Essay 1

A Ghetto Wedding. 2 6 5

A G H E T T O W E D D I N G .

H A D you chanced to be in Grand Street on that starry February night, it would scarcely have occurred to you that the Ghetto was groaning under the culmina- tion of a long season of enforced idle- ness and distress. The air was exhil- aratingly crisp, and the glare of the caf ̂ s and millinery shops flooded it with contentment and kindly good will. The sidewalks were alive with shoppers and promenaders, and lined with peddlers.

Yet the dazzling, deafening chaos had many a tale of woe to tell. The greater part of the surging crowd was out on an errand of self-torture. Straying forlorn- ly by inexorable window displays, men and women would pause here and there to indulge in a hypothetical selection, to feast a hungry eye upon the object of an imaginary purchase, only forthwith to pay for the momentary joy with all the pangs of awakening to an empty purse.

Many of the peddlers, too, bore pite- ous testimony to the calamity which was then preying upon the quarter. Some of them performed their task of yelling and gesticulating with the desperation of imminent ruin ; others implored the passers-by for custom with the abject ef- fect of begging alms ; while in still others this feverish urgency was disguised by an air of martyrdom or of shamefaced un- wontedness, as if peddling were beneath the dignity of their habitual occupations, and they had been driven to it by sheer famine, — by the hopeless dearth of em- ployment at their own trades.

One of these was a thick-set fellow of twenty-five or twenty-six, with honest, clever blue eyes. I t might be due to the genial, inviting quality of his face that the Passover dishes whose praises he was sounding had greater attraction for some of the women with an " effectual de- mand " than those of his competitors. Still, his comparative success had not as

yet reconciled him to his new calling. H e was constantly gazing about for a possible passer-by of his acquaintance, and when one came in sight he would seek refuge from identification in closer communion with the crockery on his push- cart.

" Buy nice dishes for the holidays ! Cheap and strong! Buy dishes for Passover! " When business was brisk, he sang with a bashful relish; when the interval between a customer and her suc- cessor was growing too long, his sing-song would acquire a mournful ring that was suggestive of the psalm-chanting at an orthodox Jewish funeral.

He was a cap-blocker, and in the busy season his earnings ranged from ten to fifteen dollars a week. But he had not worked full time for over two years, and during the last three months he had not been able to procure a single day's em- ployment.

Goldy, his sweetheart, too, had scarce- ly work enough at her kneebreeches to pay her humble board and rent. Na- than, after much hesitation, was ultimate- ly compelled to take to peddling ; and the longed-for day of their wedding was put off from month to month.

They had become engaged nearly two years before; the wedding ceremony hav- ing been originally fixed for a date some three months later. Their joint savings then amounted to one hundred and twen- ty dollars, — a sum quite adequate, in Nathan's judgment, for a modest, quiet celebration and the humble beginnings of a household establishment. Goldy, however, summarily and indignantly overruled him.

" One does not marry every day," she argued, " and when I have a t last lived to stand under the bridal canopy with my predestined one, I wiU not do so like a beggar-maid. Give me a respectable

PRODUCED BY UNZ.ORG ELECTRONIC REPRODUCTION PROHIBITED

266 A Ghetto Wedding.

wedding, or none at all, Nathan, do you hear ? "

I t is to be noted that a " respectable w e d d i n g " was not merely a casual ex- pression with Goldy. Like its antithe- sis, a " slipshod wedding," it played in her vocabulary the part of something like a well-established scientific term, with a meaning as clearly defined as that of " centrifugal force " or " geo- metrical progression." Now, a slipshod wedding was anything short of a gown of white satin and slippers to match; two carriages to bring tlie bride and the bridegroom to the ceremony, and one to take them to their bridal apartments ; a wedding bard and a band of at least five musicians; a spacious ballroom crowded with dancers, and a feast of a hundred and fifty covers. As to furniture, she refused to consider any which did not in- clude a pier-glass and a Brussels carpet.

