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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Yekl, by Abraham Cahan
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Yekl
+       A tale of the New York ghetto
+
+Author: Abraham Cahan
+
+Release Date: July 12, 2011 [EBook #36715]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK YEKL ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Suzanne Shell and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was
+produced from images generously made available by The
+Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Yekl
+
+A Tale of the New York Ghetto
+
+
+By
+
+A. Cahan
+
+
+New York
+D. Appleton and Company
+1896
+
+COPYRIGHT, 1896,
+BY D. APPLETON AND COMPANY.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+CHAPTER                                    PAGE
+
+
+   I.--JAKE AND YEKL                          1
+
+  II.--THE NEW YORK GHETTO                   25
+
+ III.--IN THE GRIP OF HIS PAST               50
+
+  IV.--THE MEETING                           70
+
+   V.--A PATERFAMILIAS                       82
+
+  VI.--CIRCUMSTANCES ALTER CASES            112
+
+ VII.--MRS. KAVARSKY'S COUP D'ÉTAT          136
+
+VIII.--A HOUSETOP IDYL                      158
+
+  IX.--THE PARTING                          175
+
+   X.--A DEFEATED VICTOR                    185
+
+
+
+
+YEKL.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+JAKE AND YEKL.
+
+
+The operatives of the cloak-shop in which Jake was employed had been
+idle all the morning. It was after twelve o'clock and the "boss" had
+not yet returned from Broadway, whither he had betaken himself two
+or three hours before in quest of work. The little sweltering
+assemblage--for it was an oppressive day in midsummer--beguiled their
+suspense variously. A rabbinical-looking man of thirty, who sat with
+the back of his chair tilted against his sewing machine, was intent
+upon an English newspaper. Every little while he would remove it from
+his eyes--showing a dyspeptic face fringed with a thin growth of dark
+beard--to consult the cumbrous dictionary on his knees. Two young lads,
+one seated on the frame of the next machine and the other standing,
+were boasting to one another of their respective intimacies with the
+leading actors of the Jewish stage. The board of a third machine, in a
+corner of the same wall, supported an open copy of a socialist magazine
+in Yiddish, over which a cadaverous young man absorbedly swayed to and
+fro droning in the Talmudical intonation. A middle-aged operative, with
+huge red side whiskers, who was perched on the presser's table in the
+corner opposite, was mending his own coat. While the thick-set presser
+and all the three women of the shop, occupying the three machines
+ranged against an adjoining wall, formed an attentive audience to an
+impromptu lecture upon the comparative merits of Boston and New York by
+Jake.
+
+He had been speaking for some time. He stood in the middle of the
+overcrowded stuffy room with his long but well-shaped legs wide apart,
+his bulky round head aslant, and one of his bared mighty arms akimbo.
+He spoke in Boston Yiddish, that is to say, in Yiddish more copiously
+spiced with mutilated English than is the language of the metropolitan
+Ghetto in which our story lies. He had a deep and rather harsh voice,
+and his r's could do credit to the thickest Irish brogue.
+
+"When I was in Boston," he went on, with a contemptuous mien intended
+for the American metropolis, "I knew a _feller_,[1] so he was a
+_preticly_ friend of John Shullivan's. He is a Christian, that feller
+is, and yet the two of us lived like brothers. May I be unable to move
+from this spot if we did not. How, then, would you have it? Like here,
+in New York, where the Jews are a _lot_ of _greenhornsh_ and can not
+speak a word of English? Over there every Jew speaks English like a
+stream."
+
+        [1] English words incorporated in the Yiddish of the characters
+        of this narrative are given in Italics.
+
+"_Say_, Dzake," the presser broke in, "John Sullivan is _tzampion_ no
+longer, is he?"
+
+"Oh, no! Not always is it holiday!" Jake responded, with what he
+considered a Yankee jerk of his head. "Why, don't you know? Jimmie
+Corbett _leaked_ him, and Jimmie _leaked_ Cholly Meetchel, too. _You
+can betch you' bootsh!_ Johnnie could not leak Chollie, _becaush_ he is
+a big _bluffer_, Chollie is," he pursued, his clean-shaven florid face
+beaming with enthusiasm for his subject, and with pride in the
+diminutive proper nouns he flaunted. "But Jimmie _pundished_ him. _Oh,
+didn't he knock him out off shight!_ He came near making a meat ball of
+him"--with a chuckle. "He _tzettled_ him in three _roynds_. I knew a
+feller who had seen the fight."
+
+"What is a _rawnd_, Dzake?" the presser inquired.
+
+Jake's answer to the question carried him into a minute exposition of
+"right-handers," "left-handers," "sending to sleep," "first blood," and
+other commodities of the fistic business. He must have treated the
+subject rather too scientifically, however, for his female listeners
+obviously paid more attention to what he did in the course of the
+boxing match, which he had now and then, by way of illustration, with
+the thick air of the room, than to the verbal part of his lecture. Nay,
+even the performances of his brawny arms and magnificent form did not
+charm them as much as he thought they did. For a display of manly
+force, when connected--even though in a purely imaginary way--with acts
+of violence, has little attraction for a "daughter of the Ghetto." Much
+more interest did those arms and form command on their own merits. Nor
+was his chubby high-colored face neglected. True, there was a
+suggestion of the bulldog in its make up; but this effect was lost upon
+the feminine portion of Jake's audience, for his features, illuminated
+by a pair of eager eyes of a hazel hue, and shaded by a thick crop of
+dark hair, were, after all, rather pleasing than otherwise. Strongly
+Semitic naturally, they became still more so each time they were
+brightened up by his good-natured boyish smile. Indeed, Jake's very
+nose, which was fleshy and pear-shaped and decidedly not Jewish
+(although not decidedly anything else), seemed to join the Mosaic
+faith, and even his shaven upper lip looked penitent, as soon as that
+smile of his made its appearance.
+
+"Nice fun that!" observed the side-whiskered man, who had stopped
+sewing to follow Jake's exhibition. "Fighting--like drunken moujiks in
+Russia!"
+
+"Tarrarra-boom-de-ay!" was Jake's merry retort; and for an exclamation
+mark he puffed up his cheeks into a balloon, and exploded it by a
+"_pawnch_" of his formidable fist.
+
+"Look, I beg you, look at his dog's tricks!" the other said in disgust.
+
+"Horse's head that you are!" Jake rejoined good-humoredly. "Do you mean
+to tell me that a moujik understands how to _fight_? A disease he does!
+He only knows how to strike like a bear [Jake adapted his voice and
+gesticulation to the idea of clumsiness], _an' dot'sh ull_! What does
+he _care_ where his paw will land, so he strikes. _But_ here one must
+observe _rulesh_ [rules]."
+
+At this point Meester Bernstein--for so the rabbinical-looking man was
+usually addressed by his shopmates--looked up from his dictionary.
+
+"Can't you see?" he interposed, with an air of assumed gravity as he
+turned to Jake's opponent, "America is an educated country, so they
+won't even break bones without grammar. They tear each other's sides
+according to 'right and left,'[2] you know." This was a thrust at
+Jake's right-handers and left-handers, which had interfered with
+Bernstein's reading. "Nevertheless," the latter proceeded, when the
+outburst of laughter which greeted his witticism had subsided, "I do
+think that a burly Russian peasant would, without a bit of grammar,
+crunch the bones of Corbett himself; and he would not _charge_ him a
+cent for it, either."
+
+        [2] A term relating to the Hebrew equivalent of the letter
+        _s_, whose pronunciation depends upon the right or left
+        position of a mark over it.
+
+"_Is dot sho?_" Jake retorted, somewhat nonplussed. "_I betch you_ he
+would not. The peasant would lie bleeding like a hog before he had time
+to turn around."
+
+"_But_ they might kill each other in that way, _ain't it_, Jake?" asked
+a comely, milk-faced blonde whose name was Fanny. She was celebrated
+for her lengthy tirades, mostly in a plaintive, nagging strain, and
+delivered in her quiet, piping voice, and had accordingly been dubbed
+"The Preacher."
+
+"Oh, that will happen but very seldom," Jake returned rather glumly.
+
+The theatrical pair broke off their boasting match to join in the
+debate, which soon included all except the socialist; the former two,
+together with the two girls and the presser, espousing the American
+cause, while Malke the widow and "De Viskes" sided with Bernstein.
+
+"Let it be as you say," said the leader of the minority, withdrawing
+from the contest to resume his newspaper. "My grandma's last care it is
+who can fight best."
+
+"Nice pleasure, _anyhull_," remarked the widow. "_Never min'_, we shall
+see how it will lie in his head when he has a wife and children to
+_support_."
+
+Jake colored. "What does a _chicken_ know about these things?" he said
+irascibly.
+
+Bernstein again could not help intervening. "And you, Jake, can not do
+without 'these things,' can you? Indeed, I do not see how you manage to
+live without them."
+
+"Don't you like it? I do," Jake declared tartly. "Once I live in
+America," he pursued, on the defensive, "I want to know that I live in
+America. _Dot'sh a' kin' a man I am!_ One must not be a _greenhorn_.
+Here a Jew is as good as a Gentile. How, then, would you have it? The
+way it is in Russia, where a Jew is afraid to stand within four ells of
+a Christian?"
+
+"Are there no other Christians than _fighters_ in America?" Bernstein
+objected with an amused smile. "Why don't you look for the educated
+ones?"
+
+"Do you mean to say the _fighters_ are not _ejecate_? Better than you,
+_anyhoy_," Jake said with a Yankee wink, followed by his Semitic smile.
+"Here you read the papers, and yet _I'll betch you_ you don't know that
+Corbett _findished college_."
+
+"I never read about fighters," Bernstein replied with a bored gesture,
+and turned to his paper.
+
+"Then say that you don't know, and _dot'sh ull_!"
+
+Bernstein made no reply. In his heart Jake respected him, and was now
+anxious to vindicate his tastes in the judgment of his scholarly
+shopmate and in his own.
+
+"_Alla right_, let it be as you say; the _fighters_ are not _ejecate_.
+No, not a bit!" he said ironically, continuing to address himself to
+Bernstein. "But what will you say to _baseball_? All _college boys_ and
+_tony peoplesh_ play it," he concluded triumphantly. Bernstein remained
+silent, his eyes riveted to his newspaper. "Ah, you don't answer,
+_shee_?" said Jake, feeling put out.
+
+The awkward pause which followed was relieved by one of the playgoers
+who wanted to know whether it was true that to pitch a ball required
+more skill than to catch one.
+
+"_Sure!_ You must know how to _peetch_," Jake rejoined with the cloud
+lingering on his brow, as he lukewarmly delivered an imaginary ball.
+
+"And I, for my part, don't see what wisdom there is to it," said the
+presser with a shrug. "I think I could throw, too."
+
+"He can do everything!" laughingly remarked a girl named Pessé.
+
+"How hard can you hit?" Jake demanded sarcastically, somewhat warming
+up to the subject.
+
+"As hard as you at any time."
+
+"_I betch you a dullar to you' ten shent_ you can not," Jake answered,
+and at the same moment he fished out a handful of coin from his
+trousers pocket and challengingly presented it close to his
+interlocutor's nose.
+
+"There he goes!--betting!" the presser exclaimed, drawing slightly
+back. "For my part, your _pitzers_ and _catzers_ may all lie in the
+earth. A nice entertainment, indeed! Just like little children--playing
+ball! And yet people say America is a _smart_ country. I don't see it."
+
+"_'F caush_ you don't, _becaush_ you are a bedraggled _greenhorn_,
+afraid to budge out of Heshter Shtreet." As Jake thus vented his bad
+humour on his adversary, he cast a glance at Bernstein, as if anxious
+to attract his attention and to re-engage him in the discussion.
+
+"Look at the Yankee!" the presser shot back.
+
+"More of a one than you, _anyhoy_."
+
+"He thinks that _shaving_ one's mustache makes a Yankee!"
+
+Jake turned white with rage.
+
+"_'Pon my vord_, I'll ride into his mug and give such a _shaving_ and
+planing to his pig's snout that he will have to pick up his teeth."
+
+"That's all you are good for."
+
+"Better don't answer him, Jake," said Fanny, intimately.
+
+"Oh, I came near forgetting that he has somebody to take his part!"
+snapped the presser.
+
+The girl's milky face became a fiery red, and she retorted in
+vituperative Yiddish from that vocabulary which is the undivided
+possession of her sex. The presser jerked out an innuendo still more
+far-reaching than his first. Jake, with bloodshot eyes, leaped at the
+offender, and catching him by the front of his waistcoat, was aiming
+one of those bearlike blows which but a short while ago he had decried
+in the moujik, when Bernstein sprang to his side and tore him away,
+Pessé placing herself between the two enemies.
+
+"Don't get excited," Bernstein coaxed him.
+
+"Better don't soil your hands," Fanny added.
+
+After a slight pause Bernstein could not forbear a remark which he had
+stubbornly repressed while Jake was challenging him to a debate on the
+education of baseball players: "Look here, Jake; since fighters and
+baseball men are all educated, then why don't you try to become so?
+Instead of _spending_ your money on fights, dancing, and things like
+that, would it not be better if you paid it to a teacher?"
+
+Jake flew into a fresh passion. "_Never min'_ what I do with my money,"
+he said; "I don't steal it from you, do I? Rejoice that you keep
+tormenting your books. Much does he know! Learning, learning, and
+learning, and still he can not speak English. I don't learn and yet I
+speak quicker than you!"
+
+A deep blush of wounded vanity mounted to Bernstein's sallow cheek.
+"_Ull right, ull right!_" he cut the conversation short, and took up
+the newspaper.
+
+Another nervous silence fell upon the group. Jake felt wretched. He
+uttered an English oath, which in his heart he directed against himself
+as much as against his sedate companion, and fell to frowning upon the
+leg of a machine.
+
+"Vill you go by Joe to-night?" asked Fanny in English, speaking in an
+undertone. Joe was a dancing master. She was sure Jake intended to call
+at his "academy" that evening, and she put the question only in order
+to help him out of his sour mood.
+
+"No," said Jake, morosely.
+
+"Vy, to-day is Vensday."
+
+"And without you I don't know it!" he snarled in Yiddish.
+
+The finisher girl blushed deeply and refrained from any response.
+
+"He does look like a _regely_ Yankee, doesn't he?" Pessé whispered to
+her after a little.
+
+"Go and ask him!"
+
+"Go and hang yourself together with him! Such a nasty preacher! Did you
+ever hear--one dares not say a word to the noblewoman!"
+
+At this juncture the boss, a dwarfish little Jew, with a vivid pair of
+eyes and a shaggy black beard, darted into the chamber.
+
+"It is _no used_!" he said with a gesture of despair. "There is not a
+stitch of work, if only for a cure. Look, look how they have lowered
+their noses!" he then added with a triumphant grin. "_Vell_, I shall
+not be teasing you, 'Pity living things!' The expressman is _darn
+stess_. I would not go till I saw him _start_, and then I caught a car.
+No other _boss_ could get a single jacket even if he fell upon his
+knees. _Vell_, do you appreciate it at least? Not much, ay?"
+
+The presser rushed out of the room and presently came back laden with
+bundles of cut cloth which he threw down on the table. A wild scramble
+ensued. The presser looked on indifferently. The three finisher women,
+who had awaited the advent of the bundles as eagerly as the men, now
+calmly put on their hats. They knew that their part of the work
+wouldn't come before three o'clock, and so, overjoyed by the certainty
+of employment for at least another day or two, they departed till that
+hour.
+
+"Look at the rush they are making! Just like the locusts of Egypt!" the
+boss cried half sternly and half with self-complacent humour, as he
+shielded the treasure with both his arms from all except "De Viskes"
+and Jake--the two being what is called in sweat-shop parlance,
+"_chance-mentshen_," i.e., favorites. "Don't be snatching and catching
+like that," the boss went on. "You may burn your fingers. Go to your
+machines, I say! The soup will be served in separate plates. Never
+fear, it won't get cold."
+
+The hands at last desisted gingerly, Jake and the whiskered operator
+carrying off two of the largest bundles. The others went to their
+machines empty-handed and remained seated, their hungry glances riveted
+to the booty, until they, too, were provided.
+
+The little boss distributed the bundles with dignified deliberation. In
+point of fact, he was no less impatient to have the work started than
+any of his employees. But in him the feeling was overridden by a kind
+of malicious pleasure which he took in their eagerness and in the
+demonstration of his power over the men, some of whom he knew to have
+enjoyed a more comfortable past than himself. The machines of Jake and
+"De Viskes" led off in a duet, which presently became a trio, and in
+another few minutes the floor was fairly dancing to the ear-piercing
+discords of the whole frantic sextet.
+
+In the excitement of the scene called forth by the appearance of the
+bundles, Jake's gloomy mood had melted away. Nevertheless, while his
+machine was delivering its first shrill staccatos, his heart recited a
+vow: "As soon as I get my pay I shall call on the installment man and
+give him a deposit for a ticket." The prospective ticket was to be for
+a passage across the Atlantic from Hamburg to New York. And as the
+notion of it passed through Jake's mind it evoked there the image of a
+dark-eyed young woman with a babe in her lap. However, as the sewing
+machine throbbed and writhed under Jake's lusty kicks, it seemed to be
+swiftly carrying him away from the apparition which had the effect of
+receding, as a wayside object does from the passenger of a flying
+train, until it lost itself in a misty distance, other visions emerging
+in its place.
+
+It was some three years before the opening of this story that Jake had
+last beheld that very image in the flesh. But then at that period of
+his life he had not even suspected the existence of a name like Jake,
+being known to himself and to all Povodye--a town in northwestern
+Russia--as Yekl or Yekelé.
+
+It was not as a deserter from military service that he had shaken off
+the dust of that town where he had passed the first twenty-two years of
+his life. As the only son of aged parents he had been exempt from the
+duty of bearing arms. Jake may have forgotten it, but his mother still
+frequently recurs to the day when he came rushing home, panting for
+breath, with the "red certificate" assuring his immunity in his hand.
+She nearly fainted for happiness. And when, stroking his dishevelled
+sidelocks with her bony hand and feasting her eye on his chubby face,
+she whispered, "My recovered child! God be blessed for his mercy!"
+there was a joyous tear in his eye as well as in hers. Well does she
+remember how she gently spat on his forehead three times to avert the
+effect of a possible evil eye on her "flourishing tree of a boy," and
+how his father standing by made merry over what he called her crazy
+womanish tricks, and said she had better fetch some brandy in honour of
+the glad event.
+
+But if Yekl was averse to wearing a soldier's uniform on his own person
+he was none the less fond of seeing it on others. His ruling passion,
+even after he had become a husband and a father, was to watch the
+soldiers drilling on the square in front of the whitewashed barracks
+near which stood his father's smithy. From a cheder[3] boy he showed a
+knack at placing himself on terms of familiarity with the Jewish
+members of the local regiment, whose uniforms struck terror into the
+hearts of his schoolmates. He would often play truant to attend a
+military parade; no lad in town knew so many Russian words or was as
+well versed in army terminology as Yekelé "Beril the blacksmith's;" and
+after he had left cheder, while working his father's bellows, Yekl
+would vary synagogue airs with martial song.
+
+        [3] A school where Jewish children are instructed in the Old
+        Testament or the Talmud.
+
+Three years had passed since Yekl had for the last time set his eyes on
+the whitewashed barracks and on his father's rickety smithy, which, for
+reasons indirectly connected with the Government's redoubled
+discrimination against the sons of Israel, had become inadequate to
+support two families; three years since that beautiful summer morning
+when he had mounted the spacious _kibitka_ which was to carry him to
+the frontier-bound train; since, hurried by the driver, he had leaned
+out of the wagon to kiss his half-year old son good-bye amid the
+heart-rending lamentations of his wife, the tremulous "Go in good
+health!" of his father, and the startled screams of the neighbours who
+rushed to the relief of his fainting mother. The broken Russian learned
+among the Povodye soldiers he had exchanged for English of a
+corresponding quality, and the bellows for a sewing machine--a change
+of weapons in the battle of life which had been brought about both by
+Yekl's tender religious feelings and robust legs. He had been shocked
+by the very notion of seeking employment at his old trade in a city
+where it is in the hands of Christians, and consequently involves a
+violation of the Mosaic Sabbath. On the other hand, his legs had been
+thought by his early American advisers eminently fitted for the
+treadle. Unlike New York, the Jewish sweat-shops of Boston keep in
+line, as a rule, with the Christian factories in observing Sunday as
+the only day of rest. There is, however, even in Boston a lingering
+minority of bosses--more particularly in the "pants"-making branch--who
+abide by the Sabbath of their fathers. Accordingly, it was under one of
+these that Yekl had first been initiated into the sweat-shop world.
+
+Subsequently Jake, following numerous examples, had given up "pants"
+for the more remunerative cloaks, and having rapidly attained skill in
+his new trade he had moved to New York, the centre of the cloak-making
+industry.
+
+Soon after his arrival in Boston his religious scruples had followed in
+the wake of his former first name; and if he was still free from work
+on Saturdays he found many another way of "desecrating the Sabbath."
+
+Three years had intervened since he had first set foot on American
+soil, and the thought of ever having been a Yekl would bring to Jake's
+lips a smile of patronizing commiseration for his former self. As to
+his Russian family name, which was Podkovnik, Jake's friends had such
+rare use for it that by mere negligence it had been left intact.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+THE NEW YORK GHETTO.
+
+
+It was after seven in the evening when Jake finished his last jacket.
+Some of the operators had laid down their work before, while others
+cast an envious glance on him as he was dressing to leave, and fell to
+their machines with reluctantly redoubled energy. Fanny was a week
+worker and her time had been up at seven; but on this occasion her
+toilet had taken an uncommonly long time, and she was not ready until
+Jake got up from his chair. Then she left the room rather suddenly and
+with a demonstrative "Good-night all!"
+
+When Jake reached the street he found her on the sidewalk, making a
+pretense of brushing one of her sleeves with the cuff of the other.
+
+"So kvick?" she asked, raising her head in feigned surprise.
+
+"You cull dot kvick?" he returned grimly. "Good-bye!"
+
+"Say, ain't you goin' to dance to-night, really?" she queried
+shamefacedly.
+
+"I tol' you I vouldn't."
+
+"What does _she_ want of me?" he complained to himself proceeding on
+his way. He grew conscious of his low spirits, and, tracing them with
+some effort to their source, he became gloomier still. "No more fun for
+me!" he decided. "I shall get them over here and begin a new life."
+
+After supper, which he had taken, as usual, at his lodgings, he went
+out for a walk. He was firmly determined to keep himself from visiting
+Joe Peltner's dancing academy, and accordingly he took a direction
+opposite to Suffolk Street, where that establishment was situated.
+Having passed a few blocks, however, his feet, contrary to his will,
+turned into a side street and thence into one leading to Suffolk. "I
+shall only drop in to tell Joe that I can not sell any of his ball
+tickets, and return them," he attempted to deceive his own conscience.
+Hailing this pretext with delight he quickened his pace as much as the
+overcrowded sidewalks would allow.
+
+He had to pick and nudge his way through dense swarms of bedraggled
+half-naked humanity; past garbage barrels rearing their overflowing
+contents in sickening piles, and lining the streets in malicious
+suggestion of rows of trees; underneath tiers and tiers of fire
+escapes, barricaded and festooned with mattresses, pillows, and
+feather-beds not yet gathered in for the night. The pent-in sultry
+atmosphere was laden with nausea and pierced with a discordant and, as
+it were, plaintive buzz. Supper had been despatched in a hurry, and the
+teeming populations of the cyclopic tenement houses were out in full
+force "for fresh air," as even these people will say in mental
+quotation marks.
+
+Suffolk Street is in the very thick of the battle for breath. For it
+lies in the heart of that part of the East Side which has within the
+last two or three decades become the Ghetto of the American metropolis,
+and, indeed, the metropolis of the Ghettos of the world. It is one of
+the most densely populated spots on the face of the earth--a seething
+human sea fed by streams, streamlets, and rills of immigration flowing
+from all the Yiddish-speaking centres of Europe. Hardly a block but
+shelters Jews from every nook and corner of Russia, Poland, Galicia,
+Hungary, Roumania; Lithuanian Jews, Volhynian Jews, south Russian Jews,
+Bessarabian Jews; Jews crowded out of the "pale of Jewish settlement";
+Russified Jews expelled from Moscow, St. Petersburg, Kieff, or
+Saratoff; Jewish runaways from justice; Jewish refugees from crying
+political and economical injustice; people torn from a hard-gained
+foothold in life and from deep-rooted attachments by the caprice of
+intolerance or the wiles of demagoguery--innocent scapegoats of a
+guilty Government for its outraged populace to misspend its blind fury
+upon; students shut out of the Russian universities, and come to these
+shores in quest of learning; artisans, merchants, teachers, rabbis,
+artists, beggars--all come in search of fortune. Nor is there a
+tenement house but harbours in its bosom specimens of all the whimsical
+metamorphoses wrought upon the children of Israel of the great modern
+exodus by the vicissitudes of life in this their Promised Land of
+to-day. You find there Jews born to plenty, whom the new conditions
+have delivered up to the clutches of penury; Jews reared in the straits
+of need, who have here risen to prosperity; good people morally
+degraded in the struggle for success amid an unwonted environment;
+moral outcasts lifted from the mire, purified, and imbued with
+self-respect; educated men and women with their intellectual polish
+tarnished in the inclement weather of adversity; ignorant sons of toil
+grown enlightened--in fine, people with all sorts of antecedents,
+tastes, habits, inclinations, and speaking all sorts of subdialects of
+the same jargon, thrown pellmell into one social caldron--a human
+hodgepodge with its component parts changed but not yet fused into one
+homogeneous whole.
+
+And so the "stoops," sidewalks, and pavements of Suffolk Street were
+thronged with panting, chattering, or frisking multitudes. In one spot
+the scene received a kind of weird picturesqueness from children
+dancing on the pavement to the strident music hurled out into the
+tumultuous din from a row of the open and brightly illuminated windows
+of what appeared to be a new tenement house. Some of the young women on
+the sidewalk opposite raised a longing eye to these windows, for
+floating, by through the dazzling light within were young women like
+themselves with masculine arms round their waists.
+
+As the spectacle caught Jake's eye his heart gave a leap. He violently
+pushed his way through the waltzing swarm, and dived into the half-dark
+corridor of the house whence the music issued. Presently he found
+himself on the threshold and in the overpowering air of a spacious
+oblong chamber, alive with a damp-haired, dishevelled, reeking
+crowd--an uproarious human vortex, whirling to the squeaky notes of a
+violin and the thumping of a piano. The room was, judging by its
+untidy, once-whitewashed walls and the uncouth wooden pillars
+supporting its bare ceiling, more accustomed to the whir of sewing
+machines than to the noises which filled it at the present moment. It
+took up the whole of the first floor of a five-story house built for
+large sweat-shops, and until recently it had served its original
+purpose as faithfully as the four upper floors, which were still the
+daily scenes of feverish industry. At the further end of the room there
+was now a marble soda fountain in charge of an unkempt boy. A stocky
+young man with a black entanglement of coarse curly hair was bustling
+about among the dancers. Now and then he would pause with his eyes bent
+upon some two pairs of feet, and fall to clapping time and drawling out
+in a preoccupied singsong: "Von, two, tree! Leeft you' feet! Don' so
+kvick--sloy, sloy! Von, two, tree, von, two, tree!" This was Professor
+Peltner himself, whose curly hair, by the way, had more to do with the
+success of his institution than his stumpy legs, which, according to
+the unanimous dictum of his male pupils, moved about "like a _regely_
+pair of bears."
+
+The throng showed but a very scant sprinkling of plump cheeks and
+shapely figures in a multitude of haggard faces and flaccid forms.
+Nearly all were in their work-a-day clothes, very few of the men
+sporting a wilted white shirt front. And while the general effect of
+the kaleidoscope was one of boisterous hilarity, many of the individual
+couples somehow had the air of being engaged in hard toil rather than
+as if they were dancing for amusement. The faces of some of these bore
+a wondering martyrlike expression, as who should say, "What have we
+done to be knocked about in this manner?" For the rest, there were all
+sorts of attitudes and miens in the whirling crowd. One young fellow,
+for example, seemed to be threatening vengeance to the ceiling, while
+his partner was all but exultantly exclaiming: "Lord of the universe!
+What a world this be!" Another maiden looked as if she kept murmuring,
+"You don't say!" whereas her cavalier mutely ejaculated, "Glad to try
+my best, your noble birth!"--after the fashion of a Russian soldier.
+
+The prevailing stature of the assemblage was rather below medium. This
+does not include the dozen or two of undergrown lasses of fourteen or
+thirteen who had come surreptitiously, and--to allay the suspicion of
+their mothers--in their white aprons. They accordingly had only these
+articles to check at the hat box, and hence the nickname of
+"apron-check ladies," by which this truant contingent was known at
+Joe's academy. So that as Jake now stood in the doorway with an
+orphaned collar button glistening out of the band of his collarless
+shirt front and an affected expression of _ennui_ overshadowing his
+face, his strapping figure towered over the circling throng before him.
+He was immediately noticed and became the target for hellos, smiles,
+winks, and all manner of pleasantry: "Vot you stand like dot? You vont
+to loin dantz?" or "You a detectiff?" or "You vont a job?" or, again,
+"Is it hot anawff for you?" To all of which Jake returned an invariable
+"Yep!" each time resuming his bored mien.
+
+As he thus gazed at the dancers, a feeling of envy came over him. "Look
+at them!" he said to himself begrudgingly. "How merry they are! Such
+_shnoozes_, they can hardly set a foot well, and yet they are free,
+while I am a married man. But wait till you get married, too," he
+prospectively avenged himself on Joe's pupils; "we shall see how you
+will then dance and jump!"
+
+Presently a wave of Joe's hand brought the music and the trampling to a
+pause. The girls at once took their seats on the "ladies' bench," while
+the bulk of the men retired to the side reserved for "gents only."
+Several apparent post-graduates nonchalantly overstepped the boundary
+line, and, nothing daunted by the professor's repeated "Zents to de
+right an' ladess to the left!" unrestrainedly kept their girls
+chuckling. At all events, Joe soon desisted, his attention being
+diverted by the soda department of his business. "Sawda!" he sang out.
+"Ull kin's! Sam, you ought ashamed you'selv; vy don'tz you treat you'
+lada?"
+
+In the meantime Jake was the centre of a growing bevy of both sexes. He
+refused to unbend and to enter into their facetious mood, and his
+morose air became the topic of their persiflage.
+
+By-and-bye Joe came scuttling up to his side. "Goot-evenig, Dzake!" he
+greeted him; "I didn't seen you at ull! Say, Dzake, I'll take care dis
+site an' you take care dot site--ull right?"
+
+"Alla right!" Jake responded gruffly. "Gentsh, getch you partnesh,
+hawrry up!" he commanded in another instant.
+
+The sentence was echoed by the dancing master, who then blew on his
+whistle a prolonged shrill warble, and once again the floor was set
+straining under some two hundred pounding, gliding, or scraping feet.
+
+"Don' bee 'fraid. Gu right aheat an' getch you partner!" Jake went on
+yelling right and left. "Don' be 'shamed, Mish Cohen. Dansh mit dot
+gentlemarn!" he said, as he unceremoniously encircled Miss Cohen's
+waist with "dot gentlemarn's" arm. "Cholly! vot's de madder mitch
+_you_? You do hop like a Cossack, as true as I am a Jew," he added,
+indulging in a momentary lapse into Yiddish. English was the official
+language of the academy, where it was broken and mispronounced in as
+many different ways as there were Yiddish dialects represented in that
+institution. "Dot'sh de vay, look!" With which Jake seized from Charley
+a lanky fourteen-year-old Miss Jacobs, and proceeded to set an example
+of correct waltzing, much to the unconcealed delight of the girl, who
+let her head rest on his breast with an air of reverential gratitude
+and bliss, and to the embarrassment of her cavalier, who looked at the
+evolutions of Jake's feet without seeing.
+
+Presently Jake was beckoned away to a corner by Joe, whereupon Miss
+Jacobs, looking daggers at the little professor, sulked off to a
+distant seat.
+
+"Dzake, do me a faver; hask Mamie to gib dot feller a couple a
+dantzes," Joe said imploringly, pointing to an ungainly young man who
+was timidly viewing the pandemonium-like spectacle from the further end
+of the "gent's bench." "I hasked 'er myself, but se don' vonted. He's a
+beesness man, you 'destan', an' he kan a lot o' fellers an' I vonted
+make him satetzfiet."
+
+"Dot monkey?" said Jake. "Vot you talkin' aboyt! She vouldn't lishn to
+me neider, honesht."
+
+"Say dot you don' vonted and dot's ull."
+
+"Alla right; I'm goin' to ashk her, but I know it vouldn't be of naw
+used."
+
+"Never min', you hask 'er foist. You knaw se vouldn't refuse _you_!"
+Joe urged, with a knowing grin.
+
+"Hoy much vill you bet she will refushe shaw?" Jake rejoined with
+insincere vehemence, as he whipped out a handful of change.
+
+"Vot kin' foon a man you are! Ulleways like to bet!" said Joe,
+deprecatingly. 'F cuss it depend mit vot kin' a mout' you vill hask,
+you 'destan'?"
+
+"By gum, Jaw! Vot you take me for? Ven I shay I ashk, I ashk. You knaw
+I don' like no monkey beeshnesh. Ven I promish anytink I do it shquare,
+dot'sh a kin' a man _I_ am!" And once more protesting his firm
+conviction that Mamie would disregard his request, he started to prove
+that she would not.
+
+He had to traverse nearly the entire length of the hall, and,
+notwithstanding that he was compelled to steer clear of the dancers, he
+contrived to effect the passage at the swellest of his gaits, which
+means that he jauntily bobbed and lurched, after the manner of a
+blacksmith tugging at the bellows, and held up his enormous bullet head
+as if he were bidding defiance to the whole world. Finally he paused in
+front of a girl with a superabundance of pitch-black side bangs and
+with a pert, ill natured, pretty face of the most strikingly Semitic
+cast in the whole gathering. She looked twenty-three or more, was
+inclined to plumpness, and her shrewd deep dark eyes gleamed out of a
+warm gipsy complexion. Jake found her seated in a fatigued attitude on
+a chair near the piano.
+
+"Good-evenig, Mamie!" he said, bowing with mock gallantry.
+
+"Rats!"
+
+"Shay, Mamie, give dot feller a tvisht, vill you?"
+
+"Dot slob again? Joe must tink if you ask me I'll get scared, ain't it?
+Go and tell him he is too fresh," she said with a contemptuous grimace.
+Like the majority of the girls of the academy, Mamie's English was a
+much nearer approach to a justification of its name than the gibberish
+spoken by the men.
+
+Jake felt routed; but he put a bold face on it and broke out with
+studied resentment:
+
+"Vot you kickin' aboyt, anyhoy? Jaw don' mean notin' at ull. If you
+don' vonted never min', an' dot'sh ull. It don' cut a figger, shee?"
+And he feignedly turned to go.
+
+"Look how kvick he gets excited!" she said, surrenderingly.
+
+"I ain't get ekshitet at ull; but vot'sh de used a makin' monkey
+beesnesh?" he retorted with triumphant acerbity.
+
+"You are a monkey you'self," she returned with a playful pout.
+
+The compliment was acknowledged by one of Jake's blandest grins.
+
+"An' you are a monkey from monkey-land," he said. "Vill you dansh mit
+dot feller?"
+
+"Rats! Vot vill you give me?"
+
+"Vot should I give you?" he asked impatiently.
+
+"Vill you treat?"
+
+"Treat? Ger-rr oyt!" he replied with a sweeping kick at space.
+
+"Den I von't dance."
+
+"Alla right. I'll treat you mit a coupel a waltch."
+
+"Is dot so? You must really tink I am swooning to dance vit you," she
+said, dividing the remark between both jargons.
+
+"Look at her, look! she is a _regely_ getzke[4]: one must take off
+one's cap to speak to her. Don't you always say you like to _dansh_
+with me _becush_ I am a good _dansher_?"
+
+        [4] A crucifix.
+
+"You must tink you are a peach of a dancer, ain' it? Bennie can dance a
+---- sight better dan you," she recurred to her English.
+
+"Alla right!" he said tartly. "So you don' vonted?"
+
+"O sugar! He is gettin' mad again. Vell, who is de getzke, me or you?
+All right, I'll dance vid de slob. But it's only becuss you ask me,
+mind you!" she added fawningly.
+
+"Dot'sh alla right!" he rejoined, with an affectation of gravity,
+concealing his triumph. "But you makin' too much fush. I like to shpeak
+plain, shee? Dot'sh a kin' a man _I_ am."
+
+The next two waltzes Mamie danced with the ungainly novice, taking
+exaggerated pains with him. Then came a lancers, Joe calling out the
+successive movements huckster fashion. His command was followed by less
+than half of the class, however, for the greater part preferred to
+avail themselves of the same music for waltzing. Jake was bent upon
+giving Mamie what he called a "sholid good time"; and, as she shared
+his view that a square or fancy dance was as flimsy an affair as a
+stick of candy, they joined or, rather, led the seceding majority. They
+spun along with all-forgetful gusto; every little while he lifted her
+on his powerful arm and gave her a "mill," he yelping and she squeaking
+for sheer ecstasy, as he did so; and throughout the performance his
+face and his whole figure seemed to be exclaiming, "Dot'sh a kin' a man
+_I_ am!"
+
+Several waifs stood in a cluster admiring or begrudging the antics of
+the star couple. Among these was lanky Miss Jacobs and Fanny the
+Preacher, who had shortly before made her appearance in the hall, and
+now stood pale and forlorn by the "apron-check" girl's side.
+
+"Look at the way she is stickin' to him!" the little girl observed with
+envious venom, her gaze riveted to Mamie, whose shapely head was at
+this moment reclining on Jake's shoulders, with her eyes half shut, as
+if melting in a transport of bliss.
+
+Fanny felt cut to the quick.
+
+"You are jealous, ain't you?" she jerked out.
+
+"Who, me? Vy should I be jealous?" Miss Jacobs protested, colouring.
+"On my part let them both go to ----. _You_ must be jealous. Here,
+here! See how your eyes are creeping out looking! Here, here!" she
+teased her offender in Yiddish, poking her little finger at her as she
+spoke.
+
+"Will you shut your scurvy mouth, little piece of ugliness, you? Such a
+piggish apron check!" poor Fanny burst out under breath, tears starting
+to her eyes.
+
+"Such a nasty little runt!" another girl chimed in.
+
+"Such a little cricket already knows what 'jealous' is!" a third of the
+bystanders put in. "You had better go home or your mamma will give you
+a spanking." Whereat the little cricket made a retort, which had better
+be left unrecorded.
+
+"To think of a bit of a flea like that having so much _cheek_! Here is
+America for you!"
+
+"America for a country and '_dod'll do_' [that'll do] for a language!"
+observed one of the young men of the group, indulging one of the
+stereotype jokes of the Ghetto.
+
+The passage at arms drew Jake's attention to the little knot of
+spectators, and his eye fell on Fanny. Whereupon he summarily
+relinquished his partner on the floor, and advanced toward his
+shopmate, who, seeing him approach, hastened to retreat to the girls'
+bench, where she remained seated with a drooping head.
+
+"Hello, Fanny!" he shouted briskly, coming up in front of her.
+
+"Hello!" she returned rigidly, her eyes fixed on the dirty floor.
+
+"Come, give ush a tvisht, vill you?"
+
+"But you ain't goin' by Joe to-night!" she answered, with a withering
+curl of her lip, her glance still on the ground. "Go to your lady,
+she'll be mad atch you."
+
+"I didn't vonted to gu here, honesht, Fanny. I o'ly come to tell Jaw
+shometin', an' dot'sh ull," he said guiltily.
+
+"Why should you apologize?" she addressed the tip of her shoe in her
+mother tongue. "As if he was obliged to apologize to me! _For my part_
+you can _dance_ with her day and night. _Vot do I care?_ As if I
+_cared_! I have only come to see what a _bluffer_ you are. Do you think
+I am a _fool_? As _smart_ as your Mamie, _anyvay_. As if I had not
+known he wanted to make me stay at home! What are you afraid of? Am I
+in your way then? As if I was in his way! What business have I to be in
+your way? Who is in your way?"
+
+While she was thus speaking in her voluble, querulous, harassing
+manner, Jake stood with his hands in his trousers' pockets, in an
+attitude of mock attention. Then, suddenly losing patience, he said:
+
+"_Dot'sh alla right!_ You will finish your sermon afterward. And in the
+meantime _lesh have a valtz_ from the land of _valtzes_!" With which he
+forcibly dragged her off her seat, catching her round the waist.
+
+"But I don't need it, I don't wish it! Go to your Mamie!" she
+protested, struggling. "I tell you I don't need it, I don't----" The
+rest of the sentence was choked off by her violent breathing; for by
+this time she was spinning with Jake like a top. After another moment's
+pretense at struggling to free herself she succumbed, and presently
+clung to her partner, the picture of triumph and beatitude.
+
+Meanwhile Mamie had walked up to Joe's side, and without much
+difficulty caused him to abandon the lancers party to themselves, and
+to resume with her the waltz which Jake had so abruptly broken off.
+
+In the course of the following intermission she diplomatically seated
+herself beside her rival, and paraded her tranquillity of mind by
+accosting her with a question on shop matters. Fanny was not blind to
+the manoeuvre, but her exultation was all the greater for it, and she
+participated in the ensuing conversation with exuberant geniality.
+
+By-and-bye they were joined by Jake.
+
+"Vell, vill you treat, Jake?" said Mamie.
+
+"Vot you vant, a kish?" he replied, putting his offer in action as well
+as in language.
+
+Mamie slapped his arm.
+
+"May the Angel of Death kiss you!" said her lips in Yiddish. "Try
+again!" her glowing face overruled them in a dialect of its own.
+
+Fanny laughed.
+
+"Once I am _treating_, both _ladas_ must be _treated_ alike, _ain'
+it_?" remarked the gallant, and again he proved himself as good as his
+word, although Fanny struggled with greater energy and ostensibly with
+more real indignation.
+
+"But vy don't you treat, you stingy loafer you?"
+
+"Vot elsh you vant? A peench?" He was again on the point of suiting the
+action to the word, but Mamie contrived to repay the pinch before she
+had received it, and added a generous piece of profanity into the
+bargain. Whereupon there ensued a scuffle of a character which defies
+description in more senses than one.
+
+Nevertheless Jake marched his two "ladas" up to the marble fountain,
+and regaled them with two cents' worth of soda each.
+
+An hour or so later, when Jake got out into the street, his breast
+pocket was loaded with a fresh batch of "Professor Peltner's Grand
+Annual Ball" tickets, and his two arms--with Mamie and Fanny
+respectively.
+
+"As soon as I get my wages I'll call on the installment agent and give
+him a deposit for a steamship ticket," presently glimmered through his
+mind, as he adjusted his hold upon the two girls, snugly gathering them
+to his sides.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+IN THE GRIP OF HIS PAST.
+
+
+Jake had never even vaguely abandoned the idea of supplying his wife
+and child with the means of coming to join him. He was more or less
+prompt in remitting her monthly allowance of ten rubles, and the visit
+to the draft and passage office had become part of the routine of his
+life. It had the invariable effect of arousing his dormant scruples,
+and he hardly ever left the office without ascertaining the price of a
+steerage voyage from Hamburg to New York. But no sooner did he emerge
+from the dingy basement into the noisy scenes of Essex Street, than he
+would consciously let his mind wander off to other topics.
+
+Formerly, during the early part of his sojourn in Boston, his landing
+place, where some of his townsfolk resided and where he had passed his
+first two years in America, he used to mention his Gitl and his Yosselé
+so frequently and so enthusiastically, that some wags among the Hanover
+Street tailors would sing "Yekl and wife and the baby" to the tune of
+Molly and I and the Baby. In the natural course of things, however,
+these retrospective effusions gradually became far between, and since
+he had shifted his abode to New York he carefully avoided all reference
+to his antecedents. The Jewish quarter of the metropolis, which is a
+vast and compact city within a city, offers its denizens incomparably
+fewer chances of contact with the English-speaking portion of the
+population than any of the three separate Ghettos of Boston. As a
+consequence, since Jake's advent to New York his passion for American
+sport had considerably cooled off. And, to make up for this, his
+enthusiastic nature before long found vent in dancing and in a general
+life of gallantry. His proved knack with the gentle sex had turned his
+head and now cost him all his leisure time. Still, he would
+occasionally attend some variety show in which boxing was the main
+drawing card, and somehow managed to keep track of the salient events
+of the sporting world generally. Judging from his unstaid habits and
+happy-go-lucky abandon to the pleasures of life, his present associates
+took it for granted that he was single, and instead of twitting him
+with the feigned assumption that he had deserted a family--a piece of
+burlesque as old as the Ghetto--they would quiz him as to which of his
+girls he was "dead struck" on, and as to the day fixed for the wedding.
+On more than one such occasion he had on the tip of his tongue the
+seemingly jocular question, "How do you know I am not married already?"
+But he never let the sentence cross his lips, and would, instead,
+observe facetiously that he was not "shtruck on nu goil," and that he
+was dead struck on all of them in "whulshale." "I hate retail beesnesh,
+shee? Dot'sh a' kin' a man _I_ am!" One day, in the course of an
+intimate conversation with Joe, Jake, dropping into a philosophical
+mood, remarked:
+
+"It's something like a baker, _ain't it_? The more _cakes_ he has the
+less he likes them. You and I have a _lot_ of girls; that's why we
+don't _care_ for any one of them."
+
+But if his attachment for the girls of his acquaintance collectively
+was not coupled with a quivering of his heart for any individual Mamie,
+or Fanny, or Sarah, it did not, on the other hand, preclude a certain
+lingering tenderness for his wife. But then his wife had long since
+ceased to be what she had been of yore. From a reality she had
+gradually become transmuted into a fancy. During the three years since
+he had set foot on the soil, where a "shister[5] becomes a mister and a
+mister a shister," he had lived so much more than three years--so much
+more, in fact, than in all the twenty-two years of his previous
+life--that his Russian past appeared to him a dream and his wife and
+child, together with his former self, fellow-characters in a charming
+tale, which he was neither willing to banish from his memory nor able
+to reconcile with the actualities of his American present. The question
+of how to effect this reconciliation, and of causing Gitl and little
+Yosselé to step out of the thickening haze of reminiscence and to take
+their stand by his side as living parts of his daily life, was a
+fretful subject from the consideration of which he cowardly shrank. He
+wished he could both import his family and continue his present mode of
+life. At the bottom of his soul he wondered why this should not be
+feasible. But he knew that it was not, and his heart would sink at the
+notion of forfeiting the lion's share of attentions for which he came
+in at the hands of those who lionized him. Moreover, how will he look
+people in the face in view of the lie he has been acting? He longed for
+an interminable respite. But as sooner or later the minds of his
+acquaintances were bound to become disabused, and he would have to face
+it all out anyway, he was many a time on the point of making a clean
+breast of it, and failed to do so for a mere lack of nerve, each time
+letting himself off on the plea that a week or two before his wife's
+arrival would be a more auspicious occasion for the disclosure.
