FIRST CORINTHIANS
CHAP. XIII., v. 4
Since this must deal in great part with the Finkelstein family and what
charity did for them, I began the task by seeking in the pages of an
invaluable book called Ten Thousand Familiar Quotations for a line that
suitably might serve as the text to my chapter. Delving there I came
upon abundant material, all of it more or less appropriate to our
present purpose. There were revealed at least a half a dozen extracts
from the works of writers of an established standing that might be made
to apply. For instance, Wordsworth, an English poet of the Early
Victorian Era, that period which gave so much of rhythmic thought to
Britain and so much of antirhythmic furniture to us, is credited with
having said:
_The charities that soothe and heal and bless
Are scattered at the feet of man like flowers._
Now that passage, at first blush, appeared exactly to fit the
Finkelsteins. Most certainly charities were scattered at their feet and
likewise showered on their heads.
However, before making a definite choice, I went deeper into this handy
volume. As a result, I exhumed an expression attributed to Pope--not one
of the Roman Popes, but Pope, Alex. (b. 1688; d. 1744)--to the effect
that
_In faith and hope the world will disagree,
But all mankind's concern is charity._
That statement likewise proved in a measure applicable. To the
Finkelsteins it must have seemed that all mankind's concern was charity,
devised for their especial benefit.
Now Hood takes an opposite view. In that choppy style of versification
so characteristic of this writer, Hood is discovered saying:
_Alas for the rarity
Of Christian charity
Under the sun!_
Speaking with particular reference to the case in hand I must
respectfully but nevertheless firmly take issue with the late Hood.
Assuredly the components of this particular household group had no cause
to cavil concerning the rarity of Christian charity. Christian charity
went miles out of its way to lavish rich treasures from a full heart
upon them. Under the sun, too, under the rays of an ardent and a
scorching sun, was some of it bestowed. But of that phase, more--as the
fancy writers say--anon.
The Scriptures were found to abound in reference to this most precious
of the human virtues. What does Peter say? Peter--First Epistle, fourth
chapter and eighth verse--says: "Charity shall cover the multitude of
sins." Here, too, a point might be stretched without giving offence to
any interested party. I cannot deny there were a multitude of
Finkelsteins. That, there is no gainsaying.
Elsewhere in the Good Book it is set forth: "Though I speak with the
tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as
sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal; ... and"--furthermore--"though I
have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity,
I am nothing."
One of the most significant recollections of at least two members of the
Finkelstein family in their experiences with the manifestations of
charity was associated with mountains. And was not the occasion of the
outing of the _Evening Dispatch's_ Fresh Air Fund made glad by the
presence and the activities of Prof. Washington Carter's All-Coloured
Silver Cornet Band? If ever you heard this organisation you would know
that, when it came to sounding brass and cymbals which tinkled when not
engaged in clashing, no band had anything whatsoever on Prof. Washington
Carter's.
But it was hard by, in the Testaments, that I happened on the one verse
which seemed best to sum up the situation in its more general aspects;
and notably the first three words of the said verse. The text has been
chosen, therefore, after much consideration of the subject and its
merits.
To proceed: In Pike Street, approximately midway of a block that enjoys
the dubious distinction of being a part of the most congested district
of the globe, up four flights of stairs and thence back to the extreme
rear, the Finkelstein family, at the time of its discovery, resided.
There were many of them and their lot was very lowly. To begin at the
top, there was Papa Finkelstein, a man bearded and small, shrinking,
unobtrusive and diffident; fashioned with sloping shoulders and an
indented chest as though in his extreme youth, when his bones were
supple and yielding, a partly successful effort had been made to crowd
him, head first, into a narrow-mouthed jar. His back was bent, for he
was of the race that for more than nineteen centuries has borne,
palfrey-like, upon its patient spines the persecutions of the world.
Next in order came Mamma Finkelstein, hiding her dark head beneath a wig
of slick brown horsehair in accordance with the same ritual which
ordained that her husband should touch not the corners of his beard. To
attend to the business of multiplying and replenishing the earth with
Finkelsteins was her chief mission in life. From the family stepladder
of these two no rungs were missing. Indeed, about a third of the way
down there was a double rung--to wit, twins. The married life of the
pair extended over a period of less than eleven years and already there
were eight little Finkelsteins, ranging from little to littler to
littlest.
Papa Finkelstein was by profession an old-clo' man. It was his custom to
go into the favoured sections where people laid aside their weathered
habiliments instead of continuing to wear them, and there watching on
street corners to waylay pedestrians of an ample and prosperous aspect,
and to inquire of them in his timid and twisted English, whether they
had any old clothes to sell. A prospective seller being by this method
interested, Papa Finkelstein would accompany the other to his
apartment--follow him, rather--and when discarded garments had been
fetched forth from closets and piled in a heap upon the floor he would
gaze deprecatingly at the accumulation and then, with the air of one who
courts ruin by his excessive generosity, tender one dollar and
thirty-five cents for the entire lot.
So far so good, this course being in perfect accord with the ethics of
the old-clo' business. But if, as most generally, the owner of the
raiment indignantly declined the first offer Papa Finkelstein was at a
loss to proceed with the negotiations. The chaffering; the bargaining;
the raising of the amount in ten-cent advances, each advance accompanied
by agonised outcry; the pretended departure; the reluctant return from
the door; the protest; the entreaty; the final gesture, betokening
abject and complete surrender, with which the buyer came up to two
dollars and fifteen cents--all this, so agreeable to the nature of the
born old-clo' man, was quite beyond him. Oftener than not, the trading
ended in no trade.
Or if a bargain was arrived at, if he bore away his bundled purchases to
the old-clothes mart on Bayard Street, just off the Bowery, where daily
the specialist in sick hats, let us say, swaps decrepit odd trousers and
enfeebled dress waistcoats for wares more suitable to his needs, still
he tempted bankruptcy. Sharper wits than his, by sheer weight of
dominance, bore him down and trafficked him, as the saying goes, out of
his eyeteeth. He could have taken over a tannery and run it into a
shoestring in no time at all. Many a day was there when he returned home
at eventide with nothing to show for his day's industry except
lamentable memories and two tired flat feet.
Lacking the commercial instinct, he was a failure in trade; lacking,
too, the artistic, neither would he have made headway with his
coreligionists as a professional _Schnorrer_. By persistent and
devoutful attendance upon synagogue services, by the constant exhibition
of his poverty in public places, he might have enlisted the sympathies
of the benevolent among his fellow worshippers. But he was a dilettante
in the practice of piety, even as in the practice of the old-clo'
business. Except as the head of a family, he was what this world is
pleased to call a failure.
From all this I would not have you jump at the conclusion that Papa and
Mamma Finkelstein and their steadily accruing progeny constituted an
unhappy group. Mere precarious existence and the companionship of one
another spelled for them contentment. The swarming East Side satisfied
them as an abiding place. To the adults it was a better home by far than
the drear, dreadful land of pogroms and Black Hundreds from which they
had fled; to the younger ones it was the only home they had ever known.
They were used to its tormented sky lines, faced in on either side by
tall tenements and blocked across by the structures of elevated roads
and the stone loops of viaducts; they were used to its secondhand
sunshine that filtered down to them through girders and spans. To them
the high arch of the Bridge approach was an acceptable substitute for
the rainbow; their idea of the profusion of Nature was a tiny square,
containing many green benches, a circular band stand, and here and there
a spindling tree.
Having nothing they craved for nothing. When there was food they ate
thereof; _kosher_ food preferably, though the food of the _Goyim_ was
not despised. When there was none they went without, feeding on the
thought of past feasts and the hope of future ones. Being without
knowledge of the commoner rule of hygiene, their days were neither
enhanced by its advantages nor disturbed by its observances.
With the coming of the winter Mamma Finkelstein sewed up her offspring,
all and sundry, in their heavy undergarments. Only one consideration
ever interposed to prevent her from so doing--the occasional absence of
any heavy undergarments in which to sew them up. To the pores, which
always ye have with ye, she gave no heed. An interrupted duct more or
less meant nothing to her, she being serenely unaware of the existence
of such things as ducts, anyhow. In the springtime she cut the stitches
and removed the garments, or such portions of them as had not been taken
up by natural process of absorption, finding her young, as now newly
revealed, to be pinkish, though soiled as to their skins, and in every
regard hale, hearty and wholesome.
