is welcome in his home language, and told him to come to the
kitchen-fire and dry himself. He had no bed for him, but there was straw
in the garret, and he could make out. The man's wife was cooking the
supper, and their children were playing about on the floor. Jurgis sat
and exchanged thoughts with him about the old country, and the places
where they had been and the work they had done. Then they ate, and
afterward sat and smoked and talked more about America, and how they
found it. In the middle of a sentence, however, Jurgis stopped, seeing
that the woman had brought a big basin of water and was proceeding to
undress her youngest baby. The rest had crawled into the closet where
they slept, but the baby was to have a bath, the workingman explained.
The nights had begun to be chilly, and his mother, ignorant as to the
climate in America, had sewed him up for the winter; then it had turned
warm again, and some kind of a rash had broken out on the child. The
doctor had said she must bathe him every night, and she, foolish woman,
believed him.

Jurgis scarcely heard the explanation; he was watching the baby. He was
about a year old, and a sturdy little fellow, with soft fat legs, and a
round ball of a stomach, and eyes as black as coals. His pimples did
not seem to bother him much, and he was wild with glee over the bath,
kicking and squirming and chuckling with delight, pulling at his
mother's face and then at his own little toes. When she put him into the
basin he sat in the midst of it and grinned, splashing the water over
himself and squealing like a little pig. He spoke in Russian, of which
Jurgis knew some; he spoke it with the quaintest of baby accents--and
every word of it brought back to Jurgis some word of his own dead little
one, and stabbed him like a knife. He sat perfectly motionless, silent,
but gripping his hands tightly, while a storm gathered in his bosom and
a flood heaped itself up behind his eyes. And in the end he could bear
it no more, but buried his face in his hands and burst into tears, to
the alarm and amazement of his hosts. Between the shame of this and his
woe Jurgis could not stand it, and got up and rushed out into the rain.

He went on and on down the road, finally coming to a black woods, where
he hid and wept as if his heart would break. Ah, what agony was that,
what despair, when the tomb of memory was rent open and the ghosts of
his old life came forth to scourge him! What terror to s