“I can’t tell you how I felt when we came to New York; but at Ellis Island they turned all my joy into weeping. Two of the younger children had eye disease and they wanted to send all of us back. My uncle said he would take care of us older children, so they let us in and sent father and mother and the younger ones back. It was terribly sad and father and mother cried; but although I too cried, I felt very happy because I would not have to return to Italy. We promised them to come back and here we are.”
These then were the older children, three sons and one daughter, who had been admitted to their heaven and were now coming home to the padre and madre who had lived in the hole in the wall.
“What do you think of emigration?”
The young woman answered: “Signor, it works like a miracle! I used to pray many a time, when I went to sleep, that the good saints would work a miracle and wake me in another world, where I could wear real stockings and ribbons, and now my prayer is answered and the miracle has happened.”
Indeed it was a miracle. “Bessie,” as the brothers called her, was transformed and transfigured. She was more “stylish” than the landowner’s wife who travelled in the next compartment, and I feel sure that her gown cost more than that of a certain American woman who shared with me the pleasures of the journey Bessie was engaged to be married to a countryman of hers, who is head gardener in a cemetery in one of New York’s suburbs.
“When we are married we will live in a cottage all our own, Signor, at the edge of that beautiful cemetery; six rooms it has and a bath room!”
A miracle indeed! From the hole in the wall to a six-room cottage.
Of course this group is not typical. These people went to school in America during their youth. The boys went to night school in New York and the girl went to the public school; they had entered profitable trades. Stone-cutting, engineering and dressmaking.
What was perfectly normal in their history was the effect that their going away has had upon the town from which they came.
Does the father live in the hole in the wall? No indeed. They sent home money enough to build him a house and buy about fifteen acres of land. The children at home were all sent to school. Yes, times have changed. All the children in that town are sent to school; for the immigrant father writes to his wife: “Let the children learn how to read and write. We who cannot, have to remain beasts of burden, while those who can, rule over us.”