^UBRARY-0/ F-CALIFOI?^ ^- ^-UBRARY^, <$HIE l/rPI irinri li I i I I i i 5 =? ! \ f\ V^> . ... ....... vV :IOS-ANCEU YEKL A TALE OF THE NEW YORK GHETTO J\ talc of tbe new orR Ghetto By JT. Caftan new Vork D. flppicton and Company MM COPYRIGHT, 1896, JY D. APPLETON AND COMPANY. CONTENTS I. JAKE AND YEKL i II. THE NEW YORK GHETTO .... 25 III. IN THE GRIP OF HIS PAST $O IV. THE MEETING 70 V. A PATERFAMILIAS 82 VI. CIRCUMSTANCES ALTER CASES . . .112 VII. MRS. KAVARSKY'S COUP D'ETAT . . .136 VIII. A HOUSETOP IDYL 158 IX. THE PARTING 175 X. A DEFEATED VICTOR 185 v 694967 EKL. CHAPTER I. JAKE AND YEKL. THE operatives of the cloak-shop in which Jake was employed had been idle all the .morning. It was after twelve o'clock and the " boss " had not yet returned from Broad- way, whither he had betaken himself two or three hours before in quest of work. The little sweltering assemblage for it was an oppressive day in midsummer beguiled their suspense variously. A rabbinical-look- ing man of thirty, who sat with the back of his chair tilted against his sewing machine, was intent upon an English newspaper. Every little while he would remove it from his eyes showing a dyspeptic face fringed with a 2 YEKL. thin growth of dark beard to consult the cumbrous dictionary on his knees. Two young lads, one seated on the frame of the next machine and the other standing, were boasting to one another of their respective intimacies with the leading actors of the Jewish stage. The board of a third machine, in a corner of the same wall, supported an open copy of a socialist magazine in Yid- dish, over which a cadaverous young man absorbedly swayed to and fro droning in the Talmudical intonation. A middle-aged oper- ative, with huge red side whiskers, who was perched on the presser's table in the corner opposite, was mending his own coat. While the thick-set presser and all the three women of the shop, occupying the three machines ranged against an adjoining wall, formed an attentive audience to an impromptu lecture upon the comparative merits of Boston and New York by Jake. He had been speaking for some time. He stood in the middle of the overcrowded stuffy room with his long but well-shaped JAKE AND YEKL. 3 legs wide apart, his bulky round head aslant, ; and one of his bared mighty arms akimbo. He spoke in Boston Yiddish, that is to say,\ in_Yiddish more copiously spicedjwith mutj-y lated English than is the language of the rnetropolitarrjGhetto in which our story lie& He had a deep and rather harsh voice, and his r's could do credit to the thickest Irish brogue. "When I was in Boston," he went on, * with a contemptuous mien intended for the c American metropolis, " I knew a feller* so he was a preticly friend of John Shulli van's. He is a Christian, that feller is, and yet the two of us lived like brothers. May I be un- able to move from this spot if we did not. How, then, would you have it? Like here, in New York, where the Jews are a lot of greenhornsh and can not speak a word of ; English ? Over there every Jew speaks English like a stream." * English words incorporated in the Yiddish of the characters of this narrative are given in Italics. 4 YEKL. "Say, Dzake," the presser broke in, "John Sullivan is tzampion no longer, is he ? " "Oh, no! Not always is it holiday!" Jake responded, with what he considered a Yankee jerk of his head. " Why, don't you know? Jimmie Corbett leaked him, and Jimmie leaked Cholly Meetchel, too. You can betch you bootsh ! Johnnie could not leak Chollie, becaush he is a big bluffer, Chollie is," he pursued, his clean-shaven florid face beaming with enthusiasm for his subject, and with pride in the diminutive proper nouns he flaunted. "But Jimmie pundished him. Ok, didn't he knock him out off shight ! He came near making a meat ball of him " with a chuckle. " He tzettled him in three roynds. I knew a feller who had seen the fight." " What is a rawnd, Dzake ? " the presser inquired. Jake's answer to the question carried him into a minute exposition of " right-handers," "left-handers," "sending to sleep," "first blood," and other commodities of the fistic JAKE AND YEKL. 5 business. He must have treated the subject rather too scientifically, however, for his fe- male listeners obviously paid more attention to what he did in the course of the boxing match, which he had now and then, by way of illustration, with the thick air of the room, than to the verbal part of his lecture. Nay, even the performances of his brawny arms and magnificent form did not charm them as much as he thought they did. For a dis- play of manly force, when connected even though in a purely imaginary way with acts of violence, has little attraction for a "daughter of the Ghetto." Much more in- terest did those arms and form command on their own merits. Nor was his chubby high- colored face neglected. True, there was a suggestion of the bulldog in its make up; but this effect was lost upon the feminine portion of Jake's audience, for his features, illuminated by a pair of eager eyes of a hazel hue, and shaded by a thick crop of dark hair, iwere, after all, rather pleasing than otherwise. t , ptrongly Semitic naturally, they became still 6 YEKL. more so each time they were brightened up by his goocf-natured boyish smile. Indeed, (Jake's very nose, which was fleshy and pear- shaped and deddedl^jiQjtJewish (although not decidedly anything else), seemed to join the Mosaic faith, and even his shaven upper lip looked penitent, as soon as that smile of his made its appearance. " Nice fun that ! " observed the side-whis- kered man, who had stopped sewing to fol- low Jake's exhibition. "Fighting like drunken moujiks in Russia ! " " Tarrarra-boom-de-ay ! " was Jake's mer- ry retort ; and for an exclamation mark he puffed up his cheeks into a balloon, and ex- ploded it by a " pawnch " of his formidable fist. 11 Look, I beg you, look at his dog's tricks ! " the other said in disgust. "Horse's head that you are!" Jake re- joined good-humoredly. "Do you mean to tell me that a moujik understands how to fight f A disease he does ! He only knows how to strike like a bear [Jake adapted his JAKE AND YEKL. 7 voice and gesticulation to the idea of clumsi- ness], an' dofsh ullf What dbes he care where his paw will land, so he strikes. But here one must observe rulesh [rules]." At this point Meester Bernstein for so the rabbinical-looking man was usually ad- dressed by his shopmates looked up from his dictionary. " Can't you see ? " he interposed, with an air of assumed gravity as he turned to Jake's opponent, " America is an educated country, | J so they won't even break bones without grammar. They tear each other's sides ac- j cording to 'right and left,'* you know." This was a thrust at Jake's right-handers and left-handers, which had interfered with Bern- stein's reading. " Nevertheless," the latter proceeded, when the outburst of laughter which greeted his witticism had subsided, - " I do think that a burly Russian peasant would, without a bit of grammar, crunch *A term relating to the Hebrew equivalent of the letter s, whose pronunciation depends upon the right or left position of a mark over it. 8 YEKL. the bones of Corbett himself; and he would not charge him a cent for it, either." " fs dot sho?" Jake retorted, somewhat nonplussed. "/ betch you he would not. The peasant would lie bleeding like a hog before he had time to turn around." " But they might kill each other in that way, ain't it, Jake?" asked a comely, milk- faced blonde whose name was Fanny. She was celebrated for her lengthy tirades, mostly in a plaintive, nagging strain, and delivered in her quiet, piping voice, and had accord- ingly been dubbed " The Preacher." " Oh, that will happen but very seldom," Jake returned rather glumly. The theatrical pair broke off their boast- ing match to join in the debate, which soon included all except the socialist ; the former two, together with the two girls and the presser, espousing the American cause, while Malke the widow and " De Viskes" sided with Bernstein. " Let it be as you say," said the leader of the minority, withdrawing from the contest JAKE AND YEKL. 9 to resume his newspaper. " My grandma's last care it is who can fight best." " Nice pleasure, any hull? remarked the widow. "Never miri, we shall see how it will lie in his head when he has a wife and children to support? Jake colored. " What does a chicken know about these things ?" he said irascibly. Bernstein again could not help interven- ing. " And you, Jake, can not do with- out 'these things/ can you? Indeed, I do not see how you manage to live without them." " Don't you like it ? I do " Jake declared tartly. " Once I live in America," he pur- sued, on the defensive, " I want to know that I live in America. Dofsk CL kin a man I am ! One must not be a greenhorn. Here a Jew is as good as a Gentile. How, then,^ would you have it ? The way it is in Rus- sia, where a Jew is afraid to stand within four ells of a Christian ? " "Are there no other Christians than fighters in America ? " Bernstein objected 10 YEKL. with an amused smile. " Why don't you look for the educated ones ? " " Do you mean to say the fighters are ^ not ejecate 9 Better than you, any hoy" Jake "Vsaid with a Yankee wink, followed by his 1 Semitic smile. "Here you read the papers, / and yet /'// betch you you don't know that Corbett findished college? " I never read about fighters," Bernstein replied with a bored gesture, and turned to his paper. " Then say that you don't know, and dofsh ullf " Bernstein made no reply. In his heart Jake respected him, and was now anxious to vindicate his tastes in the judgment of his scholarly shopmate and in his own. "Alia right, let it be as you say; the fighters are not ejecate. No, not a bit ! " he said ironically, continuing to address himself to Bernstein. " But what will you say to baseball? All college boys and tony peoples k play it," he concluded triumphantly. Bern- stein remained silent, his eyes riveted to his JAKE AND YEKL. H newspaper. " Ah, you don't answer, shee f " said Jake, feeling put out. The awkward pause which followed was relieved by one of the playgoers who wanted to know whether it was true that to pitch a ball required more skill than to catch one. " Sure / You must know how to peetch? Jake rejoined with the cloud linger- ing on his brow, as he lukewarmly delivered an imaginary ball. "And I, for my part, don't see what wis- dom there is to it," said the presser with a shrug. " I think I could throw, too." "He can do everything ! " laughingly re- marked a girl named Pesse*. " How hard can you hit ? " Jake demand- ed sarcastically, somewhat warming up to the subject. " As hard as you at any time." " / betch you a dullar to you' ten shent you can not," Jake answered, and at the same moment he fished out a handful of coin from his trousers pocket and challengingly presented it close to his interlocutor's nose. 12 YEKL. " There he goes ! betting ! " the presser exclaimed, drawing slightly back. " For my part, your pitzers and catzers may all lie in the earth. A nice entertainment, indeed ! Just like little children playing ball ! And yet people say America is a smart county. I don't see it." " 'F caush you don't, becaush you are a bedraggled greenhorn, afraid to budge out of Heshter Shtreet." As Jake thus vented his bad humour on his adversary, he cast a glance at Bernstein, as if anxious to attract his attention and to re-engage him in the discussion. ^ " Look at the Yankee ! " the presser shot back. " More of a one than you, anyhoy? "He thinks that shaving one's mustache makes a Yankee ! " Jake turned white with rage. " 'Pon my vord, I'll ride into his mug and give such a shaving and planing to his pig's snout that he will have to pick up his teeth." JAKE AND YEKL. ! 3 " That's all you are good for." " Better don't answer him, Jake," said Fanny, intimately. " Oh, I came near forgetting that he has somebody to take his part ! " snapped the presser. The girl's milky face became a fiery red, and she retorted in vituperative Yiddish from that vocabulary which is the undivided possession of her sex. The presser jerked out an innuendo still more far-reaching than his first. Jake, with bloodshot eyes, leaped at the offender, and catching him by the front of his waistcoat, was aiming one of those bearlike blows which but a short while ago he had decried in the moujik, when Bernstein sprang to his side and tore him away, Pesse" placing herself between the two enemies. " Don't get excited," Bernstein coaxed him. " Better don't soil your hands," Fanny added. After a slight pause Bernstein could not I4 YEKL. forbear a remark which he had stubbornly repressed while Jake was challenging him to a debate on the education of baseball players : " Look here, Jake ; since fighters and base- ball men are all educated, then why don't you try to become so ? Instead of spending your money on fights, dancing, and things like that, would it not be better if you paid it to a teacher ? " Jake flew into a fresh passion. "Never miri what I do with my money," he said ; " I don't steal it from you, do I ? Rejoice that you keep tormenting your books. Much does he know ! Learning, learning, and learning, and still _ he can not speak English. I don't learn and yet I speak quicker than you ! " A deep blush of wounded vanity mount- ed to Bernstein's sallow cheek. " Ull right t ull right ! " he cut the conversation short, and took up the newspaper. Another nervous silence fell upon the group. Jake felt wretched. He uttered an English oath, which in his heart he directed JAKE AND YEKL. 15 against himself as much as against his sedate companion, and fell to frowning upon the leg of a machine. " Vill you go by Joe to-night ? " asked Fanny in English, speaking in an undertone. Joe was a dancing master. She was sure Jake intended to call at his " academy" that evening, and she put the question only in order to help him out of his sour mood. " No," said Jake, morosely. " Vy, to-day is Vensday." " And without you I don't know it ! " he snarled in Yiddish. The finisher girl blushed deeply and re- frained from any response. " He does look like a regely Yankee, \ doesn't he ? " Pesse" whispered to her after a I little. " Go and ask him ! " "Go and hang yourself together with him ! Such a nasty preacher ! Did you ever hear one dares not say a word to the noblewoman ! " At this juncture the boss, a dwarfish !6 YEKL. ** little Jew, with a vivid pair of eyes and a shaggy black beard, darted into the chamber. " It- is no used ! " he said with a gesture of despair. " There is not a stitch of work, if only for a cure. Look, look how they have lowered their noses ! " he then added with a triumphant grin. "F*?