The New Land Part 13

"I hope so." Mr. Kohn's voice was a little doubtful. "I hate to predict trouble, but I do believe that our candidate is going to have a harder row to plough than any president we ever had since Was.h.i.+ngton. I was thinking of that when I had the verses printed on the flag I am going to send him."

"Oh, are you going to send Mr. Lincoln a flag?" cried Morris, forgetting he was not supposed to be listening.

His father shook his head and ordered the boy to attend to his lessons. "His reports are worse every month," he told Mr. Kohn. "Rabbi Adler tells me he is a good boy, but that doesn't raise his marks in Hebrew and arithmetic and history, and his mother----"

"But I don't like history about dead people," objected the boy. "Now Mr. Lincoln's alive--and he's history, too, isn't he?"

"The boy's right," laughed Mr. Kohn. "Come in here, Morris, if your father'll let you, and I'll tell you all about the flag I'm sending Mr. Lincoln next week before he leaves his home in Springfield for Was.h.i.+ngton." Morris, needing no second invitation, gladly deserted his books and slipped into the parlor, curling up in one corner of the horsehair sofa as he attempted to be as little in the way as possible.

For he didn't want his mother, should she happen to come into the room, to send him back to his lessons again.

"It is a large American flag," explained Mr. Kohn, "woven of the finest silk. And across it I've had inscribed in Hebrew the command given to Joshua when he took command of the Israelites after the death of Moses." He turned to Morris, a teasing twinkle in his eyes. "I suppose you can tell your father what that was," he said, very seriously. "What?" as Morris, really embarra.s.sed, shook his head. "I thought you really learned more in Rabbi Adler's school. Suppose you get your Bible and show us how well you can translate the pa.s.sage."

Doubtful of his skill as translator, but sure that kindly Mr. Kohn who had been one of the early cantors of the congregation and "knew everything about Hebrew" would lend him a hand at the hard places, Morris turned to the first chapter of Joshua, and, with a little prompting translated the command given to the Jewish leader:

"Have I not commanded thee?" he read. "Be strong and of good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed; for the Lord thy G.o.d is with thee whithersoever thou goest." He looked up, his boyish spirit thrilled with the words. "I like that," he exclaimed naively, "it's so--so--alive--not a bit like the Bible."

"So that's what's written on your flag?" commented Mr. Rosenfelt.

"Well, no matter what happens, I guess we won't have to worry over our Mr. Lincoln. He'll be 'strong and of good courage,' alright, and make us glad we sent him on to Was.h.i.+ngton. Morris, go into the dining room now and study your lessons. Are you going to take the flag to Mr.

Lincoln yourself before he leaves Springfield?" he asked, turning back to Mr. Kohn, as Morris unwillingly went back to his lessons for the next morning.

"No. I can't leave my work just now," answered Mr. Kohn, who was city clerk. "But I'm sending it with a friend who will be in Springfield before Mr. Lincoln leaves. I want him to have a real going-away present to tell him what the Jews of Illinois think of their new president."

Then the talk drifted to other matters, but Morris went to bed his heart filled with envy for the man who should take the flag to Mr.

Lincoln. He knew that there wasn't the slightest chance for him to go to Springfield; his mother would remember all the dreadful stories she had ever heard of little boys being kidnapped while taking railway journeys alone; his father would tell him he couldn't spare the money for such a trip and that Morris couldn't afford to lose a day of school. Then, if he couldn't go to Springfield, it would be almost as good to send a present to Mr. Lincoln such as Mr. Kohn planned to do--but what could a little boy with a limited amount of pocket money send a man just elected to be president of the United States. He even crept out of bed very stealthily, not caring to arouse his ever-wakeful mother in the next room--to look over the treasures in the top drawer of his little dresser; the finest stamp collection ever possessed by any boy who attended his school, he thought proudly; a box of sh.e.l.ls and lucky stones gathered on the lake sh.o.r.e last vacation; a prize book given him at school for perfect attendance, which Morris never cared to read, as it seemed to be the tale of a very good little boy who always stood at the head of his cla.s.s and never disobeyed his parents; a set of fis.h.i.+ng tackle discarded by his older brother, Harry. Treasures, though they were, Morris would have sent any or all of them with Mr. Kohn's flag as a going-away gift to the new president, already enshrined in so many hearts; but, boy though he was, he knew that a grown up man would not care for his poor presents. He even lifted his little blue bank and rattled it softly; but he did not take the trouble to pry it open, for he knew that for all its jingling, the pennies inside would not amount up to more than a dollar. Disappointed, yet determined not to let Mr. Kohn outdo him in the matter, Morris crept back to bed.

