“He ought to be shot!” was the brief but conclusive argument of several.
“We’re not strict enough with them,” said the man from Boston; and added the information that shooting is too good for these Black Handsand Anarchists. He called me an “unpractical sentimentalist.” The man from the West, however, took my part.
“You may call the professor a sentimentalist, but I guess he may be right after all. We’ve got a sentimentalist as they called him, in Denver. He took it into his head that you can bust kids of their meanness by being good to them instead of clapping them into jail, and he has done it. We called him a dangerous sentimentalist; but the kids of Denver call him their friend, and he has done more for them than all the sheriffs and judges and jailers put together.”
While the man from the West was speaking, “Dirty Mary,” as we called her, looked wistfully up at me and reminded me that it was candy time in the steerage.
Mary was positively the most hopeless little creature my eyes have ever seen. She was about eleven years of age, and could swear as picturesquely in English as if she were a Bowery tough; while from her stockingless feet up to her head, which looked as if it never had been guilty of contact with a hair-brush, she was a mass of unpicturesque dirt.
Mary had come from Naples to Mulberry Street, and never had a chance to be homesick, for she never had a home. Her father was in prison and her mother had all she could do to take care of the numerous little ones, who, at the
DIRTY MARY DURING THE PERIOD OF TRANSITIONDIRTY MARY DURING THE PERIOD OF TRANSITION
earliest moment, like the fledglings in a nest, were pushed out to shift for themselves. Mary had slept beneath docks, in ash cans and dark alleys, and although still a child, there was nothing left for her to learn concerning the evils of this world.
As I was sharing my sweets with her, the Boston man called down from his safe vantage ground: “Try your love-making on Mary!”
“What’s that bloke talkin’ about?” she asked, noisily chewing her candy.
“He has challenged me,” I answered.
“Say,” she said, looking at the generous proportions of the Boston man and then at me, “he’s got a cinch, ain’t he?”
Nevertheless, I accepted the challenge.
“Mary,” I began, in my gentlest and most persuasive tones, “Mary, I want you to wash yourself.”
“Ain’t got no soap,” was the reply.
“Will you wash yourself if I furnish the soap?”
“Nop”—very decidedly—“no soap in mine.”
The preliminary skirmish was over, and I had lost; but I was not discouraged. Probably the attack had been wrong. I left Mary, and going to the barber’s shop, I bought the most strongly scented soap he had. Armed with this weapon I returned to the steerage, and renewed the attack.
“Mary,” I said, holding the soap close to her nose, “this will make you smell sweet all over, if you use water with it.”
Mary sniffed the musk-laden air, and the primitive spirit in her, lured by the odour, conquered her will. She took the cake of soap and it disappeared in the pocket of her greasy skirt. Triumphantly I went to the upper deck and reported progress. After a remarkably short time Mary reappeared and smilingly looked at me from below. She had used the soap, all of it, I think; for it was liberally plastered over her face, her hands and even her limbs. Indeed dirt and soap were pretty equally distributed over her body.
I had never known that Mary was shy; but when she heard the laughter of the passengers, she disappeared as quickly as a frightened deer, leaving a strong smell of musk behind her.
“What was you all laughing about?” she demanded, when, after a long search, I found her tucked in among the blankets of the shelf which was her bed. Then I explained to her the uses of soap, and by the aid of a pocket mirror showed her its effect when used with the proper proportion of water. Mary was an apt pupil, and then and there washed herself for the first time in many days and weeks.
“Mary, will you wear stockings if I bring them to you?”
Emphatically and briefly Mary answered: “Sure.”
“And shoe-strings in your shoes?” I was growing bold; but “According to your faith——”
The next day Mary appeared, washed clean and wearing stockings which my own little woman had provided.
After that the shoes were laced, and before we reached Naples a hair-brush had invaded the wilderness which crowned her head. A bright ribbon bow was the bribe which accomplished that miracle. Her teeth even became acquainted with a tooth-brush, although I had to use chewing-gum as an inducement to open her tightly closed lips.
Outwardly, at least, Mary became a changed creature. I cannot tell much about what went on in her little soul; but I trust she felt something of that love, which, even in the imperfect way in which it was manifested to her, had some power.
The love I have for the people in the steerage has begotten love in them, and I have brothers and sisters innumerable; while countless children call me “Uncle.” I am quite sure that if these strangers are to be blended into our common life, the one great power which must be used will be this something, which practical people call sentimentalism; but which after all, at its best, is a really practical thing, and accomplisheswhat rigid law, whether good or bad, cannot accomplish. I have seen this force at work, healing, reclaiming, redeeming; and my faith in it is unbounded, although the practical man may ridicule it and the scientific man may scoff at it. My faith in love as a factor, the greatest factor in our social life, is based first of all upon my belief in our common kinship.
I recognize no barriers of race, class or religion between myself and any other human being that needs me. I happen to know something about human beings; I know intimately many races and more nationalities, and I have discovered that when one breaks through the strange speech, which so often separates; when one closes one’s eyes to what climate has burned upon a man’s skin, or what social or economic conditions have formed or deformed—one will find in every human being a kinsman.
Those of us who know certain races most intimately have come to the conclusion that what at first we regarded as essential differences, are largely upon the surface; and that when we have penetrated the unusual, we quickly reach the essentially alike.
The most interesting books and the most acceptable lectures about strange peoples often come from those who know their subjects least. They were not long enough among them to discoverthe likeness—that which is so commonplace that one cannot write books about it or deliver sensational lectures regarding it.
If emigration to America has done nothing else, it has proved that but few race characteristics, if any, are fixed. Should some sceptic wish to be convinced on this point, let him visit such towns as South Bend, Indiana; Scranton, Pa., or Youngstown, Ohio, and look at a group of Slavs or Italians who came here twenty years ago. Let him go among those who have had the full advantage of our environment, of our standard of living, of education and of an enlightening religion. He will find what we call race characteristics almost obliterated, from the faces of even the first generation.
The sluggish Pole has become vivacious; while the fiery Italian has had his blood cooled to a temperature approved by even the most fastidious of those who believe that fervour and enthusiasm are not signs of good breeding.
My own anthropological acumen has sometimes played me sore tricks, especially in the following case: I was the guest of a Woman’s Club, in the Middle West, to speak on the theme of Immigration. At the close of the session, refreshments were served.
