 Chapter 4 of The Promised Land. My mother ought to have been happy in her engagement. Everybody congratulated her on securing such a scholar. Her parents loaded her with presents, and her friends envied her. It is true that the Hassan's family consisted entirely of poor relations. There was not one solid householder among them. From the worldly point of view my mother made a maize alliance, but as one of my aunts put it, when my mother objected to the association with the undesirable cousins, she could take out the cow and set fire to the barn, meaning that she could rejoice in the Hassan and disregard his family. The Hassan on his part had reason to rejoice, without any reservations. He was going into a highly respectable family, with a name supported by property and business standing. The promised dowry was considerable, the presents were generous, the trousseau would be liberal, and the bride was fair and capable. The bridegroom would have years before him in which he would need to do nothing but eat free-board, wear his new clothes, and study Torah, and his poor relations could hold up their heads at the market stalls, and in the rear pews of the synagogue. My mother's trousseau was all that a mother-in-law could wish. The best tailor in Palatsk was engaged to make the cloaks and gowns, and his shop was filled to bursting with ample lengths of velvet and satin and silk. The wedding gown alone cost every co-peck of fifty rubles, as the tailor's wife reported all over Palatsk. The lingerie was of the best, and the seamstress was engaged on it for many weeks. Feather beds, linen, household goods of every sort, everything was provided in abundance. My mother crocheted many yards of lace to trim the best sheets, and fine silk coverlets adorned the plump beds. Many a marriageable maiden who came to view the trousseau went home to prank and blush and watch for the shod hand. The wedding was memorable for gayety and splendor. The guests included some of the finest people in Palatsk, for while my grandfather was not quite at the top of the social scale. He had business connections with those that were, and they all turned out for the wedding of his only daughter, the men in silk frock coats, the women in all their jewelry. The bridegrooms, aunts, and cousins came in full force. Wedding messengers had been sent to every person who could possibly claim relationship with the Hassan. My mother's parents were too generous to slight the lowliest. Instead of burning the barn, they did all they could to garnish it. One or two of the more important of the poor relations came to the wedding in gowns, paid for by my rich grandfather. The rest came decked out in borrowed finery, or an undisguised shabbiness. But nobody thought of staying away, except the obstructive cousin who had nearly prevented the match. When it was time to conduct the bride to the wedding canopy, the bridegroom's mother missed Tenya Ruzel. The house was searched for her, but in vain. Nobody had seen her. But my grandmother could not bear to have the marriage solemnized in the absence of a first cousin. Such a wedding as this was not likely to be repeated in her family. It would be a great pity if any of the relatives missed it. So she petitioned the principals to delay the ceremony, while she herself went in search of the missing cousin. Clear over to the farthest end of the town she walked. Lifting her gala dress well above her ankles, she found Tenya Ruzel in her untidy kitchen, sound in every limb, and salty in spirit. My grandmother exclaimed her her conduct, and bade her hurry with her toilet and accompany her. The wedding guests were waiting. The bride was faint from prolonging her fast. But Tenya Ruzel flatly refused to go. The bride might remain an old maid, for all she, Tenya Ruzel cared about the wedding. My troubled grandmother expostulated, questioned her, till she drew out the root of the cousin's sulkiness. Tenya Ruzel complained that she had not been properly invited. The wedding messenger had come, oh yes, but she had not addressed her as flatteringly, as respectfully as she had been heard to address the wife of Yahum, the moneylender. And Tenya Ruzel wasn't going to any weddings where she was not wanted. My grandmother had a struggle of it, but she succeeded in soothing the sensitive cousin, who consented at length to don her best dress and go to the wedding. While my grandmother labored with Tenya Ruzel, the bride sat in state in her father's house under the hill. The maid instanced, and the matrons fanned themselves, while the fiddlers and cymbals scraped and tinkled. But as the hours went by, the matrons became restless, and the dancers weiried. The poor relations grew impatient for the feast, and the babies in their laps began to fidget and cry, while the bride grew faint, and the bridegroom's party began to send frequent messengers from the house next door, demanding to know the cause of the delay. Some of the guests at last lost all patience, and begged leave to go home. But before they went they deposited the wedding presents in the bride's sat and lap, till she resembled a heathen image hung about with offerings. My mother, after thirty years of bustling life, retains a lively memory of the embarrassment she suffered while waiting for the arrival of the troublesome cousin. When that important dame at last appeared, with her chin in the air, the artificial flower still stuck belligerently into her dusty wig, and my grandmother beaming behind her, the bride's heart fairly jumped with anger, and the red blood of indignation set her cheeks afire. No wonder that she speaks the name of the red flower with an unloving accent to this day. Although she has forgiven the enemies who did her greater wrong, the bride is a princess on her wedding day. To put upon her in indignity is an unpardonable offense. After the feasting and dancing, which lasted a whole week, the wedding presents were locked up, the bride with her hair discreetly covered returned to her father's store, and the groom with his new praying shawl repaired to the synagogue. This was all according to the marriage bargain, which implied that my father was to study and pray, and fill the house with the spirit of piety, and return for board and lodging, and the devotion of his wife and her entire family. All the parties concerned had entered into this bargain in good faith, so far as they knew their own minds. But the eighteen-year-old bridegroom, before many months had passed, began to realize that he felt no such hunger for the word of the law as he was supposed to feel. He felt, rather, a hunger for life that all his studying did not satisfy. He was not trained enough to analyze his own thoughts to any purpose. He was not experienced enough to understand where his thoughts were leading him. He only knew that he felt no call to pray and fast that the Torah did not inspire him, and his days were blank. The life he was expected to lead grew distasteful to him, and yet he knew no other way to live. He became lax in his attendance at the synagogue, incurring the reproach of the family. It began to be rumored among the studious that the son-in-law of Raphael the Russian was not devoting himself to the sacred books with any degree of enthusiasm. It was well known that he had a good mind, but evidently the spirit was lacking. My grandparents went from surprise to indignation. From exhortation they passed to recrimination. Before my parents had been married half a year, my grandfather's house was divided against itself and my mother was torn between the two factions. For while she sympathized with her parents and felt personally cheated by my father's lack of piety, she thought it was her duty to take her husband's part, even against her parents in their own house. My mother was one of those women who always obey the highest law they know, even though it leads them to their doom. How did it happen that my father, who from his early boyhood had been pointed out as a scholar in embryo, failed to live up to the expectations of his world? It happened as it happened that his terror curled over his high forehead. He was made that way. If people were disappointed, it was because they had based their expectations on a misconception of his character. For my father had never had any aspirations for extreme piety. Piety was imputed to him by his mother, by his reba, by his neighbors, when they saw that he rendered the sacred word more intelligently than his fellow students. It was not his fault that people confused scholarship with religious ardor. Having a good mind, he was glad to exercise it, and being given only one subject to study, he was bound to make rapid progress in that. If he had ever been offered a choice between a religious and a secular education, his friends would have found out early that he was not born to be a rav. But as he had no mental opening except through the header, he went on from year to year, winning new distinction in Hebrew scholarship, with the result that witnesses, with preconceived ideas, began to see the halo of piety playing around his head, and a well-to-do family was misled into making a match with him, for the sake of the glory that he was to attain. When it became evident that the Son-in-law was not going to develop into a rav, my grandfather notified him that he would have to assume the support of his own family without delay. My father therefore entered on a series of experiments with paying occupations, for none of which he was qualified, and in none of which he succeeded permanently. My mother was with my father, as equal partner and laborer, in everything he attempted in Polotsk. They tried keeping a wayside in, but had to give it up because the life was too rough for my mother, who was expecting her first baby. Returning to Polotsk, they went to storekeeping on their own account, but failed also in this, because my father was inexperienced, and my mother, now with a baby to nurse, was not able to give her best attention to business. Over two years passed in this experiment, and in the interval the second child was born, increasing my parents' need of a home and a reliable income. It was then decided that my father should seek his fortune elsewhere. He traveled as far east as Chistafal, on the Volga, and south as far as Odessa, on the Black Sea, trying his luck at various occupations within the usual Jewish restrictions. Finally he reached the position of assistant superintendent in a distillery, with a salary of thirty rubles a month. That was a fair income for those days, and he was planning to have his family join him, when my grandfather Raphael died, leaving my mother heir to a good business. My father thereupon returned to Polotsk, after