Crassly illiterate save for his ability to read some Hebrew, without
knowing the meaning of the words, he enjoyed a considerable
degree of native intellectual alertness, and in his crude, untutored
way was a thinker
One evening he took to quizzing me on my plans, partly in Yiddish
and partly in broken English, which he uttered with a strong
Cockney accent, a relic of the several years he had spent in
London.
"And what will you do after you finish (he pronounced it
"fiendish") college?" he inquired, with a touch of derision
"I shall take up some higher things," I rejoined, reluctantly
"And what do you call 'higher things'?" he pursued in his quizzical,
browbeating way. "Are you going to be a philosopher?"
"Yes, I shall be a doctor of philosophy," I answered, frostily
"What's that? You want to be both a doctor and a philosopher? But
you know the saying, 'Many trades--few blessings.'"
"I am not going to be a doctor and a philosopher, but a doctor of
philosophy," I said, with a sneer
"And how much will you make?"
"Oh, let him alone, Meyer," his mother intervened.
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