autiful youths with wreathed locks. Everything
I read in school, in Latin or Greek, everything in my history books,
was real to me here, in this courtyard set about with stately columns.

Here is where I liked to remind myself of Polotzk, the better to bring
out the wonder of my life. That I who was born in the prison of the
Pale should roam at will in the land of freedom was a marvel that it
did me good to realize. That I who was brought up to my teens almost
without a book should be set down in the midst of all the books that
ever were written was a miracle as great as any on record. That an
outcast should become a privileged citizen, that a beggar should dwell
in a palace--this was a romance more thrilling than poet ever sung.
Surely I was rocked in an enchanted cradle.

[Illustration: BATES HALL, WHERE I SPENT MY LONGEST HOURS IN THE
LIBRARY]

From the Public Library to the State House is only a step, and I found
my way there without a guide. The State House was one of the places I
could point to and say that I had a friend there to welcome me. I do
not mean the representative of my district, though I hope he was a
worthy man. My friend was no less a man than the Honorable Senator
Roe, from Worcester, whose letters to me, written under the embossed
letter head of the Senate Chamber, I could not help exhibiting to
Florence Connolly.

How did I come by a Senator? Through being a citizen of Boston, of
course. To be a citizen of the smallest village in the United States
which maintains a free school and a public library is to stand in the
path of the splendid processions of opportunity. And as Boston has
rather better schools and a rather finer library than some other
villages, it comes natural there for children in the slums to summon
gentlemen from the State House to be their personal friends.

It is so simple, in Boston! You are a school-girl, and your teacher
gives you a ticket for the annual historical lecture in the Old South
Church, on Washington's Birthday. You hear a stirring discourse on
some subject in your country's history, and you go home with a heart
bursting with patriotism. You sit down and write a letter to the
speaker who so moved you, telling him how glad you are to be an
American, explaining to him, if you happen to be a recently made
American, why you love your adopted country so much better than your
native land. Perhaps the patriotic lecturer happens to be a Senator,
and he reads your