Rudyard Kipling - "Kim"

James Legge - "THE CHINESE CLASSICS (PROLEGOMENA)"

Mary C.E. Wemyss - "The Professional Aunt"

Kathleen Norris - "Harriet and the Piper"

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




I moved out according to her program. I came home at io the first
evening.

My double room, with its great arm-chair, carpets, bookcase,
imposing lace curtains, and the genteel silence of the street
outside, was a prison to me.

I attempted to read, but there was a lump in my throat and the lines
swam before me

I went out, roamed about the streets, dropped in at a Hungarian
café, took another ramble, and returned to my room

I tossed about on my great double bed. I sat up in front of one of
my two windows, gazing at a street-lamp. It was not solely Dora,
but also Lucy and Dannie that I missed. Only the image of Max
now aroused hostile feelings in me

Max called at my shop the very next day. The sight of him cut me
to the quick. I received him in morose silence

"What's the matter? What's the matter?" he inquired, with pained
amazement.

"What did you two quarrel about?"

I made no answer. His presence oppressed me. My surly reticence
was no mere acting. But I knew that he misinterpreted it into grim
resentment of Dora's sally, as though I said, "Your wife's conduct
had better be left undiscussed."

"What nonsense! She charged you too much, did she? Is that the
way it all began? Did she insult you? Well, women-folk are liable
to flare up, you know. Tell me all about it. I'll straighten it out
between you. The children miss you awfully. Come, don't be a
fool, Levinsky. Who ever took the words of a woman seriously?
What did she say that you should take it so hard?"

"You had better ask her," I replied, with a well-acted frown

"Ask her! She gets wild when I do. I never saw her so wild. She
thinks you insulted her first. Well, she is a woman, but you aren't
one, are you? Come to the house this evening, will you?"

"That's out of the question."

"Then meet me somewhere else. I want to have a talk with you. It's
all so foolish." I pleaded important other engagements, but he
insisted that I should meet him later in the evening, and I had to
make the appointment. I promised to be at a Canal Street café on
condition that he did not mention the disagreeable episode nor
offer to effect a reconciliation between Dora and myself

"You're a tough customer. As tough as Dora," he said

When I came to the café, at about 11, I found him waiting for me.
He kept his promise about avoiding the subject of Dora, but he
talked of women, which jarred on me inordinately now. His
lecherous fibs and philosophy made him literally unbearable to
me. To turn the conversation I talked shop, and this bored him.

About a week later he called on me again. He informed me that
Dora had taken a new apartment up in Harlem, where the rooms
were even more modern and cheaper than on Clinton Street

"I wouldn't mind staying where we are," he observed. "But you
know how women are. Everybody is moving up-town, so she must
move, too."

My face hardened, as if to say: "Why will you speak of your wife?
You know I can't bear to hear of her." At the same time I said to
myself: "Poor Dora! She must have found it awful to live in the
old place, now that I am no longer there."

His next visit at my shop took place after a lapse of three or four
weeks.

He descanted upon his new home and the Harlem dwellings in
general, and I made an effort to show him cordial attention and to
bear myself generally as though there were no cause for
estrangement between us, but I failed

At last he said, resentfully: "What's the matter with you? Why are
you so sour? If you and Dora have had a falling out, is that any
reason why you and I should not be good friends?" "Why, why?" I
protested. "Who says I am sour?"

We parted on very friendly terms. But it was a long time before I
saw him again, and then under circumstances that were a
disagreeable surprise to me



BOOK X ON THE ROAD CHAPTER I WEEKS went by. My
desolation seemed to be growing in excruciating intensity.

From time to time, when I chanced to recall some trait or trick of
Dora's, her person would come back to me with special vividness,
smiting me with sudden cruelty. The very odor of her flesh would
grip my consciousness. At such moments my agony would be so
great that I seemed to be on the brink of a physical collapse.
During intervals there was a steady gnawing pain. It was as though
the unrelenting tortures of a dull toothache had settled somewhere
in the region of my heart or stomach, I knew not exactly where. I
recognized the pang as an old acquaintance. It had the same flavor
as the terrors of my tantalizing love for Matilda

My shop had lost all meaning to me. I vaguely longed to flee from
myself

There was plenty to do in the shop and all sorts of outside
appointments to keep, not to speak of my brief trips as traveling
salesman. To all of which I attended with automatic regularity,
with listless doggedness. The union was a constant source of
worry. In addition, there was a hitch in my relations with the
"marriage broker." But even my worrying seemed to be done
automatically

