But for all my enthusiasm about animals, plants, and rocks,—for all my devotion to the Natural History Club,—I did not become a thorough naturalist. My scientific friends were right not to take me seriously. Mr. Winthrop, in his delightfully frank way, called me a fraud; and I did not resent it. I dipped into zooelogy, botany, geology, ornithology, and an infinite number of other ologies, as the activities of the club or of particular members of it gave me opportunity, but I made no systematic study of any branch of science; at least not until I went to college. For what enthralled my imagination in the whole subject of natural history was not the orderly array of facts, but the glimpse I caught, through this or that fragment of science, of the grand principles underlying the facts. By asking questions, by listening when my wise friends talked, by reading, by pondering and dreaming, I slowly gathered together the kaleidoscopic bits of the stupendous panorama which is painted in the literature of Darwinism. Everything I had ever learned at school was illumined by this new knowledge; the world lay newly made under my eyes. Vastly as my mind had stretched to embrace the idea of a great country, when I exchanged Polotzk for America, it was no such enlargement as I now experienced, when in place of the measurable earth, with its paltry tale of historic centuries, I was given the illimitable universe to contemplate, with the numberless aeons of infinite time.

As the meaning of nature was deepened for me, so was its aspect beautified. Hitherto I had loved in nature the spectacular,—the blazing sunset, the whirling tempest, the flush of summer, the snow-wonder of winter. Now, for the first time, my heart was satisfied with the microscopic perfection of a solitary blossom. The harmonious murmur of autumn woods broke up into a hundred separate melodies, as the pelting acorn, the scurrying squirrel, the infrequent chirp of the lingering cricket, and the soft speed of ripe pine cones through dense-grown branches, each struck its discriminate chord in the scented air. The outdoor world was magnified in every dimension; inanimate things were vivified; living things were dignified.

No two persons set the same value on any given thing, and so it may very well be that I am boasting of the enrichment of my life through the study of natural history to ears that hear not. I need only recall my own obtuseness to the subject, before the story of the spider sharpened my senses, to realize that these confessions of a nature lover may bore every other person who reads them. But I do not pretend to be concerned about the reader at this point. I never hope to explain to my neighbor the exact value of a winter sunrise in my spiritual economy, but I know that my life has grown better since I learned to distinguish between a butterfly and a moth; that my faith in man is the greater because I have watched for the coming of the song sparrow in the spring; and my thoughts of immortality are the less wavering because I have cherished the winter duckweed on my lawn.

Those who find their greatest intellectual and emotional satisfaction in the study of nature are apt to refer their spiritual problems also to science. That is how it went with me. Long before my introduction to natural history I had realized, with an uneasy sense of the breaking of peace, that the questions which I thought to have been settled years before were beginning to tease me anew. In Russia I had practised a prescribed religion, with little faith in what I professed, and a restless questioning of the universe. When I came to America I lightly dropped the religious forms that I had half mocked before, and contented myself with a few novel phrases employed by my father in his attempt to explain the riddle of existence. The busy years flew by, when from morning till night I was preoccupied with the process of becoming an American; and no question arose in my mind that my books or my teachers could not fully answer. Then came a time when the ordinary business of my girl's life discharged itself automatically, and I had leisure once more to look over and around things. This period coinciding with my moody adolescence, I rapidly entangled myself in a net of doubts and questions, after the well-known manner of a growing girl. I asked once more, How did I come to be?—and I found that I was no whit wiser than poor Reb' Lebe, whom I had despised for his ignorance. For all my years of America and schooling, I could give no better answer to my clamoring questions than the teacher of my childhood. Whence came the fair world? Was there a God, after all? And if so, what did He intend when He made me?

It was always my way, if I wanted anything, to turn my daily life into a pursuit of that thing. "Have you seen the treasure I seek?" I asked of every man I met. And if it was God that I desired, I made all my friends search their hearts for evidence of His being. I asked all the wise people I knew what they were going to do with themselves after death; and if the wise failed to satisfy me, I questioned the simple, and listened to the babies talking in their sleep.

Still the imperative clamor of my mind remained unallayed. Was all my life to be a hunger and a questioning? I complained of my teachers, who stuffed my head with facts and gave my soul no crumb to feed on. I blamed the stars for their silence. I sat up nights brooding over the emptiness of knowledge, and praying for revelations.

Sometimes I lived for days in a chimera of doubts, feeling that it was hardly worth while living at all if I was never to know why I was born and why I could not live forever. It was in one of these prolonged moods that I heard that a friend of mine, a distinguished man of letters whom I greatly admired, was coming to Boston for a short visit. A terrific New England blizzard arrived some hours in advance of my friend's train, but so intent was I on questioning him that I disregarded the weather, and struggled through towering snowdrifts, in the teeth of the wild wind, to the railroad station. There I nearly perished of weariness while waiting for the train, which was delayed by the storm. But when my friend emerged from one of the snow-crusted cars I was rewarded; for the blizzard had kept the reporters away, and the great man could give me his undivided attention.

No doubt he understood the pressing importance of the matter to me, from the trouble I had taken to secure an early interview with him. He heard me out very soberly, and answered my questions as honestly as a thinking man could. Not a word of what he said remains in my mind, but I remember going away with the impression that it was possible to live without knowing everything, after all, and that I might even try to be happy in a world full of riddles.

In such ways as this I sought peace of mind, but I never achieved more than a brief truce. I was coming to believe that only the stupid could be happy, and that life was pretty hard on the philosophical, when the great new interest of science came into my life, and scattered my blue devils as the sun scatters the night damps.

Some of my friends in the Natural History Club were deeply versed in the principles of evolutionary science, and were able to guide me in my impetuous rush to learn everything in a day. I was in a hurry to deduce, from the conglomeration of isolated facts that I picked up in the lectures, the final solution of all my problems. It took both patience and wisdom to check me and at the same time satisfy me, I have no doubt; but then I was always fortunate in my friends. Wisdom and patience in plenty were spent on me, and I was instructed and inspired and comforted. Of course my wisest teacher was not able to tell me how the original spark of life was kindled, nor to point out, on the starry map of heaven, my future abode. The bread of absolute knowledge I do not hope to taste in this life. But all creation was remodelled on a grander scale by the utterances of my teachers; and my problems, though they deepened with the expansion of all nameable phenomena, were carried up to the heights of the impersonal, and ceased to torment me. Seeing how life and death, beginning and end, were all parts of the process of being, it mattered less in what particular ripple of the flux of existence I found myself. If past time was a trooping of similar yesterdays, back over the unbroken millenniums, to the first moment, it was simple to think of future time as a trooping of knowable to-days, on and on, to infinity. Possibly, also, the spark of life that had persisted through the geological ages, under a million million disguises, was vital enough to continue for another earth-age, in some shape as potent as the first or last. Thinking in aeons and in races, instead of in years and individuals, somehow lightened the burden of intelligence, and filled me anew with a sense of youth and well-being, that I had almost lost in the pit of my narrow personal doubts.

No one who understands the nature of youth will be misled, by this summary of my intellectual history, into thinking that I actually arranged my newly acquired scientific knowledge into any such orderly philosophy as, for the sake of clearness, I have outlined above. I had long passed my teens, and had seen something of life that is not revealed to poetizing girls, before I could give any logical account of what I read in the book of cosmogony. But the high peaks of the promised land of evolution did flash on my vision in the earlier days, and with these to guide me I rebuilt the world, and found it much nobler than it had ever been before, and took great comfort in it.

