A startled woman stared at me. For a moment not a word came. Then she proceeded with the same kind smile. “It’s nice of you to want to help America, but I think the best way would be for you to learn a trade. That’s what this school is for, to help girls find themselves, and the best way to do is to learn something useful.”
“Ain’t thoughts useful? Does America want only the work from my body, my hands? Ain’t it thoughts that turn over the world?”
“Ah! But we don’t want to turn over the world.” Her voice cooled.
“But there’s got to be a change in America!” I cried. “Us immigrants want to be people—not ‘hands’—not slaves of the belly! And it’s the chance to think out thoughts that makes people.”
“My child, thought requires leisure. The time will come for that. First you must learn to earn a good living.”
“Did I come to America for a living?”
“What did you come for?”
“I came to give out all the fine things that was choked in me in Russia. I came to help America make the new world…. They said, in America I could open up my heart and fly free in the air—to sing—to dance—to live—to love…. Here I got all those grand things in me, and America won’t let me give nothing.”
“Perhaps you made a mistake in coming to this country. Your own land might appreciate you more.” A quick glance took me in from head to foot. “I’m afraid that you have come to the wrong place. We only teach trades here.”
She turned to her papers and spoke over her shoulder. “I think you will have to go elsewhere if you want to set the world on fire.”