Cloak-making was now
nothing but a temporary round of dreary toil, an unavoidable
stepping-stone to loftier occupations
Another year and I should be a fully developed mechanic, working
on my own hook--that is, as the immediate employee of some
manufacturer or contractor.
"I shall soon be earning forty or fifty dollars a week," I would
muse. "At that rate I shall save up plenty of money in much less
time than I expected.
I shall spend as little as possible and study as hard as possible."
The Regents' examinations were not exacting in those days. I could
have prepared to qualify for admission to a school of medicine,
law, or civil engineering in a very short time. But I aimed higher. I
knew that many of the professional men on the East Side, and,
indeed, everywhere else in the United States, were people of
doubtful intellectual equipment, while I was ambitious to be a
cultured man "in the European way." There was an odd confusion
of ideas in my mind. On the one hand, I had a notion that to
"become an American" was the only tangible form of becoming a
man of culture (for did not I regard the most refined and learned
European as a "greenhorn"?); on the other hand, the impression
was deep in me that American education was a cheap
machine-made product
CHAPTER VI COLLEGE! The sound was forever buzzing in my
ear.
Pages:
251
252
253
254
255
256
257
258
259
260
261
262
263
264
265
266
267
268
269
270
271
272
273
274
275