Thus abided the Finkelsteins in their dire and happy extremity at the
time of their discovery. The manner of their being discovered came about
as follows:
Christmastide impended. The spirit of it was every where reflected: in
the price tags; in the swollen ankles and aching insteps of shop girls
on their feet behind counters twelve to fifteen hours a day; in the
harassed countenances and despairing eyes of shoppers; in the heaving
sides and drooping heads of wearied delivery-wagon teams; in the
thoughts of the children of the rich, dissatisfied because there was
nothing Santa Claus could bring them they didn't already have; in the
thoughts of the children of the poor, happy as they pressed their cold
little noses against the plate-glass fronts of toy shop windows and made
discriminating selection of the treasures which they would like for
Santa to bring them, but knowing at the same time he couldn't because of
his previous engagements among the best families.
This all-pervading spirit penetrated even into the newspaper offices,
borne thither upon the flapping wings of the full-page display
advertisements of our leading retail establishments. One of the
papers--the _Morning Advocate_--compiled a symposium of paragraphed
miseries under the title of the One Hundred Most Deserving Cases of
Charity, and on the Monday before Christmas printed it with a view to
enlisting the aid of the kindly disposed. The list was culled largely
from the files of various philanthropic organisations. But it so befell
that a reporter, who had been detailed on these assignments, was passing
through Pike Street on his way back to the office from one of the
settlement houses when he encountered Papa Finkelstein, homeward bound
after a particularly disappointing business day uptown.
The reporter was impressed much by the despondent droop of the little
man's sloping shoulders and by the melancholy smoulder in his big, dark
eyes; but more was he impressed by the costume of Papa Finkelstein. It
was a part of Papa Finkelstein's burden of affliction that he
customarily wore winter clothes in the summertime and summer clothes in
the wintertime. On this gusty, raw December day he wore somebody's
summer suit--a much larger somebody evidently--and a suit that in its
youth had been of light-coloured, lightweight flannel. It was still
lightweight.
Infolded within its voluminous breadths the present wearer shivered
visibly and drew his chilled hands farther up into its flapping sleeve
ends until he resembled the doubly mutilated victim of a planing-mill
mishap. If his expression was woebegone, his shoe soles were more--they
practically were all-begone. A battered derby hat--size about seven and
five-eighths--threatened total extinguishment of his face, being
prevented from doing so only by the circumstance of its brim resting and
pressing upon the upper flanges of the owner's ears. They were ears
providentially designed for such employment. Broad, wide and droopy,
they stood out from the sides of Papa Finkelstein's head like the horns
of the caribou.
This reporter was a good reporter. He knew a human-interest story when
he met it walking in the road. He turned about and tagged Papa
Finkelstein to his domicile and there, after briefly inspecting the
Finkelstein household in all its wealth of picturesque destitution, he
secured the names and the address from the head of it, who perhaps gave
the desired information all the more readily because he had not the
slightest idea of what use this inquiring stranger wished to make of it.
Half an hour later the reporter was saying to the irritable functionary
in charge of the _Advocate's_ news desk:
"Oh, so-so; just fair to middling, most of them; about the usual run of
shad. But, say, I've got one bird of a case. I dug it up myself--it's
not down on any of the records I got from the charity people. When it
comes to being plumb down and out none of them has anything on the meek
and lowly Finkelsteins."
"Good!" said the news editor. "You might lead with it if you want to.
No, I guess you'd better run 'em alphabetically--it won't do to be
playing favourites."
Mark now, how a little flame may kindle a large blaze: The afternoon
half sister of the _Morning Advocate_ was the _Evening Dispatch_.
Between the two papers, owned as they were by the same gentleman and
issued from the same printshop, a bitter rivalry prevailed; it generally
does in such instances.
On Tuesday morning the city editor of the _Evening Dispatch_ ran an
agile and practiced eye through the story the _Advocate_ had printed.
With his shears he chopped out the first column of it. With his pencil
he ringed one paragraph in the scissored section and then he lifted his
voice and called to him a young woman professionally known as Betty
Gwin, who sat in the city room at a desk somewhat withdrawn from copy
readers, rewriters and leg men. This distinction of comparative
aloofness was hers by right, she being a special-feature writer, under
yearly contract, and, therefore, belonging to the aristocracy of the
craft.
After the custom of her sex Miss Betty Gwin--whose real name, I may
state, in confidence, was Ferguson--first put a hand up to be sure that
her hair was quite right and then put it behind her to be sure her belt
made proper connection with her skirt at the back; and then she answered
her superior's call. Answering it, all about her betokened confidence
and competence. And why shouldn't it? As a pen-smith this young person
acknowledged no superiors anywhere. Her troupe of trained performing
adjectives was admitted to be the smartest in town. Moreover, she was
artistically ambidextrous. Having written a story she would illustrate
it with her own hand. Her drawings were replete with lithesome curves;
so, too, was her literary style. None but a Betty Gwin could write what
she wrote; none but a Betty Gwin properly illustrate it afterward.
"Fergy," said the city editor, "here's a beaut for you--right in your
line. Full of that heart-throb junk nine ways from the jack. Those
idiots upstairs gave it ten lines when it was worth six sticks all by
itself--buried it when they should have played it up. You run down to
this number and get a good, gummy, pathetic yarn. We'll play it up for
to-morrow, with a strong picture layout and a three-col. head. Might
call it: 'What Christmas Means for the Whatyoumaycall'em Family and What
Christmas Might Mean for Them!' Get me?"
He passed over the clipping. In a glance his star comprehended the
pencilled passage.
"Judging from the name and the neighbourhood Christmas wouldn't excite
this family much, anyhow," she said.
"What do you care?" said her chief crisply. "There's a story there--go
get it!"
Doubtlessly the Christmas spirit got into Betty Gwin's typewriter keys.
Certainly it got into her inkpot and deposited the real essence of the
real sob stuff there. The story she wrote trickled pathos from every
balanced paragraph; there was pity in the periods and sentiment in the
semicolons. As for the exclamation-points, they simply were elongated
tear drops. It was one of the best stories Betty Gwin ever wrote. She
said so herself--openly. But the picture that went with the story was
absolutely diademic; it crowned figures of speech with tiaras of the
graphic art. It showed Mamma Finkelstein seated on an upended box, which
once had contained pickled herrings, surrounded by the eight little
Finkelsteins. The children looked like ragged cherubs.
To accomplish this result it had been necessary for Miss Gwin to depart
somewhat from a faithful delineation of the originals. But of what value
is the creative ability unless it be used to create? I ask you that and
pause for a reply. Not that the junior Finkelsteins were homely; without
an exception they were handsome and well-formed. A millionaire might
have been proud to own them.
But the trouble was, the Old Masters, who first painted cherubim, were
mainly Italians, and for a variety of reasons chose their models from a
race other than that to which the Finkelsteins appertained. To make her
portraits conform with the popular conceptions of cherubs Miss Gwin saw
fit to--shall we say?--conventionalise certain features. Indeed, when it
came to reproducing for publication the physical aspect of Master Solly
Finkelstein she did more than conventionalise--she idealised. Otherwise
subscribers, giving the picture a cursory inspection, might have been
led to believe that this cherub's wings had sprouted mighty high up on
him. For Solly, eldest man child of the Finkelstein brood, had inherited
the paternal ear--not all of it, as we know, but an ample and
conspicuous sufficiency. Yet, with his ears trimmed, he, on his own
merits, had enough of sombre child beauty for any seven-year-older
anywhere. So Betty Gwin trimmed them--with her drawing pencil.
The bright light of publicity having been directed upon this cheerfully
forlorn family, results followed. Of the publicity its beneficiaries
knew nothing. Such papers as Papa Finkelstein read were Yiddish papers;
he was no bookworm at that. Of the results, though, they were all
speedily made aware.
Miss Gwin embodied the original and pioneer one of the forces speedily
set marching to the relief of the Finkelsteins. Persons of a
philanthropic leaning, reading what she had written and beholding what
she had drawn, were straightway moved to forward, in care of that young
author and the publication which she served, various small sums of money
to be conveyed to this practically fireless, substantially foodless and
semigarmentless household. Miss Gwin thought, at first, of founding a
regular subscription list under the title of Betty Gwin's Succour Fund;
but, on second thought, disliked the sound of the phrase when spoken,
although it looked well enough written out.
