A CALL TO THE LAND 53 



solely a trader, might yet, he thought, as a farmer, 

 rejuvenate his race. Many times that winter he told 

 me how much joy it had given him to write those 

 letters on "The Jew and Farming" for the Baron de 

 Hirsch Fund. How much he dreamed of the realiza- 

 tion of his hopes for the Jews as farmers! 



One Tuesday in May, 1890, my husband received a 

 telegram asking him to take eight days' leave, if pos- 

 sible, in order to be in New York on the following 

 Sunday afternoon, to be present at a committee meet- 

 ing of the Baron de Hirsch Fund. He did not have 

 the shadow of an idea that to attend this meeting 

 would mean a change in all his future life and that 

 of his family ; that he would be leaving a quiet, peace- 

 ful life the life of a scientist, of a college professor 

 for one of turbulence, excitement, misunderstanding, 

 worries, and nerve-wracking anxieties; that he would 

 have to deal with classes of people so widely different 

 from one another the Jewish immigrant, quite un- 

 couth and raw in some cases, and the executive mem- 

 bers of the Board of Directors, the highly cultured 

 product of the best American standards, poor work- 

 ingmen, rich employers of immigrant labor, foreign 

 school-boys and American instructors in the agricul- 

 tural school later founded by my husband. Their ways 

 of thinking, their sentiments differed so widely that 

 to make them understand each other and to sense each 

 other's point of view would have been a staggering 

 task for even an older and more experienced man. 



