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AGAINST THE CURRENT
EDWARD A. STEINER
Against the Current
Simple Chapters from a Complex Life.
12mo, cloth, net $1.25
The Immigrant Tide--
Its Ebb and Flow
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On the Trail of the Immigrant
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A Tale of the Old World and the New.
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Tolstoy, the Man and His
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A Biographical Interpretation
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Against the Current
Simple Chapters
_from_
A Complex Life
By
EDWARD A. STEINER
_Author of "On the Trail of the Immigrant,"
Etc., etc._
[Illustration: colophon]
NEW YORK CHICAGO TORONTO
Fleming H. Revell Company
LONDON AND EDINBURGH
Copyright, 1910, by
FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY
New York: 158 Fifth Avenue
Chicago: 80 Wabash Avenue
Toronto: 25 Richmond Street, W.
London: 21 Paternoster Square
Edinburgh: 100 Princes Street
_To
President John Hanson Thomas Main,
the embodiment of the ideals of
Grinnell College
who,
although of different race and lineage
is to me a friend and brother;
I dedicate this book
on the tenth anniversary of our first meeting_
Foreword
Before I could speak one language, I cried in three, and the first words
I uttered were in a tongue so foreign to my later life, that I have
forgotten all but a few phrases which cling to me in spite of my neglect
of them.
I played with the children of three distinct races and loved those best
who hated my people most.
My soul awakened in the tumult of three alien faiths and grew into
maturity in the belief furthest from that of my fathers. My mind
struggled first with the mature if stagnant wisdom of Hebrew teachers,
who treated children as if they were sages and sages as if they were
children; but it escaped from that bondage into the untrammelled wisdom
of the Greeks, their successors, then into that of the Germans, and
later became reasonably disciplined under Slavic and Anglo-Saxon
teachers.
Born in one country, I lived my early boyhood in another, my young
manhood elsewhere and my later life on this side of the great
sea--crossing and recrossing so often that I am nowhere an alien;
although by my love of liberty and my faith in its spirit of fair play,
I am a loyal American.
It is my calling to study races and groups, to discover in the
individual what these have bequeathed to him, and having done this
fairly successfully for others, I am now trying to do it for myself. I
am searching the background of this complex life of mine, my childhood
and boyhood, trying to discover just how much I owe to race and how much
to my varying environments.
I have written this book for four classes of people. First, for those
who like myself wish to discover in these informal, yet, I trust,
genuine sketches, material for the study of race psychology.
Second, for those who may like to have their faith in the unity of the
human race strengthened, by concrete examples.
Third, for those who will find pleasure in reading the story of so
complex a child life with all its tragedies and comedies which, at the
time they occurred, seemed least significant when they were most full of
meaning and most tragic when they were of least consequence.
Lastly, I am writing for those who, like myself, have struggled against
the limitations imposed upon their faith and vision by narrow, racial
ties, who believe themselves debtors to every race, who believe that
their forefathers are all those who bequeathed to the world great
thoughts to grapple with and fair visions to realize--whether their dust
rests in the cave of the fields of Machpelah, the crowded Père la Chaise
or beneath simple headstones in the churchyards of the Puritans.
Without belittling the heritage left them by their race or people, or
the obligation to share their lot of shame or ignominy, I trust that
what I have written will enable such to ally themselves with the Son of
Man and say with the same modesty and the same courage as He said it:
"Behold My mother and My brethren!" ... "For whosoever shall do the will
of My Father which is in heaven, the same is My brother and sister and
mother."
E. A. S.
_Grinnell, Iowa._
CONTENTS
I. HOW I GOT MY NAME 15
II. THE PERIOD OF RACE UNCONSCIOUSNESS 21
III. THE DAWN OF RACE CONSCIOUSNESS 26
IV. THE NEW TEACHER 32
V. THE THREE WISE MEN 40
VI. ABRAHAM LINCOLN IN HUNGARY 48
VII. THE MILLER'S DAUGHTER 57
VIII. THE FALL OF THE GOOSE GIRL 63
IX. AN UNWILLING JEW 73
X. THE PRINCE COMES 78
XI. THE CHILD ON THE BATTLE-FIELD 84
XII. THE PENALTY OF SCEPTICISM 90
XIII. MY FIRST LIBRARY 96
XIV. THE CANDY-MAKER'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY 102
XV. THE AMERICANS 107
XVI. THE CUP OF ELIJAH 119
XVII. THE TRAGEDY OF RACE 133
XVIII. THE FIRST APOSTASY 141
XIX. A SECTARIAN CONTROVERSY 148
XX. THE HOUSE OF THE POOR 153
XXI. OUT OF THE OMNIBUS 161
XXII. A BACKWARD LOOK 168
XXIII. THE SYNAGOGUE 173
XXIV. THE CHURCH WITH THE CROSS 188
XXV. THE CHURCH WITH THE WEATHER-VANE 197
XXVI. TOLSTOY THE MAN 205
XXVII. AWAKENED JUDAISM 214
XXVIII. CONCLUSION 224
Against the Current
I
HOW I GOT MY NAME
The servants called me "Uri." When they petted me or wanted some favour,
they called me "Urinku," and when they were angry, which was not seldom,
they cried, "Uri!" giving the i a short, sharp sound. This made me very
angry, for at best I did not like the name, which wasn't my name anyway.
