Part I

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HUNGRY HEARTS

BY

ANZIA YEZIERSKA

BOSTON AND NEW YORK

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY

The Riverside Press Cambridge

1920

COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY ANZIA YEZIERSKA

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

The Riverside Press

CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS

U . S . A

To Mrs. Henry Ollesheimer

CONTENTS

Wings 1

Hunger 35

The Lost "Beautifulness" 65

The Free Vacation House 97

The Miracle 114

Where Lovers Dream 142

Soap and Water 163

"The Fat of the Land" 178

My Own People 224

How I found America 250

HUNGRY HEARTS

WINGS

"My heart chokes in me like in a prison! I'm dying for a little

love and I got nobody--nobody!" wailed Shenah Pessah, as she looked

out of the dismal basement window.

It was a bright Sunday afternoon in May, and into the gray, cheerless,

janitor's basement a timid ray of sunlight announced the dawn of

spring.

"Oi weh! Light!" breathed Shenah Pessah, excitedly, throwing open

the sash. "A little light in the room for the first time!" And she

stretched out her hands hungrily for the warming bit of sun.

The happy laughter of the shopgirls standing on the stoop with their

beaux and the sight of the young mothers with their husbands and babies

fanned anew the consuming fire in her breast.

"I'm not jealous!" she gasped, chokingly. "My heart hurts too

deep to want to tear from them their luck to happiness. But why should

they live and enjoy life and why must I only _look on_ how they are

happy?"

She clutched at her throat like one stifled for want of air. "What

is the matter with you? Are you going out of your head? For what is

your crying? Who will listen to you? Who gives a care what's going to

become from you?"

Crushed by her loneliness, she sank into a chair. For a long time she

sat motionless, finding drear fascination in the mocking faces traced

in the patches of the torn plaster. Gradually, she became aware of a

tingling warmth playing upon her cheeks. And with a revived breath, she

drank in the miracle of the sunlit wall.

"Ach!" she sighed. "Once a year the sun comes to light up even

this dark cellar, so why shouldn't the High One send on me too a

little brightness?"

This new wave of hope swept aside the fact that she was the

"greenhorn" janitress, that she was twenty-two and dowryless, and,

according to the traditions of her people, condemned to be shelved

aside as an unmated thing--a creature of pity and ridicule.

"I can't help it how old I am or how poor I am!" she burst out to

the deaf and dumb air. "I want a little life! I want a little joy!"

The bell rang sharply, and as she turned to answer the call, she saw a

young man at the doorway--a framed picture of her innermost dreams.

The stranger spoke.

Shenah Pessah did not hear the words, she heard only the music of his

voice. She gazed fascinated at his clothes--the loose Scotch tweeds,

the pongee shirt, a bit open at the neck, but she did not see him or

the things he wore. She only felt an irresistible presence seize her

soul. It was as though the god of her innermost longings had suddenly

taken shape in human form and lifted her in mid-air.

"Does the janitor live here?" the stranger repeated.

Shenah Pessah nodded.

"Can you show me the room to let?"

"Yes, right away, but wait only a minute," stammered Shenah Pessah,

fumbling for the key on the shelf.

"Don't fly into the air!" She tried to reason with her wild,

throbbing heart, as she walked upstairs with him. In an effort to

down the chaos of emotion that shook her she began to talk nervously:

"Mrs. Stein who rents out the room ain't going to be back till

the evening, but I can tell you the price and anything you want to

know. She's a grand cook and you can eat by her your breakfast and

dinner--" She did not have the slightest notion of what she was

saying, but talked on in a breathless stream lest he should hear the

loud beating of her heart.

"Could I have a drop-light put in here?" the man asked, as he

looked about the room.

Shenah Pessah stole a quick, shy glance at him. "Are you maybe a

teacher or a writing man?"

"Yes, sometimes I teach," he said, studying her, drawn by the

struggling soul of her that cried aloud to him out of her eyes.

"I could tell right away that you must be some kind of a somebody,"

she said, looking up with wistful worship in her eyes. "Ach, how

grand it must be to live only for learning and thinking."

"Is this your home?"

"I never had a home since I was eight years old. I was living by

strangers even in Russia."

"Russia?" he repeated with quickened attention. So he was in their

midst, the people he had come to study. The girl with her hungry eyes

and intense eagerness now held a new interest for him.

John Barnes, the youngest instructor of sociology in his university,

congratulated himself at his good fortune in encountering such a

splendid type for his research. He was preparing his thesis on the

"Educational Problems of the Russian Jews," and in order to get

into closer touch with his subject, he had determined to live on the

East Side during his spring and summer vacation.

He went on questioning her, unconsciously using all the compelling

power that made people open their hearts to him. "And how long have

you been here?"

"Two years already."

"You seem to be fond of study. I suppose you go to night-school?"

"I never yet stepped into a night-school since I came to

America. From where could I get the time? My uncle is such an old man

he can't do much and he got already used to leave the whole house

on me."

"You stay with your uncle, then?"

"Yes, my uncle sent for me the ticket for America when my aunt was

yet living. She got herself sick. And what could an old man like him do

with only two hands?"

"Was that sufficient reason for you to leave your homeland?"

"What did I have out there in Savel that I should be afraid to

lose? The cows that I used to milk had it better than me. They got at

least enough to eat and me slaving from morning till night went around

hungry."

"You poor child!" broke from the heart of the man, the scientific

inquisition of the sociologist momentarily swept away by his human

sympathy.

Who had ever said "poor child" to her--and in such a voice? Tears

gathered in Shenah Pessah's eyes. For the first time she mustered

the courage to look straight at him. The man's face, his voice, his

bearing, so different from any one she had ever known, and yet what was

there about him that made her so strangely at ease with him? She went

on talking, led irresistibly by the friendly glow in his eyes.

"I got yet a lot of luck. I learned myself English from a Jewish

English reader, and one of the boarders left me a grand book. When I

only begin to read, I forget I'm on this world. It lifts me on wings

with high thoughts." Her whole face and figure lit up with animation

as she poured herself out to him.

"So even in the midst of these sordid surroundings were 'wings'

and 'high thoughts,'" he mused. Again the gleam of the visionary--the

eternal desire to reach out and up, which was the predominant

racial trait of the Russian immigrant.

"What is the name of your book?" he continued, taking advantage of

this providential encounter.

"The book is 'Dreams,' by Olive Schreiner."

"H--m," he reflected. "So these are the 'wings' and 'high

thoughts.' No wonder the blushes--the tremulousness. What an

opportunity for a psychological test-case, and at the same time I could

help her by pointing the way out of her nebulous emotionalism and place

her feet firmly on earth." He made a quick, mental note of certain

books that he would place in her hands and wondered how she would

respond to them.

"Do you belong to a library?"

"Library? How? Where?"

Her lack of contact with Americanizing agencies appalled him.

"I'll have to introduce you to the library when I come to live

here," he said.

"Oi-i! You really like it, the room?" Shenah Pessah clapped her

hands in a burst of uncontrollable delight.

"I like the room very much, and I shall be glad to take it if you can

get it ready for me by next week."

Shenah Pessah looked up at the man. "Do you mean it? You really

want to come and live here, in this place? The sky is falling to the

earth!"

"Live here?" Most decidedly he would live here. He became suddenly

enthusiastic. But it was the enthusiasm of the scientist for the

specimen of his experimentation--of the sculptor for the clay that

would take form under his touch.

"I'm coming here to live--" He was surprised at the eager

note in his voice, the sudden leaven of joy that surged through his

veins. "And I'm going to teach you to read sensible books, the kind

that will help you more than your dream book."

Shenah Pessah drank in his words with a joy that struck back as

fear lest this man--the visible sign of her answered prayer--would

any moment be snatched up and disappear in the heavens where he

belonged. With a quick leap toward him she seized his hand in both

her own. "Oi, mister! Would you like to learn me English lessons

too? I'll wash for you your shirts for it. If you would even only

talk to me, it would be more to me than all the books in the world."

He instinctively recoiled at this outburst of demonstrativeness. His

eyes narrowed and his answer was deliberate. "Yes, you ought to learn

English," he said, resuming his professional tone, but the girl was

too overwrought to notice the change in his manner.

"There it is," he thought to himself on his way out. "The whole

gamut of the Russian Jew--the pendulum swinging from abject servility

to boldest aggressiveness."

Shenah Pessah remained standing and smiling to herself after Mr. Barnes

left. She did not remember a thing she had said. She only felt herself

whirling in space, millions of miles beyond the earth. The god of

dreams had arrived and nothing on earth could any longer hold her down.

Then she hurried back to the basement and took up the broken piece

of mirror that stood on the shelf over the sink and gazed at her face

trying to see herself through his eyes. "Was it only pity that made

him stop to talk to me? Or can it be that he saw what's inside me?"

Her eyes looked inward as she continued to talk to herself in the

mirror.

"God from the world!" she prayed. "I'm nothing and nobody now,

but ach! How beautiful I would become if only the light from his eyes

would fall on me!"

Covering her flushed face with her hands as if to push back the tumult

of desire that surged within her, she leaned against the wall. "Who

are you to want such a man?" she sobbed.

"But no one is too low to love God, the Highest One. There is no

high in love and there is no low in love. Then why am I too low to love

him?"

"Shenah Pessah!" called her uncle angrily. "What are you standing

there like a yok, dreaming in the air? Don't you hear the tenants

knocking on the pipes? They are hollering for the hot water. You let

the fire go out."

At the sound of her uncle's voice all her "high thoughts"

fled. The mere reminder of the furnace with its ashes and cinders

smothered her buoyant spirits and again she was weighed down by the

strangling yoke of her hateful, daily round.

It was evening when she got through with her work. To her surprise she

did not feel any of the old weariness. It was as if her feet danced

under her. Then from the open doorway of their kitchen she overheard

Mrs. Melker, the matchmaker, talking to her uncle.

"Motkeh, the fish-peddler, is looking for a wife to cook him his

eating and take care on his children," she was saying in her shrill,

grating voice. "So I thought to myself this is a golden chance for

Shenah Pessah to grab. You know a girl in her years and without money,

a single man wouldn't give a look on her."

Shenah Pessah shuddered. She wanted to run away from the branding

torture of their low talk, but an unreasoning curiosity drew her to

listen.

"Living is so high," went on Mrs. Melker, "that single men

don't want to marry themselves even to _young_ girls, except if

they can get themselves into a family with money to start them up

in business. It is Shenah Pessah's luck yet that Motkeh likes good

eating and he can't stand it any more the meals in a restaurant. He

heard from people what a good cook and housekeeper Shenah Pessah is, so

he sent me around to tell you he would take her as she stands without

a cent."

Mrs. Melker dramatically beat her breast. "I swear I shouldn't live

to go away from here alive, I shouldn't live to see my own children

married if I'm talking this match for the few dollars that Motkeh

will pay me for it, but because I want to do something good for a poor

orphan. I'm a mother, and it weeps in me my heart to see a girl in

her years and not married."

"And who'll cook for me my eating, if I'll let her go?" broke

out her uncle angrily. "And who'll do me my work? Didn't I spend

out fifty dollars to send for her the ticket to America? Oughtn't I

have a little use from her for so many dollars I laid out on her?"

"Think on God!" remonstrated Mrs. Melker. "The girl is an orphan

and time is pushing itself on her. Do you want her to sit till her

braids grow gray, before you'll let her get herself a man? It stands

in the Talmud that a man should take the last bite away from his mouth

to help an orphan get married. You'd beg yourself out a place in

heaven in the next world--"

"In America a person can't live on hopes for the next world. In

America everybody got to look out for himself. I'd have to give up

the janitor's work to let her go, and then where would I be?"

"You lived already your life. Give her also a chance to lift up

her head in the world. Couldn't you get yourself in an old man's

home?"

"These times you got to have money even in an old man's home. You

know how they say, if you oil the wheels you can ride. With dry hands

you can't get nothing in America."

"So you got no pity on an orphan and your own relation? All her young

years she choked herself in darkness and now comes already a little

light for her, a man that can make a good living wants her--"

"And who'll have pity on me if I'll let her out from my

hands? Who is this Motkeh, anyway? Is he good off? Would I also

have a place where to lay my old head? Where stands he out with his

pushcart?"

"On Essex Street near Delancey."

"Oi-i! You mean Motkeh Pelz? Why, I know him yet from years ago. They

say his wife died him from hunger. She had to chew the earth before she

could beg herself out a cent from him. By me Shenah Pessah has at least

enough to eat and shoes on her feet. I ask you only is it worth already

to grab a man if you got to die from hunger for it?"

Shenah Pessah could listen no longer.

"Don't you worry yourself for me," she commanded, charging into

the room. "Don't take pity on my years. I'm living in America,

not in Russia. I'm not hanging on anybody's neck to support me. In

America, if a girl earns her living, she can be fifty years old and

without a man, and nobody pities her."

Seizing her shawl, she ran out into the street. She did not know where

her feet carried her. She had only one desire--to get away. A fierce

rebellion against everything and everybody raged within her and goaded

her on until she felt herself choked with hate.

All at once she visioned a face and heard a voice. The blacker, the

more stifling the ugliness of her prison, the more luminous became the

light of the miraculous stranger who had stopped for a moment to talk

to her. It was as though inside a pit of darkness the heavens opened

and hidden hopes began to sing.

Her uncle was asleep when she returned. In the dim gaslight she

looked at his yellow, care-crushed face with new compassion in

her heart. "Poor old man!" she thought, as she turned to her

room. "Nothing beautiful never happened to him. What did he have in

life outside the worry for bread and rent? Who knows, maybe if such a

god of men would have shined on him--" She fell asleep and she awoke

with visions opening upon visions of new, gleaming worlds of joy and

hope. She leaped out of bed singing a song she had not heard since she

was a little child in her mother's home.

Several times during the day, she found herself, at the broken mirror,

arranging and rearranging her dark mass of unkempt hair with fumbling

fingers. She was all a-tremble with breathless excitement to imitate

the fluffy style of the much-courted landlady's daughter.

For the first time she realized how shabby and impossible her clothes

were. "Oi weh!" she wrung her hands. "I'd give away everything

in the world only to have something pretty to wear for him. My whole

life hangs on how I'll look in his eyes. I got to have a hat and a

new dress. I can't no more wear my 'greenhorn' shawl going out

with an American.

"But from where can I get the money for new clothes? Oi weh! How

bitter it is not to have the dollar! Woe is me! No mother, no friend,

nobody to help me lift myself out of my greenhorn rags."

"Why not pawn the feather bed your mother left you?" She jumped at

the thought.

"What? Have you no heart? No feelings? Pawn the only one thing left

from your dead mother?

"Why not? Nothing is too dear for him. If your mother could stand up

from her grave, she'd cut herself in pieces, she'd tear the sun and

stars out from the sky to make you beautiful for him."

Late one evening Zaretsky sat in his pawnshop, absorbed in counting the

money of his day's sales, when Shenah Pessah, with a shawl over her

head and a huge bundle over her shoulder, edged her way hesitantly into

the store. Laying her sacrifice down on the counter, she stood dumbly

and nervously fingered the fringes of her shawl.

The pawnbroker lifted his miserly face from the cash-box and shot a

quick glance at the girl's trembling figure.

"Nu?" said Zaretsky, in his cracked voice, cutting the twine from

the bundle and unfolding a feather bed. His appraising hand felt that

it was of the finest down. "How much ask you for it?"

The fiendish gleam of his shrewd eyes paralyzed her with terror. A lump

came in her throat and she wavered speechless.

"I'll give you five dollars," said Zaretsky.

"Five dollars?" gasped Shenah Pessah. Her hands rushed back

anxiously to the feather bed and her fingers clung to it as if it

were a living thing. She gazed panic-stricken at the gloomy interior

of the pawnshop with its tawdry jewels in the cases; the stacks of

second-hand clothing hanging overhead, back to the grisly face of the

pawnbroker. The weird tickings that came from the cheap clocks on the

shelves behind Zaretsky, seemed to her like the smothered heart-beats

of people who like herself had been driven to barter their last

precious belongings for a few dollars.

"Is it for yourself that you come?" he asked, strangely stirred by

the mute anguish in the girl's eyes. This morgue of dead belongings

had taken its toll of many a pitiful victim of want. But never

before had Zaretsky been so affected. People bargained and rebelled

and struggled with him on his own plane. But the dumb helplessness of

this girl and her coming to him at such a late hour touched the man's

heart.

"Is it for yourself?" he repeated, in a softened tone.

The new note of feeling in his voice made her look up. The hard, crafty

expression on his face had given place to a look of sympathy.

"Yes, it's mine, from my mother," she stammered, brokenly. "The

last memory from Russia. How many winters it took my mother to pick

together the feathers. She began it when I was yet a little baby in the

cradle--and--" She covered her face with her shawl and sobbed.

"Any one sick? Why do you got to pawn it?"

She raised her tear-stained face and mutely looked at him. How could

she explain and how could he possibly understand her sudden savage

desire for clothes?

Zaretsky, feeling that he had been clumsy and tactless, hastened to

add, "Nu--I'll give you--a--a--a--ten dollars," he finished with

a motion of his hand, as if driving from him the onrush of generosity

that seized him.

"Oi, mister!" cried Shenah Pessah, as the man handed her the

bill. "You're saving me my life! God will pay you for this

goodness." And crumpling the money in her hand, she hurried back home

elated.

The following evening, as soon as her work was over, Shenah Pessah

scurried through the ghetto streets, seeking in the myriad-colored shop

windows the one hat and the one dress that would voice the desire of

her innermost self. At last she espied a shining straw with cherries so

red, so luscious, that they cried out to her, "Bite me!" That was

the hat she bought.

The magic of those cherries on her hat brought back to her the green

fields and orchards of her native Russia. Yes, a green dress was what

she craved. And she picked out the greenest, crispest organdie.

That night, as she put on her beloved colors, she vainly tried to see

herself from head to foot, but the broken bit of a mirror that she

owned could only show her glorious parts of her. Her clothes seemed

to enfold her in flames of desire leaping upon desire. "Only to be

beautiful! Only to be beautiful!" she murmured breathlessly. "Not

for myself, but only for him."

Time stood still for Shenah Pessah as she counted the days, the hours,

and the minutes for the arrival of John Barnes. At last, through her

basement window, she saw him walk up the front steps. She longed to go

over to him and fling herself at his feet and cry out to him with what

hunger of heart she awaited his coming. But the very intensity of her

longing left her faint and dumb.

He passed to his room. Later, she saw him walk out without even

stopping to look at her. The next day and the day after, she watched

him from her hidden corner pass in and out of the house, but still he

did not come to her.

Oh, how sweet it was to suffer the very hurt of his oblivion of

her! She gloried in his great height that made him so utterly unaware

of her existence. It was enough for her worshiping eyes just to glimpse

him from afar. What was she to him? Could she expect him to greet

the stairs on which he stepped? Or take notice of the door that swung

open for him? After all, she was nothing but part of the house. So why

should he take notice of her? She was the steps on which he walked. She

was the door that swung open for him. And he did not know it.

For four evenings in succession, ever since John Barnes had come to

live in the house, Shenah Pessah arrayed herself in her new things

and waited. Was it not a miracle that he came the first time when

she did not even dream that he was on earth? So why shouldn't the

miracle happen again? This evening, however, she was so spent with the

hopelessness of her longing that she had no energy left to put on her

adornments.

All at once she was startled out of her apathy by a quick tap on her

window-pane. "How about going to the library, to-morrow evening?"

asked John Barnes.

"Oi-i-i! Yes! Thanks--" she stammered in confusion.

"Well, to-morrow night, then, at seven. Thank you." He hurried out

embarrassed by the grateful look that shone to him out of her eyes. The

gaze haunted him and hurt him. It was the beseeching look of a homeless

dog, begging to be noticed. "Poor little immigrant," he thought,

"how lonely she must be!"

"So he didn't forget," rejoiced Shenah Pessah. "How only the

sound from his voice opens the sky in my heart! How the deadness and

emptiness in me flames up into life! Ach! The sun is again beginning

to shine!"

An hour before the appointed time, Shenah Pessah dressed herself in

all her finery for John Barnes. She swung open the door and stood in

readiness watching the little clock on the mantel-shelf. The ticking

thing seemed to throb with the unutterable hopes compressed in her

heart, all the mute years of her stifled life. Each little thud of time

sang a wild song of released joy--the joy of his coming nearer.

For the tenth time Shenah Pessah went over in her mind what she would

say to him when he'd come.

"It was so kind from you to take from your dear time--to--"

"No--that sounds not good. I'll begin like this--Mr. Barnes! I

can't give it out in words your kindness, to stop from your high

thoughts to--to--"

"No--no! Oi weh! God from the world! Why should it be so hard for

me to say to him what I mean? Why shouldn't I be able to say to him

plain out--Mr. Barnes! You are an angel from the sky! You are saving me

my life to let me only give a look on you! I'm happier than a bird in

the air when I think only that such goodness like you--"

The sudden ring of the bell shattered all her carefully rehearsed

phrases and she met his greeting in a flutter of confusion.

"My! Haven't you blossomed out since last night!" exclaimed

Mr. Barnes, startled by Shenah Pessah's sudden display of color.

"Yes," she flushed, raising to him her radiant face. "I'm

through for always with old women's shawls. This is my first American

dress-up."

"Splendid! So you want to be an American! The next step will be to

take up some work that will bring you in touch with American people."

"Yes. You'll help me? Yes?" Her eyes sought his with an appeal of

unquestioning reliance.

"Have you ever thought what kind of work you would like to take

up?" he asked, when they got out into the street.

"No--I want only to get away from the basement. I'm crazy for

people."

"Would you like to learn a trade in a factory?"

"Anything--anything! I'm burning to learn. Give me only an

advice. What?"

"What can you do best with your hands?"

"With the hands the best? It's all the same what I do with the

hands. Think you not maybe now, I could begin already something with

the head? Yes?"

"We'll soon talk this over together, after you have read a book

that will tell you how to find out what you are best fitted for."

When they entered the library, Shenah Pessah halted in awe. "What

a stillness full from thinking! So beautiful, it comes on me like

music!"

"Yes. This is quite a place," he acquiesced, seeing again the

public library in a new light through her eyes. "Some of the best

minds have worked to give us just this."

"How the book-ladies look so quiet like the things."

"Yes," he replied, with a tell-tale glance at her. "I too like to

see a woman's face above her clothes."

The approach of the librarian cut off further comment. As Mr. Barnes

filled out the application card, Shenah Pessah noted the librarian's

simple attire. "What means he a woman's face above her clothes?"

she wondered. And the first shadow of a doubt crossed her mind as to

whether her dearly bought apparel was pleasing to his eyes. In the

few brief words that passed between Mr. Barnes and the librarian,

Shenah Pessah sensed that these two were of the same world and that

she was different. Her first contact with him in a well-lighted room

made her aware that "there were other things to the person besides

the dress-up." She had noticed their well-kept hands on the desk and

she became aware that her own were calloused and rough. That is why she

felt her dirty finger-nails curl in awkwardly to hide themselves as she

held the pen to sign her name.

When they were out in the street again, he turned to her and said,

"If you don't mind, I'd prefer to walk back. The night is so fine

and I've been in the stuffy office all day."

"I don't mind"--the words echoed within her. If he only knew how

above all else she wanted this walk.

"It was grand in there, but the electric lights are like so many eyes

looking you over. In the street it is easier for me. The dark covers

you up so good."

He laughed, refreshed by her unconscious self-revelation.

"As long as you feel in your element let's walk on to the pier."

"Like for a holiday, it feels itself in me," she bubbled, as he

took her arm in crossing the street. "Now see I America for the first

time!"

It was all so wonderful to Barnes that in the dirt and noise of the

overcrowded ghetto, this erstwhile drudge could be transfigured into

such a vibrant creature of joy. Even her clothes that had seemed so

bold and garish awhile ago, were now inexplicably in keeping with the

carnival spirit that he felt steal over him.

As they neared the pier, he reflected strangely upon the fact that

out of the thousands of needy, immigrant girls whom he might have

befriended, this eager young being at his side was ordained by some

peculiar providence to come under his personal protection.

"How long did you say you have been in this country, Shenah

Pessah?"

"How long?" She echoed his words as though waking from a

dream. "It's two years already. But that didn't count life. From

now on I live."

"And you mean to tell me that in all this time, no one has taken you

by the hand and shown you the ways of our country? The pity of it!"

"I never had nothing, nor nobody. But now--it dances under me the

whole earth! It feels in me grander than dreams!"

He drank in the pure joy out of her eyes. For the moment, the girl

beside him was the living flame of incarnate Spring.

"He feels for me," she rejoiced, as they walked on in silence. The

tenderness of his sympathy enfolded her like some blessed warmth.

When they reached the end of the pier, they paused and watched the

moonlight playing on the water. In the shelter of a truck they felt

benignly screened from any stray glances of the loiterers near by.

How big seemed his strength as he stood silhouetted against the

blue night! For the first time Shenah Pessah noticed the splendid

straightness of his shoulders. The clean glowing youth of him drew her

like a spell.

"Ach! Only to keep always inside my heart the kindness, the

gentlemanness that shines from his face," thought Shenah Pessah,

instinctively nestling closer.

"Poor little immigrant!" murmured John Barnes. "How lonely, how

barren your life must have been till--" In an impulse of compassion,

his arms opened and Shenah Pessah felt her soul swoon in ecstasy as he

drew her toward him.

* * * * *

It was three days since the eventful evening on the pier and Shenah

Pessah had not seen John Barnes since. He had vanished like a dream,

and yet he was not a dream. He was the only thing real in the unreal

emptiness of her unlived life. She closed her eyes and she saw again

his face with its joy-giving smile. She heard again his voice and felt

again his arms around her as he kissed her lips. Then in the midst of

her sweetest visioning a gnawing emptiness seized her and the cruel

ache of withheld love sucked dry all those beautiful feelings his

presence inspired. Sometimes there flashed across her fevered senses

the memory of his compassionate endearments: "Poor lonely little

immigrant!" And she felt his sweet words smite her flesh with their

cruel mockery.

She went about her work with restlessness. At each step, at each

sound, she started, "Maybe it's him! Maybe!" She could not fall

asleep at night, but sat up in bed writing and tearing up letters to

him. The only lull to the storm that uprooted her being was in trying

to tell him how every throb within her clamored for him, but the most

heart-piercing cry that she could utter only stabbed her heart with the

futility of words.

In the course of the week it was Shenah Pessah's duty to clean

Mrs. Stein's floor. This brought her to Mr. Barnes's den in his

absence. She gazed about her, calling up his presence at the sight of

his belongings.

"How fine to the touch is the feel from everything his," she

sighed, tenderly resting her cheek on his dressing-gown. With a timid

hand she picked up a slipper that stood beside his bed and she pressed

it to her heart reverently. "I wish I was this leather thing only

to hold his feet!" Then she turned to his dresser and passed her

hands caressingly over the ivory things on it. "Ach! You lucky

brush--smoothing his hair every day!"

All at once she heard footsteps, and before she could collect her

thoughts, he entered. Her whole being lit up with the joy of his

coming. But one glance at him revealed to her the changed expression

that darkened his face. His arms hung limply at his side--the arms she

expected to stretch out to her and enfold her. As if struck in the face

by his heartless rebuff, she rushed out blindly.

"Just a minute, please," he managed to detain her. "As a

gentleman, I owe you an apology. That night--it was a passing moment of

forgetfulness. It's not to happen again--"

Before he had finished, she had run out scorched with shame by his

words.

"Good Lord!" he ejaculated, when he found he was alone. "Who'd

ever think that she would take it so? I suppose there is no use trying

to explain to her."

For some time he sat on his bed, staring ruefully. Then, springing

to his feet, he threw his things together in a valise. "You'd

be a cad if you did not clear out of here at once," he muttered to

himself. "No matter how valuable the scientific inquiry might prove

to be, you can't let the girl run away with herself."

Shenah Pessah was at the window when she saw John Barnes go out with

his suitcases.

