"
* * * * *
Pfeiler had been left a fortune by his father, a wealthy German merchant
... so, like Sir Richard Burton, he had made off to the Near East ...
where he had lived among the Turks for ten years ... till, what with his
buying rare manuscripts and Oriental and Turkish art, he had suddenly
run upon the rocks of bankruptcy ... and had returned from the Levantine
a ruined, helpless scholar, who had never been taught to be anything
else but a man of culture and leisure....
By steerage he made his way to America ... to Chicago ... all his works
of art, his priceless manuscripts sold ... the money gone like water
through the assiduities of false friends and sycophants....
On the bum in Chicago ... a hotel clerk, discharged as incompetent--he
had forgotten to insist that a man and woman register always as man and
wife ... "because it was such hypocrisy" ... finally a dishwasher, who
lived in a hall bed-room ... no friends because of his abstractedness,
his immersion in oriental scholarship ... his only place of refuge, his
dwelling place, when not washing dishes for a mere existence, the Public
Library....
"Old Pfeiler" drank coffee by the quart, as drunkards drink whiskey. He
had a nervous affliction which caused him to shake his head continually,
as if in impatience ... or as a dog shakes his head to dislodge
something that has crept into his ear.
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