MARY ANTIN
With the publication in 1912 of Mary Antin’s “The Promised Land,” a new interest was awakened in the experiences of the foreign-born, and since then several important autobiographies of immigrants have appeared.Miss Antin, who was born in Polotzk, Russia, in 1881, and came to America in 1894, was educated in the public schools of Boston, later attending Teachers’ College and Barnard College, Columbia University. Many an American boy and girl is familiar with her fine tribute to the part of the public school in her Americanization.In 1914 she published “They Who Knock at Our Gates,” “a complete gospel of immigration,” in which she aims to refute the material and selfish arguments of the restrictionists, basing her plea for a nobler and more liberal treatment of the immigration question upon the fundamental principles of the Declaration of Independence. It is from this volume and “The Promised Land” that the following selections are taken.
With the publication in 1912 of Mary Antin’s “The Promised Land,” a new interest was awakened in the experiences of the foreign-born, and since then several important autobiographies of immigrants have appeared.
Miss Antin, who was born in Polotzk, Russia, in 1881, and came to America in 1894, was educated in the public schools of Boston, later attending Teachers’ College and Barnard College, Columbia University. Many an American boy and girl is familiar with her fine tribute to the part of the public school in her Americanization.
In 1914 she published “They Who Knock at Our Gates,” “a complete gospel of immigration,” in which she aims to refute the material and selfish arguments of the restrictionists, basing her plea for a nobler and more liberal treatment of the immigration question upon the fundamental principles of the Declaration of Independence. It is from this volume and “The Promised Land” that the following selections are taken.
The public school has done its best for us foreigners, and for the country, when it has made us into good Americans. I am glad it is mine to tell how the miracle was wrought in one case. You should be glad to hear of it, you born Americans; for it is the story of the growth of your country; of the flocking of your brothers and sisters from the far ends of the earth to the flag you love; of the recruiting of your armies of workers, thinkers, and leaders. And you will be glad to hear of it, my comrades in adoption; for it is a rehearsal of your own experience, the thrill and wonder of which your own hearts have felt.
How long would you say, wise reader, it takes to make an American? By the middle of my second year in school I had reached the sixth grade. When, after the Christmas holidays, we began to study the life of Washington, running through a summary of the Revolution, and the early days of the Republic, it seemed to me that all my reading and study had been idle until then. The reader, the arithmetic, the song book, that had so fascinated me until now, became suddenly sober exercise books, tools wherewith to hew a way to the source of inspiration. When the teacher read to us out of a big book with many bookmarks in it, I sat rigid with attention in my little chair, my hands tightly clasped on the edge of my desk; and I painfully held my breath, to prevent sighs of disappointment escaping, as I saw the teacher skip the parts between bookmarks. When the class read, and it came my turn, my voice shook and the book trembled in my hands. I could not pronounce the name of George Washington without a pause. Never had I prayed, never had I chanted the songs of David, never had I called upon the Most Holy, in such utter reverence and worship as I repeated the simple sentences of my child’s story of the patriot. I gazed with adoration at the portraits of George and Martha Washington,till I could see them with my eyes shut. And whereas formerly my self-consciousness had bordered on conceit, and I thought myself an uncommon person, parading my schoolbooks through the streets, and swelling with pride when a teacher detained me in conversation, now I grew humble all at once, seeing how insignificant I was beside the Great.
As I read about the noble boy who would not tell a lie to save himself from punishment, I was for the first time truly repentant of my sins. Formerly I had fasted and prayed and made sacrifice on the Day of Atonement, but it was more than half play, in mimicry of my elders. I had no real horror of sin, and I knew so many ways of escaping punishment. I am sure my family, my neighbors, my teachers in Polotzk—all my world, in fact—strove together, by example and precept, to teach me goodness. Saintliness had a new incarnation in about every third person I knew. I did respect the saints, but I could not help seeing that most of them were a little bit stupid, and that mischief was much more fun than piety. Goodness, as I had known it, was respectable, but not necessarily admirable. The people I really admired, like my Uncle Solomon and Cousin Rachel, were those who preached the least and laughed the most. My sister Frieda was perfectly good, but she did not think the less of me because I played tricks. What I loved in my friends was not inimitable. One could be downright good if one really wanted to. One could be learned if one had books and teachers. One could sing funny songs and tell anecdotes if one traveled about and picked up such things, like one’s uncles and cousins. But a human being strictly good, perfectly wise, and unfailingly valiant, all at the same time, I had never heard or dreamed of. This wonderful George Washington was as inimitable as he was irreproachable. Even if I had never, never told a lie, I could not compare myself to George Washington; for I was not brave,—I was afraid to go out when snowballs whizzed,—and I could never be the First President of the United States.
