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Discover Biology Core Topics 4th Edition Cain Test Bank

Chapter 2: Organizing the Diversity of Life

MULTIPLE CHOICE

1. The science of systematics is used to

a. predict an organism’s future evolution. c. show relationships among organisms.
b. decide when an organism died. d. decipher an organism’s DNA.
ANS: C DIF: Easy REF: 2.1 OBJ: Factual

2. Which of the following features is not convergent?

a. the caudal fin of a whale and shark c. the hand of a chimpanzee and human
b. the opposable thumb of a human and d. the wing of a bat and bird
panda
ANS: C DIF: Easy REF: 2.1 OBJ: Factual

3. If a biologist finds an insect that doesn’t resemble anything seen before, it

a. may be a new species.
b. may be an undescribed life history stage of an already known species.
c. may be a member of the other gender of a known species.
d. all of the above
ANS: D DIF: Easy REF: 2.1 OBJ: Factual

4. Evolutionary tree diagrams showing the relationships between various organisms can be drawn
because those organisms share
a. common descendants. c. common cellular metabolism.
b. distinct lineages. d. a common ancestor.
ANS: D DIF: Easy REF: 2.1 OBJ: Applied

5. Evolutionary trees are based on

a. the principle of convergent evolution.
b. a set of shared characteristics believed to have arisen in a common ancestor.
c. similarities in function of a characteristic.
d. consensus regarding the usefulness of particular traits.
ANS: B DIF: Easy REF: 2.1 OBJ: Factual

6. Any two groups of organisms will have

a. 2 most recent common ancestors.
b. no more than 4 most recent common ancestors.
c. only 1 most recent common ancestor.
d. as many as 16 most recent common ancestors.
ANS: C DIF: Medium REF: 2.1 OBJ: Applied

7. All of the following sources of information except _______ can be used to construct evolutionary
trees.
a. habitat preferences c. instinctive behavior
b. body form d. learned behaviors
ANS: D DIF: Medium REF: 2.1 OBJ: Applied

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 8. A set of shared derived features
a. will be unique to each Linnaean taxon.
b. marks a group of species as a set of close relatives.
c. most often indicates convergences.
d. can be found only in humans.
ANS: B DIF: Medium REF: 2.1 OBJ: Factual

9. DNA analysis has become a useful tool for understanding the relationships between organisms because
a. DNA codes for all traits, visible or invisible.
b. DNA is used by all organisms to collect energy.
c. only mammals have DNA.
d. knowing the DNA codes means we no longer have to use systematics.
ANS: A DIF: Medium REF: 2.1 OBJ: Factual

10. Evolutionary trees have been successfully used to

a. identify those species most closely related to humans.
b. explain how evolution works.
c. explain why most carnivorous mammals have four or five toes.
d. explain the potential impact of global climate change.
ANS: A DIF: Medium REF: 2.1 OBJ: Applied

11. The emergence of each new branch on the evolutionary tree represents
a. the addition of a new Linnaean taxon within that lineage.
b. the completion of a generation for that particular organism.
c. the introduction of the most important features of a group.
d. a common ancestor and the introduction of a new shared, derived feature.
ANS: D DIF: Medium REF: 2.1 OBJ: Conceptual

12. The presence of convergent features

a. indicates a close evolutionary relationship.
b. indicates that two species have merged to become a single species.
c. indicates distantly related species adapting to similar environmental conditions.
d. occurs only in plants.
ANS: C DIF: Difficult REF: 2.1 OBJ: Factual

13. Descendant organisms

a. do not share any features with their descendants.
b. have all the same features as their descendants.
c. share some features with their ancestors.
d. do not have features their ancestors lacked.
ANS: C DIF: Difficult REF: 2.1 OBJ: Conceptual

14. The organisms farthest from the base of an evolutionary tree are
a. unrelated to the organisms separated by one or more branch points.
b. less primitive than the organisms lower on the tree.
c. those that have evolved most recently.
d. chronologically older than the organisms lower on the tree.
ANS: C DIF: Difficult REF: 2.1 OBJ: Applied
15. Examine the evolutionary tree pictured below.

In this evolutionary tree, which number represents the most recent common ancestor of A, B, and C?
a. 1 c. 3
b. 2 d. 4
ANS: B DIF: Difficult REF: 2.1 OBJ: Conceptual

16. Reconsideration of the Gobi Desert site where Oviraptor fossils were found has led paleontologists to
hypothesize that
a. the most recent common ancestor of the turtles and crocodilians was a dinosaur.
b. some dinosaurs commonly ate eggs.
c. some dinosaurs exhibited parental care.
d. dinosaurs were driven to extinction shortly after the appearance of birds.
ANS: C DIF: Medium REF: 2.2 OBJ: Applied

17. To produce an evolutionary tree it is necessary to first determine

a. which organisms are the oldest.
b. the full DNA sequence of each organism that will be included within the tree.
c. the shared derived features present within each group of organisms.
d. the number of lineages in each group.
ANS: C DIF: Medium REF: 2.2 OBJ: Applied

