Henry Mackenzie - "The Man of Feeling"

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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




Still, the trustees, and several others who were responsible for the
coming of the pug-nosed singer, persisted in speaking of him as "a
greater tenor than Jean de Rezske," and my prospective
father-in-law was a trustee, and a good-natured man to boot, so he
had compassion for him

"In the old country when we meet a new-comer we only say, 'Peace
to you,'" I remarked to the cantor, gaily. "Here we say this and
something else, besides. We ask him how he likes America."

"But I have not yet seen it," the cantor returned, with a broad smile
in which his pug nose seemed to grow in size

I told him the threadbare joke of American newspaper reporters
boarding an incoming steamer at Sandy Hook and asking some
European celebrity how he likes America hours before he has set
foot on its soil

"That's what we call 'hurry up,'" Kaplan remarked

"That means quick, doesn't it?" the cantor asked, with another
broad smile

"You're picking up English rather fast," I jested

"He has not only a fine voice, but a fine head, too," Kaplan put in

"I know what 'all right' means, too," the cantor laughed. I thought
there was servility in his laugh, and I ascribed it to the lukewarm
reception with which he had met. I was touched We talked of
Antomir, and although a conversation of this kind was nothing
new to me, yet what he said of the streets, market-places, the
bridge, the synagogues, and of some of the people of the town
interested me inexpressibly

Presently the service was begun--not by the imported singer, but by
an amateur from among the worshipers, the service on a Passover
evening not being considered important enough to be conducted
by a professional cantor of consequence

My heart was all in Antomir, in the good old Antomir of
synagogues and Talmud scholars and old-fashioned marriages, not
of college students, revolutionists, and Matildas

When the service was over I stepped up close to the Holy Ark and
recited the Prayer for the Dead, in chorus with several other men
and boys. As I cast a glance at my "memorial candle" my mother
loomed saintly through its flame. I beheld myself in her arms, a
boy of four, on our way to the synagogue, where I was to be taught
to parrot the very words that I was now saying for her spirit

The Prayer for the Dead was at an end. "A good holiday! A merry
holiday!" rang on all sides, as the slender crowd streamed
chatteringly toward the door

Mr. Kaplan, the cantor, and several other men, clustering together,
lingered to bandy reminiscences of Antomir, interspersing them
with "bits of law."

CHAPTER IX The Kaplans occupied a large, old house on Henry
Street that had been built at a period when the neighborhood was
considered the best in the city. While Kaplan and I were taking off
our overcoats in the broad, carpeted, rather dimly lighted hall, a
dark-eyed girl appeared at the head of a steep stairway

"Hello, Dave! You're a good boy," she shouted, joyously, as she ran
down to meet me with coquettish complacency

She had regular features, and her face wore an expression of ease
and self-satisfaction. Her dark eyes were large and pretty, and
altogether she was rather good-looking. Indeed, there seemed to
be no reason why she should not be decidedly pretty, but she was
not. Perhaps it was because of that self-satisfied air of hers, the air
of one whom nothing in the world could startle or stir.
Temperamentally she reminded me somewhat of Miss
Kalmanovitch, but she was the better-looking of the two. I was not
in love with her, but she certainly was not repulsive to me

"Good holiday, dad! Good holiday, Dave!" she saluted us in
Yiddish, throwing out her chest and squaring her shoulders as she
reached us

She was born in New York and had graduated at a public
grammar-school and English was the only language which she
spoke like one born to speak it, and yet her Yiddish greeting was
precisely what it would have been had she been born and bred in
Antomir

Her "Good holiday, dad. Good holiday, Dave!" went straight to my
heart

"Well, I've brought him to you, haven't I? Are you pleased?" her
father said, with affectionate grimness, in Yiddish

"Oh, you're a dandy dad. You're just sweet," she returned, in
English, putting up her red lips as if he were her baby. And this,
too, went to my heart

When her father had gone to have his shoes changed for slippers
and before her mother came down from her bedroom, where she
was apparently dressing for supper, Fanny slipped her arm around
me and I kissed her lips and eyes

A chuckle rang out somewhere near by. Standing in the doorway
of the back parlor, Mefisto-like, was Mary, Fanny's
twelve-year-old sister

"Shame!" she said, gloatingly

"The nasty thing!" Fanny exclaimed, half gaily, half in anger

"You're nasty yourself," returned Mary, making faces at her sister

"Shut up or I'll knock your head off."

