folly, but as the fulfilment of the portent of
my natal star, when I saw myself, on Graduation Day, arrayed like unto
a princess. Frills, lace, patent-leather shoes--I had everything. I
even had a sash with silk fringes.

Did I speak of folly? Listen, and I will tell you quite another tale.
Perhaps when you have heard it you will not be too hasty to run and
teach The Poor. Perhaps you will admit that The Poor may have
something to teach you.

Before we had been two years in America, my sister Frieda was engaged
to be married. This was under the old dispensation: Frieda came to
America too late to avail herself of the gifts of an American
girlhood. Had she been two years younger she might have dodged her
circumstances, evaded her Old-World fate. She would have gone to
school and imbibed American ideas. She might have clung to her
girlhood longer instead of marrying at seventeen. I am so fond of the
American way that it has always seemed to me a pitiful accident that
my sister should have come so near and missed by so little the
fulfilment of my country's promise to women. A long girlhood, a free
choice in marriage, and a brimful womanhood are the precious rights of
an American woman.

My father was too recently from the Old World to be entirely free from
the influence of its social traditions. He had put Frieda to work out
of necessity. The necessity was hardly lifted when she had an offer of
marriage, but my father would not stand in the way of what he
considered her welfare. Let her escape from the workshop, if she had a
chance, while the roses were still in her cheeks. If she remained for
ten years more bent over the needle, what would she gain? Not even
her personal comfort; for Frieda never called her earnings her own,
but spent everything on the family, denying herself all but
necessities. The young man who sued for her was a good workman,
earning fair wages, of irreproachable character, and refined manners.
My father had known him for years.

So Frieda was to be released from the workshop. The act was really in
the nature of a sacrifice on my father's part, for he was still in the
woods financially, and would sorely miss Frieda's wages. The greater
the pity, therefore, that there was no one to counsel him to give
America more time with my sister. She attended the night school; she
was fond of reading. In books, in a slowly ripening experience, she
might have found a better answer to the riddle of a girl's lif