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diff --git a/36715-h/36715-h.htm b/36715-h/36715-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..2f46cfc --- /dev/null +++ b/36715-h/36715-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,6604 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" +"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en"> +<head> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=utf-8" /> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Style-Type" content="text/css" /> +<title>The Project Gutenberg eBook of Yekl, by Abraham Cahan</title> + +<style type="text/css"> + +body { margin-left: 20%; + margin-right: 20%; + text-align: justify; } + +h1, h2, h3, h4, h5 {text-align: center; font-style: normal; font-weight: +normal; line-height: 1.5; margin-top: .5em; margin-bottom: .5em;} + +h1 {font-size: 300%; + margin-top: 0.6em; + margin-bottom: 0.6em; + letter-spacing: 0.12em; + word-spacing: 0.2em; + text-indent: 0em;} +h2 {font-size: 150%; margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: 1em;} +h3 {font-size: 130%; margin-top: 1em;} +h4 {font-size: 120%;} +h5 {font-size: 110%;} + +.no-break {page-break-before: avoid;} /* for epubs */ + +div.chapter {page-break-before: always; margin-top: 4em;} + +p {text-indent: 1em; + margin-top: 0.25em; + margin-bottom: 0.25em; } + + .ctr {text-align: center;} + + .ctrspace {text-align: center; + margin-top: 2em;} + + .hang {text-align: justify; + padding-left: 2em; + text-indent: -2em;} + + .sc {font-variant: small-caps;} + + .footnote {margin-left: 16%; + margin-right: 8%; + font-size: 0.9em; + text-decoration: none;} + + .label {position: absolute; + right: 76%; + text-align: right; + text-decoration: none;} + + .blockquote {text-align: justify; + margin-left: 7%; + margin-right: 7%; + font-size: 96%; + margin-top: .75em; + margin-bottom: 1em;} + + ul {list-style-type: none; + margin-left: 6%;} + + hr.long {width: 90%; + height: 1px; + margin-top: 2.75em; + margin-bottom: 2.75em;} + + hr.med {width: 65%; + height: 1px; + margin-top: 2.5em; + margin-bottom: 2.5em;} + + hr.short {width: 35%; + height: 1px; + margin-top: 2.25em; + margin-bottom: 2.25em;} + + hr.div {width: 30%; + height: 1px; + margin-top: 1.25em; + margin-bottom: 1.25em;} + +div.fig { display:block; + margin:0 auto; + text-align:center; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em;} + +a:link {color:blue; text-decoration:none} +a:visited {color:blue; text-decoration:none} +a:hover {color:red} + +</style> +</head> +<body> + +<div style='text-align:center; font-size:1.2em; font-weight:bold'>The Project Gutenberg eBook of Yekl, by Abraham Cahan</div> +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and +most other parts of the world 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 <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. If you +are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the +country where you are located before using this eBook. +</div> +<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: Yekl<br /> + A tale of the New York ghetto</div> +<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: Abraham Cahan</div> +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Release Date: July 12, 2011 [eBook #36715]<br /> +[Most recently updated: April 27, 2022]</div> +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Language: English</div> +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Character set encoding: UTF-8</div> +<div style='display:block; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Produced by: Suzanne Shell and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team</div> +<div style='margin-top:2em; margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK YEKL ***</div> + +<h1>Yekl</h1> + +<h3>A Tale of the New York Ghetto</h3> + +<h2 class="no-break">By A. Cahan</h2> + +<div class="fig" style="width:100%;"> +<img src="images/logo.jpg" width="88" height="102" alt="[Publisher’s logo]" /> +</div> + +<h4>New York<br/> +D. Appleton and Company<br/> +1896 +</h4> + +<h4>Copyright, 1896,<br/> +By D. APPLETON AND COMPANY.</h4> + +<hr class="med" /> + +<h2>CONTENTS.</h2> + +<table summary="" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto"> + +<tr> +<td> +<a href="#I">I.—<span class="sc">Jake and Yekl</span></a> +</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> +<a href="#II">II.—<span class="sc">The New York Ghetto</span></a> +</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> +<a href="#III">III.—<span class="sc">In the grip of his past</span></a> +</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> +<a href="#IV">IV.—<span class="sc">The meeting</span></a> +</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> +<a href="#V">V.—<span class="sc">A paterfamilias</span></a> +</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> +<a href="#VI">VI.—<span class="sc">Circumstances alter cases</span></a> +</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> +<a href="#VII">VII.—<span class="sc">Mrs. Kavarsky’s coup d’état</span></a> +</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> +<a href="#VIII">VIII.—<span class="sc">A housetop idyl</span></a> +</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> +<a href="#IX">IX.—<span class="sc">The parting</span></a> +</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> +<a href="#X">X.—<span class="sc">A defeated victor</span></a> +</td> +</tr> + +</table> + +<hr class="med" /> + +<h2>YEKL.</h2> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="I"></a> +CHAPTER I.<br/> +JAKE AND YEKL.</h2> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“When I was in Boston,” he went on, with a contemptuous mien +intended for the American metropolis, “I knew a <i>feller</i>,<a +href="#note1" name="noteref1" class="fnanchor"><small>[1]</small></a> so he was +a <i>preticly</i> 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 <i>lot</i> of <i>greenhornsh</i> and can not speak a +word of English? Over there every Jew speaks English like a stream.” +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Say</i>, Dzake,” the presser broke in, “John Sullivan is +<i>tzampion</i> no longer, is he?” +</p> + +<p> +“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 <i>leaked</i> him, and Jimmie <i>leaked</i> Cholly Meetchel, too. +<i>You can betch you’ bootsh!</i> Johnnie could not leak Chollie, +<i>becaush</i> he is a big <i>bluffer</i>, 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 +<i>pundished</i> him. <i>Oh, didn’t he knock him out off shight!</i> He +came near making a meat ball of him”—with a chuckle. “He +<i>tzettled</i> him in three <i>roynds</i>. I knew a feller who had seen the +fight.” +</p> + +<p> +“What is a <i>rawnd</i>, Dzake?” the presser inquired. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Nice fun that!” observed the side-whiskered man, who had stopped +sewing to follow Jake’s exhibition. “Fighting—like drunken +moujiks in Russia!” +</p> + +<p> +“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 +“<i>pawnch</i>” of his formidable fist. +</p> + +<p> +“Look, I beg you, look at his dog’s tricks!” the other said +in disgust. +</p> + +<p> +“Horse’s head that you are!” Jake rejoined good-humoredly. +“Do you mean to tell me that a moujik understands how to <i>fight</i>? A +disease he does! He only knows how to strike like a bear [Jake adapted his +voice and gesticulation to the idea of clumsiness], <i>an’ dot’sh +ull</i>! What does he <i>care</i> where his paw will land, so he strikes. +<i>But</i> here one must observe <i>rulesh</i> [rules].” +</p> + +<p> +At this point Meester Bernstein—for so the rabbinical-looking man was +usually addressed by his shopmates—looked up from his dictionary. +</p> + +<p> +“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,’<a href="#note2" +name="noteref2" class="fnanchor"><small>[2]</small> </a> 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 <i>charge</i> +him a cent for it, either.” +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Is dot sho?</i>” Jake retorted, somewhat nonplussed. +“<i>I betch you</i> he would not. The peasant would lie bleeding like a +hog before he had time to turn around.” +</p> + +<p> +“<i>But</i> they might kill each other in that way, <i>ain’t +it</i>, 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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, that will happen but very seldom,” Jake returned rather +glumly. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Nice pleasure, <i>anyhull</i>,” remarked the widow. +“<i>Never min’</i>, we shall see how it will lie in his head when +he has a wife and children to <i>support</i>.” +</p> + +<p> +Jake colored. “What does a <i>chicken</i> know about these things?” +he said irascibly. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. <i>Dot’sh a’ kin’ a man I am!</i> One +must not be a <i>greenhorn</i>. 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?” +</p> + +<p> +“Are there no other Christians than <i>fighters</i> in America?” +Bernstein objected with an amused smile. “Why don’t you look for +the educated ones?” +</p> + +<p> +“Do you mean to say the <i>fighters</i> are not <i>ejecate</i>? Better +than you, <i>anyhoy</i>,” Jake said with a Yankee wink, followed by his +Semitic smile. “Here you read the papers, and yet <i>I’ll betch +you</i> you don’t know that Corbett <i>findished college</i>.” +</p> + +<p> +“I never read about fighters,” Bernstein replied with a bored +gesture, and turned to his paper. +</p> + +<p> +“Then say that you don’t know, and <i>dot’sh ull</i>!” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Alla right</i>, let it be as you say; the <i>fighters</i> are not +<i>ejecate</i>. No, not a bit!” he said ironically, continuing to address +himself to Bernstein. “But what will you say to <i>baseball</i>? All +<i>college boys</i> and <i>tony peoplesh</i> play it,” he concluded +triumphantly. Bernstein remained silent, his eyes riveted to his newspaper. +“Ah, you don’t answer, <i>shee</i>?” said Jake, feeling put +out. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Sure!</i> You must know how to <i>peetch</i>,” Jake rejoined +with the cloud lingering on his brow, as he lukewarmly delivered an imaginary +ball. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“He can do everything!” laughingly remarked a girl named Pessé. +</p> + +<p> +“How hard can you hit?” Jake demanded sarcastically, somewhat +warming up to the subject. +</p> + +<p> +“As hard as you at any time.” +</p> + +<p> +“<i>I betch you a dullar to you’ ten shent</i> 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. +</p> + +<p> +“There he goes!—betting!” the presser exclaimed, drawing +slightly back. “For my part, your <i>pitzers</i> and <i>catzers</i> may +all lie in the earth. A nice entertainment, indeed! Just like little +children—playing ball! And yet people say America is a <i>smart</i> +country. I don’t see it.” +</p> + +<p> +“<i>’F caush</i> you don’t, <i>becaush</i> you are a +bedraggled <i>greenhorn</i>, 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. +</p> + +<p> +“Look at the Yankee!” the presser shot back. +</p> + +<p> +“More of a one than you, <i>anyhoy</i>.” +</p> + +<p> +“He thinks that <i>shaving</i> one’s mustache makes a +Yankee!” +</p> + +<p> +Jake turned white with rage. +</p> + +<p> +“<i>’Pon my vord</i>, I’ll ride into his mug and give such a +<i>shaving</i> and planing to his pig’s snout that he will have to pick +up his teeth.” +</p> + +<p> +“That’s all you are good for.” +</p> + +<p> +“Better don’t answer him, Jake,” said Fanny, intimately. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, I came near forgetting that he has somebody to take his part!” +snapped the presser. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t get excited,” Bernstein coaxed him. +</p> + +<p> +“Better don’t soil your hands,” Fanny added. +</p> + +<p> +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 <i>spending</i> your money on fights, dancing, and things like that, +would it not be better if you paid it to a teacher?” +</p> + +<p> +Jake flew into a fresh passion. “<i>Never min’</i> 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!” +</p> + +<p> +A deep blush of wounded vanity mounted to Bernstein’s sallow cheek. +“<i>Ull right, ull right!</i>” he cut the conversation short, and +took up the newspaper. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“No,” said Jake, morosely. +</p> + +<p> +“Vy, to-day is Vensday.” +</p> + +<p> +“And without you I don’t know it!” he snarled in Yiddish. +</p> + +<p> +The finisher girl blushed deeply and refrained from any response. +</p> + +<p> +“He does look like a <i>regely</i> Yankee, doesn’t he?” Pessé +whispered to her after a little. +</p> + +<p> +“Go and ask him!” +</p> + +<p> +“Go and hang yourself together with him! Such a nasty preacher! Did you +ever hear—one dares not say a word to the noblewoman!” +</p> + +<p> +At this juncture the boss, a dwarfish little Jew, with a vivid pair of eyes and +a shaggy black beard, darted into the chamber. +</p> + +<p> +“It is <i>no used</i>!” 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. +“<i>Vell</i>, I shall not be teasing you, ‘Pity living +things!’ The expressman is <i>darn stess</i>. I would not go till I saw +him <i>start</i>, and then I caught a car. No other <i>boss</i> could get a +single jacket even if he fell upon his knees. <i>Vell</i>, do you appreciate it +at least? Not much, ay?” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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, “<i>chance-mentshen</i>,” 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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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<a href="#note3" name="noteref3" +class="fnanchor"><small>[3]</small> </a> 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. +</p> + +<p> +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 <i>kibitka</i> 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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="II"></a> +CHAPTER II.<br/> +THE NEW YORK GHETTO.</h2> + +<p> +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!” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“So kvick?” she asked, raising her head in feigned surprise. +</p> + +<p> +“You cull dot kvick?” he returned grimly. “Good-bye!” +</p> + +<p> +“Say, ain’t you goin’ to dance to-night, really?” she +queried shamefacedly. +</p> + +<p> +“I tol’ you I vouldn’t.” +</p> + +<p> +“What does <i>she</i> 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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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 <i>regely</i> pair of bears.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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 <i>ennui</i> 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. +</p> + +<p> +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 <i>shnoozes</i>, 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!” +</p> + +<p> +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?” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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?” +</p> + +<p> +“Alla right!” Jake responded gruffly. “Gentsh, getch you +partnesh, hawrry up!” he commanded in another instant. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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 +<i>you</i>? 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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Dot monkey?” said Jake. “Vot you talkin’ aboyt! She +vouldn’t lishn to me neider, honesht.” +</p> + +<p> +“Say dot you don’ vonted and dot’s ull.” +</p> + +<p> +“Alla right; I’m goin’ to ashk her, but I know it +vouldn’t be of naw used.” +</p> + +<p> +“Never min’, you hask ’er foist. You knaw se vouldn’t +refuse <i>you</i>!” Joe urged, with a knowing grin. +</p> + +<p> +“Hoy much vill you bet she will refushe shaw?” Jake rejoined with +insincere vehemence, as he whipped out a handful of change. +</p> + +<p> +“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’?” +</p> + +<p> +“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>I</i> am!” And once more protesting +his firm conviction that Mamie would disregard his request, he started to prove +that she would not. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Good-evenig, Mamie!” he said, bowing with mock gallantry. +</p> + +<p> +“Rats!” +</p> + +<p> +“Shay, Mamie, give dot feller a tvisht, vill you?” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +Jake felt routed; but he put a bold face on it and broke out with studied +resentment: +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“Look how kvick he gets excited!” she said, surrenderingly. +</p> + +<p> +“I ain’t get ekshitet at ull; but vot’sh de used a +makin’ monkey beesnesh?” he retorted with triumphant acerbity. +</p> + +<p> +“You are a monkey you’self,” she returned with a playful +pout. +</p> + +<p> +The compliment was acknowledged by one of Jake’s blandest grins. +</p> + +<p> +“An’ you are a monkey from monkey-land,” he said. “Vill +you dansh mit dot feller?” +</p> + +<p> +“Rats! Vot vill you give me?” +</p> + +<p> +“Vot should I give you?” he asked impatiently. +</p> + +<p> +“Vill you treat?” +</p> + +<p> +“Treat? Ger-rr oyt!” he replied with a sweeping kick at space. +</p> + +<p> +“Den I von’t dance.” +</p> + +<p> +“Alla right. I’ll treat you mit a coupel a waltch.” +</p> + +<p> +“Is dot so? You must really tink I am swooning to dance vit you,” +she said, dividing the remark between both jargons. +</p> + +<p> +“Look at her, look! she is a <i>regely</i> getzke<a href="#note4" +name="noteref4" class="fnanchor"><small>[4]</small></a>: one must take off +one’s cap to speak to her. Don’t you always say you like to +<i>dansh</i> with me <i>becush</i> I am a good <i>dansher</i>?” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“Alla right!” he said tartly. “So you don’ +vonted?” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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>I</i> am.” +</p> + +<p> +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>I</i> am!” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +Fanny felt cut to the quick. +</p> + +<p> +“You are jealous, ain’t you?” she jerked out. +</p> + +<p> +“Who, me? Vy should I be jealous?” Miss Jacobs protested, +colouring. “On my part let them both go to ——. <i>You</i> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“Such a nasty little runt!” another girl chimed in. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“To think of a bit of a flea like that having so much <i>cheek</i>! Here +is America for you!” +</p> + +<p> +“America for a country and ‘<i>dod’ll do</i>’ +[that’ll do] for a language!” observed one of the young men of the +group, indulging one of the stereotype jokes of the Ghetto. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Hello, Fanny!” he shouted briskly, coming up in front of her. +</p> + +<p> +“Hello!” she returned rigidly, her eyes fixed on the dirty floor. +</p> + +<p> +“Come, give ush a tvisht, vill you?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“I didn’t vonted to gu here, honesht, Fanny. I o’ly come to +tell Jaw shometin’, an’ dot’sh ull,” he said guiltily. +</p> + +<p> +“Why should you apologize?” she addressed the tip of her shoe in +her mother tongue. “As if he was obliged to apologize to me! <i>For my +part</i> you can <i>dance</i> with her day and night. <i>Vot do I care?</i> As +if I <i>cared</i>! I have only come to see what a <i>bluffer</i> you are. Do +you think I am a <i>fool</i>? As <i>smart</i> as your Mamie, <i>anyvay</i>. 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?” +</p> + +<p> +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: +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Dot’sh alla right!</i> You will finish your sermon afterward. +And in the meantime <i>lesh have a valtz</i> from the land of +<i>valtzes</i>!” With which he forcibly dragged her off her seat, +catching her round the waist. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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 manœuvre, but her +exultation was all the greater for it, and she participated in the ensuing +conversation with exuberant geniality. +</p> + +<p> +By-and-bye they were joined by Jake. +</p> + +<p> +“Vell, vill you treat, Jake?” said Mamie. +</p> + +<p> +“Vot you vant, a kish?” he replied, putting his offer in action as +well as in language. +</p> + +<p> +Mamie slapped his arm. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +Fanny laughed. +</p> + +<p> +“Once I am <i>treating</i>, both <i>ladas</i> must be <i>treated</i> +alike, <i>ain’ it</i>?” 