Nathan contended that the items upon which she insisted would cost a sum far beyond their joint accumulations. This she met by the declaration that he had all along been bent upon making her the target of universal ridicule, and that she would rather descend into an untimely grave than be married in a slipshod manner. Here she burst out crying ; and whether her tears referred to the untimely grave or to the slipshod wedding, they certainly seemed to strengthen the co- gency of her argument; for Nathan at once proceeded to signify his surrender by a kiss, and when ignominiously re- pulsed he protested his determination to earn the necessary money to bring things to the standard which she held up so un- compromisingly.

H a r d times set in. Nathan and Goldy pinched and scrimped ; but all their he- roic economies were powerless to keep their capital from dribbling down to less than one hundred dollars. The wedding was postponed again and again. Final- ly the curse of utter idleness fell upon Nathan's careworn head. Their savings dwindled apace. I n dismay they beheld

the foundation of their happiness melt gradually away. Both were tired of boarding. Both longed for the bliss and economy of married life. They grew more impatient and restless every day, and Goldy made concession after con- cession. First the wedding supper was sacrificed ; then the pier-mirror and the bard were stricken from the programme ; and these were eventually succeeded by the hired hall and the Brussels carpet.

After Nathan went into peddling, a few days before we first find him hawk- ing chinaware on Grand Street, matters began to look brighter, and the spirits of our betrothed couple rose. Their capi- tal, which had sunk to forty dollars, was increasing again, and Goldy advised wait- ing long enough for it to reach the sum necessary for a slipshod wedding and establishment.

I t was nearly ten o'clock. Nathan was absently drawling his " Buy nice dishes for the holidays! " His mind was engrossed with the question of mak- ing peddling his permanent occupation.

Presently he was startled by a mer- ry soprano mocking him : " Buy nice di-i-shes ! Mind that you don't fall asleep murmuring like this. A big lot you can m a k e ! "

Nathan turned a smile of affectionate surprise upon a compact little figure, small to droUness, but sweet in the amus- ing grace of its diminutive outlines, — an epitome of exquisite femininity. H e r tiny face was as comically lovely as her form : her apple-like cheeks were firm as marble, and her inadequate nose protrud- ed between them like the result of a hasty tweak ; a pair of large, round black eyes and a thick-lipped little mouth inundat- ing it all with passion and restless, good- natured shrewdness.

" Goldy ! What brings you here ? " Nathan demanded, with a fond look which instantly gave way to an air of discomfort. " You know I hate you to see me peddling."

PRODUCED BY UNZ.ORG ELECTRONIC REPRODUCTION PROHIBITED

A Ghetto Wedding. 267

" Are you really angry ? Bite the feather-bed, then. Where is the disgrace ? As if you were the only peddler in Amer- ica ! I wish yon were. Would n't you make heaps of money then! But you had better hear what does bring me here. Nathan, darling, dearest little heart, dear- est little crown that you are, guess what a plan I have hit upon ! " she exploded all at once. " Well, if you hear me out, and you don't say that Goldy has the head of a cabinet minister, then — well, then you will be a big hog, and nothing else."

And without giving him time to put in as much as an interjection she rattled on, puffing for breath and smacking her lips for ecstasy. Was it not stupid of them to be racking their brains about the wedding while there was such a plain way of having both a " respectable " cel- ebration and fine furniture — Brussels carpet, pier-glass, and all — with the money they now had on hand ?

" Come, out with it, then," he said morosely.

But his disguised curiosity only whet- ted her appetite for tormenting him, and she declared her determination not to disclose her great scheme before they had reached her lodgings.

" You have been yelling long enough to-day, anyhow," she said, with abrupt sympathy. " Do you suppose it does not go to my very heart to think of the way you stand out in the cold screaming your- self hoarse ? "

Half an hour later, when they were alone in Mrs. Volpiansky's parlor, which was also Goldy's bedroom, she set about emptying his pockets of the gross results of the day's business, and counting the money. This she did with a preoccupied, matter-of-tact air, Nathan submitting to the operation with fond and amused wil- lingness ; and the sum being satisfactory, she went on to unfold her plan.