18. Examine the evolutionary tree pictured below.

In this evolutionary tree, which groups of organisms are likely to share the most behaviors?
a. 5 and 4 c. 5 and 2
b. 5 and 3 d. 5 and 1
ANS: A DIF: Difficult REF: 2.2 OBJ: Conceptual

19. The following numbered sets of characters each represent a distinct group of organisms.

1. three toes per foot, feathers, cold blooded, no finger adaptations

2. three toes per foot, body hair, warm blooded, opposable thumbs
3. three toes per foot, feathers, warm blooded, no finger adaptations
4. three toes per foot, body hair, warm blooded, no finger adaptations
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her eyes! She, too, looked as if she knew her way in America. I could tell at
the first glance: here is a person that is happy by what she does.
“I feel you’ll understand me,” I said right away.
She leaned over with pleasure in her face: “I hope I can.”
“I want to work by what’s in me. Only, I don’t know what’s in me. I only
feel I’m different.”
She gave me a quick, puzzled look from the corner of her eyes. “What
are you doing now?”
“I’m the quickest shirtwaist hand on the floor. But my heart wastes away
by such work. I think and think, and my thoughts can’t come out.”
“Why don’t you think out your thoughts in shirtwaists? You could learn
to be a designer. Earn more money.”
“I don’t want to look on waists. If my hands are sick from waists, how
could my head learn to put beauty into them?”
“But you must earn your living at what you know, and rise slowly from
job to job.”
I looked at her office sign: “Vocational Guidance.” “What’s your
vocational guidance?” I asked. “How to rise from job to job—how to earn
more money?”
The smile went out from her eyes. But she tried to be kind yet. “What do
you want?” she asked, with a sigh of lost patience.
“I want America to want me.”
She fell back in her chair, thunderstruck with my boldness. But yet, in a
low voice of educated self-control, she tried to reason with me:
“You have to show that you have something special for America before
America has need of you.”
“But I never had a chance to find out what’s in me, because I always had
to work for a living. Only, I feel it’s efficiency for America to find out
what’s in me so different, so I could give it out by my work.”
 Her eyes half closed as they bored through me. Her mouth opened to
speak, but no words came from her lips. So I flamed up with all that was
choking in me like a house on fire:
“America gives free bread and rent to criminals in prison. They got grand
houses, with sunshine, fresh air, doctors and teachers, even for the crazy
ones. Why don’t they have free boarding-schools for immigrants—strong
people—willing people? Here you see us burning up with something
different, and America turns its head away from us.”
Her brows lifted and dropped down. She shrugged her shoulders away
from me with the look of pity we give to cripples and hopeless lunatics.
“America is no Utopia. First you must become efficient in earning a
living before you can indulge in your poetic dreams.”
I went away from the vocational guidance office with all the air out of
my lungs. All the light out of my eyes. My feet dragged after me like dead
wood.
Till now there had always lingered a rosy veil of hope over my
emptiness, a hope that a miracle would happen. I would open up my eyes
some day and suddenly find the America of my dreams. As a young girl
hungry for love sees always before her eyes the picture of lover’s arms
around her, so I saw always in my heart the vision of Utopian America.
But now I felt that the America of my dreams never was and never could
be. Reality had hit me on the head as with a club. I felt that the America that
I sought was nothing but a shadow—an echo—a chimera of lunatics and
crazy immigrants.
Stripped of all illusion, I looked about me. The long desert of wasting
days of drudgery stared me in the face. The drudgery that I had lived
through, and the endless drudgery still ahead of me rose over me like a
withering wilderness of sand. In vain were all my cryings, in vain were all
frantic efforts of my spirit to find the living waters of understanding for my
perishing lips. Sand, sand was everywhere. With every seeking, every
reaching out I only lost myself deeper and deeper in a vast sea of sand.
I knew now the American language. And I knew now, if I talked to the
Americans from morning till night, they could not understand what the
Russian soul of me wanted. They could not understand me any more than if
I talked to them in Chinese. Between my soul and the American soul were
worlds of difference that no words could bridge over. What was that
difference? What made the Americans so far apart from me?
I began to read the American history. I found from the first pages that
America started with a band of courageous Pilgrims. They had left their
native country as I had left mine. They had crossed an unknown ocean and
landed in an unknown country, as I.
But the great difference between the first Pilgrims and me was that they
expected to make America, build America, create their own world of liberty.
I wanted to find it ready-made.
I read on. I delved deeper down into the American history. I saw how the
Pilgrim Fathers came to a rocky desert country, surrounded by Indian
savages on all sides. But undaunted, they pressed on—through danger—
through famine, pestilence, and want—they pressed on. They did not ask
