Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne - "Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, V15"

Richard Hakluyt - "Voyages in Search of the North West Passage"

Jane Austen - "Pride and Prejudice"

Lawrence Beesley - "The Loss of the SS. Titanic"

New Philadelphia Book Publisher Highlights Local Talent
Book and Publishing News from Publishers Newswire(tm)

Looking for Child to be on Cover of a New Book, 'The Model Child'
PHILADELPHIA, Pa. -- The Philadelphia literary world will celebrate the launch of two new players today, April 10th: Kay Square Press, a new publishing company focused on Philadelphia-area artists, their stories, and their art; and Kay Square's first release, 'With the Rich and Mighty: Emlen Etting of Philadelphia' (ISBN: 978-0-9815129-0-7), a critical biography by Kenneth C. Kaleta.

FlatSigned Press Alleges Don Imus Remarks Damage Legacy of President Gerald R. Ford
NEW YORK, N.Y. -- Nathan Yungerberg, an accomplished model scout and professional child photographer is launching a nation-wide casting call to find the cover model for his highly anticipated book release, 'The Model Child: A Parents Guide to the Child Modeling Industry' (ISBN: 978-0-9817018-0-6).

Books: The Rise of David Levinsky

A >> Abraham Cahan >> The Rise of David Levinsky




Nodelman kept me waiting, without offering me a scat, a good
half-hour. He was in his shirt-sleeves, like the others, yet he
looked far more dignified than I had ever seen him look before. It
was as though the environment of his little kingdom had made
another man of him

Finally, he left the man with the tape-measure and silently led me
into his little private office, a narrow strip of partitioned-off space
at the other end of the loft

When we were seated and the partition door was shut he said, with
grave mien, "Well," and fell silent again

I gazed at him patiently

"Well," he repeated, "I have thought it over." And again he paused.
At last he burst out: "I do want to help you, young fellow. You
didn't expect it, did you? I do want to help you. And do you know
why? Because otherwise you won't pay that Gentile and I don't
want a good-hearted Gentile to think that Jews are a bad lot.
That's number one. Number two is this: If you think Meyer
Nodelman is a hog, you don't know Meyer Nodelman. Number
three: I rather liked the way you talked yesterday. I said to myself,
said I: 'An educated fellow who can talk like that will be all right.
He ought to be given a lift, for most educated people are damn
fools.' Well, I'll tell you what I am willing to do for you. I'll get
you the goods for that order of yours, not for thirty days, but for
sixty. What do you think of that? Now is Nodelman a hog or is he
not? But that's as far as I am willing to go. I can only get you the
goods for that Third Avenue order. See? But that won't be enough
to help you out of your scrape, not enough for you to pay that good
Gentile on time." He engaged in some mental arithmetic by means
of which he reached the conclusion that I should need an
additional four hundred dollars, and he wound up by an
ultimatum: he would not furnish me the goods until I had
produced that amount

"Look here, young fellow," he added; "since you were smart
enough to get that Gentile and Meyer Nodelman to help you out, it
ought not to be a hard job for you to get a third fellow to take an
interest in you. Do you remember what I told you about those
credit faces? I think you have got one."

"I have an honest heart, too," I said, with a smile

"Your heart I can't get into, so I don't know. See? Maybe there is a
rogue hiding there and maybe there isn't. But your face and your
talk certainly are all right. They ought to be able to get you some
more cash. And if they don't, then they don't deserve that I should
help you out, either. See?" He chuckled in appreciation of his own
syllogism

"It's a nice piece of Talmud reasoning," I complimented him, with
an enthusiastic laugh. "But, seriously, Mr. Nodelman, I shall pay
you every cent. You run absolutely no risk."

I pleaded with him to grant me the accommodation
unconditionally. I tried to convince him that I should contrive to
do without the additional cash. But he was obdurate, and at last I
took my leave

"Wait a moment! What's your hurry? Are you afraid you'll be a
couple of minutes longer becoming a millionaire? There is
something I want to ask you."

"What is it, Mr. Nodelman?"

"How about your studying to be a doctor-philosopher?" he asked,
archly

"Oh, well, one can attend to business and find time for books, too,"
I answered

I came away in a new transport of expectations and in a new agony
of despair at once. On the whole, however, my spirits were greatly
buoyed up.

Encouraged by the result of taking Nodelman into my confidence,
I decided to try a similar heart-to-heart talk on Max Margolis,
better known to the reader as Maximum Max. He had some
money.

