Local Color

She walked in, unannounced, on the assembled Finkelsteins and the instant she crossed the threshold all there, regardless of age, somehow realised that they were hers to do with as she pleased; realised that in her efficient hands they would be but as plastic clay between the fingers of the moulder. Everywhere she went Miss Sleybells conveyed this feeling. It travelled with her even as her aura. She could walk through a crowded street, pausing not and looking neither to the right nor the left and yet leave behind her, in the minds of those among whom she had passed, the firm conviction that she had taken this particular street under her direct management and control. Nay more. She could traverse a stretch of empty landscape and even after she was gone, inanimate nature would somehow bear the impress of her dominance as though thereafter the Original Creator of that landscape would be relieved of all responsibility in connection with its conduct, maintenance and development. Were there more like her in this hemisphere, woman would not now be asking for the suffrage. But man would be.

A variety of causes had actuated her in going into settlement work. One half the world didn’t know how the other half lived. Miss Sleybells meant to find out. Already she had written a considerable number of magazine articles embodying the fruits of her observations and deductions among the poor. Eventually, from the rich stores of her knowledge she meant to draw material for a novel. This novel would be in the style of the best work of Gorky, only stronger and more vivid than Gorky, and infinitely rich in its analytical appraisals of character. One who knew Miss Sleybells might not doubt of this. If she had had a middle name, her middle name would have been Thoroughness.

Such, in brief, was the ardent and enthusiastic woman who invaded the Finkelstein citadel, surprising its resident garrison in the middle of their comfortable untidiness and causing them instantly and unconditionally to capitulate before her onslaught. She looked about her, choosing for her initial attack the point of least resistance. It was the second to the youngest Finkelstein, Lena by name, engaged at the moment in regaling her infantile palate with a mid-forenoon snack consisting of a large, sea-green dill pickle and a rather speckly overripe banana. By Mrs. Finkelstein’s standards these two articles constituted a well-balanced food ration. If the banana was soft and spotty, the pickle certainly was firm and in the immature hands of Lena practically indestructible. Besides, the results spoke for themselves. Lena liked her dill pickle and her banana; and she thrived on them.

Miss Sleybells looked and said: “Tut! Tut!” And with these words she deprived the startled and indignant child of both those treasures. That, however, was merely the beginning. She fell to then in earnest – most expeditiously and painstakingly fell to. From a neighbouring lady, more addicted to the healthful exercise of sweeping than Mamma Finkelstein was, she commandeered the use of a broom; also a mop. She heated water to the boiling point upon the rickety stove. She gave little Miriam a quarter and sent the child forth to buy two kinds of soap – human and laundry. Following this things ensued with a dizzying celerity.

At the outset, Miss Sleybells completely upset Mamma Finkelstein’s domestic arrangements; or, rather, she disturbed and disarranged them, for to have them upset was Mamma Finkelstein’s notion of having them properly bestowed. She ferreted out from beneath beds the stored accumulations of months. She pried open the windows, admitting the chill air of winter in swift gusts. She swept, she dusted, and with suds she mopped the floor and stayed not her hand. She herded the abashed Finkelsteins into a corner, only to drive them out again before the strokes of broom and mop and dust rag, all the while tut-tutting like a high-powered dynamo.

This done, she took individual after individual in hand for cutaneal renovation. While Mamma Finkelstein hovered timorously by, stricken with a great and voiceless apprehension, Miss Sleybells took scissors and snipped the children out of their flannel swaddlings into which they had so carefully been sewn but a short six weeks before. As fast as she denuded a submissive form she bathed it soapily, set it before the fire to dry out, and seized, with moist, firm grasp, upon another unresisting victim. I indulge in no cheap effort at punning but speak the sober fact when I say Miss Godiva Sleybells that day proved herself a veritable Little Sister of the Pore.

Presently from the group of small naked figures squatted by the stove a sound of sneezing arose. The baby began it and the baby’s example was contagious. Soon these youthful Finkelsteins who had undergone the water ordeal, as contradistinguished from those who had not yet undergone it, were going off with sneezes at regular half-minute intervals, like so many little pink cuckoo clocks.

