another’s antics and while listening to the strange sounds, are
beginning to enter into a larger fellowship than they ever enjoyed; for
so close as this many of them never came without the hand upon the hilt
or the finger upon the trigger.
When Providence is generous and grants a quiet evening, the merriment
will grow louder and louder, drowning the murmur of the sea and
silencing the sorrows of the yesterday and the fears for the morrow.
“Yes, brothers, we are travelling on to America, the land of hope; let
us be merry. Where are you going, Czeska Holka?” (a pet name for a
Bohemian girl). “To Chicago, to service, and soon, I hope, to matrimony;
that’s what they say, that you can get married in America without a
dowry and without much trouble.” Ah, yes; and get unmarried again
without much trouble; but of this fact she is blissfully ignorant.
“Where are you going, signor?” “Ah, I am going to Mulberry Street; great
city, yes, Mulberry Street, great city.” “Polak, where are you going?”
“Kellisland.” “Where do you say?” “Kellisland, where stones are and big
sea.” “Yes, yes, I know now: Kelly’s Island in Ohio. Fine place for you,
Polak; powder blast and white limestone dust, yet a fine sea and a fine
life.”
All of them are going somewhere to some one; not quite strangers they;
some one has crossed the sea before them. They are drawn by thousands of
magnets and they will draw others after them.
We have all become good comrades; for fellowship is easily begotten by
the fellows in the same ship, especially in the steerage, where no
barriers exist and where no introductions are possible or necessary. I
am sharing many confidences; of young women who go to meet their lovers;
of young men who go to make their fortunes; of bankrupts who have fled
the heavy arm of the law; of women hiding moral taint; of countless ones
who are hiding grave physical infirmities; and of some who have lost
faith in God and men, in law and justice.
Yet most of them believe with a simpler faith than our own; God is real
to them and His providence stretches over the seas. No morning, no
matter how tumultuous the waves, but the Russian Jews will put on their
phylacteries, and kissing the sacred fringes which they wear upon their
breasts, will turn towards the East and the rising Sun, to where their
holy temple stood.
Rarely will a Slav or Italian go to bed without committing himself to
the special care of some patron saint.
Vice there is, crude, rough vice, down here in the steerage. Yes, they
drink vodka,--even that rarely; but up in the cabin they drink champagne
and Kentucky whiskies, the same devils with other names. Seldom do the
steerage passengers gamble--a friendly game of cards perhaps, here and
there; while up in the cabin, from sunlight until dawn, poker chips are
piled and pass to and fro among daintily attired men and women. There
are rough jests in this steerage, and scant courtesy; but virtue is as
precious here as there, although kept under tremendous temptation. I
have crossed the ocean hither and thither, often in the steerage, more
often in the cabin; and I have found gentlemen in dirty homespun in the
one place, and in the other supposed gentlemen who were but beasts,
although they had lackeys to attend them, and suites of rooms in which
to make luxurious a useless existence. The steerage brings virtue and
vice in the rough. A dollar might not be safe, and yet as safe as a
whole bank up in the cabin; the steerage might steal a loaf of white
bread or a tempting cake, but it has not yet learned how to corner the
wheat market; the men in the steerage might be tempted to steal a ride
upon a railroad, but in the cabin I have met rascals who had stolen
whole railroads, yet were called “Captains of Industry.”
Down in the steerage there is a faith in the future, and in the despair
which often overwhelms them, I needed but to whisper: “Be patient, this
seems like Hell, but it will soon seem to you like Heaven.”
Yes, this Heaven is coming; coming down almost from above, on yonder
fringe of the sea, for far away trails the low lying smoke of the pilot
boat, and but a little farther off is--land--land. None but the
shipwrecked and the emigrants, these way-farers who come to save and be
saved, know the joy of that note which goes from lip to lip as it echoes
and reëchoes in thirty languages, yet with the one word of throbbing
joy,--land--land--AMERICA.
IV
LAND, HO!
