trembled for their brothers and sisters without, and opened wide their
doors to afford the fugitives refuge. And hundreds of fugitives,
preceded by a wail of distress, flocked into the open district,
bringing their trouble where trouble was never absent, mingling their
tears with the tears that never dried.

The open cities becoming thus suddenly crowded, every man's chance of
making a living was diminished in proportion to the number of
additional competitors. Hardship, acute distress, ruin for many: thus
spread the disaster, ring beyond ring, from the stone thrown by a
despotic official into the ever-full river of Jewish persecution.

Passover was celebrated in tears that year. In the story of the Exodus
we would have read a chapter of current history, only for us there was
no deliverer and no promised land.

But what said some of us at the end of the long service? Not "May we
be next year in Jerusalem," but "Next year--in America!" So there was
our promised land, and many faces were turned towards the West. And if
the waters of the Atlantic did not part for them, the wanderers rode
its bitter flood by a miracle as great as any the rod of Moses ever
wrought.

My father was carried away by the westward movement, glad of his own
deliverance, but sore at heart for us whom he left behind. It was the
last chance for all of us. We were so far reduced in circumstances
that he had to travel with borrowed money to a German port, whence he
was forwarded to Boston, with a host of others, at the expense of an
emigrant aid society.

I was about ten years old when my father emigrated. I was used to his
going away from home, and "America" did not mean much more to me than
"Kherson," or "Odessa," or any other names of distant places. I
understood vaguely, from the gravity with which his plans were
discussed, and from references to ships, societies, and other
unfamiliar things, that this enterprise was different from previous
ones; but my excitement and emotion on the morning of my father's
departure were mainly vicarious.

I know the day when "America" as a world entirely unlike Polotzk
lodged in my brain, to become the centre of all my dreams and
speculations. Well I know the day. I was in bed, sharing the measles
with some of the other children. Mother brought us a thick letter from
father, written just before boarding the ship. The letter was full of
excitement. There was something in it besides the description of
travel,