rarely broken up, no matter how galling the poverty, and family ties
bind and obligate its stronger members even through far removed
cousinships. The permanent residents were:--Two old, scolding, toothless
women, an epileptic boy--some one's illegitimate offspring, a burden to
himself more than to any one else, and the caretaker, who was also
grave-digger, his wife and children. The House of the Poor was open day
and night to those who wander up and down the land; unfortunates,
wanderers, beggars, paupers, who keep Jewish benevolence active, often
straining it to the breaking point.
The _Schnorer_, as he is called, is a gentlemanly sort of beggar. He is
rarely in rags, is tolerably clean, and every house in which a Jew lives
is his; he enters it without knocking--never asks for alms, yet is
always sure of a gift. He does not tell a hard luck story, but should he
tell one, it would be an almost exact duplicate of that which another
_Schnorer_ had told before him. It is a story which has as its key-note
persecution; its minor details are: destruction of house by fire,
blindness, consumption, and the begging of a dowry for a marriageable
daughter. These are some of the ills of Judaism, which chronically
afflicted those who passed through the House of the Poor. I heard them
tell of the fires of hate, which destroyed straw-thatched cottages,
business, virtue, old age and youth. I heard racking coughs, felt the
groping touch of the blind, and listened to wise men trying to balance
this world upon the needle points of rabbinic exegesis. I do not recall
that I ever saw a cheerful face nor heard laughter, nor do I remember
that any one wept. After all, misfortune was to many a business asset,
even as pious learning was; and in this, the people in the House of the
Poor proved that they were typical humans. I fear that I went there more
than my mother wished me to go, and more perhaps than was good for me;
but I went to listen to the _Schnorers'_ tales. They knew Europe, from
Hamburg to Constantinople; knew each wealthy Jew, how much he gave, and
they measured his chances of Heaven by his gifts to them. They also knew
the good places to stop over the Sabbath, and what seat to take in the
synagogue in order to catch the eye of those benevolent worshippers who
invited _Schnorers_ to share the Sabbath goose.
These were not the worst things with which I became acquainted. The poor
indulged in gambling, they drank _palenka_, and I saw and heard many
things whose horror I felt but did not clearly understand. It was a
great clinic in poverty, although doubtless I was too young to attend
its classes.
The epileptic boy was my special friend; he was much older than I, as in
fact were all my friends. His malady took peculiar forms. Before each
attack he would wander off, and when he passed under the spell of the
disease he had most wonderful hallucinations. He saw visions and
declared them eloquently and poetically. Many a time I have seen him
rise from the gutter and speak an hour to an ever-increasing crowd,
which, although it did not understand him, was held by the spell of his
eloquence.
One day a _Schnorer_ told about the city of Hamburg through which he had
_schnorred_. He expatiated upon its rich and poor, its delicious fish,
its _schnaps_, and the great ships he had seen, full of passengers
sailing for America. Then each of the _Schnorers_ told something of that
far-away country, its fabled wealth and wonderful possibilities. Their
stories fitted into my dissatisfied mood, and that evening, when the
epileptic proposed our running away to America, I readily assented.
There is, I suppose, a natural restlessness which every lad feels at a
certain age; it is the flitting instinct, the desire to leave the nest
and try one's own wings; to me that feeling came often, and this time
with irresistible force.
We made no elaborate plans--youth is so optimistic. My companion was a
wanderer upon the face of the earth, and when he promised to see me safe
and sound in America, I was as sure of it as if America had been the
next village, a mile away.
Early in the morning I left my home and was joined on the highway by the
epileptic. Before sunrise we were on the outskirts of the town. A
hackman, driving to the nearest railroad station with an empty coach,
took us as passengers, and I paid him all the ready cash in my
possession, trusting that once at the station, Hamburg and America would
be within easy reach.
I had some rolls in my pockets which made our dinner, and when night
came we had reached the railroad and heard the buzzing telegraph wires
and the puffing of a far-away engine. The third class waiting-room was
full of its queer and crude mixture of humanity.
Hard-faced and hard-fisted men, going to the city to work and seek their
fortune; women, bent nearly double by the loads upon their backs, linen
and embroideries for sale among the city folk; insolent young men
surrounding young girls who bravely resisted the assaults upon their
purity.
