Luleika and old Kurguz walked through Washington Street
"Ali knew, Luleika knew, yet she married him, because he was rich.
"And I, I worked myself tired and cried myself to sleep. Twice the soul of my mother stayed my hand from murder. Thousands of rings and brooches in silver and gold I have made for men and women, and in them I have engraved all the tortures of my soul and flesh. I have put sapphires and rubies in the eyes of the engraved serpents on the brooches and pale green topazes in the mouths of the carved monsters on the rings I made.
"And every day I took an oath afresh never to see her again.
"Then one day her last words to me rang in my ears: 'I wish he were older.'
"But Kurguz Mehmed got stronger and younger every day now. I saw him pass the street without leaning on his cane.
"Five years later, one morning, Luleika suddenly appeared at the door of my place.
"'That you make for me a brooch, Malouf,' she said, 'a brooch as beautiful as you ever made.'
"I looked at her. My heart grew cold, my mouth burned. Was this the same Luleika? She was still beautiful, but her flesh had lost its firmness, and the corners of her mouth drooped.
"And as I worked at her brooch I cooled the white-heated golden wires with my tears, yet I dared not speak to her of my love, for she was the wife of another man. She must have known I still loved her; women always do.
"Kurguz Mehmed lived on and grew richer every day. He lived on five more years, and then five more and then some more. The last two years he lay, with no use of limbs and eyes on his bed, and allowed not that she leave him alone. He was still her master.
"Then he died.
"She was left alone and rich, oh very rich. Every rug sold in this country had added something to her riches. But she was no longer young when Kurguz died. She was no longer young and she knew it.
"My soul was dead to her. My flesh burnt to cold cinders. She came for a ring one day. I spoke nothing at all to her save of the ring—nothing of love.
"But there were other men, men of our people who have come here in the last fifteen years. Young men wooed her, swore love to her. She never believed. Was she not ten times as rich as Kurguz was when she married him for his wealth?
"What she herself had done was the measure by which she weighed what others may do. She would have believed the young men, ten years ago, should Kurguz have died when she expected him to. But now, her mirror told her: 'What else do men see to love in thee except thy gold?'
"As she grew richer she believed still less. She bedecked herself with the costliest jewels, yet she always knew they wouldn't bring back youth.
"Go now, you my listener, to the store of Luleika, Kurguz Mehmed's rich widow. Buy rugs. The richer she will become the greater her punishment will be. It will poison her mind and poison the souls of her wooers.
"Because her sin was so great Allah prolonged the life of even so great a sinner as Kurguz Mehmed.
"I shall live my days engraving this sad story in gold and silver. Believers and infidels, rich and poor, in the thousands are near it without knowing."
Malouf finished his story. For the time being I thought myself somewhere in the Orient—in Constantinople or Salonica, where roving packs of dogs howl day and night and no soul cares about the infernal noise—somewhere near Turkish giamies topped by the crescent moon—somewhere where men sit with their feet in the gutter and smoke from long pipes, while veiled women walk near the walls.
But when I walked out of Malouf's store, boys were just lighting the paper lanterns for a block dance. Across the street hung a big war poster with famous sayings penned underneath.
As if lit by a huge flying glow-worm, the torch of the Lady of Liberty in bronze pointed to the flitting stars. Dark-eyed men and women returned home, to the Orient from the Occident. Night was coming.
A few men on the street, facing the setting sun, bowed very low as they said their short prayers to Allah, who is here, there and everywhere.
BECAUSE COHEN COULD NEITHER READ NOR WRITE
Isaac Cohen came from Russia ten years ago. He left there his wife and two children and came here, where he had a rich uncle who was in the real estate business.
His uncle took him to his home, had him rest up, bought him a new suit of clothes and began to Americanize the nephew by telling him that he would have to make a living.
"Did you believe, uncle, that I have come here to watch my beard grow? I, who have a wife and children to support," Cohen answered.
The answer pleased his uncle very much, because he knew how easily some forget their duties when at a distance.
"Isaac, I shall try my best to get you something. Let's call in your aunt and ask her advice."
Aunt Sarah came into the room, and folding her bejewelled hands, she began to think.
"The best would be, my husband, if your nephew would tell us at what he would like to work," she finally said.
"Well, Isaac, what do you say?"
Isaac Cohen's face lit up. He had his dreams, like all mortals. His greatest desire was to be a beadle in a synagogue.
"Nothing easier," the uncle explained. "In the synagogue of our own congregation such a position is now vacant."
And the uncle phoned up to the President of the congregation, who was delighted to immediately receive the applicant at his home.
Was Isaac Cohen happy? Was there ever a happier man than he was as he walked with his uncle from Second Avenue to Rivington Street?
During the whole voyage he had dreamed of getting a position as a beadle—and now, suddenly, it was being realized. The silken blouses he saw spread out between bunches of radishes and beets on the pushcarts of Orchard Street were now almost within his grasp. He would buy one for his wife with the first money he earned. On another pushcart were toys, leftovers, seconds from last Christmas. He would buy a horse for his little son. All those luxurious things he saw in the windows of the stores were to be for him also. And a three-room flat, with water from faucets, a dumb-waiter, and other new world wonders.
A beadle! Was there ever a higher position in life?
"Isaac," his uncle suddenly cut in on his dreams, "if Mr. Rosen, the President, asks you how much you want, you should answer that you will be satisfied with the same amount as the former beadle received." And before Cohen had time to say a word the uncle continued—"and here we are—second floor front. Let's hope for the best."
"Amen," said Cohen.
Mr. Rosen, the President of the Odessa Synagogue, was a very fine old gentleman. He had come to New York twenty years before Cohen, and prospered in the insurance business. He was a member of at least twenty societies. Half of his income was paid in dues to the organizations to which he belonged. Half of the Jewish population were his "brothers." Of course they were all insured through him.
Brother Rosen received Cohen very nicely, and Isaac Cohen made a very good impression on him.
"A nephew of yours is certainly a very desirable asset to our community, I am sure, brother Cohen. The position of beadle in our synagogue is a very honorable one."
The President then turned his attention to the applicant who was nonplussed by the riches of the house. Velvet on every chair. Big brass chandeliers and a world of photographs depicting the host in all his glory as President of twenty lodges. Rosen watched the effect on the newcomer, then he spoke.
"You could enter upon your duties even to-day. I am sure you know all about them. The beadle about to leave us will instruct you and show you all the details of the work. He is a very good man, old Reb Baruch, Mr. Cohen, only we always had trouble with him on account of his handwriting. You know he has to enter in the book names and dates of births, marriages and deaths. Well, nobody can read his handwriting, not even himself; and on account of this we had a lot of trouble."
Isaac Cohen paled. He almost fainted there.
"What is the trouble?" the two men asked.
"I can't—write—never learned—to write," Isaac stammered.
And so the dream of being the beadle of the Odessa Synagogue or any other synagogue was shattered.
On returning to his uncle's home he was given a lecture by his aunt. He had to make a living. The long and short of it was that they gave him a twenty-dollar bill and told him to go and shift for himself.
A week later Isaac Cohen was peddling matches, garters and suspenders on Hester Street. A month later he was the owner of a pushcart on which he sold stockings, combs and toothbrushes. At night he learned knee-pants making. A year later he had a little shop and two machines were working for him.
His family was brought over here, and the wife helped what she could in the shop, living in the rear of the store. It was not as easy as it sounds when read, but two years later ten machines were grinding out knickerbockers in Isaac Cohen's factory. Ten years after his arrival in New York the firm of Cohen & Co. was known as the biggest of its kind. Two factories in Brownsville, one in New York, four hundred machines in all and twenty travelling salesmen selling his wares.
But he had never forgiven his uncle and aunt for having so abruptly turned him out of their house, for not having helped him realize his dream over here, and assisted him until he learned how to write.
One day old Mr. Rosen suddenly remembered to ask Brother Cohen about the nephew.
"Why, Mr. Rosen, don't you know? He is the firm Isaac Cohen & Co."
"He, the same fellow?" Rosen asked astounded.
Cohen did not care to say much about him, and old Rosen understood something was wrong between the two.
Early next morning Mr. Rosen went to see Isaac Cohen at his office. The rich manufacturer recognized him immediately. Before long he agreed to take a policy of $25,000 from Mr. Rosen's insurance company. But when the old man gave him the application to sign Isaac Cohen said:
"What is that?"
"An application, Mr. Cohen—just write down your name—you know—here at the bottom——"
"But, Mr. Rosen, if I had ever learned to write I would be a beadle in a synagogue to-day."
THE MARRIAGE BROKER'S DAUGHTER
If you don't know Mr. Leib Aaronson, permit me to introduce him. Leib Aaronson is the marriage broker of Harlem. He was in the "Schatchen" business in Harlem when there were only two synagogues for the whole community and both of them were half empty even on holidays. They were built on speculation with an eye to the future development of the section. Such ancient residenceship in Harlem cannot be boasted by many, and it is therefore regarded with great respect. It is Mayflowery, so to speak.
