Chapter IX

of _The Promised Land_)

During his three years of probation, my father had made a number of false starts in business. His history for that period is the history of thousands who come to America, like him, with pockets empty, hands untrained to the use of tools, minds cramped by centuries of repression in their native land. Dozens of these men pass under your eyes every day, my American friend, too absorbed in their honest affairs to notice the looks of suspicion which you cast at them, the repugnance with which you shrink from their touch. You see them shuffle from door to door with a basket of spools and buttons, or bending over the sizzling irons in a basement tailor shop, or rummaging in your ash can, or moving a pushcart from curb to curb, at the command of the burly policeman. "The Jew peddler!" you say, and dismiss him from your premises and from your thoughts, never dreaming that the sordid drama of his days may have a moral that concerns you. What if the creature with the untidy beard carries in his bosom his citizenship papers? What if the cross-legged tailor is supporting a boy in college who is one day going to mend your state constitution for you? What if the ragpicker's daughters are hastening over the ocean to teach your children in the public schools? Think, every time you pass the greasy alien on the street, that he was born thousands of years before the oldest native American; and he may have something to communicate to you, when you two shall have learned a common language. Remember that his very physiognomy is a cipher the key to which it behooves you to search for most diligently.

* * * * *

By the time we joined my father, he had surveyed many avenues of approach toward the coveted citadel of fortune. One of these, heretofore untried, he now proposed to essay, armed with new courage, and cheered on by the presence of his family. In partnership with an energetic little man who had an English chapter in his history, he prepared to set up a refreshment booth on Crescent Beach. But while he was completing arrangements at the beach, we remained in town, where we enjoyed the educational advantages of a thickly populated neighborhood; namely, Wall Street, in the West End of Boston.

Anybody who knows Boston knows that the West and North Ends are the wrong ends of that city. They form the tenement district, or, in the newer phrase, the slums of Boston. Anybody who is acquainted with the slums of any American metropolis knows that that is the quarter where poor immigrants foregather, to live, for the most part, as unkempt, half-washed, toiling, unaspiring foreigners; pitiful in the eyes of social missionaries, the despair of boards of health, the hope of ward politicians, the touchstone of American democracy. The well-versed metropolitan knows the slums as a sort of house of detention for poor aliens, where they live on probation till they can show a certificate of good citizenship.

He may know all this and yet not guess how Wall Street, in the West End, appears in the eyes of a little immigrant from Polotzk. What would the sophisticated sight-seer say about Union Place, off Wall Street, where my new home waited for me? He would say that it is no place at all, but a short box of an alley. Two rows of three-story tenements are its sides, a stingy strip of sky is its lid, a littered pavement is the floor, and a narrow mouth its exit.

But I saw a very different picture on my introduction to Union Place. I saw two imposing rows of brick buildings, loftier than any dwelling I had ever lived in. Brick was even on the ground for me to tread on, instead of common earth or boards. Many friendly windows stood open, filled with uncovered heads of women and children. I thought the people were interested in us, which was very neighborly. I looked up to the topmost row of windows, and my eyes were filled with the May blue of an American sky!

In our days of affluence in Russia we had been accustomed to upholstered parlors, embroidered linen, silver spoons and candlesticks, goblets of gold, kitchen shelves shining with copper and brass. We had feather-beds heaped halfway to the ceiling; we had clothes presses dusky with velvet and silk and fine woolen. The three small rooms into which my father now ushered us, up one flight of stairs, contained only the necessary beds, with lean mattresses; a few wooden chairs; a table or two; a mysterious iron structure, which later turned out to be a stove; a couple of unornamental kerosene lamps; and a scanty array of cooking-utensils and crockery. And yet we were all impressed with our new home and its furniture. It was not only because we had just passed through our seven lean years, cooking in earthern vessels, eating black bread on holidays and wearing cotton; it was chiefly because these wooden chairs and tin pans were American chairs and pans that they shone glorious in our eyes. And if there was anything lacking for comfort or decoration we expected it to be presently supplied--at least, we children did. Perhaps my mother alone, of us newcomers, appreciated the shabbiness of the little apartment, and realized that for her there was as yet no laying down of the burden of poverty.

Our initiation into American ways began with the first step on the new soil. My father found occasion to instruct or correct us even on the way from the pier to Wall Street, which journey we made crowded together in a rickety cab. He told us not to lean out of the windows, not to point, and explained the word "greenhorn." We did not want to be "greenhorns," and gave the strictest attention to my father's instructions. I do not know when my parents found opportunity to review together the history of Polotzk in the three years past, for we children had no patience with the subject; my mother's narrative was constantly interrupted by irrelevant questions, interjections, and explanations.

The first meal was an object lesson of much variety. My father produced several kinds of food, ready to eat, without any cooking, from little tin cans that had printing all over them. He attempted to introduce us to a queer, slippery kind of fruit, which he called "banana," but had to give it up for the time being. After the meal, he had better luck with a curious piece of furniture on runners, which he called "rocking-chair." There were five of us newcomers, and we found five different ways of getting into the American machine of perpetual motion, and as many ways of getting out of it. One born and bred to the use of a rocking-chair cannot imagine how ludicrous people can make themselves when attempting to use it for the first time. We laughed immoderately over our various experiments with the novelty, which was a wholesome way of letting off steam after the unusual excitement of the day.

In our flat we did not think of such a thing as storing the coal in the bathtub. There was no bathtub. So in the evening of the first day my father conducted us to the public baths. As we moved along in a little procession, I was delighted with the illumination of the streets. So many lamps, and they burned until morning, my father said, and so people did not need to carry lanterns. In America, then, everything was free, as we had heard in Russia. Light was free; the streets were as bright as a synagogue on a holy day. Music was free; we had been serenaded, to our gaping delight, by a brass band of many pieces, soon after our installation on Union Place.

Education was free. That subject my father had written about repeatedly, as comprising his chief hope for us children, the essence of American opportunity, the treasure that no thief could touch, not even misfortune or poverty. It was the one thing that he was able to promise us when he sent for us; surer, safer than bread or shelter. On our second day I was thrilled with the realization of what this freedom of education meant. A little girl from across the alley came and offered to conduct us to school. My father was out, but we five between us had a few words of English by this time. We knew the word school. We understood. This child, who had never seen us till yesterday, who could not pronounce our names, who was not much better dressed than we, was able to offer us the freedom of the schools of Boston! No application made, no questions asked, no examinations, rulings, exclusions; no machinations, no fees. The doors stood open for every one of us. The smallest child could show us the way.