//, I shall not be teasing you. ' Pity living things ! ' The expressman is darn stess. I would not go till I saw him start, and then I caught a car. No other boss could get a single jacket even if he fell upon his knees. Veil, do you appreciate it at least ? Not much, ay?" The presser rushed out of the room and presently came back laden with bundles of cut cloth which he threw down on the table. A wild scramble ensued. The presser looked on indifferently. The three finisher women, who had awaited the advent of the bundles as eagerly as the men, now calmly put on their hats. They knew that their part of the work wouldn't come before three JAKE AND YEKL. iy o'clock, and so, overjoyed by the^ertajnt^ of jmployment for at least another day or two, icy departed till that hour. t * " Look at the rush they are making ! Just like the locusts of Egypt!" the boss cried half sternly and half with self-compla- cent humour, as he shielded the treasure with both his arms from all except " De Viskes " and Jake the two being what is called in sweat-shop parlance, " chance-mentshen? i. e. f favorites. " Don't be snatching and catch- ing like that," the boss went on. " You may burn your fingers. Go to your ma- chines, I say! The soup will be served in separate plates. Never fear, it won't get cold." The hands at last desisted gingerly, Jake and the whiskered operator carrying off two of the largest bundles. The others went to their machines empty-handed and remained seated, their hungry glances riv- eted to the booty, until they, too, we're pro- vided. The little boss distributed the bundles 1 8 YEKL. with dignified deliberation. In point of fact, he was no less impatient to have the work started than any of his employees. But in him the feeling was overridden by a kind of malicious pleasure which he took in their eagerness and in the demonstration of his power over the men, some of whom he knew to have enjoyed a more comfort- able past than himself. The machines of Jake and " De Viskes " led off in a duet, which presently became a trio, and in an- other few minutes the floor was fairly danc- ing to the ear-piercing discords of the whole frantic sextet. In the excitement of the scene called forth by the appearance of the bundles, Jake's gloomy mood had melted away. Nevertheless, while his machine was deliv- ering its first shrill staccatos, his heart recited a vow : " As soon as I get my pay I shall call on the installment man and give him a deposit for a ticket." The prospective ticket was to be for a passage across the Atlantic from Hamburg to New York. And as the JAKE AND YEKL. JQ notion of it passed through Jake's mind it evoked there the image of a dark-eyed young woman with a babe in her lap. However, as the sewing machine throbbed and writhed under Jake's lusty kicks, it seemed to be swiftly carrying him away from the apparition which had the effect of reced- ing, as a wayside object does from the pas- senger of a flying train, until it lost itself in a misty distance, other visions emerging in its place. It was some three years before the open- / ing of this story that Jake had last beheld that very image in the flesh. But then at | that period of his life he had not even sus- ' pected the existence of a name like Jake, be- i ing known to himself and to all Povodye a \town in northwestern Russia as Yekl or /Yekele. It was not as a deserter from military service that he had shaken off the dust of that town where he had passed the first twenty-two years of his life. As the only son of aged parents he had been exempt 20 YEKL. from the duty of bearing arms. Jake may have forgotten it, but his mother still fre- quently recurs to the day when he came rushing home, panting for breath, with the " red certificate " assuring his immunity in his hand. She nearly fainted for happiness. And when, stroking his dishevelled sidelocks with her bony hand and feasting her eye on his chubby face, she whispered, " My recov- ered child ! God be blessed for his mercy ! " there was a joyous tear in his eye as well as in hers. Well does she remember how she gently spat on his forehead three times to avert the effect of a possible evil eye on her " flourishing tree of a boy," and how his fa- ther standing by made merry over what he called her crazy womanish tricks, and said she had better fetch some brandy in honour of the glad event. But if Yekl was averse to wearing a sol- dier's uniform on his own person he was none the less fond of seeing it on others. His ruling passion, even after he had be- come a husband and a father, was to watch JAKE AND YEKL. 21 the soldiers drilling on the square in front of the whitewashed barracks near which stood his father's smithy. From a cheder * boy he showed a knack at placing himself on terms of familiarity with the Jewish members of the local regiment, whose uniforms struck terror into the hearts of his schoolmates. He would often play truant to attend a mili- tary parade ; no lad in town knew so many Russian words or was as well versed in army terminology as Yekele* " Beril the black- smith's ; " and after he had left cheder, while working his father's bellows, Yekl would vary synagogue airs with martial song. Three years had passed since Yekl had for the last time set his eyes on the white- washed barracks and on his father's rickety smithy, which, for reasons indirectly connect- ed with the Government's redoubled discrim- ination against the sonsoTTsraetrtadnje- corne"irmdequate to strpport two families ',\ * A school where Jewish children are instructed in the Old Testament or the Talmud. 22 YEKL. three years since that beautiful summer morning when he had mounted the spacious kibitka which was to cany him to the fron- tier-bound train ; since, hurried by the driver, he had leaned out of the wagon to kiss his half-year old son good-bye amid the heart- rending lamentations of his wife, the tremu- lous " Go in good health ! " of his father, and the startled screams of the neighbours who rushed to the relief of his fainting mother. The broken Russian learned among the Po- vodye soldiers he had exchanged for Eng- lish of a corresponding quality, and the bel- lows for a sewing machine a change of weapons in the battle of life which had been brought about both by Yekl's tender reli- gious feelings and robust legs. He had been shocked by the very notion of seeking em- ployment at his old trade in a city where it is in the hands of Christians, and conse- quently involves a violation of the Mosaic Sabbath. On the other hand, his legs had been thought by his early American advisers eminently fitted for the treadle. Unlike JAKE AND YEKL. 23 New York, the Jewish sweat-shops of Bos- ton keep in line, as a rule, with the Christian factories in observing Sunday as the only day of rest. There is, however, even in Bos- ton a lingering minority of bosses more particularly in the " pants "-making branch who abide by the Sabbath of their fathers. Accordingly, it was under one of these that Yekl had first been initiated into the sweat- shop world. Subsequently Jake, following numerous examples, had given up " pants " for the more remunerative cloaks, and having rapid- ly attained skill in his new trade he had , moved to New York, the centre of the cloak-making industry. Soon after his arrival in Boston his re-j ligious scruples had followed in the wake of his~forrner first name; and it he was^T still free from work on Saturdays he found many another way of " desecrating the Sab- bath." Three years had intervened since he had first set foot on American soil, and the 24 YEKL. thought of ever having been a Yekl would bring to Jake's lips a smile of patronizing commiseration for his former self. As to his Russian family name, which was Podkovnik, Jake's friends had such rare use for it that by mere negligence it had been left intact. CHAPTER II. THE NEW YORK GHETTO. IT was after seven in the evening when Jake finished his last jacket Some of the operators had laid down their work before, while others cast an envious glance on him as he was dressing to leave, and fell to their machines with reluctantly redoubled energy. Fanny was a week worker and her time had been up at seven ; but on this occasion her toilet had taken an uncommonly long time, and she was not ready until Jake got up from his chair. Then she left the room rather suddenly and with a demonstrative " Good-night all ! " When Jake reached the street he found her on the sidewalk, making a pretense of 2 6 YEKL. brushing one of her sleeves with the cuff of the other. " So kvick ? " she asked, raising her head in feigned surprise. " You cull dot kvick ? " he returned grim- ly. " Good-bye ! " " Say, ain't you goin' to dance to-night, really ? " she queried shamefacedly. " I tol' you I vouldn't." " What does she want of me ? " he com- plained to himself proceeding on his way. He grew conscious of his low spirits, and, tracing them with some effort to their source, he became gloomier still. " No more fun for me ! " he decided. " I shall get them over here and begin a new life." After supper, which he had taken, as usual, at his lodgings, he went out for a walk. He was firmly determined to keep himself from visiting Joe Peltner's dancing academy, and accordingly he took a direc- tion opposite to Suffolk Street, where that establishment was situated. Having passed a few blocks, however, his feet, contrary to THE NEW YORK GHETTO. 2 / his will, turned into a side street and thence into one leading to Suffolk. " I shall only drop in to tell Joe that I can not sell any of his ball tickets, and return them," he at- tempted to deceive his own conscience. Hailing this pretext with delight he quick- ened his pace as much as the overcrowded sidewalks would allow. He had to pick and nudge his way through dense swarms of bedraggled half- naked humanity ; past garbage barrels rear- _ ^ ing their overflowing contents in sickening ~\ piles, and lining the streets in malicious sug- *'' gestion of rows of trees ; underneath tiers and tiers of fire escapes, barricaded and fes- tooned with mattresses, pillows, and feather- beds not yet gathered in for the night. The pent-in sultry atmosphere was laden with nausea and pierced with a discordant and, as it were, plaintive buzz. Supper had been despatched in a hurry, and the teeming popu- lations of the cyclopic tenement houses were out in full force " for fresh air," as even these people will say in mental quotation marks. 3 28 YEKL. Suffolk Street is in the very thick of the battle for breath. For it lies in the .heart of that part of the East Side which has within I the last two or three decades become the Ghetto of the American metropolis, and, in- deed, the nie^^rjoljs_of_the Ghettos of the world. It is one of the most densely popu- lated spots on the face of the earth a seeth- ing human sea fed by streams, streamlets, and rills of immigration flowing from all the Yiddish-speaking centres of Europe. Hard- ly a block but shelters Jews from every nook and corner of Russia, Poland, Galicia, Hungary, Roumania ; Lithuanian Jews, Vol- hynian Jews, south Russian Jews, Bessara- bian Jews ; Jews crowded out of the " pale of Jewish settlement"; Russified Jews ex- pelled from Moscow, St. Petersburg, Kieff, or Saratoff; Jewish runaways from justice; Jewish refugees from crying political and economical injustice ; people torn from a hard-gained foothold in life and from deep- rooted attachments by the caprice of intoler- ance or the wiles of demagoguery innocent THE NEW YORK GHETTO. 2 9 scapegoats of a 'guilty Government for its outraged populace to misspend its blind fury upon ; students shut out of the Russian uni- versities, and come to these shores in quest of learning ; artisans, merchants, teachers, rabbis, artists, beggars all come in search of > fortune.^ 'Nor is there a tenement house but harbours in its bosom specimens of all the whimsical metamorphoses wrought upon the children of Israel of the great modern exo- dus by the vicissitudes of life in this their Promised Land of to-day. You find there Jews born to plenty, whom the new condi- tions have delivered up to the clutches of penury ; Jews reared in the straits of need, who have here risen to prosperity ; good people morally degraded in the struggle for success amid an unwonted environment ; moral outcasts lifted from the mire, purified, and imbued with self-respect ; educated men and women with their intellectual polish tarnished in the inclement weather of ad- versity ; ignorant sons of toil grown enlight- ened in fine, people with all sorts of an- 30 YEKL. tecedents, tastes, habits, inclinations, and speaking all sorts of subdialects of the same jargon, thrown pellmell into one social cal- dron a human hodgepodge with its compo- nent parts changed but not yet fused into one homogeneous^. whole. ""'^And so the " stoops," sidewalks, an '"'pavements of Suffolk Street were thronged with panting, chattering, or frisking multi- tudes. In one spot the scene received a kind of weird picturesqueness from children dancing on the pavement to the strident music hurled out into the tumultuous din from a row of the open and brightly illumi- nated windows of what appeared to be a new tenement house. Some of the young women on the sidewalk opposite raised a longing eye to these windows, for floating by through the dazzling light within were young women like themselves with mascu- line arms round their waists. As the spectacle caught Jake's eye his heart gave a leap. He violently pushed his way through the waltzing swarm, and dived THE NEW YORK GHETTO. 