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.
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