nearly three years' absence from home. As my mother had been trained to her business from childhood, while my father had had only a little irregular experience, she naturally remained the leader. She was as successful as her father before her. The people continued to call her Raphaels, Hana Haya, and under that name, she was greatly respected in the business world. Her eldest brother was now a merchant of importance, and my mother's establishment was gradually enlarged, so that altogether our family had a solid position in Polotsk, and there were plenty to envious. We were almost rich, as Polotsk counted riches in those days. Certainly we were considered well-to-do. We moved into a larger house, where there was room for out-of-town customers to stay overnight, with stabbling for their horses. We lived as well as any people of our class, and perhaps better, because my father had brought home with him from his travels, a taste for more genial life than Polotsk usually asked for. My mother kept a cook and a nursemaid, and a devornik, or outdoor man, to take care of the horses, the cow, and the woodpile. All the year round we kept open house, as I remember. Cousins and aunts were always about, and on holidays friends of all degrees gathered in numbers, and coming and going in the wing set apart for business guests were merchants, traders, country peddlers, peasants, soldiers, and minor government officials. It was a full house at all times, and especially so during fares, and at the season of the military draft. In the family wing there was also enough going on. There were four of us children, besides father and mother and grandmother, and the parasitic cousins. Fetka was the eldest, I was the second, the third was my only brother, named Joseph, for my father's father, and the fourth was Debra, named for my mother's mother. I suppose I ought to explain my own name also, especially because I am going to emerge as the heroine by and by. Be it therefore known that I was named Marushka, for a bygone aunt. I was never called by my full name, however. Marushka was too dignified for me. I was always Mashinka, or else Mashka, by way of diminutive. A variety of nicknames, mostly suggested by my physical peculiarities, were bestowed on me from time to time by my fond or foolish relatives. My uncle Burl, for example, gave me the name of Zuckraken Flume, which I am not going to translate, because it is uncomplementary. My sister Fetka was always the good little girl, and when our troubles began, she was an important member of the family. What sort of little girl I was will be written by and by. Joseph was the best Jewish boy that ever was born, but he hated to go to header, so he had to be whipped, of course. Debra was just a baby, and her principal characteristic was single-mindedness. If she had teething to attend to, she thought of nothing else day or night, and communicated with the family on no other subject. If it was Hoopingcoff, she hooped most heartily. If it was Measles, she had them thick. It was the normal thing in Polatsk, where the mothers worked as well as the fathers, for the children to be left in the hands of grandmothers and nursemaids. I suffer reminiscent terrors when I recall Debra's nurse, who never opened her lips except to frighten us children, or else to lie. That girl never told the truth if she could help it. I know it is so, because I heard her tell eleven or twelve unnecessary lies today. In the beginning of her residence with us, I exposed her indignantly every time I caught her lying. But the tenor of her private conversations with me was conducive to a cessation of my activity along the line of volunteer testimony. In shorter words, the nurse terrified me with horrid threats until I did not dare to contradict her, even if she lied her head off. The things she promised me in this life, and in the life to come, could not be executed by a person without imagination. The nurse gave almost her entire attention to us older children, disposing easily of the baby's claims. Debra, unless she was teething or hoop-coughing, was a quiet baby, and would lie for hours on the nurse's lap, sucking at a pacifier made of bread and sugar, tied up in a muslin rag and previously chewed to a pulp by the nurse. And while the baby sucked, the nurse told us things, things that we must remember when we went to bed at night. A favorite subject of her discourse was the evil one, who lived, so she told us, in our attic, with his wife and brood. A pet amusement of our invisible tenant was the translating of human babies into his lair, leaving one of his own brats in the cradle. The moral of which was that if nurse wanted to loaf in the yard, and watch who went out and who came in, we children must mind the baby. The girl was so sly that she carried on all this tyranny without being detected, and we lived in terror till she was discharged for stealing. In our grandmothers we were very fortunate. They spoiled us to our heart's content. Grandma Debra's methods I know only from hearsay, for I was very little when she died. Grandma Rachel I remember distinctly, spare and trim, and always busy. I recall her coming in midwinter from the frozen village where she lived. I remember, as if it were but last winter, the immense shawls and wraps which we unwound from about her son, her voluminous brown sack coat in which there was room for three of us at a time, and at last the tight clasp of her long arms and her fresh cold cheek on ours. And when the hugging and kissing were over Grandma had a treat for us. It was talacna, or oat flour, which we mixed with cold water and ate raw, using wooden spoons, just like the peasants, and smacking our lips over it in imaginary enjoyment. But Grandma Rachel did not come to play. She applied herself energetically to the housekeeping. She kept her bright eye on everything, as if she were in her own trifling establishment in Johovich. Watchful was she as any cat, and harmless as a tame rabbit. If she caught the maids at fault, she found an excuse for them at the same time. If she was quite exasperated with the stupidity of Yakub, the devornik, she pretended to curse him in a phrase of her own invention, a mixture of Hebrew and Russian, which translated said, Mayest thou have gold and silver in thy bosom. But to the chore man, who is not a linguist, the mongrel phrase conveyed a sense of his delinquency. Grandma Rachel meant to be very strict with us children, and accordingly was prompt to discipline us. But we discovered early in our acquaintance with her that the child who got a spanking was sure to get a hot cookie or the jam pot to lick, so we did not stand in great awe of her punishments. Even if it came to a spanking, it was only a farce. Grandma generally interposed a pillow between the palm of her hand and the area of moral stimulation. The real disciplinarian in our family was my father. Present or absent, it was fear of his displeasure that kept us in the stray and narrow path. In the minds of us children he was as much represented when away from home by the strap hanging on the wall as by his portrait which stood on a parlor table, in a gorgeous frame adorned with little shells. Almost everybody's father had a strap, but our father's strap was more formidable than the ordinary. For one thing it was more painful to encounter personally, because it was not a simple strap, but a brush of fine long strips, clinging as rubber. My father called it noodles, and while his facetiousness was lost on us children, the superior sting of his instrument was entirely effective. In his leisure my father found means of instructing us other than by the strap. He took us walking and driving, answered our questions, and taught us many little things that our playmates were not taught. From distant parts of the country he had imported little tricks of speech and conduct, which we learned readily enough, for we were always a teachable lot. Our pretty manners were very much admired, so that we became used to being held up as models to children less polite. Guests at our table praised our deportment, when at the end of a meal we kissed the hands of father and mother and thanked them for food. Envious mothers of rowdy children used to sneer. Those grandchildren of Raphael the Russian are quite the aristocrats. And yet off the stage we had our little quarrels and tempests, especially I. I really and truly cannot remember a time when Fetka was naughty, but I was often her in trouble then out of it. I need not go into details. I only need recall how often I'm going to bed. I used to lie silently, rehearsing the day's misdeeds. My sister refraining from talk out of sympathy. As I always came to the conclusion that I wanted to reform, I emerged from my reflections with a solemn formula. Fetka, let us be good. And my generosity and including my sister in my plans for salvation was equaled by her magnanimity in assuming part of my degradation. She always replied, in aspiration as eager as mine. Yes, Moshka, let us be good. My mother had thus to do with our early training because she was confined to the store. When she came home at night, with her pockets full of goodies for us, she was too hungry for our love to listen to tales against us, too tired from work to discipline us. It was only on sabbaths and holidays that she had a chance to get acquainted with us. And we all looked forward to these days of enjoined rest. On Friday afternoons my parents came home early to wash and dress and remove from their persons every sign of labor. The great keys of the store were put away out of sight. The money bag was hidden in the feather beds. My father put on his best coat and silk skull cap. My mother replaced the cotton kerchief by the well-brushed wig. We children bustled around our parents, asking favors in the name of the sabbath. Mama, let Fetka and me wear our new shoes in honor of sabbath. Or, Papa, will you take us tomorrow across the bridge? You said you would on sabbath. And while we adorned ourselves in our best, my grandmother superintended the sealing of the oven, the maids washed the sweat from their faces, and the devornik scraped his feet at the door. My father and brother went to the synagogue, while we women and girls assembled in the living-room for candle prayer. The table gleamed with spotless linen and china. At my father's place lay the sabbath loaf, covered over with a crocheted doily. And beside it stood the wine flask and kadushkup of gold or silver. At the opposite end of the table was a long row of brass candlesticks, polished to perfection, with the heavy silver candlesticks in a shorter row in front. For my mother and grandmother were very pious, and each used a number of candles, while Fetka and