“Rather a stone for a pillow in my own home,” said one woman on whom life had pressed hard. “Would you go back?” she was asked. “Oh, no, no, no!” emphasizing the words by a swaying of the body and a shaking of the head. “It is not poverty we fear. It is not money we are seeking here. We do not expect things for ourselves. It is the chance for the children, education and freedom for them.” [Illustration] The passion of the Russian Jews for intellectual attainment recalls the spirit of the early New England families and their willingness to forego every comfort that a son might be set apart for the ministry. Here we are often witnesses of long-continued deprivation on the part of every member of the family, a willingness to deny themselves everything but the barest necessities of life, that there may be a doctor, a lawyer, or a teacher among them. Submission to bad housing, excessive hours, and poor working conditions is defended as of “no matter because the children will have better and can go to school—maybe college.” Said a baker who showed the ill-effects of basement and night work and whose three rooms housed a family of ten: “My boy is already in the high school. If I can’t keep on, the Herr Gott will take it up where I leave off.” A painful instance was that of a woman who came to the settlement one evening. Her son was studying music under one of the most famous masters in Vienna, and she had exiled herself to New York in order to earn more money for him than she could possibly earn at home. Literally, as I afterwards discovered, she spent nothing upon herself. A tenement family gave her lodging (a bed on chairs) and food, in return for scrubbing done after her day’s work in the necktie factory. The Viennese master, not knowing his pupil’s circumstances, or, it is possible, not caring, had written that the young man needed to give a concert, an additional demand which it was utterly impossible for her to meet. She had already given up her home, she had relinquished her wardrobe, and she had sold her grave for him.