Still,
collectively, as an abstract reminder of their sex, they flavored my
sordid environment with poetry
CHAPTER III THE majority of the students at the College of the
City of New York was already made up of Jewish boys, mostly
from the tenement-houses. One such student often called at the
cloak-shop in which I was employed, and in which his father--a
tough-looking fellow with a sandy beard, a former teamster--was
one of the pressers. A classmate of this boy was supported by an
aunt, a spinster who made good wages as a bunch-maker in a
cigar-factory.
To make an educated man of her nephew was the great ambition
of her life.
All this made me feel as though I were bound to that college with
the ties of kinship. Two of my other shopmates had sons at high
school. The East Side was full of poor Jews--wage-earners,
peddlers, grocers, salesmen, insurance agents--who would beggar
themselves to give their children a liberal education. Then, too,
thousands of our working-men attended public evening school,
while many others took lessons at home.
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