ON the fifteenth day of July we set out for Pennsylvania. It was the first train we had traveled on in America, but nothing inside the coach could tear our attention from the windows. First there was the long tunnel under the Hudson River, and then there were the Jersey marshes. They were more horrible than anything we believed possible, and they stretched as far as our eyes could see beyond scummy rivers and coalyards and shabby factories and filthy tenements. We sank back in our seats and stopped looking, trying to pretend to each other that we weren’t disappointed in the country we had set out to see. After awhile the scenery grew less noisome, but even the open woods looked unkempt and ugly with their wild underbrush. European forests are neat and open, and as high above the ground as man can reach there are no shrubs or tree branches left growing. Every little town the train went through showed its backside to the tracks. Most of the houses we could see were unpainted and dingy with coal smoke. This certainly wasn’t the country we were expecting. By the time we reached Lewistown in the late afternoon our spirits were very low.

Professor Druckman was waiting for us on the station platform. He was as friendly as we had remembered him in New York. He stowed our luggage in the back of his car, put us into the seat beside him, and we started off across the mountains for State College, some thirty miles away. It was the first American highway we had seen, white and winding and wide, with forests coming to the edge of the pavement. Every turn and lift in the road gave us sudden new views of valleys and farms. Our spirits began to rise. The air was clean and sweet and invigorating, and Druckman began to sing “Roll Out the Barrel.” It was the tune of one of our country polkas and we thought he was singing it to please us. He laughed when we thanked him, and then he began to tell us some of the differences we would observe between life in America and life in Europe.

Every farmhouse we could see from the crest of the mountains was situated in the midst of great spaces of cultivated land, as if each one were a small world in itself. Druckman explained why farm life in America was so different from European farm communities. Instead of many farmers living in one settlement and going out each day to the fields that radiated from it, these farmers lived in the center of their own land. We thought it must be a wonderful way to live, deep in a beautiful valley, miles away from the activities of other people. And we liked it more and more as we covered the miles, because these forest-covered mountains separated by rolling, cultivated land were similar to parts of Bohemia.

When we pulled in to the curb before a drugstore in the town of State College we tried not to gape, but again we could hardly believe our eyes. The college buildings were large and beautiful, but they were surrounded by wide lawns. Students were leaving classes, boys and girls together, dressed in the most astonishing fashion. The boys wore no ties, the girls wore sport shoes and socks and loose sweaters, none of them wore hats, and they carried great stacks of books under their arms. What kind of students could these be, all very gay, shouting and calling to each other in a language we only half understood? Strange cars were going down the main street with students spilling out, and the sides of the cars and the backs of the boys’ jackets were alike painted with funny words and figures. When two cars that were passing stopped abruptly in the middle of the block in order to let their inmates talk to each other, and one car refused to start again, more students appeared to push it half a block until the engine sparked and it went on its way.

We went into the drugstore and sat in a booth and Druckman ordered something which he called “cokes.” Here were more of the same students, noisy, laughing, moving from booth to booth to talk to their friends. Girls sat with their feet tucked under, they all drank through straws, and none of them seemed to mind the fact that one of their professors was sitting close enough to hear their gay remarks. We were utterly fascinated.

Then we drove out of town again and on to Shingletown, some five miles away. It was a small community of perhaps twenty houses, all on one side of the road at the edge of a forest. The houses were white-painted frame buildings with field-stone foundations, separated from the road by white picket fences, and they were surrounded by gardens and orchards. It looked to us like heaven. Druckman’s cottage had a small veranda, large windows, and an apple tree at the corner of the house. Hollyhocks were blooming by the picket fence and a sprinkler was rotating in the garden next door. Inside we found a large living room with a huge field-stone fireplace and walls solidly lined with books. Behind the living room was a kitchen which opened on the back garden, and upstairs there were two small bedrooms under the sloping roof.

As soon as we had entered the door a handsome collie came to greet us. Druckman introduced him as Duke, but he needed no formal overtures of friendship. He jumped on me and told me in every way a dog can manage that he was a good-hearted fellow and that he was glad we had come to stay. From that night on he tagged my footsteps from morning to night.

While the summer term lasted, Druckman came home each afternoon to find a warm supper in preparation and his bachelor’s quarters metamorphosed into a home. Milada had put the place in order without a word. And then one day he informed us that he had decided to spend his vacation at home; he could think of no other place where he would rather be. He was happy, and we were happy for the first time in many months. We were only three hundred miles from New York, about equal to the distance between Prague and Budapest, or halfway from Prague to Paris, but it seemed a world away from our worries of the winter.

