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diff --git a/33793-h/33793-h.htm b/33793-h/33793-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..47b301c --- /dev/null +++ b/33793-h/33793-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,5069 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> +<head> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1" /> +<title>The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Seven-Branched Candlestick, by Gilbert W. (Gilbert Wolf) Gabriel</title> + <style type="text/css"> + p { margin-top: .5em; + text-align: justify; + margin-bottom: .5em; + text-indent: 1em; + } + h1 { + text-align: center; font-family: garamond, serif; /* all headings centered */ + } + h5,h6 { + text-align: center; font-family: garamond, serif; /* all headings centered */ + } + h2 { + text-align: center; font-family: garamond, serif; /* all headings centered */ + } + h3 { + text-align: center; font-family: garamond, serif; /* all headings centered */ + } + h4 { + text-align: center; font-family: garamond, serif; /* all headings centered */ + } + hr { width: 33%; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em; + } + body{margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; + } + a {text-decoration: none} /* no lines under links */ + div.centered {text-align: center;} /* work around for IE centering with CSS problem part 1 */ + div.centered table {margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: left;} /* work around for IE centering with CSS problem part 2 */ + + .cen {text-align: center; text-indent: 0em;} /* centering paragraphs */ + .smcap {font-variant: small-caps;} /* small caps */ + .img {text-align: center; padding: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;} /* centering images */ + .tdr {text-align: right;} /* right align cell */ + .tdrp {text-align: right; padding-right: 1em;} /* right align with padding */ + .tdc {text-align: center;} /* center align cell */ + .tdl {text-align: left;} /* left align cell */ + .tr {margin-left: 22%; margin-right: 22%; margin-top: 5%; margin-bottom: 5%; padding: 1em; background-color: #f6f2f2; color: black; border: dotted black 1px;} /* transcriber's notes */ + + .pagenum { /* uncomment the next line for invisible page numbers */ + /* visibility: hidden; */ + position: absolute; right: 2%; + font-size: 75%; + color: silver; + background-color: inherit; + text-align: right; + text-indent: 0em; + font-style: normal; + font-weight: normal; + font-variant: normal;} /* page numbers */ + + h1.pg,h3.pg { font-family: Times-Roman, serif; } + hr.full { width: 100%; + margin-top: 3em; + margin-bottom: 0em; + margin-left: auto; + margin-right: auto; + height: 4px; + border-width: 4px 0 0 0; /* remove all borders except the top one */ + border-style: solid; + border-color: #000000; + clear: both; } + pre {font-size: 85%;} + </style> +</head> +<body> +<h1 class="pg">The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Seven-Branched Candlestick, by Gilbert W. +(Gilbert Wolf) Gabriel</h1> +<pre> +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at <a href = "http://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a></pre> +<p>Title: The Seven-Branched Candlestick</p> +<p> The Schooldays of Young American Jew</p> +<p>Author: Gilbert W. (Gilbert Wolf) Gabriel</p> +<p>Release Date: September 22, 2010 [eBook #33793]</p> +<p>Language: English</p> +<p>Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1</p> +<p>***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SEVEN-BRANCHED CANDLESTICK***</p> +<p> </p> +<h3 class="pg">E-text prepared by Bethanne M. Simms, Barbara Kosker,<br /> + and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team<br /> + (http://www.pgdp.net)</h3> +<p> </p> +<hr class="full" /> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> + +<h1> THE SEVEN-BRANCHED CANDLESTICK</h1> + +<h3> <i>THE SCHOOLDAYS OF YOUNG + AMERICAN JEW</i></h3> + +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> + +<h4> BY</h4> + +<h2> GILBERT W. GABRIEL</h2> + +<br /> +<br /> + +<div class="img"> +<img border="0" src="images/deco.png" width="10%" alt="Publisher's Mark" /> +</div> + +<br /> +<br /> + +<h4> NEW YORK<br /> + BLOCH PUBLISHING COMPANY, <span class="smcap">Inc.</span><br /> + "<i>The Jewish Book Concern</i>"<br /> + 1925</h4> + +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> + +<h4> +Copyright, 1917<br /> + +BLOCH PUBLISHING COMPANY</h4> + +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</a></span> + +<hr /> +<br /> +<h2>CONTENTS</h2> + +<div class="centered"> +<table border="0" width="70%" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0" summary="Table of Contents"> + <tr> + <td class="tdrp" width="8%">I.</td> + <td class="tdl" width="84%">BY WAY OF PROLOGUE</td> + <td class="tdr" width="8%"><a href="#Page_5">5</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdrp">II.</td> + <td class="tdl">IN THE BEGINNING</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_16">16</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdrp">III.</td> + <td class="tdl">FRIDAY NIGHT</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_25">25</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdrp">IV.</td> + <td class="tdl">THE BOY AND THE SCHOOL</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_34">34</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdrp">V.</td> + <td class="tdl">THE MILITARY ACADEMY</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_42">42</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdrp">VI.</td> + <td class="tdl">MY STEERFORTH</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_51">51</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdrp">VII.</td> + <td class="tdl">FRESHMAN YEAR</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_61">61</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdrp">VIII.</td> + <td class="tdl">WITHIN THE GATES</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_70">70</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdrp">IX.</td> + <td class="tdl">MY AUNT AND I</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_79">79</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdrp">X.</td> + <td class="tdl">THE RULES OF THE GAME</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_88">88</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdrp">XI.</td> + <td class="tdl">A MAN'S WORK</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_98">98</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdrp">XII.</td> + <td class="tdl">THE HEART OF JUDEA</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_107">107</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdrp">XIII.</td> + <td class="tdl">CHILD AND PARENT</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_116">116</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdrp">XIV.</td> + <td class="tdl">AN UNGRATEFUL NEPHEW</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_125">125</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdrp">XV.</td> + <td class="tdl">COLLEGE LIFE</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_135">135</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdrp">XVI.</td> + <td class="tdl">THE HUN'S INVASION</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_144">144</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdrp">XVII.</td> + <td class="tdl">MANY IMPULSES</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_154">154</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdrp">XVIII.</td> + <td class="tdl">I STAND—BUT NOT ASIDE</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_163">163</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdrp">XIX.</td> + <td class="tdl">"BATTLE ROYAL"</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_172">172</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdrp">XX.</td> + <td class="tdl">THE CANDLES ARE LIGHTED</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_181">181</a></td> + </tr> +</table> +</div> + +<br /><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span> + +<hr /> +<br /> +<h2>The Seven-Branched Candlestick</h2> + +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> + +<hr /> +<br /> +<h2>I</h2> + +<h2>BY WAY OF PROLOGUE</h2> + + +<p>"Years of Plenty" was the name an Englishman recently gave to a book of +his school days. My own years of secondary school and college were +different from his, by far, but no less full.</p> + +<p>I shall only say by way of preface that they numbered seven. There were +two of them at high school, one at a military school on the Hudson, and +four at our city's university.</p> + +<p>Seven in all. Because they were not altogether happy, I have no right to +think of them as lean years. For each one of them meant much to +me—means as much now as I look back and am chastened and strengthened +by their memory. Each is as a lighted candle in the dark of the past +that I look back upon. And I like to imagine that, since there are seven +of them, they are in the seven-branched candlestick which is so stately +and so reverent a symbol of my Faith.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span>For it was my school days which gave me that Faith.</p> + +<p>Born a Jew, I was not one. And this I can blame on no person excepting +myself. Before my parents' death, they had urged me, pleaded with me to +go to Sunday school at our reformed synagogue, to attend the Saturday +morning services, to study the lore, that I might be confirmed into the +religion of my fathers. That they did not absolutely insist upon it was +because they wanted me to come to my God gratefully, voluntarily, +considering his worship an exercise of love, of gladness, and not a task +of impatient duty. I know that it must have grieved them—I know it now, +even if I only half-guessed it then in that distorted but instinctive +way that boys do guess things—and yet they said little to me of it.</p> + +<p>Once or twice a year they took me with them to a Friday night service. I +was too young, perhaps. I am willing to use my youth as an excuse for my +falling asleep, or for my sitting uneasily, squirming, yawning, +heavy-eyed, uninterested, unmoved ... hungry only to be out into the +streets again, and back in my own room at home, with my copy of +"Pilgrim's Progress," or "The Talisman," between my knees.</p> + +<p>At best, I can excuse myself only because I lived in a neighborhood +distinctly Christian. It <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span>was on one of those old, quiet streets of the +Columbia Heights section of Brooklyn that our house stood. There was a +priggish sedateness to it. There was much talk on either hand of +"family": the Brooklyn people—of that neighborhood, anyhow—seem to set +much stock by their early settling ancestors. Near our house was a +preparatory school for girls and another for boys; they were hotbeds of +snobbery and prejudice, these schools. The students who attended them +had to pass down our block on their way home from school. Often, when +they saw me playing there, some of them would stop and make fun of me +and tease me with remarks about the Jews. I was a boy without much +spirit. I always resented the taunts—but I always lacked the courage to +call back ... and if my eyes did blaze involuntarily with anger, I +usually turned away so that these bigger boys should not be able to see +them.</p> + +<p>My fear was behind it all. I was afraid to fight back. And, being +ashamed of my cowardice, I grew quickly ashamed of that which had proved +it. I grew ashamed of being a Jew.</p> + +<p>Terribly, bitterly ashamed. So mortified, indeed, that it was more than +I could do to speak of it to my father. And, usually, I could talk of +anything to him. Once he himself mentioned it to me: asked me whether I +was not proud of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span>my race, whether I could not look with true contempt +and easy forgiveness upon those rowdies who had taunted me. I tried to +take that attitude ... but I was not big and strong enough for it. I +tried it only once—and then one of the big bullies of that fashionable +preparatory school, on his way down the block, grew angry at my lordly +unconcern towards his teasing, and hit me with his fist, and cut my lip +open. I kicked him in the shins, I remember, and ran swiftly away.</p> + +<p>That didn't help matters. I was as much a weakling as ever. When I went +to public school, I used to cry with a snivelling vexation because the +toughs of my class made fun of me. One of them had a little sister in +the class below us, and I was very fond of her. I remember how, on St. +Valentine's day, I stole into her class room at lunch time and, while +she was absent, stuck a lacy, gaudy and beribboned missive in her desk. +I didn't understand, then, why the teacher tittered so nervously when I +asked her permission to do it. But, when my own lunch was done, and I +was back at my desk, I lifted the lid of it only to find that same +valentine rammed into one corner, crushed and torn almost in half, and +scrawled with the word, "Sheeny!"</p> + +<p>Nor did the little romantic flight end there. For the next day, after +sister and brother had <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span>been comparing notes, the former marched +straight up to me, pulled my nose, and warned me to keep away, once and +for all, from the true American daughter of a true American family, and +to confine my sentiments to "some little Jew girl!"</p> + +<p>I knew none of that sort. What few boys and girls of my own race I had +met at playtime or at Sunday school, I purposely shunned. I thought, if +I went in their company, I should be inviting persecution. I thought my +only way to escape this was to escape all Jewish comrades ... to deny my +religion, if possible. I was so utterly ashamed of it!</p> + +<p>Thus I went, with all of a child's fear and a child's cowardice, into +those days which were to mean so much to me. Had I had the pride, the +devotion to my religion which is a Jewish heritage, those days would +have meant less. Less in sorrow and bewilderment, that is, and +infinitely more in the building up of my character.</p> + +<p>There are those who go stolidly, brusquely through life without ever +needing the comfort of religion. And there are those, like me, who lack +the self-reliance ... who cannot be content with a confessed +agnosticism, but who must take faith and strength from those rites and +codes which satisfy their sense of the mystically sublime. Now that I am +grown to man's estate <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span>I can know these things of myself—but how could +I know it then? How could a romping, light-hearted boy who cared more +for baseball and "Ivanhoe" than for anything else in the world +recognize, then, his own needs and cravings?</p> + +<p>It was only after those few black, frightful days were over that I +realized that something was lacking in my life. But even then I did not +know what it was. I only felt the sharply personal loss, the inevitable +loneliness and helplessness ... and had not learned in what direction to +lift my eyes, to reach up my arms to ask for spiritual succor.</p> + +<p>Those days were the ones in which my parents left me. My father was +killed in a railroad accident. My mother, about to give birth to another +child, was in bed at the time when the news was brought to her. She +never rose again. The shock killed her.</p> + +<p>I remember that the funeral services were conducted by the rabbi of our +synagogue. They were according to the Jewish ritual, and I thought them +dull and unmeaning. They expressed for me none of the sorrow that I +felt. The Hebrew that was in them was mockery and gibberish to me. I am +afraid I was glad when it was over, and I was alone with my aunt with +whom I was to live.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span>This aunt, Selina Haberman, was a widow. Her husband had been a devout +Jew of the most orthodox type. She used to tell me with great amusement +how he would say his prayers each morning with his shawl and +phylacteries upon him, with his head bowed and a look of joyous devotion +on his face. She said she never could understand how a man, as educated +and broadminded as he was, could have had so simple and unquestioning a +loyalty to these worn old costumes of the past. But she said wistfully +that she thought he had died a much happier man because of his religion +... and that was what was hardest of all for her to understand.</p> + +<p>Aunt Selina herself was a Christian. She put as little stock in +Christian Science, though, as in Judaism. It was a fad for her, and an +escape from the hindrances which connection with the Jewish faith would +have entailed. I think she had an idea that people would forget she had +ever been a Jewess and would accept her for a Christian without her +having to go through the extremer forms of proselytism. Like me, she +lacked spirit for either one thing or the other. Like me, she dreaded to +be classed among her own people. But in this we were unlike: that her +dread amounted to a vindictive and brutal antagonism towards whatever +and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span>whoever smacked of Jewry. I think she even objected to adopting me +for a while, because my name was a distinctly Jewish one, and because it +would leave no doubt in her neighbor's eyes as to my race—and hence, no +doubt as to hers.</p> + +<p>Aunt Selina lived on Central Park West in the City. She was full of +social ambitions. She had a good many friends from among the +intellectuals of Washington square: Christians, of course, most of them. +Her closest companion was a Mrs. Fleming-Cohen, who claimed to be a +Theosophist. Born with the name of Cohen, she had married a Mr. Fleming +who had made necessary, by his conduct, an early divorce. My aunt, Mrs. +Haberman, and Mrs. Fleming-Cohen lunched together very often, and I +suspect they had a tacit but inviolable agreement never to mention to +each other that bond of race and religion which, stronger than their +professed tastes, drew them instinctively together.</p> + +<p>My life in Aunt Selina's apartment was a lonely one. She was hardly the +sort of woman to whom young folks would go for sympathy. She did not +mistreat me, of course, but left me entirely to my own devious ways. For +the ways of a boy of fourteen—especially of an orphan of somewhat shy +and melancholic disposition—are bound to be devious.</p> + +<p>I had much to fight out with myself. I lacked <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span>any help from the +outside—and though I won over my impulses, my doubts and inner +conflicts, the struggle left me a weak, shy, shunning boy.</p> + +<p>For the first year of my life with Aunt Selina I went to a nearby public +school. There were a good many Jewish boys in my class—many more than +there had been in the whole Brooklyn school—but I kept away from them +as a matter of course. I made a few friends among the Gentiles—not +many, because they were hard to make, and I could always feel, in my +supersensitive fashion, that they were fashioning a sort of favor out of +conferring their friendship upon me.</p> + +<p>"It will be different when I am in high school," I told myself. "It will +be different because I myself shall be different. The boys will be older +there, will be more sensible and broadminded, and I shall be less +nervous about the difference between us!"</p> + +<p>The difference ... I did not know what it was, but I felt it all the +time. I tried to hide it, to disregard it—but I knew that it was there, +in my blood, in my face, in my name ... and it held me apart from my +class as if it had been a shame and a lasting disgrace.</p> + +<p>So it was that I looked forward more and more eagerly for the change and +liberation which I thought high school would bring me. Half a <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span>year, two +months, a month ... then only a few days ... and then it was over. My +public schools days were past. I had graduated into high school with +high honors and with an equally high hatred of whatever was Jewish.</p> + +<p>If Aunt Selina had been different ... but no, I am not going to blame it +on anyone excepting myself.</p> + +<p>The summer after I graduated from public school I went with Aunt Selina +and her friend, Mrs. Fleming-Cohen, to a hotel in the White Mountains. +It was one of those hotels where Jews are not welcome. The management, +if I am not mistaken, had not been able to impress Aunt Selina with that +fact. They were constantly raising the price of our rooms, but the two +ladies seemed content to keep on paying what was asked for the rare +privilege of dwelling in forbidden places.</p> + +<p>It was certainly not a pleasant summer. The other guests snubbed us +continually, left us to our own devices. I used to have to go walking +every morning and sit on the porch every afternoon in the company of the +two ladies ... because there was no one else for me to go with. For even +among the children there was a rigorous boycotting—and I was the +sufferer for it. It made me very melancholy; not indignant, of course, +because at that time I lacked entirely <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span>the spirit to be indignant—just +melancholy, and hateful to myself, spiteful to my aunt, ashamed of the +things I should have gloried in, hating the things I should have +worshiped.</p> + +<p>Well, I told myself, it would all be different in the fall: it would all +be different when I was at high school. For then I was to begin those +seven years which were to be my real education. So far it had been +naught but childhood's prologue. And what a shabby little part I had +played in it!</p> + +<p>But I did not know that, then!</p> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span> + +<hr /> +<br /> +<h2>II</h2> + +<h2>IN THE BEGINNING</h2> + + +<p>Immediately upon our return from the mountains I entered high school. My +aunt did her duty by accompanying me to the office of the principal and +assuring him that I was an honest and upright boy, aged fourteen.</p> + +<p>It had been her ambition to have me attend one of the fashionable +boarding schools in Connecticut. I do not think she had me much in mind +when she made the attempt to enroll me at the St. Gregory Episcopalian +Institute. She told so many of her friends of this intention—and told +them it with such an evident pride—that I fear she was more concerned +with her own social prestige than with my education. And when St. +Gregory, through a personal visit from its headmaster, discovered that +Mrs. Haberman had no right to aspire to the exquisite preference which +God accords Episcopalians, and later sent us a polite but cursory letter +of regret that its roster's capacity was full for the year, she bore it +as a direct insult upon her ancestors. (Though, of course, even so sharp +a hurt to her <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span>pride would not let her admit openly that all of those +ancestors were Jews.)</p> + +<p>At any rate, I went to the high school as a sort of a last resort. My +aunt dreaded the company I might have to keep there—all the public +riffraff, she called it. That was really why she accompanied me, that +first day, to assure herself that I was going to be placed among a +"perfectly horrid set of rude ruffians—ghetto boys, and the like!" and +to have something tangible and definite to worry about during the next +few years.</p> + +<p>The principal, busy with the hundred details of school's opening, gave +us as much time and courtesy as he could afford. As I look back upon it, +I think he was remarkably patient with my aunt.</p> + +<p>She told him her fears in a fretful, supercilious way; it was in exactly +the same tone that she ordered things from the butcher and grocer each +morning over the telephone. The principal heard her through—in fact, +prompted her whenever she faltered, nodded appreciatively when something +she said was most flagrantly out of place. When she was finished, he +turned to look very steadily at me.</p> + +<p>"If you have such objections to the class of boys in a public high +school, why do you send your nephew here?" he asked.</p> + +<p>"Because it—it is convenient," she stammered.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span>"I must confess, I wanted him to go to a boarding-school."</p> + +<p>"Which one?"</p> + +<p>"St. Gregory Episcopalian Institute."</p> + +<p>The principal's mouth quivered with the smile he could hardly suppress:</p> + +<p>"Episcopalian? The boy is a Jew, is he not?"</p> + +<p>Mrs. Haberman sat up very straight. "His parents had Jewish +affiliations, I believe. They are both dead."</p> + +<p>"I see." And I am sure he really did see! For a moment later he put a +deft end to the interview.</p> + +<p>"Madam," he said, "this boy must take his chances like any other boy in +the school. He must make his own friends from among his own sort. He +must fight his own adversaries among those who are unlike him. That is +the law of life as well as of every school. If he is attracted to the +undesirable element, he would find it and mingle with it at St. +Gregory's as quickly as he would here. I have a fine lot of youths here. +I am proud of them—even of those who fail to come up to the standards. +I won't try to talk to you about the splendid spirit of +democracy—because you evidently don't want the boy to be democratic. +You don't want him to stand on his own merits as a Jew. If he did that, +he would be putting up an honest, spirited battle. I only <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span>know that all +men and all boys like an honest stand and a fair fight for the things +worth protecting. I know that if I were a Jew, I should never—well, +that's your business, not mine." He took out of his desk a little +leather-covered book. "It may interest you to know that this high school +is ranked very high scholastically." He turned the pages. "Also that the +St. Gregory Institution is ranked among the most unsuccessful schools in +the country in the matter of scholarship." He showed her a table of +figures, then closed the book and put it away, smiling. "Also," he +finished, "that I am an Episcopalian, and that I should rather send a +son or a nephew of mine to prison than to so harmful a place as St. +Gregory."</p> + +<p>His remarks did not altogether convince my aunt, of course; and he said +no more, except to assure her that he would follow my course in his +school with much interest, and would do all in his power to make me +manly. To Mrs. Haberman, the promise to make a man of me meant little.</p> + +<p>She left me at the school door, stepping gingerly across the pavement +into her limousine in order to escape the contamination of a group of +young Italians who were coming up the steps. As she slammed the machine +door and was driven away, I felt somewhat bewildered—very much <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span>alone +in a hallway of hundreds of boys whom I did not know, but who jostled +me, went by me, up and down the stairs with a great hollow stamping of +feet, an echoing laughter, a loud excitement of regathering after the +summer's recess. None of them paid the slightest attention to me.</p> + +<p>A deep-voiced gong sounded through the hall and up the wide stair-well. +It was the signal to disperse to our classrooms.</p> + +<p>I had a card in my hand, assigning me to room 7 on the third floor. I +climbed the stairs fearfully, my heart beating faster than usual, my +knees trembling a little. I was entering a strange and mystic land that +I had dreamed of, yet had never seen.</p> + +<p>Room 7, third floor. It was a big, bare room, void of almost everything +excepting sunshine. There were desks, low and set decently apart. Along +the wall, behind gleaming glass, were cases of seashells and botanical +specimens. The teacher's desk, at the further end, was on a small, +shabby dais. Only a few of the boys had arrived, and the big room rang +with the echo of unfilled space.</p> + +<p>I heard them telling each other what they had been doing over the +summer. One of them, brown and sturdy, was telling of Maine and the camp +he had attended there. Another, in ragged clothes, and of a thin, pale +face, spoke of the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span>heated city during July and August, and of how he +had been swimming when he could get away from his summer job—swimming +in the East River. It shocked me to hear that. I had a picture of the +East River as I had seen it from the Brooklyn Bridge, a brown, littered +flood, choked with scurrying tugboats and the floating trails of refuse. +I hated that boy for a long while after I heard his story. But he had a +sharp, kindly face, and I wondered to see how popular he was with those +who knew him.</p> + +<p>Coming, as I did, from a distant grammar school, it chanced that there +were no boys of my acquaintance in the classroom. I was absolutely +alone—a stranger to them all.</p> + +<p>The teacher, on his dais, tapped with thin, white knuckles against the +side of his desk. He was a little, timid man with one of the saddest +faces I have ever seen. Mr. Levi, he said his name was.</p> + +<p>The boy next to me stirred in his seat. "A Jew for a teacher! What do +you think of that!" he said to me. "A Jew for—" Then he stopped short +and looked at me. "Oh, gee! You're one yourself, ain't you?"</p> + +<p>I felt my face grow very hot. I thought of the words which the principal +had only just spoken.... Could I stand up and fight like a man?</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span>I wanted to—I really do believe that I wanted to. But somehow the +impulse that came to me to face this seatmate squarely and to tell him +that—yes, I was a Jew, too—and proud of it—dwindled away into a gulp +and a whimper and a sickly smile.</p> + +<p>This other boy was red-headed, freckled. He was very tall, but I saw a +crutch at his side. Later on, when he rose, I could see that he was very +lame; also that around his neck (for he wore no collar) was a little +leather thong and tab. I did not know then—and I did not learn for many +months—that it was the scapular of a Roman Catholic.</p> + +<p>He looked at me surlily, but laughing.</p> + +<p>"You <i>are</i> a Jew, ain't you?" he demanded.