James Oppenheim

“ A common enough sight—a thin, starved life thirsting for joy and comradeship.
Glancing at her, it struck Edward that such was Frances's future if she did not marry—the starved, lonely city life of a manless girl. Possibly Frances felt some of this, too.
They went on down the sands. Night had come, the large summer night with throbbing stars, and out of darkness a liquid song of waves breaking their mystery at the feet of men and women. They walked along the sand. Out on the waters were sparkles of light, and in the distance the sharp, vanishing glance of a lighthouse. ”

“ The city always has some such mid-night room.
Now and then through the closed door came the noise of the fight—a heart-rending scream Now and then there was the rattle of a car in the empty street or the far horn on the foggy river; now and then through the closed door came the noise of the fight—a heart-rending scream, a sound as of wrestling and then, silence. Each time, all looked up, a wail of anguish broke from the Mother, and William gasped as if the audible pain were his. They were a bowed broken group, save that Ben Labor sat upright, very mild and very sad. ”

“ And you—Ruth—what have you to be thankful for? For your struggles, your long days of work, for your father's death? By George!" he was at white heat, "why should we give each other up? That's all we have. We belong to each other! Just when there's something good in this world, something pure and good and true—there's a smash-up. I won't go: I won't leave you!"
Ruth leaned close, her face strongly set.
"David," she spoke deeply, "I'm going to marry you, I don't care! I'm going off with you. I've cared for my family long enough—I'm going to care for you. I'm going to marry you, David." ”

“ Around the table sat a dozen glowing human beings, their faces red and golden in the lights, and to Nell's amazement, at the layer-cake end of the table sat the old organ-grinder and an old woman. He looked the same as ever in back of the blazing candles—the red weather-beaten wrinkled face, the shrewd kindly bloodshot eyes, the big human lips, the gray frazzled hair on either side of a central baldness. The rest of the people there were either middle-aged or children—a sleek, happy, prosperous lot of Jewish people—save that old Tiffy, the other organ-grinder, sat next to old Sinn. ”

“ All that is beautiful in life was disclosed—the brief and ancient pilgrimage of beings who may have been full of faults and erring days, but now showed the piercing glory of the human heart: courage and reverence and the love that binds us. We trembled with shame-hidden tears as their young voices said so simply that beyond doubt they would love and cherish and honor each other in sickness and misfortune and health and happiness, ever striving to lift each other's lives to higher levels, until the very death. So sure were they of life's grandeur and love's deathlessness. ”

“ Up the streets to the West he wheeled the go-cart, and Annie walked at his side talking quickly. They trudged through a strange slash of the city's life, squalid poverty to Third Avenue, mediocre fringes of middle class to Lexington, middle class respectability to Madison, luxurious wealth to Fifth Avenue, and then one of the loveliest stretches of landscape Park beyond. As they walked block by block west, the street grew quieter, finer, less crowded, more and more palatial, and last they stepped from the avenue-divided social classes of Man into the sweet democracy of Nature. ”

“ Come, winter is the time for human beings!"
And so Myra awoke to the fact that she was indeed a child of the city—that the magic was in her blood and the enchantment in her heart. It was useless to recall the mean toil, the narrow life, the unhealthy days. These, dropped in the great illusion of crowded New York, were transformed into a worthy struggle, a part of the city's reality. She suddenly felt as if she would go crazy if she stayed in the country—its stillness stifled her, its emptiness made her ache.
But there was a deeper call than the call of the city. She wanted to be with Joe. ”

“ We're pretty happy, aren't we?"
"Happy?" he cried. "Yes! It's good to work hard and be tired at night—it's good to eat one's supper at one's own table—it's good to suffer and then be free of pain—it's a rich big thick warm life, this human life, even at the worst!"
A great wind knocked the windows in and out and burst roaring down the airshaft, bearing with it the mingled voices of many people in the flats above.
"Whoo!" the Doctor whistled. "It's good to curl up in here to-night, to sit in the warmth and light—with you, Nell!" ”