I set about repairing fences and cleaning up the garden because I could think of nothing else to do for our host. The land around the house had gone untended for some time, so I removed rusted tin cans and old newspapers and rubble and weeds. And then I decided to plant something. I had never touched the earth with my hands before, but I was excited by the very smell and texture of it. I bought beans and peas, read the directions carefully on each package, and planted them, in spite of the fact that the season was late and nothing was likely to come of such activity. Then I brought a deck chair and a table into the garden and put them under an apple tree, and sat there reading and writing letters and watching the brown earth.

It was a world of peace and quietness, of new ideas and inner excitements that had nothing whatever to do with the world of cities and city men. The day my first bean broke through the ground I was beside myself with joy. I sat beside the garden for hours, certain that if I watched closely enough I could actually see the movement of those straight, pale-green shoots. When the first two leaves spread out on each small bean shoot I began to feel foolish for having considered myself a creative artist. Suddenly all my fine glass and china that I had been mourning lost its importance. I could think of no pattern or ornament to compare with these bean leaves. And they had come from nearly nothing, with so little help from me. One dry seed contained more potential beauty than anything ever developed in my own head.

Beyond a low stone wall on one side of Druckman’s place was the garden of another professor. On the other side was the property of an old farmer whose family had lived in the same house for generations. He was exactly the sort of man I thought American pioneers should be. He wore a long, rather crumpled mustache, his skin was a weather-beaten brown, his all-purpose trousers were held up by suspenders, and periodically he went on a drunk which he slept off in a corner of his vegetable patch. So far as I could tell, he lived alone. Beyond him was an old couple whose name was Kline. She wore a sunbonnet and he hobbled about his garden with the aid of a stick.

For at least a month we talked to no one but Druckman. One evening soon after our arrival he had made a cursory introduction over the stone hedge to the professor next door. We learned that his name was Edward Nichols and that he taught English literature. He always called “hello” if he happened to be in his own yard when I went into the garden to read or write, but I only nodded gravely and there was no conversation. Gradually I became absorbed in everything that went on in the garden of Professor Nichols, though I always turned my chair so that my back was toward it, and when I found that I could overhear his conversation with friends I retired to my vegetable patch. Still I realized that a life unlike anything I had ever known was going on there.

Eddie Nichols, as I discovered his friends called him, was probably thirty-five years old. He was tall and lean and dark. His eyes were deep pools of liquid brown, his hair was bronze, his skin showed evidence of much outdoor exercise, and his voice carried a deep ring through everything he said. His expression moved easily from gravity to mirth and back to intense interest in whatever he was doing. When he listened to the music of the victrola that was brought into the garden he was unruffled and thoughtful. When he was absorbed in a discussion he was quick with his points, tense and eager.

One afternoon I was surprised to find a ball game under way in the yard next door. There was Professor Nichols stripped to his brown waist, wearing nothing but a pair of bathing shorts, shouting and yelling with a group of his students, all of them behaving as equals and friends, calling the things American boys all yell from the corner of their mouths when they are playing ball. Impromptu games like that had been no part of my young days. I couldn’t help thinking how different the temperament of the whole of Central Europe might be today if we had learned to play games, and take our share of beatings, the way American and British boys must learn to do. And that same night Professor Nichols was playing the piano in his house with a group of his close friends around him. The music drifted through the warm night, mingling with the chirp of crickets and katydids, while Milada and I sat in the dark under the apple trees, and fireflies sparked on and off through the shrubs, and moonlight made patterns on the lawn, and we thought how strange and beautiful this was after the city life we had always known.

One day Professor Nichols called to me across the stone hedge and asked if I’d like to take a ride with him. He was driving one of his students home to some place in West Virginia. It would be a good way for me to see more of the country and he would enjoy my company on the way back. I felt a little strange about accepting the invitation; I had become so fascinated by the life of Shingletown as I saw it from Druckman’s garden that it had never occurred to me that Shingletown might be interested in the two Czechs who had come for a stay in its midst. But I very much wanted to go with Professor Nichols, and so I did.

As we started across the mountains and valleys, Nichols talked and the student talked while I listened and pondered the fundamental differences between this kind of teacher-pupil relationship and the ones I had known. There was a spontaneous warmth in the professor’s manner, and his voice was entirely different from the one I had heard during the ball game. He began to ask me questions without formality or the casual approach into conversation we invariably use in Europe. He was gay and full of quick energy of spirit and I had a passing impression that he was talking as a friend might in the presence of a convalescent whom he wanted to make smile. He talked about America and I liked his pride in her inner strength and beauty, her unlimited resources, her ability to learn, and the warm heart he knew was in her. As he spoke of the rich countryside his words took on a quality of poetry and the car slowed down perceptibly. When he tried to tell me about the vitality of America’s workers and the stubbornness of the pioneers who had conquered the land he stepped on the gas and took a curve with a wild sweep into the wind.