" You see," she began, almost in a whisper, and with the mien of a care- worn, experience-laden old matron, " in

a week or two we shall have about seven- ty-five dollars, shan't we ? Well, what is seventy-five dollars ? Nothing! We could just have the plainest furniture, and no wedding worth speaking of. Now, if we have no wedding, we shall get no pre- sents, shall we ? "

Nathan shook his head thoughtfully. " Well, why should n't we be up to

snuff and do this way ? Let us spend all our money on a grand, respectable wed- ding, and send out a big lot of invita- tions, and then — well, won't uncle Lei- ser send us a carpet or a parlor set? And aunt Beile, and cousin Shapiro, and Charley, and Meyerk^, and Wolfk^ and Bennie, and Sor^-Gitk^, — won't each present something or other, as is the custom among respectable people ? May God give us a lump of good luck as big as the wedding present each of them is sure to send us ! Why, did not Beilk^ get a fine carpet from uncle when she got married ? And am I not a nearer relative than she ? "

She paused to search his face for a sign of approval, and, fondly smoothing a tuft of his dark hair into place, she went on to enumerate the friends to be invited and the gifts to be expected from them.

" So you see," she pursued, " we will have both a respectable wedding that we shan't have to be ashamed of in af- ter years and the nicest things we could get if we spent two hundred dollars. What do you say ? "

" W h a t shall I say ? " he returned dubiously.

The project appeared reasonable enough, but the investment struck him as rather hazardous. He pleaded for caution, for delay ; but as he had no tangible argument to produce, while she stood her ground with the firmness of conviction, her victory was an easy one.

" I t will all come right, depend upon it," she said coaxingly. " You just leave everything to me. Don't be uneasy, Nathan," she added. " You and I are

PRODUCED BY UNZ.ORG ELECTRONIC REPRODUCTION PROHIBITED

268 A Ghetto Wedding.

orphans, and you know the Uppermost does not forsake a bride and bridegroom who have nobody to take care of them. If my father were alive, it would be dif- ferent," she concluded, with a disconso- late gesture.

There was a pathetic pause. Tears glistened in Goldy's eyes.

" May your father rest in a bright paradise," Nathan said feelingly. " But what is the use of crying ? Can you bring him back to life ? I wiU be a fa- ther to you."

" If God be pleased," she assented. " Would that mamma, at least, — may she be healthy a hundred and twenty years, — would that she, at least, were here to attend our wedding ! Poor mo- ther ! it will break her heart to think that she has not been foreordained by the Uppermost to lead me under the canopy."

There was another desolate pause, but it was presently broken by Goldy, who exclaimed with unexpected buoyancy, " By the way, Nathan, guess what I did! I am afraid you wiU call me brag- gart and make fun of me, but I don't care," she pursued, with a playful pout, as she produced a strip of carpet from her pocketbook. " I went into a furni- ture store, and they gave me a sample three times as big as this. I explained in my letter to mother that this is the kind of stufB that will cover my floor when I am married. Then I inclosed the sample in the letter, and sent it all to Russia."

Nathan clapped his hands and burst out laughing. " But how do you know that is just the kind of carpet you will get for your wedding present ? " he de- manded, amazed as much as amused.

" How do I know ? As if it mattered what sort of carpet! I can just see mamma going the rounds of the neigli- bors, and showing off the ' costly table- cloth ' her daughter will trample upon. Won't she be happy ! "

Over a hundred invitations, printed in as luxurious a black-and-gold as ever came out of an Essex Street hand-press, were sent out for an early date in April. Goldy and Nathan paid a month's rent in advance for three rooms on the sec- ond floor of a Cherry Street tenement- house. Goldy regarded the rent as un- usually low, and the apartments as the finest on the East Side.

