"But I don't. On the contrary, I wish it were in my line. I should be glad to—"
"That's all," he cut me short. "Let us say no more about it." And he made an awkward effort to talk Zionism again
CHAPTER III
THE real-estate "boom" which had seized upon the five Ghettos of Greater New York a few years before was still intoxicating a certain element of their population. Small tradesmen of the slums, and even working-men, were investing their savings in houses and lots. Jewish carpenters, house-painters, bricklayers, or instalment peddlers became builders of tenements or frame dwellings, real-estate speculators. Deals were being closed, and poor men were making thousands of dollars in less time than it took them to drink the glass of tea or the plate of sorrel soup over which the transaction took place. Women, too, were ardently dabbling in real estate, and one of them was Mrs. Chaikin, the wife of my talented designer
Tevkin was not the first broker to offer me a "good thing" in real estate.
Attempts in that direction had been made before and I had warded them all off
Instinct told me not to let my attention be diverted from my regular business to what I considered a gamble. "Unreal estate," I would call it. My friend Nodelman was of the same opinion. "It's a poker game traveling under a false passport," was his way of putting it.
Once, as I sat in a Brooklyn street-car, I was accosted by a bewigged woman who occupied the next seat and whom I had never seen before
"You speak Yiddish, don't you?" she began, after scrutinizing me quite unceremoniously
"I do. Why?"