny by penny. I was very proud of my connection with the public life of the beach. I admired greatly our shining soda fountain, the rows of sparkling gla.s.ses, the pyramids of oranges, the sausage chains, the neat white counter, and the bright array of tin spoons. It seemed to me that none of the other refreshment stands on the beach--there were a few--were half so attractive as ours. I thought my father looked very well in a long white ap.r.o.n and shirt sleeves. He dished out ice cream with enthusiasm, so I supposed he was getting rich.
It never occurred to me to compare his present occupation with the position for which he had been originally destined; or if I thought about it, I was just as well content, for by this time I had by heart my father"s saying, "America is not Polotzk." All occupations were respectable, all men were equal, in America.
If I admired the soda fountain and the sausage chains, I almost worshipped the partner, Mr. Wilner. I was content to stand for an hour at a time watching him make potato chips. In his cook"s cap and ap.r.o.n, with a ladle in his hand and a smile on his face, he moved about with the greatest agility, whisking his raw materials out of nowhere, dipping into his bubbling kettle with a flourish, and bringing forth the finished product with a caper. Such potato chips were not to be had anywhere else on Crescent Beach. Thin as tissue paper, crisp as dry snow, and salt as the sea--such thirst-producing, lemonade-selling, nickel-bringing potato chips only Mr. Wilner could make. On holidays, when dozens of family parties came out by every train from town, he could hardly keep up with the demand for his potato chips. And with a waiting crowd around him our partner was at his best. He was as voluble as he was skilful, and as witty as he was voluble; at least so I guessed from the laughter that frequently drowned his voice. I could not understand his jokes, but if I could get near enough to watch his lips and his smile and his merry eyes, I was happy. That any one could talk so fast, and in English, was marvel enough, but that this prodigy should belong to _our_ establishment was a fact to thrill me. I had never seen anything like Mr. Wilner, except a wedding jester; but then he spoke common Yiddish. So proud was I of the talent and good taste displayed at our stand that if my father beckoned to me in the crowd and sent me on an errand, I hoped the people noticed that I, too, was connected with the establishment.
And all this splendor and glory and distinction came to a sudden end.
There was some trouble about a license--some fee or fine--there was a storm in the night that damaged the soda fountain and other fixtures--there was talk and consultation between the houses of Antin and Wilner--and the promising partnership was dissolved. No more would the merry partner gather the crowd on the beach; no more would the twelve young Wilners gambol like mermen and mermaids in the surf. And the less numerous tribe of Antin must also say farewell to the jolly seaside life; for men in such humble business as my father"s carry their families, along with their other earthly goods, wherever they go, after the manner of the gypsies. We had driven a feeble stake into the sand.
The jealous Atlantic, in conspiracy with the Sunday law, had torn it out. We must seek our luck elsewhere.
In Polotzk we had supposed that "America" was practically synonymous with "Boston." When we landed in Boston, the horizon was pushed back, and we annexed Crescent Beach. And now, espying other lands of promise, we took possession of the province of Chelsea, in the name of our necessity.
In Chelsea, as in Boston, we made our stand in the wrong end of the town. Arlington Street was inhabited by poor Jews, poor Negroes, and a sprinkling of poor Irish. The side streets leading from it were occupied by more poor Jews and Negroes. It was a proper locality for a man without capital to do business. My father rented a tenement with a store in the bas.e.m.e.nt. He put in a few barrels of flour and of sugar, a few boxes of crackers, a few gallons of kerosene, an a.s.sortment of soap of the "save the coupon" brands; in the cellar a few barrels of potatoes, and a pyramid of kindling-wood; in the showcase, an alluring display of penny candy. He put out his sign, with a gilt-lettered warning of "Strictly Cash," and proceeded to give credit indiscriminately. That was the regular way to do business on Arlington Street. My father, in his three years" apprenticeship, had learned the tricks of many trades. He knew when and how to "bluff." The legend of "Strictly Cash" was a protection against notoriously irresponsible customers; while none of the "good" customers, who had a record for paying regularly on Sat.u.r.day, hesitated to enter the store with empty purses.