Leib Aaronson's couples have grandchildren now, and he keeps track of all of them as future prospects. In his notebook he has three divisions—Men, Women and Widows. A three-days-old boy is entered in the section Men, with date of birth and fortune of parents; and when one of his couples, the Abrahams, invite him to the christening of their daughter, he enters the little child in the section Women. Near each name are figures which Mr. Aaronson changes frequently in the course of years. If the figures are near a name in the Men section, it means a dowry he is worthy of. Figures near the name of a woman mean what dowry her father is able to give. A line across the whole stands for death, marriage or—and for this last act Mr. Aaronson is always very angry—love-marriage for which no fee was delivered.
Should Mr. Aaronson hear that Mr. Goldberg made a pile of money on some real estate transaction, the figures near Miss Sady Goldberg are raised accordingly. When Baruch Levinsohn was bankrupt the ten thousand dollars dowry marked for his daughter on the marriage broker's notebook dwindled to almost nothing—just enough for a tailor, or lucky if she could get anything with it.
That little notebook of Leib Aaronson contains the history of all the Harlem fortunes; and the lines drawn across—as they occurred more frequently in the last few years, and Aaronson is not yet a rich man from brokerage fees—stand for only one thing; the modernization of Harlem; the love matches Mr. Aaronson is so much against.
Now that I have acquainted you with the marriage broker and his methods, I will tell you the story of his daughter.
A more beautiful girl than Leah Aaronson was never seen in Harlem. Even while a child the neighborhood called her "Beautiful Leah"; "two eyes like big prunes, lips like cherries, and cheeks like a red apple," was the verdict of the fruit man on the corner.
And a more dutiful daughter never lived. She almost never attended any of the parties. Her mother was an invalid, so she attended to everything about the apartment. It was always spick and span. Her father invited people to his home to talk business, and just to make them feel at home that old-time samovar was set on the table. And did the brass shine? Did it? Why, the whole house was kept so clean one could pass a white handkerchief over the floor and not find a speck of dust on it.
Her own dress, her mother's old black silk gown and her father's clothes, were always like just brought home from the tailor. It was all Leah's work.
But all that did not help Leah to get a husband. She was nowhere on her father's book. She was already sixteen, and her father had never given a thought to her future. Why should he? There was no fee in it.
Then something happened.
Leib Aaronson had invited Abraham Goldberg to his home for tea and arranged that Mrs. Fahler should casually come in to see Mrs. Aaronson! Mrs. Fahler had inherited an insurance policy and two houses from her dead husband.
But when Abraham Goldberg saw Leah it almost spoiled the match with the widow. It took three months to get the deal through, and then only when Goldberg was on the verge of bankruptcy.
"When Goldberg comes to see me, I don't want you to be much around, Leah, or you will spoil the deal. It's four hundred dollars, you understand!"
Leah understood. Four hundred dollars was a great fortune.
But when was she to get married? The invalid mother thought of that many a time, and spoke about it to her husband.
"In about two years from now, Dora Summer will be ready; she is fifteen now. By that time Rabinowitz's son will just come out of college and will need money to establish himself—so it will be a sure deal. My fee will be about two thousand dollars. Summer, the butcher, is making money so fast he can't count it. Then, I will not forget my daughter," Leib Aaronson explained.
"Yes, Leib, but suppose——"
"That can't be, woman. Dora Summer will not make a love match; she's cross-eyed."
"I did not mean that. But suppose Rabinowitz gets on his feet himself—you know yourself what good family he comes from—will he then let his own son marry a butcher's daughter?"
"Suppose nothing! A butcher in America is as good as a rabbi if he has money. Believe me, Summer will give all he has for a doctor as a husband for his cross-eyed daughter."
It was all so certain, as Mrs. Aaronson later on explained to Leah, that the girl began to look at Dora Summer as her benefactress. Dora was a walking dowry for her. The whole Aaronson household was interested in Dora's welfare and in her fast growing fortune.
Aaronson made some money, a small fee here and there, while waiting for the big deal to get ripe—but that time was not to be.
Cross-eyed Dora met a cousin from Philadelphia and married him just when Rabinowitz's son obtained his degree. And to spoil every other plan, this young fool actually married a Christian girl he had known in college.
Leah was eighteen. She decided to look out for herself.
There was a young bookkeeper, a brother of her only girl friend, Fanny Shuman. He was nice to look at. He was also very ambitious. After she had met him at the Shumans' house he fairly invited himself for a Sunday evening at the Aaronsons'. Fanny Shuman whispered in Leah's ear "catch him. I hate Gussy Schwartz."
Things went on pretty well but slowly. Leah arranged and timed the visits of the young man in such a way that he should come when her father was absent. Yet on the third week Leib Aaronson met the visitor.
"Hello, Isaac Shuman! Look what a big man he is! How old are you, now?"
"Twenty-four, Mr. Aaronson."
"Twenty-four! Wait—I think you are older." And out he took that fatal little notebook. "You will be twenty-six, my boy, next month."
After a few minutes' silence, Leib Aaronson, the marriage broker, said to his daughter. "Make the samovar and leave us alone, please. I have something to talk to Mr. Shuman."
Leah trembled and cried as she went to the kitchen. When she returned to the front room she heard her father say to the young man:
"Fanny is nearly twenty-five. She has to marry. Without a dowry—it's a sin unto Israel. She is your sister!"
Leah cried. But Leib Aaronson could not lose a double fee. Besides the dire need, Aaronson was also urged by professional pride to turn such a clever deal and make the same money pay a double fee.
Gussy Schwartz's dowry was four thousand dollars. Out of this money Isaac Shuman gave one thousand toward his sister's dowry, who was married through Aaronson to a newly established paper box manufacturer. Both marriages took place on the same day. This was some inducement to the young manufacturer of paper boxes travelling on thin ice at his bank. It cut the wedding expenses in half.
The few hundred dollars Aaronson got as fees from that deal just put the family over the holy days.
Midwinter found Leah acquainted with a nice young fellow who studied dentistry in the day time and worked as a waiter at night. He was not from the district, consequently nowhere in her father's notebook. He had already gone so far as to kiss Leah's hand, although she said "Please don't," when Aaronson got hold of him quite accidentally at Shuman's house. Aaronson always visited his couples frequently the first year of their marriage. Back of his mind he had a notion that he guaranteed his sales for a year, as are some dollar watches.
In two weeks the future D. D. S. was convinced by the marriage broker that marriage was a more honorable profession than night work in a restaurant, and the deal was clinched. For a year's board and lodging and a promise of one thousand dollars when the young man should finish his studies, Schwartz bought a doctor for his second daughter. There was some argument as to the fee. Aaronson claimed that a year's board was worth $1,000, consequently they owed him brokerage on $2,000. But it was all settled amiably.
The Schatchen had to buy a new coat for himself. Rent was also overdue and he had no cash.
Leah was twenty-one. Leah was twenty-two, and Leah was twenty-three. And the best husbands of the district were given away by her father to other girls; one for two months' rent, one for a winter coat, one for a long overdue bill at the grocers'.
Leah's cheeks were now a little pale, her lips a little drawn. As the shoemaker's children walk barefooted, so was Leah left without a husband because her father was a marriage broker. There was not much hope for a dowry. The best matches fizzled out because of that modern institution—love. It was Aaronson's greatest enemy. No matter how much he combatted it by saying that all love matches were failures, love matches multiplied daily.
A new element invaded old Harlem. Men without reverence for old customs. People whose antecedents nobody knew. They lit no candles on Friday night and rode in cars on Saturday. Girls and young men walked arm-in-arm on the street and laughed aloud immodestly.
Aaronson complained bitterly. His time-honored profession was no longer needed.
"Leib, what about our daughter?"
"Bother with your daughter! There are no Jewish nunneries. With God's help she too will marry."
He had an eye on a certain young widow with a little money, and a young man who needed money. He invited the young man for tea and Mrs. Adler was to come in casually on a visit to Mrs. Aaronson. That old samovar was to do duty again.
Leah was watching. She was wise now. That young man was to be hers.
She placed her chair facing the young man and sat near the widow to give him a chance to compare between them. The young man was very bashful, so the widow also simulated bashfulness. But Leah was in her best mood, and actually sang as she poured tea for the company. She made Mrs. Adler look twenty years older by comparison, and angered the young widow so much that she left the table with tears trembling on her eyelashes.
The deal with the widow fell through. He did not like her. She was too old.
Two months later Leah married the young fellow. She swept him off his feet behind her father's back.
Aaronson was studying his little notebook for a suitable match for the man, when the young couple came into the room and announced that they were just married by the Alderman of the district.
The marriage broker could not forgive his daughter. Not only had she robbed him of a possible fee, but she had completed the ruin of his business. People will point at him and say:
"A marriage broker, and his daughter made a love match!"
THE NEW SECRETARY OF THE PRETZEL-PAINTERS' UNION
The Pretzel-Painters' Union had emerged victoriously from their last strike. The Pretzel eating population of the city had refused to eat Pretzels that were not glazed by the expert hand of a capable expert in the art of pretzel painting—the beer-drinking population refused to drink beer in saloons where dull pretzels were offered and capital had to yield to labor. Organized labor was triumphant. The pretzel painters who had worked fourteen hours a day for ten dollars a week before the strike, won a ten-hour day, an increase of two dollars a week, as well as official recognition of their Union.