The gay spirits soon flag when land is heralded; for Ellis Island is
ahead, with its uncertainties, and the men and women who were the
merriest and who most often went to the bar, thus trying to forget, now
are sober, and reflect. The troubled ones are usually marked by their
restless walk and by their eagerness to seek the confidences of those
who have tested the temper of the law in this unknown Eldorado.
Not long ago, on one of the ships in which I sailed, there was in the
steerage, a monk, who neither walked nor talked like one. He shunned me,
not because of my heresies, but because of my Latin, and although he
mumbled out of a prayer-book and unskillfully counted his beads, I knew
that “The devil a monk was he.”
On the eve of the great day of landing, he was pacing the deck,
evidently in an unreverential mood, and I too was there, being one of
those who prefer the biting wind of the night to the polluted air of the
steerage. He came close to me as we walked, and hesitatingly asked me in
a French to which clung a peculiar dialect never spoken in monasteries,
whether I had been in America before. When I replied in the affirmative,
he inquired all about the examination of baggage and of men, and when I
told him how strict it is, that nothing is hid from the lynx eyes of the
custom-house officials, and that nothing is sacred to them, not even the
body of a monk, he grew visibly excited.
Stealthily he drew from under the folds of his cassock, a stone, a
large, brilliant, tempting diamond, and said: “You may have that.” As I
took it between my fingers, I detected traces of the torn rim of its
setting, and passed it back into the trembling hand of his “Reverence.”
“You needn’t be afraid of that,” he said; “I am one of the monks driven
out of France, and I am taking the treasures of the Brotherhood over. I
am afraid of the high duty and it will be cheaper for me to give you
that diamond which is a pendant from the jewels of the Virgin, than to
pay for what I have; that is, if you will help me to pass this little
bag safely in.” With this he drew aside his cassock and fumbling in the
folds brought to light a little bag which he would have handed to me,
but I assured him that I was not a smuggler even for pious purposes, and
after darting at me an impious glance, he disappeared into the steerage.
The next day at Quarantine, a messenger boy of unusual size came on
board and calling out the names of a rather large number of steerage
passengers handed them telegrams which were written in English and were
rather suspiciously vague.--“Pavel Moticzka,--Ivan Kovaloff,--Isaac
Goldberg,” and last,--“Jaques Rosenstein.” My friend the monk nearly
jumped out of his cassock to reach for his message, and the “Boy,” who
made most remarkable haste for a telegraph messenger, slipped a pair of
handcuffs where only rosaries hung; and a Jewish jeweller’s clerk from
Paris, who was running away with the best part of his employer’s
diamonds,--was in the toils of the law.
Some years ago when the steerage of the Hamburg American Line had not
been made even partially decent by our stringent immigration laws, over
500 steerage passengers, booked for the _Fürst Bismark_, at that time
the swiftest boat of the line, were, without explanation or
notification, stowed away in a freight boat scheduled to cross in twelve
days, but never having actually made the trip in less than sixteen days.
The quarters were very close but the number of passengers was not
excessively large, the weather was favourable, and blissfully ignorant
of the slowness of the ship, we were comparatively happy.
[Illustration: WILL THEY LET ME IN?
It is a serious matter to many a man who has invested his all in a
ticket for the New World to face the possibility of rejection.]
We were divided about equally into Russian Jews, Slavs and Italians, and
there was very little choice so far as comradeship was concerned. The
passengers were all fairly dirty, the Italians being easily in the lead,
with the Russian Jews a good second, and the Slavs as clean as
circumstances allowed.
The Italians were from the South of Italy and had lost the romance of
their native land but not the fragrance of the garlic. They quarrelled
somewhat loudly and gesticulated wildly; but were good neighbours during
those sixteen days. They were shy and not easily lured into confidences
by one who knew their language but poorly, in spite of the fact that he
knew their country well and loved it. In sixteen days the average
American has a chance to discover at least one thing which he has found
it hard to believe; that all Italians are not alike, that they do not
look alike, and that they are not all Anarchists. When some relationship
was established between us, and I had to serve as the link among the
three races, we had a grand “Festa” to which the Slavs contributed some
gutteral songs and clumsy dances, and the Italians, sleight of hand
performances which made them appear still more uncanny to the Slavs.