The mistress of the house—and be it known that her ancestors came to this country when there was neither steerage nor cabin—told methat she had an Hungarian maid whom she wished me to see. I looked about the room and saw two young women serving the guests. One was a typical American girl, with almost a Gibson face; the daughter of the house, I decided. The face of the other showed some Slavic characteristics, and mentally I placed her birthplace in the Carpathian Mountains. I was congratulating myself on my good judgment, when the young ladies came to serve me; then I discovered that the one with Slavic features was the daughter of the house, while the “Gibson girl” had been born by the river March, in Hungary.
One of the most wonderful sights from the sociological standpoint is the main street of Scranton, Pa., and the neighbouring Court-house Square. Scranton has a weekly corso. A vast stream of young people passes up and down the street on Saturday afternoon, to see and to be seen; to court and to be courted. I have watched that stream for hours, and although fully eighty per cent. of those young people are of foreign birth or children of the foreign born, I could only faintly trace racial differences. Almost invariably, too, the racial marks have been most effectually blotted out from the faces of those who have had the best advantages; that is, the same advantages which we have had. It is noticeable that children ofthe Southern Italians grow larger than their parents, and would grow better than they, if in the changed environment love would supply what chance or fate has denied them.
I believe in love as a factor in social redemption, not only because I believe that we are essentially alike, but because I believe that most human beings respond to it more or less quickly. We know that children do, and that we ourselves rarely outgrow the response to love.
I recall once travelling westward on an immigrant train. To begin with, the car was very much crowded, and after it became part of a slow local train, it was invaded by native Americans, who fretted much and justly, at having to travel in an unventilated, ill-smelling car.
At one station a mother came in, with a child about five years of age. The little one was crying bitterly, because it had the toothache. Two other children caught the infection and lifted up their voices, loud enough and long enough to set every passenger on edge. The mother of the five year old tried to comfort her by telling her that soon they would be at the dentist’s, and he would pull the naughty tooth. That remark failed to produce the desired effect, for the little girl fairly screamed and the two babies joined in the chorus. Then the mother, growing angry, cried: “Jenny, if you don’t keep still, I’ll break your neck!” At which Jenny, not unnaturally,ran from her. I stretched out my arms, and catching her held the struggling form for a minute, then lifted her gently to my knee.
“Tell me, Jenny,” I said, “where does the tooth hurt?”
She pointed to her swollen cheek, and I said: “Now, dear, I’ll take that toothache away,” and I lightly stroked the sore cheek.
Here let me say that I am neither a Christian Scientist nor a Faith Healer, and that when I have a toothache, I go straightway to the dentist. I stroked Jenny’s swollen cheek for a time and then asked: “Does it still hurt, dearie?” and Jenny answered: “Not now. Do it some more.” And I did.
“One, two, three!” I said at last. “I’ll put your toothache into my pocket.” And lo! and behold! the toothache was gone.
Relieved of pain, the child soon fell asleep in my arms, and I carried her back to her mother.
The other children were still crying—challenging my faith in love as a soothing syrup; and I accepted the challenge.
One baby belonged to a Lithuanian woman who was going to join her husband in the coal fields of Illinois. It required more than love to touch that baby; it needed a good digestion as well; for the child was so dirty that it seemed perilous to take it, from whatever point I approached. Finally, I landed it safe. Its skinwas hot and dry; evidently it had a fever, and I knew that it would appreciate water without and within. I applied it liberally, and before long I could really love the child; for when the dirt was removed, it was fair to look upon. When its cries ceased, as they did soon after I gave it a cool drink, I laid it on a seat far from its mother, and it went to sleep.
All this time the third baby continued its lamentations; they were the cries of a very young baby, and went to my heart. I asked its Italian mother to let me take it, and she, having witnessed the miracles I wrought, had faith in me and gave me her child. As soon as it felt the strange, muscular arm, however, it howled with renewed vigour; but I held bravely to it, and walked up and down the car, and down and up, and up and down again. I had to; for whenever I attempted to sit down, the baby shrieked the louder, and as I was being eagerly watched by all the passengers, my reputation was at stake. At last I recalled a little Italian lullaby, one my Dalmatian nurse used to sing to me; I hummed it as I continued my weary march, until the child’s cries changed to a low crooning. Then I sat down and number three fell asleep. Triumphantly I carried it to its mother, and took my seat, much the worse for wear and perspiring at every pore.
In a short time a benevolent looking ladywearing eye-glasses came to me and said: “I beg your pardon, sir, but are you an M. D.?”
“No, madam,” I replied, “I am an L. L. B.”
“What is that?” she inquired.
“Lover of Little Babies,” I answered.
I told this story to my fellow passengers in the cabin; not only because I am proud of my honorary degree, but to prove my belief in the fact that most human beings respond to love, and also that it is a specific for many ills.
My theory may be unscientific and impractical; but my fellow voyagers saw it successfully carried out in the steerage of that steamer.
Shall I ever forget the landing of the ship at Naples? Tony and John Sullivan and Pietro and Guisseppi, resplendent in their American clothes,—eager to land; yet not forgetting to shake my hand as they bade me a smiling good-bye. I doubt that there was one of those hundreds of men whose life’s history I did not know, whose hopes for the future I did not share and in whom my love had not awakened some kindly feeling.
I knew the women and the children; I was expected to kiss the babies—and I did—and the children all said good-bye to their “Uncle.” After all, I may not have done them any good, but I know that they enriched my life. Proudly I looked at Mary, no longer “Dirty Mary,” and her clean face made me happy; while her smile was worth much more than gold. I had newbrothers and sisters, nephews, nieces and children.
My orthodox friend from Boston stood beside me when they landed. “This is like heaven,” he said as he looked around.
The matchless bay, with its blue water, glittered in the light of the sun, which made a pavement of gold fit for angels and spirits to walk upon. It was like heaven to me also; not because I thought of golden pavements or harps or halos, or any of the glories which the imagination might picture to itself. To me it seemed like heaven because “The redeemed walk there,” those whom America is lifting from the steerage into the many cabins of the Lord.
THE ports of Naples, Triest and Fiume felt the full tide of returning immigration, and although it came sweeping in with unprecedented force, it was not regarded as a calamity. For hours at each port, noisy venders of fruit, and “runners” for modest lodging places hung about the ship, and every passenger who disembarked was an asset, not only to the port in which he waited for the train or boat which would carry him to his native place, but to the whole economic life of his nation.
There was something almost grotesquely grandiose in the air with which each immigrant viewed the shores of his native land, and an unconscious exaggeration of our American ways in his walk and talk, and the prodigality with which he handled small change.
The street venders and purveyors of small pleasures recognized this, and appealed to his newly awakened generosity by charging him twice as much for everything as they charged when he was outward bound.
The customs officers had a sharpened vision
TRIEST Austria’s commercial harbor; prosperous, whether the immigrant tide ebbs or flows.TRIESTAustria’s commercial harbor; prosperous, whether the immigrant tide ebbs or flows.
and did not treat his baggage with the usual disrespect. The brass-bound trunks contained phonographs to disturb the age-long silence of some mountain village, samples of American whiskey, “the kind that burns all the way down,” and therefore characteristic of our temper. There were cigars, manufactured by the American Tobacco Trust, and safely concealed; for the Austrian and Italian governments have been wise enough to create a monopoly of their own on tobacco.
Gold trinkets, too, there were, for some Dulcinea in the Apennines or the Carpathians—trinkets brought as tokens of faithfulness, which is often as spurious as the metal; and ah, yes! there is something else which they bring and no customs boundary can keep it out. It is hidden away in the innermost being and will come to light some day, although now the wanderer himself may be unconscious of it.
The returned immigrants scatter into thousands of villages, rousing them from their commonplaceness by stories of adventure, boasts of mighty deeds of valor and praise or criticism of our strange customs.
Sitting in the inn of a little Alpine village, I once overheard one of these immigrants comparing the slow ways of the natives with our swifter pace.
“In America the trains go so fast that theycan’t stop to take on passengers; they just have hooks with which they are caught as the train flies past.
“They have reaping machines,” this candidate for the “Ananias Club” continued, “to which a dozen horses are hitched, and the grain is cut, threshed, ground to flour and baked, in a few minutes. All you have to do is to touch a button and you can get bread or cake as you choose.”
All this his auditors believed; but when he told them that we build houses forty stories high, their credulity was strained to the breaking point; although he swore by the memory of his departed mother that it was so, and that he had seen it with his own eyes.
One reason that the returned immigrant is so quickly recognized is, that he purposely emphasizes the difference between himself and those who have remained at home. He does everything and wears everything which will make him like an American, even if over here he had scarcely moved out of his group or come in touch with our civilization. With pride the men wear our clothing, including stiff collars and ties, and when one is in doubt as to a man’s relation to our life, a glance at his feet is sufficient; “for by their”—shoes—“ye shall know them.”
While one may deplore the loss of the picturesque in European peasant life, there is an ethicalsignificance in the immigrant’s American garments which is of rather vital importance.
The Polish peasant in his native environment is one of the laziest among European labourers. Wrapped in his sheepskin coat, summer and winter, walking barefoot the greater part of the year, and in winter putting his feet into clumsy, heavy boots which impeded his progress, these garments fitted his temper. They were heavy, inexpensive, never changing, and rarely needed renewal. The American clothes he wears are a symbol of his altered character. They mean a new standard of living even as they mean a new standard of effort.
In America the Polish labourer loses his native laziness. The journey in itself has shaken him out of his lethargy; the high gearing of our industrial wheels, the pressure brought to bear upon him by the American foreman, the general atmosphere of our life charged by an invigorating ozone, and the absence of a leisure class, at least from the industrial community, have, in a few years, changed what many observers regarded as a fixed characteristic.
The whole Slavic race is inclined to lead an easy life, and immigration is destined to have a permanent effect upon it; for the returned immigrant acts contagiously upon his community. Unbiased landowners and manufacturers have told me that we have trained their workmen inindustry, that we have quickened their wits and that while wages have risen nearly 60% in almost all departments of labour, the efficiency of the labourers has been correspondingly increased, most noticeably where the largest number of returned immigrants has entered the home field.
The Slavic peasants both in Hungary and Poland were gradually losing their allotted land, and were socially and physically deteriorating, prior to the movement to America. Indolence coupled with intemperance drove them into the hands of usurers, and they dropped into the landless class, thus becoming dependent upon casual labour.
The returned immigrant began to buy land which the large landowners were often forced to sell, because wages had risen abnormally and labourers were often not to be had at any price. In the four years between 1899 and 1903, land owned by peasants increased in some districts to 418%, and taking the immigrant districts in Austro-Hungary and Russian-Poland together, the increase in four years reaches the incredible figure of 173%.
In three districts of Russian-Poland the peasants bought in those four years 14,694 acres of farmland. This of course means not only that money was brought back from America, but that the peasant at home has become moreindustrious, if not always more temperate and frugal.
The little village of Kochanovce in the district of Trenczin in Hungary, out of which but few had emigrated to America, and to which not many families had returned, has, under this new economic impulse, bought the land on which the villagers’ forefathers were serfs and on which they had worked during the harvest for about twenty cents a day. The peasants bought the whole baronial estate, including the castle, giving a mortgage for the largest part of the purchase sum; but they are now the owners of one of the finest estates in Hungary, and the mortgage drives them to work as they have never worked before. This same impulse has struck the district of Nyitra in which the land had almost gone out of the peasants’ hands, lost by the same causes, intemperance and indolence.
In the last five years the change has been so great as to seem marvellous. Usurers have been driven out of business and the peasant’s house has ceased to be a mud hut with a straw-thatched roof. In fact, that type of building has been condemned by law, at the initiative of returned immigrants.
The shopkeepers throughout the whole immigrant territory rejoice. Their stock is increased by many varieties of goods; for the peasant now wants the best there is in themarket, often useless luxuries, to be sure; but while he may spend his money “for that which is not meat,” he wants to spend, and that means effort, than which the Slavs as a race need nothing more for their social and political salvation.
Their advance is strikingly illustrated by the following examples.
The B. Brothers of Vienna are manufacturers of neckties. On a recent visit to their establishment I met some buyers from Hungary, one of whom, when the salesman showed him the class of goods which he had been in the habit of buying, highly coloured, stiff bows of cheap cotton, said:
“We have no use for such stuff. This is the tie we want,” and he pulled out an American tie of rather fine quality and the latest pattern.
I had to promise the head of the firm of B. Brothers to put him in touch with an American haberdasher’s journal, so that he may keep himself informed as to our styles.
Partly to test the influence of immigration in the remotest region of Hungary and partly to satisfy my craving for a certain kind of candy, I visited a little village hidden away in the Carpathians, where neither steam nor electricity has yet obtruded itself. There in a certain store, I bought my very first sweets, and although I have since tasted the delicacies of many civilizations, the lingering flavour of that first candystill seems the most delicious, and its taste has never left my palate. It was hard, highly coloured and usually exposed to flies and dust; but it was my first love, and my first pennies were sacrificed to it; so I was eager to revel in its delights again.