The Union consisted of twenty members, all of whom, except one, were officials of the organization. The officials numbered a president, two vice presidents, a recording secretary and a financial secretary, a treasurer, three controllers, a house committee of five, an organizer and three trustees. The total income of the Union from dues never amounted to more than three dollars a week, but this was supplemented by the income from the yearly Pretzel-Painters' concert and ball every winter, and from the picnic every summer.
After the strike was won the members felt the necessity of solidarity more than ever. This feeling brought them together twice every week to discuss Union matters and matters of private concern. But after a while, when they had exhausted all possible subjects and the Union was running smoothly, the organizer had difficulty getting even the legal quorum together once every second week. The organizer knew from experience what such negligence caused.
The collection of dues had already diminished perceptibly. Some of the members were in arrears with five and six weeks. Fifteen cents a week is comparatively easy to pay, but when the sum is over a dollar and the pay is twelve dollars a week—it's a different story! The Pretzel-Painters' Local was in great danger.
The organizer began to feel that non-union pretzel-painters were shining the beer drinkers' delicacy. He called meeting after meeting and described passionately to the four or five old men present the great fight between Labor and Capital in general and the battle their own Union had won; the high price paid for what they already had gained through solid organization, but it was all in vain; the others did not come. They owed too much for dues and fines.
Finally the organizer hit upon a great idea. "The Pretzel-Painters' Union has to be reorganized," he wrote to all the members.
It was a new thing, that word "reorganized." It was something worth while finding out about. "We must reorganize or our organization goes to pieces," he wrote to them. That Wednesday evening was a gala evening. The financial secretary had never taken in so much money at once; twenty-six dollars in one evening! They all paid up to the minute; because it was explained in the letter that only members with paid-up dues had a vote in the reorganization of the mighty Pretzel-Painters' Union.
The Pretzel-Painters' Union was not without its inner dissensions. There was a group of Galician Jews and a group of Russian Jews always fighting one another; and both groups fought whatever the group of Roumanian Jews proposed. There were also two old Portuguese Jews; and whatever they wanted carried through was sure to be defeated by the above-mentioned three groups.
But the Russian group was always the deciding factor. By themselves alone they were the majority of the organization.
After the secretary had announced that everybody was present and paid up to the minute, the chairman, Mr. Bindzel, opened the meeting and asked the organizer to explain the cry of distress.
"Mr. Chairman and brothers," the organizer began, "we must reorganize or we go to pieces. Already the Hinshel Company employs two non-union pretzel painters. If we don't reorganize they will break our Union. We must uphold the rights of labor or the heel of capitalism will crush us——"
He spoke well into the night and urged them with tears in his eyes and a proper catch in the voice to stand by the flag of their class.
The silence was very impressive when the organizer finished and sat down to wipe his perspiring face. No one spoke a word. The chairman did not want to break the silence. He felt the greatness of the moment.
Finally brother Kessler said:
"Mr. Chairman!"
"Brother Kessler has the floor."
Brother Kessler, of the Galician group, seldom took the floor. So everybody was astonished that he of all others should want to speak.
"Mr. Chairman and Brothers.... Mr. Chairman. Of course, we want to reorganize, but we don't know how to do it."
"Well said! Go ahead Brother Kessler!" several voices were heard at once.
Kessler took heart.
"We are Pretzel Painters. We are proud of our Union, are strong for our Union, and we want to protect it. Let Brother Kirshen, our organizer, tell us how."
"Sure, Kessler is right. Let Brother Kirshen tell us how," came voices from everywhere.
"Order, please!" the chairman called. "This is an important meeting. On it depends the battle between Labor and Capital. Order, please. Brother Kirshen has the floor."
Brother Kirshen, aglow from his recent triumph, took the centre of the platform.
"The first thing to do to reorganize our Union is to elect new officers. I make therefore a motion that we elect new officers."
"Mr. Chairman, Mr. Chairman, Mr. Chairman," several called out.
"That's a political trick," called out the Roumanian group in one voice.
"Order, please!" yelled the chairman. The heavy gavel came down upon the table.
Everybody was soon seated.
"I make an amendment to the motion," Kessler said.
"Sit down, Brother Kessler, we must proceed regularly. The Pretzel-Painters' Union has a constitution. We will proceed according to its constitution. The constitution of the Pretzel-Painters' Union says that when a motion is put before the house, it is first voted upon before any amendments are discussed. Does anybody want to speak on the motion?"
"Then, I propose that the motion be voted upon without debates because it is late and they will soon put out the lights in the house," said Kessler.
"Politics, politics," the Portuguese group cried. "Traitor, traitor," came from another group. But when Kessler's proposal was voted upon he had a majority. The Russian group voted with him. And so it happened that the nineteen officers of the Pretzel-Painters' Union were shifted around.
The chairman became the treasurer and so forth. But when it came to vote upon the secretaryship, Kessler, who had hitherto been the twentieth of the Union, the only member who had been without an office, was elected Secretary of the Pretzel-Painters' Union, because he was backed by the Russian group.
The following evening Kessler was the first to appear at the local of the Union. A little later the dethroned official appeared. They did not even greet one another. Kirshen, the organizer, was the third man to come.
"Brother Grumberg," he said to the former secretary, "would you please give over the books to brother Kessler and show him what he has to do?"
Grumberg took out from a drawer the two books of the Union and was ready to explain the work.
"But by God! In God's name! What do you want me to do with these books?" Kessler cried.
"Record the meetings, brother Kessler, write down what takes place," Grumberg said.
"What?" the new Secretary called out horror-stricken. "I—write? How should I write? I don't write—I don't know how to write—never did. What do you want with my life—what?"
"For God's sake, Kessler! If you cannot read and write why did you accept the nomination for the secretaryship?" the organizer asked angrily. But Kessler was defiant.
"Well, how and from where did you want me to know that a secretary must know to read and write?"
Kessler's resignation and the election of a new secretary brought the organization on the brink of ruin. And if it would not have been for the superior generalship of organizer Kirshen the Pretzel-Painters' Union would have been crushed under the heel of capitalism.
THE GYPSY BLOOD THAT TELLS
One does not expect to meet anything out of the ordinary at West Farms to break the monotony where the big city fringes out. The old wooden shacks lean on the brick tenements, and one does not know whether the city invades the peaceful country or the country tries to catch up with the city. The outskirts of New York always brings to me the memory of a certain gentleman in silk hat and dress suit, but with the ends of his trousers in fringes and his shoes down at the heel. But—as a wise man once said—if one stands in one place long enough he sees the whole world pass before him as in a kaleidoscope. Thus also my frequent visits to West Farms were repaid when I saw one morning a gypsy tribe camped there.
Six wagons back of the road, a dozen horses neighing as they rubbed their noses on the shafts; a few tents with the flaps undulating windward; a few patches of color on the dress of the women. What a change it made in the dreary place, how stolid old West Farms was transformed when the curling smoke rose from the stovepipes of the camp wagons!
I expected to hear the usual noise attending camping; song and laughter, as only gypsies can sing and laugh.
It was a Roumanian gypsy tribe; one of many that have come over to this country in the last decade. But the people went about in the quietest possible way, which I knew was not at all their custom.
"Have they taken on manners?" I wondered.
Children of the neighborhood, and even grown-ups, began to assemble around the wagons. They stood at a distance. A mother warned her over-curious little boy:
"Don't go too near, dearie! Gypsies steal children."
As the woman spoke two little boys of the tribe climbed out from one of the camp wagons.
"Look at these white children!" exclaimed several people.
"Surely, stolen children."
The features of the children were distinctly of a Roumanian cast. A young gypsy woman followed the little ones to a tent.
From inside the wagon broke out a loud cry that was drowned in the wails and groanings of the people in every wagon and tent. The curious throng assembled about the camp now widened the circle. The gypsy litany of the dead was officiated.
In funeral rhythm the dead one's virtues were enumerated one by one, while others made incantations to chase the evil spirit.
"Leave us! If thou hast come through the chimney, leave through the chimney; and if through the door, evil one, leave the same way!"
"That thou be fed burning stones from now until eternity. That thy thirst be quenched only with the blood of thy own kin."
The same incantations were repeated for more than a half hour. They ceased abruptly, at the sound of a gong. The evil one had departed. Slowly, in single file, the gypsies descended the steps of the wagon and bowed very low westward, to the setting sun of an early autumn day, before going each one to his own tent.
The circle of the curious neighbors had widened very much when I approached an old gypsy and asked him who had died. He turned full face as he said:
"Our Chief, Yorga, our Chief. We would want to bury him under a tree near a river—but can we do as we please in this country? Tell me, stranger."
Like the drippings from a burning candle the tears fell from the man's eyes as he spoke to me.
On the wooden cross over Yorga's grave I have carved with my pen-knife the name of the dead one. In the fall of every year his tribe comes to the burial grounds, and each one cuts out a piece of cloth from his best garment and leaves it there as an offering to the dead Chief.
And the old gypsy told me: "A great man was Yorga. A king among men. His mother was killed by her father when Yorga was born, because she was the daughter of a great Roumanian boyar, and the child, fruit of a secret love, was the son of a gypsy. But the child was allowed to live, so beautiful was he.
