One October evening as I passed through the Grand Central station on my way from an Albany train I was hailed with an impulsive, "Hello, Levinsky!"
It was Bender, my old-time evening-school instructor. I had not seen him for more than three years, during which time he had developed a pronounced tendency to baldness, though his apple face had lost none of its roseate freshness. He looked spruce as ever, his clothes spick and span, his "four-in-hand" tastefully tied, his collar and cuffs immaculate. His hazel eyes, however, had a worn and wistful look in them.
"Quite an American, I declare," he exclaimed, with patronizing admiration and pride, as who should say, "My work has borne fruit, hasn't it?"
"Well, how is the world treating you?" he questioned me, after having looked me over more carefully. "You seem to be doing well."
When he heard that I was "trying to manufacture cloaks and suits" he surveyed me once again, with novel interest
"Are you really? That's good. Glad to hear you're getting on in the world."
"Do you remember the two books you gave me—Dombey and Son and the little dictionary?"
I told him how much good they had done me and he complimented me on my English
He wanted to know more about my business, and I sketched for him my struggles during the first year and the progress I was now making. My narrative was interspersed with such phrases as, "my growing credit," "my "in my desk," "dinner with a buyer from Ohio," all of which I uttered with great self-consciousness. He congratulated me upon my success and upon my English again. Whereupon I exuberantly acknowledged the gratitude I owed him for the special pains he had taken with me when I was his pupil
He still taught evening school during the winter months. When I asked about his work at the custom-house, which had been his chief occupation three years before, he answered evasively. By little and little, however, he threw off his reserve and told, at first with studied flippancy and then with frank bitterness, how "the new Republican broom swept clean," and how he had lost his job because of his loyalty to the Democratic party. He dwelt on the civil-service reform of President Cleveland, charging the Republicans with "offensive partisanship," a Cleveland phrase then as new as four-in-hand neckties. And in the next breath he proceeded to describe certain injustices (of which he apparently considered himself a victim) within the fold of his own party. His immediate ambition was to obtain a "permanent appointment" as teacher of a public day school