+
+        [5] Yiddish for shoemaker.
+
+Neither Jake nor his wife nor his parents could write even Yiddish,
+although both he and his old father read fluently the punctuated Hebrew
+of the Old Testament or the Prayer-book. Their correspondence had
+therefore to be carried on by proxy, and, as a consequence, at longer
+intervals than would have been the case otherwise. The missives which
+he received differed materially in length, style, and degree of
+illiteracy as well as in point of penmanship; but they all agreed in
+containing glowing encomiums of little Yosselé, exhorting Yekl not to
+stray from the path of righteousness, and reproachfully asking whether
+he ever meant to send the ticket. The latter point had an exasperating
+effect on Jake. There were times, however, when it would touch his
+heart and elicit from him his threadbare vow to send the ticket at
+once. But then he never had money enough to redeem it. And, to tell the
+truth, at the bottom of his heart he was at such moments rather glad of
+his poverty. At all events, the man who wrote Jake's letters had a
+standing order to reply in the sharpest terms at his command that Yekl
+did not spend his money on drink; that America was not the land they
+took it for, where one could "scoop gold by the skirtful;" that Gitl
+need not fear lest he meant to desert her, and that as soon as he had
+saved enough to pay her way and to set up a decent establishment she
+would be sure to get the ticket.
+
+Jake's scribe was an old Jew who kept a little stand on Pitt Street,
+which is one of the thoroughfares and market places of the Galician
+quarter of the Ghetto, and where Jake was unlikely to come upon any
+people of his acquaintance. The old man scraped together his livelihood
+by selling Yiddish newspapers and cigarettes, and writing letters for a
+charge varying, according to the length of the epistle, from five to
+ten cents. Each time Jake received a letter he would take it to the
+Galician, who would first read it to him (for an extra remuneration of
+one cent) and then proceed to pen five cents' worth of rhetoric, which
+might have been printed and forwarded one copy at a time for all the
+additions or alterations Jake ever caused to be made in it.
+
+"What else shall I write?" the old man would ask his patron, after
+having written and read aloud the first dozen lines, which Jake had
+come to know by heart.
+
+"How do _I_ know?" Jake would respond. "It is you who can write; so you
+ought to understand what else to write."
+
+And the scribe would go on to write what he had written on almost every
+previous occasion. Jake would keep the letter in his pocket until he
+had spare United States money enough to convert into ten rubles, and
+then he would betake himself to the draft office and have the amount,
+together with the well-crumpled epistle, forwarded to Povodye.
+
+And so it went month in and month out.
+
+The first letter which reached Jake after the scene at Joe Peltner's
+dancing academy came so unusually close upon its predecessor that he
+received it from his landlady's hand with a throb of misgiving. He had
+always laboured under the presentiment that some unknown enemies--for
+he had none that he could name--would some day discover his wife's
+address and anonymously represent him to her as contemplating another
+marriage, in order to bring Gitl down upon him unawares. His first
+thought accordingly was that this letter was the outcome of such a
+conspiracy. "Or maybe there is some death in the family?" he next
+reflected, half with terror and half with a feeling almost amounting to
+reassurance.
+
+When the cigarette vender unfolded the letter he found it to be of such
+unusual length that he stipulated an additional cent for the reading of
+it.
+
+"_Alla right_, hurry up now!" Jake said, grinding his teeth on a
+mumbled English oath.
+
+"_Righd evay! Righd evay!_" the old fellow returned jubilantly, as he
+hastily adjusted his spectacles and addressed himself to his task.
+
+The letter had evidently been penned by some one laying claim to Hebrew
+scholarship and ambitious to impress the New World with it; for it was
+quite replete with poetic digressions, strained and twisted to suit
+some quotation from the Bible. And what with this unstinted verbosity,
+which was Greek to Jake, one or two interruptions by the old man's
+customers, and interpretations necessitated by difference of dialect, a
+quarter of an hour had elapsed before the scribe realized the trend of
+what he was reading.
+
+Then he suddenly gave a start, as if shocked.
+
+"Vot'sh a madder? Vot'sh a madder?"
+
+"_Vot's der madder?_ What should be the _madder_? Wait--a--I don't know
+what I can do"--he halted in perplexity.
+
+"Any bad news?" Jake inquired, turning pale. "Speak out!"
+
+"Speak out! It is all very well for you to say 'speak out.' You forget
+that one is a piece of Jew," he faltered, hinting at the orthodox
+custom which enjoins a child of Israel from being the messenger of sad
+tidings.
+
+"Don't _bodder_ a head!" Jake shouted savagely. "I have paid you,
+haven't I?"
+
+"_Say_, young man, you need not be so angry," the other said,
+resentfully. "Half of the letter I have read, have I not? so I shall
+refund you one cent and leave me in peace." He took to fumbling in his
+pockets for the coin, with apparent reluctance.
+
+"Tell me what is the matter," Jake entreated, with clinched fists. "Is
+anybody dead? Do tell me now."
+
+"_Vell_, since you know it already, I may as well tell you," said the
+scribe cunningly, glad to retain the cent and Jake's patronage. "It is
+your father who has been freed; may he have a bright paradise."
+
+"Ha?" Jake asked aghast, with a wide gape.
+
+The Galician resumed the reading in solemn, doleful accents. The
+melancholy passage was followed by a jeremiade upon the penniless
+condition of the family and Jake's duty to send the ticket without
+further procrastination. As to his mother, she preferred the Povodye
+graveyard to a watery sepulchre, and hoped that her beloved and only
+son, the apple of her eye, whom she had been awake nights to bring up
+to manhood, and so forth, would not forget her.
+
+"So now they will be here for sure, and there can be no more delay!"
+was Jake's first distinct thought. "Poor father!" he inwardly exclaimed
+the next moment, with deep anguish. His native home came back to him
+with a vividness which it had not had in his mind for a long time.
+
+"Was he an old man?" the scribe queried sympathetically.
+
+"About seventy," Jake answered, bursting into tears.
+
+"Seventy? Then he had lived to a good old age. May no one depart
+younger," the old man observed, by way of "consoling the bereaved."
+
+As Jake's tears instantly ran dry he fell to wringing his hands and
+moaning.
+
+"Good-night!" he presently said, taking leave. "I'll see you to-morrow,
+if God be pleased."
+
+"Good-night!" the scribe returned with heartfelt condolence.
+
+As he was directing his steps to his lodgings Jake wondered why he did
+not weep. He felt that this was the proper thing for a man in his
+situation to do, and he endeavoured to inspire himself with emotions
+befitting the occasion. But his thoughts teasingly gambolled about
+among the people and things of the street. By-and-bye, however, he
+became sensible of his mental eye being fixed upon the big fleshy mole
+on his father's scantily bearded face. He recalled the old man's
+carriage, the melancholy nod of his head, his deep sigh upon taking
+snuff from the time-honoured birch bark which Jake had known as long as
+himself; and his heart writhed with pity and with the acutest pangs of
+homesickness. "And it was evening and it was morning, the sixth day.
+And the heavens and the earth were finished." As the Hebrew words of
+the Sanctification of the Sabbath resounded in Jake's ears, in his
+father's senile treble, he could see his gaunt figure swaying over a
+pair of Sabbath loaves. It is Friday night. The little room, made tidy
+for the day of rest and faintly illuminated by the mysterious light of
+two tallow candles rising from freshly burnished candlesticks, is
+pervaded by a benign, reposeful warmth and a general air of peace and
+solemnity. There, seated by the side of the head of the little family
+and within easy reach of the huge brick oven, is his old mother,
+flushed with fatigue, and with an effort keeping her drowsy eyes open
+to attend, with a devout mien, her husband's prayer. Opposite to her,
+by the window, is Yekl, the present Jake, awaiting his turn to chant
+the same words in the holy tongue, and impatiently thinking of the
+repast to come after it. Besides the three of them there is no one else
+in the chamber, for Jake visioned the fascinating scene as he had known
+it for almost twenty years, and not as it had appeared during the short
+period since the family had been joined by Gitl and subsequently by
+Yosselé.
+
+Suddenly he felt himself a child, the only and pampered son of a doting
+mother. He was overcome with a heart-wringing consciousness of being an
+orphan, and his soul was filled with a keen sense of desolation and
+self-pity. And thereupon everything around him--the rows of gigantic
+tenement houses, the hum and buzz of the scurrying pedestrians, the
+jingling horse cars--all suddenly grew alien and incomprehensible to
+Jake. Ah, if he could return to his old home and old days, and have his
+father recite Sanctification again, and sit by his side, opposite to
+mother, and receive from her hand a plate of reeking _tzimess_,[6] as
+of yore! Poor mother! He _will_ not forget her--But what is the Italian
+playing on that organ, anyhow? Ah, it is the new waltz! By the way,
+this is Monday and they are dancing at Joe's now and he is not there.
+"I shall not go there to-night, nor any other night," he commiserated
+himself, his reveries for the first time since he had left the Pitt
+Street cigarette stand passing to his wife and child. Her image now
+stood out in high relief with the multitudinous noisy scene at Joe's
+academy for a discordant, disquieting background, amid which there
+vaguely defined itself the reproachful saintlike visage of the
+deceased. "I will begin a new life!" he vowed to himself.
+
+        [6] A kind of dessert made of carrots or turnips.
+
+He strove to remember the child's features, but could only muster the
+faintest recollection--scarcely anything beyond a general symbol--a red
+little thing smiling, as he, Jake, tickles it under its tiny chin. Yet
+Jake's finger at this moment seemed to feel the soft touch of that
+little chin, and it sent through him a thrill of fatherly affection to
+which he had long been a stranger. Gitl, on the other hand, loomed up
+in all the individual sweetness of her rustic face. He beheld her
+kindly mouth opening wide--rather too wide, but all the lovelier for
+it--as she spoke; her prominent red gums, her little black eyes. He
+could distinctly hear her voice with her peculiar lisp, as one summer
+morning she had burst into the house and, clapping her hands in
+despair, she had cried, "A weeping to me! The yellow rooster is gone!"
+or, as coming into the smithy she would say: "Father-in-law,
+mother-in-law calls you to dinner. Hurry up, Yekl, dinner is ready."
+And although this was all he could recall her saying, Jake thought
+himself retentive of every word she had ever uttered in his presence.
+His heart went out to Gitl and her environment, and he was seized with
+a yearning tenderness that made him feel like crying. "I would not
+exchange her little finger for all the American _ladas_," he
+soliloquized, comparing Gitl in his mind with the dancing-school girls
+of his circle. It now filled him with disgust to think of the morals of
+some of them, although it was from his own sinful experience that he
+knew them to be of a rather loose character.
+
+He reached his lodgings in a devout mood, and before going to bed he
+was about to say his prayers. Not having said them for nearly three
+years, however, he found, to his dismay, that he could no longer do it
+by heart. His landlady had a prayer-book, but, unfortunately, she kept
+it locked in the bureau, and she was now asleep, as was everybody else
+in the house. Jake reluctantly undressed and went to bed on the kitchen
+lounge, where he usually slept.
+
+When a boy his mother had taught him to believe that to go to sleep at
+night without having recited the bed prayer rendered one liable to be
+visited and choked in bed by some ghost. Later, when he had grown up,
+and yet before he had left his birthplace, he had come to set down this
+earnest belief of his good old mother as a piece of womanish
+superstition, while since he had settled in America he had hardly ever
+had an occasion to so much as think of bed prayers. Nevertheless, as he
+now lay vaguely listening to the weird ticking of the clock on the
+mantelpiece over the stove, and at the same time desultorily brooding
+upon his father's death, the old belief suddenly uprose in his mind and
+filled him with mortal terror. He tried to persuade himself that it was
+a silly notion worthy of womenfolk, and even affected to laugh at it
+audibly. But all in vain. "Cho-king! Cho-king! Cho-king!" went the
+clock, and the form of a man in white burial clothes never ceased
+gleaming in his face. He resolutely turned to the wall, and, pulling
+the blanket over his head, he huddled himself snugly up for
+instantaneous sleep. But presently he felt the cold grip of a pair of
+hands about his throat, and he even mentally stuck out his tongue, as
+one does while being strangled.
+
+With a fast-beating heart Jake finally jumped off the lounge, and
+gently knocked at the door of his landlady's bedroom.
+
+"_Eshcoosh me, mishesh_, be so kind as to lend me your prayer-book. I
+want to say the night prayer," he addressed her imploringly.
+
+The old woman took it for a cruel practical joke, and flew into a
+passion.
+
+"Are you crazy or drunk? A nice time to make fun!"
+
+And it was not until he had said with suppliant vehemence, "May I as
+surely be alive as my father is dead!" and she had subjected him to a
+cross-examination, that she expressed sympathy and went to produce the
+keys.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+THE MEETING.
+
+
+A few weeks later, on a Saturday morning, Jake, with an unfolded
+telegram in his hand, stood in front of one of the desks at the
+Immigration Bureau of Ellis Island. He was freshly shaven and clipped,
+smartly dressed in his best clothes and ball shoes, and, in spite of
+the sickly expression of shamefacedness and anxiety which distorted his
+features, he looked younger than usual.
+
+All the way to the island he had been in a flurry of joyous
+anticipation. The prospect of meeting his dear wife and child, and,
+incidentally, of showing off his swell attire to her, had thrown him
+into a fever of impatience. But on entering the big shed he had caught
+a distant glimpse of Gitl and Yosselé through the railing separating
+the detained immigrants from their visitors, and his heart had sunk at
+the sight of his wife's uncouth and un-American appearance. She was
+slovenly dressed in a brown jacket and skirt of grotesque cut, and her
+hair was concealed under a voluminous wig of a pitch-black hue. This
+she had put on just before leaving the steamer, both "in honour of the
+Sabbath" and by way of sprucing herself up for the great event. Since
+Yekl had left home she had gained considerably in the measurement of
+her waist. The wig, however, made her seem stouter and as though
+shorter than she would have appeared without it. It also added at least
+five years to her looks. But she was aware neither of this nor of the
+fact that in New York even a Jewess of her station and orthodox
+breeding is accustomed to blink at the wickedness of displaying her
+natural hair, and that none but an elderly matron may wear a wig
+without being the occasional target for snowballs or stones. She was
+naturally dark of complexion, and the nine or ten days spent at sea had
+covered her face with a deep bronze, which combined with her prominent
+cheek bones, inky little eyes, and, above all, the smooth black wig, to
+lend her resemblance to a squaw.
+
+Jake had no sooner caught sight of her than he had averted his face, as
+if loth to rest his eyes on her, in the presence of the surging crowd
+around him, before it was inevitable. He dared not even survey that
+crowd to see whether it contained any acquaintance of his, and he
+vaguely wished that her release were delayed indefinitely.
+
+Presently the officer behind the desk took the telegram from him, and
+in another little while Gitl, hugging Yosselé with one arm and a
+bulging parcel with the other, emerged from a side door.
+
+"Yekl!" she screamed out in a piteous high key, as if crying for mercy.
+
+"Dot'sh alla right!" he returned in English, with a wan smile and
+unconscious of what he was saying. His wandering eyes and dazed mind
+were striving to fix themselves upon the stern functionary and the
+questions he bethought himself of asking before finally releasing his
+prisoners. The contrast between Gitl and Jake was so striking that the
+officer wanted to make sure--partly as a matter of official duty and
+partly for the fun of the thing--that the two were actually man and
+wife.
+
+"_Oi_ a lamentation upon me! He shaves his beard!" Gitl ejaculated to
+herself as she scrutinized her husband. "Yosselé, look! Here is
+_taté_!"
+
+But Yosselé did not care to look at taté. Instead, he turned his
+frightened little eyes--precise copies of Jake's--and buried them in
+his mother's cheek.
+
+When Gitl was finally discharged she made to fling herself on Jake. But
+he checked her by seizing both loads from her arms. He started for a
+distant and deserted corner of the room, bidding her follow. For a
+moment the boy looked stunned, then he burst out crying and fell to
+kicking his father's chest with might and main, his reddened little
+face appealingly turned to Gitl. Jake continuing his way tried to kiss
+his son into toleration, but the little fellow proved too nimble for
+him. It was in vain that Gitl, scurrying behind, kept expostulating
+with Yosselé: "Why, it is taté!" Taté was forced to capitulate before
+the march was brought to its end.
+
+At length, when the secluded corner had been reached, and Jake and Gitl
+had set down their burdens, husband and wife flew into mutual embrace
+and fell to kissing each other. The performance had an effect of
+something done to order, which, it must be owned, was far from being
+belied by the state of their minds at the moment. Their kisses imparted
+the taste of mutual estrangement to both. In Jake's case the sensation
+was quickened by the strong steerage odours which were emitted by
+Gitl's person, and he involuntarily recoiled.
+
+"You look like a _poritz_,"[7] she said shyly.
+
+        [7] Yiddish for nobleman.
+
+"How are you? How is mother?"
+
+"How should she be? So, so. She sends you her love," Gitl mumbled out.
+
+"How long was father ill?"
+
+"Maybe a month. He cost us health enough."
+
+He proceeded to make advances to Yosselé, she appealing to the child in
+his behalf. For a moment the sight of her, as they were both crouching
+before the boy, precipitated a wave of thrilling memories on Jake and
+made him feel in his old environment. Presently, however, the illusion
+took wing and here he was, Jake the Yankee, with this bonnetless,
+wigged, dowdyish little greenhorn by his side! That she was his wife,
+nay, that he was a married man at all, seemed incredible to him. The
+sturdy, thriving urchin had at first inspired him with pride; but as he
+now cast another side glance at Gitl's wig he lost all interest in him,
+and began to regard him, together with his mother, as one great
+obstacle dropped from heaven, as it were, in his way.
+
+Gitl, on her part, was overcome with a feeling akin to awe. She, too,
+could not get herself to realize that this stylish young man--shaved
+and dressed as in Povodye is only some young nobleman--was Yekl, her
+own Yekl, who had all these three years never been absent from her
+mind. And while she was once more examining Jake's blue diagonal
+cutaway, glossy stand-up collar, the white four-in-hand necktie,
+coquettishly tucked away in the bosom of his starched shirt, and, above
+all, his patent leather shoes, she was at the same time mentally
+scanning the Yekl of three years before. The latter alone was hers, and
+she felt like crying to the image to come back to her and let her be
+_his_ wife.
+
+Presently, when they had got up and Jake was plying her with
+perfunctory questions, she chanced to recognise a certain movement of
+his upper lip--an old trick of his. It was as if she had suddenly
+discovered her own Yekl in an apparent stranger, and, with another
+pitiful outcry, she fell on his breast.
+
+"Don't!" he said, with patient gentleness, pushing away her arms. "Here
+everything is so different."
+
+She coloured deeply.
+
+"They don't wear wigs here," he ventured to add.
+
+"What then?" she asked, perplexedly.
+
+"You will see. It is quite another world."
+
+"Shall I take it off, then? I have a nice Saturday kerchief," she
+faltered. "It is of silk--I bought it at Kalmen's for a bargain. It is
+still brand new."
+
+"Here one does not wear even a kerchief."
+
+"How then? Do they go about with their own hair?" she queried in
+ill-disguised bewilderment.
+
+"_Vell, alla right_, put it on, quick!"
+
+As she set about undoing her parcel, she bade him face about and screen
+her, so that neither he nor any stranger could see her bareheaded while
+she was replacing the wig by the kerchief. He obeyed. All the while the
+operation lasted he stood with his gaze on the floor, gnashing his
+teeth with disgust and shame, or hissing some Bowery oath.
+
+"Is this better?" she asked bashfully, when her hair and part of her
+forehead were hidden under a kerchief of flaming blue and yellow, whose
+end dangled down her back.
+
+The kerchief had a rejuvenating effect. But Jake thought that it made
+her look like an Italian woman of Mulberry Street on Sunday.
+
+"_Alla right_, leave it be for the present," he said in despair,
+reflecting that the wig would have been the lesser evil of the two.
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+When they reached the city Gitl was shocked to see him lead the way to
+a horse car.
+
+"_Oi_ woe is me! Why, it is Sabbath!" she gasped.
+
+He irately essayed to explain that a car, being an uncommon sort of
+vehicle, riding in it implied no violation of the holy day. But this
+she sturdily met by reference to railroads. Besides, she had seen horse
+cars while stopping in Hamburg, and knew that no orthodox Jew would use
+them on the seventh day. At length Jake, losing all self-control,
+fiercely commanded her not to make him the laughing-stock of the people
+on the street and to get in without further ado. As to the sin of the
+matter he was willing to take it all upon himself. Completely dismayed
+by his stern manner, amid the strange, uproarious, forbidding
+surroundings, Gitl yielded.
+
+As the horses started she uttered a groan of consternation and remained
+looking aghast and with a violently throbbing heart. If she had been a
+culprit on the way to the gallows she could not have been more
+terrified than she was now at this her first ride on the day of rest.
+
+The conductor came up for their fares. Jake handed him a ten-cent
+piece, and raising two fingers, he roared out: "Two! He ain' no maur as
+tree years, de liddle feller!" And so great was the impression which
+his dashing manner and his English produced on Gitl, that for some time
+it relieved her mind and she even forgot to be shocked by the sight of
+her husband handling coin on the Sabbath.
+
+Having thus paraded himself before his wife, Jake all at once grew
+kindly disposed toward her.
+
+"You must be hungry?" he asked.
+
+"Not at all! Where do you eat your _varimess_?"[8]
+
+        [8] Yiddish for dinner.
+
+"Don't say varimess," he corrected her complaisantly; "here it is
+called _dinner_!"
+
+"_Dinner?_[9] And what if one becomes fatter?" she confusedly ventured
+an irresistible pun.
+
+        [9] Yiddish for thinner.
+
+This was the way in which Gitl came to receive her first lesson in the
+five or six score English words and phrases which the omnivorous Jewish
+jargon has absorbed in the Ghettos of English-speaking countries.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+A PATERFAMILIAS.
+
+
+It was early in the afternoon of Gitl's second Wednesday in the New
+World. Jake, Bernstein and Charley, their two boarders, were at work.
+Yosselé was sound asleep in the lodgers' double bed, in the smallest of
+the three tiny rooms which the family rented on the second floor of one
+of a row of brand-new tenement houses. Gitl was by herself in the
+little front room which served the quadruple purpose of kitchen, dining
+room, sitting room, and parlour. She wore a skirt and a loose jacket of
+white Russian calico, decorated with huge gay figures, and her dark
+hair was only half covered by a bandana of red and yellow. This was
+Gitl's compromise between her conscience and her husband. She panted to
+yield to Jake's demands completely, but could not nerve herself up to
+going about "in her own hair, like a Gentile woman." Even the
+expostulations of Mrs. Kavarsky--the childless middle-aged woman who
+occupied with her husband the three rooms across the narrow
+hallway--failed to prevail upon her. Nevertheless Jake, succumbing to
+Mrs. Kavarsky's annoying solicitations, had bought his wife a cheap
+high-crowned hat, utterly unfit to be worn over her voluminous wig, and
+even a corset. Gitl could not be coaxed into accompanying them to the
+store; but the eloquent neighbour had persuaded Jake that her presence
+at the transaction was not indispensable after all.
+
+"Leave it to me," she said; "I know what will become her and what
+won't. I'll get her a hat that will make a Fifth Avenue lady of her,
+and you shall see if she does not give in. If she is then not
+_satetzfiet_ to go with her own hair, _vell_!" What then would take
+place Mrs. Kavarsky left unsaid.
+
+The hat and the corset had been lying in the house now three days, and
+the neighbour's predictions had not yet come true, save for Gitl's
+prying once or twice into the pasteboard boxes in which those articles
+lay, otherwise unmolested, on the shelf over her bed.
+
+The door was open. Gitl stood toying with the knob of the electric
+bell, and deriving much delight from the way the street door latch kept
+clicking under her magic touch two flights above. Finally she wearied
+of her diversion, and shutting the door she went to take a look at
+Yosselé. She found him fast asleep, and, as she was retracing her steps
+through her own and Jake's bedroom, her eye fell upon the paper boxes.
+She got up on the edge of her bed and, lifting the cover from the
+hatbox, she took a prolonged look at its contents. All at once her face
+brightened up with temptation. She went to fasten the hallway door of
+the kitchen on its latch, and then regaining the bedroom shut herself
+in. After a lapse of some ten or fifteen minutes she re-emerged,
+attired in her brown holiday dress in which she had first confronted
+Jake on Ellis Island, and with the tall black straw hat on her head.
+Walking on tiptoe, as though about to commit a crime, she crossed over
+to the looking-glass. Then she paused, her eyes on the door, to listen
+for possible footsteps. Hearing none she faced the glass. "Quite a
+_panenke_!"[10] she thought to herself, all aglow with excitement, a
+smile, at once shamefaced and beatific, melting her features. She
+turned to the right, then to the left, to view herself in profile, as
+she had seen Mrs. Kavarsky do, and drew back a step to ascertain the
+effect of the corset. To tell the truth, the corset proved utterly
+impotent against the baggy shapelessness of the Povodye garment. Yet
+Gitl found it to work wonders, and readily pardoned it for the very
+uncomfortable sensation which it caused her. She viewed herself again
+and again, and was in a flutter both of ecstasy and alarm when there
+came a timid rap on the door. Trembling all over, she scampered on
+tiptoe back into the bedroom, and after a little she returned in her
+calico dress and bandana kerchief. The knock at the door had apparently
+been produced by some peddler or beggar, for it was not repeated. Yet
+so violent was Gitl's agitation that she had to sit down on the
+haircloth lounge for breath and to regain composure.
+
+        [10] A young noblewoman.
+
+"What is it they call this?" she presently asked herself, gazing at
+the bare boards of the floor. "Floor!" she recalled, much to her
+self-satisfaction. "And that?" she further examined herself, as she
+fixed her glance on the ceiling. This time the answer was slow in
+coming, and her heart grew faint. "And what was it Yekl called
+that?"--transferring her eyes to the window. "Veen--neev--veenda," she
+at last uttered exultantly. The evening before she had happened to call
+it _fentzter_, in spite of Jake's repeated corrections.
+
+"Can't you say _veenda_?" he had growled. "What a peasant head! Other
+_greenhornsh_ learn to speak American _shtyle_ very fast; and she--one
+might tell her the same word eighty thousand times, and it is _nu
+used_."
+
+"_Es is of'n veenda mein ich_,"[11] she hastened to set herself right.
+
+        [11] It is on the window, I meant to say.
+
+She blushed as she said it, but at the moment she attached no
+importance to the matter and took no more notice of it. Now, however,
+Jake's tone of voice, as he had rebuked her backwardness in picking up
+American Yiddish, came back to her and she grew dejected.
+
+She was getting used to her husband, in whom her own Yekl and Jake the
+stranger were by degrees merging themselves into one undivided being.
+When the hour of his coming from work drew near she would every little
+while consult the clock and become impatient with the slow progress of
+its hands; although mixed with this impatience there was a feeling of
+apprehension lest the supper, prepared as it was under culinary
+conditions entirely new to her, should fail to please Jake and the
+boarders. She had even become accustomed to address her husband as Jake
+without reddening in the face; and, what is more, was getting to
+tolerate herself being called by him Goitie (Gertie)--a word
+phonetically akin to Yiddish for Gentile. For the rest she was too
+inexperienced and too simple-hearted naturally to comment upon his
+manner toward her. She had not altogether overcome her awe of him, but
+as he showed her occasional marks of kindness she was upon the whole
+rather content with her new situation. Now, however, as she thus sat in
+solitude, with his harsh voice ringing in her ears and his icy look
+before her, a feeling of suspicion darkened her soul. She recalled
+other scenes where he had looked and spoken as he had done the night
+before. "He must hate me! A pain upon me!" she concluded with a fallen
+heart. She wondered whether his demeanour toward her was like that of
+other people who hated their wives. She remembered a woman of her
+native village who was known to be thus afflicted, and she dropped her
+head in a fit of despair. At one moment she took a firm resolve to
+pluck up courage and cast away the kerchief and the wig; but at the
+next she reflected that God would be sure to punish her for the
+terrible sin, so that instead of winning Jake's love the change would
+increase his hatred for her. It flashed upon her mind to call upon some
+"good Jew" to pray for the return of his favour, or to seek some old
+Polish beggar woman who could prescribe a love potion. But then, alas!
+who knows whether there are in this terrible America any good Jews or
+beggar women with love potions at all! Better she had never known this
+"black year" of a country! Here everybody says she is green. What an
+ugly word to apply to people! She had never been green at home, and
+here she had suddenly become so. What do they mean by it, anyhow?
+Verily, one might turn green and yellow and gray while young in such a
+dreadful place. Her heart was wrung with the most excruciating pangs of
+homesickness. And as she thus sat brooding and listlessly surveying her
+new surroundings--the iron stove, the stationary washtubs, the window
+opening vertically, the fire escape, the yellowish broom with its
+painted handle--things which she had never dreamed of at her
+birthplace--these objects seemed to stare at her haughtily and inspired
+her with fright. Even the burnished cup of the electric bell knob
+looked contemptuously and seemed to call her "Greenhorn! greenhorn!"
+"Lord of the world! Where am I?" she whispered with tears in her voice.
+
+The dreary solitude terrified her, and she instinctively rose to take
+refuge at Yosselé's bedside. As she got up, a vague doubt came over her
+whether she should find there her child at all. But Yosselé was found
+safe and sound enough. He was rubbing his eyes and announcing the
+advent of his famous appetite. She seized him in her arms and covered
+his warm cheeks with fervent kisses which did her aching heart good.
+And by-and-bye, as she admiringly watched the boy making savage inroads
+into a generous slice of rye bread, she thought of Jake's affection for
+the child; whereupon things began to assume a brighter aspect, and she
+presently set about preparing supper with a lighter heart, although her
+countenance for some time retained its mournful woe-begone expression.
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+Meanwhile Jake sat at his machine merrily pushing away at a cloak and
+singing to it some of the popular American songs of the day.
+
+The sensation caused by the arrival of his wife and child had nearly
+blown over. Peltner's dancing school he had not visited since a week or
+two previous to Gitl's landing. As to the scene which had greeted him
+in the shop after the stirring news had first reached it, he had faced
+it out with much more courage and got over it with much less difficulty
+than he had anticipated.
+
+"Did I ever tell you I was a _tzingle man_?" he laughingly defended
+himself, though blushing crimson, against his shopmates' taunts. "And
+am I obliged to give you a _report_ whether my wife has come or not?
+You are not worth mentioning her name to, _anyhoy_."
+
+The boss then suggested that Jake celebrate the event with two pints of
+beer, the motion being seconded by the presser, who volunteered to
+fetch the beverage. Jake obeyed with alacrity, and if there had still
+lingered any trace of awkwardness in his position it was soon washed
+away by the foaming liquid.
+
+As a matter of fact, Fanny's embarrassment was much greater than
+Jake's. The stupefying news was broken to her on the very day of Gitl's
+arrival. After passing a sleepless night she felt that she could not
+bring herself to face Jake in the presence of her other shopmates, to
+whom her feelings for him were an open secret. As luck would have it,
+it was Sunday, the beginning of a new working week in the metropolitan
+Ghetto, and she went to look for a job in another place.
+
+Jake at once congratulated himself upon her absence and missed her. But
+then he equally missed the company of Mamie and of all the other
+dancing-school girls, whose society and attentions now more than ever
+seemed to him necessities of his life. They haunted his mind day and
+night; he almost never beheld them in his imagination except as
+clustering together with his fellow-cavaliers and making merry over him
+and his wife; and the vision pierced his heart with shame and jealousy.
+All his achievements seemed wiped out by a sudden stroke of ill fate.
+He thought himself a martyr, an innocent exile from a world to which he
+belonged by right; and he frequently felt the sobs of self-pity
+mounting to his throat. For several minutes at a time, while kicking at
+his treadle, he would see, reddening before him, Gitl's bandana
+kerchief and her prominent gums, or hear an un-American piece of
+Yiddish pronounced with Gitl's peculiar lisp--that very lisp, which
+three years ago he used to mimic fondly, but which now grated on his
+nerves and was apt to make his face twitch with sheer disgust, insomuch
+that he often found a vicious relief in mocking that lisp of hers
+audibly over his work. But can it be that he is doomed for life? No!
+no! he would revolt, conscious at the same time that there was really
+no escape. "Ah, may she be killed, the horrid greenhorn!" he would gasp
+to himself in a paroxysm of despair. And then he would bewail his lost
+youth, and curse all Russia for his premature marriage. Presently,
+however, he would recall the plump, spunky face of his son who bore
+such close resemblance to himself, to whom he was growing more strongly
+attached every day, and who was getting to prefer his company to his
+mother's; and thereupon his heart would soften toward Gitl, and he
+would gradually feel the qualms of pity and remorse, and make a vow to
+treat her kindly. "Never min'," he would at such instances say in his
+heart, "she will _oyshgreen_[12] herself and I shall get used to her.
+She is a ---- _shight_ better than all the dancing-school girls." And
+he would inspire himself with respect for her spotless purity, and take
+comfort in the fact of her being a model housewife, undiverted from her
+duties by any thoughts of balls or picnics. And despite a deeper
+consciousness which exposed his readiness to sacrifice it all at any
+time, he would work himself into a dignified feeling as the head of a
+household and the father of a promising son, and soothe himself with
+the additional consolation that sooner or later the other fellows of
+Joe's academy would also be married.
+
+        [12] A verb coined from the Yiddish _oys_, out, and the
+        English _green_, and signifying to cease being green.
+
+On the Wednesday in question Jake and his shopmates had warded off a
+reduction of wages by threatening a strike, and were accordingly in
+high feather. And so Jake and Bernstein came home in unusually good
+spirits. Little Joey--for such was Yosselé's name now--with whom his
+father's plays were for the most part of an athletic character,
+welcomed Jake by a challenge for a pugilistic encounter, and the way he
+said "Coom a fight!" and held out his little fists so delighted Mr.
+Podkovnik, Sr., that upon ordering Gitl to serve supper he vouchsafed a
+fillip on the tip of her nose.
+
+While she was hurriedly setting the table, Jake took to describing to
+Charley his employer's defeat. "You should have seen how he looked, the
+cockroach!" he said. "He became as pale as the wall and his teeth were
+chattering as if he had been shaken up with fever, _'pon my void_. And
+how quiet he became all of a sudden, as if he could not count two! One
+might apply him to an ulcer, so soft was he--ha-ha-ha!" he laughed,
+looking to Bernstein, who smiled assent.
+
+At last supper was announced. Bernstein donned his hat, and did not sit
+down to the repast before he had performed his ablutions and whispered
+a short prayer. As he did so Jake and Charley interchanged a wink. As
+to themselves, they dispensed with all devotional preliminaries, and
+took their seats with uncovered heads. Gitl also washed her fingers and
+said the prayer, and as she handed Yosselé his first slice of bread she
+did not release it before he had recited the benediction.
+
+Bernstein, who, as a rule, looked daggers at his meal, this time
+received his plate of _borshtch_[13]--his favourite dish--with a
+radiant face; and as he ate he pronounced it a masterpiece, and
+lavished compliments on the artist.
+
+        [13] A sour soup of cabbage and beets.
+
+"It's a long time since I tasted such a borshtch! Simply a vivifier! It
+melts in every limb!" he kept rhapsodizing, between mouthfuls. "It
+ought to be sent to the Chicago Exposition. The _missess_ would get a
+medal."
+
+"A _regely_ European borshtch!" Charley chimed in. "It is worth ten
+cents a spoonful, _'pon mine vort_!"
+
+"Go away! You are only making fun of me," Gitl declared, beaming with
+pride. "What is there to be laughing at? I make it as well as I can,"
+she added demurely.
+
+"Let him who is laughing laugh with teeth," jested Charlie. "I tell you
+it is a----" The remainder of the sentence was submerged in a mouthful
+of the vivifying semi-liquid.
+
+"_Alla right!_" Jake bethought himself. "_Charge_ him ten _shent_ for
+each spoonful. Mr. Bernstein, you shall be kind enough to be the
+_bookkeeper_. But if you don't pay, Chollie, I'll get out a _tzommesh_
+[summons] from _court_."
+
+Whereat the little kitchen rang with laughter, in which all
+participated except Bernstein. Even Joey, or Yosselé, joined in the
+general outburst of merriment. Otherwise he was busily engaged cramming
+borshtch into his mouth, and, in passing, also into his nose, with both
+his plump hands for a pair of spoons. From time to time he would
+interrupt operations to make a wry face and, blinking his eyes, to lisp
+out rapturously, "Sour!"
+
+"Look--may you live long--do look; he is laughing, too!" Gitl called
+attention to Yosselé's bespattered face. "To think of such a crumb
+having as much sense as that!" She was positive that he appreciated his
+father's witticism, although she herself understood it but vaguely.
+
+"May he know evil no better than he knows what he is laughing at," Jake
+objected, with a fatherly mien. "What makes you laugh, Joey?" The boy
+had no time to spare for an answer, being too busy licking his emptied
+plate. "Look at the soldier's appetite he has, _de feller_! Joey, hoy
+you like de borshtch? Alla right?" Jake asked in English.
+
+"Awrr-ra rr-right!" Joey pealed out his sturdy rustic r's, which he had
+mastered shortly before taking leave of his doting grandmother.
+
+"See how well he speaks English?" Jake said, facetiously. "A ----
+_shight_ better than his mamma, _anyvay_."
+
+Gitl, who was in the meantime serving the meat, coloured, but took the
+remark in good part.
+
+"_I tell ye_ he is growing to be Presdent 'Nited States," Charlie
+interposed.
+
+"_Greenhorn_ that you are! A President must be American born," Jake
+explained, self-consciously. "Ain't it, Mr. Bernstein?"
+
+"It's a pity, then, that he was not born in this country," Bernstein
+replied, his eye envyingly fixed now on Gitl, now at the child, on
+whose plate she was at this moment carving a piece of meat into tiny
+morsels. "_Vell_, if he cannot be a President of the United States, he
+may be one of a synagogue, so he is a president."
+
+"Don't you worry for his sake," Gitl put in, delighted with the
+attention her son was absorbing. "He does not need to be a pesdent; he
+is growing to be a rabbi; don't be making fun of him." And she turned
+her head to kiss the future rabbi.
+
+"Who is making fun?" Bernstein demurred. "I wish I had a boy like him."
+
+"Get married and you will have one," said Gitl, beamingly.
+
+"_Shay_, Mr. Bernstein, how about your _shadchen_?"[14] Jake queried.
+He gave a laugh, but forthwith checked it, remaining with an
+embarrassed grin on his face, as though anxious to swallow the
+question. Bernstein blushed to the roots of his hair, and bent an irate
+glance on his plate, but held his peace.
+
+        [14] A matrimonial agent.
+
+His reserved manner, if not his superior education, held Bernstein's
+shopmates at a respectful distance from him, and, as a rule, rendered
+him proof against their badinage, although behind his back they would
+indulge an occasional joke on his inferiority as a workman, and--while
+they were at it--on his dyspepsia, his books, and staid, methodical
+habits. Recently, however, they had got wind of his clandestine visits
+to a marriage broker's, and the temptation to chaff him on the subject
+had proved resistless, all the more so because Bernstein, whose leading
+foible was his well-controlled vanity, was quick to take offence in
+general, and on this matter in particular. As to Jake, he was by no
+means averse to having a laugh at somebody else's expense; but since
+Bernstein had become his boarder he felt that he could not afford to
+wound his pride. Hence his regret and anxiety at his allusion to the
+matrimonial agent.
+
+After supper Charlie went out for the evening, while Bernstein retired
+to their little bedroom. Gitl busied herself with the dishes, and Jake
+took to romping about with Joey and had a hearty laugh with him. He was
+beginning to tire of the boy's company and to feel lonesome generally,
+when there was a knock at the door.
+
+"Coom in!" Gitl hastened to say somewhat coquettishly, flourishing her
+proficiency in American manners, as she raised her head from the pot in
+her hands.
+
+"Coom in!" repeated Joey.
+
+The door flew open, and in came Mamie, preceded by a cloud of cologne
+odours. She was apparently dressed for some occasion of state, for she
+was powdered and straight-laced and resplendent in a waist of blazing
+red, gaudily trimmed, and with puff sleeves, each wider than the vast
+expanse of white straw, surmounted with a whole forest of ostrich
+feathers, which adorned her head. One of her gloved hands held the huge
+hoop-shaped yellowish handle of a blue parasol.
+
+"Good-evenin', Jake!" she said, with ostentatious vivacity.
+
+"Good-evenin', Mamie!" Jake returned, jumping to his feet and violently
+reddening, as if suddenly pricked. "Mish Fein, my vife! My vife, Mish
+Fein!"
+
+Miss Fein made a stately bow, primly biting her lip as she did so.
+Gitl, with the pot in her hands, stood staring sheepishly, at a loss
+what to do.
+
+"Say 'I'm glyad to meech you,'" Jake urged her, confusedly.
+
+The English phrase was more than Gitl could venture to echo.
+
+"She is still _green_," Jake apologized for her, in Yiddish.
+
+"_Never min'_, she will soon _oysgreen_ herself," Mamie remarked, with
+patronizing affability.
+
+"The _lada_ is an acquaintance of mine," Jake explained bashfully, his
+hand feeling the few days' growth of beard on his chin.
+
+Gitl instinctively scented an enemy in the visitor, and eyed her with
+an uneasy gaze. Nevertheless she mustered a hospitable air, and drawing
+up the rocking chair, she said, with shamefaced cordiality: "Sit down;
+why should you be standing? You may be seated for the same money."
+
+In the conversation which followed Mamie did most of the talking. With
+a nervous volubility often broken by an irrelevant giggle, and
+violently rocking with her chair, she expatiated on the charms of
+America, prophesying that her hostess would bless the day of her
+arrival on its soil, and went off in ecstasies over Joey. She spoke
+with an overdone American accent in the dialect of the Polish Jews,
+affectedly Germanized and profusely interspersed with English, so that
+Gitl, whose mother tongue was Lithuanian Yiddish, could scarcely catch
+the meaning of one half of her flood of garrulity. And as she thus
+rattled on, she now examined the room, now surveyed Gitl from head to
+foot, now fixed her with a look of studied sarcasm, followed by a side
+glance at Jake, which seemed to say, "Woe to you, what a rag of a wife
+yours is!" Whenever Gitl ventured a timid remark, Mamie would nod
+assent with dignified amiability, and thereupon imitate a smile, broad
+yet fleeting, which she had seen performed by some uptown ladies.
+
+Jake stared at the lamp with a faint simper, scarcely following the
+caller's words. His head swam with embarrassment. The consciousness of
+Gitl's unattractive appearance made him sick with shame and vexation,
+and his eyes carefully avoided her bandana, as a culprit schoolboy does
+the evidence of his offence.
+
+"You mush vant you tventy-fife dollars," he presently nerved himself up
+to say in English, breaking an awkward pause.
+
+"I should cough!" Mamie rejoined.
+
+"In a coupel a veeksh, Mamie, as sure as my name is Jake."
+
+"In a couple o' veeks! No, sirree! I mus' have my money at oncet. I
+don' know vere you vill get it, dough. Vy, a married man!"--with a
+chuckle. "You got a ---- of a lot o' t'ings to pay for. You took de
+foinitsha by a custom peddler, ain' it? But what a ---- do _I_ care? I
+vant my money. I voiked hard enough for it."
+
+"Don' shpeak English. She'll t'ink I don' knu vot ve shpeakin'," he
+besought her, in accents which implied intimacy between the two of them
+and a common aloofness from Gitl.
+
+"Vot d'I care vot she t'inks? She's your vife, ain' it? Vell, she mus'
+know ev'ryt'ing. Dot's right! A husban' dass'n't hide not'ink from his
+vife!"--with another chuckle and another look of deadly sarcasm at Gitl
+"I can say de same in Jewish----"
+
+"Shurr-r up, Mamie!" he interrupted her, gaspingly.
+
+"Don'tch you like it, lump it! A vife mus'n't be skinned like a strange
+lady, see?" she pursued inexorably. "O'ly a strange goil a feller might
+bluff dot he ain' married, and skin her out of tventy-five dollars." In
+point of fact, he had never directly given himself out for a single man
+to her. But it did not even occur to him to defend himself on that
+score.
+
+"Mamie! Ma-a-mie! Shtop! I'll pay you ev'ry shent. Shpeak Jewesh,
+pleashe!" he implored, as if for life.
+
+"You'r' afraid of her? Dot's right! Dot's right! Dot's nice! All
+religious peoples is afraid of deir vifes. But vy didn' you say you vas
+married from de sta't, an' dot you vant money to send for dem?" she
+tortured him, with a lingering arch leer.
+
+"For Chrish' shake, Mamie!" he entreated her, wincingly. "Shtop to
+shpeak English, an' shpeak shomet'ing differench. I'll shee you--vere
+can I shee you?"
+
+"You von't come by Joe no more?" she asked, with sudden interest and
+even solicitude.
+
+"You t'ink indeed I'm 'frait? If I vanted I can gu dere more ash I
+ushed to gu dere. But vere can I findsh you?"
+
+"I guess you know vere I'm livin', don'ch you? So kvick you forget? Vot
+a sho't mind you got! Vill you come? Never min', I know you are only
+bluffin', an' dot's all."
+
+"I'll come, ash sure ash I leev."
+
+"Vill you? All right. But if you don' come an' pay me at least ten
+dollars for a sta't, you'll see!"
+
+In the meanwhile Gitl, poor thing, sat pale and horror-struck. Mamie's
+perfumes somehow terrified her. She was racked with jealousy and all
+sorts of suspicions, which she vainly struggled to disguise. She could
+see that they were having a heated altercation, and that Jake was
+begging about something or other, and was generally the under dog in
+the parley. Ever and anon she strained her ears in the effort to fasten
+some of the incomprehensible sounds in her memory, that she might
+subsequently parrot them over to Mrs. Kavarsky, and ascertain their
+meaning. But, alas! the attempt proved futile; "never min'" and "all
+right" being all she could catch.
+
+Mamie concluded her visit by presenting Joey with the imposing sum of
+five cents.
+
+"What do you say? Say 'danks, sir!'" Gitl prompted the boy.
+
+"Shay 't'ank you, ma'am!'" Jake overruled her. "'Shir' is said to a
+gentlemarn."
+
+"Good-night!" Mamie sang out, as she majestically opened the door.
+
+"Good-night!" Jake returned, with a burning face.
+
+"Goot-night!" Gitl and Joey chimed in duet.