I and the maids had won a piece. After the candle prayer the women generally read in some book of devotion, while we children amuse yourselves in the quietest manner, till the men returned from synagogue. Good sabbath, my father called as he entered, and, good sabbath, good sabbath, we wished him in return. If he brought with him a sabbath guest from the synagogue, some poor man without a home, the stranger was welcomed and invited in, and placed in the seat of honor next to my father. We all stood around the table, while kadushk, or the blessing over the wine, was said, and if a child whispered or nudged another, my father reproved him with a stern look, and began again from the beginning. But as soon as he had cut the consecrated loaf and distributed the slices, we were at liberty to talk and ask questions, unless a guest was present, when we maintained a polite silence. Of one sabbath guest we were always sure, even if no destitute Jew accompanied my father from the synagogue. Yakub, the chore man, partake of the festival with us. He slept on a bunk built over the entrance door, and reached by means of a rude flight of steps. There he liked to roll on his strong rags, whenever he was not busy, or felt especially lazy. On Friday evenings he climbed to his roost very early, before the family assembled for supper, and waited for his cue, which was the breaking out of table-talk after the blessing of the bread. Then Yakub began to clear his throat, and kept on working at it until my father called to him to come down and have a glass of vodka. Sometimes my father pretended not to hear him, and we smiled at one another around the table, while Yakub's throat grew worse and worse, and he began to cough and mutter and rustle in his straw. Then my father let him come down, and he shuffled in, and stood clutching his cap with both hands, while my father poured him a brimming glass of whiskey. This Yakub dedicated to all our healths, and tossed off to his own comfort. If he got a slice of boiled fish after his glass full, he gulped it down as a chicken gulped worms, smacked his lips explosively, and wiped his fingers on his unkempt locks. Then thanking his master and mistress, and scraping and bowing, he backed out of the room and ascended to his roost once more, and in less time than it takes to write his name, the simple fellow was asleep, and snoring the snore of the jest. On Sabbath morning almost everybody went to synagogue, and those who did not read their prayers and devotions at home. Dinner at midday was a pleasant and leisurely meal in our house. Between courses my father led us in singing our favorite songs, sometimes Hebrew, sometimes Yiddish, sometimes Russian, or some of the songs without words for which the Hasidim were famous. In the afternoon we went visiting, or else we took long walks out of town, where the fields sprouted and the orchards waited to bloom. If we stayed at home we were not without company, neighbors dropped in for a glass of tea, uncles and cousins came, and perhaps my brother Shreba to examine his pupil in the hearing of the family. And wherever we spent the day the talk was pleasant, the faces were cheerful, and the joy of Sabbath pervaded everything. The festivals were observed with all due pomp and circumstance in our house. Passover was beautiful with shining new things all through the house. Poor room was gay with feasting and presents and the jolly mummers. Sukat was a poem lived in a green arbor. New year thrilled our hearts with its symbols and promises, and the day of atonement moved even the laughing children to a longing for consecration. The year in our pious house was an endless song and many cantos of joy, lamentation, aspiration, and rhapsody. We children, while we regretted the passing of a festival, found plenty to content us in the common days of the week. We had everything we needed, and almost everything we wanted. We were welcomed everywhere, petted and praised, abroad as well as at home. I suppose no little girls with whom we played had a more comfortable sense of being well off than Fetka and I. Raphael the Russian's grandchildren, people called us, as if referring to the quarterings in our shield. It was very pleasant to wear fine clothes, to have copex to spend at the fruit stalls, and to be pointed at admiringly. Some of the little girls we went with were richer than we, but after all one's mother can only wear one pair of earrings at a time, and our mother had beautiful gold ones that hung down on her neck. As we grew older, my parents gave us more than physical comfort and social standing to rejoice in. They gave us, or set out to give us, education, which was less common than gold earrings and pilotsk. For the ideal of a modern education was the priceless wear that my father brought back with him from his travels in distant parts. His travels, indeed, had been the making of my father. He had gone away from pilotsk in the first place, as a man unfit for the life he led, out of harmony with his surroundings, at odds with his neighbors. Never heartily devoted to the religious ideals of the Hebrew scholar, he was more and more a dissenter as he matured, but he hardly knew what he wanted to embrace and place of the ideals he rejected. The rigid scheme of orthodox Jewish life in the pale offered no opening to any other mode of life. But in the large cities in the east and south, he discovered a new world and found himself at home in it. The Jews among whom he lived in those parts were faithful to the essence of the religion, but they allowed themselves more latitude and practice and observance than the people in pilotsk. Instead of bribing government officials to relax the love compulsory education for boys, these people pushed in numbers at every open door of culture and enlightenment. Even the girls were given books in Odessa and Kersen, as the rock to build their lives on, and not as an ornament for idleness. My father's mind was ready for the reception of such ideas, and he was inspired by the new view of the world which they afforded him. When he returned to pilotsk he knew what had been wrong with his life before, and he proceeded to remedy it. He resolved to live, as far as the conditions of existence and pilotsk permitted, the life of a modern man. And he saw no better place to begin than with the education of the children. Outwardly he must conform to the ways of his neighbors, just as he must pay tribute to the policemen on the beat. Forestanding room is necessary to all operations, and social ostracism could ruin him as easily as police persecution. His children, if he started them right, would not have to bow to the yoke as low as he. His children's children might even be free men, and education was the one means to redemption. Fetka and I were started with Ereba in the Orthodox way, but we were taught to translate as well as read Hebrew, and we had a secular teacher besides. My sister and I were very diligent pupils, and my father took great satisfaction in our progress, and built great plans for our higher education. My brother, who was five years old when he entered Heter, hated to be shut up all day over a printed page that meant nothing to him. He cried and protested, but my father was determined that he should not grow up ignorant, so he used the strap freely to hasten the truant step to school. The Heter was the only beginning allowable for a boy in Polotsk, and to Heter Joseph must go. So the poor boy's life was made a nightmare, and the horror was not lifted until he was ten years old. When he went to a modern school, where intelligible things were taught, and it proved that it was not the book he hated, but the blindness of the Heter. For a number of peaceful years after my father's return from far Russia, we led a wholesome life of comfort, contentment, and faith in tomorrow. Everything prospered, and we children grew in the sun. My mother was one with my father in all his plans for us. Although she had spent her young years in the pursuit of the ruble, it was more to her that our teacher praised us than that she had made a good bargain with a tea merchant. Fetka and Joseph and I, and Debra when she grew up, had some prospects even in Polotsk, with our parents' hearts set on the highest things. But we were destined to seek our fortunes in a world which even my father did not dream of when he settled down to business in Polotsk. Just when he felt himself safe and strong, a long series of troubles set into harass us, and in a few years' time we were reduced to a state of helpless poverty, in which there was no room to think of anything but bread. My father became seriously ill, and spent large sums on cures that did not cure him. While he was still an invalid, my mother also became ill, and kept her bed for the better part of two years. When she got up, it was only two laps again. Some of us children also fell ill, so that at one period the house was a hospital. And while my parents were incapacitated, the business was ruined through bad management, until a day came when there was not enough money in the cash drawer to pay the doctor's bills. For some years after they got upon their feet again, my parents struggled to regain their place in the business world, but failed to do so. My father had another period of experimenting with this or that business, like his earlier experience. But everything went wrong. Till at last he made a great resolve to begin life all over again, and the way to do that was to start on a new soil. My father determined to emigrate to America. I have now told who I am, what my people were, how I began life, and why I was brought to a new home. Up to this point I have borrowed the recollections of my parents, to piece out my own fragmentary reminences. But from now on I propose to be my own pilot across the seas of memory, and if I lose myself in the mists of uncertainty, or run aground on the reefs of speculation, I still hope to make port at last, and I shall look for welcoming faces on the shore. For the ship I sail in is history, and facts will kindle my beacon fires. End of Chapter 4 Chapter 5 of The Promised Land This LibriVox recording is in the public domain, recording by Bridget Gage, The Promised Land, by Mary Anton. Chapter 5 I Remember My father and mother could tell me much more that I have forgotten, or that I never was aware of. But I want to reconstruct my childhood from those broken recollections, only which, recurring to me in after years, filled me with the pain and wonder of remembrance. I want to string together those glimpses of my earliest days that dangle in my mind, like little lanterns in the crooked alleys of the past, and show me an elusive little figure that is myself, and yet so