Chapter Four

156The whole time I was in Lemberg, the thought never left me that I was not far from Brod, the Galician town near the Russian border where I had spent three weeks in the year 1882, when I traveled to America for the first time; the old Jewish town that had served as the gathering point for the beginning of the great Jewish emigration to America.

In the second volume of these pages (from page 25 to 49) these three weeks are recounted in detail. In my personal history they belong to those chapters in a person's life that he can never forget. Vilna, where I was raised, my old home Vilna, never ceased to draw me to itself. In 1905 I had an opportunity to travel there, but, as has already been told (see the fourth volume), unfavorable circumstances intervened, and the opportunity vanished. Once again it became impossible for me to visit my old home.

And now, finding myself not far from Brod, I had157grown homesick for the town where I had spent those unforgettable three weeks. With a strange yearning, as it were, as though my heart were crying out within me: if not Vilna, then let it at least be Brod! ...

On the 8th of June, 1912, I boarded a train that ran from Lemberg to Brod. It went very slowly, and yet the journey lasted no more than a few hours, whereas in the year 1882, when I had traveled over the same road in the opposite direction on our emigrant train, we had dragged ourselves along almost an entire night. This time I traveled by day. Outside it was warm and beautiful. Ears of grain swayed. Ruthenian peasants worked in the fields. Barefoot men, women, children. The scenes were familiar to me from my childhood years, the peasants just as much as the fields. For the peasants here are the same as in southern Russia, and they resemble Poles, and the nature scenes are the same as in the region where I was born.

The train reached the station that was the destination of my short journey.

Brod. Exactly thirty years earlier I had come here from Russia, a young man of barely 22. Now I was a man of 52, with 30 years of America behind me. My impressions of it I set down a year later, in 1913, in the "Forverts."^*

158"How does one feel when one visits a place where one has not been for thirty years? — Thus I begin the introduction to those recollections. — In Brod I have not a single acquaintance. The town is wholly strange to me. I once spent three weeks there. That is all. And yet now my heart was pounding. True, those three weeks are among the most vivid of my life. True, it was here that my fate was decided. But when I consider my mood, now that I had once again come into Brod, I see that the yearning I had felt for it while in Lemberg was not the main thing. It was not the three weeks themselves that made the heart pound so.

For thirty years I had carried in my memory an image of the town. Now I came up to this town with that mental image. How closely will the image agree with the Brod I shall now find? Will I recognize it? A sharp curiosity, a restlessness, like a kind of ache, took hold of me. That is one thing.

The second was a mood that did not cease to whisper: "Thirty years already! Thirty years! Here you were a young fellow, a lad of less than 22. Now you are visiting Brod again!... Yes, again! But as a man of fifty-two!"

When I emigrated to America, I had pictured a man of 52 as an old man; and thirty years had seemed to me like an eternity. Here I am, then, that old man! The "eternity" is already gone! It cannot be believed. And yet I feel no astonishment. I am the same "I." 52 years is not such an impressive thing as I once used to think, and the thirty years — that is truly a great deal. That is what makes such a tremendous impression on me. Yes, it cannot be believed.

When I stepped off the train and came into159the Brod station, I said to myself: the center of the town is the shop-market, it is four-sided, and it has rows with little gates, like windows with arches (curved, half-rounded vaultings). We shall see whether I will recognize it. A second thing is the ruins. The many collapsed or half-rebuilt houses, burned out in a fire. The empty lots... And as for the Jews, I had before the eye of my memory the tall hats that almost every one of them wore in 1882. A barefoot boy selling bagels on the street wore a tall hat! A water-carrier with a yoke of water on his shoulders and a tall hat on his head!...

My attention was drawn to a booth right in the middle of the large station. In the booth, at a little window, sat a Jew with a beard and long payes (peyes, sidelocks) and in a yarmulke... He was a khalfen, a money-changer. A terrible poverty could be felt at once.

At the station I left my baggage and set off toward the town. I went on foot deliberately, in order to see how far I would recognize the town.

I was set upon by ragged draymen and touts from the hotels and inns. I barely freed myself from them. I passed by a market of greens, fruit, fowl. I saw the half-penny trade, the wretched livelihood over which Jews stew, beg, and scramble.

Toward me came a young Jew with payes down past his collar and with two hens under his arms. As I looked him over, he hastened to tell me the price of his hens; and when I ex160plained to him that I had no need of hens, he looked me over with a melancholy, dreamy gaze.

After another ten minutes' walk I reached the main market, that is, the shops and little stalls that are the commercial center of Brod.

The little gates with the curved vaultings, the four-sided space with stores on every side; the general impression of terrible poverty, antiquity, filth. I recognized the place at once.

Yes, recognized it! But somehow my heart gave no leap. Somehow I remained indifferent. And this vexed me: a feeling as if from a famous play that you have been preparing for months to see and that, when you finally see it, disappoints you...

It is indeed that market, and it is not that market...

Everything, it seems, is the same, and yet the general aspect is not the one I had always held in my memory. Has it not, then, faded over the thirty years? After all, I had spent here no more than three weeks. Three weeks in a stream of thirty years... Would my excitement have been greater had the image agreed absolutely? Or is my picture of that Brod perhaps a correct one, only the thirty years have made changes in it?

In the course of a few hours, when I had grown more accustomed to the town, I recognized it better. But because this came to me slowly, not all at once, my enthusiasm had crumbled away.

The ruins I did not find. Above all, Brod was no longer so neglected as thirty years before, though poverty was not lacking. The town was still one of the most pauper-ridden, but nonetheless one felt a little more culture, and more industry, activity. There were161some passable houses, a handsome pharmacy, a not at all bad hotel, a fine large gymnasium building, and a few more decent communal masonry buildings. Right in the middle of the town a handsome post office was under construction.

Tall hats I did not find. They had long since gone out of fashion. Jews for the most part wore soft, low plush hats, such as are worn everywhere in eastern Galicia.

Only a few Jews in all of Brod, old men, wore tall hats, as they had been accustomed to in the old days. With one such Jew I struck up a conversation.

A poor tailor he was, and he no longer had the strength to work. No other covering for his head than a tall hat had he ever had. Unless a yarmulke.

He remembered well the times of thirty years before, the year when Brod had been full of Russian emigrants, and he pointed out to me the place where the emigrant committee had then had its office. I recognized the house, and I recalled how there I had seen the famous Jewish-Austrian writer Karl Emil Franzos, who was interested in the emigration and had come specially to Brod from Vienna to take part in the work of the committee. For a few of our intellectual emigrants he had delivered a speech there.

And now, as I looked at the house, I saw him as though he were alive (see the second volume, page 32).

One of the things that had not been in Brod thirty years before, and that I now found there, were Russian signs on the shops. That is, properly speaking, Ruthenian, for the Ruthenians write with162the Russian alphabet. In the thirty years a little education had spread among their masses. The chief thing, however, consisted in this, that among them a national consciousness had grown up. In order, then, to satisfy this feeling in them, the shopkeepers had their signs not only in Polish, but in Ruthenian as well.

Another novelty: Jewish gymnasium pupils, boys in handsome Polish gymnasium uniforms, which resembled the uniforms of Austrian officers. I encountered a fair number of these on the streets.

More than anything, naturally, I was interested in the place where I had taken lodging in 1882. The house of the watchmaker's widow, where I had lived the three weeks (with the exception of the first few days; see the second volume, page 29). I was also keenly interested in the dwelling of Kulisher, Brodsky's house-tutor, at whose place we used to gather and debate, and where I had finally resolved to travel to America. (See the second volume, pages 35–37.) But the old tailor could not show me these houses. He did not remember the two families, or he had never known of them.

I set off to search for my former lodging.

The name of the street I had forgotten. Soon, however, I caught sight of a Polish sign "ulica Złota," that is, "Gold Street," and I recalled that there had indeed been such a street163in Brod. So I reckoned that it was there that I had lived. If not, then why do I remember this name and no other? I walk through Gold Street — how too narrow it is for me! The street where I had lived was a wider one... and perhaps it only seems to me that "Gold Street" is narrower, I think to myself. It is, after all, an old rule that when one comes from a large city into a small one that one remembers from long ago, it seems as though the streets have grown smaller...

I go on further. I look at the houses. I search for my former lodging; but I recognize nothing.

Here on "Gold Street" is the best hotel, so I took a room there. Downstairs in the hotel there is a passable café and restaurant, so I ate my fill there and set off again to search for my old lodging.

Soon I came to a small park; I recognized it at once.

"Is there a barracks here?" I asked a Jew.

"Yes, there is the barracks," he pointed out to me. "But the soldiers no longer stand here. They are now kept farther out, behind the town. What are you, a Russian?"

"Yes, a Russian," I answer him, and I sit down on a bench and look around me. I recall how we used to come here in the evening to watch the soldiers play at making camp for the night under the supervision of officers in blue uniforms. I recall how here I had seen for the first time the smoking of the very long, thin Austrian cigars with a straw at the tip. Officers used to smoke them here (see the second volume, pages 32–33).

But if so, then "Gold Street" is not the street where I164had lived. For I remember that from my lodging to the barracks I used to go first to the left and only then come to the little park with the barracks.

According to these recollections I reckon that the street where I had lived must be the one that bears a sign "Goldhaber Street." This pleases me. I reflect: most likely the name "Goldhaber Street" had become muddled in my mind with "Gold Street." I remember even quite exactly that I had never had anything to do with any Goldhaber Street, but who knows what I imagine I remember! In short, I set off along "Goldhaber Street."

The street is wider than "Gold Street," and it seems to me more homelike, somehow a little like an old acquaintance. I am gladdened.

I go and search for my lodging...

To ask where a watchmaker's widow with two sons had once lived here, I am ashamed. It is a story of thirty years, it will call up a sensation on the street... It seems it is indeed the street, and it seems it is not the street... Above all, the following troubles me here:

In my head Brod had a definite length and a definite breadth. The length was the street on which I had lived. Over this street I used to go everywhere, and over this street I used to return from everywhere to my lodging. Therefore I had grown accustomed to picturing this direction as the length of Brod.

Had I, on my present visit, come into the town over that same street, I would probably have recognized everything at once. But I had come in over the station street, that is, in a direction that cuts across the street of my lodging. As I had walked a long stretch, it now seemed to me that this was the length.

165From this the whole plan of the town had become confused in my mind. "Goldhaber Street," which had so strongly seemed to me to be the street where I had lived in 1882, had actually turned out to lie off to one side. I therefore could not believe that this had been my lodging here.

I recalled the following: when one used to go from my lodging on a straight road, from the town toward the outskirts, one would come to the Russian border.

So now I asked where the border was, and they indeed pointed me in that direction. It agreed, then. Everything, it seemed, confirmed the impression that this was the street I was searching for. Only the fact that it lay off to one side troubled me.

Walking about there, I caught sight of a woman who resembled my former landlady, the watchmaker's widow. My interest was indescribable. I looked over the surrounding houses, and it seemed to me that I recognized the neighborhood. But my landlady would by now have been at least seventy years old, whereas this woman was forty or perhaps some forty-odd years.

But who knows, perhaps she only looks young. I could not believe that a seventy-year-old Jewish woman should have such a face and such a figure. Yet I wanted to believe that it was she, and her aspect resembled that widow.

I wanted to go up to her and ask whether she did not remember a watchmaker's widow who had once lived on this street with two sons. If it was she (or perhaps a younger sister of hers), she would explain everything to me, and if not, she would perhaps show me the house where the widow had lived. But my walking about and looking at the houses had begun to attract attention to me. And this woman, too, was looking at me. It became so un166pleasant for me that I was compelled to give up the undertaking for the time being. I went back to my hotel.

Not far from the hotel was the shop of a watchmaker, so I went in to him and asked whether he knew where a watchmaker's widow with two sons had once lived. I explained to him why I wished to know this. He became interested, but he himself was too young to remember what had been thirty years before (though he did remember the ruins with the tall hats). But that on "Goldhaber Street" a watchmaker had once lived, and that he had left a widow, this he had heard. So it again agreed.

He added another bit of information that was important to me: "Goldhaber Street" is a new name. Earlier it used to be called "Leshnever Street." So it was no wonder why I had never heard the name. But "Leshnever Street" I had also never heard. I consoled myself with the thought that in a small town one does not use the names of the streets as often as in large ones; so one may perhaps live there three weeks and still not know what this or that street is called.

I went again to "Goldhaber Street," again noticed that house, again met that woman, and again left with nothing accomplished. People were looking at me — looking at the one who hangs about here all day long. What sort of person is this? Who is he? It seemed to me that the question was written on everyone's face. To go up to the woman I therefore did not dare.

I was already preparing to leave, but the wish to find out where my lodging had been thirty years before had eaten into me like a demon. The167figures of that widow and of the woman whom I had now met here would not let me leave. Is it the same woman? Is it a sister, or a relative who resembles her? The question would not let go of my brain. I had to remain in Brod another day.

When evening came, I reflected: it is dark; now I shall be free of curious eyes; now I shall go up to the woman and speak with her. It was warm. I was sure that I would find her outside again. So I went out once more into "Goldhaber Street."

I really did find her. She was standing and chatting with another Jewish woman. I went straight up to her.

"Excuse me, I want to ask you something," I began.

"I have been wondering all day why you keep looking at me," she responded with great interest and with a more friendly and pleasant smile.

"I saw that you are looking for someone here."

I told her the whole story.

"Sorele!" she exclaimed, "you mean Sorele Senzal!"

"Did she have children?" I asked, in order to make sure that she really meant my former landlady.

"Two sons," she answered.

