Family -- Fiction; New York (N.Y.) -- Social conditions -- Fiction
They found him in a small public library on an ill-smelling ghetto street.
The place had been packed with people, but the clock had just struck ten
and the readers were leaving reluctantly, many with books under their arms.
At sight of Deborah and her father, Isadore leaped up from his desk and
came quickly to meet them with outstretched hands.
"Oh, this is splendid! Good evening!" he cried. Hardly more than a boy,
perhaps twenty-one, he was short of frame but large of limb. He had wide
stooping shoulders and reddish hollows in his dark cheeks. Yet there was a
springiness in his step, vigor and warmth in the grip of his hand, in the
very curl of his thick black hair, in his voice, in his enormous smile.
"Come," he said to Roger, when the greetings were over. "You shall see my
library, sir. But I want that you shall not see it alone. While you look
you must close for me your eyes and see other libraries, many, many, all
over the world. You must see them in big cities and in very little towns
to-night. You must see people, millions there, hungry, hungry people. Now I
shall show you their food and their drink." As he spoke he was leading them
proudly around. In the stacks along the walls he pointed out fiction,
poetry, history, books of all the sciences.
"They read all, all!" cried Isadore. "Look at this Darwin on my desk. In a
year so many have read this book it is a case for the board of health. And
look at this shelf of economics. I place it next to astronomy. And I say to
these people, 'Yes, read about jobs and your hours and wages. Yes, you must
strike, you must have better lives. But you must read also about the
stars--and about the big spaces--silent--not one single little sound for
many, many million years. To be free you must grow as big as that--inside
of your head, inside of your soul. It is not enough to be free of a czar, a
kaiser or a sweatshop boss. What will you do when they are gone? My fine
people, how will you run the world? You are deaf and blind, you must be
free to open your own ears and eyes, to look into the books and see what is
there--great thoughts and feelings, great ideas! And when you have seen,
then you must think--you must think it all out every time! That is
freedom!'" He stopped abruptly. Again on his dark features came a huge and
winning smile, and with an apologetic shrug, "But I talk too much of my
books," he said. "Come. Shall we go to my café?"
On a neighboring street, a few minutes later, down a flight of steep wooden
stairs they descended into a little café, shaped like a tunnel, the ceiling
low, the bare walls soiled by rubbing elbows, dirty hands, the air blue and
hot with smoke. Young men and girls packed in at small tables bent over
tall glasses of Russian tea, and gesturing with their cigarettes declaimed
and argued excitedly. Quick joyous cries of greeting met Isadore from every
side.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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