themselves. Romano thought of the difficulty to find another man.
Salvatore was such a good barber!
A hard battle between business and artistic ideals, indeed!
There was no music that evening, because there was no harmony between
the two.
The banker and the other "notabili" came, in vain.
Salvatore took his hat and cane, and saying very politely, "Buona sera,"
he left the shop.
"What's the trouble with Salvatore?" they all asked.
"He is crazy," Romano answered. They understood something had gone wrong
between the two, so the talk was switched on the war.
Rosita came and turned pale when she did not see the young man. The
absence of his hat and cane caused the girl despair.
Said the banker to Romano at parting:
"If it's a question of a few dollars more a week, I would advise
you----"
"Nothing of the kind, banchiere. Money means nothing to me. I have
ideals, high ideals, which this impudent----Think of that! To dare sneer
at Rossini! Il grande maestro! The compositore of the 'Barbiere de
Sevilla,' and many another capo d'opera. He will have to apologize, or I
never want to see him again!"
"Yes, yes," the banker insisted--"youth is impudent, but Salvatore's
razor hand and his voice bring business."
"It means nothing to me. He will have to apologize if he wants to work
in my shop."
The next day, Saturday, the two artists were too busy to talk music.
Fire hung between them. Rosita came in early, all flushed, and sent
Salvatore a meaning-full glance. Romano ordered her out very gruffly.
Salvatore was mad with anger. How dare this Rossini fanatic speak to
Rosita, to his beautiful Rosita, in such a way!
She did not return the whole day.
In the evening Salvatore again made ready to go. He had planned to leave
definitely, and find some "sub rosa" way to speak to Rosita. Yet he
changed his mind at the last minute. There was danger. He could not lose
the girl. He decided to bide his time.
He had hardly started to take off the white jacket when Romano spoke to
him.
"Young man, you will have to apologize or leave my shop for good. It is
true you are a very good barber, an artist, and I was ready to increase
your wages of my own good will. But I have ideals. You have insulted my
masters--my great masters----"
Romano's voice quivered with emotion. His eyes were moist. He was deeply
grieved. It touched Salvatore as nothing ever did. Throwing both arms
around the old man's neck, he kissed him, crying:
"Silvio Romano, soul of an artist! amo d'artiste! I love you, I honor
you. But I too have artistic ideals. I love Rosita--but you will not
permit that I debase myself, that I lie to you for her sake?"
Both men cried.
They never again talked about the different masters; instead, they
played their music nightly. And after a time, they occasionally bowed
each at the other's shrine.
THE HOLY HEALER FROM OMSK
From Fourth Street to the confines of 14th Street below First Avenue and
the East River is one of the Russian districts in New York. It is
inhabited to a great extent by Russian laborers. The Russian
"Inteligentsia" of New York is so busy talking _about_ the people, the
"narod," it has had no time to go and see and talk _with_ the people.
The odor of cooked cabbage and burned fats dissolves into the stronger
odors of the oiled high boots and the numerous Russian steam baths of
the district. Ah, these steam baths! From the looks of them and the
smell one comes to think of them more as sewers than baths. A hundred
little "Cuchnias," restaurants with their vapored windows and sawdust
floors proclaim the fact that most of the inhabitants of the district
are here without their families and therefore thrown upon the
ill-smelling and meanly-cooked foodstuffs of those eating places.
The whole week the streets and houses are very quiet; only the
occasional quarrel between two restaurateurs and their wives disturbs
the peace. The tired workers sleep. But on Saturday night the Russian
temperament breaks loose. The windows of every front room are lit and
from the street one sees plainly the decorations on the walls; red and
blue serpentines cross the ceiling and are wrapped around the
chandeliers; a few pictures in color, cut out from some illustrated
paper or magazine; a few gayly colored hand embroidered towels are fixed
with pins on the wall above the mantelpiece on which are a few pieces of
cheap glassware in that milkish green held in so much affection by the
Lithuanians. And inside the rooms, to the creaking sound of a
concertina, the Russians dance and sing their national songs. Here and
there some American song breaks loose, but this only happens early in
the evening when things are yet on their surface. Later in the night
when drink has sobered and deepened the children of the Volga they sing
only dirges, linking one to another until the whole district is
permeated in an undulating melancholy for which no God and no man could
account.