"Stop quarreling, kids," I intervened. Then, addressing myself to
Mary, "Can you spell 'eavesdropping'?"

Mary laughed

"Never mind laughing," I insisted. "Do you know what
eavesdropping means? Is it a nice thing to do? Anyhow, when
you're as big as Fanny and you have a sweetheart, won't you let
him kiss you?" As I said this I took Fanny's hand tenderly

"She has sweethearts already," said Fanny. "She is running around
with three boys."

"I ain't," Mary protested, pouting.

"Well, three sweethearts means no sweetheart at all," I remarked

Fanny and I went into the front parlor, a vast, high-ceiled room, as
large as the average four-room flat in the "modern
apartment-house" that had recently been completed on the next
block. It was drearily too large for the habits of the East Side of
my time, depressingly out of keeping with its sense of home. It
had lanky pink-and-gold furniture and a heavy bright carpet, all of
which had a forbidding effect. It was as though the chairs and the
sofa had been placed there, not for use, but for storage. Nor was
there enough furniture to give the room an air of being inhabited,
the six pink-and-gold pieces and the marble-topped center-table
losing themselves in spaces full of gaudy desolation

"She's awful saucy," said Fanny.

I caught her in my arms. "I have not three sweethearts. I have only
one, and that's a real one," I cooed

"Only one? Really and truly?" she demanded, playfully. She
gathered me to her plump bosom, planting a deep, slow, sensuous
kiss on my lips

I cast a side-glance to ascertain if Mary was not spying upon us

"Don't be uneasy," Fanny whispered. "She won't dare. We can kiss
all we want."

I thought she was putting it in a rather matter-of-fact way, but I
kissed her with passion, all the same

"Dearest! If you knew how happy I am," I murmured

"Are you really? Oh, I don't believe you," she jested,
self-sufficiently.

"You're just pretending, that's all. Let me kiss your sweet mouthie
again."

She did, and then, breaking away at the sound of her mother's
lumbering steps, she threw out her bosom with an upward jerk, a
trick she had which I disliked

Ten minutes later the whole family, myself included, were seated
around a large oval table in the basement dining-room. Besides
the members already known to the reader, there was Fanny's
mother, a corpulent woman with a fat, diabetic face and large,
listless eyes, and Fanny's brother, Rubie, a boy with intense
features, one year younger than Mary. Rubie was the youngest of
five children, the oldest two, daughters, being married

Mr. Kaplan was in his skull-cap, while I wore my dark-brown
derby.

Everything in this house was strictly orthodox and as old-fashioned
as the American environment would permit

That there was not a trace of leavened bread in the house, its place
being taken by thin, flat, unleavened "matzos," and that the repast
included "matzo balls," wine, mead, and other accessories of a
Passover meal, is a matter of course

Mr. Kaplan was wrapped up in his family, and on this occasion,
though he presided with conscious dignity, he was in one of his
best domestic moods, talkative, and affectionately facetious. The
children were the real masters of his house

Watching his wife nag Rubie because he would not accept another
matzo ball, Mr. Kaplan said: "Don't worry, Malkah. Your matzo
balls are delicious, even if your 'only son' won't do justice to them.
Aren't they, David?"

"They certainly are," I answered. "What is more, they have the
genuine Antomir taste to them."

"Hear that, Fanny?" Mr. Kaplan said to my betrothed. "You had
better learn to make matzo balls exactly like these. He likes
everything that smells of Antomir, you know." "That's all right,"
said Malkah. "Fanny is a good housekeeper. May I have as good a
year."

"It's a good thing you say it," her husband jested. "Else David
might break the engagement."

"Let him," said Fanny, with a jerk of her bosom and a theatrical
glance at me. "I really don't know how to make matzo balls, and
Passover is nearly over, so there's no time for mamma to show me
how to do it."

"I'll do so next year," her mother said, with an affectionate smile
that kindled life in her diabetic eyes. "The two of you will then
have to pass Passover with us."

"I accept the invitation at once," I said

"Provided you attend the seder, too," remarked Kaplan, referring to
the elaborate and picturesque ceremony attending the first two
suppers of the great festival

I had been expected to partake of those ceremonial repasts on the
first and second nights of this Passover, but had been unavoidably
kept away from the city. Kaplan had resented it, and even now, as
he spoke of the next year's seder, there was reproach in his voice.

"I will, I will," I said, ardently.

"One mustn't do business on a seder night. It isn't right."

"Give it to him, pa!" Fanny cut in.

