Yekl: A Tale of the New York Ghetto

ing her monthly allowance of ten rubles, and the visit to the draft and passage office had become part of the routine of his life. It had the invariable

into the noisy scenes of Essex Street, than he would

lish-speaking portion of the population than any of the three separate Ghettos of Boston. As a consequence, since Jake's advent to New York his passion for American sport had considerably cooled off. And, to make up for this, his enthusiastic nature before long found vent in dancing and in a general life of gallantry. His proved knack with the gentle sex had turned his head and now cost him all his leisure time. Still, he would occasionally attend some variety show in which boxing was the main drawing card, and somehow managed to keep track of the salient events of the sporting world generally. Judging from his unstaid habits and happy-go-lucky abandon to the pleasures of life, his present associates took it for granted that he was

he has the less he likes them. You and I have a lot o

m and his wife and child, together with his former self, fellow-characters in a charming tale, which he was neither willing to banish from his memory nor able to reconcile with the actualities of his American present. The question of how to effect this reconciliation, and of causing Gitl and little Yosselé to step out of the thickening haze of reminiscence and to take their stand by his side as living parts of his daily life, was a fretful subject from the consideration of which he cowardly shrank. He wished he could both import his family and continue his present mode of life. At the bottom of his soul he wondered why this should not be feasible. But he knew

eed in containing glowing encomiums of little Yosselé, exhorting Yekl not to stray from the path of righteousness, and reproachfully asking whether he ever meant to send the ticket. The latter point had an exasperating effect on Jake. There were times, however, when it would touch his heart and elicit from him his threadbare vow to send the ticket at once. But then he never had money enough to redeem it. And, to tell the truth, at the bottom of his heart he was at suc

together his livelihood by selling Yiddish newspapers and cigarettes, and writing letters for a charge varying, according to the length of the epistle, from five to ten cents. Each time Jake received a letter he would take it to the Galician, who woul

patron, after having written and read aloud the fir

"It is you who can write; so you ou

ter in his pocket until he had spare United States money enough to convert into ten rubles, and then he would beta

nt month in

he presentiment that some unknown enemies-for he had none that he could name-would some day discover his wife's address and anonymously represent him to her as contemplating another marriage, in order to bring Gitl down upon him una

found it to be of such unusual length that he sti

Jake said, grinding his teet

urned jubilantly, as he hastily adjusted his

igressions, strained and twisted to suit some quotation from the Bible. And what with this unstinted verbosity, which was Greek to Jake, one or two interruptions by the o

y gave a start,

adder? Vot'

he madder? Wait-a-I don't know what

e inquired, turning

hat one is a piece of Jew," he faltered, hinting at the orthodox custom

ke shouted savagely. "I h

the letter I have read, have I not? so I shall refund you one cent and leave me in

e entreated, with clinched fists.

scribe cunningly, glad to retain the cent and Jake's patronage. "I

ed aghast, wit

ily and Jake's duty to send the ticket without further procrastination. As to his mother, she preferred the Povodye graveyard to a watery sepulchre, an

ct thought. "Poor father!" he inwardly exclaimed the next moment, with deep anguish. His nat

?" the scribe quer

Jake answered, bu

e. May no one depart younger," the old man o

ran dry he fell to wring

d, taking leave. "I'll see you

ribe returned with h

with pity and with the acutest pangs of homesickness. "And it was evening and it was morning, the sixth day. And the heavens and the earth were finished." As the Hebrew words of the Sanctification of the Sabbath resounded in Jake's ears, in his father's senile treble, he could see his gaunt figure swaying over a pair of Sabbath loaves. It is Friday night. The little room, made tidy for the day of rest and faintly illuminated by the mysterious light of two tallow candles rising from freshly burnished candlesticks, is pervaded by a benign, reposeful warmth and a general air of peace and solemnity. There, seated by the side of the head of the

could return to his old home and old days, and have his father recite Sanctification again, and sit by his side, opposite to mother, and receive from her hand a plate of reeking tzimess,[6] as of yore! Poor mother! He will not forget her-But what is the Italian playing on that organ, anyhow? Ah, it is the new waltz! By the way, this is Monday and they are dancing at Joe's now and he is not there. "I shall not go there to-night

er too wide, but all the lovelier for it-as she spoke; her prominent red gums, her little black eyes. He could distinctly hear her voice with her peculiar lisp, as one summer morning she had burst into the house and, clapping her hands in despair, she had cried, "A weeping to me! The yellow rooster is gone!" or, as coming into the smithy she would say: "Father-in-law, mother-in-law calls you to dinner. Hurry up, Yekl, dinner is ready." And although this was all he could recall her saying, Jake thought himself

, he found, to his dismay, that he could no longer do it by heart. His landlady had a prayer-book, but, unfortunately, she kept it locked in the bureau

ccasion to so much as think of bed prayers. Nevertheless, as he now lay vaguely listening to the weird ticking of the clock on the mantelpiece over the stove, and at the same time desultorily brooding upon his father's death, the old belief suddenly uprose in his mind and filled him with mortal terror. He tried to persuade himself that it was a silly notion worthy of womenfolk, and even affected to laugh at it audibly.

jumped off the lounge, and gently knock

nd me your prayer-book. I want to say the

r a cruel practical joke

r drunk? A nice

rely be alive as my father is dead!" and she had subjected him to a cro