pride I felt in walking beside a man who had come from America. Doors
and windows were opened, while black-eyed maidens and gray-haired
matrons craned their necks to get a glimpse of the stranger. All that
blessed Sabbath our house was the centre of attraction, and hundreds of
inquiries had to be answered.
"Who was he?" An old townsman who, years ago, ran away from home, and
after many adventures landed in America. He enlisted in the Federal
army, was discharged, pensioned and had come home to die.
"Aye! Aye!" the townspeople said. "Who would have thought that one of us
should come from America!"
That same day the brass-bound trunk was brought to our house, for mother
took pity on the homeless man and told him to stay with us. She hoped to
keep him from drinking _palenka_ and eating pork. The latter was not
difficult, but the _palenka_--that was impossible.
"The brass-bound trunk no doubt holds his treasures," the neighbours
said. Treasures indeed! His discharge from the army, which was framed
and hung over his bed, a second suit of blue, a huge flag--the Stars and
Stripes--a history of the Civil War in German, a book called "Uncle
Tom's Cabin," and the picture of a sad-faced man.
Every day I heard about the land of freedom from one who had been
there, the German book I soon knew by heart, the flag I learned to love,
and Abraham Lincoln, the sad-faced man, took the place of our patriarch
Abraham in my heart and imagination.
"How is it," I asked the old soldier, "that this man, who was a
Christian, was called Abraham?"
"My boy," he said, "he was a Christian; but he was as good a Jew as the
patriarch Abraham. The great lawgiver, Moses, led his own people out of
bondage; this man led a strange, African race out of slavery." Then he
read and translated to me "Uncle Tom's Cabin," and I have never
forgotten a single incident in that vivid story. So thoroughly was I
imbued by its spirit, that I gathered a group of boys to whom I preached
my first revolutionary sermon. I pictured to them the sufferings of our
poor and the harshness of our government as typified by the vicious
judge and the cruel and venal police. I tried to exact an oath from the
boys to help me free these peasant slaves and, if necessary, fight the
judge and the police.
Fortunately for the government, my classmates would not enthuse;
instead, they told the teacher, who tried to whip my revolutionary ideas
out of me, and when I reached home almost too sore to walk, I found
great comfort in looking into the sad face of Abraham Lincoln, my
patron saint and the inspirer of my passion for the common people.
"Uncle Joe," as the old soldier wished to be called, drank _palenka_
heavily and almost constantly; the three-quarters of a man wasted away
until he was scarcely half a man, and we knew and he knew that the end
was not far away. I was in his room one Saturday afternoon; my mother
sat beside him holding his thin, bony hand and he was quite sober, as I
believe he had not often been since coming to us.
"You think I am a bad man," he said to my mother. "I drink, I smoke on
the Sabbath, I do not lay the phylacteries. I am a bad man; but I have
fought, I have suffered cold and hunger and I have fallen into bad
habits.
"I think God will forgive me. I know He will if He is anything like
Abraham Lincoln. He forgave me once. I was about to be shot," he
whispered hoarsely. "He forgave me, and when I come before Jehovah I
shall call for Abraham Lincoln. He spoke a good word for me once--he
will do it again."
The old soldier looked around the room and his glance rested appealingly
on the face of the sad-eyed man who had borne the sufferings and agonies
of many men.
"Give that picture to the boy who brought me to you--let him have the
book also. The flag you must wrap me in; let it be my shroud. My
discharge I want buried with me and let them fire a salute over my
grave; for it will be a soldier's grave."
Coming home the next day at noon, I heard the pious men of our community
repeating verses spoken at the bedside of the dying. It was a weird
lamentation that went up from those hoarse-throated men, and in the
tumult of voices affirming faith in the God of Israel, "Uncle Joe's"
soul took its flight.
To induce the pious men, whose consent was necessary, to wrap his body
in the Stars and Stripes, was difficult, but was finally accomplished
through my mother's importunity. The firing of the salute was out of the
question, for no Jew owned a gun, and it would be sacrilege to hire a
Gentile to use one.
The solemn procession came to the cemetery with its burden and they
buried him after the manner of the Jews. But hardly had the last man
left the grave when three shots were fired, startling young and old
alike.