3! into the half-dark corridor of the house whence the music issued. Presently he found himself on the threshold and in the overpowering air of a spacious oblong cham- ber, alive with a damp-haired, dishevelled, reeking crowd an uproarious human vor- tex, whirling to the squeaky notes of a violin and the thumping of a piano. The room was, judging by its untidy, once-white- washed walls and the uncouth wooden pil- lars supporting its bare ceiling, more accus- tomed to the whir of sewing machines than to the noises which filled it at the present moment. It took up the whole of the first floor of a five-story house built for large sweat-shops, and until recently it had served its original purpose as faithfully as the four upper floors, which were still the daily scenes of feverjsjLindustry. At the further end of the room there was now a marble soda foun- tain in charge of an unkempt boy. A stocky young man with a black entangle- ment of coarse curly hair was bustling about among the dancers. Now and then he 32 YEKL. would pause with his eyes bent upon some two pairs of feet, and fall to clapping time and drawling out in a preoccupied sing- song : " Von, two, tree ! Leeft you' feet ! Don' so kvick sloy, sloy ! Von, two, tree, von, two, tree ! " This was Professor Pelt- ner himself, whose curly hair, by the way, had more to do with the success of his insti- tution than his stumpy legs, which, accord- ing to the unanimous dictum of his male pu- pils, moved about " like a regely pair of bears." The throng showed but a very scant sprinkling of plump cheeks and shapely fig- ures in a multitude of haggard faces and flac- cid forms. Nearly all were in their work-a- day clothes, very few of the men sporting a wilted white shirt front. And while the general effect of the kaleidoscope was one of boisterous hilarity, many of the individual couples somehow had the air of being en- / gaged in hard toil rather than as if they were I dancing for amusement. The faces of some of these bore a wondering martyrlike ex- THE NEW YORK GHETTO. 33 pression, as who should say, " What have we done to be knocked about in this man- ner ? " For the rest, there were all sorts of attitudes and miens in the whirling crowd. One young fellow, for example, seemed to be threatening vengeance to the ceiling, while his partner was all but exultantly ex- claiming : " Lord of the universe ! What a world this be ! " Another maiden looked as if she kept murmuring, " You don't say ! " whereas her cavalier mutely ejaculated, " Glad to try my best, your noble birth ! " after the fashion of a Russian soldier. The prevailing stature of the assemblage was rather below medium. This does not include the dozen or two of undergrown lasses of fourteen or thirteen who had come surreptitiously, and to allay the suspicion of their mothers in their white aprons. They accordingly had only these articles to check at the hat box, and hence the nick- name of " apron-check ladies," by which this truant contingent was known at Joe's acad- emy. So that as Jake now stood in the 34 YEKL. doorway with an orphaned collar button glis- tening out of the band of his collarless shirt front and an affected expression of ennui overshadowing his face, his strapping figure towered over the circling throng before him. He was immediately noticed and beca-me the target for hellos, smiles, winks, and all man- ner of pleasantry : " Vot you stand like dot ? You vont to loin dantz ? " or " You a detec- tiff?" or "You vont a job?" or, again, " Is it hot anawff for you ? " To all of which Jake returned an invariable " Yep ! " each time resuming his bored mien. As he thus gazed at the dancers, a feel- ing of envy came over him. " Look at them ! " he said to himself begrudgingly. How merry they are ! Such shnoozes % hey can hardly set a foot well, and yet they re free, while I am a married man. But wait till you get married, too," he prospec- tively avenged himself on Joe's pupils ; " we shall see how you will then dance and jump k^7 Presently a wave ,of Joe's hand brought THE NEW YORK GHETTO. 35 the music and the trampling to a pause. The girls at once took their seats on the " ladies' bench," while the bulk of the men retired to the side reserved for " gents only." Several apparent post-graduates nonchalant- ly overstepped the boundary line, and, noth- ing daunted by the professor's repeated " Zents to de right an' ladess to the left ! " unrestrainedly kept their girls chuckling. At all events, Joe soon desisted, his atten- tion being diverted by the soda department of his business. " Sawda ! " he sang out. " Ull kin's ! Sam, you ought ashamed you'- selv ; vy don'tz you treat you' lada ? " In the meantime Jake was the centre of a growing bevy of both sexes. He refused to unbend and to enter into their facetious mood, and his morose air became the topic of their persiflage. By-and-bye Joe came scuttling up to his side. " Goot-evenig, Dzake ! " he greeted him ; " I didn't seen you at ull ! Say, Dzake, I'll take care dis site an' you take care dot site ull right ? " 36 YEKL. "Alia right!" Jake responded gruffly. " Gentsh, getch you partnesh, hawrry up ! " he commanded in another instant. The sentence was echoed by the dancing master, who then blew on his whistle a pro- longed shrill warble, and once again the floor was set straining under some two hundred pounding, gliding, or scraping feet. "Don* bee 'fraid. Gu right aheat an' getch you partner ! " Jake went on yelling right and left. " Don* be 'shamed, Mish Co- hen. Dansh mit dot gentlemarn ! " he said, as he unceremoniously encircled Miss Co- hen's waist with "dot gentlemarn's " arm. " Cholly ! vot's de madder mitch you f You do hop like a Cossack, as true as I am a Jew," he added, indulging in a momentary lapse into Yiddish. English was the official language of the academy, where it was broken and mispronounced in as many dif- ferent ways as there were Yiddish dialects represented in that institution. " Dot'sh de vay, look!" With which Jake seized from Charley a lanky fourteen-year-old Miss Ja- THE NEW YORK GHETTO. 37 cobs, and proceeded to set an example of correct waltzing, much to the unconcealed delight of the girl, who let her head rest on his breast with an air of reverential gratitude and bliss, and to the embarrassment of her cavalier, who looked at the evolutions of Jake's feet without seeing. Presently Jake was beckoned away to a corner by Joe, whereupon Miss Jacobs, look- ing daggers at the little professor, sulked off to a distant seat. " Dzake, do me a faver ; hask Mamie to gib dot feller a couple a dantzes," Joe said imploringly, pointing to an ungainly young man who was timidly viewing the pande- monium-like spectacle from the further end of the " gent's bench." " I hasked 'er myself, but se don' vonted. He's a beesness man, you 'destan', an' he kan a lot o' fellers an' I vonted make him satetzfiet." " Dot monkey ? " said Jake. " Vot you talkin' aboyt ! She vouldn't lishn to me nei- der, honesht." " Say dot you don' vonted and dot's ull." 38 YEKL. " Alia right ; I'm goin' to ashk her, but I know it vouldn't be of naw used." " Never min', you hask 'er foist. You knaw se vouldn't refuse you!" Joe urged, with a knowing grin. " Hoy much vill you bet she will refushe shaw?" Jake rejoined with insincere vehe- mence, as he whipped out a handful of change. " Vot kin* foon a man you are ! Ulle- ways like to bet!" said Joe, deprecatingly. "'F cuss it depend mit vot kin' a mout' you vill hask, you 'destan' ? " " By gum, Jaw ! Vot you take me for ? Ven I shay I ashk, I ashk. You knaw I don' like no monkey beeshnesh. Ven I promish anytink I do it shquare, dot'sh a kin' a man / am ! " And once more protest- ing his firm conviction that Mamie would disregard his request, he started to prove that she would not. He had to traverse nearly the entire length of the hall, and, notwithstanding that he was compelled to steer clear of the danc- THE NEW YORK GHETTO. 39 ers, he contrived to effect the passage at the swellest of his gaits, which means that he jauntily bobbed and lurched, after the man- ner of a blacksmith tugging at the bellows, and held up his enormous bullet head as if he were bidding defiance to the whole world. Finally he paused in front of a girl with a superabundance of pitch-black side bangs and with a pert, ill natured, pretty face of the most strikingly Semitic cast in the whole gathering. She looked twenty-three or more, was inclined to plumpness, and her shrewd deep dark eyes gleamed out of a warm gipsy complexion. Jake found her seated in a fatigued attitude on a chair near the piano. 11 Good-evenig, Mamie!" he said, bow- ing with mock gallantry. " Rats ! " " Shay, Mamie, give dot feller a tvisht, vill you ? " " Dot slob again ? Joe must tink if you ask me I'll get scared, ain't it ? Go and tell him he is too fresh," she said with a con- 40 YEKL - temptuous grimace. Like the majority of the girls of the academy, Mamie's English was a much nearer approach to a justifica- tion of its name than the gibberish spoken by the men. Jake felt routed ; but he put a bold face on it and broke out with studied resentment : "Vot you kickin' aboyt, anyhoy? Jaw don' mean notin' at ull. If you don' vonted never min', an' dot'sh ull. It don' cut a figger, shee?" And he feignedly turned to go. " Look how kvick he gets excited ! " she said, surrender ingly. " I ain't get ekshitet at ull ; but vot'sh de used a makin' monkey beesnesh ? " he retort- ed with triumphant acerbity. "You are a monkey you'self," she re- turned with a playful pout. The compliment was acknowledged by one of Jake's blandest grins. "An' you are a monkey from monkey- land," he said. " Vill you dansh mit dot feller?" THE NEW YORK GHETTO. 41 " Rats ! Vot vill you give me ? " " Vot should I give you ? " he asked im- patiently. " Vill you treat ? " " Treat ? Ger-rr oyt ! " he replied with a sweeping kick at space. " Den I von't dance." " Alia right. I'll treat you mit a coupel a waltch." "Is dot so ? You must really tink I am swooning to dance vit you," she said, dividing the remark between both jargons. "Look at her, look! she is a regely getzke * : one must take off one's cap to speak to her. Don't you always say you like to dansh with me becush I am a good dansher f " "You must tink you are a peach of a dancer, ain' it ? Bennie can dance a sight better dan you," she recurred to her English. * A crucifix. 42 YEKL - " Alia right ! " he said tartly. " So you don' vonted ? " " O sugar ! He is gettin' mad again. Veil, who is de getzke, me or you? All right, I'll dance vid de slob. But it's only becuss you ask me, mind you!" she added fawningly. " Dot'sh alia right ! " he rejoined, with an affectation of gravity, concealing his triumph. " But you makin' too much fush. I like to shpeak plain, shee ? Dot'sh a kin' a man / am." The next two waltzes Mamie danced with the ungainly novice, taking exagger- ated pains with him. Then came a lan- cers, Joe calling out the successive move- ments huckster fashion. His command was followed by less than half of the class, how- ever, for the greater part preferred to avail themselves of the same music for waltzing. Jake was bent upon giving Mamie what he - called a " sholid good time " ; and, as she shared his view that a square or fancy dance was as flimsy an affair as a stick of candy, THE NEW YORK GHETTO. 43 they joined or, rather, led the seceding ma- jority. They spun along with all-forgetful gusto ; every little while he lifted her on his powerful arm and gave her a " mill," he yelp- ing and she squeaking for sheer ecstasy, as he did so ; and throughout the performance his face and his whole figure seemed to be exclaiming, " Dot'sh a kin' a man / am ! " Several waifs stood in a cluster admiring or begrudging the antics of the star couple. Among these was lanky Miss Jacobs and Fanny the Preacher, who had shortly before made her appearance in the hall, and now stood pale and forlorn by the " apron-check " girl's side. " Look at the way she is stickin' to him ! " the little girl observed with envious venom, her gaze riveted to Mamie, whose shapely head was at this moment reclining on Jake's shoulders, with her eyes half shut, as if melting in a transport of bliss. Fanny felt cut to the quick. " You are jealous, ain't you ? " she jerked out. 44 YEKL - " Who, me ? Vy should I be jealous ? " Miss Jacobs protested, colouring. " On my part let them both go to . You must be jealous. Here, here ! See how your eyes are creeping out looking ! Here, here!" she teased her offender in Yiddish, poking her little finger at her as she spoke. " Will you shut your scurvy mouth, little piece of ugliness, you? Such a piggish apron check ! "^ poor Fanny burst out under breath, tears starting to her eyes. " Such a nasty little runt ! " another girl chimed in. " Such a little cricket already knows what ' jealous' is ! " a third of the bystanders put in. " You had better go home or your mamma will give you a spanking." Where- at the little cricket made a retort, which had better be left unrecorded. " To think of a bit of a flea like that hav- ing so much cheek! Here is America for you ! " " America for a country and ' dod'll do ' [that'll do] for a language ! " observed one of THE NEW YORK GHETTO. 45 the young men of the group, indulging one of the stereotype jokes of the Ghetto. The passage at arms drew Jake's atten- tion to the little knot of spectators, and his eye fell on Fanny. Whereupon he sum- marily relinquished his partner on the floor, and advanced toward his shopmate, who, seeing him approach, hastened to retreat to ' the girls' bench, where she remained seated with a drooping head. " Hello, Fanny ! " he shouted briskly, coming up in front of her. "Hello!" she returned rigidly, her eyes fixed on the dirty floor. " Come, give ush a tvisht, vill you ? " " But you ain't goin' by Joe to-night ! " she answered, with a withering curl of her lip, her glance still on the ground. " Go to your lady, she'll be mad atch you." " I didn't vonted to gu here, honesht, Fanny. I o'ly come to tell Jaw shometin', an' dot'sh ull," he said guiltily. " Why should you apologize ? " she ad- dressed the tip of her shoe in her mother 46 YEKL. tongue. " As if he was obliged to apologize to me ! For my part you can dance with her day and night. Vot do I care ? As if I cared! I have only come to see what a bluffer you are. Do you think I am &fool? As smart as your Mamie, anyvay. As if I had not known he wanted to make me stay at home ! What are you afraid of ? Am I in your way then ? As if I was in his way ! What business have I to be in your way ? Who is in your way ? " While she was thus speaking in her vol- uble, querulous, harassing manner, Jake stood with his hands in his trousers' pockets, in an attitude of mock attention. Then, suddenly losing patience, he said : "Dotsh alia right! You will finish your sermon afterward. And in the mean- time lesh have a valtz from the land of valtzes ! " With which he forcibly dragged her off her seat, catching her round the waist. " But I don't need it, I don't wish it ! Go to your Mamie!" she protested, strug- THE NEW YORK GHETTO. 