I did not become a finished philosopher from hearing a couple of hundred lectures on scientific subjects. I did not even become a finished woman. If anything, I grew rather more girlish. I remember myself as very merry in the midst of my serious scientific friends, and I can think of no time when I was more inclined to play the tomboy than when off for a day in the woods, in quest of botanical and zoological specimens. The freedom of outdoors, the society of congenial friends, the delight of my occupation—all acted as a strong wine on my mood, and sent my spirits soaring to immoderate heights I am very much afraid I made myself a nuisance, at times, to some of the more sedate of my grown-up companions. I wish they could know that I have truly repented. I wish they had known at the time that it was the exuberance of my happiness that played tricks, and no wicked desire to annoy kind friends. But I am sure that those who were offended have long since forgotten or forgiven, and I need remember nothing of those wonderful days other than that a new sun rose above a new earth for me, and that my happiness was like unto the iridescent dews.



CHAPTER XIX

A KINGDOM IN THE SLUMS

I did not always wait for the Natural History Club to guide me to delectable lands. Some of the happiest days of that happy time I spent with my sister in East Boston. We had a merry time at supper, Moses making clever jokes, without cracking a smile himself; and the baby romping in his high chair, eating what wasn't good for him. But the best of the evening came later, when father and baby had gone to bed, and the dishes were put away, and there was not a crumb left on the red-and-white checked tablecloth. Frieda took out her sewing, and I took a book; and the lamp was between us, shining on the table, on the large brown roses on the wall, on the green and brown diamonds of the oil cloth on the floor, on the baby's rattle on a shelf, and on the shining stove in the corner. It was such a pleasant kitchen—such a cosey, friendly room—that when Frieda and I were left alone I was perfectly happy just to sit there. Frieda had a beautiful parlor, with plush chairs and a velvet carpet and gilt picture frames; but we preferred the homely, homelike kitchen.

I read aloud from Longfellow, or Whittier, or Tennyson; and it was as great a treat to me as it was to Frieda. Her attention alone was inspiring. Her delight, her eager questions doubled the meaning of the lines I read. Poor Frieda had little enough time for reading, unless she stole it from the sewing or the baking or the mending. But she was hungry for books, and so grateful when I came to read to her that it made me ashamed to remember all the beautiful things I had and did not share with her.

It is true I shared what could be shared. I brought my friends to her. At her wedding were some of the friends of whom I was most proud. Miss Dillingham came, and Mr. Hurd; and the humbler guests stared in admiration at our school-teachers and editors. But I had so many delightful things that I could not bring to Frieda—my walks, my dreams, my adventures of all sorts. And yet when I told her about them, I found that she partook of everything. For she had her talent for vicarious enjoyment, by means of which she entered as an actor into my adventures, was present as a witness at the frolic of my younger life. Or if I narrated things that were beyond her, on account of her narrower experience, she listened with an eager longing to understand that was better than some people's easy comprehension. My world ever rang with good tidings, and she was grateful if I brought her the echo of them, to ring again within the four walls of the kitchen that bounded her life. And I, who lived on the heights, and walked with the learned, and bathed in the crystal fountains of youth, sometimes climbed the sublimest peak in my sister's humble kitchen, there caught the unfaltering accents of inspiration, and rejoiced in silver pools of untried happiness.

The way she reached out for everything fine was shown by her interest in the incomprehensible Latin and French books that I brought. She liked to hear me read my Cicero, pleased by the movement of the sonorous periods. I translated Ovid and Virgil for her; and her pleasure illumined the difficult passages, so that I seldom needed to have recourse to the dictionary. I shall never forget the evening I read to her, from the "AEneid," the passage in the fourth book describing the death of Dido. I read the Latin first, and then my own version in English hexameters, that I had prepared for a recitation at school. Frieda forgot her sewing in her lap, and leaned forward in rapt attention. When I was through, there were tears of delight in her eyes; and I was surprised myself at the beauty of the words I had just pronounced.

I do not dare to confess how much of my Latin I have forgotten, lest any of the devoted teachers who taught me should learn the sad truth; but I shall always boast of some acquaintance with Virgil, through that scrap of the "AEneid" made memorable by my sister's enjoyment of it.

Truly my education was not entirely in the hands of persons who had licenses to teach. My sister's fat baby taught me things about the origin and ultimate destiny of dimples that were not in any of my school-books. Mr. Casey, of the second floor, who was drunk whenever his wife was sober, gave me an insight into the psychology of the beer mug that would have added to the mental furniture of my most scholarly teacher. The bold-faced girls who passed the evening on the corner, in promiscuous flirtation with the cock-eyed youths of the neighborhood, unconsciously revealed to me the eternal secrets of adolescence. My neighbor of the third floor, who sat on the curbstone with the scabby baby in her bedraggled lap, had things to say about the fine ladies who came in carriages to inspect the public bathhouse across the street that ought to be repeated in the lecture halls of every school of philanthropy. Instruction poured into my brain at such a rate that I could not digest it all at the time; but in later years, when my destiny had led me far from Dover Street, the emphatic moral of those lessons became clear. The memory of my experience on Dover Street became the strength of my convictions, the illumined index of my purpose, the aureola of my happiness. And if I paid for those lessons with days of privation and dread, with nights of tormenting anxiety, I count the price cheap. Who would not go to a little trouble to find out what life is made of? Life in the slums spins busily as a schoolboy's top, and one who has heard its humming never forgets. I look forward to telling, when I get to be a master of language, what I read in the crooked cobblestones when I revisited Dover Street the other day.

Dover Street was never really my residence—at least, not the whole of it. It happened to be the nook where my bed was made, but I inhabited the City of Boston. In the pearl-misty morning, in the ruby-red evening, I was empress of all I surveyed from the roof of the tenement house. I could point in any direction and name a friend who would welcome me there. Off towards the northwest, in the direction of Harvard Bridge, which some day I should cross on my way to Radcliffe College, was one of my favorite palaces, whither I resorted every day after school.

A low, wide-spreading building with a dignified granite front it was, flanked on all sides by noble old churches, museums, and school-houses, harmoniously disposed around a spacious triangle, called Copley Square. Two thoroughfares that came straight from the green suburbs swept by my palace, one on either side, converged at the apex of the triangle, and pointed off, past the Public Garden, across the historic Common, to the domed State House sitting on a height.

It was my habit to go very slowly up the low, broad steps to the palace entrance, pleasing my eyes with the majestic lines of the building, and lingering to read again the carved inscriptions: Public Library—Built by the People—Free to All.

Did I not say it was my palace? Mine, because I was a citizen; mine, though I was born an alien; mine, though I lived on Dover Street. My palace—mine!

I loved to lean against a pillar in the entrance hall, watching the people go in and out. Groups of children hushed their chatter at the entrance, and skipped, whispering and giggling in their fists, up the grand stairway, patting the great stone lions at the top, with an eye on the aged policemen down below. Spectacled scholars came slowly down the stairs, loaded with books, heedless of the lofty arches that echoed their steps. Visitors from out of town lingered long in the entrance hall, studying the inscriptions and symbols on the marble floor. And I loved to stand in the midst of all this, and remind myself that I was there, that I had a right to be there, that I was at home there. All these eager children, all these fine-browed women, all these scholars going home to write learned books—I and they had this glorious thing in common, this noble treasure house of learning. It was wonderful to say, This is mine; it was thrilling to say, This is ours.