This incident impressed me more than anything I had heard in advance of the freedom of education in America. It was a concrete proof--almost the thing itself. One had to experience it to understand it.

It was a great disappointment to be told by my father that we were not to enter upon our school career at once. It was too near the end of the term, he said, and we were going to move to Crescent Beach in a week or so. We had to wait until the opening of the schools in September. What a loss of precious time--from May till September!

Not that the time was really lost. Even the interval on Union Place was crowded with lessons and experiences. We had to visit the stores and be dressed from head to foot in American clothing; we had to learn the mysteries of the iron stove, the washboard, and the speaking-tube; we had to learn to trade with the fruit peddler through the window, and not to be afraid of the policeman; and, above all, we had to learn English.

The kind people who assisted us in these important matters form a group by themselves in the gallery of my friends. If I had never seen them from those early days till now, I should still have remembered them with gratitude. When I enumerate the long list of American teachers, I must begin with those who came to us on Wall Street and taught us our first steps. To my mother, in her perplexity over the cookstove, the woman who showed her how to make the fire was an angel of deliverance. A fairy godmother to us children was she who led us to a wonderful country called "uptown," where in a dazzlingly beautiful palace called a "department store," we exchanged our hateful homemade European costumes, which pointed us out as "greenhorns" to the children on the street, for real American machine-made garments, and issued forth glorified in each other's eyes.

With our despised immigrant clothing we shed also our impossible Hebrew names. A committee of our friends, several years ahead of us in American experience, put their heads together and concocted American names for us all. Those of our real names that had no pleasing American equivalents they ruthlessly discarded, content if they retained the initials. My mother, possessing a name that was not easily translatable, was punished with the undignified nickname of Annie. Fetchke, Joseph, and Deborah issued as Frieda, Joseph, and Dora, respectively. As for poor me, I was simply cheated. The name they gave me was hardly new. My Hebrew name being Maryashe in full, Mashke for short, Russianized into Marya (_Mar-ya_) my friends said that it would hold good in English as _Mary_; which was very disappointing, as I longed to possess a strange-sounding American name like the others.

I am forgetting the consolation I had, in this matter of names, from the use of my surname, which I have had no occasion to mention until now. I found on my arrival that my father was "Mr. Antin" on the slightest provocation, and not, as in Polotzk, on state occasions alone. And so I was "Mary Antin," and I felt very important to answer to such a dignified title. It was just like America that even plain people should wear their surnames on week days.

As a family we were so diligent under instruction, so adaptable, and so clever in hiding our deficiencies, that when we made the journey to Crescent Beach, in the wake of our small wagon-load of household goods, my father had very little occasion to admonish us on the way, and I am sure he was not ashamed of us. So much we had achieved toward our Americanization during the two weeks since our landing.

Crescent Beach is a name that is printed in very small type on the maps of the environs of Boston, but a life-size strip of sand curves from Winthrop to Lynn; and that is historic ground in the annals of my family. The place is now a popular resort for holiday crowds, and is famous under the name of Revere Beach. When the reunited Antins made their stand there, however, there were no boulevards, no stately bath-houses, no hotels, no gaudy amusement places, no illuminations, no showmen, no tawdry rabble. There was only the bright clean sweep of sand, the summer sea, and the summer sky. At high tide the whole Atlantic rushed in, tossing the seaweeds in his mane; at low tide he rushed out, growling and gnashing his granite teeth. Between tides a baby might play on the beach, digging with pebbles and shells, till it lay asleep on the sand. The whole sun shone by day, troops of stars by night, and the great moon in its season.

Into this grand cycle of the seaside day I came to live and learn and play. A few people came with me, as I have already intimated; but the main thing was that _I_ came to live on the edge of the sea--I, who had spent my life inland, believing that the great waters of the world were spread out before me in the Dvina. My idea of the human world had grown enormously during the long journey; my idea of the earth had expanded with every day at sea, my idea of the world outside the earth now budded and swelled during my prolonged experience of the wide and unobstructed heavens.

Not that I got any inkling of the conception of a multiple world. I had had no lessons in cosmogony, and I had no spontaneous revelation of the true position of the earth in the universe. For me, as for my fathers, the sun set and rose, and I did not feel the earth rushing through space. But I lay stretched out in the sun, my eyes level with the sea, till I seemed to be absorbed bodily by the very materials of the world around me; till I could not feel my hand as separate from the warm sand in which it was buried. Or I crouched on the beach at full moon, wondering, wondering, between the two splendors of the sky and the sea. Or I ran out to meet the incoming storm, my face full in the wind, my being a-tingle with an awesome delight to the tips of my fog-matted locks flying behind; and stood clinging to some stake or upturned boat, shaken by the roar and rumble of the waves. So clinging, I pretended that I was in danger, and was deliciously frightened; I held on with both hands, and shook my head, exulting in the tumult around me, equally ready to laugh or sob. Or else I sat, on the stillest days, with my back to the sea, not looking at all, but just listening to the rustle of the waves on the sand; not thinking at all, but just breathing with the sea.

Thus courting the influence of sea and sky and variable weather, I was bound to have dreams, hints, imaginings. It was no more than this, perhaps: that the world as I knew it was not large enough to contain all that I saw and felt; that the thoughts that flashed through my mind, not half understood, unrelated to my utterable thoughts, concerned something for which I had as yet no name. Every imaginative growing child has these flashes of intuition, especially one that becomes intimate with some one aspect of nature. With me it was the growing time, that idle summer by the sea, and I grew all the faster because I had been so cramped before. My mind, too, had so recently been worked upon by the impressive experience of a change of country that I was more than commonly alive to impressions, which are the seeds of ideas.

Let no one suppose that I spent my time entirely, or even chiefly, in inspired solitude. By far the best part of my day was spent in play--frank, hearty, boisterous play, such as comes natural to American children. In Polotzk I had already begun to be considered too old for play, excepting set games or organized frolics. Here I found myself included with children who still played, and I willingly returned to childhood. There were plenty of playfellows. My father's energetic little partner had a little wife and a large family. He kept them in the little cottage next to ours; and that the shanty survived the tumultuous presence of that brood is a wonder to me to-day. The young Wilners included an assortment of boys, girls, and twins, of every possible variety of age, size, disposition, and sex. They swarmed in and out of the cottage all day long, wearing the door-sill hollow, and trampling the ground to powder. They swung out of windows like monkeys, slid up the roof like flies, and shot out of trees like fowls. Even a small person like me couldn't go anywhere without being run over by a Wilner; and I could never tell which Wilner it was because none of them ever stood still long enough to be identified; and also because I suspected that they were in the habit of interchanging conspicuous articles of clothing, which was very confusing.