When I asked my nurse why she insisted upon using it, she said, "Because
it means awake, and you have kept us awake ever since you were born."
Then I hated the name still more.
One day--I think I was not yet four--I was brought to judgment before my
mother for having scratched and beaten a young servant girl because she
had called me by that hated nickname. My mother never could punish me,
for whenever I offended, which was often, I threw my arms around her and
kissed her, and the rising anger quickly vanished. Unconsciously this
grew to be a trick which I knew would save me and I practiced it on this
occasion. As I held my arms around my mother's neck and pressed kisses
upon her responsive lips, she said, "I will tell you why the servants
call you Uri, if you promise that you will not grow angry if they call
you by that name."
Then she told me in that sweet, low voice which never had a harsh note,
and which I shall never hear again in this world: "Before you were born,
the sky was red at night for months; a comet, which is a star with a
long tail, travelled through the heavens, and the peasants were so
frightened that they did not leave their isbas at night, and the inns
were silent and deserted. The witch"--and here I began to shudder; for
she was still living and had frightened me many a time--"the witch went
about through the street, crying: 'There will be war! There will be
war!'" In the Slavic language the word for war is strangely
euphonious--Voyna.
"Bude Voyna! Bude Voyna!" And mother imitated the voice of the witch so
that I shook from fear; for war held unknown terrors and the sight of a
gun always threw me into a panic. To this day I feel something of
childhood's dread at sight of a gun or pistol.
"It wasn't long before soldiers came," mother continued--"and they blew
the trumpet at the town hall and all the able-bodied men had to go to be
examined. I wept day and night because your father was young and strong
and the trumpet called him away from me and from four little children
and from you who were not yet born.
"Many people who had money buried it in the garden or hid it in their
bake-ovens and much of it was lost or destroyed; for numbers of the men
were killed and when their wives started fires in the bake-ovens, the
money went up the chimneys in smoke.
"'Just let them come!' your father said, 'just let those Prussians come,
and we will wring their necks like chickens!'
"No, your father did not have to go away to war, the war came to us. One
night the sky looked as if it were burning up and the stars were like
fiery coals. A haze hung around them as if each star had a halo. The
witch ran through the street as if possessed, crying: 'Bude Voyna! Bude
Voyna!' and before morning, the battle came nearer and nearer to us.
Bullets flew through the window-panes and the peasants' straw-thatched
isbas were set on fire. It was a terrible day and a frightful night.
"Your father was with the wounded and the dying and he came home in the
gray morning with his hands and his garments covered with blood. The
next day the war was over. The soldiers were gone and the Prussians were
the victors.
"Then again the witch ran through the street, crying: 'There will be
sickness! There will be sickness!' and evil smells rose from the ground
and men were smitten by the cholera. Your father went out again to care
for the sick and the dying; one evening when he came home he himself was
a victim of the disease and in the morning he was dead.
"When autumn came the cholera was over and again the witch went through
the street crying: 'There will be famine! There will be famine!' The
poor had no bread. The little flour which the king sent them, they mixed
with bran or ground roots or even sawdust. To this day the peasants
count time as so many years before the famine or after it. A hard winter
it was for every one. We lived in constant dread; for robber bands were
passing through the town at night and many Jewish homes were broken into
and plundered.
"One morning, just as the beadle was going from house to house, waking
the people to go to the synagogue--striking the door with a hammer and
crying: 'Uri, Uri!' 'Awake, Awake!'--just as he came to our door, you
were born, and ever since you have been called Uri. Of course you
received another name, the name of your sainted father, but Uri seems
to cling to you. Remember that when I see you, you awaken much sorrow
and much joy. When the servants call you Uri, you must not be angry with
them."
I remember the story almost word for word, as mother told it to me; for
it was the time when my little brain began to retain impressions, and,
moreover, mother insisted upon my apologizing to the servant girl whom I
had scratched and beaten, and an apology was not to my liking.
After that a certain kind of sadness crept over me which I could never
quite shake off. An intense fear of guns gripped me. I remember this
well, for the next day an Hungarian shepherd came into the kitchen and
brought his old blunderbuss with him. Old Istvan had fierce moustaches
and coal black eyes; he wore strange trousers which looked like divided
skirts, and a sheepskin coat with the head of the sheep hanging over his
shoulder; but I know it was the gun that I most dreaded, for I cried and
shook from fear until Istvan carried it out of the house.
I never forgot what my mother told me about my name, and I did not grow
angry again at the servants for calling me Uri. Even now there is a hut
in the Carpathians where one of our servants of that period lives. When
last I went to see her and told her who I was, a smile spread over her
care-worn face and she said as she drew me close to her, "Muy Urinku."
She was the girl I beat and scratched, and as she recalled that
incident, she said, "Alle bilie ste hundsut"--"But you were a little
rascal."
II
THE PERIOD OF RACE UNCONSCIOUSNESS
Up to my fifth year I did not know that I was not like my playmates.
