George MacDonald - "Mary Marston"

Horace Walpole - "The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3"

Jean de La Fontaine - "The Tales and Novels, v15: The Mandrake & The Rhemese"

Alexandre Dumas, Pere - "The Man in the Iron Mask"

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




Her husband was an exporter of grain and his business often took
him to Koenigsberg, Prussia, for several weeks at a time.
Occasions of this kind were hailed by Shiphrah as a godsend (in
the literal sense of the term), for in his absence she could freely
spend on her beneficiaries and even feed some of them at her own
house

When I was introduced to her as "the son of the woman who had
been killed on the Horse-market" and she heard that I frequently
had nothing to eat, she burst into tears and berated me soundly for
not having knocked at her door sooner

"It's terrible! It's terrible!" she moaned, breaking into tears again.
"In fact I, too, deserve a spanking. To think that I did not look him
up at once when that awful thing happened!"

As a matter of fact, she had not done so because at the time of my
mother's death her house had been agog with a trouble of its own.
But of this presently

She handed me a three-ruble bill and set about filling up the gaps
in my eating calendar and substituting fat "days" for lean ones.

She often came to see me at the synagogue, never empty-handed.
Now she had a silver coin for me, now a pair of socks, a shirt, or
perhaps a pair of trousers which some member of her family had
discarded. Often, too, she would bring me a quarter of a chicken,
cookies, or some other article of food from her own table

My days of hunger were at an end. I lived in clover. "Now I can
work," I thought to myself, with the satisfaction of a well-filled
stomach. "And work I will. I'll show people what I can do."

I applied myself to my task with ardor, but it did not last long. My
former interest in the Talmud was gone. The spell was broken
irretrievably. Now that I did not want for food, my sense of
loneliness became keener than ever. Indeed, it was a novel sense
of loneliness, quite unlike the one I had experienced before

My surroundings had somehow lost their former meaning. Life
was devoid of savor, and I was thirsting for an appetizer, as it
were, for some violent change, for piquant sensations

Then it was that the word America first caught my fancy

The name was buzzing all around me. The great emigration of
Jews to the United States, which had received its first impulse two
or three years before, was already in full swing. It may not be out
of order to relate, briefly. how it had all come about

An anti-Semitic riot broke out in a southern town named
Elisabethgrad in the early spring of 1881. Occurrences of this kind
were, in those days, quite rare in Russia, and when they did
happen they did not extend beyond the town of their origin. But
the circumstances that surrounded the Elisabethgrad outbreak
were of a specific character. It took place one month after the
assassination of the Czar, Alexander II. The actual size and
influence of the "underground" revolutionary organization being
an unknown quantity, St.

Petersburg was full of the rumblings of a general uprising. The
Elisabethgrad riot, however, was not of a revolutionary nature. Yet
the police, so far from suppressing it, encouraged it. The example
of the Elisabethgrad rabble was followed by the riffraff of other
places. The epidemic quickly spread from city to city. Whereupon
the scenes of lawlessness in the various cities were marked by the
same method in the mob's madness, by the same connivance on
the part of the police, and by many other traits that clearly pointed
to a common source of inspiration. It has long since become a
well-established historical fact that the anti-Jewish disturbances
were encouraged, even arranged, by the authorities as an outlet for
the growing popular discontent with the Government.

Count von Plehve was then at the head of the Police Department in
the Ministry of the Interior.

This bit of history repeated itself, on a larger scale, twenty-two
years later, when Russia was in the paroxysm of a real revolution
and when the ghastly massacres of Jews in Kishineff, Odessa,
Kieff, and other cities were among the means employed in an
effort to keep the masses "busy."

Count von Plehve then held the office of Prime Minister. To return
to 1881 and 1882. Thousands of Jewish families were left
homeless. Of still greater moment was the moral effect which the
atrocities produced on the whole Jewish population of Russia.
Over five million people were suddenly made to realize that their
birthplace was not their home (a feeling which the great Russian
revolution has suddenly changed). Then it was that the cry "To
America!" was raised. It spread like wild-fire, even over those
parts of the Pale of Jewish Settlement which lay outside the riot
zone

This was the beginning of the great New Exodus that has been in
progress for decades