"In God's name, don't leave me!" she longed to cry out. "You

are the only bit of light that I ever had, and now it will be darker

and emptier for my eyes than ever before!" But no voice could rise

out of her parched lips. She felt a faintness stunning her senses as

though some one had cut open the arteries of her wrists and all the

blood rushed out of her body.

"Oi weh!" she moaned. "Then it was all nothing to him. Why did

he make bitter to me the little sweetness that was dearer to me than my

life? What means he a gentleman?

"Why did he make me to shame telling me he didn't mean nothing? Is

it because I'm not a lady alike to him? Is a gentleman only a

make-believe man?"

With a defiant resolve she seized hold of herself and rose to her

feet. "Show him what's in you. If it takes a year, or a million

years, you got to show him you're a person. From now on, you got

why to live. You got to work not with the strength of one body and

one brain, but with the strength of a million bodies and a million

brains. By day and by night, you got to push, push yourself up till you

get to him and can look him in his face eye to eye."

Spent by the fervor of this new exaltation, she sat with her head in

her hands in a dull stupor. Little by little the darkness cleared from

her soul and a wistful serenity crept over her. She raised her face

toward the solitary ray of sunlight that stole into her basement room.

"After all, he done for you more than you could do for him. You owe

it to him the deepest, the highest he waked up in you. He opened the

wings of your soul."

HUNGER

Shenah Pessah paused in the midst of scrubbing the stairs of the

tenement. "Ach!" she sighed. "How can his face still burn so in

me when he is so long gone? How the deadness in me flames up with life

at the thought of him!"

The dark hallway seemed flooded with white radiance. She closed her

eyes that she might see more vividly the beloved features. The glowing

smile that healed all ills of life and changed her from the weary

drudge into the vibrant creature of joy.

It was all a miracle--his coming, this young professor from one of

the big colleges. He had rented a room in the very house where she was

janitress so as to be near the people he was writing about. But more

wonderful than all was the way he stopped to talk to her, to question

her about herself as though she were his equal. What warm friendliness

had prompted him to take her out of her dark basement to the library

where there were books to read!

And then--that unforgettable night on the way home, when the air was

poignant with spring! Only a moment--a kiss--a pressure of hands! And

the world shone with light--the empty, unlived years filled with love!

She was lost in dreams of her one hour of romance when a woman elbowed

her way through the dim passage, leaving behind her the smell of

herring and onions.

Shenah Pessah gripped the scrubbing-brush with suppressed

fury. "Meshugeneh! Did you not swear to yourself that you would tear

his memory out from your heart? If he would have been only a man I

could have forgotten him. But he was not a man! He was God Himself! On

whatever I look shines his face!"

The white radiance again suffused her. The brush dropped from her

hand. "He--he is the beating in my heart! He is the life in me--the

hope in me--the breath of prayer in me! If not for him in me, then

what am I? Deadness--emptiness--nothingness! You are going out of your

head. You are living only on rainbows. He is no more real--

"What is real? These rags I wear? This pail? This black hole? Or

him and the dreams of him?" She flung her challenge to the murky

darkness.

"Shenah Pessah! A black year on you!" came the answer from the

cellar below. It was the voice of her uncle, Moisheh Rifkin.

"Oi weh!" she shrugged young shoulders, wearied by joyless

toil. "He's beginning with his hollering already." And she

hurried down.

"You piece of earth! Worms should eat you! How long does it take

you to wash up the stairs?" he stormed. "Yesterday, the eating was

burned to coal; and to-day you forget the salt."

"What a fuss over a little less salt!"

"In the Talmud it stands a man has a right to divorce his wife for

only forgetting him the salt in his soup."

"Maybe that's why Aunt Gittel went to the grave before her

time--worrying how to please your taste in the mouth."

The old man's yellow, shriveled face stared up at her out of the

gloom. "What has he from life? Only his pleasure in eating and going

to the synagogue. How long will he live yet?" And moved by a surge of

pity, "Why can't I be a little kind to him?"

"Did you chop me some herring and onions?" he interrupted harshly.

She flushed with conscious guilt. Again she wondered why ugly things

and ugly smells so sickened her.

"What don't you forget?" His voice hammered upon her ears. "No

care lays in your head. You're only dreaming in the air."

Her compassion was swept away in a wave of revolt that left her

trembling. "I can't no more stand it from you! Get yourself

somebody else!" She was surprised at her sudden spirit.

"You big mouth, you! That's your thanks for saving you from

hunger."

"Two years already I'm working the nails off my fingers and you

didn't give me a cent."

"Beggerin! Money yet, you want? The minute you get enough to eat

you turn up your head with freshness. Are you used to anything from

home? What were you out there in Savel? The dirt under people's

feet. You're already forgetting how you came off from the ship--a

bundle of rags full of holes. If you lived in Russia a hundred years

would you have lived to wear a pair of new shoes on your feet?"

"Other girls come naked and with nothing to America and they work

themselves up. Everybody gets wages in America--"

"Americanerin! Didn't I spend out enough money on your ship-ticket

to have a little use from you? A thunder should strike you!"

Shenah Pessah's eyes flamed. Her broken finger-nails pierced the

callous flesh of her hands. So this was the end--the awakening of her

dreams of America! Her memory went back to the time her ship-ticket

came. In her simple faith she had really believed that they wanted

her--her father's brother and his wife who had come to the new

world before ever she was born. She thought they wanted to give her a

chance for happiness, for life and love. And then she came--to find

the paralytic aunt--housework--janitor's drudgery. Even after her

aunt's death, she had gone on uncomplainingly, till her uncle's

nagging had worn down her last shred of self-control.

"It's the last time you'll holler on me!" she cried. "You'll

never see my face again if I got to go begging in the street."

Seizing her shawl, she rushed out. "Woe is me! Bitter is

me! For what is my life? Why didn't the ship go under and drown me

before I came to America?"

Through the streets, like a maddened thing, she raced, not knowing

where she was going, not caring. "For what should I keep on

suffering? Who needs me? Who wants me? I got nobody--nobody!"

And then the vision of the face she worshiped flashed before her. His

beautiful kindness that had once warmed her into new life breathed over

her again. "Why did he ever come but to lift me out of my darkness

into his light?"

Instinctively her eyes sought the rift of blue above the tenement roofs

and were caught by a boldly printed placard: "HANDS WANTED." It

was as though the sign swung open on its hinges like a door and arms

stretched out inviting her to enter. From the sign she looked to her

own hands--vigorous, young hands--made strong through toil.

Hope leaped within her. "Maybe I got yet luck to have it good in this

world. Ach! God from the sky! I'm so burning to live--to work myself

up for a somebody! And why not?" With clenched fist she smote her

bosom. "Ain't everything possible in the new world? Why is America

but to give me the chance to lift up my head with everybody alike?"

Her feet scarcely touched the steps as she ran up. But when she reached

the huge, iron door of Cohen Brothers, a terror seized her. "Oi

weh! They'll give a look on my greenhorn rags, and down I go--For

what are you afraid, you fool?" she commanded herself. "You come

not to beg. They need hands. Don't the sign say so? And you got good,

strong hands that can turn over the earth with their strength. America

is before you. You'll begin to earn money. You'll dress yourself

up like a person and men will fall on their knees to make love to

you--even him--himself!"

All fear had left her. She flung open the door and beheld the wonder

of a factory--people--people--seas of bent heads and busy hands of

people--the whirr of machinery--flying belts--the clicking clatter of

whirling wheels--all seemed to blend and fuse into one surging song of

hope--of new life--a new world--America!

A man, his arms heaped with a bundle of shirts, paused at sight of the

radiant face. Her ruddy cheeks, the film of innocence shining out of

eyes that knew no guile, carried him back to the green fields and open

plains of his native Russia.

"Her mother's milk is still fresh on her lips," he murmured, as

his gaze enveloped her.

The bundle slipped and fell to her feet. Their eyes met in spontaneous

recognition of common race. With an embarrassed laugh they stooped to

gather up the shirts.

"I seen downstairs hands wanted," came in a faltering voice.

"Then you're looking for work?" he questioned with keen

interest. She was so different from the others he had known in his five

years in this country. He was seized with curiosity to know more.

"You ain't been long in America?" His tone was an unconscious

caress.

"Two years already," she confessed. "But I ain't so green like

I look," she added quickly, overcome by the old anxiety.

"Trust yourself on me," Sam Arkin assured her. "I'm a feller

that knows himself on a person first off. I'll take you to the office

myself. Wait only till I put away these things."

Grinning with eagerness, he returned and together they sought the

foreman.

"Good luck to you! I hope you'll be pushed up soon to my floor,"

Sam Arkin encouraged, as he hurried back to his machine.

Because of the rush of work and the scarcity of help, Shenah Pessah was

hired without delay. Atremble with excitement, she tiptoed after the

foreman as he led the way into the workroom.

"Here, Sadie Kranz, is another learner for you." He addressed a

big-bosomed girl, the most skillful worker in the place.

"Another greenhorn with a wooden head!" she whispered to her

neighbor as Shenah Pessah removed her shawl. "Gevalt! All these

greenhorn hands tear the bread from our mouths by begging to work so

cheap."

But the dumb appeal of the immigrant stirred vague memories in Sadie

Kranz. As she watched her run her first seam, she marveled at her

speed. "I got to give it to you, you have a quick head." There was

conscious condescension in her praise.

Shenah Pessah lifted a beaming face. "How kind it was from you to

learn me! You good heart!"

No one had ever before called Sadie Kranz "good heart." The words

lingered pleasantly.

"Ut! I like to help anybody, so long it don't cost me nothing. I

get paid by the week anyhow," she half apologized.

Shenah Pessah was so thrilled with the novelty of the work, the

excitement of mastering the intricacies of her machine, that she

did not realize that the day was passed until the bell rang, the

machines came to a halt, and the "hands" made a wild rush for the

cloak-room.

"Oi weh! Is it a fire?" Shenah Pessah blanched with dread.

Loud laughter quelled her fears. "Greenie! It's six o'clock. Time

to go home," chorused the voices.

"Home?" The cry broke from her. "Where will I go? I got

no home." She stood bewildered, in the fast-dwindling crowd of

workers. Each jostling by her had a place to go. Of them all, she alone

was friendless, shelterless!

"Help me find a place to sleep!" she implored, seizing Sadie Kranz

by the sleeve of her velvet coat. "I got no people. I ran away."

Sadie Kranz narrowed her eyes at the girl. A feeling of pity crept over

her at sight of the outstretched, hungry hands.

"I'll fix you by me for the while." And taking the shawl off the

shelf, she tossed it to the forlorn bundle of rags. "Come along. You

must be starved for some eating."

As Shenah Pessah entered the dingy hall-room which Sadie Kranz called

home, its chill and squalor carried her back to the janitor's

basement she had left that morning. In silence she watched her

companion prepare the hot dogs and potatoes on the oil-stove atop the

trunk. Such pressing sadness weighed upon her that she turned from even

the smell of food.

"My heart pulls me so to go back to my uncle." She swallowed

hard her crust of black bread. "He's so used to have me help

him. What'll he do--alone?"

"You got to look out for yourself in this world." Sadie Kranz

gesticulated with a hot potato. "With your quickness, you got a

chance to make money and buy clothes. You can go to shows--dances. And

who knows--maybe meet a man to get married."

"Married? You know how it burns in every girl to get herself

married--that's how it burns in me to work myself up for a person."

"Ut! For what need you to work yourself up. Better marry yourself up

to a rich feller and you're fixed for life."

"But him I want--he ain't just a man. He is--" She paused

seeking for words and a mist of longing softened the heavy peasant

features. "He is the golden hills on the sky. I'm as far from him

as the earth is from the stars."

"Yok! Why wills itself in you the stars?" her companion ridiculed

between swallows.

Shenah Pessah flung out her hands with Jewish fervor. "Can I help

it what's in my heart? It always longs in me for the higher. Maybe

he has long ago forgotten me, but only one hope drives in me like

madness--to make myself alike to him."

"I'll tell you the truth," laughed Sadie Kranz, fishing in

the pot for the last frankfurter. "You are a little out of your

head--plain mehsugeh."

"Mehsugeh?" Shenah Pessah rose to her feet vibrant with new

resolve. "Mehsugeh?" she challenged, her peasant youth afire with

ambition. "I'll yet show the world what's in me. I'll not go

back to my uncle--till it rings with my name in America."

She entered the factory, the next day, with a light in her face, a

sureness in her step that made all pause in wonder. "Look only! How

high she holds herself her head! Has the matchmaker promised her a

man?"

Then came her first real triumph. Shenah Pessah was raised above old

hands who had been in the shop for years and made assistant to Sam

Arkin, the man who had welcomed her that first day in the factory. As

she was shown to the bench beside him, she waited expectantly for a

word of welcome. None came. Instead, he bent the closer to his machine

and the hand that held the shirt trembled as though he were cold,

though the hot color flooded his face.

Resolutely, she turned to her work. She would show him how skillful she

had become in those few weeks. The seams sped under her lightning touch

when a sudden clatter startled her. She jumped up terror-stricken.

"The belt! The belt slipped! But it's nothing, little bird," Sam

Arkin hastened to assure her. "I'll fix it." And then the quick

warning, "Sh-h! The foreman is coming!"

Accustomed to her uncle's harsh bickering, this man's gentleness

overwhelmed her. There was something she longed to say that trembled on

her lips, but her voice refused to come.

Sam Arkin, too, was inarticulate. He felt he must talk to

her, must know more of her. Timidly he touched her sleeve.

"Lunch-time--here--wait for me," he whispered, as the foreman

approached.

* * * * *

A shrill whistle--the switch thrown--the slowing-down of the machines,

then the deafening hush proclaiming noon. Followed the scraping of

chairs, raucous voices, laughter, and the rush on the line to reach

the steaming cauldron. One by one, as their cups of tea were filled,

the hungry workers dispersed into groups. Seated on window-sills,

table-tops, machines, and bales of shirts, they munched black bread and

herring and sipped tea from saucers. And over all rioted the acrid odor

of garlic and onions.

Rebecca Feist, the belle of the shop, pulled up the sleeve of

her Georgette waist and glanced down at her fifty-nine-cent silk

stocking. "A lot it pays for a girl to kill herself to dress

stylish. Give only a look on Sam Arkin, how stuck he is on that new

hand."

There followed a chorus of voices. "Such freshness! We been in the

shop so long and she just gives a come-in and grabs the cream as if

it's coming to her."

"It's her innocent-looking baby eyes that fools him in--"

"Innocent! Pfui! These make-believe innocent girls! Leave it to

them! They know how to shine themselves up to a feller!"

Bleemah Levine, a stoop-shouldered, old hand, grown gray with

the grayness of unrelieved drudgery, cast a furtive look in the

direction of the couple. "Ach! The little bit of luck! Not looks, not

smartness, but only luck, and the world falls to your feet." Her lips

tightened with envy. "It's her greenhorn, red cheeks--"

Rebecca Feist glanced at herself in the mirror of her vanity

bag. It was a pretty, young face, but pale and thin from

undernourishment. Adroitly applying a lip-stick, she cried indignantly:

"I wish I could be such a false thing like her. But only, I'm too

natural--the hypocrite!"

Sadie Kranz rose to her friend's defense. "What are you falling on

her like a pack of wild dogs, just because Sam Arkin gives a smile on

her? He ain't marrying her yet, is he?"

"We don't say nothing against her," retorted Rebecca Feist,

tapping her diamond-buckled foot, "only, she pushes herself too

much. Give her a finger and she'll grab your whole hand. Is there a

limit to the pushings of such a green animal? Only a while ago, she was

a learner, a nobody, and soon she'll jump over all our heads and make

herself for a forelady."

Sam Arkin, seated beside Shenah Pessah on the window-sill, had

forgotten that it was lunch-hour and that he was savagely hungry. "It

shines so from your eyes," he beamed. "What happy thoughts lay in

your head?"

"Ach! When I give myself a look around on all the people laughing and

talking, it makes me so happy I'm one of them."

"Ut! These Americanerins! Their heads is only on ice-cream soda and

style."

"But it makes me feel so grand to be with all these hands

alike. It's as if I just got out from the choking prison into the

open air of my own people."

She paused for breath--a host of memories overpowering her. "I

can't give it out in words," she went on. "But just as there

ain't no bottom to being poor, there ain't no bottom to being

lonely. Before, everything I done was alone, by myself. My heart hurt

so with hunger for people. But here, in the factory, I feel I'm with

everybody together. Just the sight of people lifts me on wings in the

air."

Opening her bag of lunch which had lain unheeded in her lap, she turned

to him with a queer, little laugh, "I don't know why I'm so

talking myself out to you--"

"Only talk more. I want to know everything about yourself." An

aching tenderness rushed out of his heart to her, and in his grave

simplicity he told her how he had overheard one of the girls say that

she, Shenah Pessah, looked like a "greeneh yenteh," just landed

from the ship, so that he cried out, "Gottuniu! If only the doves

from the sky were as beautiful!"

They looked at each other solemnly--the girl's lips parted, her eyes

wide and serious.

"That first day I came to the shop, the minute I gave a look on you,

I felt right away, here's somebody from home. I used to tremble so

to talk to a man, but you--you--I could talk myself out to you like

thinking in myself."

"You're all soft silk and fine velvet," he breathed reverently.

"In this hard world, how could such fineness be?"

An embarrassed silence fell between them as she knotted and unknotted

her colored kerchief.

"I'll take you home? Yes?" he found voice at last.

Under lowered lashes she smiled her consent.

"I'll wait for you downstairs, closing time." And he was gone.

The noon hour was not yet over, but Shenah Pessah returned to her

machine. "Shall I tell him?" she mused. "Sam Arkin understands so

much, shall I tell him of this man that burns in me? If I could only

give out to some one about him in my heart--it would make me a little

clear in the head." She glanced at Sam Arkin furtively. "He's

kind, but could he understand? I only made a fool from myself trying to

tell Sadie Kranz." All at once she began to sob without reason. She

ran to the cloak-room and hid from prying eyes, behind the shawls

and wraps. The emptiness of all for which she struggled pressed upon

her like a dead weight, dragging her down, down--the reaction of her

ecstasy.

As the gong sounded, she made a desperate effort to pull herself

together and returned to her work.

The six o'clock whistles still reverberated when Sam Arkin hurried

down the factory stairs and out to the corner where he was to meet

Shenah Pessah. He cleared his throat to greet her as she came, but all

he managed was a bashful grin. She was so near, so real, and he had so

much to say--if he only knew how to begin.

He cracked his knuckles and bit his finger-tips, but no words

came. "Ach! You yok! Why ain't you saying something?" He wrestled

with his shyness in vain. The tense silence remained unbroken till they

reached her house.

"I'm sorry"--Shenah Pessah colored apologetically--"But I got

no place to invite you. My room is hardly big enough for a push-in of

one person."

"What say you to a bite of eating with me?" he blurted.

She thought of her scant supper upstairs and would have responded

eagerly, but glancing down at her clothes, she hesitated. "Could I go

dressed like this in a restaurant?"

"You look grander plain, like you are, than those twisted up with

style. I'll take you to the swellest restaurant on Grand Street and

be proud with you!"

She flushed with pleasure. "Nu, come on, then. It's good to have a

friend that knows himself on what's in you and not what's on you,

but still, when I go to a place, I like to be dressed like a person so

I can feel like a person."

"You'll yet live to wear diamonds that will shine up the street

when you pass!" he cried.

Through streets growing black with swarming crowds of toil-released

workers they made their way. Sam Arkin's thick hand rested with a

lightness new to him upon the little arm tucked under his. The haggling

pushcart peddlers, the newsboys screaming, "Tageblatt, Abendblatt,

Herold," the roaring noises of the elevated trains resounded the

paean of joy swelling his heart.

"America was good to me, but I never guessed how good till now."

The words were out before he knew it. "Tell me only, what pulled you

to this country?"

"What pulls anybody here? The hope for the better. People who got it

good in the old world don't hunger for the new."

A mist filled her eyes at memory of her native village. "How I

suffered in Savel. I never had enough to eat. I never had shoes on

my feet. I had to go barefoot even in the freezing winter. But still

I love it. I was born there. I love the houses and the straw roofs,

the mud streets, the cows, the chickens and the goats. My heart always

hurts me for what is no more."

The brilliant lights of Levy's Cafe brought her back to Grand

Street.

"Here is it." He led her in and over to a corner table. "Chopped

herring and onions for two," he ordered with a flourish.

"Ain't there some American eating on the card?" interposed Shenah

Pessah.

He laughed indulgently. "If I lived in America for a hundred years I

couldn't get used to the American eating. What can make the mouth so

water like the taste and the smell from herring and onions?"

"There's something in me--I can't help--that so quickly takes on

to the American taste. It's as if my outside skin only was Russian;

the heart in me is for everything of the new world--even the eating."

"Nu, I got nothing to complain against America. I don't like

the American eating, but I like the American dollar. Look only

on me!" He expanded his chest. "I came to America a ragged

nothing--and--see--" He exhibited a bank-book in four figures,

gesticulating grandly, "And I learned in America how to sign my

name!"

"Did it come hard to learn?" she asked under her breath.

"Hard?" His face purpled with excitement. "It would be easier for

me to lift up this whole house on my shoulders than to make one little

dot of a letter. When I took my pencil--Oi weh! The sweat would break

out on my face! 'I can't, I can't!' I cried, but something

in me jumped up. 'You can--you yok--you must!'--Six months, night

after night, I stuck to it--and I learned to twist around the little

black hooks till it means--me--Sam Arkin."

He had the rough-hewn features of the common people, but he lifted his

head with the pride of a king. "Since I can write out my name, I feel

I can do anything. I can sign checks, put money in the bank, or take it

out without nobody to help me."

As Shenah Pessah listened, unconsciously she compared Sam Arkin,

glowing with the frank conceit of the self-made man, his neglected

teeth, thick, red lips, with that of the Other One--made ever more

beautiful with longings and dreams.

"But in all these black years, I was always hoping to get to the

golden country," Sam Arkin's voice went on, but she heard it as

from afar. "Before my eyes was always the shine of the high wages

and the easy money and I kept pushing myself from one city to another,

and saving and saving till I saved up enough for my ship-ticket to

the new world. And then when I landed here, I fell into the hands of a

cockroach boss."

"A cockroach boss?" she questioned absently and reproached herself

for her inattention.

"A black year on him! He was a landsman, that's how he fooled me

in. He used to come to the ship with a smiling face of welcome to all

the greenhorns what had nobody to go to. And then he'd put them to

work in his sweatshop and sweat them into their grave."

"Don't I know it?" she cried with quickened understanding.

"Just like my uncle, Moisheh Rifkin."

"The blood-sucker!" he gasped. "When I think how I slaved for him

sixteen hours a day--for what? Nothing!"

She gently stroked his hand as one might a child in pain. He looked up

and smiled gratefully.

"I want to forget what's already over. I got enough money now to

start for myself--maybe a tailor-shop--and soon--I--I want to marry

myself--but none of those crazy chickens for me." And he seemed to

draw her unto himself by the intensity of his gaze.

Growing bolder, he exclaimed: "I got a grand idea. It's Monday

and the bank is open yet till nine o'clock. I'll write over my

bank-book on your name? Yes?"

"My name?" She fell back, dumbstruck.

"Yes--you--everything I only got--you--" he mumbled. "I'll give

you dove's milk to drink--silks and diamonds to wear--you'll hold

all my money."

She was shaken by this supreme proof of his devotion.

"But I--I can't--I got to work myself up for a person. I got

a head. I got ideas. I can catch on to the Americans quicker'n

lightning."

"My money can buy you everything. I'll buy you teachers. I'll

buy you a piano. I'll make you for a lady. Right away you can stop

from work." He leaned toward her, his eyes welling with tears of

earnestness.

"Take your hard-earned money? Could I be such a beggerin?"

"God from the world! You are dearer to me than the eyes from my

head! I'd give the blood from under my nails for you! I want only to

work for you--to live for you--to die for you--" He was spent with

the surge of his emotion.

Ach! To be loved as Sam Arkin loved! She covered her eyes, but it only

pressed upon her the more. Home, husband, babies, a bread-giver for

life!

And the Other--a dream--a madness that burns you up alive. "You might

as well want to marry yourself to the President of America as to want

him. But I can't help it. _Him and him only_ I want."

She looked up again. "No--no!" she cried, cruel in the self-absorption

of youth and ambition. "You can't make me for a person.

It's not only that I got to go up higher, but I got to push

myself up by myself, by my own strength--"

"Nu, nu," he sobbed. "I'll not bother you with me--only give

you my everything. My bank-book is more than my flesh and blood--only

take it, to do what you want with it."

Her eyes deepened with humility. "I know your goodness--but there's

something like a wall around me--him in my heart."

"Him?" The word hurled itself at him like a bomb-shell. He went

white with pain. And even she, immersed in her own thoughts, lowered

her head before the dumb suffering on his face. She felt she owed it to

him to tell him.

"I wanted to talk myself out to you about him yet before.--He ain't

just a man. He is all that I want to be and am not yet. He is the

hunger of me for the life that ain't just eating and sleeping and

slaving for bread."

She pushed back her chair and rose abruptly. "I can't be inside

walls when I talk of him. I need the earth, the whole free sky to

breathe when I think of him. Come out in the air."

They walked for a time before either spoke. Sam Arkin followed where

she led through the crooked labyrinth of streets. The sight of the

young mothers with their nursing infants pressed to their bared bosoms

stabbed anew his hurt.

Shenah Pessah, blind to all but the vision that obsessed her, talked

on. "All that my mother and father and my mother's mother and

father ever wanted to be is in him. This fire in me, it's not just

the hunger of a woman for a man--it's the hunger of all my people

back of me, from all ages, for light, for the life higher!"

A veil of silence fell between them. She felt almost as if it were a

sacrilege to have spoken of that which was so deeply centered within

her.

Sam Arkin's face became lifeless as clay. Bowed like an

old man, he dragged his leaden feet after him. The world was

dead--cold--meaningless. Bank-book, money--of what use were they

now? All his years of saving couldn't win her. He was suffocated in

emptiness.

* * * * *

On they walked till they reached a deserted spot in the park. So spent

was he by his sorrow that he lost the sense of time or place or that

she was near.

Leaning against a tree, he stood, dumb, motionless, unutterable

bewilderment in his sunken eyes.

"I lived over the hunger for bread--but this--" He clutched at his

aching bosom. "Highest One, help me!" With his face to the ground

he sank, prostrate.

"Sam Arkin!" She bent over him tenderly. "I feel the emptiness of

words--but I got to get it out. All that you suffer I have suffered,

and must yet go on suffering. I see no end. But only--there is

a something--a hope--a help out--it lifts me on top of my hungry

body--the hunger to make from myself a person that can't be crushed

by nothing nor nobody--the life higher!"

Slowly, he rose to his feet, drawn from his weakness by the spell of

her. "With one hand you throw me down and with the other you lift

me up to life again. Say to me only again, your words," he pleaded,

helplessly.

"Sam Arkin! Give yourself your own strength!" She shook him

roughly. "I got no pity on you, no more than I got pity on me."

He saw her eyes fill with light as though she were seeing something far

beyond them both. "This," she breathed, "is only the beginning

of the hunger that will make from you a person who'll yet ring in

America."

THE LOST "BEAUTIFULNESS"

"Oi weh! How it shines the beautifulness!" exulted Hanneh Hayyeh

over her newly painted kitchen. She cast a glance full of worship and

adoration at the picture of her son in uniform; eyes like her own,

shining with eagerness, with joy of life, looked back at her.

"Aby will not have to shame himself to come back to his old home,"

she rejoiced, clapping her hands--hands blistered from the paintbrush

and calloused from rough toil. "Now he'll be able to invite all the

grandest friends he made in the army."

The smell of the paint was suffocating, but she inhaled in it huge

draughts of hidden beauty. For weeks she had dreamed of it and felt in

each tin of paint she was able to buy, in each stroke of the brush, the

ecstasy of loving service for the son she idolized.

