Читать книгу A Search for America - Frederick Philip Grove - Страница 8

FIVE I Earn a Promotion

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The very first day taught me that knowledge of men is no more an attribute of the underling in America than it is in Europe. All of the waiters and helpers, except Frank and Ella, accepted me as what I was for the time being. I stood on the bottom-rung of the ladder, on a level with those Slavic-looking women who washed the dishes in the room behind. The fact that I bore myself differently; that my clothes, if nothing else, bespoke at least different tastes and a different origin, did not seem to penetrate their consciousness. I myself was beginning to see by the second day of this life that what we call culture, education, breeding is largely a matter of environment, something that it takes very long to acquire but which may, after all, be acquired and, therefore, lost. It overlies the human nature which is common to us all and which is not an overly lovely or adorable thing like a thin veneer which may easily be dented or even pierced. If anybody belonging to the social, intellectual, and emotional stratum from which the greater number of these men and women were recruited had, for instance, insulted me in my old surroundings, his insult would never have reached me. I might have resented it with a cold stare or an ugly laugh; but I should not have felt a wound. Now I did feel that wound though I did not resent it by stare or laugh.

The strange thing was that waiters and waitresses alike regarded themselves as being on a plane above myself, not intellectually or emotionally--they did not even know that such was possible--but socially. That was what I should have least expected. The tables were truly turned. It took Ella's supreme indifference to such demarcations, or Frank's shrewd divination--for he simply expected me to rise--to accept me on a level of equality. In other words, there seemed to be two gates through which you could enter into the democratic spirit: natural good-will and shrewd intelligence. Both, of course, may be inborn or acquired by education. Of the two, the natural good-will stands, morally speaking, on a higher level, for it simply accepts what is best in human nature and rejects what is low or accidental. Frank accepted in me, not what I was, but what I might be one day. All of which went to show that there were social strata in America as well as in Europe.

It might be well, though, to point out a difference. Taking it for granted--though the truth may hurt--that manners, knowledge, culture of mind and heart stand in the last resort for money--money which is being or has been held by individuals or families--the eyes of the European who appraises a stranger is turned back; that of the American, forward. In Europe the poor man is tolerated if he can look upon a great past; in America, if he looks to a future. This, of course, is meant as a summary only of the instinctive point of view of that part of the population which forms the apparent or patent--and therefore superficial--ground-mass of the people. We also find, both here and there, even on the surface, excluding all the latent strata, certain areas in which, by an interpenetration of ideas fostered through blood-relationship, these characteristics are exactly reversed. I once had a conversation with a lady who had been a teacher all her life and who, in a Canadian school, very strongly underlined veneration for the aristocracy as culminating in the king; to me the flag seemed the higher emblem. "Your king is a person," I said, "a human being like yourself. 'Now in the name of all the gods at once, upon what meat does this our Cæsar feed?'" She laughed. "The king," she said, "is not a person. He stands for our past; he stands for glorious battles fought, for hours of triumph, hours of terrible need. He stands for tattered banners and smoky battlefields. He stands for all that we hold sacred if we are British. What is your flag? A coloured rag!" "Yes," I replied; "the king stands for the past. The flag stands for an idea, an ideal, for the future. And little it matters whether it be the Union Jack or the Stars and Stripes. The king stands for what most certainly has been--can we always defend it? The flag stands for what may be if we are great enough to weave reality out of dreams. The king stands for our fathers; the flag, for our children. That is why I like to see it in the school. I can always defend the flag."--I still think, though that lady was born in America and prided herself on coming from a slave-holding family in the south which emigrated in 1786, I was the better American.

Things being as they were, I was--in those hours of the afternoon and the night when the work was light--very naturally thrown a good deal with that old man who shared my status on the upper floor.

He had no name in this place where he worked; nobody, not even the manager or proprietor, called him anything but "Whiskers". Nor did anybody, except Frank, Ella and myself, ever speak a word to him unless when ordering him about.

He had been born in Ontario and had come as a young lad from a farm. I was curious about him. Here was a man, considerably more than sixty years old, grown grey in this work, a veteran, as it were, of waiterdom. Here was a test of that famous American slogan, "Equal opportunities for all". He had not risen. Why not? Had he not been able to take advantage of the opportunities that had come his way? Or had no opportunity ever been offered to him?

I think it was on the afternoon of my second day at the place that I sat down at the same table with him, at the left-hand side, where so far he had been left alone, an outcast.