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. +</p> + +<p> +“But vy don’t you treat, you stingy loafer you?” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +Nevertheless Jake marched his two “ladas” up to the marble +fountain, and regaled them with two cents’ worth of soda each. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="III"></a> +CHAPTER III.<br/> +IN THE GRIP OF HIS PAST.</h2> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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>I</i> am!” One day, in the +course of an intimate conversation with Joe, Jake, dropping into a +philosophical mood, remarked: +</p> + +<p> +“It’s something like a baker, <i>ain’t it</i>? The more +<i>cakes</i> he has the less he likes them. You and I have a <i>lot</i> of +girls; that’s why we don’t <i>care</i> for any one of them.” +</p> + +<p> +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<a href="#note5" name="noteref5" +class="fnanchor"><small>[5]</small> </a> 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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“How do <i>I</i> know?” Jake would respond. “It is you who +can write; so you ought to understand what else to write.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +And so it went month in and month out. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Alla right</i>, hurry up now!” Jake said, grinding his teeth on +a mumbled English oath. +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Righd evay! Righd evay!</i>” the old fellow returned +jubilantly, as he hastily adjusted his spectacles and addressed himself to his +task. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +Then he suddenly gave a start, as if shocked. +</p> + +<p> +“Vot’sh a madder? Vot’sh a madder?” +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Vot’s der madder?</i> What should be the <i>madder</i>? +Wait—a—I don’t know what I can do”—he halted in +perplexity. +</p> + +<p> +“Any bad news?” Jake inquired, turning pale. “Speak +out!” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t <i>bodder</i> a head!” Jake shouted savagely. “I +have paid you, haven’t I?” +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Say</i>, 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. +</p> + +<p> +“Tell me what is the matter,” Jake entreated, with clinched fists. +“Is anybody dead? Do tell me now.” +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Vell</i>, 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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ha?” Jake asked aghast, with a wide gape. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“Was he an old man?” the scribe queried sympathetically. +</p> + +<p> +“About seventy,” Jake answered, bursting into tears. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +As Jake’s tears instantly ran dry he fell to wringing his hands and +moaning. +</p> + +<p> +“Good-night!” he presently said, taking leave. “I’ll +see you to-morrow, if God be pleased.” +</p> + +<p> +“Good-night!” the scribe returned with heartfelt condolence. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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 +<i>tzimess</i>,<a href="#note6" name="noteref6" +class="fnanchor"><small>[6]</small> </a> as of yore! Poor mother! He +<i>will</i> 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. +</p> + +<p> +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 <i>ladas</i>,” 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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +With a fast-beating heart Jake finally jumped off the lounge, and gently +knocked at the door of his landlady’s bedroom. +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Eshcoosh me, mishesh</i>, be so kind as to lend me your prayer-book. +I want to say the night prayer,” he addressed her imploringly. +</p> + +<p> +The old woman took it for a cruel practical joke, and flew into a passion. +</p> + +<p> +“Are you crazy or drunk? A nice time to make fun!” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="IV"></a> +CHAPTER IV.<br/> +THE MEETING.</h2> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Yekl!” she screamed out in a piteous high key, as if crying for +mercy. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Oi</i> a lamentation upon me! He shaves his beard!” Gitl +ejaculated to herself as she scrutinized her husband. “Yosselé, look! +Here is <i>taté</i>!” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“You look like a <i>poritz</i>,”<a href="#note7" name="noteref7" +class="fnanchor"><small>[7]</small> </a> she said shyly. +</p> + +<p> +“How are you? How is mother?” +</p> + +<p> +“How should she be? So, so. She sends you her love,” Gitl mumbled +out. +</p> + +<p> +“How long was father ill?” +</p> + +<p> +“Maybe a month. He cost us health enough.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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 +<i>his</i> wife. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t!” he said, with patient gentleness, pushing away her +arms. “Here everything is so different.” +</p> + +<p> +She coloured deeply. +</p> + +<p> +“They don’t wear wigs here,” he ventured to add. +</p> + +<p> +“What then?” she asked, perplexedly. +</p> + +<p> +“You will see. It is quite another world.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Here one does not wear even a kerchief.” +</p> + +<p> +“How then? Do they go about with their own hair?” she queried in +ill-disguised bewilderment. +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Vell, alla right</i>, put it on, quick!” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +The kerchief had a rejuvenating effect. But Jake thought that it made her look +like an Italian woman of Mulberry Street on Sunday. +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Alla right</i>, leave it be for the present,” he said in +despair, reflecting that the wig would have been the lesser evil of the two. +</p> + +<hr class="short" /> + +<p> +When they reached the city Gitl was shocked to see him lead the way to a horse +car. +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Oi</i> woe is me! Why, it is Sabbath!” she gasped. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +Having thus paraded himself before his wife, Jake all at once grew kindly +disposed toward her. +</p> + +<p> +“You must be hungry?” he asked. +</p> + +<p> +“Not at all! Where do you eat your <i>varimess</i>?”<a +href="#note8" name="noteref8" class="fnanchor"><small>[8]</small> </a> +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t say varimess,” he corrected her complaisantly; +“here it is called <i>dinner</i>!” +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Dinner?</i><a href="#note9" name="noteref9" +class="fnanchor"><small>[9]</small> </a> And what if one becomes fatter?” +she confusedly ventured an irresistible pun. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="V"></a> +CHAPTER V.<br/> +A PATERFAMILIAS.</h2> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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 +<i>satetzfiet</i> to go with her own hair, <i>vell</i>!” What then would +take place Mrs. Kavarsky left unsaid. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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 +<i>panenke</i>!”<a href="#note10" name="noteref10" +class="fnanchor"><small>[10]</small> </a> 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. +</p> + +<p> +“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 <i>fentzter</i>, in spite of +Jake’s repeated corrections. +</p> + +<p> +“Can’t you say <i>veenda</i>?” he had growled. “What a +peasant head! Other <i>greenhornsh</i> learn to speak American <i>shtyle</i> +very fast; and she—one might tell her the same word eighty thousand +times, and it is <i>nu used</i>.” +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Es is of’n veenda mein ich</i>,”<a href="#note11" +name="noteref11" class="fnanchor"><small>[11]</small> </a> she hastened to set +herself right. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<hr class="short" /> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Did I ever tell you I was a <i>tzingle man</i>?” he laughingly +defended himself, though blushing crimson, against his shopmates’ taunts. +“And am I obliged to give you a <i>report</i> whether my wife has come or +not? You are not worth mentioning her name to, <i>anyhoy</i>.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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 +<i>oyshgreen</i><a href="#note12" name="noteref12" +class="fnanchor"><small>[12]</small> </a> herself and I shall get used to her. +She is a —— <i>shight</i> 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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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, <i>’pon my +void</i>. 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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +Bernstein, who, as a rule, looked daggers at his meal, this time received his +plate of <i>borshtch</i><a href="#note13" name="noteref13" +class="fnanchor"><small>[13]</small></a>—his favourite dish—with a +radiant face; and as he ate he pronounced it a masterpiece, and lavished +compliments on the artist. +</p> + +<p> +“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 +<i>missess</i> would get a medal.” +</p> + +<p> +“A <i>regely</i> European borshtch!” Charley chimed in. “It +is worth ten cents a spoonful, <i>’pon mine vort</i>!” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Alla right!</i>” Jake bethought himself. “<i>Charge</i> +him ten <i>shent</i> for each spoonful. Mr. Bernstein, you shall be kind enough +to be the <i>bookkeeper</i>. But if you don’t pay, Chollie, I’ll +get out a <i>tzommesh</i> [summons] from <i>court</i>.” +</p> + +<p> +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!” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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, <i>de feller</i>! +Joey, hoy you like de borshtch? Alla right?” Jake asked in English. +</p> + +<p> +“Awrr-ra rr-right!” Joey pealed out his sturdy rustic r’s, +which he had mastered shortly before taking leave of his doting grandmother. +</p> + +<p> +“See how well he speaks English?” Jake said, facetiously. “A +—— <i>shight</i> better than his mamma, <i>anyvay</i>.” +</p> + +<p> +Gitl, who was in the meantime serving the meat, coloured, but took the remark +in good part. +</p> + +<p> +“<i>I tell ye</i> he is growing to be Presdent ’Nited +States,” Charlie interposed. +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Greenhorn</i> that you are! A President must be American born,” +Jake explained, self-consciously. “Ain’t it, Mr. Bernstein?” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +“<i>Vell</i>, if he cannot be a President of the United States, he may be +one of a synagogue, so he is a president.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“Who is making fun?” Bernstein demurred. “I wish I had a boy +like him.” +</p> + +<p> +“Get married and you will have one,” said Gitl, beamingly. +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Shay</i>, Mr. Bernstein, how about your <i>shadchen</i>?”<a +href="#note14" name="noteref14" class="fnanchor"><small>[14]</small> </a> 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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“Coom in!” repeated Joey. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Good-evenin’, Jake!” she said, with ostentatious vivacity. +</p> + +<p> +“Good-evenin’, Mamie!” Jake returned, jumping to his feet and +violently reddening, as if suddenly pricked. “Mish Fein, my vife! My +vife, Mish Fein!” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Say ‘I’m glyad to meech you,’” Jake urged her, +confusedly. +</p> + +<p> +The English phrase was more than Gitl could venture to echo. +</p> + +<p> +“She is still <i>green</i>,” Jake apologized for her, in Yiddish. +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Never min’</i>, she will soon <i>oysgreen</i> herself,” +Mamie remarked, with patronizing affability. +</p> + +<p> +“The <i>lada</i> is an acquaintance of mine,” Jake explained +bashfully, his hand feeling the few days’ growth of beard on his chin. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“You mush vant you tventy-fife dollars,” he presently nerved +himself up to say in English, breaking an awkward pause. +</p> + +<p> +“I should cough!” Mamie rejoined. +</p> + +<p> +“In a coupel a veeksh, Mamie, as sure as my name is Jake.” +</p> + +<p> +“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>I</i> care? I vant my money. I +voiked hard enough for it.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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——” +</p> + +<p> +“Shurr-r up, Mamie!” he interrupted her, gaspingly. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“Mamie! Ma-a-mie! Shtop! I’ll pay you ev’ry shent. Shpeak +Jewesh, pleashe!” he implored, as if for life. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“You von’t come by Joe no more?” she asked, with sudden +interest and even solicitude. +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“I’ll come, ash sure ash I leev.” +</p> + +<p> +“Vill you? All right. But if you don’ come an’ pay me at +least ten dollars for a sta’t, you’ll see!” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +Mamie concluded her visit by presenting Joey with the imposing sum of five +cents. +</p> + +<p> +“What do you say? Say ‘danks, sir!’” Gitl prompted the +boy. +</p> + +<p> +“Shay ’t’ank you, ma’am!’” Jake overruled +her. “‘Shir’ is said to a gentlemarn.” +</p> + +<p> +“Good-night!” Mamie sang out, as she majestically opened the door. +</p> + +<p> +“Good-night!” Jake returned, with a burning face. +</p> + +<p> +“Goot-night!” Gitl and Joey chimed in duet. +</p> + +<p> +“Say ‘cull again!’” +</p> + +<p> +“Cullye gain!” +</p> + +<p> +“Good-night!” Mamie said once more, as she bowed herself out of the +door with what she considered an exquisitely “tony” smile. +</p> + +<hr class="short" /> + +<p> +The guest’s exit was succeeded by a momentary silence. Jake felt as if +his face and ears were on fire. +</p> + +<p> +“We used to work in the same shop,” he presently said. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“She must be going to a ball,” he explained, at the same moment +casting a glance at the looking-glass. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“She looks a veritable <i>panenke</i>,”<a href="#note15" +name="noteref15" class="fnanchor"><small>[15]</small> </a> she remarked, with +hidden sarcasm. “Was she born here?” +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Nu</i>, but she has been very long here. She speaks English like one +American born. We are used to speak in English when we talk <i>shop</i>. She +came to ask me about a <i>job</i>.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="VI"></a> +CHAPTER VI.<br/> +CIRCUMSTANCES ALTER CASES.</h2> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“Nothing. May not one ask?” +</p> + +<p> +“What is the matter? Speak out! Are you afraid to tell me?” he +insisted. +</p> + +<p> +“What should be the matter? She was here. A nice <i>lada</i>.” +</p> + +<p> +“Your husband knows many nice <i>ladies</i>,” 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. +</p> + +<p> +“You ought to think yourself fortunate in having him for your +husband,” he added. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, but what did you mean by what you said first?” she demanded, +with an anxious air. +</p> + +<p> +“What did I mean? What should I have meant? I meant what I said. +<i>’F cou’se</i> 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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Who says I fear! Did I say I did? Why should I?” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Go away! You must be making fun of me!” she said, beaming with +delight. +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t you believe me? Why, are you not a pretty young +woman?” he remarked, with an oily look in his eye. +</p> + +<p> +The crimson came into her cheek, and she lowered her glance. +</p> + +<p> +“Stop making fun of me, I beg you,” she said softly. “Is it +true?” +</p> + +<p> +“Is what true? That you are a pretty young woman? Take a looking-glass +and see for yourself.” +</p> + +<p> +“Strange man that you are!” she returned, with confused +deprecation. “I mean what you said before about Jake,” she +faltered. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, about Jake! Then say so,” he jested. “Really he loves +you as life.” +</p> + +<p> +“How do you know?” she queried, wistfully. +</p> + +<p> +“How do I know!” he repeated, with an amused smile. “As if +one could not see!” +</p> + +<p> +“But he never told you himself!” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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 <i>ladas</i>,” 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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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: +</p> + +<p> +“Do you know what <i>I</i> have to tell you? Guess!” +</p> + +<p> +Gitl thought Heaven knows what revelations awaited her. +</p> + +<p> +“That you are a lump of horse and a greenhorn and nothing else!” +(Gitl felt much relieved.) “That piece of ugliness should <i>try</i> and +come to <i>my</i> house! Then she would know the price of a pound of evil. I +should open the door and—<i>march</i> 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 ‘<i>ladas foist</i>’—but then you do not even know +what that means!” she exclaimed, with a despairing wave of her hand. +</p> + +<p> +“What does it mean?” Gitl inquired, pensively. +</p> + +<p> +“What does it mean? What should it mean? It means but too well, <i>never +min’</i>. It means that when a husband does not <i>behabe</i> 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.” +</p> + +<p> +“You mean they send him to prison?” +</p> + +<p> +“Where else—to the theatre?” Mrs. Kavarsky mocked her +furiously. +</p> + +<p> +“A weeping to me!” Gitl said, with horror. “May God save me +from such things!” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“I shall take it off; now for sure—as sure as this is +Wednesday,” said Gitl, beseechingly. +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Kavarsky turned back to her pacified. +</p> + +<p> +“Remember now! If you <i>deshepoitn</i> [disappoint] me this time, +well!—look at me! I should think I was no Gentile woman, either. I am as +pious as you <i>anyhull</i>, and come from no mean family, either. You know I +hate to boast; <i>but</i> my father—peace be upon him!—was fit to +be a rabbi. <i>Vell</i>, and yet I am not afraid to go with my own hair. May no +greater sins be committed! Then it would be <i>never min’</i> enough. +Plenty of time for putting on the patch [meaning the wig] when I get old; +<i>but</i> as long as I am young, I am young <i>an’ dot’s ull</i>! +It can not be helped; when one lives in an <i>edzecate</i> country, one must +live like <i>edzecate peoples</i>. 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 <i>tea</i>. Go, my little lamb, go +and <i>try</i> 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—<i>not’ing</i>! Go now, my baby! Go and throw away your rag +and be a nice woman, and everything will be <i>ull right</i>.” 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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<hr class="short" /> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +Mamie was no less disappointed by the opening of the conversation than he. +“I ain’t afraid a bit,” she answered, sullenly. +</p> + +<p> +“Do you think my <i>kshpenshesh</i> are larger now?” he resumed in +Yiddish. “May I lose as much through sickness. On the countrary, I +<i>shpend</i> even much less than I used to. We have two nice boarders—I +keep them only for company’s sake—and I have a <i>shteada +job</i>—<i>a puddin’ of a job</i>. I shall have still more money to +<i>shpend outshite</i>,” he added, falteringly. +</p> + +<p> +“Outside?”—and she burst into an artificial laugh which sent +the blood to Jake’s face. +</p> + +<p> +“Why, do you think I sha’n’t go to Joe’s, nor to the +theatre, nor anywhere any more? Still oftener than before! <i>Hoy much vill you +bet?</i>” +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Rats!