PARTISAN REVIEW
"A dollar-dollar fifty. A dollar fifty, " the shoemaker said.
At once he felt bad, for he usually charged two twenty-five for
this kind of job. Either he should have asked the regular price or done
the work for nothing.
Later, as he entered the store, he was startled by a violent clang–
ing .and looked up to see Sobel pounding with all his strength upon
the naked last. It broke, the iron banging against the floor and hitting
with a thump against the wall, but before the enraged shoemaker
could cry out, the assistant had torn his hat and coat from the hook
and rushed out into the snow.
So Feld, who had looked forward to anticipating how it would
go with his daughter and Max, instead had a great worry on his
mind. Without his temperamental assistant he was a lost man, espe–
cially since it was years now that he had carried the store alone. The
shoemaker had for an age suffered from a heart condition that threat–
ened collapse if he dared exert himself; and five years ago, after an
attack, it had appeared as though he would have either to sacrifice
his business upon the auction block and live on a pittance thereafter,
or put himself at the mercy of some unscrupulous employee who would
in the end probably ruin him. But just at the moment of his darkest
despair, this Polish refugee, Sobel, appeared one night from the
street and begged for work. He was a stocky man, poorly dressed, with
a bald head that had once been blond, a severely plain face and soft
blue eyes prone to tears over the sad books he read, a young man but
old-no one would have guessed thirty. Though he confessed he knew
nothing of shoemaking, he said he was apt and would work for a very
little if Feld taught him the trade. Thinking that with, after all, a
landsman,
he would have less to fear than with a complete stranger,
Feld took him on and within six weeks the refugee rebuilt as good a
shoe as he, and not long thereafter expertly ran the business for the
thoroughly relieved shoemaker.
Feld could trust him with anything and did, frequently going
home after an hour at the store and leaving all the money in the till,
knowing Sobel would guard every cent of it. The amazing thing was
that he demanded so little. His wants were few; in money he was
not interested-in nothing but books it seemed- which he one by
one lent to Miriam, together with his profuse, queer written com-
