And if the waters of the Atlantic did not part for them, the wanderers rode its bitter flood by a miracle as great as any the rod of Moses ever wrought.
My father was carried away by the westward movement, glad of his own deliverance, but sore at heart for us whom he left behind.

It was the last chance for all of us.

We were so far reduced in circumstances that he had to travel with borrowed money to a German port, whence he was forwarded to Boston, with a host of others, at the expense of an emigrant aid society.
I was about ten years old when my father emigrated.

I was used to his going away from home, and "America" did not mean much more to me than "Kherson," or "Odessa," or any other names of distant places.

I understood vaguely, from the gravity with which his plans were discussed, and from references to ships, societies, and other unfamiliar things, that this enterprise was different from previous ones; but my excitement and emotion on the morning of my father's departure were mainly vicarious.
I know the day when "America" as a world entirely unlike Polotzk lodged in my brain, to become the centre of all my dreams and speculations.