</i> 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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<hr class="short" /> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<hr class="short" /> + +<p> +One afternoon, shortly after Jake’s interview with Mamie in front of the +Chrystie Street tenement house, Fanny called on Gitl. +</p> + +<p> +“Are you Mrs. Podkovnik?” she inquired, with an embarrassed air. +</p> + +<p> +“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!” +</p> + +<p> +“Nothing. I <i>just</i> want to speak to you,” the visitor uttered, +mysteriously. +</p> + +<p> +“What is it?” +</p> + +<p> +“As I say, nothing at all. Is there nobody else in the house?” +Fanny demanded, looking about. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +The girl’s appearance and manner began to inspire Gitl with confidence. +</p> + +<p> +“My name is Rosy—Rosy Blank,” said Fanny, as she took a seat +on the further end of the lounge. “<i>’F cou’se</i>, 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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Something about Jake?” Gitl blurted out, all anxiety, and +instantly regretted the question. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“Remember, now, not a word, either to Jake or to anybody else in the +world. I had a mountain of <i>trouble</i> before I found out where you lived, +and I <i>stopped</i> 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: +</p> + +<p> +“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 +<i>fellers</i> and <i>ladies</i> learn to dance,” she explained. “I +go there, too; but I know your husband from the shop.” +</p> + +<p> +“But that <i>lada</i> has also worked in the same shop with him, +hasn’t she?” Gitl broke in, with a desolate look in her eye. +</p> + +<p> +“Why, did Jake tell you she had?” Fanny asked in surprise. +</p> + +<p> +“No, not at all, not at all! I am just asking. May I be sick if I know +anything.” +</p> + +<p> +“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!” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Ull right</i>, 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 <i>boards</i>, on Chrystie Street; so they were looking into +each other’s eyes and talking like a pair of little doves. A <i>lady</i> +who is a <i>particla</i> friend of mine saw them; so she says a child could +have guessed that she was making love to him and <i>trying</i> to get him away +from you. <i>’F cou’se</i> it is none of my <i>business</i>. Is it +my <i>business</i>, then? What do <i>I care</i>? It is only <i>becuss</i> I +pity you. It is like the nature I have; I can not bear to see anybody in +trouble. Other people would not <i>care</i>, 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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Oi! Oi!</i> 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. +</p> + +<p> +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!” +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="VII"></a> +CHAPTER VII.<br/> +MRS. KAVARSKY’S COUP D’ÉTAT.</h2> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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 <i>becuss</i> you will not throw away +that ugly kerchief of yours. What is the use of your asking my advice?” +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Oi!</i> 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. +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Kavarsky lost her temper. +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Say</i>, will you stop talking nonsense?” she shouted savagely. +“No wonder your husband does not <i>care</i> for you, seeing these stupid +greenhornlike notions of yours.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“What shall I tell you? that you are a blockhead? <i>Oi! Oi! +Oi!</i>” she mocked her. “Will the crying help you? <i>Ull +right</i>, cry away!” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Dot’s right!</i> 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, +<i>asposel</i> [supposing] he did talk to that Polish piece of disturbance. +<i>Vell</i>, 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! +<i>Nu, sir!</i>” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +This time Mrs. Kavarsky was moved. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Oi</i>, 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 <i>has</i> 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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“And how does he behave toward the boy?” she absently inquired, +after a melancholy pause. +</p> + +<p> +“Would he were as kind to me!” +</p> + +<p> +“Then it is <i>ull right</i>! Such things will happen between man and +wife. It is all <i>humbuk</i>. 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 <i>care</i> for her on that account. Do you understand?” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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?” +</p> + +<p> +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, <i>sure</i>; 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 <i>regele monkey</i>!” she concluded, +gnashing her teeth at the stout resistance with which her implement was at that +moment grappling. +</p> + +<p> +Gitl’s heart swelled with delight, but she modestly kept silent. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Do you really think he will like it?” she inquired with piteous +eagerness, in a fever of conflicting emotions. +</p> + +<p> +“If he does not, I shall refund your money!” her guardian snarled, +in high glee. +</p> + +<p> +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 +“<i>Oi</i>, a health to you!” she smacked a hearty kiss on her +burning cheek. +</p> + +<p> +“And now come, piece of wretch!” So saying, Mrs. Kavarsky grasped +Gitl by the wrist, and forcibly convoyed her into her husband’s presence. +</p> + +<hr class="short" /> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Goot-evenik</i>, 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. +</p> + +<p> +Gitl’s unwonted appearance impressed Jake as something unseemly and +meretricious. The sight of her revolted him. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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!” +</p> + +<p> +“What do I do to her?” he protested morosely, cursing the intruder +in his heart. +</p> + +<p> +“Who says you do? Mercy and peace! Only—you understand—how +shall I say it?—she is only a young woman; <i>vell</i>, so she imagines +that you do not <i>care</i> 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!” +</p> + +<p> +Her innuendo struck Mrs. Kavarsky as extremely ingenious, and, egged on by the +dogged silence of her auditor, she ventured a step further. +</p> + +<p> +“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 <i>dantzin’-school</i> girl?” +</p> + +<p> +“<i>A danshin’-shchool</i> 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?” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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, <i>sure</i>. Gitl <i>never</i> said +a word to me. A prohibition if she did. Come, Mr. Podkovnik, why should you get +<i>ektzited</i>?” 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?” +</p> + +<p> +“Talk away a toothache for your grandma, not for me. Who told her about +<i>danshin’</i> 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. +</p> + +<p> +At this Gitl’s sobs made themselves heard from the bedroom. They lashed +Jake into a still greater fury. +</p> + +<p> +“What is she whimpering about, the piece of stench! <i>Alla right</i>, I +do hate her; I can not bear the sight of her; and let her do what she likes. +<i>I don’ care!</i>” +</p> + +<p> +“Mr. Podkovnik! To think of a <i>sma’t</i> man like you talking in +this way!” +</p> + +<p> +“Dot’sh alla right!” he said, somewhat relenting. “I +don’t <i>care</i> for any <i>danshin’</i> girls. It is a +—— —— lie! It was that scabby <i>greenhorn</i> who must +have taken it into her head. I don’t <i>care</i> for anybody; not for her +certainly”—pointing to the bedroom. “I am an <i>American +feller</i>, a <i>Yankee</i>—that’s what I am. What punishment is +due to me, then, if I can not stand a <i>shnooza</i> like her? It is <i>nu +ushed</i>; 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 <i>cash</i> as she +asks—I am willing to break stones to pay her—provided she agrees to +a divorce.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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!” +</p> + +<p> +Her unprecedented show of pugnacity took him aback. +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +Gitl broke into a fresh flood of tears. +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Vell</i>, 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.” +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Ach</i>, would it were a lie!” Gitl answered between her sobs. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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? <i>ull right!</i> And now make peace. Have an +embrace and a good kiss and <i>dot’s ull</i>! <i>Hurry yup</i>, 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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Kavarsky grew as red as a boiled lobster. +</p> + +<p> +“Vo—vo—vot <i>you</i> 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?” +</p> + +<p> +“Are you going out of my house or not?” roared Jake, jumping to his +feet. +</p> + +<p> +“And if I am not, what will you do? Will you call a <i>politzman</i>? +<i>Ull right</i>, 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. +</p> + +<p> +Jake’s first impulse was to strike the meddlesome woman. As he started +toward her, however, he changed his mind. “<i>Alla right</i>, you may +remain with her!” he said, rushing up to the clothes rack, and slipping +on his coat and hat. “<i>Alla right</i>,” he repeated with broken +breath, “we shall see!” And with a frantic bang of the door he +disappeared. +</p> + +<hr class="short" /> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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 +<i>her</i> 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—— +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="VIII"></a> +CHAPTER VIII.<br/> +A HOUSETOP IDYL.</h2> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Mamie, come shomeversh! I got to shpeak to you a lot,” he gasped +out. +</p> + +<p> +“Vot’s de madder?” she demanded, startled by his excited +manner. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Vot’s de madder</i>, Jake? Speak out!” she said, with +motherly harshness. +</p> + +<p> +He now wished to say something, although he still knew not what; but his sobs +once called into play were past his control. +</p> + +<p> +“She must give you <i>trouble</i>,” the girl added softly, after a +slight pause, her excitement growing with every moment. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Does she eat you?” +</p> + +<p> +“Let her go to all lamentations! Somebody told her I go around with +you.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Ach</i>, 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. +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Yes</i>, <i>but</i> before she came you didn’t <i>care</i> for +me!” she declared, labouring to disguise the exultation which made her +heart dance. +</p> + +<p> +“I always did, Mamie. May I drop from this roof and break hand and foot +if I did not.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. <i>Yes</i>, 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.” +</p> + +<p> +“It is not too late!” he protested, tremulously. “I will get +a divorce, <i>anyhoy</i>. And if you don’t take me I will hang +myself,” he added, imploringly. +</p> + +<p> +“On a burned straw?” she retorted, with a cruel chuckle. +</p> + +<p> +“It is all very well for you to laugh. But if you could enter my heart +and see how I <i>shuffer</i>!” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“<i>All right</i>,” 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?” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“All you say is not worth a penny, and it is too late, +<i>anyvay</i>,” was her verdict. “You have a wife and a child; +better go home and be a father to your <i>boy</i>.” 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. +</p> + +<p> +“You don’ vanted? Alla right, you be shorry,” he said +half-heartedly, turning to go. +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Hol’ on!</i>” she checked him, irritatedly. “How +are you going to <i>fix</i> it? Are you <i>sure</i> she will take a +divorce?” +</p> + +<p> +“Will she have a choice then? She will have to take it. I won’t +live with her <i>anyhoy</i>,” 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 <i>shatichfied</i>; 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. +</p> + +<p> +The pillowcase flapped aloud, ever more sternly, warningly, portentously. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +With a last frantic hug Mamie relaxed her hold. “Remember now, +Jake!” she then said, in a queer hollow voice. “Now it is all +<i>settled</i>. Maybe you are making fun of me? If you are, you are playing +with fire. Death to me—death to you!” she added, menacingly. +</p> + +<p> +He wished to say something to reassure her, but his tongue seemed grown fast to +his palate. +</p> + +<p> +“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, +<i>anyvay</i>. 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?” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Me?</i> May I not be able to get away from this spot. Can it be that +you still distrust me?” +</p> + +<p> +“Swear!” +</p> + +<p> +“How else shall I swear?” +</p> + +<p> +“By your father, peace upon him.” +</p> + +<p> +“May my father as surely have a bright paradise,” he said, with a +show of alacrity, his mind fixed on the loosened pillowcase. +“<i>Vell</i>, are you <i>shatichfied</i> now?” +</p> + +<p> +“All right,” she answered, in a matter-of-fact way, and as if only +half satisfied. “But do you think she will take money?” +</p> + +<p> +“But I have none.” +</p> + +<p> +“Nobody asks you if you have. But would she take it, if you had?” +</p> + +<p> +“If I had! I am sure she would take it; she would have to, for what would +she gain if she did not?” +</p> + +<p> +“Are you <i>sure</i>?” +</p> + +<p> +“<i>’F cush!</i>” +</p> + +<p> +“Ach, but, after all, why did you not tell me you liked me before she +came?” she said testily, stamping her foot. +</p> + +<p> +“Again!” he exclaimed, wincing. +</p> + +<p> +“<i>All right</i>; wait.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“You will not let yourself be talked away from me?” +</p> + +<p> +He swore. +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +Again he swore. +</p> + +<p> +“And you really don’t care for Fanny?” +</p> + +<p> +And again he swore. +</p> + +<p> +“Nor for Beckie?” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +At last she relented. +</p> + +<p> +“Look, piece of loafer you!” she then said, holding out an open +bank book to his eyes. “But what is the <i>use</i>? It is not light +enough, and you can not read, <i>anyvay</i>. You can eat, <i>dot’s +all</i>. <i>Vell</i>, 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, <i>ain’ it</i>?” +</p> + +<p> +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: +</p> + +<p> +“Mamielé, you know what? Let us run away!” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Do you know, Jake?—now I may as well tell you,” the girl +pursued, <i>à propos</i> of the prospective dancing school; “do you +know that Joe has been <i>bodering</i> me to marry him? And he did not know I +had a cent, either.” +</p> + +<p> +“<i>An you didn’ vanted?</i>” Jake asked, joyfully. +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Sure!</i> 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 <i>lots</i> of suitors—may the two of us have as many thousands of +dollars—and <i>business people</i>, too. Do you see what I am doing for +you? Do you deserve it, <i>monkey you</i>?” +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Never min’</i>, you shall see what a <i>danshin’ +shchool</i> I <i>shta’t</i>. If I don’t take away every +<i>shcholar</i> from Jaw, my name won’t be Jake. Won’t he +squirm!” he exclaimed, with childish ardour. +</p> + +<p> +“Dot’s all right; but foist min’ dot you don’ go back +on me!” +</p> + +<hr class="short" /> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="IX"></a> +CHAPTER IX.<br/> +THE PARTING.</h2> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Ready!” the scribe at length called out, getting up with the +document in his hand, and turning it over to the rabbi. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Young woman!” Rabbi Aaronovitz began, with bashful serenity, +“here is the writ of divorce all ready. Now thou mayst still change thy +mind.” +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Aaronovitz anxiously watched Gitl, who answered by a shake of her head. +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“Say that you are <i>saresfied</i>,” whispered Mrs. Kavarsky. +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Ull ride</i>, I am <i>salesfiet</i>” murmured Gitl, looking +down on the table. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Dot’sh alla right</i>,” Jake said, with ostentatious ease +of manner. “I have already told you that the <i>dvosh</i> of the +<i>court</i> is already <i>fikshed</i>, haven’t I?” he added, even +angrily. +</p> + +<p> +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: +</p> + +<p> +“Here is thy divorce. Take thy divorce. And by this divorce thou art +separated from me and free for all other men!” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +At last Jake deposited the writ and instantly drew back. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +In the ensuing commotion Jake slipped out of the room, presently followed by +Mamie’s ambassador, who had remained behind to pay the bill. +</p> + +<hr class="short" /> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“You want him badly, don’t you?” growled Mrs. Kavarsky. +“Let him go I know where, the every-evil-in-him that he is!” +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Aaronovitz telegraphing to her husband that the money was safe in her +pocket, he remarked sheepishly: “<i>He</i> may wed even to-day.” +Whereupon Gitl’s sobs became still more violent, and she fell to nodding +her head and wringing her hands. +</p> + +<p> +“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 <i>regely loifer</i>, may no good Jew know him! <i>Never +min’</i>, the Name, be It blessed, will send you your destined one, and a +fine, learned, respectable man, too,” she added significantly. +</p> + +<p> +Her words had an instantaneous effect. Gitl at once composed herself, and fell +to drying her eyes. +</p> + +<p> +Quick to catch Mrs. Kavarsky’s hint, the rabbi’s wife took her +aside and asked eagerly: +</p> + +<p> +“Why, has she got a suitor?” +</p> + +<p> +“What is the <i>differentz</i>? 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. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="X"></a> +CHAPTER X.<br/> +A DEFEATED VICTOR.</h2> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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, +<i>taté</i> is!” Whereupon Yoselé, following his mother’s example, +let loose his stentorian voice. +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Shurr-r up!</i>” 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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Nobody will tell him,” one of the neighbours put in, resentfully. +“But, <i>anyhull</i>, what is the <i>used</i> crying?” +</p> + +<p> +“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 <i>smart</i> and <i>ejecate</i> 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 <i>saresfied</i>! Cry away! If Bernstein refuses to go under the +wedding canopy, Mrs. Kavarsky will no more <i>bodder</i> her head about you, +depend upon it. It is not enough for her that I neglect <i>business</i> on her +account,” she appealed to the bystanders. +</p> + +<p> +“Really, what are you crying about, Mrs. Podkovnik?” one of the +neighbours interposed. “You ought to bless the hour when you became +free.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<hr class="short" /> + +<p> +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? +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p class="ctr"> +THE END. +</p> + +<hr class="long" /> +<p class="ctr"> +D. APPLETON & CO.’S PUBLICATIONS. +</p> + +<p class="ctrspace"> +STEPHEN CRANE’S BOOKS. +</p> + +<p class="hang"> +<i>MAGGIE: A GIRL OF THE STREETS.</i> By <span class="sc"> Stephen +Crane</span>, author of “The Red Badge of Courage,” etc. Uniform +with “The Red Badge of Courage.” 