Local Color Part 21

Now that pa.s.sage, at first blush, appeared exactly to fit the Finkelsteins. Most certainly charities were scattered at their feet and likewise showered on their heads.

However, before making a definite choice, I went deeper into this handy volume. As a result, I exhumed an expression attributed to Pope--not one of the Roman Popes, but Pope, Alex. (b. 1688; d. 1744)--to the effect that

_In faith and hope the world will disagree, But all mankind's concern is charity._

That statement likewise proved in a measure applicable. To the Finkelsteins it must have seemed that all mankind's concern was charity, devised for their especial benefit.

Now Hood takes an opposite view. In that choppy style of versification so characteristic of this writer, Hood is discovered saying:

_Alas for the rarity Of Christian charity Under the sun!_

Speaking with particular reference to the case in hand I must respectfully but nevertheless firmly take issue with the late Hood.

a.s.suredly the components of this particular household group had no cause to cavil concerning the rarity of Christian charity. Christian charity went miles out of its way to lavish rich treasures from a full heart upon them. Under the sun, too, under the rays of an ardent and a scorching sun, was some of it bestowed. But of that phase, more--as the fancy writers say--anon.

The Scriptures were found to abound in reference to this most precious of the human virtues. What does Peter say? Peter--First Epistle, fourth chapter and eighth verse--says: "Charity shall cover the mult.i.tude of sins." Here, too, a point might be stretched without giving offence to any interested party. I cannot deny there were a mult.i.tude of Finkelsteins. That, there is no gainsaying.

Elsewhere in the Good Book it is set forth: "Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding bra.s.s, or a tinkling cymbal; ... and"--furthermore--"though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing."

One of the most significant recollections of at least two members of the Finkelstein family in their experiences with the manifestations of charity was a.s.sociated with mountains. And was not the occasion of the outing of the _Evening Dispatch's_ Fresh Air Fund made glad by the presence and the activities of Prof. Was.h.i.+ngton Carter's All-Coloured Silver Cornet Band? If ever you heard this organisation you would know that, when it came to sounding bra.s.s and cymbals which tinkled when not engaged in clas.h.i.+ng, no band had anything whatsoever on Prof. Was.h.i.+ngton Carter's.

But it was hard by, in the Testaments, that I happened on the one verse which seemed best to sum up the situation in its more general aspects; and notably the first three words of the said verse. The text has been chosen, therefore, after much consideration of the subject and its merits.

To proceed: In Pike Street, approximately midway of a block that enjoys the dubious distinction of being a part of the most congested district of the globe, up four flights of stairs and thence back to the extreme rear, the Finkelstein family, at the time of its discovery, resided.

There were many of them and their lot was very lowly. To begin at the top, there was Papa Finkelstein, a man bearded and small, shrinking, un.o.btrusive and diffident; fas.h.i.+oned with sloping shoulders and an indented chest as though in his extreme youth, when his bones were supple and yielding, a partly successful effort had been made to crowd him, head first, into a narrow-mouthed jar. His back was bent, for he was of the race that for more than nineteen centuries has borne, palfrey-like, upon its patient spines the persecutions of the world.

Next in order came Mamma Finkelstein, hiding her dark head beneath a wig of slick brown horsehair in accordance with the same ritual which ordained that her husband should touch not the corners of his beard. To attend to the business of multiplying and replenis.h.i.+ng the earth with Finkelsteins was her chief mission in life. From the family stepladder of these two no rungs were missing. Indeed, about a third of the way down there was a double rung--to wit, twins. The married life of the pair extended over a period of less than eleven years and already there were eight little Finkelsteins, ranging from little to littler to littlest.

Papa Finkelstein was by profession an old-clo' man. It was his custom to go into the favoured sections where people laid aside their weathered habiliments instead of continuing to wear them, and there watching on street corners to waylay pedestrians of an ample and prosperous aspect, and to inquire of them in his timid and twisted English, whether they had any old clothes to sell. A prospective seller being by this method interested, Papa Finkelstein would accompany the other to his apartment--follow him, rather--and when discarded garments had been fetched forth from closets and piled in a heap upon the floor he would gaze deprecatingly at the acc.u.mulation and then, with the air of one who courts ruin by his excessive generosity, tender one dollar and thirty-five cents for the entire lot.

So far so good, this course being in perfect accord with the ethics of the old-clo' business. But if, as most generally, the owner of the raiment indignantly declined the first offer Papa Finkelstein was at a loss to proceed with the negotiations. The chaffering; the bargaining; the raising of the amount in ten-cent advances, each advance accompanied by agonised outcry; the pretended departure; the reluctant return from the door; the protest; the entreaty; the final gesture, betokening abject and complete surrender, with which the buyer came up to two dollars and fifteen cents--all this, so agreeable to the nature of the born old-clo' man, was quite beyond him. Oftener than not, the trading ended in no trade.