I went to that village in the spirit of one who goes on a pilgrimage, and as one seeks one’s favourite shrine so did I seek that little store. My palate’s memory led me to the very door; but in front of it, forcing itself upon my candy-hungry gaze, was a penny in the slot machine, out of which, in response to two Hungarian Filers, came dropping a stick of genuine American chewing-gum. It is needless to say that my primitive, highly-coloured candy was no more. In its place were caramels and buttercups very much like those I had left behind me in the United States.
Now I do not mean to imply that chewing-gum and caramels have any social or ethical bearing upon my subject; but they do prove that the old order changes and that the new has been brought in by the immigrant. Still within the sphere of the economic, yet having large ethical value, is the fact that the returned immigrant brings gold, not only in his pocket but in his teeth. I certainly never realized the far-reaching social and ethical value of the dentist until I saw the contrast between the returnedimmigrant, especially the contrast between his wife and daughter and the women who had remained at home.
If it ever was true that coarse fare makes strong teeth, it certainly has not been true during the period of my observations among the peasant people of Europe.
Where I know the bread to be coarsest and the fare simplest, as for instance in impoverished Montenegro, there the old, toothless hags are most numerous, and even the mouths of the young are disfigured by decaying teeth. This is especially true of the Alpine and Carpathian regions, out of which many of the Slavic immigrants come; there, a woman of forty is usually an old woman because she has no teeth. She is ugly in consequence, and therefore neglected by her husband.
The immigrant woman has discovered that gold in the teeth renews one’s youth, that it preserves one’s charms and is apt to keep lovers and husbands more loyal. Mistresses in America know how readily these foreign servants sacrifice their wages upon the dentist’s altar.
Not only does dentistry keep the women young and their lovers faithful, it keeps the men in good health, adds to their self-respect, and into regions hitherto untouched by their beneficent influence, it has introduced tooth-brushes and dentifrice.
If the returned immigrant can be easilyrecognized
Before he emigratedBefore he emigrated
When the Immigrant comes home. A CONTRAST IN HOMESWhen the Immigrant comes home.A CONTRAST IN HOMES
by his shoes and by gold in his teeth, his residence can be quickly detected from the fact that day and night his isba is blessed by fresh air; and perhaps more significant to the world’s well-being than the American economic doctrine of the “Open Door,” is its physiological doctrine of the open window.
Pastor Holubek, of Bosacz in Hungary, when I asked him what effect the returned immigrant had upon his parish, said:
“A good effect. The returned immigrant is a new man. He carries himself differently, he commands the respect of his fellows, he treats his wife better and he keeps the windows of his isba open.”
The last two facts are exceedingly important, and my observations bear out his testimony. Wherever I saw an open window in the evening, I could with perfect assurance open the door and say: “How do you do?” and I was certain to be greeted by a still more emphatic and cordial, “How do you do?”
For some inexplicable reason, Europeans of all classes are averse to air in sleeping rooms, especially at night. Night air is supposed to hold all sorts of evils, and even the medical profession, progressive as it is, has not yet freed itself from this terrible superstition.
Frequently I have discovered in the returned immigrant a quickening of the moral sense, especiallyamong the men who had come in contact with the better class of American mechanics; and the discovery was as welcome as unexpected. I saw this emphasized during my trip last year. It was on a Sunday’s journey among the villages of the valley of the Waag. Picturesque groups were moving along the highway to and from the church and into the village and out of it. The appearance of my companions and myself always created a great sensation and never a greater one than on Sunday when the peasants were at leisure. They took it as a special privilege to see “genuine Americans,” and those who had been over here were quickly on the scene to air their English and to show their familiarity with our kind.
It was a reciprocal pleasure; for it seemed like a breath from home to hear men talk intelligently of Hazleton, Pittsburg, Scranton and Wilkes-Barre; moreover it gave us a splendid opportunity to test the effect of our civilization upon them.
In one village a husband with his wife and two children came out of their isba, and we could easily imagine ourselves at home; for the whole family looked as if it had just come from a grand bargain sale at one of our department stores. What seemed most delightful to us was the way in which the man spoke of his wife, and no American husband could have been more carefulof her than was he; all this in striking contrast to the peasants to whom the woman is still an inferior being.
In conversation with them, I took the returned immigrant as my subject and told them something of our own social order as shown in the relation of husband and wife in America; upon which one of the peasants told a very ugly and realistic story to illustrate what he thought of women. Then it was that the unexpected happened. My immigrant friend blushed—yes, blushed—just as I should expect any well-bred man to blush under similar circumstances, and said to me: “Don’t mind him. He has a dirty mouth. He may after all have a clean heart.”
The man who blushed had been five years in—Pittsburg!
The change brought about through immigration, even in a youth of the better class, whose character had been spoiled by his early training, was shown in a young Magyar in Budapest. That city has the unenviable reputation of being one of the most immoral cities in Europe. The immorality of the great cities is everywhere very much alike in certain respects; still it seems to me that a city is more or less immoral, not according to the size of its tenderloin district, but in how far immorality has been accepted as the norm of life. In that respect Budapest is considerably in the lead; for its youth isnourished in an atmosphere of indolence, false pride and various phases of social impurity.
The family to which this particular young man belonged boasted three sons of whom he is the oldest. He went the road which leads to destruction, and he went with the full knowledge of his parents, for both were going their own gait in the same direction.
Finally he was forced to run away because he had transgressed the law. He landed in New York penniless and fortunately without friends. He learned all the lessons which homesickness, hunger and cold could teach him, and as there was no other way to escape them than by labour, this youth, who never had worked, began driving a milk wagon and ultimately graduated into a clerkship. When I saw him among his own people in Budapest where he was visiting, he was so changed in his physique that not even his closest friends recognized him. Although the law had been appeased and by the death of his father he had the opportunity to conduct the business bequeathed him, his awakened conscience rebelled against the conditions around him and he was eager to return to America.
It was interesting to note that his friends found him unbearable, declaring him no longer a gentleman because he worked with his hands and was not ashamed of it; while the young ladies decided that he had been spoiled by hissojourn in America because he was not eternally kissing their hands and had forgotten how to make pretty and meaningless compliments.
Of course one does not always receive favourable replies to one’s questions as to the effect of the returned immigrant upon his community. Manufacturers who exploited his labour, large landowners to whom he was no more than a serf, and priests, uneasy about the effect of the contagion, are usually very critical; but these unfavourable replies are only a proof that the leaven is at work.
I put the question to some guests at a confirmation feast. The priest told me that the immigrants become Atheists and Salvationists. In his mind there was not much difference between them. The judge told me that they become immoral; which meant that they do not pay him sufficient revenue. The host, a wealthy landowner, said that they become Socialists and Anarchists; which meant that they demand higher wages and better treatment. All agreed that emigration has been of large economic value.