Istvan, the Hungarian shepherd, once a soldier himself, had yielded to
my entreaties and paid this last tribute to a warrior.
Istvan was fined and imprisoned for shooting within the limits of the
cemetery; I too was punished, and the common suffering created
fellowship between us. Over and over again, while he was watching his
sheep, I told him the story of the life and death of Abraham Lincoln.
"Too bad," he would say, "that he had a Jewish name. Too bad that his
name was Abraham."
VII
THE MILLER'S DAUGHTER
No man of another race than my own spoke kindly to me after I had
developed some sense of race consciousness. "Little Jew" was the mildest
term in which I was addressed, and it ranged to the cruel
"Christ-Killer"--a rather questionable term to apply to a seven-year-old
lad, who could not have looked very ferocious, with his blue eyes and
his shock of curly blond hair. I knew I was guiltless of the last
appellation, even if I understood its meaning, which I doubt; but I was
quite sure I was a little Jew and every time I was called that, it hurt,
as if I were smitten by a lash. I cannot help wincing yet when the word
Jew is applied to me; I suppose it hurt because it was meant to. It is
the mental attitude of the other man which makes me sensitive, rather
than the name itself, which was one to conjure with through many a
Golden Age.
One man--the only man who took me for just the boy I was and treated me
as such--was the miller; and because he treated me kindly, and
heroically controlled the rush of the mill-race and the turning of the
mighty water-wheels, I placed him in my mind next to Jehovah in power.
Whenever I try to visualize heaven, I invariably see the miller's
bleached face (which looked like one of the rolls baked from his flour)
smiling at me from amongst the crowd of saints and I seem to hear him
saying, as he used to say: "Hello, little fellow, come in and see my
little girl and talk German to her." That is just how he greeted me one
day when decorously lifting my cap and saying in good German, "Guten
Morgen, Herr Müller," I passed tremblingly over the bridge, underneath
which the water rushed tumultuously, ready to do the miller's bidding in
turning the huge wheels. What connection the wheels had with the endless
clatter within I did not yet know; other mysteries were to disclose
themselves first. There were the pigeons in their nests, and he lifted
me high towards them and laughed when my outstretched hand was quickly
withdrawn; for a mother bird did not like my intrusion. There was his
hunting dog, which jumped at me and nearly frightened me out of my wits,
but who merely wanted to tell me in his dog fashion that, as far as he
was concerned, he had no race prejudices. And we were close
friends--this dog and I--even related, later, for one of its young
became my own--the only pet of my childhood.
I have some definite impressions of a peculiar, large living-room, which
seemed rocked by the rattling mill. I can recall certain pictures on
the wall, for the Jewish home was devoid of such ornaments and these
were the first secular pictures I had seen. There were German battles
and portraits of Bismarck and the Prussian king. Four or five lads, sons
of the miller, stood about and seemed to delight in my presence. All of
them looked bleached, like the miller, and Martha, the only daughter,
was of the same type; but lovely to me as a fairy, with her long, flaxen
hair which hung heavily below her waist. Her rather pale and delicate
face and her large, blue eyes fascinated me.
That living-room became the birthplace of my Germanic ideals--there I
first heard the name of Bismarck, for the miller was a German to the
core, and from him I heard wonderful anecdotes about Frederick the
Great. There also I read with Martha the love-songs of Heine, Schiller
and Goethe, declaiming them to her, no doubt, in the most sentimental
manner. Out of it all grew a love life, so mystic and beautiful that I
think of it every time the spring comes and I smell the faint tree
odours in the early April days. Martha was about five years older than
I, but she was more than twice as old in her physical and mental
maturity, and I watched her growth with ill-concealed jealousy. The
rounding of her form into womanhood caused me excruciating suffering. In
frightful rage I once tore from her one of Schiller's most sentimental
ballads, which some young sprig had copied for her, and I forbade her to
read it. I do not remember what she said or did but she was so gentle
and sweet about it that I was heartily ashamed of myself.
