I held up my red quilted petticoat, the supreme sacrifice of my ten-year-old life.
Even my father shyly pushed forward the samovar. “It can hold enough tea for the whole village.”
“Only a hundred rubles for them all,” pleaded my mother; “only enough to lift us to America. Only one hundred little rubles.”
“A hundred rubles? Pfui!” sniffed the pawnbroker. “Forty is overpaid. Not even thirty is it worth.”
But coaxing and cajoling my mother got a hundred rubles out of him.
Steerage—dirty bundles—foul odors—seasick humanity—but I saw and heard nothing of the foulness and ugliness around me. I floated in showers of sunshine; visions upon visions of the new world opened before me.
From lips to lips flowed the golden legend of the golden country:
“In America you can say what you feel—you can voice your thoughts in the open streets without fear of a Cossack.”
“In America is a home for everybody. The land is your land. Not like in Russia where you feel yourself a stranger in the village where you were born and raised—the village in which your father and grandfather lie buried.”