Saul Bellows
THE EINHORNS*
William Einhorn was the first superior man I knew. He
had a brain and many enterprises, real directing power, philosophical
capacity, and if I were methodical enough to take thought before
an important and practical decision and
also
(N.B.) if I were really
his disciple and not what I am, I'd ask myself, after, "What would
Caesar suffer in this case?" "What would Machiavelli advise or
Ulysses do?"-"What would Einhorn think?" I'm not kidding when I
enter Einhorn in this eminent list.
It
was him that I knew, and what
I understand of them I first understood in
him.
Unless you want
to say that we're at the dwarf end of all times and mere children
whose only share in grandeur is like a boy's share in fairy-tale kings,
beings of a different kind from times better and stronger than ours.
But
if
we're comparing men and men, not men and children or men
and demigods, which is just what would please Caesar among us
teeming democrats, and if we don't have any special wish to abdicate
into some different, lower form of existence out of shame of our
defects before the golden faces of these .and other old-time men,
then I have the right to praise Einhorn and not care about smiles of
derogation from those who think the race no longer has in any
important degree the traits we honor in these fabulous names. But I
don't want to be pushed into exaggeration by such opinion, which
is the opinion of students who, at all ages, feel their boyishness when
they confront the past.
I went to work for Einhorn while I was a high-school junior, not
long before the great crash, during the Hoover administration, when
Einhorn was still a wealthy man, though I don't believe he was ever
so rich as he later claimed, and I stayed on with him after he had
lost most of his property. Then, actually, was when I became es-
*
A self-contained chapter from
The Life of Augie March
to be published
next year by the Viking Press.
