Viera frowned as she stared out the window into the cold dirty street below her. She shivered as she pulled her thin colorless shawl tighter and turned away from the dirty frost covered window of small three bedroom apartment that she occupied along with her two younger cousins and her father. It had been nearly two years since the four of them had left their home in Russia and travelled to Boston in hopes to escape from the war and poverty that plagued Eastern Europe. Certainly life was better in America, thought Viera as she began peeling potatoes for dinner. Of course she missed her brother who had remained behind with his fiancé, and her home where she had spent so many happy summer days playing in the golden wheat fields with the neighbor children or working in the garden with her grandmother. The memory brought a smile to her thin weary face. Life had been so difficult that it made those happy summer days of her child hood ever so much more precious to her heart. Oh things did seem so horrid as though they could only get worse. First the war, then the awful revolution which claimed so many more souls, then the hope which had accompanied the news of their departure for America that had been a great gift to her somber heart and now things seemed almost as bad as ever before with the strikes and the awful, awful people who never seemed to leave her alone!

            Her father had ordered that she had and her cousins should not leave the apartment building without permission. There had been fearful tales of immigrants being deported by the government ever since someone had tried to kill the attorney general. It seemed that all the Americans were angry with her as though they blamed her for the attempt on the attorney general’s life and for the labor strikes. No, they didn’t really blame her, reasoned Viera, they were probably just as afraid as she was. She wondered who was to blame for all of the unrest and turmoil in the world. Was it God, should she be angry at him for allowing such horrors to occur? She supposed that her priest would be horrified at her thinking such a question, yet she felt that God was not to blame. It was simply the consequences of evil men’s actions and punishment for their iniquities. God must have allowed it to happen for some reason unbeknownst to her, there must be some great righteous duty that was accomplished amidst all the wrongs which occurred. Though it was so horrid that so many should be affected by the wrongs of a few great men, she thought sadly.