Or if a bargain was arrived at, if he bore away his bundled purchases to the old-clothes mart on Bayard Street, just off the Bowery, where daily the specialist in sick hats, let us say, swaps decrepit odd trousers and enfeebled dress waistcoats for wares more suitable to his needs, still he tempted bankruptcy. Sharper wits than his, by sheer weight of dominance, bore him down and trafficked him, as the saying goes, out of his eyeteeth. He could have taken over a tannery and run it into a shoestring in no time at all. Many a day was there when he returned home at eventide with nothing to show for his day's industry except lamentable memories and two tired flat feet.

Lacking the commercial instinct, he was a failure in trade; lacking, too, the artistic, neither would he have made headway with his coreligionists as a professional _Schnorrer_. By persistent and devoutful attendance upon synagogue services, by the constant exhibition of his poverty in public places, he might have enlisted the sympathies of the benevolent among his fellow wors.h.i.+ppers. But he was a dilettante in the practice of piety, even as in the practice of the old-clo'

business. Except as the head of a family, he was what this world is pleased to call a failure.

From all this I would not have you jump at the conclusion that Papa and Mamma Finkelstein and their steadily accruing progeny const.i.tuted an unhappy group. Mere precarious existence and the companions.h.i.+p of one another spelled for them contentment. The swarming East Side satisfied them as an abiding place. To the adults it was a better home by far than the drear, dreadful land of pogroms and Black Hundreds from which they had fled; to the younger ones it was the only home they had ever known.

They were used to its tormented sky lines, faced in on either side by tall tenements and blocked across by the structures of elevated roads and the stone loops of viaducts; they were used to its secondhand suns.h.i.+ne that filtered down to them through girders and spans. To them the high arch of the Bridge approach was an acceptable subst.i.tute for the rainbow; their idea of the profusion of Nature was a tiny square, containing many green benches, a circular band stand, and here and there a spindling tree.

Having nothing they craved for nothing. When there was food they ate thereof; _kosher_ food preferably, though the food of the _Goyim_ was not despised. When there was none they went without, feeding on the thought of past feasts and the hope of future ones. Being without knowledge of the commoner rule of hygiene, their days were neither enhanced by its advantages nor disturbed by its observances.

With the coming of the winter Mamma Finkelstein sewed up her offspring, all and sundry, in their heavy undergarments. Only one consideration ever interposed to prevent her from so doing--the occasional absence of any heavy undergarments in which to sew them up. To the pores, which always ye have with ye, she gave no heed. An interrupted duct more or less meant nothing to her, she being serenely unaware of the existence of such things as ducts, anyhow. In the springtime she cut the st.i.tches and removed the garments, or such portions of them as had not been taken up by natural process of absorption, finding her young, as now newly revealed, to be pinkish, though soiled as to their skins, and in every regard hale, hearty and wholesome.

Thus abided the Finkelsteins in their dire and happy extremity at the time of their discovery. The manner of their being discovered came about as follows:

Christmastide impended. The spirit of it was every where reflected: in the price tags; in the swollen ankles and aching insteps of shop girls on their feet behind counters twelve to fifteen hours a day; in the hara.s.sed countenances and despairing eyes of shoppers; in the heaving sides and drooping heads of wearied delivery-wagon teams; in the thoughts of the children of the rich, dissatisfied because there was nothing Santa Claus could bring them they didn't already have; in the thoughts of the children of the poor, happy as they pressed their cold little noses against the plate-gla.s.s fronts of toy shop windows and made discriminating selection of the treasures which they would like for Santa to bring them, but knowing at the same time he couldn't because of his previous engagements among the best families.

This all-pervading spirit penetrated even into the newspaper offices, borne thither upon the flapping wings of the full-page display advertis.e.m.e.nts of our leading retail establishments. One of the papers--the _Morning Advocate_--compiled a symposium of paragraphed miseries under the t.i.tle of the One Hundred Most Deserving Cases of Charity, and on the Monday before Christmas printed it with a view to enlisting the aid of the kindly disposed. The list was culled largely from the files of various philanthropic organisations. But it so befell that a reporter, who had been detailed on these a.s.signments, was pa.s.sing through Pike Street on his way back to the office from one of the settlement houses when he encountered Papa Finkelstein, homeward bound after a particularly disappointing business day uptown.