They also supplied a Marionette theatre, of the Punch and Judy show
variety, and “last but not least,” music from a hurdy-gurdy which played
the dulcet notes of “Cavalliero Rusticana” and a dashing tune about
“Marghareta, Marghareta.” “Signors and Signorinas,” said Pietro, after
he had played all the tunes of his limited repertoire, “I have the great
honour of presenting to you the national anthem of the great American
country to which we are travelling.” He turned the crank, and out
came,--the ragtime notes of “Ta--ra--ra--boom--de--a.”
The last number on the program was a song by a Russian Jewess, a woman
whose beauty was marred by bleached hair which had grown rusty, and by a
complexion upon which rouge and powder had done their worst. Her voice
which was strong rather than melodious, had in it an element of
artificiality evidently begotten on the stage. She at once became the
star among our entertainers, and though her culture was superficial, she
was by far the best company for me.
Her parents, she told me, had been well to do Jews in a market town in
Russia. They had broken away from many of the observances and traditions
of their religion, they and their children followed all the latest
fashions, a governess imported from France brought with her Paul de
Kock’s novels and other elevating(?) Parisian literature; music teachers
came, who discovered in the only daughter a voice which of course, had
to be cultivated in Vienna. There were concerts which the father’s money
arranged, a few glowing press notices at so much a line, and finally
the fruitless struggle to appear in opera.
Then came one of those Anti-Semitic riots, those brutal outpourings of
human hate which she was unable to describe. All she could say over and
over again was, “Strashno, Strashno,” “it was terrible, terrible.” The
house in which she had lived was a wreck, her father beaten to death,
and she--she could not say it; but I knew. She told of women whose
mutilated bodies were torn open, and of children whose heads were beaten
together until they were a bleeding mass. Yes, indeed, it was “Strashno,
Strashno,” terrible, terrible.
Somewhat early in her girlhood, a clerk in her father’s store “had
looked upon her, and loved her” with a youth’s ardour; but she had
scorned him, as well she might scorn this uncultured, stupid looking son
of Abraham. Again and again he asked her to be his wife, until through
her entreaty, her father drove him out of the store. She told me much of
her life and perhaps many things which she told me were not true. I knew
for instance, that she had not sung before the Czar of Russia, that
Hanslick the great musical critic of Vienna did not predict for her a
Patti’s fame and fortune; nor did I believe that a young millionaire in
Berlin blew out his brains because she would not marry him. But I did
believe that the poor clerk went to New York, that he had worked day
and night in a sweat shop pressing cloaks, that out of his earnings he
had supported her in the vain struggle to attain Grand Opera, and that
now she was on her way to reward his faithfulness and become his wife.
“What is it like, this America?” “What kind of life awaits one on the
East-side?” “What social status has a cloak presser in New York?” “What
chance is there for one to reach the goal of Grand Opera?” These and
other questions she hurled at me while the line upon the horizon grew
clearer, and the hearts of men and women heavy from expectation.
On this ship too, Susanka, a Slovak girl nursed her way across the
Atlantic, giving food to a little Magyar baby which she despised; and
while she rocked the restless little one to sleep and sang her Slavic
lullaby, “Hi-u, Hi-u, Hi-u-shke-e-e”--one could see in her heavy face
her heart’s hunger for her own child. “Oh! Pany velkomosny (mighty sir),
my little child! I had to leave it with a stara baba (old woman) and it
was gray, ashen gray when I left it, and it will die, it will die!” and
she grew frantic in her grief as she rocked the Magyar child to and fro,
“Hi-u, Hi-u, Hi-u-shke-e-e-e.” “Who was to blame, Susanka?” The look of
pain changed to one of fiery anger as she sent back across the sea, a
curse, long and terrible, against her betrayer.
Yes, those are heavy hours and long, on that day when the ship is
circled by the welcoming gulls, and the fire-ship is passed, while the
chains rattle and the baggage is piled on the deck. “Will they let me
in, signor?” “Why should they not, Antonio?” “Ah! signor, I have not
always been a free man. They held me in jail for four years. Will they
know it in America? I stabbed a man,--yes, signor.”