So it agreed. She said that she had been a handsome, "emancipated" woman, that is, that she went about with her own hair uncovered, and this too agreed. My heart pounded as if with a hammer.

She led me to a house, in front of which there was168a small grocery stall. Thirty years ago there had been no stall there.

"Has the house been somewhat rebuilt?" To this question she could not answer me. Nor did she know what had become of Sorele Senzal. That she herself was not even a relative of my former landlady was clear. I refrained even from asking about that.

She led me into a larger grocery shop, on the opposite side of the street, and there the shopkeeper, an older woman, gave me more details.

"Sorele's sons have long since gone off to Odessa, and they took their mother over to themselves," she explained to me.

The house had been somewhat rebuilt, and Leshnever Street had been somewhat altered about twenty years ago, it seems, planted with trees.

The grocery woman and her husband questioned me as to why I needed to know all this. It seemed to me that their questions smelled of suspicion, that they did not believe that my interest in that lodging consisted in the fact that I had stayed there thirty years before.

What I had been searching for, then, I had found. Satisfied, I went back to my hotel.

In the café it contained I found a little orchestra of three musicians. At several tables Jews were playing chess. At one little table sat a handsome young officer. He once had them play over the American-Jewish song "Chave." The landlady told me that he was a Jew.

I had heard that in a certain tavern on the market one could hear Jewish theater singers. So after supper I went169there. It was quite a sorry sort of singing. One of the actors had been a former member of a theater troupe in Russia. I chatted with him a little about Jewish theater. I reminded him of the famous Brod folk-singers, who used to have a reputation in Russia and from whom had come the beginning of the Jewish theater. But this did not interest him. He was occupied with the question of the coins that the audience had thrown into his plate. The audience was very small and very poor, so the take was a pitiful one.

When I came out of there, I again met on the market the woman who resembled my landlady. She was standing and talking with someone. She stopped me.

"Well, are you satisfied now?" she asked with her pleasant smile.

"Yes," I answered, thanking her for the trouble she had taken with me. "Now I can travel back to America with an easy mind."

"You know," she said, "the woman in the grocery shop does not believe that you are a stranger. She thinks you are one of Sorele's sons. She cannot believe that a stranger should take such an interest."

The next morning I again visited Leshnever Street. I wanted to take a last look at my former lodging. Now I recognized everything completely, and only then did I fully feel that thirty years had already passed, and what that means. A sadness spread through my heart.

In my thoughts I rebuilt the plan of the town in such a way that the direction of Leshnever Street should be the length, and then everything became clear and distinct.

170Then I hit at once upon the spot where Kulisher's lodging had been, the dwelling of the handsome tutor with the great golden beard and his dark, charming young little wife with the child in her arms. The fine dwelling where we used to gather and debate about Jewish colonies in America. I also recognized some of the nearby houses (see the second volume, page 35).

I went off to Shul Street, where my first lodging in Brod had been, at the tall, sallow smuggler's. And on the whole I now recognized that place too, although a house of which half should have collapsed I did not find.

I visited the great, ancient, famous Brod synagogue, and a few khadorim (kheyders, religious schools). In one kheyder the rebbe (teacher), a young man, was so musical that the boys chanted the Khumesh (Pentateuch) with him to a beautiful melody, all together in a harmonious chorus.

It was very interesting to me to see how he commanded over them, like a conductor, and how, with a motion of his strap, he conducted a melody out of them. They sang with pleasant, ringing little boyish voices. Such a kheyder I had never yet seen. I wanted to make the acquaintance of the musical melamed (teacher), to ask about his kheyder choir and about his livelihood, but I no longer had any patience.

The dead years are dear, like the graves of your parents. You tend them. But you do not live in your present fifty- or sixty-year-old consciousness. On the contrary! You are proud and content with your age. It seems to me that earlier you were an inexperienced snail; that only now do you begin to understand, only now does the world begin to take on the right taste for you.

171Every day is a new beginning. Life is only just starting.

The French used to cry out, at the funeral of a deceased monarch, concerning him and his heir: "The king is dead! Long live the king!" In a similar sense one wishes to cry out: "Life is dead! Long live life!"

I had now found everything that I had been searching for. Found it, and yet... not found it. The Brod where I had spent three weeks thirty years before — exactly as it had been then, it lived only in my memory. The Brod of 1912 was a different one. But my present recollections and my former youth were sealed shut. An interesting book that has already been read through. The past had suddenly ceased to stir me. I felt that I was homesick, longing for America...

In the course of a few hours I was sitting in a train that ran to Lemberg. Slowly, slowly it dragged itself along. And slowly, too, my thoughts dragged themselves along. Gloomy thoughts.

I wanted to acquaint myself with the life of the172"good Jew" of the broad Hasidic masses; the second commanded a smaller, but a richer following. My plan was to visit both of them. The Chortkover, I had heard, spent his summers in Marienbad, near Karlsbad; and I was, in any case, intending to travel there. The Belzer rebbe (Hasidic master), on the other hand, was at that time at home, and Belz is only four hours' journey from Lemberg. And so, from Lemberg I made a journey (nesiye) there.

That railway line was not one of the best. The train dragged along, jolting and dancing. But the scenes that showed themselves from the carriage window interested me, and even the wretched train itself. And so, I was not dissatisfied.

The villages in that region are thoroughly Ruthenian. There moved about barefoot peasants, men and women. Here and there an Ukrainian song was heard. I felt as if I were in southern Russia.

In the carriage there sat next to me a young Ruthenian priest (galekh). I tried speaking to him in Russian, on the chance that he might understand a few words; and, to my pleasant surprise, he answered me in Russian, with a strong Ukrainian accent, but in a good, grammatical Russian.

"Did you live in Russia?" I asked.

"No, but the Russian language is dear to us," he answered. "I learned it at home."

He was a little versed in Russian literature.

At one place, by a small station, a religious procession passed by. The priest took off his hat and explained to me what the ceremony consisted of.

173We spoke about America. He had a sister in New York and received letters from her. From these letters, however, he had drawn a strange notion about life in the United States. He was, for example, under the impression that all Americans were immigrants, and that the richest people in the country were Russian Jews.

The train drew near to Belz. We rode through great marshy meadows. Storks strutted about, tall, tall, with thin long legs, with thoughtful, proud steps. At such storks I used to look in my birthplace, when I was a child of four or five years. Since then I now, in Belz, saw such birds for the first time.

"For the sake of these storks alone it would be worth my while to come here," I said to the priest.

"Yes, our region is a fine one. A beautiful land," he remarked, "but a poor one. Many of our village children go off to America. Many of our girls write from there that they serve with Russian Jews, and that they have it good with them."