I felt her slipping away from me and almost gone, when one night she
went to a ball at the "Aristocratic Club." Through one of the windows to
which I had climbed I watched her dancing, and was twice thrown down by
some Gentile lads, who expressed themselves quite freely as to the
business a little Jew had looking in at Gentile folks' balls. I had a
deep impression that dancing as I saw it was not right. I cannot explain
what I felt. I certainly was too young to see any immorality in it; but
my intuitions were so strong that afterwards I felt as if Martha had
either done a great wrong or that she had been grievously wronged. I
think I must have inherited deep puritanic tendencies; for the orthodox
Jew is puritanical, and although my mother allowed my sisters to dance,
I know that she did not give her permission until after a great
struggle. Once, I scarcely know how old I was, certainly not more than
five, my sister was going to a ball in a rather décolleté gown, and her
bare neck and arms so offended me that I forbade her going. When she
dragged me away from the door to which I barred her way, I scratched her
arm so badly that she had to remain at home. I have good reason to
remember that event, for my older brother beat me so badly for the
cowardly act that I did not sleep all night and had opportunity to
repent. I did not embrace the opportunity for I felt that I had suffered
in a good cause.
The miller's daughter was lost to me in more than one way. Young snobs
hung about when I came to call and "snubbed" me until I had no more
courage to return. I suppose a year or more had passed since I had
called on her, when I heard a rumour that she was ill. She had caught
cold at a dance, I overheard the women say, and they were feeding her on
raw eggs and a certain drink called chocolate, and that was a sign of
wasting disease. One day her younger brother, a boy of about my own age,
called for me. He said that his sister was dying and wished to see me.
My beloved mother, who had smiled many a time over my devotion to the
miller's daughter, and had never opposed my visiting her but rather
encouraged it on account of the German I spoke there, knew the solemnity
of the occasion and saw to it that I was properly attired on this my
last visit. The mill wheels were silent, the only time that I ever knew
them so. The pigeons and rabbits were there, more numerous than ever,
and the miller's hunting dog, dear old friend that he was, greeted me
fondly. The miller for once was not dusty from flour and his face did
not resemble a penny roll. He looked like a crushed man and when he saw
me, his huge breast laboured as if the pent-up pain were ready to burst
it. He made some inarticulate sounds as if he were trying to weep and
could not. It was the first time I had seen a man suffer great heart
agonies, and it tortured me. They led me into Martha's bedroom. How
wasted she was! Her blue eyes seemed strangely aglow, her nose so much
larger than I had ever thought it, and her poor emaciated fingers picked
at the bedclothing which covered her. I do not remember what she said,
whether she spoke of living or dying. I just felt the pressure of the
pain, and before they led me away I threw myself by her bed crying, and
then a strange thing happened; her burning lips were upon my hot
forehead, and her poor, thin fingers moved through my hair. I felt as if
it were spring time again, as if we were looking for the fragrant
violets which grew by the mill-race; and the sweet odour of trees seemed
to fill the air.
I left the room bathed in hot tears, those very hot, scalding tears,
which come from the very depths of one's being, and as I went crying
through the streets, a hoyden, a woman of ill repute--the lowest of the
low--caught me and asked: "Little boy, why are you crying?" Then she too
kissed me on the forehead. Truly, the very good and the very bad have no
race prejudice.
VIII
THE FALL OF THE GOOSE GIRL
Back of our house was a long row of tenements, inhabited by the poorer
class of Gentiles. These peasants were at the verge of starvation,
although usually in the summer and autumn they lived rather comfortably,
indulging in such luxuries as _palenka_, salt pickles and smoked bacon,
heavily covered by paprika. If in the winter they had cabbage soup and a
scanty potful of beans they were fortunate; while only an occasional
midnight incursion into some more fortunate neighbour's kitchen brought
a hasty mouthful of meat. My mother owned the tenements and as a result
there was a certain deference paid me by these peasants, especially in
the winter time, when I did not treat my mother's well-stocked larder
too honestly, answering their appeal for food.