Democratic, as all children are, I played with the boys and girls
belonging to the peasant families living in our neighbourhood. I visited
them in their wretched and ill-smelling homes, and was eager to help
them with their field work, but was often carried away bodily by my
older sisters, who could not understand why I should behead cabbages for
the cross-eyed, drunken day-labourer whose son Martin was my age and my
boon companion. I assisted in many a pig killing, much to the disgust of
my wiser and race-conscious brothers and sisters, and at one time I ate
a piece of pork. I realized that it must have been a dreadful thing to
do when I had my mouth washed with strong soap. Once I was caught
chewing a piece of bacon rind which I carried in my pocket, and the
punishment was so severe that for a long time I found it inconvenient to
sit down. I never cultivated a distaste for pork, and in later years I
heard my elder sister say that she believed this was due to the fact
that I had been vaccinated with virus taken from the arm of a Gentile
boy and that my blood became contaminated.
Be that as it may, I always enjoyed the society of the Gentile boys and
girls. In the spring, I made whistles with them, and I knew the Slavic
chant which would evolve a sweet-toned instrument from a willow twig. I
even made willow switches at Easter time and went about with the Gentile
boys who were bought off from beating the girls, by their gifts of
coloured eggs.
At the tender age of six, the boy, to whom I was related by vaccination,
became a "Mendic," that is, a helper in the household of the Lutheran
pastor. He rang the bells for church and carried the cross at funerals.
For these services he received his schooling free and such board as fell
from the pastor's table. I think I rang the bells for Christian worship
as often as he rang them. Once I polished the communion set, pumped the
organ for the schoolmaster many a time, and took my full share of those
pleasant tasks, as behooves one who finds that his brother has too much
to do, even if he be a brother only by vaccination.
I recall delightful springs at that period, when I went far a-field with
the Gentile boys; and when everything had its young I followed a flock
of geese and goslings to the meadow, in the centre of which stood a
Roman Catholic chapel shaded by a huge beech tree. The girl who had
charge of the geese, and whose assistant I became, although older, was
also in that blissful state of race unconsciousness--and did not know
that she, a Magyar and a Roman Catholic, was different from me.
The boys teased me for going to the meadow with the girl, but as I
recall it now it was the fluffy little goslings that drew me after her,
although it may have been the girl, for I early developed a liking for
the opposite sex.
I did some mild gambling with buttons; marbles had either not been
invented or had not yet penetrated into our stage of civilization. I
also remember getting myself red all over with brick dust; for there was
a game, not unknown in this country, I believe, which required the
cutting of six cubes out of brick and then carefully polishing them by
means of a flat stone and the free application of saliva.
I am not sure that the Gentile children who played with me were as
unconscious of their race and religion as I was, or that they were
unconscious of my own. I suspect that as they were usually a little
older than I, they knew more than I knew, and that some of them, at
least, served me for the "loaves and fishes." I had a ten o'clock
breakfast of bread and butter--a huge slice from a loaf of rye bread
more than half as large as a wagon wheel and spread thick with sweet
butter and a few kernels of coarse salt. The Gentile boys had big mouths
and big appetites and they never had a second breakfast of bread and
butter.
Many a time I was caught purloining Sabbath cakes which I carried among
the unholy Gentile groups of children who, although they may have been
ignorant of my Jewish faith, were very conscious that the food which
came from my home had a peculiarly delicate flavour unknown in the
coarse fare to which they were accustomed.
I suffered much because of my friendly attitude towards these
unbelievers, and one day, for so small an offense as dividing all the
Sabbath apple cake among my confrères, I received such a severe beating
from my older brother, whose temper was quick, whose hand was strong and
whose aim was unerring, that I decided to run away from home. Sobbing
from anger and pain, I ran through the garden, across the bridge, into
the street in which the barns were located and out upon the highway
leading to the town of Maria's Bosom, a place of pilgrimage for devout
Catholics and of more than local fame.
It was the season for pilgrimages, the harvest being over, and I had not
walked far enough to repent of my rash decision when I heard the solemn
chant of pilgrims. Stepping aside to let them pass, I discovered that
they were our townsfolk who were going to pay their annual visit to the
Mother of God at Maria's Bosom. Staff in hand, old and young passed me,
solemnly singing hymns to the Virgin. I suppose there were more than
four hundred pilgrims. I was standing under some lilac bushes and was
not noticed. Following the marchers were several wagons which carried
the aged and infirm, the children and the provisions. On one of the
wagons sat the goose girl, the black-eyed Magyar maiden with whom I was
supposed to be in love.
"Come," she called when she saw me, "come and visit the Mother of God."
With some difficulty I climbed onto the high wagon and sat down beside
my comrade; and neither she nor I knew that it was wrong for me to go on
a visit to the Mother of God at Maria's Bosom.
III
THE DAWN OF RACE CONSCIOUSNESS
The town of Maria's Bosom was a little larger than the one in which I
lived and was famous for its healing waters, drawn from a spring in
which the face of the Virgin was to be seen. This water cured all manner
of diseases, and many grateful pilgrims had enriched the monastery in
whose centre the spring bubbled. The town itself drew a fair share of
revenue from this sacred fame; there were inns for all sorts of
pocketbooks and for all conditions of men, and there were sellers of
honey cakes who fashioned their sweet wares in various symbolic and
saintly forms. The goose girl bought the Twelve Apostles and she ate six
and I ate six without either of us suffering serious consequences.
