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"Please assure your daughter that it is not to force my attentions upon her that I am asking for an interview. All I want is to try to convince her that her image of me is, spiritually speaking, not a good likeness." Two days passed. In the morning of the third I received a telephone-call from Tevkin, asking to meet me.
"And it was about her mother that he wrote them! Somebody told me on the veranda that her name was Miss Tevkin. I did think the name sounded familiar, but I could not locate it." The discovery stirred me inordinately. I was palpitating with reminiscent interest and with a novel interest in the beautiful girl who had just stood by my side
Of late years, however that is, since Tevkin had espoused the cause of Zionism or nationalism he had insisted on the Passover feast every year. He contended that to him it was not a religious ceremony, but merely a "national custom," but about this his children were beginning to have their doubts. It seemed to them that the older their father grew the less sure he was of his free thought.
"Some day they'll find out their mistake." The hot months set in. The family nominally moved to Rockaway Beach for the season and my visits were suspended. Nominally, because Elsie and the boys and old Tevkin himself slept in the Harlem house more often than in their summer home.
He advised me concerning trains to Tannersville, and then we passed to the hotel business and mutual acquaintances Presently Miss Tevkin, apparently on her way from her room, paused at the counter, by my side, to leave her key.
Levinsky is said to be worth a million, you know." "She's always joking," I said, awkwardly, as we resumed our walk Miss Tevkin made no answer, but I felt that Auntie Yetta's joke had made a disagreeable impression on her. I sought to efface it by a humorous sketch of Auntie Yetta, and seemed to be successful The village was astir.
They were about Doctor Rachaeles, a famous Hebrew writer who practised medicine in Odessa, and his son-in-law, a poet named Abraham Tevkin. Doctor Rachaeles's daughter was a celebrated beauty and the poet's courtship of her had been in the form of a long series of passionate letters addressed, not to his lady-love, but to her father. This love-story made a strong impression on me.
Tevkin," I said, and began with a partial lie calculated to bribe him: "I became interested in her because I heard that she was your daughter, and afterward, when I had returned to the city, I made it my business to go to the library and to read your works. My enthusiasm for your writings is genuine, however, I assure you, Mr. Tevkin.
"It seems an age since they were written," he said, in confusion. "Those were different days." We sat down at a secluded table. To propitiate the proprietor and the waiter I ordered hot cheese-cakes. I offered to order something for Tevkin, but he declined, and he ordered a glass of tea, with the tacit understanding that he was to pay for it himself
As to Anna, Sasha, and George, each of them had his or her socialism "diluted" with some species of nationalism, so they were here as a matter of principle, their theory being that the Passover feast was one of the things that emphasized the unity of the Jews of all countries. But even they, and even Tevkin himself, treated it all partly as a joke.
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