The dailies of the Ghetto, the newspapers that can afford to pay, are published, not in the language of Isaiah and Job, but in Yiddish, the German dialect spoken by the Jewish masses of to-day. I asked the librarian whether Tevkin wrote for those papers, and he brought me several clippings containing some of Tevkin's Yiddish contributions. It appeared, however, that the articles he wrote in his living mother-tongue lacked the spirit and the charm that distinguished his style when he used the language of the prophets. Altogether, Tevkin seemed to be accounted one of the "has-beens" of the Ghetto
One of the bits of information I squeezed out of the librarian was that Tevkin was a passionate frequenter of Yampolsky's café, a well-known gathering-place of the East Side Bohème
I had heard a good deal about the resort. I knew that many or most of its patrons were Socialists or anarchists or some other kind of "ists." After my experience at the Cooper Institute meeting, Yampolsky's café seemed to be the last place in the world for me to visit. But I was drawn to it as a butterfly is to a flame, and finally the temptation got the better of me
CHAPTER II
THE café was a spacious room of six corners and a lop-sided general appearance.
It was about 4 o'clock of an afternoon. I sat at the end of one of the tables, a glass of Russian tea before me. There were two other customers at that table, both poorly clad and, as it seemed to me, ill-fed. Two tables in a narrow and dingier part of the room were occupied by disheveled chess-players and three or four lookers-on. Altogether there were about fifteen people in the place. Some of the conversations were carried on aloud. A man with curly dark hair who was eating soup at the table directly in front of me was satirizing somebody between spoonfuls, relishing his acrimony as if it were spice to his soup. A feminine voice back of me was trying to prove to somebody that she did much more for her sister than her sister did for her. I was wretchedly ill at ease at first. I loathed myself for being here. I felt like one who had strayed into a disreputable den. In addition, I was in dread of being recognized. The man who sat by my side had the hair and the complexion of a gipsy. He looked exhausted and morose.
Presently he had a fried steak served him. It was heavily laden with onions.
As he fell to cutting and eating it hungrily the odor of the fried onions and the sound of his lips sickened me. The steak put him in good humor. He became sociable and turned out to be a gay, though a venomous, fellow. His small talk raised my spirits, too. Nor did anybody in the café seem to know who I was or to take any notice of me. I took a humorous view of the situation and had the gipsy-faced man tell me who was who
"Shall I begin with this great man?" he asked, facetiously, pointing his fork at himself. "I am the world-renowned translator and feuilleton writer whose writings have greatly increased the circulation of the Yiddish Tribune."
Under the guise of playful vanity he gave vent to a torrent of self-appreciation. He then named all the "other notables present"—a poet, a cartoonist, a budding playwright, a distinguished Russian revolutionist, an editor, and another newspaper man—maligning and deriding some of them and grudgingly praising the others. Much of what he said was lost upon me, for, although he knew that I was a rank outsider, he used a jargon of nicknames, catch-phrases, and allusions that was apparently peculiar to the East Side Bohème. He was part of that little world, and he was unable to put himself in the place of one who was not. I subsequently had occasion to read one of his articles and I found it full of the same jargon. The public did not understand him, but he either did not know it or did not care