ONE afternoon in January or February I was on a Lexington Avenue car going up-town. At Sixty-seventh Street the car was invaded by a vivacious crowd of young girls, each with a stack of books under one of her arms. It was evident that they were returning home from Normal College, which was on that corner. Some of them preferred to stand, holding on to straps, so as to face and converse with their seated chums

I was watching them as they chattered, laughed, or whispered, bubbling over with the joy of being young and with the consciousness of their budding womanhood, when my attention was attracted to one of their number—a tall, lanky, long-necked lass of fifteen or sixteen. She was hanging on to a strap directly across the car from me. I could not see her face, but the shape of her head and a certain jerk of it, when she laughed, looked strikingly familiar to me. Presently she chanced to turn half-way around, and I recognized her. It was Lucy. I had not seen her for six years. She was completely changed and yet the same. Not yet fully formed, elongated, attenuated, angular, ridiculously too tall for her looks, and not quite so pretty as she had been at nine or ten, but overflowing with color, with light, with blossoming life, she thrilled me almost to tears. I was aching to call out her name, to hear myself say "Lucy" as I had once been wont to do, but I was not sure that it would be advisable to let her father hear of my lingering interest in his family. While I was thus debating with myself whether I should accost her, her glance fell on me. She transferred it to one of the windows, and the next moment she fell to eying me furtively.

"She has recognized me, but she won't come over to me," I thought. "She seems to be aware of her father's jealousy." It was a painful moment

Presently her fresh, youthful face brightened up. She bent over to two of her girl friends and whispered something to them, and then these threw glances at me. After some more whispering Lucy faced about boldly and stepped over to me

"I beg your pardon. Aren't you Mr. Levinsky?" she asked, with sweet, girlish shyness

"Of course I am, Lucy! Lucy dear, how are you? Quite a young lady!"

"I was wondering," she went on without answering. "At first I did not know.

You did seem familiar to me, but I could not locate your face. But then, all at once, don't you know, I said to myself, 'Why, it's Mr. Levinsky.' Oh, I'm so glad to see you."

She was all flushed and beaming with the surprise of the meeting, with consciousness of the eyes of her classmates who were watching her, and with something else which seemed to say: "I am Lucy, but not the little girl you used to play with. I am a young woman."

"And I was wondering who that tall, charming young lady was," I said. "Lord! how you have grown, Lucy!"

"Yes, I'm already taller than mother and father," she answered

"Than both together?"

"No, not as bad as all that," she giggled

For children of our immigrants to outgrow their parents, not only intellectually, but physically as well, is a common phenomenon. Perhaps it is due to their being fed far better than their parents were in their childhood and youth

I asked Lucy to take a seat by my side and she did, cheerfully. ("
Maybe she does not know anything," I wondered.) "How is
Danny?" I asked. "Still fat?"

"No, not very," she laughed. "He goes to school. I have a little sister, too," she added, blushing the least bit.

I winced. It was as though I had heard something revoltingly unseemly. Then a thought crossed my mind, and, seized with an odd feeling of curiosity, I asked: "How old is she?"

"Oh, a little less than a year," Lucy replied. "She's awful cute," she laughed

"And how is papa?" I inquired, to turn the conversation

"He's all right, thank you," she answered, gravely. "Only he lost a lot of money on account of the hard times. Many of his customers were out of work.

Business is picking up, though."

"And how is Becky? Are you still great friends?"

"Why, she ought to be here!" she replied, gazing around the car.
"Must be in the next car."

"In another car!" I exclaimed, in mock amazement. "Not by your side?" Lucy laughed. "We are in the same class," she said

"And, of course, the families still live in the same house?" She nodded affirmatively, adding that they lived at One Hundred and Second Street near Madison Avenue, about a block and a half from the Park

"Come up some time, won't you?" she gurgled, with childish amiability, yet with apparent awkwardness

I wondered whether she was aware of her father's jealousy. "If she were she certainly would not invite me to the house," I reflected

I made no answer to her invitation

"Won't you come up?" she insisted.

I thought: "She doesn't seem to know anything about it. She has only heard that I had a quarrel with her mother." I shook my head, smiling affectionately

"Why, are you still angry at mother?" she pursued, shaking her head, deprecatingly, as who should say, "You're a bad boy."

I thought, "Of course she doesn't know." I smiled again. Then I said: "You're a sweet girl, all the same. And a big one, too."

"Thank you. Do come. Will you?" I shook my head

"Will you never come?" she asked, playfully. "Never? Never?"

"I have told you you're a charming girl, haven't I? What more do you want?"

The American children of the Ghetto are American not only in their language, tastes, and ambitions, but in outward appearance as well. Their bearing, gestures, the play of their features, and something in the very expression of their Semitic faces proclaim the land of their birth. All this was true of Lucy. She was fascinatingly American, and I told her so

"You're not simply a charming girl. You're a charming American girl," I said.

I wondered whether Dora had been keeping up her studies, and by questioning Lucy about the books under her arm I contrived to elicit the information that her mother had read not only such works as the Vicar of Wakefield, Washington Irving's Sketch Book, and Lamb's Shakespeare Stories, which had been part of Lucy's course during her first year at college, but that she had also read some of the works of Cooper, George Eliot, Dickens, Thackeray, Hawthorne, and all sorts of cheaper novels

"Mother is a great reader," Lucy said. "She reads more than I do. Why, she reads newspapers and magazines—everything she can lay her hands on! Father calls her Professor."

She also told me that her mother had read a good deal of poetry, that she knew the "Ancient Mariner" and "The Raven" by heart

"She's always at me because I don't care for poetry as much as she does," she laughed.

"Well, you're not taller than your mother in this respect, are you?"

"N-no," she assented, with an appreciative giggle

She left the car on the corner of One Hundred and Second Street. I was in a queer state of excitement

It flashed upon my mind that the section of Central Park in the vicinity of One Hundred and Second Street teemed with women and baby-carriages, and that it was but natural to suppose that Dora would be out every day wheeling her baby in that locality, and reading a book, perhaps. I visioned myself meeting her there some afternoon and telling her of my undying love. I even worked out the details of the plan, but I felt that I should never carry it out

I still loved Dora, but that was the Dora of six years before, an image of an enshrined past. She was a dear, sad memory scarcely anything more, and it seemed as though to disturb that sadness were sacrilege

"I shall probably run up against her some day," I said to myself, dolefully

And an echo seemed to add, "You are all alone in the world!"

CHAPTER II

I WAS a lonely man. I was pulsating with activity and with a sense of triumph. I was receiving multitudes of new impressions and enjoying life in a multitude of ways, with no dearth of woman and song in the program. But at the bottom of my consciousness I was always lonely

There were moments when my desolation would assert itself rather violently.

This happened nearly every time I returned to New York from the road. As the train entered the great city my sense of home-coming would emphasize a feeling that the furnished two-room apartment on Lexington Avenue which was waiting to receive me was not a home

Meyer Nodelman, whom I often met in a Broadway restaurant at the lunch hour these days, would chaff or lecture me earnestly upon my unmarried state

"You don't know who you're working for," he would say, his sad, Oriental face taking on an affectionate expression. "Life is short at best, but when a fellow has nobody to bear his name after he is gone it is shorter still.

Get married, my boy. Get married." He took a lively interest in the growth of my business. He rejoiced in it as though he ascribed my successes to the loans he had given me when I struggled for a foothold. He often alluded to those favors, but he was a devoted friend, all the same. Moreover, he was a most attractive man to talk to, especially when the conversation dealt with one's intimate life. With all his illiteracy and crudity of language he had rare insight into the human heart and was full of subtle sympathy. He was the only person in America with whom I often indulged in a heart-to-heart confab. He was keenly aware of my loneliness. It seemed as though it disturbed him

"You are not a happy man, Levinsky," he once said to me. "You feel more alone than any bachelor I ever knew. You're an orphan, poor thing. You have a fine business and plenty of money and all sorts of nice times, but you are an orphan, just the same. You're still a child. You need a mother. Well, but what's the use? Your own mother—peace upon her—cannot be brought to life until the coming of the Messiah, so do the next best thing, Levinsky. Get married and you will have a mother—for your children. It isn't the same kind, but you won't feel lonesome any longer."

I laughed

"Laugh away, Levinsky. But you can't help it. And the smart books you read won't help you, either. You've got to get married whether you want it or not. This is a bill that must be paid."

I had lunch with him a day or two after my meeting with Lucy. The sight of his affectionate, melancholy face and the warmth of his greeting somehow made me think of the sentimental mood in which I had been left by that encounter

"I do feel lonesome," I said, with a smile, in the course of our chat.
"I met a girl the other day—"

"Did you?" he said, expectantly.

