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Title: The Rise of David Levinsky
Author: Abraham Cahan
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The Rise of David Levinsky
by
Abraham Cahan
Book I - Home and School
Book II - Enter Satan
Book III - I Lose My Mother
Book IV - Matilda
Book V - I Discover America
Book VI - A Greenhorn No Longer
Book VII - My Temple
Book VIII - The Destruction of My Temple
Book IX - Dora
Book X - On the Road
Book XI - Matrimony
Book XII - Miss Tevkin
Book XIII - At Her Father's House
Book XIV - Episodes of a Lonely Life
BOOK I
HOME AND SCHOOL
CHAPTER I
SOMETIMES, when I think of my past in a superficial, casual
way, the metamorphosis I have gone through strikes me as nothing
short of a miracle. I was born and reared in the lowest depths of
poverty and I arrived in America--in 1885--with four cents in my
pocket. I am now worth more than two million dollars and
recognized as one of the two or three leading men in the
cloak-and-suit trade in the United States. And yet when I take a
look at my inner identity it impresses me as being precisely the
same as it was thirty or forty years ago. My present station, power,
the amount of worldly happiness at my command, and the rest of
it, seem to be devoid of significance.
When I was young I used to think that middle-aged people recalled
their youth as something seen through a haze. I know better now.
Life is much shorter than I imagined it to be. The last years that I
spent in my native land and my first years in America come back
to me with the distinctness of yesterday. Indeed, I have a better
recollection of many a trifle of my childhood days than I have of
some important things that occurred to me recently. I have a good
memory for faces, but I am apt to recognize people I have not
seen for a quarter of a century more readily than I do some I used
to know only a few years ago.
I love to brood over my youth. The dearest days in one's life are
those that seem very far and very near at once. My wretched
boyhood appeals to me as a sick child does to its mother.
I was born in Antomir, in the Northwestern Region, Russia, in
1865. All I remember of my father is his tawny beard, a huge
yellow apple he once gave me at the gate of an orchard where he
was employed as watchman, and the candle which burned at his
head his body lay under a white shroud on the floor. I was less
than three years old when he died, so my mother would carry me
to the synagogue in her arms to have somebody say the Prayer for
the Dead with me. I was unable fully to realize the meaning of the
ceremony, of course, but its solemnity and pathos were not
altogether lost upon me. There is a streak of sadness in the blood
of my race. Very likely it is of Oriental origin. If it is, it has been
amply nourished by many centuries of persecution.
Left to her own resources, my mother strove to support herself and
me by peddling pea mush or doing odds and ends of jobs. She had
to struggle hard for our scanty livelihood and her trials and
loneliness came home to me at an early period.
I was her all in all, though she never poured over me those torrents
of senseless rhapsody which I heard other Jewish mothers shower
over their children. The only words of endearment I often heard
from her were, "My little bean," and, "My comfort." Sometimes,
when she seemed to be crushed by the miseries of her life, she
would call me, "My poor little orphan." Otherwise it was, "Come
here, my comfort," "Are you hungry, my little bean?" or, "You are
a silly little dear, my comfort." These words of hers and the
sonorous contralto in which they were uttered are ever alive in my
heart, like the Flame Everlasting in a synagogue.
"Mamma, why do you never beat me like other mammas do?" I
once asked her.
She laughed, kissed me, and said, "Because God has punished you
hard enough as it is, poor orphan mine."
I scarcely remembered my father, yet I missed him keenly. I was
ever awake to the fact that other little boys had fathers and that I
was a melancholy exception; that most married women had
husbands, while my mother had to bear her burden unaided. In my
dim childish way I knew that there was a great blank in our family
nest, that it was a widow's nest; and the feeling of it seemed to
color all my other feelings. When I was a little older and would no
longer sleep with my mother, a rusty old coat of my deceased
father's served me as a quilt. At night, before falling asleep, I
would pull it over my head, shut my eyes tight, and evoke a flow
of fantastic shapes, bright, beautifully tinted, and incessantly
changing form and color. While the play of these figures and hues
was going on before me I would see all sorts of bizarre visions,
which at times seemed to have something to do with my father's
spirit.
"Is papa in heaven now? Is he through with hell?" I once inquired
of my mother. Some things or ideas would assume queer forms in
my mind. God, for example, appealed to me as a beardless man
wearing a quilted silk cap; holiness was something burning,
forbidding, something connected with fire while a day had the
form of an oblong box.
I was a great dreamer of day dreams. One of my pastimes was to
imagine a host of tiny soldiers each the size of my little finger,
"but alive and real." These I would drill as I saw officers do their
men in front of the barracks some distance from our home. Or
else I would take to marching up and down the room with
mother's rolling-pin for a rifle, grunting, ferociously, in Russian:
"Left one! Left one! Left one!" in the double capacity of a Russian
soldier and of David fighting Goliath.
Often, while bent upon her housework, my mother would hum
some of the songs of the famous wedding bard, Eliakim Zunzer,
who later emigrated to America.
I distinctly remember her singing his "There is a flower on the
road, decaying in the dust, Passers-by treading upon it," his
"Summer and Winter," and his "Rachael is bemoaning her
children." I vividly recall these brooding airs as she used to sing
them, for I have inherited her musical memory and her passionate
love for melody, though not her voice. I cannot sing myself, but
some tunes give me thrills of pleasure, keen and terrible as the
edge of a sword. Some haunt me like ghosts. But then this is a
common trait among our people.
She was a wiry little woman, my mother, with prominent
cheek-bones, a small, firm mouth, and dark eyes. Her hair was
likewise dark, though I saw it but very seldom, for like all
orthodox daughters of Israel she always had it carefully covered
by a kerchief, a nightcap, or--on Saturdays and holidays--by a wig.
She was extremely rigorous about it. For instance, while she
changed her kerchief for her nightcap she would cause me to look
away.
My great sport during my ninth and tenth years was to play
buttons. These we would fillip around on some patch of unpaved
ground with a little pit for a billiard pocket. My own pockets were
usually full of these buttons. As the game was restricted to brass
ones from the uniforms of soldiers, my mother had plenty to do to
keep those pockets of mine in good repair. To develop skill for the
sport I would spend hours in some secluded spot, secretly
practising it by myself. Sometimes, as I was thus engaged, my
mother would seek me out and bring me a hunk of rye bread.
"Here," she would say, gravely, handing me it. And I would accept
it with preoccupied mien, take a deep bite, and go on filliping my
buttons.
I gambled passionately and was continually counting my treasure,
or running around the big courtyard, jingling it self-consciously.
But one day I suddenly wearied of it all and traded my entire
hoard of buttons for a pocket-knife and some trinkets.
"Don't you care for buttons any more?" mother inquired.
"I can't bear the sight of them," I replied.
She shrugged her shoulders smilingly, and called me "queer
fellow."
Sometimes I would fall to kissing her passionately. Once, after an
outburst of this kind, I said: "Are people sorry for us, mamma?"
"What do you mean?"
"Because I have no papa and we have no money."
Antomir, which then boasted eighty thousand inhabitants, was a
town in which a few thousand rubles was considered wealth, and
we were among the humblest and poorest in it. The bulk of the
population lived on less than fifty copecks (twenty-five cents) a
day, and that was difficult to earn. A hunk of rye bread and a bit
of herring or cheese constituted a meal. A quarter of a copeck (an
eighth of a cent) was a coin with which one purchased a few
crumbs of pot-cheese or some boiled water for tea. Rubbers were
worn by people "of means" only. I never saw any in the district in
which my mother and I had our home. A white starched collar was
an attribute of "aristocracy." Children had to nag their mothers for
a piece of bread
"Mamma, I want a piece of bread," with a mild whimper
"Again bread! You'll eat my head off. May the worms eat you."
Dialogues such as this were heard at every turn
My boyhood recollections include the following episode: Mother
once sent me to a tinker's shop to have our drinking-cup repaired.
It was a plain tin affair and must have cost, when new, something
like four or five cents. It had done service as long as I could
remember. It was quite rusty, and finally sprang a leak. And so I
took it to the tinker, or tinsmith, who soldered it up. On my way
home I slipped and fell, whereupon the cup hit a cobblestone and
sprang a new leak. When my mother discovered the damage she
made me tell the story of the accident over and over again,
wringing her hands and sighing as she listened. The average
mother in our town would have given me a whipping in the
circumstances. She did not
CHAPTER II
WE lived in a deep basement, in a large, dusky room
that we shared with three other families, each family occupying
one of the corners and as much space as it was able to wrest.
Violent quarrels were a commonplace occurrence, and the
question of floor space a staple bone of contention. The huge
brick oven in which the four housewives cooked dinner was
another prolific source of strife. Fights over pots were as frequent
and as truculent as those over the children
Of our room-mates I best recall a bookbinder and a retired old
soldier who mended old sheepskin coats for a living. My
memories of home are inseparable from the odors of sheepskin
and paste and the image of two upright wooden screws (the
bookbinder's "machine"). The soldier had finished his term of
military service years before, yet he still wore his uniform--a
dilapidated black coat with new brass buttons, and a similar
overcoat of a coarse gray material. Also, he still shaved his chin,
sporting a pair of formidable gray side-whiskers. Shaving is one of
the worst sins known to our faith, but, somehow, people
overlooked it in one who had once been compelled to practise it
in the army. Otherwise the furrier or sheepskin tailor was an
extremely pious man. He was very kind to me, so that his military
whiskers never awed me. Not so his lame, tall wife, who often hit
me with one of her crutches.
She was the bane of my life. The bookbinder's wife was much
younger than her husband and one of the things I often heard was
that he was "crazy for her because she is his second wife," from
which I inferred that second wives were loved far more than first
ones.
The bookbinder had a red-haired little girl whom I hated like
poison. Red Esther we called her, to distinguish her from a Black
Esther, whose home was on the same yard. She was full of fight.
Knowing how repulsive she was to me, she was often the first to
open hostilities, mocking my way of speaking, or sticking out her
tongue at me. Or else she would press her freckled cheek against
my lips and then dodge back, shouting, gloatingly: "He has kissed
a girl! He has kissed a girl! Sinner! Shame! Sinner! Sinner!"
There were some other things that she or some of the other little
girls of our courtyard would do to make an involuntary "sinner" of
me, but these had better be left out
I had many a fierce duel with her. I was considered a strong boy,
but she was quick and nimble as a cat, and I usually got the worst
of the bargain, often being left badly scratched and bleeding. At
which point the combat would be taken up by our mothers
The room, part of which was our home, and two other single-room
apartments, similarly tenanted, opened into a pitch-dark vestibule
which my fancy peopled with "evil ones." A steep stairway led up
to the yard, part of which was occupied by a huddle of ramshackle
one-story houses. It was known as Abner's Court. During the
summer months it swarmed with tattered, unkempt humanity.
There was a peculiar odor to the place which I can still smell.
(Indeed, many of the things that I conjure up from the past appeal
as much to my sense of smell as to my visual memory.) It was
anything but a grateful odor
The far end of our street was part of a squalid little suburb known
as the Sands. It was inhabited by Gentiles exclusively. Sometimes,
when a Jew chanced to visit it some of its boys would descend
upon him with shouts of "Damned Jew!" "Christ-killer!" and sick
their dogs at him. As we had no dogs to defend us, orthodox Jews
being prohibited from keeping these domestic animals by a
custom amounting to a religious injunction, our boys never
ventured into the place except, perhaps, in a spirit of dare-devil
bravado
One day the bigger Jewish boys of our street had a pitched battle
with the Sands boys, an event which is one of the landmarks in the
history of my childhood
Still, some of the Sands boys were on terms of friendship with us
and would even come to play with us in our yard. The only
Gentile family that lived in Abner's Court was that of the porter.
His children spoke fairly good Yiddish
One Saturday evening a pock-marked lad from the Sands, the son
of a chimney-sweep, meeting me in the street, set his dog at me.
As a result I came home with a fair-sized piece of my trousers
(knee-breeches were unknown to us) missing
"I'm going to kill him," my mother said, with something like a sob.
"I'm just going to kill him."
"Cool down," the retired soldier pleaded, without removing his
short-stemmed pipe from his mouth
Mother was silent for a minute, and even seated herself, but
presently she sprang to her feet again and made for the door
The soldier's wife seized her by an arm
"Where are you going? To the Sands? Are you crazy? If you start a
quarrel over there you'll never come back alive."
"I don't care!"
She wrenched herself free and left the room.
Half an hour later she came back beaming
"His father is a lovely Gentile," she said. "He went out, brought his
murderer of a boy home, took off his belt, and skinned him alive."
"A good Gentile," the soldier's wife commented, admiringly
There was always a pile of logs somewhere in our Court, the
property of some family that was to have it cut up for firewood.
This was our great gathering-place of a summer evening. Here we
would bandy stories (often of our own inventing) or discuss
things, the leading topic of conversation being the soldiers of the
two regiments that were stationed in our town. We saw a good
deal of these soldiers, and we could tell their officers,
commissioned or non-commissioned, by the number of stars or
bands on their shoulder-straps. Also, we knew the names of their
generals, colonels, and some of their majors or captains. The more
important manoeuvers took place a great distance from Abner's
Court, but that did not matter. If they occurred on a Saturday,
when we were free from school--and, as good luck would have it,
they usually did--many of us, myself invariably included, would go
to see them. The blare of trumpets, the beat of drums, the playing
of the band, the rhythmic clatter of thousands of feet, the glint of
rows and rows of bayonets, the red or the blue of the uniforms, the
commanding officer on his mount, the spirited singing of the men
marching back to barracks--all this would literally hold me
spellbound
That we often played soldiers goes without saying, but we played
"hares" more often, a game in which the counting was done by
means of senseless words like the American "Eeny, meeny, miny,
moe." Sometimes we would play war, with the names of the
belligerents borrowed from the Old Testament, and once in a
while we would have a real "war" with the boys of the next street
I was accounted one of the strong fellows among the boys of
Abner's Court as well as one of the conspicuous figures among
them. Compactly built, broad-shouldered, with a small, firm
mouth like my mother's, a well-formed nose and large, dark eyes,
I was not a homely boy by any means, nor one devoid of a certain
kind of magnetism
One of my recollections is of my mother administering a
tongue-lashing to a married young woman whom she had
discovered flirting in the dark vestibule with a man not her
husband
A few minutes later the young woman came in and begged my
mother not to tell her husband
"If I was your husband I would skin you alive."
"Oh, don't tell him! Take pity! Don't."
"I won't. Get out of here, you lump of stench."
"Oh, swear that you won't tell him! Do swear, dearie. Long life to
you.
Health to every little bone of yours."
"First you swear that you'll never do it again, you heap of dung."
"Strike me blind and dumb and deaf if I ever do it again. There."
"Your oaths are worth no more than the barking of a dog. Can't
you be decent? You ought to be knouted in the market-place. You
are a plague. Black luck upon you. Get away from me."
"But I will be decent. May I break both my legs and both my arms
if I am not. Do swear that you won't tell him."
My mother yielded
She was passionately devout, my mother. Being absolutely
illiterate, she would murmur meaningless words, in the singsong
of a prayer, pretending to herself that she was performing her
devotions. This, however, she would do with absolute earnestness
and fervor, often with tears of ecstasy coming to her eyes. To be
sure, she knew how to bless the Sabbath candles and to recite the
two or three other brief prayers that our religion exacts from
married women. But she was not contented with it, and the sight of
a woman going to synagogue with a huge prayer-book under her
arm was ever a source of envy to her.
Most of the tenants of the Court were good people, honest and
pure, but there were exceptions. Of these my memory has retained
the face of a man who was known as "Carrot Pudding" Moe, a
red-headed, broad-shouldered "finger worker," a specialist in
"short change," yardstick frauds, and other varieties of
market-place legerdemain. One woman, a cross between a beggar
and a dealer in second-hand dresses, had four sons, all of whom
were pickpockets, but she herself was said to be of spotless
honesty. She never allowed them to enter Abner's Court, though
every time one of them was in prison she would visit him and
bring him food
Nor were professional beggars barred from the Court as tenants.
Indeed, one of our next-door neighbors was a regular recipient of
alms at the hands of my mother. For, poor as she was, she seldom
let a Friday pass without distributing a few half-groschen (an
eighth of a cent) in charity. The amusing part of it was the fact
that one of the beggars on her list was far better off than she
"He's old and lame, and no hypocrite like the rest of them," she
would explain
She had a ferocious temper, but there were people (myself among
them) with whom she was never irritated. The women of Abner's
Court were either her devoted followers or her bitter enemies. She
was a leader in most of the feuds that often divided the whole
Court into two warring camps, and in those exceptional cases
when she happened to be neutral she was an ardent peacemaker.
She wore a dark-blue kerchief, which was older than I, and almost
invariably, when there was a crowd of women in the yard, that
kerchief would loom in its center
Growing as I did in that crowded basement room which was the
home of four families, it was inevitable that the secrets of sex
should be revealed to me before I was able fully to appreciate
their meaning. Then, too, the neighborhood was not of the purest
in town. Located a short distance from Abner's Court, midway
between it and the barracks, was a lane of ill repute, usually full
of soldiers. If it had an official name I never heard it. It was
generally referred to as "that street," in a subdued voice that was
suggestive either of shame and disgust or of waggish mirth. For a
long time I was under the impression that "That" was simply the
name of the street.
One summer day--I must have been eight years old--I told my
mother that I had peeked in one of the little yards of the
mysterious lane, that I had seen half-naked women and soldiers
there, and that one of the women had beckoned me in and given
me some cake
"Why, you mustn't do that, Davie!" she said, aghast. "Don't you
ever go near that street again! Do you hear?"
"Why?"
"Because it is a bad street."
"Why is it bad?"
"Keep still and don't ask foolish questions."
I obeyed, with the result that the foolish questions kept rankling in
my brain
On a subsequent occasion, when she was combing my dark hair
fondly, I ventured once more: "Mamma, why mustn't I come near
that street?"
"Because it is a sin to do so, my comfort. Fie upon it!"
This answer settled it. One did not ask why it was a sin to do this
or not to do that. "You don't demand explanations of the Master of
the World," as people were continually saying around me. My
curiosity was silenced. That street became repellent to me,
something hideously wicked and sinister
Sometimes some of the excommunicated women would drop in at
our yard. As a rule, my mother was bitterly opposed to their visits
and she often chased them out with maledictions and expressions
of abhorrence; but there was one case in which she showed
unusual tolerance and even assumed the part of father confessor to
a woman of this kind. She would listen to her tale of woe,
homesickness and repentance, including some of the most intimate
details of her loathsome life. She would even deliver her donations
to the synagogue, thus helping her cheat the Biblical injunction
which bars the gifts of fallen women from a house of God
My mother would bid me keep away during these confabs of
theirs, but this only whetted my curiosity and I often overheard far
more than I should
Fridays were half-holidays with us Jewish boys. One Friday
afternoon a wedding was celebrated in our courtyard. The
procession emerged from one of the rickety one-story houses,
accompanied by a band playing a solemn tune.
When it reached the center of the vacant part of the yard it came to
a halt and a canopy was stretched over the principal figures of the
ceremony.
Prayers and benedictions were chanted. The groom put the ring on
the bride's finger, "dedicating her to himself according to the laws
of Moses and Israel "; more prayers were recited; the bridegroom
and the bride received sips of wine; a plate was smashed, the
sound being greeted by shouts of "Good luck! Good luck!" The
band struck up a lively tune with a sad tang to it
The yard was crowded with people. It was the greatest sensation
we children had ever enjoyed there. We remained out chattering
of the event till the windows were aglitter with Sabbath lights
I was in a trance. The ceremony was a poem to me, something
inexpressibly beautiful and sacred.
Presently a boy, somewhat older than I, made a jest at the young
couple's expense. What he said was a startling revelation to me.
Certain things which I had known before suddenly appeared in a
new light to me. I relished the discovery and I relished the deviltry
of it. But the poem vanished. The beauty of the wedding I had just
witnessed, and of weddings in general, seemed to be irretrievably
desecrated
That boy's name was Naphtali. He was a trim-looking fellow with
curly brown hair, somewhat near-sighted. He was as poor as the
average boy in the yard and as poorly dressed, but he was the
tidiest of us. He would draw, with a piece of chalk, figures of
horses and men which we admired. He knew things, good and
bad, and from that Friday I often sought his company. Unlike most
of the other boys, he talked little, throwing out his remarks at long
intervals, which sharpened my sense of his wisdom. His father
never let him attend the manoeuvers, yet he knew more about
soldiers than any of the other boys, more even than I, though I had
that retired soldier, the sheepskin man, to explain things military
to me.
One summer evening Naphtali and I sat on a pile of logs in the
yard, watching a boy who was "playing" on a toy fiddle of his own
making. I said: "I wish I knew how to play on a real fiddle, don't
you?"
Naphtali made no answer. After a little he said: "You must think it
is the bow that does the playing, don't you?"
"What else does it?" I asked, perplexed
"It's the fingers of the other hand, those that are jumping around."
"Is it?"
I did not understand, but I was deeply impressed all the same. The
question bothered me all that evening. Finally I submitted it to my
mother: "Mamma, Naphtali says when you play on a fiddle it is not
the bow that makes the tune, but the fingers that are jumping
around. Is it true?"
She told me not to bother her with foolish questions, but the
retired soldier, who had overheard my query, volunteered to
answer it.
"Of course it is not the bow," he said
"But if you did not work the bow the strings would not play, would
they?" I urged.
"You could play a tune by pinching them," he answered. "But if
you just kept passing the bow up and down there would be no tune
at all."
I plied him with further questions and he answered them all,
patiently and fondly, illustrating his explanations with a thread for
a violin string, my mother looking from him to me beamingly
When we were through she questioned him: "Do you think he
understands it all?" "He certainly does. He has a good head," he
answered, with a wink. And she flushed with happiness
CHAPTER III
THE tuition fee at a school for religious instruction
or cheder was from eight to ten rubles (five dollars) for a term of
six months. My mother could not afford it. On the other hand, she
would not hear of sending me to the free cheder of our town,
because of its reputation for poor instruction. So she importuned
and harassed two distant relatives of ours until they agreed to raise
part of the sum between them. The payments were made with
anything but promptness, the result being that I was often turned
out of school.
Mother, however, would lose no time in bringing me back. She
would implore the schoolmaster to take pity on the poor, helpless
woman that she was, assuring him, with some weird oaths, that
she would pay him every penny. If that failed she would burst into
a flood of threats and imprecations, daring him to let a fatherless
boy grow up in ignorance of the Word of God. This was followed
by similar scenes at the houses of my cousins, until finally I was
allowed to resume my studies, sometimes at the same cheder,
sometimes at some other one. There were scores of such private
schools in our town, and before I got through my elementary
religious education I had become acquainted with a considerable
number of them
Sometimes when a teacher or his wife tried to oust me, I would
clutch at the table and struggle sullenly until they yielded
I may explain that instruction in these cheders was confined to the
Hebrew Old Testament and rudiments of the Talmud, the
exercises lasting practically all day and part of the evening. The
class-room was at the same time the bedroom, living-room, and
kitchen of the teacher's family. His wife and children were always
around. These cheder teachers were usually a haggard-looking lot
with full beards and voices hoarse with incessant shouting.
A special man generally came for an hour to teach the boys to
write. As he was to be paid separately, I was not included. The
feeling of envy, abasement, and self-pity with which I used to
watch the other boys ply their quills is among the most painful
memories of my childhood
During the penmanship lesson I was generally kept busy in other
directions.
The teacher's wife would make me help her with her housework,
go her errands, or mind the baby (in one instance I became so
attached to the baby that when I was expelled I missed it keenly)
I seized every opportunity to watch the boys write and would
practise the art, with chalk, on my mother's table or bed, on the
door of our basement room, on many a gate or fence. Sometimes a
boy would let me write a line or two in his copy-book.
Sometimes, too, I would come to school before the schoolmaster
had returned from the morning service at the synagogue, and
practise with pen and ink, following the copy of some of my
classmates. One of my teachers once caught me in the act. He
held me up as an ink-thief and forbade me come to school before
the beginning of exercises
Otherwise my teachers scarcely ever complained of my behavior.
As to the progress I was making in my studies, they admitted,
some even with enthusiasm, that mine was a "good head."
Nevertheless, to be beaten by them was an every-day experience
with me
Overworked, underfed, and goaded by the tongue-lashings of their
wives, these enervated drudges were usually out of sorts. Bursts of
ill temper, in the form of invective, hair-pulling, ear-pulling,
pinching, caning, "nape-cracking," or "chin-smashing," were part
of the routine, and very often I was the scapegoat for the sins of
other boys. When a pupil deserved punishment and the
schoolmaster could not afford to inflict it because the culprit
happened to be the pet of a well-to-do family, the teacher's anger
was almost sure to be vented on me. If I happened to be somewhat
absent-minded (the only offense I was ever guilty of), or was not
quick enough to turn over a leaf, or there was the slightest halt in
my singsong, I received a violent "nudge" or a pull by the ear.
"Lively, lively, carcass you!" I can almost hear one of my teachers
shout these words as he digs his elbow into my side. "The millions
one gets from your mother!"
This man would beat and abuse me even by way of expressing
approval
"A bright fellow, curse him!" he would say, punching me with an
air of admiration. Or, "Where did you get those brains of yours,
you wild beast?" with a violent pull at my forelock
During the winter months, when the exercises went on until 9 in
the evening, the candle or kerosene was paid for by the boys, in
rotation. When it was my turn to furnish the light it often
happened that my mother was unable to procure the required two
copecks (one cent). Then the teacher or his wife, or both, would
curse me for a sponge and a robber, and ask me why I did not go
to the charity school
Almost every teacher in town was known among us boys by some
nickname, which was usually borrowed from some trade. If he
had a predilection for pulling a boy's hair we would call him
"wig-maker" or "brush-maker"; if he preferred to slap or
"calcimine" the culprit's face we would speak of him as a mason.
A "coachman" was a teacher who did not spare the rod or the
whip; a "carpenter," one who used his finger as a gimlet, boring a
pupil's side or cheek; a "locksmith," one who had a weakness for
"turning the screw," or pinching
The greatest "locksmith" in town was a man named Shmerl. But
then he was more often called simply Shmerl the Pincher. He was
one of my schoolmasters.
He seemed to prefer the flesh of plump, well-fed boys, but as these
were usually the sons of prosperous parents, he often had to
forego the pleasure and to gratify his appetite on me. There was
something morbid in his cruel passion for young flesh something
perversely related to sex, perhaps. He was a young man with a
wide, sneering mouth
He would pinch me black and blue till my heart contracted with
pain. Yet I never uttered a murmur. I was too profoundly aware of
the fact that I was kept on sufferance to risk the slightest
demonstration. I had developed a singular faculty for bearing pain,
which I would parade before the other boys. Also, I had developed
a relish for flaunting my martyrdom, for being an object of pity
Oh, how I did hate this man, especially his sneering mouth! In my
helplessness I would seek comfort in dreams of becoming a great
man some day, rich and mighty, and avenging myself on him.
Behold! Shmerl the Pincher is running after me, cringingly
begging my pardon, and I, omnipotent and formidable, say to him:
"Do you remember how you pinched the life out of me for
nothing? Away with you, you cruel beast!"
Or I would vision myself dropping dead under one of his
onslaughts. Behold him trembling with fright, the heartless
wretch! Serves him right.
If my body happened to bear some mark of his cruelty I would
conceal it carefully from my mother, lest she should quarrel with
him. Moreover, to betray school secrets was considered a great
"sin."
One night, as I was changing my shirt, anxiously manoeuvering to
keep a certain spot on my left arm out of her sight, she became
suspicious
"Hold on. What are you hiding there?" she said, stepping up and
inspecting my bare arm. She found an ugly blotch. "Woe is me! A
lamentation upon me!" she said, looking aghast. "Who has been
pinching you?"
"Nobody."
"It is that beast of a teacher, isn't it?"
"No."
"Don't lie, Davie. It is that assassin, the cholera take him! Tell me
the truth. Don't be afraid."
"A boy did it."
"What is his name?"
"I don't know. It was a boy in the street."
"You are a liar."
The next morning when I went to cheder she accompanied me
Arrived there, she stripped me half-naked and, pointing at the
discoloration on my arm, she said, with ominous composure:
"Look! Whose work is it?"
"Mine," Shmerl answered, without removing his long-stemmed
pipe from his wide mouth. He was no coward
"And you are proud of it, are you?" "If you don't like it you can
take your ornament of a son along with you.
Clear out, you witch!"
She flew at him and they clenched. When they had separated,
some of his hair was in her hand, while her arms, as she
subsequently owned to me, were marked with the work of his
expert fingers.
Another schoolmaster had a special predilection for digging the
huge nail of his thumb into the side of his victim, a peculiarity for
which he had been named "the Cossack," his famous thumb being
referred to by the boys as his spear. He had a passion for inventing
new and complex modes of punishment, his spear figuring in most
of them. One of his methods of inflicting pain was to slap the
boy's face with one hand and to prod his side with the thumb of
the other, the slaps and the thrusts alternating rhythmically. This
heartless wretch was an abject coward. He was afraid of thunder,
of rats, spiders, dogs, and, above all, of his wife, who would call
him indecent names in our presence. I abhorred him, yet when he
was thus humiliated I felt pity for him His wife kept a stand on a
neighboring street corner, where she sold cheap cakes and candy,
and those of her husband's pupils who were on her list of "good
customers" were sure of immunity from his spear. As I scarcely
ever had a penny, he could safely beat me whenever he was so
disposed
CHAPTER IV
THE Cossack had a large family and one of his
daughters, a little girl, named Sarah-Leah, was the heroine of my
first romance.
Sarah-Leah had the misfortune to bear a striking resemblance to a
sister of her father's, an offense which her mother never forgave
her. She treated her as she might a stepdaughter. As for the
Cossack, he may have cared for the child, but if he did he dared
not show it. Poor little Sarah-Leah! She was the outcast of the
family just as I was the outcast of her father's school.
She was about eleven years old and I was somewhat younger. The
similarity of our fates and of our self-pity drew us to each other.
When her father beat me I was conscious of her commiserating
look, and when she was mistreated by her mother she would cast
appealing glances in my direction. Once when the teacher
punished me with special cruelty her face twitched and she broke
into a whimper, whereupon he gave her a kick, saying: "Is it any
business of yours? Thank God your own skin has not been peeled
off."
Once during the lunch hour, when we were alone, Sarah-Leah and
I, in a corner of the courtyard, she said: "You are so strong, Davie!
Nothing hurts you."
"Nothing at all. I could stand everything," I bragged
"You could not, if I bit your finger."
"Go ahead!" I said, with bravado, holding out my hand. She dug
her teeth into one of my fingers. It hurt so that I involuntarily
ground my own teeth, but I smiled
"Does it not hurt you, Davie?" she asked, with a look of admiration
"Not a bit. Go on, bite as hard as you can."
She did, the cruel thing, and like many an older heroine, she would
not desist until she saw her lover's blood
"It still does not hurt, does it?" she asked, wiping away a red drop
from her lips.
I shook my head contemptuously
"When you are a man you will be strong as Samson the Strong."
I was the strongest boy in her father's school. She knew that most
of the other boys were afraid of me, but that did not seem to
interest her. At least when I began to boast of it she returned to my
ability "to stand punishment," as the pugilists would put it
One day one of my schoolmates aroused her admiration by the way
he "played" taps with his fist for a trumpet. I tried to imitate him,
but failed grievously. The other boy laughed and Sarah-Leah
joined him. That was my first taste of the bitter cup called
jealousy
I went home a lovelorn boy
I took to practising "taps." I was continually trumpeting. I kept at it
so strenuously that my mother had many a quarrel with our
room-mates because of it
My efforts went for nothing, however. My rival, and with him my
lady love, continued to sneer at my performances
I had only one teacher who never beat me, or any of the other boys.
Whatever anger we provoked in him would spend itself in threats,
and even these he often turned to a joke, in a peculiar vein of his
own
"If you don't behave I'll cut you to pieces," he would say. "I'll just
cut you to tiny bits and put you into my pipe and you'll go up in
smoke." Or, "I'll give you such a thrashing that you won't be able
to sit down, stand up, or lie down. The only thing you'll be able to
do is to fly--to the devil."
This teacher used me as a living advertisement for his school. He
would take me from house to house, flaunting my recitations and
interpretations. Very often the passage which he thus made me
read was a lesson I had studied under one of his predecessors, but
I never gave him away
Every cheder had its king. As a rule, it was the richest boy in the
school, but I was usually the power behind the throne. Once one
of these potentates (it was at the school of that kindly man)
mimicked my mother hugging her pot of pea mush
"If you do it again I'll kill you," I said
"If you lay a finger on me," he retorted, "the teacher will kick you
out.
Your mother doesn't pay him, anyhow."
I flew at him. His Majesty tearfully begged for mercy. Since then
he was under my thumb and never omitted to share his
ring-shaped rolls or apples with me
Often when a boy ate something that was beyond my mother's
means--a cookie or a slice of buttered white bread--I would eye
him enviously till he complained that I made him choke. Then I
would go on eying him until he bribed me off with a piece of the
tidbit. If staring alone proved futile I might try to bring him to
terms by naming all sorts of loathsome objects. At this it
frequently happened that the prosperous boy threw away his
cookie from sheer disgust, whereupon I would be mean enough to
pick it up and to eat it in triumph, calling him something
equivalent to "Sissy."
The compliments that were paid my brains were ample
compensation for my mother's struggles. Sending me to work was
out of the question. She was resolved to put me in a Talmudic
seminary. I was the "crown of her head" and she was going to
make a "fine Jew" of me. Nor was she a rare exception in this
respect, for there were hundreds of other poor families in our town
who would starve themselves to keep their sons studying the
Word of God
Whenever one of the neighbors suggested that I be apprenticed to
some artisan she would flare up. On one occasion a suggestion of
this kind led to a violent quarrel
One afternoon when we happened to pass by a bookstore she
stopped me in front of the window and, pointing at some huge
volumes of the Talmud, she said: "This is the trade I am going to
have you learn, and let our enemies grow green with envy."
BOOK II
ENTER SATAN
CHAPTER I
THE Talmudic seminary,
or yeshivah, in which my mother placed me was a celebrated old
institution, attracting students from many provinces. Like most
yeshivahs, it was sustained by donations, and instruction in it was
free. Moreover, out-of-town students found shelter under its roof,
sleeping on the benches or floors of the same rooms in which the
lectures were delivered and studied during the day. Also, they
were supplied with a pound of rye bread each for breakfast. As to
the other meals, they were furnished by the various households of
the orthodox community. I understand that some school-teachers
in certain villages of New England get their board on the rotation
plan, dining each day in the week with another family. This is
exactly the way a poor Talmud student gets his sustenance in
Russia, the system being called "eating days."
One hour a day was devoted to penmanship and a sorry smattering
of Russian, the cost of tuition and writing-materials being paid by
a "modern" philanthropist
I was admitted to that seminary at the age of thirteen. As my home
was in the city, I neither slept in the classroom nor "ate days."
The lectures lasted only two hours a day, but then there was plenty
to do, studying them and reviewing previous work. This I did in
an old house of prayer where many other boys and men of all ages
pursued similar occupations. It was known as the Preacher's
Synagogue, and was famed for the large number of noted scholars
who had passed their young days reading Talmud in it.
The Talmud is a voluminous work of about twenty ponderous
tomes. To read these books, to drink deep of their sacred wisdom,
is accounted one of the greatest "good deeds" in the life of a Jew.
It is, however, as much a source of intellectual interest as an act of
piety. If it be true that our people represent a high percentage of
mental vigor, the distinction is probably due, in some measure, to
the extremely important part which Talmud studies have played in
the spiritual life of the race
A Talmudic education was until recent years practically the only
kind of education a Jewish boy of old-fashioned parents received.
I spent seven years at it, not counting the several years of Talmud
which I had had at the various cheders
What is the Talmud? The bulk of it is taken up with debates of
ancient rabbis. It is primarily concerned with questions of
conscience, religious duty, and human sympathy--in short, with
the relations "between man and God" and those "between man and
man." But it practically contains a consideration of almost every
topic under the sun, mostly with some verse of the Pentateuch for a
pretext. All of which is analyzed and explained in the minutest and
keenest fashion, discussions on abstruse subjects being sometimes
relieved by an anecdote or two, a bit of folklore, worldly wisdom,
or small talk. Scattered through its numerous volumes are
priceless gems of poetry, epigram, and story-telling
It is at once a fountain of religious inspiration and a
"brain-sharpener." "Can you fathom the sea? Neither can you
fathom the depths of the Talmud," as we would put it. We were
sure that the highest mathematics taught in the Gentile
universities were child's play as compared to the Talmud
In the Preacher's Synagogue, then, I spent seven years of my
youthful life.
For hours and hours together I would sit at a gaunt reading-desk,
swaying to and fro over some huge volume, reading its ancient
text and interpreting it in Yiddish. All this I did aloud, in the
peculiar Talmud singsong, a trace of which still persists in my
intonation even when I talk cloaks and bank accounts and in
English
The Talmud was being read there, in a hundred variations of the
same singsong, literally every minute of the year, except the hours
of prayer.
There were plenty of men to do it during the day and the evening,
and at least ten men (a sacred number) to keep the holy word
echoing throughout the night. The majority of them were simply
scholarly business men who would drop in to read the sacred
books for an hour or two, but there was a considerable number of
such as made it the occupation of their life. These were supported
either by the congregation or by their own wives, who kept shops,
stalls, inns, or peddled, while their husbands spent sixteen hours a
day studying Talmud
One of these was a man named Reb (Rabbi) Sender, an
insignificant, ungainly little figure of a man, with a sad, child-like
little face flanked by a pair of thick, heavy, dark-brown side-locks
that seemed to weigh him down
His wife kept a trimming-store or something of the sort, and their
only child, a girl older than I, helped her attend to business as well
as to keep house in the single-room apartment which the family
occupied in the rear of the little shop. As he invariably came to
the synagogue for the morning prayer, and never left it until after
the evening service, his breakfasts and dinners were brought to the
house of worship. His wife usually came with the meal herself.
Waiting on one's husband and "giving him strength to learn the
law" was a "good deed."
She was a large woman with an interesting dark face, and poor
Reb Sender cut a sorry figure by her side
Men of his class are described as having "no acquaintance with the
face of a coin." All the money he usually handled was the penny
or two which he needed to pay for his bath of a Friday afternoon.
Occasionally he would earn three or four copecks by participating
in some special prayer, for a sick person, for instance. These
pennies he invariably gave away. Once he gave his muffler to a
poor boy. His wife subsequently nagged him to death for it. The
next morning he complained of her to one of the other scholars
"Still," he concluded, "if you want to serve God you must be ready
to suffer for it. A good deed that comes easy to you is like a
donation which does not cost you anything." I made his
acquaintance by asking him to help me out with an obscure
passage. This he did with such simple alacrity and kindly modesty
as to make me feel a chum of his. I warmed to him and he
reciprocated my feelings. He took me to his bosom. He often
offered to go over my lesson with me, and I accepted his services
with gratitude. He spoke in a warm, mellow basso that had won
my heart from the first. His singsong lent peculiar charm to the
pages that we read in duet. As he read and interpreted the text he
would wave his snuff-box, by way of punctuating and
emphasizing his words, much as the conductor of an orchestra
does his baton, now gently, insinuatingly, now with a passionate
jerk, now with a sweeping majestic movement. One cannot read
Talmud without gesticulating, and Reb Sender would scarcely
have been able to gesticulate without his snuff-box.
It was of tortoise shell, with a lozenge-shaped bit of silver in the
center.
It gradually became dear to me as part of his charming personality.
Sometimes, when we were reading together, that glistening spot in
the center of the lid would fascinate my eye so that I lost track of
the subject in hand
He often hummed some liturgical melody of a well-known
synagogue chanter.
One afternoon he sang something to me, with his snuff-box for a
baton, and then asked me how I liked it
"I composed it myself," he explained, boastfully
I did not like the tune. In fact, I failed to make out any tune at all,
but I was overflowing with a desire to please him, so I said, with
feigned enthusiasm: "Did you really? Why, it's so beautiful, so
sweet!"
Reb Sender's face shone
After that he often submitted his compositions to me, though he
was too shy to sing them to older people. They were all supposed
to be liturgical tunes, or at least some "hop" for the Day of the
Rejoicing of the Law. When I hailed the newly composed air with
warm approval he would show his satisfaction either with
shamefaced reserve or with child-like exuberance.
If, on the other hand, I failed to conceal my indifference, he would
grow morose, and it would be some time before I succeeded in
coaxing him back to his usual good humor
Nor were his melodies the only things he confided to me. When I
was still a mere boy, fourteen or fifteen years old, he would lay
bare to me some of the most intimate secrets of his heart
"You see, my wife thinks me a fool," he once complained to me.
"She thinks I don't see it. Do you understand, David? She looks up
to me for my learning, but otherwise she thinks I have no sense. It
hurts, you know." He was absolutely incapable of keeping a secret
or of saying or acting anything that did not come from the depths
of his heart. He often talked to me of God and His throne, of the
world to come, and of the eternal bliss of the righteous, quoting
from a certain book of exhortations and adding much from his
own exalted imagination. And I would listen, thrilling, and make a
silent vow to be good and to dedicate my life to the service of God
"Study the Word of God, Davie dear," he would say, taking my
hand into his.
"There is no happiness like it. What is wealth? A dream of fools.
What is this world? A mere curl of smoke for the wind to scatter.
Only the other world has substance and reality; only good deeds
and holy learning have tangible worth. Beware of Satan, Davie.
When he assails you, just say no; turn your heart to steel and say
no. Do you hear, my son?"
The anecdotes and sayings of the Talmud, its absurdities no less
than its gems of epigrammatic wisdom, were mines of poetry,
philosophy, and science to him. He was a dreamer with a noble
imagination, with a soul full of beauty
This unsophisticated, simple-hearted man, with the mind of an
infant, was one of the most quick-witted, nimble-minded scholars
in town.
His great delight was to tackle some intricate maze of Talmudic
reasoning.
This he would do with ferocious zest, like a warrior attacking the
enemy, flashing his tortoise snuff-box as if it were his sword.
When away from his books or when reading some of the fantastic
tales in them he was meek and gentle as a little bird. No sooner
did he come across a fine bit of reasoning than he would impress
me as a lion
On one occasion, after Reb Sender got through a celebrated tangle
with me, arousing my admiration by the ingenuity with which he
discovered discrepancies and by the adroitness with which he
explained them away, he said: "I do enjoy reading with you.
Sometimes, when I read by myself, I feel lonely. Anyhow, I love
to have you around, David. If you went to study somewhere else I
should miss you very much." On another occasion he said: "You
are like a son to me, Davie. Be good, be genuinely pious; for my
sake, if for nothing else. Above all, don't be double-faced; never
say what you do not mean; do not utter words of flattery."
As I now analyze my reminiscences of him I feel that he was a
yearning, lonely man. He was in love with his wife and, in spite of
her devotion to him, he was love-lorn. Poor Reb Sender! He was
anything but a handsome man, while she was well built and pretty.
And so it may be that she showed more reverence for his learning
and piety than love for his person. He was continually referring to
her, apparently thirsting to discuss her demeanor toward him
"The Lord of the Universe has been exceptionally good to me," he
once said to me. "May I not forfeit His kindness for my sins. He
gives me health and my daily bread, and I have a worthy woman
for a wife. Indeed, she is a woman of rare merits, so clever, so
efficient, and so good. She nags me but seldom, very seldom." He
paused to take snuff and then remained silent, apparently
hesitating to come to the point. Finally he said: "In fact, she is so
wise I sometimes wish I could read her thoughts. I should give
anything to have a glimpse into her heart. She has so little to say to
me.
She thinks I am a fool. There is a sore in here "--pointing at his
heart.
"We have been married over twenty-two years, and yet--would you
believe it?--I still feel shy in her presence, as if we were brought
together for the first time, by a match-maker, don't you know. But
then you are too young to understand these things. Nor, indeed,
ought I to talk to you about them, for you are only a child. But I
cannot help it. If I did not unburden my mind once in a while I
might not be able to stand it."
That afternoon he composed what he called a "very sad tune," and
hummed it to me. I failed to make out the tune, but I could feel its
sadness
I loved him passionately. As for the other men of the synagogue, if
they did not share my ardent affection for him, they all, with one
exception, liked him. The exception was a middle-aged little
Talmudist with a tough little beard who held everybody in terror
by his violent temper and pugnacity. He was a pious man, but his
piety never manifested itself with such genuine fervor as when he
exposed the impiety of others. He was forever picking quarrels,
forever challenging people to debate with him, forever offering to
show that their interpretation of this passage or that was all wrong.
The sound of his acrimonious voice or venomous laughter grated
on Reb Sender's nerves, but he bore him absolutely no ill-will.
Nor did he ever utter a word of condemnation concerning a
certain other scholar, an inveterate tale-bearer and gossip-monger,
though a good-natured fellow, who not infrequently sought to
embroil him with some of his warmest friends.
One Talmudist, a corpulent old man whose seat was next to Reb
Sender's, was more inclined to chat than to study. Now and again
he would break in upon my friend's reading with some piece of
gossip; and the piteous air with which Reb Sender would listen to
him, casting yearning glances at his book as he did so, was as
touching as it was amusing
My mother usually brought my dinner to the synagogue. She
would make her entrance softly, so as to take me by surprise while
I was absorbed in my studies. It did her heart good to see me read
the holy book. As a result, I was never so diligent as I was at the
hour when I expected her arrival with the dinner-pot. Very often I
discovered her tiptoeing in or standing at a distance and watching
me admiringly. Then I would take to singing and swaying to and
fro with great gusto. She often encountered Reb Sender's wife at
the synagogue. They did not take to each other.
On one occasion my mother found Reb Sender's daughter at the
house of prayer. Having her father's figure and features, the girl
was anything but prepossessing. My mother surveyed her from
head to foot
That evening when I was eating my supper at home my mother
said: "Look here, Davie. I want you to understand that Reb
Sender's wife is up to some scheme about you. She wants you to
marry that monkey of hers. That's what she is after." I was not
quite fifteen
"Leave me alone," I retorted, coloring
"Never mind blushing. It is she who tells Reb Sender to be so good
to you.
The foxy thing! She thinks I don't see through her. That scarecrow
of a girl is old enough to be your mother, and she has not a penny
to her marriage portion, either. A fine match for a boy like you!
Why, you can get the best girl in town."
She said it aloud, by way of flaunting my future before our
room-mates. Two of the three families who shared the room with
us, by the way, were the same as when I was a little boy. Moving
was a rare event in the life of the average Antomir family
Red Esther was still there. She was one of those who heard my
mother's boastful warning to me. She grinned. After a little, as I
was crossing the room, she sang out with a giggle: "Bridegroom!"
"I'll break your bones," I returned, pausing
She stuck out her tongue at me
I still hated her, but, somehow, she did not seem to be the same as
she had been before. The new lines that were developing in her
growing little figure, and more particularly her own consciousness
of them, were not lost upon me. A new element was stealing into
my rancor for her--a feeling of forbidden curiosity. At night, when
I lay in bed, before falling asleep, I would be alive to the fact that
she was sleeping in the same room, only a few feet from me.
Sometimes I would conjure up the days of our childhood when
Red Esther caused me to "sin" against my will, whereupon I would
try to imagine the same scenes, but with the present
fifteen-year-old Esther in place of the five-year-old one of yore.
The word "girl" had acquired a novel sound for me, one full of
disquieting charm. The same was true of such words as "sister,"
"niece," or "bride," but not of "woman." Somehow sisters and
nieces were all young girls, whereas a woman belonged to the
realm of middle-aged humanity, not to my world
Naphtali went to the same seminary. He was two grades ahead of
me. He "ate days," for his father had died and his mother had
married a man who refused to support him. He was my great
chum at the seminary. The students called him Tidy Naphtali or
simply the Tidy One. He was a slender, trim lad, his curly brown
hair and his near-sighted eyes emphasizing his Talmudic
appearance. He was the cleanliest and neatest boy at the yeshivah.
This often aroused sardonic witticism from some of the other
students. Scrupulous tidiness was so uncommon a virtue among
the poorer classes of Antomir that the painstaking care he
bestowed upon his person and everything with which he came in
contact struck many of the boys as a manifestation of girl-like
squeamishness. As for me, it only added to my admiration of him.
His conscience seemed to be as clean as his finger-nails. He wrote
a beautiful hand, he could draw and carve, and he was a good
singer. His interpretations were as clear-cut as his handwriting. He
seemed to be a Jack of all trades and master of all. I admired and
envied him. His reticence piqued me and intensified his power
over me. I strove to emulate his cleanliness, his graceful Talmud
gestures, and his handwriting. At one period I spent many hours a
day practising caligraphy with some of his lines for a model
"Oh, I shall never be able to write like you," I once said to him, in
despair
"Let us swap, then," he replied, gaily.. "Give me your mind for
learning and I shall let you have my handwriting."
"Pshaw! Yours is a better mind than mine, too."
"No, it is not," he returned, and resumed his reading. "Besides, you
are ahead of me in piety and conduct." He shook his head
deprecatingly and went on reading. He was one of the noted "men
of diligence" at the seminary. With his near-sighted eyes close to
the book he would read all day and far into the night in ringing,
ardent singsongs that I thought fascinating. The other reticent
Talmudists I knew usually read in an undertone, humming their
recitatives quietly. He seldom did. Sparing as he was of his voice
in conversation, he would use it extravagantly when intoning his
Talmud
It is with a peculiar sense of duality one reads this ancient work.
While your mind is absorbed in the meaning of the words you
utter, the melody in which you utter them tells your heart a tale of
its own. You live in two distinct worlds at once. Naphtali had
little to say to other people, but he seemed to have much to say to
himself. His singsongs were full of meaning, of passion, of
beauty. Quite often he would sing himself hoarse
Regularly every Thursday night he and I had our vigil at the
Preacher's Synagogue, where many other young men would gather
for the same purpose. We would sit up reading, side by side, until
the worshipers came to morning service. To spend a whole night
by his side was one of the joys of my existence in those days
Reb Sender was somewhat jealous of him
Soon after graduation Naphtali left Antomir for a town in which
lived some of his relatives. I missed him as I would a sweetheart
CHAPTER II
I WAS nearly sixteen. I had graduated from the
seminary and was pursuing my studies at the Preacher's
Synagogue exclusively, as an "independent scholar." I was
overborne with a sense of my dignity and freedom. I seemed to
have suddenly grown much taller. If I caught myself walking fast
or indulging in some boyish prank I would check myself, saying in
my heart: "You must not forget that you are an independent
scholar. You are a boy no longer."
I was free to loaf, but I worked harder than ever. I was either in an
exalted state of mind or pining away under a spell of yearning and
melancholy--of causeless, meaningless melancholy.
My Talmudic singsong reflected my moods. Sometimes it was a
spirited recitative, ringing with cheery self-consciousness and the
joy of being a lad of sixteen; at other times it was a solemn song,
aglow with devotional ecstasy. When I happened to be dejected in
the commonplace sense of the word, it was a listless murmur,
doleful or sullen. But then the very reading of the Talmud was apt
to dispel my gloom. My voice would gradually rise and ring out,
vibrating with intellectual passion
The intonations of the other scholars, too, echoed the voices of
their hearts, some of them sonorous with religious bliss, others
sad, still others happy-go-lucky. Although absorbed in my book, I
would have a vague consciousness of the connection between the
various singsongs and their respective performers. I would be
aware that the bass voice with the flourishes in front of me
belonged to the stuttering widower from Vitebsk, that the
squeaky, jerky intonation to the right came from the red-headed
fellow whom I loathed for his thick lips, or that the sweet,
unassertive cadences that came floating from the east wall were
being uttered by Reb Rachmiel, the "man of acumen" whose
father-in-law had made a fortune as a war-contractor in the late
conflict with Turkey. All these voices blended in a symphonic
source of inspiration for me. It was divine music in more senses
than one
The ancient rabbis of the Talmud, the Tanaim of the earlier period
and the Amorairn of later generations, were living men. I could
almost see them, each of them individualized in my mind by some
of his sayings, by his manner in debate, by some particular word
he used, or by some particular incident in which he figured. I
pictured their faces, their beards, their voices.
Some of them had won a warmer corner in my heart than others,
but they were all superior human beings, godly, unearthly,
denizens of a world that had been ages ago and would come back
in the remote future when Messiah should make his appearance
Added to the mystery of that world was the mystery of my own
singsong. Who is there?--I seemed to be wondering, my tune or
recitative sounding like the voice of some other fellow. It was as
if somebody were hidden within me.
What did he look like? If you study the Talmud you please God
even more than you do by praying or fasting. As you sit reading
the great folio He looks down from heaven upon you. Sometimes I
seemed to feel His gaze shining down upon me, as though casting
a halo over my bead
My relations with God were of a personal and of a rather familiar
character.
He was interested in everything I did or said; He watched my every
move or thought; He was always in heaven, yet, somehow, he was
always near me, and I often spoke to Him as I might to Reb
Sender
If I caught myself slurring over some of my prayers or speaking ill
of another boy or telling a falsehood, I would say to Him, audibly:
"Oh, forgive me once more. You know that I want to be good. I
will be good.
I know I will."
Sometimes I would continue to plead in this manner till I broke
into sobs.
At other times, as I read my Talmud, conscious of His approval of
me, tears of bliss would come into my eyes
I loved Him as one does a woman.
Often while saying my prayers I would fall into a veritable
delirium of religious infatuation. Sometimes this fit of happiness
and yearning would seize me as I walked in the street
"O Master of the World! Master of the Universe! I love you so!" I
would sigh. "Oh, how I love you!"
I also had talks with the Evil Spirit, or Satan. He, too, was always
near me. But he was always trying to get me into trouble
"You won't catch me again, scoundrel you," I would assure him
with sneers and leers. Or, "Get away from me, heartless
mischief-maker you! You're wasting your time, I can tell you
that."
My bursts of piety usually lasted a week or two. Then there was
apt to set in a period of apathy, which was sure to be replaced by
days of penance and a new access of spiritual fervor.
One day, as Reb Sender and I were reading a page together, a very
pretty girl entered the synagogue. She came to have a letter
written for her by one of the scholars. I continued to read aloud,
but I did so absently now, trailing along after my companion. My
mind was upon the girl, and I was casting furtive glances
Reb Sender paused, with evident annoyance. "What are you
looking at, David?" he said, with a tug at my arm. "Shame! You
are yielding to Satan."
I colored
He was too deeply interested in the Talmudic argument under
consideration to say more on the matter at this minute, but he
returned to it as soon as we had reached the end of the section. He
spoke earnestly, with fatherly concern: "You are growing, David.
You are a boy no longer. You are getting to be a man. This is just
the time when one should be on his guard against Satan."
I sat, looking down, my brain in a daze of embarrassment
"Remember, David, 'He who looks even at the little finger of a
woman is as guilty as though he looked at a woman that is wholly
naked.'" He quoted the Talmudic maxim in a tone of passionate
sternness, beating the desk with his snuff-box at each word
As to his own conduct, he was one of three or four men at the
synagogue of whom it was said that they never looked at women,
and, to a very considerable extent, his reputation was not
unjustified
"You must never tire fighting Satan, David," he proceeded. "Fight
him with might and main."
As I listened I was tingling with a mute vow to be good. Yet, at the
same time, the vision of "a woman that is wholly naked" was
vividly before me
He caused me to bring a certain ancient work, one not included in
the Talmud, in which he made me read the following: "Rabbi
Mathia, the son of Chovosh, had never set eyes on a woman.
Therefore when he was at the synagogue studying the Law, his
visage would shine as the sun and its features would be the
features of an angel. One day, as he thus sat reading, Satan
chanced to pass by, and in a fit of jealousy Satan said: "'Can it
really be that this man has never sinned?' "'He is a man of spotless
purity,' answered God
"'Just grant me the liberty,' Satan urged, 'and I will lead him to sin.'
"'You will never succeed.' "'Let me try.' "'Proceed.' "Satan then
appeared in the guise of the most beautiful woman in the world,
of one the like of whom had not been born since the days of
Naomi, the sister of Tuval Cain, the woman who had led angels
astray.
When Rabbi Mathia espied her he faced about. So Satan, still in
the disguise of a beautiful woman, took up a position on the left
side of him; and when he turned away once more he walked over
to the right side again. Finally Rabbi Mathia had nails and fire
brought him and gouged out his own eyes.
"At this God called for Angel Raphael and bade him cure the
righteous man. Presently Raphael came back with the report that
Rabbi Mathia would not be cured lest he should again be tempted
to look at pretty women.
"'Go tell him in My name that he shall never be tempted again,'
said God
"And so the holy man regained his eyesight and was never
molested by Satan again."
The painful image of poor Rabbi M athia gouging out his eyes
supplanted the nude figure of the previous quotation in my mind
Reb Sender pursued his "exhortative talk." He dwelt on the duties
of man to man.
"If a man is tongue-tied, don't laugh at him, but, rather, feel pity
for him, as you would for a man with broken legs. Nor should you
hate a man who has a weakness for telling falsehoods. This, too, is
an affliction, like stuttering or being lame. Say to yourself, 'Poor
fellow, he is given to lying.' Above all, you must fight conceit,
envy, and every kind of ill-feeling in your heart. Remember, the
sum and substance of all learning lies in the words, 'Love thy
neighbor as thyself.' Another thing, remember that it is not enough
to abstain from lying by word of mouth; for the worst lies are
often conveyed by a false look, smile, or act. Be genuinely
truthful, then. And if you feel that you are good, don't be too proud
of it.
Be modest, humble, simple. Control your anger."
He worked me up to a veritable frenzy of penitence
"I will, I will," I said, tremulously. "And if I ever catch myself
looking at a woman again I will gouge out my eyes like Rabbi
Mathia."
"'S-sh! Don't say that, my son." About a quarter of an hour later, as
I sat reading by myself, I suddenly sprang to my feet and walked
over to Reb Sender
"You are so dear to me," I gasped out. "You are a man of perfect
righteousness. I love you so. I should jump into fire or into water
for your sake."
"'S-sh!" he said, taking me gently by the hand and pressing me
down into a seat by his side. "You are a good boy. As to my being
a man of perfect righteousness, alas! I am far from being one. We
are all sinful. Come, let us read another page together."
Satan kept me rather busy these days. It was not an easy task to
keep one's eyes off the girls who came to the Preacher's
Synagogue, and when none was around I would be apt to think of
one. I would even picture myself touching a feminine cheek with
the tip of my finger. Then my heart would sink in despair and I
would hurl curses at Satan
"Eighty black years on you, vile wretch you!" I would whisper,
gnashing my teeth, and fall to reading with ferocious zeal
In the relations between men and women it is largely case of
forbidden fruit and the mystery of distance. The great barrier that
religion, law, and convention have laced between the sexes adds
to the joys and poetry of love, but it is responsible also for much
of the suffering, degradation, and crime that spring from it. In my
case his barrier was of special magnitude.
Dancing with a girl, or even taking one out for a walk, was out of
the question. Nor was the injunction confined to men who devoted
themselves to the study of holy books. It was the rule of ordinary
decency for any Jew except one who lived "like a Gentile," that is,
like a person of modern culture. Indeed, there were scores of
towns in the vicinity of Antomir where one could not take a walk
even with one's own wife without incurring universal
condemnation. There was a dancing-school or two in Antomir, but
they were attended by young mechanics of the coarser type. To be
sure, there were plenty of young Jews in our town who did live
"like Gentiles," who called the girls of their acquaintance "young
ladies," took off their hats to them, took them out for a walk in the
public park, and danced with them, just like the nobles or the
army officers of my birthplace. But then these fellows spoke
Russian instead of Yiddish and altogether they belonged to a
world far removed from mine. Many of these "modern" young
Jews went to high school and wore pretty uniforms with
silver-plated buttons and silver lace.
To me they were apostates, sinners in Israel. And yet I could not
think of them without a lurking feeling of envy. The Gentile
books they studied and their social relations with girls who were
dressed "like young noblewomen" piqued my keenest curiosity
and made me feel small and wretched
The orthodox Jewish faith practically excludes woman from
religious life.
Attending divine service is not obligatory for her, and those of the
sex who wish to do so are allowed to follow the devotions not in
the synagogue proper, but through little windows or peepholes in
the wall of an adjoining room. In the eye of the spiritual law that
governed my life women were intended for two purposes only: for
the continuation of the human species and to serve as an
instrument in the hands of Satan for tempting the stronger sex to
sin. Marriage was simply a duty imposed by the Bible. Love? So
far as it meant attraction between two persons of the opposite sex
who were not man and wife, there was no such word in my native
tongue. One loved one's wife, mother, daughter, or sister. To be
"in love" with a girl who was an utter stranger to you was
something unseemly, something which only Gentiles or "modern"
Jews might indulge in
But at present all this merely deepened the bewitching mystery of
the forbidden sex in my young blood. And Satan, wide awake and
sharp-eyed as ever, was not slow to perceive the change that had
come over me and made the most of it
There was no such thing as athletics or outdoor sports in my world.
The only physical exercise known to us was to be swinging like a
pendulum in front of your reading-desk from nine in the morning
to bedtime every day, and an all-night vigil every Thursday in
addition. Even a most innocent frolic among the boys was
suppressed as an offense to good Judaism
All of which tended to deepen the mystery of girlhood and to
increase the chances of Satan.
I must explain that although women could not attend divine
service except through a peephole, they were free to visit the
house of worship on all sorts of other errands. So some of them
would come with food for the scholars, others with candles for the
chandeliers, while still others wanted letters read or written. One
of the several rabbis of the town was in the habit of spending his
evenings reading Talmud in the Preacher's Synagogue, so
housewives of the neighborhood, or their daughters, would bring
some spoon, pot, or chicken to have them passed upon according
to the dietary laws of Moses and the Talmud
I would scrutinize the faces and figures of these girls, I would draw
comparisons, make guesses as to whether they were engaged to be
married (I did not have to speculate upon whether they were
already married, because a young matron who would visit our
synagogue was sure to have her hair covered with a wig). It
became one of my pastimes to make forecasts as to the looks of
the next young woman to call at the synagogue, whether she would
be pretty or homely, tall or short, fair or dark, plump or spare. I
was interested in their eyes, but, somehow, I was still more
interested in their mouths. Some mouths would set my blood on
fire. I would invent all sorts of romantic episodes with myself as
the hero. I would portray my engagement to some of the pretty
girls I had seen, our wedding, and, above all, our married life. The
worst of it was that these images often visited my brain while I
was reading the holy book. Satan would choose such moments of
all others because in this manner he would involve me in two
great sins at once; for in addition to the wickedness of indulging
in salacious thoughts there was the offense of desecrating the holy
book by them
Reb Sender's daughter was about to be married to a tradesman of
Talmudic education. I did not care for her in the least, yet her
approaching wedding aroused a lively interest in me
Red Esther had gone out to service. She came home but seldom,
and when she did we scarcely ever talked to each other. The
coarse brightness of her complexion and the harsh femininity of
her laughter repelled me
"I do hate her," I once said to myself, as I heard that laugh of hers
"And yet you would not mind kissing her, would you, now?" a
voice retorted
I had to own that I would not, and then I cudgeled my brains over
the amazing discrepancy of the thing. Kissing meant being fond of
one. I enjoyed kissing my mother, for instance. Now, I certainly
was not fond of Esther. I was sure that I hated her. Why, then, was
I impelled to kiss her? How could I hate and be fond of her at
once? I went on reasoning it out, Talmud fashion, till I arrived at
the conclusion that there were two kinds of kisses: the kiss of
affection and the kiss of Satan. I submitted it, as a discovery, to
some of the other young Talmudists, but they scouted it as a
truism. A majority of us were modest of speech and conduct. But
there were some who were not
CHAPTER III
WHEN I was a little over eighteen the number of
steady readers at the Old Synagogue was increased by the advent
of a youth from the Polish provinces.
His appearance produced something of a sensation, for, in addition
to being the son of a rich merchant and the prospective son-in-law
of a celebrated rabbi, he was the possessor of a truly phenomenal
memory. He was well versed in the entire Talmud, and could
recite by heart about five hundred leaves, or one thousand pages,
of it. He was generally called the Pole. He was tall and supple,
fair-complexioned, and well-groomed, with a suggestion of
self-satisfaction and aloofness in the very sinuosity of his figure.
His velvet skull-cap, which was always pushed back on his head,
exposed to view a forelock of golden hair. His long-skirted,
well-fitting coat was of the richest broadcloth I had ever seen. He
wore a watch and chain that were said to be worth a small fortune.
I hated him. He was repugnant to me for his Polish accent, for his
good clothes, for his well-fed face, for his haughty manner, for the
servile attention that was showered on him, and, above all, for his
extraordinary memory. I had always been under the impression
that the boys of well-to-do parents were stupid. Brains did not
seem to be in their line. That this young man, who was so well
supplied with this world's goods, should possess a wonderful mind
as well jarred on me as an injustice to us poor boys
I would seek comfort in the reflection that "the essence of
scholarship lay in profundity and acumen rather than in the ability
to rattle off pages like so many psalms." Yet those "five hundred
leaves" of his gave me no peace.
Five hundred! The figure haunted me. Finally I set myself the task
of memorizing five hundred leaves. It was a gigantic undertaking,
although my memory was rather above the average. I worked with
unflagging assiduity for weeks and weeks. Nobody was to know
of my purpose until it had been achieved. I worked so hard and
was so absorbed in my task that my interest in girls lost much of
its usual acuteness. At times I had a sense of my own holiness.
When I walked through the streets, on my way to or from the
synagogue, I kept reciting some of the pages I had mastered. While
in bed for the night, I whispered myself to sleep reciting Talmud.
When I ate, some bit of Talmud was apt to be running through my
mind. If there was a hitch, and I could not go on, my heart would
sink within me. I would stop eating and make an effort to recall
the passage
It was inevitable that the new character of my studies should
sooner or later attract Reb Sender's attention. My secret hung like
a veil between us.
He was jealous of it. Ultimately he questioned me, beseechingly,
and I was forced to make a clean breast of it
Reb Sender beamed. The veil was withdrawn. Presently his face
fell again
"What I don't like about it is your envy of the Pole," he said,
gravely.
"Don't take it ill, my son, but I am afraid you are envious and
begrudging.
Fight it, Davie. Give up studying by heart. It is not with a pure
motive you are doing it. Your studies are poisoned with hatred
and malice. Do you want to gladden my heart, Davie?"
"I do. I will. What do you mean?" "Just step up to the Pole and beg
his pardon for the evil thoughts you have harbored about him."
A minute later I stood in front of my hated rival, thrilling with the
ecstasy of penitence.
"I have sinned against you. Forgive me," I said, with downcast eyes
The Pole was puzzled
"I envied you," I explained. "I could not bear to hear everybody
speak of the five hundred leaves you know by heart. So I wanted
to show you that I could learn by heart just as much, if not more."
A suggestion of a sneer flitted across his well-fed face. It stung me
as if it were some loathsome insect. His golden forelock
exasperated me
"And I could do it, too," I snapped. "I have learned more than fifty
leaves already. It is not so much of a trick as I thought it was."
"Is it not?" the Pole said, with a full-grown sneer
"You need not be so stuck up, anyhow," I shot back, and turned
away
Before I had reached Reb Sender, who had been watching us, I
rushed back to the Pole
"I just want to say this," I began, in a towering rage. "With all your
boasted memory you would be glad to change brains with me."
His shoulders shook with soundless mirth
"Laugh away. But let Reb Sender examine both of us. Let him
select a passage and see who of us can delve deeper into it, you or
I? Memory alone is nothing."
"Isn't it? Then why are you green with envy of me?" And once
more he burst into a laugh, with a graceful jerk of his head which
set my blood on fire
"You're a pampered idiot."
"You're green with envy."
"I'll break every bone in you."
We flew at each other, but Reb Sender and two other scholars tore
us apart
"Shame!" the Talmudists cried, shrugging their shoulders in
disgust
"Just like Gentiles," some one commented
"It is an outrage to have the holy place desecrated in this manner."
"What has got into you?" Reb Sender said to me as he led me back
to my desk
I resumed studying by heart with more energy than ever. "That's
all right!" I thought to myself. "I'll have that silk-stocking of a
fellow lick the dust of my shoes." I now took special measures to
guard my secret even from Reb Sender. One of these was to take a
book home and to work there, staying away from synagogue as
often as I could invent a plausible pretext. I was lying right and
left. Satan chuckled in my face, but I did not care. I promised
myself to settle my accounts with the Uppermost later on. The only
thing that mattered now was to beat the Pole
The sight of me learning the Word of God so diligently was a
source of indescribable joy to my mother. She struggled to
suppress her feeling, but from time to time a sigh would escape
her, as though the rush of happiness was too much for her heart
Alas! this happiness of hers was not to last much longer
BOOK III
I LOSE MY MOTHER
CHAPTER I
IT was Purim, the
feast of Esther. Our school-boys were celebrating the downfall of
Haman, and they were doing it in the same war-like fashion in
which American boys celebrate their forefathers' defiance of
George III. The synagogues roared with the booming of
fire-crackers, the report of toy pistols, the whir-whir of Purim
rattles. It was four weeks to the great eight-day festival of
Passover and my mother went to work in a bakery of unleavened
bread. She toiled from eighteen to twenty hours a day, so that she
often dozed off over her rolling-pin from sheer exhaustion. But
then she earned far more than usual. Including tips from
customers (the baker merely acted as a contractor for the families
whose flour he transformed into flat, round, tasteless Passover
cakes, or "matzoths") she saved up, during the period, a little over
twenty rubles. With a part of this sum she ordered a new coat for
me and bought me a new cap. I remember that coat very well. It
was of a dark-brown cotton stuff, neat at the waist and with
absurdly long skirts, of course. The Jewish Passover often concurs
with the Christian Easter. This was the case in the year in
question. One afternoon--it was the seventh day of our festival--I
chanced to be crossing the Horse-market. As it was not market
day, it was deserted save for groups of young Gentiles, civilians
and soldiers, who were rolling brightly colored Easter eggs over
the ground. My new long-skirted coat and side-locks provoked
their mirth until one of them hit me a savage blow in the face,
splitting my lower lip.
Another rowdy snatched off my new cap--just because our people
considered it a sin to go bareheaded. And, as I made my way,
bleeding, with one hand to my lip and the other over my bare
head, the company sent a shower of broken eggs and a chorus of
jeers after me
It was only a short distance from Abner's Court. When I entered
our basement and faced my mother, she stared at me for a
moment, as though dumfounded, and then, slapping her hands
together, she sobbed: "Woe is me! Darkness is me! What has
happened to you?"
When she had heard my story she stood silent awhile, looking
aghast, and then left the house.
"I'm going to kill him. I am just going to kill him," she said, in
measured accents which still ring in my ears
The bookbinder's wife, the retired soldier, and I ran after her,
imploring her not to risk her life on such a foolhardy errand, but
she took no heed of us
"Foolish woman! You don't even know who did it," urged the
soldier
"I'll find out!" she answered
The bookbinder's wife seized her by an arm, but she shook her off.
I pleaded with her with tears in my eyes
"Go back," she said to me, trying to be gentle while her eyes were
lit with an ominous look
These were the last words I ever heard her utter
Fifteen minutes later she was carried into our basement
unconscious. Her face was bruised and swollen and the back of
her head was broken. She died the same evening
I have never been able to learn the ghastly details of her death. The
police and an examining magistrate were said to be investigating
the case, but nothing came of it
There was no lack of excitement among the Jews of Antomir. The
funeral was expected to draw a vast crowd. But the epidemic of
anti-Jewish atrocities of 1881 and 1882 were fresh in one's mind,
so word was passed round "not to irritate the Gentiles." The
younger and "modern" element in town took exception to this
timidity. They insisted upon a demonstrative funeral. They were
organizing for self-defense in case the procession was interfered
with, but the counsel of older people prevailed. As a consequence,
the number of mourners following the hearse was even smaller
than it would have been if my mother had died a natural death.
And the few who did take part in the sad procession were
unusually silent. A Jewish funeral without a chorus of sobbing
women was inconceivable in Antomir. Indeed, a pious matron who
happens to come across such a scene will join in the weeping,
whether she had ever heard of the deceased or not. On this
occasion, however, sobs were conspicuous by their absence
"'S-sh! 's-sh! None of your wailing!" an old man kept admonishing
the women
I spent the "Seven Days "(of mourning) in our basement, where I
received visits from neighbors, from the families of my two
distant relatives, from Reb Sender and other Talmudists of my
synagogue. Among these was the Pole.
This time my rival begged my forgiveness. I granted it, of course,
but I felt that we never could like each other
There was a great wave of sympathy for me. Offers of assistance
came pouring in in all sorts of forms. Had there been a Yiddish
newspaper in town and such things as public meetings, the
outburst might have crystallized into what, to me, would have
been a great fortune. As it was, public interest in me died before
anything tangible was done. Still, there were several prosperous
families of the old-fashioned class, each of which wanted to
provide me with excellent board. But then Reb Sender's wife, in a
fit of compassion and carried away by the prevailing spirit of the
moment, claimed the sole right to feed me
"I'll take his mother's place," she said. "Whatever the Upper One
gives us will be enough for him, too." Her husband was happy,
while I lacked the courage to overrule them
As to lodgings, it was deemed most natural that I should sleep in
some house of worship, as thousands of Talmud students did in
Antomir and other towns.
To put up with a synagogue bench for a bed and to "eat days" was
even regarded as a desirable part of a young man's Talmud
education. And so I selected a pew in the Preacher's Synagogue
for my bed. I was better off than some others who lived in houses
of God, for I had some of my mother's bedding while they mostly
had to sleep on hay pillows with a coat for a blanket
It was not until I found myself lying on this improvised bed that I
realized the full extent of my calamity. During the first seven days
of mourning I had been aware, of course, that something appalling
had befallen me, but I had scarcely experienced anything like
keen anguish. I had been in an excited, hazy state of mind, more
conscious of being the central figure of a great sensation than of
my loss. As I went to bed on the synagogue bench, however,
instead of in my old bunk at what had been my home, the fact that
my mother was dead and would never be alive again smote me
with crushing violence. It was as though I had just discovered it. I
shall never forget that terrible night
At the end of the first thirty days of mourning I visited mother's
grave.
"Mamma! Mamma!" I shrieked, throwing myself upon the mound
in a wild paroxysm of grief
The dinners which Reb Sender's wife brought to the synagogue for
her husband and myself were never quite enough for two, and for
supper, which he had at home, she would bring me some bread
and cheese or herring. Poor Reb Sender could not look me in the
face. The situation grew more awkward every day. It was not long
before his wife began to drop hints that I was hard to please, that
she did far more than she could afford for me and that I was an
ingrate. The upshot was that she "allowed" me to accept "days"
from other families. But the well-to-do people had by now
forgotten my existence and the housewives who were still vying
with one another in offering me meals were mostly of the poorer
class. These strove to make me feel at home at their houses, and
yet, in some cases at least, as I ate, I was aware of being watched
lest I should consume too much bread. As a consequence, I often
went away half hungry. All of which quickened my self-pity and
the agony of my yearnings for mother. I grew extremely sensitive
and more quarrelsome than I am naturally. I quarreled with one of
my relatives, a woman, and rejected the "day" which I had had in
her house, and shortly after abandoned one of my other "days."
Reb Sender kept tab of my missing "days" and tried to make up for
them by sharing his dinner with me. His wife, however, who
usually waited for the dishes and so was present while I ate, was
anything but an encouraging witness of her husband's hospitality.
The food would stick in my throat under her glances. I was
repeatedly impelled abruptly to leave the meal, but refrained from
doing so for Reb Sender's sake. I obtained two new "days." One of
these I soon forfeited, having been caught stealing a hunk of bread;
but I kept the matter from Reb Sender. To conceal the truth from
him I would spend the dinner hour in the street or in a little
synagogue in another section of the city. Tidy Naphtali had
recently returned to Antomir, and this house of worship was his
home now. His vocal cords had been ruined by incessantly reading
Talmud at the top of his lungs. He now spoke or read in a low,
hoarse voice. He still spent most of his time at a reading-desk, but
he had to content himself with whispering
I found a new "day," but lost three of my old ones. Naphtali had as
little to eat as I, yet he scarcely ever left his books. One late
afternoon I sat by his side while he was reading in a spiritless
whisper. Neither of us had lunched that day. His curly head was
propped upon his arm, his near-sighted eyes close to the book. He
never stirred. He was too faint to sway his body or to gesticulate. I
was musing wearily, and it seemed as though my hunger was a
living thing and was taking part in my thoughts
"Do you know, Naphtali," I said, "it is pleasant even to famish in
company.
If I were alone it would be harder to stand it. 'The misery of the
many is a consolation.'" He made no answer. Minutes passed.
Presently he turned from his desk
"Do you really think there is a God?" he asked, irrelevantly
I stared
"Don't be shocked. It is all bosh." And he fell to swaying over his
book
I was dumfounded. "Why do you keep reading Talmud, then?" I
asked, looking aghast
"Because I am a fool," he returned, going on with his reading. A
minute later he added, "But you are a bigger one."
I was hurt and horrified. I tried to argue, but he went on
murmuring, his eyes on the folio before him
Finally I snapped: "You are a horrid atheist and a sinner in Israel.
You are desecrating the holy place." And I rushed from the little
synagogue
His shocking whisper, "Do you really think there is a God?"
haunted me all that afternoon and evening. He appeared like
another man to me. I was burning to see him again and to smash
his atheism, to prove to him that there was a God. But as I made a
mental rehearsal of my argument I realized that I had nothing
clear or definite to put forth. So I cursed Naphtali for an apostate,
registered a vow to shun him, and was looking forward to the
following day when I should go to see him again
My interest in the matter was not keen, however, and soon it died
down altogether. Nothing really interested me except the fact that
I had not enough to eat, that mother was no more, that I was all
alone in the world.
The shock of the catastrophe had produced a striking effect on me.
My incessant broodings, and the corroding sense of my great
irreparable loss and of my desolation had made a nerveless,
listless wreck of me, a mere shadow of my former self. I was
incapable of sustained thinking
My communions with God were quite rare now. Nor did He take
as much interest in my studies as He used to. Instead of the Divine
Presence shining down on me while I read, the face of my
martyred mother would loom before me. Once or twice in my
hungry rambles I visited Abner's Court and let my heart be racked
by the sight of what had once been our home, mother's and mine. I
said prayers for her three times a day with great devotion, with a
deep yearning. But this piety was powerless to restore me to my
former feeling for the Talmud
I distinctly recall how I would shut my eyes and vision my mother
looking at me from her grave, her heart contracted with anguish
and pity for her famished orphan. It was an excruciating vision,
yet I found comfort in it. I would mutely complain of the world to
her. It would give me satisfaction to denounce the whole town to
her. "Ah, I have got you!" I seemed to say to the people of
Antomir. "The ghost of my mother and the whole Other World see
you in all your heartlessness. You can't wriggle out of it." This
was my revenge. I reveled in it.
But, nothing daunted, the people of Antomir would go about their
business as usual and my heart would sink with a sense of my
helplessness.
I was restless. I coveted diversion, company, and I saw a good deal
of Naphtali. As for his Free Thought, it soon, after we had two
mild quarrels over it, began to bore me. It appeared that the huge
tomes of the Talmud were not the only books he read these days.
He spent much time, clandestinely, on little books written in the
holy tongue on any but holy topics. They were taken up with such
things as modern science, poetry, fiction, and, above all, criticism
of our faith. He made some attempts to lure me into an interest in
these books, but without avail. The only thing connected with
them that appealed to me were the anecdotes that Naphtali would
tell me, in his laconic way, concerning their authors. I scarcely
ever listened to these stories without invoking imprecations upon
the infidels, but I enjoyed them all the same. They were mostly
concerned with their apostasy, but there were many that were not.
Some of these, or rather the fact that I had first heard them from
Naphtali, in my youth, were destined to have a peculiar bearing on
an important event in my life, on something that occurred many
years later, when I was already a prosperous merchant in New
York. They were about Doctor Rachaeles, a famous Hebrew writer
who practised medicine in Odessa, and his son-in-law, a poet
named Abraham Tevkin. Doctor Rachaeles's daughter was a
celebrated beauty and the poet's courtship of her had been in the
form of a long series of passionate letters addressed, not to his
lady-love, but to her father. This love-story made a strong
impression on me. The figures of the beautiful girl and of the
enamoured young poet, as I pictured them, were vivid in my mind.
"Did he write of his love in those letters?" I demanded, shyly
"He did not write of onions, did he?" Naphtali retorted. After a
little I asked: "But how could she read those letters? She certainly
does not read holy tongue?"
"Go ask her."
"You're a funny fellow. Did Tevkin get the girl?"
"He did, and they have been married for many years. Why, did you
wonder if you mightn't have a chance?"
"You're impossible, Naphtali."
He smiled.
CHAPTER II
ONE afternoon Naphtali called on me at the
Preacher's Synagogue
"Have you got all your 'days'?" he asked, in his whisper
"Why?"
He had discovered a "treasure"--a pious, rich, elderly woman
whose latest hobby was to care for at least eighteen poor
Talmudists--eighteen being the numerical value of the letters
composing the Hebrew word for "life." Her name was Shiphrah
Minsker. She belonged to one of the oldest families in Antomir,
and her husband was equally well-born. Her religious zeal was of
recent origin, in fact, and even now she wore her hair "Gentile
fashion." It was a great sin, but she had never worn a wig in her
life, and putting on one now seemed to be out of the question.
This hair of hers was of a dark-brown hue, threaded with silver,
and it grew in a tousled abundance of unruly wisps that seemed to
be symbolic of her harum-scarum character. She was as
pugnacious as she was charitable, and as quick to make up a
quarrel as to pick one. Her husband, Michael Minsker, was a
"worldly" man, with only a smattering of Talmud, and their
younger children were being educated at the Russian schools. But
they all humored her newly adopted old-fashioned ways, to a
certain extent at least, while she tolerated their "Gentile" ones as
she did her own uncovered hair. Relegating her household affairs
to a devoted old servant, with whom she was forever wrangling,
Shiphrah spent most of her time raising contributions to her
various charity funds, looking after her Talmud students,
quarreling with her numerous friends, and begging their
forgiveness. If she was unable to provide meals for a student in the
houses of some people of her acquaintance she paid for his board
out of her own purse
Her husband was an exporter of grain and his business often took
him to Koenigsberg, Prussia, for several weeks at a time.
Occasions of this kind were hailed by Shiphrah as a godsend (in
the literal sense of the term), for in his absence she could freely
spend on her beneficiaries and even feed some of them at her own
house
When I was introduced to her as "the son of the woman who had
been killed on the Horse-market" and she heard that I frequently
had nothing to eat, she burst into tears and berated me soundly for
not having knocked at her door sooner
"It's terrible! It's terrible!" she moaned, breaking into tears again.
"In fact I, too, deserve a spanking. To think that I did not look him
up at once when that awful thing happened!"
As a matter of fact, she had not done so because at the time of my
mother's death her house had been agog with a trouble of its own.
But of this presently
She handed me a three-ruble bill and set about filling up the gaps
in my eating calendar and substituting fat "days" for lean ones.
She often came to see me at the synagogue, never empty-handed.
Now she had a silver coin for me, now a pair of socks, a shirt, or
perhaps a pair of trousers which some member of her family had
discarded. Often, too, she would bring me a quarter of a chicken,
cookies, or some other article of food from her own table
My days of hunger were at an end. I lived in clover. "Now I can
work," I thought to myself, with the satisfaction of a well-filled
stomach. "And work I will. I'll show people what I can do."
I applied myself to my task with ardor, but it did not last long. My
former interest in the Talmud was gone. The spell was broken
irretrievably. Now that I did not want for food, my sense of
loneliness became keener than ever. Indeed, it was a novel sense
of loneliness, quite unlike the one I had experienced before
My surroundings had somehow lost their former meaning. Life
was devoid of savor, and I was thirsting for an appetizer, as it
were, for some violent change, for piquant sensations
Then it was that the word America first caught my fancy
The name was buzzing all around me. The great emigration of
Jews to the United States, which had received its first impulse two
or three years before, was already in full swing. It may not be out
of order to relate, briefly. how it had all come about
An anti-Semitic riot broke out in a southern town named
Elisabethgrad in the early spring of 1881. Occurrences of this kind
were, in those days, quite rare in Russia, and when they did
happen they did not extend beyond the town of their origin. But
the circumstances that surrounded the Elisabethgrad outbreak
were of a specific character. It took place one month after the
assassination of the Czar, Alexander II. The actual size and
influence of the "underground" revolutionary organization being
an unknown quantity, St.
Petersburg was full of the rumblings of a general uprising. The
Elisabethgrad riot, however, was not of a revolutionary nature. Yet
the police, so far from suppressing it, encouraged it. The example
of the Elisabethgrad rabble was followed by the riffraff of other
places. The epidemic quickly spread from city to city. Whereupon
the scenes of lawlessness in the various cities were marked by the
same method in the mob's madness, by the same connivance on
the part of the police, and by many other traits that clearly pointed
to a common source of inspiration. It has long since become a
well-established historical fact that the anti-Jewish disturbances
were encouraged, even arranged, by the authorities as an outlet for
the growing popular discontent with the Government.
Count von Plehve was then at the head of the Police Department in
the Ministry of the Interior.
This bit of history repeated itself, on a larger scale, twenty-two
years later, when Russia was in the paroxysm of a real revolution
and when the ghastly massacres of Jews in Kishineff, Odessa,
Kieff, and other cities were among the means employed in an
effort to keep the masses "busy."
Count von Plehve then held the office of Prime Minister. To return
to 1881 and 1882. Thousands of Jewish families were left
homeless. Of still greater moment was the moral effect which the
atrocities produced on the whole Jewish population of Russia.
Over five million people were suddenly made to realize that their
birthplace was not their home (a feeling which the great Russian
revolution has suddenly changed). Then it was that the cry "To
America!" was raised. It spread like wild-fire, even over those
parts of the Pale of Jewish Settlement which lay outside the riot
zone
This was the beginning of the great New Exodus that has been in
progress for decades
My native town and the entire section to which it belongs had been
immune from the riots, yet it caught the general contagion, and at
the time I became one of Shiphrah's wards hundreds of its
inhabitants were going to America or planning to do so. Letters
full of wonders from emigrants already there went the rounds of
eager readers and listeners until they were worn to shreds in the
process
I succumbed to the spreading fever. It was one of these letters from
America, in fact, which put the notion of emigrating to the New
World definitely in my mind. An illiterate woman brought it to the
synagogue to have it read to her, and I happened to be the one to
whom she addressed her request. The concrete details of that
letter gave New York tangible form in my imagination. It haunted
me ever after
The United States lured me not merely as a land of milk and
honey, but also, and perhaps chiefly, as one of mystery, of
fantastic experiences, of marvelous transformations. To leave my
native place and to seek my fortune in that distant, weird world
seemed to be just the kind of sensational adventure my heart was
hankering for.
When I unburdened myself of my project to Reb Sender he was
thunderstruck
"To America!" he said. "Lord of the World! But one becomes a
Gentile there."
"Not at all," I sought to reassure him. "There are lots of good Jews
there, and they don't neglect their Talmud, either." The amount
that was necessary to take me to America loomed staggeringly
large. Where was it to come from? I thought of approaching
Shiphrah, but the idea of her helping me abandon my Talmud and
go to live in a godless country seemed preposterous. So I began by
saving the small allowance which I received from her and by
selling some of the clothes and food she brought me. For the
evening meal I usually received some rye bread and a small coin
for cheese or herring, so I invariably added the coin to my little
hoard, relishing the bread with thoughts of America.
While I was thus pinching and saving pennies I was continually
casting about for some more effective way of raising the sum that
would take me to New York. I confided my plan to Naphtali.
"Not a bad idea," he said, "but you will never raise the money. You
are a master of dreams, David."
"I'll get the money, and, what is more, when I am in America I
shall bring you over there, too."
"May your words pass from your lips into the ear of God."
"I thought you did not believe in God."
"How long will you believe in Him after you get to America?"
BOOK IV
MATILDA
CHAPTER I
I COULD scarcely think of
anything but America. I read every letter from there that I could
obtain. I was constantly seeking information about the country
and the opportunities it held out to a man of my type, and
cudgeling my brains for some way of scraping together the
formidable sum. I was restless, sleepless, and finally, when I
caught a slight cold, my health broke down so completely that I
had to be taken to the hospital. Shiphrah visited me every day,
calling me poor orphan boy and quarreling with the
superintendent over me. One afternoon, after I had been
discharged, when she saw me at the synagogue, feeble and
emaciated, she gasped
"You're a cruel, heartless man," she flared up, addressing herself to
the beadle. "The poor boy needs a good soft bed, fine chicken
soup, and real care. Why didn't you let me know at once? Come
on, David!"
"Where to?" I inquired, timidly.
"None of your business. Come on. I'm not going to take you to the
woods, you may be sure of that. I want you to stay in my house
until you are well rested and strong enough to study. Don't you
like it?" she added, with a wink to the beadle
It appeared that her husband was away on one of his prolonged
business excursions. Otherwise installing in her "modern" home
an old-fashioned, ridiculous young creature like a Talmud student
would have been out of the question
I followed her with fast-beating heart. I knew that her family was
"modern," that her children spoke Russian and "behaved like
Gentiles," that there was a grown young woman among them and
that her name was Matilda
The case of this young woman had been the talk of the town the
year before.
She had been persuaded to marry a man for whom she did not
care, and shortly after the wedding and after a sensational passage
at arms between his people and hers, she made her father pay him
a small fortune for divorcing her
Matilda's family being one of the "upper ten" in our town, its
members were frequently the subject of envious gossip, and so I
had known a good deal about them even before Shiphrah
befriended me. I had heard, for example, that Matilda had
received her early education in a boarding-school in Germany (in
accordance with a custom that had been in existence among people
of her father's class until recently); that she had subsequently
studied Russian and other subjects under Russian tutors at home;
and that her two brothers, who were younger than she, were at the
local Russian gymnasium, or high school. I had heard, also, that
Matilda was very pretty. That she was well dressed went without
saying
All this both fascinated and cowed me
Suddenly Shiphrah paused, as though bethinking herself of
something. "Wait.
Don't stir," she said, rushing back. Ten or fifteen minutes later she
returned, saying: "I was not long, was I? I just went to get the
beadle's forgiveness. Had insulted him for nothing. But he's a
dummy, all the same.
Come on, David."
Arrived at her house, she introduced me to her old servant, in the
kitchen
"He'll stay a week with us, perhaps more," she explained. "I want
you to build him up. Fatten him up like a Passover goose. Do you
hear?"
The servant, a tall, spare woman, with an extremely dark face
tinged with blue, began by darting hostile glances at me
"Look at the way she is staring at him!" Shiphrah growled. "He is
the son of the woman who was murdered at the Horse-market."
The old servant started. "Is he?" she said, aghast
"Are you pleased now? Will you take good care of him?"
"May the Uppermost give him a good appetite."
As Shiphrah led me from the kitchen into another room she said:
"She took a fancy to you. It will be all right."
She towed me into a vast sitting-room, so crowded with new
furniture that it had the appearance of a furniture-store. There
were many rooms in the apartment and they all produced a similar
impression. I subsequently learned that the superabundance of
sofas, chests of drawers, chairs, or bric-à-brac-stands was due to
Shiphrah's passion for bargains, a weakness which made her the
fair game of tradespeople and artisans. Several of her wardrobes
and bureaus were packed full of all sorts of things for which she
had no earthly use and many of which she had smuggled in when
her husband and the children were out
Ensconced in a corner of an enormous green sofa in the big
crowded sitting-room, with a book in her lap, we found a young
woman with curly brown hair and sparkling brown eyes set in a
small oval face. She looked no more than twenty, but when her
mother addressed her as Matilda I knew that I was facing the
heroine of the sensational divorce. She was singularly interesting,
but pretty she certainly was not. Her Gentile name had a world of
charm for my ear
One of the trifles that clung to my memory is the fact that upon
seeing her I felt something like amazement at her girlish
appearance. I had had a notion that a married woman, no matter
how young, must have a married face, something quite distinct
from the countenance of a maiden, while this married woman did
not begin to look married.
Matilda got up, cast a frowning side-glance at her mother, and
walked over to one of the four immense windows illuminating the
room. Less than a minute later she turned around and crossed over
to her mother's side
She was small, but well made, and her movements were brisk,
firm, elastic
"Come on, mother, there's something I want to tell you," she said, a
jerk of her curly head indicating the adjoining room
"I have no secrets," Shiphrah growled. "What do you want?"
A snappish whispered conference ensued, the trend of which was
at once betrayed in an acrimonious retort by Shiphrah: "Just keep
your foolish nose out of my affairs, will you? When I say he is
going to stay here for some time I mean it. Don't you mind her,
David."
"Mother! Mother! Mother!" Matilda trilled with a gesture of
disgust, and flounced out of the room
I felt my face turning all colors, and at the same time her "Mother!
Mother! Mother!" (instead of "Mamma! Mamma! Mamma!") was
echoing in my brain enchantingly
Presently a fair-complexioned youth of eighteen or nineteen came
in, apparently attracted by his mother's angry voice. He wore a
blue coat with silver lace and silver buttons, the uniform of a
Russian high school, which sent a flutter of mixed envy and awe
through me. He threw a frowning glance at me, and withdrew.
Two smaller children, a uniformed boy and a little girl, made their
appearance, talking in Russian noisily. At sight of me they fell
silent, looked me over, from my side-locks to the edge of my
long-skirted coat, and then took to whispering and giggling
"Clear out, you devils!" Shiphrah shouted, stamping her foot.
"Shoo!" A young chambermaid passed through the room, and
Shiphrah stopped her long enough to introduce me and to
command her to look after me as if I were one of the
family--"even better."
CHAPTER II
THE spacious sitting-room was used as a
breakfast-room as well. It was in this room, on the enormous
green sofa, that my bed was made for the night.
It was by far the most comfortable bed I had ever slept in
Early the next morning, after I finished my long prayer and had put
away my phylacteries, the young chambermaid removed the
bedding and the swarthy old servant served me my breakfast
"Go wash your hands and eat in good health. Eat hearty, and may it
well agree with you," she said, with a compound of deep
commiseration, reverence, and disdain. I went to the kitchen,
where I washed my hands, and, while wiping them, muttered the
brief prayer which one offers before eating. As I returned to the
sitting-room I found Matilda there. She was seated at some
distance from the table upon which my breakfast was spread. She
wore a sort of white kimono. One did not have to stand on
ceremony with a fellow who did not even wear a stiff collar and a
necktie. Nor did I know enough to resent her costume. She did not
order anything to eat for herself, not even a glass of tea. It seemed
as though she had come in for the express purpose of eying me out
of countenance. If she had, she succeeded but too well. Her silent
glances fell on me like splashes of hot water. I was so disconcerted
I could not swallow my food. There were centuries of difference
between her and myself, not to speak of the economic chasm that
separated us. To me she was an aristocrat, while I was a poor,
wretched "day" eater, a cross between a beggar and a recluse. I
dared not even look at her. Talmud students were expected to be
the shyest creatures under the sun. On this occasion I certainly
was
The other children entered the room. They were dressing
themselves, eating and studying their Gentile lessons all at once.