Instead, she elected to carry in person to their proper destination the
cash contributions already in hand, and along with them a somewhat more
cumbersome offering consisting of a one-piece costume sent by a young
lady in the theatrical profession--the chorus profession, to be
circumstantial about it--who had accompanied the donation with a note on
scented violet note paper, with a crest, stating that she wished the
devoted mother of those "poor birdlings"--a direct quotation, this, from
Miss Gwin's story--to have the frock, and to keep it and wear it for her
very own. With the Compliments of Miss Trixie Adair, of the Gay
Gamboliers Musical Comedy Company.
Thus laden, Miss Gwin descended upon Pike Street and ascended upon the
Finkelsteins, bringing with her, in addition to the other things
mentioned, an air of buoyancy and good cheer. As on the occasion of her
former call, two days earlier, the medium of intercourse between the
visitor and the heads of the household was Miriam, aged nine, the
topmost round of the family stepladder, ably reenforced by her brother
Solly, who was mentioned just a bit ago with particular reference to his
ears. In truth I should put it the other way round; for, to be exact, it
was Solly who sustained the main burden of translation, his sister being
a shy little thing and he in temperament emphatically the opposite.
Besides, his opportunities for acquiring facility and a repertoire in
tongues had been more extensive than hers. While Miriam frequented the
hallways of the tenement, or, at best, the sidewalk in front of it,
concerned with the minding of the twins--Israel and Isadore, but both
called, for convenience, Izzy--it was his practice to range far and
wide, risking death beneath trolley cars, capture by the law, and
murder at the hands of roused custodians of jobbing houses and buildings
in course of construction, about which he lurked on the lookout for
empty packing cases and bits of planking, and the like--such stuff as
might be dragged home and there converted into household furnishings or
stove fuel, depending upon whether at the moment the establishment stood
more desperately in need of something to sit on than of something to
burn.
Even now, at the tender age of seven, going on eight, Solly betrayed the
stirrings of a restless ambition such as his sire had never known. It
was an open question whether he would grow up to be a gunman or a
revered captain of finance. A tug of fate might set his eager footsteps
toward either goal. Already he had a flowing command of the sort of
English spoken by startled and indignant motormen, pestered policemen
and watchmen, tempted by provocation entirely beyond their powers of
self-control. So Solly served as chief interpreter while Miss Gwin
informally tendered the presents that had been intrusted to her charge
for transmission.
In the same spirit Papa and Mamma Finkelstein, who continued to
entertain the vaguest of theories regarding the sources of and the
reasons for these benefactions, accepted them gratefully, with no desire
to look a gift horse in the mouth. Gift horses were strange livestock in
their experience, anyhow.
The money--eight dollars and ninety-five cents, all told--went for fuel
and food; but mainly for food. With the Finkelsteins, life was a feast
or else it was a famine; in their scheme of domestic economics they
sought no middle ground. As for the gown bestowed by Miss Trixie Adair,
of the Gay Gamboliers, Mamma Finkelstein started wearing it right away,
merely adapting it to existing conditions--conditions that were, with
her, not only existent but, I may say, chronic. It was--or had been--a
pale-blue evening gown of a satinlike material, with no neck and no
sleeves to the upper part, but with a gracefully long train to the skirt
part, and made to hook up the back.
Because of the frequency of the demands put upon the maternal resources
by the newest and smallest Finkelstein, it was deemed expedient and, in
fact, essential to turn the gown round backward, so as to have the
bodice fastenings directly in front of Mamma Finkelstein instead of
directly behind her. This necessitated drawing the train up from beneath
the occupant's feet and draping it, sash-fashion, about her waist. Mamma
Finkelstein wore it so. She was wearing it so that afternoon when Mrs.
F. Fodderwood Bass arrived, direct from upper Fifth Avenue, and also the
next morning when Miss Godiva Sleybells came, representing,
semi-officially and most competently, the Cherry Hill Neighbourhood
House.
Since of these two Mrs. F. Fodderwood Bass was first, firstly then we
may consider her. I will begin by stating that she was a lady of
augmented wealth and indubitable preeminence, being of that elect group
who have ceased merely to smell society from afar off and now taste of
its exclusive delights close up. For her it had been a hard climb,
laboriously uphill all the way, boulder-strewn and beset by hazards,
pitfalls and obstacles. But she had arrived finally upon those
snow-capped peaks where the temperature is ever below freezing and life
may only be maintained artificially.
Inasmuch as she had not been born to breathe the atmosphere of this
rarefied altitude, but had achieved her right to breathe it by her own
efforts, Mrs. F. Fodderwood Bass felt it incumbent on her to maintain
her position away up there on Mount Saint Elias by such manifold and
varied activities as were most aptly designed to make for publicity,
which meant prominence, which meant success. For the moment she was
principally concerned with living up to the rôle of good angel to the
worthily indigent. Those who loved her and in return wished to be loved
by her called her the Lady Bountiful of the Slums.
She conferred the sweet boon of charity with the aid of a press agent, a
subscription to a clipping bureau, a special secretary--not her regular
secretary, but a special one--and a new photograph--copyright by De
Valle, Fifth Avenue, all infringements prohibited--appearing about once
in so often in the Sunday Magazine Sections.
It was no strain upon the eyes to gaze upon Mrs. F. Fodderwood Bass; nor
yet upon her photograph. Nor did she consciously and willfully deny any
properly respectful person the opportunity. A distinguished portrait
painter once had said, shortly after completing a commission which
brought him large pecuniary returns from Mr. F. Fodderwood Bass, that
Mrs. F. Fodderwood Bass possessed the most beautiful profile on the
entire North American continent. When in company the recipient of this
tribute kept her side face turned to the majority present--the greatest
possible good to the greatest possible number, you see. She had one
secret regret: one could not walk sideways--or, at least, one could not
for any considerable distance.
I would not go so far as to say that Mrs. F. Fodderwood Bass actually
read the prose poem emanating from Miss Betty Gwin's sympathetic
typewriter; but I will go so far as to say that promptly the article of
that gifted young word chandler was brought to her attention. No time
was to be lost; in fact, no time was lost. Very shortly thereafter Mrs.
F. Fodderwood Bass, attired in housings appropriately plain, to accord
with her errand--housings which had cost less than five hundred dollars,
exclusive of import duties--and suitably riding in a simple French
limousine of but forty-eight horse power, was conveyed southward and
eastward from her home to Pike Street. Her arrival there created a
measure of popular tumult only to be equalled by a bank run or a fire
alarm. A self-appointed escort at least seventy-five strong piloted her
up four flights to the Finkelstein flat.
Papa Finkelstein was out temporarily, and Mamma Finkelstein was stunned
into a state approximating dumb stupor by the grandeur of the visitation
that appeared before her, heralded though its coming had been by many
small, excited couriers dashing up the stairs in advance. Though Mamma
Finkelstein was of humble station, Mrs. F. Fodderwood Bass did not deny
her a treat. Throughout her stay, which was short, she remained standing
in the doorway, with her profile presented to the dazzled stare of her
hostess.
Her purpose being explained through volunteer interpreters, and largess
having been bestowed generally, she masterfully bore away Miriam, Solly
and the two small duplicate Izzys, Mamma Finkelstein making no sign
either of demur to or acquiescence in the plan, to a Christmas-tree
entertainment given under her direct patronage in a rented hall some
distance north of Cooper Union.
At eight P. M., long before their mother had in any visible respect
rallied from her coma of dumb bewilderment, these four, a torpid and
satiated quartet, were safely returned to the home nest, gorged on
goodies, and laden with small gifts for themselves and for their yet
more juvenile sisters and brothers. Throughout the remainder of the
evening, though, little Miriam persisted in regarding her father with
a certain silent and distressful reproach in her big black eyes. Made
uneasy by his daughter's bearing he questioned her; and she divulged
something she had heard.
It seemed that in explaining the intent of the festival of Christmas,
Mrs. F. Fodderwood Bass, though actuated by the best intentions
imaginable, had nevertheless revealed certain phases of Sacred History
which, when the first shock of disclosure was over, left sensitive
little Miriam in a state of mind where she stood ready to fix direct
responsibility upon her own parent. Papa Finkelstein may have been lax
in the precept and practice of his theological beliefs, but assuredly
his convictions were both sound and orthodox. Immediately he developed
an entirely unwarranted but none the less sincere distrust for the
motives of Mrs. F. Fodderwood Bass.
