From The American Hebrew
Simonoff told it to me over the coffee cups. It was the twilight hour on Second avenue and we were enjoying a late afternoon chat. The gates of the human dam, shut all day long, had been opened and the rushing, swirling stream of men and women beat past us relentlessly—past the door of the Café Cosmos open to the sights and sounds of the street.
Every person in that human torrent seemed eager to reach a haven of rest. Not that their faces looked tired or haggard. But each gave the impression that something had been worn off in a subtle, persistent process—a certain newness, freshness, gloss, call it what you will. Shadows of men and women they were in the twilight as they scurried past. And yet the rhythm of their footsteps beat upon the ear as steadily as the roar of many waters.
"The ghosts are having a holiday," said Simonoff.
His voice was barely audible in the hum of conversation. Simonoff was one of those rare teachers on the lower East Side who neither taught night school nor practised law after his daily duties were over. His passion was to understand his fellow men—to help them, if possible—although, for a reformer, he was given entirely too much to dreaming. His café bills for a year, when added together, made a surprisingly large total. But then Simonoff never bothered with useless mathematics.
A hand organ outside was droning the "Miserere." Children of the tenements, like moths drawn to globes of brilliant light on midsummer nights, hovered about the organ and danced. There was a capricious abandon about their movements which fascinated Simonoff. He had a way of running his slender fingers through his wavy, brown hair, when he was emotionally stirred.
"The dancing maidens of Trebizond were not more graceful than these," he sighed as his eyes followed the sinuous movements of two ragged little tots. "They outgrow it after a while."
"Never," I protested. "The Grand street halls——"
"I mean the search for beauty," drawled Simonoff. "This is the dance of Greek maidens at the sacrificial rites to Demeter. The Grand street thing is a contortion before the obese complacency of the great god Jazz. And Jazz has no soul."
Through the ever-gathering darkness the electric lights began to twinkle like blue-white diamonds against purple velvet. The lights in the café too were turned on by a pottering waiter whose flat-footed shuffle had become familiar to us through many years of observation.