* * * * *
In this district lived Stephan Ivanoff. Stephan came to New York with a
reputation. People said he had escaped from Siberia by flight, and
people also said that he was sent to Siberia because of the jealousy of
a doctor. Stephan was not a doctor; he was a healer.
Stephan was a big, heavy dark bearded man with two shrewd little eyes in
his head and a mouth which always looked as though it just finished
eating some savory morsel. He kept to his Russian custom and went every
Saturday night to the Russian bath. In the intimacy of the common
bathroom he told stories and anecdotes which elicited broad laughter
and made many friends to the newcomer from Siberia.
Incidentally Stephan Ivanoff gave some health hints to his friends.
"First of all, don't eat eggs; don't eat any eggs," he said, "they are
just poisoning your blood. If you have eaten even one egg in the last
four, five years, it will come out some day in a swelling of the neck or
in some other boil on the legs and arms."
* * * * *
And one day Vasilenko, the owner of one of the restaurants of the
district, had such a swelling on the neck. His wife called a doctor, a
regular M. D., who prescribed rest, hot water applications and other
such truck. It did not help very much and Mrs. Vasilenko complained to a
customer.
"A swelling on the neck?" the customer said as he wiped his mouth with
the back of his hand, "why, poor Vasilenko is poisoned!"
Several other customers approached Serzei's table and Serzei explained
with even greater details all he knew, all he had heard from the mouth
of Stephan Ivanoff, that mysterious man who had escaped from Siberia
where he had had the great fortune to meet a holy man from Omsk who
taught him all about diseases and foods and their poisons.
The upshot of it all was that they went scurrying for Stephan Ivanoff
and brought him to the bedside of Vasilenko. Stephan looked the sick man
over, held his pulse for quite a while, then declared that Vasilenko was
poisoned. He ordered all the bottles of medicine thrown away in his very
presence before he would start anything.
"The case is a very serious one," he said, "but I will try to use
whatever gifts I have," and he started immediately the old process of
dry-cupping the patient. One after the other the little cupping glasses
applied to the swollen part filled with the brown blue flesh they sucked
in. The patient groaned but Ivanoff assured him it was better than death
and tortured him the rest of the night. In the morning Stephan obtained
a few particularly active and hungry leeches which he posed to suck out
the "bad blood" from Vasilenko's arms and legs. After eight days and
eight nights he restored Vasilenko to health and guaranteed that not a
drop of poisoned blood had remained in the man's body.
* * * * *
The news spread that Ivanoff had saved Vasilenko's life, and the
reputation of the quack grew daily. According to Ivanoff's theory,
almost everybody's blood was poisoned. They were all sick people. He
took the pulse of every one, listened carefully and then dropped the
hand with a little eloquent gesture that set one despairing more than if
the death penalty had been pronounced.
"Stephan Ivanoff, what is the matter with me?"
"Alexis Vasilewitch, your pulse tells me that you are a very sick man."
"It's true Stephan Ivanoff that I feel a little tired, but I thought
that it was hard work."
Stephan never insisted. It was his trick never to insist. He knew human
nature too well to insist. He just made a little gesture and passed on
to pleasanter topics, but he was sure that Alexis Vasilewitch, or
whoever it was, would come around at the end of the conversation at the
dinner table at Vasilenko's and ask: "Stephan Ivanoff, what shall I do?"
And the next day, or on Saturday the man was dry-cupped, blood-sucked,
massaged and given to drink strange-tasting mixtures brewed over an
alcohol lamp. A few weeks' treatment and the man was healed.
* * * * *
Stephan Ivanoff had saved another life.
Things went on in such a way for years. The several doctors established
in the district starved and Stephan Ivanoff became rich. From
Vasilenko's restaurant spread tales of marvellous recoveries from all
kinds of diseases which the healer discovered as soon as he felt the
man's pulse. It was as if the holy man from Omsk had himself sent
Stephan Ivanoff to New York to save all the poisoned men. And when a
man was very severely ill Stephan spoke mysteriously of occult
communications with the man "out there" and gave a brew of special herbs
grown on the tombs of holy men and ordered Chinese leeches and
dry-cupped in a special way until the man was saved.
Stephen Ivanoff furnished his apartment with all the Russian things he
could get in order to impress the increasing number of his visitors.
The priest came to see him one day to admonish him about a little
scandal with Vasilenko's wife.
