As the teacher looked into the glorified face of this little alien-citizen she said to herself, "There is the truest patriot of them all!"
Only once as they were singing "Land where my fathers died," the child's voice had faltered and died away. Her cheek paled when at the close of school she came to her teacher with her trouble.
"Oh, teacher," she mourned, "our country's song can't to mean me—my fathers didn't die here!"
The friendly teacher, whose understanding and sympathy were never failing, understood now:
"Mary Antin," she said earnestly, looking through the child's great, dark eyes into the depths of her troubled soul, "you have as much right to those words as I or anybody else in America. The Pilgrim Fathers didn't all come here before the Revolution. Isn't your father just like them? Think of it, dear, how he left his home and came to a strange land where he couldn't even speak the language. And didn't he come looking for the same things? He wanted freedom for himself and his family, and a chance for his children to grow up wise and brave. It's the same story over again. Every ship that brings people from Russia and other countries where they are ill-treated is a Mayflower!"
These words took root in Mary Antin's heart and grew with her growth. The consciousness that she was in very truth an American glorified her days; it meant freedom from every prison. Seven years after her first appearance in the Boston primer class she entered Barnard College. After two years there and two more at Teachers College, she entered the school of life as a homemaker; her name is now Mary Antin Grabau. Besides caring for her home and her little daughter, she has devoted her gifts as a writer and a lecturer to the service of her country.
In her book, "The Promised Land," she has told the story of her life from the earliest memories of her childhood in Russia to the time when she entered college. It is an absorbing human story, but it is much more than that. It is the story of one who looks upon her American citizenship as a great "spiritual adventure," and who strives to quicken in others a sense of their opportunities and responsibilities as heirs of the new freedom. She pleads for a generous treatment of all those whom oppression and privation send to make their homes in our land. It is only by being faithful to the ideal of human brotherhood expressed in the Declaration of Independence that our nation can realize its true destiny, she warns us.
Mary Antin was recently urged to write a history of the United States for children, that would give the inner meaning of the facts as well as a clear account of the really significant events.
"I have long had such a work in mind," she wrote, "and I suppose I shall have to do it some day. In the meantime I talk history to my children—my little daughter of eight and the Russian cousin who goes to school in the kitchen. Only yesterday at luncheon I told them about our system of representative government, and our potatoes grew cold on our plates, we were all so absorbed."
In all that Mary Antin writes and in all that she says her faith in her country and her zeal for its honor shine out above all else. To the new pilgrims who lived and suffered in other lands before they sought refuge in America, as well as to those who can say quite literally, "Land where my fathers died," she brings this message: