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’William,’ said Grandmother Kane ’Two cakes axe quite sufficient; d - ds is not your last o to Harvard’
He looked at the old lady with affection and quite forgot the silver band
13 That night as Abel lay awake in his s about the boy, William, whose father would have been proud of him, he realised for the first time in his life exactly ~vhat he wanted to achieve He wanted to be thought of as an equal by the Williale on his arrival in New York He occupied a rooed to share with George and two of his cousins As a result, Abel slept onlywhen one of the beds was free George’s uncle was unable to offer hi whichalive, Abel searched fro work in a butcher’s shop which paid nine dollars for a six and a half day week, and allowed him to sleep above the premises The shop was in the heart of an almost self - sufficient little Polish community on the lower East Side, and Abel rapidly became impatient with the insularity of his fellow countrylish
Abel still saw George and his constant succession of girl friends regularly at weekends, but he spent ht school learning how to read and write English He was not asharess, for he had had very little opportunity to write at all since the age of eight, but within two years he had htest trace of an accent He now felt ready to move out of the butcher’s shop - but to what, and how? Then, while dressing a leg of laest custo to the butcher that he had had to fire a junior waiter for petty theft
’How can I find a replaceer remonstrated
The butcher had no solution to offer Abel did He put on his only suit, walked forty - seven blocks, and got the job
Once he had settled in at the Plaza, he enrolled for a night course in English at Coluht, dictionary open in one hand, pen scratching away in the other; during theup the tables for lunch, he would copy out the editorial fro up any word he was uncertain of in his secondhand Webster’s
For the next three years, Abel worked his way through the ranks of the Plaza until he was pro about twenty - five dollars a ith tips In his oorld, he lacked for nothing
Abel’s instructor at Colulish that he advised Abel to enrol in a further night course, which was to be his first step towards a Bachelor of Arts degree He switched his spare - ti out the editorials in the Wall Street journal instead of those in the New York Times His neorld totally absorbed hie he lost touch with his Polish friends of the early days
When Abel served at table in the Oak Roouests carefully - the Bakers, Loebs, Whitneys, Morgans and Phelps - and try to work out why it was that the rich were different
He read H L Mencken, The Aerald, Sinclair Lewis and Theodore Dreiser in an endless quest for knowledge He studied the New York Tih the Mirror, and he read the Wall Street Journal in his hour’s break while they dozed
He was not sure where his newly acquired knowledge would lead him, but he never doubted the Baron’s ood education, One Thursday in August 1926 - he remembered the occasion well, because it was the day that Rudolph Valentino died, andon Fifth Avenue wore black - Abel was serving as usual at one of the corner tables Ile comer tables were always reserved for top businessoverheard by prying ears He enjoyed serving at that particular table, for it was the era of expanding business, and he often picked up some inside information from the titbits of conversation After the e holding company, Abel would look up the financial record of the co had gone particularly well, he would invest one hundred dollars in the s it would be in line for a takeover or expansion with the help of the larger coars at the end of the meal, Abel would increase his investment to two hundred dollars Seven times out of ten, the value of the stock he had selected in this way doubled within six months, the period Abel would allow hi this syste the four years he worked at the Plaza