I visited every part of the building that was open to the public. I spent rapt hours studying the Abbey pictures. I repeated to myself lines from Tennyson's poem before the glowing scenes of the Holy Grail. Before the "Prophets" in the gallery above I was mute, but echoes of the Hebrew Psalms I had long forgotten throbbed somewhere in the depths of my consciousness. The Chavannes series around the main staircase I did not enjoy for years. I thought the pictures looked faded, and their symbolism somehow failed to move me at first.

Bates Hall was the place where I spent my longest hours in the library. I chose a seat far at one end, so that looking up from my books I would get the full effect of the vast reading-room. I felt the grand spaces under the soaring arches as a personal attribute of my being.

The courtyard was my sky-roofed chamber of dreams. Slowly strolling past the endless pillars of the colonnade, the fountain murmured in my ear of all the beautiful things in all the beautiful world. I imagined that I was a Greek of the classic days, treading on sandalled feet through the glistening marble porticoes of Athens. I expected to see, if I looked over my shoulder, a bearded philosopher in a drooping mantle, surrounded by beautiful youths with wreathed locks. Everything I read in school, in Latin or Greek, everything in my history books, was real to me here, in this courtyard set about with stately columns.

Here is where I liked to remind myself of Polotzk, the better to bring out the wonder of my life. That I who was born in the prison of the Pale should roam at will in the land of freedom was a marvel that it did me good to realize. That I who was brought up to my teens almost without a book should be set down in the midst of all the books that ever were written was a miracle as great as any on record. That an outcast should become a privileged citizen, that a beggar should dwell in a palace—this was a romance more thrilling than poet ever sung. Surely I was rocked in an enchanted cradle.



From the Public Library to the State House is only a step, and I found my way there without a guide. The State House was one of the places I could point to and say that I had a friend there to welcome me. I do not mean the representative of my district, though I hope he was a worthy man. My friend was no less a man than the Honorable Senator Roe, from Worcester, whose letters to me, written under the embossed letter head of the Senate Chamber, I could not help exhibiting to Florence Connolly.

How did I come by a Senator? Through being a citizen of Boston, of course. To be a citizen of the smallest village in the United States which maintains a free school and a public library is to stand in the path of the splendid processions of opportunity. And as Boston has rather better schools and a rather finer library than some other villages, it comes natural there for children in the slums to summon gentlemen from the State House to be their personal friends.

It is so simple, in Boston! You are a school-girl, and your teacher gives you a ticket for the annual historical lecture in the Old South Church, on Washington's Birthday. You hear a stirring discourse on some subject in your country's history, and you go home with a heart bursting with patriotism. You sit down and write a letter to the speaker who so moved you, telling him how glad you are to be an American, explaining to him, if you happen to be a recently made American, why you love your adopted country so much better than your native land. Perhaps the patriotic lecturer happens to be a Senator, and he reads your letter under the vast dome of the State House; and it occurs to him that he and his eminent colleagues and the stately capitol and the glorious flag that floats above it, all gathered on the hill above the Common, do his country no greater honor than the outspoken admiration of an ardent young alien. The Senator replies to your letter, inviting you to visit him at the State House; and in the renowned chamber where the august business of the State is conducted, you, an obscure child from the slums, and he, a chosen leader of the people, seal a democratic friendship based on the love of a common flag.

Even simpler than to meet a Senator was it to become acquainted with a man like Edward Everett Hale. "The Grand Old Man of Boston," the people called him, from the manner of his life among them. He kept open house in every public building in the city. Wherever two citizens met to devise a measure for the public weal, he was a third. Wherever a worthy cause needed a champion, Dr. Hale lifted his mighty voice. At some time or another his colossal figure towered above an eager multitude from every pulpit in the city, from every lecture platform. And where is the map of Boston that gives the names of the lost alleys and back ways where the great man went in search of the lame in body, who could not join the public assembly, in quest of the maimed in spirit, who feared to show their faces in the open? If all the little children who have sat on Dr. Hale's knee were started in a procession on the State House steps, standing four abreast, there would be a lane of merry faces across the Common, out to the Public Library, over Harvard Bridge, and away beyond to remoter landmarks.

That I met Dr. Hale is no wonder. It was as inevitable as that I should be a year older every twelvemonth. He was a part of Boston, as the salt wave is a part of the sea. I can hardly say whether he came to me or I came to him. We met, and my adopted country took me closer to her breast.

A day or two after our first meeting I called on Dr. Hale, at his invitation. It was only eight o'clock in the morning, you may be sure, because he had risen early to attend to a hundred great affairs, and I had risen early so as to talk with a great man before I went to school. I think we liked each other a little the more for the fact that when so many people were still asleep, we were already busy in the interests of citizenship and friendship. We certainly liked each other.

I am sure I did not stay more than fifteen minutes, and all that I recall of our conversation was that Dr. Hale asked me a great many questions about Russia, in a manner that made me feel that I was an authority on the subject; and with his great hand in good-bye he gave me a bit of homely advice, namely, that I should never study before breakfast!

That was all, but for the rest of the day I moved against a background of grandeur. There was a noble ring to Virgil that day that even my teacher's firm translation had never brought out before. Obscure points in the history lesson were clear to me alone, of the thirty girls in the class. And it happened that the tulips in Copley Square opened that day, and shone in the sun like lighted lamps.

Any one could be happy a year on Dover Street, after spending half an hour on Highland Street. I enjoyed so many half-hours in the great man's house that I do not know how to convey the sense of my remembered happiness. My friend used to keep me in conversation a few minutes, in the famous study that was fit to have been preserved as a shrine; after which he sent me to roam about the house, and explore his library, and take away what books I pleased. Who would feel cramped in a tenement, with such royal privileges as these?

Once I brought Dr. Hale a present, a copy of a story of mine that had been printed in a journal; and from his manner of accepting it you might have thought that I was a princess dispensing gifts from a throne. I wish I had asked him, that last time I talked with him, how it was that he who was so modest made those who walked with him so great.

Modest as the man was the house in which he lived. A gray old house of a style that New England no longer builds, with a pillared porch curtained by vines, set back in the yard behind the old trees. Whatever cherished flowers glowed in the garden behind the house, the common daisy was encouraged to bloom in front. And was there sun or snow on the ground, the most timid hand could open the gate, the most humble visitor was sure of a welcome. Out of that modest house the troubled came comforted, the fallen came uplifted, the noble came inspired.

My explorations of Dr. Hale's house might not have brought me to the gables, but for my friend's daughter, the artist, who had a studio at the top of the house. She asked me one day if I would sit for a portrait, and I consented with the greatest alacrity. It would be an interesting experience, and interesting experiences were the bread of life to me. I agreed to come every Saturday morning, and felt that something was going to happen to Dover Street.



When I came home from my talk with Miss Hale, I studied myself long in my blotched looking-glass. I saw just what I expected. My face was too thin, my nose too large, my complexion too dull. My hair, which was curly enough, was too short to be described as luxurious tresses; and the color was neither brown nor black. My hands were neither white nor velvety; the fingers ended decidedly, instead of tapering off like rosy dreams. I was disgusted with my wrists; they showed too far below the tight sleeves of my dress of the year before last, and they looked consumptive.