There remained still a few minutes to Belz. From afar two Hasidim appeared. They were running with all their strength, in order to catch the train, for Belz is a small station, and the train stops there very briefly. I watched how they exerted their powers. Their bekeshes (long Hasidic coats), which reached down to the ground, hampered them. The long folds tangled between their feet. They made an energetic effort to reach the train. The long folds, however, held them back. Their sidelocks (peyes) shook to the rhythm of their174between them and the locomotive, however, was interesting. I prayed to God that they should win. At the same time the scene appeared to me like a symbol of the obstacles that antiquated notions set in our way. I thought to myself: medieval superstitions tangle themselves between the feet of Jews and hold back their progress.

The two young men gave up the struggle. They remained standing at a distance, defeated, exhausted. The train was a piece of misery. But still it was a part of modern progress, and it had triumphed.

The Belz station lies outside the town, about a quarter of an hour's ride away by horse and wagon. A few Jews were milling about. One, a fair-haired fellow with a reddish little beard, offered to drive me. He had with him a respectable-looking britshke (carriage), and his own appearance, too, was that of a solid householder. So I climbed in. Soon another passenger appeared, a European-dressed man of some thirty-odd years. He had come on the same train as I, only in another carriage. He seated himself beside me. We at once became acquainted. He was from Hungary, from a town by the name of Mokko. That is a goodly distance from Belz. He was traveling especially to the Belzer rebbe.

His European clothes were very neat and tidy, and he spoke with many German expressions and with signs of a certain degree of intelligence. I was astonished: that such a Jew should travel to the rebbe, and from so far a place at that! The man was so open-hearted, so simple and approachable, that I put the question to him at once, and he answered me quite frank-

175"The one has nothing to do with the other," he said.

"I believe in him. He is an ish tomim (a deeply pious, sincere man, a man without sin and without a hair of two-facedness). That gives him a great power."

He explained to me that this time he was coming especially to take counsel about an important matter of business. That now interested me greatly. So I expressed this to him as well.

"You seem to be a well-to-do, experienced merchant," I said. "Are you traveling to a rebbe in a far-off region to take counsel about an important practical question? What does he know about it?"

"Yes, precisely because it is an important question, I am traveling to take counsel. I am afraid to act without his advice."

"But what does he know?" I repeated. "Will the Belzer rebbe show you how to take the right step?" I asked.

"To you it comes out comical. But it is serious. In the first place, do not forget that hundreds and hundreds of businessmen turn to him for advice, and so it goes on for years and years. He hears out so much, he has experience in all sorts of business affairs. He is no fool. You yourself will inquire into this. Well, then it is not at all so wondrous as you think. But I must tell you the truth: I believe in his divine power, otherwise I would not have come here."

"And how will it be if he gives you a piece of advice that does not make a good impression on you? Will you follow him in that too?"

"Whether I will follow?" he said with a kind of religious smile. "But why should it not make a good impression on me? That cannot be at all. Everything,176makes a good impression. It is not the first time I am traveling to him."

"But let us suppose that you are not in agreement with his advice — would you then follow it as well?"

"Why, of course! What a question! Not to follow would be a danger. It would be a misfortune for my business and for my family. To follow him is simply good. One's heart becomes so light from it."

I saw before me a man who was intoxicated with superstition. His superstition, however, was not a dry one, not an egoistic one. He followed the rebbe not exactly because he was afraid not to follow. In it there lay enthusiasm too. A quiet, naive, childlike enthusiasm. He made upon me the impression of a most honest and good man.

I reflected: if one were to bring light into his mind and interest him in a noble modern movement, like the struggle for freedom, for example, he would be a devoted, sympathetic fighter.

It turned out that the fair-haired coachman (balegole) who had driven us was in fact the proprietor of the inn (akhsanye) into which he led us. But he too made a good impression on me. He did not play sly. From his few words and from his bearing I felt that he was a sincere man.

He gave me a large room with two windows, a fairly clean one.

A few minutes later there came in a boy of about thirteen with long, reddish sidelocks. A son of the proprietor. His resemblance to him was distinct. He greeted me and asked whether I had already177arrived. I answered that I came from quite a far-off region. But that did not actually interest him. He asked it for form's sake. To him all regions were alike — places from which one travels to the Belzer rebbe.

Later there appeared a committee, as we would call it, of two Jews. They did not knock at the door. They came in without ceremony. The two Jews explained to me that they were collecting money for a yeshiva. But the proprietor at once appeared and politely asked them to let me first rest.

I ordered something to eat to be brought to me. The proprietress came in. Her face I do not remember. I remember only her voice and her manner of speaking. She told me about the greatness of the Belzer rebbe, and she described for me the wedding of his daughter, which had taken place a short time earlier.

"Other rebbes gathered together, with relatives, great men. They brought droshe-geshank (wedding gifts presented after the bridegroom's sermon)," she told with enthusiasm. "Those good Jews were richly dressed, in the costliest silks. Ours, may he be well, does not love that. There, you will see, he goes dressed like all Jews. A precious soul. Such a tsadik (righteous man) there is not in the world."

To see the rebbe was already too late. I had to put it off until the morning.

In the morning, after I had finished eating breakfast, to go to see the rebbe was still too early. So I

178strolled through the town. The mud was great, and the poverty — no smaller.

The most important part of Belz, its center, is a square, a four-cornered space with a row of houses on each side. Most of the doors stood open. And as far as I could see, most of the dwellings consisted of a single room with poverty outside and within. Everything was very primitive. Probably most Jews lived this way in the Middle Ages. But the Jewish towns in Lithuania, too, were the same.

People were coming from the davening (prayers). One young Hasid, a young householder of about twenty-five, with a tallis-bag under his arm, walked along lost in thought, like one absorbed. His sidelocks were very long and very thin. On his head he wore a plush hat. A fair-haired, lean, silken young fellow, like a holy man.

Next to him my attention was arrested by three beautiful little boys, brothers, all in checked little coats, in skullcaps and with little sidelocks. The corners of their little shirts stuck out of their trousers. Without meaning to, I gave them a mischievous wink, whereupon one of them burst out laughing aloud, and all three ran off.

I also encountered two Jewish little boys who walked in short coats with bare legs, in the modern fashion. With them walked a clean-shaven Jew, handsomely dressed. I asked a passerby who that was, and he explained to me that it was a lawyer and his two sons. Between those three little brothers and these two there was, in appearance, a difference of several centuries.

At one place there stood a young man in a short179coat, without sidelocks, and was speaking to an old Jew. He spoke Yiddish, like all Jews. He drew my attention because he did not look like a Jew. Seeing that I was taking an interest in him, he began to speak to me, and it turned out that he was really a Christian, a Ruthenian. He was a native of the area near Belz. He spoke Yiddish as well as all Jews, with the genuine accent of the Belz region, and he was well acquainted with all the Jews, with everything that goes on in the rebbe's "court." — I asked him in jest.

"I would be a Hasid," he answered quite seriously, "but I am, after all, not a Jew. A great, holy man is the rebbe."

"Would you want to be one of his Hasidim?"

"That, no. Everyone must be what he is. A Christian must be a Christian, and a Jew — a Jew. When a Jew converts or a gentile becomes a proselyte, that is not good."

