a suspicious look at me

I turned it off with a joke and asked about the hen-pecked man. Mr. Even had not seen him for four years. The other Talmudists present had never even known him. A man with extremely long black side-locks who spoke with a Galician accent became interested. After Mr. Even went to his wonted seat at the east wall, where he took up a book, this man said to me, with a sigh: "Oh, it is not the old home. Over there people go to the same synagogue all their lives, while here one is constantly on the move. They call it a city.

Pshaw! It is a market-place, a bazar, an inn, not a city! People are together for a day and then, behold! they have flown apart. Where to? Nobody knows. I don't know what has become of you and you don't know what has become of me."

"That's why there is no real friendship here," I chimed in, heartily.

"That's why one feels so friendless, so lonely."

My shop, of course, shut down, and I roamed about the streets a good deal. I was restless. I continually felt nonplussed, ashamed to look myself in the face, as it were. One forenoon I found myself walking in the direction of Twenty-third Street and Lexington Avenue. The college building was now a source of consolation. Indeed, what was money beside the halo of higher education? I paused in front of the building. There were several students on the campus, all Jewish boys. I accosted one of them. I spoke to him enviously, and left the place thrilling with a determination to drop all thought of business, to take the entrance examination, and be a college student at last. I was almost grateful to that Western firm for going into bankruptcy

And yet, even while I was tingling with this feeling, a voice exclaimed in my heart, "Ah, if that Western firm had not failed!"

The debt I owed the American commission merchant agonized me without let-up.

I couldn't help thinking of my "credit face." To disappoint him, of all men, seemed to be the most brutal thing I had ever done. I imagined myself obtaining just enough money to pay him; but, as I did so, I could not resist the temptation of extending the sum so as to go on manufacturing cloaks. I was incessantly cudgeling my brains for some "angel" who would come to my financial rescue

The spell of my college aspirations was broken once for all. My Temple was destroyed. Nothing was left of it but vague yearnings and something like a feeling of compunction which will assert itself, sometimes, to this day

The Talmud tells us how the destruction of Jerusalem and the great Temple was caused by a hen and a rooster. The destruction of my American Temple was caused by a bottle of milk

The physical edifice still stands, though the college has long since moved to a much larger and more imposing building or group of buildings. I find the humble old structure on Lexington Avenue and Twenty-third Street the more dignified and the more fascinating of the two. To me it is a sacred spot. It is the sepulcher of my dearest ambitions, a monument to my noblest enthusiasm in America

BOOK IX DORA CHAPTER I "HOW about it?" Mrs. Chaikin said to me, ominously

"About what? What do you mean, Mrs. Chaikin?"

"Oh, you know what I mean. It is no use playing the fool and trying to make a fool of me."

The conversation was held in our deserted shop on an afternoon. The three sewing-machines, the cutting-table, and the pressing-table looked desolate.

She spoke in an undertone, almost in a whisper, lest the secret of her husband's relations with me should leak out and reach his employers. She had been guarding that secret all along, but now, that our undertaking had apparently collapsed, she was particularly uneasy about it

"I don't believe that store in the West has failed at all. In fact, I know it has not. Somebody told me all about it."

This was her method of cross-examining me. I read her a clipping containing the news of the bankruptcy, but as she could not read it herself, she only sneered. I reasoned with her, I pleaded, I swore; but she kept sneering or nodding her head mournfully

"I don't believe you. I don't believe you," she finally said, shutting her eyes with a gesture of despair and exhaustion. "Do I believe a dog when it barks? Neither do I believe you. I curse the day when I first met you. It was the black year that brought you to us." She fell to wringing her hands and moaning: "Woe is me! Woe is me!"

Finally she tiptoed out of the room and down the stairs. In my despair I longed for somebody to whom I could unbosom myself. I thought of Meyer Nodelman. A self-made man and one who had begun manufacturing almost penniless like myself, he seemed to be just the man I needed. A thought glimmered through my mind, "And who knows but he may come to my rescue I was going to call at his warehouse, but upon second thought I realized that the seat of his cold self-interest would scarcely be a favorable setting for the interview and that I must try to entrap him in the humanizing atmosphere of his mother's home for the purpose

The next time I saw him at his mother's I took him up to my little attic and laid my tribulations before him. I told him the whole story, almost without embellishments, omitting nothing but Chaikin's name

"Is it all true?" he interrupted me at one point

I swore that it was, and went on. At the end I offered to prove it all to his satisfaction

"You don't need to prove it to me," he replied. "What do I care?" Then, suddenly, casting off his reserve, he blurted out: "Look here, young fellow! If you think I am going to lend you money you are only wasting time, for I am not." "And why not?" I asked, boldly, with studied dignity

"Why not! You better tell me why yes," he chuckled. "You have a lot of spunk. That you certainly have, and you ought to make a good business man, but I won't loan you money, for all that."

"Weren't you once hard up yourself, Mr. Nodelman? You have made a success of it, and now it would only be right that you should help another fellow get up in the world. You won't lose a cent by it, either. I take an oath on it."

"You can't have an oath cashed in a bank, can you?"

"Why did that commission merchant take a chance? If a Gentile is willing to help a Jew, and one whom he had never seen before, you should not hesitate, either."

"Well, there is no use talking about it," was his final decision

The following day I received a letter from him, inviting me to his office

His warehouse occupied a vast loft on a little street off Broadway. Arrived there, I had to pass several men, all in their shirt-sleeves, who were attacking mountains of cloth with long, narrow knives. One of these directed me to a remote window, in front of which I presently found Nodelman lecturing a man who wore a tape-measure around his neck

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