No, it was not for my beauty that Miss Hale wanted to paint me. It was because I was a girl, a person, a piece of creation. I understood perfectly. If I could write an interesting composition about a broom, why should not an artist be able to make an interesting picture of me? I had done it with the broom, and the milk wagon, and the rain spout. It was not what a thing was that made it interesting, but what I was able to draw out of it. It was exciting to speculate as to what Miss Hale was going to draw out of me.

The first sitting was indeed exciting. There was hardly any sitting to it. We did nothing but move around the studio, and move the easel around, and try on ever so many backgrounds, and ever so many poses. In the end, of course, we left everything just as it had been at the start, because Miss Hale had had the right idea from the beginning; but I understood that a preliminary tempest in the studio was the proper way to test that idea.

I was surprised to find that I should not be obliged to hold my breath, and should be allowed to wink all I wanted. Posing was just sitting with my hands in my lap, and enjoying the most interesting conversation with the artist. We hit upon such out-of-the-way topics—once, I remember, we talked about the marriage laws of different states! I had a glorious time, and I believe Miss Hale did too. I watched the progress of the portrait with utter lack of comprehension, and with perfect faith in the ultimate result. The morning flew so fast that I could have sat right on into the afternoon without tiring.

Once or twice I stayed to lunch, and sat opposite the artist's mother at table. It was like sitting face to face with Martha Washington, I thought. Everything was wonderful in that wonderful old house.

One thing disturbed my enjoyment of those Saturday mornings. It was a small thing, hardly as big as a pen-wiper. It was a silver coin which Miss Hale gave me regularly when I was going. I knew that models were paid for sitting, but I was not a professional model. When people sat for their portraits they usually paid the artist, instead of the artist paying them. Of course I had not ordered this portrait, but I had such a good time sitting that it did not seem to me I could be earning money. But what troubled me was not the suspicion that I did not earn the money, but that I did not know what was in my friend's mind when she gave it to me. Was it possible that Miss Hale had asked me to sit on purpose to be able to pay me, so that I could help pay the rent? Everybody knew about the rent sooner or later, because I was always asking my friends what a girl could do to make the landlady happy. Very possibly Miss Hale had my landlady in mind when she asked me to pose. I might have asked her—I dearly loved explanations, which cleared up hidden motives—but her answer would not have made any real difference. I should have accepted the money just the same. Miss Hale was not a stranger, like Mr. Strong when he offered me a quarter. She knew me, she believed in my cause, and she wanted to contribute to it. Thus I, in my hair-splitting analyses of persons and motives; while the portrait went steadily on.

It was Miss Hale who first found a use for our superfluous baby. She came to Dover Street several times to study our tiny Celia, in swaddling clothes improvised by my mother, after the fashion of the old country. Miss Hale wanted a baby for a picture of the Nativity which she was doing for her father's church; and of all the babies in Boston, our Celia, our little Jewish Celia, was posing for the Christ Child! It does not matter in this connection that the Infant that lies in the lantern light, brooded over by the Mother's divine sorrow of love, in the beautiful altar piece in Dr. Hale's church, was not actually painted from my mother's baby, in the end. The point is that my mother, in less than half a dozen years of America, had so far shaken off her ancient superstitions that she feared no evil consequence from letting her child pose for a Christian picture.

A busy life I led, on Dover Street; a happy, busy life. When I was not reciting lessons, nor writing midnight poetry, nor selling papers, nor posing, nor studying sociology, nor pickling bugs, nor interviewing statesmen, nor running away from home, I made long entries in nay journal, or wrote forty-page letters to my friends. It was a happy thing that poor Mrs. Hutch did not know what sums I spent for stationery and postage stamps. She would have gone into consumption, I do believe, from inexpressible indignation; and she would have been in the right—to be indignant, not to go into consumption. I admit it; she would have been justified—from her point of view. From my point of view I was also in the right; of course I was. To make friends among the great was an important part of my education, and was not to be accomplished without a liberal expenditure of paper and postage stamps. If Mrs. Hutch had not repulsed my offer of confidences, I could have shown her long letters written to me by people whose mere signature was prized by autograph hunters. It is true that I could not turn those letters directly into rent-money,—or if I could, I would not,—but indirectly my interesting letters did pay a week's rent now and then. Through the influence of my friends my father sometimes found work that he could not have got in any other way. These practical results of my costly pursuit of friendships might have given Mrs. Hutch confidence in my ultimate solvency, had she not remained obstinately deaf to my plea for time, her heart being set on direct, immediate, convertible cash payment.

That was very narrow-minded, even though I say it who should not. The grocer on Harrison Avenue who supplied our table could have taught her to take a more liberal view. We were all anxious to teach her, if she only would have listened. Here was this poor grocer, conducting his business on the same perilous credit system which had driven my father out of Chelsea and Wheeler Street, supplying us with tea and sugar and strong butter, milk freely splashed from rusty cans, potent yeast, and bananas done to a turn,—with everything, in short, that keeps a poor man's family hearty in spite of what they eat,—and all this for the consideration of part payment, with the faintest prospect of a future settlement in full. Mr. Rosenblum had an intimate knowledge of the financial situation of every family that traded with him, from the gossip of his customers around his herring barrel. He knew without asking that my father had no regular employment, and that, consequently, it was risky to give us credit. Nevertheless he gave us credit by the week, by the month, accepted partial payment with thanks, and let the balance stand by the year.

We owed him as much as the landlady, I suppose, every time he balanced our account. But he never complained; nay, he even insisted on my mother's taking almonds and raisins for a cake for the holidays. He knew, as well as Mrs. Hutch, that my father kept a daughter at school who was of age to be put to work; but so far was he from reproaching him for it that he detained my father by the half-hour, inquiring about my progress and discussing my future. He knew very well, did the poor grocer, who it was that burned so much oil in my family; but when I came in to have my kerosene can filled, he did not fall upon me with harsh words of blame. Instead, he wanted to hear about my latest triumph at school, and about the great people who wrote me letters and even came to see me; and he called his wife from the kitchen behind the store to come and hear of these grand doings. Mrs. Rosenblum, who could not sign her name, came out in her faded calico wrapper, and stood with her hands folded under her apron, shy and respectful before the embryo scholar; and she nodded her head sideways in approval, drinking in with envious pleasure her husband's Yiddish version of my tale. If her black-eyed Goldie happened to be playing jackstones on the curb, Mrs. Rosenblum pulled her into the store, to hear what distinction Mr. Antin's daughter had won at school, bidding her take example from Mary, if she would also go far in education.

"Hear you, Goldie? She has the best marks, in everything, Goldie, all the time. She is only five years in the country, and she'll be in college soon. She beats them all in school, Goldie—her father says she beats them all. She studies all the time—all night—and she writes, it is a pleasure to hear. She writes in the paper, Goldie. You ought to hear Mr. Antin read what she writes in the paper. Long pieces—"

"You don't understand what he reads, ma," Goldie interrupts mischievously; and I want to laugh, but I refrain. Mr. Rosenblum does not fill my can; I am forced to stand and hear myself eulogized.

"Not understand? Of course I don't understand. How should I understand? I was not sent to school to learn. Of course I don't understand. But you don't understand, Goldie, and that's a shame. If you would put your mind on it, and study hard, like Mary Antin, you would also stand high, and you would go to high school, and be somebody."

"Would you send me to high school, pa?" Goldie asks, to test her mother's promises. "Would you really?"