If my father knew the tricks of the trade, my mother could be counted on to throw all her talent and tact into the business. Of course she had no English yet, but as she could perform the acts of weighing, measuring, and mental computation of fractions mechanically, she was able to give her whole attention to the dark mysteries of the language, as intercourse with her customers gave her opportunity. In this she made such rapid progress that she soon lost all sense of disadvantage, and conducted herself behind the counter very much as if she were back in her old store in Polotzk. It was far more cozy than Polotzk--at least, so it seemed to me; for behind the store was the kitchen, where, in the intervals of slack trade, she did her cooking and washing. Arlington Street customers were used to waiting while the storekeeper salted the soup or rescued a loaf from the oven.
Once more Fortune favored my family with a thin little smile, and my father, in reply to a friendly inquiry, would say, "One makes a living,"
with a shrug of the shoulders that added "but nothing to boast of." It was characteristic of my att.i.tude toward bread-and-b.u.t.ter matters that this contented me, and I felt free to devote myself to the conquest of my new world. Looking back to those critical first years, I see myself always behaving like a child let loose in a garden to play and dig and chase the b.u.t.terflies. Occasionally, indeed, I was stung by the wasp of family trouble; but I knew a healing ointment--my faith in America. My father had come to America to make a living. America, which was free and fair and kind, must presently yield him what he sought. I had come to America to see a new world, and I followed my own ends with the utmost a.s.siduity; only, as I ran out to explore, I would look back to see if my house were in order behind me--if my family still kept its head above water.
In after years, when I pa.s.sed as an American among Americans, if I was suddenly made aware of the past that lay forgotten,--if a letter from Russia, or a paragraph in the newspaper, or a conversation overheard in the street-car, suddenly reminded me of what I might have been,--I thought it miracle enough that I, Mashke, the granddaughter of Raphael the Russian, born to a humble destiny, should be at home in an American metropolis, be free to fashion my own life, and should dream my dreams in English phrases. But in the beginning my admiration was spent on more concrete embodiments of the splendors of America; such as fine houses, gay shops, electric engines and apparatus, public buildings, illuminations, and parades. My early letters to my Russian friends were filled with boastful descriptions of these glories of my new country. No native citizen of Chelsea took such pride and delight in its inst.i.tutions as I did. It required no fife and drum corps, no Fourth of July procession, to set me tingling with patriotism. Even the common agents and instruments of munic.i.p.al life, such as the letter carrier and the fire engines, I regarded with a measure of respect. I know what I thought of people who said that Chelsea was a very small, dull, unaspiring town, with no discernible excuse for a separate name or existence.
The apex of my civic pride and personal contentment was reached on the bright September morning when I entered the public school. That day I must always remember, even if I live to be so old that I cannot tell my name. To most people their first day at school is a memorable occasion.
In my case the importance of the day was a hundred times magnified, on account of the years I had waited, the road I had come, and the conscious ambitions I entertained.
I am wearily aware that I am speaking in extreme figures, in superlatives. I wish I knew some other way to render the mental life of the immigrant child of reasoning age. I may have been ever so much an exception in acuteness of observation, powers of comparison, and abnormal self-consciousness; none the less were my thoughts and conduct typical of the att.i.tude of the intelligent immigrant child toward American inst.i.tutions. And what the child thinks and feels is a reflection of the hopes, desires, purposes of the parent who brought him overseas, no matter how precocious and independent the child may be.
Your immigrant inspectors will tell you what poverty the foreigner brings in his baggage, what want in his pockets. Let the overgrown boy of twelve, reverently drawing his letters in the baby cla.s.s, testify to the n.o.ble dreams and high ideals that may be hidden beneath the greasy caftan of the immigrant. Speaking for the Jews, at least, I know I am safe in inviting such an investigation.
