The Immigrant Tide, Its Ebb and FlowSteiner, Edward Alfred
History
The Immigrant Tide, Its Ebb and Flow
Steiner, Edward Alfred
United States -- Emigration and immigration
"Our old house, which nearly caved in over our heads, was replaced by
this one. I still owe money on it, but I am sure I can pay the rest in a
year."
"What use do you make of this?" I asked, pointing to the well-known
object found in every dentist's office in America.
"Since the men have come back," he replied, "filled teeth have become as
fashionable as red waistcoats used to be, and I have had to learn
dentistry. And there is more money in filling teeth," he added with a
shrewd smile, "than in giving pills.
"What do I think of the effect of emigration on the Kopanicze? It has
driven out the witch, it has awakened a community which had slept for
many centuries, it has done for these people in the twentieth century
what the Reformation did in the sixteenth. And as for us, it has saved
us from starvation."
As I was about to go, I heard a peasant girl in the hall say: "I kiss
your hand, Most Highborn Mrs. Dr. M----. Is the Most Mighty and
Honourable Mr. Dr. M---- at home?" And the "Most Highborn Mrs. Dr.
M----" answered triumphantly, that the Most Mighty and Honourable Mr.
Dr. M---- was at home, but busy. A gentleman from America had come to
consult him about his health; and I am sure that at that moment the
"Most Highborn Mrs. Dr. M----" felt that her dowry had been well
invested and that it was coming back with interest, through emigration
to America.
VII
"MOSCHELE AMERIKANSKY"
The Hungarian town inhabited by Magyars, does not materially differ from
the villages in which so many varieties and subjects of other races
live. Such a town is merely a larger village, and, instead of one broad
street flanked by straw thatched huts, there are at least four streets
which terminate on the "square," around which the dignitaries have built
their more pretentious dwellings. Here also are the stores, usually kept
by Jews, who are not indifferent to the economic movements of the people
whose purveyors they are.
Twenty years ago, before emigration from the district of Nyitra had
begun, the principal town in that district boasted but half a dozen
stores so called, the largest and best of which could be discovered only
by its tiny show-window, where, crowded in dire confusion, were a few
articles of general merchandise. During all the years of my comings and
goings I could never see any change in the articles displayed, nor even
by a wild flight of imagination see any indication that a duster had
lost its way among them.
It is not, however, of this store that I wish to tell, in spite of the
fact that it now has a double show-window, and contains, among many
other new things, a genuine American cash register.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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