Produced by Jana Srna and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.) [ Transcriber’s Notes: Every effort has been made to replicate this text as faithfully as possible, including inconsistencies in spelling and hyphenation. Some corrections of spelling and punctuation have been made. They are listed at the end of the text. Italic text has been marked with _underscores_. ] HUNGRY HEARTS BY ANZIA YEZIERSKA BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY The Riverside Press Cambridge 1920 COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY ANZIA YEZIERSKA ALL RIGHTS RESERVED The Riverside Press CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS U . S . A To Mrs. Henry Ollesheimer CONTENTS Wings 1 Hunger 35 The Lost “Beautifulness” 65 The Free Vacation House 97 The Miracle 114 Where Lovers Dream 142 Soap and Water 163 “The Fat of the Land” 178 My Own People 224 How I found America 250 HUNGRY HEARTS WINGS “My heart chokes in me like in a prison! I’m dying for a little love and I got nobody--nobody!” wailed Shenah Pessah, as she looked out of the dismal basement window. It was a bright Sunday afternoon in May, and into the gray, cheerless, janitor’s basement a timid ray of sunlight announced the dawn of spring. “Oi weh! Light!” breathed Shenah Pessah, excitedly, throwing open the sash. “A little light in the room for the first time!” And she stretched out her hands hungrily for the warming bit of sun. The happy laughter of the shopgirls standing on the stoop with their beaux and the sight of the young mothers with their husbands and babies fanned anew the consuming fire in her breast. “I’m not jealous!” she gasped, chokingly. “My heart hurts too deep to want to tear from them their luck to happiness. But why should they live and enjoy life and why must I only _look on_ how they are happy?” She clutched at her throat like one stifled for want of air. “What is the matter with you? Are you going out of your head? For what is your crying? Who will listen to you? Who gives a care what’s going to become from you?” Crushed by her loneliness, she sank into a chair. For a long time she sat motionless, finding drear fascination in the mocking faces traced in the patches of the torn plaster. Gradually, she became aware of a tingling warmth playing upon her cheeks. And with a revived breath, she drank in the miracle of the sunlit wall. “Ach!” she sighed. “Once a year the sun comes to light up even this dark cellar, so why shouldn’t the High One send on me too a little brightness?”