My native town and the entire section to which it belongs had been
immune from the riots, yet it caught the general contagion, and at
the time I became one of Shiphrah's wards hundreds of its
inhabitants were going to America or planning to do so. Letters
full of wonders from emigrants already there went the rounds of
eager readers and listeners until they were worn to shreds in the
process

I succumbed to the spreading fever. It was one of these letters from
America, in fact, which put the notion of emigrating to the New
World definitely in my mind. An illiterate woman brought it to the
synagogue to have it read to her, and I happened to be the one to
whom she addressed her request. The concrete details of that
letter gave New York tangible form in my imagination. It haunted
me ever after

The United States lured me not merely as a land of milk and
honey, but also, and perhaps chiefly, as one of mystery, of
fantastic experiences, of marvelous transformations. To leave my
native place and to seek my fortune in that distant, weird world
seemed to be just the kind of sensational adventure my heart was
hankering for.

When I unburdened myself of my project to Reb Sender he was
thunderstruck

"To America!" he said. "Lord of the World! But one becomes a
Gentile there."

"Not at all," I sought to reassure him. "There are lots of good Jews
there, and they don't neglect their Talmud, either." The amount
that was necessary to take me to America loomed staggeringly
large. Where was it to come from? I thought of approaching
Shiphrah, but the idea of her helping me abandon my Talmud and
go to live in a godless country seemed preposterous. So I began by
saving the small allowance which I received from her and by
selling some of the clothes and food she brought me. For the
evening meal I usually received some rye bread and a small coin
for cheese or herring, so I invariably added the coin to my little
hoard, relishing the bread with thoughts of America.

While I was thus pinching and saving pennies I was continually
casting about for some more effective way of raising the sum that
would take me to New York. I confided my plan to Naphtali.

"Not a bad idea," he said, "but you will never raise the money. You
are a master of dreams, David."

"I'll get the money, and, what is more, when I am in America I
shall bring you over there, too."

"May your words pass from your lips into the ear of God."

"I thought you did not believe in God."

"How long will you believe in Him after you get to America?"



BOOK IV MATILDA CHAPTER I I COULD scarcely think of
anything but America. I read every letter from there that I could
obtain. I was constantly seeking information about the country
and the opportunities it held out to a man of my type, and
cudgeling my brains for some way of scraping together the
formidable sum. I was restless, sleepless, and finally, when I
caught a slight cold, my health broke down so completely that I
had to be taken to the hospital. Shiphrah visited me every day,
calling me poor orphan boy and quarreling with the
superintendent over me. One afternoon, after I had been
discharged, when she saw me at the synagogue, feeble and
emaciated, she gasped

"You're a cruel, heartless man," she flared up, addressing herself to
the beadle. "The poor boy needs a good soft bed, fine chicken
soup, and real care. Why didn't you let me know at once? Come
on, David!"

"Where to?" I inquired, timidly.

"None of your business. Come on. I'm not going to take you to the
woods, you may be sure of that. I want you to stay in my house
until you are well rested and strong enough to study. Don't you
like it?" she added, with a wink to the beadle

It appeared that her husband was away on one of his prolonged
business excursions. Otherwise installing in her "modern" home
an old-fashioned, ridiculous young creature like a Talmud student
would have been out of the question

I followed her with fast-beating heart. I knew that her family was
"modern," that her children spoke Russian and "behaved like
Gentiles," that there was a grown young woman among them and
that her name was Matilda

The case of this young woman had been the talk of the town the
year before.

She had been persuaded to marry a man for whom she did not
care, and shortly after the wedding and after a sensational passage
at arms between his people and hers, she made her father pay him
a small fortune for divorcing her

Matilda's family being one of the "upper ten" in our town, its
members were frequently the subject of envious gossip, and so I
had known a good deal about them even before Shiphrah
befriended me. I had heard, for example, that Matilda had
received her early education in a boarding-school in Germany (in
accordance with a custom that had been in existence among people
of her father's class until recently); that she had subsequently
studied Russian and other subjects under Russian tutors at home;
and that her two brothers, who were younger than she, were at the
local Russian gymnasium, or high school. I had heard, also, that
Matilda was very pretty. That she was well dressed went without
saying

All this both fascinated and cowed me

Suddenly Shiphrah paused, as though bethinking herself of
something. "Wait.