" Oh, have n't I got lovely rooms ! " she would ejaculate, beaming with the consciousness of the pronoun. Or, " You ought to see my rooms ! How much do you pay for yours ? " Or again, " I have made up my mind to have my parlor in the rear room. I t is as light as the front one, anyhow, and I want that for a kitchen, you know. What do you say ? " For hours together she would go on talk- ing nothing but rooms, rent, and furni- ture ; every married couple who had re- cently moved into new quarters, or were about to do so, seemed bound to her by the ties of a common cause ; in her imagi- nation, humanity was divided into those who were interested in the question of rooms, rent, and furniture and those who were not, — the former, of whom she was one, constituting the superior category ; and whenever her eye fell upon a bill announcing rooms to let, she would ex- perience something akin to the feeling with which an artist, in passing, views some accessory of his art.

I t is customary to send the bulkier wedding presents to a young couple's apartments a few days before they be- come man and wife, the closer relatives and friends of the betrotlied usually set- tling among themselves what piece of furniture each is to contribute. Accord- ingly, Goldy gave up her work a week in advance of the day set for the great event, in order that she might be on hand to receive the things when they arrived.

She went to the empty little rooms, with her lunch, early in the morning, and kept anxious watch till after night-

PRODUCED BY UNZ.ORG ELECTRONIC REPRODUCTION PROHIBITED

A Ghetto Wedding. 269

fall, when Nathan came to take her home.

A day passed, another, and a third, but no expressman called out her name. She sat waiting and listening for the rough voice, but in vain.

" Oh, it is too early, anyhow. I am a fool to be expecting anything so soon at all," she tried to console herself. And she waited another hour, and still an- other ; but no wedding gift made its ap- pearance.

" Well, there is plenty of time, after a l l ; wedding presents do come a day or two before the ceremony," she argued; and again she waited, and again strained her ears, and again her heart rose in her throat.

The vacuity of the rooms, freshly cleaned, scrubbed, and smelling of white- wash, began to frighten her. H e r over- wrought mind was filled with sounds which her overstrained ears did not hear. Yet there she sat on the window-sill, listening and listening for an express- man's voice.

" Hush, hush-sh, hush-sh-sh ! " whis- pered the walls; the corners muttered awful t h r e a t s ; her heart was ever and anon contracted with fear; she often thought herself on the brink of insan- ity ; yet she stayed on, waiting, waiting, waiting.

At the slightest noise in the hall she would spring to her feet, her heart beat- ing wildly, only presently to sink in her bosom at finding it to be some neigh- bor or a peddler; and so frequent were these violent throbbings that Goldy grew to imagine herself a prey to heart dis- ease. Nevertheless the fifth day came, and she was again at her post, waiting, waiting, waiting for her wedding gifts. And what is more, when Nathan came from business, and his countenance fell as he surveyed the undisturbed empti- ness of the rooms, she set a merry face against his rueful inquiries, and took to bantering him as a woman quick to lose heart, and to painting their prospects in

roseate hues, until she argued herself, if not him, into a more cheerful view of the situation.'

On the sixth day an expressman did pull up in front of the Cherry Street tenement-house, but he had only a cheap huge rocking-chair for Goldy and Na- than ; and as it proved to be the gift of a family who had been set down for nothing less than a carpet or a parlor set, the joy and hope which its advent had called forth turned to dire disap- pointment and despair. For nearly an hour Goldy sat mournfully rocking and striving to picture how delightful it would have been if all her anticipations had come true.

Presently there arrived a flimsy plush- covered little corner table. I t could not have cost more than a dollar. Yet it was the gift of a near friend, who had been relied upon for a pier-glass or a bedroom set. A little later a cheap alarm clock and an ice-box were brought in. That was all.

Occasionally Goldy went to the door to take in the entire effect; but the more she tried to view the parlor as half furnished, the more cruelly did the few lonely and mismated things em- phasize the remaining emptiness of the apartments : whereupon she would sink into her rocker and sit motionless, with a drooping head, and then desperately fall to swaying to and fro, as though bent upon swinging herself out of her woebegone, wretched self.

