NARRATOR: The twins were born two years after the marriage of Max and Jennie, one and a half years after the move to New York, They were born into a Jewish world where people lived on top of one another and so knew each other's business. The Bronx wasn't the Lower East Side, but it was a far cry from little Whitman. The Max Leavitts and their neighbors were slightly more affluent than those in the southward tenements, yet they were all part of the same fabric.

If there was any culture shock befalling Max and Jennie when they came to New York there was no hint of it in Max's descriptions. After all, how can a person feel culture shock when he really doesn't leave a culture? The emigrants from Eastern Europe had brought their attitudes and values along with their few possessions, implanting them in the New World as a base to work from. After eight years in Whitman, Max was now in an element more familiar to him. He treated the arrival of the twins like everything else; it was a surprise perhaps, but at the same time was meant to be, and so was accepted.