A CYNICAL INVENTOR
The "intellectuals" who gather in the Russian cafés delight in expressing the ideas for which they were persecuted abroad. Enthusiasm for progress and love of ideas is the characteristic tone of these gatherings and an entire lack of practical sense.
Very striking, therefore, was the attitude of a Russian-Jewish inventor, who took his lunch the other day at one of the most literary of these cafés. Near him were a trio of enthusiasts, gesticulating over their tea, but he sat aloof, alone. He listened with a cold, superior smile. He neither smoked nor drank, but sat, with his thin, shrewd face, chillily thinking.
It is common report in the community of the intellectual Ghetto that Mr. Okun made a great invention connected with the electric arc lamp. It resulted in lengthening the time before the carbon is burnt out from four or five hours to 150 hours or thereabouts. He might have been a millionaire to-day, both he and his acquaintances maintain, but, with the usual unpractical nature of the Russian Jew, he was cheated by unscrupulous lawyers. He was a shirt maker, and for six years saved from his $10 a week to buy the apparatus necessary for the task. At last it was completed, but he was robbed of the fortune, of the fame, of the prestige to which his great idea entitled him. As it is, he gets only $1,250 a year for the great deed, spends much of his time silently in the cafés, and dreams of other inventions when not engaged with criticizing his kind.
An American, who sometimes visited the place for "color" and for the unpractical enthusiasm which he missed among his own people, sat down by the inventor, whose face interested him, and entered into conversation. He spoke of a Yiddish playwright whom he admired.
"I do not know much about him," said the inventor. "I am not a genius, like the others."
He sneered, but it was so nearly imperceptible that it did not seem ill-natured.
"But I am told," said the American, "that you are a great inventor. And that is a kind of genius."
"Yes, perhaps," he replied, carelessly. "It takes talent, too, to do what I have done. But I am not a genius, like these people."
Again he smiled, sarcastically.
"I find," said the American, "a great many interesting people in these cafés."
"Yes, they are what you call characters, I suppose," he said, dispassionately; "but I find them interesting only for one reason—no, no, I won't tell you what that reason is."
"You don't seem to be as enthusiastic about the people as I am," said the American, "but whenever I come into a café down here I find serious men who will talk seriously. They are different from the Americans who amuse themselves in bars, at horse races and farces."
The inventor smiled coldly.
"I do not call serious, what you call serious," he said. "It is not necessary to talk seriously to be serious. Serious men do things. The Russians don't do things. If they were gay and did things, they would be more serious than they are. But they are solemn and don't do anything."
"I don't agree with you," said the American, warmly. "Doesn't Blank, who writes so many excellent novels, do anything? Don't the actors, who act so truthfully, without self-consciousness, do anything? Don't the journalists, who spread excellent ideas, do anything?"
The inventor nodded judicially and remarked that there were some exceptions.
"But," he added, "you are deceived by the surface. There are many men in our colony who seem to be stronger intellectually than they really are. In Russia a few men, really cultivated and intellectual, give the tone, and everybody follows them. In America, however, the public gives the tone, and the playwright, the literary man, simply expresses the public. So that really intellectual Americans do not express as good ideas as less intellectual Russians. The Russians all imitate the best. The Americans imitate what the mass of the people want. But an intellectual American is more intellectual than these geniuses around here whom you like. Of course, they have some good things in them, as everybody has."
"What is it that you find to like in this Russian colony?" asked the American.
"I find," replied the inventor, "that when they come over here they lose what is best in the Russian character and acquire what is worst in the American character."
"And what do you deem best in the Russian character?"
"Well, in Russia they are warm hearted and friendly. They are envious even there, but not nearly so envious as they are here."
"And what do you find that is worst in the American character?"
"Oh, you know; they do everything for money. But yet there is more greatness in the American character. They are mechanical. They are practical. They don't get cheated by unscrupulous lawyers.
"Are you married?" asked the American, sympathetically.
"No, thank God!" he replied, with more energy than he had yet shown.
"But you have no friends?"
"No."
"Some men," commented the American, "find a friend in a wife."
"That depends on a man's character. It increases the loneliness of some men," replied the inventor, smiling in spite of what he was saying.
"You seem to me to be rather pessimistic," remarked the American.
"No, I am not pessimistic. I understand that a pessimist thinks life is worse than it is, but I see things just as they are; that is all. When I came to New York I was enthusiastic, too; I was an optimist. I saw life as it is not. But the mists have passed from before my eyes, and I see things just as they are."