"Yes; I had heard of them, and as I happened to be at the Astor Library I asked for your three volumes. I read several things in each of them. I liked them tremendously."
He blushed again. "It seems an age since they were written," he said, in confusion. "Those were different days."
We sat down at a secluded table. To propitiate the proprietor and the waiter I ordered hot cheese-cakes. I offered to order something for Tevkin, but he declined, and he ordered a glass of tea, with the tacit understanding that he was to pay for it himself
"Why don't you give us some more poems like those?"
He produced his business card, saying, "This is the kind of poetry that goes in America."
The card described him as a "general business agent and real-estate broker." This meant that he earned, or tried to earn, an income by acting as broker for people who wanted to sell or buy soda-and-cigarette stands, news-stands, laundries, grocery-stores, delicatessen-stores, butcher shops, cigar-stores, book-stores, and what not, from a peddier's push-cart to a "parcel" of real estate or an interest in a small factory. Scores of stores and stands change hands in the Ghetto every day, the purchaser being usually a workman who has saved up some money with an eye to business
"Does it pay?" I ventured to ask.
"I am not in it merely for the fun of it, am I?" he returned, somewhat resentfully. "Business is business and poetry is poetry. I hate to confound the two. One must make a living. Thank God, I know how to look things in the face. I am no dreamer. It is sweet to earn your livelihood."
"Of course it is. Still, dreaming is no crime, either."
"Ah, that's another kind of dreaming. Do you write?"