"Don't cry," Nodelman said. "Just be a good boy and Mrs.

Nodelman will get you a peach of a young lady. Won't you,

Bella?"

"I guess so," she answered, with a smile

"Don't you understand?" he proceeded to explain. "She first wants

to know the kind of customer you are. Then she'll know what kind

of merchandise to look for. Isn't that it, Bella?"

She made no answer

"I hope Mrs. Nodelman will find me a pretty decent sort of

customer," I put in.

"You're all right," she said, demurely. "I'm afraid it won't be an

easy job to get a young lady to suit a customer like you."

"Try your best, will you?" I said.

"I certainly will."

She was less talkative now, and certainly less at her ease than she

had been before the topic was broached, which impressed me

rather favorably.

Altogether she was far from the virago or "witch" her

mother-in-law had described her to be. As to her attitude toward

her husband, I subsequently came to the conclusion that it was a

blend of affection and contempt.

Nodelman was henpecked, but not badly so

I called on them three or four times more during that spring.

Somehow the question of my marriage was never mentioned on

these occasions, and then Mrs. Nodelman and the children, all

except Maurice, went to the seashore for the summer

CHAPTER IV

"YOU'LL examine the merchandise, and if you

don't like it nobody is going to make you buy it," said Nodelman

to me one day in January of the following winter. By

"merchandise" he meant a Miss Kalmanovitch, the daughter of a

wealthy furniture-dealer, to whom I was to be introduced at the

Nodelman residence four days later. "She is a peach of a girl,

beautiful as the sun, and no runt, either; a lovely girl." "Good

looks aren't everything. Beauty is skin deep, and handsome is as

handsome does," I paraded my English

"Oh, she is a good girl every way: a fine housekeeper,

good-natured, and educated. Gee! how educated she is! Why, she

has a pile of books in her room, Bella says, a pile that high." He

raised his hand above his head. "She is dead stuck on her, Bella

is."

Owing to an illness in the Kalmanovitch family, the projected

meeting could not take place, but Nodelman's birthday was to be

celebrated in March, so the gathering was to serve as a

match-making agency as well as a social function

The great event came to pass on a Sunday evening. The prospect

of facing a girl who offered herself as a candidate for becoming

my wife put me all in a flutter. It took me a long time to dress and

I made my appearance at the Nodelmans' rather late in the

evening. Mrs. Nodelman, who met me in the hall, offered me a

tempestuous welcome

"Here he is! Better late than never," she shrieked, hoarsely, as I

entered the hall at the head of the high stoop. "I was gettin'

uneasy. Honest I was." And dropping her voice: "Miss

Kalmanovitch came on time. She's a good girl. Always." And she

gave me a knowing look that brought the color to my face and a

coy smile into hers

Her husband appeared a minute later. After greeting me warmly he

whispered into my ear: "Nobody knows anything about it, not

even the young lady. Only her mother does."

But I soon discovered that he was mistaken. My appearance

produced a sensation, and the telltale glances of the women from

me to a large girl with black eyes who stood at the mantelpiece

not only showed plainly that they knew all about "it," but also

indicated who of the young women present was Miss

Kalmanovitch

The spacious parlor was literally jammed. The hostess led the way

through the throng, introducing me to the guests as we proceeded.

There were Nodelman's father and mother among them, the

gigantic old tailor grinning childishly by the side of his wife, who

looked glum

"That one, with the dark eves, by the mantelpiece," Meyer

Nodelman whispered to me, eagerly

The girl pointed out was large and plump, with full ivory-hued

cheeks, and a dimple in her fleshy chin. Her black eyes were large

and round. That the object of my coming, and of her own, was no

secret to her was quite evident.

She was blushing to the roots of her glossy black hair, and in her

apparent struggle with her constraint she put her stout, long arm

around the waist of a girl who stood by her side against the

mantelpiece

Upon the whole, Miss Kalmanovitch impressed me more than

favorably; but a minute later, when I was introduced to her and

saw her double chin and shook her gently by a hand that was fat

and damp with perspiration, I all but shuddered. I felt as though

she exuded oil. I was introduced to her mother, a spare,

hatchet-face little woman with bad teeth, who looked me over in a

most business-like way, and to her father, a gray man with a goatee

Miss Kalmanovitch and I soon found ourselves seated side by side.

Conscious of being the target of many eyes, I was as disconcerted

as I had been twelve years before, when Matilda played her first

practical joke upon my sidelocks. My would-be fiancée was the

first to recover her ease. She asked me if I was related to a

white-goods man named Levinsky, and when I said no she passed

to other topics. She led the conversation, and I scarcely followed

her. At one moment, for example, as I looked her in the face,

endeavoring to listen to what she was saying about the Purim ball

she had attended, I remarked to myself that the name

Kalmanovitch somehow seemed to go well with her face and

figure, and that she was too self-possessed for a "bridal

candidate."

Presently we heard Mrs. Nodelman's hoarse voice: "Now Miss

Kalmanovitch will oblige us with some music. Won't you, please,

Miss Kalmanovitch?"

A swarthy, middle-aged woman, with features that somewhat

resembled those of the host, whose cousin she was, and with huge

golden teeth that glistened good-naturedly, took Miss

Kalmanovitch by the arm, saying in a mannish voice: "Come on,

Ray! Show them what you can do!"

My companion rose and, throwing gay glances at some of the other

girls, she walked over to the piano and seated herself. Then, with

some more smiles at the girls, she cold-bloodedly attacked the

keyboard

"A nauctourrn by Chopin," her mother explained to me in an

audible whisper across the room

Miss Kalmanovitch was banging away with an effect of showing

how quickly she could get through the nocturne. I am not musical

in the accepted meaning of the term, and in those days I was even

less so than I am now, perhaps, but I was always fond of music,

and had a discriminating feeling for it. At all events, I knew

enough to realize that my would-be fiancée was playing

execrably. But her mother, her father, the hostess, and the swarthy

woman with the golden teeth, were shooting glances at me that

seemed to say: "What do you think of that? Did you ever see such

fast playing?" and there was nothing for it but to simulate

admiration

The woman with the great golden teeth, Meyer Nodelman's cousin,

was even more strenuous in her efforts to arouse my exultation

than Ray's mother. She was the wife of a prosperous teamster

whose moving-vans were seen all over the East Side. Gaunt,

flat-chested, with a solemn masculine face, she was known for her

jolly disposition and good-natured sarcasm. There was something

suggestive of Meyer Nodelman in her manner of speaking as well

as in her looks. She was childless and took an insatiable interest in

the love-affairs and matrimonial politics of young people. Her

name was Mrs.

Kalch, but everybody called her Auntie Yetta

When Ray finished playing Auntie Yetta led the applause, for all

the world like a ward heeler. When the acclaim had died down

she rushed at Ray, pressed her ample bosom to her own flat one,

kissed her a sounding smack on the lips, and exclaimed, with a

wink to me: "Ever see such a tasty duck of a girl?"

Miss Kalmanovitch was followed by a bespectacled, anemic boy

of thirteen who played something by Wieniavsky on the violin,

and then Miss Kalmanovitch "obliged" us with a recitation from

"Macbeth." There were four other solos on the piano and on the

violin by boys and girls, children of the invited guests, the

violinists having brought their instruments with them. Not that the

concert was part of a preconceived program, although it might

have been taken for granted. The mothers of the performers had

simply seized the opportunity to display the talents of their

offspring before an audience.

Only one boy--a curly-headed, long-necked little pianist,

introduced as Bennie Saminsky--played with much feeling and

taste. All the rest grated on my nerves

I beguiled the time by observing the women. I noticed, for

instance, that Auntie Yetta, whose fingers were a veritable

jewelry-store, now and again made a pretense of smoothing her

grayish hair for the purpose of exhibiting her flaming rings.

Another elderly woman, whose fingers were as heavily laden, kept

them prominently interlaced across her breast. From time to time

she would flirt her interlocked hands, in feigned

absent-mindedness, thus flashing her diamonds upon the people

around her. At one moment it became something like a race

between her and Auntie Yetta. Nodelman's cousin caught me

watching it, whereupon she winked to me merrily and interlaced

her own begemmed fingers, as much as to say, "What do you

think of our contest?" and burst into a voiceless laugh

I tried to listen to the music again. To add to my ordeal, I had to

lend an ear to the boastful chatter of the mothers or fathers on the

virtuosity of Bennie, Sidney, Beckie, or Sadie. The mother of the

curly-headed pianist, the illiterate wife of a baker, first wore out

my patience and then enlisted my interest by a torrent of musical

terminology which she apparently had picked up from talks with

her boy's piano-teacher. She interspersed her unsophisticated

Yiddish with English phrases like "rare technique," "vonderful

touch," "bee-youtiful tone," or "poeytic temperament." She

assured me that her son was the youngest boy in the United States

to play Brahms and Beethoven successfully. At first I thought that

she was prattling these words parrot fashion, but I soon realized

that, to a considerable extent, at least, she used them intelligently

She had set her heart upon making the greatest pianist in the world

of Bennie, and by incessantly discussing him with people who

were supposed to know something about music she had gradually

accumulated a smattering acquaintance with the subject. That she

was full of it there could be no doubt. Perhaps she had a native

intuition for music. Perhaps, too, it was from her that her son had

inherited his feeling for the poetry of sound. She certainly had

imagination

"Some boys play like monkeys," she said in Yiddish. "They don't

know what they are at. May I know evil if they do. My Bennie is

not that sort of a pianist, thank God! He knows what he is talking

about--on his piano, I mean.

You saw for yourself that he played with head and heart, didn't

you?"

"Indeed, I did," I said, with ardor. "I liked his playing very much."

"Yes, it comes right from his heart," she pursued. "He has a golden

temperament. The piano just talks under his fingers. I mean what I

say.

People think a piano is just a row of dead pieces of bone or wood.

It is not. No, sirrah. It has speech just like a human being,

provided you know how to get it out of the keyboard. Bennie

does."

In a certain sense this unlettered woman was being educated by her

little boy in the same manner as Dora had been and still was,

perhaps, by Lucy

There were at least three girls in the gathering who were decidedly

pretty.

One of these was a graduate of Normal College. She was

dark-eyed, like Miss Kalmanovitch, but slender and supple and

full of life. Everybody called her affectionately by her first name,

which was Stella. At the supper-table, in the dining-room, I was

placed beside Miss Kalmanovitch, but I gave most of my attention

to Stella, who was seated diagonally across the table from us.

I felt quite at home now

"What was your favorite subject at college?" I questioned Stella,

facetiously.

"That's my secret," she answered.

"I can guess it, though."

"Try."

"Dancing."