47 gling. " I tell you I don't need it, I don't " The rest of the sentence was choked off by her violent breathing ; for by this time she was spinning with Jake like a top. After another moment's pretense at strug- gling to free herself she succumbed, and pres- ently clung to her partner, the picture of tri- umph and beatitude. Meanwhile Mamie had walked up to Joe's side, and without much difficulty caused him to abandon the lancers party to themselves, and to resume with her the waltz which Jake had so abruptly broken off. In the course of the following intermis- sion she diplomatically seated herself beside her rival, and paraded her tranquillity of mind by accosting her with a question on shop matters. Fanny was not blind to the manoeuvre, but her exultation was all the greater for it, and she participated in the en- suing conversation with exuberant geniality. By-and-bye they were joined by Jake. " Veil, vill you treat, Jake ? " said Mamie. M Vot you vant, a kish ? " he replied, put- 4 8 YEKL. ting his offer in action as well as in lan- guage. Mamie slapped his arm. " May the Angel of Death kiss you ! " said her lips in Yiddish. " Try again ! " her glowing face overruled them in a dia- lect of its own. Fanny laughed. " Once I am treating, both ladas must be treated alike, airi it ? " remarked the gal- lant, and again he proved himself as good as his word, although Fanny struggled with greater energy and ostensibly with more real indignation. " But vy don't you treat, you stingy loafer you ? " " Vot elsh you vant ? A peench ? " He was again on the point of suiting the action to the word, but Mamie contrived to repay the pinch before she had received it, and added a generous piece of profanity into the bargain. Whereupon tnere ensued a scuffle of a character which defies description in more senses than one. THE NEW YORK GHETTO. 49 x - ~~~ \ Nevertheless Jake marched his two " la- f das " up to the marble fountain, and regaled ( them with two cents' worth of soda each. x- An hour or so later, when Jake got out into the street, his breast pocket was loaded with a fresh batch of " Professor Peltner's Grand Annual Ball " tickets, and his two arms with Mamie and Fanny respectively. " As soon as I get my wages I'll call on the installment agent and give him a de- i posit for a steamship ticket," presently glim- / mered through his mind, as he adjusted his / i hold upon the two girls, snugly gathering r^\ them to his sides. *C CHAPTER III. IN THE GRIP OF HIS PAST. JAKE had never even vaguely abandoned the idea of supplying his wife and child with the means of coming to join him. He was more or less prompt in remitting her month- ly allowance of ten rubles, and the visit to the draft and passage office had become part of the routine of his life. It had the invariable effect of arousing his dormant scruples, and he hardly ever left the office -.without ascertaining the price of a steerage * (voyage from Hamburg to New York. But no sooner did he emerge from the dingy sement into the noisy scenes of Essex vl Street, than he would consciously let his N| . mind wander off to other topics. IN THE GRIP OF HIS PAST. 51 Formerly, during the early part of his so- journ in Boston, his landing place, where some of his townsfolk resided and where he had passed his first two years in America, he used to mention his Gitl and his Yossele" so frequently and so enthusiastically, that some wags among the Hanover Street tailors would sing " Yekl and wife and the baby " to -the tune of Molly and I and the Baby. In the natural rmirep of things, however, these retrospective effusions gTariuaHy h*- came far between, and since he had shifted his abode to New York he carefully avoided all reference to his antecedents. The Jewish quarter of the metropolis, which is a vast and compact city within a city, offers its denizens incomparably fewer chances of contact with the English-speaking portion of the popula- tion than any of the three separate Ghettos of Boston. As a consequence, since Jake's advent to New York his passion for Ameri- can sport had considerably cooled off. And, to make up for this, his enthusiastic nature before long found vent in dancing and in a 52 YEKL. general life of gallantry. His proved knack with the gentle sex had turned his head and now cost him all his leisure time. Still, he would occasionally attend some variety show in which boxing was the main drawing card, and somehow managed to keep track of the salient events of the sporting world gener- ally. Judging from his unstaid habits and happy-go-lucky abandon to the pleasures of life, his present associates took it for granted that he was single, and instead of twitting him with the feigned assumption that he had deserted a family a piece of burlesque as old as the Ghetto they would quiz him as to which of his girls he was " dead struck " on, and as to the day fixed for the wedding. On more than one such occasion he had on the tip of his tongue the seemingly jocular question, " How do you know I am not mar- ried already?" But he never let the sen- tence cross his lips, and would, instead, ob- serve facetiously that he was not " shtruck on nu goil," and that he was dead struck on all of them in " whulshale." " I hate retail IN THE GRIP OF HIS PAST. 53 beesnesh, shee?- Dot'sh a' kin' a man / am ! " One day, in the course of an intimate conversation with Joe, Jake, dropping into a philosophical mood, remarked : " It's something like a baker, airit it f The more cakes he has the less he likes them. You and I have a lot of girls ; that's why we don't care for any one of them." But if his attachment for the girls of his acquaintance collectively was not coupled with a quivering of his heart for any individ- ual Mamie, or Fanny, or Sarah, it did not, on the other hand, preclude a certain linger- ing tenderness for his wife. But then his wife had long since ceased to be what she / had been of yore. From a reality she had \gradually become transmuted into a fancy. 1 During the three years since he had set foot , *on the soil, where a " shister * becomes a l^rnister and a mister a shister," he had lived so - much more than three years so much more, in fact, than in all the twenty-two years Yiddish for shoemaker. 54 YEKL - ' of his previous life that his Russian past appeared to him a. dream and his wife and child, together with his former self, fellow- characters in a charming tale, which he was neither willing to. banish from his memory nor able to reconcile with the actualities of his American present. The question of how to effect this reconciliation, and of causing Gitl and little Yossele" to step out of the thickening haze of reminiscence and to take their stand by his side as living parts of his daily life, was a fretful subject from the con- sideration of which he cowardly shrank. He wished he could both import his family and continue his present mode of life. At the bottom of his soul he wondered why this should not be feasible. But *he knew that it ^< put it on, quick ! " As she set about undoing her parcel, she 7 g YEKL. bade him face about and -screen her, so that neither he nor any stranger could see her bareheaded while she was replacing the wig by the kerchief. He obeyed. All the while the operation lasted he stood with his gaze on the floor, gnashing his teeth with disgust and shame, or hissing some Bowery oath. "Is this better ? " 7he^asked bashfully, when her hair and part of her forehead were hidden under a kerchief of flaming blue and yellow, whose end dangled down her back. The kerchief had a rejuvenating effect. But Jake thought that it made her look like x an Italian woman of Mulberry Street on Sunday. "Alia right, leave it be for the present," he said in despair, reflecting that the wig would have been the lesser evil of the two. When they reached the city Gitl was shocked to see him lead the way to a horse car. " Oi woe is me ! Why, it is Sabbath ! " she gasped. THE MEETING. 79 He irately essayed to explain that a car, being an uncommon sort of vehicle, riding in it implied no violation of the holy day. But this she sturdily met by reference to railroads. Besides, she had seen horse cars while stopping in Hamburg, and knew that no orthodox Jew would use them on the seventh day. At length Jake, losing all self- control, fiercely commanded her not to make him the laughing-stock of the people on the street and to get in without further ado. As to the sin of the matter he was willing to take it all upon himself. Completely dis- mayed by his stern manner, amid the strange, uproarious, forbidding surroundings, Gitl yielded. As the horses started she uttered a groan of consternation and remained look- ing aghast and with a violently throbbing heart. If she had been a culprit on the way to the gallows she could not have been more terrified than she was now at this her first ride on the day of rest. The conductor came up for their fares. 80 YEKL. Jake handed him a ten-cent piece, and rais- ing two fingers, he roared out : " Two ! He ain' no maur as tree years, de liddle feller ! " And so great was the impression which his dashing manner and his English produced on Gitl, that for some time it relieved her mind and she even forgot to be shocked by the sight of her husband handling coin on the Sabbath. Having thus paraded himself before his wife, Jake all at once grew kindly disposed toward her. " You must be hungry ? " he asked. " Not at all ! Where do you eat your varimess ? " * | " Don't say varimess," he corrected her complaisantly ; " here it is called din- I ner? "Dinner?^ And what if one becomes fatter ? " she confusedly ventured an irresisti- ble pun. * Yiddish for dinner, f Yiddish for thinner. THE MEETING. 8 1 This was the way in which Gitl came to receive her first lesson in the five or six score English words and phrases which the omnivorous Jewish jargon has absorbed in the Ghettos of English-speaking countries. CHAPTER V. A PATERFAMILIAS. IT was early in the afternoon of Gitl's second Wednesday in the New World. Jake, Bernstein and Charley, their two boarders, were at work. Yossele* was sound asleep in the lodgers' double bed, in the smallest of the three tiny rooms which the family rented on the second floor of one of a row of brand-new tenement houses. Gitl was by herself in the little front room which served the quadruple purpose of kitchen, din- ing room, sitting room, and parlour. She wore a skirt and a loose jacket of white Russian calico, decorated with huge gay fig- ures, and her dark hair was only half covered by a bandana of red and yellow. This was A PATERFAMILIAS. 83 Gitl's compromise between her conscience and her husband. She panted to yield to Jake's demands completely, but could not nerve herself up to going about " in her own hair, like a Gentile woman." Even the ex- postulations of Mrs. Kavarsky the childless middle-aged woman who occupied with her husband the three rooms across the narrow hallway failed to prevail upon her. Never- theless Jake, succumbing to Mrs. Kavarsky 's annoying solicitations, had bought his wife a cheap high-crowned hat, utterly unfit to be worn over her voluminous wig, and even a corset Gitl could not be coaxed into ac- companying them to the store ; but the elo- quent neighbour had persuaded Jake that her presence at the transaction was not in- dispensable after all " Leave it to me," she said ; " I know what will become her and what won't 111 get her a hat that will make a Fifth Avenue lady of her, and you shall see if she does not give ia If she is then not satetzfiet to go with her own hair, veil/" What 84 YEKL. then would take place Mrs. Kavarsky left unsaid. The hat and the corset had been lying in the house now three days, and the neigh- bour's predictions had not yet come true, save for Gitl's prying once or twice into the pasteboard boxes in which those articles lay, otherwise unmolested, on the shelf over her bed. The door was open. Gitl stood toying with the knob of the electric bell, and deriv- ing much delight from the way the street door latch kept clicking under her magic touch two flights above. Finally she wea- ried of her diversion, and shutting the door she went to take a look at Yossele*. She found him fast asleep, and, as she was re- tracing her steps through her own and Jake's bedroom, her eye fell upon the paper boxes. She got up on the edge of her bed and, lift- ing the cover from the hatbox, she took a prolonged look at its contents. All at once her face brightened up with temptation. She went to fasten the hallway door of the A PATERFAMILIAS. 85 kitchen on its latch, and then regaining the bedroom shut herself in. After a lapse of some ten or fifteen minutes she re-emerged, attired in her brown holiday dress in which she had first confronted Jake on Ellis Island, and with the tall black straw hat on her head. Walking on tiptoe, as though about to commit a crime, she crossed over to the looking-glass. Then she paused, her eyes on the door, to listen for possible footsteps. Hearing none she faced the glass. "Quite a panenke\"* she thought to herself, all aglow with excitement, a smile, at once shamefaced and beatific, melting her features. She turned to the right, then to the left, to view herself in profile, as she had seen Mrs. Kavarsky do, and drew back a step to ascer- tain the effect of the corset. To tell the truth, the corset proved utterly impotent against the baggy shapelessness of the Povo- dye garment. Yet Gitl found it to work wonders, and readily pardoned it for the very * A young noblewoman. 86 YEKL. uncomfortable sensation which it caused her. She viewed herself again and again, and was hi a flutter both of ecstasy and alarm when there came a timid rap on the door. Trem- bling all over, she scampered on tiptoe back into the bedroom, and after a little she re- turned in her calico dress and bandana ker- chie The knock at the door had appar- ently been produced by some peddler or beggar, for it was not repeated. Yet so vio- lent was Girl's agitation that she had to sit down on the haircloth lounge for breath and to regain composure. "What is it they call this?" she presently asked herself; gazing at the bare boards of the floor. " Floor ! " she recalled, much to her self-satisfaction. "And that?" she fur- ther examined herself, as she fixed her glance on the ceiling. This time the answer was j slow hi coming, and her heart grew faint, "And what was it Yekl called that ? "trans- ferring her eyes to the window. "Veen neev veenda," she at last uttered exultantly. The evening before she had happened to call A PATERFAMILIAS. 87 it fentzter, in spite of Jake's repeated cor- rections. "Can't you say veenda?" he had growled. "What a peasant head! Qthcr learn to speak American skt\!c very fast; and she one might tell her the same word eighty thousand times, and it is nu used? u Es is ofn veenda mein ich?