</p> + +<p>I hung my head, wondering how to evade the directness of the question. +The lame boy seemed to be waiting for my reply.</p> + +<p>"Well, no—not exactly." I stuttered. But I could feel my face flushing +again.</p> + +<p>"What d'yer mean, not exactly? What's yer mom and pop?"</p> + +<p>"My mother and father? They are dead."</p> + +<p>That did not seem to check him. "Well, if you ain't a Jew, you look like +one. You look more like one than the teacher does." Whereupon, much to +my relief, he branched off the subject. "He don't seem to be such a bad +fellow, even <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span>with a name like Levi. Oi, oi, oi, Levi!" And he chuckled +with delight at the thought of how he would annoy and tease this teacher +at some future date.</p> + +<p>There are some boys of whom we can know at a glance that they are +bullies and mischief makers. This boy, whose name was Geoghen, was one +of them. He used his very lameness as an excuse to boss and bully his +classmates. He was very strong, though as I was to learn only too +soon—and his size made him an undisputed leader.</p> + +<p>There were no lessons this first day. There were only a speech of +welcome from the teacher, and an assignment of home work for the next +morning.</p> + +<p>But when we were dismissed and had started for the door, Geoghen limped +up to me.</p> + +<p>"So you ain't a Jew, eh?" he chuckled, looking hard into my face.</p> + +<p>So as to avoid the retort, I fled from him, down the stairs into the +main hall. I was just about to gain the street when the principal, +coming out of his office, saw me.</p> + +<p>"What's this?" he said in his deep likable voice. "Running away so +soon?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, sir. We're dismissed for today."</p> + +<p>"Oh, I see. Well, I suppose you've already begun to fight like a man, +haven't you? I hope so."</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span>"Oh, yes, sir!"</p> + +<p>But, as I went, I knew in my heart that it was not true. The whole first +day had been false.</p> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span> + +<hr /> +<br /> +<h2>III</h2> + +<h2>FRIDAY NIGHT</h2> + + +<p>Those first days at high school seemed terrible in the intensity of new +experiences. Had I but had my parents to encourage me, perhaps I should +not have felt so bitterly the loneliness of this new turn in the road.</p> + +<p>I do not care how manly and resolute he is, a boy will always need the +kind words, the clasp and kiss which only his parents can give him. And +I was not half so resolute then, nor half so hardened to battle as I am +now.</p> + +<p>I worried a good deal about my standing in the class room. It seemed to +me that I could not possibly pass each day's recitations creditably. And +yet I did, as I remember. It was only that I so sorely lacked +self-confidence.</p> + +<p>My aunt, Mrs. Haberman, did her duty in taking me to a nerve specialist. +He charged her a pretty price to examine me and to assure her that, +physically, there was nothing wrong with me.</p> + +<p>"Mentally, he is a little too active," was his sentence upon me. "And +that is what makes <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span>him melancholy. Let him study, let him get out and +meet boys of his own age.... Let him find something to be proud of, to +be interested in."</p> + +<p>My aunt gave this last a few pettish, impatient moments of thought. +After the doctor was gone, and she and I sat opposite each other at the +table, where the glass and silver made so ostentatious a showing, she +did her best to be practical about it.</p> + +<p>"Now, dear, let's see," she pondered, her long white fingers stroking +the table cloth, "I'm sure we can find something to interest and amuse +you, dear. How about basket weaving? or coloring photographs or +something artistic like that?"</p> + +<p>I wasn't very polite in my refusals. I declined basket weaving and +coloring photographs and even balked at the idea of installing a +billiard table in our apartment—which seemed to relieve Mrs. Haberman +immensely, since she considered billiards a brutal and vulgar game.</p> + +<p>All her suggestions came to naught. Once she spoke of religion, but her +eyes fluttered and she changed the subject quickly, as if she had +accidently hit upon the truth and found it unpleasant. It was enough to +put an idea into my head.</p> + +<p>I did not know then, but I do now, that the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span>thing I needed was Faith. A +boy needs it—needs it as much as he needs his parents—and I had +neither one nor the other.</p> + +<p>The days retreating into a gloomy background of autumn chills and fogs, +left me thoroughly weakened in spirit. Oftentimes—I could not guess +why—I came home from high school so exhausted that I could only throw +myself upon my bed, behind a locked door, and sob and sigh and shiver as +if with the ague. Everything that had happened during the day would come +pouring back into my memory with a distorted clarity, tinctured with +despair, hopelessly sombred with a boy's sense of wrong and persecution.</p> + +<p>I did actually have enough to contend with at high school. I had begun +to feel the racial distinctions, the thoughtless slurs and boycottings +which Jewish lads must everywhere encounter. I tried to tell myself that +it didn't matter—that these were only rough, ill-bred boys to whom I +ought not lower myself to pay attention. But a boy of fourteen finds it +hard to argue himself into bravery, and I failed miserably, ridiculously +at the task. Years later, I was to learn that it was all natural—that I +was passing, as every boy must pass, through the difficult period of +adolescence. It was mostly that I was lonely, balked by the +unappreciative <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span>attitude of my aunt, without guidance or curb.</p> + +<p>If in all this personal recital I am harsh to the memory of my aunt, you +will perhaps see that I have the right. I am grateful, truly grateful, +for all that she attempted to do for me, but I know that all her care +was misdirected. It was, besides, cruelly lacking in all of the finer +things which should have been mine; things which my parents would have +given me, things that, in my aggravated state, I needed.</p> + +<p>Once I was asked by some other Jewish boys at high school to join a +little club which they were forming. I hesitated about it. They were +jolly, healthy boys—most of them from the poorer sections of the +city—who went up to Van Cortlandt Park on Saturday afternoons and +Sundays to play ball or to skate. It would have done me good to be one +of them, to join their sports and laughter—and yet....</p> + +<p>Well, my aunt did not approve. I knew she wouldn't, long before I asked +her. If I was the least bit undecided before, she gave me clearly to +understand that companionship with Jewish boys would not be right for +me; that I must avoid this stigma of Judaism as I would avoid a crime. +She said it was for my <i>own</i> good—but I cannot believe it very +heartily. She was trying at that time to make me join a dancing class of +Gentile boys and girls. She told me she <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span>thought their company would +counteract the effect of having to endure a high school's rabble.</p> + +<p>There came a night, after a day of niggardly discouragements, when the +strange moroseness seemed too heavy to bear. I told my aunt that I did +not want any supper—a fact which did not worry her too much, since she +was in a hurry to dress and go off to a studio party of some silly sort. +And when she was gone and I was alone in the apartment, I could not read +or rest or do anything. I tried to study my next day's lessons, but had +to give them up.</p> + +<p>And at last I put on my hat and coat and went down to the street. The +air was bracing, but I was not used to the streets at night—and a +white, wraith-like fog was beginning to seep up from the pavements and +cluster in misty, yellow patches around the lamp-lights.</p> + +<p>Shivering, I went on. I did not know where I was bound. The old, savage +loneliness—here in the open, where the dampness brought the scent of +withered grass and lean, bare trees—was sharper, more embittering than +ever.</p> + +<p>I went across the street and into the nearest entrance of Central Park. +The quietness of everything there frightened me, called up every +foolish, childhood fear and superstition. I went through dark lanes that +were branched over <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span>with creaking branches. I saw the lake, black, cold, +with the stippled reflections of shore lights shining up from its edges. +I felt the moist, chilly wind that came across the big lawns and struck +my face and chest and shoulders. I felt—I could not help but feel that +I must go on, go on and on—in search of I know not what.</p> + +<p>I came at length to the Fifth Avenue side of the park. The huge white +stone and marble houses that flanked the street beyond were half lost in +the mist. The automobiles that went up and down the pavements, which +were wet and shining like the backs of seals, made no noise—went +silently, mystically, sweeping blurred trails of light upon the +sidewalks as they passed.</p> + +<p>Against that white, low horizon of houses I saw one thing that loomed +dark and gropingly conspicuous.</p> + +<p>I did not know what it was. Not then. But it held my attention: the +darkness, the gray curve of it against the sky. There was something +about it that was forbidding, deep, sombre. The lower front of it seemed +to be arched and pillared—and under each arch the shadows were +impenetrably black.</p> + +<p>There were automobiles waiting in front of it, at the sidewalk's edge. A +long string of them, too, as if many persons were within upon some +mysterious business.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span>Then, softly, as if from far distant recesses, there came from within +the soft, resonant voice of an organ—playing.</p> + +<p>Was it a church?</p> + +<p>Then I remembered that it was Friday night—and I knew that this was a +synagogue—a temple of the Jewish Faith.</p> + +<p>At first realization, I moved a little away from it, down the street. A +synagogue—and all that it brought to my mind was the memory of my +parents. In former years they had been wont to take me with them when +they went on Friday nights. And those had been dull, wearisome nights +for me—but I had spent them at my parent's side. So that now, in the +shadow of God's house, my loneliness for them came back to me in wild +deluge, breaking the dam of reserve and doubts and petty limitations.</p> + +<p>The music of the organ swelled louder, richer, blending all the majesty +of its bass notes with the triumph and fancy of its treble. Louder, +richer, louder—and I, who stood outside in the choking fog, felt my +heart give way to its pain and my eyes to the solace of their tears.</p> + +<p>Until the service was ended, and the organ had ceased to play I stayed +there. Once or twice I heard the voice of the cantor at his solemn +chantings—and this too brought me a distinct memory of the cantor in +our Brooklyn <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span>synagogue, and of how I had listened to him with my hands +locked in my mother's.</p> + +<p>Outside it was all so dark, so clammy with mist—and in there they—my +own sort of people—were worshipping God—my God. And when, soon +thereafter, the doors swung open in the black of the arches and bathed +the steps below with a great, glad, golden light, I ran forward, almost +involuntarily, to gaze within.</p> + +<p>I caught a glimpse of rich things, bright and gleaming—of carpets +glowing, walls resplendent—of golden tracery and colors. And then +people began coming through the doors down the steps, blackening and +obscuring my view of the interior.</p> + +<p>I saw some of their faces. They were Jewish people, of course—and I +heard a man among them talking rather loudly and laughingly. He talked +with an accent.</p> + +<p>For me the spell was broken. All the old, petty prejudice which +circumstance had nurtured in me sprang up anew. A sense of anti-climax, +of disgust came over me: yes, these—such as these were my people—and I +hated them.</p> + +<p>And I turned and ran away, back through the park, and home.</p> + +<p>I did not ever tell my aunt where I had been, nor anything else of the +adventure. I knew she would not have understood it. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span>But I did. And, boy +as I was, I knew now that I needed some Faith, some link to the company +and comfort of God—and that, sooner or later, as Jew or Christian, I +must seek and find that link.</p> + +<p>But I knew, too, that my antipathy to my own people had become +deep-seated—had grown to be part of my whole life's code.</p> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span> + +<hr /> +<br /> +<h2>IV</h2> + +<h2>THE BOY AND THE SCHOOL</h2> + + +<p>High school's terrors developed for me into a more personal terror of +that young tough, Jim Geoghen. A thorough bully, he made me feel always +that he was aware of my religion, that he could at any moment disclose +it to the rest of my classmates and make me the subject of their taunts. +No doubt, they all knew as well as he that I was a Jew—but, for the +most part, they paid little attention to that fact. A large number of +them were Jews themselves: bright-eyed, poorly-dressed little fellows +who led the class in studies, but who mingled little with any other +element.</p> + +<p>Something stronger than myself made me take up a half-hearted +companionship with these Jewish boys. I did not want to: I dreaded being +one of them—and yet, for all my aunt's sneers and warnings, and my own +perverted pride, I always felt more comfortable with them—more as if, +in walking home with one of them after school, instead of with some +Christian boy, I was where I belonged. I know it was only +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span>self-consciousness that gave me this feeling—but after all, comfort +must play a big part in our companionships.</p> + +<p>Geoghen, with his towering, menacing form, his dull, animal's face, his +swinging crutch, his mysterious scapular, haunted me continuously. I +remember distinctly dreaming of him once or twice at night—and that he +stood over my bedside, in those dreams, with his crutch upraised to +strike, and his little leather scapular writhing and hissing like a +coiled snake.</p> + +<p>One day he did strike me. It was during the noon recess when a group of +us were in the asphalted yard, eating our lunches. Mine was always an +elaborate package of dainties, wrapped in much tissue paper and doilies. +Geoghen, on the other hand, had just a chunk of rye bread, covered over +with a slice of ham. His glance, long and greedy, betrayed how envious +of me he was.</p> + +<p>"Eat ham?" he asked with a snicker.</p> + +<p>He did not wait for an answer, but crammed a few shreds of it towards my +mouth, his dirty fingers striking my teeth. I jumped away from him and +he followed after me, hobbling with amazing swiftness.</p> + +<p>"Tried to bite me, eh?" he cried.</p> + +<p>I denied it—but he did not listen and, raising his crutch, dealt me a +stinging blow with the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span>smaller end of it—though, at that, I was let +off easy.</p> + +<p>Towards our teacher, Mr. Levi, Geoghen and some of the other boys acted +with all the pent-up meanness and savagery of mischievous youth. Mr. +Levi's manner invited the twitting, perhaps: his pale, thin face bore +always a nettled look, his eyes seemed ever hungry with some dark +sorrow, and his mouth was always twitching. There was a fine timidity +about his way of handling us. He did not seem to be able to scold or be +authoritative.</p> + +<p>But when he would be teaching us our Roman History, for instance, and +would tell us of the beauties of Italian scenery or of Caesar's +centurions lost in the dark, tangled German forests or of how Cleopatra +came with purple sails—or of how Cleopatra came to meet Mark Antony in +a golden barge with purple sails—then his face would light up with a +look that was glorious, and even the rattiest, coarsest of us would +thrill and be hushed with the thrill—and know, no matter how dimly, +that he was in the presence of a great and beautiful spirit.</p> + +<p>But those times were rare; and, as a rule, we made life miserable for +Mr. Levi. He seemed to feel, I am sure, the handicap of his religion—to +know that the Irish boys of the class, and dark, sullen-faced Italians, +were thinking it an <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span>insult to be taught by a Jew—and that they were +only waiting for the opportunity for an outburst.</p> + +<p>It came at the end of my year in high school. That last month is always +a rebellious one. The spring weather, the sense of approaching vacation +make gamins of the quietest of us.</p> + +<p>Mr. Levi had been absent from the room for a little while. Geoghen in +that time had left his seat, hobbled up to the dais and opened the +teacher's desk. This bit of boldness drew a crowd of laughing boys to +the front of the room. They rummaged the desk, overturning and +scattering its papers, tumbling books to the floor.</p> + +<p>Suddenly one of them stooped and picked up a book which lay sprawled +with its pages open. There was an immediate shouting, coarse and +repellent to hear.</p> + +<p>The book of Mr. Levi's which they had found, was a Hebrew prayer book.</p> + +<p>Geoghen took it from the other boy. He held it open and up close to his +leering face. Then slowly, with the others in his trail, he began to +march around the room, making believe to sing a heathenish jargon which +he must have thought to resemble Hebrew, twisting his face grotesquely +to seem like a Jew's, making lewd gestures—breaking off now and again +to shriek with laughter at the comicality of it all.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span>Then suddenly Mr. Levi returned.</p> + +<p>He charged into the line, spun Geoghen about and tore the book from his +hands. Geoghen reached for it, as if loath to let go of so much fun—his +face impudent, grossly humorous—and Mr. Levi knocked him down.</p> + +<p>I shall never forget how the teacher looked. His pale face, paler than +ever, gleamed as if it were cut smooth out of marble. The eyes flashed +with a noble fury. The mouth had stopped its twitching and was drawn +taut, and his teeth showed at the corners of it. And when he struck at +Geoghen his whole slender tenseness seemed to be thrown into the blow.</p> + +<p>The crippled lad lay there for a moment, stunned. Then he got unsteadily +to his feet and picked up his crutch. A stream of profanity began to +come from his mouth. I don't think any of us had ever heard such talk +before. All the obscene things which the lowest scum of humanity can +pick up in the course of living years in the gutter, he spat out at Mr. +Levi.</p> + +<p>But the teacher had gone back to his dais and desk and stood facing him +silently, calmly, a look of mild reproach taking the place of the anger +in his eyes. He let Geoghen have his miserable say, and then silently +pointed to the door and motioned to him to get out. And Geoghen went.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span>That wasn't the end of it, though. For, within a week the newspapers had +taken up the incident and enlarged it, exaggerated it—and Geoghen's +father who, it seems, was a political vassal of the alderman of this +district, had managed to have Mr. Levi brought before the Board of +Education for an investigation.</p> + +<p>Mr. Levi had no show in that trial. He told his story truthfully. I +remember that, according to the newspapers, he made scarcely any effort +to defend himself. He merely explained that he had caught this boy +defiling the traditions of the Jewish faith, mocking what was most +sacred to him, and that he was indeed sorry that, in order to wrest the +book away from his impure hands, he had had to strike and knock down a +crippled pupil.</p> + +<p>The newspapers called Mr. Levi a dangerous and cruel fanatic, the Board +of Education decided that he was incompetent, and Mr. Levi—his face +paler than ever, his manner more mild and saddened—announced to us on +the last day of school that he would not be with us in the next year.</p> + +<p>I felt somehow that I would have liked to say goodby to him, but I was +afraid that he would ask me why I, in his absence on that terrible day, +had not prevented Geoghen from doing what he did—and my conscience made +a coward of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span>me. I had a foolish idea, besides, that he did not like me. +Any man who cared so much for his religion would not be able to respect +a boy in my position. It was all very unfortunate—I was sorry for him, +to be sure—but I must not sympathize too much with him.</p> + +<p>I told my aunt of the affair, of course, and she shuddered with +distaste.</p> + +<p>"What a fearful lot of ruffians they must be!" she sighed. "And worst of +all, a Russian Jew for a teacher!"</p> + +<p>I spent the summer at a Y. M. C. A. camp on the Maine coast. There were +no other Jewish boys there, but my aunt had managed to have me placed on +the roll-call somehow. I was glad enough of it. I did not want another +summer at a fashionable hotel in her and other ladies' company.</p> + +<p>Of course, I was "Ike" to the boys of the camp. They were a good, +rough-and-ready sort who swam well, ran, tramped, sang rollicking songs +on weekdays and hymns on Sundays, grew brown and muscle-bound and manly. +Such teasing as I had from them was good-natured, and I suppose I should +have taken it in the same spirit. But I had none of their assurance, was +like a stranger in a strange land—and came out of the summer with a +still deeper shrinking from contact with other boys.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span>High school began again, went on and on from lagging month to month, and +soon enough was over for a second year. But this time my aunt had been +as much aroused as she could be to the baffling condition of my mind and +spirits. I had by no means lost the old loneliness. I had learned to +bear it with greater patience, but it still galled and depressed me.</p> + +<p>Only, after that evening when I stood outside the synagogue, I had some +dim conception of what the inevitable cure would have to be.</p> + +<p>At any rate, my aunt called in the nerve specialist a second time. He +insisted that I must be sent away. Perhaps he saw into the unsympathetic +quality of our home life.</p> + +<p>This sent my aunt into tremors of delight. She had now a legitimate +excuse for shipping me off to a fashionable boarding school of some +sort. For days she made a feverish study of monogrammed and +photogravured catalogues from various schools in the East. It was upon a +military school on the upper Hudson that her choice finally fell. And I +am sure that this was due to the expensive appearance, the coat of arms +and Latin motto of the catalogue's cover.</p> + +<p>What ever it was, her choice was made. She talked a good deal of +splendid uniforms, of flags unfurled to the sunset—and fired me with a +lust for the new chapter in my life.</p> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span> + +<hr /> +<br /> +<h2>V</h2> + +<h2>THE MILITARY ACADEMY</h2> + + +<p>My introduction to military school was hardly auspicious. I was now +sixteen years old—nearly seventeen. I did not look that old, however; +the commandant of the school, in examining me, took me for much less and +assigned me to a room with a boy of twelve.</p> + +<p>At seventeen, our age is a most important item. We think so, anyhow. And +this incident dampened my spirits most disproportionately. Especially +when I discovered that this roommate was to be the only other Jew in the +school. It seemed to me a very pointed and personal insult.</p> + +<p>He was a meek little boy, though—meeker even than I. And all through +that first night he wept aloud, smothering his tears upon his pillow and +crying for his mama—and for <i>kartoffel salat</i>. It was a Friday night, I +remember, and it must have been a Sabbath custom in his house to have +potato salad for supper. At any rate he kept me awake long into the +night.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span>And once, taking savage pity on him, I got up and went over to him in my +bare feet and nightgown, and told him brusquely how satisfied he ought +to be to have a mother at all; that both my father and mother were dead, +and I should never see them again, no matter how homesick I grew or how +long I waited for their coming. This silenced him on that score, but he +went on whimpering for the <i>kartoffel salat</i>.</p> + +<p>The next day I screwed up my courage to complain to the commandant. He +was a very tall, majestic figure of a soldier who had fought through the +Spanish and Boer wars and now, in times of peace, was reduced to +teaching the manual of arms and simple drill formations to young sons of +the rich. He was the most pompous, mean and utterly selfish man I ever +met. One could see it on his handsome face.</p> + +<p>He heard my complaint through. Then, because, being an ignorant "plebe," +I had forgotten to salute him, he made me perform that act and retell +the whole story word for word. But he could not change my room until I +had agreed to take a cot in the general dormitory—this being reserved +for students who paid less tuition.</p> + +<p>"You may write your aunt," he said stiffly, twirling his long mustaches, +"that we did all we could to make you comfortable. We purposely put you +in a room with young Private <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span>Ornstein because we thought it would be +more—er, more congenial."</p> + +<p>I saw what he was driving at, and went away miserable. So they knew it +up here, too: I was a Jew, and must be separated from the others as if I +had the plague! I felt sorry for myself.</p> + +<p>I was not particularly homesick, though I had never been able to develop +much love for my Aunt Selina. She had not given me the chance. But the +unaccustomed severing from all that was mine: my room at home, the +street that I saw from its window, the burly, Irish "cop" who stood on +the corner and passed me an occasional lofty jest—and a thousand other +things, intimate and absurdly unimportant I missed with dull emptiness.</p> + +<p>The school was comfortable enough. It was a huge, barn-like affair, +built in the previous generation and hardly ever repainted since then, +to look at it. The towers at either end of it had tin and battered +battlements, and the flanks of steps which went up the hill on which it +stood were worn with the tread of the hundreds of boys who had marched +upon them, each succeeding year. It was so with the stairs all through +the building: each step had a shallow, smooth cup which years of +treading had ground out. It gave me a creepy sense of the place's +antiquity.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span>There was a large parade ground at the back of the building. Its grass +was brown and mealy, and a flag pole, sagging slightly to one side, +jutted up from the center of it like a long, lone fin.</p> + +<p>In the quadrangle where we formed in line to march to the mess-hall, +stood a huge oak tree, century-old, with twisted limbs and browning +leaves. On one of those limbs, they told me, an American spy was hanged +by the British in Revolutionary days—but it may have been only a fable. +I have since learned that almost every military school along the Hudson +has its Revolutionary oak—but, at the time, it made a deep impression +on me, so that I could not bear to hear the creaking of the branches +against my dormitory window.</p> + +<p>This dormitory, to which I and my belongings repaired, was a long, +narrow, whitewashed room, crowded with iron cots and intruding +wardrobes. At night, when the bugle had blown taps and the lights were +dimmed, there was a ghostly quality to the rows of white and huddled +figures that lay the length of the room. There was never absolute quiet. +Sometimes some little boy would be sobbing, sometimes two of the older +ones would be telling each other the sort of jokes that daylight +forbids—and sometimes it would be the heavy, asthmatic breathing of the +proctor who was there to keep charge.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span>Of the boys themselves I could not judge at first. I was too young to +judge, at that: but I was not too young that I could not realize they +were not of the same sort as I had known in the city. There I had known +the pupils of a public school, poor, rough, almost always hard workers, +eager for whatever seemed fair and quick and democratic. But these boys +were of wealthy parents, most of them. There were only a few of them who +held scholarships, and these did jobs so menial and embarrassing that, +even under the most ideal conditions, they must have suffered in the +opinions of the rest of the school. As a matter of fact, we were a +brutal little crowd of snobs, and made life miserable for these poorer +scholars who must sweep the halls and wash dishes.</p> + +<p>I do not think all military schools are like the one I attended. I hope +not. I gained from my year there much in the way of physical +development—but that is all. For every inch of muscle that I put on I +lost something worth incalculably more: honesty and cleanliness of mind +and what little shred of self-reliance I possessed. Somehow or other, it +seemed to me that I had reached the lowest rung of boyhood here—and, as +I look back upon it, I know that I was not much mistaken.</p> + +<p>I wrote to ask my aunt to take me away. She <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span>refused to come to see +me—but scribbled a few empty lines to accuse me of homesickness, and to +assure me I should soon be rid of it.</p> + +<p>We did much more drilling than studying. Though nearly all of us +intended to go to college, our school day was confined to about three +hours at the most—and under teachers who were always surly, sneering +and uncouth. The standard of work in the classroom was very low. At +first I did not have any trouble at all in leading the entire school in +scholarship; but gradually, under the careless and relaxed conditions, I +grew unambitious, lazy—and found myself failing among a class of boys +who, I secretly knew, were my mental inferiors. It is so much a matter +of competition, of environment.