r to Wall Street, which journey we made crowded
together in a rickety cab. He told us not to lean out of the windows,
not to point, and explained the word "greenhorn." We did not want to
be "greenhorns," and gave the strictest attention to my father's
instructions. I do not know when my parents found opportunity to
review together the history of Polotzk in the three years past, for we
children had no patience with the subject; my mother's narrative was
constantly interrupted by irrelevant questions, interjections, and
explanations.

[Illustration: UNION PLACE (BOSTON) WHERE MY NEW HOME WAITED
FOR ME]

The first meal was an object lesson of much variety. My father
produced several kinds of food, ready to eat, without any cooking,
from little tin cans that had printing all over them. He attempted to
introduce us to a queer, slippery kind of fruit, which he called
"banana," but had to give it up for the time being. After the meal, he
had better luck with a curious piece of furniture on runners, which he
called "rocking-chair." There were five of us newcomers, and we found
five different ways of getting into the American machine of perpetual
motion, and as many ways of getting out of it. One born and bred to
the use of a rocking-chair cannot imagine how ludicrous people can
make themselves when attempting to use it for the first time. We
laughed immoderately over our various experiments with the novelty,
which was a wholesome way of letting off steam after the unusual
excitement of the day.

In our flat we did not think of such a thing as storing the coal in
the bathtub. There was no bathtub. So in the evening of the first day
my father conducted us to the public baths. As we moved along in a
little procession, I was delighted with the illumination of the
streets. So many lamps, and they burned until morning, my father
said, and so people did not need to carry lanterns. In America, then,
everything was free, as we had heard in Russia. Light was free; the
streets were as bright as a synagogue on a holy day. Music was free;
we had been serenaded, to our gaping delight, by a brass band of many
pieces, soon after our installation on Union Place.

Education was free. That subject my father had written about
repeatedly, as comprising his chief hope for us children, the essence
of American opportunity, the treasure that no thief could touch, not
even misfortune or poverty. It was the one thing that he was able to
promi