Over a bowl of chicken soup, at a nearby pub, you listen as Isaac tells you of his plan to move to Milwaukee to open up his own shop selling shoes to other immigrants who are heading west to make a living as farmers. New York is where most immigrants end up, but there are many like Isaac who are fed up with the poverty of the city and are seeking a fresh start.
New York City is exciting but the thought of living like your cousin in a crowded tenement slum fills you with cold horror. You didn't come all of this way just to live in a place even worse than the home your had left behind.
You hatch a plan to save up money and over the next few months you and Isaac become good friends. Isaac helps you find temporary work as a cashier at a Jewish grocery store.
By March, you both had saved up enough money to pay for the train fare to Milwaukee. The city is much smaller and quieter than New York with a growing Jewish community. Isaac plans to use the money he has saved up to rent a small storefront downtown. Isaac says that as soon as the store is open he'll hire you to help him manage the place.
In the meantime, you answer an advertisement looking for boarders. "Single, respectable women only!", the heading reads. For $1.50 a week you share a house with the owner, a widow, and four other boarders. You find work as a maid in a wealthy family's home. The work is not so bad, and in the evenings you attend school.
Within a year, your English has really improved. Enough that you are able to gain admission to a small women's college where you will learn how to become a teacher. Your dream is to open up your own school for poor immigrant families.
Later that year, Isaac opens his shoe repair shop and instantly it is doing enough business that you quit your job as a maid so that you can fulfill your promise of helping him run his store. You are making less money working for Isaac but you feel that you owe him a huge debt of gratitude.
In time, you both get married, have kids, and in 1914, just before the Great War breaks out in Europe, you send back enough money to bring your mother and two "little" sisters, now almost grown up, to America.