BOSTON, MASS.
W. B. CLARKE & CO., PARK STREET CHURCH
1899
COPYRIGHT, 1899
BY MARY ANTIN
PRESS OF PHILIP COWEN
NEW YORK CITY
DEDICATED TO
HATTIE L. HECHT
WITH THE LOVE AND GRATITUDE OF THE AUTHOR
The "infant phenomenon" in literature is rarer than inmore physical branches of art, but its productions are notlikely to be of value outside the doting domestic circle.Even Pope who "lisped in numbers for the numbers came,"did not add to our Anthology from his cradle, though hemay therein have acquired his monotonous rocking-metre.Immaturity of mind and experience, so easily disguised onthe stage or the music-stool—even by adults—is moreobvious in the field of pure intellect. The contributionwith which Mary Antin makes her début in letters is, however,saved from the emptiness of embryonic thinking bybeing a record of a real experience, the greatest of her life;her journey from Poland to Boston. Even so, and remarkableas her description is for a girl of eleven—for it was atthis age that she first wrote the thing in Yiddish, thoughshe was thirteen when she translated it into English—itwould scarcely be worth publishing merely as a literarycuriosity. But it happens to possess an extraneous value.For, despite the great wave of Russian immigration intothe United States, and despite the noble spirit in which theJews of America have grappled with the invasion, we stillknow too little of the inner feelings of the people themselves,[Pg 7]nor do we adequately realize what magic vision of freeAmerica lures them on to face the great journey to the otherside of the world.
Mary Antin's vivid description of all she and her dearones went through, enables us to see almost with our owneyes how the invasion of America appears to the impecuniousinvader. It is thus "a human document" of considerablevalue, as well as a promissory note of future performance.The quick senses of the child, her keen powers ofobservation and introspection, her impressionability both tosensations and complex emotions—these are the very thingsout of which literature is made; the raw stuff of art. Hercapacity to handle English—after so short a residence inAmerica—shows that she possesses also the instrument ofexpression. More fortunate than the poet of the Ghetto,Morris Rosenfeld, she will have at her command the mostpopular language in the world, and she has already producedin it passages of true literature, especially in herimpressionistic rendering of the sea and the bustling phantasmagoriaof travel.
What will be her development no one can say precisely,and I would not presume either to predict or to direct it, for"the wind bloweth where it listeth." It will probably takelyrical shape. Like most modern Jewesses who have written,she is, I fear, destined to spiritual suffering: fortunately herwork evidences a genial talent for enjoyment and a warm[Pg 8]humanity which may serve to counterbalance the curse ofreflectiveness. That she is growing, is evident from her own