nce my work, or
my play."

"Dear, you can't prove that, because the contrary has been proven long
ago. You yourself proved it when you did that sketch of the old fish
vender in the Ghetto. The one with the beard. It took a thousand years
of suffering and persecution and faith to stamp that look on his face,
and it took a thousand years to breed in you the genius to see it, and
put it down on paper. Fan, did you ever read Fishberg's book?"

"No," said Fanny, low-voiced.

"Sometime, when you can snatch a moment from the fascinations of the
mail order catalogue, read it. Fishberg says--I wish I could remember
his exact words--`It isn't the body that marks the Jew. It's his Soul.
The type is not anthropological, or physical; it's social or psychic. It
isn't the complexion, the nose, the lips, the head. It's his Soul which
betrays his faith. Centuries of Ghetto confinement, ostracism, ceaseless
suffering, have produced a psychic type. The thing that is stamped on
the Soul seeps through the veins and works its way magically to the
face----'"

"But I don't want to talk about souls! Please! You're spoiling a
wonderful day."

"And you're spoiling a wonderful life. I don't object to this driving
ambition in you. I don't say that you're wrong in wanting to make a
place for yourself in the world. But don't expect me to stand by and let
you trample over your own immortal soul to get there. Your head is busy
enough on this infants' wear job, but how about the rest of you--how
about You? What do you suppose all those years of work, and suppression,
and self-denial, and beauty-hunger there in Winnebago were meant for!
Not to develop the mail order business. They were given you so that you
might recognize hunger, and suppression, and self-denial in others. The
light in the face of that girl in the crowd pouring out of the plant.
What's that but the reflection of the light in you! I tell you, Fanny,
we Jews have got a money-grubbing, loud-talking, diamond-studded,
get-there-at-any-price reputation, and perhaps we deserve it. But every
now and then, out of the mass of us, one lifts his head and stands
erect, and the great white light is in his face. And that person has
suffered, for suffering breeds genius. It expands the soul just as
over-prosperity shrivels it. You see it all the way from Lew Fields to
Sarah Bernhardt; from Mendelssohn to Irving Berlin; from Mischa Elman
to Charlie Chaplin. You were a person set apart in Winnebago