Who were my companions on my first day at school? Whose hand was in mine, as I stood, overcome with awe, by the teacher"s desk, and whispered my name as my father prompted? Was it Frieda"s steady, capable hand? Was it her loyal heart that throbbed, beat for beat with mine, as it had done through all our childish adventures? Frieda"s heart did throb that day, but not with my emotions. My heart pulsed with joy and pride and ambition; in her heart longing fought with abnegation. For I was led to the schoolroom, with its sunshine and its singing and the teacher"s cheery smile; while she was led to the workshop, with its foul air, care-lined faces, and the foreman"s stern command. Our going to school was the fulfilment of my father"s best promises to us, and Frieda"s share in it was to fashion and fit the calico frocks in which the baby sister and I made our first appearance in a public schoolroom.
I remember to this day the gray pattern of the calico, so affectionately did I regard it as it hung upon the wall--my consecration robe awaiting the beatific day. And Frieda, I am sure, remembers it, too, so longingly did she regard it as the crisp, starchy breadths of it slid between her fingers. But whatever were her longings, she said nothing of them; she bent over the sewing-machine humming an Old-World melody. In every straight, smooth seam, perhaps, she tucked away some lingering impulse of childhood; but she matched the scrolls and flowers with the utmost care. If a sudden shock of rebellion made her straighten up for an instant, the next instant she was bending to adjust a ruffle to the best advantage. And when the momentous day arrived, and the little sister and I stood up to be arrayed, it was Frieda herself who patted and smoothed my stiff new calico; who made me turn round and round, to see that I was perfect; who stooped to pull out a disfiguring basting-thread. If there was anything in her heart besides sisterly love and pride and good-will, as we parted that morning, it was a sense of loss and a woman"s acquiescence in her fate; for we had been close friends, and now our ways would lie apart. Longing she felt, but no envy. She did not grudge me what she was denied. Until that morning we had been children together, but now, at the fiat of her destiny she became a woman, with all a woman"s cares; whilst I, so little younger than she, was bidden to dance at the May festival of untroubled childhood.
I wish, for my comfort, that I could say that I had some notion of the difference in our lots, some sense of the injustice to her, of the indulgence to me. I wish I could even say that I gave serious thought to the matter. There had always been a distinction between us rather out of proportion to the difference in our years. Her good health and domestic instincts had made it natural for her to become my mother"s right hand, in the years preceding the emigration, when there were no more servants or dependents. Then there was the family tradition that Mary was the quicker, the brighter of the two, and that hers could be no common lot.
Frieda was relied upon for help, and her sister for glory. And when I failed as a milliner"s apprentice, while Frieda made excellent progress at the dressmaker"s, our fates, indeed, were sealed. It was understood, even before we reached Boston, that she would go to work and I to school. In view of the family prejudices, it was the inevitable course.
No injustice was intended. My father sent us hand in hand to school, before he had ever thought of America. If, in America, he had been able to support his family unaided, it would have been the culmination of his best hopes to see all his children at school, with equal advantages at home. But when he had done his best, and was still unable to provide even bread and shelter for us all, he was compelled to make us children self-supporting as fast as it was practicable. There was no choosing possible; Frieda was the oldest, the strongest, the best prepared, and the only one who was of legal age to be put to work.
My father has nothing to answer for. He divided the world between his children in accordance with the laws of the country and the compulsion of his circ.u.mstances. I have no need of defending him. It is myself that I would like to defend, and I cannot. I remember that I accepted the arrangements made for my sister and me without much reflection, and everything that was planned for my advantage I took as a matter of course. I was no heartless monster, but a decidedly self-centered child.
If my sister had seemed unhappy it would have troubled me; but I am ashamed to recall that I did not consider how little it was that contented her. I was so preoccupied with my own happiness that I did not half perceive the splendid devotion of her att.i.tude towards me, the sweetness of her joy in my good luck. She not only stood by approvingly when I was helped to everything; she cheerfully waited on me herself.
And I took everything from her hand as if it were my due.
The two of us stood a moment in the doorway of the tenement house on Arlington Street, that wonderful September morning when I first went to school. It was I that ran away, on winged feet of joy and expectation; it was she whose feet were bound in the tread-mill of daily toil. And I was so blind that I did not see that the glory lay on her, and not on me.
