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.
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