When I told him that that was a hazardous task, he shrugged his shoulders contemptuously and left my study.
I
ALAS, why should the brave and gentle summer-time, the season of greatest freedom from care, remind the Jew in America of the misfortune of being a Jew? There is nothing malicious in the summer-time itself. To be sure, the summer-time is a sly comedian, who, with his long, white days and short, bright nights, winks his eye at many a maiden's broken heart and many a youth's troubled conscience. But has this sly summer-time so fine a sense of discrimination, that, knave-like, he can distinguish between Jew and Gentile?
Yet one would think it due to the summer-time and to nothing else, that the Jew is made to feel the sting of being a Jew. For the winter-time is less harsh—at least here in free America. In Germany, it is the winter-time which is the season of anti-Semitic Versammlungen; and in Russia it is the springtime when Jews are supposed to use the blood of Christian children for Passover cakes; and almost everywhere the autumn-time is less annoying, because then the Jews themselves are not afraid to remind themselves of the strange fact that they are Jews. But is there any other place other than in this blessed land of freedom, where "the good old summer-time" is so deprived of its healing effects as to burn a scar upon the sensitive soul of almost every summer Jew?
The winter-time—cold, bleak, gaunt—has no such terrors within it. We can walk the same streets and visit the same theatres and sleep at the same hotels; and they must even patronize our large stores, and we are a power in finance and in the colleges and in the press; and even our votes are sought after. Another advantage of the winter-time is that our poor can show how deeply they can suffer, so that we are enabled to
Oh, summer-time, thou clever devil, how thou makest me to laugh!
display the tenderness of our old-fashioned Jewish hearts.
Jewish hearts.But in the summer-time—that season ofgladness and of change and of commercewith nature—how even the greatest of usseems to be chained by some subtle destiny!Our Jewish intensity receives a shock. Inthe summer-time our Jewish sensitivenessand furtiveness seem to be set a-quiver:they are like our eyes, smouldering fireslurking in caves, blown into a pleasant glowby a friendly breeze, stirred by a cruel windinto flaming hatred. Our champion swimmers and tennis-players, who are membersof Y. M. C. A.'s in the winter, seem to seektheir brethren in the summer-time. Ourmerchants lunch with their merchants inthe winter-time. But in the summer-timethe wives and children must accompanythem, and our wives and their wives do notseem to be on calling terms. The summer-time is a great leveller of us Jews. Itbrings the highest-toned to the same placesas the loudest of us. It has a touch of theartistic, to see our winter-time aristocratsforced to roam the same hills along theUlster and Delaware, and to get brownedon the same beaches at Arverne and LongBranch, as the parvenu brethren. Our dearboys and girls are besides imitators of thesame styles; whether we hail from the avenues or the alleys, our little ones are allBuster Browns—their hair cut short roundthe neck, bangs on the forehead, half-stock-ings, colored shoes, and dresses tied aroundwith a broad sash.
Oh, summer-time, I wonder whether even your lynx eyes can penetrate into the hearts of our young and old, and read there the little tales of discontent. The maidens in white camping dresses, the young men with pines and reddened arms, the stylish women with careful coiffure and the newest forward tilt in their bearing, the well-groomed merchant, all go to the few places to which the invisible fingers of Christian Society and Jewish Necessity point. We cannot deny ourselves, for we are haunted by our own flesh even in our summer recreation.