He was afraid to go through their grocery store, where his
       father was still talking to customers. He went through the
       tenement hallway into the room where they ate and slept,
       in back of the store.
His little brothers and sisters were asleep along the big bed. He
       took the book which he had bought at a pushcart, to read
       just a page or two more by the dimmed gaslight.
His father stood over him and punched his head twice,
whispering in Yiddish, “Where have you been all day, you
       louse that feeds on me? I needed you to deliver orders.”
In the dawn he carried milk and rolls to the doors of customers.
       At seven he was in his chum’s room. “I’ll stay here with
       you till I get a job.”

He worked for a printer. When he was twenty-one he set up a
       press in the basement. It was harder to pay off than he had thought.
He fell behind in his installments. If they took the press away,
       he would have to work for someone else all over again.
Rosh Ha-Shonoh he went to his father’s house. They had been
       speaking to each other again for years.
Once a friend had turned a poem of his into Hebrew. It was
       printed in a Hebrew magazine. He showed it to his father,
       and his father showed it around to the neighbors.
After dinner his father said, “Business has been good, thank
       God, I have saved over a thousand dollars this year. How
       have you been doing?”
“Well.” “But I hear that you need money, that you’re trying to
       borrow some?” “Yes.” His father paused.
“I hope you get it.”