"That's right," she shouted, amidst an outburst of laughter

"Well, have you learned it well?" I went on

"Why don't you ask me for a waltz and find out for yourself?"

"I wish I could, but unfortunately they did not take up dancing at

my college."

"Did you go to college?" Stella asked, seriously

"I don't look like one who did, I suppose. Well, I should like to say

I did, but I haven't the heart to tell you a lie."

"Never mind," Nodelman broke in. "He's an educated fellar, all the

same.

He's awful educated. That's what makes him such a smart business

man. By the way, Levinsky, how is the merchandise?"

"This is no place to talk shop," I replied, deprecatingly. "Especially

when there are so many pretty ladies around."

"That's right!" several of the women chimed in in chorus

Mrs. Nodelman, the hostess, who stood in the doorway, beckoned

to her husband, and he jumped up from the table. As he passed by

my seat I seized him by an arm and whispered into his ear: "The

merchandise is too heavy. I want lighter goods." With this I

released him and he disappeared with Mrs. Nodelman

A few minutes later he came back

"Be a good boy. Show Ray a little more attention," he whispered

into my ear.

"Do it for my sake. Will you?"

"All right."

I became aware of Mrs. Kalmanovitch's fire-flashing eyes, and my

efforts to entertain her daughter were a poor performance

The Kalmanovitch family left immediately after supper, scarcely

making their farewells. Portentous sounds came from the hallway.

We could hear Mrs.

Kalmanovitch's angry voice. A nervous hush fell over the parlor.

Auntie Yetta gave us all an eloquent wink

"There's a woman with a tongue for you," she said in an undertone.

"Pitch and sulphur. When she opens her mouth people had better

sound the fire-alarm." After a pause she added: "Do you know

why her teeth are so bad? Her mouth is so full of poison, it has

eaten them up."

Presently the younger Mrs. Nodelman made her appearance. Her

ruddy "meat-ball" face was fairly ablaze with excitement. Her

husband followed with a guilty air

"What's the matter with you folks?" the hostess said. "Why ainchye

doin' somethin'?"

"What shall we do?" the baker's wife answered in Yiddish. "We

have eaten a nice supper and we have heard music and now we

are enjoying ourselves quietly, like the gentlemen and the ladies

we are. What more do you want?" "Come, folks, let's have a

dance. Bennie will play us a waltz. Quick, Bennie darling! Girls,

get a move on you!"

I called the hostess aside. "May I ask you a question, Mrs.

Nodelman?" I said, in the manner of a boy addressing his teacher

"What is it?" she asked, awkwardly.

"No, I won't ask any questions. I see you are angry at me."

"I ain't angry at all," she returned, making an effort to look me

straight in the face.

"Sure?"

"Sure," with a laugh. "What is it you want to ask me about?"

And again assuming the tone of a penitent pupil, I said, "May I ask

Stella to dance with me?"

"But you don't dance."

"Let her teach me, then."

"Let her, if she wants to. I ain't her mother, am I?"

"But you have no objection, have you?"

"Where do I come in? On my part, you can dance with every girl in

the house."

"Oh, you don't like me this evening, Mrs. Nodelman. You are

angry witn me.

Else you wouldn't talk the way you do."

She burst into a laugh, and said, "You're a hell of a fellow, you

are."

"I know I misbehaved myself, but I couldn't help it. Miss

Kalmanovitch is too fat, you know, and her hands perspire so."

"She's a charmin' girl," she returned, with a hearty laugh. "I wish

her mother was half so good."

"Was she angry, her mother?"

"Was she! She put all the blame on me. I invited her daughter on

purpose to make fun of her, she says. My, how she carried on!"

"I'm really sorry, but it's a matter of taste, you know."

"I know it is. I don't blame you at all."

"So you and I are friends again, aren't we?"

She laughed

"Well, then, you have no objection to my being sweet on Stella,

have you?"

"You are a hell of a fellow. That's just what you are. But I might as

well tell you it's no use trying to get Stella. She's already

engaged."

"Is she really?"

"Honest."

"Well, I don't care. I'll take her away from her fellow. That's all

there is to it." "You can't do it," she said, gaily. "She is dead stuck

on her intended.

They'll be married in June."

I went home a lovesick man, but the following evening I went to

Boston for a day, and my feeling did not survive the trip

CHAPTER V

THAT journey to Boston is fixed in my memory by

an incident which is one of my landmarks in the history of my

financial evolution and, indeed, in the history of the American

cloak industry. It occurred in the afternoon of the Monday which I

spent in that city, less than two days after that birthday party at the

Nodelmans'. I was lounging in an easy-chair in the lobby of my

hotel, when I beheld Loeb, the "star" salesman of what had been

the "star" firm in the cloak-and-suit business. I had not seen him

for some time, but I knew that his employers were on their last

legs and that he had a hard struggle trying to make a living. Nor

was that firm the only one of the old-established cloak-and-suit

concerns that found itself in this state at the period in

question--that is, at the time of the economic crisis and the burst

of good times that had succeeded it. Far from filling their coffers

from the golden flood of those few years, they were drowned in it

almost to a man. The trade was now in the hands of men from the

ranks of their former employees, tailors or cloak operators of

Russian or Galician origin, some of whom were Talmudic

scholars like myself. It was the passing of the German Jew from

the American cloak industry

We did profit by the abundance of the period. Moreover, there

were many among us to whom the crisis of 1893 had proved a

blessing. To begin with, some of our tailors, being unable to

obtain employment in that year, had been driven to make up a

garment or two and to offer it for sale in the street, huckster

fashion--a venture which in many instances formed a

stepping-stone to a cloak-factory. Others of our workmen had

achieved the same evolution by employing their days of enforced

idleness in taking lessons in cloak-designing, and then setting up a

small shop of their own

Newfangled manufacturers of this kind were now springing up like

mushrooms.

Joe, my old-time instructor in cloak-making, was one of the latest

additions to their number. They worked--often assisted by their

wives and children--in all sorts of capacities and at all hours. They

lived on bread and salmon and were content with almost a

nominal margin of profit. There were instances when the

clippings from the cutting-table constituted all the profit the

business yielded them. Pitted against "manufacturers" of this class

or against a fellow like myself were the old-established firms,

with their dignified office methods and high profit-rates, firms

whose fortunes had been sorely tried, to boot, by their bitter

struggle with the union

Loeb swaggered up to me with quizzical joviality as usual. But the

smug luster of his face was faded and his kindly black eyes had an

unsteady glance in them that belied his vivacity. I could see at

once that he felt nothing but hate for me

"Hello, Get-Rich-Quick Levinsky!" he greeted me. "Haven't seen

you for an age."

"How are you, Loeb?" I asked, genially, my heart full of mixed

triumph and compassion

We had not been talking five minutes before he grew sardonic and

venomous.

As Division Street--a few blocks on the lower East Side--was the

center of the new type of cloak-manufacturing, he referred to us

by the name of that street. My business was on Broadway, yet I

was included in the term, "Division Street manufacturer."

"What is Division Street going to do next?" he asked. "Sell a

fifteen-dollar suit for fifteen cents?"

I smiled

"That's a great place, that is. There are two big business streets in

New York--Wall Street and Division." He broke into a laugh at his

own joke and I charitably joined in. I endeavored to take his

thrusts good-naturedly and for many minutes I succeeded, but at

one point when he referred to us as "manufacturers," with a

sneering implication of quotation marks over the word, I flared up

"You don't seem to like the Division Street manufacturers, do

you?" I said.

"I suppose you have a reason for it." "I have a reason? Of course I

have," he retorted. "So has every other decent man in the

business."

"It depends on what you call decent. Every misfit claims to be

more decent than the fellow who gets the business."

He grew pale. It almost looked as though we were coming to

blows. After a pause he said, with an effect of holding himself in

leash: "Business! Do you call that business? I call it peanuts."

"Well, the peanuts are rapidly growing in size while the oranges

and the apples are shrinking and rotting. The fittest survives." ("A

lot he knows about the theory of the survival of the fittest!" I

jeered in my heart. "He hasn't even heard the name of Herbert

Spencer.") "Peanuts are peanuts, that's all there's to it," he returned

"Then why are you excited? How can we hurt you if we are only

peanuts?"

He made no answer

"We don't steal the trade we're getting, do we? If the American

people prefer to buy our product they probably like it."

"Oh, chuck your big words, Levinsky. You fellows are killing the

trade, and you know it."

He laughed, but what I said was true. The old cloak-manufacturers,

the German Jews, were merely merchant. Our people, on the other

hand, were mostly tailors or cloak operators who had learned the

mechanical part of the industry, and they were introducing a

thousand innovations into it, perfecting, revolutionizing it. We

brought to our work a knowledge, a taste, and an ardor which the

men of the old firms did not possess. And we were shedding our

uncouthness, too. In proportion as we grew we adapted American

business ways

Speaking in a semi-amicable vein, Loeb went on citing cases of

what he termed cutthroat competition on our part, till he worked

himself into a passion and became abusive again. The drift of his

harangue was that "smashing" prices was something distasteful to

the American spirit, that we were only foreigners, products of an

inferior civilization, and that we ought to know our place.

"This way of doing business may be all right in Russia, but it won't

do in this country," he said. "I tell you, it won't do."

"But it does do. So it seems."

As he continued to fume and rail at us, and I sat listening with a

bored air, an idea flashed upon my mind, and, acting upon it on

the spur of the moment, I suddenly laid a friendly hand on his arm

"Look here, Loeb," I said. "What's the use being excited? I have a

scheme.

What's the matter with you selling goods for me?"

He was taken aback, but I could see that he was going to accept it

"What do you mean?" he asked, flushing

"I mean what I say. I want you to come with me. You will make

more money than you have ever made before. You're a first-rate

salesman, Loeb, and--well, it will pay you to make the change.

What do you say?"

He contemplated the floor for a minute or two, and then, looking

up awkwardly, he said: "I'll think it over. But you're a smart

fellow, Levinsky. I can tell you that."

We proceeded to discuss details, and I received his answer--a

favorable one--before we left our seats

To celebrate the event I had him dine with me that evening, our

pledges of mutual loyalty being solemnized by a toast which we

drank in the costliest champagne the hotel restaurant could furnish

It was not a year and a half after this episode that Chaikin entered

my employ as designer

CHAPTER VI

I SAW other girls with a view to marriage, but I

was "too particular," as my friends, the Nodelmans, would have it.

I had two narrow escapes from breach-of-promise suits.

"He has too much education," Nodelman once said to his wife in

my presence.

