VI ABRAHAM LINCOLN IN HUNGARY

TEN o’clock in the morning was the one tense hour of the day, for the omnibus was due to arrive and, with it, everything which connected our town with the outside world. Although most of the villagers expected neither letters nor friends, every one who had even a moment of leisure stepped to his front door when the omnibus came, and tried to catch a glimpse of the sleepy passengers who had spent a torturing night in the sombre, springless vehicle. In front of the Black Eagle Inn, congregated town loafers, children and the aged, who alone had leisure to watch the passengers alight.

This was an exciting procedure, for the omnibus was high, and its one window served also as exit, so that the passengers’ feet protruded through the small opening first, the bodies being drawn carefully after. It was a mirth-provoking performance, and as laughter was an indulgence not often experienced in our sober environment, all who could afford the leisure and the laughter awaited the daily diversion at the Black Eagle Inn.

On a certain Sabbath morning I had absented myself from the synagogue. It was a June day of rare beauty with a warm, wooing, gentle wind, calling the boy in me back to the creek, the willow-trees, the goslings and the Gentile boys and girls. While nature with its willows and its goslings had no objection to my “cutting” the synagogue service, its Gentile and ungenteel children objected seriously, and I was driven back to the dusty street, with its cobblestone pavement. There was nothing to do except go to the synagogue or join the crowd of loafers around the Black Eagle Inn, and I chose the latter, although at great peril; for to be caught loafing on the Sabbath, during the hours of morning service, was sure to bring dire consequences. The clatter of hoofs and rattle of wheels were already heard, proceeding from a cloud of dust which came nearer and nearer as the omnibus swayed into sight. Its emaciated, weary horses responded to the whip of the driver as they made one last, brave effort at a gallop; then stopped at their accustomed place, steaming from heat and too weary even to whisk the gathering flies from their backs.

“How many passengers have you?” some one called to the driver.

“Three-quarters of a man,” he replied, laughing coarsely.

The crowd stood for a moment speechless, as the leather curtain was thrown back and a wooden leg appeared; then carefully feeling for the foot-rest, came a real leg and foot. In due time the back followed, covered by a dusty blue coat, and the man stood before us—three-quarters of a man indeed; for above the wooden leg hung an empty coat sleeve.

From the depths of the vehicle the driver drew a brass-bound trunk. It was a strange-looking, gorgeous affair, and made almost as great a sensation among the astonished onlookers as the three-quarters of a man in the blue suit and brass buttons had made. A queer-looking, soft hat shaded his bearded face, in which I intuitively detected faint traces of our common, racial ancestry. He swung his cane at the gaping crowd and called out, in military language: “Right about, face! March!” The crowd obeyed mechanically, and he hobbled unmolested into the inn. I followed him, for two reasons: first, the synagogue service was just over and I was sure to be discovered in this forbidden spot. Secondly, this was a new species of humanity to me, as new as the sewing-machine which had come to our house about a week before, and as wonderful as the coal-oil lamp, the marvellous light of which now illuminated our home for the first time. Strange to say, all these had come from America, during the last fortnight.

“Why are you looking at me, youngster?” the man asked, shaking his empty sleeve at me. “Have you never seen three-quarters of a man before? What’s your name?”

While he waited for my reply, he took a pull at his bottle of palenka, the common drink of the peasants. When he heard my name, he stared at me less fiercely.

“Come here,” he said, patting my curly head. “I am a Jew myself.”

“You are not, you cannot be! No Jew ever drinks palenka.”

“Boy,” he replied, pushing aside the empty bottle, “I am three-quarters of a man, but not even one-quarter a Jew. I have been to war, where I lost my arm and leg, and I have been in America, where I lost my Judaism.” Then with an air of abandonment, he ordered a pork roast for his dinner.

I was grievously shocked, and to save even the remnant of a Jew in him, I suggested that he go home with me and eat a good, kosher Sabbath dinner. Hospitality is a virtue of the Jewish home, and there was scarcely a Sabbath meal without some unfortunate at our table. I felt sure that mother would not object to this guest, especially if I made it clear to her that I had saved the man from eating pork roast.

I remember most vividly my going home with this Jewish soldier and the pride I felt in walking beside a man who had come from America. Doors and windows were opened, while black-eyed maidens and gray-haired matrons craned their necks to get a glimpse of the stranger. All that blessed Sabbath our house was the centre of attraction, and hundreds of inquiries had to be answered.

