But these warnings only had the effect of lending vividness to my
image of an American street as a thoroughfare strewn with nuggets
of the precious metal. Symbolically speaking, this was the idea
one had of the "land of Columbus." It was a continuation of the
widespread effect produced by stories of Cortes and Pizarro in the
sixteenth century, confirmed by the successes of some Russian
emigrants of my time
I asked the grocery-woman to let me leave my bundle with her,
and, after considerable hesitation, she allowed me to put it among
some empty barrels in her cellar
I went wandering over the Ghetto. Instead of stumbling upon
nuggets of gold, I found signs of poverty. In one place I came
across a poor family who--as I learned upon inquiry--had been
dispossessed for non-payment of rent. A mother and her two little
boys were watching their pile of furniture and other household
goods on the sidewalk while the passers-by were dropping coins
into a saucer placed on one of the chairs to enable the family to
move into new quarters
What puzzled me was the nature of the furniture.
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