Of course, I felt myself personally concerned and while I should not have hesitated to buy some of the remnants of the candy-maker’s stock in trade, what I really wanted, and wanted with all my heart, was his books and papers, reposing in a case, which I also coveted. The man who attended such auctions, as his business, was a Jew of unsavoury reputation, who kept a pawnshop and had all the characteristics which are supposed to go with that calling. He was there the next morning by St. Florian and with unerring eye had picked out the things which were worth buying. I was sure that among them was the attractive bookcase, upon which my eyes lovingly rested. I had no money, beyond the few pennies which mother gave me and which I always managed to spend; so I appealed to my brother, to whom I painted in alluring colours the wealth of literature contained in that library.
Feather-beds, tables and benches, cake pans and what not were scattered among the Gentile buyers without serious competition, but the fate of the bookcase, for which my brother began to bid, hung long in the balance—because when the pawnbroker discovered that another Jew wanted it, he scented big values. Not until the fabulous sum of twenty florins was reached did the drumstick fall, bringing the coveted treasure into my possession.
And what a commotion those books caused in our immediate family. My pious uncle was notified by the disappointed pawnbroker that a veritable arsenal of infidelity had come into my possession, and way into the small hours of that night the battle raged around it. The little bookcase stood upon the parlour table, its sliding doors warped just enough not to move without serious exertion on my part; but each book was visible through the glass which had been washed and scrubbed for the first time in many years. While mother herself had many misgivings about the books, she resisted my guardian’s attempt to destroy them, and that very night, by the light from our new coal-oil lamp, I took an inventory of my first library. A bound volume of the Gartenlaube, a German illustrated weekly, in which I followed Marlitt’s sentimental stories to their happy endings; a set of the works of Zschoke, a half forgotten Swiss author, whose stories and sketches teemed from the altruistic motive; Don Quixote, whose satire and irony I did not then understand; Auerbach’s village stories, which not only disclosed to me sympathetically the virtues of German peasant folk, but helped me to follow their fortunes in America. This edition was illustrated, and on the banks of the Ohio, where the hero of that story had settled, the artist had drawn a tropic jungle of palms and bamboo, within which crouched fierce lions and fiercer looking wild men. That, however, was not the only time I found text and illustrations at logger-heads.
Of Schiller there was a broken set, “The Robbers,” “The Maid of Orleans,” and his early poems; of Goethe only the first part of “Faust,” which I learned by heart, and each word of it has remained in my memory till now. The book which most impressed me and had the largest influence upon my life was Lessing’s “Nathan der Weise.”
That drama of tolerance came to me with all its prophetic vigour; it spoke to me as I felt I must some day speak, and the story of the three rings, spoken by the Jew Nathan, has remained the pivotal point of my philosophy of religion.
Unfortunately I fell heir in this collection to many books which were coarse in their language and brutal in their attack upon religion and certain phases of morality. They helped to confuse an already overstrained mind and awakened the man in me long before nature intended that I should cease to be a boy. Among the papers I found a number of copy-books, written full and close. They were an attempt at a diary or autobiography, written at odd times. Their frequent perusal made me so moody and introspective that my mother hid them from me and gradually I forgot all about them. Two years ago I visited my sister who has inherited the homestead and who, with rare filial devotion, has preserved the familiar objects of our childhood’s life; although civilization has brought to our town modern furniture, antique rugs and even sectional bookcases, which have claimed much room for themselves. Upon the same table, I found the same bookcase and the same books—the latter all intact; for the generation of youth which followed me has become thoroughly Magyarized and is proud of the fact that it can’t read German.
Every page to which I turned spoke to me, recalling my bitter-sweet boyhood, and I recognized that, after all, these books were the compass which guided my early life, although so often it seemed without guidance, and many a time was fast upon the rocks. There I also discovered the long-lost copy-books. They were wrapped in a Bohemian newspaper and tied by mother’s fingers with a bit of broad, white tape. I transcribe some parts of this autobiography; for the candy-maker, too, struggled against the current and helped draw me into the stream. Much of what he wrote is unprintable, for after all, he tried to write an honest autobiography. What I translated I have left unaltered, for it sounded so natural. He spoke as abruptly and to the point as he wrote.
XIV
THE CANDY-MAKER’S AUTOBIOGRAPHY
“MAN, Know Thyself.
“I am not writing this because I ever expect any man to read it; if I were not so sure of that, I would not write so frankly as I do. Even as it is, I am not sure that I am going to tell everything about myself, for to be frank with one’s self is very hard.