"I am not joking," Kaplan persisted. "One has got to be a Jew.
Excuse me, David, for speaking like that, but you re going to be as
good as a son of mine and I have a right to talk to you in this
way."

"Why, of course, you have!" I answered, with filial docility

His lecture bored me, but it did me good, too. It was sweet to hear
myself called "as good as a son" by this man of Talmudic
education who was at the same time a man of substance and of
excellent family

The chicken was served. My intended wife ate voraciously, biting
lustily and chewing with gusto. The sight of it jarred on me
somewhat, but I overruled myself. "It's all right," I thought. "She's
a healthy girl. She'll make me a strong mate, and she'll bear me
healthy children."

I had a temptation to take her in my arms and kiss her. "I am not in
love with her, and yet I am so happy," I thought. "Oh, love isn't
essential to happiness. Not at all. Our old generation is right."

Fanny's reading, which was only an occasional performance, was
confined to the cheapest stories published. Even the popular
novels of the day, the "best sellers," seemed to be beyond her
depth. Her intellectual range was not much wider than that of her
old-fashioned mother, whose literary attainments were restricted
to the reading of the Yiddish Commentary on the Pentateuch. She
often interrupted me or her mother; everybody except her father.
But all this seemed to be quite natural and fitting. "She is
expected to be a wife, a mother, and a housekeeper," I reflected,
"and that she will know how to be. Everything else is nonsense. I
don't want to discuss Spencer with her, do I?"

Kaplan quoted the opening words of a passage in the Talmud
bearing upon piety as the bulwark of happiness. I took it up,
finishing the passage for him

"See?" he said to his wife. "I have told you he remembers his
Talmud pretty well, haven't I?"

"When a man has a good head he has a good head," she returned,
radiantly

Rubie went to a public school, but he spent three or four hours
every afternoon at an old-fashioned Talmudic academy, or
"yeshivah." There were two such "yeshivahs" on the East Side,
and they were attended by boys of the most orthodox families in
the Ghetto. I had never met such boys before. That an American
school-boy should read Talmud seemed a joke to me. I could not
take Rubie's holy studies seriously. As we now sat at the table I
banteringly asked him about the last page he had read. He
answered my question, and at his father's command he ran
up-stairs, into the back parlor, where stood two huge bookcases
filled with glittering folios of the Talmud and other volumes of
holy lore, and came back with one containing the page he had
named

"Find it and let David see what you can do," his father said

Rubie complied, reading the text and interpreting it in Yiddish
precisely as I should have done when I was eleven years old. He
even gesticulated and swayed backward and forward as I used to
do. To complete the picture, his mother, watching him, beamed as
my mother used to do when she watched me reading at the
Preacher's Synagogue or at home in our wretched basement. I was
deeply affected

"He's all right!" I said

"He's a loafer, just the same," his father said, gaily. "If he had as
much appetite for his Talmud as he has for his school-books he
would really be all right." "What do you want of him?" Malkah
interceded. "Doesn't he work hard enough as it is? He hardly has
an hour's rest."

"There you have it! I didn't speak respectfully enough of her 'only
son.' I beg your pardon, Malkah," Mr. Kaplan said, facetiously

The wedding had been set for one of the half-holidays included in
the Feast of Tabernacles, about six months later. Mrs. Kaplan said
something about her plans concerning the event. Fanny objected.
Her mother insisted, and it looked like an altercation, when the
head of the family called them to order

"And where are you going for your honeymoon, Fanny?" asked
Mary

"That's none of your business," her sister retorted

"She's stuck up because she's going to be married," Mary jeered

"Shut your mouth," her father growled

"Do you know my idea of a honeymoon?" said I. "That is, if it were
possible--if Russia didn't have that accursed government of hers.
We should take a trip to Antomir." "Wouldn't that be lovely!" said
Fanny. "We would stop in Paris, wouldn't we?"

Fanny and her mother resumed their discussion of the preparations
for the wedding. I scarcely listened, yet I was thrilled. I gazed at
Fanny, trying to picture her as the mother of my first child. "If it's
a girl she'll be named for mother, of course," I mused. I reflected
with mortification that my mother's name could not be left in its
original form, but would have to be Americanized, and for the
moment this seemed to be a matter of the gravest concern to me

My attitude toward Fanny and our prospective marriage was
primitive enough, and yet our engagement had an ennobling effect
on me. I was in a lofty mood.

