Читать книгу: «Why I Believe in Poverty», страница 2

“An experience that you know not of”!

Now, how far do the facts square with this statement?

Whether or not I was born with the proverbial silver spoon in my mouth I cannot say. It is true that I was born of well-to-do parents. But when I was six years old my father lost all his means, and faced life at forty-five, in a strange country, without even necessaries. There are men and their wives who know what that means: for a man to try to “come back” at forty-five, and in a strange country!

I had the handicap of not knowing one word of the English language. I went to a public school and learned what I could. And sparse morsels they were! The boys were cruel, as boys are. The teachers were impatient, as tired teachers are.

My father could not find his place in the world. My mother, who had always had servants at her beck and call, faced the problems of housekeeping that she had never learned nor been taught. And there was no money.

So, after school hours, my brother and I went home, but not to play. After-school hours meant for us to help a mother who daily grew more frail under the burdens that she could not carry. Not for days, but for years, we two boys got up in the gray cold winter dawn when the bed feels so snug and warm to growing boys, and we sifted the cold ashes of the day-before fire for a stray lump or two of unburned coal, and with what we had or could find we made the fire and warmed up the room. Then we set the table for the scant breakfast, went to school, and directly after school we washed the dishes, swept and scrubbed the floors. Living in a three-family tenement, each third week meant that we scrubbed the entire three flights of stairs from the third story to the first, as well as the doorsteps and the side-walk outside. The latter work was the hardest: for we did it on Saturdays with the boys of the neighborhood looking on none too kindly, or we did it to the echo of the crack of the ball and bat on the adjoining lot!