You would suppose that the little mother must have been utterly lost, bewildered, trodden down in this horde of urchins; but you are mistaken. Mrs. Wilner was a positively majestic little person. She ruled her brood with the utmost coolness and strictness. She had even the biggest boy under her thumb, frequently under her palm. If they enjoyed the wildest freedom outdoors, indoors the young Wilners lived by the clock. And so at five o'clock in the evening, on seven days in the week, my father's partner's children could be seen in two long rows around the supper table. You could tell them apart on this occasion, because they all had their faces washed. And this is the time to count them: there are twelve little Wilners at table.

I managed to retain my identity in this multitude somehow, and while I was very much impressed with their numbers, I even dared to pick and choose my friends among the Wilners. One or two of the smaller boys I liked best of all, for a game of hide-and-seek or a frolic on the beach. We played in the water like ducks, never taking the trouble to get dry. One day I waded out with one of the boys, to see which of us dared go farthest. The tide was extremely low, and we had not wet our knees when we began to look back to see if familiar objects were still in sight. I thought we had been wading for hours, and still the water was so shallow and quiet. My companion was marching straight ahead, so I did the same. Suddenly a swell lifted us almost off our feet, and we clutched at each other simultaneously. There was a lesser swell, and little waves began to run, and a sigh went up from the sea. The tide was turning--perhaps a storm was on the way--and we were miles, dreadful miles from dry land.

Boy and girl turned without a word, four determined bare legs ploughing through the water, four scared eyes straining toward the land. Through an eternity of toil and fear they kept dumbly on, death at their heels, pride still in their hearts. At last they reach high-water mark--six hours before full tide.

Each has seen the other afraid, and each rejoices in the knowledge. But only the boy is sure of his tongue.

"You was scared, warn't you?" he taunts.

The girl understands so much, and is able to reply:

"You can schwimmen, I not."

"Betcher life I can schwimmen," the other mocks.

And the girl walks off, angry and hurt.

"An' I can walk on my hands," the tormentor calls after her. "Say, you greenhorn, why don'tcher look?"

The girl keeps straight on, vowing that she would never walk with that rude boy again, neither by land nor sea, not even though the waters should part at his bidding.

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 glasses, 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 apron 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 apron, 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 basement. He put in a few barrels of flour and of sugar, a few boxes of crackers, a few gallons of kerosene, an assortment 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 Saturday, 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 attitude toward bread-and-butter 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 butterflies. 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 assiduity; 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 passed 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 institutions 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 municipal 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 attitude of the intelligent immigrant child toward American institutions. 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 class, testify to the noble 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 circumstances. 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 attitude 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 superstition, 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 passed 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 constitution, 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 God 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 pronunciation 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 class 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=:--Pronounced 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 Düna 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 _jüdisch_, 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 goddess 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 Basement Store A Large Family Learning to Speak a New Language What the Public School can Do A Russian Brass Shop The Factory Girl My Childish Sports The Refreshment Stand On the Sea Shore 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

=The Immigrant Family=:--Have you ever seen a family that have just arrived in America from a foreign land? Tell where you saw them. How many persons were there? What were they doing? Describe each person, noting especially anything odd or picturesque in looks, dress, or behavior. Were they carrying anything? What expressions did they have on their faces? Did they seem pleased with their new surroundings? Was anyone trying to help them? Could they speak English? If possible, report a few fragments of their conversation. Did you have a chance to find out what they thought of America? Do you know what has become of them, and how they are getting along?

=A Fragment of my Autobiography=:--Did you, as a child, move into a strange town, or make a visit in a place entirely new to you? Tell rather briefly why you went and what preparations were made. Then give an account of your arrival. What was the first thing that impressed you? What did you do or say? What did the grown people say? Was there anything unusual about the food, or the furniture, or the dress of the people? Go on and relate your experiences, telling any incidents that you remember. Try to make your reader share the bewilderment and excitement you felt. Did anyone laugh at you, or make fun of you, or hurt your feelings? Were you glad or sorry that you had come? Finish your story by telling of your departure from the place, or of your gradually getting used to your new surroundings.

Try to recall some other experiences of your childhood. Write them out quite fully, giving space to your feelings as well as to the events.

COLLATERAL READINGS

The Promised Land Mary Antin They Who Knock at Our Gates " " The Lie " " (Atlantic Monthly, August, 1913) Children of the Tenements Jacob A. Riis The Making of an American " " " On the Trail of the Immigrant E.A. Steiner Against the Current " " " The Immigrant Tide " " " The Man Farthest Down Booker T. Washington Up from Slavery " " " The Woman who Toils Marie and Mrs. John Van Vorst The Long Day Anonymous Old Homes of New Americans F.E. Clark Autobiography S.S. McClure Autobiography Theodore Roosevelt A Buckeye Boyhood W.H. Venable A Tuscan Childhood Lisa Cipriani An Indian Boyhood Charles Eastman When I Was Young Yoshio Markino When I Was a Boy in Japan Sakae Shioya The Story of my Childhood Clara Barton The Story of my Boyhood and Youth John Muir The Biography of a Prairie Girl Eleanor Gates Autobiography of a Tomboy Jeanette Gilder The One I Knew Best of All Frances Hodgson Burnett The Story of my Life Helen Keller The Story of a Child Pierre Loti A New England Girlhood Lucy Larcom Autobiography Joseph Jefferson Dream Days Kenneth Grahame The Golden Age " " The Would-be-Goods E. Nesbit In the Morning Glow Roy Rolfe Gilson Chapters from a Life Elizabeth Stuart Phelps-Ward

Mary Antin: Outlook, 102:482, November 2, 1912; 104:473, June 28, 1913 (Portrait). Bookman, 35:419-421, June 1912.

WARBLE FOR LILAC-TIME

WALT WHITMAN

Warble me now for joy of lilac-time (returning in reminiscence), Sort me, O tongue and lips for Nature's sake, souvenirs of earliest summer, Gather the welcome signs (as children with pebbles or stringing shells), Put in April and May, the hylas croaking in the ponds, the elastic air, Bees, butterflies, the sparrow with its simple notes, Blue-bird and darting swallow, nor forget the high-hole flashing his golden wings, The tranquil sunny haze, the clinging smoke, the vapor, Shimmer of waters with fish in them, the cerulean above, All that is jocund and sparkling, the brooks running, The maple woods, the crisp February days, and the sugar-making, The robin where he hops, bright-eyed, brown-breasted, With musical clear call at sunrise and again at sunset, Or flitting among the trees of the apple-orchard, building the nest of his mate, The melted snow of March, the willow sending forth its yellow-green sprouts, For spring-time is here! the summer is here! and what is this in it and from it? Thou, soul, unloosen'd--the restlessness after I know not what; Come, let us lag here no longer, let us be up and away!