</p> + +<p>Of friends I made few: even of those schoolboy friends who are your +"pals" one day, your sworn enemies the next. I had one or two +sentimental encounters with a brewer's son—a great, beefy ox of a boy +who lorded it over all of us because he kept his own private horse in +the town livery stable and had his room furnished with real mission +furniture. But he had no use for me when he realized that I was a Jew, +and took particular pains to transfer me from the company of which he +was first sergeant into the band.</p> + +<p>The band, so-called in spite of the fact that <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span>it was composed of only +fifes, drums and bugles, was a sadly amateurish thing. The little +knowledge of music that I had was just so much more than that possessed +by any other member of the organization. As a result I soon rose to the +magnificence of cadet drum-major, an office which involved a tall, +silvered stick and a shako of sweltering bear-skin. Thus, my military +training consisted mostly of learning to twirl the baton; and when +semi-annual examinations resulted in disaster for me, I was reduced to +the humility of a private without having gained more than the knack of +sending a silvered rod in rapid circles about my stiff and sorely-tried +thumb.</p> + +<p>At that, I was glad to return to the ranks. There had been plenty of +criticism of the fact that a "plebe" should have risen so quickly to an +officership. And, of course, as Jewish boys always do, I imagined that +the demonstration was just another evidence of race prejudice. +Undoubtedly it was, to some extent—but I know that I have always been +too suspicious in that direction. Had I been braver about it, I should +have been less suspicious.</p> + +<p>One friend I did make: a lieutenant-adjutant whose first name was Sydney +and who was in charge of the punishment marks that were allotted us for +our various misdemeanors. Many <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span>a time did Sydney, for my sake, forget +to record the two or four marks which some crabbed teacher had charged +against me for inattention or disorderly conduct.</p> + +<p>He was a big, handsome chap, with the most attractive manners I have +ever met. He was a scholarship boy—so that he had begun his school year +with a hundred and one unpleasant tasks to perform. But somehow or other +he had managed to be rid of them all excepting this dignified one of +"keeping the books"—and I am sure it must have been a lucrative one, in +a small way, for Sydney's room was full of pictures which had been given +him from other boys' rooms, of canes and banners—even of a half dozen +pair of patent leather shoes—which may or may not have come to him in +return for his apt juggling of those hated punishment marks.</p> + +<p>I am not attempting to judge him—and I will tell you much more of him +later on—but I must remember him as one of the most wonderful of +friends: always smiling, always ready to join in upon whatever lark was +planning—a bit of a daredevil, very much of a protector when the +bullies of the school were pressing too close for comfort.</p> + +<p>During the year, of course, I saw or heard nothing that could remind me +of my Faith. We had to go to church on Sunday mornings. I was <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span>given my +choice, and tried accompanying one squad after another. I went to the +Episcopal, the Methodist, the Presbyterian—and it was the last that I +finally selected for good. There was a splendid old pastor there; his +white hair and trumpeting voice gave him venerableness, even when he +spoke of things that seemed to me very childish and obvious.</p> + +<p>Once the commandant, twirling his mustaches, asked me whether I should +not like to go to the synagogue on Friday nights (there was a small one +at the edge of the town). I did not care much about the religious +inspiration to be gained from the Hebrew service, but I did think it +would be jolly fun to be allowed to go down into the town at night. And +yet I knew that some of my schoolmates would come to know why I went, +and what sort of services I attended, and—reluctantly—I declined the +opportunity.</p> + +<p>I do not know what the bumptious commandant thought of it, but he pulled +his mustaches very, very hard.</p> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span> + +<hr /> +<br /> +<h2>VI</h2> + +<h2>MY STEERFORTH</h2> + + +<p>I wish I could write this episode in quite a different tone from all the +others. I wish I could summon all the tenderness of which boyhood +has—and which it loses—and put it into the lines of the recital that +is now due. Because, then, perhaps, you would have some knowledge and +appreciation of what the last few months of my stay at the military +school meant for me.</p> + +<p>David Copperfield had his Steerforth. Every boy must have one. +Certainly, <i>I</i> did. And I worshipped him with all the ardor and +unquestioning devotion that could come fresh from a boy-heart which had +never yet given itself to friendship. Steerforth was a villain; but in +David's eye he was always, unalterably, a glorious hero. This is how it +was, perhaps, with Sydney—though he was no villain, I am sure.</p> + +<p>I spoke of him in my last chapter: told you that he was a poor student, +much in favor with the commandant for his good services. I have told +you, he was tall, fair-haired, with locks that <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span>waved back from his +white forehead (as Steerforth's did, as I remember) and merry, blue +eyes.</p> + +<p>He befriended me because it was of his generous nature to befriend all +the lonelier boys. He used to pal with all the school "freaks," to +counsel them, to drill them privately, so that they should be more +proficient on parade. He used to make me very jealous of his large +circle of small worshippers. I thought that privilege ought to be kept +for me alone.</p> + +<p>He used to read with me, on spring nights, in the school's dingy +library. We read "David Copperfield" together; and would glance up from +the page to watch, from the windows, the pale but glowing battle of +sunset colors over the hills and mirrored in the darkling stretch of the +Hudson. And sometimes, when the story would not give us respite, he +would smuggle the book up into the dormitory—and when all was dark +there, and the proctor slept, we would creep into the hall and read by +its dusky light until long into the night. I have read "David +Copperfield" again since then—but not with so exquisite a thrill.</p> + +<p>And reading of Steerforth, I used to look up at Sydney and imagine that +he was that fine, attractive fellow—and that I, dumb but ecstatic in my +pride of friendship, was little David.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span>It seemed so wonderful to me, especially, that he was a Christian and I +a Jew, and yet there had never been any question of difference between +us. Other boys who had given me something of their friendship had made +such a brave point of telling me that they didn't mind my being a +Jew—that there were just as many good Jews as there were bad ones—and +all those other stupid and inevitable remarks that we must swallow and +forget. But with Sydney it was not like that. He had never mentioned it, +and it seemed as if he knew that I dreaded the subject—and so kept +silent on it out of kindness.</p> + +<p>Sometimes, when the days were warm and the trees were budding, we went +off together on long walks through the country. Sydney taught me to +smoke cigarettes, and we would stop on our way at a little village store +that lay at the end of a hilly road.</p> + +<p>An old man, who was an invalid, owned the store. But he sat all day at +his little card table in the dark, untidy rear, playing solitaire; and +it was his young daughter who would wait on us behind the counter.</p> + +<p>She was a thin, dull-looking girl, scarcely pretty, yet with large, +sombre eyes that her lonely task explained. She was ignorant, I am sure, +and knew little of what went on in the town at the river's edge or in +the big city, fifty-odd miles <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span>away. But there was something pathetic +about her position—and when Sydney made it more and more a custom to +talk to her, to make friendly advances, I thought it only the big +generosity of his heart pouring out to succor another such shy soul as +mine.</p> + +<p>Once or twice it was not until evening that we could steal "off bounds," +and then we would make straight for the little store, as if we knew +that, if we did not hurry, it would be closed for the night. And we +would have only a few hurried words, but laughing, with the girl—and +she would look up at Sydney with a light in those big eyes of hers that +I had never seen before in any woman's. She left her counter, once, and +walked all the way home with us; and I saw, in the blue of the gloaming, +that her hand was tightly clasped in Sydney's, and that he whispered +things to her under his breath, as soon as I was gone a little way ahead +of them, and that they both laughed—and she looked up at him as a dumb +animal to its master. She came as far as the school gate; and after I +had gotten within, they stood for a moment together—and I thought I +could hear the sound of kissing. It was only then that I began to be +troubled.</p> + +<p>Sydney, who was a lieutenant in the cadet battalion, had more privileges +than I. He could leave the premises when he pleased. He never <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span>had to +sign the big book in the hall when leaving and arriving back. He needed +never to give account of what he did "off bounds." It was an easy matter +for him—and there were many times, now, that he went off alone. No one +knew why he used to take that little country road that led up the hill +towards a stupid old country store. No one, that is, but me.</p> + +<p>At first I did not think much of the girl's side of it. I was bitterly +disappointed that some one else had come between my friend and me. I was +jealous of all the time he spent with her, of the hours of reading and +walking and jesting that once were mine—and of which the lure of her +had robbed me.</p> + +<p>But once, when we were at the store, and I stood aside from them, +watching the humped back of her old father, bent over his card table, +and saw the feeble shaking of his hand, I began to comprehend what it +might mean to him if anything should happen. Not that I knew what might +happen. I was still very young—but I felt the chill foreboding of +tragedy lurking somewhere in the background of it all. The dingy little +shop, with its flyspecked glass cases and its dusty rows of untouched +stock; the lights dimmed and blackened by clusters of whirling insects; +the old father with his bent back—and the two of them standing there +and laughing, gazing <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span>into each other's faces with the look of youth and +the Springtime.</p> + +<p>And I went out quickly and stumbled my way home alone, leaving Sydney to +follow after.</p> + +<p>When Sydney came in, after taps, I stole from my bed to his to speak to +him of it. But the words would not form themselves suitably, and he +laughed at my poor stammerings, and sent me off to bed again.</p> + +<p>But one night, just before "tattoo," when the fruit trees were frothing +with light blossoms and the scent of lilacs was heavy in the air, Sydney +sent for me. He was officer-of-the-day, today, and could not leave the +premises. He wanted me to go in his place, to meet the girl and to +explain why he could not keep his appointment.</p> + +<p>I looked at him in amazement. "Do you mean to say, you've been meeting +her every night. As late as this? Alone?"</p> + +<p>He was playing with the tassel at the end of the red sash which the +officer-of-the-day wears about his waist. He let it drop and gave me a +quick glance.</p> + +<p>"Yes," he said, "and mind you don't tell anybody, either. You'll have to +sneak off bounds—but I'll see you don't run much of a risk. You can +leave that part to me."</p> + +<p>Then, when he saw me hesitate, he began to plead. "Oh, say, you won't go +back on me, will <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span>you? I've been a good friend to you and done you lots +of favors—and now when I ask you to take a little risk for me...."</p> + +<p>I smiled. "You don't understand, Sydney," I said. "It isn't the risk."</p> + +<p>"Then what is it?"</p> + +<p>"It's—it's the girl."</p> + +<p>He stepped back from me, and his face took on a coldness I had never +seen before. "Don't worry about that," he exclaimed. "That's my +business."</p> + +<p>Then, as I hesitated, he burst out: "Hurry up, now, you little Jew!"</p> + +<p>I stood very still for a minute. Then I felt my face flush hot and I +flung away from him.</p> + +<p>It had come at last. He, my best friend—my only friend—he had called +me a Jew!</p> + +<p>I wanted to scream back at him, to beat him with my fist, to denounce +him and curse him. I felt betrayed, degraded as I had never been before. +Then I gulped hard and controlled myself.</p> + +<p>I said nothing. I merely saluted and set off upon his errand.</p> + +<p>But I did not find the girl at the street corner he had mentioned. I +went on, only a few hundred yards, to the store. There was a dim blue +light in one of its windows, and I crept up and pressed my face against +the glass, knowing <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span>that she was probably sitting up and waiting.</p> + +<p>Yes, she was there—behind the counter with her shawl still over her +head and her eyes fixed on the cheap wall clock. She could not see me in +the darkness outside—not even when she turned her head and gave me a +full view of her face, so that I could see how strangely pale and set it +was, and how deeply lurking in her eyes was the fear of the moment.</p> + +<p>I did not go in and tell her anything. I could not. The sight of her and +the appeal of her thin, tragic little body sent me hurrying back with my +errand uncompleted—and glad, madly glad that it was so.</p> + +<p>I crept up to bed as soon as I was "in bounds" again. I wanted to avoid +Sydney. Nor would I give him a chance to speak to me the next morning. I +felt that I knew now, almost in its entirety, the scheme he was +laying—and the climax which was fast approaching. And, after having +seen her, as I did last night, I knew that I could never go walking with +him again or have more to do with him, and that I must go back to her, +some day soon, traitor-wise, and warn her against him who had been my +best friend.</p> + +<p>In the afternoon, after school was done, a crowd of us obtained +permission to go swimming in a nearby lake. Sydney was among us: the +leader of us, in fact. He tried to speak to <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span>me—perhaps he was going to +apologize to me for having called me a Jew—I do not know. But, though I +did not give him the chance, I remember well how tall and brave he +looked, and how his hair waved back from his forehead like Steerforth's.</p> + +<p>And like Steerforth, too, he was drowned.</p> + +<p>Schoolboys are careless of their swimming. We did not notice until it +was long too late that Sydney had disappeared. When his body was +recovered, the doctors worked over it for fully two hours. But it was no +use.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>His funeral was held in the school parlor the next morning. But it had +been a night of terrors, of whispering groups, of Death's shadow over us +all—and we were but children. His empty bed, his dress uniform tossed +carelessly over the back of a chair, the knowledge of his insensible +presence in the undertaker's shop at the other end of town ... brought +fear and wakefulness to us all.</p> + +<p>And as for me, I sat all night at the dormitory window and listening to +the creak and groan of the old Revolutionary oak in the quadrangle, +thought of many things: of the walks we had taken, of the hundred +smiling adventures we had shared, of all the glad things he had taught +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span>me—and then, of the girl—and of the tragic face of her—as I had seen +it last.</p> + +<p>And I wished that he had lived only a few minutes longer so that I might +have pleaded with him and shown him where he was wrong. And, perhaps, in +those few minutes he would have reached out his hand to me, and begged +forgiveness for having called me what he did—perhaps he might have done +so—and oh, I wanted with all my heart to forgive him and tell him it +did not matter—and to wish him God-speed.</p> + +<p>But in a few days, when I summoned enough courage to go up the hilly +road in search of the little old store, I found it closed. The cracked +shades were down before the windows, and a "For Sale" sign was on the +door. The father and daughter had moved away, I heard in the town; but +no one knew where—or why.</p> + +<p>But when I was back in the dormitory, I took the book of "David +Copperfield" from under my pillow, and put it back in the library, and +did not attempt to read further in it, then.</p> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span> + +<hr /> +<br /> +<h2>VII</h2> + +<h2>FRESHMAN YEAR</h2> + + +<p>New adventures must be prefaced by new hopes. My entering college meant +the starting of a thousand new dreams, ambitions—and seemed to me an +opening gate to a land stronger than any I had yet heard of: a land of +real men, virile, courteous and kind, whose thoughts were never petty, +whose breadth of mind unfailing.</p> + +<p>It was only a few weeks after Sydney's death that I took my college +entrance examinations. I had taken the "preliminaries" the year before, +and I entered upon these "finals" low in spirit, disinterested, very +much aware of how poor a training for them this last year at military +school had given me.</p> + +<p>Nevertheless, I managed to pass them. Not brilliantly, to be sure, but +by a small margin which left no doubt but that I should be accepted in +the freshman class of the city's university.</p> + +<p>I have not called my alma mater by any other name than this: I do not +wish, out of a sense of loyalty, to define it more closely. You will +say, before I am through, that I am perverse in that <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span>loyalty; perhaps +so—but I do not wish to transgress upon it. Suffice it then, that my +college days were spent at one of the two universities which New York +has within its borders.</p> + +<p>I shall never forget how my heart bounded when I received, through the +mail, that little leather covered book which college men know as the +"Freshman Bible." It is the directory of undergraduate activities issued +by the university Y. M. C. A., and is sent to all members of the +incoming class. I read each little page and its small, fine print as if +my life depended upon its reading. When I came to understand that +freshman must wear a black, green-buttoned cap upon the campus, a deep +awe of collegiate law and order came over me. When I saw the little +half-tone prints of the chapel, the gymnasium, the baseball field, I +felt that I was glimpsing, before my proper time, the sacred precincts +of a land which would be magical, splendid with an eternal sunlight, +peopled only with a chivalrous and knightly manhood. I suppose that +college was to me, as to most subfreshman, a place of green swards and +track meets and those musical harmonies which glee clubs can so +throatily accomplish.</p> + +<p>I was at the hotel in New Hampshire when this book arrived. The very +same mail brought me the definite results of my college entrance +examinations. I remember that I was just <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span>starting to walk down to the +lake with my aunt when they arrived. I knew what was in the big ominous +envelope—and I was afraid to open it. I crammed it into my coat pocket, +careful not to let my Aunt Selina see it, and went on to the boat house, +hired a boat and rowed her dutifully around the lake for a full two +hours. She remarked upon my silence—but I did not tell her that my fate +was in my pocket—and that I dared not look upon it.</p> + +<p>But when I was back at the hotel, I went straightway to my room and +opened the envelope, stripped out the blue, bank-note sheet and +read—yes, I had passed every examination. And I was a regularly +enrolled student at the university.</p> + +<p>I told my aunt of it at lunch, as if it were a casual thing—and she +treated it as such, too. If I had had any doubts of her lack of genuine +interest in me, I knew it now for certain. It was just a matter of +course to her—this entrance into college—and to me, in turn, it meant +so much: a new work, a new land, a life entirely new and shot through +with hopes. I did not tell her that, but let her change the topic +quickly. She was intent upon talking fashions with Mrs. Fleming-Cohen.</p> + +<p>I had hated to come to this hotel for another year. The people persisted +in making things <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span>graciously unpleasant for us. I was beginning to be +old enough to feel it keenly—and not old enough to overlook. I wonder, +for that matter, if Jews are ever old enough to overlook it?</p> + +<p>But Aunt Selina was dictatress of my destinies. She had declared I must +either come along to the hotel or else I would not be allowed to enter +college. In the face of such an alternative I had yielded quickly. But +there had already begun between my aunt and me a chasm that grew daily +wider, deeper, more hopelessly incapable of bridging. When one has been +away for a year, one returns to find grim truths. I had met other +people, seen other lives and other souls since I had been in boarding +school: I was not clouded now by my blood relationship to Mrs. Haberman +or by day after day of close but unintimate companionship. I saw her as +she was: a shallow, flighty woman whose thoughts were always upon that +sort of society which spells itself with a capital S, whose petulance +found no ease—always restless, always ambitious for petty things, +wanting only what she could not have—an idle woman, foolish in her +idleness.</p> + +<p>In spite of her taking it as a matter of course, she spent the whole +day, after she had learned my news, in spreading it about the porch and +parlors of the hotel. She seemed to imagine <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span>that it would interest +every one—even Mrs. Van Brunt, the arbiter of elegance of the mountain +clique, who, on hearing it, sniffed, patted her lorgnette with a lace +handkerchief, and inquired if a great many Jews did not attend this +particular university.</p> + +<p>"Really, I should not think of sending any relative of mine there," she +sniffed. "Not that I have a prejudice against Jews, of course—in fact, +I consider myself very democratic. I have many Jewish acquaintances. +Many of my best friends are Jews."</p> + +<p>My aunt, who had undoubtedly had to listen to these catchwords as often +as any other Jew or Jewess must, attempted not to understand why Mrs. +Van Brunt had spoken them. A few minutes later she made a few unblinking +and pointed remarks about having to attend a convention of Christian +Science workers in the fall—as if to protest that Mrs. Van Brunt had +made a grievous and embarrassing error.</p> + +<p>I asked my aunt, a few days later, if I was not to be allowed to live in +one of the university dormitories. Whether or not his college is in his +home town, every boy wants the full flavor of undergraduate life—wants +to live on the campus, to throw himself heart and soul into the college +games and customs. I could not see how college would mean anything to me +if I <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span>were to go on living at home in that dull, comfortless apartment +of Aunt Selina's.</p> + +<p>Youth is always eager for emancipation—always a little too thoughtless +in its eagerness.</p> + +<p>Perhaps I was wrong in forgetting what I owed Aunt Selina. She took +great offense at my wish. She spoke, her voice choked with tears, of the +many years that she had cared for me, fostered me, guarded me from a +world of foreign things—"ruffians and kikes and niggers," was the way +she described it.</p> + +<p>At any rate, I remember that I spent a whole day in thinking it out for +myself upon a lonely walk, and that, at the end of it, I came to tell +her that she was right and that I was ashamed of wanting to leave +her—that I would live home with her, and try to gain the best of +college in that way. Privately, I knew that I could never gain as +much—but I had made up my mind not to pain her, confident that it would +be worth the sacrifice.</p> + +<p>The days lagged slowly to the end of that summer. I was preparing in a +hundred little ways for the great adventure: sending for all sorts of +stereotyped books on the moral conduct of college men, on the art of +making friends, on the history and traditions of my university. I was +prepared to be its most loyal son. I could hardly wait for the stupid +weeks at this <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span>mountain hotel to pass by, for the opening day to arrive.</p> + +<p>And then, when the trees were beginning to fleck with scarlet and the +summer heather streaked with goldenrod, we did depart for the city. It +was only a week before college would begin.</p> + +<p>Then five days, four days, three, two, one. And on the night before +registration day, which would commence the college year, I sat for a +long while at my table-desk, dreaming high things—hope and fear +mingling with my dreams, charging them with an exquisite uncertainty, +making them pulse with the things that were innermost in me.</p> + +<p>I was old enough, I thought, to review all the past—to see myself with +youth's over-harsh criticism of itself—to realize that, so far, I had +made a miserable, cringing, cowardly botch of my conduct and +convictions. Some day, soon, I seemed to feel, there would come a moment +of crisis—a moment when all the shy, stammering manhood that I knew to +be in my heart would fling itself suddenly into the open and make me +strong and confident, helpful to myself and many others. I had always +longed to be a leader—as every boy does—and so far I had been a +slave—slave, most abjectly of all, to my own fears and prejudices. But +it would be different at <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span>college: there would be something—I did not +know what—which would fling courage into me, fill my veins with +flame—and it troubled me to wonder what that thing would be. Had any +one told me, then, that it would be Judaism, I should have either +laughed or been insulted.</p> + +<p>For I was just as much afraid as ever of what hardships my religion +might work for me at college. I had as much fear, as much abhorrence of +the truth, in that regard. I wanted so much to forget it—to be one of +the other sort, little caring for creed in any form, but wishing I were +safe in the comfort of having been born into the faith of the majority. +As I looked at it then, I was going into these new four years with a +tremendous handicap scored against me. It seemed so unfair: I cared so +little for Jewish things, yet I would have to be identified with them +throughout my entire course. I had learned, by now, that I could not +escape them.</p> + +<p>I went into college with a deeper sense of the injustice of it all than +I had ever had. I was going with the feeling that, come what may, I +should have to bow before the inevitable stigma of my race—And yet, I +hoped so yearningly that it would be otherwise. I hoped—and +dreamed—and laughed at my dreams, and told myself that college men were +only boys, after all: boys as bigoted, as cruel in their prejudices as +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span>any that I had met at high school or military academy.</p> + +<p>And perhaps I was justified in this last opinion. For, when I appeared +on the campus the next morning, headed for the dean's office to file my +registration, I was met by a ratty, little sophomore who made me buy a +second-hand freshman cap from him at four times its original value.</p> + +<p>And when he had my money in his pocket, and was a safe distance across +the green from me, he began to laugh and shout:</p> + +<p>"Oi, oi! oi, oi!"</p> + +<p>So that this was my introduction into college life.</p> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span> + +<hr /> +<br /> +<h2>VIII</h2> + +<h2>WITHIN THE GATES</h2> + + +<p>This initial experience did not frighten me. I came up to the first day +of college in the firm and joyous belief that here, if anywhere, that +old bugbear of my past school days would be absent. I came into sight of +buildings that were new to me, and oh, how stately to my freshman eyes! +I came across a campus that was golden with the autumn grass, where red +leaves filtered down from old elms, and where, from heights, I caught +glimpses of the university's private parks, still green and soft, and of +the river beyond—and of the clean flanks of white stone buildings and +marble colonnades, half hidden in the trees. It was all so beautiful. It +was the promised land and I was within its gates.</p> + +<p>The giddy knowledge of it buoyed me up and sent me across the campus +humming to myself one of the alma mater songs which I had so religiously +learned from that "Freshman Bible." I was on my way to my first class. +Directly ahead of me was the broad, lofty door of the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span>recitation +building and, a little to the left, a fountain's water spilled itself +singingly over into a shallow marble basin.</p> + +<p>Suddenly a trio of sophomores bounded out from behind a clump of bushes. +They came about me in a whooping circle, took me by the head and feet +and tossed me into the fountain.</p> + +<p>I clambered out, dripping, spluttering, but—be it said to my +credit—still smiling. I had heard that this was the customary hazing +which all freshmen must endure—and I knew enough to take it with as +good a grace as they gave it.