Still, when Nathan came, there was a triumphant twinkle in her eye, as she said, pointing to the gifts, " Well, mis- ter, who was right ? I t is not very bad for a start, is it ? You know most peo- ple do send their wedding presents after the ceremony, — why, of course ! " she added in a sort of confidential way. " W e l l , we have invited a big crowd, and all people of no mean sort, thank God; and who ever heard of a lady or a gentleman attending a respectable wed- ding and having a grand wedding sup-

PRODUCED BY UNZ.ORG ELECTRONIC REPRODUCTION PROHIBITED

270 A Ghetto Wedding.

per, and then cheating the bride and the bridegroom out of their present ? "

The evening was well advanced; yet there were only a score of people in a hall that was used to hundreds.

Everybody felt ill at ease, and ever and anun looked about for the possible arrival of more guests. At ten o'clock the dancing preliminary to the ceremony had not yet ceased, although the few waltzers looked as if they were scared by the ringing echoes of their own foot- steps amid the austere solemnity of the surrounding void and the depressing sheen of the dim expanse of floor.

T h e two fiddles, the cornet, and the clarinet were shrieking as though for pain, and the malicious superabundance of gasliglit was fiendishly sneering at their tortures. Weddings and entertain- ments being scarce in the Ghetto, its musicians caught the contagion of mis- ery : hence the greedy, desperate gusto with which the band plied their instru- ments.

At last it became evident that the as- semblage was not destined to be larger than it was, and that it was no use de- laying the ceremony. I t was, in fact, an open secret among those present that by far the greater number of the invited friends were kept away by lack of em- ployment : some having their presentable clothes in the pawnshop; otiiers avoiding the expense of a wedding present, or sim- ply being too cruelly borne down by their cares to have a mind for the excitement of a wedding; indeed, some even thought it wrong of Nathan to have the celebra- tion during such a period of hard times, when everybody was out of work.

I t was a little after ten when the bard — a tall, gaunt man, with a grizzly beard and a melancholy face — donned his skull-cap, and, advancing toward the dancers, called out in a synagogue in- tonation, " Come, ladies, let us veil the b r i d e ! "

An odd dozen of daughters of Israel

followed him and the musicians into a little side-room where Goldy was seated between her two brideswomen (the wives of two men who were to attend upon the groom). According to the orthodox cus- tom she had fasted the whole day, and as a result of this and of her gnawing grief, added to the awe-inspiring scene she had been awaiting, she was pale as death ; the effect being heightened by the wreath and white gown she wore. As the procession came filing in, she sat blinking her round dark eyes in dismay, as if the bard were an executioner come to lead her to the scaffold.

The song or address to the bride usu- ally partakes of the qualities of prayer and harangue, and includes a melancholy meditation upon life and death ; lament- ing the deceased members of the young woman's family, bemoaning her own woes, and exhorting her to discharge her sacred duties as a wife, mother, and servant of God. Composed in verse and declaimed in a solemn, plaintive recitative, often broken by the band's mournful refrain, it is sure to fulfill its mission of eliciting tears even when hearts are brimful of glee. Imagine, then, the funereal effect which it produced at Goldy's wedding ceremony.

The bard, half starved himself, sang the anguish of his own heart; the violins wept, the clarinet moaned, the cornet and the double-bass groaned, each reciting the sad tale of its poverty-stricken master. H e b e g a n : —

"Silence, good women, give heed to my verses!

To-night, bride, thou dost stand before the Uppermost.

Pray to him to bless thy union, To let thee and thy mate live a hundred and

twenty peaceful years, To give you your daily bread, To keep hunger from your door."

Several women, including Goldy, burst into tears, the others sadly lowering their gaze. T h e band sounded a wailing chord, and the whole audience broke into loud, heartrending weeping.

PRODUCED BY UNZ.ORG ELECTRONIC REPRODUCTION PROHIBITED

A Ghetto Wedding. 2 7 1

The bard went on sternly: —

" Wail, bride, wail! This is a time of tears. Think of thy past days: Alas ! they are gone to return nevermore."