much a stranger to me, that I often ask, can this be I? I have not much faith in the reality of my first recollection, but as I can never go back over the past without bringing up at last at the somber little scene, as at a door beyond which I cannot pass, I must put it down for what it is worth in the scheme of my memories. I see then an empty darkened room, in the middle, on the floor, lies a long shape, covered with some black stuff. There are candles at the head of the shape. Dim figures are seated low, against the walls, swaying to and fro. No sound is in the room, except a moan, or a sigh, from the shadowy figures. But a child is walking softly around and around the shape on the floor, in quiet curiosity. The shape is the body of my grandfather, laid out for burial. The child is myself, myself asking questions of death. I was four years old when my mother's father died. Do I really remember the little scene? Perhaps I heard it described by some fond relative, as I heard other anecdotes of my infancy, and unconsciously incorporated it with my genuine recollections. It is so suitable a scene for a beginning, the darkness, the mystery, the impenetrability. My share in it too is characteristic enough, if I really studied that shape by the lighted candles, as I have always pretended to myself. So often afterwards I find myself forgetting the conventional meanings of things, in some search for a meaning of my own. It is more likely, however, that I took no intellectual interest in my grandfather's remains at the time. But later on, when I sought for a first recollection, perhaps, elaborated the scene, and my part in it, to something that satisfied my sense of dramatic fitness. If I really committed such a fraud, I am now well punished, by being obliged, at the very start, to discredit the authenticity of my memoirs. The abode of our childhood, if not revisited in later years, is apt to loom in our imagination as a vast edifice with immense chambers in which our little self seems lost. Somehow I have failed of this illusion. My grandfather's house where I was born stands in my memory, a small one-story wooden building whose chimneys touch the sky at the same level as its neighbor's chimneys. Such as it was, the house stood even with the sidewalk, but the yard was screened from the street by a board fence, outside which I am sure there was a bench. The gate into the yard swung so high from the ground that four-footed visitors did not have to wait till it was opened. Pigs found their way in, and were shown the way out, under the gate, grunting on their arrival, but squealing on their departure. Of the interior of the house I remember only one room, and not so much the room as the window, which had a blue sash curtain, and beyond the curtain a view of a narrow walled garden, where deep red dahlias grew. The garden belonged to the house adjoining my grandfathers, where lived the gentile girl who was kind to me. Concerning my dahlias, I have been told that they were not dahlias at all, but poppies. As a conscientious historian, I am bound to record every rumor, but I retain the right to cling to my own impression. Indeed, I must insist on my dahlias if I am to preserve the garden at all. I have so long believed in them that if I try to see poppies in those red masses over the wall, the whole garden crumbles away, and leaves me a gray blink. I have nothing against poppies. It is only that my illusion is more real to me than reality. And so do we often build our world on an error, and cry out that the universe is falling to pieces if anyone but lift a finger to replace the error by truth. Ours was a quiet neighborhood. Across the narrow street was the orderly front of the corpus, or military academy, with straight rows of unchuttered windows. It was an imposing edifice in the eyes of us all. Because it was built of brick, and with several stories high, at one of the windows I pretend I remember seeing a tailor mending the uniforms of the cadets. I knew the uniforms, and I knew in later years the man who had been the tailor, but I am not sure that he did not emigrate to America, there to seek his fortune in a candy shop, and his happiness in a family of triplets, twins, and even odds long before I was old enough to toddle as far as the gate. Behind my grandfather's house was a low hill, which I do not remember as a mountain. Perhaps it was only a hump in the ground. This eminence, of whatever stature, was a part of the veil, a longer and higher ridge, on the top of which was a promenade, and which was said to be the burying-ground of Napoleonic soldiers. This historic rumour meant very little to me, for I never knew what Napoleon was. It was not my way to accept unchallenged every superstition that came to my ears. Among the wild flowers that grew on the grassy slopes of the vol, there was a small daisy, popularly called blind flower, because it was supposed to cause blindness in rash children who picked it. I was rash if I was awake, and I picked blind flowers behind the house, handfuls of them, and enjoyed my eyesight unimpaired. If my faith in nursery lore was shaken by this experience, I kept my discovery to myself, and did not undertake to enlighten my playmates. I find other instances, later on, of the curious fact that I was content with finding out for myself. It is curious to me, because I am not so reticent now. Whenever I discover anything, if only a new tint in the red sunset, I must publish the fact to all my friends. Is it possible that in my childish reflections I recognize the fact that ours was a secretive atmosphere where knowledge was for the few, and wisdom was sometimes a capital offense? In the summertime I lived outdoors considerably. I found many occasions to visit my mother in the store, which gave me a long walk. If my errand was not pressing, or perhaps even if it was, I made a long stop on the plaits. Especially if I had a companion with me. The plaits was a rectangular space in the center of a roomy square, with a shady promenade around its level lawn. The corpus faced on the plaits, which was its drill-ground. Around the square were grouped the fine residences of the officers of the corpus, with a great white church occupying one side. These buildings had a fearful interest for me, especially the church, as the dwellings and sanctuary of the enemy, but on the plots I was not afraid to play and seek adventures. I loved to watch the cadets drill and play ball, or pass them close as they promenaded, two in two, looking so perfect in white trousers and jackets and visored caps. I loved to run with my playmates and lay out all sorts of geometric figures on the four straight sides of the promenade. Patterns of infinite variety, traceable only by a pair of tireless feet. If one got so wild with play as to forget all fear, one could swing, until chased away by the guard, on the heavy chain festoons that encircled the monument at one side of the square. This was the only monument in Polotsk, dedicated I never knew to whom or what. It was the monument, as the sky was the sky, and the earth, earth, the only phenomenon of its kind, mysterious, unquestionable. It was not far from the limits of Polotsk to the fields and woods. My father was fond of taking us children for a long walk on a Sabbath afternoon. I have little pictures in my mind of places where we went, though I doubt if they could be found from my descriptions. I try in vain to conjure up a panoramic view of the neighborhood. Even when I stood on the apex of the vol, and saw the level country spread in all directions, my inexperienced eyes failed to give me the picture of the whole. I saw the houses in the streets below, all going to market. The high roads wandered out into the country, and disappeared in the sunny distance, where the edge of the earth and the edge of the sky fitted together, like a jewel box with a lit a jar. In these things I saw what a child always sees, the unrelated fragments of a vast, mysterious world. But although my geography may be vague, and the scenes I remember as the pieces of a paper puzzle, still my breath catches as I replace this bit or that, and coax the edges to fit together. I am obstinately positive of some places. And for the rest you may amend the puzzle if you can. You may make a survey of Pilotsk ever so accurate, and show me where I was wrong. Still I am the better guide. You may show me that my adventure-full road led nowhere. But I can prove, by the quickening of my pulse and the throbbing of my rapid recollections, that things happen to me there, or here, and I shall be believed, not you. And so over the vague canvas of scenes, half remembered, half imagined, I draw the brush of recollection, and pick out here a landmark, there a figure, and set my own feet back in the old ways, and live over the old events. It is real enough, as by my beating heart you might know. Sometimes my father took us out by the long road. There is no road in the neighborhood of Pilotsk by that name, but I know very well that the way was long to my little feet, and long are the backward thoughts that creep along it, like a sunbeam traveling with the day. The first landmark on the sunny dusty road is the house of a peasant acquaintance, where we stopped for rest and a drink. I remember a cool gray interior, a woman with her bosom uncovered, pattering barefoot to hand us the hospitable dipper, and a baby smothered in a deep cradle, which hung by ropes from the ceiling. Farther on, the empty road gave us shadows of trees, and rustlings of long grass. This at least is what I imagine over the spaces where no certain object is. Then I know, we laughed and played, and it was father himself who hid in the corn, and we made havoc following after. Laughing, we ramble on, till we hear the long, far whistle of a locomotive. The railroad track is just visible over the field on the left of the road. The cornfield, I say, is on the right. We stand on tiptoe, and wave our hands and shout as the long train rushes by at a terrific speed, leaving its pen and of smoke behind. The passing of the train thrilled me wonderfully. Where did it come from? And wither did it fly? And how did it feel to be one of the faces at the windows? If I ever dreamed of a world beyond Polotsk, it must have been at those times, though I do not honestly remember. Somewhere out on that same long road is the place where we once attended a wedding. I do not know who were married, or whether they lived happily ever after. But I remember that when the dancers were wearied, and we were all sated with goodies, day was dawning, and several of the young people went out for a stroll in a grove nearby. They took me with them. Who were they? And they lost me. At any