"When Yorga was six years old, his grandfather, the old boyar, who had no other children, took the boy from the servant quarters into the house and called a special teacher to show him the letters. Later on Yorga was sent to school, and grew to be a learned man. All this time he did not know who his father was, and did not know that the hand he kissed good-night was the one that had murdered his mother.
"But there was a restless spirit in the boy; a spirit that made him roam from city to city whenever he had an opportunity. And thus he wandered all over the world. In search of learning, it was thought. Because no one realized the yearning of the gypsy in this stately youth.
"When Yorga was twenty-five his grandfather married him to another boyar's daughter. The following year the old man died, leaving his land and fortune to his grandson.
"Yorga was not happy in his marriage, not because the 'Conitza' was not a beautiful and good wife, not because she did not love him. Neither did his great fortune bring him happiness. It only tied him down to one place. Yorga began to go to the city once a month, and usually came home drunk. Then once every week. Later on he was seldom seen at home.
"The usurers first took away part of his land, then some of his oxen. His wife cried. One and then another child was born to them. Yorga made resolutions to better himself—cried and beat his heart and asked for forgiveness. A few days, a few weeks, or a few months of strenuous work, and then again back to the riotous life, to dissipation—and again home a repentant sinner. The land he owned shrunk daily. And the cattle he owned were either taken away or died in neglect—because 'the eye of the master fattens the cows.' And Yorga was careless. He had no ambition in life. He wanted nothing, he desired nothing. Even his carouses no longer had any distraction for him.
"Then one day our tribe camped near his grounds. At once he left wife, children, land and home, and came to live with us. For twenty years he guided our ways. There was no day that he thought not and labored not for us. He no longer thought of carouses and drinks. He bade us dress cleanly and live healthful lives, and we were respected wherever we came. It was he who guided us here over strange lands and great seas, and his wisdom is still guiding us."
"But," asked I, "what about the white children I saw in your tents?"
"They are of Yorga and his gypsy wife—and with them we have great trouble, for our ways are not their ways. Their souls are like the soul of Yorga's mother, the boyar's daughter. Some day they will run away and settle in some village—stolid, stale peasants."
"And what about Yorga's first children?" I asked again.
"They roam the world; are celebrated musicians. And the sun never finds them where the moon put them to sleep. They have the father's blood," the old man answered as he took with his bare fingers a piece of burning charcoal to light his freshly stuffed pipe.
"What's born of a cat runs after mice."
WHEN STARK'S CAFÉ WAS CLOSED
"Impossible, impossible, impossible," said everybody when the news passed around that Stark's Café was closed and that the house was being demolished.
Stark's Café on Houston Street was a celebrated landmark of New York. It was there that the playwrights, from the most pretentious to the humblest, closed contracts with managers. A special table at the upper end of the place was reserved for this purpose, and when a manager was sitting at that table with a playwright it meant business. "Charlie" the lawyer, would then loom up from somewhere and draw up the "funeral papers." Stark's Café! Why, Jewish actors in Alexandria, Egypt, made appointments with their London acquaintances to "meet at Stark's." It was not necessary to add "in New York."
Stark's was the stage mart of the world. The first tables near the door, just ordinary wooden tables, were apportioned for the ushers, ticket speculators and supers. Next to these tables were a few better ones, marble topped, at which were seated the provincial actors on visit in the metropolis. After those, there were a few which belonged to musicians and the writers of vaudeville jingles. But the round centre tables and those near the windows toward Houston Street were reserved for stars of both sexes, managers and successful playwrights. Stark's head waiter put it very clearly: "These tables are reserved for gentlemen who at least occasionally put on a silk hat."
And now, this place, this rendezvous of the two hemispheres was closed and being torn down.
Old Samuels, one of the oldest Jewish actors, complained bitterly about it.
"You understand," he said, "it's now twenty years that I never missed a day from Stark's. In the morning, after breakfast, I'd shave, dress and go to Stark's. Maybe, who knows! and after lunch I'd return there. To save carfare we moved not far from the place. After supper I was again there, and after the show—maybe—maybe."
Samuels's nickname was "Samuel Maybe," because it's now more than twenty years since he came from London, where he was a success, to play here, and it's still "Maybe." But he has never been faithless to his art. Oh, no! This was chiefly due to the fact that his wife and daughter were excellent dressmakers.
"You see for yourself what a calamity the tearing down of Stark's place is," old Samuels continued, as he wiped a tear from his eye. "All my hopes are blasted. There can be no 'maybe' any longer—I am doomed. What will I do every morning, every afternoon, every evening? Where will they come to look for me when they will need me?"
I must tell here that this conversation took place in a new café on 10th Street; whereupon some kind-hearted companion suggested to the weather-beaten veteran of the Jewish stage that he should make this place his steady abode. But the old man straightened his bent back, his eyes flashed fire and his thin hands shot out from his white cuffs in a dramatic sweep. "Here, in this place? I, Samuels, the man who created 'Kean' Shylock? No, never! Even if I starve to death. In a place without atmosphere, without traditions—never! never!"
One minute later he looked up at the clock on the wall and began to make hasty excuses: His wife was waiting for him with supper.
Samuels's past contained one of the greatest dramas. It ruined his life. It wiped the floor with him, so to say. Here is what had happened to him twenty-odd years ago:
There were only two Jewish theatres worthy of the name in the whole world. One was in London, and the other on the Bowery, New York—the old Thalia Theatre. The theatre in the Bowery had the greater reputation because of the genius of the lamented playwright, Jacob Gordin, presiding there, and the host of actors he had developed. It was the ambition of every London actor to play in New York. One of Samuels's confreres had already achieved fame on the Bowery when Samuels, who like all actors knew in his heart of hearts that he was better than any other living actor, decided to try his luck over here. In London he was already famous in certain classic rôles.
Ten days after his decision was taken, he and his grip landed at Stark's Café.
"From London? How is London? What's the new play there?"
Samuels had his best clothes on, and was admitted to the centre tables. It brought him in contact with stars and managers. His confrere, who had preceded him here, sat enviously at one of the minor tables. He only had a small part in a play, for which he received pay in "pasteboards" (tickets), which he himself peddled or sold to the brood of speculators. In those days Jewish actors did not own ten-thousand-dollar automobiles. Samuels's initial success, the ready admittance to the centre tables, made his former friend, Kashin, green with envy.
It so happened that Gordin, the dramatic manager, saw Samuels, liked his face, and engaged him immediately for a new play they were then rehearsing.
That same evening a cable was flashed to London to the actor's wife: "Pack up and come with baby." It brought Esther here two weeks later—just in time for the opening night of the new show.
Samuels's rôle was the one next to the star. Kashin had but a very minor rôle—as a body servant to Samuels, who was stalking about in flowing Oriental robes back stage from one end to the other.
Samuels waited in the wings for his cue. He had to come in with majestic steps and utter his decision to leave his faithless spouse to her lover. Oh how he chafed, waiting for his cue! It was to take the house by storm. He was to outshine even the star.
And—the cue was given, Kashin near him—everything in order. But just as he opened the door, Kashin gently but firmly stepped on poor Samuels's corn—on the little toe.
The pain was so terrible that the actor stumbled and limped on the stage with one foot in his hands. Mechanically he said his lines. Instead of using a stentorian voice with face to the gallery, he drawled them out in a plaintive tone, like a whimpering dog, looking at the stage door, with his back to the audience.
It was so funny that the audience roared with laughter and could not be brought to its senses. The heroine cried and pleaded, but it did not help. The gallery continued to laugh. When the curtain went down Kashin had disappeared from the theatre. The actors almost mobbed poor Samuels. The playwright, Gordin, could have killed him. "Even if they should have cut your head off you should still have been acting your rôle properly," he said. As soon as the poor actor appeared again in the next act, the people shook with laughter. It could not be suppressed.
When the manager came out before the curtain and explained to the people what had happened, it became even worse. It was impossible to go on. It killed the show—a good play which was revived ten years later with great success—and it killed Samuels.
Esther, a practical wife, opened a dressmaking shop. Samuels spent the next year or so explaining what had happened.
The first few weeks after the occurrence Samuels receded from the centre tables at Stark's to the side tables, and actors in good humor coaxed him into telling his story over and over again. It became a tradition to coax Samuels—and Samuels was easily coaxed into telling the story.
But he could get no place on the stage. From a character player he became a character. It became a habit with every manager to promise him a part in the next play. Some pretended it brought good luck to do so. When a play went to smash it was, they said, "Because Samuels did not believe you."
Thus the Jewish stage grew under his eyes with the doors closed to him, because some one had stepped on his corn. He became "Maybe"—"maybe" in the next play.
"Don't refuse Samuels," the manager would whisper to the playwright when the contract was drawn at the big table. "Don't refuse him; it brings bad luck."
Samuels would certainly have his eye on the proceedings, and come up to shake hands and bid good luck.
"And will I have a part?"
"I hope so, Samuels."
"Esther, I have a part in Ash's new play."
Esther had heard that same phrase twenty years thrice a day. Like all actors Samuels had but a poor vocabulary of his own. Relying on other men to supply them the tools of expression, actors are poor word finders.