* she has- tened to set herself right. She blushed as she said it, but at the mo- ment she attached no importance to the matter and took no more notice of it Now, however, Jake's tone of voice, as he had re- buked her backwardness in picking up American Yiddish, came back to her and she grew dejected She was getting used to her husband, hi whom her own Yckl and Jake J:he stranger were by degrees merging themselves into one undivided being. When the hour of his coming from work drew near she would * It is on the window, I meant to say. 88 YEKL. every little while consult the clock and be- come impatient with the slow progress of its hands ; although mixed with this impatience there was a feeling of apprehension lest the supper, prepared as it was under culinary conditions entirely new to her, should fail to please Jake and the boarders. She had even become accustomed to address her husband as Jake without reddening in the face ; and, what is more, was getting to tolerate herself being called by him Goitie (Gertie'} a word phonetically akin to Yiddish for Gentile. For the rest she was too inexperienced and too simple-hearted naturally to comment upon his manner toward her. She had not altogether overcome her awe of him, but as he showed her occasional marks of kindness she was upon the whole rather content with her new situation. Now, however, as she thus sat in solitude, with his harsh voice ring- ing in her ears and his icy look before her, a feeling of suspicion darkened her soul. She recalled other scenes where he had looked and spoken as he had done the night before. A PATERFAMILIAS. 89 "He must hate me! A pain upon me!" she concluded with a fallen heart. She won- dered whether his demeanour toward her was like that of other people who hated their wives. She remembered a \yoman of her native village who was known to be thus afflicted, and she dropped her head in a fit of despair. At one moment she took a firm resolve to pluck up courage and cast away the kerchief and the wig ; but at the next she reflected that God would be sure to pun- ish her for the terrible sin, so that instead of winning Jake's love the change would in- crease his hatred for her. It flashed upon her mind to call upon some " good Jew " to pray for the return of his favour, or to seek some old Polish beggar woman who could prescribe a love potion. But then, alas ! who knows whether there are in this terrible America any good Jews or be"ggar women with love poTions ^at all ! Better she had never known this " black year " of a coun- try ! Here everybody says she is green. What an ugly word to apply to people! 9 YEKL. She had never been green at home, and here she had suddenly become so. What do they mean by it, anyhow? Verily, one might turn green and yellow and gray while young in such a dreadful place. Her heart was ' wrung with the most excruciating pangs of homesickness. And as she thus sat brood- v,^ng and listlessly surveying her new sur- ^roundings the iron stove, the stationary washtubs, the window opening vertically, the fire escape, the yellowish broom with its painted handle things which she had never dreamed of at her birthplace these objects seemed to stare at her haughtily and inspired her with fright. Even the burnished cup of the electric bell knob looked contemptuous- ly and seemed to call her " Greenhorn ! greenhorn ! " " Lord of the world ! Where am I ? " she whispered with tears in her voice. The dreary solitude terrified her, and she instinctively rose to take refuge at Yossele's bedside. As she got up, a vague doubt came over her whether she should find there her A PATERFAMILIAS. 91 child at all. But Yossele" was found safe and sound enough. He was rubbing his eyes and announcing the advent of his fa- mous appetite. She seized him in her arms and covered his warm cheeks with fervent kisses which did her aching heart good. And by-and-bye, as she admiringly watched the boy making savage inroads into a gener- ous slice of rye bread, she thought of Jake's affection for the child ; whereupon things be- gan to assume a brighter aspect, and she presently set about preparing supper with a lighter heart, although her countenance for some time retained its mournful woe-be- gone expression. Meanwhile Jake sat at his machine mer- rily pushing away at a cloak and singing to it some of the popular American songs of the day. The sensation caused by the arrival of his wife and child had nearly blown over. Peltner's dancing school he had not visited since a week or two previous to Gitl's land- 92 YEKL. ing. As to the scene which had greeted him in the shop after the stirring news had first reached it, he had faced it out with much more courage and got over it with much less difficulty than he had anticipated. /" Did I ever tell you I was a tzingle man ? " he laughingly defended himself, though blushing crimson, against his shop- mates' taunts. " And am I obliged to give you a report whether my wife has come or not ? You are not worth mentioning her | V ~T*~.,,. ~n** a * ll *^.**v~*> <=> name to, any hoy" The boss then suggested that Jake cele- brate the event with two pints of beer, the motion being seconded by the presser, who volunteered to fetch the beverage. Jake obeyed with alacrity, and if there had still lingered any trace of awkwardness in his po- sition it was soon washed away by the foam- ing liquid. As a matter of fact, Fanny's embarrass- ment was much greater than Jake's. The stupefying news was broken to her on the very day of Gitl's arrival. After passing a A PATERFAMILIAS. 93 sleepless night she felt that she could not bring herself to face Jake in the presence of her other shopmates, to whom her feelings for him were an open secret. As luck would have it, it was Sunday, the beginning of a new working week in the metropolitan Ghetto, and she went to look for a job in another place. Jake at once congratulated himself upon her absence and missed her. But then he equally missed the company of Mamie and of all the other dancing-school girls, whose society and attentions now more than ever seemed to him necessities of his life. They haunted his mind day and night ; he almost never beheld them in his imagination except as clustering together with his fellow-cava- liers and making merry over him and his wife ; and the vision pierced his heart with shame and jealousy. All his achievements seemed wiped out by a sudden stroke of ill fate.' He thought himself a martyr, an inno- cent exile from a world to which he ber^ longed by right ; and he frequently felt the 94 YEKL. sobs of self-pity mounting to his throat. For several minutes at a time, while kicking at his treadle, he would see, reddening before him, Gitl's bandana kerchief and her promi- nent gums, or hear an un-American piece of Yiddish pronounced with Gitl's peculiar lisp that veryTisp, which three years ago he used to mimicfondjy, but which now grated on his nerves and was apt to make his face itwitcITwith sheer disgust, insomuch that he often found a vicious relief in mocking that lisp of hers audibly over his work. But can it be that he is doomed for life ? No ! no ! he would revolt, conscious at the same time Athat there was really no escape. " Ah, may the be killed,the horrid greenhorn ! " he would gasp to himself in a paroxysm of de- spair. And then he would bewail his lost youth, and curse all ^.ussiajor_his premature marriage. Presently, however, he would re- call the plump, spunky face of his son who bore such close resemblance to himself, to whom he was growing more strongly at- tached every day, and who was getting to A PATERFAMILIAS. 95 prefer his company to his mother's ; and thereupon his heart would soften toward Gitl, and he would gradually feel the qualms of pity and remorse, and make a vow to treat her kindly. " Never min'," he would at such instances say in his heart, " she will oyshgreen* herself and I shall get used to her. She is a shight better than all the dancing-school girls." And he would in- spire himself with respect for her spotless purity, and take comfort in the fact of her being a model housewife, undiverted from her duties by any thoughts of balls or pic- nics. And despite a deeper consciousness which exposed his readiness to sacrifice it all at any time, he would work himself into a i jdignified feeling as the head of a household 3 md the father of a promising son, and ^. soothe himself with the additional consola- tion that sooner or later the other fellows of Joe's academy would also be married. * A verb coined from the Yiddish cys, out, and the English green, and signifying to cease being green. 96 YEKL. On the Wednesday in question Jake and his shopmates had warded off a reduction of wages by threatening a strike, and were ac- cordingly in high feather. And so Jake and Bernstein came home in unusually good spirits. Little Joey for such was Yossel6's name now with whom his~fafKer's plays were for the most part of an athletic charac- ter, welcomed Jake by a challenge for a pu- gilistic encounter, and the way he said 41 Coom a fight ! " and held out his little fists so delighted Mr. Podkovnik, Sr., that upon ordering Gitl to serve supper he vouchsafed a fillip on the tip of her nose. While she was hurriedly setting the table, Jake took to describing to Charley his em- ployer's defeat. " You should have seen how he looked, the cockroach ! " he said. " He became as pale as the wall and his teeth were chattering as if he had been shaken up with fever, 'pon my void. And how quiet he became all of a sudden, as if he could not count two ! One might apply him to an ulcer, so soft was he ha-ha-ha ! " he A PATERFAMILIAS. 97 laughed, looking to Bernstein, who smiled assent. At last supper was announced. Bern- stein donned his hat, and did not sit down to the repast before he had performed his ablu- tions and whispered a short prayer. As he | did so Jake and Charley interchanged a (wink. As to themselves, they dispensed [with all devotional preliminaries, and took their seats with uncovered heads. Gitl also washed her fingers and said the prayer, and as she handed Yossele" his first slice of bread she did not release it before he had recited the benediction. Bernstein, who, as a rule, looked daggers at his meal, this time received his plate of borshtch* his favourite dish with a radi- ant face ; and as he ate he pronounced k a masterpiece, and lavished compliments on the artist. " It's a long time since I tasted such a borshtch ! Simply a vivifier ! It melts in * A sour soup of cabbage and beets. 98 YEKL. every limb ! " he kept rhapsodizing, between mouthfuls. " It ought to be sent to the Chi- cago Exposition. The missess would get a medal." " A regely European borshtch 1 " Charley chimed in. " It is worth ten cents a spoon- ful, 'pon mine vort / " " Go away ! You are only making fun of me," Gitl declared, beaming with pride. "What is there to be laughing at? I make it as well as I can," she added de- murely. " Let him who is laughing laugh with teeth," jested Charlie. " I tell you it is a " The remainder of the sentence was submerged in a mouthful of the vivifying semi-liquid. "Alia right/" Jake bethought himself. " Charge him ten shent for each spoonful. Mr. Bernstein, you shall be kind enough to be the bookkeeper. But if you don't pay, Chollie, I'll get out a tzommesh [summons] from court? Whereat the little kitchen rang with A PATERFAMILIAS. 99 laughter, in which all participated except Bernstein. Even Joey, or Yossele", joined in the general outburst of merriment. Other- wise he was busily engaged cramming borshtch into his mouth, and, in passing, also into his nose, with both his plump hands for a pair of spoons. From time to time he would interrupt operations to make a wry face and, blinking his eyes, to lisp out rap- turously, " Sour ! " " Look may you live long do look ; he is laughing, too ! " Gitl called attention to Yossele"s bespattered face. "To think of such a crumb having as much sense as that!" She was positive that he appreciated his fa- ther's witticism, although she herself under- stood it but vaguely. " May he know evil no better than he knows what he is laughing at," Jake ob- jected, with a fatherly mien. " What makes you laugh, Joey ? " The boy had no time to spare for an answer, being too busy licking his emptied plate. " Look at the soldier's appetite he has, de feller ! Joey, hoy you 100 YEKL. like de borshtch ? Alia right?" Jake asked in English. " Awrr-ra rr-right !" Joey pealed out his sturdy rustic r's, which he had mastered shortly before taking leave of his doting grandmother. >-)-. / " See how well he speaks English ?" Jake _ said, facetiously. "A shigkt better n his mamma, anyvay." Gitl, who was in the meantime serving the meat, coloured, but took the remark in good part. " / tell ye he is growing to be Presdent 'Nited States," Charlie interposed. " Greenhorn that you are ! A Presi- dent must be American born," Jake ex- plained, self-consciously. " Ain't it, Mr. Bern- stein ? " " It's a pity, then, that he was not born in this country," Bernstein replied, his eye envyingly fixed now on Gitl, now at the child, on whose plate she was at this mo- ment carving a piece of meat into tiny mor- sels. " Veil, if he cannot be a President of A PATERFAMILIAS. IO i the United States, he may be one of a syna- gogue, so he is a president." " Don't you worry for his sake," Gitl put in, delighted with the attention her son was absorbing. "He does not need to be a pes- dent ; he is growing to be a rabbi ; don't be making fun of him." And she turned her head to kiss the future rabbi. "Who is making fun?" Bernstein de- murred. " I wish I had a boy like him." " Get married and you will have one," said Gitl, beamingly. "Shay, Mr. Bernstein, how about your shadchenl"* Jake queried. He gave a laugh, but forthwith checked it, remaining with an embarrassed grin on his face, as though anxious to swallow the question. Bernstein blushed to the roots of his hair, and bent an irate glance on his plate, but held his peace. i His reserved manner, if not his superior 1 education, held Bernstein's shopmates at a * A matrimonial agent. 