books, and also opportunity to study the attitude of rich Americans toward a girl earning her own living—an attitude not very different from ours in the Old World. One summer I spent in a working girl's vacation home, where all the girls were shop girls, and where I met the proletariat of the New World on an equal footing. And once I spent the entire four months visiting in the mountains of North Carolina, where I learned how much more American money is needed for schools there than in Constantinople, where it goes, not to civilize the Turks but to educate at the least possible expense to themselves the children of well-to-do Bulgarians, Greeks, and Armenians—especially the first. And the recent actions of the Bulgarians have proved eloquently how little American education helps them; for American civilization must be sought—it cannot be imposed from without.
My third year at school, the head French teacher left it, and the principal offered me her place; and so, four years after I landed in the new world I was at the head of the French department of one of the best private schools in New York City. I had many good friends, was making considerable money outside the school, and was studying at the University of New York. To all appearance I had succeeded; yet truth compels me to confess that, so far as my inner self was concerned, I was a total failure.
