d when I had money enough I asked her to buy
me books of my own, for these books seemed a closer companionship with
my mother: I knew that she must have looked at the very words and said
them. In that way I have come to know a little of our religion, and the
history of our people, besides piecing together what I read in plays
and other books about Jews and Jewesses; because I was sure my mother
obeyed her religion. I had left off asking my father about her. It is
very dreadful to say it, but I began to disbelieve him. I had found
that he did not always tell the truth, and made promises without
meaning to keep them; and that raised my suspicion that my mother and
brother were still alive though he had told me they were dead. For in
going over the past again as I got older and knew more, I felt sure
that my mother had been deceived, and had expected to see us back again
after a very little while; and my father taking me on his knee and
telling me that my mother and brother were both dead seemed to me now
but a bit of acting, to set my mind at rest. The cruelty of that
falsehood sank into me, and I hated all untruth because of it. I wrote
to my mother secretly: I knew the street, Colman Street, where we
lived, and that it was not Blackfriars Bridge and the Coburg, and that
our name was Cohen then, though my father called us Lapidoth, because,
he said, it was a name of his forefathers in Poland. I sent my letter
secretly; but no answer came, and I thought there was no hope for me.
Our life in America did not last much longer. My father suddenly told
me we were to pack up and go to Hamburg, and I was rather glad. I hoped
we might get among a different sort of people, and I knew German quite
well--some German plays almost all by heart. My father spoke it better
than he spoke English. I was thirteen then, and I seemed to myself
quite old--I knew so much, and yet so little. I think other children
cannot feel as I did. I had often wished that I had been drowned when I
was going away from my mother. But I set myself to obey and suffer:
what else could I do? One day when we were on our voyage, a new thought
came into my mind. I was not very ill that time, and I kept on deck a
good deal. My father acted and sang and joked to amuse people on board,
and I used often to hear remarks about him. One day, when I was looking
at the sea and nobody took notice of me, I overheard a gentleman say,
'Oh, he is one of those clever Jews--a rascal,