O if one could but fly like a bird! O to escape, to sail forth as in a ship! To glide with thee, O soul, o'er all, in all, as a ship o'er the waters; Gathering these hints, the preludes, the blue sky, the grass, the morning drops of dew, The lilac-scent, the bushes with dark-green heart-shaped leaves, Wood-violets, the little delicate pale blossoms called innocence, Samples and sorts not for themselves alone, but for their atmosphere, To grace the bush I love--to sing with the birds, A warble for joy of lilac-time, returning in reminiscence.

SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY

What is the meaning of "sort me"? Why jumble all these signs of summer together? Does one naturally think in an orderly way when recalling the details of spring or summer? Can you think of any important points that the author has left out? Is _samples_ a poetic word? What is meant by the line "not for themselves alone," etc.? Note the sound-words in the poem: What is their value here? Read the lines slowly to yourself, or have some one read them aloud, and see how many of them suggest little pictures. Note the punctuation: Do you approve? Is this your idea of poetry? What is poetry? Would this be better if it were in the full form of verse? Can you see why the critics have disagreed over Whitman's poetry?

WHEN I HEARD THE LEARN'D ASTRONOMER

WALT WHITMAN

When I heard the learn'd astronomer, When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me, When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide and measure them, When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room, How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick, Till rising and gliding out I wander'd off by myself, In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time, Look'd up in perfect silence at the stars.

SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY

Why did the listener become tired of the lecturer who spoke with much applause? What did he learn from the stars when he was alone out of doors? Does he not think the study of astronomy worth while? What would be his feeling toward other scientific studies? What do you get out of this poem? What do you think of the way in which it is written?

VIGIL STRANGE I KEPT ON THE FIELD ONE NIGHT

WALT WHITMAN

Vigil strange I kept on the field one night; When you my son and my comrade dropt at my side that day, One look I but gave which your dear eyes return'd with a look I shall never forget, One touch of your hand to mine, O boy, reach'd up as you lay on the ground, Then onward I sped in the battle, the even-contested battle, Till late in the night reliev'd to the place at last again I made my way, Found you in death so cold dear comrade, found your body, son of responding kisses (never again on earth responding), Bared your face in the starlight, curious the scene, cool blew the moderate night-wind, Long there and then in vigil I stood, dimly around me the battle-field spreading, Vigil wondrous and vigil sweet there in the fragrant silent night, But not a tear fell, not even a long-drawn sigh, long, long I gazed, Then on the earth partially reclining sat by your side leaning my chin in my hands, Passing sweet hours, immortal and mystic hours with you dearest comrade--not a tear, not a word, Vigil of silence, love and death, vigil for you my son and my soldier, As onward silently stars aloft, eastward new ones upward stole, Vigil final for you brave boy, (I could not save you, swift was your death, I faithfully loved you and cared for you living, I think we shall surely meet again,) Till at latest lingering of the night, indeed just as the dawn appear'd, My comrade I wrapt in his blanket, envelop'd well his form, Folded the blanket well, tucked it carefully over head and carefully under feet, And there and then and bathed by the rising sun, my son in his grave, in his rude-dug grave I deposited, Ending my strange vigil with that, vigil of night and battlefield dim, Vigil for boy of responding kisses (never again on earth responding), Vigil for comrade swiftly slain, vigil I never forget, how as day brighten'd, I rose from the chill ground and folded my soldier well in his blanket, And buried him where he fell.

SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY

What is a vigil? Was Whitman ever in battle? Does he mean himself speaking? Was the boy really his son? Is the man's calmness a sign that he does not care? Why does he call the vigil "wondrous" and "sweet"? What does he think about the next life? Read the poem over slowly and thoughtfully to yourself, or aloud to some one: How does it make you feel?

Can you see any reason for calling Whitman a great poet? Has he broadened your idea of what poetry may be? Read, if possible, in John Burroughs's book on Whitman, pages 48-53.

EXERCISES

Re-read the _Warble for Lilac-Time_. Can you write of the signs of fall, in somewhat the same way? Choose the most beautiful and the most important characteristics that you can think of. Try to use color-words and sound-words so that they make your composition vivid and musical. Compare the _Warble for Lilac-Time_ with the first lines of Chaucer's _Prologue_ to the _Canterbury Tales_. With Lowell's _How Spring Came in New England_.

THEME SUBJECTS

A Walk in the Woods A Spring Day Sugar-Making My Flower Garden The Garden in Lilac Time The Orchard in Spring On a Farm in Early Summer A Walk on a Summer Night Waiting for Morning The Stars Walt Whitman and his Poetry

COLLATERAL READINGS

Poems by Whitman suitable for class reading:-- On the Beach at Night Bivouac on a Mountain Side To a Locomotive in Winter A Farm Picture The Runner I Hear It was Charged against Me A Sight in Camp By the Bivouac's Fitful Flame Song of the Broad-Axe A Child said _What is the grass?_ (from _A Song of Myself_)

The Rolling Earth (Selections from Whitman) W.R. Browne (Ed.) The Life of Walt Whitman H.B. Binns Walt Whitman John Burroughs A Visit to Walt Whitman (Portraits) John Johnston Walt Whitman the Man (Portraits) Thomas Donaldson Walt Whitman G.R. Carpenter Walt Whitman (Portraits) I.H. Platt Whitman Bliss Perry Early May in New England (poem) Percy Mackaye Knee-deep in June J.W. Riley Spring Henry Timrod Spring Song Bliss Carman

ODYSSEUS IN PHAEACIA

TRANSLATED BY GEORGE HERBERT PALMER

Thus long-tried royal Odysseus slumbered here, heavy with sleep and toil; but Athene went to the land and town of the Phaeacians. This people once in ancient times lived in the open highlands, near that rude folk the Cyclops, who often plundered them, being in strength more powerful than they. Moving them thence, godlike Nausithoüs, their leader, established them at Scheria, far from toiling men. He ran a wall around the town, built houses there, made temples for the gods, and laid out farms; but Nausithoüs had met his doom and gone to the house of Hades, and Alcinoüs now was reigning, trained in wisdom by the gods. To this man's dwelling came the goddess, clear-eyed Athene, planning a safe return for brave Odysseus. She hastened to a chamber, richly wrought, in which a maid was sleeping, of form and beauty like the immortals, Nausicaä, daughter of generous Alcinoüs. Near by two damsels, dowered with beauty by the Graces, slept by the threshold, one on either hand. The shining doors were shut; but Athene, like a breath of air, moved to the maid's couch, stood by her head, and thus addressed her,--taking the likeness of the daughter of Dymas, the famous seaman, a maiden just Nausicaä's age, dear to her heart. Taking her guise, thus spoke clear-eyed Athene:--

