d, and she was left
with six children and no means of subsistence. Already during her
husband's life they had exchanged their first lodging for a second, a
poorer and cheaper one, and after his death they moved into a third,
meaner and narrower still, and sold their precious furniture, for which,
indeed, there was no place in the new existence. But even so the
question of bread and meat was not answered. They still had about six
hundred rubles, but, as they were without a trade, it was easy to
foresee that the little stock of money would dwindle day by day till
there was none of it left--and what then?

The eldest son, Yossef, aged twenty-one, had gone from home a year
before his father's death, to seek his fortune elsewhere; but his first
letters brought no very good news, and now the second, Avrohom, a lad of
eighteen, and the daughter Rochel, who was sixteen, declared their
intention to start for America. The mother was against it, begged them
with tears not to go, but they did not listen to her. Parting with them,
forever most likely, was bad enough in itself, but worst of all was the
thought that her children, for whose Jewish education their father had
never grudged money even when times were hardest, should go to America,
and there, forgetting everything they had learned, become "ganze Goyim."
She was quite sure that her husband would never have agreed to his
children's being thus scattered abroad, and this encouraged her to
oppose their will with more determination. She urged them to wait at
least till their elder brother had achieved some measure of success, and
could help them. She held out this hope to them, because she believed in
her son Yossef and his capacity, and was convinced that in a little time
he would become their support.

If only Avrohom and Rochel had not been so impatient (she would lament
to us), everything would have turned out differently! They would not
have been bustled off to the end of creation, and she would not have
been left so lonely in her last years, but--it had apparently been so
ordained!

Avrohom and Rochel agreed to defer the journey, but when some months had
passed, and Yossef was still wandering from town to town, finding no
rest for the sole of his foot, she had to give in to her children and
let them go. They took with them two hundred rubles and sailed for
America, and with the remaining three hundred rubles she opened a tiny
shop. Her expenses were not great now, as on