The next morning he found his plans for Mr. Lincoln's present far more fascinating than his lessons as he sat in the bas.e.m.e.nt schoolroom provided for the children of the congregation. One of the school's non-Jewish teachers had heard his history and geography. In a little while Rabbi Adler would take the cla.s.ses in Hebrew and German. Morris knew he ought to prepare the lessons so shamefully neglected the night before, but he found it difficult to put his mind on his task.

Fortunately for him, he wasn't called upon during the Hebrew session and managed to escape a scolding for his lack of preparation. So he sat sedately with his eyes glued upon the thick black characters, while his mind pictured the flag with the Hebrew lettering which was to be sent to Springfield. He had seen a good many pictures of Mr.

Lincoln and now he tried to imagine how the kindly, homely face would break into a smile at Mr. Kohn's thoughtfulness. Then he roused himself to listen, for now the rabbi was saying something about the lesson that really interested him.

"Of course," said Rabbi Adler, "the Sanctuary Bezalel built in the desert wasn't half so beautiful as the Temple we afterwards raised at Jerusalem. But we were willing to wait. It was always that way with our people--with every nation, too; we must wait for what is worth while and if we wait long enough and work while we are waiting, we will finally achieve what we have been striving for." He paused for a moment, closing his book, as he looked over the cla.s.s. "Has anyone a question to ask about the lesson?" he ended, in his usual way.

Hardly thinking what he did, Morris shot his hand up in the air, then wished with all his heart that he had not raised it, when the rabbi said: "Well, Morris, what's your question?"

"It's not exactly about the lesson," confessed the boy, awkwardly.

"But when you talked about waiting for something for a long time, I wondered--I--how long is a person president of the United States?" he ended desperately, realizing how foolish his question must sound not only to the teacher but to his fellow students as well.

If Rabbi Adler failed to see any connection between the building of the Sanctuary and American politics, he was too kind to say so. "The president is elected for four years," he answered, "although sometimes he is reelected for a second term, which makes eight years in all."

"Then Mr. Lincoln'll be in Was.h.i.+ngton eight years, 'cause everybody will want him for two terms," decided Morris, loyally, though a little disappointed that the plan which had just occurred to him must take so long to mature.

"So you're a Lincoln man, too?" smiled his teacher. He hesitated a moment, then, feeling that high civic ideals were as necessary to his cla.s.s as Hebrew, he went on: "We who have worked hard to elect Mr.

Lincoln feel that our country is in good hands. He is not one of our people, yet I believe he is more like our Hebrew prophets than any man, Jew or non-Jew, living today. None of you boys may ever be president, but if you strive as earnestly as Mr. Lincoln has always done to serve the right, I shall be well satisfied.... We will take the next chapter for tomorrow," and the lesson was over.

Next came the German cla.s.s and Morris, after reading and translating his portion of a German fairy tale quite creditably, sank back in his place, again busy with his plans. Rabbi Adler was right, he decided.

If one just worked and waited, everything would turn out all right. So Mr. Lincoln would be gone for four years, perhaps eight. Well, since a Jewish gentleman had sent him a going-away present, wouldn't it be a fine thing for a Jewish boy to send him some gift when he returned to his home in Springfield? Morris wasn't sure just what the gift would be, but he was no longer worried. Even four years were not long to wait, especially if one had to save a good deal of money in the interval. For Morris was sure that he would have to send a really expensive present; perhaps a gold watch, which at that particular moment was the one thing, next to a Shetland pony, he most desired for himself.

