Classic Audiobook Collection - An American in the Making, the Life Story of an Immigrant by Marcus Eli Ravage ~ Full Audiobook [biography]

Episode Date: November 6, 2023

An American in the Making, the Life Story of an Immigrant by Marcus Eli Ravage audiobook. Genre: biography For ad-free listening try our premium subscription Chapters (Approximate) (00:00:00) Chapter 00 (00:08:41) Chapter 01 (00:33:30) Chapter 02 (00:58:03) Chapter 03 (01:11:46) Chapter 04 (01:34:35) Chapter 05 (01:55:07) Chapter 06 (02:15:19) Chapter 07 (02:32:49) Chapter 08 (02:59:48) Chapter 09 (03:39:33) Chapter 10 (04:05:36) Chapter 11 (04:28:09) Chapter 12 (04:56:41) Chapter 13 (05:14:47) Chapter 14 (05:40:00) Chapter 15 (06:07:36) Chapter 16 (06:27:09) Chapter 17 (06:54:25) Chapter 18 (07:22:27) Chapter 19 (07:50:15) Chapter 20 (08:19:55) Chapter 21 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

an american in the making the life story of an immigrant by marcus eli ravage introduction when i hear all around me the foolish prattle about the new immigration the scum of europe as it is called that is invading and making itself master of this country i cannot help saying to myself that americans have forgotten america the native i must conclude has by long familiarity with the rich blessings of his own land grown forgetful of his high privileges and ceased to grasp the lofty message which america wafts across the seas to all the oppressed of mankind what i wonder do they know of america who know only america the more i think upon the subject the more i think upon the subject the more more I become persuaded that the relation of the teacher and the taught as between those who were born and those who came here must be reversed. It is the free American who needs to be instructed by the benighted races of the uplifting word that America speaks to all the world. Only from the humble immigrant, it appears to me, can he learn just what America stands for in the family

of nations the alien must know this for he alone seems ready to pay the heavy price for his share of america he unlike the older inhabitant does not come into its inheritance by the accident of birth before he can become an american he must first be an immigrant more than that back of immigration lies amygrain and to him alone is it given to know the bitter sacrifice and the deep upheaval of the soul that are implied in those two words the average American when he thinks of immigrants at all thinks i am afraid of something rather comical he thinks of bundles funny picturesque bundles of every shape and size and color The alien himself in his incredible garb as he walks off the gangplank appears like some sort of an odd moving bundle, and always he carries more bundles. Later on, in his peculiar transplanted life, he sells nondescript merchandise in fantastic vehicles, does violence to the American's language, and sits down on the curve,

to eat fragrant cheese and unimaginable sausages he is for certain a character fit for a farce so i think you see him you fortunate ones who have never had to come to america i am afraid that the pathos and the romance of the story are quite lost on you yet both are there as surely as the comedy no doubt out when you go slumming, you reflect sympathetically on the drudgery and the misery of the immigrant's life. But poverty and hard toil are not tragic things. They indeed are part of the comedy. Tragedy lies seldom on the surface. If you would get a glimpse of the pathos and the romance of readjustment, you must try to put yourself in the alien's place. And that you may find hard to do. Well, try to think of leave-taking, of farewells to home and kindred, in all likelihood, never

to be seen again, of last looks lingering affectionately on things and places, of ties, broken and grown stronger in the breaking. Try to think of the deep upheaval of the human soul, pulled up by the roots from its ancient precious soil cast abroad among you here withering for a space then slowly finding nourishment in the new soil and once more thriving not indeed as before a novel composite growth if you can see this you may form some idea of the sadness and the glory of the adventure oh if I could show you America as we of the oppressed people see it if I could bring home to you

even the smallest fraction of this sacrifice and this upheaval the dreaming and the strife the agony and the heartache the endless disappointments the yearning and the despair all of which must be hours before we can make a home for our battered spirits in this land of of yours perhaps if we be young we dream of riches and adventure and if we be grown men we may merely seek a haven for our outraged human souls and a safe retreat for our hungry wives and children yet however aggrieved we may feel toward our native home we cannot but regard our leaving it as a violent severing of the ties of our lives of our lives life and look beyond toward our new home as a sort of glorified exile.

So whether we be young or old, something of ourselves we always leave behind in our hapless, cherished birthplaces. And the heaviest share of our burden inevitably falls on the loved ones that remain when we are gone we make no illusions for ourselves though we may expect wealth we have no thought of returning it is farewell forever we are not setting out on a trip we are amigrating yes we are emigrating and there is our experience our ordeal in a nutshell it is the one of the one way passport for us every time for we have glimpsed a vision of America and we start out resolve that whatever the cost we shall make her our own in our heavy laden hearts we are already Americans in our own dumb way we have grasped her message to us

yes we immigrants have a real claim on america every one of us who did not grow faint-hearted at the start of the battle and has stuck it out has earned a share in america by the ancient rite of conquest we have had to subdue this new home of ours to make it habitable and in conquering it we have conquered ourselves we are not what we were when you saw us landing from the ellis island ferry our own kinsfolk do not know us when they come over we sometimes hardly know ourselves end of introduction part one of an american in the making the life story of an immigrant by marcus eli ravage this lebervox recording is in the public domain part one the alien at home chapter one the prophet from america even an imaginative american i suppose must find it very hard to form anything like a just idea of the tremendous adventure involved in the act of immigration the alien in our midst is too elusive an object for satisfactory study he changes too rapidly but yesterday he was a solid citizen in his particular village of Sicily or Romania of a piece with his ancestral background surrounded by friends and kindred

apparently rooted in his native soil today he is a drift in a foreign world mute and helpless and tragically ridiculous a soul in purgatory a human creature cut from its moorings the most pitiable sight to be met on this earth tomorrow who know those tomorrow very probably you will find him a prosperous citizen again very earnestly devoting himself to some strange until recently undreamed of business giving orders or taking them even now perhaps a bit discordant against his new setting and except for one or two well-hidden scars none the worse apparently for his translation who shall find the patience to follow him in his torturous career what is surely most amazing is that he should have started out at all

considering the pangs of separation and the risks that warn and threaten him and beset his path why you might ask should he want to emigrate is it the dream of avarice yes in part and the hope of freedom without a doubt but these are general motives and remote the far-flung clarion call of american liberty and her promise of equal opportunity are the powerful loadstones that draw all immigrants alike there are more particular motives than these to spur him on even freedom and economic independence have a varying meaning to individual aliens station in life and nationality and age all play their part in composing his mental picture of america and as in war so also in emigration there are always immediate causes as well as remote and general ones i have myself been asked hundreds of times why i have come to america and i trust that there was no malice in the question as a rule i have pointed to the usual reasons i explained that at home in vaslui and in roumania generally there was very little opportunity for a young man to make anything of himself my parents had ambitions for me which their clings hopeless poverty made impossible of attainment and I was only a child of 16 and I longed for the great world with its rich prizes and its still richer adventures my soul was thrilled with the

dream of conquest and the pious hope of delivering my family from want and oppression but while all this is true it was not the whole truth in fact I quite omitted from my account the most vital because it was the most direct cause of my migration the remainder of the truth is that in the year of my departure from vaslui america had become as it were the fashionable place to go hitherto it had been but a name and by no means a revered name but suddenly america had flashed upon our consciousness and fanned our dormant souls to flames of consuming ambition. All my relatives and all our neighbors, in fact, everybody who was anybody,

had either gone or was going to New York. I call it New York, but you as Americans ought to be informed that the correct spelling is Nev York, as every refined person in Vasloy knows. I did not then, as you see, come alone to America. I came with the rest of the population of Vos-Louis, and Vos-Louis was merely a sort of scouting party to be followed directly by the main army. It has probably been forgotten in this country, if indeed it was generally noted at the time,

that about the year 1900 there was what, to my eyes, appeared to be able to be able to, to be a national migration from Romania to New York, a migration which seemed literally to include well-nigh the whole Romanian race. What had so suddenly raised the prestige of New York among the Vos-Louisanders and the Moldavian traveling public generally, I am in an excellent position to relate, for it so happened that the principal agent in this grand scheme of advertising among us the attractions of New York was a not distant relative of my own i am well aware that such services as his ought not to go unrewarded and i know that already your curiosity about his identity is getting the better of you but until a committee of representative new yorkers assures

me of its appreciation of mine and my countryman's patronage, I feel in honor bound to respect my kinsman's modesty and to guard his secret. Meantime, you shall know him by the name of Koza. Koza is a royal Romanian cognomen, and my relative, whether by divine gift or forethought, had an unmistakable royal heir, at least while he was in Voslui. koza then put in an appearance in our town during the winter of eighteen ninety nine after an absence in america of some fourteen years for months before if you had put your ear to the ground you might have heard the distant rumble of his approach and vaslui held not only its ear to the ground but its breath it seemed to us that our life had been hitherto dull and common but that at last it was to be tipped with glory and romance cos's brother jacob became over night the first citizen of the town and this reflected glory was shared by all our family those daily letters that jacob received were inquired after by the whole community

They became, in the truest sense, Voslui's first newspaper, for they contained the only intelligence we cared to hear about. Now he was embarking at Nev York, and now he had landed at Havra. A long succession of bulletins reported him at the various capitals and great cities of Europe. He was coming, coming, coming. air was growing too thick for respiration. On the street, in the market, at the synagogue, we kept asking one another the one question. When will he arrive? At last, the long-awaited telegram flashed over us, and I shall never forget my terrible disappointment on learning its message.

For weeks I had been training in the boys' chorus, which was a little bit of the boy's. to welcome the guest on his arrival. And now, at the last moment, he had cold-bloodedly decided to come in on the midnight train. The choral reception had, therefore, to be abandoned. Faslui must content itself with a mere representative committee of citizens and restrain its pent-up enthusiasm as best it might till the morrow. i have a very vivid recollection of that night of koza's arrival for although i was deprived of a direct share in the reception i had a partial reward for my disappointment in the reflected splendor that fell upon me through my father he being one of the guest's family was chosen a member of the welcoming committee and toward two o'clock in the morning he burst into the house trailing clouds of glory from his rare experience.

We had been tossing about for several intolerable hours, wondering whether he ever would get back. No sooner did we hear his key in the door, then we leaped up in our beds and greeted him with a chorus of inquiry that nearly frightened him. Is he here? We yelled altogether.

Is he? Well, I should rather say, say so father cried breathlessly and still in the dark then followed things amazing for hours that seemed like brief moments we sat agape listening to a detailed account of the arrival and a somewhat bewildering word-picture of the personage himself you should see the old boy my parent began it seems only like yesterday when i used to see him in these very streets a slouchy unprepossessing youngster with his toes out at his gaping boot-tips carrying heavy cans of milk around for his mother remember mamma he used to bring us our leader every morning before we got our own cow and do you remember how your brother samuel never tired of telling us what a dunce the urchin was at school ah this nev york must be a wonderful place why i did not know him at all when he stepped off the car not until jacob rushed up to him and was followed by the whole cheering lot of us at first i thought he was a rabbi he is so large and stout and dignified he wore a long black frock coat and a high hat just the kind that reb sander wears on saturdays at the services but when i got up nearer to him i noticed that he was clean-shaven would you believe it he did not even have a moustache

I never saw so many trunks and bags in all my life as they unloaded for him. And jewelry? He had diamonds in his cravat and brilliance on his fingers, and a magnificent gold chain from which hung a great locket, stuck full of more diamonds. He is a millionaire, if ever there was one in America. This was very exciting and altogether astonishing in many ways. It suddenly revealed America to us in a new light,

for you must not suppose that we were so ignorant as never to have heard of the place at all. The name Nev York was indeed rather new, and we admired Father a good deal for throwing it so glibly into his account. But then you could not accept. expect us to know the whole map of America in detail. Of America, however, we had heard considerable on several occasions. Whenever a Vosluander went into bankruptcy, and whenever a soldier wearied of the discipline and deserted, it was brooded about that he had run away to America.

There was a female beggar in the town whom mother always singled out for special kindnesses. I used to wonder about her, until one day I learned that she had once been the well-to-do mistress of a home of her own, but that her husband had tired of her and escaped to America. I had thus come to think of the place as a city of refuge, an exile which men fled to only in preference to

going to prison i had heard of people going to vienna and germany and paris and even to england for business or pleasure but no one to my knowledge had ever gone to america of his own free will and of those who went considering the circumstances of their departure none ever returned to tell us what it was like any more than if they had gone to the other world in fact a person gone to america was exactly like a person dead that was why on those rare occasions when a family followed its breadwinner to that distant land the whole community turned out and marched in slow time to the station and wept loudly and copiously and remembered the unfortunates in its prayer on the next Saturday I said that no one had ever returned from America but there was one exception and I mention it here because the individual was destined to become the villain in the piece which I am here transcribing it was commonly gossiped in Vaslui that

Itza Bayer, who was hand and glove with officialdom, and whom everyone feared and flattered as a notorious informer, had years before returned from America, where he must have had a stormy and ignominious career, because whenever anybody ventured to ask him about it, he would merely say that he preferred to serve his term than to live a dog's life in exile, and forthwith, the subject this itza Bayer was at first decidedly friendly to the news of Koza's coming when the time arrived he even went so far as to consent to serve on the committee and at the station he was according to father's report one of the first to greet the arrival father went into circumstantial detail in his account of this historic greeting he said that the rest of the committee drew back a step and stood around in solemn awe while the two Americans exchanged compliments in English. But the odd thing was that Iza Bayer ever after had an ironical smile about his lips

and an impish twinkle in his eye when referring to that English conversation. He was never seen speaking to COSA again, except at the temple on the Saturday following the event, and then it was neither in English nor in friendship. A mysterious coldness seemed to have developed between the two men almost from the start. And when Voslouy fell down on its knees and worshipped Koza as the great man he was, Iza Baer's jealousy, for jealousy was all it could be, turned into whispered threats at first, and finally into open hostility. on the morrow after the arrival i saw him i saw him on the first of those impressive progresses which were to become a regular but not a common sight in the daily life of our town for the next fortnight

he was riding slowly in a droshka smiling happily and bowing unpretentiously to the populace the streets were lined with craning round eyes tiptoeing vasluianders open-mouthed peasants and gay-attired holiday visitors from neighboring towns who having heard of the glory that had come to vaslui had driven in in their ox-carts and dog-carts to partake of it i have sometimes seen the king ride in state through these same streets and have heard the throng shouting thryasca reggely but this occasion was not boisterous but dignified and solemn thus louis seemed too full for idle noise-making it seemed to feel that while the king was no doubt a fine fellow and all that he had not come all the way from nev york he had not brought with him any dozen trunks he did not speak english and wear diamonds and dress in a different frock-coat every day quite the contrary the king had on the same uniform every time he came to vasili he was after all a sort of exaggerated army officer with an unnecessary amount of gold lace and other trappings about his person he like all military folk might care for show and shouts but an american millionaire was not a clown or a

a bear to be clapped at. Why, he was the most modest and the simplest of men. Any other man of his great wealth would have put on airs and gone to the Hotel Regal, the exclusive stopping place in Vaslui for all mere aristocrats. Instead, he went to his brother's home and unassumingly shared the humble quarters of his family. That appeared to be his way. whatever was good for one man was good enough for every man he never spoke of his wealth indeed he looked embarrassed and uncomfortable whenever the subject was alluded to he positively disliked to talk about himself in any fashion he let his actions speak for him and all that he represented and from his actions vaslui was forced to draw the right conclusion The sheer extravagance of the trunkful of presents he had brought from America for the immediate members of his family spoke volumes for his generosity and the abundance of his means. There was the neat little razor in the leather case for his brother Jacob, which a child could use without cutting himself, and which was reputed to cost no less than ten francs.

Then came the wonderful penholder for his sister-in-law, which, as Koza explained at some length, dispensed with inkwells and drew its life fluid from some mysterious source. The children, too, were by no means forgotten. There were railways that were wound up like clocks and ran around in their tracks like real trains, and dancing negroes and squawking dolls and Jews. harps and scores of other delights with a palate as well as the fancy. And then the climax was capped when Koza himself drew forth out of that chunk of wonders the final package and proceeded to unwrap therefrom endless reams of tissue paper, and just as his spectators were about to succumb to the torments of breathless curiosity,

held it up and presented it to his old mother a musical box to the value of 25 francs. Moreover, no one but a millionaire could have behaved as he behaved in the synagogue on the memorable Saturday following his arrival. It was the usual custom for a distinguished guest to be honored with a reading of the law. And it was expected from him in turn to make a suitable offering in return for the honor. But when the official reader paused for the donner to fill in the blank, COSA calmly and very distinctly said, one hundred and twenty-five francs,

and looked modestly about at the astounded faces of the congregation. That donation, transcended our imagination. The high watermark until that day, and for years past, had been recorded by Eleazar Kaufman, the wealthy merchant, now dead, who had once, in an extravagant moment, subscribed five francs, and the old men in Voslui still talked of it in odd tones. a hundred and twenty-five francs. Why, even when crops were bumpers, a grain merchant could garner no more than that in a month.

The sum would bring a team of oxen, pay two years rent for a house in town, or very nearly by a modest dwelling in the country. From that day on, Vasselieu became a changed town. hitherto we had been content to gaze in abstracted admiration at the splendid phenomenon and the dim romantic land that lay behind him but now the shimmering apparition had become a solid reality we had seen with our own eyes and had heard with our own ears the concrete thing that it meant to be an american millionaire and vas luiz suddenly felt a vast ambition stirring in its galloping heart gone was the languor the easy-going indifference the resignation the despair that once dwelt in the lines of our faces we became a bustling seething hopeful community a star had risen in heaven to lead us out of the wilderness

end of chapter one chapter two of an american in the making the life story of an immigrant by marcus eli this librivox recording is in the public domain chapter two the gospel of new york the very next day my father took me by the hand and marched me straight up to great headquarters He had done some deep thinking all night and had apparently worked up an exceedingly clever scheme. At least, I supposed it was clever until we reached our destination. I had been given only the broadest outline of it, but I gathered from that that it was essentially a plan to induce COSA to take me to America with him when he returned, details to be worked out later. however, we got within a block of Cousin Jacob's store. My heart sank, and father turned very pale. Here was a line of similarly clever fathers, with equally shamefaced sons and daughters, extending from Jacob's store in the front all the way around the little circular park,

which was in the center of the shopping district. And another shorter column in the rear, starting from the back door and ending a block away at the gate of the courthouse. The total effect was of two opposing armies struggling for the capture of Jacob's store and the great prize within. And every father and son there claimed relationship with COSA and was ready, I suppose, to back it up with documentary evidence and a flourishing family tree. I had never realized that all of Vaslui belonged to my family. It was just at this time that the notorious Itza Bayer entered upon the scene in real earnest.

To the shame of Vaslui, be it confessed, that he had succeeded in gathering about him a very considerable following, and, strangely enough, among men who had hitherto been held in high esteem for their integrity and shrewdness. It is at such stirring times as these that men go astray. When one or two of those whom Koza had felt obliged to discourage in their emigration plans, chanced to speak of their disappointment, Itza Bayer suggested that they might offer to share their first million with Koza in return for the passage across. He and his followers organized themselves into an anti-Cosa committee which made ridiculous claims of seeking to save Voslui, and in the end they barely nearly succeeded in ruining the hope of the town.

From the day of the great incident at the synagogue, rumors of an infinite variety had gained currency regarding certain phases of Cosa's career in America. No one was able to take. trace them to their source, but they kept issuing with ever-increasing frequency and with the emphasis of unquestionable truth. We tried to discuss them with Koza himself, but he could not be induced either to confirm or to deny them. He would simply smile confusedly and declare that everything was possible in New York. But at the end of that week, a report

of the most stupendous sort reached our ears. It was to the effect that our guest was not merely a millionaire, but that he held a very high government position in America, something resembling a prefect or a minister. This time we besieged him and insisted on knowing the truth, for this news was no matter of mere personal glory for an individual, it revealed one side of that wonderful America that we had not thought of before. One could get rich once in a while, even in Romania. But that our humble, downtrodden people could not only vote, but be voted for, and hold office in New York, was a revelation of the most startling and inspiriting kind. This time, I say, we would not be put off with modest blushes. Coza, of course, tried to hedge about by admitting that people of our kind might become members of the

government, that religion in America was a private matter, unconnected with politics, and that he had himself heard of an American president by the name of Abraham. he could not remember the other name but while all this was gratifying to a degree boss louis demanded to know the whole truth was it true that he himself was the prefect of nev York if it was then nothing else mattered because everything was as clear as day finally the conference ended in a compromise of the prefecture of the prefecture of of New York, he could by no means be persuaded to speak. But after long and cruel drilling and cross-examining, he did confess that his visit to Vos-Louis was only a side trip, incidental,

to his commissions in Paris as a special representative of the American government to the world's exposition and the pro se dryfus after that confession koza's modesty dropped from him like a mask once his mouth had been forced open he found great difficulty in closing it again until we knew as much about new york as he did which is to say everything he seemed eager now to make us realize how dull and circumsum described and enslaving was our existence in Romania, and then point in contrast to the freedom and the wealth and the beauty of that city of God, which was New York. There were many ways of getting rich in America, he told us. People got paid, it seemed, even for voting. A mere slip of a girl could earn 50 francs a week at making blouses. Girls. Girls, indeed were not a burden there as they were in Vosloui. In America, the richest young ladies earned their own living, fed and clothed themselves, and saved up the necessary dowry to get a

husband with. In fact, girls were altogether an enviable asset to their parents. A man who had a half-dozen grown daughters, or even a skillful wife, could be independent and full, for the rest of his natural life. One of the trunks that Koza had brought with him, we were to learn, was filled with American newspapers, and with their help, he preached to us the gospel of New York. Seated on the divan in that vast room at the rear of his brother Jacob's store, which constituted the family's apartment, he would spread before him one of those extensive sheets and delight his open-mouthed collars with a message from the great world he had come from.

I do not know what other people got out of those readings, but I myself was terribly excited by them, so that for months afterward I dreamed of nothing but ingenious murders and daring robberies committed in broad daylight by clean-shaven desperadoes and frockcoats and silk hats. I conceived of New York as a brave, adventurous sort of place where life was a perilous business, but romantic for that very reason. Those American newspapers puzzled us considerably. We had expected that they would, naturally, be in English. But we discovered with surprise that for the most part they were printed in our own familiar Yiddish,

although it was a Yiddish somewhat corrupted, like Koza's own speech, with a curious admixture of strange barbarisms. Koza laid great emphasis, as was most natural, on the unlimited opportunities for earning money in New York. And to that end, he invited our attention to the pages upon pages of frantic appeals from America for every variety. of help it was vastly encouraging to hear him read those appeals and to know how badly we were wanted in america but we were a little obtuse at times we could not understand for instance why anyone should want a dozen girls to keep on working at blouses day after day without end what did a body want with so many wastes we asked our interpreter But we got little satisfaction in that regard. He seemed to delight in filling his mouth with those strange, long words that somehow got into every sentence and spoiled its meaning for us.

And he showed, I thought, decided resentment at being interrupted with a request to explain. When his own brother Jacob asked to be told what was meant by a stenographer, coza contented himself with pointing the moral as to the brutalizing effect of living in such a place as vasloy where grown men did not know the things that every child in new york knew that was perhaps a bit hard on my poor cousin but even he could not help agreeing with koza and hoping all the more deeply in consequence that his children at least might some day get out of my poor cousin but even he could not help agreeing with koza and hoping all the more deeply in consequence that his children at least might some day get out of into the civilized world if any proof were needed of coza's high character and noble interests and if anything could effectively give the lie to the unwarranted ill-tempered slurs of itza and his anti-coza party we got it in coza's constant references to education he pointed with profound scorn to the inferiority of the schools and denounced our government bitterly for forcing us to pay an annual tuition rate of 30 francs for each pupil in the elementary schools in new york it appeared education was to be got

altogether without cost by jew and gentile alike by day or by night the government of america not only did not exact charges for instruction, it compelled parents to send their children to school, and it begged grown-ups to come and be educated when their day's work was over. Coza cited instances of young men of his acquaintance who had become doctors and lawyers and of young women who had become teachers by studying at night and earning their living in the daytime. He had himself obtained his remarkable education in that way. After these sessions, my father would come away flushed with enthusiasm and repeat excitedly, America is good, America is good. He had long been cherishing the hope of making a doctor of me, but he had not even succeeded in getting me into the public school.

Every fall he would take me around from number one to number two, and always he would get the same answer. No room. I knew of hundreds of other cases like my own. There was nothing for us to do but to go to the little private institutes and pay heavily for the scanty instruction we got. When we reached the high school stage, matters got even worse. Vasseluit did have a gym. but a poor fellow had not a chance in the world of getting in the tuition was high the school was overcrowded and it was necessary to have a certificate of graduation from a public school to be admitted the nearest university

was at Bucharest and it would take a small fortune to go there and a very large one to make ends meet during the seven or eight years of instruction, supposing that one succeeded in getting in. Father had almost given up the idea in despair when America appeared in the nick of time to save the situation. Unhappily, these glorious chats about America were to be cut short with tragic swiftness. Some of our townsfolk were too insistent about their own. own selfish interests and kept pestering him with their requests to be taken to America. One night, I recall, the widow Shandall came with her eight children and coaxed and begged and cried. She promised that she would slave for him and clean his shoes and scrub his mansion

and care for his horses and weed his gardens. If only he would save her from the poverty and the tax-gatherer by taking her and her children away to nev york when poor koza could no longer endure the painful scene he ended it by the sacrifice of his own dignity my dear woman he said do you take me for a millionaire then he grew very confused and grunted something in his deep base voice but i admired him for the splendid way in which he said it, it gave me a last glimpse of the fine modesty of the old Koza of the pre-donation period. Yet it was very clear that scenes of that sort were cruelly wearing to his sympathetic spirit and that he was getting restless to leave. At the end of Koza's second week, Iza Bayer became shamelessly hostile. He declared that he could no

longer stand by in silence while this braggart was bringing misery and discontent upon poor people just to feed his own vanity. And he let it be known that he intended to denounce Koza as an old fugitive from the recruiting officer. When Koza heard of this, he declared with a smile that he would like to see any little Romanian king lay hands on an American citizen to which Iza Bayer retorted that he was ready to bet his beard and earlocks that the pretended American citizen did not even have his first papers no one took him up on that because of the obvious technical points involved but the next morning Vaslui awoke to learn with bitter disappointment that

that a telegram from Paris had recalled the special representative to his duties he had left in such haste the official statement added that he had not even taken his trunks the glory of our city was gone forever for although the hope was held out to us that he would return for another short stay and for his costly baggage, as soon as Captain Dreyfus had had his trial, we never saw him again. He did not even come to get his niece, whom he had promised to take with him to America, but contented himself with meeting her on the Hungarian border. The evident dislike he had taken to Voslui hurt us sorely and puzzled us not a little. although we might have understood that a man of his calibre could not long put up with the annoyances he had been subjected to

nothing but fear of the law prevented my infuriated fellow-townsmen from wreaking terrible vengeance on the unspeakable who had the cheek to go around boasting that we owed him a debt of gratitude for having saved us from a dangerous impostor but if itzabai or any one else had imagined that koza's mission would end with his departure he was to learn differently indeed it was only then that our great guests preaching and example began to learn differently indeed it was only then that our great guests preaching and example began to have their real effect now that he was gone vaslui could stand off and see the vision that had passed over it in true perspective it became quite clear to us that for one thing koza had done something with his fourteen years in america something very enviable and magnificent we realized of course that he was a fine and clever fellow and that not every one could aspire to his attainments but we argued if a man of genius could in so short a time become a millionaire and an ambassador then an average chap ought at least to have no difficulty in becoming say a police commissioner and in keeping his cellar perpetually well stocked with red wine this much had at any rate become certain there was a country somewhere beyond seas where a man was a man was a man

in spite of his religion and his origin if kosa's career and transformation proved anything they proved that in america a human being was given a chance to live his life without interference to become rich and influential if he could and to develop whatever talents were in him to his best advantage even if the informer were right and koza were a sham america surely was no sham and the message that koza had conveyed to us was honest anyhow no one from roumania could go to america and do the things that koza had done in vaslui no it did no good for itsa by air and his mournful followers to go around how that Koza was an impostor, that New York was not at all what he had cracked it up to be, and that we would find life so hard and so sordid there that we would walk back. We let them talk and proceeded in feverish haste to put our enthusiasm into acts. Now, I must confess that I have a very grave doubt as to whether it had to

been a part of Coza's original plan to affect anything like an exodus from his native land to that of his adoption. Those who censure and introduce him have said so, but then so have they said a lot of other slanderous, contradictory things about him. Perhaps I am wrong, but really I do question it. Surely it was not his fault that my fellow townsmen were so literal and so simple. Let us remember that he was cautious to the point of taciturnity about his own achievements and accomplishments, particularly when he perceived the drift of the impression he was making. A less noble character than he could not have resisted the temptation of bragging about his own wealth and influence as he resisted it and let us further remember that it was no voluntary misrepresentation on his part when in a moment of metaphorical excitement

he let it be known that he was an envoy of the american government in paris that the statement was forced upon him by my fellow townsman and that in the deepest spiritual sense it was not a misrepresentation at all the truth is that he was but a member of the great american democracy on a lark when i got to new york the next year i found him inhabiting the fraction of a flat on attorney street the remainder of which constituted a thriving dressmaking establishment mrs koza was making the dresses and paying the rent and otherwise attending to the material side of life while koza himself was keeping more or less busy as a foreman in a bedspring factory and saving enough from his earnings to get another frock-coat very soon in a merely literal sense therefore it may be said that he had after all not been an unyrederick-coat very soon in a merely literal sense therefore it may be said that he had after all not been an envoy but he had been something nobler than that he had caught a glorious vision of america where any man might be a millionaire an ambassador or a president what did it amount to that he as a matter of crude fact was not and he had traveled all the way to vaslui to share his vision with us End of Chapter 2. Chapter 3 of an American in the Making, The Life Story of an Immigrant by Marcus Eli Ravage. This Librevox recording is in the public domain.

Chapter 3 The Exodus Within three months after Koza's departure, the American fever had spread to the confines of the kingdom. Aegean arose simultaneously in Vosloui and Belaide and stalked with the pace of lightning, northward through Jazi to Far do Rojoi on the Russian frontier, south and westward through the Danube cities of Galatz, Briala, and Turnu Severin, to the very doors of the royal palace in Bucharest, until scarcely a hamlet was left untouched by its ravages. During the early spring, Vosloui had the appearance of a town struck by war or revolution. By the merciful justice of Providence, it befell that the rich and the grasping were among the earliest victims.

Forest owners and land magnates got rid of their holdings. Students abandoned their books. Reputable merchants took the habit of bankruptcy and made off with their car. creditors' funds to the nearest foreign port. Houses were sold at such sacrifice that the value of real estate dropped to one-fourth its customary level, and a time soon arrived when no one could be induced to buy a home or a farm at any price. Household furniture was consumed as firewood. Personal property, including kitchen utensils, cradle, prayer books,

and even clothing were given away in such quantities that shops and manufacturers had to close their doors. Trade was completely at a standstill. The streets witnessed a continual procession of drays and carts bulging with comically shaped bales of feather bedding because rumor had it that the commodity was unobtainable in America. The railway station had never been so crowded before. There were cheerful farewells, and those who stayed behind cried to those who departed. I'll see you in Nev York soon, and what took place in Vosloui was only typical of what had come to be the state of affairs everywhere in Romania. I am certain that in any other country, such a general exodus bringing the serious consequences in its wake that this did would have been stopped by the police was not the thing assuming the character of a national disaster

but the government of romania was far from any thought of interference it stood by idly while the caravans kept moving on apparently only too happy to be rid of an element of its population for which it had always entertained a quite frank antipathy in fact it did the reverse of stopping it ordinarily the getting of a passport had been a matter of endless trouble and very considerable expense but in this messianic year nineteen hundred the bars were unaccountably let down and every person not of military age who made application for a passport was cheerfully sped on his way by the officials and granted the document with the minimum of cost and almost no trouble at all as the movement advanced from one astonishing stage to another our information about america kept growing vaster and vaster until the few seeds of knowledge that Koza had scattered among us seemed like a primer beside an encyclopedia. This remarkable country, so newly discovered for us, was infinitely more wonderful than it had appeared from first reports, and infinitely more puzzling. To be sure, Koza had made some passing allusion to a president, but,

it had never dawned on us at the time that this official was the ruler of the land. Surely, no government had ever been known to dispense with the guidance of hereditary kings. Countries, no matter whether they did call themselves republics, were, after all, not charity societies to be managed by mere presidents. No wonder it was said that the government of America was powerless to prevent troublesome persons from carping and poking fun at it, that newspapers had free reign to plot its overthrow, and that the ruler's position was so insecure that he never knew just when his enemies might supplant him. The geography of the place was even more surprising, since by all accounts New York stood exactly beneath Vaslui on the underside of the earth,

and that would seem to mean that the inhabitants walked head downward like flies on the ceiling. It was regrettable that we had learned this only after Koza had gone, or we might have asked him to explain how it was managed. We might also have been told in an authoritative way whether it was true that in New York the railways ran over the roofs of the houses, that the dwellings were so large that one of them was sufficient to house an entire town in Romania, that all the food was sold in sealed metal packages, that the water came up into people's homes without having. having to be carried, and that no one, not even a shoemaker, went to the temple on Saturdays without

wearing a stovepipe hat. By the end of April, the greater part of the town's men of means and distinction had rolled away in carriage and railway car and steamboat, and the great problem of emigration gradually loomed up in all its enormity. How were the rank and file of the community, the small grain merchants, the poor shopkeepers, the hundred varieties of go-between, all of whom lived on the peasant and depended on the brief harvest season for their whole year's income, how were they to make their way to New York? The most conservative estimate showed that two hundred francs would barely pay the passage of a single person and families in vaslui were of the traditional respectable type consisting usually of father and mother and an average of five descendants not to mention such odd members commonly appended to all households as grandfathers invalid aunts orphaned second cousins and orphaned second cousins and the second cousins and the

alike. To fit out and transport such a party in its entirety would require a fortune as incalculable as everything else connected with America was. Now, who among this great middle class was in a position at the tapering end of the year to produce anything like such a fortune all at once? Supposing even that one was content to let a representative of the tribe go forth to blaze the trail and that the remaining ones could summon up the patients to wait until he had wrung enough out of new york's fabulous millions to send for them where was his equipment to come from now that the money class had gone it was not even possible to sell or pawn the family heirlooms the rare few who still had a bit of ready cash clung to it with a tenacity amazing even for vaslui so my native town harassed and floundering scratched its head and pondered its tremendous problem

until it solved it or i should say until it would have solved it if relatives in america had been what they ought to be who the clear-headed realist that hit upon so simple a way out of our difficulties was i cannot now recall if indeed i ever knew i rather inclined to the theory that there was no such person that like all beneficial discoveries bringing relief to suffering mankind the solution was arrived at by all of us at the same time distilled as it were out of the charged air At any rate, and however that may be, it seemed as if all at once everyone in Voslui suddenly remembered the obvious fact that COSA was not the only one of our fellow countrymen to have gone to America. Why, there was hardly a family in town that had not a kinsman of one degree or another in that land of millionaires. it did not matter now what the disgraceful circumstance had been that had driven him there and it was altogether beside the point that he had hitherto been an outcast from our respectable hearts and our respectable world

our views had broadened we had come to regard america in a more charitable light of late thank heaven for providing us with a refuge in our extremity And so there followed an eager searching of our memories for exact names and more or less definite addresses, and an immediate dispatching of lengthy, affectionate communications to beloved uncles and very dear cousins and most precious nephews. With introductory, why haven't we been honored with news of your valued health all these years? and salutary. Times are hard here. Won't you send us a ticket and a few dollars for our Yankle or Moishi, who is now a fine big boy and you ought to see him? Unhappily, the endeared ones who were addressed somewhere in America had either migrated somewhere else or were dead or had become hardened by excessive wealth. For very few answers came back.

and those few of the most discouraging sort times were equally hard in america they invariably said the country had just been at war work was scarce and they would therefore advise us to remain where life was simpler easier and freer no doubt they expected us to believe all this but we quite readily perceive their motive they feel their motive they feared our competition. America was so good, they wanted her all to themselves. Ah, well, we had Kosa's word and the example for the truth about New York. Nothing that these selfish ingrates, whom prosperity had rendered unsympathetic to their own kin, might tell us, could move us from our resolve. And then, just as everything began to look once more as black as possible, and the great problem bade fair to remain as unsolved as ever, help appeared from the least expected quarter. The youth, the fantastic, impractical youth, seeing the muddle their elders were in, took matters into their own

hands and one fine morning Romania awoke to hear the startling news that the walking movement had begun. End of chapter three. Chapter 4 of an American in the Making, The Life Story of an Immigrant by Marcus Eli Ravage. This Librevox recording is in the public domain. Chapter 4 To America on foot It must have been along toward the middle of May that the intelligence reached Vosloui

of the strange new turn that the immigration craze had taken And while I am about it, I shall let no amount of civic pride Prevent me from recording That it was out of the neighboring and rival town of Berlade That salvation came It was to the effect that a band of young men had formed themselves into an organization for the purpose of walking to America. I remember how incredulous we were when we first heard of it. In the first place, we had learned entirely too much about America during and since Koza's visit to swallow any such absurd notion as that it could be reached.

by walking. And besides that, the report was brought to us by a woman whom Voslui credited with neither too much truthfulness nor complete sanity. The person was a neighbor of ours, whose husband had served a term at the prison of Debrovitz, justly or unjustly for arson, and she had built up a trade in convict's work in beads and leather. She used to travel about to all the fairs, and often returned with a great assortment of wild tales. We little dreamed that before many weeks, we were to have a two-America-on-foot society in our own town. Yet that is precisely what happened. we had hardly had time to make up our minds as to whether there could be anything in the strange story from Berlade when a number of the boys in our own set held a meeting and announced that they had formed a walking group right in Vos-Louis.

