He
cried and protested, but my father was determined that he should not
grow up ignorant, so he used the strap freely to hasten the truant's
steps to school. The heder was the only beginning allowable for a boy
in Polotzk, and to heder Joseph must go. So the poor boy's life was
made a nightmare, and the horror was not lifted until he was ten years
old, when he went to a modern school where intelligible things were
taught, and it proved that it was not the book he hated, but the
blindness of the heder.

For a number of peaceful years after my father's return from "far
Russia," we led a wholesome life of comfort, contentment, and faith in
to-morrow. Everything prospered, and we children grew in the sun. My
mother was one with my father in all his plans for us. Although she
had spent her young years in the pursuit of the ruble, it was more to
her that our teacher praised us than that she had made a good bargain
with a tea merchant. Fetchke and Joseph and I, and Deborah, when she
grew up, had some prospects even in Polotzk, with our parents' hearts
set on the highest things; but we were destined to seek our fortunes
in a world which even my father did not dream of when he settled down
to business in Polotzk.

Just when he felt himself safe and strong, a long series of troubles
set in to harass us, and in a few years' time we were reduced to a
state of helpless poverty, in which there was no room to think of
anything but bread. My father became seriously ill, and spent large
sums on cures that did not cure him. While he was still an invalid, my
mother also became ill and kept her bed for the better part of two
years. When she got up, it was only to lapse again. Some of us
children also fell ill, so that at one period the house was a
hospital. And while my parents were incapacitated, the business was
ruined through bad management, until a day came when there was not
enough money in the cash drawer to pay the doctor's bills.

For some years after they got upon their feet again, my parents
struggled to regain their place in the business world, but failed to
do so. My father had another period of experimenting with this or that
business, like his earlier experience. But everything went wrong, till
at last he made a great resolve to begin life all over again. And the
way to do that was to start on a new soil. My father determined to
emigrate to America.

I have now told who I am, what my people were, how I began life, and