The Traveling Shoemaker

It was the shoemaker who made me want to come to America. He was a traveling shoemaker, for on our farms we tan our own cowhides, and the shoemaker came to make them into boots for us. By traveling he learned all the news and he smuggled in newspapers across the frontier from Germany. We were always glad to hear him talk.

I can never forget that evening four years ago. It was a cold December. We were in a big room in our log house in Lithuania. My good, kind, thin old mother sat near the wide fireplace, working her brown spinning wheel, with which she made cloth for our shirts and coats and pants. I sat on the floor in front of her with my knee-boots off and my feet stretched out to the fire.

My feet were cold, for I had been out with my young brother in the freezing sheds milking the cows and feeding the sheep and geese. I leaned my head on her dress and kept yawning and thinking about my big goose-feather bed.

At last the boot was finished. The little shoemaker held it up and looked at it. My father stopped smoking and looked at it. "That's a good boot," said my father. The shoemaker only grunted: "A rough boot like all your boots, and so when you grow old you are lame."

"You!" cried the shoemaker, and he threw the boot on the floor so that our big dog lifted up his head and looked around. "It's not you at all. It's the boy — that boy there!" and he pointed to me. "That boy must go to America!"

Now I quickly stopped yawning and I looked at him all the time after this. My mother looked frightened and she put her hand on my head. "No, no; he is only a boy," she said. "Bah!" cried the shoemaker, pushing back his hair, and then I felt he was looking right through me. "He is eighteen and a man."