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.