Booth upon booth crowded the wall which encircled the great church whose
twin towers rose high above its red tiled roof; but I fear that my eyes
were holden by the gewgaws offered for sale in the booths, and that
neither the architecture of the church nor the solemn service within,
made much impression upon me. The pool, with its healing waters and the
throng of pilgrims who dipped their sores in it, did sadden and sicken
me, and to this day I never see a wound without having that scene
recalled to my mind.
The goose girl being at the base of supplies, I did not suffer hunger
nor did I feel any homesickness, for there was much to be seen and my
mind was diverted. When the pilgrims formed to go home, however, I began
to realize that I had run away and that most likely the consequences
would be equally unpleasant whether I kept on running away or returned
home. Probably I decided that running away was not such fun as I
anticipated and that my brother had been punished enough by my absence,
for I remember being seated by the goose girl homeward bound when the
band began to play, first solemnly as is fitting for a well-behaved
brass band when it returns from a pilgrimage; then it quickened its
action and played a military march quite out of keeping with the
occasion. Besides the healing waters at Maria's Bosom, wine flowed
freely and the musicians were evidently in a happy mood after their
libations.
The driver of the wagon where I sat with the goose girl was not at all
cordial when he discovered me among the jugs of water that were being
carried back to the sick.
"How much are you going to pay me, you little Jew, for taking you home?"
he demanded. The word Jew in the Slavic language is _Schid_, and it had
a contemptuous, menacing sound. I protested that I was not a _Schid_ and
before I knew it, he took me by the back of the neck and threw me from
the wagon; then he whipped his horses while I, limping and crying,
started in pursuit, which I soon saw to be fruitless, as the procession
moved rapidly away from me.
Seated in the ditch by the road, wishing with all my heart, no doubt,
that I had not run away, I heard the rumbling of a cart and horse.
Looking up, I discovered on the cart my Uncle Isaac, my guardian, who
had evidently started in search of me. My uncle was not on the best
terms with my mother, for she was not satisfied by the way in which he
administered our estate, and he was even less satisfied by the
unorthodox way in which he thought she was bringing me up--her youngest
and very much spoiled child. In consequence I did not like him and was
always afraid of him; for he had an unpleasant habit of frequently
stopping me on the street and partially undressing me, to see if my
mother had not forgotten to put on the sacred fringes which every Jewish
boy must wear close to his body.
"Where have you been?" he cried, when he saw me.
"I have been visiting the Mother of God," I replied.
Then I remember being lifted onto the cart most ungently, and my
uncle's telling me that if my mother had brought me up right, I would
not be running after the idols of the Gentiles. He prophesied a dire end
to my existence and promised that from this time forth, he would take my
religious training into his own hands.
I do not distinctly recall what happened when I reached home, but I can
still see my mother with a candle in her hand taking me down from the
cart, rejoiced to see me back; later, as she herself undressed me and
discovered on my back the marks of my brother's punishment, I could hear
her weeping as I fell into a long and troubled sleep.
The next day I had to begin the study of the Hebrew alphabet, my uncle
being the teacher, and a hard one indeed. Moreover, he strictly forbade
my playing with the Gentile children, an injunction which I did not
always obey. But inasmuch as they now called me _Schid_, in spite of my
sharing my bread and butter with them more lavishly than ever, I
gradually forsook their haunts. The next spring I no more made whistles,
or scourges at Easter time; neither did I follow the goslings to the
pasture or sit beside the goose girl under the beech tree by the chapel.
It was a new period in my life. The days began and ended differently and
all things bore a changed aspect. Every evening and every morning I had
to meet my uncle in the synagogue for prayers. He was the most pious
man in the community, a descendant of Abraham Bolsover, the fragrance of
whose piety still lingers in local history. My uncle had penetrated into
the very heart of rabbinical Judaism. He knew much of the Talmud by
heart, he could recite the prayers for all the holy days, even those for
the Day of Atonement, without once looking at the prayer-book; and
whenever the synagogue was without an official reader he filled the
place.
I did not then appreciate his piety or the splendid tenor voice in which
he recited the prayers, or the many virtues which now I know he
possessed. At that period I knew him only as a hard teacher and
guardian. My mind never was with the prayers which I could not
understand; the discordant service did not interest me and the synagogue
became a place of torture. My eyes wandered mechanically up and down the
walls. I knew how many cracks they had and how many rivulets of moisture
came down from where the roof had leaked. I could tell the exact number
of spindles in the railing of the gallery which divided the women from
the men, for I must have counted them a thousand times. Whenever my
uncle caught my wandering eyes he brought me back to the prayer-book by
poking me in the ribs, at times very forcibly. His own children were of
a different type. They throve on studying Hebrew; they sang with their
father and knew all the pianissimos and fortissimos of the hymns of
praise. And they were always held up to me as shining examples to
follow, especially by my grandmother, who took great pride in them and
invariably gave them the largest ginger cakes on Sabbath afternoons.
That did not increase my love for her or for my cousins, or did it make
me a better student of Hebrew and of the Talmud at whose threshold I was
then standing. I still preferred the willows and the whistles, the
goslings and the goose girl to my uncle, my grandmother, my cousins, and
the Talmud.
