selves driven into a
little room where a great kettle was boiling on a little stove;
our clothes taken off, our bodies rubbed with a slippery
substance that might be any bad thing; a shower of warm water
let down on us without warning; again driven to another little
room where we sit, wrapped in woollen blankets till large,
coarse bags are brought in, their contents turned out, and we
see only a cloud of steam, and hear the women's orders to dress
ourselves,--"Quick! Quick!"--or else we'll miss--something we
cannot hear. We are forced to pick out our clothes from among
all the others, with the steam blinding us; we choke, cough,
entreat the women to give us time; they persist, "Quick!
Quick!--or you'll miss the train!"--Oh, so we really won't be
murdered! They are only making us ready for the continuing of
our journey, cleaning us of all suspicions of dangerous
sickness. Thank God!

In Polotzk, if the cholera broke out, as it did once or twice in every
generation, we made no such fuss as did these Germans. Those who died
of the sickness were buried, and those who lived ran to the synagogues
to pray. We travellers felt hurt at the way the Germans treated us. My
mother nearly died of cholera once, but she was given a new name, a
lucky one, which saved her; and that was when she was a small girl.
None of us were sick now, yet hear how we were treated! Those
gendarmes and nurses always shouted their commands at us from a
distance, as fearful of our touch as if we had been lepers.

We arrived in Hamburg early one morning, after a long night in the
crowded cars. We were marched up to a strange vehicle, long and
narrow and high, drawn by two horses and commanded by a mute driver.
We were piled up on this wagon, our baggage was thrown after us, and
we started on a sight-seeing tour across the city of Hamburg. The
sights I faithfully enumerate for the benefit of my uncle include
little carts drawn by dogs, and big cars that run of themselves, later
identified as electric cars.

The humorous side of our adventures did not escape me. Again and again
I come across a laugh in the long pages of the historic epistle. The
description of the ride through Hamburg ends with this:--

The sight-seeing was not all on our side. I noticed many people
stopping to look at us as if amused, though most passed by us as
though used to such sights. We did make a queer appear