the Indians for sympathy, for understanding. They made no demands on
anybody, but on their own indomitable spirit of persistence.
And I—I was for ever begging a crumb of sympathy, a gleam of
understanding from strangers who could not sympathize, who could not
understand.
I, when I encountered a few savage Indian scalpers, like the old witch of
the sweat-shop, like my “Americanized” countryman, who cheated me of
my wages—I, when I found myself on the lonely, untrodden path through
which all seekers of the new world must pass, I lost heart and said: “There
is no America!”
Then came a light—a great revelation! I saw America—a big idea—a
deathless hope—a world still in the making. I saw that it was the glory of
America that it was not yet finished. And I, the last comer, had her share to
give, small or great, to the making of America, like those Pilgrims who
came in the Mayflower.
Fired up by this revealing light, I began to build a bridge of
understanding between the American-born and myself. Since their life was
shut out from such as me, I began to open up my life and the lives of my
people to them. And life draws life. In only writing about the Ghetto I
found America.
 Great chances have come to me. But in my heart is always a deep
sadness. I feel like a man who is sitting down to a secret table of plenty,
while his near ones and dear ones are perishing before his eyes. My very
joy in doing the work I love hurts me like secret guilt, because all about me
I see so many with my longings, my burning eagerness, to do and to be,
wasting their days in drudgery they hate, merely to buy bread and pay rent.
And America is losing all that richness of the soul.
The Americans of to-morrow, the America that is every day nearer
coming to be, will be too wise, too open-hearted, too friendly-handed, to let
the least last-comer at their gates knock in vain with his gifts unwanted.
 A BED FOR THE NIGHT
A drizzling rain had begun to fall. I was wet and chilled to the bone. I
had just left the free ward of a hospital, where I had been taken when ill
with the flu. It was good to be home again! Even though what I called home
were but the dim, narrow halls of a lodging-house. With a sigh of relief, I
dropped my suitcase in the vestibule.
As the door swung open, the landlady met me with: “Your room is taken.
Your things are in the cellar.”
“My room?” I stammered, white with fear.
“Oh no—please, Mrs. Pelz!”
“I got a chance to rent your room at such a good price, I couldn’t afford
to hold it.”
“But you promised to keep it for me while I was away. And I paid you
for it——”
“The landlord raised me my rent and I got to get it out from the
roomers,” she defended. “I got four hungry mouths to feed——”
“But maybe I would have paid you a little more,” I pleaded. “If you had
only told me. I have to go back to work to-day. How can I get another room
at a moment’s notice?”
“We all got to look out for ourselves. I am getting more than twice as
much as you paid me from this new lodger,” she finished triumphantly.
“And no housekeeping privileges.”
“You must give me time!” My voice rose into a shriek. “You can’t put a
girl out into the street at a moment’s notice. There are laws in America
——”
“There are no laws for roomers.”
“No law for roomers?” All my weakness and helplessness rushed out of
me in a fury of rebellion. “No law for roomers?”
 “I could have put your things out in the street when your week was up.
But being you were sick, I was kind enough to keep them in the cellar. But
your room is taken,” she said with finality. “I got to let my rooms to them as
pay the most. I got to feed my own children first. I can’t carry the whole
world on my back.”
I tried to speak. But no voice came to my lips. I felt struck with a club on
the head. I could only stare at her. And I must have been staring for some
time without seeing her, for I had not noticed she had gone till I heard a
voice from the upper stairs, “Are you still here?”
“Oh—yes—yes—I—I—am—going—go-ing.” I tried to rouse my
stunned senses, which seemed struck to the earth.
“There’s no money in letting rooms to girls,” my landlady continued, as
she came down to open the door for me. “They’re always cooking, or
washing, or ironing and using out my gas. This new roomer I never hear nor
see except in the morning when he goes to work and at night when he
comes to sleep.”
I staggered out in a bewildered daze. I leaned against the cold iron lamp-
post. It seemed so kind, so warm. Even the chill, drizzling rain beating on
my face was almost human. Slowly, my numbed brain began to recollect
where I was. Where should I turn? To whom? I faced an endless maze of
endless streets. All about me strangers—seas of jostling strangers. I was
alone—shelterless!
All that I had suffered in lodging-houses rushed over me. I had never
really lived or breathed like a free, human being. My closed door assured
me no privacy. I lived in constant dread of any moment being pounced upon
by my landlady for daring to be alive. I dared not hang out my clothes on a
line in the fresh air. I was forced to wash and dry them stealthily, at night,
over chairs and on my trunk. I was under the same restraint when I did my
simple cooking although I paid dearly for the gas I used.
This ceaseless strain of don’t move here and don’t step there was far
from my idea of home. But still it was shelter from the streets. I had almost
become used to it. I had almost learned not to be crushed by it. Now, I was