My heart sang of motives higher than the mere feathering of my
own nest. The vision of working for my wife and children
somehow induced a yearning for altruism in a broader sense.
While free from any vestige of religion, in the ordinary meaning
of the word, I was tingling with a religious ecstasy that was based
on a sense of public duty. The Synagogue of the Sons of Antomir
seemed to represent not a creed, but unselfishness. I donated
generously to it. Also, I subscribed a liberal sum to an East Side
hospital of which Kaplan was a member, and to other institutions.
The sum I gave to the hospital was so large that it made a stir, and
a conservative Yiddish daily printed my photograph and a short
sketch of my life. I thought of the promise I had given Naphtali,
before leaving Antomir, to send him a "ship ticket." I had thought
of it many times before, but I had never even sought to discover
his whereabouts. This time, however, I throbbed with a firm
resolution to get his address, and, in case he was poor, to bring him
over and liberally provide for his future

My wedding loomed as the beginning of a new era in my life. It
appealed to my imagination as a new birth, like my coming to
America. I looked forward to it with mixed awe and bliss

Three or four months later, however, something happened that
played havoc with that feeling



BOOK XII MISS TEVKIN CHAPTER I ON a Saturday morning
in August I took a train for Tannersville, Catskill Mountains,
where the Kaplan family had a cottage. I was to stay with them
over Sunday. I had been expected to be there the day before, but
had been detained, August being part of our busiest season. While
in the smoking-car it came over me that from Kaplan's point of
view my journey was a flagrant violation of the Sabbath and that
it was sure to make things awkward.

Whether my riding on Saturday would actually offend his religious
sensibilities or not (for in America one gets used to seeing such
sins committed even by the faithful), it was certain to offend his
sense of the respect I owed him. And so, to avoid a sullen
reception I decided to stop overnight in another Catskill town and
not to make my appearance at Tannersville until the following day

The insignificant change was pregnant with momentous results

It was lunch-time when I alighted from the train, amid a hubbub of
gay voices. Women and children were greeting their husbands and
fathers who had come from the city to join them for the week-end.
I had never been to the mountains before, nor practically ever
taken a day's vacation. It was so full of ozone, so full of
health-giving balm, it was almost overpowering. I was inhaling it
in deep, intoxicating gulps. It gave me a pleasure so keen it
seemed to verge on pain. It was so unlike the air I had left in the
sweltering city that the place seemed to belong to another planet

I stopped at the Rigi Kulm House. There were several other hotels
or boarding-houses in the village, and all of them except one were
occupied by our people, the Rigi Kulm being the largest and most
expensive hostelry in the neighborhood. lt was crowded, and I had
to content myself with sleeping-accommodations in one of the
near-by cottages, in which the hotel-keeper hired rooms for his
overflow business, taking my meals in the hotel

The Rigi Kulm stood at the end of the village and my cottage was
across the main country road from it. Both were on high ground.
Viewed from the veranda of the hotel, the village lay to the right
and the open country--a fascinating landscape of meadowland,
timbered hills, and a brook that lost itself in a grove--to the left.
The mountains rose in two ranges, one in front of the hotel and
one in the rear

The bulk of the boarders at the Rigi Kulm was made up of families
of cloak-manufacturers, shirt-manufacturers,
ladies'-waist-manufacturers, cigar-manufacturers, clothiers,
furriers, jewelers, leather-goods men, real-estate men, physicians,
dentists, lawyers--in most cases people who had blossomed out
into nabobs in the course of the last few years. The crowd was
ablaze with diamonds, painted cheeks, and bright-colored silks. It
was a babel of blatant self-consciousness, a miniature of the
parvenu smugness that had spread like wild-fire over the country
after a period of need and low spirits.

In addition to families who were there for the whole season--that
is, from the Fourth of July to the first Monday in October--the
hotel contained a considerable number of single young people, of
both sexes--salesmen, stenographers, bookkeepers,
librarians--who came for a fortnight's vacation.

These were known as "two-weekers." They occupied tiny rooms,
usually two girls or two men in a room. Each of these girls had a
large supply of dresses and shirt-waists of the latest style, and
altogether the two weeks' vacation ate up, in many cases, the
savings of months

To be sure, the "two-weekers" of the gentle sex were not the only
marriageable young women in the place. They had a number of
heiresses to compete with

I was too conspicuous a figure in the needle industries for my
name to be unknown to the guests of a hotel like the Rigi Kulm
House. Moreover, several of the people I found there were my
personal acquaintances. One of these was Nodelman's cousin,
Mrs. Kalch, or Auntie Yetta, the gaunt, childless woman of the
solemn countenance and the gay disposition, of the huge gold
teeth, and the fingers heavily laden with diamonds. I had not seen
her for months.