Stephan Ivanoff kissed the hand of the old man and as he held it between
the pointer and the thumb he exclaimed "Father, don't move!" Silently,
attentive, with the hand of the priest limply between his fingers he
said: "Father Anton Fevdoroff, you are a sick man."
"My son, I have come to speak to you about other things." The priest,
essaying his unctuous voice, tried to set things right.
Vasilenko had gone to Russia to visit his parents, and his wife, the
rumor spread, fell to the healer's spell. Stephan Ivanoff, the healer,
listened to the priest's admonition to the end and as he did so his face
radiated happiness; as though some wonderfully clear visions were
descending from the heavens upon him.
"What have you to say, son?"
"That God's wisdom is seen in the ways of life; that he taketh care of
man and worm, and that no action and no thought can come but that He had
willed it," answered Stephan Ivanoff, in religious transport.
"But why does my son speak now about godliness, when I come to censure
him about his immorality?"
"In Omsk, father, I met a holy man who taught me many things before I
came here. In five years I have not met you once. And because you are
also a holy man God willed that Vasilenko go to Russia and I be exposed
to false accusations so that you should come to me. You are a sick man,
Anton Fevdoroff--your pulse tells me you are a very sick man, that
you have been poisoned."
Father Anton Fevdoroff maintained that he was not a sick man but the
thumb and the forefinger of Stephan Ivanoff on the pulse of the man knew
better. A few days later the priest sent word to the healer that he
should come to see him. Father Fevdoroff was ill. The doctor had
prescribed something which did not seem to help and the priest's wife
was despairing. Brought up in a little village in Russia her confidence
in leeches and cupping was much stronger than in the official medicine.
Stephan's methods suited her and as the priest's health improved under
his treatment, Mother Fevdoroff went into ecstasies over the holy man
from Omsk:
On the fourth day Ivanoff said to the priest:
"Little father, your pulse is wonderful to-day. There is not a drop of
bad blood left in your body."
[Illustration: "Little Father, your pulse is wonderful to-day."]
Father Fevdoroff thereafter dropped the Vasilenko affair. Ivanoff
shrewdly refused payment for his cure. Mother Fevdoroff spread the news
of the wonderful cure so well that the healer actually overworked
himself every day feeling the pulses of his patients.
* * * * *
Hard work and heavy eating began to tell on Stephan. After a
particularly heavy meal on a Christmas Eve he had an attack of
indigestion in the house of a friend.
"Should we call a doctor, Stephan Ivanoff?"
He refused at first. Had he not denounced all the doctors as fakers! But
when the cramps almost killed him he made no answer as the suggestion to
call a doctor was made again.
The old practitioner of the district was brought to the well known
quack's bedside. The doctor hoped that the news "the quack called a
doctor when ill" might loosen the healer's hold on the people.
Ivanoff was breathing heavily. The doctor took the sick man's hand to
feel the pulse. Suddenly the healer snatched his hand away, and with
all the energy at his command exclaimed:
"Stop! You know who I am? _Don't we know that there isn't such a thing
as a pulse?_" and he refused to be treated.
That indigestion killed Stephan Ivanoff.
The neighborhood says: Because there was not another man in New York who
had met that holy man from Omsk.
HIRSH ROTH'S THEORY
The Bronx, between Claremont Parkway and Bronx Park, has known Hirsh
Roth of the firm of Hirsh Roth & Co., wholesale and retail liquor
dealers, for the last twenty years. He was there, a believer in the
Bronx, when it was yet all rocks and farms, with a few scattered wooden
shacks. He was there when the downtown people moved to the Bronx because
the doctor said they needed country air and higher ground.
Roth saved up a few dollars sewing pants the whole day and eating
herring with bread at night. His wife died of tuberculosis on such a
diet after she gave birth to a man child, to Joseph, who is now the
anonymous "& Co." of the father's business. Hirsh Roth moved to the
"country" to save his own and the child's life. But, as he is a man with
proselyting tendencies, he came downtown to the local of his union
every Saturday night to persuade people to move to the Bronx.
He was at that time affiliated with a real estate firm, and sold lots
and parcels to his former friends and co-workers. Many a fashionable
house is now raised on ground he sold. Former pants operators own them.