Then, the night of the first performance, Samuels would warm up near some one, and as the "rôle" appeared he would sadly say, "My rôle, look what he is making with my rôle."
Twenty years of daily hopes and daily disappointments. A whole world grew up before him. He knew nothing of it at all. Stark's Café was New York, America. The whole world was comprised between his home and this place. His hair turned gray, the corners of his mouth drooped, his eyes dimmed, his shoulders stooped. His wife grew old, his daughter bloomed into youth and withered from overwork. There came the Boer War, several earthquakes, the Balkan War, and now this Great War. All this left Samuels cold and indifferent. All those years he was waiting at Stark's Café for an engagement.
"Maybe to-day."
And this haven of hope has disappeared.
BECAUSE OF BOOKKEEPING
"Nominations for treasurer are now in order. Nominations!"
"Moishe Goldberg"—"Moishe Goldberg"—"Moishe Goldberg," called out every one present at the yearly election of the Roumanian Sick Benefit Society.
"Any other nominations?" the Secretary asked.
"No, no, go ahead; it's Moishe Goldberg again, Mr. Secretary."
"He's good enough, good enough, Mr. Secretary."
And so Moishe Goldberg was elected Treasurer of the Society by acclamation. It was a yearly performance—since the last twenty years.
And this was not the only society for which Moishe Goldberg was Treasurer—there were a dozen. Every Jewish-Roumanian Society of New York wanted to have him act as Treasurer. Once he promised to accept the nomination, no other man would care to run against him, and the yearly election was merely a formality turned into flattery as far as he was concerned. His probity and financial responsibility were above par. His charity was proverbial.
At thirty he came from Roumania with his wife and two little girls. With the few dollars he had brought with him he opened a little grocery store on Clinton Street which prospered and developed into a bigger store on Rivington Street. Of a religious, old-fashioned turn of mind, he followed old Jewish traditions. His store closed Friday night, it remained so over Saturday; he also kept closed every Jewish holiday. He let his beard grow, and went regularly to the synagogue near Forsythe Street.
When he heard that some one chided him about his religious punctiliousness, he said: "I came here because I wanted religious freedom—what I have I want to use."
"Moishe Goldberg, money is needed for a new scroll."
"Put me down for a third of what it costs to get one."
When a woman bought less food than usual, Goldberg would ask, "What's the matter?"
"Husband is out of work."
"Well, do you want to starve him he should have no strength to look for work? Foolish woman! Take what you need; when he will work you will pay me up." And he would accept no thanks, Moishe Goldberg.
In spite of all he gave, his business grew. In a few years he had four stores, branched out in some leather finding business, and sold wholesale to smaller groceries in East New York and Brownsville.
His promptitude made the wholesalers vie with each other as to who should sell him most. His good nature attracted customers from everywhere. He signed no notes and demanded none. Every one trusted him and he trusted everybody. He had a little note book in which he wrote down what was necessary. For the rest he had an excellent memory.
Thus the business went on for years, and as the Jewish-Roumanian population grew on the east side his fame spread. By accident he became the owner of a few tenement houses. Rents were never due. People generally paid, and when they did not, because a husband was on strike or a child sick, it was soon forgotten.
Each evening he would take together all the moneys and checks of the day and put them in a leather handbag. The next morning the whole was deposited in the bank.
If a bill was due the same or the next day and there was not enough money in the bank, all he had to do was to 'phone up to one of his hundred wealthy friends and ask a check of two or three thousand dollars for a few days. On occasion it was reciprocated.
His home life was an ideal one. He lived in the district. His wife was as good and old-fashioned as her husband, and though the girls went through high school, all they had modernized themselves was to use a little cold cream, against which the father protested.
At twenty the older girl married a well-to-do furrier, to whom Moishe Goldberg gave a check of ten thousand dollars, after having promised only five, as dowry.
The whole affair was carried along old-fashioned lines, through a marriage broker. The wedding was an event. Members from twenty societies brought wedding gifts worth into the thousands.
But right at the wedding, Sofia, the younger daughter, fell in love with a cousin of her sister's husband, a young bookkeeper.
There was nothing against the young man. He came from a good family, was well educated in Hebrew. Of course he shaved. But Moishe Goldberg was tolerant enough to understand. To his wife's objections he answered, "It's better a Jew without a beard than a beard without a Jew."
There was only one serious objection. The young man was making very little money—twenty a week. But Sofia loved him. She was the only one now.
"And after all," Moishe Goldberg said to his wife, "maybe it's better so. I will take him into the business. Why should my son-in-law work elsewhere? Sofia will continue to live with us. There is plenty room in the house."
And Sofia agreed, and the young man agreed. The wedding of the first daughter took place in the spring, and that of the second daughter late in the fall.
In three different synagogues dinners for the poor were served at Moishe Goldberg's expense for a full week.
And because he gave no dowry, he sent checks to every charitable institution. He agreed to forget the monthly rent due from a dozen tenants. Many an old account was torn out. All the people working for him got a raise in their wages.
After the wedding the young couple went on a honeymoon to Chicago, where the first daughter now lived.
When they returned Moishe Goldberg took his son-in-law down to the store and showed him the new sign, "Goldberg & Waldman, Wholesale and Retail Grocers."
There was not much to be said. The two men kissed each other in sight of all the people on the street. The young man entered the store.
"This is your new boss," Goldberg said to his employees. "I will begin to sleep a little longer every morning from now on."
Waldman greeted the men, shook hands with some. His father-in-law showed him the back of the store, packed with boxes and barrels and bags. He brought him down the cellar where the herring barrels were deposited.
"Ephraim, my son, I will tell Sofia to make you an apron. I will make a regular grocer out of you."
The next day the young man saw merchandise come and go, checks come and checks go, with no order, no billing, Moishe Goldberg only noting down in his book an item here and there.
"And where are your books, father?"
"What books; who needs books, who?"
"Why, father, how can you carry on such a business without books?"
"You are as silly as all the other young chaps. I am twenty years in business and never saw the need of books. What I am afraid I won't remember I note down here—that's good enough for me. Have a look at my check book and see."
Ephraim Waldman went home a worried man that evening. It was Friday night, and the best fish ever cooked, for which Mrs. Goldberg was so famous, was not good enough to relieve his mind. Even Sofia's kisses were thrown away.
"What's the matter with Ephraim?" the mother asked.
"He wants books." Moishe Goldberg laughed aloud as he patted his daughter. "You can see he is a bookkeeper; without books he can't even eat fish."
Waldman wanted to expostulate, but his father-in-law cut him short.
"At home, and especially on Saturday, I don't allow business talk. If you can't be merry, go to your rooms with your wife."
"No use being so cross with him," Goldberg's wife said after the young people had retired.
"I don't want him to spoil my holiday, the young smut-nose-know-everything. Goes two years to school and thinks that even God owes him an accounting. He must remember that he is in Moishe Goldberg's house."
Saturday passed quietly. Sofia's eyes were a little red, but her husband seemed to want to make up for past misdeeds, and was very merry. At the synagogue he comported himself beautifully. Moishe Goldberg was especially proud of his son-in-law's reading from the scroll.
"Well, what do you say to my American? He reads from the Holy Scroll like a charm." And everybody complimented him.
Sunday was a half holiday, but on Monday when the business started agoing, Waldman could not stand it.
"Father," he said in the evening, "it can't go on that way. We must have some books. No business is carried on that way."
"Books! bosh; don't bother about books. Attend to business."
"But how can you know anything, father?"
"Not being a bookkeeper, I know my business. The best proof that bookkeepers are not business men is that they are working for somebody else."
The next day, and the next, and the next, Sofia's eyes were red from crying.
"What should be the matter with her?" Mrs. Goldberg asked her husband.
"The Talmud says, that a young couple are like a new wagon and a new horse. They must adjust themselves," was his answer.
But the mother was not satisfied with the answer, and she got her daughter's confidence.
"Ephraim wants to look for a position. He says he can't understand a business which has no bookkeeping. No modern business is carried on that way."
The long and short of the story was that Moishe Goldberg was browbeaten by the two women. He gave his little notebook to his son-in-law who undertook to make an inventory of all the assets of Goldberg & Waldman.
The old merchant had the fun of his life to watch the young man enter everything in his books. But the laughter died on his lips when this same young man told him that the assets were some sixty thousand dollars less than the liabilities.
"It's a stupid lie! Only a silly fellow with a bookkeeping mania could say such a foolish thing."
But the old man could not sleep that night. A few days later he was short of a couple of thousand dollars to pay a bill. He lacked the old-time courage to ring up one of his business friends. He could have gotten the money from his bank, but there too his courage failed him.
Little by little, yet rapidly enough, it was whispered about that the wealthy grocer was not as solid as had been thought. Six months after the wedding of his second daughter the red flag of the auctioneer hung in front of the store for the benefit of the creditors.
"But how did it all happen?" asked his first son-in-law, the furrier when he arrived from Chicago, at the news of the calamity.
Broken down, old, worn, sick, Moishe Goldberg moaned:
"Because my daughter married a bookkeeper."
