“But tell me how he died.”
“He went out from among us in the morning as strong and straight as an oak, and he was brought home felled to the ground as if struck by lightning. God’s ways are mysterious; but oh, my son, my strong, noble son! If only he had not departed from the ways of his fathers I might still have him.
“He went to the railroad; they had switched his car of goods where he could not get it—he was buying goods by the carload; nothing like this has ever been heard of before—and he wanted his car; so he helped the men to move it. Moschele wasn’t afraid of anything. The men pushed and Moschele fell over a switch and the car went over him.”
Here a paroxysm of grief silenced the old man and he swayed to and fro, weeping piteously.
And again I passed through the town, and this time I went to the God’s acre with Uncle Isaac, to visit the grave of his son. In weird confusion lay the gray and moss-grown stones. No care is bestowed upon the graves or upon the memorials of the departed; for the body is nothing, the spirit is everything and that is with God.
In the centre of the cemetery is a knoll, and upon its crest is a monument such as cannot be found anywhere in Hungary. It is in the shape of a sarcophagus, is hewn out of Vermont granite and is so heavy that it cost over 500 kronen to bring it from the station and put it in place. How much the stone cost no one knows except Uncle Isaac, who erected it for his son Moschele, who wanted everything he had to come from America—even his tombstone.
VIII
“NOCH IST POLEN NICHT VERLOREN”
IT has always seemed to me wise to carry letters of introduction, especially when travelling to the East of Europe; often, too, I have found it still wiser to forget that I had them, for a letter of introduction sometimes blocks avenues of investigation, particularly when the problem in question involves the privileged or official classes.
This time in following the immigrant tide, I carried one letter which I was eager to deliver; it was given me by a personal friend in America and was to be presented to his mother-in-law in Poland. Not that I was overanxious to meet his mother-in-law, but because Polish women of the upper class are, as a rule, so superior to the men, so ready to talk and talk so well, that I promised myself a rather fruitful call. I did not meet the mother-in-law yet I was not disappointed.
Cracow looks dingy even to one who, like myself, is able to illuminate its sombre present in the light of its important if not glorious past. Coming, as I had come, by way of industrial German-Poland, with its glistening newness, from the