The Rise of David Levinsky
by
Abraham Cahan
SOMETIMES, when I think of my past in a superficial, casualway, the metamorphosis I have gone through strikes me as nothingshort of a miracle. I was born and reared in the lowest depths ofpoverty and I arrived in America—in 1885—with four cents in mypocket. I am now worth more than two million dollars andrecognized as one of the two or three leading men in thecloak-and-suit trade in the United States. And yet when I take alook at my inner identity it impresses me as being precisely thesame as it was thirty or forty years ago. My present station, power,the amount of worldly happiness at my command, and the rest ofit, seem to be devoid of significance.
When I was young I used to think that middle-aged people recalledtheir youth as something seen through a haze. I know better now.Life is much shorter than I imagined it to be. The last years that Ispent in my native land and my first years in America come backto me with the distinctness of yesterday. Indeed, I have a betterrecollection of many a trifle of my childhood days than I have ofsome important things that occurred to me recently. I have a goodmemory for faces, but I am apt to recognize people I have notseen for a quarter of a century more readily than I do some I usedto know only a few years ago.
I love to brood over my youth. The dearest days in one's life arethose that seem very far and very near at once. My wretchedboyhood appeals to me as a sick child does to its mother.
I was born in Antomir, in the Northwestern Region, Russia, in1865. All I remember of my father is his tawny beard, a hugeyellow apple he once gave me at the gate of an orchard where hewas employed as watchman, and the candle which burned at hishead his body lay under a white shroud on the floor. I was lessthan three years old when he died, so my mother would carry meto the synagogue in her arms to have somebody say the Prayer forthe Dead with me. I was unable fully to realize the meaning of theceremony, of course, but its solemnity and pathos were notaltogether lost upon me. There is a streak of sadness in the bloodof my race. Very likely it is of Oriental origin. If it is, it has beenamply nourished by many centuries of persecution.
Left to her own resources, my mother strove to support herself andme by peddling pea mush or doing odds and ends of jobs. She hadto struggle hard for our scanty livelihood and her trials andloneliness came home to me at an early period.
I was her all in all, though she never poured over me those torrentsof senseless rhapsody which I heard other Jewish mothers showerover their children. The only words of endearment I often heardfrom her were, "My little bean," and, "My comfort." Sometimes,when she seemed to be crushed by the miseries of her life, shewould call me, "My poor little orphan." Otherwise it was, "Comehere, my comfort," "Are you hungry, my little bean?" or, "You area silly little dear, my comfort." These words of hers and thesonorous contralto in whic