I inquired after his daughter and his son-in-law, but my hint that the latter might perhaps be willing to indorse a note for me evoked an impatient grunt
"My son-in-law! Why, you don't even know him!" he retorted, with a suspicious look at me
I turned it off with a joke and asked about the hen-pecked man. Mr. Even had not seen him for four years. The other Talmudists present had never even known him. A man with extremely long black side-locks who spoke with a Galician accent became interested. After Mr. Even went to his wonted seat at the east wall, where he took up a book, this man said to me, with a sigh: "Oh, it is not the old home. Over there people go to the same synagogue all their lives, while here one is constantly on the move. They call it a city.
Pshaw! It is a market-place, a bazar, an inn, not a city! People are together for a day and then, behold! they have flown apart. Where to? Nobody knows. I don't know what has become of you and you don't know what has become of me."
"That's why there is no real friendship here," I chimed in, heartily.
"That's why one feels so friendless, so lonely."
My shop, of course, shut down, and I roamed about the streets a good deal. I was restless. I continually felt nonplussed, ashamed to look myself in the face, as it were. One forenoon I found myself walking in the direction of Twenty-third Street and Lexington Avenue. The college building was now a source of consolation. Indeed, what was money beside the halo of higher education? I paused in front of the building. There were several students on the campus, all Jewish boys. I accosted one of them. I spoke to him enviously, and left the place thrilling with a determination to drop all thought of business, to take the entrance examination, and be a college student at last. I was almost grateful to that Western firm for going into bankruptcy
And yet, even while I was tingling with this feeling, a voice exclaimed in my heart, "Ah, if that Western firm had not failed!"
The debt I owed the American commission merchant agonized me without let-up.
I couldn't help thinking of my "credit face." To disappoint him, of all men, seemed to be the most brutal thing I had ever done. I imagined myself obtaining just enough money to pay him; but, as I did so, I could not resist the temptation of extending the sum so as to go on manufacturing cloaks. I was incessantly cudgeling my brains for some "angel" who would come to my financial rescue