I had seen very little of him in the past two years, having stumbled
upon him in the street but two or three times. But upon each of
these occasions he had stopped me and inquired about my affairs
with genuine interest. He was fond of me. I had no doubt about it.
And he was so good-natured. Our last chance meeting antedated
my new venture by at least six months, and he was not likely to
have any knowledge of it. I felt that he would be sincerely glad to
hear of it and I hoped that he would be inclined to help me launch
it. Anyhow, he seemed to be my last resort, and I was determined
to make my appeal to him as effective as I knew how

As he had always seen me shabbily clad, I decided to overwhelm
him with a new suit of clothes. I needed one, at any rate

After some seeking and inquiring, I found him in a Bowery
furniture-store, one of the several places from which he supplied
his instalment customers.

It was about 10 o'clock in the morning

"There is something I want to consult you about, Max," I said.
"Something awfully important to me. You're the only man I know
who could advise me and in whom I can confide," I added, with
an implication of great intimacy and affection. "It's a business
scheme, Max. I have a chance to make lots of money."

The conversation was held in a dusky passage of the labyrinthine
store, a narrow lane running between two barricades of furniture

"What is that? A business scheme?" he asked, in a preoccupied
tone of voice and straining his eyes to look me over. "You are
dressed up, I see. Quite prosperous, aren't you?"

As we emerged into the glare of the Bowery he scrutinized my suit
once again. I quailed. I now felt that to have come in such a
screamingly new suit was a fatal mistake. I cursed myself for an
idiot of a smart Aleck. But he spoke to me with his usual
cordiality and my spirits rose again. However, he seemed to be
busy, and so I asked him to set an hour when he could see me at
leisure. We made an appointment for 3 o'clock in the afternoon. I
was to meet him at the same furniture-store; but upon second
thought, and with another glance at my new clothes, he said,
jovially: "Why, you are rigged out like a regular monarch! It is
quite an honor to invite you to the house. Come up, will you?
And, as I won't have to go out to meet you, you can make it 2
o'clock, or half past."

CHAPTER II MAX occupied the top floor of an old private house
on Henry Street, a small "railroad" apartment of two large, bright
rooms--a living-room and a kitchen--with two small, dark
bedrooms between them. The ceiling was low and the air
somewhat tainted with the odor of mold and dampness. I found
Max in the general living-room, which was also a dining-room, a
fat boy of three on his lap and a slender, pale girl of eight on a
chair close by. His wife, a slender young woman with a fine white
complexion and serious black eyes, was clearing away the lunch
things

"Mrs. Margolis, Mr. Levinsky," he introduced us. "Plainly
speaking, this is my wifey and this is a friend of mine."

As she was leaving the room for the kitchen he called after her,
"Dvorah! Dora! make some tea, will you?"

She craned her neck and gave him a look of resentment. "It's a
good thing you are telling me that," she said. "Otherwise I
shouldn't know what I have got to do, should I?"

When she had disappeared he explained to me that he variously
addressed her by the Yiddish or English form of her name

"We are plain Yiddish folk," he generalized, good-humoredly

A few minutes later, as Mrs. Margolis placed a glass of Russian
tea before me, he drew her to him and pinched her white cheek

"What do you think of my wifey, Levinsky?"

She smiled--a grave, deprecating smile--and took to pottering
about the house

"And what do you think of these little customers?" he went on.
"Lucy, examine mamma in spelling. Quick! Dora, be a good girl,
sit down and let Levinsky see how educated you are." ("Educated"
he said in English, with the accent on the "a.") "What do you
want?" his wife protested, softly. "Mr. Levinsky wants to see you
on business, and here you are bothering him with all sorts of
nonsense

"Never mind his business. It won't run away. Sit down, I say. It
won't take long." She yielded. Casting bashful side-glances at
nobody in particular, she seated herself opposite Lucy

"Well?" she said, with a little laugh

I thought her eyes looked too serious, almost angry. "Insane people
have eyes of this kind," I said to myself. I also made a mental note
of her clear, fresh, delicate complexion. Otherwise she did not
interest me in the least, and I mutely prayed Heaven to take her
out of the room

"How do you spell 'great'?" the little girl demanded

"G-r-e-a-t--great," her mother answered, with a smile

"Book?"

"B-o-o-k--book. Oh, give me some harder words."

"Laughter."

"L-a-u-g-h-t-e-r--laughter."

"Is that correct?" Margolis turned to me, all beaming. "I wish I
could do as much. And nobody has taught her, either. She has
learned it all by herself.

Little Lucy is the only teacher she ever had. But she will soon be
ahead of her. Won't she, Lucy?"

"I'm afraid I am ahead of her already," Mrs. Margolis said, gaily,
yet flushed with excitement

"You are not!" Lucy protested, with a good-natured pout

"Shut up, bad girl you," her mother retorted, again with a bashful
side-glance

"Is that the way you talk to your mamma?" Max intervened. "I'll
tell your teacher."