Matilda had a mild altercation with Yeffim, her eighteen-year-old
brother, ordered breakfast for herself, and seemed to have
forgotten my existence. Her mother came in and took to cloying
me with food
At about 4 o'clock in the afternoon I was alone in the
drawing-room. I stood at the piano--the first I had ever laid eyes
on--timidly sounding some of the keys, when I heard approaching
voices. With my heart in my mouth, I rushed over to the nearest
window, where I paused, feigning interest in some passing peasant
teams. Presently Matilda made her appearance. accompanied by
two girl friends
The three young women were chattering in Russian, a language of
which I understood scarcely three dozen words. I could
conjecture, however, that the subject of their talk was no other
than my own quailing personality
Suddenly Matilda addressed herself to me in Yiddish: "Look here,
young man! Don't you know it is bad manners for a gentleman to
stand with his back to ladies?"
I faced about, all flushed and scared
"That's better," she said, gaily. "Never mind staring at the floor.
Give us a look, will you? Don't act as a shy bridegroom."
I made no answer. The room seemed to be in a whirl
"Why don't you speak?" Matilda insisted, concealing her quizzical
purpose under a well-acted air of gravity
Her two friends roared, and, spurred on by their merriment, she
continued to make game of me.
"Won't you give us one look, at least? Do, please! Come, my
mother will never find out you have been guilty of a great sin like
that."
I was dying to get up and fling out of the room, but I felt glued to
the spot. Their cruel sport, which made me faint with
embarrassment and misery, had something inexpressibly alluring
in it
One of the two girls said something in Russian of which I caught
the word "kiss" and which was greeted by a new outburst of
laughter. I was terror-stricken
"Well, pious Jew!" Matilda resumed. "Suppose a girl were to give
you a kiss.
What would you do? Commit suicide, would you? Well, never
fear; we won't be as cruel as all that. I tell you what, though. I'll
hide your side-locks behind your ears. I just want to see how you
would look without them." At this she stepped up close to me and
reached out her hands for my two appendages
I pushed her off. "Please, let me alone," I protested
"At last we have heard his voice. Bravo! We're making headway,
aren't we?"
At this point her mother's angry voice made itself heard. Matilda
desisted, with a merry remark to her friends
The next morning when she and I were alone she tantalized me
again. She made another attempt to tuck my side-locks behind my
ears. As we were alone I had more courage
"If you don't stop I'll go away from here," I said, in a rage. "What
do you want of me?"
As I thus gave vent to my resentment I instinctively felt that, so far
from causing her to avoid me, it would quicken her rompish
interest in me. And I hoped it would
"'S-sh! don't yell," she said, startled. "Can't you take a joke?"
"A nice joke, that."
"Very well, I won't do it again. I didn't know you were a
touch-me-not." After a pause she resumed, in grave, friendly
accents: "Come, don't be angry. I want to talk to you. Look here. Is
there any sense in your wasting your life the way you do? Look at
the way you are dressed, the way you live generally. Besides, the
idea of a young man like you not being able to speak a word of
Russian! Aren't you ashamed of yourself? Why, mother says you
are remarkably bright. Isn't it a pity that you should throw it all
away? Why don't you try to study Russian, geography, history?
Why don't you try to become an educated man?"
"The idea!" I said, with a laugh.
My confusion was gone, partly, at least. I looked her full in the
face
She flared up. "The idea!" she mocked me. "Rather say, 'The idea
of a bright young fellow being so ignorant!' Did you ever hear of a
provoking thing like that?" There was a good deal of her mother's
helter-skelter explosiveness in her
Now, that I had scanned her features in the light of the fact that she
was a married woman, I read that fact into them. She did look
married, I remarked to myself. Her exposed hair gave her an effect
of "aristocratic" wickedness and wantonness which repelled and
drew me at once. She was a girl, and yet she was a married
woman. This duality of hers deepened the fascinating mystery of
the distance between us
She proceeded to draw me out. She made me tell her the story of
my young life, and I obeyed her but too willingly. I told her my
whole tale of woe, reveling in my own rehearsal of my sufferings
and more especially in the expressions of horror and heartfelt pity
which it elicited from her.
"My God! My God!" she cried, gasping and wringing her hands.
"Poor boy!" or, "Oh, I can't hear it! I can't hear it! It is enough to
drive one crazy."
At one point, as I described the pangs of hunger which I had often
borne, there were tears in her interesting eyes
When I had finished my story, flushed with a sense of my
histrionic success, she ordered tea and preserves, as though to
indemnify me for my past sufferings
"All the more reason for you to study Russian and to become an
educated man," she said, as she put sugar into my glass. She cited
the cases of former Talmudists, poor and friendless like myself,
who had studied at the universities, fighting every inch of their
way, till they had achieved success as physicians, lawyers, writers.
She spoke passionately, often with the absurd acerbity of her
mother. "It's a crime for a young man like you to throw himself
away on that idiotic Talmud of yours," she said, pacing up and
down the room fiercely
All this sounded shockingly wicked, and yet it did not shock me in
the least
"I have a plan," I said
When she heard what I wanted to do she shook her head and
frowned. She said, in substance, that America was a land of
dollars, not of education, and that she wanted me to be an
educated man. I assured her that I should study English in
America and, after I had laid up some money, prepare for college
there (she could have made me promise anything). But colleges in
which the instruction was not in Russian failed to appeal to her
imagination
Still, when she saw that my heart was set on the project, she
yielded. She seemed to like the fervor with which I defended my
cause, and the notion of my going to a far-away land was
apparently beginning to have its effect. I was the hero of an
adventure. Gradually she became quite enthusiastic about my plan
"I tell you what. I can raise the money for you," she said, with a
gesture of sudden resolution. "How much is it?"
When I said, forlornly, that it would come to about eighty rubles,
she declared, gravely: "That's all right. I shall get it for you. Only,
say nothing to mother about it." I thought myself in a flurry of joy
over this windfall, but a little later, when I was left to myself, I
became aware that the flurry I was in was of quite a different
nature. When I tried to think of America I found that my ambition
in that direction had lost its former vitality
I was deeply in love with Matilda
CHAPTER III
SHE continued to treat me in a patronizing, playful
way; but we were supposed to be great friends and I asked myself
no questions.
"The money is assured," she once announced. "You shall get it in a
few days.
You may begin to pack your great baggage," she jested
My heart sank within me, but I feigned exultation
"Do you deserve it, pious soul that you are?" she laughed. And
casting a glance at my side-locks, she added: "I do wish you would
cut off those horrid things of yours. You won't take them to
America, will you?"
I smiled. Small as was my stock of information of the New World,
I knew enough of it to understand, in a general way, that
side-locks were out of place there
She proceeded to put my side-locks behind my ears, and this time I
did not object. She then smoothed them down, the touch of her
fingers thrilling me through and through. Then she brought a
hand-glass and made me look at myself.
"Do you see the difference?" she demanded. "If you were not
rigged out like the savage that you are you wouldn't be a
bad-looking fellow, after all.
Why, girls might even fall in love with you. But then what does a
pious soul like you know about such things as love?"
"How do you know I don't?" I ventured to say, blushing like a
poppy
"Do you, really?" she said, with mischievous surprise
I nodded
"Well, well. So you are not quite so saintly as I thought you were!
Perhaps you have even been in love yourself? Have you? Tell
me."
I kept silent. My heart was throbbing wildly.
"Do you love me?"
I nodded once more. My heart stood still.
"Kiss me, then."
She put my arms around her, made me clasp her to my breast, and
we kissed, passionately
I suddenly felt ten years older
She broke away from me, jumping around, slapping her hands and
bubbling over with triumphant mirth, as she shouted: "There is a
pious soul for you! There is a pious soul for you!"
A thought of little Red Esther of my childhood days flashed
through my brain, of the way she would force me to "sin" and then
gloat over my "fall."
"A penny for your piety," Matilda added, gravely. "When you are
in America you'll dress like a Gentile and even shave. Then you
won't look so ridiculous. Good clothes would make another man
of you." At this she looked me over in a business-like sort of way.
"Pretty good figure, that," she concluded
In the evening of that day, when there was company in the house,
she bore herself as though she did not know me. But the next
morning, after the children had gone to school and her mother was
away on her various missions, she made me put on the glittering
coat and cap of her brother's Sunday uniform
"It's rather too small for you, but it's becoming all the same," she
said, enthusiastically. "If mamma came in now she would not
know you. But then there would be a nice how-do-you-do if she
did." She gave a titter which rolled through my very heart. "Well,
Mr. Gymnasist, [note] are you really in love with me?"
"Don't make fun of me, pray," I implored her. "It hurts, you know."
"Very well, I sha'n't. But you haven't answered my question."
"What question?"
"What a poor memory you have! And yet mother says you have 'a
good head.' Try to remember."
"I do remember your question."
"Then what is your answer?"
"Yes."
"Yes!" she mocked me. "That's not the way gentlemen declare
their love." "What else shall I say?"
"What else! Well, say: 'I am ready to die for you. You are the
sunshine of my life.'" "'You are the sunshine of my life,'" I
echoed, with a smile that was a combination of mirth and
resentment
"'You are my happiness, my soul. The world would be dark
without you.'"
"I am no baby to parrot somebody else's words."
"Then you don't love me."
"Yes, I do. But I hate to be made fun of. Don't! Please don't!" I said
it with a beseeching, passionate tremor in my voice, and all at
once I clasped her violently to me and was about to kiss her. She
put up her lips responsively, but suddenly she wrenched herself
back
"Easy, easy, you saintly Talmudist," she said, good-naturedly.
"You must not forget that you are not a gymnasist, that to kiss a
woman is a sin, a great sin. You'll be beaten with rods of iron in
the world to come. Well, good-by," she concluded, gravely. "I
must go. Take off that coat and cap.
Mamma may come in at any moment." She showed me where to
hang them
[note: Gymnasist] A pupil of a gymnasium or high school
CHAPTER IV
In my incessant reveries of her I developed the
theory that if I abandoned my plan about going to America she
would have her father send me to college with a view to my
marrying her. Indeed, matches of this kind were not an unusual
arrangement in our town (nor are they in the Jewish districts of
New York, Philadelphia, Boston, or Chicago, for example)
My bed was usually made on the enormous green sofa in the
spacious sitting-room. One night, when I was asleep on that great
sofa, I was suddenly aroused by the touch of a hand
"'S-sh," I heard Matilda's whisper. "I want to talk to you. I can't
sleep, anyhow. I don't know why. So I was thinking of all kinds of
things till I came to your plan about America. It is foolish. Why go
so far? Perhaps something can be done to get you into high school
and then into the university."
"I have guessed it right, then," I exclaimed within myself. The
room was pitch-dark. Her white kimono was all I could see of her
She explained certain details. She spoke in a very low undertone,
with great earnestness. I took her by the hand and drew her down
to a seat on the edge of the sofa beside me. She offered no
resistance. She continued to talk, partly in the same undertone,
partly in whispers, with her hand remaining in mine. I was aflame
with happiness, yet I listened intently. I felt sure that she was my
bride-to-be, that it was only a matter of days when our
engagement would be celebrated. My heart went out to her with a
passion that seemed to be sanctioned by God and men. I strained
down her head and kissed her, but that was the stainless kiss of a
man yearning upon the lips of his betrothed. I clasped her flimsily
garmented form, kissed her again and again, let her kiss and bite
me; and still it all seemed legitimate, or nearly so. I saw in it an
emphatic confirmation of my feeling that she did not regard
herself a stranger to me. That mattered more than anything else at
this moment
"You're a devil," she whispered, slapping me on both cheeks, "a
devil with side-locks." And she broke into a suppressed laugh
"I'll study as hard as I can," I assured her, with boyish exultation.
"You'll see what I can do. The Gentile books are child's play in
comparison with the Talmud."
I went into details. She took no part in my talk, but she let me go
on. I became so absorbed in what I was saying that my caresses
ceased. I sat up and spoke quite audibly
"'S-sh!" she cautioned me in an irritated whisper
I dropped my voice. She listened for another minute or two and
then, suddenly rising, she said: "Oh, you are a Talmud student,
after all," and her indistinct kimono vanished in the darkness
I felt crushed, but I was sure that the words "Talmud student,"
which are Yiddish for "ninny," merely referred to my rendering
our confab dangerous by speaking too loud
The next afternoon she kissed me once more, calling me Talmud
student again.
But she was apparently getting somewhat fidgety about our
relations. She was more guarded, more on the alert for
eavesdroppers, as though somebody had become suspicious. My
Gentile education she never broached again. Finally when a letter
came from her father announcing his speedy return and Shiphrah
hastened to terminate my stay at the house, Matilda was obviously
glad to have me go.
"I shall bring you the money to the synagogue," she whispered as I
was about to leave
I was stunned. I left in a turmoil of misery and perplexity, yet not
in despair
When I returned to the synagogue everybody and everything in it
looked strange to me. Reb Sender was dearer than ever, but that
was chiefly because I was longing for a devoted friend. I was
dying to relieve my fevered mind by telling him all and seeking
advice, but I did not
"Are you still weak?" he asked, tenderly, looking close into niy
eyes
"Oh, it is not that, Reb Sender." "Is it the death of your dear
mother--peace upon her?"
"Yes, of course. That and lots of other things."
"It will all pass. She will have a bright paradise, and The Upper
One will help you. Don't lose heart, my boy."
I ran over to Naphtali's place. We talked of Shiphrah and her
children--at least I did. He asked about Matilda, and I answered
reluctantly. Now and again I felt impelled to tell him all. It would
have been such a relief to ease my mind of its cruel burden and to
hear somebody's, anybody's opinion about it. But his laconical
questions and answers were anything but encouraging
I spent many an hour in his company, but he was always absorbed
in the Talmud, or in some of his infidel books. The specific
character of my restlessness was lost upon him
I was in the grip of a dull, enervating, overpowering agony that
seemed to be weighing my heart down and filling my throat with
pent-up sobs. I was writhing inwardly, praying for Matilda's
mercy. It was the most excruciating pain I had ever experienced. I
remember it distinctly in every detail. If I now wished to imagine
a state of mind driving one to suicide I could not do it better than
by recalling my mental condition in those days
In point of fact I took pride in my misery. "I am in love. I am no
mere slouch of a Talmud student," I would say to myself
In the evening of the fourth day, as I was making a pretense at
reading Talmud, a poor boy came in to call me out. In the alley
outside the house of worship I found Matilda. She had the money
with her
"I don't think I want it now," I said. "I don't care to go to America."
"Why?" she asked, impatiently. "Oh, take it and let me be done
with it," she said, forcing a small packet into my hand. "I have no
time to bother with you. Go to America. I wish you good luck."
"But I'll miss you. I sha'n't be able to live without you."
"What? Are you crazy?" she said, sternly. "You forget your place,
young man!"
She stalked hastily away, her form, at once an angel of light and a
messenger of death, being swallowed up by the gloom
Ten minutes later, when I was at my book again, my heart bleeding
and my head in a daze, I was called out once more
Again I found her standing in the lane
"I did not mean to hurt your feelings," she said. "I wish you good
luck from the bottom of my heart."
She uttered it with a warm cordiality, and yet the note of
impatience which rang in her voice ten minutes before was again
there
"Try to become an educated man in America," she added. "That's
the main thing. Good-by. You have my best wishes. Good-by."
And before I had time to say anything she shook my hand and was
gone.
CHAPTER V
A LITTLE over three weeks had elapsed. It was two
days after Passover. I had just solemnized the first anniversary of
my mother's death. The snow had melted. Each of my five senses
seemed to be thrillingly aware of the presence of spring
I was at the railway station. Clustered about me were Reb Sender
and his wife, two other Talmudists from the Preacher's
Synagogue, the retired old soldier with the formidable
side-whiskers, and Naphtali
As I write these words I seem to see the group before me. It is one
of those scenes that never grow dim in one's memory
"Be a good Jew and a good man," Reb Sender murmured to me,
confusedly. "Do not forget that there is a God in heaven in
America as well as here. Do not forget to write us." Naphtali,
speaking in his hoarse whisper, half in jest, half in earnest, made
me repeat my promise to send him a "ship ticket" from America. I
promised everything that was asked of me. My head was
swimming
While the first bell was sounding for the passengers to board the
train, Shiphrah rushed in, puffing for breath. I looked at the door
to see if Matilda was not following her. She was not.
The group around me made way for the rich woman
"Here," she said, handing me a ten-ruble bill and a package. "There
is a boiled chicken in it, and some other things, provided you
won't neglect your Talmud in America."
A minute later she drew her purse from her skirt pocket, produced
a five-ruble bill, and put it into my hand. That all the other money
I had for my journey had come from her daughter she had not the
remotest idea
I made my final farewells amid a hubbub of excited voices and
eyes glistening with tears
BOOK V
I DISCOVER AMERICA
CHAPTER I
TWO weeks later
I was one of a multitude of steerage passengers on a Bremen
steamship on my way to New York. Who can depict the feeling of
desolation, homesickness, uncertainty, and anxiety with which an
emigrant makes his first voyage across the ocean? I proved to be a
good sailor, but the sea frightened me. The thumping of the
engines was drumming a ghastly accompaniment to the awesome
whisper of the waves. I felt in the embrace of a vast, uncanny
force. And echoing through it all were the heart-lashing words:
"Are you crazy? You forget your place, young man!" When
Columbus was crossing the Atlantic, on his first great voyage, his
men doubted whether they would ever reach land. So does many
an America-bound emigrant to this day. Such, at least, was the
feeling that was lurking in my heart while the Bremen steamer
was carrying me to New York. Day after day passes and all you
see about you is an unbroken waste of water, an unrelieved, a
hopeless monotony of water. You know that a change will come,
but this knowledge is confined to your brain. Your senses are
skeptical
In my devotions, which I performed three times a day, without
counting a benediction before every meal and every drink of
water, grace after every meal and a prayer before going to sleep, I
would mentally plead for the safety of the ship and for a speedy
sight of land. My scanty luggage included a pair of phylacteries
and a plump little prayer-book, with the Book of Psalms at the
end. The prayers I knew by heart, but I now often said psalms, in
addition, particularly when the sea looked angry and the pitching
or rolling was unusually violent. I would read all kinds of psalms,
but my favorite among them was the 104th, generally referred to
by our people as "Bless the Lord, O my soul," its opening words in
the original Hebrew. It is a poem on the power and wisdom of
God as manifested in the wonders of nature, some of its verses
dealing with the sea. It is said by the faithful every Saturday
afternoon during the fall and winter; so I could have recited it
from memory; but I preferred to read it in my prayer-book. For it
seemed as though the familiar words had changed their identity
and meaning, especially those concerned with the sea. Their
divine inspiration was now something visible and audible. It was
not I who was reading them. It was as though the waves and the
clouds, the whole far-flung scene of restlessness and mystery,
were whispering to me: "Thou who coverest thyself with light as
with a garment, who stretchest out the heavens like a curtain: who
layeth the beams of his chambers in the waters: who maketh the
clouds his chariot: who walketh upon the wings of the wind. . . .
So is this great and wide sea wherein are things creeping
innumerable, both small and great beasts. There go the ships:
there is that leviathan whom thou hast made to play therein. . .
."
The relentless presence of Matilda in my mind worried me
immeasurably, for to think of a woman who is a stranger to you is
a sin, and so there was the danger of the vessel coming to grief on
my account. And, as though to spite me, the closing verse of
Psalm 104 reads, "Let the sinners be consumed out of the earth
and let the wicked be no more." I strained every nerve to keep
Matilda out of my thoughts, but without avail
When the discoverers of America saw land at last they fell on their
knees and a hymn of thanksgiving burst from their souls. The
scene, which is one of the most thrilling in history, repeats itself
in the heart of every immigrant as he comes in sight of the
American shores. I am at a loss to convey the peculiar state of
mind that the experience created in me
When the ship reached Sandy Hook I was literally overcome with
the beauty of the landscape
The immigrant's arrival in his new home is like a second birth to
him.
Imagine a new-born babe in possession of a fully developed
intellect. Would it ever forget its entry into the world? Neither
does the immigrant ever forget his entry into a country which is,
to him, a new world in the profoundest sense of the term and in
which he expects to pass the rest of his life. I conjure up the
gorgeousness of the spectacle as it appeared to me on that clear
June morning: the magnificent verdure of Staten Island, the tender
blue of sea and sky, the dignified bustle of passing craft--above
all, those floating, squatting, multitudinously windowed palaces
which I subsequently learned to call ferries. It was all so utterly
unlike anything I had ever seen or dreamed of before. It unfolded
itself like a divine revelation. I was in a trance or in something
closely resembling one
"This, then, is America!" I exclaimed, mutely. The notion of
something enchanted which the name had always evoked in me
now seemed fully borne out
In my ecstasy I could not help thinking of Psalm 104, and, opening
my little prayer-book, I glanced over those of its verses that speak
of hills and rocks, of grass and trees and birds.
My transport of admiration, however, only added to my sense of
helplessness and awe. Here, on shipboard, I was sure of my shelter
and food, at least.
How was I going to procure my sustenance on those magic shores?
I wished the remaining hour could be prolonged indefinitely
Psalm 104 spoke reassuringly to me. It reminded me of the way
God took care of man and beast: "Thou openest thine hand and
they are filled with good." But then the very next verse warned me
that "Thou hidest thy face, they are troubled: thou takest away
their breath, they die." So I was praying God not to hide His face
from me, but to open His hand to me; to remember that my
mother had been murdered by Gentiles and that I was going to a
strange land.
When I reached the words, "I will sing unto the Lord as long as I
live: I will sing praise to my God while I have my being," I uttered
them in a fervent whisper
My unhappy love never ceased to harrow me. The stern image of
Matilda blended with the hostile glamour of America
One of my fellow-passengers was a young Yiddish-speaking tailor
named Gitelson. He was about twenty-four years old, yet his
forelock was gray, just his forelock, the rest of his hair being a
fine, glossy brown. His own cap had been blown into the sea and
the one he had obtained from the steerage steward was too small
for him, so that gray tuft of his was always out like a plume. We
had not been acquainted more than a few hours, in fact, for he had
been seasick throughout the voyage and this was the first day he
had been up and about. But then I had seen him on the day of our
sailing and subsequently, many times, as he wretchedly lay in his
berth. He was literally in tatters. He clung to me like a lover, but
we spoke very little.
Our hearts were too full for words
As I thus stood at the railing, prayer-book in hand, he took a look
at the page. The most ignorant "man of the earth" among our
people can read holy tongue (Hebrew), though he may not
understand the meaning of the words. This was the case with
Gitelson
"Saying, 'Bless the Lord, O my soul'?" he asked, reverently. "Why
this chapter of all others?"
"Because--Why, just listen." With which I took to translating the
Hebrew text into Yiddish for him
He listened with devout mien. I was not sure that he understood it
even in his native tongue, but, whether he did or not, his beaming,
wistful look and the deep sigh he emitted indicated that he was in
a state similar to mine
When I say that my first view of New York Bay struck me as
something not of this earth it is not a mere figure of speech. I
vividly recall the feeling, for example, with which I greeted the
first cat I saw on American soil. It was on the Hoboken pier, while
the steerage passengers were being marched to the ferry. A large,
black, well-fed feline stood in a corner, eying the crowd of
new-comers. The sight of it gave me a thrill of joy. "Look! there is
a cat!" I said to Gitelson. And in my heart I added, "Just like those
at home!" For the moment the little animal made America real to
me. At the same time it seemed unreal itself. I was tempted to feel
its fur to ascertain whether it was actually the kind of creature I
took it for
We were ferried over to Castle Garden. One of the things that
caught my eye as I entered the vast rotunda was an iron staircase
rising diagonally against one of the inner walls. A uniformed man,
with some papers in his hands, ascended it with brisk, resounding
step till he disappeared through a door not many inches from the
ceiling. It may seem odd, but I can never think of my arrival in
this country without hearing the ringing footfalls of this official
and beholding the yellow eyes of the black cat which stared at us
at the Hoboken pier. The harsh manner of the immigration officers
was a grievous surprise to me. As contrasted with the officials of
my despotic country, those of a republic had been portrayed in my
mind as paragons of refinement and cordiality. My anticipations
were rudely belied. "They are not a bit better than Cossacks," I
remarked to Gitelson. But they neither looked nor spoke like
Cossacks, so their gruff voices were part of the uncanny scheme
of things that surrounded me. These unfriendly voices flavored all
America with a spirit of icy inhospitality that sent a chill through
my very soul
The stringent immigration laws that were passed some years later
had not yet come into existence. We had no difficulty in being
admitted to the United States, and when I was I was loath to leave
the Garden
Many of the other immigrants were met by relatives, friends.
There were cries of joy, tears, embraces, kisses. All of which
intensified my sense of loneliness and dread of the New World.
The agencies which two Jewish charity organizations now
maintain at the Immigrant Station had not yet been established.
Gitelson, who like myself had no friends in New York, never left
my side. He was even more timid than I. It seemed as though he
were holding on to me for dear life. This had the effect of putting
me on my mettle
"Cheer up, old man!" I said, with bravado. "America is not the
place to be a ninny in. Come, pull yourself together." In truth, I
addressed these exhortations as much to myself as to him; and so
far, at least, as I was concerned, my words had the desired effect.
I led the way out of the big Immigrant Station. As we reached the
park outside we were pounced down upon by two evil-looking
men, representatives of boarding-houses for immigrants. They
pulled us so roughly and their general appearance and manner
were so uninviting that we struggled and protested until they let us
go--not without some parting curses. Then I led the way across
Battery Park and under the Elevated railway to State Street.
A train hurtling and panting along overhead produced a
bewildering, a daunting effect on me. The active life of the great
strange city made me feel like one abandoned in the midst of a
jungle. Where were we to go? What were we to do? But the
presence of Gitelson continued to act as a spur on me. I mustered
courage to approach a policeman, something I should never have
been bold enough to do at home. As a matter of fact, I scarcely had
an idea what his function was. To me he looked like some
uniformed nobleman--an impression that in itself was enough to
intimidate me. With his coat of blue cloth, starched linen collar,
and white gloves, he reminded me of anything but the policemen
of my town. I addressed him in Yiddish, making it as near an
approach to German as I knew how, but my efforts were lost on
him. He shook his head. With a witheringly dignified grimace he
then pointed his club in the direction of Broadway and strutted off
majestically
"He's not better than a Cossack, either," was my verdict
At this moment a voice hailed us in Yiddish. Facing about, we
beheld a middle-aged man with huge, round, perpendicular
nostrils and a huge, round, deep dimple in his chin that looked
like a third nostril. Prosperity was written all over his
smooth-shaven face and broad-shouldered, stocky figure.
He was literally aglow with diamonds and self-satisfaction. But he
was unmistakably one of our people. It was like coming across a
human being in the jungle. Moreover, his very diamonds
somehow told a tale of former want, of a time when he had
landed, an impecunious immigrant like myself; and this made him
a living source of encouragement to me
"God Himself has sent you to us," I began, acting as the
spokesman; but he gave no heed to me. His eyes were eagerly
fixed on Gitelson and his tatters
"You're a tailor, aren't you?" he questioned him
My steerage companion nodded. "I'm a ladies' tailor, but I have
worked on men's clothing, too," he said
"A ladies' tailor?" the well-dressed stranger echoed, with
ill-concealed delight. "Very well; come along. I have work for
you."
That he should have been able to read Gitelson's trade in his face
and figure scarcely surprised me. In my native place it seemed to
be a matter of course that one could tell a tailor by his general
appearance and walk.
Besides, had I not divined the occupation of my fellow-passenger
the moment I saw him on deck? As I learned subsequently, the
man who accosted us on State Street was a cloak contractor, and
his presence in the neighborhood of Castle Garden was anything
but a matter of chance. He came there quite often, in fact, his
purpose being to angle for cheap labor among the newly arrived
immigrants
We paused near Bowling Green. The contractor and my
fellow-passenger were absorbed in a conversation full of sartorial
technicalities which were Greek to me, but which brought a gleam
of joy into Gitelson's eye. My former companion seemed to have
become oblivious of my existence.
As we resumed our walk up Broadway the bejeweled man turned
to me
"And what was your occupation? You have no trade, have you?"
"I read Talmud," I said, confusedly.
"I see, but that's no business in America," he declared. "Any
relatives here?" "Well, don't worry. You will be all right. If a
fellow isn't lazy nor a fool he has no reason to be sorry he came to
America. It'll be all right."
"All right" he said in English, and I conjectured what it meant
from the context. In the course of the minute or two which he
bestowed upon me he uttered it so many times that the phrase
engraved itself upon my memory. It was the first bit of English I
ever acquired
The well-dressed, trim-looking crowds of lower Broadway
impressed me as a multitude of counts, barons, princes. I was
puzzled by their preoccupied faces and hurried step. It seemed to
comport ill with their baronial dress and general high-born
appearance
In a vague way all this helped to confirm my conception of
America as a unique country, unlike the rest of the world
When we reached the General Post-Office, at the end of the Third
Avenue surface line, our guide bade us stop
"Walk straight ahead," he said to me, waving his hand toward Park
Row. "Just keep walking until you see a lot of Jewish people. It
isn't far from here." With which he slipped a silver quarter into my
hand and made Gitelson bid me good-by
The two then boarded a big red horse-car
I was left with a sickening sense of having been tricked, cast off,
and abandoned. I stood watching the receding public vehicle, as
though its scarlet hue were my last gleam of hope in the world.
When it finally disappeared from view my heart sank within me. I
may safely say that the half-hour that followed is one of the worst
I experienced in all the thirty-odd years of my life in this country
The big, round nostrils of the contractor and the gray forelock of
my young steerage-fellow haunted my brain as hideous symbols of
treachery.
With twenty-nine cents in my pocket (four cents was all that was
left of the sum which I had received from Matilda and her mother)
I set forth in the direction of East Broadway
CHAPTER II
TEN minutes' walk brought me to the heart of the
Jewish East Side. The streets swarmed with Yiddish-speaking
immigrants. The sign-boards were in English and Yiddish, some
of them in Russian. The scurry and hustle of the people were not
merely overwhelmingly greater, both in volume and intensity,
than in my native town. It was of another sort. The swing and step
of the pedestrians, the voices and manner of the street peddlers,
and a hundred and one other things seemed to testify to far more
self-confidence and energy, to larger ambitions and wider scopes,
than did the appearance of the crowds in my birthplace
The great thing was that these people were better dressed than the
inhabitants of my town. The poorest-looking man wore a hat
(instead of a cap), a stiff collar and a necktie, and the poorest
woman wore a hat or a bonnet
The appearance of a newly arrived immigrant was still a novel
spectacle on the East Side. Many of the passers-by paused to look
at me with wistful smiles of curiosity
"There goes a green one!" some of them exclaimed
The sight of me obviously evoked reminiscences in them of the
days when they had been "green ones" like myself. It was a second
birth that they were witnessing, an experience which they had
once gone through themselves and which was one of the greatest
events in their lives.
"Green one" or "greenhorn" is one of the many English words and
phrases which my mother-tongue has appropriated in England and
America. Thanks to the many millions of letters that pass annually
between the Jews of Russia and their relatives in the United
States, a number of these words have by now come to be generally
known among our people at home as well as here. In the eighties,
however, one who had not visited any English-speaking country
was utterly unfamiliar with them. And so I had never heard of
"green one" before. Still, "green," in the sense of color, is Yiddish
as well as English, so I understood the phrase at once, and as a
contemptuous quizzical appellation for a newly arrived,
inexperienced immigrant it stung me cruelly. As I went along I
heard it again and again. Some of the passers-by would call me
"greenhorn" in a tone of blighting gaiety, but these were an
exception. For the most part it was "green one" and in a spirit of
sympathetic interest. It hurt me, all the same. Even those glances
that offered me a cordial welcome and good wishes had
something self-complacent and condescending in them. "Poor
fellow! he is a green one," these people seemed to say. "We are
not, of course. We are Americanized."
For my first meal in the New World I bought a three-cent wedge of
coarse rye bread, off a huge round loaf, on a stand on Essex
Street. I was too strict in my religious observances to eat it
without first performing ablutions and offering a brief prayer. So I
approached a bewigged old woman who stood in the doorway of a
small grocery-store to let me wash my hands and eat my meal in
her place. She looked old-fashioned enough, yet when she heard
my request she said, with a laugh: "You're a green one, I see."
"Suppose I am," I resented. "Do the yellow ones or black ones all
eat without washing? Can't a fellow be a good Jew in America?"
"Yes, of course he can, but--well, wait till you see for yourself."
However, she asked me to come in, gave me some water and an
old apron to serve me for a towel, and when I was ready to eat my
bread she placed a glass of milk before me, explaining that she
was not going to charge me for it
"In America people are not foolish enough to be content with dry
bread," she said, sententiously
While I ate she questioned me about my antecedents. I remember
how she impressed me as a strong, clever woman of few words as
long as she catechised me, and how disappointed I was when she
began to talk of herself.
The astute, knowing mien gradually faded out of her face and I had
before me a gushing, boastful old bore
My intention was to take a long stroll, as much in the hope of
coming upon some windfall as for the purpose of taking a look at
the great American city. Many of the letters that came from the
United States to my birthplace before I sailed had contained a
warning not to imagine that America was a "land of gold" and that
treasure might be had in the streets of New York for the picking.
But these warnings only had the effect of lending vividness to my
image of an American street as a thoroughfare strewn with nuggets
of the precious metal. Symbolically speaking, this was the idea
one had of the "land of Columbus." It was a continuation of the
widespread effect produced by stories of Cortes and Pizarro in the
sixteenth century, confirmed by the successes of some Russian
emigrants of my time
I asked the grocery-woman to let me leave my bundle with her,
and, after considerable hesitation, she allowed me to put it among
some empty barrels in her cellar
I went wandering over the Ghetto. Instead of stumbling upon
nuggets of gold, I found signs of poverty. In one place I came
across a poor family who--as I learned upon inquiry--had been
dispossessed for non-payment of rent. A mother and her two little
boys were watching their pile of furniture and other household
goods on the sidewalk while the passers-by were dropping coins
into a saucer placed on one of the chairs to enable the family to
move into new quarters
What puzzled me was the nature of the furniture. For in my
birthplace chairs and a couch like those I now saw on the
sidewalk would be a sign of prosperity. But then anything was to
be expected of a country where the poorest devil wore a hat and a
starched collar
I walked on
The exclamation "A green one" or "A greenhorn" continued. If I
did not hear it, I saw it in the eyes of the people who passed me
When it grew dark and I was much in need of rest I had a street
peddler direct me to a synagogue. I expected to spend the night
there. What could have been more natural? At the house of God I
found a handful of men in prayer. It was a large, spacious room
and the smallness of their number gave it an air of desolation. I
joined in the devotions with great fervor. My soul was sobbing to
Heaven to take care of me in the strange country
The service over, several of the worshipers took up some Talmud
folio or other holy book and proceeded to read them aloud in the
familiar singsong.
The strange surroundings suddenly began to look like home to me
One of the readers, an elderly man with a pinched face and forked
little beard, paused to look me over
"A green one?" he asked, genially.
He told me that the synagogue was crowded on Saturdays, while
on week-days people in America had no time to say their prayers
at home, much less to visit a house of worship
"It isn't Russia," he said, with a sigh. "Judaism has not much of a
chance here."
When he heard that I intended to stay at the synagogue overnight
he smiled ruefully
"One does not sleep in an American synagogue," he said. "It is not
Russia." Then, scanning me once more, he added, with an air of
compassionate perplexity: "Where will you sleep, poor child? I
wish I could take you to my house, but--well, America is not
Russia. There is no pity here, no hospitality. My wife would raise
a rumpus if I brought you along. I should never hear the last of it."
With a deep sigh and nodding his head plaintively he returned to
his book, swaying back and forth. But he was apparently more
interested in the subject he had broached. "When we were at
home," he resumed, "she, too, was a different woman. She did not
make life a burden to me as she does here. Have you no money at
all?"
I showed him the quarter I had received from the cloak contractor
"Poor fellow! Is that all you have? There are places where you can
get a night's lodging for fifteen cents, but what are you going to do
afterward? I am simply ashamed of myself."
"'Hospitality,'" he quoted from the Talmud, "'is one of the things
which the giver enjoys in this world and the fruit of which he
relishes in the world to come.' To think that I cannot offer a
Talmudic scholar a night's rest! Alas! America has turned me into
a mound of ashes."
"You were well off in Russia, weren't you?" I inquired, in
astonishment.
For, indeed, I had never heard of any but poor people emigrating to
America
"I used to spend my time reading Talmud at the synagogue," was
his reply
Many of his answers seemed to fit, not the question asked, but one
which was expected to follow it. You might have thought him
anxious to forestall your next query in order to save time and
words, had it not been so difficult for him to keep his mouth shut
"She," he said, referring to his wife, "had a nice little business. She
sold feed for horses and she rejoiced in the thought that she was
married to a man of learning. True, she has a tongue. That she
always had, but over there it was not so bad. She has become a
different woman here. Alas! America is a topsy-turvy country."
He went on to show how the New World turned things upside
down, transforming an immigrant shoemaker into a man of
substance, while a former man of leisure was forced to work in a
factory here. In like manner, his wife had changed for the worse,
for, lo and behold! instead of supporting him while he read
Talmud, as she used to do at home, she persisted in sending him
out to peddle. "America is not Russia," she said. "A man must
make a living here." But, alas! it was too late to begin now! He
had spent the better part of his life at his holy books and was fit
for nothing else now. His wife, however, would take no excuse.
He must peddle or be nagged to death. And if he ventured to slip
into some synagogue of an afternoon and read a page or two he
would be in danger of being caught red-handed, so to say, for,
indeed, she often shadowed him to make sure that he did not play
truant.
Alas! America was not Russia
A thought crossed my mind that if Reb Sender were here, he, too,
might have to go peddling. Poor Reb Sender! The very image of
him with a basket on his arm broke my heart. America did seem
to be the most cruel place on earth
"I am telling you all this that you may see why I can't invite you to
my house," explained the peddier
All I did see was that the poor man could not help unburdening his
mind to the first listener that presented himself
He pursued his tale of woe. He went on complaining of his own
fate, quite forgetful of mine. Instead of continuing to listen, I fell
to gazing around the synagogue more or less furtively. One of the
readers attracted my special attention. He was a venerable-looking
man with a face which, as I now recall it, reminds me of
Thackeray. Only he had a finer head than the English novelist
At last the henpecked man discovered my inattention and fell
silent. A minute later his tongue was at work again
"You are looking at that man over there, aren't you?" he asked
"Who is he?"
"When the Lord of the World gives one good luck he gives one
good looks as well."
"Why, is he rich?"
"His son-in-law is, but then his daughter cherishes him as she does
the apple of her eye, and--well, when the Lord of the World
wishes to give a man happiness he gives him good children, don't
you know."
He rattled on, betraying his envy of the venerable-looking man in
various ways and telling me all he knew about him--that he was a
widower named Even, that he had been some years in America,
and that his daughter furnished him all the money he needed and a
good deal more, so that "he lived like a monarch." Even would not
live in his daughter's house, however, because her kitchen was not
conducted according to the laws of Moses, and everything else in
it was too modern. So he roomed and boarded with pious
strangers, visiting her far less frequently than she visited him and
never eating at her table.
"He is a very proud man," my informant said. "One must not
approach him otherwise than on tiptoe."
I threw a glance at Even. His dignified singsong seemed to confirm
my interlocutor's characterization of him
"Perhaps you will ask me how his son-in-law takes it all?" the
voluble Talmudist went on. "Well, his daughter is a beautiful
woman and well favored." The implication was that her husband
was extremely fond of her and let her use his money freely. "They
are awfully rich and they live like veritable Gentiles, which is a
common disease among the Jews of America. But then she
observes the commandment, 'Honor thy father.' That she does."
Again he tried to read his book and again the temptation to gossip
was too much for him. He returned to Even's pride, dwelling with
considerable venom upon his love of approbation and vanity.
"May the Uppermost not punish me for my evil words, but to see
him take his roll of bills out of his pocket and pay his contribution
to the synagogue one would think he was some big merchant and
not a poor devil sponging on his son-in-law."
A few minutes later he told me admiringly how Even often
"loaned" him a half-dollar to enable him to do some reading at the
house of God.
"I tell my virago of a wife I have sold fifty cents' worth of goods,"
he explained to me, sadly
After a while the man with the Thackeray face closed his book,
kissed it, and rose to go. On his way out he unceremoniously
paused in front of me, a silver snuff-box in his left hand, and fell
to scrutinizing me. He had the appearance of a well-paid rabbi of
a large, prosperous town. "He is going to say, 'A green one,'" I
prophesied to myself, all but shuddering at the prospect. And, sure
enough, he did, but he took his time about it, which made the next
minute seem a year to me. He took snuff with tantalizing
deliberation. Next he sneezed with great zest and then he resumed
sizing me up. The suspense was insupportable. Another second
and I might have burst out, "For mercy's sake say 'A green one,'
and let us be done with it." But at that moment he uttered it of his
own accord: "A green one, I see. Where from?" And grasping my
hand he added in Hebrew, "Peace be to ye."
His first questions about me were obsequiously answered by the
man with the forked beard, whereupon my attention was attracted
by the fact that he addressed him by his Gentile name--that is, as
"Mr. Even," and not by his Hebrew name, as he would have done
in our birthplace. Surely America did not seem to be much of a
God-fearing country
When Mr. Even heard of my Talmud studies he questioned me
about the tractates I had recently read and even challenged me to
explain an apparent discrepancy in a certain passage, for the
double purpose of testing my "Talmud brains" and flaunting his
own. I acquitted myself creditably, it seemed, and I felt that I was
making a good impression personally as well.
Anyhow, he invited me to supper in a restaurant.
On our way there I told him of my mother's violent death, vaguely
hoping that it would add to his interest in me. It did--even more
than I had expected. To my pleasant surprise, he proved to be
familiar with the incident. It appeared that because our section lay
far outside the region of pogroms, or anti-Jewish riots, the killing
of my mother by a Gentile mob had attracted considerable
attention. I was thrilled to find myself in the lime-light of
world-wide publicity. I almost felt like a hero
"So you are her son?" he said, pausing to look me over, as though I
had suddenly become a new man. "My poor orphan boy!" He
caused me to recount the incident in every detail. In doing so I
made it as appallingly vivid as I knew how. He was so absorbed
and moved that he repeatedly made me stop in the middle of the
sidewalk so as to look me in the face as he listened
"Oh, but you must be hungry," he suddenly interrupted me. "Come
on." Arrived at the restaurant, he ordered supper for me. Then he
withdrew, commending me to the care of the proprietress until he
should return.
He had no sooner shut the door behind him than she took to
questioning me: Was I a relative of Mr. Even? If not, then why
was he taking so much interest in me? She was a vivacious,
well-fed young matron with cheeks of a flaming red and with the
consciousness of business success all but spurting from her black
eyes. From what she, assisted by one of the other customers
present, told me about my benefactor I learned that his son-in-law
was the owner of the tenement-house in which the restaurant was
located, as well as of several other buildings. They also told me of
the landlord's wife, of her devotion to her father, and of the latter's
piety and dignity. It appeared, however, that in her filial reverence
she would draw the line upon his desire not to spare the rod upon
her children, which was really the chief reason why he was a
stranger at her house
I had been waiting about two hours and was growing uneasy, when
Mr. Even came back, explaining that he had spent the time taking
his own supper and finding lodgings for me
He then took me to store after store, buying me a suit of clothes, a
hat, some underclothes, handkerchiefs (the first white
handkerchiefs I ever possessed), collars, shoes, and a necktie.
He spent a considerable sum on me. As we passed from block to
block he kept saying, "Now you won't look green," or, "That will
make you look American." At one point he added, "Not that you
are a bad-looking fellow as it is, but then one must be presentable
in America." At this he quoted from the Talmud an equivalent to
the saying that one must do in Rome as the Romans do
When all our purchases had been made he took me to a barber
shop with bathrooms in the rear
"Give him a hair-cut and a bath," he said to the proprietor. "Cut off
his side-locks while you are at it. One may go without them and
yet be a good Jew."
He disappeared again, but when I emerged from the bathroom I
found him waiting for me. I stood before him, necktie and collar
in hand, not knowing what to do with them, till he showed me
how to put them on
"Don't worry. David," he consoled me. "When I came here I, too,
had to learn these things." When he was through with the job he
took me in front of a looking-glass. "Quite an American, isn't he?"
he said to the barber, beamingly. "And a good-looking fellow,
too."
When I took a look at the mirror I was bewildered. I scarcely
recognized myself
I was mentally parading my "modern" make-up before Matilda. A
pang of yearning clutched my heart. It was a momentary feeling.
For the rest, I was all in a flutter with embarrassment and a novel
relish of existence. It was as though the hair-cut and the American
clothes had changed my identity. The steamer, Gitelson, and the
man who had snatched him up now appeared to be something of
the remote past. The day had been so crowded with novel
impressions that it seemed an age
He took me to an apartment in a poor tenement-house and
introduced me to a tall, bewhiskered, morose-looking, elderly man
and a smiling woman of thirty-five, explaining that he had paid
them in advance for a month's board and lodging. When he said,
"This is Mr. Levinsky," I felt as though I was being promoted in
rank as behooved my new appearance. "Mister" struck me as
something like a title of nobility. It thrilled me. But somehow it
seemed ridiculous, too. Indeed, it was some time before I could
think of myself as a "Mister" without being tempted to laugh.
"And here is some cash for you," he said, handing me a five-dollar
bill, and some silver, in addition. "And now you must shift for
yourself. That's all I can do for you. Nor, indeed, would I do more
if I could. A young man like you must learn to stand on his own
legs. Understand? If you do well, come to see me. Understand?"
There was an eloquent pause which said that if I did not do well I
was not to molest him. Then he added, aloud: "There is only one
thing I want you to promise me. Don't neglect your religion nor
your Talmud. Do you promise that, David?"
I did. There was a note of fatherly tenderness in the way this utter
stranger called me David. It reminded me of Reb Sender. I wanted
to say something to express my gratitude, but I felt a lump in my
throat
He advised me to invest the five dollars in dry-goods and to take
up peddling. Then, wishing me good luck, he left
My landlady, who had listened to Mr. Even's parting words with
pious nods and rapturous grins, remarked that one would vainly
search the world for another man like him, and proceeded to make
my bed on a lounge
The room was a kitchen. The stove was a puzzle to me. I wondered
whether it was really a stove.
"Is this used for heating?" I inquired
"Yes, for heating and cooking," she explained, with smiling
cordiality. And she added, with infinite superiority, "America has
no use for those big tile ovens."
When I found myself alone in the room the feeling of desolation
and uncertainty which had tormented me all day seized me once
again
I went to bed and began to say my bed-prayer. I did so
mechanically. My mind did not attend to the words I was
murmuring. Instead, it was saying to God: "Lord of the Universe,
you have been good to me so far. I went out of that grocery-store
in the hope of coming upon some good piece of luck and my hope
was realized. Be good to me in the future as well. I shall be more
pious than ever, I promise you, even if America is a godless
country."
I was excruciatingly homesick. My heart went out to my poor dead
mother.
Then I reflected that it was my story of her death that had led Even
to spend so much money on me. It seemed as if she were taking
care of me from her grave. It seemed, too, as though she had died
so that I might arouse sympathy and make a good start in
America. I thought of her and of all Antomir, and my pangs of
yearning for her were tinged with pangs of my unrequited love for
Matilda.
CHAPTER III
MY landlady was a robust little woman, compact
and mobile as a billiard-ball, continually bustling about,
chattering and smiling or laughing. She was a good-natured, silly
creature, and her smile, which automatically shut her eyes and
opened her mouth from ear to ear, accentuated her kindliness as
well as her lack of sense. When she did not talk she would hum or
sing at the top of her absurd voice the then popular American song
"Climbing Up the Golden Stairs." She told me the very next day
that she had been married less than a year, and one of the first
things I noticed about her was the pleasure it gave her to refer to
her husband or to quote him. Her prattle was so full of, "My
husband says, says my husband," that it seemed as though the
chief purpose of her jabber was to parade her married state and to
hear herself talk of her spouse. The words, "My husband," were
music to her ears. They actually meant, "Behold, I am an old maid
no longer!"
She was so deeply impressed by the story of my meeting with Mr.
Even, whose son-in-law was her landlord, and by the amount he
had spent on me that she retailed it among her neighbors, some of
whom she invited to the house in order to exhibit me to them
Her name was Mrs. Dienstog, which is Yiddish for Tuesday. Now
Tuesday is a lucky day, so I saw a good omen in her, and thanked
God her name was not Monday or Wednesday, which, according
to the Talmud, are unlucky
One of the first things I did was to make up a list of the English
words and phrases which our people in this country had adopted
as part and parcel of their native tongue. This, I felt, was an
essential step toward shedding one's "greenhornhood," an
operation every immigrant is anxious to dispose of without delay.
The list included, "floor," "ceiling," "window," "dinner," "supper,"
"hat," "business," "job," "clean," "plenty," "never," "ready,"
"anyhow," "never mind," "hurry up," "all right," and about a
hundred other words and phrases
I was quick to realize that to be "stylishly" dressed was a good
investment, but I realized, too, that to use the Yiddish word for
"collar" or "clean" instead of their English correlatives was worse
than to wear a dirty collar
I wrote down the English words in Hebrew characters and from my
landlady's dictation, so that "never mind," for example, became
"nevermine."
When I came home with a basket containing my first stock of
wares, Mrs.
Dienstog ran into ecstasies over it. She took to fingering some of
my collar-buttons and garters, and when I protested she drew
away, pouting
Still, the next morning, as I was leaving the house with my stock,
she wished me good luck ardently; and when I left the house she
ran after me, shouting: "Wait, Mr. Levinsky. I'll buy something of
you 'for a lucky start.'" She picked out a paper of pins, and as she
paid me the price she said, devoutly, "May this little basket
become one of the biggest stores in New York."
My plan of campaign was to peddle in the streets for a few
weeks--that is, until my "greenness" should wear off-- and then to
try to sell goods to tenement housewives. I threw myself into the
business with enthusiasm, but with rather discouraging results. I
earned what I then called a living, but made no headway. As a
consequence, my ardor cooled off. It was nothing but a daily
grind. My heart was not in it. My landlord, who was a truck-driver,
but who dreamed of business, thought that I lacked dash, pluck,
tenacity; and the proprietor of the "peddler supply store" in which
I bought my goods seemed to be of the same opinion, for he often
chaffed me on the smallness of my bill. On one occasion he said:
"If you want to make a decent living you must put all other
thoughts out of your mind and think of nothing but your
business."
Only my smiling little landlady was always chirping words of
encouragement, assuring me that I was not doing worse than the
average beginner. This and her cordial, good-natured manner were
a source of comfort to me. We became great friends. She taught
me some of her broken English; and I let her talk of her husband
as long as she wanted. One of her weaknesses was to boast of
holding him under her thumb, though in reality she was under his.
Ceaselessly gay in his absence, she would become shy and reticent
the moment he came home. I never saw him talk to her save to
give her some order, which she would execute with feverish haste.
Still, in his surly, domineering way he was devoted to her
I was ever conscious of my modern garb, and as I walked through
the streets I would repeatedly throw glances at store windows,
trying to catch my reflection in them. Or else I would pass my
fingers across my temples to feel the absence of my side-locks. It
seemed a pity that Matilda could not see me now
One of the trifles that have remained embedded in my memory
from those days is the image of a big, florid-faced huckster
shouting at the top of his husky voice: "Strawberri-i-ies,
strawberri-i-ies, five cents a quart!"
I used to hear and see him every morning through the windows of
my lodging; and to this day, whenever I hear the singsong of a
strawberry-peddler I scent the odors of New York as they struck
me upon my arrival, in 1885, and I experience the feeling of
uncertainty, homesickness, and lovesickness that never left my
heart at that period
I often saw Antomir in my dreams
The immigrants from the various Russian, Galician, or Roumanian
towns usually have their respective synagogues in New York,
Philadelphia, Boston, or Chicago. So I sought out the house of
worship of the Sons of Antomir
There were scores, perhaps hundreds, of small congregations on
the East Side, each of which had the use of a single room, for the
service hours on Saturdays and holidays, in a building rented for
all sorts of gatherings--weddings, dances, lodge meetings,
trade-union meetings, and the like. The Antomir congregation,
however, was one of those that could afford a whole house all to
themselves. Our synagogue was a small, rickety, frame structure
It was for a Saturday-morning service that I visited it for the first
time.
I entered it with throbbing heart. I prayed with great fervor. When
the devotions were over I was disappointed to find that the
congregation contained not a single worshiper whom I had known
or heard of at home.
Indeed, many of them did not even belong to Antomir. When I told
them about my mother there was a murmur of curiosity and
sympathy, but their interest in me soon gave way to their interest
in the information I could give each of them concerning the house
and street that had once been his home
Upon the advice of my landlord, the truck-driver, and largely with
his help, I soon changed the character of my business. I rented a
push-cart and tried to sell remnants of dress-goods, linen, and
oil-cloth. This turned out somewhat better than basket peddling;
but I was one of the common herd in this branch of the business as
well
Often I would load my push-cart with cheap hosiery collars,
brushes, hand-mirrors, note-books, shoe-laces, and the like,
sometimes with several of these articles at once, but more often
with one at a time. In the latter case I would announce to the
passers-by the glad news that I had struck a miraculous bargain at
a wholesale bankruptcy sale, for instance, and exhort them not to
miss their golden opportunity. I also learned to crumple up new
underwear, or even to wet it somewhat, and then shout that I could
sell it "so cheap" because it was slightly damaged
I earned enough to pay my board, but I developed neither vim nor
ardor for the occupation. I hankered after intellectual interest and
was unceasingly homesick. I was greatly tempted to call on Mr.
Even, but deferred the visit until I should make a better showing.
I hated the constant chase and scramble for bargains and I hated to
yell and scream in order to create a demand for my wares by the
sheer force of my lungs. Many an illiterate dolt easily outshouted
me and thus dampened what little interest I had mustered. One
fellow in particular was a source of discouragement to me. He
was a half -witted, hideous-looking man, with no end of vocal
energy and senseless fervor. He was a veritable engine of imbecile
vitality. He would make the street ring with deafening shrieks,
working his arms and head, sputtering and foaming at the mouth
like a madman. And it produced results. His nervous fit would
have a peculiar effect on the pedestrians. One could not help
pausing and buying something of him. The block where we
usually did business was one of the best, but I hated him so
violently that I finally moved my push-cart to a less desirable
locality
I came home in despair
"Oh, it takes a blockhead to make a success of it," I complained to
Mrs.
Dienstog
"Why, why," she consoled me, "it is a sin to be grumbling like that.
There are lots of peddlers who have been years in America and
who would be glad to earn as much as you do. It'll be all right.
Don't worry, Mr. Levinsky."
It was less than a fortnight before I changed my place of business
once again. The only thing by which these few days became fixed
in my memory was the teeth of a young man named Volodsky and
the peculiar tale of woe he told me. He was a homely,
commonplace-looking man, but his teeth were so beautiful that
their glistening whiteness irritated me somewhat. They were his
own natural teeth, but I thought them out of place amid his plain
features, or amid the features of any other man, for that matter.
They seemed to be more suited to the face of a woman. His
push-cart was next to mine, but he sold--or tried to sell--hardware,
while my cart was laden with other goods; and as he was,
moreover, as much of a failure as I was, there was no reason why
we should not be friends. So we would spend the day in
heart-to-heart talks of our hard luck and homesickness. His chief
worry was over the "dower money" which he had borrowed of his
sister, at home, to pay for his passage
"She gave it to me cheerfully," he said, in a brooding, listless way.
"She thought I would send it back to her at once. People over
there think treasure can really be had for the picking in America.
Well, I have been over two years here, and have not been able to
send her a cent. Her letters make holes in my heart. She has a
good marriage chance, so she says, and unless I send her the
money at once it will be off. Her lamentations will drive me into
the grave."
CHAPTER IV
I SOON had to move from the Dienstogs' to make
room for a relative of the truck-driver's who had arrived from
England. My second lodgings were an exact copy of my first, a
lounge in a kitchen serving me as a bed. To add to the similarity,
my new landlady was incessantly singing. Only she had three
children and her songs were all in Yiddish. Her ordinary speech
teemed with oaths like: "Strike me blind," "May I not be able to
move my arms or my legs," "May I spend every cent of it on
doctor's bills," "May I not be able to get up from this chair."
A great many of our women will spice their Yiddish with this kind
of imprecations, but she was far above the average in this respect
The curious thing about her was that her name was Mrs. Levinsky,
though we were not related in the remotest degree
Whatever enthusiasm there was in me found vent in religion. I
spent many an evening at the Antomir Synagogue, reading
Talmud passionately. This would bring my heart in touch with my
old home, with dear old Reb Sender, with the grave of my poor
mother. It was the only pleasure I had in those days, and it seemed
to be the highest I had ever enjoyed. At times I would feel the
tears coming to my eyes for the sheer joy of hearing my own
singsong, my old Antomir singsong. It was like an echo from the
Preacher's Synagogue. My former self was addressing me across
the sea in this strange, uninviting, big town where I was
compelled to peddle shoe-black or oil-cloth and to compete with a
yelling idiot. I would picture my mother gazing at me as I stood at
my push-cart. I could almost see her slapping her hands in despair
As for my love, it had settled down to a chronic dull pain that
asserted itself on special occasions only
I was so homesick that my former lodging in New York, to which I
had become used, now seemed like home by comparison. I missed
the Dienstogs keenly, and I visited them quite often
I wrote long, passionate letters to Reb Sender, in a conglomeration
of the Talmudic jargon, bad Hebrew, and good Yiddish, referring
to the Talmud studies I pursued in America and pouring out my
forlorn heart to him. His affectionate answers brought me
inexpressible happiness
But many of the other peddlers made fun of my piety and it could
not last long. Moreover, I was in contact with life now, and the
daily surprises it had in store for me dealt my former ideas of the
world blow after blow. I saw the cunning and the meanness of
some of my customers, of the tradespeople of whom I bought my
wares, and of the peddlers who did business by my side. Nor was I
unaware of certain unlovable traits that were unavoidably
developing in my own self under these influences. And while
human nature was thus growing smaller, the human world as a
whole was growing larger, more complex, more heartless, and
more interesting. The striking thing was that it was not a world of
piety. I spoke to scores of people and I saw tens of thousands.
Very few of the women who passed my push-cart wore wigs, and
men who did not shave were an exception. Also, I knew that many
of the people with whom I came in daily contact openly
patronized Gentile restaurants and would not hesitate even to eat
pork
The orthodox Jewish faith, as it is followed in the old Ghetto
towns of Russia or Austria, has still to learn the art of trimming its
sails to suit new winds. It is exactly the same as it was a thousand
years ago. It does not attempt to adopt itself to modern conditions
as the Christian Church is continually doing. It is absolutely
inflexible. If you are a Jew of the type to which I belonged when I
came to New York and you attempt to bend your religion to the
spirit of your new surroundings, it breaks. It falls to pieces. The
very clothes I wore and the very food I ate had a fatal effect on my
religious habits. A whole book could be written on the influence of
a starched collar and a necktie on a man who was brought up as I
was. It was inevitable that, sooner or later, I should let a barber
shave my sprouting beard
"What do you want those things for?" Mrs. Levinsky once said to
me, pointing at my nascent whiskers. "Oh, go take a shave and
don't be a fool. It will make you ever so much better-looking. May
my luck be as handsome as your face will then be."
"Never!" I retorted, testily, yet blushing
She gave a sarcastic snort. "They all speak like that at the
beginning," she said. "The girls will make you shave if nobody
else does."
"What girls?" I asked, with a scowl, but blushing once again
"What do I know what girls?" she laughed. "That's your own
lookout, not mine."
I did not like her. She was provokingly crafty and cold, and she
had a mean smile and a dishonest voice that often irritated me.
She was ruddy-faced and bursting with health, taller than Mrs.
Dienstog, yet too short for her great breadth of shoulder and the
enormous bulk of her bust. I thought she looked absurdly dumpy.
What I particularly hated in her was her laughter, which sounded
for all the world like the gobble of a turkey
She was constantly importuning me to get her another lodger who
would share her kitchen lounge with me
"Rent is so high, I am losing money on you. May I have a year of
darkness if I am not," she would din in my ears
She was intolerable to me, but I liked her cooking and I hated to be
moving again, so I remained several months in her house
It was not long before her prediction as to the fate of my beard
came true.
I took a shave. What actually decided me to commit so heinous a
sin was a remark dropped by one of the peddlers that my
down-covered face made me look like a "green one." It was the
most cruel thing he could have told me. I took a look at myself as
soon as I could get near a mirror, and the next day I received my
first shave. "What would Reb Sender say?" I thought. When I
came home that evening I was extremely ill at ease. Mrs. Levinsky
noticed the change at once, but she also noticed my
embarrassment, so she said nothing, but she was continually
darting furtive glances at me, and when our eyes met she seemed
to be on the verge of bursting into one of her turkey laughs. I
could have murdered her
BOOK VI
A GREENHORN NO LONGER
CHAPTER I
I BOUGHT my goods in several places and made the acquaintance
of many peddlers. One of these attracted my attention by his
popularity among the other men and by his peculiar talks of
women. His name was Max Margolis. We used to speak of him as
Big Max to distinguish him from a Little Max, till one day a
peddler who was a good chess-player and was then studying
algebra changed the two names to "Maximum Max" and
"Minimum Max," which the other peddlers pronounced "Maxie
Max" and "Minnie Max."
Some of the other fellows, too, were addicted to obscene
story-telling, but these mostly made (or pretended to make) a joke
of it. The man who had changed Max's sobriquet, for instance,
never tired of composing smutty puns, while another man, who
had a married daughter, was continually hinting, with merry
bravado, at his illicit successes with Gentile women. Maximum
Max, on the other hand, would treat his lascivious topics with
peculiar earnestness, and even with something like sadness, as
though he dwelt on them in spite of himself, under the stress of an
obsession
Otherwise he was a jovial fellow
He was a tall, large-boned man, loosely built. His lips were always
moist and when closed they were never in tight contact. He had
the reputation of a liar, and, as is often the case with those who
suffer from that weakness, people liked him. Nor, indeed, were
his fibs, as a rule, made out of whole cloth. They usually had a
basis of truth. When he told a story and he felt that it was
producing no effect he would "play it up," as newspapermen would
put it, often quite grotesquely. Altogether he was so inclined to
overemphasize and embellish his facts that it was not always easy
to say where truth ended and fiction began. Somehow it seemed to
me as though the moistness and looseness of his lips had
something to do with his mendacity
He was an ignorant man, barely able to write down an address
Max was an instalment peddler, his chief business being with
frequenters of dance-halls, to whom he sold clothing, dress-goods,
jewelry, and--when there was a marriage among them--furniture.
Many a young housewife who had met her "predestined one" in
one of these halls wore a marriage ring, and had her front room
furnished with a "parlor set," bought of Max Margolis. He was as
popular among the dancers as he was among the men he met at the
stores. He was married, Max, yet it was as much by his interest in
the dancers as by his business interest that he was drawn to the
dance-halls. He took a fancy to me and he often made me listen to
his discourses on women
The youngest married man usually appealed to me as being old
enough to be my father, and as Maximum Max was not only
married, but eleven years my senior, there seemed to be a great
chasm between us. That he should hold this kind of conversations
with an unmarried youngster like myself struck me as something
unnatural, doubly indecent. As I listened I would feel awkward,
but would listen, nevertheless
One day he looked me over, much as an expert in horseflesh would
a colt, and said, with the utmost seriousness: "Do you know,
Levinsky, you have an awfully fine figure. You are a good-looking
chap all around, for that matter. A fellow like you ought to make a
hit with women. Why don't you learn to dance?"
The compliment made me wince and blush. Perhaps, if he had put
it in the form of a jest I should even have liked it. As it was, I felt
like one stripped in public. Still, I recalled with pleasure that
Matilda had said similar things about my figure
"Why don't you learn to dance, Levinsky?" he repeated
I laughed, waving the suggestion aside as a joke
On another occasion he said, "Every woman can be won,
absolutely every one, provided a fellow knows how to go about
it."
As he proceeded to develop his theory he described various types
of women and the various methods to be used with them
"Of course, the man must not be repulsive to her," he said
That evening, when Mrs. Levinsky's husband, their three children,
and myself sat around the table and she was serving us our supper
she appeared in a new light to me. She was nearly twice my age
and I hated her not only for her meanness and low cunning, but
also for her massive, broad-shouldered figure and for her turkey
laugh, but she was a full-blooded, healthy female, after all. So, as
I looked at her bustling between the table and the stove, Max's
rule came back to me. I could almost hear his voice, "Every
woman can be won, absolutely every one. Mrs. Levinsky's oldest
child was a young man of nearly my age, yet I looked her over
lustfully and when I found that her florid skin was almost spotless,
her lips fresh, and her black hair without a hint of gray, I was glad.
Presently, while removing my plate, she threw the trembling bulk
of her great, firm bust under my very eyes. I felt disturbed. "Some
morning when we are alone," I said to myself, "I shall kiss those
red lips of hers."
From that moment on she was my quarry
As her husband worked in a sweatshop, while I peddled, he usually
got up at least an hour before me. And it was considered perfectly
natural that Mrs.
Levinsky should be hovering about the kitchen while I was
sleeping or lying awake on the kitchen lounge. Also, that after her
husband left for the day I should go around half-naked, washing
and dressing myself, in the same crowded little room in which she
was then doing her work, as scantily clad as I was and with the
sleeves of her flimsy blouse rolled up to her armpits.
I had never noticed these things before, but on the morning
following the above supper I did. As I opened my eyes and saw
her bare, fleshy arms held out toward the little kerosene-stove I
thought of my resolve to kiss her
She was humming something in a very low voice. To let her know
that I was awake I stretched myself and yawned audibly. Her
voice rose. It was a song from a well-known Jewish play she was
singing
"Good mornings Mrs. Levinsky," I greeted her, in a familiar tone
which she now heard for the first time from me. "You seem to be
in good spirits this morning."
She was evidently taken aback. I was the last man in the world she
would have expected to address a remark of this kind to her
"How can you see it?" she asked, with a side-glance at me
"Have I no ears? Don't I hear your beautiful singing?"
"Beautiful singing!" she said, without looking at me
After a considerable pause I said, awkwardly, "You know, Mrs.
Levinsky, I dreamed of you last night!"
"Did you?"
"Aren't you interested to know something more about it?" "I
dreamed of telling you that you are a good-looking lady," I
pursued, with fast-beating heart
"What has got into that fellow?" she asked of the kerosene-stove.
"He is a greenhorn no longer, as true as I am alive." "You won't
deny you are good-looking, will you?"
"What is that to you?" And again addressing herself to the
kerosene-stove: "What do you think of that fellow? A pious
Talmudist indeed! Strike me blind if I ever saw one like that."
And she uttered a gobble-like chuckle
I saw encouragement in her manner. I went on to talk of her songs
and the Jewish theater, a topic for which I knew her to have a
singular weakness.
The upshot was that I soon had her telling me of a play she had
recently seen. As she spoke, it was inevitable that she should
come up close to the lounge. As she did so, her fingers touched
my quilt, her bare, sturdy arms paralyzing my attention. The
temptation to grasp them was tightening its grip on me. I decided
to begin by taking hold of her hand. I warned myself that it must
be done gently, with romance in my touch. "I shall just caress her
hand," I decided, not hearing a word of what she was saving
I brought my hand close to hers. My heart beat violently. I was just
about to touch her fingers, but I let the opportunity pass. I turned
the conversation on her husband, on his devotion to her, on their
wedding. She mocked my questions, but answered them all the
same
"He must have been awfully in love with you," I said
"What business is that of yours? Where did you learn to ask such
questions? At the synagogue? Of course he loved me! What would
you have? That he should have hated me? Why did he marry me,
then? Of course he was in love with me! Else I would not have
married him, would I? Are you satisfied now?" She boasted of the
rich and well-connected suitors she had rejected
I felt that I had side-tracked my flirtation. Touching her hand
would have been out of place now
A few minutes later, when I was saying my morning prayers, I
carefully kept my eyes away from her lest I should meet her
sneering glance.
When I had finished my devotions and had put my phylacteries
into their little bag I sat down to breakfast. "I don't like this
woman at all," I said to myself, looking at her. "In fact, I abhor
her. Why, then, am I so crazy to carry on with her?" It was the
same question that I had once asked myself concerning my
contradictory feelings for Red Esther, but my knowledge of life
had grown considerably since then
In those days I had made the discovery that there were "kisses
prompted by affection and kisses prompted by Satan." I now
added that even love of the flesh might be of two distinct kinds:
"There is love of body and soul, and there is a kind of love that is
of the body only," I theorized. "There is love and there is lust."
I thought of my feeling for Matilda. That certainly was love
Various details of my relations with Matilda came back to me
during these days
One afternoon, as I was brooding over these recollections, while
passively awaiting customers at my cart, I conjured up that night
scene when she sat on the great green sofa and I went into
ecstasies speaking of my prospective studies for admission to a
Russian university. I recalled how she had been irritated with me
for talking too loud and how, calling me "Talmud student," or
ninny, she had abruptly left the room. I had thought of the scene a
hundred times before, but now a new interpretation of it flashed
through my mind. It all seemed so obvious. I certainly had been a
ninny, an idiot. I burst into a sarcastic titter at Matilda's expense
and my own
"Of course I was a ninny," I scoffed at myself again and again.
I saw Matilda from a new angle. It was as if she had suddenly
slipped off her pedestal. Instead of lamenting my fallen idol,
however, I gloated over her fall. And, instead of growing cold to
her, I felt that she was nearer to me than ever, nearer and dearer
CHAPTER II
ONE morning, after breakfast, when I was about to
leave the house and Mrs. Levinsky was detaining me, trying to exact a
promise that I should
get somebody to share the lounge with me, I said: "I'll see about it.
I must be going. Good-by!" At this I took her hand, ostensibly in
farewell.
"Good-by," she said, coloring and trying to free herself
"Good-by," I repeated, shaking her hand gently and smiling upon
her.
She wrenched out her hand. I took hold of her chin, but she shook
it free
"Don't," she said, shyly, turning away
"What's the matter?" I said, gaily.
She faced about again. "I'll tell you what the matter is," she said.
"If you do that again you will have to move. If you think I am one
of those landladies--you know the kind I mean--you are
mistaken."
She uttered it in calm, rather amicable accents. So I replied: "Why,
why, of course I don't! Indeed you are the most respectable and the
most sweet-looking woman in the world!"
I stepped up close to ner and reached out my hand to seize hold of
her bare arm
"None of that, mister!" she flared up, drawing back. "Keep your
hands where they belong. If you try that again I'll break every bone
in your body. May both my hands be paralyzed if I don't!"
"'S-sh," I implored. Which only added fuel to her rage
"'S-sh nothing! I'll call in all the neighbors of the house and tell
them the kind of pious man you are. Saying his prayers three
times a day, indeed!"
I sneaked out of the house like a thief. I was wretched all day,
wondering how I should come to supper in the evening. I
wondered whether she was going to deliver me over to the jealous
wrath of her husband. I should have willingly forfeited my trunk
and settled in another place, but Mrs. Levinsky had an
approximate knowledge of the places where I was likely to do
business and there was the danger of a scene from her. Maximum
Max's theory did not seem to count for much. But then he had said
that one must know "how to go about it." Perhaps I had been too
hasty.
Late in the afternoon of that day Mrs. Levinsky came to see me.
Pretending to be passing along on some errand, she paused in
front of my cart, accosting me pleasantly
"I'll bet you are angry with me," she said, smiling broadly
"I am not angry at all," I answered, with feigned moroseness. "But
you certainly have a tongue. Whew! And, well, you can't take a
joke."
"I did not mean to hurt your feelings, Mr. Levinsky. May my luck
be as good as is my friendship for you. I certainly wish you no
evil. May God give me all the things I wish you. I just want you to
behave yourself. That's all. I am so much older than you, anyhow.
Look for somebody of your own age. You are not angry at me, are
you?" she added, suavely
She simply could not afford to lose the rent I paid her
Since then she held herself at a respectful distance from me
I called on smiling Mrs. Dienstog, my former landlady, in whose
house I was no stranger. I timed this visit at an hour when I knew
her to be alone
In this venture I met with scarcely any resistance at first. She let
me hold her hand and caress it and tell her how soft and tender it
was.
"Do you think so?" she said, coyly, her eyes clouding with
embarrassment. "I don't think they are soft at all. They would be if
I did not have so much washing and scrubbing to do." Then she
added, sadly: "America has made a servant of me. A land of gold,
indeed! When I was in my father's house I did not have to scrub
floors."
I attempted to raise her wrist to my lips, but she checked me. She
did not break away from me, however. She held me off, but she
did not let go of the index finger of my right hand, which she
clutched with all her might, playfully. As we struggled, we both
laughed nervously. At last I wrenched my finger from her grip,
and before she had time to thwart my purpose she was in my
arms. I was aiming a kiss at her lips, but she continued to turn and
twist, trying to clap her hand over my mouth as she did so, and my
kiss landed on one side of her chin
"Just one more, dearest," I raved. "Only one on your sweet little
lips, my dove. Only one. Only one."
She yielded. Our lips joined in a feverish kiss. Then she thrust me
away from her and, after a pause, shook her finger at me with a
good-natured gesture, as much as to say, "You must not do that,
bad boy, you."
I went away in high feather
I called on Mrs. Dienstog again the very next morning. She
received me well, but the first thing she did after returning my
greeting was to throw the door wide open and to offer me a chair
in full view of the hallway
"Oh, shut the door," I whispered, in disgust. "Don't be foolish."
She shook her head
"Just one kiss," I begged her. "You are so sweet."
She held firm
I came away sorely disappointed, but convinced that her
inflexibility was a mere matter of practical common sense
I kept these experiences and reflections to myself. Nor did an
indecent word ever cross my lips. In the street, while attending to
my business, I heard uncouth language quite often. The other
push-cart men would utter the most revolting improprieties in the
hearing of the women peddlers, or even address such talk to them,
as a matter of course. Nor was it an uncommon incident for a
peddler to fire a volley of obscenities at a departing housewife
who had priced something on his cart without buying it. These
things scandalized me beyond words. I could never get accustomed
to them
"Look at Levinsky standing there quiet as a kitten," the other
peddlers would twit me. "One would think he is so innocent he
doesn't know how to count two. Shy young fellows are the worst
devils in the world."
They were partly mistaken, during the first few weeks of our
acquaintance, at least. For the last thread that bound me to
chastity was still unbroken.
It was rapidly wearing away, though.
CHAPTER III
THE last thread snapped. It was the beginning of a
period of unrestrained misconduct. Intoxicated by the novelty of
yielding to Satan, I gave him a free hand and the result was
months of debauchery and self-disgust. The underworld women I
met, the humdrum filth of their life, and their matter-of-fact,
business-like attitude toward it never ceased to shock and repel
me. I never left a creature of this kind without abominating her and
myself, yet I would soon, sometimes during the very same evening,
call on her again or on some other woman of her class
Many of these women would simulate love, but they failed to
deceive me. I knew that they lied and shammed to me just as I did
to my customers, and their insincerities were only another source
of repugnance to me. But I frequented them in spite of it all, in
spite of myself. I spent on them more than I could afford.
Sometimes I would borrow money or pawn something for the
purpose of calling on them
The fact that these wretched women were not segregated as they
were in my native town probably had something to do with it.
Instead of being confined to a fixed out-of-the-way locality, they
were allowed to live in the same tenement-houses with
respectable people, beckoning to men from the front steps, under
open protection from the police. Indeed, the police, as silent
partners in the profits of their shame, plainly encouraged this vice
traffic. All of which undoubtedly helped to make a profligate of
me, but, of course, it would be preposterous to charge it all, or
even chiefly, to the police
My wild oats were flavored with a sense of my failure as a
business man, by my homesickness and passion for Matilda. My
push-cart bored me. I was hungry for intellectual interest, for
novel sensations. I was restless. Sometimes I would stop from
business in the middle of the day to plunge into a page of Talmud
at some near-by synagogue, and sometimes I would lay down the
holy book in the middle of a sentence and betake myself to the
residence of some fallen woman In my loneliness I would look for
some human element in my acquaintance with these women. I
would ply them with questions about their antecedents, their
family connections, as my mother had done the girl from "That"
Street
As a rule, my questions bored them and their answers were
obvious fabrications, but there were some exceptions
One of these, a plump, handsome, languid-eyed female named
Bertha, occupied two tiny rooms in which she lived with her
ten-year-old daughter. One of the two rooms was often full of
men, some of them with heavy beards, who would sit there, each
awaiting his turn, as patients do in the reception-room of a
physician, and whiling their time away by chaffing the little girl
upon her mother's occupation and her own future. Some of the
questions and jokes they would address to her were of the most
revolting nature, whereupon she would reply, "Oh, go to hell!" or
stick out her tongue resentfully
One day I asked Bertha why she was giving her child this sort of
bringing up
"I once tried to keep her in another place, with a respectable
family," she replied, ruefully. "But she would not stay there.
Besides, I missed her so much I could not stand it."
Another fallen woman who was frank with me proved to be a
native of Antomir.
When she heard that I was from the same place she flushed with
excitement
"Go away!" she shouted. "You're fooling me."
We talked of the streets, lanes, and yards of our birthplace, she
hailing every name I uttered with outbursts of wistful enthusiasm.
I wondered whether she knew of my mother's sensational death,
but I never disclosed my identity to her, though she, on her part,
told me with impetuous frankness the whole story of her life.
"You are a Talmudist, aren't you?" she asked.
"How do you know?"
"How do I know! As if it could not be seen by your face." A little
later she said: "I am sorry you came here. Honest. You should
have stayed at home and stuck to your holy books. It would have
been a thousand times better than coming to America and calling
on girls like myself. Honest."
She was known as Argentine Rachael.
It was from her that I first heard of the relations existing between
the underworld and the police of New York. But then my idea of
the Russian police had always been associated in my mind with
everything cruel and dishonest, so the corruption of the New York
police did not seem to be anything unusual
One day she said to me: "If you want a good street corner for your
cart I can fix it for you. I know Cuff-Button Leary."
"Who is he?"
"Why, have you never heard about him?' "Is he a big police
officer?"
"Bigger. The police are afraid of him."
"Why?"
"Because he is the boss. He is the district leader. What he says
goes."
She went on to explain that he was the local chieftain of the
dominant "politician party," as she termed it
"What is a politician party?" I asked
She tried to define it and, failing in her attempt, she said, with a
giggle: "Oh, you are a boob. You certainly are a green one. Why,
it's an organization, a lot of people who stick together, don't you
know."
She talked on, and the upshot was that I formed a conception of
political parties as of a kind of competing business companies
whose specialty it was to make millions by ruling some big city,
levying tribute on fallen women, thieves, and liquor-dealers, doing
favors to friends and meting out punishment to foes. I learned also
that District-Leader Leary owed his surname to a celebrated pair
of diamond cuff-buttons, said to have cost him fifteen thousand
dollars, from which he never was separated, and by the blaze of
which he could be recognized at a distance. "Well, shall I speak to
him about you?" she asked. I gave her an evasive answer
"Why, don't you want to have favors from a girl like me?" she
laughed
I colored, whereupon she remarked, reflectively: "I don't blame
you, either."
She never tired talking of our birthplace.
"Aren't you homesick?" she once demanded
"Not a bit," I answered, with bravado
"Then you have no heart. I have been away five times as long as
you, yet I am homesick."
"Really?"
"Honest."
She was as repellent to me as the rest of her class. I could never
bring myself to accept a cup of tea from her hands. And yet I
could not help liking her spirit. She was truthful and affectionate.
This and, above all, her yearning for our common birthplace
appealed to me strongly. I was very much inclined to think that in
spite of the horrible life she led she was a good girl. To hold this
sort of opinion about a woman of her kind seemed to be an
improper thing to do. I knew that according to the conventional
idea concerning women of the street they were all the most
hideous creatures in the world in every respect. So I would tell
myself that I must consider her, too, one of the most hideous
creatures in the world in every respect. But I did not. For I knew
that at heart she was better than some of the most respectable
people I had met. It was one of the astonishing discrepancies I had
discovered in the world. Also, it was one of the things I had found
to be totally different from what people usually thought they were.
I was gradually realizing that the average man or woman was full
of all sorts of false notions.
CHAPTER IV
I ENROLLED in a public evening school. I threw
myself into my new studies with unbounded enthusiasm. After all,
it was a matter of book-learning, something in which I felt at
home. Some of my classmates had a much better practical
acquaintance with English than I, but few of these could best the
mental training that my Talmud education had given me. As a
consequence, I found things irksomely slow. Still, the teacher--a
young East Side dude, hazel-eyed, apple-faced, and girlish of
feature and voice--was a talkative fellow, with oratorical
proclivities, and his garrulousness was of great value to me. He
was of German descent and, as I subsequently learned from
private conversations with him, his mother was American-born,
like himself, so English was his mother-tongue in the full sense of
the term. He would either address us wholly in that tongue, or
intersperse it with interpretations in labored German, which,
thanks to my native Yiddish, I had no difficulty in understanding.
His name was Bender. At first I did not like him. Yet I would
hang on his lips, striving to memorize every English word I could
catch and watching intently, not only his enunciation, but also his
gestures, manners, and mannerisms, and accepting it all as part and
parcel of the American way of speaking Sign language, which was
the chief means of communication in the early days of mankind,
still holds its own. It retains sway over nations of the highest
culture with tongues of unlimited wealth and variety. And the
gestures of the various countries are as different as their spoken
languages. The gesticulations and facial expressions with which
an American will supplement his English are as distinctively
American as those of a Frenchman are distinctively French. One
can tell the nationality of a stranger by his gestures as readily as
by his language. In a vague, general way I had become aware of
this before, probably from contact with some American-born Jews
whose gesticulations, when they spoke Yiddish, impressed me as
utterly un-Yiddish. And so I studied Bender's gestures almost as
closely as I did his words
Even the slight lisp in his "s" I accepted as part of the "real
Yankee" utterance. Nor, indeed, was this unnatural, in view of the
"th" sound, that stumbling-block of every foreigner, whom it must
needs strike as a full-grown lisp. Bender spoke with a nasal twang
which I am now inclined to think he paraded as an accessory to
the over-dignified drawl he affected in the class-room. But then I
had noticed this kind of twang in the delivery of other Americans
as well, so, altogether, English impressed me as the language of a
people afflicted with defective organs of speech. Or else it would
seem to me that the Americans had normal organs of speech, but
that they made special efforts to distort the "t" into a "th" and the
"v" into a "w."
One of the things I discovered was the unsmiling smile. I often saw
it on Bender and on other native Americans-- on the principal of
the school, for instance, who was an Anglo-Saxon. In Russia,
among the people I knew, at least, one either smiled or not. here I
found a peculiar kind of smile that was not a smile. It would flash
up into a lifeless flame and forthwith go out again, leaving the
face cold and stiff. "They laugh with their teeth only," I would say
to myself. But, of course, I saw "real smiles," too, on Americans,
and I instinctively learned to discern the smile of mere politeness
from the sort that came from one's heart. Nevertheless, one
evening, when we were reading in our school-book that "Kate had
a smile for everybody," and I saw that this was stated in praise of
Kate, I had a disagreeable vision of a little girl going around the
streets and grinning upon everybody she met
I abhorred the teacher for his girlish looks and affectations, but his
twang and "th" made me literally pant with hatred. At the same
time I strained every nerve to imitate him in these very sounds. It
was a hard struggle, and when I had overcome all difficulties at
last, and my girlish-looking teacher complimented me
enthusiastically upon my 'thick" and "thin." my aversion for him
suddenly thawed out
Two of my classmates were a grizzly, heavy-set man and his
sixteen-year-old son, both trying to learn English after a long day's
work. On one occasion, when it was the boy's turn to read and he
said "bat" for "bath," the teacher bellowed, imperiously: "Stick out
the tip of your tongue! This way."
The boy tried, and failed
"Oh, you have the brain of a horse!" his father said, impatiently, in
Yiddish. "Let me try, Mr. Teacher." And screwing up his
bewhiskered old face, he yelled, "Bat-t-t!" and then he shot out
half an inch of thick red tongue
The teacher grinned, struggling with a more pronounced
manifestation of his mirth
"His tongue missed the train," I jested, in Yiddish
One of the other pupils translated it into English, whereupon
Bender's suppressed laughter broke loose, and I warmed to him
still more.
Election Day was drawing near. The streets were alive with the
banners, transparencies, window portraits of rival candidates,
processions, fireworks, speeches. I heard scores of words from the
political jargon of the country. I was continually asking questions,
inquiring into the meaning of the things I saw or heard around me.
Each day brought me new experiences, fresh impressions, keen
sensations. An American day seemed to be far richer in substance
than an Antomir year. I was in an everlasting flutter. I seemed to
be panting for breath for the sheer speed with which I was rushing
through life
What was the meaning of all this noise and excitement? Everybody
I spoke to said it was "all humbug." People were making jokes at
the expense of all politicians, irrespective of parties. "One is as
bad as the other," I heard all around me. "They are all thieves."
Argentine Rachael's conception of politics was clearly the
conception of respectable people as well
Rejoicing of the Law is one of our great autumn holidays. It is a
day of picturesque merrymaking and ceremony, when the
stringent rule barring women out of a synagogue is relaxed. On
that day, which was a short time before Election Day, I saw an
East Side judge, a Gentile, at the synagogue of the Sons of
Antomir. He was very short, and the high hat he wore gave him
droll dignity. He went around the house of worship kissing babies
in their mothers' arms and saying pleasant things to the
worshipers. Every little while he would instinctively raise his
hand to his high hat and then, reminding himself that one did not
bare one's head in a synagogue, he would feverishly drop his hand
again
This part of the scene was so utterly, so strikingly un-Russian that I
watched it open-mouthed
"A great friend of the Jewish people, isn't he?" the worshiper who
stood next to me remarked, archly
"He is simply in love with us," I chimed in, with a laugh, by way of
showing off my understanding of things American. "It's Jewish
votes he is after."
"Still, he's not a bad fellow," the man by my side remarked. "If you
have a trial in his court he'll decide it in your favor."
"How is that?" I asked, perplexed. "And how about the other
fellow? He can't decide in favor of both, can he?"
"There is no 'can't' in America," the man by my side returned, with
a sage smile
I pondered the riddle until I saw light. "I know what you mean," I
said. "He does favors only to those who vote for his party."
"You have hit it, upon my word! You're certainly no longer a green
one."
"Voting alone may not be enough, though," another worshiper
interposed. "If you ever happen to have a case in his court, take a
lawyer who is close to the judge. Understand?"
All such talks notwithstanding, the campaign, or the spectacular
novelty of it, thrilled me.
Bender delivered a speech to our class, but all I could make of it
was that it dealt with elections in general, and that it was
something solemn and lofty, like a prayer or a psalm
Election Day came round. I did not rest. I was continually
snooping around, watching the politicians and their "customers,"
as we called the voters.
Traffic in votes was quite an open business in those days, and I
saw a good deal of it, on a side-street in the vicinity ot a certain
polling-place, or even in front of the polling-place itself, under the
very eyes of policemen.
I saw the bargaining, the haggling between buyer and seller; I saw
money passed from the one to the other; I saw a heeler put a ballot
into the hand of a man whose vote he had just purchased (the
present system of voting had not yet been introduced) and then
march him into a polling-place to make sure that he deposited the
ballot for which he had paid him. I saw a man beaten black and
blue because he had cheated the party that had paid him for his
vote. I saw Leary, blazing cuff-buttons and all. He was a
broad-shouldered man with rather pleasing features. I saw him
listening to a whispered report from one of the men whom I had
seen buying votes.
There was no such thing as political life in the Russia of that
period. The only political parties in existence there were the secret
organizations of revolutionists, of people for whom government
detectives were incessantly searching so that they might be
hanged or sent to Siberia. As a consequence a great many of our
immigrants landed in America absolutely ignorant of the meaning
of citizenship, and the first practical instructors on the subject into
whose hands they fell were men like Cuff-Button Leary or his
political underlings. These taught them that a vote was something
to be sold for two or three dollars, with the prospect of future
favors into the bargain, and that a politician was a specialist in
doing people favors. Favors, favors, favors! I heard the word so
often, in connection with politics, that the two words became
inseparable in my mind. A politician was a "master of favors," as
my native tongue would have it
I attended school with religious devotion. This and the rapid
progress I was making endeared me to Bender, and he gave me
special attention. He taught me grammar, which I relished most
keenly. The prospect of going to school in the evening would
loom before me, during the hours of boredom or distress I spent at
my cart, as a promise of divine pleasure
Some English words inspired me with hatred, as though they were
obnoxious living things. The disagreeable impression they
produced on me was so strong that it made them easy to
memorize, so that I welcomed them in spite of my aversion or,
rather, because of it. The list of these words included
"satisfaction," "think," and "because."
At the end of the first month I knew infinitely more English than I
did Russian
One evening I asked Bender to tell me the "real difference"
between "I wrote" and "I have written." He had explained it to me
once or twice before, but I was none the wiser for it
"What do you mean by 'real difference'?" he demanded. "I have
told you, haven't I, that 'I wrote' is the perfect tense, while 'I have
written' is the imperfect tense." This was in accordance with the
grammatical terminology of those days
"I know," I replied in my wretched English, "but what is the
difference between these two tenses? That's just what bothers
me."
"Well," he said, grandly, "the perfect refers to what was, while the
imperfect means something that has been."
"But when do you say 'was' and when do you say 'has been'? That's
just the question." "You're a nuisance, Levinsky," was his final
retort
I was tempted to say, "And you are a blockhead." But I did not, of
course.
At the bottom of my heart I had a conviction that one who had not
studied the Talmud could not be anything but a blockhead
The first thing he did the next evening was to take up the same
subject with me, the rest of the class watching the two of us
curiously. I could see that his performance of the previous night
had been troubling him and that he was bent upon making a better
showing. He spent the entire lesson of two hours with me
exclusively, trying all sorts of elucidations and illustrations, all
without avail. The trouble with him was that he pictured the
working of a foreigner's mind, with regard to English, as that of
his own. It did not occur to him that people born to speak another
language were guided by another language logic, so to say, and
that in order to reach my understanding he would have to impart
his ideas in terms of my own linguistic psychology. Still, one of
his numerous examples gave me a glimmer of light and finally it
all became clear to me. I expressed my joy so boisterously that it
brought a roar of laughter from the other men
He made a pet of me. I became the monitor of his class (that is, I
would bring in and distribute the books), and he often had me
escort him home, so as to talk to me as we walked. He was
extremely companionable and loquacious. He had a passion for
sharing with others whatever knowledge he had, or simply for
hearing himself speak. Upon reaching the house in which he lived
we would pause in front of the building for an hour or even more.
Or else we would start on a ramble, usually through Grand Street
to East River and back again through East Broadway. His favorite
topics during these walks were civics, American history, and his
own history
"Dil-i-gence, perr-severance, tenacity!" he would drawl out, with
nasal dignity. "Get these three words engraved on your mind,
Levinsky. Diligence, perseverance, tenacity."
And by way of illustration he would enlarge on how he had fought
his way through City College, how he had won some prizes and
beaten a rival in a race for the presidency of a literary society;
how he had obtained his present two occupations--as
custom-house clerk during the day and as school-teacher in the
winter evenings--and how he was going to work himself up to
something far more dignified and lucrative. He unbosomed
himself to me of all his plans; he confided some of his intimate
secrets in me, often dwelling on "my young lady," who was a first
cousin of his and to whom he had practically been engaged since
boyhood
All this, his boasts not excepted, were of incalculable profit to me.
It introduced me to detail after detail of American life. It
accelerated the process of "getting me out of my greenhornhood"
in the better sense of the phrase
Bender was an ardent patriot. He was sincerely proud of his
country. He was firmly convinced that it was superior to any other
country, absolutely in every respect. One evening, in the course of
one of those rambles of ours, he took up the subject of political
parties with me. He explained the respective principles of the
Republicans and the Democrats. Being a Democrat himself, he
eulogized his own organization and assailed its rival, but he did it
strictly along the lines of principle and policy
"The principles of a party are its soul," he thundered, probably
borrowing the phrase from some newspaper. And he proceeded to
show that the Democratic soul was of superior quality
He went into the question of State rights, of personal liberty, of
"Jeffersonian ideals." It was all an abstract formula, and I was so
overwhelmed by the image of a great organization fighting for
lofty ideals that the concrete question of political baby-kissing, of
Cuff-Button Leary's power, and of the scenes I had witnessed on
Election Day escaped me at the moment. I merely felt that all I
had heard about politics and political parties from Argentine
Rachael and from other people was the product of untutored
brains that looked at things from the special viewpoint of the
gutter
Presently, however, the screaming discrepancy between
Cuff-Button Leary's rule and "Jeffersonian ideals" did occur to
me. I conveyed my thoughts to Bender as well as I could
He flared up. "Nonsense," he said, "Mr. Leary is the best man in
the city.
He is a friend of mine and I am proud of it. Ask him for any favor
and he will do it for you if he has to get out of bed in the middle
of the night.
He spends a fortune on the poor. He has the biggest heart of any
man in all New York, I don't care who he is. He helps a lot of
people out of trouble, but he can't help everybody, can he? That's
why you hear so many bad things about him. He has a lot of
enemies. But I love him just for the enemies he has made."
"People say he collects bribes from disreputable women," I
ventured to urge.
"It's a lie. It's all rumors," he shouted, testily
"On Election Day I saw a man who was buying votes whisper to
him."
"Whisper to him! Whisper to him! Ha-ha, ha-ha! Well, is that all
the evidence you have got against Mr. Leary? I suppose that's the
kind of evidence you have about the buying of votes, too. I am
afraid you don't quite understand what you see, Levinsky."
His answers were far from convincing. I was wondering what
interest he had to defend Leary, to deny things that everybody
saw. But he disarmed me by the force of his irritation
Bender himself was a clean, honest fellow. In his peculiar
American way, he was very religious, and I knew that his piety
was not a mere affectation.
Which was another puzzle to me, for all the educated Jews of my
birthplace were known to be atheists. He belonged to a Reformed
synagogue, where he conducted a Bible class
One evening he expanded on the beauty of the English translation
of the Old Testament. He told me it was the best English to be
found in all literature
"Study the Bible, Levinsky! Read it and read it again."
The suggestion took my fancy, for I could read the English Bible
with the aid of the original Hebrew text. I began with Psalm 104,
the poem that had thrilled me when I was on shipboard. I read the
English version of it before Bender until I pronounced the words
correctly. I thought I realized their music. I got the chapter by
heart. When I recited it before Bender he was joyously surprised
and called me a "corker."
"What is a corker?" I asked, beamingly
"It's slang for 'a great fellow.'" With which he burst into a lecture
on slang
I often sat up till the small hours, studying the English Bible. I had
many a quarrel with Mrs. Levinsky over the kerosene I consumed.
