I felt the joy of one breathing on the mountain-tops for the first time. I looked down at the world below. I was changed and the world was changed. My past was the forgotten night. Sunrise was all around me.
I went out from Miss Van Ness’s office, singing a song of new life: “America! I found America.”
“THE FAT OF THE LAND”
In an air-shaft so narrow that you could touch the next wall with your bare hands, Hanneh Breineh leaned out and knocked on her neighbor’s window.
“Can you loan me your wash-boiler for the clothes?” she called.
Mrs. Pelz threw up the sash.
“The boiler? What’s the matter with yours again? Didn’t you tell me you had it fixed already last week?”
“A black year on him, the robber, the way he fixed it! If you have no luck in this world, then it’s better not to live. There I spent out fifteen cents to stop up one hole, and it runs out another. How I ate out my gall bargaining with him he should let it down to fifteen cents! He wanted yet a quarter, the swindler. Gottuniu! My bitter heart on him for every penny he took from me for nothing!”
“You got to watch all those swindlers, or they’ll steal the whites out of your eyes,” admonished Mrs. Pelz. “You should have tried out your boiler before you paid him. Wait a minute till I empty out my dirty clothes in a pillow-case; then I’ll hand it to you.”
Mrs. Pelz returned with the boiler and tried to hand it across to Hanneh Breineh, but the soap-box refrigerator on the window-sill was in the way.