“Will they let us in, Guter Herrleben?” anxiously asks Yankev: his wife
Gietel and six children are with him and one of the boys lies motionless
upon the hatch, pale, worn and almost gone. “Consumption? yes; he was so
well, but we were smuggled over and driven by the gendarmes, and had to
be out in the damp, and he caught cold and a cough came and you can see,
Guter Herrleben, quick consumption!”
Yankev, and Gietel his wife, had an appalling story to tell, and I
listened to it as we squatted on deck under the twinkling stars. The
moon shone in silvery splendour upon the quiet water, and I wondered why
the sea did not grow angry, the constellations pale, and why the moon
did not become red like blood at the horror of it all--a horror which
never can be told. Imagine an Easter night, a night when Yankev and
Gietel celebrated the liberation of Israel from Egyptian bondage. On the
same night their Russian neighbours were celebrating the liberation of
the human race from the power of death. The synagogue service was over.
They had told the story of Israel’s passing through the Red Sea, and of
the perishing of Pharaoh’s horsemen; Yankev had come home to the feast
of unleavened bread and bitter herbs; the neighbours had been to the
church where until midnight, in darkness and silence, they mourned at
the tomb of the slain Christ. Then with the passing of the long and
silent night they went from street to street shouting: “Christ is risen,
Christ is risen, Christ is risen, indeed.” But the mob came upon the
defenseless home plundering and burning all in its fury, although
mercifully sparing the lives of the now homeless and penniless family.
Others fared worse, for they had no money with which to bribe, while
their daughters were older and good to look upon. It was a little place
and just a little pogrom. It was not written about nor protested
against; but what would have been the use?
Dumb from agony we sat there and I had to breathe back into them the
faith which they had almost lost, and the courage which had almost left
them; a faith and courage which I myself did not possess. In the peace
of the night I could hear only the terror of the voice of the Lord
saying: “Vengeance is Mine.” The gentle Nazarene who came in love to
conquer by love, I could scarcely see, and I yearned to make the
Psalmist’s prayer my own. “Blessed be the Lord God which teacheth my
hands to war and my fingers to fight.”
That night and many another last night on board of ship, I listened to
the stories of men and women who were fleeing from the terror of
Russia’s law. Russians who had wrought in secret, who had planned great
things and who had risked everything--Bogdanoff, Philipoff, Lermontoff,
Lehrman, Loewenstern. Jews and Gentiles who had struck out in their
blind fury, who had felt the terror of the law and the greater terror of
taking, or trying to take, human life. Some guilty, some innocent; all
of them caught in the same net.
Characteristic is the story of a Warsaw merchant who sailed with me on
my last journey. On the evening of the 21st of April, 1906, he went to a
dentist to have some work done. He went in the evening because he was
busy in the daytime, and when he arrived the police were searching the
house; after which all the inmates, dentist and patients, were taken to
the police station and cast into prison. Two hundred and fifty persons
were together in a room large enough for twenty. The odours were
frightful, as in common with all Russian prisons there were no toilet
conveniences outside of that room, in which for three days they were
left. After bribing the officials, twenty fortunate men, my informant
among them, were given another room. Nine weeks he remained there
utterly unconscious of the reason for his detention; and only after the
hard and faithful struggle of his wife was he released,--without an
apology, to find his business ruined and only sufficient money left to
go to America.
On the same ship I met the widow of a Jewish physician, who was shot
down in the act of binding the wounds of those fallen in the uprising of
Moscow. Binding the wounds of soldiers and revolutionists alike, he was
shot in the back by a police lieutenant who afterwards was promoted to a
captaincy.
No, it is not easy to travel in the steerage; not because there is not
room enough, nor air enough, nor food enough, although that is all true;
but because it is hard to believe down there that the God of Israel is
not dead, nor His arm shortened, if not broken, like those of the Greek
deities.
Yet they still have faith in Him, these children of His, who have waited
for the fulfillment of His promises. They still wait, although
“Jerusalem the golden” is a far away dream, and they are scattered
wanderers over the face of the earth.