+
+"Say 'cull again!'"
+
+"Cullye gain!"
+
+"Good-night!" Mamie said once more, as she bowed herself out of the
+door with what she considered an exquisitely "tony" smile.
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+The guest's exit was succeeded by a momentary silence. Jake felt as if
+his face and ears were on fire.
+
+"We used to work in the same shop," he presently said.
+
+"Is that the way a seamstress dresses in America?" Gitl inquired. "It
+is not for nothing that it is called the golden land," she added, with
+timid irony.
+
+"She must be going to a ball," he explained, at the same moment casting
+a glance at the looking-glass.
+
+The word "ball" had an imposing ring for Gitl's ears. At home she had
+heard it used in connection with the sumptuous life of the Russian or
+Polish nobility, but had never formed a clear idea of its meaning.
+
+"She looks a veritable _panenke_,"[15] she remarked, with hidden
+sarcasm. "Was she born here?"
+
+        [15] A young noblewoman.
+
+"_Nu_, but she has been very long here. She speaks English like one
+American born. We are used to speak in English when we talk _shop_. She
+came to ask me about a _job_."
+
+Gitl reflected that with Bernstein Jake was in the habit of talking
+shop in Yiddish, although the boarder could even read English books,
+which her husband could not do.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+CIRCUMSTANCES ALTER CASES.
+
+
+Jake was left by Mamie in a state of unspeakable misery. He felt
+discomfited, crushed, the universal butt of ridicule. Her perfumes
+lingered in his nostrils, taking his breath away. Her venomous gaze
+stung his heart. She seemed to him elevated above the social plane upon
+which he had recently (though the interval appeared very long) stood by
+her side, nay, upon which he had had her at his beck and call; while he
+was degraded, as it were, wallowing in a mire, from which he yearningly
+looked up to his former equals, vainly begging for recognition. An
+uncontrollable desire took possession of him to run after her, to have
+an explanation, and to swear that he was the same Jake and as much of a
+Yankee and a gallant as ever. But here was his wife fixing him with a
+timid, piteous look, which at once exasperated and cowed him; and he
+dared not stir out of the house, as though nailed by that look of hers
+to the spot.
+
+He lay down on the lounge, and shut his eyes. Gitl dutifully brought
+him a pillow. As she adjusted it under his head the touch of her hand
+on his face made him shrink, as if at the contact with a reptile. He
+was anxious to flee from his wretched self into oblivion, and his wish
+was soon gratified, the combined effect of a hard day's work and a
+plentiful and well-relished supper plunging him into a heavy sleep.
+
+While his snores resounded in the little kitchen, Gitl put the child to
+bed, and then passed with noiseless step into the boarders' room. The
+door was ajar and she entered it without knocking, as was her wont. She
+found Bernstein bent over a book, with a ponderous dictionary by its
+side. A kerosene lamp with a red shade, occupying nearly all the
+remaining space on the table, spread a lurid mysterious light. Gitl
+asked the studious cloakmaker whether he knew a Polish girl named Mamie
+Fein.
+
+"Mamie Fein? No. Why?" said Bernstein, with his index finger on the
+passage he had been reading, and his eyes on Gitl's plumpish cheek,
+bathed in the roseate light.
+
+"Nothing. May not one ask?"
+
+"What is the matter? Speak out! Are you afraid to tell me?" he
+insisted.
+
+"What should be the matter? She was here. A nice _lada_."
+
+"Your husband knows many nice _ladies_," he said, with a faint but
+significant smile. And immediately regretting the remark he went on to
+smooth it down by characterizing Jake as an honest and good-natured
+fellow.
+
+"You ought to think yourself fortunate in having him for your husband,"
+he added.
+
+"Yes, but what did you mean by what you said first?" she demanded, with
+an anxious air.
+
+"What did I mean? What should I have meant? I meant what I said. _'F
+cou'se_ he knows many girls. But who does not? You know there are
+always girls in the shops where we work. Never fear, Jake has nothing
+to do with them."
+
+"Who says I fear! Did I say I did? Why should I?"
+
+Encouraged by the cheering effect which his words were obviously having
+on the credulous, unsophisticated woman, he pursued: "May no Jewish
+daughter have a worse husband. Be easy, be easy. I tell you he is
+melting away for you. He never looked as happy as he does since you
+came."
+
+"Go away! You must be making fun of me!" she said, beaming with
+delight.
+
+"Don't you believe me? Why, are you not a pretty young woman?" he
+remarked, with an oily look in his eye.
+
+The crimson came into her cheek, and she lowered her glance.
+
+"Stop making fun of me, I beg you," she said softly. "Is it true?"
+
+"Is what true? That you are a pretty young woman? Take a looking-glass
+and see for yourself."
+
+"Strange man that you are!" she returned, with confused deprecation. "I
+mean what you said before about Jake," she faltered.
+
+"Oh, about Jake! Then say so," he jested. "Really he loves you as
+life."
+
+"How do you know?" she queried, wistfully.
+
+"How do I know!" he repeated, with an amused smile. "As if one could
+not see!"
+
+"But he never told you himself!"
+
+"How do you know he did not? You have guessed wrongly, see! He did,
+lots of times," he concluded gravely, touched by the anxiety of the
+poor woman.
+
+She left Bernstein's room all thrilling with joy, and repentant for her
+excess of communicativeness. "A wife must not tell other people what
+happens to her husband," she lectured herself, in the best of humours.
+Still, the words "Your husband knows many nice _ladas_," kept echoing
+at the bottom of her soul, and in another few minutes she was at Mrs.
+Kavarsky's, confidentially describing Mamie's visit as well as her talk
+with the boarder, omitting nothing save the latter's compliments to her
+looks.
+
+Mrs. Kavarsky was an eccentric, scraggy little woman, with a vehement
+manner and no end of words and gesticulations. Her dry face was full of
+warts and surmounted by a chaotic mass of ringlets and curls of a faded
+brown. None too tidy about her person, and rather slattern in general
+appearance, she zealously kept up the over-scrupulous cleanliness for
+which the fame of her apartments reached far and wide. Her neighbours
+and townsfolk pronounced her crazy but "with a heart of diamond," that
+is to say, the diametrical opposite of the precious stone in point of
+hardness, and resembling it in the general sense of excellence of
+quality. She was neighbourly enough, and as she was the most prosperous
+and her establishment the best equipped in the whole tenement, many a
+woman would come to borrow some cooking utensil or other, or even a few
+dollars on rent day, which Mrs. Kavarsky always started by refusing in
+the most pointed terms, and almost always finished by granting.
+
+She started to listen to Gitl's report with a fierce mien which
+gradually thawed into a sage smile. When the young neighbour had rested
+her case, she first nodded her head, as who should say, "What fools
+this young generation be!" and then burst out:
+
+"Do you know what _I_ have to tell you? Guess!"
+
+Gitl thought Heaven knows what revelations awaited her.
+
+"That you are a lump of horse and a greenhorn and nothing else!" (Gitl
+felt much relieved.) "That piece of ugliness should _try_ and come to
+_my_ house! Then she would know the price of a pound of evil. I should
+open the door and--_march_ to eighty black years! Let her go to where
+she came from! America is not Russia, thanked be the Lord of the world.
+Here one must only know how to handle a husband. Here a husband must
+remember '_ladas foist_'--but then you do not even know what that
+means!" she exclaimed, with a despairing wave of her hand.
+
+"What does it mean?" Gitl inquired, pensively.
+
+"What does it mean? What should it mean? It means but too well, _never
+min'_. It means that when a husband does not _behabe_ as he should, one
+does not stroke his cheeks for it. A prohibition upon me if one does.
+If the wife is no greenhorn she gets him shoved into the oven, over
+there, across the river."
+
+"You mean they send him to prison?"
+
+"Where else--to the theatre?" Mrs. Kavarsky mocked her furiously.
+
+"A weeping to me!" Gitl said, with horror. "May God save me from such
+things!"
+
+In due course Mrs. Kavarsky arrived at the subject of head-gear, and
+for the third or fourth time she elicited from her pupil a promise to
+discard the kerchief and to sell the wig.
+
+"No wonder he does hate you, seeing you in that horrid rag, which makes
+a grandma of you. Drop it, I tell you! Drop it so that no survivor nor
+any refugee is left of it. If you don't obey me this time, dare not
+cross my threshold any more, do you hear?" she thundered. "One might as
+well talk to the wall as to her!" she proceeded, actually addressing
+herself to the opposite wall of her kitchen, and referring to her
+interlocutrice in the third person. "I am working and working for her,
+and here she appreciates it as much as the cat. Fie!" With which the
+irate lady averted her face in disgust.
+
+"I shall take it off; now for sure--as sure as this is Wednesday," said
+Gitl, beseechingly.
+
+Mrs. Kavarsky turned back to her pacified.
+
+"Remember now! If you _deshepoitn_ [disappoint] me this time,
+well!--look at me! I should think I was no Gentile woman, either. I am
+as pious as you _anyhull_, and come from no mean family, either. You
+know I hate to boast; _but_ my father--peace be upon him!--was fit to
+be a rabbi. _Vell_, and yet I am not afraid to go with my own hair. May
+no greater sins be committed! Then it would be _never min'_ enough.
+Plenty of time for putting on the patch [meaning the wig] when I get
+old; _but_ as long as I am young, I am young _an' dot's ull_! It can
+not be helped; when one lives in an _edzecate_ country, one must live
+like _edzecate peoples_. As they play, so one dances, as the saying is.
+But I think it is time for you to be going. Go, my little kitten," Mrs.
+Kavarsky said, suddenly lapsing into accents of the most tender
+affection. "He may be up by this time and wanting _tea_. Go, my little
+lamb, go and _try_ to make yourself agreeable to him and the Uppermost
+will help. In America one must take care not to displease a husband.
+Here one is to-day in New York and to-morrow in Chicago; do you
+understand? As if there were any shame or decency here! A father is no
+father, a wife, no wife--_not'ing_! Go now, my baby! Go and throw away
+your rag and be a nice woman, and everything will be _ull right_." And
+so hurrying Gitl to go, she detained her with ever a fresh torrent of
+loquacity for another ten minutes, till the young woman, standing on
+pins and needles and scarcely lending an ear, plucked up courage to
+plead her household duties and take a hasty departure.
+
+She found Jake fast asleep. It was after eleven when he slowly awoke.
+He got up with a heavy burden on his soul--a vague sense of having met
+with some horrible rebuff. In his semiconsciousness he was unaware,
+however, of his wife's and son's existence and of the change which
+their advent had produced in his life, feeling himself the same free
+bird that he had been a fortnight ago. He stared about the room, as if
+wondering where he was. Noticing Gitl, who at that moment came out of
+the bedroom, he instantly realized the situation, recalling Mamie, hat,
+perfumes, and all, and his heart sank within him. The atmosphere of the
+room became stifling to him. After sitting on the lounge for some time
+with a drooping head, he was tempted to fling himself on the pillow
+again, but instead of doing so he slipped on his hat and coat and went
+out.
+
+Gitl was used to his goings and comings without explanation. Yet this
+time his slam of the door sent a sharp pang through her heart. She had
+no doubt but that he was bending his steps to another interview with
+the Polish witch, as she mentally branded Miss Fein.
+
+Nor was she mistaken, for Jake did start, mechanically, in the
+direction of Chrystie Street, where Mamie lodged. He felt sure that she
+was away to some ball, but the very house in which she roomed seemed to
+draw him with magnetic force. Moreover, he had a lurking hope that he
+might, after all, find her about the building. Ah, if by a stroke of
+good luck he came upon her on the street! All he wished was to have a
+talk, and that for the sole purpose of amending her unfavourable
+impression of him. Then he would never so much as think of Mamie, for,
+indeed, she was hateful to him, he persuaded himself.
+
+Arrived at his destination, and failing to find Mamie on the sidewalk,
+he was tempted to wait till she came from the ball, when he was seized
+with a sudden sense of the impropriety of his expedition, and he
+forthwith returned home, deciding in his mind, as he walked, to move
+with his wife and child to Chicago.
+
+Meanwhile Mamie lay brooding in her cot-bed in the parlour, which she
+shared with her landlady's two daughters. She was in the most wretched
+frame of mind, ineffectually struggling to fall asleep. She had made
+her way down the stairs leading from the Podkovniks with a violently
+palpitating heart. She had been bound for no more imposing a place than
+Joe's academy, and before repairing thither she had had to betake
+herself home to change her stately toilet for a humbler attire. For, as
+a matter of fact, it was expressly for her visit to the Podkovniks that
+she had thus pranked herself out, and that would have been much too
+gorgeous an appearance to make at Joe's establishment on one of its
+regular dancing evenings. Having changed her toilet she did call at
+Joe's; but so full was her mind of Jake and his wife and, accordingly,
+she was so irritable, that in the middle of a quadrille she picked a
+quarrel with the dancing master, and abruptly left the hall.
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+The next day Jake's work fared badly. When it was at last over he did
+not go direct home as usual, but first repaired to Mamie's. He found
+her with her landlady in the kitchen. She looked careworn and was in a
+white blouse which lent her face a convalescent, touching effect.
+
+"Good-eveni'g, Mrs. Bunetzky! Good-eveni'g, Mamie!" he fairly roared,
+as he playfully fillipped his hat backward. And after addressing a
+pleasantry or two to the mistress of the house, he boldly proposed to
+her boarder to go out with him for a talk. For a moment Mamie
+hesitated, fearing lest her landlady had become aware of the existence
+of a Mrs. Podkovnik; but instantly flinging all considerations to the
+wind, she followed him out into the street.
+
+"You'sh afraid I vouldn't pay you, Mamie?" he began, with bravado, in
+spite of his intention to start on a different line, he knew not
+exactly which.
+
+Mamie was no less disappointed by the opening of the conversation than
+he. "I ain't afraid a bit," she answered, sullenly.
+
+"Do you think my _kshpenshesh_ are larger now?" he resumed in Yiddish.
+"May I lose as much through sickness. On the countrary, I _shpend_ even
+much less than I used to. We have two nice boarders--I keep them only
+for company's sake--and I have a _shteada job_--_a puddin' of a job_. I
+shall have still more money to _shpend outshite_," he added,
+falteringly.
+
+"Outside?"--and she burst into an artificial laugh which sent the blood
+to Jake's face.
+
+"Why, do you think I sha'n't go to Joe's, nor to the theatre, nor
+anywhere any more? Still oftener than before! _Hoy much vill you bet?_"
+
+"_Rats!_ A married man, a papa go to a dancing school! Not unless your
+wife drags along with you and never lets go of your skirts," she said
+sneeringly, adding the declaration that Jake's "bluffs" gave her a
+"regula' pain in de neck."
+
+Jake, writhing under her lashes, protested his freedom as emphatically
+as he could; but it only served to whet Mamie's spite, and against her
+will she went on twitting him as a henpecked husband and an
+old-fashioned Jew. Finally she reverted to the subject of his debt,
+whereupon he took fire, and after an interchange of threats and some
+quite forcible language they parted company.
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+From that evening the spectre of Mamie dressed in her white blouse
+almost unremittingly preyed on Jake's mind. The mournful sneer which
+had lit her pale, invalid-looking face on their last interview, when
+she wore that blouse, relentlessly stared down into his heart; gnawed
+at it with tantalizing deliberation; "drew out his soul," as he once
+put it to himself, dropping his arms and head in despair. "Is this what
+they call love?" he wondered, thinking of the strange, hitherto
+unexperienced kind of malady, which seemed to be gradually consuming
+his whole being. He felt as if Mamie had breathed a delicious poison
+into his veins, which was now taking effect, spreading a devouring fire
+through his soul, and kindling him with a frantic thirst for more of
+the same virus. His features became distended, as it were, and acquired
+a feverish effect; his eyes had a pitiable, beseeching look, like those
+of a child in the period of teething.
+
+He grew more irritable with Gitl every day, the energy failing him to
+dissemble his hatred for her. There were moments when, in his hopeless
+craving for the presence of Mamie, he would consciously seek refuge in
+a feeling of compunction and of pity for his wife; and on several such
+occasions he made an effort to take an affectionate tone with her. But
+the unnatural sound of his voice each time only accentuated to himself
+the depth of his repugnance, while the hysterical promptness of her
+answers, the servile gratitude which trembled in her voice and shone
+out of her radiant face would, at such instances, make him breathless
+with rage. Poor Gitl! she strained every effort to please him; she
+tried to charm him by all the simple-minded little coquetries she knew,
+by every art which her artless brain could invent; and only succeeded
+in making herself more offensive than ever.
+
+As to Jake's feelings for Joey, they now alternated between periods of
+indifference and gusts of exaggerated affection; while, in some
+instances, when the boy let himself be fondled by his mother or
+returned her caresses in his childish way, he would appear to Jake as
+siding with his enemy, and share with Gitl his father's odium.
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+One afternoon, shortly after Jake's interview with Mamie in front of
+the Chrystie Street tenement house, Fanny called on Gitl.
+
+"Are you Mrs. Podkovnik?" she inquired, with an embarrassed air.
+
+"Yes; why?" Mrs. Podkovnik replied, turning pale. "She is come to tell
+me that Jake has eloped with that Polish girl," flashed upon her
+overwrought mind. At the same moment Fanny, sizing her up, exclaimed
+inwardly, "So this is the kind of woman she is, poor thing!"
+
+"Nothing. I _just_ want to speak to you," the visitor uttered,
+mysteriously.
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"As I say, nothing at all. Is there nobody else in the house?" Fanny
+demanded, looking about.
+
+"May I not live till to-morrow if there is a living soul except my boy,
+and he is asleep. You may speak; never fear. But first tell me who you
+are; do not take ill my question. Be seated."
+
+The girl's appearance and manner began to inspire Gitl with confidence.
+
+"My name is Rosy--Rosy Blank," said Fanny, as she took a seat on the
+further end of the lounge. "_'F cou'se_, you don't know me, how should
+you? But I know you well enough, never mind that we have never seen
+each other before. I used to work with your husband in one shop. I have
+come to tell you such an important thing! You must know it. It makes no
+difference that you don't know who I am. May God grant me as good a
+year as my friendship is for you."
+
+"Something about Jake?" Gitl blurted out, all anxiety, and instantly
+regretted the question.
+
+"How did you guess? About Jake it is! About him and somebody else. But
+see how you did guess! Swear that you won't tell anybody that I have
+been here."
+
+"May I be left speechless, may my arms and legs be paralyzed, if I ever
+say a word!" Gitl recited vehemently, thrilling with anxiety and
+impatience. "So it is! they have eloped!" she added in her heart,
+seating herself close to her caller. "A darkness upon my years! What
+will become of me and Yosselé now?"
+
+"Remember, now, not a word, either to Jake or to anybody else in the
+world. I had a mountain of _trouble_ before I found out where you
+lived, and I _stopped_ work on purpose to come and speak to you. As
+true as you see me alive. I wanted to call when I was sure to find you
+alone, you understand. Is there really nobody about?" And after a
+preliminary glance at the door and exacting another oath of discretion
+from Mrs. Podkovnik, Fanny began in an undertone:
+
+"There is a girl; well, her name is Mamie; well, she and your husband
+used to go to the same dancing school--that is a place where _fellers_
+and _ladies_ learn to dance," she explained. "I go there, too; but I
+know your husband from the shop."
+
+"But that _lada_ has also worked in the same shop with him, hasn't
+she?" Gitl broke in, with a desolate look in her eye.
+
+"Why, did Jake tell you she had?" Fanny asked in surprise.
+
+"No, not at all, not at all! I am just asking. May I be sick if I know
+anything."
+
+"The idea! How could they work together, seeing that she is a
+shirtmaker and he a cloakmaker. Ah, if you knew what a witch she is!
+She has set her mind on your husband, and is bound to take him away
+from you. She hitched on to him long ago. But since you came I thought
+she would have God in her heart, and be ashamed of people. Not she! She
+be ashamed! You may sling a cat into her face and she won't mind it.
+The black year knows where she grew up. I tell you there is not a girl
+in the whole dancing school but can not bear the sight of that Polish
+lizard!"
+
+"Why, do they meet and kiss?" Gitl moaned out. "Tell me, do tell me
+all, my little crown, keep nothing from me, tell me my whole dark lot."
+
+"_Ull right_, but be sure not to speak to anybody. I'll tell you the
+truth: My name is not Rosy Blank at all. It is Fanny Scutelsky. You
+see, I am telling you the whole truth. The other evening they stood
+near the house where she _boards_, on Chrystie Street; so they were
+looking into each other's eyes and talking like a pair of little doves.
+A _lady_ who is a _particla_ friend of mine saw them; so she says a
+child could have guessed that she was making love to him and _trying_
+to get him away from you. _'F cou'se_ it is none of my _business_. Is
+it my _business_, then? What do _I care_? It is only _becuss_ I pity
+you. It is like the nature I have; I can not bear to see anybody in
+trouble. Other people would not _care_, but I do. Such is my nature. So
+I thought to myself I must go and tell Mrs. Podkovnik all about it, in
+order that she might know what to do."
+
+For several moments Gitl sat speechless, her head hung down, and her
+bosom heaving rapidly. Then she fell to swaying her frame sidewise, and
+vehemently wringing her hands.
+
+"_Oi! Oi!_ Little mother! A pain to me!" she moaned. "What is to be
+done? Lord of the world, what is to be done? Come to the rescue!
+People, do take pity, come to the rescue!" She broke into a fit of low
+sobbing, which shook her whole form and was followed by a torrent of
+tears.
+
+Whereupon Fanny also burst out crying, and falling upon Gitl's shoulder
+she murmured: "My little heart! you don't know what a friend I am to
+you! Oh, if you knew what a serpent that Polish thief is!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+MRS. KAVARSKY's COUP D'ÉTAT.
+
+
+It was not until after supper time that Gitl could see Mrs. Kavarsky;
+for the neighbour's husband was in the installment business, and she
+generally spent all day in helping him with his collections as well as
+canvassing for new customers. When Gitl came in to unburden herself of
+Fanny's revelations, she found her confidante out of sorts. Something
+had gone wrong in Mrs. Kavarsky's affairs, and, while she was perfectly
+aware that she had only herself to blame, she had laid it all to her
+husband and had nagged him out of the house before he had quite
+finished his supper.
+
+She listened to her neighbour's story with a bored and impatient air,
+and when Gitl had concluded and paused for her opinion, she remarked
+languidly: "It serves you right! It is all _becuss_ you will not throw
+away that ugly kerchief of yours. What is the use of your asking my
+advice?"
+
+"_Oi!_ I think even that wouldn't help it now," Gitl rejoined,
+forlornly. "The Uppermost knows what drug she has charmed him with. A
+cholera into her, Lord of the world!" she added, fiercely.
+
+Mrs. Kavarsky lost her temper.
+
+"_Say_, will you stop talking nonsense?" she shouted savagely. "No
+wonder your husband does not _care_ for you, seeing these stupid
+greenhornlike notions of yours."
+
+"How then could she have bewitched him, the witch that she is? Tell me,
+little heart, little crown, do tell me! Take pity and be a mother to
+me. I am so lonely and----" Heartrending sobs choked her voice.
+
+"What shall I tell you? that you are a blockhead? _Oi! Oi! Oi!_" she
+mocked her. "Will the crying help you? _Ull right_, cry away!"
+
+"But what shall I do?" Gitl pleaded, wiping her tears. "It may drive me
+mad. I won't wear the kerchief any more. I swear this is the last day,"
+she added, propitiatingly.
+
+"_Dot's right!_ When you talk like a man I like you. And now sit still
+and listen to what an older person and a business woman has to tell
+you. In the first place, who knows what that girl--Jennie, Fannie,
+Shmennie, Yomtzedemennie--whatever you may call her--is after?" The
+last two names Mrs. Kavarsky invented by poetical license to complete
+the rhyme and for the greater emphasis of her contempt. "In the second
+place, _asposel_ [supposing] he did talk to that Polish piece of
+disturbance. _Vell_, what of it? It is all over with the world, isn't
+it? The mourner's prayer is to be said after it, I declare! A married
+man stood talking to a girl! Just think of it! May no greater evil
+befall any Yiddish daughter. This is not Europe where one dares not say
+a word to a strange woman! _Nu, sir!_"
+
+"What, then, is the matter with him? At home he would hardly ever leave
+my side, and never ceased looking into my eyes. Woe is me, what America
+has brought me to!" And again her grief broke out into a flood of
+tears.
+
+This time Mrs. Kavarsky was moved.
+
+"Don't be crying, my child; he may come in for you," she said,
+affectionately. "Believe me you are making a mountain out of a fly--you
+are imagining too much."
+
+"_Oi_, as my ill luck would have it, it is all but too true. Have I no
+eyes, then? He mocks at everything I say or do; he can not bear the
+touch of my hand. America _has_ made a mountain of ashes out of me.
+Really, a curse upon Columbus!" she ejaculated mournfully, quoting in
+all earnestness a current joke of the Ghetto.
+
+Mrs. Kavarsky was too deeply touched to laugh. She proceeded to examine
+her pupil, in whispers, upon certain details, and thereupon her
+interest in Gitl's answers gradually superseded her commiseration for
+the unhappy woman.
+
+"And how does he behave toward the boy?" she absently inquired, after a
+melancholy pause.
+
+"Would he were as kind to me!"
+
+"Then it is _ull right_! Such things will happen between man and wife.
+It is all _humbuk_. It will all come right, and you will some day be
+the happiest woman in the world. You shall see. Remember that Mrs.
+Kavarsky has told you so. And in the meantime stop crying. A husband
+hates a sniveller for a wife. You know the story of Jacob and Leah, as
+it stands written in the Holy Five Books, don't you? Her eyes became
+red with weeping, and Jacob, our father, did not _care_ for her on that
+account. Do you understand?"
+
+All at once Mrs. Kavarsky bit her lip, her countenance brightening up
+with a sudden inspiration. At the next instant she made a lunge at
+Gitl's head, and off went the kerchief. Gitl started with a cry, at the
+same moment covering her head with both hands.
+
+"Take off your hands! Take them off at once, I say!" the other
+shrieked, her eyes flashing fire and her feet performing an Irish jig.
+
+Gitl obeyed for sheer terror. Then, pushing her toward the sink, Mrs.
+Kavarsky said peremptorily: "You shall wash off your silly tears and
+I'll arrange your hair, and from this day on there shall be no
+kerchief, do you hear?"
+
+Gitl offered but feeble resistance, just enough to set herself right
+before her own conscience. She washed herself quietly, and when her
+friend set about combing her hair, she submitted to the operation
+without a murmur, save for uttering a painful hiss each time there came
+a particularly violent tug at the comb; for, indeed, Mrs. Kavarsky
+plied her weapon rather energetically and with a bloodthirsty air, as
+if inflicting punishment. And while she was thus attacking Gitl's
+luxurious raven locks she kept growling, as glibly as the progress of
+the comb would allow, and modulating her voice to its movements:
+"Believe me you are a lump of hunchback, _sure_; you may--may depend
+up-upon it! Tell me, now, do you ever comb yourself? You have raised
+quite a plica, the black year take it! Another woman would thank God
+for such beau-beautiful hair, and here she keeps it hidden and makes a
+bu-bugbear of herself--a _regele monkey_!" she concluded, gnashing her
+teeth at the stout resistance with which her implement was at that
+moment grappling.
+
+Gitl's heart swelled with delight, but she modestly kept silent.
+
+Suddenly Mrs. Kavarsky paused thoughtfully, as if conceiving a new
+idea. In another moment a pair of scissors and curling irons appeared
+on the scene. At the sight of this Gitl's blood ran chill, and when the
+scissors gave their first click in her hair she felt as though her
+heart snapped. Nevertheless, she endured it all without a protest,
+blindly trusting that these instruments of torture would help reinstall
+her in Jake's good graces.
+
+At last, when all was ready and she found herself adorned with a pair
+of rich side bangs, she was taken in front of the mirror, and ordered
+to hail the transformation with joy. She viewed herself with an
+unsteady glance, as if her own face struck her as unfamiliar and
+forbidding. However, the change pleased her as much as it startled her.
+
+"Do you really think he will like it?" she inquired with piteous
+eagerness, in a fever of conflicting emotions.
+
+"If he does not, I shall refund your money!" her guardian snarled, in
+high glee.
+
+For a moment or so Mrs. Kavarsky paused to admire the effect of her
+art. Then, in a sudden transport of enthusiasm, she sprang upon her
+ward, and with an "_Oi_, a health to you!" she smacked a hearty kiss on
+her burning cheek.
+
+"And now come, piece of wretch!" So saying, Mrs. Kavarsky grasped Gitl
+by the wrist, and forcibly convoyed her into her husband's presence.
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+The two boarders were out, Jake being alone with Joey. He was seated at
+the table, facing the door, with the boy on his knees.
+
+"_Goot-evenik_, Mr. Podkovnik! Look what I have brought you: a brand
+new wife!" Mrs. Kavarsky said, pointing at her charge, who stood
+faintly struggling to disengage her hand from her escort's tight grip,
+her eyes looking to the ground and her cheeks a vivid crimson.
+
+Gitl's unwonted appearance impressed Jake as something unseemly and
+meretricious. The sight of her revolted him.
+
+"It becomes her like a--a--a wet cat," he faltered out with a venomous
+smile, choking down a much stronger simile which would have conveyed
+his impression with much more precision, but which he dared not apply
+to his own wife.
+
+The boy's first impulse upon the entrance of his mother had been to run
+up to her side and to greet her merrily; but he, too, was shocked by
+the change in her aspect, and he remained where he was, looking from
+her to Jake in blank surprise.
+
+"Go away, you don't mean it!" Mrs. Kavarsky remonstrated distressedly,
+at the same moment releasing her prisoner, who forthwith dived into the
+bedroom to bury her face in a pillow, and to give way to a stream of
+tears. Then she made a few steps toward Jake, and speaking in an
+undertone she proceeded to take him to task. "Another man would
+consider himself happy to have such a wife," she said. "Such a quiet,
+honest woman! And such a housewife! Why, look at the way she keeps
+everything--like a fiddle. It is simply a treat to come into your
+house. I do declare you sin!"
+
+"What do I do to her?" he protested morosely, cursing the intruder in
+his heart.
+
+"Who says you do? Mercy and peace! Only--you understand--how shall I
+say it?--she is only a young woman; _vell_, so she imagines that you do
+not _care_ for her as much as you used to. Come, Mr. Podkovnik, you
+know you are a sensible man! I have always thought you one--you may ask
+my husband. Really you ought to be ashamed of yourself. A prohibition
+upon me if I could ever have believed it of you. Do you think a stylish
+girl would make you a better wife? If you do, you are grievously
+mistaken. What are they good for, the hussies? To darken the life of a
+husband? That, I admit, they are really great hands at. They only know
+how to squander his money for a new hat or rag every Monday and
+Thursday, and to tramp around with other men, fie upon the
+abominations! May no good Jew know them!"
+
+Her innuendo struck Mrs. Kavarsky as extremely ingenious, and, egged on
+by the dogged silence of her auditor, she ventured a step further.
+
+"Do you mean to tell me," she went on, emphasizing each word, and
+shaking her whole body with melodramatic defiance, "that you would be
+better off with a _dantzin'-school_ girl?"
+
+"_A danshin'-shchool_ girl?" Jake repeated, turning ashen pale, and
+fixing his inquisitress with a distant gaze. "Who says I care for a
+danshin'-shchool girl?" he bellowed, as he let down the boy and started
+to his feet red as a cockscomb. "It was she who told you that, was it?"
+
+Joey had tripped up to the lounge where he now stood watching his
+father with a stare in which there was more curiosity than fright.
+
+The little woman lowered her crest. "Not at all! God be with you!" she
+said quickly, in a tone of abject cowardice, and involuntarily
+shrinking before the ferocious attitude of Jake's strapping figure.
+"Who? What? When? I did not mean anything at all, _sure_. Gitl _never_
+said a word to me. A prohibition if she did. Come, Mr. Podkovnik, why
+should you get _ektzited_?" she pursued, beginning to recover her
+presence of mind. "By-the-bye--I came near forgetting--how about the
+boarder you promised to get me; do you remember, Mr. Podkovnik?"
+
+"Talk away a toothache for your grandma, not for me. Who told her about
+_danshin'_ girls?" he thundered again, re-enforcing the ejaculation
+with an English oath, and bringing down a violent fist on the table as
+he did so.
+
+At this Gitl's sobs made themselves heard from the bedroom. They lashed
+Jake into a still greater fury.
+
+"What is she whimpering about, the piece of stench! _Alla right_, I do
+hate her; I can not bear the sight of her; and let her do what she
+likes. _I don' care!_"
+
+"Mr. Podkovnik! To think of a _sma't_ man like you talking in this
+way!"
+
+"Dot'sh alla right!" he said, somewhat relenting. "I don't _care_ for
+any _danshin'_ girls. It is a ---- ---- lie! It was that scabby
+_greenhorn_ who must have taken it into her head. I don't _care_ for
+anybody; not for her certainly"--pointing to the bedroom. "I am an
+_American feller_, a _Yankee_--that's what I am. What punishment is due
+to me, then, if I can not stand a _shnooza_ like her? It is _nu ushed_;
+I can not live with her, even if she stand one foot on heaven and one
+on earth. Let her take everything"--with a wave at the household
+effects--"and I shall pay her as much _cash_ as she asks--I am willing
+to break stones to pay her--provided she agrees to a divorce."
+
+The word had no sooner left his lips than Gitl burst out of the
+darkness of her retreat, her bangs dishevelled, her face stained and
+flushed with weeping and rage, and her eyes, still suffused with tears,
+flashing fire.
+
+"May you and your Polish harlot be jumping out of your skins and
+chafing with wounds as long as you will have to wait for a divorce!"
+she exploded. "He thinks I don't know how they stand together near her
+house making love to each other!"
+
+Her unprecedented show of pugnacity took him aback.
+
+"Look at the Cossack of straw!" he said quietly, with a forced smile.
+"Such a piece of cholera!" he added, as if speaking to himself, as he
+resumed his seat. "I wonder who tells her all these fibs?"
+
+Gitl broke into a fresh flood of tears.
+
+"_Vell_, what do you want now?" Mrs. Kavarsky said, addressing herself
+to her. "He says it is a lie. I told you you take all sorts of silly
+notions into your head."
+
+"_Ach_, would it were a lie!" Gitl answered between her sobs.
+
+At this juncture the boy stepped up to his mother's side, and nestled
+against her skirt. She clasped his head with both her hands, as though
+gratefully accepting an offer of succour against an assailant. And
+then, for the vague purpose of wounding Jake's feelings, she took the
+child in her arms, and huddling him close to her bosom, she half turned
+from her husband, as much as to say, "We two are making common cause
+against you." Jake was cut to the quick. He kept his glance fixed on
+the reddened, tear-stained profile of her nose, and, choking with hate,
+he was going to say, "For my part, hang yourself together with him!"
+But he had self-mastery enough to repress the exclamation, confining
+himself to a disdainful smile.
+
+"Children, children! Woe, how you do sin!" Mrs. Kavarsky sermonized.
+"Come now, obey an older person. Whoever takes notice of such trifles?
+You have had a quarrel? _ull right!_ And now make peace. Have an
+embrace and a good kiss and _dot's ull_! _Hurry yup_, Mr. Podkovnik!
+Don't be ashamed!" she beckoned to him, her countenance wreathed in
+voluptuous smiles in anticipation of the love scene about to enact
+itself before her eyes. Mr. Podkovnik failing to hurry up, however, she
+went on disappointedly: "Why, Mr. Podkovnik! Look at the boy the
+Uppermost has given you. Would he might send me one like him. Really,
+you ought to be ashamed of yourself."
+
+"Vot you kickin' aboyt, anyhoy?" Jake suddenly fired out, in English.
+"Min' jou on businesh an' dot'sh ull," he added indignantly, averting
+his head.
+
+Mrs. Kavarsky grew as red as a boiled lobster.
+
+"Vo--vo--vot _you_ keeck aboyt?" she panted, drawing herself up and
+putting her arms akimbo. "He must think I, too, can be scared by his
+English. I declare my shirt has turned linen for fright! I was in
+America while you were hauling away at the bellows in Povodye; do you
+know it?"
+
+"Are you going out of my house or not?" roared Jake, jumping to his
+feet.
+
+"And if I am not, what will you do? Will you call a _politzman_? _Ull
+right_, do. That is just what I want. I shall tell him I can not leave
+her alone with a murderer like you, for fear you might kill her and the
+boy, so that you might dawdle around with that Polish wench of yours.
+Here you have it!" Saying which, she put her thumb between her index
+and third finger--the Russian version of the well-known gesture of
+contempt--presenting it to her adversary together with a generous
+portion of her tongue.
+
+Jake's first impulse was to strike the meddlesome woman. As he started
+toward her, however, he changed his mind. "_Alla right_, you may remain
+with her!" he said, rushing up to the clothes rack, and slipping on his
+coat and hat. "_Alla right_," he repeated with broken breath, "we shall
+see!" And with a frantic bang of the door he disappeared.
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+The fresh autumn air of the street at once produced its salutary effect
+on his overexcited nerves. As he grew more collected he felt himself in
+a most awkward muddle. He cursed his outbreak of temper, and wished the
+next few days were over and the breach healed. In his abject misery he
+thought of suicide, of fleeing to Chicago or St. Louis, all of which
+passed through his mind in a stream of the most irrelevant and the most
+frivolous reminiscences. He was burning to go back, but the nerve
+failing him to face Mrs. Kavarsky, he wondered where he was going to
+pass the night. It was too cold to be tramping about till it was time
+to go to work, and he had not change enough to pay for a night's rest
+in a lodging house; so in his despair he fulminated against Gitl and,
+above all, against her tutoress. Having passed as far as the limits of
+the Ghetto he took a homeward course by a parallel street, knowing all
+the while that he would lack the courage to enter his house. When he
+came within sight of it he again turned back, yearningly thinking of
+the cosey little home behind him, and invoking maledictions upon Gitl
+for enjoying it now while he was exposed to the chill air without the
+prospect of shelter for the night. As he thus sauntered reluctantly
+about he meditated upon the scenes coming in his way, and upon the
+thousand and one things which they brought to his mind. At the same
+time his heart was thirsting for Mamie, and he felt himself a wretched
+outcast, the target of ridicule--a martyr paying the penalty of sins,
+which he failed to recognise as sins, or of which, at any rate, he
+could not hold himself culpable.
+
+Yes, he will go to Chicago, or to Baltimore, or, better still, to
+England. He pictured to himself the sensation it would produce and
+Gitl's despair. "It will serve her right. What does she want of me?" he
+said to himself, revelling in a sense of revenge. But then it was such
+a pity to part with Joey! Whereupon, in his reverie, Jake beheld
+himself stealing into his house in the dead of night, and kidnapping
+the boy. And what would Mamie say? Would she not be sorry to have him
+disappear? Can it be that she does not care for him any longer? She
+seemed to. But that was before she knew him to be a married man. And
+again his heart uttered curses against Gitl. Ah, if Mamie did still
+care for him, and fainted upon hearing of his flight, and then could
+not sleep, and ran around wringing her hands and raving like mad! It
+would serve _her_ right, too! She should have come to tell him she
+loved him instead of making that scene at his house and taking a
+derisive tone with him upon the occasion of his visit to her. Still,
+should she come to join him in London, he would receive her, he decided
+magnanimously. They speak English in London, and have cloak shops like
+here. So he would be no greenhorn there, and wouldn't they be
+happy--he, Mamie, and little Joey! Or, supposing his wife suddenly
+died, so that he could legally marry Mamie and remain in New York----
+
+A mad desire took hold of him to see the Polish girl, and he
+involuntarily took the way to her lodging. What is he going to say to
+her? Well, he will beg her not to be angry for his failure to pay his
+debt, take her into his confidence on the subject of his proposed
+flight, and promise to send her every cent from London. And while he
+was perfectly aware that he had neither the money to take him across
+the Atlantic nor the heart to forsake Gitl and Joey, and that Mamie
+would never let him leave New York without paying her twenty-five
+dollars, he started out on a run in the direction of Chrystie Street.
+Would she might offer to join him in his flight! She must have money
+enough for two passage tickets, the rogue. Wouldn't it be nice to be
+with her on the steamer! he thought, as he wrathfully brushed apart a
+group of street urchins impeding his way.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+A HOUSETOP IDYL.
+
+
+Jake found Mamie on the sidewalk in front of the tenement house where
+she lodged. As he came rushing up to her side, she was pensively
+rehearsing a waltz step.
+
+"Mamie, come shomeversh! I got to shpeak to you a lot," he gasped out.
+
+"Vot's de madder?" she demanded, startled by his excited manner.
+
+"This is not the place for speaking," he rejoined vehemently, in
+Yiddish. "Let us go to the Grand Street dock or to Seventh Street park.
+There we can speak so that nobody overhears us."
+
+"I bet you he is going to ask me to run away with him," she prophesied
+to herself; and in her feverish impatience to hear him out she proposed
+to go on the roof, which, the evening being cool, she knew to be
+deserted.
+
+When they reached the top of the house they found it overhung with rows
+of half-dried linen, held together with wooden clothespins and
+trembling to the fresh autumn breeze. Overhead, fleecy clouds were
+floating across a starry blue sky, now concealing and now exposing to
+view a pallid crescent of new moon. Coming from the street below there
+was a muffled, mysterious hum ever and anon drowned in the clatter and
+jingle of a passing horse car. A lurid, exceedingly uncanny sort of
+idyl it was; and in the midst of it there was something extremely weird
+and gruesome in those stretches of wavering, fitfully silvered white,
+to Jake's overtaxed mind vaguely suggesting the burial clothes of the
+inmates of a Jewish graveyard.
+
+After picking and diving their way beneath the trembling lines of
+underwear, pillowcases, sheets, and what not, they paused in front of a
+tall chimney pot. Jake, in a medley of superstitious terror,
+infatuation, and bashfulness, was at a loss how to begin and, indeed,
+what to say. Feeling that it would be easy for him to break into tears
+he instinctively chose this as the only way out of his predicament.
+
+"_Vot's de madder_, Jake? Speak out!" she said, with motherly
+harshness.
+
+He now wished to say something, although he still knew not what; but
+his sobs once called into play were past his control.
+
+"She must give you _trouble_," the girl added softly, after a slight
+pause, her excitement growing with every moment.
+
+"Ach, Mamielé!" he at length exclaimed, resolutely wiping his tears
+with his handkerchief. "My life has become so dark and bitter to me, I
+might as well put a rope around my neck."
+
+"Does she eat you?"
+
+"Let her go to all lamentations! Somebody told her I go around with
+you."
+
+"But you know it is a lie! Some one must have seen us the other evening
+when we were standing downstairs. You had better not come here, then.
+When you have some money, you will send it to me," she concluded,
+between genuine sympathy and an intention to draw him out.
+
+"_Ach_, don't say that, Mamie. What is the good of my life without you?
+I don't sleep nights. Since she came I began to understand how dear you
+are to me. I can not tell it so well," he said, pointing to his heart.
+
+"_Yes_, _but_ before she came you didn't _care_ for me!" she declared,
+labouring to disguise the exultation which made her heart dance.
+
+"I always did, Mamie. May I drop from this roof and break hand and foot
+if I did not."
+
+A flood of wan light struck Mamie full in her swarthy face, suffusing
+it with ivory effulgence, out of which her deep dark eyes gleamed with
+a kind of unearthly lustre. Jake stood enravished. He took her by the
+hand, but she instantly withdrew it, edging away a step. His touch
+somehow restored her to calm self-possession, and even kindled a
+certain thirst for revenge in her heart.
+
+"It is not what it used to be, Jake," she said in tones of complaisant
+earnestness. "Now that I know you are a married man it is all gone.
+_Yes_, Jake, it is all gone! You should have cared for me when she was
+still there. Then you could have gone to a rabbi and sent her a writ of
+divorce. It is too late now, Jake."
+
+"It is not too late!" he protested, tremulously. "I will get a divorce,
+_anyhoy_. And if you don't take me I will hang myself," he added,
+imploringly.
+
+"On a burned straw?" she retorted, with a cruel chuckle.
+
+"It is all very well for you to laugh. But if you could enter my heart
+and see how I _shuffer_!"
+
+"Woe is me! I don't see how you will stand it," she mocked him. And
+abruptly assuming a grave tone, she pursued vehemently: "But I don't
+understand; since you sent her tickets and money, you must like her."
+
+Jake explained that he had all along intended to send her rabbinical
+divorce papers instead of a passage ticket, and that it had been his
+old mother who had pestered him, with her tear-stained letters, into
+acting contrary to his will.
+
+"_All right_," Mamie resumed, with a dubious smile; "but why don't you
+go to Fanny, or Beckie, or Beilké the "Black Cat"? You used to care for
+them more than for me. Why should you just come to me?"
+
+Jake answered by characterizing the girls she had mentioned in terms
+rather too high-scented for print, protesting his loathing for them.
+Whereupon she subjected him to a rigid cross-examination as to his past
+conduct toward herself and her rivals; and although he managed to
+explain matters to her inward satisfaction, owing, chiefly, to a
+predisposition on her own part to credit his assertions on the subject,
+she could not help continuing obdurate and in a spiteful, vindictive
+mood.
+
+"All you say is not worth a penny, and it is too late, _anyvay_," was
+her verdict. "You have a wife and a child; better go home and be a
+father to your _boy_." Her last words were uttered with some approach
+to sincerity, and she was mentally beginning to give herself credit for
+magnanimity and pious self-denial. She would have regretted her
+exhortation, however, had she been aware of its effect on her listener;
+for her mention of the boy and appeal to Jake as a father aroused in
+him a lively sense of the wrong he was doing. Moreover, while she was
+speaking his attention had been attracted to a loosened pillowcase
+ominously fluttering and flapping a yard or two off. The figure of his
+dead father, attired in burial linen, uprose to his mind.
+
+"You don' vanted? Alla right, you be shorry," he said half-heartedly,
+turning to go.
+
+"_Hol' on!_" she checked him, irritatedly. "How are you going to _fix_
+it? Are you _sure_ she will take a divorce?"
+
+"Will she have a choice then? She will have to take it. I won't live
+with her _anyhoy_," he replied, his passion once more welling up in his
+soul. "Mamie, my treasure, my glory!" he exclaimed, in tremulous
+accents. "Say that you are _shatichfied_; my heart will become
+lighter." Saying which, he strained her to his bosom, and fell to
+raining fervent kisses on her face. At first she made a faint attempt
+at freeing herself, and then suddenly clasping him with mad force she
+pressed her lips to his in a fury of passion.
+
+The pillowcase flapped aloud, ever more sternly, warningly,
+portentously.