Truly, he wronged her there. There was nothing that was ulterior, but
much that was superior in the lady's attitude toward the lower forms of
animal life which she observed flourishing below her. By lower forms of
animal life I, as the historian of this episode, would include
everything and everybody outside of her set. These lesser manifestations
of an inscrutable scheme of creation she regarded benignantly,
tolerantly and at times--wonderingly. To her they seemed so--well, so
different--if you get my meaning and hers. One wondered sometimes,
really one did, if they could be so susceptible to emotion and sensation
as those who had been called to service in a higher sphere of activity?
The answer might be yes and then again it might be no. It all depended
upon one's point of view. Indeed when one came to ponder these matters,
so much always did depend upon one's point of view, did it not?
Meanwhile pending the ultimate solution of these perplexing sociological
problems, she would minister Samaritanlike to the wants of the needy,
and not forget to advertise the Samaritan. That was at once her pleasure
and her duty.
If Papa Finkelstein's suspicions endured through the night, as I have my
reasons for believing they did endure, they found no permanent lodgment
in the bosom of his helpmate; for the next morning an event occurred
that for the time being, at least, served to dispossess Mamma
Finkelstein's mind of all lesser considerations. I refer to the arrival
of Miss Godiva Sleybells, from the Cherry Hill Neighbourhood House. Mrs.
F. Fodderwood Bass typified amateur philanthropy; but not so Miss
Sleybells. She came, panoplied with purposeful intent, as the
specialised, the expert, the austere representative of systematic
relief.
In a period not far remote the allegation had been made that, so often,
organised charity was lacking in the personal and the direct touch. It
had been said that its common attitude was this: if a starving man
applied for help in the guise of sustenance, organised charity took his
name and address and made a very painstaking investigation of the merits
of the mendicant and his plea, sparing neither time nor expense in the
scope of its inquiry. His case being established as a worthy one,
organised charity took steps to seek him out and providing he had not
inconsiderately died in the interim, or moved to another park bench, it
bestowed upon him a small blue ticket entitling the holder to saw wood
so many hours a day at a specially maintained wood yard, and to receive
in return for such labour a specified number of frugal meals. Mind you
I do not pretend to assume that this actually was the fact; I merely
repeat a form of criticism current at one time. But now, organised
charity was become more personal and possibly a trifle less statistical
in its methods. For proof, observe how promptly Miss Godiva Sleybells
moved. She, too, read Miss Betty Gwin's account of the lorn
Finkelsteins. She waited not for an inquisition to be made and a report
to be filed. She girded up her walking skirt, as a result of which
girding it hiked in front and it drooped behind; and she put on her
heavy rubbers and she came.
She walked in, unannounced, on the assembled Finkelsteins and the
instant she crossed the threshold all there, regardless of age, somehow
realised that they were hers to do with as she pleased; realised that in
her efficient hands they would be but as plastic clay between the
fingers of the moulder. Everywhere she went Miss Sleybells conveyed this
feeling. It travelled with her even as her aura. She could walk through
a crowded street, pausing not and looking neither to the right nor the
left and yet leave behind her, in the minds of those among whom she had
passed, the firm conviction that she had taken this particular street
under her direct management and control. Nay more. She could traverse a
stretch of empty landscape and even after she was gone, inanimate nature
would somehow bear the impress of her dominance as though thereafter the
Original Creator of that landscape would be relieved of all
responsibility in connection with its conduct, maintenance and
development. Were there more like her in this hemisphere, woman would
not now be asking for the suffrage. But man would be.
A variety of causes had actuated her in going into settlement work. One
half the world didn't know how the other half lived. Miss Sleybells
meant to find out. Already she had written a considerable number of
magazine articles embodying the fruits of her observations and
deductions among the poor. Eventually, from the rich stores of her
knowledge she meant to draw material for a novel. This novel would be
in the style of the best work of Gorky, only stronger and more vivid
than Gorky, and infinitely rich in its analytical appraisals of
character. One who knew Miss Sleybells might not doubt of this. If she
had had a middle name, her middle name would have been Thoroughness.
Such, in brief, was the ardent and enthusiastic woman who invaded the
Finkelstein citadel, surprising its resident garrison in the middle of
their comfortable untidiness and causing them instantly and
unconditionally to capitulate before her onslaught. She looked about
her, choosing for her initial attack the point of least resistance. It
was the second to the youngest Finkelstein, Lena by name, engaged at the
moment in regaling her infantile palate with a mid-forenoon snack
consisting of a large, sea-green dill pickle and a rather speckly
overripe banana. By Mrs. Finkelstein's standards these two articles
constituted a well-balanced food ration. If the banana was soft and
spotty, the pickle certainly was firm and in the immature hands of Lena
practically indestructible. Besides, the results spoke for themselves.
Lena liked her dill pickle and her banana; and she thrived on them.
Miss Sleybells looked and said: "Tut! Tut!" And with these words she
deprived the startled and indignant child of both those treasures. That,
however, was merely the beginning. She fell to then in earnest--most
expeditiously and painstakingly fell to. From a neighbouring lady, more
addicted to the healthful exercise of sweeping than Mamma Finkelstein
was, she commandeered the use of a broom; also a mop. She heated water
to the boiling point upon the rickety stove. She gave little Miriam a
quarter and sent the child forth to buy two kinds of soap--human and
laundry. Following this things ensued with a dizzying celerity.
At the outset, Miss Sleybells completely upset Mamma Finkelstein's
domestic arrangements; or, rather, she disturbed and disarranged them,
for to have them upset was Mamma Finkelstein's notion of having them
properly bestowed. She ferreted out from beneath beds the stored
accumulations of months. She pried open the windows, admitting the chill
air of winter in swift gusts. She swept, she dusted, and with suds she
mopped the floor and stayed not her hand. She herded the abashed
Finkelsteins into a corner, only to drive them out again before the
strokes of broom and mop and dust rag, all the while tut-tutting like
a high-powered dynamo.
This done, she took individual after individual in hand for cutaneal
renovation. While Mamma Finkelstein hovered timorously by, stricken with
a great and voiceless apprehension, Miss Sleybells took scissors and
snipped the children out of their flannel swaddlings into which they had
so carefully been sewn but a short six weeks before. As fast as she
denuded a submissive form she bathed it soapily, set it before the fire
to dry out, and seized, with moist, firm grasp, upon another unresisting
victim. I indulge in no cheap effort at punning but speak the sober fact
when I say Miss Godiva Sleybells that day proved herself a veritable
Little Sister of the Pore.
Presently from the group of small naked figures squatted by the stove
a sound of sneezing arose. The baby began it and the baby's example was
contagious. Soon these youthful Finkelsteins who had undergone the water
ordeal, as contradistinguished from those who had not yet undergone it,
were going off with sneezes at regular half-minute intervals, like so
many little pink cuckoo clocks.
Behind Miss Sleybells' indomitable back, then, Mamma Finkelstein wrung
her hands in mute and helpless distress. But no word of protest did she
utter. For one thing, her knowledge of the English language practically
was negligible. For another thing, she dared not speak even had she had
the words. To Mamma Finkelstein, Miss Sleybells personified the visible
authority of the state--that same dread force which, in the guise of
truant officers, sought to drag Miriam away to public school when her
services were required for nursing duties; and which, again, wearing
brass and blue, harried Solly from his wood-collecting enterprises.
Starting with the youngest and progressing toward the top, Miss
Sleybells bathed up the line as far as the twins before she stopped. She
stopped there for lack of living material.
Solly, opportunely, had fled into hiding, and with him Miriam, his
sister. Anyhow, Miss Sleybells reflected, as she looked about her at the
surroundings, now all cleansed and dampish, all lathered and purged,
that she had done a great deal for one day--a very great deal. Still,
much remained undone.
Upon leaving, she gave Mamma Finkelstein express and explicit commands
regarding the conduct of her home, speaking with especial reference to
fresh air, ablutions and diet. By nods and by gestures Mamma Finkelstein
pledged obedience, without sensing in the smallest degree what she was
promising to do. Then Miss Sleybells announced that she would return on
the morrow, and departed. Mamma Finkelstein understood that part, at
least, and her wigged head sank in her hands. Papa Finkelstein, arriving
home shortly before dark, sustained a hard shock. For a minute he almost
thought he must have got into the wrong flat.
