Boston Evening Transcript

The Boston Evening Transcript, familiarly the "Transcript," stands in Mary Antin's memoir as the emblem of the established American press, the first great public institution she, a newly arrived immigrant schoolgirl, resolved to conquer in person. When her Washington's Birthday poem had won the applause of her teachers and schoolmates, someone—perhaps her father—suggested that the tribute ought to be printed. Mary, never one to send a delegate where she could go herself, acted on the motto she attributed to the great Dr. Hale: "Personal presence moves the world." So she crossed the Mystic River to Boston and boldly invaded Newspaper Row, the city's press district, carrying her precious manuscript and an unshakable conviction that her words belonged in print.

The Perilous Journey to Newspaper Row

The route from the ferry slip to the offices of the Boston Transcript was, in Mary's recollection, "long, strange, and full of perils." She kept resolutely up Hanover Street, familiar with that part of her route, until she came to a puzzling corner where she stopped, utterly bewildered by the tangle of streets, the roar of traffic, and the giddy swarm of pedestrians. With the manuscript tightly clasped, she balanced on the curbstone, afraid to plunge into the boiling vortex of the crossing. Every time she made a start, a clanging street car snatched up the way. The unobtrusive street signs were lost to her unpractised sight in the glaring confusion of store signs and advertisements. When she accosted pedestrians for directions, Jews hurrying by with bearded chins on their bosoms shrugged their shoulders at the name "Transcript" and shrugged till they were out of sight; Italians sauntering behind their fruit carts answered with a lift of the head that made their earrings gleam and a wave of the hand that referred her to all four points of the compass at once. Deliverance came in the form of a tall newsboy who had to stoop to her, bellowing "Herald, Globe, Record, Tra-avel-er!" When she explained her mission, he good-naturedly tucked the paper back into his bundle, piloted her across the street, unravelled the end of Washington Street for her, and with much pointing out of landmarks headed her toward her destination, her nose seeking the spire of the Old South Church.

The Editorial Labyrinth

Mary's arrival at the Transcript offices did not end her trials. She descended from the top story to the street seven times, trying to decide what kind of editor a patriotic poem belonged to. Finally, an untidy boy carrying broad paper streamers and whistling shrilly, in defiance of an express prohibition on the wall, bustled through the corridor and left a door ajar. She slipped in behind him and found herself in a room full of editors, a sight that surprised her. She had imagined her editor would look like Mr. Jones, the principal of her school, whose coat was always buttoned and whose fingernails were beautiful. These people were in shirt sleeves, they smoked, and they did not politely turn in their revolving chairs to ask what they could do for her. The room was noisy with typewriters, and nobody heard her small request. At last one of the machines stopped, and the operator looked up through his own smoke and stared. Mary realized suddenly that the hand carrying her manuscript was moist, and she feared it would make marks on the paper. She held out the manuscript, explaining that it was a poem about George Washington, and would he please print it in the Transcript. The editor's queer stare and smile made her feel about eleven inches high, and her voice kept growing smaller as she neared the end of her speech. A fourth man, who had been writing busily at a desk nearby, broke in on the consultation with "That's enough, boys, that's enough. Take the young lady to Mr. Hurd."

The Redirected Mission

Mr. Hurd, it was found, was away on a vacation, and of several other editors in several offices to whom she was referred, none proved to be the proper editor to take charge of a poem about George Washington. At last an elderly editor suggested that as Mr. Hurd would be away for some time, she would do well to give up the Transcript and try the Herald, across the way. A little tired by her wanderings and bewildered by the complexity of the editorial system, but still confident about her mission, Mary picked her way across Washington Street and found the Herald offices, where she had instant good luck. The first editor she addressed took her paper, invited her to a seat, read her poem much more quickly than she could herself, said it was very nice, asked some questions, and made notes on a slip of paper which he pinned to her manuscript. He said he would have her piece printed very soon and would send her a copy of the issue in which it appeared. As she was going, she could not help giving the editor her hand, although she had not experienced any handshaking in Newspaper Row, feeling that as author and editor they were on a very pleasant footing. She had regained her full stature and something over during this cordial interview, and when she stepped out into the street and saw the crowd intently studying the bulletin board, she swelled out of all proportion, telling herself that she, Mary Antin, was one of the inspired brotherhood who made newspapers so interesting. She did not know whether her poem would be put upon the bulletin board, but at any rate it would be in the paper, with her name at the bottom, like her story about "Snow" in Miss Dillingham's school journal. And all these people in the streets, and more, thousands of people—all Boston—would read her poem, learn her name, and wonder who she was. She smiled to herself in delicious amusement when a man deliberately put her out of his path as she dreamed her way through the jostling crowd; if he only knew whom he was treating so unceremoniously!

Significance in the Memoir's Arc

The Transcript episode is one of several public performances through which Mary enacts her American identity, alongside her recitation of the Washington poem before forty Fellow Citizens, her graduation-day triumph at the Winthrop School, and her schoolyard defense of freethought. The newspaper office, like the school platform, is a stage on which the immigrant child tests her right to address the nation. The comic failure at the Transcript—the absent Mr. Hurd, the chain of unhelpful editors, the shirttailed smokers—does not discourage her; it merely redirects her. Her willingness to beard the editor in his armchair, her refusal to send her manuscript by mail, and her final handshake with the Herald editor all dramatize the memoir's governing faith that personal presence moves the world. The Boston Evening Transcript thus functions less as a specific institution than as a threshold: the first great gate of the American public sphere, which the young immigrant finds bewildering, intimidating, and ultimately passable.