Ever since she first began to wash the fine silks and linens for

Mrs. Preston, years ago, it had been Hanneh Hayyeh's ambition to have

a white-painted kitchen exactly like that in the old Stuyvesant Square

mansion. Now her own kitchen was a dream come true.

Hanneh Hayyeh ran in to her husband, a stoop-shouldered, care-crushed

man who was leaning against the bed, his swollen feet outstretched,

counting the pennies that totaled his day's earnings.

"Jake Safransky!" she cried excitedly, "you got to come in and

give a look on my painting before you go to sleep."

"Oi, let me alone. Give me only a rest."

Too intoxicated with the joy of achievement to take no for an answer,

she dragged him into the doorway. "Nu? How do you like it? Do I know

what beautiful is?"

"But how much money did you spend out on that paint?"

"It was my own money," she said, wiping the perspiration off her

face with a corner of her apron. "Every penny I earned myself from

the extra washing."

"But you had ought save it up for the bad times. What'll you do

when the cold weather starts in and the pushcart will not wheel itself

out?"

"I save and pinch enough for myself. This I done in honor for my

son. I want my Aby to lift up his head in the world. I want him to be

able to invite even the President from America to his home and shame

himself."

"You'd pull the bananas off a blind man's pushcart to bring to

your Aby. You know nothing from holding tight to a dollar and saving a

penny to a penny like poor people should."

"What do I got from living if I can't have a little beautifulness

in my life? I don't allow for myself the ten cents to go to a moving

picture that I'm crazy to see. I never yet treated myself to an

ice-cream soda even for a holiday. Shining up the house for Aby is my

only pleasure."

"Yah, but it ain't your house. It's the landlord's."

"Don't I live in it? I soak in pleasure from every inch of my

kitchen. Why, I could kiss the grand white color on the walls. It

lights up my eyes like sunshine in the room."

Her glance traveled from the newly painted walls to the geranium on the

window-sill, and back to her husband's face.

"Jake!" she cried, shaking him, "ain't you got eyes? How can

you look on the way it dances the beautifulness from every corner and

not jump in the air from happiness?"

"I'm only thinking on the money you spent out on the landlord's

house. Look only on me! I'm black from worry, but no care lays on

your head. It only dreams itself in you how to make yourself for an

American and lay in every penny you got on fixing out the house like

the rich."

"I'm sick of living like a pig with my nose to the earth, all the

time only pinching and scraping for bread and rent. So long my Aby is

with America, I want to make myself for an American. I could tear the

stars out from heaven for my Aby's wish."

Her sunken cheeks were flushed and her eyes glowed with light as she

gazed about her.

"When I see myself around the house how I fixed it up with my own

hands, I forget I'm only a nobody. It makes me feel I'm also a

person like Mrs. Preston. It lifts me with high thoughts."

"Why didn't you marry yourself to a millionaire? You always want to

make yourself like Mrs. Preston who got millions laying in the bank."

"But Mrs. Preston does make me feel that I'm alike with her,"

returned Hanneh Hayyeh, proudly. "Don't she talk herself out to me

like I was her friend? Mrs. Preston says this war is to give everybody

a chance to lift up his head like a person. It is to bring together the

people on top who got everything and the people on the bottom who got

nothing. She's been telling me about a new word--democracy. It got me

on fire. Democracy means that everybody in America is going to be with

everybody alike."

"Och! Stop your dreaming out of your head. Close up your mouth from

your foolishness. Women got long hair and small brains," he finished,

muttering as he went to bed.

At the busy gossiping hour of the following morning when the

butcher-shop was crowded with women in dressing-sacks and wrappers

covered over with shawls, Hanneh Hayyeh elbowed her way into the

clamorous babel of her neighbors.

"What are you so burning? What are you so flaming?"

"She's always on fire with the wonders of her son."

"The whole world must stop still to listen to what news her son

writes to her."

"She thinks her son is the only one soldier by the American army."

"My Benny is also one great wonder from smartness, but I ain't such

a crazy mother like she."

The voices of her neighbors rose from every corner, but Hanneh Hayyeh,

deaf to all, projected herself forward.

"What are you pushing yourself so wild? You ain't going to get your

meat first. Ain't it, Mr. Sopkin, all got to wait their turn?"

Mr. Sopkin glanced up in the midst of cutting apart a quarter of

meat. He wiped his knife on his greasy apron and leaned across the

counter.

"Nu? Hanneh Hayyeh?" his ruddy face beamed. "Have you another

letter from little Aby in France? What good news have you got to tell

us?"

"No--it's not a letter," she retorted, with a gesture of

impatience. "The good news is that I got done with the painting of

my kitchen--and you all got to come and give a look how it shines in my

house like in a palace."

Mr. Sopkin resumed cutting the meat.

"Oi weh!" clamored Hanneh Hayyeh, with feverish breathlessness.

"Stop with your meat already and quick come. The store ain't

going to run away from you! It will take only a minute.

With one step you are upstairs in my house." She flung out

her hands. "And everybody got to come along."

"Do you think I can make a living from looking on the wonders you

turn over in your house?" remonstrated the butcher, with a twinkle in

his eye.

"Making money ain't everything in life. My new-painted kitchen will

light up your heart with joy."

Seeing that Mr. Sopkin still made no move, she began to coax and

wheedle, woman-fashion. "Oi weh! Mr. Sopkin! Don't be so mean. Come

only. Your customers ain't going to run away from you. If they do,

they only got to come back, because you ain't a skinner. You weigh

the meat honest."

How could Mr. Sopkin resist such seductive flattery?

"Hanneh Hayyeh!" he laughed. "You're crazy up in the air, but

nobody can say no to anything you take into your head."

He tossed his knife down on the counter. "Everybody!" he called;

"let us do her the pleasure and give a look on what she got to show

us."

"Oi weh! I ain't got no time," protested one. "I left my baby

alone in the house locked in."

"And I left a pot of eating on the stove boiling. It must be all

burned away by this time."

"But you all got time to stand around here and chatter like a box of

monkeys, for hours," admonished Mr. Sopkin. "This will only take a

minute. You know Hanneh Hayyeh. We can't tear ourselves away from her

till we do what wills itself in her mind."

Protesting and gesticulating, they all followed Mr. Sopkin as Hanneh

Hayyeh led the way. Through the hallway of a dark, ill-smelling

tenement, up two flights of crooked, rickety stairs, they filed. When

Hanneh Hayyeh opened the door there were exclamations of wonder and

joy: "Oi! Oi!" and "Ay! Ay! Takeh! Takeh!"

"Gold is shining from every corner!"

"Like for a holiday!"

"You don't need to light up the gas, so it shines!"

"I wish I could only have it so grand!"

"You ain't got worries on your head, so it lays in your mind to

make it so fancy."

Mr. Sopkin stood with mouth open, stunned with wonder at the

transformation.

Hanneh Hayyeh shook him by the sleeve exultantly. "Nu? Why ain't

you saying something?"

"Grand ain't the word for it! What a whiteness! And what a

cleanliness! It tears out the eyes from the head! Such a tenant the

landlord ought to give out a medal or let down the rent free. I saw

the rooms before and I see them now. What a difference from one house

to another."

"Ain't you coming in?" Hanneh Hayyeh besought her neighbors.

"God from the world! To step with our feet on this new painted

floor?"

"Shah!" said the butcher, taking off his apron and spreading it

on the floor. "You can all give a step on my apron. It's dirty,

anyhow."

They crowded in on the outspread apron and vied with one another in

their words of praise.

"May you live to see your son married from this kitchen, and may we

all be invited to the wedding!"

"May you live to eat here cake and wine on the feasts of your

grandchildren!"

"May you have the luck to get rich and move from here into your own

bought house!"

"Amen!" breathed Hanneh Hayyeh. "May we all forget from our

worries for rent!"

* * * * *

Mrs. Preston followed with keen delight Hanneh Hayyeh's every

movement as she lifted the wash from the basket and spread it on the

bed. Hanneh Hayyeh's rough, toil-worn hands lingered lovingly,

caressingly over each garment. It was as though the fabrics held

something subtly animate in their texture that penetrated to her very

finger-tips.

"Hanneh Hayyeh! You're an artist!" There was reverence in

Mrs. Preston's low voice that pierced the other woman's inmost

being. "You do my laces and batistes as no one else ever has. It's

as if you breathed part of your soul into it."

The hungry-eyed, ghetto woman drank in thirstily the beauty and

goodness that radiated from Mrs. Preston's person. None of the

cultured elegance of her adored friend escaped Hanneh Hayyeh. Her

glance traveled from the exquisite shoes to the flawless hair of the

well-poised head.

"Your things got so much fineness. I'm crazy for the feel from

them. I do them up so light in my hands like it was thin air I was

handling."

Hanneh Hayyeh pantomimed as she spoke and Mrs. Preston, roused from her

habitual reserve, put her fine, white hand affectionately over Hanneh

Hayyeh's gnarled, roughened ones.

"Oi-i-i-i! Mrs. Preston! You always make me feel so grand!" said

Hanneh Hayyeh, a mist of tears in her wistful eyes. "When I go away

from you I could just sit down and cry. I can't give it out in words

what it is. It chokes me so--how good you are to me--You ain't at all

like a rich lady. You're so plain from the heart. You make the lowest

nobody feel he's somebody."

"You are not a 'nobody,' Hanneh Hayyeh. You are an artist--an

artist laundress."

"What mean you an artist?"

"An artist is so filled with love for the beautiful that he has

to express it in some way. You express it in your washing just as a

painter paints it in a picture."

"Paint?" exclaimed Hanneh Hayyeh. "If you could only give a look

how I painted up my kitchen! It lights up the whole tenement house for

blocks around. The grocer and the butcher and all the neighbors were

jumping in the air from wonder and joy when they seen how I shined up

my house."

"And all in honor of Aby's home-coming?" Mrs. Preston smiled,

her thoughts for a moment on her own son, the youngest captain in his

regiment whose home-coming had been delayed from week to week.

"Everything I do is done for my Aby," breathed Hanneh Hayyeh,

her hands clasping her bosom as if feeling again the throb of his

babyhood at her heart. "But this painting was already dreaming itself

in my head for years. You remember the time the hot iron fell on my

foot and you came to see me and brought me a red flower-pot wrapped

around with green crepe paper? That flower-pot opened up the sky in

my kitchen." The words surged from the seething soul of her. "Right

away I saw before my eyes how I could shine up my kitchen like a parlor

by painting the walls and sewing up new curtains for the window. It was

like seeing before me your face every time I looked on your flowers. I

used to talk to it like it could hear and feel and see. And I said to

it: 'I'll show you what's in me. I'll show you that I know what

beautiful is.'"

Her face was aglow with an enthusiasm that made it seem young, like a

young girl's face.

"I begged myself by the landlord to paint up my kitchen, but he

wouldn't listen to me. So I seen that if I ever hoped to fix up my

house, I'd have to spend out my own money. And I began to save a

penny to a penny to have for the paint. And when I seen the painters,

I always stopped them to ask where and how to buy it so that it

should come out the cheapest. By day and by night it burned in me the

picture--my kitchen shining all white like yours, till I couldn't

rest till I done it."

With all her breeding, with all the restraint of her Anglo-Saxon

forbears, Mrs. Preston was strangely shaken by Hanneh Hayyeh's

consuming passion for beauty. She looked deep into the eyes of the

Russian Jewess as if drinking in the secret of their hidden glow.

"I am eager to see that wonderful kitchen of yours," she said, as

Hanneh Hayyeh bade her good-bye.

Hanneh Hayyeh walked home, her thoughts in a whirl with the glad

anticipation of Mrs. Preston's promised visit. She wondered how she

might share the joy of Mrs. Preston's presence with the butcher and

all the neighbors. "I'll bake up a shtrudel cake," she thought to

herself. "They will all want to come to get a taste of the cake and

then they'll give a look on Mrs. Preston."

Thus smiling and talking to herself she went about her work. As she

bent over the wash-tub rubbing the clothes, she visualized the hot,

steaming shtrudel just out of the oven and the exclamations of pleasure

as Mrs. Preston and the neighbors tasted it. All at once there was a

knock at the door. Wiping her soapy hands on the corner of her apron,

she hastened to open it.

"Oi! Mr. Landlord! Come only inside," she urged. "I got the

rent for you, but I want you to give a look around how I shined up my

flat."

The Prince Albert that bound the protruding stomach of Mr. Benjamin

Rosenblatt was no tighter than the skin that encased the smooth-shaven

face. His mouth was tight. Even the small, popping eyes held a tight

gleam.

"I got no time. The minutes is money," he said, extending a

claw-like hand for the rent.

"But I only want you for a half a minute." And Hanneh Hayyeh

dragged the owner of her palace across the threshold. "Nu? Ain't

I a good painter? And all this I done while other people were sleeping

themselves, after I'd come home from my day's work."

"Very nice," condescended Mr. Benjamin Rosenblatt, with a hasty

glance around the room. "You certainly done a good job. But I got

to go. Here's your receipt." And the fingers that seized Hanneh

Hayyeh's rent-money seemed like pincers for grasping molars.

Two weeks later Jake Safransky and his wife Hanneh Hayyeh sat eating

their dinner, when the janitor came in with a note.

"From the landlord," he said, handing it to Hanneh Hayyeh, and

walked out.

"The landlord?" she cried, excitedly. "What for can it be?"

With trembling fingers she tore open the note. The slip dropped from

her hand. Her face grew livid, her eyes bulged with terror. "Oi

weh!" she exclaimed, as she fell back against the wall.

"Gewalt!" cried her husband, seizing her limp hand, "you look

like struck dead."

"Oi-i-i! The murderer! He raised me the rent five dollars a month."

"Good for you! I told you to listen to me. Maybe he thinks we got

money laying in the bank when you got so many dollars to give out on

paint."

She turned savagely on her husband. "What are you tearing yet my

flesh? Such a money-grabber! How could I imagine for myself that so he

would thank me for laying in my money to painting up his house?"

She seized her shawl, threw it over her head, and rushed to the

landlord's office.

"Oi weh! Mr. Landlord! Where is your heart? How could you raise me

my rent when you know my son is yet in France? And even with the extra

washing I take in I don't get enough when the eating is so dear?"

"The flat is worth five dollars more," answered Mr. Rosenblatt,

impatiently. "I can get another tenant any minute."

"Have pity on me! I beg you! From where I can squeeze out the five

dollars more for you?"

"That don't concern me. If you can't pay, somebody else will. I

got to look out for myself. In America everybody looks out for

himself."

"Is it nothing by you how I painted up your house with my own

blood-money?"

"You didn't do it for me. You done it for yourself," he

sneered. "It's nothing to me how the house looks, so long as I

get my rent in time. You wanted to have a swell house, so you painted

it. That's all."

With a wave of his hand he dismissed her.

"I beg by your conscience! Think on God!" Hanneh Hayyeh wrung her

hands. "Ain't your house worth more to you to have a tenant clean

it out and paint it out so beautiful like I done?"

"Certainly," snarled the landlord. "Because the flat is painted

new, I can get more money for it. I got no more time for you."

He turned to his stenographer and resumed the dictation of his letters.

Dazedly Hanneh Hayyeh left the office. A choking dryness contracted her

throat as she staggered blindly, gesticulating and talking to herself.

"Oi weh! The sweat, the money I laid into my flat and it should

all go to the devil. And I should be turned out and leave all my

beautifulness. And from where will I get the money for moving? When

I begin to break myself up to move, I got to pay out money for the

moving man, money for putting up new lines, money for new shelves

and new hooks besides money for the rent. I got to remain where

I am. But from where can I get together the five dollars for the

robber? Should I go to Moisheh Itzek, the pawnbroker, or should I maybe

ask Mrs. Preston? No--She shouldn't think I got her for a friend only

to help me. Oi weh! Where should I turn with my bitter heart?"

Mechanically she halted at the butcher-shop. Throwing herself on the

vacant bench, she buried her face in her shawl and burst out in a loud,

heart-piercing wail: "Woe is me! Bitter is me!"

"Hanneh Hayyeh! What to you happened?" cried Mr. Sopkin in alarm.

His sympathy unlocked the bottom depths of her misery.

"Oi-i-i! Black is my luck! Dark is for my eyes!"

The butcher and the neighbors pressed close in upon her.

"Gewalt! What is it? Bad news from Aby in France?"

"Oi-i-i! The murderer! The thief! His gall should burst as mine is

bursting! His heart should break as mine is breaking! It remains for

me nothing but to be thrown out in the gutter. The landlord raised me

five dollars a month rent. And he ripped yet my wounds by telling me he

raised me the rent because my painted-up flat is so much more worth."

"The dogs! The blood-sucking landlords! They are the new czars from

America!"

"What are you going to do?"

"What should I do? Aby is coming from France any day, and he's got

to have a home to come to. I will have to take out from my eating the

meat and the milk to save together the extra five dollars. People! Give

me an advice! What else can I do? If a wild wolf falls on you in the

black night, will crying help you?"

With a gesture of abject despair, she fell prone upon the

bench. "Gottuniu! If there is any justice and mercy on this earth,

then may the landlord be tortured like he is torturing me! May the

fires burn him and the waters drown him! May his flesh be torn from him

in pieces and his bones be ground in the teeth of wild dogs!"

Two months later, a wasted, haggard Hanneh Hayyeh stood in the kitchen,

folding Mrs. Preston's wash in her basket, when the janitor--the

servant of her oppressor--handed her another note.

"From the landlord," he said in his toneless voice.

Hanneh Hayyeh paled. She could tell from his smirking sneer that it was

a second notice of increased rental.

It grew black before her eyes. She was too stunned to think. Her first

instinct was to run to her husband; but she needed sympathy--not

nagging. And then in her darkness she saw a light--the face of her

friend, Mrs. Preston. She hurried to her.

"Oi--friend! The landlord raised me my rent again," she gasped,

dashing into the room like a thing hounded by wild beasts.

Mrs. Preston was shocked by Hanneh Hayyeh's distraught appearance.

For the first time she noticed the ravages of worry and

hunger.

"Hanneh Hayyeh! Try to calm yourself. It is really quite inexcusable

the way the landlords are taking advantage of the situation. There must

be a way out. We'll fix it up somehow."

"How fix it up?" Hanneh Hayyeh flared.

"We'll see that you get the rent you need." There was reassurance

and confidence in Mrs. Preston's tone.

Hanneh Hayyeh's eyes flamed. Too choked for utterance, her breath

ceased for a moment.

"I want no charity! You think maybe I came to beg? No--I want

justice!"

She shrank in upon herself, as though to ward off the raised whip of

her persecutor. "You know how I feel?" Her voice came from the

terrified depths of her. "It's as if the landlord pushed me in a

corner and said to me: 'I want money, or I'll squeeze from you your

life!' I have no money, so he takes my life.

"Last time, when he raised me my rent, I done without meat and

without milk. What more can I do without?"

The piercing cry stirred Mrs. Preston as no mere words had done.

"Sometimes I get so weak for a piece of meat, I could tear the world

to pieces. Hunger and bitterness are making a wild animal out of me. I

ain't no more the same Hanneh Hayyeh I used to be."

The shudder that shook Hanneh Hayyeh communicated itself to

Mrs. Preston. "I know the prices are hard to bear," she stammered,

appalled.

"There used to be a time when poor people could eat cheap things,"

the toneless voice went on. "But now there ain't no more cheap

things. Potatoes--rice--fish--even dry bread is dear. Look on my

shoes! And I who used to be so neat with myself. I can't no more have

my torn shoes fixed up. A pair of shoes or a little patch is only for

millionaires."

"Something must be done," broke in Mrs. Preston, distraught for the

first time in her life. "But in the meantime, Hanneh Hayyeh, you must

accept this to tide you over." She spoke with finality as she handed

her a bill.

Hanneh Hayyeh thrust back the money. "Ain't I hurt enough without

you having to hurt me yet with charity? You want to give me hush money

to swallow down an unrightness that burns my flesh? I want justice."

The woman's words were like bullets that shot through the static

security of Mrs. Preston's life. She realized with a guilty pang that

while strawberries and cream were being served at her table in January,

Hanneh Hayyeh had doubtless gone without a square meal in months.

"We can't change the order of things overnight," faltered

Mrs. Preston, baffled and bewildered by Hanneh Hayyeh's defiance of

her proffered aid.

"Change things? There's got to be a change!" cried Hanneh Hayyeh

with renewed intensity. "The world as it is is not to live in any

longer. If only my Aby would get back quick. But until he comes,

I'll fight till all America will have to stop and listen to me. You

was always telling me that the lowest nobody got something to give to

America. And that's what I got to give to America--the last breath in

my body for justice. I'll wake up America from its sleep. I'll go

myself to the President with my Aby's soldier picture and ask him was

all this war to let loose a bunch of blood-suckers to suck the marrow

out from the people?"

"Hanneh Hayyeh," said Mrs. Preston, with feeling, "these laws are

far from just, but they are all we have so far. Give us time. We are

young. We are still learning. We're doing our best."

Numb with suffering the woman of the ghetto looked straight into the

eyes of Mrs. Preston. "And you too--you too hold by the landlord's

side?--Oi--I see! Perhaps you too got property out by agents."

A sigh that had in it the resignation of utter hopelessness escaped

from her. "Nothing can hurt me no more--And you always stood out to

me in my dreams as the angel from love and beautifulness. You always

made-believe to me that you're only for democracy."

Tears came to Mrs. Preston's eyes. But she made no move to defend

herself or reply and Hanneh Hayyeh walked out in silence.

A few days later the whole block was astir with the news that Hanneh

Hayyeh had gone to court to answer her dispossess summons.

From the windows, the stoop, from the hallway, and the doorway of the

butcher-shop the neighbors were talking and gesticulating while waiting

for Hanneh Hayyeh's return.

Hopeless and dead, Hanneh Hayyeh dragged herself to the

butcher-shop. All made way for her to sit on the bench. She collapsed

in a heap, not uttering a single sound, nor making a single move.

The butcher produced a bottle of brandy and, hastily filling a small

glass, brought it to Hanneh Hayyeh.

"Quick, take it to your lips," he commanded. Weak from lack of food

and exhausted by the ordeal of the court-room, Hanneh Hayyeh obeyed

like a child.

Soon one neighbor came in with a cup of hot coffee; another brought

bread and herring with onion over it.

Tense, breathless, with suppressed curiosity quivering on their lips,

they waited till Hanneh Hayyeh swallowed the coffee and ate enough to

regain a little strength.

"Nu? What became in the court?"

"What said the judge?"

"Did they let you talk yourself out like you said you would?"

"Was the murderer there to say something?"

Hanneh Hayyeh wagged her head and began talking to herself in a low,

toneless voice as if continuing her inward thought. "The judge said

the same as Mrs. Preston said: the landlord has the right to raise our

rent or put us out."

"Oi weh! If Hanneh Hayyeh with her fire in her mouth couldn't get

her rights, then where are we?"

"To whom should we go? Who more will talk for us now?"

"Our life lays in their hands."

"They can choke us so much as they like!"

"Nobody cares. Nobody hears our cry!"

Out of this babel of voices there flashed across Hanneh Hayyeh's

deadened senses the chimera that to her was the one reality of her

aspiring soul--"Oi-i-i-i! My beautiful kitchen!" she sighed as in

a dream.

The butcher's face grew red with wrath. His eyes gleamed like sharp,

darting steel. "I wouldn't give that robber the satisfaction

to leave your grand painted house," he said, turning to Hanneh

Hayyeh. "I'd smash down everything for spite. You got nothing to

lose. Such a murderer! I would learn him a lesson! 'An eye for an eye

and a tooth for a tooth.'"

Hanneh Hayyeh, hair disheveled, clothes awry, the nails of her

fingers dug in her scalp, stared with the glazed, impotent stare of a

madwoman. With unseeing eyes she rose and blindly made her way to her

house.

As she entered her kitchen she encountered her husband hurrying in.

"Oi weh! Oi weh!" he whined. "I was always telling you your bad

end. Everybody is already pointing their fingers on me! and all because

you, a meshugeneh yideneh, a starved beggerin, talked it into your

head that you got to have for yourself a white-painted kitchen alike

to Mrs. Preston. Now you'll remember to listen to your husband. Now,

when you'll be laying in the street to shame and to laughter for the

whole world."

"Out! Out from my sight! Out from my house!" shrieked Hanneh

Hayyeh. In her rage she seized a flat-iron and Jake heard her hurl it

at the slammed door as he fled downstairs.

It was the last night before the eviction. Hanneh Hayyeh gazed about

her kitchen with tear-glazed eyes. "Some one who got nothing but

only money will come in here and get the pleasure from all this

beautifulness that cost me the blood from my heart. Is this already

America? What for was my Aby fighting? Was it then only a dream--all

these millions people from all lands and from all times, wishing and

hoping and praying that America is? Did I wake myself from my dreaming

to see myself back in the black times of Russia under the czar?"

Her eager, beauty-loving face became distorted with hate. "No--the

landlord ain't going to get the best from me! I'll learn him a

lesson. 'An eye for an eye'--"

With savage fury, she seized the chopping-axe and began to scratch

down the paint, breaking the plaster on the walls. She tore up the

floor-boards. She unscrewed the gas-jets, turned on the gas full force

so as to blacken the white-painted ceiling. The night through she raged

with the frenzy of destruction.

Utterly spent she flung herself on the lounge, but she could not close

her eyes. Her nerves quivered. Her body ached, and she felt her soul

ache there--inside her--like a thing killed that could not die.

The first grayness of dawn filtered through the air-shaft window of

the kitchen. The room was faintly lighted, and as the rays of dawn got

stronger and reached farther, one by one the things she had mutilated

in the night started, as it were, into consciousness. She looked at

her dish-closet, once precious, that she had scratched and defaced;

the uprooted geranium-box on the window-sill; the marred walls. It was

unbearable all this waste and desolation that stared at her. "Can it

be I who done all this?" she asked herself. "What devil got boiling

in me?"

What had she gained by her rage for vengeance? She had thought to

spite the landlord, but it was her own soul she had killed. These

walls that stared at her in their ruin were not just walls. They were

animate--they throbbed with the pulse of her own flesh. For every inch

of the broken plaster there was a scar on her heart. She had destroyed

that which had taken her so many years of prayer and longing to build

up. But this demolished beauty like her own soul, though killed, still

quivered and ached with the unstilled pain of life. "Oi weh!" she

moaned, swaying to and fro. "So much lost beautifulness--"

* * * * *

Private Abraham Safransky, with the look in his eyes and the swing of

his shoulders of all the boys who come back from overseas, edged his

way through the wet Delancey Street crowds with the skill of one born

to these streets and the assurance of the United States Army. Fresh

from the ship, with a twenty-four-hour leave stowed safely in his

pocket, he hastened to see his people after nearly two years'

separation.

On Private Safransky's left shoulder was the insignia of the Statue

of Liberty. The three gold service stripes on his left arm and the two

wound stripes of his right were supplemented by the Distinguished

Service Medal on his left breast bestowed by the United States

Government.

As he pictured his mother's joy when he would surprise her in her

spotless kitchen, the soldier broke into the double-quick.

All at once he stopped; on the sidewalk before their house was a heap

of household things that seemed familiar and there on the curbstone

a woman huddled, cowering, broken.--Good God--his mother! His own

mother--and all their worldly belongings dumped there in the rain.

THE FREE VACATION HOUSE

How came it that I went to the free vacation house was like this:

One day the visiting teacher from the school comes to find out for why

don't I get the children ready for school in time; for why are they

so often late.

I let out on her my whole bitter heart. I told her my head was on

wheels from worrying. When I get up in the morning, I don't know on

what to turn first: should I nurse the baby, or make Sam's breakfast,

or attend on the older children. I only got two hands.

"My dear woman," she says, "you are about to have a nervous

breakdown. You need to get away to the country for a rest and

vacation."