"Too much in his head, don't you know. You think too much,

Levinsky. That's what's the matter. First marry, and do your

thinking afterward. If you stopped to think before eating you

would starve to death, wouldn't you? Well, and if you keep on

thinking and figuring if this girl's nose is nice enough and if that

girl's eyes are nice enough, you'll die before you get married, and

there are no weddings among the dead, you know."

My matrimonial aspirations made themselves felt with fits and

starts. There were periods when I seemed to be completely in their

grip, when I was restless and as though ready to marry the first

girl I met. Then there would be many months during which I was

utterly indifferent, enjoying my freedom and putting off the

question indefinitely

Year after year slid by. When my thirty-ninth birthday became a

thing of the past and I saw myself entering upon my fortieth year

without knowing who I worked for I was in something like a state

of despair. When I was a boy forty years had seemed to be the

beginning of old age. This notion I now repudiated as ridiculous,

for I felt as young as I had done ten, fifteen, or twenty years

before; and yet the words "forty years" appalled me. The wish to

"settle down" then grew into a passion in me. The vague portrait of

a woman in the abstract seemed never to be absent from my mind.

Coupled with that portrait was a similarly vague image of a

window and a table set for dinner. That, somehow, was my

symbol of home. Home and woman were one, a complex charm

joining them into an inseparable force. There was the glamour of

sex, shelter, and companionship in that charm, and of something

else that promised security and perpetuity to the successes that

fate was pouring into my lap. It whispered of a future that was to

continue after I was gone

My loneliness often took on the pungence of acute physical

discomfort. The more I achieved, the more painful was my

self-pity

Nothing seemed to matter unless it was sanctified by marriage, and

marriage now mattered far more than love

Girls had acquired a new meaning. They were not merely girls.

They were matrimonial possibilities

Odd as it may appear, my romantic ideals of twenty years ago now

reasserted their claim upon me. It was my ambition to marry into

some orthodox family, well-to-do, well connected, and with an

atmosphere of Talmudic education--the kind of match of which I

had dreamed before my mother died, with such modifications as

the American environment rendered natural

There were two distinct circumstances to account for this new

mood in me

In the first place, my sense of approaching middle age somehow

rekindled my yearning interest in the scenes of my childhood and

boyhood. Memories of bygone days had become ineffably dear to

me. I seemed to remember things of my boyhood more vividly

than I did things that had happened only a year before

I was homesick for Antomir again

To revisit Abner's Court or the Preacher's Synagogue, to speak to

Reb Sender, or to the bewhiskered old soldier, the skeepskin

tailor, if they were still living, was one of my day-dreams.

Eliakim Zunzer, the famous wedding-bard whose songs my mother

used to sing in her dear, sonorous contralto, had emigrated to

America several years before and I had heard of it at the time of

his arrival, yet I had never thought of going to see him. Now,

however, I could not rest until I looked him up. It appeared that he

owned a small printing-shop in a basement on East Broadway, so I

called at his place one afternoon on the pretext of ordering some

cards. When I saw the poet--an aged little man with a tragic, tired

look on a cadaverous face--I was so unstrung that when a young

man in the shop asked me something about the cards, he had to

repeat the question before I understood it

"My mother used to sing your beautiful songs, Mr. Zunzer," I said

to the poet some minutes later, my heart beating violently again.

"Did she? Where do you come from?" he asked, with a smile that

banished the tired look, but deepened the tragic sadness of his

death-like countenance

Everything bearing the name of my native place touched a tender

spot in my heart. It was enough for a cloak-maker to ask me for a

job with the Antomir accent to be favorably recommended to one

of my foremen. A number of the men who received special

consideration and were kept working in my shop in the slack

seasons, when my force was greatly reduced, were

fellow-townspeople of mine. This had been going on for several

years, in fact, till gradually an Antomir atmosphere had been

established in my shop, and something like a family spirit of

which I was proud. We had formed a Levinsky Antomir Benefit

Society of which I was an honorary member and which was made

up, for the most part, of my own employees

All this, I confess, was not without advantage to my business

interests, for it afforded me a low average of wages and

safeguarded my shop against labor troubles. The Cloak-makers'

Union had again come into existence, and, although it had no real

power over the men, the trade was not free from sporadic conflicts

in individual shops. My place, however, was absolutely immune

from difficulties of this sort--all because of the Levinsky Antomir

Benefit Society

If one of my operatives happened to have a relative in Antomir, a

women's tailor who wished to emigrate to America, I would

advance him the passage money, with the understanding that he

was to work off the loan in my employ.

That the "green one" was to work for low wages was a matter of

course. But then, in justice to myself, I must add that I did my

men favors in numerous cases that could in no way redound to my

benefit. Besides, the fiscal advantages that I did derive from the

Antomir spirit of my shop really were not a primary consideration

with me. I sincerely cherished that spirit for its own sake.

Moreover, if my Antomir employees were willing to accept from

me lower pay than they might have received in other places, their

average earnings were actually higher than they would have been

elsewhere. I gave them steady work. Besides, they felt perfectly at

home in my shop. I treated them well. I was very democratic

Compared to the thoughts of home that had oppressed me during

my first months in America, my new visions of Antomir were like

the wistful lights of a sunset as compared with the glare of

midday. But then sunsets produce deeper, if quieter, effects on the

emotions than the strongest daylight

It was my new homesickness, then, which inclined me to an

American form of the kind of marriage of which I used to dream

in the days of my Talmudic studies. Another motive that led me to

matrimonial aspirations of this kind lay in my new ideas of

respectability as a necessary accompaniment to success. Marrying

into a well-to-do orthodox family meant respectability and

solidity. It implied law and order, the antithesis of anarchism,

socialism, trade-unionism, strikes

I was a convinced free-thinker. Spencer's Unknowable had

irrevocably replaced my God. Yet religion now appealed to me as

an indispensable instrument in the great orchestra of things. From

what I had seen of the world, or read about it in the daily press, I

was convinced that but few people of wealth and power had real

religion in their hearts. I felt sure that most of them looked upon

churches or synagogues as they did upon police-courts; that they

valued them primarily as safeguards of law and order and

correctness, and this had become my attitude. For the rest, I felt

that a vast number of the people who professed Christianity or

Judaism did so merely because to declare oneself an atheist was

not a prudent thing to do from a business or social point of view,

or that they were in doubt and chose to be on the safe side of it,

lest there should be a God, "after all," while millions of other

people were not interested enough even to doubt, or to ask

questions, and were content to do as everybody did. But there were

some who did ask questions and did dare to declare themselves

atheists. I was one of these, and yet I looked upon religion as a

most important institution, and was willing to contribute to its

support

My business life had fostered the conviction in me that, outside of

the family, the human world was as brutally selfish as the jungle,

and that it was worm-eaten with hypocrisy into the bargain. From

time to time the newspapers published sensational revelations

concerning some pillar of society who had turned out to be a

common thief on an uncommon scale. I saw that political

speeches, sermons, and editorials had, with very few exceptions,

no more sincerity in them than the rhetoric of an advertisement.

I saw that Americans who boasted descent from the heroes of the

Revolution boasted, in the same breath, of having spent an

evening with Lord So-and-so; that it was their avowed ambition to

acquire for their daughters the very titles which their ancestors

had fought to banish from the life of their country. I saw that

civilization was honeycombed with what Max Nordau called

conventional lies, with sham ecstasy, sham sympathy, sham

smiles, sham laughter

The riot of prosperity introduced the fashion of respectable women

covering their faces with powder and paint in a way that had

hitherto been peculiar to women of the streets, so I pictured

civilization as a harlot with cheeks, lips, and eyelashes of artificial

beauty. I imagined mountains of powder and paint, a deafening

chorus of affected laughter, a huge heart, as large as a city, full of

falsehood and mischief

The leaders of the Jewish socialists, who were also at the head of

the Jewish labor movement, seemed to me to be the most

repulsive hypocrites of all. I loathed them

I had no creed. I knew of no ideals. The only thing I believed in

was the cold, drab theory of the struggle for existence and the

survival of the fittest. This could not satisfy a heart that was

hungry for enthusiasm and affection, so dreams of family life

became my religion. Self-sacrificing devotion to one's family was

the only kind of altruism and idealism I did not flout

I was worth over a million, and my profits had reached enormous

dimensions, so I was regarded a most desirable match, and

match-makers pestered me as much as I would let them, but they

found me a hard man to suit

There was a homesick young man in my shop, a native of

Antomir, with whom I often chatted of our common birthplace.

His name was Mirmelstein. He was a little fellow with a massive

head and a neck that seemed to be too slender to support it. I liked

his face for its honest, ingenuous expression, but more especially

because I thought his eyes had a homesick look in them. He was a

poor mechanic, but I found him a steady job in my shipping

department

He could furnish me no information about Reb Sender, of whom

he had never heard before; he knew of the Minsker family, of

course, and he told me that Shiphrah, Matilda's mother, was dead;

that Yeffim, Matilda's brother, had been sent to Siberia some

three years before for complicity in the revolutionary movement,

and that Matilda herself had had a hair-breadth escape from arrest

and was living in Switzerland

He wrote to Antomir, and a few weeks later he brought me the sad

information that Reb Sender had been dead for several years, and

that his wife had married again

CHAPTER VII

ONE day in November less than six months after I

had learned of Yeffim Minsker's arrest and of Matilda's escape, as

I was making the rounds of my several departments, little

Mirmelstein accosted me timidly

"Yeffim Minsker and his sister are here," he said, with the smile of

one breaking an interesting surprise

I paused, flushing. I feigned indifference and preoccupation, but

the next moment I cast off all pretense

"Are they really?" I asked

He produced a clipping from a socialist Yiddish daily containing

an advertisement of a public meeting to be held at Cooper

Institute under the auspices of an organization of Russian

revolutionists for the purpose of welcoming Yefflm and another

man, a Doctor Gorsky, both of whom had recently escaped from

Siberia. The revolutionary movement was then at its height in

Russia, and the Jews were among its foremost and bravest leaders

(which, by the way, accounts for the anti-Jewish riots and

massacres which the Government inspired and encouraged quite

openly). As was mentioned in an early chapter of this book, the

then Minister of the Interior was the same man who had been

Director of Police over the whole empire at the time of the

anti-Jewish riots which followed the assassination of Czar

Alexander II. in 1881, and which started the great emigration of

Jews to America. From time to time some distinguished

revolutionist would be sent to America for subscriptions to the

cause. This was the mission of Doctor Gorsky and Yeffim. They

were here, not as immigrants, but merely to raise funds for the

movement at home

As for Matilda, it appeared that Doctor Gorsky was her husband.

