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 earthern 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 pier 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.
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.
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