"Nausicaä, how did your mother bear a child so heedless? Your gay clothes lie uncared for, though the wedding time is near, when you must wear fine clothes yourself and furnish them to those that may attend you. From things like these a good repute arises, and father and honored mother are made glad. Then let us go a-washing at the dawn of day, and I will go to help, that you may soon be ready; for really not much longer will you be a maid. Already you have for suitors the chief ones of the land throughout Phaeacia, where you too were born. Come, then, beg your good father early in the morning to harness the mules and cart, so as to carry the men's clothes, gowns, and bright-hued rugs. Yes, and for you yourself it is more decent so than setting forth on foot; the pools are far from the town."

Saying this, clear-eyed Athene passed away, off to Olympus, where they say the dwelling of the gods stands fast forever. Never with winds is it disturbed, nor by the rain made wet, nor does the snow come near; but everywhere the upper air spreads cloudless, and a bright radiance plays over all; and there the blessed gods are happy all their days. Thither now came the clear-eyed one, when she had spoken with the maid.

Soon bright-throned morning came, and waked fair-robed Nausicaä. She marveled at the dream, and hastened through the house to tell it to her parents, her dear father and her mother. She found them still in-doors: her mother sat by the hearth among the waiting-women, spinning sea-purple yarn; she met her father at the door, just going forth to join the famous princes at the council, to which the high Phaeacians summoned him. So standing close beside him, she said to her dear father:--

"Papa dear, could you not have the wagon harnessed for me,--the high one, with good wheels,--to take my nice clothes to the river to be washed, which now are lying dirty? Surely for you yourself it is but proper, when you are with the first men holding councils, that you should wear clean clothing. Five good sons too are here at home,--two married, and three merry young men still,--and they are always wanting to go to the dance wearing fresh clothes. And this is all a trouble on my mind."

Such were her words, for she was shy of naming the glad marriage to her father; but he understood it all, and answered thus:

"I do not grudge the mules, my child, nor anything beside. Go! Quickly shall the servants harness the wagon for you, the high one, with good wheels, fitted with rack above."

Saying this, he called to the servants, who gave heed. Out in the court they made the easy mule-cart ready; they brought the mules and yoked them to the wagon. The maid took from her room her pretty clothing, and stowed it in the polished wagon; her mother put in a chest food the maid liked, of every kind, put dainties in, and poured some wine into a goat-skin bottle,--the maid, meanwhile, had got into the wagon,--and gave her in a golden flask some liquid oil, that she might bathe and anoint herself, she and the waiting-women. Nausicaä took the whip and the bright reins, and cracked the whip to start. There was a clatter of the mules, and steadily they pulled, drawing the clothing and the maid,--yet not alone; beside her went the waiting-women too.

When now they came to the fair river's current, where the pools were always full,--for in abundance clear water bubbles from beneath to cleanse the foulest stains,--they turned the mules loose from the wagon, and let them stray along the eddying stream, to crop the honeyed pasturage. Then from the wagon they took the clothing in their arms, carried it into the dark water, and stamped it in the pits with rivalry in speed. And after they had washed and cleansed it of all stains, they spread it carefully along the shore, just where the waves washed up the pebbles on the beach. Then bathing and anointing with the oil, they presently took dinner on the river bank and waited for the clothes to dry in the sunshine. And when they were refreshed with food, the maids and she, they then began to play at ball, throwing their wimples off. White-armed Nausicaä led their sport; and as the huntress Artemis goes down a mountain, down long Taÿgetus or Erymanthus, exulting in the boars and the swift deer, while round her sport the woodland nymphs, daughters of ægis-bearing Zeus, and glad is Leto's heart, for all the rest her child o'ertops by head and brow, and easily marked is she, though all are fair; so did this virgin pure excel her women.

But when Nausicaä thought to turn toward home once more, to yoke the mules and fold up the clean clothes, then a new plan the goddess formed, clear-eyed Athene; for she would have Odysseus wake and see the bright-eyed maid, who might to the Phaeacian city show the way. Just then the princess tossed the ball to one of her women, and missing her it fell in the deep eddy. Thereat they screamed aloud. Royal Odysseus woke, and sitting up debated in his mind and heart:--

"Alas! To what men's land am I come now? Lawless and savage are they, with no regard for right, or are they kind to strangers and reverent toward the gods? It was as if there came to me the delicate voice of maids--nymphs, it may be, who haunt the craggy peaks of hills, the springs of streams and grassy marshes; or am I now, perhaps, near men of human speech? Suppose I make a trial for myself, and see."

So saying, royal Odysseus crept from the thicket, but with his strong hand broke a spray of leaves from the close wood, to be a covering round his body for his nakedness. He set off like a lion that is bred among the hills and trusts its strength; onward it goes, beaten with rain and wind; its two eyes glare; and now in search of oxen or of sheep it moves, or tracking the wild deer; its belly bids it make trial of the flocks, even by entering the guarded folds; so was Odysseus about to meet those fair-haired maids, for need constrained him. To them he seemed a loathsome sight, befouled with brine. They hurried off, one here, one there, over the stretching sands. Only the daughter of Alcinoüs stayed, for in her breast Athene had put courage and from her limbs took fear. Steadfast she stood to meet him. And now Odysseus doubted whether to make his suit by clasping the knees of the bright-eyed maid, or where he stood, aloof, in winning words to make that suit, and try if she would show the town and give him clothing. Reflecting thus, it seemed the better way to make his suit in winning words, aloof; for fear if he should clasp her knees, the maid might be offended. Forthwith he spoke, a winning and shrewd speech:--

"I am your suppliant, princess. Are you some god or mortal? If one of the gods who hold the open sky, to Artemis, daughter of mighty Zeus, in beauty, height, and bearing I find you likest. But if you are a mortal, living on the earth, most happy are your father and your honored mother, most happy your brothers also. Surely their hearts ever grow warm with pleasure over you, when watching such a blossom moving in the dance. And then exceeding happy he, beyond all others, who shall with gifts prevail and lead you home. For I never before saw such a being with these eyes--no man, no woman. I am amazed to see. At Delos once, by Apollo's altar, something like you I noticed, a young palm shoot springing up; for thither too I came, and a great troop was with me, upon a journey where I was to meet with bitter trials. And just as when I looked on that I marveled long within, since never before sprang such a stalk from earth; so, lady, I admire and marvel now at you, and greatly fear to touch your knees. Yet grievous woe is on me. Yesterday, after twenty days, I escaped from the wine-dark sea, and all that time the waves and boisterous winds bore me away from the island of Ogygia. Now some god cast me here, that probably here also I may meet with trouble; for I do not think trouble will cease, but much the gods will first accomplish. Then, princess, have compassion, for it is you to whom through many grievous toils I first am come; none else I know of all who own this city and this land. Show me the town, and give me a rag to throw around me, if you had perhaps on coming here some wrapper for your linen. And may the gods grant all that in your thoughts you long for: husband and home and true accord may they bestow; for a better and higher gift than this there cannot be, when with accordant aims man and wife have a home. Great grief it is to foes and joy to friends; but they themselves best know its meaning."

