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
In the centre of the cemetery is a knoll, and upon its crest is a
monument such as cannot be found anywhere in Hungary. It is in the shape
of a sarcophagus, is hewn out of Vermont granite and is so heavy that it
cost over 500 kronen to bring it from the station and put it in place.
How much the stone cost no one knows except Uncle Isaac, who erected it
for his son Moschele, who wanted everything he had to come from
America--even his tombstone.
VIII
"NOCH IST POLEN NICHT VERLOREN"
It has always seemed to me wise to carry letters of introduction,
especially when travelling to the East of Europe; often, too, I have
found it still wiser to forget that I had them, for a letter of
introduction sometimes blocks avenues of investigation, particularly
when the problem in question involves the privileged or official
classes.
This time in following the immigrant tide, I carried one letter which I
was eager to deliver; it was given me by a personal friend in America
and was to be presented to his mother-in-law in Poland. Not that I was
overanxious to meet his mother-in-law, but because Polish women of the
upper class are, as a rule, so superior to the men, so ready to talk and
talk so well, that I promised myself a rather fruitful call. I did not
meet the mother-in-law yet I was not disappointed.
Cracow looks dingy even to one who, like myself, is able to illuminate
its sombre present in the light of its important if not glorious past.
Coming, as I had come, by way of industrial German-Poland, with its
glistening newness, from the
[Illustration: THE MARKET SQUARE IN CRACOW
Here Poland mourns her glorious past, and the returned immigrant assures
her of a glorious future.]
policemen's helmets to the weather-vane of the new Rathhaus; out of its
tense atmosphere of whirring wheels within wheels; out of its
geometrically correct parks and new and ever growing building additions,
Cracow looked to me as if it had fallen off this revolving planet and
settled itself "Where the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are
at rest"--wherever that may be.
The only thing that had grown since last I saw the city was its hatred
of the Germans. On the doors of many stores on the Rinok were large
placards, which, literally translated, read: "The gentlemen travellers
from Germany, who wish to come in here to do business with us, are
politely requested to stay out."
Everything else looked the same, only more dingy; even the Austrian
officers who loaf around Havelik's restaurant seemed to have lost
something of their newness; for braid and buttons, two of the component
elements out of which Austrian officers are made, were tarnished and
worn.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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