Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1930-12-28

the often angry importunings of his
wife Anna, her relatives, and his.
For a man who had been trained to the
lucrative trade of master plumber suddenly to
turn waiter was not only matter of supreme
humiliation to the Dagmar family, one and all,
but, as Anna and his own sisters expressed it,
sometimes they actually feared for the sanity
of Leopold.
1t was not as if he had b.en lazy. Even his
sisters said of him that as a boy he had never
given symptoms of lazy bone in his body.
And dear knows the servile work of waiting
table in the small Russian restaurant where
Leopold took up his new labors no easier
than that@of plumber who hired men to work
under him.. On the, contrary, the hours were
practically as long and certainly more arduous
On his feet, carrying hoisted trays, polishing
crockery even sweeping out, and doing Servile
chores for patrons from in the evening until
and in the morning, work of an exact
ing if less skillful nature than the plumbing
WRNGING her hands, deploring the lack
of dignity his work as waiter implied for
his young children, over and over again, Anna
sought to wrest from Leopold the secret of his
sudden decision to abandon his skilled work
for the less ren1urcrative, less ambitious vo-
cation of waiter.
Not for worlds, after his five years of life
with her, could Leopold have been brought to
abandonment of his well paying trade for the
lesser vocation of waiting table in a small
Russian restaurant. Like his sisters, she would
have cried and screamed her derision of his
selfish, wastrel ways.
The secret motive neither so profound
nor SO complicated that imputed to him by
those who felt themselves to be the victims of
his vagaries. He is after women" shouted
Anna. knowing in her heart that women were
not the cause of Leopolds detection.
He is crazy after the Iow-life of the cab
aretS," accused his sisters, knowing that nothing
of the kind was characteristic of Leopold.
The reason, meanwhile, lay snugly imbedded
in the silence of Leopold. A simple reason; so
simple that it Shamed him.
The great advantage of waiting table in a
restaurant over the more dignihed, more re-
munerative work as master plumber was the
music! AS waiter you worked to music!
Your work was servile, yes, often in a way that
was hateful and revolving. but as a waiter you
worked to music!
fve-piece orchestra played at Kostas from
pm. to am. Russian music for the most
part with a balalaika or Russian banjo ac-
compartment that was melancholy as wind
in A<sImn trees, and yet at the same time
sweet and plaintive and filled with a certain
wild lust for life Music that was as real as
the beautiful black hair on the head of Leo
poldS two-monthS-old baby daughter.
You worked to music at KoSta's. At the
patrons hegan to come. At tbs in trooped
the five-piece orchestra The dinner went
something like this. Zakuska, hors d'oeuvre
which consisted of chopped liver served usually
to the accompaniment of song that wrung the
very heart out of Leopold; a piece called
"Ochee,' which clumsiy translated into Ian
guorous Eyes" Then the borSch course; thick
soup clotted with sour cream, to strains that
to Leopold were almost the most beautiful in
the world: THE Volga Boat Song" filled with
the drge and the urge of those who sweat and
toll. Pojarsky, outlets of chopped chicken,
served to the aria from Eugene Onegin" And
so on through an evening repetitiously crammed
with melodies that never seemed to pail.
You could not very well go home and say to
the most practical wife in the world and to
sisters to whom life serious day by day
business, II cannot play note, do not know
one note from another, but one day while
fixing radiators in the home of a famous
violinst and hearing him practice as worked
realized that music can lift life from the hum
drum affair it has always been into something
that makes 1t worth living will work twice
as haId as waiter. will dump every cent of
my earnings into your lap. Let me live in my
trancei"
OF course the wife and sisters of Leopold
did not let him live in his trance. There were
children to rear. clothe. educate and feed and
shortly after the startling defalcation of Leo
pold Anna developed nervous illness, induced
bYsworry
Life stepped in and took hand in the mild
madness which seemed to have got hold of
Leopold. Within month after he had gone
over to the role of waiter in the Russian res
taur u he was back again at his work of
soldering lead laying pipe and flying the
dralns and faucets :of peoples bath rooms, It