"Oh, she is a mere child, not the kind of girl you mean, Mr. Nodelman. I once boarded in her mother's house. She was a mere child then. She is still a child, but she goes to college now, and she is taller than her mother.

When I saw her I felt old."

"Is that anything to be sad about? Pshaw! Get married, and you'll have a daughter of your own, and when she grows up you won't be sorry. Take it from me, Levinsky. There can be no greater pleasure than to watch your kids grow." And he added, in a lower tone, "I do advise you to get married."

"Perhaps I ought to," I said, listlessly. "But then it takes two to make a bargain."

"Oh, there are lots of good girls, and you can have the best piece of goods there is." "Oh, I don't know. It wouldn't be hard to find a good girl, perhaps. The question is whether she'll be good after the honeymoon is over."

"You don't want a bond and mortgage to guarantee that you'll be happy, do you? A fellow must be ready to take a chance."

There is an old story of a rabbi who, upon being asked by a bachelor whether he should marry, said: "If you do you will regret it, my son; but then if you remain single you are sure to regret it just as much; perhaps more. So get married like everybody else and regret it like everybody else." Nodelman now quoted that rabbi. I had heard the anecdote more than once before, but it seemed as though its meaning had now revealed itself to me for the first time.

"According to that rabbi, marriage is not a pleasure, but a miserable necessity," I urged

"Well, it isn't all misery, either. People are fond of saying that the best marriage is a curse. But it's the other way around. The worst marriage has some blessing in it, Levinsky."

"Oh, I don't know."

"Get married and you will. There is plenty of pleasure in the worst of homes. Take it from me,. Levinsky. When I come home and feel that I have somebody to live for, that it is not the devil I am working for, then—take it from me, Levinsky—I should not give one moment like that for all the other pleasures in the world put together."

I thought of his wife whom his mother had repeatedly described to me as a "meat-ball face" and a virago, and of his home which I had always pictured as hell. His words touched me

"It isn't that I don't want to take chances, Mr. Nodelman. It's something else. Were you ever in love, Mr. Nodelman?"

"What? Was I in love? Why?" he demanded, coloring. "What put it in your head to ask me such a funny question?"

"Funny! There's more pain than fun in it. Well, I have loved, Mr. Nodelman, and that's why it's so hard for me to think of marriage as a cold proposition. I don't think I could marry a girl I did not love."

I expected an argument against love-marriages, but Nodelman had none to offer. Instead, he had me dilate on the bliss and the agony of loving. He asked me questions and eagerly listened to my answers. I told him of my own two love-affairs, particularly of my relations with Dora. I omitted names and other details that might have pointed, ever so remotely, to Mrs.

Margolis's identity. Nodelman was interested intensely. His interrogations were of the kind that a girl of sixteen who had not yet loved might address to a bosom friend who had. How does it feel to be in doubt whether one's passion had found an echo? How did I feel when our lips were joined in our first kiss? How did she carry herself the next time I saw her? Was she shy? Did she look happy? Was she afraid of her husband? Was I afraid? The restaurant had been nearly deserted for about an hour, and we still sat smoking cigars and whispering.

ONE day, as Nodelman took his seat across the table from me at the restaurant, he said: "Well, Levinsky, it's no use, you'll have to get married now. There will be no wriggling out of it. My wife has set her mind on it."

"Your wife?" I asked in surprise.

"Yes. I have an order to bring you up to the house, and that's all there is to it. Don't blame her, though. The fault is mine. I have told her so much about you she wants to know you."

"To know me and to marry me off, hey? And yet you claim to be a friend of mine."

"Well, it's no use talking. You'll have to come."

I received a formal invitation, written in English by Mrs. Nodelman, and on a Friday night in May I was in my friend's house for supper, as Nodelman called it, or "dinner," as his wife would have it

The family occupied one of a small group of lingering, brownstone, private dwellings in a neighborhood swarming with the inmates of new tenement "barracks."

"Glad to meechye," Mrs. Nodelman welcomed me. "Meyer should have broughchye up long ago. Why did you keep Mr. Levinsky away, Meyer? Was you afraid you might have reason to be jealous?"

"That's just it. She hit it right. I told you she was a smart girl, didn't
I, Levinsky?"

"Don't be uneasy, Meyer. Mr. Levinsky won't even look at an old woman like me. It's a pretty girl he's fishin' for. Ainchye, Mr. Levinsky?"

She was middle-aged, with small features inconspicuously traced in a bulging mass of full-blooded flesh. This was why her mother-in-law called her "meat-ball face." She had a hoarse voice, and altogether she might have given me the impression of being drunk had there not been something pleasing in her hoarseness as well as in that droll face of hers. That she was American-born was clear from the way she spoke her unpolished English. Was Nodelman the henpecked husband that his mother advertised him to be? I wondered whether the frequency with which his wife used his first name could be accepted as evidence to the contrary

They had six children: a youth of nineteen named Maurice who was the image of his father and, having spent two years at college, was with him in the clothing business; a high-school boy who had his mother's face and whose name was Sidney—an appellation very popular among our people as "swell American"; and four smaller children, the youngest being a little girl of six.

"What do you think of my stock, Levinsky?" Nodelman asked. "Quite a lot, isn't it? May no evil eye strike them. What do you think of the baby? Come here, Beatrice! Recite something for uncle!" The command had barely left his mouth when Beatrice sprang to her feet and burst out mumbling something in a kindergarten singsong. This lasted some minutes Then she courtesied, shook her skirts, and slipped back into her seat

"She is only six and she is already more educated than her father,"
Nodelman said. "And Sidney he's studyin' French at high school.
Sidney, talk some French to Mr. Levinsky. He'll understand you.
Come on, show Mr. Levinsky you ain't going to be as ignorant as
your pa."

The scene was largely a stereotyped copy of the one I had witnessed upon my first call at the Margolises'

Sidney scowled

"Come on, Sidney, be a good boy," Nodelman urged, taking him by the sleeve

"Let me alone," Sidney snarled, breaking away and striking the air a fierce backward blow with his elbow

"What do you want of him?" Mrs. Nodelman said to her husband, frigidly

My friend desisted, sheepishly

"He does seem to be afraid of his American household," I said to myself

After the meal, when we were all in the parlor again, Nodelman said to his wife, winking at me: "Poor fellow, his patience has all given out. He wants to know about the girl you've got for him. He has no strength any longer. Can't you see it, Bella? Look at him! Look at him! Another minute and he'll faint."

"What girl? Oh, I see! Why, there is more than one!" Mrs. Nodelman returned, confusedly. "I didn't mean anybody in particular. There are plenty of young ladies."

"That's the trouble. There are plenty, and no one in particular," I said

"Don't cry," Nodelman said. "Just be a good boy and Mrs.
Nodelman will get you a peach of a young lady. Won't you,
Bella?"

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

"Don't you understand?" he proceeded to explain. "She first wants to know the kind of customer you are. Then she'll know what kind of merchandise to look for. Isn't that it, Bella?"

She made no answer

"I hope Mrs. Nodelman will find me a pretty decent sort of customer," I put in.

"You're all right," she said, demurely. "I'm afraid it won't be an easy job to get a young lady to suit a customer like you."

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

"I certainly will."

She was less talkative now, and certainly less at her ease than she had been before the topic was broached, which impressed me rather favorably.

Altogether she was far from the virago or "witch" her mother-in-law had described her to be. As to her attitude toward her husband, I subsequently came to the conclusion that it was a blend of affection and contempt.

Nodelman was henpecked, but not badly so

I called on them three or four times more during that spring. Somehow the question of my marriage was never mentioned on these occasions, and then Mrs. Nodelman and the children, all except Maurice, went to the seashore for the summer

CHAPTER IV

"YOU'LL examine the merchandise, and if you don't like it nobody is going to make you buy it," said Nodelman to me one day in January of the following winter. By "merchandise" he meant a Miss Kalmanovitch, the daughter of a wealthy furniture-dealer, to whom I was to be introduced at the Nodelman residence four days later. "She is a peach of a girl, beautiful as the sun, and no runt, either; a lovely girl." "Good looks aren't everything. Beauty is skin deep, and handsome is as handsome does," I paraded my English

"Oh, she is a good girl every way: a fine housekeeper, good-natured, and educated. Gee! how educated she is! Why, she has a pile of books in her room, Bella says, a pile that high." He raised his hand above his head. "She is dead stuck on her, Bella is."

Owing to an illness in the Kalmanovitch family, the projected meeting could not take place, but Nodelman's birthday was to be celebrated in March, so the gathering was to serve as a match-making agency as well as a social function

The great event came to pass on a Sunday evening. The prospect of facing a girl who offered herself as a candidate for becoming my wife put me all in a flutter. It took me a long time to dress and I made my appearance at the Nodelmans' rather late in the evening. Mrs. Nodelman, who met me in the hall, offered me a tempestuous welcome

"Here he is! Better late than never," she shrieked, hoarsely, as I entered the hall at the head of the high stoop. "I was gettin' uneasy. Honest I was." And dropping her voice: "Miss Kalmanovitch came on time. She's a good girl. Always." And she gave me a knowing look that brought the color to my face and a coy smile into hers

Her husband appeared a minute later. After greeting me warmly he whispered into my ear: "Nobody knows anything about it, not even the young lady. Only her mother does."