And yet the bond between me and my former playmates was broken; for I
knew I was a Jew. The Gentile boys knew it, even the geese, I thought,
must know it, for the ganders seemed to hiss at me: "_Schid, Schid._"
The goose girl, the poor drunken mason's daughter--half-starved creature
that she was--knew it also; although I think she remembered our
childhood's friendship the longest.
IV
THE NEW TEACHER
He was expected in the omnibus, the one public conveyance of which the
town boasted and which connected us with the still far-away railroad.
Long before the old omnibus was due, boys of my age, the first Jewish
children to be taught by a teacher trained and employed by the
government, were out on the highway to meet it. So eager were we to
behold the new master of our educational destiny that we wandered a good
many miles upon the wretched highway to the Oresco Hill, famed, because
at its foot passengers had to dismount, and were lucky if they did not
have to help push the ungainly vehicle to the summit.
It was spring time, and having since then experienced such spring days
on that spot, I can now understand why the little man who was following
the omnibus looked so long through his spectacles at the encircling
Carpathians. Then his glance swept the exquisite blue of the sky with
its fleecy clouds and at the top of the hill he stood silent; while the
omnibus slid down the steep incline with its one other passenger, the
teacher's bride, whom he had brought from a far-away German city.
I did not understand the teacher when, with his eyes still fixed on our
town in the distance, he said in beautiful German: "Boys, this is a
wonderful scene." I did understand that his wife was wonderfully lovely,
and while I was the first one to see her, I was not the last to feel the
warmth of her glance and the distinct pleasure which her smile brought
to those who found favour in her eyes, and alas! they were many.
The first day in school, always an event in one's life, was remarkable
to those of us to whom it meant release from the one-sided, hard and
harsh Jewish school, and a real entrance into life.
Imagine what it meant to children to decipher difficult Hebrew
characters without vowel points, which were finally sounded by the lips
and were in a large measure meaningless and unconnected with life.
Imagine such children hearing a teacher speak and teach in German, soft
and musical; having the day's work open with a song, a really gladsome
song about winds and flowers and blue skies and all the other things
around them--things of which they had been as unconscious as if they had
not existed.
There were charts with letters and pictures and at ten o'clock, before
we had a chance to grow weary, a generous recess. Our teacher taught us
games and simple gymnastics; he took us to the woods and on top of the
hills, revealing to us the glory of the present, much to the chagrin of
my uncle to whom the past alone was sacred. Chanting his psalms, my
uncle climbed Mount Zion and rejoiced in the beauty of Lebanon, but
never lifted his eyes to the beauty of the Oresco Hill, and never
realized that the Carpathians also were God's footstool.
The teacher had no easy time of it; neither in the school where not all
his pedagogic methods were appreciated, nor out of it where they were
neither appreciated nor approved. Our home was one in which his methods
were both approved and appreciated, for our mother was a liberal spirit,
far more cultured than learned; consequently the teacher was a frequent
visitor in our home and a welcome guest at our table, sharing with us
his petty trials and his great ones. His petty trials were those that
every truth bringer must experience; his great trials were in his home
and the first real tragedy which I experienced, I shared with him and
felt as deeply in my way as he felt it in his.
In my boyhood the Jewish community was practically free from scandals
arising from domestic infelicity. Although marriages were arranged by
the parents with the aid of the _Schadchen_--marriage broker--the family
life was regarded as sacred, and something as good as love, if not love
itself, grew with the passing years. I knew of only one divorced couple
and of no woman who had borne a child out of wedlock. Changes came,
however, with changes in the character of the upper class. The town had
an influx of Hungarian officials vastly out of proportion to its
population. These officials were the children of a bankrupt,
aristocratic, landowning class, who in this way were taken care of by
the government at the expense of the people's tax account and of their
moral fibre.
Some sixty officials in a town of four or five thousand inhabitants
could not find much to do, although the county court was located in our
town. In fact, the type of officials sent us would not have done
anything had there been anything to do. They brought the Hungarian
gypsies with them, those purveyors of pleasure, par excellence; gambling
was introduced and that which was much worse and which never comes into
any community without polluting the guiltless and further polluting the
guilty. The county judge was the greatest offender in all directions;
every vice which could be originated he developed and those which he
could not originate he imported. No woman was safe if he set his heart
upon her and he used all the powers of a judge and all the artifices of
a trained courtier to gain his ends. He had no difficult task with the
teacher's wife. Her husband was a small, wizened, near-sighted Jew; the
judge was a Magyar of the finest physical type, and to those who know
the type, that is sufficient. Moreover, the teacher gave him the
opportunity and he took it. The teacher was one of the first of the
Hungarian Jews to feel the charm of the larger life, and wherever he
found it possible to break down the narrow walls of Jewish social life
he made the most of it. For this purpose he planned a May day
celebration, to be held in the near-by forest.
The Jewish young men to whom the teacher had come as a sort of
liberator, although they were too old to go to school, were drawn into
the plan, which included marching to the forest in the morning, a picnic
dinner and exercises by the children, to which the dignitaries were to
be invited. The festivities were to end in a dance for the invited
guests who were all the young officials and the judge.
