Through streets growing black with swarming crowds of toil-released workers they made their way. Sam Arkin’s thick hand rested with a lightness new to him upon the little arm tucked under his. The haggling pushcart peddlers, the newsboys screaming, “Tageblatt, Abendblatt, Herold,” the roaring noises of the elevated trains resounded the pæan of joy swelling his heart.
“America was good to me, but I never guessed how good till now.” The words were out before he knew it. “Tell me only, what pulled you to this country?”
“What pulls anybody here? The hope for the better. People who got it good in the old world don’t hunger for the new.”
A mist filled her eyes at memory of her native village. “How I suffered in Savel. I never had enough to eat. I never had shoes on my feet. I had to go barefoot even in the freezing winter. But still I love it. I was born there. I love the houses and the straw roofs, the mud streets, the cows, the chickens and the goats. My heart always hurts me for what is no more.”
The brilliant lights of Levy’s Café brought her back to Grand Street.
“Here is it.” He led her in and over to a corner table. “Chopped herring and onions for two,” he ordered with a flourish.
“Ain’t there some American eating on the card?” interposed Shenah Pessah.
He laughed indulgently. “If I lived in America for a hundred years I couldn’t get used to the American eating. What can make the mouth so water like the taste and the smell from herring and onions?”
“There’s something in me—I can’t help—that so quickly takes on to the American taste. It’s as if my outside skin only was Russian; the heart in me is for everything of the new world—even the eating.”
“Nu, I got nothing to complain against America. I don’t like the American eating, but I like the American dollar. Look only on me!” He expanded his chest. “I came to America a ragged nothing—and—see—” He exhibited a bank-book in four figures, gesticulating grandly, “And I learned in America how to sign my name!”