I do not wish to be immodest, but historical truth demands I should confess that I had the glory of being present at that meeting. and becoming one of the charter members of the organization. We assembled about 25 of us in all at Monash Bakman's Grain Shed, just outside the town gate. The place was well chosen, for that shed had already become sacred in our hearts by many tender associations. It had been the scene of a long series of theatrical performances in which the present organizers had been both, actors and audience and although we were now practical men and had quite done with childish things our instincts must have guided us in selecting this sentimental spot for our adult activities we ranged in age from 15 to 18 with the

exception of young Frankl the druggist's son who having spent a year at the University of Bucharest was looked up to as a of the world and was therefore asked to give us the benefit of his parliamentary training the meeting was a thunderous one as in all parliaments the body which had gathered as a very harmonious one soon split up into a number of factions there was the extreme left which advocated secret procedure and the exclusion of parents from our councils they were in favor of a immediate action, a nocturnal departure with French leave, and not a word to our families

until we had reached New York, when a telegram would suffice to inform them of what had happened. That plan had in its favor the element of romance, but it was forthwith howled down by the extreme right, the reactionaries, who left at the whole scheme, and declared that, if we could not travel like gentlemen we might as well abandon the idea of America entirely finally the moderates won out led by the chairman himself they argued that it would be wiser to take the townspeople into our secret and gained the benefit of their advice and support before adjourning we took up at Frankel's suggestion the matter of permanent organization

We elected a president and invested him with tyrannical powers over our bodies and souls. He was to preside at the meetings while we remained in Voslui and to act as the captain of the band on the march. He could dismiss a member from the group for a capital offense or punish him with reduced rations and solitary marching 40 meters behind the column. for minor misdemeanors. A number of us objected to making the captain into a king, pointing out the patent fact that he was called a president, and crying vehemently that this granting of wholesale privileges to a president was totally out of harmony with the spirit of the great country to which we were going. Next, we turned to the choosing of a treasurer and experienced tremendous.

tremendous difficulties in deciding what one of us could most safely be entrusted with our prospective common funds then the temporary chairman suggested that we ought to have a secretary just for the dignity of the organization even though we may find no duties for him last of all i was myself picked for the post of commissary general with powers to purchase supply and apportion the rations, always, of course, under orders from the captain and president. But alas, the irony of fate and the cruelty of parents. No sooner had we each retired to our own homes, and no sooner did we break the news to our several fathers, than we found good reason to repent of our failure to adopt the program of the leftists.

the ingrate monish bachman unmindful of the glory that had fallen upon his grain shed promptly deposed the powerful tyrant who was his own son yankle neither he nor my parent would hear of the absurd idea monish having once been wealthy and being still very proud and something of a power in the community could see no reason why his son should undergo the hardship and the indignity of having to tramp to America. If Yankle must go away, he declared with a flourish, I am not yet so poor, but that I could afford to have him travel as befits my position. But Yankle need not leave home at all, he insisted. The youngster was very useful to him in his business. In vain did the boy object that he cared nothing about dignity and position, that he thought the railway and steamboat were tiresome, uninteresting, grandfatherly modes of travel, unworthy of a boy. Monish had put his foot down.

With me, things went quite as badly, if not worse. My father was a cleverer man than Yankles, and therefore he had no difficulty in trumping up a whole chain of causes why he could not let me go. Number one, had I forgotten that no more than a week before, while I was bathing the horse down at the swimming hole, I had very narrowly escaped drowning and a whipping afterward into the bargain. With that exhibition of my incapacity still fresh in his memory, how could I expect him to trust me to take care of myself on such a journey and in a distant country? Number two, I was the youngest in the family, and probably for that reason mother's favorite child. He was not talking about himself now. Paul was in the army at

Hooshee and Harry was in business at Constanza. Was I cool enough to go away and leave mother to die of longing? Number three. The crops last fall had failed. Times were woefully hard. There was not money enough in the house to fit me out for any kind of journey, however inexpensive. All this array of logic I might have met, but, before long father's arguments were reinforced by mother's pleadings had i forgotten annie my only sister who had died but three years before a flower struck down in the midst of spring how could i think of abandoning father and mother in their sorrow and quit the precious soil where annie lay buried against the logic of bereavement i saw that saw I had no hope of prevailing even though my reason did not yield my heart did and the session ended in tears in the meantime ross louis generally showed a very different disposition toward the new emigration in spite of its deposed

president and commissary general the group had managed to grow both in numbers and in public approval It had been joined by several older men, so that the roster contained by now some 40 odd names. The organization held daily meetings, no longer in the grain shed, but in one of the town halls. The preparations for the journey were being rushed, and enthusiasm ran very high, not only among the members themselves, but especially in the community. If the earlier emigration had aroused interest, this new and strange development had in it the picturesqueness and the heroic pathos, which could not but appeal to the imagination and touch the heart. The majority of those who composed the reorganized group were preparing to walk to America out of real necessity, not for adventure. vaslui gave them the homage and the sympathy that a nation gives its army marching off to war the most striking evidence of the community's interest in the movement appeared right at the start

before matters had proceeded very far a few prominent citizens of the town undertook to guide the destinies of the group in a more systematic fashion they perpetuated the old committee which had been chosen to welcome the the man Koza, whose missionary zeal had started the whole migration. The purposes of this higher organization were at first purely decorative. It made arrangements to give the group a suitable send-off on its departure, with flags and speeches and the like, and it instituted preparations for the welcoming of such groups from other towns, as might happen to pass through Rosloui on their way to New York. But once the committee had been formed, it found a multitude of unforeseen avenues for its activity. It was discovered in the first place that such funds as had been gathered from the contributions of the members themselves were absurdly inadequate to the needs of the journey.

Furthermore, it was out of the question for the boys to camp out or stop at hotels in the towns where the night might overtake them. The most serious problem of all arose over the question of how the young people were to be cared for in the foreign countries through which they must journey. Thus, there came into being a whole succession of institutions

which the original organizers of the walking movement had not even dreamed of. The Home Committee of Vosloy was soon duplicated in every town, where groups were forming and before long these separate bodies became merged into a really formidable national committee with branches in every corner of Romania and activities that covered every possible need of the emigrants and then the process of organization was carried to the last climactic step when the newly born national committee entered into correspondence and ultimately became affiliated with the great charitable alliances of Vienna, Berlin, Paris, and London, so that the marching group which had started out as an almost grotesque, childish fancy of merely local scope had in a short time evolved into a world movement with agencies in the principal capitals of Europe

and even in New York itself. By far the most noteworthy byproduct of this amazing movement was the advent of the newspaper. Hitherto Vosloui had been content to get its news second-hand. Journalism was a thing unknown, not only in Vosloui, but in all the other cities of Romania except Bucharest. There may have been newspapers in Jaze, but I know. never heard of them. Even the Bucharest dailies were taken only by the coffee houses of Voslui, where they hung on racks, clamped into their holders, and were glanced at sporadically by the merchants who congregated there. But all this was now changed. In the last month or two, Vosloui and Romania generally had passed through a cycle of changes, the like of which

had taken elsewhere centuries to effect. The mere thought of New York had somehow in a moment of time raised us to the level of Western civilization. I have often heard it said since in school and college that the genuine art and literature of a people are the direct result of its history and invariably reflect the popular soul. If this be true, I have myself been present at the birth of a little movement, which may, who can tell, prove a real contribution to the development of a genuine national art. For these daily and weekly papers that arose so suddenly among us were no mere purveyors of the world's daily scandal.

They were essentially of the stuff of which literature is made, although I dare say they never found their way into books or libraries. They were filled with poems and passionate eloquence, words of cheer and hope, eulogies of the land of our aspirations, which for some reason or other, was continually referred to as Jerusalem. Encouragement to those who were left behind and praise to the Almighty for delivering his people from the bondage of the modern Egypt, Romania. Nearly all the contents were the work of the members of the groups themselves, and for the first time in their lives, our humble, simple people had found an interest in journalistic endeavor. They eagerly devoured every issue from the first word to the last.

The ancient arts of music and oratory likewise came in for their share. We had never dreamed of the profusion of talent that lay fallow in our own midst. Moritz Kahana, the owner of the Hotel Regal, acquired a reputation overnight for impassioned public utterance, which reached far out of Voslui and extended even beyond the frontiers of Romania. All the meetings of the group consisted in large part of songs, with Hebrew, Yiddish, and Romanian words, who, who, heirs were adaptations of ancient melodies tender lullabies melancholy yearnings for Zion and solemn chants of the synagogue some had been borrowed from the doyness of the shepherd and others had filtered in after many vicissitudes from the cafe chatan of

Vienna the martial heirs were quite recognizable plagiarisms from the military composers but all the compositions had been with the heroic spirit of the young men who sang them and the fervid enthusiasm of the times. In this immense burst of literary and artistic fire, the practical side of the undertaking was, I am afraid, somewhat neglected. I attended the majority of the meetings, but I cannot recall ever having seen a map at any of them. In fact, I am. I am pretty certain that not even the captain of the expedition had the faintest glimmer of a notion about roots. It was the broad, magnificent idea of the thing that occupied all minds.

No one seemed to be in the least interested in mere details. As far as I can now determine, there was not a member in the whole group who could tell just which way he was headed, except that the initial stop was to be Berlade, some 40 miles away, and the ultimate destination, New York. It was never made clear in the speeches or the newspapers how the Atlantic was to be inveigled into suffering the foot voyagers to Bridget's chasm. Only once had there been an allusion in biblical phrase to the cleaving of the sea and the rising of its waters, like a wall but as that came out in a poem it was not remarked it was early in may that this first group having completed its preparations set out on its strange adventure the day was a clear and balmy one the marchers assembled at the gate of the little circular park in the center of the town and from the earliest hour of the morning vast throngs of the people came out to greet them. Promptly, at 10 o'clock, the bugle sounded and the procession began. It was headed by Moritz Kahana, the orator of the occasion, and some other members of the committee

in Adrashka. Then followed the group in double file, clad in brown khaki, military leggings, and broad-brimmed canvas hats, each with an army knapsack on his back, and a water bottle slung jauntily over his shoulder. Last in order came well nigh all that remained of the community of Vosloui. We marched and sang through the main thoroughfare, and then we swung off to a by-road that led to the southern gate of the town. There we halted, and Maritz-Kahana made a speech that caused the whole throng to cheer and brought a lump into my throat and the tears into my eyes.

Finally came the long last farewells, with tears and sobs from other people besides myself. The bugle sounded again, the captain gave the command, and the column was off on its way. I have sometimes debated with myself, whether it was really the enthusiasm for America, and the vague yet marvellous thing she meant to me or whether it could have been that fascinating uniform of my fortunate boyfriends and the romantic glories that i saw lying so near before them that made my heart ache when i heard that bugle sound and beheld those feet lifted to the march whichever it was the sight of that column on its way the eloquent words of the speaker

and the dreary walk back home have remained among the saddest experiences of my boyhood end of chapter four chapter five of an american in the making the life story of an immigrant by marcus eli ravage this libravok's recording is in the public domain chapter five farewell for ever had given my word that I would not again ask to go with that group, and I had kept it in spite of the fact that Monish Bachman had withdrawn his objections and allowed my friend Yankle to go. But when several days later the papers began to publish exciting accounts of the progress of the group, I quite frankly began to be sorry for having been so good. It made me desperate to think that here I was condemned to inactivity my hopes and my ambitions turning sour within me while the boys who had been my friends and companions were plucking rich adventure seeing the world and daily

drawing nearer to that magic city of promise New York they had according to a letter to me from Yankle reached Berlade the whole town had turned out to welcome them had fought for the privilege of entertaining them at their homes, and had banqueted them for three days, as if they had been princes. From Berlade, they had gone on to Tecucci, where their reception had been even more lavish than in Berlade. Can you wonder, after this glowing report, that I was getting restless and repenting of my good behavior? Therefore, when toward the middle of June, the second Vos-Louis group was organized, I returned to my attack on father. I threatened to run away and join the group at the next town.

I reminded my parent of his ambitions for me and asked him after all the rebuffs his efforts had met, whether he could still hope to make anything of me in Vosloui. just what did he expect to turn me into i painted a gloomy picture of our life in roumania the poverty the absence of every variety of opportunity the discriminations of the government against us whichever way one turned there were prohibitions and repressions supposing i wanted to study law then aliens were not eligible to the bar the ministry Romania forbade the establishment of rabbinical seminaries well I could go in for medicine if only the government allowed him to earn the means of seeing me through but justice had taken precious care that he should not when he had engaged in storekeeping in the country and had by hard toil succeeded in making a comfortable living a new law had legislated him and all his kind back into the towns. Later on, when he had entered the family occupation of candle manufacturing, an import tax on the raw materials, and a heavy export tax on the finished product,

suddenly rendered the trade unprofitable. Wine and tobacco still brought tolerable incomes, but he was no more permitted to deal in these articles that I was to study and practice the profession of the law. He was thus doomed to stay forever in the petty business of grain brokerage, which being the only occupation open to thousands of others, was in a state of such cut-throat competition that even the most competent were hardly able to support their families by it,

let alone send their sons to the universities. Yes, it was about time that he should look the stern facts in the face and abandon his lifelong dream of a learned career for his youngest and most studious son. Why, as a matter of fact, he had abandoned it. Hadn't I left school more than a year before and gone into trade? Well, what had I accomplished? I had tried grain for six months. and had made a total profit of 18 francs for the entire period, just about enough to pay for my salt and water. I had been willing to compromise with our family traditions by condescending to buy eggs and poultry from the peasants for export.

But he had objected to that, and had reminded me that I was not Brother Paul, that it was enough to have one boy in a decent family fall below the level of his peers, and that he would rather have me idle the rest of my life than see me hobnob with market women and butcher's journeyman. Even mother's self-humiliation with her well-to-do brother Pinkus of Berlade had availed her nothing. I was by no means certain that I would have greatly relished, sweeping his dry goods store and cleaning lamps and running errands for,

all his clerks by way of a stepping stone toward someday becoming one of his clerks myself but thanks to my newly acquired aunt rebecca i had been spared the pains and the shame of it for she had threatened uncle pinkus to run away back to her parents and never come back if he started in by filling the place with his own relatives my argument gathered momentum as it swept on. Knowing my audience as I did, I turned next with merciless emphasis to another subject. There was the dreadful horror of the recruiting officer, constantly lurking in our path like a serpent, ready to spring on a young man, just when he had reached the stage where he could be useful to himself and of help to his family. My brother Paul was a case and point. He had struggled for years ever since he had been 12 to learn a trade,

had served a three-year apprenticeship for his mere bed and board, had then toiled like a slave, first for 50, then for a hundred francs a year. And when at last he had become master of his calling and was about to become independent, along came the scarlet monster and packed him off to its musty barracks to be fed on black bread and cabbage, to learn senseless tricks with his feet and a gun, to spend days and whole weeks in prison cells, as if he were criminal, to be slapped in the face like a bad boy, and to live in constant terror of war. war and the maneuver for the rest of his life if this is the sort of future you want for me i concluded dramatically you are right in trying to keep me here it was cruel this relentless logic of facts

mother began to weep quietly and father bit his lip and turned to look out of the window but with the single-eyed selfishness of youth, I looked only to the advancement of my own cause. I perceived that my speech had had its effect. So I followed up the argument with a brilliant sketch of the great things that were awaiting me in New York. Had they forgotten the wonderful man from New York who had recently visited us? had they forgotten his jewels, his clothes, his trunks, his fine, impressive appearance, his cultured manners, his official position. That was what America was making out of her men.

For our visitor, by his own confession, was not the only one who had been so marvelously transformed in that great country. everybody who went there became a millionaire overnight and a doctor or a teacher into the bargain there in america was my future as well as theirs for it would take me only a few weeks to make enough money to send for the whole family so at last i conquered but my victory turned out to be only a partial one In fact, by the time it was finally won, the best part of the glory had been extracted from it. Although father and mother were both completely won over, the chief difficulty still remained to be overcome. When father had previously told me that there was not money enough in the house to fit me out for the journey, he had touched on a real obstacle, as I now learned. The costume alone would cost about 15 francs,

the passport about 10 more, and I must have a few francs in cash. I suggested selling the cow, and father consented. But by the time that could be accomplished, the second group had left Foss Louis, and me, at home, a thoroughly, broken and disappointed boy meantime mother set about with a heavy heart to prepare for the great day which i looked forward to so impatiently and which she so horribly dreaded for the next four weeks

she knitted socks and made me underwear of flannelette and sewed buttons and mended my shirts and my old overcoat which last, however, I declined to take with me. She filled several jars with jam for me, and one or two with some of her far-famed pickles. In the evening, when we were alone together, she would make me sit on her footstool, and while her deft fingers manipulated the knitting needles, she would gaze into my eyes

as if she tried to absorb enough of me to last her for the coming months of, of absence. You will write us, dear, she kept asking continually. You won't forget your old father and mother when the Lord blesses you with riches. You won't, will you? Promise me again, my son. And if I should die when you are gone, you will remember me in your prayers. Oh, my cottage, my male child. Once or twice she gave way to passionate sobs. I have boyed. I have born you my boy and brought you into the world in pain and i have nurtured you and prayed over your cradle in the night oh my joy and my solace at such times i tried to comfort her by promises of daily letters

by calling her silly for imagining dreadful things and by assuring her again and again that it was only a matter of a little time before we should be once more united. Throughout those days of preparation, Father was silent, with that pregnant silence which he always maintained when his heart was breaking. Only on the day before my departure

he betrayed himself. He had apparently been worrying all the time about that incident at the swimming hole when I had come dangerously near drowning, and he had resolved that he would impress me with the seriousness of it, so that I should never again imperil my life. On that memorable Saturday night, therefore, after the beautiful home service with its candles and songs was over, he took me around to the house of the rabbi, and made me take part in a scene which still lingers in my memory as one of the most solemn

experiences of my life. Even at the time I remember comparing it with that impressive incident in the Bible when Jacob calls his son Joseph to his deathbed. As we entered, the rabbi arose and shook hands with me. Then, still holding my hand in one of his, he placed his other hand on my head and pronounced a blessing in Hebrew. When he had finished that, he asked me to promise him, by the love I bore my father and mother, that I would never again bathe in open water. That was an omen from above, he said. The Lord of the universe has spared you, but you must not tempt him again.

Promise me that you will not be a good son of Israel. Then he bade me a cheerful good-bye and a successful journey. When at last my preparations were completed, the last and greatest obstacle to my migration had to be faced. By this time, the second Vosloui group was approaching the city of Galatz on the Danube, which is about two hundred miles from Vosloui. Father was using his influence as a member of the committee to get me admitted into the group at that point. But the leaders of the organization would not hear of it.

To begin with, they argued, it was against the Constitution and the bylaws, and besides, it would set a bad precedent. Why should anyone care to walk at all and endure all the hardships after this if he could come in at the last moment and reap all the advantages? they had wandered about over the whole country had once or twice been attacked by brigands and had exposed themselves to sickness and every variety of danger and now just as their difficult journey was drawing to an end a member of the committee was trying to foist a raw recruit upon them but father was determined and after endless dickerings and pleadings and debating he won his point. It had developed, you see, that the walking was not to be continued all the way to New York after all. The Home Committee, the general staff as it had come appropriately enough to be called, had apparently decided that at the outset. But the captains and the other leaders of the groups themselves had found the tramping too jolly,

in spite of their occasional complaints to the contrary, and threatened to rebel. Not until they were convinced that without the support of the committee, they could not march a step would they listen to reason. So they agreed to walk only as far as Galatz, and there board a Danube River steamer for Vienna. Once out of Romania, they would be out of the jurisdiction of the national. committee and would be taken charge of by the Yudisha Alliance Suu Kine. From Vienna, they would journey by rail through Germany as far as Rotterdam at the expense and under the guidance of the

Verban de Deutsche Juden and the Alliance Israelite, and from Waterdam they would sail for New York. That was the route that the group and I along with them actually followed. It was not until Sunday morning that I knew whether I was going or not as soon as the good word reached me I proceeded to put the finishing touches to my packing and to attend to the inevitable farewells all that day I went around shaking hands with what was left of the community most of them people I had never spoken to before and everyone asked me to deliver his regards to some relative in New York and to urge him to send a steamer ticket to this one or that one during the early part of the

evening mother and I walked up and down in the front yard my hand in hers talking of the past and the future and carefully avoiding any reference to the present just before train time she put the gold clasped prayer book into my grip which father had given her on their betrothal and sewed two gold napoleons into the lining of my waistcoat she seemed calm and resigned but when the train grew into the station she lost control of her feelings as she embraced me for the last time her sobs became violent and father had to separate us there was a despair in her way of clinging to me which i could not then understand i understand i understand

it now I never saw her again for several hours I sat stark and stiff on a wooden bench in my railway carriage unaware of the other passengers mechanically guarding with one hand the fortune in my waistcoat as father had repeatedly urged me to do I did not even try to collect my thoughts i could only see a blurred vision of my mother going home from the station and kept vaguely wondering whether america with all her prizes could be worth that toward morning my mind cleared and i could see things a little more in their true relations as the train approached galatz i looked out and beheld the wide expanse of the danube with the rosy hues of dawn reflected on its placid surface there were ships along the wharves both on the Romanian and on the Bulgarian side my heart leaped up at the beautiful sight I had never seen a real ship before here was the gate of the great world opening up before me with its long open roads radiating in all directions it was but an earnest of the nobler destiny ahead of me in a very few days i should be out of roumania and then in two weeks more new york would no longer be a vision but an inspiring reality i could no longer doubt that my sacrifice was worth while and i turned my face to the west end of chapter five

part two of an american in the making the life story of an immigrant by marcus eli ravage this libravox recording is in the public domain part two the alien abroad chapter six first impressions it seems to be assumed by the self-complacent native that we immigrants are at once an overwhelmingly captivated by America and all things American. The mere sight of this new world, he fancies, should fill our hearts with the joy of dreams realized and leave us in a state of surfeited contentment, empty of all further desire. Why, he would ask, if the doubt were ever to occur to him, why should we not be happy? Have we not left our own country because we were, in one way or another, discontented there? And if we have chosen America, it is quite clear that we must have been attracted by what she offered us in substitution. Besides, no man with eyes could fail to

see right off the superiority of this great republic to every other country on the face of the earth. Witness how the tide of immigration is forever flowing and always in one direction. If the alien were dissatisfied with America, would he not be taking the first steamer back instead of inviting his friends and family to follow him? And yet, in spite of logic and appearances, the truth remains that the immigrant is almost invariably, disappointed in america at any rate of this much i am certain i myself was very bitterly disappointed in america and unless observation has been altogether astray with me i think i am justified in the generalization that nearly all other newcomers are at least as disappointed as i was it was not that this land of my aspirations had failed to come up to my dream of it although in a measure it did fall short there neither was my disillusionment due to the dreariness the sordidness and the drudgery of immigrant life

although this too may have entered into the equation all these things came only later i am writing of the first impact of america or of that small fraction of it which was america to me of the initial shock that came to me when i first set foot on american soil and i say that long before i had had time to find out what my fate would be in this new world i experienced a revulsion of feeling of the most distressful sort what were the reasons for it well there were a variety of them to begin with the alien who comes here hear from Europe is not the raw material that Americans suppose him to be. He is not a blank sheet to be written on as you see fit. He has not sprung out of nowhere. Quite the contrary. He brings with him a deep rooted tradition, a system of culture and tastes and habits, a point of view which is as ancient as his national experience, and which has been in general. gendered in him by his race and his environment.

And it is this thing, this entire old world soul of his, that comes in conflict with America as soon as he has landed. Not, I beg you to observe with America of the Americans, not at any rate immediately, of that greater and remoter world in which the native resides, we immigrants are for a long time hardly aware what rare flashes of it do come within range of our blurred vision reveal a planet so alien and far removed from our own experience that they strike us as merely comical or fantastic a set of phenomena so odd that we can only smile over them but never be greatly

concerned with them. I needed sadly to readjust myself when I arrived in New York, but the incredible thing is that my problem was to fit myself in with the people of Voslui and Romania, my erstwhile fellow townsmen and my fellow countrymen. It was not America in the large sense, but the east side ghetto that upset all my calculations, reversed all my values, and set my head swimming. New York at first sight was, after all, not so very unlike many of the large cities that I had traveled through. I viewed it from the upper deck as my steamer plowed into the harbor and up the river, and was not the least bewildered by the sight. I cannot remember whether I thought it was ugly or beautiful what did it matter from the pier i was hustled with hundreds of others of my kind

into a smaller boat and taken to ellis island there i was put through a lot of meaningless maneuvers by uniformed rough officials i was jostled and dragged and shoved and shouted at i took it philosophically I had been through the performance many times before, at the Hungarian border, at Vienna, in Germany, in Holland. It did not touch me, and I have forgotten all about it. But I have not forgotten, and I never can forget, that first pungent breath of the slums which were to become my home for the next five years. I landed early one Sunday morning in December 1900, and no sooner did I touch firm ground than I dug into one of my bundles and produced the one precious thing that formed the link for me between my old home and my new. It was a crumpled bit of wrapping paper, which I had

brought all the way from Vosloui, and on which was scribbled in his own hand-wry, writing COSA's address in New York. Do you remember COSA? Ah, well, he was to be my first disappointment in a series of heartaches and disillusionments. With what hopeful enthusiasm I approached a policeman at the battery and dumbly shoved my document into his face.

And with what a sinking of the heart I peered through the frosty windows of that jangling, rickety horse car as it bounced and wound through one shabby alley after another on its way to attorney street, where my millionaire kinsman held court. The mansion, when at last I reached it, presented an imposing enough front, and though the weather was very sharp, I passed up and down a long time before that marble portico with its brass railings and its tall cans of garbage and cinders lined up at the door before i could summon the courage to ring the bell and enter the interior was even more impressive i was marshalled through a large room in which there were a number of sewing machines littered with quantities of textile materials and into the parlor there i found the table set for breakfast and a magnificent display it was with its german silver

coffee urn and pressed glass bowl and silver-plated spoons and white linen after a somewhat unceremonious introduction to mrs koza a lank prematurely aged person handshaking with koza himself and my little girl cousin whom he had brought back with him from vasloy and after one or two perfunctory questions about my people and my journey i was invited to partake of a cup of coffee with cake. I was amazed. Cake for breakfast? If I had been offered swans eggs or steak or broiled pigeons or almost any other thing I should have kept myself possession. But the very notion of serving cake for breakfast struck me as an extravagant fancy of which only millionaires were capable. And there was Koza himself, the magnificence of him, as I had seen him in Vaslui, apparently quite undimmed, and yet, with all the splendor of that scene before me,

I could not help wondering, vaguely, as I thought of the revolting misery I had seen from the horse car, whether there was not a worm somewhere at the heart of this brilliant appearance. In Voslui, as you may remember, there had been many who doubted and openly slandered Koza as a sham, while the rest of the town worshipped him as a millionaire, and, by his own confession, an ambassador, and hailed him as a savior. Now, without anything in particular, having happened, I found myself with a kind of terror sinking into agreement with those doubters and knockers. Yes, there was COSA in his customary frock-coat and his customary newspaper spread before him. But with some terrible new vision, I seemed to see through all this. I knew that no one

had been expecting me here but i had an insane feeling that this whole decor had been set against my coming and i ended up by wanting to cry out that i had been cheated that koza and the new york he had lured me to were miserable frauds that i wanted to go back to vaslois my depression was increased after breakfast i do not know just what I had been expecting that my kinsman would do for me, but I must have been entertaining some vague hope that he would at once set me to making money in one of his factories, or at least that he would use his great influence with the American government to find me a comfortable place worthy of my family and my genteel bringing up. I made some timid advances on that score, but Koza merely grunted in his familiar base voice and declared that he would see. Mrs. Koza looked puzzled and intimated that in America there were no such things as relatives, that money was a man's best friend, and that the wisest course to pursue was to depend on oneself.