“ At dusk she stood at the window of her room, still brooding.
"I wonder how it feels," she thought, "to work so close to fire: to work half-naked, in the glare and the flames, until one lies awake all night, dizzy and spinning." She smiled. "Heredity and environment! What a bold boy he must have been, stealing rides on freight-trains, running across the tracks in front of engines!"
She drew the curtain aside and waved her hand. Before the little house, on the tree-shaded pavement, a very young woman, scarcely more than a girl, was approaching, eyes lifted. ”

“ He could dimly feel the sweet story of first love, the hopes, the dreams, the work; he could feel then what his wife Nell meant to him; he knew that Martha's family worshiped her, that she was the life and glory of the place; her smile their starriness, her word their authority. And then he felt for the young life throbbing and gasping before him, the young girl with all of life before her; all the glories, the dreams to be unfolded and made real, all the tremendous experiences to be gone through, the wifehood, motherhood, the old age, the love and pain, the joy and toil,—the human round. ”

“ And indeed before them and around them and above them the world swam in a living presence of which they were part; the drive of millions of ages of the sexes flung them together; the deep meaning of the on-rushing star-process beat in their hearts; they found the immensity, the power, the glory of themselves and a world of other selves. It was the common million-experienced awakening; the Human Springtime. No wonder Ruth whispered, what every woman has whispered at the supreme moment:
"No one ever loved the way we love!" ”

“ Melodious waves whitened on the shore, and blue and green and violet were on the heave of the immense waters. Quietness came and the beauty the dissolves the restlessness of human hearts. They walked side by side, close to the music of the waves, and all at once they were alone, and they were together.
Now was the time to speak; now if ever, Edward could free himself, now with Frances growing quiet beside him, and all annoyance and fretfulness falling away. He felt full of peace and pity; "Frances," he found himself whispering he knew now that she must forgive him ”

“ Lissner had made an overstatement, and yet he had thrown a new light on the strike, and he had reminded Joe of his long-forgotten guilt. And suddenly Joe knew. All are guilty; all share in the corruption of the world—the laborer anxious for mass-tyranny and distrustful of genius, the aristocrat afraid of soiling his hands, the capitalist intent on power and wealth, the artist neglectful of all but a narrow artifice, each one limited by excess or want, by intellect or passion, by vanity or lust, and all struggling with one another to wrest some special gift for himself. ”

“ Gusts of trouble came to Elsa. She held in her failing hands all the years of her life; it was that creation-moment when she could make her own future; when, by jetting up a little of her old strength, she could keep to the life-work, the great career, she could conserve the struggles, the ambitions, the agony and joy of the past. Was it not shameful, too? To Mr. Fitch she was merely a woman; but in her work she was a power, a force to be reckoned with. Surely a few days' hunger, a slight money debt could not weaken her so! ”

“ Nell and the Doctor felt a burst of glow in their hearts that seldom came to them—the warm flame that has come steadily up the ages in the warm nests of the Ghettoes—the tremendous hearth-flame of the Jewish home. They were swept into this one atom of family life; they were made one with these human. beings; they felt that this people was their people; they felt as if, by birth-right, they belonged here. They felt the hotness of the human, here, massed thick in a tenement room. ”

“ Ruth gasped; the three stood still; they did not look at each other. The blinding terrible truth flashed through the minds of the boy and girl. The mystery of marriage—the strange bringing into this world of new souls—the strange creative-power that was theirs—overwhelmed them with a kind of terror. Then they heard the Doctor mildly continuing:
"Consumptives cannot have children; you can't marry; the power that drives you to-night will drive the harder if you do marry. You must not even kiss each other. You must bravely release each other—bravely carry life through fire to a great finish! ”

“ At such moments Joe walked in a rarer air, he stepped on a fairer earth than ordinarily obtains. It was the beauty and loveliness of simple human camaraderie, of warm human touch. And at such times Joe had no doubt of his life-work. It lay in exquisite places, in chambers of jolly grandeur, in the invisible halls and palaces of the human spirit. He was one with the toilers of earth, one with the crowded underworld. It was that these lives might grow richer in knowledge, richer in art, richer in health, richer in festival, richer in opportunity, that Joe had dedicated his life. ”