"Sure as I am a Jew," Mr. Rosenblum promptly replies, a look of aspiration in his deep eyes. "Only show yourself worthy, Goldie, and I'll keep you in school till you get to something. In America everybody can get to something, if he only wants to. I would even send you farther than high school—to be a teacher, maybe. Why not? In America everything is possible. But you have to work hard, Goldie, like Mary Antin—study hard, put your mind on it."

"Oh, I know it, pa!" Goldie exclaims, her momentary enthusiasm extinguished at the thought of long lessons indefinitely prolonged. Goldie was a restless little thing who could not sit long over her geography book. She wriggled out of her mother's grasp now, and made for the door, throwing a "back-hand" as she went, without losing a single jackstone. "I hate long lessons," she said. "When I graduate grammar school next year I'm going to work in Jordan-Marsh's big store, and get three dollars a week, and have lots of fun with the girls. I can't write pieces in the paper, anyhow.—Beckie! Beckie Hurvich! Where you going? Wait a minute, I'll go along." And she was off, leaving her ambitious parents to shake their heads over her flightiness.

Mr. Rosenblum gave me my oil. If he had had postage stamps in stock, he would have given me all I needed, and felt proud to think that he was assisting in my important correspondences. And he was a poor man, and had a large family, and many customers who paid as irregularly as we. He ran the risk of ruin, of course, but he did not scold—not us, at any rate. For he understood. He was himself an immigrant Jew of the type that values education, and sets a great price on the higher development of the child. He would have done in my father's place just what my father was doing: borrow, beg, go without, run in debt—anything to secure for a promising child the fulfilment of the promise. That is what America was for. The land of opportunity it was, but opportunities must be used, must be grasped, held, squeezed dry. To keep a child of working age in school was to invest the meagre present for the sake of the opulent future. If there was but one child in a family of twelve who promised to achieve an intellectual career, the other eleven, and father, and mother, and neighbors must devote themselves to that one child's welfare, and feed and clothe and cheer it on, and be rewarded in the end by hearing its name mentioned with the names of the great.

So the poor grocer helped to keep me in school for I do not know how many years. And this is one of the things that is done on Harrison Avenue, by the people who pitch rubbish through their windows. Let the City Fathers strike the balance.

Of course this is wretched economics. If I had a son who wanted to go into the grocery business, I should take care that he was well grounded in the principles of sound bookkeeping and prudence. But I should not fail to tell him the story of the Harrison Avenue grocer, hoping that he would puzzle out the moral.

Mr. Rosenblum himself would be astonished to hear that any one was drawing morals from his manner of conducting his little store, and yet it is from men like him that I learn the true values of things. The grocer weighed me out a quarter of a pound of butter, and when the scales were even he threw in another scrap. "Na!" he said, smiling across the counter, "you can carry that much around the corner!" Plainly he was showing me that if I have not as many houses as my neighbor, that should not prevent me from cultivating as many graces. If I made some shame-faced reference to the unpaid balance, Mr. Rosenblum replied, "I guess you're not thinking of running away from Boston yet. You haven't finished turning the libraries inside out, have you?" In this way he reminded me that there were things more important than conventional respectability. The world belongs to those who can use it to the best advantage, the grocer seemed to argue; and I found that I had the courage to test this philosophy.

From my little room on Dover Street I reached out for the world, and the world came to me. Through books, through the conversation of noble men and women, through communion with the stars in the depth of night, I entered into every noble chamber of the palace of life. I employed no charm to win admittance. The doors opened to me because I had a right to be within. My patent of nobility was the longing for the abundance of life with which I was endowed at birth; and from the time I could toddle unaided I had been gathering into my hand everything that was fine in the world around me. Given health and standing-room, I should have worked out my salvation even on a desert island. Being set down in the garden of America, where opportunity waits on ambition, I was bound to make my days a triumphal march toward my goal. The most unfriendly witness of my life will not venture to deny that I have been successful. For aside from subordinate desires for greatness or wealth or specific achievement, my chief ambition in life has been to live, and I have lived. A glowing life has been mine, and the fires that blazed highest in all my days were kindled on Dover Street.

I have never had a dull hour in my life; I have never had a livelier time than in the slums. In all my troubles I was thrilled through and through with a prophetic sense of how they were to end. A halo of romance floated before every to-morrow; the wings of future adventures rustled in the dead of night. Nothing could be quite common that touched my life, because I had a power for attracting uncommon things. And when my noblest dreams shall have been realized I shall meet with nothing finer, nothing more remote from the commonplace, than some of the things that came into my life on Dover Street.

Friends came to me bearing noble gifts of service, inspiration, and love. There came one, to talk with whom was to double the volume of life. She left roses on my pillow when I lay ill, and in my heart she planted a longing for greatness that I have yet to satisfy. Another came whose soul was steeped in sunshine, whose eyes saw through every pretence, whose lips mocked nothing holy. And one came who carried the golden key that unlocked the last secret chamber of life for me. Friends came trooping from everywhere, and some were poor, and some were rich, but all were devoted and true; and they left no niche in my heart unfilled, and no want unsatisfied.

To be alive in America, I found out long ago, is to ride on the central current of the river of modern life; and to have a conscious purpose is to hold the rudder that steers the ship of fate. I was alive to my finger tips, back there on Dover Street, and all my girlish purposes served one main purpose. It would have been amazing if I had stuck in the mire of the slum. By every law of my nature I was bound to soar above it, to attain the fairer places that wait for every emancipated immigrant.

A characteristic thing about the aspiring immigrant is the fact that he is not content to progress alone. Solitary success is imperfect success in his eyes. He must take his family with him as he rises. So when I refused to be adopted by a rich old man, and clung to my family in the slums, I was only following the rule; and I can tell it without boasting, because it is no more to my credit than that I wake refreshed after a night's sleep.

This suggests to me a summary of my virtues, through the exercise of which I may be said to have attracted my good fortune. I find that I have always given nature a chance, I have used my opportunities, and have practised self-expression. So much my enemies will grant me; more than this my friends cannot claim for me.

In the Dover Street days I did not philosophize about my private character, nor about the immigrant and his ways. I lived the life, and the moral took care of itself. And after Dover Street came Applepie Alley, Letterbox Lane, and other evil corners of the slums of Boston, till it must have looked to our neighbors as if we meant to go on forever exploring the underworld. But we found a short-cut—we found a short-cut! And the route we took from the tenements of the stifling alleys to a darling cottage of our own, where the sun shines in at every window, and the green grass runs up to our very doorstep, was surveyed by the Pilgrim Fathers, who trans-scribed their field notes on a very fine parchment and called it the Constitution of the United States.

It was good to get out of Dover Street—it was better for the growing children, better for my weary parents, better for all of us, as the clean grass is better than the dusty pavement. But I must never forget that I came away from Dover Street with my hands full of riches. I must not fail to testify that in America a child of the slums owns the land and all that is good in it. All the beautiful things I saw belonged to me, if I wanted to use them; all the beautiful things I desired approached me. I did not need to seek my kingdom. I had only to be worthy, and it came to me, even on Dover Street. Everything that was ever to happen to me in the future had its germ or impulse in the conditions of my life on Dover Street. My friendships, my advantages and disadvantages, my gifts, my habits, my ambitions—these were the materials out of which I built my after life, in the open workshop of America. My days in the slums were pregnant with possibilities; it only needed the ripeness of events to make them fruit forth in realities. Steadily as I worked to win America, America advanced to lie at my feet. I was an heir, on Dover Street, awaiting maturity. I was a princess waiting to be led to the throne.



