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THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 GIFT OF 
 
 Robert Koshland 
 
S K ^ ^ 
 
Children of the Ghetto 
 
«^ 
 
Children of the Ghetto 
 
 A Study of a Peculiar People 
 
 BY 
 
 I. ZANGWILL 
 
 Author of "The Bachelors' Club," "The Big Bow Mystery, 
 " The Old Maids' Club," " The King of Schnorrers," etc. 
 
 Neb] gorit 
 MACMILLAN AND CO. 
 
 AND LONDON 
 1896 
 
 All rights reserved 
 
Copyright, 1892, by 
 THE JEWISH PUBLICATION SOCIETY OF AMERICA. 
 
 Copyright, 1895, 
 By MACMILLAN AND CO. 
 
 Set up and electrotyped April, 1895. Reprinted 
 September, 1895 ; January, 1896. 
 
 t 
 
 / 
 
 NorfaootJ 59reg8 
 
 J. S. Cushino; & Co. — Berwick & Smith 
 Norwood Mass. U.S.A. 
 
 p f(y^ 0^ 
 
 GIFT 
 
( 
 
 
 hi 
 
 Preface to the Third Edition, 
 
 'T^HE issue of a o7te-volume edition gives 7ne the oppor- 
 timity of thanking the public and the critics for their 
 kindly reception of this chart of a terra incognita, and of 
 restoring the original sub- title, which is a reply to sotne criti- 
 cisms upon its artistic form. The book is intended as a 
 study, through typical figures, of a race ivhose pe?'sistence is 
 the most 7'emarkable fact i7i the history of the world, the faith 
 and morals of which it has so largely inoulded. At the 
 request of numei'ous readers I have reluctantly added a 
 glossary of ' Yiddish ' words and phrases, based on one sup- 
 plied to the American edition by another haiid. I have 
 omitted only those words which occur but once afid are then 
 explained in the text ; and to each word I have added ari 
 indication of the language from which it was drawft. This 
 may please those who share Mr. Andrew Lang^s and Miss 
 Rosa Dartle's desire for information. It will be seen that 
 most of these despised words are pure Hebrew ; a language 
 which never died off the lips of men, and which is the meditmi 
 in which books are written all the world over even unto this 
 
 day. 
 
 I. Z. 
 
 London, March, 1893. 
 
 M899444 
 
Contents, 
 
 Book I. The Children of the Ghetto. 
 
 CHAPTER 
 
 
 PAGE 
 
 
 Proem ......... 
 
 ix 
 
 I. 
 
 The Bread of Affliction ...... 
 
 3 
 
 II. 
 
 The Sweater 
 
 lO 
 
 lit 
 
 Malka 
 
 30 
 
 IV. 
 
 The Redemption of the Son and the Daughter . 
 
 47 
 
 V. 
 
 The Pauper AUen 
 
 64 
 
 VI. 
 
 " Reb " Shemuel 
 
 75 
 
 VII. 
 
 The Neo-Hebrew Poet 
 
 84 
 
 VIII. 
 
 Esther and her Children ..... 
 
 98 
 
 IX. 
 
 Dutch Debby 
 
 113 
 
 X. 
 
 A Silent Family ....... 
 
 121 
 
 XL 
 
 The Purim Ball 
 
 . 127 
 
 XII. 
 
 
 . 141 
 
 XIII. 
 
 Sugarman's Barmitzvah Party .... 
 
 ■ 154 
 
 XIV. 
 
 The Hope of the Family 
 
 . 165 
 
 XV. 
 
 The Holy Land League ..... 
 
 178 
 
 XVI. 
 
 The Courtship of Shosshi Shmendrik . 
 
 ■ 193 
 
 XVII. 
 
 The Hyams's Honeymoon 
 
 209 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 
 . 221 
 
 XIX. 
 
 With the Strikers ...... 
 
 • 234 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER 
 
 XX. The Hope Extinct 
 
 XXI. The Jargon Players 
 
 XXII. " For Auld Lang Syne, My Dear " 
 
 XXIII. The Dead Monkey 
 
 XXIV. The Shadow of Religion 
 
 XXV. Seder Night 
 
 Book II. The Grandchildren of the Ghetto 
 
 I. The Christmas Dinner . 
 
 II. Raphael Leon 
 
 III. " The Flag of Judah " . 
 
 IV. The Troubles of an Editor 
 V. A Woman's Growth 
 
 VI. Comedy or Tragedy? . 
 
 VII. What the Years brought 
 
 VIII. The Ends of a Generation 
 
 IX. The " Flag " flutters . 
 
 X. Esther defies the Universe 
 
 XL Going Home 
 
 XII. A Sheaf of Sequels 
 
 XIII. The Dead Monkey again 
 
 XIV. Sidney settles down 
 XV. From Soul to Soul 
 
 XVI. Love's Temptation 
 
 XVII. The Prodigal Son . 
 
 XVIII. Hopes and Dreams 
 
 PAGE 
 
 249 
 
 259 
 266 
 
 275 
 284 
 297 
 
 319 
 
 358 
 375 
 388 
 
 398 
 
 422 
 
 431 
 435 
 445 
 457 
 468 
 491 
 
 497 
 505 
 523 
 536 
 542 
 
PROEM. 
 
 Not here in our London Ghetto the gates and gaberdines of 
 the olden Ghetto of the Eterjial City ; yet no lack of signs ex- 
 ternal by whicii one may k?iow it, and those who dwell tJierein. 
 lyts narrow streets have no specialty of architecture ; its dirt is 
 jiot picturesque. It is no longer the stage for the high-buskined 
 tragedy of tfiassacre and martyrdom ; ofily for the obscurer, 
 deeper tragedy that evolves from the pressure of its own inward 
 forces, and the long-drawn-out tragi-comedy of sordid and shifty 
 poverty. IJVatheless, this London Ghetto of ours is a region 
 where, amid uncleamtess and squalor, the rose of rojnaiice blows 
 yet a little lotiger i7i the raw air of English reality ; a world 
 which hides beneath its stony and iinlovely surface an ijuier 
 world of dreams, fantastic and poetic as the jnirage of the 
 Orient where they were woven, of superstitions grotesque as the 
 cathedral gargoyles of the Dark Ages in which they had birth. 
 And over all lie tenderly some streaks of celestial light shifting 
 from the face of the great Lawgiveh, 
 
 The folk who compose our pictures are children of the Ghetto ; 
 their faults are bred of its hover iiig miasma of persecution, their 
 virtues straitened and intensified by the narrowness of its hori- 
 zon. And they who have won their way beyond its boundaries 
 jnust still play their parts in tragedies atid comedies — tragedies 
 of spiritual struggle, comedies of material ambition — which 
 are the after?nath of its centuries of dominance, the sequel of 
 that long cruel night in Jewry which coincides with the Chris- 
 tian Era. If they are not the Children, they are at least the 
 Grandchildren of the Ghetto. 
 
 The particular Ghetto that is the dark background upon 
 which our pictures will be cast, is of voluntary formation. 
 
X PROEM. 
 
 People who have been Hving in a Ghetto for a couple of cen- 
 turies, are not able to step outside merely because the gates are 
 thrown down, nor to efface the brands on their souls by putting 
 off the yellow badges. The isolation imposed from without 
 will have come to seem the law of their being. But a minority 
 will pass, by units, into the larger, freer, stranger life amid the 
 execrations of an ever-dwindling majority. For better or for 
 worse, or for both, the Ghetto will be gradually abandoned, till 
 at last it becomes only a swarming place for the poor and the 
 ignorant, huddling together for social warmth. Such people 
 are their own Ghetto gates ; when they migrate they carry them 
 across the sea to lands where they are not. Into the heart of 
 East London there poured from Russia, from Poland, from Ger- 
 many, from Holland, streams of Jewish exiles, refugees, settlers, 
 few as well-to-do as the Jew of the proverb, but all rich in their 
 cheerfulness, their industry, and their cleverness. The majority 
 bore with them nothing but their phylacteries and praying 
 shawls, and a good-natured contempt for Christians and Chris- 
 tianity. For the Jew has rarely been embittered by persecution. 
 He knows that he is in Golitth, in exile, and that the days of the 
 Messiah are not yet, and he looks upon the persecutor merely 
 as the stupid instrument of an all-wise Providence. So that 
 these poor Jews were rich in all the virtues, devout yet tolerant, 
 and strong in their reliance on Faith, Hope, and more especially 
 Charity. 
 
 In the early days of the nineteenth century, all Israel were 
 brethren. Even the pioneer colony of wealthy Sephardim — 
 descendants of the Spanish crypto-Jews who had reached Eng- 
 land via Holland — had modified its boycott of the poor Ashke- 
 nazic immigrants, now they were become an overwhelming 
 majority. There was a superior stratum of Anglo-German Jews 
 who had had time to get on, but all the Ashkenazic tribes lived 
 very much like a happy family, the poor not stand-offish towards 
 the rich, but anxious to afford them opportunities for well-doing. 
 The Schjiorrer felt no false shame in his begging. He knew it 
 was the rich man's duty to give him unleavened bread at Pass- 
 over, and coals in the winter, and odd half-crowns at all seasons ; 
 
PROEM. xi 
 
 and he regarded himself as the Jacob's ladder by which the rich 
 man mounted to Paradise. But, like all genuine philanthropists, 
 he did not look for gratitude. He felt that virtue was its own 
 reward, especially when he sat in Sabbath vesture at the head of 
 his table on Friday nights, and thanked God in an operatic aria 
 for the white cotton table-cloth and the fried sprats. He sought 
 personal interviews with the most majestic magnates, and had 
 humorous repartees for their lumbering censure. 
 
 As for the rich, they gave charity unscrupulously — in the 
 same Oriental, unscientific, informal spirit in which the Dayanim, 
 those cadis of the East End, administered justice. The Takif, 
 or man of substance, was as accustomed to the palm of the men- 
 dicant outside the Great Synagogue as to the rattling pyx within. 
 They lived in Bury Street, and Prescott Street, and Finsbury — 
 these aristocrats of the Ghetto — in mansions that are now but 
 congeries of "apartments.'^ Few relations had they with Bel- 
 gravia, but many with Petticoat Lane and the Great Shool, the 
 stately old synagogue which has always been illuminated by 
 candles and still refuses all modern light. The Spanish Jews 
 had a more ancient s/ioga, but it was within a stone's throw of 
 the "Duke's Place" edifice. Decomm was not a feature of 
 synagogue worship in those days, nor was the Almighty yet con- 
 ceived as the holder of formal receptions once a week. Wor- 
 shippers did not pray with bated breath, as if afraid that the 
 deity would overhear them. They were at ease in Zion. They 
 passed the snuff-boxes and remarks about the weather. The 
 opportunities of skipping afforded by a too exuberant liturgy pro- 
 moted conversation, and even stocks were discussed in the terri- 
 ble longueurs induced by the meaningless ministerial repetition 
 of prayers already said by the congregation, or by the official 
 recitations of catalogues of purchased benedictions. Sometimes, 
 of course, this announcement of the offertory was interesting, 
 especially when there was sensational competition. The great 
 people bade in guineas for the privilege of rolling up the Scroll 
 of the Law or drawing the Curtain of the Ark, or saying a par- 
 ticular Kaddish if they were mourners, and then thrills of rever- 
 ence went round the congregation. The social hierarchy was to 
 
xii PROEM. 
 
 some extent graduated by synagogal contributions, and whoever 
 could afford only a little offering had it announced as a "gift" — 
 a vague term which might equally be the covering of a reticent 
 munificence. 
 
 Very few persons, " called up '' to the reading of the Law, 
 escaped at the cost they had intended, for one is easily led on by 
 an insinuative official incapable of taking low views of the donor's 
 generosity and a little deaf. The moment prior to the decla- 
 ration of the amount was quite exciting for the audience. On 
 Sabbaths and festivals the authorities could not write down these 
 sums, for writing is w^ork and work is forbidden ; even to write 
 them in the book and volume of their brain would have been to 
 charge their memories with an illegitimate if not an impossible 
 burden. Parchment books on a peculiar system with holes in 
 the pages and laces to go through the holes solved the problem 
 of bookkeeping without pen and ink. It is possible that many 
 of the worshippers were tempted to give beyond their means for 
 fear of losing the esteem of the Shatninos or Beadle, a potent 
 personage only next in influence to the President whose overcoat 
 he obsequiously removed on the greater man's annual visit to 
 the synagogue. The Beadle's eye was all over the Shool at 
 once, and he could settle an altercation about seats without 
 missing a single response. His automatic amens resounded 
 magnificently through the synagogue, at once a stimulus and a 
 rebuke. It was probably as a concession to him that poor men, 
 who were neither seat-holders nor wearers of chimney-pot hats, 
 were penned within an iron enclosure near the door of the build- 
 ing and ranged on backless benches, and it says much for the 
 authority of the Shammos that not even the Schnon-er contested 
 it. Prayers w-ere shouted rapidly by the congregation, and elab- 
 orately sung by the CJiasan. The minister was Vox et praterea 
 nihil. He was the only musical instrument permitted, and on 
 him devolved the whole onus of making the service attractive. 
 He succeededSC^e was helped by the sociability of the gather- 
 ing — for the Synagogue was virtually a Jewish Club, the focus 
 of the sectarian life/^ 
 
 "sHard times and bitter had some of the fathers of the Ghetto, 
 ■i 
 
PROEM, xiii 
 
 but they ate their dry bread with the salt of humor, loved their 
 wives, and praised God for His mercies. ,' Unwitting of the 
 genealogies that would be found for them by their prosperous 
 grandchildren, old clo' men plied their trade in ambitious con- 
 tent. They were meek and timorous outside the Ghetto, walking 
 warily for fear of the Christian. Sufferance was still the badge 
 of all their tribe. Yet that there were Jews who held their 
 heads high, let the following legend tell : Few men could shuffle 
 along more inoffensively or cry "• Old Clo' '" with a meeker twitter 
 than Sleepy Sol. The old man crawled one day, bowed with 
 humility and clo'-bag, into a military mews and uttered his trem- 
 ulous chirp. To him came one of the hostlers with insolent 
 beetling brow. 
 
 " Any gold lace ? '^ faltered Sleepy Sol. 
 
 " Get out ! " roared the hostler. 
 
 " ril give you de best prices,'' pleaded Sleepy Sol. 
 
 "Get out!" repeated the hostler and hustled the old man 
 into the street. ''If I catch you 'ere again, I'll break your 
 neck." Sleepy Sol loved his neck, but j;he profit on gold lace 
 torn from old uniforms was high. Next week he crept into the 
 mews again, trusting to meet another hostler. 
 
 "Clo' ! Clo' !" he chirped faintly. 
 
 Alas! the brawny bully was to the fore again and recognized 
 him. 
 
 " You dirty old Jew," he cried. " Take that, and that ! The 
 next time I sees you, you'll go 'ome on a shutter." 
 
 The old man took that, and that, and went on his way. The 
 next day he came again. 
 
 " Clo' ! Clo' ! " he whimpered. 
 
 " What ! " said the ruffian, his coarse cheeks flooded with 
 angry blood. "Ev yer forgotten what I promised yer?" He 
 seized Sleepy Sol by the scruff of the neck. 
 
 " I say, why can't you leave the old man alone ? " 
 
 The hostler stared at the protester, whose presence he had 
 not noticed in the pleasurable excitement of the moment. It was 
 a Jewish young man, indifferently attired in a pepper-and-salt suit. 
 The muscular hostler measured him scornfully with his eye. 
 
xiv PROEM. 
 
 "What's to do with you?'^ he said, with studied contempt. 
 
 " Nothing," admitted the intruder. " And what harm is he 
 doing you? " 
 
 " That's my bizness," answered the hostler, and tightened his 
 clutch of Sleepy SoPs nape. 
 
 "Well, you'd better not mind it," answered the young man 
 calmly. " Let go." 
 
 The hostler's thick lips emitted a disdainful laugh. 
 
 "Let go, d'you hear?" repeated the young man. 
 
 "I'll let go at your nose," said the hostler, clenching his 
 knobby fist. 
 
 " Very well," said the young man. " Then 111 pull yours." 
 
 " Oho ! " said the hostler, his scowl growing fiercer. " Yer 
 means bizness, does yer ? " With that he sent Sleepy Sol 
 staggering along the road and rolled up his shirt-sleeves. His 
 coat was already off. 
 
 The young man did not remove his ; he quietly assumed the 
 defensive. The hostler sparred up to him with grim earnest- 
 ness, and launched a terrible blow at his most characteristic 
 feature. The young man blandly put it on one side, and 
 planted a return blow on the hostler's ear. Enraged, his oppo- 
 nent sprang upon him. The young Jew paralyzed him by 
 putting his left hand negligently into his pocket. With his 
 remaining hand he closed the hostler's right eye, and sent the 
 flesh about it into mourning. Then he carelessly tapped a little 
 blood from the hostler's nose, gave him a few thumps on the 
 chest as if to test the strength of his lungs, and laid him sprawl- 
 ing in the courtyard. A brother hostler ran out from the 
 stables and gave a cry of astonishment. 
 
 " You'd better wipe his face," said the young man curtly. 
 
 The newcomer hurried back towards the stables. 
 
 " Vait a moment," said Sleepy Sol. " I can sell you a sponge 
 sheap ; I've got a beauty in my bag." 
 
 There were plenty of sponges about, but the newcomer bought 
 the second-hand sponge. 
 
 "Do you want any more?" the young man affably inquired of 
 his prostrate adversary. 
 
PROEM. XV 
 
 The hostler gave a groan. He was shamed before a friend 
 whom he had early convinced of his fistic superiority. 
 
 " No, I reckon he don't/' said his friend, with a knowing grin 
 at the conqueror. 
 
 "Then I will wish you a good day," said the young man. 
 " Come along, father." 
 
 "Yes, ma son-in-law," said Sleepy Sol. 
 
 "Do you know who that was, Joe?" said his friend, as he 
 sponged away the blood. 
 
 Joe shook his head. 
 
 " That was Dutch Sam," said his friend in an awe-struck 
 whisper. 
 
 All Joe's body vibrated with surprise and respect. Dutch 
 Sam was the champion bruiser of his time ; in private life an 
 eminent dandy and a prime favorite of His Majesty George IV., 
 and Sleepy Sol had a beautiful daughter and was perhaps pre- 
 possessing himself when washed for the Sabbath. 
 
 "Dutch Sam!" Joe repeated. 
 
 "Dutch Sam! Why, we've got his picter hanging up inside, 
 only he's naked to the waist." 
 
 "Well, strike me lucky! What a fool I was not to rekkernize 
 'im!" His battered face brightened up. " No wonder he licked 
 
 fii 
 
 me; 
 
 Except for the comparative infrequency of the more bestial 
 types of men and women, Judaea has always been a cosmos in 
 little, and its prize-fighters and scientists, its philosophers and 
 " fences," its gymnasts and money-lenders, its scholars and stock- 
 brokers, its musicians, chess-players, poets, comic singers, luna- 
 tics, saints, publicans, politicians, warriors, poltroons, mathema- 
 ticians, actors, foreign correspondents, have always been in the 
 first rank. NiJiil alieniDii a se JitdcEiis piitat. 
 
 Joe and his friend fell to recalling Dutch Sam's great feats. 
 Each out-vied the other in admiration for the supreme pugilist. 
 
 Next day Sleepy Sol came rampaging down the courtyard. 
 He walked at the rate of five miles to the hour, and despite the 
 weight of his bag his head pointed to the zenith. 
 
 "Clo'!" he shrieked. "Clo'!" 
 
xvi PROEM. 
 
 Joe the hostler came out. His head was bandaged, and in his 
 hand was gold lace. It was something even to do business with 
 a hero's father-in-law. 
 
 But it is given to few men to marry their daughters to cham- 
 pion boxers ; and as Dutch Sam was not a Don Quixote, the 
 average peddler or huckster never enjoyed the luxury of prancing 
 gait and cock-a-hoop business cry. The primitive fathers of the 
 Ghetto might have borne themselves more jauntily had tliey fore- 
 seen that they were to be the ancestors of mayors and aldermen 
 descended from Castilian hidalgos and Polish kings, and that 
 an unborn historian would conclude that the Ghetto of their day 
 was peopled by princes in disguise. T They would have been as 
 surprised to learn who they were as to be informed that they 
 were orthodox. The great Reform split did not occur till well 
 on towards the middle of the century, and the Jews of those 
 days were unable to conceive that a man could be a Jew without 
 eating kosher meat, and they would have looked upon the modern 
 distinctions between racial and religious Jews as the sophistries 
 of the convert or the missionary^' If their religious life converged 
 to the Great Shool, their social life focussed on Petticoat Lane, a 
 long, narrow thoroughfare which, as late as Strype's day, was 
 lined with beautiful trees ; vastly more pleasant they must have 
 been than the faded barrows and beggars of after days. The 
 Lane — such was its affectionate sobriquet — was the stronghold 
 of hard-shell Judaism, the Alsatia of " infidelity " into which no 
 missionary dared set foot, especially no apostate-apostlei^> Even 
 in modern days the new-fangled Jewish minister of the fashion- 
 able suburb, rigged out like the Christian clergyman, has been 
 mistaken for such a Meshiimad, and pelted with gratuitous vege- 
 tables and eleemosynary eggs. The Lane was always the great 
 market-place, and every insalubrious street and alley abutting on 
 it was covered with the overflowings of its commerce and its 
 mud. Wentworth Street and Goulston Street were the chief 
 branches, and in festival times the latter was a pandemonium of 
 caged poultry, clucking and quacking and cackling and scream- 
 ing. Fowls and geese and ducks were bought alive, and taken 
 to have their throats cut for a fee by the official slaughterer. At 
 
PROEM. xvii 
 
 Purim a gaiety, as of the Roman carnival, enlivened the swampy 
 Wentworth Street, and brought a smile into the unwashed face 
 of the pavement. The confectioners^ shops, crammed with 
 " stuffed monkeys " and '' bolas,'' were -besieged by hilarious 
 crowds of handsome girls and their young men, fat women and 
 their children, all washing down the luscious spicy compounds 
 with cups of chocolate ; temporarily erected swinging cradles 
 bore a vociferous many-colored burden to the skies ; cardboard 
 noses, grotesque in their departure from truth, abounded. The 
 Purim spiel or Purim play never took root in England, nor was 
 Haman ever burnt in the streets, but Shalachmonos, or gifts of 
 the season, passed between friend and friend, and masquerading 
 parties burst into neighbors' houses. But the Lane was lively 
 enough on the ordinary Friday and Sunday. The famous Sun- 
 day Fair was an event of metropolitan importance, and thither 
 came buyers of every sect. The Friday Fair was more local, and 
 confined mainly to edibles. The Ante-Festival Fairs combined 
 something of the other two, for Jews desired to sport new hats 
 and clothes for the holidays as well as to eat extra luxuries, and 
 took the opportunity of a well-marked epoch to invest in new 
 every things from oil -cloth to cups and saucers. Especially was 
 this so at Passover, when for a week the poorest Jew must use a 
 supplementary set of crockery and kitchen utensils. A babel of 
 sound, audible for several streets around, denoted Market Day 
 in Petticoat Lane, and the pavements were blocked by serried 
 crowds going both ways at once. 
 
 It was only gradually that the community was Anglicized. 
 Under the sway of centrifugal impulses, the wealthier members 
 began to form new colonies, moulting their old feathers and 
 replacing them by finer, and flying ever further from the centre. 
 Men of organizing ability founded unrivalled philanthropic and 
 educational institutions on British lines ; millionaires fought for 
 political emancipation ; brokers brazenly foisted themselves on 
 'Change ; ministers gave sermons in bad English ; an English 
 journal was started ; very slowly, the conventional Anglican 
 tradition was established ; and on that human palimpsest which 
 has borne the inscriptions of all languages and all epochs, was 
 
xviii PROEM. 
 
 writ large the sign-manual of England. Judaea prostrated itself 
 before the Dagon of its hereditary foe, the Philistine, and re- 
 spectability crept on to freeze the blood of the Orient with its 
 frigid finger, and to blur the vivid tints of the East into the 
 uniform gray of English middle-class life. Qn the period within 
 which our story moves, only vestiges of the old gaiety and 
 brotherhood remained ; the full al fresco flavor was evaporated^ 
 
 And to-day they are all dead — the Takeefitn with big hearts 
 and bigger purses, and the humorous Sc/uiorrers, who accepted 
 their gold, and the cheerful pious peddlers who rose from one 
 extreme to the other, building up fabulous fortunes in marvellous 
 ways. The young mothers, who suckled their babes in the sun, 
 have passed out of the sunshine ; yea, and the babes, too, have 
 gone down with gray heads to the dust. Dead are the fair fat 
 women, with tender hearts, who waddled benignantly through 
 life, ever ready to shed the sympathetic tear, best of wives, and 
 cooks, and mothers ; dead are the bald, ruddy old men, who 
 ambled about in faded carpet slippers, and passed the snuflf-box 
 of peace ; dead are the stout-hearted youths who sailed away to 
 Tom Tiddler's ground, and dead are the buxom maidens they 
 led under the wedding canopy when they returned. Even the 
 great Dr. Sequira, pompous in white stockings, physician ex- 
 traordinary to the Prince Regent of Portugal, lies vanquished 
 by his life-long adversary and the Baal Shem himself. King of 
 Cabalists, could command no countervailing miracle. 
 
 Where are the little girls in white pinafores with pink sashes 
 who brightened the Ghetto on high days and holidays? Where 
 is the beauteous Betsy of the Victoria Ballet? and where the 
 jocund synagogue dignitary who led off the cotillon with her 
 at the annual Rejoicing of the Law? Worms have long since 
 picked the great financier's brain, the embroidered waistcoats of 
 the bucks have passed even beyond the stage of adorning sweeps 
 on May Day, and Dutch Sam's fist is bonier than ever. The 
 same mould covers them all — those who donated guineas and 
 those who donated " gifts," the rogues and the hypocrites, and 
 the wedding-drolls, the observant and the lax, the purse-proud 
 and the lowly, the coarse and the genteel, the wonderful chap- 
 
PROEM. xix 
 
 men and the luckless Schlemzhls, Rabbi and Dayan and Shochet^ 
 the scribes who wrote the sacred scroll and the cantors who 
 trolled it off mellifluous tongues, and the betting-men who never 
 listened to it ; the grimy Russians of the capotes and the ear- 
 locks, and the blue-blooded Dons, " the gentlemen of the 
 Mahamad," who ruffled it with swords and knee-breeches in 
 the best Christian society. Those who kneaded the toothsome 
 " bolas " lie with those who ate them ; and the marriage-brokers 
 repose with those they mated. The olives and the cucumbers 
 grow green and fat as of yore, but their lovers are mixed with a 
 soil that is barren of them. The restless, bustling crowds that 
 jostled laughingly in Rag Fair are at rest in the " House of 
 Life ; " the pageant of their strenuous generation is vanished 
 as a dream. They died with the declaration of God's unity on 
 their stiffening lips, and the certainty of resurrection in their 
 pulseless hearts, and a faded Hebrew inscription on a tomb, or 
 an unread entry on a synagogue brass is their only record. 
 And yet, perhaps, their generation is not all dust. Perchance, 
 here and there, some decrepit centenarian rubs his purblind 
 eyes with the ointment of memory, and sees these pictures of 
 the past, hallowed by the consecration of time, and finds his 
 shrivelled cheek wet with the pathos sanctifying the joys that 
 have been. 
 
Book I. 
 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE BREAD OF AFFLICTION. 
 
 A DEAD and gone wag called the street " Fashion Street," and 
 most of the people who live in it do not even see the joke. If it 
 could exchange names with " Rotten Row," both places would be 
 more appropriately designated. It is a dull, squalid, narrow thor- 
 oughfare in the East End of London, connecting Spitalfields with 
 Whitechapel, and branching off in blind alleys. In the days when 
 little Esther Ansell trudged its unclean pavements, its extremities 
 were within earshot of the blasphemies from some of the vilest 
 quarters and filthiest rookeries in the capital of the civilized world. 
 Some of these clotted spiders'-webs have since been swept away 
 by the besom of the social reformer, and the spiders have scurried 
 off into darker crannies. 
 
 There were the conventional touches about the London street- 
 picture, as Esther Ansell sped through the freezing mist of the 
 December evening, with a pitcher in her hand, looking in her 
 oriental coloring like a miniature of Rebecca going to the well. 
 A female street-singer, with a trail of infants of dubious mater- 
 nity, troubled the air with a piercing melody ; a pair of slatterns 
 with arms a-kimbo reviled each other's relatives ; a drunkard 
 lurched along, babbling amiably ; an organ-grinder, blue-nosed as 
 his monkey, set some ragged children jigging under the watery 
 rays of a street-lamp. Esther drew her little plaid shawl tightly 
 around her, and ran on without heeding these familiar details, 
 her chilled feet absorbing the damp of the murky pavement 
 through the worn soles of her cumbrous boots. They were mas- 
 culine boots, kicked off by some intoxicated tramp and picked 
 up by Esther's father. Moses Ansell had a habit of lighting on 
 windfalls, due, perhaps, to his meek manner of walking with bent 
 head, as though literally bowed beneath the yoke of the Captiv- 
 
 3 
 
4 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 ity. Providence rewarded him for his humihty by occasional 
 treasure-trove. Esther had received a pair of new boots from 
 her school a week before, and the substitution of the tramp's 
 foot-gear for her own resulted in a net profit of half-a-crown, and 
 kept Esther's little brothers and sisters in bread for a week. At 
 school, under her teacher's eye, Esther was very unobtrusive about 
 the feet for the next fortnight, but as the fear of being found out 
 died away, even her rather morbid conscience condoned the 
 deception in view of the stomachic gain. 
 
 They gave away bread and milk at the school, too, but Esther 
 and her brothers and sisters never took either, for fear of being 
 thought in want of them. The superiority of a class-mate is hard 
 to bear, and a high-spirited child will not easily acknowledge star- 
 vation in presence of a roomful of purse-proud urchins, some of 
 them able to spend a farthing a day on pure luxuries. Moses 
 Ansell would have been grieved had he known his children were 
 refusing the bread he could not give them. Trade was slack in 
 the sweating dens, and Moses, who had always lived from hand 
 to mouth, had latterly held less than ever between the one and 
 the other. He had applied for help to the Jewish Board of 
 Guardians, but red-tape rarely unwinds as quickly as hunger coils 
 itself; moreover, Moses was an old offender in poverty at the 
 Court of Charity. But there was one species of alms which 
 Moses could not be denied, and the existence of which Esther 
 could not conceal from him as she concealed that of the elee- 
 mosynary breakfasts at the school. For it was known to all men 
 that soup and bread were to be had for the asking thrice a week 
 at the Institution in Fashion Street, and in the Ansell household 
 the opening of the soup-kitchen was looked forward to as the 
 dawn of a golden age, when it would be impossible to pass more 
 than one day without bread. The vaguely-remembered smell of 
 the soup threw a poetic fragrance over the coming winter. Every 
 year since Esther's mother had died, the child had been sent to 
 fetch home the provender, for Moses, who was the only other 
 available member of the family, was always busy praying when he 
 had nothing better to do. And so to-night Esther fared to the 
 kitchen, with her red pitcher, passing in her childish eagerness 
 
THE BREAD OF AFFLICTION. 5 
 
 numerous women shuffling along on the same errand, and bearing 
 uncouth tin cans supphed by the institution. An individualistic 
 instinct of cleanliness made Esther prefer the family pitcher. 
 To-day this liberty of choice has been taken away, and the 
 regulation can, numbered and stamped, serves as a soup-ticket. 
 There was quite a crowd of applicants outside the stable-like 
 doors of the kitchen when Esther arrived, a few with well-lined 
 stomachs, perhaps, but the majority famished and shivering. The 
 feminine element swamped the rest, but there were about a dozen 
 men and a few children among the group, most of the men scarce 
 taller than the children — strange, stunted, swarthy, hairy creat- 
 ures, with muddy complexions illumined by black, twinkling 
 eyes. A few were of imposing stature, wearing coarse, dusty felt 
 hats or peaked caps, with shaggy beards or faded scarfs around 
 their throats. Here and there, too, was a woman of comely face 
 and figure, but for the most part it was a collection of crones, 
 prematurely aged, with weird, wan, old-world features, slip-shod 
 and draggle-tailed, their heads bare, or covered with dingy shawls 
 in lieu of bonnets — red shawls, gray shawls, brick-dust shawls, 
 mud-colored shawls. Yet there was an indefinable touch of 
 romance and pathos about the tawdriness and witch-like ugli- 
 ness, and an underlying identity about the crowd of Polish, Rus- 
 sian, German, Dutch Jewesses, mutually apathetic, and pressing 
 forwards- Some of them had infants at their barff breasts, who 
 drowsed quietly with intervals of ululation. The women devoid 
 of shawls had nothing around their necks to protect them from 
 the cold, the dusky throats were exposed, and sometimes even 
 the first hooks and eyes of the bodice were unnecessarily undone. 
 The majority wore cheap earrings and black wigs with preter- 
 naturally polished hair ; where there was no wig, the hair was 
 touzled. 
 
 At half-past five the stable-doors were thrown open, and the 
 crowd pressed through a long, narrow white-washed stone cor- 
 ridor into a barn-like compartment, with a white-washed ceiling 
 traversed by wooden beams. Within this compartment, and 
 leaving but a narrow, circumscribing border, was a sort of cattle- 
 pen, into which the paupers crushed, awaiting amid discomfort 
 
6 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 and universal jabber the divine moment. The single jet of 
 gas-light depending from the ceiling flared upon the strange 
 simian faces, and touched them into a grotesque picturesque- 
 ness that would have delighted Dore. 
 
 They felt hungry, these picturesque people ; their near and 
 dear ones were hungering at home. Voluptuously savoring in 
 imagination the operation of the soup, they forgot its operation 
 as a dole in aid of wages ; were unconscious of the grave econom- 
 ical possibilities of pauperization and the rest, and quite willing to 
 swallow their independence with the soup. Even Esther, who 
 had read much, and was sensitive, accepted unquestioningly 
 the theory of the universe that was held by most people about 
 her, that human beings were distinguished from animals in 
 having to toil terribly for a meagre crust, but that their lot 
 was lightened by the existence of a small and semi-divine class 
 called Takeejiin^ or rich people, who gave away what they 
 didn't want. How these rich people came to be, Esther did 
 not inquire ; they were as much a part of the constitution of 
 things as clouds and horses. The semi-celestial variety was 
 rarely to be met with. It lived far away from the Ghetto, and 
 a small family of it was said to occupy a whole house. Rep- 
 resentatives of it, clad in rustling silks or impressive broad-cloth, 
 and radiating an indefinable aroma of superhumanity, some- 
 times came 40 the school, preceded by the beaming Head 
 Mistress ; and then all the little girls rose and curtseyed, and 
 the best of them, passing as average members of the class, 
 astonished the semi-divine persons by their intimate acquaint- 
 ance with the topography of the Pyrenees and the disagree- 
 ments of Saul and David, the intercourse of the two species 
 ending in effusive smiles and general satisfaction. But the 
 dullest of the girls was alive to the comedy, and had a good- 
 humored contempt for the unworldliness of the semi-divine 
 persons who spoke to them as if they were not going to recom- 
 mence squabbling, and pulling one another's hair, and copying 
 one another's sums, and stealing one another's needles, the 
 moment the semi-celestial backs were turned. 
 
 To-night, semi-divine persons were to be seen in a galaxy 
 
THE BREAD OF AFFLICTION. 7 
 
 of splendor, for in the reserved standing-places, behind the 
 white deal counter, was gathered a group of philanthropists. 
 The room was an odd-shaped polygon, partially lined with eight 
 boilers, whose great wooden lids were raised by pulleys and 
 balanced by red-painted iron balls. In the corner stood the 
 cooking-engine. Cooks in white caps and blouses stirred the 
 steaming soup with long wooden paddles. A tradesman be- 
 sought the attention of the Jewish reporters to the improved 
 boiler he had manufactured, and the superintendent adjured 
 the newspaper men not to omit his name ; while amid the 
 soberly-clad clergymen flitted, like gorgeous humming-birds 
 through a flock of crows, the marriageable daughters of an 
 east-end minister. 
 
 When a sufficient number of semi-divinities was gathered 
 together, the President addressed the meeting at considerable 
 length, striving to impress upon the clergymen and other phi- 
 lanthropists present that charity was a virtue, and appealing to 
 the Bible, the Koran, and even the Vedas, for confirmation of 
 his proposition. Early in his speech the sliding door that sepa- 
 rated the cattle-pen from the kitchen proper had to be closed, 
 because the jostling crowd jabbered so much and inconsiderate 
 infants squalled, and there did not seem to be any general desire 
 to hear the President's ethical views. They were a low material 
 lot, who thought only of their bellies, and did but chatter the 
 louder when the speech was shut out. They had overflowed 
 their barriers by this time, and were surging cruelly to and fro, 
 and Esther had to keep her elbows close to her sides lest her 
 arms should be dislocated. Outside the stable doors a shifting 
 array of boys and girls hovered hungrily and curiously. When 
 the President had finished, the Rabbinate was invited to address 
 the philanthropists, which it did at not less length, eloquently 
 seconding the proposition that_ charity was a virtue. Then the 
 door was slid back, and the first two paupers were admitted, the 
 rest of the crowd being courageously kept at bay by the super- 
 intendent. The head cook filled a couple of plates with soup, 
 dipping a great pewter pot into the cauldron. The Rabbinate 
 then uplifted its eyes heavenwards, and said the grace : 
 
8 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 " Blessed art Thou, O Lord, King of the Universe, according 
 to whose word all things exist." 
 
 It then tasted a spoonful of the soup, as did also the President 
 and several of the visitors, the passage of the fluid along the 
 palate invariably evoking approving ecstatic smiles ; and indeed, 
 there was more body in it this opening night than there would 
 be later, when, in due course, the bulk of the meat would take 
 its legitimate place among the pickings of office. The sight of 
 the delighted deglutition of the semi-divine persons made Es- 
 ther's mouth water as she struggled for breathing space on the 
 outskirts of Paradise. The impatience which fretted her was 
 almost allayed by visions of stout-hearted Solomon and gentle 
 Rachel and whimpering little Sarah and Ikey, all gulping down 
 the delicious draught. Even the more stoical father and grand- 
 mother were a little in her thoughts. The Ansells had eaten 
 nothing but a slice of dry bread each in the morning. Here 
 before her, in the land of Goshen, flowing with soup, was piled 
 up a heap of halves of loaves, while endless other loaves were 
 ranged along the shelves as for a giant's table. Esther looked 
 ravenously at the four-square tower built of edible bricks, shiver- 
 ing as the biting air sought out her back through a sudden in- 
 terstice in the heaving mass. The draught reminded her more 
 keenlv of her little ones huddled together in the fireless garret 
 at home. Ah! what a happy night was in store. She must not 
 let them devour the two loaves to-night ; that would be criminal 
 extravagance. No, one would suffice for the banquet, the other 
 must be carefully put by. " To-morrow is also a day," as the old 
 grandmother used to say in her quaint jargon. But the banquet 
 was not to be spread as fast as Esther's fancy could fly ; the 
 doors must be shut again, other semi-divine and wholly divine 
 persons (in white ties) must move and second (with eloquence 
 and length) votes of thanks to. the President, the Rabbinate, 
 and all other available recipients ; a French visitor must express 
 his admiration of English charity. But at last the turn of the 
 gnawing stomachs came. The motley crowd, still babbling, 
 made a slow, forward movement, squeezing painfully through 
 the narrow aperture, and shivering a plate glass window pane at 
 
THE BREAD OF AFFLICTION. 9 
 
 the side of the cattle-pen in the crush ; the semi-divine persons 
 rubbed their hands and smiled genially ; ingenious paupers tried 
 to dodge round to the cauldrons by the semi-divine entrance ; the 
 tropical humming-birds fluttered among -the crows; there was a 
 splashing of ladles and a gurgling of cascades of soup into the 
 cans, and a hubbub of voices ; a toothless, white-haired, blear- 
 eyed hag lamented in excellent English that soup was refused 
 her, owing to her case not having yet been investigated, and her 
 tears moistened the one loaf she received. In like hard case a 
 Russian threw himself on the stones and howled. But at last 
 Esther was running through the mist, warmed by the pitcher 
 which she hugged to her bosom, and suppressing the blind im- 
 pulse to pinch the pair of loaves tied up in her pinafore. She 
 almost flew up the dark flight of stairs to the attic in Royal 
 Street. Little Sarah was sobbing querulously. Esther, con- 
 scious of being an angel of deliverance, tried to take the last 
 two steps at once, tripped and tumbled ignominiously against 
 the garret-door, which flew back and let her fall into the room 
 with a crash. The pitcher shivered into fragments under her 
 aching little bosom, the odorous soup spread itself in an irreg- 
 ular pool over the boards, and flowed under the two beds and 
 dripped down the crevices into the room beneath. Esther burst 
 into tears ; her frock was wet and greased, her hands were cut 
 and bleeding. Little Sarah checked her sobs at the disaster. 
 Moses Ansell was not yet returned from evening service, but the 
 withered old grandmother, whose wizened face loomed through 
 the gloom of the cold, unlit garret, sat up on the bed and cursed 
 her angrily for a Schleinihl. A sense of injustice made Esther 
 cry more bitterly. She had never broken anything for years 
 past. Ikey, an eerie-looking dot of four and a half years, tot- 
 tered towards her (all the Ansells had learnt to see in the dark), 
 and nestling his curly head against her wet bodice, murmured : 
 " Neva mind, Estie, I lat oo teep in my new bed." 
 The consolation of sleeping in that imaginary new bed to the 
 possession of which Ikey was always looking forward was appar- 
 ently adequate ; for Esther got up from the floor and untied the 
 loaves from her pinafore. A reckless spirit of defiance possessed 
 
10 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 her, as of a gambler who throws good money after bad. They 
 should have a mad revelry to-night — the two loaves should be 
 eaten at once. One (minus a hunk for father's supper) would 
 hardly satisfy six voracious appetites. Solomon and Rachel, irre- 
 pressibly excited by the sight of the bread, rushed at it greedily, 
 snatched a loaf from Esther's hand, and tore off a crust each with 
 their fingers. 
 
 " Heathen,'' cried the old grandmother. " Washing and bene- 
 diction." 
 
 Solomon was used to being called a '• heathen " by the Bube. 
 He put on his cap and went grudgingly to the bucket of water 
 that stood in a corner of the room, and tipped a drop over his 
 fingers. It is to be feared that neither the quantity of water nor 
 the area of hand covered reached even the minimum enjoined by 
 Rabbinical law. He murmured something intended for Hebrew 
 during the operation, and was beginning to mutter the devout 
 little sentence which precedes the eating of bread when Rachel, 
 who as a female was less driven to the lavatory ceremony, and 
 had thus got ahead of him, paused in her ravenous mastication 
 and made a wr}^ face. Solomon took a huge bite at his crust, 
 then he uttered an inarticulate " pooh,"* and spat out his mouth- 
 ful. 
 
 There was no salt in the bread. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE SWEATER. 
 
 The catastrophe was not complete. There were some long 
 thin fibres of pale boiled meat, whose juices had gone to enrich 
 the soup, lying about the floor or adhering to the fragments of 
 the pitcher. Solomon, who was a curly-headed chap of infinite 
 resource, discovered them, and it had just been decided to neu- 
 tralize the insipidity of the bread by the far-away flavor of the 
 meat, when a peremptory knocking was heard at the door, and a 
 dazzling vision of beauty bounded into the room. 
 
THE SWEATER. 11 
 
 " 'Ere ! What are you doin', leavin' things leak through our 
 ceiling?'' 
 
 Becky Belcovitcli was a buxom, bouncing girl, with cherry 
 cheeks that looked exotic in a land of pale faces. She wore a 
 mass of black crisp ringlets aggressively suggestive of singeing 
 and curl-papers. She was the belle of Royal Street in her 
 spare time, and womanly triumphs dogged even her working 
 hours. She was sixteen years old, and devoted her youth and 
 beauty to buttonholes. In the East End, where a spade is a 
 spade, a buttonhole is a buttonhole, and not a primrose or a 
 pansy. There are two kinds of buttonhole — the coarse for slop 
 goods and the fine for gentlemanly wear. Becky concentrated 
 herself on superior buttonholes, which are worked with fine 
 twist. She stitched them in her father's workshop, which was 
 more comfortable than a stranger's, and better fitted for evading 
 the Factory Acts. To-night she was radiant in silk and jewelry, 
 and her pert snub nose had the insolence of felicity which Aga- 
 memnon deprecated. Seeing her, you would have as soon con- 
 nected her with Esoteric Buddhism as with buttonholes. 
 
 The Bube explained the situation in voluble Yiddish, and 
 made Esther wince again under the impassioned invective on 
 her clumsiness. The old beldame expended enough oriental 
 metaphor on the accident to fit up a minor poet. If the family 
 died of starvation, their blood would be upon their grand- 
 daughter's head. 
 
 " Well, why don't you wipe it up, stupid ? " said Becky. 
 " 'Ow would you like to pay for Pesach's new coat ? It just 
 dripped past his shoulder." 
 
 " I'm so sorry, Becky," said Esther, striving hard to master 
 the tremor in her voice. And drawing a house-cloth from a 
 mysterious recess, she went on her knees in a practical prayer 
 for pardon. 
 
 Becky snorted and went back to her sister's engagement- 
 party. For this was the secret of her gorgeous vesture, of her 
 glittering earrings, and her massive brooch, as it was the secret 
 of the transformation of the Belcovitcli workshop (and living 
 room) into a hall of dazzling light. Four separate gaunt bare 
 
12 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 arms of iron gas-pipe lifted hymeneal torches. The labels from 
 reels of cotton, pasted above the mantelpiece as indexes of work 
 done, alone betrayed the past and future of the room. At a 
 long narrow table, covered with a white table-cloth spread with 
 rum, gin, biscuits and fruit, and decorated with two wax candles 
 in tall, brass candlesticks, stood or sat a group of swarthy, 
 neatly-dressed Poles, most of them in high hats. A few women 
 wearing wigs, silk dresses, and gold chains wound round half- 
 washed necks, stood about outside the inner circle. A stoop- 
 ing black-bearded blear-eyed man in a long threadbare coat and 
 a black skull cap, on either side of which hung a corkscrew curl, 
 sat abstractedly eating the almonds and raisins, in the central 
 place of honor which befits a Maggid. Before him were pens 
 and ink and a roll of parchment. This was the engagement 
 contract. 
 
 The damages of breach of promise were assessed in advance 
 and without respect of sex. Whichever side repented of the 
 bargain undertook to pay ten pounds by way of compensation 
 for the broken pledge. As a nation, Israel is practical and free 
 from cant. Romance and moonshine are beautiful things, but 
 behind the glittering veil are always the stern realities of things 
 and the weaknesses of human nature. The high contracting 
 parties were signing the document as Becky returned. The 
 bridegroom, who halted a little on one leg, was a tall sallow 
 man named Pesach Weingott. He was a boot-maker, who 
 could expound the Talmud and play the fiddle, but was unable 
 to earn a living. He was marrying Fanny Belcovitch because 
 his parents-in-law would give him free board and lodging for 
 a year, and because he liked her. Fanny was a plump, pulpy 
 girl, not in the prime of youth. Her complexion was fair and 
 her manner lymphatic, and if she was not so well-favored as 
 her sister, she was more amiable and pleasant. She could sing 
 sweetly in Yiddish and in English, and had once been a panto- 
 mime fairy at ten shillings a week, and had even flourished a 
 cutlass as a midshipman. But she had long since given up the 
 stage, to become her father's right hand woman in the work- 
 shop. She made coats from morning till midnight at a big 
 
THE SWEATER. 13 
 
 machine with a massive treadle, and had pains in her chest 
 even before she fell in love with Pesach Weingott. 
 
 There was a hubbub of congratulation (JMazzoltov^ MazzoltoVy 
 good luck), and a palsy of handshaking, when the contract was 
 signed. Remarks, grave and facetious, flew about in Yiddish, 
 with phrases of Polish and Russian thrown in for auld lang syne, 
 and cups and jugs were broken in reminder of the transiency of 
 things mortal. The Belcovitches had been saving up their already 
 broken crockery for the occasion. The hope was expressed that 
 Mr. and Mrs. Belcovitch would live to see '• rejoicings " on their 
 other daughter, and to see their daughters' daughters under the 
 Chuppah, or wedding-canopy. 
 
 Becky's hardened cheek blushed under the oppressive jocu- 
 larity. Everybody spoke Yiddish habitually at No. i Royal 
 Street, except the younger generation, and that spoke it to the 
 elder. 
 
 "I always said, no girl of mine should marry a Dutchman." 
 It was a dominant thought of Mr. Belcovitch's, and it rose spon- 
 taneously to his lips at this joyful moment. Next to a Christian, 
 a Dutch Jew stood lowest in the gradation of potential sons-in- 
 law. Spanish Jews, earliest arrivals by way of Holland, after the 
 Restoration, are a class apart, and look down on the later im- 
 ported As/ikenaznn, embracing both Poles and Dutchmen in 
 their impartial contempt. But this does not prevent the Pole 
 and the Dutchman from despising each other. To a Dutch or 
 Russian Jew, the " Pullack," or Polish Jew, is a poor creature ; 
 and scarce anything can exceed the complacency with which the 
 "PuUack" looks down upon the '• Litvok " or Lithuanian, the 
 degraded being whose Shibboleth is literally Sibboleth, and who 
 says ''ee" where rightly constituted persons say " oo." To 
 mimic the mincing pronunciation of the " Litvok " affords the 
 " Pullack " a sense of superiority almost equalling that possessed 
 by the English Jew, whose mispronunciation of the Holy Tongue 
 is his title to rank far above all foreign varieties. Yet a vein of 
 brotherhood runs beneath all these feelings of mutual superiority ; 
 like the cliqueism which draws together old clo' dealers, though 
 each gives fifty per cent, more than any other dealer in the 
 
14 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 trade. The Dutch foregather in a district called "The Dutch 
 Tenters ; '^ they eat voraciously, and almost monopolize the ice- 
 cream, hot pea, diamond-cutting, cucumber, herring, and cigar 
 trades. They are not so cute as the Russians. Their women 
 are distinguished from other women by the flaccidity of their 
 bodices ; some wear small woollen caps and sabots. When 
 Esther read in her school-books that the note of the Dutch 
 character was cleanliness, she wondered. She looked in vain 
 for the scmpulously scoured floors and the shining caps and 
 faces. Only in the matter of tobacco-smoke did the Dutch 
 people she knew live up to the geographical " Readers." 
 
 German Jews gravitate to Polish and Russian ; and French 
 Jews mostly stay in France. Ici on ne pai'le pas Fi'anqais, is 
 the only lingual certainty in the London Ghetto, which is a 
 cosmopolitan quarter. 
 
 " I always said no girl of mine should marry a Dutchman." 
 Mr. Belcovitch spoke as if at the close of a long career devoted 
 to avoiding Dutch alliances, forgetting that not even one of his 
 daughters was yet secure. 
 
 "Nor any girl of mine," said Mrs. Belcovitch, as if starting a 
 separate proposition. " I would not trust a Dutchman with my 
 medicine-bottle, much less with my Alte or my Becky. Dutch- 
 men were not behind the door when the Almighty gave out 
 noses, and their deceitfulness is in proportion to their noses." 
 
 The company murmured assent, and one gentleman, with a 
 rather large organ, concealed it in a red cotton handkerchief, 
 trumpeting uneasily. 
 
 " The Holy One, blessed be He, has given them larger noses 
 than us," said the Afaggid, " because they have to talk through 
 them so much." 
 
 A guffaw greeted this sally. The Maggid'^s wit was relished 
 even when not coming from the pulpit. To the outsider this 
 disparagement of the Dutch nose might have seemed a case of 
 pot calling kettle black. The Maggid poured himself out a 
 glass of rum, under cover of the laughter, and murmuring " Life 
 to you," in Hebrew, gulped it down, and added, " They oughtn't 
 to call it the Dutch tongue, but the Dutch nose." 
 
THE SWEATER. 15 
 
 "Yes, I always wonder how they can understand one another," 
 said Mrs. Belcovitch, ''with their cJiatiichayacatigeiuesepoopa.'''' 
 She laughed heartily over her onomatopoetic addition to the 
 Yiddish vocabulary, screwing up her nose to give it due effect. 
 She was a small sickly-looking woman, with black eyes, and 
 shrivelled skin, and the wdg without which no virtuous wife is 
 complete. For a married woman must sacrifice her tresses on 
 the altar of home, lest she snare other men wdth such sensuous 
 baits. As a rule, she enters into the spirit of the self-denying 
 ordinance so enthusiastically as to become hideous hastily in 
 every other respect. It is forgotten that a husband is also a 
 man. Mrs. Belcovitch's head was not completely shaven and 
 shorn, for a lower stratum of an unmatched shade of brown 
 peeped out in front of the shaitel, not even coinciding as to the 
 route of the central parting. 
 
 Meantime Pesach Weingott and Alte (Fanny) Belcovitch held 
 each other's hand, guiltily conscious of Batavian corpuscles in 
 the young man's blood. Pesach had a Dutch uncle, but as he 
 had never talked like him Alte alone knew. Alte wasn't her 
 real name, by the way, and Alte was the last person in the world 
 to know what it was. She was the Belcovitches' first successful 
 child ; the others all died before she was born. Driven frantic 
 by a fate crueller than barrenness, the Belcovitches consulted an 
 old Polish Rabbi, who told them they displayed too much fond 
 solicitude for their children, provoking Heaven thereby ; in future, 
 they were to let no one but themselves know their next child's 
 name, and never to whisper it till the child was safely married. 
 In such wise, Heaven would not be incessantly reminded of the 
 existence of their dear one, and w'ould not go out of its way to 
 castigate them. The ruse succeeded, and Alte was anxiously 
 waiting to change both her names under the C/iiippah, and to 
 gratify her life-long curiosity on the subject. Meantime, her 
 mother had been calling her " Alte," or " old 'un," which 
 sounded endearing to the child, but grated on the woman arriv- 
 ing ever nearer to the years of discretion. Occasionally, Mrs. 
 Belcovitch succumbed to the prevailing tendency, and called her 
 "Fanny," just as she sometimes thought of herself as Mrs. Bel- 
 
16 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 covitch, though her name was Kosminski. When Alte first 
 went to school in London, the Head Mistress said, " Whaf s 
 your name? " The little " old 'un'' had not sufficient English to 
 understand the question, but she remembered that the Head 
 Mistress had made the same sounds to the preceding applicant, 
 and, where some little girls would have put their pinafores to 
 their eyes and cried, Fanny showed herself full of resource. As 
 the last little girl, though patently awe-struck, had come off with 
 flying colors, merely by whimpering " Fanny Belcovitch,*' Alte 
 imitated these sounds as well as she was able. 
 
 ''Fanny Belcovitch, did you say?" said the Head Mistress, 
 pausing with arrested pen. 
 
 Alte nodded her flaxen poll vigorously. 
 
 " Fanny Belcovitch," she repeated, getting the syllables better 
 on a second hearing. 
 
 The Head Mistress turned to an assistant. 
 
 *' Isn't it astonishing how names repeat themselves ? Two 
 girls, one after the other, both with exactly the same name." 
 
 They were used to coincidences in the school, where, by reason 
 of the tribal relationship of the pupils, there was a great run on 
 some half-a-dozen names. Mr. Kosminski took several years to 
 understand that Alte had disowned him. When it dawned upon 
 him he was not angry, and acquiesced in his fate. It was the 
 only domestic detail in which he had allowed himself to be led 
 by his children. Like his wife, Chayah, he was gradually per- 
 suaded into the belief that he was a born Belcovitch, or at least 
 that Belcovitch was Kosminski translated into English. 
 
 Blissfully unconscious of the Dutch taint in Pesach Weingott, 
 Bear Belcovitch bustled about in reckless hospitality. He felt 
 that engagements were not every-day events, and that even if 
 his whole half-sovereign's worth of festive provision was swal- 
 lowed up, he would not mind much. He wore a high hat, a 
 well-preserved black coat, with a cutaway waistcoat, showing a 
 quantity of glazed shirtfront and a massive watch chain. They 
 were his Sabbath clothes, and, like the Sabbath they honored, 
 were of immemorial antiquity. The shirt served him for seven 
 Sabbaths, or a week of Sabbaths, being carefully folded after 
 
THE SWEATER. 17 
 
 each. His boots had the Sabbath poHsh. The hat was the one 
 he bought when he first set up as a Baal Habaas or respectable 
 pillar of the synagogue ; for even in the smallest Chevra the 
 high hat comes next in sanctity to the Scroll of the Law, and he 
 who does not wear it may never hope to attain to congregational 
 dignities. The gloss on that hat was wonderful, considering it 
 had been out unprotected in all winds and weathers. Not that 
 Mr. Belcovitch did not possess an umbrella. He had two, — 
 one of fine new silk, the other a medley of broken ribs and cotton 
 rags. Becky had given him the first to prevent the family dis- 
 grace of the spectacle of his promenades with the second. But 
 he would not carry the new one on week-days because it w^as too 
 good. And on Sabbaths it is a sin to carry any umbrella. So 
 Becky's self-sacrifice was vain, and her umbrella stood in the 
 corner, a standing gratification to the proud possessor. Kos- 
 minski had had a hard fight for his substance, and was not given 
 to waste. He was a tall, harsh-looking man of fifty, with griz- 
 zled hair, to whom life meant work, and work meant money, and 
 money meant savings. In Parliamentary Blue-Books, English 
 newspapers, and the Berner Street Socialistic Club, he was called 
 a " sweater,'' and the comic papers pictured him with a protuber- 
 ant paunch and a greasy smile, but he had not the remotest idea 
 that he was other than a God-fearing, industrious, and even 
 philanthropic citizen. The measure that had been dealt to him 
 he did but deal to others. He saw no reason why immigrant 
 paupers should not live on a crown a week while he taught them 
 how to handle a press-iron or work a sewing machine. They 
 were much better off than in Poland. He would have been glad 
 of such an income himself in those terrible first days of English 
 life when he saw his wife and his two babes starving before his 
 eyes, and was only precluded from investing a casual twopence 
 in poison by ignorance of the English name for anything deadly. 
 And what did he live on now? The fowl, the pint of haricot 
 beans, and the haddocks which Chayah purchased for the Sab- 
 bath overlapped into the middle of next week, a quarter of a pound" 
 of coffee lasted the whole week, the grounds being decocted till 
 every grain of virtue was extracted. Black bread and potatoes 
 c 
 
 7 
 
18 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 and pickled herrings made up the bulk of the every-day diet. 
 
 No, no one could accuse Bear Belcovitch of fattening on the 
 
 entrails of his employees. The furniture was of the simplest 
 
 and shabbiest, — no aesthetic instinct urged the Kosminskis to 
 
 overpass the bare necessities of existence, except in dress. The 
 
 only concessions to art were a crudely-colored Mizrach on the 
 
 east wall, to indicate the direction towards which the Jew should 
 
 pray, and the mantelpiece mirror which was bordered with yellow 
 
 scalloped paper (to save the gilt) and ornamented at each corner 
 
 with paper roses that bloomed afresh every Passover. And yet 
 
 * Bear Belcovitch had lived in much better style in Poland, pos- 
 
 , sessing a brass wash-hand basin, a copper saucepan, silver spoons, 
 
 a silver consecration beaker, and a cupboard with glass doors, 
 
 •and he frequently adverted to their fond memories. But he 
 
 . brought nothing away except his bedding, and that was pawned 
 
 in Germany on the route. When he arrived in London he had 
 
 with him three groschen and a family. 
 
 " What do you think, Pesach,'' said Becky, as soon as she 
 could get at her prospective brother-in-law through the barriers 
 of congratulatory countrymen. ''The stuff that came through 
 there" — she pointed to the discolored fragment of ceiling — 
 "was soup. That silly little Esther spilt all she got from the 
 kitchen.'" 
 
 '•'■ Achi nebbich, poor little thing,'' cried Mrs. Kosminski, who 
 was in a tender mood, " very likely it hungers them sore upstairs. 
 The father is out of work.'' 
 
 " Knowest thou what, mother," put in Fanny. " Suppose we 
 give them our soup. Aunt Leah has just fetched it for us. 
 Have we not a special supper to-night ? " 
 
 " But father?" murmured the little woman dubiously. 
 
 "Oh, he won't notice it. I don't think he knows the soup 
 kitchen opens to-night. Let me, mother." 
 
 And Fanny, letting Pesach's hand go, slipped out to the room 
 that served as a kitchen, and bore the still-steaming pot upstairs. 
 Pesach, who had pursued her, followed with some hunks of 
 bread and a piece of lighted candle, which, while intended only 
 to illumine the journey, came in handy at the terminus. And 
 
THE SWEATER. 19 
 
 the festive company grinned and winked when the pair dis- 
 appeared, and made jocular quotations from the Old Testament 
 and the Rabbis. But the lovers did not kiss when they came 
 out of the garret of the Ansells ; their eyes were wet, and they 
 went softly downstairs hand in hand, feeling linked by a deeper 
 love than before. 
 
 Thus did Providence hand over the soup the Belcovitches took 
 from old habit to a more necessitous quarter, and demonstrate 
 in double sense that Charity never faileth. Nor was this the 
 only mulct which Providence exacted from the happy father, for 
 later on a townsman of his appeared on the scene in a long 
 capote, and with a grimy woe-begone expression. He was a 
 "greener^' of the greenest order, having landed at the docks 
 only a few hours ago, bringing over with him a great deal of 
 luggage in the shape of faith in God, and in the auriferous char- 
 acter of London pavements. On arriving in England, he gave a 
 casual glance at the metropolis and demanded to be directed to 
 a synagogue wherein to shake himself after the journey. His 
 devotions over, he tracked out Mr. Kosminski, whose address 
 on a much-creased bit of paper had been his talisman of hope 
 during the voyage. In his native town, where the Jews groaned 
 beneath divers and sore oppressions, the fame of Kosminski, the 
 pioneer, the Croesus, was a legend. Mr. Kosminski was pre- 
 pared for these contingencies. He went to his bedroom, dragged 
 out a heavy wooden chest from under the bed, unlocked it and 
 plunged his hand into a large dirty linen bag, full of coins. The 
 instinct of generosity which was upon him made him count out 
 forty-eight of them. He bore them to the ''greener" in over- 
 brimming palms and the foreigner, unconscious how much he 
 owed to the felicitous coincidence of his visit with Fanny's 
 betrothal, saw fortune visibly within his grasp. He went out, 
 his heart bursting with gratitude, his pocket with four dozen 
 farthings. They took him in and gave him hot soup at a Poor 
 Jews' Shelter, whither his townsman had directed him. Kos- 
 minski returned to the banqueting room, thrilling from head to 
 foot with the approval of his conscience. He patted Becky's 
 curly head and said : ' 
 
20 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 " Well, Becky, when shall we be dancing at your wedding?" 
 
 Becky shook her curls. Her young men could not have a 
 poorer opinion of one another than Becky had of them all. 
 Their homage pleased her, though it did not raise them in her 
 esteem. Lovers grew like blackberries — only more so; for 
 they were an evergreen stock. Or, as her mother put it in her 
 coarse, peasant manner, Chasanim were as plentiful as the street- 
 dogs. Becky's beaux sat on the stairs before she was up and 
 became early risers in their love for her, each anxious to be the 
 first to bid their Penelope of the buttonholes good morrow. It 
 was said that Kosminski's success as a " sweater " was due to his 
 beauteous Becky, the flower of sartorial youth gravitating to the 
 work-room of this East London Laban. What they admired in 
 Becky was that there was so much of her. Still it was not enough 
 to go round, and though Becky might keep nine lovers in hand 
 without fear of being set down as a flirt, a larger number of tailors 
 would have been less consistent with prospective monogamy, 
 
 " Fm not going to throw myself away like Fanny," said she 
 confidentially to Pesach Weingott in the course of the evening. 
 He smiled apologetically. " Fanny always had low views,"" con- 
 tinued Becky. " But I always said I would marry a gentleman." 
 
 "And I dare say," answered Pesach, stung into the retort, 
 " Fanny could marry a gentlemen, too, if she wanted." 
 
 Becky's idea of a gentleman was a clerk or a school-master, 
 who had no manual labor except scribbling or flogging. In her 
 matrimonial views Becky was typical. She despised the status 
 of her parents and looked to marry out of it. They for their part 
 could not understand the desire to be other than themselves. 
 
 " I don't say Fanny couldn't," she admitted. " All I say is, 
 nobody could call this a luck-match." 
 
 " Ah, thou hast me too many flies in thy nose," reprovingly 
 interposed Mrs. Belcovitch, who had just crawled up. "Thou 
 art too high-class." 
 
 Becky tossed her head. " Tve got a new dolman," she said, 
 turning to one of her young men who was present by special 
 grace. "You should see me in it. I look noble." 
 
 " Yes," said Mrs. Belcovitch proudly. " It shines in the sun." 
 
THE SWEATER. 21 
 
 "Is it like the one Bessie Sugarman's got?" inquired the 
 young man. 
 
 " Bessie Sugarman ! " echoed Becky scornfully. " She gets 
 all her things from the tallyman. She pretends to be so grand, 
 but all her jewelry is paid for at so much a week." 
 
 " So long as it is paid for," said Fanny, catching the words and 
 turning a happy face on her sister. 
 
 " Not so jealous, Alte," said her mother. " When I shall win 
 on the lotter^^, I will buy thee also a dolman." 
 
 Almost all the company speculated on the Hamburg lottery, 
 which, whether they were speaking Yiddish or English, they 
 invariably accentuated on the last syllable. When an inhabi- 
 tant of the Ghetto won even his money back, the news circulated 
 like wild-fire, and there was a rush to the agents for tickets. 
 The chances of sudden wealth floated like dazzling Will o' the 
 Wisps on the horizon, illumining the gray perspectives of the 
 future. The lottert'^ took the poor ticket-holders out of them- 
 selves, and gave them an interest in life apart from machine- 
 cotton, lasts or tobacco-leaf. The English laborer, who has 
 been forbidden State Lotteries, relieves the monotony of exist- 
 ence by an extremely indirect interest in the achievements of a 
 special breed of horses. 
 
