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Updated: June 1, 2025
Lewis had lain exposed on the pavement, and for three hours Dan had sat beside them keeping guard. From every tenement window inquisitive eyes watched each stage of the proceeding, and voluble tongues discussed every phase of the situation. Every one who passed, from Mr. Lavinski, with a pile of pants on his head, to little Rosy Snawdor, stopped to take a look at him and to ask questions.
When Ikey came from night school, he was never asked to help in the work, no matter how much his help was needed. He was always given the seat by the table nearest the lamp, and his father himself cleared a place for his books. "Ikey gits the education," Mr. Lavinski would say, with a proud smile. "The Rabbi says he is the smartest boy in the class. He takes prizes over big boys.
Illness in the abode of another has a romantic flavor that home-grown maladies lack. When Dr. Adair and Isaac Lavinski made their rounds at nine o'clock, they found Nance bending over a steaming tub, washing out a heavy comfort. "What are you doing here?" demanded Isaac in stern surprise. "Manicuring my finger-nails," she said, with an impudent grin, as she straightened her tired shoulders.
After the children had been put to bed and Nance had cried over the smallest nightgown, no longer needed, she slipped down to the second floor and, pausing before the door behind which the sewing-machines were always whirring, gave a peculiar whistle. It was a whistle possible only to a person who boasted the absence of a front tooth, and it brought Ike Lavinski promptly to the door.
At the direction of this third order Lavinski died suddenly in the Hungarian House of Parliament, Herr Krettingen was involved in a duel, the result of which was assured beforehand, and Reginald Brott, the great English statesman, was ruined and disgraced. I myself have just narrowly escaped death at his hands, and in my place my servant has been driven to death.
She'll slip the children in when you ain't looking and go out herself and see the neighbors. Don't you see that somebody's got to be here that understands?" "The girl's right, Lavinski," said Dr. Adair. "She knows the ropes here, and can be of great service to us. The nurse downstairs can't begin to do it all. Now let us have a look at the patient." Little Mr. Snawdor was hardly worth looking at.
Even when Fidy Yager, who "wasn't all there," and who, according to her mother, had "a fit a minute," was carried away to the pest-house, nobody was particularly alarmed. But when, twenty-four hours later, Mr. Snawdor and one of the Lavinski helpers came down with it, the alley began to look serious, and Mrs. Snawdor sent for Nance.
Everything that skill and money could do, was done to restore him to health and sanity. But he saw only the sordid sights he had been seeing for the past fourteen years; he heard only the sounds to which his old ears had become accustomed. "You would better move my cot, Nancy," he would say, plucking at the silken coverlid. "They are scrubbing the floor up in the Lavinski flat.
On one corner of the table, between two towering piles of pants, were the remains of the last meal, black bread, potatoes, and pickled herring. Under two swinging kerosene lamps, six women with sleeves rolled up and necks bared, bent over whirring machines, while Mr. Lavinski knelt on the floor tying the finished garments into huge bundles.
Snawdor shook her head impatiently. "I didn't, an' I ain't goin' to! That there Ike Lavinski ain't goin' to run me! He took my Fidy off to that there pest-house where I bet they operate her. He'll pay up fer this, you see if he don't!" She began to cry, but as Nance was too much occupied to give audience to her grief, she betook herself to the first floor to assist in the care of Mrs. Smelts.
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