THE STRENGTH OF THE WEAK
The Mastodon has disappeared but we are still pestered by flies.
The whole story could be told in one paragraph, nay, in one statement contradicting bluntly a biological law, the survival of the fittest. But these laws are so pliable one is as much afraid to contradict as the promulgators were afraid to establish them. So I am to tell the story as gently and as objectively as the matter on hand will permit.
Many, many years ago Hans Burgmiller, a plumber, came over here from Germany and established himself in business on what is now St. Mark's Place. You can still see the name "Burgmiller, Plumber," over the door of the old place. The original black letters stick out from underneath a dozen coats of paint, as though the old man would from his grave cry out and fight against effacement.
I don't know what plumbing there was to be done at that time in the district. But Hans Burgmiller prospered in his own way. A few years after his establishment he surrendered himself to the joys of fatherhood and little Anton Burgmiller became the idol of the Burgmiller household in the back of the shop. When Anton was twelve he was his father's helper. A little square-headed, square-shouldered, blue-eyed boy in his father's old overalls went along wherever plumbing was to be done and carried a heavy bag of tools, fittings and pipes on his back.
When little Anton was sixteen he was a full-fledger plumber. Though Hans Burgmiller never acknowledged anybody to know the trade better than he did he accepted the superiority of his son when modern plumbing methods first appeared in the district.
Water was piped up to every apartment on every floor, and baths and other modern conveniences were installed. That was a bit too complicated for Hans Burgmiller but Anton took to it like a duck to water. Soon after that the household was removed from back of the shop to the first floor, to make place for the extension of business, and over the letters of the firm were painted other letters in red that made the whole thing read "Burgmiller & Burgmiller, Plumbers." In due time, perhaps a little prematurely because of hard work, old man Hans died and was buried. But Anton had meanwhile married and a little son was soon born to him. He named him Hans in memory of his father and as he expected him to continue in the business his grandfather had established he left the lettering over the door.
What was the use taking it off when he will have to letter it again in a few years? Perhaps this item of economy entered into the christening of the little boy, because the mother wanted the boy christened after her father. But she was overruled.
Hans went to school with a lot of Irish boys. They teased him about his Dutch name and twisted it so until it became a horror to the little boy. The result was that when the time came to have a little say of his own in the business the last two syllables from the name were smeared over with yellow paint and the firm's name became "Burg & Burg." When such an expense as stationery became necessary Hans was proud that it read so beautifully "Burg & Burg, Plumbers and Fitters."
The building trade was very active. The upper floor was transformed into a sort of office in which Hans's young sister presided behind a desk on which stood letter files reserved for bills and receipts. The clinkety clink of the typewriter helped the song of the hammer a floor below. On the shelves, nuts and bolts and shiny faucets. On the floor-space, leaning on the walls, white enameled bath tubs and grey slab wash tubs. And hanging from the ceiling, a multitude of chandeliers in brass and oxidized tin.
The firm of Burg & Burg now owned a horse and wagon. Several workingmen expected and obtained regularly a pay envelope every Saturday afternoon.
At twenty-five Hans figured that he was entitled to a family of his own. Especially so because his sister had married a year before one of his workingmen who set up for himself in another district and needed her help. The firm needed a capable office woman. His mother helped him look around for a capable wife. They were successful. Ana Hirtenmayer pledged her troth to Hans Burg. The wedding took place in the spring and on the first of January a little boy was born and they named him Anton. But notwithstanding her household duties the billing and the books of the firm was kept in order by Mrs. Burg even if she had to work until after midnight.
It seemed for a while that the Burgmiller race was to rotate eternally around the two Christian names, Hans and Anton, but on the third year another son was born to them. They christened him Peter; because he came to life on St. Peter's Day.
Years passed. The family received several additions one after another at a year's interval, all girls, and then again a boy whom they christened Louis. Women folks never counted at all in the Burgmiller family. They were regarded as reproducing animals only, in spite of all other services they rendered.
Anton and Peter grew rapidly and were in overalls before they had reached their fourteenth year. The girls, strong and fleshy, helped keep the house in order and prepare the meals for the whole family. Hans Burg was proud of them.
But little Louis, the youngest of the brood, did not develop like his brothers and sisters. His chest was narrow. His muscles flabby. His legs thin. He could not lift any weight to speak of. A change of weather threw him in bed. After he was doctored by the mother with roots and herbs the medicus was called in. It happened at least twice a week. His bills were even larger than a plumber's. There never was a week in which Louis did not cause a large extra expense. As little and small as he was, he was the dead weight that dragged them all down. They had to economize for his sake. Leberwurst became a luxury instead of a staple article on the table of the Burg family. And just because Louis was so puny and weak the mother and the father loved him more than any of the other children. It was as if the whole family lived for nothing else than to expiate the sin of Louis's ailments.
When Louis was fourteen years old, he did not don overalls. He continued school. He had the best of clothes and the best of foods. In summer time he was sent to the mountains with his mother to take care of him. Louis entered High School. Anton, his oldest brother, married but remained with the firm, drawing a weekly salary—a smaller one than he could have gotten elsewhere. Then Peter married and began to draw a weekly salary. But neither Anton nor Peter were as husky and strong as they might have been. They had worked a little harder and fed a little less well than it was good for them. They had started work too soon and endured too many privations because of Louis's continual expensive existence.
From High School Louis, still nurtured and doctored, entered college. He was still too weak to work. His older sisters, rosy, carnate Gretchens, withered away working hard and living loveless lives because of the expense of Louis's upkeep.
Louis, as a college man, began to look down upon all of them. In natty suit and clean linen, supplied with money, as much as he wanted because they dared not contradict the "poor sick boy," he associated only with the gentlemen of the college. His brothers were just ordinary workingmen; ill mannered and ignorant. The time came when father Hans was called to his Maker. The Burgmillers were not of a long-living stock. And when the will was opened, everything belonged to the "poor weak Louis, who was not able to work like his strong brothers."
"Poor weak Louis" became the owner of the Burg & Burg establishment founded on the sweat of four generations. And because he was too weak to work himself, his broad shouldered brothers had sunken cheeks, bent backs, while Louis, the prosperous Louis Burg, exhibits his flashy clothes and his learning.
SOCIALISTS! BEWARE OF MRS. ROSENBERG
A mistaken idea floats about that the whole east side is socialistic. I made a special investigation to find out how it stood. I found some men who were still Socialists, some who had been, some who still pretended to be, some still clinging to it as a profession.
But nowhere did I find any one hating the doctrine so profoundly as on Third Street and Second Avenue, where lives Mrs. Rachael Rosenberg. She rents out furnished rooms. The first thing she asked me when I applied for a room was:
"Are you a Socialist? If you are, I don't want you. If you are not, we will talk business."
"I am not a Socialist," I told her. "Still, I never heard of people refusing them as boarders!"
"I suppose you know all about Socialism from books," Mrs. Rosenberg put in sneeringly. "But I tell you one never knows anybody or anything until you come in close contact with 'em. I will only go and see that the stew does not burn, and after I will tell you what I know."
And this is the story as she told it to me:
"My husband's name is Moritz Rosenberg. We came here in President Cleveland's time—which is more than you and many others could say. At home he was—what's the use to tell you what! Here he became a cloak operator. After the Cleveland financial crisis, when men died of starvation, I decided to help out my Moritz. We lived on Catharine Street, near the river, in two rooms only. I put out a shingle 'Boarders Wanted,' and got two the same day. I bought a double bed for them. Each one paid four dollars a month, so my whole rent cost me two dollars. And that was not all. I gave them breakfast and supper for two dollars a week. Things were cheap then. I actually earned our food.
"Why shouldn't a woman help her husband especially if God has not given her any children? Well, after a while we moved out to a bigger apartment on Monroe Street, four rooms with bath and all other conveniences. So I rented two more rooms to four more people. It gave me a lot of work, but we saved all my Moritz earned and more.
"He had a steady job at Kuntzman's and worked there year in, year out. He had started with Kuntzman's and worked there—yes, strike or no strike, good season, slack season, fourteen dollars a week every week.
"I treat my boarders well, so that once moved in no one moves out, unless his wife comes from Europe or he marries, if he is a single man. I shall live many years for each dollar I made as a marriage broker—and every couple as happy as could be.
"Well, one day I lost a boarder. He had his foot caught in a machine. They took him to the hospital at noon, and in the evening he was dead.
"It was too bad. He was a nice fellow. But I, who was I to mourn him? I paid sixteen dollars rent. So I put out a shingle the same day 'Boarders wanted.' On the next day I got a new boarder. I was not particular then. Especially when I saw a nice clean young man, with teeth as white as grains of polished rice; and a voice he had like silk, like pure silk, so soft and nice. He did not bargain, he did not talk. Five dollars a month, five dollars. I asked him what time he had to get up in the morning, because if he had to get up later than the other bedfellow, he should sleep near the wall, not to be disturbed, or if he had to get up earlier the other will sleep near the wall. He did not care. It was all fixed up and in the evening he brought his trunk. It was as heavy as stone—full of books.