Don't stir," she said, rushing back. Ten or fifteen minutes later she
returned, saying: "I was not long, was I? I just went to get the
beadle's forgiveness. Had insulted him for nothing. But he's a
dummy, all the same.

Come on, David."

Arrived at her house, she introduced me to her old servant, in the
kitchen

"He'll stay a week with us, perhaps more," she explained. "I want
you to build him up. Fatten him up like a Passover goose. Do you
hear?"

The servant, a tall, spare woman, with an extremely dark face
tinged with blue, began by darting hostile glances at me

"Look at the way she is staring at him!" Shiphrah growled. "He is
the son of the woman who was murdered at the Horse-market."

The old servant started. "Is he?" she said, aghast

"Are you pleased now? Will you take good care of him?"

"May the Uppermost give him a good appetite."

As Shiphrah led me from the kitchen into another room she said:
"She took a fancy to you. It will be all right."

She towed me into a vast sitting-room, so crowded with new
furniture that it had the appearance of a furniture-store. There
were many rooms in the apartment and they all produced a similar
impression. I subsequently learned that the superabundance of
sofas, chests of drawers, chairs, or bric-à-brac-stands was due to
Shiphrah's passion for bargains, a weakness which made her the
fair game of tradespeople and artisans. Several of her wardrobes
and bureaus were packed full of all sorts of things for which she
had no earthly use and many of which she had smuggled in when
her husband and the children were out

Ensconced in a corner of an enormous green sofa in the big
crowded sitting-room, with a book in her lap, we found a young
woman with curly brown hair and sparkling brown eyes set in a
small oval face. She looked no more than twenty, but when her
mother addressed her as Matilda I knew that I was facing the
heroine of the sensational divorce. She was singularly interesting,
but pretty she certainly was not. Her Gentile name had a world of
charm for my ear

One of the trifles that clung to my memory is the fact that upon
seeing her I felt something like amazement at her girlish
appearance. I had had a notion that a married woman, no matter
how young, must have a married face, something quite distinct
from the countenance of a maiden, while this married woman did
not begin to look married.

Matilda got up, cast a frowning side-glance at her mother, and
walked over to one of the four immense windows illuminating the
room. Less than a minute later she turned around and crossed over
to her mother's side

She was small, but well made, and her movements were brisk,
firm, elastic

"Come on, mother, there's something I want to tell you," she said, a
jerk of her curly head indicating the adjoining room

"I have no secrets," Shiphrah growled. "What do you want?"

A snappish whispered conference ensued, the trend of which was
at once betrayed in an acrimonious retort by Shiphrah: "Just keep
your foolish nose out of my affairs, will you? When I say he is
going to stay here for some time I mean it. Don't you mind her,
David."

"Mother! Mother! Mother!" Matilda trilled with a gesture of
disgust, and flounced out of the room

I felt my face turning all colors, and at the same time her "Mother!
Mother! Mother!" (instead of "Mamma! Mamma! Mamma!") was
echoing in my brain enchantingly

Presently a fair-complexioned youth of eighteen or nineteen came
in, apparently attracted by his mother's angry voice. He wore a
blue coat with silver lace and silver buttons, the uniform of a
Russian high school, which sent a flutter of mixed envy and awe
through me. He threw a frowning glance at me, and withdrew.
Two smaller children, a uniformed boy and a little girl, made their
appearance, talking in Russian noisily. At sight of me they fell
silent, looked me over, from my side-locks to the edge of my
long-skirted coat, and then took to whispering and giggling

"Clear out, you devils!" Shiphrah shouted, stamping her foot.
"Shoo!" A young chambermaid passed through the room, and
Shiphrah stopped her long enough to introduce me and to
command her to look after me as if I were one of the
family--"even better."

CHAPTER II THE spacious sitting-room was used as a
breakfast-room as well. It was in this room, on the enormous
green sofa, that my bed was made for the night.