+
+Jake cast an involuntary side glance at it. His spell of passion was
+broken and supplanted by a spell of benumbing terror. He had an impulse
+to withdraw his arms from the girl; but, instead, he clung to her all
+the faster, as if for shelter from the ghostlike thing.
+
+With a last frantic hug Mamie relaxed her hold. "Remember now, Jake!"
+she then said, in a queer hollow voice. "Now it is all _settled_. Maybe
+you are making fun of me? If you are, you are playing with fire. Death
+to me--death to you!" she added, menacingly.
+
+He wished to say something to reassure her, but his tongue seemed grown
+fast to his palate.
+
+"Am I to blame?" she continued with ghastly vehemence, sobs ringing in
+her voice. "Who asked you to come? Did I lure you from her, then? I
+should sooner have thrown myself into the river than taken away
+somebody else's husband. You say yourself that you would not live with
+her, _anyvay_. But now it is all gone. Just try to leave me now!" And
+giving vent to her tears, she added, "Do you think my heart is no
+heart?"
+
+A thrill of joyous pity shot through his frame. Once again he caught
+her to his heart, and in a voice quivering with tenderness he murmured:
+"Don't be uneasy, my dear, my gold, my pearl, my consolation! I will
+let my throat be cut, into fire or water will I go, for your sake."
+
+"Dot's all right," she returned, musingly. "But how are you going to
+get rid of her? You von't go back on me, vill you?" she asked in
+English.
+
+"_Me?_ May I not be able to get away from this spot. Can it be that you
+still distrust me?"
+
+"Swear!"
+
+"How else shall I swear?"
+
+"By your father, peace upon him."
+
+"May my father as surely have a bright paradise," he said, with a show
+of alacrity, his mind fixed on the loosened pillowcase. "_Vell_, are
+you _shatichfied_ now?"
+
+"All right," she answered, in a matter-of-fact way, and as if only half
+satisfied. "But do you think she will take money?"
+
+"But I have none."
+
+"Nobody asks you if you have. But would she take it, if you had?"
+
+"If I had! I am sure she would take it; she would have to, for what
+would she gain if she did not?"
+
+"Are you _sure_?"
+
+"_'F cush!_"
+
+"Ach, but, after all, why did you not tell me you liked me before she
+came?" she said testily, stamping her foot.
+
+"Again!" he exclaimed, wincing.
+
+"_All right_; wait."
+
+She turned to go somewhere, but checked herself, and facing about, she
+exacted an additional oath of allegiance. After which she went to the
+other side of the chimney. When she returned she held one of her arms
+behind her.
+
+"You will not let yourself be talked away from me?"
+
+He swore.
+
+"Not even if your father came to you from the other world--if he came
+to you in a dream, I mean--and told you to drop me?"
+
+Again he swore.
+
+"And you really don't care for Fanny?"
+
+And again he swore.
+
+"Nor for Beckie?"
+
+The ordeal was too much, and he begged her to desist. But she wouldn't,
+and so, chafing under inexorable cross-examinations, he had to swear
+again and again that he had never cared for any of Joe's female pupils
+or assistants except Mamie.
+
+At last she relented.
+
+"Look, piece of loafer you!" she then said, holding out an open bank
+book to his eyes. "But what is the _use_? It is not light enough, and
+you can not read, _anyvay_. You can eat, _dot's all_. _Vell_, you could
+make out figures, couldn't you? There are three hundred and forty
+dollars," she proceeded, pointing to the balance line, which
+represented the savings, for a marriage portion, of five years' hard
+toil. "It should be three hundred and sixty-five, but then for the
+twenty-five dollars you owe me I may as well light a mourner's candle,
+_ain' it_?"
+
+When she had started to produce the bank book from her bosom he had
+surmised her intent, and while she was gone he was making guesses as to
+the magnitude of the sum to her credit. His most liberal estimate,
+however, had been a hundred and fifty dollars; so that the revelation
+of the actual figure completely overwhelmed him. He listened to her
+with a broad grin, and when she paused he burst out:
+
+"Mamielé, you know what? Let us run away!"
+
+"You are a fool!" she overruled him, as she tucked the bank book under
+her jacket. "I have a better plan. But tell me the truth, did you not
+guess I had money? Now you need not fear to tell me all."
+
+He swore that he had not even dreamt that she possessed a bank account.
+How could he? And was it not because he had suspected the existence of
+such an account that he had come to declare his love to her and not to
+Fanny, or Beckie, or the "Black Cat"? No, may he be thunderstruck if it
+was. What does she take him for? On his part she is free to give the
+money away or throw it into the river. He will become a boss, and take
+her penniless, for he can not live without her; she is lodged in his
+heart; she is the only woman he ever cared for.
+
+"Oh, but why did you not tell me all this long ago?" With which,
+speaking like the complete mistress of the situation that she was, she
+proceeded to expound a project, which had shaped itself in her lovelorn
+mind, hypothetically, during the previous few days, when she had been
+writhing in despair of ever having an occasion to put it into practice.
+Jake was to take refuge with her married sister in Philadelphia until
+Gitl was brought to terms. In the meantime some chum of his, nominated
+by Mamie and acting under her orders, would carry on negotiations. The
+State divorce, as she had already taken pains to ascertain, would cost
+fifty dollars; the rabbinical divorce would take five or eight dollars
+more. Two hundred dollars would be deposited with some Canal Street
+banker, to be paid to Gitl when the whole procedure was brought to a
+successful termination. If she can be got to accept less, so much the
+better; if not, Jake and Mamie will get along, anyhow. When they are
+married they will open a dancing school.
+
+To all of which Jake kept nodding approval, once or twice interrupting
+her with a demonstration of enthusiasm. As to the fate of his boy,
+Mamie deliberately circumvented all reference to the subject. Several
+times Jake was tempted to declare his ardent desire to have the child
+with them, and that Mamie should like him and be a mother to him; for
+had she not herself found him a bright and nice fellow? His heart bled
+at the thought of having to part with Joey. But somehow the courage
+failed him to touch upon the question. He saw himself helplessly
+entangled in something foreboding no good. He felt between the devil
+and the deep sea, as the phrase goes; and unnerved by the whole
+situation and completely in the shop girl's power, he was glad to be
+relieved from all initiative--whether forward or backward--to shut his
+eyes, as it were, and, leaning upon Mamie's strong arm, let himself be
+led by her in whatever direction she chose.
+
+"Do you know, Jake?--now I may as well tell you," the girl pursued, _ŕ
+propos_ of the prospective dancing school; "do you know that Joe has
+been _bodering_ me to marry him? And he did not know I had a cent,
+either."
+
+"_An you didn' vanted?_" Jake asked, joyfully.
+
+"_Sure!_ I knew all along Jakie was my predestined match," she replied,
+drawing his bulky head to her lips. And following the operation by a
+sound twirl of his ear, she added: "Only he is a great lump of hog,
+Jakie is. But a heart is a clock: it told me I would have you some day.
+I could have got _lots_ of suitors--may the two of us have as many
+thousands of dollars--and _business people_, too. Do you see what I am
+doing for you? Do you deserve it, _monkey you_?"
+
+"_Never min'_, you shall see what a _danshin' shchool_ I _shta't_. If I
+don't take away every _shcholar_ from Jaw, my name won't be Jake. Won't
+he squirm!" he exclaimed, with childish ardour.
+
+"Dot's all right; but foist min' dot you don' go back on me!"
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+An hour or two later Mamie with Jake by her side stood in front of the
+little window in the ferryhouse of the Pennsylvania Railroad, buying
+one ticket for the midnight train for Philadelphia.
+
+"Min' je, Jake," she said anxiously a little after, as she handed him
+the ticket. "This is as good as a marriage certificate, do you
+understand?" And the two hurried off to the boat in a meagre stream of
+other passengers.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+THE PARTING.
+
+
+It was on a bright frosty morning in the following January, in the
+kitchen of Rabbi Aaronovitz, on the third floor of a rickety old
+tenement house, that Jake and Gitl, for the first time since his
+flight, came face to face. It was also to be their last meeting as
+husband and wife.
+
+The low-ceiled room was fairly crowded with men and women. Besides the
+principal actors in the scene, the rabbi, the scribe, and the
+witnesses, and, as a matter of course, Mrs. Kavarsky, there was the
+rabbi's wife, their two children, and an envoy from Mamie, charged to
+look after the fortitude of Jake's nerve. Gitl, extremely careworn and
+haggard, was "in her own hair," thatched with a broad-brimmed winter
+hat of a brown colour, and in a jacket of black beaver. The rustic,
+"greenhornlike" expression was completely gone from her face and
+manner, and, although she now looked bewildered and as if
+terror-stricken, there was noticeable about her a suggestion of that
+peculiar air of self-confidence with which a few months' life in
+America is sure to stamp the looks and bearing of every immigrant.
+Jake, flushed and plainly nervous and fidgety, made repeated attempts
+to conceal his state of mind now by screwing up a grim face, now by
+giving his enormous head a haughty posture, now by talking aloud to his
+escort.
+
+The tedious preliminaries were as trying to the rabbi as they were to
+Jake and Gitl. However, the venerable old man discharged his duty of
+dissuading the young couple from their contemplated step as
+scrupulously as he dared in view of his wife's signals to desist and
+not to risk the fee. Gitl, prompted by Mrs. Kavarsky, responded to all
+questions with an air of dazed resignation, while Jake, ever conscious
+of his guard's glance, gave his answers with bravado. At last the
+scribe, a gaunt middle-aged man, with an expression of countenance at
+once devout and businesslike, set about his task. Whereupon Mrs.
+Aaronovitz heaved a sigh of relief, and forthwith banished her two boys
+into the parlour.
+
+An imposing stillness fell over the room. Little by little, however, it
+was broken, at first by whispers and then by an unrestrained hum. The
+rabbi, in a velvet skullcap, faded and besprinkled with down, presided
+with pious dignity, though apparently ill at ease, at the head of the
+table. Alternately stroking his yellowish-gray beard and curling his
+scanty side locks, he kept his eyes on the open book before him, now
+and then stealing a glance at the other end of the table, where the
+scribe was rapturously drawing the square characters of the holy
+tongue.
+
+Gitl carefully looked away from Jake. But he invincibly haunted her
+mind, rendering her deaf to Mrs. Kavarsky's incessant buzz. His
+presence terrified her, and at the same time it melted her soul in a
+fire, torturing yet sweet, which impelled her at one moment to throw
+herself upon him and scratch out his eyes, and at another to prostrate
+herself at his feet and kiss them in a flood of tears.
+
+Jake, on the other hand, eyed Gitl quite frequently, with a kind of
+malicious curiosity. Her general Americanized make up, and, above all,
+that broad-brimmed, rather fussy, hat of hers, nettled him. It seemed
+to defy him, and as if devised for that express purpose. Every time she
+and her adviser caught his eye, a feeling of devouring hate for both
+would rise in his heart. He was panting to see his son; and, while he
+was thoroughly alive to the impossibility of making a child the witness
+of a divorce scene between father and mother, yet, in his fury, he
+interpreted their failure to bring Joey with them as another piece of
+malice.
+
+"Ready!" the scribe at length called out, getting up with the document
+in his hand, and turning it over to the rabbi.
+
+The rest of the assemblage also rose from their seats, and clustered
+round Jake and Gitl, who had taken places on either side of the old
+man. A beam of hard, cold sunlight, filtering in through a grimy
+window-pane and falling lurid upon the rabbi's wrinkled brow, enhanced
+the impressiveness of the spectacle. A momentary pause ensued, stern,
+weird, and casting a spell of awe over most of the bystanders, not
+excluding the rabbi. Mrs. Kavarsky even gave a shudder and gulped down
+a sob.
+
+"Young woman!" Rabbi Aaronovitz began, with bashful serenity, "here is
+the writ of divorce all ready. Now thou mayst still change thy mind."
+
+Mrs. Aaronovitz anxiously watched Gitl, who answered by a shake of her
+head.
+
+"Mind thee, I tell thee once again," the old man pursued, gently. "Thou
+must accept this divorce with the same free will and readiness with
+which thou hast married thy husband. Should there be the slightest
+objection hidden in thy heart, the divorce is null and void. Dost thou
+understand?"
+
+"Say that you are _saresfied_," whispered Mrs. Kavarsky.
+
+"_Ull ride_, I am _salesfiet_" murmured Gitl, looking down on the
+table.
+
+"Witnesses, hear ye what this young woman says? That she accepts the
+divorce of her own free will," the rabbi exclaimed solemnly, as if
+reading the Talmud.
+
+"Then I must also tell you once more," he then addressed himself to
+Jake as well as to Gitl, "that this divorce is good only upon condition
+that you are also divorced by the Government of the land--by the
+court--do you understand? So it stands written in the separate paper
+which you get. Do you understand what I say?"
+
+"_Dot'sh alla right_," Jake said, with ostentatious ease of manner. "I
+have already told you that the _dvosh_ of the _court_ is already
+_fikshed_, haven't I?" he added, even angrily.
+
+Now came the culminating act of the drama. Gitl was affectionately
+urged to hold out her hands, bringing them together at an angle, so as
+to form a receptacle for the fateful piece of paper. She obeyed
+mechanically, her cheeks turning ghastly pale. Jake, also pale to his
+lips, his brows contracted, received the paper, and obeying directions,
+approached the woman who in the eye of the Law of Moses was still his
+wife. And then, repeating word for word after the rabbi, he said:
+
+"Here is thy divorce. Take thy divorce. And by this divorce thou art
+separated from me and free for all other men!"
+
+Gitl scarcely understood the meaning of the formula, though each Hebrew
+word was followed by its Yiddish translation. Her arms shook so that
+they had to be supported by Mrs. Kavarsky and by one of the witnesses.
+
+At last Jake deposited the writ and instantly drew back.
+
+Gitl closed her hands upon the paper as she had been instructed; but at
+the same moment she gave a violent tremble, and with a heartrending
+groan fell on the witness in a fainting swoon.
+
+In the ensuing commotion Jake slipped out of the room, presently
+followed by Mamie's ambassador, who had remained behind to pay the
+bill.
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+Gitl was soon brought to by Mrs. Kavarsky and the mistress of the
+house. For a moment or so she sat staring about her, when, suddenly
+awakening to the meaning of the ordeal she had just been through, and
+finding Jake gone, she clapped her hands and burst into a fit of
+sobbing.
+
+Meanwhile the rabbi had once again perused the writ, and having caused
+the witnesses to do likewise, he made two diagonal slits in the paper.
+
+"You must not forget, my daughter," he said to the young woman, who was
+at that moment crying as if her heart would break, "that you dare not
+marry again before ninety-one days, counting from to-day, go by; while
+you--where is he, the young man? Gone?" he asked with a frustrated
+smile and growing pale.
+
+"You want him badly, don't you?" growled Mrs. Kavarsky. "Let him go I
+know where, the every-evil-in-him that he is!"
+
+Mrs. Aaronovitz telegraphing to her husband that the money was safe in
+her pocket, he remarked sheepishly: "_He_ may wed even to-day."
+Whereupon Gitl's sobs became still more violent, and she fell to
+nodding her head and wringing her hands.
+
+"What are you crying about, foolish face that you are!" Mrs. Kavarsky
+fired out. "Another woman would thank God for having at last got rid of
+the lump of leavened bread. What say you, rabbi? A rowdy, a sinner of
+Israel, a _regely loifer_, may no good Jew know him! _Never min'_, the
+Name, be It blessed, will send you your destined one, and a fine,
+learned, respectable man, too," she added significantly.
+
+Her words had an instantaneous effect. Gitl at once composed herself,
+and fell to drying her eyes.
+
+Quick to catch Mrs. Kavarsky's hint, the rabbi's wife took her aside
+and asked eagerly:
+
+"Why, has she got a suitor?"
+
+"What is the _differentz_? You need not fear; when there is a wedding
+canopy I shall employ no other man than your husband," was Mrs.
+Kavarsky's self-important but good-natured reply.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+A DEFEATED VICTOR.
+
+
+When Gitl, accompanied by her friend, reached home, they were followed
+into the former's apartments by a batch of neighbours, one of them with
+Joey in tow. The moment the young woman found herself in her kitchen
+she collapsed, sinking down on the lounge. The room seemed to have
+assumed a novel aspect, which brought home to her afresh that the bond
+between her and Jake was now at last broken forever and beyond repair.
+The appalling fact was still further accentuated in her consciousness
+when she caught sight of the boy.
+
+"Joeyelé! Joeyinké! Birdie! Little kitten!"--with which she seized him
+in her arms, and, kissing him all over, burst into tears. Then shaking
+with the child backward and forward, and intoning her words as Jewish
+women do over a grave, she went on: "Ai, you have no papa any more,
+Joeyelé! Yoselé, little crown, you will never see him again! He is
+dead, _taté_ is!" Whereupon Yoselé, following his mother's example, let
+loose his stentorian voice.
+
+"_Shurr-r up!_" Mrs. Kavarsky whispered, stamping her foot. "You want
+Mr. Bernstein to leave you, too, do you? No more is wanted than that he
+should get wind of your crying."
+
+"Nobody will tell him," one of the neighbours put in, resentfully.
+"But, _anyhull_, what is the _used_ crying?"
+
+"Ask her, the piece of hunchback!" said Mrs. Kavarsky. "Another woman
+would dance for joy, and here she is whining, the cudgel. What is it
+you are snivelling about? That you have got rid of an unclean bone and
+a dunce, and that you are going to marry a young man of silk who is fit
+to be a rabbi, and is as _smart_ and _ejecate_ as a lawyer? You would
+have got a match like that in Povodye, would you? I dare say a man like
+Mr. Bernstein would not have spoken to you there. You ought to say
+Psalms for your coming to America. It is only here that it is possible
+for a blacksmith's wife to marry a learned man, who is a blessing both
+for God and people. And yet you are not _saresfied_! Cry away! If
+Bernstein refuses to go under the wedding canopy, Mrs. Kavarsky will no
+more _bodder_ her head about you, depend upon it. It is not enough for
+her that I neglect _business_ on her account," she appealed to the
+bystanders.
+
+"Really, what are you crying about, Mrs. Podkovnik?" one of the
+neighbours interposed. "You ought to bless the hour when you became
+free."
+
+All of which haranguing only served to stimulate Gitl's demonstration
+of grief. Having let down the boy, she went on clapping her hands,
+swaying in all directions, and wailing.
+
+The truth must be told, however, that she was now continuing her
+lamentations by the mere force of inertia, and as if enjoying the very
+process of the thing. For, indeed, at the bottom of her heart she felt
+herself far from desolate, being conscious of the existence of a man
+who was to take care of her and her child, and even relishing the
+prospect of the new life in store for her. Already on her way from the
+rabbi's house, while her soul was full of Jake and the Polish girl,
+there had fluttered through her imagination a picture of the grocery
+business which she and Bernstein were to start with the money paid to
+her by Jake.
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+While Gitl thus sat swaying and wringing her hands, Jake, Mamie, her
+emissary at the divorce proceeding, and another mutual friend, were
+passengers on a Third Avenue cable car, all bound for the mayor's
+office. While Gitl was indulging herself in an exhibition of grief, her
+recent husband was flaunting a hilarious mood. He did feel a great
+burden to have rolled off his heart, and the proximity of Mamie, on the
+other hand, caressed his soul. He was tempted to catch her in his arms,
+and cover her glowing cheeks with kisses. But in his inmost heart he
+was the reverse of eager to reach the City Hall. He was painfully
+reluctant to part with his long-coveted freedom so soon after it had at
+last been attained, and before he had had time to relish it. Still
+worse than this thirst for a taste of liberty was a feeling which was
+now gaining upon him, that, instead of a conqueror, he had emerged from
+the rabbi's house the victim of an ignominious defeat. If he could now
+have seen Gitl in her paroxysm of anguish, his heart would perhaps have
+swelled with a sense of his triumph, and Mamie would have appeared to
+him the embodiment of his future happiness. Instead of this he beheld
+her, Bernstein, Yoselé, and Mrs. Kavarsky celebrating their victory and
+bandying jokes at his expense. Their future seemed bright with joy,
+while his own loomed dark and impenetrable. What if he should now dash
+into Gitl's apartments and, declaring his authority as husband, father,
+and lord of the house, fiercely eject the strangers, take Yoselé in his
+arms, and sternly command Gitl to mind her household duties?
+
+But the distance between him and the mayor's office was dwindling fast.
+Each time the car came to a halt he wished the pause could be prolonged
+indefinitely; and when it resumed its progress, the violent lurch it
+gave was accompanied by a corresponding sensation in his heart.
+
+
+THE END.
+
+
+
+
+D. APPLETON & CO.'S PUBLICATIONS.
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+
+_THE STARK MUNRO LETTERS._ Being a Series of Twelve Letters written by
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+
+    "Cullingworth, ... a much more interesting creation than Sherlock
+    Holmes, and I pray Dr. Doyle to give us more of him."--_Richard le
+    Gallienne, in the London Star._
+
+    "Every one who wants a hearty laugh must make acquaintance with Dr.
+    James Cullingworth."--_Westminster Gazette._
+
+    "Every one must read; for not to know Cullingworth should surely
+    argue one's self to be unknown."--_Pall Mall Gazette._
+
+    "One of the freshest figures to be met with in any recent
+    fiction."--_London Daily News._
+
+    "'The Stark Munro Letters' is a bit of real literature.... Its
+    reading will be an epoch-making event in many a
+    life."--_Philadelphia Evening Telegraph._
+
+    "Positively magnetic, and written with that combined force and
+    grace for which the author's style is known."--_Boston Budget._
+
+
+SEVENTH EDITION.
+
+_ROUND THE RED LAMP._ Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life. 12mo.
+Cloth, $1.50.
+
+    "Too much can not be said in praise of these strong productions,
+    that, to read, keep one's heart leaping to the throat and the mind
+    in a tumult of anticipation to the end.... No series of short
+    stories in modern literature can approach them."--_Hartford Times._
+
+    "If Dr. A. Conan Doyle had not already placed himself in the front
+    rank of living English writers by 'The Refugees,' and other of his
+    larger stories, he would surely do so by these fifteen short
+    tales."--_New York Mail and Express._
+
+    "A strikingly realistic and decidedly original contribution to
+    modern literature."--_Boston Saturday Evening Gazette._
+
+
+MISS F. F. MONTRÉSOR'S BOOKS.
+
+_FALSE COIN OR TRUE?_ 12mo. Cloth, $1.25.
+
+    "One of the few true novels of the day.... It is powerful, and
+    touched with a delicate insight and strong impressions of life and
+    character.... The author's theme is original, her treatment
+    artistic, and the book is remarkable for its unflagging
+    interest."--_Philadelphia Record._
+
+    "The tale never flags in interest, and once taken up will not be
+    laid down until the last page is finished."--_Boston Budget._
+
+    "A well-written novel, with well-depicted characters and
+    well-chosen scenes."--_Chicago News._
+
+    "A sweet, tender, pure, and lovely story."--_Buffalo Commercial._
+
+_THE ONE WHO LOOKED ON._ 12mo. Cloth, $1.25.
+
+    "A tale quite unusual, entirely unlike any other, full of a strange
+    power and realism, and touched with a fine humor."--_London World._
+
+    "One of the most remarkable and powerful of the year's
+    contributions, worthy to stand with Ian Maclaren's."--_British
+    Weekly._
+
+    "One of the rare books which can be read with great pleasure and
+    recommended without reservation. It is fresh, pure, sweet, and
+    pathetic, with a pathos which is perfectly wholesome."--_St. Paul
+    Globe._
+
+    "The story is an intensely human one, and it is delightfully
+    told.... The author shows a marvelous keenness in character
+    analysis, and a marked ingenuity in the development of her
+    story."--_Boston Advertiser._
+
+_INTO THE HIGH WAYS AND HEDGES._ 12mo. Paper, 50 cents; cloth, $1.00.
+
+    "A touch of idealism, of nobility of thought and purpose, mingled
+    with an air of reality and well-chosen expression, are the most
+    notable features of a book that has not the ordinary defects of
+    such qualities. With all its elevation of utterance and
+    spirituality of outlook and insight it is wonderfully free from
+    overstrained or exaggerated matter, and it has glimpses of humor.
+    Most of the characters are vivid, yet there are restraint and
+    sobriety in their treatment, and almost all are carefully and
+    consistently evolved."--_London Athenćum._
+
+    "'Into the Highways and Hedges' is a book not of promise only, but
+    of high achievement. It is original, powerful, artistic, humorous.
+    It places the author at a bound in the rank of those artists to
+    whom we look for the skillful presentation of strong personal
+    impressions of life and character."--_London Daily News._
+
+    "The pure idealism of 'Into the Highways and Hedges' does much to
+    redeem modern fiction from the reproach it has brought upon
+    itself.... The story is original, and told with great
+    refinement."--_Philadelphia Public Ledger._
+
+
+"A better book than 'The Prisoner of Zenda.'"--_London Queen._
+
+_THE CHRONICLES OF COUNT ANTONIO._ By ANTHONY HOPE, author of "The God
+in the Car," "The Prisoner of Zenda," etc. With photogravure
+Frontispiece by S. W. Van Schaick. Third edition. 12mo. Cloth, $1.50.
+
+    "No adventures were ever better worth recounting than are those of
+    Antonio of Monte Velluto, a very Bayard among outlaws.... To all
+    those whose pulses still stir at the recital of deeds of high
+    courage, we may recommend this book.... The chronicle conveys the
+    emotion of heroic adventure, and is picturesquely
+    written."--_London Daily News._
+
+    "It has literary merits all its own, of a deliberate and rather
+    deep order.... In point of execution 'The Chronicles of Count
+    Antonio' is the best work that Mr. Hope has yet done. The design is
+    clearer, the workmanship more elaborate, the style more colored....
+    The incidents are most ingenious, they are told quietly, but with
+    great cunning, and the Quixotic sentiment which pervades it all is
+    exceedingly pleasant"--_Westminster Gazette._
+
+    "A romance worthy of all the expectations raised by the brilliancy
+    of his former books, and likely to be read with a keen enjoyment
+    and a healthy exaltation of the spirits by every one who takes it
+    up."--_The Scotsman._
+
+    "A gallant tale, written with unfailing freshness and
+    spirit."--_London Daily Telegraph._
+
+    "One of the most fascinating romances written in English within
+    many days. The quaint simplicity of its style is delightful, and
+    the adventures recorded in these 'Chronicles of Count Antonio' are
+    as stirring and ingenious as any conceived even by Weyman at his
+    best."--_New York World._
+
+    "Romance of the real flavor, wholly and entirely romance, and
+    narrated in true romantic style. The characters, drawn with such
+    masterly handling, are not merely pictures and portraits, but
+    statues that are alive and step boldly forward from the
+    canvas."--_Boston Courier._
+
+    "Told in a wonderfully simple and direct style, and with the magic
+    touch of a man who has the genius of narrative, making the varied
+    incidents flow naturally and rapidly in a stream of sparkling
+    discourse."--_Detroit Tribune._
+
+    "Easily ranks with, if not above, 'A Prisoner of Zenda.'...
+    Wonderfully strong, graphic, and compels the interest of the most
+    _blasé_ novel reader."--_Boston Advertiser._
+
+    "No adventures were ever better worth telling than those of Count
+    Antonio.... The author knows full well how to make every pulse
+    thrill, and how to hold his readers under the spell of his
+    magic."--_Boston Herald._
+
+    "A book to make women weep proud tears, and the blood of men to
+    tingle with knightly fervor.... In 'Count Antonio' we think Mr.
+    Hope surpasses himself, as he has already surpassed all the other
+    story-tellers of the period."--_New York Spirit of the Times._
+
+
+NOVELS BY HALL CAINE.
+
+_THE MANXMAN._ 12mo. Cloth, $1.50.
+
+    "A story of marvelous dramatic intensity, and in its ethical
+    meaning has a force comparable only to Hawthorne's 'Scarlet
+    Letter.'"--_Boston Beacon._
+
+    "A work of power which is another stone added to the foundation of
+    enduring fame to which Mr. Caine is yearly adding."--_Public
+    Opinion._
+
+    "A wonderfully strong study of character; a powerful analysis of
+    those elements which go to make up the strength and weakness of a
+    man, which are at fierce warfare within the same breast; contending
+    against each other, as it were, the one to raise him to fame and
+    power, the other to drag him down to degradation and shame. Never
+    in the whole range of literature have we seen the struggle between
+    these forces for supremacy over the man more powerfully, more
+    realistically delineated than Mr. Caine pictures it."--_Boston Home
+    Journal._
+
+_THE DEEMSTER. A Romance of the Isle of Man._ 12mo. Cloth, $1.50.
+
+    "Hall Caine has already given us some very strong and fine work,
+    and 'The Deemster' is a story of unusual power.... Certain passages
+    and chapters have an intensely dramatic grasp, and hold the
+    fascinated reader with a force rarely excited nowadays in
+    literature."--_The Critic._
+
+    "One of the strongest novels which has appeared in many a
+    day."--_San Francisco Chronicle._
+
+    "Fascinates the mind like the gathering and bursting of a
+    storm."--_Illustrated London News._
+
+    "Deserves to be ranked among the remarkable novels of the
+    day."--_Chicago Times._
+
+_THE BONDMAN._ New edition. 12mo. Cloth, $1.50.
+
+    "The welcome given to this story has cheered and touched me, but I
+    am conscious that, to win a reception so warm, such a book must
+    have had readers who brought to it as much as they took away.... I
+    have called my story a saga, merely because it follows the epic
+    method, and I must not claim for it at any point the weighty
+    responsibility of history, or serious obligations to the world of
+    fact. But it matters not to me what Icelanders may call 'The
+    Bondman,' if they will honor me by reading it in the open-hearted
+    spirit and with the free mind with which they are content to read
+    of Grettir and of his fights with the Troll."--_From the Author's
+    Preface._
+
+_CAPT'N DAVY'S HONEYMOON. A Manx Yarn._ 12mo. Paper, 50 cents; cloth,
+$1.00.
+
+    "A new departure by this author. Unlike his previous works, this
+    little tale is almost wholly humorous, with, however, a current of
+    pathos underneath. It is not always that an author can succeed
+    equally well in tragedy and in comedy, but it looks as though Mr.
+    Hall Caine would be one of the exceptions."--_London Literary
+    World._
+
+    "It is pleasant to meet the author of 'The Deemster' in a brightly
+    humorous little story like this.... It shows the same observation
+    of Manx character, and much of the same artistic
+    skill."--_Philadelphia Times._
+
+
+BOOKS BY MRS. EVERARD COTES (SARA JEANNETTE DUNCAN).
+
+_HIS HONOUR, AND A LADY._ Illustrated. 12mo. Cloth, $1.50.
+
+    "'His Honour, and a Lady' is a finished novel, colored with true
+    local dyes and instinct with the Anglo-Indian and pure Indian
+    spirit, besides a perversion by originality of created character
+    and a crisp way of putting things."--_Chicago Times-Herald._
+
+_THE STORY OF SONNY SAHIB._ Illustrated. 12mo. Cloth, $1.00
+
+    "As perfect a story of its kind as can be imagined."--_Chicago
+    Times-Herald._
+
+_VERNON'S AUNT._ With many Illustrations. 12mo. Cloth, $1.25.
+
+    "A most vivid and realistic impression of certain phases of life in
+    India, and no one can read her vivacious chronicle without
+    indulging in many a hearty laugh."--_Boston Beacon._
+
+_A DAUGHTER OF TO-DAY._ A Novel. 12mo. Cloth, $1.50.
+
+    "This novel is a strong and serious piece of work; one of a kind
+    that is getting too rare in these days of universal
+    crankiness."--_Boston Courier._
+
+_A SOCIAL DEPARTURE: How Orthodocia and I Went Round the World by
+Ourselves._ With 111 Illustrations by F. H. TOWNSEND. 12mo. Paper, 75
+cents; cloth, $1.75.
+
+    "A brighter, merrier, more entirely charming book would be, indeed,
+    difficult to find."--_St. Louis Republic._
+
+_AN AMERICAN GIRL IN LONDON._ With 80 Illustrations by F. H. TOWNSEND.
+12mo. Paper, 75 cents; cloth, $1.50.
+
+    "So sprightly a book as this, on life in London as observed by an
+    American, has never before been written."--_Philadelphia Bulletin._
+
+_THE SIMPLE ADVENTURES OF A MEMSAHIB._ With 37 Illustrations by _F. H.
+Townsend_. 12mo. Cloth, $1.50.
+
+    "It is like traveling without leaving one's armchair to read it.
+    Miss Duncan has the descriptive and narrative gift in large
+    measure, and she brings vividly before us the street scenes, the
+    interiors, the bewilderingly queer natives, the gayeties of the
+    English colony."--_Philadelphia Telegraph._
+
+
+NOVELS BY MAARTEN MAARTENS.
+
+_THE GREATER GLORY. A Story of High Life._ By MAARTEN MAARTENS, author
+of "God's Fool," "Joost Avelingh," etc. 12mo. Cloth, $1.50.
+
+    "Until the Appletons discovered the merits of Maarten Maartens, the
+    foremost of Dutch novelists, it is doubtful if many American
+    readers knew that there were Dutch novelists. His 'God's Fool' and
+    'Joost Avelingh' made for him an American reputation. To our mind
+    this just published work of his is his best.... He is a master of
+    epigram, an artist in description, a prophet in insight."--_Boston
+    Advertiser._
+
+    "It would take several columns to give any adequate idea of the
+    superb way in which the Dutch novelist has developed his theme and
+    wrought out one of the most impressive stories of the period.... It
+    belongs to the small class of novels which one can not afford to
+    neglect."--_San Francisco Chronicle._
+
+    "Maarten Maartens stands head and shoulders above the average
+    novelist of the day in intellectual subtlety and imaginative
+    power."--_Boston Beacon._
+
+_GOD'S FOOL._ By MAARTEN MAARTENS. 12mo. Cloth, $1.50.
+
+    "Throughout there is an epigrammatic force which would make
+    palatable a less interesting story of human lives or one less
+    deftly told."--_London Saturday Review._
+
+    "Perfectly easy, graceful, humorous.... The author's skill in
+    character-drawing is undeniable."--_London Chronicle._
+
+    "A remarkable work."--_New York Times._
+
+    "Maarten Maartens has secured a firm footing in the eddies of
+    current literature.... Pathos deepens into tragedy in the thrilling
+    story of 'God's Fool.'"--_Philadelphia Ledger._
+
+    "Its preface alone stamps the author as one of the leading English
+    novelists of to-day."--_Boston Daily Advertiser._
+
+    "The story is wonderfully brilliant.... The interest never lags;
+    the style is realistic and intense; and there is a constantly
+    underlying current of subtle humor.... It is, in short, a book
+    which no student of modern literature should fail to
+    read."--_Boston Times._
+
+    "A story of remarkable interest and point."--_New York Observer._
+
+_JOOST AVELINGH._ By MAARTEN MAARTENS. 12mo. Cloth, $1.50.
+
+    "So unmistakably good as to induce the hope that an acquaintance
+    with the Dutch literature of fiction may soon become more general
+    among us."--_London Morning Post._
+
+    "In scarcely any of the sensational novels of the day will the
+    reader find more nature or more human nature."--_London Standard._
+
+    "A novel of a very high type. At once strongly realistic and
+    powerfully idealistic."--_London Literary World._
+
+    "Full of local color and rich in quaint phraseology and
+    suggestion."--_London Telegraph._
+
+    "Maarten Maartens is a capital story-teller."--_Pall Mall Gazette._
+
+    "Our English writers of fiction will have to look to their
+    laurels."--_Birmingham Daily Post._
+
+_A JOURNEY IN OTHER WORLDS. A Romance of the Future._ By JOHN JACOB
+ASTOR. With 9 full-page Illustrations by Dan Beard. 12mo. Cloth, $1.50.
+
+    "An interesting and cleverly devised book.... No lack of
+    imagination.... Shows a skillful and wide acquaintance with
+    scientific facts."--_New York Herald._
+
+    "The author speculates cleverly and daringly on the scientific
+    advance of the earth, and he revels in the physical luxuriance of
+    Jupiter; but he also lets his imagination travel through spiritual
+    realms, and evidently delights in mystic speculation quite as much
+    as in scientific investigation. If he is a follower of Jules Verne,
+    he has not forgotten also to study the philosophers."--_New York
+    Tribune._
+
+    "A beautiful example of typographical art and the bookmaker's
+    skill.... To appreciate the story one must read it."--_New York
+    Commercial Advertiser._
+
+    "The date of the events narrated in this book is supposed to be
+    2000 A. D. The inhabitants of North America have increased mightily
+    in numbers and power and knowledge. It is an age of marvelous
+    scientific attainments. Flying machines have long been in common
+    use, and finally a new power is discovered called 'apergy,' the
+    reverse of gravitation, by which people are able to fly off into
+    space in any direction, and at what speed they please."--_New York
+    Sun._
+
+    "The scientific romance by John Jacob Astor is more than likely to
+    secure a distinct popular success, and achieve widespread vogue
+    both as an amusing and interesting story, and a thoughtful endeavor
+    to prophesy some of the triumphs which science is destined to win
+    by the year 2000. The book has been written with a purpose, and
+    that a higher one than the mere spinning of a highly imaginative
+    yarn. Mr. Astor has been engaged upon the book for over two years,
+    and has brought to bear upon it a great deal of hard work in the
+    way of scientific research, of which he has been very fond ever
+    since he entered Harvard. It is admirably illustrated by Dan
+    Beard."--_Mail and Express._
+
+    "Mr. Astor has himself almost all the qualities imaginable for
+    making the science of astronomy popular. He knows the learned maps
+    of the astrologers. He knows the work of Copernicus. He has made
+    calculations and observations. He is enthusiastic, and the
+    spectacular does not frighten him."--_New York Times._
+
+    "The work will remind the reader very much of Jules Verne in its
+    general plan of using scientific facts and speculation as a
+    skeleton on which to hang the romantic adventures of the central
+    figures, who have all the daring ingenuity and luck of Mr. Verne's
+    heroes. Mr. Astor uses history to point out what in his opinion
+    science may be expected to accomplish. It is a romance with a
+    purpose."--_Chicago Inter-Ocean._
+
+    "The romance contains many new and striking developments of the
+    possibilities of science hereafter to be explored, but the volume
+    is intensely interesting, both as a product of imagination and an
+    illustration of the ingenious and original application of
+    science."--_Rochester Herald._
+
+
+THE STORY OF THE WEST SERIES.
+
+EDITED BY RIPLEY HITCHCOCK.
+
+    "There is a vast extent of territory lying between the Missouri
+    River and the Pacific coast which has barely been skimmed over so
+    far. That the conditions of life therein are undergoing changes
+    little short of marvelous will be understood when one recalls the
+    fact that the first white male child born in Kansas is still
+    living there; and Kansas is by no means one of the newer States.
+    Revolutionary indeed has been the upturning of the old condition of
+    affairs, and little remains thereof, and less will remain as each
+    year goes by, until presently there will be only tradition of the
+    Sioux and Comanches, the cowboy life, the wild horse, and the
+    antelope. Histories, many of them, have been written about the
+    Western country alluded to, but most if not practically all by
+    outsiders who knew not personally that life of kaleidoscopic
+    allurement. But ere it shall have vanished forever we are likely to
+    have truthful, complete, and charming portrayals of it produced by
+    men who actually know the life and have the power to describe
+    it."--_Henry Edward Rood, in The Mail and Express._
+
+
+_NOW READY._
+
+_THE STORY OF THE INDIAN._ By GEORGE BIRD GRINNELL, author of "Pawnee
+Hero Stories," "Blackfoot Lodge Tales," etc. 12mo. Cloth. Illustrated.
+$1.50.
+
+    "A valuable study of Indian life and character.... An attractive
+    book, ... in large part one in which Indians themselves might have
+    written."--_New York Tribune._
+
+    "Among the various books respecting the aborigines of America. Mr.
+    Grinnell's easily takes a leading position. He takes the reader
+    directly to the camp-fire and the council, and shows us the
+    American Indian as he really is.... A book which will convey much
+    interesting knowledge respecting a race which is now fast passing
+    away."--_Boston Commercial Bulletin._
+
+    "It must not be supposed that the volume is one only for scholars
+    and libraries of reference. It is far more than that. While it
+    is a true story, yet it is a story none the less abounding in
+    picturesque description and charming anecdote. We regard it as a
+    valuable contribution to American literature."--_N.Y. Mail and
+    Express._
+
+    "A most attractive book, which presents an admirable graphic
+    picture of the actual Indian, whose home life, religious
+    observances, amusements, together with the various phases of his
+    devotion to war and the chase, and finally the effects of
+    encroaching civilization, are delineated with a certainty and an
+    absence of sentimentalism or hostile prejudice that impart a
+    peculiar distinction to this eloquent story of a passing
+    life."--_Buffalo Commercial._
+
+    "No man is better qualified than Mr. Grinnell to introduce this
+    series with the story of the original owner of the West, the North
+    American Indian. Long acquaintance and association with the
+    Indians, and membership in a tribe, combined with a high degree of
+    literary ability and thorough education, has fitted the author to
+    understand the red man and to present him fairly to others."--_New
+    York Observer._
+
+
+_IN PREPARATION._
+
+    The Story of the Mine. By CHARLES HOWARD SHINN.
+    The Story of the Trapper. By GILBERT PARKER.
+    The Story of the Explorer.
+    The Story of the Cowboy.
+    The Story of the Soldier.
+    The Story of the Railroad.
+
+New York: D. APPLETON & CO., 72 Fifth Avenue.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Yekl, by Abraham Cahan
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK YEKL ***
+
+***** This file should be named 36715-8.txt or 36715-8.zip *****
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Yekl, by Abraham Cahan
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Yekl
+       A tale of the New York ghetto
+
+Author: Abraham Cahan
+
+Release Date: July 12, 2011 [EBook #36715]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK YEKL ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Suzanne Shell and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was
+produced from images generously made available by The
+Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Yekl
+
+A Tale of the New York Ghetto
+
+
+By
+
+A. Cahan
+
+
+New York
+D. Appleton and Company
+1896
+
+COPYRIGHT, 1896,
+BY D. APPLETON AND COMPANY.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+CHAPTER                                    PAGE
+
+
+   I.--JAKE AND YEKL                          1
+
+  II.--THE NEW YORK GHETTO                   25
+
+ III.--IN THE GRIP OF HIS PAST               50
+
+  IV.--THE MEETING                           70
+
+   V.--A PATERFAMILIAS                       82
+
+  VI.--CIRCUMSTANCES ALTER CASES            112
+
+ VII.--MRS. KAVARSKY'S COUP D'ETAT          136
+
+VIII.--A HOUSETOP IDYL                      158
+
+  IX.--THE PARTING                          175
+
+   X.--A DEFEATED VICTOR                    185
+
+
+
+
+YEKL.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+JAKE AND YEKL.
+
+
+The operatives of the cloak-shop in which Jake was employed had been
+idle all the morning. It was after twelve o'clock and the "boss" had
+not yet returned from Broadway, whither he had betaken himself two
+or three hours before in quest of work. The little sweltering
+assemblage--for it was an oppressive day in midsummer--beguiled their
+suspense variously. A rabbinical-looking man of thirty, who sat with
+the back of his chair tilted against his sewing machine, was intent
+upon an English newspaper. Every little while he would remove it from
+his eyes--showing a dyspeptic face fringed with a thin growth of dark
+beard--to consult the cumbrous dictionary on his knees. Two young lads,
+one seated on the frame of the next machine and the other standing,
+were boasting to one another of their respective intimacies with the
+leading actors of the Jewish stage. The board of a third machine, in a
+corner of the same wall, supported an open copy of a socialist magazine
+in Yiddish, over which a cadaverous young man absorbedly swayed to and
+fro droning in the Talmudical intonation. A middle-aged operative, with
+huge red side whiskers, who was perched on the presser's table in the
+corner opposite, was mending his own coat. While the thick-set presser
+and all the three women of the shop, occupying the three machines
+ranged against an adjoining wall, formed an attentive audience to an
+impromptu lecture upon the comparative merits of Boston and New York by
+Jake.
+
+He had been speaking for some time. He stood in the middle of the
+overcrowded stuffy room with his long but well-shaped legs wide apart,
+his bulky round head aslant, and one of his bared mighty arms akimbo.
+He spoke in Boston Yiddish, that is to say, in Yiddish more copiously
+spiced with mutilated English than is the language of the metropolitan
+Ghetto in which our story lies. He had a deep and rather harsh voice,
+and his r's could do credit to the thickest Irish brogue.
+
+"When I was in Boston," he went on, with a contemptuous mien intended
+for the American metropolis, "I knew a _feller_,[1] so he was a
+_preticly_ friend of John Shullivan's. He is a Christian, that feller
+is, and yet the two of us lived like brothers. May I be unable to move
+from this spot if we did not. How, then, would you have it? Like here,
+in New York, where the Jews are a _lot_ of _greenhornsh_ and can not
+speak a word of English? Over there every Jew speaks English like a
+stream."
+
+        [1] English words incorporated in the Yiddish of the characters
+        of this narrative are given in Italics.
+
+"_Say_, Dzake," the presser broke in, "John Sullivan is _tzampion_ no
+longer, is he?"
+
+"Oh, no! Not always is it holiday!" Jake responded, with what he
+considered a Yankee jerk of his head. "Why, don't you know? Jimmie
+Corbett _leaked_ him, and Jimmie _leaked_ Cholly Meetchel, too. _You
+can betch you' bootsh!_ Johnnie could not leak Chollie, _becaush_ he is
+a big _bluffer_, Chollie is," he pursued, his clean-shaven florid face
+beaming with enthusiasm for his subject, and with pride in the
+diminutive proper nouns he flaunted. "But Jimmie _pundished_ him. _Oh,
+didn't he knock him out off shight!_ He came near making a meat ball of
+him"--with a chuckle. "He _tzettled_ him in three _roynds_. I knew a
+feller who had seen the fight."
+
+"What is a _rawnd_, Dzake?" the presser inquired.
+
+Jake's answer to the question carried him into a minute exposition of
+"right-handers," "left-handers," "sending to sleep," "first blood," and
+other commodities of the fistic business. He must have treated the
+subject rather too scientifically, however, for his female listeners
+obviously paid more attention to what he did in the course of the
+boxing match, which he had now and then, by way of illustration, with
+the thick air of the room, than to the verbal part of his lecture. Nay,
+even the performances of his brawny arms and magnificent form did not
+charm them as much as he thought they did. For a display of manly
+force, when connected--even though in a purely imaginary way--with acts
+of violence, has little attraction for a "daughter of the Ghetto." Much
+more interest did those arms and form command on their own merits. Nor
+was his chubby high-colored face neglected. True, there was a
+suggestion of the bulldog in its make up; but this effect was lost upon
+the feminine portion of Jake's audience, for his features, illuminated
+by a pair of eager eyes of a hazel hue, and shaded by a thick crop of
+dark hair, were, after all, rather pleasing than otherwise. Strongly
+Semitic naturally, they became still more so each time they were
+brightened up by his good-natured boyish smile. Indeed, Jake's very
+nose, which was fleshy and pear-shaped and decidedly not Jewish
+(although not decidedly anything else), seemed to join the Mosaic
+faith, and even his shaven upper lip looked penitent, as soon as that
+smile of his made its appearance.
