38 ADVENTURES IN IDEALISM 



friends of mine had another trouble. They did not 

 know how to get rid of the bedbugs which were thick 

 in the walls. They were of exceedingly careful habits, 

 and kept their rooms scrupulously clean, but it seemed 

 that only the burning of the tenement they lived in 

 would have saved them from the pest. 



We had been just a week in America when an 

 older brother of my husband's, whom he had helped 

 to escape from military service in Russia and had 

 sent off to America with the second party of the "Am- 

 Ohlom," heard of our arrival in New York. He was 

 living in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, where he had a 

 small picture-frame store. He came to see us and 

 advised my husband to take his family and go with 

 him to Pittsfield, "sich ausgeriinen," as he remarked. 

 The following day we left for Pittsfield. My husband 

 became the utility man in his brother's picture store. 



The rapidity with which he learned English is 

 worthy of mention. His brother and his brother's 

 friends, who were nearly all illiterate men, were 

 amazed that a man only a week in this country should 

 read the English-printed papers and understand the 

 gist of them as well as they, who were five years in 

 the country. It seemed miraculous to them. But 

 a man who had had six or seven years of Latin, Greek, 

 German and French would naturally read English and 

 understand it without much effort. For two weeks 

 my husband helped .to make picture frames, and made 

 himself generally useful about the store. .But his 



