He
seemed to say, "I see everything, my dear friend, and my heart
goes out to you, but how can I help you?"
His wife tried to be diplomatic
"American young people imagine they own the earth," she once
said to me, with a knowing glint in her beautiful eyes. "Some day
they'll find out their mistake."
The hot months set in. The family nominally moved to Rockaway
Beach for the season and my visits were suspended. Nominally,
because Elsie and the boys and old Tevkin himself slept in the
Harlem house more often than in their summer home. Elsie was
wrapped up in the socialist campaign, which kept her busy every
night from the middle of July to Election Day. She practically had
no vacation. Anna made arrangements to spend her brief vacation
with some of her literary friends who had a camp in Maine, but
while she was in the city she came home to her mother and Gracie
almost every evening. As for her father, whom I saw several times
during that summer, he often sat up far into the night in Malbin's
or some other restaurant, talking "parcels.
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