And then, without any kind of warning, my youthful cousin spoke of. up and asked me to accompany her to her mother's home on Rivington Street, where I would take up my temporary lodgings until I found work. Of COSA, I was to see a great deal more. He had evidently not been found out by the other Romanians, for he had the air of keeping the entire colony he had, as it were, brought into being under his spacious protecting wing. Sundays he paid us his weekly visit dressed in his frock coat and chimney pipe hat he would walk from attorney to Rivington Street and be greeted deferentially by all who passed him on the way he always had matters of great moment to talk over with his sister-in-law and sometime during

his stay the two would mysteriously disappear into one of the bedrooms whence their earnest whispers would be heard by us outside. Mrs. Siegel, my cousin and landlady, entertained a pathetic respect for Coza, whom she always addressed as brother-in-law, and never by his Christian name. Before departing, Coza always distributed largesse of the nickel denomination among the children, and a quantity of advice on how to become Americanized and success. among the elders once I had the distinction of sitting at the same table with him at one of those elaborate Eastside weddings for the hard-earned savings of years of toil of both bride and groom are lavishly wasted and it made my eyes pop to see him hand the waiter a

five-dollar bill in return for a toothpick he was contented continually bestowing praise on those young men and women who showed a tendency to become Americanized. I tried for a long time to find out just what he meant by the word and never succeeded beyond the obvious definition of becoming like himself. But I know that he frowned upon me and a few others who betrayed an inclination to mingle with the radical and intellectual life of the quarter. That bent, he thought, was sure to ruin our chances for success in America and make us persona non-grata with the best people. That walk from Koza's residence with my bundles to Rivington Street was a nightmare. I know that the idea prevalent among Americans is that the

alien imports his slums with him to the detriment of his adopted country. That the squalor and the misery and the filth of the foreign quarters in the large cities of the United States are characteristic of the native life of the peoples who live in those quarters. But that is an error and a slander. The slums are emphatically not of our making. So far is the immigrant. from being accustomed to such living conditions that the first thing that repels him on his arrival in New York is the realization of the dreadful level of life to which his fellows have sunk. And when, by sheer use, he comes to accept these conditions himself, it is with something of a

fatalistic resignation to the idea that such is America. i shall never forget how depressed my heart became as i trudged through those littered streets with the rows of push-carts lining the sidewalks and the centers of the thoroughfares the ill-smelling merchandise and the deafening noise my pretty little cousin elegant in her american tailored suit was stepping along beside me apparently oblivious to the horrible milieu that was sickening me well-nigh into fainting. So this was America, I kept thinking. This was the boasted American freedom and opportunity, the freedom for respectable citizens to sell cabbages from hideous carts, the opportunity to live in those monstrous, dirty caves that shut out the sunshine. And when we got beyond Grand Street and entered the Romanian section, my cousin pointed out to me several of our former fellow townspeople, men of worth and standing they had been in Vosloui, bargaining vociferously

at one kind of stand or another, clad in an absurd medley of Romanian sheep pelts and American red sweaters. He was Jonah Gershon, who had been the chairman of the hospital committee in Vosloui and a prominent grain merchant. He was dispensing soda water and selling lollipops on the corner of Essex Street. This was Shloma Lobel, a descendant of rabbis and himself a learned scholar. In America, he had attained to a basket of shoe strings and matches. and candles. I myself recognized young Lévis, whose father kept the great drugstore in Vos-Louis, and who, after two years of training in medicine at the University of Bucharest, was enjoying the blessings of American liberty by selling newspapers on the streets. Here and there were women, too,

once neighbors of ours, mothers of sons and mistresses of respectable households. And what were they doing here in this diabolical country? Well, here was one selling pickles from a double row of buckets placed on a square cart, yelling herself hoarse in an insensible world in a jargon of Yiddish and quotes English, and warming her hands by snatches over an outlandish contraption filled with glowing coals. further on i came upon another laboriously pushing a metal box on wheels and offering baked potatoes and hot conishes to the hungry cold-bitten passers-by and all the while there was the dainty little figure of cousin betty walking airily beside me unaware of the huge tragedy of it all she had herself arrived no more than a year before but how callous america had already made her i asked myself whether i too would harden and forget the better days i had known and i fervently hoped not end of chapter six chapter seven of an american in the making the life story of an immigrant by marcus eli ravage

This Lieberwax recording is in the public domain. Chapter 7. The Immigrants America As I look back over my transition from the alien to the American state, I cannot help wondering at the incredible changes of it. I see a curious row of figures, as in a haze, struggling to some uncertain goal, and, with a shock, it comes to, upon me that I am all this motley crew. There is the awkward, unkept, timid youth of 16, with the inevitable

bundles, dumbly inquiring his way from the battery to the slums. A little further on, shivering in the December drizzle with a tray in his gloveless hand, the vendor of unsellable candies, dreams of Christmas far away by his Romanian fireside. A tap boy in an east side barroom follows next. His hair parted in the middle, his gift breeches fitting a little snugly on his well-groomed young carcass. He hums to himself over his tub of glassware. Then the sewing machine operative, now in his sweatshop assiduously at work, now at his anarchist meeting scheming to reform the world. And then the student in school and college, with his new struggles and problems, piled high over the old, old worries about bread and bed. And then,

and then the picture gets too near for a good perspective, and anyhow, the tale is all but told. The alien is become the self-made American. what a fortunate thing it was for me that i got to new york just before christmas fortunate that is as immigrants luck goes if i had got here after christmas i would without a doubt have starved as well as frozen you know of course why i froze because i did not obey my mother which is simply saying that it served me right mother it will be remembered had insisted that i take with me the old overcoat which she had herself recreated out of a garment once worn by my well-to-do uncle pinkus and i had refused because to begin with i already had too much to lug and because i could see no sense in carrying old clothes to a country where i would at once become rich enough to buy new ones that i did not starve in spite of my landing with the proverbial fifteen cents in my pocket was due not only to the fact that i tumbled right into the midst of the prosperity of the christmas shopping season but to a further piece of good fortune what i would have done if little cousin betty had not had the foresight to bring over her folks is more than i can tell

to be sure the family had arrived only about three months before but three months is a long time in the evolution of americans and so there they were the whole seven of them mother and son and five daughters on the tunefully named rivington street already keeping house and talking english and the oldest young lady receiving callers and betty her next of age declaring that she would not go without piznez glasses when all the fashionables including her own sister possessed and wore them betty and her modish sister, being old enough to work, did consequently work at men's neckties, while the remaining four children went to school or kindergarten, or danced on the street to the music of the grind organ, or stayed home to be rocked in the cradle, according to their varying tastes and years. Yes, there they were, quite Americanized, happy in their five

rooms, three of which faced on Allen Street and joined their windowsills right on to the beams of the elevated trestle. They were still happy, because neckwear was a genteel trade that could be worked at in the home until any hour of the night, with the whole family lending a hand, and because cousin Jacob, the father and tyrant of the household, had been left in Romania. to settle affairs. Because the business of cooking with gas and turning a faucet when you wanted water was an exciting novelty, and because keeping rumors was a romantic undertaking. They lived on the third floor, which was something to be proud of, since back home in Vosloy, none but the rich could afford to live upstairs, and of course, upstairs in Voslouy was only.

only a beggarly second floor. I never contrived to find out just how many people did share those five rooms. During the day my relative kept up the interesting fiction of an apartment with specialized divisions. Here was the parlor with its sofa and mirror and American rocking shares. Then came the dining room with another sofa called a lounge, a round table. and innumerable chairs, then the kitchen with its luxurious fittings in porcelain and metal, then the young ladies room in which there was a bureau covered with quantities of odiferous bottles and powder boxes and other mysteries.

And last of all, Mrs. Siegels and the children's room. I remember how overwhelmed I was with this impressive luxury when I arrived But between nine and ten o'clock in the evening, this imposing structure suddenly crumbled away in the most amazing fashion. The apartment suddenly became a camp. The sofas opened up and revealed their true character. The bureau lengthened out shamelessly, careless of its daylight pretensions. Even the washtubs, it turned out, were a miserable sham. the carved dining-room chairs arranged themselves into two rows that faced each other like dancers in a cotillion so that i began to ask myself whether there was after all anything in that whole surprising apartment but beds

the two young ladies room was not i learned a young lady's room at all it was a female dormitory the sofa in the parlor alone held four sleepers of whom i was one we were ranged broadside with the rocking chairs at the foot to insure the proper length and the floor was by no means exempt i counted no fewer than the floor was no fewer than the floor was by no fewer than the floor was by the floor was by no fewer than the than nine male inmates in that parlor alone one night. Mrs. Siegel with one baby slept on the washtubs while the rest of the youngsters held the kitchen floor. The pretended children's room was occupied by a man and his family of four whom he had recently brought over, although he, with ambitions for a camp of his own, did not remain long. Getting in late after the others had retired was enterprise requiring all a man's courage and circumspection, for it involved the rousing of an alarmed, overworked, grumbling landlady to unbolt the door, the exchange in stage whispers of a

complicated system of challenges and passwords through the keyhole, the squeezing through cracks in intermediate doors which were rendered stationary by the presence of beds on both sides. Much cautious high stepping over a vast field of sprawling unconscious bodies. And lastly, the gentle but firm compressing and condensing of one's relaxed bedmates in order to make room for oneself. It was on one such occasion as these also that one first became aware of how heavy the air was with the reek of food and strong breath and fermenting perspiration. The windows being, of course, hermetically sealed with putty, and a species of padding imported from home, which was tacked around all real and imaginary cracks.

In the morning, one was awakened by the puffing of steam engines and the clatter of wheels outside the windows, and then the turmoil of American existence began in real earnest. First, the furniture must be reconstructed and restored to its decorative character, and then the scattered disorder of feather bedding must be cleared from the floors and whisked away into cupboards and trunks. The menfolks had to fly into their clothes before the ladies emerged from their quarters, so that the latter might pass through the parlor on their way to the kitchen. In spite of all the precautions taken the night before, someone invariably missed one portion or another of his costume, which he promptly proceeded to search for with a great deal of wailing

and complaining against his own fate in particular and the intolerable anarchy of Columbus's country in general. Then followed a furious scramble for the sink, because the the towel had a way of getting unmanageably wet toward the end, and this made it necessary for Mrs. Siegel, who slept in the kitchen, to be up before everyone else. By the time the camp had once more become an elegant apartment, the coffee was already steaming on the round table in the dining room, and the whole colony sat down to partake of it before scattering to its various labors, breakfast and laundry being, of course, included in the rent. The first two days, Mrs. Siegel would not hear of my going out to look for work. She insisted that I must rest up from

the journey, look around a bit, and in general, play the guest. A guest is a guest, even in America, she said, and don't worry, you'll have time enough to make the money, after which she smiled in a peculiar manner. So I stayed home alone with her, and feeling that I owed her something in return for her hospitality, I tried to make myself useful to her by helping with the housework. The army of rumors had no sooner dispersed than she packed the youngsters off and threw herself into the task with enthusiasm. Housekeeping, she said, is wonderfully easy in America. i had to agree that it was wonderful but i myself at least could hardly say that i found it easy it certainly was an extravagant way of doing things the first thing we were going to do she told me was to scrub the kitchen very well i said where do you keep the sand she exclaimed this is not

and proceeded to take the neatly printed wrapper off a cake of soap which back home would have been thought too good to wash clothes with for the floor she employed a pretty white powder out of a metal can and a brush with which i had the night before cleaned my clothes moreover she kept the light burning all the time we were in the kitchen which was criminal wastefulness even if the room was a bit dark she herself would certainly not have done such a thing at home about ten o'clock she started off to market if she had not told me where she was going and if it had not been a week-day i would have believed she was on her way to temple there she stood in her taffeta gown it was the very one mother had once told me had come from her wedding and all the jewelry i used to see on her at the services in vaslui and a pair of brand-new patent-leather pumps as soon as she was out of the house i took the opportunity to blow out the gas in the kitchen only however to be scolded for my pain when she re-entered and to be informed that greenhorns must keep their eyes open and their hands off. I could see nothing wrong in what I had done, but she kept saying over and over again that I had narrowly escaped death or blowing up the building.

The things she brought back from the market, eggplant in midwinter, and tomatoes, and a yellow fruit which had the shape of a cucumber and the taste of a musk melon. I had never seen such huge eggplants in all my life. And here was another thing which was entirely strange, but which inquiry revealed was cauliflower, an article father had once eaten at the home of my cousin, the doctor, in Bucharest, and had never ceased talking about. Could there be anything in it, after all? I repeatedly asked myself during that day. Was I doing COSA and injustice?

Oh, if the Lord would only grant that I should turn out to have been mistaken. Yes, but how about the boarders? If the Seagulls had actually made their million in these three months, why did they share their fine apartment with strangers? who but the very lowest of people kept rumors in Vos-Louis. I could not figure it out. America was surely a land of contradictions. Mrs. Siegel and I had meat in the middle of the day.

And then, about six, when the two girls got home, there was meat again. I remember writing home about it the next day and telling the folks that they might think I was exaggerating, but that it was literally true all the same that in New York every night was Friday night and every day was Saturday as far as food went anyway. Why, they even had twists instead of plain rye bread

to say nothing of rice and raisins, which is properly a perm dish, and liver paste and black radish. And then about eight in the evening two young gentlemen called on cousin Rose and capped the climax of the whole day by insisting on bringing in some beer in a pitcher from the corner saloon.

There I was, I could say all I wanted about America being a sham, but no one would believe a word of it until i could prove that seagulls and abner's and sneers indulged in such luxuries as beer at home a thing which no one could prove because it was not so end of chapter seven chapter eight of an american in the making the life story of an immigrant by marcus eli ravage this lebervox recording is in in the public domain. Chapter 8. How do you like America?

No, my first impression of America was right, and no mistake. With every day that passed, I became more and more overwhelmed at the degeneration of my fellow countrymen in this new home of theirs. Even their names had become emasculated and devoid of either character or meaning. Mordecai, a name full of romantic association, had been changed to the insipid monosyllable max. Rebecca, mother of the race, was in America, Becky. Samuel had been shorn to Sam, Abraham to Abe, Israel to Izzy. The surprising dearth of the precious words betrayed a most lamentable lack of

imagination. Whole battalions of people were called Joe. The Harries alone could have repopulated Vasloy. And of Morris's, there was no end. With the women folk, matters went even worse. It did not seem to matter at all what one had been called at home. The first step toward Americanization was to fall into one or the other of the two great tribes of Rosie's and Anis. This distressing transformation I discovered before long went very much deeper than occupation and the externals of fashion. It pervaded every chamber of their life. Cut adrift suddenly from their ancient moorings, they were flora. in a sort of moral void. Good manners and good conduct, reverence and religion had all gone by the

board, and the reason was that these things were not American. A grossness of behavior, a loudness of speech, a certain repellent, quotes American, smartness, and intercourse, were thought necessary if one did not want to be taken for a greenhorn or a boor. The ancient racial respect for elders had completely disappeared. Everybody was alike addressed as thou and say, and the worst of it was that when one contemplated American old age, one was compelled to admit that there was a good deal of justification for slighting it. It had forfeited its claim to deference because it had thrown away its dignity.

Tottering grandfathers, with one foot in the grave, had snipped off their white beards and laid aside their skull caps and their snuff boxes, and paraded round the streets of a Saturday afternoon with cigarettes in their mouths when they should have been lamenting the loss of the holy city in the study room adjoining them. the synagogue, and old women with crinkled faces had doffed their perukes and their cashmere kerchiefs and donned the sleeveless frocks of their daughters and adopted the frivolities of the powder-puff and the lipstick. The younger folk, in particular, had undergone an intolerable metamorphosis. As they succeeded in picking up English more speedily than their elders,

They assumed a defiant attitude toward their parents, which the latter found themselves impotent to restrain, and, in too many cases, secretly approved as a step toward the emancipation of their offspring. Parents, indeed, were altogether helpless under the domination of their own children. There prevailed a superstition in the quarter to the effect that the laws of America, gave the father no power over the sun and that the police stood ready to interfere in behalf of the youngsters if any attempt to carry out the barbarous european notion of family relations were made thus the younger generation was master of the situation and kept the older in wholesome terror of itself mere slips of boys and girls went around together and called it love after the American fashion. The dance halls were thronged with them. The parks saw them on the benches in pairs

until all hours of the morning, and they ran things in their parents' homes to suit themselves, particularly when their families were partially dependent on them for support. Darker things than these were happening. These were the shameful days, when Allen Street in the heart of Little Romania was honeycombed with houses of evil repute, and the ignorant, untamed daughters of immigrants furnished the not always unwilling victims, and for the first time in history, Jewish young men by the score were drifting into the ranks

of the criminal. The young, however, were not the only offenders. The strong wine of American freedom was going to the heads of all ages alike. The newspapers of the ghetto were continually publishing advertisements and offering rewards for the arrest of men who had deserted their wives and children. Hundreds of husbands who had parted from their families in Europe with tears in their eyes and had promised quite sincerely to send for them as soon as they had. saved up enough money, were masquerading as bachelors, and offering themselves in wedlock to younger women for love or for money. Very often the entanglement reached that screaming stage,

which lies on the borderland of tragedy and farce, when the European wife, having been secretly and hurriedly sent for by her American relatives, appeared on the scene, and dragged the culprit before the rabbi or the law court. Whence had my countrymen got their sickening habits of carelessness and downright filthiness. It was impossible to pass through the streets after dark without being hit from above by a parcel of garbage or a pail of dirty water.

Where was the good of dressing the children in expensive white clothes and white kid shoes, and apparently never washing their poor little shrunken pale faces. A new pest of scurrying creatures unheard of at home had made their appearance here, which shared the dwellings of my friends and got into their food and their beds, and the amazing part of it was that no one seemed to mind them beyond making jokes about them and using the word by which they were called as a nickname for one's neighbors, or even as a pet name for one's own offspring. Ah, the blessed life we had left behind.

And for what? To chase after a phantom raised by Koza, the fanatic, and the humbug. To follow a will of the wisp and sink into the quagmire of this reprim. impulsive gahena back there at home the houses were low and made of mud and instead of hardwood floors the ground was plastered with fresh clay mixed with manure to give it solidity which had to be renewed every friday a family occupied but one room or two at the most but the houses were individual and sufficient and the yard was spacious and green in summer, filled with trees and flowers to delight the senses. Businessmen scarcely earned in a week what a peddler or an operator made here in a day, but they were free men and had a standing in the community, and with God's help, they supported their families in decency. They were not unattached, drifting nobody's, as everyone was here.

life ran along smoothly on an unpretentious plain there was no ambition for extravagance and therefore no unhappiness through the lack of luxuries homes in vaslui were not furnished with parlor sets of velvet and the women folk did not wear diamonds to market but on the other hand they did not have to endure the insolence of the installment agent who made a fearful scene whenever he failed to receive his weekly payment. No one was envious because his neighbor's wife had finer clothes and costlier jewels than his own had. The pride of a family was in its godliness and in its respected forebearers. Such luxury as there was consisted in heavy copper utensils and silver candelabra, which were passed on as heirloom. from generation to generation. Solid, substantial things, not the fleeting vanities of dress and upholstery. The prices of things in America were extortionate. The rental per month for a dark,

noisome, quote's, apartment on Rivington Street would have paid for a dwelling in Voslois for an entire year. A shave cost 10 cents, which was half a franc. If we had had to pay that much for it in Vosloui, the whole community would have turned barbers. When I asked my cousin landlady how much my room rent would come to, she told me that everyone paid 50 cents a week. Two francs 50. I tried to calculate all the possible things that my parents could buy for that vast sum at home, if I were to desist from the extravagance of living in a house, and I resolved that as soon as I found work, I would try to devise some substitute and send the money home, where it could be put to some sane use. My Americanized compatriots were not happy by their own confess.

As long as they kept at work or prospered at peddling, they affected a hollow gaiety and delighted in producing a roll of paper dollars, which they always carried loose in their pockets, instead of keeping them securely in purses, as at home, on the least provocation and frequented the coffee-houses and indulged in high talk about their abilities and their prosperity, and patronizing the inquired of the Greenhorn how he liked America and smiled in a knowing way when the Greenhorn replied by cursing Columbus. But no sooner did he lose his job or fail in the business of peddling than he changed his tune and sighed for the fleshpots of his native home and hung his head when asked how he was getting on. And anethematized, America and became interested in socialism at such times it was quite apparent that America's hold on his affections was very precarious a thing that needed constant reinforcing by means of very definite material adhesives to keep it from

ignominious collapse how feeble his attachment to his adoptive land was and how easily his sentiments shifted from adoration to indifference or contempt was strikingly illustrated by the various and contrasting names he had for America now it was gratefully termed the home of freedom and then with a shade of irony in the tone he referred to it as the land of gold if he brought home a satisfactory bargain from the pushcart merchant, he beamed and sang the praises of the all right country. In the next moment, if the article turned out to be discolored or rotten or otherwise defective, he fussed and fumed and swore that there never had been such a stronghold of fakes in all the world as this same

America. His fondest hope was to become a citizenic of the Republic, but the merest scratching of the surface showed beyond a doubt that his desire for naturalization did not have its roots in any conversion to the principles of democratic self-government, but rather in certain eminently human motives. Abe Sussman, for instance, entertained an ambition to become a street cleaner because he hated peddling and because his brother-in-law, Joel, who had come here before him, was in that service. Jake Field had a crippled mother at home, who had once before been brought over at ruinous expense, only to be excluded by the despots of Ellis Island. He was certain that the American government would think twice

before rejecting the parent of a full-fledged voter. Jokatchka was perfectly frank in telling you that if he only had a poll with the district leader, which of course he could not have as long as he had no papers, he could get a letter from him to the streetcar company's superintendent, which added to his fine command of English, would at once get him a job as a conductor. Harry Heller's ambitions were not quite so soaring. He too craved a pull with the governing powers, but only for the modest purpose of making the renewal of his peddler's license

less troublesome and of assaging the rapacity of the policeman. as a greenhorn i got my share of the ridicule and the condescension and the bullying that fell to the lot of my kind in my cousin's house i was constantly meeting americanized young men who came to call on the girls and invariably i must submit to the everlasting question and its concomitant the idle grin how d'ye like america well after what i have given you of my impressions you may readily guess that i did not like america that indeed i very emphatically hated america in my most courageous moments which usually came to me when my young gentleman questioner was particularly insistent and particularly stupid i declared so old old gentleman questioner i declared so old openly and with great stress, which declaration of mine was regularly met with loud peals of superior laughter, interspersed with phrases of that miserable gibberish which the Americanized of the foreign colony fondly regard as English, and which even in those first days I recognized

for the sham it was. After such encounters, I came away. hating America more than ever yes I hated America very earnestly on my first acquaintance with her and yet I must confess here and now that for a whole year every letter that came from my parents in Voslouy was an offer to return home and that I steadily refused to accept it those letters by the buy, added their very considerable share to the tragic burden of my readjustment. For my parents suggested that if I liked America well enough to remain there, they would endeavor to raise the money and join me. And to this, I was constrained to reply,

Vass Louis is not for me, and America is not for you, dear parents mine. These words were obviously a confession that our separation must remain indefinite. I did not want my parents to come to America because I could not endure the thought of father as a match peddler on Orchard Street. And since he was neither a shoemaker nor a woman's tailor nor a master of any of the other profitable professions in America, and since I was as yet full, far from equal to the task of supporting the family, there was nothing for us to do but to rest apart. But the odd thing was that I declined the alternative offer. Somehow, even in those dark days of Greenhorn Hood, an occasional ray would penetrate through the gloom and reveal another America than

that of the slums. And in the meantime, the east side ghetto was my america a theater within a theater as it were no it was even more circumscribed than that the outsider may imagine that the ghetto is a unified homogeneous country but a little more intimate acquaintance will rectify that mistake there are in its strata and substrata each with a culture a traditional and a method of life peculiar to itself. The East Side is not a colony. It is a miniature federation of semi-independent allied states. To be sure, it is a highly compact union territorially. One traverses a square and, lo, he finds himself in a new polity.

The leap in civilization from Ridge Street to Madison Street, is a much wider one than that between Philadelphia and Seattle. The line of demarcation is drawn sharply, even to the point of language, the most obvious of national distinctions. Though both speak Yiddish, the Jew from Austrian Poland will at first hardly understand his co-religionist from Lithuania. dialects differ enormously in accent and intonation and very appreciably in vocabulary. And each separate group entertains a humorous, kindly contempt for the speech and the manners and the foibles of all the

others. As I had come from Vosloui, it was my lot to settle in that odd bit of world which I have referred to as Little Romania. It was bounded on the east by Clinton Street, and with Little Galicia extending on the other side to the East River, by Grand Street on the south, with the Russians and Lithuanians beyond, and on the north lay the untracked wilds surrounding Tompkins Square Park, which to me was the vast, dark continent of the real. Americans. Even as far back as 1900, this little Romania was beginning to assume a character of its own. Already it had more restaurants than the Russian quarter, establishments with signs in English and Romanian, and platters of liver paste, chopped eggplant, and other distinctive edibles in the windows.

On Rivington Street and on Allen Street, the Romanian delicatessen store was making its appearance, with its goose pastrami and kegs of ripe olives and tubs of salted vine leaves, which, when wrapped around ground meat, make a most delicious dish. And the moon-shaped, caskaval cheese made of sheep's milk, and, most important of all, the figure of an impossible American version of a Romanian shepherd in holiday costume, with a flute at his waxen lips, standing erect in the window. Unlike the other groups of the ghetto, the Romanian is a bon vivant and a pleasure lover. Therefore, he did not long delay to establish the pastry shop,

while his Russian neighbor was establishing the lecture platform. Whither, of a Saturday afternoon, after his nap, he would betake himself with his friends and his ladies and consume dozens of dainty confections with ice-cold water. He, it was, also, who, out of a complex desire to serve his stomach and his faith, brought forth an institution which has now become universal in America. America, the dairy lunchroom, which, owing to the exigencies of religion, was originally

just what it is called, a place where nothing but the most palatable dishes built out of milk and milk products were to be had, and where no morsel that had been in the vicinity of meat could be obtained for love or money. And most characteristic of all, he transplanted. that unique near-eastern affair, the Kazin or Coffee House, which is a place of congregation for the socially minded, and where the drinking of a fragrant, pasty, Turkish coffee is merely incidental to a game of cards or billiards or dominoes. This was America, and for this we had walked here, a gay Romanian city framed in the stench and the squalor and the oppressive noisy tenements of New York's dingiest slums.

As I have already intimated, of the broader life and the cleaner air of that vast theater within which this miniature stage was set, I was hardly aware. What I knew of it came to me vaguely by hearsay in a case. allusions to a hazy, remote world, called variously Uptown and the South, to which the more venturesome of my fellows now and then resorted only to find their spunk failing them and to return forthwith. In addition, there was the policeman who made life miserable for the peddler while accepting his bribe. He was a representative of Uptown. for as soon as his tyrannical day's work was over, he vanished into the mysteries of that uncharted region. There was likewise the schoolteacher, with her neat figure and sweet smile,

and a bevy of admiring little children always clinging to her skirts as she tried to make her way from the corner of Eldridge Street uptown. Now and then, in my search for work, I wandered into Broadway, and across fifth avenue and stared at the extravagant displays in the shop windows and the obvious wealth judging from their clothes of the passers-by but altogether i remained untouched by the life of greater america it merely brushed me in passing but it was too far removed from my sphere to affect me one way or the other End of Chapter 8. Chapter 9 of An American in the Making, The Life Story of an Immigrant by Marcus Eli Ravage.

This Liebervok's recording is in the public domain. Chapter 9, Ventures and Adventures. To return to my cousin's camp and the order of events, the two days allotted to a guest being over, I was given broadly to understand that I must enter the race for American dollars. During the remainder of that week and throughout the entire week following, I went about, quote, trying. Early in the morning, I would go downstairs to buy a world,

and after breakfast I would get one of the children to translate the want advertisements for me. When I glanced at the length, and the number of those columns, I saw that I would not be long in getting rich. There were hundreds of shops and factories and offices, it seemed, that wanted my help. They literally implored me to come. They promised me high wages and regular pay and fine working conditions.

And then I would go and blunder around for hours, trying to find where they were, stand in line with a hundred other applicants, approach timidly when my turn came, and be passed up with a significant glance at my appearance. Now and then, in a sweatshop, I would get a hearing, and then the proposition was that if I would work without pay for two weeks and give $10 for instruction, I would be taught to be a presser or an operator. the thing baffled me i could not bridge the gulf between the advertised appeals for help and this arrogant indifference of the employing superintendent half the time i had not the remotest idea of what was wanted

i had been told what a butcher was and what was meant by a grocery store but what were shipping clerks and stock clerks and bill clerks and all the other scores of variety of clerk that were so eagerly sought. However, I did not let trifles discourage me. There was only one way to succeed in America, my friends continually told me, and that was by constant, tireless, undiscriminating, trying. If you failed in one place, or in ten places, or in a hundred places, you must, not give up. Keep on trying, and you are bound to be taken somewhere. Moreover, American occupations were so flimsy. They required so little skill or experience that a fellow with a little

intelligence and the normal amount of daring could bluff his way into almost any job. The main thing was to say yes, whenever you were asked whether you could do this or that, that was the way everybody got work. The employer never knew the difference, so I followed the council of the wise insofar as my limited spunk permitted and knocked at every door in sight. time and time again I applied at department stores in need of floor walkers that I thought could certainly require no special gifts at offices where stenographers were wanted at factories demanding foreman but my friend's predictions appeared to be only half true of failure there was indeed no end but that ultimate inevitable success which I had been

promised, did not come. There was nothing to do but change my tactics. Then there was the problem of distances. I could not dream of paying car fares everywhere I went. Even if I had had the nickel, the mere thought of spending 25 bani at every turn would have seemed an appalling extravagance. And somehow the jobs that I supposed I had a fair chance of getting were always at the ends of creation. An errand boy was wanted in Long Island City, and a grocer was looking for an assistant in Hoboken. By the time I had reached one place and had had my services refused, I was too late in getting to the others. and always I was refused. Why? At last one morning a butcher in the upper 80s gave me the answer with pungent frankness. I had got to the spot before anyone else, and when I saw it in his eye

that he was about to pass me up, I gathered all the pluck that was in me and demanded the reason. He looked me over from head to foot, and then with a contentioned, temptuous glance at my shabby foreign shoes. The aliens' shoes are his Judas. He asked me whether I supposed he wanted a greenhorn in his store. I pondered that query for a long time. Here, I thought, was indeed new light on America. Her road to success was a vicious circle, and no mistake. In order to have a job, one must have American clothes. And the only way to get American clothes was to find a job and earn the price. Altogether, a desperate situation. Then my relative suggested peddling. Here I was occupying part of a bed that could bring

50 cents a week and paying nothing for it. Moreover, she was getting. me meals. This was America. Everybody hustled, and nearly everybody peddled. If I had some money, I might start right off on the grand scale with a push cart. But there were other ways. There were lots of young fellows from Vos-Louis of just as good family as mine, who sold pretzels in a basket or mantles from a handbag, anything they could find, and paid for their board. and bought clothes for themselves and even saved money here for instance was louis carniall whom everybody at home had considered a ne'er-do-well a shli-le-le-le-le-mezzlick did i notice how nicely he was dressed did i know that he had money in the bank yes i need not look incredulous for only the week before he had sent home fifty francs And there was Rose Markulescu, a mere girl, and in three months she had nearly paid for the steamer ticket her brother had sent her.

Of course, the lucky ones and the clever ones got jobs. But what could a body do? In the land of Columbus, one did what one could, and there was no disgrace in doing anything. A shoemaker was just as good in America as a doctor, as long as he, worked and made money and paid for everything. I denied the imputation that I was ashamed, Anne asked her what she proposed that I should do, considering that my fifteen cents had gone for ferry rides. She answered that she proposed to lend me the money for a start, and, irrelevantly quoted

the Romanian adage about when thousands are lost, hundreds don't count. so i accepted her dollar and let her lend me a small brass tray she had brought from home and in the afternoon i went around to orchard street and invested my borrowed capital in two boxes of chocolates monday morning you might have seen me at the hour of seven standing at the corner of fourteenth street and fifth avenue inviting the crowds that rushed by to work to partake of my wares I was very enthusiastic in spite of the nipping cold, but, oddly enough, no one in that whole rolling sea of humanity seemed to be fond of chocolates. Moreover, the policeman took a strange dislike to me and chased me from one corner to another. Once a young American humorist flipped my tray in passing and nearly succeeded in spilling my in spilling my in the entire stock under the feet of the hurrying throng. However, late in the day, my affairs took a turn

for the better. Toward nine o'clock, the whole army of peddlers came forth into the daylight, and the winter air grew suddenly warm with friendly babbling and mutual offerings of assistance. The mere sight of them, with their variegated equipages and their motley goods, was reassuring. There were peddlers with push carts and peddlers with boxes, peddlers with movable stands, and peddlers with baskets, peddlers with bundles, with satchels, and suitcases and trunks, with an infinite assortment of contrivances designed to display the merchandise and to enthrall the eye. Some of the carts were ornamented with bunting and colored paper edging and Christmas bells and sprays of holly. Others carried glass showcases and feather dusters. A great number were provided with tops

built of lumber and oil cloth. They came pouring in from all directions, men with patriarchal faces and white beards, old women draped in fantastic shawls out of the Arabian nights. boys with piping voices young mothers with babes in their arms on they came scurring through the congested traffic dodging vehicles trudging with their burdens laboriously wheeling their heavy laden carts these representatives of all the nations of the earth making for their appointed posts in the international exposition that stretched along fourteenth street and up sixth avenue as far as twenty-third street it seemed to me as i looked out upon this vast itinerant commerce whose stocks were drawn from the treasures of the east and the industries of the west that I was no mere detached trafficker engaged in a despised trade. I was a member of a great and honored mercantile guild. I found myself surrounded by friends.

An elderly man with a telescope case set up camp beside me and proceeded to remove therefrom, in the manner of a conjurer, endless packages of oriental spreads and table-claws, As he drew on forth, he shook it gently out of its folds, held it up to view with a pleased expression, made some queer passes with his hands like an acrobat about to ascend a tight rope, and placed it affectionately on his shoulder. I glanced up at him and shied away. His head was swathed in a white turban, and with those laces hanging down his person, he,

had the air of some barbarous Eastern priest. The effect was heightened by his swarthy face and grizzly black beard. I was somewhat alarmed and was about to move on when he suddenly spoke up to me in my native tongue. How is business, he inquired. I confessed timidly that I had not yet made a sail. Then in excess of boldness and with a sinking suspicion of occult powers at his command, I asked him how he had recognized me for a Romanian. His eyes twinkled with amusement as they looked meaningly at my shoes. From Vosleri for a guess, he went on. I am from Berlod myself.

My family is still there. Can't get enough together to bring them over. I am an old peddler, know the game, have been here once before, years ago when I was a boy. Ah, times are hard. America is not what it used to be. Played out. Too many in the business. They pamper the customer and ruin the trade. God, if I had not been such a fool to go back and waste all those good years in Romania, serving the Wallachian with a gun and a bayonet, I could have had a store on Fifth Avenue by now. But you are a youngster. It's you.

your America. I wish I were in your shoes. Nice Syrian laces, lady? All this went over my head. I was as yet too fresh from the steerage to grasp its significance. But when his persuasive arts having failed, he informed his customer that those Syrian laces were meant for people with money and not for dickering paupers. He came back to me with more definite counsel. you'll learn all right never fear how much do you sell those chocolates for all right here is my penny for a stodder a softya but that is too cheap you'll do more business if you ask five cents your american likes to be charged a stiff price otherwise he thinks you are selling him trash move along elbow your way through the crowds in front of the stores seek out the women with kids Shove your tray in their faces. Don't be timid. America likes the nervy ones. This is the land where modesty starves. And yell. Never stop yelling. Advertising sells the goods. Here is a formula to begin on.

Candy, ladies. Finest in America. Only a nickel, a half a dime, five cents. Go on now, try it. i did reluctantly and with some misgiving what would i do if those elegantly dressed ladies should resent my aggressiveness and call the dreaded policeman moreover there were altogether too many mischievous youngsters in the throng who seemed bent on adventure and i wished no disaster to befall me So I moved along cautiously, applying my friend's advice only by degrees. But it astonished and delighted me to see how magically it worked. I was really making sales. Incredible as it seemed, these people actually paid five cents for every piece that cost me less than two-thirds of one cent.

