On the going-away morning, everybody was around our house waiting to take me to the station. Everybody wanted to give a help with the bundles. The moving along to the station was like a funeral. Nobody could hold in their feelings any longer. Everybody fell on my neck to kiss me, as if it was my last day on earth. “Remember you come from Jews. Remember to pray every day,” said my father, putting his hands over my head, like in blessing on the day of Atonement. “Only try that we should be together soon again,” were the last words from my mother as she wiped her eyes with the corner of her shawl. “Only don’t forget that I want to study, and send for me as quick as you marry yourself,” said Yosef, smiling good-bye with tears in his eyes. As I saw the train coming, what wouldn’t I have given to stay back with the people in Savel forever! I wanted to cry out: “Take only away my ticket! I don’t want any more America! I don’t want any more my lover!” But as soon as I got into the train, although my eyes were still looking back to the left-behind faces, and my ears were yet hearing the good-byes and the partings, the thoughts of America began stealing into my heart. I was thinking how soon I’d have my lover and be rich like Hanneh Hayyeh. And with my luck, everybody was going to be happy in Savel. The dead people will stop dying and all the sorrows and troubles of the world will be wiped away with my happiness. I didn’t see the day. I didn’t see the night. I didn’t see the ocean. I didn’t see the sky. I only saw my lover in America, coming nearer and nearer to me, till I could feel his eyes bending on me so near that I got frightened and began to tremble. My heart ached so with the joy of his nearness that I quick drew back and turned away, and began to talk to the people that were pushing and crowding themselves on the deck. Nu, I got to America. Ten hours I pushed a machine in a shirt-waist factory, when I was yet lucky to get work. And always my head was drying up with saving and pinching and worrying to send home a little from the little I earned. All that my face saw all day long was girls and machines--and nothing else. And even when I came already home from work, I could only talk to the girls in the working-girls’ boarding-house, or shut myself up in my dark, lonesome bedroom. No family, no friends, nobody to get me acquainted with nobody! The only men I saw were what passed me by in the street and in cars. “Is this ‘lovers’ land’?” was calling in my heart. “Where are my dreams that were so real to me in the old country?” Often in the middle of the work I felt like stopping all the machines and crying out to the world the heaviness that pressed on my heart. Sometimes when I walked in the street I felt like going over to the first man I met and cry out to him: “Oh, I’m so lonely! I’m so lonely!”