I was on pins and needles to be alone with him and to get down to
the object of my visit

Finally he said, brusquely: "Well, we have had enough of that.
Leave us alone, Dora. Go to the parlor and take the kids along."

She obeyed

When he heard of my venture he was interested. He often
interrupted me with boisterous expressions of admiration for my
subterfuges as well as for the plan as a whole. With all his
boisterousness, however, there was an air of caution about him, as
if he scented danger. When I finally said that all depended upon
my raising four hundred dollars his face clouded

"I see, I see," he murmured, with sudden estrangement. "I see. I
see." "Don't lose courage," I said to myself. "Nodelman was
exactly like that at first. Go right ahead."

I portrayed my business prospects in the most alluring colors and
gave Max to understand that if "somebody" advanced me the four
hundred dollars he would be sure to get it back in thirty days plus
any interest he might name

"It would be terrible if I had to let it all go to pieces on account of
such a thing," I concluded

There was a moment of very awkward silence. It was broken by
Max

"It's really too bad. What are you going to do about it?" he said.
"Where can you get such a 'somebody'?"

"I don't know. That's why I came to consult you. I thought you
might suggest some way. It would be a pity if I had to give it all
up on account of four hundred dollars."

"Indeed it would. It would be terrible. Still, four hundred dollars is
not four hundred cents. I wish I were a rich man. I should lend it
to you at once. You know I should."

"I should pay you every cent of it, Max."

"You say it as if I had money. You know I have not." What I did
know was that he had, and he knew that I did

He took to analyzing the situation and offering me advice. Why not
go to that kindly Gentile, the commission merchant, make a clean
breast of it, and obtain an extension of time? Why not apply to
some money-lender? Why not make a vigorous appeal to
Nodelman? He seemed to be an obliging fellow, so if I pressed
him a little harder he might give me the cash as well as the goods

I was impelled to retort that advice was cheap, and he apparently
read my thoughts

Presently he said, with genuine ardor: "I tell you what, Levinsky.
Why not try to get your old landlady to open her stocking? From
what you have told me, she ought not to be a hard nut to crack if
you only go about it in the right way.

This suggestion made a certain appeal to me, but I would not
betray it. I continued resentfully silent

"You just try her, Levinsky. She'll let you have the four hundred
dollars, or half of it, at least."

"And if she does, her son will refuse to get me the goods," I
remarked, with a sneer.

"Nonsense. If you know how to handle her, she will realize that
she must keep her mouth shut until after she gets the money
back."

"Oh, what's the use?" I said, impatiently. "I must get the cash at
once, or all is lost."

Again he spoke of money-lenders. He went into details about one
of them and offered to ascertain his address for me. He evidently
felt awkward about his part in the matter and eager to atone for it
in some way

"Why should a usurer trust me?" I said, rising to go

"Wait. What's your hurry? If that money-lender hears your story, he
may trust you. He is a peculiar fellow, don't you know. When he
takes a fancy to a man he is willing to take a chance on him. Of
course, the interest would be rather high." He paused abruptly,
wrinkled his forehead with an effect of pondering some new
scheme, and said: "Wait. I think I have a better plan.

I'll see if I can't get you the money without a money-lender." With
this he sprang to his feet and had his wife bring him his coat and
hat. "I'll be back in less than half an hour," he said. "Dvorah dear,
give Levinsky some more tea, will you? I am going out for a few
minutes. Don't let him be downhearted." Then, shaking a finger of
warning at me, he said, playfully, "Only take care that you don't
fall in love with her!" And he was gone

"It's all play-acting," I thought. "He just wants me to believe he is
trying to do something for me." But, of course, I was not
altogether devoid of hope that I was mistaken and that he was
making a sincere effort to raise a loan for me

Mrs. Margolis went into the kitchen immediately her husband
departed.

Presently she came back, carrying a glass of tea on a saucer. She
placed it before me with an embarrassed side-glance, brought
some cookies, and seated herself at the far end of the table. I
uttered some complimentary trivialities about the children

When a man finds himself alone with a woman who is neither his
wife nor a close relative, both feel awkward. It is as though they
heard a whisper, "There is nobody to watch the two of you."

