My helping hand was extended also to my smaller cousins, Mendele and Perele. I played lotto with Mendele and let him beat me; I found him when he was lost, and I helped him play tricks on our elders. Perele, the baby, was at times my special charge, and I think she did not suffer in my hands. I was a good nurse, though my methods were somewhat original.
Uncle Solomon was often away on business, and in his absence Cousin Hirshel was my hero. Hirshel was only a little older than I, but he was a pupil in the high school, and wore the student's uniform, and knew nearly as much as my uncle, I thought. When he buckled on his satchel of books in the morning, and strode away straight as a soldier,—no heder boy ever walked like that,—I stood in the doorway and worshipped his retreating steps. I met him on his return in the late afternoon, and hung over him when he laid out his books for his lessons. Sometimes he had long Russian pieces to commit to memory. He would walk up and down repeating the lines out loud, and I learned as fast as he. He would let me hold the book while he recited, and a proud girl was I if I could correct him.
My interest in his lessons amused him; he did not take me seriously. He looked much like his father, and twinkled his eyes at me in the same way and made fun of me, too. But sometimes he condescended to set me a lesson in spelling or arithmetic,—in reading I was as good as he,—and if I did well, he praised me and went and told the family about it; but lest I grow too proud of my achievements, he would sit down and do mysterious sums—I now believe it was algebra—to which I had no clue whatever, and which duly impressed me with a sense of my ignorance.
There were other books in the house than school-books. The Hebrew books, of course, were there, as in other Jewish homes; but I was no longer devoted to the Psalms. There were a few books about in Russian and in Yiddish, that were neither works of devotion nor of instruction. These were story-books and poems. They were a great surprise to me and a greater delight. I read them hungrily, all there were—a mere handful, but to me an overwhelming treasure. Of all those books I remember by name only "Robinson Crusoe." I think I preferred the stories to the poems, though poetry was good to recite, walking up and down, like Cousin Hirshel. That was my introduction to secular literature, but I did not understand it at the time.
When I had exhausted the books, I began on the old volumes of a Russian periodical which I found on a shelf in my room. There was a high stack of these paper volumes, and I was so hungry for books that I went at them greedily, fearing that I might not get through before I had to return to Polotzk.
I read every spare minute of the day, and most of the night. I scarcely ever stopped at night until my lamp burned out. Then I would creep into bed beside Dinke, but often my head burned so from excitement that I did not sleep at once. And no wonder. The violent romances which rushed through the pages of that periodical were fit to inflame an older, more sophisticated brain than mine. I must believe that it was a thoroughly respectable magazine, because I found it in my Uncle Solomon's house; but the novels it printed were certainly sensational, if I dare judge from my lurid recollections. These romances, indeed, may have had their literary qualities, which I was too untrained to appreciate. I remember nothing but startling adventures of strange heroes and heroines, violent catastrophes in every chapter, beautiful maidens abducted by cruel Cossacks, inhuman mothers who poisoned their daughters for jealousy of their lovers; and all these unheard-of things happening in a strange world, the very language of which was unnatural to me. I was quick enough to fix meanings to new words, however, so keen was my interest in what I read. Indeed, when I recall the zest with which I devoured those fearful pages, the thrill with which I followed the heartless mother or the abused maiden in her adventures, my heart beating in my throat when my little lamp began to flicker; and then, myself, big-eyed and shivery in the dark, stealing to bed like a guilty ghost,—when I remember all this, I have an unpleasant feeling, as of one hearing of another's debauch; and I would be glad to shake the little bony culprit that I was then.
My uncle was away so much of the time that I doubt if he knew how I spent my nights. My aunt, poor hard-worked housewife, knew too little of books to direct my reading. My cousins were not enough older than myself to play mentors to me. Besides all this, I think it was tacitly agreed, at my uncle's as at home, that Mashke was best let alone in such matters. So I burnt my midnight lamp, and filled my mind with a conglomeration of images entirely unsuited to my mental digestion; and no one can say what they would have bred in me, besides headache and nervousness, had they not been so soon dispelled and superseded by a host of strong new impressions. For these readings ended with my visit, which was closely followed by the preparations for our emigration.
On the whole, then, I do not feel that I was seriously harmed by my wild reading. I have not been told that my taste was corrupted, and my morals, I believe, have also escaped serious stricture. I would even say that I have never been hurt by any revelation, however distorted or untimely, that I found in books, good or poor; that I have never read an idle book that was entirely useless; and that I have never quite lost whatever was significant to my spirit in any book, good or bad, even though my conscious memory can give no account of it.
One lived, at Uncle Solomon's, not only one's own life, but the life of all around. My uncle, when he returned after a short absence, had stories to tell and adventures to describe; and I learned that one might travel considerably and see things unknown even in Vitebsk, without going as far as America. My cousins sometimes went to the theatre, and I listened with rapture to their account of what they had seen, and I learned the songs they had heard. Once Cousin Hirshel went to see a giant, who exhibited himself for three kopecks, and came home with such marvellous accounts of his astonishing proportions, and his amazing feats of strength, that little Mendele cried for envy, and I had to play lotto with him and let him beat me oh, so easily! till he felt himself a man again.
And sometimes I had adventures of my own. I explored the city to some extent by myself, or else my cousins took me with them on their errands. There were so many fine people to see, such wonderful shops, such great distances to go. Once they took me to a bookstore. I saw shelves and shelves of books, and people buying them, and taking them away to keep. I was told that some people had in their own houses more books than were in the store. Was not that wonderful? It was a great city, Vitebsk; I never could exhaust its delights.