shut out—kicked out like a homeless dog.
 All thought of reporting at my office left my mind. I walked and walked,
driven by despair. Tears pressed in my throat, but my eyes were dry as sand.
I tried to struggle out of my depression. I looked through the furnished
room sections of the city. There were no cheap rooms to be had. The prices
asked for the few left were ten, twelve and fifteen dollars a week.
I earn twenty-five dollars a week as a stenographer. I am compelled to
dress neatly to hold down my job. And with clothes and food so high, how
could I possibly pay more than one-third of my salary for rent?
In my darkness I saw a light—a vision of the settlement. As an
immigrant I had joined one of the social clubs there, and I remembered
there was a residence somewhere in that building for the workers. Surely
they would take me in till I had found a place to live.
“I’m in such trouble!” I stammered, as I entered the office of the head
resident. “My landlady put me out because I couldn’t pay the raise in rent.”
“The housing problem is appalling,” Miss Ward agreed with her usual
professional friendliness. “I wish I could let you stay with us, my child, but
our place is only for social workers.”
“Where should I go?” I struggled to keep back my tears. “I’m so terribly
alone.”
“Now—now, dear child,” Miss Ward patted my shoulder encouragingly.
“You mustn’t give way like that. Of course, I’ll give you the addresses of
mothers of our neighbourhood.”
One swift glance at the calm, well-fed face and I felt instantly that Miss
Ward had never known the terror of homelessness.
“You know, dear, I want to help you all I can,” smiled Miss Ward, trying
to be kind, “and I’m always glad when my girls come to me.”
“What was the use of my coming to you?” I was in no mood for her
make-believe settlement smile. “If you don’t take me in, aren’t you pushing
me in the street—joining hands with my landlady?”
“Why—my dear!” The mask of smiling kindness dropped from Miss
Ward’s face. Her voice cooled. “Surely you will find a room in this long list
of addresses I am giving you.”
 I went to a dozen places. It was the same everywhere. No rooms were to
be had at the price I could afford.
Crushed again and again, the habit of hope still asserted itself. I suddenly
remembered there was one person from whom I was almost sure of getting
help—an American woman who had befriended me while still an
immigrant in the factory. Her money had made it possible for me to take up
the stenographic course. Full of renewed hope, I sped along the streets. My
buoyant faith ever expectant could think of one outcome only.
Mrs. Olney had just finished dictating to her secretary, when the maid
ushered me into the luxurious library.
“How good it is to see you! What can I do for you?” The touch of Mrs.
Olney’s fine hand, the sound of her lovely voice was like the warming
breath of sunshine to a frozen thing. A choking came in my throat. Tears
blinded me.
“If it wasn’t a case of life and death, I wouldn’t have bothered you so
early in the morning.”
“What’s the trouble, my child?” Mrs. Olney was all concern.
“I can’t stand it any longer! Get me a place to live!” And I told her of my
experiences with my landlady and my hopeless room-hunting.
“I have many young friends who are in just your plight,” Mrs. Olney
consoled. “And I’m sending them all to the Better Housing Bureau.”
I felt as though a powerful lamp went out suddenly within my soul. A
sharp chill seized me. The chasm that divides those who have and those
who have not yawned between us. The face I had loved and worshipped
receded and grew dim under my searching gaze.
Here was a childless woman with a houseful of rooms to herself. Here
was a philanthropist who gave thousands of dollars to help the poor. And
here I tried to tell her that I was driven out into the street—shelterless. And
her answer to my aching need was, “The Better Housing Bureau.”
Again I turned to the unfeeling glare of the streets. A terrible loneliness
bled in my heart. Such tearing, grinding pain was dragging me to the earth!
I could barely hold myself up on my feet. “Ach! Only for a room to rest!”
And I staggered like a dizzy drunkard to the Better Housing Bureau.
 At the waiting-room I paused in breathless admiration. The soft greys
and blues of the walls and hangings, the deep-seated divans, the flowers
scattered in effective profusion, soothed and rested me like silent music.
Even the smoothly fitting gown of the housing specialist seemed almost
part of the colour scheme.
As I approached the mahogany desk I felt shabby—uncomfortable in this
flawless atmosphere, but I managed somehow to tell of my need. I had no
sooner explained the kind of room I could afford than the lady requested the
twenty-five cents registration fee.
“I want to see the room first,” I demanded.
“All our applicants pay in advance.”
“I have only a two-dollar bill, and I don’t get my pay till Monday.”
“Oh, that’s all right. I’ll change it,” she offered obligingly. And she took
my one remaining bill.
“Where were you born? What is your religion?”
“I came for a room and not to be inquisitioned,” I retorted.
“We are compelled to keep statistics of all our applicants.”
Resentfully, I gave her the desired information, and with the addresses
she had given me I recommenced my search. At the end of another futile
hour of room-hunting there was added to the twenty-five cents registration
fee an expense of fifteen cents for car fare. And I was still homeless.