As the lessee of the hotel marched me into his great dining-room
she rushed out to me, her teeth aglitter with hospitality, and made
me take a seat at a table which she shared with her husband, the
moving-van man, and two middle-aged women. I could see that
she had not heard of my engagement, and to avoid awkward
interrogations concerning the whereabouts of my fiancée I
omitted to announce it

"I know what you have come here for," she said, archly. "You can't
fool Auntie Yetta. But you have come to the right place. I can tell
you that a larger assortment of beautiful young ladies you never
saw, Mr. Levinsky. And they're educated, too. If you don't find
your predestined one here you'll never find her. What do you say,
Mr. Rivesman?" she addressed the proprietor of the hotel, who
stood by and whom I had known for many years

"I agree with you thoroughly, Mrs. Kalch," he answered, smilingly.
"But Mr.

Levinsky tells me he can stay only one day with us."

"Plenty of time for a smart man to pick a girl in a place like this.

Besides, you just tell him that you have a lot of fine, educated
young ladies, Mr. Rivesman. He is an educated gentleman, Mr.
Levinsky is, and if he knows the kind of boarders you have he'll
stay longer." "I know Mr. Levinsky is an educated man,"
Rivesman answered. "As for our boarders, they're all
fine--superfine."

"So you've got to find your predestined one here," she resumed,
turning to me again. "Otherwise you can't leave this place. See?"

"But suppose I have found her already--elsewhere?"

"You had no business to. Anyhow, if she doesn't know enough to
hold you tight and you are here to spend a week-end with other
girls, she does not deserve to have you."

"But I am not spending it with other girls."

"What else did you come here for?" And she screwed up one-half
of her face into a wink so grotesque that I could not help bursting
into laughter

About an hour after lunch I sat in a rocking-chair on the front
porch, gazing at the landscape. The sky was a blue so subtle and
so noble that it seemed as though I had never seen such a sky
before. "This is just the kind of place for God to live in," I mused.
Whereupon I decided that this was what was meant by the word
heaven, whereas the blue overhanging the city was a "mere sky."
The village was full of blinding, scorching sunshine, yet the air
was entrancingly ref reshing. The veranda was almost deserted,
most of the women being in their rooms, gossiping or dressing for
the arrival of their husbands, fathers, sweethearts, or possible
sweethearts. Birds were embroidering the silence of the hour with
a silvery whisper that spoke of rest and good-will. The slender
brook to the left of me was droning like a bee. Everything was
charged with peace and soothing mystery. A feeling of lassitude
descended upon me. I was too lazy even to think, but the landscape
was continually forcing images on my mind. A hollow in the slope
of one of the mountains in front of me looked for all the world
like a huge spoon.

Half of it was dark, while the other half was full of golden light. It
seemed as though it was the sun's favorite spot. "The enchanted
spot," I named it. I tried to imagine that oval-shaped hollow at
night. I visioned a company of ghosts tiptoeing their way to it and
stealing a night's lodging in the "spoon," and later, at the approach
of dawn, behold! the ghosts were fleeing to the woods near by

Rising behind that mountain was the timbered peak of another one.
It looked like the fur cap of a monster, and I wondered what that
monster was thinking of

When I gazed at the mountain directly opposite the hotel I had a
feeling of disappointment. I knew that it was very high, that it
took hours to climb it, but I failed to realize it

It was seemingly quite low and commonplace. Darkling at the foot
of it was what looked like a moat choked with underbrush and
weeds. The spot was about a mile and a half from the hotel, yet it
seemed to be only a minute's walk from me. But then a bird that
was flying over that moat at the moment, winging its way straight
across it, was apparently making no progress. Was this region
exempt from the laws of space and distance? The bewitching azure
of the sky and the divine taste of the air seemed to bear out a
feeling that it was exempt from any law of nature with which I
was familiar. The mountain-peak directly opposite the hotel
looked weird now. Was it peopled with Liliputians? Another bird
made itself heard somewhere in the underbrush flanking the
brook. It was saying something in querulous accents. I knew
nothing of birds, and the song or call of this one sounded so queer
to me that I was almost frightened. All of which tended to
enhance the uncanny majesty of the whole landscape