So I was forced to revise my own estimate of myself. But the twin of my new-born humility, paradoxical as it mayseem, was a sense of dignity I had never known before. For if I found that I was a person of small consequence, I discovered at the same time that I was more nobly related than I had ever supposed. I had relatives and friends who were notable people by the old standards,—and I had never been ashamed of my family,—-but this George Washington, who died long before I was born, was like a king in greatness, and he and I were Fellow-Citizens. There was a great deal about Fellow-Citizens in the patriotic literature we read at this time; and I knew from my father how he was a Citizen through the process of naturalization, and how I also was a Citizen by virtue of my relation to him. Undoubtedly I was a Fellow-Citizen, and George Washington was another. It thrilled me to realize what sudden greatness had fallen on me, and at the same time sobered me, as with a sense of responsibility. I strove to conduct myself as befitted a Fellow-Citizen.
Before books came into my life, I was given to stargazing and daydreaming. When books were given me, I fell upon them as a glutton pounces on his meat after a period of enforced starvation. I lived with my nose in a book, and took no notice of the alterations of the sun and stars. But now, after the advent of George Washington and the American Revolution, I began to dream again. I strayed on the Common after school instead of hurrying home to read. I hung on fence rails, my pet book forgotten under my arm, and gazed off to the yellow-streaked February sunset, and beyond, and beyond. I was no longer the central figure of my dreams; the dry weeds in the lane crackled beneath the tread of Heroes.
What more could America give a child? Ah, much more! As I read how the patriots planned the Revolution, and the women gave their sons to die in battle, and the heroes led to victory, and the rejoicing people set up the Republic, it dawned on me gradually what was meant bymy country. The people all desiring noble things, and striving for them together, defying their oppressors, giving their lives for each other,—all this it was that mademy country. It was not athing that Iunderstood; I could not go home and tell Frieda about it, as I told her other things I learned at school. But I knew one could say “my country” andfeelit, as one felt “God” or “myself.” My teacher, my schoolmates, Miss Dillingham, George Washington himself, could not mean more than I when they said “my country,” after I had once felt it. For the Country was for all the Citizens, andI was a citizen. And when we stood up to sing “America,” I shouted the words with all my might. I was in very earnest proclaiming to the world my love for my new-found country.
“I love thy rocks and rills,Thy woods and templed hills.”
“I love thy rocks and rills,Thy woods and templed hills.”
“I love thy rocks and rills,Thy woods and templed hills.”
“I love thy rocks and rills,
Thy woods and templed hills.”
Boston Harbor, Crescent Beach, Chelsea Square,—all was hallowed ground to me. As the day approached when the school was to hold exercises in honor of Washington’s Birthday, the halls resounded at all hours with the strains of patriotic songs; and I, who was a model of the attentive pupil, more than once lost my place in the lesson as I strained to hear, through closed doors, some neighboring class rehearsing “The Star-Spangled Banner.” If the doors happened to open, and the chorus broke out unveiled,—
“O! say, does that Star-Spangled Banner yet waveO’er the land of the free, and the home of the brave?”
“O! say, does that Star-Spangled Banner yet waveO’er the land of the free, and the home of the brave?”
“O! say, does that Star-Spangled Banner yet waveO’er the land of the free, and the home of the brave?”
“O! say, does that Star-Spangled Banner yet wave
O’er the land of the free, and the home of the brave?”
delicious tremors ran up and down my spine, and I was faint with suppressed enthusiasm.