Heedless of the convulsive sobbing with which the room resounded, he con- tinued to declaim, and at last, his eye flashing fire and his voice tremulous with emotion, he sang out in a dismal, uncan- ny high key : —

" And thy good mother beyond the seas, And thy father in his grave Near where thy cradle was rocked, — Weep, bride, weep! Though his soul is better ofB Than we are here underneath In dearth and cares and ceaseless pangs, — Weep, sweet bride, weep ! "

Then, in the general outburst that fol- lowed the extemporaneous verse, there was a cry, — " The bride is fainting ! W a t e r ! q u i c k ! "

" Murderer that you are ! " flamed out an elderly matron, with an air of admi- ration for the bard's talent as much as of wrath for the far-fetched results it achieved.

Goldy was brought to, and the rest of the ceremony passed without accident. She submitted to everythingasin adream. When the bridegroom, escorted by two attendants, each carrying a candelabrum holding lighted candles, came to place the veil over her face, she stared about as though she failed to realize the situation or to recognize Nathan. When, keeping time to the plaintive strains of a time- honored tune, she was led, blindfolded, into the large hall and stationed beside the bridegroom under the red canopy, and then marched around him seven times, she obeyed instructions and moved about with the passivity of a hypnotic. After the Seven Blessings had been recited, when the cantor, gently lifting the end of her veil, presented the wineglass to her lips, she tasted its contents with the air of an invalid taking medicine. Then she felt the ring slip down her finger, and heard Nathan say, " Be thou dedicated

to me by this ring, according to the laws of Moses and Israel."

Whereupon she said to herself, " Now I am a married woman ! " But some- how, at this moment the words were meaningless sounds to her. She knew she was married, but could not realize what it implied. As Nathan crushed the wineglass underfoot, and the band struck up a cheerful melody, and the gathering shouted, " Good luck ! Good l u c k ! " and clapped their hands, while the older women broke into a wild hop, Goldy felt the relief of having gone through a great ordeal. But still she was not dis- tinctly aware of any change in her posi- tion.

Not until fifteen minutes later, when she found herself in the basement, at the head of one of three long tables, did the realization of her new self strike her consciousness full in the face, as it were.

The dining-room was nearly as large as the dancing-hall on the floor above. I t was as brightly illuminated, and the three tables, which ran almost its entire length, were set for a hundred and fifty guests. Yet there were barely twenty to occupy them. The effect was still more depressing than in the dancing-room. T h e vacant benches and the untouched covers still more agonizingly exaggerated the emptiness of the room in which the sorry handful of a company lost them- selves.

Goldy looked at the rows of plates, spoons, forks, knives, and they weighed her down with the cold dazzle of their solemn, pompous array.

" I am not the Goldy I used to be," she said to herself. " I am a married woman, like mamma, or auntie, or Mrs. Volpiansky. And we have spent, every cent we had on this grand wedding, and now we are left without money for fur- niture, and there are no guests to send us any, and the supper will be thrown out, and everything is lost, and I am to blame for it a l l ! "

^...i^n.uw «->'-•»»»—..-**»H'—*»~I'"1*'**'»~' PRODUCED BY UNZ.ORG

ELECTRONIC REPRODUCTION PROHIBITED

272 A Ghetto Wedding.

The glittering plates seemed to hold whispered converse and to exchange winks and grins at her expense. Siie transferred her glance to the company, and it appeared as if they were vainly forcing themselves to partake of the food, — as though they, too, were looked out of countenance by that ruthless sparkle of the unused plates.

Nervous silence hung over the room, and the reluctant jingle of the score of knives and forks made it more awkward, more enervating, every second. Even the bard had not the heart to break the stillness by the merry rhymes he had composed for the occasion.

Goldy was overpowered. She thought she was on the verge of another fainting spell, and, shutting her eyes and setting her teeth, she tried to imagine herself dead. Nathan, who was by her side, no- ticed it. H e took her hand under the table, and, pressing it gently, whispered, " Don't take it to heart. There is a God in heaven."

She could not make out his words, but she felt their meaning. As she was about to utter some phrase of endearment, her heart swelled in her throat, and a pite- ous, dovelike, tearful look was all the re- sponse she could make.