I had been expecting to hear from my sister who had married a
prosperous merchant and whom I hadn’t seen for years. In my agitation I
had forgotten to ask for my mail, and I went back to see about it. A
telegram had come, stating my sister was staying at the Astor and I was to
meet her there for lunch.
I hastened to her. For although she was now rich and comfortable, I felt
that after all she was my sister and she would help me out.
“How shabby you look!” She cast a disapproving glance at me from head
to foot. “Couldn’t you dress decently to meet me, when you knew I was
staying at this fashionable hotel?”
 I told her of my plight.
“Why not go to a hotel till you find a suitable room?” she blandly
advised.
My laughter sounded unreal so loud it was, as I reminded her, “Before
the French Revolution, when the starving people came to the queen’s palace
clamouring for bread, the queen innocently exclaimed, ‘Why don’t they eat
cake?’”
“How disagreeable you are! You think of no one but yourself. I’ve come
here for a little change, to get away from my own troubles, and here you
come with your hatefulness.”
I hadn’t known the relief of laughter, but now that I was started I couldn’t
stop, no more than I could stop staring at her. I tried to associate this new
being of silks and jewels with her who had worked side by side with me in
the factory.
“How you act! I think you’re crazy,” she admonished, and glanced at her
wrist-watch. “I’m late for my appointment with the manicurist. I have to
have my nails done after this dusty railway trip.”
And I had been surprised at the insensate settlement worker, at my
uncomprehending American friend who knew not the meaning of want. Yet
here was my own sister, my own flesh and blood, reared in the same ghetto,
nurtured in the same poverty, ground in the same sweat-shop treadmill, and
because she had a few years of prosperity, because she ate well and dressed
well and was secure, she was deaf to my cry.
Where I could hope for understanding, where I could turn for shelter,
where I was to lay my head that very night, I knew not. But this much
suddenly came to me, I was due to report for work that day. I was shut out
on every side, but there in my office at least awaited me the warmth and
sunshine of an assured welcome. My employer would understand and let
me take off the remainder of the day to continue my search.
I found him out, and instead awaiting me was a pile of mail which he had
left word I should attend to. The next hour was torture. My power of
concentration had deserted me. I tapped the keys of my typewriter with my
fingers, but my brain was torn with worry, my nerves ready to snap. The
day was nearly spent. Night was coming on and I had no place to lay my
head.
I was finishing the last of the letters when he came. After a friendly
greeting he turned to the letters. I dared not interrupt until the mail was
signed.
“Girl! What’s wrong? That’s not like you!” He stared at me. “There are a
dozen mistakes in each letter.”
A blur. Everything seemed to twist and turn around me. Red and black
spots blinded me. A clenched hand pounded his desk, and I heard a voice
that seemed to come from me—scream like a lunatic. “I have no home—no
home—not even a bed for the night!”
Then all I remember is the man’s kindly tone as he handed me a glass of
water. “Are you feeling better?” he asked.
“My landlady put me out,” I said between laboured breaths. “Oh-h, I’m
so lonely! Not a place to lay my head!”
I saw him fumble for his pocket-book and look at me strangely. His
burning gaze seemed to strip me naked—pierce me through and through
from head to foot. Something hurt so deep I choked with shame. I seized
my hat and coat and ran out.
It was getting dark when I reached the entrance of Central Park.
Exhausted, I dropped to the nearest bench. I didn’t even know I was crying.
“Are you lonely, little one?” A hand slipped around my waist and a
dapper young chap moved closer. “Are you lonely?” he repeated.
I let him talk. I knew he had nothing real to offer, but I was so tired, so
ready to drop the burden of my weary body that I had no resistance in me.
“There’s no place for me,” I thought to myself. “Everyone shuts me out.
What difference what becomes of me? Who cares?”
My head dropped to his shoulder. And the cry broke from me, “I have no
place to sleep to-night.”
“Sleep?” I could feel him draw in his breath and a blood-shot gleam
leaped into his eyes. “You should worry. I’ll take care of that.”
 He flashed a roll of bills tauntingly. “How about it, kiddo? Can you
change me a twenty-dollar bill?”
As his other hand reached for me, I wrenched loose from him as from the
cloying touch of pitch. “I wish I were that kind! I wish I were your kind!
But I’m not!”
His hands dropped from the touch of me as though his flesh was
scorched, and I found I was alone.
I walked again. At the nearest public telephone office I called up the
women’s hotels. None had a room left for less than two dollars. My
remaining cash was forty cents short. The Better Housing Bureau had
robbed me of my last hope of shelter.
I passed Fifth Avenue and Park Avenue mansions. Many were closed,
standing empty. I began counting the windows, the rooms. Hundreds and
hundreds of empty rooms, hundreds and hundreds of luxuriously furnished
homes, and I homeless—shut out. I felt I was abandoned by God and man
and no one cared if I perished or went mad. I had a fresh sense why the
