there was but one
child in a family of twelve who promised to achieve an intellectual
career, the other eleven, and father, and mother, and neighbors must
devote themselves to that one child's welfare, and feed and clothe and
cheer it on, and be rewarded in the end by hearing its name mentioned
with the names of the great.

So the poor grocer helped to keep me in school for I do not know how
many years. And this is one of the things that is done on Harrison
Avenue, by the people who pitch rubbish through their windows. Let the
City Fathers strike the balance.

Of course this is wretched economics. If I had a son who wanted to go
into the grocery business, I should take care that he was well
grounded in the principles of sound bookkeeping and prudence. But I
should not fail to tell him the story of the Harrison Avenue grocer,
hoping that he would puzzle out the moral.

Mr. Rosenblum himself would be astonished to hear that any one was
drawing morals from his manner of conducting his little store, and yet
it is from men like him that I learn the true values of things. The
grocer weighed me out a quarter of a pound of butter, and when the
scales were even he threw in another scrap. "_Na!_" he said, smiling
across the counter, "you can carry that much around the corner!"
Plainly he was showing me that if I have not as many houses as my
neighbor, that should not prevent me from cultivating as many graces.
If I made some shame-faced reference to the unpaid balance, Mr.
Rosenblum replied, "I guess you're not thinking of running away from
Boston yet. You haven't finished turning the libraries inside out,
have you?" In this way he reminded me that there were things more
important than conventional respectability. The world belongs to those
who can use it to the best advantage, the grocer seemed to argue; and
I found that I had the courage to test this philosophy.

From my little room on Dover Street I reached out for the world, and
the world came to me. Through books, through the conversation of noble
men and women, through communion with the stars in the depth of night,
I entered into every noble chamber of the palace of life. I employed
no charm to win admittance. The doors opened to me because I had a
right to be within. My patent of nobility was the longing for the
abundance of life with which I was endowed at birth; and from the time
I could toddle unaided I had been gathering into my hand everything
that was fine in