But I soon discovered that he was mistaken. My appearance produced a sensation, and the telltale glances of the women from me to a large girl with black eyes who stood at the mantelpiece not only showed plainly that they knew all about "it," but also indicated who of the young women present was Miss Kalmanovitch

The spacious parlor was literally jammed. The hostess led the way through the throng, introducing me to the guests as we proceeded. There were Nodelman's father and mother among them, the gigantic old tailor grinning childishly by the side of his wife, who looked glum

"That one, with the dark eves, by the mantelpiece," Meyer
Nodelman whispered to me, eagerly

The girl pointed out was large and plump, with full ivory-hued cheeks, and a dimple in her fleshy chin. Her black eyes were large and round. That the object of my coming, and of her own, was no secret to her was quite evident.

She was blushing to the roots of her glossy black hair, and in her apparent struggle with her constraint she put her stout, long arm around the waist of a girl who stood by her side against the mantelpiece

Upon the whole, Miss Kalmanovitch impressed me more than favorably; but a minute later, when I was introduced to her and saw her double chin and shook her gently by a hand that was fat and damp with perspiration, I all but shuddered. I felt as though she exuded oil. I was introduced to her mother, a spare, hatchet-face little woman with bad teeth, who looked me over in a most business-like way, and to her father, a gray man with a goatee

Miss Kalmanovitch and I soon found ourselves seated side by side. Conscious of being the target of many eyes, I was as disconcerted as I had been twelve years before, when Matilda played her first practical joke upon my sidelocks. My would-be fiancÉe was the first to recover her ease. She asked me if I was related to a white-goods man named Levinsky, and when I said no she passed to other topics. She led the conversation, and I scarcely followed her. At one moment, for example, as I looked her in the face, endeavoring to listen to what she was saying about the Purim ball she had attended, I remarked to myself that the name Kalmanovitch somehow seemed to go well with her face and figure, and that she was too self-possessed for a "bridal candidate."

Presently we heard Mrs. Nodelman's hoarse voice: "Now Miss
Kalmanovitch will oblige us with some music. Won't you, please,
Miss Kalmanovitch?"

A swarthy, middle-aged woman, with features that somewhat resembled those of the host, whose cousin she was, and with huge golden teeth that glistened good-naturedly, took Miss Kalmanovitch by the arm, saying in a mannish voice: "Come on, Ray! Show them what you can do!"

My companion rose and, throwing gay glances at some of the other girls, she walked over to the piano and seated herself. Then, with some more smiles at the girls, she cold-bloodedly attacked the keyboard

"A nauctourrn by Chopin," her mother explained to me in an audible whisper across the room

Miss Kalmanovitch was banging away with an effect of showing how quickly she could get through the nocturne. I am not musical in the accepted meaning of the term, and in those days I was even less so than I am now, perhaps, but I was always fond of music, and had a discriminating feeling for it. At all events, I knew enough to realize that my would-be fiancÉe was playing execrably. But her mother, her father, the hostess, and the swarthy woman with the golden teeth, were shooting glances at me that seemed to say: "What do you think of that? Did you ever see such fast playing?" and there was nothing for it but to simulate admiration

The woman with the great golden teeth, Meyer Nodelman's cousin, was even more strenuous in her efforts to arouse my exultation than Ray's mother. She was the wife of a prosperous teamster whose moving-vans were seen all over the East Side. Gaunt, flat-chested, with a solemn masculine face, she was known for her jolly disposition and good-natured sarcasm. There was something suggestive of Meyer Nodelman in her manner of speaking as well as in her looks. She was childless and took an insatiable interest in the love-affairs and matrimonial politics of young people. Her name was Mrs.

Kalch, but everybody called her Auntie Yetta

When Ray finished playing Auntie Yetta led the applause, for all the world like a ward heeler. When the acclaim had died down she rushed at Ray, pressed her ample bosom to her own flat one, kissed her a sounding smack on the lips, and exclaimed, with a wink to me: "Ever see such a tasty duck of a girl?"

Miss Kalmanovitch was followed by a bespectacled, anemic boy of thirteen who played something by Wieniavsky on the violin, and then Miss Kalmanovitch "obliged" us with a recitation from "Macbeth." There were four other solos on the piano and on the violin by boys and girls, children of the invited guests, the violinists having brought their instruments with them. Not that the concert was part of a preconceived program, although it might have been taken for granted. The mothers of the performers had simply seized the opportunity to display the talents of their offspring before an audience.

Only one boy—a curly-headed, long-necked little pianist, introduced as Bennie Saminsky—played with much feeling and taste. All the rest grated on my nerves

I beguiled the time by observing the women. I noticed, for instance, that Auntie Yetta, whose fingers were a veritable jewelry-store, now and again made a pretense of smoothing her grayish hair for the purpose of exhibiting her flaming rings. Another elderly woman, whose fingers were as heavily laden, kept them prominently interlaced across her breast. From time to time she would flirt her interlocked hands, in feigned absent-mindedness, thus flashing her diamonds upon the people around her. At one moment it became something like a race between her and Auntie Yetta. Nodelman's cousin caught me watching it, whereupon she winked to me merrily and interlaced her own begemmed fingers, as much as to say, "What do you think of our contest?" and burst into a voiceless laugh

I tried to listen to the music again. To add to my ordeal, I had to lend an ear to the boastful chatter of the mothers or fathers on the virtuosity of Bennie, Sidney, Beckie, or Sadie. The mother of the curly-headed pianist, the illiterate wife of a baker, first wore out my patience and then enlisted my interest by a torrent of musical terminology which she apparently had picked up from talks with her boy's piano-teacher. She interspersed her unsophisticated Yiddish with English phrases like "rare technique," "vonderful touch," "bee-youtiful tone," or "poeytic temperament." She assured me that her son was the youngest boy in the United States to play Brahms and Beethoven successfully. At first I thought that she was prattling these words parrot fashion, but I soon realized that, to a considerable extent, at least, she used them intelligently

She had set her heart upon making the greatest pianist in the world of Bennie, and by incessantly discussing him with people who were supposed to know something about music she had gradually accumulated a smattering acquaintance with the subject. That she was full of it there could be no doubt. Perhaps she had a native intuition for music. Perhaps, too, it was from her that her son had inherited his feeling for the poetry of sound. She certainly had imagination

"Some boys play like monkeys," she said in Yiddish. "They don't know what they are at. May I know evil if they do. My Bennie is not that sort of a pianist, thank God! He knows what he is talking about—on his piano, I mean.

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

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

"Yes, it comes right from his heart," she pursued. "He has a golden temperament. The piano just talks under his fingers. I mean what I say.

People think a piano is just a row of dead pieces of bone or wood. It is not. No, sirrah. It has speech just like a human being, provided you know how to get it out of the keyboard. Bennie does."

In a certain sense this unlettered woman was being educated by her little boy in the same manner as Dora had been and still was, perhaps, by Lucy

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

One of these was a graduate of Normal College. She was dark-eyed, like Miss Kalmanovitch, but slender and supple and full of life. Everybody called her affectionately by her first name, which was Stella. At the supper-table, in the dining-room, I was placed beside Miss Kalmanovitch, but I gave most of my attention to Stella, who was seated diagonally across the table from us.

I felt quite at home now

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

"That's my secret," she answered.

"I can guess it, though."

"Try."

"Dancing."

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

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

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

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

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

"I don't look like one who did, I suppose. Well, I should like to say
I did, but I haven't the heart to tell you a lie."

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

He's awful educated. That's what makes him such a smart business man. By the way, Levinsky, how is the merchandise?"

"This is no place to talk shop," I replied, deprecatingly. "Especially when there are so many pretty ladies around."

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

Mrs. Nodelman, the hostess, who stood in the doorway, beckoned to her husband, and he jumped up from the table. As he passed by my seat I seized him by an arm and whispered into his ear: "The merchandise is too heavy. I want lighter goods." With this I released him and he disappeared with Mrs. Nodelman

A few minutes later he came back

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

"Do it for my sake. Will you?"

"All right."

I became aware of Mrs. Kalmanovitch's fire-flashing eyes, and my efforts to entertain her daughter were a poor performance

The Kalmanovitch family left immediately after supper, scarcely making their farewells. Portentous sounds came from the hallway. We could hear Mrs.

Kalmanovitch's angry voice. A nervous hush fell over the parlor.
Auntie Yetta gave us all an eloquent wink

"There's a woman with a tongue for you," she said in an undertone. "Pitch and sulphur. When she opens her mouth people had better sound the fire-alarm." After a pause she added: "Do you know why her teeth are so bad? Her mouth is so full of poison, it has eaten them up."

Presently the younger Mrs. Nodelman made her appearance. Her ruddy "meat-ball" face was fairly ablaze with excitement. Her husband followed with a guilty air

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

"What shall we do?" the baker's wife answered in Yiddish. "We have eaten a nice supper and we have heard music and now we are enjoying ourselves quietly, like the gentlemen and the ladies we are. What more do you want?" "Come, folks, let's have a dance. Bennie will play us a waltz. Quick, Bennie darling! Girls, get a move on you!"

I called the hostess aside. "May I ask you a question, Mrs.
Nodelman?" I said, in the manner of a boy addressing his teacher

"What is it?" she asked, awkwardly.

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

"I ain't angry at all," she returned, making an effort to look me straight in the face.

"Sure?"

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

And again assuming the tone of a penitent pupil, I said, "May I ask
Stella to dance with me?"

"But you don't dance."

"Let her teach me, then."

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

"But you have no objection, have you?"

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

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

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

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

"I know I misbehaved myself, but I couldn't help it. Miss
Kalmanovitch is too fat, you know, and her hands perspire so."

"She's a charmin' girl," she returned, with a hearty laugh. "I wish her mother was half so good."

"Was she angry, her mother?"

"Was she! She put all the blame on me. I invited her daughter on purpose to make fun of her, she says. My, how she carried on!"

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

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

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

She laughed

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

"You are a hell of a fellow. That's just what you are. But I might as well tell you it's no use trying to get Stella. She's already engaged."

"Is she really?"

"Honest."

"Well, I don't care. I'll take her away from her fellow. That's all there is to it." "You can't do it," she said, gaily. "She is dead stuck on her intended.

They'll be married in June."

I went home a lovesick man, but the following evening I went to
Boston for a day, and my feeling did not survive the trip

CHAPTER V

THAT journey to Boston is fixed in my memory by an incident which is one of my landmarks in the history of my financial evolution and, indeed, in the history of the American cloak industry. It occurred in the afternoon of the Monday which I spent in that city, less than two days after that birthday party at the Nodelmans'. I was lounging in an easy-chair in the lobby of my hotel, when I beheld Loeb, the "star" salesman of what had been the "star" firm in the cloak-and-suit business. I had not seen him for some time, but I knew that his employers were on their last legs and that he had a hard struggle trying to make a living. Nor was that firm the only one of the old-established cloak-and-suit concerns that found itself in this state at the period in question—that is, at the time of the economic crisis and the burst of good times that had succeeded it. Far from filling their coffers from the golden flood of those few years, they were drowned in it almost to a man. The trade was now in the hands of men from the ranks of their former employees, tailors or cloak operators of Russian or Galician origin, some of whom were Talmudic scholars like myself. It was the passing of the German Jew from the American cloak industry

We did profit by the abundance of the period. Moreover, there were many among us to whom the crisis of 1893 had proved a blessing. To begin with, some of our tailors, being unable to obtain employment in that year, had been driven to make up a garment or two and to offer it for sale in the street, huckster fashion—a venture which in many instances formed a stepping-stone to a cloak-factory. Others of our workmen had achieved the same evolution by employing their days of enforced idleness in taking lessons in cloak-designing, and then setting up a small shop of their own

Newfangled manufacturers of this kind were now springing up like mushrooms.

Joe, my old-time instructor in cloak-making, was one of the latest additions to their number. They worked—often assisted by their wives and children—in all sorts of capacities and at all hours. They lived on bread and salmon and were content with almost a nominal margin of profit. There were instances when the clippings from the cutting-table constituted all the profit the business yielded them. Pitted against "manufacturers" of this class or against a fellow like myself were the old-established firms, with their dignified office methods and high profit-rates, firms whose fortunes had been sorely tried, to boot, by their bitter struggle with the union

Loeb swaggered up to me with quizzical joviality as usual. But the smug luster of his face was faded and his kindly black eyes had an unsteady glance in them that belied his vivacity. I could see at once that he felt nothing but hate for me

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

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

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

As Division Street—a few blocks on the lower East Side—was the center of the new type of cloak-manufacturing, he referred to us by the name of that street. My business was on Broadway, yet I was included in the term, "Division Street manufacturer."

"What is Division Street going to do next?" he asked. "Sell a fifteen-dollar suit for fifteen cents?"

I smiled

"That's a great place, that is. There are two big business streets in New York—Wall Street and Division." He broke into a laugh at his own joke and I charitably joined in. I endeavored to take his thrusts good-naturedly and for many minutes I succeeded, but at one point when he referred to us as "manufacturers," with a sneering implication of quotation marks over the word, I flared up

"You don't seem to like the Division Street manufacturers, do you?" I said.

"I suppose you have a reason for it." "I have a reason? Of course I have," he retorted. "So has every other decent man in the business."

"It depends on what you call decent. Every misfit claims to be more decent than the fellow who gets the business."

He grew pale. It almost looked as though we were coming to blows. After a pause he said, with an effect of holding himself in leash: "Business! Do you call that business? I call it peanuts."

"Well, the peanuts are rapidly growing in size while the oranges and the apples are shrinking and rotting. The fittest survives." ("A lot he knows about the theory of the survival of the fittest!" I jeered in my heart. "He hasn't even heard the name of Herbert Spencer.") "Peanuts are peanuts, that's all there's to it," he returned

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

He made no answer

"We don't steal the trade we're getting, do we? If the American people prefer to buy our product they probably like it."

"Oh, chuck your big words, Levinsky. You fellows are killing the trade, and you know it."

He laughed, but what I said was true. The old cloak-manufacturers, the German Jews, were merely merchant. Our people, on the other hand, were mostly tailors or cloak operators who had learned the mechanical part of the industry, and they were introducing a thousand innovations into it, perfecting, revolutionizing it. We brought to our work a knowledge, a taste, and an ardor which the men of the old firms did not possess. And we were shedding our uncouthness, too. In proportion as we grew we adapted American business ways

Speaking in a semi-amicable vein, Loeb went on citing cases of what he termed cutthroat competition on our part, till he worked himself into a passion and became abusive again. The drift of his harangue was that "smashing" prices was something distasteful to the American spirit, that we were only foreigners, products of an inferior civilization, and that we ought to know our place.

"This way of doing business may be all right in Russia, but it won't do in this country," he said. "I tell you, it won't do."

"But it does do. So it seems."

As he continued to fume and rail at us, and I sat listening with a bored air, an idea flashed upon my mind, and, acting upon it on the spur of the moment, I suddenly laid a friendly hand on his arm

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

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

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

"What do you mean?" he asked, flushing

"I mean what I say. I want you to come with me. You will make more money than you have ever made before. You're a first-rate salesman, Loeb, and—well, it will pay you to make the change. What do you say?"

He contemplated the floor for a minute or two, and then, looking up awkwardly, he said: "I'll think it over. But you're a smart fellow, Levinsky. I can tell you that."

We proceeded to discuss details, and I received his answer—a favorable one—before we left our seats

To celebrate the event I had him dine with me that evening, our pledges of mutual loyalty being solemnized by a toast which we drank in the costliest champagne the hotel restaurant could furnish

It was not a year and a half after this episode that Chaikin entered my employ as designer

CHAPTER VI

I SAW other girls with a view to marriage, but I was "too particular," as my friends, the Nodelmans, would have it. I had two narrow escapes from breach-of-promise suits.

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

"Too much in his head, don't you know. You think too much, Levinsky. That's what's the matter. First marry, and do your thinking afterward. If you stopped to think before eating you would starve to death, wouldn't you? Well, and if you keep on thinking and figuring if this girl's nose is nice enough and if that girl's eyes are nice enough, you'll die before you get married, and there are no weddings among the dead, you know."