"Gott im Himmel!" says I. "Don't I know I need a rest? But

how? On what money can I go to the country?"

"I know of a nice country place for mothers and children that will

not cost you anything. It is free."

"Free! I never heard from it."

"Some kind people have made arrangements so no one need pay," she

explains.

Later, in a few days, I just finished up with Masha and Mendel and

Frieda and Sonya to send them to school, and I was getting Aby ready

for kindergarten, when I hear a knock on the door, and a lady comes

in. She had a white starched dress like a nurse and carried a black

satchel in her hand.

"I am from the Social Betterment Society," she tells me. "You

want to go to the country?"

Before I could say something, she goes over to the baby and pulls out

the rubber nipple from her mouth, and to me, she says, "You must not

get the child used to sucking this; it is very unsanitary."

"Gott im Himmel!" I beg the lady. "Please don't begin with that

child, or she'll holler my head off. She must have the nipple. I'm

too nervous to hear her scream like that."

When I put the nipple back again in the baby's mouth, the lady

takes herself a seat, and then takes out a big black book from her

satchel. Then she begins to question me. What is my first name? How old

I am? From where come I? How long I'm already in this country? Do

I keep any boarders? What is my husband's first name? How old he

is? How long he is in this country? By what trade he works? How much

wages he gets for a week? How much money do I spend out for rent? How

old are the children, and everything about them.

"My goodness!" I cry out. "For why is it necessary all this to

know? For why must I tell you all my business? What difference does it

make already if I keep boarders, or I don't keep boarders? If Masha

had the whooping-cough or Sonya had the measles? Or whether I spend out

for my rent ten dollars or twenty? Or whether I come from Schnipishock

or Kovner Gubernie?"

"We must make a record of all the applicants, and investigate each

case," she tells me. "There are so many who apply to the charities,

we can help only those who are most worthy."

"Charities!" I scream out. "Ain't the charities those who

help the beggars out? I ain't no beggar. I'm not asking for no

charity. My husband, he works."

"Miss Holcomb, the visiting teacher, said that you wanted to go to

the country, and I had to make out this report before investigating

your case."

"Oh! Oh!" I choke and bit my lips. "Is the free country from

which Miss Holcomb told me, is it from the charities? She was telling

me some kind people made arrangements for any mother what needs to go

there."

"If your application is approved, you will be notified," she says

to me, and out she goes.

When she is gone I think to myself, I'd better knock out from my

head this idea about the country. For so long I lived, I didn't

know nothing about the charities. For why should I come down among the

beggars now?

Then I looked around me in the kitchen. On one side was the big

wash-tub with clothes, waiting for me to wash. On the table was a pile

of breakfast dishes yet. In the sink was the potatoes, waiting to be

peeled. The baby was beginning to cry for the bottle. Aby was hollering

and pulling me to take him to kindergarten. I felt if I didn't get

away from here for a little while, I would land in a crazy house, or

from the window jump down. Which was worser, to land in a crazy house,

jump from the window down, or go to the country from the charities?

In about two weeks later around comes the same lady with the satchel

again in my house.

"You can go to the country to-morrow," she tells me. "And

you must come to the charity building to-morrow at nine o'clock

sharp. Here is a card with the address. Don't lose it, because you

must hand it to the lady in the office."

I look on the card, and there I see my name wrote; and by it, in big

printed letters, that word "CHARITY."

"Must I go to the charity office?" I ask, feeling my heart to

sink. "For why must I come there?"

"It is the rule that everybody comes to the office first, and from

there they are taken to the country."

I shivered to think how I would feel, suppose somebody from my friends

should see me walking into the charity office with my children. They

wouldn't know that it is only for the country I go there. They

might think I go to beg. Have I come down so low as to be seen by the

charities? But what's the use? Should I knock my head on the walls? I

had to go.

When I come to the office, I already found a crowd of women and

children sitting on long benches and waiting. I took myself a

seat with them, and we were sitting and sitting and looking on one

another, sideways and crosswise, and with lowered eyes, like guilty

criminals. Each one felt like hiding herself from all the rest. Each

one felt black with shame in the face.

We may have been sitting and waiting for an hour or more. But

every second was seeming years to me. The children began to get

restless. Mendel wanted water. The baby on my arms was falling

asleep. Aby was crying for something to eat.

"For why are we sittin' here like fat cats?" says the woman next

to me. "Ain't we going to the country to-day yet?"

At last a lady comes to the desk and begins calling us our names, one

by one. I nearly dropped to the floor when over she begins to ask: Do

you keep boarders? How much do you spend out for rent? How much wages

does your man get for a week?

Didn't the nurse tell them all about us already? It was bitter enough

to have to tell the nurse everything, but in my own house nobody was

hearing my troubles, only the nurse. But in the office there was so

many strangers all around me. For why should everybody have to know my

business? At every question I wanted to holler out: "Stop! Stop! I

don't want no vacations! I'll better run home with my children."

At every question I felt like she was stabbing a knife into my

heart. And she kept on stabbing me more and more, but I could not help

it, and they were all looking at me. I couldn't move from her. I had

to answer everything.

When she got through with me, my face was red like fire. I was burning

with hurts and wounds. I felt like everything was bleeding in me.

When all the names was already called, a man doctor with a nurse comes

in, and tells us to form a line, to be examined. I wish I could ease

out my heart a little, and tell in words how that doctor looked on

us, just because we were poor and had no money to pay. He only used

the ends from his finger-tips to examine us with. From the way he was

afraid to touch us or come near us, he made us feel like we had some

catching sickness that he was trying not to get on him.

The doctor got finished with us in about five minutes, so quick he

worked. Then we was told to walk after the nurse, who was leading the

way for us through the street to the car. Everybody what passed us in

the street turned around to look on us. I kept down my eyes and held

down my head and I felt like sinking into the sidewalk. All the time

I was trembling for fear somebody what knows me might yet pass and see

me. For why did they make us walk through the street, after the nurse,

like stupid cows? Weren't all of us smart enough to find our way

without the nurse? Why should the whole world have to see that we are

from the charities?

When we got into the train, I opened my eyes, and lifted up my head,

and straightened out my chest, and again began to breathe. It was

a beautiful, sunshiny day. I knocked open the window from the train,

and the fresh-smelling country air rushed upon my face and made me feel

so fine! I looked out from the window and instead of seeing the iron

fire-escapes with garbage-cans and bedclothes, that I always seen when

from my flat I looked--instead of seeing only walls and wash-lines

between walls, I saw the blue sky, and green grass and trees and

flowers.

Ah, how grand I felt, just on the sky to look! Ah, how grand I felt

just to see the green grass--and the free space--and no houses!

"Get away from me, my troubles!" I said. "Leave me rest a

minute. Leave me breathe and straighten out my bones. Forget the

unpaid butcher's bill. Forget the rent. Forget the wash-tub and the

cook-stove and the pots and pans. Forget the charities!"

"Tickets, please," calls the train conductor.

I felt knocked out from heaven all at once. I had to point to the nurse

what held our tickets, and I was feeling the conductor looking on me as

if to say, "Oh, you are only from the charities."

By the time we came to the vacation house I already forgot all about

my knock-down. I was again filled with the beauty of the country. I

never in all my life yet seen such a swell house like that vacation

house. Like the grandest palace it looked. All round the front, flowers

from all colors was smelling out the sweetest perfume. Here and there

was shady trees with comfortable chairs under them to sit down on.

When I only came inside, my mouth opened wide and my breathing

stopped still from wonder. I never yet seen such an order and such a

cleanliness. From all the corners from the room, the cleanliness was

shining like a looking-glass. The floor was so white scrubbed you could

eat on it. You couldn't find a speck of dust on nothing, if you was

looking for it with eye-glasses on.

I was beginning to feel happy and glad that I come, when, Gott im

Himmel! again a lady begins to ask us out the same questions what the

nurse already asked me in my home and what was asked over again in the

charity office. How much wages my husband makes out for a week? How

much money I spend out for rent? Do I keep boarders?

We were hungry enough to faint. So worn out was I from excitement, and

from the long ride, that my knees were bending under me ready to break

from tiredness. The children were pulling me to pieces, nagging me for

a drink, for something to eat and such like. But still we had to stand

out the whole list of questionings. When she already got through asking

us out everything, she gave to each of us a tag with our name written

on it. She told us to tie the tag on our hand. Then like tagged horses

at a horse sale in the street, they marched us into the dining-room.

There was rows of long tables, covered with pure-white oil-cloth. A

vase with bought flowers was standing on the middle from each

table. Each person got a clean napkin for himself. Laid out by the side

from each person's plate was a silver knife and fork and spoon and

teaspoon. When we only sat ourselves down, girls with white starched

aprons was passing around the eatings.

I soon forgot again all my troubles. For the first time in ten years I

sat down to a meal what I did not have to cook or worry about. For the

first time in ten years I sat down to the table like a somebody. Ah,

how grand it feels, to have handed you over the eatings and everything

you need. Just as I was beginning to like it and let myself feel good,

in comes a fat lady all in white, with a teacher's look on her

face. I could tell already, right away by the way she looked on us,

that she was the boss from this place.

"I want to read you the rules from this house, before you leave this

room," says she to us.

Then she began like this: We dassen't stand on the front grass where

the flowers are. We dassen't stay on the front porch. We dassen't

sit on the chairs under the shady trees. We must stay always in the

back and sit on those long wooden benches there. We dassen't come in

the front sitting-room or walk on the front steps what have carpet on

it--we must walk on the back iron steps. Everything on the front from

the house must be kept perfect for the show for visitors. We dassen't

lay down on the beds in the daytime, the beds must always be made up

perfect for the show for visitors.

"Gott im Himmel!" thinks I to myself; "ain't there going to be

no end to the things we dassen't do in this place?"

But still she went on. The children over two years dassen't stay

around by the mothers. They must stay by the nurse in the play-room. By

the meal-times, they can see their mothers. The children dassen't

run around the house or tear up flowers or do anything. They dassen't

holler or play rough in the play-room. They must always behave and obey

the nurse.

We must always listen to the bells. Bell one was for getting

up. Bell two, for getting babies' bottles. Bell three, for coming

to breakfast. Bell four, for bathing the babies. If we come later,

after the ring from the bell, then we'll not get what we need. If

the bottle bell rings and we don't come right away for the bottle,

then the baby don't get no bottle. If the breakfast bell rings, and

we don't come right away down to the breakfast, then there won't be

no breakfast for us.

When she got through with reading the rules, I was wondering which

side of the house I was to walk on. At every step was some rule what

said don't move here, and don't go there, don't stand there, and

don't sit there. If I tried to remember the endless rules, it would

only make me dizzy in the head. I was thinking for why, with so many

rules, didn't they also have already another rule, about how much air

in our lungs to breathe.

On every few days there came to the house swell ladies in

automobiles. It was for them that the front from the house had to be

always perfect. For them was all the beautiful smelling flowers. For

them the front porch, the front sitting-room, and the easy stairs with

the carpet on it.

Always when the rich ladies came the fat lady, what was the boss from

the vacation house, showed off to them the front. Then she took them

over to the back to look on us, where we was sitting together, on long

wooden benches, like prisoners. I was always feeling cheap like dirt,

and mad that I had to be there, when they smiled down on us.

"How nice for these poor creatures to have a restful place like

this," I heard one lady say.

The next day I already felt like going back. The children what had to

stay by the nurse in the play-room didn't like it neither.

"Mamma," says Mendel to me, "I wisht I was home and out in

the street. They don't let us do nothing here. It's worser than

school."

"Ain't it a play-room?" asks I. "Don't they let you play?"

"Gee wiss! play-room, they call it! The nurse hollers on us all the

time. She don't let us do nothing."

The reason why I stayed out the whole two weeks is this: I think to

myself, so much shame in the face I suffered to come here, let me at

least make the best from it already. Let me at least save up for two

weeks what I got to spend out for grocery and butcher for my back bills

to pay out. And then also think I to myself, if I go back on Monday,

I got to do the big washing; on Tuesday waits for me the ironing; on

Wednesday, the scrubbing and cleaning, and so goes it on. How bad it is

already in this place, it's a change from the very same sameness of

what I'm having day in and day out at home. And so I stayed out this

vacation to the bitter end.

But at last the day for going out from this prison came. On the way

riding back, I kept thinking to myself: "This is such a beautiful

vacation house. For why do they make it so hard for us? When a mother

needs a vacation, why must they tear the insides out from her first,

by making her come down to the charity office? Why drag us from the

charity office through the streets? And when we live through the shame

of the charities and when we come already to the vacation house, for

why do they boss the life out of us with so many rules and bells? For

why don't they let us lay down our heads on the bed when we are

tired? For why must we always stick in the back, like dogs what have

got to be chained in one spot? If they would let us walk around free,

would we bite off something from the front part of the house?

"If the best part of the house what is comfortable is made up for a

show for visitors, why ain't they keeping the whole business for a

show for visitors? For why do they have to fool in worn-out mothers, to

make them think they'll give them a rest? Do they need the worn-out

mothers as part of the show? I guess that is it, already."

When I got back in my home, so happy and thankful I was I could cry

from thankfulness. How good it was feeling for me to be able to move

around my own house, like I pleased. I was always kicking that my

rooms was small and narrow, but now my small rooms seemed to grow so

big like the park. I looked out from my window on the fire-escapes,

full with bedding and garbage-cans, and on the wash-lines full with

the clothes. All these ugly things was grand in my eyes. Even the high

brick walls all around made me feel like a bird what just jumped out

from a cage. And I cried out, "Gott sei dank! Gott sei dank!"

THE MIRACLE

Like all people who have nothing, I lived on dreams. With nothing but

my longing for love, I burned my way through stone walls till I got to

America. And what happened to me when I became an American is more than

I can picture before my eyes, even in a dream.

I was a poor Melamid's daughter in Savel, Poland. In my village,

a girl without a dowry was a dead one. The only kind of a man that

would give a look on a girl without money was a widower with a dozen

children, or some one with a hump or on crutches.

There was the village water-carrier with red, teary eyes, and warts

on his cracked lip. There was the janitor of the bath-house, with a

squash nose, and long, black nails with all the dirt of the world under

them. Maybe one of these uglinesses might yet take pity on me and do me

the favor to marry me. I shivered and grew cold through all my bones at

the thought of them.

Like the hunger for bread was my hunger for love. My life was nothing

to me. My heart was empty. Nothing I did was real without love. I used

to spend nights crying on my pillow, praying to God: "I want love! I

want love! I can't live--I can't breathe without love!"

And all day long I'd ask myself: "Why was I born? What is the

use of dragging on day after day, wasting myself eating, sleeping,

dressing? What is the meaning of anything without love?" And my heart

was so hungry I couldn't help feeling and dreaming that somehow,

somewhere, there must be a lover waiting for me. But how and where

could I find my lover was the one longing that burned in my heart by

day and by night.

Then came the letter from Hanneh Hayyeh, Zlata's daughter, that fired

me up to go to America for my lover.

"America is a lover's land," said Hanneh Hayyeh's letter. "In

America millionaires fall in love with poorest girls. Matchmakers are

out of style, and a girl can get herself married to a man without the

worries for a dowry."

"God from the world!" began knocking my heart. "How grand to live

where the kind of a man you get don't depend on how much money your

father can put down! If I could only go to America! There--there waits

my lover for me."

That letter made a holiday all over Savel. The butcher, the grocer, the

shoemaker, everybody stopped his work and rushed to our house to hear

my father read the news from the Golden Country.

"Stand out your ears to hear my great happiness," began Hanneh

Hayyeh's letter. "I, Hanneh Hayyeh, will marry myself to Solomon

Cohen, the boss from the shirtwaist factory, where all day I was

working sewing on buttons. If you could only see how the man is melting

away his heart for me! He kisses me after each step I walk. The

only wish from his heart is to make me for a lady. Think only, he

is buying me a piano! I should learn piano lessons as if I were from

millionaires."

Fire and lightning burst through the crowd. "Hanneh Hayyeh a lady!"

They nudged and winked one to the other as they looked on the loose

fatness of Zlata, her mother, and saw before their eyes Hanneh Hayyeh,

with her thick, red lips, and her shape so fat like a puffed-out barrel

of yeast.

"In America is a law called 'ladies first,'" the letter went

on. "In the cars the men must get up to give their seats to the

women. The men hold the babies on their hands and carry the bundles for

the women, and even help with the dishes. There are not enough women to

go around in America. And the men run after the women, and not like in

Poland, the women running after the men."

Gewalt! What an excitement began to burn through the whole village when

they heard of Hanneh Hayyeh's luck!

The ticket agents from the ship companies seeing how Hanneh Hayyeh's

letter was working like yeast in the air for America, posted up big

signs by all the market fairs: "Go to America, the New World. Fifty

rubles a ticket."

"Fifty rubles! Only fifty rubles! And there waits your lover!"

cried my heart.

Oi weh! How I was hungering to go to America after that! By day and by

night I was tearing and turning over the earth, how to get to my lover

on the other side of the world.

"Nu, Zalmon?" said my mother, twisting my father around to what I

wanted. "It's not so far from sense what Sara Reisel is saying. In

Savel, without a dowry, she had no chance to get a man, and if we got

to wait much longer she will be too old to get one anywhere."

"But from where can we get together the fifty rubles?" asked my

father. "Why don't it will itself in you to give your daughter the

moon?"

I could no more think on how to get the money than they. But I was so

dying to go, I felt I could draw the money out from the sky.

One night I could not fall asleep. I lay in the darkness and stillness,

my wild, beating heart on fire with dreams of my lover. I put out my

hungry hands and prayed to my lover through the darkness: "Oh, love,

love! How can I get the fifty rubles to come to you?"

In the morning I got up like one choking for air. We were sitting down

to eat breakfast, but I couldn't taste nothing. I felt my head drop

into my hands from weakness.

"Why don't you try to eat something?" begged my mother, going

over to me.

"Eat?" I cried, jumping up like one mad. "How can I eat? How can

I sleep? How can I breathe in this deadness? I want to go to America. I

_must_ go, and I _will_ go!"

My mother began wringing her hands. "Oi weh! Mine heart! The knife

is on our neck. The landlord is hollering for the unpaid rent, and it

wills itself in you America?"

"Are you out of your head?" cried my father.

"What are you dreaming of golden hills on the sky? How can we get

together the fifty rubles for a ticket?"

I stole a look at Yosef, my younger brother. Nothing that was sensible

ever laid in his head to do; but if there was anything wild, up in

the air that willed itself in him, he could break through stone walls

to get it. Yosef gave a look around the house. Everything was old

and poor, and not a thing to get money on--nothing except father's

Saifer Torah--the Holy Scrolls--and mother's silver candlesticks, her

wedding present from our grandmother.

"Why not sell the Saifer Torah and the candlesticks?" said Yosef.

Nobody but my brother would have dared to breathe such a thing.

"What? A Jew sell the Saifer Torah or the Sabbath candlesticks?"

My father fixed on us his burning eyes like flaming wells. His hands

tightened over his heart. He couldn't speak. He just looked on the

Saifer Torah, and then on us with a look that burned like live coals on

our naked bodies. "What?" he gasped. "Should I sell my life, my

soul from generation and generation? Sell my Saifer Torah? Not if the

world goes under!"

There was a stillness of thunder about to break. Everybody heard

everybody's heart beating.

"Did I live to see this black day?" moaned my father, choking from

quick breathing. "Mine own son, mine Kadish--mine Kadish tells me to

sell the Holy Book that our forefathers shed rivers of blood to hand

down to us."

"What are you taking it so terrible?" said my brother. "Doesn't

it stand in the Talmud that to help marry his daughter a man may sell

the holiest thing--even the Holy Book?"

"_Are there miracles in America?_ Can she yet get there a man at her

age and without a dowry?"

"If Hanneh Hayyeh, who is older than Sara Reisel and not half as

good-looking," said my brother, "could get a boss from a factory,

then whom cannot Sara Reisel pick out? And with her luck all of us will

be lifted over to America."

My father did not answer. I waited, but still he did not answer.

At last I burst out with all the tears choking in me for years: "Is

your old Saifer Torah that hangs on the wall dearer to you than that I

should marry? The Talmud tells you to sell the holiest thing to help

marry your daughter, but you--you love yourself more than your own

child!"

Then I turned to my mother. I hit my hands on the table and cried in

a voice that made her tremble and grow frightened: "Maybe you love

your silver candlesticks more than your daughter's happiness? To

whom can I marry myself here, I ask you, only--to the bath janitor, to

the water-carrier? I tell you I'll kill myself if you don't help

me get away! I can't stand no more this deadness here. I must get

away. And you must give up everything to help me get away. All I need

is a chance. I can do a million times better than Hanneh Hayyeh. I got

a head. I got brains. I feel I can marry myself to the greatest man in

America."

My mother stopped crying, took up the candlesticks from the mantelpiece

and passed her hands over them. "It's like a piece from my

flesh," she said. "We grew up with this, you children and I, and my

mother and my mother's mother. This and the Saifer Torah are the only

things that shine up the house for the Sabbath."

She couldn't go on, her words choked in her so. I am seeing yet

how she looked, holding the candlesticks in her hands, and her eyes

that she turned on us. But then I didn't see anything but to go to

America.

She walked over to my father, who sat with his head in his hands,

stoned with sadness. "Zalmon!" she sobbed. "The blood from under

my nails I'll give away, only my child should have a chance to marry

herself well. I'll give away my candlesticks--"

Even my brother Yosef's eyes filled with tears, so he quick jumped

up and began to whistle and move around. "You don't have to sell

them," he cried, trying to make it light in the air. "You can pawn

them by Moisheh Itzek, the usurer, and as soon as Sara Reisel will get

herself married, she'll send us the money to get them out again, and

we'll yet live to take them over with us to America."

I never saw my father look so sad. He looked like a man from whom

the life is bleeding away. "I'll not stand myself against your

happiness," he said, in a still voice. "I only hope this will be to

your luck and that you'll get married quick, so we could take out the

Saifer Torah from the pawn."

In less than a week the Saifer Torah and the candlesticks were pawned

and the ticket bought. The whole village was ringing with the news that

I am going to America. When I walked in the street people pointed on me

with their fingers as if I were no more the same Sara Reisel.

Everybody asked me different questions.

"Tell me how it feels to go to America? Can you yet sleep nights like

other people?"

"When you'll marry yourself in America, will you yet remember

us?"

God from the world! That last Friday night before I went to

America! Maybe it is the last time we are together was in everybody's

eyes. Everything that happened seemed so different from all other

times. I felt I was getting ready to tear my life out from my body.

Without the Saifer Torah the house was dark and empty. The sun, the

sky, the whole heaven shined from that Holy Book on the wall, and

when it was taken out it left an aching emptiness on the heart, as if

something beautiful passed out of our lives.

I yet see before me my father in the Rabbi's cap, with eyes that look

far away into things; the way he sang the prayer over the wine when he

passed around the glass for every one to give a sip. The tears rolled

out from my little sister's eyes down her cheeks and fell into the

wine. On that my mother, who was all the time wiping her tears, burst

out crying. "Shah! Shah!" commanded my father, rising up from his

chair and beginning to walk around the room. "It's Sabbath night,

when every Jew should be happy. Is this the way you give honor to God

on His one day that He set aside for you?"

On the next day, that was Sabbath, father as if held us up in his

hands, and everybody behaved himself. A stranger coming in couldn't

see anything that was going on, except that we walked so still and each

one by himself, as if somebody dying was in the air over us.

On the going-away morning, everybody was around our house waiting

to take me to the station. Everybody wanted to give a help with the

bundles. The moving along to the station was like a funeral. Nobody

could hold in their feelings any longer. Everybody fell on my neck to

kiss me, as if it was my last day on earth.

"Remember you come from Jews. Remember to pray every day," said my

father, putting his hands over my head, like in blessing on the day of

Atonement.

"Only try that we should be together soon again," were the last

words from my mother as she wiped her eyes with the corner of her

shawl.

"Only don't forget that I want to study, and send for me as quick

as you marry yourself," said Yosef, smiling good-bye with tears in

his eyes.

As I saw the train coming, what wouldn't I have given to stay back

with the people in Savel forever! I wanted to cry out: "Take only

away my ticket! I don't want any more America! I don't want any

more my lover!"

But as soon as I got into the train, although my eyes were still

looking back to the left-behind faces, and my ears were yet hearing the

good-byes and the partings, the thoughts of America began stealing into

my heart. I was thinking how soon I'd have my lover and be rich like

Hanneh Hayyeh. And with my luck, everybody was going to be happy in

Savel. The dead people will stop dying and all the sorrows and troubles

of the world will be wiped away with my happiness.

I didn't see the day. I didn't see the night. I didn't see the

ocean. I didn't see the sky. I only saw my lover in America, coming

nearer and nearer to me, till I could feel his eyes bending on me so

near that I got frightened and began to tremble. My heart ached so with

the joy of his nearness that I quick drew back and turned away, and

began to talk to the people that were pushing and crowding themselves

on the deck.

Nu, I got to America.

Ten hours I pushed a machine in a shirt-waist factory, when I was

yet lucky to get work. And always my head was drying up with saving

and pinching and worrying to send home a little from the little I

earned. All that my face saw all day long was girls and machines--and

nothing else. And even when I came already home from work, I could

only talk to the girls in the working-girls' boarding-house, or shut

myself up in my dark, lonesome bedroom. No family, no friends, nobody

to get me acquainted with nobody! The only men I saw were what passed

me by in the street and in cars.

"Is this 'lovers' land'?" was calling in my heart. "Where

are my dreams that were so real to me in the old country?"

Often in the middle of the work I felt like stopping all the

machines and crying out to the world the heaviness that pressed on my

heart. Sometimes when I walked in the street I felt like going over to

the first man I met and cry out to him: "Oh, I'm so lonely! I'm

so lonely!"

One day I read in the Jewish "Tageblatt" the advertisement from

Zaretzky, the matchmaker. "What harm is it if I try my luck?"

I said to myself. "I can't die away an old maid. Too much love

burns in my heart to stand back like a stone and only see how other

people are happy. I want to tear myself out from my deadness. I'm in

a living grave. I've got to lift myself up. I have nobody to try for

me, and maybe the matchmaker will help."

As I walked up Delancey Street to Mr. Zaretzky, the street was

turning with me. I didn't see the crowds. I didn't see the

pushcart peddlers with their bargains. I didn't hear the noises or

anything. My eyes were on the sky, praying: "Gottuniu! Send me only

the little bit of luck!"

"Nu? Nu? What need you?" asked Mr. Zaretzky when I entered.

I got red with shame in the face the way he looked at me. I turned up

my head. I was too proud to tell him for what I came. Before I walked

in I thought to tell him everything. But when I looked on his face

and saw his hard eyes, I couldn't say a word. I stood like a yok

unable to move my tongue. I went to the matchmaker with my heart, and

I saw before me a stone. The stone was talking to me--but--but--he was

a stone!

"Are you looking for a shidduch?" he asked.

"Yes," I said, proud, but crushed.

"You know I charge five dollars for the stepping in," he bargained.

It got cold by my heart. It wasn't only to give him the five dollars,

nearly a whole week's wages, but his thick-skinness for being only

after the money. But I couldn't help myself--I was like in his fists

hypnotized. And I gave him the five dollars.

I let myself go to the door, but he called me back.

"Wait, wait. Come in and sit down. I didn't question you yet."

"About what?"

"I got to know how much money you got saved before I can introduce

you to anybody."

"Oh--h--h! Is it only depending on the _money_?"

"Certainly. No move in this world without money," he said, taking

a pinch of snuff in his black, hairy fingers and sniffing it up in

his nose.

I glanced on his thick neck and greasy, red face. "And to him people

come looking for love," I said to myself, shuddering. Oh, how it

burned in my heart, but still I went on, "Can't I get a man in

America without money?"

He gave a look on me with his sharp eyes. Gottuniu! What a look! I

thought I was sinking into the floor.

