“There’s something in me--I can’t help--that so quickly takes on to the American taste. It’s as if my outside skin only was Russian; the heart in me is for everything of the new world--even the eating.” “Nu, I got nothing to complain against America. I don’t like the American eating, but I like the American dollar. Look only on me!” He expanded his chest. “I came to America a ragged nothing--and--see--” He exhibited a bank-book in four figures, gesticulating grandly, “And I learned in America how to sign my name!” “Did it come hard to learn?” she asked under her breath. “Hard?” His face purpled with excitement. “It would be easier for me to lift up this whole house on my shoulders than to make one little dot of a letter. When I took my pencil--Oi weh! The sweat would break out on my face! ‘I can’t, I can’t!’ I cried, but something in me jumped up. ‘You can--you yok--you must!’--Six months, night after night, I stuck to it--and I learned to twist around the little black hooks till it means--me--Sam Arkin.” He had the rough-hewn features of the common people, but he lifted his head with the pride of a king. “Since I can write out my name, I feel I can do anything. I can sign checks, put money in the bank, or take it out without nobody to help me.” As Shenah Pessah listened, unconsciously she compared Sam Arkin, glowing with the frank conceit of the self-made man, his neglected teeth, thick, red lips, with that of the Other One--made ever more beautiful with longings and dreams. “But in all these black years, I was always hoping to get to the golden country,” Sam Arkin’s voice went on, but she heard it as from afar. “Before my eyes was always the shine of the high wages and the easy money and I kept pushing myself from one city to another, and saving and saving till I saved up enough for my ship-ticket to the new world. And then when I landed here, I fell into the hands of a cockroach boss.” “A cockroach boss?” she questioned absently and reproached herself for her inattention. “A black year on him! He was a landsman, that’s how he fooled me in. He used to come to the ship with a smiling face of welcome to all the greenhorns what had nobody to go to. And then he’d put them to work in his sweatshop and sweat them into their grave.” “Don’t I know it?” she cried with quickened understanding. “Just like my uncle, Moisheh Rifkin.” “The blood-sucker!” he gasped. “When I think how I slaved for him sixteen hours a day--for what? Nothing!” She gently stroked his hand as one might a child in pain. He looked up and smiled gratefully. “I want to forget what’s already over. I got enough money now to start for myself--maybe a tailor-shop--and soon--I--I want to marry myself--but none of those crazy chickens for me.” And he seemed to draw her unto himself by the intensity of his gaze. Growing bolder, he exclaimed: “I got a grand idea. It’s Monday and the bank is open yet till nine o’clock. I’ll write over my bank-book on your name? Yes?”