"After supper my other boarders used to sit at a game of cards. Not that they were gamblers, but what else should they have done? They drank tea, soda water, a can of beer sometimes. Sometimes my Moritz sat with them for a while—just to make them feel at home. Believe me, I did not lose at them. They paid for tea and sugar. Why shouldn't they? Was I their mother? In America one has to pay for everything.
"But that new boarder I got, he wouldn't play cards and wouldn't drink beer. He sat in a corner and read books till late at night.
"Then after a few weeks the others, too, stopped playing cards. They all sat up late in the night and talked. The new boarder was explaining all the time how their bosses got richer every day. Every night the same thing. He was a Socialist.
"My husband was very busy, worked overtime, Sundays, whole nights. It was already fourteen years that he worked for Kuntzman, and we had put aside a nice little sum of money.
"One evening my Moritz came home very angry. Kuntzman had engaged a new foreman, an Italian fellow, and the two of them, my husband and he, couldn't agree. After supper, I told him to go to sleep, but he did not want to. He went in to talk with the boarders. I went to bed. Late at night Moritz came in.
"'You sleep,' he said.
"'What is it?'
"'You know, that new boarder is perfectly right in what he says about bosses!' Moritz said to me.
"'What do you mean?' I asked.
"'Them bosses are making piles of money,' he explained to me as clear as day; 'they make on the men at least fifty per cent. Look at Kuntzman,' he said. 'He started out with two machines, now he has four hundred. That Socialist is right; the bosses are getting rich.'
"I told him to go to sleep and not bother about other people's fortune, but my Moritz could not sleep the whole night.
"The next evening he went again in the boarders' room to hear the Socialist talk. When he came in to sleep he told me:
"'That Socialist is absolutely right. He proved by his books. Peshe! do you know what I will do?'
"'What?' I asked.
"'Since bosses are getting rich, I will become a boss. The Socialists are right.'
"With the money we had both worked so hard to save, Moritz Rosenberg opened a shop with a partner, also one of our boarders who put in his money. And in one year we lost all we had.
"He had to go and beg Mr. Kuntzman to take him on again. I am again taking boarders.
"But no Socialist liar will ever cross my threshold, and if I lay my hands on that one—if ever I see him, with his flowing necktie and book under his arm, going around to poor people to tell them such lies! Fourteen years of our work gone on account of him—fourteen years."
A sharp chocky odor of burning meat, her stew on the stove, drove her to the kitchen. I tiptoed out of the room, ran down the stairs and kept on running for blocks and blocks, for fear of Mrs. Rosenberg.
A CONFLICT OF IDEALS
In matters musical Silvio Romano is the authority of Mulberry Street. His two hundred and fifty pounds of flesh add weight to his opinion. When there are no customers in his shop, when he is not busy honing or stropping his razors, he is sitting on two chairs, guitar in hand, playing and singing to his heart's content.
Mulberry Street, "Little Italy" of the down town east side, is a very busy street—so busy, indeed, it makes one suspicious. Young men walk up and down the sidewalk, calling to each other; the pastry shops, wine shops and cafés are always full of people talking about everything, and the "barbieri" are, as they have always been, the centers of art, literature and politics.
After Angelo, Silvio Romano's son, was drafted into the army, the father felt the loss threefold—the son, the helper, and the flutist. Angelo was all these to him. As a son, there was none more dutiful than the boy. As a barber, people came from uptown to have their hair cut by Angelo Romano; he was a real artist in his line. But as a flutist he surpassed himself in all other qualities. All musical disputes were quickly settled by Romano's calling upon his son to illustrate the particular passages in dispute, of "Lucia de Lammermoor" or "Il Barbiere de Sevilla." And Angelo would leave the half-shaved customer in the chair to do his filial duty—to uphold the older Romano's authority.
The duos father and son played together were the joy of the neighborhood, ten blocks around. The select ones—Luigi the banker, Marino the olive oil dealer, and other "notabiles"—sat inside the shop smoking their cigars, while ordinary folk stood outside near the window. Young couples sat on the door sill, holding hands and humming softly the tunes played inside. The duo finished, Mulberry Street applauded generously. And when Mulberry Street applauds, even the Manhattan Bridge shakes from the concussion.
Angelo gone, Romano suffered tremendously. But he had to engage help. There was none to be found, so he inserted the following advertisement in an Italian daily newspaper:
"Artist barber wanted in a first-class tonsorial parlor. One with musical talents preferred."
A week later, Salvatore Gonfarone, disliking to return to his former shop because he was exempted from military service on account of an infirmity of which he had not previously been aware, applied for the job.
The place made no impression on him. It was not like the one he had abandoned. He would not have accepted it; but while he was talking with his prospective employer, Rosita, Silvio's daughter, entered the shop. Salvatore's heart was struck. Thumb and forefinger of the left hand rose to curl his little black mustache, while the right palm met the open hand of Romano. "Sta bene, signore!" And there and then he donned the newly laundered white jacket which Angelo used to wear.
Rosita only came to see whether any mail had arrived. She disappeared as quickly as she came. Romano sat in the chair to give Salvatore a trial. It was a dream! or, as Romano himself said to his wife about the new helper's razor hand, "as light as a gentle breeze." Indeed, he was so pleased with the young man's work that he forgot to inquire about his musical abilities.
Silvio Romano was due for a surprise; that same evening Salvatore sang in a most beautiful mellow baritone voice an aria from "Rigoletto." Romano's fingers struck the tense strings of his guitar with vigor. The old Italian was happy.
Banker and grocer and the other "notabili" came again, and the sidewalk was so crowded with people the policeman on the beat thought Mulberry Street feuds were aflame.
But the greatest triumph of Salvatore was yet to come. Rosita in her best blue silk dress, and Madame Romano herself, entered the shop. The young girl stood timidly in a corner, the Latin impulsiveness checked by her American training. The introduction was not slow to come, and in a few well-chosen words Salvatore paid his compliments to both mother and daughter.
In a few days the news of Romano's great find spread all over town. The two men got to be so busy there was no time to sing and play during the day. Rosita, red flower in her thick raven hair, visited the shop quite frequently. Her black eyes spoke quite distinctly, and once Salvatore even thought she mimicked a kiss to him. But there was no chance to say a word. Silvio Romano began to make plans for a third chair.
The evenings were gorgeous. Salvatore sang "like a god."
Springtime in Mulberry Street is like nowhere else. It finds there a most receptive mood, and there is no sweeter perfume in any flower than the odor wafted by human happiness—as though every inhabitant carried in his bosom the gardens of Tuscany. It is primavera—the primavera of the Italy of Parma violets and lush red roses.
Salvatore Gonfarone pined away in his desire to speak to Rosita. But youth, love and luck are on very friendly terms.
Silvio Romano took sick one day—nothing very serious, a toothache. Salvatore was not going to lose his chance. When Rosita came to the shop he kissed her.
"Oh, Salvatore!"
"Oh, Rosita mio!"
It was just two weeks after they had first seen each other. Rosita made it her business to come ten times that day. A few cuts on the faces of customers bore witness to the young man's distraction.
The next day Romano, feeling much better, was in the shop again.
Toward noon there was an idle hour, and the two men sat down to talk music. It soon developed into a quarrel. Romano was an admirer of the old Italian school of Rossini and Donizetti; Salvatore Gonfarone bowed at the shrine of Verdi and Puccini.
"Pah! Rossini was nothing but a——"
"Basta, Signor! Rossini was the greatest master. Your Puccinis are nothing but noise makers."
"And you love Rossini only because you can play his things on the guitar."
It was a very insolent remark! Silvio Romano checked himself with difficulty. To dispute his musical authority so sneeringly was the height of impudence. But Salvatore was such a good barber! Romano let go a cutting answer:
"And you love Puccini because he gives you the opportunity to shout stupid arias."
Some customers interrupted the dispute.
During the next few hours Salvatore thought how to evade a disaster with the father of Rosita. He loved the girl; yesterday's kisses were still on his lips. Yet he could not, on account of that, change his musical opinions! The idea of the old wire plucker! Let him stick to his Rossini and Donizetti as much as he wants to, but not impose such ideas on him, on Salvatore Gonfarone, who knew more about music than a hundred Romanos!
It was a hard battle between love and artistic ideals.
Silvio Romano was terribly incensed. Several times he made up his mind to tell the youth they had reached the parting point. To dare sneer at Rossini! Rossini, the greatest master of them all—the god of music! let alone Donizetti—it was nothing less than sacrilege.
After those thoughts had had their sway, more practical ones presented themselves. Romano thought of the difficulty to find another man. Salvatore was such a good barber!
A hard battle between business and artistic ideals, indeed!
There was no music that evening, because there was no harmony between the two.
The banker and the other "notabili" came, in vain.
Salvatore took his hat and cane, and saying very politely, "Buona sera," he left the shop.
"What's the trouble with Salvatore?" they all asked.
"He is crazy," Romano answered. They understood something had gone wrong between the two, so the talk was switched on the war.
Rosita came and turned pale when she did not see the young man. The absence of his hat and cane caused the girl despair.
Said the banker to Romano at parting:
"If it's a question of a few dollars more a week, I would advise you——"
"Nothing of the kind, banchiere. Money means nothing to me. I have ideals, high ideals, which this impudent——Think of that! To dare sneer at Rossini! Il grande maestro! The compositore of the 'Barbiere de Sevilla,' and many another capo d'opera. He will have to apologize, or I never want to see him again!"