</p> + +<p>I started on my way to the recitation hall again, my clothes leaving a +trickling line behind me on the walk. But they pulled me back and +thumped me into the water again. It happened a third time before they +let me go. And then one of them—a big, stocky fellow who wore a thick, +rolling sweater on which the college letter was emblazoned—laughed +heartily and thwacked me on the back and roared that I was a good kid, +even for a Jew!</p> + +<p>The kindness of his remark was perhaps deeply meant. I've no doubt, he +thought to be paying me a compliment—but I went away, wetter than ever, +fast contracting a cold—and with a lump in my throat for which the cold +was not at all responsible.</p> + +<p>In the class room I found a number of my <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span>new classmates in quite as +damp a condition as I. I was glad to be among them, to know that I had +not been singled out—and, being miserable, enjoyed their company. The +instructor seemed to be making a point of paying no attention to our +wetness. It made me wonder how the faculty felt about hazing. Evidently +they shut their eyes to it.</p> + +<p>The class was soon over, since we were only kept for a preliminary +explanation of the course and a few words of supercilious greeting on +behalf of the young instructor. We came out upon the campus again, +locked arm in wet arm, paradoxically proud of what we had suffered.</p> + +<p>But some more sophomores were waiting for us. We had to go into the +fountain over and over again. My own personal score was nine times. Nor +did my good nature—kept at what a cost!—serve to bring me any +leniency.</p> + +<p>In fact it was only when I showed a trace of anger that the sophomores +finally released me and took me over to the gymnasium to give me a +sweater and a pair of old pants, much too big for me, to wear until my +other suit was dry.</p> + +<p>I went home from that first day jubilant, excited, sure of my coming +four years. I had proven to myself and to all these others that I was +ready to take a joke, to share it and enjoy it even when it was "on me." +I had come out <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span>of it all with a tame but conclusive triumph of patience +and good nature.</p> + +<p>I told my aunt of what had happened, when we sat down to dinner. She was +shocked at the recital. She wanted to know what sort of boys these +sophomores were—were they of good family and all that? Otherwise, if +they were ruffians, common street boys—she was going to write a letter +of complaint to the Dean of the university. I had a hard time +restraining her from it: I only did succeed by maintaining stoutly that +hazing was part of the social scheme, and was indulged in only by "boys +of the best families!"</p> + +<p>The next morning, when I had traveled uptown to the college site, I was +met by more than one sophomore and upper classman who gave me a broad +smile or a humorous wink. The story of my dousings had probably gone the +rounds of the campus.</p> + +<p>That night there was to be a reception given to the freshman class by +the college Y. M. C. A. I had arranged with Aunt Selina that I would not +be home until late.</p> + +<p>There was a baseball game between the two classes in the afternoon. The +sophomores won, of course—as I believe they almost always do in that +first game. But after that there was a class rush around the flag pole. +I was light enough <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span>to climb up, stockinged-feet, upon the shoulders of +some of the taller classmates. I managed, somehow or other, to reach +that silly little flag and to tear it down, and then to dive down into +the twisting, jammed crowd below me, hugging the rag to my breast in +bulwarked hiding. And when the whistle blew I was still in possession of +it.</p> + +<p>Popularity is a heady wine—and I had my fill of it that day and +evening. I—little I—had won the class rush for the freshmen. Everybody +seemed to know my name, to recognize me, to want to speak to me. At the +reception, later on, I was surrounded by a great group of freshmen too +shy to stand by themselves. Under ordinary circumstances, of course, I +should have been more shy than any of them—but these were not ordinary +circumstances. I was a suddenly awakened hero, a wolf who had thrown off +his meek lamb's outfit.</p> + +<p>As I was leaving for home, full of ice cream, punch and much +self-conceit, a junior came toward me hesitatingly. He seemed to be +near-sighted, for he groped rather pitifully for my sleeve, and thrust +his face close to mine.</p> + +<p>"Aren't you the freshman that won the rush?" he asked me.</p> + +<p>I told him promptly that I was.</p> + +<p>"Well, won't you come around for lunch <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span>tomorrow at our fraternity +house? We'll be mighty glad to have you."</p> + +<p>I had learned a little of fraternities at school. They had not amounted +to anything there; but I knew that college fraternities were +different—were big, powerful organizations which could make or break a +man's college career. My aunt had spoken to me of fraternities, too; she +wanted me to join one which should give me—and her—a deal of social +prestige. And I, hungering for new experiences and—as every boy +does—for things that are mysterious and secretive, wanted, too, the +distinction and glory of making a fraternity. It seemed to my freshman +mind the most important thing upon the horizon.</p> + +<p>And so, when this upper classman invited me to luncheon, my heart +bounded high with expectation. I knew from other college men that an +invitation to lunch was but the beginning of the usual system of +"rushing" a prospective member: the preliminary skirmish of festivities +which would prelude the final invitation to join the fraternity. And I +was going to lunch at one of the most influential and exclusive of the +university's fraternities.</p> + +<p>It is needless to say, I was dressed in my Sunday-best the next morning. +And, after my 11 o'clock recitation, I hurried out to find the upper +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span>classman waiting for me by the side of the fountain which had been the +scene of my yesterday's wetting. I smiled indulgently at the thought of +it. How changed everything was since then! The upper classman waited for +me to come up to him. I saw that he did not recognize me at once, and a +tremor of suspicion came over me. What if it were all a hoax—another +bit of hazing?</p> + +<p>He was immensely cordial; took me by the arm and marched me across the +campus, down a side street and into the palatial, pillared house of his +fraternity. On the way, his genial face full of a stupid, expansive +smile, and his near-sighted eyes twinkling vacantly, he told me of the +men I should meet.</p> + +<p>Inside, in the magnificent hall, with its weathered oak beams and +mission furniture and bronze plaques upon the tapestried walls, I met a +host of good-looking, well-dressed men. There was evidently a "rushing +committee" of upper classmen, who took me about and introduced me to all +the others. There were one or two freshmen, too, whom I recognized; and +these were wearing in their lapels a strange, gleaming little button. I +was to learn later than this was the "pledge button" which announced +that these men had been offered membership to the fraternity and had +accepted it.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span>When we went into luncheon the near-sighted junior sat me next to him. +He seemed tremendously embarrassed. Once or twice he leaned over to +whisper to other men; then he would steal a glance at me and blush a +brick red, his inefficient eyes puckering to squint closely.</p> + +<p>The other men, for the most part, disregarded me. A classmate—one of +the pledged freshmen—spoke to me now and then, but loftily and as if it +were an effort of hospitality.</p> + +<p>As I felt the coldness increase, I grew glum and silent. My new-found +confidence oozed out into bewilderment. What had I done? What had I said +to insult them all, to hurt my chances of election to their midst? I +could not figure it out.</p> + +<p>They were courteous enough. They were what they claimed to be: a crowd +of young gentlemen. But I could sense, electric in the air, the +disapproval and amusement which they felt.</p> + +<p>And after lunch was over, I did not join the others in the big, +leather-walled smoking room. I made a mumbled apology and went. They +accepted it blandly, smiling, smirking a little, and let me go.</p> + +<p>I had just gone down the steps and towards the campus when the +near-sighted junior came after me, redder than ever of face, his eyes, +blinking very hard. He hurried up behind me and put his hand on my +shoulder.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span>"See here, 'fresh,'" he said thickly, "I owe you an explanation. I don't +want the other fellows to see me giving it to you. Come on, walk along +with me."</p> + +<p>At the corner, out of range of the windows of his fraternity house, he +began his hurried, jumbling speech.</p> + +<p>"I could see," he said, "how uncomfortable they made you. They tried to +be decent, honestly they did. But they—they've never had—never had to +entertain a—one of your sort before, don't you see? We—we don't ever +take—well, it's all my fault. I'm so darn near-sighted that I didn't +realize. I couldn't see—I didn't know—"</p> + +<p>He could not go on, for his dull, honest face was fearfully distressed.</p> + +<p>"What didn't you know?" I demanded.</p> + +<p>"That you were—now, don't get sore, because I like Jews as much as any +folks—and I can't see why we don't take them in our fraternity. Only—"</p> + +<p>"Only you didn't realize I was a Jew," I said hotly.</p> + +<p>"That's it—I'm so near-sighted that I—"</p> + +<p>I did not wait for his stammered finish. I went swiftly away and home, +my heart well-nigh bursting.</p> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span> + +<hr /> +<br /> +<h2>IX</h2> + +<h2>MY AUNT AND I</h2> + + +<p>"It isn't true," snapped my aunt, when I told her of what had happened +at the fraternity house. "I can't imagine that young gentlemen of such +an aristocratic set could act so meanly. You must have done something +wrong. You must have insulted them personally, yourself. I'll wager, +you're to blame—not they."</p> + +<p>I was too sickened by it all to protest. I repeated to her slowly the +words of apology which the near-sighted junior had spoken to me at our +parting, and, when they did not convince her, gave up the task and went +to bed without any supper. I was old enough to have cured myself of the +habit of tears—though, as a matter of fact, no men ever do quite want +to cure themselves of it—but I remember that my pillow was damp the +next morning, and the grey, foggy sky, through the window, seemed in sad +tune with my spirits.</p> + +<p>I dressed and went up to college, fearful to meet any of that fraternity +crowd again, wondering how they would act towards me, trying to <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span>be +indignant, but succeeding only in a shriveled self-debasement. Because I +was a Jew—that was their one and only reason for showing me the door in +so polite and gentlemanly a fashion.</p> + +<p>But when, at the chapel entrance, I bumped into one of the pledged +freshmen, he simply did not pay any attention to me at all. He appeared +not to know me, murmured an unhurried and general, "Excuse me," and went +on. A few yards further on, I met with one of the seniors at whose +fraternity table I had been sitting the noon before. He bowed hastily +and walked past.</p> + +<p>Neither one nor the other of them seemed to be much perturbed by the +meeting, nor to notice my own discomfiture. I could not imagine that +such incidents as mine of yesterday were common occurrences and yet they +seemed to take it so much as a matter of course.</p> + +<p>I fought with my pride in the matter for a long while. Then, at the end +of a noon-time recitation, I spoke of it to a freshman with whom I had +struck up a friendship two days old. The friendship ended there. He +seemed scandalized at my mentioning fraternities at all: it was a +subject far too sacred for discussion, evidently. He merely snapped back +stiffly that he expected to be pledged to another fraternity sometime +during the day, and that he did not <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span>care to hurt his chances by talking +too freely. It made me see the secretiveness of the system from another +angle.</p> + +<p>I received no more invitations to lunch. I contented myself henceforth +with a humble sandwich and glass of milk at the "Commons" eating hall. +It was galling to see classmates being escorted across the campus to the +fraternity houses, to overhear them accepting invitations to theater in +the evening, to watch the process of their conversion to this fraternity +or that one. It was like being in a bustling crowd with hands tied and +mouth gagged—and the sullen rage of a disappointed boyhood in my heart.</p> + +<p>Aunt Selina did not know how to comfort me. I think she tried to, in her +superfluous way. At first she wanted to make light of the fraternities, +gibing at them whenever opportunity arose at the dinner table. But she +did not feel lightly about it—and her disappointment was too great to +be laughed away. She still had a dim suspicion that I had made some +fearful misstep—had brought the failure on myself. And so, after a +while, she kept silent on the subject, and would not speak of it at all. +But her silence was more harshly eloquent than all her foolish talk had +been.</p> + +<p>It seems that Paul Fleming, a nephew of Mrs. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span>Fleming-Cohen, had +belonged to a fraternity at college; and Mrs. Fleming-Cohen was always +alluding to it, as if it gave her a social security which my own aunt +could never attain. Aunt Selina wanted me to make a fraternity to prove +to Mrs. Fleming-Cohen how easy a matter it was. She had implied as much, +when we had first come back from the country.</p> + +<p>Our life together as days went by, seemed to be going peacefully and +smoothly into some sort of a makeshift groove. I knew well enough that +she and I would never grow to be genuinely fond of each other. Our aims +were different; and the beginning of college had given me some inkling +of what my aims were going to be. I was only eighteen, to be sure; but I +was older, more settled than most youths of twenty or more. I blamed +myself a little for my impatience with her, for my hasty conclusions +concerning those friends of hers who came up from Washington square to +eat her meals and to fill her with senseless chatter of art and +literature. And yet I could not help loathing them. Whenever they came +to dinner, I made an excuse of studying at the house of another freshman +for the evening, and thus escaped them.</p> + +<p>The first month of college was not yet over when I went, on one of those +evenings, to hear <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span>an extra-curriculum lecture on the social duties of a +college man. I had expected to hear a fop of some sort deliver dicta on +the proper angle of holding a fork or inside information as to the most +aristocratic set in college. It was that word <i>social</i> that misled me.</p> + +<p>Instead, the speaker was a rough, business-like man, rather shabbily +dressed, who heaped fiery anathema upon the idle rich. And he spoke of +the true social duties. He spoke mainly—because he knew most about +it—concerning the opportunities for college men in settlement work.</p> + +<p>I had never heard of settlement work before. It was a new thing to +me—and perhaps it was its newness that at first attracted me so +strongly. I waited until the end of the lecture, and joined a little +group of listeners who gathered around the man with eager questions. I +had a few of my own to ask, too—and he answered mine as he answered all +of them, simply, kindly, directly.</p> + +<p>The speaker was Lawrence Richards, director of one of the largest +settlement societies in New York. There was something powerful, +magnetically enthusiastic about him—and his face was tremendously keen +and happy.</p> + +<p>He was gathering up his papers to depart when he chanced to remark to +me:</p> + +<p>"See here, will you come over to my fraternity house with me and talk +things over? We can sit <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span>in the library, and I'll tell you lots more +that I know will interest you. We'll be comfortable—and fairly alone."</p> + +<p>Mr. Richards, it seems, had gone to my university ten years ago. I asked +him the name of the fraternity. When he told me it, I shook my head, No.</p> + +<p>It was the house at which I had had that memorable luncheon—and whither +I was not to be invited any more.</p> + +<p>"Why not?" he persisted. "I want you down in my settlement. I want to +show you how you can be of help to us. Won't you come over to the +fraternity house?" And when I again declined, he insisted on knowing +why.</p> + +<p>But I did not tell him. "Perhaps some of the members of your active +chapter will tell you," I replied, "but I will not."</p> + +<p>He looked at me sharply, and his face grew grim. "I see," he said +warmly. "The nasty little cads. Well, it's harder for me to excuse them +than it is for you—and I'm their sworn brother!"</p> + +<p>So I made an appointment to come down to the settlement, instead, and to +take supper with him there some evening. He wanted to show me the +splendid organization of things there: the club rooms, the dance hall, +the gymnasium and reading room. He wanted to introduce me to the +resident leaders. He wanted to persuade <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span>me to become a leader, myself: +to attend one of the clubs of young boys, to join with them in their +meetings, their debates, their entertainments and studies, to help them +by friendliness and example.</p> + +<p>"I suppose," he said, when he left me at a subway kiosk, "that you feel +mighty sorry that you didn't make a fraternity, don't you? Well, I'm +offering you a membership in a bigger and better one than ever had a +chapter in a college—the brotherhood of humanity. You'll be proud of +it, little fellow, if you'll join. So come along down and let us 'rush' +you!"</p> + +<p>It was so good-natured a joke that I could not resent it. I had had my +eyes opened, tonight, by some of the things that Mr. Richards had told +me. I had learned that the city has its poor, its sick and wicked, its +boys and girls embroiled in wrong environments, its lonely and +unambitious, who must be comraded and wakened. And I had learned that I, +young as I was, was able to help, to foster, to do good for such as +these.</p> + +<p>On the way home, I passed a street corner where boys a few years younger +than myself were loitering in obscene play. A little further on I came +to a girl, not more than fifteen or sixteen, who was being followed by +some toughs. She was a Jewish girl, too, I noticed—and she was <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span>crying +with fright. I put her on a street car to get her out of harm's way.</p> + +<p>It was of just such as these, both boys and girls, that Mr. Richards had +spoken this evening. Perhaps he was right—and what a noble thing to be +able to join in the help and companionship which the settlement could +give them. I resolved to go down to him the very next evening.</p> + +<p>When I reached home, Aunt Selina was just getting ready for bed. She +came out into the hall in a pink silk dressing-gown, all frills and +ruffles, and asked me complainingly where I had been so long. She was +angry at my abrupt departure when her evening's guests arrived.</p> + +<p>"I have been to hear a lecture delivered by a Mr. Lawrence Richards," I +told her.</p> + +<p>"Oh! That settlement man?" she asked.</p> + +<p>"Yes."</p> + +<p>She almost snorted. "I met him once at a meeting of our Ladies' +Auxiliary. He is such a plain, undistinguished fellow!"</p> + +<p>I hesitated a moment. "Aunt Selina," I said, "I am going down tomorrow +night to have supper with him. He wants me to become a leader in one of +the settlement clubs. It would take only one night a week, he says——"</p> + +<p>My aunt was so affected by the announcement that I had to run and fetch +her smelling salts. "Oh, oh, down into that awful tenement house +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span>district? Down among those dreadful people? Indeed, you shan't go. If +you do, I shall never allow you to come back! Think of the diseases you +might spread!"</p> + +<p>And she carried on so hysterically that, after a while, I gave in and +promised I would not go—not for a while, anyhow.</p> + +<p>"Why aren't you like other boys of your class?" she demanded. "Why +aren't you content to make the best of things and be satisfied with the +splendid opportunities you have?"</p> + +<p>"That's just what I'm trying to do, Aunt Selina," I told her. "Trying to +make the best—the really best of everything that comes into my life!"</p> + +<p>But she was unimpressed, and went off sobbing to bed.</p> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span> + +<hr /> +<br /> +<h2>X</h2> + +<h2>THE RULES OF THE GAME</h2> + + +<p>I became rather friendly with that near-sighted junior. He was so +genial, good-hearted, apologetic a chap that I could not harbor any +resentment against him for the events which took place at his fraternity +house. They were not his fault, anyhow.</p> + +<p>His name was Trevelyan, and he came from one of the oldest families in +New York; one of the wealthiest, too. At college he was considered +somewhat of a fool, his never-failing good nature giving justification +for the opinion. I don't think that, since that first embarrassing +luncheon, I have never seen him unhappy—and even then it was on my +account he was discontented, not on his own. And outside of college he +must have been respected with all the awe which New Yorkers accord to +the Sons of the American Revolution and five or six million dollars. But +he was the least lofty, least snobbish man that I have ever known. Most +of his college friends thought he was too much of a fool to play the +snob; I thought he was too much of a gentleman.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span>He came to dinner at my aunt's apartment after he had known me for about +a month. I do not know who of us was the more proud, my aunt or I—for +to me the idea of having a junior and a member of one of the most +powerful fraternities visiting at my home was quite as much of a marvel +as my aunt seemed to feel it, that a member of the Trevelyan family—the +Trevelyan's of Fifth avenue and Sixty-fourth street, don't you +know—should be seated at her table and giving gracious attention to her +gossipy conversation. For a whole week after his visit Aunt Selina made +a great point of it—and of telling her friends of it. The distinction +of having a Trevelyan to dinner was a great triumph over Mrs. +Fleming-Cohen, who had once entertained a Jewish mining magnate from the +Far West—but who had never attained anything like a Trevelyan.</p> + +<p>I think Trevelyan began at first feeling very much ashamed and sorry; he +was just trying to square up matters with his own conscience. He had a +room in one of the college dormitories. He seldom used it, but when he +did he would invite me to stay up there with him and to sit until the +wee, quiet hours, talking over our briar pipes, interspacing the layers +of blue smoke with argument and stirring plans. Trevelyan had great +hopes for me. He had discovered that I was a runner.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span>As a matter of fact, I had done a little practicing with the track team +at military school. I had never amounted to much, had never stood out +tremendously in meets. I liked to run, I liked the healthy trim that the +exercise gave me, but I'm afraid I never took it very seriously.</p> + +<p>But Trevelyan saw things differently. Here was my great chance. Never +mind the college papers, the literary societies and all that tame +coterie of lesser institutions. If I made the track team I would be a +college hero—and, after seeing me capture the flag in the class rush, +he had no doubt of my vim and nerve. I must make the track team. +(Trevelyan, by the way, was assistant manager of the track +organization.)</p> + +<p>So, soon enough, I was out on the windy field in my old school +track-clothes, racing around and around with a sturdy intention of +proving myself worthy of Trevelyan's friendship. That was my chief +reason for "coming out for track," after all.</p> + +<p>The coach, a taciturn, gray old fellow, whose muscles were running too +fat and whose temper had frayed out in the years of snarling at +prospective champions, paid little attention to me until the week before +the freshman-sophomore track meet. Then he tried me out at a 44-yard +run. That was what I had been used to doing <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span>at school. There was only +one man in the freshman class who could beat me in this run for certain. +There was no reason, said Trevelyan, why I should not be absolutely sure +of my place on the class team.</p> + +<p>Three days before the meet the other "44" man sprained his knee. He was +out of the race for the time being. There was no doubt now that I would +be put in. So said Trevelyan, and so, in surly, semi-official fashion, +said the coach.</p> + +<p>But we had not counted on the captain of the freshman track team. This +was one of my classmates, chosen from among the many candidates by the +captain of the 'varsity team. This freshman leader I did not know +personally. I had met him almost every day on the field, but he had +never recognized me. His track shirt bore the monogram of a noted +preparatory school; and it was echoed that he was the handsomest man in +the class. He was most certainly the most snobbish. He was thrown into +contact with me in various organizations during our four years. I do not +remember his ever having bowed to me. In his college world I, and such +as I, did not exist.</p> + +<p>At any rate, the college newspaper came out one noon to announce the +members of the freshman track team, as chosen by its captain. My name +was not among them.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span>In vain did Trevelyan protest to the 'varsity captain, to the coach—I +even think he took the matter as high as a meeting of the faculty +athletic advisory committee. Nothing could be done. The 'varsity captain +shrugged his shoulders, the old coach growled but said nothing, the +faculty advisers kept away from the topic as if it were beneath their +tutelary notice. And the freshman-sophomore track meet was held with me +on the side-lines, among the spectators. I have no reason to gloat over +it, but it is a rather amusing point that we lost the entire meet +through losing the four-forty yard run.</p> + +<p>"It's a dirty shame," said Trevelyan, his squinting eyes full of rue and +anger. "I knew that sort of thing went on in the 'varsity circle—but I +didn't think they'd carry it down into the class teams. It's all college +politics—and college politics are the meanest, most vindictive intrigue +on earth."</p> + +<p>I didn't ask him for a further explanation, and I suppose he felt it +would be kinder not to make one. But I knew well enough to what he +referred—and why there had been this sudden, underhanded +discrimination. I made up my mind to forget the whole episode. I had not +been so tremendously anxious to make the track team that I would let the +disappointment of it rankle and grow and ruin my year's fun. I <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span>put it +all behind me, resolving to take my enthusiasm into some other of the +college activities where it would be more sincerely appreciated.</p> + +<p>I consulted Trevelyan about it. He suggested the college newspaper. But +after he had made the suggestion, he began to stammer and make strange +protests. I asked him to tell me plainly what was wrong.</p> + +<p>"Why, it's the same with that as with the track team. The +editor-in-chief of the paper is in my 'crowd.' I'll speak to him—and +save you any trouble. If he says yes, then you go out and win a place on +the board of editors. But if he says no, I want you to promise me that +you won't subject yourself to any more of this puppy-dog prejudice."</p> + +<p>I did promise. And two days later I received a postcard from Trevelyan, +telling me that it would hardly be worth my while to try for the college +paper. He added, in the large, unruly handwriting which his +near-sightedness made necessary:</p> + +<p>"You may go on breathing, however, if you don't make a noise at it."</p> + +<p>He supplemented this, a few nights later, when he and I were at our old +places in his room. He threw down his pipe in the midst of talking about +something carefully unimportant, and sat up with a laughably angry +face.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span>"See here, 'fresh,'" he bawled out, "you're getting the rottenest deal I +ever saw. You know why—so do I. And we're going to show them a thing or +two. We're going to buck up against the strongest thing in the +world—and that thing is prejudice. We're going to beat it, too. Do you +understand? Were going to beat it out! Smash it to pieces!"</p> + +<p>Yes, I understood, I said. I understood it all only too well. So well, +indeed, that I knew there was no use trying to fight. I knew that +prejudice of race and religion was the strongest shield of the ignorant +and mean, that neither he nor I could fight it fairly—and that, if he +came into the fight by my side, he would ruin his own chances of being +one of the biggest men in the college world when his senior year +arrived.</p> + +<p>"A lot I care for being a big man in a place of little thoughts," he +snapped back at me. "I'm ready to take the consequences, now and forever +after."</p> + +<p>"Have you thought of what your fraternity brothers might say about it?" +I asked him.