I have often seen that picture since and breathed the same foul
atmosphere; but never again has it been as terrible as it was that
night. The mixed train for Vienna came, and when we tried to board it
without tickets we were arrested as vagrants, and thrown into the town
jail.
A jail at best is no place for a child, and this jail was never fit for
any human beings. There were at least thirty people in a comparatively
small room, and in that miscellaneous crowd there were half a dozen
women. When we entered, the inmates had just begun to make ready for the
night and were fighting among themselves for places nearest the stove,
as it was a cool autumn evening. Animals are never fiercer than these
men were. Oaths in a dozen languages and dialects filled the putrid air;
races and classes united against each other; the Slavs cursed the
Magyars, and they together beat the Jews and drove the Gypsies into a
corner by themselves.
The women fought like tigers; they had to, for the men were assaulting
them and there was no protection but their inborn sense of virtue, which
is a mighty force in women, even in the lowest. One girl, who had the
hardest fight, was a young Gypsy. She beat, scratched, kicked and drove
off more than a score of men, who were awed as much by her indomitable
courage as by her brute strength.
We came into the jail crying; at least, I remember that I cried, and
both of us were shaking from the cold and sick from hunger. We remained
unnoticed in the mêlée, but when our cries grew louder, an old hag, a
bony, rough-looking creature, heard us. "_Boshe muy!_" she cried when
she saw us. Then, realizing our condition, she fed us cold cabbage out
of a black, earthen pot. The women quarrelled as to who should care for
us during the night. I went to sleep with my head upon the old hag's
lap; she did not have room enough to lie down full length. I closed my
eyes amid the subdued struggle and my unsubdued grief.
Early in the morning, before dawn, I was awakened by a tumult of voices.
My epileptic companion was standing on top of the cold stove, speaking
and wildly gesticulating. The men and women listened in amazement as his
confused speech rose to a pitch of eloquence. I wish I could remember
just what he said, but I know that I, in fact every one, felt as if the
jail had grown larger and the air purer. We actually saw the pictures he
drew.
One of them was a fire--yes, the _Pany's_ house was burning--the
_Kisaszonka_, his beautiful daughter, was behind the barred windows and
the epileptic would save her. He strained his muscles and the veins of
his thin arms swelled as the surging blood filled them.
"Here she was, in her raiment of white, like a twig of rosemary,
fragrant and pure--he had rescued her, and who had a right to marry her
but he, her saviour?"
Then he drew for us a battle-field; bullets flew, the air was thick from
powder smoke, the enemy was advancing, the general, a prince, was on his
white charger leading his army to kill and drive back the invaders.
"Behold! A swift riding Kozak. He rises in his stirrups and draws his
sword. It hangs over the head of my beloved prince--it is ready to fall!
I must save my prince! Ride on horse! On and on!"
He drew his imaginary sword, and swung it with all his might. "Ha! the
Kozak sinks, cloven in twain!"
There stood the epileptic before us, more than half the watchers not
understanding what he said; yet all hanging upon his words. Then, like a
wounded soldier he sank upon a bench, and slipped to the floor. His pale
face was covered by perspiration, he foamed at the mouth, he ground his
teeth, and every muscle of his body seemed to be straining and
struggling against its encircling tension.
It was now daylight, and the jailor called our names. I responded to
both, and pushing through the crowd, saw my brother, who had come after
me. Before he bought me my breakfast he gave me the severe beating which
I so richly deserved.
The next night I was safe in my own quiet, clean, white bed, and mother
was talking to me. She told me again the story of my birth and my
babyhood, the pain I had caused, the little pleasure I had brought, and
now she was going to send me away to school. Although I was desperately
tired, I did not go to sleep, for it was the closing chapter of my
boyhood's life.
Years later, a great, gruff, German teacher, after telling us of the
pains of motherhood, looked at us fiercely and cried: "You're not worth
it! Not a mother's son of you!" And I felt sure that I was not.
XXI
OUT OF THE OMNIBUS
Everybody cried; even our servants and the neighbouring peasants, and
indeed it must have been a pathetic sight, to see a lonely little boy,
packed in among all sorts of people, venturing out into the far world by
way of the omnibus.
