A DANGLING MAN
431
urged me to follow hi.s example and marry a wealthy woman. He
was even more disappointed when, instead of accepting the position
he offered me in his business,
r
took what to him seemed a menial job
at Inter American. He called me a fool, and for nearly a year we
did not see each other. Then he and Iva arranged a reconciliation.
We have been on fairly good terms since, however strange he thinks
my choice of occupation and my ways. He tries not to disapprove of
me too openly; but he has never learned that I resent his way of ques·
tioning me when we meet. He is often tactless and sometimes rude.
For some reason, he has not been able to accept the fact that
it
is
possible for a member of his family to live on so little. "Haven't
the} given you a raise yet? How much are you making? Well, do
you need money?" I have never accepted any.
Now that I have been out of work since May, he has become more
pressing. Several times he has sent me checks for large arnpunts which
I have returned immediately. The last time this happened he said,
"I'd
take it, by golly.
I
wouldn't be so proud and stiff-necked. Oh,
no, not brother Amos. Someday you just try offering me money aiJd
see if I pass it up." A month ago when we vWted him (he invites
us for meals frequently thinking, presumably, that we do not get
enough to eat) he made such a scene when I refused to take some
clothes he was thrusting on me that Iva at last whispered pleadingly,
"Take it, Joseph, take the stuff!" and I gave in.
Dolly, my sister-in-law, is a pretty woman, still slender, large
bosomed, but attractively so, dark, with fine hair combed upward in a
way designed to mjake the most of her neck. She has a very graceful
neck; I have always admired it. It is one of the traits my fifteen-year–
old niece Etta has inherited. To me it has always been one of the
exquisite characteristics of feminity; I can well understand why it pro–
voked the prophet Isaiah to utter the words: "Because the daughters of
Zion are haughty and walk with stretched forth necks, walking and
mincing as they go and making a tinkling with their feet, therefore
will the Lord smite with a scab the crown of the head of the daughters
of Zion and the Lord will discover their secret parts." It astonishes me
that the same association should be in both our minds, though with a
different cast. Certainly it is the "stretched forth necks" or delicacy in
conjunction with the rugged ancient machinery of procreation that
have for a long time been identified in
mty
imagination with feminine
nature. Here the parallel ends, for I am the very opposite of vindic–
tive in regard to this duality and have, indeed, found pleasure in
recognizing it.
My niece and I are not on good terms; there is a long-standing
antagonism between us. Ours was not a rich family. Amos tells
frequently how he struggled, how badly he was dressed as a boy, how
little my father could give him. And he and Dolly have brought Etta