It was by far the most comfortable bed I had ever slept in

Early the next morning, after I finished my long prayer and had put
away my phylacteries, the young chambermaid removed the
bedding and the swarthy old servant served me my breakfast

"Go wash your hands and eat in good health. Eat hearty, and may it
well agree with you," she said, with a compound of deep
commiseration, reverence, and disdain. I went to the kitchen,
where I washed my hands, and, while wiping them, muttered the
brief prayer which one offers before eating. As I returned to the
sitting-room I found Matilda there. She was seated at some
distance from the table upon which my breakfast was spread. She
wore a sort of white kimono. One did not have to stand on
ceremony with a fellow who did not even wear a stiff collar and a
necktie. Nor did I know enough to resent her costume. She did not
order anything to eat for herself, not even a glass of tea. It seemed
as though she had come in for the express purpose of eying me out
of countenance. If she had, she succeeded but too well. Her silent
glances fell on me like splashes of hot water. I was so disconcerted
I could not swallow my food. There were centuries of difference
between her and myself, not to speak of the economic chasm that
separated us. To me she was an aristocrat, while I was a poor,
wretched "day" eater, a cross between a beggar and a recluse. I
dared not even look at her. Talmud students were expected to be
the shyest creatures under the sun. On this occasion I certainly
was

The other children entered the room. They were dressing
themselves, eating and studying their Gentile lessons all at once.
Matilda had a mild altercation with Yeffim, her eighteen-year-old
brother, ordered breakfast for herself, and seemed to have
forgotten my existence. Her mother came in and took to cloying
me with food

At about 4 o'clock in the afternoon I was alone in the
drawing-room. I stood at the piano--the first I had ever laid eyes
on--timidly sounding some of the keys, when I heard approaching
voices. With my heart in my mouth, I rushed over to the nearest
window, where I paused, feigning interest in some passing peasant
teams. Presently Matilda made her appearance. accompanied by
two girl friends

The three young women were chattering in Russian, a language of
which I understood scarcely three dozen words. I could
conjecture, however, that the subject of their talk was no other
than my own quailing personality

Suddenly Matilda addressed herself to me in Yiddish: "Look here,
young man! Don't you know it is bad manners for a gentleman to
stand with his back to ladies?"

I faced about, all flushed and scared

"That's better," she said, gaily. "Never mind staring at the floor.
Give us a look, will you? Don't act as a shy bridegroom."

I made no answer. The room seemed to be in a whirl

"Why don't you speak?" Matilda insisted, concealing her quizzical
purpose under a well-acted air of gravity

Her two friends roared, and, spurred on by their merriment, she
continued to make game of me.

"Won't you give us one look, at least? Do, please! Come, my
mother will never find out you have been guilty of a great sin like
that."

I was dying to get up and fling out of the room, but I felt glued to
the spot. Their cruel sport, which made me faint with
embarrassment and misery, had something inexpressibly alluring
in it

One of the two girls said something in Russian of which I caught
the word "kiss" and which was greeted by a new outburst of
laughter. I was terror-stricken

"Well, pious Jew!" Matilda resumed. "Suppose a girl were to give
you a kiss.

What would you do? Commit suicide, would you? Well, never
fear; we won't be as cruel as all that. I tell you what, though. I'll
hide your side-locks behind your ears. I just want to see how you
would look without them." At this she stepped up close to me and
reached out her hands for my two appendages

I pushed her off. "Please, let me alone," I protested

"At last we have heard his voice. Bravo! We're making headway,
aren't we?"

At this point her mother's angry voice made itself heard. Matilda
desisted, with a merry remark to her friends

The next morning when she and I were alone she tantalized me
again. She made another attempt to tuck my side-locks behind my
ears. As we were alone I had more courage

"If you don't stop I'll go away from here," I said, in a rage. "What
do you want of me?"

As I thus gave vent to my resentment I instinctively felt that, so far
from causing her to avoid me, it would quicken her rompish
interest in me. And I hoped it would

"'S-sh! don't yell," she said, startled. "Can't you take a joke?"

"A nice joke, that."

"Very well, I won't do it again. I didn't know you were a
touch-me-not." After a pause she resumed, in grave, friendly
accents: "Come, don't be angry. I want to talk to you. Look here. Is
there any sense in your wasting your life the way you do? Look at
the way you are dressed, the way you live generally. Besides, the
idea of a young man like you not being able to speak a word of
Russian! Aren't you ashamed of yourself? Why, mother says you
are remarkably bright. Isn't it a pity that you should throw it all
away? Why don't you try to study Russian, geography, history?
Why don't you try to become an educated man?"

"The idea!" I said, with a laugh.