Miss Godiva Sleybells was as good as her word; in fact, better. She did
come back the next day and on many days thereafter, coming to correct,
to admonish, to renovate, to set erring feet upon the properest way, to
scold poor Mamma Finkelstein for her constantly recurrent backslidings
from the paths of domestic duty. Nearly always she came at unexpected
intervals; and, having come, she entered always without knocking. Mamma
Finkelstein fell into the habit of hearkening fearsomely for the sound
of footsteps in the hall without.
Being warned by an approaching resolute tread, betokening flat, low
heels and broad, sensible soles, she would drop whichever child she
happened to be mothering at that moment and fly about in a perfect
frenzy of purposeless activity, snatching up things, casting them aside,
rattling kitchen pans, shoving loose articles--and nearly everything she
owned was loose--out of sight. The artifice was a transparent one at
best. Assuredly it never deceived Miss Godiva Sleybells. With
shiftlessness she had no patience. Shiftlessness was one of several
thousand things with which she had no patience.
It was on the occasion of her second visit that Miss Sleybells brought
along and bestowed upon Mamma Finkelstein a bound volume dealing with
the proper care of infants, and bade her consult its pages. This gift
Mamma Finkelstein put to usage, but not the usage the donor had devised
for it. She gave it to the next-to-the-youngest baby, who was teething,
to cut her little milk teeth upon. The sharp corners proved soothing to
the feverish gums of Lena; but, under constant and well-irrigated
mumblings, the red dye on the covers came off, resulting in an
ensanguined appearance of Lena's lips and a sharp attack of colic
elsewhere in Lena. Mamma Finkelstein had suspected evil lurked within
the volume; now she was certain dangers abode in its outer casings. She
kindled a fire with it.
It was on the occasion of her third visit that Miss Sleybells brought
with her two co-labourers who listened intently and took notes while
their guide discoursed upon the subject of the Finkelstein family's
domestic and hygienic shortcomings, she speaking with the utmost candour
and just as frankly as though her living topics had not been present at
the time.
It was following the occasion of her fourth visit that Miss Godiva
prepared and read to a company of her associates in the Neighbourhood
House a paper dealing with her observations in this particular quarter.
In the course of her reading she referred variously to the collective
Finkelsteins as a charge, a problem, a question, an enigma and a
noteworthy case.
For all her lack of acquaintanceship with the language, it is possible
that Mamma Finkelstein, in her dim, inarticulate way, comprehended
something of Miss Godiva's attitude toward her. Perhaps she would have
preferred to be regarded not as a problem but occasionally as a person.
Perhaps she craved inwardly for those vanished days of comparative
privacy and unlimited disorderliness within the two rooms she called
her home. Her situation may have been miserable then. Miss Sleybells
said so. But what matters misery if its victims mistake it for
happiness?
But since Mrs. Finkelstein never by act or sign or look betrayed her
feelings, whatsoever they may have been, it is not for me or for you to
assume that she harboured resentment. She was a daughter of a tribe
bitted and bridled to silent endurance; of a people girthed and saddled
through the centuries to the uncomplaining bearing of their burdens.
Meantime Mrs. F. Fodderwood Bass was by no means slack in well-doing. As
regards the younger Finkelsteins particularly, her alms-deeds were many.
She took them under her silken wings. At intervals she arrived,
rustling, to confer advice and other things more material and therefore
more welcome. She spoke of the Finkelsteins as her Pet Charities.
Among the younger inmates of the flat her visits were by no means
distasteful. Quite aside from the gifts she brought, the richness of the
clothes she wore appealed to a heritage of their ancestry that was in
them; they had a natural taste and appreciation for fabrics. But Papa
Finkelstein found it impossible to cure himself of his earlier
suspicions. He remembered what he remembered, and remained dubious.
For all that, Mrs. F. Fodderwood Bass presently aimed her batteries of
benevolence upon him. It was like this: She had aided conspicuously in
a Bundle Day movement. Someone else, I believe, originated the idea, but
Mrs. F. Fodderwood Bass practically took it over as soon as she heard
about it. Through the daily press an appeal was made to the well-to-do
of the community that they should assemble into parcels their cast-off
garments for distribution among the poor. The police force, the fire
department, the express companies and the newspapers--all were to
cooperate in gathering up such parcels and depositing them at a
designated central station, where the objects of this bounty on a given
date might be outfitted.
The notion caught the fancy and became popular. It assumed a scope
beyond the dream horizon of its creator and of the legatees of the
notion; for in itself it had four elements that inevitably appeal to the
New York heart: first, generosity, for New York may be thoughtless, but
it is vastly generous underneath its face-paint; second, novelty; third,
size; and fourth, notoriety. But the greatest of these is notoriety.
The effects were magnificently far-reaching. Thousands made
contributions; thousands of others profited thereby. Many a poor Bowery
"dinner waiter," owning merely a greasy short jacket and one
paper-bosomed shirt, and compelled therefore to serve in some quick
order place for his food and nothing else, secured, without cost, the
dress suit of his visions and was in consequence enabled to get a
regular job, in a regular restaurant, with regular pay and regular tips.
Many a shivering derelict got a warm if threadbare overcoat to cover
him. Many a half-clad child repaired to a big building and there
selected whole garments suitable to his or her size, if not to his or
her station. And meanwhile the sponsors of the affair, including Mrs. F.
Fodderwood Bass and lesser patronesses, looked on approvingly, acquiring
merit by the minute and, incidentally, long reading notices in all the
papers.
On the day before Bundle Day the lady called in Pike Street, timing her
arrival so as to be sure of finding Papa Finkelstein in. With the aid of
Miriam and Solly she explained to him her designs. He was to come to
such and such an address next morning and be equipped with a wardrobe
less accessibly ventilated to the eager and the nipping air of winter
than the one he now possessed.
Papa Finkelstein solemnly pledged himself to be there at the appointed
hour, and so she went away, well-content. Therein, however, a subtle
Oriental strain of duplicity in Papa Finkelstein's nature found play. He
had no intention of having his timid sensibilities massacred before a
large crowd to make a Bundle Holiday. It may have been that he feared in
Mrs. F. Fodderwood Bass' friendly overtures there was concealed a covert
campaign to proselyte him away from the faith of the Fathers. It may
have been that, through professional reasons, he privily deplored a
movement calculated to strike so deadly a blow at the very vitals of the
old-clo' business. At any rate he did not go where she had bade him go;
completely he absented himself therefrom.
It was late in the afternoon of the following day before Mrs. F.
Fodderwood Bass realised that Papa Finkelstein had not yet appeared. She
called to her a footman of her employ, specially detailed to attend her
on this occasion, and ordered him to proceed at once to Pike Street and
find her missing ward and bring him before her. Being a good footman,
his expression gave no clue to his feelings. He deemed it to lie far
outside the proper functions of a footman to be hunting up persons named
Finkelstein; but he obeyed.
For the moment the scene must shift to Pike Street. The time is half an
hour later. Partly by words, partly by wide-armed gesticulations, Papa
Finkelstein explained his position in the matter, if not his private
reasons.
"Is that so?" said the footman, whose name was Cassidy--Maurice J.
Cassidy. He fixed a strong hand grippingly in the back of Papa
Finkelstein's collar. "Well, you listen to me, young fella! Wan way or
another you're goin'--wit' me, nice and peaceable or in an ambylance.
You can make your own choice."
The words possibly were confusing to the alien understanding, but the
large knobby fist, which swayed to and fro an inch or so below the tip
of the captive's nose, spoke in a language that is understood of all
men. Papa Finkelstein saw his way clear to accompanying Footman Cassidy.
Aboard the street car, on the way uptown, several of his fellow
passengers decided he must be a thief who had been caught red-handed,
and said it served him right.
Arriving, he was ushered--perhaps I should say propelled--into the
presence of Mrs. F. Fodderwood Bass. She greeted his appearance
coosomely. Or is cooingly the right word? At any rate, she cooed her
approval; she cooed beautifully, anyhow. With open pride she directed
the attention of certain of her associate patronesses to the little
huddled shape of Cassidy's prisoner.
"Ah, there he is!" she said. "My Pet Charity! So improvident, so
shiftless; but isn't he just too picturesque!"
