“Now just look at him!” cried Mrs. F. Fodderwood Bass in an ecstasy. “How neat! How trim! How cosy!”
Papa Finkelstein didn’t want to be neat. He abhorred cosiness; likewise trimness. Moreover he shrunk mentally from the prospect of his homeward journey, foreseeing difficulties. There again was his intuition prophetically justified.
At the corner of Hester Street and the Bowery a skylarking group beheld him and greeted him with cries of an almost incredulous joy. By force they detained the little man, making mock of him in English and in Yiddish. The English passed over his head, but into his soul the Yiddish bit deep, leaving scars. He wrested himself free and fled to his home. His arrival there made a profound impression on Mamma Finkelstein—after she recognised him. So did his language.
Only the absolute necessity of gleaning rent money from the realms of trade drove him forth two days later from the comparative sanctuary of the inner room of his domicile. In the spirit he suffered, and in the flesh as well. Citizens en route to the Subway, on being hailed with inquiries touching on old clothes, from an [284] undersized pedestrian attired as a chauffeur, in reduced circumstances, who had neglected to shave for a long time past, did not halt to listen. They halted to laugh and to gibe and to gird with derision. Until Papa Finkelstein had effected a trade with a compassionate but thrifty compatriot, with an utter disregard for intrinsic values exchanging what he wore for whatsoever the other might give, just so it sufficiently covered him, he felt himself to be a hissing and a byword in the highways—which he was.
And now into the tangling skeins of the Finkelstein family’s life in their relation to the charitable impulses enlisted upon their behalf—but without their consent or their approval—it is fitting to reintroduce Miss Betty Gwin. Springtime came and passed, its passage dappled for all the Finkelsteins with memory spots attesting the more or less intermittent attentions of Mrs. F. Fodderwood Bass, and the more or less constant ministrations of Miss Godiva Sleybells.
Summer came; and with the initial weeks of summer came also the time for the first of the series of annual outings conducted under the auspices of the Evening Dispatch’s Fresh Air Fund for the Children of the Poor. Yearly it was the habit of this enterprising sheet to give excursions to the beach, employing therefor a chartered steamboat and the contributions of the public.
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The public mainly put up the money; the owner of the Evening Dispatch, Mr. Jason Q. Welldover, principally took the credit, for thereby, on flaunting banners and by word of speech, was his name and his fame made glorious throughout the land. As repeatedly pointed out in the editorial columns of his journal, the Little Ones of the slums were enabled, through the Generosity of This Paper, to breathe in the Life-giving Ozone of kindly Mother Ocean; to Play upon the sands; to Disport themselves in the very Lap Of Nature; returning home at eventide Rejuvenated and Happy—the phraseology and the capitalisation alike being direct quotations from the Evening Dispatch.
Since Miss Betty Gwin was on the staff of the Evening Dispatch, it was quite natural that she should take a personal pride as well as a professional interest in the success of the opening outing of the season. As suitable candidates for admission to its dragooned passenger list she thought of Miriam Finkelstein and Solly Finkelstein. She pledged herself to see that these two were included in the party. Nor did she forget it. Upon the morning of the appointed date she went personally to Pike Street, assumed custodianship of the favoured pair and, her own self, escorted them to the designated place of assemblage and transferred them into the keeping of Mr. Moe Blotch.
Mr. Blotch belonged in the Evening [286] Dispatch’s Circulation Department. Against his will he had been drafted for service in connection with the Fresh Air Fund’s excursion. He was a rounded, heavy-set person, with the makings of a misanthrope in him. That day completed the job; after that he was a made and finished misanthrope.
While murder blazed in his eyes and kind words poured with malevolent bitterness from his lips, Mr. Blotch marshalled his small charges, to the number of several hundred, in a double file. To each he gave a small American flag, warning each, on peril of mutilation and death, to wave that flag and keep on waving it until further orders. Up at the head of the column, Prof. Washington Carter’s All-Coloured Silver Cornet Band struck up a clamorous march tune and the procession started, winding its way out of the familiar Lower East Side, across the tip of Manhattan Island, to the verge of the strange Lower West Side.