It was a great day, ushered in by a cloudless, fragrant May morning. The
gypsy band led the procession, followed by the gaily-clad children and a
wagon load of refreshments in charge of the beadle who had a great
reputation for ministering to the palate and neglecting his work in the
synagogue.
On reaching the pine forest we found a clearing decorated in the
national colours, a band stand and long tables for the dinner. It was a
new world, out-of-doors, which opened like Paradise to us Jewish
children, shut in since our birth in a small, dusty town. We ate with
ravenous appetites, went through the exercises to the satisfaction of
our exacting teacher, the rabbi, the president of the congregation and
the rest of the Jewish dignitaries--and as the Hungarian officials,
headed by the judge, appeared, we sang the national anthem, baring our
heads, a grievous offense in the eyes of the conservative Jews. Our
teacher made a great speech; I still remember certain eloquent words
which I then heard for the first time: "Patriotism, Fraternity,
Humanity."
It was a speech that fired one's blood. He closed by calling for three
cheers for the judge, after which he received the congratulations of
everybody, including my orthodox uncle. Wine was passed and the judge
proposed a toast to the king, another to the rabbi, one to the teacher
and one to our great country; toasts enough to shake the temperate Jews
somewhat out of their sober atmosphere and to carry the teacher quite
off his feet. He embraced everybody, drank more and more and when the
dance began it was he who led his young wife to the judge for the first
waltz.
I do not know how long into the night the dance lasted; it ended
scandalously. The Magyar officials taunted the Jewish youths, made the
gypsies play anti-Semitic songs and finally remained victors in the
field, consuming the fat _kosher_ geese, the no less _kosher_ wine, and
did not scruple to kiss the _kosher_ maidens who were still half
children and delighted in the attention they received.
The next day was a gloomy one at school. The teacher whipped us; he even
whipped me, his favourite, until my back was blue. At recess he did not
play with us; in fact, he never played with us again.
Many months after, as I was going to school, I found my way blocked by a
great crowd in front of the judge's house; Jews and Gentiles alike
pressed around the entrance gate in front of which stood the teacher
with a bundle of pillows in his arms. His cries of anguish and the
terrible curses, which he called down upon the judge, rang in my ears
for weeks afterwards. He pulled the bell at the gate until he broke the
wire; he beat upon the iron bars with the handle of the gate which he
had wrenched from it; he broke all the windows of the house within
reach, with the stones he threw, and when no one from within responded,
he laid his bundle on the step and left it there.
I knew nothing then of the mystery of life, but felt the awe of it while
scarcely understanding what it meant; at least I could not have
explained it to any one.
I had known for some time that the teacher was in deep trouble; in
fact, I had caught a sentence here and there from my elders which hinted
at a terrible disaster.
Here, then, was the tragedy. "This is your brat, yours, yours! Keep it
and may it grow up to curse you and damn you as it already has cursed
and damned me!"
Those were the last words I heard him speak. There was no school that
day or the next or the next. Fishermen found his body upon the shores of
the river where it had been washed up by the waves.
They buried him in an obscure corner of the God's Acre, with his head as
near the highroad as possible. There was no public funeral for he was a
suicide and there is no stone to mark his grave. Yet he is not
forgotten; because he was the first man who opened for me a window into
this beautiful world and who showed me the rivers and the mountains.
Through him I received my first uplift towards "Patriotism, Fraternity
and Humanity," and learned that those of us who believe in them must pay
the price.
V
THE THREE WISE MEN
It was a bitter winter in the valley of the Waag. Motionless in its
crooked bed lay that swift river, whose roar and rush neither the
drought of summer nor the cold of winter had silenced within the memory
of a generation. Only the roofs of the peasants' cottages were visible
above the all-conquering, drifted snow, as for days, men, women and
children battled with it in the attempt to release one another from its
embrace.
No one asked: "Is this a Jew's house or a Magyar's isba?" "Is it the
home of a Roman Catholic or a Protestant, to which we are making a
path?" The common danger broke down ancient barriers, even as the snow
filled the valleys, and the frozen river united isolated shores. As the
older people became one in their common danger, so the children became
one in the pleasurable excitement which these changes brought into the
routine of their lives.
There was no school, no church and no synagogue service, and as we
coasted down great mountains of snow, piled high by the patient
toilers, we forgot the antagonisms to which so early in life we had
fallen heir. I shared freely the sleds of the Gentile boys whose fathers
were skillful in making them, and they shared as freely my luncheon,
which the more provident Jewish home provided.
While sandwiched on a sled between two Gentile boys, one of them, my
brother by vaccination, called my attention to the fact that Christmas
was at hand, and that as chief choir boy, it was his prerogative to
train the three wise men who go about on Christmas Eve from house to
house, singing carols and gathering such gifts as may be bestowed upon
the celebrants.
The boy on the back of the sled was to be one of them, and as the third
boy was snow-bound in an isolated farmhouse, and not likely to be
liberated before Christmas Eve, it was proposed that I should take his
place. I accepted.