By and by, however, when the foam- ing lager was served, tongues were loos- ened, and the bard, although distressed by the meagre collection in store for him, but stirred by an ardent desire to relieve the insupportable wretchedness of the evening, outdid himself in offhand acros- tics and witticisms. Needless to say that his efBorts were thankfully reward- ed with unstinted laughter; and as the room rang with merriment, the gleaming rows of undisturbed plates also seemed to join in the general hubbub of mirth, and to be laughing a hearty, kindly laugh.

Presently, amid a fresh outbreak of deafening hilarity, Goldy bent close to Nathan's ear and exclaimed with sob- bing vehemence, " My husband! My husband ! M y husband ! "

" My wife ! " he returned in her ear. " Do you know what you are to me

now ? " she resumed. " A husband ! And I am your wife! Do you know what it means, — do you, do you, Na- than ? " she insisted, with frantic em- phasis.

" I do, my little sparrow ; only don't worry over the wedding presents."

I t was after midnight, and even the Ghetto was immersed in repose. Goldy and Nathan were silently wending their way to the three empty little rooms where they were destined to have their first joint home. They wore the wed- ding attire which they had rented for the evening: he a swallowtail coat and high hat, and she a white satin gown and slippers, her head uncovered, — the wreath and veil done up in a newspaper, in Nathan's hand.

They had gone to the wedding in car- riages, which had attracted large crowds both at the point of departure and in front of the h a l l ; and of course they had expected to make their way to their new home in a similar "respectable " manner. Toward the close of the last dance, after supper, they found, however, that some small change was all they possessed in the world.

The last strains of music were dying away. The guests, in their hats and bonnets, were taking leave. Everybody seemed in a hurry to get away to his own world, and to abandon the young couple to their fate.

Nathan would have borrowed a dollar or two of some friend. " Let us go home as behooves a bride and bridegroom," he said. " There is a God in heaven: he will not forsake us."

But Goldy would not hear of betraying the full measure of their poverty to their friends. " N o ! no ! " she retorted testily. " I am not going to let yon pay a dollar and a half for a few blocks' drive, like a Fifth Avenue nobleman. We can walk," she pursued, with the grim determination

PRODUCED BY UNZ.ORG ELECTRONIC REPRODUCTION PROHIBITED

A Ghetto Wedding. 273

of one bent upon self-chastisement. " A poor woman who dares spend every cent on a wedding must be ready to walk af- ter the wedding."

When they found themselves alone in the deserted street, they were so over- come by a sense of loneliness, of a kind of portentous, haunting emptiness, that they could not speak. So on they trudged in dismal silence; she leaning upon his arm, and he tenderly pressing her to his side.

Their way lay through the gloomiest and roughest part of the Seventh Ward. The neighborhood frightened her, and she clung closer to her escort. At one corner they passed some men in front of a liquor saloon.

" Look at dem ! Look at dem ! A sheeny fellar an' his bride, I '11 betch ye ! " shouted a husky voice. " J e s ' com- in' from de weddin'."

" She ain't no bigger 'n a peanut, is she ? " The simile was greeted with a horse-laugh.

" Look a here, young fellar, w h a t ' s de madder wid carryin' her in your vest- pocket ? "

When Nathan and Gold}' were a block away, something like a potato or a car- rot struck her in the back. At the same time the gang of loafers on the corner broke into boisterous merriment. Na- than tried to face about, but she re- strained him.

" D o n ' t ! They might kill you ! " she whispered, and relapsed into silence.

H e made another attempt to disen- gage himself, as if for a desperate attack upon her assailants, but she nestled close to his side and held him fast, her every

fibre tingling with the consciousness of the shelter she had in him.

" Don't mind them, Nathan," she said.