"Hello," I said in the friendliest tone.

He looked up at me with a searching look, out of the cavernous depths of his eyes. Then he nodded without a word.

I waited for him to begin the conversation; somehow a trivial remark about the weather seemed out of place in the face of his hoary dignity. But he proceeded with his repast, now and then scrutinizing me with a look in which shyness and criticism seemed strangely mingled. Since I was not eating, he seemed to suspect that I was making fun of him. I felt as if I were intruding, as if I had to find an excuse for being there at all. Yet, that excuse would not be found.

I scanned his features; they presented, as I have said, the coarsest face I had ever seen in my life. The cheekbones stood out in high relief, reddened to a carmine tinge by an exceedingly fine network of enlarged surface-veins. Above, they sloped away to temples so hollow that they seemed to form an acute angle with a perfectly flat forehead jutting out over the caves of his eyes like a penthouse. The cheeks, too, were hollow, as if all the molars in his mouth were gone. Cheeks, temples, forehead were a ghastly white, in strong contrast to the red circles on his cheekbones. Jaws and chin seemed to form a semicircular ridge under the short, straggling white beard. It was a face which seemed to lack the finishing touches of Nature. It was as if roughly hewn out of coarse stone. The more I looked, the more it seemed as if I were gazing at a death's-head, a mere skull on which there was no flesh.

A stray glance of mine sank to his hands. There they were, a living explanation why he wore those white canvas gloves which I had seen the first day. These hands were knobby, gnarled like a stunted oak-limb; their knuckles, like knots in a wiry rope. The metacarpal bones, too, stood like rocky anticlines between eroded valley-folds. To describe the man one must needs resort to geological expression.

While I sat there, facing him, my curiosity suddenly seemed sacrilegious. I did not see in him a person longer; he became a symbol. He was the walking Death-in-Life; he stood for the end of all things mortal, for ambitions foiled or misguided; for that disappointment which is all the more heartbreaking when it is unconscious. He stood for Old Age looking back on Youth; for failure incarnate, such as in the essentials awaits us all, no matter what our apparent success may be. I was confronting things eternal, tragedies beyond the utterance of man.

Curiously enough, the fact that this tragedy might be unconscious touched me with fear. Speech might turn it into comedy, such comedy as is beyond even Shakespeare's cruel jest. I refrained. I felt shaken, moved. But I smiled at him--it must have looked a ghastly smile--nodded, and got up.

He looked at me with a strange, hungry expression on his face.

As it happened, had I deliberately planned to gain the old man's confidence--with a calculation of human nature quite beyond my years--I could not have devised a surer plan.

In the evening, during the slack hours after the supper-wave, it was he who sought me out.

I was sitting down for a moment, secure from interruption by guests. He passed my stall and stopped.

"We must divide the work," he said in a hoarse, expressionless voice. "You take the front, and I the rear."

"All right," I assented.

"And I'll bring the water," he went on, "and you, the butter."

"We'll just reverse that," I said. "Sit down; you're tired."

He looked both ways before he shuffled into the opposite seat.

"My feet!" he said. "They get so tired I hardly feel them." And then he leaned over and whispered confidentially, "Carlton, he must not see me, you know, sitting down. . . . That man is a devil; you don't know him; but that's what he is; you mark my words!" And lowering his voice still more, to a scarcely audible sibilance, but speaking very fast now, "I'll quit him, though; next week I'll quit him if he doesn't do as he promised. Exhibition's coming. . . . They need all hands . . . Then I'll quit unless he does as he promised to do."

"Have you been with him long?"

"Yes, sir," he said, nodding his head. "Yes, sir. Long enough to know him and the likes of him. Ever since he was a waiter in this place. Long before Johnson's time. . . . What are they paying you, young man?"

"Four fifty a week."

"Four fifty," he repeated. "Good wages, that. Good wages when a man is young. I get six. But look at them waiters! They are making the money. That's what a person wants! Waiting on tables, that's where the big and easy money is! Some of them is making ten dollars extry ever week! Tips, you know. . . . You are young, want to learn. Take my advice, young fellow, stay for a while. Till you have caught on to the ways of this country. Funny ways they are. Then quit here. I'm going to quit, you know; next week I'm going to quit. Unless Carlton does as he's promised to do. He is always promising, talking and talking; but he never keeps faith. Has he promised you anything?" His voice had sunk down to a rapid whisper again which towards the last took on a strange note of wistful and cunning expectancy.

