Didactic fiction; Political fiction; Social problems -- Fiction
About nine o'clock one bitter winter night she was walking home along
Canal Street. The row of pushcarts, lit by flaring oil lamps, were doing
a scant business. It was too cold for sidewalk bargaining. She was moved
by a deep pity for these men and women, who were forced out on such a
night, to hawk their wares. It was not only the victims of the
sweat-shop who find living a hard matter. Suddenly her notice fell on a
dilapidated pedler, who was holding out a meagre tray of notions. He did
not have even a pushcart. A heavy black patch hid one side of his face,
but she recognized Jake at once. Her first impulse was to hurry past
with averted face. But his shivering poverty--he had no
overcoat--checked her.
"Hello, Mr. Goldfogle."
He turned his unbandaged eye on her in bewilderment. His frost-bitten
face flushed with resentment.
"Come on and have a cup of coffee," she said. "I want to talk with you."
The idea of coffee stopped the curses which were gathering on his
tongue, and, ashamed of his lack of spirit, he followed her. They sat
down opposite each other at a dingy little tea-room table. Jake
remembered Yetta as a frightened shop-girl. The last time she had seen
him, he had threatened her with arrest. He had solemnly sworn that he
would never give her back her job. And now she was giving him a cup of
coffee. He drank it in silence. Once upon a time he had dreamed of
marrying her as though it would be a great condescension.
The coffee warmed him so that he told his story. The failure had been
complete. He and his sister and brother-in-law had gone back to the
machine. The sister had given out first with the East Side
commonplace--a cough. For a while the two men had stuck together, once
more a little money had begun to pile up. Then a belt broke; the flying
end had caught Jake in the face. He lifted up the black patch and showed
Yetta the horrible scar where his eye had been. When he had come out of
the hospital, his brother-in-law had disappeared. For a while Jake had
hoped to get some compensation out of his employer, but he had fallen
into the clutches of a "shyster lawyer," who compromised the case out of
court for a hundred dollars and kept seventy-five for his fee. This had
happened about a month before. Jake had been dragging out a miserable
existence, sleeping in the lowest doss-houses, and of the stock he had
bought with his twenty-five dollars, the half-filled tray was all that
remained. And if Yetta had not started the strike, he would have been a
rich man. "Und I vas in luv wit you, Yetta," he ended.
It happened that she had just received her month's pay, so she was able
to buy Jake an overcoat and give him a few dollars for meals and
lodging. And the next day she found work for him as a night watchman.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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