The Promised Land Part 23

Here is where I liked to remind myself of Polotzk, the better to bring out the wonder of my life. That I who was born in the prison of the Pale should roam at will in the land of freedom was a marvel that it did me good to realize. That I who was brought up to my teens almost without a book should be set down in the midst of all the books that ever were written was a miracle as great as any on record. That an outcast should become a privileged citizen, that a beggar should dwell in a palace--this was a romance more thrilling than poet ever sung.

Surely I was rocked in an enchanted cradle.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BATES HALL, WHERE I SPENT MY LONGEST HOURS IN THE LIBRARY]

From the Public Library to the State House is only a step, and I found my way there without a guide. The State House was one of the places I could point to and say that I had a friend there to welcome me. I do not mean the representative of my district, though I hope he was a worthy man. My friend was no less a man than the Honorable Senator Roe, from Worcester, whose letters to me, written under the embossed letter head of the Senate Chamber, I could not help exhibiting to Florence Connolly.

How did I come by a Senator? Through being a citizen of Boston, of course. To be a citizen of the smallest village in the United States which maintains a free school and a public library is to stand in the path of the splendid processions of opportunity. And as Boston has rather better schools and a rather finer library than some other villages, it comes natural there for children in the slums to summon gentlemen from the State House to be their personal friends.

It is so simple, in Boston! You are a school-girl, and your teacher gives you a ticket for the annual historical lecture in the Old South Church, on Washington's Birthday. You hear a stirring discourse on some subject in your country's history, and you go home with a heart bursting with patriotism. You sit down and write a letter to the speaker who so moved you, telling him how glad you are to be an American, explaining to him, if you happen to be a recently made American, why you love your adopted country so much better than your native land. Perhaps the patriotic lecturer happens to be a Senator, and he reads your letter under the vast dome of the State House; and it occurs to him that he and his eminent colleagues and the stately capitol and the glorious flag that floats above it, all gathered on the hill above the Common, do his country no greater honor than the outspoken admiration of an ardent young alien. The Senator replies to your letter, inviting you to visit him at the State House; and in the renowned chamber where the august business of the State is conducted, you, an obscure child from the slums, and he, a chosen leader of the people, seal a democratic friendship based on the love of a common flag.

Even simpler than to meet a Senator was it to become acquainted with a man like Edward Everett Hale. "The Grand Old Man of Boston," the people called him, from the manner of his life among them. He kept open house in every public building in the city. Wherever two citizens met to devise a measure for the public weal, he was a third. Wherever a worthy cause needed a champion, Dr. Hale lifted his mighty voice. At some time or another his colossal figure towered above an eager mult.i.tude from every pulpit in the city, from every lecture platform.

And where is the map of Boston that gives the names of the lost alleys and back ways where the great man went in search of the lame in body, who could not join the public a.s.sembly, in quest of the maimed in spirit, who feared to show their faces in the open? If all the little children who have sat on Dr. Hale's knee were started in a procession on the State House steps, standing four abreast, there would be a lane of merry faces across the Common, out to the Public Library, over Harvard Bridge, and away beyond to remoter landmarks.

That I met Dr. Hale is no wonder. It was as inevitable as that I should be a year older every twelvemonth. He was a part of Boston, as the salt wave is a part of the sea. I can hardly say whether he came to me or I came to him. We met, and my adopted country took me closer to her breast.

A day or two after our first meeting I called on Dr. Hale, at his invitation. It was only eight o'clock in the morning, you may be sure, because he had risen early to attend to a hundred great affairs, and I had risen early so as to talk with a great man before I went to school. I think we liked each other a little the more for the fact that when so many people were still asleep, we were already busy in the interests of citizenship and friendship. We certainly liked each other.

I am sure I did not stay more than fifteen minutes, and all that I recall of our conversation was that Dr. Hale asked me a great many questions about Russia, in a manner that made me feel that I was an authority on the subject; and with his great hand in good-bye he gave me a bit of homely advice, namely, that I should never study before breakfast!

That was all, but for the rest of the day I moved against a background of grandeur. There was a n.o.ble 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 cla.s.s. And it happened that the tulips in Copley Square opened that day, and shone in the sun like lighted lamps.