The four years pa.s.sed for Morris, now slowly when lessons were long and hard, now all too swiftly during the holiday seasons. They were years of struggle for the nation now torn asunder by a dreadful civil war. Even from the first, Morris was not too young to understand the history that was being made about him; the firing upon Fort Sumter; the secession of the southern states; Mr. Lincoln's call for volunteers. How he despised himself for being such a small boy when he saw his brother Harry in his blue uniform with the bra.s.s b.u.t.tons! He couldn't understand why his mother had cried when Harry went away to be a soldier, since he himself felt cruelly cheated in being deprived of marching off to the battle field. Nor could he understand why Rabbi Adler's voice always faltered now when he read the _Kaddish_ prayer for the mourners every Sabbath in the synagogue, although he had heard that his teacher's young son, Dankmar, serving in the artillery, was wounded at the battle of Chickamauga. For war to the little boy meant nothing but lines of straight soldiers marching to music with flying banners above them, and even when bits of c.r.a.pe appeared, so it seemed, upon the doors of every other home in the city, he thought only of the glory, not the horror of it all. Nor did he ever imagine how President Lincoln's great heart almost broke in those days over the suffering not only of his own Northern soldiers, but the Southern boys too, whom he would never call "rebels" nor cease to regard but as brother Americans. When the boy thought of the president at all, it was always as the captain of a mighty host, pressing fearlessly on to victory. "Like Joshua," he thought, remembering the verses on the flag, resolving that when victory did come at last he would celebrate in his own way, by sending Mr. Lincoln his present.

"We can't do too much for Mr. Lincoln," his brother Harry had said when he came home on a furlough, so tanned and st.u.r.dy that even Mrs.

Rosenfelt had to confess that his soldiering had not broken down his health. And Morris's heart had reechoed the sentiment again and again, especially when Harry was taken to one of the Was.h.i.+ngton hospitals and wrote glowingly of the president's visits to the sick and wounded soldiers. "He's not like a president--he's just like a father," he wrote, and more than one bereaved household in those dark days learned to agree with him.

For the sadly-tried man from Illinois was never too busy with affairs of state to write a word of comfort to a mother who had lost her son on the battlefield, never too hara.s.sed with his many duties to listen to a plea for a furlough or a pardon. But, perhaps, of all the stories that reached Morris at that time the account of Mr. Abraham Jonas of Peoria meant the most.

Mr. Jonas was a Jewish citizen of Peoria, Illinois, and had been a staunch friend and political a.s.sociate of Lincoln before the latter left Springfield for the White House. Strangely enough, Mr. Jonas's four sons all enlisted in the Southern army. Towards the close of the war, Abraham Jonas fell ill, and, learning from his doctors that his disease would prove fatal, felt that he could never die in peace until he had seen his son Charles, then a Confederate prisoner of war on Johnson's Island, Lake Erie. The dying father appealed to his old friend, and President Lincoln at once gave the order to parole Charles Jonas for three weeks that he might visit his father's bedside.

"After that," admitted Mrs. Rosenfelt, wiping her eyes as she heard the story from a Chicago friend of the Jonas family, "after that, I'll forgive the president everything!" She never explained just why she should feel called upon to forgive President Lincoln for anything, but up to that time the good lady had entertained the notion that the president had made the war and was entirely responsible for her son's enlistment. "Things like that make you feel that there's good in everybody's heart even in war time. Anyhow, the war can't last much longer."

The great war did end that very year and in the spring of 1865 Morris realized that at last he might send Mr. Lincoln his present. "Just for a sort of extra celebration," he told himself, as he counted the money he had so painfully h.o.a.rded in an old wallet during the four years of waiting.

It was not a large sum after all, for Mr. Rosenfelt was not a rich man and his business interests had suffered during the war. And, it must be confessed, several times Morris had yielded to temptation and had broken into his little treasury to buy some toy or pleasure that he felt he just must have, intending to pay himself back as soon as he could earn the money. But ch.o.r.es were few and brought little, and even his uncle's _barmitzvah_ present of five dollars failed to raise the sum above fifteen. Still that was a good deal, thought Morris, although he couldn't buy a gold watch with it. But he had grown up a little during the past four years and realized that probably Mr.

Lincoln had a gold watch, anyhow. And so, much as he hated to do it, for he wanted the secret to be all his own, he decided to ask his father's advice and waited impatiently for him to come in from the porch, where he stood talking with a neighbor, and have breakfast the Sat.u.r.day morning after peace was declared.

Although he was only a boy of thirteen at the time, Morris never forgot how the parlor looked that day with the flag draped over Harry's picture taken in uniform, the pale suns.h.i.+ne of early spring streaming upon the bright red geranium plant on the marble-topped table. There was a large tidy on the table, a doily his mother had crotched, his mother who started up with a cry of alarm as Mr.

Rosenfelt entered, his face white with terror.

"Harry----" was all she could say for a moment. Then, when she could control her voice a little: "Has anything happened to our Harry?"