"Yes, yes," the banker insisted—"youth is impudent, but Salvatore's razor hand and his voice bring business."
"It means nothing to me. He will have to apologize if he wants to work in my shop."
The next day, Saturday, the two artists were too busy to talk music. Fire hung between them. Rosita came in early, all flushed, and sent Salvatore a meaning-full glance. Romano ordered her out very gruffly. Salvatore was mad with anger. How dare this Rossini fanatic speak to Rosita, to his beautiful Rosita, in such a way!
She did not return the whole day.
In the evening Salvatore again made ready to go. He had planned to leave definitely, and find some "sub rosa" way to speak to Rosita. Yet he changed his mind at the last minute. There was danger. He could not lose the girl. He decided to bide his time.
He had hardly started to take off the white jacket when Romano spoke to him.
"Young man, you will have to apologize or leave my shop for good. It is true you are a very good barber, an artist, and I was ready to increase your wages of my own good will. But I have ideals. You have insulted my masters—my great masters——"
Romano's voice quivered with emotion. His eyes were moist. He was deeply grieved. It touched Salvatore as nothing ever did. Throwing both arms around the old man's neck, he kissed him, crying:
"Silvio Romano, soul of an artist! amo d'artiste! I love you, I honor you. But I too have artistic ideals. I love Rosita—but you will not permit that I debase myself, that I lie to you for her sake?"
Both men cried.
They never again talked about the different masters; instead, they played their music nightly. And after a time, they occasionally bowed each at the other's shrine.
THE HOLY HEALER FROM OMSK
From Fourth Street to the confines of 14th Street below First Avenue and the East River is one of the Russian districts in New York. It is inhabited to a great extent by Russian laborers. The Russian "Inteligentsia" of New York is so busy talking about the people, the "narod," it has had no time to go and see and talk with the people.
The odor of cooked cabbage and burned fats dissolves into the stronger odors of the oiled high boots and the numerous Russian steam baths of the district. Ah, these steam baths! From the looks of them and the smell one comes to think of them more as sewers than baths. A hundred little "Cuchnias," restaurants with their vapored windows and sawdust floors proclaim the fact that most of the inhabitants of the district are here without their families and therefore thrown upon the ill-smelling and meanly-cooked foodstuffs of those eating places.
The whole week the streets and houses are very quiet; only the occasional quarrel between two restaurateurs and their wives disturbs the peace. The tired workers sleep. But on Saturday night the Russian temperament breaks loose. The windows of every front room are lit and from the street one sees plainly the decorations on the walls; red and blue serpentines cross the ceiling and are wrapped around the chandeliers; a few pictures in color, cut out from some illustrated paper or magazine; a few gayly colored hand embroidered towels are fixed with pins on the wall above the mantelpiece on which are a few pieces of cheap glassware in that milkish green held in so much affection by the Lithuanians. And inside the rooms, to the creaking sound of a concertina, the Russians dance and sing their national songs. Here and there some American song breaks loose, but this only happens early in the evening when things are yet on their surface. Later in the night when drink has sobered and deepened the children of the Volga they sing only dirges, linking one to another until the whole district is permeated in an undulating melancholy for which no God and no man could account.
In this district lived Stephan Ivanoff. Stephan came to New York with a reputation. People said he had escaped from Siberia by flight, and people also said that he was sent to Siberia because of the jealousy of a doctor. Stephan was not a doctor; he was a healer.
Stephan was a big, heavy dark bearded man with two shrewd little eyes in his head and a mouth which always looked as though it just finished eating some savory morsel. He kept to his Russian custom and went every Saturday night to the Russian bath. In the intimacy of the common bathroom he told stories and anecdotes which elicited broad laughter and made many friends to the newcomer from Siberia.
Incidentally Stephan Ivanoff gave some health hints to his friends. "First of all, don't eat eggs; don't eat any eggs," he said, "they are just poisoning your blood. If you have eaten even one egg in the last four, five years, it will come out some day in a swelling of the neck or in some other boil on the legs and arms."
And one day Vasilenko, the owner of one of the restaurants of the district, had such a swelling on the neck. His wife called a doctor, a regular M. D., who prescribed rest, hot water applications and other such truck. It did not help very much and Mrs. Vasilenko complained to a customer.
"A swelling on the neck?" the customer said as he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, "why, poor Vasilenko is poisoned!"
Several other customers approached Serzei's table and Serzei explained with even greater details all he knew, all he had heard from the mouth of Stephan Ivanoff, that mysterious man who had escaped from Siberia where he had had the great fortune to meet a holy man from Omsk who taught him all about diseases and foods and their poisons.
The upshot of it all was that they went scurrying for Stephan Ivanoff and brought him to the bedside of Vasilenko. Stephan looked the sick man over, held his pulse for quite a while, then declared that Vasilenko was poisoned. He ordered all the bottles of medicine thrown away in his very presence before he would start anything.
"The case is a very serious one," he said, "but I will try to use whatever gifts I have," and he started immediately the old process of dry-cupping the patient. One after the other the little cupping glasses applied to the swollen part filled with the brown blue flesh they sucked in. The patient groaned but Ivanoff assured him it was better than death and tortured him the rest of the night. In the morning Stephan obtained a few particularly active and hungry leeches which he posed to suck out the "bad blood" from Vasilenko's arms and legs. After eight days and eight nights he restored Vasilenko to health and guaranteed that not a drop of poisoned blood had remained in the man's body.
The news spread that Ivanoff had saved Vasilenko's life, and the reputation of the quack grew daily. According to Ivanoff's theory, almost everybody's blood was poisoned. They were all sick people. He took the pulse of every one, listened carefully and then dropped the hand with a little eloquent gesture that set one despairing more than if the death penalty had been pronounced.
"Stephan Ivanoff, what is the matter with me?"
"Alexis Vasilewitch, your pulse tells me that you are a very sick man."
"It's true Stephan Ivanoff that I feel a little tired, but I thought that it was hard work."
Stephan never insisted. It was his trick never to insist. He knew human nature too well to insist. He just made a little gesture and passed on to pleasanter topics, but he was sure that Alexis Vasilewitch, or whoever it was, would come around at the end of the conversation at the dinner table at Vasilenko's and ask: "Stephan Ivanoff, what shall I do?"
And the next day, or on Saturday the man was dry-cupped, blood-sucked, massaged and given to drink strange-tasting mixtures brewed over an alcohol lamp. A few weeks' treatment and the man was healed.
Stephan Ivanoff had saved another life.
Things went on in such a way for years. The several doctors established in the district starved and Stephan Ivanoff became rich. From Vasilenko's restaurant spread tales of marvellous recoveries from all kinds of diseases which the healer discovered as soon as he felt the man's pulse. It was as if the holy man from Omsk had himself sent Stephan Ivanoff to New York to save all the poisoned men. And when a man was very severely ill Stephan spoke mysteriously of occult communications with the man "out there" and gave a brew of special herbs grown on the tombs of holy men and ordered Chinese leeches and dry-cupped in a special way until the man was saved.
Stephen Ivanoff furnished his apartment with all the Russian things he could get in order to impress the increasing number of his visitors.
The priest came to see him one day to admonish him about a little scandal with Vasilenko's wife.
Stephan Ivanoff kissed the hand of the old man and as he held it between the pointer and the thumb he exclaimed "Father, don't move!" Silently, attentive, with the hand of the priest limply between his fingers he said: "Father Anton Fevdoroff, you are a sick man."
"My son, I have come to speak to you about other things." The priest, essaying his unctuous voice, tried to set things right.
Vasilenko had gone to Russia to visit his parents, and his wife, the rumor spread, fell to the healer's spell. Stephan Ivanoff, the healer, listened to the priest's admonition to the end and as he did so his face radiated happiness; as though some wonderfully clear visions were descending from the heavens upon him.
"What have you to say, son?"
"That God's wisdom is seen in the ways of life; that he taketh care of man and worm, and that no action and no thought can come but that He had willed it," answered Stephan Ivanoff, in religious transport.
"But why does my son speak now about godliness, when I come to censure him about his immorality?"
"In Omsk, father, I met a holy man who taught me many things before I came here. In five years I have not met you once. And because you are also a holy man God willed that Vasilenko go to Russia and I be exposed to false accusations so that you should come to me. You are a sick man, Anton Fevdoroff—your pulse tells me you are a very sick man, that you have been poisoned."
Father Anton Fevdoroff maintained that he was not a sick man but the thumb and the forefinger of Stephan Ivanoff on the pulse of the man knew better. A few days later the priest sent word to the healer that he should come to see him. Father Fevdoroff was ill. The doctor had prescribed something which did not seem to help and the priest's wife was despairing. Brought up in a little village in Russia her confidence in leeches and cupping was much stronger than in the official medicine. Stephan's methods suited her and as the priest's health improved under his treatment, Mother Fevdoroff went into ecstasies over the holy man from Omsk:
On the fourth day Ivanoff said to the priest:
"Little father, your pulse is wonderful to-day. There is not a drop of bad blood left in your body."