My confusion was gone, partly, at least. I looked her full in the
face

She flared up. "The idea!" she mocked me. "Rather say, 'The idea
of a bright young fellow being so ignorant!' Did you ever hear of a
provoking thing like that?" There was a good deal of her mother's
helter-skelter explosiveness in her

Now, that I had scanned her features in the light of the fact that she
was a married woman, I read that fact into them. She did look
married, I remarked to myself. Her exposed hair gave her an effect
of "aristocratic" wickedness and wantonness which repelled and
drew me at once. She was a girl, and yet she was a married
woman. This duality of hers deepened the fascinating mystery of
the distance between us

She proceeded to draw me out. She made me tell her the story of
my young life, and I obeyed her but too willingly. I told her my
whole tale of woe, reveling in my own rehearsal of my sufferings
and more especially in the expressions of horror and heartfelt pity
which it elicited from her.

"My God! My God!" she cried, gasping and wringing her hands.
"Poor boy!" or, "Oh, I can't hear it! I can't hear it! It is enough to
drive one crazy."

At one point, as I described the pangs of hunger which I had often
borne, there were tears in her interesting eyes

When I had finished my story, flushed with a sense of my
histrionic success, she ordered tea and preserves, as though to
indemnify me for my past sufferings

"All the more reason for you to study Russian and to become an
educated man," she said, as she put sugar into my glass. She cited
the cases of former Talmudists, poor and friendless like myself,
who had studied at the universities, fighting every inch of their
way, till they had achieved success as physicians, lawyers, writers.
She spoke passionately, often with the absurd acerbity of her
mother. "It's a crime for a young man like you to throw himself
away on that idiotic Talmud of yours," she said, pacing up and
down the room fiercely

All this sounded shockingly wicked, and yet it did not shock me in
the least

"I have a plan," I said

When she heard what I wanted to do she shook her head and
frowned. She said, in substance, that America was a land of
dollars, not of education, and that she wanted me to be an
educated man. I assured her that I should study English in
America and, after I had laid up some money, prepare for college
there (she could have made me promise anything). But colleges in
which the instruction was not in Russian failed to appeal to her
imagination

Still, when she saw that my heart was set on the project, she
yielded. She seemed to like the fervor with which I defended my
cause, and the notion of my going to a far-away land was
apparently beginning to have its effect. I was the hero of an
adventure. Gradually she became quite enthusiastic about my plan

"I tell you what. I can raise the money for you," she said, with a
gesture of sudden resolution. "How much is it?"

When I said, forlornly, that it would come to about eighty rubles,
she declared, gravely: "That's all right. I shall get it for you. Only,
say nothing to mother about it." I thought myself in a flurry of joy
over this windfall, but a little later, when I was left to myself, I
became aware that the flurry I was in was of quite a different
nature. When I tried to think of America I found that my ambition
in that direction had lost its former vitality

I was deeply in love with Matilda

CHAPTER III SHE continued to treat me in a patronizing, playful
way; but we were supposed to be great friends and I asked myself
no questions.

"The money is assured," she once announced. "You shall get it in a
few days.

You may begin to pack your great baggage," she jested

My heart sank within me, but I feigned exultation

"Do you deserve it, pious soul that you are?" she laughed. And
casting a glance at my side-locks, she added: "I do wish you would
cut off those horrid things of yours. You won't take them to
America, will you?"

I smiled. Small as was my stock of information of the New World,
I knew enough of it to understand, in a general way, that
side-locks were out of place there

She proceeded to put my side-locks behind my ears, and this time I
did not object. She then smoothed them down, the touch of her
fingers thrilling me through and through. Then she brought a
hand-glass and made me look at myself.

"Do you see the difference?" she demanded. "If you were not
rigged out like the savage that you are you wouldn't be a
bad-looking fellow, after all.

Why, girls might even fall in love with you. But then what does a
pious soul like you know about such things as love?"

"How do you know I don't?" I ventured to say, blushing like a
poppy

"Do you, really?" she said, with mischievous surprise

I nodded

"Well, well. So you are not quite so saintly as I thought you were!
Perhaps you have even been in love yourself? Have you? Tell
me."

I kept silent. My heart was throbbing wildly.

"Do you love me?"

I nodded once more. My heart stood still.

"Kiss me, then."

She put my arms around her, made me clasp her to my breast, and
we kissed, passionately