THE EINHORNS
631
time, talkative, clowning, classical, philosophical, homiletic, corny,
passing around French poses and imitation turds from the Clark
Street novelty stores, pornographic Katzenjammers and Somebody's
Stenog, teasing with young Lollie Fewter who was fresh up from
the coal-fields, that girl with her green eyes from which she didn't
try
to keep the hotness, and her freckled bust presented to the gather–
ing of men she came among with her waxing rags and the soft
shake of her gait. Yea, Einhorn, careful of his perch, with dead legs,
and yet denying in your teeth he was different from other men. He
never minded talking about his paralysis; on the contrary, some–
times he would boast of it as a thing he had overcome, in the manner
of a successful businessman who tells you of the farm poverty of
his
boyhood. Nor did he overlook any chance to exploit it. To a
mailing list got together from houses that 50ld wheel-chairs, braces
and appliances, he sent out a mimeographed paper called
The
S
hut–
In.
Two pages of notices and essays, sentimental bits cribbed from
Elbert Hubbard's Scrapbook,
tags from
Thanatopsis.
... "Not like the
slave scourged to his quarry" but like a noble, stoical Greek; or from
Whittier: "Prince thou art, the grown up man / Only is Republican,"
and other such sources. "Build thee more stately mansions,
0
my
soul!" The third page was reserved for readers' letters. This thing–
I put it out on the mimeograph and stapled and carried it to the
post office- gave me the creeps once in a while, uneasy flesh around
the neck. But he spoke of it as a service to shut-ins. It was a help to
him as well; it brought in considerable insurance business, for he
signed himself, "William Einhorn, a neighborhood broker," and
various companies paid the costs. Like Grandma Lausch again,
he knew how to use large institutions. He had an important bearing
with their representatives--clabber-faced, with his intelligent bit of
mustache and shrewd action of his dark eyes, chicken-winged arms
at rest. On which he wore sleeve-garters--another piece of feminine
apparel. He tried to maneuver various insurance companies into
competitive bidding to increase his commissions.
Many repeated pressures with the same effect as one strong
blow, that was his method, he said, and it was his great pride that
he knew how to use the means contributed by the age to connive
as ably as anyone else; when in a not so advanced time he'd have
been mummy-handled in a hut or somebody might have had to