A little Jew with great sidelocks, of whom I had asked something, would no longer detach himself from me. He went along with me. He meant nothing foolish by it. Simply he was curious to walk with the visitor (oyrekh). He took me up for the usual cross-examination, and when I did not answer him on one of his questions, he did not lose heart and put a second question. Finally, seeing that I had no desire to talk, he let himself go talking, and in this way he conveyed to me a few things that were interesting for me to hear, though absolutely certain of the accuracy of his information I was not. He told me, for example, how much income the town has through the guests who come to the rebbe (about eighty or ninety thousand gulden a year); how much income the rebbe has180from those who come to him, and how much is sent to him by post (a sum total of about half a million gulden a year); how much it costs the rebbe to maintain his court and the many poor Hasidim who come to him and remain in Belz for months or even years at a time; how much he gives out for charity (tsdoke), and so on.

He also told about the wedding of the rebbe's daughter.

"Eight thousand people gathered together for the celebration," he said. "Every house in Belz was packed with guests, and many of them simply slept in the street."

The way to the rebbe's "court" was a very muddy one. Presumably it had rained a great deal in Belz earlier, and those little lanes were full of holes; for there were great puddles there. Planks lay across them. One had to walk carefully.

From all sides poor people still ran after me. I had already prepared full pockets with various coins, copper and silver, besides paper money.

I came to a large besmedresh (study house and synagogue). Inside it was full of Hasidim. It was not tidied up, and the air was a heavy one. Some Jews were walking about, saying something under their breath. Others in silence. Still others were chatting.

Two of the Hasidim impressed themselves on my memory with the nervous restlessness of their movements. They walked about, both together, saying or singing something with a quiet melody (nign). They walked not quickly. Their bodies and faces, however, expressed haste, urgency, strain, impatience. It seemed to me that they were electrified with a religious en181thusiasm, which they brought within themselves bound up with their own will, and which they strove at the same time to suppress, so that it should not come out that they were distinguishing themselves with their fervor (hislaves).

In order to see the rebbe, one must, naturally, first come to the head gabbai (the rebbe's manager/attendant). Here in the besmedresh I found him. From those whom I had heard talking about the gabbais, who play the role of "prime ministers" to the Hasidic rebbes, there had taken shape in my mind the following portrait: a Jew who understands a business affair, a Jew with character, with signs of a contented life on his face and with a sly look in his eyes. As I walked toward the gabbai, I reflected: usually everything turns out the reverse of what one expects. And so the gabbai too will probably not be like the picture painted in my thought. My expectation, however, was not fulfilled. The gabbai was exactly as I had imagined him: a healthy, well-fed Jew with red cheeks and with an expression of practical good sense on his face. He wore a large fur hat.

He was standing and chatting with someone.

I presented myself to him. I gave my real name, but not the real place from which I came. I had heard that in the Belzer "court" they were not very well disposed toward Jewish newspapers. (Probably some Jewish newspaper had attacked him.) So I believed that to present myself as the editor of the "Forverts" was no plan at all. But to pass myself off as a businessman would also have been no plan. According to what I had heard from my fellow traveler, the man from Hungary, in the "court" they knew much more about business than I did. So, if I should try to play the role of a merchant, I would make182a bad impression. In short, I felt that it would be more convenient to come as a journalist, and if to be a Jewish newspaper man does not pay in Belz, I would declare myself a correspondent of English newspapers.

I do not remember how it came out — I presented myself to the gabbai as a Jew who lives in England and is connected with English newspapers in New York, as their London correspondent.

The gabbai looked me over with his clever eyes and took me up for a strict cross-examination. The story I told him went off smoothly. I played my role in a convincing manner, and it had its effect. For the Jew who is a correspondent of English newspapers that come out in America, the gabbai had respect. He began to speak with me in a very friendly tone.

Other Hasidim came up, all in high fur hats, and they all began putting questions to me.

"From London?"

"A correspondent?"

"For American newspapers, but not Jewish ones? Which? English?"

"From London, not from America? In America they speak English, isn't that so?"

One Jew asked whether I knew Jacob Gordin, who had visited Belz a few years earlier.

I told him that he had already been dead for three years.

"Borukh dayan emes (blessed be the true Judge)," he said with a pious surprise. "A fine man he was. But what a business for Jews! To write plays for the theater! Feh!"

183The gabbai made a displeased face, as one who says: "You talk too much!"

I offered the gabbai an American five-dollar bill. But he did not take it.

"That is not needed," he said, waving the little paper away with his hand.

I do not remember the details, but I was led in to the rebbe in his room. The door behind me was immediately locked, and at that they explained to me that, if it were to be left open, all sorts of people would force their way in — one after a piece of advice, one after a remedy, one after a prayer.

In the opposite wall there was yet another door.

The head gabbai I saw no more. I found myself in a large room, which at first made on me the impression of an antechamber. There stood two beds, which were partly curtained off, and, as was explained to me later, that was the rebbe's and the rebbetzin's bedroom. I had to wait, so meanwhile I looked everything over. There stood a half-open clothes-cupboard, in which the rebbe's garments were hanging, his best kaftans, as I found out later. I was astonished, looking at them, so old and poor did they look; and from the cupboard there came a musty smell, as if it had never been aired out.

Finally the mentioned second door opened, and there came in three Jews and with them a fourth. It became at once clear that the fourth was the184rebbe. This was a man of about sixty, with one eye in a bad condition. He was dressed like a poor householder, more rightly said, like a poor synagogue-dweller (kloyznik). He wore an aged satin kaftan and on his head — a spodik (tall fur hat). The three Jews, gabbais, looked even poorer than he. They sat themselves down. As they did not ask me to sit, I myself took a chair and was about to sit down. But at that same moment two of them ran up to me and held me by both arms, that I should not yet sit down. I was holding an umbrella in my hand, and one of the Jews took it from me and set it down in a corner.

The rebbe wiped his hands on a towel and said a blessing (brokhe). When he had finished, he greeted me and asked me to sit.

One of the three gabbais had a diseased ear. The ear was stopped up with a little piece of linen, but not entirely. It was running. The piece of linen was stained with fresh yellow stains, shudderingly unclean.

The rebbe turned to me with questions. The gabbai with the diseased ear mixed himself into the conversation.

The rebbe's speech was a little impaired. He did not stammer, but the words came to him with difficulty, a little kvad-pe (heavy of mouth, slow of speech). With his manner and with the tone of his speaking, however, he made a good impression on me. And as far as I could judge in the half hour that I spent with him, I received the opinion that he was a sincere, capable man, and truly one of experience. But all in a quite antiquated, very ignorant manner.

185There appeared two little boys, the rebbe's grandchildren, one of about ten years, and the other of about twelve. Both wore skullcaps, and both had little sidelocks. They sat the whole time that we spoke, and their black little eyes did not turn away from me — but with respect (derekh-erets), quietly, "sedately."

