Autobiography of Margaret Sanger. Margaret Sanger
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was mother’s philosophy. I think father fell in her estimation for a few days after this. She expected him to be the guardian of the home, but he was never that. His liberal views were so well known that our house was marked with the tramp’s patrin of the first degree. “Always get something here. Never be turned away.” If it happened to be pay day they could count on a quarter as well as a meal.
One particular evening we were expecting father home, his pockets bulging with the money from his latest commission, but by nightfall he had not yet returned. When mother heard a rap at the door she went eagerly to open it. Two ragged strangers were standing there.
“Is the boss in?”
“No, but I’m looking for him any minute.”
“We want something to eat.”
With no more ceremony than was customary among the knights of the open road they pushed through the door and made for the kitchen, plainly knowing their way about.
“How dare you come into this house!” exclaimed mother indignantly. “Toss! Beauty!” she cried sharply. The fear in her voice brought the dogs lunging downstairs with fangs bared and hackles bristling. They leaped at the backs of the uninvited guests.
Father came in a few hours later. The door was swinging wide, the snow was blowing in. Torn scraps of clothing, spots of blood were about, and mother was unconscious on the floor. He poured whiskey down her throat. “It was only good whiskey that brought you to,” he often said afterwards, recalling his alarm. He used the same remedy to pull her through the ensuing six weeks of pneumonia. But he had been so thoroughly worried that his generosity towards tramps lessened and his largesse was curtailed.
After this illness mother coughed more than ever and it was evident the pines were not helping her. Father decided to move; the house was so obviously marked and he had to be gone so much he thought it unsafe for us to live alone so far away.
Chapter Three BOOKS ARE THE COMPASSES
So we moved into town, still on the western hills. It marked the beginning of my adolescence, and such breaks are always disturbing. In the house in the woods we had all been children together, but now some of us were growing up.
Nevertheless, there were always smaller ones to be put to bed, to be rocked to sleep; there were feet and knees to be scrubbed and hands to be washed. Although we had more space, home study sometimes seemed to me impossible. The living room was usually occupied by the older members of the family, and the bedrooms were cold. I kept up in my lessons, but it was simply because I enjoyed them.
In most schools teachers and pupils then were natural enemies, and the one I had in the eighth grade was particularly adept at arousing antagonism. She apparently disliked her job and the youngsters under her care as much as we hated her. Sarcasm was both her defense and weapon of attack. One day in mid-June I was delayed in getting off for school. Well aware that being tardy was a heinous crime, I hurried, pulling and tugging at my first pair of kid gloves, which Mary had just given me. But the bell had rung two minutes before I walked into the room, flushed and out of breath.
The teacher had already begun the class. She looked up at the interruption. “Well, well, Miss Higgins, so your ladyship has arrived at last! Ah, a new pair of gloves! I wonder that she even deigns to come to school at all.”
Giggles rippled around me as I went into the cloakroom and laid down my hat and gloves. I came back, praying the teacher would pay no more attention to me, but as I walked painfully to my seat she continued repeating with variations her mean comments. Even when I sat down she did not stop. I tried to think of something else, tried not to listen, tried to smile with the others. I endured it as long as I could, then took out my books, pyramiding arithmetic, grammar, and speller, strapped them up, rose, and left.
Mother was amazed when I burst in on her. “I will never go back to that school again!” I exclaimed dramatically. “I have finished forever! I’ll go to jail, I’ll work, I’ll starve, I’ll die! But back to that school and teacher I will never go!”
As older brothers and sisters drifted home in the evening, they were as horrified as mother. “But you have only two weeks more,” they expostulated.
“I don’t care if it’s only an hour. I will not go back!”
When it became obvious that I would stick to my point, mother seemed glad to have me to help her. I was thorough and strong and could get through a surprising amount of work in no time. But the rest of the family was seriously alarmed. The next few months were filled with questions I could not answer. “What can you ever be without an education?” “Are you equipped to earn a living?” “Is factory life a pleasant prospect? If you don’t go back to school, you’ll surely end there.”
“All right. I’ll go to work!” I announced defiantly. Work, even in the factory, meant money, and money meant independence. I had no rebuttal to their arguments; I was acting on an impulse that transcended reason, and must have recognized that any explanation as to my momentous decision would sound foolish.
Then suddenly father, mother, my second older sister Nan, and Mary, who had been summoned to a family council, tried other tactics. I was sent for two weeks to Chautauqua, there to take courses, hear lectures from prominent speakers, listen to music. This was designed to stimulate my interest in education and dispel any idea I might have of getting a job.
My impulse had been misconstrued. I was not rebelling against education as such, but only against that particular school and that particular teacher. When fall drew near and the next session was at hand I was still reiterating that I would not go back, although I still had no answer to Nan’s repeated, “What are you going to do?”
Nan was perhaps the most inspiring of all my brothers and sisters. The exact contrary to father, she wanted us all to conform and was in tears if we did not. To her, failure in this respect showed a lack of breeding. Yet even more important than conformity was knowledge, which was the basis for all true culture. She herself wanted to write, and had received prizes for stories from St. Nicholas and the Youth’s Companion. But the family was too dependent upon the earnings of the older girls, and she was obliged to postpone college and her equally ardent desire to study sculpture. She became a translator of French and German until these aspirations could be fulfilled.
At the time of my mutiny Nan was especially disturbed. “You won’t be able to get anywhere without an education,” she stated firmly. She and Mary, joining forces, together looked for a school, reasonable enough for their purses, but good enough academically to prepare me for Cornell. Private education was not so expensive as today, and families of moderate means could afford it. My sisters selected Claverack College and Hudson River Institute, about three miles from the town of Hudson in the Catskill Mountains. Here, in one of the oldest coeducational institutions in the country, the Methodist farmers of the Dutch valley enrolled their sons and daughters; unfortunately it is now gone and with it the healthy spirit it typified. One sister paid my tuition and the other bought my books and clothes; for my board and room I was to work.
Going away to school was epochal in my life. The self-contained family group was suddenly multiplied to five hundred strangers, all living and studying under one roof. The girls’ dormitory was at one end, the boys’ at the other, but we shared the same dining room and sat together in classes; occasionally a boy could call on a girl in the reception hall if a teacher were present. I liked best the attitude of the teachers; they were not so much policemen as companions and friends, and their instruction was more individual and stimulating than at Corning.
I did not have money to do things the other girls did—go off for week-ends or house-parties—but waiting on table or washing dishes did not set me apart. The work was far easier than at home, and a girl was pretty well praised for doing her share. At first the students all appeared to me uninteresting and lacking in initiative. I never found the same imaginative quality I was used to in my family, but as certain ones began to stand out I discovered they had personalities