Twenty Years at Hull-House with Autobiographical Notes

by Jane Addams

Overview

Jane Addams was a prominent progressive reformer during the early 20th century, and she became one of America’s most famous women. This is a memoir of her early life. 
 
From the preface: 
 
“Many times during the writing of these reminiscences, I have become convinced that the task was undertaken all too soon. One’s fiftieth year is indeed an impressive milestone at which one may well pause to take an accounting, but the people with whom I have so long journeyed have become so intimate a part of my lot that they cannot be written of either in praise or blame; the public movements and causes with which I am still identified have become so endeared, some of them through their very struggles and failures, that it is difficult to discuss them. 
It has also been hard to determine what incidents and experiences should be selected for recital, and I have found that I might give an accurate report of each isolated event and yet give a totally misleading impression of the whole, solely by the selection of the incidents. For these reasons and many others I have found it difficult to make a faithful record of the years since the autumn of 1889 when without any preconceived social theories or economic views, I came to live in an industrial district of Chicago.”

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781629215624
Publisher:	Heraklion Press
Publication date:	09/29/2013
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	2 MB

Read an Excerpt

or to throw off Hapsburg oppression in Italy. At any rate, I was heartily ashamed of my meager notion of patriotism, and I came out of the room exhilarated with the consciousness that impersonal and international relations are actual facts and not mere phrases. I was filled with pride that I knew a man who held converse with great minds and who really sorrowed and rejoiced over happenings across the sea. I never recall those early conversations with my father, nor a score of others like them, but there comes into my mind a line from Mrs. Browning in which a daughter describes her relations with her father : — " He wrapt me in his large Man's doublet, careless did it fit or no." , "f|te£." ."feVfc:Ug " J John H. Addams. chapter{Section 4CHAPTER II Influence Of Lincoln I Suppose all the children who were born about the time of the Civil War have recollections quite unlike those of the children who are living now. Although I was but four and a half years old when Lincoln died, I distinctly remember the day when I found on our two white gate posts American flags companioned with black. I tumbled down on the harsh gravel walk in my eager rush into the house to inquire what they were "there for." To my amazement I found my father in tears, something that I had never seen before, having assumed, as all children do, that grown-up people never cried. The two flags, my father's tears and his impressive statement that the greatest man in the world had died, constituted my initiation, my baptism, as it were, into the thrilling and solemn interests of a world lying quite outside the two white gate posts. The great war touched children in many ways : I remember an engravedroster of names, headed by the words "Addams' Guard," and the whole surmounted by the insignia of the Amer...