Whether he had married her in Russia, before his arrest, or in

Switzerland, where he and her brother had spent some time after

their escape from exile, Mirmelstein could not tell me. Matilda's

name was not mentioned in the advertisement, but my

shipping-clerk had heard of her arrival and marriage from some

Antomir people.

I could scarcely do anything that day. I was in a fever of

excitement. "Do I still love her?" I wondered

I made up my mind to attend the Cooper Institute meeting. It was a

bold venture, for the crowd was sure to contain some socialist

cloak-makers who held me in anything but esteem. But then I had

not had a strike in my shop for several years, and it did not seem

likely that they would offer me an insult. Anyhow, the temptation

to see Matilda was too strong. I had to go.

She was certain to be on the platform, and all I wanted was to take

a look at her from the auditorium. "And who knows but I may

have a chance to speak to her, too," I thought.

It was a cold evening in the latter part of November. I went to the

meeting in my expensive fur coat (although fur coats were still a

rare spectacle in the streets), with a secret foretaste of the

impression my prosperity would make upon Matilda. It was a fatal

mistake

It was twenty minutes to 8 when I reached the front door of the

historical meeting-hall, but it was already crowded to

overflowing, and the policemen guarding the brightly illuminated

entrance tumed me away with a crowd of others. I was in despair.

I tried again, and this time, apparently owing to my mink coat, I

was admitted. Every seat in the vast underground auditorium was

occupied. But few people were allowed to stand, in the rear of the

hall, and I was one of them. From the chat I overheard around me

I gathered that there were scores of men and women in the

audience who had been in the thick of sensational conflicts in the

great crusade for liberty that was then going on in Russia. I

questioned a man who stood beside me about Doctor Gorsky, and

from his answers I gained the impression that Matilda's husband

was considered one of the pluckiest men in the struggle. At the

time of his arrest he was practising medicine

Ranged on the platform on either side of the speaker's desk were

about a hundred chairs, several of which in the two front rows

were kept vacant.

Presently there was a stir on the platform. A group of men and

women made their appearance and seated themselves on the

unoccupied chairs. They were greeted with passionate cheers and

applause

One of them was Matilda. I recognized her at once. Her curly

brown hair was gray at the temples, and her oval little face was

somewhat bloated, and she was stouter than she had been

twenty-one years before; but all this was merely like a new dress.

Had I met her in the street, I might have merely felt that she

looked familiar to me, without being able to trace her. As it was,

she was strikingly the same as I had known her, though not

precisely the same as I had pictured her, of late years, at least.

Some errors had stolen into my image of her, and now, that I saw

her in the flesh, I recalled her likeness of twenty-one years before,

and she now looked precisely as she had done then. She was as

interesting as ever. I was in such a turmoil that I scarcely knew

what was happening on the platform. Did I still love her, or was it

merely the excitement of beholding a living memory of my youth?

One thing was certain--the feeling of reverence and awe with

which I had once been wont to view her and her parents was

stirring in my heart again. For the moment I did not seem to be the

man who owned a big cloak-factory and was worth over a million

American dollars

The chairman had been speaking for some time before I became

aware of his existence. As his address was in Russian and I had

long since unlearned what little I had ever known of that

language, his words were Greek to me

Matilda was flanked by two men, both with full beards, one fair

and the other rather dark. The one of the fair complexion and

beard was Yeffim, although I recognized him by his resemblance

to Matilda and more especially to her father, rather than by his

image of twenty-one years ago. I supposed that the man on the

other side of her, the one with the dark beard, was her husband,

and I asked the man by my side about it, but he did not know

Several speakers made brief addresses of welcome. One of these

spoke in Yiddish and one in English, so I understood them. They

dealt with the revolution and the anti-Semitic atrocities, and paid

glowing tributes to the new-comers. They were interrupted by

outburst after outburst of enthusiasm and indignation. When

finally Doctor Gorsky was introduced (it was the man with the

dark beard) there was a veritable pandemonium of applause,

cheers, and ejaculations that lasted many minutes. He spoke in

Russian and he seemed to be a poor speaker. I searched his face

for evidence of valor and strength, but did not seem to find any. I

thought it was rather a weak face--weak and kindly and

girlish-looking. His beard, which was long and thin, did not

become him. I asked myself whether I was jealous of him, and the

question seemed so incongruous, so remote. He made a good

impression on me. The fact that this man, who was possessed of

indomitable courage, had a weak, good-natured face interested me

greatly, and the fact that he had gone through much suffering

made a strong appeal to my sympathies (somehow his martyrdom

was linked in my mind to his futility as a speaker). I warmed to

him

He was followed by Yeffim, and the scene of wild enthusiasm was

repeated

When Minsker had finished the chairman declared the meeting

closed. There was a rush for the platform. It was quite high above

the auditorium floor; unless one reached it by way of the

committee-room, which was a considerable distance to the right,

it had to be mounted, not without an effort, by means of the chairs

in the press inclosure. After some hesitation I made a dash for one

of these chairs, and the next minute I was within three or four feet

from Matilda, but with an excited crowd between us. Everybody

wanted to shake hands with the heroes. The jam and scramble

were so great that Doctor Gorsky, Yeffim, and Matilda had to

extricate themselves and to escape into the spacious

committee-room in the rear of the platform

Some minutes later I stood by her side in that room, amid a cluster

of revolutionists, her husband and Yeffim being each the center of

another crowd in the same room

"I beg your pardon," I began, with a sheepish smile. "Do you know

me."

Her glittering brown eyes fixed me with a curious look. "My name

is David Levinsky," I added. "'Dovid,' the Talmudic student to

whom you gave money with which to go to America."

"Of course I know you," she snapped. taking stock of my mink

overcoat. "And I have heard about you, too. You have a lot of

money, haven't you? I see you are wearing a costly fur coat." And

she brutally turned to speak to somebody else

My heart stood still. I wanted to say something, to assure her that I

was not so black as the socialists painted me. I had an impulse to

offer her a generous contribution to the cause, but I had not the

courage to open my mouth again. The bystanders were eying me

with glances that seemed to say, "The idea of a fellow like this

being here!" I was a despicable "bourgeois," a "capitalist" of the

kind whose presence at a socialist meeting was a sacrilege

I slunk out of the room feeling like a whipped cur. "Why, she is a

perfect savage!" I thought. "But then what else can you expect of a

socialist?"

I thought of the scenes that had passed between her and myself in

her mother's house and I sneered. "A socialist, a good, pure soul,

indeed!" I mused, gloatingly. "That's exactly like them. A bunch

of hypocrites, that's all they are."

At the same time I was nagging myself for having had so little

sense as to sport my prosperity before a socialist, of all the people

in the world

A few days later the episode seemed to have occurred many years

before. It did not bother me. Nor did Matilda

CHAPTER VIII

IT was an afternoon in April. My chief

bookkeeper, one of my stenographers, Bender, and myself were

hard at work at my Broadway factory amid a muffled turmoil of

industry. There were important questions of credit to dispose of

and letters to answer. I was taking up account after account,

weighing my data with the utmost care, giving every detail my

closest attention. And all the while I was thus absorbed, seemingly

oblivious to everything else, I was alive to the fact that it was

Passover and the eve of the anniversary of my mother's death; that

three or four hours later I should be solemnizing her memorial day

at the new Synagogue of the Sons of Antomir; that while there I

should sit next to Mr. Kaplan, a venerable-looking man to whose

daughter I had recently become engaged, and that after the service

I was to accompany Mr. Kaplan to his house and spend the

evening in the bosom of his family, by the side of the girl that was

soon to become my wife. My consciousness of all this grew

keener every minute, till it began to interfere with my work.

I was getting fidgety. Finally I broke off in the middle of a

sentence

I washed myself, combed my plentiful crop of dark hair, carefully

brushed myself, and put on my spring overcoat and derby

hat--both of a dark-brown hue

"I sha'n't be back until the day after to-morrow," I announced to

Bender, after giving him some orders

"Till day after to-morrow!" he said, with reproachful amazement

I nodded

"Can't you put it off? This is no time for being away," he grumbled

"It can't be helped."

"You're not going out of town, are you?"

"What difference does it make?" After a pause I added: "It isn't on

business. It's a private matter."

"Oh!" he uttered, with evident relief. Nothing hurt his pride more

than to suspect me of having business secrets from him.

He was a married man now, having, less than a year ago, wedded a

sweet little girl, a cousin, who was as simple-hearted and

simple-minded as himself, and to whom he had practically been

engaged since boyhood. His salary was one hundred and

twenty-five dollars a week now. I was at home in their

well-ordered little establishment, the sunshine that filled it having

given an added impulse to my matrimonial aspirations

I betook myself to the new Antomir Synagogue. The congregation

had greatly grown in prosperity and had recently moved from the

ramshackle little frame building that had been its home into an

impressive granite structure, formerly a Presbyterian church. This

was my first visit to the building.

Indeed, I had not seen the inside of its predecessor, the little old

house of prayer that had borne the name of my native town, years

before it was abandoned. In former years, even some time after I

had become a convinced free-thinker, I had visited it at least twice

a year-on my two memorial days--that is, on the anniversaries of

the death of my parents. I had not done so since I had read

Spencer. This time, however, the anniversary of my mother's

death had a peculiar meaning for me. Vaguely as a result of my

new mood, and distinctly as a result of my betrothal, I was lured

to the synagogue by a force against which my Spencerian

agnosticism was powerless

I found the interior of the building brilliantly illuminated. The

woodwork of the "stand" and the bible platform, the

velvet-and-gold curtains of the Holy Ark, and the fresco paintings

on the walls and ceiling were screamingly new and gaudy. So

were the ornamental electric fixtures. Altogether the place

reminded me of a reformed German synagogue rather than of the

kind with which my idea of Judaism had always been identified.

This seemed to accentuate the fact that the building had until

recently been a Christian church. The glaring electric lights and

the glittering decorations struck me as something unholy. Still, the

scattered handful of worshipers I found there, and more

particularly the beadle, looked orthodox enough, and I gradually

became reconciled to the place as a house of God

The beadle was a new incumbent. Better dressed and with more

authority in his appearance than the man who had superintended

the old place, he comported well with the look of things in the

new synagogue. After obsequiously directing me to the pew of my

prospective father-in-law, who had not yet arrived, he inserted a

stout, tall candle into one of the sockets of the "stand" and lit it. It

was mine. It was to burn uninterruptedly for my mother's soul for

the next twenty-four hours. Mr.

Kaplan's pew was in a place of honor--that is, by the east wall, near

the Holy Ark. To see my memorial candle I had to take a few

steps back. I did so, and as I watched its flame memories and

images took possession of me that turned my present life into a

dream and my Russian past into reality.

According to the Talmud there is a close affinity between the

human soul and light, for "the spirit of man is the lamp of God,"

as Solomon puts it in his Parables. Hence the custom of lighting

candles or lamps for the dead. And so, as I gazed at that huge

candle commemorating the day when my mother gave her life for

me, I felt as though its light was part of her spirit. The gentle

flutter of its flame seemed to be speaking in the sacred whisper of

a grave-yard

"Mother dear! Mother dear!" my heart was saying. And then:

"Thank God, mother dear! I own a large factory. I am a rich man

and I am going to be married to the daughter of a fine Jew, a man

of substance and Talmud. And the family comes from around

Antomir, too. Ah, if you were here to escort me to the wedding

canopy!"

The number of worshipers was slowly increasing. An old woman

made her appearance in the gallery reserved for her sex. At last

Mr. Kaplan, the father of my fiancée, entered the synagogue--a

man of sixty, with a gray patriarchal beard and a general

appearance that bespoke Talmudic scholarship and prosperity. He

was a native of a small town near Antomir, where his father had

been rabbi, and was now a retired flour merchant, having come to

America in the seventies. He had always been one of the pillars of

the Synagogue of the Sons of Antomir. In the days when I was a

frequenter at the old house of prayer the social chasm between

him and myself was so wide that the notion of my being engaged

to a daughter of his would have seemed absurd. Which, by the

way, was one of the attractions that his house now had for me

"Good holiday, Mr. Kaplan!" some of the other worshipers saluted

him, as he made his way toward his pew

"Good holiday! Good holiday!" he responded, with dignified

geniality

I could see that he was aware of my presence but carefully avoided

looking at me until he should be near enough for me to greet him.

He was a kindly, serious-minded man, sincerely devout, and not

over-bright. He had his little vanities and I was willing to humor

them

"Good holiday, Mr. Kaplan!" I called out to him

"Good holiday! Good holiday, David!" he returned, amiably. "Here

already? Ahead of me? That's good! Just follow the path of

Judaism and everything will be all right." "How's everybody?" I

asked

"All are well, thank God."

"How's Fanny?"

"Now you're talking. That's the real question, isn't it?" he chaffed

me, with dignity. "She's well, thank God."

He introduced me to the cantor--a pug-nosed man with a pale face

and a skimpy little beard of a brownish hue

"Our new cantor, the celebrated Jacob Goldstein!" he said. "And

this is Mr.

David Levinsky, my intended son-in-law. An Antomir man. Was a

fine scholar over there and still remembers a lot of Talmud."

The newly arrived synagogue tenor was really a celebrated man, in

the Antomir section of Russia, at least. His coming had been

conceived as a sensational feature of the opening of the new

synagogue. While "town cantor" in Antomir he had received the

highest salary ever paid there. The contract that had induced him

to come over to America pledged him nearly five times as much.

Thus the New York Sons of Antomir were not only able to parade

a famous cantor before the multitude of other New York

congregations, but also to prove to the people at home that they

were the financial superiors of the whole town of their birth. So

far, however, as the New York end of the sensation was

concerned, there was a good-sized bee in the honey. The imported

cantor was a tragic disappointment. The trouble was that his New

York audiences were far more critical and exacting than the people

in Antomir, and he was not up to their standard. For one thing,

many of the Sons of Antomir, and others who came to their

synagogue to hear the new singer, people who had mostly lived in

poverty and ignorance at home, now had a piano or a violin in the

house, with a son or a daughter to play it, and had become

frequenters of the Metropolitan Opera House or the Carnegie

Music Hall; for another, the New York Ghetto was full of good

concerts and all other sorts of musical entertainments, so much so

that good music had become all but part of the daily life of the

Jewish tenement population; for a third, the audiences of the

imported cantor included people who had lived in much larger

European cities than Antomir, in such places as Warsaw, Odessa,

Lemberg, or Vienna, for example, where they had heard much

better cantors than Goldstein. Then, too, life in New York had

Americanized my fellow-townspeople, modernized their tastes,

broadened them out. As a consequence, the methods of the man

who had won the admiration of their native town seemed to them

old-fashioned, crude, droll

Still, the trustees, and several others who were responsible for the

coming of the pug-nosed singer, persisted in speaking of him as "a

greater tenor than Jean de Rezske," and my prospective

father-in-law was a trustee, and a good-natured man to boot, so he

had compassion for him

"In the old country when we meet a new-comer we only say, 'Peace

to you,'" I remarked to the cantor, gaily. "Here we say this and

something else, besides. We ask him how he likes America."

"But I have not yet seen it," the cantor returned, with a broad smile

in which his pug nose seemed to grow in size

I told him the threadbare joke of American newspaper reporters

boarding an incoming steamer at Sandy Hook and asking some

European celebrity how he likes America hours before he has set

foot on its soil

"That's what we call 'hurry up,'" Kaplan remarked

"That means quick, doesn't it?" the cantor asked, with another

broad smile

"You're picking up English rather fast," I jested

"He has not only a fine voice, but a fine head, too," Kaplan put in

"I know what 'all right' means, too," the cantor laughed. I thought

there was servility in his laugh, and I ascribed it to the lukewarm

reception with which he had met. I was touched. We talked of

Antomir, and although a conversation of this kind was nothing

new to me, yet what he said of the streets, market-places, the

bridge, the synagogues, and of some of the people of the town

interested me inexpressibly

Presently the service was begun--not by the imported singer, but by

an amateur from among the worshipers, the service on a Passover

evening not being considered important enough to be conducted

by a professional cantor of consequence

My heart was all in Antomir, in the good old Antomir of

synagogues and Talmud scholars and old-fashioned marriages, not

of college students, revolutionists, and Matildas

When the service was over I stepped up close to the Holy Ark and

recited the Prayer for the Dead, in chorus with several other men

and boys. As I cast a glance at my "memorial candle" my mother

loomed saintly through its flame. I beheld myself in her arms, a

boy of four, on our way to the synagogue, where I was to be taught

to parrot the very words that I was now saying for her spirit

The Prayer for the Dead was at an end. "A good holiday! A merry

holiday!" rang on all sides, as the slender crowd streamed

chatteringly toward the door

Mr. Kaplan, the cantor, and several other men, clustering together,

lingered to bandy reminiscences of Antomir, interspersing them

with "bits of law."

CHAPTER IX

The Kaplans occupied a large, old house on Henry

Street that had been built at a period when the neighborhood was

considered the best in the city. While Kaplan and I were taking off

our overcoats in the broad, carpeted, rather dimly lighted hall, a

dark-eyed girl appeared at the head of a steep stairway

"Hello, Dave! You're a good boy," she shouted, joyously, as she ran

down to meet me with coquettish complacency

She had regular features, and her face wore an expression of ease

and self-satisfaction. Her dark eyes were large and pretty, and

altogether she was rather good-looking. Indeed, there seemed to

be no reason why she should not be decidedly pretty, but she was

not. Perhaps it was because of that self-satisfied air of hers, the air

of one whom nothing in the world could startle or stir.

Temperamentally she reminded me somewhat of Miss

Kalmanovitch, but she was the better-looking of the two. I was not

in love with her, but she certainly was not repulsive to me

"Good holiday, dad! Good holiday, Dave!" she saluted us in

Yiddish, throwing out her chest and squaring her shoulders as she

reached us

She was born in New York and had graduated at a public

grammar-school and English was the only language which she

spoke like one born to speak it, and yet her Yiddish greeting was

precisely what it would have been had she been born and bred in

Antomir

Her "Good holiday, dad. Good holiday, Dave!" went straight to my

heart

"Well, I've brought him to you, haven't I? Are you pleased?" her

father said, with affectionate grimness, in Yiddish

"Oh, you're a dandy dad. You're just sweet," she returned, in

English, putting up her red lips as if he were her baby. And this,

too, went to my heart

When her father had gone to have his shoes changed for slippers

and before her mother came down from her bedroom, where she

was apparently dressing for supper, Fanny slipped her arm around

me and I kissed her lips and eyes

A chuckle rang out somewhere near by. Standing in the doorway

of the back parlor, Mefisto-like, was Mary, Fanny's

twelve-year-old sister

"Shame!" she said, gloatingly

"The nasty thing!" Fanny exclaimed, half gaily, half in anger

"You're nasty yourself," returned Mary, making faces at her sister

"Shut up or I'll knock your head off."

"Stop quarreling, kids," I intervened. Then, addressing myself to

Mary, "Can you spell 'eavesdropping'?"

Mary laughed

"Never mind laughing," I insisted. "Do you know what

eavesdropping means? Is it a nice thing to do? Anyhow, when

you're as big as Fanny and you have a sweetheart, won't you let

him kiss you?" As I said this I took Fanny's hand tenderly

"She has sweethearts already," said Fanny. "She is running around

with three boys."

"I ain't," Mary protested, pouting.

"Well, three sweethearts means no sweetheart at all," I remarked

Fanny and I went into the front parlor, a vast, high-ceiled room, as

large as the average four-room flat in the "modern

apartment-house" that had recently been completed on the next

block. It was drearily too large for the habits of the East Side of

my time, depressingly out of keeping with its sense of home. It

had lanky pink-and-gold furniture and a heavy bright carpet, all of

which had a forbidding effect. It was as though the chairs and the

sofa had been placed there, not for use, but for storage. Nor was

there enough furniture to give the room an air of being inhabited,

the six pink-and-gold pieces and the marble-topped center-table

losing themselves in spaces full of gaudy desolation

"She's awful saucy," said Fanny.

I caught her in my arms. "I have not three sweethearts. I have only

one, and that's a real one," I cooed

"Only one? Really and truly?" she demanded, playfully. She

gathered me to her plump bosom, planting a deep, slow, sensuous

kiss on my lips

I cast a side-glance to ascertain if Mary was not spying upon us

"Don't be uneasy," Fanny whispered. "She won't dare. We can kiss

all we want."

I thought she was putting it in a rather matter-of-fact way, but I

kissed her with passion, all the same

"Dearest! If you knew how happy I am," I murmured

"Are you really? Oh, I don't believe you," she jested,

self-sufficiently.

"You're just pretending, that's all. Let me kiss your sweet mouthie

again."

She did, and then, breaking away at the sound of her mother's

lumbering steps, she threw out her bosom with an upward jerk, a

trick she had which I disliked

Ten minutes later the whole family, myself included, were seated

around a large oval table in the basement dining-room. Besides

the members already known to the reader, there was Fanny's

mother, a corpulent woman with a fat, diabetic face and large,

listless eyes, and Fanny's brother, Rubie, a boy with intense

features, one year younger than Mary. Rubie was the youngest of

five children, the oldest two, daughters, being married

Mr. Kaplan was in his skull-cap, while I wore my dark-brown

derby.

Everything in this house was strictly orthodox and as old-fashioned

as the American environment would permit

That there was not a trace of leavened bread in the house, its place

being taken by thin, flat, unleavened "matzos," and that the repast

included "matzo balls," wine, mead, and other accessories of a

Passover meal, is a matter of course

Mr. Kaplan was wrapped up in his family, and on this occasion,

though he presided with conscious dignity, he was in one of his

best domestic moods, talkative, and affectionately facetious. The

children were the real masters of his house

Watching his wife nag Rubie because he would not accept another

matzo ball, Mr. Kaplan said: "Don't worry, Malkah. Your matzo

balls are delicious, even if your 'only son' won't do justice to them.

Aren't they, David?"

"They certainly are," I answered. "What is more, they have the

genuine Antomir taste to them."

"Hear that, Fanny?" Mr. Kaplan said to my betrothed. "You had

better learn to make matzo balls exactly like these. He likes

everything that smells of Antomir, you know." "That's all right,"

said Malkah. "Fanny is a good housekeeper. May I have as good a

year."

"It's a good thing you say it," her husband jested. "Else David

might break the engagement."

"Let him," said Fanny, with a jerk of her bosom and a theatrical

glance at me. "I really don't know how to make matzo balls, and

Passover is nearly over, so there's no time for mamma to show me

how to do it."

"I'll do so next year," her mother said, with an affectionate smile

that kindled life in her diabetic eyes. "The two of you will then

have to pass Passover with us."

"I accept the invitation at once," I said

"Provided you attend the seder, too," remarked Kaplan, referring to

the elaborate and picturesque ceremony attending the first two

suppers of the great festival

I had been expected to partake of those ceremonial repasts on the

first and second nights of this Passover, but had been unavoidably

kept away from the city. Kaplan had resented it, and even now, as

he spoke of the next year's seder, there was reproach in his voice.

"I will, I will," I said, ardently.

"One mustn't do business on a seder night. It isn't right."

"Give it to him, pa!" Fanny cut in.

"I am not joking," Kaplan persisted. "One has got to be a Jew.

Excuse me, David, for speaking like that, but you re going to be as

good as a son of mine and I have a right to talk to you in this

way."

"Why, of course, you have!" I answered, with filial docility

His lecture bored me, but it did me good, too. It was sweet to hear

myself called "as good as a son" by this man of Talmudic

education who was at the same time a man of substance and of

excellent family

The chicken was served. My intended wife ate voraciously, biting

lustily and chewing with gusto. The sight of it jarred on me

somewhat, but I overruled myself. "It's all right," I thought. "She's

a healthy girl. She'll make me a strong mate, and she'll bear me

healthy children."

I had a temptation to take her in my arms and kiss her. "I am not in

love with her, and yet I am so happy," I thought. "Oh, love isn't

essential to happiness. Not at all. Our old generation is right."

Fanny's reading, which was only an occasional performance, was

confined to the cheapest stories published. Even the popular

novels of the day, the "best sellers," seemed to be beyond her

depth. Her intellectual range was not much wider than that of her

old-fashioned mother, whose literary attainments were restricted

to the reading of the Yiddish Commentary on the Pentateuch. She

often interrupted me or her mother; everybody except her father.

But all this seemed to be quite natural and fitting. "She is

expected to be a wife, a mother, and a housekeeper," I reflected,

"and that she will know how to be. Everything else is nonsense. I

don't want to discuss Spencer with her, do I?"

Kaplan quoted the opening words of a passage in the Talmud

bearing upon piety as the bulwark of happiness. I took it up,

finishing the passage for him

"See?" he said to his wife. "I have told you he remembers his

Talmud pretty well, haven't I?"

"When a man has a good head he has a good head," she returned,

radiantly

Rubie went to a public school, but he spent three or four hours

every afternoon at an old-fashioned Talmudic academy, or

"yeshivah." There were two such "yeshivahs" on the East Side,

and they were attended by boys of the most orthodox families in

the Ghetto. I had never met such boys before. That an American

school-boy should read Talmud seemed a joke to me. I could not

take Rubie's holy studies seriously. As we now sat at the table I

banteringly asked him about the last page he had read. He

answered my question, and at his father's command he ran

up-stairs, into the back parlor, where stood two huge bookcases

filled with glittering folios of the Talmud and other volumes of

holy lore, and came back with one containing the page he had

named

"Find it and let David see what you can do," his father said

Rubie complied, reading the text and interpreting it in Yiddish

precisely as I should have done when I was eleven years old. He

even gesticulated and swayed backward and forward as I used to

do. To complete the picture, his mother, watching him, beamed as

my mother used to do when she watched me reading at the

Preacher's Synagogue or at home in our wretched basement. I was

deeply affected

"He's all right!" I said

"He's a loafer, just the same," his father said, gaily. "If he had as

much appetite for his Talmud as he has for his school-books he

would really be all right." "What do you want of him?" Malkah

interceded. "Doesn't he work hard enough as it is? He hardly has

an hour's rest."

"There you have it! I didn't speak respectfully enough of her 'only

son.' I beg your pardon, Malkah," Mr. Kaplan said, facetiously

The wedding had been set for one of the half-holidays included in

the Feast of Tabernacles, about six months later. Mrs. Kaplan said

something about her plans concerning the event. Fanny objected.

Her mother insisted, and it looked like an altercation, when the

head of the family called them to order

"And where are you going for your honeymoon, Fanny?" asked

Mary

"That's none of your business," her sister retorted

"She's stuck up because she's going to be married," Mary jeered

"Shut your mouth," her father growled

"Do you know my idea of a honeymoon?" said I. "That is, if it were

possible--if Russia didn't have that accursed government of hers.

We should take a trip to Antomir." "Wouldn't that be lovely!" said

Fanny. "We would stop in Paris, wouldn't we?"

Fanny and her mother resumed their discussion of the preparations

for the wedding. I scarcely listened, yet I was thrilled. I gazed at

Fanny, trying to picture her as the mother of my first child. "If it's

a girl she'll be named for mother, of course," I mused. I reflected

with mortification that my mother's name could not be left in its

original form, but would have to be Americanized, and for the

moment this seemed to be a matter of the gravest concern to me

My attitude toward Fanny and our prospective marriage was

primitive enough, and yet our engagement had an ennobling effect

on me. I was in a lofty mood.

My heart sang of motives higher than the mere feathering of my

own nest. The vision of working for my wife and children

somehow induced a yearning for altruism in a broader sense.

While free from any vestige of religion, in the ordinary meaning

of the word, I was tingling with a religious ecstasy that was based

on a sense of public duty. The Synagogue of the Sons of Antomir

seemed to represent not a creed, but unselfishness. I donated

generously to it. Also, I subscribed a liberal sum to an East Side

hospital of which Kaplan was a member, and to other institutions.

The sum I gave to the hospital was so large that it made a stir, and

a conservative Yiddish daily printed my photograph and a short

sketch of my life. I thought of the promise I had given Naphtali,

before leaving Antomir, to send him a "ship ticket." I had thought

of it many times before, but I had never even sought to discover

his whereabouts. This time, however, I throbbed with a firm

resolution to get his address, and, in case he was poor, to bring him

over and liberally provide for his future

My wedding loomed as the beginning of a new era in my life. It

appealed to my imagination as a new birth, like my coming to

America. I looked forward to it with mixed awe and bliss

Three or four months later, however, something happened that

played havoc with that feeling

BOOK XII

MISS TEVKIN

CHAPTER I

ON a Saturday morning

in August I took a train for Tannersville, Catskill Mountains,

where the Kaplan family had a cottage. I was to stay with them

over Sunday. I had been expected to be there the day before, but

had been detained, August being part of our busiest season. While

in the smoking-car it came over me that from Kaplan's point of

view my journey was a flagrant violation of the Sabbath and that

it was sure to make things awkward.

Whether my riding on Saturday would actually offend his religious

sensibilities or not (for in America one gets used to seeing such

sins committed even by the faithful), it was certain to offend his

sense of the respect I owed him. And so, to avoid a sullen

reception I decided to stop overnight in another Catskill town and

not to make my appearance at Tannersville until the following day

The insignificant change was pregnant with momentous results

It was lunch-time when I alighted from the train, amid a hubbub of

gay voices. Women and children were greeting their husbands and

fathers who had come from the city to join them for the week-end.

I had never been to the mountains before, nor practically ever

taken a day's vacation. It was so full of ozone, so full of

health-giving balm, it was almost overpowering. I was inhaling it

in deep, intoxicating gulps. It gave me a pleasure so keen it

seemed to verge on pain. It was so unlike the air I had left in the

sweltering city that the place seemed to belong to another planet

I stopped at the Rigi Kulm House. There were several other hotels

or boarding-houses in the village, and all of them except one were

occupied by our people, the Rigi Kulm being the largest and most

expensive hostelry in the neighborhood. lt was crowded, and I had

to content myself with sleeping-accommodations in one of the

near-by cottages, in which the hotel-keeper hired rooms for his

overflow business, taking my meals in the hotel

The Rigi Kulm stood at the end of the village and my cottage was

across the main country road from it. Both were on high ground.

Viewed from the veranda of the hotel, the village lay to the right

and the open country--a fascinating landscape of meadowland,

timbered hills, and a brook that lost itself in a grove--to the left.

The mountains rose in two ranges, one in front of the hotel and

one in the rear

The bulk of the boarders at the Rigi Kulm was made up of families

of cloak-manufacturers, shirt-manufacturers,

ladies'-waist-manufacturers, cigar-manufacturers, clothiers,

furriers, jewelers, leather-goods men, real-estate men, physicians,

dentists, lawyers--in most cases people who had blossomed out

into nabobs in the course of the last few years. The crowd was

ablaze with diamonds, painted cheeks, and bright-colored silks. It

was a babel of blatant self-consciousness, a miniature of the

parvenu smugness that had spread like wild-fire over the country

after a period of need and low spirits.

In addition to families who were there for the whole season--that

is, from the Fourth of July to the first Monday in October--the

hotel contained a considerable number of single young people, of

both sexes--salesmen, stenographers, bookkeepers,

librarians--who came for a fortnight's vacation.

These were known as "two-weekers." They occupied tiny rooms,

usually two girls or two men in a room. Each of these girls had a

large supply of dresses and shirt-waists of the latest style, and

altogether the two weeks' vacation ate up, in many cases, the

savings of months

To be sure, the "two-weekers" of the gentle sex were not the only

marriageable young women in the place. They had a number of

heiresses to compete with

I was too conspicuous a figure in the needle industries for my

name to be unknown to the guests of a hotel like the Rigi Kulm

House. Moreover, several of the people I found there were my

personal acquaintances. One of these was Nodelman's cousin,

Mrs. Kalch, or Auntie Yetta, the gaunt, childless woman of the

solemn countenance and the gay disposition, of the huge gold

teeth, and the fingers heavily laden with diamonds. I had not seen

her for months.

As the lessee of the hotel marched me into his great dining-room

she rushed out to me, her teeth aglitter with hospitality, and made

me take a seat at a table which she shared with her husband, the

moving-van man, and two middle-aged women. I could see that

she had not heard of my engagement, and to avoid awkward

interrogations concerning the whereabouts of my fiancée I

omitted to announce it

"I know what you have come here for," she said, archly. "You can't

fool Auntie Yetta. But you have come to the right place. I can tell

you that a larger assortment of beautiful young ladies you never

saw, Mr. Levinsky. And they're educated, too. If you don't find

your predestined one here you'll never find her. What do you say,

Mr. Rivesman?" she addressed the proprietor of the hotel, who

stood by and whom I had known for many years

"I agree with you thoroughly, Mrs. Kalch," he answered, smilingly.

"But Mr.

Levinsky tells me he can stay only one day with us."

"Plenty of time for a smart man to pick a girl in a place like this.

Besides, you just tell him that you have a lot of fine, educated

young ladies, Mr. Rivesman. He is an educated gentleman, Mr.

Levinsky is, and if he knows the kind of boarders you have he'll

stay longer." "I know Mr. Levinsky is an educated man,"

Rivesman answered. "As for our boarders, they're all

fine--superfine."

"So you've got to find your predestined one here," she resumed,

turning to me again. "Otherwise you can't leave this place. See?"

"But suppose I have found her already--elsewhere?"

"You had no business to. Anyhow, if she doesn't know enough to

hold you tight and you are here to spend a week-end with other

girls, she does not deserve to have you."

"But I am not spending it with other girls."

"What else did you come here for?" And she screwed up one-half

of her face into a wink so grotesque that I could not help bursting

into laughter

About an hour after lunch I sat in a rocking-chair on the front

porch, gazing at the landscape. The sky was a blue so subtle and

so noble that it seemed as though I had never seen such a sky

before. "This is just the kind of place for God to live in," I mused.

Whereupon I decided that this was what was meant by the word

heaven, whereas the blue overhanging the city was a "mere sky."

The village was full of blinding, scorching sunshine, yet the air

was entrancingly ref reshing. The veranda was almost deserted,

most of the women being in their rooms, gossiping or dressing for

the arrival of their husbands, fathers, sweethearts, or possible

sweethearts. Birds were embroidering the silence of the hour with

a silvery whisper that spoke of rest and good-will. The slender

brook to the left of me was droning like a bee. Everything was

charged with peace and soothing mystery. A feeling of lassitude

descended upon me. I was too lazy even to think, but the landscape

was continually forcing images on my mind. A hollow in the slope

of one of the mountains in front of me looked for all the world

like a huge spoon.

Half of it was dark, while the other half was full of golden light. It

seemed as though it was the sun's favorite spot. "The enchanted

spot," I named it. I tried to imagine that oval-shaped hollow at

night. I visioned a company of ghosts tiptoeing their way to it and

stealing a night's lodging in the "spoon," and later, at the approach

of dawn, behold! the ghosts were fleeing to the woods near by

Rising behind that mountain was the timbered peak of another one.

It looked like the fur cap of a monster, and I wondered what that

monster was thinking of

When I gazed at the mountain directly opposite the hotel I had a

feeling of disappointment. I knew that it was very high, that it

took hours to climb it, but I failed to realize it

It was seemingly quite low and commonplace. Darkling at the foot

of it was what looked like a moat choked with underbrush and

weeds. The spot was about a mile and a half from the hotel, yet it

seemed to be only a minute's walk from me. But then a bird that

was flying over that moat at the moment, winging its way straight

across it, was apparently making no progress. Was this region

exempt from the laws of space and distance? The bewitching azure

of the sky and the divine taste of the air seemed to bear out a

feeling that it was exempt from any law of nature with which I

was familiar. The mountain-peak directly opposite the hotel

looked weird now. Was it peopled with Liliputians? Another bird

made itself heard somewhere in the underbrush flanking the

brook. It was saying something in querulous accents. I knew

nothing of birds, and the song or call of this one sounded so queer

to me that I was almost frightened. All of which tended to

enhance the uncanny majesty of the whole landscape

Presently I heard Mrs. Kalch calling to me. She was coming along

the veranda, resplendent in a purple dress, a huge diamond

breastpin, and huge diamond earrings

"All alone? All alone?" she exclaimed, as she paused, interlocking

her bediamonded fingers in a posture of mock amazement. "All

alone? Aren't you ashamed of yourself to sit moping out here,

when there are so many pretty young ladies around? Come along;

I'll find you one or two as sweet as sugar," kissing the tips of her

fingers

"Thank you, Mrs. Kalch, but I like it here."

"Mrs. Kalch! Auntie Yetta, you mean." And the lumps of gold in

her mouth glinted good-naturedly

"Very well. Auntie Yetta."

"That's better. Wait! Wait'll I come back."

She vanished. Presently she returned and, grabbing me by an arm,

stood me up and convoyed me half-way around the hotel to a

secluded spot on the rear porch where four girls were chatting

quietly

"Perhaps you'll find your predestined one among these," she said

"But I have found her already," I protested, with ill-concealed

annoyance

She took no heed of my words. After introducing me to two of the

girls and causing them to introduce me to the other two, she said:

"And now go for him, young ladies! You know who Mr. Levinsky

is, don't you? It isn't some kike. It's David Levinsky, the

cloak-manufacturer. Don't miss your chance. Try to catch him."

"I'm ready," said Miss Lazar, a pretty brunette in white

"She's all right," declared Auntie Yetta. "Her tongue cuts like a

knife that has just been sharpened, but she's as good as gold."

"Am I? I ain't so sure about it. You had better look out, Mr.

Levinsky," the brunette in white warned me

"Why, that just makes it interesting," I returned. "Danger is

tempting, you know. How are you going to catch me--with a net or

a trap?"

Auntie Yetta interrupted us. "I'm off," she said, rising to go. "I can

safely leave you in their hands, Mr. Levinsky. They'll take care of

you," she said, with a wink, as she departed

"You haven't answered my question," I said to Miss Lazar

"What was it?"

"She has a poor memory, don't you know," laughed a girl in a

yellow shirt-waist. She was not pretty, but she had winning blue

eyes and her yellow waist became her. "Mr. Levinsky wants to

know if you're going to catch him with a net or with a trap."

"And how about yourself?" I demanded. "What sort of tools have

you?"

"Oh, I don't think I have a chance with a big fish like yourself," she

replied

Her companions laughed

"Well, that's only her way of fishing," said Miss Lazar. "She tells

every fellow she has no chance with him. That's her way of getting

started. You'd better look out, Mr. Levinsky."

"And her way is to put on airs and look as if she could have

anybody she wanted," retorted the one of the blue eyes

"Stop, girls," said a third, who was also interesting. "If we are

going to give away one another's secrets there'll be no chance for

any of us."

I could see that their thrusts contained more fact than fiction and

more venom than gaiety, but it was all laughed off and everybody

seemed to be on the best of terms with everybody else. I looked at

this bevy of girls, each attractive in her way, and I became aware

of the fact that I was not in the least tempted to flirt with them. "I

am a well-behaved, sedate man now, and all because I am

engaged," I congratulated myself. "There is only one woman in

the world for me, and that is Fanny, my Fanny, the girl that is

going to be my wife in a few weeks from to-day

Directly in front of us and only a few yards off was a tennis-court.

It was unoccupied at first, but presently there appeared two girls

with rackets and balls and they started to play. One of these

arrested my attention violently, as it were. I thought her strikingly

interesting and pretty. I could not help gazing at her in spite of the

eyes that were watching me, and she was growing on me rapidly.

It seemed as though absolutely everything about her made a strong

appeal to me. She was tall and stately, with a fine pink

complexion and an effective mass of chestnut hair. I found that her

face attested intellectual dignity and a kindly disposition. I liked

her white, strong teeth. I liked the way she closed her lips and I

liked the way she opened them into a smile; the way she ran to

meet the ball and the way she betrayed disappointment when she

missed it. I still seemed to be congratulating myself upon my

indifference to women other than the one who was soon to bear

my name, when I became conscious of a mighty interest in this

girl. I said to myself that she looked refined from head to foot and

that her movements had a peculiar rhythm that was irresistible

Physically her cast of features was scarcely prettier than Fanny's,

for my betrothed was really a good-looking girl, but spiritually

there was a world of difference between their faces, the difference

between a Greek statue and one of those lay figures that one used

to see in front of cigar-stores

The other tennis-player was a short girl with a long face. I

reflected that if she were a little taller or her face were not so long

she might not be uninteresting, and that by contrast with her

companion she looked homelier than she actually was

Miss Lazar watched me closely

"Playing tennis is one way of fishing for fellows," she remarked

"So the racket is really a fishing-tackle in disguise, is it?" I

returned.

"But where are the fellows?"

"Aren't you one?" "No."

"Oh, these two girls go in for highbrow fellows," said a young

woman who had hitherto contented herself with smiling and

laughing. "They're highbrow themselves."

"Do they use big words?" I asked.

"Well, they're well read. I'll say that for them," observed Miss

Lazar, with a fine display of fairness

"College girls?"

"Only one of them."

"Which?"

"Guess."

"The tall one."

"I thought she'd be the one you'd pick. You'll have to guess again."

"What made you think I'd pick her for a college girl?" "You'll have

to guess that, too. Well, she is an educated girl, all the same."

She volunteered the further information that the tall girl's father

was a writer, and, as though anxious lest I should take him too

seriously, she hastened to add: "He doesn't write English, though.

It's Jewish, or Hebrew, or something."

