tificate
of good citizenship.

He may know all this and yet not guess how Wall Street, in the West
End, appears in the eyes of a little immigrant from Polotzk. What
would the sophisticated sight-seer say about Union Place, off Wall
Street, where my new home waited for me? He would say that it is no
place at all, but a short box of an alley. Two rows of three-story
tenements are its sides, a stingy strip of sky is its lid, a littered
pavement is the floor, and a narrow mouth its exit.

But I saw a very different picture on my introduction to Union Place.
I saw two imposing rows of brick buildings, loftier than any dwelling
I had ever lived in. Brick was even on the ground for me to tread on,
instead of common earth or boards. Many friendly windows stood open,
filled with uncovered heads of women and children. I thought the
people were interested in us, which was very neighborly. I looked up
to the topmost row of windows, and my eyes were filled with the May
blue of an American sky!

In our days of affluence in Russia we had been accustomed to
upholstered parlors, embroidered linen, silver spoons and
candlesticks, goblets of gold, kitchen shelves shining with copper and
brass. We had featherbeds heaped halfway to the ceiling; we had
clothes presses dusky with velvet and silk and fine woollen. The three
small rooms into which my father now ushered us, up one flight of
stairs, contained only the necessary beds, with lean mattresses; a few
wooden chairs; a table or two; a mysterious iron structure, which
later turned out to be a stove; a couple of unornamental kerosene
lamps; and a scanty array of cooking-utensils and crockery. And yet we
were all impressed with our new home and its furniture. It was not
only because we had just passed through our seven lean years, cooking
in earthen vessels, eating black bread on holidays and wearing cotton;
it was chiefly because these wooden chairs and tin pans were American
chairs and pans that they shone glorious in our eyes. And if there was
anything lacking for comfort or decoration we expected it to be
presently supplied--at least, we children did. Perhaps my mother
alone, of us newcomers, appreciated the shabbiness of the little
apartment, and realized that for her there was as yet no laying down
of the burden of poverty.

Our initiation into American ways began with the first step on the new
soil. My father found occasion to instruct or correct us even on
the way from the pie