Once a customer, a man gave me a dime and refused to take change, and I began to wonder whether I could not raise the price to 10 cents, whether, as a matter of fact, there was any limit to the gullibility of my customers. One thing indeed that impressed me right early in my contact with the world outside the ghetto was the almost ludicrous liberality of American life. Everyone was sufficiently dressed in the streets of New York. At home, people who were thought of as in comfortable circumstances usually wore their clothes and shoes away past the patch stage and thought nothing of it. In America, nobody except the newly landed and a certain recognizable type styled a bum wore patched garments. Then again in Voslui, none but young ladies of marriageable age wore gloves, for anyone else the article would have been regarded as silly dandyism. Of course, most of us wore worst

mittens, home-knitted, in cold weather, but I am talking of gloves, a very different thing in appearance as well as spiritual significance. In New York, it amused me not a little to observe that even teamsters and street laborers wore gloves at their work, to preserve, I suppose, their dainty hands. Indeed, one of the most curious things in America was the fact that, if you went merely by their address, you could not tell a bank president from his office boy. In the meantime, my first days peddling made one thing certain. I was a successful businessman. Trying was a thing of the past. I began to hold my head high, and that evening I had the satisfaction of going to a Romanian restaurant on Allen Street and ordering the first meal I had ever paid for in America.

It consisted of a dish of chopped eggplant with olive oil and a bit of pot roast with mashed potato and gravy. It did cost 10 cents, but I was in an extravagant mood that night. I had a right to be, for while I dined I reckoned up my earnings for the day, and found that they were no less than 70 cents, not counting the chocolates I had eaten myself. Thenceforth, I returned to my restaurant every night. It was a great comfort after a day spent out in the cold to go into a cozy room and have a warm meal and hear my native Romanian spoken. Now and then a musician would wander in and gladden our hearts. with a touching melody of home, and we would all join in until the tears drowned our voices.

I began to make acquaintances, and after the meal we would sit around at the tables, discussing America with her queer people and her queer language. Those of us who worked at the building trades, and those who sold fruits and vegetables uptown, brought back the most amazing stories of their adventures in the world. their adventures in exile. The American, it appeared, was a spendthrift and a finick. His home had the most luxurious appointments, and his pantry was loaded with fabulous edibles. He affected a curious liking for hushed whispers and silent footsteps. His womenfolk were meticulous cranks. His language was a corrupted jargon of Yiddish and Romanian. From the oddities of the natives' life we would come back to things

that touched us nearer. We sighed or bragged over our business ventures, bestowed admiration or advice, and when the clock that hung over the display of vituals on the counter struck midnight, we found that our talk had drifted back to where it had started to gossip about the latest arrivals. and the recent news from home. In the course of my adventures as a man of business, I was frequently brought in touch with schoolboys, and the encounter always left me wistful and envious, fortunate youths.

Here they were at such tender years, and they already talked a very high order of English. It was high enough to go over my head for the most part, and studying profound things out of profound books whose very titles were an unfathomable mystery to me. What was in those great stacks of books that they always carried around with them? I tried to draw them into talk in an effort to find out, and as the colloquy progressed, I grew bold enough to ask the one great question that lay nearest to my heart. were they all going to be doctors to which they answered with great shouts of laughter and called me greeny

only once i managed to draw a young gentleman out of his reserve a doctor he sneered lord no who on earth wants to go to school half his life and then fool around sick people for the rest of it not me I am going to high school because mother is silly and because I ain't old enough yet to get my working papers, but just you wait until next year and see how quick I chuck it and go to business. This was a tremendous revelation. How anyone with the chance of becoming a doctor could dream of wanting to do something else was something I could not get through my head at all. Oh, if only I had their luck. With my royal ambition constantly before me

and the demands of my business, learning English was becoming a necessity. I felt besides that going on living in America without knowing the American's language was stupid. But the East Side offered few facilities, and plenty of hindrances for the study. The abominations of English orthography I mastered early enough so that I could spell hundreds of words without knowing their meaning. But the practical use of the language was another matter. A greenhorn on Rivington Street did not dare open his

mouth in English unless he wanted to bring down upon himself a whole torrent of ridicule and critical assistance. The mere fact that he had arrived in America a week later than a fellow alien seemed to justify the assumption that he knew less of the language, and Eastside etiquette demanded that he should defer to the Americanized and accept their corrections without question. At first I was inclined to be meek and let myself be taught by my elders and betters, I even let them laugh at me when I spoke in my native tongue. In America, it appeared it was against the rules of good breeding to call things by their right names. Certain articles must always be referred to in English, irrespective of whether one was talking Yiddish or Romanian.

But as soon as I saw through their flimsy pretensions, which did not require very long, nor any special talents, I revolted. Indeed, I turned the tables on my critics and started to do some laughing myself. There was no scarcity of occasion. My friends were finding English contemptibly easy. That notion of theirs that it was a mixture of Yiddish and Romanian, although partly justified, was yielding some astonishing results. Little Romania was in the throes of the throes of of evolving a new tongue, a crazy quilt, whose prevailing patches were, sure enough, Yiddish and Romanian, with here and there a sprinkling of denatured English. They felt no compunction against pulling up an ancient idiom by the roots and transplanting it bodily into the new

soil. One heard such phrases as, I am going on a marriage. I should live so. a milky dinner. They called a cucumber a pickle and an eggplant a blue tomato, because in Romanian, a pickle was a sour cucumber, and tomatoes and eggplants were distinguished from one another merely by their color. All balconies were designated as fire escapes, because the nearest thing to a fire escape known at home was a second floor balcony. i found the language of america much harder than that one of the first purchases i made out of my peddler's earnings was a copy of harkevey's dictionary as it was my purpose to learn the whole english language and nothing less i meant to start at the letter a and proceed alphabetically right through to the end that appeared to me the surest way of not missing anything anything. But when I beheld that bulky volume and found on the title page something about

30,000 words, my enthusiasm got a little chilled, I had never realized that Americans were so loquacious. Why, even if I were to learn a hundred words every day, I could hardly hope to master enough vocabulary for an intelligent conversation in less than three years to say nothing of studying medicine. Moreover, experience had already taught me that words, even when perfectly memorized and pronounced, had an exasperating way of turning into nonsense as soon as they were put to the practical test. Supposing you did know what give meant. or turn and had managed in addition to discover the meaning of such particles as up, down, in, and the like, you were still at sea as to the connotations of such phrases as, give in, give up, give way, turn off, turn out, and no end of others.

No more helpful was the dictionary in your search for the sense of such bewildering oddities as That Will Do, which sounded like Dattle Do, rushing the growler, Inc. I-N-C, period, seen on signs in the street, and Doctor, obviously having nothing to do with the thing you wanted to be. There must be some magic glue outside the dictionary that held them together. So I added a Bible to my library and studied the English version side by side with the Hebrew original. I read the signs on the streets and the legends in the shop windows, and in the evening hunted up whatever words I could remember in my dictionary. Now and then I made an incursion into the... evening journal but it required a gigantic effort of the will to keep up the grind the very fact that i

could read the news in two or three other languages was a handicap in my adventures with the outer world i made another discovery bargaining was discouraged i stopped in front of a grocery store to buy a basket of what I thought were plums of a species I particularly liked. The man asked ten cents. I offered him six, and he calmly put the basket back in its place and proceeded to walk into the store. I called him back and suggested splitting the difference, whereupon his face assumed a threatening shade, and I handed over my dime. When I reached home, I decided to discovered that my plums were tomatoes. I set to work to prepare a long and convincing speech, which opened in the petitionary vein and ended in menace. Then I marched back to the store

with my heart thumping. I had scarcely opened my mouth when the salesman, divining my mission, took the package out of my hand and handed me back my ten cents. This, was something more than the liberality I had observed before. It was a peculiar, generous, trustfulness of which I was to see more and more as I went on living in America. My old friend Yanko Bachman, for instance, was employed for a brief period as assistant to a milk driver, and it made me marvel to hear him tell how his customers left bottles with money in them at the doors. where anybody could have taken them, and how he in turn left the milk in the same places. Somehow they never were taken, or at least he never heard of it.

Imagine, I used to say to myself, imagine doing business after that fashion in Vos-Louis. Once a newspaper wagon sped by and dropped a bundle of magazines right at my feet. I picked it up and was walking away with it when a man emerged from a stationary shop, and politely, though smilingly, informed me that it belonged to him. I gave it up, of course, in confusion, but I thought that if it had happened at home, the case would have gone to the courts before the owner could have proved his right to the goods. And we were honest people in Vos-Louis. Only our ideas were different. This undiscriminating confidence in God and man was a distinctly American peculiarity. On one occasion, however,

the confidence I had come to feel in American people was cruelly abused. I had had an unprofitable day on 14th Street and had remained out till late in the night. To forget my troubles, I stopped on the way home at one of the penny arcades on the Bowery and amused myself by looking into those forerunners of the movies which showed a single still-life picture free of charge and a dramatic performance as soon as a cent was deposited in the slot. A somewhat shabby looking but decided friendly, friendly individual approached my machine, and much to my surprise, started it going with a penny of his own for my benefit. I asked him to share the pleasure with me by applying an eye to one of the two openings, but he declined on the ground that he had already seen everything in that place. This led up to

his inviting me to a much finer place further down the street where the pictures were of a superior character. As we walked along, he suddenly bent down and picked up a purse. See that fat woman there turning into Houston Street? He asked me. She dropped it. I could not see her, but that was of no consequence.

Then my friend proceeded to give me a rapid account of his misfortunes, his dismissal without cause from the place he had held for 10 years. his sick wife and dying little boy, and ended by thanking the Lord before he had any idea whether there was anything in the purse to be thankful for. Because he had rescued us, he could see that I too was poor from our poverty. Finally he opened the wallet and found in one pocket a bunch of keys, and in the other a nickel and an elevated ticket. With trembling hands and dilated nostrils, he now turned to unlock the center compartment,

and he heaved an awe of relief as he drew forth a crumpled $20 bill. But at the sight of the tremendous find, his reason seemed, all at once, to have deserted him. For the first thing he said as soon as he got back his breath was, It is not right, and it is dangerous. Let us go to the police station and give it up. I had a dreadful time, with my scanty English and my excited nerves, to persuade him not to do such a foolish thing. It's ours, is it not, I cried.

Besides, the woman looked rich. She would not miss it, and we could make good use of it. Only when we got in front of it. of the bleaker street station did he come to his senses all right he said we'll go over to my sister's house and i'll get ten dollars for your share she lives up on seventh street why not go into a store i asked and get it changed it's dangerous i tell you we'll get caught he insisted say he cried with sudden inspiration you say you are a pedlar give me ten dollars and you can the bill. But I did not have ten dollars. I only had seventy-five cents. He looked incredulous.

As we approached his sister's house, he began to run off. Wait a minute, I yelled. I can't let you take the money with you. How do I know you'll come back? He gave me an injured glance, and quite justly asked me why he should trust me when I had no faith in his integrity. I might, at least, let him have my 75 cents as partial security. But to this, I answered with a laugh, that if he could trust me with $9.5 and a quarter, he might as well trust me with $10. My logic seemed to carry conviction. He turned over the bill to me, but not the keys and the rest of the find, and set off at a dash for the sisterly home. waited half an hour but he never came the next day being sunday i mysteriously informed of my cousin that i was going to

coney island she looked astonished and i grinned i thought you complained about business being poor she said then i waved the bill in her face and told her the whole story you had better wait she advised it may be one of those American fakes. About 10 o'clock, brother-in-law Koza arrived on his weekly visit, and she asked him into the children's room for an important conference. My heart sank as I heard his deep laugh through the keyhole. It was a Confederate bill. After two weeks of chocolates, I turned to toys. Success begets greed, and even a dollar a day will lose something. of its first glamour by monotonous repetition. Besides, the holiday rush was fast drawing to a close.

If I was to save up anything toward a better day, I must deal in some article that would not tempt my palate. And as the man who sold me the new merchandise pointed out, toys had various other advantages over candies. They went at a superior price, the profit was greater, and whereas chocolate spoiled, when kept overnight, toys could be returned if not disposed of. Nevertheless, when the season was over and I was left with some $8 worth of sheet metal acrobats, I discovered that my man had changed his address and was nowhere to be

found. That was the beginning of my American disasters and simultaneously of my American education. For that eight dollars represented all my savings for the season, not counting my canceled debt to Mrs. Siegel, and I was left to starve and try until I got my first job, or from Christmas to the end of January. Of course, I could have gone back to my relatives now that my credit had proved good, but my pride told me that it was better to walk the streets after the tea houses were closed than to be lectured. End of Chapter 9 Chapter 10 of an American in the Making, The Life Story of an Immigrant by Marcus Eli Ravage.

This Librevox recording is in the public domain. Chapter 10, Purifications No doubt this was proper pride, but in the month and a half that followed, I often had good reason to feel that the price I was made to pay for it was a trifle extortionate. I had come to New York in search of riches and adventure.

Well, now that. here at least was adventure a plenty even if the riches were a bit scarce to be sure the adventures I had most craved were of quite another sort but having neglected to specify in advance it was not my place to complain against destiny when she chose to put the broad interpretation on my order and supplied me with an ample stock of all the varieties in her shop all the same I could not for the life of me see any fun in the thing not at any rate while it lasted think of me as devoid of imagination all you please the fact remains that with the best intentions in the

world I never succeeded in tapping the romance of my experiences going without meals two-thirds of the time was just as dull as it could be. Tramping through the slushy wind swept streets, while the rest of the world snuggled and snored under its warm covers was monstrously nasty, and the callousness, the indifference, the smugness of employers and acquaintances alike were both dull and nasty and soul-destroying to boot. No, I got to the same. I got to precious little poetry out of my adventures wisdom perhaps of the toughening kind by the time my trials were over i had ceased to be a boy i had become a man with a disillusionment the whiliness and i fear the cynicism of a man i had thought that the first week preceding my peddling ventures had exhausted all america's

possibilities of hardship and disheartening failure. But that was because I was a greenhorn unversed in the ways of Columbus's land. It was only now that I was to get my American baptism, that cleansing of the spirit by suffering, which every one of us immigrants must pass through to prove himself worthy of his adoption. The population of little roommates, was made up of two classes, the greens and the yellows. They were not stationary casts. Every yellow had once been a green, and every green was striving and hoping to become a yellow someday. But in order to effect this coveted change of color and class, there was but one thing for the newcomer to do. He must be purified. Purification.

that was what with telling aptness the east side called the period of struggle starvation and disappointment in america which was the lot of the green if a fellow townsman of mine chanced to ask my cousin and former landlady whether she had seen me and how i was getting on she answered apathetically and as if it were only what one might expect Oh, he is bleaching out, getting purified, you know. People who had known my family in Vos-Louis would now and then pass me in the street or run into me in a tea house, and the dialogue that then ensued was after this fashion. Working? No, not yet. Hmm, getting properly purified.

Oh, well, wait until you are a yellow. You'll be all right in America yet. and my friend would suddenly discover that he had important business in hand and bid me a breathless good-bye happily i was not alone in my misery a large percentage of those who had come to america on foot were in a twofold sense in the same shoes as i was in spite of all the efforts of the newly formed romanian american society to provide for the comfort and self-support of their compatriots. The dingy hotels on the Bowery were filled with them, and the communal kitchen on Broom Street saw scores of such of them as were willing to submit to charity stand in line every day for their meal tickets. The, quote, labor agencies did a thriving business by finding jobs for them somewhere in the South, which, however, turned out,

exceedingly short-lived, as those who managed to get back, reported. With the help of some of my fellow-sufferers, I picked up a variety of scraps of industrial information, but my extreme youth and my unconquerable timidity prevented me from making any use of them. There was Asher Gold, for instance, who for two entire weeks earned two-fifty a day by replacing a a certain boiler-maker who had suddenly taken it into his head to refuse to work because he thought 250 a day was not enough. Then there was the office on 2nd Avenue, which sent people wherever they wanted to go and even got places for them. But one had to know how to get friendly with its secretary and buy him a cigar or a dish of ice cream before one stood any chance.

of even getting inside. Yankle, however, came and told me that after spending 30 cents on that unapproachable gentleman, the best that he offered to do for him was to send him to work in a mine at the other end of the country. One of the objections that Father had had in my going to America was that I was too young to be exposed to the dangers of a strange, large city and at the time I had laughed at his fears but my enforced idleness I found was leading me into worse things and physical discomfort for one thing the persistent failure to find work has a curious effect on the mind the victim begins by doubting whether he can ever be employed and

ends up fearing that he might I used to to approach a prospective employer with a kind of sinking dread lest he should take me and in the morning as i set out on my daily round i would say devoutly i am going to look for a job lord prevent that i should find one in the solitude of the night while lingering in the shelter of a doorway i would take stock of my fix and steal my heart with resolution How long I would ask myself reproachfully, can this state of affairs go on? I cannot live without meals forever. My shoes, those traitor shoes from home, will no longer keep out the snow.

Sooner or later, the folks in Vosloui are bound to guess or hear why I am ignoring their requests for help. and the more i put off getting a job the further recedes the realization of my ambition the coffee-houses i frequented were a continual bait on the east side respectability mingled freely with the underworld these elegant resorts where well-dressed shopkeepers brought their bejeweled wives and treated them to fat suppers became toward midnight the haunts of the pickpocket and the street-walker every now and then a young gentleman with piercing restless eyes faultlessly attired in modish clothes high collar and patent leather boots generously invited me to share a bite with him and in the course of the meal painted me a dark picture of the fate of the fool who thought he could succeed in america with the antiquated notions he had brought with him from the old country if i really wanted to make money and bring my family to america he would show me how just as he had shown others it was quite easy and the partnership basis was half and half the landlord of the place made me a different proposal an ambitious young fellow could get a girl to support him he did not really have to marry her he would only pose as her husband in a pinch but as i was either too stupid or too scrupulous or too timid to avail myself of these opportunities i went on getting purified until the

day came when I was left without the price of the indispensable world then once but just once I was sorely tempted to beg the penny of a likely-looking stranger only to be arrested by a paralyzing shame at the thought my parents did surely enough get wind of the actual state of things before long and the minute detail with which they wrote about it made me suspect that the guests had been inspired from this side during the first month after my arrival father never omitted to give me an account of the situation at home and to urge me to be saving because mother and he were only waiting for paul's discharge from the army to follow me to new york he suggested that i either put my money in the savings bank or purchase the steamer tickets one

by one as funds accumulated. That he felt was the surest way to avoid temptations of extravagance. Do not waste your resources, he advised once, on silly things like jewelry. There will be time enough for luxuries later on. At present, your only thought should be for the reunion of us all. I hope that we may be with you by Easter. Your mother is not likely to stand your absence very much longer. Then followed solicitous warnings against the pitfalls of the city. Remember that the tavern keeper loves the drunkard, but never gives him his daughter for a wife. Yet now, in spite of all my cheering prevarications, father suddenly adopted an entirely new tone. Times had unaccountably changed for the better in Vos-Louis. Grain was

booming. He could find use for my services in various ways. It was a mistake as he had felt from the start to let me go away at all. He and mother were getting too old to undertake such a lengthy journey. Besides, Harry had got a new place in Constanza. He was virtually the head salesman, and he had it in his power to create a vacancy for me. Even Aunt Rebecca had repented of her unkindness. She now was not only willing to have me in Uncle Pinkus's store. She was even ready to advance me the money for the return trip, if I needed any. I replied proudly that I wanted nobody's money or patronage. It was true I wrote that thus far I had not succeeded in saving a great deal, but that was because I could not yet speak English.

and had not learned a trade. Nevertheless, I was amply capable of taking care of myself. I was gradually making my way. America was exactly as COSA had pictured it. It was all right. They need not worry. In a consultation with my boyhood friend, Yankle, I confessed that I was tempted to accept the offers from home. I read in one of father's letters, and it made his eyes and his mouth water. My, you are lucky, he exclaimed. His folks, too, it seemed, had divined that all was not well with him. But Monish was a stern father, and what he had written was something to this effect. My dear son, you have wanted fun. Very well, be a man. man stick where you are and maybe you'll get it after all there is no milk and honey flowing here either yankle thought there was

distance cooperating with hunger cast a glowing spell over the past and my friend falling into reminiscence summoned up a picture of home that set both our hearts aching he was thinking only the other day he said how jolly it would be to be back in Voslui at this very season, just for a little while. In this miserable New York one was losing track, even of the calendar. Did I know that last week was the Feast of the Maccabees? How could anyone know it in America? In a land where every day was some kind of denatured holiday, where you could eat Sabbath twists on Wednesday,

and matzes on new years, the holidays themselves became meaningless and dull. Besides, the little things that made the joy of a feast at home you could not get here at all. The beeswax tapers and the dreadlocks, tops made of metal. Where were they? How, he wondered, could they keep tabernacles in a tenement? Where was the yard to put up the structure? where was the brook with the rushes growing on its banks to make the roof out of and the feast of weeks you could not celebrate that without fresh green twigs there was no spring on riventon street there was not even any real cow's cheese to make the prescribed pastries with and now puram was coming back there the boys who had not been such fools as to walk to America were getting the costumes ready to reenact for the thousandth time, the mask of

Joseph and Pharaoh, and the spectacle of Esther and Ahasveros. Velvallzinus was probably at that very moment climbing up into the garret and unearthing his mother's old purple wrapper, which in another week would be turned into the royal robe of the king of Medes and the Persians. while the handy Yosel Baylis was undoubtedly neglecting his father's shop on the ring and designing a cardboard sword for his majesty and a colored paper headdress for Esther the queen. Now that I was in exile, it would be interesting to know who was composing the words and coaching the performers. Every mother in town was now breaking walnuts by the thousand and crushing the kernels in the big brass mortar and making them into crisp strudels that crumble in your mouth. Whole jars of plum butter were being emptied into a maple bowl and put in small dabs into the three-cornered Hammond pockets. And every youngster who is not too awkward to be in,

entrusted with fine glassware will soon be going about delivering gifts of confectionery and red wine to his parents' relatives and friends in accordance with the injunction contained at the end of the book of Esther. Did I remember how last year he and I decided to depart from the traditional masks and to make the gang sit up and take notice by pulling off an entirely new stunt. How we stole into the parlor of his house and ransacked his eldest brother's cabinet until we found the two pistols that Judah always carried with him when he went about the country. And how I found difficulty in cocking the larger one so that he tried it with all his might and the trigger flew back with a deafening noise. Happily all the windows were shut and no one heard it.

and he thought he had shot me and made a careful examination of my person which resulted in the discovery that he had merely blown away half the left skirt of my new coat and i had to go about the rest of that saturday with my left hand in my breeches pocket to cover up the disaster and that evening insisted on putting my sabbath costume into the closed chest myself and on the following saturday raised an unblushing cry that the rats had got into my things four weeks after perrm was the feast of and although this was only midwinter there must already be a partial note in the air of vaslui the fatted geese were being killed to furnish forth the shortening for the glorious rich puddings and the fat for the fried matzes and the innumerable pancakes. He could almost see in his mind's eye the cheerful activity. Early in the morning, his little brother was driving the team with the Rhone down to the butchers, a dozen or so of the heavy snow-white birds lying with their feet tied in the back of the cart. As soon as he returned, his mother and sisters flew into their aprons and proceeded to filled two separate sacks with feathers and down, which were to be turned later into cushions,

important additions to the girl's true soul. Then the carcasses were dressed and hung in the chimney to be cured into pastrami, and for the rest of the month, an unending succession of palatable goose liver patties and dumplings created out of the driblets and giblets. Ah, that week before Passover. Was there anything in America with all her wealth and freedom to match that, particularly if one was a boy? Who could enumerate all its joys, even from this appalling distance? The busy hum of house cleaning, the bringing in of the huge bale of crisp, new unlovened cakes, the putting up of the all-year's dishes, and the unpacking of the holiday dishes out of the box where they had remained since the last time. The rediscovery of half-forgotten pet cups and glasses. The cleansing with red hot stones and scalding water of the silverware.

A task always performed by the boys in a pit dug somewhere in the backyard. The shaking out of all pockets lest a crumb of leavened bros. should inadvertently undo an entire month's work. The last meal at noon on the day before the festive week, which must be eaten out of doors, the ceremonial sweeping away of the last traces of non-partial food. And lastly, the brief service at the temple, attended only by father and sons,

the welcoming by the women folks dressed in spotless white, white, the very lengthy home service alternating with the courses of the banquet, the symbolism of the four questions, the invitation to the poor and hungry, and the glass for Elijah. Yankle smacked his lips and sighed as he pictured it all. He found a romantic word even for the heathen customs of the peasantry and discovered a hitherto unseen bright side in the very tyranny of the Romanian government. He recalled that we had just recently left behind the 1st of January and reminded me of the huge ice cross which always appeared on that morning in the principal square of Vosloui, to which the peasants bowed and kneeled when they came in from

the country while the regimental band played beautiful solemn heirs. The Christian Easter, if it did not come at the same time as the Passover was almost like a feast of our own. To be sure, we were not allowed to eat the colored eggs, but we could still play touch with them. And as for the cake called Kozanak, no amount of prohibition sufficed to prevent us from sharing it with our young neighbors. Was not the search for the cross in the churchyards on the night before Easter a beautiful ceremony after all and the joyous ringing of bells when it was at last found by the priest who had hidden it and the easter swing which even our mothers enjoyed riding in he used to resent it bitterly when the police came and closed our private schools in midsummer but now as he looked back to it he could see that it was really a kindness at least to us boys it ennated us to enjoy the adventure of being taught secretly in his father's or my father's shed and what is more the lessons had necessarily to be shortened which gave us time to go swimming and to take the calf out to pasture

so Yankle advised me not to be a fool a second time and take a good thing when it was offered me I was debating whether he was right and asking myself whether after living in the large world for a little time I could again feel at home in a place which had no street cars when suddenly it was now the last week in January my nightmare cleared and I got my first job for that thanks to COSA COSA had hitherto shown no inclination to interest himself in my behalf, in spite of the fact that it was his preaching an example that had brought me to New York. When, however, word reached him of my purifications, his heart was touched. And within a day or two, he left word at my old Rivington Street address that he had found me a place in a bar room on Division Street.

I have since that day received telegrams notifying me of university appointments, and I have been very glad to get them too, but no message of that kind has ever since struck me dumb with joy. The news of that first job back in 1901 did. End of chapter 10. Chapter 11 of an American in the Making, the Life's Story of an Immigrant by Marcus Eli Ravage. This Librevox recording is in the public domain. Chapter 11, The Ethics of the Bar They took me. There were a number of regulation questions about my family, how long I had been in America, what I had done before. And then Mr. and Mrs. Weiss exchanged an approving glance, and Mr. Weiss told me that I would do. He at once asked me to remove my coat and get into a white apron. Then he conducted me behind the beautiful oak counter, which, I was soon to be informed was called a bar and initiated me into the mysteries of the

beer taps. Read this, he said suddenly, and held up a bottle. Fine. Did you say you have been here less than two months? he asked incredulously. I could see that I had made an impression that he was getting more and more pleased with me. For my own part, I found the saloon a paradise. at least for a time. I got three meals every day and a clean bed every night and three dollars a month, just like that, if you please, to do what I liked with. It was oppressive to have so much money. During the middle of the afternoon, after I got through washing the windows and polishing the brass fittings and preparing the free lunch, and there was nothing to do but to wait for the evening, trade, I would sit down at the far end of the bar next to the window and do intricate

problems and fractions in an effort to calculate by just how much my fortune had increased since the day before. Then the figures would puff and swell into fantastic sums as I went on to multiply them by five in order to obtain their equivalence in Romanian francs and Bonny. you may laugh at this if you like but it was i who had a new suit and new shoes and a derby hat when easter came the derby was my first and it played queer tricks with my face but i was proud of it all the same because it made me look like a man my employers being a childless couple in a manner adopted me and father and mothered me. Mrs. Weiss, the Mrs. as I was taught to call her,

gave me some good clothes which her brother had cast off, and fed me on the choicest. In leisure moments, she took occasion to continue my education by little hints on the importance of courtesy in America, on the most effective style of dressing the hair for a young gentleman in my position, on the wisdom of thrift and in general on how to pass from the green into the yellow state in the shortest possible time. Mr. Weiss, too, was kind and helpful, except when he was in his cups, which fortunately happened regularly on Saturday nights only, so that an observant

young man need not be too much in the way when his master was irritable from him i first learned that honesty particularly with an employer is the best policy that barmen never drink except at a customer's invitation which is another story and is governed by a special ethical rule and that patience with a liberally spending customer even when he says and does unpleasant things is a virtue that is its own reward he advised me to let him keep my wages for me instead of exposing them to the risks of pickpockets and loss and assured me that i need not worry over the trifling sum in such well-to-do hands as his and that i could have the whole amount owing to you to me at any time when I should need it or wish to quit his employ he invariably paid my bath and hair-cutting bill out of his own pocket on Sunday mornings he let me sleep until seven and open the shop himself he even offered me assistance in English but of this I did not avail myself because I noticed that he always referred to Mrs. Weiss as

he but i was an ungrateful soul for i soon began to detect the flaws in my paradise just before the passover my employer filled his windows with announcements to the effect that he had received a large stock of kosher liquids for the holiday but shortly afterward the goods arrived from the distillery and i lent a hand in mixing them and discovered to my horror that the chief ingredient was grain alcohol which was ritually speaking poison several times I was humiliated by a ridiculous fashion they had of testing my honesty which consisted in leaving a quarter or half a dollar near my bed and then watching the next day to see whether I would return it the pair quarreled scandalously and interminably and when their squabbles began to degenerate into downright brawls, I hoped and prayed that I might find another job. The saloon also offered ample opportunity for an adolescent, impressionable youth to go to the dogs,

and I had to hold on very tenaciously to my parents trust in me to dodge them successfully. the family entrance admitted a constant stream of shady female characters to whose thirst i must minister and who if they had not inspired me with a physical repulsion might have become a degrading temptation the treating system was a more immediate danger my employer constantly impressed it upon me that it was my duty to his firm to accept every treat that was offered me. It pleased the customer, he explained, and it increased the sales. But I had not yet learned to like beer. At home, the commonality drank wine, and only the elegant rich indulged in beer, and I detested whiskey. Therefore, when a certain German bricklayer foreman, who was running up a big bill in our place by treating

everyone in sight, insisted on my participating in all his revels. I suggested to him one day that I would appreciate his generosity in some more solid form. He said, all right, and reported my suggestion to Mr. Weiss. Thereupon followed a terrific fuss, in which Mrs. Weiss took sides with me, declaring in the customer's face that she would not allow anyone to corrupt a young boy entrusted to her care by filling him with liquor that no one was paying for. I thought Mrs. Weiss was a brick and told her so respectfully. And yet, for all its shortcomings and unpleasantness and dangers, I would not have you carry away the impression that the part played by the saloon in my evolution was merely harmful or negative, quite the contrary. The lessons I learned

while standing behind the bar, or while pouring out miscellaneous drinks to the people at the card tables, have instilled into me more of the rich wisdom of life than I got out of all the labeled and classified knowledge imparted to me afterward in my three universities. for if a young fellow will go to perdition at the mere sight of evil the probabilities are that there was not much worth saving in him to begin with but if he holds himself erect and comes through the mire unsoiled i warrant you that he will prove the better for his experience many a man more fortunately surrounded as the phrase goes in his youth than i was has in later life, sought to round out his knowledge of mankind and to deepen his sympathies by a voluntary descent into the maelstrom of the slums. I hope that such efforts are properly rewarded, but I confess to a mistrust in the efficacy of the method. The palpitating facts of life cannot,

I am afraid, begot at through the resolves of Middle Age. youth is the time for adventuring and chance necessity is a better cicerone through the ins and outs and the ups and downs of existence than deliberate intent what a young man learns by hard knocks in his teens will quicken his senses and enrich his heart to better purpose than any amount of shrewd jottings in a slummers notebook a bar-room even an east-house side bar room is not as some good people suppose a mere hangout for the indolent and the degenerate. It is, whether you like it or not, one of the central meeting places of humanity. It is an institution where all the classes congregate, in all their moods, the bestial and the generous, the morose and the convivial. Fither the laborer may escape from his trueish wife when she makes his home unbearable. But thither also, the merchant will resort with

his customer when both are jovial over a particularly satisfactory bargain. A bum will shuffle in to dry his rags by the stove or to snatch a morsel from the free lunch counter, and before departing will give you an invaluable glimpse into his sad history and his cheerful philosophy. The next moment, a surgeon, returning from a successful operation, will toss you a quarter for a glass of vichy, and leave you gaping in idle wonderment at the incalculable wealth that a man who can so lightly do such a thing must have in reserve. At the noon hour, a gang of workmen from a nearby job will trudge in in their heavy boots and grimy overalls. to devour a plate of free soup and innumerable hunks of bread with their schooner of beer and to teach you the wholesome moral that good digestion attends on honest toil and if your mind is built to receive impressions and if your heart is attuned to beat in harmony with other human hearts your apprenticeship in a saloon will serve for as good a start toward a well-rounded

education as you could desire. It was in the saloon, or at least in what I might call the extension department of it, that my eyes were first open to the true meaning of American democracy and to my own opportunity in the midst of it. I should blush for my ingratitude if I did not in recounting the influences that helped to make me an American allude, at least end mass to the hundreds of my nameless friends who assisted me forward in the general direction of my goal. In particular, I must mention the wife of a physician in the Bronx, to whom my employer one night sent me to deliver an order. She fell into conversation with me, and then, without warning, looked up at me and exclaimed, Why, my dear boy, this is no occupation for you. You must love.

for something better i ought to have been flattered but in my confusion i could only pluck nervously at my cap it's all right i like my work and it pays fine yes she insisted but haven't you any higher ambition of course i blurted out i want to be a doctor i thought so she said with satisfaction they all do well you will be she added with an air of a divinity granting a mortal's wish i know my husband was a poor immigrant boy once and now he is a doctor do you know why because he was ambitious and discontented these were strange and inspiring words hitherto i had been piously following my parents injunction to obey my master and to be thankful for whatever God gave me i had not thought of discontent as a virtue now suddenly it dawned upon me that if i was ever to realize my father's dream i must follow a course directly opposed to the one he had outlined for me as i looked about me i became aware that discontent with fortune's favors was the order of life and the rule of progress.