rate, when they saw me again, I was a stranger. For I had sojourned, for an immeasurable moment, in a world apart from theirs. I had witnessed my first sunrise. I had watched the rosy morning tiptoe in among the silver birches. And that grove stands on the left side of the road. We had another stopping place out in that direction. It was the place where my mother sent her hundred and more house plants to be cared for one season. Because for some reason they could not fare well at home. We children went to visit them once, and the memory of that is red and white and purple. The long road went ever on and on. I remember no turns. But we turned at last when the sun was set and the breeze of evening blew, and sometimes the first star came in, and the Sabbath went out before we reached home and supper. Another way out of town was by the bridge across the Pilata. I recall more than one excursion in that direction. Sometimes we made a large party, annexing a few cousins and aunts for the day. At this moment I feel a movement of affection for these relations who shared our country adventures. I had forgotten what virtue there was in our family. I do like people who can walk. In those days it is likely enough. I did not always walk on my own legs, for I was very little and not strong. I do not remember being carried. But if any of my big uncles gave me a lift I am sure I like them all the more for it. The Divina River swallowed the Pilata many times a day, yet the lesser stream flooded the universe on one occasion. On the hither bank of that stream, as you go from Pilatsk, I should plant a flowering bush, a lilac, or a rose, in memory of the life that bloomed in me one day that I was there. Leisurely we had strolled out of the peaceful town. It was early spring, and the sky and the earth were two warm palms in which all life things nestled. Little green leaves trumbled on the trees, and the green, green grass sparkled. We sat us down to rest a little above the bridge, and life flowed in and out of us, fully, freely, as the river flowed and parted about the bridge piles. A market garden lay on the opposite slope, yellow-green with first growth. In the long, black furrows yet unsown, a peasant pushed his plow. I watched him go up and down, leaving a new black line on the bank for every turn. Suddenly he began to sing, a rude plaman song. Only the melody reached me, but the meaning sprang up in my heart to fit it, a song of the earth and the hopes of the earth. I sat a long time listening, looking, tense with attention. I felt myself discovering things. Something in me gasped for life and flayed still. I was but a little body, and life universe had suddenly burst upon me. For a moment I had my little hand on the great pulse, but my fingers slipped, empty. For the space of a wild heartbeat I knew, and then I was again a simple child looking to my earthly senses for life. But the sky had stretched for me. The earth had expanded. A greater life had dawned in me. We are not born all at once, but by bits. The body first and the spirit later, and the birth and growth of the spirit, and those who are attentive to their own inner life, are slow and exceedingly painful. Our mothers are wracked with the pains of our physical birth. We ourselves suffer the longer pains of our spiritual growth. Our souls are scarred with the struggles of successive births, and the progress is recorded also by the wrinkles in our brains, by the lines in our faces. Look at me, and you will see that I have been born many times. And my first self-birth happened as I have told that spring day of my early springs. Therefore would I plant a rose on the green bank of the Pilata, there to bloom in token of eternal life. Eternal, divine life, this is a tale of immortal life. Should I be sitting here, chattering of my infantile adventures, if I did not know that I was speaking for thousands? Should you be sitting there, attending to my chatter, while the world's work waits? If you did not know that I spoke also for you, I might say you, or he, instead of I, or I might be silent while you spoke for me and the rest. But for the accident that I was born with a pen in my hand and you without, we love to read the lives of the great, yet what a broken history of mankind they give, unless supplemented by the lives of the humble. But while the great can speak for themselves, or by the tongues of their admirers, the humble are apt to live in articulate and die unheard. It is well that now and then one is born among the simple, with a taste for self-revelation. The man or woman thus endowed must speak, will speak, though there only the grass is in the field to hear, and none but the wind to carry the tail. It is fun to run over the bridge, with a clatter of stout little shoes on resounding timbers. We pass a walled orchard on the right, and remind each other of the fruit we enjoyed here last summer. Our next stopping place is farther on, beyond the wayside in, where lives the idiot boy who gave me such a scare of last time. It is a poor enough place where we stop, but there is an ice house, the only one I know. We are allowed to go in, and see the greenish masses of ice gleaming in the half light, and bring out jars of sweet black lodger beer, which we drink in the sunny doorway. I shall always remember the flavor of the stuff, and the smell, and the wonder and chill of the ice house. I vaguely remember something about a convent out in that direction, but I was tired and sleepy after my long walk, and glad to be returning home. I hope they carried me a bit of the way, for I was very tired. There were stars out before we reached home, and the men stopped in the middle of the street to bless the new moon. It is pleasant to recall how we went bathing in the Pilata. On Friday afternoons in summer, when the week's work was done, and the houses of the good housewives stood shining with cleanliness, ready for the Sabbath. Parties of women and girls went chattering and laughing down to the riverbank. There was a particular spot which belonged to the woman. I do not know where the men bathed, but our part of the river was just above Bondaroff's Gristmill. I can see the green bank sloping to the water, and the still water sliding down to the sudden swirl and spray of the mill-race. The woods on the bank screened the bathers. Bathing costumes were simply absent, which caused the mermaids no embarrassment, for they were accustomed to see each other naked in the public hot baths. They had little fear of intrusion, for the spot was sacred to them. They splashed about and laughed and played tricks, with streaming hair and free gestures. I do not know when I saw the girls play as they did in the water. It was a pretty picture, but the bathers would have been shocked beyond your understanding if you had suggested that the naked woman might be put into a picture. If it ever happened, as it happened at least once for me to remember, that their privacy was outraged, the bathers were thrown into a panic as if their very lives were threatened. Screaming they huddled together, low in the water, some hiding their eyes in their hands, with the instinct of the ostrich. Some ran for their clothes on the bank and stood shrinking behind some inadequate rag. The more spirited of the niads threw pebbles at the cowardly intruders, who, safe behind the leafy cover that was meant to shield modesty, threw jeers and mockery in return. But the Gentile boys ran away soon or ran away punished. A chemise and a petticoat turn a frightened woman into an Amazon in such circumstances and woe to the impudent wretch who lingered after the Avengers plunged into the thicket. Slaps and coughs at close range were his portion, and curses pursued him in retreat. Amongst the liveliest of my memories are those of eating and drinking, and I would sooner give up some of my delightful remembered walks, green trees, cool skies, and all, than to lose my images of suppers eaten on sabbath evenings at the end of those walks. I make no apology to the spiritually minded, to whom this statement must be a revelation of grossness. I am content to tell the truth as well as I am able. I do not even need to console myself with the reflection that what is drawst to the dreamy aesthetic may be gold to the psychologist. The fact is that I ate, even as a delicate child, with considerable relish, and I remember eating with a relish still keener. Why, I can dream away a half hour on the immortal flavor of those thick cheese cakes we used to have on Saturday night. I am no cook, so I cannot tell you how to make such cake. I might borrow the recipe from my mother, but I would rather you should take my word for the excellence of Pilotsk cheese cakes. If you should attempt that pastry, I am certain, be you ever so clever a cook, you would be disappointed by the result, and hence you might be led to mistrust my reflections and conclusions. You have nothing in your kitchen cupboard to give the pastry its notable flavor. It takes history to make such a cake. First, you must eat it as a ravenous child, in memorable twilight, before the lighting of the weekday lamp. Then you must have yourself removed from the house of your simple feast, across the oceans, to a land where your cherished pastry is unknown even by name, and where daylight and twilight work day and fate day for years rush by you in the unbroken tide of a strange new, over-full life. You must abstain from the inimitable morsel for a period of years. I think fifteen is the magic number, and then suddenly one day rub the Aladdin's lamp of memory and have the renowned tidbit whisked upon your platter, garnished with a hundred sweet herbs of past association. Do you think all your imported spices, all your scientific blending and manipulating could produce so fragrant a morsel as that which I have on my tongue as I write? Glad am I that my mother, in her assiduous imitation of everything American, has forgotten the secrets of Pilotsk cookery. At any rate, she does not practice it, and I am the richer in memories for her omissions. Pilotsk cheesecake, as I now know it, has in it the flavor of daisies and clover picked on the ball, the sweetness of devina water, the richness of newly turned earth, which I molded with bare feet and hands, the ripeness of red cherries bought by the dipperful in the marketplace, the fragrance of all my childhood summers. Abstinence, as I have mentioned, is one of the essential ingredients in the phantom dish. I discovered this through a recent experience. It was cherry time in the country, and the sight of a scarlet fruit suddenly reminded me of a cherry season in Pilotsk, I could not say how many years ago. On that earlier occasion my cousin Shimka, who like