Half of Bathgate Avenue and Brook Avenue was populated by Hirsh Roth's
efforts--ere he formulated a new theory: "The Bronx was becoming too
populated." He then changed his business from selling real estate to
selling liquor.
Many a man changes his business for material interest only. Not so Hirsh
Roth. He always requires a theory. He went into the family liquor
business to prevent drunkenness. "When a man has a little something at
home he does not go to a saloon, that's the idea."
And all those years he boarded with his child in the house of a friend,
a house builder. Hirsh Roth did not remarry; he had a theory for that
also. "Marriage is a foolish thing a man should commit only once."
The builder, Feldman, had a daughter the same age as Joseph, Roth's son.
Before either of the tots could utter an intelligible word, the parents
had already affianced them. Dowry and everything else was settled
between the two men, and a special glass of wine drunk to the health and
happiness of the future couple. Then each went about his business with
the feeling of a man who has cleared his mind of earthly cares.
The Bronx grew up in his arms, so to say. Early mornings he went to see
how his "baby" developed. Every house was built under his eye. It
mattered not whether it was his building or not. If he thought the style
or the material was not what it ought to be he gave no peace to the
owner or the builder. Many an architect's blue print had to be changed
at his insistence. The depth of a foundation or a brick not properly
fired had caused him many a sleepless night.
"Mazel Tow, Feldman; Josephson's house is finished"; or "They broke
ground to-day on Berger's lot near Washington Avenue," were frequent
greetings when he came home.
Fanny Feldman and Joseph Roth grew up together like brother and sister.
They fought and quarrelled, and Mrs. Feldman made no distinction between
her own and the stranger when she administered a deserved spanking. Then
came the period when the high school boy hated even to speak to a girl.
Joseph Roth refused to be seen with Fanny on the street, "because I am
not a sissy," and thereupon received a beating from his father.
On some such an occasion he learned that Fanny was to be his wife.
"We are not in Russia!" he cried. "I am an American. We are in a free
country. What do you mean by choosing for me a girl?"
He got another beating for his defiance. As he lay on his cot one night
he made plans how to run away to the West and become a cowboy or
something.
Fanny was a beautiful and clever girl. Though Joseph's behavior was very
insulting to her, she agreed with the spirit of his revolt.
Of course Joseph was not to be compared with some of the young fellows
she knew. There was young Reisin, who played the violin so beautifully;
and that long-haired, almond-eyed Berger boy, who had several poems
printed in newspapers--all the girls were after him. Joseph had no such
qualities. He was not artistic. But she admired his spirit--in an
abstract sense. It was so manly of him not to submit to the will of his
father. He was an American, lord and master of his own actions, and not
a slave or hireling.
Then one day Joseph disappeared from the house. The whole night the
police of the Bronx and Manhattan were kept busy trying to find the
sixteen-year-old boy. The next day his picture was in all the papers. On
the third day he was brought back from Philadelphia, still an
unrepentant sinner.
Did he get a beating? No, but on the next day his father took him to the
store.
"No more school. You will help serve the customers."
Joseph was strong and willing, and was soon managing the business. But
there was no day in which his name was not in some way linked up with
Fanny's. For so many years Hirsh Roth had considered the matter of his
son's marriage settled, that the unsettling of this plan was a
calamity--as if a sure deal for a corner lot had fizzled out, or as if
the very Bronx had failed in some way. The more he insisted the more the
boy was steeled in his decision. He wouldn't even sit near the girl at
table. He never even smiled to her; he snarled.
One day they were alone.
"Fanny," he told her, "they want to force me to marry you, and I don't
want to--you hear, I don't want to, Fanny. I was never asked at all
whether I want to marry you or not!"
"You are perfectly right, Joseph. They have no right to do that. We are
in America. We are not in Russia. I like you, we will stick to our
guns." And Fanny put out a warm little hand.
This short interview made Joseph happy. He had at least one ally; he
could stand his father's importunities much more easily, though the
parent presented the same stubborn opposition to his plans.
Then suddenly, Hirsh Roth told his son, "We are moving out from the
Feldmans'. To do what he did to me, after all I did for him in all these
years! I never again want to see a Feldman in my life," moaned the old
man disconsolately.
That very night father and son moved in to Mrs. Josephson's.
For the first time Joseph did not feel at home. The Josephsons were very
friendly people; Josephson never forgot he owed his fortune to Hirsh
Roth's advice. But they were strangers. They called Joseph "Mr." Roth.
