The repression of centuries seemed to rush out of my heart. I told her everything--of the mud hut in Sukovoly where I was born, of the Czar’s pogroms, of the constant fear of the Cossack, of Gedalyeh Mindel’s letter and of our hopes in coming to America. After I had talked myself out, I felt suddenly ashamed for having exposed so much, and I cried out to her: “Do you think like the others that I’m all wrapped up in self?” For some minutes she studied me, and her serenity seemed to project itself into me. And then she said, as if she too were groping, “No--no--but too intense.” “I hate to be so all the time intense. But how can I help it? Everything always drives me back in myself. How can I get myself out into the free air?” “Don’t fight yourself.” Her calm, gray eyes penetrated to the very soul in me. “You are burning up too much vitality.... “You know some of us,” she went on--“not many, unfortunately--have a sort of divine fire which if it does not find expression turns into smoke. This egoism and self-centeredness which troubles you is only the smoke of repression.” She put her hand over mine. “You have had no one to talk to--no one to share your thoughts.” I marveled at the simplicity with which she explained me to myself. I couldn’t speak. I just looked at her. “But now,” she said, gently, “you have some one. Come to me whenever you wish.” “I have a friend,” it sang itself in me. “I have a friend.” “And you are a born American?” I asked. There was none of that sure, all-right look of the Americans about her. “Yes, indeed! My mother, like so many mothers,”--and her eyebrows lifted humorously whimsical,--“claims we’re descendants of the Pilgrim fathers. And that one of our lineal ancestors came over in the Mayflower.” “For all your mother’s pride in the Pilgrim fathers, you yourself are as plain from the heart as an immigrant.” “Weren’t the Pilgrim fathers immigrants two hundred years ago?” She took from her desk a book called “Our America,” by Waldo Frank, and read to me: “We go forth all to seek America. And in the seeking we create her. In the quality of our search shall be the nature of the America that we create.” “Ach, friend! Your words are life to me! You make it light for my eyes!” She opened her arms to me and breathlessly I felt myself drawn to her. Bonds seemed to burst. A suffusion of light filled my being. Great choirings lifted me in space. I walked out unseeingly. All the way home the words she read flamed before me: “We go forth all to seek America. And in the seeking we create her. In the quality of our search shall be the nature of the America that we create.” So all those lonely years of seeking and praying were not in vain! How glad I was that I had not stopped at the husk--a good job--a good living--but pressed on, through the barriers of materialism. Through my inarticulate groping and reaching-out I had found the soul--the spirit--of America! THE END [ Transcriber’s Note: