I met Moissey and his wife at my next visit. He was a man of

thirty-two or more, tall, wiry, nervous, with large, protruding, dark

eyes. He was "a dentist by profession and a Russian social

democrat by religion," as his father introduced him to me

"Karl Marx is his god and Pleenanoff, the Russian socialist leader,

is his Moses," the old man added

Moissey's wife looked strikingly Semitic. She seemed to have just

stepped out of the Old Testament. She had been only about a year

in the country, and the only language she could speak was

Russian, which she enunciated without a trace of a Jewish accent

or intonation. She scarcely understood Yiddish.

All this was uncannily at variance with her Biblical face. It seemed

incredable that her speech and outward appearance should belong

to the same person. To add to the discrepancy, she was smoking

cigarette after cigarette, a performance certainly not in keeping

with one's notion of a Jewish woman of the old type

The oldest two sons, Moissey and Sasha, spoke English with a

Russian accent from which the English of all the other children

was absolutely free. Mrs.

Tevkin's Russian sounded more Russian than her husband's. Emil,

Elsie, and Gracie did not speak Russian at all

Barring Mrs. Tevkin, each adult in the family worshiped at the

shrine of some "ism." Anna professed Israel Zangwill's modified

Zionism or Territorialism. This, however, was merely a platonic

interest with her. It took up little or none of her time. Her real

passion was Minority, a struggling little magazine of "modernistic

literature and thought." It was published by a group of radicals of

which she was a member. Elsie, on the other hand, who was a

socialist, was an ardent member of the Socialist party and of the

Socialist Press Club. Politically the two sisters were supposed to

be irreconcilable opponents, yet Anna often worked in the interests

of Elsie's party. Indeed, the more I knew them the clearer it

became to me that the older sister was under the influence of the

younger

The two girls and their brothers had many visitors--socialist and

anarchist writers, poets, critics, artists. These were of both sexes

and some of them were Gentiles. Two of the most frequent callers

were Miss Siegel and the sallow-faced, homely man who had

danced with Anna at the Rigi Kulm pavilion.

He was an instructor in an art school. From his talks with Emil and

Anna I learned of a whole world whose existence I had never even

suspected--the world of East Side art students, of the gifted boys

among them, some of whom had gone to study in Paris, of their

struggles, prospects, jealousies. I was introduced to several of

these people, but I never came into sympathetic touch with them. I

was ever conscious, never my real self in their midst.

Perhaps it was because they did not like me; perhaps it was

because I failed to appreciate a certain something that was the key

note to their mental attitude. However that may have been, I

always felt wretched in their company, and my attempts at saying

something out of the common usually missed fire

Was Anna interested in any of the young men who came to the

house? I was inclined to think that she was not, but I was not sure

Among Elsie's closest friends or "comrades" was an American

millionaire--a member of one of the best-known families in New

York--and his wife, who was a Jewess, of whom I had read in the

papers. I never saw them at the Tevkins', but I knew that they

occasionally called on the school-teacher and that she saw a good

deal of them at their house and at various meetings, a fact the

discovery of which produced a disheartening impression on me. It

was as though the sole advantage I enjoyed over Anna--the

possession of money--suddenly had been wiped out

I sometimes wondered whether at the bottom of her heart Elsie did

not feel elated by her close relations with that couple. That she

herself was a stranger to all money interests there could be no

doubt, however. And this was true of Anna and the other children.

Elsie and Moissey were the strongest individualities in the family.

Theirs were truly religious natures, and socialism was their

religion in the purest sense of the term.

Elsie scarcely had any other great interest in life. Her socialism

amused me, but her devotion to it inspired me with reverence. As

for Moissey, good literature, as the term is understood in Russia,

was nearly as much of a passion with him as Marxian socialism.

His fervent talks of what he considered good fiction and his

ferocious assaults upon what he termed "candy stories" were very

impressive, though I did not always understand what he was

talking about. Sometimes he would pick a quarrel with Anna over

Minority and her literary hobbies generally. Once he brought her to

tears by his attacks. I could not see why people should quarrel

over mere stories. I thought Moissey crazy, but I must confess that

his views on literature were not without influence upon my tastes.

I did not do much reading in these days, so I may not have become

aware of it at once. But at a later period, when I did do much

reading, Moissey's opinions came back to me and I seemed to find

myself in accord with them

To return to my visits at the Tevkins'. I told myself again and again

that their world was not mine, that there was no hope for me, and

that there was nothing for it but to discontinue my calls, but I had

not the strength to do so. I never went away from this house

otherwise than dejected and forlorn

Tevkin was charming in the fervent, yet tactful, hospitality with

which he endeavored to assuage the bitterness of my visits. He

seemed to say, "I see everything, my dear friend, and my heart

goes out to you, but how can I help you?"

His wife tried to be diplomatic

"American young people imagine they own the earth," she once

said to me, with a knowing glint in her beautiful eyes. "Some day

they'll find out their mistake."

The hot months set in. The family nominally moved to Rockaway

Beach for the season and my visits were suspended. Nominally,

because Elsie and the boys and old Tevkin himself slept in the

Harlem house more often than in their summer home. Elsie was

wrapped up in the socialist campaign, which kept her busy every

night from the middle of July to Election Day. She practically had

no vacation. Anna made arrangements to spend her brief vacation

with some of her literary friends who had a camp in Maine, but

while she was in the city she came home to her mother and Gracie

almost every evening. As for her father, whom I saw several times

during that summer, he often sat up far into the night in Malbin's

or some other restaurant, talking "parcels." He had become so

absorbed in his real-estate speculations that he was rarely seen at

Yampolsky's café these days. One evening, when he was dining

with me at the private hotel in which I lived, and we were

discussing his ventures, he said: "Do you know, my friend, I have

made more than twelve thousand dollars?"

He tried to say it in a matter-of-fact, business-like way, but his face

melted into an expression of joy before he finished the sentence.

"I tell it to you because I know that you are a real friend and that

you will be sincerely glad to hear it," he went on

"I certainly am. I'm awfully glad," I rejoined, fervently

"I expect to make more. No more chipping in by the children!

Anna shall give up her typewriting and Elsie her teaching. Yes,

things are coming my way at last."

"Still, if I were you, I should go slow. The real-estate market is an

uncertain thing, after all."

"Of course it is," he answered, mechanically

Since I bought that Brooklyn parcel and refused to go into further

real-estate operations he had never approached me with business

schemes again. There was not the slightest alloy of self-interest in

his friendship, and he was careful not to have it appear that there

was. He never initiated me into the details of his speculations, lest

I should offer him a loan. He was quite squeamish about it

One day I offered him a hundred-dollar check for The Pen, the

Hebrew weekly with which he was connected and upon which I

knew him to spend more than he could afford

"I don't want it," he said, reddening and shaking his head

"Why?" I asked, also reddening

I was sorely hurt and he noticed it

"I know that you do it whole-heartedly," he hastened to explain,

"but I don't want to feel that you do it for my sake."

"But I don't do it for your sake. I just want to help the paper. Can't

I--" He interrupted me with assurances of his regard for me and

for my motives, and accepted the check.

Was he dreaming of Anna ultimately agreeing to marry me--and

my money? He certainly considered me a most desirable match.

But I felt sure that he was fond of me on my personal account and

that he would have liked to have me for his son-in-law even if my

income had not exceeded three or four thousand dollars a year. He

did not share the radical views of his children. He was much

nearer to my point of view than they

CHAPTER V

IT was December. There was an air of prosperity in

Tevkin's house, but the girls would not give up their jobs. I was a

frequent caller again. I was burning to take Anna, Elsie, and their

parents to the theater, but was afraid the two girls would spurn the

invitation

One day I was agreeably surprised by Elsie asking me to buy some

tickets for a socialist ball. They were fifty cents apiece

"How many do you want me to take?" I asked

"As many as you can afford," she answered, roguishly

"Will you sell me twenty-five dollars' worth?"

"Oh, that would be lovely!" she said, in high glee

When I handed her the money I was on the brink of asking if it

might not be rejected as "tainted," but suppressed the pleasantry

For me to attend a socialist ball would have meant to face a crowd

of union men. It was out of the question. But the twenty-five

dollars somehow brought me nearer to Elsie, and that meant to

Anna also. I began to feel more at home in their company. Elsie

was as dear as a sister to me. I went so far as to venture to invite

them and their parents to the opera, and my invitation was

accepted. I was still merely "a friend of father's," something like an

uncle, but I saw a ray of hope now

"Suppose a commonplace business man like myself offered you a

check for Minority," I once said to Anna.

"A check for Minority?" she echoed, with joyful surprise. "Well, it

would be accepted with thanks, of course, but you would first

have to withdraw the libel 'the commonplace business man.'

Another condition is that you must promise to read the magazine."

As I was making out the check I told her that I had read some

issues of it and that I "solemnly swore" to read it regularly now.

That I had found it an unqualified bore I omitted to announce.

Shortly after that opera night Tevkin provided a box at one of the

Jewish theaters for a play by Jacob Gordin

I was quite chummy with the girls. They would jokingly call me

"Mr.

Capitalist" and, despite their father's protests, "bleed" me for all

sorts of contributions. One of these came near embroiling me with

Moissey. It was for a revolutionary leader, a Jew, who had

recently escaped from a Siberian prison in a barrel of cabbage and

whose arrival in New York (by way of Japan and San Francisco)

had been the great sensation of the year among the socialists of

the East Side. The new-comer was the founder of a party of

terrorists and had organized a plot which had resulted in the killing

of an uncle of the Czar and of a prime minister. Now, Moissey, in

his rabid, uncompromising way, sympathized with another party

of Russian revolutionists, with one that was bitterly opposed to

the theories and methods of the terrorists. So when he learned that

Anna was collecting funds for the man who had been smuggled

out of jail in a barrel, and that I had given her a check for him, he

flared up and called her "busybody."

"You had better mind your own affairs, Moissey," she retorted,

coloring

She essayed to defend her position, contending that the methods of

the Russian Government rendered terrorism not only justifiable,

but inevitable

"The question is not whether it is justifiable, but whether there is

any sense to it," Moissey replied, sneeringly. "Revolutions are not

made by plotting or bomb-throwing. They must take the form of

an uprising by the masses."

"As if the Russian terrorists did not have the masses back of them!

The peasantry and the educated classes are with them."

"How do you know they are?" Moissey asked, with a good-natured,

but patronizing, smile

He spoke of the Russian working class as the great element that

was destined to work out the political and economic salvation of

the country, and at this he tactlessly dwelt on the Russian

trade-unions, on what he termed their revolutionary strikes, and

upon the aid Russian capitalists gave the Government in its

crusade upon the struggle for liberty

I felt quite awkward. I wondered whether he was not saying these

things designedly to punish me for the check I had given Anna for

the terrorists.

He had always seemed to hold aloof from me, as if he were

opposed to the visits of the "money-bag" that I was at his father's

house. At this minute I felt as though his eyes said, "The idea of

this fleecer of labor contributing to the struggle for liberty!"

I was burning to tell him that he lacked manners, and to assail

trade-unionism, but I restrained myself, of course

Sometimes the girls and I would discuss the social question or

literature, subjects upon which they assured me that I held

"naïve" views. But all my efforts to get Anna into a more intimate

conversation failed. For all our familiarity, it seemed as if we held

our conversations through a thick window-pane. Nevertheless, in

a very vague way, and for no particular reason that I was aware of,

I thought that I sensed encouragement

Tevkin never again approached me with his real-estate ventures,

but the very air of his house these days was full of such ventures. I

met other real-estate men at his home. Their talk was tempting.

my enormous income notwithstanding. Huge fortunes seemed to

be growing like mushrooms all over the five Ghettos of New York

and Brooklyn. I saw men who three years ago had not been worth

a cent and who were now buying and selling blocks of property.

How much they were actually worth was a question which in the

excitement of the "boom" did not seem to matter. It is never a rare

incident among our people for a man with a nebulous fortune of a

few hundred dollars to plunge into a commercial undertaking

involving many thousands; but during that period this was an

every-day affair. At first I treated it like something that was going

on in another country. But I had a good deal of uninvested money

and my resistance was slackening.

At last I succumbed

One of the men I met at Tevkin's was Volodsky, the old-time street

peddler, the man of the beautiful teeth whose push-cart had

adjoined mine in those gloomy days when I tried to sell goods in

the streets, and who had told me of the dower-money which his

sister had lent him for his journey to America.

I had not seen him since then--an interval of over twenty

years--and we recognized each other with some difficulty

The real-estate boom had found him eking out a wretched

livelihood by selling goods on the instalment plan. Most of his

business had been in the Italian quarter and he had learned to

speak Italian far more fluently than he had English. A short time

before I stumbled upon him at the Tevkins' he had built an

enormous block of high, brick apartment-houses in Harlem. He

had gone into the undertaking with only five thousand dollars of

his own, and before the houses were half completed he had sold

them all, pocketing an enormous profit. When we were peddlers

together he had been considered a failure and a fool. He now

struck me as a clever fellow, full of dash.

Nor did Volodsky represent the only metamorphosis of this kind

that I came across. It was as though there were something in the

atmosphere which turned paupers into capitalists and inane

milksops into men of brains and pluck.

Volodsky succeeded in luring me into a network of speculations

Tevkin had an interest in some of these operations, and, as they

were mostly concerned with property in Harlem or in the Bronx,

his house became my real-estate headquarters. There were two

classes of callers at his home now: the socialists and the literary

men or artists who visited Tevkin's children and the "real-estate

crowd" who came to see Tevkin himself. It came to be tacitly

understood that the library was to be left to the former, while the

dining-room, in the basement, was used as Tevkin's office. Being

"a friend of the family," I had the freedom of both

"You're making a big mistake, Levinsky," Nodelman once said to

me, with a gesture of deep concern. "What is biting you? Aren't

you making money fast enough? Mark my word, if you try to

swallow too fast you'll choke. Any doctor will tell you that."

I urged him to join me, but he would not hear of it. Instead, he

exhorted me to sell out my holdings and give all my attention to

my cloak business

"Take pity on your hard-earned pennies, Levinsky," he would say.

"Else you'll wake up some day like the fellow who has dreamed he

has found a treasure. He's holding on to the treasure tight, and

when he opens his eyes he finds it's nothing but a handful of

wind." "I'll tell you what, Levinsky," he began on one occasion.

"You ought to see some of those magician fellows."

"What for?" I asked

"Did you ever see them at their game? They'll put an egg into a

hat; say, 'One, two, three,' and pull out a chicken. And then they

say, 'One, two, three,' again and there's neither a chicken nor an

egg. That's the way all this real-estate racket will end. Mark my

word, Levinsky."

Bender nagged and pleaded with me without let-up. If I had had

the remotest doubt of his devotion to me it would have been

dispelled now. I was at my great mahogany desk every morning,

as usual, but I seldom stayed more than two hours, and even

during those two hours my mind was divided between cloaks and

real estate or between cloaks and Anna. Bender was practically in

full charge of the business. Instead, however, of welcoming the

power it gave him, he made unrelenting efforts to restore things to

their former state. He was constantly haranguing me on the risks I

was incurring, beseeching me to drop my new ventures, and

threatening to leave me unless I did so. Once, as he was thus

expostulating with me, he broke down

"I appeal to you as your friend, as your old-time teacher," he said,

and burst into tears

If it had not been for him I should have neglected my cloak

business beyond repair. He handled me as a gambler's wife does

her husband. He would seek me out in front of some unfinished

building, at Tevkin's, or at some "boom" café, and make me sign

some checks, consult me on something or other, or wheedle me

into accompanying him to my factory for an hour or two. But the

next day he would have to go hunting for me again

I had invested considerable money in my new affairs, and releasing

it at short notice would not have been an easy matter. But the

great point was that I was literally intoxicated by my new

interests, and the fact that they were intimately associated with the

atmosphere of Anna's home had much--perhaps everything--to do

with it

I loved her to insanity. She was the supreme desire of my being. I

knew that she was weaker in character and mind than Elsie, for

example, but that seemed to be a point in her favor rather than

against her. "She is a good girl," I would muse, "mild, kindly,

girlish. As for her 'radical' notions, they really don't matter much. I

could easily knock them out of her. I should be happy with her.

Oh, how happy!" And, in spite of the fact that I thought her weak,

the sight of her would fill me with awe.

One's first love is said to be the most passionate love of which one

is capable. I do not think it is. I think my feeling for Anna was

stronger, deeper, more tender, and more overpowering than either

of my previous two infatuations. But then, of course, there is no

way of measuring and comparing things of this kind. Anna was

the first virgin I had ever loved.

Was that responsible for the particular depth of my feeling? "Oh, I

must have her or I'll fall to pieces," I would say to myself,

yearning and groaning and whining like a lunatic

My gambling mania was really the aberration of a love-maddened

brain. How could Bender or Nodelman understand it? I found

myself in the midst of other lunatics, of men who had simply been

knocked out of balance by the suddenness of their gains. My

money had come slowly and through work and worry. Theirs had

dropped from the sky. So they could scarcely believe their senses

that it was not all a dream. They were hysterical with gleeful

amazement; they were in a delirium of ecstasy over themselves;

and at the same time they looked as though they were tempted to

feel their own faces and hands to make sure that they were real

One evening I saw a man whose family was still living on fifteen

dollars a week lose more than six hundred dollars in poker and

then take a group of congenial spirits out for a spree that cost him

a few hundred dollars more.

One man in this party, who was said to be worth three-quarters of a

million, had only recently worked as a common brick-layer. He is

fixed in my memory by his struggles to live up to his new

position, more especially by the efforts he would make to break

himself of certain habits of speech. He always seemed to be on his

guard lest some coarse word or phrase should escape him, and

when a foul expression eluded his vigilance he would give a start,

as if he had broken something. There was often a wistful look in

his eye, as if he wondered whether his wealth and new mode of

living were not merely a cruel practical joke. Or was he yearning

for the simpler and more natural life which he had led until two

years ago? We had many an expensive meal together, and often,

as he ate, he would say: "Oh, it's all nonsense, Mr. Levinsky. All

this fussy stuff does not come up to one spoon of my wife's

cabbage soup."

Once he said: "Do you really like champagne? I don't. You may

say I am a common, ignorant fellow, but to me it doesn't come up

to the bread cider mother used to make. Honest." And he gave a

chuckle

I knew a man who bought a thousand-dollar fur coat and a

full-dress suit before he had learned to use a handkerchief. He

always had one in his pocket, but he would handle it gingerly, as

if he had not the heart to soil it, and then he would carefully fold it

again. The effect money had on this man was of quite another

nature than it was in the case of the bricklayer.

It had made him boisterously arrogant, blusteringly disdainful of

his intellectual superiors, and brazenly foul-mouthed. It was as

though he was shouting: "I don't have to fear or respect anybody

now! I have got a lot of money. I can do as I damn please." More

than one pure man became dissolute in the riot of easily gotten

wealth. A real-estate speculator once hinted to me, in a fit of

drunken confidence, that his wife, hitherto a good woman and a

simple home body, had gone astray through the new vistas of life

that had suddenly been flung open to her. One fellow who was

naturally truthful was rapidly becoming a liar through the practice

of exaggerating his profits and expenditures. There was an

abundance of side-splitting comedy in the things I saw about me,

but there was no dearth of pathos, either. One day, as I entered a

certain high-class restaurant on Broadway, I saw at one of the

tables a man who looked strikingly familiar to me, but whom I was

at first unable to locate. Presently I recognized him. Three or four

years before he had peddled apples among the employees of my

cloak-shop. He had then been literally in tatters. That was why I

was now slow to connect his former image with his present

surroundings. I had heard of his windfall. He had had a job as

watchman at houses in process of construction. While there he had

noticed things, overheard conversations, put two and two together,

and finally made fifty thousand dollars in a few months as a

real-estate broker

We were furtively eying each other. Finally our eyes met. He

greeted me with a respectful nod and then his face broke into a

good-humored smile. He moved over to my table and told me his

story in detail. He spoke in brief, pithy sentences, revealing a

remarkable understanding of the world. In conclusion he said,

with a sigh: "But what is the good of it all? The Upper One has

blessed me with one hand, but He has punished me with the

other."

It appeared that his wife had died, in Austria, just when she was

about to come to join him and he was preparing to surprise her

with what, to her, would have been a palatial apartment

"For six years I tried to bring her over, but could not manage it," he

said, simply. "I barely made enough to feed one mouth. When

good luck came at last, she died. She was a good woman, but I

never gave her a day's happiness. For eighteen years she shared

my poverty. And now, that there is something better to share, she

is gone."

CHAPTER VI

ONE of the many Jewish immigrants who were

drawn into the whirl of real-estate speculation was Max Margolis,

Dora's husband. I had heard his name in connection with some

deals, and one afternoon in February we found ourselves side by

side in a crowd of other "boomers." The scene was the corner of

Fifth Avenue and One Hundred and Sixteenth Street, two blocks

from Tevkin's residence, a spot that usually swarmed with

Yiddish-speaking real-estate speculators in those days. It was a

gesticulating, jabbering, whispering, excited throng, resembling

the crowd of curb-brokers on Broad Street. Hence the nickname

"The Curb" by which that corner was getting to be known

I was talking to Tevkin when somebody slapped me on the back

"Hello, Levinsky! Hello!"

"Margolis!"

His face had the florid hue of worn, nervous, middle age. "I heard

you were buying. Is it true? Well, how goes it, great man?"

"How have you been?"

"Can't kick. Of course, compared to a big fellow like David

Levinsky, I am a fly."

I excused myself to Tevkin and took Margolis to the quieter side of

the Avenue

"Glad to see you, upon my word," he said. "Well, let bygones by

bygones.

It's about time we forgot it all."

"There is nothing to forget."

"Honest?"

"Honest! Is that idiotic notion still sticking in your brain?"

"Why, no. Not at all. May I not live till to-morrow if it does. You

are not angry at me, are you? Come, now, say that you are not."

I smiled and shrugged my shoulders

"Well, shake hands, then."

We did and he offered to sell me a "parcel." As I did not care for it,

he went on to talk of the real-estate market in general. There was

a restaurant on that side of the block--The Curb Café we used to

call it--so we went in, ordered something, and he continued to

talk. He was plainly striving to sound me, in the hope of "hanging

on" to some of my deals. Of a sudden he said: "Say, you must

think I'm still jealous? May I not live till to-morrow if I am." And

to prove that he was not he added: "Come, Levinsky, come up to

the house and let's be friends again, as we used to be. I have

always wished you well." He gave me his address. "Will you

come?"

"Some day."

"You aren't still angry at Dora, are you?"

"Why, no. But then she may be still angry at me," I said,

indifferently

"Nonsense. Perhaps it is beneath your dignity to call on small

people like us? Come, forget that you are a great capitalist and let

us all spend an evening together as we used to." Was he ready to

suppress his jealousy for the prospect of getting under my

financial wing? The answer to this question came to me through a

most unexpected channel

The next morning, when I came to my Fifth Avenue office (it was

some eighty blocks--about four miles--downtown from "The

Curb" section of Fifth Avenue), I found Dora waiting for me. I

recognized her the moment I entered the waiting-room on my

office floor. Her hair was almost white and she had grown rather

fleshy, but her face had not changed. She wore a large, becoming

hat and was quite neatly dressed generally

The blood surged to my face. Her presence was a bewildering

surprise to me

There were three other people in the room and I had to be on my

guard

"How are you?" I said, rushing over to her

She stood up and we shook hands. I took her into my private office

through my private corridor.

"Dora! Well, well!" I murmured in a delirium of embarrassment

"I have come to tell you not to mind Margolis and not to call at the

house," she said, gravely, looking me full in the face. "It would be

awful if you did. He is out of his mind. He is--"

"Wait a minute, Dora," I interrupted her. "There'll be plenty of

time to talk of that. First tell me something about yourself. How

have you been? How are the children?" She was like an old song

that had once held me under its sway, but which now appealed to

me as a memory only. I was conscious of my consuming passion

for Anna. Dora interested and annoyed me at once

I treated her as a dear old friend. She, however, persisted in

wearing a mask of politeness, as if she had come strictly on

business and there had never been any other relations between us

"Everybody is all right, thank you," she answered

"Is Lucy married?"

"Oh, she has a beautiful little girl of two years. But I do want to

tell you about Margolis. The man is simply crazy, and I want to

warn you not to take him seriously. Above all, don't let him take

you up to the house. Not for anything in the world. That's what

brings me here this morning."

"Why? What's the trouble?"

"Oh, it would take too long to tell," she answered. "And it isn't

important, either. The main thing is that you should not let him

get into business relations with you, or into any other kind of

relations, for that matter."

Her English was a striking improvement upon what it had been

sixteen years before. As we continued to talk it became evident to

me that she was a well-read, well-informed woman. I made some

efforts to break her reserve, but they failed. Nor, indeed, was I

over-anxious to have them succeed. She did speak of her

husband's jealousy, however (though she dropped her glance and

slurred over the word as she did so); and from what she said, as

well as by reading between the lines of her statement, I gathered a

fairly clear picture of the situation. Echoes of Max's old jealousy

would still make themselves felt in his domestic life. A clash, an

irritation, would sometimes bring my name to his lips. He still,

sometimes, tortured her with questions concerning our relations

"I never answer these questions of his," she said, her eyes on my

office rug. "Not a word. I just let him talk. But sometimes I feel

like putting an end to my life," she concluded, with a smile

I listened with expressions of surprise and sympathy and with a

feeling of compunction. A thought was sluggishly trailing through

my mind: "Does she still care for me?"

Margolis had built up some sort of auction business, but his

real-estate mania had ruined it and eaten up all he had except

three thousand dollars, which Dora had contrived to save from the

wreck. With this she had bought a cigar-and-stationery store on

Washington Heights by means of which she now supported the

family. He spent his days and evenings hanging around real-estate

haunts as a penniless drunkard does around liquor-shops. He was

always importuning Dora for "a couple of hundred dollars" for a

"sure thing." This was often the cause of an altercation. Quarrels

had, in fact, never been such a frequent occurrence in the house as

they had been since he lost his money in real estate, and one of his

favorite thrusts in the course of these brawls was to allude to me

"If Levinsky asked you for money you would not refuse him,

would you?" he would taunt her

Now, that he had met me at "The Curb," he had taken it into his

head that his jealousy had worn off long since and that he had the

best of feelings for me. His heart was set upon regaining my

friendship. He had spoken to her of our meeting as a "predestined

thing" that was to result in my "letting him in" on some of my

deals. Dora, however, felt sure that a renewal of our acquaintance

would only rekindle the worst forms of his jealousy and make life

impossible to her. She dreaded to imagine it

We spoke of Lucy again. It was so stirring to think of her as a

mother. Dora told me that Lucy's husband was in the jewelry

business and quite well-to-do

She rose to go. I escorted her, continuing to question her about

Lucy, Dannie, her husband. It would have been natural for me to

take her out by way of my private little corridor, but I preferred to

pilot her through my luxurious show-rooms. We found two

customers there to whom some of my office men and a designer

were showing our "line." I greeted the customers, and, turning to

Dora again, I asked her to finish an interrupted remark. We

paused by one of the windows. What she was saying about Lucy

was beginning to puzzle me. She did not seem to be pleased with

her daughter's marriage

"She has three servants and a machine," she said, with a peculiar

smile.

"She wanted it and she got what she wanted."

"Why?" I said, perplexed

"Everything is all right," she answered, with another smile

We spoke in an undertone, so that nobody could overhear us. The

fact, however, that we were no longer alone had the effect of

relieving our constraint. Dora unbent somewhat. A certain note of

intimacy that had been lacking in our talk while we were by

ourselves stole into it now that we were in the presence of other

people

In the course of our love-affair she had often spoken to me of her

determination not to let Lucy repeat her mistake, not to let her

marry otherwise than a man she loved. We were both thinking of

it at this minute, and it seemed to be tacitly understood between

us that we were

At last I ventured to ask: "What's the trouble, Dora: Tell me all

about it.

It interests me very much."

"I don't know whether there's anything to tell," she answered,

coloring slightly. "She says she cares for her husband, and they

really get along very well. He certainly worships her. Why

shouldn't he? She is so beautiful--a regular flower--and he is old

enough to be her father."

"You don't say!" I ejaculated, with genuine distress

"She is satisfied."

"Are you?"

"As if it mattered whether I was or not. I had other ideas about her

happiness, but I am only a mother and was not even born in this

country. So what does my opinion amount to? I begged her not to

break my heart, but she would have her automobile."

"Perhaps she does love him."

She shook her head ruefully. "She was quite frank about it. She

called it being practical. She thought my ideas weren't American,

that I was a dreamer.

She talked that way ever since she was eighteen, in fact. 'I don't

care if I marry a man with white hair, provided he can make a nice

living for me,' she used to say. I thought it would drive me mad.

And the girls she went with had the same ideas. When they got

together it would be, 'This girl married a fellow who's worth a

hundred thousand,' and, 'That girl goes with a fellow who's worth

half a million.' If that's what they learn at college, what's the use

going to college?"

"It's prosperity ideas," I suggested. "It's a temporary craze."

"I don't care what it is. A girl should be a girl. She ought to think

of love, of real happiness." (Her glance seemed to be the least bit

unsteady.) "But I ain't 'practical,' don't you know. Exactly what my

mother--peace upon her [this in Hebrew]--used to say. She, too,

did not think it was necessary to be in love with the man you

marry. But then she did not go to college, not even to school. Of

what good is education, then?"

It was evident that she spoke from an overflowing heart, and that

she could speak for hours on the subject. But she cut herself short

and took another tack

"You must not think her husband is a kike, though," she said. "He

is no fool and he writes a pretty good English letter. And he is a

very nice man."

She started to go

"Tell me some more about Dannie," I said, on our way to the

elevator

"He's going to college. Always first or second in his class. And one

of the best men on the football team, too." She smiled, the first

radiant smile I had seen on her that morning

"He's all right," she continued. And in Yiddish, "He is my only

consolation." And again in English, "If it wasn't for him life

wouldn't be worth living. Good-by," she said, as we paused in

front of the elevator door. "Don't forget what I told you." She was

ill at ease again

The elevator came down from the upper floors. We shook hands

and she entered it. It sank out of sight. I stood still for a second

and then returned to my private office with a sense of relief and

sadness. My heart was full of love for Anna

CHAPTER VII

IN a vague, timid way I had been planning to

propose to Anna all along. My meeting with Dora gave these

plans shape. Her unexpected visit revived in my mind the whole

history of my acquaintance with her. I said to myself: "It was

through tenacity and persistence that I won her. It was persistence,

too, that gave me success in business. Anna is a meek,

good-natured girl.

She has far less backbone than Dora. I can win her, and I will." It

seemed so convincing. It was like a discovery. It aroused the

fighting blood in my veins. I was throbbing with love and

determination. I was priming myself for a formal proposal. I

expected to take her by storm. I was only waiting for an

opportunity. In case she said no, I was prepared for a long and

vigorous campaign. "I won't give her up. She shall be mine,

whether she wants it or not," I said to myself again and again.

These soliloquies would go on in my mind at all hours and in all

kinds of circumstances--while I was pushing my way through a

crowded street-car, while I was listening to some of Bender's

scoldings, while I was parleying with some real-estate man over a

piece of property. They often made me so absent-minded that I

would pace the floor of my hotel room, for instance, with one foot

socked and the other bare, and then distressedly search for the

other sock, which was in my hand. One morning as I sat at my

mahogany desk in my office, with the telephone receiver to my

ear, waiting to be connected with a banker, I said to myself:

"Women like a man with a strong will. My very persistence will

fascinate her." And this, too, seemed like a discovery to me. The

banker answered my call. It was an important matter, yet all the

while I spoke or listened to him I was conscious of having hit

upon an invincible argument in support of my hope that Anna

would be mine

At last I thought I saw my opportunity. It was an evening in April.

According to the Jewish calendar it was the first Passover night,

when Israel's liberation from the bondage of Egypt is

commemorated by a feast and family reunion which form the

greatest event in the domestic life of our people

Two years before, when I was engaged to Fanny, I deeply regretted

not being able to spend the great evening at her father's table. This

time I was an invited guest at the Tevkins'. They were not a

religious family by any means. Tevkin had been a free-thinker

since his early manhood, and his wife, the daughter of the Jewish

Ingersoll, had been born and bred in an atmosphere of aggressive

atheism. And so religious faith never had been known in their

house. Of late years, however--that is, since Tevkin had espoused

the cause of Zionism or nationalism--he had insisted on the

Passover feast every year. He contended that to him it was not a

religious ceremony, but merely a "national custom," but about this

his children were beginning to have their doubts. It seemed to

them that the older their father grew the less sure he was of his

free thought. They suspected that he was getting timid about it,

fearful of the hereafter. As a rule, they saw only the humorous

side of the change that was apparently coming over him, but

sometimes they would awaken to the pathos of it

As we all sat in the library, waiting to be called to the great feast,

he delivered himself of a witticism at the expense of the

prospective ceremony

"You needn't take his atheism seriously, Mr. Levinsky," said Anna,

the sound of my name on her lips sending a thrill of delight

through me. "'Way down at the bottom of his heart father is

getting to be really religious, I'm afraid." And, as though taking

pity on him, she crossed over to where he sat and nestled up to

him in a manner that put a choking sensation into my throat and

filled me with an impulse to embrace them both

At last the signal was given and we filed down into the

dining-room. A long table, flanked by two rows of chairs, with a

sofa, instead of the usual arm-chair, at its head, was set with

bottles of wine, bottles of mead, wine-glasses, and little piles of

matzos (thin, flat cakes of unleavened bread). The sofa was

cushioned with two huge Russian pillows, inclosed in fresh white

cases, for the master of the house to lean on, in commemoration

of the freedom and ease which came to the Children of Israel upon

their deliverance from Egypt. Placed on three covered matzos,

within easy reach of the master, were a shank bone, an egg, some

horseradish, salt water, and a mush made of nuts and wine. These

were symbols, the shank bone being a memorial of the pascal

lamb, and the egg of the other sacrifices brought during the

festival in ancient times, while the horseradish and the salt water

represented the bitter work that the Sons of Israel had to do for

Pharaoh, and the mush the lime and mortar from which they made

brick for him. A small book lay in front of each seat. That was the

Story of the Deliverance, in the ancient Hebrew text, accompanied

by an English translation

Moissey, the uncompromising atheist and Internationalist, was

demonstratively absent, much to the distress of his mother and

resentment of his father. His Biblical-looking wife was at the

table. So were Elsie and Emil. They were as uncompromising in

their atheism as Moissey, but they had consented to attend the

quaint supper to please their parents. As to Anna, Sasha, and

George, each of them had his or her socialism "diluted" with some

species of nationalism, so they were here as a matter of principle,

their theory being that the Passover feast was one of the things

that emphasized the unity of the Jews of all countries. But even

they, and even Tevkin himself, treated it all partly as a joke. In the

case of the poet, however, it was quite obvious that his levity was

pretended. For all his jesting and frivolity, he looked nervous. I

could almost see the memories of his childhood days which the

scene evoked in his mind. I could feel the solemnity that swelled

his heart. It appeared that this time he had decided to add to the

ceremony certain features which he had foregone on the previous

few Passover festivals he had observed. He was now bent upon

having a Passover feast service precisely like the one he had seen

his father conduct, not omitting even the white shroud which his

father had worn on the occasion. As a consequence, several of

these details were a novel sight to his children. A white shroud lay

ready for him on his sofa, and as he slipped it on, with smiles and

blushes, there was an outburst of mirth

"Oh, daddy!" Anna shouted

"Father looks like a Catholic priest," said Emil

"Don't say that, Emil," I rebuked him

Fun was made of the big white pillows upon which Tevkin leaned,

"king-like," and of the piece of unleavened bread which he "hid"

under them for Gracie to "steal."

As he raised the first of the Four Cups of wine he said, solemnly,

with an effort of shaking off all pretense of flippancy: "Well, let

us raise our glasses. Let us drink the First Cup."

We all did so, and he added, "This is the Fourth of July of our

unhappy people." After the glasses were drained and refilled he

said: "Scenes like this bind us to the Jews of the whole world, and

not only to those living, but to the past generations as well. This is

no time for speaking of the Christian religion, but as I look at this

wine an idea strikes me which I cannot help submitting: The

Christians drink wine, imagining that it is the blood of Jesus.

Well, the wine we are drinking to-night reminds me of the martyr

blood of our massacred brethren of all ages."

Anna gave me a merry wink. I felt myself one of the family. I was

in the seventh heaven. She seemed to be particularly attentive to

me this evening

"I shall speak to her to-night," I decided. "I sha'n't wait another

day." And the fact that she was a nationalist and not an

unqualified socialist, like Elsie, for instance, seemed to me a new

source of encouragement. I was in a quiver of blissful excitement

The Four Questions are usually asked by the youngest son, but

Emil, the Internationalist, could not be expected to take an active

part in the ceremony, so Sasha, the Zionist, took his place. Sasha,

however, did not read Hebrew, and old Tevkin had to be content

with having the Four Questions read in English, the general

answer to them being given by Tevkin and myself in Hebrew. It

reminded me of an operatic performance in which the part of

Faust, for instance, is sung in French, while that of Margarita is

performed in some other language. We went on with the Story of

the Deliverance. Tevkin made frequent pauses to explain and

comment upon the text, often with a burst of oratory. Mrs. Tevkin

and some of the children were obviously bored.

Gracie pleaded hunger

Finally the end of the first part of the story was reached and supper

was served. It was a typical Passover supper, with matzo balls,

and it was an excellent repast. Everybody was talkative and gay. I

addressed some remarks to Anna, and she received them all

cordially

By way of attesting her recognition of Passover as a "national

holiday" she was in festive array, wearing her newest dress, a

garment of blue taffeta embroidered in old rose, with a crêpe

collar of gray. It mellowed the glow of her healthful pink

complexion. She was the most beautiful creature at the table,

excluding neither her picturesque younger brother nor her majestic

old mother. She shone. She flooded my soul with ecstasy

Tevkin's religion was Judaism, Zionism. Mine was Anna. The

second half of the story is usually read with less pomp and

circumstance than the first, many a passage in it being often

skipped altogether. So Tevkin dismissed us all, remaining alone at

the table to chant the three final ballads, which he had

characterized to his children as "charming bits of folk-lore."

When Mrs. Tevkin, the children, and myself were mounting the

stairs leading up from the dining-room, I was by Anna's side, my

nerves as taut as those of a soldier waiting for the command to

charge. I charged sooner than I expected.

"Sasha asked the Four Questions," I found myself saying. "There is

one question which I should like to ask of you, Miss Tevkin."

I said it so simply and at a moment so little suited to a proposal of

marriage that the trend of my words was lost upon her

"Something about Jewish nationalism?" she asked

"About that and about something else."

We were passing through the hallway now. When we entered the

library I took her into a corner, and before we were seated I said:

"Well, my question has really nothing to do with nationalism. It's

quite another thing I want to ask of you. Don't refuse me. Marry

me. Make me happy."

She listened like one stunned

"I am terribly in love with you," I added

"Oh!" she then exclaimed. Her delicate pink skin became a fiery

red. She looked down and shook her head with confused stiffness.

"I see you're taken aback. Take a seat; get your bearings," I said,

lightly, pulling up a chair that stood near by, "and say, 'Yes.'"

"Why, that's impossible!" she said, with an awkward smile,

without seating herself. "I need not tell you that I have long since

changed my mind about you--"

"I am no more repellent, am I?" I jested

"No. Not at all," she returned, with another smile. "But what you

say is quite another thing. I am very sorry, indeed." She made to

move away from me, but I checked her

"That does not discourage me," I said. "I'll just go on loving you

and waiting for a favorable answer. You are still unjust to me.

You don't know me well enough. Anyhow, I can't give you up. I

won't give you up. ("That's it," I thought. "I am speaking like a

man of firm purpose.") "I am resolved to win you."

"Oh, that's entirely out of the question," she said, with a gesture of

impatience and finality. And, bursting into tears of child-like

indignation, she added: "Father assured me you would never hint

at such a thing--never.

If you mean to persist, then--"

The sentence was left eloquently unfinished. She turned away,

walked over to her mother and took a seat by her side, like a little

girl mutely seeking her mamma's protection

The room seemed to be in a whirl. I felt the cold perspiration break

out on my forehead. I was conscious of Mrs. Tevkin's and Elsie's

glances. I was sick at heart. Anna's bitter resentment was a black

surprise to me. I had a crushing sense of final defeat

BOOK XIV

EPISODES OF A LONELY LIFE

CHAPTER I

IT was a severe blow. It caused me indescribable suffering. It would

not have been unnatural to attribute my fiasco to my age. Had I been

ten years younger, Anna's attitude toward me might have been

different. But this point of view I loathed to accept. Instead, I put

the blame on Anna's environment.

"I was in the 'enemy's country' there," I would muse. "The

atmosphere around her was against me." I hated the socialists with

a novel venom. Finally I pulled myself together. Then it was that I

discovered the real condition of my affairs. I had gone into those

speculations far deeper than I could afford. There were indications

that made me seriously uneasy. Things were even worse than

Bender imagined. Ruin stared me in the face. I was panic-stricken.

One day I had the head of a large woolen concern lunch with me

in a private dining-room of a well-known hotel. He was dignifiedly

steel-gray and he had the appearance of a college professor or

successful physician rather than of a business man. He liked me. I

had long been one of his most important customers and I had

always sought to build up a good record with him. For example:

other cloak-manufacturers would exact allowances for

merchandise that proved to have some imperfection. I never do so.

It is the rule of my house never to put in a claim for such things. In

the majority of cases the goods can be cut so as to avoid any loss

of material, and if it cannot, I will sustain the small loss rather

than incur the mill's disfavor. In the long run it pays. And so this

cloth merchant was well disposed toward me. He had done me

some favors before. He addressed me as Dave. (There was a note

of condescension as well as of admiration in this "Dave" of his. It

implied that I was a shrewd fellow and an excellent customer,

singularly successful and reliable, but that I was his inferior, all

the same--a Jew, a social pariah. At the bottom of my heart I

considered myself his superior, finding an amusing discrepancy

between his professorial face and the crudity of his intellectual

interests; but he was a Gentile, and an American, and a much

wealthier man than I, so I looked up to him.) To make my appeal

as effective as possible I initiated him into the human side of my

troubles. I told him of my unfortunate courtship as well as of the

real-estate ventures into which it had led me

He was interested and moved, and, as he had confidence in me, he

granted my request at once.

"It's all right, Dave," he said, slapping my back, a queer look in his

eye.

"You can always count on me. Only throw that girl out of your

mind."

I grasped his hand silently. I wanted to say something, but the

words stuck in my throat. He helped me out of my difficulties and

I devoted myself to the cloak business with fresh energy. The

agonies of my love for Anna were more persistent than those I had

suffered after I moved out of Dora's house.

But, somehow, instead of interfering with my business activities,

these agonies stimulated them. I was like the victim of a

toothache who seeks relief in hard work. I toiled day and night,

entering into the minutest detail of the business and performing

duties that were ordinarily left to some inferior employee.

Business was good. Things went humming. Bender, who now had

an interest in my factory, was happy

Some time later the same woolen man who had come to my

assistance did me another good turn, one that brought me a rich

harvest of profits. A certain weave was in great vogue that season,

the demand far exceeding the output, and it so happened that the

mill of the man with the professorial face was one of the very few

that produced that fabric. So he let me have a much larger supply

of it than any other cloak-manufacturer in the country was able to

obtain. My business then took a great leap, while my overhead

expenses remained the same. My net profits exceeded two hundred

thousand dollars that year

One afternoon in the summer of the same year, as I walked along

Broadway in the vicinity of Canal Street, my attention was

attracted by a shabby, white-haired, feeble-looking old peddler,

with a wide, sneering mouth, who seemed disquietingly familiar

and in whom I gradually recognized one of my Antomir

teachers--one of those who used to punish me for the sins of their

other pupils. The past suddenly sprang into life with detailed,

colorful vividness. The black pit of poverty in which I had been

raised; my misery at school, where I had been treated as an

outcast and a scapegoat because my mother could not afford even

the few pennies that were charged for my tuition; the joy of my

childish existence in spite of that gloom and martyrdom--all this

rose from the dead before me

The poor old peddler I now saw trying to cross Broadway was

Shmerl the Pincher, the man with whom my mother had a

pinching and hair-pulling duel after she found the marks of his

cruelty on my young body. He had been one of the most heartless

of my tormentors, yet it was so thrillingly sweet to see him in New

York! In my schooldays I would dream of becoming a rich and

influential man and wreaking vengeance upon my brutal teachers,

more especially upon Shmerl the Pincher and "the Cossack," the

man whose little daughter, Sarah-Leah, had been the heroine of

my first romance. I now rushed after Shmerl, greatly excited, one

of the feelings in my heart being a keen desire to help him

A tangle of wagons and trolley-cars caused me some delay. I stood

gazing at him restively as he picked his weary way. I had known

him as a young man, although to my childish eye he had looked

old--a strong fellow, probably of twenty-eight, with jet-black

side-whiskers and beard, with bright, black eyes and alert

movements. At the time I saw him on Broadway he must have

been about sixty, but he looked much older

As I was thus waiting impatiently for the cars to start so that I

could cross the street and greet him, a cold, practical voice

whispered to me: "Why court trouble? Leave him alone."

My exaltation was gone. The spell was broken.

The block was presently relieved, but I did not stir. Instead of

crossing the street and accosting the old man, I stood still,

following him with my eyes until he vanished from view. Then I

resumed my walk up Broadway. As I trudged along, a feeling of

compunction took hold of me. By way of defending myself before

my conscience, I tried to think of the unmerited beatings he used

to give me. But it was of no avail. The idea of avenging myself on

this decrepit, tattered old peddler for what he had done more than

thirty years before made me feel small. "Poor devil! I must help

him," I said to myself.

I was conscious of a desire to go back and to try to overtake him;

but I did not. The desire was a meandering, sluggish sort of

feeling. The spell was broken irretrievably

CHAPTER II

THE following winter chance brought me together

with Matilda. On this occasion our meeting was of a pleasanter

nature than the one which had taken place at Cooper Institute. It

was in a Jewish theater. She and another woman, accompanied by

four men, one of whom was Matilda's husband, were occupying a

box adjoining one in which were the Chaikins and myself and

from which it was separated by a low partition. The performance

was given for the benefit of a society in which Mrs. Chaikin was

an active member, and it was she who had made me pay for the

box and solemnly promise to attend the performance. Not that I

maintained a snobbish attitude toward the Jewish stage. I went to

see Yiddish plays quite often, in fact, but these were all of the

better class (our stage has made considerable headway), whereas

the one that had been selected by Mrs. Chaikin's society was of

the "historical-opera" variety, a hodge-podge of "tear-wringing"

vaudeville and "laughter-compelling" high tragedy. I should have

bought ten boxes of Mrs.

Chaikin if she had only let me stay away from the performance,

but her heart was set upon showing me off to the other members

of the organization, and I had to come

It was on a Monday evening. As I entered the box my eyes met

Matilda's and, contrary to my will, I bowed to her. To my surprise,

she acknowledged my salutation heartily

The curtain rose. Men in velvet tunics and plumed hats were

saying something, but I was more conscious of Matilda's

proximity and of her cordial recognition of my nod than of what

was going on on the stage.

Presently a young man and a girl entered our box and occupied

two of our vacant chairs. Mrs. Chaikin thought they had been

invited by me, and when she discovered that they had not there

was a suppressed row, she calling upon them to leave the box and

they nonchalantly refusing to stir from their seats, pleading that

they meant to stay only as long as there was no one else to occupy

them. Our box was beginning to attract attention. There were

angry outcries of "'S-sh!" "Shut up!" Matilda looked at me

sympathetically and we exchanged smiles. Finally an usher came

into our box and the two intruders were ejected

When the curtain had dropped on the first act Matilda invited me

into her box. When I entered it she introduced me to her husband

and her other companions as "a fellow-townsman" of hers

Seen at close range, her husband looked much younger than she,

but it did not take me long to discover that he was wrapped up in

her. His beard was smaller and more neatly trimmed than it had

looked at the Cooper Institute meeting, but it still ill became him.

He had an unsophisticated smile, which I thought suggestive of a

man playing on a flute and which emphasized the discrepancy

between his weak face and his reputation for pluck

An intermission in a Jewish theater is almost as long as an act.

During the first few minutes of our chat Matilda never alluded to

Antomir nor to what had happened between us at Cooper Institute.

She made merry over the advertisements on the curtain and over

the story of the play explaining that the box had been forced on

one of her companions and that they had all come to see what

"historic opera" was like. She commented upon the musicians,

who were playing a Jewish melody, and on some of the scenes

that were being enacted in the big auditorium. The crowd was

buzzing and smiling good-humoredly, with a general air of

family-like sociability, some eating apple or candy. The faces of

some of the men were much in need of a shave.

Most of the women were in shirt-waists. Altogether the audience

reminded one of a crowd at a picnic. A boy tottering under the

weight of a basket laden with candy and fruit was singing his

wares. A pretty young woman stood in the center aisle near the

second row of seats, her head thrown back, her eyes fixed on the

first balcony, her plump body swaying and swaggering to the

music. One man, seated in a box across the theater from us, was

trying to speak to somebody in the box above ours. We could not

hear what he said, but his mimicry was eloquent enough. Holding

out a box of candy, he was facetiously offering to shoot some of

its contents into the mouth of the person he was addressing. One

woman, in an orchestra seat near our box, was discussing the play

with a woman in front of her. She could be heard all over the

theater. She was in ecstasies over the prima donna

"I tell you she can kill a person with her singing," she said,

admiringly.

"She tugs me by the heart and makes it melt. I never felt so

heartbroken in my life. May she live long."

This was the first opportunity I had had to take a good look at

Matilda since she had come to New York; for our first meeting

had been so brief and so embarrassing to me that I had come away

from it without a clear impression of her appearance

At first I found it difficult to look her in the face. The passionate

kisses I had given her twenty-three years before seemed to be

staring me out of countenance. She, however, was perfectly

unconstrained and smiled and laughed with contagious

exuberance. As we chatted I now and again grew absent-minded,

indulging in a mental comparison between the woman who was

talking to me and the one who had made me embrace her and so

cruelly trifled with my passion shortly before she raised the

money for my journey to America. The change that the years had

wrought in her appearance was striking, and yet it was the same

Matilda. Her brown eyes were still sparkingly full of life and her

mouth retained the sensuous expression of her youth. This and her

abrupt gestures gave her provocative charm

Nevertheless, she left me calm. It was an indescribable pleasure to

be with her, but my love for her was as dead as were the days

when I lodged in a synagogue. She never alluded to those days. To

listen to her, one would have thought that we had been seeing a

great deal of each other all along, and that small talk was the most

natural kind of conversation for us to carry on

All at once, and quite irrelevantly, she said: "I am awfully glad to

see you again. I did not treat you properly that time--at the

meeting, I mean.

Afterward I was very sorry."

"Were you?" I asked, flippantly.

"I wanted to write you, to ask you to come to see me, but--well,

you know how it is. Tell me something about yourself. At this

minute the twenty-three years seem like twenty-three weeks. But

this is no time to talk about it.

One wants hours, not a minute or two. I know, of course, that you

are a rich man. Are you a happy man? But, no, don't answer now.

The curtain will soon rise. Go back to your box, and come in

again after the next act. Will you?"

She ordered me about as she had done during my stay at her

mother's house, which offended and pleased me at once. During

the whole of the second act I looked at the stage without seeing or

hearing anything. The time when I fell in love with Matilda

sprang into life again. It really seemed as though the twenty-three

years were twenty-three weeks. My mother's death, her funeral;

Abner's Court; the uniformed old furrier with the side-whiskers,

his wife with her crutches; Naphtali with his curly hair and

near-sighted eyes; Reb Sender, his wife, the bully of the old

synagogue; Matilda's mother, and her old servant--all the human

figures and things that filled the eventful last two years of my life

at home loomed up with striking vividness before me

Matilda's affable greeting and her intimate brief talk were a

surprise to me. Did I appeal to her as the fellow who had once

kissed her? Had she always remembered me with a gleam of

romantic interest? Did I stir her merely as she stirred me--as a

living fragment of her past? Or was she trying to cultivate me in

the professional interests of her husband, who was practising

medicine in Harlem? When the curtain had fallen again Matilda

made her husband change seats with me. I was to stay by her side

through the rest of the performance. The partition between the

two boxes being only waist-high, the two parties were practically

joined into one and everybody was satisfied--everybody except

Mrs. Chaikin

"I suppose our company isn't good enough for Mr. Levinsky," she

said, aloud

When the performance was over we all went to Lorber's--the most

pretentious restaurant on the East Side. Matilda and I were mostly

left to ourselves. We talked of our native town and of her pious

mother, who had died a few years before, but we carefully

avoided the few weeks which I had spent in her mother's house,

when Matilda had encouraged my embraces. In answer to my

questions she told me something of her own and her husband's

revolutionary exploits. She spoke boastfully and yet reluctantly of

these things, as if it were a sacrilege to discuss them with a man

who was, after all, a "money-bag."

My impression was that they lived very modestly and that they

were more interested in their socialist affairs than in their income.

My theory that she wanted her husband to profit by her

acquaintance with me seemed to be exploded. She reminded me

of Elsie and her whole-hearted devotion to socialism. We mostly

spoke in Yiddish, and our Antomir enunciation was like a bond of

kinship between us, and yet I felt that she spoke to me in the

patronizing, didactical way which one adopts with a foreigner, as

though the world to which she belonged was one whose interests

were beyond my comprehension

She inquired about my early struggles and subsequent successes. I

told her of the studies I had pursued before I went into business,

of the English classics I had read, and of my acquaintance with

Spencer

"Do you remember what you told me about becoming an educated

man?" I said, eagerly. "Your words were always ringing in my

ears. It was owing to them that I studied for admission to college.

I was crazy to be a college man, but fate ordained otherwise. To

this day I regret it."

In dwelling on my successes I felt that I was too effusive and

emphatic; but I went on bragging in spite of myself. I tried to

correct the impression I was making on her by boasting of the

sums I had given to charity, but this made me feel smaller than

ever. However, my talk did not seem to arouse any criticism in her

mind. She listened to me as she might to the tale of a child

Referring to my unmarried state, she said, with unfeigned

sympathy: "This is really no life. You ought to get married." And

she added, gaily, "If you ever marry, you mustn't neglect to invite

me to the wedding."

"I certainly won't; you may be sure of that," I said

"You must come to see me. I'll call you up on the telephone some

day and we'll arrange it."

"I shall be very glad, indeed."

I departed in a queer state of mind. Her present identity failed to

touch a romantic chord in my heart. She was simply a memory,

like Dora. But as a memory she had rekindled some of the old

yearning in me. I was still in love with Anna, but at this moment I

was in love both with her and with the Matilda of twenty-three

years before. But this intense feeling for Matilda as a monument

of my past self did not last two days

The invitation she had promised to telephone never came

I came across a man whom I used to see at the Tevkins', and one

of the things he told me was that Anna had recently married a

high-school teacher

CHAPTER III

THE real estate boom collapsed. The cause of the

catastrophe lay in the nature, or rather in the unnaturalness, of the

"get-rich-quick" epidemic.

Its immediate cause, however, was a series of rent strikes inspired

and engineered by the Jewish socialists through their Yiddish

daily. One of the many artificialities of the situation had been a

progressive inflation of rent values. Houses had been continually

changing hands, being bought, not as a permanent investment, but

for speculation, whereupon each successive purchaser would raise

rents as a means of increasing the market price of his temporary

property. And so the socialists had organized a crusade that filled

the municipal courts with dispossess cases and turned the boom

into a panic

Hundreds of people who had become rich overnight now became

worse than penniless overnight. The Ghetto was full of dethroned

"kings for a day only." It seemed as if it all really had been a

dream

One of the men whose quickly made little fortune burst like a

bubble was poor Tevkin. I wondered how his children took the

socialist rent strikes

Nor did I escape uninjured when the crisis broke loose. I still had a

considerable sum in real estate, all my efforts to extricate it having

proved futile. My holdings were rapidly depreciating. In hundreds

of cases similar to mine equities were wiped out through the

speculators' inability to pay interest on mortgages or even taxes.

To be sure, things did not come to such a pass in my case, but

then some of the city lots or improved property in which I was

interested had been hit so hard as to be no longer worth the

mortgages on them

Volodsky lost almost everything except his courage and

speculative spirit

"Oh, it will come back," he once said to me, speaking of the boom

When I urged that it had been an unnatural growth he retorted that

it was the collapse of the boom which was unnatural. He was

scheming some sort of syndicate again

"It requires no money to make a lot of money," he said. "All it does

require is brains and some good luck."

Nevertheless, he coveted some of my money for his new scheme.

He did not succeed with me, but he found other "angels." He was

now quite in his element in the American atmosphere of

breathless enterprise and breakneck speed. When the violence of

the crisis had quieted down building operations were resumed on

a more natural basis. Men like Volodsky, with hosts of carpenters,

bricklayers, plumbers--all Russian or Galician Jews--continued to

build up the Bronx, Washington Heights, and several sections of

Brooklyn.

Vast areas of meadowland and rock were turned by them, as by a

magic wand, into densely populated avenues and streets of brick

and mortar. Under the spell of their activity cities larger than

Odessa sprang up within the confines of Greater New York in the

course of three or four years

Mrs. Chaikin came out of her speculations more than safe. She and

her husband, who is still in my employ, own half a dozen

tenement-houses. One day, on the first of the month, I met her in

the street with a large hand-bag and a dignified mien. She was out

collecting rent.

CHAPTER IV

IT was the spring of 1910. The twenty-fifth

anniversary of my coming to America was drawing near. The day

of an immigrant's arrival in his new home is like a birthday to

him. Indeed, it is more apt to claim his attention and to warm his

heart than his real birthday. Some of our immigrants do not even

know their birthday. But they all know the day when they came to

America. It is Landing Day with red capital letters. This, at any

rate, is the case with me. The day upon which I was born often

passes without my being aware of it.

The day when I landed in Hoboken, on the other hand, never

arrives without my being fully conscious of the place it occupies

in the calendar of my life. Is it because I do not remember myself

coming into the world, while I do remember my arrival in

America? However that may be, the advent of that day invariably

puts me in a sentimental mood which I never experience on the

day of my birth

It was 1910, then, and the twenty-fifth anniversary of my coming

was near at hand. Thoughts of the past filled me with mixed joy

and sadness. I was overcome with a desire to celebrate the day.

But with whom? Usually this is done by "ship brothers," as

East-Siders call fellow-immigrants who arrive here on the same

boat. It came back to me that I had such a ship brother, and that it

was Gitelson. Poor Gitelson! He was still working at his trade.

I had not seen him for years, but I had heard of him from time to

time, and I knew that he was employed by a ladies' tailor at

custom work somewhere in Brooklyn. (The custom-tailoring shop

he had once started for himself had proved a failure.) Also, I knew

how to reach a brother-in-law of his. The upshot was that I made

an appointment with Gitelson for him to be at my office on the

great day at 12 o'clock. I did so without specifying the object of

the meeting, but I expected that he would know

Finally the day arrived. It was a few minutes to 12. I was alone in

my private office, all in a fidget, as if the meeting I was expecting

were a love-tryst. Reminiscences and reflections were flitting

incoherently through my mind. Some of the events of the day

which I was about to celebrate loomed up like a ship seen in the

distance. My eye swept the expensive furniture of my office. I

thought of the way my career had begun. I thought of the Friday

evening when I met Gitelson on Grand Street, he an American

dandy and I in tatters. The fact that it was upon his advice and

with his ten dollars that I had become a cloak-maker stood out as

large as life before me. A great feeling of gratitude welled up in

me, of gratitude and of pity for my tattered self of those days.

Dear, kind Gitelson! Poor fellow! He was still working with his

needle. I was seized with a desire to do something for him.

I had never paid him those ten dollars. So I was going to do so

with "substantial interest" now. "I shall spend a few hundred

dollars on him--nay, a few thousand!" I said to myself. "I shall buy

him a small business. Let him end his days in comfort. Let him

know that his ship brother is like a real brother to him."

It was twenty minutes after 12 and I was still waiting for the

telephone to announce him. My suspense became insupportable.

"Is he going to disappoint me, the idiot?" I wondered. Presently

the telephone trilled. I seized the receiver

"Mr. Gitelson wishes to see Mr. Levinsky," came the familiar pipe

of my switchboard girl. "He says he has an appointment--"

"Let him come in at once," I flashed.

Two minutes later he was in my room. His forelock was still the

only bunch of gray hair on his head, but his face was pitifully

wizened. He was quite neatly dressed, as trained tailors will be,

even when they are poor, and at some distance I might have failed

to perceive any change in him. At close range, however, his

appearance broke my heart

"Do you know what sort of a day this is?" I asked, after shaking his

hand warmly.

"I should think I did," he answered, sheepishly. "Twenty-five years

ago at this time--"

He was at a loss for words

"Yes, it's twenty-five years, Gitelson," I rejoined. I was going to

indulge in reminiscences, to compare memories with him, but

changed my mind. I would rather not speak of our Landing Day

until we were seated at a dining-table and after we had drunk its

toast in champagne

"Come, let us have lunch together," I said, simply

I took him to the Waldorf-Astoria, where a table had been reserved

for us in a snug corner.

Gitelson was extremely bashful and his embarrassment infected

me. He was apparently at a loss to know what to do with the

various glasses, knives, forks. It was evident that he had never sat

at such a table before. The French waiter, who was silently

officious, seemed to be inwardly laughing at both of us. At the

bottom of my heart I cow before waiters to this day.

Their white shirt-fronts, reticence, and pompous bows make me

feel as if they saw through me and ridiculed my ways. They make

me feel as if my expensive clothes and ways ill became me

"Here is good health, Gitelson," I said in plain old Yiddish, as we

touched glasses. "Let us drink to the day when we arrived in

Castle Garden."

There was something forced, studied, in the way I uttered these

words. I was disgusted with my own voice. Gitelson only

simpered. He drained his glass, and the champagne, to which he

was not accustomed, made him tipsy at once. I tried to talk of our

ship, of the cap he had lost, of his timidity when we had found

ourselves in Castle Garden, of the policeman whom I asked to

direct us. But Gitelson only nodded and grinned and tittered. I

realized that I had made a mistake--that I should have taken him

to a more modest restaurant. But then the chasm between him and

me seemed to be too wide for us to celebrate as ship brothers in

any place

"By the way, Gitelson, I owe you something," I said, producing a

ten-dollar bill. "It was with your ten dollars that I learned to be a

cloak-operator and entered the cloak trade. Do you remember?" I

was going to add something about my desire to help him in some

substantial way, but he interrupted me

"Sure, I do," he said, with inebriate shamefacedness, as he received

the money and shoved it into the inside pocket of his vest. "It has

brought you good luck, hasn't it? And how about the interest? He,

he, he! You've kept it over twenty-three years. The interest must

be quite a little. He, he, he!"

"Of course I'll pay you the interest, and more, too. You shall get a

check."

"Oh, I was only joking."

"But I am not joking. You're going to get a check, all right."

He revolted me

I made out a check for two hundred dollars; tore it and made out

one for five hundred

He flushed, scanned the figure, giggled, hesitated, and finally

folded the check and pushed it into his inner vest pocket, thanking

me with drunken ardor

Some time later I was returning to my office, my heart heavy with

self-disgust and sadness. In the evening I went home, to the

loneliness of my beautiful hotel lodgings. My heart was still heavy

with distaste and sadness.

CHAPTER V

GUSSIE, the finisher-girl to whom I had once made

love with a view to marrying her for her money, worked in the

vicinity of my factory and I met her from time to time on the

Avenue. We kept up our familiar tone of former days. We would

pause, exchange some banter, and go our several ways. She was

over fifty now. She looked haggard and dried up and her hair was

copiously shot with gray

One afternoon she told me she had changed her shop, naming her

new employer

"Is it a good place to work in?" I inquired

"Oh, it's as good or as bad as any other place," she replied, with a

gay smile

"Mine is good," I jested

"That's what they all say

"Come to work for me and see for yourself."

"Will I get good wages?"

"Yes."

"How much?"

"Any price you name."

"Look at him," she said, as though addressing a third person. "Look

at the new millionaire."

"It might have been all yours. But you did not think I was good

enough for you." "You can keep it all to yourself and welcome."

"Well, will you come to work?"

"You can't do without me, can you? He can't get finisher-girls, the

poor fellow. Well, how much will you pay me?"

We agreed upon the price, but on taking leave she said, "I was

joking."

"What do you mean? Don't you want to work for me, Gussie?"

She shook her head

"Why?"

"I don't want you to think I begrudge you your millions. We'll be

better friends at a distance. Good-by."

"You're a funny girl, Gussie. Good-by."

A short time after this conversation I had trouble with the

Cloak-makers' Union, of which Gussie was one of the oldest and

most loyal members

The cause of the conflict was an operator named Blitt, a native of

Antomir, who had been working in my shop for some months. He

was a spare little fellow with a nose so compressed at the nostrils

that it looked as though it was inhaling some sharp, pleasant odor.

It gave his face a droll appearance, but his eyes, dark and large,

were very attractive. I had known him as a small boy in my

birthplace, where he belonged to a much better family than I

When Blitt was invited to join the Levinsky Antomir Society of my

employees he refused. It turned out that he was one of the active

spirits of the union and also an ardent member of the Socialist

party. His foreman had not the courage to discharge him, because

of my well-known predilection for natives of Antomir, so he

reported him to me as a dangerous fellow

"He isn't going to blow up the building, is he?" I said, lightly

"But he may do other mischief. He's one of the leaders of the

union."

"Let him lead."

The next time I looked at Blitt I felt uncomfortable. His refusal to

join my Antomir organization hurt me, and his activities in the

union and at socialist gatherings kindled my rancor. His

compressed nose revolted me now.

I wanted to get rid of him

Not that I had remained inflexible in my views regarding the

distribution of wealth in the world. Some of the best-known

people in the country were openly taking the ground that the poor

man was not getting a "square deal." To sympathize with

organized labor was no longer "bad form," some society women

even doing picket duty for Jewish factory-girls out on strike.

Socialism, which used to be declared utterly un-American, had

come to be almost a vogue. American colleges were leavened

with it, while American magazines were building up stupendous

circulations by exposing the corruption of the mighty. Public

opinion had, during the past two decades, undergone a striking

change in this respect. I had watched that change and I could not

but be influenced by it. For all my theorizing about the "survival

of the fittest" and the "dying off of the weaklings," I could not help

feeling that, in an abstract way, the socialists were not altogether

wrong.

The case was different, however, when I considered it in

connection with the concrete struggle of trade-unionism (which

among the Jewish immigrants was practically but another name

for socialism) against low wages or high rent.

I must confess, too, that the defeat with which I had met at

Tevkin's house had greatly intensified my hostility to socialists.

As I have remarked in a previous chapter, I ascribed my fiasco to

the socialist atmosphere that surrounded Anna. I was embittered

The socialists were constantly harping on "class struggle," "class

antagonism," "class psychology." I would dismiss it all as absurd,

but I did hate the trade-unions, particularly those of the East Side.

Altogether there was too much socialism among the masses of the

Ghetto, I thought

Blitt now seemed to be the embodiment of this "class antagonism."

"Ah, he won't join my Antomir Society!" I would storm and fume

and writhe inwardly. "That's a tacit protest against the whole

society as an organization of 'slaves.' It means that the society

makes meek, obedient servants of my employees and helps me

fleece them. As if they did not earn in my shop more than they

would anywhere else! As if they could all get steady work outside

my place! And what about the loans and all sorts of other favors

they get from me? If they worked for their own fathers they could

not be treated better than they are treated here." I felt outraged

I rebuked myself for making much ado about nothing. Indeed, this

was a growing weakness with me. Some trifle unworthy of

consideration would get on my nerves and bother me like a grain

of sand in the eye. Was I getting old? But, no, I felt in the prime of

life, full of vigor, and more active and more alive to the passions

than a youth

Whenever I chanced to be on the floor where Blitt worked I would

avoid looking in his direction. His presence irritated me. "How

ridiculous," I often thought. "One would imagine he's my

conscience and that's why I want to get rid of him." As a

consequence, I dared not send him away, and, as a consequence of

this, he irritated me more than ever

Finally, one afternoon, acting on the spur of the moment, I called

his foreman to me and told him to discharge him

A committee of the union called on me. I refused to deal with

them. The upshot was a strike--not merely for the return of Blitt to

my employment, but also for higher wages and the recognition of

the union. The organization was not strong, and only a small

number of my men were members of it, but when these went out

all the others followed their contagious example, the members of

my Antomir Society not excepted

The police gave me ample protection, and there were thousands of

cloak-makers who remained outside the union, so that I soon had

all the "hands" I wanted; but the conflict caused me all sorts of

other mortifications. For one thing, it gave me no end of hostile

publicity. The socialist Yiddish daily, which had an

overwhelmingly wide circulation now, printed reports of meetings

at which I had been hissed and hooted. I was accused of bribing

corrupt politicians who were supposed to help me suppress the

strike by means of police clubs. I was charged with bringing

disgrace upon the Jewish people

The thought of Tevkin reading these reports and of Anna hearing

of them hurt me cruelly. I could see Moissey reveling in the hisses

with which my name was greeted. And Elsie? Did she take part in

some of the demonstrations against me? Were she and Anna

collecting funds for my striking employees? The reports in the

American papers also were inclined to favor the strikers.

Public opinion was against me. What galled me worse than all,

perhaps, was the sympathy shown for the strikers by some

German-Jewish financiers and philanthropists, men whose

acquaintance it was the height of my ambition to cultivate. All of

which only served to pour oil into the flames of my hatred for the

union

Bender implored me to settle the strike

"The union doesn't amount to a row of pins," he urged. "A week or

two after we settle, things will get back to their old state."

"Where's your backbone, Bender?" I exploded. "If you had your

way, those fellows would run the whole business. You have no

sense of dignity. And yet you were born in America."

I was always accompanied by a detective

One of the strikers was in my pay. Every morning at a fixed hour

he would call at a certain hotel, where he reported the doings of

the organization to Bender and myself. One of the things I thus

learned was that the union was hard up and constantly exacting

loans from Gussie and several other members who had

savings-bank accounts. One day, however, when the secretary

appealed to her for a further loan with which to pay fines for

arrested pickets and assist some of the neediest strikers, she flew

into a passion. "What do you want of me, murderers that you are?"

she cried, bursting into tears.

"Haven't I done enough? Have you no hearts?"

A minute or two later she yielded

"Bleed me, bleed me, cruel people that you are!" she said, pointing

at her heart, as she started toward her savings bank

I was moved. When my spy had departed I paced the floor for

some minutes.

Then, pausing, I smilingly declared to Bender my determination to

ask the union for a committee. He was overjoyed and shook my

hand solemnly

One of my bookkeepers was to communicate with the strike

committee in the afternoon. Two hours before the time set for

their meeting I saw in one of the afternoon papers an interview

with the president of the union. His statements were so unjust to

me, I thought, and so bitter, that the fighting blood was again up

in my veins

But the image of Gussie giving her hard-earned money to help the

strikers haunted me. The next morning I went to Atlantic City for

a few days, letting Bender "do as he pleased." The strike was

compromised, the men obtaining a partial concession of their

demands and Blitt waiving his claim to his former job

CHAPTER VI

MY business continued to grow. My consumption

of raw material reached gigantic dimensions, so much so that at

times, when I liked a pattern, I would buy up the entire output and

sell some of it to smaller manufacturers at a profit.

Gradually I abandoned the higher grades of goods, developing my

whole business along the lines of popular prices. There are two

cloak-and-suit houses that make a specialty of costly garments.

These enjoy high reputations for taste and are the real arbiters of

fashion in this country, one of the two being known in the trade as

Little Pans; but the combined volume of business of both these

firms is much smaller than mine.

My deals with one mill alone--the largest in the country and the

one whose head had come to my rescue when my affairs were on

the brink of a precipice--now exceeded a million dollars at a

single purchase to be delivered in seven months. The mills often

sell me at a figure considerably lower than the general market

price. They do so, first, because of the enormous quantities I buy,

and, second, because of the "boost" a fabric receives from the very

fact of being handled by my house. One day, for instance, I said to

the president of a certain mill: "I like this cloth of yours. I feel like

making a big thing of it, provided you can let me have an inside

figure." We came to terms, and I gave him an advance order for

nine thousand pieces. When smaller manufacturers and

department-store buyers heard that I had bought an immense

quantity of that pattern its success was practically established. As

a consequence, the mill was in a position to raise the price of the

cloth to others, so that it amply made up for the low figure at

which it had sold the goods to me.

Judged by the market price of the raw material, my profit on a

garment did not exceed fifty cents. But I paid for the raw material

seventy-five cents less than the market price, so that my total

profit was one dollar and twenty-five cents. Still, there have been

instances when I lost seventy-five thousand dollars in one month

because goods fell in price or because a certain style failed to

move and I had to sell it below cost to get it out of the way. To be

sure, cheaper goods are less likely to be affected by the caprices

of style than higher grades, which is one of several reasons why I

prefer to produce garments of popular prices.

I do not employ my entire capital in my cloak business, half of it,

or more, being invested in "quick assets." Should I need more

ready cash than I have, I could procure it at a lower rate than what

those assets bring me. I can get half a million dollars, from two

banks, without rising from my desk--by merely calling those

banks up on the telephone. For this I pay, say, three and a half or

four per cent., for I am a desirable customer at the banks; and, as

my quick assets bring me an average of five per cent., I make at

least one per cent. on the money

Another way of making my money breed money is by early

payments to the mills. Not only can I do without their credit, but I

can afford to pay them six months in advance. This gives me an

"anticipation" allowance at the rate of six per cent. per annum,

while money costs me at the banks three or four per cent. per

annum.

All this is good sport.

I own considerable stock in the very mills with which I do

business, which has a certain moral effect on their relations with

my house. For a similar purpose I am a shareholder in the large

mail-order houses that buy cloaks and suits of me. I hold shares of

some department stores also, but of late I have grown somewhat

shy of this kind of investment, the future of a department store

being as uncertain as the future of the neighborhood in which it is

located. Mail-order houses, on the other hand, have the whole

country before them, and their overwhelming growth during past

years was one of the conspicuous phenomena in the business life

of the nation. I love to watch their operations spread over the map,

and I love to watch the growth of American cities, the shifting of

their shopping centers, the consequent vicissitudes, the decline of

some houses, the rise of others. American Jews of German origin

are playing a foremost part in the retail business of the country,

large or small, and our people, Russian and Galician Jews, also are

making themselves felt in it, being, in many cases, in partnership

with Gentiles or with their own coreligionists of German descent.