</p> + +<p>"I don't care—I don't—well, if they—." His voice died away in +perplexity. I had hit upon his weak spot. He was an easy-going, likeable +chap; he hated a rumpus. If he made any sort of fight against the +anti-Jewish prejudice, he <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span>would have his whole fraternity against him, +he would perhaps be shunned by all his sworn brothers, by his best +college friends. His enthusiasm became a little dulled, then died down +into a great good-natured sigh.</p> + +<p>"I suppose you're right, 'fresh,'" he admitted slowly. "I'm not of the +fighting sort. And I have my fraternity to consider. That's the worst of +belonging to a fraternity." He took up his pipe again and smoked in +silence for a while. "I suppose you think you'll never be happy, now +that you know you aren't going to be in a fraternity. Take my word for +it, you're ten times luckier in having your freedom. Wait until you're +an upperclassman and you'll agree with me."</p> + +<p>It seemed a dreadful sacrilege for him to be saying it. Besides, I +thought he was blaming his own lack of fighting power on his fraternity +in too heavy and unjust a degree. I wasn't any more of a fighter than +he—but I was disappointed, somehow, that his pugnacity had died out so +readily.</p> + +<p>"I can't do it, 'fresh,'" he confessed, with a grin. "I'm not the +scrapper I thought I could be. I just want to go through college lazily, +happily, respectably—and all that. I wouldn't know how to make a rumpus +if I wanted to. But listen here." He pointed his finger at me <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span>sternly. +"If I were you, I wouldn't rest until I had made the fight and won it. +Fight it not only for yourself but for the hundred other Jewish fellows +in college. See that they get a square deal. See that they don't lose +out on all the things that make college worth while. A Jew is just as +good as anyone else, isn't he?"</p> + +<p>"Yes," I answered him only faintly.</p> + +<p>"Well, then, go ahead and prove that fact to the whole college world."</p> + +<p>But, though I did not answer him, I knew that I was not any more able to +make the fight than he. Less able, perhaps, because I was more +handicapped. I made myself a thousand excuses as I sat there thinking it +over—I was not brave enough, that was all.</p> + +<p>But one thing my acquaintanceship with Trevelyan did bring me. He was a +dabbler in light verse, and had been elected to the college funny paper. +He also contributed to the undergraduate literary magazine at +times—though he was a bit ashamed of being taken seriously. At any +rate, he encouraged me to go into these two activities.</p> + +<p>Whether or not it was due entirely to his influence, or whether these +two college publications were broader and less exacting as to the +ancestry of contributors, my work for them was welcomed. Before the year +was over I had been <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span>elected an associate editor of the funny paper, and +had four articles accepted by the literary magazine—enough to put me +among the list of "probables" for election, next winter.</p> + +<p>At the same time I went through a successful trial for membership in the +college dramatic association. I was not given a part in the annual play, +however. I made up my mind to consider this a just decision, and that I +had no right to impute it to anything other than my lack of talent. The +president of the association, however, met me at lunch hour one day and +made some rather lame remarks about the embarrassment to which the +"dramatics" would be put if I were in the cast.</p> + +<p>"Yer see," he said, "we go on an annual tour. And we get entertained a +lot, yer see. And it's big social stunts in every city. And it's the +cream of society wherever we go—so, it'd be funny if—well don'tcher +see?"</p> + +<p>"Yes," I admitted, "I do see. I see further than you do."</p> + +<p>I was beginning to wonder if that fight that Trevelyan planned wouldn't +be worth while, after all.</p> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span> + +<hr /> +<br /> +<h2>XI</h2> + +<h2>A MAN'S WORK</h2> + + +<p>I talked to Trevelyan, too, of my interest in the work of Lawrence +Richards. Trevelyan had heard of him and of his settlement, and was +rather at sea to give an opinion about it. He was only mildly +enthusiastic.</p> + +<p>"What's the use of bothering with things so far away from your college +life?" he protested lazily. "Of course, the idea of being useful to +people in need is splendid and all that. But somehow, it doesn't fit in +with college life."</p> + +<p>"Why not? Why shouldn't it?" I argued.</p> + +<p>He waved his hand as if to begin some generalization, but made no real +reply.</p> + +<p>"Wait until you're through with college before you settle down to +manhood," he said a little later. "College is just the sport of kids, +after all."</p> + +<p>It came to me—though I did not tell him so—of how, in the beginning, I +had thought of college as a place of full manhood—and of the misgivings +I had had, that perhaps, after all, college would be only another +stepping stone to <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span>that manhood. And so it was: just a stepping stone, +through brambles of prickly prejudice and childish pranks. When would it +come, that manhood?</p> + +<p>"You know, Trev," I said to him hesitatingly, "I sometimes feel I am +much older than most fellows. Almost old enough to do a man's work."</p> + +<p>He looked at me and laughed, refusing to take me too soberly. "You are +older," he admitted. "Only what do you call a man's work?"</p> + +<p>I didn't know, and told him so. He seemed to consider it a triumph for +his own argument.</p> + +<p>"See here," he said, "what's the use of all this stewing about the slums +and the wretched poor and that sort of thing, if you're just aching to +make trouble for yourself? If you want manhood, you'll reach it ten +times sooner if you'll slip into it comfortably, gracefully, lying +quietly on your back and floating—and not splashing too hard. You'll +never get anywhere if you insist on getting there with a rumpus."</p> + +<p>I admired the studied grace of his similes, but had to confess that they +did not impress me as true. But, at the same time, I did not try to +explain any further to him how I felt.</p> + +<p>That did not end the questioning for me, however. I even broached it to +Aunt Selina once, and she threw up her hands in despair. I think I did +it somewhat with the idea of seeing her <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span>do just that. It was beginning +to amuse me, how hopeless she thought I was.</p> + +<p>So that was why I did not tell her of my intention to go, one evening, +to see Mr. Lawrence Richards at his East Side Settlement. But +immediately after supper, I bade my aunt good night, and answered her +suspicious query with the information that I was "bound for a social +affair." The answer seemed to reassure her and she gave me gracious +permission to go.</p> + +<p>I took the subway to Spring street, walked across to the Bowery, and a +few blocks on the other side of it, came to the Settlement. It was in +the heart of a noisy crowded section, towering high above the shabby +buildings like a great, clean, shining bulwark.</p> + +<p>Mr. Richards was at supper, I was told. A bright-eyed little Jewish boy, +neatly dressed and careful of speech, offered to show me the way to the +dining room on the fifth floor.</p> + +<p>I had a hearty welcome from the Head Worker when he recognized me. He +was disappointed that I had already had my supper; made me sit down +beside him and introduced me to all his associates. They were mostly +young men, I was surprised to find; one of them told me that he had +graduated from one of the New England colleges only the year before.</p> + +<p>Mr. Richards showed me all about the place, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span>as he had promised he +would. Then he took me with him into his "den" as he called it—a little +room, just off the gymnasium, where he had his desk and filing cabinets +and books. He sat me down opposite him on a canvas-covered chair, and, +when he had gone over some reports which needed his signature, looked up +at me and smiled.</p> + +<p>"Well," he said, "what's the trouble?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, I didn't—well, how did you know there was any trouble?"</p> + +<p>The smile broadened. "None of you ever come down here unless you are in +trouble. Trouble's a sort of bait that lands ambitious youths into doing +settlement work—and into coming to me for advice. They say I'm pretty +good at giving it. Why don't you try me?"</p> + +<p>I did. I told him exactly how I felt: that I was growing impatient of +all the tomfoolery of college; that I wanted work more sure of manly +results, more broadening, more full of character. Then, too, I told him +of what Trevelyan had said, and he laughed at it merrily.</p> + +<p>"Trevelyan?" he said. "Oh, yes, I know him. He belongs to my fraternity, +doesn't he? I've met him at one or another of our affairs. A good enough +fellow—a little too much money, and a little too easy with himself in +consequence. But he's a thorough gentleman at heart, isn't he?"</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span>I almost gasped. He had summed up Trevelyan marvelously well in those +few words. He saw my wonderment and smiled.</p> + +<p>"I've only met him once or twice," he said, "but I have the faculty of +knowing men. It's a faculty I have to have in this sort of work. It +depends so much on the human equation. I meet thousands of young men and +women every year—meet them, talk with them a little while, give them +the best I have to give in that short space—and like to think that, +even if I never see them again, I've helped them along a bit. That's all +that a settlement can do, after all."</p> + +<p>Outside the door, in the gymnasium, we could hear the joyful shrieks of +a crowd of young boys playing basketball. From the upper floors came a +scraping of feet to tell that the clubs were beginning to meet for the +evening. From across the hall came the sound of young girls singing the +parts of a cantata—and this was all planned, all created by Lawrence +Richards who sat there at his desk and had a smile for each and everyone +who came before him.</p> + +<p>"Don't think you're different from all the other fellows at the +university," he said to me. "You're not. You're all as much alike as a +row of pins. Your problems are youth's problems—and you needn't be +ashamed to have them, as long as you work them out to suit the best that +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span>is in you. You've nothing definite in mind, have you?"</p> + +<p>I said, "No." I only had an idea that he might be able to use me here at +the settlement in some capacity.</p> + +<p>"There's a good deal in what Trevelyan said," he told me. "While you're +at college you might as well give college all that it needs of your time +and energy. College will surely pay you back. All the work that you do +on a team, for a college paper, for any of the undergraduate +organizations, will be just so much of a pledge on the part of your +college that she will honor you, give you power and position and the +opportunity to do bigger things. Don't you want those honors? Doesn't +that power mean anything to you?"</p> + +<p>I could not answer him; I did not want to tell him that I thought myself +above these little things. He understood me, however, even in my +silence.</p> + +<p>"They are things worth while," he said. "There is a senior society worth +'making,' if you can. It would be something to be proud of to be the +only Jew ever to have 'made' it. But it's more than an honor. That +senior society practically governs the student body—molds its thought, +holds sway over all campus opinion. Think what you could do if you were +a member of it. You <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span>could fight for the other Jewish boys, make things +easier and fairer for them—could spare them the unpleasant things you +had to bear. You could master all snobbery, could make the university a +place of real American democracy and gentlemanliness. Don't you think +that that's worth while?"</p> + +<p>I admitted it was. I had not thought of it in that way.</p> + +<p>"Now, this is what I suggest," he said. "It's getting near the end of +the term, and there's no use in your beginning any work down here at the +settlement while college is still in session. But when vacation begins, +I want you to come down here to live for a couple of months. I'll make +you a resident club-leader, and you'll have your full share of the best +sort of work." He paused a moment. "Will you come?"</p> + +<p>"Will I? You bet I will!"</p> + +<p>"Good! And in the meanwhile, take Trevelyan's advice—it's mine, to. +Stick to your college work and your college play, and don't bother about +the outside world for a while. That is your world—the college. Fight +hard in it. The whole world likes a stiff upper lip, and the college +world likes it best of all. And, sooner or later, Jew or Gentile, the +college world will repay you for all that you give it. If you go through +college shunning everyone, afraid of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span>your own shadow, surly to the +approach of all who would be friendly to you, you will reap nothing but +loneliness and a bitter 'grouch.' If you loaf and play cards and hang +about the billiard parlors all day long, you won't make a friend worth +having, you won't gain anything worth remembering. If you work at your +studies only, you'll gain nothing but Phi Beta Kappa—and, for all its +worth, that'll mean nothing to you unless it brings along with it the +respect and good will of all the men from whom you wrested it. At +college as much as in any business office a smile will beget a smile, +willingness to work will reap willingness to reward—and Alma Mater, if +only you prove your love for her by working for her, will return your +love tenfold."</p> + +<p>He reached over the desk and touched my arm.</p> + +<p>"I don't mean to be just rhetorical," he continued. "I have been through +the same inner struggle and wonder and repugnance that you have—and I +know how deeply you feel it. Well, I worked blindly ahead at the things +that college gave me to work at—the football team and the newspaper and +all that—and soon enough I knew that I had been working into manhood by +the only right road. Manhood is a matter of disposition, not of work. +There's a place for manhood in your little college world. Go and find +that place—and give it all that is manly and courageous in you."</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span>I left him, I confess, doubting his words a little to find that place of +which he spoke so feelingly.</p> + +<p>Well, perhaps I would find it. Perhaps an opportunity would spring up +from out of the sing-song ordinariness of my daily life—and what would +I do then?</p> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span> + +<hr /> +<br /> +<h2>XII</h2> + +<h2>THE HEART OF JUDEA</h2> + + +<p>My promise to Mr. Richards brought more than one result. The first of +them was a serious quarrel with my Aunt Selina. Her horror at the idea +of my spending the summer at a slum-settlement was beyond curbing. She +had planned that I should accompany her and Mrs. Fleming-Cohen upon a +trip to Europe. They did not need me; they would be in no way dependent +on my company ... and I flatly declined. Aunt Selina, outraged at my +actual intentions, left for France a week earlier than she had +expected—and, in high indignation, gave me leave to do "whatever I +pleased by way of disgracing her reputation."</p> + +<p>Her letter from the steamer warned me to bathe every day in very hot +water, lest I should be contaminated by the filth of that section of the +city which I had chosen for my summer home ... and to be sure and give +her warmest regards to that delightful Mr. Trevelyan!</p> + +<p>I lost no time in moving into Mr. Richards' company at the East Side +settlement. I was <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span>given a room there which was small, dark, but neat +and comfortable enough. College had no sooner closed than I was settled +in it, ready for the two months of work which had been allotted me.</p> + +<p>In return for my board and lodgings, the settlement demanded all my +time. There was hardly an hour which was not given to some sort of club +or class, rehearsal or supervision or gymnastic training. Almost +immediately after breakfast the playground work began; by noon I was +helping a crowd of little ragamuffins to forget the heat in the +splashing fun of the swimming pool, in the basement. In the afternoon +there were classes for young boys who needed tutoring—hungry-eyed, +eager little fellows who reminded me of what I must have been when I was +their age.</p> + +<p>I would not have you believe that I was readily sympathetic with every +case I met. These boys and girls—though I rarely had to do with the +latter—were all Jewish. The appearance of some of them would perhaps +have justified my aunt's antipathy to the East Side. Those that were new +to the settlement, I noticed, were shabby, dull, rough of speech, surly +of manners. It would need a few weeks before I could see how subtle, yet +how fundamental, were the changes which the settlement would have +wrought in them.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span>I was shy, too, in the presence of so many boys: shy of their +hastily-offered friendship, their rushing eagerness to bring me into all +their schemes and boyish dreams. But I was still young enough to know +those dreams upon my own account: young enough to feel with little +Mosche, a cripple, who wanted so much to become an expert at the +swinging of Indian clubs, and who was forever dropping the heavy things +in clumsy weakness; young enough to realize how much his mother's love +meant to thirteen-year-old Frank Cohen, who had been caught stealing +fruit from a corner grocery and was "on parole."</p> + +<p>But the feeling in itself was not enough, evidently. I must try and try +to make that feeling eloquent—to make these boys feel, in turn, the +sureness and helpfulness of my understanding. Sometimes it was torture. +It is harder to conquer shyness than to slap a dragon.</p> + +<p>Mr. Richards saw this in me—watched the struggle, appreciated it. He +spoke of it to me, once, and I did not hesitate to tell him how I felt. +How inadequate, how chagrined and humbled in the face of all the poverty +and suffering which life down here disclosed.</p> + +<p>"It was the same when I first came down here," he said to me in turn. +"But I gained courage. Thank God for that!"</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span>He said it quietly, but there was a good deal of fervor in the tones. It +surprised me, somehow, because, I had never before heard him mention the +name of the Deity. It gave me a new question to ask.</p> + +<p>"Why is it that you don't lay more stress on religion down here? Don't +the boys and girls need it?"</p> + +<p>"Need it? Who doesn't?" A shadow crossed his face. His vivacity gave way +for a moment before deep thoughtfulness. "But they get all they need, +these kids. They are mostly all of them members of strictly orthodox +Jewish families. Religion is given them at all hours in their own homes. +Many of them get more of it than they can ever need. They get so much of +it that they flee from it, just anxious for the freedom of the streets +and the novelty of the bar room and the brothel and the gambling den. I +have made investigations. I know that half of the East Side boys who +land in the police court have been driven there by the religious +strictness of their parents."</p> + +<p>"Mr. Richards," I began ... but stopped in dismay. What I had been about +to say was no more nor less than a hot, strong denial of his opinion. I +felt sure he was wrong—and yet it seemed humorous to me that I, who a +year ago, had hated all things Jewish, was <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span>now defending all the worth +and venerability of its ritual.</p> + +<p>"I do not agree with you altogether," I said lamely. "But ... but still, +don't think I am a very enthusiastic Jew. Because I'm not."</p> + +<p>"Aren't you? Why not?"</p> + +<p>I did not answer—had no answer to make, in fact. I did not want to tell +him of my aunt, of her influence, of my own cowardice. But, looking at +me, I think he did guess something of the longing I had had ... +something of that strange night when I had stood outside the synagogue +and heard the music coming from within the depths of its golden haze. +For he put his hand on my shoulder and bade me think for a moment why I +was not a Jew in spirit as well as in name.</p> + +<p>"You're not a snob," he said, trying to help me. "You're not thinking +that, because your religion is in the minority in the midst of a +Christian land, it is necessarily an ignominy to be a Jew—and to act as +one."</p> + +<p>My silence held. I let him go on talking. "Anyhow, you need religion. +Every man does to a variable extent. I should feel sorry for the man who +didn't. And do you mind my telling you—" he paused only for a +second—"that you are one of those who need it most?"</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span>I hung my head. He had hit so truly upon what was right, what was most +secret in me.... I could not ask him how he had guessed it, I remembered +his assertion that he knew men—all men—and saw now that he had not +been boasting.</p> + +<p>He went on, presently, to explain that religion was a thing for the +fathers and mothers and rabbis to teach to the children—not for the +settlement to teach them. He knew that boys needed the guidance of +religion ... but he felt that it was supplied in even too large doses +already.</p> + +<p>"The pity of it is," he said in closing, "that wherever Jewish children +turn away from the faith of their fathers, they have nothing to turn +towards next. They are at sea ..." he gave me another of his quick, deep +set glances ... "and that applies to rich and poor alike. Christians +forget their religion when they feel they have outgrown it ... because +they have lost interest in it. Jews forsake theirs but never forget it. +Under certain circumstances they grow impatient with it, slink from the +inconveniences which it entails ... but their hearts are always +desperate for the Faith. It is a hidden loneliness, a stifled longing to +them."</p> + +<p>I thought of Aunt Selina and wondered if <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span>she had ever felt that +loneliness, that longing, as I had. I could hardly imagine her happy in +devoutness to Judaism. It was so comical, I laughed aloud ... and got up +and left Mr. Richards, lest he should ask me at what I was laughing.</p> + +<p>It was his remark about Jewish children getting all the religion they +need which nettled me the most. I felt that I would like to go out upon +the streets and see for myself. The streets are the East Side's +parliament, its court of law and high opinion.</p> + +<p>They were hot and glaring with the noonday sun when first I appealed to +them. Their pavements, white and littered with unspeakable confusion, +gave off a dancing wave of heat. Old women, squatting on their +doorsteps, their coarse wigs low upon perspiring foreheads, dozed and +woke and gabbled to each other and dozed again. Old men, with long grey +beards, long, tousled hair and melancholy eyes shuffled listlessly up +and down, stopping only to make way for playing children or to pat them +on the head. The gutters had their Jewish peddlers, each window its fat +Jewish matron who leaned upon a cushioned window-sill and gazed +apathetically at nothing. There was a Babel of Yiddish and Russian and +guttural English. At one corner there was a crap-game going on in full +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span>sight of the policeman across the street. Young men of my age were in +it; youths with mean, furtive faces and laughs that were cruel and +raucous.</p> + +<p>So this was Judea? This was where religion played too strong a part ... +where parents and rabbis taught so fully to their charges the word and +the comfort of God? It did not seem so to me. It seemed all hateful, +smeared, repellant. And, with the question unanswered, I fled from it.</p> + +<p>But the next morning, in the settlement playground, something happened +which began the solution for me. It was an accident and I regretted it +for a long while, feeling that it was my fault.</p> + +<p>I had been teaching little Frank Cohen some tricks on the horizontal +bar. Frank, the boy on parole for petty theft, was daring in this +gymnastic work. No sooner was my back turned on him than he tried one of +the tricks without my help. His fingers slipped, he fell heavily from +the bar to the ground. When we picked him up, his arm was found to be +broken.</p> + +<p>We got him home in Mr. Richards' little run-about, and put the boy to +bed. The doctor set his arm and put it into splints. I met Frank's +mother here, and, later on, his father who, having heard of the +accident, came rushing upstairs <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span>from his bakery shop. They were a +nervous, frightened pair; and it needed all the talk my lungs were +capable of to assure them that their son would soon recover the use of +his arm and be out of his bandage.</p> + +<p>As I left their stuffy little flat, they were reciting some Hebrew +prayers of gratitude. Tears were on the cheeks of both of them, and +their eyes were uplifted to a God I could not know. I went downstairs +bitterly conscious of that.</p> + +<p>And this was why, when Frank Cohen, pale, his arm in a sling, but the +hero of his comrades, came again to the settlement, I sought him out and +made an especial friend of him. Of what that friendship should become I +had then no plan.</p> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span> + +<hr /> +<br /> +<h2>XIII</h2> + +<h2>CHILD AND PARENT</h2> + + +<p>One hot evening, when the fire-escapes were crowded with hundreds of +sleeping children, and the streets were shrieking canyons of heated +stone and iron, and men and women lay in the grass of little parks, +breathing heavily as if in prayer for coolness, I learned the secret in +the heart of young Frank Cohen.</p> + +<p>He was sitting beside me in the amateur roof-garden which Mr. Richards +had contrived atop the settlement. We had wicker chairs there, a few +potted palms and a solitary, tiny goldfish in a small glass bowl. That +was the extent of its furnishings; but in the later afternoons the old +Jewish mothers would come and sit here and doze in the sun, grateful for +the breeze, city-fed and redolent, which might carry relief towards +them.</p> + +<p>This afternoon Frank's mother had been among them. I had seen her there, +a pale, little woman who sat with her sewing in her lap, staring dully +out over the roofs below her. I had been detailed to go around among +these <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span>women and to make them as comfortable as I could. Hardly a one, +however, could understand English; and Frank's mother, when I came to +her, took no notice of anything that I said or mentioned. She looked at +me from under lowered eyebrows. Later on Mr. Richards, who had had her +under his attention for some months, told me how frightened she had been +by her son's misdemeanor—it had been no more than that, according to +the police report—and it was easy to imagine that she looked with +suspicion upon every comrade whom Frank followed, now. The fact that I +was so much older and was a member of the staff of the settlement +workers was not enough to overcome the whole of her distrust.</p> + +<p>And when the evening came, and Frank and I had emerged from one of the +club meetings—for he was president of his particular club of boys of +his own age—hot and tired from wrangling over Robert's Rules of Order +and the wording of a baseball challenge to be sent to a rival +organization, he told me the entire story of that misdemeanor. He would +not speak of it readily. He too felt the shame of it, differently of +course, but no less heavily. He had been in bad company. He had been +going for months with some sons of one of the East Side's notorious +gamblers—boys who were wise beyond their years and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span>brutal beyond their +strength. Cowardly, sneaky, they had prompted him to steal things at the +counters of all the shops on their street. He had never realized, under +their whispered urgings, how wrong it was—and he had never had a chance +to profit by his thefts himself. The petty business had gone on for a +couple of weeks, the other boys praising him, bullying him by turn, and +dividing the loot between them. And when the inevitable happened and +Frank found himself locked for the night in a police court, frantic at +the disgrace which the loathsome night exaggerated, these boys informed +against him.</p> + +<p>When he told me of this, and how they had come snivelling before the +police lieutenant, and had lied to make that fat, gruff, old master +believe that Frank had stolen even more than he actually had, and all +for the sake of becoming the chief of their "gang"—then his narrow face +darkened and writhed with a hate that was too great for him to bear—and +presently tears came into his black eyes.</p> + +<p>"Were they Jewish boys?" I asked him. "No," he answered passionately. "I +think I should have gone crazy if they had been."</p> + +<p>I glanced at him quickly. He did not smile as he said it, nor was there +anything too melodramatic about his manner.</p> + +<p>"Why do you say that? That you would have gone crazy?"</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span>"Don't you see? You're a Jew, ain't you?"</p> + +<p>I said, "Yes."</p> + +<p>"Well, I couldn't talk about it to you at all if you wasn't. And if they +had been Jews—my own people—and had gone back on me like that, it +would've been just a little too much. They were just tough kids—and so +they didn't know any better. If they had been Jews they wouldn't have +taught me to steal, they wouldn't have done what they—God, my father +and mother were right about it, for sure!"