12mo. Cloth, 75 cents. +</p> + +<div class="blockquote"> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +</div> + +<p class="ctrspace"> +TENTH EDITION. +</p> + +<p class="hang"> +<i>THE RED BADGE OF COURAGE. An Episode of the American Civil War.</i> By <span +class="sc"> Stephen Crane.</span> 12mo. 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APPLETON & CO.’S PUBLICATIONS. +</p> + +<p class="ctrspace"> +GILBERT PARKER’S BEST BOOKS. +</p> + +<p class="hang"> +<i>THE SEATS OF THE MIGHTY.</i> 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. +</p> + +<div class="blockquote"> + +<p> +“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.”—<i>Chicago Record.</i> +</p> + +<p> +“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.”—<i>New York Mail and +Express.</i> +</p> + +</div> + +<p class="hang"> +<i>THE TRAIL OF THE SWORD.</i> A Novel. 12mo. Paper, 50 cents; cloth, $1.00. +</p> + +<div class="blockquote"> + +<p> +“Mr. Parker here adds to a reputation already wide, and anew demonstrates +his power of pictorial portrayal and of strong dramatic situation and +climax.”—<i>Philadelphia Bulletin.</i> +</p> + +<p> +“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.”—<i>Pittsburg Times.</i> +</p> + +</div> + +<p class="hang"> +<i>THE TRESPASSER.</i> 12mo. Paper, 50 cents; cloth, $1.00. +</p> + +<div class="blockquote"> + +<p> +“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.”—<i>The +Critic.</i> +</p> + +<p> +“Gilbert Parker writes a strong novel, but thus far this is his +masterpiece.... It is one of the great novels of the +year.”—<i>Boston Advertiser.</i> +</p> + +</div> + +<p class="hang"> +<i>THE TRANSLATION OF A SAVAGE.</i> 16mo. Flexible cloth, 75 cents. +</p> + +<div class="blockquote"> + +<p> +“A book which no one will be satisfied to put down until the end has +been matter of certainty and assurance.”—<i>The Nation.</i> +</p> + +<p> +“A story of remarkable interest, originality, and ingenuity of +construction.”—<i>Boston Home Journal.</i> +</p> + +<p> +“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.”—<i>London Daily News.</i> +</p> + +</div> + +<hr class="div" /> + +<p class="ctr"> +New York: D. APPLETON & CO., 72 Fifth Avenue. +</p> + +<hr class="long" /> + +<p class="ctr"> +BY S. R. CROCKETT. +</p> + +<p class="hang"> +<i>CLEG KELLY, ARAB OF THE CITY. His Progress and Adventures.</i> Uniform with +“The Lilac Sunbonnet” and “Bog-Myrtle and Peat.” +Illustrated. 12mo. Cloth, $1.50. +</p> + +<div class="blockquote"> + +<p> +“A masterpiece which Mark Twain himself has never rivaled.... If there +ever was an ideal character in action it is this heroic +ragamuffin.”—<i>London Daily Chronicle.</i> +</p> + +<p> +“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.”—<i>Boston Daily +Advertiser.</i> +</p> + +<p> +“One of the most successful of Mr. Crockett’s +works.”—<i>Brooklyn Eagle.</i> +</p> + +</div> + +<p class="hang"> +<i>BOG-MYRTLE AND PEAT.</i> Third edition. 12mo. Cloth, $1.50. +</p> + +<div class="blockquote"> + +<p> +“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.”—<i>Boston Courier.</i> +</p> + +<p> +“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.”—<i>Boston Home Journal.</i> +</p> + +<p> +“One dips into the book anywhere and reads on and on, fascinated by the +writer’s charm of manner.”—<i>Minneapolis Tribune.</i> +</p> + +</div> + +<p class="hang"> +<i>THE LILAC SUNBONNET.</i> Sixth edition. 12mo. Cloth, $1.50. +</p> + +<div class="blockquote"> + +<p> +“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.”—<i>New York +Times.</i> +</p> + +<p> +“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.”—<i>New York +Mail and Express.</i> +</p> + +<p> +“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.”—<i>Boston Traveller.</i> +</p> + +</div> + +<p class="ctrspace"> +<span class="sc">By</span> A. CONAN DOYLE. +</p> + +<p class="hang"> +<i>THE EXPLOITS OF BRIGADIER GERARD. A Romance of the Life of a Typical +Napoleonic Soldier.</i> Illustrated. 12mo. Cloth, $1.50. +</p> + +<div class="blockquote"> + +<p> +“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.”—<i>London Times.</i> +</p> + +<p> +“May be set down without reservation as the most thoroughly enjoyable +book that Dr. Doyle has ever published.”—<i>Boston Beacon.</i> +</p> + +</div> + +<p class="hang"> +<i>THE STARK MUNRO LETTERS.</i> Being a Series of Twelve Letters written by +<span class="sc">Stark Munro, M. B.</span>, to his friend and former +fellow-student, Herbert Swanborough, of Lowell, Massachusetts, during the years +1881-1884. Illustrated. 12mo. Buckram, $1.50. +</p> + +<div class="blockquote"> + + +<p> +“Cullingworth, ... a much more interesting creation than Sherlock Holmes, +and I pray Dr. Doyle to give us more of him.”—<i>Richard le +Gallienne, in the London Star.</i> +</p> + +<p> +“Every one who wants a hearty laugh must make acquaintance with Dr. James +Cullingworth.”—<i>Westminster Gazette.</i> +</p> + +<p> +“Every one must read; for not to know Cullingworth should surely argue +one’s self to be unknown.”—<i>Pall Mall Gazette.</i> +</p> + +<p> +“One of the freshest figures to be met with in any recent +fiction.”—<i>London Daily News.</i> +</p> + +<p> +“‘The Stark Munro Letters’ is a bit of real literature.... +Its reading will be an epoch-making event in many a +life.”—<i>Philadelphia Evening Telegraph.</i> +</p> + +<p> +“Positively magnetic, and written with that combined force and grace for +which the author’s style is known.”—<i>Boston Budget.</i> +</p> + +</div> + +<p class="ctrspace"> +<span class="sc">Seventh Edition.</span> +</p> + +<p class="hang"> +<i>ROUND THE RED LAMP.</i> Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life. 12mo. +Cloth, $1.50. +</p> + +<div class="blockquote"> + +<p> +“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.”—<i>Hartford Times.</i> +</p> + +<p> +“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.”—<i>New York Mail and Express.</i> +</p> + +<p> +“A strikingly realistic and decidedly original contribution to modern +literature.”—<i>Boston Saturday Evening Gazette.</i> +</p> + +</div> + +<p class="ctrspace"> +<span class="sc">Miss</span> F. F. MONTRÉSOR’S BOOKS. +</p> + +<p class="hang"> +<i>FALSE COIN OR TRUE?</i> 12mo. Cloth, $1.25. +</p> + +<div class="blockquote"> + +<p> +“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.... 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Paper, 50 cents; cloth, $1.00. +</p> + +<div class="blockquote"> + +<p> +“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.”—<i>London Athenæum.</i> +</p> + +<p> +“‘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.”—<i>London Daily News.</i> +</p> + +<p> +“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.”—<i>Philadelphia Public Ledger.</i> +</p> + +</div> + +<p class="ctrspace"> +<b> +“A better book than ‘The Prisoner of +Zenda.’”</b>—<i>London Queen.</i> +</p> + +<p class="hang"> +<i>THE CHRONICLES OF COUNT ANTONIO.</i> By <span class="sc">Anthony +Hope</span>, 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. +</p> + +<div class="blockquote"> + + + +<p> +“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.”—<i>London Daily News.</i> +</p> + +<p> +“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”—<i>Westminster Gazette.</i> +</p> + +<p> +“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.”—<i>The +Scotsman.</i> +</p> + +<p> +“A gallant tale, written with unfailing freshness and +spirit.”—<i>London Daily Telegraph.</i> +</p> + +<p> +“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.”—<i>New York +World.</i> +</p> + +<p> +“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.”—<i>Boston Courier.</i> +</p> + +<p> +“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.”—<i>Detroit Tribune.</i> +</p> + +<p> +“Easily ranks with, if not above, ‘A Prisoner of Zenda.’... +Wonderfully strong, graphic, and compels the interest of the most <i>blasé</i> +novel reader.”—<i>Boston Advertiser.</i> +</p> + +<p> +“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.”—<i>Boston +Herald.</i> +</p> + +<p> +“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.”—<i>New York Spirit of the Times.</i> +</p> + +</div> + +<p class="ctrspace"> +NOVELS BY HALL CAINE. +</p> + +<p class="hang"> +<i>THE MANXMAN.</i> 12mo. Cloth, $1.50. +</p> + +<div class="blockquote"> + +<p> +“A story of marvelous dramatic intensity, and in its ethical meaning has +a force comparable only to Hawthorne’s ‘Scarlet +Letter.’”—<i>Boston Beacon.</i> +</p> + +<p> +“A work of power which is another stone added to the foundation of +enduring fame to which Mr. Caine is yearly adding.”—<i>Public +Opinion.</i> +</p> + +<p> +“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.”—<i>Boston +Home Journal.</i> +</p> + +</div> + +<p class="hang"> +<i>THE DEEMSTER. A Romance of the Isle of Man.</i> 12mo. Cloth, $1.50. +</p> + +<div class="blockquote"> + +<p> +“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.”—<i>The Critic.</i> +</p> + +<p> +“One of the strongest novels which has appeared in many a +day.”—<i>San Francisco Chronicle.</i> +</p> + +<p> +“Fascinates the mind like the gathering and bursting of a +storm.”—<i>Illustrated London News.</i> +</p> + +<p> +“Deserves to be ranked among the remarkable novels of the +day.”—<i>Chicago Times.</i> +</p> + +</div> + +<p class="hang"> +<i>THE BONDMAN.</i> New edition. 12mo. Cloth, $1.50. +</p> + +<div class="blockquote"> + +<p> +“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.”—<i>From the Author’s Preface.</i> +</p> + +</div> + +<p class="hang"> +<i>CAPT’N DAVY’S HONEYMOON. A Manx Yarn.</i> 12mo. Paper, 50 cents; +cloth, $1.00. +</p> + +<div class="blockquote"> + +<p> +“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.”—<i>London Literary World.</i> +</p> + +<p> +“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.”—<i>Philadelphia Times.</i> +</p> + +</div> + +<p class="ctrspace"> +<span class="sc">Books by Mrs. Everard Cotes (Sara Jeannette Duncan).</span> +</p> + +<p class="hang"> +<i>HIS HONOUR, AND A LADY.</i> Illustrated. 12mo. Cloth, $1.50. +</p> + +<div class="blockquote"> + +<p> +“‘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.”—<i>Chicago Times-Herald.</i> +</p> + +</div> + +<p class="hang"> +<i>THE STORY OF SONNY SAHIB.</i> Illustrated. 12mo. Cloth, $1.00 +</p> + +<div class="blockquote"> + +<p> +“As perfect a story of its kind as can be +imagined.”—<i>Chicago Times-Herald.</i> +</p> + +</div> + +<p class="hang"> +<i>VERNON’S AUNT.