"Where are you from?" the rebbe asked me with friendliness and respect, and at the same time also with the tone of a man who is accustomed to receive respect much more than to give it. All this showed itself in a mild manner. Self-importance, ambition, or a spirit of dominance was not to be seen.

"From London," I answered.

"They told me that you write in the newspapers in New York. You live in London, and you write in New York. What is your name?"

I explained to him that I was a correspondent, that I send my articles by post. At this he nodded his head, as one who says: "Yes, yes, that one understands already. Do you think I don't understand?"

"In English newspapers?"

"Yes, in English ones."

"In English newspapers!" he repeated with respect. "But you are, after all, a Jew, like all Jews, isn't it true?"

"Certainly I am a Jew like all Jews, but in England I have lived for a long time already."

"And where are you yourself from?"

"From Vilna."

"Vilna? A Jewish city! A fine city!"

186I began to ask about his standpoint on political questions. In Galicia it was always a matter of whether the Jews should, at the elections, support the Poles or the Ruthenians. And so it was interesting to me to know what he had to say about this matter. To tell the truth, it was curious to me that one should put such questions to an old-fashioned Jew of this type at all. My interview with him seemed to me like a kind of joke. And he really knew quite little about politics, in the more important sense of the word, but yet more than I had expected.

"I bid the Jews go with the government," he said. (He meant the general Austrian government, the rule of the throne.) "Our state is good to Jews, so we must stand with the state. The Zionists want us to set ourselves against it. They keep saying that Jews must show courage, and we say that all that is politics. When the time comes that one must show courage, we will show courage. The Zionists have their politics, and we have ours. Our politics today is that Jews must hold the head bowed." (At this he cited a familiar rhyme, which says that Jews must keep the head lowered.)

"They say that we always hold with the Poles, because they are the stronger. That is not true. We mean only that it should be better for Jews. If we should know that for Jews it is better to go with the Ruthenians, we would go with the Ruthenians. We have one rule: do that which is better for Jews."

Speaking about Zionism in general, he said:

"They spoil Jewishness. They make Jewish schools where one studies gentile subjects. They, the Zionists,187say that a good Pole need not necessarily be a good Catholic. By this they mean to show that one can be a faithful Jew and yet not hold by Yiddishkeit (Jewishness, the Jewish religion). But I say that a Jew who does not hold by Yiddishkeit is no Jew at all. My impression was that he had no clear conception that England and America are two places far distant from each other. I said that I had been in America several times. At this he asked me about our Jewish immigrants, and in the course of it he made the following remark:

— As far as I am concerned, there ought to be no immigration at all, for the immigrants abandon the Jewish spirit. (These were his very words; and in my notes of this conversation a remark is recorded: "He had probably heard the expression 'the Jewish spirit' from someone or other, and it pleased him, for he used it again and again.) The immigrants travel to America to look after the body; one abandons one's wife, one lives with others, anything is permitted.

He said a few words about Roosevelt. He liked him. But he had no clear conception of him or of his politics.

In order to keep the conversation going, I asked how he knew all this, and whether he read newspapers. At this the attendant with the ailing ear spoke up: "No, the rebbe does not read newspapers. No newspaper ever comes into the house."

On the table lay a Gemara (volume of the Talmud); the rebbe gave it a tap with his finger and said:

— When one spends whole days on such weighty matters, the lesser things are already of no account. They need not be studied at all. One understands them of oneself.

188Speaking of America a second time, he asked me how I knew so much of what goes on there. The fact that I had told him I had been in America several times he had forgotten. As it seemed, this had made no impression on him. Of the difference between England and America he had, generally speaking, no clear conception. Since a great sea lies between them, then how could I be here in England and there in America? Concerning this there was a fog in his mind.

— In the first place, one reads it in the newspapers, and in the second place, it falls to me in my business to be in America from time to time, — I again explained.

I told him about the Jewish workers in America, how they are organized, "so that they should not be deceived, so that they should not be cheated," as I put it.

— They make strikes? — he asked. — What do they want? That one should pay them more wages? No use! Prices are high. In America too prices are high? One works too hard there, isn't that so?

— Yes, it is true.

I tried to draw from him an opinion about capital and labor, about rich and poor. This, however, was impossible. To my first question in this direction he answered thus:

— All are children of the same Master of the Universe. When an honest Jew keeps a factory, he pays good wages, and when a Jew torments his workmen, he is a wicked man. He cited a verse, or perhaps a bit of Gemara, that one must treat a laborer well.

This was already the clearest answer I was able to draw from him with regard to the189labor question. I asked him the same thing in a different form, in case I might draw him a little deeper into the matter. But he would not let himself be drawn. One could see that he had an instinct which showed him where it was better for him to wriggle out of an answer. And he had a great deal of experience in this respect. People of various classes had spoken with him, sought to entangle him into expressing an opinion about all sorts of dangerous matters. So he had become practiced and nimble at giving answers that answer nothing.

And yet, after all, he made on me no impression of a sly fellow. On the contrary, I even found him sympathetic. Had he been a clever, somewhat false sort, then at least some Jews would not have loved him. And, as far as I could find out, they all truly loved him, not only with their superstitious love for the "godly man," but simply as a man as well.

When my visit had ended, one of the three gabbaim (synagogue wardens, the rebbe's attendants) accompanied me to the exit. He unlocked the door. At this a group of Jews, who had been waiting outside in the hope that they might somehow be able to get in, pressed forward. But they were not let in.

From outside, all sorts of people made a rush at me with outstretched hands.

I stopped off to the side to set down my interview with the rebbe and all that had happened in the course of it. The supplicants did not interrupt me. They looked on with190respect and with curious glances as I wrote in my notebook.

When I had finished, I distributed among them a fair number of coins and set off back to my inn, striding over the planks that lay across the puddles and mud.

The number of Jews asking for support grew. My "stock" of coins was at last exhausted. I explained that I had no more, and that later, at the inn, I would give the rest. I begged them to let me go alone. It did not come easy to me. But at last I prevailed upon them not to run after me. There was only one exception — a mute. He did not understand my signs, and he would not leave me alone. He went after me through the whole tangle of swampy little lanes and alleyways, chasing after me and shouting at me in his nerve-racking mute fashion. When I reached the inn, I got coins from the innkeeper and satisfied him.

Later there came into my room the innkeeper and his son and a couple of neighbors, it seems. All inquired about my visit to the rebbe. A crowd had gathered, and I shall never forget the rapturous face of a middle-aged Jew while I told what the rebbe had said.

— He has a pure mouth, you understand me, — he spoke up, — a word of his is not a word of mine. What he says comes to pass.

He then went on to tell something about the Trisker rebbe, that he was altogether a holy man, a sort of God.

— He neither eats nor sleeps, the Trisker. Is it any wonder, then, that such a man can turn worlds upside down?