 " Nii^ Pesach, another glass of rirni," said Mr. Belcovitch ge- 
 nially to his future son-in-law and boarder. 
 
 "Yes, I will," said Pesach. " After all, this is the first time 
 Pve got engaged." 
 
 The rimi was of Mr. Belcovitch's own manufacture ; its ingre- 
 dients were unknown, but the fame of it travelled on currents of 
 air to the remotest parts of the house. Even the inhabitants of 
 the garrets sniffed and thought of turpentine. Pesach swallowed 
 the concoction, murmuring "To life" afresh. His throat felt 
 like the funnel of a steamer, and there were tears in his eyes 
 when he put down the glass. 
 
 " Ah, that was good," he murmured. 
 
 "Not like thy English drinks, eh?" said Mr. Belcovitch. 
 
 " England! " snorted Pesach in royal disdain. " What a coun- 
 try! Daddle-doo is a language and ginger-beer a liquor." 
 
22 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 " Daddle doo " was Pesach's way of saying "ThatUl do." It 
 was one of the first English idioms he picked up, and its puerility 
 made him facetious. It seemed to smack of the nursery; when 
 a nation expressed its soul thus, the existence of a beverage like 
 ginger-beer could occasion no further surprise. 
 
 "You shan't have anything stronger than ginger-beer when 
 we're married,"' said Fanny laughingly. " I am not going to 
 have any drinking." 
 
 " But I'll get drunk on ginger-beer," Pesach laughed back. 
 
 "You can't," Fanny said, shaking her large fond smile to and 
 fro. " By my health, not." 
 
 "Ha! Ha! Ha! Can't even get shikktir on it. What a 
 liquor! " 
 
 In the first Anglo-Jewish circles with which Pesach had 
 scraped acquaintance, ginger-beer was the prevalent drink; and, 
 generalizing almost as hastily as if he were going to write a book 
 on the country, he concluded that it was the national beverage. 
 He had long since discovered his mistake, but the drift of the 
 discussion reminded Becky of a chance for an arrow. 
 
 " On the day when you sit for joy, Pesach," she said slily, " I 
 shall send you a valentine." 
 
 Pesach colored up and those in the secret laughed ; the refer- 
 ence was to another of Pesach's early ideas. Some mischievous 
 gossip had heard him arguing with another Greener outside a 
 stationer's shop blazing with comic valentines. The two for- 
 eigners were extremely puzzled to understand what these mon- 
 strosities portended ; Pesach, however, laid it down that the mi- 
 crocephalous gentlemen with tremendous legs, and the ladies 
 five-sixths head and one-sixth skirt, were representations of the 
 English peasants who lived in the little villages up country. 
 
 " When I sit for joy," retorted Pesach, " it will not be the sea- 
 son for valentines." 
 
 "Won't it though!" cried Becky, shaking her frizzly black 
 curls. " You'll be a pair of comic "uns." 
 
 " All right, Becky," said Alte good-humoredly. " Your turn'U 
 come, and then we shall have the laugh of you." 
 
 "Never," said Becky. "What do I want with a man?" 
 
THE SWEATER. 23 
 
 The arm of the specially invited young man was round her as 
 she spoke. 
 
 " Don't make schiiecks^'' said Fanny. 
 
 " Ifs not aifectation. I mean it. What's the good of the 
 men who visit father? There isn't a gentleman among them." 
 
 " Ah, wait till I win on the lotter^^/' said the special young 
 man. 
 
 "Then, vy not take another eighth of a ticket?" inquired 
 Sugarman the Shadcha7i, who seemed to spring from the other 
 end of the room. He was one of the greatest Talmudists in 
 London — a lean, hungry-looking man, sharp of feature and 
 acute of intellect. "Look at Mrs. Robinson — Pve just won 
 her over twenty pounds, and she only gave me two pounds for 
 myself. I call it a cherpah — a shame." 
 
 " Yes, but you stole another two pounds," said Becky. 
 
 " How do you know ? " said Sugarman startled. 
 
 Becky winked and shook her head sapiently. "Never you 
 mind." 
 
 The published list of the winning numbers was so complex in 
 constraction that Sugarman had ample opportunities of bewil- 
 dering his clients. 
 
 "I von't sell you no more tickets," said Sugarman with right- 
 eous indignation. 
 
 "A fat lot I care," said Becky, tossing her curls. 
 
 "Thou carest for nothing," said Mrs. Belcovitch, seizing the 
 opportunity for maternal admonition. "Thou hast not even 
 brought me my medicine to-night. Thou wilt find it on the 
 chest of drawers in the bedroom." 
 
 Becky shook herself impatiently. 
 
 " I will go," said the special young man. 
 
 " No, it is not beautiful that a young man shall go into my 
 bedroom in my absence," said Mrs. Belcovitch blushing. 
 
 Becky left the room. 
 
 " Thou knowest," said Mrs. Belcovitch, addressing herself to 
 the special young man, " I suffer greatly from my legs. One is 
 a thick one, and one a thin one." 
 
 The young man sighed sympathetically. 
 
24 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 "Whence comes it ?" he asked. 
 
 " Do I know ? I was born so. My poor lambkin (this was 
 the way Mrs. Belcovitch always referred to her dead mother) 
 had well-matched legs. If I had Aristotle's head I might be 
 able to find out why my legs are inferior. And so one goes 
 about." 
 
 The reverence for Aristotle enshrined in Yiddish idiom is 
 probably due to his being taken by the vulgar for a Jew. At 
 any rate the theory that Aristotle's philosophy was Jewish was 
 advanced by the mediaeval poet, Jehuda Halevi, and sustained 
 by Maimonides. The legend runs that when Alexander went to 
 Palestine, Aristotle w'as in his train. At Jerusalem the phi- 
 losopher had sight of King Solomon's manuscripts, and he 
 forthwith edited them and put his name to them. But it is 
 noteworthy that the story was only accepted by those Jewish 
 scholars who adopted the Aristotelian philosophy, those who 
 rejected it declaring that Aristotle in his last testament had 
 admitted the inferiority of his writings to the Mosaic, and had 
 asked that his works should be destroyed. 
 
 When Becky returned with the medicine, Mrs. Belcovitch 
 mentioned that it was extremely nasty, and offered the young 
 man a taste, whereat he rejoiced inwardly, knowing he had 
 found favor in the sight of the parent. Mrs. Belcovitch paid a 
 penny a week to her doctor, in sickness or health, so that there 
 was a loss on being well. Becky used to fill up the bottles with 
 water to save herself the trouble of going to fetch the medicine, 
 but as Mrs. Belcovitch did not know this it made no difference. 
 
 " Thou livest too much indoors," said Mr. Sugarman, in Yid- 
 dish. 
 
 "Shall I march about in this weather? Black and slippery, 
 and the Angel going a-hunting?" 
 
 "Ah!" said Mr. Sugarman, relapsing proudly into the vernac- 
 ular, " Ve English valk about in all vedders." 
 
 Meanwhile Moses Ansell had returned from evening service 
 and sat down, unquestioningly, by the light of an unexpected 
 candle to his expected supper of bread and soup, blessing God 
 for both gifts. The rest of the family had supped. Esther had 
 
THE SWEATER. 25 
 
 put the two youngest children to bed (Rachel had arrived at 
 years of independent undressing), and she and Solomon were 
 doing home-lessons in copy-books, the candle saving them from 
 a caning on the morrow. She held her pen clumsily, for several 
 of her fingers were swathed in bloody rags tied with cobweb. 
 The grandmother dozed in her chair. Everything was quiet and 
 peaceful, though the atmosphere was chilly. Moses ate his sup- 
 per with a great smacking of the lips and an equivalent enjoy- 
 ment. When it was over he sighed deeply, and thanked God 
 in a prayer lasting ten minutes, and delivered in a rapid, sing- 
 song manner. He then inquired of Solomon whether he had 
 said his evening prayer. Solomon looked out of the corner of 
 his eyes at his Bube, and, seeing she was asleep on the bed, said 
 he had, and kicked Esther significantly but hurtfuUy under the 
 table 
 
 " Then you had better say your night-prayer." 
 
 There was no getting out of that ; so Solomon finished his 
 sum, writing the figures of the answer rather faint, in case he 
 should discover from another boy next morning that they were 
 wrong ; then producing a Hebrew prayer-book from his inky 
 cotton satchel, he made a mumbling sound, with occasional 
 enthusiastic bursts of audible coherence, for a length of time 
 proportioned to the number of pages. Then he went to bed. 
 After that, Esther put her grandmother to bed and curled her- 
 self up at her side. She lay awake a long time, listening to the 
 quaint sounds emitted by her father in his study of Rashi's com- 
 mentary on the Book of Job, the measured drone blending not 
 disagreeably with the far-away sounds of Pesach Weingott's 
 fiddle. 
 
 Pesach's fiddle played the accompaniment to many other 
 people's thoughts. The respectable master-tailor sat behind 
 his glazed shirt-front beating time with his foot. His little 
 sickly-looking wife stood by his side, nodding her bewigged 
 head joyously. To both the music brought the same recollec- 
 tion — a Polish market-place. 
 
 Belcovitch, or rather Kosminski. was the only surviving son 
 of a widow. It was curious, and suggestive of some grim law of 
 
26 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 heredity, that his parents' elder children had died off as rapidly 
 as his own, and that his life had been preserved by some such 
 expedient as Alters. Only, in his case the Rabbi consulted had 
 advised his father to go into the woods and call his new-born son 
 by the name of the first animal that he saw. This was why the 
 future sweater was named Bear. To the death of his brothers 
 and sisters, Bear owed his exemption from military service. He 
 grew up to be a stalwart, well-set-up young baker, a loss to the 
 Russian army. 
 
 Bear went out in the market-place one fine day and saw^ Chayah 
 in maiden ringlets. She was a slim, graceful little thing, with 
 nothing obviously odd about the legs, and was buying onions. 
 Her back was towards him, but in another moment she turned 
 her head and Bear's. As he caught the sparkle of her eye, he 
 felt that without her life were worse than the conscription. With- 
 out delay, he made inquiries about the fair young vision, and find- 
 ing its respectability unimpeachable, he sent a Shadchan to 
 propose to her, and they were affianced ; Chayah 's father under- 
 taking to give a dowry of tw^o hundred gulden. Unfortunately, 
 he died suddenly in the attempt to amass them, and Chayah was 
 left an orphan. The two hundred gulden were nowhere to be 
 found. Tears rained down both Chayah's cheeks, on the one 
 side for the loss of her father, on the other for the prospective 
 loss of a husband. The Rabbi was full of tender sympathy. 
 He bade Bear come to the dead man's chamber. The venerable 
 white-bearded corpse lay on the bed, swathed in shroud, and 
 Talith or praying-shawl. 
 
 " Bear," he said, '' thou knowest that I saved thy life." 
 
 "Nay," said Bear, "indeed, I know not that." 
 
 "Yea, of a surety," said the Rabbi. "Thy mother hath not 
 told thee, but all thy brothers and sisters perished, and, lo ! thou 
 alone art preserved ! It was I that called thee a beast." 
 
 Bear bowed his head in grateful silence. 
 
 " Bear," said the Rabbi, " thou didst contract to wed this dead 
 man's daughter, and he did contract to pay over to thee two 
 hundred gulden." 
 
 " Truth," replied Bear. 
 
THE SWEATER. 27 
 
 " Bear," said the Rabbi, " there are no two hundred gulden." 
 
 A shadow flitted across Beard's face, but he said nothing. 
 
 " Bear," said the Rabbi again, "there are not two gulden." 
 
 Bear did not move. 
 
 " Bear," said the Rabbi, "- leave thou my side, and go over to 
 the other side of the bed, facing me." 
 
 So Bear left his side and went over to the other side of the 
 bed facing him. 
 
 " Bear," said the Rabbi, " give me thy right hand." 
 
 The Rabbi stretched his own right hand across the bed, but 
 Bear kept his obstinately behind his back. 
 
 '^ Bear," repeated the Rabbi, in tones of more penetrating 
 solemnity, "give me thy right hand." 
 
 " Nay," replied Bear, sullenly. " Wherefore should I give 
 thee my right hand ? " 
 
 "■ Because," said the Rabbi, and his tones trembled, and it 
 seemed to him that the dead man's face grew sterner. '*• Because 
 I wish thee to swear across the body of Chayah's father that thou 
 wilt marry her." 
 
 " Nay, that I will not," said Bear. 
 
 " Will not ? " repeated the Rabbi, his lips growing white 
 with pity. 
 
 " Nay, I will not take any oaths," said Bear, hotly. " I love 
 the maiden, and I will keep what I have promised. But, by 
 my father's soul, I will take no oaths!" 
 
 " Bear," said the Rabbi in a choking voice, " give me thy 
 hand. Nay, not to swear by, but to grip. Long shalt thou 
 live, and the Most High shall prepare thy seat in Gan Iden." 
 
 So the old man and the young clasped hands across the 
 corpse, and the simple old Rabbi perceived a smile flickering 
 over the face of Chayah's father. Perhaps it was only a sud- 
 den glint of sunshine. 
 
 The wedding-day drew nigh, but lo! Chayah was again dis- 
 solved in tears. 
 
 "What ails thee?" said her brother Naphtali. 
 
 " I cannot follow the custom of the maidens," wept Chayah. 
 "■ Thou knowest we are blood-poor, and I have not the where- 
 
28 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 withal to buy my Bear a Talith for his wedding-day ; nay, 
 not even to make him a Talitk-h2Lg. And when our father 
 (the memory of the righteous for a blessing) was alive, I had 
 dreamed of making my chosan a beautiful velvet satchel lined with 
 silk, and I would have embroidered his initials thereon in gold, 
 and sewn him beautiful white corpse-clothes. Perchance he 
 will rely upon me for his wedding Talith, and we shall be 
 shamed in the sight of the congregation.'" 
 
 " Nay, dry thine eyes, my sister," said Naphtali. " Thou 
 knowest that my Leah presented me with a costly Talith when 
 I led her under the canopy. Wherefore, do thou take my 
 praying-shawl and lend it to Bear for the wedding-day, so that 
 decency may be preserved in the sight of the congregation. 
 The young man has a great heart, and he will understand,'" 
 
 So Chayah, blushing prettily, lent Bear Naphtali^s delicate 
 Talith, and Beauty and the Beast made a rare couple under 
 the wedding canopy. Chayah wore the gold medallion and the 
 three rows of pearls which her lover had sent her the day 
 before. And when the Rabbi had finished blessing husband and 
 wife, Naphtali spake the bridegroom privily, and said : 
 
 "Pass me my Talith back.''' 
 
 But Bear answered : " Nay, nay ; the Talith is in my keep- 
 ing, and there it shall remain.'" 
 
 " But it is my Talith,^'' protested Naphtali in an angry whis- 
 per. " I only lent it to Chayah to lend it thee.'" 
 
 " It concerns me not," Bear returned in a decisive whisper. 
 "The Talith is my due and I shall keep it. What! Have I not 
 lost enough by marrying thy sister? Did not thy father, peace 
 be upon him, promise me two hundred gulden with her? " 
 
 Naphtali retired discomfited. But he made up his mind not 
 to go without some compensation. He resolved that during the 
 progress of the wedding procession conducting the bridegroom 
 to the chamber of the bride, he would be the man to snatch 
 off Bear's new hat. Let the rest of the riotous escort essay to 
 snatch whatever other article of the bridegroom's attire they 
 would, the hat was the easiest to dislodge, and he, Naphtali, 
 would straightway reimburse himself partially with that. But 
 
THE SWEATER. 29 
 
 the instant the procession formed itself, behold the shifty bride- 
 groom forthwith removed his hat, and held it tightly under his 
 arm. 
 
 A storm of protestations burst forth at his daring departure 
 from hymeneal tradition. 
 
 ''Nay, nay, put it on," arose from every mouth. 
 
 But Bear closed his and marched mutely on. 
 
 " Heathen," cried the Rabbi. " Put on your hat." 
 
 The attempt to enforce the religious sanction failed too. 
 Bear had spent several gulden upon his head-gear, and could 
 not see the joke. He plodded towards his blushing Chayah 
 through a tempest of disapprobation. 
 
 Throughout life Bear Belcovitch retained the contrariety of 
 character that marked his matrimonial beginnings. He hated 
 to part with money ; he put off paying bills to the last moment, 
 and he would even beseech his "' hands " to wait a day or two 
 longer for their wages. He liked to feel that he had all that 
 money in his possession. Yet "at home," in Poland, he had 
 always lent money to the officers and gentry, when they ran 
 temporarily short at cards. They would knock him up in the 
 middle of the night to obtain the means of going on with the 
 game. And in England he never refused to become surety for 
 a loan when any of his poor friends begged the favor of him. 
 These loans ran from three to five pounds, but whatever the 
 amount, they were very rarely paid. The loan offices came 
 down upon him for the money. He paid it without a murmur, 
 shaking his head compassionately over the poor ne'er do wells, 
 and perhaps not without a compensating consciousness of superior 
 practicality. 
 
 Only, if the borrower had neglected to treat him to a glass 
 of rum to clench his signing as surety, the shake of Bear's head 
 would become more reproachful than sympathetic, and he would 
 mutter bitterly : " Five pounds and not even a drink for the 
 money." The jewelry he generously lavished on his woman- 
 kind was in essence a mere channel of investment for his sav- 
 ings, avoiding the risks of a banking-account and aggregating 
 his wealth in a portable shape, in obedience to an instinct gen- 
 
30 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 erated by centuries of insecurity. The interest on the sums 
 thus invested was the gratification of the other oriental instinct 
 for gaudiness. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 MALKA. 
 
 The Sunday Fair, so long associated with Petticoat Lane, is 
 dying hard, and is still vigorous ; its glories were in full swing 
 on the dull, gray morning when Moses Ansell took his way 
 through the Ghetto. It was near eleven o'clock, and the throng 
 was thickening momently. The vendors cried their wares in 
 stentorian tones, and the babble of the buyers was like the con- 
 fused roar of a stormy sea. The dead walls and hoardings were 
 placarded with bills from w^hich the life of the inhabitants could 
 be constructed. Many were in Yiddish, the most hopelessly 
 corrupt and hybrid jargon ever evolved. Even when the lan- 
 guage w^as English the letters were Hebrew. Whitechapel, 
 Public Meeting, Board School, Sermon, Police, and other mod- 
 ern banalities, glared at the passer-by in the sacred guise of the 
 Tongue associated with miracles and prophecies, palm-trees and 
 cedars and seraphs, lions and shepherds and harpists. 
 
 Moses stopped to read these hybrid posters — he had nothing 
 better to do — as he slouched along. He did not care to re- 
 member that dinner was due in two hours. He turned aim- 
 lessly into Wentworth Street, and studied a placard that hung in 
 a bootmaker's window. This was the announcement it made in 
 
 jargon : 
 
 Riveters, Clickers, Lasters, Finishers, 
 
 Wanted. 
 
 Baruch Emanuel, 
 
 Cobbler. 
 
 Makes and Repairs Boots. 
 
 Every Bit as Cheaply 
 
 as 
 
 MORDECAI SCHWARTZ, 
 
 of 12 Goulston Street. 
 
MALKA. 31 
 
 Mordecai Schwartz was written in the biggest and blackest 
 of Hebrew letters, and quite dominated the little shop-window. 
 Baruch Emanuel was visibly conscious of his inferiority to his 
 powerful rival, though Moses had never heard of Mordecai 
 Schwartz before. He entered the shop and said in Hebrew 
 " Peace be to you." Bai"uch Emanuel, hammering a sole, an- 
 swered in Hebrew : 
 
 " Peace be to you." 
 
 Moses dropped into Yiddish. 
 
 ^'I am looking for work. Peradventure have you something 
 for me ? " 
 
 " What can you do ? " 
 
 " I have been a riveter." 
 
 "I cannot engage any more riveters." 
 
 Moses looked disappointed. 
 
 " I have also been a clicker," he said. 
 
 "I have all the clickers I can afford," Baruch answered. 
 
 Moses's gloom deepened. " Two years ago I worked as a 
 finisher." 
 
 Bamch shook his head silently. He was annoyed at the 
 man's persistence. There was only the laster resource left. 
 
 " And before that I was a laster for a week," Moses answered. 
 
 " 1 don't want any! " cried Baruch, losing his temper. 
 
 " But in your window it stands that you do," protested Moses 
 feebly. 
 
 " I don't care what stands in my window," said Baruch hotly. 
 " Have you not head enough to see that that is all bunkum ? 
 Unfortunately I work single-handed, but it looks good and it 
 isn't lies. Naturally I want Riveters and Clickers and Lasters 
 and Finishers. Then I could set up a big establishment and 
 gouge out Mordecai Schw^artz's eyes. But the Most High denies 
 me assistants, and I am content to want." 
 
 Moses understood that attitude towards the nature of things. 
 He went out and wandered down another narrow dirty street in 
 search of Mordecai Schwartz, whose address Baruch Emanuel 
 had so obligingly given him. He thought of the Maggid's ser- 
 mon on the day before. The Maggid had explained a verse of 
 
32 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 Habakkuk in quite an original way which gave an entirely new 
 color to a passage in Deuteronomy. Moses experienced acute 
 pleasure in musing upon it, and went past Mordecai's shop with- 
 out going in, and was only awakened from his day-dream by the 
 brazen clanging of a bell. It was the bell of the great Ghetto 
 school, summoning its pupils from the reeking courts and alleys, 
 from the garrets and the cellars, calling them to come and be 
 Anglicized. And they came in a great straggling procession 
 recruited from every lane and by-way, big children and little 
 children, boys in blackening corduroy, and girls in washed-out 
 cotton ; tidy children and ragged children ; children in great 
 shapeless boots gaping at the toes ; sickly children, and sturdy 
 children, and diseased children ; bright-eyed children and hol- 
 low-eyed children ; quaint sallow foreign-looking children, and 
 fresh-colored English-looking children ; with great pumpkin 
 heads, with oval heads, with pear-shaped heads ; with old men's 
 faces, with cherubs' faces, with monkeys' faces ; cold and fam- 
 ished children, and warm and well-fed children ; children con- 
 ning their lessons and children romping carelessly ; the demure 
 and the anaemic ; the boisterous and the blackguardly, the inso- 
 lent, the idiotic, the vicious, the intelligent, the exemplary, the 
 dull — spawn of all countries — all hastening at the inexorable 
 clang of the big school-bell to be ground iil the same great, 
 blind, inexorable Governmental machine. Here, too, was a 
 miniature fair, the path being lined by itinerant temptations. 
 There was brisk traffic in toffy, and gray peas and monkey-nuts, 
 and the crowd was swollen by anxious parents seeing tiny or 
 truant offspring safe within the school-gates. The women were 
 bare-headed or be-shawled, with infants at their breasts and little 
 ones toddling at their sides, the men were greasy, and musty, 
 and squalid. Here a bright earnest little girl held her vagrant 
 big brother by the hand, not to let go till she had seen him in 
 the bosom of his class-mates. There a sullen wild-eyed mite 
 in petticoats was being dragged along, screaming, towards dis- 
 tasteful durance. It was a drab picture — the bleak, leaden sky 
 above, the sloppy, miry stones below, the frowsy mothers and 
 fathers, the motley children. 
 
MALKA. 33 
 
 ''Monkey-nuts! Monkey-nuts! " croaked a wizened old woman. 
 
 "Oppea! Oppea!" droned a doddering old Dutchman. He 
 bore a great can of hot peas in one hand and a lighthouse-look- 
 ing pepper-pot in the other. Some of the children swallowed 
 the dainties hastily out of miniature basins, others carried them 
 within in paper packets for surreptitious munching. 
 
 " Call that a ay-puth ? '^ a small boy would say. 
 
 "Not enough!" the old man would exclaim in surprise. 
 "Here you are, then!" And he would give the peas another 
 sprinkling from the pepper-pot. 
 
 Moses Ansell's progeny were not in the picture. The younger 
 children were at home, the elder had gone to school an hour 
 before to run about and get warm in the spacious playgrounds. 
 A slice of bread each and the wish-wash of a thrice-brewed 
 pennyworth of tea had been their morning meal, and there was 
 no prospect of dinner. The thought of them made Moses's 
 heart heavy again; he forgot the Maggid^s explanation of the 
 verse in Habakkuk, and he retraced his steps towards Mordecai 
 Schwartz's shop. But like his humbler rival, Mordecai had no 
 use for the many-sided Moses ; he was " full up " with swarthy 
 " hands," though, as there were rumors of strikes in the air, he 
 prudently took note of Moses's address. After this rebuff, 
 Moses shuffled hopelessly about for more than an hour; the 
 dinner-hour was getting desperately near ; already children 
 passed him, carrying the Sunday dinners from the bakeries, and 
 there were wafts of vague poetry in the atmosphere. Moses felt 
 he could not face his own children. 
 
 At last he nerved himself to an audacious resolution, and 
 elbowed his way blusterously towards the Ruins, lest he might 
 break down if his courage had time to cool. 
 
 " The Ruins " was a great stony square, partly bordered by 
 houses, and only picturesque on Sundays when it became a 
 branch of the all-ramifying Fair. Moses could have bought 
 anything there from elastic braces to green parrots in gilt cages. 
 That is to say if he had had money. At present he had noth- 
 ing in his pocket except holes. 
 
 What he might be able to do on his way back was another 
 
 D 
 
34 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 matter ; for it was Malka that Moses Ansell was going to see. 
 She was the cousin of his deceased wife, and Uved in Zachariah 
 Square. Moses had not been there for a month, for Malka was 
 a wealthy twig of the family tree, to be approached with awe and 
 trembling. She kept a .second-hand clothes store in Hounds- 
 ditch, a supplementary stall in the Halfpenny Exchange, and 
 a barrow on the "Ruins'" of a Sunday; and she had set up 
 Ephraim, her newly-acquired son-in-law, in the same line of 
 business in the same district. Like most things she dealt in, 
 her son-in-law was second-hand, having lost his first wife four 
 years ago in Poland. But he was only twenty-two, and a second- 
 hand son-in-law of twenty-two is superior to many brand new 
 ones. The two domestic establishments were a few minutes 
 away from the shops, facing each other diagonally across the 
 square. They were small, three-roomed houses, without base- 
 ments, the ground floor window in each being filled up with 
 a black gauze blind (an invariable index of gentility) which 
 allowed the occupants to see all that was passing outside, but 
 confronted gazers with their own reflections. Passers-by post- 
 ured at these mirrors, twisting moustaches perkily, or giving 
 coquettish pats to bonnets, unwitting of the grinning inhabi- 
 tants. Most of the doors were ajar, wintry as the air was ; for 
 the Zachariah Squareites lived a good deal on the door-step. 
 In the summer, the housewives sat outside on chairs and gos- 
 siped and knitted, as if the sea foamed at their feet, and 
 wrinkled good-humored old men played nap on tea-trays. 
 Some of the doors were blocked below with sliding barriers of 
 wood, a sure token of infants inside given to straying. More 
 obvious tokens of child-life w'ere the swings nailed to the lintels 
 of a few doors, in which, despite the cold, toothless babes 
 swayed like monkeys on a branch. But the Square, with its 
 broad area of quadrangular pavement, was an ideal playing- 
 ground for children, since other animals came not within its 
 precincts, except an inquisitive dog or a local cat. Solomon 
 Ansell knew no greater privilege than to accompany his father 
 to these fashionable quarters and whip his humming-top across 
 the ample spaces, the while Moses transacted his business with 
 
MALKA. 35 
 
 Malka. Last time the business was psalm-saying. Milly had 
 beein brought to bed of a son, but it was doubtful if she would 
 survive, despite the charms hung upon the bedpost to counter- 
 act the nefarious designs of Lilith, the wicked first wife of Adam, 
 and of the Not-Good Ones who hover about women in child- 
 birth. So Moses was sent for, post-haste, to intercede with the 
 Almighty. His piety, it was felt, would command attention. For 
 an average of three hundred and sixty-two days a year Moses 
 was a miserable worm, a nonentity, but on the other three, when 
 death threatened to visit Malka or her little clan, Moses became 
 a personage of prime importance, and was summoned at all 
 hours of the day and night to wrestle with the angel Azrael. 
 When the angel had retired, worsted, after a match sometimes 
 protracted into days, Moses relapsed into his primitive insignifi- 
 cance, and was dismissed with a mouthful of rum and a shilling. 
 It never seemed to him an unfair equivalent, for nobody could 
 make less demand on the universe than Moses. Give him two 
 solid meals and three solid services a day, and he was satisfied, 
 and he craved more for spiritual snacks between meals than for 
 physical. 
 
 The last crisis had been brief, and there was so little danofer 
 that, when Milly's child was circumcised, Moses had not even 
 been bidden to the feast, though his piety would have made him 
 the ideal saiidek or god-father. He did not resent this, knowing 
 himself dust — and that anything but gold-dust. 
 
 Moses had hardly emerged from the little arched passage 
 which led to the Square, when sounds of strife fell upon his ears. 
 Two stout women chatting amicably at their doors, had suddenly 
 developed a dispute. In Zachariah Square, when you wanted to 
 get to the bottom of a quarrel, the cue was not " find the woman," 
 but find the child. The high-spirited bantlings had a way of 
 pummelling one another in fistic duels, and of calling in their re- 
 spective mothers when they got the worse of it — which is cow- 
 ardly, but human. The mother of the beaten belligerent would 
 then threaten to wring the "year,"" or to twist the nose of the vic- 
 torious party — sometimes she did it. In either case, the other 
 mother would intervene, and then the two bantlings would re- 
 
36 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 tire into the background and leave their mothers to take up the 
 duel while they resumed their interrupted game. 
 
 Of such sort was the squabble betwixt Mrs. Isaacs and Mrs. 
 Jacobs. Mrs. Isaacs pointed out with superfluous vehemence 
 that her poor lamb had been mangled beyond recognition. Mrs. 
 Jacobs, per contra^ asseverated with superfluous gesture that it 
 was her poor lamb who had received irreparable injury. These 
 statements were not in mutual contradiction, but Mrs. Isaacs and 
 Mrs. Jacobs were, and so the point at issue was gradually ab- 
 sorbed in more personal recriminations. 
 
 " By my life, and by my Fanny's life. Til leave my seal on the 
 first child of yours that comes across my way! There!'' Thus 
 Mrs. Isaacs. 
 
 " Lay a finger on a hair of a child of mine, and, by my hus- 
 band's life, I'll summons you ; I'll have the law on you." Thus 
 Mrs. Jacobs; to the gratification of the resident populace. 
 
 Mrs. Isaacs and Mrs. Jacobs rarely quarrelled with eacli other, 
 uniting rather in opposition to the rest of the Square. They 
 were English, quite English, their grandf^ither having been born 
 in Dresden ; and they gave themselves airs in consequence, and 
 called their kinder '" children," which annoyed those neighbors 
 who found a larger admixture of Yiddish necessary for conversa- 
 tion. These very kinder^ ^g'^i'"*? attained considerable impor- 
 tance among their school-fellows by refusing to pronounce the 
 guttural " ch '' of the Hebrew otherwise than as an English ''k." 
 
 " Summons me, indeed," laughed back Mrs. Isaacs. '• A fat lot 
 I'd care for that. You'd jolly soon expose your character to the 
 magistrate. Everybody knows \\\\dL\ you are." 
 
 " Your mother! " retorted Mrs. Jacobs mechanically ; the ellip- 
 tical method of expression being greatly in vogue for conversation 
 of a loud character. Quick as lightning came the parrying stroke. 
 
 "Yah! And what was your father, I should like to know?" 
 
 Mrs. Isaacs had no sooner made this inquiry than she became 
 conscious of an environment of suppressed laughter ; Mrs. Jacobs 
 awoke to the situation a second later, and the two women stood 
 suddenly dumbfounded, petrified, with arms akimbo, staring at 
 each other. 
 
MALKA. 37 
 
 The wise, if apocryphal, Ecclesiasticus, sagely and pithily re- 
 marked, many centuries before modern civilization was invented: 
 Jest not with a rude man lest thy ancestors be disgraced. To 
 this day the oriental methods of insult- have survived in the 
 Ghetto. The dead past is never allowed to bury its dead; the 
 genealogical dust-heap is always liable to be raked up, and even 
 innocuous ancestors may be traduced to the third and fourth gen- 
 eration. 
 
 Now it so happened that Mrs. Isaacs and Mrs. Jacobs were 
 sisters. And when it dawned upon them into what dilemma 
 their automatic methods of carte and tierce had inveigled them, 
 they were frozen with confusion. They retired crestfallen to 
 their respective parlors, and sported their oaks. The resources 
 of repartee were dried up for the moment. Relatives are unduly 
 handicapped in these verbal duels ; especially relatives with the 
 same mother and father. 
 
 Presently Mrs. Isaacs reappeared. She had thought of some- 
 thing she ought to have said. She went up to her sister's closed 
 door, and shouted into the key-hole : '' None of my children ever 
 had bandy-legs ! '' 
 
 Almost immediately the window of the front bedroom was 
 flung up, and Mrs. Jacobs leant out of it waving what looked like 
 an immense streamer. 
 
 "Aha,'' she observed, dangling it tantalizingly up and down. 
 " Morry antique ! " 
 
 The dress fluttered in the breeze. Mrs. Jacobs caressed the 
 stuff" between her thumb and forefinger. 
 
 " Aw-aw-aw-aw-aw-awl silk," she announced with a long 
 ecstatic quaver. 
 
 Mrs. Isaacs stood paralyzed by the brilliancy of the repartee. 
 
 Mrs. Jacobs withdrew the moire antique and exhibited a mauve 
 gown. 
 
 " Aw-aw-aw-aw-aw-awl silk."" 
 
 The mauve fluttered for a triumphant instant, the next a puce 
 and amber dress floated on the breeze. 
 
 "Aw-aw-aw-aw-aw-awl silk." Mrs. Jacobs's fingers smoothed 
 it lovingly, then it was drawn within to be instantly replaced by 
 
38 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 a green dress. Mrs. Jacobs passed the skirt slowly through her 
 fingers. " Aw-aw-aw-aw-aw-awl silk ! " she quavered mockingly. 
 
 By this time Mrs. Isaacs's face was the color of the latest flag 
 of victory. 
 
 " The tallyman ! " she tried to retort, but the words stuck in 
 her throat. Fortunately just then she caught sight of her poor 
 lamb playing with the other poor lamb. She dashed at her oif- 
 spring, boxed its ears and crying, '• You little blackguard, if I 
 ever catch you playing with blackguards again, Til wring your 
 neck for you/' she hustled the infant into the house and slammed 
 the door viciously behind her. 
 
 Moses had welcomed this every-day scene, for it put off a few 
 moments his encounter with the formidable Malka. As she had 
 not appeared at door or window, he concluded she was in a bad 
 temper or out of London ; neither alternative was pleasant. 
 
 He knocked at the door of Milly's house where her mother 
 was generally to be found, and an elderly char-woman opened 
 it. There were some bottles of spirit, standing on a wooden 
 side-table covered with a colored cloth, and some unopened bis- 
 cuit bags. At these familiar premonitory signs of a festival, 
 Moses felt tempted to beat a retreat. He could not think for the 
 moment what was up, but whatever it was he had no doubt the 
 well-to-do persons would supply him with ice. The char-woman, 
 with brow darkened by soot and gloom, told him that Milly was 
 upstairs, but that her mother had gone across to her own house 
 with the clothes-brush. 
 
 Moses's face fell. When his wife was alive, she had been a 
 link of connection between '^' The Family " and himself, her 
 cousin having generously employed her as a char-woman. So 
 Moses knew the import of the clothes-brush. Malka was very 
 particular about her appearance and loved to be externally 
 speckless, but somehow or other she had no clothes-brush at 
 home. This deficiency did not matter ordinarily, for she 
 practically lived at Milly's. But when she had words with 
 Milly or her husband, she retired to her own house to sulk or 
 schmull, as they called it. The carrying away of the clothes- 
 brush was, thus, a sign that she considered the breach serious 
 
MALKA. 39 
 
 and hostilities likely to be protracted. Sometimes a whole 
 week would go by without the two bouses ceasing to stare sul- 
 lenly across at each other, the situation in Milly's camp being 
 aggravated by the lack of a clothes-brush.- In such moments of 
 irritation, Milly's husband was apt to declare that his mother- 
 in-law had abundance of clothes-brushes, for, he pertinently 
 asked, how did she manage during her frequent business tours 
 in the country? He gave it as his conviction that Malka merely 
 took the clothes-brush away to afford herself a handle for return- 
 ing. But then Ephraim Phillips was a graceless young fellow, 
 the death of whose first wife was probably a judgment on his 
 levity, and everybody except his second mother-in-law knew that 
 he had a book of tickets for the Oxbridge Music Hall, and went 
 there on Friday nights. Still, in spite of these facts, experience 
 did show that whenever Milly's camp had outsulked Malka's, 
 the old woman's surrender was always veiled under the formula 
 of : " Oh Milly, I've brought you over your clothes-bmsh. I 
 just noticed it, and thought you might be wanting it." After 
 this, conversation was comparatively easy, 
 
 Moses hardly cared to face Malka in such a crisis of the 
 clothes-brush. He turned away despairingly, and was going 
 back through the small archway which led to the Ruins and the 
 outside world, when a grating voice startled his ear. 
 
 " Well, Meshe, whither fliest thou? Has my Milly forbidden 
 thee to see me ? " 
 
 He looked back. Malka was standing at her house-door. He 
 retraced his steps. 
 
 " N-n-o," he murmured. " I thought you still out with your 
 stall." 
 
 That was where she should have been, at any rate, till half an 
 hour ago. She did not care to tell herself, much less Moses, 
 that she had been waiting at home for the envoy of peace from 
 the filial camp summoning her to the ceremony of the Redemp- 
 tion of her grandson. 
 
 "Well, now thou seest me," she said, speaking Yiddish for his 
 behoof, " thou lookest not outwardly anxious to know how it goes 
 with me." 
 
40 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 '• How goes it with you? " 
 
 "As well as an old woman has a right to expect. The Most 
 High is good!" Malka was in her most amiable mood, to em- 
 phasize to outsiders the injustice of her kin in quarrelling with 
 her. She was a tall woman of fifty, with a tanned equine gypsy 
 face surmounted by a black wig, and decorated laterally by great 
 gold earrings. Great black eyes blazed beneath great black eye- 
 brows, and the skin between them was capable of wrinkling itself 
 black with wrath. A gold chain was wound thrice round her 
 neck, and looped up within her black silk bodice. There were 
 numerous rings on her fingers, and she perpetually smelt of 
 peppermint. 
 
 "A^//, stand not chattering there," she went on. "Come in. 
 Dost thou wish me to catch my death of cold?" 
 
 Moses slouched timidly within, his head bowed as if in dread 
 of knocking against the top of the door. The room was a per- 
 fect fac-simile of Milly's parlor at the other end of the diagonal, 
 save that instead of the festive bottles and paper bags on the 
 small side-table, there was a cheerless clothes-brush. Like 
 Milly's, the room contained a round table, a chest of drawers 
 with decanters on the top, and a high mantelpiece decorated 
 with pendant green fringes, fastened by big-headed brass nails. 
 Here cheap china dogs, that had had more than their day 
 squatted amid lustres with crystal drops. Before the fire was a 
 lofty steel guard, which, useful enough in Milly's household, had 
 survived its function in Malka's, where no one was ever likely to 
 tumble into the grate. In a corner of the room a little staircase 
 began to go upstairs. There was oilcloth on the floor. In 
 Zachariah Square anybody could go into anybody else's house 
 and feel at home. There was no visible difference between one 
 and another. Moses sat down awkwardly on a chair and refused 
 a peppermint. In the end he accepted an apple, blessed God for 
 creating the fruit of the tree, and made a ravenous bite at it. 
 
 " I must take peppermints,"' Malka explained. ^ It's for the 
 spasms." 
 
 " But you said you were well," murmured Moses. 
 
 "And suppose? If I did not take peppermint I should have 
 
MALKA. 41 
 
 the spasms. My poor sister Rosina, peace be upon him, who 
 died of typhoid, suffered greatly from the spasms. It's in the 
 family. She would have died of asthma if she had lived long 
 enough. Nu, how goes it with theeP^'S'he went on, suddenly 
 remembering that Moses, too, had a right to be ill. At bottom, 
 Malka felt a real respect for Moses, though he did not know it. 
 It dated from the day he cut a chip of mahogany out of her best 
 round table. He had finished cutting his nails, and wanted a 
 morsel of wood to burn with them in witness of his fulfilment of 
 the pious custom. Malka raged, but in her inmost heart there 
 was admiration for such unscrupulous sanctity. 
 
 " I have been out of work for three weeks," Moses answered, 
 omitting to expound the state of his health in view of more 
 urgent matters. 
 
 "Unlucky fool! What my silly cousin Gittel, peace be upon 
 him, could see to marry in thee, I know not." 
 
 Moses could not enlighten her. He might have informed her 
 that olov hasholoni, " peace be upon him," was an absurdity when 
 applied to a woman, but then he used the pious phrase himself, 
 although aware of its grammatical shortcomings. 
 
 " I told her thou wouldst never be able to keep her, poor 
 lamb," Malka went on. " But she was always an obstinate pig. 
 And she kept her head high up, too, as if she had five pounds 
 a week ! Never would let her children earn money like other 
 people's children. But thou oughtest not to be so obstinate. 
 Thou shouldst have more sense, Meshe ; thoii belongest not to 
 my family. Why can't Solomon go out with matches? " 
 
 '' Gittel's soul would not like it." 
 
 '* But the living have bodies ! Thou rather seest thy children 
 starve than work. There's Esther, — an idle, lazy brat, always 
 reading story-books ; why doesn't she sell flowers or pull out 
 bastings in the evening?" 
 
 " Esther and Solomon have their lessons to do." 
 
 "Lessons!" snorted Malka. "What's the good of lessons? 
 It's English, not Judaism, they teach them in that godless 
 school. I could never read or write anything but Hebrew in all 
 my life ; but God be thanked, I have thriven without it. All 
 
42 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO, 
 
 they teach them in the school is EngHsh nonsense. The teachers 
 are a pack of heathens, who eat forbidden things, but the good 
 Yiddishkeit goes to the wall. Fm ashamed of thee, Meshe ; 
 thou dost not even send thy boys to a Hebrew class in the 
 evening." 
 
 " I have no money, and they must do their English lessons. 
 Else, perhaps, their clothes will be stopped. Besides, I teach 
 them myself every Shabbos afternoon and Sunday. Solomon 
 translates into Yiddish the whole Pentateuch with Rashi." 
 
 "Yes, he may know T^Vrt//,"'' said Malka, not to be baffled. 
 " But he'll never know Geinorah or MisJmayis.'''' Malka herself 
 knew very little of these abstruse subjects beyond their names, 
 and the fact that they were studied out of minutely-printed folios 
 by men of extreme sanctity. 
 
 "He knows a little Geniora/i, too," said Moses. "I can't 
 teach him at home because I haven't got a Geniorah, — it's so 
 expensive, as you know. But he went with me to the Beth- 
 Medrash, when the Maggid was studying it with a class free of 
 charge, and we learnt the whole of the Tj-actate IViddah. Solo- 
 mon understands very well all about the Divorce Laws, and he 
 could adjudicate on the duties of women to their husbands." 
 
 "Ah, but he'll never know Cabbu/a/i,'*'' smd Malka, driven to 
 her last citadel. " But then no one in England can study Cab- 
 bulah since the days of Rabbi Falk (the memory of the righteous 
 for a blessing) any more than a born Englishman can learn 
 Talmud. There's something in the air that prevents it. In my 
 town there was a Rabbi who could do Cabbidah ; he could call 
 Abraham our father from the grave. But in this pig-eating 
 country no one can be holy enough for the Name, blessed be 
 It, to grant him the privilege. I don't believe the SJwchctim kill 
 the animals properly ; the statutes are violated ; even pious people 
 eat tripha cheese and butter. I don't say thou dost, Meshe, 
 but thou lettest thy children." 
 
 " Well, your own butter is not kosher,'''' said Moses, nettled. 
 
 " My butter ? What does it matter about my butter ? I never 
 set up for a purist. I don't come of a family of Rabbonim. I'm 
 only a business woman. It's \\\^ frooDi people that I complain 
 
MALKA. 43 
 
 of; the people who ought to set an example, and are lowering 
 the standard of Froojnkeit. I caught a beadle's wife the other 
 day washing her meat and butter plates in the same bowl of 
 water. In time they will be frying steal^s in butter, and they 
 will end by eating trip/ia meat out of butter plates, and the 
 judgment of God will come. But what is become of thine 
 apple? Thou hast not gorged it already?" Moses nervously 
 pointed to his trousers pocket, bulged out by the mutilated 
 globe. After his first ravenous bite Moses had bethought him- 
 self of his responsibilities. 
 
 " It's for the kinder,'''^ he explained. 
 
 " A7/, the kinder!'''' snorted Malka disdainfully. "And what 
 will they give thee for it ? Verily, not a thank you. In my 
 young days we trembled before the father and the mother, and 
 my mother, peace be upon him, patched my face after I was a 
 married woman. I shall never forget that slap — it nearly made 
 me adhere to the wall. But now-a-days our children sit on our 
 heads. I gave my Milly all she has in the world — a house, a 
 shop, a husband, and my best bed-linen. And now when I want 
 her to call the child Yosef, after my first husband, peace be on 
 him, her own father, she would out of sheer vexatiousness, call 
 it Yechezkel." Malka's voice became more strident than ever. 
 She had been anxious to make a species of vicarious reparation 
 to her first husband, and the failure of Milly to acquiesce in the 
 arrangement was a source of real vexation. 
 
 Moses could think of nothing better to say than to inquire 
 how her present husband was. 
 
 " He overworks himself," Malka replied, shaking her head. 
 " The misfortune is that he thinks himself a good man of busi- 
 ness, and he is always starting new enterprises without consult- 
 ing me. If he would only take my advice more ! " 
 
 Moses shook his head in sympathetic deprecation of Michael 
 Birnbaum's wilfulness. 
 
 " Is he at home? " he asked. 
 
 " No, but I expect him back from the country every minute. 
 I believe they have invited him for the Pidyun Haben to-day." 
 
 '' Oh, is that to-day ? " 
 
44 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 " Of course. Didst thou not know ? " 
 
 " No, no one told me.'" 
 
 " Thine own sense should have told thee. Is it not the thirty- 
 first day since the birth.? But of course he won't accept when he 
 knows that my own daughter has driven me out of her house." 
 
 " You say not ! " exclaimed Moses in horror. 
 
 " I do say," said Malka, unconsciously taking up the clothes- 
 brush and thumping with it on the table to emphasize the out- 
 rage. "I told her that when Yechezkel cried so much, it would 
 be better to look for the pin than to dose the child for gripes. 
 ^I dressed it myself. Mother,' says she. 'Thou art an obstinate 
 cat's head, Milly,' says I. 'I say there is a pin.' 'And I know 
 better,' says she. 'How canst thou know better than I?' says I. 
 'Why, I was a mother before thou wast born.' So I unrolled 
 the child's flannel, and sure enough underneath it just over the 
 stomach I found — " 
 
 "The pin," concluded Moses, shaking his head gravely. 
 
 " No, not exactly. But a red mark where the pin had been 
 pricking the poor little thing." 
 
 "And what did Milly say then?" said Moses in sympathetic 
 triumph. 
 
 "Milly said it was a flea-bite! and I said, 'Gott in Himmel, 
 Milly, dost thou want to swear my eyes away? My enemies 
 shall have such a flea-bite.' And because Red Rivkah was in 
 the room, Milly said I was shedding her blood in public, and she 
 began to cry as if I had committed a crime against her in looking 
 after her child. And I rushed out, leaving the two babies howl- 
 ing together. That was a week ago." 
 
 "And how is the child?" 
 
 "How should I know? lam only the grandmother. I only 
 supplied the bed-linen it was born on." 
 
 " But is it recovered from the circumcision?" 
 
 "Oh, yes, all our family have good healing flesh. It's a fine 
 child, imbeshreer. It's got my eyes and nose. It's a rare hand- 
 some baby, i/nbeshreer. Only it won't be its mother's fault if the 
 Almighty takes it not back again. Milly has picked up so many 
 ignorant Lane women who come in and blight the child, by 
 
MALKA. 45 
 
 admiring it aloud, not even sdiy'mg vubeshreer. And then there's 
 an old witch, a beggar-woman that Ephraim, my son-in-law, 
 used to give a shilling a week to. Now he only gives her nine- 
 pence. She asked him 'why?' and he said, ' Tm married now. 
 I can't afford more.' 'What!' she shrieked, ' you got married 
 on my money ! ' And one Friday when the nurse had baby 
 downstairs, the old beggar-woman knocked for her weekly allow- 
 ance, and she opened the door, and she saw the child, and she 
 looked at it with her Evil Eye! I hope to Heaven nothing will 
 come of it." 
 
 " 1 will pray for Yechezkel," said Moses. 
 
 " Pray for Milly also, while thou art about it, that she may 
 remember what is owing to a mother before the earth covers me. 
 I don't know what's coming over children. Look at my Leah. 
 She will marry that Sam Levine, though he belongs to a lax 
 English family, and I suspect his mother was a proselyte. She 
 can't fry fish any way. I don't say anything against Sam, but 
 still I do think my Leah might have told me before falling in 
 love with him. And yet see how I treat them ! My Michael 
 made a Missheberach for them in synagogue the Sabbath after 
 the engagement ; not a common eighteen-penny benediction, but 
 a guinea one, with half-crown blessings thrown in for his parents 
 and the congregation, and a gift of five shillings to the minister. 
 That \vas of course in our own Chevrah, not reckoning the 
 guinea my Michael shnodared at Duke's Plaizer Shoot. You 
 know we always keep two seats at Duke's Plaizer as well." 
 Duke's Plaizer was the current distortion of Duke's Place. 
 
 " What magnanimity," said Moses overawed. 
 
 " I like to do everything with decorum," said Malka. " No 
 one can say I have ever acted otherwise than as a fine person. 
 I dare say thou couldst do with a few shillings thyself now." 
 
 Moses hung his head still lower. " You see my mother is so 
 poorly," he stammered. " She is a very old woman, and without 
 anything to eat she may not live long." 
 
 " They ought to take her into the Aged Widows' Home. I'm 
 sure I gave her ;;// votes." 
 
 "God shall bless you for it. But people say I was lucky 
 
46 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 enough to get my Benjamin into the Orphan Asylum, and that 
 I ought not to have brought her from Poland. They say we 
 grow enough poor old widows here." 
 
 " People say quite right — at least she would have starved in 
 a Yiddishe country, not in a land of heathens." 
 
 " But she was lonely and miserable out there, exposed to all 
 the malice of the Christians. And I was earning a pound a 
 week. Tailoring was a good trade then. The few roubles I 
 used to send her did not always reach her." 
 
 "Thou hadst no right to send her anything, nor to send for 
 her. Mothers are not everything. Thou didst marry my cousin 
 Gittel, peace be upon him, and it was thy duty to support her 
 and her children. Thy mother took the bread out of the mouth 
 of Gittel, and but for her my poor cousin might have been alive 
 to-day. Believe me it was no MitzvahP 
 
 Mitzvah is a " portmanteau-word." It means a commandment 
 and a good deed, the two conceptions being regarded as inter- 
 changeable. 
 
 " Nay, thou errest there," answered Moses. " Gittel was not 
 a phoenix which alone ate not of the Tree of Knowledge and 
 lives for ever. Women have no need to live as long as men, for 
 they have not so many Mitzvahs to perform as men; and inas- 
 much as" — here his tones involuntarily assumed the argumenta- 
 tive sing-song — "their souls profit by all the Mitzvahs performed 
 by their husbands and children, Gittel will profit by the Mitzvah 
 I did in bringing over my mother, so that even if she did die 
 through it, she will not be the loser thereby. It stands in the 
 Verse that man shall do the Mitzvahs and live by them. To 
 live is a Mitzvah., but it is plainly one of those Mitzvahs that 
 have to be done at a definite time, from which species women, 
 by reason of their household duties, are exempt ; wherefore I 
 would deduce by another circuit that it is not so incumbent upon 
 women to live as upon men. Nevertheless, if God had willed it, 
 she would have been still alive. The Holy One, blessed be He, 
 will provide for the little ones He has sent into the world. He 
 fed Elijah the prophet by ravens, and He will never send me a 
 black Sabbath." 
 
THE REDEMPTION OF SON AND DAUGHTER. 47 
 
 " Oh, you are a saint, Meshe,*" said Malka, so impressed that 
 she admitted him to the equality of the second person plural. 
 " If everybody knew as much Terah as you, the Messiah would 
 soon be here. Here are five shillings. •■ For five shillings you 
 can get a basket of lemons in the Orange Market in Duke's 
 Place, and if you sell them in the Lane at a halfpenny each, you 
 will make a good profit. Put aside five shillings of your takings 
 and get another basket, and so you will be able to live till the 
 tailoring picks up a bit." Moses listened as if he had never 
 heard of the elementary principles of barter. 
 
 "May the Name, blessed be It, bless you, and may you see 
 rejoicings on your children''s children." 
 
 So Moses went away and bought dinner, treating his family to 
 some beuglich, or circular twisted rolls, in his joy. But on the 
 morrow he repaired to the Market, thinking on the way of the 
 ethical distinction between " duties of the heart " and " duties of 
 the limbs," as expounded in choice Hebrew by Rabbenu Bachja, 
 and he laid out the remnant in lemons. Then he stationed 
 himself in Petticoat Lane, crying, in his imperfect English, 
 " Lemans, verra good lemans, two a penny each, two a penny 
 each ! " 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE REDEMPTION OF THE SON AND THE DAUGHTER. 
 
 Malka did not have long to wait for her liege lord. He was 
 a fresh-colored young man of thirty, rather good-looking, with 
 side whiskers, keen, eager glance, and an air of perpetually doing 
 business. Though a native of Germany, he spoke English as 
 well as many Lane Jews, whose comparative impiety was a cer- 
 tificate of British birth. Michael Birnbaum was a great man in 
 the local little synagogue if only one of the crowd at " Duke's 
 Plaizer." He had been successively Gabbai and Parnass, or 
 treasurer and president, and had presented the plush curtain, 
 with its mystical decoration of intersecting triangles, woven in 
 silk, that hung before the Ark in which the scrolls of the Law 
 
48 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 were kept. He was the very antithesis of Moses Ansell. His 
 energy was restless. From hawking he had risen to a profitable 
 traffic in gold lace and Brummagem jewelry, with a large clientele 
 all over the countrv, before he was twentv. He touched nothing 
 which he did not profit by ; and when he married, at twenty- 
 three, a woman nearly twice his age, the transaction was not 
 without the usual percentage. Very soon his line was diamonds, 
 — real diamonds. He carried a pocket-knife which was a com- 
 bination of a corkscrew, a pair of scissors, a file, a pair of 
 tweezers, a toothpick, and half a dozen other things, and which 
 seemed an epitome of his character. His temperament was 
 lively, and, like Ephraim Phillips, he liked music-halls. Fortu- 
 nately, Malka was too conscious of her charms to dream of 
 jealousy. 
 
 Michael smacked her soundly on the mouth with his lips and 
 said: "Well, mother!'' 
 
 He called her mother, not because he had any children, but 
 because she had, and it seemed a pity to multiply domestic 
 nomenclature. 
 
 "Well, my little one," said Malka, hugging him fondly. 
 " Have you made a good journey this time? " 
 
 "No, trade is so dull. People won't put their hands in their 
 pockets. And here?" 
 
 " People won't take their hands out of their pockets, lazy dogs! 
 Everybody is striking, — Jews with them. Unheard-of things! 
 The bootmakers, the capmakers, the furriers! And now they 
 say the tailors are going to strike ; more fools, too, when the 
 trade is so slack. What with one thing and another (let me put 
 your cravat straight, my little love), it's just the people who 
 can't afford to buy new clothes that are hard up, so that they 
 can't afford to buy second-hand clothes either. If the Almighty 
 is not good to us, we shall come to the Board of Guardians 
 ourselves." 
 
 "Not quite so bad as that, mother," laughed Michael, twirling 
 the massive diamond ring on his finger. " How's baby? Is it 
 ready to be redeemed ? " 
 
 "Which baby?" said Malka, with well-affected agnosticism. 
 
THE REDEMPTION OF SON AND DAUGHTER. 49 
 
 " Phew! " whistled Michael. "What's up now, mother?" 
 . '' Nothing, my pet, nothing." 
 
 "Well, Pm going across. Come along, mother. Oh, wait a 
 minute. I want to brush this mud off my trousers. Is the 
 clothes-brush here ? " 
 
 " Yes, dearest one," said the unsuspecting Malka. 
 
 Michael winked imperceptibly, flicked his trousers, and with- 
 out further parley ran across the diagonal to Milly's house. 
 Five minutes afterwards a deputation, consisting of a char- 
 woman, waited upon Malka and said : 
 
 " Missus says will you please come over, as baby is a-cryin' 
 for its grandma." 
 
 "Ah, that must be another pin," said Malka, with a gleam of 
 triumph at her victory. But she did not budge. At the end of 
 five minutes she rose solemnly, adjusted her wig and her dress 
 in the mirror, put on her bonnet, brushed away a non-existent 
 speck of dust from her left sleeve, put a peppermint in her mouth, 
 and crossed the Square, carrying the clothes-brush in her hand. 
 Milly's door was half open, but she knocked at it and said to the 
 char-woman : 
 
 "Is Mrs. Phillips in?" 
 
 " Yes, mum, the company's all upstairs." 
 
 " Oh, then I will go up and return her this myself." 
 
 Malka went straight through the little crowd of guests to 
 Milly, who was sitting on a sofa with Ezekiel, quiet as a lamb 
 and as good as gold, in her arms. 
 
 " Milly, my dear," she said. " I have come to bring you back 
 your clothes-brush. Thank you so much for the loan of it." 
 
 " You know you're welcome, mother," said Milly, with uninten- 
 tionally dual significance. The two ladies embraced. Ephra- 
 im Phillips, a sallow-looking, close-cropped Pole, also kissed 
 his mother-in-law, and the gold chain that rested on Malka's 
 bosom heaved with the expansion of domestic pride. Malka 
 thanked God she was not a mother of barren or celibate children, 
 which is only one degree better than personal unfruitfulness, 
 and testifies scarce less to the celestial curse. 
 
 "Is that pin-mark gone away yet, Milly, from the precious 
 
 E 
 
50 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 little thing?" said Malka, taking Ezekiel in her arms and dis- 
 regarding the transformation of face which in babies precedes a 
 storm. 
 
 ^' Yes, it was a mere flea-bite," said Milly incautiously, adding 
 hurriedly, " I always go through his flannels and things most 
 carefully to see there are no more pins lurking about." 
 
 "That is right! Pins are like fleas — you never know where 
 they get to," said Malka in an insidious spirit of compromise. 
 "Where is Leah?" 
 
 " She is in the back yard frying the last of the fish. Don't 
 you smell it?" 
 
 "It will hardly have time to get cold." 
 
 " Well, but I did a dishful myself last night. She is only pre- 
 paring a reserve in case the attack be too deadly." 
 
 " And where is the Cohen ? " 
 
 " Oh, we have asked old Hyams across the Ruins. We expect 
 him round every minute." 
 
 At this point the indications of EzekiePs facial barometer were 
 fulfilled, and a tempest of weeping shook him. 
 
 '''■Nal Go then! Go to the mother!" said Malka angrily. 
 " All my children are alike. It's getting late. Hadn't you bet- 
 ter send across again for old Hyams?" 
 
 " There's no hurry, mother," said Michael Birnbaum sooth- 
 ingly. "We must wait for Sam." 
 
 " And who's Sam?" cried Malka unappeased. 
 
 " Sam is Leah's Chosan^'' replied Michael ingenuously. 
 
 "Clever!" sneered Malka. " But my grandson is not going to 
 wait for the son of a proselyte. Why doesn't he come?" 
 
 " He'll be here in one minute." 
 
 " How do you know?" 
 
 "We came up in the same train. He got in at Middles- 
 borough. He's just gone home to see his folks, and get a wash 
 and a brush-up. Considering he's coming up to town merely 
 for the sake of the family ceremony, I think it would be very 
 rude to commence without him. It's no joke, a long railway 
 journey this weather. My feet were nearly frozen despite the 
 foot-warmer." 
 
THE REDEMPTION OF SON AND DAUGHTER. 51 
 
 " My poor lambkin,"" said Malka, melting. And she patted 
 his side whiskers. 
 
 Sam Levine arrived almost immediately, and Leah, fishfork in 
 hand, flew out of the back-yard kitchen lo greet him. Though 
 a member of the tribe of Levi, he was anything but ecclesiastical 
 in appearance, rather a representative of muscular Judaism. He 
 had a pink and w^hite complexion, and a tawny moustache, and 
 bubbled over with energy and animal spirits. He could give 
 most men thirty in a hundred in billiards, and fifty in anecdote. 
 He w^as an advanced Radical in politics, and had a high opinion 
 of the intelligence of his party. He paid Leah lip-fealty on his 
 entry. 
 
 "What a pity ifs Sunday !" was Leah's first remark when the 
 kissing was done. 
 
 " No going to the play," said Sam ruefully, catching her 
 meaning. 
 
 They always celebrated his return from a commercial round 
 by going to the theatre — the-etter they pronounced it. They 
 went to the pit of the West End houses rather than patronize 
 the local dress circles for the same money. There were two 
 strata of Ghetto girls, those who strolled in the Strand on Sab- 
 bath, and those who strolled in the Whitechapel Road. Leah 
 was of the upper stratum. She was a tall lovely brunette, exu- 
 berant of voice and figure, with coarse red hands. She doted 
 on ice-cream in the summer, and hot chocolate in the winter, but 
 her love of the theatre w^as a perennial passion. Both Sam and 
 she had good ears, and w^re always first in the field with the 
 latest comic opera tunes. Leah's healthy vitality was prodigious. 
 There was. a legend in the Lane of such a maiden having been 
 chosen by a coronet ; Leah was satisfied with Sam, who was just 
 her match. On the heels of Sam came several other guests, 
 notably Mrs. Jacobs (wife of "Reb" Shemuel), with her pretty 
 daughter, Hannah. Mr. Hyams, the Cohen., came last — the 
 Priest whose functions had so curiously dwindled since the times 
 of the Temples. To be called first to the reading of the Law, to 
 bless his brethren with symbolic spreadings of palms and fingers 
 in a mystic incantation delivered, standing shoeless before the 
 
62 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 Ark of the Covenant at festival seasons, to redeem the mother^s 
 first-born son when neither parent was of priestly lineage — 
 these privileges combined with a disability to be with or near 
 the dead, differentiated his religious position from that of the 
 Levite or the Israelite. Mendel Hyams was not puiTed up about 
 his tribal superiority, though if tradition were to be trusted, his 
 direct descent from Aaron, the High Priest, gave him a longer 
 genealogy than Queen Victoria's. He was a meek sexagenarian, 
 with a threadbare black coat and a child-like smile. All the 
 pride of the family seemed to be monopolized by his daughter 
 Miriam, a girl whose very nose Heaven had fashioned scornful. 
 Miriam had accompanied him out of contemptuous curiosity. 
 She wore a stylish feather in her hat, and a boa round her 
 throat, and earned thirty shillings a week, all told, as a school 
 teacher. (Esther Ansell was in her class just now.) Probably 
 her toilette had made old Hyams unpunctual. His arrival was 
 the signal for the commencement of the proceedings, and the 
 men hastened to assume their head-gear. 
 
 Ephraim Phillips cautiously took the swaddled-up infant from 
 the bosom of Milly where it was suckling and presented it to 
 old Hyams. Fortunately Ezekiel had already had a repletion of 
 milk, and was drowsy and manifested very little interest in the 
 whole transaction. 
 
 " This my first-born son," said Ephraim in Hebrew as he 
 handed Ezekiel over — " is the first-born of his mother, and the 
 Holy One, blessed be He, hath given command to redeem him, 
 as it is said, and those that are to be redeemed of them from 
 a month old, shalt thou redeem according to thine estimation 
 for the money of five shekels after the shekel of the sanctuary, 
 the shekel being twenty gerahs ; and it is said, ' Sanctify unto 
 me all the first-born, whatsoever openeth the womb among the 
 children of Israel, both of man and of beast ; it is mine.' " 
 
 Ephraim Phillips then placed fifteen shillings in silver before 
 old Hyams, who thereupon inquired in Chaldaic : " Which 
 wouldst thou rather — give me thy first-born son, the first-born 
 of his mother, or redeem him for five selaim, which thou art 
 bound to give according to the Law ? " 
 
THE REDEMPTION OF SON AND DAUGHTER. 53 
 
 Ephraim replied in Chaldaic : '' I am desirous rather to re- 
 deem my son, and here thou hast the value of his redemption, 
 which I am bound to give according to the Law.*" 
 
 Thereupon Hyams took the money tendered, and gave back 
 the child to his father, who blessed God for His sanctifying com- 
 mandments, and thanked Him for His mercies ; after which the 
 old Cohen held the fifteen shillings over the head of the infant, 
 saying : " This instead of that, this in exchange for that, this in 
 remission of that. May this child enter into life, into the Law, 
 and into the fear of Heaven. May it be God's will that even as 
 he has been admitted to redemption, so may he enter into the 
 Law, the nuptial canopy and into good deeds. Amen." Then, 
 placing his hand in benediction upon the child's head, the 
 priestly layman added : " God make thee as Ephraim and 
 Manasseh. The Lord bless thee and keep thee. The Lord 
 make His face to shine upon thee, and be gracious unto thee. 
 The Lord turn His face to thee and grant thee peace. The 
 Lord is thy guardian ; the Lord is thy shade upon thy right 
 hand. For length of days and years of life and peace shall they 
 add to thee. The Lord shall guard thee from all evil. He shall 
 guard thy soul.'' 
 