CHAPTER XX

THE HERITAGE

One of the inherent disadvantages of premature biography is that it cannot go to the natural end of the story. This difficulty threatened me in the beginning, but now I find I do not need to tax my judgment to fix the proper stopping-place. Sudden qualms of reluctance warn me where the past and present meet. I have reached a point where my yesterdays lie in a quick heap, and I cannot bear to prod and turn them and set them up to be looked at. For that matter, I am not sure that I should add anything really new, even if I could force myself to cross the line of discretion. I have already shown what a real thing is this American freedom that we talk about, and in what manner a certain class of aliens make use of it. Anything that I might add of my later adventures would be a repetition, in substance, of what I have already described. Having traced the way an immigrant child may take from the ship through the public schools, passed on from hand to hand by the ready teachers; through free libraries and lecture halls, inspired by every occasion of civic consciousness; dragging through the slums the weight of private disadvantage, but heartened for the effort by public opportunity; welcomed at a hundred open doors of instruction, initiated with pomp and splendor and flags unfurled seeking, in American minds, the American way, and finding it in the thoughts of the noble,—striving against the odds of foreign birth and poverty, and winning, through the use of abundant opportunity, a place as enviable as that of any native child,—having traced the footsteps of the young immigrant almost to the college gate, the rest of the course may be left to the imagination. Let us say that from the Latin School on I lived very much as my American schoolmates lived, having overcome my foreign idiosyncrasies, and the rest of my outward adventures you may read in any volume of American feminine statistics.

But lest I be reproached for a sudden affectation of reserve, after having trained my reader to expect the fullest particulars, I am willing to add a few details. I went to college, as I proposed, though not to Radcliffe. Receiving an invitation to live in New York that I did not like to refuse, I went to Barnard College instead. There I took all the honors that I deserved; and if I did not learn to write poetry, as I once supposed I should, I learned at least to think in English without an accent. Did I get rich? you may want to know, remembering my ambition to provide for the family. I can reply that I have earned enough to pay Mrs. Hutch the arrears, and satisfy all my wants. And where have I lived since I left the slums? My favorite abode is a tent in the wilderness, where I shall be happy to serve you a cup of tea out of a tin kettle, and answer further questions.

And is this really to be the last word? Yes, though a long chapter of the romance of Dover Street is left untold. I could fill another book with anecdotes, telling how I took possession of Beacon Street, and learned to distinguish the lord of the manor from the butler in full dress. I might trace my steps from my bare room overlooking the lumber-yard to the satin drawing-rooms of the Back Bay, where I drank afternoon tea with gentle ladies whose hands were as delicate as their porcelain cups. My journal of those days is full of comments on the contrasts of life, that I copied from my busy thoughts in the evening, after a visit to my aristocratic friends. Coming straight from the cushioned refinement of Beacon Street, where the maid who brought my hostess her slippers spoke in softer accents than the finest people on Dover Street, I sometimes stumbled over poor Mr. Casey lying asleep in the corridor; and the shock of the contrast was like a searchlight turned suddenly on my life, and I pondered over the revelation, and wrote touching poems, in which I figured as a heroine of two worlds.

I might quote from my journals and poems, and build up the picture of that double life. I might rehearse the names of the gracious friends who admitted me to their tables, although I came direct from the reeking slums. I might enumerate the priceless gifts they showered on me; gifts bought not with gold but with love. It would be a pleasant task to recall the high things that passed in the gilded drawing-rooms over the afternoon tea. It would add a splendor to my simple narrative to weave in the portraits of the distinguished men and women who busied themselves with the humble fortunes of a school-girl. And finally, it would relieve my heart of a burden of gratitude to publish, once for all, the amount of my indebtedness to the devoted friends who took me by the hand when I walked in the paths of obscurity, and led me, by a pleasanter lane than I could have found by myself, to the open fields where obstacles thinned and opportunities crowded to meet me. Outside America I should hardly be believed if I told how simply, in my experience, Dover Street merged into the Back Bay. These are matters to which I long to testify, but I must wait till they recede into the past.

I can conjure up no better symbol of the genuine, practical equality of all our citizens than the Hale House Natural History Club, which played an important part in my final emancipation from the slums. For all I was regarded as a plaything by the serious members of the club, the attention and kindness they lavished on me had a deep significance. Every one of those earnest men and women unconsciously taught me my place in the Commonwealth, as the potential equal of the best of them. Few of my friends in the club, it is true, could have rightly defined their benevolence toward me. Perhaps some of them thought they befriended me for charity's sake, because I was a starved waif from the slums. Some of them imagined they enjoyed my society, because I had much to say for myself, and a gay manner of meeting life. But all these were only secondary motives. I myself, in my unclouded perception of the true relation of things that concerned me, could have told them all why they spent their friendship on me. They made way for me because I was their foster sister. They opened their homes to me that I might learn how good Americans lived. In the least of their attentions to me, they cherished the citizen in the making.

* * * * *

The Natural History Club had spent the day at Nahant, studying marine life in the tide pools, scrambling up and down the cliffs with no thought for decorum, bent only on securing the starfish, limpets, sea-urchins, and other trophies of the chase. There had been a merry luncheon on the rocks, with talk and laughter between sandwiches, and strange jokes, intelligible only to the practising naturalist. The tide had rushed in at its proper time, stealing away our seaweed cushions, drowning our transparent pools, spouting in the crevices, booming and hissing, and tossing high the snowy foam.



From the deck of the jolly excursion steamer which was carrying us home, we had watched the rosy sun dip down below the sea. The members of the club, grouped in twos and threes, discussed the day's successes, compared specimens, exchanged field notes, or watched the western horizon in sympathetic silence.

It had been a great day for me. I had seen a dozen new forms of life, had caught a hundred fragments of the song of nature by the sea; and my mind was seething with meanings that crowded in. I do not remember to which of my learned friends I addressed my questions on this occasion, but he surely was one of the most learned. For he took up all my fragments of dawning knowledge in his discourse, and welded them into a solid structure of wisdom, with windows looking far down the past and a tower overlooking the future. I was so absorbed in my private review of creation that I hardly realized when we landed, or how we got into the electric cars, till we were a good way into the city.

At the Public Library I parted from my friends, and stood on the broad stone steps, my jar of specimens in my hand, watching the car that carried them glide out of sight. My heart was full of a stirring wonder. I was hardly conscious of the place where I stood, or of the day, or the hour. I was in a dream, and the familiar world around me was transfigured. My hair was damp with sea spray; the roar of the tide was still in my ears. Mighty thoughts surged through my dreams, and I trembled with understanding.

I sank down on the granite ledge beside the entrance to the Library, and for a mere moment I covered my eyes with my hand. In that moment I had a vision of myself, the human creature, emerging from the dim places where the torch of history has never been, creeping slowly into the light of civilized existence, pushing more steadily forward to the broad plateau of modern life, and leaping, at last, strong and glad, to the intellectual summit of the latest century.

What an awful stretch of years to contemplate! What a weighty past to carry in memory! How shall I number the days of my life, except by the stars of the night, except by the salt drops of the sea?