Behind Miss Sleybells’ indomitable back, then, Mamma Finkelstein wrung her hands in mute and helpless distress. But no word of protest did she utter. For one thing, her knowledge of the English language practically was negligible. For another thing, she dared not speak even had she had the words. To Mamma Finkelstein, Miss Sleybells personified the visible authority of the state – that same dread force which, in the guise of truant officers, sought to drag Miriam away to public school when her services were required for nursing duties; and which, again, wearing brass and blue, harried Solly from his wood-collecting enterprises.

Starting with the youngest and progressing toward the top, Miss Sleybells bathed up the line as far as the twins before she stopped. She stopped there for lack of living material.

Solly, opportunely, had fled into hiding, and with him Miriam, his sister. Anyhow, Miss Sleybells reflected, as she looked about her at the surroundings, now all cleansed and dampish, all lathered and purged, that she had done a great deal for one day – a very great deal. Still, much remained undone.

Upon leaving, she gave Mamma Finkelstein express and explicit commands regarding the conduct of her home, speaking with especial reference to fresh air, ablutions and diet. By nods and by gestures Mamma Finkelstein pledged obedience, without sensing in the smallest degree what she was promising to do. Then Miss Sleybells announced that she would return on the morrow, and departed. Mamma Finkelstein understood that part, at least, and her wigged head sank in her hands. Papa Finkelstein, arriving home shortly before dark, sustained a hard shock. For a minute he almost thought he must have got into the wrong flat.

Miss Godiva Sleybells was as good as her word; in fact, better. She did come back the next day and on many days thereafter, coming to correct, to admonish, to renovate, to set erring feet upon the properest way, to scold poor Mamma Finkelstein for her constantly recurrent backslidings from the paths of domestic duty. Nearly always she came at unexpected intervals; and, having come, she entered always without knocking. Mamma Finkelstein fell into the habit of hearkening fearsomely for the sound of footsteps in the hall without.

Being warned by an approaching resolute tread, betokening flat, low heels and broad, sensible soles, she would drop whichever child she happened to be mothering at that moment and fly about in a perfect frenzy of purposeless activity, snatching up things, casting them aside, rattling kitchen pans, shoving loose articles – and nearly everything she owned was loose – out of sight. The artifice was a transparent one at best. Assuredly it never deceived Miss Godiva Sleybells. With shiftlessness she had no patience. Shiftlessness was one of several thousand things with which she had no patience.

It was on the occasion of her second visit that Miss Sleybells brought along and bestowed upon Mamma Finkelstein a bound volume dealing with the proper care of infants, and bade her consult its pages. This gift Mamma Finkelstein put to usage, but not the usage the donor had devised for it. She gave it to the next-to-the-youngest baby, who was teething, to cut her little milk teeth upon. The sharp corners proved soothing to the feverish gums of Lena; but, under constant and well-irrigated mumblings, the red dye on the covers came off, resulting in an ensanguined appearance of Lena’s lips and a sharp attack of colic elsewhere in Lena. Mamma Finkelstein had suspected evil lurked within the volume; now she was certain dangers abode in its outer casings. She kindled a fire with it.

It was on the occasion of her third visit that Miss Sleybells brought with her two co-labourers who listened intently and took notes while their guide discoursed upon the subject of the Finkelstein family’s domestic and hygienic shortcomings, she speaking with the utmost candour and just as frankly as though her living topics had not been present at the time.

It was following the occasion of her fourth visit that Miss Godiva prepared and read to a company of her associates in the Neighbourhood House a paper dealing with her observations in this particular quarter. In the course of her reading she referred variously to the collective Finkelsteins as a charge, a problem, a question, an enigma and a noteworthy case.

For all her lack of acquaintanceship with the language, it is possible that Mamma Finkelstein, in her dim, inarticulate way, comprehended something of Miss Godiva’s attitude toward her. Perhaps she would have preferred to be regarded not as a problem but occasionally as a person. Perhaps she craved inwardly for those vanished days of comparative privacy and unlimited disorderliness within the two rooms she called her home. Her situation may have been miserable then. Miss Sleybells said so. But what matters misery if its victims mistake it for happiness?

But since Mrs. Finkelstein never by act or sign or look betrayed her feelings, whatsoever they may have been, it is not for me or for you to assume that she harboured resentment. She was a daughter of a tribe bitted and bridled to silent endurance; of a people girthed and saddled through the centuries to the uncomplaining bearing of their burdens.