 " Amen," answered the company, and then there was a buzz 
 of secular talk, general rapture being expressed at the stolidness 
 of Ezekiel's demeanor. Cups of tea were passed round by the 
 lovely Leah, and the secrets of the paper bags were brought to 
 light. Ephraim Phillips talked horses with Sam Levine, and 
 old Hyams quarrelled with Malka over the disposal of the fifteen 
 shillings. Knowing that Hyams was poor, Malka refused to 
 take back the money retendered by him unde* pretence of a gift 
 to the child. The Cohen, however, was a proud man, and under 
 the eye of Miriam a firm one. Ultimately it was agreed the 
 money should be expended on a Missheberach, for the infant's 
 welfare and the synagogue's. Birds of a feather flock together, 
 and Miriam forgathered with Hannah Jacobs, who also had a 
 stylish feather in her hat, and was the most congenial of the 
 company. Mrs. Jacobs was left to discourse of the ailments of 
 childhood and the iniquities of servants with Mrs. Philips. 
 
54 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 Reb Shemuers wife, commonly known as the Rebbitzin, was a 
 tall woman with a bony nose and shrivelled cheeks, whereon the 
 paths of the blood-vessels were scrawled in red. The same 
 bones were visible beneath the plumper padding of Hannah's 
 face. Mrs. Jacobs had escaped the temptation to fatness, which 
 is the besetting peril of the Jewish matron. If Hannah could 
 escape her mother's inclination to angularity she would be a 
 pretty woman. She dressed with taste, which is half the battle, 
 and for the present she was only nineteen. 
 
 "- Do you think it's a good match ? '' said Miriam Hyams, in- 
 dicatino; Sam Levine with a movement of the eyebrow. 
 
 A swift, scornful look flitted across Hannah's face. "Among 
 the Jews," she said, " every match is a grand Shiddiich before 
 the marriage ; after, we hear another tale." 
 
 "There is a good deal in that," admitted Miriam, thought- 
 fully. " The girl's' family cries up the capture shamelessly. I 
 remember when Clara Emanuel was engaged, her brother Jack 
 told me it was a splendid Shidduch. Afterwards I found he 
 was a widower of fifty-five with three children." 
 
 "But that engagement went off," said Hannah. 
 
 "I know," said Miriam. " I'm only saying I can't fancy my- 
 self doing anything of the kind." 
 
 " What ! breaking off an engagement? " said Hannah, with a 
 cynical little twinkle about her eye. 
 
 " No, taking a man like that," replied Miriam. " I wouldn't 
 look at a man over thirty-five, or with less than two hundred and 
 fifty a year." 
 
 " You'll never marry a teacher, then," Hannah remarked. 
 
 " Teacher ! " Miriam Hyams repeated, with a look of disgust. 
 " How can one be respectable on three pounds a week? I must 
 have a man in a good position." She tossed her piquant nose 
 and looked almost handsome. She was five years older than 
 Hannah, and it seemed an enigma why men did not rush to lay 
 five pounds a week at her daintily shod feet. 
 
 " rd rather marry a man with two pounds a week if I loved 
 him," said Hannah in a low tone. 
 
 " Not in this century," said Miriam, shaking her head incredu- 
 
THE REDEMPTION OF SON AND DAUGHTER. 55 
 
 lously. " We don''t believe in that nonsense now-a-days. There 
 was Alice Green, — she used to talk like that, — now look at 
 her, riding about in a gig side by side with a bald monkey." 
 
 "Alice Greenes mother," interrupted Maika, pricking up her 
 ears, "married a son of Mendel Weinstein by his third wife,' 
 Dinah, who had ten pounds left her by her uncle Shloumi." 
 
 " No, Dinah was Menders second wife," corrected Mrs. Jacobs, 
 cutting short a remark of Mrs. Phillips's in favor of the new 
 interest. 
 
 "Dinah was Mendel's third wife," repeated Malka, her tanned 
 cheeks reddening. " I know it because my Simon, God bless 
 him, was breeched the same month." 
 
 Simon was Malka's eldest, now a magistrate in Melbourne. 
 
 "His third wife was Kitty Green, daughter of the yellow 
 Melammed," persisted the Rebbitzin. " I know it for a fact, 
 because Kitty's sister Annie was engaged for a week to my 
 brother-in-law Nathaniel." 
 
 " His first wife," put in Malka's husband, with the air of arbi- 
 trating between the two, "was Shmool the publican's eldest 
 daughter." 
 
 " Shmool the publican's daughter," said Malka, stirred to 
 fresh indignation, " married Hyam Robins, the grandson of old 
 Benjamin, who kept the cutlery shop at the corner of Little 
 Eden Alley, there where the pickled cucumber store stands 
 now." 
 
 " It was Shmool's sister that married Hyam Robins, wasn't 
 it, mother? " asked Milly, incautiously. 
 
 " Certainly not," thundered Malka. " I knew old Benjamin 
 well, and he sent me a pair of chintz curtains when I married 
 your father." 
 
 " Poor old Benjamin! How long has he been dead? " mused 
 Reb Shemuel's wife. 
 
 " He died the year I was confined with my Leah " 
 
 "Stop! stop! " interrupted Sam Levine boisterously. "There's 
 Leah getting as red as fire for fear you'll blab out her age." 
 
 " Don't be a fool, Sam," said Leah, blushing violently, and 
 looking the lovelier for it. 
 
66 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 The attention of the entire company was now concentrated 
 upon the question at issue, whatever it might be. Malka fixed 
 her audience with her piercing eye, and said in a tone that scarce 
 brooked contradiction : " Hyam Robins couldn't have married 
 ShmooPs sister because Shmool's sister was already the wife of 
 Abraham the fishmonger." 
 
 "Yes, but Shmool had two sisters," said Mrs. Jacobs, auda- 
 ciously asserting her position as the rival genealogist. 
 
 " Nothing of the kind," replied Malka warmly. 
 
 " Fm quite sure," persisted Mrs. Jacobs. "There was Phoeby 
 and there was Harriet." 
 
 " Nothing of the kind," repeated Malka. " Shmool had three 
 sisters. Only two were in the deaf and dumb home." 
 ' " Why, that wasn't Shmool at all," Milly forgot herself so far 
 as to say, " that was Block the Baker." 
 
 " Of course! " said Malka in her most acid tone. '^^ My kinder 
 always know better than me." 
 
 There was a moment of painful silence. Malka's eye mechan- 
 ically sought the clothes-brush. Then Ezekiel sneezed. It was 
 a convulsive "' atichoo," and agitated the infant to its most inti- 
 mate flannel-roll. 
 
 " For thy Salvation do I hope, O Lord," murmured Malka, 
 piously, adding triumphantly aloud, " There ! the kind has sneezed 
 to the truth of it. I knew I was right." 
 
 The sneeze of an innocent child silences everybody who is not 
 a blasphemer. In the general satisfaction at the unexpected 
 solution of the situation, no one even pointed out that the actual 
 statement to which Ezekiel had borne testimony, was an asser- 
 tion of the superior knowledge of Malka's children. Shortly 
 afterwards the company trooped downstairs to partake of high 
 tea, which in the Ghetto need not include anything more fleshly 
 than fish. Fish was, indeed, the staple of the meal. Fried fish, 
 and such fried fish! Only a great poet could sing the praises of 
 the national dish, and the golden age of Hebrew poetry is over. 
 Strange that Gebirol should have lived and died without the 
 opportunity of the theme, and that the great Jehuda Halevi him- 
 self should have had to devote his genius merely to singing the 
 
THE REDEMPTION OF SON AND DAUGHTER. 57 
 
 glories of Jerusalem. " Israel is among the other nations," he 
 sang, ''as the heart among the limbs.'" Even so is the fried fish 
 of Judcea to the fried fish of Christendom and Heathendom. 
 With the audacity of true culinary genius, Jewish fried fish is 
 always served cold. The skin is a beautiful brown, the substance 
 firm and succulent. The very bones thereof are full of marrow, 
 yea and charged with memories of the happy past. Fried fish 
 binds Anglo-Judaea more than all the lip-professions of unity. 
 Its savor is early known of youth, and the divine flavor, endeared 
 by a thousand childish recollections, entwined with the most 
 sacred associations, draws back the hoary sinner into the paths 
 of piety. It is on fried fish, mayhap, that the Jewish matron 
 grows fat. In the days of the Messiah, when the saints shall 
 feed off the Leviathan ; and the Sea Serpent shall be dished up 
 for the last time, and the world and the silly season shall come 
 to an end, in those days it is probable that the saints will prefer 
 their Leviathan fried. Not that any physical frying will be 
 necessary, for in those happy times (for whose coming every 
 faithful Israelite prays three times a day), the Leviathan will have 
 what taste the eater will. Possibly a few highly respectable 
 saints, who were fashionable in their day and contrived to live in 
 Kensington without infection of paganism, will take their Levia- 
 than in conventional courses, and beginning with hors cfa'uvres 
 may will him everything by turns and nothing long ; making 
 him soup and sweets, joint and entree, and even ices and cofl"ee, 
 for in the millennium the harassing prohibition which bars cream 
 after meat will fall through. But, however this be, it is beyond 
 question that the bulk of the faithful will mentally fry him, and 
 though the Christian saints, who shall be privileged to wait at 
 table, hand them plate after plate, fried fish shall be all the fare. 
 One suspects that Hebrews gained the taste in the Desert of 
 Sinai, for the manna that fell there was not monotonous to the 
 palate as the sciolist supposes, but likewise mutable under voli- 
 tion. It were incredible that Moses, who gave so many imperish- 
 able things to his people, did not also give them the knowledge 
 of fried fish, so that they might obey his behest, and rejoice 
 before the Lord. Nay, was it not because, while the manna fell, 
 
58 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 there could be no lack of fish to fry, that they lingered forty 
 years in a dreary wilderness? Other delicious things there are 
 in Jewish cookery — Lockschen, which are the apotheosis of 
 vermicelli, Ferfel, which are Lockschen in an atomic state, and 
 Creplick, which are triangular meat-pasties, and Kuggol, to which 
 pudding has a far-away resemblance ; and there is even gefilllte 
 Fisch, which is stuffed fish without bones — but fried fish reigns 
 above all in cold, unquestioned sovereignty. No other people 
 possesses the recipe. As a poet of the commencement of the 
 century sings : 
 
 The Christians are ninnies, they can't fry Dutch plaice, 
 Believe me, they can't tell a carp from a dace. 
 
 It was while discussing a deliciously brown oblong of the 
 Dutch plaice of the ballad that Samuel Levine appeared to be 
 struck by an idea. He threw down his knife and fork and 
 exclaimed in Hebrew. '-'' Sheinah benil'''' 
 
 Every one looked at him. 
 
 "Hear, my son!" he repeated in comic horror. Then relaps- 
 ing into English, he explained. " IVe forgotten to give Leah 
 a present from her chosany 
 
 "A-h-h!" Everybody gave a sigh of deep interest; Leah, 
 whom the exigencies of service had removed from his side to 
 the head of the table, half-rose from her seat in excitement. 
 
 Now, whether Samuel Levine had really forgotten, or whether 
 he had chosen the most effective moment will never be known ; 
 certain it is that the Semitic instinct for drama was gratified 
 within him as he drew a little folded white paper out of his 
 waistcoat pocket, amid the keen expectation of the com- 
 pany. 
 
 " This," said he, tapping the paper as if he were a conjurer, 
 "was purchased by me yesterday morning for my little girl. 
 I said to myself, says I, look here, old man, you've got to go 
 up to town for a day in honor of Ezekiel Phillips, and your poor 
 girl, who had looked forward to your staying away till Pass- 
 over, will want some compensation for her disappointment at 
 seeing you earlier. So I thinks to myself, thinks I, now what 
 
THE REDEMPTION OF SON AND DAUGHTER. 59 
 
 is there that Leah would hke? It must be something appro- 
 priate, of course, and it mustn't be of any value, because I 
 can't afford it. It's a ruinous business getting engaged ; the 
 worst bit of business I ever did in all my born days."' Here 
 Sam winked facetiously at the company. "And 1 thought and 
 thought of what was the cheapest thing I could get out of it 
 with, and lo and behold I suddenly thought of a ring." 
 
 So saying, Sam, still with the same dramatic air, unwrapped 
 the thick gold ring and held it up so that the huge diamond 
 in it sparkled in the sight of all. A long '• O — h — h" went 
 round the company, the majority instantaneously pricing it 
 mentally, and wondering at what reduction Sam had acquired 
 it from a brother commercial. For that no Jew ever pays 
 full retail price for jewelry is regarded as axiomatic. Even the 
 engagement ring is not required to be first-hand — or should 
 it be first-finger? — so long as it is solid ; which perhaps accounts 
 for the superiority of the Jewish marriage-rate. Leah rose 
 entirely to her feet, the light of tlie diamond reflected in her 
 eager eyes. She leant across the table, stretching out a finger 
 to receive her lover's gift. Sam put the ring near her finger, 
 then drew it away teasingly. 
 
 " Them as asks shan't have," he said, in high good humor. 
 " You're too greedy. Look at the number of rings you've got 
 already." The fun of the situation diffused itself along the 
 table. 
 
 " Give it me," laughed Miriam Hyams, stretching out her 
 finger. " I'll say ' ta ' so nicely." 
 
 '^ No," he said, " you've been naughty ; I'm going to give it 
 to the little girl who has sat quiet all the time. Miss Hannah 
 Jacobs, rise to receive your prize." 
 
 Hannah, who was sitting two places to the left of him, smiled 
 quietly, but went on carving her fish. Sam, growing quite bois- 
 terous under the appreciation of a visibly amused audience, 
 leaned towards her, captured her right hand, and forcibly 
 adjusted the ring on the second finger, exclaiming in Hebrew, 
 with mock solemnity, " Behold, thou art consecrated unto me by 
 this ring according to the Law of Moses and Israel." 
 
60 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 It was the formal marriage speech he had learnt up for his 
 approaching marriage. The company roared with laughter, 
 and pleasure and enjoyment of the fun made Leah's lovely, 
 smiling cheeks flush to a livelier crimson. Badinage flew about 
 from one end of the table to the other ; burlesque congratula- 
 tions were showered on the couple, flowing over even unto Mrs. 
 Jacobs, who appeared to enjoy the episode as much as if her 
 daughter were really off" her hands. The little incident added 
 the last touch of high spirits to the company and extorted 
 all their latent humor. Samuel excelled himself in vivacious 
 repartee, and responded comically to the toast of his health as 
 drunk in coffee. Suddenly, amid the hubbub of chaff and 
 laughter and the clatter of cutlery, a still small voice made 
 itself heard. It same from old Hyams, who had been sitting 
 quietly with brow corrugated under his black velvet koppel. 
 
 " Mr. Levine," he said, in low grave tones, " I have been 
 thinking, and I am afraid that what you have done is serious." 
 
 The earnestness of his tones arrested the attention of the 
 company. The laughter ceased. 
 
 " What do you mean ? '^ said Samuel. He understood the 
 Yiddish which old Hyams almost invariably used, though he 
 did not speak it himself. Contrariwise, old Hyams understood 
 much more English than he spoke. 
 
 '' You have married Hannah Jacobs.'" 
 
 There was a painful silence, dim recollections surging in 
 everybody's brain. 
 
 "Married Hannah Jacobs! " repeated Samuel incredulously. 
 
 " Yes,'' affirmed old Hyams. " What you have done consti- 
 tutes a marriage according to Jewish law. You have pledged 
 yourself to her in the presence of two witnesses." 
 
 There was another tense silence. Samuel broke it with a 
 boisterous laugh. 
 
 " No, no, old fellow," he said ; " you don't have me like that! " 
 
 The tension was relaxed. Everybody joined in the laugh 
 with a feeling of indescribable relief. Facetious old Hyams 
 had gone near scoring one. Hannah smilingly plucked off the 
 glittering bauble from her finger and slid it on to Leah's. Hy- 
 
THE REDEMPTION OF SON AND DAUGHTER. 61 
 
 ams alone remained grave. "Laugh away!" he said. "You 
 will soon find I am right. Such is our law." 
 
 "May be," said Samuel, constrained to seriousness despite 
 himself. " But you forget that I am already engaged to Leah." 
 
 " I do not forget it," replied Hyams, '• but it has nothing to 
 do with the case. You are both single, or rather you were both 
 single, for now you are man and wife." 
 
 Leah, who had been sitting pale and agitated, burst into tears. 
 Hannah's face was drawn and white. Her mother looked the 
 least alarmed of the company. 
 
 "Droll person!" cried Malka, addressing Sam angrily in jar- 
 gon. "What hast thou done? " 
 
 " Don't let us all go mad," said Samuel, bewildered. " How 
 can a piece of fun, a joke, be a valid marriage? " 
 
 " The law takes no account of jokes," said old Hyams solemnly. 
 
 "Then why didn't you stop me?" asked Sam, exasperated. 
 
 " It was all done in a moment. I laughed myseM"; I had no 
 time to think." 
 
 Sam brought his fist down on the table with a bang. 
 
 " Well, ril never believe this! If this is Judaism ! " 
 
 " Hush ! " said Malka angrily. " These are your English Jews, 
 who make mock of holy things. I always said the son of a pros- 
 elyte was " 
 
 " Look here, mother," put in Michael soothingly. " Don't let 
 us make a fuss before we know the truth. Send for some one 
 who is likely to know." He played agitatedly with his complex 
 pocket-knife. 
 
 " Yes, Hannah's father, Reb Shemuel is just the man," cried 
 Milly Phillips. 
 
 " I told you my husband was gone to Manchester for a day or 
 two," Mrs. Jacobs reminded her. 
 
 " There's the Maggid of the Sons of the Covenant," said one 
 of the company. " Fll go and fetch him." 
 
 The stooping, black-bearded Maggid was brought. When 
 he arrived, it was evident from his look that he knew all and 
 brought confirmation of their worst fears. He explained the law 
 at great length, and cited precedent upon precedent. When he 
 
62 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 ceased, Leah's sobs alone broke the silence. SamuePs face was 
 white. The merry gathering had been turned to a wedding 
 party. 
 
 "You rogue! "burst forth Malka at last. "You planned all 
 this — you thought my Leah didn't have enough money, and 
 that Reb Shemuel will heap you up gold in the hands. But you 
 don't take me in like this." 
 
 " May this piece of bread choke me if I had the slightest iota 
 of intention!" cried Samuel passionately, for the thought of what 
 Leah might think was like fire in his veins. He turned appeal- 
 ingly to the Maggid ; " but there must be some way out of this, 
 surely there must be some way out. I know you Maggidivi 
 can split hairs. Can't you make one of your clever distinctions 
 even when there's more than a trifle concerned?" There was 
 a savage impatience about the bridegroom which boded ill for 
 the Law. 
 
 " Of course there's a way out," said the Maggid calmly. 
 " Only one way, but a very broad and simple one." 
 
 "What's that?" everybody asked breathlessly. 
 
 " He must give her Gett ! " 
 
 "Of course!" shouted Sam in a voice of thunder. "I 
 divorce her at once." He guffawed hysterically ; " What a pack 
 of fools we are! Good old Jewish law! " 
 
 Leah's sobs ceased. Everybody except Mrs. Jacobs was 
 smiling once more. Half a dozen hands grasped the Maggid'^s ; 
 half a dozen others thumped him on the back. He was pushed 
 into a chair. They gave him a glass of brandy, they heaped a 
 plate with fried fish. Verily the Maggid, who was in truth sore 
 ahungered, was in luck's way. He blessed Providence and the 
 Jewish Marriage Law. 
 
 " But you had better not reckon that a divorce," he warned 
 them between two mouthfuls. " You had better go to Reb 
 Shemuel, the maiden's father, and let him arrange the Gett 
 beyond reach of cavil." 
 
 " But Reb Shemuel is away," said Mrs. Jacobs. 
 
 "And I must go away, too, by the first train to-morrow," said 
 Sam. " However, there's no hurry. I'll arrange to run up to 
 
THE REDEMPTION OF SON AND DAUGHTER. 63 
 
 town again in a fortnight or so, and then Reb Shemuel shall see 
 that we are properly untied. You don't mind being my wife for 
 a fortnight, I hope, Miss Jacobs?" asked Sam, winking gleefully 
 at Leah. She smiled back at him and they laughed together 
 over the danger they had just escaped. Hannah laughed too, 
 in contemptuous amusement at the rigidity of Jewish Law. 
 
 '• ril tell you what, Sam, can't you come back for next Satur- 
 day week? " said Leah. 
 
 " Why ? " asked Sam. " What's on ? " 
 
 '■" The Purim Ball at the Club. As you've got to come back to 
 give Hannah Gett, you might as well come in time to take me to 
 the ball." 
 
 " Right you are," said Sam cheerfully. 
 
 Leah clapped her hands. " Oh that will be jolly," she said. 
 "And we'll take Hannah with us," she added as an after- 
 thought. 
 
 "Is that by way of compensation for losing my husband?" 
 Hannah asked with a smile. 
 
 Leah gave a happy laugh, and turned the new ring on her fin- 
 ger in delighted contemplation. 
 
 "All's well that ends well," said Sam. "Through this joke 
 Leah will be the belle of the Purim Ball. I think I deserve 
 another piece of plaice, Leah, for that compliment. As for you, 
 Mr. Maggid, you're a saint and a Talmud sage! " 
 
 The MaggiiVs face was brightened by a smile. He intoned 
 the grace with unction when the meal ended, and everybody 
 joined in heartily at the specifically vocal portions. Then the 
 Maggid left, and the cards were brought out. 
 
 It is inadvisable to play cards before fried fish, because it is 
 well known that you may lose, and losing may ruffle your tem- 
 per, and you may call your partner an ass or your partner may 
 call you an ass. To-night the greatest good humor prevailed, 
 though several pounds changed hands. They played Loo, 
 " Klobbiyos," Napoleon, Vingt-et-un, and especially Brag. 
 Solo whist had not yet come in to drive everything else out. 
 Old Hyams did not spiel, because he could not afford to, and 
 Hannah Jacobs because she did not care to. These and a few 
 
64 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 other guests left early. But the family party stayed late. On a 
 warm green table, under a cheerful gas light, with brandy and 
 whiskey and sweets and fruit to hand, with no trains or busses 
 to catch, what wonder if the light-hearted assembly played far 
 into the new day? 
 
 Meanwhile the Redeemed Son slept peacefully in his crib with 
 his legs curled up, and his little fists clenched beneath the 
 coverlet. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE PAUPER ALIEN. 
 
 Moses Ansell married mainly because all men are mortal. 
 He knew he would die and he wanted an heir. Not to in- 
 herit anything, but to say Kaddish for him. Kaddish is the 
 most beautiful and wonderful mourning prayer ever written. 
 Rigidly excluding all references to death and grief, it exhausts 
 itself in supreme glorification of the Eternal and in supplication 
 for peace upon the House of Israel. But its significance has 
 been gradually transformed ; human nature, driven away with a 
 pitchfork, has avenged itself by regarding the prayer as a mass, 
 not without purgatorial efficacy, and so the Jew is reluctant to 
 die without leaving some one qualified to say Kaddish after him 
 every day for a year, and then one day a year. That is one 
 reason why sons are of such domestic importance. 
 
 Moses had only a mother in the world when he married Gittel 
 Silverstein, and he hoped to restore the balance of male relatives 
 by this reckless measure. The result was six children, three 
 girls and three Kaddishwi. In Gittel, Moses found a tireless 
 helpmate. During her lifetime the family always lived in two 
 rooms, for she had various ways of supplementing the household 
 income. When in London she chared for her cousin Malka at 
 a shilling a day. Likewise she sewed underlinen and stitched 
 slips of fur into caps in the privacy of home and midnight. For 
 all Mrs. AnselFs industry, the family had been a typical group of 
 wandering Jews, straying from town to town in search of better 
 things. The congregation they left (every town which could 
 
THE PAUPER ALIEN. 65 
 
 muster the minimum of ten men for worship boasted its KehillaJi) 
 invariably paid their fare to the next congregation, glad to get 
 rid of them so cheaply, and the new Kehillah jumped at the 
 opportunity of gratifying their restless- migratory instinct and 
 sent them to a newer. Thus were they tossed about on the 
 battledores of philanthropy, often reverting to their starting- 
 point, to the disgust of the charitable committees. Yet Moses 
 always made loyal efforts to find work. His versatility was mar- 
 vellous. There was nothing he could not do badly. He had 
 been glazier, synagogue beadle, picture-frame manufacturer, 
 cantor, peddler, shoemaker in all branches, coat-seller, official 
 executioner of fowls and cattle, Hebrew teacher, fruiterer, cir- 
 cumciser, professional corpse-watcher, and now he was a tailor 
 out of work. 
 
 Unquestionably Malka was right in considering Moses a 
 Schleinihl in comparison with many a fellow-immigrant, who 
 brought indefatigable hand and subtle brain to the struggle for 
 existence, and discarded the prop of charity as soon as he could, 
 and sometimes earlier. 
 
 It was as a hawker that he believed himself most gifted, and 
 he never lost the conviction that if he could only get a fair start, 
 he had in him the makings of a millionaire. Yet there was 
 scarcely anything cheap with which he had not tramped the 
 country, so that when poor Benjamin, who profited by his 
 mother's death to get into the Orphan Asylum, was asked to 
 write a piece of composition on *' The Methods of Travelling," 
 he excited the hilarity of the class-room by writing that there 
 were numerous ways of travelling, for you could travel with 
 sponge, lemons, rhubarb, old clothes, jewelry, and so on, for a 
 page of a copy book. Benjamin was a brilliant boy, yet he 
 never shook off some of the misleading associations engendered 
 by the parental jargon. For Mrs. Ansell had diversified her 
 corrupt German by streaks of incorrect English, being of a much 
 more energetic and ambitious temperament than the conserva- 
 tive Moses, who dropped nearly all his burden of English into 
 her grave. For Benjamin, " to travel " meant to wander about 
 selling goods, and when in his books he read of African trav- 
 
66 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 ellers, he took it for granted that they were but exploiting the 
 Dark Continent for small profits and quick returns. 
 
 And who knows ? Perhaps of the two species, it was the old 
 Jewish peddlers who suffered the more and made the less profit 
 on the average. For the despised three-hatted scarecrow of 
 Christian caricature, who shambled along snuffling " Old cloV' 
 had a strenuous inner life, which might possibly have vied in 
 intensity, elevation, and even sense of humor, with that of the 
 best of the jeerers on the highway. To Moses, "travelling" 
 meant straying forlornly in strange towns and villages, given 
 over to the worship of an alien deity and ever ready to avenge 
 his crucifixion ; in a land of whose tongue he knew scarce more 
 than the Saracen damsel married by legend to a Becket's father. 
 It meant praying brazenly in crowded railway trains, winding the 
 phylacteries sevenfold round his left arm and crowning his fore- 
 head with a huge leather bump of righteousness, to the bewilder- 
 ment or irritation of unsympathetic fellow-passengers. It meant 
 living chiefly on dry bread and drinking black tea out of his 
 own cup, with meat and fish and the good things of life utterly 
 banned by the traditional law, even if he were flush. It meant 
 carrying the red rag of an obnoxious personality through a land 
 of bulls. It meant passing months away from wife and children, 
 in a solitude only occasionally alleviated by a Sabbath spent in 
 a synagogue town. It meant putting up at low public houses 
 and common lodging houses, where rowdy disciples of the Prince 
 of Peace often sent him bleeding to bed, or shamelessly despoiled 
 him of his merchandise, or bullied and blustered him out of his 
 fair price, knowing he dared not resent. It meant being chaffed 
 and gibed at in language of which he only understood that it 
 was cruel, though certain trite facetiae grew intelligible to him by 
 repetition. Thus once, when he had been interrogated as to the 
 locality of Moses when the light went out, he replied in Yiddish 
 that the light could not go out, for "' it stands in the verse, that 
 round the head of Moses, our teacher, the great law-giver, was a 
 perpetual halo." An old German happened to be smoking at 
 the bar of the public house when the peddler gave his acute 
 answer ; he laughed heartily, slapped the Jew on the back and 
 
THE PAUPER ALIEN. 67 
 
 translated the repartee to the convivial crew. For once intellect 
 told, and the rough drinkers, with a pang of shame, vied with 
 one another in pressing bitter beer upon the temperate Semite. 
 But, as a rule, Moses Ansell drank the cup of affliction instead 
 of hospitality and bore his share to the full, without the remot- 
 est intention of being heroic, in the long agony of his race, 
 doomed to be a byword and a mockery amongst the heathen. 
 Assuredly, to die for a religion is easier than to live for it. Yet 
 Moses never complained nor lost faith. To be spat upon was 
 the very condition of existence of the modern Jew, deprived of 
 Palestine and his Temple, a footsore mendicant, buffeted and 
 reviled, yet the dearer to the Lord God who had chosen him 
 from the nations. Bullies might break Moses's head in this 
 world, but in the next he would sit on a gold chair in Paradise 
 among the saints and sing exegetical acrostics to all eternity. 
 It was some dim perception of these things that made Esther 
 forgive her father when the Ansells waited weeks and weeks for 
 a postal order and landlords were threatening to bundle them 
 out neck and crop, and her mothers hands were worn to the 
 bone slaving for her little ones. 
 
 Things improved a little just before the mother died, for they 
 had settled down in London and Moses earned eighteen shil- 
 lings a week as a machinist and presser, and no longer roamed 
 the country. But the interval of happiness was brief. The 
 grandmother, imported from Poland, did not take kindly to her 
 son's wife, whom she found wanting in the minutiae of ceremonial 
 piety and godless enough to wear her own hair. There had 
 been, indeed, a note of scepticism, of defiance, in Esther's 
 mother, a hankering after the customs of the heathen, which her 
 grandmother divined instinctively and resented for the sake of 
 her son and the post-mundane existence of her grandchildren. 
 Mrs. Ansell's scepticism based itself upon the uncleanliness 
 which was so generally next to godliness in the pious circles 
 round them, and she had been heard to express contempt for the 
 learned and venerable Israelite, who, being accosted by an ac- 
 quaintance when the shadows of eve were beginning to usher in 
 the Day of Atonement, exclaimed : 
 
68 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 " For heaven's sake, don't stop me — I missed my bath last 
 year." 
 
 Mrs. Ansell bathed her children from head to foot once a 
 month, and even profanely washed them on the Sabbath, and 
 had other strange, uncanny notions. She professed not to see 
 the value to God, man or beast of the learned Rabbonim, who 
 sat shaking themselves all day in the Beth Haviidrash., and said 
 they would be better occupied in supporting their families, a view 
 which, though mere surface blasphemy on the part of the good 
 woman and primarily intended as a hint to Moses to study less 
 and work longer, did not fail to excite lively passages of arms 
 between the two women. But death ended these bickerings and 
 the Bube^ who had frequently reproached her son for bringing 
 her into such an atheistic country, was left a drag the more upon 
 the family deprived at once of a mother and a bread-winner. 
 Old Mrs. Ansell was unfit for anything save gnmibling, and so 
 the headship naturally devolved upon Esther, whom her mother's 
 death left a woman gettinor on for eiijht. The commencement of 
 har reign coincided with a sad bisection of territory. Shocking 
 as it may be to better regulated minds, these seven people lived 
 in one room. Moses and the two boys slept in one bed and the 
 grandmother and the three girls in another. Esther had to sleep 
 with her head on a supplementary pillow at the foot of the bed. 
 But there can be much love in a little room. 
 
 The room was not, however, so very little, for it was of un- 
 gainly sprawling structure, pushing out an odd limb that might 
 have been cut off with a curtain. The walls nodded fixedly to 
 one another so that the ceiling was only half the size of the floor. 
 The furniture comprised but the commonest necessities. This 
 attic of the Ansells was nearer heaven than most earthly dwell- 
 ing places, for there were four tall flights of stairs to mount be- 
 fore you got to it. No. i Royal Street had been in its time one 
 of the great mansions of the Ghetto; pillars of the synagogue 
 had quaffed kosJicr wine in its spacious reception rooms and its 
 corridors had echoed witli the gossip of portly dames in stiff bro- 
 cades. It was stoutly built and its balusters were of carved oak. 
 But now the threshold of the great street door, which was never 
 
THE PAUPER ALIEN. 69 
 
 closed, was encrusted with black mud, and a musty odor perma- 
 nently clung to the wide staircase and blent subtly with far- 
 away reminiscences of Mr. Belcovitch's festive turpentine. The 
 Ansells had numerous housemates, for No. i Royal Street was a 
 Jewish colony in itself and the resident population was periodi- 
 cally swollen by the " hands '^ of the Belcovitches and by the 
 " Sons of the Covenant," who came to worship at their syna- 
 gogue on the ground floor. What with Sugarman the Shadchan, 
 on the first floor, Mrs. Simons and Dutch Debby on the second, 
 the Belcovitches on the third, and the Ansells and Gabriel Ham- 
 burg, the great scholar, on the fourth, the door-posts twinkled 
 with Meziizahs — cases or cylinders containing sacred script 
 with the word Shaddai (Almighty) peering out of a little glass 
 eye at the centre. Even Dutch Debby, abandoned wretch as 
 she was, had this protection against evil spirits (so it has come 
 to be regarded) on her lintel, though she probably never touched 
 the eye with her finger to kiss the place of contact after the 
 manner of the faithful. 
 
 Thus was No. i Royal Street close packed with the stuff of 
 human life, homespun and drab enough, but not altogether prof- 
 itless, may be, to turn over and examine. So close packed was 
 it that there was scarce breathing space. It was only at imme- 
 morial intervals that our pauper alien made a pun, but one day he 
 flashed upon the world the pregnant remark that England was 
 well named, for to the Jew it was verily the Enge-Land, which 
 in German signifies the country without elbow room. Moses 
 Ansell chuckled softly and beatifically when he emitted the 
 remark that surprised all who knew him. But then it was the 
 Rejoicing of the Law and the Sons of the Covenant had treated 
 him to rum and currant cake. He often thought of his witticism 
 afterwards, and it always lightened his unwashed face with a 
 happy smile. The recollection usually caught him when he was 
 praying. 
 
 For four years after Mrs. Ansell's charity funeral the Ansells, 
 though far from happy, had no history to speak of. 
 
 Benjamin accompanied Solomon to Shool morning and even- 
 ing to say KaddisJi for their mother till he passed into the 
 
70 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 Orphan Asylum and out of the lives of his relatives. Solomon 
 and Rachel and Esther went to the great school and Isaac to the 
 infant school, while the tiny Sarah, whose birth had cost Mrs. 
 Ansell's life, crawled and climbed about in the garret, the grand- 
 mother coming in negatively useful as a safeguard against fire on 
 the days when the grate was not empty. The Bute's own con- 
 ception of her function as a safeguard against fire was quite other. 
 
 Moses was out all day working or looking for work, or pray- 
 ing or listening to Droshes by the Maggid or other great preach- 
 ers. Such charities as brightened and warmed the Ghetto 
 Moses usually came in for. Bread, meat and coal tickets, god- 
 sends from the Society for Restoring the Soul, made odd days 
 memorable. Blankets were not so easy to get as in the days of 
 poor Gittel's confinements. 
 
 What little cooking there was to do was done by Esther before 
 or after school ; she and her children usually took their mid-day 
 meal with them in the shape of bread, occasionally made ambro- 
 sial by treacle. The Ansells had more fast days than the Jewish 
 calendar, which is saying a good deal. Providence, however, 
 generally stepped in before the larder had been bare twenty- 
 four hours. 
 
 As the fast days of the Jewish calendar did not necessarily 
 fall upon the Ansell fast days, they were an additional tax on 
 Moses and his mother. Yet neither ever wavered in the scrupu- 
 lous observance of them, not a crumb of bread nor a drop of 
 water passing their lips. In the keen search for facts detri- 
 mental to the Ghetto it is surprising that no political economist 
 has hitherto exposed tlie abundant fasts with which Israel has 
 been endowed, and which obviously operate as a dole in aid of 
 wages. So does the Lenten period of the " Three Weeks,'' when 
 meat is prohibited in memory of the shattered Temples. The 
 Ansells kept the "Three Weeks" pretty well all the year round. 
 On rare occasions they purchased pickled Dutch herrings or 
 brought home pennyworths of pea soup or of baked potatoes 
 and rice from a neighboring cook shop. For Festival days, if 
 Malka had subsidized them with a half-sovereign, Esther some- 
 times compounded Tsifinnus^ a dainty blend of carrots, pudding 
 
THE PAUPER ALIEN. 71 
 
 and potatoes. She was prepared to write an essay on Tzmimus 
 as a gastronomic ideal. There were other pleasing Polish com- 
 binations which were baked for twopence by the local bakers. 
 Tabechas^ or stuffed entrails, and liver, lights or milt were good 
 substitutes for meat. A favorite soup was Borsch^ which was 
 made with beet-root, fat taking the place of the more fashionable 
 cream. 
 
 The national dish was seldom their lot ; when fried fish came 
 it was usually from the larder of Mrs. Simons, a motherly old 
 widow, who lived in the second floor front, and presided over 
 the confinements of all the women and the sicknesses of all the 
 children in the neighborhood. Her married daughter Dinah 
 was providentially suckling a black-eyed boy when Mrs. Ansell 
 died, so Mrs. Simons converted her into a foster mother of 
 little Sarah, regarding herself ever afterwards as under special 
 responsibilities toward the infant, whom she occasionally took to 
 live with her for a week, and for whom she saw heaven encour- 
 aging a future alliance with the black-eyed foster brother. Life 
 would have been gloomier still in the Ansell garret if Mrs. 
 Simons had not been created to bless and sustain. Even old 
 garments somehow arrived from Mrs. Simons to eke out the 
 corduroys and the print gowns which were the gift of the school. 
 There were few pleasanter events in the Ansell household than 
 the falling ill of one of the children, for not only did this mean a 
 supply of broth, port wine and other incredible luxuries from the 
 charity doctor (of which all could taste), but it brought in its 
 train the assiduous attendance of Mrs. Simons. To see the 
 kindly brown face bending over it with smiling eyes of jet, to 
 feel the soft, cool hand pressed to its forehead, was worth a fever 
 to a motherless infant. Mrs. Simons was a busy woman and a 
 poor withal, and the Ansells were a reticent pack, not given to 
 expressing either their love or their hunger to outsiders ; so 
 altogether the children did not see so much of Mrs. Simons or 
 her bounties as they would have liked. Nevertheless, in a grave 
 crisis she was always to be counted upon. 
 
 "I tell thee what, Me'she," said old Mrs. Ansell often, "that 
 woman wants to marry thee. A blind man could see it." 
 
72- CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 " She cannot want it, mother/^ Moses would reply with infinite 
 respect. 
 
 "What art thou saying? A wholly fine young man like thee," 
 said his mother, fondling his side ringlets, " and one so froojn, 
 too, and with such worldly wisdom. But thou must not have 
 her, Meshe." 
 
 " What kind of idea thou stuifest into my head! I tell thee 
 she would not have me if I sent to ask/' „^ 
 
 " Talk not thyself thereinto. Who wouldn't like to catch hold 
 of thy cloak to go to heaven by? But Mrs. Simons is too much 
 of an Englishwoman for me. Your last wife had English ideas 
 and made mock of pious men and God's judgment took her. 
 What says the Prayer-book? For three things a woman dies in 
 childbirth, for not separating the dough, for not lighting the Sab- 
 bath lamps and for not — " 
 
 " How often have I told thee she did do all these things! " in- 
 terrupted Moses. 
 
 "Dost thou contradict the Prayer-book?" said the Dube 
 angrily. " It would have been different if thou hadst let me 
 pick a woman for thee. But this time thou wilt honor thy 
 mother more. It must be a respectable, virtuous maiden, with 
 the fear of heaven — not an old woman like Mrs. Simons, but one 
 who can bear me robust grandchildren. The grandchildren 
 thou hast given me are sickly, and they fear not the Most High. 
 Ah! why did'st thou drag me to this impious country? Could'st 
 thou not let me die in peace? Thy girls think more of English 
 story books and lessons than of Yiddishkcit^ and the boys run 
 out under the naked sky with bare heads and are loth to wash 
 their hands before meals, and they do not come home in the din- 
 ner hour for fear they should have to say the afternoon prayer. 
 Laugh at me, Moses, as thou wilt, but, old as I am, I have eyes, 
 and not two blotches of clay, in my sockets. Thou seest not 
 how thy family is going to destruction. Oh, the abominations! " 
 
 Thus warned and put on his mettle, Moses would keep a keen 
 look-out on his hopeful family for the next day, and the seed 
 which the grandmother had sown came up in black and blue 
 bruises on the family anatomy, especially on that portion of it 
 
THE PAUPER ALIEN. 73 
 
 which belonged to Solomon. For Moses's crumbling trousers 
 were buckled with a stout strap, and Solomon was a young rogue 
 who did his best to dodge the Almighty, and had never heard of 
 Lowell's warning. 
 
 You've gut to git up airly, 
 Ef you want to take in God. 
 
 Even if he had heard of it, he would probably have retorted that 
 he usually got up early enough to take in his father, who was the 
 more immediately terrible of the two. Nevertheless, Solomon 
 learned many lessons at his father's knee, or rather, across it. 
 In earlier days Solomon had had a number of confidential trans- 
 actions with his father's God, making bargains with Him accord- 
 ing to his childish sense of equity. If, for instance, God would 
 ensure his doing his sums correctly, so that he should be neither 
 caned nor " kept in," he would say his morning prayers with- 
 out skipping the aggravating Longe VeracJuun, which bulked so 
 largely on Mondays and Thursdays ; otherwise he could not be 
 bothered. 
 
 By the terms of the contract Solomon threw all the initiative 
 on the Deity, and whenever the Deity undertook his share of the 
 contract, Solomon honorably fulfilled his. Thus was his faith in 
 Providence never shaken like that of some boys, who expect the 
 Deity to follow their lead. Still, by declining to praise his Maker 
 at extraordinary length, except in acknowledgment of services 
 rendered, Solomon gave early evidence of his failure to inherit 
 his father's business incapacity. 
 
 On days when things at the school went well, no one gabbled 
 through the weary Prayer-book more conscientiously than he ; 
 he said all the things in large type and all the funny little bits 
 in small type, and even some passages without vowels. Nay, he 
 included the very preface, and was lured on and coaxed on and 
 enticed by his father to recite the appendices, which shot up one 
 after the other on the devotional horizon like the endless-seeming 
 terraces of a deceptive ascent ; just another little bit, and now 
 that Httle bit, and just that last bit, and one more very last little 
 bit. It was like the infinite inclusiveness of a Chinese sphere, or 
 the farewell performances of a distinguished singer. 
 
74 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 For the rest, Solomon was a Chine-poniin^ or droll, having that 
 inextinguishable sense of humor which has made the saints of 
 the Jewish Church human, has lit up dry technical Talmudic 
 discussions with flashes of freakish fun, with pun and jest and 
 merry quibble, and has helped the race to survive (^pace Dr. 
 Wallace) by dint of a humorous acquiescence in the inevitable. 
 
 His Chitie helped Solomon to survive synagogue, where the 
 only drop of sweetness was in the beaker of wine for the sanctifi- 
 cation service. Solomon was always in the van of the brave 
 boys who volunteered to take, part in the ceremonial quafling of 
 it. Decidedly, Solomon was not spiritual, he would not even kiss 
 a Hebrew Pentateuch that he had dropped, unless his father was 
 looking, and but for the personal supervision of the Bute the 
 dirty white fringes of his '* four-corners "" might have got tangled 
 and irredeemably invalidated for all he cared. 
 
 In the direst need of the Ansells Solomon held his curly head 
 high among his school-fellows, and never lacked personal pos- 
 sessions, though they were not negotiable at the pawnbroker's. 
 He had a peep-show, made out of an old cocoa box. and repre- 
 senting the sortie from Plevna, a permit to view being obtain- 
 able for a fragment of slate pencil. For two pins he would let 
 you look a whole minute. He also had bags of brass buttons, 
 marbles, both commoners and alleys ; nibs, beer bottle labels 
 and cherry " hogs,'' besides bottles of liquorice water, vendible 
 either by the sip or the teaspoonful, and he dealt in ''assy- 
 tassy," which consisted of little packets of acetic acid blent with 
 brown sugar. The character of his stock varied according to 
 the time of year, for nature and Belgravia are less stable in their 
 seasons than the Jewish schoolboy, to whom buttons in March 
 are as inconceivable as snow-balling in July. 
 
 On Purim Solomon always had nuts to gamble with, just as if 
 he had been a banker's son, and on the Day of Atonement he was 
 never without a little tin fusee box filled with savings of snufF. 
 This, when the fast racked them most sorely, he would pass round 
 among the old men with a grand manner. They would take a 
 pinch and say, " May thy strength increase."' and blow their 
 delighted noses with great colored handerchiefs, and Solomon 
 
''REB'' SHEMUEL. 75 
 
 would feel about fifty and sniff a few grains himself with the air 
 of an aged connoisseur. 
 
 He took little interest in the subtle disquisitions of the Rabbis, 
 which added their burden to his cross of secular learning. He 
 wrestled but perfunctorily with the theses of the Bible commen- 
 tators, for Moses Ansell was so absorbed in translating and 
 enjoying the intellectual tangles, that Solomon had scarce more 
 to do than to play the part of chorus. He was fortunate in that 
 his father could not afford to send him to a Chedar, an insani- 
 tary institution that made Jacob a dull boy by cutting off his 
 play-time and his oxygen, and delivering him over to the leathery 
 mercies of an unintelligently learned zealot, scrupulously unclean. 
 
 The literature and history Solomon really cared for was not 
 of the Jews. It was the history of Daredevil Dick and his con- 
 geners whose surprising adventures, second-hand, in ink-stained 
 sheets, were bartered to him for buttons, which shows the 
 advantages of not having a soul above such. These deeds of 
 derring-do (usually starting in a Sturm tmd Drang school-room 
 period in which teachers were thankfully accepted as created by 
 Providence for the sport of schoolboys) Solomon conned at all 
 hours, concealing them under his locker when he was supposed 
 to be studying the Irish question from an atlas, and even hiding 
 them between the leaves of his dog-eared Prayer-book for use 
 during the morning service. The only harm they did him was 
 that inflicted through the medium of the educational rod, when 
 his surreptitious readings were discovered and his treasures 
 thrown to the flames amid tears copious enough to extinguish 
 them. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 "REB" SHEMUEL. 
 
 " The Torah is greater than the priesthood and than royalty, seeing that 
 royalty demands thirty qualifications, the priesthood twenty-four, while the 
 Torah is acquired by forty-eight. And these are they: By audible study; 
 by distinct pronunciation ; by understanding and discernment of the heart ; 
 by awe, reverence, meekness, cheerfulness ; by ministering to the sages ; by 
 
76 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 attaching oneself to colleagues ; by discussion with disciples ; by sedate- 
 ness ; by knowledge of the Scripture and of the Mishnah ; by moderation 
 in business, in intercourse with the world, in pleasure, in sleep, in conversa- 
 tion, in laughter; by long suffering ; by a good heart ; by faith in the wise ; 
 by resignation under chastisement ; by recognizing one's place, rejoicing in 
 one's portion, putting a fence to one's words, claiming no merit for oneself; 
 by being beloved, loving the All-present, loving mankind, loving just courses, 
 rectitude and reproof; by keeping oneself far from honors, not boasting of 
 one's learning, nor delighting in giving decisions ; by bearing the yoke with 
 one's fellow, judging him favorably and leading him to truth and peace ; by 
 being composed in one's study ; by asking and answering, hearing and add- 
 ing thereto (by one's own reflection) ; by learning with the object of teach- 
 ing and learning with the object of practising, by making one's master 
 wiser, fixing attention upon his discourse, and reporting a thing in the 
 name of him who said it. So thou hast learnt. Whosoever reports a thing 
 in the name of him that said it brings deliverance into the world, as it is 
 said — And Esther told the King in the name of Mordecai." — {Ethics of 
 the Fathers, Singer's translation,) 
 
 Moses Ansell only occasionally worshipped at the synagogue 
 of " The Sons of the Covenant,''' for it was too near to make 
 attendance a Mitzvah, pleasing in the sight of Heaven. It was 
 like having the prayer-quorum brought to you, instead of your 
 going to it. The pious Jew must speed to Shool to show his 
 eagerness and return slowly, as with reluctant feet, lest Satan 
 draw the attention of the Holy One to the laches of His chosen 
 people. It was not easy to express these varying emotions on a 
 few flights of stairs, and so Moses went farther afield. In subtle 
 minutiae like this Moses was facile princeps, being as Wellhausen 
 puts it of the vi?'tuosi oi roWgxon. If he put on his right stock- 
 ing (or rather foot lappet, for he did not wear stockings) first, he 
 made amends by putting on the left boot first, and if he had 
 lace-up boots, then the boot put on second would have a com- 
 pensatory precedence in the lacing. Thus was the divine prin- 
 ciple of justice symbolized even in these small matters. 
 
 Moses was a great man in several of the more distant C/ievras, 
 among which he distributed the privilege of his presence. It 
 was only when by accident the times of service did not coincide 
 that Moses favored the *" Sons of the Covenant/' putting in an 
 
"REB'' SHEMUEL, 77 
 
 appearance either at the commencement or the fag end, for he 
 was not above praying odd bits of the service twice over, and 
 even sometimes prefaced or supplemented his synagogal perform- 
 ances by solo renditions of the entire ritual of a hundred pages 
 at home. The morning services began at six in summer and 
 seven in winter, so that the workingman might start his long 
 day^s work fortified. 
 
 At the close of the service at the Beth Hamidrash a few morn- 
 ings after the Redemption of Ezekiel, Solomon went up to Reb 
 Shemuel, who in return for the privilege of blessing the boy gave 
 him a halfpenny. Solomon passed it on to his father, whom he 
 accompanied. 
 
 "Well, how goes it, Reb Meshe?'' said Reb Shemuel with his 
 cheery smile, noticing Moses loitering. He called him " Reb " 
 out of courtesy and in acknowledgment of his piety. The real 
 " Reb " was a fine figure of a man, with matter, if not piety, 
 enough for two Moses Ansells. Reb was a popular corruption 
 of " Rav " or Rabbi. 
 
 " Bad," replied Moses. " I havenH had any machining to do 
 for a month. Work is very slack at this time of year. But God 
 is good." 
 
 "Can't you sell something?" said Reb Shemuel, thoughtfully 
 caressing his long, gray-streaked black beard. 
 
 " I have sold lemons, but the four or five shillings I made 
 went in bread for the children and in rent. Money runs through 
 the fingers somehow, with a family of five and a frosty winter. 
 When the lemons were gone I stood where I started." 
 
 The Rabbi sighed sympathetically and slipped half-a-crown 
 into Moses''s palm. Then he hurried out. His boy, Levi, stayed 
 behind a moment to finish a transaction involving the barter of 
 a pea-shooter for some of Solomon's buttons. Levi was two 
 years older than Solomon, and was further removed from him by 
 going to a " middle class school." His manner towards Solomon 
 was of a corresponding condescension. But it took a great deal 
 to overawe Solomon, who, with the national humor, possessed 
 the national Chutzpah^ which is variously translated enterprise, 
 audacity, brazen impudence and cheek. 
 
78 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 " I say, Levi/' he said, " we've got no school to-day. Won't 
 you come round this morning and play I-spy-I in our street? 
 There are some splendid corners for hiding, and they are putting 
 up new buildings all round with lovely hoardings, and they're 
 knocking down a pickle warehouse, and while you are hiding in 
 the rubbish you sometimes pick up scrumptious bits of pickled 
 walnut. Oh, golly, ain't they prime ! " 
 
 Levi turned up his nose. 
 
 "We've got plenty of whole walnuts at home," he said. 
 
 Solomon felt snubbed. He became aware that this tall boy 
 had smart black clothes, which would not be improved by rub- 
 bing against his own greasy corduroys. 
 
 " Oh, well," he said, " I can get lots of boys, and girls, too." 
 
 " Say," said Levi, turning back a little. " That little girl your 
 father brought upstairs here on the Rejoicing of the Law, that 
 was your sister, wasn't it ? " 
 
 " Esther, d'ye mean ? " 
 
 "How should I know? A little, dark girl, with a print dress, 
 rather pretty — not a bit like you." 
 
 " Yes, that's our Esther — she's in the sixth standard and only 
 eleven." 
 
 "We don't have standards in our school! " said Levi contempt- 
 uously. " Will your sister join in the I-spy-I ? " 
 
 "No, she can't run," replied Solomon, half apologetically. 
 " She only likes to read. She reads all my * Boys of England' 
 and things, and now she's got hold of a little brown book she 
 keeps all to herself. I like reading, too, but I do it in school or 
 in S/iool, where there's nothing better to do." 
 
 "Has she got a holiday to-day, too?" 
 
 " Yes," said Solomon. 
 
 " But my school's open," said Levi enviously, and Solomon 
 lost the feeling of inferiority, and felt avenged. 
 
 " Come, then, Solomon," said his father, who had reached the 
 door. The two converted part of the half-crown into French 
 loaves and carried them home to form an unexpected breakfast. 
 
 Meantime Reb Shemuel, whose full name was the Reverend 
 Samuel Jacobs, also proceeded to breakfast. His house lay 
 
*'REB" SIIEMUEL. 79 
 
 near the Shoo!, and was approached by an avenue of mendicants. 
 He arrived in his shirt-sleeves. 
 
 " Quick, Simcha, give me my new coat. It is very cold this 
 morning.'" 
 
 " YouVe given away your coat again ! " shrieked his wife, who, 
 though her name meant '' Rejoicing," was more often upbraid- 
 ing. 
 
 " Yes, it was only an old one, Simcha," said the Rabbi dep- 
 recatingly. He took off his high hat and replaced it by a little 
 black cap which he carried in his tail pocket. 
 
 "You'll ruin me, Shemuel!" moaned Simcha, wringing her 
 hands. " You'd give away the shirt off your skin to a pack of 
 good-for-nothing Schnorrers P 
 
 "Yes, if they had only their skin in the world. Why not?" 
 said the old Rabbi, a pacific gleam in his large gazelle-like eyes. 
 " Perhaps my coat may have the honor to cover Elijah the 
 prophet." 
 
 "Elijah the prophet!" snorted Simcha. "Elijah has sense 
 enough to stay in heaven and not go wandering about shiver- 
 ing in the fog and frost of this God-accursed country." 
 
 The old Rabbi answered, "Atschew!" 
 
 " For thy salvation do I hope, O Lord," murmured Simcha 
 piously in Hebrew, adding excitedly in English, " Ah, you'll kill 
 yourself, Shemuel." She rushed upstairs and returned with 
 another coat and a new terror. 
 
 " Here, you fool, youVe been and done a fine thing this time ! 
 All your silver was in the coat youVe given away ! " 
 
 "Was it?" said Reb Shemuel, startled. Then the tranquil 
 look returned to his brown eyes. " No, I took it all out before 
 I gave away the coat." 
 
 "God be thanked!" said Simcha fervently in Yiddish. 
 "Where is it? I want a few shillings for grocery." 
 
 " I gave it away before, I tell you! " 
 
 Simcha groaned and fell into her chair with a crash that 
 rattled the tray and shook the cups. 
 
 " Here's the end of the week coming," she sobbed, " and I 
 shall have no fish for Shabbos.'''' 
 
80 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 "Do not blaspheme!" said Reb Shemuel, tugging a little 
 angrily at his venerable beard. " The Holy One, blessed be 
 He, will provide for our Shabbos.'''' 
 
 Simcha made a sceptical mouth, knowing that it was she and 
 nobody else whose economies would provide for the due celebra- 
 tion of the Sabbath. Only by a constant course of vigilance, 
 mendacity and petty peculation at her husband's expense could 
 she manage to support the family of four comfortably on his 
 pretty considerable salary. Reb Shemuel went and kissed her 
 on the sceptical mouth, because in another instant she would 
 have him at her mercy. He washed his hands and durst not 
 speak between that and the first bite. 
 
 He was an official of heterogeneous duties — he preached and 
 taught and lectured. He married people and divorced them. 
 He released bachelors from the duty of marrying their deceased 
 brothers' wives. He superintended a slaughtering department, 
 licensed men as competent killers, examined the sharpness of 
 their knives that the victims might be put to as little pain as 
 possible, and inspected dead cattle in the shambles to see if 
 they were perfectly sound and free from pulmonary disease. 
 But his greatest function was paskenmg, or answering inquiries 
 ranging from the simplest to the most complicated problems of 
 ceremonial ethics and civil law. He had added a volume of 
 Shaalot/i-2i-Tshuvoth, or " Questions and Answers " to the colos- 
 sal casuistic literature of his race. His aid was also invoked as a 
 Shadchan, though he forgot to take his commissions and lacked 
 the restless zeal for the mating of mankind which animated 
 Sugarman, the professional match-maker. In fine, he was a 
 witty old fellow and everybody loved him. He and his wife 
 spoke English with a strong foreign accent ; in their more inti- 
 mate causeries they dropped into Yiddish. 
 
 The Rebbitzin poured out the Rabbi's coffee and whitened it 
 with milk drawn direct from the cow into her own jug. The 
 butter and cheese were equally kosher, coming straight from 
 Hebrew Hollanders and having passed through none but Jewish 
 vessels. As the Reb sat himself down at the head of the table 
 Hannah entered the room. 
 
''REB'' SHEMUEL. 81 
 
 " Good morning, father," she said, kissing him. ^' What have 
 you got your new coat on for? Any weddings to-day? '^ 
 
 '' No, my dear," said Reb Shemuel, " marriages are falling off. 
 There hasn't even been an engagement since Belcovitch's eldest 
 daughter betrothed herself to Pesach Weingott." 
 
 "Oh, these Jewish young men!" said the Rebbitzin. "Look 
 at my Hannah — as pretty a girl as you could meet in the whole 
 Lane — and yet here she is wasting her youth." 
 
 Hannah bit her lip, instead of her bread and butter, for she 
 felt she had brought the talk on herself She had heard the 
 same grumblings from her mother for two years. Mrs. Jacobs's 
 maternal anxiety had begun when her daughter was seventeen. 
 " When /was seventeen," she went on, " I was a married woman. 
 Now-a-days the girls don't begin to get a Chosan till they're 
 twenty." 
 
 " We are not living in Poland," the Reb reminded her. 
 
 "What's that to do with it? It's the Jewish young men who 
 want to marry gold." 
 
 " Why blame them ? A Jewish young man can marry several 
 pieces of gold, but since Rabbenu Gershom he can only marry 
 one woman," said the Reb, laughing feebly and forcing his 
 humor for his daughter's sake. 
 
 " One woman is more than thou canst support," said the 
 Rebbitzin, irritated into Yiddish, "giving away the flesh from 
 off thy children's bones. If thou hadst been a proper father 
 thou wouldst have saved thy money for Hannah's dowry, instead 
 of wasting it on a parcel of vagabond Schnorrers. Even so I can 
 give her a good stock of bedding and under-linen. It's a re- 
 proach and a shame that thou hast not yet found her a hus- 
 band. Thou canst find husbands quick enough for other men's 
 daughters ! " 
 
 " I found a husband for thy father's daughter," said the Reb, 
 with a roguish gleam in his brown eyes. 
 
 "Don't throw that up to me! I could have got plenty better. 
 And my daughter wouldn't have known the shame of finding 
 nobody to marry her. In Poland at least the youths would 
 have flocked to marry her because she was a Rabbi's daughter, 
 
 G 
 
82 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 and theyM think it an honor to be a son-in-law of a Son of the 
 Law. But in this godless country ! Why in my village the 
 Chief Rabbi's daughter, who was so ugly as to make one spit 
 out, carried off the finest man in the district." 
 
 " But thou, my Simcha, hadst no need to be connected with 
 Rabbonim ! " 
 
 " Oh, yes ; make mockery of me." 
 
 " I mean it. Thou art as a lily of Sharon." 
 
 "Wilt thou have another cup of coffee, Shemuel?" 
 
 "Yes, my life. Wait but a little and thou shalt see our 
 Hannah under the CJuippahy 
 
 " Hast thou any one in thine eye? " 
 
 The Reb nodded his head mysteriously and winked the eye, as 
 if nudging the person in it. 
 
 "Who is it, father?" said Levi. "I do hope it's a real swell 
 who talks English properly." 
 
 "And mind you make yourself agreeable to him, Hannah," 
 said the Rebbitzin. " You spoil all the matches Pve tried to 
 make for you by your stupid, stiff manner." 
 
 "Look here, mother!" cried Hannah, pushing aside her cup 
 violently. " Am I going to have my breakfast in peace ? I 
 don't want to be married at all. I don't want any of your 
 Jewish men coming round to examine me as if I were a horse, 
 and wanting to know how much money you'll give them as a 
 set-off. Let me be ! Let me be single ! It's my business, not 
 yours." 
 
 The Rebbitzin bent eyes of angry reproach on the Reb. 
 
 "What did I tell thee, Shemuel? She's vieshiigga — quite 
 mad! Healthy and fresh and mad!" 
 
 " Yes, you'll drive me mad," said Hannah savagely. " Let 
 me be ! Fm too old now to get a C/iosan, so let me be as I am. 
 I can always earn my own living." 
 
 " Thou seest, Shemuel ? " said Simcha. " Thou seest my 
 sorrows ? Thou seest how impious our children wax in this 
 godless country." 
 
 " Let her be, Simcha, let her be," said the Reb. " She is 
 young vet. If she hasn't any inclination thereto — ! " 
 
''REB'' SHEMUEL. 83 
 
 "And what is her inclination? A pretty thing, forsooth! Is 
 she going to make her mother a laughing-stock! Are Mrs. 
 Jewell and Mrs. Abrahams to dandle grandchildren in my face, 
 to gouge out my eyes with them! It isn^t that she canH get 
 young men. Only she is so high-blown. One would think she 
 had a father who earned five hundred a year, instead of a man 
 who scrambles half his salary among dirty Schnorrers.'''' 
 
 "Talk not like an Epicurean,^'' said the Reb. "What are we 
 all but Schnorrers, dependent on the charity of the Holy One, 
 blessed be He? What! Have we made ourselves? Rather 
 fall prostrate and thank Him that His bounties to us are so 
 great that they include the privilege of giving charity to others." 
 
 "But we work for our living !" said the Rebbitzin. "I wear 
 my knees away scrubbing." External evidence pointed rather 
 to the defrication of the nose. 
 
 " But, mother," said Hannah. "You know we have a servant 
 to do the rough work." 
 
 " Yes, servants ! " said the Rebbitzin, contemptuously. " If 
 you don't stand over them as the Egyptian taskmasters over our 
 forefathers, they don't do a stroke of work except breaking the 
 crockery. Pd much rather sweep a room myself than see a 
 Shiksah pottering about for an hour and end by leaving all the 
 dust on the window-ledges and the corners of the mantelpiece. 
 As for beds, I don't believe Shiksahs ever shake them ! If I 
 had my way Td wring all their necks." 
 
 "What's the use of always complaining?" said Hannah, im- 
 patiently. " You know we must keep a Shiksah to attend to the 
 Shabbos fire. The women or the little boys you pick up in the 
 street are so unsatisfactory. When you call in a little barefoot 
 street Arab and ask him to poke the fire, he looks at you as if 
 you must be an imbecile not to be able to do it yourself. And 
 then you can't always get hold of one." 
 
 The Sabbath fire was one of the great difficulties of the 
 Ghetto. The Rabbis had modified the Biblical prohibition 
 against having any fire whatever, and allowed it to be kindled 
 by non-Jews. Poor women, frequently Irish, and known as 
 Shabbos-goyahs or fire-goyahs^ acted as stokers to the Ghetto 
 
84 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 at twopence a hearth. No Jew ever touched a match or a 
 candle or burnt a piece of paper, or even opened a letter. The 
 Goyah, which is literally heathen female, did everything required 
 on the Sabbath. His grandmother once called Solomon Ansell 
 a Sabbath-female merely for fingering the shovel when there was 
 nothing in the grate. 
 
 The Reb liked his fire. When it sank on the Sabbath he 
 could not give orders to the Shiksah to replenish it, but he 
 would rub his hands and remark casually (in her hearing), 
 " Ah, how cold it is ! '' 
 
 " Yes,"" he said now, " I always freeze on Shabbos when thou 
 hast dismissed thy Shiksah. Thou makest me catch one cold 
 a month." 
 
 "/make thee catch cold!" said the Rebbitzin. "When thou 
 comest through the air of winter in thy shirt-sleeves ! Thou'lt 
 fall back upon me for poultices and mustard plasters. And then 
 thou expectest me to have enough money to pay a Shiksah into 
 the bargain! If I have any more of thy Schnorrers coming 
 here I shall bundle them out neck and crop." 
 
 This was the morhent selected by Fate and Melchitsedek 
 Pinchas for the latter's entry. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE NEO-HEBREW POET. 
 
 He came through the open street door, knocked perfunctorily 
 at the door of the room, opened it and then kissed the Mesiizah 
 outside the door. Then he advanced, snatched the Rebbitzin's 
 hand away from the handle of the coffee-pot and kissed it with 
 equal devotion. He then seized upon Hannah's hand and 
 pressed his grimy lips to that, murmuring in German : 
 
 " Thou lookest so charming this morning, like the roses of 
 Carmel." Next he bent down and pressed his lips to the Reb^s 
 coat-tail. Finally he said: "Good morning, sir," to Levi, who 
 replied very affably, "• Good morning, Mr. Pinchas." " Peace be 
 
THE NEO-HEBREW POET. 85 
 
 unto you, Pinchas," said the Reb. " I did not see you in SJiool 
 this morning, though it was the New Moon.'" 
 