Levelling their lorgnettes on him, her friends agreed in chorus that he
was very picturesque. They wondered, though, why he wriggled so.
"The dearest, gentlest little man!" continued Mrs. F. Fodderwood Bass in
clear, sweet tones. "So diffident, but so grateful for everything--the
poor, tattered dear! He never says a word to me when I talk to him; but
by the look in his eyes I can tell he is fairly worshipping the ground
I walk on."
As if to prove the truth of what she said Papa Finkelstein's gaze even
now was directed upon the floor at her feet.
"Now, Cassidy," went on his mistress, "you take him into one of the
dressing rooms yonder and have him undress. It's too bad nearly
everything has been picked over; but we shall find something for him,
I'm sure."
Within a curtained recess Cassidy explained his meaning with threatening
mien.
"Take off thim rags!" he commanded.
Rags they may have been, but Papa Finkelstein cherished them.
Reluctantly he parted with them, filled with the melancholy conviction
that he should see them never more. It was a true foreboding. But that
was not the worst of it. Papa Finkelstein was in figure slight and of
a contour difficult to drape garments upon. Moreover, it was as his
benefactor had said--everything had been picked over so. Nevertheless,
a selection agreeable to the lady's ideals was finally made.
Fifteen minutes passed. At the end of those fifteen minutes Papa
Finkelstein, under the menacing urgings of Footman Cassidy, made a
diffident but spectacular reappearance before the Bundle Day audience.
His head was bent apologetically low, so that his whiskers, spraying
upon his bosom, helped to cover him. His two hands were spread flat upon
his chest, hiding still more of his abashed shape. Nevertheless, it
might be discerned that Papa Finkelstein wore the abandoned
cream-coloured whipcords of somebody's chauffeur--very abandoned and
very cream-coloured, the whole constituting a livery, complete, from the
visored cap upon his head to the leather puttees reefed about his bowed
shanks.
"Now just look at him!" cried Mrs. F. Fodderwood Bass in an ecstasy.
"How neat! How trim! How cosy!"
Papa Finkelstein didn't want to be neat. He abhorred cosiness; likewise
trimness. Moreover he shrunk mentally from the prospect of his homeward
journey, foreseeing difficulties. There again was his intuition
prophetically justified.
At the corner of Hester Street and the Bowery a skylarking group beheld
him and greeted him with cries of an almost incredulous joy. By force
they detained the little man, making mock of him in English and in
Yiddish. The English passed over his head, but into his soul the Yiddish
bit deep, leaving scars. He wrested himself free and fled to his home.
His arrival there made a profound impression on Mamma Finkelstein--after
she recognised him. So did his language.
Only the absolute necessity of gleaning rent money from the realms of
trade drove him forth two days later from the comparative sanctuary of
the inner room of his domicile. In the spirit he suffered, and in the
flesh as well. Citizens en route to the Subway, on being hailed with
inquiries touching on old clothes, from an undersized pedestrian
attired as a chauffeur, in reduced circumstances, who had neglected to
shave for a long time past, did not halt to listen. They halted to laugh
and to gibe and to gird with derision. Until Papa Finkelstein had
effected a trade with a compassionate but thrifty compatriot, with an
utter disregard for intrinsic values exchanging what he wore for
whatsoever the other might give, just so it sufficiently covered him, he
felt himself to be a hissing and a byword in the highways--which he was.
And now into the tangling skeins of the Finkelstein family's life in
their relation to the charitable impulses enlisted upon their
behalf--but without their consent or their approval--it is fitting to
reintroduce Miss Betty Gwin. Springtime came and passed, its passage
dappled for all the Finkelsteins with memory spots attesting the more or
less intermittent attentions of Mrs. F. Fodderwood Bass, and the more or
less constant ministrations of Miss Godiva Sleybells.
Summer came; and with the initial weeks of summer came also the time for
the first of the series of annual outings conducted under the auspices
of the _Evening Dispatch's_ Fresh Air Fund for the Children of the Poor.
Yearly it was the habit of this enterprising sheet to give excursions to
the beach, employing therefor a chartered steamboat and the
contributions of the public.
The public mainly put up the money; the owner of the _Evening Dispatch_,
Mr. Jason Q. Welldover, principally took the credit, for thereby, on
flaunting banners and by word of speech, was his name and his fame made
glorious throughout the land. As repeatedly pointed out in the editorial
columns of his journal, the =Little Ones= of the slums were enabled,
through the =Generosity of This Paper=, to breathe in the =Life-giving
Ozone= of kindly =Mother Ocean=; to =Play= upon the sands; to =Disport=
themselves in the very =Lap Of Nature=; returning home at eventide
=Rejuvenated= and =Happy=--the phraseology and the capitalisation alike
being direct quotations from the _Evening Dispatch_.
Since Miss Betty Gwin was on the staff of the _Evening Dispatch_, it was
quite natural that she should take a personal pride as well as a
professional interest in the success of the opening outing of the
season. As suitable candidates for admission to its dragooned passenger
list she thought of Miriam Finkelstein and Solly Finkelstein. She
pledged herself to see that these two were included in the party. Nor
did she forget it. Upon the morning of the appointed date she went
personally to Pike Street, assumed custodianship of the favoured pair
and, her own self, escorted them to the designated place of assemblage
and transferred them into the keeping of Mr. Moe Blotch.
Mr. Blotch belonged in the _Evening Dispatch's_ Circulation Department.
Against his will he had been drafted for service in connection with the
Fresh Air Fund's excursion. He was a rounded, heavy-set person, with the
makings of a misanthrope in him. That day completed the job; after that
he was a made and finished misanthrope.
While murder blazed in his eyes and kind words poured with malevolent
bitterness from his lips, Mr. Blotch marshalled his small charges, to
the number of several hundred, in a double file. To each he gave a small
American flag, warning each, on peril of mutilation and death, to wave
that flag and keep on waving it until further orders. Up at the head of
the column, Prof. Washington Carter's All-Coloured Silver Cornet Band
struck up a clamorous march tune and the procession started, winding its
way out of the familiar Lower East Side, across the tip of Manhattan
Island, to the verge of the strange Lower West Side.
Well up in the line, side by side, marched Miriam and Solly, the twain
whose fortunes we are following. Possibly from stress of joyous
anticipation they shivered constantly. However, it was a damp and cloudy
day, and, for early June, very raw. Even Mr. Moe Blotch, muffled as he
was in a light overcoat, shivered.
The route of march led past the downtown offices of the _Evening
Dispatch_, where, in a front window, the proprietor, Mr. Jason Q.
Welldover, waited to review the parade. According to his instructions
from a higher authority, Mr. Blotch now gave the signal for an outburst
of appreciative cheering from the small marchers. Obeying the command,
they lifted up their voices; but, doubtlessly through stage fright or
lack of chorus drilling, the demonstration, considered for vocal volume,
was not altogether a success. It was plaintive rather than enthusiastic.
It resembled the pipings of despondent sandpipers upon a distant lea.
Standing in the window, Mr. Welldover acknowledged the tribute by
bowing, he then holding the pose until his staff photographers had
caught him--once, twice, three times.
Half a mile more of trudging brought the little travellers to a dock
above the Battery. Alongside the dock lay a steamboat so swathed in
bunting and bannered inscriptions as to present the appearance of being
surgically bandaged following a succession of major operations. The
smokestack suggested a newly broken leg, enveloped in first-aid
wrappings. The walking beam rose above a red-and-white-and-blue mass,
like a sprained wrist escaping from its sling. The boiler deck was
trussed from end to end; and everywhere recurred, in strikingly large
letters, the names of Mr. Jason Q. Welldover and the _Evening Dispatch_.
Without loss of time, Mr. Blotch drove his excursionists aboard; and
soon then, to the strains of martial music, the swaddled craft was
moving gayly down the river. Or, anyhow, she moved as gayly as was
possible, seeing that the river was of a rumpled, grayish aspect,
abounding in large waves, and each wave flounced with a ruffle of
dirty-white foam; and seeing, further, that an exceedingly keen wind
blew dead against her, searching out the remotest and most sheltered
recesses of her decks. Mr. Blotch remained in the engine room throughout
the journey.
But all pleasant things must have an end; and eventually, although to
some aboard it seemed even longer than that, the steamer reached Coney.
Somewhere on this globe there may be a more dispiriting, more dismal
spot than Coney is on a wet and cloudy day in the early part of June.
