es. I do not remember suffering because there was no jam on my
bread, and no new dress for the holidays. I do not know whether I was
hurt when some of our playmates abandoned us. I remember myself
oftener in the attitude of an onlooker, as on the occasion of the
attachment of our furniture, when I went off into a corner to think
about it. Perhaps I was not able to cling to negations. The possession
of the bread was a more absorbing fact than the loss of the jam. If I
were to read my character backwards, I ought to believe that I did
miss what I lacked in our days of privation; for I know, to my shame,
that in more recent years I have cried for jam. But I am trying not to
reason, only to remember; and from many scattered and shadowy
memories, that glimmer and fade away so fast that I cannot fix them on
this page, I form an idea, almost a conviction, that it was with me as
I say.

However indifferent I may have been to what I had not, I was fully
alive to what I had. So when I came to Vitebsk I eagerly seized on the
many new things that I found around me; and these new impressions and
experiences affected me so much that I count that visit as an epoch in
my Russian life.

I was very much at home in my uncle's household. I was a little afraid
of my aunt, who had a quick temper, but on the whole I liked her. She
was fair and thin and had a pretty smile in the wake of her tempers.
Uncle Solomon was an old friend. I was fond of him and he made much of
me. His fine brown eyes were full of smiles, and there always was a
pleasant smile for me, or a teasing one.

Uncle Solomon was comparatively prosperous, so I soon forgot whatever
I had known at home of sordid cares. I do not remember that I was ever
haunted by the thought of my mother, who slaved to keep us in bread;
or of my sister, so little older than myself, who bent her little back
to a woman's work. I took up the life around me as if there were no
other life. I did not play all the time, but I enjoyed whatever work I
found because I was so happy. I helped my Cousin Dinke help her
mother with the housework. I put it this way because I think my aunt
never set me any tasks; but Dinke was glad to have me help wash dishes
and sweep and make beds. My cousin was a gentle, sweet girl, blue-eyed
and fair, and altogether attractive. She talked to me about grown-up
things, and I liked it. When her friends came to visit her she did not
mind having me about, although my skirts were