On the east side, I observed, there were no classes. Men were engaged in given lines of work or business, but their occupations were not permanent things. They did not chain them down to any definite place in the scheme of existence. What a man did in no way determined his worth or circumscribed his ambitions. peddling and hawking and the sewing-machine were just so many rungs in the ladder a dingy apartment in the tenement was merely a stage in the march toward a home in brownsville or a shop in the bronx the earth was young and fresh from the hand of the maker and as yet undivided among his children that was another distinctive superiority of america over Romania. From that night on, my hope to get into other work turned into determination,

and at Easter an incident occurred which promised to open the way. In the three months that I had been in the saloon, I had never had a day to myself. I had been too well contented to ask for it, but when my new clothes came i must go and show them to my friends mrs weiss thought so too and between us we persuaded mr weiss to let me off for the afternoon and evening of easter day among the relatives and friends whom i visited that day i met a cousin of mine who worked at shirts as a collar-maker he opened my eyes to the lay of things here i was working day and night for three dollars a month while he was earning six and often seven dollars in a single week and he had his evenings to go to the Romanian restaurants and tea houses I wondered whether I could become a shirtmaker my cousin thought so and promised to watch for an opening I passed a restless and

discontented month before my opportunity came then a firm on walker street offered to teach me sleeving on condition that i worked for two weeks without pay i had a month's wages coming to me so i felt that i could manage it but when i timidly announced my purpose to mr weiss in my excitement i forgot that it was the fateful saturday night he flew off the handle and refused to pay up even mrs weiss was a against me this time. She declared me a fool for leaving a good home to go to the sweatshop, the very argument I have since employed with domestic servants, and revealed an ambition she had been cherishing for some time of setting me up in a saloon of my own when I had become sufficiently

Americanized. She prophesied that if I did not come to my senses at the very first sight of a shop, I would never leave it at all. Once an operator, always an operator, she reminded me. Grocer's assistants worked their way up to grocery stores. Tap boys became saloon keepers. Peddlers and clerks attained to businesses of their own. But a sweatshop hand contracted consumption or socialism and never rose to anything better.

the operatives lean years always swallowed up his fat ones as long as i worked i might earn a little more than i was getting in the saloon still she was ready to give me a raise but i would find saving quite impossible once i began to pay for every little thing out of my own pocket and when the slack came i would starve as thoroughly as ever i did when i was a Greenhorn and before she saved my life by taking me off the streets. No doubt I had forgotten those miserable days now that prosperity had come to me through her, but she remembered very distinctly that first day when I gluttonously devoured potatoes like cheese dainties, and she was ashamed to let customers see me until she had found me some clothes. my benefactor cosa happening to drop in as he often did mr and mrs weiss at once appealed the case to him whereupon he settled himself into a chair by one of the tables and while sipping a schooner of beer proceeded to give me a sound lecture on my unethical conduct my ingratitude to my employers and to him he found was simply monstrous. I ought to be ashamed for even asking them to pay me after the return I was

making them for their parental kindness. Was I aware that the very clothes I was wearing were theirs and that they had tried to educate me into an American and a businessman? As for the sweatshop, he would not even discuss that. He could only think pityingly of my poor father and mother they were decent respectable people if they had known that their favorite little son on whom they were placing such high hopes would ally himself with the outcast the vulgar the unambitious the ungodly they would never have consented to my emigration and if they were to hear of it now as they were certainly going to it would break their hearts and they would disown me heaven alone knows what they hoped to achieve by all this grilling unless it was to do violence to my

feelings in which case they succeeded amply but as far as gaining any result for themselves was concerned it could do no possible good a month ago a raise of a dollar might have made me hesitate and consider. But now I had bettered Koza's own instruction. I had found the America he had seen in a dream. Even shirt-making, with all its promise of freedom and money, was but a stepping stone. I was looking away beyond to my destiny dawning on the horizon, the golden destiny of my childhood. I had heard the tap of opportunity on my door, and I was hurrying to answer the call. End of Chapter 11

Chapter 12 of an American in the Making, The Life Story of an Immigrant by Marcus Eli Ravage. This Lieberwock's recording is in the public domain. Part 3, The Education of an American. Chapter 12, Shirts and Philosophy On the whole, I take it, the foreign colony in our larger cities is a little unfavorably regarded by the conventional enthusiasts for Americanization. These kindly ladies and gentlemen appear to assume that the trick of turning American is some kind of an affair of a rubber stamp and an oath of allegiance,

and bath-tubs. It is quite simple. You go down there to the east side or little Italy or little Poland, and you establish a settlement and deliver lectures and furnish them a pointed example. And behold, the fog lifts and before your eyes stands the new-born American. The sooner this effective performance is accomplished, the better. for it is quite clear that the immigrant invariably hails from an inferior world with queer notions about manners and the use of soap and fresh air and constitutions. And if he is long left to himself and his fellows, he will settle down to this pestiferous imported life of his and never become one of us at all. He will become a a confirmed alien, a dangerous, disruptive element. Into this complacent view, the patent fact that Americanism is a compromise does not enter. It is quite overlooked that the adoptive American has always been and will always remain a composite American. My good friends are unwilling to see

that the alien has as much to teach as to learn, that his readjustment is inevitably a matter of give and take, and that he only begins to feel at home in this new country when he has succeeded in blending his own culture and ideas and mode of life with those of the people that came here before him. Your self-complacent native takes stock of the Americanized alien and cries delightedly, see how America has changed him. But I suppose he would be greatly astonished if the immigrant were to answer with equal truth, look how I have changed America. Americans can no wise be persuaded that, if there is to be any readjustment, it must come from this sort of mutual reaction.

And they will simply laugh at you if you tell them that the foreign colony, far from being a danger, is about the only natural agency by which the process can be affected. Now, if places like the east side are looked at askance, how very little justice could one expect toward the instance? of the sweatshop. That surely is a veritable hotbed of un-Americanism. When my native friends, who never weary of the topic, ask me what influences I account as the most vital in making an American of me, and when, in a sincere endeavor to be enlightening, I answer them that it is a toss-up

between the college and the sweatshop, they smile and say that I am making paradoxes. Of course, they admit, in a negative kind of way, the slums may perhaps arouse a craving for a broader and a fuller life, just as imprisonment develops a passionate love of freedom, or as a crabbed, bigoted, religious parent may drive a youngster to a child. atheism. But how such a place can possibly foster any idealism in a direct way or itself become a bridge between ignorance and intelligence, between slavery and independence, in short, between culture and stagnation, is more than they can understand. They think of the sweatshop as all dark and poverty-ridden and brutalized. The east side itself, I may add, or at any rate the forward-looking

practical layer of it, holds no exaggerated opinion about the sewing machine and the flat iron, as Mrs. Weiss's convictions on the subject may serve to prove. Little Romania, indeed, as a civilization, entertained an instinctive aversion to the industrial life. My former employers and their distinguished patron, the big-hearted COSA, whatever their ulterior motives might be in attempting to deter me from my course, really spoke from the depths of their souls when they denounced the sweatshop. Almost everybody I knew warned me against it. Even my erstwhile landlady, Mrs. Siegel, declared that she had never approved of Cousin Abbey's collar-making,

in spite of the fact that he came from the lesser branch of the family, and had never received the fine schooling and home training that we of the Voslui clan had, Abby being a native of Galatz. What, she asked me, would become of our splendid tradition, as a family of merchants and professional men if we drifted one by one into the classes that worked with their hands. I could not answer that difficult question, but I reminded her that she herself had once long ago taught me that in America there was no such thing as high and low and no shame in doing anything. besides her own daughters were earning their living at neckwear whereupon she invited my attention to the subtle fact that neckties were not shirts and that i was now no longer a greenhorn which altered the case entirely

but it was all right i could go to the shop if i was determined to and see for myself well i confessed that there was more than a grain of truth in these gloomy predictions. The very walk to the shop that early morning with Cousin Abbey, the Collarmaker, was a depressing adventure. We were a little late, and I was being properly berated as we hurried along for my un-industrial habits. Canal Street, west of the Bowery, with its cobblestones and quattering trucks, its bare, ugly sides, and trudging throngs of unkept men and girls, was not half so friendly as its eastern extremity. And as we swung past Broadway and into Walker Street, the dreariness became almost intolerable. Here the thoroughfare was too cramped for normal traffic,

and the stunted, grimy buildings seemed ludicrous. undersized for their heavy tasks. All the same, the little alley was choked up with one-horse carts. Its sidewalks were littered with bales of unmade clothing, a pandemonium of rasping curses from drivers and half-awake, half-grown men with aprons, staggering under immense burdens, overtop the rattling and the clanging from Broadway beyond. And then we felt our way up two creaking flights of stairs, and my cousin opened a door, and we entered. We proceeded to the right towards an elongated counter, where I was introduced to the boss.

My cousin removed his coat and collar and disappeared into the wilderness beyond. I followed him with my eyes, and the sight did not cheer me. There were three endless tables running almost through the entire length of a loft in parallel lines. Each table was dotted with a row of machines, and in front of these sat the operatives, like prisoners, chained to their posts. Men and women they were, colorless, disheveled, bent into irregular curves, palpitating, twitching, as if they were so many pistons and levers in some huge, monstrous engine. On the nearer end, around a smaller square table, stood an old, white-bearded man, a young girl, and a boy,

marking shirts with a pencil, pulling threads, folding, finishing. The intermittent whirring of wheels, the gasping and sucking of the power engine, somewhere out of sight, the dull murmur of voices heightened the oppressive effect. My first lesson administered by a frowsy little man in shirt sleeves and no collar, with his suspenders dangling loosely at his sides, was very bewildering. I had thought that I was to learn how to make shirts, but now my instructor informed me with a smile that that would be a very,

rather large order. No, I was to play only a very small part in the great performance. I was to be a sleever, and sleeving, it appeared, was as much as any one man could desire, for it involved a whole chain of skillful and delicate operations. The shirts were brought to you in two bundles, which you proceeded to place each bundle in a separate. box, one situated on the right side and the other on the left side of your machine. Then you suddenly discovered, sometimes a bit too late, that the bundles contained textiles of several designs and shades of color, and that you were expected to sew no green sleeves into brown shirts. The machine was of a kind that I had not even suspected to exist. It

had two needles and that implied two spools and two threadings and two bobbins just in front of the needles was an odd device called a hammer which was designed to facilitate the work but the whole contraption had a way of running away with you as soon as you pressed the power pedal so that the material got twisted and bunched up in the hammer and usually broke both needles at once and sometimes lodged one of them in your thumb and invariably at the least tangled up the thread into a hopeless mess i sewed and ripped and sewed again for two weeks without pay and i am afraid that the proceeds of my toil made but a poor return for the boss's patience and instruction but if the bargain was unprofitable for him it was well-nigh ruinous to me my former employers having declined out of pure benevolence to pay me the month's wages they owed me my great problem was to survive the period of my apprenticeship i had borrowed an amount equivalent to that reserve i had been counting on and mrs burnfield with whom i had taken up residence on eldridge street was kind enough to let me pay her rent at the end of the month instead of in advance but with all my skimping and economizing it was impossible to make three dollars last very much longer than two weeks i had miscalculated somewhat i had miscalculated somewhat i had had figured on getting some money when my instruction was over forgetting entirely that while everything else had to be paid for as i went or beforehand labor received its rewards only after it was done i got nothing even when i had completed a week as a piece worker payday was once in a fortnight and i was in the shop for a month before my first envelope came around

And then I discovered that, although I had sleeved a hundred and sixty dozens of shirts, which at the rate of four cents per dozen ought to have entitled me to very nearly $6.5, my envelope contained only $3. One week's wages it developed was regularly held back. They said it was because it took that long to audit. it the accounts. But that was a euphemism. The truth was that that week's wages of the 40 hands constituted the major part of the firm's operating capital. For all that, I soon found myself very happy in my new surroundings. Those novelists and sentimentalists who slander the sweatshop

and the tenement should take notice. We certainly had a very much more human. We certainly had a very much more human time of it in the old days than we did later on in the high-ceilinged, mini-windowed, electric fanned, palatial prisons that conformed to the factory laws. The reasons were these. In the sweatshop, the hand and the boss belonged to the same class. That made a big difference. There was no spying four ladies and no rules, no preemptory calls to the office, and no threats of discharge. You did not have to stand in line with hat and hand for the wages of your toil. If we were hard up after a long slack season, we could get all our meals on credit from the old shop peddler, who sold baked liver by the slice, brandy, bananas, and rolls, and sometimes,

lent us even a bit of cash. The number of workers was small so that everybody knew everybody else. During the lunch hour we visited and fell into violent arguments about the labor movement and socialism and literature and mocked good-naturedly at the capitalist when he ventured to put in a word as he always did, and each of us except the girls took his turn in going for the can of beer. all this tended to preserve the human dignity and the self-respect of the worker in spite of the fact that my firm was specializing in the stiff black and white article intended for the southern negro my earnings kept gradually rising until with the standards of bar-room wages still in my mind they attained dizzying heights with softer materials to be sure i might have turned out more dozens per day but i comforted myself with the thought that the work would be more particular so that the net results would probably be about the same the slack indeed was longer and more thorough-going than at the better line lines. For the two whole months of January and February, that temperamental gentleman in the South

seemed to be dispensing with shirts. But while that meant going into debt and cutting down on luxuries, there were compensating circumstances even then, as we shall see. While work was rushing, I got in touch with the installment peddler and bought a solid gold watch and chain on the basis of dollar per week and once in an access of extreme thriftiness i went the length of starting a savings account with the Bowery bank which however never went beyond the first deposit for one thing because my fellow workers got wind of the fact and poked fun at me and called me capitalist and secondly because the slack fell upon us suddenly that year and i was forced to liquidate and the can't cashier told me in a coldly impersonal way that my patronage would not be desired again.

The jewelry, on the other hand, was as good as a solid estate and much better than money in the bank, because at a pinch it was not necessary to wait 30 days to cash in. All I had to do was to take the thing to the uncle, or as you would call it, the pawn shop, and get $30, all at once, which suffice to keep the pedlar pacified with regular payments as well as to make me comfortable until prosperity was mine again. There was no denying that for all its good things to eat and drink and its lazy afternoon hours and educational opportunities, the saloon could not hold a candle to the two-needle machine. Indeed, the sweatshop was for me, the cradle of cradle of liberty. It was more. It was my first university. I was not long there before I discovered

that there were better things I could do with my free evenings than to frequent the cozy hangouts of my fellow countrymen. When I overheard a dispute between the young buttonhole maker and the cadaverous curly-haired closer on the respective merits of the stories of Chekhov and Montpoussin, and when another day the little black-eyed Russian girl who was receiving two cents per dozen shirts as a finisher boldly asserted that evolution pointed the way to anarchism and not to socialism and cited the fact that Spencer himself was an anarchist my eyes were opened and i felt ashamed of my ignorance I had been rather inclined hitherto to feel superior to my surroundings, and to regard the shop and the whole east side as but a temporary halt in my progress.

With my career looming on the horizon and my inherited tendency to look down upon mechanical trades, I had at first barely given a tolerant eye to the sordid men and girls who worked beside me i had not realized that this grimy toil-worn airless ghetto had a soul and a mind under its shabby exterior it knew everything and talked about everything nothing in the way of thought interest was too big or too heavy for this intelligentsia of the slums I made an effort to listen attentively in the hope that I might get some hint as to where my fellow operatives got all their knowledge. I observed that nearly all of them brought books with them to work, Yiddish, Russian, German, and even English books. During the lunch hour, if the disputatious mood was not on them, the entire lot of them had their heads buried in their volumes or their papers, so that the littered, unswept loft had the air of having been miraculously turned into a library.

While waiting for my next bundle of shirts, or just before leaving the shop, I would stealthily glance at a title or open a pamphlet and snatch a word or two. I was too timid to inquire openly. Once a girl caught me by the wardrobe examining her book, and asked me whether I liked books and whether I went to the lectures. I became confused and murmured and negative. You know, she said, Gorky is going to speak tonight

and held out a newspaper to show me the announcement. So, they were going to lectures. I began to buy newspapers and watch for the notices. I took to reading books and attending meetings and theaters. There were scores of lectures every week I found, and I went to as many as I could. One night it was Darwin, and the next it might be the principles of air pressure. On a Saturday night, there were sometimes two meetings, so arranged that both could be attended by the same audience. I remember going once to a meeting at Cooper Union to protest against the use of the militia in breaking a strike,

somewhere in the West, and then retiring with a crowd of others to the anarchist reading room on Eldridge Street to hear an informal discussion on Hamlet v. Don Quixote. It did not matter to us what the subject was. There was a peculiar intoxicating joy in just sitting there and drinking in the words of the speakers, which to us were echoes from a higher world than ours. Quite likely, most of us could not have passed an examination in any of the subjects we heard discussed. It was something more valuable than information that we were after. Our poor cramped souls were yearning to be inspired and uplifted. Never in all my experience since, though i have been in colleges and learned societies have i seen such earnest responsive audiences as were those colorless men and hatless girls of the sweatshops

the east side theater was another educational institution it was seldom that an attempt was made to entertain us there and whenever it was made we expressed our resentment by hooting we did not go to the theater for amusement any more than we read books or listened to lectures for amusement it was art and the truthful representation of actual life and the element of culture that we demanded and the playwrights who satisfied us we rewarded by our homage and our devotion no american dramatist was ever worshipped by his public as jacobbara was ever worshipped by his public as Jacob Gordon was. I remember that when a reactionary newspaper tried to stab him in the back by raising a cry of immorality against one of his plays, the whole progressive element in the ghetto came as a unit to his support by packing his theater and clamoring for his appearance. The sheet that dared attack him was nearly boycotted out of his. existence. And when, some years later, Gordon died, every shop was closed on the east side,

and a hundred thousand followed his hearse in genuine mourning. There is no parallel, I think, in the whole history of the American drama to this testimonial of popular devotion to an intellectual leader. Nor was Gordon the only divinity on our dramatic Olympus, They were younger men like Libbon and Coburn, who, although they might be said to have been members of Gordon's realistic school, each had made some interesting departures in subject matter by laying emphasis on the humor and pathos of life in the new world as affecting the immigrant. These two had for a long time been principally occupied with fiction, but had turned to the stage because of the stage because of the immigrant. of the greater educational possibilities of the drama. The Russians, too, kept in touch with their exile brethren and saw to it that our souls did not starve

for lack of spiritual sustenance. Not only did the Canal Street publishers bring out the beautiful, humorous tales of Sholom Alecum and Mendelei Mocher Sofram, and the poetry of Frug and Peretz, several amateur organizations, precursor, of the numerous advanced playhouses now fashionable everywhere were formed for the purpose of producing the poetic dramas of Hirschbein and Peretz and the symbolic plays of Ash and Pinsky, which, owing to their extreme literary character, were not adapted to the regular theaters.

Notably, the progressive dramatic club conducted readings and performances of choice tragedies, quotes from home, which, although they were intended for the elect, were attended by as large audiences as ever went to the Thalia and People's Theaters. I saw more good literature on the stage in those days while I was sewing sleeves into shirts than I saw in awe my subsequent career. When the original playwrights could not fill the demand, the lack was supplied by the translators. while broadway was giving ibsen the cold shoulder the east side was acclaiming him with wild enthusiasm i saw mona vana on the bowery before the broadway type of theatre goer had ever heard the name of matterlink many foreign writers haughtman suderman gorky andryev tolstoy had their premieres in the ghetto the same was two of actors i saw nassimova and ghosts before she could speak English, and I made my first acquaintance with Greek tragedy when I had not yet learned how to speak English.

End of Chapter 12. Chapter 13 of an American in the Making, The Life's Story of an Immigrant by Marcus Eli Ravage. This Librevox recording is in the public domain. Chapter 13 The Soul of the Ghetto I did not for a long time perceive the drift of all this feverish intellectual activity. I was too busy reading and listening to care about the ultimate purpose of it all. Gordon was giving his brilliant talks on the evolution of the drama and running a series of suggestive articles on the topic in Dezou Comft.

A group of young writers had just begun the publication of De Freya Stunda, the idle hour, which was devoted only to what was best in Beletra. The war between the radical and the reactionary press, always raging, was just now assuming a most violent character. The anarchist, Freya Arbiter Stimmer, was bringing out the journal of a Catholic priest who had attained to atheism, and publishing column upon column of letters in which the merits of religion and free thought were discussed by the public, a certain well-known agnostic, taking up the defense of religion for argument's sake. Within the progressive circle, there were continual debates between

socialists and anarchists, which sometimes rose to passionate fury, but always remained in the lightning my mind was eagerly absorbing all these new impressions and all these wonderful ideas a new world was unfolding itself before me with endless magnificent vistas extending in all directions the slack that bugbear of the factory hand was losing its terror for me a time arrived when i would start to the shop in the morning in hopes that i might find the power turned off and the boss explaining that work was slow on such days i would keep my coat and collar right on and take myself off to the nearest library despite the boss's protests and assurance that he was expecting the bundles from the manufacturer to arrive any moment there was so much for me to do there were whole stacks of Norwegian dramatists and russian novelists and yiddish poets that I had as yet barely touched. In my room there was a collection of the reclaim editions of Zola and Mopassan and an assortment of plays of all nations which had been suggested to me

by Gordon's lectures, which I had not yet found time to touch at all. Besides, I was trying to become a writer myself. The forward had accepted and published some aphorisms of mine under the pen name of Max the Sleaver, which my friends at the shop had greatly admired. I was devoting whole nights to a novel in the manner of the Kreitzer Sonata. Above all, I delighted in lingering outside the literary coffee houses on Canal Street, where every now and then I would catch a glimpse of Gordon and his circle. With my mind so busy then, it was not surprising that I should remember, somewhat indifferent to what was going on in my soul my ancient religion had under

American skies vanished long ago but I was scarcely aware that a burning new faith had taken its place with me as it had done with thousands of others I cannot now say whether I was taking it for granted or did not know it I continually heard people in the shop and in the quarter-de- generally referred to as clodpates and intelligence and i knew that an intelligent was a person who went to lectures and read books and preferred tragedy to vaudeville and looked upon america as a place which afforded one an opportunity to acquire and express ideas while a clodpate cared more for dollars than for ideas and worked hard so that someday he might have others work for him and in the evening he went to a dance-hall or to the atlantic garden or to miners or to a card-party

and kept himself scrupulously respectable so that some day when he could afford it he might rise to be the president of the synagogue or the lodge and read when he read at all the taggitblot and the joke-books all this i knew and in addition that i was already being classed as an intelligent among the hands at the shop it never occurred to me however to attach any ulterior meaning to the word it was obvious enough i could have seen it if i had only looked but somehow i did not look until one day the thing struck me and i had to look it was an idle day at the shop shop the boss had persuaded us to wait for the work and we were lounging about on the machine tables and on the ends of cases some of us had been to a reading of ibsen's symbolic drama when we did awaken the night before and were of course discussing it i said that i liked it then the girl who had the year before put me on the intellectual track spoke up and asked me in a tone of pain astonishment why aren't you a radical yes of course I said a little

uncertainly who is not who is not the Claude Pates are not but what has this got to do with literature well she answered it has this to do with it this symbolism business is reactionary it has always been it's churchy then i suddenly realized that everybody i knew was either a socialist or an anarchist it came to me in a flash that this social idealism was the soul that stirred within everything that was going on about and within me I remembered that all our meetings and lectures were colored by it, and I understood that every intelligent was an atheist, partly because every clodpate was a believer, and partly because the established creeds were cluttering the road to social and spiritual progress. When I asked myself why we studied the abstruse principles of physics, the answer was,

that it helped us to disprove the arguments of the religious. Our enthusiasm for evolution, I saw, was due to that doctrine's implied denial of the biblical story of creation. And, if we loved the poets, it was because they seemed to us to be pervaded by a lofty discontent with the existing order of things. In short, I perceived that, we were moved by a very vital religion of our own although of course we would have scorned to call it by that hated name i imagine that one of the things that had misled me was the absence of every trace of sect exclusiveness in the movement at least on its intellectual side bitter as we were against the ruling class we took no exception to its books in our little

radical libraries, Burke rubbed elbows with Rousseau, and the works of the imperialist, Kipling, touched sides with those of the revolutionary Karpotkin. Some of our leaders were as assiduously translating Machiavelli as Oscar Wilde. At War Shower's Russian Tea House, the principal labor resort, I often heard Bacon mentioned respectfully as a philosopher alongside of Spencer. of course it was hard for us to see how a man who had the mental and emotional equipment of a great author could be blind to the justice of our cause and we naturally did favor the insurgent writers but art is art we held and the value of a good book is not changed by the fact that its author is wrong about the rights of women or the referendum the only kind of writing we scorned was the stupid and the fraudulent toward genuine literature we were as friendly as the mediaeval monks who saved the literary treasures of paganism from destruction

yes our radicalism had all the nobility and all the weakness of a young faith we were no mere parlor socialists we toilers of the slums our atheism was no affectation our anarchism was not a fad to make conversation with over the teacups nor were we concerned with the improvement of our own material condition merely we were engaged in the regeneration of society and we were prepared to take up arms in the great social revolution which we saw daily drawing nearer We were all missionaries, and some of us were quite genuine bigots. On the day of atonement when all the conservative people in the quarter fasted and repented and knelt in prayer, we, ostentatiously, went about with big cigars in our mouths and bags of food in our pockets. And in the afternoon, we met in the public square and marched off in a body with flags and trumpets, to the atheist picnics somewhere in brooklyn similarly during the passover we gave an entertainment and ball where we consumed more

forbidden food and drink than was good for us no doubt this was foolish perhaps it was even vulgar but to us it was propaganda for our faith among the unconverted i recall a lean devotee i used to see at the anarchist meetings he named never missed one and he never failed to occupy a seat right in front of the speaker's stand during the address he would lean forward and glue his eyes on the speaker as if he were determined that not a word should escape him and then somehow it appeared that he always did miss something very essential after all When the floor was thrown open for general discussion, he was invariably the first to arise. Whereupon he would begin with thinkers and comrades, and proceed to make a few irrelevant remarks, which showed at once that he had understood nothing at all of the lecture. Some of the audience would smile at him, and some would murmur,

impatiently until he would grow confused and sink back into his seat. But these ignominious exhibitions never prevented him from heading each contribution list with some extravagant sum. Occasionally I would run across him at a little restaurant in the rear of a saloon on Eldridge Street, where one could get a tolerable meal for thirteen cents, and it puzzled me to reconcile that open-handedness at the meetings with this skimping on food. I understood it only when I became a devotee myself. I have often since looked back with a melancholy regret to those splendid days and have tried to reconstruct them in my memory and to find a parallel for them somewhere. From this distance they seem to me comparable to nothing else so much as to be.

to those early times when Christianity was still the faith of the despised and the lowly. There was in us that apostolic simplicity of speech and manners, that disregard of externals, that contempt of the world and its prizes, that hatred of shams, that love of the essential, that intolerance for the unbeliever, which only they who feed on a living ideal can know. in our social relations it was the sincere intention the rigid adherence to the truth as we saw it that counted in an argument it was your duty to be frank and honest if your opponent was offended so much the worse for him you could come to a meeting to a play or to a gathering in the house of a friend in your working clothes and unshaven if you chose the man and not the costume was the thing. A woman was but a human being in petticoats. Therefore, if you happen to want company at war showers or felt the need of giving play to your opinions at the theater, you need not

hesitate to address the first girl that came your way. Therefore, also, you need not spare her in a battle of ideas. But therefore, also, you need not expect to be looked up to as a superior creature with a whole chain of exploded privileges and immunities. She was in every way your human equal and counterpart, whatever the animal differences between you might be. Your business in life was to labor for the things that you devoured, to cultivate your mind, and to serve the ideals of your class. Besides these, the sordid concerns of the bodily existence were a secondary matter. Wherefore, the American heathen with his wealth and his show, his worldliness and his materialism, and his sporting page, was an object worthy of your profoundest contempt.

What else could it be if it was not this ancient dream of the prophets revitalized and recapitalized, and recast into a modern mold that had the magic power to transfigure the rotting slums into an oasis of spiritual luxuriance and the gloomy dust-laden factory into a house of light and hope the mere human thirst for knowledge the purely selfish craving for personal advancement is hardly strong enough to have made us sit up night after after night and listen to abstract discussions about monkeys and men or the basis of religious belief when our worn-out bodies were eminently entitled to rest and light entertainment. And surely nothing but this attachment to the uplifting promise of a noble future for mankind, this devotion to something outside of our unwashed selves and above our grimy surroundings, surroundings could have rendered us so heartlessly indifferent to the bleeding hearts of our poor,

bewildered elders. How the wretched graybeards and the peruked grandmothers suffered at the disaffection of their young. For even in the most advanced households, it was a rare thing if the two generations were in spiritual accord, and in the greater part of them, Claude Pate and intelligent dined at the same table and clashed continually, the parents enduring violent agonies over the children's disloyalty to the ancient faith, their sacrilegious mockery of the law and its practices, their adherence to an abhorred creed, their oblivion to the ambitions that father and mother had so long entertained for them. while the youth thought of nothing but the progress of the cause and flaunted the red flag in the faces of their beloved parents in the hope of convincing them of its honesty by the simple device of getting them used to it it needed just that element of tragedy to add to east side radicalism the cup of martyrdom without which no religion is quite genuine

end of chapter thirteen chapter fourteen of an american in the making the life story of an immigrant by marcus eli this librivox recording is in the public domain chapter fourteen the tragedy of readjustment i myself was in the meantime moving in two separate worlds nominally at least my home was still in little Romania among my own respectable relatives from Vos-Louis. Time and again I resolved to find a lodging somewhere south of Grand Street where the majority of my comrades in spirit lived, and where all my interests lay. But I never did it. Of friction there was enough between us. They were very outspoken, were my kinsfolk in their disapproval of me. They found fault with my impiety. My socialism, or anarchism, they did not know just what it was, my indifference to dress, and the social proprieties, my ragamuffin argumentative associates. Mrs. Siegel, who still

attempted to hold a protecting wing over me, took me to task often for not dropping into her Sunday afternoon at homes, which were the rendezvous of the gilded youth of our hometown. and especially for neglecting to assist at the betrothal party of her oldest daughter others of my blood observed that despite my aptness in picking up english i was unpardonably slow in getting americanized and doing nothing towards becoming a doctor i was making quite a lot of money too but not only did i send very little of it home i did not even have a bank account Cousin Abby, who, though he was still making shirt collars, had never become a radical, kept eternally at me for smoking on the Sabbath instead of going to the services. I, for my part, had my own opinions of their superficial Americanism, their indifference to the seething intellectual life about them,

their blindness to the fine merits of the labor cause, and missed no opportunity to express my views. And yet, some curious bond held us together. I had a strange feeling that I would miss them, that I would feel lonely without them, and I knew that they would take it as the final insult if I were to draw away from them altogether. These strained relations with my old-world kin,

as well as the tragic experiences of my fellow radicals, often made me pause and wonder how I should get on with my own parents if I were ever to succeed in bringing them over. Father, to be sure, was not as I remembered what one could call fanatically religious, and mother had implicit confidence in me to do the right thing, but they were both, after all, to the last, degree, old-fashioned, and rigidly conservative. They had a horror of the very word socialist. I recalled how shocked they had been once. I was a mere child at the time, when mother's nephew

Herschel came back from a long sojourn in Vienna and declared himself a socialist. He caused a most painful sensation, and my parents declined to have him come to our house, lest he he should contaminate it, and his own mother treated him as an apostate, and offered up candles at the synagogue for the reclaiming of his soul. Of course, America was a different story, and they would be coming into my world and not I into theirs, but it was difficult to imagine mother accepting me, her cottage, in the role of an unbeliever, and father going off alone to temple on the morning of the day of atonement, while I prepared for the FAS picnic. I wanted them, however, very much to come.

Conditions were now somewhat favorable. It was my third year at the trade, and I was now an expert sliver. I was employed at the very best line. I was turning out 40 and often 50 dozen a day. my rate thanks in part to the union had risen to five and a half cents and when the material was silk as it often was i got as much as 20 cents per dozen i had paid every penny on my watch and chain and the installment man was eternally asking me when i was going to give him another show didn't i want a diamond ring or a steamer ticket for someone or some thing yes i did want more than one steamer ticket and later on i would want very likely quite a lot of house furnishings but i was revolving the problem in my head when suddenly destiny stepped in and solved it for me in her own summary fashion early in the spring of 1903 i wrote to my brother harry who was still at his big job in constant

to get his advice not of course on the real difficulty but on the general situation he answered that owing to the commercial depression in romania he was himself thinking quite seriously of going to america his suggestion was that i should send a steamer ticket to paul and then when the three of us were together we would manage by our joint efforts to bring over the old folks paul had met with hard luck at his trade ever since his discharge from the army so that he had no money of his own to make the trip i hunted up my pedlar at once gave him a deposit of five dollars on a direct vaslui new york second-class ticket and sent it off to paul a little more than a month later i heard from harry again this time from vasloy he wrote that their preparations for the journey were completed He wrote that their preparations for the journey were completed, and that he meant to sail with Paul from Bremen about the 1st of June. I watched the ship news for the next four months. Several times I went down to the offices of the Lloyd to inquire. I haunted the peers. I even telephoned to Ellis Island, thinking that perhaps my guests had been detained there, in spite of their superior mode of traffic. But not a sign of any brothers, not even a word of explanation.

I was nearly out of my wits with apprehension. I bombarded Harry and Father and everybody I could think of with anxious letters, without results. At last, it was autumn now. It occurred to me to make inquiries at my former address. my former landlady mrs burnfeld appeared ill at ease at my unexpected visit contrary to her habitual pleasure on seeing me when i told her what i had come for she asked me nervously what made me think that she would not forward my mail with my suspicions and fears aroused by her manner i insisted that there must be something for me then she yielded it up. It was a postal card written in the hand of the rabbi, advising me that father had died in August and urging me to perform the religious duties expected of a son in the circumstances. Some days later, a second card in the same hand, informed me that mother had caught cold

at father's funeral. pneumonia had developed, and she had died in less than a fortnight. My brothers did not get to New York until February. When I met them at Hoboken, we kissed and wept together, and I got the details of my parents' death. Harry, being a man of business, was bent on going at once into an account of the disposition of the estate. he began by observing that since he had had to stand the expense of the illnesses and the funerals it was no more than just that he should inherit the feather bedding and the brass things as for the remainder but i waived the topic aside assuring him that there was time enough for that on the ferry boat across the river i observed that he was taking me in critically no sooner had we seated

ourselves in an elevated car, then he turned upon me, and without preface or introduction, demanded to know whether I was doing my duty by the dead. My first impulse was to tell him the unpalatable truth without delay. On second thought, I decided to spare him. This was no time for propaganda. It would merely pain him. He would not understand my position offhand like this, so i begged again for time brother paul who had thus far merely sat there holding my hand and devouring me with his eyes but saying nothing agreed that a public vehicle was no place for family conferences but harry insisted surely i could answer a plain question did i say cadish yes or no well it was yes and no and no know. The truth was that at the first shock of the terrible news, I had compromised with my conscience and had attended services, mornings before going to work, and evenings after returning.

