The excitement was at its height, when suddenly a tremendous rap on the table drew the startled gaze of all toward the spot whence the sound had proceeded. What they saw caused a hush to fall over the assemblage. Yerachmiel stood at the side of one of the tables, his cheeks ashy pale, his eyes blazing with a furious light that no one had ever seen in them before, fiercely rapping with his cane in an effort to procure silence. As soon as his voice could be heard he began to speak.
“Jewish brethren and sisters of Novo-Kaidansk,” he said, with painfully labored yet distinct utterance. “You have come here to see Yerachmiel the Shlemihl give divorce to his wife, Shprinze. I know most of you are good people and have pitied me for being such a Shlemihl that I could not keep either my money or my wife. But, perhaps, I am not such a Shlemihl after all. I have not desired nor sought this divorce, but I have tried to find out the truth about an old wrong and to right it; and I believe I have succeeded as well as some who are considered wiser and cleverer than I. Shlemihl though I may be, I have always tried to do my duty toward my wife. Even before I went to America, when poverty and wretchedness were my lot in this town, I gave Shprinze every kopeck that I earned. From America, where God blessed me and made me prosperous, I sent her regularly all that she could properly require. But in return for this I asked wifely love. I knew that a husband must honor, cherish, and maintain his wife; and that a wife must, in true marriage, return love for love, affection for affection. Shprinze never showed the least trace of love for me. My soul hungered and thirsted for love. Shprinze gave me, at worst, bitter revilings and beratings, tongue-stabbings that pierced my soul like the thrusts of a sword; at best, cold indifference. In the beginning, when I could not, because of poverty, properly support her, I excused her. I said to myself that I deserved nothing better. But when from America I sent abundance of gold and loving words, and showed in every way I could that I was a true and loving husband, and when, in return for all this, I could not get an affectionate word, a loving sentence, I resolved that I would find out whether in Shprinze’s heart dwelt a spark of love for me, or whether it was only my gold she loved. The rest you know. I came here, dressed in shabby clothing, looking the olden Shlemihl. Her evil heart made her quickly conclude that I had lost my all, and without questioning me or offering, like a true wife, to share my lot, she demanded a divorce. I saw that she loved me not, that she had never been to me more than a wife in name, and to-day I have granted her wish. But let me assure her and you, friends, that she is mistaken in thinking that she has now got rid of a Shlemihl, of a poor, never succeeding unfortunate. She has freed herself of a successful, of a wealthy man; she has deprived herself of a splendid home in the greatest city of free America; she has deprived herself of luxury and riches, and, what is more, of the love of a man who was deeply attached to her, and who would have given his all for a kind word or a loving kiss from her lips. See, here are the presents I had brought here for her, and would have given her had she treated me rightly.” So speaking, he drew forth a magnificent diamond necklace and a beautiful, richly ornamented gold watch and chain. “And here is the proof that I am a man of means and no deceiver—a letter of credit on a Berlin banking-house for ten thousand marks”—and here he drew from his wallet the precious document and flourished it triumphantly yet sorrowfully before the eyes of his hearers. “As for me,” he continued, “I thank the All-Merciful that He has opened my eyes to the truth, and that He has freed me from a serpent that would only have devoured my substance, and with its icy touch have frozen my heart. Now farewell, friends, and farewell, false and heartless woman. I go to my home beyond the sea, where I shall try to forget this long, sad dream of misplaced love and cruel ingratitude and heartlessness.”
Having thus spoken, he turned and left the room. None ventured to detain him or to restrain his departure. As he went out of the door, Shprinze, who had been listening with strained attention to his words, and whose countenance had alternately flushed and paled as he spoke, rushed forward as if she would have held him back, then paused, uttered a piercing, heartrending shriek, and fell in a deathly swoon to the floor. The cry reached the ears of Yerachmiel as he strode down the dusty street. An expression of pain crossed his features as he heard it, but he did not turn and he came not back.
A VICTIM OF PREJUDICE.