+
+"Nice fun that!" observed the side-whiskered man, who had stopped
+sewing to follow Jake's exhibition. "Fighting--like drunken moujiks in
+Russia!"
+
+"Tarrarra-boom-de-ay!" was Jake's merry retort; and for an exclamation
+mark he puffed up his cheeks into a balloon, and exploded it by a
+"_pawnch_" of his formidable fist.
+
+"Look, I beg you, look at his dog's tricks!" the other said in disgust.
+
+"Horse's head that you are!" Jake rejoined good-humoredly. "Do you mean
+to tell me that a moujik understands how to _fight_? A disease he does!
+He only knows how to strike like a bear [Jake adapted his voice and
+gesticulation to the idea of clumsiness], _an' dot'sh ull_! What does
+he _care_ where his paw will land, so he strikes. _But_ here one must
+observe _rulesh_ [rules]."
+
+At this point Meester Bernstein--for so the rabbinical-looking man was
+usually addressed by his shopmates--looked up from his dictionary.
+
+"Can't you see?" he interposed, with an air of assumed gravity as he
+turned to Jake's opponent, "America is an educated country, so they
+won't even break bones without grammar. They tear each other's sides
+according to 'right and left,'[2] you know." This was a thrust at
+Jake's right-handers and left-handers, which had interfered with
+Bernstein's reading. "Nevertheless," the latter proceeded, when the
+outburst of laughter which greeted his witticism had subsided, "I do
+think that a burly Russian peasant would, without a bit of grammar,
+crunch the bones of Corbett himself; and he would not _charge_ him a
+cent for it, either."
+
+        [2] A term relating to the Hebrew equivalent of the letter
+        _s_, whose pronunciation depends upon the right or left
+        position of a mark over it.
+
+"_Is dot sho?_" Jake retorted, somewhat nonplussed. "_I betch you_ he
+would not. The peasant would lie bleeding like a hog before he had time
+to turn around."
+
+"_But_ they might kill each other in that way, _ain't it_, Jake?" asked
+a comely, milk-faced blonde whose name was Fanny. She was celebrated
+for her lengthy tirades, mostly in a plaintive, nagging strain, and
+delivered in her quiet, piping voice, and had accordingly been dubbed
+"The Preacher."
+
+"Oh, that will happen but very seldom," Jake returned rather glumly.
+
+The theatrical pair broke off their boasting match to join in the
+debate, which soon included all except the socialist; the former two,
+together with the two girls and the presser, espousing the American
+cause, while Malke the widow and "De Viskes" sided with Bernstein.
+
+"Let it be as you say," said the leader of the minority, withdrawing
+from the contest to resume his newspaper. "My grandma's last care it is
+who can fight best."
+
+"Nice pleasure, _anyhull_," remarked the widow. "_Never min'_, we shall
+see how it will lie in his head when he has a wife and children to
+_support_."
+
+Jake colored. "What does a _chicken_ know about these things?" he said
+irascibly.
+
+Bernstein again could not help intervening. "And you, Jake, can not do
+without 'these things,' can you? Indeed, I do not see how you manage to
+live without them."
+
+"Don't you like it? I do," Jake declared tartly. "Once I live in
+America," he pursued, on the defensive, "I want to know that I live in
+America. _Dot'sh a' kin' a man I am!_ One must not be a _greenhorn_.
+Here a Jew is as good as a Gentile. How, then, would you have it? The
+way it is in Russia, where a Jew is afraid to stand within four ells of
+a Christian?"
+
+"Are there no other Christians than _fighters_ in America?" Bernstein
+objected with an amused smile. "Why don't you look for the educated
+ones?"
+
+"Do you mean to say the _fighters_ are not _ejecate_? Better than you,
+_anyhoy_," Jake said with a Yankee wink, followed by his Semitic smile.
+"Here you read the papers, and yet _I'll betch you_ you don't know that
+Corbett _findished college_."
+
+"I never read about fighters," Bernstein replied with a bored gesture,
+and turned to his paper.
+
+"Then say that you don't know, and _dot'sh ull_!"
+
+Bernstein made no reply. In his heart Jake respected him, and was now
+anxious to vindicate his tastes in the judgment of his scholarly
+shopmate and in his own.
+
+"_Alla right_, let it be as you say; the _fighters_ are not _ejecate_.
+No, not a bit!" he said ironically, continuing to address himself to
+Bernstein. "But what will you say to _baseball_? All _college boys_ and
+_tony peoplesh_ play it," he concluded triumphantly. Bernstein remained
+silent, his eyes riveted to his newspaper. "Ah, you don't answer,
+_shee_?" said Jake, feeling put out.
+
+The awkward pause which followed was relieved by one of the playgoers
+who wanted to know whether it was true that to pitch a ball required
+more skill than to catch one.
+
+"_Sure!_ You must know how to _peetch_," Jake rejoined with the cloud
+lingering on his brow, as he lukewarmly delivered an imaginary ball.
+
+"And I, for my part, don't see what wisdom there is to it," said the
+presser with a shrug. "I think I could throw, too."
+
+"He can do everything!" laughingly remarked a girl named Pesse.
+
+"How hard can you hit?" Jake demanded sarcastically, somewhat warming
+up to the subject.
+
+"As hard as you at any time."
+
+"_I betch you a dullar to you' ten shent_ you can not," Jake answered,
+and at the same moment he fished out a handful of coin from his
+trousers pocket and challengingly presented it close to his
+interlocutor's nose.
+
+"There he goes!--betting!" the presser exclaimed, drawing slightly
+back. "For my part, your _pitzers_ and _catzers_ may all lie in the
+earth. A nice entertainment, indeed! Just like little children--playing
+ball! And yet people say America is a _smart_ country. I don't see it."
+
+"_'F caush_ you don't, _becaush_ you are a bedraggled _greenhorn_,
+afraid to budge out of Heshter Shtreet." As Jake thus vented his bad
+humour on his adversary, he cast a glance at Bernstein, as if anxious
+to attract his attention and to re-engage him in the discussion.
+
+"Look at the Yankee!" the presser shot back.
+
+"More of a one than you, _anyhoy_."
+
+"He thinks that _shaving_ one's mustache makes a Yankee!"
+
+Jake turned white with rage.
+
+"_'Pon my vord_, I'll ride into his mug and give such a _shaving_ and
+planing to his pig's snout that he will have to pick up his teeth."
+
+"That's all you are good for."
+
+"Better don't answer him, Jake," said Fanny, intimately.
+
+"Oh, I came near forgetting that he has somebody to take his part!"
+snapped the presser.
+
+The girl's milky face became a fiery red, and she retorted in
+vituperative Yiddish from that vocabulary which is the undivided
+possession of her sex. The presser jerked out an innuendo still more
+far-reaching than his first. Jake, with bloodshot eyes, leaped at the
+offender, and catching him by the front of his waistcoat, was aiming
+one of those bearlike blows which but a short while ago he had decried
+in the moujik, when Bernstein sprang to his side and tore him away,
+Pesse placing herself between the two enemies.
+
+"Don't get excited," Bernstein coaxed him.
+
+"Better don't soil your hands," Fanny added.
+
+After a slight pause Bernstein could not forbear a remark which he had
+stubbornly repressed while Jake was challenging him to a debate on the
+education of baseball players: "Look here, Jake; since fighters and
+baseball men are all educated, then why don't you try to become so?
+Instead of _spending_ your money on fights, dancing, and things like
+that, would it not be better if you paid it to a teacher?"
+
+Jake flew into a fresh passion. "_Never min'_ what I do with my money,"
+he said; "I don't steal it from you, do I? Rejoice that you keep
+tormenting your books. Much does he know! Learning, learning, and
+learning, and still he can not speak English. I don't learn and yet I
+speak quicker than you!"
+
+A deep blush of wounded vanity mounted to Bernstein's sallow cheek.
+"_Ull right, ull right!_" he cut the conversation short, and took up
+the newspaper.
+
+Another nervous silence fell upon the group. Jake felt wretched. He
+uttered an English oath, which in his heart he directed against himself
+as much as against his sedate companion, and fell to frowning upon the
+leg of a machine.
+
+"Vill you go by Joe to-night?" asked Fanny in English, speaking in an
+undertone. Joe was a dancing master. She was sure Jake intended to call
+at his "academy" that evening, and she put the question only in order
+to help him out of his sour mood.
+
+"No," said Jake, morosely.
+
+"Vy, to-day is Vensday."
+
+"And without you I don't know it!" he snarled in Yiddish.
+
+The finisher girl blushed deeply and refrained from any response.
+
+"He does look like a _regely_ Yankee, doesn't he?" Pesse whispered to
+her after a little.
+
+"Go and ask him!"
+
+"Go and hang yourself together with him! Such a nasty preacher! Did you
+ever hear--one dares not say a word to the noblewoman!"
+
+At this juncture the boss, a dwarfish little Jew, with a vivid pair of
+eyes and a shaggy black beard, darted into the chamber.
+
+"It is _no used_!" he said with a gesture of despair. "There is not a
+stitch of work, if only for a cure. Look, look how they have lowered
+their noses!" he then added with a triumphant grin. "_Vell_, I shall
+not be teasing you, 'Pity living things!' The expressman is _darn
+stess_. I would not go till I saw him _start_, and then I caught a car.
+No other _boss_ could get a single jacket even if he fell upon his
+knees. _Vell_, do you appreciate it at least? Not much, ay?"
+
+The presser rushed out of the room and presently came back laden with
+bundles of cut cloth which he threw down on the table. A wild scramble
+ensued. The presser looked on indifferently. The three finisher women,
+who had awaited the advent of the bundles as eagerly as the men, now
+calmly put on their hats. They knew that their part of the work
+wouldn't come before three o'clock, and so, overjoyed by the certainty
+of employment for at least another day or two, they departed till that
+hour.
+
+"Look at the rush they are making! Just like the locusts of Egypt!" the
+boss cried half sternly and half with self-complacent humour, as he
+shielded the treasure with both his arms from all except "De Viskes"
+and Jake--the two being what is called in sweat-shop parlance,
+"_chance-mentshen_," i.e., favorites. "Don't be snatching and catching
+like that," the boss went on. "You may burn your fingers. Go to your
+machines, I say! The soup will be served in separate plates. Never
+fear, it won't get cold."
+
+The hands at last desisted gingerly, Jake and the whiskered operator
+carrying off two of the largest bundles. The others went to their
+machines empty-handed and remained seated, their hungry glances riveted
+to the booty, until they, too, were provided.
+
+The little boss distributed the bundles with dignified deliberation. In
+point of fact, he was no less impatient to have the work started than
+any of his employees. But in him the feeling was overridden by a kind
+of malicious pleasure which he took in their eagerness and in the
+demonstration of his power over the men, some of whom he knew to have
+enjoyed a more comfortable past than himself. The machines of Jake and
+"De Viskes" led off in a duet, which presently became a trio, and in
+another few minutes the floor was fairly dancing to the ear-piercing
+discords of the whole frantic sextet.
+
+In the excitement of the scene called forth by the appearance of the
+bundles, Jake's gloomy mood had melted away. Nevertheless, while his
+machine was delivering its first shrill staccatos, his heart recited a
+vow: "As soon as I get my pay I shall call on the installment man and
+give him a deposit for a ticket." The prospective ticket was to be for
+a passage across the Atlantic from Hamburg to New York. And as the
+notion of it passed through Jake's mind it evoked there the image of a
+dark-eyed young woman with a babe in her lap. However, as the sewing
+machine throbbed and writhed under Jake's lusty kicks, it seemed to be
+swiftly carrying him away from the apparition which had the effect of
+receding, as a wayside object does from the passenger of a flying
+train, until it lost itself in a misty distance, other visions emerging
+in its place.
+
+It was some three years before the opening of this story that Jake had
+last beheld that very image in the flesh. But then at that period of
+his life he had not even suspected the existence of a name like Jake,
+being known to himself and to all Povodye--a town in northwestern
+Russia--as Yekl or Yekele.
+
+It was not as a deserter from military service that he had shaken off
+the dust of that town where he had passed the first twenty-two years of
+his life. As the only son of aged parents he had been exempt from the
+duty of bearing arms. Jake may have forgotten it, but his mother still
+frequently recurs to the day when he came rushing home, panting for
+breath, with the "red certificate" assuring his immunity in his hand.
+She nearly fainted for happiness. And when, stroking his dishevelled
+sidelocks with her bony hand and feasting her eye on his chubby face,
+she whispered, "My recovered child! God be blessed for his mercy!"
+there was a joyous tear in his eye as well as in hers. Well does she
+remember how she gently spat on his forehead three times to avert the
+effect of a possible evil eye on her "flourishing tree of a boy," and
+how his father standing by made merry over what he called her crazy
+womanish tricks, and said she had better fetch some brandy in honour of
+the glad event.
+
+But if Yekl was averse to wearing a soldier's uniform on his own person
+he was none the less fond of seeing it on others. His ruling passion,
+even after he had become a husband and a father, was to watch the
+soldiers drilling on the square in front of the whitewashed barracks
+near which stood his father's smithy. From a cheder[3] boy he showed a
+knack at placing himself on terms of familiarity with the Jewish
+members of the local regiment, whose uniforms struck terror into the
+hearts of his schoolmates. He would often play truant to attend a
+military parade; no lad in town knew so many Russian words or was as
+well versed in army terminology as Yekele "Beril the blacksmith's;" and
+after he had left cheder, while working his father's bellows, Yekl
+would vary synagogue airs with martial song.
+
+        [3] A school where Jewish children are instructed in the Old
+        Testament or the Talmud.
+
+Three years had passed since Yekl had for the last time set his eyes on
+the whitewashed barracks and on his father's rickety smithy, which, for
+reasons indirectly connected with the Government's redoubled
+discrimination against the sons of Israel, had become inadequate to
+support two families; three years since that beautiful summer morning
+when he had mounted the spacious _kibitka_ which was to carry him to
+the frontier-bound train; since, hurried by the driver, he had leaned
+out of the wagon to kiss his half-year old son good-bye amid the
+heart-rending lamentations of his wife, the tremulous "Go in good
+health!" of his father, and the startled screams of the neighbours who
+rushed to the relief of his fainting mother. The broken Russian learned
+among the Povodye soldiers he had exchanged for English of a
+corresponding quality, and the bellows for a sewing machine--a change
+of weapons in the battle of life which had been brought about both by
+Yekl's tender religious feelings and robust legs. He had been shocked
+by the very notion of seeking employment at his old trade in a city
+where it is in the hands of Christians, and consequently involves a
+violation of the Mosaic Sabbath. On the other hand, his legs had been
+thought by his early American advisers eminently fitted for the
+treadle. Unlike New York, the Jewish sweat-shops of Boston keep in
+line, as a rule, with the Christian factories in observing Sunday as
+the only day of rest. There is, however, even in Boston a lingering
+minority of bosses--more particularly in the "pants"-making branch--who
+abide by the Sabbath of their fathers. Accordingly, it was under one of
+these that Yekl had first been initiated into the sweat-shop world.
+
+Subsequently Jake, following numerous examples, had given up "pants"
+for the more remunerative cloaks, and having rapidly attained skill in
+his new trade he had moved to New York, the centre of the cloak-making
+industry.
+
+Soon after his arrival in Boston his religious scruples had followed in
+the wake of his former first name; and if he was still free from work
+on Saturdays he found many another way of "desecrating the Sabbath."
+
+Three years had intervened since he had first set foot on American
+soil, and the thought of ever having been a Yekl would bring to Jake's
+lips a smile of patronizing commiseration for his former self. As to
+his Russian family name, which was Podkovnik, Jake's friends had such
+rare use for it that by mere negligence it had been left intact.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+THE NEW YORK GHETTO.
+
+
+It was after seven in the evening when Jake finished his last jacket.
+Some of the operators had laid down their work before, while others
+cast an envious glance on him as he was dressing to leave, and fell to
+their machines with reluctantly redoubled energy. Fanny was a week
+worker and her time had been up at seven; but on this occasion her
+toilet had taken an uncommonly long time, and she was not ready until
+Jake got up from his chair. Then she left the room rather suddenly and
+with a demonstrative "Good-night all!"
+
+When Jake reached the street he found her on the sidewalk, making a
+pretense of brushing one of her sleeves with the cuff of the other.
+
+"So kvick?" she asked, raising her head in feigned surprise.
+
+"You cull dot kvick?" he returned grimly. "Good-bye!"
+
+"Say, ain't you goin' to dance to-night, really?" she queried
+shamefacedly.
+
+"I tol' you I vouldn't."
+
+"What does _she_ want of me?" he complained to himself proceeding on
+his way. He grew conscious of his low spirits, and, tracing them with
+some effort to their source, he became gloomier still. "No more fun for
+me!" he decided. "I shall get them over here and begin a new life."
+
+After supper, which he had taken, as usual, at his lodgings, he went
+out for a walk. He was firmly determined to keep himself from visiting
+Joe Peltner's dancing academy, and accordingly he took a direction
+opposite to Suffolk Street, where that establishment was situated.
+Having passed a few blocks, however, his feet, contrary to his will,
+turned into a side street and thence into one leading to Suffolk. "I
+shall only drop in to tell Joe that I can not sell any of his ball
+tickets, and return them," he attempted to deceive his own conscience.
+Hailing this pretext with delight he quickened his pace as much as the
+overcrowded sidewalks would allow.
+
+He had to pick and nudge his way through dense swarms of bedraggled
+half-naked humanity; past garbage barrels rearing their overflowing
+contents in sickening piles, and lining the streets in malicious
+suggestion of rows of trees; underneath tiers and tiers of fire
+escapes, barricaded and festooned with mattresses, pillows, and
+feather-beds not yet gathered in for the night. The pent-in sultry
+atmosphere was laden with nausea and pierced with a discordant and, as
+it were, plaintive buzz. Supper had been despatched in a hurry, and the
+teeming populations of the cyclopic tenement houses were out in full
+force "for fresh air," as even these people will say in mental
+quotation marks.
+
+Suffolk Street is in the very thick of the battle for breath. For it
+lies in the heart of that part of the East Side which has within the
+last two or three decades become the Ghetto of the American metropolis,
+and, indeed, the metropolis of the Ghettos of the world. It is one of
+the most densely populated spots on the face of the earth--a seething
+human sea fed by streams, streamlets, and rills of immigration flowing
+from all the Yiddish-speaking centres of Europe. Hardly a block but
+shelters Jews from every nook and corner of Russia, Poland, Galicia,
+Hungary, Roumania; Lithuanian Jews, Volhynian Jews, south Russian Jews,
+Bessarabian Jews; Jews crowded out of the "pale of Jewish settlement";
+Russified Jews expelled from Moscow, St. Petersburg, Kieff, or
+Saratoff; Jewish runaways from justice; Jewish refugees from crying
+political and economical injustice; people torn from a hard-gained
+foothold in life and from deep-rooted attachments by the caprice of
+intolerance or the wiles of demagoguery--innocent scapegoats of a
+guilty Government for its outraged populace to misspend its blind fury
+upon; students shut out of the Russian universities, and come to these
+shores in quest of learning; artisans, merchants, teachers, rabbis,
+artists, beggars--all come in search of fortune. Nor is there a
+tenement house but harbours in its bosom specimens of all the whimsical
+metamorphoses wrought upon the children of Israel of the great modern
+exodus by the vicissitudes of life in this their Promised Land of
+to-day. You find there Jews born to plenty, whom the new conditions
+have delivered up to the clutches of penury; Jews reared in the straits
+of need, who have here risen to prosperity; good people morally
+degraded in the struggle for success amid an unwonted environment;
+moral outcasts lifted from the mire, purified, and imbued with
+self-respect; educated men and women with their intellectual polish
+tarnished in the inclement weather of adversity; ignorant sons of toil
+grown enlightened--in fine, people with all sorts of antecedents,
+tastes, habits, inclinations, and speaking all sorts of subdialects of
+the same jargon, thrown pellmell into one social caldron--a human
+hodgepodge with its component parts changed but not yet fused into one
+homogeneous whole.
+
+And so the "stoops," sidewalks, and pavements of Suffolk Street were
+thronged with panting, chattering, or frisking multitudes. In one spot
+the scene received a kind of weird picturesqueness from children
+dancing on the pavement to the strident music hurled out into the
+tumultuous din from a row of the open and brightly illuminated windows
+of what appeared to be a new tenement house. Some of the young women on
+the sidewalk opposite raised a longing eye to these windows, for
+floating, by through the dazzling light within were young women like
+themselves with masculine arms round their waists.
+
+As the spectacle caught Jake's eye his heart gave a leap. He violently
+pushed his way through the waltzing swarm, and dived into the half-dark
+corridor of the house whence the music issued. Presently he found
+himself on the threshold and in the overpowering air of a spacious
+oblong chamber, alive with a damp-haired, dishevelled, reeking
+crowd--an uproarious human vortex, whirling to the squeaky notes of a
+violin and the thumping of a piano. The room was, judging by its
+untidy, once-whitewashed walls and the uncouth wooden pillars
+supporting its bare ceiling, more accustomed to the whir of sewing
+machines than to the noises which filled it at the present moment. It
+took up the whole of the first floor of a five-story house built for
+large sweat-shops, and until recently it had served its original
+purpose as faithfully as the four upper floors, which were still the
+daily scenes of feverish industry. At the further end of the room there
+was now a marble soda fountain in charge of an unkempt boy. A stocky
+young man with a black entanglement of coarse curly hair was bustling
+about among the dancers. Now and then he would pause with his eyes bent
+upon some two pairs of feet, and fall to clapping time and drawling out
+in a preoccupied singsong: "Von, two, tree! Leeft you' feet! Don' so
+kvick--sloy, sloy! Von, two, tree, von, two, tree!" This was Professor
+Peltner himself, whose curly hair, by the way, had more to do with the
+success of his institution than his stumpy legs, which, according to
+the unanimous dictum of his male pupils, moved about "like a _regely_
+pair of bears."
+
+The throng showed but a very scant sprinkling of plump cheeks and
+shapely figures in a multitude of haggard faces and flaccid forms.
+Nearly all were in their work-a-day clothes, very few of the men
+sporting a wilted white shirt front. And while the general effect of
+the kaleidoscope was one of boisterous hilarity, many of the individual
+couples somehow had the air of being engaged in hard toil rather than
+as if they were dancing for amusement. The faces of some of these bore
+a wondering martyrlike expression, as who should say, "What have we
+done to be knocked about in this manner?" For the rest, there were all
+sorts of attitudes and miens in the whirling crowd. One young fellow,
+for example, seemed to be threatening vengeance to the ceiling, while
+his partner was all but exultantly exclaiming: "Lord of the universe!
+What a world this be!" Another maiden looked as if she kept murmuring,
+"You don't say!" whereas her cavalier mutely ejaculated, "Glad to try
+my best, your noble birth!"--after the fashion of a Russian soldier.
+
+The prevailing stature of the assemblage was rather below medium. This
+does not include the dozen or two of undergrown lasses of fourteen or
+thirteen who had come surreptitiously, and--to allay the suspicion of
+their mothers--in their white aprons. They accordingly had only these
+articles to check at the hat box, and hence the nickname of
+"apron-check ladies," by which this truant contingent was known at
+Joe's academy. So that as Jake now stood in the doorway with an
+orphaned collar button glistening out of the band of his collarless
+shirt front and an affected expression of _ennui_ overshadowing his
+face, his strapping figure towered over the circling throng before him.
+He was immediately noticed and became the target for hellos, smiles,
+winks, and all manner of pleasantry: "Vot you stand like dot? You vont
+to loin dantz?" or "You a detectiff?" or "You vont a job?" or, again,
+"Is it hot anawff for you?" To all of which Jake returned an invariable
+"Yep!" each time resuming his bored mien.
+
+As he thus gazed at the dancers, a feeling of envy came over him. "Look
+at them!" he said to himself begrudgingly. "How merry they are! Such
+_shnoozes_, they can hardly set a foot well, and yet they are free,
+while I am a married man. But wait till you get married, too," he
+prospectively avenged himself on Joe's pupils; "we shall see how you
+will then dance and jump!"
+
+Presently a wave of Joe's hand brought the music and the trampling to a
+pause. The girls at once took their seats on the "ladies' bench," while
+the bulk of the men retired to the side reserved for "gents only."
+Several apparent post-graduates nonchalantly overstepped the boundary
+line, and, nothing daunted by the professor's repeated "Zents to de
+right an' ladess to the left!" unrestrainedly kept their girls
+chuckling. At all events, Joe soon desisted, his attention being
+diverted by the soda department of his business. "Sawda!" he sang out.
+"Ull kin's! Sam, you ought ashamed you'selv; vy don'tz you treat you'
+lada?"
+
+In the meantime Jake was the centre of a growing bevy of both sexes. He
+refused to unbend and to enter into their facetious mood, and his
+morose air became the topic of their persiflage.
+
+By-and-bye Joe came scuttling up to his side. "Goot-evenig, Dzake!" he
+greeted him; "I didn't seen you at ull! Say, Dzake, I'll take care dis
+site an' you take care dot site--ull right?"
+
+"Alla right!" Jake responded gruffly. "Gentsh, getch you partnesh,
+hawrry up!" he commanded in another instant.
+
+The sentence was echoed by the dancing master, who then blew on his
+whistle a prolonged shrill warble, and once again the floor was set
+straining under some two hundred pounding, gliding, or scraping feet.
+
+"Don' bee 'fraid. Gu right aheat an' getch you partner!" Jake went on
+yelling right and left. "Don' be 'shamed, Mish Cohen. Dansh mit dot
+gentlemarn!" he said, as he unceremoniously encircled Miss Cohen's
+waist with "dot gentlemarn's" arm. "Cholly! vot's de madder mitch
+_you_? You do hop like a Cossack, as true as I am a Jew," he added,
+indulging in a momentary lapse into Yiddish. English was the official
+language of the academy, where it was broken and mispronounced in as
+many different ways as there were Yiddish dialects represented in that
+institution. "Dot'sh de vay, look!" With which Jake seized from Charley
+a lanky fourteen-year-old Miss Jacobs, and proceeded to set an example
+of correct waltzing, much to the unconcealed delight of the girl, who
+let her head rest on his breast with an air of reverential gratitude
+and bliss, and to the embarrassment of her cavalier, who looked at the
+evolutions of Jake's feet without seeing.
+
+Presently Jake was beckoned away to a corner by Joe, whereupon Miss
+Jacobs, looking daggers at the little professor, sulked off to a
+distant seat.
+
+"Dzake, do me a faver; hask Mamie to gib dot feller a couple a
+dantzes," Joe said imploringly, pointing to an ungainly young man who
+was timidly viewing the pandemonium-like spectacle from the further end
+of the "gent's bench." "I hasked 'er myself, but se don' vonted. He's a
+beesness man, you 'destan', an' he kan a lot o' fellers an' I vonted
+make him satetzfiet."
+
+"Dot monkey?" said Jake. "Vot you talkin' aboyt! She vouldn't lishn to
+me neider, honesht."
+
+"Say dot you don' vonted and dot's ull."
+
+"Alla right; I'm goin' to ashk her, but I know it vouldn't be of naw
+used."
+
+"Never min', you hask 'er foist. You knaw se vouldn't refuse _you_!"
+Joe urged, with a knowing grin.
+
+"Hoy much vill you bet she will refushe shaw?" Jake rejoined with
+insincere vehemence, as he whipped out a handful of change.
+
+"Vot kin' foon a man you are! Ulleways like to bet!" said Joe,
+deprecatingly. 'F cuss it depend mit vot kin' a mout' you vill hask,
+you 'destan'?"
+
+"By gum, Jaw! Vot you take me for? Ven I shay I ashk, I ashk. You knaw
+I don' like no monkey beeshnesh. Ven I promish anytink I do it shquare,
+dot'sh a kin' a man _I_ am!" And once more protesting his firm
+conviction that Mamie would disregard his request, he started to prove
+that she would not.
+
+He had to traverse nearly the entire length of the hall, and,
+notwithstanding that he was compelled to steer clear of the dancers, he
+contrived to effect the passage at the swellest of his gaits, which
+means that he jauntily bobbed and lurched, after the manner of a
+blacksmith tugging at the bellows, and held up his enormous bullet head
+as if he were bidding defiance to the whole world. Finally he paused in
+front of a girl with a superabundance of pitch-black side bangs and
+with a pert, ill natured, pretty face of the most strikingly Semitic
+cast in the whole gathering. She looked twenty-three or more, was
+inclined to plumpness, and her shrewd deep dark eyes gleamed out of a
+warm gipsy complexion. Jake found her seated in a fatigued attitude on
+a chair near the piano.
+
+"Good-evenig, Mamie!" he said, bowing with mock gallantry.
+
+"Rats!"
+
+"Shay, Mamie, give dot feller a tvisht, vill you?"
+
+"Dot slob again? Joe must tink if you ask me I'll get scared, ain't it?
+Go and tell him he is too fresh," she said with a contemptuous grimace.
+Like the majority of the girls of the academy, Mamie's English was a
+much nearer approach to a justification of its name than the gibberish
+spoken by the men.
+
+Jake felt routed; but he put a bold face on it and broke out with
+studied resentment:
+
+"Vot you kickin' aboyt, anyhoy? Jaw don' mean notin' at ull. If you
+don' vonted never min', an' dot'sh ull. It don' cut a figger, shee?"
+And he feignedly turned to go.
+
+"Look how kvick he gets excited!" she said, surrenderingly.
+
+"I ain't get ekshitet at ull; but vot'sh de used a makin' monkey
+beesnesh?" he retorted with triumphant acerbity.
+
+"You are a monkey you'self," she returned with a playful pout.
+
+The compliment was acknowledged by one of Jake's blandest grins.
+
+"An' you are a monkey from monkey-land," he said. "Vill you dansh mit
+dot feller?"
+
+"Rats! Vot vill you give me?"
+
+"Vot should I give you?" he asked impatiently.
+
+"Vill you treat?"
+
+"Treat? Ger-rr oyt!" he replied with a sweeping kick at space.
+
+"Den I von't dance."
+
+"Alla right. I'll treat you mit a coupel a waltch."
+
+"Is dot so? You must really tink I am swooning to dance vit you," she
+said, dividing the remark between both jargons.
+
+"Look at her, look! she is a _regely_ getzke[4]: one must take off
+one's cap to speak to her. Don't you always say you like to _dansh_
+with me _becush_ I am a good _dansher_?"
+
+        [4] A crucifix.
+
+"You must tink you are a peach of a dancer, ain' it? Bennie can dance a
+---- sight better dan you," she recurred to her English.
+
+"Alla right!" he said tartly. "So you don' vonted?"
+
+"O sugar! He is gettin' mad again. Vell, who is de getzke, me or you?
+All right, I'll dance vid de slob. But it's only becuss you ask me,
+mind you!" she added fawningly.
+
+"Dot'sh alla right!" he rejoined, with an affectation of gravity,
+concealing his triumph. "But you makin' too much fush. I like to shpeak
+plain, shee? Dot'sh a kin' a man _I_ am."
+
+The next two waltzes Mamie danced with the ungainly novice, taking
+exaggerated pains with him. Then came a lancers, Joe calling out the
+successive movements huckster fashion. His command was followed by less
+than half of the class, however, for the greater part preferred to
+avail themselves of the same music for waltzing. Jake was bent upon
+giving Mamie what he called a "sholid good time"; and, as she shared
+his view that a square or fancy dance was as flimsy an affair as a
+stick of candy, they joined or, rather, led the seceding majority. They
+spun along with all-forgetful gusto; every little while he lifted her
+on his powerful arm and gave her a "mill," he yelping and she squeaking
+for sheer ecstasy, as he did so; and throughout the performance his
+face and his whole figure seemed to be exclaiming, "Dot'sh a kin' a man
+_I_ am!"
+
+Several waifs stood in a cluster admiring or begrudging the antics of
+the star couple. Among these was lanky Miss Jacobs and Fanny the
+Preacher, who had shortly before made her appearance in the hall, and
+now stood pale and forlorn by the "apron-check" girl's side.
+
+"Look at the way she is stickin' to him!" the little girl observed with
+envious venom, her gaze riveted to Mamie, whose shapely head was at
+this moment reclining on Jake's shoulders, with her eyes half shut, as
+if melting in a transport of bliss.
+
+Fanny felt cut to the quick.
+
+"You are jealous, ain't you?" she jerked out.
+
+"Who, me? Vy should I be jealous?" Miss Jacobs protested, colouring.
+"On my part let them both go to ----. _You_ must be jealous. Here,
+here! See how your eyes are creeping out looking! Here, here!" she
+teased her offender in Yiddish, poking her little finger at her as she
+spoke.
+
+"Will you shut your scurvy mouth, little piece of ugliness, you? Such a
+piggish apron check!" poor Fanny burst out under breath, tears starting
+to her eyes.
+
+"Such a nasty little runt!" another girl chimed in.
+
+"Such a little cricket already knows what 'jealous' is!" a third of the
+bystanders put in. "You had better go home or your mamma will give you
+a spanking." Whereat the little cricket made a retort, which had better
+be left unrecorded.
+
+"To think of a bit of a flea like that having so much _cheek_! Here is
+America for you!"
+
+"America for a country and '_dod'll do_' [that'll do] for a language!"
+observed one of the young men of the group, indulging one of the
+stereotype jokes of the Ghetto.
+
+The passage at arms drew Jake's attention to the little knot of
+spectators, and his eye fell on Fanny. Whereupon he summarily
+relinquished his partner on the floor, and advanced toward his
+shopmate, who, seeing him approach, hastened to retreat to the girls'
+bench, where she remained seated with a drooping head.
+
+"Hello, Fanny!" he shouted briskly, coming up in front of her.
+
+"Hello!" she returned rigidly, her eyes fixed on the dirty floor.
+
+"Come, give ush a tvisht, vill you?"
+
+"But you ain't goin' by Joe to-night!" she answered, with a withering
+curl of her lip, her glance still on the ground. "Go to your lady,
+she'll be mad atch you."
+
+"I didn't vonted to gu here, honesht, Fanny. I o'ly come to tell Jaw
+shometin', an' dot'sh ull," he said guiltily.
+
+"Why should you apologize?" she addressed the tip of her shoe in her
+mother tongue. "As if he was obliged to apologize to me! _For my part_
+you can _dance_ with her day and night. _Vot do I care?_ As if I
+_cared_! I have only come to see what a _bluffer_ you are. Do you think
+I am a _fool_? As _smart_ as your Mamie, _anyvay_. As if I had not
+known he wanted to make me stay at home! What are you afraid of? Am I
+in your way then? As if I was in his way! What business have I to be in
+your way? Who is in your way?"
+
+While she was thus speaking in her voluble, querulous, harassing
+manner, Jake stood with his hands in his trousers' pockets, in an
+attitude of mock attention. Then, suddenly losing patience, he said:
+
+"_Dot'sh alla right!_ You will finish your sermon afterward. And in the
+meantime _lesh have a valtz_ from the land of _valtzes_!" With which he
+forcibly dragged her off her seat, catching her round the waist.
+
+"But I don't need it, I don't wish it! Go to your Mamie!" she
+protested, struggling. "I tell you I don't need it, I don't----" The
+rest of the sentence was choked off by her violent breathing; for by
+this time she was spinning with Jake like a top. After another moment's
+pretense at struggling to free herself she succumbed, and presently
+clung to her partner, the picture of triumph and beatitude.
+
+Meanwhile Mamie had walked up to Joe's side, and without much
+difficulty caused him to abandon the lancers party to themselves, and
+to resume with her the waltz which Jake had so abruptly broken off.
+
+In the course of the following intermission she diplomatically seated
+herself beside her rival, and paraded her tranquillity of mind by
+accosting her with a question on shop matters. Fanny was not blind to
+the manoeuvre, but her exultation was all the greater for it, and she
+participated in the ensuing conversation with exuberant geniality.
+
+By-and-bye they were joined by Jake.
+
+"Vell, vill you treat, Jake?" said Mamie.
+
+"Vot you vant, a kish?" he replied, putting his offer in action as well
+as in language.
+
+Mamie slapped his arm.
+
+"May the Angel of Death kiss you!" said her lips in Yiddish. "Try
+again!" her glowing face overruled them in a dialect of its own.
+
+Fanny laughed.
+
+"Once I am _treating_, both _ladas_ must be _treated_ alike, _ain'
+it_?" remarked the gallant, and again he proved himself as good as his
+word, although Fanny struggled with greater energy and ostensibly with
+more real indignation.
+
+"But vy don't you treat, you stingy loafer you?"
+
+"Vot elsh you vant? A peench?" He was again on the point of suiting the
+action to the word, but Mamie contrived to repay the pinch before she
+had received it, and added a generous piece of profanity into the
+bargain. Whereupon there ensued a scuffle of a character which defies
+description in more senses than one.
+
+Nevertheless Jake marched his two "ladas" up to the marble fountain,
+and regaled them with two cents' worth of soda each.
+
+An hour or so later, when Jake got out into the street, his breast
+pocket was loaded with a fresh batch of "Professor Peltner's Grand
+Annual Ball" tickets, and his two arms--with Mamie and Fanny
+respectively.
+
+"As soon as I get my wages I'll call on the installment agent and give
+him a deposit for a steamship ticket," presently glimmered through his
+mind, as he adjusted his hold upon the two girls, snugly gathering them
+to his sides.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+IN THE GRIP OF HIS PAST.
+
+
+Jake had never even vaguely abandoned the idea of supplying his wife
+and child with the means of coming to join him. He was more or less
+prompt in remitting her monthly allowance of ten rubles, and the visit
+to the draft and passage office had become part of the routine of his
+life. It had the invariable effect of arousing his dormant scruples,
+and he hardly ever left the office without ascertaining the price of a
+steerage voyage from Hamburg to New York. But no sooner did he emerge
+from the dingy basement into the noisy scenes of Essex Street, than he
+would consciously let his mind wander off to other topics.
+
+Formerly, during the early part of his sojourn in Boston, his landing
+place, where some of his townsfolk resided and where he had passed his
+first two years in America, he used to mention his Gitl and his Yossele
+so frequently and so enthusiastically, that some wags among the Hanover
+Street tailors would sing "Yekl and wife and the baby" to the tune of
+Molly and I and the Baby. In the natural course of things, however,
+these retrospective effusions gradually became far between, and since
+he had shifted his abode to New York he carefully avoided all reference
+to his antecedents. The Jewish quarter of the metropolis, which is a
+vast and compact city within a city, offers its denizens incomparably
+fewer chances of contact with the English-speaking portion of the
+population than any of the three separate Ghettos of Boston. As a
+consequence, since Jake's advent to New York his passion for American
+sport had considerably cooled off. And, to make up for this, his
+enthusiastic nature before long found vent in dancing and in a general
+life of gallantry. His proved knack with the gentle sex had turned his
+head and now cost him all his leisure time. Still, he would
+occasionally attend some variety show in which boxing was the main
+drawing card, and somehow managed to keep track of the salient events
+of the sporting world generally. Judging from his unstaid habits and
+happy-go-lucky abandon to the pleasures of life, his present associates
+took it for granted that he was single, and instead of twitting him
+with the feigned assumption that he had deserted a family--a piece of
+burlesque as old as the Ghetto--they would quiz him as to which of his
+girls he was "dead struck" on, and as to the day fixed for the wedding.
+On more than one such occasion he had on the tip of his tongue the
+seemingly jocular question, "How do you know I am not married already?"
+But he never let the sentence cross his lips, and would, instead,
+observe facetiously that he was not "shtruck on nu goil," and that he
+was dead struck on all of them in "whulshale." "I hate retail beesnesh,
+shee? Dot'sh a' kin' a man _I_ am!" One day, in the course of an
+intimate conversation with Joe, Jake, dropping into a philosophical
+mood, remarked:
+
+"It's something like a baker, _ain't it_? The more _cakes_ he has the
+less he likes them. You and I have a _lot_ of girls; that's why we
+don't _care_ for any one of them."
+
+But if his attachment for the girls of his acquaintance collectively
+was not coupled with a quivering of his heart for any individual Mamie,
+or Fanny, or Sarah, it did not, on the other hand, preclude a certain
+lingering tenderness for his wife. But then his wife had long since
+ceased to be what she had been of yore. From a reality she had
+gradually become transmuted into a fancy. During the three years since
+he had set foot on the soil, where a "shister[5] becomes a mister and a
+mister a shister," he had lived so much more than three years--so much
+more, in fact, than in all the twenty-two years of his previous
+life--that his Russian past appeared to him a dream and his wife and
+child, together with his former self, fellow-characters in a charming
+tale, which he was neither willing to banish from his memory nor able
+to reconcile with the actualities of his American present. The question
+of how to effect this reconciliation, and of causing Gitl and little
+Yossele to step out of the thickening haze of reminiscence and to take
+their stand by his side as living parts of his daily life, was a
+fretful subject from the consideration of which he cowardly shrank. He
+wished he could both import his family and continue his present mode of
+life. At the bottom of his soul he wondered why this should not be
+feasible. But he knew that it was not, and his heart would sink at the
+notion of forfeiting the lion's share of attentions for which he came
+in at the hands of those who lionized him. Moreover, how will he look
+people in the face in view of the lie he has been acting? He longed for
+an interminable respite. But as sooner or later the minds of his
+acquaintances were bound to become disabused, and he would have to face
+it all out anyway, he was many a time on the point of making a clean
+breast of it, and failed to do so for a mere lack of nerve, each time
+letting himself off on the plea that a week or two before his wife's
+arrival would be a more auspicious occasion for the disclosure.
+
+        [5] Yiddish for shoemaker.
+
+Neither Jake nor his wife nor his parents could write even Yiddish,
+although both he and his old father read fluently the punctuated Hebrew
+of the Old Testament or the Prayer-book. Their correspondence had
+therefore to be carried on by proxy, and, as a consequence, at longer
+intervals than would have been the case otherwise. The missives which
+he received differed materially in length, style, and degree of
+illiteracy as well as in point of penmanship; but they all agreed in
+containing glowing encomiums of little Yossele, exhorting Yekl not to
+stray from the path of righteousness, and reproachfully asking whether
+he ever meant to send the ticket. The latter point had an exasperating
+effect on Jake. There were times, however, when it would touch his
+heart and elicit from him his threadbare vow to send the ticket at
+once. But then he never had money enough to redeem it. And, to tell the
+truth, at the bottom of his heart he was at such moments rather glad of
+his poverty. At all events, the man who wrote Jake's letters had a
+standing order to reply in the sharpest terms at his command that Yekl
+did not spend his money on drink; that America was not the land they
+took it for, where one could "scoop gold by the skirtful;" that Gitl
+need not fear lest he meant to desert her, and that as soon as he had
+saved enough to pay her way and to set up a decent establishment she
+would be sure to get the ticket.
+
+Jake's scribe was an old Jew who kept a little stand on Pitt Street,
+which is one of the thoroughfares and market places of the Galician
+quarter of the Ghetto, and where Jake was unlikely to come upon any
+people of his acquaintance. The old man scraped together his livelihood
+by selling Yiddish newspapers and cigarettes, and writing letters for a
+charge varying, according to the length of the epistle, from five to
+ten cents. Each time Jake received a letter he would take it to the
+Galician, who would first read it to him (for an extra remuneration of
+one cent) and then proceed to pen five cents' worth of rhetoric, which
+might have been printed and forwarded one copy at a time for all the
+additions or alterations Jake ever caused to be made in it.
+
+"What else shall I write?" the old man would ask his patron, after
+having written and read aloud the first dozen lines, which Jake had
+come to know by heart.
+
+"How do _I_ know?" Jake would respond. "It is you who can write; so you
+ought to understand what else to write."
+
+And the scribe would go on to write what he had written on almost every
+previous occasion. Jake would keep the letter in his pocket until he
+had spare United States money enough to convert into ten rubles, and
+then he would betake himself to the draft office and have the amount,
+together with the well-crumpled epistle, forwarded to Povodye.
+
+And so it went month in and month out.
+
+The first letter which reached Jake after the scene at Joe Peltner's
+dancing academy came so unusually close upon its predecessor that he
+received it from his landlady's hand with a throb of misgiving. He had
+always laboured under the presentiment that some unknown enemies--for
+he had none that he could name--would some day discover his wife's
+address and anonymously represent him to her as contemplating another
+marriage, in order to bring Gitl down upon him unawares. His first
+thought accordingly was that this letter was the outcome of such a
+conspiracy. "Or maybe there is some death in the family?" he next
+reflected, half with terror and half with a feeling almost amounting to
+reassurance.
+
+When the cigarette vender unfolded the letter he found it to be of such
+unusual length that he stipulated an additional cent for the reading of
+it.
+
+"_Alla right_, hurry up now!" Jake said, grinding his teeth on a
+mumbled English oath.
+
+"_Righd evay! Righd evay!_" the old fellow returned jubilantly, as he
+hastily adjusted his spectacles and addressed himself to his task.
+
+The letter had evidently been penned by some one laying claim to Hebrew
+scholarship and ambitious to impress the New World with it; for it was
+quite replete with poetic digressions, strained and twisted to suit
+some quotation from the Bible. And what with this unstinted verbosity,
+which was Greek to Jake, one or two interruptions by the old man's
+customers, and interpretations necessitated by difference of dialect, a
+quarter of an hour had elapsed before the scribe realized the trend of
+what he was reading.
+
+Then he suddenly gave a start, as if shocked.
+
+"Vot'sh a madder? Vot'sh a madder?"
+
+"_Vot's der madder?_ What should be the _madder_? Wait--a--I don't know
+what I can do"--he halted in perplexity.
+
+"Any bad news?" Jake inquired, turning pale. "Speak out!"
+
+"Speak out! It is all very well for you to say 'speak out.' You forget
+that one is a piece of Jew," he faltered, hinting at the orthodox
+custom which enjoins a child of Israel from being the messenger of sad
+tidings.
+
+"Don't _bodder_ a head!" Jake shouted savagely. "I have paid you,
+haven't I?"
+
+"_Say_, young man, you need not be so angry," the other said,
+resentfully. "Half of the letter I have read, have I not? so I shall
+refund you one cent and leave me in peace." He took to fumbling in his
+pockets for the coin, with apparent reluctance.
+
+"Tell me what is the matter," Jake entreated, with clinched fists. "Is
+anybody dead? Do tell me now."