It was very difficult, this going away to school. All our relatives had
to be convinced that it was not a terrible tempting of providence. Many
remained unconvinced, and their prophecies of dire consequences were not
reassuring.
The fitting out was upon a generous scale. Seamstresses were busy and
the tailor, a deaf mute, measured me in his rough way, making notches
upon long, paper tape; for he couldn't read even figures. Fortunately,
clothes, so long as they were generously large, were regarded as
satisfactory. What did not fit me then, might, another year.
Feather-beds and pillows whose contents had been contributed by many
generations of Sabbath geese, were packed, sewed into linen sheets; but
what appealed to me most was a basketful of goodies. Poppy-seed cakes,
cheese cakes, twisted Sabbath bread, a generous portion of roast goose,
and with it all, many admonitions not to eat everything at once.
How hard it was for me to cry, how glad I was when it was all over, and
what a sense of freedom possessed me--in spite of the fact that I was
packed into the omnibus like a sardine, and that my fellow passengers
had no special regard for a little Jewish boy.
I doubt that were I now to fly in an air-ship, I should feel such
exaltation, and were I to be chief among the distinguished citizens who
ride on some patriotic errand, would I feel anything akin to the pride
which then filled me. The higher emotions wipe out the lower
differences, and my racial and other enemies seemed like brothers during
those last, fast fleeting moments of my boyhood's life.
Good-bye, my brother by vaccination, now a shoemaker's apprentice,
passing the omnibus whistling. He stood there with puckered lips, silent
for a second; then a smile passed over his dirty face, his brotherly
instinct overcame all barriers, he jumped on to the step of the vehicle
and shook my hand, saying: "_Z'Boghem_"--"with God."
Good-bye, you son of the _Pany_; you tried to humiliate me when I was
king. I knew he, too, would have shaken hands with me; but one of his
class has to be careful, and a French governess and social proprieties
are higher barriers than old scores. He nodded his head and smiled, and
I thanked him for the smile.
Good-bye, you miller's sons, looking like two huge, penny rolls, leaning
against the walls of the mill.
True sons of their Teutonic father, they grasped my hands, leaving huge
flour spots on my new suit.
My neighbour in the omnibus scolded, for she, too, had to brush her
coat; but what are flour spots compared with warm, fraternal handshakes?
"Aufwiedersehn!" the miller's sons called after me. That was what they
carved on their sister's tombstone, "Aufwiedersehn."
Ah, Martha! My first, pure love! I shall never forget your kiss or your
brother's warm hand-shake.
Good-bye, all ye goose girls, geese and goslings. The earth seemed
covered by them.
Good-bye, you Lutheran pastor, who once gave me a glimpse of a
Christian's heart and a Christian's vision. He was tightly buttoned, and
scarcely nodded his head. I understand it now; it was ministerial
dignity.
Good-bye, St. Florian, guarding your huts and stables against fire. You
looked neglected, your halo was tarnished and the damp had spotted your
saintly robes. Was it because a fire engine had been brought to town?
Good-bye, St. Peter, keeper of the gate of Heaven, with a smile upon
your face as if it were all a joke, this locking and unlocking of the
abode of bliss. You didn't look as if you would keep a poor Jewish lad
out of Heaven.
Good-bye, blessed Virgin Mary, standing upon a crescent moon and a
pillar of cloud. You beautiful Jewish mother of the Son of God!
The women in the omnibus said: "Oh! Virgin Mary, intercede for us!" For
some reason, the Virgin never appealed to me until in riper years I saw
the Sistine in the Dresden gallery. I think I now understand why the
women adore her.
Good-bye, faithful old priest; you always looked like a Sphinx to me.
Your face was like that of a Cæsar and not of the Christ. You were a
Roman and not a Jew. Yet they loved you and you were on your way to make
some one's dying easier. I never liked your acolytes--they were always
cruel to me, and I ran whenever I saw one. They told me once when they
were piled on top of me, that I crucified the Christ and that they beat
me "for the love of God."
What a black eye--the first black eye I ever had--I got for "the love of
God"! It hurt, though, just as much as if I had got it because of their
love for the devil.
Good-bye, you Jewish dead, who lie by the dusty road. My buoyant spirits
flagged as I passed the thorn hedge, beyond which they lay in dire
confusion.
