“Well, what of that? You could stand it, I guess. They're very nice people, the Kochs; people whom it is worth while to be on good terms with—so warm-hearted and unpretentious, and yet with their hundreds of thousands behind them. There isn't a smarter business man in New York City than Washington I. Koch, nor a more honest, nor a more open-handed. Look at that stained glass window he gave the congregation. And then, at the same time, he's a man of ideas, a well-informed man; and best of all, he's a pious Jew.”
“Well, I'll tell you what I'll do,” said Elias; “I'll call on them, if you'll come along.”
“I! Nonsense! I called on them last New-Year's, and shall call again next. That's the most that can be expected of me.”
“Well, I shouldn't dare to go alone. If you'd come along, to keep me in countenance, I'd go. But alone—no, never.”
There was an interval of silence. Suddenly the rabbi said, “Well, I declare, I'll do it. I'll do it, just to encourage you. There; let's go up-stairs and dress.”
Pretty soon they left the house and sauntered westward arm-in-arm. Elias wore the Prince Albert coat that he had had made to be married in.
It was a hot night, and it had all the qualities characteristic of a hot night in New York. The air was redolent of bursting ailanthus buds. Strains of music, more or less musical, were wafted from every point of the compass—from behind open windows, where people sang, or played pianos; from the blazing depths of German concert saloons, where cracked-voiced orchestrions thundered discord; from the street corners, where itinerant bands halted, and blew themselves red in the face; and from the indeterminate distance, where belated hand-organs wailed with mechanical melancholy. Third Avenue, into which thoroughfare Elias and the rabbi presently turned, was thronged by many sorts and conditions of men and women clad in light summer gear, and drifting onward in light, languid, summer fashion. It was intensely hot and oppressive; and yet, somehow, it was productive of a certain unmistakable exhilaration. The sense one got of busy, teeming human life, was penetrating and enlivening.
They walked up to Eighteenth Street, where they took the Elevated Railway. At Fifty-ninth Street they descended, and thence proceeded to Lexington Avenue. On Lexington Avenue, just above Sixty-first Street, the Kochs resided. Out on the stoops of most of the houses that they passed, the inmates were seated, resting, gossiping, trying to cool off—the ladies in white dresses, the gentlemen often in their shirt-sleeves. Here and there, some of them were partaking of refreshments; beer, sandwiches, or cheese that savored of the Rhine. Here and there, some of them had fallen asleep. Here and there, a couple of young folks made surreptitious love, and, consumed by inner fires, forgot the outer heat. A pervasive odor, compounded of tobacco smoke and eau-de-cologne, assailed the nostrils. What snatches of conversation could be overheard, were either in German, or in English pronounced with a strong German accent.
They rang the Kochs' door-bell, and were ushered by a white-capped, flaxen-haired Mädchen into the drawing-room.
The drawing-room was gorgeously and elaborately over-furnished. A bewildering arabesque, in gold, vermilion, and purple, decorated the ceiling. A dark, pseudo-æsthetic paper, bearing huge pink apricots embossed upon a ground of olive-green, covered the walls. The gas fixtures were of brass, wrought into an intricate design, and burnished to the highest possible brilliancy. The globes were alternately of ruby and emerald tinted glass. There were a good many pictures; two or three family portraits in charcoal, and several bits of color. Of the latter, the one above the mantelpiece was the largest. A blaze of crimson and orange, deep-set in a massive gilt frame, it proved, on close inspection, to be a specimen of worsted-work; and represented, as a device embroidered upon the margin testified, the Queen of Sheba playing before Solomon. The Queen had beautiful gambooge hair, and ultramarine eyes. Her harp was of ivory, with strings of silver; her costume, décolleté, of indigo velvet, trimmed profusely with handsome gold lace. Solomon—it is to be hoped, for his own sake, that Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like this flamboyant effigy of himself. In a robe of gold brocade, lined with scarlet satin, and bearing upon his brow a richly bejeweled crown, that must certainly have weighed in the neighborhood of twenty pounds, the sagacious monarch looked wretchedly hot and uncomfortable. The rest of this apartment was in perfect keeping. The chairs were of ebony, upholstered in stamped red velvet.