"What's his name?" I asked

"Tevkin," she answered, under her breath

The name sounded remotely familiar to me. Had I seen it in some

Yiddish paper? Had I heard it somewhere? The intellectual East

Side was practically a foreign country to me, and I was proud of

the fact. I knew something of its orthodox Talmudists, but

scarcely anything of its modern men of letters, poets, thinkers,

humorists, whether they wrote in Yiddish, in Hebrew, in Russian,

or in English. If I took an occasional look at the socialist Yiddish

daily it was chiefly to see what was going on in the Cloak-makers'

Union. Otherwise I regarded everything that was written for the

East Side with contempt, and "East Side writer" was synonymous

with "greenhorn" and "tramp." Worse than that, it was identified

in my mind with socialism, anarchism, and trade-unionism. It was

something sinister, absurd, and uncouth

But Miss Tevkin was a beautiful girl, nevertheless. So I pitied her

for being the daughter of an East Side writer

The tennis game did not last long. Miss Tevkin and her companion

soon went indoors. I went out for a stroll by myself. I was thinking

of my journey to Tannersville the next morning. The enforced loss

of time chafed me. Of the strong impression which the tall girl

had produced on me not a trace seemed to have been left. She

bothered me no more than any other pretty girl I might have

recently come across. Young women with strikingly interesting

faces and figures were not rare in New York

I had not been walking five minutes when I impatiently returned to

the hotel to consult the time-tables

CHAPTER II

I WAS chatting with Rivesman, the lessee of the

hotel, across the counter that separated part of his office from the

lobby. As I have said, I had known him for many years. He had

formerly been in the insurance business, and he had at one time

acted as my insurance broker. He was a Talmudist, and well

versed in modern Hebrew literature, to boot. He advised me

concerning trains to Tannersville, and then we passed to the hotel

business and mutual acquaintances

Presently Miss Tevkin, apparently on her way from her room,

paused at the counter, by my side, to leave her key. She was

dressed for dinner, although it was not yet half past 4 o'clock and

the great Saturday-evening repast, for which train after train was

bringing husbands and other "weekenders" to the mountains, was

usually a very late affair

The dress she now wore was a modest gown of navy blue trimmed

with lace. The change of attire seemed to have produced a partial

change in her identity.

She was interesting in a new way, I thought

"Going to enjoy the fresh air?" Rivesman asked her, gallantly

"Ye-es," she answered, pleasantly. "It's glorious outside." And she

vanished

"Pretty girl," I remarked

"And a well-bred one, too--in the real sense of the word."

"One of your two-week guests, I suppose," I said, with studied

indifference.

"Yes. She is a stenographer." Whereupon he named a well-known

lawyer, a man prominent in the affairs of the Jewish community,

as her employer. "It was an admirer of her father who got the job

for her."

From what followed I learned that Miss Tevkin's father had once

been a celebrated Hebrew poet and that he was no other than the

hero of the romance of which Naphtali had told me a few months

before I left my native place to go to America, and that her mother

was the heroine of that romance. In other words, her mother was

the once celebrated beauty, the daughter of the famous Hebrew

writer (long since deceased), Doctor Rachaeless of Odessa

"It was her father, then, who wrote those love-letters!" I exclaimed,

excitedly. "And it was about her mother that he wrote them!

Somebody told me on the veranda that her name was Miss

Tevkin. I did think the name sounded familiar, but I could not

locate it." The discovery stirred me inordinately. I was palpitating

with reminiscent interest and with a novel interest in the beautiful

girl who had just stood by my side

At my request Rivesman, followed by myself, sought her out on

the front porch and introduced me to her as "a great admirer of

your father's poetry."

Seated beside her was a bald-headed man with a lone wisp of hair

directly over his forehead whom the hotel-keeper introduced as

"Mr. Shapiro, a counselor," and who by his manner of greeting me

showed that he was fully aware of my financial standing

The old romance of the Hebrew poet and his present wife, and

more especially the fact that I had been thrilled by it in Antomir,

threw a halo of ineffable fascination around their beautiful

daughter

"So you are a daughter of the great Hebrew poet," I said in English

"It's awfully kind of you to speak like that," she returned

"Mr. Levinsky is known for his literary tastes, you know," Shapiro

put in

"I wish I deserved the compliment," I rejoined. "Unfortunately, I

don't. I am glad I find time to read the newspapers

"The newspapers are life," observed Miss Tevkin, "and life is the

source of literature, or should be."

"'Or should be!'" Shapiro mocked her, fondly. "Is that a dig at the

popular novels?" And in an aside to me, "Miss Tevkin has no use

for them, you know."

She smiled

"Still worshiping at the shrine of Ibsen?" he asked her

"More than ever," she replied, gaily.

"I admire your loyalty, though I regret to say that I am still unable

to share your taste."

"It isn't a matter of taste," she returned. "It depends on what one is

looking for in a play or a novel."

She smiled with the air of one abstaining from a fruitless

discussion

"She's a blue-stocking," I said to myself. "Women of this kind are

usually doomed to be old maids." And yet she drew me with a

magnetic force that seemed to be beyond my power of resistance

It was evident that she enjoyed the discussion and the fact that it

was merely a pretext for the lawyer to feast his eyes on her

I wondered why a bald-headed man with a lone tuft of hair did not

repel her

A younger brother of Shapiro's, a real-estate broker, joined us. He

also was bald-headed, but his baldness formed a smaller patch

than the lawyer's

The two brothers did most of the talking, and, among other things,

they informed Miss Tevkin and myself that they were graduates of

the City College. With a great display of reading and repeatedly

interrupting each other they took up the cudgels for the "good old

school." I soon discovered, however, that their range was limited

to a small number of authors, whose names they uttered with great

gusto and to whom they returned again and again. These were

Victor Hugo, Dumas, Dickens, Thackeray, George Eliot,

Coleridge, Edgar Poe, and one or two others. If the lawyer added a

new name, like Walter Pater, to his list, the real-estate man would

hasten to trot out De Quincey, for example. For the rest they

would parade a whole array of writers rather than refer to any one

of them in particular. The more they fulminated and fumed and

bullied Miss Tevkin the firmer grew my conviction that they had

scarcely read the books for which they seemed to be ready to lay

down their lives

Miss Tevkin, however, took them seriously. She followed them

with the air of a "good girl "listening to a lecture by her mother or

teacher

"I don't agree with you at all," she would say, weakly, from time to

time, and resume listening with charming resignation

The noise made by the two brothers attracted several other

boarders. One of these was a slovenly-looking man of forty-five

who spoke remarkably good English with a very bad accent (far

worse than mine). That he was a Talmudic scholar was written all

over his face. By profession he was a photographer.

His name was Mendelson. He took a hand in our discussion, and it

at once became apparent that he had read more and knew more

than the bald-headed brothers. He was overflowing with withering

sarcasm and easily sneered them into silence

Miss Tevkin was happy. B.ut the slovenly boarder proved to be

one of those people who know what they do not want rather than

what they do. And so he proceeded, in a spirit of chivalrous

banter, to make game of her literary gods as well.

"You don't really mean to tell us that you enjoy an Ibsen play?" he

demanded. "Why, you are too full of life for that."

"But that's just what the Ibsen plays are--full of life," she answered.

"If you're bored by them it's because you're probably looking for

stories, for 'action.' But art is something more significant than that.

There is moral force and beauty in Ibsen which one misses in the

old masters."

"That's exactly what the ministers of the gospel or the up-to-date

rabbis are always talking about--moral force, moral beauty, and

moral clam-chowder," Mendelson retorted

The real-estate man uttered a chuckle

"Would you turn the theater into a church or a reform synagogue?"

the photographer continued. "People go to see a play because they

want to enjoy themselves, not because they feel that their morals

need darning."

"But in good literature the moral is not preached as a sermon,"

Miss Tevkin replied. "It naturally follows from the life it presents.

Anyhow, the other kind of literature is mere froth. You read page

after page and there doesn't seem to be any substance to it." She

said it plaintively, as though apologizing for holding views of this

kind

"Is that the way you feel about Thackeray and Dickens, too?" I

ventured

"I do," she answered, in the same doleful tone

She went on to develop her argument. We did not interrupt her, the

two brothers, the photographer, and myself listening to her with

admiring glances that had more to do with her beautiful face and

the music of her soft, girlish voice than with what she was saying.

There was a congealed sneer on the photographer's face as he

followed her plea, but it was full of the magic of her presence

"You're a silly child," his countenance seemed to say. "But I could

eat you, all the same."

She dwelt on the virtues of Ibsen, Strindberg, Knut Hamsen,

Hauptmann, and a number of others, mostly names I did not

recollect ever having heard before, and she often used the word

"decadent," which she pronounced in the French way and which I

did not then understand. Now and then she would quote some

critic, or some remark heard from a friend or from her father, and

once she dwelt on an argument of her oldest brother, who seemed

to be well versed in Russian literature and to have clear-cut

opinions on literature in general.

She spoke with an even-voiced fluency, with a charming gift of

language.

Words came readily, pleasantly from her pretty lips. It was evident,

too, that she was thoroughly familiar with the many authors whose

praises she was sounding. Yet I could not help feeling that she had

not much to say. The opinions she voiced were manifestly not her

own, as though she was reciting a well-mastered lesson. And I was

glad of it. "She's merely a girl, after all," I thought, fondly. "She's

the sweetest thing I ever knew, and her father is the man who

wrote those love-letters, and her mother is the celebrated beauty

with whom he was in love."

Whether the views she set forth were her own or somebody else's, I

could see that she relished uttering them. Also, that she relished

the euphony and felicity of her phrasing, which was certainly her

own. Whether she spoke from conviction or not, one thing seemed

indisputable: the atmosphere surrounding the books and authors

she named had a genuine fascination for her. There was a naive

sincerity in her rhetoric, and her delivery and gestures had a

rhythm that seemed to be akin to the rhythm of her movements in

the tennis-court

Miss Lazar passed by us, giving me a smiling look, which seemed

to say, "I knew you would sooner or later be in her company." I

felt myself blushing.

"To-morrow I'll be in Tannersville and all this nonsense will be

over," I said to myself

The long-faced, short girl with whom Miss Tevkin had played

tennis emerged from the lobby door and was introduced to me as

Miss Siegel. As I soon gathered from a bit of pleasantry by the

lawyer, she was a school-teacher

At Miss Tevkin's suggestion we all went to see the crowd waiting

for the last "husband train."

As we rose to go I made a point of asking Miss Tevkin for the

name of the best Ibsen play, my object being to be by her side on

our walk down to the village. The photographer hastened to

answer my question, thus occupying the place on the other side of

her

We were crossing the sloping lawn, Miss Tevkin on a narrow

flagged walk, while we were trotting along through the grass on

either side of her, with the other three of our group bringing up

the rear. Presently, as we reached the main sidewalk, we were

held up by Auntie Yetta, who was apparently returning from one

of the cottages across the road

"Is this the one you are after?" she demanded of me, with a wink in

the direction of Miss Tevkin. And, looking her over, "You do

know a good thing when you see it." Then to her: "Hold on to him,

young lady. Hold on tight.

Mr. Levinsky is said to be worth a million, you know."