An Incident in His Career
IT was in no easy state of mind that Harry Feldman arrived at the college building. "Shall I do it?" he kept thinking. "What else can I do?" he asked himself, at last.
The best student in the college though he was, yet he was perhaps the most needy. Steadily, for the past three years, Harry Feldman had been at the head of each class. To do this he had worked night and day, sponged on his acquaintances, had been obliged to sleep nights on a bench in a sweatshop and to borrow where he could. He often had to go without his meals. This was how he had been attaining his ambitions, conceived shortly after his arrival in this country more than eight years ago.
He aimed to become a mechanical engineer, and the professors encouraged him, for they admired him to a man. Price, the tutor in mathematics, blushed like a school-girl when his results did not tally with Feldman’s. They predicted great things for him. Some had even aided him slightly.
Feldman had continued to struggle on, working hard, giving lessons to eke out expenses, and eventually overtaxed himself and became ill. He fell behind somewhat, having been told to "ease up a bit" if he wished to live.
And so this was how he had failed to win the long-coveted free scholarship to the University, as he had explained the day before to fat little Mr. Rosinsky in the latter’s jewelry store on the East Side.
Mr. Rosinsky was a widower and had a daughter whom he called Becky and whom he was anxious to marry to a suitable man. He was embarrassed to have to deal with such wifely matters (weibersche sachen) but there was no help for it. So, when he heard Harry’s difficulties related to him by the young man—with whose parents he had been acquainted in Russia—he clucked his tongue with real sympathy, and, after some apparent reflection, ‘said, “I will make you an offer, young man!” and banged the counter with his plump fist. “I will pay your expenses, tuition fees, all. all,” the
emphasized, "and when you get your diploma, you will marry my daughter Becky! Hah?"
Feldman did not know what to say to him for a moment. At last, he smiled feebly, and asked, "Are you joking, Mr. Rosinsky?"
"Joking!" Mr. Rosinsky raised his lash-less eyelids almost indignantly. "Don't you think I want to see my daughter happy? God in Heaven! am I not a father? Come! Say! Speak! Let me hear words!" he added gayly.
"But—but—" stammered Feldman. "She doesn't care for me, maybe!"
Mr. Rosinsky laughed long and loudly. "Nu, nu," he said at length, "don't be afraid of that. She'll care for you. What is she a girl for, I should like to know?"
"I—" began Feldman nervously, "I—I— will think it over Mr. Rosinsky."
“Yes, yes! think it over. Nothing better could have happened to a man like you. Where else can you get money for the university? And my daughter is a good Jewish child—may I have such a year!”
"I will think it over," Feldman had said as he left the store.
The objection »seemed serious. This cut and-dried method of arranging his matrimonial future seemed very distasteful, altthough he was not of a romantic turn of mind, he told himself. Yes, he had often seen Becky. She was pretty in a way—intelligent, but Yiddish, insignificant, not of the new bright world toward which he felt himself moving of late.
But, on the other hand, what could he do? Should he allow his strivings, his passion for the profession go for naught? Witness his colleagues push ahead and be left behind? Lots and lots of fellows, he told himself, would have snapped at such an opportunity. It was undoubtedly due to his refined feelings that he permitted himself to hesitate at all. It was really all right. He would teach her. She would soon learn all the fine things. Then, his debts —he could be rid of them forever. "And for the first time in my life," he