Finally it was arranged that I should pay her five cents for every
night I sat up late. But this merely changed the bone of contention
between us. Instead of quarreling over kerosene, we would quarrel
over hours--over the question whether I really had sat up late or
not.
To this day, whenever I happen to utter certain Biblical words or
names in their English version, they seem to smell of Mrs.
Levinsky's lamp.
CHAPTER V
EVENING school closed in April. The final session
was of a festive character. Bender, excited and sentimental,
distributed some presents
"Promise me that you will read this glorious book from beginning
to end, Levinsky," he said, solemnly, as he handed me a new
volume of Dombey and Son and a small dictionary. "We may
never meet again. So you will have something to remind you that
once upon a time you had a teacher whose name was Bender and
who tried to do his duty."
I wanted to thank him, to say something handsome, but partly
because I was overcome by his gift, partly because I was at a loss
for words, I merely kept saying, sheepishly, "Thank you, thank
you, thank you, thank you."
That volume of Dickens proved to be the ruin of my push-cart
business and caused me some weeks of the blackest misery I had
ever experienced
As I started to read the voluminous book I found it an extremely
difficult task. It seemed as though it was written in a language
other than the one I had been studying during the past few months.
I had to turn to the dictionary for the meaning of every third word,
if not more often, while in many cases several words in succession
were Greek to me. Some words could not be found in my little
dictionary at all, and in the case of many others the English
definitions were as much of an enigma to me as the words they
were supposed to interpret. Yet I was making headway. I had to
turn to the dictionary less and less often
It was the first novel I had ever read. The dramatic interest of the
narrative, coupled with the poetry and the humor with which it is
so richly spiced, was a revelation to me. I had had no idea that
Gentiles were capable of anything so wonderful in the line of
book-writing. To all of which should be added my
self-congratulations upon being able to read English of this sort, a
state of mind which I was too apt to mistake for my raptures over
Dickens. It seemed to me that people who were born to speak this
language were of a superior race
I was literally intoxicated, and, drunkard-like, I would delay going
to business from hour to hour. The upshot was that I became so
badly involved in debt that I dared not appear with my push-cart
for fear of scenes from my creditors. Moreover, I scarcely had
anything to sell. Finally I disposed of what little stock I still
possessed for one-fourth of its value, and, to my relief as well as
to my despair, my activities as a peddler came to an end
I went on reading, or, rather, studying, Dombey and Son with
voluptuous abandon till I found myself literally penniless.
I procured a job with a man who sold dill pickles to Jewish
grocers. From his description of my duties-- chiefly as his
bookkeeper--I expected that they would leave me plenty of
leisure, between whiles, to read my Dickens. I was mistaken. My
first attempt to open the book during business hours, which
extended from 8 in the morning to bedtime, was suppressed. My
employer, who had the complexion of a dill pickle, by the way,
proved to be a severe taskmaster, absurdly exacting, and so
niggardly that I dared not take a decent-looking pickle for my
lunch.
I left him at the end of the second week, obtaining employment in
a prosperous fish-store next door. My new "boss" was a kinder
and pleasanter man, but then the malodorous and clamorous chaos
of his place literally sickened me
I left the fishmonger and jumped my board at Mrs. Levinsky's to go
to a New Jersey farm, where I was engaged to read Yiddish novels
to the illiterate wife of a New York merchant, but my client was
soon driven from the place by the New Jersey mosquitoes and I
returned to New York with two dollars in my pocket. I worked as
assistant in a Hebrew school where the American-born boys
mocked my English and challenged me to have an "American
fight" with them, till--on the third day--I administered a sound
un-American thrashing to one of them and lost my job
Maximum Max got the proprietor of one of the dance-halls in
which he did his instalment business to let me sleep in his
basement in return for some odd jobs. While there I earned from
two to three dollars a week in tips and a good supper every time
there was a wedding in the place, which happened two or three
times a week. I had plenty of time for Dickens (I was still
burrowing my way through Dombey and Son) while the "affairs"
of the hall--weddings, banquets, balls, mass meetings--were quite
exciting. I felt happy, but this happiness of mine did not last long.
I was soon sent packing.
This is the way it came about. It was in the large ballroom of the
establishment in question that I saw a "modern" dance for the first
time in my life. It produced a bewitching effect on me. Here were
highly respectable young women who would let men encircle their
waists, each resting her arm on her partner's shoulder, and then go
spinning and hopping with him, with a frank relish of the physical
excitement in which they were joined. As I watched one of these
girls I seemed to see her surrender much of her womanly reserve.
I knew that the dance--an ordinary waltz--was considered highly
proper, yet her pose and his struck me as a public confession of
unseemly mutual interest. I almost blushed for her. And for the
moment I was in love with her. As this young woman went round
and round her face bore a faint smile of embarrassed satisfaction.
I knew that it was a sex smile. Another woman danced with grave
mien, and I knew that it was the gravity of sex
To watch dancing couples became a passion with me. One
evening, as I stood watching the waltzing members of a wedding
party, a married sister of the bride's shouted to me in Yiddish:
"What are you doing here? Get out. You're a kill-joy."
This was her way of alluding to my unpresentable appearance.
When the proprietor heard of the incident he sent for me. He told
me that I was a nuisance and bade me find another "hang-out" for
myself.
The following month or two constitute the most wretched period
of my life in America. I slept in the cheapest lodging-houses on
the Bowery and not infrequently in some express-wagon. I was
constantly borrowing quarters, dimes, nickels.
Maximum Max was very kind to me. As I could not meet him at
the stores, where I dared not face my creditors, I would waylay
him in front of his residence
"I tell you what, Levinsky," he once said to me. "You ought to
learn some trade. It's plain you were not born to be a business
man. The black dots [meaning the words in books] take up too
much room in your head."
Finally I owed him so many quarters, and even half-dollars, that I
had not the courage to ask him for more
Hunger was a frequent experience. I had been no stranger to the
sensation at Antomir, at least after the death of my mother; but,
for some reason, I was now less capable of bearing it. The pangs I
underwent were at times so acute that I would pick up cigarette
stubs in the street and smoke them, without being a smoker, for
the purpose of having the pain supplanted by dizziness and
nausea. Sometimes, too, I would burn my hand with a match or
bite it as hard as I could. Any kind of suffering or excitement was
welcome, provided it made me forget my hunger
When famished I would sometimes saunter through the streets on
the lower East Side which disreputable creatures used as their
market-place. It was mildly exciting to watch women hunt for
men and men hunt for women: their furtive glances, winks, tacit
understandings, bargainings, the little subterfuges by which they
sought to veil their purpose from the other passers-by; the way a
man would take stock of a passing woman to ascertain whether
she was of the approachable class; the timidity of some of the men
and the matter-of-fact ease of others; the mutual spying of two or
three rivals aiming at the same quarry; the pretended abstraction
of the policemen, and a hundred and one other details of the
traffic. Many a time I joined in the chase without having a cent in
my pocket, stop to discuss terms with a woman in front of some
window display, or around a corner, only soon to turn away from
her on the pretense that I had expected to be taken to her
residence while she proposed going to some hotel. Thus, held by a
dull, dogged fascination, I would tramp around, sometimes for
hours, until, feeling on the verge of a fainting-spell with hunger
and exhaustion, I would sit down on the front steps of some house
I often thought of Mr. Even, but nothing was further from my mind
than to let him see me in my present plight. One morning I met
him, face to face, on the Bowery, but he evidently failed to
recognize me
One afternoon I called on Argentine Rachael. "Look here,
Rachace," I said, in a studiously matter-of-fact voice, "I'm dead
broke to-day. I'll pay you in a day or two." Her face fell. "I never
trust. Never," she said, shaking her head mournfully. "It brings
bad luck, anyhow."
I felt like sinking into the ground. "All right, I'll see you some
other time," I said, with an air of bravado
She ran after me. "Wait a moment. What's your hurry?"
By way of warding off "bad luck," she offered to lend me three
dollars in cash, out of which I could pay her. I declined her offer.
She pleaded and expostulated. But I stood firm, and I came away
in a state of the blackest wretchedness and self-disgust
I could never again bring myself to show my face at her house
A little music-store was now my chief resort. It was kept by a man
whom I had met at the synagogue of the Sons of Antomir, a
former cantor who now supplemented his income from the store
by doing occasional service as a wedding bard. The musicians,
singers, and music-teachers who made the place their
headquarters had begun by taking an interest in me, but the dimes
and nickels I was now unceasingly "borrowing" of them had
turned me into an outcast in their eyes. I felt it keenly. I would
sulk around the store, anxious to leave, and loitering in spite of
myself. There was a piano in the store, upon which they often
played. This, their talks of music, and their venomous gossip had
an irresistible fascination for me
I noticed that morbid vanity was a common disease among them.
Some of them would frankly and boldly sing their own
panegyrics, while others, more discreet and tactful, let their high
opinions of themselves be inferred. Nor could they conceal the
grudges they bore one another, the jealousies with which they
were eaten up. I thought them ludicrous, repugnant, and yet they
lured me. I felt that some of those among them who were most
grotesque and revolting in their selfishness had something in their
make-up--certain interests, passions, emotions, visions-- which
placed them above the common herd. This was especially true of
a spare, haggard-looking violinist, boyish of figure and cat-like of
manner, with deep dark rings under his insatiable blue eyes. He
called himself Octavius. He was literally consumed by the blaze
of his own conceit and envy. When he was not in raptures over the
poetry, subtlety, or depth of his own playing or compositions, he
would give way to paroxysms of malice and derision at the
expense of some other musician, from his East Side rivals all the
way up to Sarasate, who was then at the height of his career and
had recently played in New York. Wagner was his god, yet no
sooner would somebody else express admiration for Wagner
music than he would offer to show that all the good things in the
works of the famous German were merely so many paraphrased
plagiarisms from the compositions of other men. He possessed a
phenomenal memory. He seemed to remember every note in every
opera, symphony, oratorio, or concerto that anybody ever
mentioned, and there was not a piece of music by a celebrated
man but he was ready to "prove" that it had been stolen from some
other celebrated man
His invective was particularly violent when he spoke of those
Jewish immigrants in the musical profession whose success had
extended beyond the East Side. He could never mention without a
jeer or some coarse epithet the name of a Madison Street boy, a
violinist, who was then attracting attention in Europe and who
was booked for a series of concerts before the best audiences in
the United States
He was a passionate phrase-maker. Indeed, it would have been
difficult to determine which afforded him more pleasure--his
self-laudations or the colorful, pungent, often preposterous
language in which they were clothed
"I am writing something with hot tears in it," I once heard him
brag.
"They'll be so hot they'll scald the heart of every one who hears it,
provided he has a heart."
He had given me some nickels, yet his boasts would fill me with
disgust. On the occasion just mentioned I was so irritated with my
poverty and with the whole world that I was seized with an
irresistible desire to taunt him. As he continued to eulogize his
forthcoming masterpiece I threw out a Hebrew quotation: "Let
others praise thee, but not thine own mouth."
He took no heed of my thrust. But since then he never looked at
me and I never dared ask him for a nickel again
He had a ferocious temper. When it broke loose it would be a
veritable volcano of revolting acrimony, his thin, firm opening
and snapping shut in a peculiar fashion, as though he were
squirting venom all over the floor. He was as sensual as
Maximum Max, only his voluptuous talks of women were far
more offensive in form. But then his lewd drivel was apt to glitter
with flashes of imagination. I do not remember ever seeing him in
good humor
BOOK VII
MY TEMPLE
CHAPTER I
ONE Friday evening in
September I stood on Grand Street with my eyes raised to the big
open windows of a dance-hall on the second floor of a brick
building on the opposite side of the lively thoroughfare. Only the
busts of the dancers could be seen. This and the distance that
divided me from the hall enveloped the scene in mystery. As the
couples floated by, as though borne along on waves of the music,
the girls clinging to the men, their fantastic figures held me
spellbound. Several other people were watching the dancers from
the street, mostly women, who gazed at the appearing and
disappearing images with envying eyes
Presently I was accosted by a dandified-looking young man who
rushed at me with an exuberant, "How are you?" in English. He
was dressed in the height of the summer fashion. He looked
familiar to me, but I was at a loss to locate him
"Don't you know me? Try to remember!"
It was Gitelson, my fellow-passenger on board the ship that had
brought me to America, the tailor who clung to my side when I
made my entry into the New World, sixteen months before
The change took my breath away
"You didn't recognize me, did you?" he said, with a triumphant
snicker, pulling out his cuffs so as to flaunt their gold or gilded
buttons
He asked me what I was doing, but he was more interested in
telling me about himself. That cloak-contractor who picked him
up near Castle Garden had turned out to be a skinflint and a
slave-driver. He had started him on five dollars a week for work
the market price of which was twenty or thirty. So Gitelson left
him as soon as he realized his real worth, and he had been making
good wages ever since. Being an excellent tailor, he was much
sought after, and although the trade had two long slack seasons he
always had plenty to do. He told me that he was going to that
dance-hall across the street, which greatly enhanced his
importance in my eyes and seemed to give reality to the floating
phantoms that I had been watching in those windows.
He said he was in a hurry to go up there, as he had "an
appointment with a lady" (this in English), yet he went on
describing the picnics, balls, excursions he attended
Thereupon I involuntarily shot a look at his jaunty straw hat,
thinking of his gray forelock. I did so several times. I could not
help it. Finally my furtive glances attracted his attention
"What are you looking at? Anything wrong with my hat?" he
asked, baring his head. His hair was freshly trimmed and dudishly
dressed. As I looked at the patch of silver hair that shone in front
of a glossy expanse of brown, he exclaimed, with a laugh: "Oh,
you mean that! That's nothing. The ladies like me all the same
He went on boasting, but he did it in an inoffensive way. He
simply could not get over the magic transformation that had come
over him. While in his native place his income had amounted to
four rubles (about two dollars) a week, his wages here were now
from thirty to forty dollars. He felt like a peasant suddenly turned
to a prince. But he spoke of his successes in a pleasing, soft voice
and with a kindly, confiding smile that won my heart.
Altogether he made the impression of an exceedingly
unaggressive, good-natured fellow, without anything like ginger in
his make-up
After he had bragged his fill he invited me to have a glass of soda
with him. There was a soda-stand on the next corner, and when
we reached it I paused, but he pulled me away
"Come on," he said, disdainfully. "We'll go into a drug-store, or,
better still, let's go to an ice-cream parlor."
This I hesitated to do because of my shabby clothes. When he
divined the cause of my embarrassment he was touched
"Come on!' he said, with warm hospitality, uttering the two words
in English. "When I say 'Come on' I know what I am talking
about."
"But your lady is waiting for you." "She can wait. Ladies are never
on time, anyhow."
"But maybe she is."
"If she is she can dance with some of the other fellows. I wouldn't
be jealous. There are plenty of other ladies. I should not take fifty
ladies for this chance of seeing you. Honest."
He took me into a little candy-store, dazzlingly lighted and
mirrored and filled with marble-topped tables
We seated ourselves and he gave the order. He did so rather
swaggeringly, but his manner to me was one of affectionate and
compassionate respectfulness
"Oh, I am so glad to see you," he said. "You remember the ship?"
"As if one could ever forget things of that kind."
"I have often thought of you. 'I wonder what has become of him,' I
said to myself." He did not remember my name, or perhaps he
had never known it, so I had to introduce myself afresh. The
contrast between his flashy clothes and my frowsy,
wretched-looking appearance, as I saw ourselves in the mirrors on
either side of me, made me sorely ill at ease. The brilliancy of the
gaslight chafed my nerves. It was as though it had been turned on
for the express purpose of illuminating my disgrace. I was longing
to go away, but Gitelson fell to questioning me about my affairs
once more, and this time he did so with such unfeigned concern
that I told him the whole cheerless story of my sixteen months' life
in America
He was touched. In his mild, unemphatic way he expressed
heartfelt sympathy
"But why don't you learn some trade?" he inquired. "You don't
seem to be fit for business, anyhow" (the last two words in
mispronounced English)
"Everybody is telling me that."
"There you are. You just listen to me, Mr. Levinsky. You won't be
sorry for it." He proposed machine-operating in a cloak-shop,
which paid even better than tailoring and was far easier to learn.
Finally he offered to introduce me to an operator who would teach
me the trade, and to pay him my tuition fee
He went into details. He continued to address me as Mr. Levinsky
and tried to show me esteem as his intellectual superior, but, in
spite of himself, as it were, he gradually took a respectfully
contemptuous tone with me
"Don't be a lobster, Mr. Levinsky." (" Lobster" he said in English.)
"This is not Russia. Here a fellow must be no fool. There is no
sense in living the way you do. Do as Gitelson tells you, and you'll
live decently, dress decently, and lay by a dollar or two. There are
lots of educated fellows in the shops." He told me of some of
these, particularly of one young man who was a shopmate of his.
"He never comes to work without some book" he said.
"When there is not enough to do he reads. When he has to wait for
a new 'bundle,' as we call it, he reads. Other fellows carry on, but
he is always reading. He is so highly educated he could read any
kind of book, and I don't believe there is a book in the world that
he has not read. He is saving up money to go to college."
On parting he became fully respectful again. "Do as I tell you, Mr.
Levinsky," he said. "Take up cloak-making."
He made me write down his address. He expected that I would do
it in Yiddish. When he saw me write his name and the name of
the street in English he said, reverently: "Writing English already!
There is a mind for you! If I could write like that I could become a
designer. Well, don't lose the address. Call on me, and if you
make up your mind to take up cloak-making just say the word and
I'll fix you up. When Gitelson says he will, he will." The image of
that cloak-operator reading books and laying by money for a
college education haunted me. Why could I not do the same? I
pictured myself working and studying and saving money for the
kind of education which Matilda had dinned into my ears
I accepted Gitelson's offer. Cloak-making or the cloak business as
a career never entered my dreams at that time. I regarded the trade
merely as a stepping-stone to a life of intellectual interests
CHAPTER II
THE operator to whom Gitelson apprenticed me was
a short, plump, dark-complexioned fellow named Joe. I have but a
dim recollection of his features, though I distinctly remember his
irresistible wide-eyed smile and his emotional nature
He taught me to bind seams, and later to put in pockets, to stitch
on "under collars," and so forth. After a while he began to pay me
a small weekly wage, he himself being paid, for our joint work, by
the piece. The shop was not the manufacturer's. It belonged to one
of his contractors, who received from him "bundles" of material
which his employees (tailors, machine - operators, pressers, and
finisher girls) made up into cloaks or jackets. The cheaper goods
were made entirely by operators; the better grades partly by
tailors, partly by operators, or wholly by tailors; but these were
mostly made "inside," in the manufacturer's own establishment.
The designing, cutting, and making of samples were "inside"
branches exclusively. Gitelson, as a skilled tailor, was an "inside"
man, being mostly employed on samples
My work proved to be much harder and the hours very much
longer than I had anticipated. I had to toil from six in the morning
to nine in the evening.
(Joe put in even more time. I always found him grinding away
rapturously when I came to the shop in the morning, and always
left him toiling as rapturously when I went home in the evening.)
Ours is a seasonal trade. All the work of the year is crowded into
two short seasons of three and two months, respectively, during
which one is to earn enough to last him twelve months (only
sample-makers, high-grade tailors like Gitelson, were kept busy
throughout the year). But then wages were comparatively high, so
that a good mechanic, particularly an operator, could make as
much as seventy-five dollars a week, working about fifteen hours
a day. However, during the first two or three weeks I was too
much borne down by the cruelty of my drudgery to be interested
in the luring rewards which it held out. Not being accustomed to
physical exertion of any kind, I felt like an innocent man suddenly
thrown into prison and put at hard labor. I was shocked. I was
crushed. I was continually looking at the clock, counting the
minutes, and when I came home I would feel so sore in body and
spirit that I could not sleep. Studying or reading was out of the
question
Moreover, as a peddler I seemed to have belonged to the world of
business, to the same class as the rich, the refined, while now,
behold! I was a workman, a laborer, one of the masses. I pitied
myself for a degraded wretch. And when some of my shopmates
indulged in coarse pleasantry in the hearing of the finisher girls it
would hurt me personally, as a confirmation of my disgrace. "And
this is the kind of people with whom I am doomed to associate!" I
would lament. In point of fact, there were only four or five fellows
of this kind in a shop of fifty. Nor were some of the peddlers or
music-teachers I had known more modest of speech than the worst
of these cloak-makers. What was more, I felt that some of my
fellow-employees were purer and better men than I. But that did
not matter. I abhorred the shop and everybody in it as a well-bred
convict abhors his jail and his fellow-inmates
When the men quarreled they would call one another, among other
things, "bundle-eaters." This meant that they accused one another
of being ever hungry for bundles of raw material, ever eager to
"gobble up all the work in the shop." I wondered how one could
be anxious for physical toil. They seemed to be a lot of savages
The idea of leaving the shop often crossed my mind, but I never
had the courage to take it seriously. I had tried my hand at
peddling and failed.
Was I a failure as a mechanic as well? Was I unfit for anything?
The other fellows at the shop had a definite foothold in life, while
I was a waif, a ne'er-do-well, nearly two years in America with
nothing to show for it.
Thoughts such as these had a cowing effect on me. They made me
feel somewhat like the fresh prisoner who has been put to work at
stone-breaking to have his wild spirit broken. I dared not give up
my new occupation. I would force myself to work hard, and as I
did so the very terrors of my toil would fascinate me, giving me a
sense of my own worth. As the jackets that bore my stitches kept
piling up, the concrete result of my useful performance would
become a source of moral satisfaction to me. And when I received
my first wages--the first money I had ever earned by the work of
my hands--it seemed as if it were the first money I had ever
earned honestly
By little and little I got used to my work and even to enjoy its
processes.
Moreover, the thinking and the dreaming I usually indulged in
while plying my machine became a great pleasure to me. It
seemed as though one's mind could not produce such interesting
thoughts or images unless it had the rhythmic whir of a
sewing-machine to stimulate it
I now ate well and slept well. I was in the best of health and in the
best of spirits. I was in an uplifted state of mind. No one seemed
to be honorable who did not earn his bread in the sweat of his
brow as I did. Had I then chanced to hear a Socialist speech I
might have become an ardent follower of Karl Marx and my life
might have been directed along lines other than those which
brought me to financial power
The girls in the shop, individually, scarcely interested me, but their
collective presence was something of which I never seemed to be
quite unconscious. It was as though the workaday atmosphere
were scented with the breath of a delicate perfume--a perfume
that was tainted with the tang of my yearning for Matilda
Two girls who were seated within a yard from my machine were
continually bandying secrets. Now one and then the other would
look around to make sure that the contractor was not watching,
and then she would bend over and whisper something into her
chum's ear. This would set my blood tingling with a peculiar kind
of inquisitiveness. It was reasonable to suppose that their
whispered conferences mostly bore upon such innocent matters as
their work, earnings, lodgings, or dresses. Nevertheless, it seemed
to me that their whispers, especially when accompanied by a
smile, a giggle, or a wink, conveyed some of their intimate
thoughts of men. They were homely girls, with pinched faces, yet
at such moments they represented to me all that there was
fascinating and disquieting in womanhood
The jests of the foul-mouthed rowdies would make me writhe with
disgust. As a rule they were ostensibly addressed to some of the
other fellows or to nobody in particular, their real target being the
nearest girls. These would receive them with gestures of protest or
with an exclamation of mild repugnance, or--in the majority of
cases--pass them unnoticed, as one does some unavoidable
discomfort of toil. There was only one girl in the shop who
received these jests with a shamefaced grin or even with frank
appreciation, and she was a perfectly respectable girl like the rest.
There were some finisher girls who could not boast an unsullied
reputation, but none of them worked in our shop, and, indeed,
their number in the entire trade was very small
One of the two girls who sat nearest to my machine was quite
popular in the shop, but that was because of her sweet disposition
and sound sense rather than for her looks. She was known to have
a snug little account in a savings-bank. It was for a marriage
portion she was saving; but she was doing it so strenuously that
she stinted herself the expense of a decent dress or hat, or the
price of a ticket to a ball, picnic, or dancing-class.
The result was that while she was pinching and scrimping herself
to pave the way to her marriage she barred herself, by this very
process, from contact with possible suitors. She was a good soul.
From time to time she would give some of her money to a needy
relative, and then she would try to make up for it by saving with
more ardor than ever. Her name was Gussie
Joe, the plump, dark fellow who was teaching me the trade, was
one of the several men in the shop who were addicted to salacious
banter. One of his favorite pranks was to burlesque some
synagogue chant from the solemn service of the Days of Awe,
with disgustingly coarse Yiddish in place of the Hebrew of the
prayer. But he was not a bad fellow, by any means. He was
good-natured, extremely impressionable, and susceptible of good
influences.
A sad tune would bring a woebegone look into his face, while a
good joke would make him laugh to tears. He was fond of
referring to himself as my "rabbi," which is Hebrew for teacher,
and that was the way I would address him, at first playfully, and
then as a matter of course
One day, after he had delivered himself of a quip that set my teeth
on edge, I said to him, appealingly: "Why should you be saying
these things, rabbi?"
"If you don't like them you can stop your God-fearing ears," he
fired back, good-naturedly
I retorted that it was not a matter of piety, but of common decency,
and my words were evidently striking home, but the girls
applauded me, which spoiled it all
"If you want to preach sermons you're in the wrong place," he
flared up.
"This is no synagogue."
"Nor is it a pigsty," Gussie urged, without raising her eyes from her
work
A month or two later he abandoned these sallies of his own accord.
The other fellows twitted him on his burst of "righteousness" and
made efforts to lure him into a race of ribald punning, but he
stood his ground
By and by it leaked out that he was engaged and madly in love
with his girl.
I warmed to him.
The young woman who had won his heart was not an employee of
our shop.
Indeed, love-affairs between working-men and working-girls who
are employed in the same place are not quite so common as one
might suppose. The factory is scarcely a proper setting for
romance. It is one of the battle-fields in our struggle for existence,
where we treat woman as an inferior being, whereas in civilized
love-making we prefer to keep up the chivalrous fiction that she is
our superior. The girls of our shop, hard-worked, disheveled, and
handled with anything but chivalry, aroused my sympathy, but it
was not the kind of feeling that stimulates romantic interest. Still,
collectively, as an abstract reminder of their sex, they flavored my
sordid environment with poetry
CHAPTER III
THE majority of the students at the College of the
City of New York was already made up of Jewish boys, mostly
from the tenement-houses. One such student often called at the
cloak-shop in which I was employed, and in which his father--a
tough-looking fellow with a sandy beard, a former teamster--was
one of the pressers. A classmate of this boy was supported by an
aunt, a spinster who made good wages as a bunch-maker in a
cigar-factory.
To make an educated man of her nephew was the great ambition
of her life.
All this made me feel as though I were bound to that college with
the ties of kinship. Two of my other shopmates had sons at high
school. The East Side was full of poor Jews--wage-earners,
peddlers, grocers, salesmen, insurance agents--who would beggar
themselves to give their children a liberal education. Then, too,
thousands of our working-men attended public evening school,
while many others took lessons at home. The Ghetto rang with a
clamor for knowledge
To save up some money and prepare for college seemed to be the
most natural thing for me to do. I said to myself that I must begin
to study for it without delay. But that was impossible, and it was
quite some time before I took up the course which the presser's
boy had laid out for me. During the first three months I literally
had no time to open a book. Nor was that all.
My work as a cloak-maker had become a passion with me, so
much so that even on Saturdays, when the shop was closed, I
would scarcely do any reading.
Instead, I would seek the society of other cloak-makers with whom
I might talk shop
I was developing speed rather than skill at my sewing-machine, but
this question of speed afforded exercise to my brain. It did not
take me long to realize that the number of cloaks or jackets which
one turned out in a given length of time was largely a matter of
method and system. I perceived that Joe, who was accounted a
fast hand, would take up the various parts of a garment in a
certain order calculated to reduce to a minimum the amount of
time lost in passing from section to section. So I watched him
intently, studying his system with every fiber of my being. Nor did
I content myself with imitating his processes. I was forever
pondering the problem and introducing little improvements of my
own. I was making a science of it. It was not merely physical
exertion. It was a source of intellectual interest as well. I was
wrapped up in it. If I happened to meet a cloak-operator who was
noted for extraordinary speed I would feel like an ambitious
musician meeting a famous virtuoso. Some cloak-operators were
artists. I certainly was not one of them. I admired their work and
envied them, but I lacked the artistic patience and the dexterity
essential to workmanship of a high order. Much to my chagrin, I
was a born bungler. But then I possessed physical strength,
nervous vitality, method, and inventiveness--all the elements that
go to make up speed
I was progressing with unusual rapidity. Joe criticized my work
severely, often calling me botcher, but I knew that this was chiefly
intended to veil his satisfaction at the growing profits that my
work was yielding him
I now earned about ten dollars a week, of which I spent about five,
saving the rest for the next season of idleness
At last that season set in. There was not a stroke of work in the
shop. I was so absorbed in my new vocation that I would pass my
evenings in a cloak-makers' haunt, a café on Delancey Street,
where I never tired talking sleeves, pockets, stitches, trimmings,
and the like. There was a good deal of card-playing in the place,
but somehow I never succumbed to that temptation.
But then, under the influence of some of the fellows I met there, I
developed a considerable passion for the Jewish theater. These
young men were what is known on the East Side as "patriots," that
is, devoted admirers of some actor or actress and members of his
or her voluntary claque. Several of the other frequenters were also
interested in the stage, or at least in the gossip of it; so that, on the
whole, there was as much talk of plays and players as there was of
cloaks and cloak-makers. Our shop discussions certainly never
reached the heat that usually characterized our debates on things
theatrical
The most ardent of the "patriots" was a young contractor named
Mindels. He attended nearly every performance in which his
favorite actor had a part, selling dozens of tickets for his benefit
performances and usually losing considerable sums on these sales,
loading him with presents and often running his errands. I once
saw Mindels in a violent quarrel with a man who had scoffed at
his idol
Mindels's younger brother, Jake, fascinated me by his appearance,
and we became great chums. He was the handsomest fellow I ever
had seen, with a fine head of dark-brown hair, classic features,
and large, soft-blue eyes; too soft and too blue, perhaps. His was a
manly face and figure, and his voice was a manly, a beautiful
basso; but this masculine exterior contained an effeminate
psychology. In my heart I pronounced him "a calf," and when I
had discovered the English word "sissy," I thought that it just fitted
him.
Yet I adored him, and even looked up to him, all because of his
good looks
He was a Talmudist like myself, and we had much in common,
also, regarding our dreams of the future
"Oh, I am so glad I have met you," I once said to him
"I am glad, too," he returned, flushing
I found that he blushed rather too frequently, which confirmed my
notion of him as a sissy. Like most handsome men, he bestowed a
great deal of time on his personal appearance. He never uttered a
foul word nor a harsh one. If he heard a cloak-maker tell an
indecent story he would look down, smiling and blushing like a
girl
Formerly he had been employed in his brother's shop, while now
he earned his living by soliciting and collecting for a
life-insurance company
CHAPTER IV
JAKE MINDELS was a devotee of Madame
Klesmer, the leading Jewish actress of that period, which, by the
way, was practically the opening chapter in the interesting history
of the Yiddish stage in America. Madame Klesmer was a
tragedienne and a prima donna at once-a usual combination in
those days
One Friday evening we were in the gallery of her theater. The play
was an "historical opera," and she was playing the part of a
Biblical princess. It was the closing scene of an act. The whole
company was on the stage, swaying sidewise and singing with the
princess, her head in a halo of electric light in the center. Jake was
feasting his large blue eyes on her. Presently he turned to me with
the air of one confiding a secret. "Wouldn't you like to kiss her?"
And, swinging around again, he resumed feasting his blue eyes on
the princess.
"I have seen prettier women than she," I replied
"'S-sh! Let a fellow listen. She is a dear, all the same. You don't
know a good thing when you see it, Levinsky."
"Are you in love with her?"
"'S-sh! Do let me listen."
When the curtain fell he made me applaud her. There were several
curtain-calls, during all of which he kept applauding her furiously,
shouting the prima donna's name at the top of his voice and
winking to me imploringly to do the same. When quiet had been
restored at last I returned to the subject: "Are you in love with
her?"
"Sure," he answered, without blushing. "As if a fellow could help
it. If she let me kiss her little finger I should be the happiest man
in the world."
"And if she let you kiss her cheek?" "I should go crazy."
"And if she let you kiss her lips?" "What's the use asking idle
questions?"
"Would you like to kiss her neck?" "You ask me foolish
questions."
"You are in love with her," I declared, reflectively
"I should say I was."
It was a unique sort of love, for he wanted me also to be in love
with her
"If you are not in love with her you must have a heart of iron, or
else your soul is dry as a raisin." With which he took to analyzing
the prima donna's charms, going into raptures over her eyes,
smile, gestures, manner of opening her mouth, and her swing and
step as she walked over the stage
"No, I don't care for her," I replied
"You are a peculiar fellow."
"If I did fall in love," I said, by way of meeting him halfway, "I
should choose Mrs. Segalovitch. She is a thousand times prettier
than Mrs.
Klesmer."
"Tut, tut!"
Mrs. Segalovitch was certainly prettier than the prima donna, but
she played unimportant parts, so the notion of one's falling in love
with her seemed queer to Jake
That night I had an endless chain of dreams, in every one of which
Madame Klesmer was the central figure. When I awoke in the
morning I fell in love with her, and was overjoyed
When I saw Jake Mindels at dinner I said to him, with the air of
one bringing glad news: "Do you know, I am in love with her?"
"With whom? With Mrs. Segalovitch?" "Oh, pshaw! I had
forgotten all about her. I mean Madame Kiesmer," I said,
self-consciously
Somehow, my love for the actress did not interfere with my
longing thoughts of Matilda. I asked myself no questions
And so we went on loving jointly, Jake and I, the companionship
of our passion apparently stimulating our romance as
companionship at a meal stimulates the appetite of the diners.
Each of us seemed to be infatuated with Madame Klesmer. Yet
the community of this feeling, far from arousing mutual jealousy
in us, seemed to strengthen the ties of our friendship
We would hum her songs in duet, recite her lines, compare notes
on our dreams of happiness with her. One day we composed a
love-letter to her, a long epistle full of Biblical and homespun
poetry, which we copied jointly, his lines alternating with mine,
and which we signed: "Your two lovelorn slaves whose hearts are
panting for a look of your star-like eyes. Jacob and David." We
mailed the letter without affixing any address
The next evening we were in the theater, and when she appeared
on the stage and shot a glance to the gallery Jake nudged me
violently
"But she does not know we are in the gallery," I argued. "She must
think we are in the orchestra."
"Hearts are good guessers."
"Guessers nothing."
" 'S-sh! Let's listen."
Madame Klesmer was playing the part of a girl in a modern
Russian town. She declaimed her lines, speaking like a prophetess
in ancient Israel, and I liked it extremely. I was fully aware that it
was unnatural for a girl in a modern Russian town to speak like a
prophetess in ancient Israel, but that was just why I liked it. I
thought it perfectly proper that people on the stage should not talk
as they would off the stage. I thought that this unnatural speech of
theirs was one of the principal things an audience paid for. The
only actor who spoke like a human being was the comedian, and
this, too, seemed to be perfectly proper, for a comedian was a
fellow who did not take his art seriously, and so I thought that this
natural talk of his was part of his fun-making. I thought it was
something like a clown burlesquing the Old Testament by reading
it, not in the ancient intonations of the synagogue, but in the plain,
conversational accents of every-day life
During the intermission, in the course of our talk about Madame
Klesmer, Jake said: "Do you know, Levinsky, I don't think you
really love her."
"I love her as much as you, and more, too," I retorted
"How much do you love her? Would you walk from New York to
Philadelphia if she wanted you to do so?"
"Why should she? What good would it do her?"
"But suppose she does want it?"
"How can I suppose such nonsense?" "Well, she might just want
to see how much you love her."
"A nice test, that."
"Oh, well, she might just get that kind of notion. Women are liable
to get any kind of notion, don't you know."
"Well, if Madame Klesmer got that kind of notion I should tell her
to walk to Philadelphia herself."
"Then you don't love her."
"I love her as much as you do, but if she took it into her head to
make a fool of me I should send her to the eighty devils."
He winced. "And you call that love, don't you?" he said, with a
sneer in the corner of his pretty mouth. "As for me, I should walk
to Boston, if she wanted me to."
"Even if she did not promise to let you kiss her?"
"Even if she did not."
"And if she did?"
"I should walk to Chicago."
"And if she promised to be your mistress?"
"Oh, what's the use talking that way?" he protested, blushing.
"Aren't you shy! A regular bride-to-be, I declare." "Stop!" he said,
coloring once again.
It dawned upon me that he was probably chaste, and, searching his
face with a mocking look, I said: "I bet you you are still innocent."
"Leave me alone, please," he retorted, softly
"I have hit it, then," I importuned him, with a great sense of my
own superiority.
"Do let me alone, will you?"
"I just want you to tell me whether you are innocent or not."
"It's none of your business."
"Of course you are."
"And if I am? Is it a disgrace?" "Who says it is?"
I desisted. He became more attractive than ever to me
Nevertheless, I made repeated attempts to deprave him. His
chastity bothered me. The idea of breaking it down became an
irresistible temptation. I would ridicule him for a sissy, appeal to
him in the name of his health, beg him as one does for a personal
favor, all in vain
He spoke better English than I, with more ease, and in that pretty
basso of his which I envied. He had never read Dickens or any
other English author, but he was familiar with some subjects to
which I was a stranger. He was well grounded in arithmetic, knew
some geography, and now with a view of qualifying for the study
of medicine, he was preparing, with the aid of a private teacher,
for the Regents' examination in algebra, geometry, English
composition, American and English history. I thought he did not
study "deeply" enough, that he took more real interest in his
collars and neckties, the shine of his shoes, or the hang of his
trousers than he did in his algebra or history
By his cleanliness and tidiness he reminded me of Naphtali, which,
indeed, had something to do with my attachment for him. My
relations toward him echoed with the feelings I used to have for
the reticent, omniscient boy of Abner's Court, and with the hoarse,
studious young Talmudist with whom I would "famish in
company." He had neither Naphtali's brains nor his individuality,
yet I looked up to him and was somewhat under his influence.
I adopted many of the English phrases he was in the habit of using
and tried to imitate his way of dressing. As a consequence, he
would sometimes assume a patronizing tone with me, addressing
me with a good-natured sneer which I liked in spite of myself
We made a compact to speak nothing but English, and, to a
considerable extent, we kept it
CHAPTER V
A FEW weeks of employment were succeeded by
another period of enforced idleness. I took up arithmetic, but
reading was still a great passion with me. My mornings and
forenoons during that slack season were mostly spent over
Dickens or Thackeray
I now lived in a misshapen attic room which I rented of an Irish
family in what was then a Gentile neighborhood. I had chosen that
street for the English I had expected to hear around me. I had
lived more than two months in that attic, and almost the only
English I heard from my neighbors were the few words my
landlady would say to me when I paid her my weekly rent.
Yet, somehow, the place seemed helpful to me, as though its very
atmosphere exuded a feeling for the language I was so eager to
master. I made all sorts of advances to the Irish family, all sorts of
efforts to get into social relations with them, all to no purpose.
Finally, one evening I had a real conversation with one of my
landlady's sons. My window gave me trouble and he came up to
put it in working order for me. We talked of his work and of mine.
I told him of my plans about going to college. He was interested
and I thought him charmingly courteous and sociable. He
remained about an hour and a half in my room. When he had
departed I was in high spirits. I seemed to feel the progress my
English had made in that hour and a half
My bed was so placed that by lying prone, diagonally across it, my
head toward the window and my feet suspended in the air, I would
get excellent daylight. So this became my favorite posture when I
read in the daytime.
Thus, lying on my stomach, with a novel under my eyes and the
dictionary by my side, I would devour scores of pages. In a few
weeks, often reading literally day and night, I read through
Nicholas Nickleby and Vanity Fair.
Thackeray's masterpiece did not strike me as being in the same
class with anything by Dickens. It seemed to me that anybody in
command of bookish English ought to be able to turn out a work
like Vanity Fair, where men and things were so simple and so
natural that they impressed me like people and things I had
known. Indeed, I had a lurking feeling that I, too, could do it, after
a while at least. On the other hand, Nicholas Nickleby and
Dombey and Son were so full of extraordinary characters,
unexpected wit, outbursts of beautiful rhetoric, and other
wonderful things, that their author appealed to me as something
more than a human being. And yet deep down in my heart I
enjoyed Thackeray more than I did Dickens, It was at the East Side
branch of the Young Men's Hebrew Association that I obtained
my books. It was a sort of university settlement in which educated
men and women from up-town acted as "workers." The advice
these would give me as to my reading, their kindly manner, their
native English, and, last but not least, the flattering way in which
they would speak of my intellectual aspirations, led me to spend
many an hour in the place. The great thing was to hear these
American-born people speak their native tongue and to have them
hear me speak it. It was the same as in the case of the chat I had
with the son of my Irish landlady. Every time I had occasion to
spend five or ten minutes in their company I would seem to be
conscious of a perceptible improvement in my English
Some days I would be so carried away by my reading that I never
opened my arithmetic. At other times I would drift into an
arithmetical mood and sit up all night doing problems
When I happened to be in raptures over some book I would pester
Jake with lengthy accounts of it, dwelling on the chapters I had
read last and trying to force my exaltation upon him. As a rule, he
was bored, but sometimes he would become interested in the plot
or in some romantic scene.
One evening, as we were discussing love in general, I said: "Love
is the greatest thing in the world."
"Sure it is," he answered. "But if you love and are not loved in
return it is nothing but agony."
"Even then it is sweet," I rejoined, reflectively, the image of
Matilda before me.
"How can pain be sweet?"
"But it can."
"If you were really in love with Madame Klesmer you wouldn't
think so
"I love her as much as you do."
"You are always saying you do, but you don't."
"Yes, I do." And suddenly lapsing into a confidential tone, I
questioned him: "By the way, Jake, is this the first time you have
ever been in love?"
"Why?"
"I just want to know. Is it?"
"What difference does it make? Have you ever been in love
before?"
"What difference does that make? If you answer my question I
shall answer yours." "Well, then, I have never been in love
before."
"And I have."
He was intensely interested, and I confided my love story in him,
which served to strengthen our friendship still further. When I
concluded my narrative he said, thoughtfully: "Of course you don't
love Madame Klesmer. I tell you what, Levinsky, you are still in
love with Matilda."
I made no answer
"Anyhow, you don't love Madame Klesmer."
This time he said it without reproach. Once I was in love with
somebody else I was excused.
The next "season" came around. I was a full-fledged helper now,
and, according to the customary arrangement, I received thirty per
cent. of what Joe received for my work. This brought me from
twenty to twenty-five dollars a week, quite an overwhelming sum,
according to my then standard of income and expenditures. I
saved about fifteen dollars a week. I shall never forget the day
when my capital reached the round figure of one hundred dollars. I
was in a flutter. When I looked at the passers-by in the street I
would say to myself, "These people have no idea that I am worth a
hundred dollars."
Another thing I was ever conscious of was the fact that I had
earned the hundred dollars by my work. There was a touch of
solemnity in my mood, as though I had performed some feat of
valor or rendered some great service to the community. I was
impelled to convey this feeling to Jake, but when I attempted to
put it into words it was somehow lost in a haze and what I said
was something quite prosaic
"Guess how much I have in the savings-bank?" I began
"I haven't any idea. How much?"
"Just one hundred."
"Really?"
"Honest. But, then, what does it amount to, after all? Of course, it
is pleasant to feel that you have a trade and that you know how to
keep a dollar, don't you know."
So far from endearing me to the cloak trade, as might have been
expected, the hundred dollars killed at one stroke all the interest I
had taken in it.
It lent reality to my vision of college. Cloak-making was now
nothing but a temporary round of dreary toil, an unavoidable
stepping-stone to loftier occupations
Another year and I should be a fully developed mechanic, working
on my own hook--that is, as the immediate employee of some
manufacturer or contractor.
"I shall soon be earning forty or fifty dollars a week," I would
muse. "At that rate I shall save up plenty of money in much less
time than I expected.
I shall spend as little as possible and study as hard as possible."
The Regents' examinations were not exacting in those days. I could
have prepared to qualify for admission to a school of medicine,
law, or civil engineering in a very short time. But I aimed higher. I
knew that many of the professional men on the East Side, and,
indeed, everywhere else in the United States, were people of
doubtful intellectual equipment, while I was ambitious to be a
cultured man "in the European way." There was an odd confusion
of ideas in my mind. On the one hand, I had a notion that to
"become an American" was the only tangible form of becoming a
man of culture (for did not I regard the most refined and learned
European as a "greenhorn"?); on the other hand, the impression
was deep in me that American education was a cheap
machine-made product.
CHAPTER VI
COLLEGE! The sound was forever buzzing in my
ear. The seven letters were forever floating before my eyes. They
were a magic group, a magic whisper.
Matilda was to hear of me as a college man. What would she say?
"What do you want City College for?" Jake would argue. "Why not
take up medicine at once?"
"Once I am to be an educated man I want to be the genuine
article," I would reply
Every bit of new knowledge I acquired aroused my enthusiasm. I
was in a continuous turmoil of exultation
My plan of campaign was to keep working until I had saved up six
hundred dollars, by which time I was to be eligible to admission
to the junior class of the College of the City of New York,
commonly known as City College, where tuition is free. The six
hundred dollars was to last me two years--that is, till graduation,
when I might take up medicine, engineering, or law. During the
height of the cloak season I might find it possible to replenish my
funds by an occasional few days at the sewing-machine, or else it
ought not to be difficult to support myself by joining the army of
private instructors who taught English to our workingmen at their
homes
The image of the modest college building was constantly before
me. More than once I went a considerable distance out of my way
to pass the corner of Lexington Avenue and Twenty-third Street,
where that edifice stood. I would pause and gaze at its red,
ivy-clad walls, mysterious high windows, humble spires; I would
stand watching the students on the campus and around the great
doors, and go my way, with a heart full of reverence, envy, and
hope, with a heart full of quiet ecstasy
It was not merely a place in which I was to fit myself for the battle
of life, nor merely one in which I was going to acquire knowledge.
It was a symbol of spiritual promotion as well. University-bred
people were the real nobility of the world. A college diploma was
a certificate of moral as well as intellectual aristocracy
My old religion had gradually fallen to pieces, and if its place was
taken by something else, if there was something that appealed to
the better man in me, to what was purest in my thoughts and most
sacred in my emotions, that something was the red, church-like
structure on the southeast corner of Lexington Avenue and
Twenty-third Street
It was the synagogue of my new life. Nor is this merely a figure of
speech: the building really appealed to me as a temple, as a House
of Sanctity, as we call the ancient Temple of Jerusalem. At least
that was the term I would fondly apply to it, years later, in my
retrospective broodings upon the first few years of my life in
America
I was impatiently awaiting the advent of the slack season, and
when it came at last I applied myself exclusively to the study of
subjects required for admission to college. To accelerate matters I
engaged, as my instructor in mathematics and geography, the son
of our tough-looking presser. I paid him twenty-five cents an hour.
My geography lessons were rapidly dispelling the haze that had
enshrouded the universe from me. I beheld the globe hanging in
space, a vast independent world and yet a mere speck among
countless myriads of other worlds. Its rotations were so vivid in
my mind that I seemed to hear it hum as it spun round and round
its axis. The phenomena producing day and night and the four
seasons were as real to me as the things that took place in my
restaurant. The earth was being disclosed to my mental vision as a
whole and in detail. Order was coming out of chaos. Continents,
seas, islands, mountains, rivers, countries, were defining
themselves out of a misty jumble of meaningless names. Light
was breaking all around me. Life was becoming clearer. I was
broadening out. I was overborne by a sense of my growing
perspicacity
My keenest pleasure was to do geometrical problems, preferably
such as contained puzzles in construction. On one occasion I sat
up all night and far into the following day over a riddle of this
kind. It was about 2 o'clock when I dressed and went to lunch,
which was also my breakfast. The problem was still unsolved. I
hurried back home as soon as I had finished my meal, went at the
problem again, and did not let go until it surrendered.
Odd as it may seem, I found a certain kind of similarity between
the lure of these purely mental exercises and the appeal of music.
In both cases I was piqued and harassed by a personified mystery.
If a tune ran in my mind it would appear as though somebody, I
knew not who, was saying something, I knew not what. What was
he saying? Who was he? What had happened to him? Was he
reciting some grievance, bemoaning some loss, or threatening
vengeance? What was he nagging me about? Questions such as
these would keep pecking at my heart, and this pain, this
excruciating curiosity, I would call keen enjoyment
In like manner every difficult mathematical problem seemed to
shelter some unknown fellow who took pleasure in teasing me
and daring me to find him. It was the same mischievous fellow, in
fact, who used to laugh in my face when I had a difficult bit of
Talmud to unravel
"Why, geometry is even deeper than Talmud," I once exclaimed to
Jake
"Do you think so?" he answered, indifferently
"I think an interesting geometrical problem is more delicious than
the best piece of meat."
"Why don't you live on problems, then? Why spend money on
dinners?"
"Smart boy, aren't you?"
"Is doing problems as sweet as being in love?" he demanded, with
sheepish earnestness
"You are in love with Madame Klesmer. You ought to know."
He made no answer
On the day when I began these studies I had thirty-six dollars
besides the hundred which I kept in the savings-bank. Of this I
was now spending, including tuition fees, less than six dollars a
week. Every time I changed a dollar my heart literally sank within
me. Finally, when my cash was all gone, I borrowed some money
of Joe, my "rabbi" at the art of cloak-making.
Breaking the round sum total of my savings-bank account was out
of the question. Joe advanced me money more than cheerfully. He
was glad to have me in his debt as a pledge of my continuing to
work for him. His motive was obvious, and yet I went on
borrowing of him rather than draw upon my bank account
One day it crossed my mind that it would be a handsome thing if I
looked up Gitelson and paid him the ten dollars I owed him. It
was sweet to picture myself telling him how much his ten dollars
had done and was going to do for me. I was impatient to call on
him, and so I borrowed ten dollars of Joe and betook myself to the
factory where I had visited Gitelson several times before. As he
was a sample-maker, his work knew no seasons. When I called at
that factory I found that he had given up his job there, that he had
married and established a small custom-tailor shop somewhere
up-town, nobody seemed to know where. Joe had not even heard
of his marriage. Meanwhile, my enthusiasm for paying him his
debt was gone, and I was rather glad that I had not found him
It was the middle of July. The great "winter season" was
developing. I felt perfectly competent to make a whole garment
unaided. It was doubtful, however, whether I should be readily
accepted as an independent mechanic in the shop where I was
employed now and where one was in the habit of regarding me as
a mere apprentice. So I was determined to seek employment
elsewhere. Joe was suspicious. Not that I betrayed my plans in any
way. He took them for granted. And so he visited me every day,
on all sorts of pretexts, dined me and wined me (if the phrase may
be applied to a soda-water dinner), and watched my every step
Finally I wearied of it all, and one afternoon, as we were seated in
the restaurant, I picked a quarrel with him
"I don't want your dinners," I burst out, "and I don't want to be
watched by you as if I were a recruit in the Russian army and you
were my 'little uncle.' I'll pay you what I owe you and leave me
alone."
"As if I were uneasy about those few dollars!" he said,
ingratiatingly
"I know you are not. That's just it."
He took fire. "What am I after, then? You think I get rich on your
work, don't you?"
Our altercation waxed violent. At one point he was about to lapse
into a conciliatory tone again, but his dignity prevailed
"I would not keep you if you begged me," he declared. "I hate to
deal with an ingrate. But I want my money at once." "I shall pay it
to you when work begins."
"No, sirrah. I want it at once." An ugly scene followed. He seized
me by my coat lapels and threatened to have me arrested.
Finally the restaurant-keeper and Gussie, the homely finisher girl
whom we all respected, made peace between us, and things were
arranged more or less amicably
I obtained employment in an "inside" place, a factory owned by
twin brothers named Manheimer
I was in high feather. My sense of advancement and independence
reminded me of the days when I had just been graduated from the
Talmudic Academy and went on studying as an "independent
scholar." I had not, however, begun to work in my new place
when a general strike of the trade was declared
CHAPTER VII
THE Cloak-makers' Union had been a weak,
insignificant organization, but at the call for a general strike it
suddenly burst into life. There was a great rush for membership
cards. Everybody seemed to be enthusiastic, full of fight. To me,
however, the strike was a sheer calamity. I laid it all to my own
hard luck. It seemed as though the trouble had been devised for the
express purpose of preventing me from being promoted to full pay;
for the express purpose of upsetting my financial calculations in
connection with my college plans. Everybody was saying that
prices were outrageously low, that the manufacturers were taking
advantage of the weakness of the union, and that they must be
brought to terms. All this was lost upon me. The question of
prices did not interest me, because the wages I was going to
receive were by far the highest I had ever been paid. But the main
thing was that I looked upon the whole business of making cloaks
as a temporary occupation.
My mind was full of my books and my college dreams. All I
wanted was to start the "season" as soon as possible, to save up
the expected sum, and to reach the next period of freedom from
physical toil, when I should be able to spend day and night on my
studies again. But going to work as a strike-breaker was out of the
question. A new kind of Public Opinion had suddenly sprung up
among the cloak-makers: a man who did not belong to the union
was a traitor, worse than an apostate, worse than the worst of
criminals
And so, feeling like a school-boy in Antomir when he is made to
furnish the very rod with which he is to be chastised, I went to the
headquarters of the union, paid my initiation fee, and became a
member. It was on a Friday afternoon. The secretaries of the
organization were seated at a long table in the basement of a
meeting-room building on Rivington Street. The basement and the
street outside were swarming with cloak-makers. A number of
mass meetings had been arranged to take place in several halls,
with well-known Socialists for speakers, but I had not even the
curiosity to attend them.
When some of my shopmates reproached me for my indifference I
said, sullenly: "I've joined the union. What more do you want?"
One of them, a Talmudist like myself, spoke of capital and labor,
of the injustice of the existing economic order. He had recently,
through the strike, been converted to Socialism. He made a fiery
appeal to me. He spoke with the exaltation of a new proselyte. But
his words fell on deaf ears. I had no mind for anything but my
college studies
"Do you think it right that millions of people should toil and live in
misery so that a number of idlers might roll in luxury?" he pleaded
"I haven't made the world, nor can I mend it," was my retort
The manufacturers yielded almost every point. The "season"
began with a rush
My pay-envelope for the first week contained thirty-two dollars
and some cents. I knew the union price, of course, and I had
figured out the sum before I received it, yet when I beheld the two
figures on the envelope the blood surged to my head. Thirty-two
dollars! Why, that meant sixty-four rubles! I was tempted to write
Naphtali about it
The next week brought me an even fatter envelope. I worked
sixteen hours a day. Reading and studying had to be suspended till
October. I lived on five dollars a week. My savings, and with them
my sense of my own importance in the world, grew apace. As
there was no time to go to the savings-bank, I had to carry what I
deemed a great sum on my person (in a money-belt that I had
improvised for the purpose). This was a constant source of anxiety
as well as of joy. No matter how absorbed I might have been in
my work or in thought, the consciousness of having that wad of
paper money with me was never wholly absent from my mind. It
loomed as a badge of omnipotence. I felt in the presence of Luck,
which was a living spirit, a goddess. I was mostly grave. The
frivolities of the other men in the factory seemed so fatuous, so
revolting. A great sense of security and self-confidence swelled
my heart. When I walked through the American streets I would
feel at home in them, far more so than I had ever felt before. At
the same time danger was constantly hovering about me-the
danger of the street crowds seizing that magic wad from me.
The image of the college building loomed as a bride-elect of mine.
But that, somehow, did not seem to have anything to do with my
money-belt, as though I expected to go to college without
encroaching upon my savings--a case of eating the cake and
having it
The cloak-makers were so busy they had no time to attend
meetings, and being little accustomed to method and discipline,
they suffered their organization to melt away. By the time the
"season" came to a close the union was scarcely stronger than it
had been before the strike. As there was no work now, and no
prices to fix, one did not miss its protection
The number of men employed in the trade in those years did not
exceed seven thousand. The industry was still in its infancy
I resumed my studies with a passion amounting to a frenzy. I
would lay in a supply of coarse rye bread, cheese, and salmon to
last me two or even three days, and never leave my lair during that
length of time. I dined at the Delancey Street restaurant every
third or fourth day, and did not go to the theater unless Jake was
particularly insistent. But then I religiously attended Felix Adler's
ethical-culture lectures, at Chickering Hall, on Sunday mornings. I
valued them for their English rather than for anything else, but
their spirit, reinforced by the effect of organ music and the general
atmosphere of the place, would send my soul soaring. These
gatherings and my prospective alma mater appealed to me as being
of the same order of things, of the same world of refined ways,
new thoughts, noble interests
If I came across a street faker and he spoke with a foreign accent I
would pass on; if, however, his English struck me as that of a
"real American," I would pause and listen to his "lecture,"
sometimes for more than an hour.
People who were born to speak English were superior beings.
Even among fallen women I would seek those who were real
Americans
CHAPTER VIII
I WAS reading Pendennis. The prospect of
returning to work was a hideous vision. The high wages in store
for me had lost their magnetism. I often wondered whether I
might not be able to secure some pupils in English or Hebrew, and
drop cloak-making at once. I dreamed of enlisting the interest of a
certain Maecenas, a German-American Jew who financed many a
struggling college student of the Ghetto. Thoughts of a "college
match" would flash through my mind--that is, of becoming
engaged to some girl who earned good wages and was willing to
support me through college. This form of matrimonial
arrangement, which has been mentioned in an earlier chapter, is
not uncommon among our immigrants. Alliances of this sort
naturally tend to widen the intellectual chasm between the two
parties to the contract, and often result in some of the tragedies or
comedies that fill the swift-flowing life of American Ghettos. But
the ambition to be the wife of a doctor, lawyer, or dentist is too
strong in some of our working-girls to be quenched by the dangers
involved
One of the young women I had in mind was Gussie, the
cloak-finisher mentioned above, who saved for a marriage portion
too energetically to make a marriage. She was a good girl, and no
fool, either, and I thought to myself that she would make me a
good wife, even if she was plain and had a washed-out appearance
and was none too young. I was too passionately in love with my
prospective alma mater to care whether I could love my fiancée or
not
"I have a fellow for you," I said to Gussie, under the guise of
pleasantry, meeting her in the street one day. "Something fine."
"Who is it--yourself?" she asked, quickly
"You have guessed it right."
"Have I? Then tell your fellow to go to all the black devils."
"Why?"
"Because."
"If I could go to college--"
"You want me to pay your bills, do you?"
"Wouldn't you like to be the wife of a doctor? You would take
rides in my carriage--"
"You mean the other way around: you would ride in my carriage
and I should have to start a breach-of-promise case against 'Dr.
Levinsky.' You'll have to look for a bigger fool than I," she
concluded, with a smile
It was an attractive smile, full of good nature and common sense.
A smile of this kind often makes a homely face pretty. Gussie's
did not. The light it shed only served to publish her ugliness. But I
did not care. The infatuation I had brought with me from Antomir
had not yet completely faded out, anyhow. And so I harbored
vague thoughts that some day, when I saw fit to press my suit,
Gussie might yield
I was getting impatient. The idea of having to go back to work
became more hateful to me every day. I was in despair. Finally I
decided to consider my career as a cloak-maker closed; to cut my
expenses to the veriest minimum, to live on my savings, look for
some source of income that would not interfere with my studies,
take the college examination as soon as I was ready for it, and let
the future take care of itself
In the heart of the Jewish neighborhood I found an attic for half of
what I was paying the Irish family. Moreover, it was a
neighborhood where everything was cheaper than in any other
part of New York, the only one in which it was possible for a man
to have a "room" to himself and live on four dollars a week. So I
moved to that attic, a step for which, as I now think of it, I cannot
but be thankful to fate, for it brought me in touch with a quaint,
simple man who is my warm friend to this day, perhaps the dearest
friend I have had in America
The house was a rickety, two-story frame structure, the smallest
and oldest-looking on the block. Its ground floor was used as a
tailoring shop by the landlord himself, a white-headed giant of a
man whom I cannot recall otherwise than as smiling wistfully and
sighing. His name was Esrah Nodelman. His wife, who was a
dwarf beside him, ruled him with an iron hand
Mrs. Nodelman gave me breakfasts, and I soon felt like one of the
family.
She was a veritable chatter-box, her great topic of conversation
being her son Meyer, upon whom she doted, and his
American-born wife, whose name she scarcely ever uttered
without a malediction. She told me how she, Meyer's mother, her
sister, and a niece had turned out their pockets and pawned their
jewelry to help Meyer start in business as a clothing-manufacturer
"He's now worth a hundred thousand dollars--may no evil eye hit
him," she said. "He's a good fellow, a lump of gold. If God had
given him a better wife (may the plague carry off the one he has)
he would be all right. She has a meat-ball for a face, the face of a
murderess. She always was a murderess, but since Meyer became
a manufacturer there is no talking to her at all. The airs she is
giving herself! And all because she was born in America, the frog
that she is."
I soon made Meyer's acquaintance. He was a dark man of forty,
with Oriental sadness in his eyes. To lend his face capitalistic
dignity he had recently grown a pair of side-whiskers, but one day,
a week or two after I met him, he saw a circus poster of "Jo Jo, the
human dog," and then he hastened to discard them
"I don't want to look like a man-dog," he explained, gaily, to his
mother, who was unpleasantly surprised by the change.
"Man-dog nothing," she protested, addressing herself to me. "He
was as handsome as gold in those whiskers. He looked like a
regular monarch in them." And then to him: "I suppose it was that
treasure of a wife you have who told you to have them taken off.
It's a lucky thing she does not order you to have your foolish head
taken off."
"You better shut up, mamma," he said, sternly. And she did
He called to see his parents quite frequently, sometimes with some
of his children, but never with his wife, at least not while I lived
there.
Crassly illiterate save for his ability to read some Hebrew, without
knowing the meaning of the words, he enjoyed a considerable
degree of native intellectual alertness, and in his crude, untutored
way was a thinker
One evening he took to quizzing me on my plans, partly in Yiddish
and partly in broken English, which he uttered with a strong
Cockney accent, a relic of the several years he had spent in
London.
"And what will you do after you finish (he pronounced it
"fiendish") college?" he inquired, with a touch of derision
"I shall take up some higher things," I rejoined, reluctantly
"And what do you call 'higher things'?" he pursued in his quizzical,
browbeating way. "Are you going to be a philosopher?"
"Yes, I shall be a doctor of philosophy," I answered, frostily
"What's that? You want to be both a doctor and a philosopher? But
you know the saying, 'Many trades--few blessings.'"
"I am not going to be a doctor and a philosopher, but a doctor of
philosophy," I said, with a sneer
"And how much will you make?"
"Oh, let him alone, Meyer," his mother intervened. "He is an
educated fellow, and he doesn't care for money at all."
"Doesn't care for money, eh?" the younger Nodelman jeered
"Do you think money is really everything?" I shot back. "One
might be able to find a thing or two which could not be bought
with it."
"Not even at Ridley's," [note] he jested, but he was manifestly
beginning to resent my attitude and to take our passage at arms
rather seriously
"Not even at Ridley's. You can't get brains there, can you?"
"Well, I never learned to write, but I have a learned fellow in my
office.
He's chuck full of learning and that sort of thing. Yet who is
working for whom--I for him or he for me? So much for
education--for the stuff that's in a man's head. And now let's take
charity--the stuff that's in a man's heart.
I don't care what you say, but of what use is a good heart unless he
has some jinglers [note] to go with it? You can't shove your hand
into your heart and pull out a few dollars for a poor friend, can
you? You can help him out of your pocket, though--that is,
provided it is not empty."
My bewigged little landlady was feasting her eyes on her son
Meyer went on with his argument: "What is a man without capital?
Nothing! Nobody cares for him. He is like a beast. A beast can't
talk, and he can't.
'Money talks,' as the Americans say."
His words and manner put me in a socialist mood. He was hateful
to me. I listened in morose silence. He felt piqued, and he wilted.
The ginger went out of his voice. My taciturnity continued, until,
gradually, he edged over to my side of the controversy, taking up
the cudgels for education and spiritual excellence with the same
force with which he had a short while ago tried to set forth their
futility
"Of course it's nice to be educated," he said. "A man without
writing is just like a deaf mute. What's the difference? The man
who can't write has speech in his mouth, but he is dumb with his
fingers, while the deaf mute he can't talk with his mouth, but he
can do so with his fingers. Both should be pitied. I do like
education. Of course I do. Don't I send my boy to college? I am an
ignorant boor myself, because my father was poor, but my children
shall have all the wisdom they can pile in. We Jews have too many
enemies in the world. Everybody is ready to shed our blood. So
where would we be if many of our people were not among the
wisest of the wise? Why, they would just crush us like so many
flies. When I see an educated Jew I say to myself, 'That's it!'"
When he heard of my ambition to give lessons he said: "I tell you
what. I'll be your first pupil. I mean it." he added, seriously.
My heart gave a leap. "Very well. I'll try my best," I replied
"Mind you, I don't want to be a philosopher. I just want you to fix
me up in reading, writing, and figuring a little bit. That's all. You
don't think it's too late, do you?"
"Too late!" I chuckled, hysterically. "Why?"
"I can sign or indorse a check, and, thank God, for a good few
dollars, too--but when it comes to fixing in the stuffing, there is
trouble. I know how to write the figures, but not the words. I can
write almost any number.
If I was worth all the money I can put down in figures I should be
richer than Vanderbilt."
To insure secrecy I was to give him his lessons in my attic room
"I don't want my kids to know their pa is learning like a little boy,
don't you know," he explained. "American kids have not much
respect for their fathers, anyhow."
As a preliminary to his initial lesson Nodelman offered to show
me what he could do. When I brought pen and ink and some paper
he cleared his throat, screwed up a solemn mien, and took hold of
the pen. In trying to shake off some of the ink he sent splashes all
over the table. At last he proceeded to write his name. He handled
the pen as he would a pitchfork. It was quite a laborious
proceeding, and his first attempt was a fizzle, for he reached the
end of the paper before he finished the "in" in Nodelman. He tried
again, and this time he was successful, but it was three minutes
before the task was completed. It left him panting and wiping his
ink-stained fingers on his hair
"A man who has to work as hard as that over his signature has no
business to be seen among decent people," he said, with sincere
disgust. "I ought to be a horse-driver, not a manufacturer."
So speaking, he submitted his signature for my inspection,
without, however, letting go of the sheet
"Tell me how rotten it is," he said, bashfully
When I protested that it was not "rotten" at all he grunted
something to the effect that once I was to instruct him he would
expect to pay me, not for empty compliments, but for the truth. At
this he lighted a match and applied it to the sheet of paper
containing his signature
"A signature is no joke," he explained, as he watched it burn. "Put
a few words and some figures on top of it and it is a note, as good
as cash. When a fellow is a beggar he has nothing to fear, but
when he is in business he had better be careful."
When he asked me how much I was going to charge him and I said
twenty-five cents an hour, he smiled
"I'll pay you more than that. You just try your best for me, will
you?"
At the end of the first week he handed me two dollars for three
lessons
I was the happiest man in New York that day. If I had had to
choose between earning ten dollars a week in tuition fees and a
hundred dollars as wages or profits I should, without the slightest
hesitation, have decided in favor of the ten dollars, and now,
behold! that coveted source of income seemed nearer at hand than
I had dared forecast. Once a start had been made, I might expect
to procure other pupils, even if they could not afford to pay so
lavish a price as two dollars for three lessons
But alas! My happiness was not to last long.
I was giving Nodelman his fifth lesson. We were spelling out some
syllables in a First Reader. Presently he grew absent-minded and
then, suddenly pushing the school-book from him, said: "Too
late! Too late! Those black little dots won't get through my
forehead.
It has grown too hard for them, I suppose."
I attempted to reassure him, but in vain
When the next cloak season came I slunk back to work. I felt
degraded. But I earned high wages and my good spirits soon
returned. I firmly made up my mind, come what might, to take the
college-entrance examination the very next fall. I expected to
have four hundred dollars by then, but I was determined to enter
college even if I had much less. "I sha'n't starve," I said to myself.
"And, if I don't get enough to eat, hunger is nothing new to me."
The very firmness of my purpose was a source of encouragement
and joy.
[note: Ridley's]: A well-known department store in those days
[note: jingler]: Coin, money
BOOK VIII
THE DESTRUCTION OF MY TEMPLE
CHAPTER I
AN unimportant accident, a mere trifle, suddenly gave a new turn
to the trend of events changing the character of my whole life.
It was the middle of April. The spring season was over, but
Manheimer Brothers, the firm by which I was employed, had
received heavy duplicate orders for silk coats, and, considering
the time of the year, we were unusually busy. One day, at the
lunch hour, as I was opening a small bottle of milk, the bottle
slipped out of my hand and its contents were spilled over the floor
and some silk coats
Jeff Manheimer, one of the twins, happened to be near me at the
moment, and a disagreeable scene followed. But first a word or
two about Jeff Manheimer
He was the "inside man" of the firm, having charge of the
mechanical end of the business as well as of the offices. He was
of German parentage, but of American birth. Bald-headed as a
melon and with a tendency to corpulence, he had the back of a
man of forty-five and the front of a man of twenty-five.
He was a vivacious fellow, one of those who are indefatigable in
abortive attempts at being witty, one of his favorite puns being
that we "Russians were not rushin' at all," that we were a "slow
lot." Altogether he treated us as an inferior race, often lecturing us
upon our lack of manners
I detested him
When he saw me drop the bottle of milk he flew into a rage
"Eh!" he shouted, "did you think this was a kitchen? Can't you take
better care of things?" As he saw me crouching and wiping the
floor and the coats with my handkerchief he added: "You might as
well take those coats home. The price will be charged against you.
That 'll make you remember that this is not a barn, but a factory.
Where were you brought up? Among Indians?"
Some of my shopmates tittered obsequiously, which encouraged
Manheimer to further sarcasm.
"Why, he doesn't even know how to handle a bottle of milk. Did
you ever see such a lobster?"
At this there was an explosion of merriment.
"A lobster!" one of the tailors repeated, relishingly
I could have murdered him as well as Manheimer.
My head was swimming. I was about to say something insulting to
my employer, to get up and leave the place demonstratively. But I
said to myself that I should soon be through with this kind of life
for good, and I held myself in leash.
Two or three minutes later I sat at a machine, eating my milkless
lunch. I was trying to forget the incident, trying to think of
something else, but in vain. Manheimer's derision, especially the
word "lobster," was ringing in my ear.
He passed out of the shop, but ten or fifteen minutes later he came
back, and as I saw him walk down the aisle I became breathless
with hate. The word "lobster" was buzzing in my brain amid
vague, helpless visions of revenge
Presently my eye fell upon Ansel Chaikin, the designer, and a
strange thought flashed upon me.
He was a Russian, like myself. He was an ignorant tailor, as
illiterate as Meyer Nodelman, but a born artist in his line. It was
largely to his skill that the firm, which was doing exceedingly
well, owed the beginning of its success. It was the common talk
among the "hands" of the factory that his Americanized copies of
French models had found special favor with the buyer of a certain
large department store and that this alone gave the house a
considerable volume of business. Jeff Manheimer, who
superintended the work, was a commonplace man, with more
method and system than taste or initiative.
Chaikin was the heart and the actual master of the establishment.
Yet all this really wonderful designer received was forty-five
dollars a week. He knew his value, and he saw that the two
brothers were rapidly getting rich, but he was a quiet man,
unaggressive and unassuming, and very likely he had not the
courage to ask for a raise
As I now looked at him, with my heart full of rancor for
Manheimer, I exclaimed to myself, "What a fool!"
He appeared to me in a new light, as the willing victim of
downright robbery. It seemed obvious that the Manheimers could
not do without him, that he was in a position to dictate terms to
them, even to make them accept him as a third partner. And once
the matter had presented itself to me in that light it somehow
began to vex me. It got on my nerves, as though it were an affair
of my own. I complimented myself upon my keen sense of justice,
but in reality this was my name for my disgust with Chaikin's
passivity and for the annoyance and the burning ill-will which the
rapid ascent of the firm aroused in me. I begrudged them--or,
rather, Jeff--the money they were making through his efficiency
"The idiot!" I soliloquized. "He ought to start on his own hook with
some smart business man for a partner. Let Jeff try to do without
that 'lobster' of a Russian."
The idea took a peculiar hold upon my imagination. I could not
look at Ansel Chaikin, or think of him, without picturing him
leaving the Manheimers in a lurch and becoming a fatal
competitor of theirs. I beheld their downfall. I gloated over it
But Chaikin lacked gumption and enterprise. What he needed was
an able partner, some man of brains and force. And so,
unbeknown to Chaikin, the notion was shaping itself in my mind
of becoming his manufacturing partner.
The thought of Meyer Nodelman's humble beginnings and of the three
hundred-odd dollars I had in my savings-bank whispered
encouragement into my ear. I had heard of people who went into
manufacturing with even less than that sum.
Moreover, it was reasonable to expect that Chaikin had laid up
some money of his own. Our precarious life among unfriendly
nations has made a thrifty people of us, and for a man like
Chaikin forty-five dollars a week, every week in the year, meant
superabundance
The Manheimers were relegated to the background. It was no
longer a mere matter of punishing Jeff. It was a much greater
thing.
I visioned myself a rich man, of course, but that was merely a
detail. What really hypnotized me was the venture of the thing. It
was a great, daring game of life
I tried to reconcile this new dream of mine with my college
projects. I was again performing the trick of eating the cake and
having it. I would picture myself building up a great cloak
business and somehow contriving, at the same time, to go to
college
The new scheme was scarcely ever absent from my mind. I would
ponder it over my work and during my meals. It would visit me in
my sleep in a thousand grotesque forms. Chaikin became the
center of the universe. I was continually eying him, listening for
his voice, scrutinizing his look, his gestures, his clothes
He was an insignificant-looking man of thirty-two, with almost a
cadaverous face and a very prominent Adam's apple. He was not a
prepossessing man by any means, but his bluish eyes had a
charming look, of boy-like dreaminess, and his smile was even
more child-like than his look. He was dressed with scrupulous
neatness and rather pretentiously, as behooved his occupation, but
all this would scarcely have prevented one from telling him for a
tailor from some poor town in Russia
Now and then my project struck me as absurd. For Chaikin was in
the foremost ranks of a trade in which I was one of the ruck.
Should he conceive the notion of going into business on his own
account, he would have no difficulty in forming a partnership with
considerable capital. Why, then, should he take heed of a piteous
schemer of my caliber? But a few minutes later I would see the
matter in another light
CHAPTER II
ONE Sunday morning in the latter part of May I
betook myself to a certain block of new tenement-houses in the
neighborhood of East 110th Street and Central Park, then the new
quarter of the more prosperous Russian Jews.
Chaikin had recently moved into one of these houses, and it was to
call on him that I had made my way from down-town. I found him
in the dining-room, playing on an accordion, while his wife, who
had answered my knock at the door, was busy in the kitchen
He scarcely knew me. To pave the way to the object of my visit I
began by inquiring about designing lessons. As teaching was not
in his line, we soon passed to other topics related to the cloak
trade. I found him a poor talker and a very uninteresting
companion. He answered mostly in monosyllables, or with mute
gestures, often accompanied by his child-like grin or by a
perplexed stare of his bluish eyes
Gradually I gave the conversation a more personal turn. When,
somewhat flushed, I finally hinted at my plan, he shrank with an
air of confusion
At this juncture his wife made her appearance, followed by her
eight-year-old boy. Chaikin looked relieved
"I hear you are talking business," she said, summarily taking
possession of the situation. "What is it all about?"
Completely taken aback by her domineering manner, I sought
escape in embarrassed banter.
"You have scared me so," I said, "I can't speak. I'll tell you
everything.
That's just what brings me here. Only let me first catch my breath
and take a look at your stalwart little man of a boy."
Her grave face relaxed into an involuntary smile
What struck me most in her was the startling resemblance she bore
to her husband. The two looked like brother and sister rather than
like husband and wife
"You must be relatives," I observed, for something pleasant to say,
and put my foot in it
"Not at all," she replied, with a frown
To win back her good graces I proceeded to examine Maxie, her
boy, in spelling. The stratagem had the desired effect
We got down to business again. When she heard my plan she
paused to survey me. I felt a sinking at the heart. I interpreted her
searching look as saying, "The nerve this snoozer has!" But I was
mistaken. Her pinched, sallow face grew tense with excitement,
and she said, with coy eagerness: "How can we tell if your plan
amounts to anything? If you gave us an idea of how much you
could put up--"
"It would not require a million," I hazarded
"A million! Who talks of millions! Still, it would take a good deal
of capital to start a factory that should be something like."
"There'll be no trouble about money," I parried, fighting shy of the
more imposing term "capital," which made my paltry three
hundred still paltrier
"There is money and money," she answered, with furtive glances at
me. "A nickel is also money."
"I am not speaking of nickels, of course."
"I should say not. It's a matter of many thousands of dollars."
I was dumfounded, but instantly rallied. "Of course," I assented.
"At the same time it depends on many things."
"Still, you ought to give us some idea how much you could put in.
Is it--is it, say, fifteen thousand?"
That she should not deem it unnatural for a young man of my
station to be able to raise a sum of this size was partly due to her
utter lack of experience and partly to an impression prevalent
among people of her class that "nothing is impossible in the land
of Columbus."
I pretended to grow thoughtful, with an effect of making
computations. I even produced a piece of paper and a pencil and
indulged in some sham figuring. At last I said: "Well, I can't as yet
tell you exactly how much. As I have said, it depends on certain
things, but it'll be all right. Besides, money is really not the most
important part in a scheme of this kind. A man of brains and a
hustler will make a lot of money, while a fool will lose a lot.
There are others who want to go into business with me. Only I
know Mr. Chaikin is an honest man, and that's what I value more
than anything else. I hate to take up with people of whom I can't
be sure, don't you know--"
"You forget the main thing," she could not forbear to break in.
"Mr. Chaikin is the best designer in New York."
"Everybody knows that," I conceded, deeming it best to flatter her
vanity.
"That's just what makes it ridiculous that he should work for
others, make other people rich instead of trying to do something
for himself. I have some plans by which the two of us--Mr.
Chaikin taking charge of the manufacturing and I of the business
outside--would do wonders. We would simply do wonders.
There is another fine designer who is anxious to form a partnership
with me, but I said to myself, 'I must first see if I could not get Mr.
Chaikin interested.'"
Mrs. Chaikin tried to guess who that other designer was, but I
pleaded, mysteriously, certain circumstances that placed the seal
of discretion on my lips
"I won't tell anybody," she assured me, in a flutter of curiosity
"I know you won't, but I can't. Honest."
"But, I tell you, I won't say a word to anybody. Strike me dumb if I
do!"
"I can't, Mrs. Chaikin," I besought her
"Don't bother," her husband put in, good-naturedly. "A woman will
be a woman."
I went on to describe the "wonders" that the firm of Chaikin &
Levinsky would do. Mrs. Chaikin's eyes glittered. I held her
spellbound. Her husband, who had hitherto been a passive
listener, as if the matter under discussion was one in which he was
not concerned, began to show signs of interest. It was the longest
and most eloquent speech I had ever had occasion to deliver.
It seemed to carry conviction
Children often act as a barometer of their mother's moods. So
when I had finished and little Maxie slipped up close to me and
tactily invited me to fondle him I knew that I had made a
favorable impression on his mother
I was detained for dinner. I played with Maxie, gave him problems
in arithmetic, went into ecstasies over his "cuteness." I had a
feeling that the way to Mrs. Chaikin's heart was through Maxie,
but I took good care not to over-play my part
We are all actors, more or less. The question is only what our aim
is, and whether we are capable of a "convincing personation." At
the time I conceived my financial scheme I knew enough of
human motive to be aware of this.
CHAPTER III
IT was a sultry, sweltering July afternoon in May,
one of those escapades of the New York climate when the
population finds itself in the grip of midsummer discomforts
without having had time to get seasoned to them. I went into the
Park. I had come away from the Chaikins' under the impression
that if I could raise two or three thousand dollars I might be able,
by means of perseverance and diplomacy, to achieve my purpose.
But I might as well have set myself to raise two or three millions
I thought of Meyer Nodelman, of Mr. Even and his wealthy
son-in-law, of Maximum Max. But the idea of approaching them
with my venture could not be taken seriously. The images of
Gitelson and of Gussie crossed my mind almost simultaneously. I
rejected them both. Gitelson and I might, perhaps, start
manufacturing on a small scale, leaving Chaikin out. But Chaikin
was the very soul of my project. Without him there was no life to
it. Besides, where was he, Gitelson? Was it worth while hunting
for him? As for Gussie, the notion of marrying her for her money
seemed a joke, even if she were better-looking and younger. That
her dower was anywhere near three thousand dollars was
exceedingly doubtful. However, the image of her washed-out face
would not leave my mind. Her hoarding might amount to over one
thousand, and in my despair the sum was tempting. "She is a good
girl, the best of all I know," I defended myself before the "Good
Spirit" in me.
"Also she is a most sensible girl. Just the kind of wife a business
man needs." In addition I urged the time-honored theory that a
homely wife is less likely to flirt with other men and to neglect
her duties than a good-looking one.
I took the car down-town and made my way to Gussie's lodgings
that very afternoon. I did so before I had made up my mind that I
was prepared to marry her. "I'll call on her, anyhow," I decided.
"Then we shall see. There can be no harm in speaking to her."
I was impelled by the adventure of it more than by anything else
In spite of the unbearable heat, I almost felt sure that I should find
her at home. Going out of a Sunday required presentable clothes,
which she did not possess. She was saving for her dower with her
usual intensity
I was not mistaken. I found her on the stoop in a crowd of women
and children
"I must speak to you, Gussie," I said, as she descended to the
sidewalk to meet me. "Let's go somewhere. I have something very
important I want to say to you."
"Is it again something about your studying to be a smart man at my
expense?" she asked, rather good-naturedly
"No, no. Not at all. It's something altogether different, Gussie."
The nervous emphasis with which I said it piqued her interest.
Without going up-stairs for her hat she took me to the Grand
Street dock, not many blocks away. The best spots were already
engaged, but we found one that suited our purpose better than the
water edge would have done. It was a secluded nook where I
could give the rein to my eloquence
I told her of my talk with the Chaikins, omitting names, but
inventing details and bits of "local color" calculated to appeal to
my listener's imagination and business sense. She followed my
story with an air of stiff aloofness, but this only added fuel to the
fervor with which I depicted the opportunity before me
"So you have thrown that college of yours out of your mind,
haven't you?" she said in a dry, non-committal way
I felt the color mounting to my face. "Well, not entirely," I
answered
"Not entirely?"
"I mean--Well, anyhow, what do they do at college? They read
books. Can't I read them at home? One can find time for
everything." Returning to my new project, I said: "It's a great
chance, Gussie. It would be an awful thing if I had to let it slip out
of my hand."
That what I wanted was her dower (with herself as an unavoidable
appendage) went without saying. It was implied, as a matter of
course
"How much would your great designer want you to invest?" she
asked, with an air of one guided by mere curiosity, and with a
touch of irony to boot
"A couple of thousand dollars might do, I suppose."
"A couple of thousand!" she said, lukewarmly. "Tell your great
designer he is riding too high a horse."
"Still, in order to start a decent business--" I said, throwing a covert
glance at her
"Cloak-factories have been started with a good deal less," she
snapped back
"On Division Street, perhaps."
"And what do you fellows expect to do--start on Broadway?"
"Well, it takes some money to get started even on Division Street."
"Not two thousand. It has been done for a good deal less."
"I know; but still--I am sure a fellow must have some money
"It depends on what you call 'some.'" It was the same kind of
fencing contest as that which I had had with Mrs.
Chaikin. I was sounding Gussie's purse as the designer's wife had
mine.
Finally she took me in hand for a severe cross-examination. She
was obviously interested. I contradicted myself in some minor
points, but, upon the whole, I stood the test well
"If it is all as you say," she finally declared, "there seems to be
something in it."
"Gussie " I said, tremulously, "there is a great chance for us--"
"Wait," she interrupted me, suddenly bethinking herself of a new
point. "If he is as great a designer as you say he is, and he works
for a big firm, how is it, then, that he can't find a partner with big
money?"
"He could, any number of them, but he has confidence in me. He
says he would much rather start with me on two thousand than
with somebody else on twenty.
He thinks I should make an excellent business man, and that
between the two of us we should make a great success of it.
Money is nothing--so he says--money can be made, but with a fool
of an outside man even more than twenty thousand dollars might
go up in smoke." "That's so," Gussie assented, musingly. There
was a pause
"Well, Gussie?" I mustered courage to demand
"You don't want me to give you an answer right off, do you?
Things like that are not decided in a hurry."
We went on to discuss the project and some indifferent topics. It
was rapidly growing dark and cool. Looming through the
thickening dusk, somewhat diagonally across the dock from us,
was the figure of a young fellow with his head reclining on the
shoulder of a young woman. A little further off and nearer to the
water I could discern a white shirt-waist in the embrace of a dark
coat. A song made itself heard. It was "After the Ball is Over," one
of the sentimental songs of that day. "Tara-ra-boom-de-aye"
followed, a tune usually full of joyous snap and go, but now
performed in a subdued, brooding tempo, tinged with sadness. It
rang in a girlish soprano, the rest of the crowd listening silently.
By this time the gloom was so dense that the majority of us could
not see the singer, which enhanced the mystery of her melody and
the charm of her young voice. Presently other voices joined in, all
in the same meditative, somewhat doleful rhythm. Gayer strains
would have sounded sacrilegiously out of tune with the darkling
glint of the river, with the mysterious splash of its waves against
the bobbing bulkheads of the pier, with the starry enchantment of
the passing ferry-boats, with the love-enraptured solemnity of the
spring night.
I had not the heart even to think of business, much less to talk it.
We fell silent, both of us, listening to the singing. Poor Gussie!
She was not a pretty girl, and she did not interest me in the least.
Yet at this moment I was drawn to her. The brooding, plaintive
tones which resounded around us had a bewitching effect on me.
It filled me with yearning; it filled me with love. Gussie was a
woman to me now. My hand sought hers. It was an honest proffer
of endearment, for my soul was praying for communion with hers
She withdrew her hand. "This should not be done in a hurry,
either," she explained, pensively
"Gussie! Dear Gussie!" I said, sincerely, though not unaware of the
temporary nature of my feeling
"Don't!" she implored me
There was something in her plea which seemed to say: "You know
you don't care for me. It's my money that has brought you here.
Alas! It is not my lot to be loved for my own sake."
Her unspoken words broke my heart
"Gussie! I swear to you you're dear to me. Can't you believe me?"
The singing night was too much for her. She yielded to my arms.
Urged on by the chill air, we clung together in a delirium of
love-making. There were passionate embraces and kisses. I felt
that her thin, dried-up lips were not to my taste, but I went on
kissing them with unfeigned fervor.
The singing echoed dolefully. We remained in that secluded nook
until the growing chill woke us from our trance. I took her home.
When we reached a tiny square jammed with express-wagons we
paused to kiss once more, and when we found ourselves in front
of her stoop, which was now deserted, the vigorous hand-clasp
with which I took my leave was symbolic of another kiss.
I went away without discovering the size of her hoard. I was to call
on her the next evening.
As I trudged along through the swarming streets on my way home
the predominant feeling in my heart was one of physical distaste.
Poor thing! I felt that marrying her was out of the question
Nevertheless, the next evening I went to see her as arranged. I
found her out. Her landlady handed me a letter. It was in Yiddish:
Mr. Levinsky [it read], I do not write this myself, for I cannot
write, and I do not want you to think that I want to make believe
that I can. A man is writing it for me for ten cents. I am telling
him the words and he is writing just as I tell him. It was all a
mistake. You know what I mean. I don't care to marry you. You
are too smart for me and too young, too. I am afraid of you. I am a
simple girl and you are educated. I must look for my equal. If I
married you, both of us would be sorry for it.
Excuse me, and I wish you well. Please don't come to see me any
more
GUSSIE
The message left me with a feeling of shame, sadness, and
commiseration.
During that evening and the forenoon of the following day I was
badly out of spirits
There was nothing to do at the shop, yet I went there just to see
Chaikin, so as to keep up his interest in my scheme. He was glad
to see me. He had a message from his wife, who wanted me to
call in the evening. Gussie's letter was blotted out of my memory.
I was once more absorbed in my project
I spent the evening at the designer's house. Mrs. Chaikin made new
attempts at worming out the size of my fortune and, in addition,
something concerning its origin
"Is it an inheritance?" she queried.
"An inheritance? Why, would you like me to get one?" I said,
playfully, as though talking to a child
She could not help laughing. "Well, then, is it from a rich brother
or a sister, or is it your own money?" she pursued, falling in with
the facetious tone that I was affecting
"Any kind of money you wish, Mrs. Chaikin. But, seriously, there
will be no trouble about cash. The main point is that I want to go
into manufacturing and that I should prefer to have Mr. Chaikin
for my partner. There is plenty of money in cloaks, and I am bent
upon making heaps, great heaps, of it--for Mr. Chaikin and
myself. Really, isn't it maddening to think that he should be
making other people rich, while all he gets is a miserable few
dollars a week? It's simply outrageous."
So speaking, I worked Mrs. Chaikin up to a high sense of the
absurdity of the thing. I was rapidly gaining ground with her
And so, pending that mysterious something to which I was often
alluding as the source of my prospective fortune, I became a
frequent visitor at her house. Sometimes she would invite me to
supper; once or twice we spent Sunday together. As for little
Maxie, he invariably hailed me with joy. I was actually fond of
him, and I was glad of it.
CHAPTER IV
THE time I speak of, the late '80's and the early
'90's, is connected with an important and interesting chapter in the
history of the American cloak business. Hitherto in the control of
German Jews, it was now beginning to pass into the hands of their
Russian co-religionists, the change being effected under peculiar
conditions that were destined to lead to a stupendous development
of the industry. If the average American woman is to-day dressed
infinitely better than she was a quarter of a century ago, and if she
is now easily the best-dressed average woman in the world, the
fact is due, in a large measure, to the change I refer to
The transition was inevitable. While the manufacturers were
German Jews, their contractors, tailors, and machine operators
were Yiddish-speaking immigrants from Russia or Austrian
Galicia. Although the former were of a superior commercial
civilization, it was, after all, a case of Greek meeting Greek, and
the circumstances were such that just because they represented a
superior commercial civilization they were doomed to be beaten
The German manufacturers were the pioneers of the industry in
America. It was a new industry, in fact, scarcely twenty years old.
Formerly, and as late as the '70's, women's cloaks and jackets were
little known in the United States. Shawls were worn by the
masses. What few cloaks were seen on women of means and
fashion were imported from Germany. But the demand grew.
So, gradually, some German-American merchants and an
American shawl firm bethought themselves of manufacturing
these garments at home. The industry progressed, the new-born
great Russian immigration--a child of the massacres of 1881 and
1882--bringing the needed army of tailors for it. There was big
money in the cloak business, and it would have been unnatural if
some of these tailors had not, sooner or later, begun to think of
going into business on their own hook. At first it was a hard
struggle. The American business world was slow to appreciate the
commercial possibilities which these new-comers represented, but
it learned them in course of time
It was at the beginning of this transition period that my scheme
was born in my mind. Schemes of that kind were in the air
Meyer Nodelman, the son of my landlady, had not the remotest
inkling of my plans, yet I had consulted him about them more than
once. Of course, it was all done in a purely abstract way. Like the
majority of our people, he was a talkative man so I would try to
keep him talking shop. By a system of seemingly casual
questioning I would pump him on sundry details of the clothing
business, on the differences and similarities between it and the
cloak trade, and, more especially, on how one started on a very
small capital
He bragged and blustered, but oftentimes he would be carried
away by the sentimental side of his past struggles. Then he would
unburden himself of a great deal of unvarnished history. On such
occasions I would obtain from him a veritable treasure of
information and suggestions.
Some of the generalizations of this homespun and quaint thinker,
too, were interesting. Talking of credit, for example, he once said:
"When a fellow is a beginner it's a good thing if he has a credit
face."
I thought it was some sort of commercial term he was using, and
when I asked him what it meant he said: "Why, some people are
just born with the kind of face that makes the woolen merchant or
the bank president trust them. They are not more honest than
some other fellows. Indeed, some of them are plain pickpockets,
but they have a credit face, so you have got to trust them. You just
can't help it."
"And if they don't pay?"
"But they do. They get credit from somebody else and pay the
jobber or the banker. Then they get more credit from these people
and pay the other fellows. People of this kind can do a big
business without a cent of capital. In Russia a fellow who pays his
bills is called an honest man, but America is miles ahead of
Russia. Here you can be the best pay in the world and yet be a
crook. You wouldn't say that every man who breathes God's air is
honest, would you? Well, paying your bills in America is like
breathing.
If you don't, you are dead."
Chaikin, too, often let fall, in his hesitating, monosyllabic way,
some observation which I considered of value. Of the purely
commercial side of the industry he knew next to nothing, but then
he could tell me a thing or two concerning the psychology of
popular taste, the forces operating behind the scenes of fashion,
the methods employed by small firms in stealing styles from
larger ones, and other tricks of the trade.
At last I resolved to act. It was the height of the season for winter
orders, and I decided to take time by the forelock
One day when I called at the designer's, and Mrs. Chaikin asked
me for news (alluding to the thousands I was supposed to be
expecting), I said: "Well, I have rented a shop."
"Rented a shop?"
"That's what I did. It's no use missing the season. If a fellow wants
to do something, there is nothing for it but to go to work and do it,
else he is doomed to be a slave all his life."
When I added that the shop was on Division Street her face fell
"But what difference does it make where it is?" I argued, with
studied vehemence. "It's only a place to make samples in--for a
start."
"Mr. Chaikin is not going into a wee bit of a business like that. No,
sir."
In the course of our many discussions it had often happened that
after overruling me with great finality she would end by yielding
to my point of view. I hoped this would be the case in the present
instance
"Don't be so hasty, Mrs. Chaikin," I said, with a smile. "Wait till
you know a little more about the arrangement."
And dropping into the Talmudic singsong, which usually comes
back to me when my words assume an argumentative character, I
proceeded "In the first place, I don't want Mr. Chaikin to leave the
Manheimers--not yet. All I want him to do is to attend to our shop
evenings. Don't be uneasy: the Manheimers won't get wind of it.
Leave that to me. Well, all I want is some samples to go around
the stores with. The rest will come easy.
We'll make things hum. See if we don't. When we have orders and
get really started we'll move out of Division Street. Of course we
will. But would it not be foolish to open up on a large scale and
have Mr. Chaikin give up his job before we have accomplished
anything? I think it would. Indeed, it's my money that's going to be
invested. Do you blame me for being careful, at the beginning at
least? I neither want Mr. Chaikin to risk his job nor myself to risk
big money."
"But you haven't even told me how much you can put in," she
blurted out, excitedly.
"As much as will be necessary. But what's the use dumping a big
lot at once? Many a big business has failed, while firms who start
in a modest way have worked themselves up. Why should Mr.
