Word: calisch
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...James H. Calisch was a white-haired, precisely spoken little gentleman of 63. He had lived in Brooklyn for four years since coming from his native Holland. He was a Jew, and by night, as recreation from his daily labors of an expert accountant, he pored over books of philosophy and psychology. These explorations had led him far from the faith of his race, but his Jewish neighbors and landlady found him most kindly, gentle, a patient teacher of any who sought his counsel...
Many a night James Calisch sat until dawn with young Emanuel Silberstein, who would come around from 57th St. to interrogate and dispute upon the writings of Spinoza, the Jew of Amsterdam; of morbid Schopenhauer, neurotic Nietzsche, recondite Kant. Emanuel was regarded by himself and his family, as a mental prodigy. He had made public orations in the Liberty Loan drives at the age of 10. He had finished high school at 16 and, after a nervous breakdown, read long and late at philosophy and psychology, screwed up in a corner with his scrawny shoulders hunched, his lean hooked nose...
Some months ago, James Calisch's landlady heard her lodger in an altercation with young Silberstein. "You're a nut!" ejaculated the older man. "What reasons have you for making such a statement?" demanded the youth, with the pedantic inflection of an adolescent philosopher. "Well," began Mr. Calisch, patient once more, "in the first place-" They had been arguing about a newly-published book on Sigmund Freud. Mr. Calisch had genially called psychoanalysis "rot." Neurotic young Emanuel was furious; he took Freud as glorious gospel. After the quarrel, Mr. Calisch, annoyed by his voluble visitor, told the landlady...
...evening last week, Mr. Calisch sat at his usual table in his usual cafeteria. In came a slender figure in a serge coat and grey "bellbottom" trousers, with a cap pulled so far down over the cadaverous face that only the high hooked nose of Emanuel Silberstein showed out from beneath. Moving up behind his old tutor, the youth raised a squat hammer (a cobbler's) and beat upon the bowed white skull. James Calisch was unconscious, his cranium crushed beyond repair, before other patrons could seize Student Silberstein...
| 1 |