Yekl | Page 8

bee 'fraid. Gu right aheat an' getch you partner!" Jake went on
yelling right and left. "Don' be 'shamed, Mish Cohen. Dansh mit dot
gentlemarn!" he said, as he unceremoniously encircled Miss Cohen's
waist with "dot gentlemarn's" arm. "Cholly! vot's de madder mitch you?
You do hop like a Cossack, as true as I am a Jew," he added, indulging
in a momentary lapse into Yiddish. English was the official language of
the academy, where it was broken and mispronounced in as many
different ways as there were Yiddish dialects represented in that
institution. "Dot'sh de vay, look!" With which Jake seized from Charley
a lanky fourteen-year-old Miss Jacobs, and proceeded to set an example
of correct waltzing, much to the unconcealed delight of the girl, who let
her head rest on his breast with an air of reverential gratitude and bliss,
and to the embarrassment of her cavalier, who looked at the evolutions
of Jake's feet without seeing.
Presently Jake was beckoned away to a corner by Joe, where upon Miss
Jacobs, looking daggers at the little professor, sulked off to a distant
seat.

"Dzake, do me a faver; hask Mamie to gib dot feller a couple a
dantzes," Joe said imploringly, pointing to an ungainly young man who
was timidly viewing the pandemonium-like spectacle from the further
end of the "gent's bench." "I hasked 'er myself, but se don' vonted. He's
a beesness man, you 'destan', an' he kan a lot o' fellers an' I vonted
make him satetzfiet."
"Dot monkey?" said Jake. "Vot you talkin' aboyt! She vouldn't lishn to
me neider, honesht."
"Say dot you don' vonted and dot's ull."
"Alla right; I'm goin' to ashk her, but I know it vouldn't be of naw
used."
"Never mm, you hask 'er foist. You knaw se vouldn't refuse you!" Joe
urged, with a knowing grin.
"Hoy much vill you bet she will refushe shaw?" Jake rejoined with
insincere vehemence, as he whipped out a handful of change.
"Vot kin' foon a man you are! Ulleways like to bet!" said Joe,
deprecatingly. "'F cuss it depend mit vot kin' a mout' you vill hask, you
'destan'?"
"By gum, Jaw! Vot you take me for? Ven I shay I ashk, I ashk. You
knaw I don' like no monkey beeshnesh. Ven I promish anytink I do it
shquare, dot'sh a kin' a man I am!" And once more protesting his firm
conviction that Mamie would disregard his request, he started to prove
that she would not.
He had to traverse nearly the entire length of the hall, and,
notwithstanding that he was compelled to steer clear of the dancers, he
contrived to effect the passage at the swellest of his gaits, which means
that he jauntily bobbed and lurched, after the manner of a blacksmith
tugging at the bellows, and held up his enormous bullet head as if he
were bidding defiance to the whole world. Finally he paused in front of
a girl with a superabundance of pitch-black side bangs and with a pert,

ill-natured, pretty face of the most strikingly Semitic cast in the whole
gathering. She looked twenty-three or more, was inclined to plumpness,
and her shrewd deep dark eyes gleamed out of a warm gipsy
complexion. Jake found her seated in a fatigued attitude on a chair near
the piano.
"Good-evenig, Mamie!" he said, bowing with mock gallantry.
"Rats!"
"Shay, Mamie, give dot feller a tvisht, vill you?"
"Dot slob again? Joe must tink if you ask me I'll get scared, ain't it? Go
and tell him he is too fresh," she said with a contemptuous grimace.
Like the majority of the girls of the academy, Mamie's English was a
much nearer approach to a justification of its name than the gibberish
spoken by the men.
Jake felt routed; but he put a bold face on it and broke out with studied
resentment:
"Vot you kickin' aboyt, anyhoy? Jaw don' mean notin' at ull. If you don'
vonted never min', an' dot'sh ull. It don' cut a figger, shee?" And he
feignedly turned to go.
"Look how kvick he gets excited!" she said, surrenderingly. "I ain't get
ekshitet at ull; but vot'sh de used a makin' monkey beesnesh?" he
retorted with triumphant acerbity.
"You are a monkey you'self," she returned with a playful pout.
The compliment was acknowledged by one of Jake's blandest grins.
"An' you are a monkey from monkeyland," he said. "Vill you dansh mit
dot feller?"
"Rats! Vot vill you give me?"
"Vot should I give you?" he asked impatiently.

"Vill you treat?"
"Treat? Ger--rr oyt!" he replied with a sweeping kick at space.
"Den I von't dance."
"Alla right. I'll treat you mit a coupel a waltch."
"Is dot so? You must really tink I am swooning to dance vit you," she
said, dividing