The reporter was impressed much by the despondent droop of the little man's sloping shoulders and by the melancholy smoulder in his big, dark eyes; but more was he impressed by the costume of Papa Finkelstein. It was a part of Papa Finkelstein's burden of affliction that he customarily wore winter clothes in the summertime and summer clothes in the wintertime. On this gusty, raw December day he wore somebody's summer suit--a much larger somebody evidently--and a suit that in its youth had been of light-coloured, lightweight flannel. It was still lightweight.

Infolded within its voluminous breadths the present wearer s.h.i.+vered visibly and drew his chilled hands farther up into its flapping sleeve ends until he resembled the doubly mutilated victim of a planing-mill mishap. If his expression was woebegone, his shoe soles were more--they practically were all-begone. A battered derby hat--size about seven and five-eighths--threatened total extinguishment of his face, being prevented from doing so only by the circ.u.mstance of its brim resting and pressing upon the upper f.l.a.n.g.es of the owner's ears. They were ears providentially designed for such employment. Broad, wide and droopy, they stood out from the sides of Papa Finkelstein's head like the horns of the caribou.

This reporter was a good reporter. He knew a human-interest story when he met it walking in the road. He turned about and tagged Papa Finkelstein to his domicile and there, after briefly inspecting the Finkelstein household in all its wealth of picturesque dest.i.tution, he secured the names and the address from the head of it, who perhaps gave the desired information all the more readily because he had not the slightest idea of what use this inquiring stranger wished to make of it.

Half an hour later the reporter was saying to the irritable functionary in charge of the _Advocate's_ news desk:

"Oh, so-so; just fair to middling, most of them; about the usual run of shad. But, say, I've got one bird of a case. I dug it up myself--it's not down on any of the records I got from the charity people. When it comes to being plumb down and out none of them has anything on the meek and lowly Finkelsteins."

"Good!" said the news editor. "You might lead with it if you want to.

No, I guess you'd better run 'em alphabetically--it won't do to be playing favourites."

Mark now, how a little flame may kindle a large blaze: The afternoon half sister of the _Morning Advocate_ was the _Evening Dispatch_.

Between the two papers, owned as they were by the same gentleman and issued from the same printshop, a bitter rivalry prevailed; it generally does in such instances.

On Tuesday morning the city editor of the _Evening Dispatch_ ran an agile and practiced eye through the story the _Advocate_ had printed.

With his shears he chopped out the first column of it. With his pencil he ringed one paragraph in the scissored section and then he lifted his voice and called to him a young woman professionally known as Betty Gwin, who sat in the city room at a desk somewhat withdrawn from copy readers, rewriters and leg men. This distinction of comparative aloofness was hers by right, she being a special-feature writer, under yearly contract, and, therefore, belonging to the aristocracy of the craft.

After the custom of her s.e.x Miss Betty Gwin--whose real name, I may state, in confidence, was Ferguson--first put a hand up to be sure that her hair was quite right and then put it behind her to be sure her belt made proper connection with her skirt at the back; and then she answered her superior's call. Answering it, all about her betokened confidence and competence. And why shouldn't it? As a pen-smith this young person acknowledged no superiors anywhere. Her troupe of trained performing adjectives was admitted to be the smartest in town. Moreover, she was artistically ambidextrous. Having written a story she would ill.u.s.trate it with her own hand. Her drawings were replete with lithesome curves; so, too, was her literary style. None but a Betty Gwin could write what she wrote; none but a Betty Gwin properly ill.u.s.trate it afterward.

"Fergy," said the city editor, "here's a beaut for you--right in your line. Full of that heart-throb junk nine ways from the jack. Those idiots upstairs gave it ten lines when it was worth six sticks all by itself--buried it when they should have played it up. You run down to this number and get a good, gummy, pathetic yarn. We'll play it up for to-morrow, with a strong picture layout and a three-col. head. Might call it: 'What Christmas Means for the Whatyoumaycall'em Family and What Christmas Might Mean for Them!' Get me?"

He pa.s.sed over the clipping. In a glance his star comprehended the pencilled pa.s.sage.

"Judging from the name and the neighbourhood Christmas wouldn't excite this family much, anyhow," she said.

"What do you care?" said her chief crisply. "There's a story there--go get it!"

Doubtlessly the Christmas spirit got into Betty Gwin's typewriter keys.

Certainly it got into her inkpot and deposited the real essence of the real sob stuff there. The story she wrote trickled pathos from every balanced paragraph; there was pity in the periods and sentiment in the semicolons. As for the exclamation-points, they simply were elongated tear drops. It was one of the best stories Betty Gwin ever wrote. She said so herself--openly. But the picture that went with the story was absolutely diademic; it crowned figures of speech with tiaras of the graphic art. It showed Mamma Finkelstein seated on an upended box, which once had contained pickled herrings, surrounded by the eight little Finkelsteins. The children looked like ragged cherubs.