Even the hot soup lacked warmth after that.
Hirsh Roth went to a meeting of his lodge. Joseph went out for a walk.
He saw Fanny on the opposite side of the street. She was strolling
leisurely with the young poet Berger.
He saluted her, but as he did so he remembered his father's moanings
about the Feldmans. It made him feel very sinful.
The next few days Joseph surprised himself frequently thinking of Fanny;
how she had shaken hands with him and become his ally on a certain
proposition. The following evenings his father kept him busy in the
store till late in the night. For a full month Hirsh managed to keep his
son under his eye. He even took him to a lodge meeting. Joseph began to
suspect he did it purposely to keep him away from Fanny.
He met her on the Elevated one afternoon as he had to go downtown on
business.
"Hello, Miss Feldman."
"Oh! Mr. Roth, glad to see you again," she responded cheerily.
And they shook hands like old friends that have not met in a long time.
They traveled together. He even went with her to a department store
where she bought some notions. They talked about many things, and she
managed to sell him a ticket for the next musicale of the synagogue.
"Will you be there, Miss Feldman?"
"Of course."
All through the winter they met here and there, and every time they
learned to know each other better. It was enough that she should look
friendly-like at another young man for his heart to beat faster and the
blood to rise and rush.
Hirsh Roth never relaxed his vigilance over his son. Many an appointment
with Fanny could not be kept on account of the older man. He wanted to
know where his son went and from whence he came. From time to time he
spoke about Feldman as of one who had betrayed him in the most rascally
way.
Every meeting with Fanny now necessitated diplomacy, and was frequently
espaced by weeks. The elder Roth grew thin and irritable as the spring
approached. Joseph Roth planned many a time to ask details about
Feldman's betrayal, hoping to patch up the quarrel. But he was afraid to
complicate matters, to arouse suspicion.
One evening, late, as Joseph entered his room at the Josephson's he
found his father waiting for him. The old man abused the boy in the most
vehement way. It had been brought to his ears that Joseph had danced
with Fanny Feldman at the last musicale.
"My son, my own son, danced with Feldman's daughter!"
It was more than Joseph could stand. How long was he to be bossed like
that? His father had once chosen who was to be his wife, and now he was
abusing him for dancing with whom he pleased. To his mind Miss Feldman
was not at all the Fanny of a few months ago. Miss Feldman was the woman
he loved, admired--the one he had chosen himself. Why should his
father's dislike of her father interfere with his plans?
And it did not. He eloped with her a week later--eloped to Philadelphia
on a paltry twenty-dollar bill, a week before the Easter holiday season
began.
"We are married, Fanny and Joseph," he wired to his father two days
later.
"Come home immediately, Mazel Tow," was the answer returned as fast as
the wires could take it.
At the Josephsons' the young couple were told Hirsh Roth had again gone
to live with the Feldmans. There Joseph found his father in the highest
possible spirits.
"But why didn't you do it sooner, you silly boy? I almost ruined my
stomach eating at the Josephsons. The thought of missing the good things
Mrs. Feldman cooks during the Holy days almost drove me mad."
And turning to the beaming Feldman:
"Well, did I win a hat? Free choice, old friend, we have to give free
choice to the world. But I almost died of a sick stomach waiting for the
theory to work."
THE TRAGEDY OF AFGHIAN'S LIVING RUG
Somewhere between Madison and Fifth Avenues, close to the hubbub of
Forty-second Street--the thoroughfare which is like a river flowing in
many directions at the same time--you will find the store of Afghian,
Mestre Afghian, the rug dealer and Oriental art collector.
Afghian would surely take offense at having his place called a "store,"
the chief objection to this word being his aversion to Occidental
business methods--the system by which things are appraised in their
dollar-and-cents value.
Afghian also is a business man. But to him rugs and topazes are rugs and
topazes first, and do not represent so many gold pieces. He thinks and
feels in terms of rugs, as did his ancestors hundreds of years ago on
the plains of Afghanistan and Turkestan when they exchanged the product
of their labor and love for the pearls brought to them by the poachers
of Bahrein.
In the dimly lit square room hang beautiful examples of the work of the
Tadjiks and Chiites, some in riotous colors suggestive and voluptuous,
and others as though woven by hands of saints who had banished all
earthly joy from their hearts.