Any one could be happy a year on Dover Street, after spending half an hour on Highland Street. I enjoyed so many half-hours in the great man's house that I do not know how to convey the sense of my remembered happiness. My friend used to keep me in conversation a few minutes, in the famous study that was fit to have been preserved as a shrine; after which he sent me to roam about the house, and explore his library, and take away what books I pleased. Who would feel cramped in a tenement, with such royal privileges as these?

Once I brought Dr. Hale a present, a copy of a story of mine that had been printed in a journal; and from his manner of accepting it you might have thought that I was a princess dispensing gifts from a throne. I wish I had asked him, that last time I talked with him, how it was that he who was so modest made those who walked with him so great.

Modest as the man was the house in which he lived. A gray old house of a style that New England no longer builds, with a pillared porch curtained by vines, set back in the yard behind the old trees.

Whatever cherished flowers glowed in the garden behind the house, the common daisy was encouraged to bloom in front. And was there sun or snow on the ground, the most timid hand could open the gate, the most humble visitor was sure of a welcome. Out of that modest house the troubled came comforted, the fallen came uplifted, the n.o.ble came inspired.

My explorations of Dr. Hale's house might not have brought me to the gables, but for my friend's daughter, the artist, who had a studio at the top of the house. She asked me one day if I would sit for a portrait, and I consented with the greatest alacrity. It would be an interesting experience, and interesting experiences were the bread of life to me. I agreed to come every Sat.u.r.day morning, and felt that something was going to happen to Dover Street.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE FAMOUS STUDY, THAT WAS FIT TO HAVE BEEN PRESERVED AS A SHRINE]

When I came home from my talk with Miss Hale, I studied myself long in my blotched looking-gla.s.s. I saw just what I expected. My face was too thin, my nose too large, my complexion too dull. My hair, which was curly enough, was too short to be described as luxurious tresses; and the color was neither brown nor black. My hands were neither white nor velvety; the fingers ended decidedly, instead of tapering off like rosy dreams. I was disgusted with my wrists; they showed too far below the tight sleeves of my dress of the year before last, and they looked consumptive.

No, it was not for my beauty that Miss Hale wanted to paint me. It was because I was a girl, a person, a piece of creation. I understood perfectly. If I could write an interesting composition about a broom, why should not an artist be able to make an interesting picture of me?

I had done it with the broom, and the milk wagon, and the rain spout.

It was not what a thing was that made it interesting, but what I was able to draw out of it. It was exciting to speculate as to what Miss Hale was going to draw out of me.

The first sitting was indeed exciting. There was hardly any sitting to it. We did nothing but move around the studio, and move the easel around, and try on ever so many backgrounds, and ever so many poses.

In the end, of course, we left everything just as it had been at the start, because Miss Hale had had the right idea from the beginning; but I understood that a preliminary tempest in the studio was the proper way to test that idea.

I was surprised to find that I should not be obliged to hold my breath, and should be allowed to wink all I wanted. Posing was just sitting with my hands in my lap, and enjoying the most interesting conversation with the artist. We hit upon such out-of-the-way topics--once, I remember, we talked about the marriage laws of different states! I had a glorious time, and I believe Miss Hale did too. I watched the progress of the portrait with utter lack of comprehension, and with perfect faith in the ultimate result. The morning flew so fast that I could have sat right on into the afternoon without tiring.

Once or twice I stayed to lunch, and sat opposite the artist's mother at table. It was like sitting face to face with Martha Washington, I thought. Everything was wonderful in that wonderful old house.

One thing disturbed my enjoyment of those Sat.u.r.day mornings. It was a small thing, hardly as big as a pen-wiper. It was a silver coin which Miss Hale gave me regularly when I was going. I knew that models were paid for sitting, but I was not a professional model. When people sat for their portraits they usually paid the artist, instead of the artist paying them. Of course I had not ordered this portrait, but I had such a good time sitting that it did not seem to me I could be earning money. But what troubled me was not the suspicion that I did not earn the money, but that I did not know what was in my friend's mind when she gave it to me. Was it possible that Miss Hale had asked me to sit on purpose to be able to pay me, so that I could help pay the rent? Everybody knew about the rent sooner or later, because I was always asking my friends what a girl could do to make the landlady happy. Very possibly Miss Hale had my landlady in mind when she asked me to pose. I might have asked her--I dearly loved explanations, which cleared up hidden motives--but her answer would not have made any real difference. I should have accepted the money just the same. Miss Hale was not a stranger, like Mr. Strong when he offered me a quarter.