But hark to the clamor of the city all about! This is my latest home, and it invites me to a glad new life. The endless ages have indeed throbbed through my blood, but a new rhythm dances in my veins. My spirit is not tied to the monumental past, any more than my feet were bound to my grandfather's house below the hill. The past was only my cradle, and now it cannot hold me, because I am grown too big; just as the little house in Polotzk, once my home, has now become a toy of memory, as I move about at will in the wide spaces of this splendid palace, whose shadow covers acres. No! it is not I that belong to the past, but the past that belongs to me. America is the youngest of the nations, and inherits all that went before in history. And I am the youngest of America's children, and into my hands is given all her priceless heritage, to the last white star espied through the telescope, to the last great thought of the philosopher. Mine is the whole majestic past, and mine is the shining future.



ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

To my mother who bore me; to my father who endowed me; to my brothers and sisters who believed in me; to my friends who loved me; to my teachers who inspired me; to my neighbors who befriended me; to my daughter who enlarged me; to my husband who opened the door of the greater life for me;—to all these who helped to make this book, I give my thanks.



GLOSSARY

KEY TO PRONUNCIATION

a as in man ae as in far e as in met ē as in meet e as long e in German Leder i as in pin ī as in file o as in not ō as in note oe as in German Koenig u as in circus ū as in mute u as in pull ai as in aisle oi as in joint ch as in German ach, Scotch loch ḥ as in German ach, Scotch loch l as in failure n as in canon zh as z in seizure.

Transcriber's Note: The diacritical marks used in the pronunciations for the original text are not available in the standard text character set. The following substitutions have been made: The macron (long bar) used over e, i, o, and u are represented as ē, ī, ō and ū. The diacritical u with a dot above, is represented as u. The diacritical h with a dot below, is represented as ḥ. The diacritical l with a circumflex (hat ^) above, is represented as l.

Explanations

The abbreviations Germ. (= German), Hebr. (= Hebrew), Russ. (= Russian), and Yid. (= Yiddish) indicate the origin of a word. Most of the names marked Yiddish are such in form only, the roots being for the most part Hebrew.

Prop. n = proper name.

The endings ke and le of Yiddish proper names (Mashke, Perele) have a diminutive or endearing value, like the German chen (Helenchen).

Double names are given under the first name.

The religious customs described prevail among the Orthodox Jews of European countries. In the United States they have been considerably modified, especially among the Reformed Jews.

Ab (aeb) Hebr. The fifth month of the Hebrew calendar. The ninth of Ab is a day of fasting and mourning, in commemoration of the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple.

Adonai (ae-do-nai'), Hebr. An appellation of God.

Aleph (ae'-lef), Hebr. The first letter of the Hebrew alphabet.

Atonement, Day of (Hebrew, Yom Kippur). The most solemn of the Hebrew festivals, observed by fasting and an elaborate ceremonial.

Bahur (bae'-hur), Hebr. A young unmarried man, particularly a student of the Talmud. (See Yeshibah bahur.)

Berl (berl). Yid. Prop. n.

Cabala (kaeb-ae'-lae), Hebr. A system of Hebrew mystic philosophy which flourished in the Middle Ages.

Candle Prayer (Yiddish, licht bentschen). Prayer pronounced over lighted candles by the women and older girls of the household at the commencement of the Sabbath.

Canopy, wedding (Hebrew huppah). A portable canopy under which the marriage ceremony is performed, usually outdoors.

Cossaks (kos'-aks), Russ. A name given to certain Russian tribes, formerly distinguished for their freebooting habits, now best known for their position in the army.

Dayyan (dai'-an), Hebr. A judge to whom are submitted civil disputes, as distinguished from purely religious questions, which are decided by the Rav.

Dinke (din'-ke), Yid. Prop. n.

Dvina (dvē'-nae), Russ. Name of a river.

Dvornik (dvor'-nik), Russ. An outdoor man; a choreman.

Dvoshe (dvo'-she), Yid. Prop. n.

Earlocks (Hebrew peath). Two locks of hair allowed to grow long and hang in front of the ears. Among the fanatical Hasidim, a mark of piety.

Eidtkuhnen (eit-koo'-nen), Germ. Name of a Russo-German frontier town.

Fetchke (fetch'-ke), Yid. Prop. n.

Fringes, sacred (Hebrew zizit). Specially prepared fringes fastened to the four corners of the arba kanfot (literally, "four-corners"), a garment worn by all pious males underneath the jacket or frock coat, usually with the fringes showing. The latter play a part in the daily ritual.

Goluth (gol'-ut), Hebr. Banishment; exile.

Good Jew (Yiddish guter id). Among the Hasidim, a title popularly accorded to more or less learned individuals distinguished for their piety, and credited with supernatural powers of healing, divination, etc. Pilgrimages to some renowned "Good Jew" were often undertaken by the very pious, on occasions of perplexity or trouble, for the purpose of obtaining his advice or help.

Groschen (gro'-shen), Germ. A popular name for various coins of small denomination, especially the half-kopeck.

Gutke (gut'-ke), Yid. Prop. n.

Hannah Hayye (ḥaen'-a ḥai'-e), Hebr. Prop. n.

Hasid, pl. Hasidim (ḥaes'-id, ḥas-id'-im), Hebr. A numerous sect of Jews distinguished for their enthusiasm in religious observance, a fanatical worship of their rabbis and many superstitious practices.

Haven Mirel (ḥa'-ve mirl), Hebr. and Yid. Prop. n.

Hayye Dvoshe (ḥai'-e dvo'-she), Hebr. and Yid. Prop. n.

Hayyim (ḥai'-im), Hebr. Prop. n.

Hazzan (ḥaez-an), Hebr. Cantor in a synagogue.

Heder (ḥe'-der), Hebr. Elementary Hebrew school, usually held at the teacher's residence.

Henne Roesel (he'-ne roezl), Yid. Prop. n.

Hirshel (hir'-shl), Yid. Prop. n.

Hode (ho'-de), Yid. Prop. n.

Horn, ram's (Hebrew shofar). Ritual horn, used in the synagogue during the great festivals.

Hossen (ḥo'-ssn), Hebr. Bridegroom; prospective bridegroom; betrothed.

Humesh (ḥu'-mesh), Hebr. The Pentateuch.

Icon (ī'-kon) Russ. A representation of Christ or some saint, usually in an elaborate frame, found in every orthodox Russian house.

Itke (it'-ke), Yid. Prop. n.

Jew, Good. See under Good.

Kibart (ki-baert'), Russ. Name of a town.

Kiddush (kid'-ush), Hebr. Benediction pronounced over a cup of wine before the Sabbath evening meal.

Kimanye (ki-mae'-ne), Russ. Name of a village.

Kimanyer (ki-mae'-ner), Yid. Belonging to or hailing from the village of Kimanye.

Knupf (knupf), Yid. A sort of turban.

Kopeck (ko'-pek), Russ. A copper coin, the 1/100 part of a ruble, worth about half a cent.

Kopistch (ko'-pistch), Russ. Name of a town.

Kosher (ko'-sher), Hebr. Clean, according to Jewish ritual law; opposed to tref, unclean. Applied chiefly to articles of diet and cooking and eating vessels.

Lamden (laem'-den), Hebr. Scholar; one versed in Hebrew learning.

Law, the (specifically used). The Mosaic Law; the Torah.

Lebe (le'-be), Yid. Prop. n.

Loaf, Sabbath. See under Sabbath.

Lozhe (lo'-zhe), Yid. Prop. n.

Lubavitch (lu-baev'-itch), Russ. Name of a town.