Chaikin begin by risking his position? Why? Why?"
The long and short of it was that Mrs. Chaikin became enthusiastic
for my Division Street shop, and the next day her husband took
two hours off to accompany me to a nondescript woolen-store on
Hester Street, where we bought fifty dollars' worth of material
The rent for the shop was thirty dollars a month. One month's rent
for two sewing-machines was two dollars. A large second-hand
table for designing and cutting and some old chairs cost me
twelve dollars more, leaving me a balance of over two hundred
dollars
Before I went to rent the premises for our prospective shop I had
withdrawn my money from the savings-bank and deposited it in a
small bank where I opened a check account
"Once I am to play the part of a manufacturer it would not do to
pay bills in cash," I reflected. "I must pay in checks, and do so like
one to the manner born."
At this the magic word "credit" loomed in letters of gold before
me. I was aware of the fascination of check-books, so, being
armed with one, I expected to be able to buy things, in some
cases, at least, without having to pay for them at once. Besides,
my bank might be induced to grant me a loan. Then, too, one
might issue a check before one had the amount and thereby gain a
day's time. There seemed to be a world of possibilities in the long,
narrow book in my breast pocket. I was ever conscious of its
presence. I have a vivid recollection of the elation with which I
drew and issued my first check (in payment of thirty dollars, the
first month's rent for our prospective cloak-factory). Humanity
seemed to have become divided into two distinct classes--those
who paid their obligations in cash and those who paid them in
checks. I still have that first check-book of mine
CHAPTER V
CHAIKIN made up half a dozen sample garments. I
took them to the department store to which the Manheimer
Brothers catered, but the buyer of the cloak department would not
so much as let me untie my bundle. He was a middle-aged man
(women buyers were rare in those days), an Irish-American of
commanding figure. After sweeping me with a glance of cold
curiosity, he waved me aside. My Russian name and my
appearance were evidently against me. I tried the other
department stores --with the same result. The larger business
world of the city had not yet learned to take the Russian Jew
seriously as a factor in advanced commerce. The buyer of the
cloak department in the last store I visited was an American Jew,
a fair-complexioned little fellow, all aglitter with neatness. At first
he took an amused interest in me. When I had unpacked my goods
and was about to show him one of Chaikin's jackets he checked
me
"Suppose we gave you an order for five hundred," he said, with a
smile; "five hundred jackets to be delivered at a certain date."
"I would deliver it," I answered, boldly. "Why not?"
"I don't know why. Maybe you would, maybe you wouldn't. How
can we be sure you would?" Before I had time to answer he asked
me how long I had been in the country.
When I told him, he complimented me on my English. I was sure it
meant business. I was thrilled
"Have you got a shop?" he further questioned. "How many hands
do you employ?"
"Seventy-five."
He sized me up. "Where is your place?"
"On Division Street."
"Well, well! What is your rating?" I did not know what he meant.
So, for an answer, I made a new attempt to submit the contents of
my bundle for his inspection. At this he made a gesture of disgust
and withdrew. A cold sweat broke out on my forehead
I had heard of the existence of small department stores in various
sections of the city, so I went in search of them
I found myself in the vicinity of the City College. As I passed that
corner I studiously looked away. I felt like a convert Jew passing a
synagogue
It was a warm day. My pack seemed to grow heavier with every
block I walked, and so did my heart. I was perspiring freely; my
collar wilted. All of which did anything but make me look as "a
man who paid his bills in checks." At last, walking up Third
Avenue I came across a place where there was quite a large
display of jackets in the windows. Upon my opening the door and
announcing my mission, two jaunty young fellows invited me in
with elaborate courtesy, almost with anxiety. My heart leaped for
joy. I fell to opening my bundle. The two young men inspected
every jacket, went into ecstasies over each of them, and then
asked me all sorts of irrelevant questions until it dawned upon me
that I was being made game of. It appeared that the father of the
two young men, the proprietor of the store, manufactured his own
goods, for wholesale as well as for retail trade
I received much better treatment in a store on Avenue B, but my
goods proved too high for that neighborhood. As if to atone for
this, the proprietor of this store, a kindly Galician Jew, gave me a
list of the minor department stores I was looking for, and some
valuable suggestions in addition
My dinner that day consisted of two ring-shaped rolls which I
bought in a Jewish grocery-store and which I ate on a bench in
Tompkins Square
The day passed most discouragingly. It was about 7 o'clock when,
disheartened to the point of despair, I dragged my wearied limbs in
the direction of my "factory." When I got there I found my partner
waiting for me--not alone, but in the company of his wife
"Well?" she shrieked, jumping to meet me
"Splendid!" I replied, with enthusiasm. "It looks even better than I
expected. I could have got good orders at once, but a fellow must
not be too hasty. You have got to look around first--find out who
is who, you know."
Mrs. Chaikin looked crestfallen. "So you did not get any orders at
all?"
"What's your hurry?" her husband said, pleadingly. "Levinsky is
right. You can't sell goods unless you know who you deal with."
The following two days were as barren of results as the first. Mrs.
Chaikin had lost all confidence in the venture. She was becoming
rather hard to handle
"I don't want Ansel to bother any more," she said, peevishly. "You
know what the Americans say, 'Time is money.' Pay Ansel for his
work and let us be 'friends at a distance.'"
"Very well," I said, and, producing my check-book, I asked, "How
much is it?"
The sight of my check-book acted like a charm. The situation
suddenly assumed brighter colors in Mrs. Cbaikin's eyes
"Look at him! He thought I really meant it," she grinned,
sheepishly
Every night I would go to bed sick at heart and with my mind half
made up to drop it all, only to wake in the morning more resolute
and hopeful than ever. Hopeful and defiant. It was as though
somebody--the whole world--were jeering at my brazen-faced,
piteous efforts, and I was bound to make good, "just for spite."
I learned of the existence of "purchasing offices" where the buyers
of several department stores, from so many cities, made their
headquarters in New York. Also, I discovered that in order to keep
track of the arrivals of these buyers I must follow a daily paper
called Hotel Reporter (the ordinary newspapers did not furnish
information of this character in those days). A man who
manufactured neckties in the same ramshackle building in which I
hoped to manufacture cloaks volunteered to let me look at his
Reporter every day. This man was naturally inclined to be
neighborly, but I had found that an occasional quotation or two
from the Talmud was particularly helpful in obtaining a small
favor from him
I knocked about among the purchasing offices with bulldog
tenacity, but during the first few days my efforts in this direction
were as futile as in the case of the New York stores. Meanwhile,
time was pressing. So far as out-of-town buyers were concerned,
the "winter season" was drawing to a close. All I could see were
some belated stragglers. One of these was a man from the Middle
West, a stout, fleshy American with quick, nervous movements
which contradicted his well-fed, languid-looking face
He shot a few glances at my samples, just to get rid of me, but he
liked the designs, and I could see that he found my prices
tempting
"How soon will you be able to deliver five hundred?" he snarled
"In three weeks."
"Very well--go ahead!" And speaking in his jerky, impatient way,
he went on to specify how many cloaks he wanted of each kind
I left him with my heart divided between unutterable triumph and
black despair. Five hundred cloaks! How would I raise the money
for so much raw material? It almost looked like another practical
joke
By this time I was more than sure that the Chaikins had a
considerable little pile, but to turn to them for funds was
impossible. It would have let my cat out of the bag. I sought credit
at Claflin's and at half a dozen smaller places, but all in vain. I
could not help thinking of Nodelman's "credit face." Ah, if that
kind of a face had fallen to my lot! But it had not, it seemed. It
looked as if there were no hope for me
Finally I took the necktie man into my confidence, the result being
that he unburdened himself of his own financial straits to me
One afternoon I was moping around some of the side-streets off
lower Broadway in quest of some new place where I might try to
beg for credit, when I noticed the small sign-board of a
commission merchant. Upon entering the place I found a
fine-looking elderly American dictating something to a
stenographer. When the man had heard my plea be looked me over
from head to foot.
I felt like a prisoner facing the jury which is about to announce its
verdict
At last he said: "Well, you look pretty reliable. I guess I'll trust you
the goods for thirty days."
It was all I could do to restrain myself from invoking benedictions
on his head and kissing his hands as my mother would have done
under similar circumstances
"So I do have a 'credit face'!" I exclaimed to myself, gleefully
When I found myself in the street again I looked at my reflection
in store windows, scanning my "credit face."
The Chaikins took it for granted that I had paid for the goods on
the spot
Things brightened up at our "factory." I ordered an additional
sewing-machine of the instalment agent and hired two
operators--poor fellows who were willing to work fourteen or
fifteen hours a day for twelve dollars a week. (The union had
again been revived, but it was weak, and my employees did not
belong to it.) As for myself, I toiled at my machine literally day
and night, snatching two or three hours' sleep at dawn, with some
bundles of cut goods or half-finished cloaks for a bed. Chaikin
spent every night, from 7 to 2, with me, cutting the goods and
doing the better part of the other work. Mrs. Chaikin, too, lent a
hand. Leaving Maxie in the care of her mother, she would spend
several hours a day in the factory, finishing the cloaks
The five hundred cloaks were shipped on time. I was bursting with
consciousness of the fact that I was a manufacturer--that a big firm
out West (a firm of Gentiles, mind you!) was recognizing my
claim to the title.
I was American enough to be alive to the special glamour of the
words, "out West."
Goods in our line of business usually sold "for cash," which meant
ten days.
Ten days more, then, and I should receive a big check from that
firm. That would enable me to start new operations. Accordingly,
I went out to look for more orders
Whether my first success had put new confidence in me, or
whether my past experiences had somewhat rounded off my rough
edges and enabled me to speak to business people in a more
effective manner than I could have done before, the proprietor of
a small department store on upper Third Avenue let me show him
my samples. My prices made an impression on him. My cloaks
were five dollars apiece lower than he was in the habit of paying.
He looked askance at me, as though my figures seemed too good
to be true, until I found it the best policy to tell him the
unembellished truth.
"The big manufacturers of whom you buy have big office
expenses," I explained. "They make a lot of fuss, and you've got to
pay for it. My principle is not to make fuss at the retailer's
expense. Our office costs us very, very little. We are plain people.
But that isn't all. Your big manufacturer pays for union labor, so
he takes it out of you. Now, we don't bother about these things.
We get the best work done for the lowest wages.
The big men in the business wouldn't even know where hands of
this kind could be got. We do."
I took my departure with an order for three hundred cloaks,
expecting to begin work on them as soon as I received that check
"from out West." Things seemed to be coming my way.
As I sat in an Elevated train going down-town I figured the profits
on the two orders and pictured other orders coming in. I beheld
our little factory crowded with machines, I heard their bewitching
whir-r, whir-r. Chaikin would have to leave the Manheimers, of
course
In the afternoon of the sixth day, when I called at one of the
purchasing offices I have mentioned, I received the information
that the firm whose check I was awaiting so impatiently had
failed!
CHAPTER VI
THE failure of the Western firm seemed to
have nipped my commercial career in the bud. The large order I
had received from its representative was apparently to be the
death as well as the birth of my glory. In my despair, I tried to
make a virtue of necessity. I was telling myself that it served me
right; that I had had no business to abandon my intellectual
pursuits. I was inclined to behold something like the hand of
Providence in the bankruptcy of that firm. At the same time I was
casting about in my mind for some way of raising new money
with which to pay the kindly commission merchant, get a new bill
of goods from him, and fill my new order.
When I explained the matter to Mrs. Chaikin she was on the brink
of a fainting spell
"You're a liar and a thief!" she shrieked. "There never was a
Western firm in the world. It's all a lie. You sold the goods for
cash."
Her husband knew something about firms and credit, so I had no
difficulty in substantiating my assertion to him
"It's only a matter of days when I shall get the big check that is
coming to me," I assured them. I went on to spin a long yarn, to
which she listened with jeers and outbursts of uncomplimentary
Yiddish
One day I mustered courage and called on Mrs. Chaikin. I did so
on an afternoon when her husband was sure to be at work,
because I had a lurking feeling that, being alone with me, she
would be easier to deal with
When she saw me she gasped. "What, you?" she said. "You have
the nerve to come up here?"
"Come, come, Mrs. Chaikin," I said, earnestly. "Please be seated
and let us talk it all over in a business-like manner. With your
sense, and especially with your sense for business. you will
understand me."
"Please don't flatter me," she demurred, sternly
But I knew that nothing appealed to her vanity so much as being
thought a clever business woman, and I protested: "Flatter you! In
the first place, it is a well-known fact that women have more
sense than men. In the second place, it is the talk of every
cloak-shop that Mr. Chaikin owes his high position to you as
much as to his own ability. Everybody, everybody says so."
I talked of "unforeseen difficulties," of a "well-known landlord"
whose big check I was expecting every day; I composed a story
about that landlord's father-in-law agreed with Mrs. Chaikin that it
had been a mistake on my part to trust the buyer of that Western
firm the goods without first consulting her; and the upshot was
that she made me stay to supper and that pending the arrival of
Chaikin I took Maxie to the Park
The father-in-law of my story was Mr. Even, of course. I had
portrayed him vividly as coming to my rescue in my present
predicament, so vividly, indeed, that my own fib haunted me the
next day. The result was that in the evening I made myself as
presentable as I could, and repaired to the synagogue where he
spent much of his time reading Talmud
I had not visited the place since that memorable day, my first day
in America. I recognized it at once. I was thrilled. The four-odd
years seemed twenty-four.
Mr. Even was not there, but he soon came in. He had aged
considerably. He was beginning to look somewhat decrepit. His
dignity was tinged with the sadness of old age
"Good evening, Mr. Even. Do you know me?" I began
He scanned me closely, but failed to recognize me
"I am David Levinsky, the 'green one' you befriended four and a
half years ago. Don't you remember me, Mr. Even? It was in this
very place where I had the good fortune to make your
acquaintance. I'm the son of the woman who was killed by
Gentiles, in Antomir," I added, mournfully
"Oh yes, indeed!" he said, with a wistful smile, somewhat abashed.
He took snuff, looked me over once more, and, as if his memory
had been brightened by the snuff, he burst out: "Lord of the
World! You are that young man! Why, I confess I scarcely
recognize you. Of course I remember it all. Why, of course I
remember you. Well, well! How have you been getting along in
America?"
"Can't complain. Not at all. You remember that evening? After you
provided me with a complete outfit, like a father fixing up his son
for his wedding-day, and you gave me five dollars into the
bargain, you told me not to call on you again until I was well
established in life. Do you remember that?"
"Of course I do," he answered, with a beaming glance at two old
Talmudists who sat at their books close by
"Well, here I am. I am running a cloak-factory."
He began to question me about my affairs with sad curiosity. I said
that business was "good, too good, in fact," so that it required
somewhat more capital than I possessed.
I soon realized, however, that he did not care for me now. My
Americanized self did not make the favorable impression that I
had made four and a half years before, when he gave me my first
American hair-cut
I inquired after his daughter and his son-in-law, but my hint that
the latter might perhaps be willing to indorse a note for me
evoked an impatient grunt
"My son-in-law! Why, you don't even know him!" he retorted, with
a suspicious look at me
I turned it off with a joke and asked about the hen-pecked man.
Mr. Even had not seen him for four years. The other Talmudists
present had never even known him. A man with extremely long
black side-locks who spoke with a Galician accent became
interested. After Mr. Even went to his wonted seat at the east wall,
where he took up a book, this man said to me, with a sigh: "Oh, it
is not the old home. Over there people go to the same synagogue
all their lives, while here one is constantly on the move. They call
it a city.
Pshaw! It is a market-place, a bazar, an inn, not a city! People are
together for a day and then, behold! they have flown apart. Where
to? Nobody knows. I don't know what has become of you and you
don't know what has become of me."
"That's why there is no real friendship here," I chimed in, heartily.
"That's why one feels so friendless, so lonely."
My shop, of course, shut down, and I roamed about the streets a
good deal. I was restless. I continually felt nonplussed, ashamed to
look myself in the face, as it were. One forenoon I found myself
walking in the direction of Twenty-third Street and Lexington
Avenue. The college building was now a source of consolation.
Indeed, what was money beside the halo of higher education? I
paused in front of the building. There were several students on the
campus, all Jewish boys. I accosted one of them. I spoke to him
enviously, and left the place thrilling with a determination to drop
all thought of business, to take the entrance examination, and be a
college student at last. I was almost grateful to that Western firm
for going into bankruptcy
And yet, even while I was tingling with this feeling, a voice
exclaimed in my heart, "Ah, if that Western firm had not failed!"
The debt I owed the American commission merchant agonized me
without let-up.
I couldn't help thinking of my "credit face." To disappoint him, of
all men, seemed to be the most brutal thing I had ever done. I
imagined myself obtaining just enough money to pay him; but, as
I did so, I could not resist the temptation of extending the sum so
as to go on manufacturing cloaks. I was incessantly cudgeling my
brains for some "angel" who would come to my financial rescue
The spell of my college aspirations was broken once for all. My
Temple was destroyed. Nothing was left of it but vague yearnings
and something like a feeling of compunction which will assert
itself, sometimes, to this day
The Talmud tells us how the destruction of Jerusalem and the
great Temple was caused by a hen and a rooster. The destruction
of my American Temple was caused by a bottle of milk.
The physical edifice still stands, though the college has long since
moved to a much larger and more imposing building or group of
buildings. I find the humble old structure on Lexington Avenue
and Twenty-third Street the more dignified and the more
fascinating of the two. To me it is a sacred spot. It is the sepulcher
of my dearest ambitions, a monument to my noblest enthusiasm in
America.
BOOK IX
DORA
CHAPTER I
"HOW about it?" Mrs. Chaikin said to me, ominously.
"About what? What do you mean, Mrs. Chaikin?"
"Oh, you know what I mean. It is no use playing the fool and trying
to make a fool of me."
The conversation was held in our deserted shop on an afternoon.
The three sewing-machines, the cutting-table, and the
pressing-table looked desolate.
She spoke in an undertone, almost in a whisper, lest the secret of
her husband's relations with me should leak out and reach his
employers. She had been guarding that secret all along, but now,
that our undertaking had apparently collapsed, she was
particularly uneasy about it
"I don't believe that store in the West has failed at all. In fact, I
know it has not. Somebody told me all about it."
This was her method of cross-examining me. I read her a clipping
containing the news of the bankruptcy, but as she could not read it
herself, she only sneered. I reasoned with her, I pleaded, I swore;
but she kept sneering or nodding her head mournfully
"I don't believe you. I don't believe you," she finally said, shutting
her eyes with a gesture of despair and exhaustion. "Do I believe a
dog when it barks? Neither do I believe you. I curse the day when
I first met you. It was the black year that brought you to us." She
fell to wringing her hands and moaning: "Woe is me! Woe is me!"
Finally she tiptoed out of the room and down the stairs. In my
despair I longed for somebody to whom I could unbosom myself. I
thought of Meyer Nodelman. A self-made man and one who had
begun manufacturing almost penniless like myself, he seemed to
be just the man I needed. A thought glimmered through my mind,
"And who knows but he may come to my rescue I was going to call
at his warehouse, but upon second thought I realized that the seat
of his cold self-interest would scarcely be a favorable setting for
the interview and that I must try to entrap him in the humanizing
atmosphere of his mother's home for the purpose
The next time I saw him at his mother's I took him up to my little
attic and laid my tribulations before him. I told him the whole
story, almost without embellishments, omitting nothing but
Chaikin's name
"Is it all true?" he interrupted me at one point
I swore that it was, and went on. At the end I offered to prove it all
to his satisfaction
"You don't need to prove it to me," he replied. "What do I care?"
Then, suddenly, casting off his reserve, he blurted out: "Look here,
young fellow! If you think I am going to lend you money you are
only wasting time, for I am not." "And why not?" I asked, boldly,
with studied dignity
"Why not! You better tell me why yes," he chuckled. "You have a
lot of spunk. That you certainly have, and you ought to make a
good business man, but I won't loan you money, for all that."
"Weren't you once hard up yourself, Mr. Nodelman? You have
made a success of it, and now it would only be right that you
should help another fellow get up in the world. You won't lose a
cent by it, either. I take an oath on it."
"You can't have an oath cashed in a bank, can you?"
"Why did that commission merchant take a chance? If a Gentile is
willing to help a Jew, and one whom he had never seen before,
you should not hesitate, either."
"Well, there is no use talking about it," was his final decision
The following day I received a letter from him, inviting me to his
office
His warehouse occupied a vast loft on a little street off Broadway.
Arrived there, I had to pass several men, all in their shirt-sleeves,
who were attacking mountains of cloth with long, narrow knives.
One of these directed me to a remote window, in front of which I
presently found Nodelman lecturing a man who wore a
tape-measure around his neck
Nodelman kept me waiting, without offering me a scat, a good
half-hour. He was in his shirt-sleeves, like the others, yet he
looked far more dignified than I had ever seen him look before. It
was as though the environment of his little kingdom had made
another man of him
Finally, he left the man with the tape-measure and silently led me
into his little private office, a narrow strip of partitioned-off space
at the other end of the loft
When we were seated and the partition door was shut he said, with
grave mien, "Well," and fell silent again
I gazed at him patiently
"Well," he repeated, "I have thought it over." And again he paused.
At last he burst out: "I do want to help you, young fellow. You
didn't expect it, did you? I do want to help you. And do you know
why? Because otherwise you won't pay that Gentile and I don't
want a good-hearted Gentile to think that Jews are a bad lot.
That's number one. Number two is this: If you think Meyer
Nodelman is a hog, you don't know Meyer Nodelman. Number
three: I rather liked the way you talked yesterday. I said to myself,
said I: 'An educated fellow who can talk like that will be all right.
He ought to be given a lift, for most educated people are damn
fools.' Well, I'll tell you what I am willing to do for you. I'll get
you the goods for that order of yours, not for thirty days, but for
sixty. What do you think of that? Now is Nodelman a hog or is he
not? But that's as far as I am willing to go. I can only get you the
goods for that Third Avenue order. See? But that won't be enough
to help you out of your scrape, not enough for you to pay that good
Gentile on time." He engaged in some mental arithmetic by means
of which he reached the conclusion that I should need an
additional four hundred dollars, and he wound up by an
ultimatum: he would not furnish me the goods until I had
produced that amount
"Look here, young fellow," he added; "since you were smart
enough to get that Gentile and Meyer Nodelman to help you out, it
ought not to be a hard job for you to get a third fellow to take an
interest in you. Do you remember what I told you about those
credit faces? I think you have got one."
"I have an honest heart, too," I said, with a smile
"Your heart I can't get into, so I don't know. See? Maybe there is a
rogue hiding there and maybe there isn't. But your face and your
talk certainly are all right. They ought to be able to get you some
more cash. And if they don't, then they don't deserve that I should
help you out, either. See?" He chuckled in appreciation of his own
syllogism
"It's a nice piece of Talmud reasoning," I complimented him, with
an enthusiastic laugh. "But, seriously, Mr. Nodelman, I shall pay
you every cent. You run absolutely no risk."
I pleaded with him to grant me the accommodation
unconditionally. I tried to convince him that I should contrive to
do without the additional cash. But he was obdurate, and at last I
took my leave
"Wait a moment! What's your hurry? Are you afraid you'll be a
couple of minutes longer becoming a millionaire? There is
something I want to ask you."
"What is it, Mr. Nodelman?"
"How about your studying to be a doctor-philosopher?" he asked,
archly
"Oh, well, one can attend to business and find time for books, too,"
I answered
I came away in a new transport of expectations and in a new agony
of despair at once. On the whole, however, my spirits were greatly
buoyed up.
Encouraged by the result of taking Nodelman into my confidence,
I decided to try a similar heart-to-heart talk on Max Margolis,
better known to the reader as Maximum Max. He had some
money.
I had seen very little of him in the past two years, having stumbled
upon him in the street but two or three times. But upon each of
these occasions he had stopped me and inquired about my affairs
with genuine interest. He was fond of me. I had no doubt about it.
And he was so good-natured. Our last chance meeting antedated
my new venture by at least six months, and he was not likely to
have any knowledge of it. I felt that he would be sincerely glad to
hear of it and I hoped that he would be inclined to help me launch
it. Anyhow, he seemed to be my last resort, and I was determined
to make my appeal to him as effective as I knew how
As he had always seen me shabbily clad, I decided to overwhelm
him with a new suit of clothes. I needed one, at any rate
After some seeking and inquiring, I found him in a Bowery
furniture-store, one of the several places from which he supplied
his instalment customers.
It was about 10 o'clock in the morning
"There is something I want to consult you about, Max," I said.
"Something awfully important to me. You're the only man I know
who could advise me and in whom I can confide," I added, with
an implication of great intimacy and affection. "It's a business
scheme, Max. I have a chance to make lots of money."
The conversation was held in a dusky passage of the labyrinthine
store, a narrow lane running between two barricades of furniture
"What is that? A business scheme?" he asked, in a preoccupied
tone of voice and straining his eyes to look me over. "You are
dressed up, I see. Quite prosperous, aren't you?"
As we emerged into the glare of the Bowery he scrutinized my suit
once again. I quailed. I now felt that to have come in such a
screamingly new suit was a fatal mistake. I cursed myself for an
idiot of a smart Aleck. But he spoke to me with his usual
cordiality and my spirits rose again. However, he seemed to be
busy, and so I asked him to set an hour when he could see me at
leisure. We made an appointment for 3 o'clock in the afternoon. I
was to meet him at the same furniture-store; but upon second
thought, and with another glance at my new clothes, he said,
jovially: "Why, you are rigged out like a regular monarch! It is
quite an honor to invite you to the house. Come up, will you?
And, as I won't have to go out to meet you, you can make it 2
o'clock, or half past."
CHAPTER II
MAX occupied the top floor of an old private house
on Henry Street, a small "railroad" apartment of two large, bright
rooms--a living-room and a kitchen--with two small, dark
bedrooms between them. The ceiling was low and the air
somewhat tainted with the odor of mold and dampness. I found
Max in the general living-room, which was also a dining-room, a
fat boy of three on his lap and a slender, pale girl of eight on a
chair close by. His wife, a slender young woman with a fine white
complexion and serious black eyes, was clearing away the lunch
things
"Mrs. Margolis, Mr. Levinsky," he introduced us. "Plainly
speaking, this is my wifey and this is a friend of mine."
As she was leaving the room for the kitchen he called after her,
"Dvorah! Dora! make some tea, will you?"
She craned her neck and gave him a look of resentment. "It's a
good thing you are telling me that," she said. "Otherwise I
shouldn't know what I have got to do, should I?"
When she had disappeared he explained to me that he variously
addressed her by the Yiddish or English form of her name
"We are plain Yiddish folk," he generalized, good-humoredly
A few minutes later, as Mrs. Margolis placed a glass of Russian
tea before me, he drew her to him and pinched her white cheek
"What do you think of my wifey, Levinsky?"
She smiled--a grave, deprecating smile--and took to pottering
about the house
"And what do you think of these little customers?" he went on.
"Lucy, examine mamma in spelling. Quick! Dora, be a good girl,
sit down and let Levinsky see how educated you are." ("Educated"
he said in English, with the accent on the "a.") "What do you
want?" his wife protested, softly. "Mr. Levinsky wants to see you
on business, and here you are bothering him with all sorts of
nonsense
"Never mind his business. It won't run away. Sit down, I say. It
won't take long." She yielded. Casting bashful side-glances at
nobody in particular, she seated herself opposite Lucy
"Well?" she said, with a little laugh
I thought her eyes looked too serious, almost angry. "Insane people
have eyes of this kind," I said to myself. I also made a mental note
of her clear, fresh, delicate complexion. Otherwise she did not
interest me in the least, and I mutely prayed Heaven to take her
out of the room
"How do you spell 'great'?" the little girl demanded
"G-r-e-a-t--great," her mother answered, with a smile
"Book?"
"B-o-o-k--book. Oh, give me some harder words."
"Laughter."
"L-a-u-g-h-t-e-r--laughter."
"Is that correct?" Margolis turned to me, all beaming. "I wish I
could do as much. And nobody has taught her, either. She has
learned it all by herself.
Little Lucy is the only teacher she ever had. But she will soon be
ahead of her. Won't she, Lucy?"
"I'm afraid I am ahead of her already," Mrs. Margolis said, gaily,
yet flushed with excitement
"You are not!" Lucy protested, with a good-natured pout
"Shut up, bad girl you," her mother retorted, again with a bashful
side-glance
"Is that the way you talk to your mamma?" Max intervened. "I'll
tell your teacher."
I was on pins and needles to be alone with him and to get down to
the object of my visit
Finally he said, brusquely: "Well, we have had enough of that.
Leave us alone, Dora. Go to the parlor and take the kids along."
She obeyed
When he heard of my venture he was interested. He often
interrupted me with boisterous expressions of admiration for my
subterfuges as well as for the plan as a whole. With all his
boisterousness, however, there was an air of caution about him, as
if he scented danger. When I finally said that all depended upon
my raising four hundred dollars his face clouded
"I see, I see," he murmured, with sudden estrangement. "I see. I
see." "Don't lose courage," I said to myself. "Nodelman was
exactly like that at first. Go right ahead."
I portrayed my business prospects in the most alluring colors and
gave Max to understand that if "somebody" advanced me the four
hundred dollars he would be sure to get it back in thirty days plus
any interest he might name
"It would be terrible if I had to let it all go to pieces on account of
such a thing," I concluded
There was a moment of very awkward silence. It was broken by
Max
"It's really too bad. What are you going to do about it?" he said.
"Where can you get such a 'somebody'?"
"I don't know. That's why I came to consult you. I thought you
might suggest some way. It would be a pity if I had to give it all
up on account of four hundred dollars."
"Indeed it would. It would be terrible. Still, four hundred dollars is
not four hundred cents. I wish I were a rich man. I should lend it
to you at once. You know I should."
"I should pay you every cent of it, Max."
"You say it as if I had money. You know I have not." What I did
know was that he had, and he knew that I did
He took to analyzing the situation and offering me advice. Why not
go to that kindly Gentile, the commission merchant, make a clean
breast of it, and obtain an extension of time? Why not apply to
some money-lender? Why not make a vigorous appeal to
Nodelman? He seemed to be an obliging fellow, so if I pressed
him a little harder he might give me the cash as well as the goods
I was impelled to retort that advice was cheap, and he apparently
read my thoughts
Presently he said, with genuine ardor: "I tell you what, Levinsky.
Why not try to get your old landlady to open her stocking? From
what you have told me, she ought not to be a hard nut to crack if
you only go about it in the right way.
This suggestion made a certain appeal to me, but I would not
betray it. I continued resentfully silent
"You just try her, Levinsky. She'll let you have the four hundred
dollars, or half of it, at least."
"And if she does, her son will refuse to get me the goods," I
remarked, with a sneer.
"Nonsense. If you know how to handle her, she will realize that
she must keep her mouth shut until after she gets the money
back."
"Oh, what's the use?" I said, impatiently. "I must get the cash at
once, or all is lost."
Again he spoke of money-lenders. He went into details about one
of them and offered to ascertain his address for me. He evidently
felt awkward about his part in the matter and eager to atone for it
in some way
"Why should a usurer trust me?" I said, rising to go.
"Wait. What's your hurry? If that money-lender hears your story, he
may trust you. He is a peculiar fellow, don't you know. When he
takes a fancy to a man he is willing to take a chance on him. Of
course, the interest would be rather high." He paused abruptly,
wrinkled his forehead with an effect of pondering some new
scheme, and said: "Wait. I think I have a better plan.
I'll see if I can't get you the money without a money-lender." With
this he sprang to his feet and had his wife bring him his coat and
hat. "I'll be back in less than half an hour," he said. "Dvorah dear,
give Levinsky some more tea, will you? I am going out for a few
minutes. Don't let him be downhearted." Then, shaking a finger of
warning at me, he said, playfully, "Only take care that you don't
fall in love with her!" And he was gone
"It's all play-acting," I thought. "He just wants me to believe he is
trying to do something for me." But, of course, I was not
altogether devoid of hope that I was mistaken and that he was
making a sincere effort to raise a loan for me
Mrs. Margolis went into the kitchen immediately her husband
departed.
Presently she came back, carrying a glass of tea on a saucer. She
placed it before me with an embarrassed side-glance, brought
some cookies, and seated herself at the far end of the table. I
uttered some complimentary trivialities about the children
When a man finds himself alone with a woman who is neither his
wife nor a close relative, both feel awkward. It is as though they
heard a whisper, "There is nobody to watch the two of you."
Still, confused as I was, I was fully aware of her tempting
complexion and found her angry black eyes strangely interesting.
Upon the whole, however, I do not think she made any appeal to
me save by virtue of the fact that she was a woman and that we
were alone. I was tense with the consciousness of that fact, and
everything about her disturbed me. She wore a navy-blue summer
wrapper and I noticed the way it set off the soft whiteness of her
neck. I remarked to myself that she looked younger than her
husband, that she must be about twenty-eight or thirty, perhaps.
My glances apparently caused her painful embarrassment. Finally
she got up again, making a pretense of bustling about the room. It
seemed to me that when she was on her feet she looked younger
than when she was seated
I asked the boy his name, and he answered in lugubrious, but
distinct, accents: "Daniel Margolis."
"He speaks like a grown person," I said
"She used to speak like that, too, when she was of his age," my
hostess replied, with a glance in the direction of her daughter
"Did you?" I said to Lucy
The little girl grinned coyly
"Why don't you answer the gentleman's question?" her mother
rebuked her, in English. "It's Mr. Levinsky, a friend of papa's."
Lucy gave me a long stare and lost all interest in me. "Don't you
like me at all? Not even a little bit?" I pleaded
She soon unbent and took to plying me with questions. Where did I
live? Was I a "customer peddler "like her papa? How long had I
been in America? (A question which a child of the East Side hears
as often as it does queries about the weather.) "Can you spell?"
"No," I answered. "Not at all?"
"Not at all!"
"Shame! But my papa can't spell, neither."
"Shut up, you bad girl you!" her mother broke in with a laugh.
"Vere you lea'n such nasty things? By your mamma? The
gentleman will think by your mamma."
She delivered her a little lecture in English, taking pains to
produce the "th" and the American "r," though her "w's" were "v's."
She urged me not to let the tea get cold. As I took hold of the tall,
thin, cylindrical glass I noted that it was scrupulously clean and
that its contents had a good clear color. I threw a glance around
the room and I saw that it was well kept and tidy
Mrs. Margolis took a seat again. Lucy, with part of a cooky in her
mouth, stepped over to her and seated herself on her lap, throwing
her arm around her. She struck me as the very image of her
mother. Presently, however, I discovered that she resembled her
father quite as closely. It seemed as though the one likeness lay on
the surface of her face, while the other loomed up from
underneath, as the reflection of a face does from under the surface
of water. Lucy soon wearied of her mother and walked over to my
side. I put her on my lap. She would not let me pat her, but she did
not mind sitting on my knees.
"Are you a good speller?" I asked
"I c'n spell all the words we get at school," she answered, sagely
"How do you spell 'colonel'?"
"We never got it at school. But you can't spell it, either."
"How do you know I can't? Maybe I can. Well, let us take an easier
word. How do you spell 'because'?"
She spelled it correctly, her mother joining in playfully. I gave
them other words, addressing myself to both, and they made a
race of it, each trying to head off or outshout the other. At first
Mrs. Margolis did so with feigned gaiety, but her face soon set
into a grave look and glowed with excitement
At last I asked them to spell "coefficient."
"We never got it at school," Lucy demurred
"I don't know what it means," said Mrs. Margolis, with a shrug of
her shoulders.
"It means something in mathematics, in high figuring," I explained
in Yiddish
Mrs. Margolis shrugged her shoulders once more
I asked Lucy to try me in spelling. She did and I acquitted myself
so well that she exclaimed: "Oh, you liar you! Why did you say
you didn't know how to spell?"
Once more her mother took her to task for her manners
"Is that the vay to talk to a gentleman? Shame! Vere you lea'n up to
be such a pig? Not by your mamma!"
When Max came back Lucy hastened to inform him that I could
spell "awful good." To which he replied in Yiddish that he knew I
was a smart fellow, that I could read and write "everything," and
that I had studied to go to college and "to be a doctor, a lawyer, or
anything."
His wife looked me over with bashful side-glances. "Really?" she
said.
Max told me a lame story about his errand and promised to let me
know the "final result." It was clearer than ever to me that he was
making a fool of me.
CHAPTER III
WHEN I hear a new melody and it makes an appeal
to me its effect usually lasts only as long as I hear it, but it is
almost sure to reassert itself later on. I scarcely ever think of it
during the first two, three, or four days, but then, all of a sudden,
it will pop up in my brain and haunt me a few days in succession,
humming itself and nagging me like a living thing.
This was precisely what happened to me with regard to Mrs.
Margolis. During the first two days after I left her house I never
gave her a thought, but on the third her shy side-glances suddenly
loomed up in my mind and would not leave it. Just her black,
serious eyes and those shy looks of theirs gleaming out of a white,
strikingly interesting complexion. Her face in general was a mere
blur in my memory
I was incessantly racking my brain over my affairs. I was so
low-spirited and worried that I was unconscious of the food I ate
or of the streets through which I passed, yet her manner of darting
embarrassed glances out of the corner of her eye and her
complexion were never absent from my mind. I felt like seeing
her once more. However, the prospect of calling at her house was
now anything but alluring. I could almost see the annoyed air with
which her husband would receive me
I sought out two usurers and begged each of them to grant me the
loan, but they unyieldingly insisted on more substantial security
than the bare story or my venture. I made other efforts to raise the
money. I approached several people, including the proprietor of
the little music-store. All to no purpose
One afternoon, eight or ten days after my call at the Margolises',
when I came to my "factory" I found under the door a closed
envelope bearing the name of that Western firm. It contained a
typewritten letter and a check in full payment of my bill. Also a
circular explaining that the firm had been reorganized with plenty
of capital, and naming as one of its new directors a man who,
from the tone of the circular, seemed to be of high standing in the
financial world
My head was in a whirl. The desolate-looking sewing-machines of
my deserted shop seemed to have suddenly brightened up. I
looked at the check again and again. The figure on it literally
staggered me. It seemed to be part of a fairy tale
I rushed over to Nodelman's office, but found him gone for the
day. The next thing on my program was to carry the glad news to
the Chaikins and to discuss plans for the immediate future with
my partner. But Chaikin never came home before 7. So I first
dropped in on the Margolises to flash my check in Max's face and,
incidentally, to see his wife
I found him playing with his fat boy
"Hello, Max! I have good news!" I shouted, excitedly. Which
actually meant: "Don't be uneasy, Max. I am not going to ask you
for a loan again."
When he had examined the check he said, sheepishly: "Now you
are all right. Why, something told me all along that you would get
it." His wife came in, apparently from the kitchen. She returned
my "Good evening" with free and easy amiability, without any
shyness or side-glances, and disappeared again. I felt annoyed. I
was tempted to call after her to come back and let me take a good
look at her
"Say, Levinsky, you must have thought I would not trust you for
the four hundred dollars," Max said. "May I have four hundred
days of distress if I have a cent. What few dollars I do have is
buried in the business. So help me, God! Let a few of my
customers stop paying and I would have to go begging. It's the real
truth I am telling you. Honest."
"I know, I know," I said, awkwardly. "Well, it was as if the check
had dropped from heaven. Thank God! Now I can begin to do
things."
I went over the main facts of my venture, this time with a touch of
bluster.
And he listened with far readier attention and more genuine
interest than he had done on the previous occasion. We discussed
my plans and my prospects.
At one point, when I referred to the Western check, he asked to see
it again, just for curiosity's sake, and as I watched him look it over
I could almost see the change that it was producing in his attitude
toward me. I do not know to what extent he had previously
believed my story, if at all. One thing was clear: the magic check
now made it all real to him. As he handed me back the strip of
paper he gave me a look that seemed to say: "So you are a
manufacturer, you whom I have always known as a miserable
ragamuffin."
Mrs. Margolis reappeared. Her husband told her of my great check
and she returned some trivialities. As we thus chatted, I made a
mental note of the fascinating feminine texture of her flesh
He made me stay to supper. It was a cheery repast. As though to
make amends for his failure to respond when I knocked at his
door, Max overwhelmed me with attention
We were eating cold sorrel soup, prepared in the old Ghetto way,
with cream, bits of boiled egg, cucumber, and scallions
"How do you like it?" he asked
"Delicious! And the genuine article, too."
"'The genuine article'!" he mocked me. "What's the use praising it
when you eat it like a bird? What's the matter with you? Are you
bashful? Fire away, old man!" Then to his wife: "Why do you keep
quiet, Dvorah? Why don't you tell him to eat like a man and not
like a bird?"
"Maybe he doesn't care for my cooking," she jested, demurely
"Why, why," I replied. "The sorrel soup is fit for a king."
"You mean for a president," Max corrected me. "We are in
America, not in Europe."
"How do you know the President of the United States would care
for a plate of cold sorrel soup?"
"And how do you know a king would?" "If you care for it, I am
satisfied," the hostess said to me
"I certainly do. I haven't eaten anything like it since I left home," I
replied
"Feed him well, Dvorah. Now is your chance. He will soon be a
millionaire, don't you know. Then he won't bother about calling
on poor people like us."
"But I have said the sorrel soup is fit for a king, and a king has
many millions," I rejoined. "I shall always be glad to come,
provided Lucy and Dannie have no objection." "You remember
their names, don't you?" Mrs. Margolis said, beamingly. "You
certainly have a good memory."
"Who else should have one?" her husband chimed in. "I have told
you he was going to study to be a doctor or a lawyer. Lucy, did
you hear what uncle said? If you let him in he will come to see us
even when he is worth a million. What do you say? Will you let
him in?"
Lucy grinned childishly
Max did most of the talking. He entertained me with stories of
some curious weddings which he said had recently been
celebrated in his dance-halls, and, as usual, it was not easy to
draw a line of demarkation between fact and fiction. Of one
bridegroom, who had agreed to the marriage under threats of
violence from the girl's father, he said: "You should have seen the
fellow! He looked like a man going to the electric chair. They
were afraid he might bolt, so the bride's father and brother, big,
strapping fellows both, stuck to him like two detectives. 'You had
better not make monkey business,' they said to him. 'If you don't
want a wedding, you'll have a funeral.' That's exactly what they
said to him. I was standing close to them and I heard it with my
own ears. May I not live till to-morrow if I did not." Mrs.
Margolis looked down shamefacedly. She certainly was not
unaware of her husband's failing, and she obviously took anything
but pride in it. As I glanced at her face at this moment it struck me
as a singularly truthful face. "Those eyes of hers do not express
anger, but integrity," I said to myself. And the more I looked at
her, watched her gestures, and listened to her voice, the stronger
grew my impression that she was a serious-minded, ingenuous
woman, incapable of playing a part. Her mannerisms were mostly
her version of manners, and those that were not were frankly
affected, as it were
The meal over and the dishes washed, Mrs. Margolis caused Lucy
to bring her school reader and began to read it aloud, Lucy or I
correcting her pronunciation where it was faulty. She was frankly
parading her intellectual achievements before me, and I could see
that she took them quite seriously.
She was very sensitive about the mistakes she made. She accepted
our corrections, Lucy's and mine, with great earnestness, often
with a gesture of annoyance and mortification at the failure of her
memory
When I bade them good night Max said, heartily, in English, "Call
again, Levinsky." And he added, in a mixture of English and
Yiddish, "Don't be a stranger, even if you are a manufacturer."
"Call again," his wife echoed, affably
"Call again!" shouted Dannie, in his funereal voice
I left with the comfortable feeling of having spent an hour or two
in a house where I was sincerely welcome
"It's a good thing to have real friends," I soliloquized in a transport
of good spirits, on my way to the Elevated station. "Now I sha'n't
feel all alone in the world. There is at least one house where I can
call and feel at home."
I beheld Mrs. Margolis's face and her slender figure and I was
conscious of a remote desire to see her again
I was in high feather. While the Elevated train was carrying me
up-town I visioned an avalanche of new orders for my shop and a
spacious factory full of machines and men. I saw myself building
up a great business. An ugly thought flashed through my mind:
Why be saddled with a partner? Why not get rid of Chaikin? I
belittled the part which his samples had played in my successful
start, and it seemed to be a cruel injustice to myself to share my
fortune with a man who had no more brains than a cat. But I
instantly saw the other side of the situation: It was Chaikin's
models that had made the Manheimers what they were, and if I
clung to him until he could afford to let me announce him as my
partner the very news of it would be a tremendous boost for my
factory. And then I had a real qualm of compunction for having
entertained that thought even for a single moment. My heart
warmed to Chaikin and his family. "I shall be faithful to them," I
vowed inwardly.
"They have been so good to me. We must be absolutely devoted to
each other.
Their house, too, will be like a home to me. Oh, it is so sweet to
have friends, real friends."
It was close upon 10 o'clock when I reached the Chaikins' flat in
Harlem. I had barely closed the door behind me when I whipped
out the check, and, dangling it before Mrs. Chaikin, I said,
radiantly: "Good evening. Guess what it is!" "The check you
expected from your uncle or cousin or whatever he is to you.
Is it?" she conjectured
"No. It's something far better," I replied. "It's a check from the
Western company, and for the full amount, too." And, although I
was fairly on the road to atheism, I exclaimed, with a thrill of
genuine pity, "Oh, God has been good to us, Mrs. Chaikin!"
I let her see the figures, which she could scarcely make out. Then
her husband took a look at the check. He did know something
about figures, so he read the sum out aloud
Instead of hailing it with joy, as I had expected her to do, she said
to me, glumly: "And how do we know that you did not receive
more?"
"But that was the bill," her husband put in
"I am not asking you, am I?" she disciplined him
"But it is the amount on the bill," I said, with a smile
"And how do we know that it is?" she demanded. "It's you who
write the bills, and it's you who get the checks. What do we
know?"
"Mrs. Chaikin! Mrs. Chaikin!" I remonstrated. "Why should you be
so suspicious? Can't you see that I am the most devoted friend you
people ever had? God has blessed us; we are making a success of
our business so we must be devoted to one another, while here
you imagine all kinds of nonsense."
"A woman will be a woman," Chaikin muttered, with his sheepish
smile
The unfeigned ardor of my plea produced an impression on Mrs.
Chaikin.
Still, she insisted upon receiving her husband's share of the profits
at once in spot cash. I argued again
"Why, of course you are going to get your share of the profits," I
said, genially. "Of course you are. Only we must first pay for the
goods of those five hundred coats and for some other things.
Mustn't we? Then, too, there is that other order to fill. We need
more goods and cash for wages and rent and other expenses.
"But you said you were going to get it all yourself, and now you
want us to pay for it. You think you are smart, don't you?"
Her husband opened his mouth, but she waved it shut before she
had any idea what he wanted to say
"Anybody could fool you," she said. "'When a fool goes shopping
there is rejoicing among the shopkeepers.'"
With our joint efforts we finally managed to placate her, however,
and the next evening our shop was the scene of feverish activity.
CHAPTER IV
I FILLED my Third Avenue order and went on
soliciting other business. The season was waning, but I obtained a
number of small orders and laid foundations for future sales. Our
capital was growing apace, but we often lacked working cash
After I paid the debt I owed Meyer Nodelman I obtained other
favors from him. He took a sponsorial interest in my business and
often offered me the benefit of his commercial experience in the
form of maxims
"Don't bite off more than you can chew, Levinsky," he would tell
me.
"Finding it easy to get people to trust you is not enough. You must
also find it easy to pay them."
Some of his other rules were: "Be pleasant with the man you deal
with, even if he knows you don't mean it.
He likes it, anyway."
"Take it from me, Levinsky: honesty is the best policy. There is
only one line of business in which dishonesty pays: the burglar
business, provided the burglar does not get caught. If I thought
lying could help my business, I should lie day and night. But I
have learned that it hurts far more than it helps. Be sure that the
other fellow believes what you say. If you have his confidence you
have him by the throat."
It was not always easy to comply with Meyer's tenets, however.
The inadequacy of my working capital often forced me to have
recourse to subterfuges that could not exactly be called honorable.
One day, when we had some bills to meet two days before I could
expect to obtain the cash, I made out and signed checks, but
inclosed each of them in the wrong envelope--this supposed act of
inadvertence gaining me the needed two days of grace. On another
occasion I sent out a number of checks without my signature,
which presumably I had forgotten to affix. There were instances
when I was so hard pressed for funds that the fate of our factory
hinged on seventy-five or a hundred dollars. In one of these crises
I bought two gold watches on the instalment plan, for the express
and sole purpose of pawning them for fifty dollars. I bought the
watches of two men who did not know each other, and returned
them as soon as I could spare the cash to redeem them, forfeiting
the several weekly payments which I had made on the pretended
purchases.
There were instances, too, when I had to borrow of my employees
a few dollars with which to buy cotton. Needless to say that all
this happened in the early stages of my experience as a
manufacturer. I have long since been above and beyond such
methods. Indeed, business honor and business dignity are often a
luxury in which only those in the front ranks of success can
indulge. But then there are features of the game in which the small
man is apt to be more honorable and less cruel than the financial
magnate
I was continually consulting Max on my affairs. Not that I needed
his advice or expected to act upon it. These confidential talks
seemed to promote our intimacy and to enhance the security of the
welcome I found in his house. A great immigrant city like New
York or Chicago is full of men and women who are alone amid a
welter of human life. For these nothing has a greater glamour than
a family in whose house they might be made to feel at home. I
was one of these desolate souls. I still missed my mother. The
anniversary of her death was still a feast of longing agony and
spiritual bliss to me. I scarcely ever visited the synagogue of the
Sons of Antomir these days, but on that great day I was sure to be
there. Forgetful of my atheism, I would place a huge candle for
her soul, attend all the three services, without omitting a line, and
recite the prayer for the dead with sobs in my heart. I had craved
some family who would show me warm friendship. The
Margolises were such a family (Meyer Nodelman never invited
me to his house). They were a godsend to me
Max was essentially a hospitable man, and really fond of me. As
for his wife, who received me with the same hearty welcome as
he, her liking for me was primarily based, as she once put it
herself in the presence of her husband, upon my intellectual
qualifications
"It's good to have educated people come to the house," she
remarked. "It's good for the children and for everybody else." "I
knew she would like you," Max said to me. "She would give her
head for education. Only better look out, you two. See that you
don't fall in love with each other. Ha, ha!"
Sometimes there were other visitors in the house--some of Max's
friends, his and her fellow-townspeople, her relatives, or some
neighbor. Dora's great friend was a stout woman with flaxen hair
and fishy eyes, named Sadie, or Mrs. Shornik, whose little girl,
Beckie, was a classmate of Lucy's, the acquaintance and devoted
intimacy of the two mothers having originated in the intimacy of
the two school-girls. Sadie lived several blocks from the
Margolises, but she absolutely never let a day pass without calling
on her, if it were only for just time enough to kiss her. She was
infatuated with Dora, and Beckie was infatuated with Lucy
"They just couldn't live without one another," Max said, after
introducing me to Sadie and explaining the situation
"Suppose Lucy and Beckie had not happened to be in the same
school," I jested, addressing myself to the two women. "What
would you have done then?"
"This shows that we have a good God in heaven," Sadie returned,
radiantly.
"He put the children in the same school so that we might meet."
"'A providential match,'" I observed.
"May it last for many, many years," Sadie returned, devoutly
"Say, women!" Max shouted, "you have been more than five
minutes without kissing. What's the matter with you?"
At this, Sadie, with mock defiance, walked up to Mrs. Margolis,
threw her arms around her, and gave her a luscious smack on the
lips
"Bravo! And now you, kids!" Max commanded
With a merry chuckle the two little girls flew into each other's
arms and kissed. Lucy had dark hair like Dora's, and Beckie
flaxen hair like Sadie's, so when their heads were close together
they were an amusing reduced copy of their mothers as these had
looked embracing and kissing a minute before
Max often dropped in to see me at my factory, and when I was not
busy we would talk of my cloaks, of his instalment business, or of
women. Women were his great topic of conversation, as usual.
But then these talks of his no longer found a ready listener in me.
Now, that I knew his wife, they jarred on me. A decided change
had come over me in this respect. I remember it vividly. It was as
if his lewd discourses desecrated her name and thereby offended
me. It may be interesting to note, however, that he never took up
this kind of topics when we were in his house, not even when his
wife was out
Sometimes I would have supper at his house. More often,
however--usually on Monday, when Max seldom went to the
dance-halls--I would come after supper and spend the rest of the
evening there. Sometimes the Shorniks would drop in--Sadie, her
husband, and Beckie. Ben Shornik and Max would play a game of
pinochle, while I, who never cared for cards, would chat with the
women or entertain them by entertaining the children. Ben--as I
came into the habit of calling him--was a spare little man with an
extremely high forehead. He was an insurance-collector and only
one degree less illiterate than Max; but because he had the
"forehead of a learned man," and because it was his business to go
from house to house with a long, thick book under his arm, he
affected longish hair, flowing black neckties, and a certain
pomposity of manner. One of his ways of being tremendously
American was to snap his fingers ferociously and to say, "I don't
care a continental!" or, "One, two, three, and there you are!" The
latter exclamation he would be continually murmuring to himself
when he was absorbed in pinochle.
CHAPTER V
ONE evening, when the Shorniks and I were at
Max's house, and Max and Ben were having their game of
pinochle, the conversation between the women and myself turned
upon Dora's efforts to obtain education through her little daughter.
Encouraged by Sadie and myself, Dora let herself loose and told us
much of Lucy's history, or, rather, of her own history as Lucy's
mother. In her crude, lumbering way and with flushed cheeks she
talked with profound frankness and quaint introspective insight, in
the manner of one touching upon things that are enshined in
innermost recesses of one's soul
She depicted the thrills of joyous surprise with which she had
watched Lucy, in her infancy, master the beginnings of speech.
Sometimes her delight would be accompanied by something akin
to fright. There had been moments when it all seemed unreal and
weird
"The little thing seemed to be a stranger to me," she said. "Or else,
she did not seem to be a human being at all."
The next moment she would recognize her, as it were, and then she
would kiss and yearn over her in a mad rush of passion
The day when she took Lucy to school--about two years
before--was one of the greatest days in Dora's life. She would then
watch her learn to associate written signs with spoken words as
she had once watched her learn to speak.
But that was not all. She became jealous of the child. She herself
had never been taught to read even Hebrew or Yiddish, much less
a Gentile language, while here, lo and behold! her little girl
possessed a Gentile book and was learning to read it. She was
getting education, her child, just like the daughter of the landlord
of the house in Russia in which Dora had grown up
"C-a-t--cat," Lucy would spell out. "R-a-t--rat. M-a-t--mat."
And poor Dora would watch the performance with mixed joy and
envy and exclamations like: "What do you think of that snip of a
thing! Did you ever?"
Lucy's school-reader achievements stirred a novel feeling of rivalry
in Dora's breast. When the little girl could spell half a dozen
English words she hated herself for her inferiority to her
"The idea of that kitten getting ahead of me! Why, it worried the
life out of me!" she said. "You may think it foolish, but I couldn't
help it. I kept saying to myself, 'She'll grow up and be an educated
American lady and she'll be ashamed to walk in the street with
me.' Don't we see things like that? People will beggar themselves
to send their children to college, only to be treated as fools and
greenhorns by them. I call that terrible. Don't you? Well, I am not
going to let my child treat me like that. Not I. I should commit
suicide first. I want my child to respect me, not to look down on
me. If she reads a book she is to bear in mind that her mother is no
ignorant slouch of a greenhorn, either."
A next-door neighbor, a woman who could read English, would
help Lucy with her spelling lesson of an evening. This seemed to
have established special relations between the child and that
woman from which Dora was excluded
She made up her mind to learn to read. If Lucy could manage it,
she, her mother, could. So she caused the child to teach her to
spell out words in her First Reader. At first she pretended to treat
it as a joke, but inwardly she took it seriously from the very
outset, and later, under the intoxicating effect of the progress she
was achieving, these studies became the great passion of her life.
Whenever Lucy recited some new lines, learned at school, she
would not rest until she, too, had learned them by heart.
Here are two "pieces" which she proudly recited to us: "The snow
is white, The sky is blue, The sun is bright, And so are you."
"Our ears were made to hear, Our tongues were made to talk, Our
eyes were made to see, Our feet were made to walk."
Her voice, as she declaimed the lines, attracted Lucy's attention, so
she sent her and Beckie into the kitchen
"She doesn't know what a treasure she is to me," she said to us.
Then, after she finished the two verses, she remarked, wistfully,
"Well, my own life is lost, but she shall be educated."
"Why? Why should you talk like that, Dora?" Sadie protested, her
fishy eyes full of tragedy. "Why, you are only beginning to live."
"Of course she is," I chimed in.
"Well," Dora rejoined, "anyhow, I am afraid I love her too much.
Sometimes it seems to me I am going crazy over her. I love
Dannie, too, of course.
When he happens to hurt a finger or to hit his dear little head
against something I can't sleep. Is he not my flesh and blood like
Lucy? Still, Lucy is different." She paused and then rose from her
seat, saying, with a smile: "Wait. I am going to show you
something." She went into the kitchen and came back, holding a
tooth-brush in either hand. "Guess what it is."
"Two tooth-brushes," I answered, with perplexed gaiety
"Aren't you smart! I know they are not shoe-brushes, but what kind
of tooth-brushes? How did I come by them? That's the question.
Did I use a tooth-brush in my mother's house?"
She then told me how Lucy, coming from school one day, had
announced an order from the teacher that every girl in the class
must bring a tooth-brush the next morning
Sadie nodded confirmation
"Of course, I went to work and bought, not one brush, but two,"
Dora pursued. "I am as good as Lucy, am I not? If she is worth
twelve cents, I am. And if she is American lady enough to use a
tooth-brush, I am."
Lucy is not a usual name on the East Side. It was, in fact, the
principal of the school who had recommended it, at Dora's
solicitation. The little girl had hitherto been called Lizzie, the
commonplace East Side version of Leah, her Hebrew name. Dora
never liked it. It did not sound American enough, for there were
Lizzies or Lizas in Europe, too. Any "greenhorn" might bear such
a name. So she called on Lizzie's principal and asked her to
suggest some "nicer name" for her daughter
"I want a real American one," she said
The principal submitted half a dozen names beginning with "L,"
and the result was that Lizzie became Lucy
Dora went over every spelling lesson with the child. It was so
sweet to be helpful to her in this way. Lucy, on her part, had to
reciprocate by hearing her mother spell the same words, and often
they would have a spelling-match.
All of which, as I could see, had invested Lucy with the fascination
of a spiritual companion
The child had not been at school many weeks when she began to
show signs of estrangement from her mother-tongue. Her Yiddish
was rapidly becoming clogged with queer-sounding "r's" and with
quaintly twisted idioms. Yiddish words came less and less readily
to her tongue, and the tendency to replace them with their English
equivalents grew in persistence. Dora would taunt her on her
"Gentile Yiddish," yet she took real pride in it. Finally, Lucy
abandoned her native tongue altogether. She still understood her
parents, of course, but she now invariably addressed them or
answered their Yiddish questions in English. As a result, Dora
would make efforts to speak to her in the language that had
become the child's natural means of expression. It was a sorry
attempt at first; but she was not one to give up without a hard
struggle. She went at it with great tenacity, listening intently to
Lucy's English and trying to repeat words and phrases after her.
And so, with the child's assistance, conscious or unconscious, she
kept adding to her practical acquaintance with the language, until
by the end of Lucy's first school year she spoke it with
considerable fluency
Dora tried her hand at writing, but little Lucy proved a poor
penmanship-teacher, and she was forced to confine herself to
reading. She forged ahead of her, reading pages which Lucy's
class had not yet reached.
To take Lucy to school was one of the keen joys of Dora's
existence. Very often they would fall in with Lucy's bosom friend
"Good morning, Lucy."
"Good morning, Beckie."
As she described the smiling, childishly lady-like way in which the
little girls exchanged their greetings and then intertwined their
little arms as they proceeded on their way together, Sadie's fishy
eyes filled with tears
"Oh, how sweet it is to be a mother!" Dora said
"I should say it was," her chum and follower echoed, wiping her
tears and laughing at once
There was a curious element of superstition in Dora's attitude
toward her little girl. She had taken it into her head that Lucy had
been playing the part of a mascot in her life
"I was a bag of bones until she was born," she said. "Why, people
who are put into the grave look better than I did. But my birdie
darling came, and, well, if I don't look like a monkey now, I have
her to thank. It was after her birth that I began to pick up." She
had formed the theory that the child was born to go to school for
her mother's sake as well as her own--a little angel sent down
from heaven to act as a messenger of light to her
Her story made a strong impression on me. "Max is not worthy of
her," I reflected. I wondered whether she was fully aware what
manner of man he was
CHAPTER VI
SOMETIMES we would go to the Jewish theater
together, Max, Dora, and I, the children being left at Sadie's
house. Once, when Max's lodge had a benefit performance and he
had had some tickets for sale, we made up a party of five: the two
couples and myself. On that occasion I met Jake Mindels at the
playhouse. He was now studying medicine at the University
Medical College, and it was a considerable time since I had last
seen him. To tell the truth, I had avoided meeting him. I hated to
stand confessed before him as a traitor to my dreams of a college
education, and I begrudged him his medical books.
I took Max and Dora to see an American play. He did not
understand much of what he saw and was bored to death. As for
her, she took in scarcely more than did her husband, though she
understood many of the words she heard, but then she reverently
followed the good manners of the "real Americans" on the stage,
and the sound of their "educated" English seemed to inspire her
with mixed awe and envy
Once, on a Monday evening, when I called on the Margolises, I
found Max out.
Dora seemed to be ill at ease in my company, and I did not stay
long. It seemed natural to fear that Max, who gave so much
attention to the relations between the sexes, should view visits of
this kind with misgivings. His playful warnings that we should
beware of falling in love with each other seemed to be always in
the air, and on that evening when he was away and we found
ourselves alone I seemed to hear their echo more distinctly than
ever.
It had a disquieting effect on me, that echo, and I decided never to
call unless Max was sure to be at home. I enjoyed their hospitality
too much to hazard it rashly. Moreover, Max and Dora lived in
peace and I was the last man in the world to wish to disturb it
To my surprise, however, he did not seem to be jealous of me in
the least.
Quite the contrary. He encouraged my familiarities with her, so
much so that I soon drifted into the habit of addressing her as
Dora
The better I knew her the greater was the respect with which she
inspired me. I thought her an unusual woman, and I looked up to
her
It became a most natural thing that I should propose myself as a
boarder.
Thousands of families like the Margolises kept boarders to lighten
the burden of rent-day
The project had been trailing in my mind for some time and, I
must confess, the fact that Max stayed out till the small hours four
or five nights a week had something to do with it
"You would be alone with her," Satan often whispered. Still, there
was nothing definitely reprehensible in this reflection. It was the
prospect of often being decorously alone with a woman who
inspired me with respect and interested me more and more keenly
that tempted me. Vaguely, however, I had a feeling that I was on
the road to falling in love with her
One evening, as I complained of my restaurant meals and of
certain inconveniences of my lodgings, Max said: "Nothing like
being married, Levinsky. Take my advice and get you a nice little
wifey. One like mine, for instance."
"Like yours! The trouble is that there is only one such, and you
have captured her." "Don't worry," Dora broke in. "There are
plenty of others, and better ones, too."
"I have a scheme," I said, seriously. "Why shouldn't you people let
me board with you?"
Natural as the suggestion was, it took them by surprise. For a
second or two Max gazed at his wife with a perplexed air. Then
he said: "That would not he a bad idea. Would it, Dora?"
"I don't know, I am sure," she answered, with a shrug and an
embarrassed smile. "We have never kept boarders."
"You will try to keep one now, then," I urged
"If there were room in the house, I should be glad. Upon my health
and strength I should." "Oh, you can make room," I said.
"Of course you can," Max put in, warming to the plan somewhat.
"He could have the children's bedroom, and they could sleep in
this room."
She held to her veto
"Oh, you don't know what an obstinate thing she is," Max said.
"Let her say that white is black, and black it must be, even if the
world turned upside down."
"What do you want of me?" she protested. "Levinsky may think I
really don't care to have him. Let us move to a larger apartment
and I'll be but too glad to give him a room."
The upshot was a compromise. For the present I was to content
myself with having my luncheons and dinners or suppers at their
house, Dora charging me cost price
"Get him to move to one of those new houses with modern
improvements," she said to me, earnestly; "to an apartment of five
light rooms, and I shall give you a room at once. The rent would
come cheaper than it is now. But Max would rather pay more and
have the children grow in these damp rooms than budge."
"Don't bother me. By and by we shall move out of here. All in due
time.
Don't bother. Meanwhile see that your dinners and suppers are all
right.
Levinsky thinks you a good cook. Don't disappoint him, then. Don't
run away with the idea it's on your own account he wants to board
with us. It is on account of your cooking. That's all. Isn't it,
Levinsky?"
"It's a good thing to know that I am not a bad cook, at least," she
returned
"But how about the profits you are going to make on him? I'll
deduct them from your weekly allowance, you know," he chaffed
her
"Oh no. I am just going to save them and buy a house on Fifth
Avenue."
"You ought to allow me ten per cent. for cash," I said. "She does
not want cash," Max replied. "Your note is good enough."
I had been taking my meals with them a little over a month when
they moved into a new apartment, with me as their roomer and
boarder. The apartment was on the third floor of a corner house
on Clinton Street, one of a row of what was then a new type of
tenement buildings. It consisted of five rooms and bath, all
perfectly light, and it had a tiny private corridor or vestibule, a
dumb-waiter, an enameled bath-tub, electric and gas light, and an
electric door-bell. There was a rush for these apartments and Dora
paid a deposit on the first month's rent before the builder was
quite through with his work.
My room opened into the vestibule, its window looking out upon a
side-street. The rent for the whole apartment was thirty-two
dollars, my board being five and a half dollars a week, which was
supposed to include a monthly rental of six dollars for my room.
The Shorniks moved into the same house.
CHAPTER VII
MY growing interest in Dora burst into flame all at
once, as it were. It happened at a moment which is distinctly fixed
in my mind. At least I distinctly remember the moment when I
became conscious of it
It was on an afternoon, four days after the Margolises had taken
possession of the new place. The family was fully established in
it, while I had just moved in. I had seen my room, furniture and
all, several times before, but I had never seen it absolutely ready
for my occupancy as I did now. It was by far the brightest, airiest,
best-furnished, and neatest room that I had ever had all to myself.
Everything in it, from the wall-paper to the little wash-stand, was
invitingly new. I can still smell its grateful odor of freshness.
When I was left to myself in it for the first time and I shut its door
the room appealed to me as a compartment in the nest of a family
of which I was a member. My lonely soul had a sense of home and
domestic comfort that all but overpowered me. The sight of the
new quilt and of the fresh white pillow, coupled with the
knowledge that it was Dora whose fingers had prepared it all for
me, sent a glow of delight through my heart
Dora's name was whispering itself in my mind. I paused at the
window, an enchanted man
A few minutes later, when I re-entered the living-room, where she
was counting some freshly ironed napkins, her face seemed to
have acquired a new meaning. I felt that a great change had come
in my attitude toward her
"Well, is everything all right?" she inquired
"First rate," I answered, in a voice that sounded unnatural to myself
Max was fussing with the rug in the parlor. The children were
gamboling from room to room, testing the faucets, the
dumb-waiter
"Get avey from there!" Dora shouted. "You'll hurt yourself. Max,
tell Lucy not to touch the dumb-vaiter, vill you?"
"Children! Children! What's a madder vitch you?" he called out
from the parlor, in English, with a perfunctory snarl. Presently he
came into the living-room. "Well, are you satisfied with your new
palace?" he addressed me in Yiddish. And for the hundredth time
he proceeded to make jokes at the various modern
"improvements," at the abundance of light, and at my new rank of
"real boarder."
It is one of the old and deep-rooted customs of the Ghetto towns of
Europe for a young couple to live with the parents of the bride for
a year or two after the wedding. So Max gaily dubbed me his
"boarding son-in-law
"Try to behave, boarding son-in-law," he bantered me. "If you don't
your mother-in-law will starve you."
The pleasantry grated on me
Dora's ambition to learn to read and spell English was a passion,
and the little girl played a more important part in the efforts she
made in this direction than Dora was willing to admit. Lucy would
tell her the meaning of new words as she had heard it at school,
but it often happened that the official definition she quoted was
incomprehensible to both. This was apt to irritate Dora or even
lead to a disagreeable scene
If I happened to be around I would explain things to her, but she
seemed to accept my explanations with a grain of salt. She bowed
before my intellectual status in a general way, but since she had
good reason to doubt the quality of my English enunciation, she
doubted my Yiddish interpretations as well. Indeed, she doubted
everything that did not bear the indorsement of Lucy's school.
Whatever came from that sacred source was "real Yankee";
everything else was "greenhorn." If she failed to grasp some of the
things that Lucy brought back from school, she would blame it on
the child.
"Oh, you didn't understand what your teacher said," she would
scold her.
"You must have twisted it all up, you stupid."
One afternoon, when business was slow and there did not seem to
be anything to preclude my staying at home and breathing the air
that Dora breathed, I witnessed a painful scene between them. It
was soon after Lucy returned from school. Her mother wanted her
to go over her last reading-lesson with her, and the child would
not do so, pleading a desire to call on Beckie
"Stay where you are and open your reader," Dora commanded
Lucy obeyed, whimperingly. "Read!" "I want to go to Beckie."
"Read, I say." And she slapped her hand
"Don't," I remonstrated. "Let the poor child go enjoy herself." But
it only spoiled matters
"Read!" she went on, with grim composure, hitting her on the
shoulder
"I don't want to! I want to go down-stairs," Lucy sobbed, defiantly
"Read!" And once more she hit her.
My heart went out to the child, but I dared not intercede again
Dora did not relent until Lucy yielded, sobbingly
I left the room in disgust. The scene preyed upon my mind all that
afternoon. I remained in my room until supper-time. Then I found
Dora taciturn and downcast and I noticed that she treated Lucy
with exceptional, though undemonstrative, tenderness
"Must have given her a licking," Max explained to me, with a wink
I kept my counsel
She beat her quite often, sometimes violently, each scene of this
kind being followed by hours of bitter remorse on her part. Her
devotion to her children was above that of the average mother.
Lucy had been going to school for over two years, yet she missed
her every morning as though she were away to another city; and
when the little girl came back, Dora's face would brighten, as if a
flood of new sunshine had burst into the house.
On one occasion there was a quarrel between mother and daughter
over the result of a spelling-match between them which I had
umpired and which Lucy had won. Dora took her defeat so hard
that she was dejected all that evening
I have said that despite her passionate devotion to Lucy she was
jealous of her. She was jealous not only of the school education
she was receiving, but also of her American birth
She was feverishly ambitious to bring up her children in the "real
American syle," and the realization of her helplessness in this
direction caused her many a pang of despair. She was thirstily
seeking for information on the subject of table manners, and
whatever knowledge she possessed of it she would practise, and
make Lucy practise, with amusing pomp and circumstance.
"Don't reach out for the herring, Lucy!" she would say, sternly.
"How many times must I tell you about it? What do you say?"
"Pass me the herring, mamma, please." "Not 'mamma.'"
"Pass me the herring, mother, please."
The herring is passed with what Dora regards as a lady-like gesture
"Thank you, ma'am," says Lucy
"There is another way," Dora might add in a case of this kind.
"Instead of saying, 'Pass me the herring or the butter,' you can
say--What is it, Lucy?"
"May I trouble you for the herring, mother?"
I asked her to keep track of my table etiquette, too, and she did.
Whenever I made a break she would correct my error solemnly, or
with a burst of merriment, or with a scandalized air, as if she had
caught me in the act of committing a felony. This was her revenge
for my general intellectual superiority, which she could not help
admitting and envying
"You just let her teach you and she will make a man of you," Max
would say to me.
Sometimes, when I mispronounced an English word with which
she happened to be familiar, or uttered an English phrase in my
Talmudic singsong, she would mock me gloatingly. On one such
occasion I felt the sting of her triumph so keenly that I hastened to
lower her crest by pointing out that she had said "nice" where
"nicely" was in order
"What do you mean?" she asked, perplexedly
My reply was an ostentatious discourse on adjectives and
adverbs, something which I knew to be utterly beyond her depth.
It had the intended effect. She listened to my explanation stupidly,
and when I had finished she said, with resignation: "I don't
understand what you say. I wish I had time to go to evening school,
at least, as you did. I haven't any idea of these things. Lucy will be
educated for both of us, for herself and for her poor mamma. If my
mother had understood as much as I do it would have been
different." She uttered a sigh, fell silent, and then resumed: "But I
can't complain of my mother, either. She was a diamond of a
woman, and she was wise as daylight. But Russia is not America.
No, I can't complain of my parents. My father was a poor man, but
ask Max or some of our fellow-townspeople and they will tell you
what a fine name he had."
She was talkative and somewhat boastful like the average woman
of her class, but there was about her an elusive effect of reserve
and earnestness that kept me at a distance from her. Moreover, the
tireless assiduity and precision which she brought to her
housework and, above all, the grim passion of her intellectual
struggles created an atmosphere of physical and spiritual tidiness
about her that inspired me with something like reverence.
Living in that atmosphere seemed to be making a better man of me
Attempting a lark with her, as I had done with Mrs. Dienstog and
Mrs.
Levinsky, my first two landladies in New York, was out of the
question.
Needless to explain that this respectful distance did not prevent my
eyes and ears from feasting upon her luxurious complexion, her
clear, honest voice, and all else that made me feel both happy
and forlorn in her company. Nor would she, aware as she
undoubtedly was of the meaning of my look or smile, hesitate to
respond to them by some legitimate bit of coquetry. In short, we
often held converse in that language of smiles, glances, blushes,
pauses, gestures, which is the gesture language of sex across the
barrier of decorum.
These speechless flirtations cost me many an hour which I should
have otherwise spent at my shop or soliciting trade. When away
from the magnetic force of her presence I would attend to
business with unabated intensity.
Her image visited my brain often, but it did not disturb me. Rather,
it was the image of some customer or creditor or of some new
style of jacket or cloak that would interfere with my peace of
mind. My brain was full of prices, bills, notes, checks, fabrics,
color effects, "lines." Not infrequently, while walking in the street
or sitting in a street-car, I would catch myself describing some of
those garment lines in the air.
And yet, through all these preoccupations I seemed to be
constantly aware that something unusual had happened to me,
giving a novel tinge to my being; that I was a changed man
CHAPTER VIII
MAX saw nothing. His wife was a very womanly
woman with a splendid, almost a gorgeous snow-white womanly
complexion, and I was a young man in whom, according to his
own dictum, women ought to be interested; yet he never seemed
to feel anything like apprehension about us. This man who plumed
himself upon his knowledge of women and love and who actually
had a great deal of insight in these matters, this man, I say, was
absolutely blind to his wife's power over me. He suspected every
man and every woman under the sun, yet he was the least jealous
of men so far as his wife was concerned, though he loved and was
proud of her. From time to time he would chaff Dora and myself
on the danger of our falling in love with each other, but that was
never more than a joke and, at any rate, I heard it from him far less
often than that other joke of his--about my being his and Dora's
son-in-law
"Look out, mother-in-law," he would say to her. "If you don't treat
your son-in-law right you'll lose him."
I have said that he was proud of her. One evening, while she stood
on a chair struggling with a recalcitrant window-shade, he drew
my attention to her efforts admiringly
"Look at her!" he said under his breath. "Another woman would
make her husband do it. Not she. I can't kick. She is not a lazy
slob, is she?"
"Certainly not," I asserted
We watched her take the shade down, wind up the spring, fit the
pins back into their sockets, and then test the flap. It was in good
working order now
"No, she is not a slob," he repeated, exultantly. "And she is not a
gossiping sort, either. She just minds her own business."
At this point Dora came over to the table where we sat. "Move
along!" he said, gaily. "Don't disturb us. I am telling Levinsky
what a bad girl you are. Run along."
She gave us a shy side-glance like those that had carried the first
germ of disquiet into my soul, and moved away
"No, she is no slob, thank God," he resumed. He boasted of her
tidiness and of the way she had picked up her English and learned
to read and spell, with little Lucy for her teacher. He depicted the
tenacity and unflagging ardor with which she had carried on her
mental pursuits ever since Lucy began to go to school. "Once she
makes up her mind to do something she will stick to it, even if the
world went under. That's the kind of woman she is. And she is no
mean, foxy thing, either. When she says something you may be
sure she means it, if I do say so. You ought to know her by this
time. Have you ever heard her say things that are not so? Or have
you heard her talk about the neighbors as other women-folk will
do? Have you, now? Just tell me," he pressed me.
"Of course I have not," I answered, awkwardly. "There are not
many women like her."
"I know there are not. And, well, if she is not devoted to her hubby,
I don't know who is," he added, sheepishly.
CHAPTER IX
IT was during this period that I received my first
baptism of dismay as patron of a high-class restaurant. The
occasion was a lunch to which I had invited a buyer from
Philadelphia. The word "buyer" had a bewitching sound for me,
inspiring me with awe and enthusiasm at once. The word "king"
certainly did not mean so much to me. The august person to whom
I was doing homage on the occasion in question was a man named
Charles M. Eaton, a full-blooded Anglo-Saxon of New England
origin, with a huge round forehead and small, blue, extremely
genial eyes. He was a large, fair-complexioned man, and the way
his kindly little eyes looked from under his hemispherical
forehead, like two swallows viewing the world from under the
eaves of a roof, gave him a striking appearance. The immense
restaurant, with its high, frescoed ceiling, the dazzling whiteness
of its rows and rows of table-cloths, the crowd of well-dressed
customers, the glint and rattle of knives and forks, the subdued
tones of the orchestra, and the imposing black-and-white figures
of the waiters struck terror into my Antomir heart.
The bill of fare was, of course, Chinese to me, though I made a
pretense of reading it. The words swam before me. My inside
pocket contained sufficient money to foot the most extravagant
bill our lordly waiter was likely to present, but I was in constant
dread lest my treasure disappear in some mysterious way; so, from
time to time, I felt my breast to ascertain whether it was still there
The worst part of it all was that I had not the least idea what I was
to say or do. The occasion seemed to call for a sort of table
manners which were beyond the resources not only of a poor
novice like myself, but also of a trained specialist like Dora
Finally my instinct of self-preservation whispered in my ear,
"Make a clean breast of it." And so, dropping the bill of fare with
an air of mock despair, I said, jovially: "I'm afraid you'll have to
tell me what to do, Mr. Eaton. It's no use bluffing. I have never
been in such a fine restaurant in my life. I am scared to death, Mr.
Eaton. Take pity."
The Philadelphian, who was a slow-spoken, slow-witted, though
shrewd, man, was perplexed at first
"I see," he said, coloring, and looking confusedly at me. The next
minute he seemed to realize the situation and to enjoy it, too, but
even then he was apparently embarrassed. I cracked another joke
or two at my own expense, until finally he burst into a hearty
laugh and cheerfully agreed to act as master of ceremonies. Not
only did he do the ordering, explaining things to me when the
waiter was not around, but he also showed me how to use my
napkin, how to eat the soup, the fish, the meat, what to do with the
finger-bowl, and so forth and so on, to the minutest detail
"I am afraid one lesson won't be enough," I said. "You must give
me another chance."
"With pleasure," he replied. "Only the next 'lesson' will be on me."
And then he had to tell me what "on me" meant
He took a fancy to me and that meant orders, not only from him,
but also from some people of his acquaintance, buyers from other
towns
I sought to dress like a genteel American, my favorite color for
clothes and hats being (and still is) dark brown. It became my
dark hair well, I thought. The difference between taste and vulgar
ostentation was coming slowly, but surely, I hope. I remember the
passionate efforts I made to learn to tie a four-in-hand cravat, then
a recent invention. I was forever watching and striving to imitate
the dress and the ways of the well-bred American merchants with
whom I was, or trying to be, thrown. All this, I felt, was an
essential element in achieving business success; but the ambition
to act and look like a gentleman grew in me quite apart from these
motives
Now, Dora seemed to notice these things in me, and to like them.
So I would parade my newly acquired manners before her as I did
my neckties or my English vocabulary.
After that lecture I gave her on adverbs she no longer called my
English in question. To be educated and an "American lady" had,
thanks to Lucy's influence, become the great passion of her life. It
almost amounted to an obsession. She thought me educated and a
good deal of an American, so she looked up to me and would
listen to my harangues reverently.
CHAPTER X
ONE Saturday evening she said to me: "Lord! you
are so educated. I wish I had a head like yours."
"Why, you have an excellent head, Dora," I replied. "You have no
reason to complain."
She sighed
"I wish I had not gone into business," I resumed
I had already told her, more than once, in fact, how I had been
about to enter college when an accident had led me astray; so I
now referred to those events, dwelling regretfully upon the sudden
change I had made in my life plans
"It was the devil that put it in my head to become a manufacturer,"
I said, bitterly, yet with relish in the "manufacturer." "Well, one
can be a manufacturer and educated man at the same time," she
consoled me
"Of course. That's exactly what I always say," I returned, joyously.
"Still, I wish I had stuck to my original plan. There was a lady in
Antomir who advised me to prepare for college. She was always
speaking to me about it."
It was about 10 o'clock. Max was away to his dancing-schools. The
children were asleep. We were alone in the living-room
I expected her to ask who that Antomir lady was, but she did not,
so I went on speaking of Matilda of my own accord. I sketched
her as an "aristocratic" young woman, the daughter of one of the
leading families in town, accomplished, clever, pretty, and
"modern."
"It was she, in fact, who got me the money for my trip to
America," I said, lowering my voice, as one will when a
conversation assumes an intimate character
"Was it?" Dora said, also in a low voice
"Yes. It is a long story. It is nearly five years since I left home, but
I still think of it a good deal. Sometimes I feel as if my heart
would snap unless I had somebody to tell about it."
This was my way of drawing Dora into a flirtation, my first
attempt in that direction, though in my heart I had been making
love to her for weeks
I told her the story of my acquaintance with Matilda. She listened
with non-committal interest, with an amused, patronizing glimmer
of a smile
"You did not fall in love with her, did you?" she quizzed me as she
might Lucy
"That's the worst part of it," I said, gravely
"Is it?" she asked, still gaily, but with frank interest now
I recounted the episode at length. To put it in plain English, I was
using my affair with Matilda (or shall I say her affair with me?) as
a basis for an adventure with Dora. At first I took pains to gloss
over those details in which I had cut an undignified figure, but I
soon dropped all embellishments. The episode stood out so bold
in my memory. its appeal to my imagination was so poignant, that
I found an intoxicating satisfaction in conveying the facts as
faithfully as I knew how. To be telling a complete, unvarnished
truth is in itself a pleasure. It is as though there were a special
sense of truth and sincerity in our make-up (just as there is a sense
of musical harmony, for example), and the gratification of it were
a source of delight.
Nor was this my only motive for telling Dora all. I had long since
realized that the disdain and mockery with which Matilda handled
me had been but a cloak for her interest in my person. So when I
was relating to Dora the scenes of my ignominy I felt that the
piquant circumstances surrounding them were not unfavorable to
me
Anyhow, I was having a singularly intimate talk with Dora and she
was listening with the profoundest interest, all the little tricks she
employed to disguise it notwithstanding
In depicting the scene of the memorable night when Matilda came
to talk to me at my bedside I emphasized the fact that she had
called me a ninny
"I did not know what she meant," I said.
Dora tittered, looking at the floor shamefacedly. "The nasty thing!"
she said
"What do you mean?" I inquired, dishonestly
"I mean just what I say. She is a nasty thing, that grand lady of
yours." And she added another word--the East Side name for a
woman of the streets--that gave me a shock
"Don't call her that," I entreated. "Please don't. You are mistaken
about her. I assure you she is a highly respectable lady. She has a
heart of gold," I added, irrelevantly
"Well, well! You are still in love with her, aren't you?"
I was tempted to say: "No. It is you I now love." But I merely said,
dolefully: "No. Not any more."
She contemplated me amusedly and broke into a soft laugh
The next time we were alone in the house I came back to it. I
added some details. I found a lascivious interest in dwelling on
our passionate kisses, Matilda's and mine. Also, it gave me
morbid pleasure to have her behold me at Matilda's feet, lovelorn,
disdained, crushed, yet coveted, kissed, triumphant
Dora listened intently. She strove to keep up an amused air, as
though listening to some childish nonsense, but the look of her
eye, tense or flinching, and the warm color that often overspread
her cheeks, betrayed her
CHAPTER XI
WE talked about my first love-affair for weeks. She
asked me many questions ahout Matilda, mostly with that
pretended air of amused curiosity. Every time I had something
good to say about Matilda she would assail her brutally
The fact that Dora never referred to my story in the presence of her
husband was a tacit confession that we had a secret from him.
Outwardly it meant that the secret was mine, not hers; that she
had nothing to do with it; but then there was another secret--the
fact that she was my sole confidante in a matter of this
nature--and this secret was ours in common
On one occasion, in the course of one of these confabs of ours, she
said, with ill-concealed malice: "Do you really think she cared for
you? Not that much," marking off the tip of her little finger
"Why should you say that? Why should you hurt my feelings?" I
protested
"It still hurts your feelings, then, does it? There is a faithful lover
for you! But what would you have me say? That she loved you as
much as you loved her?"
At this Dora jerked her head backward, with a laugh that rang so
charmingly false and so virulent that I was impelled both to slap
her face and to kiss it
"But tell me," she said, with a sudden affectation of sedate
curiosity, "was she really so beautiful?"
"I never said she was 'so beautiful,' did I? You are far more
beautiful than she." "Oh, stop joking, please! Can't you answer
seriously?"
"I really mean it."
"Mean what?"
"That you are prettier than Matilda." "Is that the way you are
faithful to her?"
"Oh, that was five years ago. Now there is somebody else I am
faithful to."
She was silent. Her cheeks glowed
"Why don't you ask who that somebody is?"
"Because I don't care. What do I care? And please don't talk like
that. I mean what I say. You must promise me never to talk like
that," she said, gravely
During the following few days Dora firmly barred all more or less
intimate conversation. She treated me with her usual friendly
familiarity, but there was something new in her demeanor,
something that seemed to say, "I don't deny that I enjoy our talks,
but that's all the more reason why you must behave yourself."
The story of my childhood seemed legitimate enough, so she let
me tell her bits of it, and before she was aware of it she was
following my childish love-affair with the daughter of one of my
despotic school-teachers, my struggles with Satan, and my early
dreams of marriage. Gradually she let me draw her out concerning
her own past.
One evening, while Lucy was playing school-teacher, with Dannie
for the class, Dora told me of an episode connected with her
betrothal to Max
"Was that a love match?" I asked, with a casual air, when she had
finished
She winced. "What difference does it make?" she said, with an
annoyed look.
"We were engaged as most couples are engaged. Much I knew of
the love business in those days."
"You speak as though you married when you were a mere baby.
You certainly knew how you felt toward him."
"I don't think I felt anything," she answered
"Still," I insisted, "you said to yourself, 'This man is going to be my
husband; he will kiss me, embrace me.' How did you feel then?"
"You want to know too much, Levinsky," she said, coloring. "You
know the saying, 'If you know too much you get old too quick.'
Well, I don't think I gave him any thought at all. I was too busy
thinking of the wedding and of the pretty dress they were making
for me. Besides. I was so rattled and so shy. Much I understood. I
was not quite nineteen."
It called to my mind that in the excitement following my mother's
death I was so overwhelmed by the attentions showered on me
that it was a day or two before I realized the magnitude of my
calamity
"Anyhow, you certainly knew that marriage is the most serious
thing in life," I persisted
"Oh, I don't think I knew much of anything."
"And after the wedding?"
"After the wedding I knew that I was a married woman and must
be contented," she parried
"But this is not love," I pressed her
"Oh, let us not talk of these things, pray! Don't ask me questions
like that," she said in a low, entreating voice. "It isn't right."
"I don't know if it is right or wrong," I replied, also in a low voice.
"All I do know is that I am interested in everything that ever
happened to you
Silence fell. She was the first to break it. She tried to talk of
trivialities. I scarcely listened. She broke off again
"Dora!" I said, amorously. "My heart is so full."
"Don't," she whispered, with a gesture of pained supplication.
"Talk of something else, pray."
"I can't. I can't talk of anything else. Nor think of anything else,
either."
"You mustn't, you mustn't, you mustn't," she said, with sudden
vehemence, though still with a beseeching ring in her voice. "I
won't let you. May I not live to see my children again if I will. Do
you hear, Levinsky? Do you hear? Do you hear? I want you to
understand it. Be a man. Have a heart, Levinsky. You must behave
yourself. If you don't you'll have to move. There can't be any other
way about it. If you are a real friend of mine, not an enemy, you
must behave yourself." She spoke with deep, solemn earnestness,
somewhat in the singsong of a woman reading the Yiddish
Commentary on the Five Books of Moses or wailing over a grave.
She went on: "Why should you vex me? You are a respectable
man. You don't want to do what is wrong. You don't want to make
me miserable, do you? So be good, Levinsky. I beg of you.
I beg of you. Be good. Be good. Be good. Let us never have
another talk like this. Do you promise?"
I was silent
"Do you promise, Levinsky? You must. You must. Do you promise
me never to come back to this kind of talk?"
"I do," I said, like a guilty school-boy
She was terribly in earnest. She almost broke my heart. I could not
thwart her will
She was in love with me
Days passed. There was no lack of unspoken tenderness between
us. That she was tremulously glad to see me every time I came
home was quite obvious, but she bore herself in such a manner
that I never ventured to allude to my feeling, much less to touch
her hand or sit close to her.
"It is as well that I should not," I often said to myself. "Am I not
happy as it is? Is it not bliss enough to have a home--her home? It
would be too awful to forfeit it." I registered a vow to live up to
the promise she had exacted from me, but I knew that I would
break it
She was in love with me. She had an iron will, but I hoped that
this, too, would soon be broken.
There were moments when I would work myself up to an exalted,
religious kind of mood over it. "I should be a vile creature if I
interfered with the peace of this house," I would exhort myself,
passionately. "Max has been a warm friend to me. Oh, I will be
good."
Dora talked less than usual. She, too, seemed to be a changed
person. She was particularly taciturn when we happened to be
alone in the house, and then it would be difficult for us to look
each other in the face. Such tête-à-têtes occurred once or twice a
week, quite late in the evening. I was very busy at the shop and I
could never leave it before 10, 11, or even 12, except on Sabbath
eve (Friday night), when it was closed. On those evenings when
Max stayed out very late I usually found her alone in the little
dining-room, sewing, mending, or--more often--poring over Lucy's
school reader or story-book
After exchanging a few perfunctory sentences with her, each of us
aware of the other's embarrassment, I would take a seat a
considerable distance from her and take up a newspaper or
clipping from one, while she went on with her work or reading.
Lucy had begun to take juvenile books out of the circulating
library of the Educational Alliance, so her mother would read
them also. The words were all short and simple and Dora had not
much difficulty in deciphering their meaning. Anyhow, she now
never sought my assistance for her reading. I can still see her
seated at the table, a considerable distance from me, moving her
head from word to word and from line to line, and silently
working her lips, as though muttering an incantation. I would do
her all sorts of little services (though she never asked for any), all
silently, softly, as if performing a religious rite
I have said that on such occasions I would read my newspaper or
some clipping from it. In truth I read little else in those days.
Editorials of the daily press interested me as much as the most
sensational news, and if some of the more important leading
articles in my paper had to be left unread on the day of their
publication I would clip them and glance them over at the next
leisure moment, sometimes days later
The financial column was followed by me with a sense of being a
member of a caste for which it was especially intended, to the
exclusion of the rest of the world. At first the jargon of that
column made me feel as though I had never learned any English at
all. But I was making headway in this jargon, too, and when I
struck a recondite sentence I would cut the few lines out and put
them in my pocket, on the chance of coming across somebody who
could interpret them for me. Often, too, I would clip and put away
a paragraph containing some curious piece of information or a bit
of English that was an addition to my knowledge of the language.
My inside pocket was always full of all sorts of clippings
CHAPTER XII
It was about this time that I found myself
confronted with an unexpected source of anxiety in my business
affairs. There were several circumstances that made it possible for
a financial midget like myself to outbid the lions of the
cloak-and-suit industry. Now, however, a new circumstance arose
which threatened to rob me of my chief advantage and to
undermine the very foundation of my future
The rent of my loft, which was in the slums, was, comparatively
speaking, a mere trifle, while my overhead expense amounted to
scarcely anything at all.
I did my own bookkeeping, and a thirteen-year-old girl,
American-born, school-bred, and bright, whose bewigged mother
was one of my finishers, took care of the shop while I was out,
helped me with my mail, and sewed on buttons
between-whiles--all for four dollars a week. Another finisher, a
young widow, saved me the expense of a figure woman. To which
should be added that I did business on a profit margin far beneath
the consideration of the well-known firms. All this, however, does
not include the most important of all the items that gave me an
advantage over the princes of the trade. That was cheap labor
Three of my men were excellent tailors. They could have easily
procured employment in some of the largest factories, where they
would have been paid at least twice as much as I paid them. They
were bewhiskered, elderly people, strictly orthodox and extremely
old-fashioned as to dress and habits. They felt perfectly at home in
my shop, and would rather work for me and be underpaid than be
employed in an up-to-date factory where a tailor was expected to
wear a starched collar and necktie and was made the butt of
ridicule if he covered his head every time he took a drink of water.
These, however, were minor advantages. The important thing, the
insurmountable obstacle which kept these three skilled tailors
away from the big cloak-shops, was the fact that one had to work
on Saturdays there, while in my place one could work on Sunday
instead of Saturday
My pressers were of the same class as my tailors. As for my
operators, who were younger fellows and had adopted American
ways, my shop had other attractions for them. For example, my
operations were limited to a very small number of styles, and, as
theirs was piece-work, it meant greater earnings. While the
employee of a Broadway firm (or of one of its contractors) was
engaged on a large variety of garments, being continually shifted
from one kind of work to another, a man working for me would be
taken up with the same style for many days in succession, thus
developing a much higher rate of speed and a fatter pay-envelope
Altogether, I always contrived to procure the cheapest labor
obtainable, although this, as we have seen, by no means implied
that my "hands" were inferior mechanics. The sum and substance
of it all was that I could afford to sell a garment for less than what
was its cost of production in the best-known cloak-houses
My business was making headway when the Cloak and Suit
Makers' Union sprang into life again, with the usual rush and
commotion, but with unusual portents of strength and stability. It
seemed as if this time it had come to stay. My budding little
establishment was too small, in fact, to be in immediate danger. It
was one of a scattered number of insignificant places which the
union found it difficult to control. Still, cheap labor being my
chief excuse for being, the organization caused me no end of worry
"Just when a fellow is beginning to make a living all sorts of black
dreams will come along and trip him up," I complained to Meyer
Nodelman, bitterly.
"A bunch of good-for-nothings, too lazy to work, will stir up
trouble, and there you are."
"Oh, it won't last long," Meyer Nodelman consoled me. "Don't be
excited, anyhow. Business does not always go like grease, you
know. You must be ready for trouble too."