Father himself conducted us to school. He would not have delegated that mission to the President of the United States. He had awaited the day with impatience equal to mine, and the visions he saw as he hurried us over the sun-flecked pavements transcended all my dreams. Almost his first act on landing on American soil, three years before, had been his application for naturalization. He had taken the remaining steps in the process with eager promptness, and at the earliest moment allowed by the law, he became a citizen of the United States. It is true that he had left home in search of bread for his hungry family, but he went blessing the necessity that drove him to America. The boasted freedom of the New World meant to him far more than the right to reside, travel, and work wherever he pleased; it meant the freedom to speak his thoughts, to throw off the shackles of superst.i.tion, to test his own fate, unhindered by political or religious tyranny. He was only a young man when he landed--thirty-two; and most of his life he had been held in leading-strings. He was hungry for his untasted manhood.
Three years pa.s.sed in sordid struggle and disappointment. He was not prepared to make a living even in America, where the day laborer eats wheat instead of rye. Apparently the American flag could not protect him against the pursuing Nemesis of his limitations; he must expiate the sins of his fathers who slept across the seas. He had been endowed at birth with a poor const.i.tution, a nervous, restless temperament, and an abundance of hindering prejudices. In his boyhood his body was starved, that his mind might be stuffed with useless learning. In his youth this dearly gotten learning was sold, and the price was the bread and salt which he had not been trained to earn for himself. Under the wedding canopy he was bound for life to a girl whose features were still strange to him; and he was bidden to multiply himself, that sacred learning might be perpetuated in his sons, to the glory of the G.o.d of his fathers. All this while he had been led about as a creature without a will, a chattel, an instrument. In his maturity he awoke, and found himself poor in health, poor in purse, poor in useful knowledge, and hampered on all sides. At the first nod of opportunity he broke away from his prison, and strove to atone for his wasted youth by a life of useful labor; while at the same time he sought to lighten the gloom of his narrow scholarship by freely partaking of modern ideas. But his utmost endeavor still left him far from his goal. In business nothing prospered with him. Some fault of hand or mind or temperament led him to failure where other men found success. Wherever the blame for his disabilities be placed, he reaped their bitter fruit. "Give me bread!"
he cried to America. "What will you do to earn it?" the challenge came back. And he found that he was master of no art, of no trade; that even his precious learning was of no avail, because he had only the most antiquated methods of communicating it.
So in his primary quest he had failed. There was left him the compensation of intellectual freedom. That he sought to realize in every possible way. He had very little opportunity to prosecute his education, which, in truth, had never been begun. His struggle for a bare living left him no time to take advantage of the public evening school; but he lost nothing of what was to be learned through reading, through attendance at public meetings, through exercising the rights of citizenship. Even here he was hindered by a natural inability to acquire the English language. In time, indeed, he learned to read, to follow a conversation or lecture; but he never learned to write correctly, and his p.r.o.nunciation remains extremely foreign to this day.
If education, culture, the higher life were shining things to be worshipped from afar, he had still a means left whereby he could draw one step nearer to them. He could send his children to school, to learn all those things that he knew by fame to be desirable. The common school, at least, perhaps high school; for one or two, perhaps even college! His children should be students, should fill his house with books and intellectual company; and thus he would walk by proxy in the Elysian Fields of liberal learning. As for the children themselves, he knew no surer way to their advancement and happiness.
So it was with a heart full of longing and hope that my father led us to school on that first day. He took long strides in his eagerness, the rest of us running and hopping to keep up.
At last the four of us stood around the teacher"s desk; and my father, in his impossible English, gave us over in her charge, with some broken word of his hopes for us that his swelling heart could no longer contain. I venture to say that Miss Nixon was struck by something uncommon in the group we made, something outside of Semitic features and the abashed manner of the alien. My little sister was as pretty as a doll, with her clear pink-and-white face, short golden curls, and eyes like blue violets when you caught them looking up. My brother might have been a girl, too, with his cherubic contours of face, rich red color, glossy black hair, and fine eyebrows. Whatever secret fears were in his heart, remembering his former teachers, who had taught with the rod, he stood up straight and uncringing before the American teacher, his cap respectfully doffed. Next to him stood a starved-looking girl with eyes ready to pop out, and short dark curls that would not have made much of a wig for a Jewish bride.