 "No, I went to the Great Shoo^'' said Pinchas in German. 
 " If you do not see me at your place yoa.may be sure Fm some- 
 where else. Any one who has lived so long as I in the Land of 
 Israel cannot bear to pray without a quorum. In the Holy Land 
 I used to learn for an hour in the SJiool every morning before the 
 service began. But I am not here to talk about myself. I come 
 to ask you to do me the honor to accept a copy of ray new vol- 
 ume of poems: Metatoro)Cs Flames. Is it not a beautiful title? 
 When Enoch was taken up to heaven while yet alive, he was 
 converted to flames of fire and became Metatoron, the great 
 spirit of the Cabalah, So am I rapt up into the heaven of lyrical 
 poetry and I become all fire and flame and light.'" 
 
 The poet was a slim, dark little man, with long, matted black 
 hair. His face was hatchet-shaped and not unlike an Aztec's. 
 The eyes were informed by an eager brilliance. He had a heap 
 of little paper-covered books in one hand and an extinct cigar in 
 the other. He placed the books upon the breakfast table. 
 
 "At last,'' he said. "See, I have got it printed — the great 
 work which this ignorant English Judaism has left to moulder 
 while it pays its stupid reverends thousands a year for wearing 
 white ties." 
 
 "And who paid for it now, Mr. Pinchas? " said the Rebbitzin. 
 
 "Who? Wh-o-o?" stammered Melchitsedek. "Who but 
 myself? " 
 
 " But you say you are blood-poor." 
 
 " True as the Law of Moses ! But I have written articles for 
 the jargon papers. They jump at me — there is not a man 
 on the staff of them all who has the pen of a ready writer. I 
 can't get any money out of them, my dear Rebbitzin, else I 
 shouldn't be without breakfast this morning, but the proprietor 
 of the largest of them is also a printer, and he has printed my 
 little book in return. But I don't think I shall fill my stomach 
 with the sales. Oh! the Holy One, blessed be He, bless you, 
 Rebbitzin, of course I'll take a cup of coffee ; I don't know any 
 one else who makes coffee with such a sweet savor ; it would do 
 
86 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 for a spice oflfering when the Almighty restores us our Temple. 
 You are a happy mortal, Rabbi, You will permit that I seat 
 myself at the table ? " 
 
 Without awaiting permission he pushed a chair between Levi 
 and Hannah and sat down ; then he got up again and washed 
 his hands and helped himself to a spare egg. 
 
 " Here is your copy, Reb Shemuel," he went on after an 
 interval. " You see it is dedicated generally : 
 
 ' To the Pillars of English Judaism.' 
 
 They are a set of donkey-heads, but one must give them a 
 chance of rising to higher things. It is true that not one of 
 them understands Hebrew, not even the Chief Rabbi, to whom 
 courtesy made me send a copy. Perhaps he will be able to 
 read my poems with a dictionary ; he certainly can't write 
 Hebrew without two grammatical blunders to every word. No, 
 no, don't defend him, Reb Shemuel, because you're under him. 
 He ought to be under you — only he expresses his ignorance 
 in English and the fools think to talk nonsense in good English 
 is lo be qualified for the Rabbinate.'" 
 
 (The remark touched the Rabbi in a tender place. It was 
 the-one worry of his life, the consciousness that persons in 
 high quarters disapproved of him as a force impeding the An- 
 glicization of the Ghetto. He knew his shortcomings, but could 
 never quite comprehend the importance of becoming English. 
 He had a latent feeling that Judaism had flourished before Eng- 
 land was invented, and so the poet's remark was secretly pleasing 
 to himo 
 
 '^ You know very well," went on Pinchas, ^' that I and you 
 are the only two persons in London who can write correct 
 Holy Language." 
 
 " No, no," said the Rabbi, deprecatingly. 
 
 "Yes, yes," said Pinchas, emphatically. "You can write 
 quite as well as I. But just cast your eye now on the especial 
 dedication which I have written to you in my own autograph. 
 'To the light of his generation, the great Gaon, whose excel- 
 
THE NEO-HEBREW POET. 87 
 
 lency reaches to the ends of the earth, from whose lips all 
 the people of the Lord seek knowledge, the never-failing well, 
 the mighty eagle soars to heaven on the wings of understand- 
 ing, to Rav Shemiiel, may whose light n-ever be dimmed, and 
 in whose day may the Redeemer come unto Zion.' There, 
 take it, honor me by taking it. It is the homage of the man 
 of genius to the man of learning, the humble oiTering of the 
 one Hebrew scholar in England to the other." 
 
 "Thank you," said the old Rabbi, much moved. "It is 
 too handsome of you, and I shall read it at once and treasure 
 it amongst my dearest books, for you know well that I con- 
 sider that you have the truest poetic gift of any son of Israel 
 since Jehuda Halevi." 
 
 " I have ! I know it ! I feel it ! It burns me. The sorrow of 
 our race keeps me awake at night — the national hopes tingle 
 like electricity through me — I bedew my couch with tears in 
 the darkness " — Pinchas paused to take another slice of bread 
 and butter. " It is then that my poems are born. The words 
 burst into music in my head and I sing like Isaiah the restora- 
 tion of our land, and become the poet patriot of my people. 
 But these English ! They care only to make money and to 
 stuff it down the throats of gorging reverends. My scholarship, 
 my poetry, my divine dreams — what are these to a besotted, 
 brutal congregation of Men-of-the-Earth ? I sent Buckledorf, 
 the rich banker, a copy of my little book, with a special dedica- 
 tion written in my own autograph in German, so that he might 
 understand it. And what did he send me? A beggarly five 
 shillings? Five shillings to the one poet in whom the heavenly 
 fire lives! How can the heavenly fire live on five shillings? I 
 had almost a mind to send it back. And then there was Gideon, 
 the member of Parliament. I made one of the poems an acros- 
 tic on his name, so that he might be handed down to posterity. 
 There, that\s the one. No, the one on the page you were just 
 looking at. Yes, that's it, beginning : 
 
 ' Great leader of our Israel's host, 
 I sing thy high heroic deeds, 
 Divinely gifted learned man." 
 
88 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 " I wrote his dedication in English, for he understands neither 
 Hebrew nor German, the miserable, purse-proud, vanity-eaten 
 Man-of-the-Earth." 
 
 "Why, didn't he give you anything at all? " said the Reb. 
 
 " Worse ! He sent me back the book. But Til be revenged 
 on him. Til take the acrostic out of the next edition and let 
 him rot in oblivion. I have been all over the world to every 
 great city where Jews congregate. In Russia, in Turkey, in 
 Germany, in Roumania, in Greece, in Morocco, in Palestine. 
 Everywhere the greatest Rabbis have leaped like harts on the 
 mountains with joy at my coming. They have fed and clothed 
 me like a prince. I have preached at the synagogues, and every- 
 where people have said it was like the Wilna Gaon come again. 
 From the neighboring villages for miles and miles the pious 
 have come to be blessed by me. Look at my testimonials from 
 all the greatest saints and savants. But in England — in Eng- 
 land alone — what is my welcome? Do they say: 'Welcome, 
 Melchitsedek Pinchas, welcome as the bridegroom to the bride 
 when the long day is done and the feast is o'er ; welcome to you, 
 with the torch of your genius, with the burden of your learning 
 that is rich with the whole wealth of Hebrew literature in all 
 ages and countries. Here we have no great and wise men. Our 
 Chief Rabbi is an idiot. Come thou and be our Chief Rabbi?' 
 Do they say this? No ! They greet me with scorn, coldness, 
 slander. As for the Rev. Elkan Benjamin, who makes such a 
 fuss of himself because he sends a wealthy congregation to sleep 
 with his sermons, Til expose him as sure as there's a Guardian 
 of Israel. 1*1] let the world know about his four mistresses." 
 
 " Nonsense ! Guard yourself against the evil tongue," said the 
 Reb. " How do you know he has ? " 
 
 "It's the Law of Moses," said the little poet. "True as 
 I stand here. You ask Jacob Hermann. It was he who told 
 me about it. Jacob Hermann said to me one day : ' That Ben- 
 jamin has a mistress for every fringe of his four-corners.' And 
 how many is that, eh? I do not know why he should be 
 allowed to slander me and I not be allowed to tell the tmth 
 about him. One day I will shoot him. You know he said that 
 
THE NEO-HEBREW POET. 89 
 
 when I first came to London I joined the Meshumadim in 
 Palestine Place." 
 
 "Well, he had at least some foundation for that," said Reb 
 Shemuel. 
 
 ''Foundation ! Do you call that foundation — because I lived 
 there for a week, hunting out their customs and their ways of 
 ensnaring the souls of our brethren, so that I might write about 
 them one day? Have I not already told you not a morsel of 
 their food passed my lips and that the money which I had to 
 take so as not to excite suspicion I distributed in charity among 
 the poor Jews? Why not? From pigs we take bristles." 
 
 " Still, you must remember that if you had not been such a 
 saint and such a great poet, I might myself have believed that 
 you sold your soul for money to escape starvation. I know 
 how these devils set their baits for the helpless immigrant, offer- 
 ing bread in return for a lip-conversion. They are grown so 
 cunning now — they print their hellish appeals in Hebrew, 
 knowing we reverence the Holy Tongue." 
 
 " Yes, the ordinary Man-of-the-Earth believes everything 
 thafs in Hebrew. That was the mistake of the Apostles — to 
 write in Greek. But then they, too, were such Men-of-the 
 Earth." 
 
 " I wonder who writes such good Hebrew for the mission- 
 aries," said Reb Shemuel. 
 
 " I wonder," gm-gled Pinchas, deep in his coffee. 
 
 " But, father," asked Hannah, " don't you believe any Jew 
 ever really believes in Christianity ? " 
 
 ''How is it possible?" answered Reb Shemuel. "A Jew 
 who has the Law from Sinai, the Law that will never be 
 changed, to whom God has given a sensible religion and 
 common-sense, how can such a person believe in the farrago of 
 nonsense that makes up the worship of the Christians ! No 
 Jew has ever apostatized except to fill his purse or his stomach 
 or to avoid persecution. ' Getting grace ' they call it in Eng- 
 lish ; but with poor Jews it is always grace after meals. Look 
 at the Crypto-Jews, the Marranos, who for centuries lived a 
 double life, outwardly Christians, but handing down secretly 
 
90 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 from generation to generation the faith, the traditions, the 
 observances of Judaism."" 
 
 " Yes, no Jew was ever fool enough to turn Christian unless 
 he was a clever man," said the poet paradoxically. " Have you 
 not, my sweet, innocent young lady, heard the story of the two 
 Jews in Burgos Cathedral ? " 
 
 " No, what is it ? " said Levi, eagerly. 
 
 " Well, pass my cup up to your highly superior mother who is 
 waiting to fill it with coffee. Your eminent father knows the 
 story — I can see by the twinkle in his learned eye." 
 
 " Yes, that story has a beard," said the Reb. 
 
 " Two Spanish Jews," said the poet, addressing himself defer- 
 entially to Levi, " who had got grace were waiting to be baptized 
 at Burgos Cathedral. There was a great throng of Catholics 
 and a special Cardinal was coming to conduct the ceremony, for 
 their conversion was a great triumph. But the Cardinal was 
 late and the Jews fumed and fretted at the delay. The shadows 
 of evening were falling on vault and transept. At last one 
 turned to the other and said, ' Knowest thou what, Moses? If 
 the Holy Father does not arrive soon, we shall be too late to 
 say Diincha.'' " 
 
 Levi laughed heartily ; the reference to the Jewish afternoon 
 prayer went home to him. 
 
 "That story sums up in a nutshell the whole history of the 
 great movement for the conversion of the Jews. We dip our- 
 selves in baptismal water and wipe ourselves with a Talith. We 
 are not a race to be lured out of the fixed feelings of countless 
 centuries by the empty spirituality of a religion in which, as I 
 soon found out when I lived among the soul-dealers, its very 
 professors no longer believe. W^e are too fond of solid things," 
 said the poet, upon whom a good breakfast was beginning to 
 produce a soothing materialistic effect. " Do you know that 
 anecdote about the two Jews in the Transvaal?" Pinchas went 
 on. '' That's a real Chiney 
 
 "I don't think I know that Maaseh^'' said Reb Shemuel. 
 
 "Oh, the two Jews had made a trek and were travelling 
 onwards exploring unknown country. One night they were sit- 
 
THE NEO-HEBREW POET. 91 
 
 ting by their campfire playing cards when suddenly one threw 
 up his cards, tore his hair and beat his breast in terrible agony. 
 'What's the matter?' cried the other. 'Woe, woe,' said the 
 first. ''To-day was the Day of Atonemeijt! and we have eaten 
 and gone on as usual.' 'Oh, don't take on so,' said his friend. 
 ' After all. Heaven will take into consideration that w-e lost count 
 of the Jewish calendar and didn't mean to be so wicked. And 
 we can make up for it by fasting to-morrow.' 
 
 '"Oh, no! Not for me,' said the first. 'To-day was the Day 
 of Atonement.' " 
 
 All laughed, the Reb appreciating most keenly the sly dig at 
 his race. He had a kindly sense of human frailty. Jews are 
 very fond of telling stories against themselves — for their sense 
 of humor is too strong not to be aware of their own foibles — 
 but they tell them with closed doors, and resent them from the 
 outside. They chastise themselves because they love them- 
 selves, as members of the same family insult one another. The 
 secret is, that insiders understand the limitations of the criti- 
 cism, which outsiders are apt to take in bulk. No race in the 
 world possesses a richer anecdotal lore than the Jews — such 
 pawky, even blasphemous humor, not understandable of the 
 heathen, and to a suspicious mind Pinchas's overflowing cornu- 
 copia of such would have suggested a prior period of Continental 
 wandering from town to town, like the Afinnesingers of the 
 middle ages, repaying the hospitality of his Jewish entertainers 
 with a budget of good stories and gossip from the scenes of 
 his pilgrimages. 
 
 "Do you know the story?" he w^ent on, encouraged by 
 Simcha's smiling face, " of the old Reb and the Havdolah ? 
 His wife left town for a few days and when she returned the Reb 
 took out a bottle of wine, poured some into the consecration cup 
 and began to recite the blessing. ' What art thou doing ? ' 
 demanded his wife in amaze. ' I am making HavdolaJi^ replied 
 the Reb. ' But it is not the conclusion of a festival to-night,' she 
 said. ' Oh, yes, it is,' he answered. ' My Festival's over. You've 
 come back.' " 
 
 The Reb laughed so much over this story that Simcha's brow 
 
92 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 grew as the solid Egyptian darkness, and Pinchas perceived he 
 had made a mistake. 
 
 "But listen to the end," he said with a creditable impromptu. 
 "The wife said — 'No, you're mistaken. Your Festival's only 
 beginning. You get no supper. It's the commencement of the 
 Day of Atonement.' " 
 
 Simcha's brow cleared and the Reb laughed heartily. 
 
 " But I don't see the point, father," said Levi. 
 
 " Point ! Listen, my son. First of all he was to have a Day 
 of Atonement, beginning with no supper, for his sin of rudeness 
 to his faithful wife. Secondly, dost thou not know that with us 
 the Day of Atonement is called a festival, because we rejoice at 
 the Creator's goodness in giving us the privilege of fasting? 
 That's it, Pinchas, isn't it?" 
 
 " Yes, that's the point of the story, and I think the Rebbitzin 
 had the best of it, eh ? " 
 
 " Rebbitzins always have the last word,'' said the Reb. " But 
 did I tell you the story of the woman who asked me a question 
 the other day? She brought me a fowl in the morning and said 
 that in cutting open the gizzard she had found a rusty pin which 
 the fowl must have swallowed. She wanted to know whether the 
 fowl might be eaten. It was a very difficult point, for how could 
 you tell whether the pin had in any way contributed to the fowl's 
 death ? I searched the Shass and a heap of ShaalotJm- Tshuvos. 
 I went and consulted the Maggid and Sugarman the Shadchan 
 and Mr. Karlkammer, and at last we decided that the fowl was 
 trifa and could not be eaten. So the same evening I sent for 
 the woman, and when I told her of our decision she burst into 
 tears and wrung her hands. 'Do not grieve so,' I said, taking 
 compassion upon her, ' I will buy thee another fowl.' But she 
 wept on, uncomforted. ' O woe ! woe ! ' she cried. ' We ate it 
 all up yesterday.'" 
 
 Pinchas was convulsed with laughter. Recovering himself, he 
 lit his half-smoked cigar without asking leave. 
 
 " I thought it would turn out differently," he said. '' Like that 
 story of the peacock. A man had one presented to him, and as 
 this is such rare diet he went to the Reb to ask if it was kosher. 
 
THE NEO-HEBREW POET. 93 
 
 The Rabbi said ' no ' and confiscated the peacock. Later on the 
 man heard that the Rabbi had given a banquet at which his 
 peacock was the crowning dish. He went to his Rabbi and 
 reproached liim. ' / may eat it/ replied the Rabbi, ' because my 
 father considers it permitted and we may always go by what 
 some eminent Son of the Law decides. But you unfortunately 
 came to 7ne for an opinion, and the permissibility of peacock is 
 a point on which I have always disagreed with my father.'' '' 
 
 Hannah seemed to find peculiar enjoyment in the story. 
 
 "Anyhow,'' concluded Pinchas, " you have a more pious flock 
 than the Rabbi of my native place, who, one day, announced to 
 his congregation that he was going to resign. Startled, they 
 sent to him a delegate, who asked, in the name of the congrega- 
 tion, why he was leaving them. ' Because,' answered the Rabbi, 
 'this is the first question any one has ever asked me! ' " 
 
 " Tell Mr. Pinchas your repartee about the donkey," said 
 Hannah, smiling. 
 
 " Oh, no, it's not worth while," said the Reb. 
 
 " Thou art always so backward with thine own," cried the 
 Rebbitzin warmly. " Last Purim an impudent of face sent my 
 husband a donkey made of sugar. My husband had a Rabbi 
 baked in gingerbread and sent it in exchange to the donor, with 
 the inscription '• A Rabbi sends a Rabbi.' " 
 
 Reb Shemuel laughed heartily, hearing this afresh at the lips 
 of his wife. But Pinchas was bent double like a convulsive note 
 of interrogation. 
 
 The clock on the mantelshelf began to strike nine. Levi 
 jumped to his feet. 
 
 " I shall be late for school! " he cried, making for the door. 
 
 ''Stop! stop!" shouted his father. " Thou hast not yet said 
 grace." 
 
 " Oh, yes, I have, father. While you were all telling stories I 
 was be7i5hing q^\\qX\)' to myself." 
 
 " Is Saul also among the prophets, is Levi also among the 
 story-tellers.?" murmured Pinchas to himself. Aloud he said: 
 " The child speaks truth ; I saw his lips moving." 
 
 Levi gave the poet a grateful look, snatched up his satchel and 
 
94 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 ran off to No. i Royal Street. Pinchas followed him soon, in- 
 wardly upbraiding Reb Shemuel for meanness. He had only as 
 yet had his breakfast for his book. Perhaps it was Simcha's 
 presence that was to blame. She was the Reb's right hand and 
 he did not care to let her know what his left was doing. 
 
 He retired to his study when Pinchas departed, and the Reb- 
 bitzin clattered about with a besom. 
 
 The study was a large square room lined wdth book-shelves 
 and hung with portraits of the great continental Rabbis. The 
 books were bibliographical monsters to which the Family Bibles 
 of the Christian are mere pocket-books. They were all printed 
 purely with the consonants, the vowels being divined grammati- 
 cally or known by heart. In each there was an island of text in 
 a sea of commentary, itself lost in an ocean of super-commentary 
 that was bordered by a continent of super-super-commentary. 
 Reb Shemuel knew many of these immense folios — with all 
 their tortuous windings of argument and anecdote — much as 
 the child knows the village it was born in, the crooked by-ways 
 and the field paths. Such and such a Rabbi gave such and such 
 an opinion on such and such a line from the bottom of such and 
 such a page — his memory of it was a visual picture. And just 
 as the child does not connect its native village with the broader 
 world without, does not trace its streets and turnings till they 
 lead to the great towns, does not inquire as to its origins and its 
 history, does not view it in relation to other villages, to the coun- 
 try, to the continent, to the world, but loves it for itself and in 
 itself, so Reb Shemuel regarded and reverenced and loved these 
 gigantic pages with their serried battalions of varied type. They 
 were facts — absolute as the globe itself — regions of wisdom, 
 perfect and self-sufficing. A little obscure here and there, per- 
 haps, and in need of amplification or explication for inferior in- 
 tellects — a half-finished manuscript commentary on one of the 
 super-commentaries, to be called "The Garden of Lilies," was 
 lying open on Reb Shemuel's own desk — but yet the only true 
 encyclopaedia of things terrestrial and divine. And, indeed, they 
 were wondeiful books. It was as difficult to say what was not 
 in them as what was. Through them the old Rabbi held com- 
 
THE NEO-HEBREW POET. 95 
 
 munion with his God whom he loved with all his heart and soul 
 and thought of as a genial Father, watching tenderly over His 
 froward children and chastising them because He loved them. 
 Generations of saints and scholars linked Reb Shemuel with the 
 marvels of Sinai. The infinite network of ceremonial never 
 hampered his soul ; it was his jo3'ous privilege to obey his Father 
 in all things and like the king who offered to reward the man 
 who invented a new pleasure, he was ready to embrace the sage 
 who could deduce a new commandment. He rose at four every 
 morning to study, and snatched every odd moment he could 
 during the day. Rabbi Meir, that ancient ethical teacher, wrote : 
 " Whosoever labors in the Torah for its own sake, the whole 
 world is indebted to him ; he is called friend, beloved, a lover of 
 the All-present, a lover of mankind ; it clothes him in meekness 
 and reverence ; it fits him to become just, pious, upright and 
 faithful ; he becomes modest, long-suffering and forgiving of 
 insult." 
 
 Reb Shemuel would have been scandalized if any one had 
 applied these words to him. 
 
 At about eleven o''clock Hannah came into the room, an open 
 letter in her hand. 
 
 " Father," she said, " I have just had a letter from Samuel 
 Levine." 
 
 "Your husband?'' he said, looking up with a smile. 
 
 "My husband," she replied, with a fainter smile. 
 
 " And what does he say ? " 
 
 " It isn't a very serious letter ; he only wants to reassure me 
 that he is coming back by Sunday week to be divorced." 
 
 "All right; tell him it shall be done at cost price," he said, 
 with the foreign accent that made him somehow seem more 
 lovable to his daughter when he spoke English. " He shall 
 only be charged for the scribe." 
 
 " He'll take that for granted," Hannah replied. '' Fathers are 
 expected to do these little things for their own children. But 
 how much nicer it would be if you could give me the Gett 
 yourself." 
 
 " I would marry you with pleasure," said Reb Shemuel, " but 
 
96 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 divorce is another matter. The Din has too much regard for a 
 father's feelings to allow that." 
 
 "And you really think I am Sam Levine's wife?" 
 
 " How many times shall I tell you ? Some authorities do take 
 the intention into account, but the letter of the law is clearly 
 against you. It is far safer to be formally divorced." 
 
 " Then if he were to die — " 
 
 " Save us and grant us peace," interrupted the Reb in horror. 
 
 " I should be his widow." 
 
 "Yes, I suppose you would. But what Na?'rischkeit I Why 
 should he die? It isn't as if you were really married to him," 
 said the Reb, his eye twinkling. 
 
 " But isn't it all absurd, father? " 
 
 " Do not talk so," said Reb Shemuel, resuming his gravity. 
 " Is it absurd that you should be scorched if you play with fire? " 
 
 Hannah did not reply to the question. 
 
 " You never told me how you got on at Manchester," she 
 said. " Did you settle the dispute satisfactorily?" 
 
 " Oh, yes," said the Reb ; " but it was very difficult. Both 
 parties were so envenomed, and it seems that the feud has been 
 going on in the congregation ever since the Day of Atonement, 
 when the minister refused to blow the SJiofar three minutes 
 too early, as the President requested. The Treasurer sided with 
 the minister, and there has almost been a split." 
 
 " The sounding of the New Year trumpet seems often to be 
 the signal for war," said Hannah, sarcastically. 
 
 " It is so," said the Reb, sadly. 
 
 " And how did you repair the breach ? " 
 
 "Just by laughing at both sides. They would have turned a 
 deaf ear to reasoning. I told them that Midrash about Jacob's 
 journey to Laban." 
 
 " What is that ? " 
 
 " Oh, it's an amplification of the Biblical narrative. The verse 
 in Genesis says that he lighted on the place, and he put up there 
 for the night because the sun had set, and he took of the stones 
 of the place and he made them into pillows. But later on it says 
 that he rose up in the morning and he took the stone which he 
 
THE NEO-HEBREW POET. 97 
 
 had put as his pillows. Now what is the explanation?" Reb 
 Shemuers tone became momently more sing-song : " In the 
 night the stones quarrelled for the honor of supporting the 
 Patriarch's head, and so by a miracle tltey were turned into one 
 stone to satisfy them all. Now you remember that when Jacob 
 arose in the morning he said : ' How fearful is this place ; this 
 is none other than the House of God.' So I said to the wran- 
 glers : 'Why did Jacob say that? He said it because his rest 
 had been so disturbed by the quarrelling stones that it reminded 
 him of the House of God — the Synagogue.' I pointed out 
 how much better it would be if they ceased their quarrellings and 
 became one stone. And so I made peace again in the Ke]iil- 
 lahP 
 
 " Till next year," said Hannah, laughing. " But, father, I 
 have often wondered why they allow the ram's horn in the ser- 
 vice. I thought all musical instruments were forbidden." 
 
 "It is not a musical instrument — in practice," said the Reb, 
 with evasive facetiousness. And, indeed, the performers were 
 nearly always incompetent, marring the solemnity of great mo- 
 ments by asthmatic wheezings and thin far-away tootlings. 
 
 '■ But it would be if we had trained trumpeters," persisted 
 Hannah, smiling. 
 
 " If you really want the explanation, it is that since the fall of 
 the second Temple we have dropped out of our worship all musi- 
 cal instruments connected with the old Temple worship, espe- 
 cially such as have become associated with Christianity. But 
 the ram's horn on the New Year is an institution older than the 
 Temple, and specially enjoined in the Bible." 
 
 " But surely there is something spiritualizing about an organ." 
 
 For reply the Reb pinched her ear. " Ah, you are a sad 
 Epikoiiros^'' he said, half seriously. " If you loved God you 
 would not want an organ to take your thoughts to heaven." 
 
 He released her ear and took up his pen, humming with unc- 
 tion a synagogue air full of joyous flourishes. 
 
 Hannah turned to go, then turned back. 
 
 "Father," she said nervously, blushing a little, "who was 
 that you said you had in your eye ? " 
 
 H 
 
98 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 " Oh, nobody in particular," said the Reb, equally embarrassed 
 and avoiding meeting her eye, as if to conceal the person in 
 his. 
 
 " But you must have meant something by it," she said gravely. 
 " You know Fm not going to be married off to please other 
 people." 
 
 The Reb wriggled uncomfortably in his chair. " It was only 
 a thought — an idea. If it does not come to you, too, it shall be 
 nothing. I didn't mean anything serious — really, my dear, I 
 didn't. To tell you the truth," he finished suddenly with a frank, 
 heavenly smile, " the person I had mainly in my eye when I 
 spoke was your mother." 
 
 This time his eye met hers, and they smiled at each other with 
 the consciousness of the humors of the situation. The Reb- 
 bitzin's broom was heard banging viciously in the passage. 
 Hannah bent down and kissed the ample forehead beneath the 
 black skull-cap. 
 
 " Mr. Levine also writes insisting that I must go to the Purim 
 ball with him and Leah," she said, glancing at the letter. 
 
 " A husband's wishes must be obeyed," answered the Reb. 
 
 "No, I will treat him as if he were really my husband," re- 
 torted Hannah. " 1 will have my own way ; I shan't go." 
 
 The door was thrown open suddenly. 
 
 " Oh yes thou wilt," said the Rebbitzin. " Thou art not 
 going to bury thyself alive." 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 ESTHER AND HER CHILDREN. 
 
 Esther Ansell did not welcome Levi Jacobs warmly. She 
 had just cleared away the breakfast things and was looking for- 
 ward to a glorious day's reading, and the advent of a visitor did 
 not gratify her. And yet Levi Jacobs was a good-looking boy 
 with brown hair and eyes, a dark glowing complexion and ruddy 
 lips — a sort of reduced masculine edition of Hannah. 
 
ESTHER AND HER CHILDREN. 99 
 
 " Tve come to play I-spy-I, Solomon/' he said when he entered. 
 " My, don't you live high up! " 
 
 " I thought you had to go to school," Solomon observed with 
 a stare. 
 
 " Ours isn't a board school," Levi explained. " You might 
 introduce a fellow to your sister." 
 
 "Garn! You know Esther right enough," said Solomon and 
 began to whistle carelessly. 
 
 "How are you, Esther?" said Levi awkwardly. 
 
 " I'm very well, thank you," said Esther, looking up from a 
 little brown-covered book and looking down at it again. 
 
 She was crouching on the fender trying to get some warmth at 
 the little fire extracted from Reb Shemuel's half-crown. Decem- 
 ber continued gray ; the room was dim and a spurt of flame 
 played on her pale earnest face. It was a face that never lost a 
 certain ardency of color even at its palest : the hair was dark and 
 abundant, the eyes were large and thoughtful, the nose slightly 
 aquiline and the whole cast of the features betrayed the Polish 
 origin. The forehead was rather low. Esther had nice teeth 
 which accident had preserved white. It was an arrestive rather 
 than a beautiful face, though charming enough when she smiled. 
 If the grace and candor of childhood could have been disengaged 
 from the face, it would have been easier to say whether it was 
 absolutely pretty. It came nearer being so on Sabbaths and 
 holidays when scholastic supervision was removed and the hair 
 was free to fall loosely about the shoulders instead of being screwed 
 up into the pendulous plait so dear to the educational eye. 
 Esther could have earned a penny quite easily by sacrificing her 
 tresses and going about with close-cropped head like a boy, for 
 her teacher never failed thus to reward the shorn, but in the 
 darkest hours of hunger she held on to her hair as her mother 
 had done before her. The prospects of Esther's post-nuptial 
 wig were not brilliant. She was not tall for a girl who is get- 
 ting on for twelve ; but some little girls shoot up suddenly and 
 there was considerable room for hope. 
 
 Sarah and Isaac were romping noisily about and under the 
 beds ; Rachel was at the table, knitting a scarf for Solomon ; the 
 
100 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 grandmother pored over a bulky enchiridion for pious women, 
 written in jargon. Moses was out in search of work. No one 
 took any notice of the visitor. 
 
 "What's that youVe reading?" he asked Esther politely. 
 
 " Oh nothing," said Esther with a start, closing the book as 
 if fearful he might want to look over her shoulder. 
 
 " I don't see the fun of reading books out of school," said 
 Levi. 
 
 "Oh, but we don't read school books," said Solomon 
 defensively. 
 
 "I don't care. It's stupid." 
 
 " At that rate you could' never read books when you're grown 
 up," said Esther contemptuously. 
 
 " No, of course not," admitted Levi. " Otherwise where 
 would be the fun of being grown up? After I leave school I 
 don't intend to open a book." 
 
 "No? Perhaps you'll open a shop," said Solomon. 
 
 " What will you do when it rains?" asked Esther crushingly. 
 
 " I shall smoke," replied Levi loftily. 
 
 " Yes, but suppose it's Shabbos^'' swiftly rejoined Esther. 
 
 Levi was nonplussed. "Well, it can't rain all day and there 
 are only fifty-two SJiabbosim in the year,"' he said lamely. "A 
 man can always do something." 
 
 " I think there's more pleasure in reading than in doing some- 
 thing," remarked Esther. 
 
 "Yes, you're a girl," Levi reminded her, "and girls are ex- 
 pected to stay indoors. Look at my sister Hannah. She reads, 
 too. But a man can be out doing what he pleases, eh, Solo- 
 mon?" 
 
 " Yes, of course we've got the best of it," said Solomon. 
 "The Prayer-book shows that. Don't I say every morning 
 '■ Blessed art Thou, O Lord our God, who hast not made me a 
 woman ' ? " 
 
 " I don't know whether you do say it. You certainly have got 
 to," said Esther witheringly. 
 
 "'Sh," said Solomon, winking in the direction of the grand- 
 mother. 
 
ESTHER AND HER CHILDREN. 101 
 
 " It doesn't matter/' said Esther calmly. " She can't under- 
 stand what Fm saying." 
 
 " I don't know," said Solomon dubiously. " She sometimes 
 catches more than you bargain for." 
 
 " And then yoii catch more than you bargain for," said Rachel, 
 looking up roguishly from her knitting. 
 
 Solomon stuck his tongue in his cheek and grimaced. 
 
 Isaac came behind Levi and gave his coat a pull and toddled 
 off with a yell of delight. 
 
 " Be quiet, Ikey ! " cried Esther. " If you don't behave better 
 I shan't sleep in your new bed." 
 
 "Oh yeth, you mutht, Ethty," lisped Ikey, his elfish face 
 growing grave. He went about depressed for some seconds. 
 
 " Kids are a beastly nuisance," said Levi, " don't you think so, 
 Esther?" 
 
 " Oh no, not always," said the little girl. " Besides we were 
 all kids once." 
 
 "That's what I complain of," said Levi. "We ought to be 
 all born grown-up." 
 
 " But that's impossible ! " put in Rachel. 
 
 "It isn't impossible at all," said Esther. " Look at Adam and 
 Eve!" 
 
 Levi looked at Esther gratefully instead. He felt nearer to 
 her and thought of persuading her into playing Kiss-in-the-Ring. 
 But he found it difficult to back out of his undertaking to play 
 I-spy-I with Solomon ; and in the end he had to leave Esther 
 to her book. 
 
 She had little in common witli her brother Solomon, least of 
 all humor and animal spirits. Even before the responsibilities 
 of headship had come upon her she was a preternaturally thought- 
 ful little girl who had strange intuitions about things and was 
 doomed to work out her own salvation as a metaphysician. 
 When she asked her mother who made God, a slap in the face 
 demonstrated to her the limits of human inquiry. The natural 
 instinct of the child over-rode the long travail of the race to con- 
 ceive an abstract Deity, and Esther pictured God as a mammoth 
 cloud. In early years Esther imagined that the "body" that 
 
102 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 was buried when a person died was the corpse decapitated and 
 she often puzzled herself to think what was done with the iso- 
 lated head. When her mother was being tied up in grave-clothes, 
 Esther hovered about with a real thirst for knowledge while the 
 thoughts of all the other children were sensuously concentrated 
 on the funeral and the glory of seeing a vehicle drive away from 
 their own door. Esther w'as also disappointed at not seeing her 
 mother's soul fly up to heaven though she watched vigilantly at 
 the death-bed for the ascent of the long yellow hook-shaped 
 thing. The genesis of this conception of the soul was probably 
 to be sought in the pictorial representations of ghosts in the 
 story-papers brought home by her eldest brother Benjamin. 
 Strange shadowy conceptions of things more corporeal floated 
 up from her solitary reading. Theatres she came across often, 
 and a theatre was a kind of Babel plain or Vanity Fair in which 
 performers and spectators were promiscuously mingled and 
 wherein the richer folk clad in evening dress sat in thin deal 
 boxes — the cases in Spitalfields market being Esther's main as- 
 sociation with boxes. One of her day-dreams of the future was 
 going to the theatre in a night-gown and being accommodated 
 with an orange-box. Little rectification of such distorted views 
 of life was to be expected from Moses Ansell, who went down to 
 his grave without seeing even a circus, and had no interest in art 
 apart from the '' Police News" and his " Mizrach "' and the syn- 
 agogue decorations. Even when Esther's sceptical instinct 
 drove her to inquire of her father how people knew that Moses 
 got the Law on Mount Sinai, he could only repeat in horror that 
 the Books of Moses said so. and could never be brought to see 
 that his arguments travelled on roundabouts. She sometimes 
 regretted that her brilliant brother Benjamin had been swallowed 
 up by the orphan asylum, for she imagined she could have dis- 
 cussed many a knotty point with him. Solomon was both flip- 
 pant and incompetent. But in spite of her theoretical latitudi- 
 narianism, in practice she was pious to the point of fanaticism and 
 could scarce conceive tlie depths of degradation of which she 
 heard vague horror-struck talk. There were Jews about — 
 grown-up men and women, not insane — who struck lucifer 
 
ESTHER AND HER CHILDREN. 103 
 
 matches on the Sabbath and housewives who carelessly mixed 
 their butter-plates with their meat-plates even when they did not 
 actually eat butter with meat. Esther promised herself that, 
 please God, she would never do anything^ so wicked when she 
 grew up. She at least would never fail to light the Sabbath can- 
 dles nor to kasher the meat. Never was child more alive to the 
 beauty of duty, more open to the appeal of virtue, self-control, 
 abnegation. She fasted till two o'clock on the Great White 
 Fast when she was seven years old and accomplished the 
 perfect feat at nine. When she read a simple little story in a 
 prize-book, inculcating the homely moralities at which the 
 cynic sneers, her eyes filled with tears and her breast with unsel- 
 fish and dutiful determinations. She had something of the tem- 
 perament of the stoic, fortified by that spiritual pride which 
 does not look for equal goodness in others ; and though she 
 disapproved of Solomon's dodgings of duty, she did not 
 sneak or preach, even gave him surreptitious crusts of bread 
 before he had said his prayers, especially on Saturdays and 
 Festivals when the praying took place in Shool and was liable 
 to be prolonged till mid-day. 
 
 Esther often went to synagogue and sat in the ladies' com- 
 partment. The drone of the "Sons of the Convenant '' down- 
 stairs was part of her consciousness of home, like the musty 
 smell of the stairs, or Becky's young men through whom she 
 had to plough her way when she went for the morning milk, 
 or the odors of Mr. Belcovitch's rum or the whirr of his ma- 
 chines, or the bent, snuffy personality of the Hebrew scholar 
 in the adjoining garret, or the dread of Dutch Debby's dog 
 that was ultimately transformed to friendly expectation. Esther 
 led a double life, just as she spoke two tongues. ■ The knowl- 
 edge that she was a Jewish child, whose people had had a 
 special history, was always at the back of her consciousness ; 
 sometimes it was brought to the front by the scoffing rhymes 
 of Christian children, who informed her that they had stuck 
 a piece of pork upon a fork and given it to a member of her 
 race. 
 
 But far more vividly did she realize that she was an Eng- 
 
104 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 lish girl ; far keener than her pride in Judas Maccabeus was 
 her pride in Nelson and Wellington; she rejoiced to find that 
 her ancestors had always beaten the French from the days of 
 Cressy and Poictiers to the days of Waterloo, that Alfred the 
 Great was the wisest of kings, and that Englishmen dominated 
 the world and had planted colonies in every corner of it, that 
 the English language was the noblest in the world and men 
 speaking it had invented railway trains, steamships, telegraphs, 
 and everything worth inventing. Esther absorbed these ideas 
 from the school reading books. The experience of a month 
 will overlay the hereditary bequest of a century. And yet, 
 beneath all, the prepared plate remains most sensitive to the 
 old impressions. 
 
 Sarah and Isaac had developed as distinct individualities as 
 was possible in the time at their disposal. Isaac was just five 
 and Sarah — who had never known her mother — just four. 
 The thoughts of both ran strongly in the direction of sensu- 
 ous enjoyment, and they preferred baked potatoes, especially 
 potatoes touched with gravy, to all the joys of the kindergarten. 
 Isaac's ambition ran in the direction of eider-down beds such 
 as he had once felt at Malka's and Moses soothed him by the 
 horizon-like prospect of such a new bed. Places of honor had 
 already been conceded by the generous little chap to his father 
 and brother. Heaven alone knows how he had come to con- 
 ceive their common bed as his own peculiar property in which 
 the other three resided at night on sufferance. He could not 
 even plead it was his by right of birth in it. But Isaac was not 
 after all wholly given over to worldly thoughts, for an intellectual 
 problem often occupied his thoughts and led him to slap little 
 Sarah's arms. He had been born on the 4th of December while 
 Sarah had been born a year later on the 3d. 
 
 " It ain't, it can't be,'' he would say. " Your birfday can't be 
 afore mine.'' 
 
 " 'Tis, Esty thays so,"* Sarah would reply. 
 
 " Esty's a liar,"' Isaac responded imperturbably. 
 
 "Ask Tat ah y 
 
 ^^Tatah dunno. Ain't I five ?" 
 
ESTHER AND HER CHILDREN. 105 
 
 «Yeth." 
 
 " And ain't you four ? " 
 
 "Yeth/' 
 
 " And ain't I older than you ? " 
 
 "Courth." 
 
 " And wasn't I born afore you ? " 
 
 " Yeth, Ikey." 
 
 " Then 'ow can your birfday come afore mine ? " 
 
 "'Cos it doth." 
 
 " Stoopid ! " 
 
 " It doth, arx Esty," Sarah would insist. 
 
 " Than't teep in my new bed," Ikey would threaten. 
 
 " Thall if I like." 
 
 " Than't ! " 
 
 Here Sarah would generally break down in tears and Isaac 
 with premature economic instinct, feeling it wicked to waste a 
 cry, would proceed to justify it by hitting her. Thereupon little 
 Sarah would hit him back and develop a terrible howl. 
 
 " Hi, woe is unto me," she would wail in jargon, throwing 
 herself on the ground in a corner and rocking herself to and 
 fro like her far-away ancestresses remembering Zion by the 
 waters of Babylon. 
 
 Little Sarah's lamentations never ceased till she had been 
 avenged by a higlier hand. There were several great powers 
 but Esther was the most trusty instrument of reprisal. If 
 Esther was out little Sarah's sobs ceased speedily, for she, 
 too, felt the folly of fruitless tears. Though she nursed in her 
 breast the sense of injury, she would even resume her amicable 
 romps with Isaac. But the moment the step of the avenger was 
 heard on the stairs, little Sarah would betake herself to the 
 corner and howl with the pain of Isaac's pummellings. She 
 had a strong love of abstract justice and felt that if the wrong- 
 doer were to go unpunished, there was no security for the con- 
 stitution of things. 
 
 To-day's holiday did not pass without an outbreak of this 
 sort. It occurred about tea-time. Perhaps the infants were 
 fractious because there was no tea. Esther had to economize 
 
106 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 her resources and a repast at seven would serve for both tea and 
 supper. Among the poor, combination meals are as common 
 as combination beds and chests. Esther had quieted Sarah by 
 slapping Isaac, but as this made Isaac howl the gain was dubious. 
 She had to put a fresh piece of coal on the fire and sing to them 
 while their shadows contorted themselves grotesquely on the 
 beds and then upwards along the sloping walls, terminating with 
 twisted necks on the ceiling. 
 
 Esther usually sang melancholy things in minor keys. They 
 seemed most attuned to the dim straggling room. There was a 
 song her mother used to sing. It was taken from a Purim-Spiel., 
 itself based upon a Midrash, one of the endless legends with 
 which the People of One Book have broidered it, amplifying 
 every minute detail with all the exuberance of oriental imagina- 
 tion and justifying their fancies with all the ingenuity of a race 
 of lawyers. After his brethren sold Joseph to the Midianite 
 merchants, the lad escaped from the caravan and wandered foot- 
 sore and hungry to Bethlehem, to the grave of his mother, Rachel. 
 And he threw himself upon the ground and wept aloud and sang 
 to a heart-breaking melody in Yiddish. 
 
 Und hei weh ist mir, 
 Wie schlecht ist doch mir, 
 Ich bin vertrieben geworen 
 Junger held voon dir. 
 
 Whereof the English runs : 
 
 Alas ! woe is me ! 
 How wretched to be 
 Driven away and banished, 
 Yet so young, from thee. 
 
 Thereupon the voice of his beloved mother Rachel was heard 
 from the grave, comforting him and bidding him be of good 
 cheer, for that his future should be great and glorious. 
 
 Esther could not sing this without the tears trickling down 
 her cheeks. Was it that she thought of her own dead mother 
 and applied the lines to herself? Isaac's ill-humor scarcely ever 
 survived the anodvne of these mournful cadences. There was 
 
ESTHER AND HER CHILDREN. 107 
 
 another melodious wail which Alte Belcovitch had brought from 
 Poland. The chorus ran : 
 
 Man nemt awek die chasanim voon die callohs 
 Hi, hi, did-a-rid-a-ree! 
 
 They tear away their lovers from the maidens, 
 Hi, hi, did-a-rid-a-ree! 
 
 The air mingled the melancholy of Polish music with the sad- 
 ness of Jewish and the words hinted of God knew what 
 
 " Old unhappy far-off things 
 And battles long ago." 
 
 And so over all the songs and stories was the trail of tragedy, 
 under all the heart-ache of a hunted race. There are few more 
 plaintive chants in the world than the recitation of the Psalms 
 by the ''Sons of the Covenant^' on Sabbath afternoons amid 
 the gathering shadows of twilight. Esther often stood in the 
 passage to hear it, morbidly fascinated, tears of pensive pleasure 
 in her eyes. Even the little jargon story-book which Moses 
 Ansell read out that night to his Kinder.^ after tea-supper, by the 
 light of the one candle, was prefaced with a note of pathos. 
 " These stories have we gathered together from the Gemorah 
 and the Midrash, wonderful stories, and we have translated the 
 beautiful stories, using the Hebrew alphabet so that every one, 
 little or big, shall be able to read them, and shall know that 
 there is a God in the world who forsaketh not His people Israel 
 and who even for us will likewise work miracles and wonders 
 and will send us the righteous Redeemer speedily in our days, 
 Amen." Of this same Messiah the children heard endless tales. 
 Oriental fancy had been exhausted in picturing him for the con- 
 solation of exiled and suffering Israel. Before his days there 
 would be a wicked Messiah of the House of Joseph ; later, a 
 king with one ear deaf to hear good but acute to hear evil ; 
 there would be a scar on his forehead, one of his hands would 
 be an inch long and the other three miles, apparently a subtle 
 symbol of the persecutor. The jargon story-book among its 
 ''stories, wonderful stories," had also extracts from the famous 
 
108 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 romance, or diary, of Eldad the Danite, who professed to have 
 discovered the lost Ten Tribes. Eldad's book appeared towards 
 the end of the ninth century and became the Arabian Nights of 
 the Jews, and it had filtered down through the ages into the 
 Ansell garret, in common with many other tales from the rich 
 storehouse of mediaeval folk-lore in the diffusion of which the 
 wandering Jew has played so great a part. 
 
 Sometimes Moses read to his charmed hearers the description 
 of Heaven and Hell by Immanuel, the friend and contemporary 
 of Dante, sometimes a jargon version of Robinson Crusoe. To- 
 night he chose Eldad's account of the tribe of Moses dwelling 
 beyond the wonderful river, Sambatyon, which never flows on 
 the Sabbath. 
 
 " There is also the tribe of Moses, our just master, which is 
 called the tribe that flees, because it fled from idol worship and 
 clung to the fear of God. A river flows round their land for a 
 distance of four days' journey on every side. They dwell in 
 beautiful houses provided with handsome towers, which they 
 have built themselves. There is nothing unclean among them, 
 neither in the case of birds, venison nor domesticated animals ; 
 there are no wild animals, no flies, no foxes, no vermin, no ser- 
 pents, no dogs, and in general, nothing which does harm ; they 
 have only sheep and cattle, which bear twice a year. They sow 
 and reap; there are all' sorts of gardens, with all kinds of fmits 
 and cereals, viz. : beans, melons, gourds, onions, garlic, wheat and 
 barley, and the seed grows a hundred fold. They have faith; 
 they know the Law, the Mishnah, the Talmud and the Agadah ; 
 but their Talmud is in Hebrew. They introduce their sayings 
 in the name of the fathers, the wise men, who heard them 
 from the mouth of Joshua, who himself heard them from the 
 mouth of God. They have no knowledge of the Tanaim (doc- 
 tors of the Mishnah) and Amoraim (doctors of the Talmud), 
 who flourished during the time of the second Temple, which was, 
 of course, not known to these tribes. They speak only Hebrew, 
 and are very strict as regards the use of wine made by others 
 than themselves, as well as the rules of slaughtering animals ; in 
 this respect the La\y of Moses is much more rigorous than that of 
 
ESTHER AND HER CHfLDREN. 109 
 
 the Tribes. They do not swear by the name of God, for fear 
 that their breath may leave them, and they become angry with 
 those who swear ; they reprimand tliem, saying, ' Woe, ye poor, 
 why do you swear with the mention of the name of God upon 
 your lips? Use your mouth for eating bread and drinking water. 
 Do you not know that for the sin of swearing your children die 
 young ? ' And in this way they exhort every one to serve God 
 with fear and integrity of heart. Therefore, the children of 
 Moses, the servant of God, live long, to the age of loo or 120 
 years. No child, be it son or daughter, dies during the lifetime 
 of its parent, but they reach a third and a fourth generation, 
 and see grandchildren and great-grandchildren with their off- 
 spring. They do all field work themselves, having no male 
 or female servants; there are also merchants among them. 
 They do not close their houses at night, for there is no thief 
 nor any wicked man among them. Thus a little lad might go 
 for days with his flock without fear of robbers, demons or dan- 
 ger of any other kind; they are, indeed, all holy and clean. 
 These Levites busy themselves with the Law and with the com- 
 mandments, and they still live in the holiness of our master, 
 Moses ; therefore, God has given them all this good. Moreover, 
 they see nobody and nobody sees them, e.xcept the four tribes 
 who dwell on the other side of the rivers of Gush ; they see them 
 and speak to them, but the river Sambatyon is between them, as 
 it is said : ' That thou mayest say to prisoners. Go forth " (Isaiah 
 xlix., 9). They have plenty of gold and silver; they sow flax 
 and cultivate the crimson worm, and make beautiful garments. 
 Their number is double or four times the number that went out 
 from Egypt. 
 
 " The river Sambatyon is 200 yards broad — ' about as far as 
 a bowshot ' (Gen. xxi., 16), full of sand and stones, but without 
 water ; the stones make a great noise like the waves of the sea 
 and a stormy wind, so that in the night the noise is heard at 
 a distance of half a day^s journey. There are sources of water 
 which collect themselves in one pool, out of which they water 
 the fields. There are fish in it, and all kinds of clean birds fly 
 round it. And this river of stone and sand rolls during the six 
 
110 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 working days and rests on the Sabbath day. As soon as the 
 Sabbath begins fire surrounds the river and the flames remain 
 till the next evening, when the Sabbath ends. Thus no human 
 being can reach the river for a distance of half a mile on either 
 side; the fire consumes all that grows there. The four tribes, 
 Dan, Naphtali, Gad and Asher, stand on the borders of the 
 river. When shearing their flocks here, for the land is flat and 
 clean without any thorns, if the children of Moses see them 
 gathered together on the border they shout, saying, ' Brethren, 
 tribes of Jeshurun, show us your camels, dogs and asses,' and 
 they make their remarks about the length of the camel's neck 
 and the shortness of the tail. Then they greet one another and 
 go their way." 
 
 When this was done, Solomon called for Hell. He liked to 
 hear about the punishment of the sinners ; it gave a zest to life. 
 Moses hardly needed a book to tell them about Hell. It had 
 no secrets for him. The Old Testament has no reference to a 
 future existence, but the poor Jew has no more been able to live 
 without the hope of Hell than the poor Christian. When the 
 wicked man has waxed fat and kicked the righteous skinny man, 
 shall the two lie down in the same dust and the game be over? 
 Perish the thought! One of the Hells was that in which the 
 sinner was condemned to do over and over again the sins he 
 had done in life. 
 
 " Why, that must be jolly! " said Solomon. 
 
 " No, that is frightful," maintained Moses Ansell. He spoke 
 Yiddish, the children English. 
 
 "Of course, it is," said Esther. "Just fancy, Solomon, having 
 to eat toffy all day." 
 
 "It's better than eating nothing all day," replied Solomon. 
 
 "But to eat it every day for ever and ever!" said Moses. 
 " There's no rest for the wicked." 
 
 "What! Not even on the Sabbath?" said Esther. 
 
 " Oh, yes ; of course, then. Like the river Sambatyon, even 
 the flames of Hell rest on S/iabbosy 
 
 "Haven't they got no ^re-goyas f'' inquired Ikey, and every- 
 body laughed, 
 
ESTHER AND HER CHILDREN. Ill 
 
 " SJiabbos is a holiday in Hell," Moses explained to the little 
 one. " So thou seest the result of thy making out Sabbath too 
 early on Saturday night, thou sendest the poor souls back to 
 their tortures before the proper time." 
 
 Moses never lost an opportunity of enforcing the claims of the 
 ceremonial law. Esther had a vivid picture flashed upon her of 
 poor, yellow hook-shaped souls floating sullenly back towards the 
 flames. 
 
 Solomon's chief respect for his father sprang from the halo of 
 military service encircling Moses ever since it leaked out through 
 the lips of the Bube, that he had been a conscript in Russia and 
 been brutally treated by the sergeant. But Moses could not be 
 got to speak of his exploits. Solomon pressed him to do so, 
 especially when his father gave symptoms of inviting him to the 
 study of Rashi's Commentary. To-night Moses brought out a 
 Hebrew tome, and said, " Come, Solomon. Enough of stories. 
 We must learn a little." 
 
 " To-day is a holiday," grumbled Solomon. 
 
 "It is never a holiday for the study of the Law." 
 
 " Only this once, father; let's play draughts." 
 
 Moses weakly yielded. Draughts was his sole relaxation and 
 when Solomon acquired a draught board by barter his father 
 taught him the game. Moses played the Polish variety, in 
 which the men are like English kings that leap backwards and 
 forwards and the kings shoot diagonally across like bishops at 
 chess. Solomon could not withstand these gigantic grasshop- 
 pers, whose stopping places he could never anticipate. Moses 
 won every game to-night and was full of glee and told the Kinder 
 another story. It was about the Emperor Nicholas and is not 
 to be found in the official histories of Russia. 
 
 "Nicholas was a wicked king, who oppressed the Jews and 
 made their lives sore and bitter. And one day he made it 
 known to the Jews that if a million roubles were not raised for 
 him in a month's time they should be driven from their homes. 
 Then the Jews prayed unto God and besought him to help them 
 for the merits of the forefathers, but no help came. Then they 
 tried to bribe the officials, but the officials pocketed their gold 
 
112 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 and the Emperor still demanded his tax. Then they went to 
 the great Masters of Cabalah, who, by pondering day and night 
 on the name and its transmutations, had won the control of all 
 things, and they said, 'Can ye do naught for us?' Then the 
 Masters of Cabalah took counsel together and at midnight they 
 called up the spirits of Abraham our father, and Isaac and Jacob, 
 and Elijah the prophet, who wept to hear of their children's 
 sorrows. And Abraham our father, and Isaac and Jacob, and 
 Elijah the prophet took the bed whereon Nicholas the Emperor 
 slept and transported it to a wild place. And they took Nicho- 
 las the Emperor out of his warm bed and whipped him soundly 
 so that he yelled for mercy. Then they asked : ' Wilt thou re- 
 scind the edict against the Jews?' And he said M will.'' But 
 in the morning Nicholas the Emperor woke up and called for 
 the chief of the bed-chamber and said, ' How darest thou allow 
 my bed to be carried out in the middle of the night into the for- 
 est? ' And the chief of the bed-chamber grew pale and said that 
 the Emperor's guards had watched all night outside the door, 
 neither was there space for the bed to pass out. And Nicholas 
 the Emperor, thinking he had dreamed, let the man go unhung. 
 But the next night lo! the bed was transported again to the wild 
 place and Abraham our father, and Isaac and Jacob, and Elijah 
 the prophet drubbed him doubly and again he promised to remit 
 the tax. So in the morning the chief of the bed-chamber was 
 hanged and at night the guards were doubled. But the bed 
 sailed away to the wild place and Nicholas the Emperor was 
 trebly whipped. Then Nicholas the Emperor annulled the 
 edict and the Jews rejoiced and fell at the knees of the Masters 
 of Cabalah." 
 
 "But why can't they save the Jews altogether?" queried 
 Esther. 
 
 " Oh," said Moses mysteriously. " Cabalah is a great force 
 and must not be abused. The Holy Name must not be made 
 common. Moreover one might lose one's life." 
 
 "Could the Masters make men? " inquired Esther, who had 
 recently come across Frankenstein. 
 
 " Certainly," said Moses. "And what is more, it stands writ- 
 
DUTCH DEB BY. 113 
 
 ten that Reb Chanina and Reb Osheya fashioned a fine fat calf 
 on Friday and enjoyed it on the Sabbath."" 
 
 " Oh, father! '' said Solomon, piteously, " don't you know 
 Cabalah ? " 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 DUTCH DEBBY. 
 
 A YEAR before we got to know Esther Ansell she got to know 
 Dutch Debby and it changed her hfe. Dutch Debby was a tall 
 sallow ungainly girl who lived in the wee back room on the 
 second floor behind Mrs. Simons and supported herself and her 
 dog by needle-work. Nobody ever came to see her, for it was 
 whispered that her parents had cast her out when she presented 
 them with an illegitimate grandchild. The baby was fortunate 
 enough to die, but she still continued to incur suspicion by keep- 
 ing a dog, which is an un-Jewish trait. Bobby often squatted on 
 the stairs guarding her door and, as it was very dark on the 
 staircase, Esther suffered great agonies lest she should tread on 
 his tail and provoke reprisals. Her anxiety led her to do so one 
 afternoon and Bobby's teeth just penetrated through her stock- 
 ing. The clamor brought out Dutch Debby, who took the girl 
 into her room and soothed her. Esther had often wondered 
 what uncanny mysteries lay behind that dark dog-guarded door 
 and she was rather more afraid of Debby than of Bobby. 
 
 But that afternoon saw the beginning of a friendship which 
 added one to the many factors which were moulding the future 
 woman. For Debby turned out a very mild bogie, indeed, 
 with a good English vocabulary and a stock of old London 
 yonrnals, more precious to Esther than mines of Ind. Debby 
 kept them under the bed, which, as the size of the bed all but 
 coincided with the area of the room, was a wise arrangement. 
 And on the long summer evenings and the Sunday afternoons 
 when her little ones needed no looking after and were traipsing 
 about playing " whoop! " and pussy-cat in the street downstairs, 
 Esther slipped into the wee back room, where the treasures lay, 
 and there, by the open window, overlooking the dingy back yard 
 
114 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 and the slanting perspectives of sun-flecked red tiles where cats 
 prowled and dingy sparrows hopped, in an atmosphere laden 
 with whiffs from a neighboring dairyman^s stables, Esther lost 
 herself in wild tales of passion and romance. She frequently 
 read them aloud for the benefit of the sallow-faced needle- 
 woman, who had found romance square so sadly with the reali- 
 ties of her own existence. And so all a summer afternoon, 
 Dutch Debby and Esther would be rapt away to a world of 
 brave men and fair women, a world of fine linen and purple, of 
 champagne and wickedness and cigarettes, a world where nobody 
 w^orked or washed shirts or was hungry or had holes in boots, a 
 world utterly ignorant of Judaism and the heinousness of eating 
 meat with butter. Not that Esther for her part correlated her 
 conception of this world with facts. She never realized that it 
 was an actually possible world — never indeed asked herself 
 whether it existed outside print or not. She never thought of 
 it in that way at all, any more than it ever occurred to her that 
 people once spoke the Hebrew she learned to read and translate. 
 " Bobby '^ was often present at these readings, but he kept his 
 thoughts to himself, sitting on his hind legs with his delight- 
 fully ugly nose tilted up inquiringly at Esther. For the best of 
 all this new friendship was that Bobby was not jealous. He 
 was only a sorry dun-colored mongrel to outsiders, but Esther 
 learned to see him almost through Dutch Debby^s eyes. And 
 she could run up the stairs freely, knowing that if she trod on 
 his tail now, he would take it as a mark of camaraderie. 
 
 " I used to pay a penny a week for the London yoiirnal^'^ said 
 Debby early in their acquaintanceship, " till one day I discovered 
 I had a dreadful bad memory." 
 
 "And what was the good of that?" said Esther. 
 
 "Why, it was worth shillings and shillings to me. You see 
 I used to save up all the back numbers of the London Journal 
 because of the answers to correspondents, telling you how to 
 do your hair and trim your nails and give yourself a nice com- 
 plexion. I used to bother my head about that sort of thing in 
 those days, dear ; and one day I happened to get reading a 
 story in a back number only about a year old and I found I was 
 
DUTCH DEB BY. 115 
 
 just as interested as if I had never read it before and I hadnH 
 the slightest remembrance of it. After that I left oif buying 
 the Journal ■B.wdi. took to reading my big heap of back numbers. 
 I get through them once every two years." Debby interrupted 
 herself with a fit of coughing, for lengthy monologue is inad- 
 visable for persons W'ho bend over needle-work in dark back 
 rooms. Recovering herself, she added, "And then I start 
 afresh. You couldn't do that, could you? " 
 
 " No," admitted Esther, with a painful feeling of inferiority. 
 " I remember all IVe ever read." 
 
 " Ah, you will grow up a clever woman! " said Debby, patting 
 her hair. 
 
 "Oh, do you think so?" said Esther, her dark eyes lighting 
 up with pleasure. 
 
 " Oh yes, you're always first in your class, ain't you ? " 
 
 "Is that what you judge by, Debby?" said Esther, disap- 
 pointed. " The other girls are so stupid and take no thought 
 for anything but their hats and their frocks. They would rather 
 play gobs or shuttlecock or hopscotch than read about the 
 ' Forty Thieves.' They don't mind being kept a whole year in 
 one class but I — oh, I feel so mad at getting on so slow. I 
 could easily learn the standard work in three months. I want 
 to know everything — so that I can grow up to be a teacher at 
 our school.'^ 
 
 "And does your teacher know everything? " 
 
 " Oh yes ! She knows the meaning of every word and all 
 about foreign countries." 
 
 "And would you like to be a teacher?" 
 
 " If I could only be clever enough ! " sighed Esther. " But 
 then you see the teachers at our school are real ladies and 
 they dress, oh, so beautifully ! With fur tippets and six-button 
 gloves. I could never afford it, for even when I was earning 
 five shillings a week I should have to give most of it to father 
 and the children." 
 
 " But if you're very good — I dare say some of the great ladies 
 like the Rothschilds will buy you nice clothes. I have heard 
 they are very good to clever children." 
 
116 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 " No, then the other teachers would know I was getting 
 charity ! And they would mock at me. I heard Miss Hyams 
 make fun of a teacher because she wore the same dress as last 
 winter. I don't think I should hke to be a teacher after all, 
 though it is nice to be able to stand with your back to the fire 
 in the winter. The girls would know — " Esther stopped and 
 blushed. 
 
 " Would know what, dear?" 
 
 "Well, they would know father/' said Esther in low tones. 
 " They would see him selling things in the Lane and they 
 wouldn't do what I told them." 
 
 " Nonsense, Esther. I believe most of the teachers' fathers 
 are just as bad — I mean as poor. Look at Miss Hyams's own 
 father." 
 
 " Oh Debby ! I do hope that's true. Besides when I was earn- 
 ing five shillings a week, I could buy father a new coat, couldn't 
 I ? And then there would be no need for him to stand in the 
 Lane with lemons or ' four-corner fringes,' would there ? " 
 
 " No, dear. You shall be a teacher, I prophesy, and who 
 knows ? Some day you may be Head Mistress ! " 
 
 Esther laughed a startled little laugh of delight, with a sus- 
 picion of a sob in it. "What ! Me ! Me go round and make 
 all the teachers do their work. Oh, wouldn't I catch them £05- 
 siping ! I know their tricks ! " 
 
 "You seem to look after your teacher well. Do you ever call 
 her over the coals for gossiping ? " inquired Dutch Debby, 
 amused. 
 
 " No, no," protested Esther quite seriously. " I like to hear 
 them gossiping. When my teacher and Miss Davis, who's in 
 the next room, and a few other teachers get together, I learn — 
 Oh such a lot ! — from their conversation." 
 
 " Then they do teach you after all," laughed Debby. 
 
 " Yes, but it's not on the Time Table," said Esther, shaking her 
 little head sapiently. " It's mostly about young men. Did you 
 ever have a young man, Debby ? " 
 
 " Don't — don't ask such questions, child ! " Debby bent over 
 her needle-work. 
 
DUTCH DEB BY. 117 
 
 " Why not ? " persisted Esther. " If I only had a young man 
 when I grew up, I should be proud of him. Yes, youVe trying 
 to turn your head away. Pm sure you had. Was he nice like 
 Lord Eversmonde or Captain Andrew Sinclair ? Why you're 
 crying, Debby! " 
 
 "Don't be a little fool, Esther! A tiny fly has just flown into 
 my eye — poor little thing ! He hurts me and does himself no 
 good." 
 
 " Let me see, Debby," said Esther. " Perhaps I shall be in 
 time to save him." 
 
 "No, don't trouble." 
 
 " Don't be so cruel, Debby. You're as bad as Solomon, who 
 pulls off flies' wings to see if they can fly without them." 
 
 "He's dead now. Go on with 'Lady Ann's Rival;' we've 
 been wasting the whole afternoon talking. Take my advice, 
 Esther, and don't stuff your head with ideas about young men. 
 You're too young. Now, dear, Pm ready. Go on." 
 
 "Where was I? Oh yes. ' Lord Eversmonde folded the fair 
 young form to his manly bosom and pressed kiss after kiss 
 upon her ripe young lips, which responded passionately to his 
 own. At last she recovered herself and cried reproachfully, Oh 
 Sigismund, why do you persist in coming here, when the Duke 
 forbids it ? ' Oh, do you know, Debby, father said the other day 
 I oughtn't to come here ? " 
 
 " Oh no, you must," cried Debby impulsively. " I couldn't 
 part with you now." 
 
 "Father says people say you are not good," said Esther 
 candidly. 
 
 Debby breathed painfully. "Well !" she whispered. 
 
 " But I said people were liars. You are good ! " 
 
 " Oh, Esther, Esther ! " sobbed Debby, kissing the earnest 
 little face with a vehemence that surprised the child. 
 