He told me of his own experiences with unions and he drifted into
a philosophic view of the matter. "You and I want to make as
much money as possible, don't we?" he said. "Well, the
working-men want the same. Can you blame them? We are
fighting them and they are fighting us. The world is not a
wedding-feast, Levinsky. It is a big barn-yard full of chickens and
they are scratching one another, and scrambling over one another.
Why? Because there are little heaps of grain in the yard and each
chicken wants to get as much of it as possible. So let us try our
best. But why be mad at the other chickens? Scratch away,
Levinsky, but what's the use being excited?"
He gave a chuckle, and I could not help smiling, but at heart I was
bored and wretched.
The big manufacturers could afford to pay union wages, yet they
were fighting tooth and nail, and I certainly could not afford to
pay high wages.
If I had to, I should have to get out of business.
Officially mine had become a union shop, yet my men continued
to work on non-union terms. They made considerably more
money by working for non-union wages than they would in the
places that were under stringent union supervision. They could
work any number of hours in my shop, and that was what my
piece-workers wanted. To toil from sunrise till long after sunset
was what every tailor was accustomed to in Antomir, for instance.
Only over there one received a paltry few shillings at the end of
the week. while I paid my men many dollars
So far, then, I had been successful in eluding the vigilance of the
walking delegates and my shop was in full blast from 5 in the
morning to midnight, whereas in the genuine union shops the
regular workday was restricted to ten hours, and overtime to three,
which, coupled with the especial advantage accruing from a
limited number of styles handled, made my shop a desirable place
to my "hands."
A storm broke. All cloak-manufacturers formed a coalition and
locked out their union men. A bitter struggle ensued. As it was
rich in quaint "human-nature" material, the newspapers bestowed
a good deal of space upon it
I made a pretense of joining in the lockout, my men clandestinely
continuing to work for me. More than that, my working force was
trebled, for, besides filling my own orders, I did some of the work
of a well-known firm which found it much more difficult to
procure non-union labor than I did. What was a great calamity to
the trade in general seemed to be a source of overwhelming
prosperity to me. But the golden windfall did not last long.
The agitation and the picketing activities of the union, aided by the
Arbeiter Zeitung, a Yiddish socialist weekly, were spreading a
spell of enthusiasm (or fear) to which my men gradually
succumbed. My best operator, a young fellow who exercised
much influence over his shopmates and who had hitherto been
genuinely devoted to me, became an ardent convert to union
principles and led all my operatives out of the shop. I organized a
shop elsewhere, but it was soon discovered
Somebody must have reported to the editor of the Arbeiter Zeitung
that at one time I had been a member of the union myself, for that
weekly published a scurrilous paragraph, branding me as a traitor
I read the paragraph with mixed rage and pain, and yet the sight of
my name in print flattered my vanity, and when the heat of my
fury subsided I became conscious of a sneaking feeling of
gratitude to the socialist editor for printing the attack on me. For,
behold! the same organ assailed the Vanderbilts, the Goulds, the
Rothschilds, and by calling me "a fleecer of labor" it placed me in
their class. I felt in good company. I felt, too, that while there
were people by whom "fleecers" were cursed, there were many
others who held them in high esteem, and that even those who
cursed them had a secret envy for them, hoping some day to be
fleecers of labor like them
The only thing in that paragraph that galled me was the appellation
of "cockroach manufacturer" by which it referred to me. I was
going to parade the "quip" before Max and Dora, but thought
better of it. The notion of Dora hearing me called "cockroach"
made me squirm
But Max somehow got wind of the paragraph, and one evening as I
came home for supper he said, good-naturedly: "You got a
spanking, didn't you? I have seen what they say in the Arbeiter
Zeitung about you."
"Oh, to the eighty black years with them!" I answered, blushing,
and hastened to switch the conversation to the lockout and strike
in general.
"Oh, we'll get all the men we want," I said. "It's only a matter of
time.
We'll teach these scoundrels a lesson they'll never forget."
"If only you manufacturers stick together."
"You bet we will. We can wait. We are in no hurry. We can wait
till those tramps come begging for a job," I said. For the benefit of
Dora I added a little disquisition on the opportunities America
offered to every man who had brains and industry, and on the
grudge which men like myself were apt to arouse in lazy fellows.
"Those union leaders have neither brains nor a desire to work.
That's why they can't work themselves up," I said. "Yes, and that's
why they begrudge those who can. All those scoundrels are able to
do is to hatch trouble."
I spoke as if I had been a capitalist of the higher altitudes and of
long standing. That some of the big cloak firms had promised to
back me with funds to keep me from yielding to the union I never
mentioned.
CHAPTER XIII
MY shop being practically closed, I was at home
most of the time, not only in the evening, but many a forenoon or
afternoon as well. Dora and I would hold interminable
conversations. Our love was never alluded to. A relationship on
new terms seemed to have been established between us. It was as
if she were saying: "Now, isn't this better? Why can't we go on like
this forever?"
Sometimes I would watch her read with Lucy. Or else I would take
up a newspaper or a book and sit reading it at the same table.
Dora was making rapid headway in her studies. It was July and
Lucy was free from school, so she would let her spend many an
hour in the street, but she caused her to spend a good deal of time
with her, too. If she did not read with her she would talk or listen
to her. I often wondered whether it was for fear of being too much
thrown into my company that she would make the child stay
indoors. At all events, her readings, spelling contests, or talks with
Lucy bore perceptible fruit. Her English seemed to be improving
every day, so much so that we gradually came to use a good deal
of that language even when we were alone in the house; even
when every word we said had an echo of intimacy with which the
tongue we were learning to speak seemed to be out of accord
One evening mother and daughter sat at the open parlor window.
While I was reclining in an easy-chair at the other end of the room
Lucy was narrating something and Dora was listening, apparently
with rapt attention. I watched their profiles. Finally I said: "She
must be telling you something important, considering the interest
you are taking in it."
"Everything she says is important to me," Dora answered
"What has she been telling you?"
"Oh, about her girls, about their brothers and their baseball games,
about lots of things," she said, with a far-away tone in her voice. "I
want to know everything about her. Everything. I wish I could get
right into her. I wish I could be a child like her. Oh, why can't a
person be born over again?"
Her longing ejaculation had perhaps more to do with her feelings
for me than with her feelings for her child. Anyhow, what she said
about her being interested in everything that Lucy had to say was
true. And, whether she listened to the child's prattle or not, it
always seemed to me as though she absorbed every English word
Lucy uttered and every American gesture she made. The
American school-girl radiated a subtle influence, a spiritual
ozone, which her mother breathed in greedily
"My own life is lost, but she shall be educated"-- these words
dropped from her lips quite often. On one occasion they came
from her with a modification that lent them unusual meaning. It
was on a Friday evening. Max was out, as usual, and the children
were asleep. "My own life is lost, but Lucy shall be happy," she
said
"Why?" I said, feelingly. "Why should you think yourself lost? I
can't bear it, Dora."
She made no answer. I attempted to renew the conversation, but
without avail. She answered in melancholy monosyllables and my
voice had a constrained note
At last I burst out, in our native tongue: "Why do you torture me,
Dora? Why don't you let me talk and pour my heart out?"
"'S-sh! You mustn't," she said, peremptorily, also in Yiddish.
"You'll get me in trouble if you do. It'll be the ruin of me and of
the children, too.
You mustn't."
"But you say your life is lost," I retorted, coming up close to the
chair on which she sat. "Do you think it's easy for me to hear it?
Do you think my heart is made of iron?"
"'S-sh! You know everything without my speaking," she said,
slowly rising and drawing back. "You know well enough that I am
not happy. Can't you rest until you have heard me say so again and
again? Must you drink my blood? All right, then. Go ahead. Here.
I am unhappy, I am unhappy, I am unhappy. Max is a good
husband to me. I can't complain. And we get along well, too. And I
shall be true to him. May I choke right here, may darkness come
upon me, if I ever cease to be a faithful wife to him. But you know
that my heart has never been happy. Lucy will be happy and that
will be my happiness, too. She shall go to college and be an
educated American lady, and, if God lets me live, I shall see to it
that she doesn't marry unless she meets the choice of her heart.
She must be happy. She must make up for her mother's lost life,
too. If my mother had understood things as I do, I, too, should have
been happy. But she was an old-fashioned woman and she would
have me marry in the old-fashioned way, as she herself had
married: without laying her eyes on her 'predestined one' until the
morning after the wedding." She laughed bitterly. "Of course I did
see Max before the wedding, but it made no difference. I obeyed
my mother, peace upon her soul. I thought love-marriages were
something which none but educated girls could dream of.
My mother--peace upon her soul--told me to throw all fancies out
of my mind, that I was a simple girl and must get married without
fuss. And I did. In this country people have different notions. But I
am already married and a mother. All I can do now is to see to it
that Lucy shall be both educated and happy, and, well, I beg of
you, I beg of you, I beg of you, Levinsky, never let me talk of
these things again. They must be locked up in my heart and the
key must be thrown into the river, Levinsky. It cannot be
otherwise, Levinsky. Do you hear?"
CHAPTER XIV
THE situation could not last. One morning about
three weeks subsequent to the above conversation Max left town
for a day. One of his debtors, a dancing-master, had disappeared
without settling his account and Max had recently discovered that
he was running a dance-hall and meeting-rooms in New Haven; so
he went there to see what he could do toward collecting his bill.
His absence for a whole day was nothing new, and yet the house
seemed to have assumed a novel appearance that morning. When,
after breakfast, Lucy ran out into the street I felt as though Dora
and I were alone for the first time, and from her constraint I could
see that she was experiencing a similar feeling. I hung around the
house awkwardly. She was trying to keep herself busy. Finally I
said: "I think I'll be going. Maybe there is some news about the
lockout."
I rose to go to the little corridor for my hat, but on my way thither,
as I came abreast of her, I paused, and with amorous mien I drew
her to me.
She made but a perfunctory attempt at resistance, and when I
kissed her she responded, our lips clinging together hungrily. It all
seemed to have happened in a most natural way. When our lips
parted at last her cheeks were deeply flushed and her eyes looked
filmed
"Dearest," I whispered
"I must go out," she said, shrinking back, her embarrassed gaze on
the floor. "I have some marketing to do."
"Don't. Don't go away from me, Dora. Please don't," I said in
Yiddish, with the least bit of authority. "I love thee. I love thee,
Dora," I raved, for the first time addressing her in the familiar
pronoun
"You ought not to speak to me like that," she said, limply, with
frank happiness in her voice. "It's terrible. What has got into me?"
I strained her to me once again, and again we abandoned ourselves
to a transport of kisses and hugs
"Dost thou love me, Dora? Tell me. I want to hear it from thine
own lips."
She slowly drew me to her bosom and clasped me with all her
might. That was her answer to my question. Then, with a hurried
parting kiss on my forehead, she said: "Go. Attend to business,
dearest." As I walked through the street I was all but shouting to
myself: "Dora has kissed me! Dora dear is mine!" My heart was
dancing with joy over my conquest of her, and at the same time I
felt that I was almost ready to lay down my life for her. It was a
blend of animal selfishness and spiritual sublimity. I really loved
her
I attended to my affairs (that is, to some of the affairs of the
Manufacturers' Organization) that day; but while thus engaged I
was ever tremulously conscious of my happiness, ever in an
uplifted state of mind. I was bubbling over with a desire to be
good to somebody, to everybody--except, of course, the
Cloak-makers' Union. My membership in the Manufacturers'
Association flattered my vanity inordinately, and I always danced
attendance upon the other members, the German Jews, the big men
of the trade; now, however, I ran their errands with an alacrity that
was not mere servility
I was constantly aware of the fact that this was my second
love-affair, as if it were something to be proud of. My love for
Matilda was remote as a piece of art, while my passion for Dora
was a flaming reality. "Matilda only tortured me," I said to myself,
without malice. "She treated me as she would a dog, whereas
Dora is an angel. I would jump into fire for her. Dora dear!
Sweetheart mine!" I had not the patience to wait until evening. I
ran in to see her in the middle of the day
She flung herself at me and we embraced and kissed as if we had
been separated for years. Then, holding me by both hands, she
gave me a long look full of pensive bliss and clasped me to her
bosom again. When she had calmed down she smoothed my hair,
adjusted my necktie, told me she did not like it and offered to get
me one more becoming
"Do you love me? Do you really?" she asked, with deep
earnestness
"I do, I do. Dora mine, I am crazy for you," I replied. "Now I know
what real love means."
She sighed, and after a pause her grave, strained mien broke into a
smile
"So all you told me about Matilda was a lie, was it?" she said,
roguishly.
"There is no such person in the world, is there?"
"Don't talk about her, pray. You don't understand me. I never was
happy before. Never in my life."
"Never at all?" she questioned me, earnestly
"Never, Dora dearest. Anyhow, let bygones be bygones. All I know
is that I love you, that I am going crazy for you. Oh, I do love
you." "And nobody else?"
"And nobody else."
"And you are not lying?"
"Lying? Why should you talk like that, dearest?"
"Why, have you forgotten Matilda so soon?"
"Do you call that soon? It's more than five years."
"But you told me that you had been in love with her a considerable
time after you came to this country. Will you forget me so soon,
too?"
I squirmed, I writhed. "Don't be tormenting me, dearest," I
implored, my voice quavering with impatience. "I love thee and
nobody else."
She fell into a muse. Then she said, with a far-away look in her
eyes: "I don't know where this will land me. It seems as if a great
misfortune had befallen me. But I don't care. I don't care. I don't
care. Come what may. I can't help it. At last I know what it means
to be happy. I have been dreaming of it all my life. Now I know
what it is like, and I am willing to suffer for it. Yes, I am willing
to suffer for you, Levinsky." She spoke with profound,
even-voiced earnestness, with peculiar solemnity, as though
chanting a prayer. I was somewhat bored. Presently she paused,
and, changing her tone, she asked. "Matilda talked to you of
education. She wanted you to be an educated man, did she? Yes,
but what did she do for you? She drank your blood, the leech, and
when she got tired of it she dropped you. A woman like that ought
to be torn to pieces. May every bit of the suffering she caused you
come back to her a thousandfold. May her blood be shed as she
shed yours." Suddenly she checked herself and said: "But, no, I am
not going to curse her. I don't want you to think badly of her. Your
love must be sacred, Levinsky. If you ever go back on me and love
somebody else, don't let her curse me. Don't let anybody say a
cross word about me." Max came home after midnight and I did
not see him until the next evening.
When we met at supper (Dora was out at that moment) I had to
make an effort to meet his eye. But he did not seem to notice
anything out of the usual, and my awkwardness soon wore off
Nor, indeed, was there any change in my feelings toward him. I
had expected that he would now be hateful to me. He was not. He
was absolutely the same man as he had always been, except,
perhaps, that I vaguely felt like a thief in his presence. Only I
hated to think of Dora while I looked at him
Presently Dora made her appearance. My embarrassment returned,
more acute than ever. The consciousness of her confusion and,
above all, the consciousness of the three of us being together, was
insupportable. It was a terrible repast, though Max was absolutely
unaware of anything unnatural in our demeanor. I retired to my
room soon after supper
I had a what-not half filled with books, so I drew a volume from it.
I found it difficult to get my mind on it. My thoughts were circling
round Dora and Max, round my precarious happiness, round the
novelty of carrying on a romantic conspiracy with a married
woman. Dora was so dear to me. I seemed to be vibrating with
devotion to her. Regardless of the fact that she was somebody
else's wife and a mother of two children, my love impressed me as
something sacred. I seemed to accept the general rule that a
wife-stealer is a despicable creature, a thief, a vile, immoral
wretch. But now, that I was not facing Max, that rule, somehow,
did not apply to my relations with Dora.
Simultaneously with this feeling I had another one which excused
my conduct on the theory that everybody was at the bottom of his
heart likewise ready to set that rule at defiance and to make a
mistress of his friend's wife, provided it could be done with
absolute secrecy and safety. Max in my place would certainly not
have scrupled to act as I did. But then I hated to think of him in
this connection. I would brush all thoughts of him aside as I would
a vicious fly. I was too selfish to endure the pain even of a
moment's compunction. I treated myself as a doting mother does a
wayward son
The book in my hands was the first volume of Herbert Spencer's
Sociology. My interest in this author and in Darwin was of recent
origin. It had been born of my hatred for the Cloak-makers' Union,
in fact. This is how I came to discover the existence of the two
great names and to develop a passion for the ideas with which
they are identified
In my virulent criticism of the leaders of the union I had often
characterized them as so many good-for-nothings, jealous of those
who had succeeded in business by their superior brains, industry,
and efficiency.
One day I found a long editorial in my newspaper, an answer to a
letter from a socialist. The editorial derived its inspiration from
the theory of the Struggle for Existence and the Survival of the
Fittest. Unlike many of the other editorials I had read, it breathed
conviction. It was obviously a work of love. When the central idea
of the argument came home to me I was in a turmoil of surprise
and elation. "Why, that's just what I have been saying all these
days!" I exclaimed in my heart. "The able fellows succeed, and the
misfits fail. Then the misfits begrudge those who accomplish
things." I almost felt as though Darwin and Spencer had
plagiarized a discovery of mine. Then, as I visualized the Struggle
for Existence, I recalled Meyer Nodelman's parable of chickens
fighting for food, and it seemed to me that, between the two of us,
Nodelman and I had hit upon the whole Darwinian doctrine.
Later, however, when I dipped into Social Statics, I was
over-borne by the wondrous novelty of the thing and by a sense of
my own futility, ignorance, and cheapness. I felt at the gates of a
great world of knowledge whose existence I had not even
suspected. I had to read the Origin of Species and the Descent of
Man, and then Spencer again. I sat up nights reading these books.
Apart from the purely intellectual intoxication they gave me, they
flattered my vanity as one of the "fittest." It was as though all the
wonders of learning, acumen, ingenuity, and assiduity displayed in
these works had been intended, among other purposes, to establish
my title as one of the victors of Existence
A working-man, and every one else who was poor, was an object
of contempt to me--a misfit, a weakling, a failure, one of the ruck.
CHAPTER XV
IT was August. In normal times this would have
been the beginning of the great "winter season" in our trade. As it
was, the deadlock continued. The stubbornness of the men, far
from showing signs of wilting under the strain of so many weeks
of enforced idleness and suffering, seemed to be gathering
strength, while our own people, the manufacturers, were frankly
weakening.
The danger of having the great season pass without one being able
to fill a single order overcame the fighting blood of the most
pugnacious among them.
One was confronted with the risk of losing one's best customers.
The trade threatened to pass from New York to Philadelphia and
Chicago. If you called the attention of a manufacturer to the
unyielding courage of the workmen, the reply invariably was,
first, that it was all mere bravado; and, second, that, anyhow, the
poor devils had nothing to lose, while the manufacturers had their
investments to lose
The press supported the strikers. It did so, not because they were
working-people, but because they were East-Siders. Their district
was the great field of activity for the American University
Settlement worker and fashionable slummer. The East Side was a
place upon which one descended in quest of esoteric types and
"local color," as well as for purposes of philanthropy and "uplift"
work. To spend an evening in some East Side café was regarded
as something like spending a few hours at the Louvre so much so
that one such café, in the depth of East Houston Street, was
making a fortune by purveying expensive wine dinners to people
from up-town who came there ostensibly to see "how the other
half lived," but who only saw one another eat and drink in
freedom from the restraint of manners. Accordingly, to show
sympathy for East Side strikers was within the bounds of the
highest propriety. It was as "correct" as belonging to the Episcopal
Church. And so public opinion was wholly on the side of the
Cloak-makers' Union. This hastened the end. We succumbed. A
settlement was patched up. We were beaten.
But even this did not appease the men. They repudiated the
agreement between their organization and ours, branding it as a
trap, and the strike was continued. Then the manufacturers
yielded completely, acceding to every demand of the union
I became busy. I continued to curse the union, but at the bottom of
my heart I wished it well, for the vigor with which it enforced its
increased wage scale in all larger factories gave me greater
advantages than ever. I was still able to get men who were willing
to trick the organization. Every Friday afternoon these men
received pay-envelopes which bore figures in strict conformity
with the union's schedule, but the contents of which were
considerably below the sum marked outside. Subsequently this
proved to be a risky practice to pursue, for the walking delegates
were wide awake and apt to examine the envelopes as the
operatives were emerging from the shop.
Accordingly, I adopted another system: the men would receive the
union pay in full, but on the following Monday each of them
would pay me back the difference between the official and the
actual wage. The usual practice was for the employee to put the
few dollars into his little wage-book, which he would then place
on my desk for the ostensible purpose of having his account
verified
By thus cheating the union I could now undersell the bigger
manufacturers more easily than I had been able to do previous to
the lockout and strike. I had more orders than I could fill. Money
was coming in in floods
The lockout and the absolute triumph of the union was practically
the making of me
I saw much less of Dora than I had done during the five months of
the lockout, and our happiness when we managed to be left alone
was all the keener for it. Our best time for a tê-à-tˆte were the
hours between 10 and 12 on the evenings, when Max was sure to
be away at his dancing-schools, but then it often happened that
those were among my busiest hours at the shop.
Sometimes I would snatch half an hour from my work in the
middle of a busy day to surprise her with my caresses. If a week
passed without my doing so she would punish me with mute
scenes of jealousy, of which none but she and I were aware. She
would avoid looking at me, and I would press my hand to my
heart and raise a pleading gaze at her, which said: "I couldn't get
away, dearest. Honest, I couldn't."
One evening I bought her some roses. As I carried them home I
was thrilled as much by the fact that I, David of Abner's Court,
was taking flowers to a lady as I was by visioning the moment
when I should hand them to Dora. When I came home and put my
offering into her hand she was in a flurry of delight over it, but she
was scared to death lest it should betray our secret. After giving
way to bursts of admiration for the flowers and myself, and
smelling her fill, and covering me with kisses, she burned the
bouquet in the stove and forbade me to use this method of
showing her attention again
"Your dear eyes are the best flowers you can bring me," she said
Her love burned with a steady flame, bright and even. It
manifested itself in a thousand little things which she did for the
double purpose of ministering to my comfort and keeping me in
mind of herself. I felt it in the taste of the coffee I drank, in the
quality of my cup and saucer, in the painstaking darning on my
socks, in the frequency with which my room was swept, my towel
changed, my books dusted
"Did you notice the new soap-dish on your wash-stand?" she asked
me, one morning. "Do you deserve it? Do you know how often I
am in your room every day? Just guess."
"A million times a day."
"To you it's a joke. But if you loved as I do you would not be up to
joking."
"Very well, I'll cry." And I personated a boy crying. "Don't. It
breaks my heart," she said, earnestly. "I can't see you crying even
for fun." She kissed my eyes. "No, really, I go to your room twenty
times a day, perhaps.
When I am there it seems to me that I am nearer to you. I kiss the
pillow on which you sleep. I pat the blanket, the pitcher, every
book of yours--everything your dear little hands touch. I want you
to know it. I want you to know how I love you. I knew that love
was sweet, but I never knew that it was so sweet. Oh, my loved
one!"
She would pour out all sorts of endearments on me, some of them
rather of a fantastic nature, but "my loved one" became her
favorite appellation, while I found special relish in calling her "my
bride" or "bridie mine."
I can almost feel her white fingers as they played with my
abundant dark hair or rested on my shoulders while she looked
into my eyes and murmured, yearningly: "My loved one! My loved
one! My loved one!"
The set of my shoulders was a special object of her admiration.
She would shake them tenderly, call me monkey, and ask me if I
realized how much she loved me and if I deserved it all, bad boy
that I was
She held me in check with an iron hand. Whenever my caresses
threatened to overstep the bounds of what she termed "respectable
love" she would stop them. With clouded eyes she would slap my
hand and then kiss it, saying: "Be a gentleman, Levinsky. Be a
gentleman. Can't you be a gentleman?"
"Oh, you don't love me," I would grunt
"I don't? I don't? I wish you would love me half as much," with a
sigh. "If you did you would not behave the way you do. That's all
your love amounts to--behaving like that. All men are hogs, after
all." With which she would take to lecturing me and pouring out
her infatuated heart in that solemn singsong of hers, which
somewhat bored me
If she thought my kisses unduly passionate and the amorous look
of my eye dangerous she would move away from me
"Don't be angry at me, sweetheart," she would say, cooingly
"I am not angry, but you don't love me."
"Why should you hurt my feelings like that? Why should you shed
my blood? Am I not yours, heart and soul? Am I not ready to cut
myself to pieces to please you? Why should you torture me?"
"What are you afraid of? He won't know any more than he does
now," I once urged.
She blushed, looking at the floor. After a minute's silence she said,
dolefully: "It isn't so much on account of that as on account of the
children. How could I look Lucy in the face?"
Her eyes grew humid. My heart went out to her.
"I understand. You are right," I yielded
The scene repeated itself not many days after. It occurred again
and again at almost regular intervals. She fought bravely
Many months passed, and still she was able "to look Lucy in the
face."
At first, for a period of six or seven weeks, my moral conduct
outside the house was immaculate. Then I renewed my excursions
to certain streets. I made rather frequent calls at the apartment of a
handsome Hungarian woman who called herself Cleo. Once, in a
frenzy, I tried to imagine that she was Dora, and then I
experienced qualms of abject compunction and self-loathing
Sometimes Lucy would arouse my jealous rancor, as a living
barrier between her mother and myself. But she was really dear to
me. I revered Dora for her fortitude, and Lucy appealed to me as
the embodiment of her mother's saintliness
I would watch Lucy. She was an interesting study. Her manner of
speaking, her giggle, her childish little affectations seemed to
grow more American every day. She was like a little foreigner in
the house
Dora was watching and studying her with a feeling akin to despair,
I thought. It was as though she was pursuing the little girl, with
outstretched arms, vainly trying to overtake her
CHAPTER XVI
I WAS rapidly advancing on the road to financial
triumphs. I was planning to move my business to larger quarters,
in the same modest neighborhood. Mrs.
Chaikin, my partner's wife, failed to realize the situation, however.
She could not forgive me the false representations I had made to
her regarding my assets
"And where is the treasure you were expecting?" she would twit
me. "You never tell a lie, do you? You simply don't know how to
do it. Poor thing!"
When we were in the midst of an avalanche of lucrative orders
promising a brilliant winter season she took it into her head to
withdraw her husband from the firm, in which he was a silent
partner. Her decision was apparently based on the extreme efforts
she had once seen me making to raise five hundred dollars. As a
matter of fact, this was due to the rapidity of our growth. I lacked
capital. But then my credit was growing, too, and altogether things
were in a most encouraging condition
"What is the use worrying along like that?" she said. "You
deceived me from the start. You made me believe you had a lot of
money, while you were really a beggar. Yes, you are a beggar, and
a beggar you are bound to stay. A beggar and a swindler--that's
what you are. You have fooled me long enough.
You can't fool me any longer. So there!"
Her husband was still employed by the German firm, attending to
the needs of our growing little factory surreptitiously every
evening and on Sundays. The day seemed near when it would pay
him to give all his time to our shop. And he was aware of it, too;
to some extent, at least. But Mrs. Chaikin ordained otherwise
I attempted to present the actual state of affairs to her, but broke
off in the middle of a sentence. It suddenly flashed upon my mind
that it might all be to my advantage. "A designer can be hired," I
said to myself. "The business is progressing rapidly. To make him
my life partner is too high a price to pay for his skill. Besides,
having him for a partner actually means having his nuisance of a
wife for a partner. It will be a good thing to get rid of her." I
consulted Max, as I did quite often now. Not that I thought myself
in need of his advice, or anybody else's, for that matter. Success
had made me too self-confident for that. I played the intimate and
ardent friend, and this was simply part of my personation. To
flatter his vanity I would make him think his suggestions had been
acted upon and that they had brought good results. As a
consequence, he was developing the notion that my success was
largely due to his guidance, a notion which jarred on me, but
which I humored, nevertheless
"Do you know what's the matter?" he said, sagely. "Mrs. Chaikin
must have found another partner for her husband. Some fellow
with big money, I suppose."
"You are right, Max," I said, sincerely. "How stupid I am."
"Why, of course they have got another partner. Of course they
have," he repeated, with elation. "So much the better for you. Let
them go to the eighty black years. Don't run after him. Just do as I
tell you and you'll be all right, Levinsky. My advice has never got
you in trouble, has it?"
"Indeed not. Indeed not," I answered
Max's blindness to what was going on between Dora and myself
was a riddle to which I vainly sought a solution. That this cynic
who charged every man and woman with immorality should, in
the circumstances, be so absolutely undisturbed in his confidence
regarding his wife seemed nothing short of a miracle. When I now
think of the riddle I see its solution in a modified version of the
old rule concerning the mote in thy neighbor's eye and the beam in
thine own eve. Your worst pessimist is, after all, an optimist with
regard to himself. We are quick to recognize the gravity of ill
health in somebody else, yet we ourselves may be on the very
brink of death without realizing it. It is a special phase of
selfishness. We are loath to connect the idea of a catastrophe with
our own person. Max, who saw a mote in the eye of everybody
else's wife, failed to perceive the beam in the eye of his own
As for Sadie, who lived in the same house now, and who visited
Dora's apartment at all hours, she was too silly and too deeply
infatuated with her friend to suspect her of anything wrong
I idolized Dora. It seemed to me that I adored her soul even more
than I did her body. I was under her moral influence, and the
firmness with which she maintained the distance between us
added to my respect for her. And yet I never ceased to dream of
and to seek her moral downfall
I had extended my canvassing activities to a number of cities
outside New York, my territory being a semicircle with a radius of
about a hundred and fifty miles. I had long since picked up some
of the business jargon of the country and I was thirstily drinking in
more and more
"What do you think of this number, Mr. So-and-so?" I would say,
self-consciously, to a merchant, as I dangled a garment in front of
him.
"You can make a run on it. It's the kind of suit that gives the
wearer an air of distinction."
If I heard a bit of business rhetoric that I thought effective I would
jot it down and commit it to memory. In like manner I would
write down every new piece of slang, the use of the latest popular
phrase being, as I thought, helpful in making oneself popular with
Americans, especially with those of the young generation. But
somehow a slang phrase would be in general use for a
considerable time before it attracted my attention. The Americans
I met were so quick to discern and adopt these phrases it seemed
as if they were born with a special slang sense which I, poor
foreigner that I was, lacked.
That I was not born in America was something like a physical
defect that asserted itself in many disagreeable ways--a physical
defect which, alas! no surgeon in the world was capable of
removing
Other things that I would enter in my note-book were names of
dishes on the bills of fare of the better restaurants, with
explanations of my own. I would describe the difference between
Roquefort cheese and Liederkranz cheese, between consommé
Celestine and consommé princesse; I would make a note of the
composition of macaroni au gratin, the appearance and taste of
potatoes Lyonnaise, of various salad-dressings. But I gradually
picked up this information in a practical way and really had no
need of my culinary notes. I had many occasions to eat in
high-class restaurants and I was getting to feel quite at home in
them
Max's conjecture regarding Chaikin was borne out. The talented
designer had given up his job at the Manheimer Brothers' and
opened a cloak-and-suit house with a man who had made
considerable money as a cloak salesman, and as a landlord for a
partner. When Max heard of it he was overjoyed
"I tell you what, Levinsky," he said, half in jest and half in earnest.
"Let the two of us make a partnership of it. I could put some
money into the business."
I reflected that when I approached him for a loan of four hundred
dollars, on my first visit at his house, he had pleaded poverty
"I could do a good deal of hustling, too," he added, gravely.
"Between the two of us we should make a great success of it."
I gave him an evasive answer. I must have looked annoyed, for he
exclaimed: "Look at him! Look at him, Dora! Scared to death, isn't
he?" And to me: "Don't be uneasy, old chap! I am not going to
snatch your factory from you.
But you are a big hog, all the same. I can tell you that. How will
you manage all alone? Who will take care of your business when
you go traveling?"
"Oh, I'll manage it somehow," I answered, making an effort to be
pleasant.
"Chaikin was scarcely ever in the shop, anyhow."
CHAPTER XVII
I TRAVELED quite often, sometimes staying
away from New York for two or three days, but more frequently
for only one day. On one occasion, however, I was detained on the
road for five days in succession. It was the beginning of June, a
little over a year since the Margolises moved into the Clinton
Street flat with myself as their boarder. I was homesick. I missed
Dora acutely. I loved her passionately, tenderly, devotedly. I now
felt it with special force. Her face and figure loomed up a hundred
times a day.
"Dora dear! Bridie mine!" I would whisper, all but going to pieces
with tenderness and yearning
One afternoon, after closing an unexpectedly large sale in a
department store, I went to the jewelry department of the same
firm and paid a hundred and twenty dollars for a bracelet. I knew
that she would not be able to wear it, yet I was determined to
make her accept it
"Let her keep it in some hiding-place," I thought. "Let her steal an
occasional look at it. I don't care what she does with it. I want her
to know that I think of her, that I am crazy for her."
It was Friday evening when I returned to New York, having been
on the road since the preceding Monday morning. I first went to
my place of business and then to a restaurant for supper. I would
not make my appearance at the house until half past 10, when the
coast was sure to be clear. With thrills of anticipation that verged
on physical pain I was looking forward to the moment when I
should close the bracelet about her slender white wrist
At the fixed minute I was at the door of the Clinton Street
apartment. I pulled the bell. I expected an excited rush, a violent
opening of the door, a tremulous: "My loved one! My loved one!"
There was a peculiar disappointment in store for me. She received
me icily, not letting me come near her
"Why, what's the matter? What's up?" "Nothing," she muttered
When we reached the light of the Sabbath candles in the
dining-room I noticed that she looked worn and haggard
"What has happened?" I asked, greatly perplexed. "I have
something for you," I said, producing the blue-velvet box
containing the bracelet and opening it. "Here, my bride!"
"How dare you call me 'bride,' you hypocrite?" she gasped. "Away
with you, your present and all!"
"Why? Why? What does it all mean?" I asked, between mirth and
perplexity
For an answer she merely continued: "You thought you could bribe
me by this present of yours, did you? You can fool me no longer. I
have found you out.
You have fallen into your own trap. You have. How dare you buy
me presents?"
At this she tore the bracelet out of my hand and flung it into the
little corridor. She was on the verge of a fit of hysterics. I fetched
her a glass of water, but she dashed it out of my hand. Then,
frightened and sobered by the crash, she first tiptoed to the
bedroom to ascertain if Lucy was not awake and listening, and
then went to the little corridor, picked up the bracelet and slipped
it into my pocket
"If you have decided to get married, I can't stop you, of course,"
she began, in a ghastly undertone, as she crouched to gather up the
fragments of the glass and to wipe the floor.
"Decided to get married?" I interrupted her. "Where on earth did
you get that? What 'trap' are you talking about, Dora?"
She made no answer. I continued to protest my innocence. Finally,
when she had removed the broken glass, she said: "It's no use
pretending you don't know anything about it. It won't do you any
good. You have been very foxy about it, but you made a break, and
there you are! You think you are very clever. If you were you
wouldn't let your shadchen [note] know where you live--"
Oh, I see," I said, with a hearty laugh. "Has he been here?" And I
gave way to another guffaw
Shadchen was a conspiracy name for a man who would bring an
employer together with cloak-makers who were willing to cheat
the union. The one who performed these services for me was one
of my own "hands." He was thoroughly dishonest, but he
possessed a gentle disposition and a certain gift of expression.
This gave him power over his shopmates. He was their "shop
chairman" and a member of their "price committee." He was the
only man in my employ who actually received the full union price.
In addition to this, I paid him his broker's commission for every
new man he furnished me, and various sums as bribes pure and
simple
I explained it all to Dora. The ardor with which I spoke and the
details of my dealings with the shadchen must have made my
explanation convincing, for she accepted it at once
"You're not fooling me, are you?" she asked, piteously, yet in a
tone of immense relief.
"Strike me dumb if--"
"'S-sh! Don't curse yourself," she said, clapping her hand over my
mouth. "I can't bear to hear it. I believe you. If you knew what I
have gone through!"
"Poor, poor child!" I said, kissing her soft white fingers tenderly.
"Poor, poor baby! How could you think of such a thing! There is
only one bride for me in all the world, and that is my own Dora
darling."
Her face shone with a wan, beseeching kind of light
Again I drew forth the bracelet
"Foolish child!" I said, examining it. "Thank God, it isn't damaged.
Not a bit."
I took her by the hand, opened the bracelet, and closed it over her
wrist.
She instantly took it off again, with an instinctive side-glance at
the door. Then, holding it up to the light admiringly, she said:
"Oh! Oh! Must have cost a pile of money! Why did you spend so
much? I can't wear it, anyway. Better return it."
"Never! It's yours, my sweetheart. Do whatever you like with it.
Put it away somewhere. If you wear it for one minute every week I
shall be happy. If you only look at it once in a while I shall be
happy."
"I am afraid to keep it. Somebody may come across it some day.
Better return it, my loved one! I am happy as it is. It would make
me nervous to have it in the house."
She made me take it back
"Thank God it wasn't a real shadchen! I thought I was going to
commit suicide," she said
I seized her in my arms. She abandoned herself to a transport of
gratitude and happiness in which her usual fortitude melted away
The next morning she had the appearance of one doomed to death.
Her eyes avoided everybody, not only her husband and Lucy, but
myself as well. She pleaded indisposition
Max left for the synagogue, as he always did on Saturday morning.
I accompanied him out of the house, on my way to business. We
parted at a corner where I was to wait for a street-car. Instead of
boarding a car, however, I returned home. I was burning to be
alone with Dora, to cuddle her out of her forlorn mood
"I have come back for a minute just to tell you how dear you are to
me," I whispered to her in the presence of the children, who were
having their breakfast. I signed to her to follow me into the parlor,
and she did. "Just one kiss, dearest!" I said, clasping her to me and
kissing her. "I'd let myself be cut to pieces for you."
She nestled to me for a moment ,gave me a hasty kiss, and ran
back to the children, all without looking at me
I went away with a broken heart
Late that evening, when we found ourselves alone, and I rushed at
her, she gently pushed me off
"Why? What's the trouble?" I asked.
"No trouble at all," she answered, looking down, with shamefaced
gravity
"Do you hate me?"
"Hate you! I wish I could," she answered, with a sad smile, still
looking down.
"Why this new way, then?" I said, rather impatiently. "You are
dearer than ever to me, Levinsky. Tell me to jump into fire, and I
will. But--can't we love each other and be good?"
"What are you talking about, Dora? What has got into you? Do you
know what you are to me now?" I demanded, melodramatically
I made another attempt at kissing her, but was repulsed again
"Not now, anyway, my loved one," she said, entreatingly. "Let a
few days pass. You don't want me to feel bad, do you, dearest?"
I looked sheepish. I was convinced that it was merely a passing
mood
[note: shadchen]: Marriage broker, match-maker
CHAPTER XVIII
NEXT Monday, when I was ready to go to my
place of business, Dora left the house, pitcher in hand, before I
rose from the breakfast-table. She was going for milk, but a
side-glance which she cast at the floor in my direction as she
turned to shut the door behind her told me that she wanted to see
me in the street. After letting some minutes pass I put on my
overcoat and hat, bade Max a studiously casual good-by, and
departed
I awaited her on the stoop. Presently she emerged from the grocery
in the adjoining building
"Could you be free at 4 o'clock this afternoon?" she asked,
ascending the few steps, and pausing by my side. "I want to have a
talk with you.
Somewhere else. Not at home."
"Why not at home, in the evening?" "No. That won't do," she
overruled me, softly. "Somebody might come in and interrupt me.
I'll wait for you in the little park on Second Avenue and Fifteenth
Street. You know the place, don't you?"
She meant Stuyvesant Park, which the sunny Second Avenue cuts
in two, and she explained that our meeting was to take place on
the west side of the thoroughfare
"Will you come?" she asked, nervously
"I will, I will. But what's up? Why do you look so serious? Dora!
Dora mine!"
"'S-sh! You had better go. When we meet I'll explain everything.
At 4 o'clock, then. Don't forget. As you come up the avenue, going
up-town, it is on the left-hand side. Write it down."
To insure against any mistakes on my part she made me repeat it
and then jot it down. As she turned to go upstairs she said, in a
melancholy whisper: "Good-by, dearest."
When I reached the appointed place the brass hands of the clock
on the steeple high overhead indicated ten minutes of 4. It was
June, but the day was a typical November day, mildly warm, clear,
and charged with the exhilarating breath of a New York autumn.
Dora had not yet arrived. The benches in the little park were for
the most part occupied by housewives or servant-girls who sat
gossiping in front of baby-carriages, amid the noise of romping
children. Here and there an elderly man sat smoking his pipe
broodingly. They were mostly Germans or Czechs. There were
scarcely any of our people in the neighborhood at the period in
question, and that was why Dora had selected the place
I stood outside the iron gate, gazing down the avenue. The minutes
were insupportably long.
At last her womanly figure came into dim view. My heart leaped. I
was in a flutter of mixed anxiety and joyous anticipation. "Oh,
she'll back down," I persuaded myself.
She was walking fast, apparently under the impression that she
was late. Her face was growing more distinct every moment. The
blue hat she wore and the parasol she carried gave her a new
aspect. I had more than once seen her leave the house in street
array, but watching her come up the street thus formally attired
somehow gave her a different appearance.
She looked so peculiarly dignified and so exquisitely lady-like she
almost seemed to be a stranger. This, added to her romantic
estrangement from me and to the clandestine nature of our tryst,
produced a singular effect upon me.
"Am I very late?" she asked
"No. Not at all, Dora!" I said, yearningly
She made no answer
We could not find an empty bench, and to let Germans overhear
our Yiddish, which is merely a German dialect, would have been
rather risky. So she delivered her message as we walked round
and round, both of us eying the asphalt all the while. Her beautiful
complexion and our manner attracted much attention. The people
on the benches apparently divined the romantic nature of our
interview. One white-haired little man with a terrier face never
took his eyes off her
"First of all I want to tell you that this is one of the most important
days in my life," she began. "It is certainly not a happy day. It's
Yom Kippur [note] with me. I want to say right here that I am
willing to die for you, Levinsky. I am terribly in love with you,
Levinsky. Yes--"
Her voice broke. She was confused and agitated, but she soon
regained her self-mastery. She spoke in sad, solemn, quietly
passionate tones, and gradually developed a homespun sort of
eloquence which I had never heard from her before. But then the
gift of homely rhetoric is rather a common talent among
Yiddish-speaking women
The revolting sight of the dog-faced old fellow who was ogling
Dora so fascinated me that it interfered with my listening. I made
a point of looking away from him every time we came round to
his bench, but that only kept me thinking of him instead of
listening to Dora. Finally we confined our walk to the farther side
of the little park, giving him a wide berth
"I love you more than I can tell you, Levinsky," she resumed. "But
it is not my good luck to be happy. I dreamed all my life of love,
and now that it is here, right here in my heart, I must choke it with
my own hands." "Why? Why?" I said, with vehemence. "Why
must you?"
"Why!" she echoed, bitterly. "Because the Upper One brought you
to me only to punish me, to tease me. That's all. That's all. That's
all."
"Why should you take it that way?" "Don't interrupt me,
Levinsky," she said, chanting, rather than speaking. As she
proceeded, her voice lapsed into a quaint, doleful singsong, not
unlike the lament of our women over a grave. "No, Levinsky. It is
not given to me to be happy. But I ask no questions of the Upper
One. I used to live in peace. I was not happy, but I lived in peace.
I did not know what happiness was, so I did not miss it much. I
only dreamed of it. But the Lord of the World would have me
taste it, so that I might miss it and that my heart might be left with
a big, big wound. I want you to know exactly how I feel.
Oh, if I could turn this poor heart of mine inside out! Then you
could see all that is going on there. Listen, Levinsky. If it were not
for my children, my dear children, my all in all in the world, I
should not live with Margolis another day. If he gave me a
divorce, well and good; if not, then I don't know what I might do. I
shouldn't care. I love you so and I want to be happy. I do, I do, I
do."
A sob rang through her voice as she repeated the words. "You do,
and yet you are bound to make both of us miserable," I said
"Can I help it?"
"If you would you could," I said, grimly. "Get a divorce and let us
be married and have it over."
She shook her head sadly
"Thousands of couples get divorced." She kept shaking her head
"Then what's the use pretending you love me?"
"Pretending! Shall I turn my heart inside out to show you how hard
it is to live without you? But you can't understand. No, Levinsky. I
have no right to be happy. Lucy shall be happy. She certainly
sha'n't marry without love. Her happiness will be mine, too. That's
the only kind I am entitled to. She shall go to college. She shall be
educated. She shall marry the loved one of her heart. She shall not
be buried alive as her mother was. Let her profit by what little
sense I have been able to pick up."
A bench became vacant and we occupied it. The momentary
interruption and the change in her physical attitude broke the
spell. The solemnity was gone out of her voice. She resumed in a
distracted and somewhat listless manner, but she soon warmed up
again
"What would you have me do? Let Lucy find out some day that her
mother was a bad woman? I should take poison first."
"A bad woman!" I protested. "A better woman could not be found
anywhere in the world. You are a saint, Dora."
"No, I am not. I am a bad, wicked, nasty woman. I hate myself."
"'S-sh! You mustn't speak like that," I said, stopping my ears. " I
cannot bear it."
"Yes, that's what I am, a nasty creature. I used to be pure as gold.
There was not a speck on my soul, and now, woe is me, pain is
me! What has come over me?"
When she finally got down to the practical side of her resolution it
turned out that she wanted me to move out of her house and never
to see her again
I was shocked. I flouted the idea of it. I argued, I poured out my
lovelorn heart. But she insisted with an iron-clad finality. I argued
again, entreated, raved, all to no purpose
"I'll never come close to you. All I want is to be able to see you, to
live in the same house with you."
"Don't be tearing my heart to pieces," she said. "It is torn badly
enough as it is. Do as I say, Levinsky." "Don't you want to see me
at all?" "Oh, it's cruel of you to ask questions like that. You have
no heart, Levinsky. It's just because I am crazy to see you that you
have got to move."
"Don't you want me even to call at your house?" I asked, with an
ironical smile, as though I did not take the matter seriously
"Well, that would look strange. Call sometimes, not often, though,
and never when Margolis is out."
"Oh, I shall commit suicide," I snarled
"Oh, well. It isn't as bad as all that."
"I will. I certainly will," I said, knowing that I was talking
nonsense
"Don't torment me, Levinsky. Don't sprinkle salt over my wound.
Take pity on me. Do as I wish and let the tooth be pulled out with
as little pain as possible."
I accompanied her down the avenue as far as Houston Street,
where she insisted upon our parting. Before we did, however, she
indulged in another outburst of funereal oratory, bewailing her
happiness as she would a dead child. It was apparently not easy
for her to take leave of me, but her purpose to make our romance
a thing of the past and to have me move to other lodgings
remained unshaken
"This is the last time I shall ever speak to you of my love,
Levinsky," she said. "I must tear it out of my heart, even if I have
to tear out a piece of my heart along with it. Such is my fate.
Good-by, Levinsky. Good luck to you. Be good. Be good. Be
good. Remember you have a good head. Waste no time. Study as
much as you can. God grant you luck in your business, but try to
find time for your books, too. You must become a great man. Do
you promise me to read and study a lot?"
"I do. I do. But I won't move out. I can't live without you. We
belong to each other, and all you say is nothing but a woman's
whim. It's all bosh," I concluded, with an air of masculine
superiority. "I won't move out."
"You shall, dearest. Good-by. Good-by."
She broke into a fit of sobbing, but checked it, shook my hand
vehemently and hastened away.
[note: Yom Kippur] Day of Atonement; figuratively, a day of
anguish and tears.
CHAPTER XIX
I HOPED she would yield, but she did not. I
found myself in the grip of an iron will and I did as I was bidden
When I set out in quest of a furnished room I instinctively betook
myself to the neighborhood of Stuyvesant Park. That park had
acquired a melancholy fascination for me. As though to make
amends for my agonies, I determined to move into a good,
spacious room, even if I had to pay three or four times as much as
I had been paying at the Margolises'. I found a sunny front room
with two windows in an old brown-stone house on East Nineteenth
Street, between Second Avenue and First, a short distance from
the little park and near an Elevated station. The curtains, the
carpet, the huge, soft arm-chair, and the lounge struck me as
decidedly "aristocratic." To cap the climax of comfort and
"swellness," the landlady--a gray little German-American--had, at
my request, a bookcase placed between the mantelpiece and one
of the windows. It was a "regular" bookcase, doors and all, not a
mere "what-not," and the sight of it swelled my breast
"I shall forget all my troubles here," I thought. "I am going to buy a
complete set of Spencer and some other books. Won't the
bookcase look fine! I shall read, read, read."
When I reported to Dora that I was ready to move, her face
clouded
"You seem to be glad to," she said, with venom, dropping her eyes
"Glad? Glad? Why, I am not going to move, then. May I stay here,
darling mine? May I?"
"Are you really sorry you have to move?" she asked, fixing a
loving glance at me. "Do you really love me?"
There were tears in her eyes. I attempted to come close to her, to
kiss her, but she held me back
"No, dearest," she said, shaking her head. "Move out to-morrow,
will you? Let's be done with it."
"And what will Max say?" I asked, sardonically. Will nothing seem
strange to him nothing at all?"
"Never mind that."
She never mentioned Max to me now, not even by pronoun
"Then you must know him to be an idiot." Now I hated Max with
all my heart.
"Don't," she implored
"Oh, I see. He's dear to you now," I laughed
"Have a heart, Levinsky. Have a heart. Must you keep shedding my
blood? Have you no pity at all?"
"But it is all so ridiculous. It will look strange," I argued, seriously.
"He is bound to get suspicious."
"I have thought it all out. Don't be uneasy. I'll say we had a quarrel
over your board bill."
"A nice dodge, indeed! It may fool Dannie, not him."
"Leave it all to me. Better tell me what sort of lodgings you have
got. Is it a decent room? Plenty of air and sunshine? But, no. Don't
tell me anything. I mustn't know." I sneered
She was absorbed in thought, flushed, nervous.
Presently she said, with an effect of speaking to herself: "It's sweet
to suffer for what is right."
I moved out according to her program. I came home at 10 the first
evening.
My double room, with its great arm-chair, carpets, bookcase,
imposing lace curtains, and the genteel silence of the street
outside, was a prison to me.
I attempted to read, but there was a lump in my throat and the lines
swam before me
I went out, roamed about the streets, dropped in at a Hungarian
café, took another ramble, and returned to my room
I tossed about on my great double bed. I sat up in front of one of
my two windows, gazing at a street-lamp. It was not solely Dora,
but also Lucy and Dannie that I missed. Only the image of Max
now aroused hostile feelings in me
Max called at my shop the very next day. The sight of him cut me
to the quick. I received him in morose silence
"What's the matter? What's the matter?" he inquired, with pained
amazement.
"What did you two quarrel about?"
I made no answer. His presence oppressed me. My surly reticence
was no mere acting. But I knew that he misinterpreted it into grim
resentment of Dora's sally, as though I said, "Your wife's conduct
had better be left undiscussed."
"What nonsense! She charged you too much, did she? Is that the
way it all began? Did she insult you? Well, women-folk are liable
to flare up, you know. Tell me all about it. I'll straighten it out
between you. The children miss you awfully. Come, don't be a
fool, Levinsky. Who ever took the words of a woman seriously?
What did she say that you should take it so hard?"
"You had better ask her," I replied, with a well-acted frown
"Ask her! She gets wild when I do. I never saw her so wild. She
thinks you insulted her first. Well, she is a woman, but you aren't
one, are you? Come to the house this evening, will you?"
"That's out of the question."
"Then meet me somewhere else. I want to have a talk with you. It's
all so foolish." I pleaded important other engagements, but he
insisted that I should meet him later in the evening, and I had to
make the appointment. I promised to be at a Canal Street café on
condition that he did not mention the disagreeable episode nor
offer to effect a reconciliation between Dora and myself
"You're a tough customer. As tough as Dora," he said
When I came to the café, at about 11, I found him waiting for me.
He kept his promise about avoiding the subject of Dora, but he
talked of women, which jarred on me inordinately now. His
lecherous fibs and philosophy made him literally unbearable to
me. To turn the conversation I talked shop, and this bored him.
About a week later he called on me again. He informed me that
Dora had taken a new apartment up in Harlem, where the rooms
were even more modern and cheaper than on Clinton Street
"I wouldn't mind staying where we are," he observed. "But you
know how women are. Everybody is moving up-town, so she must
move, too."
My face hardened, as if to say: "Why will you speak of your wife?
You know I can't bear to hear of her." At the same time I said to
myself: "Poor Dora! She must have found it awful to live in the
old place, now that I am no longer there."
His next visit at my shop took place after a lapse of three or four
weeks.
He descanted upon his new home and the Harlem dwellings in
general, and I made an effort to show him cordial attention and to
bear myself generally as though there were no cause for
estrangement between us, but I failed
At last he said, resentfully: "What's the matter with you? Why are
you so sour? If you and Dora have had a falling out, is that any
reason why you and I should not be good friends?" "Why, why?" I
protested. "Who says I am sour?"
We parted on very friendly terms. But it was a long time before I
saw him again, and then under circumstances that were a
disagreeable surprise to me
BOOK X
ON THE ROAD
CHAPTER I
WEEKS went by. My desolation seemed to be growing in excruciating intensity.
From time to time, when I chanced to recall some trait or trick of
Dora's, her person would come back to me with special vividness,
smiting me with sudden cruelty. The very odor of her flesh would
grip my consciousness. At such moments my agony would be so
great that I seemed to be on the brink of a physical collapse.
During intervals there was a steady gnawing pain. It was as though
the unrelenting tortures of a dull toothache had settled somewhere
in the region of my heart or stomach, I knew not exactly where. I
recognized the pang as an old acquaintance. It had the same flavor
as the terrors of my tantalizing love for Matilda
My shop had lost all meaning to me. I vaguely longed to flee from
myself
There was plenty to do in the shop and all sorts of outside
appointments to keep, not to speak of my brief trips as traveling
salesman. To all of which I attended with automatic regularity,
with listless doggedness. The union was a constant source of
worry. In addition, there was a hitch in my relations with the
"marriage broker." But even my worrying seemed to be done
automatically
Having forfeited the invaluable services of Chaikin, who now gave
all his time to his newly established factory, I filled the gap with
all sorts of makeshifts and contrivances. An employee of one of
the big shops, a tailor, stole designs for me. These were used in
my shop by a psalm-muttering old tailor with a greenish-white
beard full of snuff, who would have become a Chaikin if he had
been twenty years younger. Later I hired the services of a newly
graduated cloak-designer who would drop in of an afternoon.
Officially the old man was my foreman, but in reality he acted as
a guiding spirit to that designer and one of my sample-makers, as
well as foreman
I was forming new connections, obtaining orders from new
sources. Things were coming my way in spite of myself, as it
were. There was so much work and bustle that it became next to
impossible to manage it all single-handed.
The need of a bookkeeper, at least, was felt more keenly every day.
But I simply lacked the initiative to get one
While I was thus cudgeling my brains, hovering about my shop,
meeting people, signing checks, reading or writing letters, that
dull pain would keep nibbling, nibbling, nibbling at me. At times,
during some of those violent onslaughts I would seek the partial
privacy of my second-hand desk for the express purpose of
abandoning myself to the tortures of my helpless love. There is
pleasure in this kind of pain. It was as though I were two men at
once, one being in the toils of hopeless love and the other filled
with the joy of loving, all injunctions and barriers notwithstanding
One October evening as I passed through the Grand Central
station on my way from an Albany train I was hailed with an
impulsive, "Hello, Levinsky!"
It was Bender, my old-time evening-school instructor. I had not
seen him for more than three years, during which time he had
developed a pronounced tendency to baldness, though his apple
face had lost none of its roseate freshness. He looked spruce as
ever, his clothes spick and span, his "four-in-hand" tastefully tied,
his collar and cuffs immaculate. His hazel eyes, however, had a
worn and wistful look in them.
"Quite an American, I declare," he exclaimed, with patronizing
admiration and pride, as who should say, "My work has borne
fruit, hasn't it?"
"Well, how is the world treating you?" he questioned me, after
having looked me over more carefully. "You seem to be doing
well."
When he heard that I was "trying to manufacture cloaks and suits"
he surveyed me once again, with novel interest
"Are you really? That's good. Glad to hear you're getting on in the
world."
"Do you remember the two books you gave me--Dombey and Son
and the little dictionary?"
I told him how much good they had done me and he complimented
me on my English
He wanted to know more about my business, and I sketched for
him my struggles during the first year and the progress I was now
making. My narrative was interspersed with such phrases as, "my
growing credit," "my "in my desk," "dinner with a buyer from
Ohio," all of which I uttered with great self-consciousness. He
congratulated me upon my success and upon my English again.
Whereupon I exuberantly acknowledged the gratitude I owed him
for the special pains he had taken with me when I was his pupil
He still taught evening school during the winter months. When I
asked about his work at the custom-house, which had been his
chief occupation three years before, he answered evasively. By
little and little, however, he threw off his reserve and told, at first
with studied flippancy and then with frank bitterness, how "the
new Republican broom swept clean," and how he had lost his job
because of his loyalty to the Democratic party. He dwelt on the
civil-service reform of President Cleveland, charging the
Republicans with "offensive partisanship," a Cleveland phrase
then as new as four-in-hand neckties. And in the next breath he
proceeded to describe certain injustices (of which he apparently
considered himself a victim) within the fold of his own party. His
immediate ambition was to obtain a "permanent appointment" as
teacher of a public day school
He was a singular surprise to me. Formerly I had looked up to him
as infinitely my superior, whereas now he struck me as being
piteously beneath me
"Can't you think of something better?" I said, with mild contempt.
Then, with a sudden inspiration, I exclaimed: "I have a scheme for
you, Mr.
Bender! Suppose you try to sell cloaks? There's lots of money in
it."
The outcome of our conversation was that he agreed to spend a
week or two in my shop preparatory to soliciting orders for me, at
first in the city and then on the road
Our interview lasted a little over an hour, but that hour produced a
world of difference in our relations. He had met me with a
patronizing, "Hello, Levinsky." When we parted there was a note
of gratitude and of something like obsequiousness in his voice
CHAPTER II
ON a Friday afternoon, during the first week of
Bender's connection with my establishment, as he and I were
crossing a side-street on our way from luncheon, I ran into the
loosely built, bulky figure of Max Margolis. Max and I paused
with a start, both embarrassed. I greeted him complaisantly
"And how are you?" he said, looking at the lower part of my face
I introduced my companion and after a brief exchange of
trivialities we were about to part, when Max detained me
"Wait. What's your hurry?" he said. "There is something I want to
speak to you about. In fact, it was to your shop I was going."
His manner disturbed me. "Were you? Come on, then," I said
"Hold on. What's your hurry? We might as well talk here."
Bender tipped his hat to him and moved away, leaving us to
ourselves
"What is it?" I repeated, with studied indifference
"Well, I should like to have a plain, frank talk with you, Levinsky,"
he answered. "There is something that is bothering my mind. I
never thought I should speak to you about it, but at last I decided
to see you and have it out. I was going to call on you and to ask
you to go out with me, because you have no private office."
There was a nervous, under-dog kind of air about him. His damp
lips revolted me
"But what is it? What are all these preliminaries for? Come to the
point and be done with it. What is it?" Then I asked, with
well-simulated indignation, "Your wife has not persuaded you that
I have cheated her out of some money, has she?"
"Why, no. Not at all," he answered, looking at the pavement. "It
isn't that at all. The thing is driving me mad."
"But what is it?" I shouted, in a rage
"'S-sh!" he said, nervously. "If you are going to be excited like that
it's no use speaking at all. Perhaps you are doing it on purpose to
get out of it."
Get out of what? What on earth are you prating about?" I
demanded, with a fine display of perplexity and sarcasm
We were attracting attention. Bystanders were eying us. An old
woman, leading a boy by the hand, even paused to watch us, and
then her example was followed by some others
"Come on, for God's sake!" he implored me. "All I want is a
friendly talk with you. We might talk in your shop, but you have
no private office."
"Whether I have one or not is none of your business" I retorted,
with irrelevant resentment
We walked on. He proposed to take me to one of the ball and
meeting-room places in which he did business, and I acquiesced
A few minutes later we were seated on a long cushion of red plush
covering one of the benches in a long, narrow meeting-hall. We
were close to the window, in the full glare of daylight. A few feet
off the room was in semi-darkness which, still farther off, lapsed
into night. As the plush cushions stretched their lengths into the
deepening gloom their live red died away. There was a touch of
weirdness to the scene, adding to the oppressiveness of the
interview
"I want to ask you a plain question," he began, in a strange voice.
"And I want you to answer it frankly. I assure you I sha'n't be
angry. On the contrary, I shall be much obliged to you if you tell
me the whole truth.
Tell me what happened between you and Dora." I was about to
burst into laughter, but I felt that it would not do. Before I knew
how to act he added, with a sort of solemnity: "She has confessed
everything."
"Confessed everything!" I exclaimed, with a feigned compound of
hauteur, indignation, and amusement, playing for time
"That's what she did."
A frenzy of hate took hold of me. I panted to be away from him, to
be out of this room, semi-darkness, red cushions, and all, and let
the future take care of itself. And so, jumping to my feet, I said, in
a fury: "You always were a liar and an idiot. I don't want to have
anything to do with you." With which I made for the door
"Oh, don't be excited. Don't go yet, Levinsky dear, please," he
implored, hysterically, running after me. "I have the best of
feelings for you. May the things that I wish you come to me.
Levinsky! Dear friend! Darling!"
"What do you want of me?" I demanded, with quiet rancor,
pausing at the door and half opening it, without moving on
"If you tell me it isn't true I'll believe you, even if she did confess. I
don't know if she meant what she said. If only you were not
excited! I want to tell you everything, everything."
I laughed sardonically. My desire to escape the ordeal gave way to
strange curiosity. He seemed to be aware of it, for he boldly shut
the door. He begged me to take a seat again, and I did, a short
distance from the door, where the gloom was almost thick enough
to hide our faces from each other's view
"Why, you are simply crazy, Max!" I said. "You probably bothered
the life out of her and she 'confessed' to put an end to it all. You
might as well have made her confess to murder."
"That's what she says now. But I don't know. When she confessed
she confessed. I could see it was the truth."
"You are crazy, Max! It is all nonsense. Ab-solutely."
"Is it?" he demanded, straining to make out the expression of my
face through the dusk. "Do assure me it is all untrue. Take pity,
dear friend. Do take pity."
"How can I assure you, seeing that you have taken that crazy
notion into your head and don't seem to be able to get rid of it?
Come, throw that stuff out of your mind!" I scolded him,
mentorially. "It's enough to make one sick. Come to reason. Don't
be a fool. I am no saint, but in this case you are absolutely
mistaken. Why, Dora is such an absolutely respectable woman, a
fellow would never dare have the slightest kind of fun with her.
The idea!"--with a little laugh. "You are a baby, Max. Upon my
word, you are.
Dora and I had some words over my bill and--well, she insulted me
and I wouldn't take it from her. That's all there was to it. Why,
look here, Max.
With your knowledge of men and women, do you mean to say that
something was going on under your very nose and you never
noticed anything? Don't you see how ridiculous it is?"
"Well, I believe you, Levinsky," he said, lukewarmly. "Now that
you assure me you don't know anything about it, I believe you. I
know you are not an enemy of mine. I have always considered you
a true friend. You know I have.
That's why I am having this talk with you. I am feeling better
already. But you have no idea what I have been through the last
few weeks. She is so dear to me. I love her so." His voice broke
I was seized with a feeling of mixed abomination and sympathy
"You are a child," I said, taking him by the hand. As I did so every
vestige of hostility faded out of me. My heart went out to him.
"Come, Max, pull yourself together! Be a man!"
"I have always known you to be my friend. I believe all you say. I
first began to think of this trouble a few days after you moved out.
But at first I made no fuss about it. I thought she was not well. I
came to see you a few times and you did not behave like a fellow
who was guilty."
I gave a silent little laugh
He related certain intimate incidents which had aroused his first
twinge of suspicion. He was revoltingly frank
"I spoke to her plainly," he said. "'What's the matter with you,
Dora?' I asked her. 'Don't you like me any more?' And she got wild
and said she hated me like poison. She never talked to me like
that before. It was a different Dora. She was always downhearted,
cranky. The slightest thing made her yell or cry with tears. It got
worse and worse. Oh, it was terrible! We quarreled twenty times a
day and the children cried and I thought I was going mad.
Maybe she was just missing you. You were like one of the family,
don't you know. And, well, you are a good-looking fellow,
Levinsky, and she is only a woman."
"Nonsense!" I returned, the hot color mounting to my cheeks. "I
am sure Dora had not a bad thought in her mind--"
"But she confessed," he interrupted me. "She said she was crazy
for you and I could do as I pleased."
"But you know she did not mean it. She said it just for spite, just to
make you feel bad, because you were quarreling with her."
He quoted a brutal question which he had once put to her
concerning her relations with me, and then he quoted Dora as
answering: "Yes, yes, yes! And if you don't like it you can sue me
for divorce."
I laughed, making my merriment as realistic as I could. "It's all
ridiculous nonsense, Max," I said. "You made life miserable to her
and she was ready to say anything. She may have been worried
over something, and you imagined all sorts of things. Maybe it
was something about her education that worried her. You know
how ambitious she is to be educated, and how hard she takes these
things."
Max shook his head pensively
"I am sure it is as I say," I continued. "Dora is a peculiar woman.
The trouble is, you judge her as if she were like the other women
you meet. Hers is a different character."
This point apparently interested him
"She is always taken up with her thoughts," I pursued. "She is not
so easy to understand, anyway. I lived over a year in your house,
and yet I'll be hanged if I know what kind of woman she is. Of
course you're her husband, but still--can you say you know what
she is thinking of most of the time?"
"There is something in what you say," he assented, half-heartedly
As we rose to go he said, timidly: "There is only one more question
I want to ask of you, Levinsky. You won't be angry, will you?"
"What is it?" I demanded, with a good-natured laugh. "What is
bothering your head?"
"I mean if you meet her now, sometimes?"
"Now, look here, Max. You are simply crazy," I said, earnestly. "I
swear to you by my mother that I have not seen Dora since I
moved out of your house, and that all your suspicions are
nonsense" (to keep the memory of my mother from desecration I
declared mutely that my oath referred to the truthful part of my
declaration only-- that is, exclusively to the fact that I no longer
met Dora)
"I believe you, I believe you, Levinsky," he rejoined. We parted
more than cordially, Max promising to call on me again and to
spend an evening with me.
I was left in a singular state of mind. I was eaten up with
compunction, and yet the pain of my love reasserted itself with the
tantalizing force of two months before.
Max never called on me again.
CHAPTER III
AS a salesman Bender proved a dismal failure, but I
retained him in my employ as a bookkeeper and a sort of general
supervisor. I could offer him only ten dollars a week, with a
promise to raise his salary as soon as I could afford it, and he
accepted the job "temporarily." As general supervisor under my
orders he developed considerable efficiency, although he lacked
initiative and his naïveté was a frequent cause of annoyance to
me. I found him spotlessly honest and devoted
I quickly raised his salary to fifteen dollars a week
He was the embodiment of method and precision and he often
nagged me for my deficiency in these qualities. Sometimes these
naggings of his or some display of poor judgment on his part
would give rise to a tiff between us.
Otherwise we got along splendidly. We were supposed to be great
chums. In reality, however, I would freely order him about, while
he would address me with a familiarity which had an echo of
respectful distance to it
With him to take care of my place when I was away, it became
possible for me gradually to extend my territory as traveling
salesman till it reached Nebraska and Louisiana. Thus, having
failed as a drummer himself, he made up for it by enabling me to
act as one
He had been less than a year with me when his salary was twenty
dollars
Charles Eaton, the Pennsylvanian of the hemispherical forehead
and bushy eyebrows who had given me my first lesson in
restaurant manners, was now my sponsor at the beginning of my
career as a full-fledged traveling salesman.
He took a warm interest in me. Having spent many years on the
road himself, more particularly in the Middle West and Canada,
he had formed many a close friendship among retailers, so he now
gave me some valuable letters of intro duction to merchants in
several cities
When I asked him for suggestions to guide me on the road he
looked perplexed
"Oh, well, I guess you'll do well," he said
"Still, you have had so much experience, Mr. Eaton."
"Well, I really don't know. It's all a matter of common sense, I
guess. And, after all, the merchandise is the thing, the
merchandise and the price."
He added a word or two about the futility of laying down rules,
and that was all I could get out of him. That a man of few words
like him should have succeeded as a salesman was a riddle to me.
I subsequently realized that his reticence accentuated an effect of
solidity and helped to inspire confidence in the few words which
he did utter. But at the time in question I was sure that the "gift of
the gab" was an indispensable element of success in a salesman.
Indeed, one of my faults as a drummer, during that period at least,
was that I was apt to talk too much. I would do so partly for the
sheer lust of hearing myself use the jargon of the market, but
chiefly, of course, from eagerness to make a sale, from
over-insistence. I was too exuberant in praising my own goods and
too harsh in criticising those of my competitors.
Altogether there was more emphasis than dignity in my appeal.
One day, as I was haranguing the proprietor of a small department
store in a Michigan town, he suddenly interrupted me by placing a
friendly hand on my shoulder. His name was Henry Gans. He was
a stout man of fifty, with the stamp of American birth on a strong
Jewish face.
"Let me give you a bit of advice, young man," he said, with
paternal geniality. "You won't mind, will you?"
I uttered a perplexed, "Why, no"; and he proceeded: "If you want
to make good as a salesman, observe these two rules: Don't knock
the other fellow and don't talk too much."
For a minute I stood silent, utterly nonplussed. Then, pulling
myself together, I said, with a bow: "Thank you, sir. Thank you
very much. I am only a beginner, and only a few years in the
country. I know I have still a great deal to learn. It's very kind of
you to point out my mistakes to me. The gay light of Gans's eye gave
way to a look of heart-to-heart earnestness.
"It ain't nice to run down your competitor," he said. "Besides, it
don't pay. It makes a bad impression on the man you are trying to
get an order from."
We had a long conversation, gradually passing from business to
affairs of a personal nature. He was interested in my early
struggles in America, in my mode of living, in the state of my
business, and I told him the whole story.
He seemed to be well disposed toward me, but it was evident that
he did not take my "one-horse" establishment seriously, and I left
his store without an order. I was berating myself for having
revealed the true size of my business. Somehow my failure in this
instance galled me with special poignancy. I roamed around the
streets, casting about for some scheme to make good my mistake
Less than an hour after I left Gans's store I re-entered it, full of
fresh spirit and pluck.
"I beg your pardon for troubling you again, Mr. Gans," I began,
stopping him in the middle of an aisle. "You've been so kind to
me. I should like to ask you one more question. Only one. I trust I
am not intruding?"
"Go ahead," he said, patiently
"I shall do as you advise me. I shall never knock the other fellow,"
I began, with a smile. "But suppose his merchandise is really
good, and I can outbid him. Why should it not be proper for me to
say so? If you'll permit me"--pointing at one of the suits displayed
in the store, a brown cheviot trimmed with velvet. "Take that suit,
for instance. It's certainly a fine garment. It has style and dash. It's
really a beautiful garment. I haven't the least idea how much you
pay for it, of course, but I do know that I could make you the
identical coat for a much smaller price. So why shouldn't it be
right for me to say so?"
He contemplated me for a moment, broke into a hearty laugh, and
said: "You're a pretty shrewd fellow. Why, of course, there's
nothing wrong in selling cheaper than your competitor. That's
what we're all trying to do.
That's the game, provided you really can sell cheaper than the
other man, and there are no other drawbacks in doing business
with you."
What I said about the brown suit piqued him. He had his
bookkeeper show me the bill, and defied me to sell him a garment
of exactly the same material, cut, and workmanship for less. I
accepted the challenge, offering to reduce the price by four dollars
and a half before I had any idea whether I could afford to do so. I
was ready to lose money on the transaction, so long as I got a start
with this man
Gans expressed doubt of my ability to make good my offer. I
proceeded to explain the special conditions under which I ran my
business. I waxed eloquent
"Doing business on a gigantic scale is not always an advantage,
Mr. Gans," I sang out, with an affected Yankee twang. "There are
exceptions. And the cloak-and-suit industry is one of these
exceptions, especially now that the Cloak-makers' Union has
come to stay. By dealing with a very big firm you've got to pay for
union labor, while a modest fellow like myself has no trouble in
getting cheap labor. And when I say cheap I don't mean poor labor,
but just the opposite. I mean the very best tailors, the most skilled
mechanics in the country. It sounds queer, doesn't it? But it's a
fact, nevertheless, Mr. Gans. It is a fact that the best ladies' tailors
are old-fashioned, pious people, green in the country, who hate to
work in big places, and who keep away from Socialists,
anarchists, unionists, and their whole crew. They need very little,
and they love their work. They willingly stay in the shop from
early in the morning till late at night."
"They are dead stuck on it, hey?" Gans said, quizzically. "They are
used to it," I explained. "In Russia a tailor works about fourteen
hours a day. Of course, I don't let them overwork themselves. I
treat them as if they were my brothers or uncles. We get along like
a family, and they earn twice as much as the strict union people,
too."
"I see. They get low wages and don't work too much and are ahead
of the game, after all. Is that it? Well, well. But you're a smart
fellow, just the same."
I explained to him why my men earned more than they would in
the big shops, and the upshot was an order for a hundred suits.
Twenty of these were to be copies of the brown-cheviot garment
which was the subject of his challenge, I buying that suit of him,
so as to use it as a sample
On my way home I exhibited that suit to merchants in other cities,
giving it out for my own product. It was really an attractive
garment and it brought me half a dozen additional sales.
I developed into an excellent salesman. If I were asked to name
some single element of my success on the road I should mention
the enthusiasm with which I usually spoke of my merchandise. It
was genuine, and it was contagious.
Retailers could not help believing that I believed in my goods.
CHAPTER IV
THE road was a great school of business and life to
me. I visited scores of cities. I met hundreds of human types. I saw
much of the United States.
Every time I returned home I felt as though, in comparison with
the places which I had just visited, New York was not an
American city at all, and as though my last trip had greatly added
to the "real American" quality in me
Thousands of things reminded me of my promotion in the world. I
could not go to bed in a Pullman car, walk over the springy
"runner" of a hotel corridor, unfold the immense napkin of a hotel
dining-room, or shake down my trousers upon alighting from a
boot-black's chair, without being conscious of the difference
between my present life and my life in Antomir
I was full of energy, full of the joy of being alive, but there was
usually an undercurrent of sadness to all this. While on the road I
would feel homesick for New York, and at the same time I would
feel that I had no home anywhere, that my mother was dead and I
was all alone in the world.
I missed Dora many months after she made me move from her
house. As for Max, the thought of him, his jealousy and the way
he groveled before me the last time I had seen him, would give me
a bad taste in the mouth. I both pitied and despised him, and I
hated my guilty conscience; so I would try to keep him out of my
mind. What I missed almost as much as I did Dora was her home.
There was no other to take its place. There was not a single family
in New York or in any other American town who would invite me
to its nest and make me feel at home there. I saw a good deal of
Meyer Nodelman, but he never asked me to the house. And so I
was forever homesick, not for Antomir--for my native town had
become a mere poem--but for a home
I did some reading on the road. There was always some book in
my hand-bag--some volume of Spencer, Emerson, or
Schopenhauer (in an English translation), perhaps. I would also
read articles in the magazines, not to mention the newspapers. But
I would chiefly spend my time in the smoker, talking to the other
drummers or listening to their talk. There was a good deal of
card-playing in the cars, but that never had any attraction for me.
I tried to learn poker, but found it tedious.
The cigarette stumps by which I had sought to counteract my
hunger pangs at the period of my dire need had developed the
cigarette habit in me. This had subsequently become a cigar habit.
I had discovered the psychological significance of smoking "the
cigar of peace and good will." I had realized the importance of
offering a cigar to some of the people I met. I would watch
American smokers and study their ways, as though there were a
special American manner of smoking and such a thing as smoking
with a foreign accent. I came to the conclusion that the dignity of
smoking a cigar lasted only while the cigar was still long and
fresh. There seemed to be special elegance in a smoker taking a
newly lighted cigar out of his mouth and throwing a glance at its
glowing end to see if it was smoking well.
Accordingly, I never did so without being conscious of my
gestures and trying to make them as "American" as possible
The other cloak salesmen I met on the road in those days were
mostly representatives of much bigger houses than mine. They
treated me with ill-concealed contempt, and I would retaliate by
overstating my sales. One of the drummers who were fond of
taunting me was an American by birth, a fellow named Loeb
"Well, Levinsky," he would begin. "Had a big day, didn't you?"
"I certainly did," I would retort.
"How much? Twenty-five thousand?" "Well, it's no use trying to
be funny, but I've pulled in five thousand dollars to-day." "Is that
all?"
"Well, if you don't believe me, what's the use asking? What good
would it do me to brag? If I say five thousand. it is five thousand.
As a matter of fact, it 'll amount to more." Whereupon he would
slap his knee and roar
He was a good-looking, florid-faced man with sparkling black
eyes--a gay, boisterous fellow, one of those who are the first to
laugh at their own jests. He was connected with the largest house
in the cloak trade. Our relations were of a singular character. He
was incessantly poking fun at me; nothing seemed to afford him
more pleasure than to set a smokerful of passengers laughing at
my expense. At the same time he seemed to like me.
But then he hated me, too. As for me, I reciprocated both feelings
One day, on the road, he made me the victim of a practical joke
that proved an expensive lesson to me. The incident took place in
a hotel in Cincinnati, Ohio. He "confidentially" let me see one of
his samples, hinting that it was his "leader," or best seller. He then
went to do some telephoning, leaving the garment with me the
while. Whereupon I lost no time in making a pencil-sketch of it,
with a few notes as to materials, tints, and other details. I
subsequently had the garment copied and spent time and money
offering it to merchants in New York and on the road. It proved an
unmitigated failure.
"You are a nice one, you are," he said to me, with mock gravity, on
a subsequent trip. "You copied that garment I showed you in
Cincinnati, didn't you?"
"What garment? What on earth are you talking about?" I lied, my
face on fire.
"Come, come, Levinsky. You know very well what garment I
mean. While I was away telephoning you went to work and made
a sketch of it. It was downright robbery. That's what I call it. Well,
have you sold a lot of them?" And he gave me a merry wink that
cut me as with a knife
One of the things about which he often made fun of me was my
Talmud gesticulations, a habit that worried me like a physical
defect. It was so distressingly un-American. I struggled hard
against it. I had made efforts to speak with my hands in my
pockets; I had devised other means for keeping them from
participating in my speech. All of no avail. I still gesticulate a
great deal, though much less than I used to
One afternoon, on a west-bound train, Loeb entertained a group of
passengers of which I was one with worn-out stories of
gesticulating Russian Jews. He told of a man who never opened
his mouth when he was out of doors and it was too cold for him to
expose his hands; of another man who never spoke when it was so
dark that his hands could not be seen. I laughed with the others,
but I felt like a cripple who is forced to make fun of his own
deformity. It seemed to me as though Loeb, who was a Jew, was
holding up our whole race to the ridicule of Gentiles. I could have
executed him as a traitor to his people. Presently he turned on me
"By the way, Levinsky, you never use a telephone, do you?"
"Why? Who says I don't?" I protested, timidly
"Because it's of no use to you," he replied. "The fellow at the other
end of the wire couldn't see your hands, could he?" And he broke
into a peal of self-satisfied mirth in which some of his listeners
involuntarily joined.
"You think you're awfully smart," I retorted, in abject misery
"And you think you're awfully grammatical." And once more he
roared
"You are making fun of the Jewish people," I said, in a rage.
"Aren't you a Jew yourself?"
"Of course I am," he answered, wiping the tears from his laughing
black eyes. "And a good one, too. I am a member of a synagogue.
But what has that got to do with it? I can speak on the telephone,
all right." And again the car rang with his laughter
I was aching to hurl back some fitting repartee, but could think of
none, and to my horror the moments were slipping by, and
presently the conversation was changed
At the request of a gay little Chicagoan who wore a skull-cap a
very fat Chicagoan told a story that was rather risqué. Loeb went
him one better. The man in the skull-cap declared that while he
could not bring himself to tell a smutty story himself, he was "as
good as any man in appreciating one." He then offered a box of
cigars for the most daring anecdote, and there ensued an orgy of
obscenity that kept us shouting (I could not help thinking of
similar talks at the cloak-shops). Loeb suggested that the
smoking-room be dubbed "smutty room" and was applauded by
the little Chicagoan. The prize was awarded, by a vote, to a man
who had told his story in the gravest tone of voice and without a
hint of a smile
Frivolity gave way to a discussion of general business conditions.
A lanky man with a gray beard, neatly trimmed, and with the most
refined manners in our group, said something about competition
in the abstract. I made a remark which seemed to attract attention
and then I hastened to refer to the struggle for life and the survival
of the fittest. Loeb dared not burlesque me. I was in high feather
Dinner was announced. To keep my traveling expenses down I was
usually very frugal on the road. I had not yet seen the inside of a
dining-car (while stopping at a hotel I would not indulge in a
dining-room meal unless I deemed it advisable to do so for
business considerations). On this occasion, however, when most
of our group went to the dining-car I could not help joining them.
The lanky man, the little Chicagoan, and the fleshy
Chicagoan--the three "stars" of the smoker--went to the same table,
and I hastened, with their ready permission, to occupy the
remaining seat at that table. I ordered an expensive dinner. At my
instance the chat turned on national politics, a subject in which I
felt at home, owing to my passion for newspaper editorials. I said
something which met with an encouraging reception, and then I
entered upon a somewhat elaborate discourse. My listeners
seemed to be interested. I was so absorbed in the topic and in the
success I was apparently scoring that I was utterly oblivious to the
taste of the food in my mouth. But I was aware that it was
"aristocratic American" food, that I was in the company of
well-dressed American Gentiles, eating and conversing with them,
a nobleman among noblemen. I throbbed with love for America
"Don't be excited," I was saying to myself. "Speak in a calm, low
voice, as these Americans do. And for goodness' sake don't
gesticulate!"
I went on to speak with exaggerated apathy, my hands so
strenuously still that they fairly tingled with the effort, and, of
course, I was so conscious of the whole performance that I did not
know what I was talking about. This state of my mind soon wore
off, however
Neither the meal nor the appointments of the car contained
anything that I had not enjoyed scores of times before--in the
hotels at which I stopped or at the restaurants at which I would
dine and wine some of my customers; but to eat such a meal amid
such surroundings while on the move was a novel experience. The
electric lights, the soft red glint of the mahogany walls, the
whiteness of the table linen, the silent efficiency of the colored
waiters, coupled with the fact that all this was speeding onward
through the night, made me feel as though I were partaking of a
repast in an enchanted palace. The easy urbanity of the three
well-dressed Americans gave me a sense of uncanny gentility and
bliss
"Can it be that I am I?" I seemed to be wondering
The gaunt, elderly man, who was a member of a wholesale butcher
concern, was seated diagonally across the table from me, but my
eye was for the most part fixed on him rather than on the fat man
who occupied the seat directly opposite mine. He was the most
refined-looking man of the three and his vocabulary matched his
appearance and manner. He fascinated me. His cultured English
and ways conflicted in my mind with the character of his business.
I could not help thinking of raw beef, bones, and congealed blood.
I said to myself, "It takes a country like America to produce
butchers who look and speak like noblemen." The United States
was still full of surprises for me.
I was still discovering America
After dinner, when we were in the smoking-room again, it seemed
to me that the three Gentiles were tired of me. Had I talked too
much? Had I made a nuisance of myself? I was wretched
CHAPTER V
I LOST track of Loeb before the train reached
Chicago, but about a fortnight later, when I was in St. Louis, I
encountered him again. It was on a Monday morning. With
sample-case in hand, I was crossing one of the busiest spots in the
shopping district with preoccupied mien, when he hailed me:
"Hello, Levinsky! How long have you been here?"
"Just arrived," I answered
"Where are you stopping?"
I named my hotel. I could see that he was taking note of the fact
that I was crossing the street to the Great Bazar, one of the largest
department stores in St. Louis
"I am going to tackle Huntington this morning," I said, with mild
defiance
"Are you? Wish you luck," he remarked, quite gravely. "You'll find
him a pretty tough customer, though." He was apparently too busy
to indulge in raillery. "Wish you luck," he repeated, and was off
Huntington was the new head of the cloak-and-suit department in
the Great Bazar, and in this capacity he was said to be doing
wonders. It was not true that I had just arrived. I had been in the
city nearly three days, and the day before I had mailed a letter to
Huntington upon which I was building great hopes. I knew but too
well that he was a "tough customer," my previous efforts to obtain
an interview with him--in New York as well as here, in St.
Louis--having proven futile. I was too small a fish for him. Nor,
indeed, was the Great Bazar the only large department store in the
country whose door was closed to me. Barring six or seven such
stores, in as many cities, with which I was in touch largely
through the good offices of Eaton, my business was almost
confined to small concerns. Eaton had given me letters to many
other large firms, but these had brought no result. For one thing,
my Russian name was against me. As I have said before, the
American business world had not yet learned to take our people
seriously
And so I had written Huntington, making a special plea for a few
minutes of his "most valuable time." All I asked for was an
opportunity "to point out some specific conditions that enable our
house to reduce the cost of production to an unheard-of level." If
he had only read that letter! I had bestowed so much effort on it,
and I gave myself credit for having made a fine job of it
Arriving at the big store, I made my way to the sample-rooms. I
did so by a freight-elevator, the passenger-cars being denied to
men carrying sample-cases. In the waiting-room of the buyers'
offices I found four or five men, all of them accompanied by
colored porters who carried their sample-cases for them. A
neat-looking office-boy, behind a small desk, was rocking on the
hind legs of his chair with an air of supreme indifference.
"Will you take it in?" I said to him, handing him my card. "I want
to see Mr. Huntington."
"Mr. Huntington is busy," he answered, mechanically, without
ceasing to rock.
"Take it in, please," I whispered, imploringly. But he took no heed
of me.
Had I been the only salesman in the room, I should have offered
him a bribe.
As it was, there was nothing to do but to take a seat and wait
"These office-boys treat salesmen like so many dogs," I muttered,
addressing myself to the man by my side
He sized me up, without deigning an answer.
Other salesmen made their appearance, some modestly, others
with a studied air of confidence, loudly greeting those they knew.
The presence of so many rivals and the frigidity of the office-boy
made my heart heavy. I was still a novice at the game, and the
least mark of hostility was apt to have a depressing effect on my
spirits, though, as a rule, it only added fuel to my ambition
Some of the other salesmen were chatting and cracking jokes, for
all the world like a group of devoted friends gathered for some
common purpose. The ostensible meaning of it all was that the
competition in which they were engaged was a "mere matter of
business," of civilized rivalry; that it was not supposed to interfere
with their friendship and mutual sense of fair play. But I thought
that all this was mere pretense, and that at the bottom of their
hearts each of them felt like wiping the rest of us off the face of
the earth
Presently the office-boy gathered up our cards and disappeared
behind a door. He was gone quite a few minutes. They were hours
to me. I was in the toils of suspense, in a fever of eagerness and
anxiety. As I sat gazing at the door through which the office-boy
had vanished, Mr. Huntington loomed in my imagination large
and formidable, mighty and stern. To be admitted to his presence
was at this moment the highest aim of my life. Running through
my anxious mind were various phrases from the letter I had sent
him. Some of these seemed to be highly felicitous. The epistle
was bound to make an impression. "Provided he has read it," I
thought, anxiously. "But why should he have bothered with it? He
probably receives scores like it. No, he has not read it."
The next moment it became clear to me that the opening sentence
of my plea was sure to have arrested Huntington's attention, that
he had read it to the end, and would let me not only show him my
samples, but explain matters as well. Of a sudden, however, it
struck me, to my horror, that I had no recollection of having
signed that letter of mine
A middle-aged woman with a Jewish cast of features passed
through the waiting-room. I knew that she was Huntington's
assistant and she was apparently going to his compartment of the
sample-room. The fact that she had a Jewish face seemed
encouraging. Not that the Jews I had met in business had shown
me more leniency or cordiality than the average Gentile.
Nor was an assistant buyer, as a rule, in a position to do something
for a salesman unless his samples had been referred to her by her
superior.
Nevertheless, her Jewish features spoke of kinship to me. They
softened the grimness of the atmosphere around me
Finally the office-boy came back. My heart beat violently. Pausing
at his desk, with only two or three of all the cards he had taken to
the potentate, he looked at them, as he called out, with great
dignity: "Mr. Huntington will see Mr. Sallinger, Mr. Stewart, and
Mr. Feltman."
My heart sank. I suspected that my poor card had never reached its
destination, that the boy had simply thrown it away, together with
some of the other cards, perhaps, on his way to Mr. Huntington's
room. Indeed, I knew that this was the fate of many a salesman's
card
The boy called out Sallinger's name again, this time admitting him
to the inner precincts. All those whose cards had been ignored
except myself--there were about a dozen of them--picked up their
sample-cases or had their porters do so and passed out without
ado. As for me, I simply could not bring myself to leave
"He didn't mark my card, did he?" I said to the boy
"No, sir," he snapped, with a scowl.
When I reached the street I paused for some minutes, as though
glued to the sidewalk. Was it all over? Was there no hope of my
seeing Huntington? My mind would not be reconciled to such an
outcome. I stood racking my brains for some subterfuge by which
I might be able to break through the Chinese wall that separated
me from the great Mogul, and when I finally set out on my way to
other stores I was still brooding over the question. I visited several
smaller places that day and I made some sales, but all the while I
was displaying my samples, quoting prices, arguing, cajoling,
explaining, jesting, the background of my brain never ceased
bothering about Huntington and devising means of getting at him
The next morning I was in Huntington's waiting-room again. I
fared no better than on the previous occasion. I tried to speak to
Huntington on the telephone, but I only succeeded in speaking to
a telephone-girl and she told me that he was busy
"Please tell Mr. Huntington I have a job to close out, a
seventeen-dollar garment for seven fifty."
"Mr. Huntington is busy."
At this moment it seemed to me that all talk of American liberty
was mere cant
I asked the manager of the hotel at which I was stopping to give
me a letter of introduction to him, and received a polite no for an
answer. I discovered the restaurant where Huntington was in the
habit of taking lunch and I went there for my next noon-hour meal
for the purpose of asking him for an interview. I knew him by
sight, for I had seen him twice in New York, so when he walked
into the restaurant there was a catch at my heart. He was a spare
little man with a face, mustache, and hair that looked as though he
had just been dipped in a pail of saffron paint. He was
accompanied by another man. I was determined first to let him
have his lunch and then, on his way out, to accost him. Presently,
lo and behold! Loeb entered the restaurant and walked straight up
to Huntington's table, evidently by appointment. I nearly groaned.
I knew that Loeb had a spacious sample-room at his hotel, with
scores of garments hung out, and even with wire figures.
It was clear that Huntington had visited it or was going to, while I
could not even get him to hear my prices. Was that fair? I saw the
law of free competition, the great law of struggle and the survival
of the fittest, defied, violated, desecrated
I discovered the residence of Huntington's assistant, and called on
her. I had offered presents to other assistant buyers and some of
them had been accepted, so I tried the same method in this
case--with an unfortunate result. Huntington's assistant not only
rejected my bribe, but flew into a passion to boot, and it was all
my powers of pleading could do to have her promise me not to
report the matter to her principal
I learned that Huntington was a member of the Elks and a
frequenter of their local club-house, but, unfortunately, I was not a
member of that order
I went to the Yiddish-speaking quarter of St. Louis, made the
acquaintance of a man who was ready to sell me, on the
instalment plan, everything under the sun, from a house lot and a
lottery ticket to a divorce, and who undertook to find me (for ten
dollars) somebody who would give me a "first-class introduction"
to Huntington; but his eager eloquence failed to convince me. I
had my coat pressed by a Jewish tailor whose place was around
the corner from Huntington's residence and who pressed his suits
for him. I had a shave in the barber shop at which Huntington kept
his shaving-cup. I learned something of the great man's family
life, of his character, ways, habits. It proved that he lived quite
modestly, and that his income was somewhere between sixty and
seventy dollars a week. Mine was three times as large. That I
should have to rack my brains, do detective work, and be
subjected to all sorts of humiliation in an effort to obtain an
audience with him seemed to be a most absurd injustice
I was losing precious time, but I could not bring myself to get
away from St. Louis without having had the desired interview.
Huntington's name was buzzing in my mind like an insect. It was a
veritable obsession
My talk with his barber led me to a bowling-alley. Being a
passionate bowler, the cloak-buyer visited the place for an hour or
so three or four times a week. As a consequence of this discovery
I spent two afternoons and an evening there, practising a game
which I had never even heard of before
My labors were not thrown away. The next evening I saw
Huntington and a son of his in the place and we bowled some
games together. Seen at close range, the cloak-buyer was a
commonplace-looking fellow. I thought that he did not look much
older than his son, and that both of them might have just stepped
out from behind a necktie counter. I searched the older man's
countenance for marks of astuteness, initiative, or energy, without
being able to find any. But he certainly was a forcible bowler
When he made a sensational hit and there broke out a roar of
admiration I surpassed all the other bystanders in exuberance. "I
must not overdo it, though," I cautioned myself. "He cannot be a
fool. He'll see through me." His son was apparently very proud of
him, so I said to the young man: "Anybody can see your father is
an energetic man."
"You bet he is," the young man returned, appreciatively. I led him
on and he told me about his father's baseball record. I dropped a
remark about his being "successful in business as well as in
athletics" and wound up by introducing myself and asking to be
introduced to his father. It was a rather dangerous venture, for the
older Huntington was apt to remember my name, in which case
my efforts might bring me nothing but a rebuff. Anyhow, I took
the plunge and, to my great delight, he did not seem ever to have
heard of me
Ten minutes later the three of us were seated over glasses of lager
in the beer-garden with which the bowling-alley was connected. I
told them that I was from New York and that I had come to St.
Louis partly on business and partly to visit a sister who lived in
their neighborhood. The elder Huntington said something of the
rapid growth of New York, of its new high buildings. His English
was curiously interspersed with a bookish phraseology that
seemed to be traceable to the high-flown advertisements of his
department in the newspapers. I veered the conversation from the
architectural changes that had come over New York to changes of
an ethnographic character.
"Our people, immigrants from Russia, I mean, are beginning to
play a part in the business life of the city," I said
"Are you a Russian?" he asked
"I used to be," I answered, with a smile. "I am an American now."
"That's right."
"You see, we are only new-comers. The German Jews began
coming a great many years ahead of us, but we can't kick, either."
"I suppose not," he said, genially.
"For one thing, we are the early bird that gets, or is bound to get,
the worm. I mean it in a literal sense. Our people go to business at
a much earlier hour and go home much later. There is quite a
number of them in your line of business, too."
"I know," he said. "Of course, the 'hands' are mostly Russian
Hebrews, but some of them have gone into manufacturing, and I
don't doubt but they'll make a success of it."
"Why, they are making a success of it, Mr. Huntington."