Then answered him white-armed Nausicaä: "Stranger, because you do not seem a common, senseless person,--and Olympian Zeus himself distributes fortune to mankind and gives to high and low even as he wills to each; and this he gave to you, and you must bear it therefore,--now you have reached our city and our land, you shall not lack for clothes nor anything besides which it is fit a hard-pressed suppliant should find. I will point out the town and tell its people's name. The Phaeacians own this city and this land, and I am the daughter of generous Alcinoüs, on whom the might and power of the Phaeacians rests."

She spoke, and called her fair-haired waiting-women: "My women, stay! Why do you run because you saw a man? You surely do not think him evil-minded, The man is not alive, and never will be born, who can come and offer harm to the Phaeacian land: for we are very dear to the immortals; and then we live apart, far on the surging sea, no other tribe of men has dealings with us. But this poor man has come here having lost his way, and we should give him aid; for in the charge of Zeus all strangers and beggars stand, and a small gift is welcome. Then give, my women, to the stranger food and drink, and let him bathe in the river where there is shelter from the breeze."

She spoke; the others stopped and called to one another, and down they brought Odysseus to the place of shelter, even as Nausicaä, daughter of generous Alcinoüs, had ordered. They placed a robe and tunic there for clothing, they gave him in the golden flask the liquid oil, and bade him bathe in the stream's currents.

* * * * *

The women went away.... And now, with water from the stream, royal Odysseus washed his skin clean of the salt which clung about his back and his broad shoulders, and wiped from his head the foam brought by the barren sea; and when he had thoroughly bathed and oiled himself and had put on the clothing which the chaste maiden gave, Athene, the daughter of Zeus, made him taller than before and stouter to behold, and she made the curling locks to fall around his head as on the hyacinth flower. As when a man lays gold on silver,--some skillful man whom Hephaestus and Pallas Athene have trained in every art, and he fashions graceful work; so did she cast a grace upon his head and shoulders. He walked apart along the shore, and there sat down, beaming with grace and beauty. The maid observed; then to her fair-haired waiting-women said:--

"Hearken, my white-armed women, while I speak. Not without purpose on the part of all the gods that hold Olympus is this man's meeting with the godlike Phaeacians. A while ago, he really seemed to me ill-looking, but now he is like the gods who hold the open sky. Ah, might a man like this be called my husband, having his home here, and content to stay! But give, my women, to the stranger food and drink."

She spoke, and very willingly they heeded and obeyed, and set beside Odysseus food and drink. Then long-tried Odysseus eagerly drank and ate, for he had long been fasting.

And now to other matters white-armed Nausicaä turned her thoughts. She folded the clothes and laid them in the beautiful wagon, she yoked the stout-hoofed mules, mounted herself, and calling to Odysseus thus she spoke and said:--

"Arise now, stranger, and hasten to the town, that I may set you on the road to my wise father's house, where you shall see, I promise you, the best of all Phaeacia. Only do this,--you seem to me not to lack understanding: while we are passing through the fields and farms, here with my women, behind the mules and cart, walk rapidly along, and I will lead the way. But as we near the town,--round which is a lofty rampart, a beautiful harbor on each side and a narrow road between,--there curved ships line the way; for every man has his own mooring-place. Beyond is the assembly near the beautiful grounds of Poseidon, constructed out of blocks of stone deeply imbedded. Further along, they make the black ships' tackling, cables and canvas, and shape out the oars; for the Phaeacians do not care for bow and quiver, only for masts and oars of ships and the trim ships themselves, with which it is their joy to cross the foaming sea. Now the rude talk of such as these I would avoid, that no one afterwards may give me blame. For very forward persons are about the place, and some coarse man might say, if he should meet us: 'What tall and handsome stranger is following Nausicaä? Where did she find him? A husband he will be, her very own. Some castaway, perhaps, she rescued from his vessel, some foreigner; for we have no neighbors here. Or at her prayer some long-entreated god has come straight down from heaven, and he will keep her his forever. So much the better, if she has gone herself and found a husband elsewhere! The people of our own land here, Phaeacians, she disdains, though she has many high-born suitors.' So they will talk, and for me it would prove a scandal. I should myself censure a girl who acted so, who, heedless of friends, while father and mother were alive, mingled with men before her public wedding. And, stranger, listen now to what I say, that you may soon obtain assistance and safe conduct from my father. Near our road you will see a stately grove of poplar trees, belonging to Athene; in it a fountain flows, and round it is a meadow. That is my father's park, his fruitful vineyard, as far from the town as one can call. There sit and wait a while, until we come to the town and reach my father's palace. But when you think we have already reached the palace, enter the city of the Phaeacians, and ask for the palace of my father, generous Alcinoüs. Easily is it known; a child, though young, could show the way; for the Phaeacians do not build their houses like the dwelling of Alcinoüs their prince. But when his house and court receive you, pass quickly through the hall until you find my mother. She sits in the firelight by the hearth, spinning sea-purple yarn, a marvel to behold, and resting against a pillar. Her handmaids sit behind her. Here too my father's seat rests on the self-same pillar, and here he sits and sips his wine like an immortal. Passing him by, stretch out your hands to our mother's knees, if you would see the day of your return in gladness and with speed, although you come from far. If she regards you kindly in her heart, then there is hope that you may see your friends and reach your stately house and native land."

Saying this, with her bright whip she struck the mules, and fast they left the river's streams; and well they trotted, well they plied their feet, and skillfully she reined them that those on foot might follow,--the waiting-women and Odysseus,--and moderately she used the lash. The sun was setting when they reached the famous grove, Athene's sacred ground where royal Odysseus sat him down. And thereupon he prayed to the daughter of mighty Zeus:--

"Hearken, thou child of ægis-bearing Zeus, unwearied one! O hear me now, although before thou didst not hear me, when I was wrecked, what time the great Land-shaker wrecked me. Grant that I come among the Phaeacians welcomed and pitied by them."

