220:, Marten went through the experience without being affected by it in any way. After the story appeared, Asimov was attending a dinner with Mills. He was chatting happily with Janet Jeppson, a fan he had just met, and Mills asked her what she thought of the story. Jeppson said that it was flawed because Marten had been unaffected by his meeting with Phinehas Levkovich. Asimov decided that Jeppson was right, and when he included the story in
194:. His wife and sons have died, his daughter Leah emigrated to America, and he is alone. He has prayed for a chance to meet a son of Leah's line, and his prayer has been granted. Phinehas is Marten's great-great-grandfather; Marten is Leah's daughter's daughter's son, the first son to be born to her family. Marten asks for his great-great-grandfather's blessing, and the old man gives it, then adds, "I go now to my fathers in peace, my son."
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s then-editor Robert P. Mills on 23 October 1958 when Mills mentioned having seen the name
Lefkowitz several times, each time with a different spelling. He asked Asimov to write a story about it and Asimov, who was an acquaintance of a “Leskowitz” himself (fellow Columbia grad student Dr. Sidney
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Time snaps back two hours. Marten is on his way to his business meeting, and he finds himself free of anxiety, for he somehow knows that all will be well with him.
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The story concerns Samuel Marten, an anxious 23-year-old junior executive on his way to meet with a potential customer. When Marten sees a passing truck that says
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The old man is
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Works originally published in The
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The name
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114:Learn how and when to remove this message
160:The Best Science Fiction of Isaac Asimov
177:Lewkowitz and Sons, Wholesale Clothiers
163:(1986). It is Asimov's most explicitly
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