Where had been my country until now? What flag had I loved? What heroes had I worshipped? The very names of these things had been unknown to me. Well I knew that Polotzk was not my country. It wasgoluth—exile. On many occasions in the year we prayed to God to lead us out of exile. The beautiful Passover service closed with the words, “Next year, may we be in Jerusalem.” On childish lips, indeed, those words were no conscious aspiration; we repeated the Hebrew syllables after our elders, but without their hope and longing. Still not a child among us was tooyoung to feel in his own flesh the lash of the oppressor. We knew what it was to be Jews in exile, from the spiteful treatment we suffered at the hands of the smallest urchin who crossed himself; and thence we knew that Israel had good reason to pray for deliverance. But the story of the Exodus was not history to me in the sense that the story of the American Revolution was. It was more like a glorious myth, a belief in which had the effect of cutting me off from the actual world, by linking me with a world of phantoms. Those moments of exaltation which the contemplation of the Biblical past afforded us, allowing us to call ourselves the children of princes, served but to tinge with a more poignant sense of disinheritance the long humdrum stretches of our life. In very truth we were a people without a country. Surrounded by mocking foes and detractors, it was difficult for me to realize the persons of my people’s heroes or the events in which they moved. Except in moments of abstraction from the world around me, I scarcely understood that Jerusalem was an actual spot on the earth, where once the Kings of the Bible, real people, like my neighbors in Polotzk, ruled in puissant majesty. For the conditions of our civil life did not permit us to cultivate a spirit of nationalism. The freedom of worship that was grudgingly granted within the narrow limits of the Pale by no means included the right to set up openly any ideal of a Hebrew State, any hero other than the Czar. What we children picked up of our ancient political history was confused with the miraculous story of the Creation, with the supernatural legends and hazy associations of Bible lore. As to our future, we Jews in Polotzk had no national expectations; only a life-worn dreamer here and there hoped to die in Palestine. If Fetchke and I sang, with my father, first making sure of our audience, “Zion, Zion, Holy Zion, not forever is it lost,” we did not really picture to ourselves Judæa restored.
So it came to pass that we did not know whatmy countrycould mean to a man. And as we had no country, so we had no flag to love. It was by no far-fetched symbolism that the banner of the House of Romanoff became the emblemof our latter-day bondage in our eyes. Even a child would know how to hate the flag that we were forced, on pain of severe penalties, to hoist above our housetops, in celebration of the advent of one of our oppressors. And as it was with country and flag, so it was with heroes of war. We hated the uniform of the soldier, to the last brass button. On the person of a Gentile, it was the symbol of tyranny; on the person of a Jew, it was the emblem of shame.
So a little Jewish girl in Polotzk was apt to grow up hungry-minded and empty-hearted; and if, still in her outreaching youth, she was set down in a land of outspoken patriotism, she was likely to love her new country with a great love, and to embrace its heroes in a great worship. Naturalization, with us Russian Jews, may mean more than the adoption of the immigrant by America. It may mean the adoption of America by the immigrant.
If I ask an American what is the fundamental American law, and he does not answer me promptly, “That which is contained in the Declaration of Independence,” I put him down for a poor citizen. He who is ignorant of the law is likely to disobey it. And there cannot be two minds about the position of the Declaration among our documents of State. What the Mosaic Law is to the Jews, the Declaration is to the American people. It affords us a starting-point in history and defines our mission among the nations. Without it, we should not differ greatly from other nations who achieved a constitutional form of government and various democratic institutions. What marks us out from other advanced nations is the origin of our liberties in one supreme act of political innovation, prompted by a conscious sense of the dignity of manhood. In other countries advances have been made by favor of hereditary rulers and aristocratic parliaments, each successive reform being grudgingly handed down to the people from above. Not so in America. At one bold stroke we shattered the monarchical tradition, and installed the people in the seats of government, substituting the gospel of the sovereignty of the masses for the superstition of the divine right of kings.
And even more notable than the boldness of the act was the dignity with which it was entered upon. In terms befitting a philosophical discourse, we gave notice to the world that what we were about to do, we would do in the name of humanity, in the conviction that as justice is the end of government, so should manhood be its source.
It is this insistence on the philosophic sanction of our revolt that gives the sublime touch to our political performance. Up to the moment of our declaration of independence, our struggle with our English rulers did not differ from other popular struggles against despotic governments. Againand again we respectfully petitioned for redress of specific grievances, as the governed, from time immemorial, have petitioned their governors. But one day we abandoned our suit for petty damages, and instituted a suit for the recovery of our entire human heritage of freedom; and by basing our claim on the fundamental principles of the brotherhood of man and the sovereignty of the masses, we assumed the championship of the oppressed against their oppressors, wherever found.
It was thus, by sinking our particular quarrel with George of England in the universal quarrel of humanity with injustice, that we emerged a distinct nation, with a unique mission in the world. And we revealed ourselves to the world in the Declaration of Independence, even as the Israelites revealed themselves in the Law of Moses. From the Declaration flows our race consciousness, our sense of what is and what is not American. Our laws, our policies, the successive steps of our progress,—all must conform to the spirit of the Declaration of Independence, the source of our national being.
The American confession of faith, therefore, is a recital of the doctrines of liberty and equality. A faithful American is one who understands these doctrines and applies them in his life.