Still, confused as I was, I was fully aware of her tempting
complexion and found her angry black eyes strangely interesting.
Upon the whole, however, I do not think she made any appeal to
me save by virtue of the fact that she was a woman and that we
were alone. I was tense with the consciousness of that fact, and
everything about her disturbed me. She wore a navy-blue summer
wrapper and I noticed the way it set off the soft whiteness of her
neck. I remarked to myself that she looked younger than her
husband, that she must be about twenty-eight or thirty, perhaps.
My glances apparently caused her painful embarrassment. Finally
she got up again, making a pretense of bustling about the room. It
seemed to me that when she was on her feet she looked younger
than when she was seated

I asked the boy his name, and he answered in lugubrious, but
distinct, accents: "Daniel Margolis."

"He speaks like a grown person," I said

"She used to speak like that, too, when she was of his age," my
hostess replied, with a glance in the direction of her daughter

"Did you?" I said to Lucy

The little girl grinned coyly

"Why don't you answer the gentleman's question?" her mother
rebuked her, in English. "It's Mr. Levinsky, a friend of papa's."

Lucy gave me a long stare and lost all interest in me. "Don't you
like me at all? Not even a little bit?" I pleaded

She soon unbent and took to plying me with questions. Where did I
live? Was I a "customer peddler "like her papa? How long had I
been in America? (A question which a child of the East Side hears
as often as it does queries about the weather.) "Can you spell?"
"No," I answered. "Not at all?"

"Not at all!"

"Shame! But my papa can't spell, neither."

"Shut up, you bad girl you!" her mother broke in with a laugh.
"Vere you lea'n such nasty things? By your mamma? The
gentleman will think by your mamma."

She delivered her a little lecture in English, taking pains to
produce the "th" and the American "r," though her were "v's."

She urged me not to let the tea get cold. As I took hold of the tall,
thin, cylindrical glass I noted that it was scrupulously clean and
that its contents had a good clear color. I threw a glance around
the room and I saw that it was well kept and tidy

Mrs. Margolis took a seat again. Lucy, with part of a cooky in her
mouth, stepped over to her and seated herself on her lap, throwing
her arm around her. She struck me as the very image of her
mother. Presently, however, I discovered that she resembled her
father quite as closely. It seemed as though the one likeness lay on
the surface of her face, while the other loomed up from
underneath, as the reflection of a face does from under the surface
of water. Lucy soon wearied of her mother and walked over to my
side. I put her on my lap. She would not let me pat her, but she did
not mind sitting on my knees.

"Are you a good speller?" I asked

"I c'n spell all the words we get at school," she answered, sagely

"How do you spell 'colonel'?"

"We never got it at school. But you can't spell it, either."

"How do you know I can't? Maybe I can. Well, let us take an easier
word. How do you spell 'because'?"

She spelled it correctly, her mother joining in playfully. I gave
them other words, addressing myself to both, and they made a
race of it, each trying to head off or outshout the other. At first
Mrs. Margolis did so with feigned gaiety, but her face soon set
into a grave look and glowed with excitement

At last I asked them to spell "coefficient."

"We never got it at school," Lucy demurred

"I don't know what it means," said Mrs. Margolis, with a shrug of
her shoulders.

"It means something in mathematics, in high figuring," I explained
in Yiddish

Mrs. Margolis shrugged her shoulders once more

I asked Lucy to try me in spelling. She did and I acquitted myself
so well that she exclaimed: "Oh, you liar you! Why did you say
you didn't know how to spell?"

Once more her mother took her to task for her manners

"Is that the vay to talk to a gentleman? Shame! Vere you lea'n up to
be such a pig? Not by your mamma!"

When Max came back Lucy hastened to inform him that I could
spell "awful good." To which he replied in Yiddish that he knew I
was a smart fellow, that I could read and write "everything," and
that I had studied to go to college and "to be a doctor, a lawyer, or
anything."

His wife looked me over with bashful side-glances. "Really?" she
said

Max told me a lame story about his errand and promised to let me
know the "final result." It was clearer than ever to me that he was
making a fool of me

CHAPTER III WHEN I hear a new melody and it makes an appeal
to me its effect usually lasts only as long as I hear it, but it is
almost sure to reassert itself later on. I scarcely ever think of it
during the first two, three, or four days, but then, all of a sudden,
it will pop up in my brain and haunt me a few days in succession,
humming itself and nagging me like a living thing.

