something besides the pictures of crowds of people, of foreign
cities, of a ship ready to put out to sea. My father was travelling at
the expense of a charitable organization, without means of his own,
without plans, to a strange world where he had no friends; and yet he
wrote with the confidence of a well-equipped soldier going into
battle. The rhetoric is mine. Father simply wrote that the emigration
committee was taking good care of everybody, that the weather was
fine, and the ship comfortable. But I heard something, as we read the
letter together in the darkened room, that was more than the words
seemed to say. There was an elation, a hint of triumph, such as had
never been in my father's letters before. I cannot tell how I knew it.
I felt a stirring, a straining in my father's letter. It was there,
even though my mother stumbled over strange words, even though she
cried, as women will when somebody is going away. My father was
inspired by a vision. He saw something--he promised us something. It
was this "America." And "America" became my dream.

While it was nothing new for my father to go far from home in search
of his fortune, the circumstances in which he left us were unlike
anything we had experienced before. We had absolutely no reliable
source of income, no settled home, no immediate prospects. We hardly
knew where we belonged in the simple scheme of our society. My mother,
as a bread-winner, had nothing like her former success. Her health was
permanently impaired, her place in the business world had long been
filled by others, and there was no capital to start her anew. Her
brothers did what they could for her. They were well-to-do, but they
all had large families, with marriageable daughters and sons to be
bought out of military service. The allowance they made her was
generous compared to their means,--affection and duty could do no
more,--but there were four of us growing children, and my mother was
obliged to make every effort within her power to piece out her income.

How quickly we came down from a large establishment, with servants and
retainers, and a place among the best in Polotzk, to a single room
hired by the week, and the humblest associations, and the averted
heads of former friends! But oftenest it was my mother who turned away
her head. She took to using the side streets to avoid the pitiful eyes
of the kind, and the scornful eyes of the haughty. Both were turned on
her as she trudged from