my mother alone, of us newcomers, appreciated the shabbiness of the
little apartment, and realized that for her there was as yet no laying
down of the burden of poverty.

Our initiation into American ways began with the first step on the new
soil. My father found occasion to instruct or correct us even on the way
from the pier to Wall Street, which journey we made crowded together in
a rickety cab. He told us not to lean out of the windows, not to point,
and explained the word "greenhorn." We did not want to be "greenhorns,"
and gave the strictest attention to my father's instructions. I do not
know when my parents found opportunity to review together the history of
Polotzk in the three years past, for we children had no patience with
the subject; my mother's narrative was constantly interrupted by
irrelevant questions, interjections, and explanations.

The first meal was an object lesson of much variety. My father produced
several kinds of food, ready to eat, without any cooking, from little
tin cans that had printing all over them. He attempted to introduce us
to a queer, slippery kind of fruit, which he called "banana," but had to
give it up for the time being. After the meal, he had better luck with a
curious piece of furniture on runners, which he called "rocking-chair."
There were five of us newcomers, and we found five different ways of
getting into the American machine of perpetual motion, and as many ways
of getting out of it. One born and bred to the use of a rocking-chair
cannot imagine how ludicrous people can make themselves when attempting
to use it for the first time. We laughed immoderately over our various
experiments with the novelty, which was a wholesome way of letting off
steam after the unusual excitement of the day.

In our flat we did not think of such a thing as storing the coal in the