My matrimonial aspirations made themselves felt with fits and starts. There were periods when I seemed to be completely in their grip, when I was restless and as though ready to marry the first girl I met. Then there would be many months during which I was utterly indifferent, enjoying my freedom and putting off the question indefinitely

Year after year slid by. When my thirty-ninth birthday became a thing of the past and I saw myself entering upon my fortieth year without knowing who I worked for I was in something like a state of despair. When I was a boy forty years had seemed to be the beginning of old age. This notion I now repudiated as ridiculous, for I felt as young as I had done ten, fifteen, or twenty years before; and yet the words "forty years" appalled me. The wish to "settle down" then grew into a passion in me. The vague portrait of a woman in the abstract seemed never to be absent from my mind. Coupled with that portrait was a similarly vague image of a window and a table set for dinner. That, somehow, was my symbol of home. Home and woman were one, a complex charm joining them into an inseparable force. There was the glamour of sex, shelter, and companionship in that charm, and of something else that promised security and perpetuity to the successes that fate was pouring into my lap. It whispered of a future that was to continue after I was gone

My loneliness often took on the pungence of acute physical discomfort. The more I achieved, the more painful was my self-pity

Nothing seemed to matter unless it was sanctified by marriage, and marriage now mattered far more than love

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

Odd as it may appear, my romantic ideals of twenty years ago now reasserted their claim upon me. It was my ambition to marry into some orthodox family, well-to-do, well connected, and with an atmosphere of Talmudic education—the kind of match of which I had dreamed before my mother died, with such modifications as the American environment rendered natural

There were two distinct circumstances to account for this new mood in me

In the first place, my sense of approaching middle age somehow rekindled my yearning interest in the scenes of my childhood and boyhood. Memories of bygone days had become ineffably dear to me. I seemed to remember things of my boyhood more vividly than I did things that had happened only a year before

I was homesick for Antomir again

To revisit Abner's Court or the Preacher's Synagogue, to speak to Reb Sender, or to the bewhiskered old soldier, the skeepskin tailor, if they were still living, was one of my day-dreams.

Eliakim Zunzer, the famous wedding-bard whose songs my mother used to sing in her dear, sonorous contralto, had emigrated to America several years before and I had heard of it at the time of his arrival, yet I had never thought of going to see him. Now, however, I could not rest until I looked him up. It appeared that he owned a small printing-shop in a basement on East Broadway, so I called at his place one afternoon on the pretext of ordering some cards. When I saw the poet—an aged little man with a tragic, tired look on a cadaverous face—I was so unstrung that when a young man in the shop asked me something about the cards, he had to repeat the question before I understood it

"My mother used to sing your beautiful songs, Mr. Zunzer," I said to the poet some minutes later, my heart beating violently again.

"Did she? Where do you come from?" he asked, with a smile that banished the tired look, but deepened the tragic sadness of his death-like countenance

Everything bearing the name of my native place touched a tender spot in my heart. It was enough for a cloak-maker to ask me for a job with the Antomir accent to be favorably recommended to one of my foremen. A number of the men who received special consideration and were kept working in my shop in the slack seasons, when my force was greatly reduced, were fellow-townspeople of mine. This had been going on for several years, in fact, till gradually an Antomir atmosphere had been established in my shop, and something like a family spirit of which I was proud. We had formed a Levinsky Antomir Benefit Society of which I was an honorary member and which was made up, for the most part, of my own employees

All this, I confess, was not without advantage to my business interests, for it afforded me a low average of wages and safeguarded my shop against labor troubles. The Cloak-makers' Union had again come into existence, and, although it had no real power over the men, the trade was not free from sporadic conflicts in individual shops. My place, however, was absolutely immune from difficulties of this sort—all because of the Levinsky Antomir Benefit Society

If one of my operatives happened to have a relative in Antomir, a women's tailor who wished to emigrate to America, I would advance him the passage money, with the understanding that he was to work off the loan in my employ.

That the "green one" was to work for low wages was a matter of course. But then, in justice to myself, I must add that I did my men favors in numerous cases that could in no way redound to my benefit. Besides, the fiscal advantages that I did derive from the Antomir spirit of my shop really were not a primary consideration with me. I sincerely cherished that spirit for its own sake. Moreover, if my Antomir employees were willing to accept from me lower pay than they might have received in other places, their average earnings were actually higher than they would have been elsewhere. I gave them steady work. Besides, they felt perfectly at home in my shop. I treated them well. I was very democratic

Compared to the thoughts of home that had oppressed me during my first months in America, my new visions of Antomir were like the wistful lights of a sunset as compared with the glare of midday. But then sunsets produce deeper, if quieter, effects on the emotions than the strongest daylight

It was my new homesickness, then, which inclined me to an American form of the kind of marriage of which I used to dream in the days of my Talmudic studies. Another motive that led me to matrimonial aspirations of this kind lay in my new ideas of respectability as a necessary accompaniment to success. Marrying into a well-to-do orthodox family meant respectability and solidity. It implied law and order, the antithesis of anarchism, socialism, trade-unionism, strikes

I was a convinced free-thinker. Spencer's Unknowable had irrevocably replaced my God. Yet religion now appealed to me as an indispensable instrument in the great orchestra of things. From what I had seen of the world, or read about it in the daily press, I was convinced that but few people of wealth and power had real religion in their hearts. I felt sure that most of them looked upon churches or synagogues as they did upon police-courts; that they valued them primarily as safeguards of law and order and correctness, and this had become my attitude. For the rest, I felt that a vast number of the people who professed Christianity or Judaism did so merely because to declare oneself an atheist was not a prudent thing to do from a business or social point of view, or that they were in doubt and chose to be on the safe side of it, lest there should be a God, "after all," while millions of other people were not interested enough even to doubt, or to ask questions, and were content to do as everybody did. But there were some who did ask questions and did dare to declare themselves atheists. I was one of these, and yet I looked upon religion as a most important institution, and was willing to contribute to its support

My business life had fostered the conviction in me that, outside of the family, the human world was as brutally selfish as the jungle, and that it was worm-eaten with hypocrisy into the bargain. From time to time the newspapers published sensational revelations concerning some pillar of society who had turned out to be a common thief on an uncommon scale. I saw that political speeches, sermons, and editorials had, with very few exceptions, no more sincerity in them than the rhetoric of an advertisement.

I saw that Americans who boasted descent from the heroes of the Revolution boasted, in the same breath, of having spent an evening with Lord So-and-so; that it was their avowed ambition to acquire for their daughters the very titles which their ancestors had fought to banish from the life of their country. I saw that civilization was honeycombed with what Max Nordau called conventional lies, with sham ecstasy, sham sympathy, sham smiles, sham laughter

The riot of prosperity introduced the fashion of respectable women covering their faces with powder and paint in a way that had hitherto been peculiar to women of the streets, so I pictured civilization as a harlot with cheeks, lips, and eyelashes of artificial beauty. I imagined mountains of powder and paint, a deafening chorus of affected laughter, a huge heart, as large as a city, full of falsehood and mischief

The leaders of the Jewish socialists, who were also at the head of the Jewish labor movement, seemed to me to be the most repulsive hypocrites of all. I loathed them

I had no creed. I knew of no ideals. The only thing I believed in was the cold, drab theory of the struggle for existence and the survival of the fittest. This could not satisfy a heart that was hungry for enthusiasm and affection, so dreams of family life became my religion. Self-sacrificing devotion to one's family was the only kind of altruism and idealism I did not flout

I was worth over a million, and my profits had reached enormous dimensions, so I was regarded a most desirable match, and match-makers pestered me as much as I would let them, but they found me a hard man to suit

There was a homesick young man in my shop, a native of Antomir, with whom I often chatted of our common birthplace. His name was Mirmelstein. He was a little fellow with a massive head and a neck that seemed to be too slender to support it. I liked his face for its honest, ingenuous expression, but more especially because I thought his eyes had a homesick look in them. He was a poor mechanic, but I found him a steady job in my shipping department

He could furnish me no information about Reb Sender, of whom he had never heard before; he knew of the Minsker family, of course, and he told me that Shiphrah, Matilda's mother, was dead; that Yeffim, Matilda's brother, had been sent to Siberia some three years before for complicity in the revolutionary movement, and that Matilda herself had had a hair-breadth escape from arrest and was living in Switzerland

He wrote to Antomir, and a few weeks later he brought me the sad information that Reb Sender had been dead for several years, and that his wife had married again

CHAPTER VII

ONE day in November less than six months after I
had learned of Yeffim Minsker's arrest and of Matilda's escape, as
I was making the rounds of my several departments, little
Mirmelstein accosted me timidly

"Yeffim Minsker and his sister are here," he said, with the smile of one breaking an interesting surprise

I paused, flushing. I feigned indifference and preoccupation, but the next moment I cast off all pretense

"Are they really?" I asked

He produced a clipping from a socialist Yiddish daily containing an advertisement of a public meeting to be held at Cooper Institute under the auspices of an organization of Russian revolutionists for the purpose of welcoming Yefflm and another man, a Doctor Gorsky, both of whom had recently escaped from Siberia. The revolutionary movement was then at its height in Russia, and the Jews were among its foremost and bravest leaders (which, by the way, accounts for the anti-Jewish riots and massacres which the Government inspired and encouraged quite openly). As was mentioned in an early chapter of this book, the then Minister of the Interior was the same man who had been Director of Police over the whole empire at the time of the anti-Jewish riots which followed the assassination of Czar Alexander II. in 1881, and which started the great emigration of Jews to America. From time to time some distinguished revolutionist would be sent to America for subscriptions to the cause. This was the mission of Doctor Gorsky and Yeffim. They were here, not as immigrants, but merely to raise funds for the movement at home

As for Matilda, it appeared that Doctor Gorsky was her husband. Whether he had married her in Russia, before his arrest, or in Switzerland, where he and her brother had spent some time after their escape from exile, Mirmelstein could not tell me. Matilda's name was not mentioned in the advertisement, but my shipping-clerk had heard of her arrival and marriage from some Antomir people.

I could scarcely do anything that day. I was in a fever of excitement. "Do I still love her?" I wondered

I made up my mind to attend the Cooper Institute meeting. It was a bold venture, for the crowd was sure to contain some socialist cloak-makers who held me in anything but esteem. But then I had not had a strike in my shop for several years, and it did not seem likely that they would offer me an insult. Anyhow, the temptation to see Matilda was too strong. I had to go.

She was certain to be on the platform, and all I wanted was to take a look at her from the auditorium. "And who knows but I may have a chance to speak to her, too," I thought.

It was a cold evening in the latter part of November. I went to the meeting in my expensive fur coat (although fur coats were still a rare spectacle in the streets), with a secret foretaste of the impression my prosperity would make upon Matilda. It was a fatal mistake

It was twenty minutes to 8 when I reached the front door of the historical meeting-hall, but it was already crowded to overflowing, and the policemen guarding the brightly illuminated entrance tumed me away with a crowd of others. I was in despair. I tried again, and this time, apparently owing to my mink coat, I was admitted. Every seat in the vast underground auditorium was occupied. But few people were allowed to stand, in the rear of the hall, and I was one of them. From the chat I overheard around me I gathered that there were scores of men and women in the audience who had been in the thick of sensational conflicts in the great crusade for liberty that was then going on in Russia. I questioned a man who stood beside me about Doctor Gorsky, and from his answers I gained the impression that Matilda's husband was considered one of the pluckiest men in the struggle. At the time of his arrest he was practising medicine

Ranged on the platform on either side of the speaker's desk were about a hundred chairs, several of which in the two front rows were kept vacant.

Presently there was a stir on the platform. A group of men and women made their appearance and seated themselves on the unoccupied chairs. They were greeted with passionate cheers and applause

One of them was Matilda. I recognized her at once. Her curly brown hair was gray at the temples, and her oval little face was somewhat bloated, and she was stouter than she had been twenty-one years before; but all this was merely like a new dress. Had I met her in the street, I might have merely felt that she looked familiar to me, without being able to trace her. As it was, she was strikingly the same as I had known her, though not precisely the same as I had pictured her, of late years, at least. Some errors had stolen into my image of her, and now, that I saw her in the flesh, I recalled her likeness of twenty-one years before, and she now looked precisely as she had done then. She was as interesting as ever. I was in such a turmoil that I scarcely knew what was happening on the platform. Did I still love her, or was it merely the excitement of beholding a living memory of my youth? One thing was certain—the feeling of reverence and awe with which I had once been wont to view her and her parents was stirring in my heart again. For the moment I did not seem to be the man who owned a big cloak-factory and was worth over a million American dollars

The chairman had been speaking for some time before I became aware of his existence. As his address was in Russian and I had long since unlearned what little I had ever known of that language, his words were Greek to me

Matilda was flanked by two men, both with full beards, one fair and the other rather dark. The one of the fair complexion and beard was Yeffim, although I recognized him by his resemblance to Matilda and more especially to her father, rather than by his image of twenty-one years ago. I supposed that the man on the other side of her, the one with the dark beard, was her husband, and I asked the man by my side about it, but he did not know

Several speakers made brief addresses of welcome. One of these spoke in Yiddish and one in English, so I understood them. They dealt with the revolution and the anti-Semitic atrocities, and paid glowing tributes to the new-comers. They were interrupted by outburst after outburst of enthusiasm and indignation. When finally Doctor Gorsky was introduced (it was the man with the dark beard) there was a veritable pandemonium of applause, cheers, and ejaculations that lasted many minutes. He spoke in Russian and he seemed to be a poor speaker. I searched his face for evidence of valor and strength, but did not seem to find any. I thought it was rather a weak face—weak and kindly and girlish-looking. His beard, which was long and thin, did not become him. I asked myself whether I was jealous of him, and the question seemed so incongruous, so remote. He made a good impression on me. The fact that this man, who was possessed of indomitable courage, had a weak, good-natured face interested me greatly, and the fact that he had gone through much suffering made a strong appeal to my sympathies (somehow his martyrdom was linked in my mind to his futility as a speaker). I warmed to him

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

When Minsker had finished the chairman declared the meeting closed. There was a rush for the platform. It was quite high above the auditorium floor; unless one reached it by way of the committee-room, which was a considerable distance to the right, it had to be mounted, not without an effort, by means of the chairs in the press inclosure. After some hesitation I made a dash for one of these chairs, and the next minute I was within three or four feet from Matilda, but with an excited crowd between us. Everybody wanted to shake hands with the heroes. The jam and scramble were so great that Doctor Gorsky, Yeffim, and Matilda had to extricate themselves and to escape into the spacious committee-room in the rear of the platform

Some minutes later I stood by her side in that room, amid a cluster of revolutionists, her husband and Yeffim being each the center of another crowd in the same room

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

Her glittering brown eyes fixed me with a curious look. "My name is David Levinsky," I added. "'Dovid,' the Talmudic student to whom you gave money with which to go to America."

"Of course I know you," she snapped. taking stock of my mink overcoat. "And I have heard about you, too. You have a lot of money, haven't you? I see you are wearing a costly fur coat." And she brutally turned to speak to somebody else

My heart stood still. I wanted to say something, to assure her that I was not so black as the socialists painted me. I had an impulse to offer her a generous contribution to the cause, but I had not the courage to open my mouth again. The bystanders were eying me with glances that seemed to say, "The idea of a fellow like this being here!" I was a despicable "bourgeois," a "capitalist" of the kind whose presence at a socialist meeting was a sacrilege

I slunk out of the room feeling like a whipped cur. "Why, she is a perfect savage!" I thought. "But then what else can you expect of a socialist?"

I thought of the scenes that had passed between her and myself in her mother's house and I sneered. "A socialist, a good, pure soul, indeed!" I mused, gloatingly. "That's exactly like them. A bunch of hypocrites, that's all they are."

At the same time I was nagging myself for having had so little sense as to sport my prosperity before a socialist, of all the people in the world

A few days later the episode seemed to have occurred many years before. It did not bother me. Nor did Matilda

CHAPTER VIII

IT was an afternoon in April. My chief bookkeeper, one of my stenographers, Bender, and myself were hard at work at my Broadway factory amid a muffled turmoil of industry. There were important questions of credit to dispose of and letters to answer. I was taking up account after account, weighing my data with the utmost care, giving every detail my closest attention. And all the while I was thus absorbed, seemingly oblivious to everything else, I was alive to the fact that it was Passover and the eve of the anniversary of my mother's death; that three or four hours later I should be solemnizing her memorial day at the new Synagogue of the Sons of Antomir; that while there I should sit next to Mr. Kaplan, a venerable-looking man to whose daughter I had recently become engaged, and that after the service I was to accompany Mr. Kaplan to his house and spend the evening in the bosom of his family, by the side of the girl that was soon to become my wife. My consciousness of all this grew keener every minute, till it began to interfere with my work.

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

I washed myself, combed my plentiful crop of dark hair, carefully brushed myself, and put on my spring overcoat and derby hat—both of a dark-brown hue

"I sha'n't be back until the day after to-morrow," I announced to
Bender, after giving him some orders

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

I nodded

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

"It can't be helped."

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

"What difference does it make?" After a pause I added: "It isn't on business. It's a private matter."

"Oh!" he uttered, with evident relief. Nothing hurt his pride more than to suspect me of having business secrets from him.

He was a married man now, having, less than a year ago, wedded a sweet little girl, a cousin, who was as simple-hearted and simple-minded as himself, and to whom he had practically been engaged since boyhood. His salary was one hundred and twenty-five dollars a week now. I was at home in their well-ordered little establishment, the sunshine that filled it having given an added impulse to my matrimonial aspirations

I betook myself to the new Antomir Synagogue. The congregation had greatly grown in prosperity and had recently moved from the ramshackle little frame building that had been its home into an impressive granite structure, formerly a Presbyterian church. This was my first visit to the building.