spirit of revolution was abroad in the land.
Blindly I retraced my steps to the park bench. I saw and felt nothing but a
devouring sense of fear. It suddenly came over me that I was not living in a
world of human beings, but in a jungle of savages who gorged themselves
with food, gorged themselves with rooms, while I implored only a bed for
the night. And I implored in vain.
I felt the chaos and destruction of the good and the beautiful within me
and around me. The sight of people who lived in homes and ate three meals
a day filled me with the fury of hate. The wrongs and injustices of the
hungry and the homeless of all past ages burst from my soul like the
smouldering lava of a blazing volcano. Earth-quakes of rebellion raced
through my body and brain. I fell prone against the bench and wept, not
tears, but blood.
“Move along! No loitering here!” The policeman’s club tapped me on the
shoulder. Then a woman stopped and bent over me.
I couldn’t move. I couldn’t lift my head.
 “Tell your friend to cut out the sob-stuff,” the officer continued,
flourishing his club authoritatively. “On your way, both of youse. Y’know
better than to loaf around here, Mag.”
The woman put her hand on mine in a friendly little gesture of protection.
“Leave her alone! Can’t you see she’s all in? I’ll take care of her.”
Her touch filled me with the warmth of shelter. I didn’t know who or
what she was, but I trusted her.
“Poor kid! What ails her? It’s a rough world all alone.”
There was no pity in her tone, but comprehension, fellowship. From
childhood I’d had my friendships and many were dear to me. But this
woman, without a word, without a greeting, had sounded the depths of
understanding that I never knew existed. Even as I looked up at her she
lifted me from the bench and almost carried me through the arbour of trees
to the park entrance. My own mother couldn’t have been more gentle. For a
moment it seemed to me as though the spirit of my dead mother had risen
from her grave in the guise of this unknown friend.
Only once the silence between us was broken. “Down in your luck, kid?”
Her grip tightened on my arm. “I’ve been there myself. I know all about it.”
She knew so well, what need had she of answer. The refrain came back to
me: “Only themselves understand themselves and the likes of themselves,
as souls only understand souls.”
In a darkened side street we paused in front of a brown stone house with
shutters drawn.
“Here we are! Now for some grub! I’ll bet a nickel you ain’t ate all day.”
She vaulted the rickety stairs two at a time and led the way into her little
room. With a gay assertiveness she planted me into her one comfortable
chair, attempting no apology for her poverty—a poverty that winked from
every corner and could not be concealed. Flinging off her street clothes, she
donned a crimson kimono, and rummaged through her soap-box in which
her cooking things were kept. She wrung her hands with despair as though
she suffered because she couldn’t change herself into food.
Ah! the magic of love! It was only tea and toast and an outer crust of
cheese she offered—but she offered it with the bounty of a princess. Only
the kind look in her face and the smell of the steaming tray as she handed it
to me—and I was filled before I touched the food to my lips. Somehow this
woman who had so little had fed me as people with stuffed larders never
could.
Under the spell of a hospitality so real that it hurt like divine, beautiful
things hurt, I felt ashamed of my hysterical worries. I looked up at her and
marvelled. She was so full of God-like grace—and so unconscious of it!
Not until she had tucked the covers warmly around me did I realize that I
was occupying the only couch she had.
“But where will you sleep?” I questioned.
A funny little laugh broke from her. “I should worry where I sleep.”
“It’s so snug and comfy,” I yawned, my eyes heavy with fatigue. “It’s
good to take from you——”
“Take? Aw, dry up, kid! You ain’t taking nothing,” she protested,
embarrassed. “Tear off some sleep and forget it.”
“I’ll get close to the wall and make room for you,” I murmured as I
dropped off to sleep.
When I woke up I found, to my surprise, the woman was sleeping in a
chair with a shawl wrapped around her like a huge statue. The half of the
bed which she had left for me had remained untouched.
“You were sleeping so sound I didn’t want to wake you,” she said as she
hurried to prepare the breakfast.
I rose, refreshed, restored—sane. It was more than gratitude that rushed
out of my heart to her. I felt I belonged to someone, I had found home at
last.
As I was ready to leave for work I turned to her. “I am coming back to-
night,” I said.
She fell back of a sudden as though I had struck her. From the quick pain
that shone in her face I knew I had hurt something deep within her. Her
eyes met mine in a fixed gaze but she did not see me, but stared through me
into the vacancy of space. She seemed to have forgotten my presence, and
when she spoke her voice was like that of one in a trance. “You don’t know
what you’re asking. I—ain’t—no good.”
“You no good? God from the world! Where would I have been without
you? Even my own sister shut me out. Of them all, you alone opened the
door and spread for me all you had.”
“I ain’t so stuck on myself as the good people, although I was as good as
any of them at the start. But the first time I got into trouble, instead of
helping me, they gave me the marble stare and the frozen heart and drove