"There are plenty of _young_ girls with money that are begging

themselves the men to take them. So what can you expect? _Not young,

not lively, and without money, too?_ But, anyhow, I'll see what I can

do for you."

He took out a little book from his vest-pocket and looked through the

names.

"What trade do you go on your hands?" he asked, turning to

me. "Sometimes a dressmaker or a hairdresser that can help make a

living for a man, maybe--"

I couldn't hear any more. It got black before my eyes, my voice

stopped inside of me.

"If you want to listen to sense from a friend, so I have a good

match for you," he said, following me to the door. "I have on

my list a widower with not more than five or six children. He has a

grand business, a herring-stand on Hester Street. He don't ask for

no money, and he don't make an objection if the girl is in years, so

long as she knows how to cook well for him."

How I got myself back to my room I don't know. But for two days and

for two nights I lay still on my bed, unable to move. I looked around

on my empty walls, thinking, thinking, "Where am I? Is this the

world? Is this America?"

Suddenly I sprang up from bed. "What can come from pitying

yourself?" I cried. "If the world kicks you down and makes nothing

of you, you bounce yourself up and make something of yourself." A

fire blazed up in me to rise over the world because I was downed by

the world.

"Make a person of yourself," I said. "Begin to learn English.

Make yourself for an American if you want to live in America.

American girls don't go to matchmakers. American girls don't

run after a man: if they don't get a husband they don't

think the world is over; they turn their mind to something else.

"Wake up!" I said to myself. "You want love to come to you? Why

don't you give it out to other people? Love the women and children,

everybody in the street and the shop. Love the rag-picker and the

drunkard, the bad and the ugly. All those whom the world kicks down you

pick up and press to your heart with love."

As I said this I felt wells of love that choked in me all my life

flowing out of me and over me. A strange, wonderful light like a

lover's smile melted over me, and the sweetness of lover's arms

stole around me.

The first night I went to school I felt like falling on everybody's

neck and kissing them. I felt like kissing the books and the

benches. It was such great happiness to learn to read and write the

English words.

Because I started a few weeks after the beginning of the term, my

teacher said I might stay after the class to help me catch up with my

back lessons. The minute I looked on him I felt that grand feeling:

"Here is a person! Here is America!" His face just shined with high

thoughts. There was such a beautiful light in his eyes that it warmed

my heart to steal a look on him.

At first, when it came my turn to say something in the class, I got so

excited the words stuck and twisted in my mouth and I couldn't give

out my thoughts. But the teacher didn't see my nervousness. He only

saw that I had something to say, and he helped me say it. How or what

he did I don't know. I only felt his look of understanding flowing

into me like draughts of air to one who is choking.

Long after I already felt free and easy to talk to him alone after the

class, I looked at all the books on his desk. "Oi weh!" I said to

him, "if I only knew half of what is in your books, I couldn't any

more sit still in the chair like you. I'd fly in the air with the joy

of so much knowledge."

"Why are you so eager for learning?" he asked me.

"Because I want to make a person of myself," I answered. "Since

I got to work for low wages and I can't be young any more, I'm

burning to get among people where it's not against a girl if she is

in years and without money."

His hand went out to me. "I'll help you," he said. "But you

must first learn to get hold of yourself."

Such a beautiful kindness went out of his heart to me with his

words! His voice, and the goodness that shone from his eyes, made

me want to burst out crying, but I choked back my tears till I got

home. And all night long I wept on my pillow: "Fool! What is the

matter with you? Why are you crying?" But I said, "I can't help

it. He is so beautiful!"

My teacher was so much above me that he wasn't a man to me at all. He

was a God. His face lighted up the shop for me, and his voice sang

itself in me everywhere I went. It was like healing medicine to the

flaming fever within me to listen to his voice. And then I'd repeat

to myself his words and live in them as if they were religion.

Often as I sat at the machine sewing the waists I'd forget what I

was doing. I'd find myself dreaming in the air. "Ach!" I asked

myself, "what was that beautifulness in his eyes that made the lowest

nobody feel like a somebody? What was that about him that when his

smile fell on me I felt lifted up to the sky away from all the coldness

and the ugliness of the world? Gottunui!" I prayed, "if I could

only always hold on to the light of high thoughts that shined from

him. If I could only always hear in my heart the sound of his voice

I would need nothing more in life. I would be happier than a bird in

the air.

"Friend," I said to him once, "if you could but teach me how to

get cold in the heart and clear in the head like you are!"

He only smiled at me and looked far away. His calmness was like the

sureness of money in the bank. Then he turned and looked on me, and

said: "I am not so cold in the heart and clear in the head as I

make-believe. I am bound. I am a prisoner of convention."

"You make-believe--you bound?" I burst out. "You who do not

have foreladies or bosses--you who do not have to sell yourself for

wages--you who only work for love and truth--you a prisoner?"

"True, I do not have bosses just as you do," he said. "But

still I am not free. I am bound by formal education and conventional

traditions. Though you work in a shop, you are really freer than I. You

are not repressed as I am by the fear and shame of feeling. You could

teach me more than I could teach you. You could teach me how to be

natural."

"I'm not so natural like you think," I said. "I'm afraid."

He smiled at me out of his eyes. "What are you afraid of?"

"I'm afraid of my heart," I said, trying to hold back the blood

rushing to my face. "I'm burning to get calm and sensible like the

born Americans. But how can I help it? My heart flies away from me like

a wild bird. How can I learn to keep myself down on earth like the born

Americans?"

"But I don't want you to get down on earth like the Americans. That

is just the beauty and the wonder of you. We Americans are too much on

earth; we need more of your power to fly. If you would only know how

much you can teach us Americans. You are the promise of the centuries

to come. You are the heart, the creative pulse of America to be."

I walked home on wings. My teacher said that I could help him; that I

had something to give to Americans. "But how could I teach him?" I

wondered; "I who had never had a chance to learn anything except what

he taught me. And what had I to give to the Americans, I who am nothing

but dreams and longings and hunger for love?"

When school closed down for vacation, it seemed to me all life stopped

in the world. I had no more class to look forward to, no more chance

of seeing my teacher. As I faced the emptiness of my long vacation,

all the light went out of my eyes, and all the strength out of my arms

and fingers.

For nearly a week I was like without air. There was no school. One

night I came home from the shop and threw myself down on the bed. I

wanted to cry, to let out the heavy weight that pressed on my heart,

but I couldn't cry. My tears felt like hot, burning sand in my eyes.

"Oi-i-i! I can't stand it no more, this emptiness," I groaned.

"Why don't I kill myself? Why don't something happen to

me? No consumption, no fever, no plague or death ever comes to save me

from this terrible world. I have to go on suffering and choking inside

myself till I grow mad."

I jumped up from the bed, threw open the window, and began fighting

with the deaf-and-dumb air in the air-shaft.

"What is the matter with you?" I cried. "You are going out

of your head. You are sinking back into the old ways from which you

dragged yourself out with your studies. Studies! What did I get from

all my studies? Nothing. Nothing. I am still in the same shop with

the same shirt-waists. A lot my teacher cares for me once the class

is over."

A fire burned up in me that he was already forgetting me. And I shot

out a letter to him:

"You call yourself a teacher? A friend? How can you go off in the

country and drop me out of your heart and out of your head like a

read-over book you left on the shelf of your shut-down classroom? How

can you enjoy your vacation in the country while I'm in the

sweatshop? You learned me nothing. You only broke my heart. What

good are all the books you ever gave me? They don't tell me how

to be happy in a factory. They don't tell me how to keep alive in

emptiness, or how to find something beautiful in the dirt and ugliness

in which I got to waste away. I want life. I want people. I can't

live inside my head as you do."

I sent the letter off in the madness in which I wrote it, without

stopping to think; but the minute after I dropped it in the mail-box my

reason came again to my head. I went back tearing my hair. "What have

I done? Meshugeneh!"

Walking up the stairs I saw my door open. I went in. The sky is

falling to the earth! Am I dreaming? There was my teacher sitting on my

trunk! My teacher come to see me? Me, in my dingy room? For a minute it

got blind before my eyes, and I didn't know where I was any more.

"I had to come," he said, the light of heaven shining on me out of

his eyes. "I was so desolate without you. I tried to say something to

you before I left for my vacation, but the words wouldn't come. Since

I have been away I have written you many letters, but I did not

mail them, for they were like my old self from which I want to break

away."

He put his cool, strong hand into mine. "You can save me," he

said. "You can free me from the bondage of age-long repressions. You

can lift me out of the dead grooves of sterile intellectuality. Without

you I am the dry dust of hopes unrealized. You are fire and sunshine

and desire. You make life changeable and beautiful and full of daily

wonder."

I couldn't speak. I was so on fire with his words. Then, like

whirlwinds in my brain, rushed out the burning words of the matchmaker:

"Not young, not lively, and without money, too!"

"You are younger than youth," he said, kissing my hands. "Every

day of your unlived youth shall be relived with love, but such a love

as youth could never know."

And then how it happened I don't know; but his arms were around

me. "Sara Reisel, tell me, do you love me," he said, kissing me on

my hair and on my eyes and on my lips.

I could only weep and tremble with joy at his touch. "The miracle!"

cried my heart; "the miracle of America come true!"

WHERE LOVERS DREAM

For years I was saying to myself--Just so you will act when you meet

him. Just so you will stand. So will you look on him. These words you

will say to him.

I wanted to show him that what he had done to me could not down me;

that his leaving me the way he left me, that his breaking my heart

the way he broke it, didn't crush me; that his grand life and my

pinched-in life, his having learning and my not having learning--that

the difference didn't count so much like it seemed; that on the

bottom I was the same like him.

But he came upon me so sudden, all my plannings for years smashed to

the wall. The sight of him was like an earthquake shaking me to pieces.

I can't yet see nothing in front of me and can't get my head

together to anything, so torn up I am from the shock.

It was at Yetta Solomon's wedding I met him again. She was after me

for weeks I should only come.

"How can I come to such a swell hall?" I told her. "You know I

ain't got nothing decent to wear."

"Like you are without no dressing-up, I want you to come. You are the

kind what people look in your eyes and not on what you got on. Ain't

you yourself the one what helped me with my love troubles? And now,

when everything is turning out happy, you mean to tell me that you

ain't going to be there?"

She gave me a grab over and kissed me in a way that I couldn't say

"No" to her.

So I shined myself up in the best I had and went to the wedding.

I was in the middle from giving my congratulations to Yetta and her new

husband, when--Gott! Gott im Himmel! The sky is falling to the earth! I

see him--him, and his wife leaning on his arm, coming over.

I gave a fall back, like something sharp hit me. My head got dizzy, and

my eyes got blind.

I wanted to run away from him, but, ach! everything in me rushed to

him.

I was feeling like struck deaf, dumb, and blind all in one.

He must have said something to me, and I must have answered back

something to him, but how? What? I only remember like in a dream my

getting to the cloakroom. Such a tearing, grinding pain was dragging me

down to the floor that I had to hold on to the wall not to fall.

All of a sudden I feel a pull on my arm. It was the janitor with the

broom in his hand.

"Lady, are you sick? The wedding people is all gone, and I swept up

already."

But I couldn't wake up from myself.

"Lady, the lights is going out," he says, looking on me queer.

"I think I ain't well," I said. And I went out.

* * * * *

Ach, I see again the time when we was lovers! How beautiful the world

was then!

"Maybe there never was such love like ours, and never will be," we

was always telling one another.

When we was together there was like a light shining around us, the

light from his heart on mine, and from my heart on his. People began to

look happy just looking on us.

When we was walking we didn't feel we was touching the earth but

flying high up through the air. We looked on the rest of the people

with pity, because it was seeming to us that we was the only two

persons awake, and all the rest was hurrying and pushing and slaving

and crowding one on the other without the splendidness of feeling for

what it was all for, like we was feeling it.

David was learning for a doctor. Daytimes he went to college,

and nights he was in a drug-store. I was working in a factory on

shirt-waists. We was poor. But we didn't feel poor. The waists I was

sewing flyed like white birds through my fingers, because his face was

shining out of everything I touched.

David was always trying to learn me how to make myself over for

an American. Sometimes he would spend out fifteen cents to buy me

the "Ladies' Home Journal" to read about American life, and my

whole head was put away on how to look neat and be up-to-date like the

American girls. Till long hours in the night I used to stay up brushing

and pressing my plain blue suit with the white collar what David liked,

and washing my waists, and fixing up my hat like the pattern magazines

show you.

On holidays he took me out for a dinner by a restaurant, to learn me

how the Americans eat, with napkins, and use up so many plates--the

butter by itself, and the bread by itself, and the meat by itself, and

the potatoes by itself.

Always when the six o'clock whistle blowed, he was waiting for me on

the corner from the shop to take me home.

"Ut, there waits Sara's doctor feller," the girls were nudging

one to the other, as we went out from the shop. "Ain't she the

lucky one!"

All the way as we walked along he was learning me how to throw off my

greenhorn talk, and say out the words in the American.

He used to stop me in the middle of the pavement and laugh from me,

shaking me: "No t'ink or t'ank or t'ought, now. You're an

American," he would say to me. And then he would fix my tongue

and teeth together and make me say after him: "th-think, th-thank,

th-thought; this, that, there." And if I said the words right, he

kissed me in the hall when we got home. And if I said them wrong, he

kissed me anyhow.

He moved next door to us, so we shouldn't lose the sweetness from one

little minute that we could be together. There was only the thin wall

between our kitchen and his room, and the first thing in the morning,

we would knock in one to the other to begin the day together.

"See what I got for you, Hertzele," he said to me one day, holding

up a grand printed card.

I gave a read. It was the ticket invitation for his graduation from

college. I gave it a touch, with pride melting over in my heart.

"Only one week more, and you'll be a doctor for the world!"

"And then, heart of mine," he said, drawing me over to him and

kissing me on the lips, "when I get my office fixed up, you will

marry me?"

"Ach, such a happiness," I answered, "to be together all the

time, and wait on you and cook for you, and do everything for you, like

if I was your mother!"

"Uncle Rosenberg is coming special from Boston for my graduation."

"The one what helped out your chance for college?" I asked.

"Yes, and he's going to start me up the doctor's office, he

says. Like his son he looks on me, because he only got daughters in his

family."

"Ach, the good heart! He'll yet have joy and good luck from

us! What is he saying about me?" I ask.

"I want him to see you first, darling. You can't help going to his

heart, when he'll only give a look on you."

"Think only, Mammele--David is graduating for a doctor in a week!"

I gave a hurry in to my mother that night. "And his Uncle Rosenberg

is coming special from Boston and says he'll start him up in his

doctor's office."

"Oi weh, the uncle is going to give a come, you say? Look how the

house looks! And the children in rags and no shoes on their feet!"

The whole week before the uncle came, my mother and I was busy nights

buying and fixing up, and painting the chairs, and nailing together

solid the table, and hanging up calendar pictures to cover up the

broken plaster on the wall, and fixing the springs from the sleeping

lounge so it didn't sink in, and scrubbing up everything, and even

washing the windows, like before Passover.

I stopped away from the shop, on the day David was graduating.

Everything in the house was like for a holiday. The children

shined up like rich people's children, with their faces

washed clean and their hair brushed and new shoes on their feet. I made

my father put away his black shirt and dress up in an American white

shirt and starched collar. I fixed out my mother in a new white waist

and a blue checked apron, and I blowed myself to dress up the baby

in everything new, like a doll in a window. Her round, laughing face

lighted up the house, so beautiful she was.

By the time we got finished the rush to fix ourselves out, the

children's cheeks was red with excitement and our eyes was bulging

bright, like ready to start for a picnic.

When David came in with his uncle, my father and mother and all the

children gave a stand up.

But the "Boruch Chabo" and the hot words of welcome, what was

rushing from us to say, froze up on our lips by the stiff look the

uncle throwed on us.

David's uncle didn't look like David. He had a thick neck and a red

face and the breathing of a man what eats plenty.--But his eyes looked

smart like David's.

He wouldn't take no seat and didn't seem to want to let go from

the door.

David laughed and talked fast, and moved around nervous, trying to

cover up the ice. But he didn't get no answers from nobody. And he

didn't look in my eyes, and I was feeling myself ashamed, like I did

something wrong which I didn't understand.

My father started up to say something to the uncle--"Our David--"

But I quick pulled him by the sleeve to stop. And nobody after that

could say nothing, nobody except David.

I couldn't get up the heart to ask them to give a taste from the cake

and the wine what we made ready special for them on the table.

The baby started crying for a cake, and I quick went over to take her

up, because I wanted to hide myself with being busy with her. But only

the crying and nothing else happening made my heart give a shiver, like

bad luck was in the air.

And right away the uncle and him said good-bye and walked out.

When the door was shut the children gave a rush for the cakes, and then

burst out in the street.

"Come, Schmuel," said my mother, "I got to say something with

you." And she gave my father a pull in the other room and closed

the door.

I felt they was trying not to look on me, and was shrinking away from

the shame that was throwed on me.

"Och, what's the matter with me! Nothing can come between David and

me. His uncle ain't everything," I said, trying to pull up my head.

I sat myself down by the table to cool down my nervousness. "Brace

yourself up," I said to myself, jumping up from the chair and

beginning to walk around again. "Nothing has happened. Stop off

nagging yourself."

Just then I hear loud voices through the wall. I go nearer. Ut, it's

his uncle!

The plaster from the wall was broken on our side by the door. "Lay

your ear in this crack, and you can hear plain the words," I say to

myself.

"What's getting over you? You ain't that kind to do such a

thing," I say. But still I do it.

Oi weh, I hear the uncle plainly! "What's all this mean, these

neighbors? Who's the pretty girl what made such eyes on you?"

"Ain't she beautiful? Do you like her?" I hear David.

"What? What's that matter to you?"

"I'll marry myself to her," says David.

"Marry! Marry yourself into that beggar house! Are you crazy?"

"A man could get to anywhere with such a beautiful girl."

"Koosh! Pretty faces is cheap like dirt. What has she got to bring

you in for your future? An empty pocketbook? A starving family to hang

over your neck?"

"You don't know nothing about her. You don't know what you're

saying. She comes from fine people in Russia. You can see her father is

a learned man."

"Ach! You make me a disgust with your calf talk! Poverty winking from

every corner of the house! Hunger hollering from all their starved

faces! I got too much sense to waste my love on beggars. And all

the time I was planning for you an American family, people which are

somebodies in this world, which could help you work up a practice! For

why did I waste my good dollars on you?"

"Gott! Ain't David answering?" my heart cries out. "Why don't

he throw him out of the house?"

"Perhaps I can't hear him," I think, and with my finger-nails I

pick thinner the broken plaster.

I push myself back to get away and not to do it. But it did itself with

my hands. "Don't let me hear nothing," I pray, and yet I strain

more to hear.

The uncle was still hollering. And David wasn't saying nothing for

me.

"Gazlen! You want to sink your life in a family of beggars?"

"But I love her. We're so happy together. Don't that count for

something? I can't live without her."

"Koosh! Love her! Do you want to plan your future with your heart

or with your head? Take for your wife an ignorant shopgirl without a

cent! Can two dead people start up a dance together?"

"So you mean not to help me with the office?"

"Yah-yah-yah! I'll run on all fours to do it! The impudence from

such penniless nobodies wanting to pull in a young man with a future

for a doctor! Nobody but such a yok like you would be such an easy

mark."

"Well, I got to live my own life, and I love her."

"That's all I got to say.--Where's my hat? Throw yourself away on

the pretty face, make yourself to shame and to laughter with a ragged

Melamid for a father-in-law, and I wash my hands from you for the rest

of your life."

* * * * *

A change came over David from that day. For the first time we was no

more one person together. We couldn't no more laugh and talk like we

used to. When I tried to look him in the eyes, he gave them a turn away

from me.

I used to lie awake nights turning over in my head David's looks,

David's words, and it made me frightened like something black rising

over me and pushing me out from David's heart. I could feel he was

blaming me for something I couldn't understand.

Once David asked me, "Don't you love me no more?"

I tried to tell him that there wasn't no change in my love, but I

couldn't no more talk out to him what was in my mind, like I used.

"I didn't want to worry you before with my worries," he said to

me at last.

"Worry me, David! What am I here for?"

"My uncle is acting like a stingy grouch," he answered me, "and I

can't stand no more his bossing me."

"Why didn't you speak yourself out to me what was on your mind,

David?" I asked him.

"You don't know how my plans is smashed to pieces," he said, with

a worried look on his face. "I don't see how I'll ever be able to

open my doctor's office. And how can we get married with your people

hanging on for your wages?"

"Ah, David, don't you no longer feel that love can find a way

out?"

He looked on me, down and up, and up and down, till I drawed myself

back, frightened.

But he grabbed me back to him. "I love you. I love you, heart

of mine," he said, kissing me on the neck, on my hair and my

eyes. "And nothing else matters, does it, does it?" and he kissed

me again and again, as if he wanted to swallow me up.

Next day I go out from the shop and down the steps to meet him, like on

every day.

I give a look around.

"Gott! Where is he? He wasn't never late before," gave a knock

my heart.

I waited out till all the girls was gone, and the streets was getting

empty, but David didn't come yet.

"Maybe an accident happened to him, and I standing round here like a

dummy," and I gave a quick hurry home.

But nobody had heard nothing.

"He's coming! He _must_ come!" I fighted back my fear. But by

evening he hadn't come yet.

I sent in my brother next door to see if he could find him.

"He moved to-day," comes in my brother to tell me.

"My God! David left me? It ain't possible!"

I walk around the house, waiting and listening. "Don't let nobody

see your nervousness. Don't let yourself out. Don't break down."

It got late and everybody was gone to bed.

I couldn't take my clothes off. Any minute he'll come up the steps

or knock on the wall. Any minute a telegram will come.

It's twelve o'clock. It's one. Two!

Every time I hear footsteps in the empty street, I am by the

window--"Maybe it's him."

It's beginning the day.

The sun is rising. Oi weh, how can the sun rise and he not here?

Mein Gott! He ain't coming!

I sit myself down on the floor by the window with my head on the sill.

Everybody is sleeping. I can't sleep. And I'm so tired.

Next day I go, like pushed on, to the shop, glad to be swallowed up by

my work.

The noise of the knocking machines is like a sleeping-medicine to the

cryings inside of me. All day I watched my hands push the waists up and

down the machine. I wasn't with my hands. It was like my breathing

stopped and I was sitting inside of myself, waiting for David.

The six o'clock whistle blowed. I go out from the shop.

I can't help it--I look for him.

"Oi, Gott! Do something for me once! Send him only!"

I hold on to the iron fence of the shop, because I feel my heart

bleeding away.

I can't go away. The girls all come out from the shops, and the

streets get empty and still. But at the end of the block once in a

while somebody crosses and goes out from sight.

I watch them. I begin counting, "One, two, three--"

Underneath my mind is saying, "Maybe it's him. Maybe the next

one!"

My eyes shut themselves. I feel the end from everything.

"Ah, David! David! Gott! Mein Gott!"

I fall on the steps and clinch the stones with the twistings of my

body. A terrible cry breaks out from me--"David! David!" My soul is

tearing itself out from my body. It is gone.

Next day I got news--David opened a doctor's office uptown.

Nothing could hurt me no more. I didn't hope for nothing. Even if he

wanted me back, I couldn't go to him no more. I was like something

dying what wants to be left alone in darkness.

But still something inside of me wanted to see for itself how all is

dead between us, and I write him:

"David Novak: You killed me. You killed my love. Why did you leave me

yet living? Why must I yet drag on the deadness from me?"

I don't know why I wrote him. I just wanted to give a look on him. I

wanted to fill up my eyes with him before I turned them away forever.

I was sitting by the table in the kitchen, wanting to sew, but my hands

was lying dead on the table, when the door back of me burst open.

"O God! What have I done? Your face is like ashes! You look like you

are dying!" David gave a rush in.

His hair wasn't combed, his face wasn't shaved, his clothes was all

wrinkled. My letter he was holding crushed in his hand.

"I killed you! I left you! But I didn't rest a minute since I went

away! Heart of mine, forgive me!"

He gave a take my hand, and fell down kneeling by me.

"Sarale, speak to me!"

"False dog! Coward!" cried my father, breaking in on us. "Get

up! Get out! Don't dare touch my child again! May your name and

memory be blotted out!"

David covered up his head with his arm and fell back to the wall like

my father had hit him.

"You yet listen to him?" cried my father, grabbing me by the arm

and shaking me. "Didn't I tell you he's a Meshumid, a denier of

God?"

"Have pity! Speak to me! Give me only a word!" David begged me.

I wanted to speak to him, to stretch out my hands to him and call him

over, but I couldn't move my body. No voice came from my lips no more

than if I was locked in my grave.

I was dead, and the David I loved was dead.

I married Sam because he came along and wanted me, and I didn't care

about nothing no more.

But for long after, even when the children began coming, my head was

still far away in the dream of the time when love was. Before my eyes

was always his face, drawing me on. In my ears was always his voice,

but thin, like from far away.

I was like a person following after something in the dark.

For years when I went out into the street or got into a car, it gave a

knock my heart--"Maybe I'll see him yet to-day."

When I heard he got himself engaged, I hunted up where she lived,

and with Sammy in the carriage and the three other children hanging on

to my skirts, I stayed around for hours to look up at the grand stone

house where she lived, just to take a minute's look on her.

When I seen her go by, it stabbed awake in me the old days.

It ain't that I still love him, but nothing don't seem real to me

no more. For the little while when we was lovers I breathed the air

from the high places where love comes from, and I can't no more come

down.

SOAP AND WATER

What I so greatly feared, happened! Miss Whiteside, the dean of our

college, withheld my diploma. When I came to her office, and asked her

why she did not pass me, she said that she could not recommend me as a

teacher because of my personal appearance.

She told me that my skin looked oily, my hair unkempt, and my

finger-nails sadly neglected. She told me that I was utterly unmindful

of the little niceties of the well-groomed lady. She pointed out that

my collar did not set evenly, my belt was awry, and there was a lack

of freshness in my dress. And she ended with: "Soap and water are

cheap. Any one can be clean."

In those four years while I was under her supervision, I was always

timid and diffident. I shrank and trembled when I had to come near

her. When I had to say something to her, I mumbled and stuttered, and

grew red and white in the face with fear.

Every time I had to come to the dean's office for a private

conference, I prepared for the ordeal of her cold scrutiny, as a

patient prepares for a surgical operation. I watched her gimlet eyes

searching for a stray pin, for a spot on my dress, for my unpolished

shoes, for my uncared-for finger-nails, as one strapped on the

operating table watches the surgeon approaching with his tray of

sterilized knives.

She never looked into my eyes. She never perceived that I had a

soul. She did not see how I longed for beauty and cleanliness. How I

strained and struggled to lift myself from the dead toil and exhaustion

that weighed me down. She could see nothing in people like me, except

the dirt and the stains on the outside.

But this last time when she threatened to withhold my diploma, because

of my appearance, this last time when she reminded me that "Soap and

water are cheap. Any one can be clean," this last time, something

burst within me.

I felt the suppressed wrath of all the unwashed of the earth break

loose within me. My eyes blazed fire. I didn't care for myself, nor

the dean, nor the whole laundered world. I had suffered the cruelty

of their cleanliness and the tyranny of their culture to the breaking

point. I was too frenzied to know what I said or did. But I saw clean,

immaculate, spotless Miss Whiteside shrivel and tremble and cower

before me, as I had shriveled and trembled and cowered before her for

so many years.

Why did she give me my diploma? Was it pity? Or can it be that in my

outburst of fury, at the climax of indignities that I had suffered, the

barriers broke, and she saw into the world below from where I came?

Miss Whiteside had no particular reason for hounding and persecuting

me. Personally, she didn't give a hang if I was clean or dirty. She

was merely one of the agents of clean society, delegated to judge who

is fit and who is unfit to teach.

