Yekl: A Tale of the New York Ghetto

was dressing to leave, and fell to their machines with reluctantly redoubled energy. Fanny was a week worker and her time had been up at seven; but on this occasion her toile

the sidewalk, making a pretense of brushing o

d, raising her head

ck?" he returned

dance to-night, really?"

you I vo

s of his low spirits, and, tracing them with some effort to their source, he became gloomier

Suffolk Street, where that establishment was situated. Having passed a few blocks, however, his feet, contrary to his will, turned into a side street and thence into one leading to Suffolk. "I shall only drop in to te

underneath tiers and tiers of fire escapes, barricaded and festooned with mattresses, pillows, and feather-beds not yet gathered in for the night. The pent-in sultry atmosphere was laden with nausea and pierced with a discordant

, or Saratoff; Jewish runaways from justice; Jewish refugees from crying political and economical injustice; people torn from a hard-gained foothold in life and from deep-rooted attachments by the caprice of intolerance or the wiles of demagoguery-innocent scapegoats of a guilty Government for its outraged populace to misspend its blind fury upon; students shut out of the Russian universities, and come to these shores in quest of learning; artisans, merchants, teachers, rabbis, artists, beggars-all come in search of fortune. Nor is there a tenement house but harbours in its bosom specimens of all the whimsical metamorphoses wrought upon the children of Israel of the great modern exodus by the vicissitudes of life in this their Promised Land of to-d

ldren dancing on the pavement to the strident music hurled out into the tumultuous din from a row of the open and brightly illuminated windows of what appeared to be a new tenement house. Some of the

lars supporting its bare ceiling, more accustomed to the whir of sewing machines than to the noises which filled it at the present moment. It took up the whole of the first floor of a five-story house built for large sweat-shops, and until recently it had served its original purpose as faithfully as the four upper floors, which were still the daily scenes of feverish industry. At the further end of the room there was now a marble soda fountain in charge of an unkempt boy. A stocky young man with a black entanglement of coars

s somehow had the air of being engaged in hard toil rather than as if they were dancing for amusement. The faces of some of these bore a wondering martyrlike expression, as who should say, "What have we done to be knocked about in this manner?" For the rest, there were all sorts of attitudes and miens in the whirling crowd. One young fellow, f

me of "apron-check ladies," by which this truant contingent was known at Joe's academy. So that as Jake now stood in the doorway with an orphaned collar button glistening out of the band of his collarless shirt front and an affected expression of ennui overshadowing his face, his strapping figure towered over the circling throng be

rry they are! Such shnoozes, they can hardly set a foot well, and yet they are free, while I am a married man. But wait ti

." Several apparent post-graduates nonchalantly overstepped the boundary line, and, nothing daunted by the professor's repeated "Zents to de right an' ladess to the left!" unrestrainedly kept their girls chuc

sexes. He refused to unbend and to enter into their facetious

zake!" he greeted him; "I didn't seen you at ull! Say, Dzake,

"Gentsh, getch you partnesh, hawrry

whistle a prolonged shrill warble, and once again the floor was set

I am a Jew," he added, indulging in a momentary lapse into Yiddish. English was the official language of the academy, where it was broken and mispronounced in as many different ways as there were Yiddish dialects represented in that institution. "Dot'sh de vay, look!" With which Jake seized from Charley a lanky

Joe, whereupon Miss Jacobs, looking daggers at t

ng man who was timidly viewing the pandemonium-like spectacle from the further end of the "gent's bench." "I hasked 'er my

you talkin' aboyt! She vouldn'

don' vonted a

ashk her, but I know it

You knaw se vouldn't refuse you

haw?" Jake rejoined with insincere veheme

et!" said Joe, deprecatingly. 'F cuss it depend

nesh. Ven I promish anytink I do it shquare, dot'sh a kin' a man I am!" And once more protesting h

er of a blacksmith tugging at the bellows, and held up his enormous bullet head as if he were bidding defiance to the whole world. Finally he paused in front of a girl with a superabundance of pitch-black side bangs and with a pert, ill natured, pretty face o

!" he said, bowing

at

ve dot feller a

esh," she said with a contemptuous grimace. Like the majority of the girls of the academy, Mamie's E

a bold face on it and broke

ull. If you don' vonted never min', an' dot'sh ull. It

gets excited!" she

'sh de used a makin' monkey beesnesh?

u'self," she returne

knowledged by one of

monkey-land," he said. "Vil

t vill yo

ive you?" he as

you

he replied with a s

von't

treat you mit a

wooning to dance vit you," she said, di

take off one's cap to speak to her. Don't you always s

, ain' it? Bennie can dance a -- sight bet

said tartly. "So

e, me or you? All right, I'll dance vid de slob. But it'

avity, concealing his triumph. "But you makin' too much fus

l themselves of the same music for waltzing. Jake was bent upon giving Mamie what he called a "sholid good time"; and, as she shared his view that a square or fancy dance was as flimsy an affair as a stick of candy, they joined or, rather, led the seceding majority. They spun al

mong these was lanky Miss Jacobs and Fanny the Preacher, who had shortly before made her

nom, her gaze riveted to Mamie, whose shapely head was at this moment reclining on

t cut to

s, ain't you?"

th go to --. You must be jealous. Here, here! See how your eyes are creeping out looking! He

liness, you? Such a piggish apron check!" poor Fanny

tle runt!" anothe

ders put in. "You had better go home or your mamma will give you a spanking."

like that having so much ch

a language!" observed one of the young men of the grou

hereupon he summarily relinquished his partner on the floor, and advanced toward his shopmate, who, seei

houted briskly, comi

rigidly, her eyes fi

ush a tvisht

with a withering curl of her lip, her glance still on

Fanny. I o'ly come to tell Jaw shometi

nd night. Vot do I care? As if I cared! I have only come to see what a bluffer you are. Do you think I am a fool? As smart as your Mamie, anyvay. As if I had not know

anner, Jake stood with his hands in his trousers' pockets, in an a

he meantime lesh have a valtz from the land of valtzes!" With which

t of the sentence was choked off by her violent breathing; for by this time she was spinning with Jake like a top. After another mom

iculty caused him to abandon the lancers party to themselves, and

ranquillity of mind by accosting her with a question on shop matters. Fanny was not blind to the man?uvre, but he

hey were joi

ou treat, Jak

plied, putting his offer in a

lapped

lips in Yiddish. "Try again!" her glowing

y la

the gallant, and again he proved himself as good as his word, although Fan

u treat, you sti

ntrived to repay the pinch before she had received it, and added a generous piece of profanity into the

" up to the marble fountain, and regaled

cket was loaded with a fresh batch of "Professor Peltner's Grand Annu

a deposit for a steamship ticket," presently glimmered through his mind, as