So far as my observation goes, I feel certain that emigration has been of inestimable economic and ethical value to the three great monarchies chiefly concerned, namely: Italy, Austro-Hungary and Russia. It has withdrawn inefficient labour and has returned some of it capable of more and better work; it has liftedthe status of the peasantry to a degree which could not have been achieved even by a revolution; it has educated the neglected masses, lifted them to a higher standard of living and has implanted new and vital ideals.
That there are attendant evils, no one will question. There is much more discontent than there ever has been, more haste and less leisure; there is less respect for authority and for established institutions; certain social evils have been accentuated; the newly acquired wealth has proved disastrous to some, and family ties have been strained by the absence of the heads of many households.
Nevertheless, an Hungarian statesman, who had risen from the ranks, said to me: “America has been a blessing to us. Had Columbus not discovered it, all Europe would still be in servitude, and had it not been rediscovered by our peasants, they would not have had much chance to get their necks from under the yoke.
“America is our leaven and will yet be our salvation.”
I have watched the leaven at work, and in the succeeding chapters I have recorded some concrete instances, which clearly show that “A little leaven, leaveneth the whole lump.”
THE third-class waiting-room in the Oderberg station, on the Northern Railroad of Austria, is splendid vantage ground from which to watch the racial and national conglomerate that forms the insecure structure called the Austro-Hungarian monarchy.
Here from her East and West, her North and South, one meets those great social currents which stream from the mountains to the plains and from the villages to the cities. Here, also, the tides of immigration come in and go out, and by their volume one can judge the prosperity of the United States, or at least the condition of our labour markets.
Here the “spick and span” German, from across the border, meets his less vigorous and more “gemuethlich” cousin, the Austrian.
Here the Moravian and the Czech touch elbows and glory in their Slavic speech—the age-long battle for the supremacy of their language being one of the few points which they have won in this contentious monarchy.
This is also the meeting place of Southern and Western Slavs, and here the fierce looking Bosnianscarry, in their erstwhile weapon belts, pins, pipes, jack-knives and razors, which they sell to their Slavic brothers of the West; they even deign to speak in broken German to the hated “Schwabs,” when driving their bargains.
Glancing around the crowded waiting-room, one sees Ruthenians and Wallachians, in picturesque garb, travelling from their impoverished mountain homes to the upper Danubian plain. They are harvesters, and their backs are bent under the weight of crude cooking utensils and primitive harvest implements.
Close to this group are fiercely moustachioed Magyars, in their semi-Oriental, loose, white linen trousers and heavy sheepskin coats. They are going to take charge of the flocks of sheep on some lordly estates; they know the ways of all four-footed animals, and are considered faithful shepherds.
In one corner stand smoothly shaven, coarse featured Slovaks, in clothing, home-made, from their felt boots to their felt hats; primitive folk they are, seeking labour in the industrial cities along this busy highway.
Of course, there are Jews from the East and the West; as far removed from each other in culture and beliefs as those two points of the compass, yet all swayed by the same mysterious force which at its best turns their vision towards Jehovah, and at its worst towards Mammon.
They all are divided more or less by speech, blood and faith and are united, only by the poverty which compels them to travel third-class on the government’s railways, whose low-zone tariff encourages the migrations of its people; thus easily relieving economic distress in some regions and providing labour where it is needed.
When the train comes, the conductor sorts this mixture of humanity according to his prejudices or the seeming ability of the travellers to reward him for rescuing them from this malodorous conglomerate, by providing a less crowded compartment. As a rule, I am willing to be thus rescued, but not this time; for there is one element in evidence which makes the well-known mass of people more interesting than usual; namely, the returning immigrant. “Where thou goest, I will go,” even if it was into the thick of bag and baggage carried on the backs of men and women, through the narrow door, into an already over-crowded compartment where windows were hermetically sealed and where the air was not only stiflingly hot but full of mysterious odours, much unlike those of “Araby the blest.”
There seemed no limit to the capacity of the car or to the patience of the passengers who were being pushed about like cattle; until the conductor attempted to thrust in a woman of unusual size, who evidently was acquainted with our ways and certain words of our language.She let loose upon the official the vials of her wrath, her realistic Slavic becoming fairly lurid, reënforced as it was by English words, which, when used in America, make even printers gasp, when they must be printed. Were it not that such words can be indicated only by dashes, it would prove interesting to record them here, to show what changes they undergo upon the lips of our apt pupils.
Puffing and panting, this colossal woman forced her way through the crowded car, looking for a seat. I gave her my place, and as she accepted it, she asked laconically, “’Merican man?” When I nodded assent, the point of contact was made, we shook hands and said: “How do you do?”
Like an electric current the greeting communicated itself from bench to bench. A woman across the aisle caught the force of it and waved her hand over the heads of the crowd as she cried: “How do you do?” She held up a fretful boy of five, who raised his voice in lamentation; while she said: “Behave yourself, kid; there’s an American boss on the car.” But the boy, thoroughly American, would not be frightened by threats of boss, police, or any other bugaboo. He pulled at her skirt, clutched her expansive hat, nearly tearing it from its insecure moorings, then rolled the window shade up and down, suddenly letting it go with a spring—after which, all in one breath, he peremptorily demanded candy, water,bananas, and that his mother make the reluctant “choo-choo cars” go at once.
This woman’s husband is a merchant in Wilmerding, Pa., and she, after many years in America, was going home to visit her people, bringing this hopeful youngster with her to disturb the “peace of Jerusalem.”
“If he were my boy,” growled the unfortunate man who sat on the same bench with him, “I’d throw him out the window;” and the woman apologetically said: “He is an American boy, and they are all like this. You can’t tame them. Whipping does no good.”
“Well,” the man muttered, under his fierce moustachio, “I am glad I am not living in America.”
A young Moravian woman, who, in America, had exchanged her peasant garb and ruggedness for our more expensive dress and gentler ways, corroborated the mother’s statement. She had worked in American homes and testified: “Children in America are all terrible. Nothing is sacred to them; neither the kitchen nor the church. It’s because they have so few children; they spoil them.”
“Yes,” agreed a young Hungarian Jew; “in America, they have the one child system, and many women do not have even one child. They are so sterile. You should see how thin and flat-chested they are.”
Then, in his realistic way, he described the physique of our women. He was a great talker, that young Jew. Having been unsuccessful in New York, he was returning home a cynic and a severe critic.
“Hm!” he continued; “the women of America are the boss. Just think of it; you can’t get a woman to black your boots. That is the reason so many men get a divorce.”