And as they proceeded on their dreary way through a sombre, impover- ished street, with here and there a rus- tling tree, — a melancholy witness of its better days, — they felt a stream of happiness uniting them, as it coursed through the veins of both, and they were filled with a blissful sense of oneness the like of which they had never tasted be- fore. So happy were they that the gang behind them, and the bare rooms toward which they were directing their steps, and the miserable failure of the wedding, all suddenly appeared too in- significant to engage their attention, — paltry matters alien to their new life, remote from the enchanted world in which they now dwelt.

The 'very notion of a relentless void abruptly turned to a beatific sense of their own seclusion, of there being only themselves in the universe, to live and to delight in each other.

" Don't mind them, Nathan darling," she repeated mechanically, conscious of nothing but the tremor of happiness in her voice.

" I should give it to them ! " he re- sponded, gathering her still closer to him. " I should show them how to touch my Goldy, my pearl, my birdie ! "

They dived into the denser gloom of a side-street.

A gentle breeze ran past and ahead of them, proclaiming the bride and the bridegroom. An old tree whispered over- head its tender felicitations.

Abraham Cahan. VOL. LXXXI. — NO. 4 8 4 . 18

PRODUCED BY UNZ.ORG ELECTRONIC REPRODUCTION PROHIBITED

274 A Brief Survey of Recent Historical Work.

A B R I E F S U R V E Y O F R E C E N T H I S T O R I C A L W O R K .

A N account of recent historical work, of the past year, for instance, could hard- ly be made a study in literature. Many histories have been literary achievements of the first order, and of course it is always open to the historical student to make of his results a genuine book, but such is not the tendency at present. To employ once again the hackneyed classi- fication of De Quincey, it is to the litera- ture of knowledge, not to the literature of power, that the industry of the aver- age worker in history now chiefly con- tributes. His watchword is " original research; " his main endeavor is to dis- cover, in no sense to create.

Even the briefest survey must take into account the activity of associations and agencies as well as of individuals. Some of the most important agencies are gov- ernmental. The national government, for example, has just completed, at a cost of about two millions of dollars, the series of Rebellion Records dealing with the movements of the Federal and Con- federate armies. These ponderous vol- umes are not history, if history is a thing to be read, but they contribute to the store of historical knowledge, and they are as close akin to literature as many other publications that are offered to us as books. Several of the departments at Washington have printed historical doc- uments during the year, and the Venezue- lan Commission, happily relieved of its task of determining whether or not we shall go to war with Great Britain, has yet accomplished, in its first report, work of undeniable if purely historical value.

The number of state governments more or less committed to the printing of their own earlier records has increased. The Carolinas have made a beginning of this work, and Rhode Island has set a new precedent by authorizing a commis- sion to search for documents in the cus-

tody of towns, of parishes and churches, and even of other states. Mr. GoodeU, in his deliberate edition of the Province Laws of Massachusetts, seemed to be set- ting the standard for such publications, until the Pennsylvania Commission, by undertaking a history of each statute, afforded the scholarship of its members a still wider opportunity.

Of the societies, the National Histori- cal Association is foremost in dignity, if not, perhaps, in actual achievement. I t s Historical Manuscripts Commission, aim- ing especially at papers in private hands, is a new departure, in line with the Royal Manuscripts Commission of Great Brit- ain. The American Historical Review, which has been printing documents gar- thered from private sources, should prove a valuable ally in the enterprise. T h e ' announced financial success of this peri- odical is matter of congratulation to its editor and to the gentlemen by whose disinterested efforts it was established three years ago. A promising recent development is the entrance into the his- torical field of societies — such as the Scotch-Irish, the Huguenot, and the Jew- ish-American —which aim to make plain the part that particular race elements have played in the upbuilding of the re- public.

The dignified position some of the state societies have attained is well at- tested by the complfont thatmembership in them has become a social distinction, and not merely a reward of scholarship. The Texas society, formed within the year to deal with the rich material awaiting the future historian of the extreme Southwest, has endeavored to guard against this tendency by constitu- tional provision looking to the perma- nent dominance of the historical purpose in its councils and composition. The Massachusetts society, the oldest of all.

PRODUCED BY UNZ.ORG ELECTRONIC REPRODUCTION PROHIBITED