I remained in Vitebsk about six months. I do not believe I was ever homesick during all that time. I was too happy to be homesick. The life suited me extremely well. My life in Polotzk had grown meaner and duller, as the family fortunes declined. For years there had been no lessons, no pleasant excursions, no jolly gatherings with uncles and aunts. Poverty, shadowed by pride, trampled down our simple ambitions and simpler joys. I cannot honestly say that I was very sensitive to our losses. I do not remember suffering because there was no jam on my bread, and no new dress for the holidays. I do not know whether I was hurt when some of our playmates abandoned us. I remember myself oftener in the attitude of an onlooker, as on the occasion of the attachment of our furniture, when I went off into a corner to think about it. Perhaps I was not able to cling to negations. The possession of the bread was a more absorbing fact than the loss of the jam. If I were to read my character backwards, I ought to believe that I did miss what I lacked in our days of privation; for I know, to my shame, that in more recent years I have cried for jam. But I am trying not to reason, only to remember; and from many scattered and shadowy memories, that glimmer and fade away so fast that I cannot fix them on this page, I form an idea, almost a conviction, that it was with me as I say.
However indifferent I may have been to what I had not, I was fully alive to what I had. So when I came to Vitebsk I eagerly seized on the many new things that I found around me; and these new impressions and experiences affected me so much that I count that visit as an epoch in my Russian life.
I was very much at home in my uncle's household. I was a little afraid of my aunt, who had a quick temper, but on the whole I liked her. She was fair and thin and had a pretty smile in the wake of her tempers. Uncle Solomon was an old friend. I was fond of him and he made much of me. His fine brown eyes were full of smiles, and there always was a pleasant smile for me, or a teasing one.
Uncle Solomon was comparatively prosperous, so I soon forgot whatever I had known at home of sordid cares. I do not remember that I was ever haunted by the thought of my mother, who slaved to keep us in bread; or of my sister, so little older than myself, who bent her little back to a woman's work. I took up the life around me as if there were no other life. I did not play all the time, but I enjoyed whatever work I found because I was so happy. I helped my Cousin Dinke help her mother with the housework. I put it this way because I think my aunt never set me any tasks; but Dinke was glad to have me help wash dishes and sweep and make beds. My cousin was a gentle, sweet girl, blue-eyed and fair, and altogether attractive. She talked to me about grown-up things, and I liked it. When her friends came to visit her she did not mind having me about, although my skirts were so short.