She knew me, she believed in my cause, and she wanted to contribute to it. Thus I, in my hair-splitting a.n.a.lyses of persons and motives; while the portrait went steadily on.

It was Miss Hale who first found a use for our superfluous baby. She came to Dover Street several times to study our tiny Celia, in swaddling clothes improvised by my mother, after the fashion of the old country. Miss Hale wanted a baby for a picture of the Nativity which she was doing for her father's church; and of all the babies in Boston, our Celia, our little Jewish Celia, was posing for the Christ Child! It does not matter in this connection that the Infant that lies in the lantern light, brooded over by the Mother's divine sorrow of love, in the beautiful altar piece in Dr. Hale's church, was not actually painted from my mother's baby, in the end. The point is that my mother, in less than half a dozen years of America, had so far shaken off her ancient superst.i.tions that she feared no evil consequence from letting her child pose for a Christian picture.

A busy life I led, on Dover Street; a happy, busy life. When I was not reciting lessons, nor writing midnight poetry, nor selling papers, nor posing, nor studying sociology, nor pickling bugs, nor interviewing statesmen, nor running away from home, I made long entries in nay journal, or wrote forty-page letters to my friends. It was a happy thing that poor Mrs. Hutch did not know what sums I spent for stationery and postage stamps. She would have gone into consumption, I do believe, from inexpressible indignation; and she would have been in the right--to be indignant, not to go into consumption. I admit it; she would have been justified--from her point of view. From my point of view I was also in the right; of course I was. To make friends among the great was an important part of my education, and was not to be accomplished without a liberal expenditure of paper and postage stamps. If Mrs. Hutch had not repulsed my offer of confidences, I could have shown her long letters written to me by people whose mere signature was prized by autograph hunters. It is true that I could not turn those letters directly into rent-money,--or if I could, I would not,--but indirectly my interesting letters did pay a week's rent now and then. Through the influence of my friends my father sometimes found work that he could not have got in any other way. These practical results of my costly pursuit of friendships might have given Mrs. Hutch confidence in my ultimate solvency, had she not remained obstinately deaf to my plea for time, her heart being set on direct, immediate, convertible cash payment.

That was very narrow-minded, even though I say it who should not. The grocer on Harrison Avenue who supplied our table could have taught her to take a more liberal view. We were all anxious to teach her, if she only would have listened. Here was this poor grocer, conducting his business on the same perilous credit system which had driven my father out of Chelsea and Wheeler Street, supplying us with tea and sugar and strong b.u.t.ter, milk freely splashed from rusty cans, potent yeast, and bananas done to a turn,--with everything, in short, that keeps a poor man's family hearty in spite of what they eat,--and all this for the consideration of part payment, with the faintest prospect of a future settlement in full. Mr. Rosenblum had an intimate knowledge of the financial situation of every family that traded with him, from the gossip of his customers around his herring barrel. He knew without asking that my father had no regular employment, and that, consequently, it was risky to give us credit. Nevertheless he gave us credit by the week, by the month, accepted partial payment with thanks, and let the balance stand by the year.

We owed him as much as the landlady, I suppose, every time he balanced our account. But he never complained; nay, he even insisted on my mother's taking almonds and raisins for a cake for the holidays. He knew, as well as Mrs. Hutch, that my father kept a daughter at school who was of age to be put to work; but so far was he from reproaching him for it that he detained my father by the half-hour, inquiring about my progress and discussing my future. He knew very well, did the poor grocer, who it was that burned so much oil in my family; but when I came in to have my kerosene can filled, he did not fall upon me with harsh words of blame. Instead, he wanted to hear about my latest triumph at school, and about the great people who wrote me letters and even came to see me; and he called his wife from the kitchen behind the store to come and hear of these grand doings. Mrs. Rosenblum, who could not sign her name, came out in her faded calico wrapper, and stood with her hands folded under her ap.r.o.n, shy and respectful before the embryo scholar; and she nodded her head sideways in approval, drinking in with envious pleasure her husband's Yiddish version of my tale. If her black-eyed Goldie happened to be playing jackstones on the curb, Mrs. Rosenblum pulled her into the store, to hear what distinction Mr. Antin's daughter had won at school, bidding her take example from Mary, if she would also go far in education.