Indeed, I had not seen the inside of its predecessor, the little old house of prayer that had borne the name of my native town, years before it was abandoned. In former years, even some time after I had become a convinced free-thinker, I had visited it at least twice a year-on my two memorial days—that is, on the anniversaries of the death of my parents. I had not done so since I had read Spencer. This time, however, the anniversary of my mother's death had a peculiar meaning for me. Vaguely as a result of my new mood, and distinctly as a result of my betrothal, I was lured to the synagogue by a force against which my Spencerian agnosticism was powerless

I found the interior of the building brilliantly illuminated. The woodwork of the "stand" and the bible platform, the velvet-and-gold curtains of the Holy Ark, and the fresco paintings on the walls and ceiling were screamingly new and gaudy. So were the ornamental electric fixtures. Altogether the place reminded me of a reformed German synagogue rather than of the kind with which my idea of Judaism had always been identified. This seemed to accentuate the fact that the building had until recently been a Christian church. The glaring electric lights and the glittering decorations struck me as something unholy. Still, the scattered handful of worshipers I found there, and more particularly the beadle, looked orthodox enough, and I gradually became reconciled to the place as a house of God

The beadle was a new incumbent. Better dressed and with more authority in his appearance than the man who had superintended the old place, he comported well with the look of things in the new synagogue. After obsequiously directing me to the pew of my prospective father-in-law, who had not yet arrived, he inserted a stout, tall candle into one of the sockets of the "stand" and lit it. It was mine. It was to burn uninterruptedly for my mother's soul for the next twenty-four hours. Mr.

Kaplan's pew was in a place of honor—that is, by the east wall, near the Holy Ark. To see my memorial candle I had to take a few steps back. I did so, and as I watched its flame memories and images took possession of me that turned my present life into a dream and my Russian past into reality.

According to the Talmud there is a close affinity between the human soul and light, for "the spirit of man is the lamp of God," as Solomon puts it in his Parables. Hence the custom of lighting candles or lamps for the dead. And so, as I gazed at that huge candle commemorating the day when my mother gave her life for me, I felt as though its light was part of her spirit. The gentle flutter of its flame seemed to be speaking in the sacred whisper of a grave-yard

"Mother dear! Mother dear!" my heart was saying. And then: "Thank God, mother dear! I own a large factory. I am a rich man and I am going to be married to the daughter of a fine Jew, a man of substance and Talmud. And the family comes from around Antomir, too. Ah, if you were here to escort me to the wedding canopy!"

The number of worshipers was slowly increasing. An old woman made her appearance in the gallery reserved for her sex. At last Mr. Kaplan, the father of my fiancÉe, entered the synagogue—a man of sixty, with a gray patriarchal beard and a general appearance that bespoke Talmudic scholarship and prosperity. He was a native of a small town near Antomir, where his father had been rabbi, and was now a retired flour merchant, having come to America in the seventies. He had always been one of the pillars of the Synagogue of the Sons of Antomir. In the days when I was a frequenter at the old house of prayer the social chasm between him and myself was so wide that the notion of my being engaged to a daughter of his would have seemed absurd. Which, by the way, was one of the attractions that his house now had for me

"Good holiday, Mr. Kaplan!" some of the other worshipers saluted him, as he made his way toward his pew

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

I could see that he was aware of my presence but carefully avoided looking at me until he should be near enough for me to greet him. He was a kindly, serious-minded man, sincerely devout, and not over-bright. He had his little vanities and I was willing to humor them

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

"Good holiday! Good holiday, David!" he returned, amiably. "Here already? Ahead of me? That's good! Just follow the path of Judaism and everything will be all right." "How's everybody?" I asked

"All are well, thank God."

"How's Fanny?"

"Now you're talking. That's the real question, isn't it?" he chaffed me, with dignity. "She's well, thank God."

He introduced me to the cantor—a pug-nosed man with a pale face and a skimpy little beard of a brownish hue

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

David Levinsky, my intended son-in-law. An Antomir man. Was a fine scholar over there and still remembers a lot of Talmud."

The newly arrived synagogue tenor was really a celebrated man, in the Antomir section of Russia, at least. His coming had been conceived as a sensational feature of the opening of the new synagogue. While "town cantor" in Antomir he had received the highest salary ever paid there. The contract that had induced him to come over to America pledged him nearly five times as much. Thus the New York Sons of Antomir were not only able to parade a famous cantor before the multitude of other New York congregations, but also to prove to the people at home that they were the financial superiors of the whole town of their birth. So far, however, as the New York end of the sensation was concerned, there was a good-sized bee in the honey. The imported cantor was a tragic disappointment. The trouble was that his New York audiences were far more critical and exacting than the people in Antomir, and he was not up to their standard. For one thing, many of the Sons of Antomir, and others who came to their synagogue to hear the new singer, people who had mostly lived in poverty and ignorance at home, now had a piano or a violin in the house, with a son or a daughter to play it, and had become frequenters of the Metropolitan Opera House or the Carnegie Music Hall; for another, the New York Ghetto was full of good concerts and all other sorts of musical entertainments, so much so that good music had become all but part of the daily life of the Jewish tenement population; for a third, the audiences of the imported cantor included people who had lived in much larger European cities than Antomir, in such places as Warsaw, Odessa, Lemberg, or Vienna, for example, where they had heard much better cantors than Goldstein. Then, too, life in New York had Americanized my fellow-townspeople, modernized their tastes, broadened them out. As a consequence, the methods of the man who had won the admiration of their native town seemed to them old-fashioned, crude, droll

Still, the trustees, and several others who were responsible for the coming of the pug-nosed singer, persisted in speaking of him as "a greater tenor than Jean de Rezske," and my prospective father-in-law was a trustee, and a good-natured man to boot, so he had compassion for him

"In the old country when we meet a new-comer we only say, 'Peace to you,'" I remarked to the cantor, gaily. "Here we say this and something else, besides. We ask him how he likes America."

"But I have not yet seen it," the cantor returned, with a broad smile in which his pug nose seemed to grow in size

I told him the threadbare joke of American newspaper reporters boarding an incoming steamer at Sandy Hook and asking some European celebrity how he likes America hours before he has set foot on its soil

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

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

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

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

"I know what 'all right' means, too," the cantor laughed. I thought there was servility in his laugh, and I ascribed it to the lukewarm reception with which he had met. I was touched. We talked of Antomir, and although a conversation of this kind was nothing new to me, yet what he said of the streets, market-places, the bridge, the synagogues, and of some of the people of the town interested me inexpressibly

Presently the service was begun—not by the imported singer, but by an amateur from among the worshipers, the service on a Passover evening not being considered important enough to be conducted by a professional cantor of consequence

My heart was all in Antomir, in the good old Antomir of synagogues and Talmud scholars and old-fashioned marriages, not of college students, revolutionists, and Matildas

When the service was over I stepped up close to the Holy Ark and recited the Prayer for the Dead, in chorus with several other men and boys. As I cast a glance at my "memorial candle" my mother loomed saintly through its flame. I beheld myself in her arms, a boy of four, on our way to the synagogue, where I was to be taught to parrot the very words that I was now saying for her spirit

The Prayer for the Dead was at an end. "A good holiday! A merry holiday!" rang on all sides, as the slender crowd streamed chatteringly toward the door

Mr. Kaplan, the cantor, and several other men, clustering together, lingered to bandy reminiscences of Antomir, interspersing them with "bits of law."

The Kaplans occupied a large, old house on Henry Street that had been built at a period when the neighborhood was considered the best in the city. While Kaplan and I were taking off our overcoats in the broad, carpeted, rather dimly lighted hall, a dark-eyed girl appeared at the head of a steep stairway

"Hello, Dave! You're a good boy," she shouted, joyously, as she ran down to meet me with coquettish complacency

She had regular features, and her face wore an expression of ease and self-satisfaction. Her dark eyes were large and pretty, and altogether she was rather good-looking. Indeed, there seemed to be no reason why she should not be decidedly pretty, but she was not. Perhaps it was because of that self-satisfied air of hers, the air of one whom nothing in the world could startle or stir. Temperamentally she reminded me somewhat of Miss Kalmanovitch, but she was the better-looking of the two. I was not in love with her, but she certainly was not repulsive to me

"Good holiday, dad! Good holiday, Dave!" she saluted us in Yiddish, throwing out her chest and squaring her shoulders as she reached us

She was born in New York and had graduated at a public grammar-school and English was the only language which she spoke like one born to speak it, and yet her Yiddish greeting was precisely what it would have been had she been born and bred in Antomir

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

"Well, I've brought him to you, haven't I? Are you pleased?" her father said, with affectionate grimness, in Yiddish

"Oh, you're a dandy dad. You're just sweet," she returned, in English, putting up her red lips as if he were her baby. And this, too, went to my heart

When her father had gone to have his shoes changed for slippers and before her mother came down from her bedroom, where she was apparently dressing for supper, Fanny slipped her arm around me and I kissed her lips and eyes

A chuckle rang out somewhere near by. Standing in the doorway of the back parlor, Mefisto-like, was Mary, Fanny's twelve-year-old sister

"Shame!" she said, gloatingly

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

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

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

"Stop quarreling, kids," I intervened. Then, addressing myself to
Mary, "Can you spell 'eavesdropping'?"