I felt that I was treading on risky gound, that he might smell a rat
at any moment; but I felt, also, that when he heard why
manufacturers of my type were able to undersell the big old firms
he would find my talk too tempting to cut it short. And so I rushed
on. I explained that the Russian cloak-manufacturer operated on a
basis of much lower profits and figured down expenses to a point
never dreamed of before; that the German-American
cloak-manufacturer was primarily a merchant, not a tailor; that he
was compelled to leave things to his designer and a foreman,
whereas his Russian competitor was a tailor or cloak-operator
himself, and was, therefore, able to economize in ways that never
occurred to the heads of the old houses.
"I see," Huntington said, with a queer stare at me
"Besides, our people content themselves with small profits," I
pursued. "We are modest."
Here I plagiarized an epigram I had heard from Meyer Nodelman:
"Our German co-religionists will spend their money before they
have made it, while we try to make it first."
I expected Huntington to smile, but he did not. He was listening
with sphinx-like gravity. When I paused, my face and my ears
burning, he said, with some embarrassment: "What is your
business, may I ask?" "I am in the same line. Cloaks." "Are you?"
With another stare
Tense with excitement, I said, with daredevil recklessness: "The
trouble is that successful men like yourself are so hard to get at,
Mr.
Huntington."
"What do you mean?" he said, with a cryptic laugh
I made a clean breast of it
Perhaps he was flattered by my picture of him as an inaccessible
magnate; perhaps he simply appreciated the joke of the thing and
the energy and tenacity I had brought to it, but he let me narrate
the adventure in detail.
I told him the bare truth, and I did so with conscious
simple-heartedness, straining every nerve to make a favorable
impression
As he listened he repeatedly broke into laughter, and when I had
finished he said to his son: "Sounds like a detective story, doesn't
it?"
But his demeanor was still enigmatic, and I anxiously wondered
whether I impressed him as an energetic business man or merely
as an adventurer, a crank, or even a crook
"All I ask for is an opportunity to show you my samples, Mr.
Huntington," I said.
"Well," he answered, deliberately, "there can be no harm in that."
And after a pause, "You've bagged your game so far as that's
concerned."
And he merrily made me an appointment for the next morning
About a month later I came across Loeb on Broadway, New York
"By the way," he said, in the course of our brief talk, with a
twinkle in his eve, "did you sell anything to Huntington?"
"Huntington? St. Louis? Why, he really is a hard man to reach," I
answered, glumly.
At that very moment my cutters were at work on a big order from
Huntington, largely for copies from Loeb's styles. I had filled a
test order of his so promptly and so completely to his satisfaction,
and my prices were so overwhelmingly below those in Loeb's bill,
that the St. Louis buyer had wired me a "duplicate" for eight
hundred suits
There was a buyer in Cleveland, a bright, forceful little man who
would not let a salesman quote his price until he had made a guess
at it. His name was Lemmelmann. He was an excellent business
man and a charming fellow, but he had a weakness for parading
his ability to estimate the price of a garment "down to a cent." The
salesmen naturally humored this ambition of his and every time
he made a correct guess they would applaud him without stint, and
I would follow their example. On one occasion I came to
Cleveland with two especially prepared compliments in my mind
"Every human being has five senses," I said to the little buyer.
"You have six, Mr. Lemmelmann. You were born with a price
sense besides the ordinary five."
"My, but it's a good one," he returned, jovially
"Yes, you have more senses than anybody else, Mr.
Lemmelmann," I added.
"You're the most sensible man in the world."
"Why--why, you can send stuff like that to Puck or Judge and get a
five-dollar bill for it. How much will you charge me? Will that
do?" he asked, handing me a cigar
The two compliments cemented our friendship. At least, I thought
they did
Another buyer, in Atlanta, Georgia, had a truly wonderful memory.
He seemed to remember every sample he had ever seen--goods,
lines, trimmings, price, and all. He was an eccentric man.
Sometimes he would receive a crowd of salesmen in rapid
succession, inspect their merchandise and hear their prices
without making any purchase. Later, sometimes on the same day,
he would send out orders for the "numbers" that had taken his
fancy
While showing him my samples one morning I essayed to express
amazement at his unusual memory. But in this case I mistook my
man
"If everybody had your marvelous memory there would be little
work for bookkeepers," I jested
Whereupon he darted an impatient glance at me and growled:
"Never mind my memory. You sell cloaks and suits, don't you? If
you deal in taffy, you'll have to see the buyer of the candy
department."
CHAPTER VI
HUNTINGTON was a rising man and the other
cloak-buyers were watchng him.
When it became known that there was a young manufacturer
named Levinsky with whom he was placing heavy orders I began
to attract general attention. My reputation for selling "first-rate
stuff" for the lowest prices quoted spread. Buyers would call at my
rookery of a shop before I had time to seek an interview with
them. The appearance of my place and the crudity of my office
facilities, so far from militating against my progress, helped to
accelerate it. Skeptical buyers who had doubted my ability to
undersell the old-established houses became convinced of it when
they inspected my primitive-looking establishment.
The place became far too small for me. I moved to much larger
quarters, consisting of the two uppermost floors and garret of a
double tenement-house of the old type. A hall bedroom was
converted into an office, the first separate room I ever had for the
purpose, and I enjoyed the possession of it as much as I had done
my first check-book. I had a lounge put in it, and often, at the
height of the manufacturing season, when I worked from daybreak
far into the night and lived on sandwiches, I would, instead of
going home for the night, snatch three or four hours' sleep on it.
The only thing that annoyed me was a faint odor of mold which
filled my bedroom-office and which kept me in mind of the
Margolises' old apartment.
There was the pain of my second love-affair in that odor, for,
although I had not seen Dora nor heard of her for more than two
years, I still thought of her often, and when I did her image still
gave me pangs of yearning.
There was an air of prosperity and growth about my new place, but
this did not interfere with the old air of skimpiness and cheapness
as to running expenses and other elements that go to make up the
cost of production
Bender's salary had been raised substantially, so much so that he
had resigned his place as evening-school teacher, devoting
himself exclusively to my shop and office. He was provokingly
childish as ever, but he had learned a vast deal about the cloak
business, its mechanical branch as well as the commercial end of
it, and his usefulness had grown enormously
One morning I was hustling about my garret floor, vibrating with
energy and self-importance, when he came up the stairs, saying:
"There is a woman on the main floor who wants to see you. She
says you know her." Was it Dora? I descended the stairs in a
flutter
I was mistaken. It was Mrs. Chaikin. She looked haggard and more
than usually frowsy. The cause of her pitiable appearance was no
riddle to me. I knew that her husband's partner had made a mess
of their business and that Chaikin had lost all his savings. "Does
she want a loan?" I speculated
My first impulse was to take her to my little office, but I instantly
realized that it would not be wise to flaunt such a mark of my
advancement before her. I offered her a chair in a corner of the
room in which I found her
"How is Chaikin? How is Maxie?"
"Thank God, Maxie is quite a boy," she answered, coyly. "Why
don't you come to see him? Have you forgotten him? He has not
forgotten you. Always asking about 'Uncle Levinsky.' Some little
children have a better memory than some grown people."
Having delivered this thrust, she swept my shop with a sepulchral
glance, followed by a succession of nods. Then she said, with a
grin at once wheedling and malicious: "There are two more floors,
aren't there? And I see you're very busy, thank God. Plenty of
orders, hey? Thank God. Well, when Chaikin gets something
started and there is nobody to spoil it, it's sure to go well. Isn't it?"
"Chaikin is certainly a fine designer," I replied, noncommittally,
wondering what she was driving at
"A fine designer! Is that all?" she protested, with exquisite
sarcasm. "And who fixed up this whole business? styles got the
business started and gave it the name it has? Only 'a fine designer,'
indeed! It's a good thing you admit that much at least. Well, but
what's the use quarreling? I am here as a friend, not to make
threats. That's not in my nature."
She gave me a propitiating look, and paused for my reply. "What
do you mean, Mrs. Chaikin?" I asked, with an air of complaisant
perplexity
"'What do you mean?'" she mocked me, suavely. "Poor fellow, he
doesn't understand what a person means. He has no head on his
shoulders, the poor thing. But what's the good beating about the
bush, Levinsky? I am here to tell you that we have decided to
come back and be partners again."
I did not burst into laughter. I just looked her over, and said, in the
calmest and most business-like manner: "That's impossible, Mrs.
Chaikin. The business doesn't need any partner."
"Doesn't need any partner! But it's ours, this business, as much as
yours; even more. It is our sweat and our blood. Why, you hadn't a
cent to your name when we started it, and you know it. And what
did you have, pray? Did you know anything about cloaks? Could
you do anything without Chaikin?"
"We won't argue about it, Mrs. Chaikin."
"Not argue about it?"
She was working herself into a rage, but she nipped it in the bud.
"Now, look here, Levinsky," she said, with fresh suavity. "I have
told you I haven't come here to pick a quarrel. Maxie misses you
very much. He's always speaking about you." She tried a tone of
persuasion. "When Chaikin and you are together again the
business will go like grease. You know it will. He'll be the inside
man and you'll attend to the outside business. You won't have to
worry about anything around the shop, and, well, I needn't tell you
what his designs will do for the business. Why, the Manheimers
are just begging him to become their partner" (this was a lie, of
course), "but I say: 'No, Chaikin! Better let us stick to our own
business, even if it is much smaller, and let's be satisfied with
whatever God is pleased to give us.'" Her protestations and
pleadings proving ineffectual, she burst into another fury and
made an ugly scene, threatening to retain "the biggest lawyer in
the 'Nited States" and to commence action against me
I smiled
"Look at him! He's smiling!" she said, addressing herself to some
of my men.
"He thinks he can swindle people and be left alone."
"Better go home, Mrs. Chaikin," I said, impatiently. "I have no
time." "All right. We shall see!" she snapped, flouncing out.
Before she closed the door on herself she returned and, stalking up
to the chair which she had occupied a minute before, she seated
herself again, defiantly. "Chase me out, if you dare," she said,
with a sneer, her chin in the air. "I should just like to see you do it.
Should like to see you chase me out of my own shop. It's all mine!
all mine!" she shouted, her voice mounting hysterically. "All
mine! Chaikin's sweat and blood. You're a swindler, a thief! I'll
put you in Sing Sing."
She went off into a swoon, more or less affected, and when I had
brought her to herself she shed a flood of quiet tears
"Take pity, oh, do take pity!" she besought, patting my hand. "You
have a Jewish heart; you'll take pity."
There was nothing for it but to edge out of the room and to hide
myself
A week later she came again, this time with Maxie, whom I had
not seen for nearly three years and who seemed to have grown to
double his former size.
On this occasion she threatened to denounce me to the
Cloak-makers' Union for employing scab labor. Finally she made
a scene that caused me to whisper to Bender to telephone for a
policeman. Before complying, however, he tried persuasion.
"You had better go, madam," he said to her, meekly. "You are
excited."
Partly because he was a stranger to her, but mainly, I think,
because of his American appearance and English, she obeyed him
at once.
The next day her husband came. He looked so worn and wretched
and he was so ill at ease as he attempted to explain his errand that
I could scarcely make out his words, but I received him well and
my manner was encouraging, so he soon found his tongue
"Don't you care to have it in the old way again?" he said, piteously
"Why, I wish I could, Mr. Chaikin. I should be very glad to have
you here. I mean what I say. But it's really impossible."
"I should try my best, you know." "I know you would."
After a pause he said: "She'll drive me into the grave. She makes
my life so miserable."
"But it was she who made you get out of our partnership," I
remarked, sympathetically
"Yes, and now she blames it all on me. When she heard you had
moved to a larger place she fainted. Couldn't you take me back?"
He finally went to work as a designer for one of the old firms, at a
smaller salary than his former employers had paid him
For the present I continued to worry along with my free-lance
designer, but as a matter of fact Chaikin's wonderful feeling for
line and color was, unbeknown to himself, in my service. The
practice of pirating designs was rapidly becoming an open secret,
in fact. Styles put out by the big houses were copied by some of
their tailors, who would sell the drawing for a few dollars to some
of the smaller houses in plenty of time before the new cloak or
suit had been placed on the market. In this manner it was that I
obtained, almost regularly, copies of Chaikin's latest designs
The period of dire distress that smote the country about this
time--the memorable crisis of 1893--dealt me a staggering blow,
but I soon recovered from it. The crisis had been preceded by a
series of bitter conflicts between the old manufacturers and the
Cloak-makers' Union, in the form of lockouts, strikes, and
criminal proceedings against the leaders of the union, which had
proved fatal to both. The union was still in existence, but it was a
mere shadow of the formidable body that it had been three years
before. And, as work was scarce, labor could be had for a song, as
the phrase goes. This enabled me to make a number of
comparatively large sales.
To tell the truth, the decay of the union was a source of regret to
me, as the special talents I had developed for dodging it while it
was powerful had formerly given me an advantage over a majority
of my competitors which I now did not enjoy. Everybody was now
practically free from its control.
Everybody could have all the cheap labor he wanted.
Still, I was one of a minority of cloak-manufacturers who
contrived to bring down the cost of production to an
extraordinarily low level, and so I gradually obtained considerable
business, rallying from the shock of the panic before it was well
over.
CHAPTER VII
THE panic was followed by a carnival of
prosperity of which I received a generous share. My business was
progressing with leaps and bounds
The factory and office were moved to Broadway. This time it was
a real office, with several bookkeepers, stenographers, model
girls, and golden legends on the doors. These legends were always
glittering in my mind
People were loading me with flattery. Everybody was telling me
that I had "got there," and some were hinting, or saying in so many
words, that I was a man of rare gifts, of exceptional character. I
accepted it all as my due.
Nay, I regarded myself as rather underestimated. "They don't really
understand me," I would think to myself. "They know that I
possess brains and grit and all that sort of thing, but they are too
commonplace to appreciate the subtlety of my thoughts and
feelings."
Every successful man is a Napoleon in one thing at least--in
believing himself the ward of a lucky star. I was no exception to
this rule. I came to think myself infallible
In short, prosperity had turned my head
I looked upon poor people with more contempt than ever. I still
called them "misfits," in a Darwinian sense. The removal of my
business to Broadway was an official confirmation of my being
one of the fittest, and those golden inscriptions on my two office
doors seemed to proclaim it solemnly
At the same time I did not seem to be successful enough. I felt as
though my rewards were inadequate. I was now worth more than
one hundred thousand dollars, and the sum did not seem to be
anything to rejoice over. My fortune was not climbing rapidly
enough. I was almost tempted to stamp my foot and snarlingly
urge it on. Only one hundred thousand! Why, there were so many
illiterate dunces who had not even heard of Darwin and Spencer
and who were worth more
There were moments, however, when my success would seem
something incredible. That was usually when I chanced to think of
some scene of my past life with special vividness. Could it be
possible that I was worth a hundred thousand dollars, that I wore
six-dollar shoes, ate dollar lunches, and had an army of employees
at my beck and call? I never recalled my unrealized dreams of a
college education without experiencing a qualm of regret
One day--it was a drizzly afternoon in April--as I walked along
Broadway under my umbrella I came across Jake Mindels, the
handsome young man who had been my companion during the
period when I was preparing for City College. I had not seen him
for over two years, but I had kept track of his career and I knew
that he had recently graduated from the University Medical
College and had opened a doctor's office on Rivington Street. His
studiously dignified carriage, his Prince Albert coat, the way he
wore his soft hat, the way he held his open umbrella, and, above
all, the beard he was growing, betrayed a desire to look his new
part. And he did look it, too. The nascent beard, the frock-coat,
and the soft hat became him. He was handsomer than ever, and
there was a new air of quiet, though conscious, intellectual
importance about him.
The sight of him as I beheld him coming toward me gave me a
pang of envy
"Levinsky! How are you? How are you?" he shouted, flinging
himself at me effusively
"I hear you're practising medicine," I returned. And, looking him
over gaily, I added, "A doctor every inch of you."
He blushed
"And you're a rich man, I hear."
"Vanderbilt is richer, I can assure you. I should change places with
you any time." In my heart I remarked, "Yes, I am worth a
hundred thousand dollars, while he is probably struggling to make
a living, but I can beat him at his own intellectual game, too, even
if he has studied anatomy and physiology."
"Well, you will be a Vanderbilt some day. You're only beginning
to make money. People say you are a great success. I was so glad
to hear of it."
"And I am glad to hear that you were glad," I jested, gratefully.
"And how are things with you?"
"All right," he answered, firmly. "I can't complain. For the time I've
been practising I am doing very well. Very well, indeed."
He told me of a case in which one of the oldest and most
successful physicians on the East Side had made a false diagnosis,
and where he, Mindels, had made the correct one and saved the
patient's life
"The family wouldn't hear of another doctor now. They would give
their lives for me," he said, with a simper
I took him up to my factory and showed him about. He was lavish
in his expressions of surprise at the magnitude of my concern, and
when I asked him to have dinner with me that evening he seemed
to be more than pleased. Apart from other feelings, he was
probably glad to renew acquaintance with a man who could afford
to pay a decent doctor's bill, and through whom he might get in
touch with other desirable patrons
Presently he wrinkled his forehead, as though he had suddenly
remembered something
"Oh! Let me see!" he said. "Couldn't we postpone it? I have a
confinement this evening. I expect to be called at any moment."
We changed the date, and he departed. I was left somewhat excited
by the reminiscences that the meeting had evoked in me. I fell to
pacing the floor of my office, ruminating upon the change which
the past few years had wrought in his life and in mine. His
boastful garrulity was something new in him. Was it the struggle
for existence which was forcing it upon him? I wondered whether
that confinement story was not a fib invented to flaunt his
professional success. Thereupon I gave myself credit for my
knowledge of human nature. "That's one of the secrets of my
success," I thought. I complimented myself upon the possession of
all sorts of talents, but my keenest ambition was to be recognized
as an unerring judge of men
The amusing part of it was that in 1894, for example, I found that
in 1893 my judgment of men and things had been immature and
puerile. I was convinced that now at last my insight was a
thoroughly reliable instrurnent, only a year later to look back upon
my opinions of 1894 with contempt. I was everlastingly revising
my views of people, including my own self
BOOK XI
MATRIMONY
CHAPTER I
ONE afternoon in January
or February I was on a Lexington Avenue car going up-town. At
Sixty-seventh Street the car was invaded by a vivacious crowd of
young girls, each with a stack of books under one of her arms. It
was evident that they were returning home from Normal College,
which was on that corner. Some of them preferred to stand,
holding on to straps, so as to face and converse with their seated
chums
I was watching them as they chattered, laughed, or whispered,
bubbling over with the joy of being young and with the
consciousness of their budding womanhood, when my attention
was attracted to one of their number--a tall, lanky, long-necked
lass of fifteen or sixteen. She was hanging on to a strap directly
across the car from me. I could not see her face, but the shape of
her head and a certain jerk of it, when she laughed, looked
strikingly familiar to me. Presently she chanced to turn half-way
around, and I recognized her. It was Lucy. I had not seen her for
six years. She was completely changed and yet the same. Not yet
fully formed, elongated, attenuated, angular, ridiculously too tall
for her looks, and not quite so pretty as she had been at nine or
ten, but overflowing with color, with light, with blossoming life,
she thrilled me almost to tears. I was aching to call out her name,
to hear myself say "Lucy" as I had once been wont to do, but I was
not sure that it would be advisable to let her father hear of my
lingering interest in his family. While I was thus debating with
myself whether I should accost her, her glance fell on me. She
transferred it to one of the windows, and the next moment she fell
to eying me furtively.
"She has recognized me, but she won't come over to me," I
thought. "She seems to be aware of her father's jealousy." It was a
painful moment
Presently her fresh, youthful face brightened up. She bent over to
two of her girl friends and whispered something to them, and then
these threw glances at me. After some more whispering Lucy
faced about boldly and stepped over to me
"I beg your pardon. Aren't you Mr. Levinsky?" she asked, with
sweet, girlish shyness
"Of course I am, Lucy! Lucy dear, how are you? Quite a young
lady!"
"I was wondering," she went on without answering. "At first I did
not know.
You did seem familiar to me, but I could not locate your face. But
then, all at once, don't you know, I said to myself, 'Why, it's Mr.
Levinsky.' Oh, I'm so glad to see you."
She was all flushed and beaming with the surprise of the meeting,
with consciousness of the eyes of her classmates who were
watching her, and with something else which seemed to say: "I am
Lucy, but not the little girl you used to play with. I am a young
woman."
"And I was wondering who that tall, charming young lady was," I
said. "Lord! how you have grown, Lucy!"
"Yes, I'm already taller than mother and father," she answered
"Than both together?"
"No, not as bad as all that," she giggled
For children of our immigrants to outgrow their parents, not only
intellectually, but physically as well, is a common phenomenon.
Perhaps it is due to their being fed far better than their parents
were in their childhood and youth
I asked Lucy to take a seat by my side and she did, cheerfully. ("
Maybe she does not know anything," I wondered.) "How is
Danny?" I asked. "Still fat?"
"No, not very," she laughed. "He goes to school. I have a little
sister, too," she added, blushing the least bit.
I winced. It was as though I had heard something revoltingly
unseemly. Then a thought crossed my mind, and, seized with an
odd feeling of curiosity, I asked: "How old is she?"
"Oh, a little less than a year," Lucy replied. "She's awful cute," she
laughed
"And how is papa?" I inquired, to turn the conversation
"He's all right, thank you," she answered, gravely. "Only he lost a
lot of money on account of the hard times. Many of his customers
were out of work.
Business is picking up, though."
"And how is Becky? Are you still great friends?"
"Why, she ought to be here!" she replied, gazing around the car.
"Must be in the next car."
"In another car!" I exclaimed, in mock amazement. "Not by your
side?" Lucy laughed. "We are in the same class," she said
"And, of course, the families still live in the same house?" She
nodded affirmatively, adding that they lived at One Hundred and
Second Street near Madison Avenue, about a block and a half
from the Park
"Come up some time, won't you?" she gurgled, with childish
amiability, yet with apparent awkwardness
I wondered whether she was aware of her father's jealousy. "If she
were she certainly would not invite me to the house," I reflected
I made no answer to her invitation
"Won't you come up?" she insisted.
I thought: "She doesn't seem to know anything about it. She has
only heard that I had a quarrel with her mother." I shook my head,
smiling affectionately
"Why, are you still angry at mother?" she pursued, shaking her
head, deprecatingly, as who should say, "You're a bad boy."
I thought, "Of course she doesn't know." I smiled again. Then I
said: "You're a sweet girl, all the same. And a big one, too."
"Thank you. Do come. Will you?" I shook my head
"Will you never come?" she asked, playfully. "Never? Never?"
"I have told you you're a charming girl, haven't I? What more do
you want?"
The American children of the Ghetto are American not only in
their language, tastes, and ambitions, but in outward appearance
as well. Their bearing, gestures, the play of their features, and
something in the very expression of their Semitic faces proclaim
the land of their birth. All this was true of Lucy. She was
fascinatingly American, and I told her so
"You're not simply a charming girl. You're a charming American
girl," I said.
I wondered whether Dora had been keeping up her studies, and by
questioning Lucy about the books under her arm I contrived to
elicit the information that her mother had read not only such
works as the Vicar of Wakefield, Washington Irving's Sketch
Book, and Lamb's Shakespeare Stories, which had been part of
Lucy's course during her first year at college, but that she had also
read some of the works of Cooper, George Eliot, Dickens,
Thackeray, Hawthorne, and all sorts of cheaper novels
"Mother is a great reader," Lucy said. "She reads more than I do.
Why, she reads newspapers and magazines--everything she can
lay her hands on! Father calls her Professor."
She also told me that her mother had read a good deal of poetry,
that she knew the "Ancient Mariner" and "The Raven" by heart
"She's always at me because I don't care for poetry as much as she
does," she laughed.
"Well, you're not taller than your mother in this respect, are you?"
"N-no," she assented, with an appreciative giggle
She left the car on the corner of One Hundred and Second Street. I
was in a queer state of excitement
It flashed upon my mind that the section of Central Park in the
vicinity of One Hundred and Second Street teemed with women
and baby-carriages, and that it was but natural to suppose that
Dora would be out every day wheeling her baby in that locality,
and reading a book, perhaps. I visioned myself meeting her there
some afternoon and telling her of my undying love. I even worked
out the details of the plan, but I felt that I should never carry it out
I still loved Dora, but that was the Dora of six years before, an
image of an enshrined past. She was a dear, sad memory scarcely
anything more, and it seemed as though to disturb that sadness
were sacrilege
"I shall probably run up against her some day," I said to myself,
dolefully
And an echo seemed to add, "You are all alone in the world!"
CHAPTER II
I WAS a lonely man. I was pulsating with activity
and with a sense of triumph. I was receiving multitudes of new
impressions and enjoying life in a multitude of ways, with no
dearth of woman and song in the program. But at the bottom of
my consciousness I was always lonely
There were moments when my desolation would assert itself rather
violently.
This happened nearly every time I returned to New York from the
road. As the train entered the great city my sense of home-coming
would emphasize a feeling that the furnished two-room apartment
on Lexington Avenue which was waiting to receive me was not a
home
Meyer Nodelman, whom I often met in a Broadway restaurant at
the lunch hour these days, would chaff or lecture me earnestly
upon my unmarried state
"You don't know who you're working for," he would say, his sad,
Oriental face taking on an affectionate expression. "Life is short at
best, but when a fellow has nobody to bear his name after he is
gone it is shorter still.
Get married, my boy. Get married." He took a lively interest in the
growth of my business. He rejoiced in it as though he ascribed my
successes to the loans he had given me when I struggled for a
foothold. He often alluded to those favors, but he was a devoted
friend, all the same. Moreover, he was a most attractive man to
talk to, especially when the conversation dealt with one's intimate
life. With all his illiteracy and crudity of language he had rare
insight into the human heart and was full of subtle sympathy. He
was the only person in America with whom I often indulged in a
heart-to-heart confab. He was keenly aware of my loneliness. It
seemed as though it disturbed him
"You are not a happy man, Levinsky," he once said to me. "You
feel more alone than any bachelor I ever knew. You're an orphan,
poor thing. You have a fine business and plenty of money and all
sorts of nice times, but you are an orphan, just the same. You're
still a child. You need a mother. Well, but what's the use? Your
own mother--peace upon her--cannot be brought to life until the
coming of the Messiah, so do the next best thing, Levinsky. Get
married and you will have a mother--for your children. It isn't the
same kind, but you won't feel lonesome any longer."
I laughed
"Laugh away, Levinsky. But you can't help it. And the smart books
you read won't help you, either. You've got to get married whether
you want it or not. This is a bill that must be paid."
I had lunch with him a day or two after my meeting with Lucy. The
sight of his affectionate, melancholy face and the warmth of his
greeting somehow made me think of the sentimental mood in
which I had been left by that encounter
"I do feel lonesome," I said, with a smile, in the course of our chat.
"I met a girl the other day--"
"Did you?" he said, expectantly.
"Oh, she is a mere child, not the kind of girl you mean, Mr.
Nodelman. I once boarded in her mother's house. She was a mere
child then. She is still a child, but she goes to college now, and
she is taller than her mother.
When I saw her I felt old."
"Is that anything to be sad about? Pshaw! Get married, and you'll
have a daughter of your own, and when she grows up you won't be
sorry. Take it from me, Levinsky. There can be no greater
pleasure than to watch your kids grow." And he added, in a lower
tone, "I do advise you to get married."
"Perhaps I ought to," I said, listlessly. "But then it takes two to
make a bargain."
"Oh, there are lots of good girls, and you can have the best piece of
goods there is." "Oh, I don't know. It wouldn't be hard to find a
good girl, perhaps. The question is whether she'll be good after the
honeymoon is over."
"You don't want a bond and mortgage to guarantee that you'll be
happy, do you? A fellow must be ready to take a chance."
There is an old story of a rabbi who, upon being asked by a
bachelor whether he should marry, said: "If you do you will regret
it, my son; but then if you remain single you are sure to regret it
just as much; perhaps more. So get married like everybody else
and regret it like everybody else." Nodelman now quoted that
rabbi. I had heard the anecdote more than once before, but it
seemed as though its meaning had now revealed itself to me for
the first time.
"According to that rabbi, marriage is not a pleasure, but a
miserable necessity," I urged
"Well, it isn't all misery, either. People are fond of saying that the
best marriage is a curse. But it's the other way around. The worst
marriage has some blessing in it, Levinsky."
"Oh, I don't know."
"Get married and you will. There is plenty of pleasure in the worst
of homes. Take it from me,. Levinsky. When I come home and
feel that I have somebody to live for, that it is not the devil I am
working for, then--take it from me, Levinsky--I should not give
one moment like that for all the other pleasures in the world put
together."
I thought of his wife whom his mother had repeatedly described to
me as a "meat-ball face" and a virago, and of his home which I
had always pictured as hell. His words touched me
"It isn't that I don't want to take chances, Mr. Nodelman. It's
something else. Were you ever in love, Mr. Nodelman?"
"What? Was I in love? Why?" he demanded, coloring. "What put it
in your head to ask me such a funny question?"
"Funny! There's more pain than fun in it. Well, I have loved, Mr.
Nodelman, and that's why it's so hard for me to think of marriage
as a cold proposition. I don't think I could marry a girl I did not
love."
I expected an argument against love-marriages, but Nodelman had
none to offer. Instead, he had me dilate on the bliss and the agony
of loving. He asked me questions and eagerly listened to my
answers. I told him of my own two love-affairs, particularly of my
relations with Dora. I omitted names and other details that might
have pointed, ever so remotely, to Mrs.
Margolis's identity. Nodelman was interested intensely. His
interrogations were of the kind that a girl of sixteen who had not
yet loved might address to a bosom friend who had. How does it
feel to be in doubt whether one's passion had found an echo? How
did I feel when our lips were joined in our first kiss? How did she
carry herself the next time I saw her? Was she shy? Did she look
happy? Was she afraid of her husband? Was I afraid? The
restaurant had been nearly deserted for about an hour, and we still
sat smoking cigars and whispering.
CHAPTER III
ONE day, as Nodelman took his seat across the
table from me at the restaurant, he said: "Well, Levinsky, it's no
use, you'll have to get married now. There will be no wriggling
out of it. My wife has set her mind on it."
"Your wife?" I asked in surprise.
"Yes. I have an order to bring you up to the house, and that's all
there is to it. Don't blame her, though. The fault is mine. I have
told her so much about you she wants to know you."
"To know me and to marry me off, hey? And yet you claim to be a
friend of mine."
"Well, it's no use talking. You'll have to come."
I received a formal invitation, written in English by Mrs.
Nodelman, and on a Friday night in May I was in my friend's
house for supper, as Nodelman called it, or "dinner," as his wife
would have it
The family occupied one of a small group of lingering,
brownstone, private dwellings in a neighborhood swarming with
the inmates of new tenement "barracks."
"Glad to meechye," Mrs. Nodelman welcomed me. "Meyer should
have broughchye up long ago. Why did you keep Mr. Levinsky
away, Meyer? Was you afraid you might have reason to be
jealous?"
"That's just it. She hit it right. I told you she was a smart girl, didn't
I, Levinsky?"
"Don't be uneasy, Meyer. Mr. Levinsky won't even look at an old
woman like me. It's a pretty girl he's fishin' for. Ainchye, Mr.
Levinsky?"
She was middle-aged, with small features inconspicuously traced
in a bulging mass of full-blooded flesh. This was why her
mother-in-law called her "meat-ball face." She had a hoarse voice,
and altogether she might have given me the impression of being
drunk had there not been something pleasing in her hoarseness as
well as in that droll face of hers. That she was American-born was
clear from the way she spoke her unpolished English. Was
Nodelman the henpecked husband that his mother advertised him
to be? I wondered whether the frequency with which his wife used
his first name could be accepted as evidence to the contrary
They had six children: a youth of nineteen named Maurice who
was the image of his father and, having spent two years at college,
was with him in the clothing business; a high-school boy who had
his mother's face and whose name was Sidney--an appellation
very popular among our people as "swell American"; and four
smaller children, the youngest being a little girl of six.
"What do you think of my stock, Levinsky?" Nodelman asked.
"Quite a lot, isn't it? May no evil eye strike them. What do you
think of the baby? Come here, Beatrice! Recite something for
uncle!" The command had barely left his mouth when Beatrice
sprang to her feet and burst out mumbling something in a
kindergarten singsong. This lasted some minutes Then she
courtesied, shook her skirts, and slipped back into her seat
"She is only six and she is already more educated than her father,"
Nodelman said. "And Sidney he's studyin' French at high school.
Sidney, talk some French to Mr. Levinsky. He'll understand you.
Come on, show Mr. Levinsky you ain't going to be as ignorant as
your pa."
The scene was largely a stereotyped copy of the one I had
witnessed upon my first call at the Margolises'
Sidney scowled
"Come on, Sidney, be a good boy," Nodelman urged, taking him
by the sleeve
"Let me alone," Sidney snarled, breaking away and striking the air
a fierce backward blow with his elbow
"What do you want of him?" Mrs. Nodelman said to her husband,
frigidly
My friend desisted, sheepishly
"He does seem to be afraid of his American household," I said to
myself
After the meal, when we were all in the parlor again, Nodelman
said to his wife, winking at me: "Poor fellow, his patience has all
given out. He wants to know about the girl you've got for him. He
has no strength any longer. Can't you see it, Bella? Look at him!
Look at him! Another minute and he'll faint."
"What girl? Oh, I see! Why, there is more than one!" Mrs.
Nodelman returned, confusedly. "I didn't mean anybody in
particular. There are plenty of young ladies."
"That's the trouble. There are plenty, and no one in particular," I
said
"Don't cry," Nodelman said. "Just be a good boy and Mrs.
Nodelman will get you a peach of a young lady. Won't you,
Bella?"
"I guess so," she answered, with a smile
"Don't you understand?" he proceeded to explain. "She first wants
to know the kind of customer you are. Then she'll know what kind
of merchandise to look for. Isn't that it, Bella?"
She made no answer
"I hope Mrs. Nodelman will find me a pretty decent sort of
customer," I put in.
"You're all right," she said, demurely. "I'm afraid it won't be an
easy job to get a young lady to suit a customer like you."
"Try your best, will you?" I said.
"I certainly will."
She was less talkative now, and certainly less at her ease than she
had been before the topic was broached, which impressed me
rather favorably.
Altogether she was far from the virago or "witch" her
mother-in-law had described her to be. As to her attitude toward
her husband, I subsequently came to the conclusion that it was a
blend of affection and contempt.
Nodelman was henpecked, but not badly so
I called on them three or four times more during that spring.
Somehow the question of my marriage was never mentioned on
these occasions, and then Mrs. Nodelman and the children, all
except Maurice, went to the seashore for the summer
CHAPTER IV
"YOU'LL examine the merchandise, and if you
don't like it nobody is going to make you buy it," said Nodelman
to me one day in January of the following winter. By
"merchandise" he meant a Miss Kalmanovitch, the daughter of a
wealthy furniture-dealer, to whom I was to be introduced at the
Nodelman residence four days later. "She is a peach of a girl,
beautiful as the sun, and no runt, either; a lovely girl." "Good
looks aren't everything. Beauty is skin deep, and handsome is as
handsome does," I paraded my English
"Oh, she is a good girl every way: a fine housekeeper,
good-natured, and educated. Gee! how educated she is! Why, she
has a pile of books in her room, Bella says, a pile that high." He
raised his hand above his head. "She is dead stuck on her, Bella
is."
Owing to an illness in the Kalmanovitch family, the projected
meeting could not take place, but Nodelman's birthday was to be
celebrated in March, so the gathering was to serve as a
match-making agency as well as a social function
The great event came to pass on a Sunday evening. The prospect
of facing a girl who offered herself as a candidate for becoming
my wife put me all in a flutter. It took me a long time to dress and
I made my appearance at the Nodelmans' rather late in the
evening. Mrs. Nodelman, who met me in the hall, offered me a
tempestuous welcome
"Here he is! Better late than never," she shrieked, hoarsely, as I
entered the hall at the head of the high stoop. "I was gettin'
uneasy. Honest I was." And dropping her voice: "Miss
Kalmanovitch came on time. She's a good girl. Always." And she
gave me a knowing look that brought the color to my face and a
coy smile into hers
Her husband appeared a minute later. After greeting me warmly he
whispered into my ear: "Nobody knows anything about it, not
even the young lady. Only her mother does."
But I soon discovered that he was mistaken. My appearance
produced a sensation, and the telltale glances of the women from
me to a large girl with black eyes who stood at the mantelpiece
not only showed plainly that they knew all about "it," but also
indicated who of the young women present was Miss
Kalmanovitch
The spacious parlor was literally jammed. The hostess led the way
through the throng, introducing me to the guests as we proceeded.
There were Nodelman's father and mother among them, the
gigantic old tailor grinning childishly by the side of his wife, who
looked glum
"That one, with the dark eves, by the mantelpiece," Meyer
Nodelman whispered to me, eagerly
The girl pointed out was large and plump, with full ivory-hued
cheeks, and a dimple in her fleshy chin. Her black eyes were large
and round. That the object of my coming, and of her own, was no
secret to her was quite evident.
She was blushing to the roots of her glossy black hair, and in her
apparent struggle with her constraint she put her stout, long arm
around the waist of a girl who stood by her side against the
mantelpiece
Upon the whole, Miss Kalmanovitch impressed me more than
favorably; but a minute later, when I was introduced to her and
saw her double chin and shook her gently by a hand that was fat
and damp with perspiration, I all but shuddered. I felt as though
she exuded oil. I was introduced to her mother, a spare,
hatchet-face little woman with bad teeth, who looked me over in a
most business-like way, and to her father, a gray man with a goatee
Miss Kalmanovitch and I soon found ourselves seated side by side.
Conscious of being the target of many eyes, I was as disconcerted
as I had been twelve years before, when Matilda played her first
practical joke upon my sidelocks. My would-be fiancée was the
first to recover her ease. She asked me if I was related to a
white-goods man named Levinsky, and when I said no she passed
to other topics. She led the conversation, and I scarcely followed
her. At one moment, for example, as I looked her in the face,
endeavoring to listen to what she was saying about the Purim ball
she had attended, I remarked to myself that the name
Kalmanovitch somehow seemed to go well with her face and
figure, and that she was too self-possessed for a "bridal
candidate."
Presently we heard Mrs. Nodelman's hoarse voice: "Now Miss
Kalmanovitch will oblige us with some music. Won't you, please,
Miss Kalmanovitch?"
A swarthy, middle-aged woman, with features that somewhat
resembled those of the host, whose cousin she was, and with huge
golden teeth that glistened good-naturedly, took Miss
Kalmanovitch by the arm, saying in a mannish voice: "Come on,
Ray! Show them what you can do!"
My companion rose and, throwing gay glances at some of the other
girls, she walked over to the piano and seated herself. Then, with
some more smiles at the girls, she cold-bloodedly attacked the
keyboard
"A nauctourrn by Chopin," her mother explained to me in an
audible whisper across the room
Miss Kalmanovitch was banging away with an effect of showing
how quickly she could get through the nocturne. I am not musical
in the accepted meaning of the term, and in those days I was even
less so than I am now, perhaps, but I was always fond of music,
and had a discriminating feeling for it. At all events, I knew
enough to realize that my would-be fiancée was playing
execrably. But her mother, her father, the hostess, and the swarthy
woman with the golden teeth, were shooting glances at me that
seemed to say: "What do you think of that? Did you ever see such
fast playing?" and there was nothing for it but to simulate
admiration
The woman with the great golden teeth, Meyer Nodelman's cousin,
was even more strenuous in her efforts to arouse my exultation
than Ray's mother. She was the wife of a prosperous teamster
whose moving-vans were seen all over the East Side. Gaunt,
flat-chested, with a solemn masculine face, she was known for her
jolly disposition and good-natured sarcasm. There was something
suggestive of Meyer Nodelman in her manner of speaking as well
as in her looks. She was childless and took an insatiable interest in
the love-affairs and matrimonial politics of young people. Her
name was Mrs.
Kalch, but everybody called her Auntie Yetta
When Ray finished playing Auntie Yetta led the applause, for all
the world like a ward heeler. When the acclaim had died down
she rushed at Ray, pressed her ample bosom to her own flat one,
kissed her a sounding smack on the lips, and exclaimed, with a
wink to me: "Ever see such a tasty duck of a girl?"
Miss Kalmanovitch was followed by a bespectacled, anemic boy
of thirteen who played something by Wieniavsky on the violin,
and then Miss Kalmanovitch "obliged" us with a recitation from
"Macbeth." There were four other solos on the piano and on the
violin by boys and girls, children of the invited guests, the
violinists having brought their instruments with them. Not that the
concert was part of a preconceived program, although it might
have been taken for granted. The mothers of the performers had
simply seized the opportunity to display the talents of their
offspring before an audience.
Only one boy--a curly-headed, long-necked little pianist,
introduced as Bennie Saminsky--played with much feeling and
taste. All the rest grated on my nerves
I beguiled the time by observing the women. I noticed, for
instance, that Auntie Yetta, whose fingers were a veritable
jewelry-store, now and again made a pretense of smoothing her
grayish hair for the purpose of exhibiting her flaming rings.
Another elderly woman, whose fingers were as heavily laden, kept
them prominently interlaced across her breast. From time to time
she would flirt her interlocked hands, in feigned
absent-mindedness, thus flashing her diamonds upon the people
around her. At one moment it became something like a race
between her and Auntie Yetta. Nodelman's cousin caught me
watching it, whereupon she winked to me merrily and interlaced
her own begemmed fingers, as much as to say, "What do you
think of our contest?" and burst into a voiceless laugh
I tried to listen to the music again. To add to my ordeal, I had to
lend an ear to the boastful chatter of the mothers or fathers on the
virtuosity of Bennie, Sidney, Beckie, or Sadie. The mother of the
curly-headed pianist, the illiterate wife of a baker, first wore out
my patience and then enlisted my interest by a torrent of musical
terminology which she apparently had picked up from talks with
her boy's piano-teacher. She interspersed her unsophisticated
Yiddish with English phrases like "rare technique," "vonderful
touch," "bee-youtiful tone," or "poeytic temperament." She
assured me that her son was the youngest boy in the United States
to play Brahms and Beethoven successfully. At first I thought that
she was prattling these words parrot fashion, but I soon realized
that, to a considerable extent, at least, she used them intelligently
She had set her heart upon making the greatest pianist in the world
of Bennie, and by incessantly discussing him with people who
were supposed to know something about music she had gradually
accumulated a smattering acquaintance with the subject. That she
was full of it there could be no doubt. Perhaps she had a native
intuition for music. Perhaps, too, it was from her that her son had
inherited his feeling for the poetry of sound. She certainly had
imagination
"Some boys play like monkeys," she said in Yiddish. "They don't
know what they are at. May I know evil if they do. My Bennie is
not that sort of a pianist, thank God! He knows what he is talking
about--on his piano, I mean.
You saw for yourself that he played with head and heart, didn't
you?"
"Indeed, I did," I said, with ardor. "I liked his playing very much."
"Yes, it comes right from his heart," she pursued. "He has a golden
temperament. The piano just talks under his fingers. I mean what I
say.
People think a piano is just a row of dead pieces of bone or wood.
It is not. No, sirrah. It has speech just like a human being,
provided you know how to get it out of the keyboard. Bennie
does."
In a certain sense this unlettered woman was being educated by her
little boy in the same manner as Dora had been and still was,
perhaps, by Lucy
There were at least three girls in the gathering who were decidedly
pretty.
One of these was a graduate of Normal College. She was
dark-eyed, like Miss Kalmanovitch, but slender and supple and
full of life. Everybody called her affectionately by her first name,
which was Stella. At the supper-table, in the dining-room, I was
placed beside Miss Kalmanovitch, but I gave most of my attention
to Stella, who was seated diagonally across the table from us.
I felt quite at home now
"What was your favorite subject at college?" I questioned Stella,
facetiously.
"That's my secret," she answered.
"I can guess it, though."
"Try."
"Dancing."
"That's right," she shouted, amidst an outburst of laughter
"Well, have you learned it well?" I went on
"Why don't you ask me for a waltz and find out for yourself?"
"I wish I could, but unfortunately they did not take up dancing at
my college."
"Did you go to college?" Stella asked, seriously
"I don't look like one who did, I suppose. Well, I should like to say
I did, but I haven't the heart to tell you a lie."
"Never mind," Nodelman broke in. "He's an educated fellar, all the
same.
He's awful educated. That's what makes him such a smart business
man. By the way, Levinsky, how is the merchandise?"
"This is no place to talk shop," I replied, deprecatingly. "Especially
when there are so many pretty ladies around."
"That's right!" several of the women chimed in in chorus
Mrs. Nodelman, the hostess, who stood in the doorway, beckoned
to her husband, and he jumped up from the table. As he passed by
my seat I seized him by an arm and whispered into his ear: "The
merchandise is too heavy. I want lighter goods." With this I
released him and he disappeared with Mrs. Nodelman
A few minutes later he came back
"Be a good boy. Show Ray a little more attention," he whispered
into my ear.
"Do it for my sake. Will you?"
"All right."
I became aware of Mrs. Kalmanovitch's fire-flashing eyes, and my
efforts to entertain her daughter were a poor performance
The Kalmanovitch family left immediately after supper, scarcely
making their farewells. Portentous sounds came from the hallway.
We could hear Mrs.
Kalmanovitch's angry voice. A nervous hush fell over the parlor.
Auntie Yetta gave us all an eloquent wink
"There's a woman with a tongue for you," she said in an undertone.
"Pitch and sulphur. When she opens her mouth people had better
sound the fire-alarm." After a pause she added: "Do you know
why her teeth are so bad? Her mouth is so full of poison, it has
eaten them up."
Presently the younger Mrs. Nodelman made her appearance. Her
ruddy "meat-ball" face was fairly ablaze with excitement. Her
husband followed with a guilty air
"What's the matter with you folks?" the hostess said. "Why ainchye
doin' somethin'?"
"What shall we do?" the baker's wife answered in Yiddish. "We
have eaten a nice supper and we have heard music and now we
are enjoying ourselves quietly, like the gentlemen and the ladies
we are. What more do you want?" "Come, folks, let's have a
dance. Bennie will play us a waltz. Quick, Bennie darling! Girls,
get a move on you!"
I called the hostess aside. "May I ask you a question, Mrs.
Nodelman?" I said, in the manner of a boy addressing his teacher
"What is it?" she asked, awkwardly.
"No, I won't ask any questions. I see you are angry at me."
"I ain't angry at all," she returned, making an effort to look me
straight in the face.
"Sure?"
"Sure," with a laugh. "What is it you want to ask me about?"
And again assuming the tone of a penitent pupil, I said, "May I ask
Stella to dance with me?"
"But you don't dance."
"Let her teach me, then."
"Let her, if she wants to. I ain't her mother, am I?"
"But you have no objection, have you?"
"Where do I come in? On my part, you can dance with every girl in
the house."
"Oh, you don't like me this evening, Mrs. Nodelman. You are
angry witn me.
Else you wouldn't talk the way you do."
She burst into a laugh, and said, "You're a hell of a fellow, you
are."
"I know I misbehaved myself, but I couldn't help it. Miss
Kalmanovitch is too fat, you know, and her hands perspire so."
"She's a charmin' girl," she returned, with a hearty laugh. "I wish
her mother was half so good."
"Was she angry, her mother?"
"Was she! She put all the blame on me. I invited her daughter on
purpose to make fun of her, she says. My, how she carried on!"
"I'm really sorry, but it's a matter of taste, you know."
"I know it is. I don't blame you at all."
"So you and I are friends again, aren't we?"
She laughed
"Well, then, you have no objection to my being sweet on Stella,
have you?"
"You are a hell of a fellow. That's just what you are. But I might as
well tell you it's no use trying to get Stella. She's already
engaged."
"Is she really?"
"Honest."
"Well, I don't care. I'll take her away from her fellow. That's all
there is to it." "You can't do it," she said, gaily. "She is dead stuck
on her intended.
They'll be married in June."
I went home a lovesick man, but the following evening I went to
Boston for a day, and my feeling did not survive the trip
CHAPTER V
THAT journey to Boston is fixed in my memory by
an incident which is one of my landmarks in the history of my
financial evolution and, indeed, in the history of the American
cloak industry. It occurred in the afternoon of the Monday which I
spent in that city, less than two days after that birthday party at the
Nodelmans'. I was lounging in an easy-chair in the lobby of my
hotel, when I beheld Loeb, the "star" salesman of what had been
the "star" firm in the cloak-and-suit business. I had not seen him
for some time, but I knew that his employers were on their last
legs and that he had a hard struggle trying to make a living. Nor
was that firm the only one of the old-established cloak-and-suit
concerns that found itself in this state at the period in
question--that is, at the time of the economic crisis and the burst
of good times that had succeeded it. Far from filling their coffers
from the golden flood of those few years, they were drowned in it
almost to a man. The trade was now in the hands of men from the
ranks of their former employees, tailors or cloak operators of
Russian or Galician origin, some of whom were Talmudic
scholars like myself. It was the passing of the German Jew from
the American cloak industry
We did profit by the abundance of the period. Moreover, there
were many among us to whom the crisis of 1893 had proved a
blessing. To begin with, some of our tailors, being unable to
obtain employment in that year, had been driven to make up a
garment or two and to offer it for sale in the street, huckster
fashion--a venture which in many instances formed a
stepping-stone to a cloak-factory. Others of our workmen had
achieved the same evolution by employing their days of enforced
idleness in taking lessons in cloak-designing, and then setting up a
small shop of their own
Newfangled manufacturers of this kind were now springing up like
mushrooms.
Joe, my old-time instructor in cloak-making, was one of the latest
additions to their number. They worked--often assisted by their
wives and children--in all sorts of capacities and at all hours. They
lived on bread and salmon and were content with almost a
nominal margin of profit. There were instances when the
clippings from the cutting-table constituted all the profit the
business yielded them. Pitted against "manufacturers" of this class
or against a fellow like myself were the old-established firms,
with their dignified office methods and high profit-rates, firms
whose fortunes had been sorely tried, to boot, by their bitter
struggle with the union
Loeb swaggered up to me with quizzical joviality as usual. But the
smug luster of his face was faded and his kindly black eyes had an
unsteady glance in them that belied his vivacity. I could see at
once that he felt nothing but hate for me
"Hello, Get-Rich-Quick Levinsky!" he greeted me. "Haven't seen
you for an age."
"How are you, Loeb?" I asked, genially, my heart full of mixed
triumph and compassion
We had not been talking five minutes before he grew sardonic and
venomous.
As Division Street--a few blocks on the lower East Side--was the
center of the new type of cloak-manufacturing, he referred to us
by the name of that street. My business was on Broadway, yet I
was included in the term, "Division Street manufacturer."
"What is Division Street going to do next?" he asked. "Sell a
fifteen-dollar suit for fifteen cents?"
I smiled
"That's a great place, that is. There are two big business streets in
New York--Wall Street and Division." He broke into a laugh at his
own joke and I charitably joined in. I endeavored to take his
thrusts good-naturedly and for many minutes I succeeded, but at
one point when he referred to us as "manufacturers," with a
sneering implication of quotation marks over the word, I flared up
"You don't seem to like the Division Street manufacturers, do
you?" I said.
"I suppose you have a reason for it." "I have a reason? Of course I
have," he retorted. "So has every other decent man in the
business."
"It depends on what you call decent. Every misfit claims to be
more decent than the fellow who gets the business."
He grew pale. It almost looked as though we were coming to
blows. After a pause he said, with an effect of holding himself in
leash: "Business! Do you call that business? I call it peanuts."
"Well, the peanuts are rapidly growing in size while the oranges
and the apples are shrinking and rotting. The fittest survives." ("A
lot he knows about the theory of the survival of the fittest!" I
jeered in my heart. "He hasn't even heard the name of Herbert
Spencer.") "Peanuts are peanuts, that's all there's to it," he returned
"Then why are you excited? How can we hurt you if we are only
peanuts?"
He made no answer
"We don't steal the trade we're getting, do we? If the American
people prefer to buy our product they probably like it."
"Oh, chuck your big words, Levinsky. You fellows are killing the
trade, and you know it."
He laughed, but what I said was true. The old cloak-manufacturers,
the German Jews, were merely merchant. Our people, on the other
hand, were mostly tailors or cloak operators who had learned the
mechanical part of the industry, and they were introducing a
thousand innovations into it, perfecting, revolutionizing it. We
brought to our work a knowledge, a taste, and an ardor which the
men of the old firms did not possess. And we were shedding our
uncouthness, too. In proportion as we grew we adapted American
business ways
Speaking in a semi-amicable vein, Loeb went on citing cases of
what he termed cutthroat competition on our part, till he worked
himself into a passion and became abusive again. The drift of his
harangue was that "smashing" prices was something distasteful to
the American spirit, that we were only foreigners, products of an
inferior civilization, and that we ought to know our place.
"This way of doing business may be all right in Russia, but it won't
do in this country," he said. "I tell you, it won't do."
"But it does do. So it seems."
As he continued to fume and rail at us, and I sat listening with a
bored air, an idea flashed upon my mind, and, acting upon it on
the spur of the moment, I suddenly laid a friendly hand on his arm
"Look here, Loeb," I said. "What's the use being excited? I have a
scheme.
What's the matter with you selling goods for me?"
He was taken aback, but I could see that he was going to accept it
"What do you mean?" he asked, flushing
"I mean what I say. I want you to come with me. You will make
more money than you have ever made before. You're a first-rate
salesman, Loeb, and--well, it will pay you to make the change.
What do you say?"
He contemplated the floor for a minute or two, and then, looking
up awkwardly, he said: "I'll think it over. But you're a smart
fellow, Levinsky. I can tell you that."
We proceeded to discuss details, and I received his answer--a
favorable one--before we left our seats
To celebrate the event I had him dine with me that evening, our
pledges of mutual loyalty being solemnized by a toast which we
drank in the costliest champagne the hotel restaurant could furnish
It was not a year and a half after this episode that Chaikin entered
my employ as designer
CHAPTER VI
I SAW other girls with a view to marriage, but I
was "too particular," as my friends, the Nodelmans, would have it.
I had two narrow escapes from breach-of-promise suits.
"He has too much education," Nodelman once said to his wife in
my presence.
"Too much in his head, don't you know. You think too much,
Levinsky. That's what's the matter. First marry, and do your
thinking afterward. If you stopped to think before eating you
would starve to death, wouldn't you? Well, and if you keep on
thinking and figuring if this girl's nose is nice enough and if that
girl's eyes are nice enough, you'll die before you get married, and
there are no weddings among the dead, you know."
My matrimonial aspirations made themselves felt with fits and
starts. There were periods when I seemed to be completely in their
grip, when I was restless and as though ready to marry the first
girl I met. Then there would be many months during which I was
utterly indifferent, enjoying my freedom and putting off the
question indefinitely
Year after year slid by. When my thirty-ninth birthday became a
thing of the past and I saw myself entering upon my fortieth year
without knowing who I worked for I was in something like a state
of despair. When I was a boy forty years had seemed to be the
beginning of old age. This notion I now repudiated as ridiculous,
for I felt as young as I had done ten, fifteen, or twenty years
before; and yet the words "forty years" appalled me. The wish to
"settle down" then grew into a passion in me. The vague portrait of
a woman in the abstract seemed never to be absent from my mind.
Coupled with that portrait was a similarly vague image of a
window and a table set for dinner. That, somehow, was my
symbol of home. Home and woman were one, a complex charm
joining them into an inseparable force. There was the glamour of
sex, shelter, and companionship in that charm, and of something
else that promised security and perpetuity to the successes that
fate was pouring into my lap. It whispered of a future that was to
continue after I was gone
My loneliness often took on the pungence of acute physical
discomfort. The more I achieved, the more painful was my
self-pity
Nothing seemed to matter unless it was sanctified by marriage, and
marriage now mattered far more than love
Girls had acquired a new meaning. They were not merely girls.
They were matrimonial possibilities
Odd as it may appear, my romantic ideals of twenty years ago now
reasserted their claim upon me. It was my ambition to marry into
some orthodox family, well-to-do, well connected, and with an
atmosphere of Talmudic education--the kind of match of which I
had dreamed before my mother died, with such modifications as
the American environment rendered natural
There were two distinct circumstances to account for this new
mood in me
In the first place, my sense of approaching middle age somehow
rekindled my yearning interest in the scenes of my childhood and
boyhood. Memories of bygone days had become ineffably dear to
me. I seemed to remember things of my boyhood more vividly
than I did things that had happened only a year before
I was homesick for Antomir again
To revisit Abner's Court or the Preacher's Synagogue, to speak to
Reb Sender, or to the bewhiskered old soldier, the skeepskin
tailor, if they were still living, was one of my day-dreams.
Eliakim Zunzer, the famous wedding-bard whose songs my mother
used to sing in her dear, sonorous contralto, had emigrated to
America several years before and I had heard of it at the time of
his arrival, yet I had never thought of going to see him. Now,
however, I could not rest until I looked him up. It appeared that he
owned a small printing-shop in a basement on East Broadway, so I
called at his place one afternoon on the pretext of ordering some
cards. When I saw the poet--an aged little man with a tragic, tired
look on a cadaverous face--I was so unstrung that when a young
man in the shop asked me something about the cards, he had to
repeat the question before I understood it
"My mother used to sing your beautiful songs, Mr. Zunzer," I said
to the poet some minutes later, my heart beating violently again.
"Did she? Where do you come from?" he asked, with a smile that
banished the tired look, but deepened the tragic sadness of his
death-like countenance
Everything bearing the name of my native place touched a tender
spot in my heart. It was enough for a cloak-maker to ask me for a
job with the Antomir accent to be favorably recommended to one
of my foremen. A number of the men who received special
consideration and were kept working in my shop in the slack
seasons, when my force was greatly reduced, were
fellow-townspeople of mine. This had been going on for several
years, in fact, till gradually an Antomir atmosphere had been
established in my shop, and something like a family spirit of
which I was proud. We had formed a Levinsky Antomir Benefit
Society of which I was an honorary member and which was made
up, for the most part, of my own employees
All this, I confess, was not without advantage to my business
interests, for it afforded me a low average of wages and
safeguarded my shop against labor troubles. The Cloak-makers'
Union had again come into existence, and, although it had no real
power over the men, the trade was not free from sporadic conflicts
in individual shops. My place, however, was absolutely immune
from difficulties of this sort--all because of the Levinsky Antomir
Benefit Society
If one of my operatives happened to have a relative in Antomir, a
women's tailor who wished to emigrate to America, I would
advance him the passage money, with the understanding that he
was to work off the loan in my employ.
That the "green one" was to work for low wages was a matter of
course. But then, in justice to myself, I must add that I did my
men favors in numerous cases that could in no way redound to my
benefit. Besides, the fiscal advantages that I did derive from the
Antomir spirit of my shop really were not a primary consideration
with me. I sincerely cherished that spirit for its own sake.
Moreover, if my Antomir employees were willing to accept from
me lower pay than they might have received in other places, their
average earnings were actually higher than they would have been
elsewhere. I gave them steady work. Besides, they felt perfectly at
home in my shop. I treated them well. I was very democratic
Compared to the thoughts of home that had oppressed me during
my first months in America, my new visions of Antomir were like
the wistful lights of a sunset as compared with the glare of
midday. But then sunsets produce deeper, if quieter, effects on the
emotions than the strongest daylight
It was my new homesickness, then, which inclined me to an
American form of the kind of marriage of which I used to dream
in the days of my Talmudic studies. Another motive that led me to
matrimonial aspirations of this kind lay in my new ideas of
respectability as a necessary accompaniment to success. Marrying
into a well-to-do orthodox family meant respectability and
solidity. It implied law and order, the antithesis of anarchism,
socialism, trade-unionism, strikes
I was a convinced free-thinker. Spencer's Unknowable had
irrevocably replaced my God. Yet religion now appealed to me as
an indispensable instrument in the great orchestra of things. From
what I had seen of the world, or read about it in the daily press, I
was convinced that but few people of wealth and power had real
religion in their hearts. I felt sure that most of them looked upon
churches or synagogues as they did upon police-courts; that they
valued them primarily as safeguards of law and order and
correctness, and this had become my attitude. For the rest, I felt
that a vast number of the people who professed Christianity or
Judaism did so merely because to declare oneself an atheist was
not a prudent thing to do from a business or social point of view,
or that they were in doubt and chose to be on the safe side of it,
lest there should be a God, "after all," while millions of other
people were not interested enough even to doubt, or to ask
questions, and were content to do as everybody did. But there were
some who did ask questions and did dare to declare themselves
atheists. I was one of these, and yet I looked upon religion as a
most important institution, and was willing to contribute to its
support
My business life had fostered the conviction in me that, outside of
the family, the human world was as brutally selfish as the jungle,
and that it was worm-eaten with hypocrisy into the bargain. From
time to time the newspapers published sensational revelations
concerning some pillar of society who had turned out to be a
common thief on an uncommon scale. I saw that political
speeches, sermons, and editorials had, with very few exceptions,
no more sincerity in them than the rhetoric of an advertisement.
I saw that Americans who boasted descent from the heroes of the
Revolution boasted, in the same breath, of having spent an
evening with Lord So-and-so; that it was their avowed ambition to
acquire for their daughters the very titles which their ancestors
had fought to banish from the life of their country. I saw that
civilization was honeycombed with what Max Nordau called
conventional lies, with sham ecstasy, sham sympathy, sham
smiles, sham laughter
The riot of prosperity introduced the fashion of respectable women
covering their faces with powder and paint in a way that had
hitherto been peculiar to women of the streets, so I pictured
civilization as a harlot with cheeks, lips, and eyelashes of artificial
beauty. I imagined mountains of powder and paint, a deafening
chorus of affected laughter, a huge heart, as large as a city, full of
falsehood and mischief
The leaders of the Jewish socialists, who were also at the head of
the Jewish labor movement, seemed to me to be the most
repulsive hypocrites of all. I loathed them
I had no creed. I knew of no ideals. The only thing I believed in
was the cold, drab theory of the struggle for existence and the
survival of the fittest. This could not satisfy a heart that was
hungry for enthusiasm and affection, so dreams of family life
became my religion. Self-sacrificing devotion to one's family was
the only kind of altruism and idealism I did not flout
I was worth over a million, and my profits had reached enormous
dimensions, so I was regarded a most desirable match, and
match-makers pestered me as much as I would let them, but they
found me a hard man to suit
There was a homesick young man in my shop, a native of
Antomir, with whom I often chatted of our common birthplace.
His name was Mirmelstein. He was a little fellow with a massive
head and a neck that seemed to be too slender to support it. I liked
his face for its honest, ingenuous expression, but more especially
because I thought his eyes had a homesick look in them. He was a
poor mechanic, but I found him a steady job in my shipping
department
He could furnish me no information about Reb Sender, of whom
he had never heard before; he knew of the Minsker family, of
course, and he told me that Shiphrah, Matilda's mother, was dead;
that Yeffim, Matilda's brother, had been sent to Siberia some
three years before for complicity in the revolutionary movement,
and that Matilda herself had had a hair-breadth escape from arrest
and was living in Switzerland
He wrote to Antomir, and a few weeks later he brought me the sad
information that Reb Sender had been dead for several years, and
that his wife had married again
CHAPTER VII
ONE day in November less than six months after I
had learned of Yeffim Minsker's arrest and of Matilda's escape, as
I was making the rounds of my several departments, little
Mirmelstein accosted me timidly
"Yeffim Minsker and his sister are here," he said, with the smile of
one breaking an interesting surprise
I paused, flushing. I feigned indifference and preoccupation, but
the next moment I cast off all pretense
"Are they really?" I asked
He produced a clipping from a socialist Yiddish daily containing
an advertisement of a public meeting to be held at Cooper
Institute under the auspices of an organization of Russian
revolutionists for the purpose of welcoming Yefflm and another
man, a Doctor Gorsky, both of whom had recently escaped from
Siberia. The revolutionary movement was then at its height in
Russia, and the Jews were among its foremost and bravest leaders
(which, by the way, accounts for the anti-Jewish riots and
massacres which the Government inspired and encouraged quite
openly). As was mentioned in an early chapter of this book, the
then Minister of the Interior was the same man who had been
Director of Police over the whole empire at the time of the
anti-Jewish riots which followed the assassination of Czar
Alexander II. in 1881, and which started the great emigration of
Jews to America. From time to time some distinguished
revolutionist would be sent to America for subscriptions to the
cause. This was the mission of Doctor Gorsky and Yeffim. They
were here, not as immigrants, but merely to raise funds for the
movement at home
As for Matilda, it appeared that Doctor Gorsky was her husband.
Whether he had married her in Russia, before his arrest, or in
Switzerland, where he and her brother had spent some time after
their escape from exile, Mirmelstein could not tell me. Matilda's
name was not mentioned in the advertisement, but my
shipping-clerk had heard of her arrival and marriage from some
Antomir people.
I could scarcely do anything that day. I was in a fever of
excitement. "Do I still love her?" I wondered
I made up my mind to attend the Cooper Institute meeting. It was a
bold venture, for the crowd was sure to contain some socialist
cloak-makers who held me in anything but esteem. But then I had
not had a strike in my shop for several years, and it did not seem
likely that they would offer me an insult. Anyhow, the temptation
to see Matilda was too strong. I had to go.
She was certain to be on the platform, and all I wanted was to take
a look at her from the auditorium. "And who knows but I may
have a chance to speak to her, too," I thought.
It was a cold evening in the latter part of November. I went to the
meeting in my expensive fur coat (although fur coats were still a
rare spectacle in the streets), with a secret foretaste of the
impression my prosperity would make upon Matilda. It was a fatal
mistake
It was twenty minutes to 8 when I reached the front door of the
historical meeting-hall, but it was already crowded to
overflowing, and the policemen guarding the brightly illuminated
entrance tumed me away with a crowd of others. I was in despair.
I tried again, and this time, apparently owing to my mink coat, I
was admitted. Every seat in the vast underground auditorium was
occupied. But few people were allowed to stand, in the rear of the
hall, and I was one of them. From the chat I overheard around me
I gathered that there were scores of men and women in the
audience who had been in the thick of sensational conflicts in the
great crusade for liberty that was then going on in Russia. I
questioned a man who stood beside me about Doctor Gorsky, and
from his answers I gained the impression that Matilda's husband
was considered one of the pluckiest men in the struggle. At the
time of his arrest he was practising medicine
Ranged on the platform on either side of the speaker's desk were
about a hundred chairs, several of which in the two front rows
were kept vacant.
Presently there was a stir on the platform. A group of men and
women made their appearance and seated themselves on the
unoccupied chairs. They were greeted with passionate cheers and
applause
One of them was Matilda. I recognized her at once. Her curly
brown hair was gray at the temples, and her oval little face was
somewhat bloated, and she was stouter than she had been
twenty-one years before; but all this was merely like a new dress.
Had I met her in the street, I might have merely felt that she
looked familiar to me, without being able to trace her. As it was,
she was strikingly the same as I had known her, though not
precisely the same as I had pictured her, of late years, at least.
Some errors had stolen into my image of her, and now, that I saw
her in the flesh, I recalled her likeness of twenty-one years before,
and she now looked precisely as she had done then. She was as
interesting as ever. I was in such a turmoil that I scarcely knew
what was happening on the platform. Did I still love her, or was it
merely the excitement of beholding a living memory of my youth?
One thing was certain--the feeling of reverence and awe with
which I had once been wont to view her and her parents was
stirring in my heart again. For the moment I did not seem to be the
man who owned a big cloak-factory and was worth over a million
American dollars
The chairman had been speaking for some time before I became
aware of his existence. As his address was in Russian and I had
long since unlearned what little I had ever known of that
language, his words were Greek to me
Matilda was flanked by two men, both with full beards, one fair
and the other rather dark. The one of the fair complexion and
beard was Yeffim, although I recognized him by his resemblance
to Matilda and more especially to her father, rather than by his
image of twenty-one years ago. I supposed that the man on the
other side of her, the one with the dark beard, was her husband,
and I asked the man by my side about it, but he did not know
Several speakers made brief addresses of welcome. One of these
spoke in Yiddish and one in English, so I understood them. They
dealt with the revolution and the anti-Semitic atrocities, and paid
glowing tributes to the new-comers. They were interrupted by
outburst after outburst of enthusiasm and indignation. When
finally Doctor Gorsky was introduced (it was the man with the
dark beard) there was a veritable pandemonium of applause,
cheers, and ejaculations that lasted many minutes. He spoke in
Russian and he seemed to be a poor speaker. I searched his face
for evidence of valor and strength, but did not seem to find any. I
thought it was rather a weak face--weak and kindly and
girlish-looking. His beard, which was long and thin, did not
become him. I asked myself whether I was jealous of him, and the
question seemed so incongruous, so remote. He made a good
impression on me. The fact that this man, who was possessed of
indomitable courage, had a weak, good-natured face interested me
greatly, and the fact that he had gone through much suffering
made a strong appeal to my sympathies (somehow his martyrdom
was linked in my mind to his futility as a speaker). I warmed to
him
He was followed by Yeffim, and the scene of wild enthusiasm was
repeated
When Minsker had finished the chairman declared the meeting
closed. There was a rush for the platform. It was quite high above
the auditorium floor; unless one reached it by way of the
committee-room, which was a considerable distance to the right,
it had to be mounted, not without an effort, by means of the chairs
in the press inclosure. After some hesitation I made a dash for one
of these chairs, and the next minute I was within three or four feet
from Matilda, but with an excited crowd between us. Everybody
wanted to shake hands with the heroes. The jam and scramble
were so great that Doctor Gorsky, Yeffim, and Matilda had to
extricate themselves and to escape into the spacious
committee-room in the rear of the platform
Some minutes later I stood by her side in that room, amid a cluster
of revolutionists, her husband and Yeffim being each the center of
another crowd in the same room
"I beg your pardon," I began, with a sheepish smile. "Do you know
me."
Her glittering brown eyes fixed me with a curious look. "My name
is David Levinsky," I added. "'Dovid,' the Talmudic student to
whom you gave money with which to go to America."
"Of course I know you," she snapped. taking stock of my mink
overcoat. "And I have heard about you, too. You have a lot of
money, haven't you? I see you are wearing a costly fur coat." And
she brutally turned to speak to somebody else
My heart stood still. I wanted to say something, to assure her that I
was not so black as the socialists painted me. I had an impulse to
offer her a generous contribution to the cause, but I had not the
courage to open my mouth again. The bystanders were eying me
with glances that seemed to say, "The idea of a fellow like this
being here!" I was a despicable "bourgeois," a "capitalist" of the
kind whose presence at a socialist meeting was a sacrilege
I slunk out of the room feeling like a whipped cur. "Why, she is a
perfect savage!" I thought. "But then what else can you expect of a
socialist?"
I thought of the scenes that had passed between her and myself in
her mother's house and I sneered. "A socialist, a good, pure soul,
indeed!" I mused, gloatingly. "That's exactly like them. A bunch
of hypocrites, that's all they are."
At the same time I was nagging myself for having had so little
sense as to sport my prosperity before a socialist, of all the people
in the world
A few days later the episode seemed to have occurred many years
before. It did not bother me. Nor did Matilda
CHAPTER VIII
IT was an afternoon in April. My chief
bookkeeper, one of my stenographers, Bender, and myself were
hard at work at my Broadway factory amid a muffled turmoil of
industry. There were important questions of credit to dispose of
and letters to answer. I was taking up account after account,
weighing my data with the utmost care, giving every detail my
closest attention. And all the while I was thus absorbed, seemingly
oblivious to everything else, I was alive to the fact that it was
Passover and the eve of the anniversary of my mother's death; that
three or four hours later I should be solemnizing her memorial day
at the new Synagogue of the Sons of Antomir; that while there I
should sit next to Mr. Kaplan, a venerable-looking man to whose
daughter I had recently become engaged, and that after the service
I was to accompany Mr. Kaplan to his house and spend the
evening in the bosom of his family, by the side of the girl that was
soon to become my wife. My consciousness of all this grew
keener every minute, till it began to interfere with my work.
I was getting fidgety. Finally I broke off in the middle of a
sentence
I washed myself, combed my plentiful crop of dark hair, carefully
brushed myself, and put on my spring overcoat and derby
hat--both of a dark-brown hue
"I sha'n't be back until the day after to-morrow," I announced to
Bender, after giving him some orders
"Till day after to-morrow!" he said, with reproachful amazement
I nodded
"Can't you put it off? This is no time for being away," he grumbled
"It can't be helped."
"You're not going out of town, are you?"
"What difference does it make?" After a pause I added: "It isn't on
business. It's a private matter."
"Oh!" he uttered, with evident relief. Nothing hurt his pride more
than to suspect me of having business secrets from him.
He was a married man now, having, less than a year ago, wedded a
sweet little girl, a cousin, who was as simple-hearted and
simple-minded as himself, and to whom he had practically been
engaged since boyhood. His salary was one hundred and
twenty-five dollars a week now. I was at home in their
well-ordered little establishment, the sunshine that filled it having
given an added impulse to my matrimonial aspirations
I betook myself to the new Antomir Synagogue. The congregation
had greatly grown in prosperity and had recently moved from the
ramshackle little frame building that had been its home into an
impressive granite structure, formerly a Presbyterian church. This
was my first visit to the building.
Indeed, I had not seen the inside of its predecessor, the little old
house of prayer that had borne the name of my native town, years
before it was abandoned. In former years, even some time after I
had become a convinced free-thinker, I had visited it at least twice
a year-on my two memorial days--that is, on the anniversaries of
the death of my parents. I had not done so since I had read
Spencer. This time, however, the anniversary of my mother's
death had a peculiar meaning for me. Vaguely as a result of my
new mood, and distinctly as a result of my betrothal, I was lured
to the synagogue by a force against which my Spencerian
agnosticism was powerless
I found the interior of the building brilliantly illuminated. The
woodwork of the "stand" and the bible platform, the
velvet-and-gold curtains of the Holy Ark, and the fresco paintings
on the walls and ceiling were screamingly new and gaudy. So
were the ornamental electric fixtures. Altogether the place
reminded me of a reformed German synagogue rather than of the
kind with which my idea of Judaism had always been identified.
This seemed to accentuate the fact that the building had until
recently been a Christian church. The glaring electric lights and
the glittering decorations struck me as something unholy. Still, the
scattered handful of worshipers I found there, and more
particularly the beadle, looked orthodox enough, and I gradually
became reconciled to the place as a house of God
The beadle was a new incumbent. Better dressed and with more
authority in his appearance than the man who had superintended
the old place, he comported well with the look of things in the
new synagogue. After obsequiously directing me to the pew of my
prospective father-in-law, who had not yet arrived, he inserted a
stout, tall candle into one of the sockets of the "stand" and lit it. It
was mine. It was to burn uninterruptedly for my mother's soul for
the next twenty-four hours. Mr.
Kaplan's pew was in a place of honor--that is, by the east wall, near
the Holy Ark. To see my memorial candle I had to take a few
steps back. I did so, and as I watched its flame memories and
images took possession of me that turned my present life into a
dream and my Russian past into reality.
According to the Talmud there is a close affinity between the
human soul and light, for "the spirit of man is the lamp of God,"
as Solomon puts it in his Parables. Hence the custom of lighting
candles or lamps for the dead. And so, as I gazed at that huge
candle commemorating the day when my mother gave her life for
me, I felt as though its light was part of her spirit. The gentle
flutter of its flame seemed to be speaking in the sacred whisper of
a grave-yard
"Mother dear! Mother dear!" my heart was saying. And then:
"Thank God, mother dear! I own a large factory. I am a rich man
and I am going to be married to the daughter of a fine Jew, a man
of substance and Talmud. And the family comes from around
Antomir, too. Ah, if you were here to escort me to the wedding
canopy!"
The number of worshipers was slowly increasing. An old woman
made her appearance in the gallery reserved for her sex. At last
Mr. Kaplan, the father of my fiancée, entered the synagogue--a
man of sixty, with a gray patriarchal beard and a general
appearance that bespoke Talmudic scholarship and prosperity. He
was a native of a small town near Antomir, where his father had
been rabbi, and was now a retired flour merchant, having come to
America in the seventies. He had always been one of the pillars of
the Synagogue of the Sons of Antomir. In the days when I was a
frequenter at the old house of prayer the social chasm between
him and myself was so wide that the notion of my being engaged
to a daughter of his would have seemed absurd. Which, by the
way, was one of the attractions that his house now had for me
"Good holiday, Mr. Kaplan!" some of the other worshipers saluted
him, as he made his way toward his pew
"Good holiday! Good holiday!" he responded, with dignified
geniality
I could see that he was aware of my presence but carefully avoided
looking at me until he should be near enough for me to greet him.
He was a kindly, serious-minded man, sincerely devout, and not
over-bright. He had his little vanities and I was willing to humor
them
"Good holiday, Mr. Kaplan!" I called out to him
"Good holiday! Good holiday, David!" he returned, amiably. "Here
already? Ahead of me? That's good! Just follow the path of
Judaism and everything will be all right." "How's everybody?" I
asked
"All are well, thank God."
"How's Fanny?"
"Now you're talking. That's the real question, isn't it?" he chaffed
me, with dignity. "She's well, thank God."
He introduced me to the cantor--a pug-nosed man with a pale face
and a skimpy little beard of a brownish hue
"Our new cantor, the celebrated Jacob Goldstein!" he said. "And
this is Mr.
David Levinsky, my intended son-in-law. An Antomir man. Was a
fine scholar over there and still remembers a lot of Talmud."
The newly arrived synagogue tenor was really a celebrated man, in
the Antomir section of Russia, at least. His coming had been
conceived as a sensational feature of the opening of the new
synagogue. While "town cantor" in Antomir he had received the
highest salary ever paid there. The contract that had induced him
to come over to America pledged him nearly five times as much.
Thus the New York Sons of Antomir were not only able to parade
a famous cantor before the multitude of other New York
congregations, but also to prove to the people at home that they
were the financial superiors of the whole town of their birth. So
far, however, as the New York end of the sensation was
concerned, there was a good-sized bee in the honey. The imported
cantor was a tragic disappointment. The trouble was that his New
York audiences were far more critical and exacting than the people
in Antomir, and he was not up to their standard. For one thing,
many of the Sons of Antomir, and others who came to their
synagogue to hear the new singer, people who had mostly lived in
poverty and ignorance at home, now had a piano or a violin in the
house, with a son or a daughter to play it, and had become
frequenters of the Metropolitan Opera House or the Carnegie
Music Hall; for another, the New York Ghetto was full of good
concerts and all other sorts of musical entertainments, so much so
that good music had become all but part of the daily life of the
Jewish tenement population; for a third, the audiences of the
imported cantor included people who had lived in much larger
European cities than Antomir, in such places as Warsaw, Odessa,
Lemberg, or Vienna, for example, where they had heard much
better cantors than Goldstein. Then, too, life in New York had
Americanized my fellow-townspeople, modernized their tastes,
broadened them out. As a consequence, the methods of the man
who had won the admiration of their native town seemed to them
old-fashioned, crude, droll
Still, the trustees, and several others who were responsible for the
coming of the pug-nosed singer, persisted in speaking of him as "a
greater tenor than Jean de Rezske," and my prospective
father-in-law was a trustee, and a good-natured man to boot, so he
had compassion for him
"In the old country when we meet a new-comer we only say, 'Peace
to you,'" I remarked to the cantor, gaily. "Here we say this and
something else, besides. We ask him how he likes America."
"But I have not yet seen it," the cantor returned, with a broad smile
in which his pug nose seemed to grow in size
I told him the threadbare joke of American newspaper reporters
boarding an incoming steamer at Sandy Hook and asking some
European celebrity how he likes America hours before he has set
foot on its soil
"That's what we call 'hurry up,'" Kaplan remarked
"That means quick, doesn't it?" the cantor asked, with another
broad smile
"You're picking up English rather fast," I jested
"He has not only a fine voice, but a fine head, too," Kaplan put in
"I know what 'all right' means, too," the cantor laughed. I thought
there was servility in his laugh, and I ascribed it to the lukewarm
reception with which he had met. I was touched. We talked of
Antomir, and although a conversation of this kind was nothing
new to me, yet what he said of the streets, market-places, the
bridge, the synagogues, and of some of the people of the town
interested me inexpressibly
Presently the service was begun--not by the imported singer, but by
an amateur from among the worshipers, the service on a Passover
evening not being considered important enough to be conducted
by a professional cantor of consequence
My heart was all in Antomir, in the good old Antomir of
synagogues and Talmud scholars and old-fashioned marriages, not
of college students, revolutionists, and Matildas
When the service was over I stepped up close to the Holy Ark and
recited the Prayer for the Dead, in chorus with several other men
and boys. As I cast a glance at my "memorial candle" my mother
loomed saintly through its flame. I beheld myself in her arms, a
boy of four, on our way to the synagogue, where I was to be taught
to parrot the very words that I was now saying for her spirit
The Prayer for the Dead was at an end. "A good holiday! A merry
holiday!" rang on all sides, as the slender crowd streamed
chatteringly toward the door
Mr. Kaplan, the cantor, and several other men, clustering together,
lingered to bandy reminiscences of Antomir, interspersing them
with "bits of law."
CHAPTER IX
The Kaplans occupied a large, old house on Henry
Street that had been built at a period when the neighborhood was
considered the best in the city. While Kaplan and I were taking off
our overcoats in the broad, carpeted, rather dimly lighted hall, a
dark-eyed girl appeared at the head of a steep stairway
"Hello, Dave! You're a good boy," she shouted, joyously, as she ran
down to meet me with coquettish complacency
She had regular features, and her face wore an expression of ease
and self-satisfaction. Her dark eyes were large and pretty, and
altogether she was rather good-looking. Indeed, there seemed to
be no reason why she should not be decidedly pretty, but she was
not. Perhaps it was because of that self-satisfied air of hers, the air
of one whom nothing in the world could startle or stir.
Temperamentally she reminded me somewhat of Miss
Kalmanovitch, but she was the better-looking of the two. I was not
in love with her, but she certainly was not repulsive to me
"Good holiday, dad! Good holiday, Dave!" she saluted us in
Yiddish, throwing out her chest and squaring her shoulders as she
reached us
She was born in New York and had graduated at a public
grammar-school and English was the only language which she
spoke like one born to speak it, and yet her Yiddish greeting was
precisely what it would have been had she been born and bred in
Antomir
Her "Good holiday, dad. Good holiday, Dave!" went straight to my
heart
"Well, I've brought him to you, haven't I? Are you pleased?" her
father said, with affectionate grimness, in Yiddish
"Oh, you're a dandy dad. You're just sweet," she returned, in
English, putting up her red lips as if he were her baby. And this,
too, went to my heart
When her father had gone to have his shoes changed for slippers
and before her mother came down from her bedroom, where she
was apparently dressing for supper, Fanny slipped her arm around
me and I kissed her lips and eyes
A chuckle rang out somewhere near by. Standing in the doorway
of the back parlor, Mefisto-like, was Mary, Fanny's
twelve-year-old sister
"Shame!" she said, gloatingly
"The nasty thing!" Fanny exclaimed, half gaily, half in anger
"You're nasty yourself," returned Mary, making faces at her sister
"Shut up or I'll knock your head off."
"Stop quarreling, kids," I intervened. Then, addressing myself to
Mary, "Can you spell 'eavesdropping'?"
Mary laughed
"Never mind laughing," I insisted. "Do you know what
eavesdropping means? Is it a nice thing to do? Anyhow, when
you're as big as Fanny and you have a sweetheart, won't you let
him kiss you?" As I said this I took Fanny's hand tenderly
"She has sweethearts already," said Fanny. "She is running around
with three boys."
"I ain't," Mary protested, pouting.
"Well, three sweethearts means no sweetheart at all," I remarked
Fanny and I went into the front parlor, a vast, high-ceiled room, as
large as the average four-room flat in the "modern
apartment-house" that had recently been completed on the next
block. It was drearily too large for the habits of the East Side of
my time, depressingly out of keeping with its sense of home. It
had lanky pink-and-gold furniture and a heavy bright carpet, all of
which had a forbidding effect. It was as though the chairs and the
sofa had been placed there, not for use, but for storage. Nor was
there enough furniture to give the room an air of being inhabited,
the six pink-and-gold pieces and the marble-topped center-table
losing themselves in spaces full of gaudy desolation
"She's awful saucy," said Fanny.
I caught her in my arms. "I have not three sweethearts. I have only
one, and that's a real one," I cooed
"Only one? Really and truly?" she demanded, playfully. She
gathered me to her plump bosom, planting a deep, slow, sensuous
kiss on my lips
I cast a side-glance to ascertain if Mary was not spying upon us
"Don't be uneasy," Fanny whispered. "She won't dare. We can kiss
all we want."
I thought she was putting it in a rather matter-of-fact way, but I
kissed her with passion, all the same
"Dearest! If you knew how happy I am," I murmured
"Are you really? Oh, I don't believe you," she jested,
self-sufficiently.
"You're just pretending, that's all. Let me kiss your sweet mouthie
again."
She did, and then, breaking away at the sound of her mother's
lumbering steps, she threw out her bosom with an upward jerk, a
trick she had which I disliked
Ten minutes later the whole family, myself included, were seated
around a large oval table in the basement dining-room. Besides
the members already known to the reader, there was Fanny's
mother, a corpulent woman with a fat, diabetic face and large,
listless eyes, and Fanny's brother, Rubie, a boy with intense
features, one year younger than Mary. Rubie was the youngest of
five children, the oldest two, daughters, being married
Mr. Kaplan was in his skull-cap, while I wore my dark-brown
derby.
Everything in this house was strictly orthodox and as old-fashioned
as the American environment would permit
That there was not a trace of leavened bread in the house, its place
being taken by thin, flat, unleavened "matzos," and that the repast
included "matzo balls," wine, mead, and other accessories of a
Passover meal, is a matter of course
Mr. Kaplan was wrapped up in his family, and on this occasion,
though he presided with conscious dignity, he was in one of his
best domestic moods, talkative, and affectionately facetious. The
children were the real masters of his house
Watching his wife nag Rubie because he would not accept another
matzo ball, Mr. Kaplan said: "Don't worry, Malkah. Your matzo
balls are delicious, even if your 'only son' won't do justice to them.
Aren't they, David?"
"They certainly are," I answered. "What is more, they have the
genuine Antomir taste to them."
"Hear that, Fanny?" Mr. Kaplan said to my betrothed. "You had
better learn to make matzo balls exactly like these. He likes
everything that smells of Antomir, you know." "That's all right,"
said Malkah. "Fanny is a good housekeeper. May I have as good a
year."
"It's a good thing you say it," her husband jested. "Else David
might break the engagement."
"Let him," said Fanny, with a jerk of her bosom and a theatrical
glance at me. "I really don't know how to make matzo balls, and
Passover is nearly over, so there's no time for mamma to show me
how to do it."
"I'll do so next year," her mother said, with an affectionate smile
that kindled life in her diabetic eyes. "The two of you will then
have to pass Passover with us."
"I accept the invitation at once," I said
"Provided you attend the seder, too," remarked Kaplan, referring to
the elaborate and picturesque ceremony attending the first two
suppers of the great festival
I had been expected to partake of those ceremonial repasts on the
first and second nights of this Passover, but had been unavoidably
kept away from the city. Kaplan had resented it, and even now, as
he spoke of the next year's seder, there was reproach in his voice.
"I will, I will," I said, ardently.
"One mustn't do business on a seder night. It isn't right."
"Give it to him, pa!" Fanny cut in.
"I am not joking," Kaplan persisted. "One has got to be a Jew.
Excuse me, David, for speaking like that, but you re going to be as
good as a son of mine and I have a right to talk to you in this
way."
"Why, of course, you have!" I answered, with filial docility
His lecture bored me, but it did me good, too. It was sweet to hear
myself called "as good as a son" by this man of Talmudic
education who was at the same time a man of substance and of
excellent family
The chicken was served. My intended wife ate voraciously, biting
lustily and chewing with gusto. The sight of it jarred on me
somewhat, but I overruled myself. "It's all right," I thought. "She's
a healthy girl. She'll make me a strong mate, and she'll bear me
healthy children."
I had a temptation to take her in my arms and kiss her. "I am not in
love with her, and yet I am so happy," I thought. "Oh, love isn't
essential to happiness. Not at all. Our old generation is right."
Fanny's reading, which was only an occasional performance, was
confined to the cheapest stories published. Even the popular
novels of the day, the "best sellers," seemed to be beyond her
depth. Her intellectual range was not much wider than that of her
old-fashioned mother, whose literary attainments were restricted
to the reading of the Yiddish Commentary on the Pentateuch. She
often interrupted me or her mother; everybody except her father.
But all this seemed to be quite natural and fitting. "She is
expected to be a wife, a mother, and a housekeeper," I reflected,
"and that she will know how to be. Everything else is nonsense. I
don't want to discuss Spencer with her, do I?"
Kaplan quoted the opening words of a passage in the Talmud
bearing upon piety as the bulwark of happiness. I took it up,
finishing the passage for him
"See?" he said to his wife. "I have told you he remembers his
Talmud pretty well, haven't I?"
"When a man has a good head he has a good head," she returned,
radiantly
Rubie went to a public school, but he spent three or four hours
every afternoon at an old-fashioned Talmudic academy, or
"yeshivah." There were two such "yeshivahs" on the East Side,
and they were attended by boys of the most orthodox families in
the Ghetto. I had never met such boys before. That an American
school-boy should read Talmud seemed a joke to me. I could not
take Rubie's holy studies seriously. As we now sat at the table I
banteringly asked him about the last page he had read. He
answered my question, and at his father's command he ran
up-stairs, into the back parlor, where stood two huge bookcases
filled with glittering folios of the Talmud and other volumes of
holy lore, and came back with one containing the page he had
named
"Find it and let David see what you can do," his father said
Rubie complied, reading the text and interpreting it in Yiddish
precisely as I should have done when I was eleven years old. He
even gesticulated and swayed backward and forward as I used to
do. To complete the picture, his mother, watching him, beamed as
my mother used to do when she watched me reading at the
Preacher's Synagogue or at home in our wretched basement. I was
deeply affected
"He's all right!" I said
"He's a loafer, just the same," his father said, gaily. "If he had as
much appetite for his Talmud as he has for his school-books he
would really be all right." "What do you want of him?" Malkah
interceded. "Doesn't he work hard enough as it is? He hardly has
an hour's rest."
"There you have it! I didn't speak respectfully enough of her 'only
son.' I beg your pardon, Malkah," Mr. Kaplan said, facetiously
The wedding had been set for one of the half-holidays included in
the Feast of Tabernacles, about six months later. Mrs. Kaplan said
something about her plans concerning the event. Fanny objected.
Her mother insisted, and it looked like an altercation, when the
head of the family called them to order
"And where are you going for your honeymoon, Fanny?" asked
Mary
"That's none of your business," her sister retorted
"She's stuck up because she's going to be married," Mary jeered
"Shut your mouth," her father growled
"Do you know my idea of a honeymoon?" said I. "That is, if it were
possible--if Russia didn't have that accursed government of hers.
We should take a trip to Antomir." "Wouldn't that be lovely!" said
Fanny. "We would stop in Paris, wouldn't we?"
Fanny and her mother resumed their discussion of the preparations
for the wedding. I scarcely listened, yet I was thrilled. I gazed at
Fanny, trying to picture her as the mother of my first child. "If it's
a girl she'll be named for mother, of course," I mused. I reflected
with mortification that my mother's name could not be left in its
original form, but would have to be Americanized, and for the
moment this seemed to be a matter of the gravest concern to me
My attitude toward Fanny and our prospective marriage was
primitive enough, and yet our engagement had an ennobling effect
on me. I was in a lofty mood.
My heart sang of motives higher than the mere feathering of my
own nest. The vision of working for my wife and children
somehow induced a yearning for altruism in a broader sense.
While free from any vestige of religion, in the ordinary meaning
of the word, I was tingling with a religious ecstasy that was based
on a sense of public duty. The Synagogue of the Sons of Antomir
seemed to represent not a creed, but unselfishness. I donated
generously to it. Also, I subscribed a liberal sum to an East Side
hospital of which Kaplan was a member, and to other institutions.
The sum I gave to the hospital was so large that it made a stir, and
a conservative Yiddish daily printed my photograph and a short
sketch of my life. I thought of the promise I had given Naphtali,
before leaving Antomir, to send him a "ship ticket." I had thought
of it many times before, but I had never even sought to discover
his whereabouts. This time, however, I throbbed with a firm
resolution to get his address, and, in case he was poor, to bring him
over and liberally provide for his future
My wedding loomed as the beginning of a new era in my life. It
appealed to my imagination as a new birth, like my coming to
America. I looked forward to it with mixed awe and bliss
Three or four months later, however, something happened that
played havoc with that feeling
BOOK XII
MISS TEVKIN
CHAPTER I
ON a Saturday morning
in August I took a train for Tannersville, Catskill Mountains,
where the Kaplan family had a cottage. I was to stay with them
over Sunday. I had been expected to be there the day before, but
had been detained, August being part of our busiest season. While
in the smoking-car it came over me that from Kaplan's point of
view my journey was a flagrant violation of the Sabbath and that
it was sure to make things awkward.
Whether my riding on Saturday would actually offend his religious
sensibilities or not (for in America one gets used to seeing such
sins committed even by the faithful), it was certain to offend his
sense of the respect I owed him. And so, to avoid a sullen
reception I decided to stop overnight in another Catskill town and
not to make my appearance at Tannersville until the following day
The insignificant change was pregnant with momentous results
It was lunch-time when I alighted from the train, amid a hubbub of
gay voices. Women and children were greeting their husbands and
fathers who had come from the city to join them for the week-end.
I had never been to the mountains before, nor practically ever
taken a day's vacation. It was so full of ozone, so full of
health-giving balm, it was almost overpowering. I was inhaling it
in deep, intoxicating gulps. It gave me a pleasure so keen it
seemed to verge on pain. It was so unlike the air I had left in the
sweltering city that the place seemed to belong to another planet
I stopped at the Rigi Kulm House. There were several other hotels
or boarding-houses in the village, and all of them except one were
occupied by our people, the Rigi Kulm being the largest and most
expensive hostelry in the neighborhood. lt was crowded, and I had
to content myself with sleeping-accommodations in one of the
near-by cottages, in which the hotel-keeper hired rooms for his
overflow business, taking my meals in the hotel
The Rigi Kulm stood at the end of the village and my cottage was
across the main country road from it. Both were on high ground.
Viewed from the veranda of the hotel, the village lay to the right
and the open country--a fascinating landscape of meadowland,
timbered hills, and a brook that lost itself in a grove--to the left.
The mountains rose in two ranges, one in front of the hotel and
one in the rear
The bulk of the boarders at the Rigi Kulm was made up of families
of cloak-manufacturers, shirt-manufacturers,
ladies'-waist-manufacturers, cigar-manufacturers, clothiers,
furriers, jewelers, leather-goods men, real-estate men, physicians,
dentists, lawyers--in most cases people who had blossomed out
into nabobs in the course of the last few years. The crowd was
ablaze with diamonds, painted cheeks, and bright-colored silks. It
was a babel of blatant self-consciousness, a miniature of the
parvenu smugness that had spread like wild-fire over the country
after a period of need and low spirits.
