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Updated: June 2, 2025
They favored the rich man against the poor, the Christian against the Jew. The dayyan always gave true judgments. Nohem Rabinovitch, the richest man in Polotzk, could not win a case against a servant maid, unless he were in the right.
Abstinence, as I have mentioned, is one of the essential ingredients in the phantom dish. I discovered this through a recent experience. It was cherry time in the country, and the sight of the scarlet fruit suddenly reminded me of a cherry season in Polotzk, I could not say how many years ago.
For the rich there were luxuries even in Polotzk. Cleansed, red-skinned, and steaming, we return at last to the dressing-room, to shiver, as we dress, in the cold drafts from the entry door; and then, muffled up to the eyes, we plunge into the refreshing outer air, and hurry home, looking like so many big bundles running away with smaller bundles.
But my mother remained on her bed. Weeks, months, a year she lay there, and half of another year. All the doctors in Polotzk attended her in turn, and one doctor came all the way from Vitebsk. Every country practitioner for miles around was consulted, every quack, every old wife who knew a charm.
Vastly as my mind had stretched to embrace the idea of a great country, when I exchanged Polotzk for America, it was no such enlargement as I now experienced, when in place of the measurable earth, with its paltry tale of historic centuries, I was given the illimitable universe to contemplate, with the numberless æons of infinite time.
It seemed as if it were within as well as without, part of myself; and I wondered how I had lived without it, and if I could ever part with it. And so suffering, fearing, brooding, rejoicing we crept nearer and nearer to the coveted shore, until, on a glorious May morning, six weeks after our departure from Polotzk, our eyes beheld the Promised Land, and my father received us in his arms.
He dished out ice cream with enthusiasm, so I supposed he was getting rich. It never occurred to me to compare his present occupation with the position for which he had been originally destined; or if I thought about it, I was just as well content, for by this time I had by heart my father's saying, "America is not Polotzk." All occupations were respectable, all men were equal, in America.
The flag must show from every house, or the owner will be dragged to the police station, to pay a fine of twenty-five rubles. What happened to the old woman who lives in that tumble-down shanty over the way? It was that other time when flags were ordered up, because the Grand Duke was to visit Polotzk. The old woman had no flag, and no money.
We do not know whether to admire most the plan of operations which brought up the Russian armies from the extremities of Moldavia, from Moscow, and from Polotzk to the Beresina as to a rendezvous arranged in peace, a plan which came near effecting the capture of their formidable adversary, or the wonderful firmness of the lion thus pursued, who succeeded in opening a way through his enemies.
Returning to Polotzk they went to storekeeping on their own account, but failed in this also, because my father was inexperienced, and my mother, now with the baby to nurse, was not able to give her best attention to business. Over two years passed in this experiment, and in the interval the second child was born, increasing my parents' need of a home and a reliable income.
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