me to the bad.”
I looked closely at her, at the dyed hair, the rouged lips, the defiant look
of the woman driven by the Pharisees from the steps of the temple. Then I
saw beneath. It was as though her body dropped away from her and there
stood revealed her soul—the sorrows that gave her understanding—the
shame and the heartbreak that she turned into love.
“What is good or bad?” I challenged. “All I know is that I was hungry
and you fed me. Shelterless and you sheltered me. Broken in spirit and you
made me whole——”
“That stuff’s all right, but you’re better off out of here.”
I started towards her in mute protest.
“Don’t touch me,” she cried. “Can’t you see—the smut all over me?
Ain’t it in my face?”
Her voice broke. And like one possessed of sudden fury, she seized me
by the shoulder and shoved me out.
As the door slammed I heard sobbing—loosened torrents of woe. I sank
to my knees. A light not of this earth poured through the door that had shut
on me. A holiness enveloped me.
This woman had changed the world for me. I could love the people I had
hated yesterday. There was that something new in me, a light that the
dingiest rooming house could not dim nor all the tyranny of the landlady
shut out.
Vague, half remembered words flashed before me in letters of fire.
“Despised and rejected of men: a woman of sorrows acquainted with grief.”
 DREAMS AND DOLLARS
Spring was in the air. But such radiant, joyous spring as one coming out
of the dark shadows of the ghetto never could dream. Earth and sky seemed
to sing with the joy of an unceasing holiday. Rebecca Yudelson felt as
though she had suddenly stepped into fairyland, where the shadow of
sorrow or sickness, where the black blight of poverty had never been.
An ecstasy of wonder and longing shone from her hungry, young eyes as
she gazed at the luxurious dwellings. Such radiance of colour! Fruits,
flowers and real orange-trees! Beauty and plenty! Each house outshone the
other in beauty and plenty.
Fresh from the East Side tenements, worn from the nerve-racking grind
of selling ribbons at the Five and Ten Cent Store, the residential section of
Los Angeles was like a magic world of romance too perfect to be real. She
had often seen the Fifth Avenue palaces of the New York millionaires when
she had treated herself to a bus ride on a holiday. But nothing she had ever
seen before compared with this glowing splendour.
“And in one of these mansions of sunshine and roses my own sister
lives!” she breathed. “How could Minnie get used to so much free space
and sunshine for every day?”
Ten years since Minnie had left Delancey Street. Ten years’ freedom
from the black worry for bread. There must have come a new sureness in
her step, a new joy of life in her every movement. And to think that Abe
Shmukler from cloaks and suits had bought her and brought her to this new
world!
Rebecca wondered if her sister ever thought back to Felix Weinberg, the
poet who had loved her and whom she had given up to marry this bank
account man.
With the passionate ardour of adolescence Rebecca had woven an idyll
for herself out of her sister’s love affair. Felix Weinberg had become for her
the symbol of beauty and romance. His voice, his face, the lines he had
written to Minnie, coloured Rebecca’s longings and dreams. With the love
cadence of the poet’s voice still stirring in her heart, she put her finger on
the door bell.
The door was opened by a trim maid in black, whose superior scrutiny
left Rebecca speechless.
Her own sister Minnie with a stiff lady for a servant!
“My sister, is she in? I just came from New York.”
“Rebecca!” cried a familiar voice, as she was smothered in hungry arms.
“Oi weh! How many years! You were yet so little then. Now you’re a
grown-up person.” And overcome by the memories of their ghetto days
together, they sobbed in one another’s arms.
Rebecca had been prepared for a change in Minnie. Ten years of plenty.
But to think that Abe Shmukler with his cloaks and suits could have blotted
out the fine sensitiveness of the sister she had loved and left in its place his
own gross imprint! Minnie’s thin long fingers were now heavy and
weighted with diamonds. The slender lines of her figure had grown bulky
with fat.
“And to think that you who used to shine up the street like a princess in
your home-mades are such a fashion-plate now?” Rebecca laughed
reproachfully.
They drew apart and gazed achingly at one another. Rebecca’s soul grew
faint within her as though her own flesh and blood had grown alien to her.
Why couldn’t Minnie have lifted Abe to her high thoughts? Why did she let
him drag her down to his cloaks and suits—make her a thing of store-
bought style?
“Minnie—Minnie!” the younger sister wept, bewildered. “Where have
you gone? What have you done with yourself?”
Minnie brushed away her tears and laughed away her sister’s reproach.
“Did you want me to remain always an East Side venteh?”
Then she hugged the young sister with a fresh burst of affection.
“Rebecca, you little witch! All you need is a little style. I’ll take you to the
best stores, and when I get through with you no one will guess that you
came from Delancey Street.”
 “You have the same old heart, Minnie, although you shine like a born
Mrs. Vanderbilt.”
“No wonder you have no luck for a man with these clothes,” Minnie
harped back to the thing uppermost in her mind.
“But you weren’t fixed up in style when Felix Weinberg was so crazy
about you.”