In a very vague way I knew the meaning of Christmas; it came in the
dreariness of our winter, unrelieved by Jewish holidays, and the
Christmas trees, the candles, and the happy children had long ago
aroused my childish envy. Realizing that all this was not for me, I was
content to see the twinkling lights, and hear the merry laughter of the
children from afar, never even asking why I could not have a share in
those things. Consequently it came about that when the sled reached the
bottom of the roadway and I was released from my close fellowship with
the Gentile boys, I was initiated into the duties of a wise man and duly
accepted the post with all its obligations. Being a Jew, the financial
responsibilities of the affair were thrust upon me. These consisted of
purchasing paste, pins and several sheets of gilt paper for crowns and a
huge star. My room was made the studio in which the various symbols were
to be designed and manufactured.
It is safe to say that I was fairly unselfish in the matter, inasmuch as
I could not hope to share in the returns from this enterprise, which
would be largely in food which I did not need and could not have eaten
had I needed it. Of course, being a wise man and wearing a crown were in
themselves compensations worthy the sacrifice I was making, which at
first consisted merely in diverting a few pennies from my small
allowance, but which grew beyond my calculations, the more I entered
into the experiences of a wise man.
While I provided the material things, as behooved my station in life,
the acolyte provided things spiritual, and in a snow cave dug by our
united efforts, he taught me my part in the dramatic performance of the
"Three Wise Men." Incidentally I learned how to sing a Christian hymn
and had my first lesson in Latin; and of both there were more, later in
life and under less trying circumstances.
I spent the day before Christmas in feverish excitement, mumbling my
part in all sorts of out-of-the-way places, as it was not safe for me to
be heard by my family, reciting: "Christo nostro infantia"; three words
of the hymn which I have never forgotten. When evening came, I had the
difficult task of smuggling the Gentile boys into my room and then
converting those ragamuffins into kings from Eastern lands. Their
ill-smelling sheepskin coats were hidden in my bed, and the red garments
of the acolytes, readorned by gilt paper, were thrown over the scanty
clothing which remained. Then with gilt star, sceptre and crowns, we
started out into the bitter cold to seek the Child in the Manger. I
carried the star, and being cast for the part of the wise man from the
land of the Moors, my face was blackened with stove-polish, generously
applied by my brother by vaccination.
We made straightway for the home of the _Pany_, at the edge of the town.
It seemed a fairy palace to our unspoiled eyes. As in a dream I climbed
the broad stairway leading to the upper chambers, although I was very
conscious of the unusual garments I wore and in whose folds my ungainly
feet were entangled.
Our welcome was not such as royal guests might expect, and very
reluctantly we were led into the drawing-room where, nearly touching
the high ceiling, stood the lighted Christmas tree from which hung
glittering things that fairly dazzled us.
I had been told that in Catholic homes we would be greeted, according to
custom, in the following manner: "You royal sirs, our visitors, what is
the cause that brings you thus?"
Instead of that, the rough, jeering voice of the _Pany_ said: "Get done
with your mummery, you lousy brats!" The two Gentile boys, born to obey
such commands, fell upon their knees and recited:
"Oh! do not be afraid of us,
Your royal, Eastern visitors.
To worship, we have come from far,
Led by a wondrous, shining star;
For we have heard this glorious thing
That to the Jews is born a king."
Then came the Latin hymn with its chorus, in which I was supposed to
join lustily; but throughout which I was silent.
"Eya! Eya! Virgo Deum genuit quern divina voluit potentia." ...
It was a corrupt Latin and out of tune, which the boys sang; and when
they had finished, they rose, conscious of the fact that there was
something wrong with them or their audience, and there was. I was in
the thick of a desperate fight with the _Pany's_ son who was trying to
throw me. Ordinarily, he would not have had a difficult task; but my
wounded, royal pride had given me unknown strength, and majestically I
held my ground.
"Get down, you dirty peasant!" the lad cried viciously, while I, loudly
protesting that I was not a peasant, fought him back until, coming to
close quarters, we rolled on the floor, I holding him down with my hands
and knees.
"Enough of this, you impudent fellow!" the angry voice of the _Pany_
said, as he lifted me roughly from the badly damaged form of his scion.
"Enough of this! Get out of here!"
I was ready enough to go; but fate willed otherwise.
"Why didn't you kneel?" the _Pany_ asked, as I picked up my demoralized
crown and the star, which in the scuffle had been ruthlessly torn from
my mother's yardstick, on top of which it had guided our footsteps.
"Because I am a king and not a peasant, and I won't kneel to any one."
Loud laughter greeted this speech, for it betrayed my race and religion.
Mockingly, the _Pany_ took me by the back of the neck.
"Ah, so!" he said; "that's your new business, being a king. Now, you
dirty little _Schid_, get out of here, quick!" And down the broad
stairway, which a few minutes before led me up to Paradise, I stumbled
onto earth again.
With tears streaming down my blackened face and the acolyte's garments
half torn from my body, I tried to find my way out of the lower hall,
the other two kings having basely deserted me--when a woman's hand
reached out to me in the dark. A very gentle touch it was, and it drew
me into a warm and beautiful room. Then I saw that the woman was the
_Pany's_ sister, an "old maid" known all through the town for her piety
and good works. She washed my face with warm water, and arranged my
dress so that I would be better shielded from the cold; she filled my
pockets with nuts and such sweets as she knew I could eat, and as she
led me out, she kissed my forehead and said: "Our Lord was a little
Jewish boy, just like you." Then she kissed my lips and said, "In His
name."
