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