While they condemned me as unfit to be a teacher, because of my

appearance, I was slaving to keep them clean. I was slaving in a

laundry from five to eight in the morning, before going to college, and

from six to eleven at night, after coming from college. Eight hours of

work a day, outside my studies. Where was the time and the strength for

the "little niceties of the well-groomed lady"?

At the time when they rose and took their morning bath, and put on

their fresh-laundered linen that somebody had made ready for them, when

they were being served with their breakfast, I had already toiled for

three hours in a laundry.

When college hours were over, they went for a walk in the fresh

air. They had time to rest, and bathe again, and put on fresh clothes

for dinner. But I, after college hours, had only time to bolt a soggy

meal, and rush back to the grind of the laundry till eleven at night.

At the hour when they came from the theater or musicale, I came from

the laundry. But I was so bathed in the sweat of exhaustion that I

could not think of a bath of soap and water. I had only strength to

drag myself home, and fall down on the bed and sleep. Even if I had had

the desire and the energy to take a bath, there were no such things as

bathtubs in the house where I lived.

Often as I stood at my board at the laundry, I thought of Miss

Whiteside, and her clean world, clothed in the snowy shirt-waists

I had ironed. I was thinking--I, soaking in the foul vapors of the

steaming laundry, I, with my dirty, tired hands, I am ironing the

clean, immaculate shirt-waists of clean, immaculate society. I, the

unclean one, am actually fashioning the pedestal of their cleanliness,

from which they reach down, hoping to lift me to the height that I have

created for them.

I look back at my sweatshop childhood. One day, when I was about

sixteen, some one gave me Rosenfeld's poem, "The Machine," to

read. Like a spark thrown among oily rags, it set my whole being aflame

with longing for self-expression. But I was dumb. I had nothing but

blind, aching feeling. For days I went about with agonies of feeling,

yet utterly at sea how to fathom and voice those feelings--birth-throes

of infinite worlds, and yet dumb.

Suddenly, there came upon me this inspiration. I can go to

college! There I shall learn to express myself, to voice my

thoughts. But I was not prepared to go to college. The girl in the

cigar factory, in the next block, had gone first to a preparatory

school. Why shouldn't I find a way, too?

Going to college seemed as impossible for me, at that time, as for an

ignorant Russian shopgirl to attempt to write poetry in English. But I

was sixteen then, and the impossible was a magnet to draw the dreams

that had no outlet. Besides, the actual was so barren, so narrow,

so strangling, that the dream of the unattainable was the only air in

which the soul could survive.

The ideal of going to college was like the birth of a new religion in

my soul. It put new fire in my eyes, and new strength in my tired arms

and fingers.

For six years I worked daytimes and went at night to a preparatory

school. For six years I went about nursing the illusion that college

was a place where I should find self-expression, and vague, pent-up

feelings could live as thoughts and grow as ideas.

At last I came to college. I rushed for it with the outstretched

arms of youth's aching hunger to give and take of life's deepest

and highest, and I came against the solid wall of the well-fed,

well-dressed world--the frigid whitewashed wall of cleanliness.

Until I came to college I had been unconscious of my clothes. Suddenly

I felt people looking at me at arm's length, as if I were crooked

or crippled, as if I had come to a place where I didn't belong, and

would never be taken in.

How I pinched, and scraped, and starved myself, to save enough to come

to college! Every cent of the tuition fee I paid was drops of sweat and

blood from underpaid laundry work. And what did I get for it? A crushed

spirit, a broken heart, a stinging sense of poverty that I never felt

before.

The courses of study I had to swallow to get my diploma were utterly

barren of interest to me. I didn't come to college to get dull

learning from dead books. I didn't come for that dry, inanimate

stuff that can be hammered out in lectures. I came because I longed

for the larger life, for the stimulus of intellectual associations. I

came because my whole being clamored for more vision, more light. But

everywhere I went I saw big fences put up against me, with the brutal

signs: "No trespassing. Get off the grass."

I experienced at college the same feeling of years ago when I came to

this country, when after months of shut-in-ness, in dark tenements

and stifling sweatshops, I had come to Central Park for the first

time. Like a bird just out from a cage, I stretched out my arms, and

then flung myself in ecstatic abandon on the grass. Just as I began to

breathe in the fresh-smelling earth, and lift up my eyes to the sky, a

big, fat policeman with a club in his hand, seized me, with: "Can't

you read the sign? Get off the grass!" Miss Whiteside, the dean of

the college, the representative of the clean, the educated world, for

all her external refinement, was to me like that big, brutal policeman,

with the club in his hand, that drove me off the grass.

The death-blows to all aspiration began when I graduated from college

and tried to get a start at the work for which I had struggled so hard

to fit myself. I soon found other agents of clean society, who had

the power of giving or withholding the positions I sought, judging

me as Miss Whiteside judged me. One glance at my shabby clothes, the

desperate anguish that glazed and dulled my eyes and I felt myself

condemned by them before I opened my lips to speak.

Starvation forced me to accept the lowest-paid substitute position. And

because my wages were so low and so unsteady, I could never get the

money for the clothes to make an appearance to secure a position with

better pay. I was tricked and foiled. I was considered unfit to get

decent pay for my work because of my appearance, and it was to the

advantage of those who used me that my appearance should damn me, so as

to get me to work for the low wages I was forced to accept. It seemed

to me the whole vicious circle of society's injustices was thrust

like a noose around my neck to strangle me.

The insults and injuries I had suffered at college had so eaten into

my flesh that I could not bear to get near it. I shuddered with horror

whenever I had to pass the place blocks away. The hate which I felt

for Miss Whiteside spread like poison inside my soul, into hate for all

clean society. The whole clean world was massed against me. Whenever I

met a well-dressed person, I felt the secret stab of a hidden enemy.

I was so obsessed and consumed with my grievances that I could not get

away from myself and think things out in the light. I was in the grip

of that blinding, destructive, terrible thing--righteous indignation. I

could not rest. I wanted the whole world to know that the college

was against democracy in education, that clothes form the basis of

class distinctions, that after graduation the opportunities for the

best positions are passed out to those who are best-dressed, and the

students too poor to put up a front are pigeon-holed and marked unfit

and abandoned to the mercy of the wind.

A wild desire raged in the corner of my brain. I knew that the dean

gave dinners to the faculty at regular intervals. I longed to burst

in at one of those feasts, in the midst of their grand speech-making,

and tear down the fine clothes from these well-groomed ladies and

gentlemen, and trample them under my feet, and scream like a lunatic:

"Soap and water are cheap! Soap and water are cheap! Look at me! See

how cheap it is!"

There seemed but three avenues of escape to the torments of my wasted

life, madness, suicide, or a heart-to-heart confession to some one who

understood. I had not energy enough for suicide. Besides, in my darkest

moments of despair, hope clamored loudest. Oh, I longed so to live, to

dream my way up on the heights, above the unreal realities that ground

me and dragged me down to earth.

Inside the ruin of my thwarted life, the _unlived_ visionary immigrant

hungered and thirsted for America. I had come a refugee from the

Russian pogroms, aflame with dreams of America. I did not find America

in the sweatshops, much less in the schools and colleges. But for

hundreds of years the persecuted races all over the world were nurtured

on hopes of America. When a little baby in my mother's arms, before I

was old enough to speak, I saw all around me weary faces light up with

thrilling tales of the far-off "golden country." And so, though my

faith in this so-called America was shattered, yet underneath, in the

sap and roots of my soul, burned the deathless faith that America is,

must be, somehow, somewhere. In the midst of my bitterest hates and

rebellions, visions of America rose over me, like songs of freedom of

an oppressed people.

My body was worn to the bone from overwork, my footsteps dragged with

exhaustion, but my eyes still sought the sky, praying, ceaselessly

praying, the dumb, inarticulate prayer of the lost immigrant:

"America! Ach, America! Where is America?"

It seemed to me if I could only find some human being to whom I

could unburden my heart, I would have new strength to begin again my

insatiable search for America.

But to whom could I speak? The people in the laundry? They never

understood me. They had a grudge against me because I left them when I

tried to work myself up. Could I speak to the college people? What did

these icebergs of convention know about the vital things of the heart?

And yet, I remembered, in the freshman year, in one of the courses in

chemistry, there was an instructor, a woman, who drew me strangely. I

felt she was the only real teacher among all the teachers and

professors I met. I didn't care for the chemistry, but I liked to

look at her. She gave me life, air, the unconscious emanation of

her beautiful spirit. I had not spoken a word to her, outside the

experiments in chemistry, but I knew her more than the people around

her who were of her own class. I felt in the throb of her voice, in the

subtle shading around the corner of her eyes, the color and texture of

her dreams.

Often in the midst of our work in chemistry I felt like crying out to

her: "Oh, please be my friend. I'm so lonely." But something

choked me. I couldn't speak. The very intensity of my longing for

her friendship made me run away from her in confusion the minute she

approached me. I was so conscious of my shabbiness that I was afraid

maybe she was only trying to be kind. I couldn't bear kindness. I

wanted from her love, understanding, or nothing.

About ten years after I left college, as I walked the streets bowed

and beaten with the shame of having to go around begging for work, I

met Miss Van Ness. She not only recognized me, but stopped to ask how I

was, and what I was doing.

I had begun to think that my only comrades in this world were the

homeless and abandoned cats and dogs of the street, whom everybody

gives another kick, as they slam the door on them. And here was one

from the clean world human enough to be friendly. Here was one of the

well-dressed, with a look in her eyes and a sound in her voice that was

like healing oil over the bruises of my soul. The mere touch of that

woman's hand in mine so overwhelmed me, that I burst out crying in

the street.

The next morning I came to Miss Van Ness at her office. In those ten

years she had risen to a professorship. But I was not in the least

intimidated by her high office. I felt as natural in her presence as

if she were my own sister. I heard myself telling her the whole story

of my life, but I felt that even if I had not said a word she would

have understood all I had to say as if I had spoken. It was all so

unutterable, to find one from the other side of the world who was so

simply and naturally that miraculous thing--a friend. Just as contact

with Miss Whiteside had tied and bound all my thinking processes, so

Miss Van Ness unbound and freed me and suffused me with light.

I felt the joy of one breathing on the mountain-tops for the first

time. I looked down at the world below. I was changed and the world was

changed. My past was the forgotten night. Sunrise was all around me.

I went out from Miss Van Ness's office, singing a song of new life:

"America! I found America."

"THE FAT OF THE LAND"

In an air-shaft so narrow that you could touch the next wall with your

bare hands, Hanneh Breineh leaned out and knocked on her neighbor's

window.

"Can you loan me your wash-boiler for the clothes?" she called.

Mrs. Pelz threw up the sash.

"The boiler? What's the matter with yours again? Didn't you tell

me you had it fixed already last week?"

"A black year on him, the robber, the way he fixed it! If you have

no luck in this world, then it's better not to live. There I spent

out fifteen cents to stop up one hole, and it runs out another. How I

ate out my gall bargaining with him he should let it down to fifteen

cents! He wanted yet a quarter, the swindler. Gottuniu! My bitter heart

on him for every penny he took from me for nothing!"

"You got to watch all those swindlers, or they'll steal the whites

out of your eyes," admonished Mrs. Pelz. "You should have tried

out your boiler before you paid him. Wait a minute till I empty out my

dirty clothes in a pillow-case; then I'll hand it to you."

Mrs. Pelz returned with the boiler and tried to hand it across to

Hanneh Breineh, but the soap-box refrigerator on the window-sill was in

the way.

"You got to come in for the boiler yourself," said Mrs. Pelz.

"Wait only till I tie my Sammy on to the high-chair he shouldn't

fall on me again. He's so wild that ropes won't hold him."

Hanneh Breineh tied the child in the chair, stuck a pacifier in his

mouth, and went in to her neighbor. As she took the boiler Mrs. Pelz

said:

"Do you know Mrs. Melker ordered fifty pounds of chicken for her

daughter's wedding? And such grand chickens! Shining like gold! My

heart melted in me just looking at the flowing fatness of those

chickens."

Hanneh Breineh smacked her thin, dry lips, a hungry gleam in her sunken

eyes.

"Fifty pounds!" she gasped. "It ain't possible. How do you

know?"

"I heard her with my own ears. I saw them with my own eyes. And she

said she will chop up the chicken livers with onions and eggs for an

appetizer, and then she will buy twenty-five pounds of fish, and cook

it sweet and sour with raisins, and she said she will bake all her

shtrudels on pure chicken fat."

"Some people work themselves up in the world," sighed Hanneh

Breineh. "For them is America flowing with milk and honey. In Savel

Mrs. Melker used to get shriveled up from hunger. She and her children

used to live on potato-peelings and crusts of dry bread picked out

from the barrels; and in America she lives to eat chicken, and apple

shtrudels soaking in fat."

"The world is a wheel always turning," philosophized Mrs.

Pelz. "Those who were high go down low, and those who've been

low go up higher. Who will believe me here in America that in Poland

I was a cook in a banker's house? I handled ducks and geese every

day. I used to bake coffee-cake with cream so thick you could cut it

with a knife."

"And do you think I was a nobody in Poland?" broke in Hanneh

Breineh, tears welling in her eyes as the memories of her past

rushed over her. "But what's the use of talking? In America

money is everything. Who cares who my father or grandfather was in

Poland? Without money I'm a living dead one. My head dries out

worrying how to get for the children the eating a penny cheaper."

Mrs. Pelz wagged her head, a gnawing envy contracting her features.

"Mrs. Melker had it good from the day she came," she said,

begrudgingly. "Right away she sent all her children to the

factory, and she began to cook meat for dinner every day. She and her

children have eggs and buttered rolls for breakfast each morning like

millionaires."

A sudden fall and a baby's scream, and the boiler dropped from Hanneh

Breineh's hands as she rushed into her kitchen, Mrs. Pelz after

her. They found the high-chair turned on top of the baby.

"Gewalt! Save me! Run for a doctor!" cried Hanneh Breineh, as she

dragged the child from under the high-chair. "He's killed! He's

killed! My only child! My precious lamb!" she shrieked as she ran

back and forth with the screaming infant.

Mrs. Pelz snatched little Sammy from the mother's hands.

"Meshugneh! What are you running around like a crazy, frightening

the child? Let me see. Let me tend to him. He ain't killed yet."

She hastened to the sink to wash the child's face, and discovered a

swelling lump on his forehead. "Have you a quarter in your house?"

she asked.

"Yes, I got one," replied Hanneh Breineh, climbing on a chair. "I

got to keep it on a high shelf where the children can't get it."

Mrs. Pelz seized the quarter Hanneh Breineh handed down to her.

"Now pull your left eyelid three times while I'm pressing the

quarter, and you'll see the swelling go down."

Hanneh Breineh took the child again in her arms, shaking and cooing

over it and caressing it.

"Ah-ah-ah, Sammy! Ah-ah-ah-ah, little lamb! Ah-ah-ah, little

bird! Ah-ah-ah-ah, precious heart! Oh, you saved my life; I thought he

was killed," gasped Hanneh Breineh, turning to Mrs. Pelz. "Oi-i!"

she sighed, "a mother's heart! Always in fear over her children.

The minute anything happens to them all life goes out of

me. I lose my head and I don't know where I am any more."

"No wonder the child fell," admonished Mrs. Pelz. "You should

have a red ribbon or red beads on his neck to keep away the evil

eye. Wait. I got something in my machine-drawer."

Mrs. Pelz returned, bringing the boiler and a red string, which she

tied about the child's neck while the mother proceeded to fill the

boiler.

A little later Hanneh Breineh again came into Mrs. Pelz's

kitchen, holding Sammy in one arm and in the other an apronful of

potatoes. Putting the child down on the floor, she seated herself on

the unmade kitchen-bed and began to peel the potatoes in her apron.

"Woe to me!" sobbed Hanneh Breineh. "To my bitter luck there

ain't no end. With all my other troubles, the stove got broke. I

lighted the fire to boil the clothes, and it's to get choked with

smoke. I paid rent only a week ago, and the agent don't want to fix

it. A thunder should strike him! He only comes for the rent, and if

anything has to be fixed, then he don't want to hear nothing.

"Why comes it to me so hard?" went on Hanneh Breineh, the tears

streaming down her cheeks. "I can't stand it no more. I came into

you for a minute to run away from my troubles. It's only when I sit

myself down to peel potatoes or nurse the baby that I take time to draw

a breath, and beg only for death."

Mrs. Pelz, accustomed to Hanneh Breineh's bitter outbursts, continued

her scrubbing.

"Ut!" exclaimed Hanneh Breineh, irritated at her neighbor's

silence, "what are you tearing up the world with your cleaning?

What's the use to clean up when everything only gets dirty

again?"

"I got to shine up my house for the holidays."

"You've got it so good nothing lays on your mind but to clean

your house. Look on this little blood-sucker," said Hanneh Breineh,

pointing to the wizened child, made prematurely solemn from starvation

and neglect. "Could anybody keep that brat clean? I wash him

one minute, and he is dirty the minute after." Little Sammy grew

frightened and began to cry. "Shut up!" ordered the mother, picking

up the child to nurse it again. "Can't you see me take a rest for

a minute?"

The hungry child began to cry at the top of its weakened lungs.

"Na, na, you glutton." Hanneh Breineh took out a dirty pacifier

from her pocket and stuffed it into the baby's mouth. The grave,

pasty-faced infant shrank into a panic of fear, and chewed the nipple

nervously, clinging to it with both his thin little hands.

"For what did I need yet the sixth one?" groaned Hanneh Breineh,

turning to Mrs. Pelz. "Wasn't it enough five mouths to feed? If

I didn't have this child on my neck, I could turn myself around

and earn a few cents." She wrung her hands in a passion of

despair. "Gottuniu! The earth should only take it before it grows

up!"

"Shah! Shah!" reproved Mrs. Pelz. "Pity yourself on the

child. Let it grow up already so long as it is here. See how frightened

it looks on you." Mrs. Pelz took the child in her arms and petted

it. "The poor little lamb! What did it done you should hate it so?"

Hanneh Breineh pushed Mrs. Pelz away from her.

"To whom can I open the wounds of my heart?" she moaned. "Nobody

has pity on me. You don't believe me, nobody believes me until

I'll fall down like a horse in the middle of the street. Oi weh! Mine

life is so black for my eyes! Some mothers got luck. A child gets run

over by a car, some fall from a window, some burn themselves up with

a match, some get choked with diphtheria; but no death takes mine

away."

"God from the world, stop cursing!" admonished Mrs. Pelz. "What

do you want from the poor children? Is it their fault that their father

makes small wages? Why do you let it all out on them?" Mrs. Pelz sat

down beside Hanneh Breineh. "Wait only till your children get old

enough to go to the shop and earn money," she consoled. "Push only

through those few years while they are yet small; your sun will begin

to shine; you will live on the fat of the land, when they begin to

bring you in the wages each week."

Hanneh Breineh refused to be comforted.

"Till they are old enough to go to the shop and earn money they'll

eat the head off my bones," she wailed. "If you only knew the

fights I got by each meal. Maybe I gave Abe a bigger piece of bread

than Fanny. Maybe Fanny got a little more soup in her plate than

Jake. Eating is dearer than diamonds. Potatoes went up a cent on a

pound, and milk is only for millionaires. And once a week, when I buy

a little meat for the Sabbath, the butcher weighs it for me like gold,

with all the bones in it. When I come to lay the meat out on a plate

and divide it up, there ain't nothing to it but bones. Before, he

used to throw me in a piece of fat extra or a piece of lung, but now

you got to pay for everything, even for a bone to the soup."

"Never mind; you'll yet come out from all your troubles. Just as

soon as your children get old enough to get their working papers the

more children you got, the more money you'll have."

"Why should I fool myself with the false shine of hope? Don't I

know it's already my black luck not to have it good in this world? Do

you think American children will right away give everything they earn

to their mother?"

"I know what is with you the matter," said Mrs. Pelz. "You

didn't eat yet to-day. When it is empty in the stomach, the whole

world looks black. Come, only let me give you something good to

taste in the mouth; that will freshen you up." Mrs. Pelz went to

the cupboard and brought out the saucepan of gefuelte fish that she

had cooked for dinner and placed it on the table in front of Hanneh

Breineh. "Give a taste my fish," she said, taking one slice on a

spoon, and handing it to Hanneh Breineh with a piece of bread. "I

wouldn't give it to you on a plate because I just cleaned up my

house, and I don't want to dirty up more dishes."

"What, am I a stranger you should have to serve me on a plate yet!"

cried Hanneh Breineh, snatching the fish in her trembling fingers.

"Oi weh! How it melts through all the bones!" she exclaimed,

brightening as she ate. "May it be for good luck to us all!" she

exulted, waving aloft the last precious bite.

Mrs. Pelz was so flattered that she even ladled up a spoonful of gravy.

"There is a bit of onion and carrot in it," she said, as she handed

it to her neighbor.

Hanneh Breineh sipped the gravy drop by drop, like a connoisseur

sipping wine.

"Ah-h-h! A taste of that gravy lifts me up to heaven!" As she

disposed leisurely of the slice of onion and carrot she relaxed and

expanded and even grew jovial. "Let us wish all our troubles on the

Russian Czar! Let him burst with our worries for rent! Let him get

shriveled with our hunger for bread! Let his eyes dry out of his head

looking for work!

"Shah! I'm forgetting from everything," she exclaimed, jumping

up. "It must be eleven or soon twelve, and my children will be

right away out of school and fall on me like a pack of wild wolves. I

better quick run to the market and see what cheaper I can get for a

quarter."

Because of the lateness of her coming, the stale bread at the nearest

bakeshop was sold out, and Hanneh Breineh had to trudge from shop to

shop in search of the usual bargain, and spent nearly an hour to save

two cents.

In the meantime the children returned from school, and, finding the

door locked, climbed through the fire-escape, and entered the house

through the window. Seeing nothing on the table, they rushed to the

stove. Abe pulled a steaming potato out of the boiling pot, and so

scalded his fingers that the potato fell to the floor; where upon the

three others pounced on it.

"It was my potato," cried Abe, blowing his burned fingers, while

with the other hand and his foot he cuffed and kicked the three who

were struggling on the floor. A wild fight ensued, and the potato was

smashed under Abe's foot amid shouts and screams. Hanneh Breineh,

on the stairs, heard the noise of her famished brood, and topped their

cries with curses and invectives.

"They are here already, the savages! They are here already to shorten

my life! They heard you all over the hall, in all the houses around!"

The children, disregarding her words, pounced on her market-basket,

shouting ravenously: "Mamma, I'm hungry! What more do you got to

eat?"

They tore the bread and herring out of Hanneh Breineh's basket and

devoured it in starved savagery, clamoring for more.

"Murderers!" screamed Hanneh Breineh, goaded beyond endurance.

"What are you tearing from me my flesh? From where should

I steal to give you more? Here I had already a pot of potatoes and a

whole loaf of bread and two herrings, and you swallowed it down in the

wink of an eye. I have to have Rockefeller's millions to fill your

stomachs."

All at once Hanneh Breineh became aware that Benny was missing. "Oi

weh!" she burst out, wringing her hands in a new wave of woe,

"where is Benny? Didn't he come home yet from school?"

She ran out into the hall, opened the grime-coated window, and looked

up and down the street; but Benny was nowhere in sight.

"Abe, Jake, Fanny, quick, find Benny!" entreated Hanneh Breineh, as

she rushed back into the kitchen. But the children, anxious to snatch a

few minutes' play before the school-call, dodged past her and hurried

out.

With the baby on her arm, Hanneh Breineh hastened to the kindergarten.

"Why are you keeping Benny here so long?" she shouted at the

teacher as she flung open the door. "If you had my bitter heart,

you would send him home long ago and not wait till I got to come for

him."

The teacher turned calmly and consulted her record-cards.

"Benny Safron? He wasn't present this morning."

"Not here?" shrieked Hanneh Breineh. "I pushed him out myself

he should go. The children didn't want to take him, and I had no

time. Woe is me! Where is my child?" She began pulling her hair and

beating her breast as she ran into the street.

Mrs. Pelz was busy at a pushcart, picking over some spotted apples,

when she heard the clamor of an approaching crowd. A block off she

recognized Hanneh Breineh, her hair disheveled, her clothes awry,

running toward her with her yelling baby in her arms, the crowd

following.

"Friend mine," cried Hanneh Breineh, falling on Mrs. Pelz's

neck, "I lost my Benny, the best child of all my children." Tears

streamed down her red, swollen eyes as she sobbed. "Benny! mine

heart, mine life! Oi-i-i!"

Mrs. Pelz took the frightened baby out of the mother's arms.

"Still yourself a little! See how you're frightening your child."

"Woe to me! Where is my Benny? Maybe he's killed already by a

car. Maybe he fainted away from hunger. He didn't eat nothing all day

long. Gottuniu! Pity yourself on me!"

She lifted her hands full of tragic entreaty.

"People, my child! Get me my child! I'll go crazy out of my

head! Get me my child, or I'll take poison before your eyes!"

"Still yourself a little!" pleaded Mrs. Pelz.

"Talk not to me!" cried Hanneh Breineh, wringing her hands.

"You're having all your children. I lost mine. Every good

luck comes to other people. But I didn't live yet to see a good day

in my life. Mine only joy, mine Benny, is lost away from me."

The crowd followed Hanneh Breineh as she wailed through the streets,

leaning on Mrs. Pelz. By the time she returned to her house the

children were back from school; but seeing that Benny was not there,

she chased them out in the street, crying:

"Out of here, you robbers, gluttons! Go find Benny!" Hanneh

Breineh crumpled into a chair in utter prostration. "Oi weh! he's

lost! Mine life; my little bird; mine only joy! How many nights I

spent nursing him when he had the measles! And all that I suffered for

weeks and months when he had the whooping-cough! How the eyes went out

of my head till I learned him how to walk, till I learned him how to

talk! And such a smart child! If I lost all the others, it wouldn't

tear me so by the heart."

She worked herself up into such a hysteria, crying, and tearing her

hair, and hitting her head with her knuckles, that at last she fell

into a faint. It took some time before Mrs. Pelz, with the aid of

neighbors, revived her.

"Benny, mine angel!" she moaned as she opened her eyes.

Just then a policeman came in with the lost Benny.

"Na, na, here you got him already!" said Mrs. Pelz. "Why did you

carry on so for nothing? Why did you tear up the world like a crazy?"

The child's face was streaked with tears as he cowered, frightened

and forlorn. Hanneh Breineh sprang toward him, slapping his cheeks,

boxing his ears, before the neighbors could rescue him from her.

"Woe on your head!" cried the mother. "Where did you lost

yourself? Ain't I got enough worries on my head than to go around

looking for you? I didn't have yet a minute's peace from that child

since he was born!"

"See a crazy mother!" remonstrated Mrs. Pelz, rescuing Benny from

another beating. "Such a mouth! With one breath she blesses him

when he is lost, and with the other breath she curses him when he is

found."

Hanneh Breineh took from the window-sill a piece of herring covered

with swarming flies, and putting it on a slice of dry bread, she filled

a cup of tea that had been stewing all day, and dragged Benny over to

the table to eat.

But the child, choking with tears, was unable to touch the food.

"Go eat!" commanded Hanneh Breineh. "Eat and choke yourself

eating!"

* * * * *

"Maybe she won't remember me no more. Maybe the servant won't

let me in," thought Mrs. Pelz, as she walked by the brownstone

house on Eighty-Fourth Street where she had been told Hanneh Breineh

now lived. At last she summoned up enough courage to climb the

steps. She was all out of breath as she rang the bell with trembling

fingers. "Oi weh! even the outside smells riches and plenty! Such

curtains! And shades on all windows like by millionaires! Twenty years

ago she used to eat from the pot to the hand, and now she lives in such

a palace."

A whiff of steam-heated warmth swept over Mrs. Pelz as the door opened,

and she saw her old friend of the tenements dressed in silk and

diamonds like a being from another world.

"Mrs. Pelz, is it you!" cried Hanneh Breineh, overjoyed at the

sight of her former neighbor. "Come right in. Since when are you back

in New York?"