I have heard Antarctic explorers speak with feeling of the sense of
desolation inspired by contemplation of the scenery closely adjacent to
the South Pole; but, never having been at or near the South Pole, I am
still pledged to Coney Island.
A hot dog merchant there, hearing the strains of music and beholding the
approach of a multitude, lit his fires and laid specimens of his wares
upon the grid to brown and sizzle. A closer view of the massed crowd,
advancing toward him from the pier, disillusioned him. As a regular
subscriber to the _Evening Dispatch_ he knew that these oncoming hosts
were not to be considered, even remotely, as prospective patrons. For
had it not been written and repeatedly written that they were to be
regaled, ABSOLUTELY WITHOUT EXPENSE, at Stanchheimer's Chowder
Pavilion? Verily it had been so written. Uttering fluent maledictions in
his sonorous native Greek, the hot dog man went inside his booth, pulled
down the shades and turned off the gas.
On a wide and windswept shore, where pallid sands ran down to pallid
sea, and sea in turn ran out and out to mingle, under shrouding fog
banks, with lowering skies, the small Fresh-Air funders were turned
loose and sternly ordered to enjoy themselves. Perversely, they
persisted in huddling in close, tight clusters, as though drawn together
by a gravitation of common discomfort. Their conductor was not to be
thwarted. He had a duty to perform--a duty to them and to his
employer--and scrupulously he meant to obey it if it cost forty lives.
From group to group Mr. Moe Blotch ran, yanking its members out into the
cheerless open.
"Play, consarn you! Play!" he blared at them. "Laugh and sing and dig in
the sands! Breathe in the life-giving ozone or I'll break every bone in
your bodies!"
Little Miriam found herself alone and lonesome in the shadow of a
depressingly pale-yellow dune. She thought of the warm and comfortable
tenement hallway, crowded as it would be with gossiping little deputy
mothers and crawling, babbling babies. She thought of the shifting
panorama of Pike Street's sidewalk life, spectacular and thrilling. She
thought of her own two special charges--Izzy and Izzy--deprived now of
their customary guardianship and no doubt pining for it.
These poignant memories overcame her. She lifted her face to the
unresponsive vault of heaven, and she wept. Once she was at it, there
was no false restraint in her weeping; she bemoaned her lot shrilly,
copiously and damply. Moisture streamed from her eyes, her mouth, her
nose. In her rendition there was a certain aquatic wholeheartedness that
would have interested and startled a student of natural hydraulics.
Practically this child had riparian rights.
To her side came running Solly, her brother, likewise weeping. His
antlerlike ears, undefended and, as it were, defiantly outbranching to
the edged breezes, were now two chilled disks, shot through their more
membranous surfaces with bluish, pinkish, greenish tones, like
mother-of-pearl. His nose, from tip to base, was one frigid and painful
curve. And, to top all, Solly, venturing too near the beach edge, had
been surprised by a quick, large wave. From his waist down he dripped
sea water. His fortitude succumbed before this final misfortune. He
mingled his tears with Miriam's, substantially doubling the output.
Their sorrow might have touched a heart of stone; but Mr. Blotch,
embarking on this mission of pleasure, had left his heart behind him,
foreseeing that its presence might be inconvenient to a proper
discharge of his philanthropic obligations. He charged down upon them,
separated their entwined arms and, with terrible threats, required them
to play and dig in the sand.
So they played and they dug in the sand. Choking back their sobs and
burying their little, cold fingers in the cold, gritty sand, they played
and dug through the long forenoon until dinnertime; and after dinner
they dug and played some more, until the hour for departure arrived,
cutting short all their blithesome misery.
Beyond question, Solly next day would have developed pneumonia, except
that pneumonia was far too troublesome a luxury for any of the
Finkelstein family to be having. Besides, at this juncture the weather
providentially turned off to be warm and seasonable, and, scouting in
East Broadway, he happened upon a large, empty crockery crate, which
seemed to lack a friend. He up-ended it, crawled inside it and made off
with it; and so completely hidden was he within its capsized depths that
one observing the spectacle might have been excused for assuming that a
crockery crate was out for a walk on its own account. In the joys of
perilous adventures and treasure-findings Solly conquered his symptoms
and forgot to fall ill.
The weather continued to be warm and warmer. By mid-July it was so warm
that the interior of the tenements became insufferable, and the
dwellers slept of nights on fire escapes and in doorways, and even in
the little squares and out on the pavement gratings, stretched--whole
rows of them--upon pallets and quilts. The hot spell afforded Miss
Godiva Sleybells an opportunity to do something that was really worth
while for the two older of the eight younger Finkelsteins. She came one
simmering day and told them the splendid news. They were to have a
week--a whole week--on a farm up in the Catskills.
With memories of Coney still vivid in their young brains, Miriam and
Solly inwardly quailed at the prospect; but they went. There was nothing
else for them to do; the determined dragoness in the double-lensed
spectacles, who managed their mother and condemned them at intervals to
trials by soap and water, had so ordained it.
I wish I might say the two children were wrong in their forebodings; I
wish I might paint their week in the Catskills as a climactic success.
Perhaps from Miss Godiva Sleybells' viewpoint it was a success; but,
remember, I am concerned with detailing not her impressions so much as
the impressions of these small wards of hers.
Remember, too, that in saying what I must, as a truthful historian, say,
I mean not to reflect upon the common aims or the general results of
that splendid charity which each year sends thousands of poor children
to the country, there for a spell to breathe in a better air than ever
they have breathed, and to eat of better fare than ever they have eaten.
In this instance I am afraid the trouble was that the city had trapped
the small Finkelsteins too early. If they had not been born in its
stone-and-steel cage, at any rate they could not remember a time when
they had not lived in it. They were like birds, which, being freed,
cannot use their wings because they have never used them, but only
flutter about distractedly, seeking to return to the old confines within
the bars of the prison and the familiar perches of its constricted
bounds. Distance--free, limitless and far-extending--daunts those other
birdlings as it daunted these two small human ones. It was so strange an
experience to them to be thrust into the real out-of-doors. And to most
of us whatever is strange is uncomfortable--until we get accustomed to
it.
The journey mountainward frightened the small pair. They had never been
on a train before. As they clung to each other, cowering low in their
seat every time the locomotive hooted, they resolved that willingly they
would never be on one again. Upon reaching their destination they were
required to sleep in separate beds, which was an experience so very
different from the agreeable and neighbourly congestion of sleeping four
or five to a bed, as at home. Next morning they were given for
breakfast country eggs and country milk--the one fresh-laid by the hen;
the other fresh-drawn from the udder.
For Miriam and Solly it proved a most unsatisfactory meal. This milk
came from a cow, whereas the milk they knew came from a milkman. It was
so yellow, so annoyingly thick, so utterly lacking in the clear blue,
almost translucent, aspect of East Side milk! The Catskill egg likewise
proved disappointing. After the infrequent Pike Street egg, with its
staunchness and pungency of flavour, it seemed but a weak, spiritless,
flat-tasting thing.
When breakfast was over they went forth upon kindly compulsion from the
farmhouse kitchen and, barefooted, were turned loose on a grassy mead.
At once all Nature appeared in a conspiracy against them. The wide
reaches of space disturbed them, whose horizon always had been fenced in
with tall, close-racked buildings. The very earth was a pitfall, bearded
with harsh saw-edged grass blades, drenched with chilly dews, and
containing beneath the ambush of its green covering many rough and
uneven depressions. The dew irritated Solly's naked legs, making him
long for the soothing contact of Pike Street's mud-coated cobbles.
Miriam stubbed her shrinking pink toes against hidden clods when she
essayed a timorous step or two forward. So both of them stood still,
then, very much at a loss to know what they should or could do next.
Somebody suggested to Miriam that she pick the wild flowers and the wild
vine tendrils and weave them into garlands. Was it her fault that her
very first selections should be a spray of poisoned sumac, first cousin
to poison ivy, and that her second should be a handful of nettles?
Somebody else undertook to induct Solly into the pleasures of tree
climbing. Was it altogether his fault that he should promptly fall out
of the first crotch and painfully sprain and bruise himself in several
places?
And when, finally, they had been induced to quit the immediate proximity
of the farmhouse, which at least provided a refuge and a shelter from
suspected dangers, and had ventured over a fence and into a pasture, a
most terrible thing occurred. Toward them there suddenly advanced an
enormous red creature, tossing a huge head crowned with sharp horns,
and emitting frightful, rumbling sounds from a great rubbery muzzle.
