WITHIN THE PALE When I was a little girl, the world was divided into two parts; namely, Polotzk, the place where I lived, and a strange land called Russia.

All the little girls I knew lived in Polotzk, with their fathers and mothers and friends.

Russia was the place where one's father went on business.

It was so far off, and so many bad things happened there, that one's mother and grandmother and grown-up aunts cried at the railroad station, and one was expected to be sad and quiet for the rest of the day, when the father departed for Russia.
After a while there came to my knowledge the existence of another division, a region intermediate between Polotzk and Russia.

It seemed there was a place called Vitebsk, and one called Vilna, and Riga, and some others.