Three races were represented by these tenants of ours; Slovaks, Magyars
and Gypsies. The last named were the musicians of the town and had given
up their nomadic habits, while the first two were almost literally "the
hewers of wood and drawers of water." I was on the best terms with the
Gypsies, especially with one who played the cornet and played it with
all the fervour of his Gypsy nature. Whatever musical education I have,
I purchased its beginning from him, paying in buttered rolls and Sabbath
cakes for Schubert's Serenade and the Swan Song from Lohengrin--two of
my favourite songs even yet. The goose girl's parents were our tenants
during this period. Her father was a pseudo Magyar: that is, a Slav who
had changed his name and swore in the Magyar language while he continued
to drink _palenka_ like the Slovak he was, and beat or otherwise abused
his family like the brute who is pretty much alike among all the fallen
children of men. The goose girl had long ago stopped herding geese. She
had been a nurse-maid and later a very indifferent house servant,
accused by her many mistresses of theft, lying and excessive vanity. To
the last named quality of her nature I could have borne abundant
evidence, for she persuaded me on a moonlight night to bring her one of
my younger sister's ball dresses, which she put on in the shadow of a
pear tree standing far back in our garden. As she emerged into the
moonlight, looking to me like a fairy princess, she demanded my
obeisance, and made me call her "Kis Aszonka," which is the Hungarian
term for a young lady of the upper class and is never applied to a
peasant girl. As a peacock spreads his feathers, so the goose girl
spread the train of my sister's gown, dragging it over the dewy grass,
much to my dismay then and more to my sorrow the next day, when my
sister discovered the green spots upon her best gown.
Not long after this, I heard that my childhood's friend had run away
from home. Her father cursed more than usual, her mother cried and the
neighbours said: "I told you so." When later I asked her father what had
become of his daughter he replied: "I suppose she has gone to the
devil."
I do not know how long a time had passed since her disappearance, when a
certain spring came with unusual rapture, swept across the meadows,
drove the ice out of the river in a night and climbed the foothills of
the Carpathians, leaving the big mountains still covered by snow. It was
a Sunday and May-day, the Gypsies had gone to the houses of the nobility
and also to the lesser folk, in whose pockets they suspected small
change which they would lure out by their stirring music. The peasant
lads had gathered at the inn and were boasting of their prowess in
climbing May-poles and of their eagerness to climb an unusually tall and
smooth one, at whose top tempting prizes of coloured neckerchiefs and
bottles of _palenka_ awaited the man who could make his boast true. The
room in which the peasants gathered was a bare one, although a few
coloured prints of anæmic-looking saints hung upon the once whitewashed
wall. In one corner on the beaten earth floor was a bundle of straw
which served as beds for poorer wayfarers, while the better furnished
adjoining room was reserved for the higher class of guests, none of whom
had yet arrived, as it was still early. Even when a boy I had a curious
interest in people and always disregarded class distinctions. I wanted
to see that May-day celebration as the peasants saw it. I wasn't merely
curious; I know that I celebrated with them. I felt sorry if the rain
spoiled their holidays and that day was unusually happy because the
weather was fine. A square-jawed, heavy-faced lad, whom my mother had
hired to work in the field, was my sponsor and guide. He wore his very
best and most gorgeous garments and from his rakish hat hung rather
defiantly the feather of a cock with whose erstwhile owner, this youth,
whose name was Shimek, shared his predilection for a fight. "First
music, then a fight and after the fight, a girl to love." This was
Shimek's Sunday program, although to do him justice, he went to church
in the morning. One must not believe, though, that he was seriously
concerned about his soul; for the plan of salvation, if he ever thought
of it, was expressed by him in the song, sung by just such youths
through many generations:
"He who can dance well
And payeth the fiddler
Angels will lift him
Up into heaven."
While they had no fiddler to make merry for them, they had the goose
girl's father--who could evoke music out of a threshing flail. This he
did by rubbing the flail over one of his fingers which he held on the
table. The result was a rumbling sound, not unlike the monotonous notes
of a bass viol. In a quavering voice he began singing to his
accompaniment a familiar song, the swinging melody of which was snatched
from his lips by the ever ready Shimek, who knew every song born in the
merry heart of the Slovak and who taught me many of them, none of which
I have forgotten. This is the song he sang:
"On the white mountain
The peasant ploweth,
Has a fine daughter,
Grant her me, Heaven!"
All the half-drunk guests sang the chorus:
"Hey, zuppy, zuppy, zupp,
Grant her me, Heaven!
Hey, zuppy, zuppy, zupp."
Above the noisy chorus came the rumbling of Matushek's improvised
instrument which he rubbed over his fingers until the blood came
spurting out. Even then he would not stop, until every verse was sung:
"O! if I had her,
I would rejoice so.
