Part 9

Dumb from agony we sat there and I had to breathe back into them the faith which they had almost lost, and the courage which had almost left them; a faith and courage which I myself did not possess. In the peace of the night I could hear only the terror of the voice of the Lord saying: “Vengeance is Mine.” The gentle Nazarene who came in love to conquer by love, I could scarcely see, and I yearned to make the Psalmist’s prayer my own. “Blessed be the Lord God which teacheth my hands to war and my fingers to fight.”

That night and many another last night on board of ship, I listened to the stories of men and women who were fleeing from the terror of Russia’s law. Russians who had wrought in secret, who had planned great things and who had risked everything--Bogdanoff, Philipoff, Lermontoff, Lehrman, Loewenstern. Jews and Gentiles who had struck out in their blind fury, who had felt the terror of the law and the greater terror of taking, or trying to take, human life. Some guilty, some innocent; all of them caught in the same net.

Characteristic is the story of a Warsaw merchant who sailed with me on my last journey. On the evening of the 21st of April, 1906, he went to a dentist to have some work done. He went in the evening because he was busy in the daytime, and when he arrived the police were searching the house; after which all the inmates, dentist and patients, were taken to the police station and cast into prison. Two hundred and fifty persons were together in a room large enough for twenty. The odours were frightful, as in common with all Russian prisons there were no toilet conveniences outside of that room, in which for three days they were left. After bribing the officials, twenty fortunate men, my informant among them, were given another room. Nine weeks he remained there utterly unconscious of the reason for his detention; and only after the hard and faithful struggle of his wife was he released,--without an apology, to find his business ruined and only sufficient money left to go to America.

On the same ship I met the widow of a Jewish physician, who was shot down in the act of binding the wounds of those fallen in the uprising of Moscow. Binding the wounds of soldiers and revolutionists alike, he was shot in the back by a police lieutenant who afterwards was promoted to a captaincy.

No, it is not easy to travel in the steerage; not because there is not room enough, nor air enough, nor food enough, although that is all true; but because it is hard to believe down there that the God of Israel is not dead, nor His arm shortened, if not broken, like those of the Greek deities.

Yet they still have faith in Him, these children of His, who have waited for the fulfillment of His promises. They still wait, although “Jerusalem the golden” is a far away dream, and they are scattered wanderers over the face of the earth.

Friday night, with the coming of the first star, all those who believed, met, to voice their faith in Jehovah.

In a corner of the steerage quarters, while the eyes of the Gentiles looked inquisitively on, they turned towards Zion, and lifting up their voices, greeted the Sabbath: “Come, my beloved, thou Sabbath bride,” “Lcho dody L Crass Calo.” They sang this one joyous song of Israel, and stretched out their arms as if to press this spiritual bride to their rest-hungry souls.

They do not doubt that Jehovah will guide the destinies of Israel, and that the Sabbath bride will some day descend upon the earth to abide forever, bringing rest and peace to the Israel of God.

At last the great heart of the ship has ceased its mighty throbbing, and but a gentle tremor tells that its life has not all been spent in the battle with wind and waves. The waters are of a quieter colour, and over them hovers the morning mist. The silence of the early dawn is broken only by the sound of deep-chested ferry-boats which pass into the mist and out of it, like giant monsters, stalking on their cross beams over the deep. The steerage is awake after its restless night and mutely awaits the disclosures of its own and the new world’s secrets. The sound of a booming gun is carried across the hidden space, and faint touches of flame struggling through the gray, are the sun’s answer to the salute from Governor’s Island. The morning breeze, like a “Dancing Psaltress,” moves gently over the glassy surface of the water, lifts the fog higher and higher, tearing it into a thousand fleecy shreds, and the far things have come near and the hidden things have been revealed. The sky line straight ahead, assaulted by a thousand towering shafts, looking like a challenge to the strong, and a warning to the weak, makes all of us tremble from an unknown fear.

The steerage is still mute; it looks to the left at the populous shore, to the right at the green stretches of Long Island, and again straight ahead at the mighty city. Slowly the ship glides into the harbour, and when it passes under the shadow of the Statue of Liberty, the silence is broken, and a thousand hands are outstretched in greeting to this new divinity into whose keeping they now entrust themselves.

Some day a great poet will arise among us, who, catching the inspiration of that moment will be able to put into words these surging emotions; who will be great enough to feel beating against his own soul and give utterance to, the thousand varying notes which are felt and never sounded.

