“The story does not say. You’re sure it is fresh?” THE AMERICANISATION OF SHADRACH COHEN There is no set rule for the turning of the worm; most worms, however, turn unexpectedly. It was so with Shadrach Cohen. He had two sons. One was named Abel and the other Gottlieb. They had left Russia five years before their father, had opened a store on Hester Street with the money he had given them. For reasons that only business men would understand they conducted the store in their father’s name—and, when the business began to prosper and they saw an opportunity of investing further capital in it to good advantage, they wrote to their dear father to come to this country. “We have a nice home for you here,” they wrote. “We will live happily together.” Shadrach came. With him he brought Marta, the serving-woman who had nursed his wife until she died, and whom, for his wife’s sake, he had taken into the household. When the ship landed he was met by two dapper-looking young men, each of whom wore a flaring necktie with a diamond in it. It took him some time to realise that these were his two sons. Abel and Gottlieb promptly threw their arms around his neck and welcomed him to the new land. Behind his head they looked at each other in dismay. In the course of five years they had forgotten that their father wore a gaberdine—the loose, baglike garment of the Russian Ghetto—and had a long, straggling grey beard and ringlets that came down over his ears—that, in short, he was a perfect type of the immigrant whose appearance they had so frequently ridiculed. Abel and Gottlieb were proud of the fact that they had become Americanised. And they frowned at Marta. “Come, father,” they said. “Let us go to a barber, who will trim your beard and make you look more like an American. Then we will take you home with us.” Shadrach looked from one to the other in surprise. “My beard?” he said; “what is the matter with my beard?” “In this city,” they explained to him, “no one wears a beard like yours except the newly landed, Russian Jews.” Shadrach’s lips shut tightly for a moment. Then he said: “Then I will keep my beard as it is. I am a newly landed Russian Jew.” His sons clinched their fists behind their backs and smiled at him amiably. After all, he held the purse-strings. It was best to humour him. “What shall we do with Marta?” they asked. “We have a servant. We will not need two.” “Marta,” said the old man, “stays with us. Let the other servant go. Come, take me home. I am getting hungry.”