Maryashe (maer-yae'-she), Yid. Prop. n.

Mashinke (mae'-shin-ke), Yid. A diminutive of Mashke.

Mashke (maesh'-ke), Yid. Prop. n.

Mendele (men'-del-e), Yid. Prop. n.

Mezuzah (me-zu'-zae), Hebr. A piece of parchment inscribed with a passage of Scripture, rolled in a case and tacked to the doorpost. The pious touch or kiss this when leaving or entering a house.

Mikweh (mik'-we), Hebr. Ritual bath, constructed and used according to minute directions.

Mirele (mir'-e-le), Yid. Prop. n.

Mishka (mish'-kae), Russ. Prop. n.

Moon, blessing of. Benediction pronounced at the appearance of the new moon.

Moshe (mo'-she), Yid. Prop, n., a form of Moses.

Moeshele (mo'-she-le), Yid. Prop, n., diminutive of Moshe.

Mulke (mul'-ke), Yid. Prop, n., diminutive of Mulye.

Mulye (mul'-e), Yid. Prop. n.

Na! (nae), Yid. Here you are! Take it!

Nohem (no'-ḥem), Hebr. Prop. n.

Nu, nu! (nu, nu), Yid. Well, well.

Oi, weh! (oi, ve), Yid. Woe is me!

Oven, sealing of. As no fire is kindled on the Sabbath, the Sabbath dinner is cooked on Friday afternoon and left in the brick oven overnight. The oven is tightly closed with a board or sheet of metal, wet rags being stuffed into the interstices.

Passover (Hebrew, pesech). The feast of Unleavened Bread, commemorating the escape of the Israelites from Egypt.

Passport, foreign. A special passport required of any Russian subject wishing to go to a foreign country. To avoid the necessity of procuring such a passport, travellers often cross the border by stealth.

Perele (per'-e-le), Yid. Prop. n.

Phylacteries (fi-lak'-ter-is; Hebrew tefillin). Two small leathern boxes containing parchments inscribed with certain passages of Scripture, worn during morning prayer, one on the forehead and one on the left arm, where they are fastened by means of straps, in a manner carefully prescribed. The wearing of the tefillin is obligatory on all males over thirteen years of age (the age of confirmation).

Pinchus (pin'-chus), Hebr. Prop. n.

Pogrom (po-grom'), Russ. An organized massacre of Jews.

Poll (pol), Yid. A series of steps in the bathing-room, where cupping, etc., is done under a high temperature.

Polota (Po-lo-tae'), Russ. Name of a river.

Polotzk (po'-lotzk), Russ., also spelled Polotsk. A town in the government of Vitebsk, Russia, since early times a stronghold of Jewish orthodoxy. N.B. Polotzk must not be confused with Plotzk (also spelled Plock), the capital of the government of Plotzk, in Russian Poland, about 400 miles southwest of Polotzk.

Praying Shawl (Hebrew, tallit). A fine white woollen shawl with sacred fringes (zizit), in the four corners, worn by males after marriage, during certain devotional exercises.

Purim (pu'-rim), Hebr. A feast in commemoration of the deliverance of the Persian Jews, through the intervention of Esther, from the massacre planned by Haman. Masquerading, feasting, exchange of presents, and general license make this celebration the jolliest of the Jewish year.

Questions, the Four. At the Passover feast, the youngest son (or, in the absence of a son of suitable age, a daughter) asks four questions as to the significance of various symbolic articles used in the ceremonial, in reply to which the family read the story of Exodus.

Rabbi (rab'-ī), Hebr. A title accorded to men distinguished for learning and authorized to teach the Law. As used in the present work, rabbi is identical with the official title of rav, which see.

Rabbonim (raeb-on'-im), Hebr. Plural of rabbi.

Rav (raev), Hebr. The spiritual head of a Jewish community, whose duties include the settlement of ritualistic questions.

Reb' (reb), Yid. An abbreviation of rebbe, used as a title of respect, equivalent to the old-fashioned English "master."

Rebbe (reb'-e), Yid. Colloquial form of rabbi. A Hebrew teacher. Applied usually to teachers of lesser rank; also used as a title for a "Good Jew"; as, the Rebbe of Kopistch.

Rebbetzin (reb'-e-tzin), Yid. Female Hebrew teacher.

Riga (ri'-gae), Russ. Name of a city.

Ruble (ru'-bl), Russ. The monetary unit of Russia. A silver coin (or, more commonly, a paper bill) worth a little over fifty cents.

Sabbath Loaf (Hebrew, hallah). A wheaten loaf of peculiar shape used in the Sabbath ceremonial.

Sacred Fringes. See under Fringes.

Shadchan (shaed'-chan), Hebr. Professional match-maker; marriage broker.

Shawl, Praying. See under Praying.

Shema (shmae), Hebr. The verse recited as the Jewish confession of faith ("Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One"); so called from the initial word. The "Shema" recurs constantly in the daily ritual, and is informally repeated on every occasion of distress, or as a charm to ward off evil influences.

Shohat (sho'-ḥat), Hebr. Slaughterer of cattle according to ritual law.

Succoth (su'-kot), Hebr. The feast of Tabernacles, celebrated with many symbolic rites, among these being the eating of the festive meals outdoors, in a booth or bower of lattice work covered with evergreens.

Talakno (tael-aek-no'), Russ. Meal made of ground oats, often mixed with other grains or with weeds. An important article of diet among the peasants, generally moistened with cold water and eaten raw.

Talmudists (tal'-mud-ists; from Hebrew talmud). The compilers of the Talmud (the body of Jewish traditional lore); scholars versed in the teachings of the Talmud.

Tav (taev), Hebr. The last letter of the Hebrew alphabet.

Torah (tō'-rae), Hebr. The Mosaic Law; the book or scroll of the Law; sacred learning.

Trefah (tref'-a), Hebr. Unclean, according to ritual law; opposed to kosher, clean. Chiefly applied to articles of food and eating and cooking vessels.

Versbolovo (vers-bo-lo'-vae), Russ. Name of a town.

Verst (vyerst), Russ. A measure of length, about two-thirds of an English mile.

Vilna (vil'-nae), Russ. Name of a city.

Vitebsk (vi'-tebsk), Russ. Name of a city.

Vodka (vod'-kae), Russ. A kind of whiskey distilled from barley or from potatoes, constantly indulged in by the lower classes in Russia, especially by the peasants.

Wedding Canopy. See under Canopy.

Yachne (Yaech'-ne), Yid. Prop. n.

Yakub (yae-kub'), Russ. Prop. n.

Yankel (yaen'-kl), Yid. Prop. n.

Yeshibah (ye-shib'-ae), Hebr. Rabbinical school or seminary.

Yeshibah Bachur, a student in a yeshibah.

Yiddish (yid'-ish), Yid. Judeo-German, the language of the Jews of Eastern Europe. The basis is an archaic form of German, on which are grafted many words of Hebrew origin, and words from the vernacular of the country.

Yochem (yo'-chem), Yid. Prop. n.

Yuchovitch (yu-chov-itch'), Russ. Name of a village.

Zaddik (tzae'-dik), Hebr. A man of piety; a holy man.

Zalmen (zael'-men), Yid. Prop. n.

Zimbler (tzim'-bler), Yid. A performer on the zimble, an instrument constructed like a wooden tray, with several wires stretched across lengthwise, and played by means of two short rods.

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