“Who was he?” An old townsman who, years ago, ran away from home, and after many adventures landed in America. He enlisted in the Federal army, was discharged, pensioned and had come home to die.

“Aye! Aye!” the townspeople said. “Who would have thought that one of us should come from America!”

That same day the brass-bound trunk was brought to our house, for mother took pity on the homeless man and told him to stay with us. She hoped to keep him from drinking palenka and eating pork. The latter was not difficult, but the palenka—that was impossible.

“The brass-bound trunk no doubt holds his treasures,” the neighbours said. Treasures indeed! His discharge from the army, which was framed and hung over his bed, a second suit of blue, a huge flag—the Stars and Stripes—a history of the Civil War in German, a book called “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” and the picture of a sad-faced man.

Every day I heard about the land of freedom from one who had been there, the German book I soon knew by heart, the flag I learned to love, and Abraham Lincoln, the sad-faced man, took the place of our patriarch Abraham in my heart and imagination.

“How is it,” I asked the old soldier, “that this man, who was a Christian, was called Abraham?”

“My boy,” he said, “he was a Christian; but he was as good a Jew as the patriarch Abraham. The great lawgiver, Moses, led his own people out of bondage; this man led a strange, African race out of slavery.” Then he read and translated to me “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” and I have never forgotten a single incident in that vivid story. So thoroughly was I imbued by its spirit, that I gathered a group of boys to whom I preached my first revolutionary sermon. I pictured to them the sufferings of our poor and the harshness of our government as typified by the vicious judge and the cruel and venal police. I tried to exact an oath from the boys to help me free these peasant slaves and, if necessary, fight the judge and the police.

Fortunately for the government, my classmates would not enthuse; instead, they told the teacher, who tried to whip my revolutionary ideas out of me, and when I reached home almost too sore to walk, I found great comfort in looking into the sad face of Abraham Lincoln, my patron saint and the inspirer of my passion for the common people.

“Uncle Joe,” as the old soldier wished to be called, drank palenka heavily and almost constantly; the three-quarters of a man wasted away until he was scarcely half a man, and we knew and he knew that the end was not far away. I was in his room one Saturday afternoon; my mother sat beside him holding his thin, bony hand and he was quite sober, as I believe he had not often been since coming to us.

“You think I am a bad man,” he said to my mother. “I drink, I smoke on the Sabbath, I do not lay the phylacteries. I am a bad man; but I have fought, I have suffered cold and hunger and I have fallen into bad habits.

“I think God will forgive me. I know He will if He is anything like Abraham Lincoln. He forgave me once. I was about to be shot,” he whispered hoarsely. “He forgave me, and when I come before Jehovah I shall call for Abraham Lincoln. He spoke a good word for me once—he will do it again.”

The old soldier looked around the room and his glance rested appealingly on the face of the sad-eyed man who had borne the sufferings and agonies of many men.

“Give that picture to the boy who brought me to you—let him have the book also. The flag you must wrap me in; let it be my shroud. My discharge I want buried with me and let them fire a salute over my grave; for it will be a soldier’s grave.”

Coming home the next day at noon, I heard the pious men of our community repeating verses spoken at the bedside of the dying. It was a weird lamentation that went up from those hoarse-throated men, and in the tumult of voices affirming faith in the God of Israel, “Uncle Joe’s” soul took its flight.

To induce the pious men, whose consent was necessary, to wrap his body in the Stars and Stripes, was difficult, but was finally accomplished through my mother’s importunity. The firing of the salute was out of the question, for no Jew owned a gun, and it would be sacrilege to hire a Gentile to use one.

The solemn procession came to the cemetery with its burden and they buried him after the manner of the Jews. But hardly had the last man left the grave when three shots were fired, startling young and old alike.

Istvan, the Hungarian shepherd, once a soldier himself, had yielded to my entreaties and paid this last tribute to a warrior.

Istvan was fined and imprisoned for shooting within the limits of the cemetery; I too was punished, and the common suffering created fellowship between us. Over and over again, while he was watching his sheep, I told him the story of the life and death of Abraham Lincoln.

“Too bad,” he would say, “that he had a Jewish name. Too bad that his name was Abraham.”