191The innkeeper and others of those present interrupted his speech with songs of praise to the Belzer rebbe, until at last they out-shouted him.

The Hasid who was so enthusiastic about the Trisker then asked me:

— Is it true that in America one eats shalosh seudos (the third Sabbath meal) at home, not in the shtibl (the little Hasidic prayer house)?

I admitted that it was true. And at this he cried out with sarcastic venom:

— Then what sort of flavor can it have? What have you got there, theater? To sing and eat shalosh seudos at the rebbe's table is the greatest of delicacies. What is theater? A Gentile disguises himself as a Jew, and a Jew as a Gentile, an old man as a young one and a young man as an old one. A fine pleasure...

Later, in the evening, there came in a half-intelligent Jew who interested me with his clever talk. He made on me the impression of a man who scoffs at the rebbe. On the contrary, he spoke of him with genuine respect. But it seemed to me that he respected the rebbe because he was accustomed to it — just as a Jew, for example, who has long ceased to be religious cannot for all that bring himself to eat anything treyf (non-kosher).

He told me about the various sorts of "yoshvim." These are Hasidim who remain sitting at the rebbe's court. One is a lazy fellow; he sits there simply because in this place he is spared having to rack his brains over earning a living. Let the wife worry about that! At the rebbe's he eats his fill, sings, and trades tales with the other yoshvim. Another has a shrew of a wife, so he flees from her.

Then there came in a Jew who used in his speech words like "capacity" and "ab192stract." He confided to me a secret, that he smokes on the Sabbath, but that in the rebbe he believes.

— How does that fit together? — I asked.

— With me this is no plain faith, — he explained, — it is a higher level of faith. If I smoke on the Sabbath, that is against plain faith, but the soul rises up to the higher levels, and there the ordinary Torah with its ordinary commandments and sins has no value.

I told him that his answer was not comprehensible to me. To this he remarked:

— If you were to settle here among us and stay a few weeks, you would already understand. By hearing alone one cannot grasp such things.

As far as I could afterward make out, the Hasidim looked upon him as a half-madman.

Already quite late at night there came in a Jew who declared that, since I wished to know about the various yoshvim, what sort of men they were (someone had told him so), he could explain all this to me for a few gulden. We bargained for one gulden (two kronen), and he began to talk. He simply prattled away, in a curious, muddled fashion that befuddled his own mind more than mine.

— Do you know what a type is? — I suddenly wondered aloud to him.

— No, — he answered, — what sort of thing is that?

— Here, I will give you to understand. You want to tell me about the various yoshvim, what sort of man each of them is. Isn't that so? Well, that is to say, you want to tell me what type each of them is. Do you understand now what a "type" means?

193— Yes, now I understand.

— Well, then I tell you that the most interesting of all the types is you yourself.

I saw that he still did not understand what a type was. But I paid him the two kronen all the same. He took the silver coins, wished me all the best, and went off.

Other Hasidim came. I was chiefly interested in those who made on me the impression that their enthusiasm was sincere. Of such I noted down three.

Przemysl is the third city of Galicia, but its center is livelier than the center of Cracow. I spent there only a single day, and the general impression that has remained in my memory is that it is a city of hills and of the military.

Most of the streets run up and down a hillside. If you wish to come from the center to the beautiful city park, you must climb high up a hill; if you wish to go to the market, you must again go up a hill. Many streets are very steep. I saw how very old people climbed up them. It was indeed hard for them.

The Jewish quarter is right in the middle of the city, just as in Lemberg, and just as in Lemberg it is the best street, full of a mixed crowd of old-fashioned Hasidim with dandies of the latest cut, and officers without number. Przemysl has a strong fortress, which was one of the most important in the Austrian empire of that day. So here the military uniforms glittered at every step and turn.

194I noted in my notebook that the inhabitants of Przemysl move about with more energy than the people in Cracow and Lemberg, and that their faces shine with the joy of life. It is possible that this impression stemmed from the wonderfully beautiful weather that I found there. It was hot, but not unpleasant. The high-lying, hill-encircled city breathed freely and airily. And when I climbed up the hill, where the park lies spread out like a Garden of Eden, I was reminded of our Catskills. All of Przemysl has a Catskill air.

On such a day, in such air, the observer looks with altogether different eyes.

By the upper market, beside a small park, there stands a little pavilion, reached by a few steps, with a platform and a roof. On the platform stood little tables with chairs. This belonged to a confectionery that stood there nearby. In the early morning, when I visited the place, strolling through the city, the pavilion was full of customers. People were sitting over glasses of coffee, tea, ice cream (frozen sweets), bowls of sour milk with black bread, plates of sugar pastry.

The market was in full swing. It reached up to the pavilion and surrounded it on two sides. Many of the peasant women sat with their wares beneath those who, up above in the pavilion, were cozily drinking or refreshing themselves at the little tables.

The market scene was absolutely un-American. There breathed from it something of my old home, where in my very young days my parents lived beside a similar market (see the first volume, page 211). The pavilion was an excellent observation post. It drew me like a magnet.

195I went up. Just at that moment a little table happened to free itself at a spot below which the trade was seething. I ordered a glass of tea. The market was spread out before my eyes — down the hillside.

It was a day of raspberries. The peasant women had brought them into the city that morning for the first or second time. On all sides were heaped up hills of raspberries — pails, tubs, pots, little cans, filled with juicy, tasty raspberries. Of strawberries there was also enough, but not as much as of raspberries. Also they no longer looked so fresh. The blessing of Shehecheyanu (the prayer over a thing enjoyed for the first time) had long since been said over them. A few weeks earlier they had been the aristocrats. But nothing lasts forever. One generation up, one generation down. Now the raspberry was the queen of the market.

Here and there one could already see emptied pails. The raspberries that had been brought in them were already sold. All that remained of them was a red emptiness and a little red juice on the bottom, like the traces of a bloody operation.

The peasant women — the same or others — had also brought from their villages "vegetable greens," potatoes, peas, beans, carrots. There were also to be seen a few cucumbers, small and large mushrooms, onions, caraway, heads of cabbage, cauliflower, eggs, pigs' feet, live little piglets, geese, ducks, hens, baskets of flowers — a little of everything. But raspberries were there in masses.

It smelled of the village. The scents of the fruits, of all sorts of greens, mingled into one pleasant smell of freshness.

Housewives, Christian and Jewish, walked about among the peasant women, examined and felt the wares, asked196how much it cost, haggled, deliberated, consulted among themselves. The country women — most of them Ruthenian and almost all barefoot — sat on the ground, each beside her wares, and when one offered them a smaller price than they had asked, they gave a cold shake of the head and remained sitting as though frozen. The buyers had to bend down bodily before them in order to inspect the raspberries; they had to speak to them, ask, haggle, plead, fly into a rage; and they, the peasant women, did not so much as raise their eyes to them. Only here and there one of them would lose her patience, and then it would sometimes come to an exchange of curses, to a shouting, but only for a little while.