"Hear you, Goldie? She has the best marks, in everything, Goldie, all the time. She is only five years in the country, and she'll be in college soon. She beats them all in school, Goldie--her father says she beats them all. She studies all the time--all night--and she writes, it is a pleasure to hear. She writes in the paper, Goldie. You ought to hear Mr. Antin read what she writes in the paper. Long pieces--"

"You don't understand what he reads, ma," Goldie interrupts mischievously; and I want to laugh, but I refrain. Mr. Rosenblum does not fill my can; I am forced to stand and hear myself eulogized.

"Not understand? Of course I don't understand. How should I understand? I was not sent to school to learn. Of course I don't understand. But _you_ don't understand, Goldie, and that's a shame. If you would put your mind on it, and study hard, like Mary Antin, you would also stand high, and you would go to high school, and be somebody."

"Would you send me to high school, pa?" Goldie asks, to test her mother's promises. "Would you really?"

"Sure as I am a Jew," Mr. Rosenblum promptly replies, a look of aspiration in his deep eyes. "Only show yourself worthy, Goldie, and I'll keep you in school till you get to something. In America everybody can get to something, if he only wants to. I would even send you farther than high school--to be a teacher, maybe. Why not? In America everything is possible. But you have to work hard, Goldie, like Mary Antin--study hard, put your mind on it."

"Oh, I know it, pa!" Goldie exclaims, her momentary enthusiasm extinguished at the thought of long lessons indefinitely prolonged.

Goldie was a restless little thing who could not sit long over her geography book. She wriggled out of her mother's grasp now, and made for the door, throwing a "back-hand" as she went, without losing a single jackstone. "I hate long lessons," she said. "When I graduate grammar school next year I'm going to work in Jordan-Marsh's big store, and get three dollars a week, and have lots of fun with the girls. I can't write pieces in the paper, anyhow.--Beckie! Beckie Hurvich! Where you going? Wait a minute, I'll go along." And she was off, leaving her ambitious parents to shake their heads over her flightiness.

Mr. Rosenblum gave me my oil. If he had had postage stamps in stock, he would have given me all I needed, and felt proud to think that he was a.s.sisting in my important correspondences. And he was a poor man, and had a large family, and many customers who paid as irregularly as we. He ran the risk of ruin, of course, but he did not scold--not us, at any rate. For he _understood_. He was himself an immigrant Jew of the type that values education, and sets a great price on the higher development of the child. He would have done in my father's place just what my father was doing: borrow, beg, go without, run in debt--anything to secure for a promising child the fulfilment of the promise. That is what America was for. The land of opportunity it was, but opportunities must be used, must be grasped, held, squeezed dry.

To keep a child of working age in school was to invest the meagre present for the sake of the opulent future. If there was but one child in a family of twelve who promised to achieve an intellectual career, the other eleven, and father, and mother, and neighbors must devote themselves to that one child's welfare, and feed and clothe and cheer it on, and be rewarded in the end by hearing its name mentioned with the names of the great.

So the poor grocer helped to keep me in school for I do not know how many years. And this is one of the things that is done on Harrison Avenue, by the people who pitch rubbish through their windows. Let the City Fathers strike the balance.

Of course this is wretched economics. If I had a son who wanted to go into the grocery business, I should take care that he was well grounded in the principles of sound bookkeeping and prudence. But I should not fail to tell him the story of the Harrison Avenue grocer, hoping that he would puzzle out the moral.

Mr. Rosenblum himself would be astonished to hear that any one was drawing morals from his manner of conducting his little store, and yet it is from men like him that I learn the true values of things. The grocer weighed me out a quarter of a pound of b.u.t.ter, and when the scales were even he threw in another sc.r.a.p. "_Na!_" he said, smiling across the counter, "you can carry that much around the corner!"

Plainly he was showing me that if I have not as many houses as my neighbor, that should not prevent me from cultivating as many graces.

If I made some shame-faced reference to the unpaid balance, Mr.

Rosenblum replied, "I guess you're not thinking of running away from Boston yet. You haven't finished turning the libraries inside out, have you?" In this way he reminded me that there were things more important than conventional respectability. The world belongs to those who can use it to the best advantage, the grocer seemed to argue; and I found that I had the courage to test this philosophy.