On this very ship are women who have left the burdens which crippled them, and now hope to walk erect; who have fled from the rough, polluting hands of persecuting mobs, that they may be able to guard their virtue and have it guarded by gallant men. Here are hundreds of Slavs who never knew aught but the yoke of czar or other potentate, whose minds have been enthralled by a galling autocracy, and whose closed eyes have never been permitted to see their own downtrodden strength. Now they shall have the opportunity to prove themselves and show the nobility of a peasant race.

Here are Italians from shores where classic art is stored, and the air is soft and full of melody; yet they were left uncouth, rough and unhewn. They come to a rougher but freer air, that they may grow into a gentler, stronger, nobler manhood and womanhood.

Melancholy Jews whose feet never knew a safe abiding place, are here, and their hope is that they may find the peace which went out from their race, when Jerusalem was laid waste and they were scattered among the nations of the earth.

He who thinks that these people scent but the dollars which lie in our treasury, is mightily mistaken, and he who says that they come without ideals has no knowledge of the children of men.

I found myself close to hundreds of these people, closest to the Russian Jews who most excited my sympathies; and one day when they heard that I had been in Bialistok, Kishineff and Odessa, that I knew the horror of it all and that I sympathized with them, they crowded around me almost like wild animals. What did they ask for above everything? Money? No. The one loud cry was for a speech about America. “Preach to us,” they said, “preach to us about America.” It was a polyglot sermon which I preached that Sunday from the covered hatch which was my pulpit, and when I spoke to them of their new home and their new duties, they cheered me to the echo.

I have passed through this gateway more than ten times; I have sounded as far as a man can sound, the souls of men and women, and I have found them tingling from emotions, akin only to those which we more prosperous voyagers shall feel, when we have crossed the last sea and find ourselves in the presence of the great Judge.

Many of these emigrants expect to find more liberty, more justice, and more equitable law than we ourselves enjoy; they imagine that our common life is permeated by a noble idealism; and while they cannot give expression to their high anticipations they feel more loftily than we think them capable of feeling. Many a time I have heard conversations between those who had read about America and those who were ignorant of its life, and invariably I have had to keep silence; for had I spoken I must have destroyed blessed illusions. From the very people whom we call Sabbath breakers, I have heard glowing descriptions of an ideal American Sabbath, and from men to whom alcoholic beverages seemed essential to life, I have heard a defense of laws regulating the sale of liquor. If, in our superficial touch with them in our own country, we find them materialistic and dulled to what we call our higher life, they are not the only ones at fault.

* * * * *

Cabin and steerage passengers alike, soon find the poetry of the moment disturbed; for the quarantine and custom-house officials are on board, driving away the tourist’s memories of the splendour of European capitals by their inquisitiveness as to his purchases. They make him solemnly swear that he is not a smuggler, and upon landing, immediately proceed to prove that he is one.

The steerage passengers have before them more rigid examinations which may have vast consequences; so in spite of the joyous notes of the band, and the glad greetings shouted to and fro, they sink again into awe-struck and confused silence. When the last cabin passenger has disappeared from the dock, the immigrants with their baggage are loaded into barges and taken to Ellis Island for their final examination.

AT THE GATEWAY

The barges on which the immigrants are towed towards the island are of a somewhat antiquated pattern and if I remember rightly have done service in the Castle Garden days, and before that some of them at least had done full service for excursion parties up and down Long Island Sound. The structure towards which we sail and which gradually rises from the surrounding sea is rather imposing, and impresses one by its utilitarian dignity and by its plainly expressed official character.

With tickets fastened to our caps and to the dresses of the women, and with our own bills of lading in our trembling hands, we pass between rows of uniformed attendants, and under the huge portal of the vast hall where the final judgment awaits us. We are cheered somewhat by the fact that assistance is promised to most of us by the agents of various National Immigrant Societies who seem both watchful and efficient.

Mechanically and with quick movements we are examined for general physical defects and for the dreaded trachoma, an eye disease, the prevalence of which is greater in the imagination of some statisticians than it is on board immigrant vessels.

From here we pass into passageways made by iron railings, in which only lately, through the intervention of a humane official, benches have been placed, upon which, closely crowded, we await our passing before the inspectors.

Already a sifting process has taken place; and children who clung to their mother’s skirts have disappeared, families have been divided, and those remaining intact, cling to each other in a really tragic fear that they may share the fate of those previously examined.