So spoke he in his prayer, and Pallas Athene heard, but did not yet appear to him in open presence; for she regarded still her father's brother, who stoutly strove with godlike Odysseus until he reached his land.

Here, then, long-tried royal Odysseus made his prayer; but to the town the strong mules bore the maid. And when she reached her father's famous palace, she stopped before the door-way, and round her stood her brothers, men like immortals, who from the cart unyoked the mules and carried the clothing in. The maid went to her chamber, where a fire was kindled for her by an old Apeirean woman, the chamber-servant Eurymedousa, whom long ago curved ships brought from Apeira; her they had chosen from the rest to be the gift of honor for Alcinoüs, because he was the lord of all Phaeacians, and people listened to his voice as if he were a god. She was the nurse of white-armed Nausicaä at the palace, and she it was who kindled her the fire and in her room prepared her supper.

And now Odysseus rose to go to the city; but Athene kindly drew thick clouds around Odysseus, for fear some bold Phaeacian meeting him might trouble him with talk and ask him who he was. And just as he was entering the pleasant town, the goddess, clear-eyed Athene, came to meet him, disguised as a young girl who bore a water-jar. She paused as she drew near, and royal Odysseus asked:--

"My child, could you not guide me to the house of one Alcinoüs, who is ruler of this people? For I am a toil-worn stranger come from far, out of a distant land. Therefore I know not one among the men who own this city and this land."

Then said to him the goddess, clear-eyed Athene: "Yes, good old stranger, I will show the house for which you ask, for it stands near my gentle father's. But follow in silence: I will lead the way. Cast not a glance at any man and ask no questions, for our people do not well endure a stranger, nor courteously receive a man who comes from elsewhere. Yet they themselves trust in swift ships and traverse the great deep, for the Earth-shaker permits them. Swift are their ships as wing or thought."

Saying this, Pallas Athene led the way in haste, and he walked after in the footsteps of the goddess. So the Phaeacians, famed for shipping, did not observe him walking through the town among them, because Athene, the fair-haired powerful goddess, did not allow it, but in the kindness of her heart drew a marvelous mist around him. And now Odysseus admired the harbors, the trim ships, the meeting-places of the lords themselves, and the long walls that were so high, fitted with palisades, a marvel to behold. Then as they neared the famous palace of the king, the goddess, clear-eyed Athene, thus began:--

"Here, good old stranger, is the house you bade me show. You will see heaven-descended kings sitting at table here. But enter, and have no misgivings in your heart; for the courageous man in all affairs better attains his end, come he from where he may. First you shall find the Queen within the hall. Arete is her name.... Alcinoüs took Arete for his wife, and he has honored her as no one else on earth is honored among the women who to-day keep houses for their husbands. Thus has she had a heartfelt honor, and she has it still, from her own children, from Alcinoüs himself, and from the people also, who gaze on her as on a god and greet her with welcomes when she walks about the town. For of sound judgment, woman as she is, she has no lack; and those whom she regards, though men, find troubles clear away. If she regards you kindly in her heart, then there is hope that you may see your friends and reach your high-roofed house and native land."

Saying this, clear-eyed Athene passed away, over the barren sea. She turned from pleasant Scheria, and came to Marathon and wide-wayed Athens and entered there the strong house of Erechtheus. Meanwhile Odysseus neared the lordly palace of Alcinoüs, and his heart was deeply stirred so that he paused before he crossed the brazen threshold; for a sheen as of the sun or moon played through the high-roofed house of generous Alcinoüs. On either hand ran walls of bronze from threshold to recess, and round about the ceiling was a cornice of dark metal. Doors made of gold closed in the solid building. The door-posts were of silver and stood on a bronze threshold, silver the lintel overhead, and gold the handle. On the two sides were gold and silver dogs; these had Hephaestus wrought with subtle craft to guard the house of generous Alcinoüs, creatures immortal, young forever. Within were seats planted against the wall on this side and on that, from threshold to recess, in long array; and over these were strewn light fine-spun robes, the work of women. Here the Phaeacian leaders used to sit, drinking and eating, holding constant cheer. And golden youths on massive pedestals stood and held flaming torches in their hands to light by night the palace for the feasters.

In the King's house are fifty serving maids, some grinding at the mill the yellow corn, some plying looms or twisting yarn, who as they sit are like the leaves of a tall poplar; and from the close-spun linen drops the liquid oil. And as Phaeacian men are skilled beyond all others in speeding a swift ship along the sea, so are their women practiced at the loom; for Athene has given them in large measure skill in fair works and noble minds.

Without the court and close beside its gate is a large garden, covering four acres; around it runs a hedge on either side. Here grow tall thrifty trees--pears, pomegranates, apples with shining fruit, sweet figs and thrifty olives. On them fruit never fails; it is not gone in winter or in summer, but lasts throughout the year; for constantly the west wind's breath brings some to bud and mellows others. Pear ripens upon pear, apple on apple, cluster on cluster, fig on fig. Here too the teeming vineyard has been planted, one part of which, the drying place, lying on level ground, is heating in the sun; elsewhere men gather grapes; and elsewhere still they tread them. In front, the grapes are green and shed their flower, but a second row are now just turning dark. And here trim garden-beds, along the outer line, spring up in every kind and all the year are gay. Near by, two fountains rise, one scattering its streams throughout the garden, one bounding by another course beneath the courtyard gate toward the high house; from this the towns-folk draw their water. Such at the palace of Alcinoüs were the gods' splendid gifts.

Here long-tried royal Odysseus stood and gazed. Then after he had gazed his heart's fill on all, he quickly crossed the threshold and came within the house.

NOTES

=Phaeacia=:--The land of the Phaeacians, on the Island of Scheria, or Corcyra, the modern Corfu.

=Athene=:--Minerva, the goddess of wisdom, skill, and science. She was interested in war, and protected warlike heroes.

=Cyclops=:--One of a race of uncouth giants, each of whom had but a single eye, which was in the middle of the forehead.

=Nausithoüs=:--The king of the Phaeacians at the time they entered Scheria.

=Hades=:--The realm of souls; not necessarily a place of punishment.

=Artemis=:--Another name for Diana, goddess of the moon.

=Taÿgetus and Erymanthus=:--Mountains in Greece.

=Leto=:--The mother of Artemis.

=Delos=:--An island in the Aegean Sea.