</p> + +<p>"Your father and mother? Why, what had they to do with it?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, you know how parents are. They used to warn me against going with +those tough kids. They seemed to know from the beginning that +something'd happen out of it. They said—you know, it's like old +folks—that Christian boys would never want to go with me unless to gain +their own ends—and then to desert me, see? They wanted me to go with +the Jewish boys I'd been going with all my life, before then. But I +laughed and didn't listen. And—and when I had to pay back for all the +things I stole, it was—well, it was the Jewish boys I knew who clubbed +together and earned money by odd jobs after school—and if it wasn't for +them, I'd be in the workhouse."</p> + +<p>"But all Christian boys aren't like the ones you went with," I argued.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span>"No, I suppose not. But I like to think that all Jewish boys are like +the ones on this street. They made a good Jew of me!"</p> + +<p>I turned on him quickly. "Did they? How?"</p> + +<p>"They made me proud of being one of them. They made me feel the close +something-or-other—well, I ain't much when it comes to speeches but you +know what I mean."</p> + +<p>Perhaps I did, but I would not admit it to myself. Perhaps I did see the +faith reborn in him through the faith that other boys had given him. +Perhaps, too, I could picture something of the welling joy that had come +to his parents when he returned to the only right path that their +simple, unquestioning eyes could see. And how jealously they must be +guarding him now, to keep him in that code which was their life's law +and had become his daily lesson!</p> + +<p>"Don't you see?" he begged. "Can't you? Why, a fellow's just <i>got</i> to +have a side to fight on—and to fight for. And he's got to believe that +his side is the only one, the right one. Life wouldn't be worth living +without it. You don't know what it means to be <i>fighting for the +right</i>!"</p> + +<p>From below came the droning of the unquiet streets. A little higher up a +hot wind went almost noiselessly among the chimneys, so that we heard +but faint sighs. The roof garden was <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span>in darkness, naught gleaming but +the little glass bowl of gold fish. There was a sense of utter darkness +and loneliness—and yet into it had come, like the glad, brave blast of +New Year's trumpet, a battle cry of the One God. A battle cry which made +throb the heart of a young, rough boy; a battle cry which would be his +whole life's secret well of gratitude and bravery.</p> + +<p>"<i>You don't know what it means to be fighting for the right!</i>"</p> + +<p>He was so slight, so meagre in appearance, that I could not help finding +something gently humorous about his utterance. But when I looked at him +and saw how his eyes glowed through the dark, and how he stood straight +and at full height, his narrow shoulders thrown back, in spite of his +bandaged arm, and his face upraised to the summer stars, my smile passed +quickly.</p> + +<p>There came over me that same queer panging sense of being only on the +outside of things—only on Life's outermost border. I was looking +straight into the heart of a boy and seeing the gladness which blazed +there—and yet I could not have it, as he had it. Here was this sudden, +all-forgetting boldness of belief which he had won—and I could only +watch it covetously through the bars of my exiled doubts.</p> + +<p>No, no, he was right—a thousand times more <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span>right than I. If faith in +the One God did all of this for him, then that faith was surely +justified.</p> + +<p>And if I could only bring myself to believe as deeply, as powerfully as +he did—then my whole life would be remade as his had been—and I, too, +would fight for what I must believe: would fight—<i>for the right</i>!</p> + +<p>I did not let him talk any further, but sent him home. I did not want +his parents to be worrying as to where he was, this time of night. I +stayed on a little while, looking over the roofs and the white-faced +huddlings of the fire-escapes, and then I went to bed, to toss with heat +and battle with my thoughts throughout the night.</p> + +<p>When the morning came, I went early to Frank's house. The pavements were +fresh and damp with the water of a sprinkling cart, and the shops, just +beginning to open, had a Sabbath air of cleanliness. It was cooler than +yesterday, too, and the street corners were still cleared and quiet.</p> + +<p>I had been granted permission to take Frank and two other boys on a +picnic to Westchester. He was ready for me when I knocked at his door, +and let me into the darkened kitchen.</p> + +<p>His mother was there, too, cutting bread for sandwiches which we would +take along. Her old morning wrapper and her hastily-shawled head <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span>gave +her an even more forbidding appearance than ever. But when her +sandwiches were packed into a box and wrapped and tied, she wiped her +hands on a towel and looked at me steadfastly, not unkindly, for fully a +minute.</p> + +<p>I could not understand what she said. It was in Yiddish, and I have +never learned that tongue. But here and there I caught a word which gave +me enough of her meaning.</p> + +<p>She was telling me that Frank had spoken to her of me last night when he +returned from the blessed settlement. He always came to her bedside, +nowadays, knowing that she would be awake and waiting to hear where he +had been. And so he had whispered, while his father slept, of the +strange young man who was so kind—a Jew, like them—and yet who had no +faith in God.</p> + +<p>Then suddenly she began to beg something. "Mutter, mutter," was all I +could make of it—and I guessed that she was asking me of my mother, and +wondering why I did not listen at her knee as Frank had done at his own +mother's. And when I told her that my mother was dead, tears came into +her eyes, and this was the finest sympathy I had ever known.</p> + +<p>For she put her big, buttery hand on mine and shook her head. "You must +learn to know God," I think she said. "He alone can take your mother's +place. He made my son what I longed <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span>he should be. He will make you what +you most desire. In God alone is there happiness."</p> + +<p>And so Frank and I went out and down the dirty, narrow stairs, and came +into a street of Heaven itself—a street of early sunlight, and a clear +sky above—and morning smiles upon the faces of all passersby. Or so it +seemed to me, at any rate.</p> + +<p>Because, for once in my life, I had seen the happiness of mother and +child swept up into glory that is God's.</p> + +<p>And I laughed to think of Mr. Richard's remark that religion works harm +among these East Side people.</p> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span> + +<hr /> +<br /> +<h2>XIV</h2> + +<h2>AN UNGRATEFUL NEPHEW</h2> + + +<p>The summer came to an end only too quickly. I had enjoyed every moment +of it, every opportunity. I had built up three clubs of which I was +personal leader; I had given service in the gymnasium and playground; I +had helped in the development of a roof-garden cordiality between the +settlement workers and the mothers of children on the street. Mr. +Richards, the last night I was there, presented me with a loving-cup on +behalf of the other workers.</p> + +<p>It was at supper that he did this, in front of them all. He called upon +me, then, to describe to them the most interesting experience I had had +in the course of the summer. So I told them the incident of Frank Cohen +and his mother—but I do not think they saw much that was interesting +about it. Mr. Richards may have, perhaps, because he must have +remembered that dictum of his which the incident disproved; but even he +could guess little of the impression it had made upon my thought and +character.</p> + +<p>I had had a letter from my Aunt Selina, to tell <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span>me curtly that she was +back in New York, but intended starting out immediately upon an +automobile tour through New England into Canada, in company with Mrs. +Fleming-Cohen and some ship-board acquaintances—"personages," she +called them in her much underlined letter, which probably meant that she +had succeeded in capturing some stray society folk. She bade me go back +to our apartment and to have it ready for her on her return. The +servants, she said, were already there, engaged in cleaning away the +summer's dust. She hoped "I would be able to start the college year +without her, and that I would comport myself on the campus in a manner +creditable and befitting, etc., etc."</p> + +<p>But in spite of the servants' efforts to make things bright and +comfortable, the apartment was a dismal and lonely place. College kept +me uptown all day long, of course, but when the evening came and I must +return to the big, empty rooms that were our substitute for home, I did +not like it. I began to linger more and more about the campus at night: +it was truly the most beautiful time to be there, when the autumn moon +silvered its lawns and gave the buildings a marble whiteness. There was +singing on the fences, then, and all sorts of meetings of all kinds of +college organizations. The campus hummed with a hundred undergraduate +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span>activities—so that I saw, as never before, how much I missed through +having to go downtown each night to live. But so long as my aunt wanted +it, I felt I owed it to her to obey, and would not even consider the +renting of Trevelyan's suite of rooms in the principal dormitory. +Trevelyan had given up these rooms to move into his fraternity house.</p> + +<p>"It's a dreadful bore," he said to me in his lazy, rueful way. "I'd be +ten times more comfortable here—but I don't want to insult the +brothers. However, you'll come up to the house and see me just as often, +won't you?"</p> + +<p>I promised him I would, but he seemed to know as well as I that I would +not. A sophomore paying nightly visits to a senior in the fraternity +house where that sophomore had only a year ago been smiled politely +out—no, it didn't seem even probable. And so, when I had helped +Trevelyan put his last bit of furniture upon a truck—and had tucked +among the rungs of many Morris chairs the bundle of flags and college +shields which he had overlooked—I could hardly bear to shake hands with +him. We both knew that it was something in the nature of a definite +goodbye; at any rate, so far as college was concerned.</p> + +<p>"A damned nuisance, this," he said thickly, his short-sighted eyes +screwing up oddly. "And <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span>if it wasn't for the brothers—" But the +brothers did win him, and I lost a friend thereby.</p> + +<p>The home to which I must go seemed lonelier than ever now. I was not +expecting Aunt Selina for two more weeks, and so I hit upon the idea of +inviting some one to stay with me until then.</p> + +<p>Frank Cohen! Yes, I would ask Frank Cohen. He was going to high school +now, and the branch which he attended was not so far from where I lived. +It would be convenient for him, and perhaps a happy change from the East +Side crowdedness which he had had to encounter all his life.</p> + +<p>He was as glad to come as I to have him. I gave him Aunt Selina's room +to sleep in, and we sat there, when our homework was done, many evenings +until past midnight, talking gently and thoughtfully of many things. He +was a boy much as I had been—and perhaps, still was. He was shy to an +uncomfortable degree, low of voice, dreamy in manner. But when he was +aroused to something especial, he became uncontrollably intense, his +eyes flashing and his knees trembling, so that his whole small body +seemed but the sheer vibration of his thoughts.</p> + +<p>He was hoping to go to college, when his high school days were over. He +had not dared mention it at home, though, because he knew <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span>how poor his +father was, and how much of a help he would be when he could go to work +and begin to carry home his weekly earnings. He hated to go into a +shoddy little business; he wanted to study further, to take up some +profession—perhaps the law. Or if he did go into business, he wanted to +have had a few years of college first, so that he might see things +broadly and with a mind trained for bigness. But he had only dreamed all +this, only longed for it in secret. He would rather forego all of it +than urge his father to make the big sacrifice.</p> + +<p>I had come to be so fond of him, it was not long before I decided upon +what seemed to be a proper solution. Without a word to Frank, I escaped +from college early one afternoon and went downtown to that East Side +street where he lived. I found his father in the cellar of the bakery +shop which he owned, his beard all whitened with flour dust, his thin, +bare arms thick with the paste of dough.</p> + +<p>With rehearsed gesticulations I made him understand what I offered. My +own father had left me fairly well off; I wanted to lay out the money +which would be necessary to afford Frank a college education. They could +pay it back when they pleased—not for many years would I need it.</p> + +<p>I had a distinct surprise, then. My generosity <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span>was taken somewhat aback +by the man's apparent anger. He seemed to be resenting any suggestion of +charity. I tried to assure him that this was not what I intended, but he +did not understand. At length we had to call in one of the bakery's +oven-tenders to act as interpreter. And through this third party Mr. +Cohen thanked me kindly. He appreciated all I offered, but he had long +ago made arrangements for Frank.</p> + +<p>"And what are those arrangements?" I asked anxiously, picturing the boy +at work in this dark, mouldy cellar.</p> + +<p>"It is a secret," said Mr. Cohen. "But it is time now for me to disclose +what his mother and I have planned for him. For ten years we have saved. +And we have saved enough to send him to college. He shall go there and +we ourselves shall send him." He drew himself up as he said it, so that +I had a glimpse of that pride which all Jewish fathers seem to take in +hardships which they undergo for their children. "It is so with the son +of the president of my synagogue," he said. "It shall be no less so with +my son, either. He shall have what his father could not have, though his +father starve and slave to give it to him!"</p> + +<p>The dull interpreter gave me this in flat, spiritless tones; but I could +see the clenched hands <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span>and the earnest face of Mr. Cohen, and I nodded +quickly.</p> + +<p>"I am very glad," I told him. "And I know it will mean ten times more in +happiness to you because you are giving him all this with your own +hands. Frank said to me he dared not ask it of you—he thought the +sacrifice too great—and that is why I came to you with my offer. Do not +think me rude, therefore."</p> + +<p>He answered gravely. I was not rude, he assured me, and he owed me deep +thanks. He had only one favor to ask; that I should not tell Frank the +secret, but would leave it and the joy that it would bring, for him, his +father. He would tell him immediately after Frank had returned home from +his stay at my apartment.</p> + +<p>I hurried home, for it was now nearly suppertime. To my amazement I +found Frank sitting in the lobby of the apartment, his old suitcase +beside him, his look one of fevered disconsolement.</p> + +<p>"What's the trouble?" I asked him.</p> + +<p>"Oh, I just wanted to say goodby to you," he said hurriedly. "I did not +want to go without doing that. I've—I've had a pleasant time."</p> + +<p>"But why are you going?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, I want to be home ... you know, I get a little homesick." But he +said it so stumblingly that I was sure he was not telling me all.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span>"Frank," I demanded, "tell me the truth. Has anything gone wrong? I had +hoped you would stay until my aunt returned."</p> + +<p>He laughed at that, and mystified me the more. "Have any of the servants +offended you in any way?" I asked, searching my brain for some reason +for his change of attitude.</p> + +<p>"The servants? Oh, no, of course not!" He picked up his suitcase and +started for the street. "Well, goodby," he said. He stopped as if he +wanted to explain, then thought better—or worse—of it, and went on. I +was a little nettled by this time, and let him go.</p> + +<p>As I went up in the elevator, it seemed to me a mighty mystery. But no +sooner had I let myself into the apartment than I was due for a bigger +surprise.</p> + +<p>For there, blocking the hallway, a figure of offended pride, stood Aunt +Selina.</p> + +<p>I went to her to kiss her, but she stepped back and glared into my face.</p> + +<p>"It's a lucky thing I came back unexpectedly," she said. "The idea of +finding a little Jew boy like that in my room—sitting in my own bedroom +with his copy books spread all over my directoire desk! A common little +boy with an accent!"</p> + +<p>I saw it all, now.</p> + +<p>"That boy was one of my best friends," I <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span>told her as calmly as I could. +"Had I thought you would have objected to his presence here, I would +never have invited him to stay with me for these weeks."</p> + +<p>"Weeks? What, you have had that little East Side creature here for +weeks?" She began to walk up and down the hall in feline fury. "Haven't +you any idea of what is proper? Here I go away with some of the most +cultured and well-known society people in New York—an absolute +triumph—and you use my home as a refuge for nasty little scum of the +slums. It isn't bad enough for you to spend your summer in such +disgusting company. You have to cap it all by bringing them up into my +own home. Think of the disgrace it would mean if any of these new +friends of mine were to discover it!"</p> + +<p>"I have my own friends to consider," I told her patiently. "And this boy +is one of them. What did you tell him?"</p> + +<p>"Tell him? What should I tell him?" She made a great show of shuddering. +"I told him to get out. To—to get out as fast as he could."</p> + +<p>I looked at her evenly for as long a while as she could stand it. Then +her miserable pose gave way to pettishness, and she cried:</p> + +<p>"And what's more, you'll have to get out yourself, if you insist on +trying any more of these outrageous things. I can't bear it, that's +all. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span>You'll have to get out before you disgrace me!"</p> + +<p>"I shall," I agreed, and, passing her, went into my own room and began +to pack.</p> + +<p>We had a silent, sullen supper. At the end of it I told her that my +clothes were packed and that I intended moving on the morrow to +Trevelyan's empty suite, up at college. I would take none of the +furniture from my room, however, since I did not wish to inconvenience +her. I would not trouble her at all after tonight.</p> + +<p>She may have thought this was pure bragging, she may have been +reconciled to it. At any rate she made no answer, and let me go to my +room without a word of comment.</p> + +<p>And it was only two weeks later, when I was comfortably settled in my +room on the campus, that I received a stormy letter from her, calling me +a "most ungrateful monster of a nephew."</p> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span> + +<hr /> +<br /> +<h2>XV</h2> + +<h2>COLLEGE LIFE</h2> + + +<p>Across the hall from Trevelyan's rooms lived one of the college +"grinds." Now that I had moved there and came and went at all hours of +the day, I saw this man often.</p> + +<p>Fallon—that was his name—stood fully six-feet four, and had about a +thirty-two-inch waist. He stooped until his thin shoulder blades were at +directly right angles to each other. He would never talk to any one he +met on his way; his nose was always deep in the book which he held +outspread. He was the most ferocious grind I have ever known.</p> + +<p>Next to Fallon lived Waters, a cheery, well-dressed little person, who +had pink cheeks and no disturbing thoughts. Waters was a member of one +of the minor fraternities; he spoke longingly of the day when he would +be living in his "chapter lodge." Waters was easy company. He had four +hundred "friends" around the campus, and when I met him was engaged in +capitalizing on those friendships by canvassing votes for his election +to a team managership.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span>That perhaps is why he came into my room so often to sit and chat +pleasantly, lightly, about almost every topic known to the college man. +He was very much of a type. There were at least thirty other men in that +class who were like him, no better nor worse, nor more nor less +attractive than he was. Popularity was an end and a means with him. It +was all he wanted of college.</p> + +<p>"Well, how are you, old top?" was the greeting that came singing from +his room, each time I passed its open door. It was a door perennially +open, lest some passerby might escape without the greeting.</p> + +<p>"D'you know, old chap," he'd say, sweeping into my room in the midst of +a study-hour and slumping down upon the divan with a great show of silk +socks and shirtings, "it's high time you and I did something for that +'grind' across the hall."</p> + +<p>He was tremendously interested in Fallon, it would appear. Not +personally, he explained to me—but just because Fallon might become a +valuable friend in time. A college man needed friends—and he, Waters, +had only four hundred of them!</p> + +<p>Fallon, however, had something of his own opinion about it. He went +about the building with his book before him, bowing neither to me <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span>nor +Waters nor any one else. It was dreadful to have to speak to him. He +could scarcely answer; his big Adam's-apple would go juggling painfully +up and down, and finally he would succeed in emitting a barely audible +whisper. He would blush, stammer, clap his mouth shut, then hurry away.</p> + +<p>That was Fallon, worst of "grinds." He was beginning to be the butt of +all sorts of miserable jokes. Even the freshmen over-stepped the line to +make fun of him. For, like Waters and myself, he was a sophomore.</p> + +<p>In the guise of helping a classmate, Waters took charge of him. He gave +him nightly lectures in cordiality, in self-confidence, in the bettering +of one's appearance. Once, when I chanced to go by, I heard him +delivering glib advice upon what "Fallon, old top" ought to eat, in +order that he might grow stouter and more favorable to look upon. And +Fallon sat through it all and clutched his bony knees and grinned the +grin of the helpless.</p> + +<p>But one day, the story goes, he surprised Waters by finding his +voice—and a very full-toned, convincing voice it proved to be, not at +all like his usual whisper. And he told Waters to keep out of his room +in study hour; he told him that he did not care to have his chances of +becoming class valedictorian spoiled <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span>through having to divert his +attention and listen to such superficial tommy-rot. And he told him to +keep himself away, now and forever more, from his room and its owner.</p> + +<p>"Oh, very well!" I heard the injured Waters say. A second later he had +come across into my room and was pouring into my ear a complaint +concerning the beggarly rudeness of that "grind, Fallon, who never would +amount to anything in the college world, anyhow!"</p> + +<p>He had just returned from a very important meeting, he told me, for the +express purpose of having that heart-to-heart talk with Fallon—and the +big, uncouth beggar didn't appreciate it at all. No wonder some fellows +never did get along in college—and here he was, absent from this most +important meeting, with no results at all.</p> + +<p>He didn't mind telling me—(here his voice died down into an impressive +whisper)—that it was from a fraternity meeting he had come. They were +great things, these fraternity meetings. It was really too bad that I +had never been able to join a fraternity—but then, of course, I must +realize that fraternities had to draw the line somewhere! Now, I mustn't +take that as a reflection on me personally—because it wasn't. I was all +right, I was—and some day, he was sure, I was going to be a big man in +the college world—bigger than he himself ever hoped to be. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span>But Jews +were a funny people—and I must admit, if I wanted to be fair, that some +of them weren't fit to come to college at all, not to speak of joining +fraternities.</p> + +<p>And so he went on, until, thoroughly nauseated by the bland niceness of +his speech, I followed Fallon's example and threw him out, though he +refused to be insulted at this move, and promised to come around the +next night and discuss the question of who should be elected our next +football manager.</p> + +<p>A little while after he was gone, Fallon came across the hall and +knocked at my door. It was a timid, scared sort of a knock, and it +needed a loud and repeated, "Come in," before he finally obeyed my +summons.</p> + +<p>He was pitifully wrought up over the incident. He had wanted to be +polite to Waters, but he had had to study. He hadn't wanted to insult +him, but somehow Waters never did understand how valuable time was, and +what it would mean to Fallon's mother if he could come out a +valedictorian at the end of our four years.</p> + +<p>"Which would you rather have," I asked him, "a valedictory or a friend?"</p> + +<p>He stammered a good deal over it. He knew that Waters was right about +that: he did not have a single friend in the whole college—didn't know +how to go about it—but he didn't want <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span>such men as Waters trying to +teach him the way either.</p> + +<p>That began my friendship for Fallon. I had acquaintances enough on the +campus, but I was almost as friendless as he—for friendlessness, I +think, is not so much a matter of other people's as of one's own habit +of mind. And there was something so grotesquely miserable about his +loneliness—something so like a grinning gargoyle, solitary in its +elevation—that I was drawn to him without much conscious effort.</p> + +<p>I began by taking him for long walks. It was the first exercise of any +sort, outside of the required freshman gymnasium course, which he had +had in college. At first he would not talk at all; would just walk +beside me through the city's fringes into the half-suburban roads, his +eyes drinking in the green vistas as if they were astounding novelties, +his breath coming fast with exertion, his cheeks glowing with new color. +Gradually I urged him into talking—and, like all beginners, he talked +of himself entirely. It was good for him. The more he spoke of himself, +the more highly he thought of himself. He needed pride.</p> + +<p>I had already been elected an editor of the college joke paper. I was +qualified, therefore, to persuade Fallon to contribute what he could to +that periodical. But he had not a jot of humor, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span>and his contributions +turned out to be very long and serious bits of verse in studied French +rhyme schemes. I did not even risk reading them at a meeting of the +board, but always turned them over to Trevelyan who could have them used +in the coming issue of the other magazine, the literary monthly. This +set Fallon writing entirely for the "lit," as we called it—and, as a +result, when the elections to that paper were announced in the middle of +the sophomore year, Fallon's name and mine stood together.</p> + +<p>But the happiest inspiration came to me one Sunday when at noon Fallon +and I were resting atop the Palisades, whither we had gone upon an +all-day tramp. I watched him pick up a flat rock and sent it sailing out +and down through space. His long thin arm gave the toss a surprising +power.</p> + +<p>I asked him, had he ever seen a discus. He said, "No."</p> + +<p>The next day I had overcome all his scruples as to the immodesty of a +track costume and had led him out upon the field to practice with the +discus. It was hard work, because he was by far the clumsiest man I have +ever known. Later on I interested the old coach on his behalf. Before +Thanksgiving Fallon gave promise of becoming one of the college's best +discus throwers.</p> + +<p>When winter began, I took him down to the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span>gymnasium. At first I had in +mind only to keep him in good condition; but his handling of the heavy +medicine ball gave me another idea. I put him to work with a +basketball—and here the training I had given the young boys at the +settlement served me in good stead. He was so tall, he need only swing +up his arms to drop the ball into the basket. He was the ideal build for +a "center," and our 'varsity team needed a center.</p> + +<p>He did not make the 'varsity—not that year, anyhow. But he did make our +class team, and won his numerals.</p> + +<p>Also when spring came in, he was chosen as one of the track team's +discus throwers. Add to this the fact that he had lately been elected to +the board of the literary monthly, and it will be seen that Fallon had +had a skyrocket rise. No wonder that Waters, the genial, now forgot that +autumn affront and paid nightly visits upon his particular friend +Fallon. And Fallon, of course, having had his attention diverted into so +many foreign channels, no longer cared so singularly for his studies, +but was willing to receive Waters and such as Waters with an +ever-increasing cordiality.</p> + +<p>The inevitable happened. Fallon, exhibiting his latest development—a +full-sized, roistering swagger—came into my room one evening and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span>told +me jubilantly that he was pledged to join Waters' fraternity.