In addition to families who were there for the whole season--that
is, from the Fourth of July to the first Monday in October--the
hotel contained a considerable number of single young people, of
both sexes--salesmen, stenographers, bookkeepers,
librarians--who came for a fortnight's vacation.
These were known as "two-weekers." They occupied tiny rooms,
usually two girls or two men in a room. Each of these girls had a
large supply of dresses and shirt-waists of the latest style, and
altogether the two weeks' vacation ate up, in many cases, the
savings of months
To be sure, the "two-weekers" of the gentle sex were not the only
marriageable young women in the place. They had a number of
heiresses to compete with
I was too conspicuous a figure in the needle industries for my
name to be unknown to the guests of a hotel like the Rigi Kulm
House. Moreover, several of the people I found there were my
personal acquaintances. One of these was Nodelman's cousin,
Mrs. Kalch, or Auntie Yetta, the gaunt, childless woman of the
solemn countenance and the gay disposition, of the huge gold
teeth, and the fingers heavily laden with diamonds. I had not seen
her for months.
As the lessee of the hotel marched me into his great dining-room
she rushed out to me, her teeth aglitter with hospitality, and made
me take a seat at a table which she shared with her husband, the
moving-van man, and two middle-aged women. I could see that
she had not heard of my engagement, and to avoid awkward
interrogations concerning the whereabouts of my fiancée I
omitted to announce it
"I know what you have come here for," she said, archly. "You can't
fool Auntie Yetta. But you have come to the right place. I can tell
you that a larger assortment of beautiful young ladies you never
saw, Mr. Levinsky. And they're educated, too. If you don't find
your predestined one here you'll never find her. What do you say,
Mr. Rivesman?" she addressed the proprietor of the hotel, who
stood by and whom I had known for many years
"I agree with you thoroughly, Mrs. Kalch," he answered, smilingly.
"But Mr.
Levinsky tells me he can stay only one day with us."
"Plenty of time for a smart man to pick a girl in a place like this.
Besides, you just tell him that you have a lot of fine, educated
young ladies, Mr. Rivesman. He is an educated gentleman, Mr.
Levinsky is, and if he knows the kind of boarders you have he'll
stay longer." "I know Mr. Levinsky is an educated man,"
Rivesman answered. "As for our boarders, they're all
fine--superfine."
"So you've got to find your predestined one here," she resumed,
turning to me again. "Otherwise you can't leave this place. See?"
"But suppose I have found her already--elsewhere?"
"You had no business to. Anyhow, if she doesn't know enough to
hold you tight and you are here to spend a week-end with other
girls, she does not deserve to have you."
"But I am not spending it with other girls."
"What else did you come here for?" And she screwed up one-half
of her face into a wink so grotesque that I could not help bursting
into laughter
About an hour after lunch I sat in a rocking-chair on the front
porch, gazing at the landscape. The sky was a blue so subtle and
so noble that it seemed as though I had never seen such a sky
before. "This is just the kind of place for God to live in," I mused.
Whereupon I decided that this was what was meant by the word
heaven, whereas the blue overhanging the city was a "mere sky."
The village was full of blinding, scorching sunshine, yet the air
was entrancingly ref reshing. The veranda was almost deserted,
most of the women being in their rooms, gossiping or dressing for
the arrival of their husbands, fathers, sweethearts, or possible
sweethearts. Birds were embroidering the silence of the hour with
a silvery whisper that spoke of rest and good-will. The slender
brook to the left of me was droning like a bee. Everything was
charged with peace and soothing mystery. A feeling of lassitude
descended upon me. I was too lazy even to think, but the landscape
was continually forcing images on my mind. A hollow in the slope
of one of the mountains in front of me looked for all the world
like a huge spoon.
Half of it was dark, while the other half was full of golden light. It
seemed as though it was the sun's favorite spot. "The enchanted
spot," I named it. I tried to imagine that oval-shaped hollow at
night. I visioned a company of ghosts tiptoeing their way to it and
stealing a night's lodging in the "spoon," and later, at the approach
of dawn, behold! the ghosts were fleeing to the woods near by
Rising behind that mountain was the timbered peak of another one.
It looked like the fur cap of a monster, and I wondered what that
monster was thinking of
When I gazed at the mountain directly opposite the hotel I had a
feeling of disappointment. I knew that it was very high, that it
took hours to climb it, but I failed to realize it
It was seemingly quite low and commonplace. Darkling at the foot
of it was what looked like a moat choked with underbrush and
weeds. The spot was about a mile and a half from the hotel, yet it
seemed to be only a minute's walk from me. But then a bird that
was flying over that moat at the moment, winging its way straight
across it, was apparently making no progress. Was this region
exempt from the laws of space and distance? The bewitching azure
of the sky and the divine taste of the air seemed to bear out a
feeling that it was exempt from any law of nature with which I
was familiar. The mountain-peak directly opposite the hotel
looked weird now. Was it peopled with Liliputians? Another bird
made itself heard somewhere in the underbrush flanking the
brook. It was saying something in querulous accents. I knew
nothing of birds, and the song or call of this one sounded so queer
to me that I was almost frightened. All of which tended to
enhance the uncanny majesty of the whole landscape
Presently I heard Mrs. Kalch calling to me. She was coming along
the veranda, resplendent in a purple dress, a huge diamond
breastpin, and huge diamond earrings
"All alone? All alone?" she exclaimed, as she paused, interlocking
her bediamonded fingers in a posture of mock amazement. "All
alone? Aren't you ashamed of yourself to sit moping out here,
when there are so many pretty young ladies around? Come along;
I'll find you one or two as sweet as sugar," kissing the tips of her
fingers
"Thank you, Mrs. Kalch, but I like it here."
"Mrs. Kalch! Auntie Yetta, you mean." And the lumps of gold in
her mouth glinted good-naturedly
"Very well. Auntie Yetta."
"That's better. Wait! Wait'll I come back."
She vanished. Presently she returned and, grabbing me by an arm,
stood me up and convoyed me half-way around the hotel to a
secluded spot on the rear porch where four girls were chatting
quietly
"Perhaps you'll find your predestined one among these," she said
"But I have found her already," I protested, with ill-concealed
annoyance
She took no heed of my words. After introducing me to two of the
girls and causing them to introduce me to the other two, she said:
"And now go for him, young ladies! You know who Mr. Levinsky
is, don't you? It isn't some kike. It's David Levinsky, the
cloak-manufacturer. Don't miss your chance. Try to catch him."
"I'm ready," said Miss Lazar, a pretty brunette in white
"She's all right," declared Auntie Yetta. "Her tongue cuts like a
knife that has just been sharpened, but she's as good as gold."
"Am I? I ain't so sure about it. You had better look out, Mr.
Levinsky," the brunette in white warned me
"Why, that just makes it interesting," I returned. "Danger is
tempting, you know. How are you going to catch me--with a net or
a trap?"
Auntie Yetta interrupted us. "I'm off," she said, rising to go. "I can
safely leave you in their hands, Mr. Levinsky. They'll take care of
you," she said, with a wink, as she departed
"You haven't answered my question," I said to Miss Lazar
"What was it?"
"She has a poor memory, don't you know," laughed a girl in a
yellow shirt-waist. She was not pretty, but she had winning blue
eyes and her yellow waist became her. "Mr. Levinsky wants to
know if you're going to catch him with a net or with a trap."
"And how about yourself?" I demanded. "What sort of tools have
you?"
"Oh, I don't think I have a chance with a big fish like yourself," she
replied
Her companions laughed
"Well, that's only her way of fishing," said Miss Lazar. "She tells
every fellow she has no chance with him. That's her way of getting
started. You'd better look out, Mr. Levinsky."
"And her way is to put on airs and look as if she could have
anybody she wanted," retorted the one of the blue eyes
"Stop, girls," said a third, who was also interesting. "If we are
going to give away one another's secrets there'll be no chance for
any of us."
I could see that their thrusts contained more fact than fiction and
more venom than gaiety, but it was all laughed off and everybody
seemed to be on the best of terms with everybody else. I looked at
this bevy of girls, each attractive in her way, and I became aware
of the fact that I was not in the least tempted to flirt with them. "I
am a well-behaved, sedate man now, and all because I am
engaged," I congratulated myself. "There is only one woman in
the world for me, and that is Fanny, my Fanny, the girl that is
going to be my wife in a few weeks from to-day
Directly in front of us and only a few yards off was a tennis-court.
It was unoccupied at first, but presently there appeared two girls
with rackets and balls and they started to play. One of these
arrested my attention violently, as it were. I thought her strikingly
interesting and pretty. I could not help gazing at her in spite of the
eyes that were watching me, and she was growing on me rapidly.
It seemed as though absolutely everything about her made a strong
appeal to me. She was tall and stately, with a fine pink
complexion and an effective mass of chestnut hair. I found that her
face attested intellectual dignity and a kindly disposition. I liked
her white, strong teeth. I liked the way she closed her lips and I
liked the way she opened them into a smile; the way she ran to
meet the ball and the way she betrayed disappointment when she
missed it. I still seemed to be congratulating myself upon my
indifference to women other than the one who was soon to bear
my name, when I became conscious of a mighty interest in this
girl. I said to myself that she looked refined from head to foot and
that her movements had a peculiar rhythm that was irresistible
Physically her cast of features was scarcely prettier than Fanny's,
for my betrothed was really a good-looking girl, but spiritually
there was a world of difference between their faces, the difference
between a Greek statue and one of those lay figures that one used
to see in front of cigar-stores
The other tennis-player was a short girl with a long face. I
reflected that if she were a little taller or her face were not so long
she might not be uninteresting, and that by contrast with her
companion she looked homelier than she actually was
Miss Lazar watched me closely
"Playing tennis is one way of fishing for fellows," she remarked
"So the racket is really a fishing-tackle in disguise, is it?" I
returned.
"But where are the fellows?"
"Aren't you one?" "No."
"Oh, these two girls go in for highbrow fellows," said a young
woman who had hitherto contented herself with smiling and
laughing. "They're highbrow themselves."
"Do they use big words?" I asked.
"Well, they're well read. I'll say that for them," observed Miss
Lazar, with a fine display of fairness
"College girls?"
"Only one of them."
"Which?"
"Guess."
"The tall one."
"I thought she'd be the one you'd pick. You'll have to guess again."
"What made you think I'd pick her for a college girl?" "You'll have
to guess that, too. Well, she is an educated girl, all the same."
She volunteered the further information that the tall girl's father
was a writer, and, as though anxious lest I should take him too
seriously, she hastened to add: "He doesn't write English, though.
It's Jewish, or Hebrew, or something."
"What's his name?" I asked
"Tevkin," she answered, under her breath
The name sounded remotely familiar to me. Had I seen it in some
Yiddish paper? Had I heard it somewhere? The intellectual East
Side was practically a foreign country to me, and I was proud of
the fact. I knew something of its orthodox Talmudists, but
scarcely anything of its modern men of letters, poets, thinkers,
humorists, whether they wrote in Yiddish, in Hebrew, in Russian,
or in English. If I took an occasional look at the socialist Yiddish
daily it was chiefly to see what was going on in the Cloak-makers'
Union. Otherwise I regarded everything that was written for the
East Side with contempt, and "East Side writer" was synonymous
with "greenhorn" and "tramp." Worse than that, it was identified
in my mind with socialism, anarchism, and trade-unionism. It was
something sinister, absurd, and uncouth
But Miss Tevkin was a beautiful girl, nevertheless. So I pitied her
for being the daughter of an East Side writer
The tennis game did not last long. Miss Tevkin and her companion
soon went indoors. I went out for a stroll by myself. I was thinking
of my journey to Tannersville the next morning. The enforced loss
of time chafed me. Of the strong impression which the tall girl
had produced on me not a trace seemed to have been left. She
bothered me no more than any other pretty girl I might have
recently come across. Young women with strikingly interesting
faces and figures were not rare in New York
I had not been walking five minutes when I impatiently returned to
the hotel to consult the time-tables
CHAPTER II
I WAS chatting with Rivesman, the lessee of the
hotel, across the counter that separated part of his office from the
lobby. As I have said, I had known him for many years. He had
formerly been in the insurance business, and he had at one time
acted as my insurance broker. He was a Talmudist, and well
versed in modern Hebrew literature, to boot. He advised me
concerning trains to Tannersville, and then we passed to the hotel
business and mutual acquaintances
Presently Miss Tevkin, apparently on her way from her room,
paused at the counter, by my side, to leave her key. She was
dressed for dinner, although it was not yet half past 4 o'clock and
the great Saturday-evening repast, for which train after train was
bringing husbands and other "weekenders" to the mountains, was
usually a very late affair
The dress she now wore was a modest gown of navy blue trimmed
with lace. The change of attire seemed to have produced a partial
change in her identity.
She was interesting in a new way, I thought
"Going to enjoy the fresh air?" Rivesman asked her, gallantly
"Ye-es," she answered, pleasantly. "It's glorious outside." And she
vanished
"Pretty girl," I remarked
"And a well-bred one, too--in the real sense of the word."
"One of your two-week guests, I suppose," I said, with studied
indifference.
"Yes. She is a stenographer." Whereupon he named a well-known
lawyer, a man prominent in the affairs of the Jewish community,
as her employer. "It was an admirer of her father who got the job
for her."
From what followed I learned that Miss Tevkin's father had once
been a celebrated Hebrew poet and that he was no other than the
hero of the romance of which Naphtali had told me a few months
before I left my native place to go to America, and that her mother
was the heroine of that romance. In other words, her mother was
the once celebrated beauty, the daughter of the famous Hebrew
writer (long since deceased), Doctor Rachaeless of Odessa
"It was her father, then, who wrote those love-letters!" I exclaimed,
excitedly. "And it was about her mother that he wrote them!
Somebody told me on the veranda that her name was Miss
Tevkin. I did think the name sounded familiar, but I could not
locate it." The discovery stirred me inordinately. I was palpitating
with reminiscent interest and with a novel interest in the beautiful
girl who had just stood by my side
At my request Rivesman, followed by myself, sought her out on
the front porch and introduced me to her as "a great admirer of
your father's poetry."
Seated beside her was a bald-headed man with a lone wisp of hair
directly over his forehead whom the hotel-keeper introduced as
"Mr. Shapiro, a counselor," and who by his manner of greeting me
showed that he was fully aware of my financial standing
The old romance of the Hebrew poet and his present wife, and
more especially the fact that I had been thrilled by it in Antomir,
threw a halo of ineffable fascination around their beautiful
daughter
"So you are a daughter of the great Hebrew poet," I said in English
"It's awfully kind of you to speak like that," she returned
"Mr. Levinsky is known for his literary tastes, you know," Shapiro
put in
"I wish I deserved the compliment," I rejoined. "Unfortunately, I
don't. I am glad I find time to read the newspapers
"The newspapers are life," observed Miss Tevkin, "and life is the
source of literature, or should be."
"'Or should be!'" Shapiro mocked her, fondly. "Is that a dig at the
popular novels?" And in an aside to me, "Miss Tevkin has no use
for them, you know."
She smiled
"Still worshiping at the shrine of Ibsen?" he asked her
"More than ever," she replied, gaily.
"I admire your loyalty, though I regret to say that I am still unable
to share your taste."
"It isn't a matter of taste," she returned. "It depends on what one is
looking for in a play or a novel."
She smiled with the air of one abstaining from a fruitless
discussion
"She's a blue-stocking," I said to myself. "Women of this kind are
usually doomed to be old maids." And yet she drew me with a
magnetic force that seemed to be beyond my power of resistance
It was evident that she enjoyed the discussion and the fact that it
was merely a pretext for the lawyer to feast his eyes on her
I wondered why a bald-headed man with a lone tuft of hair did not
repel her
A younger brother of Shapiro's, a real-estate broker, joined us. He
also was bald-headed, but his baldness formed a smaller patch
than the lawyer's
The two brothers did most of the talking, and, among other things,
they informed Miss Tevkin and myself that they were graduates of
the City College. With a great display of reading and repeatedly
interrupting each other they took up the cudgels for the "good old
school." I soon discovered, however, that their range was limited
to a small number of authors, whose names they uttered with great
gusto and to whom they returned again and again. These were
Victor Hugo, Dumas, Dickens, Thackeray, George Eliot,
Coleridge, Edgar Poe, and one or two others. If the lawyer added a
new name, like Walter Pater, to his list, the real-estate man would
hasten to trot out De Quincey, for example. For the rest they
would parade a whole array of writers rather than refer to any one
of them in particular. The more they fulminated and fumed and
bullied Miss Tevkin the firmer grew my conviction that they had
scarcely read the books for which they seemed to be ready to lay
down their lives
Miss Tevkin, however, took them seriously. She followed them
with the air of a "good girl "listening to a lecture by her mother or
teacher
"I don't agree with you at all," she would say, weakly, from time to
time, and resume listening with charming resignation
The noise made by the two brothers attracted several other
boarders. One of these was a slovenly-looking man of forty-five
who spoke remarkably good English with a very bad accent (far
worse than mine). That he was a Talmudic scholar was written all
over his face. By profession he was a photographer.
His name was Mendelson. He took a hand in our discussion, and it
at once became apparent that he had read more and knew more
than the bald-headed brothers. He was overflowing with withering
sarcasm and easily sneered them into silence
Miss Tevkin was happy. B.ut the slovenly boarder proved to be
one of those people who know what they do not want rather than
what they do. And so he proceeded, in a spirit of chivalrous
banter, to make game of her literary gods as well.
"You don't really mean to tell us that you enjoy an Ibsen play?" he
demanded. "Why, you are too full of life for that."
"But that's just what the Ibsen plays are--full of life," she answered.
"If you're bored by them it's because you're probably looking for
stories, for 'action.' But art is something more significant than that.
There is moral force and beauty in Ibsen which one misses in the
old masters."
"That's exactly what the ministers of the gospel or the up-to-date
rabbis are always talking about--moral force, moral beauty, and
moral clam-chowder," Mendelson retorted
The real-estate man uttered a chuckle
"Would you turn the theater into a church or a reform synagogue?"
the photographer continued. "People go to see a play because they
want to enjoy themselves, not because they feel that their morals
need darning."
"But in good literature the moral is not preached as a sermon,"
Miss Tevkin replied. "It naturally follows from the life it presents.
Anyhow, the other kind of literature is mere froth. You read page
after page and there doesn't seem to be any substance to it." She
said it plaintively, as though apologizing for holding views of this
kind
"Is that the way you feel about Thackeray and Dickens, too?" I
ventured
"I do," she answered, in the same doleful tone
She went on to develop her argument. We did not interrupt her, the
two brothers, the photographer, and myself listening to her with
admiring glances that had more to do with her beautiful face and
the music of her soft, girlish voice than with what she was saying.
There was a congealed sneer on the photographer's face as he
followed her plea, but it was full of the magic of her presence
"You're a silly child," his countenance seemed to say. "But I could
eat you, all the same."
She dwelt on the virtues of Ibsen, Strindberg, Knut Hamsen,
Hauptmann, and a number of others, mostly names I did not
recollect ever having heard before, and she often used the word
"decadent," which she pronounced in the French way and which I
did not then understand. Now and then she would quote some
critic, or some remark heard from a friend or from her father, and
once she dwelt on an argument of her oldest brother, who seemed
to be well versed in Russian literature and to have clear-cut
opinions on literature in general.
She spoke with an even-voiced fluency, with a charming gift of
language.
Words came readily, pleasantly from her pretty lips. It was evident,
too, that she was thoroughly familiar with the many authors whose
praises she was sounding. Yet I could not help feeling that she had
not much to say. The opinions she voiced were manifestly not her
own, as though she was reciting a well-mastered lesson. And I was
glad of it. "She's merely a girl, after all," I thought, fondly. "She's
the sweetest thing I ever knew, and her father is the man who
wrote those love-letters, and her mother is the celebrated beauty
with whom he was in love."
Whether the views she set forth were her own or somebody else's, I
could see that she relished uttering them. Also, that she relished
the euphony and felicity of her phrasing, which was certainly her
own. Whether she spoke from conviction or not, one thing seemed
indisputable: the atmosphere surrounding the books and authors
she named had a genuine fascination for her. There was a naive
sincerity in her rhetoric, and her delivery and gestures had a
rhythm that seemed to be akin to the rhythm of her movements in
the tennis-court
Miss Lazar passed by us, giving me a smiling look, which seemed
to say, "I knew you would sooner or later be in her company." I
felt myself blushing.
"To-morrow I'll be in Tannersville and all this nonsense will be
over," I said to myself
The long-faced, short girl with whom Miss Tevkin had played
tennis emerged from the lobby door and was introduced to me as
Miss Siegel. As I soon gathered from a bit of pleasantry by the
lawyer, she was a school-teacher
At Miss Tevkin's suggestion we all went to see the crowd waiting
for the last "husband train."
As we rose to go I made a point of asking Miss Tevkin for the
name of the best Ibsen play, my object being to be by her side on
our walk down to the village. The photographer hastened to
answer my question, thus occupying the place on the other side of
her
We were crossing the sloping lawn, Miss Tevkin on a narrow
flagged walk, while we were trotting along through the grass on
either side of her, with the other three of our group bringing up
the rear. Presently, as we reached the main sidewalk, we were
held up by Auntie Yetta, who was apparently returning from one
of the cottages across the road
"Is this the one you are after?" she demanded of me, with a wink in
the direction of Miss Tevkin. And, looking her over, "You do
know a good thing when you see it." Then to her: "Hold on to him,
young lady. Hold on tight.
Mr. Levinsky is said to be worth a million, you know."
"She's always joking," I said, awkwardly, as we resumed our walk
Miss Tevkin made no answer, but I felt that Auntie Yetta's joke
had made a disagreeable impression on her. I sought to efface it
by a humorous sketch of Auntie Yetta, and seemed to be
successful
The village was astir. The great "husband train," the last and
longest of the day, was due in about ten minutes. Groups of
women and children in gala dress were emerging from the various
boarding-houses, feeding the main human stream. Some boarders
were out to meet the train, others were on their way to the
post-office for letters. A sunset of pale gold hung broodingly over
the mountains. Miss Tevkin's voice seemed to have something to
do with it
Presently we reached the crowd at the station. The train was late.
The children were getting restless. At last it arrived, the first of
two sections, with a few minutes' headway between them. There
was a jam and a babel of voices. Interminable strings of
passengers, travel-worn, begrimed, their eyes searching the
throng, came dribbling out of the cars with tantalizing slowness.
Men in livery caps were chanting the names of their respective
boarding-houses. Passengers were shouting the pet names of their
wives or children; women and children were calling to their newly
arrived husbands and fathers, some gaily, others shrieking, as
though the train were on fire. There were a large number of
handsome, well-groomed women in expensive dresses and
diamonds, and some of these were being kissed by puny, but
successful-looking, men. "They married them for their money," I
said to myself. An absurd-looking shirt-waist-manufacturer of my
acquaintance, a man with the face of a squirrel, swooped down
upon a large young matron of dazzling animal beauty who had
come in an automobile. He introduced me to her, with a beaming
air of triumph. "I can afford a machine and a beautiful wife," his
radiant squirrel-face seemed to say. He was parading the fact that
this tempting female had married him in spite of his ugliness. He
was mutely boasting as much of his own homeliness as of her
coarse beauty
Prosperity was picking the cream of the "bride market" for her
favorite sons. I thought of Lenox Avenue, a great, broad
thoroughfare up-town that had almost suddenly begun to swarm
with good-looking and flashily gowned brides of Ghetto upstarts,
like a meadow bursting into bloom in spring
"And how about your own case?" a voice retorted within me.
"Could you get a girl like Fanny if it were not for your money?
Ah, but I'm a good-looking chap myself and not as ignorant as
most of the other fellows who have succeeded," I answered,
inwardly. "Yes, and I am entitled to a better girl than Fanny, too."
And I became conscious of Miss Tevkin's presence by my side
Conversation with the poet's daughter was practically monopolized
by the misanthropic photographer. I was seized with a desire to
dislodge him. I was determined to break into the conversation and
to try to eclipse him. With a fast-beating heart I began: "What an
array of beautiful women! Present company" --with a bow to Miss
Tevkin and her long-faced chum-- "not excepted, of course. Far
from it."
The two girls smiled
"Why! Why! Whence this sudden fit of gallantry?" asked the
photographer, his sneer and the rasping Yiddish enunciation with
which he spoke English filling me with hate
"Come, Mr. Mendelson," I answered, "it's about time you cast off
your grouch. Look! The sky is so beautiful, the mountains so
majestic. Cheer up, old man."
The real-estate man burst into a laugh. The two girls smiled,
looking me over curiously. I hastened to follow up my advantage
"One does get into a peculiar mood on an evening like this," I
pursued. "The air is so divine and the people are so happy."
"That's what we all come to the mountains for," the photographer
retorted
Ignoring his remark, I resumed: "It may seem a contradiction of
terms, but these family reunions, these shouts of welcome, are so
thrilling it makes one feel as if there was something pathetic in
them."
"Pathetic?" the bald-headed real-estate man asked in surprise
"Mr. Levinsky is in a pathetic mood, don't you know," the
photographer cut in.
"Yes, pathetic," I defied him. "But pathos has nothing to do with
grouch, has it?" I asked, addressing myself to the girls
"Why, no," Miss Siegel replied, with a perfunctory smile. "Still, I
should rather see people meet than part. It's heartbreaking to
watch a train move out of a station, with those white
handkerchiefs waving, and getting smaller, smaller. Oh, those
handkerchiefs!"
It was practically the first remark I had heard from her. It produced
a stronger impression on my mind than all Miss Tevkin had said.
Nevertheless, I felt that I should much rather listen to Miss Tevkin
"Of course, of course," I said. "Leave-taking is a very touching
scene to witness. But still, when people meet again after a
considerable separation, it's also touching. Don't you think it is?"
"Yes, I know what you mean," Miss Siegel assented, somewhat
aloofly
"People cry for joy," Miss Tevkin put in, non-committally
"Yes, but they cry, all the same. There are tears," I urged
"I had no idea you were such a cry-baby, Mr. Levinsky," the
photographer said. "Perhaps you'll feel better when you've had
dinner. But I thought you said this weather made you happy."
"It simply means that at the bottom of our hearts we Jews are a sad
people," Miss Tevkin interceded. "There is a broad streak of
tragedy in our psychology. It's the result of many centuries of
persecution and homelessness. Gentiles take life more easily than
we do. My father has a beautiful poem on the theme. But then the
Russians are even more melancholy than we are. Russian
literature is full of it. My oldest brother, who is a great stickler for
everything Russian, is always speaking about it."
"Always referring to her papa and her brother," I thought. "What a
sweet child."
Presently she and her long-faced chum were hailed by a group of
young men and women, and, excusing themselves to us, they ran
over to join them. I felt like a man sipping at a glass of wine when
the glass is suddenly seized from his hand
Some time later I sat on a cane chair amid flower-beds in front of
the Rigi Kulm, inhaling the scented evening air and gazing down
the sloping side of the lawn. Women and girls were returning
from the post-office, many of them with letters in their hands.
Some of these were so impatient to know their contents that they
were straining their eyes to read them in the sickly light that fell
from a sparse row of electric lamps. I watched their faces.
In one case it was quite evident that the letter was a love-message,
and that the girl who was reading it was tremendously happy. In
another I wondered whether the missive had come from a son. It
was for Miss Tevkin's return that I was watching. But the
dinner-gong sounded before she made her appearance
CHAPTER III
DINNER at the Rigi Kulm on a Saturday evening
was not merely a meal. It was, in addition, or chiefly, a great
social function and a gown contest
The band was playing. As each matron or girl made her
appearance in the vast dining-room the female boarders already
seated would look her over with feverish interest, comparing her
gown and diamonds with their own. It was as though it were
especially for this parade of dresses and finery that the band was
playing. As the women came trooping in, arrayed for the
exhibition, some timid, others brazenly self-confident, they
seemed to be marching in time to the music, like so many
chorus-girls tripping before a theater audience, or like a
procession of model-girls at a style-display in a big department
store. Many of the women strutted affectedly, with "refined" mien.
Indeed, I knew that most of them had a feeling as though wearing a
hundred-and-fifty-dollar dress was in itself culture and education
Mrs. Kalch kept talking to me, now aloud, now in whispers. She
was passing judgment on the gowns and incidentally initiating me
into some of the innermost details of the gown race. It appeared
that the women kept tab on one another's dresses, shirt-waists,
shoes, ribbons, pins, earrings. She pointed out two matrons who
had never been seen twice in the same dress, waist, or skirt,
although they had lived in the hotel for more than five weeks. Of
one woman she informed me that she could afford to wear a new
gown every hour in the year, but that she was "too big a slob to
dress up and too lazy to undress even when she went to bed"; of
another, that she would owe her grocer and butcher rather than go
to the country with less than ten big trunks full of duds; of a third,
that she was repeatedly threatening to leave the hotel because its
bills of fare were typewritten, whereas "for the money she paid
she could go to a place with printed menu-cards."
"Must have been brought up on printed menu-cards," one of the
other women at our table commented, with a laugh
"That's right," Mrs. Kalch assented, appreciatively. "I could not say
whether her father was a horse-driver or a stoker in a bath-house,
but I do know that her husband kept a coal-and-ice cellar a few
years ago."
"That'll do," her bewhiskered husband snarled. " "It's about time
you gave your tongue a rest."
Auntie Yetta's golden teeth glittered good-humoredly. The next
instant she called my attention to a woman who, driven to despair
by the superiority of her "bosom friend's" gowns, had gone to the
city for a fortnight, ostensibly to look for a new flat, but in reality
to replenish her wardrobe. She had just returned, on the big
"husband train," and now "her bosom friend won't be able to eat or
sleep, trying to guess what kind of dresses she brought back."
Nor was this the only kind of gossip upon which Mrs. Kalch
regaled me. She told me, for example, of some sensational
discoveries made by several boarders regarding a certain mother
of five children, of her sister who was "not a bit better," and of a
couple who were supposed to be man and wife, but who seemed
to be "somebody else's man and somebody else's wife."
At last Miss Tevkin and Miss Siegel entered the dining-room.
Something like a thrill passed through me. I felt like exclaiming,
"At last!"
"That's the one I met you with, isn't it? Not bad-looking," said Mrs.
Kalch
"Which do you mean?"
"'Which do you mean'! The tall one, of course; the one you were so
sweet on.
Not the dwarf with the horse-face."
"They're fine, educated girls, both of them," I rejoined. "Both of
them! As if it was all the same to you!" At this she bent over and
gave me a glare and a smile that brought the color to my face.
"The tall one is certainly not bad-looking, but we don't call that
pretty in this place."
"Are there many prettier ones?" I asked, gaily
"I haven't counted them, but I can show you some girls who shine
like the sun. There is one!" she said, pointing at a girl on the other
side of the aisle. "A regular princess. Don't you think so?"
"She's a pretty girl, all right," I replied, "but in comparison with
that tall one she's like a nice piece of cotton goods alongside of a
piece of imported silk."
"Look at him! He's stuck on her. Does she know it? If she does not,
I'll tell her and collect a marriage-broker's commission."
I loathed myself for having talked too much.
"I was joking, of course," I tried to mend matters. "All girls are
pretty." Luckily Mrs. Kalch's attention was at this point diverted
by the arrival of the waiter with a huge platter laden with roast
chicken, which he placed in the middle of the table. There ensued
a silent race for the best portions.
One of the other two women at the table was the first to obtain
possession of the platter. Taking her time about it, she first made
a careful examination of its contents and then attacked what she
evidently considered a choice piece. By way of calling my
attention to the proceeding, Auntie Yetta stepped on my foot
under the table and gave me a knowing glance
The noise in the dining-room was unendurable. It seemed as
though everybody was talking at the top of his voice. The
musicians--a pianist and two violinists--found it difficult to make
themselves heard. They were pounding and sawing frantically in a
vain effort to beat the bedlam of conversation and laughter. It was
quite touching. The better to take in the effect of the turmoil, I
shut my eyes for a moment, whereupon the noise reminded me of
the Stock Exchange
The conductor, who played the first violin, was a fiery little fellow
with a high crown of black hair. He was working every muscle
and nerve in his body.
He played selections from "Aïda," the favorite opera of the
Ghetto; he played the popular American songs of the day; he
played celebrated "hits" of the Yiddish stage. All to no purpose.
Finally, he had recourse to what was apparently his last resort. He
struck up the "Star-spangled Banner The effect was
overwhelming. The few hundred diners rose like one man,
applauding. The children and many of the adults caught up the
tune joyously, passionately. It was an interesting scene. Men and
women were offering thanksgiving to the flag under which they
were eating this good dinner, wearing these expensive clothes.
There was the jingle of newly-acquired dollars in our applause.
But there was something else in it as well. Many of those who
were now paying tribute to the Stars and Stripes were listening to
the tune with grave, solemn mien. It was as if they were saying:
"We are not persecuted under this flag. At last we have found a
home." Love for America blazed up in my soul. I shouted to the
musicians, "My Country," and the cry spread like wildfire. The
musicians obeyed and we all sang the anthem from the bottom of
our souls
CHAPTER IV
I WAS in the lobby, chatting with the clerk across
his counter and casting glances at the dining-room door. Miss
Tevkin had not yet finished her meal and I was watching for her to
appear. Presently she did, toying with Miss Siegel's hand
"Feeling better now?" I asked, stepping up to meet them. "I hope
you enjoyed your dinner."
"Oh, we were so hungry, I don't think we knew what we were
eating," Miss Tevkin returned, politely
"Going to take the air on the veranda?"
"Why--no. We are going out for a walk," she answered in a tone
that said as clearly as words that my company was not wanted.
And, nodding with exaggerated amiability, they passed out
The blood rushed to my face as though she had slapped it. I stood
petrified.
"It's all because of Mrs. Kalch's tongue, confound her!" I thought.
"To-morrow I shall be in Tannersville and this trifling incident will
be forgotten." But at this I became aware that I did not care to go
to Tannersville and that the prospect of seeing Fanny had lost its
attraction for me. I went back to the counter and attempted to
resume my conversation with the clerk, but he was a handsome
fellow, which was one of his chief qualifications for the place,
and so I soon found myself in the midst of a bevy of girls and
married women. However, they all seemed to know that I was a
desirable match and they gradually transferred their attentions to
me, the girls in their own interests and the older matrons in those
of their marriageable daughters. Their crude amenities sickened
me. One middle-aged woman tried to monopolize me by a
confidential talk concerning the social inferiority of the Catskills
"The food is good here," she said, in English. "There's no kick
comin' on that score. But my daughter says with her dresses she
could go to any hotel in Atlantic City, and she's right, too. I don't
care what you say."
I fled as soon as I could. I went to look for a seat on the spacious
veranda. I said to myself that Miss Tevkin and Miss Siegel must
have had an appointment with some one else and that I had no
cause for feeling slighted by them
I felt reassured, but I was lonely. I was yearning for some
congenial company, and blamed fate for having allowed Miss
Tevkin to make another engagement--if she had
The veranda was crowded and almost as noisy as the dining-room
had been.
There was a hubbub of broken English, the gibberish being mostly
spoken with self-confidence and ease. Indeed, many of these
people had some difficulty in speaking their native tongue. Bad
English replete with literal translations from untranslatable
Yiddish idioms had become their natural speech. The younger
parents, however, more susceptible of the influence of their
children, spoke purer English.
It was a dark night, but the sky was full of stars, full of golden
mystery.
The mountains rose black, vast, disquieting. A tumultuous choir of
invisible katydids was reciting an interminable poem on an
unpoetic subject that had something to do with Miss Tevkin. The
air was even richer in aroma than it had been in the morning, but
its breath seemed to be part of the uncanny stridulation of the
katydids. The windows of the dancing-pavilion beyond the level
part of the lawn gleamed like so many sheets of yellow fire.
Presently its door flew open, sending a slanting shaft of light over
the grass
I found a chair on the veranda, but I was restless, and the chatter of
two women in front of me grated on my nerves. I wondered where
Miss Tevkin and her companion were at this minute. I was saying
to myself that I would never come near them again, that I was
going to see Fanny; but I did not cease wondering where they
were. The two women in front of me were discussing the relative
virtues and faults of little boys and little girls. They agreed that a
boy was a "big loafer" and a great source of trouble, and that a
little girl was more obedient and clinging. It appeared that one of
these two mothers had a boy and two girls and that, contrary to
her own wish, he was her great pet, although he was not the
"baby."
"I am just crazy for him," she said, plaintively
She boasted of his baseball record, whereupon she used the slang
of the game with so much authority that it became entertaining,
but by a curious association of ideas she turned the conversation
to the subject of a family who owed the hotel-keeper their last
summer's board and who had been accepted this time in the hope
that they would pay their old debt as well as their new bills
Two men to the right of me were complaining of the unions and
the walking delegates, of traveling salesmen, of buyers. Then they
took up the subject of charity, whereupon one of them enlarged on
"scientific philanthropy," apparently for the sheer lust of hearing
himself use the term
I recalled that one of the things I was booked to do in Tannersville
was to attend a charity meeting of East Side business men, of
which Kaplan was one of the organizers. Two subscriptions were
to be started--one for a home for aged immigrants and one for the
victims of the anti-Jewish riots in Russia--and I was expected to
contribute sums large enough to do credit to my prospective
father-in-law
The multitudinous jabber was suddenly interrupted by the sound of
scampering feet accompanied by merry shrieks. A young girl burst
from the vestibule door, closely followed by three young men. She
was about eighteen years old, well fed, of a ravishing
strawberries-and-cream complexion, her low-cut evening gown
leaving her plump arms and a good deal of her bust exposed. One
of the rocking-chairs on the porch impeding her way, she was
seized by her pursuers, apparently a willing victim, and held
prisoner. Two of her captors gripped her bare arms, while the
third clutched her by the neck. Thus they stood, the men stroking
and kneading her luscious flesh, and she beaming and giggling
rapturously. Then one of the men gathered her to him with one
arm, pressing his cheek against hers
"She's my wife," he jested. "We are married. Let go, boys."
"I'll sue you for alimony then," piped the girl
Finally, they released her, and the next minute I saw them walking
across the lawn in the direction of the dancing-pavilion
The man who had talked scientific philanthropy spat in disgust
"Shame!" he said. "Decent young people wouldn't behave like that
in Russia, would they?"
"Indeed they wouldn't," his interlocutor assented, vehemently.
"People over there haven't yet forgotten what decency is."
"Oh, well, it was only a joke, said a woman
"A nice joke, that!" retorted the man who had dwelt on scientific
charity
"What would you have? Would you want American-born young
people to be a lot of greenhorns? This is not Russia. They are
Americans and they are young, so they want to have some fun.
They are just as respectable as the boys and the girls in the old
country. Only there is some life to them. That's all."
Young people were moving along the flagged walk or crossing the
lawn from various directions, all converging toward the pavilion.
They walked singly, in twos, in threes, and in larger groups, some
trudging along leisurely, others proceeding at a hurried pace.
Some came from our hotel, others from other places, the strangers
mostly in flocks. I watched them as they sauntered or scurried
along, as they receded through the thickening gloom, as they
emerged from it into the slanting shaft of light that fell from the
pavilion, and as they vanished in its blazing doorway. I gazed at
the spectacle until it fascinated me as something weird. The
pavilion with its brightly illuminated windows was an immense
magic lamp, and the young people flocking to it so many huge
moths of a supernatural species. As I saw them disappear in the
glare of the doorway I pictured them as being burned up. I was
tempted to join the unearthly procession and to be "burned" like
the others. Then, discarding the image, I visioned men and women
of ordinary flesh and blood dancing, and I was seized with a
desire to see the sexes in mutual embrace. But I exhorted myself
that I was soon to be a married man and that it was as well to keep
out of temptation's way
Presently I saw Miss Tevkin crossing the lawn, headed for the
pavilion. She was one of a bevy of girls and men. I watched her
get nearer and nearer to that shaft of light. When she was finally
swallowed up by the pavilion the lawn disappeared from my
consciousness. My thoughts were in the dance-hall, and a few
minutes later I was there in the flesh
It was a vast room and it was crowded. It was some time before I
located Miss Tevkin. The chaotic throng of dancers was a welter
of color and outline so superb, I thought, that it seemed as though
every face and figure in it were the consummation of youthful
beauty. However, as I contemplated the individual couples, in
quest of the girl who filled my thoughts, I met with disillusion
after disillusion. Then, after recovering from a sense of watching
a parade of uncomeliness, I began to discover figures or faces, or
both, that were decidedly charming, while here and there I came
upon a young woman of singular beauty. The number of
good-looking women or women with expressive faces was
remarkably large, in fact. As I scanned the crowd for the third
time it seemed to me that the homely women looked cleverer than
the pretty ones. Many of the girls or matrons were dressed far
more daringly than they would have been a year or two before.
Almost all of them were powdered and painted. Prosperity was
rapidly breaking the chains of American Puritanism, rapidly
"Frenchifying" the country, and the East Side was quick to fall
into line
The band was again playing with might and main. The vehement
little conductor was again exerting every nerve and muscle. His
bow, which was also his baton, was pouring vim and sex mystery
into the dancers. As I looked at him it seemed to me as though the
music, the thunderous clatter of feet, and the hum of voices all
came from the fiery rhythm of his arm
Finally, I discovered Miss Tevkin. She was dancing with a
sallow-faced, homely, scholarly-looking fellow. The rhythmic
motion of her tall, stately frame, as it floated and swayed through
the dazzling light, brought a sob to my throat
When the waltz was over and her cavalier was taking her to a seat I
caught her eye. I nodded and smiled to her. She returned the
greeting, but immediately averted her face. Again I felt as if she
had slapped my cheek.
Was I repugnant to her? I thought of my victory over the
acrimonious photographer at the railroad station. Had I not won
her favor there? And it came over me that even on that occasion
she had shown me but scant cordiality. Was it all because of
Auntie Yetta's idiotic jest? She beckoned to Miss Siegel, who was
on the other side of the hall, and presently she was joined by her
and by some other young people.
She danced indefatigably, now with this man, now with that, but
always of the same "set." I watched her. Sometimes, as she
waltzed, she talked and laughed brokenly, exchanging jokes with
her partner or with some other dancing couple. Sometimes she
looked solemnly absorbed, as though dancing were a sacred
function. I wondered whether she was interested in any one of
these fellows in particular. I could see that it gave her special
pleasure to waltz with that sallow-faced man, but he was the best
dancer in her group, and so homely that I discarded the theory of
her caring for him otherwise than as a waltzing partner as absurd.
Nor did she seem to be particularly interested in anybody else on
the floor. As I scrutinized the men of her "set" I said to myself:
"They seem to be school-teachers or writers, or beginning
physicians, perhaps. They probably make less than one-third of
what I pay Bender. Yet they freely talk and joke with her, while I
cannot even get near her."
Miss Lazar, half naked, had been dancing with various partners,
most of all with a freckled lad of sixteen or seventeen who looked
as though he were panting to kiss her. She and I had exchanged
smiles and pleasantry, but in her semi-nudity she was far less
prepossessing than she had been in the afternoon, and I had an
uncontrollable desire to announce it to her, or to hurt her in some
other way. Finally, seeing a vacant seat by my side, she abruptly
broke away from the freckled youth and took it
"You'll have to excuse me, Ben," she said. "I'm tired."
Ben looked the picture of despair
"Don't cry, Ben. Go out and take a walk, or dance with some other
girl."
"Is this your catch after many days of fishing?" I asked
"Nope. I'm angling for bigger fish. He's just Ben, a college boy. He
has fallen in love with me this evening. When I dance with
somebody else he gets awful jealous." She laughed.
"He's a manly-looking boy, for all his freckles."
"He is. But how would you like a little girl to fall in love with
you?" I made no answer
"Why don't you dance?" she asked
"Not in my line." "Why?"
"Oh, I never cared to learn it," I answered, impatiently
"Come. I'll show you how. It's very simple."
"Too old for that kind of thing." "Too old? How old are you?"
"That's an indiscreet question. Would you tell me your age?"
"Indeed I would. Why not?" she said, with sportive defiance. "Only
you wouldn't believe me."
"Why wouldn't I? Do you look much older?"
"Oh, you cruel thing! I'm just twenty-three years and four months
to-day.
There!" she said, with embarrassed gaiety.
"A sort of birthday, isn't it? I congratulate you."
"Thank you."
"You're welcome."
A pause
"So you won't tell me how old you are, will you?" she resumed
"What do you want to know it for? Are you in the life-insurance
business?"
Another pause
"Look at that girl over there," she said, trying to make
conversation.
"She's showing off her slender figure. She thinks she looks awful
American."
"You do have a sharp tongue."
"But you remember what Mrs. Kalch said: 'A sharp tongue, but a
kind heart.'"
The band struck up a two-step
Ben was coming over to her, his freckled face the image of
supplication. She shut her eyes and shook her head and the boy
stopped short, his jaw dropping as he did so
"Don't be hard on the poor boy," I pleaded
"That's none of your business. I want you to dance with me. Come
on. I'll teach you
I shut my eyes and shook my head precisely as she had done to
Ben
She burst into a laugh. "Ain't you tired of being a wall-flower?"
"I love it."
"Do you really? Or maybe you want to watch somebody?"
"I want to watch everybody," I replied, coloring the least bit.
"When you were dancing I watched you, and I thought--well, I
won't tell you what I thought."
A splash of color overspread her face
"Go ahead. Speak out!" she said, with a sick smile
I took pity on her. "I'm joking, of course. But I do like to watch
people when they dance," I said, earnestly. "They do it in so many
different ways, don't you know." I proceeded to point out couple
after couple, commenting upon their peculiar manner and the
special expression of their faces. One man was seemingly about to
hurl his partner at somebody. Another man was eying other women
over the shoulder of the one with whom he danced, apparently his
wife. One woman was clinging to her partner with all her might,
while her half-shut eyes and half-opened mouth seemed to say,
"My, isn't it sweet!"
Miss Lazar greeted my observations with bursts of merry approval.
Encouraged by this and full of mischief and malice, I made her
watch a man with tapering white side-whiskers and watery eyes
who was staring at the bare bust of a fat woman
"You had better look out, for his watery eyes will soon be on you."
Miss Lazar lowered her head and burst into a confused giggle
"You're a holy terror," she declared.
I was tempted to take her out into the night and hug and kiss her
and tell her that she was a nuisance, but the fear of a
breach-of-promise suit held me in leash
I rose to go. As I picked my way through the crowd I watched Miss
Tevkin, who sat between Miss Siegel and one of their cavaliers.
Our eyes met, but she hastened to look away
"She has certainly made up her mind to shun me," I thought,
wretchedly. "She knows I am worth about a million, and yet she
does not want to have anything to do with me. Must be a Socialist.
The idea of a typewriter girl cutting me! Pooh! I could get a
prettier girl than she, and one well-educated, too, if I only cared
for that kind of thing in a wife. Let her stick to her beggarly
crowd!"
It all seemed so ridiculous. I was baffled, perplexed, full of
contempt and misery at once. "Perhaps she is engaged, after all," I
comforted myself, feeling that there was anything but comfort in
the reflection
I was burning to have an explanation with her, to remove any bad
impression I might have made upon her
An asphalt walk in front of the pavilion and the adjoining section
of the lawn were astir with boarders. A tall woman of thirty, of
excellent figure, and all but naked, passed along like a flame, the
men frankly gloating over her flesh.
"Wait a moment! What's your hurry?" a young stallion shouted,
running after her hungrily
In another spot, on the lawn, I saw a young man in evening dress
chaffing a bare-shouldered girl who looked no more than fifteen
"What! Sweet sixteen and not yet kissed?" he said to her, aloud.
"Go on! I don't believe it. Anyhow, I'd like to be the fellow who's
going to get you."
"Would you? I'll tell your wife about it," the little girl replied, with
the good humor of a woman of forty
"Never mind my wife. But how about the fellow who is going to
marry you?"
"I'd like to see him myself. I hope he ain't going to be some boob."
The air was redolent of grass, flowers, ozone, and sex. All this was
flavored with Miss Tevkin's antipathy for me
CHAPTER V
THE next morning I awoke utterly out of sorts. That
I was going to take the first train for Tannersville seemed to be a
matter of course, and yet I knew that I was not going to take that
train, nor any other that day. I dressed myself and went out for a
walk up the road, some distance beyond the grove.
The sun was out, but it had rained all night and the sandy road was
damp, solid, and smooth, like baked clay. It was half an hour
before breakfast-time when I returned to my cottage across the
road from the hotel.
As I was about to take a chair on the tiny porch I perceived the
sunlit figure of Miss Tevkin in the distance. She wore a large
sailor hat and I thought it greatly enhanced the effect of her tall
figure. She was making her way over a shaky little bridge. Then,
reaching the road, she turned into it. I remained standing like one
transfixed. The distance gave her new fascination. Every little
while she would pause to look up through something that glittered
in the sunshine, apparently an opera-glass. I had never heard that
opera-glasses were used for observing birds, but this was evidently
what she was doing at this moment, and the proceeding quickened
my sense not only of her intellectual refinement, but also of her
social distinction.
Presently she turned into a byway, passed the grove, and was lost
to view
I seated myself, my eye on the spot where I had seen her disappear.
Somebody greeted me from the hotel lawn. I returned the
salutation mechanically and went on gazing at that spot. I knew
that I was making a fool of myself, but I could not help it. My
will-power was gone as it might from the effect of some drug
When she reappeared at last and I saw her coming back I crossed
over to the hotel veranda so as to be near her when she should
arrive. I found several of the boarders there, including the lawyer,
the photographer, and a jewelry merchant of my acquaintance. We
all watched her coming. At one moment, as she leveled her
opera-glass at a bird, the lawyer said: "Studying birds. She's a great
girl for studying. She is."
"Studying nothing!" the photographer jeered. "It's simply becoming
to her.
It's effective, don't you know."
The lawyer smiled sagely, as if what Mendelson said was precisely
what he himself had meant to intimate
I was inclined to think that Mendelson was right, but this did not
detract from the force that drew me to Miss Tevkin
When she reached the veranda the lawyer gallantly offered her a
chair, but she declined it, pleasantly, and went indoors. Her high
heels had left deep, dear-cut imprints in a small patch of damp,
sandy ground near the veranda.
This physical trace of her person fascinated me. It was a trace of
stern hostility, yet I could not keep my eye away from it. I gazed
and gazed at those foot-prints of hers till I seemed to be growing
stupid and dizzy. "Am I losing my head?" I said to myself. "Am I
obsessed? Why, I saw her yesterday for the first time and I have
scarcely spoken to her. What the devil is the matter with me?"
After breakfast we returned to the veranda. The jewelry-dealer and
the lawyer bored me unmercifully. Finally I was saved from them
by the arrival of the Sunday papers, but my reading was soon
disturbed by the intrusions of a mother and her marriageable
daughter. There was no escape. I had to lay down my paper and
let them torture me. There was a striking family resemblance
between the two, yet the daughter was as homely as the mother
was pretty. "She isn't as prepossessing as her ma, of course," the
older woman seemed to be saying to me, "but she's charming, all
the same, isn't she?"
Miss Lazar was watching me at a respectful distance. Mrs. Kalch
was deep in a game of pinochle in a small ground-floor room that
gave out on the veranda. The window was open and I could hear
Mrs. Kalch's voice. She seemed to have been losing. The little
room, by the way, was used both as a synagogue and a
gambling-room. In the mornings, before breakfast, it was filled
with old men in praying-shawls and phylacteries, while the rest of
the day, until late at night, it was in the possession of card-players
I wanted to wire Bender to send a message to Fanny, in my name,
stating that I had been unavoidably detained in the city, but I
lacked the energy to do so. I had not even the energy to extricate
myself from the attentions of the pretty mother of the homely girl
That charity meeting bothered me more than anything else. One
was apt to impute my absence to meanness. I pictured Kaplan's
disappointment, and I felt like going to Tannersville for his sake,
if for no other reason. The next best thing would have been to
have Bender wire my contribution to each of the two funds. But I
did not stir
The hotel-keeper came out to remind me of my train
"Thank you," I said, with a smile. "But the weather is too
confoundedly good. I'm too lazy to leave your place, Rivesman.
You must have ordered this weather on purpose to detain me."
I was hoping, of course, that my presence in this hotel would be
unknown to the Kaplans, for some time at least. Soon, however,
something happened which made it inevitable that they should
hear of it that very evening
On Sundays the Jewish summer hotels are usually visited by
committees of various philanthropic institutions who go from
place to place making speeches and collecting donations. One
such committee appeared in the dining-room of the Rigi Kulm at
the dinner-hour, which on Sundays was between 1 and 3. It
represented a day nursery, an establishment where the children of
the East Side poor are taken care of while their mothers are at
work, and it consisted of two men, one of whom was an eloquent
young rabbi.
As the ecclesiastic took his stand near the piano and began his
appeal my heart sank within me. I had once met him at Kaplan's
house, where he was a frequent visitor, and had given him a
check. It goes without saying that I had to give him a contribution
now and to talk to him. At this I learned, to my consternation, that
he was going to Tannersville that very afternoon
"Shall I convey your regards?" he asked
"Very kind of you," I answered, and I added in an undertone, out of
Mrs.
Kalch's hearing, "Please tell Mr. Kaplan I'm here on an important
matter and that I have been detained longer than I expected."
When he had gone over to the next table I said to myself: "I don't
care.
Come what may."
In the evening, as the crowd swarmed out of the dining-room, it
was greeted by a gorgeous sunset. Everybody appreciated its
beauty, but Miss Tevkin and Miss Siegel went into ecstasies over
it, with something of the specialist in their exclamations. As for
me, it was the first rich sunset I had seen since I crossed the
ocean, and then I had scarcely known what it was. The play of
color and light in the sky was a revelation to me. The edge of the
sun, a vivid red, was peeping out of a gray patch of cloud that
looked like a sack, the sack hanging with its mouth downward and
the red disk slowly emerging from it. Spread directly underneath
was a pool of molten gold into which the sun was seemingly about
to drop. As the disk continued to glide out of the bag it gradually
grew into a huge fiery ball of magnificent crimson, suffusing the
valley with divine light. At the moment when it was just going to
plunge into the golden pool the pool vanished. The crimson ball
kept sinking until it was buried in a region of darkness. When the
last fiery speck of it disappeared the sky broke into an evensong of
color so solemn, so pensive that my wretched mood interpreted it
as a visible dirge for the dead sun. Rose lapsed into purple, purple
merged into blue, the blue bordering on a field of hammered gold
that was changing shape and hue; all of which was eloquent of
sadness. It seemed as though the heavens were in an ecstasy of
grief and everybody about me were about to break into tears
some of the old women gasped. "How nice!" "Isn't it lovely?" said
several girls
"Isn't that glorious?" said Miss Tevkin. "It's one of the most
exquisite sunsets I have seen in a long time." And she referred to
certain "effects," apparently in the work of a well-known
landscape painter, which I did not understand
I discovered a note of consciousness in her rapture, something like
a patronizing approval of the sky by one who looked at it with a
professional eye. Nevertheless, I felt that my poor soul was
cringing before her
An epigram occurred to me, something about the discrepancy
between the spiritual quality of the sunset and the after-supper
satisfaction of the onlookers. I essayed to express it, but was so
embarrassed that I made a muddle of my English. Miss Tevkin
took no notice of the remark.
The sunset was transformed into a thousand lumps of pearl, here
and there edged with flame. In some places the pearl thinned
away, dissolving into the color of the sky, while the outline of the
lump remained--a map of glowing tracery on a ground of the
subtlest blue. Drifts of gold were gleaming, blazing, going out. A
vast heap of silver caught fire. The outlined map disappeared, its
place being taken by a raised one, with continents, islands,
mountains, and seas of ravishing azure
What was the power behind this sublime spectacle? Where did it
come from? What did it all mean? I visioned a chorus of angels.
My heart was full of God, full of that stately girl, full of misery.
"If I only got a chance to have a decent talk with her!" I said to
myself again and again.
CHAPTER VI
IT was Monday afternoon. The week-end boarders
and many others had left, and I was still idling my precious time
away on the big veranda, listening to the gossip of women who
bored me and trying to keep track of a girl who shunned me. My
establishment in New York was feverishly busy and my presence
was urgently needed there. It was more than probable that Bender
had wired to Tannersville to call me home. The situation was
extremely awkward.
Moreover, I was beginning to feel uneasy about certain payments
that required my personal attendance.
It was a quiet, pleasant afternoon. The boarders were scattered
over the various parts of the hotel and its surroundings.
Twenty-four of them, forming two coach parties, had gone to see
some celebrated Catskill views, one to the Old Mountain House
and the other to East Windham. Some were in the village. Miss
Tevkin, wearing her immense straw hat, and with her opera-glass
in her hand, was looking at birds in the vicinity of the hotel.
Thus rambling about leisurely, she sauntered over to the main road
near the grove. A few minutes later she turned into the same path
where I had watched her disappear on the morning of the day
before. And once more I saw her vanish there
I went out for a walk in the opposite direction. Soon, however, I
turned back, strolling with studied aimiessness, toward that spot
What was my purpose? At first I did not know, but by little and
little, as I moved along, an idea took shape in my brain: If I met
her alone I might force her to listen to me and let her see the stuff
I was made of. I lacked courage, however. While I was priming
myself for the coup I wished that it would be postponed. I
dawdled. There were swarms of strange insects on the road,
creatures I had never seen before. At first I thought they were
grasshoppers, but they were gray and had wings. Every now and
then I would pause to watch them leap (or were they flying?) and
drop to the ground again, becoming part of the dusty road. I
followed them with genuine interest, yet all the time I kept
working on the speech that I was going to deliver to Miss Tevkin
I was lingering at a spot a few yards from the grove on the opposite
side of the main road when suddenly twilight fell over half of the
valley. I raised my eyes. Behold! an inky cloud was crawling over
the mountains, growing in size as it advanced. A flash of lightning
snapped across the heavens. It was as though the sky screened a
world of dazzling glory into which a glimpse had now been
offered by a momentary crack in the screen. The flash was
followed by a devout peal of thunder, as if a giant whose abode
was in those dark clouds broke into a murmur of glorification at
sight of the splendors above the sky. The trees shuddered,
awe-stricken. I went under cover. A farmer was chasing a cow. As
my eyes turned toward the grove they fell on Miss Tevkin, who
was standing at the farther end of it, under its leafy roof, facing
the main road. My heart beat fast. I dared not stir
A shower broke loose, a great, torrential downpour. It came in
sheets, with an impetuous, though genial, clatter. It seemed as
though the valley was swiftly filling with water and in less than an
hour's time it would reach the tops of the trees. I thought of Noah's
flood. I could almost see his dove winging her way over the
waters. The storm had been in progress but seven or eight minutes
when it came to an end. The sky broke into a smile again, as if it
had all been a joke.
Miss Tevkin left the shelter of the trees and set out in the direction
of the hotel. I do not know whether she was aware of my
proximity
It was clearing beautifully, when a new cloud gathered. This time a
great, stern force, violent, vengeful, came into play. A lash of fire
smote the firmament with frantic suddenness, shattering it into a
myriad of blinding sparks, yet leaving it uninjured. There was a
pause and then came a ferocious crash. The universe was falling
to pieces. Then somebody seemed to be tearing an inner heaven of
metal as one tears a sheet of linen. This released a torrent that
descended with the roar of Niagara, as though the metal vault that
had just been rent asunder had been its prison. Miss Tevkin ran
back to cover. The torrent slackened, settling down to a steady
rain, spirited, zealous, amicable again
In a turmoil of agitation I crossed over to her. Instead, however, of
beginning at the beginning of my well-prepared little speech, I
blurted out something else
"You can't run away from me now," I said, with timid flippancy
"Please, leave me alone," she besought, turning away
I was literally stunned. Instead of trying to say what I had in my
mind and to force her to listen, I slunk away, in the rain, like a
beaten dog
The shock seemed to have a sobering effect on me. I suddenly
realized the imbecility of the part I had been playing, even the
humor of it. The first thing I did upon reaching the hotel was to
ask the clerk about the next train--not to Tannersville, but direct to
New York. Going to see Fanny was out of the question now.
There was a late train connecting with a Hudson River boat and I
took it.
CHAPTER VII
WHEN I got home and my business reasserted its
multitudinous demands on my attention, the Catskill incident
seemed to be fading into the character of a passing summer-resort
episode, but I was mistaken; the pang it left in my heart persisted
A fortnight after my return to the city I forced myself to take a trip
to Tannersville. Fanny came to meet me at the train. As we kissed
it was borne in upon me that I was irretrievably estranged from
her. I tried to play my part, with poor success
"Are you worried, Dave? What's the matter with you?" Fanny
demanded again and again.
Her "What's the matter with you?" jarred on me
I offered her sundry excuses, but I did not even take pains to make
them ring true
Finally she had a cry and I kissed her tears away. While doing so I
worked myself into a mild fit of love, but my lips had scarcely
released hers when it was again clear to me that she was not going
to be my wife
Our engagement was broken shortly after the family came back to
the city.
That burden lifted, it seemed as though the memory of my
unfortunate acquaintance with Miss Tevkin had suddenly grown
in clarity and painful acuteness
Our rush season had passed, but we were busy preparing for our
removal to new quarters, on Fifth Avenue near Twenty-third
Street. That locality had already become the center of the
cloak-and-suit trade, being built up with new sky-scrapers, full of
up-to-date cloak-factories, dress-factories, and
ladies'-waist-factories. The sight of the celebrated Avenue
swarming with Jewish mechanics out for their lunch hour or going
home after a day's work was already a daily spectacle
The new aspect of that section of the proud thoroughfare marked
the advent of the Russian Jew as the head of one of the largest
industries in the United States. Also, it meant that as master of
that industry he had made good, for in his hands it had increased a
hundredfold, garments that had formerly reached only the few
having been placed within the reach of the masses. Foreigners
ourselves, and mostly unable to speak English, we had
Americanized the system of providing clothes for the American
woman of moderate or humble means. The ingenuity and
unyielding tenacity of our managers, foremen, and operatives had
introduced a thousand and one devices for making by machine
garments that used to be considered possible only as the product
of handwork. This--added to a vastly increased division of labor,
the invention, at our instance, of all sorts of machinery for the
manufacture of trimmings, and the enormous scale upon which
production was carried on by us--had the effect of cheapening the
better class of garments prodigiously. We had done away with
prohibitive prices and greatly improved the popular taste. Indeed,
the Russian Jew had made the average American girl a
"tailor-made" girl.
When I learned the trade a cloak made of the cheapest satinette
cost eighteen dollars. To-day nobody would wear it. One can now
buy a whole suit made of all-wool material and silk-lined for
fifteen dollars
What I have said of cloaks and suits applies also to skirts and
dresses, the production of which is a branch of our trade. It was
the Russian Jew who had introduced the factory-made gown,
constantly perfecting it and reducing the cost of its production.
The ready-made silk dress which the American woman of small
means now buys for a few dollars is of the very latest style and as
tasteful in its lines, color scheme, and trimming as a high-class
designer can make it. A ten-dollar gown is copied from a
hundred-dollar model.
Whereupon our gifted dress-designers are indefatigably at work on
the problem of providing a good fit for almost any figure, with as
little alteration as possible, and the results achieved in this
direction are truly phenomenal. Nor is it mere apish copying. We
make it our business to know how the American woman wants to
look, what sort of lines she would like her figure to have. Many a
time when I saw a well-dressed American woman in the street I
followed her for blocks, scanning the make-up of her cloak, jacket,
or suit. I never wearied of studying the trend of the American
woman's taste. The subject had become a veritable idée fixé with
me
The average American woman is the best-dressed average woman
in the world, and the Russian Jew has had a good deal to do with
making her one.
My Fifth Avenue establishment occupied four vast floors, the rent
being thirty-eight thousand dollars a year. The office floor, which
was elaborately furnished, had an immense waiting-room with
gold letters on doors of dull glass bearing the legends: "General
Offices," "Show-rooms," "Private Offices," "Salesmen. Please
show samples of merchandise between 9 and 12 A.M.," and
"Information." The "Private Office" door led to a secluded little
kingdom with the inscription "David Levinsky" on one of its
several doors, another door leading from my private office to the
showrooms
I employed a large staff of trained bookkeepers, stenographers,
clerks, and cloak models. These models were all American girls
of Anglo-Saxon origin, since a young woman of other stock is not
likely to be built on American lines--with the exception of
Scandinavian and Irish girls, who have the American figure. But
the figure alone was not enough, I thought. In selecting my
model-girls, I preferred a good-looking face and good manners,
and, if possible, good grammar. Experience had taught me that
refinement in a model was helpful in making a sale, even in the
case of the least refined of customers. Indeed, often it is even
more effectual than a tempting complexion
My new place was the talk of the trade. Friends came to look it
over. I received numerous letters of congratulation, from mill
men, bankers, retail merchants, buyers, private friends. My range
of acquaintance was very wide.
In hundreds of American cities and towns there were business
people with whom my firm was in correspondence or whom I
knew personally, who called me Dave and whom I called Jim,
Jack, or Ned. So, many of these people, having received my
circular describing my new place, sent their felicitations. Some of
these letters were inspired by genuine admiration for my enterprise
and energy. All of them had genuine admiration for my success.
Success! Success! Success! It was the almighty goddess of the
hour. Thousands of new fortunes were advertising her gaudy
splendors. Newspapers, magazines, and public speeches were full
of her glory, and he who found favor in her eyes found favor in
the eyes of man
Nodelman scarcely ever left my place during the first three days.
He would show visitors over the four floors with a charming
pride, like that of a mother. Among the things he exhibited was
the stub-book of my first check account, a photograph of the
rickety house where I had had my first shop, and letters of
congratulation from some well-known financiers. Bender, with a
big, shining bald disk on his head, slender and spruce as ever, was
fussing around with the gruff air of an unappreciated genius, while
Loeb, also bald-headed, but fat and beaming, was telling
everybody about the scraps he and I used to have on the road
when he was a star drummer and I a struggling beginner
One of the men who came to congratulate me at my magnificent
new place on Fifth Avenue was the kindly American commission
merchant who had been the first to grant me credit when I was
badly in need of it. As I took him over my immense factory,
splendid showrooms, and offices, we recalled the days when it
took a man of special generosity to treat a beginning manufacturer
of my type as he had treated me. That was the time when
woolen-mills would even refuse to bother with a check of a
Russian Jew; he had to bring cash.
In the rôle of manufacturer he was regarded as a joke. By hard
work, perseverance, thrift, and ingenuity, however, we had
completely changed all that. By the time I moved to the avenue
our beginners could get any amount of credit. The American
merchants dealing in raw material had gradually realized our
energy, ability, and responsibility--realized that we were a good
risk, while we, on our part, had assimilated the ways of the
advanced American business man
Another man who came to see my new establishment was Eaton,
the Philadelphia buyer who had given me my first lesson in table
manners. He had a small, but well-established, business of his
own now, and it was with my financial aid that he had founded it.
Our friendship had never flagged. Sometimes I go to spend a day
or two in his cozy little house in North Philadelphia, where I feel
as much at home as I do in Bender's or Nodelman's house
I assigned one of my office men to the special duty of looking up
and inviting Mr. Even, the kindly old man who had bought me my
first American suit of clothes and paid for my first American bath.
He came back with the report that Mr. Even had been dead for
over four years. The news was a genuine shock to me. It was as
though it had come from my birthplace and concerned the death
of a half-forgotten relative. It stirred a swarm of memories; but, of
course, impressions and moods of this kind do not last long. I
received requests for donations from all sorts of East Side
institutions and I responded liberally. Mindels, the handsome
doctor, made me contribute twenty-five hundred dollars to a
prospective hospital in which he expected to be one of the leading
spirits
There was dining and wining. I was being toasted, complimented,
blessed
One of these dinners was given in my honor by my office
employees, salesmen, designers, and foremen. Bender, who
presided, told, in an elaborate and high-flown oration, of his
experiences as my school-teacher, of our walks after school hours,
and of our chance meeting a few years later
Loeb made a rough-and-ready speech, the gist of which was a joke
on the bottle of milk which I had spilled while in the employ of
Manheimer Brothers and which had led to my becoming a
manufacturer. His concluding words were: "There's at least one
saying that has come true. I mean the saying, 'There's no use
crying over spilled milk.' Mr. Levinsky, you certainly have no
reason to cry over the milk you spilled at Manheimer's, have
you?"
I had heard the witticism from him more than once before. So had
some of the other men present. Nevertheless, he now delivered it
with gusto, and it was received with a hearty roar of merriment, in
which his own laughter was the loudest
Among the people who came to rejoice in my success were some
whose appearance was an amusing surprise to me. One of these
was Octavius, the violinist, who had had nothing but contempt for
me in the days when to go twenty-four hours without food was a
usual experience with me. He had scarcely changed. He entered
my office with bohemian self-importance
"Glad to see you, Levinsky. I was glad to hear of your rise in the
world," he said, somewhat pompously. "I can't complain, either,
though. However, our fields are so different."
The implication was that, while I had succeeded as a prosaic,
pitiable cloak-manufacturer, he had conquered the world by the
magic of his violin and compositions. He never referred to olden
times. Instead, he boasted of his successes, present and future.
The upshot of the interview was that I sent a check to the treasurer
of the free conservatory of which Octavius was one of the
founders
I was elated and happy, but there was a fly in the ointment of my
happiness.
The question, "Who are you living for?" reverberated through the
four vast floors of my factory, and the image of Miss Tevkin
visited me again and again, marring my festive mood. My sense of
triumph often clashed with a feeling of self-pity and yearning. The
rebuff I had received at her hands in the afternoon of that storm
lay like a mosquito in my soul
BOOK XIII
AT HER FATHER'S HOUSE
CHAPTER I
I MADE it my business to visit a well-known Hebrew book-store on Canal
Street. I asked for Tevkin's works. It appeared that before he
emigrated to America he had published three small volumes of
verse and prose, that they had once aroused much interest, but that
they were now practically out of print. I tried two other stores,
with the same result. I was referred to the Astor Library, whose
Hebrew department was becoming one of the richest in the world.
Sitting down in a public library to read a book seemed to be an
undignified proceeding for a manufacturer to engage in, but my
curiosity was beyond considerations of this sort. Whenever I
thought of Miss Tevkin I beheld the image of those three
books--the only things related to her with which I was able to
come in contact
Finally, on a Saturday afternoon, I found myself at one of the green
tables of Astor Library. I was reading poetry written in the holy
tongue, a language I had not used for more than eighteen years
Two of Tevkin's three little volumes were made up of poetry,
while the third consisted of brief essays, prose, poems,
"meditations," and epigrams. I came across a "meditation" entitled
"My Children," and took it up eagerly. It contained but three
sentences: "My children love me, yet my heart is hungry. They are
mine, yet they are strangers. I am homesick for them even when I
clasp them to my bosom."
The next "meditation," on the same page, had the word "Poetry"
for its head-line
"The children of Israel have been pent up in cities," it ran. "The
stuffy synagogue has been field and forest to them. But then there
is more beauty in a heaven visioned by a congregation of
worshipers than in the bluest heaven sung by the minstrel of
landscapes. They are not worshipers. They are poets. It is not God
they are speaking to. It is a sublime image. It is not their Creator.
It is their poetic creation."
Several of the poems were dedicated to Doctor Rachaeles, and of
these one of two stanzas seemed to contain a timid allusion to
Tevkin's love for his daughter. Here it is in prosaic English: "Saith
Koheleth, the son of David: 'All the rivers run into the sea, yet the
sea is not full.' Ah! the rivers are flowing and flowing, yet they are
full as ever. And my lips are speaking and speaking, yet my heart
is full as ever
"Behold! The brook is murmuring and murmuring, but I know not
of what. My heart is yearning and yearning, and I know not of
what. I cherish the murmur of the brook. I cherish the pang of my
lonely heart."
The following lines, which were also dedicated to Doctor
Rachaeles and which were entitled "Night," betray a similar
mood, perhaps, without distinctly referring to the poet's yearnings
"Hush! the night is speaking. Each twinkle of a star is a word from
the world beyond. It is the language of men who were once here,
but are no more.
A thousand generations of departed souls are speaking to us in
words of twinkling stars. I seem to be one of them. I hear my own
ghost whispering to me: 'Alas!' it says, 'Alas!'"
The three volumes were full of Biblical quaintness, and my
estrangement from the language only added to the bizarre effect
of its terse grammatical construction. I read a number of the
poems, and several of the things in the prose volume. His Hebrew
is truly marvelous, and much of the strength and charm of his
message is bound up in it. As I read his poetry or prose I seemed
to be listening to Jeremiah or Isaiah. The rhythm of his lines is not
the only thing that is lost in my translation. There is a prehistoric
vigor and a mystic beauty to them which elude the English at my
command. To be sure, every word I read in his three little volumes
was tinged with the fact that the author was the father of the girl
who had cast her spell over me.
But then the thought that she had grown up in the house of the man
who had written these lines intensified the glow of her nimbus
As I returned the books to the official in charge of the Hebrew
department I lingered to draw him into conversation. He was a
well-known member of the East Side Bohème. I had heard of him
as a man who spoke several languages and was amazingly well
read--a walking library of knowledge, not only of books, but also
of men and things. Accordingly, I hoped to extract from him some
information about Tevkin. He was a portly man, with a round,
youthful face and a baby smile. He smiled far more than he spoke.
He answered my questions either by some laconic phrase or by
leaving me for a minute and then returning with some book,
pamphlet, or newspaper-clipping in which he pointed out a
passage that was supposed to contain a reply to my query. I had
quite a long talk with him. Now and then we were interrupted by
some one asking for or returning a book, but each time he was
released he readily gave me his attention again
Speaking of Tevkin, I inquired, "Why doesn't he write some more
of those things?" For an answer he withdrew and soon came back
with several issues of The Pen, a Hebrew weekly published in
New York, in which he showed me an article by Tevkin
"Have you read it?" I asked
He nodded and smiled
"Is it good?"
"It isn't bad," he answered, with a smile
"Not as good as the things in those three volumes?"
He smiled
"This kind of thing doesn't pay, does it? How does he make a
living?"
"I don't know. I understand he has several grown children."
"So they support the family?"
"I suppose so. I am not sure, though."
"Can't a Hebrew writer make a living in New York?"
He shook his head and smiled
The dailies of the Ghetto, the newspapers that can afford to pay,
are published, not in the language of Isaiah and Job, but in
Yiddish, the German dialect spoken by the Jewish masses of
to-day. I asked the librarian whether Tevkin wrote for those
papers, and he brought me several clippings containing some of
Tevkin's Yiddish contributions. It appeared, however, that the
articles he wrote in his living mother-tongue lacked the spirit and
the charm that distinguished his style when he used the language
of the prophets. Altogether, Tevkin seemed to be accounted one
of the "has-beens" of the Ghetto
One of the bits of information I squeezed out of the librarian was
that Tevkin was a passionate frequenter of Yampolsky's café, a
well-known gathering-place of the East Side Bohème
I had heard a good deal about the resort. I knew that many or most
of its patrons were Socialists or anarchists or some other kind of
"ists." After my experience at the Cooper Institute meeting,
Yampolsky's café seemed to be the last place in the world for me
to visit. But I was drawn to it as a butterfly is to a flame, and
finally the temptation got the better of me
CHAPTER II
THE café was a spacious room of six corners and a
lop-sided general appearance.
It was about 4 o'clock of an afternoon. I sat at the end of one of the
tables, a glass of Russian tea before me. There were two other
customers at that table, both poorly clad and, as it seemed to me,
ill-fed. Two tables in a narrow and dingier part of the room were
occupied by disheveled chess-players and three or four lookers-on.
Altogether there were about fifteen people in the place. Some of
the conversations were carried on aloud. A man with curly dark
hair who was eating soup at the table directly in front of me was
satirizing somebody between spoonfuls, relishing his acrimony as
if it were spice to his soup. A feminine voice back of me was
trying to prove to somebody that she did much more for her sister
than her sister did for her. I was wretchedly ill at ease at first. I
loathed myself for being here. I felt like one who had strayed into
a disreputable den. In addition, I was in dread of being
recognized. The man who sat by my side had the hair and the
complexion of a gipsy. He looked exhausted and morose.
Presently he had a fried steak served him. It was heavily laden with
onions.
As he fell to cutting and eating it hungrily the odor of the fried
onions and the sound of his lips sickened me. The steak put him in
good humor. He became sociable and turned out to be a gay,
though a venomous, fellow. His small talk raised my spirits, too.
Nor did anybody in the café seem to know who I was or to take
any notice of me. I took a humorous view of the situation and had
the gipsy-faced man tell me who was who
"Shall I begin with this great man?" he asked, facetiously, pointing
his fork at himself. "I am the world-renowned translator and
feuilleton writer whose writings have greatly increased the
circulation of the Yiddish Tribune."
Under the guise of playful vanity he gave vent to a torrent of
self-appreciation. He then named all the "other notables
present"--a poet, a cartoonist, a budding playwright, a
distinguished Russian revolutionist, an editor, and another
newspaper man--maligning and deriding some of them and
grudgingly praising the others. Much of what he said was lost upon
me, for, although he knew that I was a rank outsider, he used a
jargon of nicknames, catch-phrases, and allusions that was
apparently peculiar to the East Side Bohème. He was part of that
little world, and he was unable to put himself in the place of one
who was not. I subsequently had occasion to read one of his
articles and I found it full of the same jargon. The public did not
understand him, but he either did not know it or did not care
As he did not point out Tevkin to me, I concluded that the Hebrew
poet was not at the café
"Do you know Tevkin?" I inquired.
"There he is," he answered, directing my glance to a gray-haired,
clean-shaven, commonplace-looking man of medium stature who
stood in the chess corner, watching one of the games. "Do you
know him?"
"No, but I have heard of him. You did not include him in your list
of notables, did you?"
"Oh, well, he was a notable once upon a time. Our rule is, 'Let the
dead past bury it's dead.'"
I felt sorry for poor Tevkin. Turning half-way around in my seat, I
took to eying the Hebrew poet. I felt disappointed. That this
prosaic-looking old man should have written the lines that I had
read at the Astor Library seemed inconceivable. The fact,
however, that he was the father of the tall, stately, beautiful girl
whose image was ever before me ennobled his face
I stepped over to him and said: "You are Mr. Tevkin, aren't you?
Allow me to introduce myself. Levinsky."
He bowed, grasping my hand, evidently loath to take his eyes off
the chess-players
"I read some of your poems the other day," I added
"My poems?" he asked, coloring
"Yes; I had heard of them, and as I happened to be at the Astor
Library I asked for your three volumes. I read several things in
each of them. I liked them tremendously."
He blushed again. "It seems an age since they were written," he
said, in confusion. "Those were different days."
We sat down at a secluded table. To propitiate the proprietor and
the waiter I ordered hot cheese-cakes. I offered to order something
for Tevkin, but he declined, and he ordered a glass of tea, with the
tacit understanding that he was to pay for it himself
"Why don't you give us some more poems like those?"
He produced his business card, saying, "This is the kind of poetry
that goes in America."
The card described him as a "general business agent and real-estate
broker." This meant that he earned, or tried to earn, an income by
acting as broker for people who wanted to sell or buy
soda-and-cigarette stands, news-stands, laundries, grocery-stores,
delicatessen-stores, butcher shops, cigar-stores, book-stores, and
what not, from a peddier's push-cart to a "parcel" of real estate or
an interest in a small factory. Scores of stores and stands change
hands in the Ghetto every day, the purchaser being usually a
workman who has saved up some money with an eye to business
"Does it pay?" I ventured to ask.
"I am not in it merely for the fun of it, am I?" he returned,
somewhat resentfully. "Business is business and poetry is poetry. I
hate to confound the two. One must make a living. Thank God, I
know how to look things in the face. I am no dreamer. It is sweet
to earn your livelihood."
"Of course it is. Still, dreaming is no crime, either."
"Ah, that's another kind of dreaming. Do you write?"
"Oh no," I said, with a laugh. "I am just a prosaic business man."
And by way of showing that I was not, I veered the conversation
back to his poetry.
I sought to impress him with a sense of my deep and critical
appreciation of what I had read in his three volumes. I spoke
enthusiastically of most of it, but took exception to the basic idea
in a poem on Job and Solomon
"It's fine as poetry," I said. "Some lines in it are perfectly beautiful.
But the parallel is not convincing."
"Why not?" he said, bristling up.
We locked horns. He was pugnacious, bitter, but ineffectual. He
quoted Hebrew, he spoke partly in Yiddish and partly in English;
he repeatedly used the words "subjective" and "objective"; he
dwelt on Job's "obvious tragedy" and Solomon's "inner sadness,"
but he was a poor talker and apparently displeased with his own
argument
"Oh, I don't make myself clear," he said, in despair
"But you do," I reassured him. "I understand you perfectly."
"No, you don't. You're only saying it to please me. But then what
matters it whether a business agent has a correct conception of
Solomon's psychology or not?" he said, bitterly. "Seriously, Mr.
Levinsky, I am often out of sorts with myself for hanging around
this café. This is the gathering-place of talent, not of business
agents."
"Why? Why?" I tried to console him. "I am sure you have more
talent than all of them put together. Do you think anybody in this
café could write verse or prose like yours?"
He looked down, his features hardening into a frown. "Anyhow, I
cannot afford the time. While I loiter here I am liable to miss a
customer. I must give myself entirely to my business, entirely,
entirely--every bit of myself. I must forget I ever did any
scribbling." "You are taking it too hard, Mr. Tevkin. One can
attend to business and yet find time for writing."
All at once he brightened up bashfully and took to reciting a
Hebrew poem.
Here is the essence of it: "Since the destruction of the Temple
instrumental music has been forbidden in the synagogues. The
Children of Israel are in mourning. They are in exile and in
mourning. Silent is their harp. So is mine. I am in exile. I am in a
strange land. My harp is silent." "Is it your poem?" I asked.
He nodded bashfully
"When did you compose it?"
"A few weeks ago."
"Has it been printed?" He shook his head
"Why?"
"I could have it printed in a Hebrew weekly we publish here,
but--well, I did not care to."
"You mean The Pen?"
"Yes. Do you see it sometimes?"
"I did, once. I am going to subscribe for it. Anyhow, the poem
belies itself. It shows that your harp has not fallen silent."
He smiled, flushed with satisfaction, like a shy schoolboy, and
proceeded to recite another Hebrew poem: "Most song-birds do
not sing in captivity. I was once a song-bird, but America is my
cage. It is not my home. My song is gone."
"This poem, too, gives itself the lie!" I declared. "But the idea of
America being likened to a prison!"
"It is of my soul I speak," he said, resentfully. "Russia did not
imprison it, did it? Russia is a better country than America,
anyhow, even if she is oppressed by a czar. It's a freer country,
too--for the spirit, at least.
There is more poetry there, more music, more feeling, even if our
people do suffer appalling persecution. The Russian people are
really a warm-hearted people. Besides, one enjoys life in Russia
better than here. Oh, a thousand times better. There is too much
materialism here, too much hurry and too much prose, and--yes,
too much machinery. It's all very well to make shoes or bread by
machinery, but alas! the things of the spirit, too, seem to be
machine-made in America. If my younger children were not so
attached to this country and did not love it so, and if I could make
a living in Russia now, I should be ready to go back at once."
"'Comfort ye, comfort ye, my people, saith your God,'" I quoted,
gaily.
"It's all a matter of mood. Poets are men of moods." And again I
quoted, "'Attend unto me, O my friend, and give ear unto me, O
my comrade.'" I took up the cudgels for America
He listened gloomily, leaving my arguments unanswered. By way
of broaching the subject of his daughter I steered my talk to a
point that gave me a chance to refer to his little "meditation," "My
Children." "How well you do remember my poor little volumes,"
he said, greatly flattered. "Yes, 'My children love me.' They are
not children, but angels.
And yet--God save me from having to be supported by them. They
bring in a considerable sum at the end of the week, and they hate
to see me work or worry. But, oh, how sweet it is to earn one's
own living! Thank God, I do earn my share and my wife's. My
children are bitterly opposed to it. They beg me to stay home, but
I say: 'No, children mine! As long as your father can earn his
bread, his bread he will earn.' That's why my humdrum occupation
is so sweet to me." At this he lowered his eyes and said, with the
embarrassed simper which seemed to accompany every remark of
his that implied self-appreciation, "I wrote something on this
subject the other day, just a line or two: 'There are instances when
the jewel of poetry glints out of the prose of trade.'"
The fact that his children contributed to the maintenance of the
family nest was evidently a sore spot in his heart
His face, sensitive and mobile in the extreme, was like a
cinematographic film. It recorded the subtlest change in his mood.
The notion of its being a commonplace face seemed to me absurd
now. It was a different image almost every minute, and my mental
portrait of it was as unlike my first impression of it as a motion
picture is unlike any of its component photographs
I parted from him without referring to his daughter, but I felt that I
had won his heart, and it seemed to be a matter of days when he
would invite me to his house
The next time I saw him, on an afternoon at Yampolsky's café
again, there was an elusive deference in his demeanor. He seemed
to me more reserved and ill at ease than he had been on the
previous occasion. Finally he said, "I had no idea you were David
Levinsky, the cloak-manufacturer."
My vanity was so flattered that I was unable to restrain my face
from betraying it. I answered, with a beaming smile, "I told you I
was in the cloak business, didn't I?"
"I don't think you did. Anyhow, I did not know what kind of a
cloak-factory yours was," he said
"What kind do you mean?" I laughed.
"Well, I am glad to know you are so successful. There was
somebody who recognized you last time you were here. Your
secret leaked out."
"Secret! Well, what difference does it all make? To possess a
talent like yours is a far greater success than to own a factory,
even if mine were the largest in the world."
He waved his hand deprecatingly
Our conversation was disturbed by a quarrel between two men at a
near-by table. I was at a loss to make out what it was all about.
Tevkin attempted to enlighten me, but I listened to him only
partly, being interested in the darts of the two belligerents. All I
could gather was that they were story-writers of two opposing
schools. I felt, however, that their hostility was based upon
professional jealousy rather than upon a divergence of artistic
ideals
Finally one of them paid his check and departed. Tevkin told me
more about them. He spoke of the one who stayed in the café
with admiration. "He's a real artist; some of his stories are perfect
gems," he said. "He's a good fellow, too. Only he thinks too much
of himself. But then perhaps this is an inevitable part of talent, the
shadow that is inseparable from the light of genius."
"Perhaps it's the engine that sets it in motion, gives it incentive."
"Perhaps. I wish I had some of it." I reflected that he did seem to
have some of "it." At all events, he did not seem to begrudge
others their success. He spoke of the other people in the café with
singular good-will, and even enthusiasm, in fact
Some of the people present I had seen on my previous visit. Of the
others Tevkin pointed out a man to me who knew six languages
well and had a working acquaintance with several more; another
who had published an excellent Hebrew translation of some of the
English poets, and a third whose son, a young violinist, "had taken
Europe by storm."
An intellectual-looking Gentile made his entry. He shook hands
with one of the men I had seen on the former occasion and seated
himself by his side
"Either a journalist in search of material," Tevkin explained to me
in answer to a question, "or simply a man of literary tastes who is
drawn to the atmosphere of this place."
The café rose in my estimation
I learned from Tevkin that many of Yampolsky's patrons were poor
working-men and that some of these were poets, writers of stories,
or thinkers, but that the café was also frequented by some
professional and business men. At this he directed my attention to
a "Talmud-faced" man whom he described as a liquor-dealer who
"would be a celebrated writer if he were not worth half a million."
The last piece of information was a most agreeable surprise to me.
It made me feel safe in the place. I regarded the liquor-dealer with
some contempt, however. "Pshaw! half a million. He's probably
worth a good deal less.
Anyhow, I could buy and sell him." At the same time I said to
myself, "He's well-to-do and yet he chums around with people in
whom intellectual Gentiles take an interest." I envied him. I felt
cheap
I felt still cheaper when I heard that the literary liquor-dealer
generously contributed to the maintenance of The Pen, the
Hebrew weekly with which Tevkin was connected, and that he,
the liquor-dealer, wrote for that publication
It appeared that Tevkin had an office which was a short distance
from the bohemian café. I asked to see it, and he yielded
reluctantly
"You can take it for granted that your office is a more imposing
one than mine," he jested
"Ah, but there was a time when all my office amounted to was an
old desk. So there will be a time when yours will occupy a
splendid building on Wall Street."
"That's far more than I aspire to. All I want is to make a modest
living, so that my daughters should not have to go to work. They
don't work in a shop, of course. One is a stenographer in a fine
office and the other a school-teacher. But what difference does it
make?"
His office proved to be the hall bedroom of an apartment occupied
by the family of a cantor named Wolpert. We first entered the
dining-room, a door connecting it with Tevkin's "office" being
wide open. It was late and the gas-light was burning. Seated at a
large oval table, covered with a white oil-cloth, was Wolpert and
two other men, all the three of them with full beards and with the
stamp of intellectual life on their faces
"There are some queer people in the world who will still read my
poetry," Tevkin said to them, by way of introducing me. "Here is
one of them. Mr.
Levinsky, David Levinsky, the cloak-manufacturer."
The announcement made something of a stir.
Mrs. Wolpert brought us tea. From the ensuing conversation I
gleaned that these people, including Tevkin, were ardent Zionists
of a certain type, and that they were part of a group in which the
poet was a ruling spirit. When I happened to drop a remark to the
effect that Hebrew, the language of the Old Testament, was a dead
language, Wolpert exclaimed: "Oh no! Not any longer, Mr.
Levinsky. It has risen from the dead."
The other two chimed in, each in his way, the burden of their
argument being that Hebrew was the living tongue of the Zionist
colonists in Palestine
"The children of our colonists speak it as American children do
English," said Tevkin, exultingly. "They speak it as the sons and
daughters of Jerusalem spoke it at the time of the prophets. We
are no dreamers. We can tell the difference between a dream and
a hard fact, can't we?"--to the other two. "For centuries the tongue
of our fathers spoke from the grave to us. Now, however, it has
come to life again."
He took me into his "office," lighting the gas-jet in it. A few
minutes later he shut the dining-room door, his face assuming an
extremely grave mien
"By the way, an idea has occurred to me," he said. "But first I want
you to know that I do not mean to profit by our spiritual friendship
for purposes of a material nature. Do you believe me?"
"I certainly do. Go ahead, Mr. Tevkin."
"What I want to say is a pure matter of business. Do you
understand? If you don't want to go into it, just say so, and we
shall drop it."
"Of course," I answered
We were unable to look each other in the face.
"There is a parcel of real estate in Brooklyn," he resumed. "One
could have it for a song."
"But I don't buy real estate," I replied, my cheeks on fire. He
looked at the floor and, after a moment's silence, he said: "That's
all. Excuse me. I don't want you to think I want to presume upon
our acquaintance."
"But I don't. On the contrary, I wish it were in my line. I should be
glad to--"
"That's all," he cut me short. "Let us say no more about it." And he
made an awkward effort to talk Zionism again
CHAPTER III
THE real-estate "boom" which had seized upon the
five Ghettos of Greater New York a few years before was still
intoxicating a certain element of their population. Small
tradesmen of the slums, and even working-men, were investing
their savings in houses and lots. Jewish carpenters, house-painters,
bricklayers, or instalment peddlers became builders of tenements
or frame dwellings, real-estate speculators. Deals were being
closed, and poor men were making thousands of dollars in less
time than it took them to drink the glass of tea or the plate of
sorrel soup over which the transaction took place. Women, too,
were ardently dabbling in real estate, and one of them was Mrs.
Chaikin, the wife of my talented designer
Tevkin was not the first broker to offer me a "good thing" in real
estate.
Attempts in that direction had been made before and I had warded
them all off
Instinct told me not to let my attention be diverted from my regular
business to what I considered a gamble. "Unreal estate," I would
call it. My friend Nodelman was of the same opinion. "It's a poker
game traveling under a false passport," was his way of putting it.
Once, as I sat in a Brooklyn street-car, I was accosted by a
bewigged woman who occupied the next seat and whom I had
never seen before
"You speak Yiddish, don't you?" she began, after scrutinizing me
quite unceremoniously
"I do. Why?"
"I just wanted to know."
"Is that all?"
"Well, it is and it is not," she said, with a shrewd, good-natured
smile.
"Since we are talking, I might as well ask you if you would not
care to take a look at a couple of new houses in East New York."
I did not interrupt her and she proceeded to describe the houses
and the bargain they represented
When she finally paused for my answer and I perpetrated a labored
witticism about her "peddling real estate in street-cars" she flared
up: "Why not? Is it anything to be ashamed of or to hide? Did I
steal those houses? I can assure you I paid good money for them.
So why should I be afraid to speak about them? And when I say it
is a bargain, I mean it. That, too, I can say aloud and to everybody
in the world, because it is the truth, the holy truth. May I not live
to see my children again if it is not.
There!" After a pause she resumed: "Well?"
I made no reply
"Will you come along and see the houses? It is not far from here."
"I have no time."
She took up some details tending to show that by buying those two
frame buildings of hers and selling them again I was sure to
"clear" a profit of ten thousand dollars
I made no reply
"Well? Will you come along?"
"Leave me alone, please."
"Ah, you are angry, aren't you?" she said, sneeringly. "Is it because
you haven't any money?"
The awkward scene that had attended Tevkin's attempt to get me
interested in his parcel haunted me. I craved to see him again and
to let him sell me something. To be sure, my chief motive was a
desire to cultivate his friendship, to increase my chances of being
invited to his house. The risk of buying some city lots in Brooklyn
seemed to be a trifling price to pay for the prospect of coming into
closer relations with him. Besides, the "parcel" seemed to be a
sure investment. But I was also eager to do something for him for
his own sake. And so I made an appointment with him by
telephone and called at his wretched little office again
"Where is the parcel you mentioned the other day?" I began.
"Where is it located?"
"Never mind that," he said, hotly. "There shall be no business
between you and me. Nothing but pure spiritual friendship. I made
a foolish mistake last time. I hate myself for it. If you were a
smaller man financially I should not mind it, perhaps. As it is, it
would simply mean that you help me out.
It would mean charity."
I laughed and argued and insisted, and he succumbed. We made an
appointment to meet at Malbin's, a large restaurant on Grand
Street that was known as the "Real Estate Exchange" of the
Ghetto. There I was introduced to a plain-looking man who
proved to be the then owner of the parcel, and closed a contract
for a deed.
Encouraged by this transaction, Tevkin rapidly developed some
far-reaching real-estate projects in which he apparently expected
me to be the central figure. One afternoon as we sat over glasses
of tea at Malbin's he said: "If you want to drink a glass of real
Russian tea, come up some evening. We shall all be very glad to
see you."
I felt the color mounting to my face as I said, "I don't think your
daughter would like it."
"My daughter?" he asked, in amazement. "But I have three
daughters."
"The one that spent some time at the Rigi Kulm in the Catskills
last summer."
"Anna?" he asked, with still greater surprise, as it were
"I don't know her first name, but I suppose that's the one."
"If she was at the Rigi Kulm, it's Anna."