+
+"_Vell_, since you know it already, I may as well tell you," said the
+scribe cunningly, glad to retain the cent and Jake's patronage. "It is
+your father who has been freed; may he have a bright paradise."
+
+"Ha?" Jake asked aghast, with a wide gape.
+
+The Galician resumed the reading in solemn, doleful accents. The
+melancholy passage was followed by a jeremiade upon the penniless
+condition of the family and Jake's duty to send the ticket without
+further procrastination. As to his mother, she preferred the Povodye
+graveyard to a watery sepulchre, and hoped that her beloved and only
+son, the apple of her eye, whom she had been awake nights to bring up
+to manhood, and so forth, would not forget her.
+
+"So now they will be here for sure, and there can be no more delay!"
+was Jake's first distinct thought. "Poor father!" he inwardly exclaimed
+the next moment, with deep anguish. His native home came back to him
+with a vividness which it had not had in his mind for a long time.
+
+"Was he an old man?" the scribe queried sympathetically.
+
+"About seventy," Jake answered, bursting into tears.
+
+"Seventy? Then he had lived to a good old age. May no one depart
+younger," the old man observed, by way of "consoling the bereaved."
+
+As Jake's tears instantly ran dry he fell to wringing his hands and
+moaning.
+
+"Good-night!" he presently said, taking leave. "I'll see you to-morrow,
+if God be pleased."
+
+"Good-night!" the scribe returned with heartfelt condolence.
+
+As he was directing his steps to his lodgings Jake wondered why he did
+not weep. He felt that this was the proper thing for a man in his
+situation to do, and he endeavoured to inspire himself with emotions
+befitting the occasion. But his thoughts teasingly gambolled about
+among the people and things of the street. By-and-bye, however, he
+became sensible of his mental eye being fixed upon the big fleshy mole
+on his father's scantily bearded face. He recalled the old man's
+carriage, the melancholy nod of his head, his deep sigh upon taking
+snuff from the time-honoured birch bark which Jake had known as long as
+himself; and his heart writhed with pity and with the acutest pangs of
+homesickness. "And it was evening and it was morning, the sixth day.
+And the heavens and the earth were finished." As the Hebrew words of
+the Sanctification of the Sabbath resounded in Jake's ears, in his
+father's senile treble, he could see his gaunt figure swaying over a
+pair of Sabbath loaves. It is Friday night. The little room, made tidy
+for the day of rest and faintly illuminated by the mysterious light of
+two tallow candles rising from freshly burnished candlesticks, is
+pervaded by a benign, reposeful warmth and a general air of peace and
+solemnity. There, seated by the side of the head of the little family
+and within easy reach of the huge brick oven, is his old mother,
+flushed with fatigue, and with an effort keeping her drowsy eyes open
+to attend, with a devout mien, her husband's prayer. Opposite to her,
+by the window, is Yekl, the present Jake, awaiting his turn to chant
+the same words in the holy tongue, and impatiently thinking of the
+repast to come after it. Besides the three of them there is no one else
+in the chamber, for Jake visioned the fascinating scene as he had known
+it for almost twenty years, and not as it had appeared during the short
+period since the family had been joined by Gitl and subsequently by
+Yossele.
+
+Suddenly he felt himself a child, the only and pampered son of a doting
+mother. He was overcome with a heart-wringing consciousness of being an
+orphan, and his soul was filled with a keen sense of desolation and
+self-pity. And thereupon everything around him--the rows of gigantic
+tenement houses, the hum and buzz of the scurrying pedestrians, the
+jingling horse cars--all suddenly grew alien and incomprehensible to
+Jake. Ah, if he could return to his old home and old days, and have his
+father recite Sanctification again, and sit by his side, opposite to
+mother, and receive from her hand a plate of reeking _tzimess_,[6] as
+of yore! Poor mother! He _will_ not forget her--But what is the Italian
+playing on that organ, anyhow? Ah, it is the new waltz! By the way,
+this is Monday and they are dancing at Joe's now and he is not there.
+"I shall not go there to-night, nor any other night," he commiserated
+himself, his reveries for the first time since he had left the Pitt
+Street cigarette stand passing to his wife and child. Her image now
+stood out in high relief with the multitudinous noisy scene at Joe's
+academy for a discordant, disquieting background, amid which there
+vaguely defined itself the reproachful saintlike visage of the
+deceased. "I will begin a new life!" he vowed to himself.
+
+        [6] A kind of dessert made of carrots or turnips.
+
+He strove to remember the child's features, but could only muster the
+faintest recollection--scarcely anything beyond a general symbol--a red
+little thing smiling, as he, Jake, tickles it under its tiny chin. Yet
+Jake's finger at this moment seemed to feel the soft touch of that
+little chin, and it sent through him a thrill of fatherly affection to
+which he had long been a stranger. Gitl, on the other hand, loomed up
+in all the individual sweetness of her rustic face. He beheld her
+kindly mouth opening wide--rather too wide, but all the lovelier for
+it--as she spoke; her prominent red gums, her little black eyes. He
+could distinctly hear her voice with her peculiar lisp, as one summer
+morning she had burst into the house and, clapping her hands in
+despair, she had cried, "A weeping to me! The yellow rooster is gone!"
+or, as coming into the smithy she would say: "Father-in-law,
+mother-in-law calls you to dinner. Hurry up, Yekl, dinner is ready."
+And although this was all he could recall her saying, Jake thought
+himself retentive of every word she had ever uttered in his presence.
+His heart went out to Gitl and her environment, and he was seized with
+a yearning tenderness that made him feel like crying. "I would not
+exchange her little finger for all the American _ladas_," he
+soliloquized, comparing Gitl in his mind with the dancing-school girls
+of his circle. It now filled him with disgust to think of the morals of
+some of them, although it was from his own sinful experience that he
+knew them to be of a rather loose character.
+
+He reached his lodgings in a devout mood, and before going to bed he
+was about to say his prayers. Not having said them for nearly three
+years, however, he found, to his dismay, that he could no longer do it
+by heart. His landlady had a prayer-book, but, unfortunately, she kept
+it locked in the bureau, and she was now asleep, as was everybody else
+in the house. Jake reluctantly undressed and went to bed on the kitchen
+lounge, where he usually slept.
+
+When a boy his mother had taught him to believe that to go to sleep at
+night without having recited the bed prayer rendered one liable to be
+visited and choked in bed by some ghost. Later, when he had grown up,
+and yet before he had left his birthplace, he had come to set down this
+earnest belief of his good old mother as a piece of womanish
+superstition, while since he had settled in America he had hardly ever
+had an occasion to so much as think of bed prayers. Nevertheless, as he
+now lay vaguely listening to the weird ticking of the clock on the
+mantelpiece over the stove, and at the same time desultorily brooding
+upon his father's death, the old belief suddenly uprose in his mind and
+filled him with mortal terror. He tried to persuade himself that it was
+a silly notion worthy of womenfolk, and even affected to laugh at it
+audibly. But all in vain. "Cho-king! Cho-king! Cho-king!" went the
+clock, and the form of a man in white burial clothes never ceased
+gleaming in his face. He resolutely turned to the wall, and, pulling
+the blanket over his head, he huddled himself snugly up for
+instantaneous sleep. But presently he felt the cold grip of a pair of
+hands about his throat, and he even mentally stuck out his tongue, as
+one does while being strangled.
+
+With a fast-beating heart Jake finally jumped off the lounge, and
+gently knocked at the door of his landlady's bedroom.
+
+"_Eshcoosh me, mishesh_, be so kind as to lend me your prayer-book. I
+want to say the night prayer," he addressed her imploringly.
+
+The old woman took it for a cruel practical joke, and flew into a
+passion.
+
+"Are you crazy or drunk? A nice time to make fun!"
+
+And it was not until he had said with suppliant vehemence, "May I as
+surely be alive as my father is dead!" and she had subjected him to a
+cross-examination, that she expressed sympathy and went to produce the
+keys.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+THE MEETING.
+
+
+A few weeks later, on a Saturday morning, Jake, with an unfolded
+telegram in his hand, stood in front of one of the desks at the
+Immigration Bureau of Ellis Island. He was freshly shaven and clipped,
+smartly dressed in his best clothes and ball shoes, and, in spite of
+the sickly expression of shamefacedness and anxiety which distorted his
+features, he looked younger than usual.
+
+All the way to the island he had been in a flurry of joyous
+anticipation. The prospect of meeting his dear wife and child, and,
+incidentally, of showing off his swell attire to her, had thrown him
+into a fever of impatience. But on entering the big shed he had caught
+a distant glimpse of Gitl and Yossele through the railing separating
+the detained immigrants from their visitors, and his heart had sunk at
+the sight of his wife's uncouth and un-American appearance. She was
+slovenly dressed in a brown jacket and skirt of grotesque cut, and her
+hair was concealed under a voluminous wig of a pitch-black hue. This
+she had put on just before leaving the steamer, both "in honour of the
+Sabbath" and by way of sprucing herself up for the great event. Since
+Yekl had left home she had gained considerably in the measurement of
+her waist. The wig, however, made her seem stouter and as though
+shorter than she would have appeared without it. It also added at least
+five years to her looks. But she was aware neither of this nor of the
+fact that in New York even a Jewess of her station and orthodox
+breeding is accustomed to blink at the wickedness of displaying her
+natural hair, and that none but an elderly matron may wear a wig
+without being the occasional target for snowballs or stones. She was
+naturally dark of complexion, and the nine or ten days spent at sea had
+covered her face with a deep bronze, which combined with her prominent
+cheek bones, inky little eyes, and, above all, the smooth black wig, to
+lend her resemblance to a squaw.
+
+Jake had no sooner caught sight of her than he had averted his face, as
+if loth to rest his eyes on her, in the presence of the surging crowd
+around him, before it was inevitable. He dared not even survey that
+crowd to see whether it contained any acquaintance of his, and he
+vaguely wished that her release were delayed indefinitely.
+
+Presently the officer behind the desk took the telegram from him, and
+in another little while Gitl, hugging Yossele with one arm and a
+bulging parcel with the other, emerged from a side door.
+
+"Yekl!" she screamed out in a piteous high key, as if crying for mercy.
+
+"Dot'sh alla right!" he returned in English, with a wan smile and
+unconscious of what he was saying. His wandering eyes and dazed mind
+were striving to fix themselves upon the stern functionary and the
+questions he bethought himself of asking before finally releasing his
+prisoners. The contrast between Gitl and Jake was so striking that the
+officer wanted to make sure--partly as a matter of official duty and
+partly for the fun of the thing--that the two were actually man and
+wife.
+
+"_Oi_ a lamentation upon me! He shaves his beard!" Gitl ejaculated to
+herself as she scrutinized her husband. "Yossele, look! Here is
+_tate_!"
+
+But Yossele did not care to look at tate. Instead, he turned his
+frightened little eyes--precise copies of Jake's--and buried them in
+his mother's cheek.
+
+When Gitl was finally discharged she made to fling herself on Jake. But
+he checked her by seizing both loads from her arms. He started for a
+distant and deserted corner of the room, bidding her follow. For a
+moment the boy looked stunned, then he burst out crying and fell to
+kicking his father's chest with might and main, his reddened little
+face appealingly turned to Gitl. Jake continuing his way tried to kiss
+his son into toleration, but the little fellow proved too nimble for
+him. It was in vain that Gitl, scurrying behind, kept expostulating
+with Yossele: "Why, it is tate!" Tate was forced to capitulate before
+the march was brought to its end.
+
+At length, when the secluded corner had been reached, and Jake and Gitl
+had set down their burdens, husband and wife flew into mutual embrace
+and fell to kissing each other. The performance had an effect of
+something done to order, which, it must be owned, was far from being
+belied by the state of their minds at the moment. Their kisses imparted
+the taste of mutual estrangement to both. In Jake's case the sensation
+was quickened by the strong steerage odours which were emitted by
+Gitl's person, and he involuntarily recoiled.
+
+"You look like a _poritz_,"[7] she said shyly.
+
+        [7] Yiddish for nobleman.
+
+"How are you? How is mother?"
+
+"How should she be? So, so. She sends you her love," Gitl mumbled out.
+
+"How long was father ill?"
+
+"Maybe a month. He cost us health enough."
+
+He proceeded to make advances to Yossele, she appealing to the child in
+his behalf. For a moment the sight of her, as they were both crouching
+before the boy, precipitated a wave of thrilling memories on Jake and
+made him feel in his old environment. Presently, however, the illusion
+took wing and here he was, Jake the Yankee, with this bonnetless,
+wigged, dowdyish little greenhorn by his side! That she was his wife,
+nay, that he was a married man at all, seemed incredible to him. The
+sturdy, thriving urchin had at first inspired him with pride; but as he
+now cast another side glance at Gitl's wig he lost all interest in him,
+and began to regard him, together with his mother, as one great
+obstacle dropped from heaven, as it were, in his way.
+
+Gitl, on her part, was overcome with a feeling akin to awe. She, too,
+could not get herself to realize that this stylish young man--shaved
+and dressed as in Povodye is only some young nobleman--was Yekl, her
+own Yekl, who had all these three years never been absent from her
+mind. And while she was once more examining Jake's blue diagonal
+cutaway, glossy stand-up collar, the white four-in-hand necktie,
+coquettishly tucked away in the bosom of his starched shirt, and, above
+all, his patent leather shoes, she was at the same time mentally
+scanning the Yekl of three years before. The latter alone was hers, and
+she felt like crying to the image to come back to her and let her be
+_his_ wife.
+
+Presently, when they had got up and Jake was plying her with
+perfunctory questions, she chanced to recognise a certain movement of
+his upper lip--an old trick of his. It was as if she had suddenly
+discovered her own Yekl in an apparent stranger, and, with another
+pitiful outcry, she fell on his breast.
+
+"Don't!" he said, with patient gentleness, pushing away her arms. "Here
+everything is so different."
+
+She coloured deeply.
+
+"They don't wear wigs here," he ventured to add.
+
+"What then?" she asked, perplexedly.
+
+"You will see. It is quite another world."
+
+"Shall I take it off, then? I have a nice Saturday kerchief," she
+faltered. "It is of silk--I bought it at Kalmen's for a bargain. It is
+still brand new."
+
+"Here one does not wear even a kerchief."
+
+"How then? Do they go about with their own hair?" she queried in
+ill-disguised bewilderment.
+
+"_Vell, alla right_, put it on, quick!"
+
+As she set about undoing her parcel, she bade him face about and screen
+her, so that neither he nor any stranger could see her bareheaded while
+she was replacing the wig by the kerchief. He obeyed. All the while the
+operation lasted he stood with his gaze on the floor, gnashing his
+teeth with disgust and shame, or hissing some Bowery oath.
+
+"Is this better?" she asked bashfully, when her hair and part of her
+forehead were hidden under a kerchief of flaming blue and yellow, whose
+end dangled down her back.
+
+The kerchief had a rejuvenating effect. But Jake thought that it made
+her look like an Italian woman of Mulberry Street on Sunday.
+
+"_Alla right_, leave it be for the present," he said in despair,
+reflecting that the wig would have been the lesser evil of the two.
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+When they reached the city Gitl was shocked to see him lead the way to
+a horse car.
+
+"_Oi_ woe is me! Why, it is Sabbath!" she gasped.
+
+He irately essayed to explain that a car, being an uncommon sort of
+vehicle, riding in it implied no violation of the holy day. But this
+she sturdily met by reference to railroads. Besides, she had seen horse
+cars while stopping in Hamburg, and knew that no orthodox Jew would use
+them on the seventh day. At length Jake, losing all self-control,
+fiercely commanded her not to make him the laughing-stock of the people
+on the street and to get in without further ado. As to the sin of the
+matter he was willing to take it all upon himself. Completely dismayed
+by his stern manner, amid the strange, uproarious, forbidding
+surroundings, Gitl yielded.
+
+As the horses started she uttered a groan of consternation and remained
+looking aghast and with a violently throbbing heart. If she had been a
+culprit on the way to the gallows she could not have been more
+terrified than she was now at this her first ride on the day of rest.
+
+The conductor came up for their fares. Jake handed him a ten-cent
+piece, and raising two fingers, he roared out: "Two! He ain' no maur as
+tree years, de liddle feller!" And so great was the impression which
+his dashing manner and his English produced on Gitl, that for some time
+it relieved her mind and she even forgot to be shocked by the sight of
+her husband handling coin on the Sabbath.
+
+Having thus paraded himself before his wife, Jake all at once grew
+kindly disposed toward her.
+
+"You must be hungry?" he asked.
+
+"Not at all! Where do you eat your _varimess_?"[8]
+
+        [8] Yiddish for dinner.
+
+"Don't say varimess," he corrected her complaisantly; "here it is
+called _dinner_!"
+
+"_Dinner?_[9] And what if one becomes fatter?" she confusedly ventured
+an irresistible pun.
+
+        [9] Yiddish for thinner.
+
+This was the way in which Gitl came to receive her first lesson in the
+five or six score English words and phrases which the omnivorous Jewish
+jargon has absorbed in the Ghettos of English-speaking countries.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+A PATERFAMILIAS.
+
+
+It was early in the afternoon of Gitl's second Wednesday in the New
+World. Jake, Bernstein and Charley, their two boarders, were at work.
+Yossele was sound asleep in the lodgers' double bed, in the smallest of
+the three tiny rooms which the family rented on the second floor of one
+of a row of brand-new tenement houses. Gitl was by herself in the
+little front room which served the quadruple purpose of kitchen, dining
+room, sitting room, and parlour. She wore a skirt and a loose jacket of
+white Russian calico, decorated with huge gay figures, and her dark
+hair was only half covered by a bandana of red and yellow. This was
+Gitl's compromise between her conscience and her husband. She panted to
+yield to Jake's demands completely, but could not nerve herself up to
+going about "in her own hair, like a Gentile woman." Even the
+expostulations of Mrs. Kavarsky--the childless middle-aged woman who
+occupied with her husband the three rooms across the narrow
+hallway--failed to prevail upon her. Nevertheless Jake, succumbing to
+Mrs. Kavarsky's annoying solicitations, had bought his wife a cheap
+high-crowned hat, utterly unfit to be worn over her voluminous wig, and
+even a corset. Gitl could not be coaxed into accompanying them to the
+store; but the eloquent neighbour had persuaded Jake that her presence
+at the transaction was not indispensable after all.
+
+"Leave it to me," she said; "I know what will become her and what
+won't. I'll get her a hat that will make a Fifth Avenue lady of her,
+and you shall see if she does not give in. If she is then not
+_satetzfiet_ to go with her own hair, _vell_!" What then would take
+place Mrs. Kavarsky left unsaid.
+
+The hat and the corset had been lying in the house now three days, and
+the neighbour's predictions had not yet come true, save for Gitl's
+prying once or twice into the pasteboard boxes in which those articles
+lay, otherwise unmolested, on the shelf over her bed.
+
+The door was open. Gitl stood toying with the knob of the electric
+bell, and deriving much delight from the way the street door latch kept
+clicking under her magic touch two flights above. Finally she wearied
+of her diversion, and shutting the door she went to take a look at
+Yossele. She found him fast asleep, and, as she was retracing her steps
+through her own and Jake's bedroom, her eye fell upon the paper boxes.
+She got up on the edge of her bed and, lifting the cover from the
+hatbox, she took a prolonged look at its contents. All at once her face
+brightened up with temptation. She went to fasten the hallway door of
+the kitchen on its latch, and then regaining the bedroom shut herself
+in. After a lapse of some ten or fifteen minutes she re-emerged,
+attired in her brown holiday dress in which she had first confronted
+Jake on Ellis Island, and with the tall black straw hat on her head.
+Walking on tiptoe, as though about to commit a crime, she crossed over
+to the looking-glass. Then she paused, her eyes on the door, to listen
+for possible footsteps. Hearing none she faced the glass. "Quite a
+_panenke_!"[10] she thought to herself, all aglow with excitement, a
+smile, at once shamefaced and beatific, melting her features. She
+turned to the right, then to the left, to view herself in profile, as
+she had seen Mrs. Kavarsky do, and drew back a step to ascertain the
+effect of the corset. To tell the truth, the corset proved utterly
+impotent against the baggy shapelessness of the Povodye garment. Yet
+Gitl found it to work wonders, and readily pardoned it for the very
+uncomfortable sensation which it caused her. She viewed herself again
+and again, and was in a flutter both of ecstasy and alarm when there
+came a timid rap on the door. Trembling all over, she scampered on
+tiptoe back into the bedroom, and after a little she returned in her
+calico dress and bandana kerchief. The knock at the door had apparently
+been produced by some peddler or beggar, for it was not repeated. Yet
+so violent was Gitl's agitation that she had to sit down on the
+haircloth lounge for breath and to regain composure.
+
+        [10] A young noblewoman.
+
+"What is it they call this?" she presently asked herself, gazing at
+the bare boards of the floor. "Floor!" she recalled, much to her
+self-satisfaction. "And that?" she further examined herself, as she
+fixed her glance on the ceiling. This time the answer was slow in
+coming, and her heart grew faint. "And what was it Yekl called
+that?"--transferring her eyes to the window. "Veen--neev--veenda," she
+at last uttered exultantly. The evening before she had happened to call
+it _fentzter_, in spite of Jake's repeated corrections.
+
+"Can't you say _veenda_?" he had growled. "What a peasant head! Other
+_greenhornsh_ learn to speak American _shtyle_ very fast; and she--one
+might tell her the same word eighty thousand times, and it is _nu
+used_."
+
+"_Es is of'n veenda mein ich_,"[11] she hastened to set herself right.
+
+        [11] It is on the window, I meant to say.
+
+She blushed as she said it, but at the moment she attached no
+importance to the matter and took no more notice of it. Now, however,
+Jake's tone of voice, as he had rebuked her backwardness in picking up
+American Yiddish, came back to her and she grew dejected.
+
+She was getting used to her husband, in whom her own Yekl and Jake the
+stranger were by degrees merging themselves into one undivided being.
+When the hour of his coming from work drew near she would every little
+while consult the clock and become impatient with the slow progress of
+its hands; although mixed with this impatience there was a feeling of
+apprehension lest the supper, prepared as it was under culinary
+conditions entirely new to her, should fail to please Jake and the
+boarders. She had even become accustomed to address her husband as Jake
+without reddening in the face; and, what is more, was getting to
+tolerate herself being called by him Goitie (Gertie)--a word
+phonetically akin to Yiddish for Gentile. For the rest she was too
+inexperienced and too simple-hearted naturally to comment upon his
+manner toward her. She had not altogether overcome her awe of him, but
+as he showed her occasional marks of kindness she was upon the whole
+rather content with her new situation. Now, however, as she thus sat in
+solitude, with his harsh voice ringing in her ears and his icy look
+before her, a feeling of suspicion darkened her soul. She recalled
+other scenes where he had looked and spoken as he had done the night
+before. "He must hate me! A pain upon me!" she concluded with a fallen
+heart. She wondered whether his demeanour toward her was like that of
+other people who hated their wives. She remembered a woman of her
+native village who was known to be thus afflicted, and she dropped her
+head in a fit of despair. At one moment she took a firm resolve to
+pluck up courage and cast away the kerchief and the wig; but at the
+next she reflected that God would be sure to punish her for the
+terrible sin, so that instead of winning Jake's love the change would
+increase his hatred for her. It flashed upon her mind to call upon some
+"good Jew" to pray for the return of his favour, or to seek some old
+Polish beggar woman who could prescribe a love potion. But then, alas!
+who knows whether there are in this terrible America any good Jews or
+beggar women with love potions at all! Better she had never known this
+"black year" of a country! Here everybody says she is green. What an
+ugly word to apply to people! She had never been green at home, and
+here she had suddenly become so. What do they mean by it, anyhow?
+Verily, one might turn green and yellow and gray while young in such a
+dreadful place. Her heart was wrung with the most excruciating pangs of
+homesickness. And as she thus sat brooding and listlessly surveying her
+new surroundings--the iron stove, the stationary washtubs, the window
+opening vertically, the fire escape, the yellowish broom with its
+painted handle--things which she had never dreamed of at her
+birthplace--these objects seemed to stare at her haughtily and inspired
+her with fright. Even the burnished cup of the electric bell knob
+looked contemptuously and seemed to call her "Greenhorn! greenhorn!"
+"Lord of the world! Where am I?" she whispered with tears in her voice.
+
+The dreary solitude terrified her, and she instinctively rose to take
+refuge at Yossele's bedside. As she got up, a vague doubt came over her
+whether she should find there her child at all. But Yossele was found
+safe and sound enough. He was rubbing his eyes and announcing the
+advent of his famous appetite. She seized him in her arms and covered
+his warm cheeks with fervent kisses which did her aching heart good.
+And by-and-bye, as she admiringly watched the boy making savage inroads
+into a generous slice of rye bread, she thought of Jake's affection for
+the child; whereupon things began to assume a brighter aspect, and she
+presently set about preparing supper with a lighter heart, although her
+countenance for some time retained its mournful woe-begone expression.
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+Meanwhile Jake sat at his machine merrily pushing away at a cloak and
+singing to it some of the popular American songs of the day.
+
+The sensation caused by the arrival of his wife and child had nearly
+blown over. Peltner's dancing school he had not visited since a week or
+two previous to Gitl's landing. As to the scene which had greeted him
+in the shop after the stirring news had first reached it, he had faced
+it out with much more courage and got over it with much less difficulty
+than he had anticipated.
+
+"Did I ever tell you I was a _tzingle man_?" he laughingly defended
+himself, though blushing crimson, against his shopmates' taunts. "And
+am I obliged to give you a _report_ whether my wife has come or not?
+You are not worth mentioning her name to, _anyhoy_."
+
+The boss then suggested that Jake celebrate the event with two pints of
+beer, the motion being seconded by the presser, who volunteered to
+fetch the beverage. Jake obeyed with alacrity, and if there had still
+lingered any trace of awkwardness in his position it was soon washed
+away by the foaming liquid.
+
+As a matter of fact, Fanny's embarrassment was much greater than
+Jake's. The stupefying news was broken to her on the very day of Gitl's
+arrival. After passing a sleepless night she felt that she could not
+bring herself to face Jake in the presence of her other shopmates, to
+whom her feelings for him were an open secret. As luck would have it,
+it was Sunday, the beginning of a new working week in the metropolitan
+Ghetto, and she went to look for a job in another place.
+
+Jake at once congratulated himself upon her absence and missed her. But
+then he equally missed the company of Mamie and of all the other
+dancing-school girls, whose society and attentions now more than ever
+seemed to him necessities of his life. They haunted his mind day and
+night; he almost never beheld them in his imagination except as
+clustering together with his fellow-cavaliers and making merry over him
+and his wife; and the vision pierced his heart with shame and jealousy.
+All his achievements seemed wiped out by a sudden stroke of ill fate.
+He thought himself a martyr, an innocent exile from a world to which he
+belonged by right; and he frequently felt the sobs of self-pity
+mounting to his throat. For several minutes at a time, while kicking at
+his treadle, he would see, reddening before him, Gitl's bandana
+kerchief and her prominent gums, or hear an un-American piece of
+Yiddish pronounced with Gitl's peculiar lisp--that very lisp, which
+three years ago he used to mimic fondly, but which now grated on his
+nerves and was apt to make his face twitch with sheer disgust, insomuch
+that he often found a vicious relief in mocking that lisp of hers
+audibly over his work. But can it be that he is doomed for life? No!
+no! he would revolt, conscious at the same time that there was really
+no escape. "Ah, may she be killed, the horrid greenhorn!" he would gasp
+to himself in a paroxysm of despair. And then he would bewail his lost
+youth, and curse all Russia for his premature marriage. Presently,
+however, he would recall the plump, spunky face of his son who bore
+such close resemblance to himself, to whom he was growing more strongly
+attached every day, and who was getting to prefer his company to his
+mother's; and thereupon his heart would soften toward Gitl, and he
+would gradually feel the qualms of pity and remorse, and make a vow to
+treat her kindly. "Never min'," he would at such instances say in his
+heart, "she will _oyshgreen_[12] herself and I shall get used to her.
+She is a ---- _shight_ better than all the dancing-school girls." And
+he would inspire himself with respect for her spotless purity, and take
+comfort in the fact of her being a model housewife, undiverted from her
+duties by any thoughts of balls or picnics. And despite a deeper
+consciousness which exposed his readiness to sacrifice it all at any
+time, he would work himself into a dignified feeling as the head of a
+household and the father of a promising son, and soothe himself with
+the additional consolation that sooner or later the other fellows of
+Joe's academy would also be married.
+
+        [12] A verb coined from the Yiddish _oys_, out, and the
+        English _green_, and signifying to cease being green.
+
+On the Wednesday in question Jake and his shopmates had warded off a
+reduction of wages by threatening a strike, and were accordingly in
+high feather. And so Jake and Bernstein came home in unusually good
+spirits. Little Joey--for such was Yossele's name now--with whom his
+father's plays were for the most part of an athletic character,
+welcomed Jake by a challenge for a pugilistic encounter, and the way he
+said "Coom a fight!" and held out his little fists so delighted Mr.
+Podkovnik, Sr., that upon ordering Gitl to serve supper he vouchsafed a
+fillip on the tip of her nose.
+
+While she was hurriedly setting the table, Jake took to describing to
+Charley his employer's defeat. "You should have seen how he looked, the
+cockroach!" he said. "He became as pale as the wall and his teeth were
+chattering as if he had been shaken up with fever, _'pon my void_. And
+how quiet he became all of a sudden, as if he could not count two! One
+might apply him to an ulcer, so soft was he--ha-ha-ha!" he laughed,
+looking to Bernstein, who smiled assent.
+
+At last supper was announced. Bernstein donned his hat, and did not sit
+down to the repast before he had performed his ablutions and whispered
+a short prayer. As he did so Jake and Charley interchanged a wink. As
+to themselves, they dispensed with all devotional preliminaries, and
+took their seats with uncovered heads. Gitl also washed her fingers and
+said the prayer, and as she handed Yossele his first slice of bread she
+did not release it before he had recited the benediction.
+
+Bernstein, who, as a rule, looked daggers at his meal, this time
+received his plate of _borshtch_[13]--his favourite dish--with a
+radiant face; and as he ate he pronounced it a masterpiece, and
+lavished compliments on the artist.
+
+        [13] A sour soup of cabbage and beets.
+
+"It's a long time since I tasted such a borshtch! Simply a vivifier! It
+melts in every limb!" he kept rhapsodizing, between mouthfuls. "It
+ought to be sent to the Chicago Exposition. The _missess_ would get a
+medal."
+
+"A _regely_ European borshtch!" Charley chimed in. "It is worth ten
+cents a spoonful, _'pon mine vort_!"
+
+"Go away! You are only making fun of me," Gitl declared, beaming with
+pride. "What is there to be laughing at? I make it as well as I can,"
+she added demurely.
+
+"Let him who is laughing laugh with teeth," jested Charlie. "I tell you
+it is a----" The remainder of the sentence was submerged in a mouthful
+of the vivifying semi-liquid.
+
+"_Alla right!_" Jake bethought himself. "_Charge_ him ten _shent_ for
+each spoonful. Mr. Bernstein, you shall be kind enough to be the
+_bookkeeper_. But if you don't pay, Chollie, I'll get out a _tzommesh_
+[summons] from _court_."
+
+Whereat the little kitchen rang with laughter, in which all
+participated except Bernstein. Even Joey, or Yossele, joined in the
+general outburst of merriment. Otherwise he was busily engaged cramming
+borshtch into his mouth, and, in passing, also into his nose, with both
+his plump hands for a pair of spoons. From time to time he would
+interrupt operations to make a wry face and, blinking his eyes, to lisp
+out rapturously, "Sour!"
+
+"Look--may you live long--do look; he is laughing, too!" Gitl called
+attention to Yossele's bespattered face. "To think of such a crumb
+having as much sense as that!" She was positive that he appreciated his
+father's witticism, although she herself understood it but vaguely.
+
+"May he know evil no better than he knows what he is laughing at," Jake
+objected, with a fatherly mien. "What makes you laugh, Joey?" The boy
+had no time to spare for an answer, being too busy licking his emptied
+plate. "Look at the soldier's appetite he has, _de feller_! Joey, hoy
+you like de borshtch? Alla right?" Jake asked in English.
+
+"Awrr-ra rr-right!" Joey pealed out his sturdy rustic r's, which he had
+mastered shortly before taking leave of his doting grandmother.
+
+"See how well he speaks English?" Jake said, facetiously. "A ----
+_shight_ better than his mamma, _anyvay_."
+
+Gitl, who was in the meantime serving the meat, coloured, but took the
+remark in good part.
+
+"_I tell ye_ he is growing to be Presdent 'Nited States," Charlie
+interposed.
+
+"_Greenhorn_ that you are! A President must be American born," Jake
+explained, self-consciously. "Ain't it, Mr. Bernstein?"
+
+"It's a pity, then, that he was not born in this country," Bernstein
+replied, his eye envyingly fixed now on Gitl, now at the child, on
+whose plate she was at this moment carving a piece of meat into tiny
+morsels. "_Vell_, if he cannot be a President of the United States, he
+may be one of a synagogue, so he is a president."
+
+"Don't you worry for his sake," Gitl put in, delighted with the
+attention her son was absorbing. "He does not need to be a pesdent; he
+is growing to be a rabbi; don't be making fun of him." And she turned
+her head to kiss the future rabbi.
+
+"Who is making fun?" Bernstein demurred. "I wish I had a boy like him."
+
+"Get married and you will have one," said Gitl, beamingly.
+
+"_Shay_, Mr. Bernstein, how about your _shadchen_?"[14] Jake queried.
+He gave a laugh, but forthwith checked it, remaining with an
+embarrassed grin on his face, as though anxious to swallow the
+question. Bernstein blushed to the roots of his hair, and bent an irate
+glance on his plate, but held his peace.
+
+        [14] A matrimonial agent.
+
+His reserved manner, if not his superior education, held Bernstein's
+shopmates at a respectful distance from him, and, as a rule, rendered
+him proof against their badinage, although behind his back they would
+indulge an occasional joke on his inferiority as a workman, and--while
+they were at it--on his dyspepsia, his books, and staid, methodical
+habits. Recently, however, they had got wind of his clandestine visits
+to a marriage broker's, and the temptation to chaff him on the subject
+had proved resistless, all the more so because Bernstein, whose leading
+foible was his well-controlled vanity, was quick to take offence in
+general, and on this matter in particular. As to Jake, he was by no
+means averse to having a laugh at somebody else's expense; but since
+Bernstein had become his boarder he felt that he could not afford to
+wound his pride. Hence his regret and anxiety at his allusion to the
+matrimonial agent.
+
+After supper Charlie went out for the evening, while Bernstein retired
+to their little bedroom. Gitl busied herself with the dishes, and Jake
+took to romping about with Joey and had a hearty laugh with him. He was
+beginning to tire of the boy's company and to feel lonesome generally,
+when there was a knock at the door.
+
+"Coom in!" Gitl hastened to say somewhat coquettishly, flourishing her
+proficiency in American manners, as she raised her head from the pot in
+her hands.
+
+"Coom in!" repeated Joey.
+
+The door flew open, and in came Mamie, preceded by a cloud of cologne
+odours. She was apparently dressed for some occasion of state, for she
+was powdered and straight-laced and resplendent in a waist of blazing
+red, gaudily trimmed, and with puff sleeves, each wider than the vast
+expanse of white straw, surmounted with a whole forest of ostrich
+feathers, which adorned her head. One of her gloved hands held the huge
+hoop-shaped yellowish handle of a blue parasol.
+
+"Good-evenin', Jake!" she said, with ostentatious vivacity.
+
+"Good-evenin', Mamie!" Jake returned, jumping to his feet and violently
+reddening, as if suddenly pricked. "Mish Fein, my vife! My vife, Mish
+Fein!"
+
+Miss Fein made a stately bow, primly biting her lip as she did so.
+Gitl, with the pot in her hands, stood staring sheepishly, at a loss
+what to do.
+
+"Say 'I'm glyad to meech you,'" Jake urged her, confusedly.
+
+The English phrase was more than Gitl could venture to echo.
+
+"She is still _green_," Jake apologized for her, in Yiddish.
+
+"_Never min'_, she will soon _oysgreen_ herself," Mamie remarked, with
+patronizing affability.
+
+"The _lada_ is an acquaintance of mine," Jake explained bashfully, his
+hand feeling the few days' growth of beard on his chin.
+
+Gitl instinctively scented an enemy in the visitor, and eyed her with
+an uneasy gaze. Nevertheless she mustered a hospitable air, and drawing
+up the rocking chair, she said, with shamefaced cordiality: "Sit down;
+why should you be standing? You may be seated for the same money."
+
+In the conversation which followed Mamie did most of the talking. With
+a nervous volubility often broken by an irrelevant giggle, and
+violently rocking with her chair, she expatiated on the charms of
+America, prophesying that her hostess would bless the day of her
+arrival on its soil, and went off in ecstasies over Joey. She spoke
+with an overdone American accent in the dialect of the Polish Jews,
+affectedly Germanized and profusely interspersed with English, so that
+Gitl, whose mother tongue was Lithuanian Yiddish, could scarcely catch
+the meaning of one half of her flood of garrulity. And as she thus
+rattled on, she now examined the room, now surveyed Gitl from head to
+foot, now fixed her with a look of studied sarcasm, followed by a side
+glance at Jake, which seemed to say, "Woe to you, what a rag of a wife
+yours is!" Whenever Gitl ventured a timid remark, Mamie would nod
+assent with dignified amiability, and thereupon imitate a smile, broad
+yet fleeting, which she had seen performed by some uptown ladies.
+
+Jake stared at the lamp with a faint simper, scarcely following the
+caller's words. His head swam with embarrassment. The consciousness of
+Gitl's unattractive appearance made him sick with shame and vexation,
+and his eyes carefully avoided her bandana, as a culprit schoolboy does
+the evidence of his offence.
+
+"You mush vant you tventy-fife dollars," he presently nerved himself up
+to say in English, breaking an awkward pause.
+
+"I should cough!" Mamie rejoined.
+
+"In a coupel a veeksh, Mamie, as sure as my name is Jake."
+
+"In a couple o' veeks! No, sirree! I mus' have my money at oncet. I
+don' know vere you vill get it, dough. Vy, a married man!"--with a
+chuckle. "You got a ---- of a lot o' t'ings to pay for. You took de
+foinitsha by a custom peddler, ain' it? But what a ---- do _I_ care? I
+vant my money. I voiked hard enough for it."
+
+"Don' shpeak English. She'll t'ink I don' knu vot ve shpeakin'," he
+besought her, in accents which implied intimacy between the two of them
+and a common aloofness from Gitl.
+
+"Vot d'I care vot she t'inks? She's your vife, ain' it? Vell, she mus'
+know ev'ryt'ing. Dot's right! A husban' dass'n't hide not'ink from his
+vife!"--with another chuckle and another look of deadly sarcasm at Gitl
+"I can say de same in Jewish----"
+
+"Shurr-r up, Mamie!" he interrupted her, gaspingly.
+
+"Don'tch you like it, lump it! A vife mus'n't be skinned like a strange
+lady, see?" she pursued inexorably. "O'ly a strange goil a feller might
+bluff dot he ain' married, and skin her out of tventy-five dollars." In
+point of fact, he had never directly given himself out for a single man
+to her. But it did not even occur to him to defend himself on that
+score.
+
+"Mamie! Ma-a-mie! Shtop! I'll pay you ev'ry shent. Shpeak Jewesh,
+pleashe!" he implored, as if for life.
+
+"You'r' afraid of her? Dot's right! Dot's right! Dot's nice! All
+religious peoples is afraid of deir vifes. But vy didn' you say you vas
+married from de sta't, an' dot you vant money to send for dem?" she
+tortured him, with a lingering arch leer.
+
+"For Chrish' shake, Mamie!" he entreated her, wincingly. "Shtop to
+shpeak English, an' shpeak shomet'ing differench. I'll shee you--vere
+can I shee you?"
+
+"You von't come by Joe no more?" she asked, with sudden interest and
+even solicitude.
+
+"You t'ink indeed I'm 'frait? If I vanted I can gu dere more ash I
+ushed to gu dere. But vere can I findsh you?"
+
+"I guess you know vere I'm livin', don'ch you? So kvick you forget? Vot
+a sho't mind you got! Vill you come? Never min', I know you are only
+bluffin', an' dot's all."
+
+"I'll come, ash sure ash I leev."
+
+"Vill you? All right. But if you don' come an' pay me at least ten
+dollars for a sta't, you'll see!"
+
+In the meanwhile Gitl, poor thing, sat pale and horror-struck. Mamie's
+perfumes somehow terrified her. She was racked with jealousy and all
+sorts of suspicions, which she vainly struggled to disguise. She could
+see that they were having a heated altercation, and that Jake was
+begging about something or other, and was generally the under dog in
+the parley. Ever and anon she strained her ears in the effort to fasten
+some of the incomprehensible sounds in her memory, that she might
+subsequently parrot them over to Mrs. Kavarsky, and ascertain their
+meaning. But, alas! the attempt proved futile; "never min'" and "all
+right" being all she could catch.
+
+Mamie concluded her visit by presenting Joey with the imposing sum of
+five cents.
+
+"What do you say? Say 'danks, sir!'" Gitl prompted the boy.
+
+"Shay 't'ank you, ma'am!'" Jake overruled her. "'Shir' is said to a
+gentlemarn."
+
+"Good-night!" Mamie sang out, as she majestically opened the door.
+
+"Good-night!" Jake returned, with a burning face.
+
+"Goot-night!" Gitl and Joey chimed in duet.
+
+"Say 'cull again!'"
+
+"Cullye gain!"
+
+"Good-night!" Mamie said once more, as she bowed herself out of the
+door with what she considered an exquisitely "tony" smile.
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+The guest's exit was succeeded by a momentary silence. Jake felt as if
+his face and ears were on fire.
+
+"We used to work in the same shop," he presently said.
+
+"Is that the way a seamstress dresses in America?" Gitl inquired. "It
+is not for nothing that it is called the golden land," she added, with
+timid irony.
+
+"She must be going to a ball," he explained, at the same moment casting
+a glance at the looking-glass.
+
+The word "ball" had an imposing ring for Gitl's ears. At home she had
+heard it used in connection with the sumptuous life of the Russian or
+Polish nobility, but had never formed a clear idea of its meaning.
+
+"She looks a veritable _panenke_,"[15] she remarked, with hidden
+sarcasm. "Was she born here?"
+
+        [15] A young noblewoman.
+
+"_Nu_, but she has been very long here. She speaks English like one
+American born. We are used to speak in English when we talk _shop_. She
+came to ask me about a _job_."
+
+Gitl reflected that with Bernstein Jake was in the habit of talking
+shop in Yiddish, although the boarder could even read English books,
+which her husband could not do.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+CIRCUMSTANCES ALTER CASES.
+
+
+Jake was left by Mamie in a state of unspeakable misery. He felt
+discomfited, crushed, the universal butt of ridicule. Her perfumes
+lingered in his nostrils, taking his breath away. Her venomous gaze
+stung his heart. She seemed to him elevated above the social plane upon
+which he had recently (though the interval appeared very long) stood by
+her side, nay, upon which he had had her at his beck and call; while he
+was degraded, as it were, wallowing in a mire, from which he yearningly
+looked up to his former equals, vainly begging for recognition. An
+uncontrollable desire took possession of him to run after her, to have
+an explanation, and to swear that he was the same Jake and as much of a
+Yankee and a gallant as ever. But here was his wife fixing him with a
+timid, piteous look, which at once exasperated and cowed him; and he
+dared not stir out of the house, as though nailed by that look of hers
+to the spot.
+
+He lay down on the lounge, and shut his eyes. Gitl dutifully brought
+him a pillow. As she adjusted it under his head the touch of her hand
+on his face made him shrink, as if at the contact with a reptile. He
+was anxious to flee from his wretched self into oblivion, and his wish
+was soon gratified, the combined effect of a hard day's work and a
+plentiful and well-relished supper plunging him into a heavy sleep.
+
+While his snores resounded in the little kitchen, Gitl put the child to
+bed, and then passed with noiseless step into the boarders' room. The
+door was ajar and she entered it without knocking, as was her wont. She
+found Bernstein bent over a book, with a ponderous dictionary by its
+side. A kerosene lamp with a red shade, occupying nearly all the
+remaining space on the table, spread a lurid mysterious light. Gitl
+asked the studious cloakmaker whether he knew a Polish girl named Mamie
+Fein.
+
+"Mamie Fein? No. Why?" said Bernstein, with his index finger on the
+passage he had been reading, and his eyes on Gitl's plumpish cheek,
+bathed in the roseate light.
+
+"Nothing. May not one ask?"
+
+"What is the matter? Speak out! Are you afraid to tell me?" he
+insisted.
+
+"What should be the matter? She was here. A nice _lada_."
+
+"Your husband knows many nice _ladies_," he said, with a faint but
+significant smile. And immediately regretting the remark he went on to
+smooth it down by characterizing Jake as an honest and good-natured
+fellow.
+
+"You ought to think yourself fortunate in having him for your husband,"
+he added.
+
+"Yes, but what did you mean by what you said first?" she demanded, with
+an anxious air.
+
+"What did I mean? What should I have meant? I meant what I said. _'F
+cou'se_ he knows many girls. But who does not? You know there are
+always girls in the shops where we work. Never fear, Jake has nothing
+to do with them."
+
+"Who says I fear! Did I say I did? Why should I?"
+
+Encouraged by the cheering effect which his words were obviously having
+on the credulous, unsophisticated woman, he pursued: "May no Jewish
+daughter have a worse husband. Be easy, be easy. I tell you he is
+melting away for you. He never looked as happy as he does since you
+came."
+
+"Go away! You must be making fun of me!" she said, beaming with
+delight.
+
+"Don't you believe me? Why, are you not a pretty young woman?" he
+remarked, with an oily look in his eye.
+
+The crimson came into her cheek, and she lowered her glance.
+
+"Stop making fun of me, I beg you," she said softly. "Is it true?"
+
+"Is what true? That you are a pretty young woman? Take a looking-glass
+and see for yourself."
+
+"Strange man that you are!" she returned, with confused deprecation. "I
+mean what you said before about Jake," she faltered.
+
+"Oh, about Jake! Then say so," he jested. "Really he loves you as
+life."
+
+"How do you know?" she queried, wistfully.
+
+"How do I know!" he repeated, with an amused smile. "As if one could
+not see!"
+
+"But he never told you himself!"
+
+"How do you know he did not? You have guessed wrongly, see! He did,
+lots of times," he concluded gravely, touched by the anxiety of the
+poor woman.
+
+She left Bernstein's room all thrilling with joy, and repentant for her
+excess of communicativeness. "A wife must not tell other people what
+happens to her husband," she lectured herself, in the best of humours.
