Autobiographies are usually written by gray-haired men and women. But Mary Antin was not yet thirty when she wrote her life story. She had a tale to tell, and she told it well. She wrote: "I began life in the region of Russia known as the Pale of Settlement. Within this area the Czar commanded me to stay, with my father and mother and friends, and all people like us. We must not be found outside the Pale, because we were Jews."

Mary had a good mind and loved to read, but schools in Russia were closed to most Jews, and there were no public libraries in the Pale. In the Old World, Jewish boys who wanted to study something besides religious books had no way to do it. Mary's father had been that kind of boy: a scholar, but not of religion. Perhaps that was why he wanted to bring his family to America. Whatever the reason, he made the journey, got off the immigrant ship, and went to Boston. When his family arrived in America three years later, they had come, as Mary wrote, from the Middle Ages to the modern world—as they found with their first American meal. She recalled: "My father produced several kinds of food, ready to eat, without any cooking, from little tin cans that had printing all over them. He attempted to introduce us to a queer, slippery kind of fruit, which he called 'banana,' but had to give it up for the time being. After the meal, he had better luck with a curious piece of furniture on runners, which he called 'rocking chair.' One born and bred to the use of a rocking chair cannot imagine how ludicrous people can make themselves attempting to use it for the first time ."

There was no bathtub in their apartment, so in evening of their first day Mary's father took them to the public baths. When they came home it was evening and the streets were bright. Mary wrote: "So many lamps, and they burned until morning, my father said, and so people did not need to carry lanterns. In America, then, everything was free, as we had heard in Russia. Light was free; the streets were as bright as a synagogue on a holy day . Education was free. That my father had written about repeatedly, as comprising his chief hope for us children, the essence of American opportunity. It was the one thing he was able to promise us when he sent for us; surer, safer than bread or shelter."

It was May, almost the end of the school year, so the Antin children had to wait until September to begin school. "That day I must always remember," Mary wrote, "even if I live to be so old I cannot tell my name. Father himself conducted us to school. He would not have delegated that mission to the president of the United States. The boasted freedom of the New World meant to him far more than the right to reside, travel, and work wherever he pleased; it meant the freedom to speak his thoughts, to throw off the shackles of superstition, to test his own fate, unhindered by political or religious tyranny."

Mary Antin became the best student in her elementary school. When she wrote a poem about George Washington and it was published in a newspaper, the whole school was proud of her. When she grew up she wrote her autobiography and called it The Promised Land . In it she wrote of her adopted nation's priceless heritage: it was the freedom and opportunity that let the poorest immigrant—like Mary herself—become rich in learning.