Were you very happy?
DAVID
It was heaven. You must remember that all my life I had heard of America—everybody in our town had friends there or was going there or got money orders from there. The earliest game I played at was selling off my toy furniture and setting up in America. All my life America was waiting, beckoning, shining—the place where God would wipe away tears from off all faces.
[He ends in a half-sob.]
MENDEL [Rises, as in terror]
Now, now, David, don't get excited.
[Approaches him.]
DAVID
To think that the same great torch of liberty which threw its light across all the broad seas and lands into my little garret in Russia, is shining also for all those other weeping millions of Europe, shining wherever men hunger and are oppressed——
MENDEL [Soothingly]