CHAPTER I

Ver.04.29.93*END*

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."