Having forfeited the invaluable services of Chaikin, who now gave
all his time to his newly established factory, I filled the gap with
all sorts of makeshifts and contrivances. An employee of one of
the big shops, a tailor, stole designs for me. These were used in
my shop by a psalm-muttering old tailor with a greenish-white
beard full of snuff, who would have become a Chaikin if he had
been twenty years younger. Later I hired the services of a newly
graduated cloak-designer who would drop in of an afternoon.
Officially the old man was my foreman, but in reality he acted as
a guiding spirit to that designer and one of my sample-makers, as
well as foreman

I was forming new connections, obtaining orders from new
sources. Things were coming my way in spite of myself, as it
were. There was so much work and bustle that it became next to
impossible to manage it all single-handed.

The need of a bookkeeper, at least, was felt more keenly every day.
But I simply lacked the initiative to get one

While I was thus cudgeling my brains, hovering about my shop,
meeting people, signing checks, reading or writing letters, that
dull pain would keep nibbling, nibbling, nibbling at me. At times,
during some of those violent onslaughts I would seek the partial
privacy of my second-hand desk for the express purpose of
abandoning myself to the tortures of my helpless love. There is
pleasure in this kind of pain. It was as though I were two men at
once, one being in the toils of hopeless love and the other filled
with the joy of loving, all injunctions and barriers notwithstanding

One October evening as I passed through the Grand Central
station on my way from an Albany train I was hailed with an
impulsive, "Hello, Levinsky!"

It was Bender, my old-time evening-school instructor. I had not
seen him for more than three years, during which time he had
developed a pronounced tendency to baldness, though his apple
face had lost none of its roseate freshness. He looked spruce as
ever, his clothes spick and span, his "four-in-hand" tastefully tied,
his collar and cuffs immaculate. His hazel eyes, however, had a
worn and wistful look in them.

"Quite an American, I declare," he exclaimed, with patronizing
admiration and pride, as who should say, "My work has borne
fruit, hasn't it?"

"Well, how is the world treating you?" he questioned me, after
having looked me over more carefully. "You seem to be doing
well."

When he heard that I was "trying to manufacture cloaks and suits"
he surveyed me once again, with novel interest

"Are you really? That's good. Glad to hear you're getting on in the
world."

"Do you remember the two books you gave me--Dombey and Son
and the little dictionary?"

I told him how much good they had done me and he complimented
me on my English

He wanted to know more about my business, and I sketched for
him my struggles during the first year and the progress I was now
making. My narrative was interspersed with such phrases as, "my
growing credit," "my "in my desk," "dinner with a buyer from
Ohio," all of which I uttered with great self-consciousness. He
congratulated me upon my success and upon my English again.
Whereupon I exuberantly acknowledged the gratitude I owed him
for the special pains he had taken with me when I was his pupil

He still taught evening school during the winter months. When I
asked about his work at the custom-house, which had been his
chief occupation three years before, he answered evasively. By
little and little, however, he threw off his reserve and told, at first
with studied flippancy and then with frank bitterness, how "the
new Republican broom swept clean," and how he had lost his job
because of his loyalty to the Democratic party. He dwelt on the
civil-service reform of President Cleveland, charging the
Republicans with "offensive partisanship," a Cleveland phrase
then as new as four-in-hand neckties. And in the next breath he
proceeded to describe certain injustices (of which he apparently
considered himself a victim) within the fold of his own party. His
immediate ambition was to obtain a "permanent appointment" as
teacher of a public day school

He was a singular surprise to me. Formerly I had looked up to him
as infinitely my superior, whereas now he struck me as being
piteously beneath me

"Can't you think of something better?" I said, with mild contempt.
Then, with a sudden inspiration, I exclaimed: "I have a scheme for
you, Mr.

Bender! Suppose you try to sell cloaks? There's lots of money in
it."