everybody else, was a storekeeper, had set a boy to watch her store, and me to watch the boy, while she went home to make cherry preserves. She gave us a basket of cherries for our trouble, and the boy offered to eat them with the stones, if I would give him my share. But I was equal to that feat myself, so we sat down to a cherry stone contest. Who ate the most stones I could not remember, as I stood under the laden trees not long ago. But the transcendent flavor of the historical cherries came back to me, and I needs must enjoy it once more. I climbed into the lowest boughs and hung there, eating cherries with the stones, my whole mind concentrated on the sense of taste. Alas, the fruit had no such flavor to yield as I sought. Excellent American cherries were these, but not so fragrantly sweet as my cousin's cherries, and if I should return to Pilotsk, and buy me a measure of cherries at a market stall, and pay for it with the Russian Gratian, would the market woman be generous enough to throw in that haunting flavor? I fear I should find that the old species of cherry is extinct in Pilotsk. Sometimes, when I am not trying to remember at all, I am more fortunate in extracting the flavors of past feasts from my plain American vines. I was eating strawberries the other day, ripe red American strawberries. Suddenly I experienced the very flavor and aroma of some strawberries I ate perhaps twenty years ago. I started as from a shock, and then sat still, for I do not know how long, breathless with amazement. In the brief interval of a gustatory perception I became a child again, and I positively ached with the pain of being so suddenly compressed to that small being. I wandered about Pilotsk once more, with large questioning eyes. I rode the Atlantic in an emigrant ship. I took possession of the New World, my ears growing accustomed to a new language. I sat at the feet of renowned professors, till my eyes contracted in dreaming over what they taught. And there I was again, an American among Americans, suddenly made aware of all that I had been, all that I had become, suddenly illuminated, inspired by a complete vision of myself, a daughter of Israel, and a child of the universe, that taught me more of the history of my race than ever my learned teachers could understand. All this came to me in that instant of tasting, all from the flavor of ripe strawberries on my tongue. Why, then, should I not treasure my memories of childhood feasts? This experience gives me a great respect for my bread and meat. I want to taste of as many vines as possible, for when I sit down to a dish of porridge, I am certain of rising again a better animal, and I may rise a wiser man. I want to eat and drink and be instructed. Someday I expect to extract from my pudding the flavor of mana which I ate in the desert. And then I shall write you a contemporaneous commentary on the Exodus. Nor do I despair of remembering yet over a dish of corn, the time when I fed on worms, and then I may be able to recall how it felt to be made at last into a man. Give me to eat and drink, for I crave wisdom. My winters, while I was a very little girl, were passed in comparative confinement. On account of my delicate health, my grandmother and Anne steamed it wise to keep me indoors. Or if I went out, I was so heavily coated and mittened and shalled that the frost scarcely got a chance at the tip of my nose. I never skated or coasted or built snow houses. If I had any experience of snowballs, it was with those thrown at me by the Gentile boys. The way I dodge a snowball to this day makes me certain that I learned the act in my fearful childhood days when I learned so many cowardly tricks of bending to a blow. I know that I was part of myself when, not many years ago, I found I was not afraid to stand up and catch a flying baseball. But the fear of the snowball I have not conquered. When I turn a corner in snowball days, the boys with bulging pockets see a head held high and a step unquickened. But I know that I cringe inwardly, and this private mortification I set down against Old Polotsk and my long score of grievances and shames. Fear is a hard devil to cast out. Let me make the most of the winter adventures that I recall. First, there was slaying. We never kept horses of our own, but the horses of our customer guests were always at our disposal, and many a jolly ride they gave us, with a dvornik at the reins, while their owners haggled with my mother in the store about the price of soap. We had no luxurious slay with cushions and fur robes, no silver bells on our harness. Ours was a bare sledge used for hauling wood, with a padding of straw and burlap. And the reins, as likely as not, were a knotted rope. But the horses did fly over the river and up the opposite bank if we chose. And whether we had bells or not, the merry, foolish heart of Yakub would sing, and the whip would crack, and we children would laugh, and the sport was as good as when, occasionally, we did ride in a more splendid slay, loaned us by one of our prouder guests. We were wholesome as apples to look at when we returned for bread and tea in the dusk. At least I remember my sister, with cheeks as red as the painted dolls under her close clipped curls, and my little brother, Rosie too, and aristocratic looking enough in his little great coat, tied with a red sash, and a little fur cap with earlaps. For myself, I suppose my nose was purple and my cheeks pinched, just as they are now in the cold weather. But I had a good time. At certain, I mean uncertain, intervals, we were bundled up and marched to the public baths. This was so great in undertaking, consuming half a day or so, and involving, in winter, such risk of catching cold, that it is no wonder the ceremony was not practiced oftener. The public baths were situated on the river bank. I always stopped a while outside to visit the poor patient horse in the treadmill, by means of which the water was pumped into the baths. I was not sentimental about animals then. I had not read of Black Beauty, or any other personified monsters. I had not heard of any societies for the prevention of cruelty to anything. But my pity stirred of its own accord at the sight of that miserable brute in the treadmill. I was used to seeing horses hard-worked and abused. This horse had no load to make him sweat, and I never saw him whipped. Yet I pitied this creature. Round and round his little circle he trod, with head hanging and eyes void of expectation. Round and round all day, unthrilled by any touch of rain or bridle, interpreters of a living will. Round and round, all solitary, never driven, never checked, never addressed. Round and round and round, a walking machine, with eyes that did not flash, with teeth that did not threaten, with hooves that did not strike. Round and round, the dull day long, I knew what a horse's life should be, entangled with a life of a master, adventurous, troubled, thrilled, petted and opposed, loved and abused. Today the ringing city pavement underfoot, and the buzz of beasts and men in the marketplace. Tomorrow the yielding turf under tickled flanks, and the lonely winny of scattered mates. How empty the existence of the treadmill-horse beside this, as empty and endless and dull, as the life of almost any woman in Pilotsk, had I had eyes to see the likeness. But to my ablutions, we undress in a room leading directly from the entry, and furnished only with benches around the walls. There is no screen or other protection against the drafts rushing in every time the door is opened. When we enter the bathing-room, we are confused by a babble of sounds, shrill voices of women, hoarse voices of attendants, wailing and yelping of children, and rushing of water. At the same time, we are smitten by the heat of the room, and nearly suffocated by clouds of steam. We find at last an empty bench, and surround ourselves with a semi-circle of wooden pales, collected from all around the room. Sometimes two women in search of pales lay hold of the same pal at the same moment, and a wrangle ensues, in the course of which each disputant reminds the other of all her failings, nicknames, and undesirable connections, living dead and unborn, until an attendant interferes with more muscle than argument, punctuating the sentence of justice with newly coined expletives suggested by the occasion. The center of the room, where the bathers fill their pales with the faucets, is a field of endless battle, especially on a crowded day. The peaceful woman seated with an earshot stopped their violent scrubbing to the relief of unwilling children, while they attend to the liveliest of the curls. I like to watch the pole, that place of torture and heroic endurance. It is a series of steps rising to the ceiling, affording a gradually mounting temperature. The bather who wants to enjoy a violent sweating rests full length for a few minutes on each step. While an attendant administers several hardy strokes of a stinging bosom, sometimes a woman climbs too far, and is brought down in a faint. On the pole, also the cupping is done. The back of the patient, with the cups and even rows, looks to me like a muffin pan. Of course, I never go on the pole. I am not robust enough. My spankings I take at home. Another center of interest is the mikwa, the name of which it is indelicate to mention in the hearing of men. It is a large pool of standing water, its depth graded by means of a flight of steps. Every married woman must perform here certain ceremonious ablutions at regular intervals. Cleanliness is as strictly enjoined as godliness, and the manner of attaining it is carefully prescribed. The women are prepared by the attendants for entering the pool, the curious children looking on. In the pool they are ducked over their heads the correct number of times. The water in the pool has been standing for days. It does not look nor smell fresh. But we had no germs in pilotsk, so no harm came of it, any more than of the pails used promiscuously by feminine pilotsk. If any were so dainty as to have second thoughts about the use of the common bath, they could enjoy, for a fee of twenty-five co-packs, a private bathtub, and another part of the building. For the rich there were luxuries even in pilotsk. Cleansed, red-skinned, and steaming, we return at last to the dressing-room, to shiver as we dress, and the cold drafts from the entry door, and then, muffled up to the eyes, we plunge into the refreshing outer air and hurry home, looking like so many big bundles running away with smaller bundles. If we meet acquaintances on the way, we are greeted with zoo refua. To your good health. If the first man we meet is a gentile, the woman who have been to the mikwa have to return