102 YEKL. respectful distance from him, and, as a rule, rendered him proof against their badinage, although behind his back they would in- dulge, an occasional joke on his inferiority as a workman, and while they were at it on his dyspepsia, his books, and staid, methodical habits. Recently, however, they had got wind of his clandestine visits to a marriage broker's, and the temptation to chaff him on the subject had proved resist- less, all the more so because Bernstein, whose leading foible was his well-controlled vanity, was quick to take offence in general, and on this matter in particular. As to Jake, he was by no means averse to having a laugh at somebody else's expense ; but since Bernstein had become his boarder he felt that he could not afford to wound his pride. Hence his regret and anxiety at his allusion to the matrimonial agent. f After supper Charlie went out for the evening, while Bernstein retired to their lit- tle bedroom. Gitl busied herself with the dishes, and Jake took to romping about with A PATERFAMILIAS. Io ^ Joey and had a hearty laugh with him. He was beginning to tire of the boy's company and to feel lonesome generally, when there was a knock at the door. . " Coom in ! " Gitl hastened to say some- what coquettishly, flourishing her proficiency ih American manners, as she raised her head . from the pot in her hands. " Coom in ! " repeated Joey. The door flew open, and in came Mamie, preceded by a cloud of cologne odours. She was apparently dressed for some occasion of state, for she was powdered and straight- laced and resplendent in a waist of blazing red, gaudily trimmed, and with puff sleeves, each wider than the vast expanse of white straw, surmounted with a whole forest of ostrich feathers, which adorned her head. One_jrf_her gloved frja.pds helft the 'hnpre hoop-shaped yellowish handle of a blue -~ * " Good-evenin', Jake ! " she said, with os- tentatious vivacity. "Good-evenin', Mamie!" Jake returned, 104 YEKL - jumping to his feet and violently reddening, as if suddenly pricked. " Mish Fein, my vife ! My vife, Mish Fein ! " Miss Fein made a stately bow, primly biting her lip as she did so. Gitl, with the pot in her hands, stood staring sheepishly, at a loss what to do. " Say ' I'm glyad to meech you,' " Jake rged her, confusedly. The English phrase was more than Gitl ould venture to echo. I " She is still green'' Jake_apologized for (her, in Yiddish. "Never miri, she will soon oysgreen her- self," Mamie remarked, with patronizing affa- bility. " The lada, is an acquaintance of mine," Jake explained bashfully, his hand feel- ing the few days' growth of beard on his chin. Gitl instinctively scented an enemy in the visitor, and eyed her with an uneasy gaze. Nevertheless she mustered a hospitable air, and drawing up the rocking chair, she said, A PATERFAMILIAS. 105 with shamefaced cordiality : " Sit down J why should you be standing? You may be seat- ed for the same money." In the conversation which followed Ma- mie did most of the talking. With a nerv- ous volubility often broken -by an irrelevant giggle, and violently rocking with her chair, she ex patiated__on_jthe charms of America, prophesying that her hostess would bless the i day of her arrival on its soil, and went off in ' ecstasies over Joey. Shg_?pnke yjth an overdone American accent in the dialect of the Polish Jews, affectedly Germanized and profusely interspersed^wjthEnglish, so that Gitl, whose mother tongue was Lithuanian Yiddish, could scarcely catch the meaning of one half of her flood of garrulity. And as she thus rattled on, she now examined the room, now surveyed Gitl from head to foot, now fixed her with a look of studied sar- casm, followed by a side glance at Jake, which seemed to say, " Woe to you, what a rag of a wife yours is!" Whenever Gitl ventured a timid remark, Mamie would nod 106 YEKL. assent with dignified amiability, and there- upon imitate a smile, broad yet fleeting, which she had seen performed by some up- town ladies. Jake stared at the lamp with a faint simper, scarcely following the caller's words. His head swam with embarrassment. The consciousness of Gitl's unattractive appear- ance made him sick with shame and vexa- tion, and his eyes carefully avoided her ban- dana, as a culprit schoolboy does the evidence of his offence. " You mush vant you tventy-fife dollars," he presently nerved himself up to say in English, breaking an awkward pause. " I should cough ! " Mamie rejoined. " In a coupel a veeksh, Mamie, as sure as my name is Jake." " In a couple o' veeks ! No, sirree ! I mus' have my money at oncet. I don' know vere you vill get it, dough. Vy, a married man ! " with a chuckle. " You got a of a lot o' t'ings to pay for. You took de foi- nitsha by a custom peddler, ain' it ? But A PATERFAMILIAS. 107 what a do / care ? I vant my money. I voiked hard enough for it" " Don' shpeak English. She'll t'ink I don' knu vot ve shpeakin'," he besought her, in accents which implied intimacy between the two of them and a common aloofness from Gitl. " Vot d'l care vot she t'inks ? She's your vife, ain' it ? Veil, she mus' know ev'ry- t'ing. Dot's right ! A husban' dass'n't hide not'ink from his vife !" with another chuckle and another look of deadly sarcasm at Gitl. " I can say de same in Jewish " " Shurr-r up, Mamie !" he interrupted her, gaspingly. " Don'tch you like it, lump it ! A vife mus'n't be skinned like a strange lady, see ? " she pursued inexorably. " O'ly a strange goil a feller might bluff dot he ain' married, and skin her out of tventy-five dollars." In point of fact, he had never directly given himself out for a single man to her. But it did not even occur to him to defend himself on that score. 1 08 YEKL - " Mamie ! Ma-a-mie ! Shtop ! I'll pay you ev'ry shent. Shpeak Jewesh, pleashe ! " he implored, as if for life. " You'r' afraid of her ? Dot's right ! o Dot's right ! Dot's nice ! All religious peo- ples is afraid of deir vifes. But vy didn' you say you vas married from de sta't, an* dot you vant money to send for dem ? " she tor- tured him, with a lingering arch leer. " For Chrish' shake, Mamie !" he entreat- ed her, wincingly. " Shtop to shpeak Eng- lish, an' shpeak shomet'ing differench. I'll shee you vere can I shee you ? " " You von't come by Joe no more ?" she asked, with sudden interest and even solici- tude. " You t'ink indeed I'm 'frait ? If I vant- ed I can gu dere more ash I ushed to gu dere. But vere can I findsh you ? " " I guess you know vere I'm livin', don'ch you? So kvick you forget? Vot a sho't mind you got ! Vill you come ? Never min', I know you are only bluffin', an' dot's all." A PATERFAMILIAS. i O g " I'll come, ash sure ash I leev." " Vill you ? All right. But if you don' come an' pay me at least ten dollars for a sta't, you'll see ! " In the meanwhile Gitl, poor thing, sat pale and horror-struck. Mamie's perfumes somehow terrified her. She was racked with jealousy and all sorts of suspicions, which she vainly struggled to disguise. She could see that they were having a heated altercation, and that Jake was begging about something or other, and was generally the under dog in the parley. Ever and anon she strained her ears in the effort to fasten some of the in- comprehensible sounds in her memory, that she might subsequently parrot them over to Mrs. Kavarsky, and ascertain their meaning. But, alas ! the attempt proved futile ; " never min'" and "all right" being all she could catch. Mamie concluded her visit by presenting Joey with the imposing sum of five cents. " What do you say ? Say ' danks, sir ! ' " Gitl prompted the boy. 1 10 YEKL. (" Shay ' t'ank you, ma'am ! ' " Jake over- ruled her. " ' Shir ' is said to a gentlemarn." " Good-night ! " Mamie sang out, as she majestically opened the door. " Good-night ! " Jake returned, with a burning face. " Goot-night ! " Gitl and Joey chimed in duet. %v> " Say ' cull again ! ' " G^S- f "Cullyegain!" " Good-night ! " Mamie said once more, as she bowed herself out of the door with what she considered an exquisitely " tony " smile. The guest's exit was succeeded by a mo- mentary silence. Jake felt as if his face and ears were on fire. " We used to work in the same shop," he presently said. " Is that the way a seamstress dresses in America ? " Gitl inquired. " It is not for nothing that it is called the golden land," she added, with timid irony. A PATERFAMILIAS. Ill " She must be going to a ball," he ex- plained, at the same moment casting a glance at the looking-glass. The word " ball " had an imposing ring for Gitl's ears. At home she had heard it used in connection with the sumptuous life of the Russian or Polish nobility, but had never formed a clear idea of its meaning. | " She looks a veritable panenke" * she re- marked, with hidden sarcasm. " Was she I born here ? " * Nu, but she has been very long here. She speaks English like one American born. We aTe^^aserj-io speak in English when we talk shop. She came to ask me about a job" Gitl reflected that with Bernstein Jake I was in the habit of talking shop in Yiddish, I although the boarder could even read Eng- ' lish books, which her husband could not do. * A young noblewoman. CHAPTER VI. CIRCUMSTANCES ALTER CASES. JAKE was left by Mamie in a state of unspeakable misery. He felt discomfited, crushed, the universal butt of ridicule. Her perfumes lingered in his nostrils, taking his breath away. Her venomous gaze stung his heart. She seemed to him elevated above the social plane upon which he had recently (though the interval appeared very long) stood by her side, nay, upon which he had had her at his beck and call ; while he was degraded, as it were, wallowing in a mire, from which he yearningly looked up to his former equals, vainly begging for recogni- tion. An uncontrollable desire took posses- sion of him to run after her, to have an ex- CIRCUMSTANCES ALTER CASES. n^ ^lanation, and to swear that he was the same Jake and as much of a Yankee and a gallant as ever. But Here was his wife fixing him with a timid, piteous look, which at once ex- asperated and cowed him ; and he dared not stir out of the house, as though nailed by that look of hers to the spot He lay down on the lounge, and shut his eyes. Gitl dutifully brought him a pillow. As she adjusted it under his head the touch of her hand on his face made him shrink, as if at the contact with a reptile. He was anxious to flee from his wretched self into oblivion, and his wish was soon gratified, the combined effect of a hard day's work and a plentiful and well-relished supper plunging him into a heavy sleep. While his snores resounded in the little kitchen, Gitl put the child to bed, and then passed with noiseless step into the boarders' room. The door was ajar and she entered it without knocking, as was her wont She found Bernstein bent over a book, with a ponderous dictionary by its side. A kero- ii 4 YEKL - sene lamp with a red shade, occupying near- ly all the remaining space on the table, spread a lurid mysterious light. Gitl asked the studious cloakmaker whether he knew a Polish girl named Mamie Fein. " Mamie Fein ? No. Why ? " said Bern- stein, with his index finger on the passage he had been reading, and his eyes on Gitl's plumpish cheek, bathed in the roseate light. " Nothing. May not one ask ? " " What is the matter ? Speak out ! Are you afraid to tell me ? " he insisted. " What should be the matter ? She was here. A nice lada" " Your husband knows many nice ladies? he said, with a faint but significant smile. And immediately regretting the remark he went on to smooth it down by characteriz- ing Jake as an honest and good-natured fel- low. "You ought to think yourself fortu- nate in having him for your husband," he added. " Yes, but what did you mean by what CIRCUMSTANCES ALTER CASES. 115 you said first ? " she demanded, with an anx- ious air. "What did I mean? What should I have meant ? I meant what I said. 'F cause he knows many girls. But who does not? You know there are always girls in the shops where we work. Never fear, Jake has nothing to do with them." "Who says I fear! Did I say I did? Why should I?" Encouraged by the cheering effect which his words were obviously having on the credulous, unsophisticated woman, he pur- sued : "May no Jewish daughter have a worse husband. Be easy, be easy. I tell you he is melting away for you. He never looked as happy as he does since you came." " Go away ! You must be making fun of me ! " she said, beaming with delight. " Don't you believe me ? Why, are you not a pretty young woman ? " he remarked, with an oily look in his eye. The crimson came into her cheek, and she lowered her glance. Il6 YEKL. " Stop making fun of me, I beg you," she said softly. " Is it true ? " " Is what true ? That you are a pretty young woman ? Take a looking-glass and see for yourself." " Strange man that you are ! " she re- turned, with confused deprecation. " I mean what you said before about Jake," she fal- tered. "Oh, about Jake! Then say so," he jested. " Really he loves you as life." " How do you know ? " she queried, wist- fully. " How do I know ! " he repeated, with an amused smile. " As if one could not see ! " " But he never told you himself ! " " How do you know he did not ? You have guessed wrongly, see ! He did, lots of times," he concluded gravely, touched by the anxiety of the poor woman. She left Bernstein's room all thrilling with- joy, and repentant for her excess of communicativeness. "A wife must not tell other people what happens to her husband," CIRCUMSTANCES ALTER CASES. nj she lectured herself, in the best of humours. Still, the words " Your husband knows many nice ladas? kept echoing at the bottom of her soul, and in another few minutes she was at Mrs. Kavarsky's, confidentially describing Mamie's visit as well as her talk with the boarder, omitting nothing save the latter's compliments to her looks. Mrs. Kavarsky was an eccentric, scraggy little woman, with a vehement manner and no end of words and gesticulations. Her dry face was full of warts and surmounted by a chaotic mass of ringlets and curls of a faded brown. None too tidy about her per- son, and rather slattern in general appear- ance, she zealously kept up the over-scrupu- lous cleanliness for which the fame of her apartments reached far and wide. Her neighbours and townsfolk pronounced her crazy but " with a heart of diamond," that is to say, the diametrical opposite of^the pre- cious stone in point of hardness, and resem- bling it in the general sense of excellence of quality. She was neighbourly enough, and 118 YEKL. as she was the most prosperous and her es- tablishment the best equipped in the whole tenement, many a woman would come to "Borrow^some cooking utensil or other, or even a few dollars on rent day, which Mrs. Kavarsky always started by refusing in the most pointed terms, and almost always fin- ished by granting. She started to listen to Gitl's report with a fierce mien which gradually thawed into a sage smile. When the young neighbour had rested her