“Do you ever see him?” came eagerly.
“Yes, I meet him every once in a while, but his thoughts are far away
when he talks to me.” She paused, overcome by a rush of feeling.
“Sometimes, in my dreams, I feel myself crying out to him, ‘Look at me!
Can’t you see I’m here?’”
“Don’t be a little fool and let yourself fall in love with a poet. He’s all
right for poetry, but to get married you need a man who can make a living. I
sent for you not only because I was lonesome and wanted you near, but
because I have a man who’ll be a great catch for you. He’s full of money
and crazy to marry himself.”
“Aren’t there plenty of girls in California for him?”
“But he’s like Abe. He wants the plain, settled down kind.”
“Am I the plain, settled-down kind like my sister?” thought Rebecca.
And so the whole afternoon sped by in reminiscence of the past and
golden plans for the future. Minnie told with pride that her children were
sent to a swell camp, where they rubbed sleeves with the millionaires’
children of California. Abe had sold out the greater share of his cloaks and
suits business to Moe Mirsky—this very man whom Minnie had picked out
for Rebecca.
“And if we have the luck to land him, I’ll charge you nothing for the
matchmaking. My commission will be to have you live near me.”
Before Rebecca could answer there was a footstep in the outer hall and a
hearty voice called: “So your sister has come! No wonder you’re not
standing by the door waiting to kiss your husband.”
Abe Shmukler, fatter and more prosperous than ten years ago, filled the
doorway with his bulk. “Now there’ll be peace in the house,” he exploded
genially. “I’ve had nothing from my wife but cryings from lonesomeness
since I brought her here. You’ll have to keep my wife company till we get
you a man.”
Instinctively Rebecca responded to the fulsomeness of Abe’s greeting.
His sincerity, his simple joy in welcoming her, touched her. She wondered if
her sister had been quite fair to this big, happy-hearted man.
And even as she wondered the vision of Felix Weinberg stood before her.
This man of fire and romance and dreams, against Abe Shmukler, was like
sunrise and moonrise and song against cloaks and suits. How could any
woman who had known the fiery wonder of the poet be content with this
tame, ox-like husband?
“I’ve already picked out a man for you, so you can settle near us for
good,” said Abe, giving Rebecca another affectionate hug.
Again her heart warmed to him. He was so well intentioned, so lovable.
The world needed these plain, bread-and-butter men. Their affection-
craving natures, their generous instincts, kept the home fires burning.
Abe fulfilled the great essentials of life. He was a good provider, a good
husband, a good father and a genial host. But though he could feed her
sister with the fat of the land, what nourishment could this stolid bread-
giver provide for the heart, the soul, the mind?
Rebecca’s reverie was interrupted by the jangle of the telephone.
“I’ll bet it’s already that man asking if you arrived.” Abe winked at his
wife and twitted his sister-in-law under the chin as he picked up the
receiver.
“Yes, she’s here,” Rebecca heard Abe say. And turning to his wife:
“Minnie, our friend Moe is coming for dinner.”
“Coming right for dinner,” cried Minnie. “Quickly we must fix you up. I
can’t have that man see you looking like a greenhorn just off the ship.”
Rebecca surveyed herself critically in the gilt mirror. The excitement of
the arrival had brought a faint flush to her cheeks. Her hair had become
softer, wavier in the moist California air.
 “Why can’t I see your Rockefeller prince as I am?” Rebecca was not
aware that her charm was enhanced by the very simplicity of her attire. “Is
he so high tone that plain me is not good enough for him?”
Her sister cut short her objections and hurried her upstairs, where she
tried on one gown after another. But they were all too big.
Then on a sudden thought she snatched a long, fillet scarf, which she
draped loosely around Rebecca’s neck.
“Why, you look like a picture for a painter.” Even Minnie, accustomed
now to the last word in style, recognized that the little sister had a charm of
personality that needed no store-bought clothes to set it off.
Awaiting them at the foot of the stairs was the smiling Abe. Behind him
with one hand grasping the banisters stood a short stocky young man.
Under his arm he held tightly to his side a heart-shaped box of candy tied
with a flowing red ribbon.
“My, look him over, kid! Ain’t he the swellest feller you ever set your
eyes on? Ain’t you glad you left your ribbon counter for your California
prince?”
Moe’s colour outshone the red ribbon which tied his box of candy. With a
clumsy flourish, he bowed and offered it to the girl. In a panic of confusion,
Rebecca let the box slip from her nervous fingers. And Moe stooped jerkily
to recover it.
And Abe burst into loud laughter.
“On! Solemiel!” Minnie cried, shaking him by the arm. “You’re a grand
brother-in-law.” And led the way to the dining-room.
Never had Rebecca seen such a rich spread of luxuries. Roast squabs, a
silver platter of gerfulta fish, shimmering cut glass containing chopped
chicken livers and spiced jellies. The under-nourished girl saw for the first
time a feast of plenty fit for millionaires.
“What’s this—a holiday?” she asked, recovering her voice.
“Don’t think you’re yet in Delancey Street,” admonished the host. “In
California the fat of the land is for every day.”