Yekl | Page 7

the first floor of a five-story house built for large
sweatshops, and until recently it had served its original purpose as
faithfully as the four upper floors, which were still the daily scenes of
feverish industry. At the further end of the room there was now a
marble soda fountain in charge of an unkempt boy. A stocky young
man with a black entanglement of coarse curly hair was bustling about
among the dancers. Now and then he would pause with his eyes bent
upon some two pairs of feet, and fall to clapping time and drawling out
in a preoccupied sing-song: "Von, two, tree! Leeft you' feet! Don' so
kvick--sloy, sloy! Von, two, tree, von, two, tree!" This was Professor
Peltner himself, whose curly hair, by the way, had more to do with the
success of his institution than his stumpy legs, which, according to the
unanimous dictum of his male pupils, moved about "like a regely pair
of bears."
The throng showed but a very scant sprinkling of plump cheeks and
shapely figures in a multitude of haggard faces and flacid forms. Nearly
all were in their workaday clothes, very few of the men sporting a
wilted white shirt front. And while the general effect of the
kaleidoscope was one of boisterous hilarity, many of the individual
couples somehow had the air of being engaged in hard toil rather than
as if they were dancing for amusement. The faces of some of these bore
a wondering martyrlike expression, as who should say, "What have we
done to be knocked about in this manner?" For the rest, there were all

sorts of attitudes and miens in the whirling crowd. One young fellow,
for example, seemed to be threatening vengeance to the ceiling, while
his partner was all but exultantly exclaiming: "Lord of the universe!
What a world this be!" Another maiden looked as if she kept
murmuring, "You don't say!" whereas her cavalier mutely ejaculated,
"Glad to try my best, your noble birth!"--after the fashion of a Russian
soldier.
The prevailing stature of the assemblage was rather below medium.
This does not include the dozen or two of undergrown lasses of
fourteen or thirteen who had come surreptitiously, and--to allay the
suspicion of their mothers--in their white aprons. They accordingly had
only these articles to check at the hat box, and hence the nickname of
"apron-check ladies," by which this truant contingent was known at
Joe's academy. So that as Jake now stood in the doorway with an
orphaned collar button glistening out of the band of his collarless shirt
front and an affected expression of ennui overshadowing his face, his
strapping figure towered over the circling throng before him. He was
immediately noticed and became the target for hellos, smiles, winks,
and all manner of pleasantry: "Vot you stand like dot? You vont to loin
dantz? or "You a detectiff?" or "You vont a job?" or, again, "Is it hot
anawfffor you?" To all of which Jake returned an invariable "Yep!"
each time resuming his bored mien.
As he thus gazed at the dancers, a feeling of envy came over him.
"Look at them!" he said to himself begrudgingly. "How merry they are!
Such shnoozes, they can hardly set a foot well, and yet they are free,
while I am a married man. But wait till you get married, too," he
prospectively avenged himself on Joe's pupils; "we shall see how you
will then dance and jump!"
Presently a wave of Joe's hand brought the music and the trampling to a
pause. The girls at once took their seats on the "ladies' bench," while
the bulk of the men retired to the side reserved for "gents only." Several
apparent post-graduates nonchalantly overstepped the boundary line,
and, nothing daunted by the professor's repeated "Zents to de right an'
ladess to the left!" unrestrainedly kept their girls chuckling. At all

events, Joe soon desisted, his attention being diverted by the soda
department of his business. "Sawda!" he sang out. "Ull kin's! Sam, you
ought ashamed you'selv; vy don'tz you treat you lada?"
In the meantime Jake was the center of a growing bevy of both sexes.
He refused to unbend and to enter into their facetious mood, and his
morose air became the topic of their persiflage.
By-and-by Joe came scuttling up to his side. "Goot-evenig, Dzake!" he
greeted him; "I didn't seen you at ull! Say, Dzake, I'll take care dis site
an' you take care dot site--ull right?"
"Alla right!" Jake responded gruffly. "Gentsh, getch you partnesh,
hawrry up!" he commanded in another instant.
The sentence was echoed by the dancing master, who then blew on his
whistle a prolonged shrill warble, and once again the floor was set
straining under some two hundred pounding, gliding, or scraping feet.
"Don'