case, she first nodded her head, as who should say, " What fools this young generation be ! " and then burst out : " Do you know what / have to tell you ? Guess ! " Gitl thought Heaven knows what revela- tions awaited her. "That you are a lump of horse and a greenhorn and nothing else ! " (Gitl felt much relieved.) "That piece of ugliness should try and come to my house ! Then she would know the price of a pound of evil. I should open the door and march to CIRCUMSTANCES ALTER CASES. ng eighty black years! Let her go to where she came from ! America is not Russia, \ thanked-bg_the Lord of tfee^world. Here v one must only know how to handle a hus- (band Here a husband must remember ' ladas foist' but then you do not even know what that means ! " she exclaimed, with a despairing wave of her hand "What does it mean?" Gitl inquired, pensively. "What does it mean? What should it mean? It means but too well, never min\ It means that when a husband does not be- habe as he should, one does not stroke his cheeks for it A prohibition upon me if one does. If the wife is no greenhorn she gets him shoved into the oven, over there, across the river." " You mean they send him to prison ? " "Where else to the theatre?" Mrs. Ka- varsky mocked her furiously. " A weeping to me ! " Gitl said, with hor- ror. " May God save me from such things!" In due course Mrs. Kavarsky arrived at 120 the subject of head-gear, and for the third or fourth time she elicited from her pupil a promise to discard the kerchief and to sell the wig. " No wonder he does hate you, seeing you in that horrid rag, which makes a grand- ma of you. Drop it, I tell you ! Drop it so that no survivor nor any refugee is left of it. If you don't obey me this time, dare not cross my threshold any more, do you hear ? " she thundered. " One might as well talk to the wall as to her ! " she proceeded, actually addressing herself to the opposite wall of her kitchen, and referring to her interlocutrice in the third person. " I am working and work- ing for her, and here she appreciates it as much as the cat. Fie!" With which the irate lady averted her face in disgust. ' "I shall take it off; now for sure as sure as this is Wednesday," said Gitl, beseech- ingly. Mrs. Kavarsky turned back to her paci- fied. " Remember now ! If you deshepoitn CIRCUMSTANCES ALTER CASES. I2 i [disappoint] me this time, well! look at me! I should think I was no Gentile wo- man, either. I am as pious as you anyhull, and come from no mean family, either. You jcnow I hate to boast ; but my father peace '><|be upon him ! was fit to be a rabbi. Veil, S and yet I am not afraid to go with my own hair. May no greater sins be committed! Then it would be never miri enough. Plen- ty of time for putting on the patch [mean- ing the wig] when I get old ; but as long as I am young, I am young an' *&/'.$ ull! It can not be helped ; when one lives in an ed- r zecate country, one must live \\ke_edzecate ^peoples. As they play, so one dances, as the * saying is. But I think it is time for you to be going. Go, my little kitten," Mrs. Ka- varsky said, suddenly lapsing into accents of the most tender affection. " He may be up f by this time and wanting tea. Go, my little Jllamb, go and try to make yourself ^agreeable ^tojiim and the Uppermost will help. In America one must take care not to displease a husband. Here one is to-day in New 122 YEKL. York and to-morrow in Chicago ; do you understand ? As if there were any shame or decency here ! A father is no father, a wife, no wife noting / Go now, my baby ! Go and throw away your rag and be a nice wo- man, and everything will be ull right" And so hurrying Gitl to go, she detained her with ever a fresh torrent of loquacity for an- other ten minutes, till the young woman, standing on pins and needles and scarcely lending an ear, plucked up courage to plead her household duties and take a hasty de- parture. She found Jake fast asleep. It was after eleven when he slowly awoke. He got up with a heavy burden on his soul a vague sense of having met with some horrible re- buff. In his semiconsciousness he was una- ware, however, of his wife's and son's exist- ence and of the change which their advent had produced in his life, feeling himself the same free bird that he had been a fortnight ago. He stared about the room, as if won- dering where he was. Noticing Gitl, who at CIRCUMSTANCED ALTER CASES. ^3 that moment came out of the bedroom, he instantly realized the situation, recalling Ma- mie, hat, perfumes, and all, and his heart sank within him. The atmosphere of the room became stifling to him. After sitting on the lounge for some time with a droop- ing head, he was tempted to fling himself on the pillow again, but instead of doing so he slipped on his hat and coat and went out. Gitl was used to his goings and comings ^ without explanation. Yet this time his slam of the door sent a sharp pang through her heart. She had no doubt but that he was bending his steps to another interview with the Polish witch, as she mentally branded Miss Fein. Nor was she mistaken, for Jake did start, mechanically, in the direction of Chrystie Street, where Mamie lodged. He felt sure that she was away to some ball, but the very house in which she roomed seemed to draw him with magnetic force. Moreover, he had a lurking hope that he might, after all, find her about the building. Ah, if by a 124 YEKL - stroke of good luck he came upon her on the street ! All he wished was to have a talk, and that for the sole purpose of amend- ing her unfavourable impression of him. Then he would never so much as think of Mamie, for, indeed, she was hateful to him, he persuaded himself. Arrived at his destination, and failing to find Mamie on the sidewalk, he was tempted to wait till she came from the ball, when he was seized with a sudden sense of the impro- priety of his expedition, and he forthwith re- turned home, deciding in his mind, as he walked, to move with his wife and child to Chicago. Meanwhile Mamie lay brooding in her cot-bed in the parlour, which she shared with her landlady's two daughters. She was in the most wretched frame of mind, ineffectu- ally struggling to fall asleep. She had made her way down the stairs leading from the Podkovniks with a violently palpitating heart. She had been bound for no more imposing a place than Joe's academy, and CIRCUMSTANCES ALTER CASES. 125 before repairing thither she had had to be- take herself home to change her stately toi- let for a humbler attire. For, as a matter of fact, it was expressly for her visit to the Pod- kovniks that she had thus pranked herself out, and that would have been much too gorgeous an appearance to make at Joe's establishment on one of its regular dancing evenings. Having changed her toilet she did call at Joe's; but so full was her mind of Jake and his wife and, accordingly, she was so irritable, that in the middle of a qua- drille she picked a quarrel with the dancing master, and abruptly left the hall. The next day Jake's work fared badly. When it was at last over he did not go di- rect home as usual, but first repaired to Ma- mie's. He found her with her landlady in the kitchen. She looked careworn and was in a white blouse which lent her face a con- valescent, touching effect. " Good-eveni'g, Mrs. Bunetzky ! Good- eveni'g, Mamie ! " he fairly roared, as he play- 126 YEKL. fully fillipped his hat backward. And after addressing a pleasantry or two to the mis- tress of the house, he boldly proposed to her boarder to go out with him for a talk. For a moment Mamie hesitated, fearing lest her landlady had become aware of the existence of a Mrs. Podkovnik ; but instantly flinging all considerations to the wind, she followed him out into the street. " You'sh afraid I vouldn't pay you, Ma- mie ? " he began, with bravado, in spite of his intention to start on a different line, he knew not exactly which. Mamie was no less disappointed by the opening of the conversation than he. " I ain't afraid a bit," she answered, sullenly. " Do you think my kshpenshesh are larger now ? " he resumed in Yiddish. "May I lose as much through sickness. On the coun- trary, I stipend even much less than I used to. We have twonice boarders I keep them only for company's sake and I have a shteada job a puddiri of a job. I shall CIRCUMSTANCES ALTER CASES. 127 have still more money to stipend outskite" he added, falteringly. " Outside ? " and she burst into an arti- ficial laugh which sent the blood to Jake's face. " Why, do you think I sha'n't go to Joe's, nor to the theatre, nor anywhere any more ? Still oftener than before ! Hoy much vill you bet ? " " Rats ! A married man, a papa go to a dancing school ! Not unless your wife drags along with you and never lets go of your skirts," she said sneeringly, adding the decla- ration that Jake's " bluffs " gave her a " reg- ula' pain in de neck." Jake, writhing under her lashes, protested his freedom as emphatically as he could ; but it only served to whet Mamie's spite, and against her will she went on twitting him as a henpecked husband and an old-fashioned Jew. Finally she reverted to the subject of his debt, whereupon he took fire, and after an interchange of threats and some quite forcible language they parted company. 128 YEKL. From that evening the spectre of Mamie dressed in her white blouse almost unremit- tingly preyed on Jake's mind. The mourn- ful sneer which had lit her pale, invalid-look- ing face on their last interview, when she wore that blouse, relentlessly stared down into his heart ; gnawed at it with tantalizing deliberation ; " drew out his soul," as he once put it to himself, dropping his arms and head in despair. "Is this what they call love ? " he wondered, thinking of the strange, hither- to unexperienced kind of malady, which seemed to be gradually consuming his whole being. He felt as if Mamie had breathed a delicious poison into his veins, which was now taking effect, spreading a devouring fire through his soul, and kindling him with a frantic thirst for more of the same virus. His features became distended, as it were, and acquired a feverish effect ; his eyes had a pitiable, beseeching look, like those of a child in the period of teething. He grew more irritable with Gitl every day, the energy failing him to dissemble his CIRCUMSTANCES ALTER CASES. 129 hatred for her. There were moments when, in his hopeless craving for the presence of Mamie, he would consciously seek refuge in a feeling of compunction and of pity for his wife ; and on several such occasions he made an effort to take an affectionate tone with her. But the unnatural sound of his voice each time only accentuated to himself the depth of his repugnance, while the hysterical promptness of her answers, the servile grati- tude which trembled in her voice and shone out of her radiant face would, at such in- stances, make him breathless with rage. Poor Gitl ! she strained every effort to please him ; she tried to charm him by all the sim- ple-minded little coquetries she knew, by every art which her artless brain could in- vent ; and only succeeded in making herself more offensive than ever. As to Jake's feelings for Joey, they now alternated between periods of indifference and gusts of exaggerated affection ; while, in some instances, when the boy let himself be fondled by his mother or returned her ca- 130 YEKL. resses in his childish way, he would appear to Jake as siding with his enemy, and share with Gitl his father's odium. One afternoon, shortly after Jake's inter- view with Mamie in front of the Chrystie Street tenement house, Fanny called on Gitl. " Are you Mrs. Podkovnik ? " she in- quired, with an embarrassed air. " Yes ; why ? " Mrs. Podkovnik replied, turning pale. " She is come to tell me that Jake has eloped with that Polish girl," flashed upon her overwrought mind. At the same moment Fanny, sizing her up, ex- claimed inwardly, " So this is the kind of woman she is, poor thing ! " "Nothing. I just want to speak to you," the visitor uttered, mysteriously. "What is it?" " As I say, nothing at all. Is there no- body else in the house ? " Fanny demanded, looking about. " May I not live till to-morrow if there is a living soul except my boy, and he is asleep. CIRCUMSTANCES ALTER CASES. 131 You may speak ; never fear. But first tell me who you are ; do not take ill my ques- tion. Be seated" The girl's appearance and manner began to inspire Gitl with confidence. " My name is Rosy Rosy Blank," said Fanny, as she took a seat on the further end of the lounge. " 'F course, you don't know me, how should you ? But I know you well enough, never mind that we have never seen each other before. I used to work with your husband in one shop. I have come to tell you such an important thing! You must know it It makes no difference that you don't know who I am. May God grant me as good a year as my friendship is for you." "Something about Jake?" Gitl blurted out, all anxiety, and instantly regretted the question. " How did you guess ? About Jake it is! About him and somebody else. But see how you did guess! Swear that you won't tell anybody that I have been here.** 132 YEKL. "May I be left speechless, may my arms and legs be paralyzed, if I ever say a word ! " Gitl recited vehemently, thrilling with anx- iety and impatience. " So it is ! they have eloped ! " she added in her heart, seating her- self close to her caller. "A darkness upon my years ! What will become of me and Yossele" now ? " " Remember, now, not a word, either to Jake or to anybody else in the world. I had a mountain of trouble before I found out where you lived, and I stopped work on pur- pose to come and speak to you. As true as you see me alive. I wanted to call when I was sure to find you alone, you under- stand. Is there really nobody about ?" And after a preliminary glance at the door and exacting another oath of discretion from Mrs. Podkovnik, Fanny began in an under- tone: "There is a girl; well, her name is Ma- mie ; well, she and your husband used to go to the same dancing school that is a place where fellers and ladies learn to dance," she CIRCUMSTANCES ALTER CASES. 133 explained. " I go there, too ; but I know your husband from the shop." " But that lada has also worked in the same shop with him, hasn't she ? " Gitl broke in, with a desolate look in her eye. " Why, did Jake tell you she had ? " Fan- ny asked in surprise. 