ither one nor the other.

The days retreating into a gloomy background of autumn chills and fogs,
left me thoroughly weakened in spirit. Oftentimes--I could not guess
why--I came home from high school so exhausted that I could only throw
myself upon my bed, behind a locked door, and sob and sigh and shiver as
if with the ague. Everything that had happened during the day would come
pouring back into my memory with a distorted clarity, tinctured with
despair, hopelessly sombred with a boy's sense of wrong and persecution.

I did actually have enough to contend with at high school. I had begun
to feel the racial distinctions, the thoughtless slurs and boycottings
which Jewish lads must everywhere encounter. I tried to tell myself that
it didn't matter--that these were only rough, ill-bred boys to whom I
ought not lower myself to pay attention. But a boy of fourteen finds it
hard to argue himself into bravery, and I failed miserably, ridiculously
at the task. Years later, I was to learn that it was all natural--that I
was passing, as every boy must pass, through the difficult period of
adolescence. It was mostly that I was lonely, balked by the
unappreciative attitude of my aunt, without guidance or curb.

If in all this personal recital I am harsh to the memory of my aunt, you
will perhaps see that I have the right. I am grateful, truly grateful,
for all that she attempted to do for me, but I know that all her care
was misdirected. It was, besides, cruelly lacking in all of the finer
things which should have been mine; things which my parents would have
given me, things that, in my aggravated state, I needed.

Once I was asked by some other Jewish boys at high school to join a
little club which they were forming. I hesitated about it. They were
jolly, healthy boys--most of them from the poorer sections of the
city--who went up to Van Cortlandt Park on Saturday afternoons and
Sundays to play ball or to skate. It would have done me good to be one
of them, to join their sports and laughter--and yet....

Well, my aunt did not approve. I knew she wouldn't, long before I asked
her. If I was the least bit undecided before, she gave me clearly to
understand that companionship with Jewish boys would not be right for
me; that I must avoid this stigma of Judaism as I would avoid a crime.
She said it was for my _own_ good--but I cannot believe it very
heartily. She was trying at that time to make me join a dancing class of
Gentile