 "I think father only said that," Esther went on, "because he 
 fancies I neglect Sarah and Isaac when he's at Shool and they 
 quarrel so about their birthdays when they're together. But 
 they don't slap one another hard. Pll tell you what ! Suppose 
 I bring Sarah down here ! " 
 
118 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 "Well, but won't she cry and be miserable here, if you read, 
 and with no Isaac to play with?" 
 
 " Oh no/' said Esther confidently. " She'll keep Bobby 
 company." 
 
 Bobby took kindly to little Sarah also. He knew no other 
 dogs and in such circumstances a sensible animal falls back on 
 human beings. He had first met Debby herself quite casually 
 and the two lonely beings took to each other. Before that 
 meeting Dutch Debby was subject to wild temptations. Once 
 she half starved herself and put aside ninepence a week for 
 almost three months and purchased one-eighth of a lottery 
 ticket from Sugarman the SJiadchan, who recognized her exist- 
 ence for the occasion. The fortune did not come off. 
 
 Debby saw less and less of Esther as the months crept on 
 again towards winter, for the little girl feared her hostess might 
 feel constrained to offer her food, and the children required 
 more soothing. Esther would say very little about her home 
 life, though Debby got to know a great deal about her school- 
 mates and her teacher. 
 
 One summer evening after Esther had passed into the hands 
 of Miss Miriam Hyams she came to Dutch Debby with a grave 
 face and said : " Oh, Debby, Miss Hyams is not a heroine." 
 
 " No ? " said Debby, amused. " You were so charmed with 
 her at first." 
 
 " Yes, she is very pretty and her hats are lovely. But she is 
 not a heroine." 
 
 "Why, what's happened?" 
 
 " You know what lovely weather it's been all day ? " 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " Well, this morning all in the middle of the Scripture les- 
 son, she said to us, ' What a pity, girls, we've got to stay cooped 
 up here this bright weather' — you know she chats to us so 
 nicely — ' in some schools they have half-holidays on Wednes- 
 day afternoons in the summer. Wouldn't it be nice if we 
 could have them and be out in the sunshine in Victoria 
 Park?' 'Hoo, yes, teacher, wouldn't that be jolly?' we all 
 cried. Then teacher said : ' Well, why not ask the Head 
 
DUTCH DEB BY. 119 
 
 Mistress for a holiday tliis afternoon? YouVe the highest 
 standard in the school — I dare say if you ask for it, the whole 
 school will get a holiday. Who will be spokes-woman?' Then 
 all the girls said I must be because I was the first girl in the 
 class and sounded all my h's, and when the Head Mistress 
 came into the room I up and curtseyed and asked her if we 
 could have a holiday this afternoon on account of the beautiful 
 sunshine. Then the Head Mistress put on her eye-glasses and 
 her face grew black and the sunshine seemed to go out of the 
 room. And she said ' What ! After all the holidays we have 
 here, a month at New Year and a fortnight at Passover, and all 
 the fast-days ! I am surprised that you girls should be so lazy 
 and idle and ask for more. Why don't you take example by 
 your teacher? Look at Miss Hyams.'' We all looked at Miss 
 Hyams, but she was looking for some papers in her desk. 
 'Look how Miss Hyams works!' said the Head Mistress. 
 ' She never grumbles, she never asks for a holiday ! ' We all 
 looked again at Miss Hyams, but she hadn't yet found the 
 papers. There was an awful silence ; you could have heard 
 a pin drop. There wasn't a single cough or rustle of a dress. 
 Then the Head Mistress turned to me and she said : '■ And you, 
 Esther Ansell, whom I always thought so highly of, I'm surprised 
 at your being the ringleader in such a disgraceful request. You 
 ought to know better. I shall bear it in mind, Esther Ansell.' 
 With that she sailed out, stiff and straight as a poker, and 
 the door closed behind her with a bang." 
 
 "Well, and what did Miss Hyams say then?" asked Debby, 
 deeply interested. 
 
 " She said : ' Selina Green, and what did Moses do when the 
 Children of Israel gRimbled for water?' She just went on with 
 the Scripture lesson, as if nothing had happened." 
 
 " I should tell the Head Mistress who sent me on," cried 
 Debby indignantly. 
 
 " Oh, no," said Esther shaking her head. " That would be 
 mean. It's a matter for her own conscience. Oh, but I do 
 wish," she concluded, " we had had a holiday. It would have 
 been so lovely out in the Park." 
 
120 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 Victoria Park was the Park to the Ghetto. A couple of miles 
 off, far enough to make a visit to it an excursion, it was a per- 
 petual blessing to the Ghetto. On rare Sunday afternoons the 
 Ansell family minus the Bube toiled there and back en ?nasse, 
 Moses carrying Isaac and Sarah by turns upon his shoulder. 
 Esther loved the Park in all weathers, but best of all in the 
 summer, when the great lake was bright and busy with boats, 
 and the birds twittered in the leafy trees and the lobelias and 
 calceolarias were woven into wonderful patterns by the garden- 
 ers. Then she would throw herself down on the thick grass and 
 look up in mystic rapture at the brooding blue sky and forget to 
 read the book she had brought with her, while the other chil- 
 dren chased one another about in savage delight. Only once 
 on a Saturday afternoon when her father w^as not with them, did 
 she get Dutch Debby to break through her retired habits and 
 accompany them, and then it was not summer but late autumn. 
 There was an indefinable melancholy about the sere landscape. 
 Russet refuse strewed the paths and the gaunt trees waved flesh- 
 less arms in the breeze. The November haze rose from the 
 moist ground and dulled the blue of heaven with smoky clouds 
 amid which the sun, a red sailless boat, floated at anchor among 
 golden and crimson furrows and glimmering far-dotted fleeces. 
 The small lake was slimy, reflecting the trees on its borders as a 
 network of dirty branches. A solitary swan ruffled its plumes 
 and elongated its throat, doubled in quivering outlines beneath 
 the muddy surface. All at once the splash of oars was heard and 
 the sluggish waters were stirred by the passage of a boat in 
 which a heroic young man was rowing a no less heroic young, 
 woman. 
 
 Dutch Debby burst into tears and went home. After that she 
 fell back entirely on Bobby and Esther and the London Journal 
 and never even saved up nine shillings again. 
 
A SILENT FAMILY. 121 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 A SILENT FAMILY. 
 
 SuGARMAN the Shadchan arrived one evening a few days 
 before Purim at the tiny two-storied house in which Esther's 
 teacher lived, with Httle Nehemiah tucked under his arm. 
 Nehemiah wore shoes and short red socks. The rest of his 
 legs was bare. Sugarman always carried him so as to demon- 
 strate this fact. Sugarman himself was rigged out in a hand- 
 some manner, and the day not being holy, his blue bandanna 
 peeped out from his left coat-tail, instead of being tied round his 
 trouser band. 
 
 "Good morning, marm,'' he said cheerfully. 
 
 "Good morning, Sugarman," said Mrs. Hyams. 
 
 She was a little careworn old woman of si.xty with white hair. 
 Had she been more pious her hair would never have turned 
 gray. But Miriam had long since put her veto on her mother's 
 black wig. Mrs. Hyams was a meek, weak person and submitted 
 in silence to the outrage on her deepest instincts. Old Hyams 
 was stronger, but not strong enough. He, too, was a silent 
 person. 
 
 " P'raps you're surprised," said Sugarman, " to get a call from 
 me in my sealskin vest-coat. But de fact is, marm, I put it on 
 to call on a lady. I only dropped in here on my vay." 
 
 "Won't you take a chair?" said Mrs. Hyams. She spoke 
 English painfully and slowly, having been schooled by Miriam. 
 
 " No, I'm not tired. But I vill put Nechemyah down on one, 
 if you permit. Dere! Sit still or I potch you! P'raps you could 
 lend me your corkscrew." 
 
 " With pleasure," said Mrs. Hyams. 
 
 " I dank you. You see my boy, Ebenezer, is Barmitzvah 
 next Shabbos a veek, and I may not be passing again. You vill 
 come?" 
 
 " I don't know," said Mrs. Hyams hesitatingly. She was not 
 
122 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 certain whether Miriam considered Sugarman on their visiting 
 list. 
 
 " Don't say dat. I expect to open dirteen bottles of lemonade! 
 You must come, you and Mr. Hyams and the whole family.'" 
 
 "Thank you, I will tell Miriam and Daniel and my hus- 
 band." 
 
 " Dat's right. Nechemyah, don't dance on de good lady's 
 chair. Did you hear, Mrs. Hyams, of Mrs. Jonas's luck?" 
 
 " No." 
 
 " I won her eleven pounds on the lotter*?^." 
 
 "How nice," said Mrs. Hyams, a little fluttered. 
 
 "I would let you have half a ticket for two pounds." 
 
 "I haven't the money." 
 
 " Veil, dirty-six shillings! Dere! I have to pay dat myself." 
 
 " I would if I could, but I can't." 
 
 " But you can have an eighth for nine shillings." 
 
 Mrs. Hyams shook her head hopelessly. 
 
 " How is your son Daniel?" Sugarman asked. 
 
 "Pretty well, thank you. How is your wife?" 
 
 " Tank Gawd ! " 
 
 "And your Bessie?" 
 
 "Tank Gawd! Is your Daniel in?" 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 "Tank Gawd! I mean, can I see him?" 
 
 "It won't do any good." 
 
 " No, not dat," said Sugarman. " I should like to ask him to 
 de Confirmation myself." 
 
 "Daniel! " called Mrs. Hyams. 
 
 He came from the back yard in rolled-up shirt-sleeves, soap- 
 suds drying on his arms. He was a pleasant-faced, flaxen-haired 
 young fellow, the junior of Miriam by eighteen months. There 
 was will in the lower part of the face and tenderness in the eyes. 
 
 " Good morning, sir," said Sugarman. " My Ebenezer is Bar- 
 viitzvah next Shabbos week ; vill you do me the honor to drop 
 in wid your moder and fader after Shoolf'' 
 
 Daniel crimsoned suddenly. He had "No" on his lips, but 
 suppressed it and ultimately articulated it in some polite periph- 
 
A SILENT FAMILY. 123 
 
 rasis. His mother noticed the crimson. On a blonde face it 
 tells. 
 
 " Don't say dat," said Sugarman. " I expect to open dirteen 
 bottles of lemonade. I have lent your good moderns corkscrew." 
 
 " I shall be pleased to send Ebenezer a little present, but I 
 can't come, I really can't. You must excuse me.'' Daniel turned 
 away. 
 
 " Veil," said Sugarman, anxious to assure him he bore no 
 malice. " If you send a present I reckon it de same as if you 
 come." 
 
 "That's all right," said Daniel with strained heartiness. 
 
 Sugarman tucked Nehemiah under his arm but lingered on 
 the threshold. He did not know how to broach the subject. 
 But the inspiration came. 
 
 " Do you know I have summonsed Morris Kerlinski ? " 
 
 " No," said Daniel. " What for ? " 
 
 "He owes me dirty shillings. I found him a very fine maiden, 
 but, now he is married, he says it was only worth a suvran. He 
 offered it me but I vouldn't take it. A poor man he vas, too, 
 and got ten pun from a marriage portion society." 
 
 " Is it worth while bringing a scandal on the community for 
 the sake of ten shillings? It will be in all the papers, and SJiad- 
 chan will be spelt shatcan, shodkin, shatkin, chodcan, shotgun, 
 and goodness knows what else." 
 
 "Yes, but it isn't ten shillings," said Sugarman. "It's dirty 
 shillings.'' 
 
 " But you say he offered you a sovereign." 
 
 " So he did. He arranged for two pun ten. I took the 
 suvran — but not in full payment." 
 
 " You ought to settle it before the Beth-din," said Daniel ve- 
 hemently, "or get some Jew to arbitrate. You make the Jews a 
 laughing-stock. It is true all marriages depend on money," he 
 added bitterly, " only it is the fashion of police court reporters to 
 pretend the custom is limited to the Jews." 
 
 " Veil, I did go to Reb Shemuel," said Sugarman " I dought 
 he'd be the very man to arbitrate." 
 
 "Why? "asked Daniel. 
 
124 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 "Vy? Hasn't \\^ h^itvv z. Shadchati himself? From who else 
 shall we look for sympaty ? " 
 
 " I see," said Daniel smiling a little. " And apparently you 
 got none." 
 
 "No," said Sugarman, growing wToth at the recollection. 
 " He said ve are not in Poland." 
 
 " Quite true." 
 
 "Yes, but I gave him an answer he didn't like," said Sugar- 
 man. " I said, and ven ve are not in Poland mustn't ve keep 
 none of our religion ? " 
 
 His tone changed from indignation to insinuation. 
 
 " Vy vill you not let me get you a vife, Mr. Hyams? I have 
 several extra fine maidens in my eye. Come now, don't look so 
 angry. How much commission vill you give me if I find you a 
 maiden vid a hundred pound? " 
 
 "The maiden!" thundered Daniel. Then it dawned upon 
 him that he had said a humorous thing and he laughed. There 
 was merriment as well as mysticism in Daniel's blue eyes. 
 
 But Sugarman went away, down-hearted. Love is blind, and 
 even marriage-brokers may be myopic. Most people not con- 
 cerned knew that Daniel Hyams was "sweet on '^ Sugarman's 
 Bessie. And it was so. Daniel loved Bessie, and Bessie loved 
 Daniel. Only Bessie did not speak because she was a woman 
 and Daniel did not speak because he was a man. They were a 
 quiet family — the Hyamses. They all bore their crosses in 
 a silence unbroken even at home. Miriam herself, the least reti- 
 cent, did not give the impression that she could not have hus- 
 bands for the winking. Her demands were so high — that was 
 all. Daniel was proud of her and her position and her clever- 
 ness and was confident she w^ould marry as well as she dressed. 
 He did not expect her to contribute towards the expenses of the 
 household — though she did — for he felt he had broad shoul- 
 ders. He bore his father and mother on those shoulders, semi- 
 invalids both. In the bold bad years of shameless poverty, 
 Hyams had been a wandering metropolitan glazier, but this open 
 degradation became intolerable as Miriam's prospects improved. 
 It was partly for her sake that Daniel ultimately supported his 
 
A SILENT FAMILY. 125 
 
 parents in idleness and refrained from speaking to Bessie. For 
 he was only an employe in a fancy-goods warehouse, and on forty- 
 five shillings a week you cannot keep up two respectable estab- 
 lishments. 
 
 Bessie was a bonnie girl and could not in the nature of things 
 be long uncaught. There was a certain night on which Daniel 
 did not sleep — hardly a white night as our French neighbors 
 say ; a tear-stained night rather. In the morning he was resolved 
 to deny himself Bessie. Peace would be his' instead. If it did 
 not come immediately he knew it was on the way. For once be- 
 fore he had struggled and been so rewarded. That was in his 
 eighteenth year when he awoke to the glories of free thought, and 
 knew himself a victim to the Moloch of the Sabbath, to which 
 fathers sacrifice their children. The proprietor of the fancy 
 goods was a Jew, and moreover closed on Saturdays. But for 
 this anachronism of keeping Saturday holy when you had Sun- 
 day also to laze on, Daniel felt a hundred higher careers would 
 have been open to him. Later, when free thought waned (it was 
 after Daniel had met Bessie), although he never returned to his 
 father's narrowness, he found the abhorred Sabbath sanctifying 
 his life. It made life a conscious voluntary sacrifice to an ideal, 
 and the reward was a touch of consecration once a week. Dan- 
 iel could not have described these things, nor did he speak of 
 them, which was a pity. Once and once only in the ferment of 
 free thought he had uncorked his soul, and it had run over with 
 much froth, and thenceforward old Mendel Hyams and Beenah, 
 his wife, opposed more furrowed foreheads to a world too strong 
 for them. If Daniel had taken back his words and told them 
 he was happier for the ruin they had made of his prospects, 
 their gait might not have been so listless. But he was a silent 
 man. 
 
 "You will go to Sugarman's, mother," he said now. "You 
 and father. Don't mind that I'm not going. I have another 
 appointment for the afternoon." 
 
 It was a superfluous lie for so silent a man. 
 
 " He doesn't like to be seen with us," Beenah Hyams thought. 
 But she was silent. 
 
126 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 " He has never forgiven my putting him to the fancy goods," 
 thought Mendel Hyams when told. But he was silent. 
 
 It was of no good discussing it with his wife. Those two had 
 rather halved their joys than their sorrows. They had been 
 married forty years and had never had an intimate moment. 
 Their marriage had been a matter of contract. Forty years 
 ago, in Poland, Mendel Hyams had awoke one morning to find 
 a face he had never seen before on the pillow beside his. Not 
 even on the wedding-day had he been allowed a glimpse of his 
 bride's countenance. That was the custom of the country and 
 the time. Beenah bore her husband four children, of whom 
 the elder two died ; but the marriage did not beget affection, 
 often the inverse offspring of such unions. Beenah was a duti- 
 ful housewife and Mendel Hyams supported her faithfully so 
 Ions: as his children would let him. Love never flew out of the 
 window for he was never in the house. They did not talk to 
 each other much. Beenah did the housework unaided by the 
 sprig of a servant who was engaged to satisfy the neighbors. 
 In his enforced idleness Mendel fell back on his religion, almost 
 a profession in itself They were a silent couple. 
 
 At sixty there is not much chance of a forty year old silence 
 being broken on this side of the grave. So far as his personal 
 happiness was concerned, Mendel had only one hope left in the 
 world — to, die in Jerusalem. His feeling for Jerusalem was 
 unique. All the hunted Jew in him combined with all the bat- 
 tered man to transfigure Zion with the splendor of sacred dreams 
 and girdle it with the rainbows that are builded of bitter tears. 
 And with it all a dread that if he were buried elsewhere, when 
 the last trump sounded he would have to roll under the earth 
 and under the sea to Jerusalem, the rendezvous of resurrection. 
 
 Every year at the Passover table he gave his hope voice : 
 "Next year in Jerusalem.''' In her deepest soul Miriam echoed 
 this wish of his. She felt she could like him better at a distance. 
 Beenah Hyams had only one hope left in the world — to die. 
 
THE PURIM BALL. 127 
 
 CHAPTER XI, 
 
 THE PURIM BALL. 
 
 Sam Levine duly returned for the Purim ball. Malka was 
 away and so it was safe to arrive on the Sabbath. Sam and 
 Leah called for Hannah in a cab, for the pavements were un- 
 favorable to dancing shoes, and the three drove to the " Club/' 
 which was not a sixth of a mile off. 
 
 "The Club" was the People's Palace of the Ghetto; but that 
 it did not reach the bed-rock of the inhabitants was sufficiently 
 evident from the fact that its language was English. ^ The very 
 lowest stratum was of secondary formation — the children of 
 immigrants — while the highest touched the lower middle-class, 
 on the mere fringes of the Ghetto. It was a happy place where 
 young men and maidens met on equal terms and similar sub- 
 scriptions, where billiards and flirtations and concerts and laugh- 
 ter and gay gossip were always on, and lemonade and cakes 
 never off; a heaven where marriages were made, books borrowed 
 and newspapers read. Muscular Judaism was well to the fore at 
 "the Club," and entertainments were frequent. The middle 
 classes of the community, overflowing with artistic instinct, sup- 
 plied a phenomenal number of reciters, vocalists and instrumen- 
 talists ready to oblige, and the greatest favorites of the London 
 footlights were pleased to come down, partly because they found 
 such keenly appreciative audiences, and partly because they were 
 so much mixed up with the race, both professionally and socially. 
 There were serious lectures now and again, but few of the mem- 
 bers took them seriously ; they came to the Club not to improve 
 their minds but to relax them. The Club was a blessing with- 
 out disguise to the daughters of Judah, and certainly kept their 
 brothers from harm. The ball-room, with its decorations of 
 evergreens and winter blossoms, was a gay sight. Most of the 
 dancers were in evening dress, and it would have been impos- 
 sible to tell the ball from a Belgravian gathering, except by the 
 
128 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 preponderance of youth and beauty. Where could you match 
 such a bevy of brunettes, where find such blondes ? They were 
 anything but lymphatic, these oriental blondes, if their eyes did 
 not sparkle so intoxicatingly as those of the darker majority. 
 The young men had carefully curled moustaches and ringlets 
 oiled like the Assyrian bull, and figure-six noses, and studs glit- 
 tering on their creamy shirt-fronts. How they did it on their 
 wages was one of the many miracles of Jewish history. For 
 socially and even in most cases financially they were only on the 
 level of the Christian artisan. These young men in dress-coats 
 were epitomes of one aspect of Jewish history. Not in every 
 respect improvements on the " Sons of the Covenant," though ; 
 replacing the primitive manners and the piety of the foreign Jew 
 by a veneer of cheap culture and a laxity of ceremonial observ- 
 ance. It was a merry party, almost like a family gathering, 
 not merely because most of the dancers knew one another, but 
 because "all Israel are brothers'' — and sisters. They danced 
 very buo3'antly, not boisterously ; the square dances symmet- 
 rically executed, every performer knowing his part ; the waltzing 
 full of rhythmic grace. When the music was popular they ac- 
 companied it on their voices. After supper their heels grew 
 lighter, and the laughter and gossip louder, but never beyond 
 the bounds of decorimi. A few Dutch dancers tried to intro- 
 duce the more gymnastic methods in vogue in their own clubs. 
 
 where the kangaroo is dancing master, but the sentiment of the 
 floor was against them. Hannah danced little, a voluntary wall- 
 flower, for she looked radiant in tussore silk, and there was an 
 air of refinement about the slight, pretty girl that attracted the 
 beaux of the Club. But she only gave a duty dance to Sam, and 
 a waltz to Daniel Hyams, who had been brought by his sister, 
 though he did not boast a swallow-tail to match her flowing 
 draperies. Hannah caught a rather unamiable glance from pretty 
 Bessie Sugarman, whom poor Daniel was trying hard not to see 
 in the crush. 
 
 "Is your sister engaged yet?" Hannah asked, for want of 
 something to say. 
 
 "You would know it if she was," said Daniel, looking so 
 
THE PURIM BALL. 129 
 
 troubled that Hannah reproached herself for the meaningless 
 remark. 
 
 " How well she dances ! " she made haste to say. 
 
 " Not better than you," said Daniel, gallantly. 
 
 " I see compliments are among the fancy goods you deal in. 
 Do you reverse .'' " she added, as they came to an awkward 
 corner. 
 
 "Yes — but not my compliments," he said smiling. "Miriam 
 taught me." 
 
 " She makes me think of Miriam dancing by the Red Sea," 
 she said, laughing at the incongmous idea. 
 
 "She played a timbrel, though, didn't she?" he asked. "I 
 confess I don't quite know what a timbrel is." 
 
 "A sort of tambourine, I suppose," said Hannah merrily, "and 
 she sang because the children of Israel were saved." 
 
 They both laughed heartily, but when the waltz was over they 
 returned to their individual gloom. Towards supper-time, in the 
 middle of a square dance, Sam suddenly noticing Hannah's soli- 
 tude, brought her a tall bronzed gentlemanly young man in a 
 frock coat, mumbled an introduction and rushed back to the 
 arms of the exacting Leah. 
 
 "Excuse me, I am not dancing to-night," Hannah said coldly 
 in reply to the stranger's demand for her programme. 
 
 " Well, I'm not half sorry," he said, with a frank smile. " I 
 had to ask you, you know. But I should feel quite out of place 
 bumping such a lot of swells." 
 
 There w'as something unusual about the words and the man- 
 ner which impressed Hannah agreeably, in spite of herself. Her 
 face relaxed a little as she said : 
 
 "Why, haven't you been to one of these affairs before?" 
 
 " Oh yes, six or seven years ago, but the place seems quite 
 altered. They've rebuilt it, haven't they? Very few of us 
 sported dress-coats here in the days before I went to the Cape. 
 I only came back the other day and somebody gave me a ticket 
 and so I've looked in for auld lang syne." 
 
 An unsympathetic hearer would have detected a note of con- 
 descension in the last sentence. Hannah detected it, for the 
 
 K 
 
130 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 announcement that the young man had returned from the Cape 
 froze all her nascent sympathy. She was turned to ice again. 
 Hannah knew him well — the young man from the Cape. He 
 was a higher and more disagreeable development of the young 
 man in the dress-coat. He had put South African money in his 
 purse — whether honestly or not, no one inquired — the fact re- 
 mained he had put it in his purse. Sometimes the law confis- 
 cated it, pretending he had purchased diamonds illegally, or 
 what not, but then the young man did not return from the Cape. 
 But, to do him justice, the secret of his success was less dis- 
 honesty than the opportunities for initiative energy in unex- 
 ploited districts. Besides, not having to keep up appearances, 
 he descended to menial occupations and toiled so long and terri- 
 bly that he would probably have made just as much money at 
 home, if he had had the courage. Be this as it may, there the 
 money was ; and, armed with it, the young man set sail literally 
 for England, home and beauty ; resuming his cast-off gentility 
 with several extra layers of superciliousness. Pretty Jewesses, 
 pranked in their prettiest clothes, hastened, metaphorically 
 speaking, to the port to welcome the wanderer ; for they knew 
 it was from among them he would make his pick. There were 
 several varieties of him — marked by financial ciphers — but 
 whether he married in his old station or higher up the scale, he 
 was always faithful to the sectarian tradition of the race, and this 
 less from religious motives than from hereditary instinct. Like 
 the young man in the dress-coat, he held the Christian girl to be 
 cold of heart, and unsprightly of temperament. He laid it down 
 that all Yiddishe girls possessed that warmth and chic which, 
 among Christians, were the birthright of a few actresses and 
 music-hall artistes — themselves, probably, Jewesses ! And on 
 things theatrical this young man spoke as one having authority. 
 Perhaps, though he was scarce conscious of it, at the bottom of 
 his repulsion was the certainty that the Christian girl could not 
 fry fish. She might be delightful for flirtation of all degrees, 
 but had not been formed to make him permanently happy. Such 
 was the conception which Hannah had formed for herself of 
 the young man from the Cape. This latest specimen of the 
 
THE PURIM BALL. 131 
 
 genus was prepossessing into the bargain. There was no deny- 
 ing he was well built, with a shapely head and a lovely mous- 
 tache. Good looks alone were vouchers for insolence and 
 conceit, but, backed by the aforesaid purse — ! She turned 
 her head away and stared at the evolutions of the " Lancers " 
 with much interest. 
 
 " TheyVe got some pretty girls in that set," he observed 
 admiringly. Evidently the young man did not intend to go 
 away. 
 
 Hannah felt very annoyed. " Yes," she said, sharply, "which 
 would you like ? " 
 
 " I shouldn't care to make invidious distinctions," he replied 
 with a little laugh. 
 
 "Odious prig!" thought Hannah. ''He actually doesn''t see 
 Fm sitting on him!" Aloud she said, "No? But you can't 
 marry them all." 
 
 "Why should I marry any?" he asked in the same light 
 tone, though there was a shade of surprise in it. 
 
 "Haven't you come back to England to get a wife? Most 
 young men do, when they don't have one exported to them 
 in Africa." 
 
 He laughed with genuine enjoyment and strove to catch the 
 answering gleam in her eyes, but she kept them averted. They 
 were standing with their backs to the wall and he could only see 
 the profile and note the graceful poise of the head upon the 
 warm-colored neck that stood out against the white bodice. 
 The frank ring of his laughter mixed with the merry jingle of the 
 fifth figure — 
 
 "Well, I'm afraid I'm going to be an exception," he said. 
 
 "You think nobody good enough, perhaps," she could not 
 help saying. 
 
 " Oh! Why should you think that ? " 
 
 " Perhaps you're married already." 
 
 "Oh no, I'm not," he said earnestly. "You're not, either, 
 are you? " 
 
 "Me? " she asked ; then, with a barely perceptible pause, she 
 said, " Of course 1 am." 
 
132 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 The thought of posing as the married woman she theoretically 
 was, flashed upon her suddenly and appealed irresistibly to 
 her sense of fun. The recollection that the nature of the 
 ring on her finger was concealed by her glove afforded her 
 supplementary amusement. 
 
 "Oh!" was all he said. "I didn't catch your name 
 exactly.'" 
 
 " I didn''t catch yours,"" she replied evasively. 
 
 "David Brandon,"' he said readily. 
 
 "It^s a pretty name," she said, turning smilingly to him. 
 The infinite possibilities of making fun of him latent in the 
 joke quite warmed her towards him. " How unfortunate for me 
 I have destroyed my chance of getting it." 
 
 It was the first time she had smiled, and he liked the play of 
 light round the curves of her mouth, amid the shadows of the 
 soft dark skin, in the black depths of the eyes. 
 
 " How unfortunate for me ! " he said, smiling in return. 
 
 "Oh yes, of course! " she said with a little toss of her head. 
 " There is no danger in saying that now." 
 
 " I wouldn't care if there was." 
 
 "It is easy to smooth down the serpent when the fangs are 
 drawn," she laughed back. 
 
 '• What an extraordinary comparison ! " he exclaimed. " But 
 where are all the people going? It isn't all over, I hope." 
 
 " Why, what do you want to stay for? You're not dancing." 
 
 " That is the reason. Unless I dance with you." 
 
 " And then you would want to go?" she flashed with mock 
 resentment. 
 
 " I see you're too sharp for me," he said lugubriously. 
 " Roughing it among the Boers makes a fellow a bit dull in 
 compliments." 
 
 " Dull indeed ! " said Hannah, drawing herself up with great 
 seriousness. " I think you're more complimentary than you 
 have a right to be to a married woman." 
 
 His face fell. " Oh, I didn't mean anything,*' he said apolo- 
 getically. 
 
 " So I thought," retorted Hannah. 
 
THE PURIM BALL. 133 
 
 The poor fellow grew more red and confused than ever. 
 Hannah felt quite sympathetic with him now, so pleased was 
 she at the humiliated condition to which she had brought the 
 young man from the Cape. 
 
 " Well, ril say good-bye," he said awkwardly. " I suppose 
 I mustn't ask to take you down to supper. I dare say your 
 husband will want that privilege."" 
 
 " I dare say," replied Hannah smiling. " Although husbands 
 do not always appreciate their privileges." 
 
 " I shall be glad if yours doesn't," he burst forth. 
 • " Thank you for your good wishes for my domestic happiness," 
 she said severely. 
 
 "^ Oh, why will you misconstrue everything I say? "he pleaded. 
 " You must think me an awful Shlemihl, putting my foot into 
 it so often. Anyhow I hope I shall meet you again some- 
 where." 
 
 " The world is very small," she reminded him. 
 
 " I wish I knew your husband," he said ruefully. 
 
 "Why?" said Hannah, innocently. 
 
 " Because I could call on him," he replied, smiling. 
 
 " Well, you do know him," she could not help saying. 
 
 "Do I? Who is it? I don't think I do," he exclaimed. 
 
 " Well, considering he introduced you to me ! " 
 
 " Sam ! " cried David startled. 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " But — " said David, half incredulously, half in surprise. He 
 certainly had never credited Sam with the wisdom to select or 
 the merit to deserve a wife like this. 
 
 " But what ? " asked Hannah with charming naivete. . 
 
 " He said — I — I — at least I think he said — I — I — under- 
 stood that he introduced me to Miss Solomon, as his intended 
 wife." 
 
 Solomon was the name of Malka's first husband, and so of 
 Leah . 
 
 " Quite right," said Hannah simply. 
 
 " Then — what — how ? " he stammered. 
 
 " She was his intended wife," explained Hannah as if she were 
 
lU CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 telling the most natural thing in the world. " Before he married 
 me, you know." 
 
 " I — I beg your pardon if I seemed to doubt you. I really 
 thought you were joking." 
 
 " Why, what made you think so?" 
 
 " Well," he blurted out. " He didn't mention he was married, 
 and seeing him dancing with her the whole time — " 
 
 " I suppose he thinks he owes her some attention," said Han- 
 nah indifferently. " By way of compensation probably. I 
 shouldn't be at all surprised if he takes her down to supper in- 
 stead of me." 
 
 ''There he is, struggling towards the buffet. Yes, he has her 
 on his arm." 
 
 '-' You speak as if she were his phylacteries," said Hannah, 
 smiling. " It would be a pity to disturb them. So, if you like, 
 you can have me on your arm, as you put it." 
 
 The young man's face lit up with pleasure, the keener that it 
 was unexpected. 
 
 " I am very glad to have such phylacteries on my arm, as you 
 put it," he responded. " I fancy I should be a good dt2i\ f roomer 
 if my phylacteries were like that." 
 
 " What, aren't youyvvw;//.^" she said, as they joined the hungry 
 procession in which she noted Bessie Sugarman on the arm of 
 Daniel Hyams. 
 
 " No, Pm a regular wrong'un," he replied. '' As for phylac- 
 teries, I almost forget how to lay them." 
 
 " That is bad," she admitted, though he could not ascertain 
 her own point of view from the tone. 
 
 " Well, everybody else is just as bad," he said cheerfully. "All 
 the old piety seems to be breaking down. It's Purim, but how 
 many of us have been to hear the — the what do you call it.-* — 
 the Megillah read? There is actually a minister here to-night 
 bare-headed. And how many of us are going to wash our hands 
 before supper or boisli afterwards, I should like to know. Why, 
 it's as much as can be expected if the food's kosher, and there's 
 no ham sandwiches on the dishes. Lord! how my old dad, God 
 rest his soul, would have bean horrified by such a party as this! " 
 
THE PURIM BALL. 135 
 
 "Yes, it's wonderful how ashamed Jews are of their religion 
 outside a synagogue ! ^' said Hannah musingly. " My father, if 
 he were here, would put on his hat after supper and bensh, though 
 there wasn't another man in the room to follow his example." 
 
 "And I should admire him for it," said David, earnestly, 
 " though I admit I shouldn't follow his example myself. I sup- 
 pose he's one of the old school." 
 
 " He is Reb Shemuel," said Hannah, with dignity. 
 
 "Oh, indeed!" he exclaimed, not without surprise, "I know 
 him well. He used to bless me when I was a boy, and it used to 
 cost him a halfpenny a time. Such a jolly fellow! " 
 
 " I'm so glad you think so," said Hannah flushing with 
 pleasure. 
 
 "Of course I do. Does he still have all those Greeners com- 
 ing to ask him questions? " 
 
 " Oh, yes. Their piety is just the same as ever." 
 
 " They're poor," observed David. " It's always those poorest 
 in worldly goods who are richest in religion." 
 
 "Well, isn't that a compensation?" returned Hannah, with a 
 little sigh. " But from my father's point of view, the truth is 
 rather that those who have most pecuniary difficulties have most 
 religious difficulties." 
 
 " Ah, I suppose they come to your father as much to solve the 
 first as the second." 
 
 " Father is very good," she said simply. 
 
 They had by this time obtained something to eat, and for a 
 minute or so the dialogue became merely dietary. 
 
 " Do you know," he said in the course of the meal, " I feel I 
 ought not to have told you what a wicked person I am? I put 
 my foot into it there, too." 
 
 "No, why?" 
 
 " Because you are Reb Shemuel's daughter." 
 
 " Oh, what nonsense! I like to hear people speak their minds. 
 Besides, you mustn't fancy I'm 2.sfroo?n as my father." 
 
 " I don't fancy that. Not quite," he laughed. " I know there's 
 some blessed old law or other by which women haven't got the 
 same chance of distinguishing themselves that way as men. I 
 
136 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 have a vague recollection of saying a prayer thanking God for 
 not having made me a woman/' 
 
 "Ah, that must have been a long time ago," she said slyly. 
 
 "Yes, when I was a boy,'' he admitted. Then the oddity 
 of the premature thanksgiving struck them both and they 
 laughed. 
 
 " YouVe got a different form provided for you, haven't you ? " 
 he said. 
 
 " Yes, I have to thank God for having made me according to 
 His will." 
 
 "You don't seem satisfied for all that," he said, struck by 
 something in the way she said it. 
 
 "How can a woman be satisfied?" she asked, looking up 
 frankly. " She has no voice in her destinies. She must shut 
 her eyes and open her mouth and swallow what it pleases God 
 to send her." 
 
 " All right, shut your eyes," he said, and putting his hand over 
 them he gave her a titbit and restored the conversation to a 
 more flippant level. 
 
 " You mustn't do that," she said. " Suppose my husband were 
 to see you." 
 
 "Oh, bother!" he said. "I don't know why it is, but I don't 
 seem to realize you're a married woman." 
 
 " Am I playing the part so badly as all that ? " 
 
 " Is it a part?" he cried eagerly. 
 
 She shook her head. His face fell again. She could hardly 
 fail to note the change. 
 
 " No, it's a stern reality," she said. " I wish it wasn't." 
 
 It seemed a bold confession, but it was easy to understand. 
 Sam had been an old school-fellow of his, and David had not 
 thought highly of him. He was silent a moment. 
 
 " Are you not happy ? " he said gently. 
 
 "Not in my marriage." 
 
 " Sam must be a regular brute!*' he cried indignantly. "He 
 doesn't know how to treat you. He ought to have his head 
 punched the way he's going on with that fat thing in red." 
 
 " Oh. don't run her down," said Hannah, struggling to repress 
 
THE PURIM BALL. 137 
 
 her emotions, which were not purely of laughter. " She's my 
 dearest friend." 
 
 " They always are,'' said David oracularly. " But how came 
 you to marry him? " 
 
 "Accident," she said indifferently. 
 
 "Accident!" he repeated, open-eyed. 
 
 " Ah, well, it doesn't matter," said Hannah, meditatively con- 
 veying a spoonful of trifle to her mouth. " I shall be divorced 
 from him to-morrow. Be careful! You nearly broke that 
 plate." 
 
 David stared at her, open-mouthed. 
 
 " Going to be divorced from him to-morrow ? " 
 
 "Yes, is there anything odd about it?" 
 
 " Oh," he said, after staring at her impassive face for a full 
 minute. "' Now I'm sure you've been making fun of me all 
 along." 
 
 " My dear Mr. Brandon, why will you persist in making me 
 out a liar? " 
 
 He was forced to apologize again and became such a model 
 of perplexity and embarrassment that Hannah's gravity broke 
 down at last and her merry peal of laughter mingled with the 
 clatter of plates and the hubbub of voices. 
 
 "I must take pity on you and enlighten you," she said, "but 
 promise me it shall go no further. It's only our own little circle 
 that knows about it and I don't want to be the laughing-stock 
 of the Lane." 
 
 " Of course I will promise," he said eagerly. 
 
 She kept his curiosity on the qui vive to amuse herself a little 
 longer, but ended by telling him all, amid frequent exclamations 
 of surprise. 
 
 "Well, I never!" he said when it was over. "Fancy a relig- 
 ion in which only two per cent, of the people who profess it 
 have ever heard of its laws. I suppose we're so mixed up with 
 the English, that it never occurs to us we've got marriage laws 
 of our own — like the Scotch. Anyhow I'm real glad and I 
 congratulate you." 
 
 " On what ? " 
 
138 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 "On not being really married to Sam." 
 
 " Well, you're a nice friend of his, I must say. I don^t con- 
 gratulate myself, I can tell you." 
 
 " You don't? " he said in a disappointed tone. 
 
 She shook her head silently. 
 
 "Why not?" he inquired anxiously. 
 
 " Well, to tell the truth, this forced marriage was my only 
 chance of getting a husband who wasn't pious. Don't look so 
 puzzled. ■ I wasn't shocked at your wickedness — you mustn't be 
 at mine.- You know there's such a lot of religion in our house 
 that I thought if I ever did get married I'd like a change." 
 
 " Ha! ha! ha! So you're as the rest of us. Well, it's plucky 
 of you to admit it." 
 
 " Don't see it. My living doesn't depend on religion, thank 
 Heaven. Father's a saint, I know, but he swallows everything 
 he sees in his books just as he swallows everything mother and 
 I put before him in his plate — and in spite of it all — " She 
 was about to mention Levi's shortcomings but checked herself 
 in time. She had no right to unveil anybody's soul but her own 
 and she didn't know why she was doing that. 
 
 " But you don't mean to say your father would forbid you to 
 marry a man you cared for, just because he \\2isn\ f?'oom ? '''' 
 
 " I'm sure he would." 
 
 " But that would be cruel." 
 
 " He wouldn't think so. He'd think he was saving my soul, 
 and you must remember he can't imagine any one who has been 
 taught to see its beauty not loving the yoke of the Law. He's 
 the best father in the world — but when religion's concerned, the 
 best-hearted of mankind are liable to become hard as stone. 
 You don't know my father as I do. But apart from that, I 
 wouldn't marry a man, myself, who might hurt my father's posi- 
 tion. I should have to keep a kosher house or look how people 
 would talk ! " 
 
 " And wouldn't you if you had your own way ? " 
 
 " I don't know what I would do. It's so impossible, the idea 
 of my having my own way. I think I should probably go in 
 for a change, I'm so tired — so tired of this eternal ceremony. 
 
THE PURIM BALL. - 139 
 
 Always washing up plates and dishes. I dare say it's all for our 
 good, but I am so tired." 
 
 " Oh, I don't see much difficulty about Koshers. I always eat 
 kosher meat myself when I can get it, providing it's not so 
 beastly tough as it has a knack of being. Of course it's absurd 
 to expect a man to go without meat when he's travelling up 
 country, just because it hasn't been killed with a knife instead 
 of a pole-axe. Besides, don't we know well enough that the 
 folks who are most particular about those sort of things don't 
 mind swindling and setting their houses on fire and all manner 
 of abominations ? I wouldn't be a Christian for the world, but I 
 should like to see a little more common-sense introduced into 
 our religion ; it ought to be more up to date. If ever I marry, I 
 should like my wife to be a girl who wouldn't want to keep any- 
 thing but the higher parts of Judaism. Not out of laziness, 
 mind you, but out of conviction." 
 
 David stopped suddenly, surprised at his own sentiments, 
 which he learned for the first time. However vaguely they 
 might have been simmering in his brain, he could not honestly 
 accuse himself of having ever bestowed any reflection on " the 
 higher parts of Judaism '' or even on the religious convictions 
 apart from the racial aspects of his future wife. Could it be that 
 Hannah's earnestness was infecting him? 
 
 "Oh, then you w^///<^ marry a Jewess! " said Hannah. 
 
 " Oh, of course," he said in astonishment. Then as he looked 
 at her pretty, earnest face the amusing recollection that she was 
 married already came over him with a sort of shock, not wholly 
 comical. There was a minute of silence, each pursuing a sep- 
 arate train of thought. Then David wound up, as if there had 
 been no break, with an elliptical, •' wouldn't you?" 
 
 Hannah shrugged her shoulders and elevated her eyebrows in 
 a gesture that lacked her usual grace. 
 
 " Not if I had only to please myself," she added. 
 
 "Oh, come! Don't say that," he said anxiously. "I don't 
 believe mixed marriages are a success. Really, I don't. Besides, 
 look at the scandal ! " 
 
 Again she shrugged her shoulders, defiantly this time. 
 
140 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 "I don''t suppose I shall ever get married," she said. "I 
 never could marry a man father would approve of, so that a 
 Christian would be no worse than an educated Jew." 
 
 David did not quite grasp the sentence ; he was trying to, 
 when Sam and Leah passed them. Sam winked in a friendly if 
 not very refined manner. 
 
 " I see you two are getting on all right," he said. 
 
 "Good gracious!" said Hannah, starting up with a blush. 
 " Everybody's going back. They will think us greedy. What a 
 pair of fools we are to have got into such serious conversation 
 at a ball." 
 
 " Was it serious ? " said David with a retrospective air. " Well, 
 I never enjoyed a conversation so much in my life." 
 
 " You mean the supper," Hannah said lightly. 
 
 " Well, both. It's your fault that we don't behave more 
 appropriately.'' 
 
 " How do you mean?" 
 
 " You won't dance." 
 
 "Do you want to? " 
 
 " Rather." 
 
 " I thought you were afraid of all the swells." 
 
 " Supper has given me courage." 
 
 " Oh, very well if you want to, that's to say if you really can 
 waltz." 
 
 "Try me, only you must allow for my being out of practice. 
 I didn't get many dances at the Cape, I can tell you." 
 
 "The Cape!" Hannah heard the words without making her 
 usual grimace. She put her hand lightly on his shoulder, he 
 encircled her waist with his arm and they surrendered them- 
 selves to the intoxication of the slow, voluptuous music. 
 
THE SONS OF THE COVENANT. 141 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 THE SONS OF THE COVENANT. 
 
 The " Sons of the Covenant " sent no representatives to the 
 club balls, wotting neither of waltzes nor of dress-coats, and pre- 
 ferring death to the embrace of a strange dancing woman. They 
 were the congregation of which Mr. Belcovitch was President 
 and their synagogue was the ground floor of No. i Royal Street 
 — two large rooms knocked into one, and the rear partitioned 
 off for the use of the bewigged, heavy-jawed women who might 
 not sit with the men lest they should fascinate their thoughts 
 away from things spiritual. Its furniture was bare benches, a 
 raised platform with a reading desk in the centre and a wooden 
 curtained ark at the end containing two parchment scrolls of the 
 Law, each with a silver pointer and silver bells and pomegran- 
 ates. The scrolls were in manuscript, for the printing-press has 
 never yet sullied the s^anctity of the synagogue editions of the 
 Pentateuch. The room was badly ventilated and what little air 
 there was was generally sucked up by a greedy company of wax- 
 candles, big and little, struck in brass holders. The back 
 window gave on the yard and the contiguous cow-sheds, and 
 " moos " mingled with the impassioned supplications of the 
 worshippers, who came hither two and three times a day to bat- 
 ter the gates of heaven and to listen to sermons more exegetical 
 than ethical. They dropped in, mostly in *their work-a-day 
 garments and grime, and rumbled and roared and chorused 
 prayers with a zeal that shook the window-panes, and there w^s 
 never lack of tniiiyan — the congregational quorum of ten. (\n 
 the West End, synagogues are built to eke out the income of 
 poor jnmyan-jnen or professional congregants ; in the East End 
 rooms are tricked up for prayer. This synagogue was all of 
 luxury many of its Sons could boast. It was their salon and 
 their lecture-hall. It supplied them not only with their religion 
 but their art and letters, their politics and their public amuse- 
 
142 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 ments. It was their home as well as the Almighty's, and on 
 occasion they were familiar and even a little vulgar with Him. 
 It was a place in which they could sit in their slippers, meta- 
 phorically that is ; for though they frequently did so literally, it 
 was by way of reverence, not ease. They enjoyed themselves 
 in this Shool of theirs ; they shouted and skipped and shook and 
 sang, they wailed and moaned ; they clenched their fists and 
 thumped their breasts and they were not least happy when they 
 were crying. There is an apocryphal anecdote of one of them 
 being in the act of taking a pinch of snuff when the " Confes- 
 sion " caught him unexpectedly. 
 
 " We have trespassed," he wailed mechanically, as he spas- 
 modically put the snuff in his bosom and beat his nose with his 
 clenched fist. 
 
 They prayed metaphysics, acrostics, angelology, Cabalah, his- 
 tory, exegetics, Talmudical controversies, memcs, recipes, priestly 
 prescriptions, the canonical books, psalms, love-poems, an undi- 
 gested hotch-potch of exalted and questionable sentiments, of 
 communal and egoistic aspirations of the highest order. It was 
 a wonderful liturgy, as grotesque as it was beautiful — like an 
 old cathedral in all styles of architecture, stored with shabby 
 antiquities and side-shows and overgrown with moss and lichen 
 — a heterogeneous blend of historical strata of all periods, in 
 which gems of poetry and pathos and spiritual fer\'or glittered 
 and pitiful records of ancient persecution lay petrified. And the 
 method of praying these things was equally complex and un- 
 couth, equally the bond-slave of tradition ; here a rising and 
 there a bow, now three steps backwards and now a beating of 
 the breast, this bit for the congregation and that for the minis- 
 ter, variants of a page, a word, a syllable, even a vowel, ready 
 for every possible contingency. Their religious consciousness 
 was largely a musical box — the thrill of the ram's horn, the 
 cadenza of psalmic phrase, the jubilance of a festival "Amen" 
 and the sobriety of a work-a-day "Amen," the Passover mel- 
 odies and the Pentecost, the minor keys of Atonement and the 
 hilarious rhapsodies of Rejoicing, the plain chant of the Law 
 and the more ornate intonation of the Prophets — all this was 
 
THE SONS OF THE COVENANT. 143 
 
 known and loved and was far more important than the meaning 
 of it all or its relation to their real lives ; for page upon page 
 was gabbled off at rates that could not be excelled by automata. 
 But if they did not always know what- they were saying they 
 always meant it. If the serv'ice had been more intelligible it 
 would have been less emotional and edifying. There was not 
 a sentiment, however incomprehensible, for which they were 
 not ready to die or to damn. 
 
 "All Israel are brethren/' and indeed there w^as a strange 
 antique clannishness about these ''Sons of the Covenant" 
 which in the modern world, where the ends of the ages meet, is 
 Socialism. They prayed for one another while alive, visited 
 one another's bedsides when sick, buried one another when 
 dead. No mercenary hands poured the yolks of eggs over their 
 dead faces and arrayed their corpses in their praying-shawls. 
 No hired masses were said for the sick or the troubled, for the 
 psalm-singing services of the " Sons of the Covenant " were 
 always available for petitioning the Heavens, even though their 
 brother had been arrested for buying stolen goods, and the ser- 
 vice might be an invitation to Providence to compound a felony. 
 Little charities of their own they had, too — a Sabbath Meal 
 Society, and a Marriage Portion Society to buy the sticks for 
 poor couples — and when a pauper countryman arrived from 
 Poland, one of them boarded him and another lodged him and 
 a third taught him a trade. Strange exotics in a land of prose 
 carrying with them through the paven highways of London 
 the odor of Continental Ghettos and bearing in their eyes 
 through all the shrewdness of their glances the eternal mysti- 
 cism of the Orient, where God was born ! Hawkers and ped- 
 dlers, tailors and cigar-makers, cobblers and furriers, glaziers 
 and cap-makers — this was in sum their life. To pray much 
 and to work long, to beg a little and to cheat a little, to eat not 
 over-much and to " drink " scarce at all, to beget annual children 
 by chaste wives (disallowed them half the year), and to rear 
 them not over-well, to study the Law and the Prophets and 
 to reverence the Rabbinical tradition and the chaos of com- 
 mentaries expounding it, to abase themselves before the " Life 
 
144 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 of Man" and Joseph Caro's '' Prepared Table'' as though the 
 authors had presided at the foundation of the earth, to wear 
 phylacteries and fringes, to keep the beard unshaven, and the 
 corners of the hair uncut, to know no work on Sabbath and no 
 rest on week-day. It was a series of recurrent landmarks, ritual 
 and historical, of intimacy with God so continuous that they 
 were in danger of forgetting His existence as of the air they 
 breathed. They ate unleavened bread in Passover and blessed 
 the moon and counted the days of the Omer till Pentecost saw the 
 synagogue dressed with flowers in celebration of an Asiatic fruit 
 harvest by a European people divorced from agriculture ; they 
 passed to the terrors and triumphs of the New Year (with its 
 domestic symbolism of apple and honey and its procession to 
 the river) and the revelry of repentance on the Great White 
 Fast, when they burned long candles and whirled fowls round 
 their heads and attired themselves in grave-clothes and saw 
 from their seats in synagogue the long fast-day darken slowly 
 into dusk, while God was sealing the decrees of life and death ; 
 they passed to Tabernacles when they ran up rough booths in 
 back yards draped with their bed-sheets and covered with green- 
 ery, and bore through the streets citrons in boxes and a waving 
 combination of myrtle, and palm and willow branches, where- 
 with they made a pleasant rustling in the synagogue ; and 
 thence to the Rejoicing of the Law when they danced and 
 drank rum in the House of the Lord and scrambled sweets for 
 the little ones, and made a sevenfold circuit with the two scrolls, 
 supplemented by toy flags and children's candles stuck in hollow 
 carrots ; and then on again to Dedication with its celebration of 
 the Maccaba^an deliverance and the miracle of the unwaning oil 
 in the Temple, and to Purim with its masquerading and its exe- 
 cration of Haman's name by the banging of little hammers ; and 
 so back to Passover. And with these larger cycles, epicycles of 
 minor fasts and feasts, multiplex, not to be overlooked, from the 
 fast of the ninth of Ab — fatal day for the race — when they sat 
 on the ground in shrouds, and wailed for the destruction of 
 Jerusalem, to the feast of the Great Hosannah when they 
 whipped away willow-leaves on the Shool benches in symbolism 
 
THE SONS OF THE COVENANT. 145 
 
 of forgiven sins, sitting up the whole of the night before in a 
 long paroxysm of prayer mitigated by coffee and cakes ; from 
 the period in which nuts were prohibited to the period in which 
 marriages were commended. 
 
 And each day, too, had its cycles of religious duty, its compre- 
 hensive and cumbrous ritual with accretions of commentary and 
 tradition. 
 
 And every contingency of the individual life was equally pro- 
 vided for, and the writings that regulated all this complex ritual 
 are a marvellous monument of the patience, piety and juristic 
 genius of the race — and of the persecution which threw it back 
 upon its sole treasure, the Law, 
 
 Thus they lived and died, these Sons of the Covenant, half- 
 automata, sternly disciplined by voluntary and involuntary pri- 
 vation, hemmed and mewed in by iron walls of form and poverty, 
 joyfully ground under the perpetual rotary wheel of ritualism, 
 good-humored withal and casuistic like all people whose religion 
 stands much upon ceremony ; inasmuch as a ritual law comes to 
 count one equally with a moral, and a man is not half bad who 
 does three-fourths of his duty. 
 
 And so the stuffy room with its guttering candles and its 
 chameleon-colored ark-curtain was the pivot of their barren lives. 
 Joy came to bear to it the offering of its thanksgiving and to 
 vow sixpenny bits to the Lord, prosperity came in a high hat to 
 chaffer for the holy privileges, and grief came with rent garments 
 to lament the beloved dead and glorify the name of the Eternal. 
 
 The poorest life is to itself the universe and all that therein is, 
 and these humble products of a great and terrible past, strange 
 fruits of a motley-flowering secular tree whose roots are in 
 Canaan and whose boughs overshadow the earth, were all the 
 happier for not knowing that the fulness of life was not theirs. 
 
 And the years went rolling on, and the children grew up and 
 here and there a parent. 
 
 The elders of the synagogue were met in council. 
 
 " He is greater than a Prince," said the Shalotten Shamitios. 
 
 " If all the Princes of the Earth were put in one scale," said 
 
 L 
 
146 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 Mr. Belcovitch, " and our Maggid, Moses, in the other, he would 
 outweigh them all. He is worth a hundred of the Chief Rabbi 
 of England, who has been seen bareheaded." 
 
 " From Moses to Moses there has been none like Moses," said 
 old Mendel Hyams, interrupting the Yiddish with a Hebrew 
 quotation. 
 
 " Oh no," said the Shalotten Sha7nmoSy who was a great stickler 
 for precision, being, as his nickname implied, a master of ceremo- 
 nies. " I can't admit that. Look at my brother Nachmann." 
 
 There was a general laugh at the Shalotten Shaimnos's bull ; 
 the proverb dealing only with Moseses. 
 
 " He has the true gift," observed Froovi Karlkammer, shaking 
 the flames of his hair pensively. " For ihe letters of his name 
 have the same numerical value as those of the great Moses da 
 Leon." 
 
 Frooni Karlkammer was listened to with respect, for he was 
 an honorary member of the committee, who paid for two seats in 
 a larger congregation and only worshipped with the Sons of the 
 Covenant on special occasions. The Shalotten Shavtutos, how- 
 ever, was of contradictory temperament — a born dissentient, 
 upheld by a steady consciousness of highly superior English, the 
 drop of bitter in Belcovitch's presidential cup. He was a long 
 thin man, who towered above the congregation, and was as tall 
 as the bulk of them even when he was bowing his acknowledg- 
 ments to his Maker. 
 
 "How do you make that out?" he asked Karlkammer. 
 "Moses of course adds up the same as Moses — but while the 
 other part of the Maggid''s name makes seventy-three, da Leon's 
 makes ninety-one." 
 
 " Ah, that's because youVe ignorant of Gematriyah^'' said little 
 Karlkammer, looking up contemptuously at the cantankerous 
 giant. " You reckon all the letters on the same system, and 
 you omit to give yourself the license of deleting the ciphers." 
 
 In philology it is well known that all consonants are inter- 
 changeable and vowels don't count ; in Gemairiyah any letter may 
 count for anything, and the total may be summed up anyhow. 
 
 Karlkammer was one of the curiosities of the Ghetto. In a 
 
THE SONS OF THE COVENANT. 147 
 
 land oifroo/n men he was ihtfroomest. He had the very genius 
 of fanaticism. On the Sabbath lie spoke nothing but Hebrew 
 whatever the inconvenience and however numerous the misun- 
 derstandings, and if he perchance paid a visit he would not per- 
 form the " work " of lifting the knocker. Of course he had his 
 handkerchief girt round his waist to save him from carrying it, 
 but this compromise being general was not characteristic of 
 Karlkammer any more than his habit of wearing two gigantic 
 sets of phylacteries where average piety was content with one of 
 moderate size. 
 
 One of the walls of his room had an unpapered and unpainted 
 scrap in mourning for the fall of Jerusalem. He walked through 
 the streets to synagogue attired in his praying-shawl and phylac- 
 teries, and knocked three times at the door of God's house when 
 he arrived. On the Day of Atonement he walked in his socks, 
 though the heavens fell, wearing his grave-clothes. On this day 
 he remained standing in synagogue from 6 a.m. to 7 p.m. with 
 his body bent at an angle of ninety degrees ; it was to give him 
 bending space that he hired two seats. On Tabernacles, not 
 having any ground whereon to erect a booth, by reason of living 
 in an attic, he knocked a square hole in the ceiling, covered it 
 with branches through which the free air of heaven played, and 
 hung a quadrangle of sheets from roof to floor ; he bore to syna- 
 gogue the tallest Lulav of palm-branches that could be procured 
 and quarrelled with a rival pietist for the last place in the floral 
 procession, as being the lowliest and meekest man in Israel — 
 an ethical pedestal equally claimed by his rival. He insisted on 
 bearing a corner of the biers of all the righteous dead. Almost 
 every other day was a fast-day for Karlkammer, and he had a 
 host of supplementary ceremonial observances which are not for 
 the vulgar. Compared with him Moses Ansell and the ordinary 
 " Sons of the Covenant '' were mere heathens. He was a man 
 of prodigious distorted mental activity. He had read omnivo- 
 rously amid the vast stores of Hebrew literature, was a great 
 authority on Cabalah, understood astronomy, and, still more, 
 astrology, was strong on finance, and could argue coherently on 
 any subject outside religion. His letters to the press on specifi- 
 
148 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 cally Jewish subjects were the most hopeless, involved, incompre- 
 hensible and protracted puzzles ever penned, bristling with 
 Hebrew quotations from the most varying, the most irrelevant 
 and the most mutually incongruous sources and peppered with 
 the dates of birth and death of every Rabbi mentioned. 
 
 No one had ever been known to follow one of these argumen- 
 tations to the bitter end. They were written in good English 
 modified by a few peculiar terms used in senses unsuspected by 
 dictionary-makers ; in a beautiful hand, with the t^s uncrossed, 
 but crowned with the side-stroke, so as to avoid the appearance 
 of the symbol of Christianity, and with the dates expressed 
 according to the Hebrew Calendar, for Karlkammer refused to 
 recognize the chronology of the Christian. He made three 
 copies of every letter, and each was exactly like the others in 
 every word and every line. His bill for midnight oil must have 
 been extraordinary, for he was a business man and had to earn 
 his living by day. Kept within the limits of sanity by a religion 
 without apocalyptic visions, he was saved from predicting the 
 end of the world by mystic calculations, but he used them to 
 prove everything else and fervently believed that endless mean- 
 ings were deducible from the numerical value of Biblical words, 
 that not a curl at the tail of a letter of any word in any sentence 
 but had its supersubtle significance. The elaborate cipher with 
 which Bacon is alleged to have written Shakspeare's plays was 
 mere child's play compared with the infinite revelations which in 
 Karlkammer's belief the Deity left latent in writing the Old Tes- 
 tament from Genesis to Malachi, and in inspiring the Talmud 
 and the holier treasures of Hebrew literature. Nor were these 
 ideas of his own origination. His was an eclectic philosophy and 
 religionism, of which all the elements were discoverable in old 
 Hebrew books ; scraps of Alexandrian philosophy inextricably 
 blent with Aristotelian, Platonic, mystic. 
 
 He kept up a copious correspondence with scholars in other 
 countries and was universally esteemed and pitied. 
 
 "We haven't come to discuss the figures of the Maggid's 
 name, but of his salary," said Mr. Belcovitch, who prided himself 
 on his capacity for conducting public business. 
 
THE SONS OF THE COVENANT. 149 
 
 "I have examined the finances," said Karlkammer, "and I 
 don't see how we can possibly put aside more for our preacher 
 than the pound a week.'" 
 
 "But he is not satisfied," said Mr. Belcovitch. 
 
 " I don't see why he shouldn't be," said the Shalotten Shain- 
 mos. " A pound a week is luxury for a single man." 
 
 The Sons of the Covenant did not know that the poor con- 
 sumptive Maggid sent half his salary to his sisters in Poland to 
 enable them to buy back their husbands from military service ; 
 also they had vague unexpressed ideas that he was not mortal, 
 that Heaven would look after his larder, that if the worst came to 
 the worst he could fall back on Cabalah and engage himself with 
 the mysteries of food-creation. 
 
 " I have a wife and family to keep on a pound a week," grum- 
 bled Greenberg the Chazan. 
 
 Besides being Reader, Greenberg blew the horn and killed 
 cattle and circumcised male infants and educated children and 
 discharged, the functions of beadle and collector. He spent a 
 great deal of his time in avoiding being drawn into the contend- 
 ing factions of the congregation and in steering equally between 
 Belcovitch and the Shalotten Shammos. The Sons only gave 
 him fifty a year for all his trouble, but they eked it out by allow- 
 ing him to be on the Committee, where on the question of a rise 
 in the Reader's salary he was always an ineffective minority of 
 one. His other grievance was that for the High Festivals the 
 Sons temporarily engaged a finer voiced Reader and advertised 
 him at raised prices to repay themselves out of the surplus 
 congregation. Not only had Greenberg to play second fiddle 
 on these grand occasions, but he had to iterate " Pom " as a sort 
 of musical accompaniment in the pauses of his rival's vocalization. 
 
 " You can't compare yourself with the Maggid,^'' the Shalotten 
 Shammos reminded him consolingly. " There are hundreds of 
 you in the market. There are several morceaux of the service 
 which you do not sing half so well as your predecessor; your 
 horn-blowing cannot compete with Freedman's of the Fashion 
 Street Chevrah, nor can you read the Law as quickly and accu- 
 rately as Prochintski. I have told you over and over again you 
 
150 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 confound the air of the Passover Yigdal\v\\\\ the New Year ditto. 
 And then your preliminary flourish to the Confession of Sin — it 
 goes ' Ei, Ei, Ei, Ei, Ei, Ei, Ei ' '' (he mimicked Greenberg^s mel- 
 ody) " whereas it should be ' Oi, Oi, Oi, Oi, Oi, Oi.' " 
 
 "Oh no," intermpted Belcovitch. "All the Chazanwi Fve 
 ever heard do it ' Ei, Ei, Ei.' " 
 
 " You are not entitled to speak on this subject, Belcovitch," 
 said the Shalotten Shainjnos warmly. '• You are a Man-of-the- 
 Earth. I have heard every great Chazan in Europe." 
 
 " What was good enough for my father is good enough for 
 me," retorted Belcovitch. "The Shool\\^ took me to at home 
 had a beautiful Chazan^ and he always sang it ' Ei, Ei, Ei.' " 
 
 "I don't care what you heard at home. In England every 
 Chazaji sings ' Oi, Oi, Oi.' " 
 
 " We can't take our tune from England," said Karlkammer re- 
 provingly. " England is a polluted country by reason of the Re- 
 formers whom we were compelled to excommunicate." 
 
 "Do you mean to say that my father was an Epicurean?" 
 asked Belcovitch indignantly. " The tune was as Greenberg 
 sings it. That there are impious Jews who pray bareheaded and 
 sit in the synagogue side by side with the women has nothing to 
 do with it." 
 
 The Reformers did neither of these things, but the Ghetto to 
 a man believed they did, and it would have been countenancing 
 their blasphemies to pay a visit to their synagogues and see. It 
 was an extraordinary example of a myth flourishing in the teeth 
 of the facts, and as such should be useful to historians sifting 
 "the evidence of contemporary writers." 
 
 The dispute thickened .; the synagogue hummed with " Eis " 
 and " Ois " not in concord. 
 
 " Shah! " said the President at last. " Make an end, make an 
 end!" 
 
 " You see he knows I'm right," murmured the Shalotten 
 Shainmos to his circle. 
 
 " And if you are! " burst forth the impeached Greenberg, who 
 had by this time thought of a retort. "And if I do sing the 
 Passover Yigdal instead of the New Year, have I not reason, see- 
 
THE SONS OF THE COVENANT. 151 
 
 ing I have 7W bread in the house ? With my salary I have Pass- 
 over all the year round." 
 
 The Chazan's sally made a good impression on his audience if 
 not on his salary. It was felt that he had a just grievance, and 
 the conversation was hastily shifted to the original topic. 
 
 " We mustn't forget the Maggid draws crowds here every Sat- 
 urday and Sunday afternoon," said Mendel Hyams. "Suppose 
 he goes over to a Chevrah that will pay him more! " 
 
 " No, he won't do that," said another of the Committee. " He 
 will remember that we brought him out of Poland." 
 
 " Yes, but we shan't have room for the audiences soon," said 
 Belcovitch. "There are so many outsiders turned away every 
 time that I think we ought to let half the applicants enjoy the 
 first two hours of the sermon and the other half the second two 
 hours." 
 