"Nothing in particular," I replied; "though, come to think of it, he did promise that he would keep an eye on me and let me wait on tables as soon as he thinks I am able to do so."

This casual revelation had an altogether unexpected effect. The old man hung upon my words while I was speaking; and when I mentioned the two promises, he nodded his head with more vigour and agility than I should have thought possible in one as osseous as he was. But when I finished, he broke into the most abandoned giggle that I had ever heard from anybody but a silly girl, and the giggle changed into a spasmodic cackle, running into higher and higher pitches of dissonance--an exhibition of mirth which had something alarming, terrifying in so old a man, the more so the longer it lasted; and it lasted longer than anything of the kind I had ever witnessed, till it broke off just as abruptly as it had begun.

"Didn't I know it," he whispered, raising his gnarled and shaking forefinger. "Didn't I know it? Didn't I tell you he is a devil? Now, young man, just tell me, didn't I tell you?"

"Yes," I nodded, "you told me; no doubt about that; but still, I don't quite see . . ."

These words brought a repetition of the former outbreak. I looked at him in serious concern, for I feared an accident. It seemed impossible for so much hilarity to come from one like him without provoking wrath divine. It seemed to be against the laws of nature. Probably it was the expression in my face which cut it short this time.

Then he whispered again. "He doesn't quite see it! He doesn't quite see it!" And, as if to reveal to me the very arcana of his innermost knowledge of the depravity of mankind, "Now listen, young man, and remember! I have never told this to any one before. But you have been good to me. You haven't called me Whiskers. Carlton has promised me that, week for week, for the last twenty-five or thirty years! Just think about it and see whether you can make anything of it!" And with great exertion he lifted himself to his feet, shuffled out into the aisle, looked back at me once more, and whispered again, "Think . . . Think . . ."

Next day I tried out how many tumblers filled with water I might be able to handle safely on a tray. I had made up my mind to start work ten to fifteen minutes earlier in the morning, so as to get a sufficient amount of iced water to the front before the rush set in. I was determined to do that part of the work myself.

While thus engaged, I caught sight of Ella who was passing along the aisle. When she saw me, she stopped.

"What are you doing, Slim?"

"Trying to find out how I can make things somewhat easier for our friend, the old man," I replied.

"Whiskers? Poor fellow!"

"Do you think he is being treated fairly?" I asked.

"Well," she said hesitatingly, "what else can they do? It seems charity to keep him in this job. He is too old; he can't do anything else; he looks a disgrace to the place, but they let him make his dollar a day.

"Is he any more a disgrace to the place than the dressing-rooms downstairs, or the kitchen?"

"Perhaps not," she said; "but those the customers do not see."

"That's it. Do you know how long he has been in this place?"

"Since it was built, I believe."

"Yes," I said, "ever since that dressing-room was swept and aired for the first and last time. At six dollars a week! Why don't they retire him?"

"Retire him? What do you mean?"

"Pay him a small sum a week for life and let him go."

"That isn't done, you know," she smiled. "How could they when he does not work?"

I challenged her. "I hear, Mr. Carlton gets three thousand dollars a year and a share of the profits besides. Mr. Johnson, they tell me, clears somewhere around twenty thousand dollars a year from this place alone."

"Oh yes, they are hogs," declared Ella, and I understood that word though I had never heard it thus used before.

"The old man has reached the stage where he wants to quit unless they give him a table."

Ella giggled. The last trace of thoughtfulness had disappeared from her face. "Ain't he too funny for anything?" she said with a laugh. "That's his ambition, you know, waiting on tables. And, of course, he's sprung that bluff on you, too."

"Bluff?" I asked though I understood only too well.

"That he'll quit next week unless Carlton does as he promised to do. I've been here three years now, and he's told that yarn to every newcomer who would listen. He never quits. He's married. He can't afford to. He's got to live like the rest of us."

I dropped the topic; Ella clearly was not ripe for such ideas. Though she might be perfectly awake to the niceties of personal right and wrong, she had in her mental equipment no organ to grasp the idea of a social wrong.