"Well, I had the pleasure of meeting her there, but I am afraid I
was somewhat of a persona non grata with her," I said, in a partial
attempt to make a joke of it
He dropped his glance, leveled it at me once more, and dropped it
again
"Why, what was the matter?" he inquired, in great embarrassment
"Nothing was the matter. A case of dislike at first sight, I
suppose."
"Still--"
"You'd better ask her, Mr. Tevkin." He made no reply, nor did he
repeat his invitation. He was manifestly on pins and needles to get
away, without having the courage to do so.
"So that's what you wanted to meet me for?" he muttered looking
at the wall
"Well, I'll tell you frankly how it was, Mr. Tevkin," I said, and
began with a partial lie calculated to bribe him: "I became
interested in her because I heard that she was your daughter, and
afterward, when I had returned to the city, I made it my business
to go to the library and to read your works. My enthusiasm for
your writings is genuine, however, I assure you, Mr. Tevkin.
And when I went to that café it was for the purpose of making
your acquaintance, as much for your own sake as for hers. There, I
have told you the whole story."
There was mixed satisfaction and perplexity in his look
The next morning my mail included a letter from him. It was
penned in Hebrew. It read like a chapter of the Old Testament. He
pointed out, with exquisite tact, that it was merely as a would-be
courtier that I had failed to find favor in his daughter's
eyes--something that is purely a matter of taste and chance. He
then went on to intimate that if the unfortunate little situation
rendered it at all inconvenient for me to visit his house he did not
see why he and I could not continue our friendly relations
"If I have found as much grace in thine eyes as thou hast found in
mine," he wrote, "it would pain me to forfeit thy friendship. Let
the unpleasant incident be forgotten, then. I have a very important
business proposition to make, but should it fail to arouse thine
interest, why, then, let all business, too, be eliminated, and let our
bond be one of unalloyed friendship. I have been hungry for a
fellow-spirit for years and in thee I have found one at last. Shall I
be estranged from thee for external causes?"
Whereupon he went into raptures over a prospective real-estate
company of which he wanted me to be a leading shareholder.
Companies or "combines" of this sort were then being formed on
the East Side by the score and some of them were said to be
reaping fabulous profits.
My Hebrew, which had never been perfect (for the Talmud is
chiefly in Chaldaic and Aramaic), was by now quite out of gear.
So my answer was framed partly in Yiddish, but mostly in
English, the English being tacitly intended for his daughter,
although he understood the language perfectly. I said, in
substance, that I was going to be as frank as he was, that I did not
propose to invest more money in real estate, and that I asked to be
allowed to call on his daughter. The following passage was
entirely in English: "I have made a misleading impression on Miss
Tevkin. I have done myself a great injustice and I beg for a chance
to repair the damage. In business I am said to know how to show
my goods to their best advantage. Unfortunately, this instinct
seems often to desert me in private life. There I am apt to put my
least attractive wares in the show-window, to expose some
unlovable trait of my character, while whatever good there may be
in me eludes the eye of a superficial acquaintance.
"Please assure your daughter that it is not to force my attentions
upon her that I am asking for an interview. All I want is to try to
convince her that her image of me is, spiritually speaking, not a
good likeness."
Two days passed. In the morning of the third I received a
telephone-call from Tevkin, asking to meet me. Impelled by a
desire to impress him with my importance, I invited him to my
place of business. When he came I designedly kept him in my
waiting-room for some minutes before I received him. When he
was finally admitted to my private office he faced me with studied
indifference. He said he had only a minute's time, yet he stayed
nearly an hour. He asked me to come to his house. He spoke
guardedly, giving vague answers to my questions. The best I could
make of his explanation was that his daughter had been prejudiced
against me by the fact that everybody at the Rigi Kulm had looked
upon me as a great matrimonial "catch."
"Mv children have extremely modern ideas," he said. "Topsy-turvy
ones." His face brightened, and he added: "The old rule is,
'Poverty is no disgrace.' Their rule is, 'Wealth is a disgrace.'" And
he flushed and burst into a little laugh of approbation at his own
epigram
"I suppose your daughter regarded me as a parvenu, an upstart, an
ignoramus," I remarked
"No, not at all. She says she heard you say some clever things."
"Did she?"
"Still, your letter was a surprise to her. She had not thought you
capable of writing such things."
What really had occurred between father and daughter concerning
my desire to call I never learned
Tevkin's house was apparently full of Socialism. Indeed, so was
the house of almost every intellectual family among our
immigrants. I hated and dreaded that world as much as ever and I
dreaded Miss Tevkin more than ever, but, moth-like, I was drawn
to the flame with greater and greater force. I went to the Tevkins'
with the feeling of one going to his doom
CHAPTER IV
THE family occupied a large, old, private house in
the Harlem section of Fifth Avenue, a locality swarming with our
people. I called at 8 in the evening. It was in the latter part of
March, nearly eight months after my unfortunate experience in the
Catskills. I was received in the hall by Tevkin. He took me into a
spacious parlor whose walls were lined with old book-cases and
book-stands. There I found Anna and two of the other children of
the numerous family. She wore a blouse of green velvet and a
black four-in-hand tie. She welcomed me with a cordial
handshake and a gay smile, as though all that had transpired
between us had been a childish misunderstanding, but she was ill
at ease. As for me, I was literally panic-stricken. It was at this
moment, when I came face to face with her for the first time in the
eight months following that Catskill incident, that I became aware
of being definitely in love with her
The book-cases and book-stands were full to bursting. There was a
piano in the room and two tables littered with books, prints, and
photographs. The space between book-cases and over the piano
was hung with etchings, crayons, pen-and-ink drawings, and
photographs. The other two of Tevkin's children present were a
chubby girl of twelve, named Gracie, and a young man of
twenty-eight, two or three years older than Anna, named Sasha.
Sasha had a half-interest in an evening preparatory school in
which he taught mathematics, being now confined to the house by
a slight indisposition
Mrs. Tevkin made her appearance--a handsome old woman of
striking presence, tall, almost majestic, with a mass of white hair,
with the beautiful features of the girl who was the cause of my
being there. I thought of Naphtali. I had a desire to discover his
address and to write him about my meeting with the hero and
heroine of the romance of which he had told me a few months
before I left Antomir. "I go to their house. She is still beautiful," I
pictured myself saying to him. Her demeanor and the very
intonation of her speech seemed to proclaim the fact that she was
the daughter of that illustrious physician of Odessa. It did not take
me long to discover, however, that under the surface of her good
breeding and refinement was a woman of scant intellect
Seeing me look at the book-cases, she said: "These are not all the
books we have. There are some in the other rooms, too. Plenty of
them. It's quite a job for an American servant-girl to dust them."
Anna smiled good-humoredly
The next utterance of Mrs. Tevkin's was to the effect that one had
to put up with crowded quarters in America--a hint at the better
days which the family had seen in Russia
Anna's younger sister, Elsie, a school-teacher, came in. She had
quicker movements and a sharper look than the stenographer and
she bore strong resemblance to her father. Anna was the prettier
of the two. We went down into the dining-room, where we found
Russian tea, cake, and preserves.
Presently we were joined by George, an insurance-collector, who
was between Anna and Sasha, and Emil, an artist employed on a
Sunday paper, who was between Anna and Elsie. Emil was a
handsome fellow with a picturesque face which betrayed his
vocation. The crayons and the pen-and-ink drawings that I had
seen in the library were his work. He had a pale, high forehead and
a thick, upright grove of very soft, brown hair which I pictured as
billowing in a breeze like a field of rye. "Just the kind of son for a
poet to have," I thought
There was another son, Moissey. He was married and I did not see
him that evening. His mother was continually referring to him
"I can see that you miss him," I said
"I should say so," Anna broke in. "He's her pet."
"Don't mind what she says, Mr. Levinsky," her mother exhorted
me. "She just loves to tease me."
"Mother is right," Elsie interposed. "Moissey is not her pet. lf
somebody is, it's I, isn't it, ma?"
Anna smiled good-naturedly
"Gracie is my pet," Mrs. Tevkin rejoined
"Gracie and Moissey, both," Tevkin amended. "Moissey is her
first-born, don't you know. But the great point is that he has been
married only three months, and she has not yet got used to having
him live somewhere else. She feels as if somebody had snatched
him from her. When a day passes without her seeing him she is
uneasy."
"Not at all," Mrs. Tevkin demurred. "I am thinking of him just now
because--because--well, because we have all been introduced to
Mr. Levinsky except him!"
"If two or three of the family were missing it wouldn't be so
marked," Tevkin supported her, chivalrously. "But only one is
missing, only one. That somehow makes you think of him. I feel
the same way."
As he spoke it seemed to me that in his home atmosphere he bore
himself with more self-confidence and repose than at the café or
at his office. His hospitality had made him ill at ease at first, but
that had worn off
"You can depend on father to find some defense for mother,"
remarked the picturesque Emil
At her husband's suggestion and after some urging the hostess led
the way back to the parlor, or library, where she was to play us
something. As we were passing out of the dining-room and up the
stairs Tevkin seized the opportunity to say to me: "We live on the
communistic principle, as you see. Each of us, except Mrs.
Tevkin and the little one contributes his earnings or part of them to
the general treasury, my wife acting as treasurer and manager.
Still, in the near future I hope to be able to turn the commune into
a family of the good old type. My affairs are making headway,
thank God. I sha'n't need my children's contributions much
longer."
Mrs. Tevkin played some classical pieces. She had a pleasing tone
and apparently felt at home at the keyboard, but it was to my eye
rather than to my ear that her playing appealed. A white-haired
Jewish woman at a piano was something which, in Antomir, had
been associated in my mind with the life of the highest aristocracy
exclusively. But then Mrs. Tevkin's father had been a physician,
and Jewish physicians belonged, in the conception of my
childhood and youth, to the highest social level. Another mark of
her noble birth, according to my Antomir ideas, was the fact that
she often addressed her husband and her older children, not in
Yiddish or English, but in Russian. Compared to her, Matilda's
mother was a plebeian
The only other person in the family who played the piano with
facility and confidence was Emil.
I had never been in a house of this kind in my life. I was fascinated
beyond expression
Anna's constraint soon wore off and she treated me with charming
hospitality. So did Elsie. There was absolutely no difference in
their manner toward me. Elsie gave me the attention which a girl
usually accords to a close friend of her father's, and this was also
the sort of attention I received from her older sister. It was as if
the Catskill episode had never taken place and she were now
seeing me for the first time
I met Moissey and his wife at my next visit. He was a man of
thirty-two or more, tall, wiry, nervous, with large, protruding, dark
eyes. He was "a dentist by profession and a Russian social
democrat by religion," as his father introduced him to me
"Karl Marx is his god and Pleenanoff, the Russian socialist leader,
is his Moses," the old man added
Moissey's wife looked strikingly Semitic. She seemed to have just
stepped out of the Old Testament. She had been only about a year
in the country, and the only language she could speak was
Russian, which she enunciated without a trace of a Jewish accent
or intonation. She scarcely understood Yiddish.
All this was uncannily at variance with her Biblical face. It seemed
incredable that her speech and outward appearance should belong
to the same person. To add to the discrepancy, she was smoking
cigarette after cigarette, a performance certainly not in keeping
with one's notion of a Jewish woman of the old type
The oldest two sons, Moissey and Sasha, spoke English with a
Russian accent from which the English of all the other children
was absolutely free. Mrs.
Tevkin's Russian sounded more Russian than her husband's. Emil,
Elsie, and Gracie did not speak Russian at all
Barring Mrs. Tevkin, each adult in the family worshiped at the
shrine of some "ism." Anna professed Israel Zangwill's modified
Zionism or Territorialism. This, however, was merely a platonic
interest with her. It took up little or none of her time. Her real
passion was Minority, a struggling little magazine of "modernistic
literature and thought." It was published by a group of radicals of
which she was a member. Elsie, on the other hand, who was a
socialist, was an ardent member of the Socialist party and of the
Socialist Press Club. Politically the two sisters were supposed to
be irreconcilable opponents, yet Anna often worked in the interests
of Elsie's party. Indeed, the more I knew them the clearer it
became to me that the older sister was under the influence of the
younger
The two girls and their brothers had many visitors--socialist and
anarchist writers, poets, critics, artists. These were of both sexes
and some of them were Gentiles. Two of the most frequent callers
were Miss Siegel and the sallow-faced, homely man who had
danced with Anna at the Rigi Kulm pavilion.
He was an instructor in an art school. From his talks with Emil and
Anna I learned of a whole world whose existence I had never even
suspected--the world of East Side art students, of the gifted boys
among them, some of whom had gone to study in Paris, of their
struggles, prospects, jealousies. I was introduced to several of
these people, but I never came into sympathetic touch with them. I
was ever conscious, never my real self in their midst.
Perhaps it was because they did not like me; perhaps it was
because I failed to appreciate a certain something that was the key
note to their mental attitude. However that may have been, I
always felt wretched in their company, and my attempts at saying
something out of the common usually missed fire
Was Anna interested in any of the young men who came to the
house? I was inclined to think that she was not, but I was not sure
Among Elsie's closest friends or "comrades" was an American
millionaire--a member of one of the best-known families in New
York--and his wife, who was a Jewess, of whom I had read in the
papers. I never saw them at the Tevkins', but I knew that they
occasionally called on the school-teacher and that she saw a good
deal of them at their house and at various meetings, a fact the
discovery of which produced a disheartening impression on me. It
was as though the sole advantage I enjoyed over Anna--the
possession of money--suddenly had been wiped out
I sometimes wondered whether at the bottom of her heart Elsie did
not feel elated by her close relations with that couple. That she
herself was a stranger to all money interests there could be no
doubt, however. And this was true of Anna and the other children.
Elsie and Moissey were the strongest individualities in the family.
Theirs were truly religious natures, and socialism was their
religion in the purest sense of the term.
Elsie scarcely had any other great interest in life. Her socialism
amused me, but her devotion to it inspired me with reverence. As
for Moissey, good literature, as the term is understood in Russia,
was nearly as much of a passion with him as Marxian socialism.
His fervent talks of what he considered good fiction and his
ferocious assaults upon what he termed "candy stories" were very
impressive, though I did not always understand what he was
talking about. Sometimes he would pick a quarrel with Anna over
Minority and her literary hobbies generally. Once he brought her to
tears by his attacks. I could not see why people should quarrel
over mere stories. I thought Moissey crazy, but I must confess that
his views on literature were not without influence upon my tastes.
I did not do much reading in these days, so I may not have become
aware of it at once. But at a later period, when I did do much
reading, Moissey's opinions came back to me and I seemed to find
myself in accord with them
To return to my visits at the Tevkins'. I told myself again and again
that their world was not mine, that there was no hope for me, and
that there was nothing for it but to discontinue my calls, but I had
not the strength to do so. I never went away from this house
otherwise than dejected and forlorn
Tevkin was charming in the fervent, yet tactful, hospitality with
which he endeavored to assuage the bitterness of my visits. He
seemed to say, "I see everything, my dear friend, and my heart
goes out to you, but how can I help you?"
His wife tried to be diplomatic
"American young people imagine they own the earth," she once
said to me, with a knowing glint in her beautiful eyes. "Some day
they'll find out their mistake."
The hot months set in. The family nominally moved to Rockaway
Beach for the season and my visits were suspended. Nominally,
because Elsie and the boys and old Tevkin himself slept in the
Harlem house more often than in their summer home. Elsie was
wrapped up in the socialist campaign, which kept her busy every
night from the middle of July to Election Day. She practically had
no vacation. Anna made arrangements to spend her brief vacation
with some of her literary friends who had a camp in Maine, but
while she was in the city she came home to her mother and Gracie
almost every evening. As for her father, whom I saw several times
during that summer, he often sat up far into the night in Malbin's
or some other restaurant, talking "parcels." He had become so
absorbed in his real-estate speculations that he was rarely seen at
Yampolsky's café these days. One evening, when he was dining
with me at the private hotel in which I lived, and we were
discussing his ventures, he said: "Do you know, my friend, I have
made more than twelve thousand dollars?"
He tried to say it in a matter-of-fact, business-like way, but his face
melted into an expression of joy before he finished the sentence.
"I tell it to you because I know that you are a real friend and that
you will be sincerely glad to hear it," he went on
"I certainly am. I'm awfully glad," I rejoined, fervently
"I expect to make more. No more chipping in by the children!
Anna shall give up her typewriting and Elsie her teaching. Yes,
things are coming my way at last."
"Still, if I were you, I should go slow. The real-estate market is an
uncertain thing, after all."
"Of course it is," he answered, mechanically
Since I bought that Brooklyn parcel and refused to go into further
real-estate operations he had never approached me with business
schemes again. There was not the slightest alloy of self-interest in
his friendship, and he was careful not to have it appear that there
was. He never initiated me into the details of his speculations, lest
I should offer him a loan. He was quite squeamish about it
One day I offered him a hundred-dollar check for The Pen, the
Hebrew weekly with which he was connected and upon which I
knew him to spend more than he could afford
"I don't want it," he said, reddening and shaking his head
"Why?" I asked, also reddening
I was sorely hurt and he noticed it
"I know that you do it whole-heartedly," he hastened to explain,
"but I don't want to feel that you do it for my sake."
"But I don't do it for your sake. I just want to help the paper. Can't
I--" He interrupted me with assurances of his regard for me and
for my motives, and accepted the check.
Was he dreaming of Anna ultimately agreeing to marry me--and
my money? He certainly considered me a most desirable match.
But I felt sure that he was fond of me on my personal account and
that he would have liked to have me for his son-in-law even if my
income had not exceeded three or four thousand dollars a year. He
did not share the radical views of his children. He was much
nearer to my point of view than they
CHAPTER V
IT was December. There was an air of prosperity in
Tevkin's house, but the girls would not give up their jobs. I was a
frequent caller again. I was burning to take Anna, Elsie, and their
parents to the theater, but was afraid the two girls would spurn the
invitation
One day I was agreeably surprised by Elsie asking me to buy some
tickets for a socialist ball. They were fifty cents apiece
"How many do you want me to take?" I asked
"As many as you can afford," she answered, roguishly
"Will you sell me twenty-five dollars' worth?"
"Oh, that would be lovely!" she said, in high glee
When I handed her the money I was on the brink of asking if it
might not be rejected as "tainted," but suppressed the pleasantry
For me to attend a socialist ball would have meant to face a crowd
of union men. It was out of the question. But the twenty-five
dollars somehow brought me nearer to Elsie, and that meant to
Anna also. I began to feel more at home in their company. Elsie
was as dear as a sister to me. I went so far as to venture to invite
them and their parents to the opera, and my invitation was
accepted. I was still merely "a friend of father's," something like an
uncle, but I saw a ray of hope now
"Suppose a commonplace business man like myself offered you a
check for Minority," I once said to Anna.
"A check for Minority?" she echoed, with joyful surprise. "Well, it
would be accepted with thanks, of course, but you would first
have to withdraw the libel 'the commonplace business man.'
Another condition is that you must promise to read the magazine."
As I was making out the check I told her that I had read some
issues of it and that I "solemnly swore" to read it regularly now.
That I had found it an unqualified bore I omitted to announce.
Shortly after that opera night Tevkin provided a box at one of the
Jewish theaters for a play by Jacob Gordin
I was quite chummy with the girls. They would jokingly call me
"Mr.
Capitalist" and, despite their father's protests, "bleed" me for all
sorts of contributions. One of these came near embroiling me with
Moissey. It was for a revolutionary leader, a Jew, who had
recently escaped from a Siberian prison in a barrel of cabbage and
whose arrival in New York (by way of Japan and San Francisco)
had been the great sensation of the year among the socialists of
the East Side. The new-comer was the founder of a party of
terrorists and had organized a plot which had resulted in the killing
of an uncle of the Czar and of a prime minister. Now, Moissey, in
his rabid, uncompromising way, sympathized with another party
of Russian revolutionists, with one that was bitterly opposed to
the theories and methods of the terrorists. So when he learned that
Anna was collecting funds for the man who had been smuggled
out of jail in a barrel, and that I had given her a check for him, he
flared up and called her "busybody."
"You had better mind your own affairs, Moissey," she retorted,
coloring
She essayed to defend her position, contending that the methods of
the Russian Government rendered terrorism not only justifiable,
but inevitable
"The question is not whether it is justifiable, but whether there is
any sense to it," Moissey replied, sneeringly. "Revolutions are not
made by plotting or bomb-throwing. They must take the form of
an uprising by the masses."
"As if the Russian terrorists did not have the masses back of them!
The peasantry and the educated classes are with them."
"How do you know they are?" Moissey asked, with a good-natured,
but patronizing, smile
He spoke of the Russian working class as the great element that
was destined to work out the political and economic salvation of
the country, and at this he tactlessly dwelt on the Russian
trade-unions, on what he termed their revolutionary strikes, and
upon the aid Russian capitalists gave the Government in its
crusade upon the struggle for liberty
I felt quite awkward. I wondered whether he was not saying these
things designedly to punish me for the check I had given Anna for
the terrorists.
He had always seemed to hold aloof from me, as if he were
opposed to the visits of the "money-bag" that I was at his father's
house. At this minute I felt as though his eyes said, "The idea of
this fleecer of labor contributing to the struggle for liberty!"
I was burning to tell him that he lacked manners, and to assail
trade-unionism, but I restrained myself, of course
Sometimes the girls and I would discuss the social question or
literature, subjects upon which they assured me that I held
"naïve" views. But all my efforts to get Anna into a more intimate
conversation failed. For all our familiarity, it seemed as if we held
our conversations through a thick window-pane. Nevertheless, in
a very vague way, and for no particular reason that I was aware of,
I thought that I sensed encouragement
Tevkin never again approached me with his real-estate ventures,
but the very air of his house these days was full of such ventures. I
met other real-estate men at his home. Their talk was tempting.
my enormous income notwithstanding. Huge fortunes seemed to
be growing like mushrooms all over the five Ghettos of New York
and Brooklyn. I saw men who three years ago had not been worth
a cent and who were now buying and selling blocks of property.
How much they were actually worth was a question which in the
excitement of the "boom" did not seem to matter. It is never a rare
incident among our people for a man with a nebulous fortune of a
few hundred dollars to plunge into a commercial undertaking
involving many thousands; but during that period this was an
every-day affair. At first I treated it like something that was going
on in another country. But I had a good deal of uninvested money
and my resistance was slackening.
At last I succumbed
One of the men I met at Tevkin's was Volodsky, the old-time street
peddler, the man of the beautiful teeth whose push-cart had
adjoined mine in those gloomy days when I tried to sell goods in
the streets, and who had told me of the dower-money which his
sister had lent him for his journey to America.
I had not seen him since then--an interval of over twenty
years--and we recognized each other with some difficulty
The real-estate boom had found him eking out a wretched
livelihood by selling goods on the instalment plan. Most of his
business had been in the Italian quarter and he had learned to
speak Italian far more fluently than he had English. A short time
before I stumbled upon him at the Tevkins' he had built an
enormous block of high, brick apartment-houses in Harlem. He
had gone into the undertaking with only five thousand dollars of
his own, and before the houses were half completed he had sold
them all, pocketing an enormous profit. When we were peddlers
together he had been considered a failure and a fool. He now
struck me as a clever fellow, full of dash.
Nor did Volodsky represent the only metamorphosis of this kind
that I came across. It was as though there were something in the
atmosphere which turned paupers into capitalists and inane
milksops into men of brains and pluck.
Volodsky succeeded in luring me into a network of speculations
Tevkin had an interest in some of these operations, and, as they
were mostly concerned with property in Harlem or in the Bronx,
his house became my real-estate headquarters. There were two
classes of callers at his home now: the socialists and the literary
men or artists who visited Tevkin's children and the "real-estate
crowd" who came to see Tevkin himself. It came to be tacitly
understood that the library was to be left to the former, while the
dining-room, in the basement, was used as Tevkin's office. Being
"a friend of the family," I had the freedom of both
"You're making a big mistake, Levinsky," Nodelman once said to
me, with a gesture of deep concern. "What is biting you? Aren't
you making money fast enough? Mark my word, if you try to
swallow too fast you'll choke. Any doctor will tell you that."
I urged him to join me, but he would not hear of it. Instead, he
exhorted me to sell out my holdings and give all my attention to
my cloak business
"Take pity on your hard-earned pennies, Levinsky," he would say.
"Else you'll wake up some day like the fellow who has dreamed he
has found a treasure. He's holding on to the treasure tight, and
when he opens his eyes he finds it's nothing but a handful of
wind." "I'll tell you what, Levinsky," he began on one occasion.
"You ought to see some of those magician fellows."
"What for?" I asked
"Did you ever see them at their game? They'll put an egg into a
hat; say, 'One, two, three,' and pull out a chicken. And then they
say, 'One, two, three,' again and there's neither a chicken nor an
egg. That's the way all this real-estate racket will end. Mark my
word, Levinsky."
Bender nagged and pleaded with me without let-up. If I had had
the remotest doubt of his devotion to me it would have been
dispelled now. I was at my great mahogany desk every morning,
as usual, but I seldom stayed more than two hours, and even
during those two hours my mind was divided between cloaks and
real estate or between cloaks and Anna. Bender was practically in
full charge of the business. Instead, however, of welcoming the
power it gave him, he made unrelenting efforts to restore things to
their former state. He was constantly haranguing me on the risks I
was incurring, beseeching me to drop my new ventures, and
threatening to leave me unless I did so. Once, as he was thus
expostulating with me, he broke down
"I appeal to you as your friend, as your old-time teacher," he said,
and burst into tears
If it had not been for him I should have neglected my cloak
business beyond repair. He handled me as a gambler's wife does
her husband. He would seek me out in front of some unfinished
building, at Tevkin's, or at some "boom" café, and make me sign
some checks, consult me on something or other, or wheedle me
into accompanying him to my factory for an hour or two. But the
next day he would have to go hunting for me again
I had invested considerable money in my new affairs, and releasing
it at short notice would not have been an easy matter. But the
great point was that I was literally intoxicated by my new
interests, and the fact that they were intimately associated with the
atmosphere of Anna's home had much--perhaps everything--to do
with it
I loved her to insanity. She was the supreme desire of my being. I
knew that she was weaker in character and mind than Elsie, for
example, but that seemed to be a point in her favor rather than
against her. "She is a good girl," I would muse, "mild, kindly,
girlish. As for her 'radical' notions, they really don't matter much. I
could easily knock them out of her. I should be happy with her.
Oh, how happy!" And, in spite of the fact that I thought her weak,
the sight of her would fill me with awe.
One's first love is said to be the most passionate love of which one
is capable. I do not think it is. I think my feeling for Anna was
stronger, deeper, more tender, and more overpowering than either
of my previous two infatuations. But then, of course, there is no
way of measuring and comparing things of this kind. Anna was
the first virgin I had ever loved.
Was that responsible for the particular depth of my feeling? "Oh, I
must have her or I'll fall to pieces," I would say to myself,
yearning and groaning and whining like a lunatic
My gambling mania was really the aberration of a love-maddened
brain. How could Bender or Nodelman understand it? I found
myself in the midst of other lunatics, of men who had simply been
knocked out of balance by the suddenness of their gains. My
money had come slowly and through work and worry. Theirs had
dropped from the sky. So they could scarcely believe their senses
that it was not all a dream. They were hysterical with gleeful
amazement; they were in a delirium of ecstasy over themselves;
and at the same time they looked as though they were tempted to
feel their own faces and hands to make sure that they were real
One evening I saw a man whose family was still living on fifteen
dollars a week lose more than six hundred dollars in poker and
then take a group of congenial spirits out for a spree that cost him
a few hundred dollars more.
One man in this party, who was said to be worth three-quarters of a
million, had only recently worked as a common brick-layer. He is
fixed in my memory by his struggles to live up to his new
position, more especially by the efforts he would make to break
himself of certain habits of speech. He always seemed to be on his
guard lest some coarse word or phrase should escape him, and
when a foul expression eluded his vigilance he would give a start,
as if he had broken something. There was often a wistful look in
his eye, as if he wondered whether his wealth and new mode of
living were not merely a cruel practical joke. Or was he yearning
for the simpler and more natural life which he had led until two
years ago? We had many an expensive meal together, and often,
as he ate, he would say: "Oh, it's all nonsense, Mr. Levinsky. All
this fussy stuff does not come up to one spoon of my wife's
cabbage soup."
Once he said: "Do you really like champagne? I don't. You may
say I am a common, ignorant fellow, but to me it doesn't come up
to the bread cider mother used to make. Honest." And he gave a
chuckle
I knew a man who bought a thousand-dollar fur coat and a
full-dress suit before he had learned to use a handkerchief. He
always had one in his pocket, but he would handle it gingerly, as
if he had not the heart to soil it, and then he would carefully fold it
again. The effect money had on this man was of quite another
nature than it was in the case of the bricklayer.
It had made him boisterously arrogant, blusteringly disdainful of
his intellectual superiors, and brazenly foul-mouthed. It was as
though he was shouting: "I don't have to fear or respect anybody
now! I have got a lot of money. I can do as I damn please." More
than one pure man became dissolute in the riot of easily gotten
wealth. A real-estate speculator once hinted to me, in a fit of
drunken confidence, that his wife, hitherto a good woman and a
simple home body, had gone astray through the new vistas of life
that had suddenly been flung open to her. One fellow who was
naturally truthful was rapidly becoming a liar through the practice
of exaggerating his profits and expenditures. There was an
abundance of side-splitting comedy in the things I saw about me,
but there was no dearth of pathos, either. One day, as I entered a
certain high-class restaurant on Broadway, I saw at one of the
tables a man who looked strikingly familiar to me, but whom I was
at first unable to locate. Presently I recognized him. Three or four
years before he had peddled apples among the employees of my
cloak-shop. He had then been literally in tatters. That was why I
was now slow to connect his former image with his present
surroundings. I had heard of his windfall. He had had a job as
watchman at houses in process of construction. While there he had
noticed things, overheard conversations, put two and two together,
and finally made fifty thousand dollars in a few months as a
real-estate broker
We were furtively eying each other. Finally our eyes met. He
greeted me with a respectful nod and then his face broke into a
good-humored smile. He moved over to my table and told me his
story in detail. He spoke in brief, pithy sentences, revealing a
remarkable understanding of the world. In conclusion he said,
with a sigh: "But what is the good of it all? The Upper One has
blessed me with one hand, but He has punished me with the
other."
It appeared that his wife had died, in Austria, just when she was
about to come to join him and he was preparing to surprise her
with what, to her, would have been a palatial apartment
"For six years I tried to bring her over, but could not manage it," he
said, simply. "I barely made enough to feed one mouth. When
good luck came at last, she died. She was a good woman, but I
never gave her a day's happiness. For eighteen years she shared
my poverty. And now, that there is something better to share, she
is gone."
CHAPTER VI
ONE of the many Jewish immigrants who were
drawn into the whirl of real-estate speculation was Max Margolis,
Dora's husband. I had heard his name in connection with some
deals, and one afternoon in February we found ourselves side by
side in a crowd of other "boomers." The scene was the corner of
Fifth Avenue and One Hundred and Sixteenth Street, two blocks
from Tevkin's residence, a spot that usually swarmed with
Yiddish-speaking real-estate speculators in those days. It was a
gesticulating, jabbering, whispering, excited throng, resembling
the crowd of curb-brokers on Broad Street. Hence the nickname
"The Curb" by which that corner was getting to be known
I was talking to Tevkin when somebody slapped me on the back
"Hello, Levinsky! Hello!"
"Margolis!"
His face had the florid hue of worn, nervous, middle age. "I heard
you were buying. Is it true? Well, how goes it, great man?"
"How have you been?"
"Can't kick. Of course, compared to a big fellow like David
Levinsky, I am a fly."
I excused myself to Tevkin and took Margolis to the quieter side of
the Avenue
"Glad to see you, upon my word," he said. "Well, let bygones by
bygones.
It's about time we forgot it all."
"There is nothing to forget."
"Honest?"
"Honest! Is that idiotic notion still sticking in your brain?"
"Why, no. Not at all. May I not live till to-morrow if it does. You
are not angry at me, are you? Come, now, say that you are not."
I smiled and shrugged my shoulders
"Well, shake hands, then."
We did and he offered to sell me a "parcel." As I did not care for it,
he went on to talk of the real-estate market in general. There was
a restaurant on that side of the block--The Curb Café we used to
call it--so we went in, ordered something, and he continued to
talk. He was plainly striving to sound me, in the hope of "hanging
on" to some of my deals. Of a sudden he said: "Say, you must
think I'm still jealous? May I not live till to-morrow if I am." And
to prove that he was not he added: "Come, Levinsky, come up to
the house and let's be friends again, as we used to be. I have
always wished you well." He gave me his address. "Will you
come?"
"Some day."
"You aren't still angry at Dora, are you?"
"Why, no. But then she may be still angry at me," I said,
indifferently
"Nonsense. Perhaps it is beneath your dignity to call on small
people like us? Come, forget that you are a great capitalist and let
us all spend an evening together as we used to." Was he ready to
suppress his jealousy for the prospect of getting under my
financial wing? The answer to this question came to me through a
most unexpected channel
The next morning, when I came to my Fifth Avenue office (it was
some eighty blocks--about four miles--downtown from "The
Curb" section of Fifth Avenue), I found Dora waiting for me. I
recognized her the moment I entered the waiting-room on my
office floor. Her hair was almost white and she had grown rather
fleshy, but her face had not changed. She wore a large, becoming
hat and was quite neatly dressed generally
The blood surged to my face. Her presence was a bewildering
surprise to me
There were three other people in the room and I had to be on my
guard
"How are you?" I said, rushing over to her
She stood up and we shook hands. I took her into my private office
through my private corridor.
"Dora! Well, well!" I murmured in a delirium of embarrassment
"I have come to tell you not to mind Margolis and not to call at the
house," she said, gravely, looking me full in the face. "It would be
awful if you did. He is out of his mind. He is--"
"Wait a minute, Dora," I interrupted her. "There'll be plenty of
time to talk of that. First tell me something about yourself. How
have you been? How are the children?" She was like an old song
that had once held me under its sway, but which now appealed to
me as a memory only. I was conscious of my consuming passion
for Anna. Dora interested and annoyed me at once
I treated her as a dear old friend. She, however, persisted in
wearing a mask of politeness, as if she had come strictly on
business and there had never been any other relations between us
"Everybody is all right, thank you," she answered
"Is Lucy married?"
"Oh, she has a beautiful little girl of two years. But I do want to
tell you about Margolis. The man is simply crazy, and I want to
warn you not to take him seriously. Above all, don't let him take
you up to the house. Not for anything in the world. That's what
brings me here this morning."
"Why? What's the trouble?"
"Oh, it would take too long to tell," she answered. "And it isn't
important, either. The main thing is that you should not let him
get into business relations with you, or into any other kind of
relations, for that matter."
Her English was a striking improvement upon what it had been
sixteen years before. As we continued to talk it became evident to
me that she was a well-read, well-informed woman. I made some
efforts to break her reserve, but they failed. Nor, indeed, was I
over-anxious to have them succeed. She did speak of her
husband's jealousy, however (though she dropped her glance and
slurred over the word as she did so); and from what she said, as
well as by reading between the lines of her statement, I gathered a
fairly clear picture of the situation. Echoes of Max's old jealousy
would still make themselves felt in his domestic life. A clash, an
irritation, would sometimes bring my name to his lips. He still,
sometimes, tortured her with questions concerning our relations
"I never answer these questions of his," she said, her eyes on my
office rug. "Not a word. I just let him talk. But sometimes I feel
like putting an end to my life," she concluded, with a smile
I listened with expressions of surprise and sympathy and with a
feeling of compunction. A thought was sluggishly trailing through
my mind: "Does she still care for me?"
Margolis had built up some sort of auction business, but his
real-estate mania had ruined it and eaten up all he had except
three thousand dollars, which Dora had contrived to save from the
wreck. With this she had bought a cigar-and-stationery store on
Washington Heights by means of which she now supported the
family. He spent his days and evenings hanging around real-estate
haunts as a penniless drunkard does around liquor-shops. He was
always importuning Dora for "a couple of hundred dollars" for a
"sure thing." This was often the cause of an altercation. Quarrels
had, in fact, never been such a frequent occurrence in the house as
they had been since he lost his money in real estate, and one of his
favorite thrusts in the course of these brawls was to allude to me
"If Levinsky asked you for money you would not refuse him,
would you?" he would taunt her
Now, that he had met me at "The Curb," he had taken it into his
head that his jealousy had worn off long since and that he had the
best of feelings for me. His heart was set upon regaining my
friendship. He had spoken to her of our meeting as a "predestined
thing" that was to result in my "letting him in" on some of my
deals. Dora, however, felt sure that a renewal of our acquaintance
would only rekindle the worst forms of his jealousy and make life
impossible to her. She dreaded to imagine it
We spoke of Lucy again. It was so stirring to think of her as a
mother. Dora told me that Lucy's husband was in the jewelry
business and quite well-to-do
She rose to go. I escorted her, continuing to question her about
Lucy, Dannie, her husband. It would have been natural for me to
take her out by way of my private little corridor, but I preferred to
pilot her through my luxurious show-rooms. We found two
customers there to whom some of my office men and a designer
were showing our "line." I greeted the customers, and, turning to
Dora again, I asked her to finish an interrupted remark. We
paused by one of the windows. What she was saying about Lucy
was beginning to puzzle me. She did not seem to be pleased with
her daughter's marriage
"She has three servants and a machine," she said, with a peculiar
smile.
"She wanted it and she got what she wanted."
"Why?" I said, perplexed
"Everything is all right," she answered, with another smile
We spoke in an undertone, so that nobody could overhear us. The
fact, however, that we were no longer alone had the effect of
relieving our constraint. Dora unbent somewhat. A certain note of
intimacy that had been lacking in our talk while we were by
ourselves stole into it now that we were in the presence of other
people
In the course of our love-affair she had often spoken to me of her
determination not to let Lucy repeat her mistake, not to let her
marry otherwise than a man she loved. We were both thinking of
it at this minute, and it seemed to be tacitly understood between
us that we were
At last I ventured to ask: "What's the trouble, Dora: Tell me all
about it.
It interests me very much."
"I don't know whether there's anything to tell," she answered,
coloring slightly. "She says she cares for her husband, and they
really get along very well. He certainly worships her. Why
shouldn't he? She is so beautiful--a regular flower--and he is old
enough to be her father."
"You don't say!" I ejaculated, with genuine distress
"She is satisfied."
"Are you?"
"As if it mattered whether I was or not. I had other ideas about her
happiness, but I am only a mother and was not even born in this
country. So what does my opinion amount to? I begged her not to
break my heart, but she would have her automobile."
"Perhaps she does love him."
She shook her head ruefully. "She was quite frank about it. She
called it being practical. She thought my ideas weren't American,
that I was a dreamer.
She talked that way ever since she was eighteen, in fact. 'I don't
care if I marry a man with white hair, provided he can make a nice
living for me,' she used to say. I thought it would drive me mad.
And the girls she went with had the same ideas. When they got
together it would be, 'This girl married a fellow who's worth a
hundred thousand,' and, 'That girl goes with a fellow who's worth
half a million.' If that's what they learn at college, what's the use
going to college?"
"It's prosperity ideas," I suggested. "It's a temporary craze."
"I don't care what it is. A girl should be a girl. She ought to think
of love, of real happiness." (Her glance seemed to be the least bit
unsteady.) "But I ain't 'practical,' don't you know. Exactly what my
mother--peace upon her [this in Hebrew]--used to say. She, too,
did not think it was necessary to be in love with the man you
marry. But then she did not go to college, not even to school. Of
what good is education, then?"
It was evident that she spoke from an overflowing heart, and that
she could speak for hours on the subject. But she cut herself short
and took another tack
"You must not think her husband is a kike, though," she said. "He
is no fool and he writes a pretty good English letter. And he is a
very nice man."
She started to go
"Tell me some more about Dannie," I said, on our way to the
elevator
"He's going to college. Always first or second in his class. And one
of the best men on the football team, too." She smiled, the first
radiant smile I had seen on her that morning
"He's all right," she continued. And in Yiddish, "He is my only
consolation." And again in English, "If it wasn't for him life
wouldn't be worth living. Good-by," she said, as we paused in
front of the elevator door. "Don't forget what I told you." She was
ill at ease again
The elevator came down from the upper floors. We shook hands
and she entered it. It sank out of sight. I stood still for a second
and then returned to my private office with a sense of relief and
sadness. My heart was full of love for Anna
CHAPTER VII
IN a vague, timid way I had been planning to
propose to Anna all along. My meeting with Dora gave these
plans shape. Her unexpected visit revived in my mind the whole
history of my acquaintance with her. I said to myself: "It was
through tenacity and persistence that I won her. It was persistence,
too, that gave me success in business. Anna is a meek,
good-natured girl.
She has far less backbone than Dora. I can win her, and I will." It
seemed so convincing. It was like a discovery. It aroused the
fighting blood in my veins. I was throbbing with love and
determination. I was priming myself for a formal proposal. I
expected to take her by storm. I was only waiting for an
opportunity. In case she said no, I was prepared for a long and
vigorous campaign. "I won't give her up. She shall be mine,
whether she wants it or not," I said to myself again and again.
These soliloquies would go on in my mind at all hours and in all
kinds of circumstances--while I was pushing my way through a
crowded street-car, while I was listening to some of Bender's
scoldings, while I was parleying with some real-estate man over a
piece of property. They often made me so absent-minded that I
would pace the floor of my hotel room, for instance, with one foot
socked and the other bare, and then distressedly search for the
other sock, which was in my hand. One morning as I sat at my
mahogany desk in my office, with the telephone receiver to my
ear, waiting to be connected with a banker, I said to myself:
"Women like a man with a strong will. My very persistence will
fascinate her." And this, too, seemed like a discovery to me. The
banker answered my call. It was an important matter, yet all the
while I spoke or listened to him I was conscious of having hit
upon an invincible argument in support of my hope that Anna
would be mine
At last I thought I saw my opportunity. It was an evening in April.
According to the Jewish calendar it was the first Passover night,
when Israel's liberation from the bondage of Egypt is
commemorated by a feast and family reunion which form the
greatest event in the domestic life of our people
Two years before, when I was engaged to Fanny, I deeply regretted
not being able to spend the great evening at her father's table. This
time I was an invited guest at the Tevkins'. They were not a
religious family by any means. Tevkin had been a free-thinker
since his early manhood, and his wife, the daughter of the Jewish
Ingersoll, had been born and bred in an atmosphere of aggressive
atheism. And so religious faith never had been known in their
house. Of late years, however--that is, since Tevkin had espoused
the cause of Zionism or nationalism--he had insisted on the
Passover feast every year. He contended that to him it was not a
religious ceremony, but merely a "national custom," but about this
his children were beginning to have their doubts. It seemed to
them that the older their father grew the less sure he was of his
free thought. They suspected that he was getting timid about it,
fearful of the hereafter. As a rule, they saw only the humorous
side of the change that was apparently coming over him, but
sometimes they would awaken to the pathos of it
As we all sat in the library, waiting to be called to the great feast,
he delivered himself of a witticism at the expense of the
prospective ceremony
"You needn't take his atheism seriously, Mr. Levinsky," said Anna,
the sound of my name on her lips sending a thrill of delight
through me. "'Way down at the bottom of his heart father is
getting to be really religious, I'm afraid." And, as though taking
pity on him, she crossed over to where he sat and nestled up to
him in a manner that put a choking sensation into my throat and
filled me with an impulse to embrace them both
At last the signal was given and we filed down into the
dining-room. A long table, flanked by two rows of chairs, with a
sofa, instead of the usual arm-chair, at its head, was set with
bottles of wine, bottles of mead, wine-glasses, and little piles of
matzos (thin, flat cakes of unleavened bread). The sofa was
cushioned with two huge Russian pillows, inclosed in fresh white
cases, for the master of the house to lean on, in commemoration
of the freedom and ease which came to the Children of Israel upon
their deliverance from Egypt. Placed on three covered matzos,
within easy reach of the master, were a shank bone, an egg, some
horseradish, salt water, and a mush made of nuts and wine. These
were symbols, the shank bone being a memorial of the pascal
lamb, and the egg of the other sacrifices brought during the
festival in ancient times, while the horseradish and the salt water
represented the bitter work that the Sons of Israel had to do for
Pharaoh, and the mush the lime and mortar from which they made
brick for him. A small book lay in front of each seat. That was the
Story of the Deliverance, in the ancient Hebrew text, accompanied
by an English translation
Moissey, the uncompromising atheist and Internationalist, was
demonstratively absent, much to the distress of his mother and
resentment of his father. His Biblical-looking wife was at the
table. So were Elsie and Emil. They were as uncompromising in
their atheism as Moissey, but they had consented to attend the
quaint supper to please their parents. As to Anna, Sasha, and
George, each of them had his or her socialism "diluted" with some
species of nationalism, so they were here as a matter of principle,
their theory being that the Passover feast was one of the things
that emphasized the unity of the Jews of all countries. But even
they, and even Tevkin himself, treated it all partly as a joke. In the
case of the poet, however, it was quite obvious that his levity was
pretended. For all his jesting and frivolity, he looked nervous. I
could almost see the memories of his childhood days which the
scene evoked in his mind. I could feel the solemnity that swelled
his heart. It appeared that this time he had decided to add to the
ceremony certain features which he had foregone on the previous
few Passover festivals he had observed. He was now bent upon
having a Passover feast service precisely like the one he had seen
his father conduct, not omitting even the white shroud which his
father had worn on the occasion. As a consequence, several of
these details were a novel sight to his children. A white shroud lay
ready for him on his sofa, and as he slipped it on, with smiles and
blushes, there was an outburst of mirth
"Oh, daddy!" Anna shouted
"Father looks like a Catholic priest," said Emil
"Don't say that, Emil," I rebuked him
Fun was made of the big white pillows upon which Tevkin leaned,
"king-like," and of the piece of unleavened bread which he "hid"
under them for Gracie to "steal."
As he raised the first of the Four Cups of wine he said, solemnly,
with an effort of shaking off all pretense of flippancy: "Well, let
us raise our glasses. Let us drink the First Cup."
We all did so, and he added, "This is the Fourth of July of our
unhappy people." After the glasses were drained and refilled he
said: "Scenes like this bind us to the Jews of the whole world, and
not only to those living, but to the past generations as well. This is
no time for speaking of the Christian religion, but as I look at this
wine an idea strikes me which I cannot help submitting: The
Christians drink wine, imagining that it is the blood of Jesus.
Well, the wine we are drinking to-night reminds me of the martyr
blood of our massacred brethren of all ages."
Anna gave me a merry wink. I felt myself one of the family. I was
in the seventh heaven. She seemed to be particularly attentive to
me this evening
"I shall speak to her to-night," I decided. "I sha'n't wait another
day." And the fact that she was a nationalist and not an
unqualified socialist, like Elsie, for instance, seemed to me a new
source of encouragement. I was in a quiver of blissful excitement
The Four Questions are usually asked by the youngest son, but
Emil, the Internationalist, could not be expected to take an active
part in the ceremony, so Sasha, the Zionist, took his place. Sasha,
however, did not read Hebrew, and old Tevkin had to be content
with having the Four Questions read in English, the general
answer to them being given by Tevkin and myself in Hebrew. It
reminded me of an operatic performance in which the part of
Faust, for instance, is sung in French, while that of Margarita is
performed in some other language. We went on with the Story of
the Deliverance. Tevkin made frequent pauses to explain and
comment upon the text, often with a burst of oratory. Mrs. Tevkin
and some of the children were obviously bored.
Gracie pleaded hunger
Finally the end of the first part of the story was reached and supper
was served. It was a typical Passover supper, with matzo balls,
and it was an excellent repast. Everybody was talkative and gay. I
addressed some remarks to Anna, and she received them all
cordially
By way of attesting her recognition of Passover as a "national
holiday" she was in festive array, wearing her newest dress, a
garment of blue taffeta embroidered in old rose, with a crêpe
collar of gray. It mellowed the glow of her healthful pink
complexion. She was the most beautiful creature at the table,
excluding neither her picturesque younger brother nor her majestic
old mother. She shone. She flooded my soul with ecstasy
Tevkin's religion was Judaism, Zionism. Mine was Anna. The
second half of the story is usually read with less pomp and
circumstance than the first, many a passage in it being often
skipped altogether. So Tevkin dismissed us all, remaining alone at
the table to chant the three final ballads, which he had
characterized to his children as "charming bits of folk-lore."
When Mrs. Tevkin, the children, and myself were mounting the
stairs leading up from the dining-room, I was by Anna's side, my
nerves as taut as those of a soldier waiting for the command to
charge. I charged sooner than I expected.
"Sasha asked the Four Questions," I found myself saying. "There is
one question which I should like to ask of you, Miss Tevkin."
I said it so simply and at a moment so little suited to a proposal of
marriage that the trend of my words was lost upon her
"Something about Jewish nationalism?" she asked
"About that and about something else."
We were passing through the hallway now. When we entered the
library I took her into a corner, and before we were seated I said:
"Well, my question has really nothing to do with nationalism. It's
quite another thing I want to ask of you. Don't refuse me. Marry
me. Make me happy."
She listened like one stunned
"I am terribly in love with you," I added
"Oh!" she then exclaimed. Her delicate pink skin became a fiery
red. She looked down and shook her head with confused stiffness.
"I see you're taken aback. Take a seat; get your bearings," I said,
lightly, pulling up a chair that stood near by, "and say, 'Yes.'"
"Why, that's impossible!" she said, with an awkward smile,
without seating herself. "I need not tell you that I have long since
changed my mind about you--"
"I am no more repellent, am I?" I jested
"No. Not at all," she returned, with another smile. "But what you
say is quite another thing. I am very sorry, indeed." She made to
move away from me, but I checked her
"That does not discourage me," I said. "I'll just go on loving you
and waiting for a favorable answer. You are still unjust to me.
You don't know me well enough. Anyhow, I can't give you up. I
won't give you up. ("That's it," I thought. "I am speaking like a
man of firm purpose.") "I am resolved to win you."
"Oh, that's entirely out of the question," she said, with a gesture of
impatience and finality. And, bursting into tears of child-like
indignation, she added: "Father assured me you would never hint
at such a thing--never.
If you mean to persist, then--"
The sentence was left eloquently unfinished. She turned away,
walked over to her mother and took a seat by her side, like a little
girl mutely seeking her mamma's protection
The room seemed to be in a whirl. I felt the cold perspiration break
out on my forehead. I was conscious of Mrs. Tevkin's and Elsie's
glances. I was sick at heart. Anna's bitter resentment was a black
surprise to me. I had a crushing sense of final defeat
BOOK XIV
EPISODES OF A LONELY LIFE
CHAPTER I
IT was a severe blow. It caused me indescribable suffering. It would
not have been unnatural to attribute my fiasco to my age. Had I been
ten years younger, Anna's attitude toward me might have been
different. But this point of view I loathed to accept. Instead, I put
the blame on Anna's environment.
"I was in the 'enemy's country' there," I would muse. "The
atmosphere around her was against me." I hated the socialists with
a novel venom. Finally I pulled myself together. Then it was that I
discovered the real condition of my affairs. I had gone into those
speculations far deeper than I could afford. There were indications
that made me seriously uneasy. Things were even worse than
Bender imagined. Ruin stared me in the face. I was panic-stricken.
One day I had the head of a large woolen concern lunch with me
in a private dining-room of a well-known hotel. He was dignifiedly
steel-gray and he had the appearance of a college professor or
successful physician rather than of a business man. He liked me. I
had long been one of his most important customers and I had
always sought to build up a good record with him. For example:
other cloak-manufacturers would exact allowances for
merchandise that proved to have some imperfection. I never do so.
It is the rule of my house never to put in a claim for such things. In
the majority of cases the goods can be cut so as to avoid any loss
of material, and if it cannot, I will sustain the small loss rather
than incur the mill's disfavor. In the long run it pays. And so this
cloth merchant was well disposed toward me. He had done me
some favors before. He addressed me as Dave. (There was a note
of condescension as well as of admiration in this "Dave" of his. It
implied that I was a shrewd fellow and an excellent customer,
singularly successful and reliable, but that I was his inferior, all
the same--a Jew, a social pariah. At the bottom of my heart I
considered myself his superior, finding an amusing discrepancy
between his professorial face and the crudity of his intellectual
interests; but he was a Gentile, and an American, and a much
wealthier man than I, so I looked up to him.) To make my appeal
as effective as possible I initiated him into the human side of my
troubles. I told him of my unfortunate courtship as well as of the
real-estate ventures into which it had led me
He was interested and moved, and, as he had confidence in me, he
granted my request at once.
"It's all right, Dave," he said, slapping my back, a queer look in his
eye.
"You can always count on me. Only throw that girl out of your
mind."
I grasped his hand silently. I wanted to say something, but the
words stuck in my throat. He helped me out of my difficulties and
I devoted myself to the cloak business with fresh energy. The
agonies of my love for Anna were more persistent than those I had
suffered after I moved out of Dora's house.
But, somehow, instead of interfering with my business activities,
these agonies stimulated them. I was like the victim of a
toothache who seeks relief in hard work. I toiled day and night,
entering into the minutest detail of the business and performing
duties that were ordinarily left to some inferior employee.
Business was good. Things went humming. Bender, who now had
an interest in my factory, was happy
Some time later the same woolen man who had come to my
assistance did me another good turn, one that brought me a rich
harvest of profits. A certain weave was in great vogue that season,
the demand far exceeding the output, and it so happened that the
mill of the man with the professorial face was one of the very few
that produced that fabric. So he let me have a much larger supply
of it than any other cloak-manufacturer in the country was able to
obtain. My business then took a great leap, while my overhead
expenses remained the same. My net profits exceeded two hundred
thousand dollars that year
One afternoon in the summer of the same year, as I walked along
Broadway in the vicinity of Canal Street, my attention was
attracted by a shabby, white-haired, feeble-looking old peddler,
with a wide, sneering mouth, who seemed disquietingly familiar
and in whom I gradually recognized one of my Antomir
teachers--one of those who used to punish me for the sins of their
other pupils. The past suddenly sprang into life with detailed,
colorful vividness. The black pit of poverty in which I had been
raised; my misery at school, where I had been treated as an
outcast and a scapegoat because my mother could not afford even
the few pennies that were charged for my tuition; the joy of my
childish existence in spite of that gloom and martyrdom--all this
rose from the dead before me
The poor old peddler I now saw trying to cross Broadway was
Shmerl the Pincher, the man with whom my mother had a
pinching and hair-pulling duel after she found the marks of his
cruelty on my young body. He had been one of the most heartless
of my tormentors, yet it was so thrillingly sweet to see him in New
York! In my schooldays I would dream of becoming a rich and
influential man and wreaking vengeance upon my brutal teachers,
more especially upon Shmerl the Pincher and "the Cossack," the
man whose little daughter, Sarah-Leah, had been the heroine of
my first romance. I now rushed after Shmerl, greatly excited, one
of the feelings in my heart being a keen desire to help him
A tangle of wagons and trolley-cars caused me some delay. I stood
gazing at him restively as he picked his weary way. I had known
him as a young man, although to my childish eye he had looked
old--a strong fellow, probably of twenty-eight, with jet-black
side-whiskers and beard, with bright, black eyes and alert
movements. At the time I saw him on Broadway he must have
been about sixty, but he looked much older
As I was thus waiting impatiently for the cars to start so that I
could cross the street and greet him, a cold, practical voice
whispered to me: "Why court trouble? Leave him alone."
My exaltation was gone. The spell was broken.
The block was presently relieved, but I did not stir. Instead of
crossing the street and accosting the old man, I stood still,
following him with my eyes until he vanished from view. Then I
resumed my walk up Broadway. As I trudged along, a feeling of
compunction took hold of me. By way of defending myself before
my conscience, I tried to think of the unmerited beatings he used
to give me. But it was of no avail. The idea of avenging myself on
this decrepit, tattered old peddler for what he had done more than
thirty years before made me feel small. "Poor devil! I must help
him," I said to myself.
I was conscious of a desire to go back and to try to overtake him;
but I did not. The desire was a meandering, sluggish sort of
feeling. The spell was broken irretrievably
CHAPTER II
THE following winter chance brought me together
with Matilda. On this occasion our meeting was of a pleasanter
nature than the one which had taken place at Cooper Institute. It
was in a Jewish theater. She and another woman, accompanied by
four men, one of whom was Matilda's husband, were occupying a
box adjoining one in which were the Chaikins and myself and
from which it was separated by a low partition. The performance
was given for the benefit of a society in which Mrs. Chaikin was
an active member, and it was she who had made me pay for the
box and solemnly promise to attend the performance. Not that I
maintained a snobbish attitude toward the Jewish stage. I went to
see Yiddish plays quite often, in fact, but these were all of the
better class (our stage has made considerable headway), whereas
the one that had been selected by Mrs. Chaikin's society was of
the "historical-opera" variety, a hodge-podge of "tear-wringing"
vaudeville and "laughter-compelling" high tragedy. I should have
bought ten boxes of Mrs.
Chaikin if she had only let me stay away from the performance,
but her heart was set upon showing me off to the other members
of the organization, and I had to come
It was on a Monday evening. As I entered the box my eyes met
Matilda's and, contrary to my will, I bowed to her. To my surprise,
she acknowledged my salutation heartily
The curtain rose. Men in velvet tunics and plumed hats were
saying something, but I was more conscious of Matilda's
proximity and of her cordial recognition of my nod than of what
was going on on the stage.
Presently a young man and a girl entered our box and occupied
two of our vacant chairs. Mrs. Chaikin thought they had been
invited by me, and when she discovered that they had not there
was a suppressed row, she calling upon them to leave the box and
they nonchalantly refusing to stir from their seats, pleading that
they meant to stay only as long as there was no one else to occupy
them. Our box was beginning to attract attention. There were
angry outcries of "'S-sh!" "Shut up!" Matilda looked at me
sympathetically and we exchanged smiles. Finally an usher came
into our box and the two intruders were ejected
When the curtain had dropped on the first act Matilda invited me
into her box. When I entered it she introduced me to her husband
and her other companions as "a fellow-townsman" of hers
Seen at close range, her husband looked much younger than she,
but it did not take me long to discover that he was wrapped up in
her. His beard was smaller and more neatly trimmed than it had
looked at the Cooper Institute meeting, but it still ill became him.
He had an unsophisticated smile, which I thought suggestive of a
man playing on a flute and which emphasized the discrepancy
between his weak face and his reputation for pluck
An intermission in a Jewish theater is almost as long as an act.
During the first few minutes of our chat Matilda never alluded to
Antomir nor to what had happened between us at Cooper Institute.
She made merry over the advertisements on the curtain and over
the story of the play explaining that the box had been forced on
one of her companions and that they had all come to see what
"historic opera" was like. She commented upon the musicians,
who were playing a Jewish melody, and on some of the scenes
that were being enacted in the big auditorium. The crowd was
buzzing and smiling good-humoredly, with a general air of
family-like sociability, some eating apple or candy. The faces of
some of the men were much in need of a shave.
Most of the women were in shirt-waists. Altogether the audience
reminded one of a crowd at a picnic. A boy tottering under the
weight of a basket laden with candy and fruit was singing his
wares. A pretty young woman stood in the center aisle near the
second row of seats, her head thrown back, her eyes fixed on the
first balcony, her plump body swaying and swaggering to the
music. One man, seated in a box across the theater from us, was
trying to speak to somebody in the box above ours. We could not
hear what he said, but his mimicry was eloquent enough. Holding
out a box of candy, he was facetiously offering to shoot some of
its contents into the mouth of the person he was addressing. One
woman, in an orchestra seat near our box, was discussing the play
with a woman in front of her. She could be heard all over the
theater. She was in ecstasies over the prima donna
"I tell you she can kill a person with her singing," she said,
admiringly.
"She tugs me by the heart and makes it melt. I never felt so
heartbroken in my life. May she live long."
This was the first opportunity I had had to take a good look at
Matilda since she had come to New York; for our first meeting
had been so brief and so embarrassing to me that I had come away
from it without a clear impression of her appearance
At first I found it difficult to look her in the face. The passionate
kisses I had given her twenty-three years before seemed to be
staring me out of countenance. She, however, was perfectly
unconstrained and smiled and laughed with contagious
exuberance. As we chatted I now and again grew absent-minded,
indulging in a mental comparison between the woman who was
talking to me and the one who had made me embrace her and so
cruelly trifled with my passion shortly before she raised the
money for my journey to America. The change that the years had
wrought in her appearance was striking, and yet it was the same
Matilda. Her brown eyes were still sparkingly full of life and her
mouth retained the sensuous expression of her youth. This and her
abrupt gestures gave her provocative charm
Nevertheless, she left me calm. It was an indescribable pleasure to
be with her, but my love for her was as dead as were the days
when I lodged in a synagogue. She never alluded to those days. To
listen to her, one would have thought that we had been seeing a
great deal of each other all along, and that small talk was the most
natural kind of conversation for us to carry on
All at once, and quite irrelevantly, she said: "I am awfully glad to
see you again. I did not treat you properly that time--at the
meeting, I mean.
Afterward I was very sorry."
"Were you?" I asked, flippantly.
"I wanted to write you, to ask you to come to see me, but--well,
you know how it is. Tell me something about yourself. At this
minute the twenty-three years seem like twenty-three weeks. But
this is no time to talk about it.
One wants hours, not a minute or two. I know, of course, that you
are a rich man. Are you a happy man? But, no, don't answer now.
The curtain will soon rise. Go back to your box, and come in
again after the next act. Will you?"
She ordered me about as she had done during my stay at her
mother's house, which offended and pleased me at once. During
the whole of the second act I looked at the stage without seeing or
hearing anything. The time when I fell in love with Matilda
sprang into life again. It really seemed as though the twenty-three
years were twenty-three weeks. My mother's death, her funeral;
Abner's Court; the uniformed old furrier with the side-whiskers,
his wife with her crutches; Naphtali with his curly hair and
near-sighted eyes; Reb Sender, his wife, the bully of the old
synagogue; Matilda's mother, and her old servant--all the human
figures and things that filled the eventful last two years of my life
at home loomed up with striking vividness before me
Matilda's affable greeting and her intimate brief talk were a
surprise to me. Did I appeal to her as the fellow who had once
kissed her? Had she always remembered me with a gleam of
romantic interest? Did I stir her merely as she stirred me--as a
living fragment of her past? Or was she trying to cultivate me in
the professional interests of her husband, who was practising
medicine in Harlem? When the curtain had fallen again Matilda
made her husband change seats with me. I was to stay by her side
through the rest of the performance. The partition between the
two boxes being only waist-high, the two parties were practically
joined into one and everybody was satisfied--everybody except
Mrs. Chaikin
"I suppose our company isn't good enough for Mr. Levinsky," she
said, aloud
When the performance was over we all went to Lorber's--the most
pretentious restaurant on the East Side. Matilda and I were mostly
left to ourselves. We talked of our native town and of her pious
mother, who had died a few years before, but we carefully
avoided the few weeks which I had spent in her mother's house,
when Matilda had encouraged my embraces. In answer to my
questions she told me something of her own and her husband's
revolutionary exploits. She spoke boastfully and yet reluctantly of
these things, as if it were a sacrilege to discuss them with a man
who was, after all, a "money-bag."
My impression was that they lived very modestly and that they
were more interested in their socialist affairs than in their income.
My theory that she wanted her husband to profit by her
acquaintance with me seemed to be exploded. She reminded me
of Elsie and her whole-hearted devotion to socialism. We mostly
spoke in Yiddish, and our Antomir enunciation was like a bond of
kinship between us, and yet I felt that she spoke to me in the
patronizing, didactical way which one adopts with a foreigner, as
though the world to which she belonged was one whose interests
were beyond my comprehension
She inquired about my early struggles and subsequent successes. I
told her of the studies I had pursued before I went into business,
of the English classics I had read, and of my acquaintance with
Spencer
"Do you remember what you told me about becoming an educated
man?" I said, eagerly. "Your words were always ringing in my
ears. It was owing to them that I studied for admission to college.
I was crazy to be a college man, but fate ordained otherwise. To
this day I regret it."
In dwelling on my successes I felt that I was too effusive and
emphatic; but I went on bragging in spite of myself. I tried to
correct the impression I was making on her by boasting of the
sums I had given to charity, but this made me feel smaller than
ever. However, my talk did not seem to arouse any criticism in her
mind. She listened to me as she might to the tale of a child
Referring to my unmarried state, she said, with unfeigned
sympathy: "This is really no life. You ought to get married." And
she added, gaily, "If you ever marry, you mustn't neglect to invite
me to the wedding."
"I certainly won't; you may be sure of that," I said
"You must come to see me. I'll call you up on the telephone some
day and we'll arrange it."
"I shall be very glad, indeed."
I departed in a queer state of mind. Her present identity failed to
touch a romantic chord in my heart. She was simply a memory,
like Dora. But as a memory she had rekindled some of the old
yearning in me. I was still in love with Anna, but at this moment I
was in love both with her and with the Matilda of twenty-three
years before. But this intense feeling for Matilda as a monument
of my past self did not last two days
The invitation she had promised to telephone never came
I came across a man whom I used to see at the Tevkins', and one
of the things he told me was that Anna had recently married a
high-school teacher
CHAPTER III
THE real estate boom collapsed. The cause of the
catastrophe lay in the nature, or rather in the unnaturalness, of the
"get-rich-quick" epidemic.
Its immediate cause, however, was a series of rent strikes inspired
and engineered by the Jewish socialists through their Yiddish
daily. One of the many artificialities of the situation had been a
progressive inflation of rent values. Houses had been continually
changing hands, being bought, not as a permanent investment, but
for speculation, whereupon each successive purchaser would raise
rents as a means of increasing the market price of his temporary
property. And so the socialists had organized a crusade that filled
the municipal courts with dispossess cases and turned the boom
into a panic
Hundreds of people who had become rich overnight now became
worse than penniless overnight. The Ghetto was full of dethroned
"kings for a day only." It seemed as if it all really had been a
dream
One of the men whose quickly made little fortune burst like a
bubble was poor Tevkin. I wondered how his children took the
socialist rent strikes
Nor did I escape uninjured when the crisis broke loose. I still had a
considerable sum in real estate, all my efforts to extricate it having
proved futile. My holdings were rapidly depreciating. In hundreds
of cases similar to mine equities were wiped out through the
speculators' inability to pay interest on mortgages or even taxes.
To be sure, things did not come to such a pass in my case, but
then some of the city lots or improved property in which I was
interested had been hit so hard as to be no longer worth the
mortgages on them
Volodsky lost almost everything except his courage and
speculative spirit
"Oh, it will come back," he once said to me, speaking of the boom
When I urged that it had been an unnatural growth he retorted that
it was the collapse of the boom which was unnatural. He was
scheming some sort of syndicate again
"It requires no money to make a lot of money," he said. "All it does
require is brains and some good luck."
Nevertheless, he coveted some of my money for his new scheme.
He did not succeed with me, but he found other "angels." He was
now quite in his element in the American atmosphere of
breathless enterprise and breakneck speed. When the violence of
the crisis had quieted down building operations were resumed on
a more natural basis. Men like Volodsky, with hosts of carpenters,
bricklayers, plumbers--all Russian or Galician Jews--continued to
build up the Bronx, Washington Heights, and several sections of
Brooklyn.
Vast areas of meadowland and rock were turned by them, as by a
magic wand, into densely populated avenues and streets of brick
and mortar. Under the spell of their activity cities larger than
Odessa sprang up within the confines of Greater New York in the
course of three or four years
Mrs. Chaikin came out of her speculations more than safe. She and
her husband, who is still in my employ, own half a dozen
tenement-houses. One day, on the first of the month, I met her in
the street with a large hand-bag and a dignified mien. She was out
collecting rent.
CHAPTER IV
IT was the spring of 1910. The twenty-fifth
anniversary of my coming to America was drawing near. The day
of an immigrant's arrival in his new home is like a birthday to
him. Indeed, it is more apt to claim his attention and to warm his
heart than his real birthday. Some of our immigrants do not even
know their birthday. But they all know the day when they came to
America. It is Landing Day with red capital letters. This, at any
rate, is the case with me. The day upon which I was born often
passes without my being aware of it.
The day when I landed in Hoboken, on the other hand, never
arrives without my being fully conscious of the place it occupies
in the calendar of my life. Is it because I do not remember myself
coming into the world, while I do remember my arrival in
America? However that may be, the advent of that day invariably
puts me in a sentimental mood which I never experience on the
day of my birth
It was 1910, then, and the twenty-fifth anniversary of my coming
was near at hand. Thoughts of the past filled me with mixed joy
and sadness. I was overcome with a desire to celebrate the day.
But with whom? Usually this is done by "ship brothers," as
East-Siders call fellow-immigrants who arrive here on the same
boat. It came back to me that I had such a ship brother, and that it
was Gitelson. Poor Gitelson! He was still working at his trade.
I had not seen him for years, but I had heard of him from time to
time, and I knew that he was employed by a ladies' tailor at
custom work somewhere in Brooklyn. (The custom-tailoring shop
he had once started for himself had proved a failure.) Also, I knew
how to reach a brother-in-law of his. The upshot was that I made
an appointment with Gitelson for him to be at my office on the
great day at 12 o'clock. I did so without specifying the object of
the meeting, but I expected that he would know
Finally the day arrived. It was a few minutes to 12. I was alone in
my private office, all in a fidget, as if the meeting I was expecting
were a love-tryst. Reminiscences and reflections were flitting
incoherently through my mind. Some of the events of the day
which I was about to celebrate loomed up like a ship seen in the
distance. My eye swept the expensive furniture of my office. I
thought of the way my career had begun. I thought of the Friday
evening when I met Gitelson on Grand Street, he an American
dandy and I in tatters. The fact that it was upon his advice and
with his ten dollars that I had become a cloak-maker stood out as
large as life before me. A great feeling of gratitude welled up in
me, of gratitude and of pity for my tattered self of those days.
Dear, kind Gitelson! Poor fellow! He was still working with his
needle. I was seized with a desire to do something for him.
I had never paid him those ten dollars. So I was going to do so
with "substantial interest" now. "I shall spend a few hundred
dollars on him--nay, a few thousand!" I said to myself. "I shall buy
him a small business. Let him end his days in comfort. Let him
know that his ship brother is like a real brother to him."
It was twenty minutes after 12 and I was still waiting for the
telephone to announce him. My suspense became insupportable.
"Is he going to disappoint me, the idiot?" I wondered. Presently
the telephone trilled. I seized the receiver
"Mr. Gitelson wishes to see Mr. Levinsky," came the familiar pipe
of my switchboard girl. "He says he has an appointment--"
"Let him come in at once," I flashed.
Two minutes later he was in my room. His forelock was still the
only bunch of gray hair on his head, but his face was pitifully
wizened. He was quite neatly dressed, as trained tailors will be,
even when they are poor, and at some distance I might have failed
to perceive any change in him. At close range, however, his
appearance broke my heart
"Do you know what sort of a day this is?" I asked, after shaking his
hand warmly.
"I should think I did," he answered, sheepishly. "Twenty-five years
ago at this time--"
He was at a loss for words
"Yes, it's twenty-five years, Gitelson," I rejoined. I was going to
indulge in reminiscences, to compare memories with him, but
changed my mind. I would rather not speak of our Landing Day
until we were seated at a dining-table and after we had drunk its
toast in champagne
"Come, let us have lunch together," I said, simply
I took him to the Waldorf-Astoria, where a table had been reserved
for us in a snug corner.
Gitelson was extremely bashful and his embarrassment infected
me. He was apparently at a loss to know what to do with the
various glasses, knives, forks. It was evident that he had never sat
at such a table before. The French waiter, who was silently
officious, seemed to be inwardly laughing at both of us. At the
bottom of my heart I cow before waiters to this day.
Their white shirt-fronts, reticence, and pompous bows make me
feel as if they saw through me and ridiculed my ways. They make
me feel as if my expensive clothes and ways ill became me
"Here is good health, Gitelson," I said in plain old Yiddish, as we
touched glasses. "Let us drink to the day when we arrived in
Castle Garden."
There was something forced, studied, in the way I uttered these
words. I was disgusted with my own voice. Gitelson only
simpered. He drained his glass, and the champagne, to which he
was not accustomed, made him tipsy at once. I tried to talk of our
ship, of the cap he had lost, of his timidity when we had found
ourselves in Castle Garden, of the policeman whom I asked to
direct us. But Gitelson only nodded and grinned and tittered. I
realized that I had made a mistake--that I should have taken him
to a more modest restaurant. But then the chasm between him and
me seemed to be too wide for us to celebrate as ship brothers in
any place
"By the way, Gitelson, I owe you something," I said, producing a
ten-dollar bill. "It was with your ten dollars that I learned to be a
cloak-operator and entered the cloak trade. Do you remember?" I
was going to add something about my desire to help him in some
substantial way, but he interrupted me
"Sure, I do," he said, with inebriate shamefacedness, as he received
the money and shoved it into the inside pocket of his vest. "It has
brought you good luck, hasn't it? And how about the interest? He,
he, he! You've kept it over twenty-three years. The interest must
be quite a little. He, he, he!"
"Of course I'll pay you the interest, and more, too. You shall get a
check."
"Oh, I was only joking."
"But I am not joking. You're going to get a check, all right."
He revolted me
I made out a check for two hundred dollars; tore it and made out
one for five hundred
He flushed, scanned the figure, giggled, hesitated, and finally
folded the check and pushed it into his inner vest pocket, thanking
me with drunken ardor
Some time later I was returning to my office, my heart heavy with
self-disgust and sadness. In the evening I went home, to the
loneliness of my beautiful hotel lodgings. My heart was still heavy
with distaste and sadness.
CHAPTER V
GUSSIE, the finisher-girl to whom I had once made
love with a view to marrying her for her money, worked in the
vicinity of my factory and I met her from time to time on the
Avenue. We kept up our familiar tone of former days. We would
pause, exchange some banter, and go our several ways. She was
over fifty now. She looked haggard and dried up and her hair was
copiously shot with gray
One afternoon she told me she had changed her shop, naming her
new employer
"Is it a good place to work in?" I inquired
"Oh, it's as good or as bad as any other place," she replied, with a
gay smile
"Mine is good," I jested
"That's what they all say
"Come to work for me and see for yourself."
"Will I get good wages?"
"Yes."
"How much?"
"Any price you name."
"Look at him," she said, as though addressing a third person. "Look
at the new millionaire."
"It might have been all yours. But you did not think I was good
enough for you." "You can keep it all to yourself and welcome."
"Well, will you come to work?"
"You can't do without me, can you? He can't get finisher-girls, the
poor fellow. Well, how much will you pay me?"
We agreed upon the price, but on taking leave she said, "I was
joking."
"What do you mean? Don't you want to work for me, Gussie?"
She shook her head
"Why?"
"I don't want you to think I begrudge you your millions. We'll be
better friends at a distance. Good-by."
"You're a funny girl, Gussie. Good-by."
A short time after this conversation I had trouble with the
Cloak-makers' Union, of which Gussie was one of the oldest and
most loyal members
The cause of the conflict was an operator named Blitt, a native of
Antomir, who had been working in my shop for some months. He
was a spare little fellow with a nose so compressed at the nostrils
that it looked as though it was inhaling some sharp, pleasant odor.
It gave his face a droll appearance, but his eyes, dark and large,
were very attractive. I had known him as a small boy in my
birthplace, where he belonged to a much better family than I
When Blitt was invited to join the Levinsky Antomir Society of my
employees he refused. It turned out that he was one of the active
spirits of the union and also an ardent member of the Socialist
party. His foreman had not the courage to discharge him, because
of my well-known predilection for natives of Antomir, so he
reported him to me as a dangerous fellow
"He isn't going to blow up the building, is he?" I said, lightly
"But he may do other mischief. He's one of the leaders of the
union."
"Let him lead."
The next time I looked at Blitt I felt uncomfortable. His refusal to
join my Antomir organization hurt me, and his activities in the
union and at socialist gatherings kindled my rancor. His
compressed nose revolted me now.
I wanted to get rid of him
Not that I had remained inflexible in my views regarding the
distribution of wealth in the world. Some of the best-known
people in the country were openly taking the ground that the poor
man was not getting a "square deal." To sympathize with
organized labor was no longer "bad form," some society women
even doing picket duty for Jewish factory-girls out on strike.
Socialism, which used to be declared utterly un-American, had
come to be almost a vogue. American colleges were leavened
with it, while American magazines were building up stupendous
circulations by exposing the corruption of the mighty. Public
opinion had, during the past two decades, undergone a striking
change in this respect. I had watched that change and I could not
but be influenced by it. For all my theorizing about the "survival
of the fittest" and the "dying off of the weaklings," I could not help
feeling that, in an abstract way, the socialists were not altogether
wrong.
The case was different, however, when I considered it in
connection with the concrete struggle of trade-unionism (which
among the Jewish immigrants was practically but another name
for socialism) against low wages or high rent.
I must confess, too, that the defeat with which I had met at
Tevkin's house had greatly intensified my hostility to socialists.
As I have remarked in a previous chapter, I ascribed my fiasco to
the socialist atmosphere that surrounded Anna. I was embittered
The socialists were constantly harping on "class struggle," "class
antagonism," "class psychology." I would dismiss it all as absurd,
but I did hate the trade-unions, particularly those of the East Side.
Altogether there was too much socialism among the masses of the
Ghetto, I thought
Blitt now seemed to be the embodiment of this "class antagonism."
"Ah, he won't join my Antomir Society!" I would storm and fume
and writhe inwardly. "That's a tacit protest against the whole
society as an organization of 'slaves.' It means that the society
makes meek, obedient servants of my employees and helps me
fleece them. As if they did not earn in my shop more than they
would anywhere else! As if they could all get steady work outside
my place! And what about the loans and all sorts of other favors
they get from me? If they worked for their own fathers they could
not be treated better than they are treated here." I felt outraged
I rebuked myself for making much ado about nothing. Indeed, this
was a growing weakness with me. Some trifle unworthy of
consideration would get on my nerves and bother me like a grain
of sand in the eye. Was I getting old? But, no, I felt in the prime of
life, full of vigor, and more active and more alive to the passions
than a youth
Whenever I chanced to be on the floor where Blitt worked I would
avoid looking in his direction. His presence irritated me. "How
ridiculous," I often thought. "One would imagine he's my
conscience and that's why I want to get rid of him." As a
consequence, I dared not send him away, and, as a consequence of
this, he irritated me more than ever
Finally, one afternoon, acting on the spur of the moment, I called
his foreman to me and told him to discharge him
A committee of the union called on me. I refused to deal with
them. The upshot was a strike--not merely for the return of Blitt to
my employment, but also for higher wages and the recognition of
the union. The organization was not strong, and only a small
number of my men were members of it, but when these went out
all the others followed their contagious example, the members of
my Antomir Society not excepted
The police gave me ample protection, and there were thousands of
cloak-makers who remained outside the union, so that I soon had
all the "hands" I wanted; but the conflict caused me all sorts of
other mortifications. For one thing, it gave me no end of hostile
publicity. The socialist Yiddish daily, which had an
overwhelmingly wide circulation now, printed reports of meetings
at which I had been hissed and hooted. I was accused of bribing
corrupt politicians who were supposed to help me suppress the
strike by means of police clubs. I was charged with bringing
disgrace upon the Jewish people
The thought of Tevkin reading these reports and of Anna hearing
of them hurt me cruelly. I could see Moissey reveling in the hisses
with which my name was greeted. And Elsie? Did she take part in
some of the demonstrations against me? Were she and Anna
collecting funds for my striking employees? The reports in the
American papers also were inclined to favor the strikers.
Public opinion was against me. What galled me worse than all,
perhaps, was the sympathy shown for the strikers by some
German-Jewish financiers and philanthropists, men whose
acquaintance it was the height of my ambition to cultivate. All of
which only served to pour oil into the flames of my hatred for the
union
Bender implored me to settle the strike
"The union doesn't amount to a row of pins," he urged. "A week or
two after we settle, things will get back to their old state."
"Where's your backbone, Bender?" I exploded. "If you had your
way, those fellows would run the whole business. You have no
sense of dignity. And yet you were born in America."
I was always accompanied by a detective
One of the strikers was in my pay. Every morning at a fixed hour
he would call at a certain hotel, where he reported the doings of
the organization to Bender and myself. One of the things I thus
learned was that the union was hard up and constantly exacting
loans from Gussie and several other members who had
savings-bank accounts. One day, however, when the secretary
appealed to her for a further loan with which to pay fines for
arrested pickets and assist some of the neediest strikers, she flew
into a passion. "What do you want of me, murderers that you are?"
she cried, bursting into tears.
"Haven't I done enough? Have you no hearts?"
A minute or two later she yielded
"Bleed me, bleed me, cruel people that you are!" she said, pointing
at her heart, as she started toward her savings bank
I was moved. When my spy had departed I paced the floor for
some minutes.
Then, pausing, I smilingly declared to Bender my determination to
ask the union for a committee. He was overjoyed and shook my
hand solemnly
One of my bookkeepers was to communicate with the strike
committee in the afternoon. Two hours before the time set for
their meeting I saw in one of the afternoon papers an interview
with the president of the union. His statements were so unjust to
me, I thought, and so bitter, that the fighting blood was again up
in my veins
But the image of Gussie giving her hard-earned money to help the
strikers haunted me. The next morning I went to Atlantic City for
a few days, letting Bender "do as he pleased." The strike was
compromised, the men obtaining a partial concession of their
demands and Blitt waiving his claim to his former job
CHAPTER VI
MY business continued to grow. My consumption
of raw material reached gigantic dimensions, so much so that at
times, when I liked a pattern, I would buy up the entire output and
sell some of it to smaller manufacturers at a profit.
Gradually I abandoned the higher grades of goods, developing my
whole business along the lines of popular prices. There are two
cloak-and-suit houses that make a specialty of costly garments.
These enjoy high reputations for taste and are the real arbiters of
fashion in this country, one of the two being known in the trade as
Little Pans; but the combined volume of business of both these
firms is much smaller than mine.
My deals with one mill alone--the largest in the country and the
one whose head had come to my rescue when my affairs were on
the brink of a precipice--now exceeded a million dollars at a
single purchase to be delivered in seven months. The mills often
sell me at a figure considerably lower than the general market
price. They do so, first, because of the enormous quantities I buy,
and, second, because of the "boost" a fabric receives from the very
fact of being handled by my house. One day, for instance, I said to
the president of a certain mill: "I like this cloth of yours. I feel like
making a big thing of it, provided you can let me have an inside
figure." We came to terms, and I gave him an advance order for
nine thousand pieces. When smaller manufacturers and
department-store buyers heard that I had bought an immense
quantity of that pattern its success was practically established. As
a consequence, the mill was in a position to raise the price of the
cloth to others, so that it amply made up for the low figure at
which it had sold the goods to me.
Judged by the market price of the raw material, my profit on a
garment did not exceed fifty cents. But I paid for the raw material
seventy-five cents less than the market price, so that my total
profit was one dollar and twenty-five cents. Still, there have been
instances when I lost seventy-five thousand dollars in one month
because goods fell in price or because a certain style failed to
move and I had to sell it below cost to get it out of the way. To be
sure, cheaper goods are less likely to be affected by the caprices
of style than higher grades, which is one of several reasons why I
prefer to produce garments of popular prices.
I do not employ my entire capital in my cloak business, half of it,
or more, being invested in "quick assets." Should I need more
ready cash than I have, I could procure it at a lower rate than what
those assets bring me. I can get half a million dollars, from two
banks, without rising from my desk--by merely calling those
banks up on the telephone. For this I pay, say, three and a half or
four per cent., for I am a desirable customer at the banks; and, as
my quick assets bring me an average of five per cent., I make at
least one per cent. on the money
Another way of making my money breed money is by early
payments to the mills. Not only can I do without their credit, but I
can afford to pay them six months in advance. This gives me an
"anticipation" allowance at the rate of six per cent. per annum,
while money costs me at the banks three or four per cent. per
annum.
All this is good sport.
I own considerable stock in the very mills with which I do
business, which has a certain moral effect on their relations with
my house. For a similar purpose I am a shareholder in the large
mail-order houses that buy cloaks and suits of me. I hold shares of
some department stores also, but of late I have grown somewhat
shy of this kind of investment, the future of a department store
being as uncertain as the future of the neighborhood in which it is
located. Mail-order houses, on the other hand, have the whole
country before them, and their overwhelming growth during past
years was one of the conspicuous phenomena in the business life
of the nation. I love to watch their operations spread over the map,
and I love to watch the growth of American cities, the shifting of
their shopping centers, the consequent vicissitudes, the decline of
some houses, the rise of others. American Jews of German origin
are playing a foremost part in the retail business of the country,
large or small, and our people, Russian and Galician Jews, also are
making themselves felt in it, being, in many cases, in partnership
with Gentiles or with their own coreligionists of German descent.
The king of the great mail-order business, a man with an annual
income of many millions, is the son of a Polish Jew. He is one of
the two richest Jews in America, having built up his vast fortune
in ten or fifteen years. As I have said before, I know hundreds, if
not thousands, of merchants, Jews and Gentiles, throughout this
country and Canada, so I like to keep track of their careers
This, too, is good sport
Of course, it is essential to study the business map in the interests
of my own establishment, but I find intellectual excitement in it as
well, and, after all, I am essentially an intellectual man, I think
There are retailers in various sections of the country whom I have
helped financially--former buyers, for example, who went into
business on their own hook with my assistance. This is good
business, for while these merchants must be left free to buy in the
open market, they naturally give my house precedence. But here
again I must say in fairness to myself that business interest is not
the only motive that induces me to do them these favors.
Indeed, in some cases I do it without even expecting to get my
money back.
It gives me moral satisfaction, for which money is no measure of
value.
CHAPTER VII
AM I happy? There are moments when I am overwhelmed by a
sense of my success and ease. I become aware that thousands of
things which had formerly been forbidden fruit to me are at my
command now. I distinctly recall that crushing sense of being
debarred from everything, and then I feel as though the whole
world were mine. One day I paused in front of an old East Side
restaurant that I had often passed in my days of need and despair.
The feeling of desolation and envy with which I used to peek in its
windows came back to me. It gave me pangs of self-pity for my
past and a thrilling sense of my present power. The prices that had
once been prohibitive seemed so wretchedly low now. On another
occasion I came across a Canal Street merchant of whom I used to
buy goods for my push-cart. I said to myself: "There was a time
when I used to implore this man for ten dollars' worth of goods,
when I regarded him as all-powerful and feared him. Now he
would be happy to shake hands with me."
I recalled other people whom I used to fear and before whom I
used to humiliate myself because of my poverty. I thought of the
time when I had already entered the cloak business, but was
struggling and squirming and constantly racking my brains for
some way of raising a hundred dollars; when I would cringe with
a certain East Side banker and vainly beg him to extend a small
note of mine, and come away in a sickening state of despair
At this moment, as these memories were filing by me, I felt as
though now there were nobody in the world who could inspire me
with awe or render me a service
And yet in all such instances I feel a peculiar yearning for the very
days when the doors of that restaurant were closed to me and
when the Canal Street merchant was a magnate of commerce in
my estimation. Somehow, encounters of this kind leave me
dejected. The gloomiest past is dearer than the brightest present.
In my case there seems to be a special reason for feeling this way.
My sense of triumph is coupled with a brooding sense of
emptiness and insignificance, of my lack of anything like a great,
deep interest
I am lonely. Amid the pandemonium of my six hundred
sewing-machines and the jingle of gold which they pour into my
lap I feel the deadly silence of solitude
I spend at least one evening a week at the Benders. I am fond of
their children and I feel pleasantly at home at their house. I am a
frequent caller at the Nodelmans', and enjoy their hospitality even
more than that of the Benders. I go to the opera, to the theaters,
and to concerts, and never alone. There are merry suppers, and
some orgies in which I take part, but when I go home I suffer a
gnawing aftermath of loneliness and desolation
I have a fine summer home, with servants, automobiles, and
horses. I share it with the Bender family and we often have
visitors from the city, but, no matter how large and gay the crowd
may be, the country makes me sad
I know bachelors who are thoroughly reconciled to their solitude
and even enjoy it. I am not.
No, I am not happy
In the city I occupy a luxurious suite of rooms in a high-class hotel
and keep an excellent chauffeur and valet. I give myself every
comfort that money can buy. But there is one thing which I crave
and which money cannot buy--happiness.
Many a pretty girl is setting her cap at me, but I know that it is
only my dollars they want to marry. Nor do I care for any of them,
while the woman to whom my heart is calling--Anna--is married
to another man
I dream of marrying some day. I dread to think of dying a lonely
man
Sometimes I have a spell of morbid amativeness and seem to be
falling in love with woman after woman. There are periods when I
can scarcely pass a woman in the street without scanning her face
and figure. When I see the crowds returning from work in the
cloak-and-waist district I often pause to watch the groups of girls
as they walk apart from the men. Their keeping together, as if they
formed a separate world full of its own interests and secrets,
makes a peculiar appeal to me
Once, in Florida, I thought I was falling in love with a rich Jewish
girl whose face had a bashful expression of a peculiar type. There
are different sorts of bashfulness. This girl had the bashfulness of
sin, as I put it to myself. She looked as if her mind harbored illicit
thoughts which she was trying to conceal. Her blushes seemed to
be full of sex and her eyes full of secrets. She was not a pretty girl
at all, but her "guilty look" disturbed me as long as we were
stopping in the same place
But through all these ephemeral infatuations and interests I am in
love with Anna
From time to time I decide to make a "sensible" marriage, and
study this woman or that as a possible candidate, but so far
nothing has come of it
There was one woman whom I might have married if she had not
been a Gentile--one of the very few who lived in the family hotel
in which I had my apartments. At first I set her down for an
adventuress seeking the acquaintance of rich Jews for some
sinister purpose. But I was mistaken. She was a woman of high
character. Moreover, she and her aged mother, with whom she
lived, had settled in that hotel long before it came to be patronized
by our people. She was a widow of over forty, with a good,
intellectual face, well read in the better sense of the term, and no
fool. Many of our people in the hotel danced attendance upon her
because she was a Gentile woman, but all of them were really
fond of her. The great point was that she seemed to have a sincere
liking for our people. This and the peculiar way her shoulders
would shake when she laughed was, in fact, what first drew me to
her. We grew chummy and I spent many an hour in her company
In my soliloquies I often speculated and theorized on the question
of proposing to her. I saw clearly that it would be a mistake. It
was not the faith of my fathers that was in the way. It was that
medieval prejudice against our people which makes so many
marriages between Jew and Gentile a failure. It frightened me
One evening we sat chatting in the bright lobby of the hotel,
discussing human nature, and she telling me something of the
good novels she had read.
After a brief pause I said: "I enjoy these talks immensely. I don't
think there is another person with whom I so love to talk of
human beings."
She bowed with a smile that shone of something more than mere
appreciation of the compliment. And then I uttered in the simplest
possible accents: "It's really a pity that there is the chasm of race
between us. Otherwise I don't see why we couldn't be happy
together."
I was in an adventurous mood and ready, even eager, to marry her.
But her answer was a laugh, as if she took it for a joke; and,
though I seemed to sense intimacy and encouragement in that
laugh, it gave me pause. I felt on the brink of a fatal blunder, and I
escaped before it was too late.
"But then," I hastened to add, "real happiness in a case like this is
perhaps not the rule, but the exception. That chasm continues to
yawn throughout the couple's married life, I suppose."
"That's an interesting point of view," she said, a non-committal
smile on her lips
She tactfully forbore to take up the discussion, and I soon dropped
the subject. We remained friends
It was this woman who got me interested in good, modern fiction.
The books she selected for me interested me greatly. Then it was
that the remarks I had heard from Moissey Tevkin came to my
mind. They were illuminating
Most of the people at my hotel are German-American Jews. I
know other Jews of this class. I contribute to their charity
institutions. Though an atheist, I belong to one of their
synagogues. Nor can I plead the special feeling which had partly
accounted for my visits at the synagogue of the Sons of Antomir
while I was engaged to Kaplan's daughter. I am a member of that
synagogue chiefly because it is a fashionable synagogue. I often
convict myself of currying favor with the German Jews. But then
German-American Jews curry favor with Portuguese-American
Jews, just as we all curry favor with Gentiles and as American
Gentiles curry favor with the aristocracy of Europe
I often long for a heart-to-heart talk with some of the people of my
birthplace. I have tried to revive my old friendships with some of
them, but they are mostly poor and my prosperity stands between
us in many ways
Sometimes when I am alone in my beautiful apartments, brooding
over these things and nursing my loneliness, I say to myself:
"There are cases when success is a tragedy."
There are moments when I regret my whole career, when my very
success seems to be a mistake.
I think that I was born for a life of intellectual interest. I was
certainly brought up for one. The day when that accident turned
my mind from college to business seems to be the most
unfortunate day in my life. I think that I should be much happier
as a scientist or writer, perhaps. I should then be in my natural
element, and if I were doomed to loneliness I should have
comforts to which I am now a stranger. That's the way I feel every
time I pass the abandoned old building of the City College.
The business world contains plenty of successful men who have no
brains.
Why, then, should I ascribe my triumph to special ability? I should
probably have made a much better college professor than a
cloak-manufacturer, and should probably be a happier man, too. I
know people who have made much more money than I and whom
I consider my inferiors in every respect.
Many of our immigrants have distinguished themselves in science,
music, or art, and these I envy far more than I do a billionaire. As
an example of the successes achieved by Russian Jews in America
in the last quarter of a century it is often pointed out that the man
who has built the greatest sky-scrapers in the country, including
the Woolworth Building, is a Russian Jew who came here a
penniless boy. I cannot boast such distinction, but then I have
helped build up one of the great industries of the United States,
and this also is something to be proud of. But I should readily
change places with the Russian Jew, a former Talmud student like
myself, who is the greatest physiologist in the New World, or with
the Russian Jew who holds the foremost place among American
song-writers and whose soulful compositions are sung in almost
every English-speaking house in the world. I love music to
madness. I yearn for the world of great singers, violinists, pianists.
Several of the greatest of them are of my race and country, and I
have met them, but all my acquaintance with them has brought me
is a sense of being looked down upon as a money-bag striving to
play the Maæcenas. I had a similar experience with a sculptor,
also one of our immigrants, an East Side boy who had met with
sensational success in Paris and London. I had him make my bust.
His demeanor toward me was all that could have been desired.
We even cracked Yiddish jokes together and he hummed bits of
synagogue music over his work, but I never left his studio without
feeling cheap and wretched.
When I think of these things, when I am in this sort of mood, I pity
myself for a victim of circumstances.
At the height of my business success I feel that if I had my life to
live over again I should never think of a business career.
I don't seem to be able to get accustomed to my luxurious life. I am
always more or less conscious of my good clothes, of the high
quality of my office furniture, of the power I wield over the men
in my pay. As I have said in another connection, I still have a
lurking fear of restaurant waiters.
I can never forget the days of my misery. I cannot escape from my
old self.
My past and my present do not comport well. David, the poor lad
swinging over a Talmud volume at the Preacher's Synagogue,
seems to have more in common with my inner identity than David
Levinsky, the well-known cloak-manufacturer.
End of Project Gutenberg's The Rise of David Levinsky, by Abraham Cahan