Meantime Mrs. F. Fodderwood Bass was by no means slack in well-doing. As regards the younger Finkelsteins particularly, her alms-deeds were many. She took them under her silken wings. At intervals she arrived, rustling, to confer advice and other things more material and therefore more welcome. She spoke of the Finkelsteins as her Pet Charities.

Among the younger inmates of the flat her visits were by no means distasteful. Quite aside from the gifts she brought, the richness of the clothes she wore appealed to a heritage of their ancestry that was in them; they had a natural taste and appreciation for fabrics. But Papa Finkelstein found it impossible to cure himself of his earlier suspicions. He remembered what he remembered, and remained dubious.

For all that, Mrs. F. Fodderwood Bass presently aimed her batteries of benevolence upon him. It was like this: She had aided conspicuously in a Bundle Day movement. Someone else, I believe, originated the idea, but Mrs. F. Fodderwood Bass practically took it over as soon as she heard about it. Through the daily press an appeal was made to the well-to-do of the community that they should assemble into parcels their cast-off garments for distribution among the poor. The police force, the fire department, the express companies and the newspapers – all were to cooperate in gathering up such parcels and depositing them at a designated central station, where the objects of this bounty on a given date might be outfitted.

The notion caught the fancy and became popular. It assumed a scope beyond the dream horizon of its creator and of the legatees of the notion; for in itself it had four elements that inevitably appeal to the New York heart: first, generosity, for New York may be thoughtless, but it is vastly generous underneath its face-paint; second, novelty; third, size; and fourth, notoriety. But the greatest of these is notoriety.

The effects were magnificently far-reaching. Thousands made contributions; thousands of others profited thereby. Many a poor Bowery “dinner waiter,” owning merely a greasy short jacket and one paper-bosomed shirt, and compelled therefore to serve in some quick order place for his food and nothing else, secured, without cost, the dress suit of his visions and was in consequence enabled to get a regular job, in a regular restaurant, with regular pay and regular tips. Many a shivering derelict got a warm if threadbare overcoat to cover him. Many a half-clad child repaired to a big building and there selected whole garments suitable to his or her size, if not to his or her station. And meanwhile the sponsors of the affair, including Mrs. F. Fodderwood Bass and lesser patronesses, looked on approvingly, acquiring merit by the minute and, incidentally, long reading notices in all the papers.

On the day before Bundle Day the lady called in Pike Street, timing her arrival so as to be sure of finding Papa Finkelstein in. With the aid of Miriam and Solly she explained to him her designs. He was to come to such and such an address next morning and be equipped with a wardrobe less accessibly ventilated to the eager and the nipping air of winter than the one he now possessed.

Papa Finkelstein solemnly pledged himself to be there at the appointed hour, and so she went away, well-content. Therein, however, a subtle Oriental strain of duplicity in Papa Finkelstein’s nature found play. He had no intention of having his timid sensibilities massacred before a large crowd to make a Bundle Holiday. It may have been that he feared in Mrs. F. Fodderwood Bass’ friendly overtures there was concealed a covert campaign to proselyte him away from the faith of the Fathers. It may have been that, through professional reasons, he privily deplored a movement calculated to strike so deadly a blow at the very vitals of the old-clo’ business. At any rate he did not go where she had bade him go; completely he absented himself therefrom.

It was late in the afternoon of the following day before Mrs. F. Fodderwood Bass realised that Papa Finkelstein had not yet appeared. She called to her a footman of her employ, specially detailed to attend her on this occasion, and ordered him to proceed at once to Pike Street and find her missing ward and bring him before her. Being a good footman, his expression gave no clue to his feelings. He deemed it to lie far outside the proper functions of a footman to be hunting up persons named Finkelstein; but he obeyed.

For the moment the scene must shift to Pike Street. The time is half an hour later. Partly by words, partly by wide-armed gesticulations, Papa Finkelstein explained his position in the matter, if not his private reasons.