I had food for thought. I did not know at the time just what socialism was or meant. So far I had had a vague idea that it meant the "subversion of the state"; I considered it one of the many paradoxes in which Bernard Shaw indulged that he tried to persuade the world that he was a Socialist, when the whole world knew all the time that he was perfectly respectable and nice. I had never seriously thought of such topics as Old-Age-Insurance. If anybody had told me that I had been talking Socialism to Ella, I should have been shocked and should have answered, "I was talking sense, and nothing else." In this practical case, of which there must be many duplicates in a great industrial organization like that of America, I felt at once, as I feel to-day, that society is at fault if it leaves the provision for old age to the individual's thrift, or, worse still, puts it beyond his powers to look out for himself. "What a country," I thought, "that turns all my sympathies into new channels within two weeks!" But, of course, I forgot that it might have been the same had I "submerged" in that Europe which I had left behind.

Meanwhile I made rapid progress in various ways. Above all, I learned to regard the noon-hour rush with perfect indifference. I did what I could with speed and alacrity; but what I could not do had by Wednesday ceased to worry me. I also acquired the skill that is needed to swing a heavily loaded tray aloft and to carry it out while I was bustled and pushed on every hand. I knew the names and the faces of all the employees of the restaurant; nor did the bill-of-fare hold further mysteries for me. I received most of the assistance I was in need of from Frank who was always cheerful, always willing to help.

Another trouble arose in which Frank aided. The first day I had, as much as possible, avoided loitering in the kitchen. But in my endeavour to learn all about the various dishes offered I had to face this kitchen as a serious problem. What I saw there was not of a nature to increase my liking for the place. The very atmosphere was disgusting. The wood-work seemed to be soaked, impregnated, dripping with grease. Apart from sweeping up the litter from the floor nobody ever thought of doing any cleaning there. Soap seemed to be unknown in this establishment. The washing of the dishes even was the most perfunctory process imaginable. The chute through which the left-overs were disposed of was the most nauseating sight I had ever beheld.

This dislike was mutual. There was no Frank, no Ella in the kitchen-personnel to befriend me. Whenever I showed my face--except during the rush-hours--I was received with an uproar of the coarsest and filthiest gibes and jokes. They called me "the baron" there, addressed me as "Sir Phil", and in high-sounding phrases spoke to me mostly of things and parts of the body that will not bear print. The reader will understand that it took courage to enter the place.

"Yes," said Frank with his fatalistic acceptance of all things that be, "you want to get used to that. They are a vile bunch. And all of them--as, by the way, take warning, Phil, most of the girls, too--are rotten with sexual disease. You can't help seeing some of it in the long run."

The first day or so I had forced myself to eat the food prepared in this kitchen, with eyes closed, as it were. Then I went hungry most of the time, for I ate only bread and butter. But late one afternoon Frank and I had slipped out through the kitchen to a little platform behind, where the trucks of the supply-houses unloaded their wares; there we were having a quiet smoke.

Suddenly I heard, close to the door, a remark made by the head-cook. "Well, boys, I must get my hands clean. Guess I'll make a batch of biscuits. Get the flour."

Frank smiled up at me.

But the expression on my face was of such utter disgust that his smile faded.

"How do you make out on food?" he asked.

This ready comprehension made friends of us.

"I am afraid, after this, I shall not be making out at all."

"It is not bad in the morning," Frank tried a defence. "I eat their oatmeal."

"Has the kettle ever been scoured in the last ten years?" I enquired mercilessly.

He laughed. "No. That is, I don't think so. I haven't been here more than six months, you know. During that time it has not that I know of. They merely stir the new meal into the left-over porridge. But porridge does not get rancid."

"I have heard it gets sour," I replied to that challenge.

"Not if it is sterilized by repeated boiling," he said with a very serious face.

We both burst out laughing, so that we could not recover till our sides ached.

"At noon I can't eat their concoctions either," Frank confided after a while; "not after having looked on when that one-eyed devil works."

Again we laughed; we were young and easily infected.

"Well, what do you do?"

"Pastry," Frank replied. "The pies are good. They are handled at the counter, in plain view. They can't spoil them."

"Yes, but I have been told we are now allowed to get our own orders from the counter unless we pay for them."

"There are lots of things which we are not allowed to do," said Frank. "You come to me when you get hungry till you learn to pull the strings yourself."

We slipped back through the kitchen. When we were on the point of pushing through the swinging door, Frank stopped me by a motion of his hand. He raised a finger to his lips.

I heard Mr. Carlton's voice. "Not just now, Whiskers," he said in a tone that was not unkindly. "We'll see; maybe later."

"At his old game again," Frank whispered.