I ran home through the increasing cold as fast as my feet could carry
me, into my room and to bed, but spent a restless night. I dreamed of
the _Pany's_ son and of his sister, feeling kicks and kisses
alternately. Then I travelled, far and farther, following the star,
looking for the crib and the Child, but never finding them.
That Christmas morning I shall never forget. The maid found my bed full
of vermin which had crawled out of the boys' sheepskin coats, and the
towels and toilet articles were a mass of stove-polish. It was a day of
intensest suffering under punishment of various kinds, yet through it
all I felt the kisses of the _Pany's_ sister on my forehead and on my
lips.
I was neither a Wise Man nor a king, yet I was wiser than I had been and
I was as proud as a king, for I had not knelt at the _Pany's_ command
and I had whipped his son.
VI
ABRAHAM LINCOLN IN HUNGARY
Ten o'clock in the morning was the one tense hour of the day, for the
omnibus was due to arrive and, with it, everything which connected our
town with the outside world. Although most of the villagers expected
neither letters nor friends, every one who had even a moment of leisure
stepped to his front door when the omnibus came, and tried to catch a
glimpse of the sleepy passengers who had spent a torturing night in the
sombre, springless vehicle. In front of the Black Eagle Inn, congregated
town loafers, children and the aged, who alone had leisure to watch the
passengers alight.
This was an exciting procedure, for the omnibus was high, and its one
window served also as exit, so that the passengers' feet protruded
through the small opening first, the bodies being drawn carefully after.
It was a mirth-provoking performance, and as laughter was an indulgence
not often experienced in our sober environment, all who could afford the
leisure and the laughter awaited the daily diversion at the Black Eagle
Inn.
On a certain Sabbath morning I had absented myself from the synagogue.
It was a June day of rare beauty with a warm, wooing, gentle wind,
calling the boy in me back to the creek, the willow-trees, the goslings
and the Gentile boys and girls. While nature with its willows and its
goslings had no objection to my "cutting" the synagogue service, its
Gentile and ungenteel children objected seriously, and I was driven back
to the dusty street, with its cobblestone pavement. There was nothing to
do except go to the synagogue or join the crowd of loafers around the
Black Eagle Inn, and I chose the latter, although at great peril; for to
be caught loafing on the Sabbath, during the hours of morning service,
was sure to bring dire consequences. The clatter of hoofs and rattle of
wheels were already heard, proceeding from a cloud of dust which came
nearer and nearer as the omnibus swayed into sight. Its emaciated, weary
horses responded to the whip of the driver as they made one last, brave
effort at a gallop; then stopped at their accustomed place, steaming
from heat and too weary even to whisk the gathering flies from their
backs.
"How many passengers have you?" some one called to the driver.
"Three-quarters of a man," he replied, laughing coarsely.
The crowd stood for a moment speechless, as the leather curtain was
thrown back and a wooden leg appeared; then carefully feeling for the
foot-rest, came a real leg and foot. In due time the back followed,
covered by a dusty blue coat, and the man stood before us--three-quarters
of a man indeed; for above the wooden leg hung an empty coat sleeve.
From the depths of the vehicle the driver drew a brass-bound trunk. It
was a strange-looking, gorgeous affair, and made almost as great a
sensation among the astonished onlookers as the three-quarters of a man
in the blue suit and brass buttons had made. A queer-looking, soft hat
shaded his bearded face, in which I intuitively detected faint traces of
our common, racial ancestry. He swung his cane at the gaping crowd and
called out, in military language: "Right about, face! March!" The crowd
obeyed mechanically, and he hobbled unmolested into the inn. I followed
him, for two reasons: first, the synagogue service was just over and I
was sure to be discovered in this forbidden spot. Secondly, this was a
new species of humanity to me, as new as the sewing-machine which had
come to our house about a week before, and as wonderful as the coal-oil
lamp, the marvellous light of which now illuminated our home for the
first time. Strange to say, all these had come from America, during the
last fortnight.
"Why are you looking at me, youngster?" the man asked, shaking his
empty sleeve at me. "Have you never seen three-quarters of a man before?
What's your name?"
While he waited for my reply, he took a pull at his bottle of _palenka_,
the common drink of the peasants. When he heard my name, he stared at me
less fiercely.
"Come here," he said, patting my curly head. "I am a Jew myself."
"You are not, you cannot be! No Jew ever drinks _palenka_."
"Boy," he replied, pushing aside the empty bottle, "I am three-quarters
of a man, but not even one-quarter a Jew. I have been to war, where I
lost my arm and leg, and I have been in America, where I lost my
Judaism." Then with an air of abandonment, he ordered a pork roast for
his dinner.
I was grievously shocked, and to save even the remnant of a Jew in him,
I suggested that he go home with me and eat a good, _kosher_ Sabbath
dinner. Hospitality is a virtue of the Jewish home, and there was
scarcely a Sabbath meal without some unfortunate at our table. I felt
sure that mother would not object to this guest, especially if I made it
clear to her that I had saved the man from eating pork roast.