The King of Schnorrers: Grotesques and FantasiesZangwill, Israel
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The King of Schnorrers: Grotesques and Fantasies
Zangwill, Israel
Humorous stories; Jewish fiction; Jews -- England -- Fiction; London (England) -- Fiction
One day, when Rachel was nineteen, there came to the workshop a
handsome young man. He had been brought by a placard in the window of
the chandler's shop, and was found to answer perfectly to its wants.
He took his place at the work-table, and soon came to the front as a
wage-earner, wielding a dexterous needle that rarely snapped, even in
white fur. His name was Emanuel Lefkovitch, and his seat was next to
Rachel's. For Rachel had long since entered into her career, and the
beauty of her early-blossoming womanhood was bent day after day over
strips of rabbit-skin, which she made into sealskin jackets. For
compensation to her youth Rachel walked out on the Sabbath elegantly
attired in the latest fashion. She ordered her own frocks now, having
a banking account of her own, in a tin box that was hidden away in her
little bedroom. Her father honourably paid her a wage as large as she
would have got elsewhere--otherwise she would have gone there. Her
Sabbath walks extended as far as Hyde Park, and she loved to watch the
fine ladies cantering in the Row, or lolling in luxurious carriages.
Sometimes she even peeped into fashionable restaurants. She became the
admiring disciple of a girl who worked at a Jewish furrier's in Regent
Street, and whose occidental habitat gave her a halo of aristocracy.
Even on Friday nights Rachel would disappear from the sacred
domesticity of the Sabbath hearth, and Flutter-Duck suspected that
she went to the Cambridge Music Hall in Spitalfields. This led to
dramatic scenes, for Rachel's frowardness had not decreased with age.
If she had only gone out with some accredited young man, Flutter-Duck
could have borne the scandal in view of the joyous prospect of
becoming a grandmother. But no! Rachel tolerated no matrimonial
advances, not even from the most seductive of _Shadchanim_, though
her voluptuous figure and rosy lips marked her out for the
marriage-broker's eye. Her father had grown sterner with the growth of
his malady, and though at the bottom of his heart he loved and was
proud of his beautiful Rachel, the words that rose to his lips were
often as harsh and bitter as Flutter-Duck's own, so that the girl
would withdraw sullenly into herself and hold no converse with her
parents for days.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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