I FILLED my Third Avenue order and went on
soliciting other business. The season was waning, but I obtained a
number of small orders and laid foundations for future sales. Our
capital was growing apace, but we often lacked working cash
After I paid the debt I owed Meyer Nodelman I obtained other
favors from him. He took a sponsorial interest in my business and
often offered me the benefit of his commercial experience in the
form of maxims
"Don't bite off more than you can chew, Levinsky," he would tell
me.
"Finding it easy to get people to trust you is not enough. You must
also find it easy to pay them."
Some of his other rules were: "Be pleasant with the man you deal
with, even if he knows you don't mean it.
He likes it, anyway."
"Take it from me, Levinsky: honesty is the best policy. There is
only one line of business in which dishonesty pays: the burglar
business, provided the burglar does not get caught. If I thought
lying could help my business, I should lie day and night. But I
have learned that it hurts far more than it helps. Be sure that the
other fellow believes what you say. If you have his confidence you
have him by the throat."
It was not always easy to comply with Meyer's tenets, however.
The inadequacy of my working capital often forced me to have
recourse to subterfuges that could not exactly be called honorable.
One day, when we had some bills to meet two days before I could
expect to obtain the cash, I made out and signed checks, but
inclosed each of them in the wrong envelope--this supposed act of
inadvertence gaining me the needed two days of grace. On another
occasion I sent out a number of checks without my signature,
which presumably I had forgotten to affix. There were instances
when I was so hard pressed for funds that the fate of our factory
hinged on seventy-five or a hundred dollars. In one of these crises
I bought two gold watches on the instalment plan, for the express
and sole purpose of pawning them for fifty dollars. I bought the
watches of two men who did not know each other, and returned
them as soon as I could spare the cash to redeem them, forfeiting
the several weekly payments which I had made on the pretended
purchases.
There were instances, too, when I had to borrow of my employees
a few dollars with which to buy cotton. Needless to say that all
this happened in the early stages of my experience as a
manufacturer. I have long since been above and beyond such
methods. Indeed, business honor and business dignity are often a
luxury in which only those in the front ranks of success can
indulge. But then there are features of the game in which the small
man is apt to be more honorable and less cruel than the financial
magnate
I was continually consulting Max on my affairs. Not that I needed
his advice or expected to act upon it. These confidential talks
seemed to promote our intimacy and to enhance the security of the
welcome I found in his house. A great immigrant city like New
York or Chicago is full of men and women who are alone amid a
welter of human life. For these nothing has a greater glamour than
a family in whose house they might be made to feel at home. I
was one of these desolate souls. I still missed my mother. The
anniversary of her death was still a feast of longing agony and
spiritual bliss to me. I scarcely ever visited the synagogue of the
Sons of Antomir these days, but on that great day I was sure to be
there. Forgetful of my atheism, I would place a huge candle for
her soul, attend all the three services, without omitting a line, and
recite the prayer for the dead with sobs in my heart. I had craved
some family who would show me warm friendship. The
Margolises were such a family (Meyer Nodelman never invited
me to his house). They were a godsend to me
Max was essentially a hospitable man, and really fond of me. As
for his wife, who received me with the same hearty welcome as
he, her liking for me was primarily based, as she once put it
herself in the presence of her husband, upon my intellectual
qualifications
"It's good to have educated people come to the house," she
remarked. "It's good for the children and for everybody else." "I
knew she would like you," Max said to me. "She would give her
head for education. Only better look out, you two. See that you
don't fall in love with each other. Ha, ha!"
Sometimes there were other visitors in the house--some of Max's
friends, his and her fellow-townspeople, her relatives, or some
neighbor. Dora's great friend was a stout woman with flaxen hair
and fishy eyes, named Sadie, or Mrs. Shornik, whose little girl,
Beckie, was a classmate of Lucy's, the acquaintance and devoted
intimacy of the two mothers having originated in the intimacy of
the two school-girls. Sadie lived several blocks from the
Margolises, but she absolutely never let a day pass without calling
on her, if it were only for just time enough to kiss her. She was
infatuated with Dora, and Beckie was infatuated with Lucy
"They just couldn't live without one another," Max said, after
introducing me to Sadie and explaining the situation
"Suppose Lucy and Beckie had not happened to be in the same
school," I jested, addressing myself to the two women. "What
would you have done then?"
"This shows that we have a good God in heaven," Sadie returned,
radiantly.
"He put the children in the same school so that we might meet."
"'A providential match,'" I observed.
"May it last for many, many years," Sadie returned, devoutly
"Say, women!" Max shouted, "you have been more than five
minutes without kissing. What's the matter with you?"
At this, Sadie, with mock defiance, walked up to Mrs. Margolis,
threw her arms around her, and gave her a luscious smack on the
lips
"Bravo! And now you, kids!" Max commanded
With a merry chuckle the two little girls flew into each other's
arms and kissed. Lucy had dark hair like Dora's, and Beckie
flaxen hair like Sadie's, so when their heads were close together
they were an amusing reduced copy of their mothers as these had
looked embracing and kissing a minute before
Max often dropped in to see me at my factory, and when I was not
busy we would talk of my cloaks, of his instalment business, or of
women. Women were his great topic of conversation, as usual.
But then these talks of his no longer found a ready listener in me.
Now, that I knew his wife, they jarred on me. A decided change
had come over me in this respect. I remember it vividly. It was as
if his lewd discourses desecrated her name and thereby offended
me. It may be interesting to note, however, that he never took up
this kind of topics when we were in his house, not even when his
wife was out
Sometimes I would have supper at his house. More often,
however--usually on Monday, when Max seldom went to the
dance-halls--I would come after supper and spend the rest of the
evening there. Sometimes the Shorniks would drop in--Sadie, her
husband, and Beckie. Ben Shornik and Max would play a game of
pinochle, while I, who never cared for cards, would chat with the
women or entertain them by entertaining the children. Ben--as I
came into the habit of calling him--was a spare little man with an
extremely high forehead. He was an insurance-collector and only
one degree less illiterate than Max; but because he had the
"forehead of a learned man," and because it was his business to go
from house to house with a long, thick book under his arm, he
affected longish hair, flowing black neckties, and a certain
pomposity of manner. One of his ways of being tremendously
American was to snap his fingers ferociously and to say, "I don't
care a continental!" or, "One, two, three, and there you are!" The
latter exclamation he would be continually murmuring to himself
when he was absorbed in pinochle.