The outcome of our conversation was that he agreed to spend a
week or two in my shop preparatory to soliciting orders for me, at
first in the city and then on the road

Our interview lasted a little over an hour, but that hour produced a
world of difference in our relations. He had met me with a
patronizing, "Hello, Levinsky." When we parted there was a note
of gratitude and of something like obsequiousness in his voice

CHAPTER II ON a Friday afternoon, during the first week of
Bender's connection with my establishment, as he and I were
crossing a side-street on our way from luncheon, I ran into the
loosely built, bulky figure of Max Margolis. Max and I paused
with a start, both embarrassed. I greeted him complaisantly

"And how are you?" he said, looking at the lower part of my face

I introduced my companion and after a brief exchange of
trivialities we were about to part, when Max detained me

"Wait. What's your hurry?" he said. "There is something I want to
speak to you about. In fact, it was to your shop I was going."

His manner disturbed me. "Were you? Come on, then," I said

"Hold on. What's your hurry? We might as well talk here."

Bender tipped his hat to him and moved away, leaving us to
ourselves

"What is it?" I repeated, with studied indifference

"Well, I should like to have a plain, frank talk with you, Levinsky,"
he answered. "There is something that is bothering my mind. I
never thought I should speak to you about it, but at last I decided
to see you and have it out. I was going to call on you and to ask
you to go out with me, because you have no private office."

There was a nervous, under-dog kind of air about him. His damp
lips revolted me

"But what is it? What are all these preliminaries for? Come to the
point and be done with it. What is it?" Then I asked, with
well-simulated indignation, "Your wife has not persuaded you that
I have cheated her out of some money, has she?"

"Why, no. Not at all," he answered, looking at the pavement. "It
isn't that at all. The thing is driving me mad."

"But what is it?" I shouted, in a rage

"'S-sh!" he said, nervously. "If you are going to be excited like that
it's no use speaking at all. Perhaps you are doing it on purpose to
get out of it."

Get out of what? What on earth are you prating about?" I
demanded, with a fine display of perplexity and sarcasm

We were attracting attention. Bystanders were eying us. An old
woman, leading a boy by the hand, even paused to watch us, and
then her example was followed by some others

"Come on, for God's sake!" he implored me. "All I want is a
friendly talk with you. We might talk in your shop, but you have
no private office."

"Whether I have one or not is none of your business" I retorted,
with irrelevant resentment

We walked on. He proposed to take me to one of the ball and
meeting-room places in which he did business, and I acquiesced

A few minutes later we were seated on a long cushion of red plush
covering one of the benches in a long, narrow meeting-hall. We
were close to the window, in the full glare of daylight. A few feet
off the room was in semi-darkness which, still farther off, lapsed
into night. As the plush cushions stretched their lengths into the
deepening gloom their live red died away. There was a touch of
weirdness to the scene, adding to the oppressiveness of the
interview

"I want to ask you a plain question," he began, in a strange voice.
"And I want you to answer it frankly. I assure you I sha'n't be
angry. On the contrary, I shall be much obliged to you if you tell
me the whole truth.

Tell me what happened between you and Dora." I was about to
burst into laughter, but I felt that it would not do. Before I knew
how to act he added, with a sort of solemnity: "She has confessed
everything."

"Confessed everything!" I exclaimed, with a feigned compound of
hauteur, indignation, and amusement, playing for time

"That's what she did."

A frenzy of hate took hold of me. I panted to be away from him, to
be out of this room, semi-darkness, red cushions, and all, and let
the future take care of itself. And so, jumping to my feet, I said, in
a fury: "You always were a liar and an idiot. I don't want to have
anything to do with you." With which I made for the door

"Oh, don't be excited. Don't go yet, Levinsky dear, please," he
implored, hysterically, running after me. "I have the best of
feelings for you. May the things that I wish you come to me.
Levinsky! Dear friend! Darling!"

"What do you want of me?" I demanded, with quiet rancor,
pausing at the door and half opening it, without moving on

"If you tell me it isn't true I'll believe you, even if she did confess. I
don't know if she meant what she said. If only you were not
excited! I want to tell you everything, everything."

I laughed sardonically. My desire to escape the ordeal gave way to
strange curiosity. He seemed to be aware of it, for he boldly shut
the door. lie begged me to take a seat again, and I did, a short
distance from the door, where the gloom was almost thick enough
to hide our faces from each other's view

"Why, you are simply crazy, Max!" I said. "You probably bothered
the life out of her and she 'confessed' to put an end to it all. You
might as well have made her confess to murder."

"That's what she says now. But I don't know. When she confessed
she confessed. I could see it was the truth."