I had kept it up for ten days. Then I had rebelled. I simply could not endure the sham of it and the self-deception. The Licks-spiddle mercenary air of the Beatles had disgusted me. he had better wait before he judged me America he would find would change his ideas as she had changed mine it could not be helped father and mother would forgive me they too would have understood if they had lived and come here harry regarded me with a pitying look and turned away he refused to speak to me for the next 24 hours my brother paul had been a spirited youngster and had objected to the rigid methods of education at home, with the consequence that he was a bit backward in bookish things. He found now that he had to pay the price of his youthful escapades. He experienced great difficulties in finding his way about, in reading street names, and in handling foreign money. Nevertheless, thanks to his mechanical occupation, he was not long in getting work.

in fact he got his first job several weeks before harry got his and immediately offered to take over the payments on his ticket harry was thoroughly scandalized by everything american he found every one for mrs slessinger our landlady down to his prospective employers and his own brother coarsened and vulgarized the children were too smart and far forward. The women were loud and overdressed and ill-mannered. Above all, the shops were dingy and ill-kept and inelegant. From these last, he had expected a great deal. He had thought of New York as a kind of magnified Bucharest, a great, refined, luxurious city, with beautiful stores where it would be a proud joy to work. That was one of the things that had induced him to come to America. In Romania, he had always been employed in the haberdasheries, magazines de galantiri, they were called, of the small Black Sea port towns, and he had for years dreamed of getting a situation at one of

the brilliant shops of the capital. His longing had never been fulfilled, and he had emigrate, to America with a feeling that here he would better his own aspiration and what did he find of course the department stores on 14th Street and on 6th Avenue where he sallied forth to look over with wistful eyes on the very day following his arrival were inexpressibly wonderful but they were for the time being at least out of his reach he had learned to speak greek and Italian and Turkish in Constanza. But all these languages were of no earthly use in New York without English. The only places that were open to him were the unspeakably shabby holes in the Italian quarter or on Hester Street. They were, for the most part, in gloomy basements. Their owners were

rough, unkept Polish and Russian ex-pedalers with fat, noisy wives. And one of them he had actually found the whole family lunching on the counter. The customers, instead of the sea captains and naval officers and refined Greek ladies and suave Ottoman traders he had been accustomed to, were crude Sicilian peasants, whose harsh dialects he scarcely understood, or east-side fisherwoman. It made him very unhappy. I suggested that since he had brought quite a bit of money with him, he could easily learn

to be a cutter at cloaks. That surely was elegant enough for any taste. It was universally considered the next best thing to a doctor. The very first families in little Romania thought a cutter an excellent catch for their marriageable daughters. All the best young men in the quarter who had a sense of what was classy were so saving their pennies toward that end. Cousin Abby was dreaming of exchanging the machine for the knife

as soon as he had enough money for the instruction fee and the wagerless month of apprenticeship. But Harry cried out that my suggestion was an insult. Was that what he had clerked for all his life and economized and learned refined manners from his aristocratic customers in Constanza? Was that? what he had come across seas to America for to become a woman's tailor no thank God he had enough

money left to go back to Romania where character and ability and gentlemanly qualities still counted for something cursed Columbus and his country he was going back but he did not because before he had time to buy his ticket he found a job in a basement store on Mulberry Street and got eight dollars a week, which he estimated to be nearly twice as many francs as he had ever received in the most elegant shop on the shores of the Black Sea. While Harry was idle, he amused himself by rummaging among my books and papers, when he was not, that is, making excursions through the department stores. one evening it was during the first week after his arrival he picked up a copy of the

zoo kumft and regarded it dubiously then with a sudden inspiration lighting up his puzzled face he looked me squarely in the eye and charged me point-blank with being a socialist i could not help marveling at his sharpness because there was nothing on the cover of the publication to betray me his next sally enlightened me young men who are respectable and mind their business he said in a voice shaken with emotion do not waste their time reading monthly magazines now i know why you sent home so little money and why you do not attend to your cottage and why after three years in america you are still an operator and at shirts instead of having a business of your own. Daizu kumft, the future, he sneered bitterly. A fine future will come to you reading this sort of thing. Our poor parents would die again if they knew what has become of the promising son of their old age.

When the April holidays came, and I made no pretense of keeping them, he suffered keenly. He tried to reason with me and to bring me to a conviction of sin he was older he argued and he knew better he by no means meant to have me a bigot in religious matters but my behavior was treason to everything that had from time immemorial been sacred to our people in my own justification I must say that I did everything I could short of betraying my convictions to lessen his suffering I went to my meetings secretly and did all my reading at the library. I avoided argument, even at the cost of losing

a possible convert. I even kept all my radical friends away from our room, fearing that their zeal might get the better of their discretion. But I did not have to keep up this religious regime very long. Harry had scarcely been in New York three months before I began to notice that he was rapidly undergoing a change. He began to funk in his prayers for the dead, offering at first the excuse that his long hours of employment made it impossible for him to go to daily services. After a time, he openly began to smoke cigarettes on the Sabbath. I asked him about it, and he answered that he was not the simpleton I took him for. In fact, he admitted he had never been able to able to see anything in the old-fashioned faith. It was all well enough for unintelligent,

unmancipated people, but he was a modern man. His profession of enlightenment could have furnished me with lessons in blasphemy. But when I invited him to accompany me to a lecture on a Sunday evening, he told me that he was too tired and that he needed recreation. It was as impossible now to get him interested in radicalism as when he had landed the ancient faith had gone but nothing had come to take its place all the same it was harry who brought me my first and most successful proselyte for it was through him that i met my excellent friend esther harry had no sooner got a job and opened a bank account and settled down to his place in the american scheme of existence, then he invested his surplus income in some first-class clothes and furnishings, and plunged into the social whirl. Unlike myself, he regularly attended Mrs. Siegel's salon, and sought out the most desirable people. He saw that with his knowledge of Italian,

it would not take him long to have a shop of his own, and he was, frankly, looking about for a gentle partner to share his future prosperity with him. On a Sunday afternoon, as soon as his store was closed, he would hurry home and clean up and get into his best shoes and neckwear to say nothing of suits and bolt forth on his round of calls. Now and then, he would persuade Paul and me to go with him, and it was on one of the first of those occasions that I fell in with Esther. Something about her hearty, almost masculine handshake and her unaffected manner arrested my attention her plain way of dressing and tying her hair the straightforward tone of her speech her reserve all these told me that she was not the customary roumanian girl i got into talk with her and found that she was reading quite a lot and by no means the conventional books for young ladies she had been in america no longer than i had but partly because of her unfamiliarity with yiddish she was managing to get on with english print

we compared notes and found that our history as well as our leanings had much in common she too had had her purifications she had run the gamut of occupations from cash girl in an east side department store to the factory but now she had run the gamut of occupations from cash girl in an east side department store to the factory but now she had run the She was a tremor at millinery and earning enough. Nevertheless, she was discontented. She had a vague feeling that she wanted to do something with herself and with the world. We became fast friends. I read things to her from the Zucumft and from the other radical publications, and she drank in everything with wide eyes. This was a new and splendid world of ideas and ideals.

told me in some remote way she had been thinking similar things then i offered to take her to a lecture she went and came away radiant she was furious with her folks for not having been taught the humble mother tongue as her brothers had been she had never dreamed of its literary treasures and of the things that were reported in its press i undertook to teach her to read yiddish and before long she abandoned her english fiction and devoured perrits and gordon she bettered my instruction although a little sentimental her devotion to the radical faith was far more intense from the start than mine she would not let me miss anything in the hottest weather she would insist on going and dragging me with her to all sorts of out-of-the-way places climbing endless flights of sands of sands stairs, elbowing her way into jammed halls, and sweltering in the close air until the end. If I objected, she would look at me like conscience incarnate and asked me whether I was not backsliding and whether I was not becoming a bourgeois again. At such times I would tell her that I wished I had bit off my tongue before talking to her about the movement. But in the depths of my heart, I was very proud of her. She was such a soul as any missionary might well be proud of having

saved, and she was even a better friend than she was a disciple. End of Chapter 14 Chapter 15 of an American in the Making, The Life Story of an Immigrant by Marcus Eli Ravage. This Librevox recording is in the public domain. Chapter 15 The Trials of Scholarship My radical interests had one salutary result immediately. I was not content to know at second-hand the great writers and thinkers whom I heard continually discussed, but in order to read them, I must know English. I began my literary study of the language, one memorable night

by borrowing a one-volume edition of the complete works of Shakespeare from the Bond Street Library. As soon as I got home, I eagerly opened my treasure and turned to Hamlet. To read Hamlet in the original had long been one of my most ambitious dreams. But to my disappointment, I found that I could not get more than one word in ten, and of the sense nothing at all. Shakespeare as a first reader proved a total failure. It was then I decided to go to school, although I should mention that my inspiration came in great part from Abe Wyckoff, whom I had shortly before met at a lecture. The chap was a cloakmaker with ambitions similar to my own. As we came out of the building,

he said, Comrade, I am going to throw up the machine. I am sick of cloaks. Three months in the year you work overtime till midnight, so that it nearly kills you intellectually and physically. And the rest of the time, you are so hard up, you have not a dime for the Zucumph. I am going to study dentistry.

I had a little training at home, and I think I can pull through. then liberty time to read and to think to be a human being i listened to faginbaum here the other night did you hear him on dominant figures in world literature and it made my heart sick gerta calderon racine dante what do i know about them hearsay nothing more i want to get into them but good lord where is the leisure a professional man is different I hear that Gordon and the others are getting together to start a progressive school for workmen you and I ought to look into it it is to be called the educational league the new organization opened its doors toward the end of August and Abe and I were among the first of its pupils

tuition was entirely free and there were no restrictions as to the choice of studies. All of the teachers gave their services without pay and with no lack of enthusiasm. Before a month had passed, the place was filled, a student body made up of boys and girls in their teens, bearded men and middle-aged women, former gymnasium students from Russia, and semi-illiterates from Galicia, all the ages and types of the diversified ghetto. But the school turned out to be somewhat of a disappointment. Its fine liberal spirit tended to degenerate into a mere absence of system and order. Pupils came in at all hours and interrupted the classes.

Attendance was irregular, and those who were present one night were unable to follow the lesson because of what they had missed the night before. The program of the League, moreover, was an odd one. Its 12 rooms housed a course of study, which began with elementary arithmetic and spelling, and ended with university courses in evolution, the philosophy of Nietzsche, the history of the labor movement, attic, tragedy, and comparative religion, and teachers and students alike were too interested in the lectures and discussions on literary and social matters to give much attention to the exercises in orthography. By the latter part of September, I took an inventory of my added stock

of knowledge and found that I had learned the names of some fourscore new books and authors, as well as the difference in meaning between the English words county and country, and excellent and surpassing, of which latter I was far from certain. Fortunately, there had lately begun to appear a whole crop of evening preparatory schools on East Broadway, largely no doubt a result of the league's experiment. They were usually owned and manned by young East Siders who had recently graduated from the City College. I entered one of them. simply in order to study English, but once there my ambitions expanded. I recalled my father's professional hopes for me and conferred with my teachers about the possibility of preparing for a medical

college. They encouraged me, and I agreed to pay $50 for the 48-point Regents course in monthly installments of $5 each. The institution occupied the remitably. model top flats of two buildings on both sides of the street. The ground floor of one of them was occupied by a second-hand bookstore, and the basement of the other housed a butcher shop. The classrooms themselves were on off nights, the meeting places of lodges and societies, and one of them did alternate duty as a chemical laboratory and a house of worship, as the brass candelabra and the paraphernalia on the east wall showed. I used to travel across the street from algebra to English and back again for German.

The stoops and the halls and the stairways were always crowded with students. And during change of classes, it was almost impossible to break through. I often wondered what would happen if there were a fire. At last, the management rented a flat in a flat, third building and turned it into a waiting room and study hall the classes were overcrowded so that even with the best instructors anything like a recitation was a practical impossibility the evening was divided into four periods beginning at 715 and ending at 11 o'clock as there were four regents examinations annually our school year was arranged into four corresponding terms. Every course ran through a term. For instance,

I took algebra three times a week for ten weeks, and then went up to the Grand Central Palace and passed the examination, along with high school pupils who had had the work five times a week for a year. I cannot tell you how we did it. I only remember that I would sit and puzzle over X's and Y's from the time I got home at 11 o'clock until my eyes would give out, and at 7 in the morning I would be back at the machine, sewing shirts. I had registered late and had missed the first two or three lessons. For a time, the idea of algebra simply would not get through my head. But even algebra was as nothing besides English.

We were trying to cover the prescribed regents requirements, in spite of the fact that the majority of us could hardly speak a straight English sentence. The formal grammar, which was the bugbear of nearly everybody in the class, did not worry me. The terms were the same as in Romanian, and I had been well trained at a class. home. But the classics, we began, mind you, with Milton, the nights and the Sundays I spent on Le Allegro and El Penseroso, looking up words and classical allusions, if I had devoted them as earnestly to shirt-making, would have made me rich. And then I would go to class, and the teacher would ask me whether I thought there were two separate persons in the poems or just one person in two different moods.

Bless my soul, I had not thought there were any persons in it at all. I had made up my mind that it was something about a three-headed dog that watched at the gate of Hades, whatever that was. So I would go back and read those. puzzling lines again and again in a sort of blind hope that sheer repetition would somehow make me understand them until I got them by heart I can recite them yet as soon as I got straightened out a bit I tried to take a little interest in the social life of my school there was a socialist club and a Zionist society and a

chess club and a debating club and i don't remember how many others that sent their representatives around with notices to the grammar class one of the teachers was giving an unscheduled course in greek between six and seven and i joined it in the hope that it might enable me to read the dramas of sophocles in the original on sunday nights the instructors took turns in lecturing in the study hall on the other way that the other works of the authors we were studying in English and German or on the colleges and universities of America or on art and I was drinking in a lot of things that the radical educators had omitted. In the debating society, too, the subjects were a little out of the usual. American politics and prohibition and the nature of the trusts touched elbows with

such familiar things as the referendum and the initiative and the true shakespearean conception of the character of shylock and what i particularly liked about the organization was that it gave greater opportunities for self-expression and in english than the regular lectures did my schooling brought a lot of new problems with it and not all of them academic Some of them were the old, familiar ones with a new wrinkle. As a student, I could not work overtime, and many a row I had with the boss about it. That meant a reduction in my weekly envelope of about $2. There were the monthly $5 payments and several books every quarter, which, however, one was not compelled to buy since the school itself,

supplied them at a nominal rental of 10 cents a month each. My room rent was raised by 50 cents a month to pay for the midnight gas I was burning. One had to dress a little better and shave oftener and pay club dues. But all this additional expense I could have endured, it was the matchmakers who made day and night hideous for me. being a prospective doctor had made me quite a commodity in the marriage market one of the men in the factory called my attention to the fact that a certain pretty finisher had five hundred dollars in the bank an old woman of my acquaintance hunted me up in my room one night after school to make me a tempting offer she knew of a rich jewelry peddler who was ready to be ready to be a very jewelry peddler who was ready to be to finance me through college on condition that I become engaged to his daughter.

And he is a fellow countryman of yours, too, she added, and of such a fine family. And the girl, a jewel in the sight of God and man, full of virtues, educated like a bookkeeper, reads German. It is a joy to hear her. And English as is as if it is a good-either. if born to it and all this while I had a load of German and English of my own to get through with before morning not only among my own relatives but in little Romania generally I was causing an immense furor my cousins and second cousins and aunts and uncles to say nothing of my brothers never ceased bragging about my change for the better. Even Koza, whom I had not seen since my barroom days, was pleased and took occasion

to remember that he was entitled to some of the credit, because if it had not been for him, I would still be in Vos-Louis. Cousin Jacob, who had in the meantime settled affairs in Romania and followed his family, grinned with delight, and forgave me my irreligibility. practices and declared that he had always known that I would one of these days come to my senses next-door neighbors and fellow townsmen beat a path to my hall bedroom to find out exactly what profession I meant to pursue and ventured an opinion as to which was the most profitable or the least irksome or the most elegant I was set up as an arbiter on on every variety of disputed question,

linguistic, geographical, legal, and whatnot. Was Minneapolis in the South? If a chap had promised to marry a girl in Buseo and now refused to marry her, could she sue him for breach of promise in New York? Was the dollar mark derived from US? Which was right, myself, or? me self and if one why not the other why could one say yesterday and not yesternight if i

confess that i really did not know the answer to all these difficult questions then i was told that pride goeth before a fall and that i must not get so stuck on myself or else that i was a queer kind of a college boy In January, at the end of my first three-month term, I took the examinations in English, algebra, and third-year German, and reaped five points. That left ten more between me and college. Unfortunately, it left something more besides, which even a conscientious student could not get by means of examinations. As we drew toward the end of the end of the end of the time, we were in the end of the our preparation we seniors as we were called had but one topic for discussion how to get into and through college i cannot enumerate half the schemes we cooked up some of us did more daring things than marry plutocrats

daughters a great number became druggists taking pharmacy as a stepping stone to the higher ambition because it only required about one-fourth the number of counts and only one year in college. I knew several boys who became conductors and robbed the street railway companies of nickels until they were caught and discharged, alas too soon. I myself, in company with Alfred, now Dr. Goodman, chose another more difficult course. When September came, a year after I had entered school, I had enough credits to enter college on a condition, and of course, no money, even for the matriculation fee. Then Goodman heard of the state scholarships, and came and told me about them. The stipend was good for four years' tuition at Cornell University, but the scholarships were open to none but

high school pupils. I fretted at the loss of a year, but there was nothing for it but to go to high school and make myself eligible. I remember the afternoon when Goodman and I decided to go around to the nearest high school to find out what we had to do to get in. In our ignorance, we wandered into a girl's institution somewhere on 13th Street and got laughed at at every. return. And as far as I can now recall, never got as far as the principal's office at all. From a policeman on the street, we learned that what we were looking for was the DeWitt Clinton High School, which was a considerable distance of town. There, a warm-hearted old gentleman whom I came later to know as Dr. Buchanan, the principal, took charge of us.

us and extracted from us our entire personal and family history and gave us several score of cards to fill out and conducted us about the building as if we were noted visitors and introduced us to our teachers and commended us to their mercy because we had never seen the inside of a public school we were admitted to the fifth form and blushed with shame at finding ourselves in a class with mere youngsters. The English instructor was not much older than we were. On the very first test, we were asked to write 150 words on school spirit, and Alfred and I exchanged frightened glances and handed in blank papers. But the next day, the teacher told us that we must not be bashful when we did not understand an assignment.

and allowed us to take our choice of subjects and marked our substitute papers ninety five and ninety eight respectively and scribbled excellent on the margin for good measure things did not go quite so well however in the other classes in the history room the teacher was altogether helpless in the hands of his pupils and in his misery he found fault with everything goodman and in his misery he found fault with everything goodman and and I did, from the manner of our taking notes to our English intonation. How those boys could be so disrespectful to a learned man, our European minds could not grasp at all. They threw chalk at him and at one another as soon as he turned his back to write on the blackboard, and Cat called him, and one fat youngster even went to the length of getting up and waltzing around the room in the middle of another boy's farcical recitation.

And yet, as soon as they came into the physics room, these same pupils became as meek as lambs and as attentive as a Clinton Hall audience. We suffered so horribly under the discipline that at the end of a week, Goodman gave up the effort and borrowed the money to go to a second-rate medical school where the tuition was comparatively cheap. At the evening school, there had never been any insistence on getting exercises and themes

into the hands of the teachers at any particular time. It was assumed that the work was done as a matter of course. If a student could not or would not follow out assignments, he naturally dropped out altogether and devoted his money and his time to more pleasurable avocations than going to school after a hard day's work in the sweatshop. At Clinton, however, nothing was taken for granted. And I, who had fallen into the habit of doing lessons thoroughly enough, but by the method of inspiration, came into constant collision with the more conservative of my teachers and was reported to my guardian for insubordination and was kept in the detention

room after classes when i should have been out earning my living and was peremptorily sent down to see the principal who did nothing more tyrannical however than to take me parentally by the arm and to tell me smilingly that he knew there were more ways than one to kill a cat and that if I would not tell it in Gaff, he would confess to me that he thought my way as efficient as any, but that, nevertheless, I would find it beneficial to adopt in part, if I could, the ways of authority. I don't know how long my termentors would have kept on worrying me, if it had not gotten abroad, that I had offered to join the penal class in higher spelling of my own free will, which my taskmasters accepted at once as a submission and as a stoic challenge to them to do their worst. Going to day

school necessitated giving up my shirts, which rendered the financial situation exceedingly tense. More than once, I lacked the car fare to get to the school on the school on the school. a hundred and second street and then I must either get up at five in the morning and walk or invent some plausible but altogether untruthful excuse and compose a letter of explanation which must be signed by my landlady a process that no doubt appears simple enough to the uninitiated but was all the same fraught with peril and difficulties because Mrs. Schlesinger had neglected to acquire the art of writing, and if I signed it myself with her name, I made myself liable to the charge of forgery

and the criminal punishments appertaining thereto. To make ends meet, I attempted a return to the familiar occupation of peddling, on the grand scale with a push-cart this time, and the merchandise second-hand books instead of sweetmeats, but finding it less congenial and less profitable, my wants having become extravagant than in the old days. So I advertised myself in Cousin Friedman's Coffee House window as a private instructor in English and arithmetic. I charged 25 cents an hour, which would have brought me wealth enough if I was a private instructor in English, if only the powers above had not cut the day to a skimpy 24 hours, and if the desire for self-improvement in little Romania had not been so scarce. Time was particularly at a premium, inasmuch as my

pupils were possessed with an excessive curiosity about the meanings of all sorts of words that I had not inquired into so that if I prized my dignity and self-respect, I must devote hour for hour to preparing my lessons, and also because the ancient problem of distances had still to be solved. And then, when the struggle was all over, it turned out that I had labored and suffered in vain. Somehow, I had never stopped to question my ability to win the scholarship. Yet it required only a trifling accident to smash the hope on which I had staked everything. I scored 96 in English and nearly as high in all the other subjects except one. In physics, I was marked 50.

out of four questions one was on the rainbow and another on some species of dynamo neither of which topics had been touched on at all in the class a month later i took the regent's examination in that same subject and i believe under the same examiners and passed with honor which meant a percentage of over 90 so decisive our examination end of chapter 15 chapter 16 of an american in the making the life story of an immigrant by marcus eli ravage this Librevox recording is in the public domain chapter 16 off to college but to college i went that autumn all the same the examinations were no sooner over that I gave up my tutoring and my school and began to cast about for something real to do. I had entered the high school to attain a particular object. It had been defeated, but I had got something else in its stead. I had improved my English. I had acquired new and more regular methods of study.

I had completed my entrance requirements so that I need not worry now about working off conditions in college still there was no sense in keeping up the grind even though the authorities sent postal card after postal card to mrs slessinger threatening me with the visitations of the truant officer they were snail slow in that city institution the course was to all intents and purposes finished but they were taking the entire month from the end of may to the last of June to review and wind up. I could do better with those four weeks. Time was precious. If I got busy straight away, that very month might decide whether I should graduate in 1910 or 1911. In a financial sense, I was no better off now than a year ago, rather worse,

if anything. I had not only fallen behind by a year, so that if I entered college at all, I would be a freshman when Goodman and a lot of others of my companions would be sophomores. I had missed the chance of laying up some money toward the lean years that were ahead of me. The failure to earn the state scholarship I had come to take philosophically. It merely prevented me from going to Cornell, the university, I had set my heart on. But that prize would, after all, have paid only my tuition, my living expenses I must earn in any event. At one of the three out-of-town colleges, to be sure, it might prove harder to find work. But hadn't I tried this past year to combine study

with business in New York and with what results? Besides, college was not high school. by all accounts a medical student had practically no time left when his day in the lecture-room and the laboratory was over in a small town there would at least be no wastage in traveling back and forth the road to follow was therefore plain i must utilize every bit of the three or four months between now and the opening of college how that was the question. Ornstein and Stein, my former employers, had a vacancy at the double-needle machine, but a week's trial revealed the fact that shirts were going through one of their periodic slack seasons that summer. The union, too, had disintegrated, and peace prices were at their worst. Just when I was perfectly ready to work overtime, there was hardly enough to do during the A little figuring showed me that at the present rate I would not get enough together by September to pay even for my trip to college.

Fortunately, my good cousin David was an electrician and was working as a lineman at the Pennsylvania terminal then building. I knew nothing about the trade beyond a few odd terms such as potential, cathoids, alternating current and Leidenjar, which I had picked up in my study of physics, and which David did not know and regarded as worse than useless. Nevertheless, he managed to get me taken on as his helper at a wage of $1.75 a day. David was devoting his evenings to taking care of the tenement house he was living in, and he insisted that I must come and take a room in his apartment. You can save about $20, he urged, and it will be no loss to me. We have more space than we can use, and I am not paying any rent.

Once he got me up there, he pointed out that there were no restaurants in the neighborhood, except American ones which served food I could not eat, so that I must eat at his table. When the week was up, and I asked Rose, his wife, to tell me how much. much I owed her, she sent me about my business and added with a laugh that I could pay all in a bunch at the rate of $10 a week when I became a doctor, or I might reimburse her by treating her four children. That David family saved the situation. Rose even persisted, in spite of all my protests, to double the number of her husband's sandwiches which she packed for him every morning along with a bottle of cold coffee so that my lunch money went likewise to increase the great pile

david and i had an hour at noon so i carried a book with me to work every day and employed the better part of the period in going over the english and american classics i had studied once when one of the engineers on the job found my copy of emerson's essays in the supply chest and he asked David whose it was my cousin pointed proudly at me the gentleman however did not seem impressed he threw me a sidelong glance and smiled superiorly when he was gone david burst out laughing that's a good one on him he cried he doesn't know you could give him a few pointers why didn't you speak up you big silly and tell him that he wasn't the only college gun on the place the whole world however is not made up of davids and roses and my family was no exception to the rule looking ahead i could see that the dollars i was saving would hardly suffice to carry me through a friend who for reason of his own must remain nameless offered to lend me fifty dollars but the attempt to persuade my two brothers to contribute each and equal amount met with only partial success indeed my relatives who had up to this time been very proud of my ambitions and my achievements now held up their hands in solemn disapproval at my selfishness

it was all very well they declared to become a doctor but this business of borrowing money to get there was was carrying matters to extremes. My cousin, the collar maker, could not see why shirt-making was good enough for him and not for me. Another cousin thought I had enough education already. A third was convinced that I could persuade Mr. Rockefeller to lend me the money. Uncle Burrell confessed quite frankly that he had had his doubts about a fellow who could not win a paltry scholarship ever becoming a doctor anyhow. Uncle Schmurl, equally as frankly, laid it before the whole assemblage that it was a foolish thing to encourage a poor boy to rise above his kind so that he might later put on airs and be ashamed of his own kindred.

brother harry was not so philosophical as all that but he was intending to go into business for himself might it not be best he wanted to know to wait another year and in the meantime earn the money at the machine only gentle paul was silent at the family council except to say that as long as he kept his job he would spare me his dollar a week but all the advice and the censure was to no purpose i had made up my mind money or no money i was going my earnings as an electrician would pay my fare the lord might do the worrying i would do the worrying i was going my earnings as an electrician would pay my fare the lord might do the worrying about the rest. To my great astonishment, I discovered that even my radical associates were staunchly opposed to my plans and my ambitions. I had confidently expected that they at least would understand my longing for emancipation and approve of it. It was from them largely that I had got the inspiration, the worship of learning, the ideal of culture, the dream for a higher plane of life they had no illusions about the wretched precarious

existence of the working man they constantly lamented his lot his oppression by the rulers and capitalists his lack of opportunity to develop himself his imprisonment in dingy lofts and airless tenements their newspapers and their lecturers never tired of insisting that the liberation of the working class could only come by education and that this education must come from within from the conscious endeavor of the proletariat itself well here i was carrying their theories into practice i was going to get educated to lift myself out of my class i was going to make my fight for the freedom and the leisure and the opportunity to develop which they had taught me was the inalienable right of every man why should they not give me their most enthusiastic support i remember

the stormy discussion at the anarchist reading room that followed upon my announcement isidore lipschitz the cadaverous curly-haired closer who had befriended me in the in the days of my apprenticeship and had witnessed the beginning of my career burst out into sarcastic fiendish laughter and joe shapiro affectionately nicknamed the red bull jumped to his feet and launched into a passionate denunciation of my sac religious perversion of radical principles the class-conscious proletariat is no longer good enough for you he shall you want to go to college to become a gentleman and a bourgeois to wear spats I suppose and silk gloves quite like a little quadpate all right go and the devil take you but and here he waved a menacing finger in my face don't you come around here and pollute this place with your infernal sophistries did you hear that isadore to our lecturers he pairs himself, the cheek of the Knicks. Whoever told you that Faginbaum and Hermelin and

Leicin have gone to college, they started in the shop and they have developed by their own brains and the right kind of reading, but they have stuck to their class and have devoted themselves to the interests of the worker. They have not tried to climb in among the churchwalkers and the capitalists and the oppressors, traitor. In vain I tried to make myself heard and to explain that by getting a thorough education, I was serving the best interests of my class. As a factory hand, I argued, all my energy and struggling against a complex system was doomed to be unavailing.

They insisted that the emancipation of the worker could only come by the education of the body as a whole, not by the sporadic, selfish, scrambling out of individuals into the ranks of the oppressors. My place was in the shop, among the men and women who were building up the movement with their blood and their brains. They predicted that no sooner would I enter college than my class consciousness would melt away, and I would begin to feel myself as belonging to the camp of the enemy. my whole course was treason to the cause of labor. I smiled incredulously at their passionate presentiments, but the event, as you shall see, proved that they were not altogether wrong.

The only person I got any comfort out of was Esther. She admitted that, theoretically, there was, no doubt, something to be said for the point of view of our radical friends. but that in practice I was entirely right she even found an element of the heroic in my undertaking as long as the world was what it was there was nothing for the individual to do but to make the most of his own opportunities besides I was not merely striving for economic betterment if at all and it was pure sentimental not nonsense to raise objections against the aspirations of a hungry mind about my financial difficulties

she was equally encouraging with my energy and my various abilities i ought to have no trouble at all in earning all i spent to say nothing of my modest hope of making a dollar a week so in the autumn of 1906 i started out of out on my great adventure. Throughout the summer I had been studying catalogs from all ends of the country and making the rounds of all cut-rate ticket offices in the city in an effort to make my scant savings go as far as I could. The New York medical colleges, with their tuition rates of $150 and upward were, of course, out of the question. Some of the state universities I found charged no tuition fees, but a study of certain tables contained in the bulletin, showed that the

minimum expenditure for board and room per year was $250. Heaven preserve me. 100 was my limit, and I would have to earn the most of that. Therefore, even those schools that promised reasonable living expenses had to be passed up as long as their catalogs said nothing about ways and means. Finally, after two months of figuring and comparing, I chose the University of Missouri. It appeared to combine all the advantages of economy with high, academic standards. I calculated that by living at the dormitories and boarding at the university dining club, I could make an appreciable cut in my first estimate. Perhaps I could skimp through the

year on $75 and pay my railroad fare with the remainder of the hundred. And the reports of the YMCA made me feel certain that I could earn the better part of the outlay by doing odd jobs. I did not start from New York until two weeks after the official opening of the university. My experience in the night school had taught me how to do a month's work in a week, so that I had no doubt of my ability to catch up with my classes. As long as I had a job, I felt that I had a job. ought to keep it as long as I could heaven alone knew when I would have another so I worked at the Pennsylvania terminal until one Friday late in September on Saturday I packed my

belongings bought the return half of an excursion ticket to St. Louis for three dollars less than the regular price and went around to say goodbye to my friends Goodman gave me a pound of Russian tobacco and a case of five hundred cigarettes from his father's shop Esther wanted to give me her fountain pen but I would not let her and made her accept my two leather bound quarto volumes of dickens leftovers from my book-selling venture in gratitude for her confidence in me on Sunday I was off my brothers my cousins and a number of my school fellows came to the station. As I scrambled into the car with my telescope case and my big bundle of food for the journey, the womenfolk burst into tears. Poor Max, they cried, what will become of him out there in the wilderness, among strangers,

cut off from the world? I tried to smile encouragingly, but my heart was in my throat. I was to learn the reason for those kind silly tears soon enough. I was going to the land of the real Americans. End of chapter 16. Chapter 17 of an American in the Making, the life story of an immigrant by Marcus Eli Ravage. This Librevox recording is in the public domain. part four america of the americans chapter seventeen in the mold i am sure that if the immigrant to america were ever to dream of the things that await him at his journey's end

there would be no need for any laws to keep him out he would prefer to eat grass and kiss the royal sceptre and stay at home any man i suppose with a drop of vagabond's blood in his make-up and a family to support will under the stress of necessity fold his tent and move on to greener pastures and no human soul will indefinitely endure the insolence of oppression without flaming into revolt but there is on the other hand a generally accepted limit to the price of bread and food freedom, beyond which even a hungry and a weary voyager, if he retains a sense of value and of honor, will not go, purely as a matter of principle. One may be willing to submit with a kind of grim cheerfulness to train robbers and steerage pirates, to seasickness and homesickness, to customs officials, and, though this is really too much, even to Ellis Island inspectors, and count the whole thing with the heart-ringing farewells thrown in

as a tolerably fair exchange for the right to live and the means of living. But no one, I insist, would for a moment consider the transaction if he suspected that he must, before he is through, become an American into the bargain. Mortal man is ready for everything except spiritual experiences. For I hardly need tell you that becoming an American is spiritual adventure of the most volcanic variety. I am not talking of taking out citizens' papers. It cannot be too often repeated that the shedding of one nationality

and the assumption of another is something more than a matter of perfunctory formalities and solemn oaths to a flag and a constitution. Vowing allegiance to the state is one thing, but renouncing your priceless inherited identity, and blending your individual soul with the soul of an alien people is quite another affair and it is this staggering experience of the spirit this slipping of his ancient ground from under the immigrant's feet this commingling of souls toward a new birth that i have in mind when i speak of becoming an american to be born in one world and grow to manhood there to be thrust then into the midst of another with all one's racial heritage with one's likes and dislikes aspirations and prejudices and to be abandoned to the task of adjusting within one's own being the clash of opposed systems of culture tradition and social

convention. If that is not heroic tragedy, I should like to be told what is. I got to Columbia, Missouri, in the evening two days later. I had written to the president of the university to tell him by what train I would arrive, and I was a little taken aback to find that he had not even sent anyone to meet me. There were a lot of stories. There were a lot of at the station, but they paid no attention to me. They were making a great deal of noise and shaking hands in a boisterous sort of way with one or two decidedly rural-looking boys who had come in on the train with me. I began to feel very lonely.