“ Intertwined, these wondrous things drew the heart now this way, now that, and to Joe they arose separately in intermittent pulsations that threatened to absorb his existence.
He did not dare go to Myra until he was sure of himself. It seemed that he would have to choose between woman and work. It seemed as if his work would lead into peril, dirt, disaster, and that he could not ask a delicate, high-strung woman to go with him. The woman could not follow her warrior to the battle, for marriage meant children to Joe, and the little ones must stay back at home with the mother. ”

“ Joe understood not a word, but the burden of the speech was:
"Why should we strike? What for? For the cloak-makers? What have we to do with cloak-makers? We have troubles enough of our own. We have our families to support—our wives and children and relations. Shall they starve for some foolish cloak—makers? Comrades, don't listen to such humbug. Do your work—get done with it. You have good jobs—don't lose them. These revolutionists! They would break up the whole world for their nonsense! It's not they who have to suffer; it's us working people. We do the starving, we do the fighting. ”

“ There was even a little hissing when it was announced that a committee of big men would see to the matter.
Joe had a dull sense of some monstrous social cleavage; the world divided into the rulers and the ruled, the drivers and the driven. He felt uncomfortable, and so did the throng. There was a feeling as if the crowd ought to have a throat to give vent to some strange, fierce fact that festered in its heart.
And then toward the end the chairman announced that one of the hat-trimmers, one of the girls who worked—in another hat factory, would address the meeting—Miss Sally Heffer. ”

“ It might be hard to imagine that far to the south in that moving human ocean, a certain Joe Blaine, swallowed in the sea, was yet as real a fact as the city contained—that to himself he was far from being swallowed, that he was, in fact, so real to himself that the rest of the city was rather shadowy and unreal, and that he was immensely concerned in a thousand-flashing torrent of thoughts, in a mix-up of appetite and desires, and in the condition and apparel of his body. ”

“ As he turned it out, Billy rushed it in batches to the compositors, and when finally it all came back in strips of type, it was hurried down to the idlers in the basement. At ten-thirty that chilly, dust-blowing morning, when the sun-stricken air glittered with eddies of motes, Joe, sitting at his desk, had the exquisite rapture of feeling the building tremble.
He rushed to his mother, and exulted.
"Can't you feel the press going? Listen!"
Truly the new life had begun—the vision was beginning to crystallize in daily living.
"We're in the fight now, mother!" he cried. "There's something doing!" ”

“ Romance, led by Myra's hand, had entered the dusty printery and Joe began to feel like a youngster who had been blind to life.
Outside the world was blowing away on the gray wings of the twilight, blowing away with eddies of dust that swept the sparkling street-lamps, and the air was sharp with a tang of homesickness and autumn. The afternoon was quietly waning, up—stairs the hat-makers, and here the printers, were toiling in a crowded, satisfying present, and Joe stood there musing, a tall, gaunt man, the upstart tufts of his tousled hair glistening in the light overhead. ”

“ A new kind of woman! Joe remembered the phrase, and in the end admitted that it was true. Sally was of the new breed; she represented the new emancipation; the exodus of woman from the home to the battle-fields of the world; the willingness to fight in the open, shoulder to shoulder with men; the advance of a sex that now demanded a broader, freer life, a new health, a home built up on comradeship and economic freedom. In all of these things she contrasted sharply with Myra, and Joe always thought of the two together. ”

“ All in the inclosed space stood and moved a mass of careless men, the lawyers, hangers-on, and all who fatten upon crime—careless, laughing, nudging, talking openly to the women of the street. A crass scene, a scene of bitter cynicism, of flashy froth, degrading and cheap. Not here to-night the majesty of the law; here only a well-oiled machine grinding out injustice.
Joe and Myra were seated among a crowd of witnesses and tired lawyers. The law's delay seemed to steep the big room with drowsiness; the air was warm and breathed in and out a thousand times by a hundred lungs. ”