 " No, no, that would be cruel," said Karlkammer. " He will 
 have to give the Sunday sermons at least in a larger synagogue. 
 My own Shool, the German, will be glad to give him facilities." 
 
 " But what if they want to take him altogether at a higher 
 salary?" said Mendel. 
 
 " No, Pm on the Committee, Pll see to that," said Karlkammer 
 reassuringly. 
 
 " Then do you think we shall tell him we can't afford to give 
 him more?" asked Belcovitch. 
 
 There was a murmur of assent with a fainter mingling of dis- 
 sent. The motion that the Maggid's application be refused was 
 put to the vote and carried by a large majority. 
 
 It was the fate of the Maggid to be the one subject on which 
 Belcovitch and the Shalotten Sha7n?nos agreed. They agreed as 
 to his transcendent merits and they agreed as to the adequacy of 
 his salary. 
 
 " But he's so weakly," protested Mendel Hyams, who was in 
 the minority. " He coughs blood." 
 
 " He ought to go to a sunny place for a week," said Belcovitch 
 compassionately. 
 
 " Yes, he must certainly have that," said Karlkammer. " Let 
 us add as a rider that although we cannot pay him more per 
 
152 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 week, he must have a week's holiday in the country. The Sha- 
 kitten Sham;nos shall write the letter to Rothschild.'" 
 y^ Rothschild was a magic name in the Ghetto ; it stood next to 
 I the Almighty's as a redresser of grievances and a friend of the 
 / poor, and the Shalotten Sha?nmos made a large part of his in- 
 come by writing letters to it. He charged twopence halfpenny 
 I>er letter, for his English vocabulary was larger than any other 
 scribe's in the Ghetto, and his words were as much longer than 
 theirs as his body. He also filled up printed application forms 
 for Soup or Passover cakes, and had a most artistic sense of the 
 proportion of orphans permissible to widows and a correct 
 instinct for the plausible duration of sicknesses. 
 
 The Committee agreed iiem. con. to the grant of a seaside 
 holiday, and the Shalotten Shammos with a gratified feeling of 
 importance waived his twopence halfpenny. He drew up a 
 letter forthwith, not of course in the name of the Sons of the 
 Covenant, but in the Maggid''s own. 
 
 He took the magniloquent sentences to the Maggid for signa- 
 ture. He found the Maggid walking up and down Royal Street 
 waiting for the verdict. Tlie Maggid walked with a stoop that 
 was almost a permanent bow, so that his long black beard 
 reached well towards his baggy knees. His curved eagle nose 
 was grown thinner, his long coat shinier, his look more haggard, 
 his corkscrew earlocks were more matted, and when he spoke 
 his voice was a tone more raucous. He wore his high hat — a 
 tall cylinder that reminded one of a weather-beaten turret. 
 
 The Shalotten Shammos explained briefly what he had done. 
 
 " May thy strength increase! "' said the Maggid in the Hebrew 
 formula of gratitude. 
 
 "Nay, thine is more important," replied the Shalotten Shain- 
 7nos with hilarious heartiness, and he proceeded to read the 
 letter as they walked along together, giant and doubled-up 
 wizard. 
 
 " But 1 haven't got a wife and six children,'' said the Maggid^ 
 for whom one or two phrases stood out intelligible. " My wife 
 is dead and I never was blessed with a Kaddish.'''' 
 
 " It sounds better so," said the Shalotten Shammos authori- 
 
THE SONS OF THE COVENANT. 153 
 
 tatively. " Preachers are expected to have heavy families 
 dependent upon them. It would sound lies if I told the truth. ""^ 
 
 This was an argument after the MaggicVs own heart, but it 
 did not quite convince him. 
 
 "But they will send and make inquiries," he murmured. 
 
 " Then your family are in Poland ; you send your money over 
 there." 
 
 " That is true," said the Maggid feebly. " But still it likes 
 me not." 
 
 " You leave it to me," said the Shalotten Shammos impres- 
 sively. "A shamefaced man cannot learn, and a passionate 
 man cannot teach. So said Hillel. When you are in the pulpit 
 I listen to you ; when I have my pen in hand, do you listen to 
 me. As the proverb says, if I were a Rabbi the town would 
 burn. But if you were a scribe the letter would burn. I don't 
 pretend to be a Maggid, don't you set up to be a letter writer." 
 
 " Well, but do you think it's honorable? " 
 
 "Hear, O Israel! " cried the Shalotten Shammos, spreading 
 out his palms impatiently. " Haven't I written letters for twenty 
 years ? " 
 
 The Maggz'd W2LS silenced. He walked on brooding. "And 
 what is this place, Burnmud, I ask to go to? " he inquired. 
 
 " Bournemouth," corrected the other. " It is a place on the 
 South coast where all the most aristocratic consumptives go." 
 
 " But it must be very dear," said the poor Maggid, affrighted. 
 
 "Dear? Of course it's dear," said the Shalotten Shajnmos 
 pompously. " But shall we consider expense where your health 
 is concerned ? " 
 
 The Maggid felt so grateful he was almost ashamed to ask 
 whether he could eat kosher there, but the Shalotten Shammos, 
 who had the air of a tall encyclopaedia, set his soul at rest on all 
 Doints. 
 
154 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 CHAPTER Xm. 
 sugarman's bar-mitzvah party. 
 
 The day of Ebenezer Sugarman's Ba7'-mitzva/i duly arrived. 
 All his sins would henceforth be on his own head and everybody 
 rejoiced By the Friday evening so many presents had arrived 
 — four breastpins, two rings, six pocket-knives, three sets of 
 Machzorim or Festival Prayer-books, and the like — that his 
 father barred up the door very carefully and in the middle of 
 the night, hearing a mouse scampering across the floor, woke 
 up in a cold sweat and threw open the bedroom window and 
 cried "Ho! Buglers!" But the "Buglers" made no sign of 
 being scared, everything was still and nothing purloined, so 
 Jonathan took a reprimand from his disturbed wife and curled 
 himself up again in bed. 
 
 Sugarman did things in style and through the influence of a 
 client the confirmation ceremony was celebrated in " Duke's Plai- 
 zer Shook '' Ebenezer, who was tall and weak-eyed, with lank 
 black hair, had a fine new black cloth suit and a beautiful silk 
 praying-shawl with blue stripes, and a glittering watch-chain and 
 a gold ring and a nice new Prayer-book with gilt edges, and all 
 the boys under thirteen made up their minds to grow up and be 
 responsible for their sins as quick as possible. Ebenezer walked 
 up to the Reading Desk with a dauntless stride and intoned his 
 Portion of the Law with no more tremor than was necessitated 
 by the musical roulades, and then marched upstairs, as bold as 
 brass, to his mother, who was sitting up in the gallery, and wlio 
 gave him a loud smacking kiss that could be heard in the four 
 corners of the synagogue, just as if she were a real lady. 
 
 Then there was the Bar-mitzvah breakfast, at which Ebenezer 
 delivered an English sermon and a speech, both openly written 
 by the Shalotten S/iainwos, and everybody commended the boy's 
 beautiful sentiments and the beautiful language in which they 
 
SUGARMAN'S BAR-MITZVAH PARTY. 155 
 
 were couched. Mrs. Sugarman forgot all the trouble Ebenezer 
 had given her in the face of his assurances of respect and affec- 
 tion and she wept copiously. Having only one eye she could 
 not see what her Jonathan saw, and what.vvas spoiling his enjoy- 
 ment of Ebenezer''s effusive gratitude to his dear parents for 
 having trained him up in lofty principles. 
 
 It was chiefly male cronies who had been invited to break- 
 fast, and the table had been decorated with biscuits and fruit 
 and sweets not appertaining to the meal, but provided for the 
 refreshment of the less-favored visitors — such as Mr. and 
 Mrs. Hyams — who would be dropping in during the day. 
 Now, nearly every one of the guests had brought a little boy 
 with him, each of whom stood like a page behind his father's 
 chair. 
 
 Before starting on their prandial fried fish, these trencher-men 
 took from the dainties wherewith the ornamental plates were 
 laden and gave thereof to their offspring. Now this was only 
 right and proper, because it is the . prerogative of children to 
 '■'■ nash'''' on these occasions. But as the meal progressed, each 
 father from time to time, while talking briskly to his neighbor. 
 allowed his hand to stray mechanically into the plates and thence 
 negligently backwards into the hand of his infant, who stuffed 
 the treasure into his pockets. Sugarman fidgeted about un- 
 easily ; not one surreptitious seizure escaped him, and every one 
 pricked him like a needle. Soon his soul grew punctured like a 
 pin-cushion. The Shalotten Shanunos was among the worst 
 offenders, and he covered his back-handed proceedings with a 
 ceaseless flow of complimentary conversation. 
 
 "Excellent fish, Mrs. Sugarman," he said, dexterously slipping 
 some almonds behind his chair. 
 
 "What?"" said Mrs. Sugarman, who was hard of hearing. 
 
 " First-class plaice ! " shouted the Shalotten S/ia^/unos, negli- 
 gently conveying a bunch of raisins. 
 
 " So they ought to be/' said Mrs. Sugarman in her thin tink- 
 ling accents, "they were all alive in the pan." 
 
 "Ah, did they twitter?" said Mr. Belcovitch, pricking up his 
 ears. 
 
156 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 " No,'' Bessie interposed. " What do you mean? " 
 
 "At home in my town," said Mr. Belcovitch impressively, "a 
 fish made a noise in the pan one Friday." 
 
 ''Well? and suppose?" said the Shalotten Sha??wws, passing 
 a fig to the rear, " the oil frizzles." 
 
 " Nothing of the kind," said Belcovitch angrily. " A real liv- 
 ing noise. The woman snatched it out of the pan and ran with 
 it to the Rabbi. But he did not know what to do. Fortunately 
 there was staying with him for the Sabbath a travelling Saint 
 from the far city of Ridnik, a Chasid, very skilful in plagues and 
 purifications, and able to make clean a creeping thing by a hun- 
 dred and fifty reasons. He directed the woman to wrap the fish 
 in a shroud and give it honorable burial as quickly as possible. 
 The funeral took place the same afternoon and a lot of people 
 went in solemn procession to the woman's back garden and 
 buried it with all seemly rites, and the knife with which it had 
 been cut was buried in the same grave, having been defiled by 
 contact with the demon. One man said it should be burned, 
 but that was absurd because the demon would be only too glad 
 to find itself in its native element, but to prevent Satan from 
 rebuking the woman any more its mouth was stopped with fur- 
 nace ashes. There was no time to obtain Palestine earth, which 
 would have completely crushed the demon." 
 
 " The woman must have committed some Avirah^'' said Karl- 
 kammer. 
 
 '* A true story ! " said the Shalotten Shanimos, ironically'. 
 "That tale has been over Warsaw this twelvemonth." 
 
 " It occurred when I was a boy," affirmed Belcovitch indig- 
 nantly. '' I remember it quite well. Some people explained it 
 favorably. Others were of opinion that the soul of the fish- 
 monger had transmigrated into the fish, an opinion borne out by 
 the death of the fishmonger a few days before. And the Rabbi 
 is still alive to prove it — may his light continue to shine — 
 though they write that he has lost his memory." 
 
 The Shalotten Shammos sceptically passed a pear to his son. 
 Old Gabriel Hamburg, the scholar, came compassionately to the 
 raconteur's assistance. 
 
SUGARMAN'S BAR-MI TZVAH PARTY. 157 
 
 ^' Rabbi Solomon Maimon," he said, "has left it on record 
 that he witnessed a similar funeral in Posen.'' 
 
 "' It was well she buried it/' said Karlkammer. " It was an 
 atonement for a child, and saved its life." 
 
 The Shalotten Sham?nos laughed outright. 
 
 "Ah, laugh not," said Mrs. Belcovitch. "Or you might laugh 
 with blood. It isn't for my own sins that I was born with ill- 
 matched legs." 
 
 " I must laugh when I hear of God's fools burying fish any- 
 where but in their stomach," said the Shalotten Shammos, trans- 
 porting a Brazil nut to the rear, where it was quickly annexed by 
 Solomon Ansell, who had sneaked in uninvited and ousted the 
 other boy from his coign of vantage. 
 
 The conversation was becoming heated ; Breckeloff turned 
 the topic. 
 
 " My sister has married a man who can't play cards," he 
 said lugubriously. 
 
 " How lucky for her," answered several voices. 
 
 "No, it's just her black luck," he rejoined. "For he will 
 play." 
 
 There was a burst of laughter and then the company remem- 
 bered that Breckeloff was 2i Badchan or jester. 
 
 "Why, your sister's husband is a splendid player," said 
 Sugarman with a flash of memory, and the company laughed 
 afresh. 
 
 " Yes," said Breckeloff. " But he doesn't give me the chance 
 of losing to him now, he's got such a stuck-up Kotzon. He 
 belongs to Duke's Plaizer Shool and comes there very late, 
 and when you ask him his birthplace he forgets he was a 
 Pullack and says he comes from 'behind Berlin.'" 
 
 These strokes of true satire occasioned more merriment 
 and were worth a biscuit to Solomon Ansell vice the son of 
 the Shalotten Sham7nos. 
 
 Among the inoffensive guests were old Gabriel Hamburg, 
 the scholar, and young Joseph Strelitski, the student, who sat 
 together. On the left of the somewhat seedy Strelitski pretty 
 Bessie in blue silk presided over the coffee-pot. Nobody knew 
 
158 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 whence Bessie had stolen her good looks ; probably some re- 
 mote ancestress! Bessie was in every way the most agreeable 
 member of the family, inheriting some of her father's brains, 
 but wisely going for the rest of herself to that remote ances- 
 tress. 
 
 Gabriel Hamburg and Joseph Strelitski had both had rela- 
 tions with No. I Royal Street for some time, yet they had 
 hardly exchanged a word and their meeting at this breakfast 
 table found them as great strangers as though they had nev-er 
 seen each other. Strelitski came because he boarded with the 
 Sugarmans, and Hamburg came because he sometimes con- 
 sulted Jonathan Sugarman about a Talmudical passage. Sugar- 
 man was charged with the oral traditions of a chain of Rabbis, 
 like an actor who knows all the " business " elaborated by his 
 predecessors, and even a scientific scholar like Hamburg found 
 him occasionally and fortuitously illuminating. Even so Karl- 
 kammer's red hair was a pillar of fire in the trackless wilder- 
 ness of Hebrew literature. Gabriel Hamburg was a mighty 
 savant who endured all things for the love ot knowledge 
 and the sake of six men in Europe who followed his work 
 and profited by its results. Verily, fit audience though few. 
 But such is the fate of great scholars whose readers are sown 
 throughout the lands more sparsely than monarchs. One by 
 one Hamburg grappled with the countless problems of Jewish 
 literary history, settling dates and authors, disintegrating the 
 Books of the Bible into their constituent parts, now inserting 
 a gap of centuries between two halves of the same chapter, 
 now flashing the light of new theories upon the development 
 of Jewish theology. He lived at Royal Street and the British 
 Museum, for he spent most of his time groping among the 
 folios and manuscripts, and had no need for more than the 
 little back bedroom, behind the Ansells, stuffed with mouldy 
 books. Nobody (who was anybody) had heard of him in Eng- 
 land, and he worked on, unencumbered by patronage or a 
 fall stomach. The Ghetto, itself, knew little of him, for there 
 were but few with whom he found intercourse satisfying. He 
 was not "orthodox"" in belief though eminently so in practice 
 
SUGARMAN'S BAR-MITZVAH PARTY. 159 
 
 — which is all the Ghetto demands — not from hypocrisy 
 but from ancient prejudice. Scholarship had not shrivelled 
 up his humanity, for he had a genial fund of humor and a 
 gentle play of satire and loved his neighbors for their folly 
 and narrowmindedness. Unlike Spinoza, too, he did not go 
 out of his way to inform them of his heterodox views, content 
 to comprehend the crowd rather than be misunderstood by 
 it. He knew that the bigger soul includes the smaller and 
 that the smaller can never circumscribe the bigger. Such 
 money as was indispensable for the endowment of research he 
 earned by copying texts and liunting out references for the 
 numerous scholars and clergymen who infest the Museum and 
 prevent the general reader from having elbow room. In per- 
 son he was small and bent and snuify. Superficially more 
 intelligible, Joseph Strelitski was really a deeper mystery than 
 Gabriel Hamburg. He was known to be a recent arrival on 
 English soil, yet he spoke English fluently. He studied at Jews' 
 College by day and was preparing for the examinations at 
 the London University. None of the other students knew 
 where he lived nor a bit of his past history. There was a 
 vague idea afloat that he was an only child whose parents 
 had been hounded to penury and death by Russian persecu- 
 tion, but who launched it nobody knew. His eyes were sad 
 and earnest, a curl of raven hair fell forwards on his high 
 brow ; his clothing was shabby and darned in places by his 
 own hand. Beyond accepting the gift of education at the 
 hands o^ dead men he would take no help. On several dis- 
 tinct occasions, the magic name, Rothschild, was appealed to 
 on his behalf by well-wishers, and through its avenue of almo- 
 ners it responded with its eternal quenchless unquestioning 
 generosity to students. But Joseph Strelitski always quietly 
 sent back these bounties. He made enough to exist upon by 
 touting for a cigar-firm in the evenings. In the streets he 
 walked with tight-pursed lips, dreaming no one knew what. 
 
 And yet there were times when his tight-pursed lips un- 
 clenched themselves and he drew in great breaths even of 
 Ghetto air with the huge contentment of one who has known 
 
160 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 suffocation. " One can breathe here," he seemed to be saying. 
 The atmosphere, untainted by spies, venal officials, and jeering 
 soldiery, seemed fresh and sweet. Here the ground was stable, 
 not mined in all directions ; no arbitrary ukase — veritable sword 
 of Damocles — hung over the head and darkened the sunshine. 
 In such a country, where faith w^as free and action untrammelled, 
 mere living was an ecstasy when remembrance came over one, 
 and so Joseph Strelitski sometimes threw back his head and 
 breathed in liberty. The voluptuousness of the sensation can- 
 not be known by born freemen. 
 
 When Joseph Strelitski^s father was sent to Siberia, he took 
 his nine-year old boy with him in infringement of the law which 
 prohibits exiles from taking children above five years of age. 
 The police authorities, however, raised no objection, and they 
 permitted Joseph to attend the public school at Kansk, Yeniseisk 
 province, where the Strelitski family resided. A year or so after- 
 wards the Yeniseisk authorities accorded the family permission to 
 reside in Yeniseisk, and Joseph, having given proof of brilliant 
 abilities, was placed in the Yeniseisk gymnasium. For nigh 
 three years the boy studied here, astonishing the gymnasium 
 with his extraordinary ability, when suddenly the Government 
 authorities ordered the boy to return at once " to the place where 
 he was born.'" In vain the directors of the gymnasium, won 
 over by the poor boy^s talent and enthusiasm for study, peti- 
 tioned the Government. The Yeniseisk authorities were again 
 ordered to expel him. No respite was granted and the thirteen- 
 year old lad was sent to Sokolk in the Government of Grodno 
 at the other extreme of European Russia, where he was quite 
 alone in the world. Before he was sixteen, he escaped to Eng- 
 land, his soul branded by terrible memories, and steeled by 
 solitude to a stern strength. 
 
 At Sugarman's he spoke little and then mainly with the father 
 on scholastic points. After meals he retired quickly to his busi- 
 ness or his sleeping-den, which was across the road. Bessie 
 loved Daniel Hyams, but she was a woman and Strelitski's neu- 
 trality piqued her. Even to-day it is possible he might not have 
 spoken to Gabriel Hamburg if his other neighbor had not been 
 
SUGARMAN'S BAR-MITZVAH PARTY. 161 
 
 Bessie. Gabriel Hamburg was glad to talk to the youth, the 
 outlines of whose English history were known to him. Strelitski 
 seemed to expand under the sunshine of a congenial spirit ; he 
 answered Hamburg's sympathetic inquiries about his work 
 without reluctance and even made some remarks on his own 
 initiative. 
 
 And as they spoke, an undercurrent of pensive thought was 
 flowing in the old scholar's soul and his tones grew tenderer and 
 tenderer. The echoes of Ebenezer's effusive speech were in his 
 ears and the artificial notes rang strangely genuine. All round 
 him sat happy fathers of happy children, men who warmed their 
 hands at the home-fire of life, men who lived while he was think- 
 ing. Yet he, too, had had his chance far back in the dim and 
 dusty years, his chance of love and money with it. He had let 
 it slip away for poverty and learning, and only six men in Europe 
 cared whether he lived or died. The sense of his own loneliness 
 smote him with a sudden aching desolation. His gaze grew hu- 
 mid ; the face of the young student was covered with a veil of 
 mist and seemed to shine with the radiance of an unstained soul. 
 If he had been as other men he might have had such a son. At 
 this moment Gabriel Hamburg was speaking of paragoge in He- 
 brew grammar, but his voice faltered and in imagination he was 
 laying hands of paternal benediction on Joseph Strelitski's head. 
 Swayed by an overmastering impulse he burst out at last. 
 
 " An idea strikes me! " 
 
 Strelitski looked up in silent interrogation at the old man's 
 agitated face. 
 
 " You live by yourself. I live by myself. We are both stu- 
 dents. Why should we not live together as students, too?" 
 
 A swift wave of surprise traversed Strelitski's face, and his eyes 
 grew soft. For an instant the one solitary soul visibly yearned 
 towards the other; he hesitated. 
 
 "Do not think I am too old," said the great scholar, trembling 
 all over. " I know it is the young who chum together, but still 
 I am a student. And you shall see how lively and cheerful I will 
 be." He forced a smile that hovered on tears. "We shall be 
 two rackety young students, every night raising a thousand 
 
 M 
 
162 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 devils. Gaudeainus igitiirP He began to hum in his cracked 
 hoarse voice the Burschen-lied of his early days at the Berlin 
 Gymnasium. 
 
 But Strelitski's face had grown dusky with a gradual flush and 
 a deepening gloom ; his black eyebrows were knit and his lips 
 set together and his eyes full of sullen ire. He suspected a snare 
 to assist him. 
 
 He shook his head. " Thank you," he said slowly. ^' But I 
 prefer to live alone." 
 
 And he turned and spoke to the astonished Bessie, and so the 
 two strange lonely vessels that had hailed each other across the 
 darkness drifted away and apart for ever in the waste of waters. 
 
 But Jonathan Sugarman's eye was on more tragic episodes. 
 Gradually the plates emptied, for the guests openly followed up 
 the more substantial elements of the repast by dessert, more 
 devastating even than the rear manoeuvres. At last there was 
 nothing but an aching china blank. The men looked round the 
 table for something else to " nash^'' but everywhere was the same 
 depressing desolation. Only in the centre of the table towered 
 in awful intact majesty the great Bar-niitsvah cake, like some 
 mighty sphinx of stone surveying the ruins of empires, and the 
 least reverent shrank before its austere gaze. But at last the 
 Shalotten SJianunos shook off his awe and stretched out his hand 
 leisurely towards the cake, as became the master of ceremonies. 
 But when Sugarman the Shadchan beheld his hand moving like 
 a creeping flame forward, he sprang towards him, as the tigress 
 springs when the hunter threatens her cub. And speaking no 
 word he snatched the great cake from under the hand of the 
 spoiler and tucked it under his arm, in the place where he carried 
 Nehemiah, and sped therewith from the room. Then consterna- 
 tion fell upon the scene till Solomon Ansell, crawling on hands 
 and knees in search of windfalls, discovered a basket of apples 
 stored under the centre of the table, and the Shalotten Sham- 
 mos's son told his father thereof ere Solomon could do more than 
 secure a few for his brother and sisters. And the Shalotten 
 Shammos laughed joyously, " Apples," and dived under the table, 
 and his long form reached to the other side and beyond, and 
 
SUGARMAN'S BAR-MI TZVAH PARTY. 163 
 
 graybearded men echoed the joyous cry and scrambled on the 
 ground Hke schoolboys. 
 
 " Leolom tikkach — always take," quoted the Badchan glee- 
 fully. 
 
 When Sugarman returned, radiant, he found his absence had 
 been fatal. 
 
 " Piece of fool! Two-eyed lump of flesh," said Mrs. Sugarman 
 in a loud whisper. '• Flying out of the room as if thou hadst the 
 ague." 
 
 " Shall I sit still like thee while our home is eaten up around 
 us?" Sugarman whispered back. " Couldst thou not look to 
 the apples? Plaster image! Leaden fool! See, they have 
 emptied the basket, too." 
 
 "Well, dost thou expect luck and blessing to crawl into it? 
 Even five shillings^ worth of nash cannot last for ever. May ten 
 ammunition wagons of black curses be discharged on thee ! " 
 replied Mrs. Sugarman, her one eye shooting fire. 
 
 This was the last straw of insult added to injury. Sugarman 
 was exasperated beyond endurance. He forgot that he had a 
 wider audience than his wife ; he lost all control of himself, and 
 cried aloud in a frenzy of rage, "What a pity thou hadst not a 
 fourth uncle! " 
 
 Mrs. Sugarman collapsed, speechless. 
 
 "A greedy lot, marm," Sugarman reported to Mrs. Hyams on 
 the Monday. "I was very glad you and your people didn't 
 come ; dere was noding left except de prospectuses of the Ham- 
 burg lotter^^ vich I left laying all about for de guests to take. 
 Being Shabbos I could not give dem out." 
 
 "We were sorry not to come, but neither Mr. Hyams nor my- 
 self felt well," said the white-haired broken-down old woman 
 with her painfully slow enunciation. Her English words rarely 
 went beyond two syllables. 
 
 "Ah!" said Sugarman. "But Pve come to give you back 
 your corkscrew." 
 
 "Why, it's broken," said Mrs. Hyams, as she took it. 
 
 " So it is, marm," he admitted readily. " But if you taink dat 
 I ought to pay for de damage you're mistaken. If you lend me 
 
164 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 your cat " — here he began to make the argumentative movement 
 with his thumb, as though scooping out imaginary kosher cheese 
 with it ; ''if you lend me your cat to kill my rat,'' his tones took 
 on tlie strange Talmudic singsong — "and my rat instead kills 
 your cat, then it is the fault of your cat and not the fault of my 
 rat/' 
 
 Poor Mrs. Hyams could not meet this argument. If Mendel 
 had been at home, he might have found a counter-analogy. As 
 it was, Sugarman re-tucked Nehemiah under his arm and de- 
 parted triumphant, almost consoled for the raid on his provisions 
 by the thought of money saved. In the street he met the Sha- 
 lotten S/tam?nos. 
 
 " Blessed art thou who comest,'' said the giant, in Hebrew ; 
 then relapsing into Yiddish he cried : " Fve been wanting to see 
 you. What did you mean by telling your wife you were sorry 
 she had not a fourth uncle?'' 
 
 " Soorka knew what I meant," said Sugarman with a little 
 croak of victory. " I have told her the story before. When the 
 A\m\g\\iy Shade k an was making marriages in Heaven, before we 
 were yet born, the name of my wife was coupled with my 
 own. The spirit of her eldest uncle hearing this flew up to the 
 Angel who made the proclamation and said: 'Angel! thou art 
 making a mistake. The man of whom thou makest mention 
 will be of a lower status than this future niece of mine.' 
 Said the Angel: 'Sh! It is all right. She will halt on one 
 leg.' Came then the spirit of her second uncle and said : 
 ' Angel, what blazonest thou ? A niece of mine marry a man 
 of such family?' Says the Angel: 'Sh! It is all right. She 
 will be blind in one eye.' Came the spirit of her third uncle 
 and said: 'Angel, hast thou not erred? Surely thou canst 
 not mean to marry my future niece into such a humble family.' 
 Said the Angel: 'Sh! It is all right. She will be deaf in 
 one ear.' Now, do you see? If she had only had a fourth 
 uncle, she would have been dumb into the bargain ; there 
 is only one mouth and my life would have been a happy one. 
 Before I told Soorka that history she used to throw up her 
 better breeding and finer family to me. Even in public she 
 
THE HOPE OF THE FAMILY. 165 
 
 would shed my blood. Now she does not do it even in pri- 
 vate." 
 
 Sugarman the Shadchan winked, readjusted Nehemiah and 
 went his way. • 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 THE HOPE OF THE FAMILY. 
 
 It was a cold, bleak Sunday afternoon, and the Ansells were 
 spending it as usual. Little Sarah was with Mrs. Simons, 
 Rachel had gone to Victoria Park with a party of school-mates, 
 the grandmother was asleep on the bed, covered with one of 
 her son's old coats (for there was no fire in the grate), with her 
 pious vade mecum in her hand ; Esther had prepared her lessons 
 and was reading a little brown book at Dutch Debby's, not 
 being able to forget the London Journal sufficiently ; Solomon 
 had not prepared his and was playing " rounder ''"' in the street, 
 Isaac being permitted to '' feed '''' the strikers, in return for a 
 prospective occupation of his new bed ; Moses Ansell was at S/iool, 
 listening to a Lfesped or funeral oration at the German Syna- 
 gogue, preached by Reb Shemuel over one of the lights of the 
 Ghetto, prematurely gone out — no other than the consumptive 
 ALaggid, who had departed suddenly for a less fashionable place 
 than Bournemouth. '' He has fallen," said the Reb, " not laden 
 with age, nor sighing for release because the grasshopper was a 
 burden. But He who holds the keys said : ' Thou hast done thy 
 share of the work ; it is not thine to complete it. It was in thy 
 heart to serve Me, from Me thou shalt receive thy reward.'" 
 
 And all the perspiring crowd in the black-draped hall shook 
 with grief, and thousands of working men followed the body, 
 weeping, to the grave, walking all the way to the great cemetery 
 in Bow. 
 
 A slim, black-haired, handsome lad of about twelve, dressed in 
 a neat black suit, with a shining white Eton collar, stumbled up 
 the dark stairs of No. i Royal Street, with an air of unfamiliarity 
 and disgust. At Dutch Debby's door he was delayed by a brief 
 
166 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 altercation with Bobby. He burst open the door of the Ansell 
 apartment without knocking, though he took off his hat invol- 
 untarily as he entered Then he stood still with an air of dis- 
 appointment. The room seemed empty. 
 
 "What dost thou want, Esther? " murmured the grandmother 
 rousing herself sleepily. 
 
 The boy looked towards the bed with a start He could not 
 make out what the grandmother was saying. It was four years 
 since he had heard Yiddish spoken, and he had almost forgotten 
 the existence of the dialect The room, too, seemed chill and 
 alien, — so unspeakably poverty-stricken. 
 
 "Oh, how are you, grandmother?" he said, going up to her 
 and kissing her perfunctorily. " Where's everybody?" 
 
 "Art thou Benjamin?" said the grandmother, her stern, 
 wrinkled face shadowed with surprise and doubt. 
 
 Benjamin guessed what she was asking and nodded. 
 
 "But how richly they have dressed thee! Alas, I suppose 
 they have taken away thy Judaism instead. For four whole 
 years — is it not — thou hast been with English folk. Woe! 
 Woe! If thy father had married a pious woman, she would 
 have been living still and thou wouldst have been able to live 
 happily in our midst instead of being exiled among strangers, 
 who feed thy body and starve thy soul. If thy father had left 
 me in Poland, I should have died happy and my old eyes would 
 never have seen the sorrow. Unbutton thy waistcoat, let me 
 see if thou wearest the ' four-corners ' at least." Of this harangue, 
 poured forth at the rate natural to thoughts running ever in the 
 same groove, Benjamin understood but a word here and there. 
 For four years he had read and read and read English books, 
 absorbed himself in English composition, heard nothing but 
 English spoken about him. Nay, he had even deliberately put 
 the jargon out of his mind at the commencement as something 
 degrading and humiliating. Now it stiuck vague notes of old 
 outgrown associations but called up no definite images. 
 
 " Where's Esther? ' " he said. 
 
 "Esther," grumbled the grandmother, catching the name. 
 " Esther is with Dutch Debby. She's always with her. Dutch 
 
THE HOPE OF THE FAMILY. 167 
 
 Debby pretends to love her like a mother — and why? Because 
 she wants to be her mother. She aims at marrying my Moses. 
 But not for us. This time we shall marry the woman I select. 
 No person like that who knows as mueh about Judaism as the 
 cow of Sunday, nor like Mrs. Simons, who coddles our little 
 Sarah because she thinks my Moses will have her. It's plain 
 as the eye in her head what she wants. But the Widow Finkel- 
 stein is the woman we're going to marry. She is a true Jewess, 
 shuts up her shop the moment Shabbos comes in, not works 
 right into the Sabbath like so many, and goes to Shool even on 
 Friday nights. Look how she brought up her Avromkely, who 
 intoned the whole Portion of the Law and the Prophets in 
 Shool before he was six years old. Besides she has money and 
 has cast eyes upon him." 
 
 The boy, seeing conversation was hopeless, murmured some- 
 thing inarticulate and ran down the stairs to find some traces of 
 the intelligible members of his family. Happily Bobby, remem- 
 bering their former altercation, and determining to have the last 
 word, barred Benjamin's path with such pertinacity that Esther 
 came out to quiet him and leapt into her brother's arms with 
 a great cry of joy, dropping the book she held full on Bobby's 
 nose. 
 
 "O Benjy — Is it really you? Oh, I am so glad. I am so 
 glad. I knew you would come some day. O Benjy! Bobby, 
 you bad dog, this is Benjy, my brother. Debby, I'm going up- 
 stairs. Benjamin's come back. Benjamin's come back." 
 
 " All right, dear," Debby called out. " Let me have a look at 
 him soon. Send me in Bobby if you're going away." The words 
 ended in a cough. 
 
 Esther hurriedly drove in Bobby, and then half led, half 
 dragged Benjamin upstairs. The grandmother had fallen asleep 
 again and was snoring peacefully. 
 
 " Speak low, Benjy," said Esther. " Grandmother's asleep." 
 
 "All right, Esther. I, don't want to wake her, I'm sure. I 
 was up here just now, and couldn't make out a word she was 
 jabbering." 
 
 " I know. She's losing all her teeth, poor thing." 
 
168 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 "No, it isn't that. She speaks that beastly Yiddish — I made 
 sure she'd have learned English by this time. I hope you don't 
 speak it, Esther." 
 
 " I must, Benjy. You see father and grandmother never speak 
 anything else at home, and only know a few words of English. 
 But I don't let the children speak it except to them. You should 
 hear little Sarah speak English. It's beautiful. Only when she 
 cries she says '■ Woe is me ' in Yiddish. I have had to slap her 
 for it — but that makes her cry 'Woe is me ' all the more. Oh, 
 how nice you look, Benjy, with your white collar, just like the 
 pictures of little Lord Launceston in the Fourth Standard Reader. 
 I wish I could show you to the girls! Oh, my, what'll Solomon 
 say when he sees you! He's always wearing his corduroys away 
 at the knees." 
 
 "Butw^here is everybody? And w^hy is there no fire?" said 
 Benjamin impatiently. " It's beastly cold." 
 
 "Father hopes to get a bread, coal and meat ticket to-morrow, 
 dear." 
 
 "Well, this is a pretty welcome for a fellow!" grumbled 
 Benjamin. 
 
 "I'm so sorry, Benjy! If I'd only known you were coming I 
 misfht have borrowed some coals from Mrs. Belcovitch. But 
 just stamp your feet a little if they freeze. No, do it outside the 
 door; grandmother's asleep. Why didn't you write to me you 
 were coming?" 
 
 "I didn't know. Old Four-Eyes — that's one of our teachers 
 — was going up to London this afternoon, and he wanted a boy 
 to carry some parcels, and as Tm the best boy in my class he let 
 me come. He let me run up and see you all, and I'm to meet 
 him at London Bridge Station at seven o'clock. You're not 
 much altered, Esther." 
 
 "Ain't I?" she said, with a little pathetic smile. "Ain't I 
 bigger? " 
 
 "Not four years bigger. For a moment I could fancy I'd 
 never been away. How the years slip by! I shall be Bar- 
 initzvah soon." 
 
 '^ Ves, and now I've got you again I've so much to say I don't 
 
THE HOPE OF THE FAMILY. 169 
 
 know where to begin. That time father went to see you I 
 couldn't get much out of him about you, and your own letters 
 have been so few." 
 
 " A letter costs a penny, Esther. Where am I to get pennies 
 from?" 
 
 " I know, dear. I know you would have liked to write. But 
 now you shall tell me everything. Have you missed us very 
 much ? " 
 
 " No, I don't think so," said Benjamin. 
 
 "Oh, not at all? " asked Esther in disappointed tones. 
 
 " Yes, I missed you^ Esther, at first," he said, soothingly. 
 " But there's such a lot to do and to think about. It's a new 
 life." 
 
 "And have you been happy, Benjy? " 
 
 "Oh yes. Quite. _[ust think! Regular meals, with oranges 
 and sweets and entertainments every now and then, a bed all to 
 yourself, good fires, a mansion with a noble staircase and hall, a 
 field to play in, with balls and toys — " 
 
 "A field!" echoed Esther. "Why it must be like going to 
 Greenwich every day." 
 
 " Oh, better than Greenwich where they take you girls for a 
 measly day's holiday once a year." 
 
 " Better than the Crystal Palace, where they take the boys ? " 
 
 " Why, the Crystal Palace is quite near. We can see the fire- 
 works every Thursday night in the season." 
 
 Esther's eyes opened wider. " And have you been inside ? " 
 
 " Lots of times." 
 
 "Do you remember the time you didn't go?" Esther said 
 softly. 
 
 "A fellow doesn't forget that sort of thing," he grumbled. " I 
 so wanted to go — I had heard such a lot about it from the boys 
 who had been. When the day of the excursion came my Shabbos 
 coat was in pawn, wasn't it ? " 
 
 "Yes," said Esther, her eyes growing humid. "I was so sorry 
 for you, dear. You didn't want to go in your corduroy coat and 
 let the boys know you didn't have a best coat. It was quite 
 right, Benjy." 
 
170 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 " I remember mother gave me a treat instead/' said Benjamin 
 with a comic grimace. " She took me round to Zachariah Square 
 and let me play there while she was scrubbing Malka's floor. I 
 think Milly gave me a penny, and I remember Leah let me take 
 a couple of licks from a glass of ice cream she was eating on 
 the Ruins. It was a hot day — I shall never forget that ice 
 cream. But fancy parents pawning a chap's only decent coat." 
 He smoothed his well-brushed jacket complacently. 
 
 " Yes, but don't you remember mother took it out the very 
 next morning before school with the money she earnt at 
 Malka's." 
 
 " But what was the use of that? I put it on of course when I 
 went to school and told the teacher I was ill the day before, just 
 to show the boys I was telling the truth. But it was too late to 
 take me to the Palace." 
 
 " Ah, but it came in handy — don't you remember, Benjy, 
 how one of the Great Ladies died suddenly the next week! " 
 
 ''Oh yes! Yoicks! Tallyho!" cried Benjamin, with sudden 
 excitement. " We went down on hired omnibuses to the ceme- 
 tery ever so far into the country, six of the best boys in each 
 class, and I was on the box seat next to the driver, and I thought 
 of the old mail-coach days and looked out for highwaymen. We 
 stood along the path in the cemetery and the sun was shining 
 and the grass was so green and there were such lovely flowers 
 on the coflin when it came past with the gentlemen crying behind 
 it and then we had lemonade and cakes on the way back. Oh, it 
 was just beautiful! I went to two other funerals after that, but 
 that was the one I enjoyed most. Yes, that coat did come in 
 useful after all for a day in the country." 
 
 Benjamin evidently did not think of his own mother's inter- 
 ment as a funeral. Esther did and she changed the subject 
 quickly. 
 
 " Well, tell me more about your place." 
 
 '' Well, it's like going to funerals every day. It's all country 
 all round about, with trees and flowers and birds. Why, I've 
 helped to make hay in the autumn." 
 
 Esther drew a sigh of ecstasy. •" It's like a book," she said. 
 
THE HOPE OF THE FAMILY. 171 
 
 "Books!'' he said. "We've got hundreds and hundreds, a 
 whole hbrary — Dickens, Mayne Reid, George EHot, Captain 
 Marryat, Thackeray — I've read them all." 
 
 "Oh, Benjy! " said Esther, clasping her hands in admiration, 
 both of the librar}' and her brother. " I wish I were you." 
 
 " Well, you could be me easily enough." 
 
 " How? " said Esther, eagerly. 
 
 " Why, we have a girls' department, too. You're an orphan 
 as much as me. You get father to enter you as a candidate." 
 
 "Oh, how could I, Benjy?" said Esther, her face falling. 
 " What would become of Solomon and Ikey and little Sarah? " 
 
 "They've got a father, haven't they? and a grandmother?" 
 
 "Father can't do washing and cooking, you silly boy! And 
 grandmother's too old." 
 
 "Well, I call it a beastly shame. Why can't father earn a 
 living and give out the washing? He never has a penny to bless 
 himself with." 
 
 "It isn't his fault, Benjy. He tries hard. I'm sure he often 
 grieves that he's so poor that he can't afford the railway fare to 
 visit you on visiting days. That time he did go he only got the 
 money by selling a work-box I had for a prize. But he often 
 speaks about you." 
 
 "Well, I don't grumble at his not coming," said Benjamin. 
 " I forgive him that because you know he's not very presentable, 
 is he, Esther? " 
 
 Esther was silent. "Oh, well, ev'erybody knows he's poor. 
 They don't expect father to be a gentleman," 
 
 " Yes, but he might look decent. Does he still wear those 
 two beastly little curls at the side of his head ? Oh, I did hate it 
 when I was at school here, and he used to come to see the mas- 
 ter about something. Some of the boys had such respectable 
 fathers, it was quite a pleasure to see them come in and overawe 
 the teacher. Mother used to be as bad, coming in with a shawl 
 over her head." 
 
 "Yes, Benjy, but she used to bring us in bread and butter 
 when there had been none in the house at breakfast-time. 
 Don't you remember, Benjy?" 
 
172 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 "Oh, yes, I remember. We\'e been through some beastly 
 bad times, haven't we, Esther? All I say is you wouldn't like 
 father coming in before all the girls in your class, would you, 
 
 now 
 
 ?'^ 
 
 Esther blushed. " There is no occasion for him to come,"" 
 she said evasively. 
 
 " Well, I know what I shall do ! " said Benjamin decisively ; 
 " Fm going to be a very rich man — " 
 
 "Are you, Benjy?" inquired Esther. 
 
 "Yes, of course. Fm going to write books — like Dickens 
 and those fellows. Dickens made a pile of money, just by writ- 
 ing down plain every-day things going on around." 
 
 " But you can't write ! " 
 
 Benjamin laughed a superior laugh. "Oh, can't I? What 
 about Our Own, eh?" 
 
 "What's that?" 
 
 "That's our journal. I edit it. Didn't I tell you about it? 
 Yes, I'm running a story through it, called ' The Soldier's 
 Bride,' all about life in Afghanistan." 
 
 "Oh, where could I get a number?" 
 
 "You can't get a number. It ain't printed, stupid. It's all 
 copied by hand, and we've only got a few copies. If you came 
 down, you could see it." 
 
 " Yes, but I can't come down," said Esther, with tears in her 
 eyes. 
 
 " Well, never mind. You'll see it some day. Well, what 
 was I telling you? Oh, yes! About my prospects. You see, 
 I'm going in for a scholarship in a few months, and everybody, 
 says I shall get it. Then, perhaps I might go to a higher school, 
 perhaps to Oxford or Cambridge ! " 
 
 "And row in the boat-race!" said Esther, flushing with 
 excitement. 
 
 "No, bother the boat-race. I'm going in for Latin and 
 Greek. I've begun to learn French already. So I shall know 
 three foreign languages." 
 
 "Four!" said Esther, "you forget Hebrew !" 
 
 "Oh, of course, Hebrew. I don't reckon Hebrew. Every- 
 
THE HOPE OF THE FAMILY, 173 
 
 body knows Hebrew. Hebrew's no good to any one. What 
 I want is something that'll get me on in the world and enable 
 me to write my books.'' 
 
 "But Dickens — did he know Latin or Greek?" asked Esther. 
 
 " No, he didn't," said Benjamin proudly. '•'' That's just where 
 I shall have the pull of him. Well, when I've got rich I shall 
 buy father a new suit of clothes and a high hat — it is so beastly 
 cold here, Esther, just feel my hands, like ice! — and I shall 
 make him live with grandmother in a decent room, and give 
 him an allowance so that he can study beastly big books all 
 day long — does he still take a week to read a page? And 
 Sarah and Isaac and Rachel shall go to a proper boarding 
 school, and Solomon — how old will he be then? " 
 
 Esther looked puzzled. '■'■ Oh, but suppose it takes you ten 
 years getting famous! Solomon will be nearly twenty." 
 
 "It can't take me ten years. But never mind! We shall see 
 what is to be done with Solomon when the time comes. As for 
 you — " 
 
 "Well, Benjy," she said, for his imagination was breaking 
 down. 
 
 "I'll give you a dowry and you'll get married. See!" he 
 concluded triumphantly. 
 
 " Oh, but suppose I shan't want to get married ? " 
 
 "Nonsense — every girl wants to get married. I overheard 
 Old Four-Eyes say all the teachers in the girls' department were 
 dying to marry him. I've got several sweethearts already, and I 
 dare say you have." He looked at her quizzingly. 
 
 " No, dear," she said earnestly. " There's only Levi Jacobs, 
 Reb Shemuel's son, who's been coming round sometimes to play 
 with Solomon, and brings me almond-rock. But I don't care for 
 him — at least not in that way. Besides, he's quite above us." 
 
 '■''Oh, is he? Wait till I write my novels." 
 
 " I wish you'd write them now. Because then I should have 
 something to read — Oh ! " 
 
 "What's the matter? " 
 
 " I've lost my book. What have I done with my little brown 
 book?" 
 
174 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 "Didn't you drop it on that beastly dog?" 
 
 " Oh, did I? People'!! tread on it on the stairs. Oh dear! 
 ri! run down and get it. But don't call Bobby beastly, 
 please." 
 
 " Why not? Dogs are beasts, aren't they?" 
 
 Esther puzzled over the retort as she flew downstairs, but 
 could find no reply. She found the book, however, and that 
 consoled her. 
 
 " What have you got hold of ? " replied Benjamin, when she 
 returned. 
 
 "Oh, nothing! It wouldn't interest you." 
 
 "All books interest me," announced Benjamin with dignity. 
 
 Esther reluctantly gave him the book. He turned over the 
 pages carelessly, then his face grew serious and astonished. 
 
 " Esther! " he said, " how did you come by this? " 
 
 " One of the girls gave it me in exchange for a stick of slate 
 pencil. She said she got it from the missionaries — she went to 
 their night-school for a lark and they gave her it and a pair of 
 boots as well." 
 
 "And you have been reading it?'^ 
 
 " Yes, Benjy," said Esther meekly. 
 
 " You naughty girl I Don't you know the New Testament is 
 a wicked book? Look here! There's the word 'Christ' on 
 nearly every page, and the word ' Jesus ' on every other. And 
 you liaven't even scratched them out! Oh, if any one was to 
 catch you reading this book ! " 
 
 " I don't read it in school hours," said the little girl depre- 
 catingly. 
 
 " But you have no business to read it at all ! " 
 
 "Why not? " she said doggedly. "I like it. It seems just as 
 interesting as the Old Testament, and there are more miracles 
 to the page." 
 
 "You wicked girl!" said her brother, overwhelmed by her 
 audacity. " Surely you know that all these miracles were false ? " 
 
 " Why were they false ? " persisted Esther. 
 
 "Because miracles left off after the Old Testament! There 
 are no miracles now-a-days, are there ? " 
 
THE HOPE OF THE FAMILY. 175 
 
 " No," admitted Esther. 
 
 "Well, then," he said triumphantly, "if miracles had gone 
 overlapping into New Testament times we might just as well 
 expect to have them now." 
 
 " But why shouldn't we have them now ? " 
 
 " Esther, Fm surprised at you. I should like to set Old Four- 
 Eyes on to you. He'd soon tell you why. Religion all hap- 
 pened in the past. God couldn't be always talking to His 
 creatures." 
 
 " I wish I'd lived in the past, when Religion was happening," 
 said Esther ruefully, " But why do Christians all reverence this 
 book? Fm sure there are many more millions of them than of 
 Jews!" 
 
 " Of course there are, Esther. Good things are scarce. We 
 are so few because we are God's chosen people." 
 
 " But why do I feel good when I read what Jesus said?" 
 
 " Because you are so bad," he answered, in a shocked tone. 
 " Here, give me the book, Fll burn it." 
 
 "No, no! " said Esther. " Besides there's no fire." 
 
 " No, hang it," he said, rubbing his hands. "Well, it'll never 
 do if you have to fall back on this sort of thing. Fll tell you 
 what Fll do. Fll send you Our Own.'''' 
 
 " Oh, will you, Benjy ? That is good of you," she said joyfully, 
 and was kissing him when Solomon and Isaac came romping in 
 and woke up the grandmother. 
 
 " How are you, Solomon ? " said Benjamin. " How are you, 
 my little man," he added, patting Isaac on his curly head. Sol- 
 omon was overawed for a moment. Then he said, " Hullo, 
 Benjy, have you got any spare buttons ? " 
 
 But Isaac was utterly ignorant who the stranger could be and 
 hung back with his finger in his mouth. 
 
 " That's your brother Benjamin, Ikey," said Solomon. 
 
 " Don't want no more brovers," said Ikey. 
 
 " Oh, but I was here before you," said Benjamin laughing. 
 
 "Does oor birfday come before mine, then?" 
 
 " Yes, if I remember." 
 
 Isaac looked tauntingly at the door. " See ! " he cried to the 
 
176 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 absent Sarah. Then turning graciously to Benjamin he said, 
 " I thant kiss oo, but FU lat oo teep in my new bed." 
 
 '' But you must kiss him," said Esther, and saw that he did 
 it before she left the room to fetch little Sarah from Mrs. 
 Simons. 
 
 When she came back Solomon was letting Benjamin inspect 
 his Plevna peep-show without charge and Moses Ansell was 
 back, too. His eyes were red with weeping, but that was on 
 account of the Maggid. His nose was blue with the chill of the 
 cemetery. 
 
 "He was a great man," he was saying to the grandmother. 
 "He could lecture for four hours together on any text and he 
 would always manage to get back to the text before the end. 
 Such exegetics, such homiletics! He was greater than the Em- 
 peror of Russia. Woe! Woe!" 
 
 "Woe! Woe!" echoed the grandmother. "If women were 
 allowed to go to funerals, I would gladly have followed him. 
 Why did he come to England? In Poland he would still have 
 been alive. And why did I come to England? Woe! Woe!" 
 
 Her head dropped back on the pillow and her sighs passed 
 gently into snores. Moses turned again to his eldest born, feel- 
 ing that he was secondary in importance only to the Maggid, 
 and proud at heart of his genteel English appearance. 
 
 " Well, you'll soon be Baf'-7nitzvah, Benjamin," he said, with 
 clumsy geniality blent with respect, as he patted his boy's cheeks 
 with his discolored fingers. 
 
 Benjamin caught the last two words and nodded his head. 
 
 " And then you'll be coming back to us. I suppose they will 
 apprentice you to something." 
 
 "What does he say, Esther?" asked Benjamin, impatiently. 
 
 Esther interpreted. 
 
 "Apprentice me to something!" he repeated, disgusted. 
 "Father's ideas are so beastly humble. He would like every- 
 body to dance on him. Why he'd be content to see me a cigar- 
 maker or a presser. Tell him I'm not coming home, that I'm 
 going to win a scholarship and to go to the University." 
 
 Moses's eyes dilated with pride. " Ah, you will become a 
 
THE HOPE OF THE FAMILY. 177 
 
 Rav," he said, and lifted up his boy's chin and looked lovingly 
 into the handsome face. 
 
 " What's that about a Rav, Esther? '' said Benjamin. " Does 
 he want me to become a Rabbi — Ugh! Tell him I'm going 
 to write books." 
 
 "My blessed boy! A good commentary on the Song of Songs 
 is much needed. Perhaps you will begin by writing that." 
 
 " Oh, it's no use talking to him, Esther. Let him be. Why 
 can't he speak English ? " 
 
 " He can — but you'd understand even less," said Esther with 
 a sad smile. 
 
 "Well, all I say is it's a beastly disgrace. Look at the years 
 he's been in England — just as long as we have." Then the 
 humor of the remark dawned upon him and he laughed. " I 
 suppose he's out of work, as usual," he added. 
 
 Moses's ears pricked up at the syllables " out-of-work," which 
 to him was a single word of baneful meaning. 
 
 "Yes," he said in Yiddish. " But if I only had a few pounds 
 to start with I could work up a splendid business." 
 
 "Wait! He shall have a business," said Benjamin when 
 Esther interpreted. 
 
 " Don't listen to him," said Esther. " The Board of Guardians 
 has started him again and again. But he likes to think he is a 
 man of business." 
 
 Meantime Isaac had been busy explaining Benjamin to Sarah, 
 nnd pointing out the remarkable confirmation of his own views 
 as to birthdays. This will account for Esther's next remark 
 being, " Now, dears, no fighting to-day. We must celebrate 
 Benjy's return. We ought to kill a fatted calf — like the man 
 in the Bible." 
 
 "What are you talking about, Esther?" said Benjamin suspi- 
 ciously. 
 
 "I'm so sorry, nothing, only foolishness," said Esther. "We 
 really must do something to make a holiday of the occasion. 
 Oh, I know ; we'll have tea before you go, instead of waiting till 
 supper-time. Perhaps Rachel'll be back from the Park. You 
 haven't seen her yet." 
 
 N 
 
178 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 " No, I can't stay/^ said Benjy. " It'll take me three-quarters 
 of an hour getting to the station. And you've got no fire to 
 make tea with either." 
 
 "Nonsense, Benjy. You seem to have forgotten everything; 
 weVe got a loaf and a penn'uth of tea in the cupboard. Solo- 
 mon, fetch a farthing's worth of boiling water from the Widow 
 Finkelstein." 
 
 At the words " widow Finkelstein/' the grandmother awoke 
 and sat up. 
 
 "No, I'm too tired," said Solomon. " Isaac can go." 
 
 " No," said Isaac. " Let Estie go." 
 
 Esther took a jug and went to the door, 
 
 " Meshe," said the grandmother. " Go thou to the Widow 
 Finkelstein." 
 
 " But Esther can go," said Moses. 
 
 " Yes, I'm going," said Esther. 
 
 "Meshe!" repeated the Bube inexorably. "Go thou to the 
 Widow Finkelstein." 
 
 Moses went. 
 
 " Have you said the afternoon prayer, boys ? " the old woman 
 asked. 
 
 "Yes," said Solomon. "While you were asleep." 
 
 "Oh-h-h!" said Esther under her breath. And she looked 
 reproachfully at Solomon. 
 
 "Well, didn't you say we must make a holiday to-day.?" he 
 whispered back. 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 THE HOLY LAND LEAGUE. 
 
 "Oh, these English Jews!" said Melchitsedek Pinchas, in 
 German. 
 
 "What have they done to you now?" said Guedalyah, the 
 greengrocer, in Yiddish. 
 
 The two languages are relatives and often speak as they pass by. 
 
 " I have presented my book to every one of them, but they 
 
THE HOLY LAND LEAGUE. 179 
 
 have paid me scarce enough to purchase poison for them all," 
 said the little poet scowling. The cheekbones stood out sharply 
 beneath the tense bronzed skin. The black hair was tangled 
 and unkempt and the beard untrimmed, the eyes darted venom. 
 ''One of them — Gideon, M. P., the stockbroker, engaged me to 
 teach his son for his Bar-niitzvah. But the boy is so stupid! 
 So stupid! Just like his father. I have no doubt he will grow 
 up to be a Rabbi. I teach him his Portion — I sing the words to 
 him with a most beautiful voice, but he has as much ear as soul. 
 Then I write him a speech — a wonderful speech for him to make 
 to his parents and the company at the breakfast, and in it, after 
 he thanks them for their kindness, I make him say how, with the 
 blessing of the Almighty, he will grow up to be a good Jew, and 
 munificently support Hebrew literature and learned men like his 
 revered teacher, Melchitsedek Pinchas. And he shows it to his 
 father, and his father says it is not written in good English, and 
 that another scholar has already written him a speech. Good 
 English! Gideon has as much knowledge of style as the Rev. 
 Elkan Benjamin of decency. Ah, I will shoot them both. I 
 know I do not speak English like a native — but what language 
 under the sun is there I cannot wTite? French, German, Spanish, 
 Arabic — they flow from my pen like honey from a rod. As for 
 Hebrew, you know, Guedalyah, I and you are the only two men 
 in England who can write Holy Language grammatically. And 
 yet these miserable stockbrokers, Men-of-the-Earth, they dare to 
 say I cannot write English, and they have given me the sack. 
 I, who was teaching the boy true Judaism and the value of 
 Hebrew literature." 
 
 " What! They didnH let you finish teaching the boy his Por- 
 tion because you couldn't write English ? " 
 
 " No ; they had another pretext — one of the servant girls said 
 I wanted to kiss her — lies ^nd falsehood. I was kissing my 
 finger after kissing the Meziizah, and the stupid abomination 
 thought I was kissing my hand to her. It sees itself that they 
 don't kiss the Meziizahs often in that house — the impious crew. 
 And what will be now? The stupid boy will go home to break- 
 fast in a bazaar of costly presents, and he will make the stupid 
 
180 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 speech written by the fool of an Englishman, and the ladies will 
 weep. But where will be the Judaism in all this? Who will 
 vaccinate him against free-thinking as I would have done? Who 
 will infuse into him the true patriotic fervor, the love of his race, 
 the love of Zion, the land of his fathers ? " 
 
 " Ah, you are verily a man after my own heart ! " said Gue- 
 dalyah, the greengrocer, overswept by a wave of admiration. 
 " Why should you not come with me to my Beth-Haviidrash 
 to-night, to the meeting for the foundation of the Holy Land 
 League? That cauliflower will be four-pence, mum." 
 
 "Ah, what is that?" said Pinchas. 
 
 " I have an idea ; a score of us meet to-night to discuss it." 
 
 "Ah, yes! You have always ideas. You are a sage and a 
 saint, Guedalyah. The Beth-Ha»iidrash which you have estab- 
 lished is the only centre of real orthodoxy and Jewish literature 
 in London. The ideas you expound in the Jewish papers for 
 the amelioration of the lot of our poor brethren are most states- 
 manlike. But these donkey-head English rich people — w'hat help 
 can you expect from them ? They do not even understand your 
 plans. They have only sympathy with needs of the stomach." 
 
 "You are right! You are right, Pinchas!" said Guedalyah, 
 the greengrocer, eagerly. He was a tall, loosely-built man, with 
 a pasty complexion capable of shining with enthusiasm. He 
 was dressed shabbily, and in the intervals of selling cabbages 
 projected the regeneration of Judah. 
 
 " That is just what is beginning to dawn upon me, Pinchas," 
 he went on. "Our rich people give plenty away in charity; 
 they have good hearts but not Jewish hearts. As the verse 
 says. — A bundle of rhubarb and two pounds of Brussels sprouts 
 and threepence halfpenny change. Thank you. Much obliged. 
 
 — Now I have bethought myself why should we not work out 
 our own salvation? It is the poor, the oppressed, the persecuted, 
 whose souls pant after the Land of Israel as the hart after the 
 water-brooks. Let us help ourselves. Let us put our hands in 
 our own pockets. With our Groschen let us rebuild Jerusalem 
 and our Holy Temple. We will collect a fund slowly but surely 
 
 — from all parts of the East End and the provinces the pious 
 
THE HOLY LAND LEAGUE. 181 
 
 will give. With the first fruits we will send out a little party of 
 persecuted Jews to Palestine ; and then another ; and another. 
 The movement will grow like a sliding snow-ball that becomes 
 an avalanche." 
 
 " Yes, then the rich will come to you," said Pinchas, intensely 
 excited. "Ah! it is a great idea, like all yours. Yes, I will 
 come, I will make a mighty speech, for my lips, like Isaiah's, 
 have been touched with the burning coal. I will inspire all 
 hearts to start the movement at once. I will write its Marseil- 
 laise this very night, bedewing my couch with a poet's tears. 
 We shall no longer be dumb — we shall roar like the lions of 
 Lebanon. I shall be the trumpet to call the dispersed together 
 from the four corners of the earth — yea, I shall be the Messiah 
 himself," said Pinchas, rising on the wings of his own eloquence, 
 and forgetting to puff at his cigar. 
 
 " I rejoice to see you so ardent ; but mention not the word 
 Messiah, for I fear some of our friends will take alarm and say 
 that these are not Messianic times, that neither Elias, nor Gog, 
 King of Magog, nor any of the portents have yet appeared. 
 Kidneys or regents, my child?" 
 
 " Stupid people! Hillel said more wisely: 'If I help not my- 
 self who will help me?' Do they expect the Messiah to fall 
 from heaven? Who knows but I am the Messiah? Was I not 
 born on the ninth of Ab?" 
 
 " Hush, hush! " said Guedalyah, the greengrocer. " Let us be 
 practical. We are not yet ready for Marsellaises or Messiahs. 
 The first step is to get funds enough to send one family to 
 Palestine." 
 
 " Yes, yes," said Pinchas, drawing vigorously at his cigar to 
 rekindle it. " But we must look ahead. Already I see it all. 
 Palestine in the hands of the Jews — the Holy Temple rebuilt, a 
 Jewish state, a President who is equally accomplished with the 
 sword and the pen, — the whole campaign stretches before me. 
 I see things like Napoleon, general and dictator alike." 
 
 " Truly we wish that," said the greengrocer cautiously. " But 
 to-night it is only a question of a dozen men founding a collect- 
 ing society." 
 
182 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 "Of course, of course, that I understand. You're right — peo- 
 ple about here say Guedalyah the greengrocer is always right. 
 I will come beforehand to supper with you to talk it over, 
 and you shall see what I will write for the Mizpeh and the 
 Arbeiter-freund. You know all these papers jump at me — their 
 readers are the class to which you appeal — in them will I write 
 my burning verses and leaders advocating the cause. I shall be 
 your Tyrtaeus, your Mazzini, your Napoleon. How blessed that 
 I came to England just now. I have lived in the Holy Land — 
 the genius of the soil is blent with mine. I can describe its 
 beauties as none other can. I am the very man at the very hour. 
 And yet I will not go rashly — slow and sure — my plan is to 
 collect small amounts from the poor to start by sending one 
 family at a time to Palestine. That is how we must do it. 
 How does that strike you, Guedalyah. You agree? " 
 
 "Yes, yes. That is also my opinion." 
 
 "You see I am not a Napoleon only in great ideas. I under- 
 stand detail, though as a poet I abhor it. Ah, the Jew is king of 
 the world. He alone conceives great ideas and executes them 
 by petty means. The heathen are so stupid, so stupid! Yes, 
 you shall see at supper how practically I will draw up the scheme. 
 And then I will show you, too, what I have written about Gid- 
 eon, M. P., the dog of a stockbroker — a satirical poem have I 
 written about him, in Hebrew — an acrostic with his name for 
 the mockery of posterity. Stocks and shares have I translated 
 into Hebrew, with new words which will at once be accepted by 
 the Hebraists of the world and added to the vocabulary of mod- 
 ern Hebrew. Oh! I am terrible in satire. I sting like the hor- 
 net ; witty as Immanuel, but mordant as his friend Dante. It 
 will appear in the Mizpeh to-morrow. I will show this Anglo- 
 Jewish community that I am a man to be reckoned with. I will 
 crush it — not it me." 
 
 " But they don't see the Mizpeh and couldn't read it if they 
 did." 
 
 "No matter. I send it abroad — I have friends, great Rabbis, 
 great scholars, everywhere, who send me their learned manu- 
 scripts, their commentaries, their ideas, for revision and improve- 
 
THE HOLY LAND LEAGUE. 183 
 
 ment. Let the Anglo-Jewish community hug itself in its stupid 
 prosperity — but I will make it the laughing-stock of Europe and 
 Asia. Then some day it will find out its mistake ; it will not 
 have ministers like the Rev. Elkan Benjamin, who keeps four 
 mistresses, it will depose the lump of flesh who reigns over it 
 and it will seize the hem of my coat and beseech me to be its 
 Rabbi. ^^ 
 
 "We should have a more orthodox Chief Rabbi, certainly," 
 admitted Guedalyah. 
 
 "Orthodox? Then and only then shall we have true Judaism 
 in London and a burst of literary splendor far exceeding that of 
 the much overpraised Spanish School, none of whom had that 
 true lyrical gift which is like the carol of the bird in the pairing 
 season. O why have I not the bird's privileges as well as its 
 gift of song? Why can I not pair at will? Oh the stupid Rab- 
 bis who forbade polygamy. Verily as the verse says : The Law 
 of Moses is perfect, enlightening the eyes — marriage, divorce, 
 all is regulated with the height of wisdom. Why must we adopt 
 the stupid customs of the heathen ? At present I have not even 
 one mate — but I love — ah Guedalyah! I love! The women 
 are so beautiful. You love the women, hey?" 
 
 "I love my Rivkah," said Guedalyah. "A penny on each 
 gingerbeer bottle." 
 
 " Yes, but why haven't / got a wife ? Eh ? " demanded the 
 little poet fiercely, his black eyes glittering. "I am a fine tall 
 well-built good-looking man. In Palestine and on the Continent 
 all the girls would go about sighing and casting sheep's eyes at 
 me, for there the Jews love poetry and literature. But here ! I 
 can go into a room with a maiden in it and she makes herself 
 unconscious of my presence. There is Reb Shemuel's daughter 
 — a fine beautiful virgin. I kiss her hand — and it is ice to my 
 lips. Ah, if I only had money ! And money I should have, if 
 these English Jews w-ere not so stupid and if they elected me 
 Chief Rabbi. Then I would marry — one, two, three maidens." 
 