He knew all about the American woman’s luxuries, and talked loudly and long of silken petticoats, lace waists, and other sartorial mysteries; for he had worked in a tailor’s shop and was acquainted with all woman’s “doings.”
“The American men are to blame!” exclaimed a man who was crowded close to me. He had returned from America some time before, and was travelling up and down the country, buying butter and eggs. He had caught a vision of the American man and his business methods in Chicago, where he had worked in a large packing-house, and in a modest way, he was applying his knowledge.
“They work like niggers,” he continued, “and let their women remain in idleness, sitting all day long in rocking-chairs, rocking, rocking”—and he imitated the motion—“and eating candy. Just think of it! They buy candy by the pound!”
Evidently he was not imitating the exampleof American men in the treatment of his wife who was with him, sharing the hardships of the journeys from village to village. While he was speaking, she drew their luncheon from her ample pockets: hard rye bread and Salami, a sausage as hard as the bread.
“No, indeed!” He had not taken her to America. “That’s where they spoil the women.”
His aspiration was to ultimately control the butter and egg business in his region, and future historians may record his name as a “Captain of Industry,” with those of Armour and Swift. He knew a little of every language spoken in the dual monarchy, and that, together with the fact that he spoke some English, made him a most interesting travelling companion. The greater part of the time he preached to the peasants the gospel of business. “You poor rascals,” he said; “you work in the fields from sunrise to sunset, eat bread-soup, and not much else, three times a day, and carry loads heavy enough to break your backs; while the Jews, who do the business, live in fine houses, eat the best spring geese, which you raise for them, and send their children to college. You ought to go to America and see business. Even the little boys of rich people sell newspapers and lemonade in front of their fathers’ palaces. Go into business and the Jews will have to go back to Jerusalem where they came from.”
The peasants all nodded their heads and said: “Tak ye, tak ye,” it is so, it is so; but one could see in their placid, half-stupid faces, that if they ever have the spirit which ventures, they must first go to America.
The corpulent woman who had accepted my seat knew something about the lot of her kind in America, and, having by this time recovered her breath, she very emphatically gave the butter and egg man her views on the subject.
“You say that women don’t work in America, and that they are spoiled? I just come from there; I have been there fourteen years, in McKeesport, Pa. I have kept boarders ever since I went there, and I haven’t had time to sit in a rocking-chair, and my husband never bought me any candy. It’s true, you can’t beat us women there as you can over here. Soon after we went there, my husband beat me when he was drunk. I took it as patiently as I did here, and he beat me again and I didn’t say anything; although I carried a black eye for a week. Then the young woman who takes the money at the grocery store asked me how I hurt myself. I said I didn’t hurt myself, my husband did it. Then that young girl, as thin as a rail and as meek-looking as a swallow, said: ‘You tell me the next time he hits you.’
“It wasn’t long before he beat me again, and I told her and the police came and took him bythe neck and put him in the lock-up, and it cost me twenty-five dollars to get him out. I earned that money myself and it was no punishment to him. I told the young woman about it, and she said: ‘The next time he hits you, you hit back.’ I said: ‘Is it allowed?’ She laughed, and said: ‘If he hits you first and you kill him, nothing will happen to you.’ It wasn’t long until he came home drunk and beat me again and I gave him one with the rolling-pin and he fell, and as he was lying there I got so angry I gave him another and another, and after that he knew better than to beat me.”
This Slavic Deborah told her story graphically and dramatically, and, undoubtedly, her husband was not the first immigrant to learn that marriage on the European plan is one thing, and on the American plan, quite another matter.
“Yes,” said the young Moravian woman. “When I get married, I’ll get an American husband. They don’t expect a dowry, and they don’t make you work like a slave.”
“In a year he’ll get divorced,” the young Hungarian Jew broke in. “They do that quickly.”
“And what of it?” she retorted. “I’ll be still better off. He’ll have to pay me.”
I do not know exactly at what point of the conversation I began to sing the praises of the American man; his loyalty and his sense of justice—if there is one thing that I enjoy morethan singing the praise of the American woman it is lauding the American man.
Hardly had I begun to speak, when a young Roumanian, whom I had not previously noticed, commenced to rail at me, telling me in a mixture of three languages to keep my mouth shut; for he knew better. From the time he landed in New York until he left the country, he had not met a man who did not take advantage of him or ill-treat him. In Chicago, he was lured from the Union Station to a saloon on Canal Street, and, when he came to himself, he was lying in an alley, penniless. He found his way to Montana, where he herded sheep. There he tasted something of loneliness and homesickness, seeing nothing for weeks but red hills and blue sky—not a living thing except his sheep, or wolves to drive away. Then one day came American men on ponies and killed every one of his sheep, hundreds and hundreds of them, knocked him down and threatened to riddle him with bullets if he did not turn his face towards the East and march on without looking back. Days and days he walked, and because his face was of a darker hue than others, and his clothes looked strange, “No man gave unto him.” He then worked in the mines of Colorado. “The men there,” he said, “shoot, drink, and gamble, and have about as much regard for human life as for the life of sheep, and as soon as I had money enough Imade ready to go home.” No more America for him, and no praise for its men.
“That’s not so, Brother,” came a voice from the farther end of the car, and I turned to see this valiant champion of ours. Had I been asked to give the place of his nativity, I should have put it in that Middle West of ours, which takes from her children all surplus flesh and puts in its place bone and sinew. His complexion was sallow, and the general expression of his face betokened sensitiveness, bordering on the abnormal. “I have been in America twenty years, and those years in Chicago, and I have met many good men. The good men don’t shoot and drink and gamble.”
It seemed strange language to my travelling companions; but to me it sounded familiar.
After the Chicago man had delivered his exordium, I had no difficulty in getting his story from him, and then I knew “whence this man had this doctrine.” Emigrating in his young manhood to Chicago, he had come in touch with Methodist missionaries, who befriended him and saved him from a life of intemperance and infidelity. Unfortunately, his awakened, religion-hungry soul became confused by the shibboleths of contending sects; he travelled and travailed all the way, from striving after a “Second Blessing,” to “Soul Sleepers,” “Seventh Day Adventists,” and Dowie’s religious movement, whichat times looked like Opera Bouffe, but which ended in a great tragedy. I did not discover what form of faith was now holding the allegiance of his spirit; but as he told me that it was neither a church nor a sect, I surmised that he belonged to some church or sect whose chief doctrine is that it is neither.