We waited a moment, till the steps on the other side of the door sounded fainter; then we returned into the dining-room.

The words had been insignificant. But the tone in which they were spoken was a revelation to me. There was indulgence in that tone, even pity. The manager simply did not wish to tell the old man that what he asked for was impossible. He seemed to know that it would break his heart if he told him. Sympathy and consideration--attributes which I had not been looking for in Mr. Carlton--made him appear less culpable than before. I came near sharing Ella's view; it was, perhaps, mere charity to keep the old man "in his job."

The week drew to an end. I was inured to the practices of the place. The problem of food was solved by the pies and pastry which Frank sequestered on the lower shelf of one of his dumbwaiters.

On Saturday morning we were all surprised by the appearance of a third helper on the upper floor. He was a raw-looking, awkward boy from the country, red-faced, shy, excitable, but willing to work and very silent.

Just before the noon-rush, Mr. Carlton stopped at the tray-rack where I was arranging the tumblers with iced water.

"How do you like it by this time?" he asked.

"Not much to like about it, sir," I replied. "But I am making my living and catching on to the work, I believe."

"Yes," he said; "you are doing well. We have agreed to let you have full pay for the week. At noon you will help Ella and Iva wait on their tables. After the rush you will take the last centres and the stalls alongside for yourself."

I was so surprised that I could hardly say anything.

"Of course," Mr. Carlton added, "there is not much of a chance for you to have many customers at those tables today; it's Saturday."

With a nod he went off.

Here was success! Mr. Carlton was keeping faith beyond his promises! Within a couple of weeks or so, he had said. I was promoted within five days! I knew, of course, that I owed this in large part to the circumstances. In spite of the fact that there seemed to be an abundant supply of help where clerical positions were concerned, these people were exceedingly short-handed. From which I could draw only one conclusion, namely, that the desirability of certain classes of work attracted or deterred the crowds of applicants here as well as elsewhere. Had the management not by chance been able to secure an additional helper for the upper floor, I should probably have had to stay longer where I was. And yet, I had been making good! My very first attempt in the new world was not a failure! There was promise in this fact. I had shown to myself, to my own satisfaction that I had the necessary adaptability. I knew that I should never accept defeat; that, no matter how long it might take, no matter how much it might cost, in the end I should somehow win through to the very goal of my desires.

And while I was going about my work, taking orders, clearing tables, bellowing in the kitchen with the best of them--sometimes nearly overcome with the rush and the repulsiveness of it all--I grew beyond my present status. I was going to quit this work; I was going to fight for something better. But before I did that, I was going to double my present holdings in money. With twice what I had I was going to make another stand in the very front trenches, as it were. Should success fail me, should I find it impossible to break through into something more congenial, then there would be this to fall back on, this one thing in which I then should be able to say that I was not without experience.

These were, of course, not continuous or even connected thoughts of mine. During the noon-rush the customers saw to it that there was no time left for dreaming or planning. Ideas would arise in disconnected flashes, such as will lift you above your present surroundings, such as will carry you even through times of danger; there was triumph in them, such as will take you forward even into the jaws of death. You forget what you are about; you are able to do things which otherwise you might not even have attempted. In spite of the fact that you are really absent-minded, you go about the work in hand with a curious, nearly automatic precision, as if a second vision guided you, as if you were following inspiration.

Incongruous words to use of the work of a waiter, you say! But my life on this continent has taught me that it really does not matter what you do. I can assure you that the psychology of a general who leads his troops to victory is not essentially different from that of a helper in a cheap restaurant. If vision guides, the problems of immediate details solve themselves. I have found Goethe's word, "What you long for in youth, you have a-plenty in your old age," quite eminently true in life.

If the desire to get somewhere is strong enough in a person, his whole being, conscious and unconscious, is always at work, looking for, and devising, means to get to the goal. It is not so much a question of opportunities offered, as it is a problem of searching for, and seeing, things which you would overlook if your soul and mind were not at all times keyed up to, or attuned for, the very things you see. I might put it this way. On some distant mountain you know a treasure. That treasure you are bent upon lifting. You approach the place; you circle the summit; but the very peak you find impossible of access. You are led to by-paths, devious ways; environment takes hold of you; your immediate attention is deflected; you start, let me say, herding cattle in the valleys around the resplendent peak. But unconsciously your mind is still set on your goal; it looks down upon the small things of daily life; and as you will see the connections of gully and rill, brook-chasm and river-valley more clearly from above, so you will also see more clearly the things in hand, the connections between the hour and the exigencies of the next if your mind is lifted to great heights by overpowering desires. While you are living your years with that glacier-clad height in closest vicinity, without consciously thinking of it, you will at all times be looking about for the approaches, for clefts in the cliffs, for slanting ledges which lead around and above the ice-fields. And one day all things that you have seen and noted--for whatever had no bearing upon your ruling desire you did not note--will, as it were, connect up with a sudden jerk that sends you to your feet; the whole landscape will clear like a milky film, and you will see the road that leads to the goal, as if it were unobstructed.