“Is that so?” said the footman, whose name was Cassidy – Maurice J. Cassidy. He fixed a strong hand grippingly in the back of Papa Finkelstein’s collar. “Well, you listen to me, young fella! Wan way or another you’re goin’ – wit’ me, nice and peaceable or in an ambylance. You can make your own choice.”

The words possibly were confusing to the alien understanding, but the large knobby fist, which swayed to and fro an inch or so below the tip of the captive’s nose, spoke in a language that is understood of all men. Papa Finkelstein saw his way clear to accompanying Footman Cassidy. Aboard the street car, on the way uptown, several of his fellow passengers decided he must be a thief who had been caught red-handed, and said it served him right.

Arriving, he was ushered – perhaps I should say propelled – into the presence of Mrs. F. Fodderwood Bass. She greeted his appearance coosomely. Or is cooingly the right word? At any rate, she cooed her approval; she cooed beautifully, anyhow. With open pride she directed the attention of certain of her associate patronesses to the little huddled shape of Cassidy’s prisoner.

“Ah, there he is!” she said. “My Pet Charity! So improvident, so shiftless; but isn’t he just too picturesque!”

Levelling their lorgnettes on him, her friends agreed in chorus that he was very picturesque. They wondered, though, why he wriggled so.

“The dearest, gentlest little man!” continued Mrs. F. Fodderwood Bass in clear, sweet tones. “So diffident, but so grateful for everything – the poor, tattered dear! He never says a word to me when I talk to him; but by the look in his eyes I can tell he is fairly worshipping the ground I walk on.”

As if to prove the truth of what she said Papa Finkelstein’s gaze even now was directed upon the floor at her feet.

“Now, Cassidy,” went on his mistress, “you take him into one of the dressing rooms yonder and have him undress. It’s too bad nearly everything has been picked over; but we shall find something for him, I’m sure.”

Within a curtained recess Cassidy explained his meaning with threatening mien.

“Take off thim rags!” he commanded.

Rags they may have been, but Papa Finkelstein cherished them. Reluctantly he parted with them, filled with the melancholy conviction that he should see them never more. It was a true foreboding. But that was not the worst of it. Papa Finkelstein was in figure slight and of a contour difficult to drape garments upon. Moreover, it was as his benefactor had said – everything had been picked over so. Nevertheless, a selection agreeable to the lady’s ideals was finally made.

Fifteen minutes passed. At the end of those fifteen minutes Papa Finkelstein, under the menacing urgings of Footman Cassidy, made a diffident but spectacular reappearance before the Bundle Day audience. His head was bent apologetically low, so that his whiskers, spraying upon his bosom, helped to cover him. His two hands were spread flat upon his chest, hiding still more of his abashed shape. Nevertheless, it might be discerned that Papa Finkelstein wore the abandoned cream-coloured whipcords of somebody’s chauffeur – very abandoned and very cream-coloured, the whole constituting a livery, complete, from the visored cap upon his head to the leather puttees reefed about his bowed shanks.

“Now just look at him!” cried Mrs. F. Fodderwood Bass in an ecstasy. “How neat! How trim! How cosy!”

Papa Finkelstein didn’t want to be neat. He abhorred cosiness; likewise trimness. Moreover he shrunk mentally from the prospect of his homeward journey, foreseeing difficulties. There again was his intuition prophetically justified.

At the corner of Hester Street and the Bowery a skylarking group beheld him and greeted him with cries of an almost incredulous joy. By force they detained the little man, making mock of him in English and in Yiddish. The English passed over his head, but into his soul the Yiddish bit deep, leaving scars. He wrested himself free and fled to his home. His arrival there made a profound impression on Mamma Finkelstein – after she recognised him. So did his language.

Only the absolute necessity of gleaning rent money from the realms of trade drove him forth two days later from the comparative sanctuary of the inner room of his domicile. In the spirit he suffered, and in the flesh as well. Citizens en route to the Subway, on being hailed with inquiries touching on old clothes, from an undersized pedestrian attired as a chauffeur, in reduced circumstances, who had neglected to shave for a long time past, did not halt to listen. They halted to laugh and to gibe and to gird with derision. Until Papa Finkelstein had effected a trade with a compassionate but thrifty compatriot, with an utter disregard for intrinsic values exchanging what he wore for whatsoever the other might give, just so it sufficiently covered him, he felt himself to be a hissing and a byword in the highways – which he was.