Good-bye, old teacher, whom they drew out of the muddy river. They put
you closest to the gate and your grave is level with the roadway. It was
terrible to lose the love of your wife and have her unfaithful to you. I
know now why you despaired. I have read Hosea since, and I understand
your grief. It was not because the child was "_Lo ami_"--not my
people--that you despaired; but because the people were harlots and did
not understand your "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity." It isn't easy to
have faith at such a time, old teacher, and yet Hosea, in his grief,
said: "Come let us return unto the Lord. For He hath torn and He will
heal us. He hath smitten and He will bind us up." Too bad we couldn't
have read Hosea together.
Good-bye, Adèle, whose grief I shared. Love--I understand it now. Love
and not wrath is a consuming fire. All those who love, suffer,
especially when love tries to break the barriers of class or race.
Good-bye, old Jewish soldier, you three-quarters of a man, who showed me
"Old Glory" and interpreted to me the riddle of the Stars and Stripes.
Thanks, many thanks for the patron saint under whose care you put
me--"Honest Abe!" The church calendar may not mark his name; but what is
a church calendar compared with the record made by those whose chains
he broke, or in whose hearts he inspired the hope that chains _can be_
broken?
Good-bye, my father, whom my eyes never saw and my fingers never
touched. I could not weep at your grave. How can we miss what we never
had? Now, with children of my own, I understand how hard your dying was;
how brave your life. Not because you fought for your country, most men
are too cowardly to be cowards in time of war; but you went alone where
"the pestilence walketh in darkness." You were not afraid of the "terror
by night." You may even have been afraid of those guns--I fear them and
my children after me. I do not believe you ever killed a Prussian. They
may have called you coward, but you were not afraid of the cholera. You
comforted the sick and buried the dead, when strong men fled and mere
brute strength was unavailing.
I wonder whether you ever struggled as I struggled, whether you suffered
just as I suffered. There is no picture of you. I often wished that I
could see your features and read in them the story of your inner life.
Mother always looked more longingly into my face than into the faces of
the other children. They said she spoiled me because I looked like you.
Sometimes I think I feel you in me--some one--not quite
myself--sometimes many who are not myself--is it you? Is it you,
father, and all the passing generations? Is it a race? Is this the way
we live on--in one another? Is this the way we bless or curse the world?
I am much I do not wish to be. I do more I do not wish to do. How much
am I just myself? How much you? How much this strong, pathetic race to
which I belong, against whose ill I have striven, whose good I have not
always understood, whose ignominy I have had to share? I tried to run
away from that inheritance, father; I did not understand when I rode
past your grave that morning in the omnibus--a little boy, packed in
among Magyar, Slav, Lutheran and Catholic, who hated me because I was
your son.
I have travelled in many an omnibus since. I have seen greater griefs
than mine. I now laugh at that pathetic little boy in the omnibus;
others will do the same--but although I laugh at that little boy I do
not understand. I cannot understand.
One thing you have not left me. One thing which neither you nor your
father nor your race nor any one has left me--is hate. If it was ever in
me--lurking somewhere--she loved it out of me--your wife, my mother.
XXII
A BACKWARD LOOK
From some ancestor, perhaps from my race, I inherited an abnormal
sensitiveness. Even as a child I felt instinctively the attitude of
people towards me. Consequently, situated as I was in an atmosphere
charged with race antagonism, I suffered constantly and often, of
course, needlessly. Therefore my childhood seems blurred, as if I were
looking at it through a dark cloud, or through eyes misty from tears.
Yet there was a bright side to it which should be recalled now, if only
in justice to the racial group that composed my close environment.
I never suffered from hunger or cold or from lack of all the affection
that my love-hungry nature demanded. If our home had no pictures, my
mother's face was beautiful to look upon, and when her blue eyes sought
mine I experienced emotions which I recalled vividly in later days, when
looking into the face of Murillo's St. Elizabeth. My mother's was that
type of maternal face, furrowed early by the pain of widowhood; the eyes
were deeply set and overarched by heavy brows. She had a sensitive
aquiline nose and such sweet, well-formed lips that even the loss of
her teeth in later years could not disfigure them. She was not what we
call an educated woman; for, in her day, girls were not taught anything
outside the prayer-book; but she was so cultured that I often wondered
where she got her wisdom. The two virtues which she constantly practiced
were: contentment and charity. One of her favourite maxims which I
remember was: "Never despise those beneath you and never envy those
above you."