That is the reason why, in spite of all that has been said to the contrary, the great man, the genius, still counts for more than the multitude. That is why in times of stress or danger we cry for the leader to come; we turn to the man with vision, the dreamer rather than the practical man of affairs. Very great achievements are brought about by passion and emotion rather than by practice, training, knowledge. Questions of routine will solve themselves when the ideas and ideals are clearly conceived. Vision is needed; the dreamer is needed. A people of men who place practical things above all others may become wealthy; but a people of dreamers must become great. Great men were those who had vision, and for their vision passionate love.

And here the case of the old man explains itself readily enough. He was overwhelmed with routine. His vision was weak in as much as he threw the burden of finding the path to the peak on others. I was to make this mistake a good many times myself, in that future which now has receded into the dim past. The old man had a desire, but it did not dominate his life; he had never coordinated present and future; the future had never determined and dominated his present day.

But I do not say this in order to exculpate society from its sins. Legislation is never needed to guide the man with vision. But it should protect that vast majority which is without it.

In the afternoon, when I had taken charge of my new stand, and when everybody was resting, so as to be ready for the supper-rush, an elderly, bearded man, an invalid, guided by a young lady in inconspicuous but expensive clothes, came drifting along the aisle, looking right and left. I guessed at what they were looking for: privacy. Not one of the other waiters was in sight; I happened to stand near one of my stalls. So I ventured a slight, inviting motion with my hand, the young lady smiled; the pair came up.

I was quite excited about it. They were the first customers on whom I was going to wait on my own responsibility. Ella looked at me from where she was sitting and winked. I took charge of the old man and helped him to his seat, disposed of his hat, and returned for a light coat which the young lady carried over her arm.

"We should like some tea," she said when she was seated. "Father likes his strong, with cream. I like mine weak, but without cream. A little toast and some pastry, please."

That was not a large order, to be sure. I arranged what dishes I should need, having carefully wiped them, secured a platter with assorted pieces of pastry and cuts of cake, made the toast myself, and steeped the tea freshly when I was ready. Then I served the whole order as quickly as I could, leaving it to the young lady to pour the tea, and retired from view. Still I watched my customers, took note of what cake was consumed, and completed the check when I saw that they had taken what they cared to have. Then I went over, enquired whether they had any further wishes, and laid the check, face down, on the edge of the table before I withdrew. At the first motion they made to rise I was back, assisted the father into the aisle, reached for his hat, and handed the young lady her coat. They left with a smile and a nod.

I had not done anything except what I should have expected from any waiter in a reputable place. Yet, what I had done, must have appeared like exceptional service, for when I cleared the table, I found a fifty-cent piece under the rim of the young lady's plate. I could not refrain from showing the coin to Frank and Ella. Neither one believed that that was the actual tip received.

I will mention that this pair of afternoon customers returned to my tables every day while I remained in the establishment; and though the tip was not always so generous, it was never less than a quarter, the amount depending, probably, on the chance of the purse.

Late in the evening, during the weary, slack hours of waiting, of sitting, or standing around, my personal satisfaction with the success achieved was to suffer a heavy check. The old helper had all afternoon been going about his duties with a set expression on his hollow face. While I waited on my first customers, he had followed my movements with a dumb, nearly hostile eye. When the supper-hour was over--which practically finished his work--he sat down in the farthest corner, all by himself, resting his hands on his knees and hiding them under the table, in a peculiar attitude of his which had something strangely pathetic. I did not pay much attention to him, I am afraid, but I shall never forget the shock I received when, on passing his table, I suddenly noticed that he held himself very erect, looking neither to right nor to left, and staring into vacancy, with the tears slowly rolling down into his beard.

My success was his deadliest hurt. I did not feel so elated any longer.

A Search for America

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