Yes, began was the word. It was to be continued. My first thought was to make straight for the university. and ask for the president. He was the only person who knew who I was, but inquiry revealed the fact that the campus was a good half mile from the station, so I decided to wait until morning. There was a house not far away that looked like my own home in Vasselui, and it bore a sign with the word hotel under its eaves. I went in and asked an old negro about a lodging, and I went in and asked an old Negro about a lodging for the night. He said the place was full and conducted me across the street

to what he called the annex. There I was given a room. In the morning I dressed and began to look for the kitchen. A little girl asked me whether I wanted breakfast. I said, no, I'll have breakfast after I come back from the president's house. But where is the sink? I want to wash. It took her some time to understand me, then she grinned and pointed to a picture and bowl on a little stand in my room. At the university, I learned that the president was out of town, but a clerk told me, with a twinkle in her eye, that if I wanted to be registered, she would show me where to go. At the registrar's office, another clerk surprised me by saying that he remembered my name quite well because he had got all the letters I had written to the president and then astonished me

still more by producing a folder which contained every one of them he said pleasantly that my name was so unusual that he could not forget it and added some other polite remarks about the fine city new york was and his hopes as to my happiness in missouri then we got down to business and I felt my heart sinking as I watched my hard-earned funds melting away under his efficient pencil. Let's see. Your incidental fee will be $5. Biology lab, five again.

You are going to take Chemistry 1, lab fee, $10. I don't know just where I would have landed at this remorseless rate if I had not had enough presence of mind to interrupt him here you will excuse me i asked i am afraid i shall have to wait a little until i get some more money from new york before i go any further yes you you see it's like this i was hoping that i could earn something first is there not a christian association that gets work for students yes to your right in the corridor as you go out. His courtesy made me bold. You do not suppose I could arrange to make my payments to the university more gradually, say a dollar a week, I asked. He did not know. He had never heard of its being done, but I might see the chairman of the entrance committee on the next floor. And I am sorry to tell

you, he added, that there is one other item which I omitted. registration closed a week ago there will be a late registration fee of five dollars i could see he was completely desolated about my plight did i have a room he wanted to know next if not there was the y m c a again or the bulletin board in academic hall i would have no trouble in finding just what i wanted no i had no room as yet but how about Lathar Paul I should prefer to live in the dormitory he took me in with a sidelong glance I should not advise you to he concluded you will find the boys a little jolly there I do not mind that I assured him while my thoughts lingered anxiously on my resources well there was another difficulty not being a resident of the state I will ineligible but I could make my money go a long way at the University Dining Club

if I would buy a permit for twenty dollars twenty dollars when I had seventeen in the whole world so I went around to the YMCA and was told again that I was a little late most of the jobs had been grabbed up weeks ago likewise the chairman of the entrance committee saw no way of agreeing to my odd suggestion about easy payments if i were a sophomore he might recommend me to the loan fund committee anyhow he would see that i got back my late registration fee if i filled out a blank stating the reasons for my tardiness after wandering about in the buildings i came upon the bulletin board and discovered scores of requests for rumors and roommates and batching partners here was a ray of hope the majority of the rooms seemed to rent for six dollars a month so that with a

roommate the expense would come to very little more than at the dormitory but roommates as i was soon to learn were a notier problem than funds i jotted down a few addresses of boarding-houses as well as the names of several students who announced that they had second-hand books for sale and withdrew to the grounds to contemplate my situation i walked across to the center of the quadrangle and sat down with my back against the base of one of the ivy covered columns most likely they would wait with breakfast for me at the hotel oh well let them wait i was in no humor for food my brain was in a turmoil what i needed was air and the power to think straight now then the first step was to clear out of that dollar and a half-house and take up lodgings for the time being in as inexpensive a place as might be found good economics told me that in spite of the extortioned price the permit in the university dining club would prove a wise investment therefore the next step was to despatch a special delivery letter to my friend in new york for the promised fifty dollars and above all things i must not let the pessimism of the y m c a office paralyze my spirit somehow i must see the thing through

if i cannot get german translations i shall wash dishes or clean shoes or petal or but at this point my ruminations were rudely broken into and i had my first set to with the american reality two young gentlemen emerging from the engineering building were making their way toward me earnestly conferring as they went i glanced up at their faces and told myself with some trepidation that i was in for it there was an unmistakable bellicose light in their eyes what had i done then i heard one whisper go for him bud my first impulse was to clear the field while there was yet time but my curiosity got the better of me and i waited in suspense to see what would happen bud advanced with one hand behind him freshman he asked laconically as he stopped in front of me a happy inspiration dashed the word yes from my tongue and i replied in the negative soft he persisted yes wherefrom cornell well you'll have to get off the mound only juniors and seniors and seniors can sit by the columns. As he walked away, I saw that he carried a paddle in one hand. Hazing, a term I had occasionally heard in high school, flashed through my mind.

I had saved the day, not perhaps by the approved method of open warfare, but at any rate by perfectly legitimate strategy. During the remainder of that first week in Missouri, I found out what it was to be a stranger in a foreign land and as the year wore on i found out more and more columbia seemed a thousand times further removed from new york than new york had been from vasloy back there in the ghetto everybody had thought me quite americanized now i could not help seeing that missouri was more genuinely American than the New York I had known and against this native background I appeared greener than when I had landed this new world I had suddenly dropped into was utterly without my experience and beyond my understanding so that I could not even make up my mind whether I liked or hated it. I had to admire the heartiness, the genuineness,

and the clean-cut manliness of it, but on the other hand it prided itself on a peculiar common sense, a cool-headedness, a practical indifference to things of the spirit, which the intelligent of the east side in me revolted against nevertheless i tried very hard to make myself agreeable to my fellow-students but i failed miserably in the first two months i had and lost a half-dozen room-mates do what i might i could not make them stay with me there were never any hard words we always parted as good friends but almost from the first day they would hardly talk to me and before the week was out they would find some excuse for moving or asking me to move i spent many sleepless nights trying to figure out the thing it wounded my self-esteem to find my society so offensive to everybody besides it touched my poor purse. Every time I was left alone in a room, I had to pay the full rent. But my predicament

had its comic side, too. It got so that when I found a new roommate, I would take a perverse sort of pleasure in watching to see how soon he would begin to look the other way when I spoke to him. I never had to wait very long. These broad intimations so often repeated, should i suppose have convinced me that i lacked the stuff of which missourians were made and should have served to drive me back into my shell whatever their reasons and motives might be it was quite clear that these fellows had no love for my presence and common sense as well as a natural regard for my own sensibilities ought to have told me that the fellow's the simplest way out of my scrape was to leave them alone. Besides, I may as well confess that this subtle distaste, this deep-lying repulsion of contrary temperaments,

was by no means one-sided. Perhaps I liked my elusive roommates a little better than they liked me, but I possessed enough of self-esteem to tell myself that this was but a proof of my own, superiority if Missouri did not take to me I argued so much the worse for Missouri's powers of penetration and appreciation it betrayed at least an extremely provincial state of mind no doubt I had my share of damning imperfections but even a college freshman if he had eyes could see that I was not altogether wanting in the virtues that make for grace.

And if they should care to ask me, I could give these gentlemen a bill of particulars relative to their own shortcomings that would take as much of their conceit out of them as they avowedly persisted in trying to knock out of me. All the same, I did not leave them alone. I did the very opposite. How in the first place was I to avoid them? I was a lonely, deserted rock, surrounded and buffeted by a vast ocean. Wherever I turned, I must face them. If I wanted a job, I must work for and with them. The classrooms, the library, the boarding houses, the very streets swarmed, and echoed with them.

I had no choice but to walk with them, talk with them, and trade with them. Nay, my case was far worse than poor Shylock's. I must even eat with them and at brief intervals

sleep with them. Think of it. An entire university. Yes, a whole state stretching over a hundred thousand square miles filled with nothing but missourians of course there was one avenue of escape i might go back to the ghetto in new york but i was not fool enough for that alive as i was from the very start to his deficiencies and his foibles i could see that the missourian had something to teach me that i needed very badly to learn in one of my earliest letters to esther i wrote i am in an appalling mess but it will be the making of me the sheer conflict somehow appealed to me it was not exactly any notion of valor or any shame at the thought of failing to see a thing through

my bringing up had bred very little of the chivalrous in me my friends would never dream of holding the failure against my character i merely felt that the constant rubbing of shoulders with a body of people who were in nearly every way the opposite of myself was bound to do me good even if i acquired none of the enemy's virtues the contact with him could do nothing less than throw light on my own all to numerous weaknesses. And so I flung myself into the battle with an intense fury. I deliberately went out of my way to get stepped on. I attended chapel religiously, in spite of the fact that the speeches bored me and the prayers jarred on me.

I was punctual at meal time, so as not to miss my usual, portion of side-long glances and grins and open ho-hows. Timit as I was, I let no opportunity slip to get into an argument at the cost of getting myself thoroughly disliked. I even went so far as to join the cadet corps and was bawled at by the commandant whose thundering bass voice reminded me of COSA, and was laughed at by the members of my platoon. for my unsoldierly bearing and was eternally posted for soiled gloves or unpolished shoes or errors in executing commands and was made to write excuses when I would rather have read Hine or Huxley for these delinquencies

and to rewrite them over and over again until they conformed precisely to military etiquette and was hailed before the adjutant and bawled at some more when I revolted at the stupidity of it all, and was punished with extra drilling in the awkward squad, every bit of which was just what I deserved for betraying my radical faith by getting into the silly business at all. More than half the time, if you will pardon the unmasculine confession, I was in the depths of the blues. and during at least half of that, I was contemplating suicide, which, however, I took no steps to commit,

beyond the penning of an exceedingly vivid portrayal of the act, which was perpetrated with a vial of deadly substances filched from the chemistry laboratory, and the subsequent regrets of my fellow students as they reviewed the history of their uncharitable dealings with me. the worst of it was that all my heroic suffering seemed to be going for not at least for a long time for the principal problem that i had set out to solve remained as obstinate as ever why would not those boys room with me to this puzzling question none of my disagreeable adventures would furnish an answer of course it was quite quite clear they found me a queer, unlikable animal, but I had no mat all along. Why did they not like me?

None of my guesses satisfied me. At the boardinghouse where I stayed while waiting for money from New York, I heard a great many stories in an impossible dialect about Jews, and judging from the satisfaction with which they were received, I thought at first that I was a victim of ancient prejudice. But I could not hold on to that theory. There was not a trace of venom in the yarns. Why these chaps had not the remotest idea what a Jew was like.

Their picture of him was the stage caricature of a rather mild individual with mobile hands who sold clothing and spoke broken English. No one in Missouri knew that I had. had Jewish parents until three years later, when on the occasion of my graduation, the newspapers of St. Louis and Kansas City thought my career of sufficient interests to have me interviewed, and I made some passing allusion to my origin. No more tenable was my surmise about class antagonism. Indeed, I was not long in Missouri before I was struck with the absence of every real class feeling and I said to myself exultingly that however America might have broken faith with me in other ways

her promise of democratic equality she had scrupulously fulfilled to be sure there were the fraternities with their vague dream of building up an aristocracy on a foundation of first-rate tailoring and third-rate chorus girls but they hardly mattered. The genuine American recognized but one distinction in human society, the vital distinction between the strong, effectual, real man, and the soft, pleasure-loving, unreliant failure. As far as I could judge, the real men were chiefly Barb's, and the failures, at least on examinations, were, for the most part, Hellenes. If then my isolation rested neither on race prejudice nor on class exclusiveness, what did it rest on? My poor, bewildered brain was unable to answer. End of Chapter 17.

the life story of an immigrant by marcus eli ravage this lepervox recording is in the public domain chapter eighteen the american as he is my friend in new york on whose liberality the financial success of my venture was entirely dependent had not expected me to get into straits so soon and it was nearly two weeks before help arrived. In the meantime, I had canvassed the labor market and had found it so discouraging that I informed Esther how unjustified her optimism had been. A lot of people had taken my name an address, but I could tell from the way they looked at me that my chances with them would be very slim, even if they had not already got someone else. The soonest I could possibly expect to get employment was at the end of the semester when a number of the present job holders would be leaving the university on various missions. I had also caught up with my classes and had succeeded somehow

in impressing my teachers a little more favorably than my fellow students. In particular, I was taking effective hold of the work in languages, so much so that my English instructor had twice, read my themes to the class without thank goodness divulging my name my seventeen dollars had gone for books incidentals entrance fee and board and i was now rapidly and ruinously running into debt and anxiously inquiring at the post-office for mail when at last relief came in an envelope with yellow stamps the first thing i did was to buy my permit to the University Dining Club and to secure myself against the future by paying for a month's keep in advance. The price per board 21 meals was $1.50. With the cost of the permit, it amounted to about $2 per week. There were between 50 and 60 tables in one vast room and eight Missourians at each table. When the

the big gong rang there was a fierce scramble for places followed by a scraping of chairs and a rattling of crockery and silverware usually during the noon meal the manager of the club would get up to make some announcement and invariably he would be greeted by yells of fire away jack horner we want butter can the oleo before an athletic game and particularly after a victory the rooting and the yelling, the pounding on the tables, and the miscellaneous racket were deafening. I thought I had wandered into a barbarous country. I confess I did not altogether disapprove of the barbarians. After a while, I tried very hard to be one myself, but I did not know how. Most of the conversation at the table and around the campus was about athletics. I wanted to talk

about socialism and found that these university men knew as little about it and had as dark a dread of it as the clodpate on the east side religion was taboo they went to church because it made them feel good as they put it and there was an end they took their Christianity as a sort of drug sex too was excluded from sane conversation, although there was no objection to it as material for funny stories. I went to one or two football and basketball games. I could not afford very many and like them, but I could not, for the life of me, say an intelligent word about them. The chatter around me about forward passes and goals and fumbles might just as well have been in a foreign language for all I got out of it. When Missouri won a hard victory over Texas, I caught the enthusiasm and joined in the shirt-tail parade,

wondering in the meantime what my intellectual friends in New York would have thought if they had seen me in that outfit. But the hero worship bestowed on. the overgrown animals who won the battle irritated me i could not see what place this sort of thing had in a university and it surprised and delighted me to find that some of the more sensible fellows who loved the game took the same view of the matter as i did i made heroic efforts to become an adept in sports not so much because the subject interested me but because because I did not greatly relish being taken for a fool. There could be very little doubt, but that my tablemates had made up their minds that I was one. No one else that they had ever

seen or heard of could sit through a meal the way I did without opening his mouth, and that while the calendar was crowded with events of every kind. Moreover, I knew but one way to make friends with people, and that was by the east side method of discussion. There was no help for it. I was in the enemy's country, and I must submit to his tradition and his customs, or die. If he refused to talk about poetry and Nietzsche and the Russian Revolution and the Scandinavian drama and the class struggle, I ought at any rate to be thankful that there was at least one topic he was interested in. It was not his fault that I had been sewing sleeves when I ought to have been playing ball, and that I had gone to the wrong kind of a school for my secondary

training, where I had been made into a grind and a bore and a disputatious fanatic, when I could just as well have learned to be a level-headed man among men. It was not yet too late, fortunately, the opportunities for rounding out my education were ample enough i had but to bring my will into play besides the institution of sport had begun to interest me no one but an intellectual snob could remain at missouri for any length of time without perceiving that the enthusiasm of the ball field was something more than a mere fad or a frivolous path time it was a highly developed cult sprung out of the soil and the native spirit and possessed of all the distinguishing characteristics of its type it had a hierarchy and a liturgy and a symbolic ritual of its own what was on first impression taken to be but an argot was in reality a very exact sacred

tongue in a class with the choice Hebrew which my old rabbi's wife in Vaslui insisted on talking on Saturdays. A football match in full swing had all the solemnity and all the fervor and color of a great religious service. The band and the songs, the serpentine processions, and the periodic risings, the mystic signals and the picturesque vestments, the obscure dramatic conflict with its sudden flights and hot pursuits, the transfigured faces of the populace, the intense silences, alternating with violent outbursts of approving cheers and despondent groans. All this was plainly not a game, but a significant national worship. akin to the high mass and the festival of Dionysus. What had deceived me about the true nature of

this thing at first was that my Missourian professed devotion to an altogether different creed, a creed which was as alien to his western clime as it was hostile to his temper and his aspirations. Six days in the week he labored at his field sports and shouted from the housetops his pagan Macon about a sane mind in a sane body and looked upon the world as a fierce battleground in which every man must grapple with his fellows and in which the victor was not only the hero but the saint as well and resented the merest intimation of any contrary doctrine as an insult to human fortitude and a danger to civilization and cultivated a strident burly, rough masculinity, and despised the sensitive and the studious and the idealistic as morbid, effeminate, chicken-livered weaklings. And then, on the seventh day, he suddenly turned his coat and changed his tune and denied this robust faith of his, and sighed about the materialism

of the world and the folly of man's desire. and assented with bowed head and contrite heart to the assertion that the poor which meant the weak shall inherit the earth and that men are brothers and that God who feedeth the crow and clotheeth the lily shall feed and clothe also him and humbled himself before the gentle impractical dreamer of Nazareth and sang hymns to him and called him master who could under such circumstances fail to arrive at the opinion that if the Missourian was not a hypocrite, he must at least be amazingly inconsistent. Athletics, however, was not the only weak link in my chain. I was found wanting in the most unexpected places. In the class in literature i frequently attracted attention by displaying all sorts of scraps of curious knowledge as when the instructor asked for a specimen of hindu drama and i volunteered the play of sacutala or when on another occasion i pointed out that the german word in yal was in no way related to the english word genial but when the boys in the house organized the organized a coon hunt and asked me to join in it, I had to admit that I did not know what a coon was,

which gave Thompson the wag of the crowd an opportunity to tell me that coons were vegetables and to inquire in a tone of mock surprise whether it were possible that I had never eaten possum and sweet potatoes. In the work in biology and physics, the things that both teach and textbooks were taking for granted as being matters of common knowledge were the very ones that puzzled me most the entire lore of field and forest of gun and workshop was a sealed book to me I could not drive a nail into a plank without hitting my fingers what were persimmons how was cider made where did the sorghum in the pewter pictures that were always on the tables at the club come from. I had not the faintest idea. My familiarity with trees stopped at the oak,

my acquaintance with flowers at the rose. I did not know how to swim or skate or harness a horse or milk a cow. It had never entered my head that not all clouds were rain clouds, that a wind from the east brought one kind of weather and a southwester another. that gales, tornadoes, cyclones, and sandstorms were as distinguishable from one another as were hexameters from Alexandrines and novellas from idols. There were apparently more things in heaven and earth than were discussed at war showers Russian tea house or in the works of insurgent literati. Wherefore, I must at once revise my opinion of the heathen in Missouri.

and expand my notions as to what constituted a well-rounded education my fellow students having for the most part come to the university direct from the farm were not slow in observing how ignorant I was of all things agricultural nor in making the most of their discovery they found me a godsend for their ready wit and their native love of broad farce they said I did not know the difference between a hoe and a threshing machine, but that was an exaggeration. It was true, however, that I was not sure whether it was a pig or a sheep that bleated, whether clover was a plant and plover a bird, or the other way about, whether heifers and colts were both or neither of the genus bovine, and whether harrow and furrow,

were interchangeable names for the same object or were entirely separate things i kept talking of sewing corn until i was told that planting was the word in the bible and in shakespeare i had always read about the reaping of the grain in missouri they harvested the crops i saw no connection between this gap in my education and my failure to make friends then it dawned upon me that one reason why i could not get on with these fellows was that i did not speak their language why i had thought that i was a wonder at english hadn't i got the highest mark in freshman composition hadn't dr wilbur of the english division encouraged me to drop medicine on the ground that i was cut out for a professorship in that subject yes but while i pronounced like a native and otherwise spoke and wrote with considerable freedom my english was still the very grammatical and very clumsy book english of the foreigner i was weak in the colloquial idiom and always had to resort to round about locutions to express the simplest idea i had mastered the science of english speech I had yet to acquire the art of it. My vocabulary ran to the Latin elements of the hybrid tongue,

while what I needed worst were the common everyday words. Of course, the professors understood me, and having somehow got hold of the outlines of my history, they even commended me. But the rank and file of the student body pricked up their ears when I talked and simply stared. every time i tried to tell a story it fell flat because of some subtle shade of meaning that escaped me my stock of words and phrases was not varied enough i might know one word like earth whereas the missourian had his choice of ground and soil and sod and half a dozen others which he could draw on with sure hand

these little difficulties in making myself perfectly understood had an evil tendency toward making me self-conscious and aggravating my timidity i fell into the habit of studying out my sentences before entrusting them to the ears of my critical friends with the consequence that they turned out more silted than ever as soon as i opened my mouth i would realize of course what a bad job i had made of them and then my confidence would fail me my throat would get parched and lumpy and my interlocutor would cry what is it in such a way as to knock the bottom out of me altogether after a number of experiences of this harrowing kind i determined that my voice was in need of cultivation and i joined the class in elocution where the instructor did most of the reading himself he had once been an actor and lectured interminably on deep breathing and declared with much emphasis that a good delivery was essential to vivacious conversation which was what i knew myself and that it was largely a matter of intelligence which was not true so that i dropped elocution and borrowed a volume of mark twain from the library and read pages and pages of it aloud to myself as every one at ms u who happened to be walking in the neighborhood of hinkson creek before breakfast can testify what is more i bought a penny scrapbook and jotted down every word i overheard at my table-mates conversation that was new to my foreign ear and subsequently consulted the dictionaries to find out what it meant

unfortunately for me the men of missouri had command of a whole vast and varied vocabulary of which not a trace could be found in any dictionary no matter how diligently i searched it did not take me long to lay hold of their peculiar trick of cutting words off at the end and after a month or so i could myself refer to professors as profs to a course in literature as lit and to the quadrangle as the quad i found that highly practical like everything else in missouri and convenient but when a chap asked me to pass him that stuff and pointed one day to the potatoes and another day to a pile of typewritten notes i was mystified i could not easily perceive what quality it was the two commodities had in common that made the same name applicable to both moreover i observed that my friends expressed every variety of emotion disappointment enthusiasm anger elation by the one word or was it too doggone food in general was called grub although gravies and sauces were sometimes distinguished as goo, while, on the other hand, money had a whole chain of names to itself,

rocks and Missouma and wheels, and of course stuff. It was all very bewildering. Perhaps the greatest stumbling block in the way of my readjustment was the emphasis that my Missourian placed on what he called good manners. I was not quite sure. obtuse as to miss the rather frank curiosity with which certain details in my conduct at table were regarded. Well, I knew better, but it was part of my east side religion not to be concerned with the externals of conduct. One was in peril of losing sight of the essential and of becoming insincere as soon as one began to worry about the correct thing and the polite. word. Once or twice I succeeded in drawing an unwary freshman into an argument about religion or

economics, and then I wished I had not. His good manners rendered him quite sterile as a debater. I could on no account get him to make a straightforward, flat-footed statement, and he exasperated me by a way he had of emasculating my own emphatic. assertions with his eternal colorless conformity. He invariably introduced a remark with an, it seems to me, or an, it looks as if, or don't you think? And if I, with my ill-breeding, shot back at him as I usually did, no, I don't think so at all, I disagree with you entirely. He looked grieved and surprised and visibly chilled and crawfished out of the embarrassing situation

by admitting that there were two sides to every question and that no doubt I was right too. And the next time he spied me on the street, he suddenly developed a preference for the opposite side. Did he have manners? My father would not have thought so. How many whacks over the fingers do you suppose I got at the family board at home for putting my elbows on the edge of the table and for inclining the soup bowl away from myself while dipping the spoon into it backhand? It is painful even to recall.

Yet that was precisely what they did in Missouri. As for using the fingers of the left hand to assist the fork in the right in the process of cash. capturing an obstinate morsel, whacking, in my parents' opinion, was too good for that, and nothing but chasing the offender from the table would suffice. Yet that again was what they did in Missouri.

I will say nothing about tossing biscuits across the dining hall and such like violent business because in the first place the good name of my college is precious to me. And secondly, because that sort of thing was never the work of any but students of engineering or members of the hannibal club and these two are not listed as civilized even in missouri but i will say something of the practice of parting with a companion in the street without wishing him good-bye of resting one's legs on the table while reading and of whistling incessantly inside the house

and what i will say is this that what are good manners in one country are extremely bad manners in another the business of introductions was my chief abomination in my little radical world in new york the institution hardly existed if you liked a person you went up to him and drew him into a discussion and became friends with him if you did not like him you paid no attention to him in missouri this queer formality was all over the shop everybody wanted to introduce you to everybody they seemed to think i would take offense if i was not extended the dubious courtesy the ritual of the performance would have been a rich source of entertainment to me if i had only had some one of my own kind to share it with. My gentleman would leap up, grab my hand violently, and, staring me right in the eye, exclaim, mighty glad to know you, man. And he expected me to answer him back in kind. But as a rule, I was constrained to disappoint him there, because I was not at all glad to know him. I was wishing that I could meet him on Eldridge Street, where I was at home, and see how he would like

that. I suffered unendurably from hunger. It took me three years to get used to American cookery. At the club, everything tasted flat. I missed the pickles and the fragrant soups and the highly seasoned fried things and the rich pastries made with sweet cheese that I had been brought up on. The breakfast hour was outrageous. In New York, I used to do. to drink coffee in the morning and then have breakfast at 10 here i had to get down a full meal at seven o'clock in the morning or starve until one the very order of the courses was topsy-turvy at home we began the big meal of the day with radish or ripe olives or chopped liver or fish then we had meat of one kind or another then some vegetables cooked sweet or sour sweet and wound up with soup the missourian always began at the tail end started with soup when he had any which was all too rare

then piled his meat and potatoes of potatoes he never tired and vegetables in several heaps all on the same plate devouring them all together and concluded the performance with a muddy paste he called pumpkin pie and some powerful beverage that passed for coffee. Is it any wonder that I was so slow becoming an American when, as everyone knows, nationality is principally a matter of diet, and it was this array that I must learn to cherish. End of chapter 18. Chapter 19 of An American in the Making The Life Story of an Immigrant by Marcus Eli Ravage This Librevox recording is in the public domain

Chapter 19 The Fruits of Solitude My expense account for 1906-07 which I still preserve along with some choice compositions a notebook or two and a gratifying press clipping about my maiden speech before the Cosmopolitan Club, as the precious momentos of that incredible year, ought not to be allowed to perish in the dark. It should certainly prove of inestimable value

to certain extravagant-minded members of the Committee on Student Budgets by showing them what really are the possibilities of a minimum expenditure for young men in moderate circumstances. They would learn, for instance, that the item of amusements and incidentals is capable of an amazing contraction from $20 to very nearly nothing a year, or to be quite accurate,

to $2.12. Thus, two half-pecks of apples, 30 cents. 12 bananas, 12 cents. One football game, 50 cents. One basketball game, 25 cents. Two visits to the Nickelodeon, 10 cents. Smoking tobacco, 80 cents.

One Christmas dinner cigar, 5 cents. What a person of more modest tastes than mine, would do still further to bring this elastic item toward the absolute zero is an interesting question. It is clearly not indispensable to the maintenance of life to go to moving picture houses, and as long as the club table provides enough of bread and gravy, a consistently economical young man with a goal before him may conceivably eliminate such articles from his diet, it as bananas and apples still I admit that I was extravagant at times let the next item speak for itself here are stamps postal cards and correspondence

stationary to the appalling amount of seven dollars and six cents I hope no one will think me lacking in a sense of proportion but the truth is that if I did not go oftener to the games and the shows it was in order to have more money for letters it was the only way for me to keep my soul alive i wrote to everybody i knew because i loved everybody now who was in new york sometimes it was business but the greater part of the time it was untainted affection i had to remind brother harry several times how badly i need those rubber shoes and socks he had promised me cousin Abby every now and then sent me a few of the radical papers and I must express to him the genuine gratitude I felt for being kept in touch with the beloved world I had left behind but the bulk of my correspondence was with Esther and one or two others of my erstwhile fellow students in the night school. It was to get their letters that I regularly raced home to my room

between the nine and the ten o'clock classes, and whether I was bright or stupid the rest of the day depended largely on what the mails had brought me from them. Esther was generous as to length when she did write, but no amount of urging could convince her that a daily letter was not too much. Perhaps if she had known how much such things meant to me, she would have come around, but I did not want her to know. I was half unconsciously putting the best face on my life in Missouri. I wanted her to follow me. I wanted everybody at the Manhattan School to come to Missouri. Was it a selfish craving for the society of my own kind? Or was it the peculiar psychology of the whipped dog longing for the sight of other whipped dogs?

Perhaps I do not hesitate to confess that I had developed a kind of passion for wanting to see all my school friends in my own scrape. But I think I am honest when I add that I was merely hoping that it would do them as much good as it was doing me. and so when Esther's resolution seemed to be on the breaking point and she wrote me discouraged letters about the terrors of geometry and the heartlessness of examiners I assumed the schoolmasterly tone and scolded her for her lack of persistence and held out glowing pictures to her of the rewards that were awaiting her at the end of her struggles And I was right, too, about Esther, at any rate. For the following autumn, I had the satisfaction of seeing her in Missouri,

where she still remains, as happy an American as ever came from Romania. Of the three or four whom I succeeded in bringing out, she was the only one who stuck it out. The others maintained that they could see no fun in the thing. No, there was not much fun in being made into an American. I was painfully aware of that fact myself. Oh, the dreary loneliness of it, particularly the Sundays. Of all the days in the week, they were the hardest to live through.

The very holiday tone in the air was suffocating me. Everybody else was busy and outrageous. happy on Sunday. The boys in the house went to church in the morning, wrote letters in the afternoon, and went calling in the evening. I was left all alone. There was not even any mail. The library, the only place where I could still feel a sense of human contact, was closed. But there were whole seasons that, if anything, could surpass even those intolerable Sundays. At Christmas, nearly every fellow went home to his family. There was an exchange of presents and cheerful wishes. Invitations were extended to good chaps to come and partake of turkey and mashed

potatoes at the homes of their friends. And then, for an entire fortnight, the town looked dessert, and I was almost the only border left at the club. I have an idea, for instance, that I was not particularly fond of the jams and the cakes and the fudge that a lot of the boys brought home with them from their weekend trips to the farm. If I recall aright, I had more than one taste of them, for those queer fellows were absurdly generous in their own surprising way. First, they would destroy my appetite for food by some thoughtless remark, and the next moment they would ask me to partake of their dainties with a help yourself, which it was impossible to misunderstand. Ah, well, I had eaten better things in my day, and yet I envied them

their goodies. I often thought that it would be a jolly thing to have a mother on a farm somewhere and to have her bake and boil things and pack them into one's suitcase while one went out to the barn and inquired about the health of the newest calf or the old rheumatic dog and i sometimes even had an odd wish that i could be a quote's christian what did it matter after all that they took on faith so many unreasonable things or said they did and worshipped Jesus as a pale divinity while denying his fierce humanity, and coddled themselves into a belief in a second and much longer and rather emasculated existence. When one came right down to it, it was really immense for a religion, this Christianity, with its couples and its Easter bonnets, socials and its watches its clear-headed emphasis on the things of this world its

innocent childlike hoidenism if I had been born into any one of the many indistinguishable varieties of this faith I often asked myself would I have turned against it possibly not but all the same I did not often go to church and of course I did not go calling at all Missouri is a co-educational university but it might just as well have been a monastery for all the social good it did me when my ways and my personality were finding so little favor with the men my chances of making friends with the women were as you may well imagine very scant indeed now and then in the course of a

recitation, I might get a whispered distress call from a young lady, whose fate in the person of the professor, had surprised in the midst of other thoughts. Occasionally in the library, too, such a one might, with a gracious smile, ask for assistance in the preparation of her English theme. But when she next saw me on the street or about the campus, she betrayed no signer. of recognition even those who had formerly met me at the Deutsche Veren and had professed to be pleased to make my acquaintance seemed unaccountably eager to sever that acquaintance as soon as the meeting was over their conduct toward me was a painful mystery it struck me with my east-side notion of frankness as needlessly insincere why I wondered

don't they come out openly and tell me when I displeased them? And I wanted very much to be friends with them. Their interests were much finer than the men's, and their appreciation of literature was keener. I would have given a great deal for the privilege of calling on one of a few girls I had observed in class to take a walk with her and have a discussion in the good old style of East Broadway.

