But always, winter and summer, in season and out of season, Mashke found herself wondering about the meaning of all the things that she saw and heard. She wondered about her hens who gave her eggs and broth, and feathers for her bed, all in exchange for her careless largess of grain. Did they ever feel that the barnyard was a prison? She wondered about the treadmill horse who went round and round to pump water for the public baths. Did he know that he was cheated out of the true life of a horse—work-time in cheerful partnership with man and play-time in the pasture with the fresh turf under his road-weary hoofs? Did the women, who toiled over the selfsame tasks in such a weary round that they looked forward to the change of wash-day at the river where they stood knee-deep in the water to rub and scrub their poor rags, know that they, too, were in a treadmill?—Sometimes she could not sleep for wondering, and would steal from her bed before daybreak to walk through the dewy grass of the yard and watch the blackness turn to soft, dreamy gray. Then the houses seemed like breathing creatures, and all the world was hushed and very sweet. Was there ever such a wonder as the coming of a new day?—As she watched it seemed that her spirit flew beyond the town, beyond the river and the glowing sky itself—touching, knowing, and loving all things. Her spirit was free!
Sometimes it seemed that the wings of her spirit could all but carry her little body up and away. She was indeed such a wee mite that they sometimes called her Mouse and Crumb and Poppy Seed. All of her eager, flaming life was in her questioning eyes and her dark, wayward curls. Because she was small and frail she was spared the hard work that early fell to the lot of her older, stronger sister. So it happened that she had time for her wonderings—time for her spirit to grow and try its wings.
Mashke was still a very little child when she learned a very big truth. She discovered that there were many prisons besides those made by Russian laws; she saw that her people often shut themselves up in prisons of their own making. There were hundreds of laws and observances—ways to wash, to eat, to dress, to work—which seemed to many as sacred as their faith in God. Doubtless the rules which were now only empty forms had once had meaning, such as the law forbidding her people to touch fire on the Sabbath, which came down from a time before matches or tinder-boxes when making a fire was hard work. But all good people observed the letter of the law, and, no matter what the need of mending a fire or a light, would wait for a Gentile helper to come to the rescue.
One memorable evening, however, Mashke saw her father, when he thought himself unobserved, quietly steal over to the table and turn down a troublesome lamp. The gleam of a new light came to the mind of the watching, wondering child at that moment. She began to understand that even her father, who was the wisest man in Polotzk, did many things because he feared to offend the prejudices of their people, just as he did many other things because of fear of the Russian police. There was more than one kind of a prison.
When Mashke was about ten years old a great change came to her life. Her father decided to go on a long journey to a place far from Polotzk and its rules of life, far from Russia and its laws of persecution and death, to a true Promised Land where all people, it was said, no matter what their nation and belief, were free to live and be happy in their own way. The name of this Promised Land was America. Some friendly people—the "emigration society," her father called them—made it possible for him to go try his fortune in the new country. Soon he would make a home there for them all.
At last the wonderful letter came—a long letter, and yet it could not tell the half of his joy in the Promised Land. He had not found riches—no, he had been obliged to borrow the money for the third-class tickets he was sending them—but he had found freedom. Best of all, his children might have the chance to go to school and learn the things that make a free life possible and worth while.
Mashke found that they had suddenly become the most important people in Polotzk. All the neighbors gathered about to see the marvelous tickets that could take a family across the sea. Cousins who had not thought of them for months came with gifts and pleadings for letters from the new world. "Do not forget us when you are so happy and grand," they said.
"You will see my boy, my Möshele," cried a poor mother again and again. "Ask him why he does not write to us these many months. If you do not find him in Boston maybe he will be in Balti-moreh. It is all America."
The day came at last when every stool and feather-bed was sold, and their clothes and all the poor treasures they could carry were wrapped in queer-looking bundles ready to be taken in their arms to the new home. All of Polotzk went to the station to wave gay handkerchiefs and bits of calico and wish them well. They soon found, however, that the way of the emigrant is hard. In order to reach the sea they had to go through Germany to Hamburg, and a fearful journey it proved to be. It was soon evident that the Russians were not the only cruel people in the world; the Germans were just as cruel in strange and unusual ways, and in a strange language.
They put the travelers in prison, for which they had a queer name, of course—"Quarantine," they called it. They drove them like cattle into a most unpleasant place, where their clothes were snatched off, their bodies rubbed with an evil, slippery substance, and their breath taken away by an unexpected shower that suddenly descended on their helpless heads. Their precious bundles, too, were tossed about rudely and steamed and smoked. As the poor victims sat wrapped in clouds of steam waiting for the final agony, their clothes were brought back, steaming like everything else, and somebody cried, "Quick! Quick! or you will lose your train!" It seemed that they were not to be murdered after all, but that this was just the German way of treating people whom they thought capable of carrying diseases about with them.