Her husband shook his head. "No," he answered in a matter-of-fact tone that contrasted strangely with his dreadful pallor. "Harry, thank G.o.d, is safe and will soon be on his way home. But President Lincoln----"

"Yes?" cried Mrs. Rosenfelt, "the president?"

"He was shot last evening by an a.s.sa.s.sin. He has just died," answered her husband, and he spoke as one speaks of a dear friend.

"It can't be true," cried Morris, hotly. "No one would hurt him--he was so good--we all loved him so." The tears ran down his face as he spoke and for once he was not ashamed to have his father see him cry.

Without another word he turned and ran upstairs to his own room. The little blue bank still standing upon the dresser hurt him with a sudden memory. He was comparatively rich now, but he hated the fifteen dollars he had saved with so much eagerness through the years of patient waiting.

The money, still unspent, lay in Morris's wallet the day Mr. Lincoln came home to Springfield. The humble rail splitter had returned to his home town in kingly triumph. As his funeral train crossed the continent, every great city, every tiny village, c.r.a.pe-hung and grief-stricken, had sent its citizens to do him homage. Even the farmers from the scattered farms along the way lit funeral pyres as the dark procession thundered past through the night. Now the citizens of Chicago stood bowed in grief as the body of the martyred president was borne through the silent streets. Strong men wept openly and unashamed; but Morris, standing at his father's side on the curbing, did not cry. Somehow, it all seemed too terrible for tears. And, because he was just a small boy, after all not the least of his grief was the thought that now it was too late to send Mr. Lincoln his present.

THE LAND COLUMBUS FOUND

_The Story of the Tablet Placed Upon the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor._

This isn't a story at all, just a sort of "good-bye" word to the boys and girls who have read these tales of Jewish men and women who tried to do their part in the making of America. Do you remember away back to the first one, the story of the Jews who from Columbus's flag s.h.i.+p dreamed of the promised land, but never knew that the continent their admiral discovered would some day be a place of refuge for their race?

Now, every year, thousands of men and women and children, a great many of our own people among them, seek a refuge here. If you go to Ellis Island, you may see them entering this New World where they hope to find home and happiness. I have seen them with their baskets and their bundles of household goods, their little children in their arms, (do you remember how Reuben wandered through the storm carrying his little son?), crossing the gang plank of the steamer which brings them to the island, raising their tired eyes in mute grat.i.tude to the American flag which floats above them as they pa.s.s. And from where I stood I could also see the great Statue of Liberty Enlightening the World, the woman with the light in her hand to guide the weary wanderers across the sea.

If you visit this statue, boys and girls, you will see at the base a bronze tablet with a short poem engraved upon it. The poem was written by a Jewish woman, Emma Lazarus, our first and greatest Jewish American poet. As a girl she had cared little for the history and traditions of her people; her verses were about the G.o.ds of Greece and Rome and the legends of the Middle Ages. Then, when the dreadful persecution of our people in Russia in 1881 drove many of them to our sh.o.r.es, she was called upon to a.s.sist in caring for some of the homeless wanderers and, like a loving mother, she gathered them to her heart.

Something new and beautiful awoke in her soul and she gave her strength and energy in caring for these exiles of her own blood. When she wrote now it was of her people. She read our long and wonderful history and immortalized the heroism of our martyrs in such poems as her tragedy, "The Dance to Death." She wrote shorter verses, too, and there are few Jewish boys and girls who have not recited or at least heard her stirring Chanukkah recitations, "The Feast of Lights," and "The Banner of the Jew." Her poems had always been very beautiful, winning the praises of such a high critic as Ralph Waldo Emerson, but now they glowed with a new beauty, her love and new found kins.h.i.+p with her race.

It was her pa.s.sionate love for America and her knowledge of all that our country means to the Jew, both the native-born and the persecuted wanderer from other lands, that made her see in the Statue of Liberty more than a mere ma.s.s of sculptured stone. Instead she saw a gracious, loving woman guarding the gates of the New World, not like the ancient giant figure striding the harbor at Rhodes, a haughty menace to the nations, but a symbol of welcome and freedom and justice to all mankind. So she wrote her verses, to be inscribed later at the statue's base, telling as only a great poet could what America means to her children.

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame, With conquering limbs astride from land to land, Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand Glows world-wide welcome: her mild eyes command The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled ma.s.ses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming sh.o.r.e, Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"