"We came last week," mumbled Mrs. Pelz, as she was led into a

richly carpeted reception-room.

"Make yourself comfortable. Take off your shawl," urged Hanneh

Breineh.

But Mrs. Pelz only drew her shawl more tightly around her, a keen sense

of her poverty gripping her as she gazed, abashed by the luxurious

wealth that shone from every corner.

"This shawl covers up my rags," she said, trying to hide her shabby

sweater.

"I'll tell you what; come right into the kitchen," suggested

Hanneh Breineh. "The servant is away for this afternoon, and we can

feel more comfortable there. I can breathe like a free person in my

kitchen when the girl has her day out."

Mrs. Pelz glanced about her in an excited daze. Never in her life

had she seen anything so wonderful as a white-tiled kitchen, with its

glistening porcelain sink and the aluminum pots and pans that shone

like silver.

"Where are you staying now?" asked Hanneh Breineh, as she pinned an

apron over her silk dress.

"I moved back to Delancey Street, where we used to live," replied

Mrs. Pelz, as she seated herself cautiously in a white enameled chair.

"Oi weh! What grand times we had in that old house when we were

neighbors!" sighed Hanneh Breineh, looking at her old friend with

misty eyes.

"You still think on Delancey Street? Haven't you more high-class

neighbors uptown here?"

"A good neighbor is not to be found every day," deplored

Hanneh Breineh. "Uptown here, where each lives in his own house,

nobody cares if the person next door is dying or going crazy from

loneliness. It ain't anything like we used to have it in Delancey

Street, when we could walk into one another's rooms without knocking,

and borrow a pinch of salt or a pot to cook in."

Hanneh Breineh went over to the pantry-shelf.

"We are going to have a bite right here on the kitchen-table like on

Delancey Street. So long there's no servant to watch us we can eat

what we please."

"Oi! How it waters my mouth with appetite, the smell of the herring

and onion!" chuckled Mrs. Pelz, sniffing the welcome odors with

greedy pleasure.

Hanneh Breineh pulled a dish-towel from the rack and threw one end of

it to Mrs. Pelz.

"So long there's no servant around, we can use it together for

a napkin. It's dirty, anyhow. How it freshens up my heart to see

you!" she rejoiced as she poured out her tea into a saucer. "If you

would only know how I used to beg my daughter to write for me a letter

to you; but these American children, what is to them a mother's

feelings?"

"What are you talking!" cried Mrs. Pelz. "The whole world rings

with you and your children. Everybody is envying you. Tell me how began

your luck?"

"You heard how my husband died with consumption," replied Hanneh

Breineh. "The five hundred dollars lodge money gave me the first

lift in life, and I opened a little grocery store. Then my son Abe

married himself to a girl with a thousand dollars. That started him

in business, and now he has the biggest shirt-waist factory on West

Twenty-Ninth Street."

"Yes, I heard your son had a factory." Mrs. Pelz hesitated and

stammered; "I'll tell you the truth. What I came to ask you--I

thought maybe you would beg your son Abe if he would give my husband

a job."

"Why not?" said Hanneh Breineh. "He keeps more than five hundred

hands. I'll ask him if he should take in Mr. Pelz."

"Long years on you, Hanneh Breineh! You'll save my life if you

could only help my husband get work."

"Of course my son will help him. All my children like to do good. My

daughter Fanny is a milliner on Fifth Avenue, and she takes in the

poorest girls in her shop and even pays them sometimes while they learn

the trade." Hanneh Breineh's face lit up, and her chest filled with

pride as she enumerated the successes of her children. "And my son

Benny he wrote a play on Broadway and he gave away more than a hundred

free tickets for the first night."

"Benny? The one who used to get lost from home all the time? You

always did love that child more than all the rest. And what is Sammy

your baby doing?"

"He ain't a baby no longer. He goes to college and quarterbacks the

football team. They can't get along without him.

"And my son Jake, I nearly forgot him. He began collecting rent

in Delancey Street, and now he is boss of renting the swellest

apartment-houses on Riverside Drive."

"What did I tell you? In America children are like money in the

bank," purred Mrs. Pelz, as she pinched and patted Hanneh Breineh's

silk sleeve. "Oi weh! How it shines from you! You ought to kiss the

air and dance for joy and happiness. It is such a bitter frost outside;

a pail of coal is so dear, and you got it so warm with steam heat. I

had to pawn my feather bed to have enough for the rent, and you are

rolling in money."

"Yes, I got it good in some ways, but money ain't everything,"

sighed Hanneh Breineh.

"You ain't yet satisfied?"

"But here I got no friends," complained Hanneh Breineh.

"Friends?" queried Mrs. Pelz. "What greater friend is there on

earth than the dollar?"

"Oi! Mrs. Pelz; if you could only look into my heart! I'm so choked

up! You know they say a cow has a long tongue, but can't talk."

Hanneh Breineh shook her head wistfully, and her eyes filmed with

inward brooding. "My children give me everything from the best. When

I was sick, they got me a nurse by day and one by night. They bought

me the best wine. If I asked for dove's milk, they would buy it for

me; but--but--I can't talk myself out in their language. They want

to make me over for an American lady, and I'm different." Tears

cut their way under her eyelids with a pricking pain as she went

on: "When I was poor, I was free, and could holler and do what I

like in my own house. Here I got to lie still like a mouse under a

broom. Between living up to my Fifth-Avenue daughter and keeping up

with the servants, I am like a sinner in the next world that is thrown

from one hell to another." The doorbell rang, and Hanneh Breineh

jumped up with a start.

"Oi weh! It must be the servant back already!" she exclaimed,

as she tore off her apron. "Oi weh! Let's quickly put the dishes

together in a dish-pan. If she sees I eat on the kitchen table, she

will look on me like the dirt under her feet."

Mrs. Pelz seized her shawl in haste.

"I better run home quick in my rags before your servant sees me."

"I'll speak to Abe about the job," said Hanneh Breineh, as she

pushed a bill into the hand of Mrs. Pelz, who edged out as the servant

entered.

* * * * *

"I'm having fried potato lotkes special for you, Benny," said

Hanneh Breineh, as the children gathered about the table for the family

dinner given in honor of Benny's success with his new play. "Do you

remember how you used to lick the fingers from them?"

"Oh, mother!" reproved Fanny. "Anyone hearing you would think we

were still in the pushcart district."

"Stop your nagging, sis, and let ma alone," commanded Benny,

patting his mother's arm affectionately. "I'm home only once a

month. Let her feed me what she pleases. My stomach is bomb-proof."

"Do I hear that the President is coming to your play?" said Abe,

as he stuffed a napkin over his diamond-studded shirt-front.

"Why shouldn't he come?" returned Benny. "The critics say

it's the greatest antidote for the race hatred created by the war. If

you want to know, he is coming to-night; and what's more, our box is

next to the President's."

"Nu, mammeh," sallied Jake, "did you ever dream in Delancey

Street that we should rub sleeves with the President?"

"I always said that Benny had more head than the rest of you,"

replied the mother.

As the laughter died away, Jake went on:

"Honor you are getting plenty; but how much mezummen does this play

bring you? Can I invest any of it in real estate for you?"

"I'm getting ten per cent royalties of the gross receipts,"

replied the youthful playwright.

"How much is that?" queried Hanneh Breineh.

"Enough to buy up all your fish-markets in Delancey Street,"

laughed Abe in good-natured raillery at his mother.

Her son's jest cut like a knife-thrust in her heart. She felt

her heart ache with the pain that she was shut out from their

successes. Each added triumph only widened the gulf. And when she tried

to bridge this gulf by asking questions, they only thrust her back upon

herself.

"Your fame has even helped me get my hat trade solid with the Four

Hundred," put in Fanny. "You bet I let Mrs. Van Suyden know that

our box is next to the President's. She said she would drop in to

meet you. Of course she let on to me that she hadn't seen the play

yet, though my designer said she saw her there on the opening night."

"Oh, Gosh, the toadies!" sneered Benny. "Nothing so sickens you

with success as the way people who once shoved you off the sidewalk

come crawling to you on their stomachs begging you to dine with

them."

"Say, that leading man of yours he's some class!" cried

Fanny. "That's the man I'm looking for. Will you invite him to

supper after the theater?"

The playwright turned to his mother.

"Say, ma," he said, laughingly, "how would you like a real actor

for a son-in-law?"

"She should worry," mocked Sam. "She'll be discussing with

him the future of the Greek drama. Too bad it doesn't happen to be

Warfield, or mother could give him tips on the 'Auctioneer.'"

Jake turned to his mother with a covert grin.

"I guess you'd have no objection if Fanny got next to Benny's

leading man. He makes at least fifteen hundred a week. That wouldn't

be such a bad addition to the family, would it?"

Again the bantering tone stabbed Hanneh Breineh. Everything in her

began to tremble and break loose.

"Why do you ask me?" she cried, throwing her napkin into her

plate. "Do I count for a person in this house? If I'll say

something, will you even listen to me? What is to me the grandest man

that my daughter could pick out? Another enemy in my house! Another

person to shame himself from me!" She swept in her children in one

glance of despairing anguish as she rose from the table. "What worth

is an old mother to American children? The President is coming to-night

to the theater, and none of you asked me to go." Unable to check the

rising tears, she fled toward the kitchen and banged the door.

They all looked at one another guiltily.

"Say, sis," Benny called out sharply, "what sort of frame-up is

this? Haven't you told mother that she was to go with us to-night?"

"Yes--I--" Fanny bit her lips as she fumbled evasively for

words. "I asked her if she wouldn't mind my taking her some other

time."

"Now you have made a mess of it!" fumed Benny. "Mother'll be

too hurt to go now."

"Well, I don't care," snapped Fanny. "I can't appear with

mother in a box at the theater. Can I introduce her to Mrs. Van

Suyden? And suppose your leading man should ask to meet me?"

"Take your time, sis. He hasn't asked yet," scoffed Benny.

"The more reason I shouldn't spoil my chances. You know

mother. She'll spill the beans that we come from Delancey Street the

minute we introduce her anywhere. Must I always have the black shadow

of my past trailing after me?"

"But have you no feelings for mother?" admonished Abe.

"I've tried harder than all of you to do my duty. I've _lived_

with her." She turned angrily upon them. "I've borne the shame

of mother while you bought her off with a present and a treat here and

there. God knows how hard I tried to civilize her so as not to have to

blush with shame when I take her anywhere. I dressed her in the most

stylish Paris models, but Delancey Street sticks out from every inch of

her. Whenever she opens her mouth, I'm done for. You fellows had your

chance to rise in the world because a man is free to go up as high as

he can reach up to; but I, with all my style and pep, can't get a man

my equal because a girl is always judged by her mother."

They were silenced by her vehemence, and unconsciously turned to Benny.

"I guess we all tried to do our best for mother," said Benny,

thoughtfully. "But wherever there is growth, there is pain and

heartbreak. The trouble with us is that the ghetto of the Middle Ages

and the children of the twentieth century have to live under one roof,

and--"

A sound of crashing dishes came from the kitchen, and the voice of

Hanneh Breineh resounded through the dining-room as she wreaked her

pent-up fury on the helpless servant.

"Oh, my nerves! I can't stand it any more! There will be no girl

again for another week!" cried Fanny.

"Oh, let up on the old lady," protested Abe. "Since she

can't take it out on us any more, what harm is it if she cusses the

servants?"

"If you fellows had to chase around employment agencies, you

wouldn't see anything funny about it. Why can't we move into a

hotel that will do away with the need of servants altogether?"

"I got it better," said Jake, consulting a notebook from his

pocket. "I have on my list an apartment on Riverside Drive where

there's only a small kitchenette; but we can do away with the

cooking, for there is a dining service in the building."

* * * * *

The new Riverside apartment to which Hanneh Breineh was removed by

her socially ambitious children was for the habitually active mother

an empty desert of enforced idleness. Deprived of her kitchen, Hanneh

Breineh felt robbed of the last reason for her existence. Cooking and

marketing and puttering busily with pots and pans gave her an excuse

for living and struggling and bearing up with her children. The lonely

idleness of Riverside Drive stunned all her senses and arrested all

her thoughts. It gave her that choked sense of being cut off from air,

from life, from everything warm and human. The cold indifference, the

each-for-himself look in the eyes of the people about her were like

stinging slaps in the face. Even the children had nothing real or human

in them. They were starched and stiff miniatures of their elders.

But the most unendurable part of the stifling life on Riverside Drive

was being forced to eat in the public dining-room. No matter how

hard she tried to learn polite table manners, she always found people

staring at her, and her daughter rebuking her for eating with the wrong

fork or guzzling the soup or staining the cloth.

In a fit of rebellion Hanneh Breineh resolved never to go down to

the public dining-room again, but to make use of the gas-stove in

the kitchenette to cook her own meals. That very day she rode down to

Delancey Street and purchased a new market-basket. For some time she

walked among the haggling pushcart venders, relaxing and swimming in

the warm waves of her old familiar past.

A fish-peddler held up a large carp in his black, hairy hand and waved

it dramatically:

"Women! Women! Fourteen cents a pound!"

He ceased his raucous shouting as he saw Hanneh Breineh in her rich

attire approach his cart.

"How much?" she asked, pointing to the fattest carp.

"Fifteen cents, lady," said the peddler, smirking as he raised his

price.

"Swindler! Didn't I hear you call fourteen cents?" shrieked

Hanneh Breineh, exultingly, the spirit of the penny chase surging in

her blood. Diplomatically, Hanneh Breineh turned as if to go, and the

fisherman seized her basket in frantic fear.

"I should live; I'm losing money on the fish, lady," whined the

peddler. "I'll let it down to thirteen cents for you only."

"Two pounds for a quarter, and not a penny more," said Hanneh

Breineh, thrilling again with the rare sport of bargaining, which had

been her chief joy in the good old days of poverty.

"Nu, I want to make the first sale for good luck." The peddler

threw the fish on the scale.

As he wrapped up the fish, Hanneh Breineh saw the driven look of

worry in his haggard eyes, and when he counted out the change from her

dollar, she waved it aside. "Keep it for your luck," she said, and

hurried off to strike a new bargain at a pushcart of onions.

Hanneh Breineh returned triumphantly with her purchases. The basket

under her arm gave forth the old, homelike odors of herring and

garlic, while the scaly tail of a four-pound carp protruded from its

newspaper wrapping. A gilded placard on the door of the apartment-house

proclaimed that all merchandise must be delivered through the trade

entrance in the rear; but Hanneh Breineh with her basket strode proudly

through the marble-paneled hall and rang nonchalantly for the elevator.

The uniformed hall-man, erect, expressionless, frigid with dignity,

stepped forward:

"Just a minute, madam. I'll call a boy to take up your basket for

you."

Hanneh Breineh, glaring at him, jerked the basket savagely from his

hands. "Mind your own business!" she retorted. "I'll take it

up myself. Do you think you're a Russian policeman to boss me in my

own house?"

Angry lines appeared on the countenance of the representative of social

decorum.

"It is against the rules, madam," he said, stiffly.

"You should sink into the earth with all your rules and brass

buttons. Ain't this America? Ain't this a free country? Can't I

take up in my own house what I buy with my own money?" cried Hanneh

Breineh, reveling in the opportunity to shower forth the volley of

invectives that had been suppressed in her for the weeks of deadly

dignity of Riverside Drive.

In the midst of this uproar Fanny came in with Mrs. Van Suyden. Hanneh

Breineh rushed over to her, crying:

"This bossy policeman won't let me take up my basket in the

elevator."

The daughter, unnerved with shame and confusion, took the basket in

her white-gloved hand and ordered the hall-boy to take it around to the

regular delivery entrance.

Hanneh Breineh was so hurt by her daughter's apparent defense of

the hall-man's rules that she utterly ignored Mrs. Van Suyden's

greeting and walked up the seven flights of stairs out of sheer spite.

"You see the tragedy of my life?" broke out Fanny, turning to

Mrs. Van Suyden.

"You poor child! You go right up to your dear, old lady mother, and

I'll come some other time."

Instantly Fanny regretted her words. Mrs. Van Suyden's pity only

roused her wrath the more against her mother.

Breathless from climbing the stairs, Hanneh Breineh entered the

apartment just as Fanny tore the faultless millinery creation from her

head and threw it on the floor in a rage.

"Mother, you are the ruination of my life! You have driven away

Mrs. Van Suyden, as you have driven away all my best friends. What do

you think we got this apartment for but to get rid of your fish smells

and your brawls with the servants? And here you come with a basket on

your arm as if you just landed from steerage! And this afternoon, of

all times, when Benny is bringing his leading man to tea. When will you

ever stop disgracing us?"

"When I'm dead," said Hanneh Breineh, grimly. "When the earth

will cover me up, then you'll be free to go your American way. I'm

not going to make myself over for a lady on Riverside Drive. I hate

you and all your swell friends. I'll not let myself be choked up here

by you or by that hall-boss policeman that is higher in your eyes than

your own mother."

"So that's your thanks for all we've done for you?" cried the

daughter.

"All you've done for me!" shouted Hanneh Breineh. "What have

you done for me? You hold me like a dog on a chain! It stands in the

Talmud; some children give their mothers dry bread and water and go to

heaven for it, and some give their mother roast duck and go to Gehenna

because it's not given with love."

"You want me to love you yet?" raged the daughter. "You knocked

every bit of love out of me when I was yet a kid. All the memories of

childhood I have is your everlasting cursing and yelling that we were

gluttons."

The bell rang sharply, and Hanneh Breineh flung open the door.

"Your groceries, ma'am," said the boy.

Hanneh Breineh seized the basket from him, and with a vicious fling

sent it rolling across the room, strewing its contents over the Persian

rugs and inlaid floor. Then seizing her hat and coat, she stormed out

of the apartment and down the stairs.

Mr. and Mrs. Pelz sat crouched and shivering over their meager supper

when the door opened, and Hanneh Breineh in fur coat and plumed hat

charged into the room.

"I come to cry out to you my bitter heart," she sobbed. "Woe is

me! It is so black for my eyes!"

"What is the matter with you, Hanneh Breineh?" cried Mrs. Pelz in

bewildered alarm.

"I am turned out of my own house by the brass-buttoned policeman that

bosses the elevator. Oi-i-i-i! Weh-h-h-h! What have I from my life? The

whole world rings with my son's play. Even the President came to see

it, and I, his mother, have not seen it yet. My heart is dying in me

like in a prison," she went on wailing. "I am starved out for a

piece of real eating. In that swell restaurant is nothing but napkins

and forks and lettuce-leaves. There are a dozen plates to every bite of

food. And it looks so fancy on the plate, but it's nothing but straw

in the mouth. I'm starving, but I can't swallow down their American

eating."

"Hanneh Breineh," said Mrs. Pelz, "you are sinning before

God. Look on your fur coat; it alone would feed a whole family for a

year. I never had yet a piece of fur trimming on a coat, and you are in

fur from the neck to the feet. I never had yet a piece of feather on a

hat, and your hat is all feathers."

"What are you envying me?" protested Hanneh Breineh. "What have

I from all my fine furs and feathers when my children are strangers

to me? All the fur coats in the world can't warm up the loneliness

inside my heart. All the grandest feathers can't hide the bitter

shame in my face that my children shame themselves from me."

Hanneh Breineh suddenly loomed over them like some ancient, heroic

figure of the Bible condemning unrighteousness.

"Why should my children shame themselves from me? From where did they

get the stuff to work themselves up in the world? Did they get it from

the air? How did they get all their smartness to rise over the people

around them? Why don't the children of born American mothers write

my Benny's plays? It is I, who never had a chance to be a person,

who gave him the fire in his head. If I would have had a chance to go

to school and learn the language, what couldn't I have been? It is

I and my mother and my mother's mother and my father and father's

father who had such a black life in Poland; it is our choked thoughts

and feelings that are flaming up in my children and making them great

in America. And yet they shame themselves from me!"

For a moment Mr. and Mrs. Pelz were hypnotized by the sweep of her

words. Then Hanneh Breineh sank into a chair in utter exhaustion. She

began to weep bitterly, her body shaking with sobs.

"Woe is me! For what did I suffer and hope on my children? A bitter

old age--my end. I'm so lonely!"

All the dramatic fire seemed to have left her. The spell was

broken. They saw the Hanneh Breineh of old, ever discontented, ever

complaining even in the midst of riches and plenty.

"Hanneh Breineh," said Mrs. Pelz, "the only trouble with you is

that you got it too good. People will tear the eyes out of your head

because you're complaining yet. If I only had your fur coat! If I

only had your diamonds! I have nothing. You have everything. You are

living on the fat of the land. You go right back home and thank God

that you don't have my bitter lot."

"You got to let me stay here with you," insisted Hanneh

Breineh. "I'll not go back to my children except when they bury

me. When they will see my dead face, they will understand how they

killed me."

Mrs. Pelz glanced nervously at her husband. They barely had enough

covering for their one bed; how could they possibly lodge a visitor?

"I don't want to take up your bed," said Hanneh Breineh. "I

don't care if I have to sleep on the floor or on the chairs, but

I'll stay here for the night."

Seeing that she was bent on staying, Mr. Pelz prepared to sleep by

putting a few chairs next to the trunk, and Hanneh Breineh was invited

to share the rickety bed with Mrs. Pelz.

The mattress was full of lumps and hollows. Hanneh Breineh lay cramped

and miserable, unable to stretch out her limbs. For years she had been

accustomed to hair mattresses and ample woolen blankets, so that though

she covered herself with her fur coat, she was too cold to sleep. But

worse than the cold were the creeping things on the wall. And as the

lights were turned low, the mice came through the broken plaster and

raced across the floor. The foul odors of the kitchen-sink added to the

night of horrors.

"Are you going back home?" asked Mrs. Pelz, as Hanneh Breineh put

on her hat and coat the next morning.

"I don't know where I'm going," she replied, as she put a bill

into Mrs. Pelz's hand.

For hours Hanneh Breineh walked through the crowded ghetto streets. She

realized that she no longer could endure the sordid ugliness of her

past, and yet she could not go home to her children. She only felt that

she must go on and on.

In the afternoon a cold, drizzling rain set in. She was worn out from

the sleepless night and hours of tramping. With a piercing pain in her

heart she at last turned back and boarded the subway for Riverside

Drive. She had fled from the marble sepulcher of the Riverside

apartment to her old home in the ghetto; but now she knew that she

could not live there again. She had outgrown her past by the habits of

years of physical comforts, and these material comforts that she could

no longer do without choked and crushed the life within her.

A cold shudder went through Hanneh Breineh as she approached the

apartment-house. Peering through the plate glass of the door she

saw the face of the uniformed hall-man. For a hesitating moment she

remained standing in the drizzling rain, unable to enter, and yet

knowing full well that she would have to enter.

Then suddenly Hanneh Breineh began to laugh. She realized that it was

the first time she had laughed since her children had become rich. But

it was the hard laugh of bitter sorrow. Tears streamed down her

furrowed cheeks as she walked slowly up the granite steps.

"The fat of the land!" muttered Hanneh Breineh, with a choking

sob as the hall-man with immobile face deferentially swung open the

door--"the fat of the land!"

MY OWN PEOPLE

With the suitcase containing all her worldly possessions under

her arm, Sophie Sapinsky elbowed her way through the noisy

ghetto crowds. Pushcart peddlers and pullers-in shouted and

gesticulated. Women with market-baskets pushed and shoved one another,

eyes straining with the one thought--how to get the food a penny

cheaper. With the same strained intentness, Sophie scanned each

tenement, searching for a room cheap enough for her dwindling means.

In a dingy basement window a crooked sign, in straggling, penciled

letters, caught Sophie's eye: "Room to let, a bargain, cheap."

The exuberant phrasing was quite in keeping with the extravagant

dilapidation of the surroundings. "This is the very place," thought

Sophie. "There couldn't be nothing cheaper in all New York."

At the foot of the basement steps she knocked.

"Come in!" a voice answered.

As she opened the door she saw an old man bending over a pot of

potatoes on a shoemaker's bench. A group of children in all degrees

of rags surrounded him, greedily snatching at the potatoes he handed

out.

Sophie paused for an instant, but her absorption in her own problem was

too great to halt the question: "Is there a room to let?"

"Hanneh Breineh, in the back, has a room." The old man was so

preoccupied filling the hungry hands that he did not even look up.

Sophie groped her way to the rear hall. A gaunt-faced woman answered

her inquiry with loquacious enthusiasm. "A grand room for the

money. I'll let it down to you only for three dollars a month. In the

whole block is no bigger bargain. I should live so."

As she talked, the woman led her through the dark hall into an airshaft

room. A narrow window looked out into the bottom of a chimney-like pit,

where lay the accumulated refuse from a score of crowded kitchens.

"Oi weh!" gasped Sophie, throwing open the sash. "No air and no

light. Outside shines the sun and here it's so dark."

"It ain't so dark. It's only a little shady. Let me only

turn up the gas for you and you'll quick see everything like with

sunshine."

The claw-fingered flame revealed a rusty, iron cot, an inverted potato

barrel that served for a table, and two soap-boxes for chairs.

Sophie felt of the cot. It sagged and flopped under her touch. "The

bed has only three feet!" she exclaimed in dismay.

"You can't have Rockefeller's palace for three dollars a

month," defended Hanneh Breineh, as she shoved one of the boxes

under the legless corner of the cot. "If the bed ain't so steady,

so you got good neighbors. Upstairs lives Shprintzeh Gittle, the

herring-woman. You can buy by her the biggest bargains in fish,

a few days older.... What she got left over from the Sabbath, she

sells to the neighbors cheap.... In the front lives Shmendrik, the

shoemaker. I'll tell you the truth, he ain't no real shoemaker. He

never yet made a pair of whole shoes in his life. He's a learner

from the old country--a tzadik, a saint; but every time he sees in

the street a child with torn feet, he calls them in and patches them

up. His own eating, the last bite from his mouth, he divides up with

them."

"Three dollars," deliberated Sophie, scarcely hearing Hanneh

Breineh's chatter. "I will never find anything cheaper. It has a

door to lock and I can shut this woman out ... I'll take it," she

said, handing her the money.

Hanneh Breineh kissed the greasy bills gloatingly. "I'll treat you

like a mother! You'll have it good by me like in your own home."

"Thanks--but I got no time to shmoos. I got to be alone to get my

work done."

The rebuff could not penetrate Hanneh Breineh's joy over the sudden

possession of three dollars.

"Long years on you! May we be to good luck to one another!" was

Hanneh Breineh's blessing as she closed the door.

Alone in her room--_her_ room, securely hers--yet with the flash of

triumph, a stab of bitterness. All that was hers--so wretched and so

ugly! Had her eager spirit, eager to give and give, no claim to a bit

of beauty--a shred of comfort?

Perhaps her family was right in condemning her rashness. Was it

worth while to give up the peace of home, the security of a regular

job--suffer hunger, loneliness, and want--for what? For something she

knew in her heart was beyond her reach. Would her writing ever amount

to enough to vindicate the uprooting of her past? Would she ever become

articulate enough to express beautifully what she saw and felt? What

had she, after all, but a stifling, sweatshop experience, a meager,

night-school education, and this wild, blind hunger to release the

dumbness that choked her?

Sophie spread her papers on the cot beside her. Resting her elbows on

the potato barrel, she clutched her pencil with tense fingers. In the

notebook before her were a hundred beginnings, essays, abstractions,

outbursts of chaotic moods. She glanced through the titles: "Believe

in Yourself," "The Quest of the Ideal."

Meaningless tracings on the paper, her words seemed to her now--a

restless spirit pawing at the air. The intensity of experience,

the surge of emotion that had been hers when she wrote--where were

they? The words had failed to catch the life-beat--had failed to

register the passion she had poured into them.

Perhaps she was not a writer, after all. Had the years and years of

night-study been in vain? Choked with discouragement, the cry broke

from her, "O--God--God help me! I feel--I see, but it all dies in

me--dumb!"

* * * * *

Tedious days passed into weeks. Again Sophie sat staring into her

notebook. "There's nothing here that's alive. Not a word yet says

what's in me ...

