Father and Son
I.
Early in the Spring of the year 1905—the great pogrom year,—Mr. Simon Levinson, a prosperous manufacturing furrier in the city of New York, after duly consulting with his wife, decided to invite his old father in Russia to come to this country and spend the remainder of his days with them, away from the constant dread of persecution and massacres. Reb Leib Levinson accepted the invitation. Of course, it was very hard for him to abandon the old town of Naslikov, and especially the old synagogue where so much of his life had been spent in study and prayer. But the pogrom-wave was approaching ever nearer and nearer, and, besides, many of the townspeople and especially his lifetime friend Isaac Wilner, had already emigrated, and so, carefully packing up his old set of Talmud folios—a family heirloom—he entrusted his old frame to the will of God and the hardships of the journey.
In the forenoon of a sunny Friday in the latter part of April, Reb Leib Levinson, preceded by his son Simon, ascended the carpeted stairs of the apartment house in Harlem where his son lived, traversed the vestibule on tiptoe, and was installed in a soft-cushioned chair in the dining-room. Simon Levinson's plump clean-shaven face expressed an agitated sort of happiness and he kept continually looking from his father to the door of an adjoining room. The face of his white-bearded father, on the other hand, was expressive of a childlike elation and a wonder bordering on awe as he felt beneath his feet the thickly carpeted floor, saw the thickly curtained windows, the massive, shining furniture and the silver and cutglass arrayed on the sideboard.
"And how did you fare on the voyage?" Simon asked for the tenth time as he fluttered about the old man and helped him remove the old black overcoat which he wore in spite of the mild weather,
and which covered a long black Kaftan. Simon incidentally removed the old man's vizored cap. Reb Leib immediately covered his white locks with a skull-cap which he drew from one of the pockets of his kaftan. His son cast a rather nervous glance at the door of the adjoining room.
"Thank God it's over," replied the old man, "and I am here at last where I'll find some rest. Ai! It was a hard ordeal, that voyage, and at one time I thought I should not live to see its end; but God be thanked, God be thanked: and you?" he asked, "how goes it with you?"
"As you see,"—and Simon indicated with a sweep of the hand the bourgeois splendor of his domicile. His cheeks contracted in a broad self-satisfied smile, he leaned back pompously in his cushioned chair and tapped the carpet with his foot.
"And your wife?" asked the old man, "Where is she?"
"Oh! she'll be here in a moment." Simon replied, again glancing toward the curtained door.
Then he questioned his father about various people and places in Russia that he still remembered, and but for his frequent glances toward the curtained door, he seemed to be highly interested in the people and places of his old town.
"And have they already mended the roof of the old synagogue, so that an rainy days—"
Just then the curtains parted. Simon stopped short and rose from his chair.
A young woman with delicate features and large blue eyes appeared, dressed in a loose morning gown, with open neck and sleeves reaching to the elbows.
"My wife," said Simon turning to his father. Mrs. Levinson advanced, her lips upturned in a smile, and extended to Reb Leib a small long-fingered hand which the old man took rather nervously. He looked at his daughtre-in-law and his face expressed wonder and hesitancy.