and repeat the ceremony of purification. To prevent such a calamity, the kerchief is worn hooded over the eyes, so as to exclude unholy sights. At home we are indulged with extra pieces of cake for tea, and otherwise treated like heroes returned from victory. We narrate anecdotes of our expedition, and my mother complains that my little brother is getting too old to be taken to the woman's bath, he will go hereafter with the men. My winter confinement was not shared by my older sister, who otherwise was my constant companion. She went out more than I, not being so afraid of the cold. She used to fret so when my mother was away in the store that it became accustomed for her to accompany my mother from the time she was a mere baby. Muffled in rosy and frostbitten, the tears of cold rolling unnoticed down her plump cheeks, she ran after my busy mother all day long, or tumbled about behind the counter. Or nestled for a nap among the bulging sacks of oats and barley. She warmed her little hands over my mother's pot of glowing charcoal. There was no stove in the store, and even learned to stand astride of it for further comfort without setting her clothes on fire. Fetka was like a young colt inseparable from the mare. I make this comparison not in disrespectful jest, but in deepest pity. Fetka kept close to my mother at first for love and protection, but the petting she got became a blind for discipline. She learned early, from my mother's example, that hands and feet and brains were made for labour. She learned to bow to the yoke, to lift burdens, to do more for others than she could ever hope to have done for her in turn. She learned to see sugar plums lie around without asking for her share. When she was only fit to nurse her dolls, she learned how to comfort a weary heart. And all this while I sat warm and watched over at home, untouched by any discipline, safe such as I directly incurred by my own sins. I differed from Fetka a little in age, considerably in health, and enormously in luck. It was my good luck in the first place to be born after her, instead of before, in the second place to inherit from the family stock that particular assortment of gifts which was sure to mark me for special attentions, exemptions, and privileges. And as fortune always smiles on good fortune, it has ever been my luck, in the third place, to find something good in my idle hand, whether a sunbeam or a loving heart, or a congenial task. Whenever, unturning a corner, I put out my hand to see what my new world was like. While my sister, dear devoted creature, had her hand so full of work that the sunbeam slipped, and the loving comrade passed out of hearing before she could straighten from her task. And all she had of the better world was a scented Zephyr fanned in her face by the irresistible closing of a door. Perhaps Esau has been too severely blamed for selling his birthright for a mess of potage. The law of the firstborn is not necessarily to be envied. The firstborn of a well-to-do patriarch, like Isaac, or of a Rothschild of today, inherits with his father's flocks and slaves and coffers. A troop of cares and responsibilities, unless he be a man without a sense of duty, in which case we are not supposed to envy him. The firstborn of an indigent father inherits a double measure of the disadvantages of poverty. A joyless childhood, a guideless youth, and perhaps a mateless manhood, his own life being drained to feed the young of his father's beginning. If we cannot do away with poverty entirely, we ought at least to abolish the institution of primogeniture. Nature invented the individual and promised him as a reward for a lusty being, comfort and immortality. Comes maned with his patented brains and copyrighted notions and levies attacks on the individual in the form of enforced cooperation for the maintenance of his pet institution, the family. Our comfort in the grip of this tyranny must lie in the hope that man, who is no bastard child of mother nature, may be approaching a more perfect resemblance to her majestic features, that his fitful development will culminate in a spiritual constitution capable of absolute justice. I think I was telling how I stayed at home in the winter while my sister helped or hindered my mother in her storekeeping. The days drew themselves out too long sometimes, so that I sat at the window thinking what should happen next. No dowels, no books, no games, and at times no companions. My grandmother taught me knitting, but I never got to the heel of my stocking. Because if I discovered a dropped stitch, I insisted on unraveling all my work till I picked it up. And grandmother, instead of encouraging me in my love for perfection, lost patience and took away my knitting needles. I still maintain that she was in the wrong, but I have forgiven her, since I have worn many pairs of stockings with dropped stitches and been grateful for them. And speaking of such everyday things reminds me of my friends, among whom also I find an impressive number with a stitch dropped somewhere in the pattern of their souls. I love these friends so dearly that I begin to think I am at last shedding my intolerance, for I remember the day when I could not love less than perfection. I and my imperfect friends together aspire to cast our blemishes, and I am happier so. There was not much to see from my window, yet adventures beckoned to me from the empty street. Sometimes the adventure was real, and I went out to ecton it, instead of dreaming on my stool. Once I remember, it was early spring, and the winter's ice, just chopped up by the street cleaners, lay muddy and ragged, and high in the streets from curb to curb. So it must fly there till it was time to cart it to the Divina, which had all it could do at this season to carry tons and heavy tons of ice and snow, and every sort of city rubbish, accumulated during the long, closed months. Pilots could no underground communication with the sea, save such as water naturally makes for itself. The poor old Divina was hard worked, serving both as drinking fountain and sewer, as a bridge in winter, a highway in summer, and a playground at all times. So it served us right if we had to wait weeks and weeks in thawing-time for our streets to be cleared, and we deserved all the sprains and bruises we suffered from clambering over the broken ice in the streets while going about our business. Leah the short, little and straight and neat, with a basket on one arm and a bundle under the other, stood hesitating on the edge of the curb opposite my window. Her poor old face, framed in its calico kerchief, had a wrinkle of anxiety in it. The tumbled ice heap in the street looked to her like an impassable barrier. Tiny as she was and loaded, she had reason to hesitate. Perhaps she had eggs in her basket. I thought of that as I looked at her across the street, and I thought of my old ambition to measure myself, shoulder to shoulder with Leah, reputedly short. I was small myself, and was constantly reminded of it by a variety of nicknames, lovingly or vengefully invented by my friends and enemies. I was called mouse and crumb and poppy seed. Should I live to be called in my old age, moshka the short? I longed to measure my stature by Leah's, and here was my chance. I ran out into the street, my grandmother scolding me for going without a shawl, and I calling back to her to be sure and watch me. I skipped over the ice blocks like a goat, and offered my assistance to Leah the short. With admirable skill and solicitude, I guided her timid steps across the street, at the same time winking to my grandmother at the window, and pointing to my shoulder close to Leah's. Once on the safe sidewalk, the tiny woman thanked me and blessed me, and praised me for a thoughtful child, and I watched her tattle away without the least stir of shame and my hypocrisy. She had convinced me that I was a good little girl, and I had convinced myself that I was not so very short. My chin was almost on a level with Leah's shoulder, and I had years ahead in which to elevate it. Grandma at the window was witness, and I was entirely happy. If I caught cold from going bareheaded, so much the better, mother would give me rock candy for my cough. For the long winter evenings there was plenty of quiet occupation. I liked to sit with the woman at the long bare table picking feathers for new feather beds. It was pleasant to poke my hands into the soft, heaped mass, and set it all in motion. I pretended that I could pick out the feathers of particular hens, formerly my pets. I reflected that they had fed me with eggs and broth, and now were going to make my bed so soft, while I had done nothing for them, but throw them a handful of oats now and then, or chase them about, or spoil their nests. I was not ashamed of my part. I knew that if I were a hen, I should do as a hen does. I just like to think about things in my idle way. Itka the housemaid was always the one to break in upon my reflections. She was sure to have a fit of sneezing, just when the heap on the table was the highest, sending clouds of feathers into the air, like a homemade snowstorm. After that the evening was finished by our picking the feathers from each other's hair. Sometimes we played cards or checkers, munching frost-bit and apples between moves. Sometimes the woman sewed, and we children round yarn, or worsted for grandmother's knitting. If somebody had a story to tell while the rest worked, the evening passed with a pleasant sense of semi-idleness for all. On a Saturday night, the Sabbath being just departed, ghost stories were particularly in favor. After two or three of the creepy legends, we began to move closer together under the lamp. At the end of an hour or so, we started and screamed if a spool fell, or a window rattled. At bedtime, nobody was willing to make the round of doors and windows, and we were afraid to bring a candle into a dark room. I was just as much afraid as anybody. I am afraid now to be alone in the house at night. I certainly was afraid that Saturday night, when somebody, in Bravado, suggested fresh-baked buns as a charm to dispel the ghosts. The baker who lived next door always baked on Saturday night. Who would go and fetch the buns? Nobody dared to venture outdoors. It had snowed all evening. The frosted windows prevented a preliminary survey of the silent night. Burr! Nobody would take the dare. Nobody but me. Oh, how the creeps ran up and down my back. And oh, how I loved to distinguish myself. I let them bundle me up till I was nearly smothered. I paused with my mitt and hand on the latch. I shivered, though I could have sat the night out with a polar bear without another shawl. I opened the door, and then turned back to make