"You are crazy, Max! It is all nonsense. Ab-solutely."

"Is it?" he demanded, straining to make out the expression of my
face through the dusk. "Do assure me it is all untrue. Take pity,
dear friend. Do take pity."

"How can I assure you, seeing that you have taken that crazy
notion into your head and don't seem to be able to get rid of it?
Come, throw that stuff out of your mind!" I scolded him,
mentorially. "It's enough to make one sick. Come to reason. Don't
be a fool. I am no saint, but in this case you are absolutely
mistaken. Why, Dora is such an absolutely respectable woman, a
fellow would never dare have the slightest kind of fun with her.
The idea!"--with a little laugh. "You are a baby, Max. Upon my
word, you are.

Dora and I had some words over my bill and--well, she insulted me
and I wouldn't take it from her. That's all there was to it. Why,
look here, Max.

With your knowledge of men and women, do you mean to say that
something was going on under your very nose and you never
noticed anything? Don't you see how ridiculous it is?"

"Well, I believe you, Levinsky," he said, lukewarmly. "Now that
you assure me you don't know anything about it, I believe you. I
know you are not an enemy of mine. I have always considered you
a true friend. You know I have.

That's why I am having this talk with you. I am feeling better
already. But you have no idea what I have been through the last
few weeks. She is so dear to me. I love her so." His voice broke

I was seized with a feeling of mixed abomination and sympathy

"You are a child," I said, taking him by the hand. As I did so every
vestige of hostility faded out of me. My heart went out to him.
"Come, Max, pull yourself together! Be a man!"

"I have always known you to be my friend. I believe all you say. I
first began to think of this trouble a few days after you moved out.
But at first I made no fuss about it. I thought she was not well. I
came to see you a few times and you did not behave like a fellow
who was guilty."

I gave a silent little laugh

He related certain intimate incidents which had aroused his first
twinge of suspicion. He was revoltingly frank

"I spoke to her plainly," he said. "'What's the matter with you,
Dora?' I asked her. 'Don't you like me any more?' And she got wild
and said she hated me like poison. She never talked to me like
that before. It was a different Dora. She was always downhearted,
cranky. The slightest thing made her yell or cry with tears. It got
worse and worse. Oh, it was terrible! We quarreled twenty times a
day and the children cried and I thought I was going mad.

Maybe she was just missing you. You were like one of the family,
don't you know. And, well, you are a good-looking fellow,
Levinsky, and she is only a woman."

"Nonsense!" I returned, the hot color mounting to my cheeks. "I
am sure Dora had not a bad thought in her mind--"

"But she confessed," he interrupted me. "She said she was crazy
for you and I could do as I pleased."

"But you know she did not mean it. She said it just for spite, just to
make you feel bad, because you were quarreling with her."

He quoted a brutal question which he had once put to her
concerning her relations with me, and then he quoted Dora as
answering: "Yes, yes, yes! And if you don't like it you can sue me
for divorce."

I laughed, making my merriment as realistic as I could. "It's all
ridiculous nonsense, Max," I said. "You made life miserable to her
and she was ready to say anything. She may have been worried
over something, and you imagined all sorts of things. Maybe it
was something about her education that worried her. You know
how ambitious she is to be educated, and how hard she takes these
things."

Max shook his head pensively

"I am sure it is as I say," I continued. "Dora is a peculiar woman.
The trouble is, you judge her as if she were like the other women
you meet. Hers is a different character."

This point apparently interested him

"She is always taken up with her thoughts," I pursued. "She is not
so easy to understand, anyway. I lived over a year in your house,
and yet I'll be hanged if I know what kind of woman she is. Of
course you're her husband, but still--can you say you know what
she is thinking of most of the time?"

"There is something in what you say," he assented, half-heartedly

As we rose to go he said, timidly: "There is only one more question
I want to ask of you, Levinsky. You won't be angry, will you?"
"What is it?" I demanded, with a good-natured laugh. "What is
bothering your head?"

"I mean if you meet her now, sometimes?"