Friday night, with the coming of the first star, all those who believed,
met, to voice their faith in Jehovah.
In a corner of the steerage quarters, while the eyes of the Gentiles
looked inquisitively on, they turned towards Zion, and lifting up their
voices, greeted the Sabbath: “Come, my beloved, thou Sabbath bride,”
“Lcho dody L Crass Calo.” They sang this one joyous song of Israel, and
stretched out their arms as if to press this spiritual bride to their
rest-hungry souls.
They do not doubt that Jehovah will guide the destinies of Israel, and
that the Sabbath bride will some day descend upon the earth to abide
forever, bringing rest and peace to the Israel of God.
At last the great heart of the ship has ceased its mighty throbbing, and
but a gentle tremor tells that its life has not all been spent in the
battle with wind and waves. The waters are of a quieter colour, and over
them hovers the morning mist. The silence of the early dawn is broken
only by the sound of deep-chested ferry-boats which pass into the mist
and out of it, like giant monsters, stalking on their cross beams over
the deep. The steerage is awake after its restless night and mutely
awaits the disclosures of its own and the new world’s secrets. The sound
of a booming gun is carried across the hidden space, and faint touches
of flame struggling through the gray, are the sun’s answer to the salute
from Governor’s Island. The morning breeze, like a “Dancing Psaltress,”
moves gently over the glassy surface of the water, lifts the fog higher
and higher, tearing it into a thousand fleecy shreds, and the far
things have come near and the hidden things have been revealed. The sky
line straight ahead, assaulted by a thousand towering shafts, looking
like a challenge to the strong, and a warning to the weak, makes all of
us tremble from an unknown fear.
The steerage is still mute; it looks to the left at the populous shore,
to the right at the green stretches of Long Island, and again straight
ahead at the mighty city. Slowly the ship glides into the harbour, and
when it passes under the shadow of the Statue of Liberty, the silence is
broken, and a thousand hands are outstretched in greeting to this new
divinity into whose keeping they now entrust themselves.
Some day a great poet will arise among us, who, catching the inspiration
of that moment will be able to put into words these surging emotions;
who will be great enough to feel beating against his own soul and give
utterance to, the thousand varying notes which are felt and never
sounded.
On this very ship are women who have left the burdens which crippled
them, and now hope to walk erect; who have fled from the rough,
polluting hands of persecuting mobs, that they may be able to guard
their virtue and have it guarded by gallant men. Here are hundreds of
Slavs who never knew aught but the yoke of czar or other potentate,
whose minds have been enthralled by a galling autocracy, and whose
closed eyes have never been permitted to see their own downtrodden
strength. Now they shall have the opportunity to prove themselves and
show the nobility of a peasant race.
Here are Italians from shores where classic art is stored, and the air
is soft and full of melody; yet they were left uncouth, rough and
unhewn. They come to a rougher but freer air, that they may grow into a
gentler, stronger, nobler manhood and womanhood.
Melancholy Jews whose feet never knew a safe abiding place, are here,
and their hope is that they may find the peace which went out from their
race, when Jerusalem was laid waste and they were scattered among the
nations of the earth.
He who thinks that these people scent but the dollars which lie in our
treasury, is mightily mistaken, and he who says that they come without
ideals has no knowledge of the children of men.
I found myself close to hundreds of these people, closest to the Russian
Jews who most excited my sympathies; and one day when they heard that I
had been in Bialistok, Kishineff and Odessa, that I knew the horror of
it all and that I sympathized with them, they crowded around me almost
like wild animals. What did they ask for above everything? Money? No.
The one loud cry was for a speech about America. “Preach to us,” they
said, “preach to us about America.” It was a polyglot sermon which I
preached that Sunday from the covered hatch which was my pulpit, and
when I spoke to them of their new home and their new duties, they
cheered me to the echo.
I have passed through this gateway more than ten times; I have sounded
as far as a man can sound, the souls of men and women, and I have found
them tingling from emotions, akin only to those which we more prosperous
voyagers shall feel, when we have crossed the last sea and find
ourselves in the presence of the great Judge.