11 No, not at all, not at all ! I am just asking. May I be sick if I know anything." "The idea! How could they work to- gether, seeing that she is a shirtmaker and he a cloak maker. Ah, if you knew what a witch she is ! She has set her mind on your husband, and is bound to take him away from you. She hitched on to him long ago. But since you came I thought she would have God in her heart, and be ashamed of people. Not she ! She be ashamed ! You may sling a cat into her face and she won't mind it. The black year knows where she grew up. I tell you there is not a girl in the whole dancing school but can not bear the sight of that Polish lizard ! " "Why, do they meet and kiss?" Gitl I 34 YEKL. moaned out. "Tell me, do tell me all, my little crown, keep nothing from me, tell me my whole dark lot." " Ull right, but be sure not to speak to anybody. I'll tell you the truth : My name is not Rosy Blank at all. It is Fanny Scutelsky. You see, I am telling you the whole truth. The other evening they stood near the house where she boards, on Chrystie Street ; so they were looking into each other's eyes and talking like a pair of little doves. A lady who is a particla friend of mine saw them ; so she says a child could have guessed that she was making love to him and trying to get him away from you. *F cou'se it is none of my busi- ness. Is it my business, then? What do / care? It is only becuss I pity you. It is like the nature I have ; I can not bear to see anybody in trouble. Other people would not care, but I do. Such is my nature. So I thought to myself I must go and tell Mrs. Podkovnik all about it, in order that she might know what to do." CIRCUMSTANCES ALTER CASES. 135 For several moments Gitl sat speechless, her head hung down, and her bosom heaving rapidly. Then she fell to swaying her frame sidewise, and vehemently wringing her hands. "Oi! Oi! Little mother ! A pain to me!" she moaned. "What is to be done? Lord of the world, what is to be done? Come to the rescue ! People, do take pity, come to the rescue ! " She broke into a fit of low sobbing, which shook her whole form and was followed by a torrent of tears. Whereupon Fanny also burst out crying, and falling upon Gitl's shoulder she mur- mured : " My little heart ! you don't know what a friend I am to you ! Oh, if you knew what a serpent that Polish thief is ! " CHAPTER VII. MRS. KAVARSKY'S COUP D'ETAT. IT was not until after supper time that Gitl could see Mrs. Kavarsky ; for the neigh- bour's husband was in the installment busi- ness, and she generally spent all day in help- ing him with his collections as well as canvassing for new customers. When Gitl came in to unburden herself of Fanny's rev- elations, she found her confidante out of sorts. Something had gone wrong in Mrs. Kavarsky 's affairs, and, while she was per- fectly aware that she had only herself to blame, she had laid it all to her husband and had nagged him out of the house before he had quite finished his supper. She listened to her neighbour's story MRS. KAVARSKY'S COUP D'ETAT. 137 with a bored and impatient air, and when Gitl had concluded and paused for her opin- ion, she remarked languidly : " It serves you right ! It is all becuss you will not throw away that ugly kerchief of yours. What is the use of your asking my advice ? " " Oi! I think even that wouldn't help it now," Gitl rejoined, forlornly. " The Upper- most knows what drug she has charmed him with. A cholera into her, Lord of the world ! " she added, fiercely. Mrs. Kavarsky lost her temper. "Say, will you stop talking nonsense?" she shouted savagely. "No wonder your husband does not care for you, seeing these stupid greenhornlike notions of yours." " How then could she have bewitched him, the witch that she is? Tell me, little heart, little crown, do tell me! Take pity and be a mother to me. I am so lonely and " Heartrending sobs choked her voice. "What shall I tell you? that you are a blockhead ? Oi! Oi! Oi! " she mocked her. 138 YEKL. " Will the crying help you ? Ull right, cry away ! " "But what shall I do?" Gitl pleaded, wiping her tears. " It may drive me mad. I won't wear the kerchief any more. I swear this is the last day," she added, propitiat- ingly. "Dot's right! When you talk like a man I like you. And now sit still and lis- ten to what an older person and a business woman has to tell you. In the first place, who knows what that girl Jennie, Fannie, Shmennie, Yomtzedemennie whatever you may call her is after? " The last two names Mrs. Kavarsky invented by poetical license to complete the rhyme and for the greater emphasis of her contempt. "In the second place, asposel [supposing] he did talk to that Polish piece of disturbance. Veil, what of it ? It is all over with the world, isn't it ? The mourner's prayer is to be said after it, I declare ! A married man stood talking to a girl! Just think of it! May no greater evil befall any Yiddish daughter. This is MRS. KAVARSKY'S COUP D'ETAT. i^g vnot Europe where one dares not say a word to a strange woman ! Nu t sir / " ' "What, then, is the matter with him? At home he would hardly ever leave my side, and never ceased looking into my eyes. Woe is me, what America has brought me to ! " And again her grief broke out into a flood of tears. This time Mrs. Kavarsky was moved. " Don't be crying, my child ; he may come in for you," she said, affectionately. " Believe me you are making a mountain out of a fly you are imagining too much." " Oz, as my ill luck would have it, it is all but too true. Have I no eyes, then? He mocks at everything I say or do ; he can not bear the touch of my hand. America has made a mountain of ashes out of me. Really, a curse upon Columbus ! " she ejacu- lated mournfully, quoting in all earnestness a current joke of the Ghetto. Mrs. Kavarsky was too deeply touched to laugh. She proceeded to examine her pupil, in whispers, upon certain details, and 140 YEKL. thereupon her interest in Gitl's answers grad- ually superseded her commiseration for the unhappy woman. "And how does he behave toward the boy ? " she absently inquired, after a melan- choly pause. " Would he were as kind to me ! " " Then it is ull right ! Such things will happen between man and wife. It is all humbuk. It will all come right, and you will some day be the happiest woman in the world. You shall see. Remember that Mrs. Kavarsky has told you so. And in the meantime stop crying. A husband hates a sniveller for a wife. You know the story of Jacob and Leah, as it stands written in the Holy Five Books, don't you ? Her eyes be- came red with weeping, and Jacob, our fa- ther, did not care for her on that account. Do you understand ? " All at once Mrs. Kavarsky bit her lip, her countenance brightening up with a sud- den inspiration. At the next instant she made a lunge at Gitl's head, and off went the MRS. KAVARSKY'S COUP D'ETAT. I4I kerchief. Gitl started with a cry, at the same moment covering her head with both hands. " Take off your hands ! Take them off at once, I say ! " the other shrieked, her eyes flashing fire and her feet performing an Irish jig- Gitl obeyed for sheer terror. Then, push- ing her toward the sink, Mrs. Kavarsky said peremptorily : " You shall wash off your silly tears and I'll arrange your hair, and from this day on there shall be no kerchief, do you hear?" Gitl offered but feeble resistance, just enough to set herself right before her own conscience. She washed herself quietly, and when her friend set about combing her hair, she submitted to the operation without a murmur, save for uttering a painful hiss each time there came a particularly violent tug at the comb ; for, indeed, Mrs. Kavarsky plied her weapon rather energetically and with a bloodthirsty air, as if inflicting pun- ishment. And while she was thus attacking I 4 2 YEKL. Gitl's luxurious raven locks she kept growl- ing, as glibly as the progress of the comb would allow, and modulating her voice to its movements : " Believe me you are a lump of hunchback, szire ; you may may depend up-upon it ! Tell me, now, do you ever comb yourself? You have raised quite a plica, the black year take it ! Another wo- man would thank God for such beau-beau- tiful hair, and here she keeps it hidden and makes a bu-bugbear of herself a regele monkey ! " she concluded, gnashing her teeth at the stout resistance with which her imple- ment was at that moment grappling. Gitl's heart swelled with delight, but she modestly kept silent. Suddenly Mrs. Kavarsky paused thought- fully, as if conceiving a new idea. In an- other moment a pair of scissors and curling irons appeared on the scene. At the sight of this Gitl's blood ran chill, and when the scissors gave their first click in her hair she felt as though her heart snapped. Neverthe- less, she endured it all without a protest, MRS. KAVARSKVS COUP D'ETAT. I43 blindly trusting that these instruments of torture would help ^reinstall her in Jake's good graces. At last, when all was ready and she found herself adorned with a pair of rich side bangs, she was taken in front of the mirror, and or- dered to hail the transformation with joy. She viewed herself with an unsteady glance, as if her own face struck her as unfamiliar and forbidding. However, the change pleased her as much as it startled her. " Do you really think he will like it ? " she inquired with piteous eagerness, in a fever of conflicting emotions. "If he does not, I shall refund your money ! " her guardian snarled, in high glee. For a moment or so Mrs. Kavarsky paused to admire the effect of her art. Then, in a sudden transport of enthusiasm, she sprang upon her ward, and with an " Oi t a health to you ! " she smacked a hearty kiss on her burning cheek. " And now come, piece of wretch ! " So saying, Mrs. Kavarsky grasped Gitl by the I 44 YEKL - wrist, and forcibly convoyed her into her husband's presence. The two boarders were out, Jake being alone with Joey. He was seated at the ta- ble, facing the door, with the boy on his knees. " Goot-evenik, Mr. Podkovnik ! Look what I have brought you : a brand new wife ! " Mrs. Kavarsky said, pointing at her charge, who stood faintly struggling to dis- engage her hand from her escort's tight grip, her eyes looking to the ground and her cheeks a vivid crimson. Gitl's unwonted appearance impressed Jake as something unseemly and meretri- cious. The sight of her revolted him. " It becomes her like a a a wet cat," he faltered out with a venomous smile, choking down a much stronger simile which would have conveyed his impression with much more precision, but which he dared not ap- ply to his own wife. The boy's first impulse upon the en- MRS. KAVARSKY'S COUP D'ETAT. 14$ trance of his mother had been to run up to her side and to greet her merrily ; but he, too, was shocked by the change in her as- pect, and he remained where he was, looking from her to Jake in blank surprise. " Go away, you don't mean it ! " Mrs. Ka- varsky remonstrated distressedly, at the same moment releasing her prisoner, who forth- with dived into the bedroom to bury her face in a pillow, and to give way to a stream of tears. Then she made a few steps toward Jake, and speaking in an undertone she pro- ceeded to take him to task. " Another man would consider himself happy to have such a wife," she said. " Such a quiet, honest wo- man ! And such a housewife ! Why, look at the way she keeps everything like a fid- dle. It is simply a treat to come into your house. I do declare you sin ! " "What do I do to her?" he protested morosely, cursing the intruder in his heart. " Who says you do ? Mercy and peace ! Only you understand how shall I say it ? she is only a young woman; veil, so she 146 YEKL. imagines that you do not care for her as much as you used to. Come, Mr. Podkovnik, you know you are a sensible man ! I have al- ways thought you one you may ask my husband. Really you ought to be ashamed of yourself. A prohibition upon me if I could ever have believed it of you. Do you think a stylish girl would make you a better wife? If you do, you are grievously mis- taken. What are they good for, the hus- sies? To darken the life of a husband? That, I admit, they are really great hands at. They only know how to squander his money for a new hat or rag every Monday and Thursday, and to tramp around with other men, fie upon the abominations ! May no good Jew know them ! " Her innuendo struck Mrs. Kavarsky as extremely ingenious, and, egged on by the dogged silence of her auditor, she ventured a step further. " Do you mean to tell me," she went on, emphasizing each word, and shaking her whole body with melodramatic defiance, . MRS. KAVARSKY'S COUP D'ETAT. I47 " that you would be better off with a dantz- iri -school girl ? " * " A danshin'-shchool girl ? " Jake repeat- ed, turning ashen pale, and fixing his inquisi- tress with a distant gaze. "Who says I care for a danshin'-shchool girl ? " he bellowed, as he let down the boy and started to his feet red as a cockscomb. " It was she who told you that, was it ? " Joey had tripped up to the lounge where he now stood watching his father with a stare in which there was more curiosity than fright. The little woman lowered her crest. " Not at all ! God be with you ! " she said quickly, in a tone of abject cowardice, and in- voluntarily shrinking before the ferocious at- titude of Jake's strapping figure. " Who ? What ? When ? I did not mean anything at all, sure. Gitl never said a word to me. A prohibition if she did. Come, Mr. Pod- kovnik, why should you get ektzited?" she pursued, beginning to recover her presence of mind. " By-the-bye I came near forget- 148 YEKL. ting how about the boarder you promised to get me ; do you remember, Mr. Podkov- nik ? " " Talk away a toothache for your grand- ma, not for me. Who told her about dansh- iri girls?" he thundered again, re-enforcing the ejaculation with an English oath, and bringing down a violent fist on the table as he did so. At this Girl's sobs made themselves heard from the bedroom. They lashed Jake into a still greater fury. " What is she whimpering about, the piece of stench ! Alia right, I do hate her ; I can not bear the sight of her ; and let her do what she likes. I dori care!" " Mr. Podkovnik ! To think of a sma't man like you talking in this way ! " " Dot'sh alia right ! " he said, somewhat re- lenting. " I don't care for any dans kin girls. It is a lie! It was that scabby greenhorn who must have taken it into her head. I don't care for anybody ; not for her certainly " pointing to the bedroom. " I/ MRS. KAVARSKVS COUP D'ETAT. 149 'am an American feller, a Yankee* that's *Jwhat I am. WhaTpumsKmenr is Tdue to me, , jhen, if I can not stand a shnooza like her? tft is nu uShed; I can not live with her, even if she stand one foot on heaven an