</p> + +<p>"It's not the best in college," he admitted loftily, "but it'll tone up +a bit when I get the track captaincy and Waters gets elected to a +managership."</p> + +<p>"And how about that senior year valedictory?" I asked him.</p> + +<p>"Oh, I was a fool in those days, wasn't I?"</p> + +<p>He mistook my silence. "Say, old chap," he went on, "this is no time for +you to be jealous of me. I know well enough, you ought to be in a +fraternity—in the very best one. I wish I could get you into ours—but, +say, you know how it is about Jews."</p> + +<p>Yes, I knew, I assured him, and gave him the heartiest hand-clasp I +could manage.</p> + +<p>"You know, my mother's going to be awfully proud of this," he exclaimed +huskily.</p> + +<p>But though Waters did succeed in winning himself a team managership, +Fallon never became the captain of the track team. For his election to +that fraternity meant his ruin. He lost his grip upon everything. +Perhaps it was his fellow-members, perhaps he had only himself to blame. +He began to drink. At the end of junior year he was expelled from +college.</p> + +<p>And I wondered if the mother, who had wanted him to be the class +valedictorian, was as proud of him as ever.</p> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span> + +<hr /> +<br /> +<h2>XVI</h2> + +<h2>THE HUN'S INVASION</h2> + + +<p>So far in my college course I had met with actually little outspoken +insult. Once or twice in my freshman year some loutish sophomore had not +stopped at making comments upon my religion. There had been that +incident at Trevelyan's fraternity house, too. But, generally speaking, +the prejudice had been of a negative sort, restricting rather than +driving—though none the less offensive and chafing on that account. +There was nothing on which I could actually lay my finger to complain. I +had no actual proof that I had been kept off any college organization +because of my religion. I might have had, had I cared at the time to +follow up the favoritism shown in the dramatic society—but that was a +small affair, by now, and I preferred to let it rest forgotten.</p> + +<p>Otherwise, I was treated with a fair amount of kindness by almost all of +the college. The members of my own class, in which I was gradually +acquiring such positions as work and merit could win me, had begun to +show me a good, clean respect; and those in the class above soon +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span>followed their lead. All that I asked was fair play, and the chance to +overcome that handicap which I knew existed. This was easier, now that I +lived at college, and I gave to the various activities in which I was +interested, all the spare time which I could afford from my studies. I +was beginning to realize what that preachment meant: "The college will +give you back all that you give to it in work."</p> + +<p>Thus, at the end of my sophomore year, when I again went to the +settlement for the summer, I was planning big and enthusiastic things +for the autumn term.</p> + +<p>Mr. Richards placed me in charge of one of the settlement's fresh-air +camps, up the state. I had two other boys to help me in my work, and one +of them was Frank Cohen. It had taken me a long time to overcome Frank's +sensitiveness, after his encounter with my aunt; but we were fast +friends again now, and it was good to have him with me where I could +help him with his daily noon-time studying for his "preliminaries." When +the fall came, he passed them easily—and it was now definitely decided +that he would enter my college when I was a senior.</p> + +<p>My own return to the university, however, gave me an unpleasant shock. I +had arrived a few days late, because I had wanted to help Mr. Richards +with some of his coming year's <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span>programs. The campus was already alive +and crowded, therefore, and the dormitory windows were all thrown open +and overflowing with the rugs and chair cushions of autumn cleaning. The +campus teemed with a thousand youths who grasped each other cordially by +the wrist and went through all sorts of contortions to prove that they +"were glad to see you, old man!"</p> + +<p>But there was a difference! The first glimpse I had of it, I called +myself a self-conscious fool. I tried to reassure myself, everybody's +greeting had been as cordial as I could expect. Everybody had said he +was glad to see me—and—yet!</p> + +<p>Then, the second day that I was at college, I had my first proof of the +truth of my suspicions. I had it through eavesdropping—but I was +justified. For I heard little Waters, the genial popularist, talking of +it to another classmate in front of the laboratory steps.</p> + +<p>"It's a rotten shame," he was declaiming. "Haven't you noticed? I don't +see how it could escape you! Jews and Jews! The freshman class is just +swarming with 'em!"</p> + +<p>"What? Really?"</p> + +<p>"Honestly. If there's one Jew in the freshman class, there are fifty. +And such Jewy-looking Jews!"</p> + +<p>"Gee whizz, it's a disgrace. It was bad enough when they used to come in +four or five—or even <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span>ten—in a class. But fifty! Are there really +fifty?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, easily! Maybe a hundred—I don't know. They are swarming all over +the place! Gosh, we'll have to do something to get rid of them. It just +simply ruins the college name to have so many of them around."</p> + +<p>"You bet! A campaign for ours!"</p> + +<p>I watched them going off together, arm in arm, towards "fraternity +row"—and wondered what that campaign would be.</p> + +<p>It did not take me long to investigate the real state of affairs. There +were some thirty members of the freshman class listed in the dean's +office under the designation of "Jew," "Hebrew" or "Ethical Culturist." +And the faces that I met under freshman caps were certainly Semitic, to +a large percentage.</p> + +<p>At first it annoyed me. Annoyed me more, too, when the first member of +the freshman class to be expelled for ungentlemanly conduct was a Jew. +There were one or two others, I noticed, who would sooner or later reach +the same end if they did not keep away from the city at night—and from +the things the city teaches.</p> + +<p>These one or two gradually became scape-goats for the rest of the Jewish +boys in the class. They were sons of rich fathers; they paraded their +automobiles about the campus—and thus <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span>broke the rule number one in the +"freshman bible." They had unbridled tongues, and used them +ungraciously. One of them, a big, swaggering chap, "went out" for his +class football team—and, having been selected to play in a minor game, +developed a dying aunt overnight and disappeared for the day. When he +came back, on Sunday night, he was caught and hazed. His automobile was +dumped on its side in the middle of the campus. His face, when I saw him +the next day, was a network of plaster strips. Three days after that he +left college—and I, for one, was devoutly thankful for his resigning. +He did not belong in our college, had done nothing to fit himself into +its environment, had talked loudly, acted the cad and the coward—and +had reaped the reward of such a person, Jew or Gentile, in whatever +community.</p> + +<p>The persecution—for it had taken on proportions worthy of that +name—went forward, however. There was an annual "freshman parade," for +instance, when the entering class was dressed in grotesque costumes and +sent marching in and out a lane of laughing spectators to the football +field. In my own freshman year this was a good-natured affair—and each +class, including the victimized one, took it for the boisterous joke +that it was.</p> + +<p>But this year, when the parade was starting <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span>at the gymnasium, and the +big, card-board placards were being lifted to the marchers' shoulders, I +noticed that all the Jewish boys were being put conspicuously into one +group. They would march together. And those placards! The sickening +succession of them was only a repetition of "Oi oi" and the pawnbroker's +symbol—and humor of that high order. And these Jewish freshmen went +down the street amid the jeering—and I had to stand by and see them, +some with heads high and eyes blazing with pride, others stumbling and +bowed, one of them with tears running inanely down his cheeks—had to +stand there and watch it all, and curse myself for a coward because I +would not, could not, go out into the middle of the road and tear down, +one by one, the daubed, cheap jests that they had to carry.</p> + +<p>A few weeks later there was another such celebration. There were +speeches to be made. The class wits—and what class is without +them?—were to have their turn.</p> + +<p>And their wit—what did it consist of? One after another, they made +blunt, exaggerated references to the "invasion of the Huns," to the +"Jews coming unto Jordan," to "the lost Ten Tribes ..." and hoots of +applause went up to the night sky like the roar of a Philistine army!</p> + +<p>One of the men who spoke was a classmate <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span>of mine—a fellow-member of +the joke paper's board. I knew him well, for he had been to see me +often. It was only a few nights ago that he had told me he was chosen to +speak at this celebration, and had promised me he would make no +reference to the Jewish influx.</p> + +<p>"I don't agree with you about it," he had said. "You're too sensitive, +all you Jews—and anyhow, you know perfectly well we're not aiming this +campaign at you personally. It's against this big bunch of them in the +freshman class."</p> + +<p>"So it's a regular campaign, is it?" I demanded.</p> + +<p>He evaded the question—but satisfied me with his promise.</p> + +<p>But when I heard him break it—heard him, more than any other speaker, +launch one smiling epithet after another against the "sons of Abraham, +Isaac and Jacob," I lost all the gnawing consciousness that I had had as +to the justice of this remark about Jewish sensitiveness—and I went +forward to the cart-end from which he was speaking. I meant to pull him +down and get up there in his place, and to speak hotly, straight from +the shoulder—I didn't care what I said so long as I put them all to +disgrace!</p> + +<p>But when I was within a few feet of him in the jostling, laughing crowd, +I could go no further. I tried to cry out, but that was denied me. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span>My +courage gave me only the power to glare and sneer at him—and once, as +he spoke, he looked down and saw my face, I think. For his own grew +paler in the light of the gas lantern which flared windily beside him, +and he faltered in his speech.</p> + +<p>Later on he came over to my room and asked to speak to me. I heard him +through; listened to his smooth explanation about the committee of +arrangements demanding that he put something into his speech about the +Jews—and he was sorry he had broken his word to me—only, of course, I +was to consider myself an exception to all this sort of thing. Everybody +knew I was a good fellow and was doing bully work for the name of the +college—and what right had I to class myself with these insignificant +little Jews in the Freshman class? and he didn't want it to break up our +friendship, because he thought the world of me.</p> + +<p>And so I showed him the door.</p> + +<p>The next day I began to pay for that stroke of arrogance. The classmates +who belonged to that man's fraternity snubbed me on the street.</p> + +<p>It didn't matter much, I thought—but in reality, it did. Because these +men, as it happened, had been my closest friends. I was beginning to +worry myself into a maudlin state, and no doubt did attribute hostility +to altogether too many of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span>the undergraduates. But it is hard to choose +and distinguish surely in a land that is generally hostile and strange. +I began to stay more and more within the shelter of my room, working at +my studies and at those activities which had already given me +recognition. I wanted to be plucky about it. I wanted to keep on +smiling—but there were times, I must confess, when I wished that I were +through with college and all its rough-and-tumble boyishness.</p> + +<p>I did not care so much myself. There were all these freshmen who were +probably ten times lonelier than I was, ten times more bewildered and +disheartened by the welcome they had had. I tried to visit as many of +them as lived in dormitories. I wanted to talk things over with them, to +help them in some possible way. But it wasn't much of a success—I could +make no progress out of condonement and asking them to wait patiently +until the foolish campaign had dwindled away.</p> + +<p>Then, one day, as I crossed the campus to a first recitation, I saw that +the brick walls of the oldest of the dormitories had been adorned with +huge painted letters:</p> + +<p class="cen"> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">"OUT WITH THE JEWS."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>I went into a telephone booth and called up the house of one of the +professors with whom <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span>I had become friendly. He was a kindly, +well-meaning man, and an alumnus of the college.</p> + +<p>His telephone line was busy when I called it. I heard him talking with +some one. I was about to ring off when suddenly I heard my own name +mentioned.</p> + +<p>The professor was an alumnus member of one of the college fraternities. +And this other man—evidently an undergraduate, though I never tried to +identify him—was asking the professor what he thought of offering me an +election to this fraternity.</p> + +<p>And I heard the professor sigh in his patient way.</p> + +<p>"I like him—I like him very much, mind you," I heard him say, "but—er, +er—I do think it would be disastrous—nothing short of disastrous to +elect a Jew to any of our fraternities in the present situation."</p> + +<p>I rang off. It was something to know that I was even being considered +for membership—but it was disastrous, that was all—disastrous!</p> + +<p>When I was out upon the campus again I saw that painters were already at +work obliterating the sign. They had whitewashed the "<i>Out With the</i>" +away, and there was nothing left upon the wall but a huge, red</p> + +<p class="cen"> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">"JEWS."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>And thank God, I could laugh at the incident!</p> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span> + +<hr /> +<br /> +<h2>XVII</h2> + +<h2>MANY IMPULSES</h2 +> + + +<p>Fair play comes first—and reasoning follows it. For fair play is always +an impulse. It comes when least expected.</p> + +<p>That is how it was at the university. The incident of the big, painted +sign was practically the last demonstration against the influx of Jewish +boys. Waters, who made capital of everything, attempted to found a +formal organization dignified by the title of the Anti-Hebrew Collegiate +League, but when, at the first meeting, he was not elected to the +presidency, abandoned the project with bitter complaints against the +ingratitude of his fellow members. A little later on, when the tide had +turned in the opposite direction, he became the head of the Helping Hand +League, and was atop the wave of contrition.</p> + +<p>For the tide did turn. Men are always afraid to carry their propaganda +beyond the point of the ridiculous. When tomfoolery turns to foolishness +its perpetrators are only too anxious for a chance to abandon it.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span>It was impossible to keep the thing out of the newspapers. The day after +that sign incident, there was a lurid story to be read at each of the +city's breakfast tables and in the evening subways. New York took it up +and made it a matter of shocked debate for a day and a half. The +president of the university, in his quarterly sermon in chapel, spoke +fervently of toleration and the gentle spirit.</p> + +<p>The reaction was almost as hysterical as the movement itself. The little +Jewish freshmen—timid, frightened little mice, who had been going about +their classroom work and scurrying home and out of reach for so many +months—suddenly found themselves lauded as martyrs, as the best of +fellows.</p> + +<p>One evening a deputation of them were waiting for me when I came in from +supper. They had formed a Jewish fraternity, and wished me to join with +them. Appeal to a Jewish philanthropist had brought them enough money to +lease a house near the campus. They were sure that they would have +sanction and support from the rest of the college, now that the +prejudice had abated. And since they could not join any of the other +fraternities, why should they not have one of their own?</p> + +<p>I thought it over carefully. I wanted to be fair to myself as well as to +them. That same <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span>old repugnance of being identified with a distinctly +Jewish propaganda troubled me and made me turn from them. And yet it +wasn't only that, either. For when I thought it out, I knew that, +according to my point of view, theirs was not the proper solution. Fire +can fight fire, perhaps—in proverbs, anyhow—but discrimination is not +to be overpowered by a like amount of secularity. If Jewish college men +objected to that unwritten rule of fraternities; if they contended that +fraternities should be democratic; if they wanted equal rights in those +fraternities ... how, then, were they justified in standing apart and +founding a fraternity of their own—a brotherhood which should be open +only to Jews?</p> + +<p>That is what I thought. I may have been wrong—and the excellent records +of the Jewish fraternity chapters in various colleges and universities +do perhaps prove me wrong—but I could not bring myself to join them. I +was heartily glad the whole heated question of race and race prejudice +was abated. I asked, for myself, only that I be given something of the +fair-play that other men had. I was working hard for the college. I was +doing all that my talents enabled me to do and I was sure that, sooner +or later, there would be the reward.</p> + +<p>This reward did come, definitely. It came at <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span>the end of May when, at +the height of the reaction against the whole year of prejudice, I was +chosen for the college senior society. It was a public election, held on +the afternoon of one of the most important baseball games. There were +crowds to watch the ceremony—students and graduates, young girls and +parents ... so that the memory of the green campus and the banks of +pretty gowns and parasols, the sunshine and the cheering will be with me +till I die. I remember that there were tears in my eyes as I was chosen +... and that there came to me, with all the cool freshness of the spring +winds, the thought that this was the end, the salvation from out of all +the year's mean, squalid troubles. Here was I, a Jew, raised above all +the other Jews who had ever entered this college ... raised among the +highest, to be a power in the land, to be the champion of all those who +had suffered, the winner through hardship and handicap, a vindicated +Dreyfus, an example to all the lower classes.... For, at twenty-one, +alas, we are our own best heroes, and none can take our place!</p> + +<p>College closed in a blaze of glory for me. There was even a note from +Aunt Selina Haberman, wishing me well of this new honor and informing me +that "Mrs. Fleming-Cohen, when she heard it, was green with envy!" Aunt +Selina <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span>wanted to know, was I going to be a wicked boy, however, and +stay away from her all next year, too. She was sure that, now I had won +out, we could get along much more smoothly than we had.</p> + +<p>I fear I began to think a little too highly of my position in the +community. I was now capable of going to no less a person than the dean +of the college and talking over with him, as if man to man, the +possibility of an anti-Jewish agitation, the next year, and demanding in +none too deferential tones that, should it come, the college authorities +must do their share to stamp it out.</p> + +<p>"Really, Mr.-er-er-,—what's your name?"</p> + +<p>I told him very slowly, but it did not mean much to him. I rather pitied +the old gentleman for not paying more attention to the undergraduate +contests and triumphs.</p> + +<p>But he did hear me out, and gave me information which I thought worth +acting on. The large majority of the Jewish boys in the freshman class +had prepared for college at one school—a large private preparatory +school in New York City. Perhaps it would be as well, suggested the +dean, for me to go to the principal of this school and talk things over +with him.</p> + +<p>"Do you mean, I should warn him against sending so many of his boys to +our college?" I asked.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span>The dean appeared dreadfully shocked. "Oh, no—dear me, no. That +wouldn't do at all. Only—well, it seems that this school caters almost +entirely to the sons of wealthy Jewish men—and that this principal is +very fond of our college ... and so he grievously sends us all the boys +that he can. You know, so many boys don't know where to go to +college—and the principal often has a chance to suggest one, don't you +see!"</p> + +<p>The dean had a very sober face, but his eyes were twinkling. It relieved +me to know, he was not taking this principal's bad judgment too +seriously.</p> + +<p>"So you think it would be wiser if there weren't so many Jewish boys in +next year's entering class?"</p> + +<p>"Precise—oh, no, I shouldn't dare say that, even if I thought so. +Remember, I am in an official capacity here. But come around to my house +tonight, when I've doffed my scholastic robe and am in my shirt +sleeves—and perhaps I'll tell you, then, the name of that principal."</p> + +<p>I did not even bother to do this. Without waiting for further advice, I +went down to this school to beard the foolish principal in his den.</p> + +<p>It was a hard matter to work my way into his presence. He had an office +and inner office, and stenographers to guard them both. I <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span>wrote on my +card, however, that I wished to speak to him regarding affairs at my +college, and evidently piqued his curiosity to the extent of his giving +me the interview.</p> + +<p>In that inner office I found a youngish man whose face was adorned with +a heavy black beard. He seemed strangely familiar, but I could not place +him.</p> + +<p>"Come in," he said, looking hard at me. His restless eyes did not leave +my face all the while I was talking.</p> + +<p>"What is it you want me to do?" he asked me when I had given him some +stumbling hint of my mission.</p> + +<p>"I think you ought to keep Jewish boys out of my college," I told him. +"It—it isn't altogether fair, and it would only provoke a renewal of +the prejudice, if there should be as many freshmen next year as there +were this."</p> + +<p>"You are a Jew yourself," he said accusingly.</p> + +<p>"Yes, I am. But don't judge by me.... I have always been an exception to +all that prejudice."</p> + +<p>"Oh, have you? I wonder why?"</p> + +<p>I resented his tone, but went on to explain how I had entered college +long before the antagonism had broken out; had worked hard, with +Christian friends to help me, until I had won honors which assured me +immunity from any unpleasantness.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span>"I congratulate you," he said dryly. "You no doubt deserve these honors. +Your sort always does."</p> + +<p>I stood up angrily and looked him square in the face. Then suddenly I +recognized him.... Pictures of my public school days came up before +me.... The class room and the big, crippled bully, Geoghen.... That +finding of the Hebrew prayer book when the teacher was out of the room, +and the hooting and mocking ... and then the teacher's return—and the +fight.</p> + +<p>It was Mr. Levi.</p> + +<p>He smiled when he saw that I knew him, now. "I remembered you more +readily," he said. "You have no beard to change your appearance." But it +was more than his beard: there was a complete change in him from the +dreamy, pale young man who had learned so harsh a lesson in those old +days. There was a bitter twist to his mouth. His lips were set sternly, +his eyebrows were lowered, his brow crossed by scowling lines.</p> + +<p>"There's one thing about you that I remember," he snapped at me. "You +were a Jew—and yet you stood aside and let those little cads take the +book of God and make nasty fun of it—and never raised your hand or even +your voice to stop them. That's the sort of boy you were. And, I +suppose, you're still the same. It'd seem <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span>so, anyhow. You probably won +all your college honors through standing aside. And now you have the +audacity to ask me to do the same, lest you be made uncomfortable by the +number of other Jewish boys at your college. You want me to stand aside, +do you? Well, I wish I had a thousand Jewish boys to enter into your +college's next year's class!"</p> + +<p>He glared at me. "If you want to know the truth, I can't get a single +boy in my school to go to your college, now. I wish I could. Because I'm +training them to fight like men. They aren't the sort who win honors by +allowing themselves to be classed as exceptions...."</p> + +<p>As for myself, I knew that he was half wrong, half right—and that there +was nothing more for me to say. I had learned what I came to learn. So I +got up to go.</p> + +<p>"And if there's another such demonstration, next year," he sneered, "you +and your precious honors will have to stand aside again, eh? It must +keep you very light on your feet!"</p> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span> + +<hr /> +<br /> +<h2>XVIII</h2> + +<h2>I STAND—BUT NOT ASIDE</h2> + + +<p>Thus it happened that only five Jews enrolled in the entering freshman +class. One of them, of course, was Frank Cohen.</p> + +<p>Mr. Levi's accusations had stung deeply. My anger at them was all the +more intense because my heart admitted half their truth. Nevertheless, I +was glad to see that there could be no possible aggravation this year: +surely, with only five Jewish freshmen, the percentage would be small +and unnoticed. It was all very well, that venom of Mr. Levi's—but it +was unreasonable. I would be glad if the Jewish question would never +again be mentioned during my college course.</p> + +<p>The opening of the senior year found Frank Cohen and me on the +Palisades, talking eagerly of what his college course would mean to him. +He made me smile, his dreams were so like my own had been when I, too, +was a freshman. Made me wonder, too, how much I had fulfilled those +dreams. Something accomplished, yes—and as much unfulfilled, +disregarded, left <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span>undone. Well, perhaps, in this last year, I would +have the chance again—and would not flinch.</p> + +<p>The chance came just two days after the opening of college. It came when +Frank Cohen burst into my room about nine o'clock at night, in company +with another Jewish freshman. The other one was dogged, frightened, and, +when he was behind my closed door, began to cry noiselessly. As for +Frank, who was made of stronger stuff, he sat silent in his chair, +grasping its arms and trying to control the intensity of some revulsion +which had come over him.</p> + +<p>They told me quickly what had happened. They were just from a meeting of +freshman candidates for the college newspaper. The meeting had been +called in order to instruct these candidates in the rules and +qualifications of the competition. All men who cared to enter the +competition had been invited. Two men had made speeches: the +editor-in-chief and the managing editor of the paper, Sayer and Braley +by name.</p> + +<p>These had been cordial speeches, urging all men present at the meeting +to work hard in this competition. There had been speeches of +encouragement, in glowing colors—and then, at the end of it all, in +front of the fifty-odd youths who were assembled there, Braley had +closed his speech with this:</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span>"We wish to say that any Jew who may have it in mind to enter this +competition might as well save himself the pains. We shall not even +consider the election of a Jew to the board."</p> + +<p>Immediately a gasp, then a snicker had run through the roomful; then +necks had craned and heads turned to catch looks at Frank and the other +freshman who stood, flushed and humiliated, in their midst.</p> + +<p>Then the meeting had broken up, and the other candidates, taking their +cue from Braley's speech, stood aside to let Frank and his companion +pass down through whispering, giggling aisles. They had tried to go +calmly, unconcernedly, as if the shock of the insult meant nothing to +them. But the other Jewish freshman had broken down, and Frank had to +put his arm around him to keep him up and straight upon his path through +the crowd's midst, out upon the campus and over to my dormitory.</p> + +<p>I sat a little while silent after I heard them tell of it. I was as much +stunned as they—and sickened too. I had thought all that sort of thing +was done with. I had hoped it was all past, even forgotten—and here it +was, leaping up again to confront, to threaten, to jeer at us. I had +only dimly imagined the possibility of it. I had no plan, no hint of how +I should go about it.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span>Two years ago, if this had happened, I should not have cared one way or +the other. I should have crawled away into a corner and buried my face +to hide my fear's approach. I should have waited to see how others +acted, how others fought—and then, at best I should have fought along +in a half-hearted, half-dreading fashion. Even now, I had nothing to +fight for. I knew what Judaism was—and that it was for the God and the +people of Judaism that I should be making my little fight—but—</p> + +<p>I turned about and saw the eyes of the two freshmen glued upon me. +Frank's especially—and they were beginning to fill with a troubled +distrust which I had never allowed to be there before. I could not fail +Frank. I would do what I could.