Yes, it was dreary, but it was far from dull. I had but to take a glance into myself to find excitement of plenty. Solitude had its compensations like everything else. For one thing, I was learning the valuable art of enjoying my own company. Back in the ghetto there had come a time once when it was a positive, torment to remain alone. If there was not a gathering somewhere, if no one came to see me, I must at least run down into the teeming streets and mingle with the throngs and feel the pulse of people about me. If I could not see an intelligent, I might walk into a cousin and have a chat

with a fellow Vasluander. Here there was hardly any escape. The presence of the crowd was only a stimulant to my wistful thoughts. The gay laughter, the companionable groups, the beaming couples, only made me feel lonelier than ever. In sheer self-defense, I tried for a time to delude myself with a consolation picture of the Missourian as a cold. hold, unsympathetic dog. I pounced on his intense anti-social individualism, his worship of the strong

man, his devotion to the ideal of personal success at all costs, his sneering indifference to the unspeakable miseries of the black man in his midst, his lack of interest in international matters, his snobbish disregard of the claims of the worker, and told myself that a fellow who walked about the world in that kind of thin shoes could hardly be expected to give much sentimental thought to the rather minor woes of a moping hypersensitive individual who had chosen to thrust himself his way it was a tremendous relief to think of him in this way as a monstrous device of wood and steel inasmuch as it did away with the need of further thinking and removed the unpleasant business of self-criticism but the picture would not hold its color and kept gradually fading away before the light of facts

willy nilly i must admit that there was an openness a freedom yes even a delightful warmth and charm a distinctive kind of pioneer neighborliness in the social atmosphere of my Missouri, which was altogether unique in my experience. The very individualism of these people was in reality, an emphasis on the happiness of the single life. They were far from unsympathetic among themselves, and anything but cold even toward the complete stranger. When I spent a day at the infirmary, the whole crowd from the house and the table turned out to see me. and poked fun at my gripe and there was no escaping it at myself they made a religion of personal decency no it would not do unpalatable as the truth was there was no evading the patent fact that if i was not taken in among the missourians the fault was with me and not with them with this uncompromising confession came unexpected relief i was floundering in the dark as you see grappling with my obstinate problem like a miner without tools and without a lantern

but having made up my mind that i was not a victim but an unconscious comedian it behooved me to stand before the glass and enjoy if i might my own amusing antics. Once I admitted that I really was material for sport, the logical thing was to try and see some of it myself, perhaps to do something in the way of toning it down a bit. And so there followed a pitiless dissecting of the internal man, a dragging out into the light of a layer upon layer of encrusted self, a lining up for inspection of a whole vast procession of things. Antiques from Syria, heirlooms from a long exile in Asia and Europe, shards and fragments of a proud and broken ancestry, warped bits of thin veneer from Romania, heavy plate from the radical ghetto, gems and rubbish without end, I took in the exhibition with mingled feelings and asked myself incredulously whether all this was what I had been used to calling my simple self.

The more I contemplated it, the more I felt inclined to be struck with the oddity of it. If that was what my American neighbors had in mind, when they talked of taking the conceit out of me, they were coming very, very, near to accomplishing their purpose. Another glance, and I would be grinning at the pile myself. I was being threatened with a novel thing for an East Sider, a sense of humor. Quite as novel and as further result of my solitude was the opening of my eyes to the unsuspected miracles about me, both in Romania and in the ghetto nature was looked upon either as vermin or vegetable a thing to hold your nose at or to devour as a child i had exhibited a fondness for animals but when my father once found me playing with our neighbor's dog he took me into the house and made it very clear to me how unhebrae my conduct had been such things he told me earnestly were of the gentile and a good child of our tribe should shun them

on the east side people did frequently take excursions to the neighboring parks but the real attractions were often of the lecture that went with the picnic and the stores of assorted food than the loveliness of the landscape So here again was a ragged edge to my training. As the dreary months dragged on, I took to wandering out into the country. At first, my chief aim was to run away from the house and my own unpleasant thoughts, but it was impossible to roam over the pretty hills around Columbia for very long, without falling under their spell. I walked for the most part at night when my lessons for the next day were done, and I found myself becoming enchanted with its myriad mysteries, the fragrance of the damp earth, the bustle of the wind in the

leaves, the murmur of the brooks, the scintillating fires of innumerable glowworms, the soothing feel of dew-filled, cool grass, the sweep of clouds over the moon, the far-off voices of beasts and men all these were filtering into my soul and making me into a new being my enforced exclusiveness served also to advance me in my studies my professor of english had probably never found out why i was so prompt with my papers when the majority of the class had to be urged and threatened and often penalized to make them bring theirs in on time. Well, what else was there for me to do when there were no girls to call up and no chums to come and drag me away to parties and things? Besides, I had for years looked forward to this opportunity when time and command of the language might adhere to make extensive reading possible. On the east side, literature had consisted almost entire

of the insurgent moderns, interspersed with a few choice English writers like Carlyle, Shelley, and Shakespeare, whom we also regarded as, quotes, among our own. Now, with the aid of courses, I was coming upon whole continents of undiscovered books, and I threw myself with a navigator's zest into the joyous task of exploration. I was filling notebooks with exercises in style based on Stevenson and Haslett. I was coming back to my old enemy Milton and reveling in Paradise Lost, and I was devouring the great critics in order to obtain guidance for further voyages. Moreover, there was German literature, a planet in itself.

A class reference had directed me to the hundred and and 30-odd volume collection of the Deutsche National Literature, and I actually undertook to go through the whole thing from beginning to end. On the whole, then, it looked as if I might yet work out my salvation, if only those barbarians would leave me to myself. But it was not in them to do that. They seemed to be determined on disturbing. my peace of mind. They were devoting, I honestly believe, all their spare thoughts and all their

inventive genius to thinking up ways of making me uncomfortable. One young gentleman, still reminiscent of my ignorance of rural things, made up a tale of how I went to get a job on a farm, and proceeded to relate it at the table. The farmer gave Max a pail and a stool, and sent him out to milk the cow about an hour later when the old boy failed to show up with the stuff reuben went out to see what was the trouble he found his new assistant in a fierce pickle his clothes were torn and his hands and face were bleeding horribly what in heck is the matter asked the farmer oh curse the old cow said max i can't make her sit on that stool a burst of merriment greeted the climactic ending although the yarn was a trifle musty and the most painful part of it was that i must laugh at the silly thing myself it was not at all true as one of my numerous room-mates tried to intimate that i shunned baths i was merely conservative in the matter one day however he had the indelicacy to ask me the some one way however he had the indelicacy to ask me the some personal question whether I ever took a bath and I told him of course rather sullenly that I did

once in a while some time later I overheard him repeat the dialogue to the other men in the house and provoking shouts of laughter it puzzled me to see where the joke was until I learned that these fellows were taking a shower bath at the gymnasian every day it seemed to me that that was running a good thing into the ground again i noticed that my roommates were making a great show of their tooth-brushes they used them after every meal and before retiring as the advertisement say and always with an unnecessary amount of splash and clatter at home i had been taught to keep my mouth and teeth clean without all this fuss nevertheless i thought that i would get a brush and join in the drill after that the other brushes became noticeably quiet and then of course there was the institution of the practical joke on april first there was soap in in the pie. If you got in late to a meal, it was wise to brush your chair and pick your bites, if any bites were left. If not, there was no telling what you might swallow or sit on.

More than once I tasted salt in my water and pepper in my biscuits. I seemed to have been marked from the first as a fit subject for these pranks. On Halloween, a squad of cadet, debts commanded by a corporal, entered my room, and ordered me to get into my uniform, shouldered my gun, and proceed to the gymnasium, which, according to the order read, the commandant assigned me to guard against stragglers. I guarded through a whole uneventful night. Toward morning, the captain of the football team, who had a room in the gymnasium, returned from a party. I ordered him to do that. to halt and give the password. He smiled and tried to enter. I made a lunge for him and would have run my

bayonet through him if he had not begun to laugh. Go on home, you poor boy, he said. They pull that stunt off every year. Poor joke, I think. The next day my tablemates tried to jolly me about it. They said I would be court-martialed as a deserter from duty. I got angry. and that made them all the more hilarious. Then a great strapping fellow named Harvey spoke up. Be still, you galutes, he said to them. And then to me, for gosh sake, fellow, be human. I tried a long time to figure out what he meant by human,

and for the rest of my college career I strove hard to follow his advice. It was the first real hint I had got on what America, through her representatives in Missouri, was expecting of me. Harvey became my first American friend. End of Chapter 19 Chapter 20 of An American in the Making, The Life Story of an Immigrant by Marcus Eli Ravage. This Librevox recording is in the public. domain chapter 20 Harvey I was still at the stage where one American looked and acted exactly as

every other and it was a profound mystery to me how I had gained the favor of this very representative specimen of the type I had not greatly changed as far as I could judge between September and February unless it was for the worse if I I had only had one or two of my own people and had not been in such dire need of human fellowship, I doubt whether I should have been attracted to him, notwithstanding the fact that I owed him a debt of gratitude for having taken up the cudgels in my behalf. But he was a long way from being hard up for company. I walked home with him from the club that night, and I observed with a feeling mingled of envy and admiration that he was cordially greeted by almost everyone that

passed us and during the half hour that i remained in his room he must have had a dozen friends dropping in who were as amazed to find him hobnobbing with me as i was myself my surprise at his unaccountable behavior toward me reached a climax when a few days later he asked me to come and live with him captain he said you and I are pretty much in the same boat if you want an old lady let's get together i could scarcely believe my ears what could he be up to i wondered as soon as my first flush of joy at his offer had passed some new variety of practical joke that i had not yet experienced or was it it really possible that I was, quote, arriving in Missouri? Be his scheme what it might, I felt a great temptation to accept. But remembering my long record of failures as a roommate, I hesitated, lest my newfound friendship, if it was friendship, should go on the rocks. I should like to, I said,

but I think I had better not. Then Harvey told me some things about himself that opened my eyes and reassured me. I had thought that I was the only one at Missouri who did not know where his next week's board was coming from and that everyone else belonged, as they had warned me in the ghetto, among the capitalists. But this fellow, who was in his own country,

it turned out was if anything poorer than i he too had come to college from the ranks of the worker he was toiling nights and vacations and paying ten percent compound interest on periodic bowings to get an education which he like myself had been struggling for years to attain that was what he had in mind when he said that we were in the same boat in a we had various and sundry interests in common as far as my observation could determine he was the only freshman I had run into who cared anything about reading as a recreation he was intending ultimately to go into engineering but he was taking courses in the languages a rare procedure in Missouri cultural value a phrase I had not often heard in the past months kept continually reoccurring in his remarks about studies and best of all he confessed to a weakness for argument about religion and other matters which was as

convincing as it was irresistible from the first our relations were those between master and disciple much as I had longed all these weary months for someone who could understand me it was not Harvey's intellectual and liberal leanings that I prized in him most in September it might have been different but now I had definitely settled down to the role of a captive in a foreign land I had almost learned to endure the personal inconveniences of my situation and I was determined that I must bring away something in the nature of a system of Missouri philosophy for the edification of the people at home when the time came and i regained my liberty harvey was the man to help me compass this purpose for all his unexpected divergencies from the rank and file i could not help regarding him as a kind of epitome of the national character he knew the speech and the customs the heart and the soul of the native between him and his friends i should have no difficulty in piecing out a life-size portrait of the creature the differences began to crop up between us right away out of the countless discussions with which we beguiled the sunday evenings harvey did not go calling one inescapable conclusion emerged that whatever was sacred to me was anathema to him and that everything that he accepted as unquestioned truth

was to say the best for it a string of dubious commonplaces to me he had for instance worked all his adult life with his hands but he distrusted the organizations and the horse of the laboring man. He was a churchman, and he looked now to the parson and then to the successful businessman to regenerate the earth, if indeed this perfect earth needed regenerating. There was something positively religious in his worship of success in the abstract. Given success, he seemed to feel, and all the other virtues in the book must follow. as a matter of course. The man who had risen to the top could not but be good and clean and sane and self-controlled and clear-sighted as to the true values of life. He was not only the strong man, but the benefactor of the race as well. In some mysterious manner, he was fulfilling

the divine purpose while pursuing his own interests. The reason why he was a America was great was because she had the wisdom to give free reign to the ambitions of the individual the country had been made by its big men to me all this was not only far-fetched it was contradictory from Harvey's own point of view for my good friends conduct belied his philosophy and what is more in his better moments he openly professed devotion to a set of principles which were the direct opposite of the 39 articles of success these i thought he lived up to with a rigidity born of natural instinct and conviction he abhorred immodesty self-advertising aggressiveness show the cold insistence on literal justness in short the major quality by which commercial success is made possible. I was constantly learning from him the excellent habit of giving in when I was right, of declining the things that were my due, of minimizing

instead of exaggerating my own virtues and little superiority. When Harvey got some new clothes, and I praised them, he blushed, the burly giant, and waved me aside with a deprecating hand. if i said of a theme of his that is a neat piece of work colonel he said get out you don't call that english once we bought a peck of apples in partnership for thirty-five cents i hesitated a moment whether to give him seventeen or eighteen cents as my share of the outlay and then generously decided to make it eighteen harvey tossed the pennies back and said, we'll call it square old gas pipe. When I suggested dividing up the fruit, he gave me a queer glance, and then took a few handfuls and left me nearly two-thirds of the peck. I had thought he would count them and pick out the biggest ones. I was using his shoe-blacking and my east-side sense of strict dealing told me that I ought to pay for it. But when I often, I oftened, I was using the shoe-blacking and my east-side sense of strict

dealing told me that I ought to pay for it but when I offered Harvey a nickel he refused it and when I insisted on his taking it he simply told me that I might buy the next can the idea had never occurred to me but he was not consistent even in his magnanimity there seemed to be a shadow line somewhere in his system where self-denial ended and self-assertion began, or, as he expressed it once, where a fellow must stop giving in because the other side was doing the taking in. I do not know whether he still remembers, but I certainly have not forgotten the incident of the fountain pen. I must say that it was not I who asked Harvey to let me use it, but he must have observed that I had none and that I was having a struggle with an old-fashioned wooden penholder I had brought from New York. And so one night he suggested that I might see what I could do with his fountain pen. May I? I asked. Sure, go ahead. Help yourself any time, he said. I used it three or four times.

And then I noticed that the thing had disappeared from the table. Why? clearly i had abused the privilege but he had said any time hadn't he now in the ghetto no one would have granted any such unlimited rights to private property but once one had committed himself he would have stuck it out to the end in missouri the rules seem to be that you can have anything as long as you don't ask for it and that as soon as you have accepted it a liberal offer to literally you have really forfeited your privileges not more than three days after this subtle lesson i engaged a laundress to call for my clothes by the time she appeared for my first batch i had come upon another woman who charged more reasonably and had given the work to her harvey was in the room when the original woman showed up, and I could see that he was listening with disapproval to what I was telling her. As soon as she was gone, he opened fire on me. Confound you, he said. Why did you do

that? Well, I answered, I changed my mind. Haven't I a right to do that? Yes, he retorted, but you could have let her know. I was about to answer him that he might practice what he preached, but it occurred to me that perhaps the American logic made a distinction between roommates and laundresses, and between fountain pens and soiled linen, and I said nothing. My confusion was increasing from day to day, and largely because Harvey and his friends worshipped simultaneously at two distinct and opposed shrine. Harvey had a discerning ear for music and played the fiddle with considerable skill. I envied him the accomplishment, both because it enabled him to earn money more easily than I did,

and because he got no end of fun out of it. And yet it was a curious thing that my friend was, I do not know what else to call it, ashamed of his talent. we were alone, he fondled his instrument as a loving mother fondles a child and played everything, from college songs to nocturns, and studied little booklets on the art of Boeing and what not. But as soon as his Missouri friends came in to see him, he either put the beloved thing into its case and hid it in the closet, or if he was caught red-handed, he took on a sheepy-shunded. air and spoke condescendingly of it as a frivolous diversion and struck up turkey in the straw or the

Arkansas traveler why I made bold to ask him once and his answer was more absurd than his conduct he said it is thought a bit effeminate for a man to care for music I could not for Barry glance at him as he said it and the incongruity of this six-footer with his huge hands and powerful frame worrying his head lest he should not be thought masculine enough made me laugh in his face but Harvey knew his people better than I did that wholesome manliness which I had so sincerely admired on arriving at Columbia had a worm at its root it was the fashion you see to be masculine in Missouri and when a thing becomes fashionable it ceases to be genuine those whom nature had endowed with the virtue made a fetish and a self-conscious pose of

it and those who lacked it became obsessed with the desire to imitate it the final insult to a missourian was to suggest that he was sissified there was something like a panic among the more refined of my fellow students at the mere mention of effeminacy even the girls dreaded it they too affected a kind of factitious burliness a worship of the strident male a hail fellow well-met air they liked to greet one another with the jolly halloo and the the slap on the back and betrayed an odd fondness for the big sweater and the heavy boot and the words fellow and bully the mania was having its effect on the course of study and the whole life of the university the departments of the arts were thrown on the defensive the professor must adopt an apologetic tone for being interested in such unmanly things as poetry music or painting sentiment being tabooed as effeminate it followed inevitably that whatever in the curriculum addressed itself to the emotions must be avoided like a plague in speaking of his friends

harvey constantly alluded to broads and narrows there was lowry who never failed to remind us that the the particular sect to which he belonged, was the only true Christian body, because its bishops had been the recipients of the apostolic touch from the beginning of the world. Lowry was narrow, it appeared. On the other hand, Higgins and Moore were broad, and Harvey advised me to cultivate their acquaintance. I tackled first one and then the other, and found that they were not adverse to discussion, even about religion, but as soon as I betrayed myself by questioning the validity of the more

fundamental doctrines of theology, they informed me that certain things had better not be touched. Broadness seemed to consist in being tolerant towards Presbyterians if you were a Methodist or toward Baptists if you were a congregationalist. Some of those boys, on the other hand, presented a problem of another kind that baffled me for a long time when i solved it i had taken one more step towards becoming an american it was true that i mowed lawns and washed dishes and waited on tables and did a score of other odd jobs to make ends meet but then i was an immigrant without parents and without resources if i had a little odd jobs to make ends meet but then i was an immigrant without parents without resources if i had a had the means, I thought, I would rather not engage in all these extra mural activities and devote all my time to study and recreation. But among the other dishwashers at the club, I learned there were young men whose fathers had large farms or big businesses in the little towns. Why, I

wondered, did they not support their sons through college decently? Then I made the interesting discovery that they did not want to be supported. That not to be supported was their idea of going through college decently. I revolved that idea through my head until I got it. It showed me the Missourian in a new light. I could almost forgive him his indifference to radical discussions. If I was by degrees being turned into an American, my friend and roommate was learning a few things about the ghetto and finding them not half so repulsive as he had thought. On several occasions, Harvey listened with interest to excerpts from Yiddish literature, which I translated for him from periodicals and pamphlets I had brought with me. now and then my brother paul sent me a few choice morsels from home romanian pastrami or cheese or ripe olives and it was gratifying to observe that harvey smacked his lips after sampling them toward the end of the winter we had definitely formed the habit of having midnight spreads which never came at midnight because harvey was subject to a peculiar feeling of getting hungry by nine clock, which he justified by declaring that it required more fuel to run a big engine than a small one.

I also taught him to drink tea made and served in the Russian way. Harvey supplied the alcohol burner and the pot, and I furnished the tea, and every night, just when I thought he was in the thick of his mathematics or German, he would suddenly look up and give me a significant wink. then I would look blank and he would smile encouragingly and enlighten me further by the monosyllable feast if I still failed to rise to his enthusiasm he would say shall we and before I could answer he would make a dash for the corner of the room called the kitchen and spread a newspaper at one end of the table and announce in a falsetto voice that supper was served

on saturday afternoons if there was no play in town that week and harvey did not have to go to orchestra rehearsals we would go out on the back lot with a ball and a glove and i would revive an art i had not practiced since childhood but the ball was much harder than the kind i had known in vaslui and my hands would get black and blue after an hour's catching and harvey would laugh every time i let hot one pass without making an effort to stop it and tell me that the essential thing in becoming an American was to get toughened up when the baseball season opened he took me with him to one of the games and explained its mysteries to me and spoke enthusiastically of its science and said that it was the only real national sport at which i had to smile because it was the very game we used to play at home only we called it oina with a ball made of rags and pieces of board torn out of fences for bats and as i looked around me and saw dignified professors and rumy-eyed civil war veterans tossing their hats in the air i wish that my father could be present so that i might convince him of the profound truth i had failed as a boy to get through his head that and oina

was a joy for ever and not the silly childish thing that he insisted it was gradually too harvey was getting acquainted with my past history and much to my amazement approving of it once when i begged him not to let the details of my career go any further he looked at me in astonishment and called me a fool you deserve all the credit in the world you bloom an idiot, he added. Evidently, he regarded my sweat-shop experiences in the light of heroic deeds, and thereafter he made it a point to let every one of his friends know just the kind of marvel his queer roommate was, and they also, narrows and broads alike, appeared to think the better of me for my humble past, and to show more cordiality toward me when they passed me on the street. isn't it i kept thinking intellectually i would probably have felt more at home in a european university but supposing even that anyone could have leaped from the sweat shop to college over there

would his fellow students have forgiven him his origin to say nothing of praising him for it what harvey could not forgive me and what came very near to wrecking our friendship was a what he termed my contemptible habit of smoking cigarettes. At first I thought that the odor of tobacco was offensive to him and put myself to the inconvenience of going out of the house whenever I felt the desire for a smoke. But my pain seemed to go for naught. Our relations remained as strained as ever. What is the objection? I finally asked him. Oh, nothing, he answered. if you can't see for yourself how picayune and insignificant the pesky things make you look. More masculinity, I reflected, and asked someone in New York to send me a pipe, adding that cigarettes were not in fashion in Missouri.

Then I found that I had hit upon another snag in the American character, for Harvey apparently relished my pipe even less than he did the cigarettes. Surely, I asked myself, a pipe was not effeminate. No, indeed. But the whole business of smoking revealed a deplorable moral degeneracy. It was one of the habits that break as opposed to the habits that make, as one of those curious composite doctor-preachers who kept constantly resorting to the university and talking to men only neatly expressed it. Not masculinity, then. but success. My experiences with Harvey and with Americans generally have bred in me the conviction that no one should be granted citizens' papers until he can see a joke. A man has not even

begun the process of readjustment as long as he still stares blankly at the sallies of native humor. And it goes without saying that the simplest as well as the most concordes, inclusive test as to whether a foreigner has acquired anything like a respectable command of English lies along the line of the story. You may read and enjoy Shakespeare or Emerson. You may write a first-rate business letter in English. You may be enrolled Republican or Democrat. But all this avails you nothing, and in your heart of hearts you are a hopeless alien. Even an interest in outdoor sports is no convincing proof that you are naturalized. It may be faked.

Do you go wild over Bill Nye's history of the United States? Do you laugh till the tears run down your face at Mark Twain's description of a Turkish bath? Do you turn to the next to the last column on the editorial page of the evening paper and devour that before you even think of the sporting page? let alone the news above all can you do your share at the dinner-table or at the marshmallow party when conversation becomes feeble and some one proposes stories then you are an american to the bone i don't care how much you may believe in the divine right of kings and in secret diplomacy in america or at least in missouri every one is a whiff or tries to be. No one says simply, pass me the salt. What he says is, may I crave the saline or the capital N-A, capital C-L, just as no one asks you where you live, but where is your

habitat or domicile? An American will not talk or write a personal letter unless he can be funny. It is an excellent national trait. It makes conversation breezy. But I think it often makes it scarce. I owe it to Harvey, who did not have to try to be a wag, that I made this jolly American characteristic, among many others, in part my own. Indeed, any inventory of my first year at college will reveal an astonishing list. of things over and above what I had started out to get. The university catalog omits quite as much as it includes. It makes absolutely no mention of the unofficial extension courses under Professor Harvey, of the practical joke as an educational method, and of the Special Department of Personal Relations for the benefit of foreign students. The peasant in Romania says very truly, that one never knows what kind of bargain he is going to make until he gets to market i had gone to missouri to become a doctor but joe shapiro was a real profit those capitalists and oppressors

were making me into a gentleman end of chapter twenty chapter twenty one of an american in the making the life story of an immigrant by martin eliz eliz ravage this libravox recording is in the public domain chapter twenty one the romance of readjustment as the summer drew near i began to look around for something to do i would spend nearly one hundred and twenty-five dollars i saw between september and june and half of it borrowed money harry from whom i had got almost no help the first year, had just married and gone into business for himself, and he was giving me to understand in very broad hints that I need not rely on him the next year. Brother Paul had been out of work for the better part of the winter, and was trying desperately to keep alive while paying off some of the debts he had made in his period of unemployment. My friend, who had more than lived up to his promises, had to be sure agreed to lend me $50 every year.

But I was endeavoring to bring him out to Missouri, and if I succeeded, he would need all he had to pay his own way. Therefore, if I meant to return to school next year, I must find a way to earn enough to give me at least a good start in the fall. I discussed the question with Harvey, and he made several suggestions. he himself was going to joplin where there was a lot of building and where he being a carpenter always found plenty to do i might come along with him and try my luck in the zinc mines or there were the kansas wheat fields where they paid two fifty a day and keep a number of students were going there summer after summer and returning with their hides well tanned and their pockets well lined still on second thought he would not advise me to tackle harvesting i might not be able to stand it with my soft hands and my town breeding but i gave very little thought to his advice

i was longing for a sight of new york it would cost fifty dollars to go there and back but i tried to persuade myself that i would earn enough more in the city to make it worth while if the worst came to the worst i could always get a job at the machine i was known there i had friends and old pupils tutoring was a possibility particularly with my added prestige as a college man there was no limit to the things that one could do in a large town and deep down in my foolish heart i knew quite well that all these calculations were but a sham in the letter I wrote to Esther, I honestly confessed that if I remained away from my own people that summer, I would feel like a man who was forced to work seven days in the week and would be unfit to resume work in the fall. Then Paul somehow divined my thoughts and surprised me one fine June morning with a money order for $30 and a letter saying that he would not forgive me if I'd did not come and spend the vacations at home heaven alone knows where he got it but there it was and i sent him

back a postcard with the picture of a saddled donkey and the words ready to pack underneath the examinations had just been held and i delayed only a few days until the instructors returned my notebooks and told me my marks harvey was hanging over till after commencement because the closing days of the session were crowded with dances and entertainments and he was cleaning up a lot of money with the orchestra he had an amused twinkle in his eye as he watched me excitedly getting ready and every now and then he would ask well old fish do you think we'll see you back with us next year or do you think you've had enough of the wild and woolly west and when I told

him with great emphasis that nothing in the world would keep me away from Missouri until I had finished the course. He slapped me on the back and cried, Now you're talking, we'll make a man of you yet. Then he would add, but say, if those anarchists get a hold of you and keep you there, let a fellow know what's happening to you. Maybe we can come to the rescue. So to New York I went and lived through the last and the bitterest episode in the romance of readjustment. During that whole strenuous year, while I was fighting my battle for America, I had never, for a moment, stopped to figure the price it was costing me. I had not dreamed that my mere going to Missouri had opened up a gulf

between me and the world I had come from, and that every step I was taking toward my ultimate goal was a stride away from everything that had once been mine, that had once been myself. Now no sooner had I alighted from the train than it came upon me with a pang that that one year out there had loosened ties that I had imagined were each other. There was Paul faithfully at the ferry, and as I came off he rushed up to me and threw his arms around me and kissed me affectionately. Did I kiss him back? I am afraid not. He took the grip out of my hand and carried it to the Brooklyn Bridge. Then we boarded a car. I asked him where we were going, and he said mysteriously to Harry's. A surprise was awaiting me of apparently as we entered the little alley of a store in the italian quarter i looked about me and saw no one but suddenly there was a burst of laughter from a dozen voices a door or two opened violently and my whole family was upon me brothers a new sister-in-law cousins of various degrees some old

people a few children they rushed me into the apartment behind the store pelting me with endearments and with questions the table was set as for a perum feast there was an odor of pot-roasted chicken and my eye caught a glimpse of chopped eggplant as the meal progressed my heart was touched by their loving thoughtfulness nothing had been omitted not even the red wine and the turkish peas and rice harry and everyone else kept on urging me to to eat. It's a long time since you have had a real meal, said my sister-in-law. How true it was, but I felt constrained and ate very little. Here were the people and the things I had so longed to be with, but I caught myself regarding them with the eyes of a Western American.

Suddenly, at a glance, as it were, I grasped the answer to the problem that had puzzled me so long, for here in the persons of those dear to me, I was seeing myself as those others had seen me. I went about revisiting old scenes and found that everything had changed in my brief absence. My friends were not the same. The east side was not the same. They never would be the same. What had come over them? My kinsfolk and my old companions looked me over, and declared that it was I who had become transformed. I had become soberer. I carried myself differently. There was an unfamiliar reserve, something mingled of coldness and melancholy in my eye. My very speech had a new intonation. It was more incisive, but less fluent, less cordial, they thought. Perhaps so.

At any rate, while my people were still dear to me, and always would be dear to me, the atmosphere about them repelled me. If it was I who had changed, then as I took in the little world I had emerged from, I could not help telling myself that the change. was a salutary one while calling at the old basement bookshop on East Broadway I suddenly heard a horrible wailing and lamenting on the street a funeral procession was hurrying by followed by several women in an open carriage their hair was flying their faces were red with weeping their bodies were swaying grotesquely on the rhythm of their violent cries the oldest

in the group, continued mechanically to address the body in the hearse, Husband, dear, upon whom have you left us? Upon whom, husband dear? A young girl facing her in the vehicle looked about in a terrified manner, seized every now and then the hand of her afflicted mother, and tried to quiet her. The frightful scene, with its tragic display, its abysmal ludicousness, its barbarous noise, revolted me. I had seen the like of it before, but that was in another life. I had once been part of such a performance myself, and the grief of it still lingered somewhere in my motley soul. But now I could only think of the affecting simplicity, the quiet, unobtrusive solemnity of a burial I had witnessed the previous spring.

in the west the afternoon following my arrival i flew uptown to see esther she waved to me and smiled as i approached she had been waiting on the stoop as she shook my hand in her somewhat masculine fashion she took me in with a glance and the first thing she said was what a genteel person you have become you have changed astonishingly do you think so i asked her I am afraid I haven't. At least they do not think so in Missouri. Then she told me that she had got only ten points, but that she was expecting three more in the fall. She was almost resigned to wait another year before entering college. That would enable her to make her total requirements, save up a little more money, and get her breath. A woman is not a man, you know, she added.

I am beginning to feel the effects of it all. I am really exhausted. Geometry has nearly finished me, and mother has added her share. She is no longer young, and this winter she was ill. I have worried, and I have had to send money. But let us not talk about my troubles. You are full of things to tell me, I know. Yes, I had lots I wanted to say, but I did not know where to be. But I did not know begin and the other thing that was uppermost in my mind i was afraid to utter lest she should misunderstand and feel injured and reproach me i did not want her to reproach me on first meeting i wanted to give myself time as well as her and so we fell into one of those customary long silences and for a while i felt at home again and reflected that perhaps I had been hasty in letting the first poignant reactions mislead me.

Toward evening, Esther remarked that it was fortunate I had got to town the day before. If I had no other plans, she would take me to a meeting at Clinton Hall, where Michaeloff was to speak on the coming storm in America. It would be exciting, she said, and enlightening. Michaeloff had just come out of prison. He was full of new impressions of America and the system generally, and one could rely on him to tear things open. Of course we went, and the assemblage was noisy and quarrelsome and intolerant, and the hall was stuffy and smelly, and the speaker was honest and fiery and ill-informed. He thundered passionately,

and as if he were detailing a personal grievance against American individualism and the benighted Americans who allowed a medieval religion and an oppressive capitalistic system to molt and exploit them, and referred to a recent article in the Zucumft, where the writer had weakly admitted the need of being fair, even to Christianity, and insisted that to be fair to an end. enemy of humanity was to be a traitor to humanity. I listened to it all with an alien ear. Soon I caught myself defending the enemy out there. What did these folk know of Americans anyhow? Michael Off was, after all, to radicalism, what Higgins and Moore were to Christianity. His idea of being liberal was to tolerate anarchists.

if you were a socialist and communism if you were an individualist and as I left the hall I told Esther what I had hesitated to tell her earlier in the evening save yourself my dear friend run as fast as you can you will find a bigger and a freer world than this promise me that you will follow me to the West this fall you will thank me for it those big genuine people out in missouri are the salt of the earth whatever they may think about the problem of universal brotherhood they have already solved it for their next-door neighbors there is no need of the social revolution in missouri they have a generous slice of the kingdom of heaven maybe i was exaggerating but that was how i felt from this distance and from these surroundings

Missouri and the New World she meant to me was enchanting and heroic. The loneliness I had endured, the snubbing, the ridicule, the inner struggles, all the dreariness and the sadness of my life in exile had faded out of the picture, and what remained was only an idealized vision of the clean manhood, the large human dignity, the wholesome, braced, atmosphere of it which contrasted so strikingly with the things around me no there was no sense in deceiving myself the east side had somehow ceased to be my world I had thought a few days ago that I was going home I had yelled to Harvey from the train as it

was pulling out of the station at Columbia I am going home old man but I had had merely come to another strange land in the fall i would return to that other exile i was indeed a man without a country during that entire summer while i opened gates on an elevated train in brooklyn i tussled with my problem it was quite apparent to me from the first what its solution must be i knew that now there was no going back for me that my only hope lay in continuing in the direction i had taken however painful it may be to my loved ones and to myself but for a long time i could not admit it to myself a host of voices and sights and memories had awakened within me that clutched me to my people and to my past as long as i remained in New York, I kept up the tragic farce of making Sunday calls on Brother Harry and pretending that all was as before, that America and education had changed nothing, that I was still one of

them. I had taken a room in a remote quarter of Brooklyn, where there were few immigrants, under the pretense that it was nearer to the railway barns. But I was deceiving no one but myself. Most of my relatives who had received me so heartily when I arrived seemed to be avoiding Harry's house on Sundays, and on those rare occasions when I ran into one of them, he seemed frigid and ill at ease. Once, Paul said to me, you are very funny. It looks as if you were ashamed of the family. You aren't really, are you? You know they said you would be when you went away. there is a lot of foolish talk about it everybody speaks of harry and me as the doctor's brothers can't you warm up i poured out my heart in a letter to harvey if a year ago i had been told that i would be laying my sorrows and my disappointments in my own kindred before anyone out there i would have laughed at the idea but that barbarian in missouri was the only

human being strangely enough in whom I could now confide with any hope of being understood i tried to convey to him some idea of the agonizing moral experience i was going through i told him that i was aching to get back to columbia how apt the name was to take up again where i had left off the process of my transformation and to get through with it as soon as might be and in the fall i went back this time a week before college opened and was met by harvey at the station just as those rural looking boys had been met by their friends the year before when i reached the campus i was surprised to see how many people knew me Scores of them came up and slapped me on the back and shook hands in their hearty, boisterous fashion

and hoped that I had had a jolly summer. I was asked to join boarding clubs to become a member in debating societies, to come and see this fellow or that in his room. It took me off my feet this sudden geniality of my fellows toward me. I had not been aware how throughout the previous year the barriers between us had been gradually and steadily breaking down it came upon me all at once i felt my heart going out to my new friends i had become one of them i was not a man without a country i was an american the end of chapter 21 end of

an American in the making, the life story of an immigrant by Marcus Eli Ravage.