The reason given by Mr. Shaikevitch for coming to America is that he began to be interested in play writing, when the Yiddish stage was prohibited in Russia. The actors left Russia then and came to America, and some of them later wrote Shaikevitch, who was one of the earliest Yiddish playwrights, to join them in New York. He did so, and has written twelve plays, which have been produced in this city. Some of the better known of them are: The Jewish Count, Hamann the Second, Rebecca and Dreyfus. Shaikevitch is interesting mainly as representing in his work an early stage of the popular Yiddish consciousness.
A CYNICAL INVENTOR
The "intellectuals" who gather in the Russian cafés delight in expressing the ideas for which they were persecuted abroad. Enthusiasm for progress and love of ideas is the characteristic tone of these gatherings and an entire lack of practical sense.
Very striking, therefore, was the attitude of a Russian-Jewish inventor, who took his lunch the other day at one of the most literary of these cafés. Near him were a trio of enthusiasts, gesticulating over their tea, but he sat aloof, alone. He listened with a cold, superior smile. He neither smoked nor drank, but sat, with his thin, shrewd face, chillily thinking.
It is common report in the community of the intellectual Ghetto that Mr. Okun made a great invention connected with the electric arc lamp. It resulted in lengthening the time before the carbon is burnt out from four or five hours to 150 hours or thereabouts. He might have been a millionaire to-day, both he and his acquaintances maintain, but, with the usual unpractical nature of the Russian Jew, he was cheated by unscrupulous lawyers. He was a shirt maker, and for six years saved from his $10 a week to buy the apparatus necessary for the task. At last it was completed, but he was robbed of the fortune, of the fame, of the prestige to which his great idea entitled him. As it is, he gets only $1,250 a year for the great deed, spends much of his time silently in the cafés, and dreams of other inventions when not engaged with criticizing his kind.
An American, who sometimes visited the place for "color" and for the unpractical enthusiasm which he missed among his own people, sat down by the inventor, whose face interested him, and entered into conversation. He spoke of a Yiddish playwright whom he admired.
"I do not know much about him," said the inventor. "I am not a genius, like the others."
He sneered, but it was so nearly imperceptible that it did not seem ill-natured.
"But I am told," said the American, "that you are a great inventor. And that is a kind of genius."
"Yes, perhaps," he replied, carelessly. "It takes talent, too, to do what I have done. But I am not a genius, like these people."