 " Talk not such foolishness," said Guedalyah, laughing, for he 
 thought the poet jested. Pinchas saw his enthusiasm had carried 
 him too far, but his tongue was the most reckless of organs and 
 
184 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 often slipped into tlie truth. He was a real poet with an extraor- 
 dinary faculty for language and a gift of unerring rhythm. He 
 wrote after the mediaeval model — with a profusion of acrostics 
 and double rhyming — not with the bald duplications of primitive 
 Hebrew poetry. Intellectually he divined things like a woman 
 — with marvellous rapidity, shrewdness and inaccuracy. He saw 
 into people's souls through a dark refracting suspiciousness. The 
 same bent of mind, the same individuality of distorted insight 
 made him overflow with ingenious explanations of the Bible and 
 the Talmud, with new views and new lights on history, philology, 
 medicine — anything, everything. And he believed in his ideas 
 because they were his and in himself because of his ideas. To 
 himself his stature sometimes seemed to expand till his head 
 touched the sun — but that was mostly after wine — and his 
 brain retained a permanent glow from the contact. 
 
 "Well, peace be with you!" said Pinchas. "I will leave you 
 to your customers, who besiege you as I have been besieged 
 by the maidens. But what you have just told me has gladdened 
 my heart. I always had an affection for you, but now I love you 
 like a woman. We will found this Holy Land League, you and 
 L You shall be President — I waive all claims in your favor — 
 and I will be Treasurer. Hey?" 
 
 " We shall see ; we shall see," said Guedalyah the green- 
 grocer. 
 
 " No, we cannot leave it to the mob, we must settle it before- 
 hand. Shall we say done? " 
 
 He laid his finger cajolingly to the side of his nose. 
 
 " We shall see," repeated Guedalyah the greengrocer, impa- 
 tiently. 
 
 "No, say! I love you like a brother. Grant me this favor 
 and I will never ask anything of you so long as I live." 
 
 "Well, if the others — " began Guedalyah feebly. 
 
 "Ah! You are a Prince in Israel," Pinchas cried enthusias- 
 tically. " If I could only show you my heart, how it loves you." 
 
 He capered off at a sprightly trot, his head haloed by huge 
 volumes of smoke. Guedalyah the greengrocer bent over a bin 
 of potatoes. Looking up suddenly he was startled to see the 
 
THE HOLY LAND LEAGUE, 185 
 
 head fixed in the open front of the shop window. It was a nar- 
 row dark bearded face distorted witli an insinuative smile. A 
 dirty-nailed forefinger was laid on the right of the nose. 
 
 " You won't forget," said the head coaxingly. 
 
 "Of course I won't forget," cried the greengrocer querulously. 
 
 The meeting took place at ten that night at the Beth Hamid- 
 rash founded by Guedalyah, a large unswept room rudely fitted up 
 as a synagogue and approached by reeking staircases, unsavory 
 as the neighborhood. On one of the black benches a shabby 
 youth with very long hair and lank fleshless limbs shook his 
 body violently to and fro while he vociferated the sentences of 
 the Mishnah in the traditional argumentative singsong. Near 
 the central raised platform was a group of enthusiasts, among 
 whom Froom Karlkammer, with his thin ascetic body and the 
 mass of red hair that crowned his head like the light of a pharos, 
 was a conspicuous figure. 
 
 "Peace be to you, Karlkammer!" said Pinchas to him in 
 Hebrew. 
 
 " To you be peace, Pinchas ! " replied Karlkammer. 
 
 "Ah!" went on Pinchas. "Sweeter than honey it is to me, 
 yea than fine honey, to talk to a man in the Holy Tongue. 
 Woe, the speakers are few in these latter days. I and thou, 
 Karlkammer, are the only two people who can speak the Holy 
 Tongue grammatically on this isle of the sea. Lo, it is a great 
 thing we are met to do this night — I see Zion laughing on her 
 mountains and her fig-trees skipping for joy. I will be the treas- 
 urer of the fund, Karlkammer — do thou vote for me, for so our 
 society shall flourish as the green bay tree." 
 
 Karlkammer grunted vaguely, not having humor enough to 
 recall the usual associations of the simile, and Pinchas passed on 
 to salute Hamburg. To Gabriel Hamburg, Pinchas was occasion 
 for half-respectful amusement. He could not but reverence the 
 poet's genius even while he laughed at his pretensions to omnis- 
 cience, and at the daring and unscientific guesses which the poet 
 oiTered as plain prose. For when in their arguments Pinchas 
 came upon Jewish ground, he was in presence of a man who 
 knew every inch of it. 
 
186 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 " Blessed art thou who arrivest,'' he said when he perceived 
 Pinchas. Then dropping into German he continued — "I did 
 not know you would join in the rebuilding of Zion." 
 
 " Why not ? " inquired Pinchas. 
 
 " Because you have written so many poems thereupon." 
 
 " Be not so foolish," said Pinchas, annoyed. " Did not King 
 David fight the Philistines as well as write the Psalms?" 
 
 " Did he write the Psalms ? " said Hamburg quietly, with a 
 smile. 
 
 "No — not so loud! Of course he didn't! The Psalms were 
 written by Judas Maccabaeus, as I proved in the last issue of the 
 Stuttgard Zeitschrift. But that only makes my analogy more 
 forcible. You shall see how I will gird on sword and armor, 
 and I shall yet see even you in the forefront of the battle. I 
 will be treasurer, you shall vote for me, Hamburg, for I and you 
 are the only two people who know the Holy Tongue grammati- 
 cally, and we must work shoulder to shoulder and see that the 
 balance sheets are drawn up in the language of our fathers." 
 
 In like manner did Melchitsedek Pinchas approach Hiram 
 Lyons and Simon Gradkoski, the former a poverty-stricken 
 pietist who added day by day to a furlong of crabbed manu- 
 script, embodying a useless comm.entary on the first chapter of 
 Genesis ; the latter the portly fancy-goods dealer in whose 
 warehouse Daniel Hyams was employed. Gradkoski rivalled 
 Reb Shemuel in his knowledge of the exact loci of Talmudical 
 remarks — page this, and line that — and secretly a tolerant 
 latitudinarian, enjoyed the reputation of a bulwark of orthodoxy 
 too well to give it up. Gradkoski passed easily from writing 
 an invoice to writing a learned article on Hebrew astronomy. 
 Pinchas ignored Joseph Strelitski whose raven curl floated wildly 
 over his forehead like a pirate's flag, though Hamburg, who was 
 rather surprised to see the taciturn young man at a meeting, 
 strove to draw him into conversation. The man to whom 
 Pinchas ultimately attached himself was only a man in the 
 sense of having attained his religious majority. He was a Har- 
 row boy named Raphael Leon, a scion of a wealthy family. 
 The boy had manifested a strange premature interest in Jewish 
 
THE HOLY LAND LEAGUE. 187 
 
 literature and had often seen Gabriel Hamburg^s name in learned 
 foot-notes, and, discovering that he was in England, had just 
 written to him. Hamburg had replied; they had met that day 
 for the first time and at the lad's own request the old scholar 
 brought him on to this strange meeting. The boy grew to be 
 Hamburg's one link with wealthy England, and though he rarely 
 saw Leon again, the lad came in a shadowy way to take the 
 place he had momentarily designed for Joseph Strelitski. To- 
 night it was Pinchas who assumed the paternal manner, but he 
 mingled it with a subtle obsequiousness that made the shy 
 simple lad uncomfortable, though when he came to read the 
 poet's lofty sentiments which arrived (with an acrostic dedica- 
 tion) by the first post next morning, he conceived an enthusiastic 
 admiration for the neglected genius. 
 
 The rest of the '' remnant '' that were met to save Israel 
 looked more commonplace — a furrier, a slipper-maker, a lock- 
 smith, an ex-glazier (Mendel Hyams), a confectioner, a Me- 
 lainmed or Hebrew teacher, a carpenter, a presser, a cigar-maker, 
 a small shop-keeper or two, and last and least, Moses Ansell. 
 They were of many birthplaces — Austria, Holland, Poland, 
 Russia, Germany, Italy, Spain — yet felt themselves of no coun- 
 try and of one. Encircled by the splendors of modern Babylon, 
 their hearts turned to the East, like passion-flowers seeking the 
 sun. Palestine, Jerusalem, Jordan, the Holy Land were magic 
 syllables to them, the sight of a coin struck in one of Baron 
 Edmund's colonies filled their eyes with tears ; in death they 
 craved no higher boon than a handful of Palestine earth 
 sprinkled over their graves. 
 
 But Guedalyah the greengrocer was not the man to encourage 
 idle hopes. He explained his scheme lucidly — without high- 
 falutin. They were to rebuild Judaism as the coral insect 
 builds its reefs — not as the prayer went, " speedily and in our 
 days." 
 
 They had brought themselves up to expect more and were 
 disappointed. Some protested against peddling little measures 
 — like Pinchas they were for high, heroic deeds. Joseph Stre- 
 litski, student and cigar commission agent, jumped to his feet 
 
188 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 and cried passionately in German: "Everywhere Israel groans 
 and travails — must we indeed wait and wait till our hearts are 
 sick and strike never a decisive blow ? It is nigh two thousand 
 years since across the ashes of our Holy Temple we were driven 
 into the Exile, clanking the chains of Pagan conquerors. For 
 nigh two thousand years have we dwelt on alien soils, a mockery 
 and a byword for the nations, hounded out from every worthy 
 employ and persecuted for turning to the unworthy, spat upon 
 and trodden under foot, suffusing the scroll of history with our 
 blood and illuminating it with the lurid glare of the fires to which 
 our martyrs have ascended gladly for the Sanctification of. the 
 Name. We who twenty centuries ago were a mighty nation^ 
 with a law and a constitution and a religion which have been 
 the key-notes of the civilization of the world, we who sat in 
 judgment by the gates of great cities, clothed in purple and fine 
 linen, are the sport of peoples who were then roaming wild in 
 woods and marshes clothed in the skins of the wolf and the bear. 
 Now in the East there gleams again a star of hope — why shall 
 we not follow it? Never has the chance of the Restoration 
 flamed so high as to-day. Our capitalists rule the markets of 
 Europe, our generals lead armies, our great men sit in the Coun- 
 cils of every State. We are everywhere — a thousand thousand 
 stray rivulets of power that could be blent into a mighty ocean. 
 Palestine is one if we wish — the whole house of Israel has but 
 to speak with a mighty unanimous voice. Poets will sing for 
 us, journalists write for us, diplomatists haggle for us, million- 
 aires pay the price for us. The sultan would restore our land to 
 us to-morrow, did we but essay to get it. There are no obstacles 
 — but ourselves. It is not the heathen that keeps us out of our 
 land — it is the Jews, the rich and prosperous Jews — Jeshurun 
 grown fat and sleepy, dreaming the false dream of assimilation 
 with the people of the pleasant places in which their lines have 
 been cast. Give us back our country ; this alone will solve the 
 Jewish question. Our paupers shall become agriculturists, and 
 like Antaeus, the genius of Israel shall gain fresh strength by 
 contact with mother earth. And for England it will help to 
 solve the Indian question — Between European Russia and India 
 
THE HOLY LAND LEAGUE. 189 
 
 there will be planted a people, fierce, terrible, hating Russia for 
 her wild-beast deeds. Into the Exile we took with us, of all our 
 glories, only a spark of the fire by which our Temple, the abode 
 of our great One was engirdled, and -this little spark kept us 
 alive while the towers of our enemies crumbled to dust, and this 
 spark leaped into celestial flame and shed light upon the faces 
 of the heroes of our race and inspired them to endure the horrors 
 of the Dance of Death and the tortures of the Auto-da-fe. Let 
 us fan the spark again till it leap up and become a pillar of flame 
 going before us and showing us the way to Jerusalem, the City 
 of our sires. And if gold will not buy back our land we must 
 try steel. As the National Poet of Israel, Naphtali Herz Imber, 
 has so nobly sung (here he broke into the Hebrew IVacht Am 
 Rhem, of which an English version would run thus) : 
 
 "THE WATCH ON THE JORDAN. 
 
 I. 
 
 " Like the crash of the thunder 
 Which splitteth asunder 
 
 The flame of the cloud, 
 On our ears ever falhng, 
 A voice is heard calling 
 
 From Zion aloud : 
 ' Let your spirits' desires 
 For the land of your sires 
 
 Eternally burn. 
 From the foe to deliver 
 Our own holy river, 
 
 To Jordan return.' 
 Where the soft flowing stream 
 Murmurs low as in dream. 
 
 There set we our watch. 
 Our watchword, ' The sword 
 Of our land and our Lord ' — 
 
 By the Jordan then set we our watch, 
 
 II. 
 " Rest in peace, lov^d land, 
 For we rest not, but stand, 
 
190 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 Off shaken our sloth. 
 When the bolts of war rattle 
 To shirk not the battle, 
 
 We make thee our oath. 
 As we hope for a Heaven, 
 Thy chains shall be riven, 
 
 Thine ensign unfurled. 
 And in pride of our race 
 We will fearlessly face 
 
 The might of the world. 
 When our trumpet is blown. 
 And our standard is flown, 
 
 Then set we our watch. 
 Our watchword, ' The sword 
 Of our land and our Lord ' — 
 
 By Jordan then set we our watch. 
 
 III. 
 
 "Yea, as long as there be 
 Birds in air, fish in sea. 
 
 And blood in our veins ; 
 And the lions in might, 
 Leaping down from the height, 
 
 Shake, roaring, their manes; 
 And the dew nightly laves 
 The forgotten old graves 
 
 Where Judah's sires sleep, — 
 We swear, who are living, 
 To rest not in striving. 
 
 To pause not to weep. 
 Let the trumpet be blown. 
 Let the standard be flown. 
 
 Now set we our watch. 
 Our watchword, ' The sword 
 Of our land and our Lord ' — 
 
 In Jordan NOW set we our watch." 
 
 He sank upon the rude, wooden bench, exhausted, his eyes 
 glittering, his raven hair dishevelled by the wildness of his 
 gestures. He had said. For the rest of the evening he neither 
 moved nor spake. The calm, good-humored tones of Simon 
 Gradkoski followed like a cold shower. 
 
THE HOLY LAND LEAGUE. 191 
 
 " We must be sensible,'^ he said, for he enjoyed the reputation 
 of a shrewd conciliatory man of the world as well as of a pillar 
 of orthodoxy. " The great people will come to us, but not if we 
 abuse them. We must flatter them up and tell them they are 
 the descendants of the Maccabees. There is much political kudos 
 to be got out of leading such a movement — this, too, they will 
 see. Rome was not built in a day, and the Temple will not be 
 rebuilt in a year. Besides, we are not soldiers now. We must 
 recapture our land by brain, not sword. Slow and sure and the 
 blessing of God over all.*' 
 
 After suph wise Simon Gradkoski. But Gronovitz, the He- 
 brew teacher, crypto-atheist and overt revolutionary, who read a 
 Hebrew edition of the "Pickwick Papers'' in synagogue on the 
 Day of Atonement, was with Strelitski, and a bigot whose relig- 
 ion made his wife and children wretched was with the cautious 
 Simon Gradkoski. Froom- Karlkammer followed, but his drift 
 was uncertain. He apparently looked forward to miraculous 
 interpositions. Still he approved of the movement from one 
 point of view. The more Jews lived in Jerusalem the more 
 would be enabled to die there — which was the aim of a good 
 Jew's life. As for the Messiah, he would come assuredly — in 
 God's good time. Thus Karlkammer at enormous length with 
 frequent intervals of unintelligibility and huge chunks of irrel- 
 evant quotation and much play of Cabalistic conceptions. Pin- 
 chas, who had been fuming throughout this speech, for to him 
 Karlkammer stood for the archetype of all donkeys, jumped up 
 impatiently when Karlkammer paused for breath and denounced 
 as an interruption that gentleman's indignant continuance of his 
 speech. The sense of the meeting was with the poet and Karl- 
 kammer was silenced. Pinchas was dithyrambic, sublime, with 
 audacities which only genius can venture on. He was pungently 
 merry over Imber's pretensions to be the National Poet of Israel, 
 declaring that his prosody, his vocabulary, and even his grammar 
 were beneath contempt. He, Pinchas, would write Judaea a real 
 Patriotic Poem, which should be sung from the slums of White- 
 chapel to the Veldts of South Africa, and from the Mellah of 
 Morocco to the Jtidengasseti of Germany, and should gladden 
 
192 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 the hearts and break from the mouths of the poor immigrants 
 saluting the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor. When he, 
 Pinchas, walked in Victoria Park of a Sunday afternoon and 
 heard the band play, the sound of a cornet always seemed to 
 him, said he, like the sound of Bar Cochba's trumpet calling the 
 warriors to battle. And when it was all over and the band 
 played " God save the Queen,'' it sounded like the p^an of vic- 
 tory when he marched, a conqueror, to the gates of Jerusalem. 
 Wherefore he, Pinchas, would be their leader. Had not the 
 Providence, which concealed so many revelations in the letters 
 of the Torah, given him the name Melchitsedek Pinchas, whereof 
 one initial stood for Messiah and the other for Palestine. Yes, 
 he would be their Messiah. But money now-a-days was the 
 sinews of war and the first step to Messiahship was the keeping 
 of the funds. The Redeemer must in the first instance be the 
 treasurer. With this anti-climax Pinchas wound up, his child- 
 ishness and naivete conquering his cunning. 
 
 Other speakers followed bat in the end Guedalyah the green- 
 grocer prevailed. They appointed him President and Simon 
 Gradkoski, Treasurer, collecting twenty-five shillings on the 
 spot, ten from the lad Raphael Leon. In vain Pinchas reminded 
 the President they would need Collectors to make house to 
 house calls ; three other members were chosen to trisect the 
 Ghetto. All felt the incongruity of hanging money bags at the 
 saddle-bow of Pegasus. Whereupon Pinchas re-lit his cigar and 
 muttering that they w-ere all fool-men betook himself uncere- 
 moniously without. 
 
 Gabriel Hamburg looked on throughout with something like a 
 smile on his shrivelled features. Once while Joseph Strelitski 
 was holding forth he blew his nose violently. Perhaps he had 
 taken too large a pinch of snuff. But not a word did the great 
 scholar speak. He would give up his last breath to promote 
 the Return (provided the Hebrew manuscripts w^ere not left 
 behind in alien museums) ; but the humors of the enthusiasts 
 were part of the great comedy in the only theatre he cared for. 
 Mendel Hyams was another silent member. But he wept openly 
 under Strelitski's harangue. 
 
THE COURTSHIP OF SHOSSHI SHMENDRIK, 193 
 
 When the meeting adjourned, the lank unhealthy swaying 
 creature in the corner, who had been mumbling the tractate 
 Baba Kama out of courtesy, now burst out afresh in his quaint 
 argumentative recitative. 
 
 "What then does it refer to? To his stone or his knife or 
 his burden which he has left on the highway and it injured a 
 passer-by. How is this? If he gave up his ownership^ whether 
 according to Rav or according to Shemuel, it is a pit, and if he 
 retained his ownership, if according to Shemuel, who holds that 
 all are derived from ' his pit,' then it is ^ a pit,' and if according to 
 Rav, who holds that all are derived from ^ his ox,' then it is ' an 
 ox,' therefore the derivatives of ' an ox ' are the same as "^ an ox ' 
 itself." 
 
 He had been at it all day, and he went on far into the small 
 hours, shaking his body backwards and forwards without 
 remission. 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 THE COURTSHIP OF SHOSSHI SHMENDRIK. 
 
 Meckisch was a Chasid, which in the vernacular is a saint, but 
 in the actual a member of the sect of the Chasidiin whose centre 
 is Galicia. In the eighteenth century Israel Baal Shem, " the 
 Master of the Name," retired to the mountains to meditate on 
 philosophical truths. He arrived at a creed of cheerful and even 
 stoical acceptance of the Cosmos in all its aspects and a convic- 
 tion that the incense of an enjoyed pipe was grateful to the 
 Creator. But it is the inevitable misfortune of religious founders 
 to work apocryphal miracles and to raise up an army of disciples 
 who squeeze the teaching of their master into their own mental 
 moulds and are ready to die for the resultant distortion. It is 
 only by being misunderstood that a great man can have any 
 influence upon his kind. Baal Shem w'as succeeded by an army 
 of thaumaturgists, and the wonder-working Rabbis of Sadagora 
 who are in touch with all the spirits of the air enjoy the revenue 
 of princes and the reverence of Popes. To snatch a morsel of 
 o 
 
194 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 such a Rabbi's Sabbath Kuggol, or pudding, is to insure Paradise, 
 and the scramble is a scene to witness. Chasidis7n is the ex- 
 treme expression of Jewish optimism. The Chasidim are the 
 Corybantes or Salvationists of Judaism. In England their idio- 
 syncrasies are limited to noisy jubilant services in their Chevrah, 
 the worshippers dancing or leaning or standing or writhing or 
 beating their heads against the wall as they will, and frisking 
 like happy children in the presence of their Father. 
 
 Meckisch also danced at home and sang "Tiddy, riddy, 
 roi, toi, toi, toi, ta," varied by " Rom, pom, pom " and " Bim, 
 bom " in a quaint melody to express his personal satisfaction 
 with existence. He was a weazened little widower with a deep 
 yellow complexion, prominent cheek bones, a hook nose and a 
 scrubby, straggling little beard. Years of professional practice 
 as a mendicant had stamped his face with an anguished sup- 
 pliant conciliatory grin, which he could not now erase even 
 after business hours. It might perhaps have yielded to soap 
 and water but the experiment had not been tried. On his head 
 he always wore a fur cap with lappets for his ears. Across his 
 shoulders was strung a lemon-basket filled with grimy, gritty 
 bits of sponge which nobody ever bought. Meckisch's mer- 
 chandise was quite other. He dealt in sensational spectacle. 
 As he shambled along with extreme difficulty and by the aid of 
 a stick, his lower limbs which were crossed in odd contortions 
 appeared half paralyzed, and, when his strange appearance had 
 attracted attention, his legs would give way and he would find 
 himself with his back on the pavement, where he waited to be 
 picked up by sympathetic spectators shedding silver and copper. 
 After an indefinite number of performances Meckisch would 
 hurry home in the darkness to dance and sing " Tiddy, riddy, 
 roi, toi, bim, bom." 
 
 Thus Meckisch lived at peace with God and man, till one day 
 the fatal thought came into his head that he wanted a second 
 wife. There was no difficulty in getting one — by the aid of his 
 friend, Sugarman the S/iadchan — and soon the little man found 
 his household goods increased by the possession of a fat, Russian 
 giantess. Meckisch did not call in the authorities to marry him. 
 
THE COURTSHIP OF SHOSSHI SHMENDRIK. 195 
 
 He had a " still weddingj"" which cost nothing. An artificial 
 canopy made out of a sheet and four broomsticks was erected in 
 the chimney corner and nine male friends sanctified the cere- 
 mony by their presence. Meckisch and the Russian giantess 
 fasted on their w^edding morn and everything was in honorable 
 order. 
 
 But Meckisch's happiness and economies were short-lived. 
 The Russian giantess turned out a tartar. She got her claws 
 into his savings and decorated herself wdth Paisley shawls and 
 gold necklaces. Nay more! She insisted that Meckisch must 
 give her " Society " and keep open house. Accordingly the 
 bed-sitting room which they rented was turned into a salon of 
 reception, and hither one Friday night came Peleg Shmendrik and 
 his wife and Mr. and Mrs. Sugarman. Over the Sabbath meal the 
 current of talk divided itself into masculine and feminine freshets. 
 The ladies discussed bonnets and the gentlemen Talmud. All 
 the three men dabbled, pettily enough, in stocks and shares, 
 but nothing in the w^orld would tempt them to transact any 
 negotiation or discuss the merits of a prospectus on the Sab- 
 bath, though they were all fluttered by the allurements of the 
 Sapphire Mines, Limited, as set forth in a whole page of adver- 
 tisement in the Jewish Chronicle, the organ naturally perused 
 for its religious news on Friday evenings. The share-list would 
 close at noon on Monday. 
 
 " But when Moses, our teacher, struck the rock," said Peleg 
 Shmendrik, in the course of the discussion, " he was right the 
 first time but wrong the second, because as the Talmud points 
 out, a child may be chastised when it is little, but as it grows up 
 it should be reasoned with." 
 
 " Yes," said Sugarman the Shadchan, quickly ; " but if his rod 
 had not been made of sapphire he would have split that instead 
 of the rock." 
 
 " Was it made of sapphire ? " asked Meckisch, who was rather 
 a Man-of-the-Earth. 
 
 " Of course it was — and a very fine thing, too," answered 
 Sugarman. 
 
 " Do you think so? " inquired Peleg Shmendrik eagerly. 
 
196 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 " The sapphire is a magic stone,'' answered Sugarman. " It 
 improves the vision and makes peace between foes. Issachar, 
 the studious son of Jacob, was represented on the Breast-plate 
 by the sapphire. Do you not know that tlie mist-like centre of 
 the sapphire symbolizes the cloud that enveloped Sinai at the 
 giving of the Law ? " 
 
 '' I did not know that,"" answered Peleg Shmendrik, " but I 
 know that Moses's Rod was created in the twilight of the first 
 Sabbath and God did everything after that with this sceptre." 
 
 " Ah, but we are not all strong enough to wield Moses's Rod ; 
 it weighed forty seahs," said Sugarman. 
 
 " How many seahs do you think one could safely carry? " said 
 Meckisch. 
 
 "Five or six seahs — not more," said Sugarman. "You see 
 one might drop them if he attempted more and even sapphire 
 may break — the First Tables of the Law were made of sapphire, 
 and yet from a great height they fell terribly, and were shattered 
 to pieces." 
 
 " Gideon, the M. P., may be said to desire a Rod of Moses, for 
 his secretary told me he will take forty," said Shmendrik. 
 
 "Hush! what are you saying!" said Sugarman. "Gideon is 
 a rich man, and then he is a director." 
 
 " It seems a good lot of directors," said Meckisch. 
 
 "Good to look at. But who can tell?" said Sugarman, shak- 
 ing his head. "The Queen of Sheba probably brought sapphires 
 to Solomon, but she was not a virtuous woman." 
 
 "Ah, Solomon! " sighed Mrs. Shmendrik, pricking up her ears 
 and interrupting this talk of stocks and stones, "If he'd had a 
 thousand daughters instead of a thousand wives, even his treas- 
 ury couldn't have held out. I had only two girls, praised be He, 
 and yet it nearly ruined me to buy them husbands. A dirty 
 Greener comes over, without a shirt to his skin, and nothing else 
 but he must have two hundred pounds in the hand. And then 
 you've got to stick to his back to see that he doesn't take his 
 breeches in his hand and off to America. In Poland he would 
 have been glad to get a maiden, and would have said thank 
 you." 
 
THE COURTSHIP OF SHOSSHI SHMENDRIK. 197 
 
 " Well, but what about your own son? " said Sugarman. "Whv 
 haven't you asked me to find Shosshi a wife? It's a sin against 
 the maidens of Israel. He must be long past the Talmudical 
 age." 
 
 " He is twenty-four," replied Peleg Shmendrik. 
 
 " Tu, tu, tu, tu, tu!" said Sugarman, clacking his tongue in 
 horror, " have you perhaps an objection to his marrying? " 
 
 "Save us and grant us peace!" said the father in deprecatory 
 horror. '"Only Shosshi is so shy. You are aware, too, he is not 
 handsome. Heaven alone knows whom he takes after." 
 
 "Peleg, I blush for you," said Mrs. Shmendrik. "What is the 
 matter with the boy? Is he deaf, dumb, blind, unprovided with 
 legs? If Shosshi is backward with the women, it is because he 
 ' learns ' so hard when he's not at work. He earns a good living 
 by his cabinet-making and it is quite time he set up a Jewish 
 household for himself. How much will you want for finding him 
 a Calloh ? " 
 
 " Hush! " said Sugarman sternly, " do you forget it is the Sab- 
 bath ? Be assured I shall not charge more than last time, unless 
 the bride has an extra good dowry." 
 
 On Saturday night immediately after Havdalah, Sugarman 
 went to Mr. Belcovitch, who was just about to resume work, and 
 informed him he had the very CJiosaji for Becky. " I know," he 
 said, " Becky has a lot of young men after her, but what are they 
 but a pack of bare-backs? How much will you give for a solid 
 man ? " 
 
 After much haggling Belcovitch consented to give twenty 
 pounds immediately before the marriage ceremony and another 
 twenty at the end of twelve months. 
 
 " But no pretending you haven't got it about you, when we're 
 at the Shool, no asking us to wait till we get home," said Sugar- 
 man, " or else I withdraw my man, even from under the Chiippah 
 itself. When shall I bring him for your inspection ? " 
 
 " Oh, to-morrow afternoon, Sunday, when Becky will be out in 
 the park with her young men. It's best I shall see him first! " 
 
 Sugarman now regarded Shosshi as a married man! He 
 rubbed his hands and went to see him. He found him in a little 
 
198 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTQ. 
 
 shed in the back yard where he did extra work at home. Shosshi 
 was busy completing little wooden articles — stools and wooden 
 spoons and money boxes for sale in Petticoat Lane next day. He 
 supplemented his wages that way. 
 
 " Good evening, Shosshi,'^ said Sugarman. 
 
 " Good evening," murmured Shosshi, sawing away. 
 
 Shosshi was a gawky young man with a blotched sandy face 
 ever ready to blush deeper with the suspicion that conversa- 
 tions going on at a distance were all about him. His eyes, 
 were shifty and catlike ; one shoulder overbalanced the other, 
 and when he walked, he swayed loosely to and fro. Sugar- 
 man was rarely remiss in the offices of piety and he was nigh 
 murmuring the prayer at the sight of monstrosities, " Blessed 
 art Thou who variest the creatures." But resisting the temp- 
 tation he said aloud, " I have something to tell you." 
 
 Shosshi looked up suspiciously. 
 
 " Don't bother ; I am busy," he said, and applied his plane to 
 the leg of a stool. 
 
 " But this is more important than stools. How would you 
 like to get married ? " 
 
 Shosshi's face became like a peony. 
 
 " Don't make laughter," he said. 
 
 "But I mean it. You are twenty-four years old and ought to 
 have a wife and four children by this time." 
 
 "But I don't want a wife and four children," said Shosshi. 
 
 "No, of course not. I don't mean a widow. It is a maiden I 
 have in my eye." 
 
 " Nonsense, what maiden would have me ? " said Shosshi, a 
 note of eagerness mingling with the diffidence of the words. 
 
 " What maiden? Gott in Himmcll A hundred. A fine, strong, 
 healthy young man like you, who can make a good living! " 
 
 Shosshi put down his plane and straightened himself. There 
 was a moment of silence. Then his frame collapsed again into 
 a limp mass. His head drooped over his left shoulder. " This 
 is all foolishness you talk, the maidens make mock." 
 
 " Be not a piece of clay! I know a maiden who has you quite 
 in affection!" 
 
THE COURTSHIP OF SHOSSHI SHMENDRIK. 199 
 
 The blush which had waned mantled in a full flood. Shosshi 
 stood breathless, gazing half suspiciously, half credulously at 
 his strictly honorable Mephistopheles. 
 
 It was about seven o'clock and the moon was a yellow cres- 
 cent in the frosty heavens. The sky was punctured with clear- 
 cut constellations. The back yard looked poetic with its blend 
 of shadow and moonlight. 
 
 "A beautiful fine maid," said Sugarman ecstatically, "with 
 pink cheeks and black eyes and forty pounds dowry." 
 
 The moon sailed smilingly along. The water was running 
 into the cistern with a soothing, peaceful sound. Shosshi con- 
 sented to go and see Mr. Belcovitch. 
 
 Mr. Belcovitch made no parade. Everything was as usual. 
 On the wooden table were two halves of squeezed lemons, a 
 piece of chalk, two cracked cups and some squashed soap. 
 He was not overwhelmed by Shosshi, but admitted he was 
 solid. His father was known to be pious, and both his sis- 
 ters had married reputable men. Above all, he was not a 
 Dutchman. Shosshi left No, i Royal Street, Belcovitch's 
 accepted son-in-law. Esther met him on the stairs and noted 
 the radiance on his pimply countenance. He walked with his 
 head almost erect. Shosshi was indeed very much in love and 
 felt that all that was needed for his happiness was a sight of 
 his future wife. 
 
 But he had no time to go and see her except on Sunday after- 
 noons, and then she was always out. Mrs. Belcovitch, however, 
 made amends by paying him considerable attention. The sickly- 
 looking little woman chatted to him for hours at a time about 
 her ailments and invited him to taste her medicine, which was a 
 compliment Mrs. Belcovitch passed only to her most esteemed 
 visitors. By and by she even wore her night-cap in his presence 
 as a sign that he had become one of the family. Under this 
 encouragement Shosshi grew confidential and imparted to his 
 future mother-in-law the details of his mother's disabilities. But 
 he could mention nothing which Mrs. Belcovitch could not cap, 
 for she was a woman extremely catholic in her maladies. She 
 was possessed of considerable imagination, and once when Fanny 
 
200 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 selected a bonnet for her in a milliner's window, the girl had 
 much difficulty in persuading her it was not inferior to what 
 turned out to be the reflection of itself in a side mirror. 
 
 " Pm so weak upon my legs," she would boast to Shosshi. " I 
 was born with ill-matched legs. One is a thick one and one is 
 a thin one, and so one goes about." 
 
 Shosshi expressed his sympathetic admiration and the court- 
 ship proceeded apace. Sometimes Fanny and Pesach Weingott 
 would be at home working, and they were very affable to him. 
 He began to lose something of his shyness and his lurching gait, 
 and he quite looked forward to his weekly visit to the Belco- 
 vitches. It was the story of Cymon and Iphigenia over again. 
 Love improved even his powers of conversation, for when Bel- 
 covitch held forth at length Shosshi came in several times with 
 "So?" and sometimes in the right place. Mr. Belcovitch loved 
 his own voice and listened to it, the arrested press-iron in his 
 hand. Occasionally in the middle of one of his harangues it 
 would occur to him that some one was talking and wasting time, 
 and then he would say to the room, ''Shah! Make an end, 
 make an end," and dry up. But to Shosshi he was especially 
 polite, rarely interrupting himself when his son-in-law elect was 
 hanojino; on his words. There was an intimate tender tone 
 about these can series. 
 
 "I should like to drop down dead suddenly," he would say 
 with the air of a philosopher, who had thought it all out. "I 
 shouldn't care to lie up in bed and mess about with medicine 
 and doctors. To make a long job of dying is so expensive." 
 
 "So?" said Shosshi. 
 
 "Don't worry. Bear! I dare say the devil will seize you sud- 
 denly," interposed Mrs. Belcovitch drily. 
 
 " It will not be the devil," said Mr. Belcovitch, confidently 
 and in a confidential manner. " If I had died as a young man, 
 Shosshi, it might have been different." 
 
 Shosshi pricked up his ears to listen to the tale of Bear's wild 
 cubhood. 
 
 "One morning," said Belcovitch, "in Poland, I got up at four 
 o'clock to go to Supplications for Forgiveness. The air was raw 
 
THE COURTSHIP OF SHOSSHI SHMENDRIK. 201 
 
 and there was no sign of dawn ! Suddenly I noticed a black pig 
 trotting behind me. I quickened my pace and the black pig did 
 likewise. I broke into a run and I heard the pig's paws patting 
 furiously upon the hard frozen ground. A cold sweat broke out 
 all over me. I looked over my shoulder and saw the pig's eyes 
 burning like red-hot coals in the darkness. Then I knew that 
 the Not Good One was after me. ' Hear, O Israel/ I cried. I 
 looked up to the heavens but there was a cold mist covering the 
 stars. Faster and faster I flew and faster and faster flew the 
 demon pig. At last the Shool came in sight. I made one last 
 wild effort and fell exhausted upon the holy threshold and the 
 pig vanished.'' 
 
 " So ? " said Shosshi, with a long breath. 
 
 " Immediately after Shool I spake with the Rabbi and he said 
 '■ Bear, are thy Tephillin in order ? ' So I said ' Yea, Rabbi, they 
 are very large and I bought them of the pious scribe, Naphtali, 
 and I look to the knots weekly.'' But he said, ' I will examine 
 them.' So I brought them to him and he opened the head- 
 phylactery and lo ! in place of the holy parchment he found 
 bread crumbs." 
 
 " Hoi, hoi," said Shosshi in horror, his red hands quivering. 
 
 "Yes," said Bear mournfully, "I had worn them for ten years 
 and moreover the leaven had defiled all my Passovers." 
 
 Belcovitch also entertained the lover with details of the internal 
 politics of the " Sons of the Covenant." 
 
 Shosshi's affection for Becky increased weekly under the stress 
 of these intimate conversations with her family. At last his pas- 
 sion was rewarded, and Becky, at the violent instance of her father, 
 consented to disappoint one of her young men and stay at home to 
 meet her future husband. She put off her consent till after din- 
 ner though, and it began to rain immediately before she gave it. 
 
 The moment Shosshi came into the room he divined that a 
 change had come over the spirit of the dream. Out of the cor- 
 ners of his eyes he caught a glimpse of an appalling beauty 
 standing behind a sewing machine. His face fired up, his legs 
 began to quiver, he wished the ground would open and swallow 
 him as it did Korah. 
 
202 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 "Becky," said Mr. Belcovitch, "this is Mr. Shosshi Shmen- 
 drik." 
 
 Shosshi put on a sickly grin and nodded his head affirmatively, 
 as if to corroborate the statement, and the round felt hat he wore 
 slid back till the broad rim rested on his ears. Through a sort 
 of mist a terribly fine maid loomed. 
 
 Becky stared at him haughtily and curled her lip. Then she 
 giggled. 
 
 Shosshi held out his huge red hand limply. Becky took no 
 notice of it. 
 
 " Nu, Becky ! " breathed Belcovitch, in a whisper that could 
 have been heard across the way. 
 
 " How are you ? All right ?" said Becky, very loud, as if she 
 thought deafness was among Shosshi^s disadvantages. 
 
 Shosshi grinned reassuringly. 
 
 There was another silence. 
 
 Shosshi wondered whether the co7ivenances would permit him 
 to take his leave now. He did not feel comfortable at all. 
 Everything had been going so delightfully, it had been quite 
 a pleasure to him to come to the house. But now all was 
 changed. The course of true love never does run smooth, 
 and the advent of this new personage into the courtship was 
 distinctly embarrassing. 
 
 The father came to the rescue. 
 
 " A little rum ? " he said. 
 
 " Yes," said Shosshi. 
 
 " Chayah! nu. Fetch the bottle! " 
 
 Mrs. Belcovitch went to the cliest of drawers in the corner 
 of the room and took from the top of it a large decanter. She 
 then produced two glasses without feet and filled them with the 
 home-made rum, handing one to Shosshi and the other to her 
 husband. Shosshi muttered a blessing over it, then he leered 
 vacuously at the company and cried, " To life! " 
 
 "To peace!" replied the older man, gulping down the spirit. 
 Shosshi was doing the same, when his eye caught Becky's. 
 He choked for five minutes, Mrs. Belcovitch thumping him 
 maternally on the back. When he was comparatively recovered 
 
THE COURTSHIP OF SHOSSHI SHMENDRTK. 203 
 
 the sense of his disgrace rushed upon him and overwhelmed 
 him afresh. Becky was still giggling behind the sewing ma- 
 chine. Once more Shosshi felt that the burden of the conver- 
 sation was upon him. He looked at his boots and not seeing 
 anything there, looked up again and grinned encouragingly at 
 the company as if to waive his rights. But finding the com- 
 pany did not respond, he blew his nose enthusiastically as a 
 lead oif to the conversation. 
 
 Mr. Belcovitch saw his embarrassment, and, making a sign to 
 Chayah, slipped out of the room followed by his wife. Shosshi 
 was left alone with the terribly fine maid. 
 
 Becky stood still, humming a little air and looking up at the 
 ceiling, as if she had forgotten Shosshi's existence. With her 
 eyes in that position it was easier for Shosshi to look at her. 
 He stole side-long glances at her, which, growing bolder and 
 bolder, at length fused into an uninterrupted steady gaze. How 
 fine and beautiful she was! His eyes began to glitter, a smile 
 of approbation overspread his face. Suddenly she looked down 
 and their eyes met. Shosshi's smile hurried off and gave way 
 to a sickly sheepish look and his legs felt weak. The terribly 
 fine maid gave a kind of snort and resumed her inspection of 
 the ceiling. Gradually Shosshi found himself examining her 
 again. Verily Sugarman had spoken truly of her charms. But 
 — overwhelming thought — had not Sugarman also said she 
 loved him? Shosshi knew nothing of the ways of girls, except 
 what he had learned from the Talmud. Quite possibly Becky 
 was now occupied in expressing ardent affection. He shuffled 
 towards her, his heart beating violently. He was near enough 
 to touch her. The air she was humming throbbed in his ears. 
 He opened his mouth to speak — Becky becoming suddenly 
 aware of his proximity fixed him with a basilisk glare — the 
 words were frozen on his lips. For some seconds his mouth 
 remained open, then the ridiculousness of shutting it again 
 without speaking spurred him on to make some sound, however 
 meaningless. He made a violent effort and there burst from 
 his lips in Hebrew : 
 
 " Happy are those who dwell in thy house, ever shall they 
 
204 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 praise thee, Selah! " It was not a compliment to Becky. Shos- 
 shi's face lit up with joyous relief. By some inspiration he had 
 started the afternoon prayer. He felt that Becky would under- 
 stand the pious necessity. With fervent gratitude to the Al- 
 mighty he continued the Psalm : " Happy are the people whose 
 lot is thus, etc." Then he turned his back on Becky, with his 
 face to the East wall, made three steps forwards and commenced 
 the silent delivery of the Amidah. Usually he gabbled off the 
 "Eighteen Blessings 'Mn five minutes. To-day they were pro- 
 longed till he heard the footsteps of the returning parents- 
 Then he scurried through the relics of the service at lightning 
 speed. When Mr. and Mrs. Belcovitch re-entered the room 
 they saw by his happy face that all was well and made no 
 opposition to his instant departure. 
 
 He came again the next Sunday and was rejoiced to find that 
 Becky was out, though he had hoped to find her in. The court- 
 ship made great strides that afternoon, Mr. and Mrs. Belcovitch 
 being more amiable than ever to compensate for Becky's private 
 refusal to entertain the addresses of such a Shniuck. There had 
 been sharp domestic discussions during the week, and Becky had 
 only sniffed at her parents' commendations of Shosshi as a '' very 
 worthy youth." She declared that it was "remission of sins 
 merely to look at him." 
 
 Next Sabbath Mr. and Mrs. Belcovitch paid a formal visit to 
 Shosshi's parents to make their acquaintance, and partook of tea 
 and cake. Becky was not with them; moreover she defiantly 
 declared she would never be at home on a Sunday till Shosshi 
 was married. They circumvented her by getting him up on 
 a weekday. The image of Becky had been so often in his 
 thoughts now that by the time he saw her the second time he 
 was quite habituated to her appearance. He had even imagined 
 his arm round her waist, but in practice he found he could go no 
 further as yet than ordinary conversation. 
 
 Becky was sitting sewing buttonholes when Shosshi arrived. 
 Everybody was there — Mr. Belcovitch pressing coats with hot 
 irons ; Fanny shaking the room with her heavy machine ; Pesach 
 Weingott cutting a piece of chalk-marked cloth ; Mrs. Belcovitch 
 
THE COURTSHIP OF SHOSSHI SHMENDRIK. 205 
 
 carefully pouring out tablespoonfuls of medicine. There were 
 even some outside " hands/' work being unusually plentiful, as 
 from the manifestos of Simon Wolf, the labor-leader, the slop 
 manufacturers anticipated a strike. 
 
 Sustained by their presence, Shosshi felt a bold and gallant 
 wooer. He determined that this time he would not go without 
 having addressed at least one remark to the object of his affec- 
 tions. Grinning amiably at the company generally, by way of 
 salutation, he made straight for Becky's corner. The terribly 
 fine lady snorted at the sight of him, divining that she had been 
 out-manoeuvred. Belcovitch surveyed the situation out of the 
 corners of his eyes, not pausing a moment in his task. 
 
 '•'■ Nil, how goes it, Becky?" Shosshi murmured. 
 
 Becky said, "All right, how are you?" 
 
 "God be thanked, I have nothing to complain of," said 
 Shosshi, encouraged by the warmth of his welcome. "My eyes 
 are rather weak, still, though much better than last year." 
 
 Becky made no reply, so Shosshi continued : " But my mother 
 is always a sick person. She has to swallow bucketsful of cod 
 liver oil. She cannot be long for this world." 
 
 "Nonsense, nonsense," put in Mrs. Belcovitch, appearing sud- 
 denly behind the lovers. " My children's children shall never be 
 any worse ; it's all fancy with her, she coddles herself too much." 
 
 " Oh, no, she says she's much worse than you," Shosshi blurted 
 out, turning round to face his future mother-in-law. 
 
 " Oh, indeed! " said Chayah angrily. " My enemies shall have 
 my maladies! If your mother had my health, she would be lying 
 in bed with it. But I go about in a sick condition. I can hardly 
 crawl around. Look at my legs — has your mother got such 
 legs? One a thick one and one a thin one." 
 
 Shosshi grew scarlet; he felt he had blundered. It was the 
 first real shadow on his courtship — perhaps the little rift within 
 the lute. He turned back to Becky for sympathy. There was 
 no Becky. She had taken advantage of the conversation to slip 
 away. He found her again in a moment though, at the other 
 end of the room. She was seated before a machine. He crossed 
 the room boldly and bent over her, 
 
206 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 "Don't you feel cold, working?" 
 
 B7'-r-r-r-7'-r-h I 
 
 It was the machine turning. Becky had set the treadle go- 
 ing madly and was pushing a piece of cloth under the needle. 
 When she paused, Shosshi said : 
 
 "Have you heard Reb Shemuel preach? He told a very amus- 
 ing allegory last — " 
 
 Br-r-r-r-r-r-r-h ! 
 
 Undaunted, Shosshi recounted the amusing allegory at length, 
 and as the noise of her machine prevented Becky hearing a word 
 she found his conversation endurable. After several more mono- 
 logues, accompanied on the machine by Becky, Shosshi took his 
 departure in high feather, promising to bring up specimens of 
 his handiwork for her edification. 
 
 On his next visit he arrived with his arms laden with choice 
 morsels of carpentry. He laid them on the table for her admira- 
 tion. 
 
 They were odd knobs and rockers for Polish cradles! The 
 pink of Becky's cheeks spread all over her face like a blot of red 
 ink on a piece of porous paper. Shosshi's face reflected the color 
 in even more ensanguined dyes. Becky rushed from the room 
 and Shosshi heard her giggling madly on the staircase. It 
 dawned upon him that he had displayed bad taste in his se- 
 lection. 
 
 "What have you done to my child?" Mrs. Belcovitch in- 
 quired. 
 
 " N-n-othing," he stammered ; " I only brought her some of 
 my work to see." 
 
 "And is this what one shows to a young girl?" demanded the 
 mother indignantly. 
 
 " They are only bits of cradles," said Shosshi deprecatingly. 
 " I thought she would like to see what nice workmanly things I 
 turned out. See how smoothly these rockers are carved ! There 
 is a thick one, and there is a thin one! " 
 
 "Ah! Shameless droll! dost thou make mock of my legs, 
 too?" said Mrs. Belcovitch. "Out, impudent face, out with 
 thee!" 
 
THE COURTSHIP OF SHOSSHI SHMENDRIK. 207 
 
 Shosshi gathered up his specimens in his arms and fled through 
 the door. Becky was still in hilarious eruption outside. The 
 sight of her made confusion worse confounded. The knobs and 
 rockers rolled thunderously down the stairs ; Shosshi stumbled 
 after them, picking them up on his course and wishing himself 
 dead. 
 
 All Sugarman's strenuous eiforts to patch up the affair failed. 
 Shosshi went about broken-hearted for several days. To have 
 been so near the goal — and then not to arrive after all! What 
 made failure more bitter was that he had boasted of his conquest 
 to his acquaintances, especially to the two who kept the stalls to 
 the right and left of him on Sundays in Petticoat Lane. They 
 made a butt of him as it was ; he felt he could never stand be- 
 tween them for a whole morning now, and have Attic salt put 
 upon his wounds. He shifted his position, arranging to pay six- 
 pence a time for the privilege of fixing himself outside Widow 
 Finkelstein's shop, which stood at the corner of a street, and 
 might be presumed to intercept two streams of pedestrians. 
 Widow Finkelstein's shop was a chandler''s, and she did a large 
 business in farthing-worths of boiling water. There was thus 
 no possible rivalry between her ware and Shosshi's, which con- 
 sisted of wooden candlesticks, little rocking chairs, stools, ash- 
 trays, etc., piled up artistically on a barrow. 
 
 But Shosshi's luck had gone with the change of locus. His 
 clientUe went to the old spot but did not find him. He did not 
 even make a hansel. At two o'clock he tied his articles to the 
 barrow with a complicated arrangement of cords. Widow Fink- 
 elstein waddled out and demanded her sixpence. Shosshi re- 
 plied that he had not taken sixpence, that the coign was not one 
 of vantage. Widow Finkelstein stood up for her rights, and even 
 hung on to the barrow for them. There was a short, sharp argu- 
 ment, a simultaneous jabbering, as of a pair of monkeys. Shos- 
 shi Shmendrik's pimply face worked with excited expostulation, 
 Widow Finkelstein's cushion-like countenance was agitated by 
 waves of righteous indignation. Suddenly Shosshi darted be- 
 tween the shafts and made a dash oiT with the barrow down the 
 side street. But Widow Finkelstein pressed it down with all 
 
208 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 her force, arresting the motion like a drag. Incensed by the 
 laugliter of the spectators, Shosslii put forth all his strength at 
 the shafts, jerked the widow off her feet and see-sawed her sky- 
 wards, huddled up spherically like a balloon, but clinging as 
 grimly as ever to the defalcating barrow. Then Shosshi started 
 off at a run, the carpentry rattling, and the dead w'eight of his 
 living burden making his muscles ache. 
 
 Right to the end of the street he dragged her, pursued by a 
 hooting crowd. Then he stopped, worn out. 
 
 " Will you give me that sixpence, you Gonofl " 
 
 " No, I haven't got it. You'd better go back to your shop, 
 else you'll suffer from worse thieves." 
 
 It was true. Widow Finkelstein smote her wig in horror and 
 hurried back to purvey treacle. 
 
 But that night when she shut up the shutters, she hurried off 
 to Shosshi's address, which she had learned in the interim. His 
 little brother opened the door and said Shosshi was in the shed. 
 
 He was just nailing the thicker of those rockers on to the 
 body of a cradle. His soul was full of bitter-sweet memories. 
 Widow Finkelstein suddenly appeared in the moonlight. F'or 
 a moment Shosshi's heart beat wildly. He thought the buxom 
 figure was Becky's. 
 
 "I have come for my sixpence." 
 
 Ah! The words awoke him from his dream. It was only the 
 Widow Finkelstein. 
 
 And yet — ! Verily, the widow, too, was plump and agree- 
 able ; if only her errand had been pleasant, Shosshi felt she 
 might have brightened his back yard. He had been moved to 
 his depths latterly and a new tenderness and a new boldness 
 towards women shone in his eyes. 
 
 He rose and put his head on one side and smiled amiably and 
 said, " Be not so foolish. I did not take a copper. I am a poor 
 young man. You have plenty of money in your stocking." 
 
 "How know you that?" said the widow, stretching for- 
 ward her right foot meditatively and gazing at the strip of 
 stocking revealed. 
 
 " Never mind ! " said Shosshi, shaking his head sapiently. 
 
THE HYAMS'S HONEYMOON. 209 
 
 "Well, it's true," she admitted. "I have two hundred and 
 seventeen golden sovereigns besides my shop. But for all that 
 why should you keep my sixpence?" She asked it with the 
 same good-humored smile. 
 
 The logic of that smile was unanswerable. Shosshi's mouth 
 opened, but no sound issued from it. He did not even say the 
 Evening Prayer. The moon sailed slowly across the heavens. 
 The water flowed into the cistern with a soft soothing sound. 
 
 Suddenly it occurred to Shosshi that the widow's waist was 
 not very unlike that which he had engirdled imaginatively. He 
 thought he would just try if the sensation was anything like 
 what he had fancied. His arm strayed timidly round her black- 
 beaded mantle. The sense of his audacity was delicious. He 
 was wondering whether he ought to say She-hechyoni — the 
 prayer over a new pleasure. But the Widow Finkelstein 
 stopped his mouth with a kiss. After that Shosshi forgot his 
 pious instincts. 
 
 Except old Mrs. Ansell, Sugarman was the only person 
 scandalized. Shosshi's irrepressible spirit of romance had robbed 
 him of his commission. But Meckisch danced with Shosshi 
 Shmendrik at the wedding, while the Calloh footed it with the 
 Russian giantess. The men danced in one-half of the room, the 
 women in the other. 
 
 CHAPTER XVH. 
 
 THE HYAMS'S HONEYMOON. ' 
 
 " Beenah, hast thou heard aught about our Daniel? " There 
 was a note of anxiety in old Hyams\s voice. 
 
 "Naught, Mendel." 
 
 "Thou hast not heard talk of him and Sugarman's daughter?" 
 
 " No, is there aught between them ? " The listless old woman 
 spoke a little eagerly. 
 
 " Only that a man told me that his son saw our Daniel pay 
 court to the maiden." 
 
 "Where?" 
 p 
 
210 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 "At the Purim Ball." 
 
 " The man is a fool ; a youth must dance with some maiden 
 or other/' 
 
 Miriam came in, fagged out from teaching. Old Hyams 
 dropped from Yiddish into English. 
 
 "You are right, he must.'' 
 
 Beenah replied in her slow painful English. 
 
 " Would he not have told us ? " 
 
 Mendel repeated : — " Would he not have told us? " 
 
 Each avoided the other's eye. Beenah dragged herself about 
 the room, laying Miriam's tea. 
 
 " Mother, I wish you wouldn't scrape your feet along the floor 
 so. It gets on my nerves and I am so worn out. Would he not 
 have told you what? And who's he?" 
 
 Beenah looked at her husband. 
 
 " I heard Daniel was engaged," said old Hyams jerkily. 
 
 Miriam started and flushed. 
 
 "To whom?" she cried, in excitement. 
 
 "Bessie Sugarman." 
 
 " Sugarman's daughter?" Miriam's voice was pitched high. 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 Miriam's voice rose to a higher pitch. 
 
 "Sugarman the Shadchaiis daughter?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 Miriam burst into a fit of incredulous laughter. 
 
 " As if Daniel would marry into a miserable family like 
 that!" 
 
 " It is as good as ours," said Mendel, with white lips. 
 
 His daughter looked at him astonished. " I thought your 
 children had taught you more self-respect than that," she said 
 quietly. " Mr. Sugarman is a nice person to be related to! " 
 
 "At home, Mrs. Sugarman's family was highly respected," 
 quavered old Hyams. 
 
 " We are not at home now," said Miriam witheringly. " We're 
 in England. A bad-tempered old hag! " 
 
 "That is what she thinks me," thought Mrs. Hyams. But she 
 said nothing. 
 
THE H YAMS' S HONEYMOON. 211 
 
 " Did you not see Daniel with her at the ball ? " said Mr. 
 Hyams, still visibly disquieted. 
 
 " Pm sure I didn't notice,^' Miriam replied petulantly. " I 
 think you must have forgot the sugar, mother, or else the tea is 
 viler than usual. Why don't you let Jane cut the bread and 
 butter instead of lazing in the kitchen? " 
 
 "Jane has been washing all day in the scullery/' said Mrs. 
 Hyams apologetically. 
 
 " H'm! " snapped Miriam, her pretty face looking peevish and 
 careworn. "Jane ought to have to manage sixty-three girls 
 whose ignorant parents let them run wild at home, and haven't 
 the least idea of discipline. As for this chit of a Sugarman, 
 don't you know that Jews always engage every fellow and girl 
 that look at each other across the street, and make fun of them 
 and discuss their united prospects before they are even intro- 
 duced to each other." 
 
 She finished her tea, changed her dress and went oiT to the 
 theatre with a girl-friend. The really harassing nature of her 
 work called for some such recreation. Daniel came in a little 
 after she had gone out, and ate his supper, which was his dinner 
 saved for him and warmed up in the oven. Mendel sat studying 
 from an unwieldy folio which he held on his lap by the fireside 
 and bent over. When Daniel had done supper and was standing 
 yawning and stretching himself, Mendel said suddenly as if try- 
 ing to bluff him : 
 
 " Why don't you ask your father to wish you Mazzoltov ? " 
 
 ^^ Mazzoltov ? What for?" asked Daniel puzzled. 
 
 " On your engagement." 
 
 "My engagement!" repeated Daniel, his heart thumping 
 against his ribs. 
 
 " Yes — to Bessie Sugarman." 
 
 Mendel's eye, fixed scrutinizingly on his boy's face, saw it pass 
 from white to red and from red to white. Daniel caught hold of 
 the mantel as if to steady himself. 
 
 " But it is a lie! " he cried hotly. " Who told you that? " 
 
 " No one ; a man hinted as much." 
 
 " But I haven't even been in her company." 
 
212 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 " Yes — at the Purim Ball." 
 
 Daniel bit his lip. 
 
 "Damned gossips!" he cried. "Til never speak to the girl 
 again." 
 
 There was a tense silence for a few seconds, then old Hyams 
 said : 
 
 " Why not? You love her." 
 
 Daniel stared at him, his heart palpitating painfully. The 
 blood in his ears throbbed mad sweet music. 
 
 " You love her," Mendel repeated quietly. " Why do you not 
 ask her to marry you? Do you fear she would refuse? " 
 
 Daniel burst into semi-hysterical laughter. Then seeing his 
 father's half-repi*oachful, half-puzzled look he said shamefacedly : 
 
 " Forgive me, father, I really couldn't help it. The idea of your 
 talking about love ! The oddity of it came over me all of a heap." 
 
 " Why should I not talk about love ? " 
 
 " Don't be so comically serious, father," said Daniel, smihng 
 afresh. "What's come over you? What have you to do with 
 love? One would think you w-ere a romantic young fool on the * 
 stage. It's all nonsense about love. I don't love anybody, least 
 of all Bessie Sugarman, so don't you go worrying your old head 
 about ;/// affairs. You get back to that musty book of yours 
 there. I wonder if you've suddenly come across anything about 
 love in tliat, and don't forget to use the reading glasses and not 
 your ordinary spectacles, else it'll be a sheer waste of money. 
 By the way, mother, remember to go to the Eye Hospital on 
 Saturday to be tested. I feel sure it's time you had a pair of 
 specs, too." 
 
 "Don't I look old enough already?" thought Mrs. Hyams. 
 But she said, " Very well, Daniel," and began to clear away his 
 supper. 
 
 " That's the best of being in the fancy," said Daniel cheerfully. 
 "There's no end of articles you can get at trade prices." 
 
 He sat for half an hour turning over the evening paper, then 
 went to bed. Mr. and Mrs. Hyams's eyes sought each other 
 involuntarily but they said nothing. Mrs. Hyams fried a piece 
 of Wiirst for MiriT.m*s supper and put it into the oven to keep 
 
THE H YAMS' S HONEYMOON. 213 
 
 hot, then she sat down opposite Mendel to stitch on a strip of 
 fur, which had got unripped on one of Miriam's jackets. The 
 fire burnt briskly, little flames leaped up with a crackling sound, 
 the clock ticked quietly. 
 
 Beenah threaded her needle at the first attempt. 
 
 " I can still see without spectacles," she thought bitterly. But 
 she said nothing. 
 
 Mendel looked up furtively at her several times from his book. 
 The meagreness of her parchment flesh, the thickening mesh of 
 wrinkles, the snow-white hair stnjck him with almost novel 
 force. But he said nothing. Beenah patiently drew her needle 
 through and through the fur, ever and anon glancing at Mendel's 
 worn spectacled face, the eyes deep in the sockets, the forehead 
 that was bent over the folio furrowed painfully beneath the black 
 Koppel, the complexion sickly. A lump seemed to be rising in 
 her throat. She bent determinedly over her sewing, then sud- 
 denly looked up again. This time their eyes met. They did 
 not droop them ; a strange subtle flash seemed to pass from soul 
 to soul. They gazed at each other, trembling on the brink of tears. 
 
 " Beenah." The voice was thick with suppressed sobs. 
 
 "Yes, Mendel." 
 
 " Thou hast heard ? " 
 
 " Yes, Mendel." 
 
 " He says he loves her not.'*' 
 
 " So he says." 
 
 " It is lies, Beenah." 
 
 " But wherefore should he lie? " 
 
 " Thou askest with thy mouth, not thy heart. Thou knowest 
 that he wishes us not to think that he remains single for our 
 sake. All his money goes to keep up this house we live in. It 
 is the law of Moses. Sawest thou not his face when I spake of 
 Sugarman's daughter ? " 
 
 Beenah rocked herself to and fro, crying : " My poor Daniel, 
 my poor lamb! Wait a little. I shall die soon. The All-High 
 is merciful. Wait a little." 
 
 Mendel caught Miriam's jacket which was slipping to the floor 
 and laid it aside. 
 
214 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 " It helps not to cr}%" said he gently, longing to cry with her. 
 " This cannot be. He must marry the maiden whom his heart 
 desires. Is it not enough that he feels that we have crippled 
 his life for the sake of our Sabbath ? He never speaks of it, but 
 it smoulders in his veins." 
 
 "Wait a little! " moaned Beenah, still rocking to and fro. 
 
 "Nay, calm thyself." He rose and passed his horny hand 
 tenderly over her white hair. "We must not wait. Consider 
 how long Daniel has waited." 
 
 "Yes, my poor lamb, my poor lamb!" sobbed the old 
 woman. 
 
 "If Daniel marries," said the old man, striving to speak 
 firmly, "we have not a penny to live upon. Our Miriam 
 requires all her salary. Already she gives us more than she 
 can spare. She is a lady, in a great position. She must dress 
 finely. Who knows, too, but that w-e are in the way of a 
 gentleman marrying her? We are not fit to mix with high 
 people. But above all, Daniel must marry and I must earn 
 your and my living as I did when the children were young." 
 
 " But what wilt thou do ? " said Beenah, ceasing to cry and 
 looking up with affrighted face. " Thou canst not go glazier- 
 ing. Think of Miriam. What canst thou do, what canst thou 
 do? Thou knowest no trade! " 
 
 " No, I know no trade," he said bitterly. " At home, as thou 
 art aware, I was a stone-mason, but here I could get no work 
 without breaking the Sabbath, and my hand has forgotten 
 its cunning. Perhaps I shall get my hand back." He took 
 hers in the meantime. It was limp and chill, though so near 
 the fire. " Have courage," he said. " There is naught I can 
 do here that will not shame Miriam. We cannot even go into 
 an almshouse without shedding her blood. But the Holy One, 
 blessed be He, is good. I will go away." 
 
 "Go aw^ay!" Beenah's clammy hand tightened her clasp of 
 his, " Thou wilt travel with ware in the country?" 
 
 "No. If it stands written that I must break with my children, 
 let the gap be too wide for repining. Miriam will like it better. 
 I will go to America." 
 
• THE H YAMS' S HONEYMOON. 215 
 
 "To America!" Beeiiah's heartbeat wildly. "And leave 
 me?" A strange sense of desolation swept over her. 
 
 "Yes — for a little, an3diow. Thou must not face the first 
 hardships. I shall find something to do. Perhaps in America 
 there are more Jewish stone-masons to get work from. God 
 will not desert us. There I can sell ware in the streets — do as 
 I will. At the worst I can always fall back upon glaziering. 
 Have faith, my dove." 
 
 The novel word of affection thrilled Beenah through and 
 through. 
 
 " I shall send thee a little money ; then as soon as I can 
 see my way clear I shall send for thee and thou shalt come 
 out to me and we will live happily together and our children 
 shall live happily here." 
 
 But Beenah burst into fresh tears. 
 
 "Woe! Woe!" she sobbed. " How wilt thou, an old man, 
 face the sea and the strange faces all alone? See how sorely 
 thou art racked with rheumatism. How canst thou go glazier- 
 ing? Thou liest often groaning all the night. How shalt thou 
 carry the heavy crate on thy shoulders?" 
 
 " God will give me strength to do what is right." The tears 
 were plain enough in his voice now and would not be denied. 
 His words forced themselves out in a husky wheeze. 
 
 Beenah threw her arms round his neck. "No! No! "she 
 cried hysterically. " Thou shalt not go! Thou shalt not leave 
 me!" 
 
 " I must go," his parched lips articulated. He could not see 
 that the snow of her hair had drifted into her eyes and was 
 scarce whiter than her cheeks. His spectacles were a blur of 
 mist. 
 
 "No, no," she moaned incoherently. "I shall die soon. God 
 is merciful. Wait a little, wait a little. He will kill us both 
 soon. My poor lamb, my poor Daniel! Thou shalt not leave 
 me." 
 
 The old man unlaced her arms from his neck. 
 
 " I must. I have heard God's word in the silence." 
 
 "Then I will go with thee. Wherever thou goest I will go." 
 
216 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 " No, no ; thou shalt not face the first hardships. I will front 
 them alone ; I am strong, I am a man." 
 
 "And thou hast the heart to leave me?" She looked pite- 
 ously into his face, but hers was still hidden from him in the 
 mist. But through the darkness the flash passed again. His 
 hand groped for her waist, he drew her again towards him and 
 put the arms he had unlaced round his neck and stooped his 
 wet cheek to hers. The past was a void, the forty years of joint 
 housekeeping, since the morning each had seen a strange face 
 on the pillow, faded to a point. For fifteen years they had been 
 drifting towards each other, drifting nearer, nearer in dual loneli- 
 ness ; driven together by common suffering and growing aliena- 
 tion from the children they had begotten in common ; drifting 
 nearer, nearer in silence, almost in unconsciousness. And now 
 they had met. The supreme moment of their lives had come. 
 The silence of forty years was broken. His withered lips sought 
 hers and love flooded their souls at last. 
 