Three hundred dollars
Quickly I'd earn.
Huy, zuppy, zuppy, zupp.
"Dear little woman!
Three hundred dollars!
I'd make her travel
In a closed carriage.
Huy, zuppy, zuppy, zupp.
"Servants in front of her,
Servants behind her,
And they must call her
My high-born lady.
Huy, zuppy, zuppy, zupp."
Many times the crowd sang the ringing chorus, accompanying it with their
feet upon the floor and their fists upon the table. As they sang, the
sound of bells came nearer and nearer, not clear enough at first to
disturb the revellers. Then it grew louder and louder, until just before
it stopped, some one heard it. The tumult ceased and every one ran to
the door to see the omnibus whose coming was still the event of the day.
It had undergone some changes since I first knew it in my early boyhood,
although the changes were only external. Upon its new covering of
leather was printed in three languages, "Omnibus to Hodowin, tour et
retour, one florin." The "tour et retour" was the same in all the
languages and at first puzzled every one except a few of the elect who,
thanks to some French phrases which had filtered into our community,
understood its meaning. To proceed rearward out of the stage was doubly
difficult that day, as each of the passengers, who were all women, had a
baby wrapped closely in a linen sheet, hanging from her shoulders. Some
fifteen women finally drew themselves and their precious burdens out of
the tunnel of the stage, and from the depths of sundry wrappings one
could hear the voices of their charges. The fact that they could be
heard at all out of the mass of feather pillows and linen sheets unto
which they had sunk, proved their great lung capacity.
When the last passenger had left the stage, the peasants returned to the
room which they had so lately deserted--followed by the women, who
silenced the cries of the infants with milk, out of bottles in various
stages of uncleanliness. The women themselves ate heartily of the rye
bread which was sold them at the inn and drank freely of the _palenka_
generously offered by the numerous Sunday guests.
Just one woman held her baby close to her breast and shamefacedly
nourished it in the darkest corner she could find. She was the mother of
her child. The other women, most of them much older than she, had been
in Vienna and gathered these little ones as they would have garnered any
remunerative crop.
In a high gray house facing the general hospital, these little ones were
born, thousands of them every month, tens of thousands every year; some
of them born on fine linen, out of love, most of them born on coarse
cotton, out of love's counterfeit; but all of them born out of wedlock.
Because the young mother wore the garb of the city, I felt free to talk
to her. I addressed her in German and when she lifted her face and
looked into mine, I recognized the long lost goose girl. Shimek, my
guardian during these festal hours, recognized her as quickly as I had.
"Boze muy, boze muy," he cried, "it is Katuska!"
Her father, stick in hand, jumped to his feet at the mention of his
daughter's name and before we knew it the stick had fallen upon her
head, and she was crying piteously while the baby, too, lifted up its
voice. Mockingly the old man walked up and down before his daughter and
called her "Kis Aszonka." "With whose baby have I the honour of making
acquaintance?" he asked. I do not recollect all that happened but the
stick suddenly came down more heavily than before upon the girl's back.
"A bastard brat!" her father cried; "a bastard brat!" he repeated,
almost insane from anger. "No, not into my house--not into my house!"
Slamming the door of the inn behind him he left his daughter among the
gaping crowd of men. Shimek drew me aside and whispered: "Would I stand
by him if he took the goose girl and her baby into the loft above the
stable? Would I intercede with my mother in his behalf if she should
object?"
I remember distinctly the feeling which came over me when I held that
poor little waif in my arms and carried it as far as the loft in which
Shimek was domiciled, while he led the goose girl who was too weak to
walk alone. I then felt for the first time what I have since felt a
thousand times when holding children in my arms: a joyous sense of
relationship which no one can dispute and the children cannot repudiate.
I hovered around that stable many a day and heard with aching heart the
crying of the baby.
My mother visited the goose girl in the stable loft and her baby in the
manger. She made some kind of satisfactory arrangements with Shimek; for
that evening we saw him, Katuska and the baby, sitting under the pear
tree in the garden. He was singing lustily the love-song he had
carelessly thrown at many a maiden before:
"Will you take my heart?
Will you give your heart?
I am yours, my love,
You're my turtle dove
Hiy, hiy,
Will you be my love?"