All three children carried themselves rather better than the common run of "green" pupils that were brought to Miss Nixon. But the figure that challenged attention to the group was the tall, straight father, with his earnest face and fine forehead, nervous hands eloquent in gesture, and a voice full of feeling. This foreigner, who brought his children to school as if it were an act of consecration, who regarded the teacher of the primer cla.s.s with reverence, who spoke of visions, like a man inspired, in a common schoolroom, was not like other aliens, who brought their children in dull obedience to the law; was not like the native fathers, who brought their unmanageable boys, glad to be relieved of their care. I think Miss Nixon guessed what my father"s best English could not convey. I think she divined that by the simple act of delivering our school certificates to her he took possession of America.
NOTES
=The Promised Land=:--The land of freedom and peace which the Jews have hoped to attain. See Exodus, 3:8; 6:8; Genesis, 12:5-7; Deuteronomy, 8:7-10; Hebrews, 11:9.
=his three years of probation=:--Mary Antin"s father had spent three years in America before sending back to Russia for his family.
=Polotzk=:--p.r.o.nounced P[=o]"lotsk; a town in Russia on the Dwina River.
=seven lean years=:--A reference to the famine in Egypt predicted by Joseph, Pharaoh"s Hebrew favorite. See Genesis, 40.
=Dvina=:--The Duna or Dwina River, in Russia.
=originally destined=:--Mr. Antin"s parents had intended him to be a scholar and teacher.
=Yiddish=:--From the German word _judisch_, meaning Jewish; a mixed language made up of German, Hebrew, and Russian words. It is generally spoken by Jews.
=Chelsea=:--A suburb of Boston.
=Nemesis=:--In Greek mythology, a G.o.ddess of vengeance or punishment for sins and errors.
=the sins of his fathers=:--See Exodus, 20:5; Numbers, 14:18; Deuteronomy, 5:9.
=Elysian fields=:--In Greek thought, the home of the happy dead.
=Semitic=:--Jewish; from the name of Shem, the son of Noah.
SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY
This selection gives the experience of a Jewish girl who came from Polotzk, Russia, to Boston. Read rather slowly, with the help of these questions: What is meant by "centuries of repression"? Is there no such repression in America? How is it true that the Jew peddler "was born thousands of years before the oldest native American"? What are the educational advantages of a thickly populated neighborhood? What is your idea of the slums? Why did the children expect every comfort to be supplied? How much is really free in America? Is education free? How does one secure an education in Russia? How are American machine-made garments superior to those made by hand in Russia? Was it a good thing to change the children"s names? What effect does the sea have upon those who live near it? What effect has a great change of environment on a growing young person? What kind of person was Mrs. Wilner? What does Mr.
Antin mean when he says, "America is not Polotzk"? Are all men equal in America? Read carefully the description of Mr. Wilner: How does the author make it vivid and lively? Why was Mary Antin"s first day in school so important to her? Was it fair that Frieda should not go to school? Should an older child be sacrificed for a younger? Should a slow child always give way to a bright one? What do you think of the way in which Mary accepted the situation when Frieda had to go to work? Read carefully what Mary says about it. Is it easy to make a living in America? Why did Mr. Antin not succeed in business? What is meant by "the compensation of intellectual freedom"? What did Mr. Antin gain from his life in America? What sort of man was he? In reading the selection, what idea do you get of the Russian immigrant? Of what America means to the poor foreigner?
THEME SUBJECTS
The Foreigners in our Town The "Greenhorn"
The Immigrant Family The Peddler Ellis Island What America Means to the Foreigner The Statue of Liberty A Russian Woman The New Girl at School The Bas.e.m.e.nt Store A Large Family Learning to Speak a New Language What the Public School can Do A Russian Bra.s.s Shop The Factory Girl My Childish Sports The Refreshment Stand On the Sea Sh.o.r.e The Popcorn Man A Home in the Tenements Earning a Living More about Mary Antin[9]
How Children Amuse Themselves A Fragment of My Autobiography An Autobiography that I Have Read
SUGGESTIONS FOR WRITING