Franz Friedrich Levy sat on his high stool before his desk in the office of the Second Secretariat of the Anhalt-Diesterburg-Rickershofen State Railroad and reflected discontentedly on his lot. He had rather an important position, it is true, that of chief bookkeeper of the Second Secretariat, an important subdivision in the management of the railway, which was a prosperous governmental institution, binding together a rich and beautiful stretch of country in middle Germany. He was in receipt of a very fair salary, occupied a comfortable house in the suburbs of the town, and was wedded to a rather good-looking wife, with quite a store of fashionable though useless accomplishments, but still he was not happy. The cause of his unhappiness was a grievance which he had against the Ober-Direction or supreme management of the railway, a grievance for which he thought—and his wife agreed with him in this opinion—there could be only one explanation. He believed that his promotion was unduly slow. He had entered the service of the railroad in his twentieth year as clerk, and now in his forty-fifth, when his once raven black locks were already heavily streaked with gray and more than a suspicion of baldness was showing itself on the top of his poll, he was only chief bookkeeper of one of the numerous subdivisions of the great concern. He thought that by length of service and capacity he was fitted to be general manager of the road; but while admitting that he had no right to aspire to that exalted position, he considered that by this time he should have attained at the very least to the post of division chief or superintendent.
“Why is it that I do not advance?” he asked himself as he sat gloomily revolving on the high stool. “Am I incapable? Have I been idle, negligent, or inattentive to my duties? Do I not know all the details of the business from beginning to end? Do I not know by heart all the statistics of the road, the number of passengers and the weight of freight carried, the condition of every station, the receipts and the expenditures to a pfennig? No, the fault is not mine. It is owing to rishus, to anti-Semitic prejudice. My only fault, as far as I can discover, is that I am a Jew. To that I owe all my misfortune. This accursed accident of my birth prevents my talents being appreciated, prevents my attaining the success which I should naturally reach; and, I suppose, as long as I am marked with this badge of disgrace and social inferiority I shall always remain an unimportant, insignificant individual. That Ober-Director von Meinken, he is, I am sure, the chief cause of keeping me down. He always looks at me with such a dark, unfriendly glance whenever I have to enter his office. He is the very picture of a Rosho, although he talks smoothly enough. I don’t doubt but he would be glad enough to get rid of me altogether if he only knew how to bring it about.”
“Aha, friend Levy, why are you plunged in such deep thought?” suddenly said a deep, hearty voice at his side. “I have been standing here a whole minute and you have never even noticed my presence, so absorbed were you in your reflections. Did I not know that you were a married man of virtuous principles I would say that you were in love. But then the expression of your face shows that you have not been dreaming sweet dreams of love delights. If I am any judge of physiognomy at all, your thoughts have been disagreeable ones. May I ask what they were?”
Levy turned around with a startled jerk of the high stool. It was the Herr Ober-Director, Baron Adalbert von Meinken himself with a good-humored smile on his broad, handsome, Teutonic face, the lower part of which was covered with a neatly trimmed brown full beard. Levy blushed guiltily. He felt as though the keen blue eyes of his superior were gazing into his very soul and reading the thoughts that had just occupied him. He stammered forth a half apology.
“The Herr Ober-Director will pardon my preoccupation,” he said, “but I can assure you that I was not thinking of any outside matter. I never permit myself to think of outside matters in business hours. I was thinking of a method of reducing the expenses of the station Weizenhofen on the Blauberg-Schoenthal branch. That place costs a great deal more than it ought to, considering the small amount of business done at that point, and I hope soon to be able to lay a project before your Excellency which will materially reduce the cost of maintenance of the station.”
“Ah,” said the Ober-Director, with a pleased expression, “I might have known that you, Levy, were not wasting your employer’s time in idle ruminations. You have always been a faithful, industrious worker, devoted heart and soul to the interests of the road. I shall be glad to receive your proposal in the Weizenhofen matter and I shall give it full consideration.”