To accomplish this result it had been necessary for Miss Gwin to depart somewhat from a faithful delineation of the originals. But of what value is the creative ability unless it be used to create? I ask you that and pause for a reply. Not that the junior Finkelsteins were homely; without an exception they were handsome and well-formed. A millionaire might have been proud to own them.

But the trouble was, the Old Masters, who first painted cherubim, were mainly Italians, and for a variety of reasons chose their models from a race other than that to which the Finkelsteins appertained. To make her portraits conform with the popular conceptions of cherubs Miss Gwin saw fit to--shall we say?--conventionalise certain features. Indeed, when it came to reproducing for publication the physical aspect of Master Solly Finkelstein she did more than conventionalise--she idealised. Otherwise subscribers, giving the picture a cursory inspection, might have been led to believe that this cherub's wings had sprouted mighty high up on him. For Solly, eldest man child of the Finkelstein brood, had inherited the paternal ear--not all of it, as we know, but an ample and conspicuous sufficiency. Yet, with his ears trimmed, he, on his own merits, had enough of sombre child beauty for any seven-year-older anywhere. So Betty Gwin trimmed them--with her drawing pencil.

The bright light of publicity having been directed upon this cheerfully forlorn family, results followed. Of the publicity its beneficiaries knew nothing. Such papers as Papa Finkelstein read were Yiddish papers; he was no bookworm at that. Of the results, though, they were all speedily made aware.

Miss Gwin embodied the original and pioneer one of the forces speedily set marching to the relief of the Finkelsteins. Persons of a philanthropic leaning, reading what she had written and beholding what she had drawn, were straightway moved to forward, in care of that young author and the publication which she served, various small sums of money to be conveyed to this practically fireless, substantially foodless and semigarmentless household. Miss Gwin thought, at first, of founding a regular subscription list under the t.i.tle of Betty Gwin's Succour Fund; but, on second thought, disliked the sound of the phrase when spoken, although it looked well enough written out.

Instead, she elected to carry in person to their proper destination the cash contributions already in hand, and along with them a somewhat more c.u.mbersome offering consisting of a one-piece costume sent by a young lady in the theatrical profession--the chorus profession, to be circ.u.mstantial about it--who had accompanied the donation with a note on scented violet note paper, with a crest, stating that she wished the devoted mother of those "poor birdlings"--a direct quotation, this, from Miss Gwin's story--to have the frock, and to keep it and wear it for her very own. With the Compliments of Miss Trixie Adair, of the Gay Gamboliers Musical Comedy Company.

Thus laden, Miss Gwin descended upon Pike Street and ascended upon the Finkelsteins, bringing with her, in addition to the other things mentioned, an air of buoyancy and good cheer. As on the occasion of her former call, two days earlier, the medium of intercourse between the visitor and the heads of the household was Miriam, aged nine, the topmost round of the family stepladder, ably reenforced by her brother Solly, who was mentioned just a bit ago with particular reference to his ears. In truth I should put it the other way round; for, to be exact, it was Solly who sustained the main burden of translation, his sister being a shy little thing and he in temperament emphatically the opposite.

Besides, his opportunities for acquiring facility and a repertoire in tongues had been more extensive than hers. While Miriam frequented the hallways of the tenement, or, at best, the sidewalk in front of it, concerned with the minding of the twins--Israel and Isadore, but both called, for convenience, Izzy--it was his practice to range far and wide, risking death beneath trolley cars, capture by the law, and murder at the hands of roused custodians of jobbing houses and buildings in course of construction, about which he lurked on the lookout for empty packing cases and bits of planking, and the like--such stuff as might be dragged home and there converted into household furnis.h.i.+ngs or stove fuel, depending upon whether at the moment the establishment stood more desperately in need of something to sit on than of something to burn.

Even now, at the tender age of seven, going on eight, Solly betrayed the stirrings of a restless ambition such as his sire had never known. It was an open question whether he would grow up to be a gunman or a revered captain of finance. A tug of fate might set his eager footsteps toward either goal. Already he had a flowing command of the sort of English spoken by startled and indignant motormen, pestered policemen and watchmen, tempted by provocation entirely beyond their powers of self-control. So Solly served as chief interpreter while Miss Gwin informally tendered the presents that had been intrusted to her charge for transmission.

In the same spirit Papa and Mamma Finkelstein, who continued to entertain the vaguest of theories regarding the sources of and the reasons for these benefactions, accepted them gratefully, with no desire to look a gift horse in the mouth. Gift horses were strange livestock in their experience, anyhow.