</p> + +<p>"All right," I said, drawing on my coat. "Go ahead home and get to bed. +I will see what I can do."</p> + +<p>I went with them across the campus to the other freshman's room. Frank +would sleep there for the night, though he usually went back to his +parents. I think he did not have the heart tonight to face them, and +when they asked their usual breathless questions of the day's work and +play, lie to them and hide from them the galling incident. He did not +seem to feel the insult for his own sake; he was thinking, rather, of +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span>his mother and of how she would feel, should she ever know.</p> + +<p>"Good night," said the other freshman soberly.</p> + +<p>"Good night," said Frank—and I felt in his voice all of the cheery +obligation of friendship. He was expecting wonders of me.</p> + +<p>Walking on alone, across the open gloominess of deserted paths and night +winds in the shrubbery, a thousand foolish fears tramped by my side and +sang into my ears. I had hidden my empty spirit from those two boys—but +I could not hide it from myself. I wondered what sort of a fight was +ahead of me, and how long it would last, and what would be the final +result. Those two men, Sayer and Braley, were among the most influential +of the class. They were members of my senior society. They could hold me +down by sentimental ties of brotherhood, much as Trevelyan had been held +down by his fraternity mates; failing that, they could use their +popularity, their clinch upon college opinion to force me literally into +silence. They could run me out of college, if they pleased. I knew this, +did not deny it to myself as I went forward to the first skirmish.</p> + +<p>Once I turned around and almost retreated to my rooms. But the +remembrance of the sting that was in Frank's reproachful look would not +let me do that.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span>So I came to the steps of the big Y. M. C. A. building. They were many, +these white stone steps, and they shone in the moonlight with a mottling +of hazardous shadows. I mounted them and went into the huge assembly +hall on the first floor. I heard the awkward, self-conscious benediction +and adjournment of the meeting—for they were all young fellows, and had +not yet learned to be entirely glib towards their meetings—and stood +aside to let them pass out. As the first of them went through the door +and out upon the campus, they burst into the giddy laughs which +moonlight conjures—and I heard them singing foolish glees—snatches of +song that were utterly pagan and gleeful, and far from the heated +stuffiness of their prayer meeting. They seemed to have found their +Kindly Light more easily in the open.</p> + +<p>The man for whom I now waited had always been the leader of my class; +this year, he was the idol of the entire university. Captain of +football, a 'varsity baseball man, he had the finest, sincerest +character that I had ever known. He was not merely popular, in our +undergraduate sense. Underclassmen worshipped him from afar, and +upperclassmen, who knew him and the life that he led, loved him and +respected him with a love and respect which few men can ever win.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span>He and I had become friendly, lately. It was due, perhaps, to the fact +that we now belonged to the same senior society. Before, I had +worshipped from afar; now I knew him well and warmly—and, as I look +back upon my college life, I am amazed to realize how much of his +influence went into the making of it.</p> + +<p>As he came out, I noticed how his broad shoulders filled the doorway and +blocked out its light completely. But his face was above the shadows, +and I had a sudden sense of comfort from the resolute kindliness that +shone upon it.</p> + +<p>"Fred," I said, "I want your help on something."</p> + +<p>As president of the Y. M. C. A. he had a room allotted him in the +building where he might sleep. I knew that he had a suite in his +fraternity house, too—but he preferred to stay here, for some reason, +in this smaller, simpler place, where he would be nearer his duties.</p> + +<p>When he had me in the plain little den, sitting before the miniature +wood fire which he heaped with broken twigs, he sat me down and gave me +a few minutes of tactful silence. I was thinking it all out. I wanted to +tell it to him fairly, concisely, with no imprecations, and yet with no +weakening of attitude. Then I did tell it, simply, just as the two boys +had told it to me.</p> + +<p>I saw Fred's face grow troubled. Before I <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span>was through he had begun to +walk up and down the little room with a nervousness that made his pace +almost such a jog as football players use when they come out upon the +field.</p> + +<p>"You're right," he said when I was done. "You're so right that +everything else connected with the incident is wrong—and that's the +hardest part for me to admit. You deserve to fight this out alone—it +belongs to you. I wish I had a fight like yours to make. But if you'll +let me help you—?"</p> + +<p>"Let you? Why, I <i>need</i> your help!"</p> + +<p>"Then you'll have it. I'll be glad—mighty glad to chime in with you—"</p> + +<p>He stopped short, his tremendous frame red-lined in the fire's glow, his +cheeks above his square jaw as bright as the flames themselves.</p> + +<p>I could not answer him sentimentally. My comfort and gratitude were too +deep, my suddenly gained encouragement too surging for the narrow outlet +of words. But after a while we began to plan. We would fight it +together—and immediately.</p> + +<p>When I got up to go, his Bible was lying open at the beginning of the +New Testament, with a ribbon and tiny silver cross to mark the place. +When Fred saw me looking at it, he must have felt some part of the +strange, shivery misgiving which had come over me. For he took the +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span>ribbon in his fingers, so that the cross lay gleaming in his palm.</p> + +<p>"It is Christ's symbol," he said. "It is the sign of one who +suffered—and who was a Jew."</p> + +<p>Then, as if he must leave me no doubt of his meaning in my mind:</p> + +<p>"Don't worry. The cross won't stand between us. Though—" His eyes +travelled slowly to the shelf above the fireplace. "Look! There's a +symbol of <i>your</i> religion, too."</p> + +<p>So I looked. Gleaming brass, its seven uplifting arms gracefully curved, +stood a—Menorah!</p> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span> + +<hr /> +<br /> +<h2>XIX</h2> + +<h2>"BATTLE ROYAL!"</h2> + + +<p>I awoke the next morning to an insistent knocking at my door. I sprang +out of bed and opened it. In the hall, their dress showing signs of much +haste, stood Sayer and Braley. They did not wait my invitation, but +strode at once into the room and, throwing the rumpled covers from the +bed, plumped down upon it.</p> + +<p>"See here," said Braley, without prelude, "what's this talk about Fred's +calling a special meeting of the senior class for tonight? Do you know +anything about it?"</p> + +<p>I smiled my way out of a pajama top. "Really?" I exclaimed. "Well, I did +hear Fred say something about it last night."</p> + +<p>"Oh, so you talked it over with him? Did you ask for the meeting?"</p> + +<p>I had thrown on a bathrobe. "Yes, I did. Why?"</p> + +<p>"That's what we want to know. Why, why?"</p> + +<p>I looked up from tying the cord about my waist. "That's just what I'm +not going to tell. Not until the meeting."</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span>"Well, perhaps we know."</p> + +<p>"You probably do. You deserve to."</p> + +<p>"What do you mean by that?" Sayer jumped up and towards me. He was doing +his best to fight, I could see—but I would not give him the chance—not +prematurely!</p> + +<p>Braley waved a conciliatory hand. He was a large, stoop-shouldered +fellow with long, light hair and an enormous forehead. He had the most +important and sumptuous manners I have ever met.</p> + +<p>"See here, now," he said, "you really must tell us all you know about +this thing. You really must." He was very earnest about it. They were +both uneasy, it was easy to see.</p> + +<p>"I'll tell you nothing," I said. "You will have to wait until tonight, +and then——"</p> + +<p>"Threatening us, are you?"</p> + +<p>"No. I'm kind enough to warn you, that's all. I don't want you to go to +the meeting unprepared."</p> + +<p>"Oh, so it has to do with my remarks to the freshmen candidates, has +it?"</p> + +<p>"And mine?"</p> + +<p>"I've given you all the warning that fair play demands," I said. "Look +to your consciences for means of defense." And, flinging a towel over my +shoulder, I darted away for my morning shower, leaving them in +possession of the room. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span>When I came back, a few minutes later, it was +apparently empty, and I thought them gone.</p> + +<p>I was almost dressed when I went into the clothes closet to select a tie +from the rack I had there. There was a sudden rustle and movement of the +clothes at the back of the dark little place. Two men closed in on me, +dragged me into the depths of the closet. I reached out blindly, +furiously. My fists hit only against the rows of my own clothes hanging +there. A couple of coat-hangers clattered down. I stumbled and fell over +my satchel. Then the door slammed shut. As I lay there, stunned, in the +darkness, I heard the key turning in the lock, from the outside. They +had sealed me in.</p> + +<p>I had no doubts but they had been Sayer and Braley. Though I had never +imagined they would go as far as this—and the fools! what did they +think they could accomplish by locking me up for the day?</p> + +<p>It was easy enough to breathe in the tiny, black square. I was in no +danger. I groped my way to the suitcase and sat down on it for a few +minutes. My head pained me terrifically. My forehead was hot. I put my +hand up to it and felt a fast-swelling bruise. My fingers grew wet with +something warm. It wasn't just perspiration.... I knew that—and that, +in the struggle, I must have hit my head against <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span>one of the hooks. Or +had one of them hit me in the dark with some sharp thing that he held in +his hands?</p> + +<p>I stood up again unsteadily, found the door handle—yes, it was locked. +I was in my stocking feet; I could not kick through a panel. I reached +along the wall, found a hook. I flung the clothes from it, gave it both +my hands and all my strength in a sudden pull. It gave way with a +spurting of loosened plaster.</p> + +<p>It was a large, heavy hook. It made a good ram. I crashed upon the two +upper panels with it. One of them split at length—and when I rammed the +ugly iron thing against it again, it broke into splinters and my arm +went through it. Light came through dimly—and, three minutes later, I +had knocked out the whole panel, climbed through and staggered out into +the room.</p> + +<p>The mirror showed me a bad cut over my right eye. I staunched the flow +of blood as best I could. It was so humorous an incident—like one of +the famous adventures of Frank Merriwell!</p> + +<p>I played it out, though. I did not go out of my room the whole day. In +the afternoon I telephoned Fred, the class president, about it. He came +over to see me—and he didn't treat it as lightly as I did. He wanted me +to have a <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span>doctor, for one thing. I promised I would see one, as soon as +the meeting was over, that night.</p> + +<p>"You'd better," he said. "That cut is mighty close to some of the most +important nerves of the eye."</p> + +<p>It was evening when I ventured out. Over in the big assembly hall the +meeting of the senior class had already begun. I stole across the campus +with my coat collar turned up and my hat far down to hide my face. I did +not want to be recognized until I was ready. I hung about outside the +ruddy windows of the hall, watching the crowded groups that sat within. +They were listening intently to someone on the platform that I could not +see—but I knew that it was Fred, presiding. Fred—and he was explaining +it all to them, perhaps, in that deep-voiced way of his.</p> + +<p>Then, as I watched, I saw how the heads of all who sat within the scope +of my spying craned suddenly towards the side of the room. I knew what +that meant, too. It meant that either Sayer or Braley had risen from his +seat to make reply to the president's accusation.</p> + +<p>Then, amazed, I heard applause and laughter. The muffled clapping of +hands went on for minutes. So they approved these things that the two +editors had done, did they? So they could laugh and clap to hear how +Sayer and Braley <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span>had crushed the spirit out of two young Jews in front +of fifty other freshmen?</p> + +<p>I grew too angry to wait. I was not going to dawdle idly in the +background, waiting for a foolish, theatrical entrance cue—I wasn't +going to "stand aside" a moment longer!</p> + +<p>I hurried into the building, up stairs and around corners until I was at +the very threshold of the hall. The big mass of men there, the lights, +the noise of their clapping, ten times louder from within—all of it +gave a tightening to my throat. My knees began to tremble violently.</p> + +<p>It was Braley who was speaking. He was waving his hand with his usual +sense of the grandiloquence of his remarks. I heard, I suppose, only the +last of them—but that was enough:</p> + +<p>"I regret, of course, that I should have had to give pain to these two +poor little kike freshmen. I regret that I have thereby offended no less +a person than the president of the class. But there is the broader way +of looking at this thing: that of the interest of the whole community. +And I believe, as every man in this room believes, that it would be ten +times better that all Jews be debarred from our college. If not that, +then certainly from all our college activities, in order that real +Anglo-Saxon fair play may prevail! If any man, including the Jew who has +instigated this protest against Sayer <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span>and myself, wishes to refute +this, let him step forward now or be forever silent."</p> + +<p>He sat down grandly, amid huzzas.</p> + +<p>I do not know whether he or Sayer actually meant me to be incarcerated +during all that day and night, while the meeting went forward so +famously. Probably they had had it in mind when they played the +vindictive little prank, and had been ashamed, when in better senses, to +come back and release me. Certainly Sayer, who sat close to the door, +turned pale when he saw me now.</p> + +<p>I went slowly to the front of the room. My eyes pained me and I was +nauseated. But I had ceased to tremble and was calm with a fury that +checked all nervousness.</p> + +<p>"The Jew who instigated this protest is here to back it up," I said +slowly. "He is here to appeal to the 'real Anglo-Saxon fair play.'"</p> + +<p>I could feel in the air the antagonism which I must down. I knew, as +never before, how bitter and insensate was the prejudice which I must +conquer by fifteen minutes of quiet words.</p> + +<p>What I said doesn't count: I hardly remember most of it, anyhow. Before +me, as I talked, the faces swam away into a dim and meaningless strip. I +was not talking to these raw, swankering college boys. I was talking to +something beyond—to something that was infinitely <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span>brighter and more +glorious than I had ever known before. I was talking to something beyond +all earth—to Someone....</p> + +<p>And I was appealing, was summoning, calling Him down to my aid. I was +speaking His words, in the spirit of His ancient fighting prophets. I +was fighting His fight. The calm frenzy in my heart was of His +instillation. For years I had sought Him. For years I had shunned Him, +knowing my need of Him. For all the days of my life I had borne the +fierce justice of His words as a lonely burden—and now, now....</p> + +<p>"And I shall fight and fight," I cried, "in the name of God—the God +that is over all of us, of whatever race, creed or color—for the things +that are fair and right and just. I shall have justice for a little East +Side Jewish freshman as you shall have it, too."</p> + +<p>Then suddenly, as if blinded by the refulgence of what I saw, my eyes +began to water and grow dim. I stood there, tense, and did not mind the +pain that was in them. But I could speak no more.</p> + +<p>And slowly the men rose and went out, quietly, strangely—looking back +sometimes to where I stood—not comprehending everything, I suppose, but +moved beyond all common approbation. They had been conquered.</p> + +<p>Braley remained alone with me in the deserted <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span>hall. I looked at him +across a row of seats and began to laugh.</p> + +<p>"You didn't even say a word to them about that rotten trick we played on +you," he said, shamefacedly, his glib manners gone.</p> + +<p>"I didn't have to," I replied. "Besides, I forgot."</p> + +<p>"Well—er—thanks! You could have had us expelled!"</p> + +<p>But the pain and dizziness were beyond standing now. I tore off my hat, +so that he had a glimpse of the long, sullen cut over my eye.</p> + +<p>"Look out!" he cried, leaping up on the platform, to hold me—for I was +falling to the floor.</p> + +<p>I remember laughing again, long but weakly. "I didn't have to! I didn't +have to!"</p> + +<p>And after so much light, there came the darkness.</p> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span> + +<hr /> +<br /> +<h2>XX</h2> + +<h2>THE CANDLES ARE LIGHTED</h2> + + +<p>When I rose from a hospital bed of fever and darkness, ten days later, +it was with a feeling of rebirth—as if, in the dripping delirium of +threatened blindness, the last doubts had sloughed away.</p> + +<p>And when the bandage was taken from my eyes, and I had, for the first +time in so long a while, a short and tempered bit of sunshine that came +through the shaded windows and across the clean, white floors, it was as +if I saw things, now, as I had never seen them—face to face.</p> + +<p>I must not return immediately to college, the doctors said. There must +be another fortnight of convalescence, with absolute rest for my eyes. +They gave me my choice as to where I wanted to go—and I chose the +settlement. I should be among friends, down there; I should have the +sunny roof-garden to loiter in—and Jewish faces everywhere about me.</p> + +<p>It was good old Trevelyan, squinting and stuttering and strangely moved, +who called for <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span>me in his car and took me away from the hospital. He had +wanted me to go to his Adirondack lodge, instead, and resigned me into +Mr. Richards' care at the settlement as if he were consigning me +reluctantly to one of the Inferno's inner limbos.</p> + +<p>It was then the second day of the Jewish New Year. The whole teeming +neighborhood was in holiday garb and mood. From the roof that night Mr. +Richards and I stood watching the streets and their carnival crowds, +swarming indistinctly under the lamps and about the corners.</p> + +<p>"The little people," quoted Mr. Richards, "God and the little people...."</p> + +<p>"They are not little when they have God," I answered.</p> + +<p>He nodded. "I was wrong in what I said in that argument of ours. Do you +remember? I said they didn't need their religion—that it was working +more harm than good among the younger generation. I've learned, now.... +There isn't a person on earth that doesn't need it—all that he can get +of it—and these little people of the East Side most of all."</p> + +<p>From below there rose to us the clang and clatter of traffic, the +indescribable rustle of the crowd, the shriek of a demon fire engine, +many streets away. But, above it all, we heard singing, on the floor +below us, of a solemn chant <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span>in rehearsal. It was the settlement Choral +Society, singing the plaintive "Kol Nidre"—and when the parts swelled +into unison, all other sounds seemed suddenly engulfed in the rich, +melancholy texture of the harmony.</p> + +<p>Mr. Richards smiled. "There it is, you see: the grim, sad faith of the +Jewish people. It is all they have had in all their wanderings—but it +is everything."</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>The cut across my forehead healed quickly. Resting from all tasks, my +eyes regained their strength without relapse.</p> + +<p>I had visitors. Several of the men from college came down each day. I +had not known there were so many persons who cared. Braley was among +them, once—and he sat and twisted his hat and said nothing. Whether or +not his friendship is worth anything to me, I have made a friend of him. +Once or twice, since then, he has tried to speak of the trick which he +and Sayer attempted, but I have stopped him. There is no need of going +over <i>that</i>.</p> + +<p>Only, a few days after I went to the hospital, there was a long and +flowery retraction published in the college newspaper, inviting all +freshmen "of whatever race or creed to enter the editorial competition, +with the assurance that the most democratic principles would prevail."</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span>At any rate, when Frank Cohen ran in to see me, on his way home, a few +days later, I advised him to re-enter the contest. Frank, with a +freshman's capacity for hero worship, leaped to act on my advice.</p> + +<p>"And hurry up back to college," he said, with a little catch in his +voice. "There are twenty other Jewish underclassmen who want the same +sort of counsel from you. You see—they didn't know they had a +leader—and they do need one!"</p> + +<p>It is not part of the tale, perhaps, but I cannot help intruding the +fact that Frank was the first freshman to be elected to the editorial +board of the college paper—and that, in his senior year, he became its +managing editor.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>My aunt came, too. I had been secretly expecting her—hoping, perhaps, +for no especial reason, that she would come.</p> + +<p>She wept a little at the sight of my healing scar. It was a long while +since I had seen her, and it shocked me—she looked so worn. She clung +to my hand for several minutes before she would speak.</p> + +<p>"I read about it," she sobbed. "It was in the papers—and they said the +nicest things of you.... But I didn't come sooner because—because I +didn't know whether you wanted—you wanted—"</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span>"Yes, Aunt Selina, I am very glad to see you."</p> + +<p>She drew a deep sigh. "It has been so long—and I am growing old. I'm +just a lonely old woman, boy. And there's no comfort in old age."</p> + +<p>I looked at her. She had changed much, I thought. "But you had so many +friends," I remonstrated. "All those intellectual society folk!"</p> + +<p>"I don't know—they don't seem to interest me any more. I'm growing old. +That's all—old and lonely. And they are such fools, every one of +them—almost as foolish as I am—and hypocrites, all."</p> + +<p>Her hand went tighter about mine, and her rheumy eyes sought mine and +searched them. "You seem so happy, boy—so changed. What's the secret of +it—can't you tell me?"</p> + +<p>I shook my head. It would be of no use, I thought.</p> + +<p>"I want it," she begged. "The comfort of it—I did not know I should +need it when I was old—and when all else fell away."</p> + +<p>So I reached for a book which was on a table nearby, and gave it to her. +It was an old Union Prayer Book.</p> + +<p>She took it with the barest flicker of lashes. "It's—it's Hebrew," she +protested. "I don't know how to read it."</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span>"There is always an English translation on the opposite page," I showed +her. "You will be able to read that. Perhaps it will help you."</p> + +<p>"Perhaps," she said after me, her thin voice quavering.</p> + +<p>"Read it all. You will come at any rate to a better understanding of +your fellow Jews."</p> + +<p>Her head went down, as if in shame of some unpleasant reminiscence. +"Perhaps—I will try, anyhow—and perhaps—"</p> + +<p>"Aunt Selina," I told her hastily, "I am coming home to live with you at +the end of this college year. We shall begin all over again."</p> + +<p>Then her tears began afresh. "I did not dare ask it—but oh, if you +could only know how I have wanted it—and for how long! I would have +prayed for it—yes, really, prayed for it—if I had only had someone to +pray to!"</p> + +<p>And then, as if suddenly remembering, she hugged the shabby leather book +to her breast, and smiled.</p> + +<p>But, before she left, I opened it up to show her why I prized this +particular copy. For, on the yellowed flyleaf in old ink, was the name, +"Isidore Levi." And below it, newly written, these words:</p> + +<p>"<i>To a Jew who could not stand aside.</i>"</p> + +<p>He had sent it to me immediately after he had learned of that last +incident at college. And <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</a></span>he did not need to explain where I had seen +this prayer book last.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>Yom Kippur was my last day at the settlement before returning to +college. I went with Frank Cohen and his father to the service of their +orthodox congregation. The little synagogue, just off the Bowery, had +had to be abandoned, for once, in favor of a huge bare hall that usually +served political meetings. But, large as it was, it was packed tightly; +and from the gallery, where I stole once to look on, it seemed a vast +black sea—wave upon wave of derbies and shiny top hats, with the +flicker of white prayer shawls for froth. The prayers and the chantings +came up to me almost like mystic exhalations. The great, drab, smeared +walls had the splendor of the afternoon sun upon them; the cheap chairs, +the improvised altar, the temporary gilt ark behind it—the long gray +beards of the patriarchs, the wan faces of the fasting +children—everything, every one had been gradually drenched in the glory +that poured through the windows.</p> + +<p>It was the setting sun upon Israel—and Israel prayed and sang in the +gold of it.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>I went back to college the next day. Mr. Richards and I had breakfast +together, so that <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span>we might say slowly and easily the last things that +were to be said.</p> + +<p>"I'm glad you're going to finish it out," he began. "You've proved what +I once told you; that college isn't all child's play. Some things about +it are, of course." He paused a moment, a little embarrassed. "Trevelyan +phoned me last night, after you'd gone to bed."</p> + +<p>"Yes? About me?"</p> + +<p>"Well, in a way. He'd just come from one of our fraternity meetings. He +wanted to tell me that, when you are back, they will probably offer you +an election."</p> + +<p>"What? To your fraternity?"</p> + +<p>"Yes." He paused and watched me amusedly. "It doesn't seem to thrill +you."</p> + +<p>I smiled back at him. "No, not the way I would have in freshman year."</p> + +<p>"Yes—that's how I thought you'd feel. You needn't be afraid of hurting +my feelings—or Trevelyan's, either—by declining. They're a little too +late, aren't they?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, it isn't that. I don't want them to think me ungrateful, you +see—but I've passed that stage. There are so many other things for me +to care about, now." I was thinking of Frank Cohen's remark about the +number of Jewish underclassmen who wanted counsel, leadership—and, now +more than ever, I was sure of myself.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span>"I understand," said Mr. Richards, shaking my hand at parting. "Good +luck to you—or better still, good faith to you! A man's work and a +man's God—you've found them at last."</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>That night, in my room at college, I found on the mantle shelf the big, +brass, seven-branched candlestick which I had seen in the room of the +class president. It was Fred's gift to me.</p> + +<p>And, thinking of those years, I lit the seven candles, one by one, and +watched them struggle feebly, desperately, until all of them were calm +and bright, their flicker ended—until the Menorah, with its uplifted +arms, and all the little space about it, shone with a radiance that was +firm and beautiful.</p> + +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> + +<div class="tr"> +<p class="cen"><a name="TN" id="TN"></a>Transcriber's Note</p> +<br /> + +Typographical errors corrected in the text:<br /> +<br /> +Page 13 friendhsip changed to friendship<br /> +Page 22 aint changed to ain't<br /> +Page 32 is changed to it<br /> +Page 43 stifly changed to stiffly<br /> +Page 53 Sidney changed to Sydney<br /> +Page 54 Sidney changed to Sydney<br /> +Page 56 Sidney changed to Sydney<br /> +Page 69 "be began to laugh" changed to "he began to laugh"<br /> +Page 80 occurences changed to occurrences<br /> +Page 115 checks changed to cheeks<br /> +Page 123 guesed changed to guessed<br /> +Page 182 relunctantly changed to reluctantly<br /> +Page 188 embarrased changed to embarrassed<br /> +</div> + +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<hr class="full" /> +<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SEVEN-BRANCHED CANDLESTICK***</p> +<p>******* This file should be named 33793-h.txt or 33793-h.zip *******</p> +<p>This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:<br /> +<a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/3/3/7/9/33793">http://www.gutenberg.org/3/3/7/9/33793</a></p> +<p>Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed.</p> + +<p>Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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