Although she was brought up in the atmosphere of the Ghetto, when even
that was no safe abiding place, and her parents had to bribe officials
from week to week to live in peace, her nature had nothing false in it
and nothing narrow. While she was a faithful Jewess, she early
differentiated between the form of religion and its spirit, discarding
many of the ceremonials which seemed to her useless and unethical.
She abhorred the hypocrite but pitied the wayward. She was so
pure-minded that I never heard a vulgar word spoken in our family
circle, in spite of the fact that we lived in a most realistic
atmosphere, surrounded by many immoral men and women. She was a Puritan
at heart, never allowing a playing card in the home and very rarely
permitting us the use of wine, although it was always in the cellar. Yet
with the increasing luxuries of life as they came to her in later
years, she learned to enjoy the beautiful in many forms and yielded to
the social demands of the time. She never gossiped or made purely formal
calls. She was so busy from morning until night that she could not enjoy
leisure when it came, voluntarily assuming the care of grandchildren.
When finally her sight failed and she could do nothing, she grieved so
because of her enforced idleness that it hastened her death.
My brothers were much older than I, and I did not know them as children.
They never permitted me to forget that I was growing up without a
father's care, and that they were willing and able to provide all the
harsher elements which such care is supposed to afford. No doubt I
deserved all they gave me although I am sure I never enjoyed it. I
suppose little brothers were made to be tyrannized over by the older
ones, especially when the father is not living.
When I say that my older sister was just like my mother I give her ample
praise, and when I say that my younger sister was like my brothers, I
mean that it took time and better judgment than I had as a child, to
appreciate her. Neither she nor her brothers understood their
oversensitive relative.
Of none of my kinsfolk and of few among the Jews I knew, had I cause to
be ashamed. All my mother's relatives lived in Vienna, which was our
legal home. They were intelligent, industrious people, gentle natures,
most of them; too honest to grow very rich and too provident to grow
poor. I have already spoken of my father's brother and my grandmother,
and fear that I have done them scant justice. From my father's side
comes the strong religious strain in us; an almost fanatical sense of
righteousness, a great deal of hot, uncontrollable temper, and with it
unusual fluency of expression.
The grandmother I referred to I knew only as a bedridden old woman,
crippled by rheumatism. She outlived her husband, who left her with four
sons, all but one of them dying before she was called to her well-earned
rest. She favoured my uncle's children and bequeathed them all her
earthly possessions. I have never felt envious; for after all, the
things that are worth inheriting from our forefathers cannot be taken
from us by will or testament.
Among all the Jews I knew, there were just three whom I should now
regard as bad men--they were swindlers and usurers; they committed or
were capable of committing perjuries; but every one of them, and their
children also, have suffered the consequences. The vast majority were
hard-working, honest and scarcely well-to-do people, with a small fringe
of very poor and paupers at the social edge; enough to teach the rest
the virtue of charity. Their children, my contemporaries, I meet all
the way from Chicago to Constantinople. All of them are good citizens,
and some of them occupy large places of usefulness.
As a whole I should say that the Jewish community stood, intellectually,
far above the other racial and religious groups; that in the personal
virtues, such as chastity and charity, they surpassed them, and that in
striking a just balance they certainly were not morally inferior to
them.
The unfortunate thing was and still is, that the Gentiles had no
understanding of the fine qualities of the Jews and that the Jews never
properly appraised the real value of their Gentile neighbours. From my
present vantage ground I can see many sinners among all of them, and
some saints in each group. Humanly, all of them are so much alike that I
can see no difference.
This is what I suppose I felt in my race unconscious days, and when I
woke to consciousness, I rebelled against the artificial barriers,
suffering much and no doubt causing others to suffer. I was eager to
leave home because I supposed that in the larger world there was a
larger view of life, and when the driver told us all to get out and walk
up the Oresco Hill, I climbed it with joy; for I thought it led to those
heights.
XXIII
THE SYNAGOGUE