Mary laughed

"Never mind laughing," I insisted. "Do you know what eavesdropping means? Is it a nice thing to do? Anyhow, when you're as big as Fanny and you have a sweetheart, won't you let him kiss you?" As I said this I took Fanny's hand tenderly

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

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

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

Fanny and I went into the front parlor, a vast, high-ceiled room, as large as the average four-room flat in the "modern apartment-house" that had recently been completed on the next block. It was drearily too large for the habits of the East Side of my time, depressingly out of keeping with its sense of home. It had lanky pink-and-gold furniture and a heavy bright carpet, all of which had a forbidding effect. It was as though the chairs and the sofa had been placed there, not for use, but for storage. Nor was there enough furniture to give the room an air of being inhabited, the six pink-and-gold pieces and the marble-topped center-table losing themselves in spaces full of gaudy desolation

"She's awful saucy," said Fanny.

I caught her in my arms. "I have not three sweethearts. I have only one, and that's a real one," I cooed

"Only one? Really and truly?" she demanded, playfully. She gathered me to her plump bosom, planting a deep, slow, sensuous kiss on my lips

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

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

I thought she was putting it in a rather matter-of-fact way, but I kissed her with passion, all the same

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

"Are you really? Oh, I don't believe you," she jested, self-sufficiently.

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

She did, and then, breaking away at the sound of her mother's lumbering steps, she threw out her bosom with an upward jerk, a trick she had which I disliked

Ten minutes later the whole family, myself included, were seated around a large oval table in the basement dining-room. Besides the members already known to the reader, there was Fanny's mother, a corpulent woman with a fat, diabetic face and large, listless eyes, and Fanny's brother, Rubie, a boy with intense features, one year younger than Mary. Rubie was the youngest of five children, the oldest two, daughters, being married

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

Everything in this house was strictly orthodox and as old-fashioned as the American environment would permit

That there was not a trace of leavened bread in the house, its place being taken by thin, flat, unleavened "matzos," and that the repast included "matzo balls," wine, mead, and other accessories of a Passover meal, is a matter of course

Mr. Kaplan was wrapped up in his family, and on this occasion, though he presided with conscious dignity, he was in one of his best domestic moods, talkative, and affectionately facetious. The children were the real masters of his house

Watching his wife nag Rubie because he would not accept another matzo ball, Mr. Kaplan said: "Don't worry, Malkah. Your matzo balls are delicious, even if your 'only son' won't do justice to them. Aren't they, David?"

"They certainly are," I answered. "What is more, they have the genuine Antomir taste to them."

"Hear that, Fanny?" Mr. Kaplan said to my betrothed. "You had better learn to make matzo balls exactly like these. He likes everything that smells of Antomir, you know." "That's all right," said Malkah. "Fanny is a good housekeeper. May I have as good a year."

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

"Let him," said Fanny, with a jerk of her bosom and a theatrical glance at me. "I really don't know how to make matzo balls, and Passover is nearly over, so there's no time for mamma to show me how to do it."

"I'll do so next year," her mother said, with an affectionate smile that kindled life in her diabetic eyes. "The two of you will then have to pass Passover with us."

"I accept the invitation at once," I said

"Provided you attend the seder, too," remarked Kaplan, referring to the elaborate and picturesque ceremony attending the first two suppers of the great festival

I had been expected to partake of those ceremonial repasts on the first and second nights of this Passover, but had been unavoidably kept away from the city. Kaplan had resented it, and even now, as he spoke of the next year's seder, there was reproach in his voice.

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

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

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

"I am not joking," Kaplan persisted. "One has got to be a Jew. Excuse me, David, for speaking like that, but you re going to be as good as a son of mine and I have a right to talk to you in this way."

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

His lecture bored me, but it did me good, too. It was sweet to hear myself called "as good as a son" by this man of Talmudic education who was at the same time a man of substance and of excellent family

The chicken was served. My intended wife ate voraciously, biting lustily and chewing with gusto. The sight of it jarred on me somewhat, but I overruled myself. "It's all right," I thought. "She's a healthy girl. She'll make me a strong mate, and she'll bear me healthy children."

I had a temptation to take her in my arms and kiss her. "I am not in love with her, and yet I am so happy," I thought. "Oh, love isn't essential to happiness. Not at all. Our old generation is right."

Fanny's reading, which was only an occasional performance, was confined to the cheapest stories published. Even the popular novels of the day, the "best sellers," seemed to be beyond her depth. Her intellectual range was not much wider than that of her old-fashioned mother, whose literary attainments were restricted to the reading of the Yiddish Commentary on the Pentateuch. She often interrupted me or her mother; everybody except her father. But all this seemed to be quite natural and fitting. "She is expected to be a wife, a mother, and a housekeeper," I reflected, "and that she will know how to be. Everything else is nonsense. I don't want to discuss Spencer with her, do I?"

Kaplan quoted the opening words of a passage in the Talmud bearing upon piety as the bulwark of happiness. I took it up, finishing the passage for him

"See?" he said to his wife. "I have told you he remembers his
Talmud pretty well, haven't I?"

"When a man has a good head he has a good head," she returned, radiantly

Rubie went to a public school, but he spent three or four hours every afternoon at an old-fashioned Talmudic academy, or "yeshivah." There were two such "yeshivahs" on the East Side, and they were attended by boys of the most orthodox families in the Ghetto. I had never met such boys before. That an American school-boy should read Talmud seemed a joke to me. I could not take Rubie's holy studies seriously. As we now sat at the table I banteringly asked him about the last page he had read. He answered my question, and at his father's command he ran up-stairs, into the back parlor, where stood two huge bookcases filled with glittering folios of the Talmud and other volumes of holy lore, and came back with one containing the page he had named

"Find it and let David see what you can do," his father said

Rubie complied, reading the text and interpreting it in Yiddish precisely as I should have done when I was eleven years old. He even gesticulated and swayed backward and forward as I used to do. To complete the picture, his mother, watching him, beamed as my mother used to do when she watched me reading at the Preacher's Synagogue or at home in our wretched basement. I was deeply affected

"He's all right!" I said

"He's a loafer, just the same," his father said, gaily. "If he had as much appetite for his Talmud as he has for his school-books he would really be all right." "What do you want of him?" Malkah interceded. "Doesn't he work hard enough as it is? He hardly has an hour's rest."

"There you have it! I didn't speak respectfully enough of her 'only son.' I beg your pardon, Malkah," Mr. Kaplan said, facetiously

The wedding had been set for one of the half-holidays included in the Feast of Tabernacles, about six months later. Mrs. Kaplan said something about her plans concerning the event. Fanny objected. Her mother insisted, and it looked like an altercation, when the head of the family called them to order

"And where are you going for your honeymoon, Fanny?" asked
Mary

"That's none of your business," her sister retorted

"She's stuck up because she's going to be married," Mary jeered

"Shut your mouth," her father growled

"Do you know my idea of a honeymoon?" said I. "That is, if it were
possible—if Russia didn't have that accursed government of hers.
We should take a trip to Antomir." "Wouldn't that be lovely!" said
Fanny. "We would stop in Paris, wouldn't we?"

Fanny and her mother resumed their discussion of the preparations for the wedding. I scarcely listened, yet I was thrilled. I gazed at Fanny, trying to picture her as the mother of my first child. "If it's a girl she'll be named for mother, of course," I mused. I reflected with mortification that my mother's name could not be left in its original form, but would have to be Americanized, and for the moment this seemed to be a matter of the gravest concern to me

My attitude toward Fanny and our prospective marriage was primitive enough, and yet our engagement had an ennobling effect on me. I was in a lofty mood.

My heart sang of motives higher than the mere feathering of my own nest. The vision of working for my wife and children somehow induced a yearning for altruism in a broader sense. While free from any vestige of religion, in the ordinary meaning of the word, I was tingling with a religious ecstasy that was based on a sense of public duty. The Synagogue of the Sons of Antomir seemed to represent not a creed, but unselfishness. I donated generously to it. Also, I subscribed a liberal sum to an East Side hospital of which Kaplan was a member, and to other institutions. The sum I gave to the hospital was so large that it made a stir, and a conservative Yiddish daily printed my photograph and a short sketch of my life. I thought of the promise I had given Naphtali, before leaving Antomir, to send him a "ship ticket." I had thought of it many times before, but I had never even sought to discover his whereabouts. This time, however, I throbbed with a firm resolution to get his address, and, in case he was poor, to bring him over and liberally provide for his future

My wedding loomed as the beginning of a new era in my life. It appealed to my imagination as a new birth, like my coming to America. I looked forward to it with mixed awe and bliss

Three or four months later, however, something happened that played havoc with that feeling