“Plenty for all. Learning flows free, like milk and honey.”
“Learning flows free.” The words painted pictures in my mind. I saw before me free schools, free colleges, free libraries, where I could learn and learn and keep on learning. In our village was a school, but only for Christian children. In the schools of America I'd lift up my head and laugh and dance, a child with other children. Like a bird in the air, from sky to sky, from star to star, I'd soar and soar.
“Land! land!” came the joyous shout. All crowded and pushed on deck. They strained and stretched to get the first glimpse of the “golden country,” lifting their children on their shoulders that they might see beyond them. Men fell on their knees to pray. Women hugged their babies and wept. Children danced. Strangers embraced and kissed like old friends. Old men and old women had in their eyes a look of young people in love. Age-old visions sang themselves in me, songs of freedom of an oppressed people. America! America!
Between buildings that loomed like mountains we struggled with our bundles, spreading around us the smell of the steerage. Up Broadway, under the bridge, and through the swarming streets of the Ghetto, we followed Gedalyah Mindel.
I looked about the narrow streets of squeezed-in stores and houses, ragged clothes, dirty bedding oozing out of the windows, ash-cans and garbage-cans cluttering the sidewalks. A vague sadness pressed down my heart, the first doubt of America.
“Where are the green fields and open spaces in America?” cried my heart. “Where is the golden country of my dreams?” A loneliness for the fragrant silence of the woods that lay beyond our mud hut welled up in my heart, a longing for the soft, responsive earth of our village streets. All about me was the hardness of brick and stone, the smells of crowded poverty.
“Here's your house, with separate rooms like a palace,” said Gedalyah Mindel, and flung open the door of a dingy, airless flat.
“Oi weh!” cried my mother in dismay. “Where's the sunshine in America?” She went to the window and looked out at the blank wall of the next house. “Gottunieu! Like in a grave so dark!”
“It ain't so dark; it's only a little shady,” said Gedalyah Mindel, and lighted the gas. “Look only!”—he pointed with pride to the dim gas-light—“No candles, no kerosene lamps, in America. You turn on a screw, and put to it a match, and you got it light like with sunshine.”
Again the shadow fell over me, again the doubt of America. In America were rooms without sunlight; rooms to sleep in, to eat in, to cook in, but without sunshine, and Gedalyah Mindel was happy. Could I be satisfied with just a place to sleep in and eat in, and a door to shut people out, to take the place of sunlight? Or would I always need the sunlight to be happy? And where was there a place in America for me to play? I looked out into the alley below, and saw pale-faced children scrambling in the gutter. “Where is America?” cried my heart.