And now into the tangling skeins of the Finkelstein family’s life in their relation to the charitable impulses enlisted upon their behalf – but without their consent or their approval – it is fitting to reintroduce Miss Betty Gwin. Springtime came and passed, its passage dappled for all the Finkelsteins with memory spots attesting the more or less intermittent attentions of Mrs. F. Fodderwood Bass, and the more or less constant ministrations of Miss Godiva Sleybells.

Summer came; and with the initial weeks of summer came also the time for the first of the series of annual outings conducted under the auspices of the Evening Dispatch’s Fresh Air Fund for the Children of the Poor. Yearly it was the habit of this enterprising sheet to give excursions to the beach, employing therefor a chartered steamboat and the contributions of the public.

The public mainly put up the money; the owner of the Evening Dispatch, Mr. Jason Q. Welldover, principally took the credit, for thereby, on flaunting banners and by word of speech, was his name and his fame made glorious throughout the land. As repeatedly pointed out in the editorial columns of his journal, the Little Ones of the slums were enabled, through the Generosity of This Paper, to breathe in the Life-giving Ozone of kindly Mother Ocean; to Play upon the sands; to Disport themselves in the very Lap Of Nature; returning home at eventide Rejuvenated and Happy – the phraseology and the capitalisation alike being direct quotations from the Evening Dispatch.

Since Miss Betty Gwin was on the staff of the Evening Dispatch, it was quite natural that she should take a personal pride as well as a professional interest in the success of the opening outing of the season. As suitable candidates for admission to its dragooned passenger list she thought of Miriam Finkelstein and Solly Finkelstein. She pledged herself to see that these two were included in the party. Nor did she forget it. Upon the morning of the appointed date she went personally to Pike Street, assumed custodianship of the favoured pair and, her own self, escorted them to the designated place of assemblage and transferred them into the keeping of Mr. Moe Blotch.

Mr. Blotch belonged in the Evening Dispatch’s Circulation Department. Against his will he had been drafted for service in connection with the Fresh Air Fund’s excursion. He was a rounded, heavy-set person, with the makings of a misanthrope in him. That day completed the job; after that he was a made and finished misanthrope.

While murder blazed in his eyes and kind words poured with malevolent bitterness from his lips, Mr. Blotch marshalled his small charges, to the number of several hundred, in a double file. To each he gave a small American flag, warning each, on peril of mutilation and death, to wave that flag and keep on waving it until further orders. Up at the head of the column, Prof. Washington Carter’s All-Coloured Silver Cornet Band struck up a clamorous march tune and the procession started, winding its way out of the familiar Lower East Side, across the tip of Manhattan Island, to the verge of the strange Lower West Side.

Well up in the line, side by side, marched Miriam and Solly, the twain whose fortunes we are following. Possibly from stress of joyous anticipation they shivered constantly. However, it was a damp and cloudy day, and, for early June, very raw. Even Mr. Moe Blotch, muffled as he was in a light overcoat, shivered.

The route of march led past the downtown offices of the Evening Dispatch, where, in a front window, the proprietor, Mr. Jason Q. Welldover, waited to review the parade. According to his instructions from a higher authority, Mr. Blotch now gave the signal for an outburst of appreciative cheering from the small marchers. Obeying the command, they lifted up their voices; but, doubtlessly through stage fright or lack of chorus drilling, the demonstration, considered for vocal volume, was not altogether a success. It was plaintive rather than enthusiastic. It resembled the pipings of despondent sandpipers upon a distant lea. Standing in the window, Mr. Welldover acknowledged the tribute by bowing, he then holding the pose until his staff photographers had caught him – once, twice, three times.

Half a mile more of trudging brought the little travellers to a dock above the Battery. Alongside the dock lay a steamboat so swathed in bunting and bannered inscriptions as to present the appearance of being surgically bandaged following a succession of major operations. The smokestack suggested a newly broken leg, enveloped in first-aid wrappings. The walking beam rose above a red-and-white-and-blue mass, like a sprained wrist escaping from its sling. The boiler deck was trussed from end to end; and everywhere recurred, in strikingly large letters, the names of Mr. Jason Q. Welldover and the Evening Dispatch.