of the people themselves, nor do we adequately realize what
magic vision of free America lures them on to face the great journey to
the other side of the world.

Mary Antin's vivid description of all she and her dear ones went
through, enables us to see almost with our own eyes how the invasion of
America appears to the impecunious invader. It is thus "a human
document" of considerable value, as well as a promissory note of future
performance. The quick senses of the child, her keen powers of
observation and introspection, her impressionability both to sensations
and complex emotions--these are the very things out of which literature
is made; the raw stuff of art. Her capacity to handle English--after so
short a residence in America--shows that she possesses also the
instrument of expression. More fortunate than the poet of the Ghetto,
Morris Rosenfeld, she will have at her command the most popular language
in the world, and she has already produced in it passages of true
literature, especially in her impressionistic rendering of the sea and
the bustling phantasmagoria of travel.

What will be her development no one can say precisely, and I would not
presume either to predict or to direct it, for "the wind bloweth where
it listeth." It will probably take lyrical shape. Like most modern
Jewesses who have written, she is, I fear, destined to spiritual
suffering: fortunately her work evidences a genial talent for enjoyment
and a warm humanity which may serve to counterbalance the curse of
reflectiveness. That she is growing, is evident from her own
Introduction, written only the other day, with its touches of humor and
more complex manipulation of groups of facts. But I have ventured to
counsel delay rather than precipitation in production--for she is not
yet sixteen--and the completion of her education, physical no less than
intellectual; and it is to this purpose that such profits as may accrue
from this publication will be devoted. Let us hope this premature
recognition of her potentialities will not injure their future
flowering, and that her development will add to those spiritual and
intellectual forces of which big-hearted American Judaism stands sorely
in need. I should explain in conclusion, that I have neither added nor
subtracted, even a comma, and that I have no credit in "discovering"
Mary Antin. I did but endorse the verdict of that kind and charming
Boston household in which I had the pleasure of encounter