Evidently the Spirit was upon him, some spirit at least; for he told me that he had been sent to Hungary to convert his brethren. Knowing how much the region from which he came needed some moral and religious quickening, I timidly offered him my hand and my good wishes; but he declined both. He “must not lean on the arm of flesh; so the Bible says.” The odour of tobacco offended his sensitive nostrils, and, turning to the butter and egg man, who was the chief offender, he pointed to his pipe, saying: “Throw that devilish thing away!” But a Slav and his pipe are not so soon parted, and the butter and egg man held firmly to his; although he smiled, not wishing to offend this prophet in Israel. Then the luckless man pulled his whiskey bottle out of his pocket and offered it to the ex-Dowieite, who took it, lifted it high in air, and made an eloquent temperance address, after which he threw the bottle out the window.
If, as a drowning man, he had refused a life-preserver, or had thrown diamonds into the sea, his Slavic brothers would not have thought himmore reckless or insane. Palenka, as they call it, gives strength. Black bread and palenka have kept the hard-working Slav alive, have given him courage and cheer, and this crazy man had thrown the precious stuff away!
Yet he was so righteously indignant, so wrought up over his heroic task, that the peasants who had risen to remonstrate with him or to attack him, sank back into their seats; while over them all came a solemn silence, broken only by the grinding and jolting of the flat car-wheels.
This was the psychological moment for the prophet to declare his mission and preach to us all, and he did. It was a fervent message; one in which much truth and falsehood mingled, and if Dowie’s spirit hovered near, his satisfaction at hearing one of his disciples speak of the things for which he fought and on which he throve, would have been marred only by the fact that, for once at least, “Elijah the Second” was outdone. All the Dowie vernacular, translated into the realistic Slavic, was let loose by this apostle. Now it was the voice of some Old Testament prophet which spoke; and again it was as if a John pleaded for love’s sake. Then came a jumble of words and bitter invective, which, by comparison, caused the imprecatory Psalms to seem like the thirteenth chapter of First Corinthians.
No sooner had the preacher resumed his seatthan the spell he had woven about his auditors was broken. The butter and egg man rose and demanded to be reimbursed for his wasted palenka, concluding his remarks by asserting that in America good people do drink whiskey, that everybody drinks, and that “they make you drink whether you want to or not.”
“Tak ye,” so it is, said a young man, who, as far as his clothing was concerned, might have just stepped out of an American Jockey Club. His voice was guttural and every sentence was punctuated by oaths.
“My father keeps a saloon in Hazleton, and the policemen and aldermen come there and drink, and at election time the burgess comes and ‘sets ’em up’ for everybody.”
While he spoke, he jingled the money in his pockets and kept his audience much interested by telling about his betting on horse-races, the intricacies of the game of poker, how much money his father made on liquor and what a high and mighty position was that of a saloon-keeper in Hazleton. He was going to Galicia to visit his grandparents, and he meant to show the slow town of Przemysl what it means to have a “hot time.”
At Hodonin, in Moravia, I had to leave the train; so I bade good-bye to the interesting company.
The woman from McKeesport said, as we shook hands, “America all right, and you bet I’m going back just as soon as I have seen to my property.”
With a contemptuous glance at the young Jew, the Moravian girl said: “Right she is! There’s nothing the matter with America, and when I go back, I bet you I’ll get an American husband!”
“Oh, yes! Of course. They are lying on the shelf waiting for you!” sneered the object of her contempt.
The sport tried to be kind in his good-bye words; but he used so many oaths that he became repulsive. When I remonstrated, he said:
“In America, everybody swear—no make trouble to say: good-morning your—Highness. See a man—slap him on shoulder and say: Hello—John—you—how dy? So long, then, you—old man, good-bye.”
The butter and egg man gripped my hand mightily, and as a parting word gave me this injunction. “Don’t let your old woman boss you;” then, glancing at our prophet, he added: “He little not all right.”
The Roumanian shepherd looked out the window and made no effort to take my proffered hand. His sallow face was drawn by pain, caused by something I dimly divined.
We were at the station, a station famous for a certain kind of sausage, whose odorous steamsoon filled our nostrils. Taking several portions from the tray which a waiter held towards me, I gave them to the Roumanian peasant. Like a wild beast he fell upon the food, while into his pain-drawn face came a ray of human joy.
The prophet had difficulty in making up his mind about me. Reluctantly he stretched out his hand as I was leaving the car. When I grasped it, he querulously asked: “Have you received the Blessing?” and with great assurance I answered: “You bet.”
THE last people to feel the sweep of the tide which carried them to the United States and back again were the mountain folk in Eastern Europe.
The Slav is naturally a plainsman, and even in the lowlands, where he could not very well escape the force of world currents, he resisted them as long as possible, content to follow his plough for a meagre wage.
When at last the lure of the gold grew too strong for him to withstand its seductive beckoning, he went first from the great highways along the main branches of railroads, and from villages on the shores of rivers; until the ever-rising tide, with all its volume and all its good or ill, reached the mountains.
Where in straggling villages in the Carpathians the little mud-huts are detached, and scattered on top of the foothills in the midst of their stony fields, these form a Kopanicze; the individual hut is called a Kopanicza, and the inhabitants are called Kopaniczari.
They are the poor mountain folk, isolated from church and school, far from the highways oftravel, and are among the most backward, most primitive, and most neglected of the Slovak people. Their isolation has often bred not only ignorance but sometimes lawlessness, and, even now, he who has no pressing business there, avoids these settlements.
Meeting a Kopaniczar on a lonely highway gives one a queer, creepy sensation. He is a raw-boned, clumsy creature, his body wrapped in a sheepskin coat, his head covered by a broad, felt hat, soaked in grease, his feet encased in woolen boots; all his garments of the most primitive home manufacture. He looks more ferocious than he is; for unless heavily under the influence of alcohol, which does not easily affect him, he is a good-natured human being. His superstition and his ignorance, however, coupled with his intemperance, make him often dangerous, as is seen by the following incident which took place last year.
A great many fires of incendiary origin occurred in one of the settlements, and as no satisfactory clue to the perpetrator was found, they were supposed to be the work of evil spirits. Fire in one of these settlements is especially disastrous; for as the huts are built of exceedingly inflammable material, everything is consumed. Such a house usually includes in its primitive possessions a horse or a cow, and when these are destroyed, it spells utter ruin.
One day a tourist came into this Kopanicze, the first of his kind who had ever ventured into that isolated region. Being a tourist, he naturally carried a camera, and as he levelled it upon the buildings, the peasants, conceiving the insane idea that he was marking their huts for destruction, ran out and beat him to death.