=Ogygia=:--The island of the goddess Calypso, who held Odysseus captive for seven years.

=Hephaestus=:--Another name for Vulcan, the god of the under-world. He was a skilled worker in metal.

=Poseidon=:--Neptune, god of the ocean.

=Land-shaker=:--Neptune.

=Marathon=:--A plain eighteen miles from Athens. It was here that the Greeks defeated the Persians in 490 B.C.

=Erectheus=:--The mythical founder of Attica; he was half man and half serpent.

=THE PRONUNCIATION OF PROPER NAMES IN THIS SELECTION=

Al cin' o us ([)a]l sïn' [+o] _[)u]_ s) Ap ei' ra ([.a]p [=i]' r_a_) Ap ei re' an ([)a]p [=i] r[=e]' _[)a]_n) A re' te ([.a] r[=e]' t[=e]) Ar' te mis (är' t[+e] m[)i]s) A the' ne ([.a] th[=e]' n[=e]) Ca lyp' so (k_a_ l[)i]p' s[=o]) Cir' ce (sûr' s[=e]) Cy' clops (s[=i]' cl[)o]ps) De' los (d[=e]' l[)o]s) Dy' mas (d[=i]' m_[.a]_s) E rech' theus ([+e] r[)e]k' th[=u]s) E ry man' thus ([)e]r [)i] m[)a]n' th_[=u]_s) Eu rym e dou' sa ([=u] r[)i]m [+e] d[=oo]' s_[.a]_) He phaes' tus (h[+e] f[)e]s' t_[)u]_s) Le' to (l[=e]' t[=o]) Mar' a thon (m[)a]r' [.a] th[)o]n) Nau sic' a ä (nô s[)i]k' [+a] _[.a]_) Nau sith' o us (nô s[)i]th' [+o] _[)u]_s) O dys' seus ([+o] d[)i]s' [=u]s) O gyg' i a ([+o] j[)i]j' _[.a]_) Phae a' cia (f[+e] [=a]' sh_[.a]_) Po sei' don (p[+o] s[=i]' d_[)o]_n) Scher' i a (sk[=e]' r[)i] _[.a]_) Ta ÿg' e tus (t[=a] [)i]j' [+e] t_[)u]_s)

SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY

Odysseus (Ulysses) has been cast ashore after a long battle with the sea, following his attempt to escape on a raft from Calypso's island. He has been saved by the intervention of the goddess Athene, who often protects distressed heroes. When Book VI opens, he is sleeping in a secluded nook under an olive tree. (For Odysseus's adventures on the sea, consult Book V of the _Odyssey_.) Is Athene's visit to Nausicaä an unusual sort of thing in Greek story? Does it appear that it was customary for princesses to do their own washing? Note here that _I_ refers to the daughter of Dymas, since Athene is not speaking in her own character. From Nausicaä's conversation with her father and her preparations for departure, what can you judge of Greek family life? How does the author make us see vividly the activities of Nausicaä and her maids? Does the out-door scene appear true to life? _This virgin pure_ refers to Nausicaä, who is being compared to Artemis (Diana), the goddess of the hunt. What plan has Athene for assisting Odysseus? From the hero's speech, what can you tell of his character? Can you find out what adjectives are usually applied to Odysseus in the _Iliad_ and the _Odyssey_? Why does he here call Nausicaä "Princess"? What effect is his speech likely to have? What can you tell of Nausicaä from her reply? Give her reasons for not taking Odysseus with her to the town. Does she fail in hospitality? What do her reasons show of the life of Greek women? What do you judge of the prosperity of the Phaeacians? Why does Nausicaä tell Odysseus to seek the favor of her mother? _Her father's brother_ means Neptune (the Sea)--brother of Zeus, Athene's father; Neptune is enraged at Odysseus and wishes to destroy him. _Here then_: At this point Book VII begins. From what is said of Arete, what can you tell of the influence of the Greek women? How does the author make you feel the richness of Alcinoüs's palace? How does it differ from modern houses? _Corn_ means grain, not Indian corn, which, of course, had not yet been brought from the New World. Note the vivid description of the garden. How do you think Odysseus is received at the house of Alcinoüs? You can find out by reading the rest of Book VII of the _Odyssey_.

THEME SUBJECTS

One of Ulysses's Adventures An Escape from the Sea A Picnic on the Shore The Character of Nausicaä My Idea of a Princess The Life of a Greek Woman A Group of Girls The Character of Odysseus Shipwrecked A Beautiful Building Along the Shore Among Strangers A Garden A Story from the Odyssey Odysseus at the House of Alcinoüs The Lady of the House The Greek Warrior The Stranger Why I Wish to Study Greek

SUGGESTIONS FOR WRITING

=A Story from the Odyssey=:--Read, in a translation of the _Odyssey_, a story of Odysseus, and tell it in your own words. The following stories are appropriate: The Departure from Calypso's Island, Book V; The Cyclops Polyphemus, Book IX; The Palace of Circe, Book X; The Land of the Dead, Book XI; Scylla and Charybdis, Book XII; The Swineherd, Book XIV; The Trial of the Bow, Book XXI; The Slaughter of the Suitors, Book XXII.

After you have chosen a story, read it through several times, to fix the details in your mind. Lay the book aside, and write the story simply, but as vividly as possible.

=The Stranger=:--Explain the circumstances under which the stranger appears. Are people startled at seeing him (or her)? Describe him. Is he bewildered? Does he ask directions? Does he ask help? Quote his words directly. How are his remarks received? Are people afraid of him? or do they make sport of him? or do they receive him kindly? Who aids him? Tell what he does and what becomes of him. Quote what is said of him after he is gone.

Perhaps you will like to tell the story of Ulysses's arrival among the Phaeacians, giving it a modern setting, and using modern names.

=Odysseus at the House of Alcinoüs=:--Without reading Book VII of the _Odyssey_, write what you imagine to be the conversation between Alcinoüs (or Arete) and Odysseus, when the shipwrecked hero enters the palace.

COLLATERAL READINGS

The Odyssey George Herbert Palmer (Trans.) The Odyssey of Homer (prose translation) Butcher and Lang The Iliad of Homer Lang, Leaf, and Myers The Odyssey (translation in verse) William Cullen Bryant The Odyssey for Boys and Girls A.J. Church The Story of the Odyssey " " " Greek Song and Story " " " The Adventures of Odysseus Marvin, Mayor, and Stawell Tanglewood Tales Nathaniel Hawthorne Home Life of the Ancient Greeks H. Blümner (trans, by A. Zimmerman Classic Myths (