ing the gifted
Polish girl, and to a member of which this little volume is
appropriately dedicated.

I. ZANGWILL.

PREFATORY

In the year 1891, a mighty wave of the emigration movement swept over
all parts of Russia, carrying with it a vast number of the Jewish
population to the distant shores of the New World--from tyranny to
democracy, from darkness to light, from bondage and persecution to
freedom, justice and equality. But the great mass knew nothing of these
things; they were going to the foreign world in hopes only of earning
their bread and worshiping their God in peace. The different currents
that directed the course of that wave cannot be here enumerated. Suffice
it to say that its power was enormous. All over the land homes were
broken up, families separated, lives completely altered, for a common
end.

The emigration fever was at its height in Plotzk, my native town, in the
central western part of Russia, on the Dvina River. "America" was in
everybody's mouth. Business men talked of it over their accounts; the
market women made up their quarrels that they might discuss it from
stall to stall; people who had relatives in the famous land went around
reading their letters for the enlightenment of less fortunate folks; the
one letter-carrier informed the public how many letters arrived from
America, and who were the recipients; children played at emigrating; old
folks shook their sage heads over the evening fire, and prophesied no
good for those who braved the terrors of the sea and the foreign goal
beyond it;--all talked of it, but scarcely anybody knew one true fact
about this magic land. For book-knowledge was not for them; and a few
persons--they were a dressmaker's daughter, and a merchant with his two
sons--who had returned from America after a long visit, happened to be
endowed with extraordinary imagination, (a faculty closely related to
their knowledge of their old country-men's ignorance), and their
descriptions of life across the ocean, given daily, for some months, to
eager audiences, surpassed anything in the Arabian Nights. One sad fact
threw a shadow over the splendor of the gold-paved, Paradise-like
fairyland. The travelers all agreed that Jews lived there in the most
shocking impiety.

Driven by a necessity for bettering the family circumstances, and by
certain minor forces which cannot now be named, my father began to think
seriously of casting his lot with the great stream of emi