“Zelde, you’re a old woman. You don’t understand. All I need is one drop of luck and that drop will sweeten our whole ocean of troubles. If only one of my inventions succeeds, none of us will have to work. Then Sarah will have dowry. What is dowry? Every man’s price. And we’ll move out of the fish-market. What is success? Fifth Avenue. What is failure? Fifth floor. “Some day, you’ll see. I’ll be president of the Refillable Can Company and save the world millions in tin. Just wait!” “And who’ll buy bread in the meantime? Mendel, remember what I tell you. Knock out this craziness from your head. Forget about this can business!” Mendel’s dignity was roused. “Crazy! That’s what you all are! You and all your relatives think I got water on the brain!” He pointed with conviction to his brow. “But up here is the refillable can. Zelde, you see it? It’s in the brain, the whole scheme. Up here is full with ideas, plans and machinery. Thinking, scheming, planning all the time. It don’t let me sleep. It don’t let me eat. It don’t let me work. And I should forget it--ah? “You’re all jealous because God was good to me. He gave your brother Morris a shoe factory, your cousin Joe He gave a real estate, your sister Dora a rich husband. But God gave me _brains_--and that none of you got!” Mendel paced the floor excitedly. Zelde stood silent and bit her lip. For years she had heard the same flow of rhetoric, the same boast of intellect, and the same trust in luck. The net result was always an evasion of work, and the responsibility shifted back to her and the children. Mendel Marantz had brains, all right. Otherwise, how could he have existed so long without working? He always confused her with clever phrases and blurred the issue by creating fictitious ones. And he always succeeded in infecting her with his dreams, until she let him dream on while she did the work. It was that way when they had the candy-stand which her brother Gershon bought for them; it was that way when they kept a vegetable-store which sister Dora financed and later reduced to a push-cart; and it was that way now when they had nothing. By trade a mechanic, by inclination an inventor, and by nature a dreamer, Mendel abhorred the sordid commonplaces of labor and dreaded the yoke of routine. He had been everything from an insurance agent to a night watchman in rapid succession, and had invented at least a hundred different devices for the betterment of civilization while changing jobs. None of these inventions had as yet received proper recognition, least of all from Zelde. But that could not discourage him to such a point as to drive him to work. He really believed in his powers. That was the tragedy of it. All geniuses have an unalterable faith in their greatness. But so have most cranks. And Zelde was not sure as to which of the two species Mendel belonged.