+Still, the words "Your husband knows many nice _ladas_," kept echoing
+at the bottom of her soul, and in another few minutes she was at Mrs.
+Kavarsky's, confidentially describing Mamie's visit as well as her talk
+with the boarder, omitting nothing save the latter's compliments to her
+looks.
+
+Mrs. Kavarsky was an eccentric, scraggy little woman, with a vehement
+manner and no end of words and gesticulations. Her dry face was full of
+warts and surmounted by a chaotic mass of ringlets and curls of a faded
+brown. None too tidy about her person, and rather slattern in general
+appearance, she zealously kept up the over-scrupulous cleanliness for
+which the fame of her apartments reached far and wide. Her neighbours
+and townsfolk pronounced her crazy but "with a heart of diamond," that
+is to say, the diametrical opposite of the precious stone in point of
+hardness, and resembling it in the general sense of excellence of
+quality. She was neighbourly enough, and as she was the most prosperous
+and her establishment the best equipped in the whole tenement, many a
+woman would come to borrow some cooking utensil or other, or even a few
+dollars on rent day, which Mrs. Kavarsky always started by refusing in
+the most pointed terms, and almost always finished by granting.
+
+She started to listen to Gitl's report with a fierce mien which
+gradually thawed into a sage smile. When the young neighbour had rested
+her case, she first nodded her head, as who should say, "What fools
+this young generation be!" and then burst out:
+
+"Do you know what _I_ have to tell you? Guess!"
+
+Gitl thought Heaven knows what revelations awaited her.
+
+"That you are a lump of horse and a greenhorn and nothing else!" (Gitl
+felt much relieved.) "That piece of ugliness should _try_ and come to
+_my_ house! Then she would know the price of a pound of evil. I should
+open the door and--_march_ to eighty black years! Let her go to where
+she came from! America is not Russia, thanked be the Lord of the world.
+Here one must only know how to handle a husband. Here a husband must
+remember '_ladas foist_'--but then you do not even know what that
+means!" she exclaimed, with a despairing wave of her hand.
+
+"What does it mean?" Gitl inquired, pensively.
+
+"What does it mean? What should it mean? It means but too well, _never
+min'_. It means that when a husband does not _behabe_ as he should, one
+does not stroke his cheeks for it. A prohibition upon me if one does.
+If the wife is no greenhorn she gets him shoved into the oven, over
+there, across the river."
+
+"You mean they send him to prison?"
+
+"Where else--to the theatre?" Mrs. Kavarsky mocked her furiously.
+
+"A weeping to me!" Gitl said, with horror. "May God save me from such
+things!"
+
+In due course Mrs. Kavarsky arrived at the subject of head-gear, and
+for the third or fourth time she elicited from her pupil a promise to
+discard the kerchief and to sell the wig.
+
+"No wonder he does hate you, seeing you in that horrid rag, which makes
+a grandma of you. Drop it, I tell you! Drop it so that no survivor nor
+any refugee is left of it. If you don't obey me this time, dare not
+cross my threshold any more, do you hear?" she thundered. "One might as
+well talk to the wall as to her!" she proceeded, actually addressing
+herself to the opposite wall of her kitchen, and referring to her
+interlocutrice in the third person. "I am working and working for her,
+and here she appreciates it as much as the cat. Fie!" With which the
+irate lady averted her face in disgust.
+
+"I shall take it off; now for sure--as sure as this is Wednesday," said
+Gitl, beseechingly.
+
+Mrs. Kavarsky turned back to her pacified.
+
+"Remember now! If you _deshepoitn_ [disappoint] me this time,
+well!--look at me! I should think I was no Gentile woman, either. I am
+as pious as you _anyhull_, and come from no mean family, either. You
+know I hate to boast; _but_ my father--peace be upon him!--was fit to
+be a rabbi. _Vell_, and yet I am not afraid to go with my own hair. May
+no greater sins be committed! Then it would be _never min'_ enough.
+Plenty of time for putting on the patch [meaning the wig] when I get
+old; _but_ as long as I am young, I am young _an' dot's ull_! It can
+not be helped; when one lives in an _edzecate_ country, one must live
+like _edzecate peoples_. As they play, so one dances, as the saying is.
+But I think it is time for you to be going. Go, my little kitten," Mrs.
+Kavarsky said, suddenly lapsing into accents of the most tender
+affection. "He may be up by this time and wanting _tea_. Go, my little
+lamb, go and _try_ to make yourself agreeable to him and the Uppermost
+will help. In America one must take care not to displease a husband.
+Here one is to-day in New York and to-morrow in Chicago; do you
+understand? As if there were any shame or decency here! A father is no
+father, a wife, no wife--_not'ing_! Go now, my baby! Go and throw away
+your rag and be a nice woman, and everything will be _ull right_." And
+so hurrying Gitl to go, she detained her with ever a fresh torrent of
+loquacity for another ten minutes, till the young woman, standing on
+pins and needles and scarcely lending an ear, plucked up courage to
+plead her household duties and take a hasty departure.
+
+She found Jake fast asleep. It was after eleven when he slowly awoke.
+He got up with a heavy burden on his soul--a vague sense of having met
+with some horrible rebuff. In his semiconsciousness he was unaware,
+however, of his wife's and son's existence and of the change which
+their advent had produced in his life, feeling himself the same free
+bird that he had been a fortnight ago. He stared about the room, as if
+wondering where he was. Noticing Gitl, who at that moment came out of
+the bedroom, he instantly realized the situation, recalling Mamie, hat,
+perfumes, and all, and his heart sank within him. The atmosphere of the
+room became stifling to him. After sitting on the lounge for some time
+with a drooping head, he was tempted to fling himself on the pillow
+again, but instead of doing so he slipped on his hat and coat and went
+out.
+
+Gitl was used to his goings and comings without explanation. Yet this
+time his slam of the door sent a sharp pang through her heart. She had
+no doubt but that he was bending his steps to another interview with
+the Polish witch, as she mentally branded Miss Fein.
+
+Nor was she mistaken, for Jake did start, mechanically, in the
+direction of Chrystie Street, where Mamie lodged. He felt sure that she
+was away to some ball, but the very house in which she roomed seemed to
+draw him with magnetic force. Moreover, he had a lurking hope that he
+might, after all, find her about the building. Ah, if by a stroke of
+good luck he came upon her on the street! All he wished was to have a
+talk, and that for the sole purpose of amending her unfavourable
+impression of him. Then he would never so much as think of Mamie, for,
+indeed, she was hateful to him, he persuaded himself.
+
+Arrived at his destination, and failing to find Mamie on the sidewalk,
+he was tempted to wait till she came from the ball, when he was seized
+with a sudden sense of the impropriety of his expedition, and he
+forthwith returned home, deciding in his mind, as he walked, to move
+with his wife and child to Chicago.
+
+Meanwhile Mamie lay brooding in her cot-bed in the parlour, which she
+shared with her landlady's two daughters. She was in the most wretched
+frame of mind, ineffectually struggling to fall asleep. She had made
+her way down the stairs leading from the Podkovniks with a violently
+palpitating heart. She had been bound for no more imposing a place than
+Joe's academy, and before repairing thither she had had to betake
+herself home to change her stately toilet for a humbler attire. For, as
+a matter of fact, it was expressly for her visit to the Podkovniks that
+she had thus pranked herself out, and that would have been much too
+gorgeous an appearance to make at Joe's establishment on one of its
+regular dancing evenings. Having changed her toilet she did call at
+Joe's; but so full was her mind of Jake and his wife and, accordingly,
+she was so irritable, that in the middle of a quadrille she picked a
+quarrel with the dancing master, and abruptly left the hall.
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+The next day Jake's work fared badly. When it was at last over he did
+not go direct home as usual, but first repaired to Mamie's. He found
+her with her landlady in the kitchen. She looked careworn and was in a
+white blouse which lent her face a convalescent, touching effect.
+
+"Good-eveni'g, Mrs. Bunetzky! Good-eveni'g, Mamie!" he fairly roared,
+as he playfully fillipped his hat backward. And after addressing a
+pleasantry or two to the mistress of the house, he boldly proposed to
+her boarder to go out with him for a talk. For a moment Mamie
+hesitated, fearing lest her landlady had become aware of the existence
+of a Mrs. Podkovnik; but instantly flinging all considerations to the
+wind, she followed him out into the street.
+
+"You'sh afraid I vouldn't pay you, Mamie?" he began, with bravado, in
+spite of his intention to start on a different line, he knew not
+exactly which.
+
+Mamie was no less disappointed by the opening of the conversation than
+he. "I ain't afraid a bit," she answered, sullenly.
+
+"Do you think my _kshpenshesh_ are larger now?" he resumed in Yiddish.
+"May I lose as much through sickness. On the countrary, I _shpend_ even
+much less than I used to. We have two nice boarders--I keep them only
+for company's sake--and I have a _shteada job_--_a puddin' of a job_. I
+shall have still more money to _shpend outshite_," he added,
+falteringly.
+
+"Outside?"--and she burst into an artificial laugh which sent the blood
+to Jake's face.
+
+"Why, do you think I sha'n't go to Joe's, nor to the theatre, nor
+anywhere any more? Still oftener than before! _Hoy much vill you bet?_"
+
+"_Rats!_ A married man, a papa go to a dancing school! Not unless your
+wife drags along with you and never lets go of your skirts," she said
+sneeringly, adding the declaration that Jake's "bluffs" gave her a
+"regula' pain in de neck."
+
+Jake, writhing under her lashes, protested his freedom as emphatically
+as he could; but it only served to whet Mamie's spite, and against her
+will she went on twitting him as a henpecked husband and an
+old-fashioned Jew. Finally she reverted to the subject of his debt,
+whereupon he took fire, and after an interchange of threats and some
+quite forcible language they parted company.
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+From that evening the spectre of Mamie dressed in her white blouse
+almost unremittingly preyed on Jake's mind. The mournful sneer which
+had lit her pale, invalid-looking face on their last interview, when
+she wore that blouse, relentlessly stared down into his heart; gnawed
+at it with tantalizing deliberation; "drew out his soul," as he once
+put it to himself, dropping his arms and head in despair. "Is this what
+they call love?" he wondered, thinking of the strange, hitherto
+unexperienced kind of malady, which seemed to be gradually consuming
+his whole being. He felt as if Mamie had breathed a delicious poison
+into his veins, which was now taking effect, spreading a devouring fire
+through his soul, and kindling him with a frantic thirst for more of
+the same virus. His features became distended, as it were, and acquired
+a feverish effect; his eyes had a pitiable, beseeching look, like those
+of a child in the period of teething.
+
+He grew more irritable with Gitl every day, the energy failing him to
+dissemble his hatred for her. There were moments when, in his hopeless
+craving for the presence of Mamie, he would consciously seek refuge in
+a feeling of compunction and of pity for his wife; and on several such
+occasions he made an effort to take an affectionate tone with her. But
+the unnatural sound of his voice each time only accentuated to himself
+the depth of his repugnance, while the hysterical promptness of her
+answers, the servile gratitude which trembled in her voice and shone
+out of her radiant face would, at such instances, make him breathless
+with rage. Poor Gitl! she strained every effort to please him; she
+tried to charm him by all the simple-minded little coquetries she knew,
+by every art which her artless brain could invent; and only succeeded
+in making herself more offensive than ever.
+
+As to Jake's feelings for Joey, they now alternated between periods of
+indifference and gusts of exaggerated affection; while, in some
+instances, when the boy let himself be fondled by his mother or
+returned her caresses in his childish way, he would appear to Jake as
+siding with his enemy, and share with Gitl his father's odium.
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+One afternoon, shortly after Jake's interview with Mamie in front of
+the Chrystie Street tenement house, Fanny called on Gitl.
+
+"Are you Mrs. Podkovnik?" she inquired, with an embarrassed air.
+
+"Yes; why?" Mrs. Podkovnik replied, turning pale. "She is come to tell
+me that Jake has eloped with that Polish girl," flashed upon her
+overwrought mind. At the same moment Fanny, sizing her up, exclaimed
+inwardly, "So this is the kind of woman she is, poor thing!"
+
+"Nothing. I _just_ want to speak to you," the visitor uttered,
+mysteriously.
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"As I say, nothing at all. Is there nobody else in the house?" Fanny
+demanded, looking about.
+
+"May I not live till to-morrow if there is a living soul except my boy,
+and he is asleep. You may speak; never fear. But first tell me who you
+are; do not take ill my question. Be seated."
+
+The girl's appearance and manner began to inspire Gitl with confidence.
+
+"My name is Rosy--Rosy Blank," said Fanny, as she took a seat on the
+further end of the lounge. "_'F cou'se_, you don't know me, how should
+you? But I know you well enough, never mind that we have never seen
+each other before. I used to work with your husband in one shop. I have
+come to tell you such an important thing! You must know it. It makes no
+difference that you don't know who I am. May God grant me as good a
+year as my friendship is for you."
+
+"Something about Jake?" Gitl blurted out, all anxiety, and instantly
+regretted the question.
+
+"How did you guess? About Jake it is! About him and somebody else. But
+see how you did guess! Swear that you won't tell anybody that I have
+been here."
+
+"May I be left speechless, may my arms and legs be paralyzed, if I ever
+say a word!" Gitl recited vehemently, thrilling with anxiety and
+impatience. "So it is! they have eloped!" she added in her heart,
+seating herself close to her caller. "A darkness upon my years! What
+will become of me and Yossele now?"
+
+"Remember, now, not a word, either to Jake or to anybody else in the
+world. I had a mountain of _trouble_ before I found out where you
+lived, and I _stopped_ work on purpose to come and speak to you. As
+true as you see me alive. I wanted to call when I was sure to find you
+alone, you understand. Is there really nobody about?" And after a
+preliminary glance at the door and exacting another oath of discretion
+from Mrs. Podkovnik, Fanny began in an undertone:
+
+"There is a girl; well, her name is Mamie; well, she and your husband
+used to go to the same dancing school--that is a place where _fellers_
+and _ladies_ learn to dance," she explained. "I go there, too; but I
+know your husband from the shop."
+
+"But that _lada_ has also worked in the same shop with him, hasn't
+she?" Gitl broke in, with a desolate look in her eye.
+
+"Why, did Jake tell you she had?" Fanny asked in surprise.
+
+"No, not at all, not at all! I am just asking. May I be sick if I know
+anything."
+
+"The idea! How could they work together, seeing that she is a
+shirtmaker and he a cloakmaker. Ah, if you knew what a witch she is!
+She has set her mind on your husband, and is bound to take him away
+from you. She hitched on to him long ago. But since you came I thought
+she would have God in her heart, and be ashamed of people. Not she! She
+be ashamed! You may sling a cat into her face and she won't mind it.
+The black year knows where she grew up. I tell you there is not a girl
+in the whole dancing school but can not bear the sight of that Polish
+lizard!"
+
+"Why, do they meet and kiss?" Gitl moaned out. "Tell me, do tell me
+all, my little crown, keep nothing from me, tell me my whole dark lot."
+
+"_Ull right_, but be sure not to speak to anybody. I'll tell you the
+truth: My name is not Rosy Blank at all. It is Fanny Scutelsky. You
+see, I am telling you the whole truth. The other evening they stood
+near the house where she _boards_, on Chrystie Street; so they were
+looking into each other's eyes and talking like a pair of little doves.
+A _lady_ who is a _particla_ friend of mine saw them; so she says a
+child could have guessed that she was making love to him and _trying_
+to get him away from you. _'F cou'se_ it is none of my _business_. Is
+it my _business_, then? What do _I care_? It is only _becuss_ I pity
+you. It is like the nature I have; I can not bear to see anybody in
+trouble. Other people would not _care_, but I do. Such is my nature. So
+I thought to myself I must go and tell Mrs. Podkovnik all about it, in
+order that she might know what to do."
+
+For several moments Gitl sat speechless, her head hung down, and her
+bosom heaving rapidly. Then she fell to swaying her frame sidewise, and
+vehemently wringing her hands.
+
+"_Oi! Oi!_ Little mother! A pain to me!" she moaned. "What is to be
+done? Lord of the world, what is to be done? Come to the rescue!
+People, do take pity, come to the rescue!" She broke into a fit of low
+sobbing, which shook her whole form and was followed by a torrent of
+tears.
+
+Whereupon Fanny also burst out crying, and falling upon Gitl's shoulder
+she murmured: "My little heart! you don't know what a friend I am to
+you! Oh, if you knew what a serpent that Polish thief is!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+MRS. KAVARSKY's COUP D'ETAT.
+
+
+It was not until after supper time that Gitl could see Mrs. Kavarsky;
+for the neighbour's husband was in the installment business, and she
+generally spent all day in helping him with his collections as well as
+canvassing for new customers. When Gitl came in to unburden herself of
+Fanny's revelations, she found her confidante out of sorts. Something
+had gone wrong in Mrs. Kavarsky's affairs, and, while she was perfectly
+aware that she had only herself to blame, she had laid it all to her
+husband and had nagged him out of the house before he had quite
+finished his supper.
+
+She listened to her neighbour's story with a bored and impatient air,
+and when Gitl had concluded and paused for her opinion, she remarked
+languidly: "It serves you right! It is all _becuss_ you will not throw
+away that ugly kerchief of yours. What is the use of your asking my
+advice?"
+
+"_Oi!_ I think even that wouldn't help it now," Gitl rejoined,
+forlornly. "The Uppermost knows what drug she has charmed him with. A
+cholera into her, Lord of the world!" she added, fiercely.
+
+Mrs. Kavarsky lost her temper.
+
+"_Say_, will you stop talking nonsense?" she shouted savagely. "No
+wonder your husband does not _care_ for you, seeing these stupid
+greenhornlike notions of yours."
+
+"How then could she have bewitched him, the witch that she is? Tell me,
+little heart, little crown, do tell me! Take pity and be a mother to
+me. I am so lonely and----" Heartrending sobs choked her voice.
+
+"What shall I tell you? that you are a blockhead? _Oi! Oi! Oi!_" she
+mocked her. "Will the crying help you? _Ull right_, cry away!"
+
+"But what shall I do?" Gitl pleaded, wiping her tears. "It may drive me
+mad. I won't wear the kerchief any more. I swear this is the last day,"
+she added, propitiatingly.
+
+"_Dot's right!_ When you talk like a man I like you. And now sit still
+and listen to what an older person and a business woman has to tell
+you. In the first place, who knows what that girl--Jennie, Fannie,
+Shmennie, Yomtzedemennie--whatever you may call her--is after?" The
+last two names Mrs. Kavarsky invented by poetical license to complete
+the rhyme and for the greater emphasis of her contempt. "In the second
+place, _asposel_ [supposing] he did talk to that Polish piece of
+disturbance. _Vell_, what of it? It is all over with the world, isn't
+it? The mourner's prayer is to be said after it, I declare! A married
+man stood talking to a girl! Just think of it! May no greater evil
+befall any Yiddish daughter. This is not Europe where one dares not say
+a word to a strange woman! _Nu, sir!_"
+
+"What, then, is the matter with him? At home he would hardly ever leave
+my side, and never ceased looking into my eyes. Woe is me, what America
+has brought me to!" And again her grief broke out into a flood of
+tears.
+
+This time Mrs. Kavarsky was moved.
+
+"Don't be crying, my child; he may come in for you," she said,
+affectionately. "Believe me you are making a mountain out of a fly--you
+are imagining too much."
+
+"_Oi_, as my ill luck would have it, it is all but too true. Have I no
+eyes, then? He mocks at everything I say or do; he can not bear the
+touch of my hand. America _has_ made a mountain of ashes out of me.
+Really, a curse upon Columbus!" she ejaculated mournfully, quoting in
+all earnestness a current joke of the Ghetto.
+
+Mrs. Kavarsky was too deeply touched to laugh. She proceeded to examine
+her pupil, in whispers, upon certain details, and thereupon her
+interest in Gitl's answers gradually superseded her commiseration for
+the unhappy woman.
+
+"And how does he behave toward the boy?" she absently inquired, after a
+melancholy pause.
+
+"Would he were as kind to me!"
+
+"Then it is _ull right_! Such things will happen between man and wife.
+It is all _humbuk_. It will all come right, and you will some day be
+the happiest woman in the world. You shall see. Remember that Mrs.
+Kavarsky has told you so. And in the meantime stop crying. A husband
+hates a sniveller for a wife. You know the story of Jacob and Leah, as
+it stands written in the Holy Five Books, don't you? Her eyes became
+red with weeping, and Jacob, our father, did not _care_ for her on that
+account. Do you understand?"
+
+All at once Mrs. Kavarsky bit her lip, her countenance brightening up
+with a sudden inspiration. At the next instant she made a lunge at
+Gitl's head, and off went the kerchief. Gitl started with a cry, at the
+same moment covering her head with both hands.
+
+"Take off your hands! Take them off at once, I say!" the other
+shrieked, her eyes flashing fire and her feet performing an Irish jig.
+
+Gitl obeyed for sheer terror. Then, pushing her toward the sink, Mrs.
+Kavarsky said peremptorily: "You shall wash off your silly tears and
+I'll arrange your hair, and from this day on there shall be no
+kerchief, do you hear?"
+
+Gitl offered but feeble resistance, just enough to set herself right
+before her own conscience. She washed herself quietly, and when her
+friend set about combing her hair, she submitted to the operation
+without a murmur, save for uttering a painful hiss each time there came
+a particularly violent tug at the comb; for, indeed, Mrs. Kavarsky
+plied her weapon rather energetically and with a bloodthirsty air, as
+if inflicting punishment. And while she was thus attacking Gitl's
+luxurious raven locks she kept growling, as glibly as the progress of
+the comb would allow, and modulating her voice to its movements:
+"Believe me you are a lump of hunchback, _sure_; you may--may depend
+up-upon it! Tell me, now, do you ever comb yourself? You have raised
+quite a plica, the black year take it! Another woman would thank God
+for such beau-beautiful hair, and here she keeps it hidden and makes a
+bu-bugbear of herself--a _regele monkey_!" she concluded, gnashing her
+teeth at the stout resistance with which her implement was at that
+moment grappling.
+
+Gitl's heart swelled with delight, but she modestly kept silent.
+
+Suddenly Mrs. Kavarsky paused thoughtfully, as if conceiving a new
+idea. In another moment a pair of scissors and curling irons appeared
+on the scene. At the sight of this Gitl's blood ran chill, and when the
+scissors gave their first click in her hair she felt as though her
+heart snapped. Nevertheless, she endured it all without a protest,
+blindly trusting that these instruments of torture would help reinstall
+her in Jake's good graces.
+
+At last, when all was ready and she found herself adorned with a pair
+of rich side bangs, she was taken in front of the mirror, and ordered
+to hail the transformation with joy. She viewed herself with an
+unsteady glance, as if her own face struck her as unfamiliar and
+forbidding. However, the change pleased her as much as it startled her.
+
+"Do you really think he will like it?" she inquired with piteous
+eagerness, in a fever of conflicting emotions.
+
+"If he does not, I shall refund your money!" her guardian snarled, in
+high glee.
+
+For a moment or so Mrs. Kavarsky paused to admire the effect of her
+art. Then, in a sudden transport of enthusiasm, she sprang upon her
+ward, and with an "_Oi_, a health to you!" she smacked a hearty kiss on
+her burning cheek.
+
+"And now come, piece of wretch!" So saying, Mrs. Kavarsky grasped Gitl
+by the wrist, and forcibly convoyed her into her husband's presence.
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+The two boarders were out, Jake being alone with Joey. He was seated at
+the table, facing the door, with the boy on his knees.
+
+"_Goot-evenik_, Mr. Podkovnik! Look what I have brought you: a brand
+new wife!" Mrs. Kavarsky said, pointing at her charge, who stood
+faintly struggling to disengage her hand from her escort's tight grip,
+her eyes looking to the ground and her cheeks a vivid crimson.
+
+Gitl's unwonted appearance impressed Jake as something unseemly and
+meretricious. The sight of her revolted him.
+
+"It becomes her like a--a--a wet cat," he faltered out with a venomous
+smile, choking down a much stronger simile which would have conveyed
+his impression with much more precision, but which he dared not apply
+to his own wife.
+
+The boy's first impulse upon the entrance of his mother had been to run
+up to her side and to greet her merrily; but he, too, was shocked by
+the change in her aspect, and he remained where he was, looking from
+her to Jake in blank surprise.
+
+"Go away, you don't mean it!" Mrs. Kavarsky remonstrated distressedly,
+at the same moment releasing her prisoner, who forthwith dived into the
+bedroom to bury her face in a pillow, and to give way to a stream of
+tears. Then she made a few steps toward Jake, and speaking in an
+undertone she proceeded to take him to task. "Another man would
+consider himself happy to have such a wife," she said. "Such a quiet,
+honest woman! And such a housewife! Why, look at the way she keeps
+everything--like a fiddle. It is simply a treat to come into your
+house. I do declare you sin!"
+
+"What do I do to her?" he protested morosely, cursing the intruder in
+his heart.
+
+"Who says you do? Mercy and peace! Only--you understand--how shall I
+say it?--she is only a young woman; _vell_, so she imagines that you do
+not _care_ for her as much as you used to. Come, Mr. Podkovnik, you
+know you are a sensible man! I have always thought you one--you may ask
+my husband. Really you ought to be ashamed of yourself. A prohibition
+upon me if I could ever have believed it of you. Do you think a stylish
+girl would make you a better wife? If you do, you are grievously
+mistaken. What are they good for, the hussies? To darken the life of a
+husband? That, I admit, they are really great hands at. They only know
+how to squander his money for a new hat or rag every Monday and
+Thursday, and to tramp around with other men, fie upon the
+abominations! May no good Jew know them!"
+
+Her innuendo struck Mrs. Kavarsky as extremely ingenious, and, egged on
+by the dogged silence of her auditor, she ventured a step further.
+
+"Do you mean to tell me," she went on, emphasizing each word, and
+shaking her whole body with melodramatic defiance, "that you would be
+better off with a _dantzin'-school_ girl?"
+
+"_A danshin'-shchool_ girl?" Jake repeated, turning ashen pale, and
+fixing his inquisitress with a distant gaze. "Who says I care for a
+danshin'-shchool girl?" he bellowed, as he let down the boy and started
+to his feet red as a cockscomb. "It was she who told you that, was it?"
+
+Joey had tripped up to the lounge where he now stood watching his
+father with a stare in which there was more curiosity than fright.
+
+The little woman lowered her crest. "Not at all! God be with you!" she
+said quickly, in a tone of abject cowardice, and involuntarily
+shrinking before the ferocious attitude of Jake's strapping figure.
+"Who? What? When? I did not mean anything at all, _sure_. Gitl _never_
+said a word to me. A prohibition if she did. Come, Mr. Podkovnik, why
+should you get _ektzited_?" she pursued, beginning to recover her
+presence of mind. "By-the-bye--I came near forgetting--how about the
+boarder you promised to get me; do you remember, Mr. Podkovnik?"
+
+"Talk away a toothache for your grandma, not for me. Who told her about
+_danshin'_ girls?" he thundered again, re-enforcing the ejaculation
+with an English oath, and bringing down a violent fist on the table as
+he did so.
+
+At this Gitl's sobs made themselves heard from the bedroom. They lashed
+Jake into a still greater fury.
+
+"What is she whimpering about, the piece of stench! _Alla right_, I do
+hate her; I can not bear the sight of her; and let her do what she
+likes. _I don' care!_"
+
+"Mr. Podkovnik! To think of a _sma't_ man like you talking in this
+way!"
+
+"Dot'sh alla right!" he said, somewhat relenting. "I don't _care_ for
+any _danshin'_ girls. It is a ---- ---- lie! It was that scabby
+_greenhorn_ who must have taken it into her head. I don't _care_ for
+anybody; not for her certainly"--pointing to the bedroom. "I am an
+_American feller_, a _Yankee_--that's what I am. What punishment is due
+to me, then, if I can not stand a _shnooza_ like her? It is _nu ushed_;
+I can not live with her, even if she stand one foot on heaven and one
+on earth. Let her take everything"--with a wave at the household
+effects--"and I shall pay her as much _cash_ as she asks--I am willing
+to break stones to pay her--provided she agrees to a divorce."
+
+The word had no sooner left his lips than Gitl burst out of the
+darkness of her retreat, her bangs dishevelled, her face stained and
+flushed with weeping and rage, and her eyes, still suffused with tears,
+flashing fire.
+
+"May you and your Polish harlot be jumping out of your skins and
+chafing with wounds as long as you will have to wait for a divorce!"
+she exploded. "He thinks I don't know how they stand together near her
+house making love to each other!"
+
+Her unprecedented show of pugnacity took him aback.
+
+"Look at the Cossack of straw!" he said quietly, with a forced smile.
+"Such a piece of cholera!" he added, as if speaking to himself, as he
+resumed his seat. "I wonder who tells her all these fibs?"
+
+Gitl broke into a fresh flood of tears.
+
+"_Vell_, what do you want now?" Mrs. Kavarsky said, addressing herself
+to her. "He says it is a lie. I told you you take all sorts of silly
+notions into your head."
+
+"_Ach_, would it were a lie!" Gitl answered between her sobs.
+
+At this juncture the boy stepped up to his mother's side, and nestled
+against her skirt. She clasped his head with both her hands, as though
+gratefully accepting an offer of succour against an assailant. And
+then, for the vague purpose of wounding Jake's feelings, she took the
+child in her arms, and huddling him close to her bosom, she half turned
+from her husband, as much as to say, "We two are making common cause
+against you." Jake was cut to the quick. He kept his glance fixed on
+the reddened, tear-stained profile of her nose, and, choking with hate,
+he was going to say, "For my part, hang yourself together with him!"
+But he had self-mastery enough to repress the exclamation, confining
+himself to a disdainful smile.
+
+"Children, children! Woe, how you do sin!" Mrs. Kavarsky sermonized.
+"Come now, obey an older person. Whoever takes notice of such trifles?
+You have had a quarrel? _ull right!_ And now make peace. Have an
+embrace and a good kiss and _dot's ull_! _Hurry yup_, Mr. Podkovnik!
+Don't be ashamed!" she beckoned to him, her countenance wreathed in
+voluptuous smiles in anticipation of the love scene about to enact
+itself before her eyes. Mr. Podkovnik failing to hurry up, however, she
+went on disappointedly: "Why, Mr. Podkovnik! Look at the boy the
+Uppermost has given you. Would he might send me one like him. Really,
+you ought to be ashamed of yourself."
+
+"Vot you kickin' aboyt, anyhoy?" Jake suddenly fired out, in English.
+"Min' jou on businesh an' dot'sh ull," he added indignantly, averting
+his head.
+
+Mrs. Kavarsky grew as red as a boiled lobster.
+
+"Vo--vo--vot _you_ keeck aboyt?" she panted, drawing herself up and
+putting her arms akimbo. "He must think I, too, can be scared by his
+English. I declare my shirt has turned linen for fright! I was in
+America while you were hauling away at the bellows in Povodye; do you
+know it?"
+
+"Are you going out of my house or not?" roared Jake, jumping to his
+feet.
+
+"And if I am not, what will you do? Will you call a _politzman_? _Ull
+right_, do. That is just what I want. I shall tell him I can not leave
+her alone with a murderer like you, for fear you might kill her and the
+boy, so that you might dawdle around with that Polish wench of yours.
+Here you have it!" Saying which, she put her thumb between her index
+and third finger--the Russian version of the well-known gesture of
+contempt--presenting it to her adversary together with a generous
+portion of her tongue.
+
+Jake's first impulse was to strike the meddlesome woman. As he started
+toward her, however, he changed his mind. "_Alla right_, you may remain
+with her!" he said, rushing up to the clothes rack, and slipping on his
+coat and hat. "_Alla right_," he repeated with broken breath, "we shall
+see!" And with a frantic bang of the door he disappeared.
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+The fresh autumn air of the street at once produced its salutary effect
+on his overexcited nerves. As he grew more collected he felt himself in
+a most awkward muddle. He cursed his outbreak of temper, and wished the
+next few days were over and the breach healed. In his abject misery he
+thought of suicide, of fleeing to Chicago or St. Louis, all of which
+passed through his mind in a stream of the most irrelevant and the most
+frivolous reminiscences. He was burning to go back, but the nerve
+failing him to face Mrs. Kavarsky, he wondered where he was going to
+pass the night. It was too cold to be tramping about till it was time
+to go to work, and he had not change enough to pay for a night's rest
+in a lodging house; so in his despair he fulminated against Gitl and,
+above all, against her tutoress. Having passed as far as the limits of
+the Ghetto he took a homeward course by a parallel street, knowing all
+the while that he would lack the courage to enter his house. When he
+came within sight of it he again turned back, yearningly thinking of
+the cosey little home behind him, and invoking maledictions upon Gitl
+for enjoying it now while he was exposed to the chill air without the
+prospect of shelter for the night. As he thus sauntered reluctantly
+about he meditated upon the scenes coming in his way, and upon the
+thousand and one things which they brought to his mind. At the same
+time his heart was thirsting for Mamie, and he felt himself a wretched
+outcast, the target of ridicule--a martyr paying the penalty of sins,
+which he failed to recognise as sins, or of which, at any rate, he
+could not hold himself culpable.
+
+Yes, he will go to Chicago, or to Baltimore, or, better still, to
+England. He pictured to himself the sensation it would produce and
+Gitl's despair. "It will serve her right. What does she want of me?" he
+said to himself, revelling in a sense of revenge. But then it was such
+a pity to part with Joey! Whereupon, in his reverie, Jake beheld
+himself stealing into his house in the dead of night, and kidnapping
+the boy. And what would Mamie say? Would she not be sorry to have him
+disappear? Can it be that she does not care for him any longer? She
+seemed to. But that was before she knew him to be a married man. And
+again his heart uttered curses against Gitl. Ah, if Mamie did still
+care for him, and fainted upon hearing of his flight, and then could
+not sleep, and ran around wringing her hands and raving like mad! It
+would serve _her_ right, too! She should have come to tell him she
+loved him instead of making that scene at his house and taking a
+derisive tone with him upon the occasion of his visit to her. Still,
+should she come to join him in London, he would receive her, he decided
+magnanimously. They speak English in London, and have cloak shops like
+here. So he would be no greenhorn there, and wouldn't they be
+happy--he, Mamie, and little Joey! Or, supposing his wife suddenly
+died, so that he could legally marry Mamie and remain in New York----
+
+A mad desire took hold of him to see the Polish girl, and he
+involuntarily took the way to her lodging. What is he going to say to
+her? Well, he will beg her not to be angry for his failure to pay his
+debt, take her into his confidence on the subject of his proposed
+flight, and promise to send her every cent from London. And while he
+was perfectly aware that he had neither the money to take him across
+the Atlantic nor the heart to forsake Gitl and Joey, and that Mamie
+would never let him leave New York without paying her twenty-five
+dollars, he started out on a run in the direction of Chrystie Street.
+Would she might offer to join him in his flight! She must have money
+enough for two passage tickets, the rogue. Wouldn't it be nice to be
+with her on the steamer! he thought, as he wrathfully brushed apart a
+group of street urchins impeding his way.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+A HOUSETOP IDYL.
+
+
+Jake found Mamie on the sidewalk in front of the tenement house where
+she lodged. As he came rushing up to her side, she was pensively
+rehearsing a waltz step.
+
+"Mamie, come shomeversh! I got to shpeak to you a lot," he gasped out.
+
+"Vot's de madder?" she demanded, startled by his excited manner.
+
+"This is not the place for speaking," he rejoined vehemently, in
+Yiddish. "Let us go to the Grand Street dock or to Seventh Street park.
+There we can speak so that nobody overhears us."
+
+"I bet you he is going to ask me to run away with him," she prophesied
+to herself; and in her feverish impatience to hear him out she proposed
+to go on the roof, which, the evening being cool, she knew to be
+deserted.
+
+When they reached the top of the house they found it overhung with rows
+of half-dried linen, held together with wooden clothespins and
+trembling to the fresh autumn breeze. Overhead, fleecy clouds were
+floating across a starry blue sky, now concealing and now exposing to
+view a pallid crescent of new moon. Coming from the street below there
+was a muffled, mysterious hum ever and anon drowned in the clatter and
+jingle of a passing horse car. A lurid, exceedingly uncanny sort of
+idyl it was; and in the midst of it there was something extremely weird
+and gruesome in those stretches of wavering, fitfully silvered white,
+to Jake's overtaxed mind vaguely suggesting the burial clothes of the
+inmates of a Jewish graveyard.
+
+After picking and diving their way beneath the trembling lines of
+underwear, pillowcases, sheets, and what not, they paused in front of a
+tall chimney pot. Jake, in a medley of superstitious terror,
+infatuation, and bashfulness, was at a loss how to begin and, indeed,
+what to say. Feeling that it would be easy for him to break into tears
+he instinctively chose this as the only way out of his predicament.
+
+"_Vot's de madder_, Jake? Speak out!" she said, with motherly
+harshness.
+
+He now wished to say something, although he still knew not what; but
+his sobs once called into play were past his control.
+
+"She must give you _trouble_," the girl added softly, after a slight
+pause, her excitement growing with every moment.
+
+"Ach, Mamiele!" he at length exclaimed, resolutely wiping his tears
+with his handkerchief. "My life has become so dark and bitter to me, I
+might as well put a rope around my neck."
+
+"Does she eat you?"
+
+"Let her go to all lamentations! Somebody told her I go around with
+you."
+
+"But you know it is a lie! Some one must have seen us the other evening
+when we were standing downstairs. You had better not come here, then.
+When you have some money, you will send it to me," she concluded,
+between genuine sympathy and an intention to draw him out.
+
+"_Ach_, don't say that, Mamie. What is the good of my life without you?
+I don't sleep nights. Since she came I began to understand how dear you
+are to me. I can not tell it so well," he said, pointing to his heart.
+
+"_Yes_, _but_ before she came you didn't _care_ for me!" she declared,
+labouring to disguise the exultation which made her heart dance.
+
+"I always did, Mamie. May I drop from this roof and break hand and foot
+if I did not."
+
+A flood of wan light struck Mamie full in her swarthy face, suffusing
+it with ivory effulgence, out of which her deep dark eyes gleamed with
+a kind of unearthly lustre. Jake stood enravished. He took her by the
+hand, but she instantly withdrew it, edging away a step. His touch
+somehow restored her to calm self-possession, and even kindled a
+certain thirst for revenge in her heart.
+
+"It is not what it used to be, Jake," she said in tones of complaisant
+earnestness. "Now that I know you are a married man it is all gone.
+_Yes_, Jake, it is all gone! You should have cared for me when she was
+still there. Then you could have gone to a rabbi and sent her a writ of
+divorce. It is too late now, Jake."
+
+"It is not too late!" he protested, tremulously. "I will get a divorce,
+_anyhoy_. And if you don't take me I will hang myself," he added,
+imploringly.
+
+"On a burned straw?" she retorted, with a cruel chuckle.
+
+"It is all very well for you to laugh. But if you could enter my heart
+and see how I _shuffer_!"
+
+"Woe is me! I don't see how you will stand it," she mocked him. And
+abruptly assuming a grave tone, she pursued vehemently: "But I don't
+understand; since you sent her tickets and money, you must like her."
+
+Jake explained that he had all along intended to send her rabbinical
+divorce papers instead of a passage ticket, and that it had been his
+old mother who had pestered him, with her tear-stained letters, into
+acting contrary to his will.
+
+"_All right_," Mamie resumed, with a dubious smile; "but why don't you
+go to Fanny, or Beckie, or Beilke the "Black Cat"? You used to care for
+them more than for me. Why should you just come to me?"
+
+Jake answered by characterizing the girls she had mentioned in terms
+rather too high-scented for print, protesting his loathing for them.
+Whereupon she subjected him to a rigid cross-examination as to his past
+conduct toward herself and her rivals; and although he managed to
+explain matters to her inward satisfaction, owing, chiefly, to a
+predisposition on her own part to credit his assertions on the subject,
+she could not help continuing obdurate and in a spiteful, vindictive
+mood.
+
+"All you say is not worth a penny, and it is too late, _anyvay_," was
+her verdict. "You have a wife and a child; better go home and be a
+father to your _boy_." Her last words were uttered with some approach
+to sincerity, and she was mentally beginning to give herself credit for
+magnanimity and pious self-denial. She would have regretted her
+exhortation, however, had she been aware of its effect on her listener;
+for her mention of the boy and appeal to Jake as a father aroused in
+him a lively sense of the wrong he was doing. Moreover, while she was
+speaking his attention had been attracted to a loosened pillowcase
+ominously fluttering and flapping a yard or two off. The figure of his
+dead father, attired in burial linen, uprose to his mind.
+
+"You don' vanted? Alla right, you be shorry," he said half-heartedly,
+turning to go.
+
+"_Hol' on!_" she checked him, irritatedly. "How are you going to _fix_
+it? Are you _sure_ she will take a divorce?"
+
+"Will she have a choice then? She will have to take it. I won't live
+with her _anyhoy_," he replied, his passion once more welling up in his
+soul. "Mamie, my treasure, my glory!" he exclaimed, in tremulous
+accents. "Say that you are _shatichfied_; my heart will become
+lighter." Saying which, he strained her to his bosom, and fell to
+raining fervent kisses on her face. At first she made a faint attempt
+at freeing herself, and then suddenly clasping him with mad force she
+pressed her lips to his in a fury of passion.
+
+The pillowcase flapped aloud, ever more sternly, warningly,
+portentously.
+
+Jake cast an involuntary side glance at it. His spell of passion was
+broken and supplanted by a spell of benumbing terror. He had an impulse
+to withdraw his arms from the girl; but, instead, he clung to her all
+the faster, as if for shelter from the ghostlike thing.
+
+With a last frantic hug Mamie relaxed her hold. "Remember now, Jake!"
+she then said, in a queer hollow voice. "Now it is all _settled_. Maybe
+you are making fun of me? If you are, you are playing with fire. Death
+to me--death to you!" she added, menacingly.
+
+He wished to say something to reassure her, but his tongue seemed grown
+fast to his palate.
+
+"Am I to blame?" she continued with ghastly vehemence, sobs ringing in
+her voice. "Who asked you to come? Did I lure you from her, then? I
+should sooner have thrown myself into the river than taken away
+somebody else's husband. You say yourself that you would not live with
+her, _anyvay_. But now it is all gone. Just try to leave me now!" And
+giving vent to her tears, she added, "Do you think my heart is no
+heart?"
+
+A thrill of joyous pity shot through his frame. Once again he caught
+her to his heart, and in a voice quivering with tenderness he murmured:
+"Don't be uneasy, my dear, my gold, my pearl, my consolation! I will
+let my throat be cut, into fire or water will I go, for your sake."
+
+"Dot's all right," she returned, musingly. "But how are you going to
+get rid of her? You von't go back on me, vill you?" she asked in
+English.
+
+"_Me?_ May I not be able to get away from this spot. Can it be that you
+still distrust me?"
+
+"Swear!"
+
+"How else shall I swear?"
+
+"By your father, peace upon him."
+
+"May my father as surely have a bright paradise," he said, with a show
+of alacrity, his mind fixed on the loosened pillowcase. "_Vell_, are
+you _shatichfied_ now?"
+
+"All right," she answered, in a matter-of-fact way, and as if only half
+satisfied. "But do you think she will take money?"
+
+"But I have none."
+
+"Nobody asks you if you have. But would she take it, if you had?"
+
+"If I had! I am sure she would take it; she would have to, for what
+would she gain if she did not?"
+
+"Are you _sure_?"
+
+"_'F cush!_"
+
+"Ach, but, after all, why did you not tell me you liked me before she
+came?" she said testily, stamping her foot.
+
+"Again!" he exclaimed, wincing.
+
+"_All right_; wait."
+
+She turned to go somewhere, but checked herself, and facing about, she
+exacted an additional oath of allegiance. After which she went to the
+other side of the chimney. When she returned she held one of her arms
+behind her.
+
+"You will not let yourself be talked away from me?"
+
+He swore.
+
+"Not even if your father came to you from the other world--if he came
+to you in a dream, I mean--and told you to drop me?"
+
+Again he swore.
+
+"And you really don't care for Fanny?"
+
+And again he swore.
+
+"Nor for Beckie?"
+
+The ordeal was too much, and he begged her to desist. But she wouldn't,
+and so, chafing under inexorable cross-examinations, he had to swear
+again and again that he had never cared for any of Joe's female pupils
+or assistants except Mamie.
+
+At last she relented.
+
+"Look, piece of loafer you!" she then said, holding out an open bank
+book to his eyes. "But what is the _use_? It is not light enough, and
+you can not read, _anyvay_. You can eat, _dot's all_. _Vell_, you could
+make out figures, couldn't you? There are three hundred and forty
+dollars," she proceeded, pointing to the balance line, which
+represented the savings, for a marriage portion, of five years' hard
+toil. "It should be three hundred and sixty-five, but then for the
+twenty-five dollars you owe me I may as well light a mourner's candle,
+_ain' it_?"
+
+When she had started to produce the bank book from her bosom he had
+surmised her intent, and while she was gone he was making guesses as to
+the magnitude of the sum to her credit. His most liberal estimate,
+however, had been a hundred and fifty dollars; so that the revelation
+of the actual figure completely overwhelmed him. He listened to her
+with a broad grin, and when she paused he burst out:
+
+"Mamiele, you know what? Let us run away!"
+
+"You are a fool!" she overruled him, as she tucked the bank book under
+her jacket. "I have a better plan. But tell me the truth, did you not
+guess I had money? Now you need not fear to tell me all."
+
+He swore that he had not even dreamt that she possessed a bank account.
+How could he? And was it not because he had suspected the existence of
+such an account that he had come to declare his love to her and not to
+Fanny, or Beckie, or the "Black Cat"? No, may he be thunderstruck if it
+was. What does she take him for? On his part she is free to give the
+money away or throw it into the river. He will become a boss, and take
+her penniless, for he can not live without her; she is lodged in his
+heart; she is the only woman he ever cared for.
+
+"Oh, but why did you not tell me all this long ago?" With which,
+speaking like the complete mistress of the situation that she was, she
+proceeded to expound a project, which had shaped itself in her lovelorn
+mind, hypothetically, during the previous few days, when she had been
+writhing in despair of ever having an occasion to put it into practice.
+Jake was to take refuge with her married sister in Philadelphia until
+Gitl was brought to terms. In the meantime some chum of his, nominated
+by Mamie and acting under her orders, would carry on negotiations. The
+State divorce, as she had already taken pains to ascertain, would cost
+fifty dollars; the rabbinical divorce would take five or eight dollars
+more. Two hundred dollars would be deposited with some Canal Street
+banker, to be paid to Gitl when the whole procedure was brought to a
+successful termination. If she can be got to accept less, so much the
+better; if not, Jake and Mamie will get along, anyhow. When they are
+married they will open a dancing school.