The king of the great mail-order business, a man with an annual

income of many millions, is the son of a Polish Jew. He is one of

the two richest Jews in America, having built up his vast fortune

in ten or fifteen years. As I have said before, I know hundreds, if

not thousands, of merchants, Jews and Gentiles, throughout this

country and Canada, so I like to keep track of their careers

This, too, is good sport

Of course, it is essential to study the business map in the interests

of my own establishment, but I find intellectual excitement in it as

well, and, after all, I am essentially an intellectual man, I think

There are retailers in various sections of the country whom I have

helped financially--former buyers, for example, who went into

business on their own hook with my assistance. This is good

business, for while these merchants must be left free to buy in the

open market, they naturally give my house precedence. But here

again I must say in fairness to myself that business interest is not

the only motive that induces me to do them these favors.

Indeed, in some cases I do it without even expecting to get my

money back.

It gives me moral satisfaction, for which money is no measure of

value.

CHAPTER VII

AM I happy? There are moments when I am overwhelmed by a

sense of my success and ease. I become aware that thousands of

things which had formerly been forbidden fruit to me are at my

command now. I distinctly recall that crushing sense of being

debarred from everything, and then I feel as though the whole

world were mine. One day I paused in front of an old East Side

restaurant that I had often passed in my days of need and despair.

The feeling of desolation and envy with which I used to peek in its

windows came back to me. It gave me pangs of self-pity for my

past and a thrilling sense of my present power. The prices that had

once been prohibitive seemed so wretchedly low now. On another

occasion I came across a Canal Street merchant of whom I used to

buy goods for my push-cart. I said to myself: "There was a time

when I used to implore this man for ten dollars' worth of goods,

when I regarded him as all-powerful and feared him. Now he

would be happy to shake hands with me."

I recalled other people whom I used to fear and before whom I

used to humiliate myself because of my poverty. I thought of the

time when I had already entered the cloak business, but was

struggling and squirming and constantly racking my brains for

some way of raising a hundred dollars; when I would cringe with

a certain East Side banker and vainly beg him to extend a small

note of mine, and come away in a sickening state of despair

At this moment, as these memories were filing by me, I felt as

though now there were nobody in the world who could inspire me

with awe or render me a service

And yet in all such instances I feel a peculiar yearning for the very

days when the doors of that restaurant were closed to me and

when the Canal Street merchant was a magnate of commerce in

my estimation. Somehow, encounters of this kind leave me

dejected. The gloomiest past is dearer than the brightest present.

In my case there seems to be a special reason for feeling this way.

My sense of triumph is coupled with a brooding sense of

emptiness and insignificance, of my lack of anything like a great,

deep interest

I am lonely. Amid the pandemonium of my six hundred

sewing-machines and the jingle of gold which they pour into my

lap I feel the deadly silence of solitude

I spend at least one evening a week at the Benders. I am fond of

their children and I feel pleasantly at home at their house. I am a

frequent caller at the Nodelmans', and enjoy their hospitality even

more than that of the Benders. I go to the opera, to the theaters,

and to concerts, and never alone. There are merry suppers, and

some orgies in which I take part, but when I go home I suffer a

gnawing aftermath of loneliness and desolation

I have a fine summer home, with servants, automobiles, and

horses. I share it with the Bender family and we often have

visitors from the city, but, no matter how large and gay the crowd

may be, the country makes me sad

I know bachelors who are thoroughly reconciled to their solitude

and even enjoy it. I am not.

No, I am not happy

In the city I occupy a luxurious suite of rooms in a high-class hotel

and keep an excellent chauffeur and valet. I give myself every

comfort that money can buy. But there is one thing which I crave

and which money cannot buy--happiness.

Many a pretty girl is setting her cap at me, but I know that it is

only my dollars they want to marry. Nor do I care for any of them,

while the woman to whom my heart is calling--Anna--is married

to another man

I dream of marrying some day. I dread to think of dying a lonely

man

Sometimes I have a spell of morbid amativeness and seem to be

falling in love with woman after woman. There are periods when I

can scarcely pass a woman in the street without scanning her face

and figure. When I see the crowds returning from work in the

cloak-and-waist district I often pause to watch the groups of girls

as they walk apart from the men. Their keeping together, as if they

formed a separate world full of its own interests and secrets,

makes a peculiar appeal to me

Once, in Florida, I thought I was falling in love with a rich Jewish

girl whose face had a bashful expression of a peculiar type. There

are different sorts of bashfulness. This girl had the bashfulness of

sin, as I put it to myself. She looked as if her mind harbored illicit

thoughts which she was trying to conceal. Her blushes seemed to

be full of sex and her eyes full of secrets. She was not a pretty girl

at all, but her "guilty look" disturbed me as long as we were

stopping in the same place

But through all these ephemeral infatuations and interests I am in

love with Anna

From time to time I decide to make a "sensible" marriage, and

study this woman or that as a possible candidate, but so far

nothing has come of it

There was one woman whom I might have married if she had not

been a Gentile--one of the very few who lived in the family hotel

in which I had my apartments. At first I set her down for an

adventuress seeking the acquaintance of rich Jews for some

sinister purpose. But I was mistaken. She was a woman of high

character. Moreover, she and her aged mother, with whom she

lived, had settled in that hotel long before it came to be patronized

by our people. She was a widow of over forty, with a good,

intellectual face, well read in the better sense of the term, and no

fool. Many of our people in the hotel danced attendance upon her

because she was a Gentile woman, but all of them were really

fond of her. The great point was that she seemed to have a sincere

liking for our people. This and the peculiar way her shoulders

would shake when she laughed was, in fact, what first drew me to

her. We grew chummy and I spent many an hour in her company

In my soliloquies I often speculated and theorized on the question

of proposing to her. I saw clearly that it would be a mistake. It

was not the faith of my fathers that was in the way. It was that

medieval prejudice against our people which makes so many

marriages between Jew and Gentile a failure. It frightened me

One evening we sat chatting in the bright lobby of the hotel,

discussing human nature, and she telling me something of the

good novels she had read.

After a brief pause I said: "I enjoy these talks immensely. I don't

think there is another person with whom I so love to talk of

human beings."

She bowed with a smile that shone of something more than mere

appreciation of the compliment. And then I uttered in the simplest

possible accents: "It's really a pity that there is the chasm of race

between us. Otherwise I don't see why we couldn't be happy

together."

I was in an adventurous mood and ready, even eager, to marry her.

But her answer was a laugh, as if she took it for a joke; and,

though I seemed to sense intimacy and encouragement in that

laugh, it gave me pause. I felt on the brink of a fatal blunder, and I

escaped before it was too late.

"But then," I hastened to add, "real happiness in a case like this is

perhaps not the rule, but the exception. That chasm continues to

yawn throughout the couple's married life, I suppose."

"That's an interesting point of view," she said, a non-committal

smile on her lips

She tactfully forbore to take up the discussion, and I soon dropped

the subject. We remained friends

It was this woman who got me interested in good, modern fiction.

The books she selected for me interested me greatly. Then it was

that the remarks I had heard from Moissey Tevkin came to my

mind. They were illuminating

Most of the people at my hotel are German-American Jews. I

know other Jews of this class. I contribute to their charity

institutions. Though an atheist, I belong to one of their

synagogues. Nor can I plead the special feeling which had partly

accounted for my visits at the synagogue of the Sons of Antomir

while I was engaged to Kaplan's daughter. I am a member of that

synagogue chiefly because it is a fashionable synagogue. I often

convict myself of currying favor with the German Jews. But then

German-American Jews curry favor with Portuguese-American

Jews, just as we all curry favor with Gentiles and as American

Gentiles curry favor with the aristocracy of Europe

I often long for a heart-to-heart talk with some of the people of my

birthplace. I have tried to revive my old friendships with some of

them, but they are mostly poor and my prosperity stands between

us in many ways

Sometimes when I am alone in my beautiful apartments, brooding

over these things and nursing my loneliness, I say to myself:

"There are cases when success is a tragedy."

There are moments when I regret my whole career, when my very

success seems to be a mistake.

I think that I was born for a life of intellectual interest. I was

certainly brought up for one. The day when that accident turned

my mind from college to business seems to be the most

unfortunate day in my life. I think that I should be much happier

as a scientist or writer, perhaps. I should then be in my natural

element, and if I were doomed to loneliness I should have

comforts to which I am now a stranger. That's the way I feel every

time I pass the abandoned old building of the City College.

The business world contains plenty of successful men who have no

brains.

Why, then, should I ascribe my triumph to special ability? I should

probably have made a much better college professor than a

cloak-manufacturer, and should probably be a happier man, too. I

know people who have made much more money than I and whom

I consider my inferiors in every respect.

Many of our immigrants have distinguished themselves in science,

music, or art, and these I envy far more than I do a billionaire. As

an example of the successes achieved by Russian Jews in America

in the last quarter of a century it is often pointed out that the man

who has built the greatest sky-scrapers in the country, including

the Woolworth Building, is a Russian Jew who came here a

penniless boy. I cannot boast such distinction, but then I have

helped build up one of the great industries of the United States,

and this also is something to be proud of. But I should readily

change places with the Russian Jew, a former Talmud student like

myself, who is the greatest physiologist in the New World, or with

the Russian Jew who holds the foremost place among American

song-writers and whose soulful compositions are sung in almost

every English-speaking house in the world. I love music to

madness. I yearn for the world of great singers, violinists, pianists.

Several of the greatest of them are of my race and country, and I

have met them, but all my acquaintance with them has brought me

is a sense of being looked down upon as a money-bag striving to

play the Maæcenas. I had a similar experience with a sculptor,

also one of our immigrants, an East Side boy who had met with

sensational success in Paris and London. I had him make my bust.

His demeanor toward me was all that could have been desired.

We even cracked Yiddish jokes together and he hummed bits of

synagogue music over his work, but I never left his studio without

feeling cheap and wretched.

When I think of these things, when I am in this sort of mood, I pity

myself for a victim of circumstances.

At the height of my business success I feel that if I had my life to

live over again I should never think of a business career.

I don't seem to be able to get accustomed to my luxurious life. I am

always more or less conscious of my good clothes, of the high

quality of my office furniture, of the power I wield over the men

in my pay. As I have said in another connection, I still have a

lurking fear of restaurant waiters.

I can never forget the days of my misery. I cannot escape from my

old self.

My past and my present do not comport well. David, the poor lad

swinging over a Talmud volume at the Preacher's Synagogue,

seems to have more in common with my inner identity than David

Levinsky, the well-known cloak-manufacturer.