"But it _is_ in me!" With clenched fist she smote her bosom. "It

must be in me! I believe in it! I got to get it out--even if it tears

my flesh in pieces--even if it kills me!...

"But these words--these flat, dead words ...

"Whether I can write or can't write--I can't stop writing. I

can't rest. I can't breathe. There's no peace, no running away

for me on earth except in the struggle to give out what's in me. The

beat from my heart--the blood from my veins--must flow out into my

words."

She returned to her unfinished essay, "Believe in Yourself." Her

mind groping--clutching at the misty incoherence that clouded her

thoughts--she wrote on.

"These sentences are yet only wood--lead; but I can't help

it--I'll push on--on--I'll not eat--I'll not sleep--I'll not

move from this spot till I get it to say on the paper what I got in my

heart!"

Slowly the dead words seemed to begin to breathe. Her eyes

brightened. Her cheeks flushed. Her very pencil trembled with the eager

onrush of words.

Then a sharp rap sounded on her door. With a gesture of irritation

Sophie put down her pencil and looked into the burning, sunken eyes of

her neighbor, Hanneh Breineh.

"I got yourself a glass of tea, good friend. It ain't much I got to

give away, but it's warm even if it's nothing."

Sophie scowled. "You mustn't bother yourself with me. I'm so

busy--thanks."

"Don't thank me yet so quick. I got no sugar." Hanneh Breineh

edged herself into the room confidingly. "At home, in Poland, I not

only had sugar for tea--but even jelly--a jelly that would lift you up

to heaven. I thought in America everything would be so plenty, I could

drink the tea out from my sugar-bowl. But ach! Not in Poland did my

children starve like in America!"

Hanneh Breineh, in a friendly manner, settled herself on the sound end

of the bed, and began her jeremiad.

"Yosef, my man, ain't no bread-giver. Already he got consumption

the second year. One week he works and nine weeks he lays sick."

In despair Sophie gathered her papers, wondering how to get the woman

out of her room. She glanced through the page she had written, but

Hanneh Breineh, unconscious of her indifference, went right on.

"How many times it is tearing the heart out from my body--should I

take Yosef's milk to give to the baby, or the baby's milk to give

to Yosef? If he was dead the pensions they give to widows would help

feed my children. Now I got only the charities to help me. A black year

on them! They should only have to feed their own children on what they

give me."

Resolved not to listen to the intruder, Sophie debated within

herself: "Should I call my essay 'Believe in Yourself,' or

wouldn't it be stronger to say, 'Trust Yourself'? But if I say,

'Trust Yourself,' wouldn't they think that I got the words from

Emerson?"

Hanneh Breineh's voice went on, but it sounded to Sophie like a faint

buzzing from afar. "Gotteniu! How much did it cost me my life to go

and swear myself that my little Fannie--only skin and bones--that she

is already fourteen! How it chokes me the tears every morning when

I got to wake her and push her out to the shop when her eyes are yet

shutting themselves with sleep!"

Sophie glanced at her wrist-watch as it ticked away the precious

minutes. She must get rid of the woman! Had she not left her own

sister, sacrificed all comfort, all association, for solitude and its

golden possibilities? For the first time in her life she had the chance

to be by herself and think. And now, the thoughts which a moment ago

had seemed like a flock of fluttering birds had come so close--and this

woman with her sordid wailing had scattered them.

"I'm a savage, a beast, but I got to ask her to get out--this very

minute," resolved Sophie. But before she could summon the courage to

do what she wanted to do, there was a timid knock at the door, and the

wizened little Fannie, her face streaked with tears, stumbled in.

"The inspector said it's a lie. I ain't yet fourteen," she

whimpered.

Hanneh Breineh paled. "Woe is me! Sent back from the shop? God

from the world--is there no end to my troubles? Why didn't you hide

yourself when you saw the inspector come?"

"I was running to hide myself under the table, but she caught me and

she said she'll take me to the Children's Society and arrest me and

my mother for sending me to work too soon."

"Arrest me?" shrieked Hanneh Breineh, beating her breast. "Let

them only come and arrest me! I'll show America who I am! Let

them only begin themselves with me!... Black is for my eyes ... the

groceryman will not give us another bread till we pay him the bill!"

"The inspector said ..." The child's brow puckered in an effort

to recall the words.

"What did the inspector said? Gotteniu!" Hanneh Breineh wrung her

hands in passionate entreaty. "Listen only once to my prayer! Send

on the inspector only a quick death! I only wish her to have her own

house with twenty-four rooms and each of the twenty-four rooms should

be twenty-four beds and the chills and the fever should throw her from

one bed to another!"

"Hanneh Breineh, still yourself a little," entreated Sophie.

"How can I still myself without Fannie's wages? Bitter is me! Why

do I have to live so long?"

"The inspector said ..."

"What did the inspector said? A thunder should strike the

inspector! Ain't I as good a mother as other mothers? Wouldn't I

better send my children to school? But who'll give us to eat? And

who'll pay us the rent?"

Hanneh Breineh wiped her red-lidded eyes with the corner of her apron.

"The president from America should only come to my bitter heart. Let

him go fighting himself with the pushcarts how to get the eating

a penny cheaper. Let him try to feed his children on the money the

charities give me and we'd see if he wouldn't better send his

littlest ones to the shop better than to let them starve before

his eyes. Woe is me! What for did I come to America? What's my

life--nothing but one terrible, never-stopping fight with the grocer

and the butcher and the landlord ..."

Suddenly Sophie's resentment for her lost morning was forgotten. The

crying waste of Hanneh Breineh's life lay open before her eyes

like pictures in a book. She saw her own life in Hanneh Breineh's

life. Her efforts to write were like Hanneh Breineh's efforts to feed

her children. Behind her life and Hanneh Breineh's life she saw the

massed ghosts of thousands upon thousands beating--beating out their

hearts against rock barriers.

"The inspector said ..." Fannie timidly attempted again to

explain.

"The inspector!" shrieked Hanneh Breineh, as she seized hold of

Fannie in a rage. "Hellfire should burn the inspector! Tell me again

about the inspector and I'll choke the life out from you--"

Sophie sprang forward to protect the child from the mother. "She's

only trying to tell you something."

"Why should she yet throw salt on my wounds? If there was enough

bread in the house would I need an inspector to tell me to send her to

school? If America is so interested in poor people's children, then

why don't they give them to eat till they should go to work? What

learning can come into a child's head when the stomach is empty?"

A clutter of feet down the creaking cellar steps, a scuffle of broken

shoes, and a chorus of shrill voices, as the younger children rushed in

from school.

"Mamma--what's to eat?"

"It smells potatoes!"

"Pfui! The pot is empty! It smells over from Cohen's."

"Jake grabbed all the bread!"

"Mamma--he kicked the piece out from my hands!"

"Mamma--it's so empty in my stomach! Ain't there nothing?"

"Gluttons--wolves--thieves!" Hanneh Breineh shrieked. "I should

only live to bury you all in one day!"

The children, regardless of Hanneh Breineh's invectives, swarmed

around her like hungry bees, tearing at her apron, her skirt. Their

voices rose in increased clamor, topped only by their mother's

imprecations. "Gotteniu! Tear me away from these leeches on my

neck! Send on them only a quick death!... Only a minute's peace

before I die!"

"Hanneh Breineh--children! What's the matter?" Shmendrik stood at

the door. The sweet quiet of the old man stilled the raucous voices as

the coming of evening stills the noises of the day.

"There's no end to my troubles! Hear them hollering for bread,

and the grocer stopped to give till the bill is paid. Woe is me! Fannie

sent home by the inspector and not a crumb in the house!"

"I got something." The old man put his hands over the heads of the

children in silent benediction. "All come in by me. I got sent me a

box of cake."

"Cake!" The children cried, catching at the kind hands and

snuggling about the shabby coat.

"Yes. Cake and nuts and raisins and even a bottle of wine."

The children leaped and danced around him in their wild burst of joy.

"Cake and wine--a box--to you? Have the charities gone crazy?"

Hanneh Breineh's eyes sparkled with light and laughter.

"No--no," Shmendrik explained hastily. "Not from the charities--from

a friend--for the holidays."

Shmendrik nodded invitingly to Sophie, who was standing in the door of

her room. "The roomerkeh will also give a taste with us our party?"

"Sure will she!" Hanneh Breineh took Sophie by the arm. "Who'll

say no in this black life to cake and wine?"

Young throats burst into shrill cries: "Cake and wine--wine and

cake--raisins and nuts--nuts and raisins!" The words rose in a

triumphant chorus. The children leaped and danced in time to their

chant, almost carrying the old man bodily into his room in the wildness

of their joy.

The contagion of this sudden hilarity erased from Sophie's mind the

last thought of work and she found herself seated with the others on

the cobbler's bench.

From under his cot the old man drew forth a wooden box. Lifting the

cover he held up before wondering eyes a large frosted cake embedded in

raisins and nuts.

Amid the shouts of glee Shmendrik now waved aloft a large bottle of

grape-juice.

The children could contain themselves no longer and dashed forward.

"Shah--shah! Wait only!" He gently halted their onrush and waved

them back to their seats.

"The glasses for the wine!" Hanneh Breineh rushed about hither and

thither in happy confusion. From the sink, the shelf, the window-sill,

she gathered cracked glasses, cups without handles--anything that would

hold even a few drops of the yellow wine.

Sacrificial solemnity filled the basement as the children breathlessly

watched Shmendrik cut the precious cake. Mouths--even eyes--watered

with the intensity of their emotion.

With almost religious fervor Hanneh Breineh poured the grape-juice

into the glasses held in the trembling hands of the children. So

overwhelming was the occasion that none dared to taste till the ritual

was completed. The suspense was agonizing as one and all waited for

Shmendrik's signal.

"Hanneh Breineh--you drink from my Sabbath wine-glass!"

Hanneh Breineh clinked glasses with Schmendrik. "Long years on

you--long years on us all!" Then she turned to Sophie, clinked

glasses once more. "May you yet marry yourself from our basement to a

millionaire!" Then she lifted the glass to her lips.

The spell was broken. With a yell of triumph the children gobbled the

cake in huge mouthfuls and sucked the golden liquid. All the traditions

of wealth and joy that ever sparkled from the bubbles of champagne

smiled at Hanneh Breineh from her glass of California grape-juice.

"Ach!" she sighed. "How good it is to forget your troubles, and

only those that's got troubles have the chance to forget them!"

She sipped the grape-juice leisurely, thrilled into ecstacy with each

lingering drop. "How it laughs yet in me, the life, the minute I turn

my head from my worries!"

With growing wonder in her eyes, Sophie watched Hanneh Breineh. This

ragged wreck of a woman--how passionately she clung to every atom of

life! Hungrily, she burned through the depths of every experience. How

she flared against wrongs--and how every tiny spark of pleasure blazed

into joy!

Within a half-hour this woman had touched the whole range of human

emotions, from bitterest agony to dancing joy. The terrible despair

at the onrush of her starving children when she cried out, "O that

I should only bury you all in one day!" And now the leaping light of

the words: "How it laughs yet in me, the life, the minute I turn my

head from my worries."

"Ach, if I could only write like Hanneh Breineh talks!" thought

Sophie. "Her words dance with a thousand colors. Like a rainbow it

flows from her lips." Sentences from her own essays marched before

her, stiff and wooden. How clumsy, how unreal, were her most labored

phrases compared to Hanneh Breineh's spontaneity. Fascinated, she

listened to Hanneh Breineh, drinking her words as a thirst-perishing

man drinks water. Every bubbling phrase filled her with a drunken

rapture to create.

"Up till now I was only trying to write from my head. It wasn't

real--it wasn't life. Hanneh Breineh is real. Hanneh Breineh is

life."

"Ach! What do the rich people got but dried-up dollars? Pfui

on them and their money!" Hanneh Breineh held up her glass to be

refilled. "Let me only win a fortune on the lotteree and move myself

in my own bought house. Let me only have my first hundred dollars

in the bank and I'll lift up my head like a person and tell the

charities to eat their own cornmeal. I'll get myself an automobile

like the kind rich ladies and ride up to their houses on Fifth Avenue

and feed them only once on the eating they like so good for me and my

children."

With a smile of benediction Shmendrik refilled the glasses and cut for

each of his guests another slice of cake. Then came the handful of nuts

and raisins.

As the children were scurrying about for hammers and iron lasts with

which to crack their nuts, the basement door creaked. Unannounced, a

woman entered--the "friendly visitor" of the charities. Her look of

awful amazement swept the group of merrymakers.

"Mr. Shmendrik!--Hanneh Breineh!" Indignation seethed in her

voice. "What's this? A feast--a birthday?"

Gasps--bewildered glances--a struggle for utterance!

"I came to make my monthly visit--evidently I'm not needed."

Shmendrik faced the accusing eyes of the "friendly visitor."

"Holiday eating ..."

"Oh--I'm glad you're so prosperous."

Before any one had gained presence of mind enough to explain things,

the door had clanked. The "friendly visitor" had vanished.

"Pfui!" Hanneh Breineh snatched up her glass and drained its

contents. "What will she do now? Will we get no more dry bread from

the charities because once we ate cake?"

"What for did she come?" asked Sophie.

"To see that we don't over-eat ourselves!" returned Hanneh

Breineh. "She's a 'friendly visitor'! She learns us how to cook

cornmeal. By pictures and lectures she shows us how the poor people

should live without meat, without milk, without butter, and without

eggs. Always it's on the end of my tongue to ask her, 'You learned

us to do without so much, why can't you yet learn us how to eat

without eating?'"

The children seized the last crumbs of cake that Shmendrik handed them

and rushed for the street.

"What a killing look was on her face," said Sophie. "Couldn't

she be a little glad for your gladness?"

"Charity ladies--gladness?" The joy of the grape-wine still

rippled in Hanneh Breineh's laughter. "For poor people is only

cornmeal. Ten cents a day--to feed my children!"

Still in her rollicking mood Hanneh Breineh picked up the baby and

tossed it like a Bacchante. "Could you be happy a lot with ten cents

in your stomach? Ten cents--half a can of condensed milk--then fill

yourself the rest with water!... Maybe yet feed you with all water and

save the ten-cent pieces to buy you a carriage like the Fifth Avenue

babies!..."

The soft sound of a limousine purred through the area grating and two

well-fed figures in seal-skin coats, led by the "friendly visitor,"

appeared at the door.

"Mr. Bernstein, you can see for yourself." The "friendly

visitor" pointed to the table.

The merry group shrank back. It was as if a gust of icy wind had swept

all the joy and laughter from the basement.

"You are charged with intent to deceive and obtain assistance by

dishonest means," said Mr. Bernstein.

"Dishonest?" Shmendrik paled.

Sophie's throat strained with passionate protest, but no words came

to her release.

"A friend--a friend"--stammered Shmendrik--"sent me the holiday

eating."

The superintendent of the Social Betterment Society faced him

accusingly. "You told us that you had no friends when you applied to

us for assistance."

"My friend--he knew me in my better time." Shmendrik flushed

painfully. "I was once a scholar--respected. I wanted by this one

friend to hold myself like I was."

Mr. Bernstein had taken from the bookshelf a number of letters, glanced

through them rapidly and handed them one by one to the deferential

superintendent.

Shmendrik clutched at his heart in an agony of humiliation. Suddenly

his bent body straightened. His eyes dilated. "My letters--my

life--you dare?"

"Of course we dare!" The superintendent returned Shmendrik's

livid gaze, made bold by the confidence that what he was doing was the

only scientific method of administering philanthropy. "These dollars,

so generously given, must go to those most worthy.... I find in these

letters references to gifts of fruit and other luxuries you did not

report at our office."

"He never kept nothing for himself!" Hanneh Breineh broke in

defensively. "He gave it all for the children."

Ignoring the interruption Mr. Bernstein turned to the "friendly

visitor." "I'm glad you brought my attention to this case. It's

but one of the many impositions on our charity ... Come ..."

"Kossacks! Pogromschiks!" Sophie's rage broke at last. "You

call yourselves Americans? You dare call yourselves Jews? You bosses of

the poor! This man Shmendrik, whose house you broke into, whom you made

to shame like a beggar--he is the one Jew from whom the Jews can be

proud! He gives all he is--all he has--as God gives. _He is_ charity.

"But you--you are the greed--the shame of the Jews! _All-right-niks_--fat

bellies in fur coats! What do you give from yourselves?

You may eat and bust eating! Nothing you give till you've

stuffed yourselves so full that your hearts are dead!"

The door closed in her face. Her wrath fell on indifferent backs as the

visitors mounted the steps to the street.

Shmendrik groped blindly for the Bible. In a low, quavering voice,

he began the chant of the oppressed--the wail of the downtrodden. "I

am afraid, and a trembling taketh hold of my flesh. Wherefore do the

wicked live, become old, yea, mighty in power?"

Hanneh Breineh and the children drew close around the old man. They

were weeping--unconscious of their weeping--deep-buried memories roused

by the music, the age-old music of the Hebrew race.

Through the grating Sophie saw the limousine pass. The chant flowed

on: "Their houses are safe from fear; neither is the rod of God upon

them."

Silently Sophie stole back to her room. She flung herself on the cot,

pressed her fingers to her burning eyeballs. For a long time she lay

rigid, clenched--listening to the drumming of her heart like the sea

against rock barriers. Presently the barriers burst. Something in her

began pouring itself out. She felt for her pencil--paper--and began

to write. Whether she reached out to God or man she knew not, but she

wrote on and on all through that night.

The gray light entering her grated window told her that beyond was

dawn. Sophie looked up: "Ach! At last it writes itself in me!"

she whispered triumphantly. "It's not me--it's their cries--my

own people--crying in me! Hanneh Breineh, Shmendrik, they will not be

stilled in me, till all America stops to listen."

HOW I FOUND AMERICA

Part I

Every breath I drew was a breath of fear, every shadow a stifling

shock, every footfall struck on my heart like the heavy boot of the

Cossack.

On a low stool in the middle of the only room in our mud hut sat my

father--his red beard falling over the Book of Isaiah open before

him. On the tile stove, on the benches that were our beds, even on the

earthen floor, sat the neighbors' children, learning from him the

ancient poetry of the Hebrew race.

As he chanted, the children repeated:

"The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness,

Prepare ye the way of the Lord.

Make straight in the desert a highway for our God.

"Every valley shall be exalted,

And every mountain and hill shall be made low,

And the crooked shall be made straight,

And the rough places plain.

"And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed,

And all flesh shall see it together."

Undisturbed by the swaying and chanting of teacher and pupils, old

Kakah, our speckled hen, with her brood of chicks, strutted and pecked

at the potato-peelings which fell from my mother's lap, as she

prepared our noon meal.

I stood at the window watching the road, lest the Cossack come upon us

unawares to enforce the ukaz of the Czar, which would tear the bread

from our mouths: "No Chadir [Hebrew school] shall be held in a room

used for cooking and sleeping."

With one eye I watched ravenously my mother cutting chunks of black

bread. At last the potatoes were ready. She poured them out of the iron

pot into a wooden bowl and placed them in the center of the table.

Instantly the swaying and chanting ceased, the children rushed

forward. The fear of the Cossacks was swept away from my heart by the

fear that the children would get my potato.

The sentry deserted his post. With a shout of joy I seized my portion

and bit a huge mouthful of mealy delight.

At that moment the door was driven open by the blow of an iron

heel. The Cossack's whip swished through the air. Screaming, we

scattered.

The children ran out--our livelihood gone with them.

"Oi weh," wailed my mother, clutching her breast, "is there a God

over us--and sees all this?"

With grief-glazed eyes my father muttered a broken prayer as the

Cossack thundered the ukaz: "A thousand rubles fine or a year in

prison if you are ever found again teaching children where you're

eating and sleeping."

"Gottuniu!" pleaded my mother, "would you tear the last skin from

our bones? Where else can we be eating and sleeping? Or should we keep

chadir in the middle of the road? Have we houses with separate rooms

like the Czar?"

Ignoring my mother's entreaties the Cossack strode out of the hut. My

father sank into a chair, his head bowed in the silent grief of the

helpless.

"God from the world"--my mother wrung her hands--"is there no end

to our troubles? When will the earth cover me and my woes?"

I watched the Cossack disappear down the road. All at once I saw the

whole village running toward us. I dragged my mother to the window to

see the approaching crowd.

"Gewalt! What more is falling over our heads?" she cried in alarm.

Masheh Mindel, the water-carrier's wife, headed a wild procession.

The baker, the butcher, the shoemaker, the tailor, the goat-herd,

the workers of the fields, with their wives and children,

pressed toward us through a cloud of dust.

Masheh Mindel, almost fainting, fell in front of the doorway. "A

letter from America!" she gasped.

"A letter from America!" echoed the crowd, as they snatched the

letter from her and thrust it into my father's hands.

"Read! Read!" they shouted tumultuously.

My father looked through the letter, his lips uttering no sound. In

breathless suspense the crowd gazed at him. Their eyes shone with

wonder and reverence for the only man in the village who could read.

Masheh Mindel crouched at his feet, her neck stretched toward him to

catch each precious word of the letter.

"To my worthy wife, Masheh Mindel, and to my loving son, Susha

Feifel, and to my precious darling daughter, the apple of my eye, the

pride of my life, Tzipkeleh!

"Long years and good luck on you! May the blessings from heaven fall

over your beloved heads and save you from all harm!

"First I come to tell you that I am well and in good health. May I

hear the same from you.

"Secondly, I am telling you that my sun is beginning to shine in

America. I am becoming a person--a business man.

"I have for myself a stand in the most crowded part of America,

where people are as thick as flies and every day is like market-day

by a fair. My business is from bananas and apples. The day begins

with my pushcart full of fruit, and the day never ends before I count

up at least $2.00 profit--that means four rubles. Stand before your

eyes ... I ... Gedalyeh Mindel, four rubles a day, twenty-four rubles

a week!"

* * * * *

"Gedalyeh Mindel, the water-carrier, twenty-four roubles a

week ..." The words leaped like fire in the air.

We gazed at his wife, Masheh Mindel--a dried-out bone of a woman.

"Masheh Mindel, with a husband in America--Masheh Mindel, the wife of

a man earning twenty-four rubles a week!"

We looked at her with new reverence. Already she was a being from

another world. The dead, sunken eyes became alive with light. The worry

for bread that had tightened the skin of her cheek-bones was gone. The

sudden surge of happiness filled out her features, flushing her face as

with wine.

The two starved children clinging to her skirts, dazed with excitement,

only dimly realized their good fortune by the envious glances of the

others.

"Thirdly, I come to tell you," the letter went on, "white bread

and meat I eat every day just like the millionaires.

"Fourthly, I have to tell you that I am no more Gedalyeh

Mindel--_Mister_ Mindel they call me in America.

"Fifthly, Masheh Mindel and my dear children, in America there are no

mud huts where cows and chickens and people live all together. I have

for myself a separate room with a closed door, and before any one can

come to me, I can give a say, 'Come in,' or 'Stay out,' like a

king in a palace.

"Lastly, my darling family and people of the Village of Sukovoly,

there is no Czar in America."

* * * * *

My father paused; the hush was stifling. No Czar--no Czar in

America! Even the little babies repeated the chant: "No Czar in

America!"

* * * * *

"In America they ask everybody who should be the President, and I,

Gedalyeh Mindel, when I take out my Citizens papers, will have as much

to say who shall be the next President in America, as Mr. Rockefeller

the greatest millionaire.

"Fifty rubles I am sending you for your ship-ticket to America. And

may all Jews who suffer in Goluth from ukazes and pogroms live yet to

lift up their heads like me, Gedalyeh Mindel, in America."

* * * * *

Fifty rubles! A ship-ticket to America! That so much good luck should

fall on one head! A savage envy bit me. Gloomy darts from narrowed eyes

stabbed Masheh Mindel.

Why should not we too have a chance to get away from this dark

land? Has not every heart the same hunger for America? The same longing

to live and laugh and breathe like a free human being? America is for

all. Why should only Masheh Mindel and her children have a chance to

the new world?

Murmuring and gesticulating the crowd dispersed.

Each one knew every one else's thought: How to get to America. What

could they pawn? From where could they borrow for a ship-ticket?

Silently we followed my father back into the hut from which the Cossack

had driven us a while before.

We children looked from mother to father and from father to mother.

"Gottuniu! The Czar himself is pushing us to America by this last

ukaz." My mother's face lighted up the hut like a lamp.

"Meshugeneh Yidini!" admonished my father. "Always your head in

the air. What--where--America? With what money? Can dead people lift

themselves up to dance?"

"Dance?" The samovar and the brass pots rang and reechoed with

my mother's laughter. "I could dance myself over the waves of the

ocean to America."

In amazed delight at my mother's joy we children rippled and chuckled

with her.

My father paced the room--his face dark with dread for the morrow.

"Empty hands--empty pockets--yet it dreams itself in you America."

"Who is poor who has hopes on America?" flaunted my mother.

"Sell my red quilted petticoat that grandmother left for my dowry,"

I urged in excitement.

"Sell the feather beds, sell the samovar," chorused the children.

"Sure we can sell everything--the goat and all the winter things,"

added my mother; "it must be always summer in America."

I flung my arms around my brother and he seized Bessie by the curls,

and we danced about the room crazy with joy.

"Beggars!" laughed my mother, "why are you so happy with

yourselves? How will you go to America without a shirt on your

back--without shoes on your feet?"

But we ran out into the road, shouting and singing: "We'll sell

everything we got--we'll go to America."

"White bread and meat we'll eat every day--in America! In

America!"

That very evening we fetched Berel Zalman, the usurer, and showed him

all our treasures, piled up in the middle of the hut.

"Look, all these fine feather beds, Berel Zalman," urged my mother;

"this grand fur coat came from Nijny itself. My grandfather bought it

at the fair."

I held up my red quilted petticoat, the supreme sacrifice of my

ten-year-old life.

Even my father shyly pushed forward the samovar. "It can hold enough

tea for the whole village."

"Only a hundred rubles for them all," pleaded my mother; "only

enough to lift us to America. Only one hundred little rubles."

"A hundred rubles? Pfui!" sniffed the pawnbroker. "Forty is

overpaid. Not even thirty is it worth."

But coaxing and cajoling my mother got a hundred rubles out of him.

* * * * *

Steerage--dirty bundles--foul odors--seasick humanity--but I saw and

heard nothing of the foulness and ugliness around me. I floated in

showers of sunshine; visions upon visions of the new world opened

before me.

From lips to lips flowed the golden legend of the golden country:

"In America you can say what you feel--you can voice your thoughts in

the open streets without fear of a Cossack."

"In America is a home for everybody. The land is your land. Not like

in Russia where you feel yourself a stranger in the village where you

were born and raised--the village in which your father and grandfather

lie buried."

"Everybody is with everybody alike, in America. Christians and Jews

are brothers together."

"An end to the worry for bread. An end to the fear of the bosses over

you. Everybody can do what he wants with his life in America."

"There are no high or low in America. Even the President holds hands

with Gedalyeh Mindel."

"Plenty for all. Learning flows free like milk and honey."

* * * * *

"Learning flows free."

The words painted pictures in my mind. I saw before me free schools,

free colleges, free libraries, where I could learn and learn and keep

on learning.

In our village was a school, but only for Christian children. In the

schools of America I'd lift up my head and laugh and dance--a child

with other children. Like a bird in the air, from sky to sky, from star

to star, I'd soar and soar.

"Land! Land!" came the joyous shout.

"America! We're in America!" cried my mother, almost smothering

us in her rapture.

All crowded and pushed on deck. They strained and stretched to get the

first glimpse of the "golden country," lifting their children on

their shoulders that they might see beyond them.

Men fell on their knees to pray. Women hugged their babies and

wept. Children danced. Strangers embraced and kissed like old

friends. Old men and women had in their eyes a look of young people

in love.

Age-old visions sang themselves in me--songs of freedom of an oppressed

people.

America!--America!