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