From my little room on Dover Street I reached out for the world, and the world came to me. Through books, through the conversation of n.o.ble men and women, through communion with the stars in the depth of night, I entered into every n.o.ble 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 n.o.bility was the longing for the abundance of life with which I was endowed at birth; and from the time I could toddle unaided I had been gathering into my hand everything that was fine in the world around me. Given health and standing-room, I should have worked out my salvation even on a desert island. Being set down in the garden of America, where opportunity waits on ambition, I was bound to make my days a triumphal march toward my goal. The most unfriendly witness of my life will not venture to deny that I have been successful. For aside from subordinate desires for greatness or wealth or specific achievement, my chief ambition in life has been _to live_, and I have lived. A glowing life has been mine, and the fires that blazed highest in all my days were kindled on Dover Street.

I have never had a dull hour in my life; I have never had a livelier time than in the slums. In all my troubles I was thrilled through and through with a prophetic sense of how they were to end. A halo of romance floated before every to-morrow; the wings of future adventures rustled in the dead of night. Nothing could be quite common that touched my life, because I had a power for attracting uncommon things. And when my n.o.blest 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 n.o.ble gifts of service, inspiration, and love. There came one, to talk with whom was to double the volume of life. She left roses on my pillow when I lay ill, and in my heart she planted a longing for greatness that I have yet to satisfy. Another came whose soul was steeped in sunshine, whose eyes saw through every pretence, whose lips mocked nothing holy. And one came who carried the golden key that unlocked the last secret chamber of life for me.

Friends came trooping from everywhere, and some were poor, and some were rich, but all were devoted and true; and they left no niche in my heart unfilled, and no want unsatisfied.

To be alive in America, I found out long ago, is to ride on the central current of the river of modern life; and to have a conscious purpose is to hold the rudder that steers the ship of fate. I was alive to my finger tips, back there on Dover Street, and all my girlish purposes served one main purpose. It would have been amazing if I had stuck in the mire of the slum. By every law of my nature I was bound to soar above it, to attain the fairer places that wait for every emanc.i.p.ated immigrant.

A characteristic thing about the aspiring immigrant is the fact that he is not content to progress alone. Solitary success is imperfect success in his eyes. He must take his family with him as he rises. So when I refused to be adopted by a rich old man, and clung to my family in the slums, I was only following the rule; and I can tell it without boasting, because it is no more to my credit than that I wake refreshed after a night's sleep.

This suggests to me a summary of my virtues, through the exercise of which I may be said to have attracted my good fortune. I find that I have always given nature a chance, I have used my opportunities, and have practised self-expression. So much my enemies will grant me; more than this my friends cannot claim for me.

In the Dover Street days I did not philosophize about my private character, nor about the immigrant and his ways. I lived the life, and the moral took care of itself. And after Dover Street came Applepie Alley, Letterbox Lane, and other evil corners of the slums of Boston, till it must have looked to our neighbors as if we meant to go on forever exploring the underworld. But we found a short-cut--we found a short-cut! And the route we took from the tenements of the stifling alleys to a darling cottage of our own, where the sun shines in at every window, and the green gra.s.s runs up to our very doorstep, was surveyed by the Pilgrim Fathers, who trans-scribed their field notes on a very fine parchment and called it the Const.i.tution of the United States.

It was good to get out of Dover Street--it was better for the growing children, better for my weary parents, better for all of us, as the clean gra.s.s is better than the dusty pavement. But I must never forget that I came away from Dover Street with my hands full of riches. I must not fail to testify that in America a child of the slums owns the land and all that is good in it. All the beautiful things I saw belonged to me, if I wanted to use them; all the beautiful things I desired approached me. I did not need to seek my kingdom. I had only to be worthy, and it came to me, even on Dover Street. Everything that was ever to happen to me in the future had its germ or impulse in the conditions of my life on Dover Street. My friendships, my advantages and disadvantages, my gifts, my habits, my ambitions--these were the materials out of which I built my after life, in the open workshop of America. My days in the slums were pregnant with possibilities; it only needed the ripeness of events to make them fruit forth in realities. Steadily as I worked to win America, America advanced to lie at my feet. I was an heir, on Dover Street, awaiting maturity. I was a princess waiting to be led to the throne.