With shrieks of terror, they fled blindly into a patch of woodland that
was perhaps two acres in extent; and, losing themselves in its--to
them--vast and impenetrable depths, they remained there, crouching
behind a tree until discovered, tearful, hungry and disconsolate, by
a volunteer search party shortly before sunset. Miriam's subsequent
description of the monster that had menaced them, as detailed to her
mother, gave Mamma Finkelstein a mental picture of something which might
be likened to a cross between a raging rhinoceros and a hook-and-ladder
motor truck. For it had been many a year since Mamma Finkelstein herself
had seen a yearling heifer. And Miriam never had seen one before.
It was indeed a hard and an irksome week. The end of it saw the two
small adventurers, both sun-blistered and peeling, both broken out as to
hands and legs with strange, irritating rashes, and both with gladness
in their little homesick souls, returning to the beloved perils and the
customary pleasures of the torrid town.
After this the Finkelsteins for a while had a welcomed respite from
kindness. They fairly revelled in it; but not for a great while, nor, in
fact, for very long, did it endure. Following Labor Day, Mrs. F.
Fodderwood Bass came back from her country place up Greenwich way and
reopened her city place. It transpired that with her she had brought a
perfectly splendid idea. She was going to establish the Finkelsteins on
an abandoned farm. While motoring about over the country lanes in
Connecticut she had found the very spot for them--an ideal spot,
indeed--nine acres, and nine miles from a railroad, with a ruinous
little cottage, all furnished, perched upon a rocky hillock in the
centre of the nine acres.
It was upon this site she was resolved they should be domiciled.
There--as she herself said--Papa Finkelstein might turn farmer and maybe
make a fortune. There Mamma Finkelstein could rear her brood in peace
and quiet, far aloof and remote from the teeming multitude. There the
fresh, pure air of the country would restore the bloom of health to the
cheeks of all the little Finkelsteins. What mattered it though the
little Finkelsteins were already so healthy that if they had been any
healthier than they were it might have been necessary to tap them for
it? I am not detailing what was actually the case, but what Mrs. F.
Fodderwood Bass, in the exuberance engendered by her generous impulses,
said about it.
A scheme so large required cooperation. Mrs. F. Fodderwood Bass secured
it from Miss Godiva Sleybells, whom she had met upon more than one
occasion when the two of them chanced to happen in upon the Finkelsteins
at the same time, and from Miss Betty Gwin, who frequently had been
called upon to detail to a hungry reading public particulars concerning
Mrs. F. Fodderwood Bass' social and charitable endeavours.
Together these three constituted a committee on ways, means and
publicity. Mrs. F. Fodderwood Bass provided the funds for leasing the
nine acres and for transporting its ten future tenants to their future
home. Miss Godiva Sleybells agreed, for her part, to insure that the
prospective colonists, both big and little, were properly loaded and
properly shipped to their destination. Miss Betty Gwin wrote a moving
word picture two columns long about it, in which she mentioned the late
Baron de Hirsch once and Mrs. F. Fodderwood Bass a great many times.
Actually the day preceding the day set for the removal of the
Finkelsteins arrived before it occurred to the three conferees that they
had entirely forgotten until that minute to take the Finkelsteins into
their confidence--not that it very much mattered; this was but an
incidental detail, which before now had been altogether overlooked. Miss
Sleybells volunteered to go and tell them. She went and she did.
Reporting back to the principal factor in this kindly little conspiracy,
Miss Sleybells said the Finkelstein family had been stunned--literally
stunned into dumb silence by the grateful joy the tidings brought to
them. She said surprise and gratitude had left them absolutely
speechless. Naturally she had no way of knowing, when she broke the glad
news, that Solly thought of Coney's inhospitable sands and treacherous
seas; that Miriam thought of the fearsome Catskill cow; that their
mother, whose whole life had been bounded by two Ghettos--one in the Old
World and one in the New, and who knew no other life--thought of a great
variety of things; and that the children, ranging from the twins
downward, would have done some thinking, too, had they been of suitable
age thus to indulge their juvenile intellects.
She had no way of knowing that, when she was gone from among them, Papa
Finkelstein stood erect and, elevating his two hands in passionate
entreaty toward heaven, with solemn fervour uttered the only words which
it is fated that we, in this recital, shall ever hear him utter. He
spake them in the tongue with which he was most conversant. He said:
"_Gott bei heit!_"
* * * * *
September's hurried twilight was folding in upon Pike Street. Against
the curbing, surrounded by an admiring throng, stood Mrs. F. Fodderwood
Bass' third-best car. Hard by stood an express wagon, its driver ready
to receive what puny freightage of household and personal belongings as
might be consigned to his care. And upstairs, upon the top floor of a
certain tenement, in the narrow hall outside the Finkelstein flat, stood
Mrs. F. Fodderwood Bass, Miss Godiva Sleybells and Miss Betty Gwin. The
first named of these three was come to witness the accomplishment of her
beautiful purpose; the second, to lend her executive abilities to the
details of the undertaking; the third, to write a piece about it.
In accord with her regular habit Miss Sleybells turned the knob. The
knob turned part way, but the door did not open; so she rattled the knob
and knocked with her knuckles on the panel. Mrs. F. Fodderwood Bass
raised her flutelike voice in cooing accents.
"Open the door, my dear charities," she said clearly. "It is I--your
good angel."
Miss Betty Gwin stooped and applied a squinted eye at the keyhole. Miss
Sleybells knocked again--harder. There was no answer.
I shall tell you why there was no answer. The reason is a good and
sufficient one. All day within their two rooms the Finkelstein family
had bided, waiting, waiting; hoping against hope. With the sound of
well-remembered footsteps in the hall without, with the sound of a
well-known voice uplifted, the last faint remnant of hope expired.
In melancholy resignation Papa Finkelstein nodded to Mamma Finkelstein;
and Mamma Finkelstein, stifling the plaint of the youngest baby in her
shawl, nodded back to him in sorrowful confirmation of the worst. With
gestures he imposed deep silence upon all present. He tiptoed into the
rear room and his people followed, tiptoeing also. He climbed out of the
back window and descended the fire-escape ladder to the fire-escape
landing at the level of the next floor below. He balanced himself there
and into his extended arms, Mamma Finkelstein passed down to him, one by
one, their children; and he, in turn, passed them in at a window where
Mrs. Esther Rabinowitz, a good-hearted neighbour, received them, and
deposited them in a mute row upon her kitchen floor. At the last Mamma
Finkelstein descended and joined him.
They assembled their progeny. They noiselessly emerged from Mrs.
Rabinowitz' hall door; and, noiselessly all, they fled down the stairs
and out into the gathering twilight of Pike Street, which has a way of
growing shabby and soiled-looking as it gathers. They had deserted all
their small belongings; they knew not where that night they might lay
their heads; they had no idea where they were going--but they were on
their way.
* * * * *
Up on the top floor Miss Sleybells knocked and knocked again. Miss Gwin
put her ear to the locked, barred door and listened and listened for
betraying sounds within; and Mrs. F. Fodderwood Bass raised her coo to
yet a flutier pitch. And while they were thus engaged the Finkelstein
family, one and all, vanished into the cloaking, protecting dusk where
Pike Street runs toward the river.
Did I say Finkelstein family? I was wrong there.
For purposes of better concealment Papa Finkelstein had changed the
name. The inspiration had come to him even as he gripped the topmost
round of the fire-escape ladder. Changing it, he had seen fit to honour,
by virtue of self-adoption, a race of Irish kings, and notably a
policeman of his acquaintance, a descendant of that kingly line. He
changed it to Finnigan. Loss to the Finkelsteins would thenceforth be
gain to the Finnigans.
So they vanished away--Papa Meyer Finnigan, Mamma Leah Finnigan--née
Pincus--Miriam Finnigan, Solly Finnigan, the Finnigan twins, Izzy and
Izzy; Benjamin Finnigan, Rebecca Finnigan, Lena Finnigan, and so on down
to Baby Leopold Finnigan--and were gone!
For does it not stand written that----? But see Corinthians--first,
thirteenth and fourth--and notably the first three words of the same.
Only it should have been written there, in amplification, that there is
a limit.