</i> With many Illustrations. 12mo. Cloth, $1.25. +</p> + +<div class="blockquote"> + +<p> +“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.”—<i>Boston Beacon.</i> +</p> + +</div> + +<p class="hang"> +<i>A DAUGHTER OF TO-DAY.</i> A Novel. 12mo. Cloth, $1.50. +</p> + +<div class="blockquote"> + +<p> +“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.”—<i>Boston +Courier.</i> +</p> + +</div> + +<p class="hang"> +<i>A SOCIAL DEPARTURE: How Orthodocia and I Went Round the World by +Ourselves.</i> With 111 Illustrations by <span class="sc">F. H. +Townsend</span>. 12mo. Paper, 75 cents; cloth, $1.75. +</p> + +<div class="blockquote"> + +<p> +“A brighter, merrier, more entirely charming book would be, indeed, +difficult to find.”—<i>St. Louis Republic.</i> +</p> + +</div> + +<p class="hang"> +<i>AN AMERICAN GIRL IN LONDON.</i> With 80 Illustrations by <span class="sc">F. +H. Townsend</span>. 12mo. Paper, 75 cents; cloth, $1.50. +</p> + +<div class="blockquote"> + +<p> +“So sprightly a book as this, on life in London as observed by an +American, has never before been written.”—<i>Philadelphia +Bulletin.</i> +</p> + +</div> + +<p class="hang"> +<i>THE SIMPLE ADVENTURES OF A MEMSAHIB.</i> With 37 Illustrations by <i>F. H. +Townsend</i>. 12mo. Cloth, $1.50. +</p> + +<div class="blockquote"> + +<p> +“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.”—<i>Philadelphia +Telegraph.</i> +</p> + +</div> + +<p class="ctrspace"> +NOVELS BY MAARTEN MAARTENS. +</p> + +<p class="hang"> +<i>THE GREATER GLORY. A Story of High Life.</i> By <span class="sc">Maarten +Maartens</span>, author of “God’s Fool,” “Joost +Avelingh,” etc. 12mo. Cloth, $1.50. +</p> + +<div class="blockquote"> + +<p> +“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.”—<i>Boston Advertiser.</i> +</p> + +<p> +“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.”—<i>San Francisco +Chronicle.</i> +</p> + +<p> +“Maarten Maartens stands head and shoulders above the average novelist of +the day in intellectual subtlety and imaginative power.”—<i>Boston +Beacon.</i> +</p> + +</div> + +<p class="hang"> +<i>GOD’S FOOL.</i> By <span class="sc">Maarten Maartens</span>. 12mo. +Cloth, $1.50. +</p> + +<div class="blockquote"> + +<p> +“Throughout there is an epigrammatic force which would make palatable a +less interesting story of human lives or one less deftly +told.”—<i>London Saturday Review.</i> +</p> + +<p> +“Perfectly easy, graceful, humorous.... The author’s skill in +character-drawing is undeniable.”—<i>London Chronicle.</i> +</p> + +<p> +“A remarkable work.”—<i>New York Times.</i> +</p> + +<p> +“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.’”—<i>Philadelphia Ledger.</i> +</p> + +<p> +“Its preface alone stamps the author as one of the leading English +novelists of to-day.”—<i>Boston Daily Advertiser.</i> +</p> + +<p> +“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.”—<i>Boston Times.</i> +</p> + +<p> +“A story of remarkable interest and point.”—<i>New York +Observer.</i> +</p> + +</div> + +<p class="hang"> +<i>JOOST AVELINGH.</i> By <span class="sc">Maarten Maartens</span>. 12mo. +Cloth, $1.50. +</p> + +<div class="blockquote"> + +<p> +“So unmistakably good as to induce the hope that an acquaintance with the +Dutch literature of fiction may soon become more general among +us.”—<i>London Morning Post.</i> +</p> + +<p> +“In scarcely any of the sensational novels of the day will the reader +find more nature or more human nature.”—<i>London Standard.</i> +</p> + +<p> +“A novel of a very high type. At once strongly realistic and powerfully +idealistic.”—<i>London Literary World.</i> +</p> + +<p> +“Full of local color and rich in quaint phraseology and +suggestion.”—<i>London Telegraph.</i> +</p> + +<p> +“Maarten Maartens is a capital story-teller.”—<i>Pall Mall +Gazette.</i> +</p> + +<p> +“Our English writers of fiction will have to look to their +laurels.”—<i>Birmingham Daily Post.</i> +</p> + +</div> + +<p class="hang"> +<i>A JOURNEY IN OTHER WORLDS. A Romance of the Future.</i> By <span +class="sc">John Jacob Astor</span>. With 9 full-page Illustrations by Dan +Beard. 12mo. Cloth, $1.50. +</p> + +<div class="blockquote"> + +<p> +“An interesting and cleverly devised book.... No lack of imagination.... +Shows a skillful and wide acquaintance with scientific +facts.”—<i>New York Herald.</i> +</p> + +<p> +“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.”—<i>New York Tribune.</i> +</p> + +<p> +“A beautiful example of typographical art and the bookmaker’s +skill.... To appreciate the story one must read it.”—<i>New York +Commercial Advertiser.</i> +</p> + +<p> +“The date of the events narrated in this book is supposed to be 2000 +<span class="sc">a. d.</span> 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.”—<i>New York Sun.</i> +</p> + +<p> +“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.”—<i>Mail and +Express.</i> +</p> + +<p> +“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.”—<i>New +York Times.</i> +</p> + +<p> +“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.”—<i>Chicago Inter-Ocean.</i> +</p> + +<p> +“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.”—<i>Rochester +Herald.</i> +</p> + +</div> + +<p class="ctrspace"> +THE STORY OF THE WEST SERIES. +</p> + +<p class="ctr"> +<span class="sc">Edited by Ripley Hitchcock.</span> +</p> + +<div class="blockquote"> + +<p> +“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.”—<i>Henry Edward +Rood, in The Mail and Express.</i> +</p> + +</div> + +<p class="ctrspace"> +<i>NOW READY.</i> +</p> + +<p class="hang"> +<i>THE STORY OF THE INDIAN.</i> By <span class="sc">George Bird +Grinnell</span>, author of “Pawnee Hero Stories,” “Blackfoot +Lodge Tales,” etc. 12mo. Cloth. Illustrated. $1.50. +</p> + +<div class="blockquote"> + +<p> +“A valuable study of Indian life and character.... An attractive book, +... in large part one in which Indians themselves might have +written.”—<i>New York Tribune.</i> +</p> + +<p> +“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.”—<i>Boston Commercial Bulletin.</i> +</p> + +<p> +“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.”—<i>N.Y. Mail and Express.</i> +</p> + +<p> +“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.”—<i>Buffalo +Commercial.</i> +</p> + +<p> +“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.”—<i>New York Observer.</i> +</p> + +</div> + +<p class="ctrspace"> +<i>IN PREPARATION.</i> +</p> + +<ul> +<li> +<b> +The Story of the Mine. +</b> +By +<span class="sc">Charles Howard Shinn</span>. +</li> +<li> +<b> +The Story of the Trapper. +</b> +By +<span class="sc">Gilbert Parker</span>. +</li> +<li> +<b> +The Story of the Explorer.</b> +</li> +<li> +<b> +The Story of the Cowboy.</b> +</li> +<li> +<b> +The Story of the Soldier.</b> +</li> +<li> +<b> +The Story of the Railroad.</b> +</li> +</ul> +<hr class="div" /> +<p class="ctr"> +New York: D. APPLETON & CO., 72 Fifth Avenue. +</p> + +<hr class="long" /> + +<p class="ctr"> +Footnotes +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="note1"> + </a><a href="#noteref1"><span class="label"> <small>[1]</small></span> +</a> +English words incorporated in the Yiddish of the characters of this narrative are given in Italics. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="note2"> + </a><a href="#noteref2"><span class="label"> <small>[2]</small></span> +</a> +A term relating to the Hebrew equivalent of the letter +<i>s</i>, whose pronunciation depends upon the right or left position of a mark over it. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="note3"> + </a><a href="#noteref3"><span class="label"> <small>[3]</small></span> +</a> +A school where Jewish children are instructed in the Old Testament or the Talmud. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="note4"> + </a><a href="#noteref4"><span class="label"> <small>[4]</small></span> +</a> +A crucifix. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="note5"> + </a><a href="#noteref5"><span class="label"> <small>[5]</small></span> +</a> +Yiddish for shoemaker. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="note6"> + </a><a href="#noteref6"><span class="label"> <small>[6]</small></span> +</a> +A kind of dessert made of carrots or turnips. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="note7"> + </a><a href="#noteref7"><span class="label"> <small>[7]</small></span> +</a> +Yiddish for nobleman. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="note8"> + </a><a href="#noteref8"><span class="label"> <small>[8]</small></span> +</a> +Yiddish for dinner. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="note9"> + </a><a href="#noteref9"><span class="label"> <small>[9]</small></span> +</a> +Yiddish for thinner. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="note10"> + </a><a href="#noteref10"><span class="label"><small>[10]</small></span> +</a> +A young noblewoman. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="note11"> + </a><a href="#noteref11"><span class="label"><small>[11]</small></span> +</a> +It is on the window, I meant to say. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="note12"> + </a><a href="#noteref12"><span class="label"><small>[12]</small></span> +</a> +A verb coined from the Yiddish +<i>oys</i>, out, and the English +<i>green</i>, and signifying to cease being green. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="note13"> + </a><a href="#noteref13"><span class="label"><small>[13]</small></span> +</a> +A sour soup of cabbage and beets. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="note14"> + </a><a href="#noteref14"><span class="label"><small>[14]</small></span> +</a> +A matrimonial agent. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="note15"> + </a><a href="#noteref15"><span class="label"><small>[15]</small></span> +</a> +A young noblewoman. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div style='display:block; margin-top:4em'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK YEKL ***</div> +<div style='text-align:left'> + +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will +be renamed. +</div> + +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright +law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, +so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United +States without permission and without paying copyright +royalties. 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