A boyhood friend of mine was appointed district physician in the upper Trenczin district, the most poverty stricken in Hungary, largely populated by these Kopaniczari. He was a Jew without powerful protection, and one way of getting rid of surplus Jewish physicians was to put them in charge of one of these regions, in which they were sure to be out of the way of some Gentile aspirant for a large and lucrative medical practice.
My friend had travelled the usual long and thorny road which a poor boy has to travel in striving after a university education. His parents, who were poor, laboured and begged and borrowed; while he tutored and borrowed and begged; yet he found himself still within two years of a diploma when his parents died.
Then he did the not uncommon thing; consulted a marriage broker, who found a marriageable maiden with a dowry, and parents willing to advance a portion of it; so that the young man could finish his education before he led the daughter to the altar.
In Hungary, a doctor’s diploma is a splendid asset in the marriage business, and had my friend been able to wait until he really had his, he could have commanded twice as much dowry and a handsomer maiden. Being poor, he shared the lot of all those unfortunates who have to make purchases on the instalment plan, be they plush albums, life insurance, or wives.
In spite of the materialistic way in which my doctor went about getting a bride, he was an idealist; and, consequently, doomed to have a hard time in this exceedingly practical world. When after his marriage he was sent to the Trenczin district, he found that the Kopanicze had as much use for a doctor as it had for a professor of psychology. Not that the people were never ill; on the contrary, infants born in the wretched huts, unless remarkably well prepared for the stifling air they had to breathe, for the hard rye bread soaked in alcohol, which often they had to eat, and for the poppy seed concoction which they were given to keep them quiet while their mothers were working in the fields—such infants, and there were many—went back into the unknown soon after they came out of it.
If they lingered, if any one lingered, before death overtook him, the witch was the first aid brought into requisition. To cure infantile convulsions, she would lay the baby on the thresholdand cause a female dog to jump over it three times. A specific against typhoid fever was a vile compound made of the heart of a black cat, juniper berries, and alcohol; while if a child had eaten poisoned mushrooms, it was hit over the head until it either died or recovered.
Strange to say, and yet not strange, a fair proportion of robust infants, as well as hardened adults, survived such treatment, and even to this day there is a witch not far from the city of Vag Ujhely, who has some degree of national fame for her healing art.
If the witch failed to cure, the priest was sent for and the proper saints invoked for the healing. If the priest’s prayers failed to help—“What’s the use of sending for the doctor?” The undertaker was notified, and the grave-digger did the rest.
Unselfishly my friend tried to save these people. He preached the gospel of fresh air, and in passing through one of the settlements with him, some five years ago, I saw him break window after window (they were not made to open) that fresh air might at least once enter the wretched living-rooms. The result was a riot, and that night all his windows were broken; so that for once he had more air than he desired.
There was consumption in one settlement, and he provided sanitary cuspidors, proscribed by law; but he saw them used for culinary purposes instead!
Vainly, he lifted his voice against the use of alcohol; he had the innkeepers and the State against him. The State prefers to see its people rot from poison rather than lose its revenue.
In spite of all he did, he was regarded as the enemy of the community and not its friend; so having meddled much in business which was not his, he could not expect a promotion, and none came.
Five years ago he had accepted poverty, neglect, and the enmity of his neighbours as his lot in life. He had sunk into such a hopeless attitude that neither in dress nor in habits of living could one easily distinguish him from his ignorant neighbours. His wife was more disappointed than he was. Had she bestowed upon him such a dowry to live in the Kopanicze? She had expected to be the “Highborn Mrs. Dr. M——” and taste something of the forbidden fruits of Gentile society. Ordinarily, the physician breaks through the cast of race and faith; but here she was, despised even by the Kopaniczari, the lowliest of the lowly.
I left the doctor after that last visit, vowing never to see him again; for it was an uncomfortable experience, if not a painful one.
My studies last year carried me into this very region. Since I had left it, hundreds of men and women had gone to America and a large number had returned home. Here, indeed, was theproper field for observation, and the man to help me most, was my boyhood’s friend.
With difficulty I found his home; for it was new, the doctor’s wife was resplendent in fine clothing, and the doctor’s office, once full of dust and cobwebs, contained new cases with new surgical instruments, and, wonder of wonders! a dentist’s machine. I had to wait for the return of the doctor, who was visiting a patient, and had time to catch my breath; for having come a great distance by wheel and then finding such a surprise, proved quite overwhelming.
“What has happened here?” I asked him when he returned.
“One thing at a time,” he replied. “First let’s have some refreshments;” and as we drank the delicious raspberry soda which he prepared, he said: “If I wished to tell you in one word what has happened, I could do it by saying: Emigration.
“It seemed almost a miracle to see the first people leaving the Kopanicze; for neither they nor their ancestors had moved away since the great persecution in the sixteenth century brought them here from Bohemia.
“The letters they wrote, and which I had to read to their neighbours, contained such glowing accounts of America that others went, until nobody was left but the women, the children, the aged, the witch, and ourselves. We were at thepoint of starvation when the first money came from America, and with it nearly every husband, who sent it, wrote: ‘If there is anything the matter with the children, send for the doctor.’
“My first case was a scarlet fever patient. The child recovered; but the contagion had spread. The mother whose child I had saved told everybody that the witch with her machinations made no impression upon the fever; while the medicine helped. I was called to other cases. In most homes I am sure that after I left the witch was called also; but I did not care so long as the children were given my medicine.
“Soon I was called to other villages, and as the money kept coming from America, and the peasants gained confidence in me, my services were greatly in demand.
“Our old house, which nearly caved in over our heads, was replaced by this one. I still owe money on it, but I am sure I can pay the rest in a year.”
“What use do you make of this?” I asked, pointing to the well-known object found in every dentist’s office in America.
“Since the men have come back,” he replied, “filled teeth have become as fashionable as red waistcoats used to be, and I have had to learn dentistry. And there is more money in filling teeth,” he added with a shrewd smile, “than in giving pills.
“What do I think of the effect of emigration on the Kopanicze? It has driven out the witch, it has awakened a community which had slept for many centuries, it has done for these people in the twentieth century what the Reformation did in the sixteenth. And as for us, it has saved us from starvation.”
As I was about to go, I heard a peasant girl in the hall say: “I kiss your hand, Most Highborn Mrs. Dr. M——. Is the Most Mighty and Honourable Mr. Dr. M—— at home?” And the “Most Highborn Mrs. Dr. M——” answered triumphantly, that the Most Mighty and Honourable Mr. Dr. M—— was at home, but busy. A gentleman from America had come to consult him about his health; and I am sure that at that moment the “Most Highborn Mrs. Dr. M——” felt that her dowry had been well invested and that it was coming back with interest, through emigration to America.