"Now, look here, Max. You are simply crazy," I said, earnestly. "I
swear to you by my mother that I have not seen Dora since I
moved out of your house, and that all your suspicions are
nonsense" (to keep the memory of my mother from desecration I
declared mutely that my oath referred to the truthful part of my
declaration only-- that is, exclusively to the fact that I no longer
met Dora)

"I believe you, I believe you, Levinsky," he rejoined. We parted
more than cordially, Max promising to call on me again and to
spend an evening with me

I was left in a singular state of mind. I was eaten up with
compunction, and yet the pain of my love reasserted itself with the
tantalizing force of two months before

Max never called on me again

CHAPTER III AS a salesman Bender proved a dismal failure, but I
retained him in my employ as a bookkeeper and a sort of general
supervisor. I could offer him only ten dollars a week, with a
promise to raise his salary as soon as I could afford it, and he
accepted the job "temporarily." As general supervisor under my
orders he developed considerable efficiency, although he lacked
initiative and his naïveté was a frequent cause of annoyance to
me. I found him spotlessly honest and devoted

I quickly raised his salary to fifteen dollars a week

He was the embodiment of method and precision and he often
nagged me for my deficiency in these qualities. Sometimes these
naggings of his or some display of poor judgment on his part
would give rise to a tiff between us.

Otherwise we got along splendidly. We were supposed to be great
chums. In reality, however, I would freely order him about, while
he would address me with a familiarity which had an echo of
respectful distance to it

With him to take care of my place when I was away, it became
possible for me gradually to extend my territory as traveling
salesman till it reached Nebraska and Louisiana. Thus, having
failed as a drummer himself, he made up for it by enabling me to
act as one

He had been less than a year with me when his salary was twenty
dollars

Charles Eaton, the Pennsylvanian of the hemispherical forehead
and bushy eyebrows who had given me my first lesson in
restaurant manners, was now my sponsor at the beginning of my
career as a full-fledged traveling salesman.

He took a warm interest in me. Having spent many years on the
road himself, more particularly in the Middle West and Canada,
he had formed many a close friendship among retailers, so he now
gave me some valuable letters of intro duction to merchants in
several cities

When I asked him for suggestions to guide me on the road he
looked perplexed

"Oh, well, I guess you'll do well," he said

"Still, you have had so much experience, Mr. Eaton."

"Well, I really don't know. It's all a matter of common sense, I
guess. And, after all, the merchandise is the thing, the
merchandise and the price."

He added a word or two about the futility of laying down rules,
and that was all I could get out of him. That a man of few words
like him should have succeeded as a salesman was a riddle to me.
I subsequently realized that his reticence accentuated an effect of
solidity and helped to inspire confidence in the few words which
he did utter. But at the time in question I was sure that the "gift of
the gab" was an indispensable element of success in a salesman.

Indeed, one of my faults as a drummer, during that period at least,
was that I was apt to talk too much. I would do so partly for the
sheer lust of hearing myself use the jargon of the market, but
chiefly, of course, from eagerness to make a sale, from
over-insistence. I was too exuberant in praising my own goods and
too harsh in criticising those of my competitors.

Altogether there was more emphasis than dignity in my appeal.

One day, as I was haranguing the proprietor of a small department
store in a Michigan town, he suddenly interrupted me by placing a
friendly hand on my shoulder. His name was Henry Gans. He was
a stout man of fifty, with the stamp of American birth on a strong
Jewish face

"Let me give you a bit of advice, young man," he said, with
paternal geniality. "You won't mind, will you?"

I uttered a perplexed, "Why, no"; and he proceeded: "If you want
to make good as a salesman, observe these two rules: Don't knock
the other fellow and don't talk too much."

For a minute I stood silent, utterly nonplussed. Then, pulling
myself together, I said, with a bow: "Thank you, sir. Thank you
very much. I am only a beginner, and only a few years in the
country. I know I have still a great deal to learn. It's very kind of
you to point out my mistakes to The gay light of Gans's eye gave
way to a look of heart-to-heart earnestness

"It ain't nice to run down your competitor," he said. "Besides, it
don't pay. It makes a bad impression on the man you are trying to
get an order from."

We had a long conversation, gradually passing from business to
affairs of a personal nature. He was interested in my early
struggles in America, in my mode of living, in the state of my
business, and I told him the whole story.

He seemed to be well disposed toward me, but it was evident that
he did not take my "one-horse" establishment seriously, and I left
his store without an order. I was berating myself for having
revealed the true size of my business. Somehow my failure in this
instance galled me with special poignancy. I roamed around the
streets, casting about for some scheme to make good my mistake