"I don't agree with you at all," she would say, weakly, from time to time, and resume listening with charming resignation
The noise made by the two brothers attracted several other boarders. One of these was a slovenly-looking man of forty-five who spoke remarkably good English with a very bad accent (far worse than mine). That he was a Talmudic scholar was written all over his face. By profession he was a photographer.
His name was Mendelson. He took a hand in our discussion, and it at once became apparent that he had read more and knew more than the bald-headed brothers. He was overflowing with withering sarcasm and easily sneered them into silence
Miss Tevkin was happy. B.ut the slovenly boarder proved to be one of those people who know what they do not want rather than what they do. And so he proceeded, in a spirit of chivalrous banter, to make game of her literary gods as well.
"You don't really mean to tell us that you enjoy an Ibsen play?" he demanded. "Why, you are too full of life for that."
"But that's just what the Ibsen plays are—full of life," she answered. "If you're bored by them it's because you're probably looking for stories, for 'action.' But art is something more significant than that. There is moral force and beauty in Ibsen which one misses in the old masters."
"That's exactly what the ministers of the gospel or the up-to-date rabbis are always talking about—moral force, moral beauty, and moral clam-chowder," Mendelson retorted
The real-estate man uttered a chuckle
"Would you turn the theater into a church or a reform synagogue?" the photographer continued. "People go to see a play because they want to enjoy themselves, not because they feel that their morals need darning."
"But in good literature the moral is not preached as a sermon," Miss Tevkin replied. "It naturally follows from the life it presents. Anyhow, the other kind of literature is mere froth. You read page after page and there doesn't seem to be any substance to it." She said it plaintively, as though apologizing for holding views of this kind