+
+To all of which Jake kept nodding approval, once or twice interrupting
+her with a demonstration of enthusiasm. As to the fate of his boy,
+Mamie deliberately circumvented all reference to the subject. Several
+times Jake was tempted to declare his ardent desire to have the child
+with them, and that Mamie should like him and be a mother to him; for
+had she not herself found him a bright and nice fellow? His heart bled
+at the thought of having to part with Joey. But somehow the courage
+failed him to touch upon the question. He saw himself helplessly
+entangled in something foreboding no good. He felt between the devil
+and the deep sea, as the phrase goes; and unnerved by the whole
+situation and completely in the shop girl's power, he was glad to be
+relieved from all initiative--whether forward or backward--to shut his
+eyes, as it were, and, leaning upon Mamie's strong arm, let himself be
+led by her in whatever direction she chose.
+
+"Do you know, Jake?--now I may as well tell you," the girl pursued, _a
+propos_ of the prospective dancing school; "do you know that Joe has
+been _bodering_ me to marry him? And he did not know I had a cent,
+either."
+
+"_An you didn' vanted?_" Jake asked, joyfully.
+
+"_Sure!_ I knew all along Jakie was my predestined match," she replied,
+drawing his bulky head to her lips. And following the operation by a
+sound twirl of his ear, she added: "Only he is a great lump of hog,
+Jakie is. But a heart is a clock: it told me I would have you some day.
+I could have got _lots_ of suitors--may the two of us have as many
+thousands of dollars--and _business people_, too. Do you see what I am
+doing for you? Do you deserve it, _monkey you_?"
+
+"_Never min'_, you shall see what a _danshin' shchool_ I _shta't_. If I
+don't take away every _shcholar_ from Jaw, my name won't be Jake. Won't
+he squirm!" he exclaimed, with childish ardour.
+
+"Dot's all right; but foist min' dot you don' go back on me!"
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+An hour or two later Mamie with Jake by her side stood in front of the
+little window in the ferryhouse of the Pennsylvania Railroad, buying
+one ticket for the midnight train for Philadelphia.
+
+"Min' je, Jake," she said anxiously a little after, as she handed him
+the ticket. "This is as good as a marriage certificate, do you
+understand?" And the two hurried off to the boat in a meagre stream of
+other passengers.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+THE PARTING.
+
+
+It was on a bright frosty morning in the following January, in the
+kitchen of Rabbi Aaronovitz, on the third floor of a rickety old
+tenement house, that Jake and Gitl, for the first time since his
+flight, came face to face. It was also to be their last meeting as
+husband and wife.
+
+The low-ceiled room was fairly crowded with men and women. Besides the
+principal actors in the scene, the rabbi, the scribe, and the
+witnesses, and, as a matter of course, Mrs. Kavarsky, there was the
+rabbi's wife, their two children, and an envoy from Mamie, charged to
+look after the fortitude of Jake's nerve. Gitl, extremely careworn and
+haggard, was "in her own hair," thatched with a broad-brimmed winter
+hat of a brown colour, and in a jacket of black beaver. The rustic,
+"greenhornlike" expression was completely gone from her face and
+manner, and, although she now looked bewildered and as if
+terror-stricken, there was noticeable about her a suggestion of that
+peculiar air of self-confidence with which a few months' life in
+America is sure to stamp the looks and bearing of every immigrant.
+Jake, flushed and plainly nervous and fidgety, made repeated attempts
+to conceal his state of mind now by screwing up a grim face, now by
+giving his enormous head a haughty posture, now by talking aloud to his
+escort.
+
+The tedious preliminaries were as trying to the rabbi as they were to
+Jake and Gitl. However, the venerable old man discharged his duty of
+dissuading the young couple from their contemplated step as
+scrupulously as he dared in view of his wife's signals to desist and
+not to risk the fee. Gitl, prompted by Mrs. Kavarsky, responded to all
+questions with an air of dazed resignation, while Jake, ever conscious
+of his guard's glance, gave his answers with bravado. At last the
+scribe, a gaunt middle-aged man, with an expression of countenance at
+once devout and businesslike, set about his task. Whereupon Mrs.
+Aaronovitz heaved a sigh of relief, and forthwith banished her two boys
+into the parlour.
+
+An imposing stillness fell over the room. Little by little, however, it
+was broken, at first by whispers and then by an unrestrained hum. The
+rabbi, in a velvet skullcap, faded and besprinkled with down, presided
+with pious dignity, though apparently ill at ease, at the head of the
+table. Alternately stroking his yellowish-gray beard and curling his
+scanty side locks, he kept his eyes on the open book before him, now
+and then stealing a glance at the other end of the table, where the
+scribe was rapturously drawing the square characters of the holy
+tongue.
+
+Gitl carefully looked away from Jake. But he invincibly haunted her
+mind, rendering her deaf to Mrs. Kavarsky's incessant buzz. His
+presence terrified her, and at the same time it melted her soul in a
+fire, torturing yet sweet, which impelled her at one moment to throw
+herself upon him and scratch out his eyes, and at another to prostrate
+herself at his feet and kiss them in a flood of tears.
+
+Jake, on the other hand, eyed Gitl quite frequently, with a kind of
+malicious curiosity. Her general Americanized make up, and, above all,
+that broad-brimmed, rather fussy, hat of hers, nettled him. It seemed
+to defy him, and as if devised for that express purpose. Every time she
+and her adviser caught his eye, a feeling of devouring hate for both
+would rise in his heart. He was panting to see his son; and, while he
+was thoroughly alive to the impossibility of making a child the witness
+of a divorce scene between father and mother, yet, in his fury, he
+interpreted their failure to bring Joey with them as another piece of
+malice.
+
+"Ready!" the scribe at length called out, getting up with the document
+in his hand, and turning it over to the rabbi.
+
+The rest of the assemblage also rose from their seats, and clustered
+round Jake and Gitl, who had taken places on either side of the old
+man. A beam of hard, cold sunlight, filtering in through a grimy
+window-pane and falling lurid upon the rabbi's wrinkled brow, enhanced
+the impressiveness of the spectacle. A momentary pause ensued, stern,
+weird, and casting a spell of awe over most of the bystanders, not
+excluding the rabbi. Mrs. Kavarsky even gave a shudder and gulped down
+a sob.
+
+"Young woman!" Rabbi Aaronovitz began, with bashful serenity, "here is
+the writ of divorce all ready. Now thou mayst still change thy mind."
+
+Mrs. Aaronovitz anxiously watched Gitl, who answered by a shake of her
+head.
+
+"Mind thee, I tell thee once again," the old man pursued, gently. "Thou
+must accept this divorce with the same free will and readiness with
+which thou hast married thy husband. Should there be the slightest
+objection hidden in thy heart, the divorce is null and void. Dost thou
+understand?"
+
+"Say that you are _saresfied_," whispered Mrs. Kavarsky.
+
+"_Ull ride_, I am _salesfiet_" murmured Gitl, looking down on the
+table.
+
+"Witnesses, hear ye what this young woman says? That she accepts the
+divorce of her own free will," the rabbi exclaimed solemnly, as if
+reading the Talmud.
+
+"Then I must also tell you once more," he then addressed himself to
+Jake as well as to Gitl, "that this divorce is good only upon condition
+that you are also divorced by the Government of the land--by the
+court--do you understand? So it stands written in the separate paper
+which you get. Do you understand what I say?"
+
+"_Dot'sh alla right_," Jake said, with ostentatious ease of manner. "I
+have already told you that the _dvosh_ of the _court_ is already
+_fikshed_, haven't I?" he added, even angrily.
+
+Now came the culminating act of the drama. Gitl was affectionately
+urged to hold out her hands, bringing them together at an angle, so as
+to form a receptacle for the fateful piece of paper. She obeyed
+mechanically, her cheeks turning ghastly pale. Jake, also pale to his
+lips, his brows contracted, received the paper, and obeying directions,
+approached the woman who in the eye of the Law of Moses was still his
+wife. And then, repeating word for word after the rabbi, he said:
+
+"Here is thy divorce. Take thy divorce. And by this divorce thou art
+separated from me and free for all other men!"
+
+Gitl scarcely understood the meaning of the formula, though each Hebrew
+word was followed by its Yiddish translation. Her arms shook so that
+they had to be supported by Mrs. Kavarsky and by one of the witnesses.
+
+At last Jake deposited the writ and instantly drew back.
+
+Gitl closed her hands upon the paper as she had been instructed; but at
+the same moment she gave a violent tremble, and with a heartrending
+groan fell on the witness in a fainting swoon.
+
+In the ensuing commotion Jake slipped out of the room, presently
+followed by Mamie's ambassador, who had remained behind to pay the
+bill.
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+Gitl was soon brought to by Mrs. Kavarsky and the mistress of the
+house. For a moment or so she sat staring about her, when, suddenly
+awakening to the meaning of the ordeal she had just been through, and
+finding Jake gone, she clapped her hands and burst into a fit of
+sobbing.
+
+Meanwhile the rabbi had once again perused the writ, and having caused
+the witnesses to do likewise, he made two diagonal slits in the paper.
+
+"You must not forget, my daughter," he said to the young woman, who was
+at that moment crying as if her heart would break, "that you dare not
+marry again before ninety-one days, counting from to-day, go by; while
+you--where is he, the young man? Gone?" he asked with a frustrated
+smile and growing pale.
+
+"You want him badly, don't you?" growled Mrs. Kavarsky. "Let him go I
+know where, the every-evil-in-him that he is!"
+
+Mrs. Aaronovitz telegraphing to her husband that the money was safe in
+her pocket, he remarked sheepishly: "_He_ may wed even to-day."
+Whereupon Gitl's sobs became still more violent, and she fell to
+nodding her head and wringing her hands.
+
+"What are you crying about, foolish face that you are!" Mrs. Kavarsky
+fired out. "Another woman would thank God for having at last got rid of
+the lump of leavened bread. What say you, rabbi? A rowdy, a sinner of
+Israel, a _regely loifer_, may no good Jew know him! _Never min'_, the
+Name, be It blessed, will send you your destined one, and a fine,
+learned, respectable man, too," she added significantly.
+
+Her words had an instantaneous effect. Gitl at once composed herself,
+and fell to drying her eyes.
+
+Quick to catch Mrs. Kavarsky's hint, the rabbi's wife took her aside
+and asked eagerly:
+
+"Why, has she got a suitor?"
+
+"What is the _differentz_? You need not fear; when there is a wedding
+canopy I shall employ no other man than your husband," was Mrs.
+Kavarsky's self-important but good-natured reply.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+A DEFEATED VICTOR.
+
+
+When Gitl, accompanied by her friend, reached home, they were followed
+into the former's apartments by a batch of neighbours, one of them with
+Joey in tow. The moment the young woman found herself in her kitchen
+she collapsed, sinking down on the lounge. The room seemed to have
+assumed a novel aspect, which brought home to her afresh that the bond
+between her and Jake was now at last broken forever and beyond repair.
+The appalling fact was still further accentuated in her consciousness
+when she caught sight of the boy.
+
+"Joeyele! Joeyinke! Birdie! Little kitten!"--with which she seized him
+in her arms, and, kissing him all over, burst into tears. Then shaking
+with the child backward and forward, and intoning her words as Jewish
+women do over a grave, she went on: "Ai, you have no papa any more,
+Joeyele! Yosele, little crown, you will never see him again! He is
+dead, _tate_ is!" Whereupon Yosele, following his mother's example, let
+loose his stentorian voice.
+
+"_Shurr-r up!_" Mrs. Kavarsky whispered, stamping her foot. "You want
+Mr. Bernstein to leave you, too, do you? No more is wanted than that he
+should get wind of your crying."
+
+"Nobody will tell him," one of the neighbours put in, resentfully.
+"But, _anyhull_, what is the _used_ crying?"
+
+"Ask her, the piece of hunchback!" said Mrs. Kavarsky. "Another woman
+would dance for joy, and here she is whining, the cudgel. What is it
+you are snivelling about? That you have got rid of an unclean bone and
+a dunce, and that you are going to marry a young man of silk who is fit
+to be a rabbi, and is as _smart_ and _ejecate_ as a lawyer? You would
+have got a match like that in Povodye, would you? I dare say a man like
+Mr. Bernstein would not have spoken to you there. You ought to say
+Psalms for your coming to America. It is only here that it is possible
+for a blacksmith's wife to marry a learned man, who is a blessing both
+for God and people. And yet you are not _saresfied_! Cry away! If
+Bernstein refuses to go under the wedding canopy, Mrs. Kavarsky will no
+more _bodder_ her head about you, depend upon it. It is not enough for
+her that I neglect _business_ on her account," she appealed to the
+bystanders.
+
+"Really, what are you crying about, Mrs. Podkovnik?" one of the
+neighbours interposed. "You ought to bless the hour when you became
+free."
+
+All of which haranguing only served to stimulate Gitl's demonstration
+of grief. Having let down the boy, she went on clapping her hands,
+swaying in all directions, and wailing.
+
+The truth must be told, however, that she was now continuing her
+lamentations by the mere force of inertia, and as if enjoying the very
+process of the thing. For, indeed, at the bottom of her heart she felt
+herself far from desolate, being conscious of the existence of a man
+who was to take care of her and her child, and even relishing the
+prospect of the new life in store for her. Already on her way from the
+rabbi's house, while her soul was full of Jake and the Polish girl,
+there had fluttered through her imagination a picture of the grocery
+business which she and Bernstein were to start with the money paid to
+her by Jake.
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+While Gitl thus sat swaying and wringing her hands, Jake, Mamie, her
+emissary at the divorce proceeding, and another mutual friend, were
+passengers on a Third Avenue cable car, all bound for the mayor's
+office. While Gitl was indulging herself in an exhibition of grief, her
+recent husband was flaunting a hilarious mood. He did feel a great
+burden to have rolled off his heart, and the proximity of Mamie, on the
+other hand, caressed his soul. He was tempted to catch her in his arms,
+and cover her glowing cheeks with kisses. But in his inmost heart he
+was the reverse of eager to reach the City Hall. He was painfully
+reluctant to part with his long-coveted freedom so soon after it had at
+last been attained, and before he had had time to relish it. Still
+worse than this thirst for a taste of liberty was a feeling which was
+now gaining upon him, that, instead of a conqueror, he had emerged from
+the rabbi's house the victim of an ignominious defeat. If he could now
+have seen Gitl in her paroxysm of anguish, his heart would perhaps have
+swelled with a sense of his triumph, and Mamie would have appeared to
+him the embodiment of his future happiness. Instead of this he beheld
+her, Bernstein, Yosele, and Mrs. Kavarsky celebrating their victory and
+bandying jokes at his expense. Their future seemed bright with joy,
+while his own loomed dark and impenetrable. What if he should now dash
+into Gitl's apartments and, declaring his authority as husband, father,
+and lord of the house, fiercely eject the strangers, take Yosele in his
+arms, and sternly command Gitl to mind her household duties?
+
+But the distance between him and the mayor's office was dwindling fast.
+Each time the car came to a halt he wished the pause could be prolonged
+indefinitely; and when it resumed its progress, the violent lurch it
+gave was accompanied by a corresponding sensation in his heart.
+
+
+THE END.
+
+
+
+
+D. APPLETON & CO.'S PUBLICATIONS.
+
+
+STEPHEN CRANE'S BOOKS.
+
+_MAGGIE: A GIRL OF THE STREETS._ By STEPHEN CRANE, author of "The Red
+Badge of Courage," etc. Uniform with "The Red Badge of Courage." 12mo.
+Cloth, 75 cents.
+
+    In this book the author pictures certain realities of city life,
+    and he has not contented himself with a search for humorous
+    material or with superficial aspects. His story lives, and its
+    actuality can not fail to produce a deep impression and to point a
+    moral which many a thoughtful reader will apply.
+
+
+TENTH EDITION.
+
+_THE RED BADGE OF COURAGE. An Episode of the American Civil War._ By
+STEPHEN CRANE. 12mo. Cloth, $1.00.
+
+    "A strong book and a true book; true to life, whether it be taken
+    as a literal transcript of a soldier's experiences in his first
+    battle, or a great parable of the inner battle which every man must
+    fight."--_The Critic._
+
+    "Never before have we had the seamy side of glorious war so well
+    depicted.... The action of the story throughout is splendid, and
+    all aglow with color, movement, and vim. The style is as keen and
+    bright as a sword blade, and a Kipling has done nothing better in
+    this line."--_Chicago Evening Post._
+
+    "Original, striking, astonishing, powerful; holding the attention
+    with the force of genius."--_Louisville Post._
+
+    "So vivid is the picture of actual conflict that the reader comes
+    face to face with war."--_Atlantic Monthly._
+
+    "Has been surpassed by few writers dealing with war."--_New York
+    Mail and Express._
+
+    "We have had many stories of the war; this stands absolutely
+    alone."--_Boston Transcript._
+
+    "There is nothing in American fiction to compare with it.... Mr.
+    Crane has added to American literature something that has never
+    been done before, and that is, in its own peculiar way,
+    inimitable."--_Boston Beacon._
+
+New York: D. APPLETON & CO., 72 Fifth Avenue.
+
+
+
+
+D. APPLETON & CO.'S PUBLICATIONS.
+
+
+_THE FOLLY OF EUSTACE._ By R. S. HICHENS, author of "An Imaginative
+Man," "The Green Carnation," etc. 16mo. Cloth, 75 cents.
+
+"Mr. Hichens has proved himself to be a man of ready wit, plentiful
+cleverness, and of high spirits; ... one of the most interesting
+figures among contemporary _romanciers."--London Weekly Sun._
+
+_SLEEPING FIRES._ By GEORGE GISSING, author of "In the Year of
+Jubilee," "Eve's Ransom," etc. 16mo. Cloth, 75 cents.
+
+In this striking story the author has treated an original motive with
+rare self-command and skill. His book is most interesting as a story,
+and remarkable as a literary performance.
+
+_STONEPASTURES._ By ELEANOR STUART. 16mo. Cloth, 75 cents.
+
+    "This is a strong bit of good literary workmanship.... The book has
+    the value of being a real sketch of our own mining regions, and of
+    showing how, even in the apparently dull round of work, there is
+    still material for a good bit of literature."--_Philadelphia
+    Ledger._
+
+_COURTSHIP BY COMMAND_. By M. M. BLAKE. 16mo. Cloth, 75 cents.
+
+    "A bright, moving study of an unusually interesting period in the
+    life of Napoleon, ... deliciously told; the characters are clearly,
+    strongly, and very delicately modeled, and the touches of color
+    most artistically done. 'Courtship by Command' is the most
+    satisfactory Napoleon _bonne-bouche_ we have had."--_N.Y.
+    Commercial Advertiser._
+
+_THE WATTER'S MOU'._ By BRAM STOKER. 16mo. Cloth, 75 cents.
+
+    "Here is a tale to stir the most sluggish nature.... It is like
+    standing on the deck of a wave-tossed ship; you feel the soul of
+    the storm go into your blood."--_New York Home Journal._
+
+_MASTER AND MAN._ By COUNT LEO TOLSTOY. With an Introduction by W. D.
+HOWELLS. 16mo. Cloth, 75 cts.
+
+    "Reveals a wonderful knowledge of the workings of the human mind,
+    and it tells a tale that not only stirs the emotions, but gives us
+    a better insight into our own hearts."--_San Francisco Argonaut._
+
+_THE ZEIT-GEIST._ By L. DOUGALL, author of "The Mermaid," "Beggars
+All," etc. 16mo. Cloth, 75 cents.
+
+    "One of the most remarkable novels of the year."--_New York
+    Commercial Advertiser._
+
+    "Powerful in conception, treatment, and influence."--_Boston
+    Globe._
+
+New York: D. APPLETON & CO., 72 Fifth Avenue.
+
+
+
+
+D. APPLETON & CO.'S PUBLICATIONS.
+
+
+GILBERT PARKER'S BEST BOOKS.
+
+_THE SEATS OF THE MIGHTY._ Being the Memoirs of Captain Robert Moray,
+sometime an Officer in the Virginia Regiment, and afterwards of
+Amherst's Regiment. 12mo. Cloth, illustrated, $1.50.
+
+    "Another historical romance of the vividness and intensity of 'The
+    Seats of the Mighty' has never come from the pen of an American.
+    Mr. Parker's latest work may, without hesitation, be set down as
+    the best he has done. From the first chapter to the last word
+    interest in the book never wanes; one finds it difficult to
+    interrupt the narrative with breathing space. It whirls with
+    excitement and strange adventure.... All of the scenes do homage to
+    the genius of Mr. Parker, and make 'The Seats of the Mighty' one of
+    the books of the year."--_Chicago Record._
+
+    "Mr. Gilbert Parker is to be congratulated on the excellence of his
+    latest story, 'The Seats of the Mighty,' and his readers are to be
+    congratulated on the direction which his talents have taken
+    therein.... It is so good that we do not stop to think of its
+    literature, and the personality of Doltaire is a masterpiece of
+    creative art."--_New York Mail and Express._
+
+_THE TRAIL OF THE SWORD._ A Novel. 12mo. Paper, 50 cents; cloth, $1.00.
+
+    "Mr. Parker here adds to a reputation already wide, and anew
+    demonstrates his power of pictorial portrayal and of strong
+    dramatic situation and climax."--_Philadelphia Bulletin._
+
+    "The tale holds the reader's interest from first to last, for it is
+    full of fire and spirit, abounding in incident, and marked by good
+    character drawing."--_Pittsburg Times._
+
+_THE TRESPASSER._ 12mo. Paper, 50 cents; cloth, $1.00.
+
+    "Interest, pith, force, and charm--Mr. Parker's new story possesses
+    all these qualities.... Almost bare of synthetical decoration, his
+    paragraphs are stirring because they are real. We read at times--as
+    we have read the great masters of romance--breathlessly."--_The
+    Critic._
+
+    "Gilbert Parker writes a strong novel, but thus far this is his
+    masterpiece.... It is one of the great novels of the
+    year."--_Boston Advertiser._
+
+_THE TRANSLATION OF A SAVAGE._ 16mo. Flexible cloth, 75 cents.
+
+    "A book which no one will be satisfied to put down until the end
+    has been matter of certainty and assurance."--_The Nation._
+
+    "A story of remarkable interest, originality, and ingenuity of
+    construction."--_Boston Home Journal._
+
+    "The perusal of this romance will repay those who care for new and
+    original types of character, and who are susceptible to the
+    fascination of a fresh and vigorous style."--_London Daily News._
+
+New York: D. APPLETON & CO., 72 Fifth Avenue.
+
+
+
+
+BY S. R. CROCKETT.
+
+_CLEG KELLY, ARAB OF THE CITY. His Progress and Adventures._ Uniform
+with "The Lilac Sunbonnet" and "Bog-Myrtle and Peat." Illustrated.
+12mo. Cloth, $1.50.
+
+    "A masterpiece which Mark Twain himself has never rivaled.... If
+    there ever was an ideal character in action it is this heroic
+    ragamuffin."--_London Daily Chronicle._
+
+    "In no one of his books does Mr. Crockett give us a brighter or
+    more graphic picture of contemporary Scotch life than in 'Cleg
+    Kelly.'... It is one of the great books."--_Boston Daily
+    Advertiser._
+
+    "One of the most successful of Mr. Crockett's works."--_Brooklyn
+    Eagle._
+
+_BOG-MYRTLE AND PEAT._ Third edition. 12mo. Cloth, $1.50.
+
+    "Here are idyls, epics, dramas of human life, written in words that
+    thrill and burn.... Each is a poem that has an immortal flavor.
+    They are fragments of the author's early dreams, too bright, too
+    gorgeous, too full of the blood of rubies and the life of diamonds
+    to be caught and held palpitating in expression's grasp."--_Boston
+    Courier._
+
+    "Hardly a sketch among them all that will not afford pleasure to
+    the reader for its genial humor, artistic local coloring, and
+    admirable portrayal of character."--_Boston Home Journal._
+
+    "One dips into the book anywhere and reads on and on, fascinated by
+    the writer's charm of manner."--_Minneapolis Tribune._
+
+_THE LILAC SUNBONNET._ Sixth edition. 12mo. Cloth, $1.50.
+
+    "A love story pure and simple, one of the old-fashioned, wholesome,
+    sunshiny kind, with a pure-minded, sound-hearted hero, and a
+    heroine who is merely a good and beautiful woman; and if any other
+    love story half so sweet has been written this year, it has escaped
+    our notice."--_New York Times._
+
+    "The general conception of the story, the motive of which is the
+    growth of love between the young chief and heroine, is delineated
+    with a sweetness and a freshness, a naturalness and a certainty,
+    which places 'The Lilac Sunbonnet' among the best stories of the
+    time."--_New York Mail and Express._
+
+    "In its own line this little love story can hardly be excelled. It
+    is a pastoral, an idyl--the story of love and courtship and
+    marriage of a fine young man and a lovely girl--no more. But it is
+    told in so thoroughly delightful a manner, with such playful humor,
+    such delicate fancy, such true and sympathetic feeling, that
+    nothing more could be desired."--_Boston Traveller._
+
+
+BY A. CONAN DOYLE.
+
+_THE EXPLOITS OF BRIGADIER GERARD. A Romance of the Life of a Typical
+Napoleonic Soldier._ Illustrated. 12mo. Cloth, $1.50.
+
+    "The Brigadier is brave, resolute, amorous, loyal, chivalrous;
+    never was a foe more ardent in battle, more clement in victory, or
+    more ready at need.... Gallantry, humor, martial gayety, moving
+    incident, make up a really delightful book."--_London Times._
+
+    "May be set down without reservation as the most thoroughly
+    enjoyable book that Dr. Doyle has ever published."--_Boston
+    Beacon._
+
+_THE STARK MUNRO LETTERS._ Being a Series of Twelve Letters written by
+STARK MUNRO, M. B., to his friend and former fellow-student, Herbert
+Swanborough, of Lowell, Massachusetts, during the years 1881-1884.
+Illustrated. 12mo. Buckram, $1.50.
+
+    "Cullingworth, ... a much more interesting creation than Sherlock
+    Holmes, and I pray Dr. Doyle to give us more of him."--_Richard le
+    Gallienne, in the London Star._
+
+    "Every one who wants a hearty laugh must make acquaintance with Dr.
+    James Cullingworth."--_Westminster Gazette._
+
+    "Every one must read; for not to know Cullingworth should surely
+    argue one's self to be unknown."--_Pall Mall Gazette._
+
+    "One of the freshest figures to be met with in any recent
+    fiction."--_London Daily News._
+
+    "'The Stark Munro Letters' is a bit of real literature.... Its
+    reading will be an epoch-making event in many a
+    life."--_Philadelphia Evening Telegraph._
+
+    "Positively magnetic, and written with that combined force and
+    grace for which the author's style is known."--_Boston Budget._
+
+
+SEVENTH EDITION.
+
+_ROUND THE RED LAMP._ Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life. 12mo.
+Cloth, $1.50.
+
+    "Too much can not be said in praise of these strong productions,
+    that, to read, keep one's heart leaping to the throat and the mind
+    in a tumult of anticipation to the end.... No series of short
+    stories in modern literature can approach them."--_Hartford Times._
+
+    "If Dr. A. Conan Doyle had not already placed himself in the front
+    rank of living English writers by 'The Refugees,' and other of his
+    larger stories, he would surely do so by these fifteen short
+    tales."--_New York Mail and Express._
+
+    "A strikingly realistic and decidedly original contribution to
+    modern literature."--_Boston Saturday Evening Gazette._
+
+
+MISS F. F. MONTRESOR'S BOOKS.
+
+_FALSE COIN OR TRUE?_ 12mo. Cloth, $1.25.
+
+    "One of the few true novels of the day.... It is powerful, and
+    touched with a delicate insight and strong impressions of life and
+    character.... The author's theme is original, her treatment
+    artistic, and the book is remarkable for its unflagging
+    interest."--_Philadelphia Record._
+
+    "The tale never flags in interest, and once taken up will not be
+    laid down until the last page is finished."--_Boston Budget._
+
+    "A well-written novel, with well-depicted characters and
+    well-chosen scenes."--_Chicago News._
+
+    "A sweet, tender, pure, and lovely story."--_Buffalo Commercial._
+
+_THE ONE WHO LOOKED ON._ 12mo. Cloth, $1.25.
+
+    "A tale quite unusual, entirely unlike any other, full of a strange
+    power and realism, and touched with a fine humor."--_London World._
+
+    "One of the most remarkable and powerful of the year's
+    contributions, worthy to stand with Ian Maclaren's."--_British
+    Weekly._
+
+    "One of the rare books which can be read with great pleasure and
+    recommended without reservation. It is fresh, pure, sweet, and
+    pathetic, with a pathos which is perfectly wholesome."--_St. Paul
+    Globe._
+
+    "The story is an intensely human one, and it is delightfully
+    told.... The author shows a marvelous keenness in character
+    analysis, and a marked ingenuity in the development of her
+    story."--_Boston Advertiser._
+
+_INTO THE HIGH WAYS AND HEDGES._ 12mo. Paper, 50 cents; cloth, $1.00.
+
+    "A touch of idealism, of nobility of thought and purpose, mingled
+    with an air of reality and well-chosen expression, are the most
+    notable features of a book that has not the ordinary defects of
+    such qualities. With all its elevation of utterance and
+    spirituality of outlook and insight it is wonderfully free from
+    overstrained or exaggerated matter, and it has glimpses of humor.
+    Most of the characters are vivid, yet there are restraint and
+    sobriety in their treatment, and almost all are carefully and
+    consistently evolved."--_London Athenaeum._
+
+    "'Into the Highways and Hedges' is a book not of promise only, but
+    of high achievement. It is original, powerful, artistic, humorous.
+    It places the author at a bound in the rank of those artists to
+    whom we look for the skillful presentation of strong personal
+    impressions of life and character."--_London Daily News._
+
+    "The pure idealism of 'Into the Highways and Hedges' does much to
+    redeem modern fiction from the reproach it has brought upon
+    itself.... The story is original, and told with great
+    refinement."--_Philadelphia Public Ledger._
+
+
+"A better book than 'The Prisoner of Zenda.'"--_London Queen._
+
+_THE CHRONICLES OF COUNT ANTONIO._ By ANTHONY HOPE, author of "The God
+in the Car," "The Prisoner of Zenda," etc. With photogravure
+Frontispiece by S. W. Van Schaick. Third edition. 12mo. Cloth, $1.50.
+
+    "No adventures were ever better worth recounting than are those of
+    Antonio of Monte Velluto, a very Bayard among outlaws.... To all
+    those whose pulses still stir at the recital of deeds of high
+    courage, we may recommend this book.... The chronicle conveys the
+    emotion of heroic adventure, and is picturesquely
+    written."--_London Daily News._
+
+    "It has literary merits all its own, of a deliberate and rather
+    deep order.... In point of execution 'The Chronicles of Count
+    Antonio' is the best work that Mr. Hope has yet done. The design is
+    clearer, the workmanship more elaborate, the style more colored....
+    The incidents are most ingenious, they are told quietly, but with
+    great cunning, and the Quixotic sentiment which pervades it all is
+    exceedingly pleasant"--_Westminster Gazette._
+
+    "A romance worthy of all the expectations raised by the brilliancy
+    of his former books, and likely to be read with a keen enjoyment
+    and a healthy exaltation of the spirits by every one who takes it
+    up."--_The Scotsman._
+
+    "A gallant tale, written with unfailing freshness and
+    spirit."--_London Daily Telegraph._
+
+    "One of the most fascinating romances written in English within
+    many days. The quaint simplicity of its style is delightful, and
+    the adventures recorded in these 'Chronicles of Count Antonio' are
+    as stirring and ingenious as any conceived even by Weyman at his
+    best."--_New York World._
+
+    "Romance of the real flavor, wholly and entirely romance, and
+    narrated in true romantic style. The characters, drawn with such
+    masterly handling, are not merely pictures and portraits, but
+    statues that are alive and step boldly forward from the
+    canvas."--_Boston Courier._
+
+    "Told in a wonderfully simple and direct style, and with the magic
+    touch of a man who has the genius of narrative, making the varied
+    incidents flow naturally and rapidly in a stream of sparkling
+    discourse."--_Detroit Tribune._
+
+    "Easily ranks with, if not above, 'A Prisoner of Zenda.'...
+    Wonderfully strong, graphic, and compels the interest of the most
+    _blase_ novel reader."--_Boston Advertiser._
+
+    "No adventures were ever better worth telling than those of Count
+    Antonio.... The author knows full well how to make every pulse
+    thrill, and how to hold his readers under the spell of his
+    magic."--_Boston Herald._
+
+    "A book to make women weep proud tears, and the blood of men to
+    tingle with knightly fervor.... In 'Count Antonio' we think Mr.
+    Hope surpasses himself, as he has already surpassed all the other
+    story-tellers of the period."--_New York Spirit of the Times._
+
+
+NOVELS BY HALL CAINE.
+
+_THE MANXMAN._ 12mo. Cloth, $1.50.
+
+    "A story of marvelous dramatic intensity, and in its ethical
+    meaning has a force comparable only to Hawthorne's 'Scarlet
+    Letter.'"--_Boston Beacon._
+
+    "A work of power which is another stone added to the foundation of
+    enduring fame to which Mr. Caine is yearly adding."--_Public
+    Opinion._
+
+    "A wonderfully strong study of character; a powerful analysis of
+    those elements which go to make up the strength and weakness of a
+    man, which are at fierce warfare within the same breast; contending
+    against each other, as it were, the one to raise him to fame and
+    power, the other to drag him down to degradation and shame. Never
+    in the whole range of literature have we seen the struggle between
+    these forces for supremacy over the man more powerfully, more
+    realistically delineated than Mr. Caine pictures it."--_Boston Home
+    Journal._
+
+_THE DEEMSTER. A Romance of the Isle of Man._ 12mo. Cloth, $1.50.
+
+    "Hall Caine has already given us some very strong and fine work,
+    and 'The Deemster' is a story of unusual power.... Certain passages
+    and chapters have an intensely dramatic grasp, and hold the
+    fascinated reader with a force rarely excited nowadays in
+    literature."--_The Critic._
+
+    "One of the strongest novels which has appeared in many a
+    day."--_San Francisco Chronicle._
+
+    "Fascinates the mind like the gathering and bursting of a
+    storm."--_Illustrated London News._
+
+    "Deserves to be ranked among the remarkable novels of the
+    day."--_Chicago Times._
+
+_THE BONDMAN._ New edition. 12mo. Cloth, $1.50.
+
+    "The welcome given to this story has cheered and touched me, but I
+    am conscious that, to win a reception so warm, such a book must
+    have had readers who brought to it as much as they took away.... I
+    have called my story a saga, merely because it follows the epic
+    method, and I must not claim for it at any point the weighty
+    responsibility of history, or serious obligations to the world of
+    fact. But it matters not to me what Icelanders may call 'The
+    Bondman,' if they will honor me by reading it in the open-hearted
+    spirit and with the free mind with which they are content to read
+    of Grettir and of his fights with the Troll."--_From the Author's
+    Preface._
+
+_CAPT'N DAVY'S HONEYMOON. A Manx Yarn._ 12mo. Paper, 50 cents; cloth,
+$1.00.
+
+    "A new departure by this author. Unlike his previous works, this
+    little tale is almost wholly humorous, with, however, a current of
+    pathos underneath. It is not always that an author can succeed
+    equally well in tragedy and in comedy, but it looks as though Mr.
+    Hall Caine would be one of the exceptions."--_London Literary
+    World._
+
+    "It is pleasant to meet the author of 'The Deemster' in a brightly
+    humorous little story like this.... It shows the same observation
+    of Manx character, and much of the same artistic
+    skill."--_Philadelphia Times._
+
+
+BOOKS BY MRS. EVERARD COTES (SARA JEANNETTE DUNCAN).
+
+_HIS HONOUR, AND A LADY._ Illustrated. 12mo. Cloth, $1.50.
+
+    "'His Honour, and a Lady' is a finished novel, colored with true
+    local dyes and instinct with the Anglo-Indian and pure Indian
+    spirit, besides a perversion by originality of created character
+    and a crisp way of putting things."--_Chicago Times-Herald._
+
+_THE STORY OF SONNY SAHIB._ Illustrated. 12mo. Cloth, $1.00
+
+    "As perfect a story of its kind as can be imagined."--_Chicago
+    Times-Herald._
+
+_VERNON'S AUNT._ With many Illustrations. 12mo. Cloth, $1.25.
+
+    "A most vivid and realistic impression of certain phases of life in
+    India, and no one can read her vivacious chronicle without
+    indulging in many a hearty laugh."--_Boston Beacon._
+
+_A DAUGHTER OF TO-DAY._ A Novel. 12mo. Cloth, $1.50.
+
+    "This novel is a strong and serious piece of work; one of a kind
+    that is getting too rare in these days of universal
+    crankiness."--_Boston Courier._
+
+_A SOCIAL DEPARTURE: How Orthodocia and I Went Round the World by
+Ourselves._ With 111 Illustrations by F. H. TOWNSEND. 12mo. Paper, 75
+cents; cloth, $1.75.
+
+    "A brighter, merrier, more entirely charming book would be, indeed,
+    difficult to find."--_St. Louis Republic._
+
+_AN AMERICAN GIRL IN LONDON._ With 80 Illustrations by F. H. TOWNSEND.
+12mo. Paper, 75 cents; cloth, $1.50.
+
+    "So sprightly a book as this, on life in London as observed by an
+    American, has never before been written."--_Philadelphia Bulletin._
+
+_THE SIMPLE ADVENTURES OF A MEMSAHIB._ With 37 Illustrations by _F. H.
+Townsend_. 12mo. Cloth, $1.50.
+
+    "It is like traveling without leaving one's armchair to read it.
+    Miss Duncan has the descriptive and narrative gift in large
+    measure, and she brings vividly before us the street scenes, the
+    interiors, the bewilderingly queer natives, the gayeties of the
+    English colony."--_Philadelphia Telegraph._
+
+
+NOVELS BY MAARTEN MAARTENS.
+
+_THE GREATER GLORY. A Story of High Life._ By MAARTEN MAARTENS, author
+of "God's Fool," "Joost Avelingh," etc. 12mo. Cloth, $1.50.
+
+    "Until the Appletons discovered the merits of Maarten Maartens, the
+    foremost of Dutch novelists, it is doubtful if many American
+    readers knew that there were Dutch novelists. His 'God's Fool' and
+    'Joost Avelingh' made for him an American reputation. To our mind
+    this just published work of his is his best.... He is a master of
+    epigram, an artist in description, a prophet in insight."--_Boston
+    Advertiser._
+
+    "It would take several columns to give any adequate idea of the
+    superb way in which the Dutch novelist has developed his theme and
+    wrought out one of the most impressive stories of the period.... It
+    belongs to the small class of novels which one can not afford to
+    neglect."--_San Francisco Chronicle._
+
+    "Maarten Maartens stands head and shoulders above the average
+    novelist of the day in intellectual subtlety and imaginative
+    power."--_Boston Beacon._
+
+_GOD'S FOOL._ By MAARTEN MAARTENS. 12mo. Cloth, $1.50.
+
+    "Throughout there is an epigrammatic force which would make
+    palatable a less interesting story of human lives or one less
+    deftly told."--_London Saturday Review._
+
+    "Perfectly easy, graceful, humorous.... The author's skill in
+    character-drawing is undeniable."--_London Chronicle._
+
+    "A remarkable work."--_New York Times._
+
+    "Maarten Maartens has secured a firm footing in the eddies of
+    current literature.... Pathos deepens into tragedy in the thrilling
+    story of 'God's Fool.'"--_Philadelphia Ledger._
+
+    "Its preface alone stamps the author as one of the leading English
+    novelists of to-day."--_Boston Daily Advertiser._
+
+    "The story is wonderfully brilliant.... The interest never lags;
+    the style is realistic and intense; and there is a constantly
+    underlying current of subtle humor.... It is, in short, a book
+    which no student of modern literature should fail to
+    read."--_Boston Times._
+
+    "A story of remarkable interest and point."--_New York Observer._
+
+_JOOST AVELINGH._ By MAARTEN MAARTENS. 12mo. Cloth, $1.50.
+
+    "So unmistakably good as to induce the hope that an acquaintance
+    with the Dutch literature of fiction may soon become more general
+    among us."--_London Morning Post._
+
+    "In scarcely any of the sensational novels of the day will the
+    reader find more nature or more human nature."--_London Standard._
+
+    "A novel of a very high type. At once strongly realistic and
+    powerfully idealistic."--_London Literary World._
+
+    "Full of local color and rich in quaint phraseology and
+    suggestion."--_London Telegraph._
+
+    "Maarten Maartens is a capital story-teller."--_Pall Mall Gazette._
+
+    "Our English writers of fiction will have to look to their
+    laurels."--_Birmingham Daily Post._
+
+_A JOURNEY IN OTHER WORLDS. A Romance of the Future._ By JOHN JACOB
+ASTOR. With 9 full-page Illustrations by Dan Beard. 12mo. Cloth, $1.50.
+
+    "An interesting and cleverly devised book.... No lack of
+    imagination.... Shows a skillful and wide acquaintance with
+    scientific facts."--_New York Herald._
+
+    "The author speculates cleverly and daringly on the scientific
+    advance of the earth, and he revels in the physical luxuriance of
+    Jupiter; but he also lets his imagination travel through spiritual
+    realms, and evidently delights in mystic speculation quite as much
+    as in scientific investigation. If he is a follower of Jules Verne,
+    he has not forgotten also to study the philosophers."--_New York
+    Tribune._
+
+    "A beautiful example of typographical art and the bookmaker's
+    skill.... To appreciate the story one must read it."--_New York
+    Commercial Advertiser._
+
+    "The date of the events narrated in this book is supposed to be
+    2000 A. D. The inhabitants of North America have increased mightily
+    in numbers and power and knowledge. It is an age of marvelous
+    scientific attainments. Flying machines have long been in common
+    use, and finally a new power is discovered called 'apergy,' the
+    reverse of gravitation, by which people are able to fly off into
+    space in any direction, and at what speed they please."--_New York
+    Sun._
+
+    "The scientific romance by John Jacob Astor is more than likely to
+    secure a distinct popular success, and achieve widespread vogue
+    both as an amusing and interesting story, and a thoughtful endeavor
+    to prophesy some of the triumphs which science is destined to win
+    by the year 2000. The book has been written with a purpose, and
+    that a higher one than the mere spinning of a highly imaginative
+    yarn. Mr. Astor has been engaged upon the book for over two years,
+    and has brought to bear upon it a great deal of hard work in the
+    way of scientific research, of which he has been very fond ever
+    since he entered Harvard. It is admirably illustrated by Dan
+    Beard."--_Mail and Express._
+
+    "Mr. Astor has himself almost all the qualities imaginable for
+    making the science of astronomy popular. He knows the learned maps
+    of the astrologers. He knows the work of Copernicus. He has made
+    calculations and observations. He is enthusiastic, and the
+    spectacular does not frighten him."--_New York Times._
+
+    "The work will remind the reader very much of Jules Verne in its
+    general plan of using scientific facts and speculation as a
+    skeleton on which to hang the romantic adventures of the central
+    figures, who have all the daring ingenuity and luck of Mr. Verne's
+    heroes. Mr. Astor uses history to point out what in his opinion
+    science may be expected to accomplish. It is a romance with a
+    purpose."--_Chicago Inter-Ocean._
+
+    "The romance contains many new and striking developments of the
+    possibilities of science hereafter to be explored, but the volume
+    is intensely interesting, both as a product of imagination and an
+    illustration of the ingenious and original application of
+    science."--_Rochester Herald._
+
+
+THE STORY OF THE WEST SERIES.
+
+EDITED BY RIPLEY HITCHCOCK.
+
+    "There is a vast extent of territory lying between the Missouri
+    River and the Pacific coast which has barely been skimmed over so
+    far. That the conditions of life therein are undergoing changes
+    little short of marvelous will be understood when one recalls the
+    fact that the first white male child born in Kansas is still
+    living there; and Kansas is by no means one of the newer States.
+    Revolutionary indeed has been the upturning of the old condition of
+    affairs, and little remains thereof, and less will remain as each
+    year goes by, until presently there will be only tradition of the
+    Sioux and Comanches, the cowboy life, the wild horse, and the
+    antelope. Histories, many of them, have been written about the
+    Western country alluded to, but most if not practically all by
+    outsiders who knew not personally that life of kaleidoscopic
+    allurement. But ere it shall have vanished forever we are likely to
+    have truthful, complete, and charming portrayals of it produced by
+    men who actually know the life and have the power to describe
+    it."--_Henry Edward Rood, in The Mail and Express._
+
+
+_NOW READY._
+
+_THE STORY OF THE INDIAN._ By GEORGE BIRD GRINNELL, author of "Pawnee
+Hero Stories," "Blackfoot Lodge Tales," etc. 12mo. Cloth. Illustrated.
+$1.50.
+
+    "A valuable study of Indian life and character.... An attractive
+    book, ... in large part one in which Indians themselves might have
+    written."--_New York Tribune._
+
+    "Among the various books respecting the aborigines of America. Mr.
+    Grinnell's easily takes a leading position. He takes the reader
+    directly to the camp-fire and the council, and shows us the
+    American Indian as he really is.... A book which will convey much
+    interesting knowledge respecting a race which is now fast passing
+    away."--_Boston Commercial Bulletin._
+
+    "It must not be supposed that the volume is one only for scholars
+    and libraries of reference. It is far more than that. While it
+    is a true story, yet it is a story none the less abounding in
+    picturesque description and charming anecdote. We regard it as a
+    valuable contribution to American literature."--_N.Y. Mail and
+    Express._
+
+    "A most attractive book, which presents an admirable graphic
+    picture of the actual Indian, whose home life, religious
+    observances, amusements, together with the various phases of his
+    devotion to war and the chase, and finally the effects of
+    encroaching civilization, are delineated with a certainty and an
+    absence of sentimentalism or hostile prejudice that impart a
+    peculiar distinction to this eloquent story of a passing
+    life."--_Buffalo Commercial._
+
+    "No man is better qualified than Mr. Grinnell to introduce this
+    series with the story of the original owner of the West, the North
+    American Indian. Long acquaintance and association with the
+    Indians, and membership in a tribe, combined with a high degree of
+    literary ability and thorough education, has fitted the author to
+    understand the red man and to present him fairly to others."--_New
+    York Observer._
+
+
+_IN PREPARATION._
+
+    The Story of the Mine. By CHARLES HOWARD SHINN.
+    The Story of the Trapper. By GILBERT PARKER.
+    The Story of the Explorer.
+    The Story of the Cowboy.
+    The Story of the Soldier.
+    The Story of the Railroad.
+
+New York: D. APPLETON & CO., 72 Fifth Avenue.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Yekl, by Abraham Cahan
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