In trying to answer his questions about my own country I felt suddenly limited in my use of his language and more than a little overcome by the renewed knowledge that my country was lost to me for an indefinite time to come. I asked him to correct me whenever I misused an English word, but he countered by saying that my mistakes had a peculiar interest for a teacher of English. He added that America was ours to be taken and to be loved so long as we were unable to go home. By the end of the day when we returned to Shingletown I was exhausted by all the new ideas which Professor Nichols had given me, but I was also very happy.

Several days later Milada and I were invited to the house next door to meet some of the professor’s friends. There was Harold Graves whom they called Barney, tall and gray and full of kindly good humor. There was Jack Bowman, also of the English department, sensitive and exact. There were their wives who were not like professors’ wives in Europe; they shared ideas and maintained intellectual standards of their own. There were the Woods and the Cannons, and George Palmer and Bill Hickling who had been their students. They all called each other by their given names and invited us to do likewise, but it was many months before we found ourselves able to accept the invitation. The first evening was followed by others. We met more members of this group of friends and we discovered that they all liked good music, whether made by themselves or others, they all talked about a great variety of things, and they all wanted to ask us questions.

It took us a long time to learn how to answer in the way they expected us to do. In Europe I would have been made vain by such questions, for there they would have implied that I was a wise person with much to say that was worth hearing. Here their questions seemed merely to say, “If you have an answer, give it. If not, tell us so.” Their manner of asking touched my pride and forced me to answer; and in formulating my replies, my thoughts began to work far better than they did shut up in the silence of my own mind. I was amazed at some of the answers I found.

I was impressed by the way men of their kind never felt embarrassment or shame in stating candidly that they knew nothing about this or that, and furthermore were willing to admit that they were anxious to learn what they didn’t know. In Central Europe we never admitted our ignorance about anything, either in public or in private. If possible, we avoided any field of conversation or discussion in which our knowledge was not strong. If not possible, we turned the subject skillfully at the first opportunity. In Middle Europe it would be inconceivable for a man of position to say “I don’t know anything about it.”

The first evidence of a change of behavior traceable to these new American surroundings was a willingness to forget my vanity in sticking to a position I had taken after I was shown that my logic was faulty. I respected these professors and their wives and friends. They were critical, but they were also kind. Whenever they proved me to be wrong, they also gave me a way to rectify my mistakes. These things took time, of course, but the process of change was steady. The peaceful life of Shingletown was healing my nerves and the discussions were healing my mind.

When September came and we suddenly realized that another college year was about to begin, we tried to tell Professor Druckman of our appreciation of the start he had given us on a new life in America and made our preparations to leave. We tried to tell the group of friendly people we had met through Professor Nichols how much they had taught us and how they had made us feel at home. Then why leave, they said to us, if you like it here? They brought old Mrs. Kline to see us. She owned an old schoolhouse that had been empty for years, ever since a bus had begun to take the Shingletown children to school in State College. As a child she had gone to school there herself. It was within sight of Professor Nichols’ house, at the edge of the forest. She was willing to rent it to us for next to nothing a month, though we would have to furnish it ourselves. Even before we looked at it, we knew we would stay. There was no place else in the whole of America where we so much wanted to be.

We bought a small car, because now we could no longer depend upon Professor Druckman to take us to State College for our shopping, and drove back to New York to buy furnishings to add to the pieces we had already ordered from Lewistown. We decided to get nothing out of keeping with the simplicity of this new life, so we chose sturdy, solid maple furniture: chests and a desk and a trestle table and Windsor chairs; chintz-covered lounge chairs, a handmade rug, a brass-bowled lamp, and a studio couch that would serve as both bed and sofa.

We stayed in the city for three days and our enthusiasm was so high that nothing in New York could bring us down to the old level of depression. We went to see the Lerners to thank them as the first links in the chain of circumstances which had sent us to Pennsylvania. Their interest in our new experiences fortified our faith in the decision to stay in Shingletown.

Once or twice we ran into some of the refugees. We made the mistake of trying to tell them about the completely different character of the people we had met in the college town in Pennsylvania, about the quietness of life in the country. They answered us with sarcasm and poor jokes; they said we liked our new life because we could sit on chairs on a lawn all day and do nothing. So we picked up our books and our collection of glass and went back to Shingletown, more than ever convinced that we were right to have dropped out of the race in New York.