a speech. I am not afraid, I said, in the noble essence of courage. I am not afraid to go. God goes with me. Pride goeth before a fall. On the step outside I slid down into a drift, just on the eve of triumph. They picked me up, they brought me in. They found all of me inside my wrappings. They gave me a piece of sugar and sent me to bed. And I was very glad. I did hate to go all the way next door and all the way back, through the white snow, under the white stars. Invisible company, keeping step with me. And I remember my playmates. There was always a crowd of us girls. We were a mixed set. Rich little girls, well-to-do little girls, and poor little girls. But not because we were so democratic. Rather it came about, if my sister and I are considered the center of the ring, because we had suffered the several grades of fortune. In our best days no little girls had to stoop to us. In our humbler days we were not so proud that we had to condescend to our chants' neighbors. The granddaughters of Raphael the Russian, and retaining their breeding and manners, retained a few of their more exalted friends, and became a link between them, and those whom they later adopted through a force of prop iniquity. We were human little girls, so our amusements mimicked the life about us. We played house. We played soldiers. We played gentiles. We celebrated weddings and funerals. We copied the life about us, literally. We had not been to a frebble kindergarten, and learned to impersonate butterflies and stones. Our elders would have laughed at us for such nonsense. I remember once standing on the river bank with a little boy, when a quantity of lumber was floating down on its way to the distant sawmill. A log and a board crowded each other near where we stood. The board slipped by first, but presently it swerved and swung partly around. Then it ridded itself with a stream and kept straight on, the lazy log following behind. Said Solomon to me, interpreting, the board looks back and says, Log, log, you will not go with me? Then I will go on by myself. That boy was called simple, on account of such speeches as this. I wonder in what language he is writing poetry now. We had very few toys. Neither Fetka nor I cared much for dolls. A rag baby apiece contented us, and if we had a set of jackstones, we were perfectly happy. Our jackstones, by the way, were not stones, but bones. We used the knuckle bones of sheep, dried and scraped. Every little girl cherished a set in her pocket. I did not care much for playing house. I liked soldiers better. But it was not much fun without boys. Boys and girls always played a part. I was very fond of playing Gentiles. I am afraid I liked everything that was a little risky. I particularly enjoyed being the corpse in a Gentile funeral. I was laid across two chairs, and my playmates, and borrowed shawls and long calicoes, with their hair loose and with candlesticks in their hands, marched around me, singing unearthly songs, and groaning till they scared themselves. As I lay there, covered over with a black cloth, I felt as dead as dead could be, and my playmates were the unholy priests and gorgeous robes of velvet and silken gold. Their candlesticks were the croissures that were carried in Christian funeral processions, and their chantings were hideous incantations to the arch enemy, the Christian god of horrible images. As I imagined the bareheaded crowds making way for my funeral to pass, my flesh crept, not because I was about to be buried, but because the people crossed themselves. But our processions stopped outside the church, because we did not dare to carry even our make-believe across that accursed threshold. Besides, none of us had ever been inside, God forbid, so we did not know what did happen next. When I arose from my funeral, I was indeed a ghost. I felt unreal, and lost, and hateful. I don't think we girls liked each other much after playing funeral. Anyway, we never played any more on the same day, or if we did, we soon crawled. Such was the hold which our hereditary terrors and hatreds had upon our childish minds, that if we only mocked a Christian procession in our play, we suffered a mutual revulsion of feeling, as if we had led each other into sin. We gathered oftener at our house than anywhere else. On Sabbath days we refrained, of course, from soldiering and the like, but we had just a good time, going off to promenade, two in two, in our very best dresses, whispering secrets and telling stories. We had a few stories in the circle. I do not know how they came to us, and these were told over and over. Guttka knew the best story of all. She told the story of Aladdin and the wonderful lamp, and she told it well. It was her story, and nobody else ever attempted it, though why, for one, soon had it by heart. Guttka's version of the famous tale was unlike any I have since read, but it was essentially the story of Aladdin, so that I was able to identify it later when I found it in a book. Names, incidents, and local color were slightly hebraized, but the supernatural wonders of treasure-caves, jeweled gardens, genie, princesses, and all were not in the least marred or diminished. Guttka would spin the story out for a long afternoon, and we all listened and tranced, even at the hundredth rehearsal. We had a few other fairy stories. I later identified them with stories of Grimm's or of Anderson's. But for the most part the tales we told were somber and unimaginative. Tales our nurses used to tell to frighten us into good behavior. Sometimes we spent a whole afternoon in dancing. We made our own music, singing as we danced, or somebody blew on a comb with a bit of paper over its teeth. And comb music is not to be despised when there is no other sort. We knew the polka and the waltz, the mazurka, the quadril, and the lancers, and several fancy dances. We did not hesitate to invent new steps or figures, and we never stopped till we were out of breath. I was one of the most enthusiastic dancers. I danced till I felt as if I could fly. Sometimes we sat in a ring and sang all the songs we knew. None of us were trained. We had never seen a sheet of music. But some of us could sing any tune that was ever heard in Polotsk, and the others followed half of our behind. I enjoyed these singing bees. We had Hebrew songs and Jewish and Russian. Salam songs and Jolly songs, and songs unfit for children, but harmless enough on our innocent lips. I enjoyed the play of moods in these songs. I liked to be harrowed one minute and tickled the next. I threw all my heart into the singing, which was only fair, as I had very little voice to throw in. Although I always joined the crowd when any fun was on foot, I think I had the best times by myself. My sister was fond of housework, but I—I was fond of idleness. While Fetka pottered in the kitchen beside the maid or trotted all about the house after my grandmother, I wasted time in some window-corner, or studied the habits of the cow and the chickens in the yard. I always found something to do that was of no use to anybody. I had no particular fondness for animals. I liked to see what they did, merely because they were curious. The red cow would go to meet my grandmother as she came out of the kitchen with a bucket of bran for her. She drank it up in no time, the greedy creature, and great loud gulps, and then she stood with dripping nostrils over the empty bucket, staring at me on the other side. I teased Grandmother to give the cow more, because I enjoyed her enjoyment of it. I wondered, if I ate from a bucket instead of a plate, should I take so much more pleasure in my dinner? That red cow liked everything. She liked going to pasture, and she liked coming back, and she stood still to be milked, as if she liked that too. The chickens were not all alike. Some of them would not let me catch them, while others stood still till I took them up. They were two that were particularly tame, a white hen and a speckled one. In winter, when they were kept in the house, my sister and I had these two for our pets. They let us handle them by the hour, and stayed just where we put them. The white hen laid her eggs and a linen chest made of bark. We would take the warm egg to Grandmother, who rolled it on her eyes, repeating this charm. As this egg is fresh, so may your eyes be fresh. As this egg is sound, so may your eyes be sound. I still like to touch my eyelids with a fresh laid egg, whenever I am so happy as to possess one. On the horses in the barn, I bestowed the same calm attention as on the cow, speculative rather than affectionate. I was not a very tender-hearted infant. If I have been a true witness of my own growth, I was slower to love than I was to think. I do not know when the change was wrought, but today, if you ask my friends, they will tell you that I know how to love them better than to solve their problems. And if you will call one more witness and ask me, I shall say that if you set me down before a noble landscape, I feel it long before I begin to see it. Idle child, though I was, the day was not long enough sometimes for my idleness. More than once in the pleasant summer I stole out of bed, when even the cow was still drowsing, and went barefoot through the dripping grass and stood at the gate, awaiting the morning. I found a sense of adventure in being conscious when all other people were asleep. There was not much of a prospect from the gateway, but in that early hour everything looked new and large to me, even the little houses that yesterday had been so familiar. The houses, when creatures went in and out of them, were merely conventional objects. In the soft gray morning they were themselves creatures. Some stood up straight, and some leaned, and some looked as if they saw me. And then over the dewy gardens rose the sun, and the light spread and grew over everything, till it shone on my bare feet. And in my heart grew a great wonder, and I was ready to cry. My world was so strange and sweet about me. In those moments, I think, I could have loved somebody as well as I loved later, somebody who cared to get up secretly, and stand and see the sun come up. Was there not somebody who got up before the sun? Was there not Mishka the shepherd? Aye, that was an early riser, but I knew he was no sun-worshipper. Before the chicken stirred, before the lazy maid let the cow out of the barn, I heard his rousing horn, its distant notes harmonious with the morning. Barn doors creaked in response to Mishka's call, and soft-eyed cattle went willingly out to meet him, and stood in groups in the empty square, looking and nosing each other, till Mishka's little drove was all assembled, and he tramped out of town behind them, in a cloud of dust. End of Chapter 5