Not far from the pavilion a Ruthenian peasant woman said "tfu" (spat) at a Jewish woman because she had dared to offer too small a price. The Jewish woman shrieked out at the top of her voice and answered her back with another "tfu." Her "tfu," however, was no longer a dry one. There began a duel of spitting at each other, a little ring of onlookers gathered, but it did not last long. The crowd was too keenly interested in the country wares to occupy itself with other matters. The "ring" dissolved into the market, just as a lump of sugar in a hot glass of tea. That Jewish woman did not stop shrieking for another couple of minutes, but no one paid her any more attention. Seeing that I was the only one who took an interest in her, she turned her head sharply toward me and retold the whole story from beginning to end, with curses and oaths that she had been in the right. Suddenly, however, she caught sight of a peasant carrying two fat geese under his arms, and she made a dash to feel the geese and haggle with the peasant. She forgot all about me.

197The housewives complained to one another about the high price of the raspberries and of the other products. Everywhere one could see how people shrugged their shoulders, how they let their hands drop in despair, how they made a pitying face out of sympathy for another woman and for themselves. The word "yakres" (high prices, dearness) I heard every little while.

Not far from the pavilion stood a picture-beautiful young woman, a Christian, haggling with a seller of cauliflower. Beside her stood her servant girl with a handbag of black oilcloth. The young housewife was dressed not as one dresses in the morning, certainly not for a market. Her blue silk gown was décolleté, and her little shoes were of white silk. Her servant was decked out in a festive Ruthenian costume with whole mountains of kerchiefs about the neck. But barefoot!

With a remarkable enthusiasm the décolletée little lady haggled and bustled about among the greens. It was plain that she had been married only a couple of days before, and that the role of a housewife held for her the charm of something new.

But the older women, too, did not remain indifferent. One could see on their faces that to walk about the market, to look things over, to question, to haggle, was for them not merely a necessity, but also a pleasure, a sport. With the absorbed air and the deepened gaze with which a gambler sits over his cards, they walked about among the baskets of mushrooms or cucumbers... Later I came down from the pavilion and took a stroll about the market once more.

The hubbub had grown. Through the medley of human voices there sounded the bass "kra-kra"198of ducks, the hoarse baritone of geese, the squeal of a young piglet. In one corner a Jew had bought up all the raspberries of several peasant women at once (presumably for a trial venture, or perhaps to make raspberry preserves). Nearby stood a stout woman, gazing with a greedy look in her eyes. A little off to the side stood women blowing upon the hens in a certain spot, to see whether the fowl were fat.

A Jew in a fine, well-to-do bekeshe (long Hasidic coat), tall, stout, with a handsome golden beard and side-locks, with a yarmulke under his Polish hat, also stood there with a hen in his hands and likewise blew, where it was fitting. At every blow he gave, his side-locks gave a shake. But he was too deeply absorbed in the hen to notice such trifles.

In one spot a war broke out between a Ruthenian peasant woman and a Jewish carter, who had to cart something away from the market. The debate took place in Ruthenian. But many of the words were similar to Russian, and I understood them. Their plain sense, however, was such that I must pass them over.

As I was standing there listening, a Jewish woman who was holding a goose pressed tight to her bosom peered at me.

— Tell me, I beg you, are you not from America?

— she wondered at me.

When I answered that I was, she explained, almost with tears in her eyes, that she knew me, but that she did not remember my name. It was already a tale of seventeen years, she said. She had worked for me in New York, in the shop, at "knee-pants" (the words "knee-pants" she remembered quite well). I assured her that she was mistaken. She calmed down after a fashion,199but only for a second. At once she began again to seethe and shout, and "recalled" that I had been her doctor, that I had attended her at her first childbed; and before I had a chance to disclaim this honor as well, she begged me to come to her home, to introduce me to her eldest daughter, the fruit of that historic confinement. Out of enthusiasm she kept shouting, and the goose shouted along with her.

I scarcely managed to convince her that she was mistaken again. At last it turned out that she had seen me in New York at a meeting.

My conversation with her, and chiefly her heated shouting, attracted attention. Several people stopped to look and listen. One of them, a man of about fifty, who was dressed "half and half," partly like a Hasid and partly like a dandy, took a keen interest in the few words that he overheard there about America.

— You are from America? — he asked in a stern tone, as though he were a detective and suspected me of some crime. The upshot was that I, too, became interested in him. We fell into talk, at first in jest, then in earnest. Chatting thus, we went off from the market and sat down on a bench in the small park that lies nearby. He told me with joy that at the elections he had voted for Dr. Lieberman, the socialist candidate. His socialism, however, was of a peculiar sort. When I asked him where he had read it, he said with pride that nowhere at all. He had "arrived at it all with his own reason." He does not hold with worker-socialists, because they have in mind, after all, only their own advantage. Their socialism is an egoistic one. His own so200cialism is a pure one, because he needs no favors for himself, for he is well off as it is. The workers are "egoists," "begrudgers," and "brazen-faced fellows." All the troubles come from them. And he began to bring examples to prove it.

I had a few conversations with other Przemysl Jews as well — conversations that showed me that Dr. Lieberman's election rested upon far better notions of socialism than those which this Jew had displayed.

The Jewish socialist deputy to the Vienna parliament, Lieberman, of Przemysl (who is today one of the most important socialist deputies of the Warsaw Sejm), was then at home. I visited him. He looked very young. A blond man, neither tall nor stout, with a good-natured, intelligent face. He was very hospitable, and we spent a fair amount of time in conversation about the Polish movement and about America. He spoke, naturally, from a socialist standpoint, but as a Polish patriot. He conceded that there are certain difficulties that stem from the relations between the races. He spoke with enthusiasm about the Poles who are active in the socialist movement. "One must always reckon with circumstances," — he said. — "When one takes that into account, one finds among the Polish socialists a great, great number of fine, noble idealists."

— As a socialist, do you feel yourself chiefly as a Pole or as a Jew? — I asked him.

201— There need be no "chiefly," and there cannot be. For me it is chiefly our Jews who vote, and if they did not know that our party is faithful to Jewish interests, they would not vote for me here, nor for Comrade Diamant in Lemberg. But Galicia is Polish, and the relations between the Jews and the Poles are with us not so very much better than between the Jews and the Poles in Russian Poland. We socialists are convinced that through our party both nations can derive benefit. The interests of our Jews are dear to us. We worry about them. And we are convinced that, going hand in hand with the Polish population, they attain through our party the best results, politically, economically, and culturally. In Austria we know nothing of the Russian despotism. The various peoples have, as far as possible, self-administration and self-government. The Poles in Russia will surely be oppressed. In Austria, however, they have autonomy. If the Jews could fill a whole district and form there the main population, they would have the same local rights as the Poles, or the Germans, or the Slavs, or the Italians. But even now the Galician Jews feel themselves fully free.