This was precisely what happened to me with regard to Mrs.
Margolis. During the first two days after I left her house I never
gave her a thought, but on the third her shy side-glances suddenly
loomed up in my mind and would not leave it. Just her black,
serious eyes and those shy looks of theirs gleaming out of a white,
strikingly interesting complexion. Her face in general was a mere
blur in my memory

I was incessantly racking my brain over my affairs. I was so
low-spirited and worried that I was unconscious of the food I ate
or of the streets through which I passed, yet her manner of darting
embarrassed glances out of the corner of her eye and her
complexion were never absent from my mind. I felt like seeing
her once more. However, the prospect of calling at her house was
now anything but alluring. I could almost see the annoyed air with
which her husband would receive me

I sought out two usurers and begged each of them to grant me the
loan, but they unyieldingly insisted on more substantial security
than the bare story or my venture. I made other efforts to raise the
money. I approached several people, including the proprietor of
the little music-store. All to no purpose

One afternoon, eight or ten days after my call at the Margolises',
when I came to my "factory" I found under the door a closed
envelope bearing the name of that Western firm. It contained a
typewritten letter and a check in full payment of my bill. Also a
circular explaining that the firm had been reorganized with plenty
of capital, and naming as one of its new directors a man who,
from the tone of the circular, seemed to be of high standing in the
financial world

My head was in a whirl. The desolate-looking sewing-machines of
my deserted shop seemed to have suddenly brightened up. I
looked at the check again and again. The figure on it literally
staggered me. It seemed to be part of a fairy tale

I rushed over to Nodelman's office, but found him gone for the
day. The next thing on my program was to carry the glad news to
the Chaikins and to discuss plans for the immediate future with
my partner. But Chaikin never came home before 7. So I first
dropped in on the Margolises to flash my check in Max's face and,
incidentally, to see his wife

I found him playing with his fat boy

"Hello, Max! I have good news!" I shouted, excitedly. Which
actually meant: "Don't be uneasy, Max. I am not going to ask you
for a loan again."

When he had examined the check he said, sheepishly: "Now you
are all right. Why, something told me all along that you would get
it." His wife came in, apparently from the kitchen. She returned
my "Good evening" with free and easy amiability, without any
shyness or side-glances, and disappeared again. I felt annoyed. I
was tempted to call after her to come back and let me take a good
look at her

"Say, Levinsky, you must have thought I would not trust you for
the four hundred dollars," Max said. "May I have four hundred
days of distress if I have a cent. What few dollars I do have is
buried in the business. So help me, God! Let a few of my
customers stop paying and I would have to go begging. It's the real
truth I am telling you. Honest."

"I know, I know," I said, awkwardly. "Well, it was as if the check
had dropped from heaven. Thank God! Now I can begin to do
things."

I went over the main facts of my venture, this time with a touch of
bluster.

And he listened with far readier attention and more genuine
interest than he had done on the previous occasion. We discussed
my plans and my prospects.

At one point, when I referred to the Western check, he asked to see
it again, just for curiosity's sake, and as I watched him look it over
I could almost see the change that it was producing in his attitude
toward me. I do not know to what extent he had previously
believed my story, if at all. One thing was clear: the magic check
now made it all real to him. As he handed me back the strip of
paper he gave me a look that seemed to say: "So you are a
manufacturer, you whom I have always known as a miserable
ragamuffin."

Mrs. Margolis reappeared. Her husband told her of my great check
and she returned some trivialities. As we thus chatted, I made a
mental note of the fascinating feminine texture of her flesh

He made me stay to supper. It was a cheery repast. As though to
make amends for his failure to respond when I knocked at his
door, Max overwhelmed me with attention

We were eating cold sorrel soup, prepared in the old Ghetto way,
with cream, bits of boiled egg, cucumber, and scallions

"How do you like it?" he asked

"Delicious! And the genuine article, too."

"'The genuine article'!" he mocked me. "What's the use praising it
when you eat it like a bird? What's the matter with you? Are you
bashful? Fire away, old man!" Then to his wife: "Why do you keep
quiet, Dvorah? Why don't you tell him to eat like a man and not
like a bird?"

"Maybe he doesn't care for my cooking," she jested, demurely

"Why, why," I replied. "The sorrel soup is fit for a king."

"You mean for a president," Max corrected me. "We are in
America, not in Europe."

"How do you know the President of the United States would care
for a plate of cold sorrel soup?"

"And how do you know a king would?" "If you care for it, I am
satisfied," the hostess said to me

"I certainly do. I haven't eaten anything like it since I left home," I
replied

"Feed him well, Dvorah. Now is your chance. He will soon be a
millionaire, don't you know. Then he won't bother about calling
on poor people like us."

"But I have said the sorrel soup is fit for a king, and a king has
many millions," I rejoined. "I shall always be glad to come,
provided Lucy and Dannie have no objection." "You remember
their names, don't you?" Mrs. Margolis said, beamingly. "You
certainly have a good memory."

"Who else should have one?" her husband chimed in. "I have told
you he was going to study to be a doctor or a lawyer. Lucy, did
you hear what uncle said? If you let him in he will come to see us
even when he is worth a million. What do you say? Will you let
him in?"