THE PROMISED LAND

CONTENTS


INTRODUCTION xi

I. WITHIN THE PALE 1

II. CHILDREN OF THE LAW 29

III. BOTH THEIR HOUSES 42

IV. DAILY BREAD 60

V. I REMEMBER 79

VI. THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE 111

VII. THE BOUNDARIES STRETCH 137

VIII. THE EXODUS 163

IX. THE PROMISED LAND 180

X. INITIATION 206

XI. "MY COUNTRY" 222

XII. MIRACLES 241

XIII. A CHILD'S PARADISE 252

XIV. MANNA 264

XV. TARNISHED LAURELS 276

XVI. DOVER STREET 286

XVII. THE LANDLADY 301

XVIII. THE BURNING BUSH 321

XIX. A KINGDOM IN THE SLUMS 337

XX. THE HERITAGE 359

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 365

GLOSSARY 367





INTRODUCTION


I was born, I have lived, and I have been made over. Is it not time to
write my life's story? I am just as much out of the way as if I were
dead, for I am absolutely other than the person whose story I have to
tell. Physical continuity with my earlier self is no disadvantage. I
could speak in the third person and not feel that I was masquerading.
I can analyze my subject, I can reveal everything; for _she_, and not
_I_, is my real heroine. My life I have still to live; her life ended
when mine began.

A generation is sometimes a more satisfactory unit for the study of
humanity than a lifetime; and spiritual generations are as easy to
demark as physical ones. Now I am the spiritual offspring of the
marriage within my conscious experience of the Past and the Present.
My second birth was no less a birth because there was no distinct
incarnation. Surely it has happened before that one body served more
than one spiritual organization. Nor am I disowning my father and
mother of the flesh, for they were also partners in the generation of
my second self; copartners with my entire line of ancestors. They gave
me body, so that I have eyes like my father's and hair like my
mother's. The spirit also they gave me, so that I reason like my
father and endure like my mother. But did they set me down in a
sheltered garden, where the sun should warm me, and no winter should
hurt, while they fed me from their hands? No; they early let me run in
the fields--perhaps because I would not be held--and eat of the wild
fruits and drink of the dew. Did they teach me from books, and tell me
what to believe? I soon chose my own books, and built me a world of my
own.