 When the first delicious instants were over, Mendel drew a 
 chair to the table and wrote a letter in. Hebrew script and posted 
 it and Beenah picked up Miriam's jacket. The crackling flames 
 had subsided to a steady glow, the clock ticked on quietly as 
 before, but something new and sweet and sacred had come into 
 her life, and Beenah no longer wished to die. 
 
 When Miriam came home, she brought a little blast of cold 
 air into the room. Beenah rose and shut the door and put out 
 Miriam's supper; she did not drag her feet now. 
 
 " Was it a nice play, Miriam? " said Beenah softly. 
 
 "The usual stuff and nonsense!" said Miriam peevishly. 
 " Love and all that sort of thing, as if the wt rid never got any 
 older." 
 
 At breakfast next morning old Hyams received a letter by the 
 first post. He carefully took his spectacles off and donned his 
 reading-glasses to read it, throwing the envelope carelessly into 
 the fire. When he had scanned a few lines he uttered an excla- 
 mation of surprise and dropped the letter. 
 
 "What's the matter, father? " said Daniel, while Miriam tilted 
 her snub nose curiously. 
 
THE H YAMS' S HONEYMOON. 217 
 
 "Praised be God! " was all the old man could say. 
 
 "Well, what is it? Speak I'' said Beenah, with unusual ani- 
 mation, while a flush of excitement lit up Miriam's face and 
 made it beautiful. 
 
 " My brother in America has won a thousand pounds on the 
 lotter^^ and he invites me and Beenah to come and live with 
 him." 
 
 "Your brother in America!" repeated his children staring. 
 
 " Why, I didnH know you had a brother in America," added 
 Miriam. 
 
 " No, while he was poor, I didn't mention him," replied Men- 
 del, with unintentional sarcasm. " But I've heard from him 
 several times. We both came over from Poland together, but 
 the Board of Guardians sent him and a lot of others on to New 
 York." 
 
 " But you won't go, father! " said Daniel. 
 
 "Why not? I should like to see my brother before I die. 
 We were very thick as boys." 
 
 " But a thousand pounds isn't so very much," Miriam could 
 not refrain from saying. 
 
 Old Hyams had thought it boundless opulence and was now 
 sorry he had not done his brother a better turn. 
 
 "It will be enough for us all to live upon, he and Beenah and 
 me. You see his wife died and he has no children." 
 
 "You don't really mean to go?" gasped Daniel, unable to 
 grasp the situation suddenly sprung upon him. " How will you 
 get the money to travel with ? " 
 
 "Read here!" said Mendel, quietly passing him the letter. 
 " He oifers to send it." 
 
 " But it's written in Hebrew! " cried Daniel, turning it upside 
 down hopelessly. 
 
 " You can read Hebrew writing surely," said his father. 
 
 " I could, years and years ago. I remember you taught me 
 the letters. But my Hebrew correspondence has been so scanty 
 
 " He broke off with a laugh and handed the letter to 
 
 Miriam, who surveyed it with mock comprehension. There was 
 a look of relief in her eyes as she returned it to her father. 
 
218 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 " He might have sent something to his nephew and his niece," 
 she said half seriously. 
 
 " Perhaps he will when I get to America and tell him how 
 pretty you are," said Mendel oracularly. He looked quite joy- 
 ous and even ventured to pinch Miriam's flushed cheek 
 roguishly, and she submitted to the indignity without a 
 murmur. 
 
 " Why jK<??^V^ looking as pleased as Punch too, mother," said 
 Daniel, in half-rueful amazement. " You seem delighted at the 
 idea of leaving us." 
 
 " I always wanted to see America," the old woman admitted 
 with a smile. " I also shall renew an old friendship in New 
 York." She looked meaningly at her husband, and in his eye 
 was an answering love-light. 
 
 "Well, that's cool!" Daniel burst forth. "But she doesn't 
 mean it, does she, father? " 
 
 " I mean it," Hymas answered. 
 
 " But it can't be true," persisted Daniel, in ever-growing be- 
 wilderment. " I believe it's all a hoax." 
 
 Mendel hastily drained his coffee-cup. 
 
 " A hoax! " he murmured, from behind the cup. 
 
 " Yes, I believe some one is having a lark with you." 
 
 " Nonsense ! " cried Mendel vehemently, as he put down his 
 coffee-cup and picked up the letter from the table. " Don't I 
 know my own brother Yankov's writing. Besides, who else 
 would know all the little things he writes about? " 
 
 Daniel was silenced, but lingered on after Miriam had departed 
 to her wearisome duties. 
 
 " I shall write at once, accepting Yankov's offer," said his 
 father. " Fortunately we took the house by the week, so you 
 can always move out if it is too large for you and Miriam. I 
 can trust you to look after Miriam, I know, Daniel." Daniel ex- 
 postulated yet further, but Mendel answered : 
 
 "He is so lonely. He cannot well come over here by him- 
 self because he is half paralyzed. After all, what have I to do 
 in England? And the mother naturally does not care to leave 
 me. Perhaps I shall get my brother to travel with me to the 
 
THE HYAMS'S HONEYMOON. 219 
 
 land of Israel, and then we shall all end our days in Jerusalem, 
 which you know has always been my heart's desire.'" 
 
 Neither mentioned Bessie Sugarman. 
 
 " Why do you make so much bother?" Miriam said to Daniel 
 in the evening. " It's the best thing that could have happened. 
 Who'd have dreamed at this hour of the day of coming into 
 possession of a relative who might actually have something to 
 leave us. It'll be a good story to tell, too." 
 
 After Shool next morning Mendel spoke to the President. 
 
 "Can you lend me six pounds? " he asked. 
 
 Belcovitch staggered. 
 
 " Six pounds! " he repeated, dazed. 
 
 " Yes. I wish to go to America with my wife. And I want 
 you moreover to give your hand as a countryman that you will 
 not breathe a word of this, whatever you hear. Beenah and I 
 have sold a few little trinkets which our childien gave us, and 
 we have reckoned that with six pounds more we shall be able to 
 take steerage passages and just exist till I get work." 
 
 " But six pounds is a very great sum — without sureties," said 
 Belcovitch, rubbing his time-worn workaday high hat in his 
 agitation. 
 
 " I know it is!" answered Mendel, "but God is my witness 
 that I mean to pay you. And if I die before 1 can do so I vow 
 to send word to my son Daniel, who will pay you the balance. 
 You know my son Daniel. His word is an oath." 
 
 " But where shall I get six pounds from ? " said Bear helplessly. 
 "I am only a poor tailor, and my daughter gets married soon. 
 It is a great sum. By my honorable word, it is. I have never 
 lent so much in my life, nor even been security for such an 
 amount." 
 
 Mendel dropped his head. There was a moment of anxious 
 silence. Bear thought deeply. 
 
 " I tell you what I'll do," said Bear at last. " I'll lend you five 
 if you can manage to come out with that." 
 
 Mendel gave a great sigh of relief. " God shall bless you," 
 he said. He wrung the sweater's hand passionately. " I dare 
 say we shall find another sovereign's-worth to sell." Mendel 
 
220 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 clinched the borrowing by standing the lender a glass of rum, 
 and Bear felt secure against the graver shocks of doom. If the 
 Avorst come to the worst now, he had still had something for his 
 money. 
 
 And so Mendel and Beenah sailed away over the Atlantic. 
 Daniel accompanied them to Liverpool, but Miriam said she 
 could not get a day's holiday — perhaps she remembered the re- 
 buke Esther Ansell had drawn down on herself, and was chary 
 of asking. 
 
 At the dock in the chill dawn, Mendel Hyams kissed his son 
 Daniel on the forehead and said in a broken voice : 
 
 "Good-bye. God bless you.'' He dared not add and God 
 bless your Bessie, my daughter-in-law to be ; but the benediction 
 was in his heart. 
 
 Daniel turned away heavy-hearted, but the old man touched 
 him on the shoulder and said in a low tremulous voice : 
 
 " Won't you forgive me for putting you into the fancy goods? " 
 
 " Father! What do you mean ? " said Daniel choking. " Surely 
 you are not thinking of the wild words I spoke years and years 
 ago. I have long forgotten them." 
 
 " Then you will remain a good Jew," said Mendel, trembling 
 all over, " even when we are far away ? " 
 
 "With God's help," said Daniel. And then Mendel turned to 
 Beenah and kissed her, weeping, and the faces of the old couple 
 were radiant behind their tears. 
 
 Daniel stood on the clamorous hustling wharf, watching the 
 ship move slowly from her moorings towards the open river, and 
 neither he nor any one in the world but the happy pair knew 
 that Mendel and Beenah were on their honeymoon. 
 
 ********** 
 
 Mrs. Hyams died two years after her honeymoon, and old 
 Hyams laid a lover's kiss upon her sealed eyelids. Then, being 
 absolutely alone in the world, he sold oflf his scanty furniture, 
 sent the balance of the debt with a sovereign of undemanded 
 interest to Bear Belcovitch, and girded up his loins for the jour- 
 ney to Jerusalem, which had been, the dream of his life. 
 
 But the dream of his life had better have remained a dream 
 
THE HEBREW'S FRIDAY NIGHT. 221 
 
 Mendel saw the hills of Palestine and the holy Jordan and 
 Mount Moriah, the site of the Temple, and the tombs of Absa- 
 lom and Melchitsedek, and the gate of Zion and the aqueduct 
 built by Solomon, and all that he had longed to see from boy- 
 hood. But somehow it was not his Jerusalem — scarce more 
 than his London Ghetto transplanted, only grown filthier and 
 narrower and more ragged, with cripples for beggars and lepers 
 in lieu of hawkers. The magic of his dream-city was not here. 
 This was something prosaic, almost sordid. It made his heart 
 sink as he thought of the sacred splendors of the Zion he had 
 imaged in his suffering soul. The rainbows builded of his bitter 
 tears did not span the firmament of this dingy Eastern city, set 
 amid sterile hills. Where were the roses and lilies, the cedars 
 and the fountains ? Mount Moriah was here indeed, but it bore 
 the Mosque of Omar, and the Temple of Jehovah was but one 
 ruined wall. The Shechinah, the Divine Glory, had faded into 
 cold sunshine. " Who shall go up into the Mount of Jehovah." 
 Lo, the Moslem worshipper and the Christian tourist. Barracks 
 and convents stood on Zion's hill. His brethren, loilers by 
 divine right of the soil they trod, were lost in the chaos of pop- 
 ulations — Syrians, Armenians, Turks, Copts, Abyssinians, Euro- 
 peans — as their synagogues were lost amid the domes and 
 minarets of the Gentiles. The city was full of venerated relics 
 of the Christ his people had lived — and died — to deny, and 
 over all flew the crescent flag of the Mussulman. 
 
 And so every Friday, heedless of scofiing on-lookers, Mendel 
 Hyams kissed the stones of the Wailing Place, bedewing their 
 barrenness with tears ; and every year at Passover, until he was 
 gathered to his fathers, he continued to pray : " Next year — • in 
 Jerusalem ! " 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 THE HEBREW'S FRIDAY NIGHT. 
 
 "Ah, the Men-of-the-Earth ! " said Pinchas to Reb Shemuel, 
 " ignorant fanatics, how shall a movement prosper in their 
 hands? They have not the poetic vision, their ideas are as 
 
222 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 the mole^s ; they wish to make Messiahs out of half-pence. 
 What inspiration for the soul is there in the sight of snuiTy 
 collectors that have the air of ScJmorrers ? with Karlkammer's 
 red hair for a flag and the sound of Gradkoski\s nose blowing 
 for a trumpet-peal. But I have written an acrostic against 
 Guedalyah the greengrocer, virulent as serpent's gall. He the 
 Redeemer, indeed, with his diseased potatoes and his flat ginger- 
 beer ! Not thus did the great prophets and teachers in Israel 
 figure the Return. Let a great signal-fire be lit in Israel and lo! 
 the beacons will leap up on every mountain and tongue of flame 
 shall call to tongue. Yea, I, even I, Melchitsedek Pinchas, will 
 light the fire forthwith." 
 
 "Nay, not to-day,"" said Reb Shemuel, with his humorous 
 twinkle ; " it is the Sabbath."' 
 
 The Rabbi was returning from synagogue and Pinchas was 
 giving him his company on the short homeward journey. At 
 their heels trudged Levi and on the other side of Reb Shemuel 
 walked Eliphaz Chowchoski, a miserable-looking Pole whom 
 Reb Shemuel was taking home to supper. In those days Reb 
 Shemuel was not alone in taking to his hearth " the Sabbath 
 guest" — some forlorn starveling or other — to sit at the table in 
 like honor with the master. It was an object lesson in equality 
 and fraternity for the children of many a well-to-do household, 
 nor did it fail altogether in the homes of the poor. "All Israel 
 are brothers," and how better honor the Sabbath than by mak- 
 ing the lip-babble a reality ? 
 
 " You will speak to your daughter?" said Pinchas, changing 
 the subject abruptly. " You will tell her that what I wrote to her 
 is not a millionth part of what I feel — that she is my sun by 
 day and my moon and stars by night, that I must marry her at 
 once or die, that I think of nothing in the world but her, that I 
 can do, write, plan, nothing without her, that once she smiles 
 on me I will write her great love-poems, greater than Byron's, 
 greater than Heine's — the real Song of Songs, which is Pinchas's 
 — that I will make her immortal as Dante made Beatrice, as Pe- 
 trarch made Laura, that I walk about wretched, bedewing the 
 pavements with my tears, that I sleep not by night nor eat by 
 
THE HEBREW'S FRIDAY NIGHT. 223 
 
 day — you will tell her this ? " He laid his finger pleadingly on 
 his nose. 
 
 " I will tell her,''' said Reb Shemuel. " You are a son-in-law 
 to gladden the heart of any man. But I fear the maiden looks 
 but coldly on wooers. Besides you are fourteen years older than 
 she." 
 
 " Then I love her twice as much as Jacob loved Rachel — for 
 it is written ' seven years were but as a day in his love for her/ 
 To me fourteen years are but as a day in my love for Hannah." 
 
 The Rabbi laughed at the quibble and said : 
 
 " You are like the man who when he was accused of being 
 twenty years older than the maiden he desired, replied ' but when 
 I look at her I shall become ten years younger, and when she 
 looks at me she will become ten years older, and thus we shall be 
 even.'" 
 
 Pinchas laughed enthusiastically in his turn, but replied : 
 
 " Surely you will plead my cause, you whose motto is the He- 
 brew saying — ^the husband help the housewife, God help the 
 bachelor.' " 
 
 " But have you the wherewithal to support her? " 
 
 "Shall my writings not suffice? If there are none to protect 
 literature in England, we will go abroad — to your birthplace, 
 Reb Shemuel, the cradle of great scholars." 
 
 The poet spoke yet more, but in the end his excited stridulous 
 accents fell on Reb Shemuel's ears as a storm without on the 
 ears of the slippered reader by the fireside. He had dropped 
 into a delicious reverie — tasting in advance the Sabbath peace. 
 The work of the week was over. The faithful Jew could enter 
 on his rest — the narrow, miry streets faded before the brighter 
 image of his brain. " Come., 7ny beloved., to meet the Bridey the 
 face of the Sabbath let 21s welcome.'''' 
 
 To-night his sweetheart would wear her Sabbath face, putting 
 off the mask of the shrew, which hid not from him the angel 
 countenance. To-night he could in very truth call his wife (as 
 the Rabbi in the Talmud did) " not wife, but home." To-night 
 she would be in very truth Sif/icha — rejoicing. A cheerful 
 warmth glowed at his heart, love for all the wonderful Creation 
 
224 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 dissolved him in tenderness. As he approached the door, cheer- 
 ful hghts gleamed on him like a heavenly smile. He invited 
 Pinchas to enter, but the poet in view of his passion thought it 
 prudent to let others plead for him and went off with his finger 
 to his nose in final reminder. The Reb kissed the Mezuzah on 
 the outside of the door and his daughter, who met him, on the 
 inside. Everything was as he had pictured it — the two tall wax 
 candles in quaint heavy silver candlesticks, the spotless table- 
 cloth, the dish of fried fish made picturesque with sprigs of pars- 
 ley, the Sabbath loaves shaped like boys' tip-cats, with a curious 
 plait of crust from point to point and thickly sprinkled with a 
 drift of poppy-seed, and covered with a velvet cloth embroidered 
 with Hebrew words; the flask of wine and the silver goblet. 
 The sight was familiar yet it always struck the simple old Reb 
 anew, with a sense of special blessing. 
 
 "Good Shabbos^ Simcha," said Reb Shemuel. 
 
 "Good Shabbos, Shemuel," said Simcha. The light of love 
 was in her eyes, and in her hair her newest comb. Her sharp 
 features shone with peace and good-will and the consciousness 
 of having duly lit the Sabbath candles and thrown the morsel of 
 dough into the fire. Shemuel kissed her, then he laid his hands 
 upon Hannah's head and murmured : 
 
 " May God make thee as Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel, and Leah," 
 and upon Levi's, murmuring : " May God make thee as Ephraim 
 and Manasseh." 
 
 Even the callous Levi felt the breath of sanctity in the air and 
 had a vague restful sense of his Sabbath Angel hovering about 
 and causing him to cast two shadows on the wall while his Evil 
 Angel shivered impotent on the door-step. 
 
 Then Reb Shemuel repeated three times a series of sentences 
 commencing : " Peace be unto you, ye iniiiistering Angels,'''' and 
 thereupon the wonderful picture of an ideal woman from Prov- 
 erbs, looking affectionately at Simcha the while. "A woman 
 of worth, whoso findeth her, her price is far above rubies. The 
 heart of her husband trusteth in her ; good and not evil will she 
 do him all the days of her life ; she riseth, while it is yet night, 
 giveth food to her household and a task to her maidens. She 
 
THE HEBREW'S FRIDAY NIGHT. 225 
 
 putteth her own hands to the spindle ; she stretcheth out her 
 hand to the poor — strength and honor are her clothing and she 
 looketh forth smilingly to the morrow ; she openeth her mouth 
 with wisdom and the law of kindness is on her tongue — she 
 looketh well to the ways of her household and eateth not the 
 bread of idleness. Deceitful is favor and vain is beauty, but the 
 woman that feareth the Lord, she shall be praised.'" 
 
 Then, washing his hands with the due benediction, he filled 
 the goblet with wine, and while every one reverently stood 
 he " made Kiddish,'" in a traditional joyous recitative ". . . 
 blessed art thou, O Lord, our God ! King of the Universe, Cre- 
 ator of the fruit of the vine, who doth sanctify us with His com- 
 mandments and hath delight in us. . . . Thou hast chosen and 
 sanctified us above all peoples and with love and favor hast 
 made us to inherit Thy holy Sabbath. . . .■" 
 
 And all the household, and the hungry Pole, answered 
 " Amen," each sipping of the cup in due gradation, then eating 
 a special morsel of bread cut by the father and dipped in salt ; 
 after which the good wife served the fish, and cups and saucers 
 clattered and knives and forks rattled. And after a few mouth- 
 fuls, the Pole knew himself a Prince in Israel and felt he must 
 forthwith make choice of a maiden to grace his royal Sabbath 
 board. Soup followed the fish ; it was not served direct from 
 the saucepan but transferred by way of a large tureen ; since any 
 creeping thing that might have got into the soup would have 
 rendered the plateful in which it appeared not legally potable, 
 whereas if it were detected in the large tureen, its polluting 
 powers would be dissipated by being diffused over such a large 
 mass of fluid. For like religious reasons, another feature of the 
 etiquette of the modern fashionable table had been anticipated 
 by many centuries — the eaters washed their hands in a little 
 bowl of water after their meal. The Pollack was thus kept by 
 main religious force in touch with a liquid with which he had no 
 external sympathy. 
 
 When supper was over, grace was chanted and then the Zoni- 
 roth was sung — songs summing up in light and jingling metre 
 the very essence of holy joyousness — neither riotous nor ascetic 
 Q 
 
226 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 — the note of spiritualized common sense which has been the 
 key-note of historical Judaism. For to feel " the delight of 
 Sabbath " is a duty and to take three meals thereon a religious 
 obligation — the sanctification of the sensuous bv a creed to 
 which everything is holy. The Sabbath is the hub of the Jew's 
 universe ; to protract it is a virtue, to love it a liberal education. 
 It cancels all mourning — even for Jerusalem. The candles may 
 gutter out at their own greasy will — unsnufFed, untended — is 
 not Sabbath its own self-sufficient light? 
 
 This is the sanctified rest-day ; 
 Happy the man who observes it, 
 Thinks of it over the wine-cup, 
 Feeling no pang at his heart-strings 
 For that his purse-strings are empty, 
 Joyous, and if he must borrow 
 God will repay the good lender, 
 Meat, wine and fish in profusion — 
 See no delight is deficient. 
 Let but the table be spread well. 
 Angels of God answer " Amen ! " 
 So when a soul is in dolor, 
 Cometh the sweet restful Sabbath, 
 Singing and joy in its footsteps. 
 Rapidly floweth Sambatyon, 
 Till that, of God's love the symbol, 
 Sabbath, the holy, the peaceful, 
 Husheth its turbulent waters. 
 ******** 
 Bless Him, O constant companions. 
 Rock from whose stores we have eaten, 
 Eaten have we and have left, too, 
 Just as the Lord hath commanded 
 Father and Shepherd and Feeder. 
 His is the bread we have eaten. 
 His is the wine we have drunken, 
 Wherefore with lips let us praise Him, 
 Lord of the land of our fathers, 
 Gratefully, ceaselessly chaunting 
 " None like Jehovah is holy." 
 
 Light and rejoicing to Israel, 
 Sabbath, the soother of sorrows, 
 
THE HEBREW'S FRIDAY NIGHT. 227 
 
 Comfort of down-trodden Israel, 
 Healing the hearts that were broken ! 
 Banish despair! Here is Hope come, 
 What ! A soul crushed ! Lo a stranger 
 Bringeth the balsamous Sabbath. 
 Build, O rebuild thou, Thy Temple, 
 Fill again Zion, Thy city, 
 Clad with delight will we go there. 
 Other and new songs to sing there, 
 Merciful One and All-Holy, 
 Praised for ever and ever. 
 
 During the meal the Pollack began to speak with his host 
 about the persecution in the land whence he had come, the 
 bright spot in his picture being the fidelity of his brethren under 
 trial, only a minority deserting and those already tainted with 
 Epicureanism — students wishful of University distinction and 
 such like. Orthodox Jews are rather surprised when men of 
 (secular) education remain in the fold. 
 
 Hannah took advantage of a pause in their conversation to 
 say in German : 
 
 "I am so glad, father, thou didst not bring that man home." 
 
 " What man? '^ said Reb Shemuel. 
 
 "The dirty monkey-faced little man who talks so much." 
 
 The Reb considered. 
 
 '' I know none such." 
 
 " Pinchas she means," said her mother. " The poet! " 
 
 Reb Shemuel looked at her gravely. This did not sound 
 promising. 
 
 "Why dost thou speak so harshly of thy fellow-creatures?" 
 he said. " The man is a scholar and a poet, such as we have 
 too few in Israel." 
 
 " We have too many Schnorrers in Israel already," retorted 
 Hannah. 
 
 "Sh!" whispered Reb Shemuel reddening and indicating his 
 guest with a slight movement of the eye. 
 
 Hannah bit her lip in self-humiliation and hastened to load 
 the lucky Pole's plate with an extra piece of fish. 
 
 " He has written me a letter," she went on. 
 
228 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 " He has told me so," he answered. '■' He loves thee with a 
 great love." 
 
 " What nonsense, Shemuel ! '' broke in Simcha, setting down 
 her coffee-cup with work-a-day violence. "The idea of a man 
 who has not a penny to bless himself with marrying our Hannah! 
 They would be on the Board of Guardians in a month." 
 
 " Money is not everything. Wisdom and learning outweigh 
 much. And as the Midrash says: 'As a scarlet ribbon be- 
 cometh a black horse, so poverty becometh the daughter of 
 Jacob.' The world stands on the Torah, not on gold; as it is 
 written : ' Better is the Law of Thy mouth to me than thou- 
 sands of gold or silver.' He is greater than I, for he studies the 
 law for nothing like the fathers of the Mishna while I am paid 
 a salary." 
 
 " Alethinks thou art little inferior," said Simcha, " for thou 
 retainest little enough thereof Let Pinchas get nothing for 
 himself, 'tis his affair, but, if he wants my Hannah, he must get 
 something for her. Were the fathers of the Mishna also fathers 
 of families ? " 
 
 " Certainly ; is it not a command — ' Be fruitful and multiply ' ? " 
 
 "And how did their families live?" 
 
 "Many of our sages were artisans." 
 
 "Ahal" snorted Simcha triumphantly. 
 
 " And says not the Talmud," put in the Pole as if he were on 
 the family council, " ' Flay a carcass in the streets rather than be 
 under an obligation '? " This with supreme unconsciousness of 
 any personal application. "Yea, and said not Rabban Gam- 
 liel, the son of Rabbi Judah the Prince, Mt is commendable to 
 join the study of the Law with worldly employment*? Did not 
 Moses our teacher keep sheep?"' 
 
 " Truth," replied the host. " I agree with Maimonides that 
 man should first secure a living, then prepare a residence and 
 after that seek a wife; and that they are fools who invert the 
 order. But Pinchas works also with his pen. He writes 
 articles in the papers. But the great thing, Hannah, is that 
 he loves the Law." 
 
 " H"m I " said Hannah. "Let him marry the Law, then." 
 
THE HEBREW'S FRIDAY NIGHT. 229 
 
 " He is in a hurry," said Reb Shemuel with a flash of irrever- 
 ent facetiousness. ''And he cannot become the Bridegroom of 
 the Law till Simchath Tor all.'''' 
 
 All laughed. The Bridegroom of the Law is the temporary 
 title of the Jew who enjoys the distinction of being "called up" 
 to the public reading of the last fragment of the Pentateuch, 
 which is got through once a year. 
 
 Under the encouragement of the laughter, the Rabbi added : 
 
 " But he will know much more of his Bride than the majority 
 of the Law's Bridegrooms." 
 
 Hannah took advantage of her father's pleasure in the effect 
 of his jokes to show him Pinchas's epistle, which he deciphered 
 laboriously. It commenced : 
 
 Hebrew Hebe 
 All-fair Maid, 
 Next to Heaven 
 Nightly laid 
 Ah, I love you 
 Half afraid. 
 
 The Pole, looking a different being from the wretch who had 
 come empty, departed invoking Peace on the household ; Simcha 
 went into the kitchen to superintend the removal of the crockery 
 thither ; Levi slipped out to pay his respects to Esther Ansell, 
 for the evening was yet young, and father and daughter were 
 left alone. 
 
 Reb Shemuel was already poring over a Pentateuch in his 
 Friday night duty of reading the Portion twice in Hebrew and 
 once in Chaldaic. 
 
 Hannah sat opposite him, studying the kindly furrowed face, 
 the massive head set on rounded shoulders, the shaggy eye- 
 brows, the long whitening beard moving with the mumble of 
 the pious Hps, the brown peering eyes held close to the sacred 
 tome, the high forehead crowned with the black skullcap. 
 
 She felt a moisture gathering under her eyelids as she looked 
 at him. 
 
 "•Father," she said at last, in a gentle voice. 
 
230 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 " Did you call me, Hannah ? " he asked, looking up. 
 
 "Yes, dear. About this man, Pinchas." 
 
 "Yes, Hannah.'' 
 
 " I am sorry I spoke harshly of him." 
 
 " Ah, that is right, my daughter. If he is poor and ill-clad we 
 must only honor him the more. Wisdom and learning must be 
 respected if they appear in rags. Abraham entertained God's 
 messengers though they came as weary travellers.'" 
 
 " I know, father. It is not because of his appearance that I 
 do not like him. If he is really a scholar and a poet, I will try 
 to admire him as you do." 
 
 "Now you speak like a true daughter of Israel." 
 
 " But about my marrying him — you are not really in earnest?" 
 
 "//(? is," said Reb Shemuel. evasively. 
 
 " Ah, I knew you were not," she said, catching the lurking 
 twinkle in his eye. "You know I could never marry a man like 
 that." 
 
 "Your mother could," said the Reb. 
 
 " Dear old goose," she said, leaning across to pull his beard. 
 "You are not a bit like that — you know a thousand times more, 
 you know you do." 
 
 The old Rabbi held up his hands in comic deprecation. 
 
 " Yes, you do," she persisted. " Only you let him talk so 
 much ; you let everybody talk and bamboozle you." 
 
 Reb Shemuel drew the hand that fondled his beard in his 
 own, feeling tlie fresh warm skin with a puzzled look. 
 
 " The hands are the hands of Hannah," he said, " but the 
 voice is the voice of Simcha." 
 
 Hannah laughed merrily. 
 
 "All right, dear, I won't scold you any more. Pm so glad it 
 didn't really enter your great stupid, clever old head that I was 
 likely to care for Pinchas." 
 
 " My dear daughter, Pinchas wished to take you to wife, 
 and 1 felt pleased. It is a union with a son of the Torah, who 
 has also the pen of a ready writer. He asked me to tell you and 
 I did." 
 
 " But you would not like me to marry any one I did not like." 
 
THE HEBREW'S FRIDAY NIGHT. 231 
 
 " God forbid ! My little Hannah shall marry whomever she 
 pleases." 
 
 A wave of emotion passed over the girPs face. 
 
 " You don't mean that, father," she said, shaking her head. 
 
 "True as the Torah! Why should I not?" 
 
 " Suppose," she said slowly, " I wanted to marry a Christian?" 
 
 Her heart beat painfully as she put the question. 
 
 Reb Shemuel laughed heartily. 
 
 " My Hannah would have made a good Talmudist. Of course, 
 I don't mean it in that sense." 
 
 "Yes, but if I was to marry a very link Jew, you'd think it 
 almost as bad." 
 
 "No, no!" said the Reb, shaking his head. " That's a dif- 
 ferent thing altogether; a Jew is a Jew, and a Christian a 
 Christian." 
 
 " But you can't always distinguish between them,'' argued 
 Hannah. "There are Jews who behave as if they were Chris- 
 tians, except, of course, they don't believe in the Crucified 
 One." 
 
 Still the old Reb shook his head. 
 
 "The worst of Jews cannot put off his Judaism. His unborn 
 soul undertook the yoke of the Torah at Sinai." 
 
 "Then you really wouldn't mind if I married a link Jew! " 
 
 He looked at her, startled, a suspicion dawning in his eyes. 
 
 " I should mind," he said slowly. " But if you loved him he 
 would become a good Jew." 
 
 The simple conviction of his words moved her to tears, but she 
 kept them back. 
 
 "But if he wouldn't?" 
 
 " I should pray. While there is life there is hope for the 
 sinner in Israel." 
 
 She fell back on her old question. 
 
 " And you would really not mind whom I married ? " 
 
 " Follow your heart, my little one," said Reb Shemuel. "It is 
 a good heart and it will not lead you wrong." 
 
 Hannah turned away to hide the tears that could no longer be 
 stayed. Her father resumed his reading of the Law. 
 
232 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 But he had got through very few verses ere he felt a soft warm 
 arm round his neck and a wet cheek laid close to his. 
 
 " Father, forgive me," whispered the lips. " I am so sorry. I 
 thought that — that I — that you — oh father, father! I feel as 
 if I had never known you before to-night.-' 
 
 "What is it, my daughter? " said Reb Shemuel, stumbling into 
 Yiddish in his anxiety. " What hast thou done?" 
 
 " I have betrothed myself," she answered, unwittingly adopt- 
 ing his dialect. " I have betrothed myself without telling thee 
 or mother." 
 
 "To whom?" he asked anxiously. 
 
 " To a Jew," she hastened to assure him. " But he is neither 
 a Talmud-sage nor pious. He is newly returned from the 
 Cape." 
 
 " Ah, they are a link lot," muttered the Reb anxiously. 
 " Where didst thou first meet him ? " 
 
 "At the Club," she answered. "At the Purim Ball — the 
 night before Sam Levine came round here to be divorced from 
 me." 
 
 He wrinkled his great brow. " Thy mother w^ould have thee 
 go," he said. " Thou didst not deserve I should get thee the 
 divorce. What is his name?" 
 
 " David Brandon. He is not like other Jewish young men ; I 
 thought he was and did him wrong and mocked at him when 
 first he spoke to me, so that afterwards I felt tender towards 
 him. His conversation is agreeable, for he thinks for himself, 
 and deeming thou wouldst not hear of such a match and that 
 there was no danger, I met him at the Club several times in the 
 evening, and — and — thou knowest the rest." 
 
 She turned away her face, blushing, contrite, happy, anxious. 
 
 Her love-story was as simple as her telling of it. David 
 Brandon was not the shadowy Prince of her maiden dreams, 
 nor was the passion exactly as she had imagined it ; it was both 
 stronger and stranger, and the sense of secrecy and impending 
 opposition instilled into her love a poignant sweetness. 
 
 The Reb stroked her hair silently. 
 
 " I would not have said • Yea ' so quick, father," she went on. 
 
THE HEBREW'S FRIDAY NIGHT. 233 
 
 "but David had to go to Germany to take a message to the aged 
 parents of his Cape chum, who died in the gold-fields. David 
 had promised the dying man to go personally as soon as he 
 returned to England — I think it was a request for forgiveness 
 and blessing — but after meeting me he delayed going, and when 
 I learned of it I reproached him, but he said he could not tear 
 himself away, and he would not go till I had confessed I loved 
 him. At last I said if he would go home the moment I said it 
 and not bother about getting me a ring or anything, but go off to 
 Germany the first thing the next morning, I would admit I loved 
 him a little bit. Thus did it occur. He went off last Wednes- 
 day. Oh, isn't it cruel to think, father, that he should be going 
 with love and joy in his heart to the parents of his dead friend!" 
 
 Her father's head was bent. She lifted it up by the chin and 
 looked pleadingly into the big brown eyes. 
 
 " Thou art not angry with me, father? " 
 
 "No, Hannah. But thou shouldst have told me from the 
 first." 
 
 " I always meant to, father. But I feared to grieve thee." 
 
 "Wherefore? The man is a Jew. And thou lovest him, dost 
 thou not? " 
 
 " As my life, father." 
 
 He kissed her lips. 
 
 "It is enough, my Hannah. With thee to love him, he will 
 become pious. When a man has a good Jewish wife like my 
 beloved daughter, who will keep a good Jewish house, he cannot 
 be long among the sinners. The light of a true Jewish home 
 will lead his footsteps back to God." 
 
 Hannah pressed her face to his in silence. She could not 
 speak. She had not strength to undeceive him further, to tell 
 him she had no care for trivial forms. Besides, in the flush of 
 gratitude and surprise at her father's tolerance, she felt stirrings 
 of responsive tolerance to his religion. It was not the moment 
 to analyze her feelings or to enunciate her state of mind regard- 
 ing religion. She simply let herself sink in the sweet sense of 
 restored confidence and love, her head resting against his. 
 
 Presently Reb Shemuel put his hands on her head and mur- 
 
b 
 
 234 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 mured again : ''' May God make thee as Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel 
 and Leah." 
 
 Then he added : " Go now, my daughter, and make glad the 
 heart of thy mother." 
 
 Hannah suspected a shade of satire in the words, but was not 
 sure. 
 
 The roaring Sambatyon of life was at rest in the Ghetto ; on 
 thousands of squalid homes the light of Sinai shone. The 
 Sabbath Angels whispered words of hope and comfort to the 
 foot-sore hawker and the aching machinist, and refreshed their 
 parched souls with celestial anodyne and made them kings of 
 the hour, with leisure to dream of the golden chairs that awaited 
 thenxin Paradise. 
 
 /T'he Ghetto welcomed the Bride with proud song and humble 
 feast, and sped her parting with optimistic symbolisms of fire 
 and wine, of spice and light and shadow. All around their 
 neighbors sought distraction in the blazing public-houses, and 
 their tipsy bellpwings resounded through the streets and mingled 
 with the Hebrew hymns. Here and there the voice of a beaten 
 woman rose on the air. But no Son of the Covenant was among 
 the revellers or the wife-beaters ; the Jews remained a chosen 
 race, a peculiar people, faulty enough, but redeemed at least from 
 the grosser vices, a little human islet won from the waters of 
 animalism by the genius of ancient engineers. For while the 
 genius of the Greek or the Roman, the Egyptian or the Phoeni- 
 cian, survives but in word and stone, the Hebrew word alone 
 was made flesh. 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 WITH THE STRIKERS. 
 
 "Ignorant donkey-heads ! " cried Pinchas next Friday morn- 
 ing. " Him they make a Rabbi and give him the right of 
 answering questions, and he know no more of Judaism," the 
 patriotic poet paused to take a bite out of his ham-sandwich. 
 
WITH THE STRIKERS. 235 
 
 '•' than a cow of Sunday. I lof his daughter and I tell him so 
 and he tells me she lof another. But I haf held him up on the 
 point of my pen to the contempt of posterity. I haf written an 
 acrostic on him ; it is terrible. Her vill I shoot." 
 
 " Ah, they are a bad lot, these Rabbis," said Simon Wolf, sip- 
 ping his sherry. The conversation took place in English and 
 the two men were seated in a small private room in a public- 
 house, awaiting the advent of the Strike Committee. 
 
 " Dey are like de rest of de Community. I vash my hands of 
 dem," said the poet, waving his cigar in a fiery crescent. 
 
 " I have long since washed my hands of them," said Simon 
 Wolf, though the fact was not obvious. " We can trust neither 
 our Rabbis nor our philanthropists. The Rabbis engrossed in 
 the hypocritical endeavor to galvanize the corpse of Judaism 
 into a vitality that shall last at least their own lifetime, have 
 neither time nor thought for the great labor question. Our 
 philanthropists do but scratch the surface. They give the work- 
 ing-man with their right hand what they have stolen from him 
 with the left." 
 
 Simon Wolf was the great Jewish labor leader. Most of his 
 cronies were rampant atheists, disgusted with the commercialism 
 of the believers. They were clever young artisans from Russia 
 and Poland with a smattering of education, a feverish receptive- 
 ness for all the iconoclastic ideas that were in the London air, 
 a hatred of capitalism and strong social sympathies. They wrote 
 vigorous jargon for i\\Q Friend of Labor ?Lnd compassed the ex- 
 treme proverbial limits of impiety by '^ eating pork on the Day of 
 Atonement." This was done partly to vindicate their religious 
 opinions whose correctness was demonstrated by the non-appear- 
 ance of thunderbolts, partly to show that nothing one way or the 
 other was to be expected from Providence or its professors. 
 
 " The only way for our poor brethren to be saved from their 
 slavery," went on Simon Wolf, " is for them to combine against 
 the sweaters and to let the West-End Jews go and hang them- 
 selves." 
 
 " Ah, dat is mine policee," said Pinchas, " dat was mine 
 policee ven I founded de Holy Land League. Help yourselves 
 
236 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 and Pinchas vill help you. You muz combine, and den I vill be 
 de Moses to lead you out of de land of bondage. IVem, I vill 
 be more dan Moses, for he had not de gift of eloquence." 
 
 " And he was the meekest man that ever lived," added Wolf. 
 
 " Yes, he was a fool-man," said Pinchas imperturbably. " I 
 agree with Goethe — mir L^iinpen sifid bescheiden, only clods 
 are modaist. I am not modaist. Is the Almighty modaist? 
 I know, I feel vat I am, vat I can do." 
 
 " Look here, Pinchas, you're a very clever fellow, I know, and 
 Fm very glad to have you with us — but remember I have organ- 
 ized this movement for years, planned it out as I sat toiling in 
 Belcovitch's machine-room, written on it till Fve got the cramp, 
 spoken on it till I was hoarse, given evidence before innumer- 
 able Commissions. It is I who have stirred up the East-End 
 Jews and sent the echo of their cry into Parliament, and I will 
 not be interfered with. Do you hear?" 
 
 " Yes, I hear. Vy you not listen to me ? You no understand 
 vat I mean ! " 
 
 "Oh, I understand you well enough. You want to oust me 
 from my position." 
 
 ''Me? Me?" repeated the poet in an injured and astonished 
 tone. " Vy midout you de movement vould crumble like a 
 mummy in de air ; be not such a fool-man. To everybody I haf 
 said — ah, dat Simon Wolf he is a great man, a vair great man ; 
 he is de only man among de English Jews who can save de East- 
 End ; it is he that should be member for Vitechapel — not that 
 fool-man Gideon. Be not such a fool-man! Haf anoder glaz 
 sherry and some more ham-sandwiches." The poet had a simple 
 child-like delight in occasionally assuming the host. 
 
 " Very well, so long as I have your assurance," said the molli- 
 fied labor-leader, mumbling the conclusion of the sentence into 
 his wine-glass. "•'But you know how it is! After I have worked 
 the thing for years, I don't want to see a drone come in and take 
 the credit." 
 
 " Yes, sic vos non vobis, as the Talmud says. Do you know I 
 haf proved that Virgil stole all his ideas from the Talmud?" 
 
 " First there was Black and then there was Cohen — now Gid- 
 
WITH THE STRIKERS. 'lol 
 
 eon, M.P., sees he can get some advertisement out of it in the 
 press, he wants to preside at the meetings. Members of ParHa- 
 ment are a bad lot! " 
 
 uYes — but dey shall not take de credit from you. I will 
 write and expose dem — the world shall know what humbugs 
 dey are, how de whole wealthy West-End stood idly by with 
 her hands in de working-men's pockets while you vere building 
 up de great organization. You know all de jargon-papers jump 
 at vat I write, dey sign my name in vair large type — Melchit- 
 sedek Pinchas — under everyting, and I am so pleased with deir 
 homage, I do not ask for payment, for dey are vair poor. By 
 dis time I am famous everywhere, my name has been in de even- 
 ing papers, and ven I write about you to de Times^ you vill be- 
 come as famous as me. And den you vill write about me — ve 
 vill put up for Vitechapel at de elections, ve vill both become 
 membairs of Parliament, I and you, eh?'' 
 
 " Pm afraid there's not much chance of that," sighed Simon 
 
 Wolf. 
 
 "Vynot? Dere are two seats. Vy should you not haf de 
 
 Oder?" 
 
 "Ain't you forgetting about election expenses, Pinchas?" 
 
 '-'■ Neinl " repeated the poet emphatically. "I forgets noding. 
 Ve vill start a fund." 
 
 " We can't start funds for ourselves." 
 
 " Be not a fool-man ; of course not. You for me, I for you." 
 
 "' You won't get much," said Simon, laughing ruefully at the 
 idea. 
 
 "Tink not? Praps not. But you vill for me. Ven I am in 
 Parliament, de load vill be easier for us both. Besides I vill go 
 to de Continent soon to give avay de rest of de copies of my 
 book. I expect to make dousands of pounds by it — for dey 
 know how to honor scholars and poets abroad. D^re dey haf 
 not stupid-head stockbrokers like Gideon, M.P., ministers like 
 the Reverend Elkan Benjamin who keep four mistresses, and 
 Rabbis like Reb Shemuel vid long white beards outside and 
 emptiness vidin who sell deir daughters." 
 
 " I don't want to look so far ahead," said Simon Wolf. " At 
 
238 ' CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 present, what we have to do is to carry this strike through. 
 Once we get our demands from the masters a powerful blow will 
 have been struck for the emancipation of ten thousand working- 
 men. They will have more money and more leisure, a little 
 less of hell and a little more of heaven. The coming Passover 
 would, indeed, be an appropriate festival even for the most het- 
 erodox among them if we could strike off their chains in the 
 interim. But it seems impossible to get unity among them — a 
 large section appears to mistrust me, though I swear to you, 
 Pinchas, I am actuated by nothing but an unselfish desire for 
 their good. May this morsel of sandwich choke me if I have 
 ever been swayed by anything but sympathy with their wrongs. 
 And yet you saw that malicious pamphlet that was circulated 
 against me in Yiddish — silly, illiterate scribble." 
 
 " Oh, no! " said Pinchas. " It was vair beautiful ; sharp as de 
 sting of de hornet. But vat can you expect? Christ suffered. 
 All great benefactors suffer. Am / happy? But it is only your 
 own foolishness that you must tank if dere is dissension in de 
 camp. De Gomorah says ve muz be vize, chochavi ; ve muz haf 
 tact. See vat you haf done. You haf frighten avay de ortodox 
 fool-men. Dey are oppressed, dey sweat — but dey tink deir 
 God make dem sweat. Why you tell dem, no? Vat mattairs? 
 Free dem from hunger and tirst first, den freedom from deir 
 fool-superstitions vill come of itself. Jeshurun vax fat and kick? 
 Hey? You go de wrong vay." 
 
 " Do you mean Pm to pretend to be p'ooui^'' said Simon 
 Wolf. 
 
 " And ven? Vat mattairs? You are a fool, man. To get to 
 de goal one muz go crooked vays. Ah, you have no stadesman- 
 ship. You frighten dem. You lead processions vid bands and 
 banners on Shabbos to de Shools. Many who vould be glad to 
 be delivered by you tremble for de heavenly lightning. Dey go 
 not in de procession. Many go when deir head is on fire — 
 afterwards, dey take fright and beat deir breasts. Vat vill hap- 
 pen? De ortodox are de majority; in time dere vill come a 
 leader who vill be, or pretend to be, ortodox as veil as socialist. 
 Den vat become of you? You are left vid von, two, tree ateists 
 
WITH THE STRIKERS. . 239 
 
 — not enough to make Miiiyan. No, ve muz be chocha?n, ve 
 muz take de men as ve find dem. God has made two classes of 
 men — vise-men and fool-men. Dere is one vise-man to a mill- 
 ion fool-men — and he sits on deir head and dey support him. 
 If dese fool-men vant to go to Shool and to fast on Yo7n Kippur.^ 
 vat for you make a feast of pig and shock dem, so dey not be- 
 lieve in your socialism? Ven you vant to eat pig, you do it here, 
 like ve do now, in private. In public, ve spit out ven ve see pig. 
 Ah, you are a fool-man. I am a stadesman, a politician. I vill 
 be de Machiavelli of de movement." 
 
 " Ah, Pinchas, you are a devil of a chap," said Wolf, laughing. 
 "And yet you say you are the poet of patriotism and Palestine." 
 
 "Vy not? Vy should we lif here in captivity? Vy we shall 
 not have our own state — and our own President, a man who 
 combine deep politic vid knowledge of Hebrew literature and de 
 pen of a poet. No, let us fight to get back our country — ve vill 
 not hang our harps on the villovvs of Babylon and veep — ve vill 
 take our swords vid Ezra and Judas Maccabaeus, and — " 
 
 " One thing at a time, Pinchas," said Simon Wolf. '' At pres- 
 ent, we have to consider how to distribute these food-tickets. 
 The committee-men are late ; I wonder if there has been any 
 fighting at the centres, where they have been addressing meet- 
 ings." 
 
 " Ah, dat is anoder point," said Pinchas. " Vy you no let me 
 address meetings — not de little ones in de street, but de great 
 ones in de hall of de Club ? Dere my vords vould rush like de 
 moundain dorrents, sveeping avay de corruptions. But you let 
 all dese fool-men talk. You know, Simon, I and you are de only 
 two persons in de East-End who speak Ainglish properly." 
 
 "I know. But these speeches must be in Yiddish." 
 
 " Gezuiss. But who speak her like me and you? You muz gif 
 me a speech to-night." 
 
 "I can't; really not," said Simon. "The programme's ar- 
 ranged. You know they're all jealous of me already. I dare 
 not leave one out." 
 
 "Ah, no; do not say dat!" said Pinchas, laying his finger 
 pleadingly on the side of his nose. 
 
240 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 "I must." 
 
 " You tear my heart in two. I lof you like a brother — ahnost 
 like a voman. Just von ! " There was an appealing smile in his 
 eye. 
 
 "I cannot. I shall have a hornefs nest about my ears." 
 
 "Von leedle von, Simon Wolf!" Again his finger was on 
 his nose. 
 
 "It is impossible." 
 
 "You haf not considair how my Yiddish shall make kindle 
 every heart, strike tears from every eye, as Moses did from de 
 rock." 
 
 " I have. I know. But what am I to do? " 
 
 " Jus dis leedle favor ; and I vill be gradeful to you all mine 
 life." 
 
 " You know I would if I could." 
 
 Pinchas's finger was laid more insistently on his nose. 
 
 "Just dis vonce. Grant me dis, and I vill nevair ask anyding 
 of you in all my life." 
 
 "No, no. Don't bother, Pinchas. Go away now," said Wolf, 
 getting annoyed. " I have lots to do." 
 
 " I vill never gif you mine ideas again! " said the poet, flashing 
 up, and he went out and banged the door. 
 
 The labor-leader settled to his papers with a sigh of relief. 
 
 The relief was transient. A moment afterwards the door was 
 slightly opened, and Pinchas's head was protruded through the 
 aperture. The poet wore his most endearing smile, the finger 
 was laid coaxingly against the nose. 
 
 "Just von leedle speech, Simon. Tink how I lof you." 
 
 " Oh, well, go away. I'll see," replied Wolf, laughing amid 
 all his annoyance. 
 
 The poet rushed in and kissed the hem of Wolf's coat. 
 
 " Oh, you be a great man!" he said. Then he walked out, 
 closing the door gently. A moment afterwards, a vision of tlie 
 dusky head, with the carneying smile and the finger on the nose, 
 reappeared. 
 
 " You von't forget your promise," said the head. 
 
 "No, no. Go to the devil. I won't forget." 
 
WITH THE STRIKERS. 241 
 
 Pinchas walked home through streets thronged with excited 
 strikers, discussing the situation with oriental exuberance of 
 gesture, with any one who would listen. The demands of these 
 poor slop-hands (who could only count upon six hours out of 
 the twenty-four for themselves, and who, by the help of their 
 wives and little ones in finishing, might earn a pound a week) 
 were moderate enough — hours from eight to eight, with an hour 
 for dinner and half an hour for tea, two shillings from the gov- 
 ernment contractors for making a policeman's great-coat instead 
 of one and ninepence halfpenny, and so on and so on. Their 
 intentions were strictly peaceful. Every face was stamped with 
 the marks of intellect and ill-health — the hue of a muddy pallor 
 relieved by the flash of eyes and teeth. Their shoulders stooped, 
 their chests were narrow, their arms flabby. They came in their 
 hundreds to the hall at night. It was square-shaped with a stage 
 and galleries, for a jargon-company sometimes thrilled the Ghetto 
 with tragedy and tickled it with farce. Both species were play- 
 ing to-night, and in jargon to boot. In real life you always get 
 your drama mixed, and the sock of comedy galls the buskin of 
 tragedy. It was an episode in the pitiful tussle of hunger and 
 greed, yet its humors were grotesque enough. ,.^^^^ 
 
 Full as the Hall was, it was not crowded, for it was Friday] 
 night and a large contingent of strikers refused to desecrate the 
 Sabbath by attending the meeting. But these were the zealots 
 — Moses Ansell among them, for he, too, had struck. Having 
 been out of work already he had nothing to lose by augmenting 
 the numerical importance of the agitation. The moderately 
 pious argued that there was no financial business to transact and 
 attendance could hardly come under the denomination of work. 
 It was rather analogous to attendance at a lecture — they would 
 simply have to listen to speeches. Besides it would be but a 
 black Sabbath at home with a barren larder, and they had already 
 been to synagogue. Thus degenerates ancient piety in the stress 
 of modern social problems. Some of the men had not even 
 changed their everyday face for their Sabbath countenance by 
 washing it. Some wore collars, and shiny threadbare garments 
 of dignified origin, others were unafl"ectedly poverty-stricken with 
 
242 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 dingy shirt-cuffs peeping out of frayed sleeve edges and un- 
 healthily colored scarfs folded complexly round their necks. A 
 minority belonged to the Free-thinking party, but the majority 
 only availed themselves of Wolf's services because they were 
 indispensable. For the moment he was the only possible leader, 
 and they were sufficiently Jesuitic to use the Devil himself for 
 good ends. 
 
 Though Wolf would not give up a Friday-night meeting — 
 especially valuable, as permitting of the attendance of tailors 
 who had not yet struck — Pinchas's politic advice had not failed 
 to make an impression. Like so many reformers who have 
 started with blatant atheism, he was beginning to see the in- 
 significance of irreligious dissent as compared with the solution 
 of the social problem, and Pinchas's seed had fallen on ready 
 soil. As a labor-leader, pure and simple, he could count upon a 
 far larger following than as a preacher of militant impiety. He 
 resolved to keep his atheism in the background for the future 
 and devote himself to the enfranchisement of the body before 
 tampering with the soul. He was too proud ever to acknowl- 
 edge his indebtedness to the poet's suggestion, but he felt grate- 
 ful to him all the same. 
 
 '' My brothers," he said in Yiddish, when his turn came to 
 speak. " It pains me much to note how disunited we are. The 
 capitalists, the Belcovitches, would rejoice if they but knew all 
 that is going on. Have we not enemies enough that we must 
 quarrel and split up into little factions among ourselves? (Hear, 
 hear.) How can we hope to succeed unless we are thoroughly 
 organized? It has come to my ears that there are men who 
 insinuate things even about me and before I go on further 
 to-night I wish to put this question to you." He paused and 
 there was a breathless silence. The orator threw his chest 
 forwards and gazing fearlessly at the assembly cried in a sten- 
 torian voice : 
 
 " Sind sie ziifrieden niit ihrer Chairman ? " (Are you satis- 
 fied with your chairman ?) 
 
 His audacity made an impression. The discontented cowered 
 timidly in their places. 
 
WITH THE STRIKERS. 243 
 
 " Yes^^'' rolled back from the assenibly, proud of its English 
 monosyllables. 
 
 ''^ Nein^'' cried a solitary voice from the topmost gallery. 
 
 Instantly the assembly was on its legs, eyeing the dissen- 
 tient angrily. "Get down! Go on the platform!" mingled 
 with cries of " order " from the Chairman, who in vain sum- 
 moned him on to the stage. The dissentient waved a roll of 
 paper violently and refused to modify his standpoint. He was 
 evidently speaking, for his jaws were making movements, which 
 in the din and uproar could not rise above grimaces. There 
 was a battered high hat on the back of his head, and his hair 
 was uncombed, and his face unwashed. At last silence was 
 restored and the tirade became audible. 
 
 " Cursed sweaters — capitalists — stealing men's brains — leav- 
 ing us to rot and starve in darkness and filth. Curse them! 
 Curse them!'' The speaker's voice rose to a hysterical scream, 
 as he rambled on. 
 
 Some of the men knew him and soon there flew from lip to 
 lip, "Oh, it's only McsJuiggeiie Dovid.'''' 
 
 Mad Davy was a gifted Russian university student, who had 
 been mixed up with nihilistic conspiracies and had fled to Eng- 
 land where the struggle to find employ for his clerical talents 
 had addled his brain. He had a gift for chess and mechanical 
 invention, and in the early days had saved himself from star- 
 vation by the sale of some ingenious patents to a swaggering 
 co-religionist who owned race-horses and a music-hall, but he 
 sank into squaring the circle and inventing perpetual motion. 
 He lived now on the casual crumbs of indigent neighbors, for 
 the charitable organizations had marked him " dangerous." 
 He was a man of infinite loquacity, with an intense jealousy of 
 Simon Wolf or any such uninstructed person who assumed 
 to lead the populace, but when the assembly accorded him 
 his hearing he forgot the occasion of his rising in a burst of 
 passionate invective against society. 
 
 When the irrelevancy of his remarks became apparent, he 
 was rudely howled down and his neighbors pulled him into his 
 seat, where he gibbered and mowed inaudibly. 
 
244 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 Wolf continued his address. 
 
 " Sind sie ziifrieden mit Hirer Secretary ? " 
 
 This time there was no dissent. The ^^ Ves''"' came like 
 thunder. 
 
 " Sifid sie ziifrieden jnit ihrer Treasurer f " 
 
 Yeas and nays mingled. The question of the retention 
 of the functionary was put to the vote. But there was much 
 confusion, for the East-End Jew is only slowly becoming a 
 political animal. The ayes had it, but Wolf was not yet 
 satisfied with the satisfaction of the gathering. He repeated 
 the entire batch of questions in a new formula so as to drive 
 them home. 
 
 '-'■ Hot a7ier etwas zn sagen gegen niir ?'''' Which is Yiddish 
 for " has any one anything to say against me ? " 
 
 '' No I ''"' came in a vehement roar. 
 
 '' Hot aner etwas zu sagen gegen dcin secretary .^" 
 
 " No ! " 
 
 " Hot a)ier etwas zii sagen gegen detn treasurer f " 
 
 u jYo ! " 
 
 Having thus shown his grasp of logical exhaustiveness in 
 a manner unduly exhausting to the more intelligent, Wolf 
 consented to resume his oration. He had scored a victory, 
 and triumph lent him added eloquence. When he ceased he 
 left his audience in a frenzy of resolution and loyalty. In 
 the flush of conscious power and freshly added influence, he 
 found a niche for Pinchas's oratory. 
 
 "Brethren in exile," said the poet in his best Yiddish. 
 
 Pinchas spoke German which is an outlandish form of Yiddish 
 and scarce understanded of the people, so that to be intelligible 
 he had to divest himself of sundry inflections, and to throw gen- 
 der to the winds and to say " wet " for '" wird " and mix hybrid 
 Hebrew and ill-pronounced English with his vocabulary. There 
 was some cheering as Pinchas tossed his dishevelled locks and 
 addressed the gathering, for everybody to whom he had ever 
 spoken knew that he was a wise and learned man and a great 
 singer in Israel. 
 
 " Brethren in exile," said the poet. " The hour has come for 
 
WITH THE STRIKERS. 245 
 
 laying the sweaters low. Singly we are sand-grains, together 
 we are the simoom. Our great teacher, Moses, was the first 
 Socialist. The legislation of the Old Testament — the land 
 laws, the jubilee regulations, the tender care for the poor, the 
 subordination of the rights of property to the interests of the 
 working-men — all this is pure Socialism! " 
 
 The poet paused for the cheers which came in a mighty vol- 
 ume. Few of those present knew what Socialism was, but 
 all knew the word as a shibboleth of salvation from sweaters. 
 Socialism meant shorter hours and higher wages and was obtain- 
 able by marching with banners and brass bands — what need to 
 inquire further? 
 
 "In short," pursued the poet, " Socialism is Judaism and Juda- 
 ism is Socialism, and Karl Marx and Lassalle, the founders of 
 Socialism, were Jews. Judaism does not bother with the next 
 world. It says, ' Eat, drink and be satisfied and thank the 
 Lord, thy God, who brought thee out of Egypt from the land 
 of bondage.' But we have nothing to eat, we have nothing to 
 drink, we have nothing to be satisfied with, we are still in the 
 land of bondage." (Cheers.) " My brothers, how can we keep 
 Judaism in a land where there is no Socialism? We must be- 
 come better Jews, we must bring on Socialism, for the period 
 of Socialism on earth and of peace and plenty and brotherly 
 love is what all our prophets and great teachers meant by 
 Messiah-times." 
 
 A little murmur of dissent rose here and there, but Pinchas 
 went on. 
 
 " When Hillel the Great summed up the law to the would-be 
 proselyte while standing on one leg, how did he express it? 
 ' Do not unto others what you would not have others do unto 
 you.' This is Socialism in a nut-shell. Do not keep your 
 riches for yourself, spread them abroad. Do not fatten on the 
 labor of the poor, but share it. Do not eat the food others 
 have earned, but earn your own. Yes, brothers, the only true 
 Jews in England are the Socialists. Phylacteries, praying- 
 shawls — all nonsense. Work for Socialism — that pleases the 
 Almighty. The Messiah will be a Socialist." 
 
246 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 There were mingled sounds, men asking each other dubiously, 
 "What says he?" They began to sniff brimstone. Wolf, shift- 
 ing uneasily on his chair, kicked the poet's leg in reminder of his 
 own warning. But Pinchas's head was touching the stars again. 
 Mundane considerations were left behind somewhere in the 
 depths of space below his feet. 
 
 "But how is the Messiah to redeem his people? '' he asked. 
 " Not now-a-days by the sword but by the tongue. He will 
 plead the cause of Judaism, the cause of Socialism, in Parliament. 
 He will not come with mock miracle like Bar Cochba or Zevi. 
 At the general election, brothers, I will stand as the candidate 
 for Wliitechapel. I, a poor man, one of yourselves, will take my 
 stand in that mighty assembly and touch the hearts of the legis- 
 lators. They shall bend before my oratory as the bulrushes of 
 the Nile when the wind passes. They will make me Prime Min- 
 ister like Lord Beaconsfield, only he was no true lover of his 
 people, he was not the Messiah. To hell with the rich bankers 
 and the stockbrokers — we want them not. We will free our- 
 selves." 
 
 The extraordinary vigor of the poet's language and gestures 
 told. Only half comprehending, the majority stamped and 
 huzzahed. Pinchas swelled visibly. His slim, lithe form, five 
 and a quarter feet high, towered over the assembly. His com- 
 plexion was as burnished copper, his eyes flashed flame. 
 
 "Yes, brethren," he resumed. "These Anglo-Jewish swine 
 trample unheeding on the pearls of poetry and scholarship, they 
 choose for Ministers men with four mistresses, for Chief Rabbis 
 hypocrites who cannot even write the holy tongue grammatically, 
 for Dayanim men who sell their daughters to the rich, for Mem- 
 bers of Parliament stockbrokers who cannot speak English, for 
 philanthropists greengrocers who embezzle funds. Let us have 
 nothing to do with these swine — Moses our teacher forbade it. 
 (Laughter.) I will be the Member for Whitechapel. See, my 
 name Melchitsedek Pinchas already makes AL P. — it was fore- 
 ordained. If every letter of the Torah has its special meaning, 
 and none was put by chance, why should the finger of heaven 
 not have written my name thus : M. P. — Melchitsedek Pinchas. 
 
WITH THE STRIKERS. 247 
 
 Ah, our brother Wolf speaks truth — wisdom issues from his Hps. 
 Put aside your petty quarrels and unite in working for my elec- 
 tion to Parliament. Thus and thus only shall you be redeemed 
 from bondage, made from beasts of burden into men, from slaves 
 to citizens, from false Jews to true Jews. Thus and thus only 
 shall you eat, drink and be satisfied, and thank me for bringing 
 you out of the land of bondage. Thus and thus only shall 
 Judaism cover the w'orld as the waters cover the sea." 
 
 The fervid peroration overbalanced the audience, and from all 
 sides except the platform applause warmed the poet's ears. He 
 resumed his seat, and as he did so he automatically drew out a 
 match and a cigar, and lit the one with the other. Instantly the 
 applause dwindled, died ; there was a moment of astonished 
 silence, then a roar of execration. The bulk of the audience, as 
 Pinchas, sober, had been shrewd enough to see, was still ortho- 
 dox. This public desecration of the Sabbath by smoking was 
 intolerable. How should the God of Israel aid the spread of 
 Socialism and the shorter hours movement and the rise of prices 
 a penny on a coat, if such deviPs incense were borne to His 
 nostrils ? Their vague admiration of Pinchas changed into defi- 
 nite distrust. ^^ Epiko2i?-os, Epikoiiros^ MesJmmad^'''' resounded 
 from all sides. The poet looked wonderingly about him, failing 
 to grasp the situation. Simon Wolf saw his opportunity. With 
 an angry jerk he knocked the glowing cigar from between the 
 poef s teeth. There was a yell of delight and approbation. 
 
 Wolf jumped to his feet. " Brothers,'' he roared, '' you know 
 I am not froom, but I will not have anybody else's feelings 
 trampled upon." So saying, he ground the cigar under his 
 heel. 
 
 Immediately an abortive blow from the poet's puny arm 
 swished the air. Pinchas was roused, the veins on his forehead 
 swelled, his heart thumped rapidly in his bosom. Wolf shook 
 his knobby fist laughingly at the poet, who made no further 
 efifort to use any other weapon of offence but his tongue. 
 
 "Hypocrite!" he shrieked. "Liar! Machiavelli ! Child of 
 the separation! A black year on thee! An evil spirit in thy 
 bones and in the bones of thy father and mother. Thy father 
 
248 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 was a proselyte and thy mother an abomination. The curses of 
 Deuteronomy light on thee. May est thou become covered with 
 boils like Job! And you/' he added, turning on the audience, 
 " pack of Men-of-the-earth ! Stupid animals ! How much longer 
 will you bend your neck to the yoke of superstition while your 
 bellies are empty? Who says I shall not smoke? Was tobacco 
 known to Moses our Teacher? If so he would have enjoyed it 
 on the SJiabbos. He was a wise man like me. Did the Rabbis 
 know of it? No, fortunately, else they were so stupid they 
 would have forbidden it. You are all so ignorant that you 
 think not of these things. Can any one show me where it 
 stands that we must not smoke on Shabbos? Is not SJiabbos a 
 day of rest, and how can we rest if we smoke not ? I believe 
 with the Baal-Shem that God is more pleased when I smoke my 
 cigar than at the prayers of all the stupid Rabbis. How dare 
 you rob me of my cigar — is that keeping Shabbos ? " He turned 
 back to Wolf, and tried to push his foot from off the cigar. 
 There was a brief struggle. A dozen men leaped on the plat- 
 form and dragged the poet away from his convulsive clasp of the 
 labor-leader's leg. A few opponents of Wolf on the platform 
 cried, " Let the man alone, give him his cigar," and thrust them- 
 selves amongst the invaders. The hall was in tumult. From 
 the gallery the voice of Mad Davy resounded again : 
 
 " Cursed sweaters — stealing men's brains — darkness and 
 filth — curse them! Blow them up! as we blew up Alexander. 
 Curse them ! " 
 
 Pinchas was carried, shrieking hysterically, and striving to 
 bite the arms of his bearers, through the tumultuous crowd, 
 amid a little ineffective opposition, and deposited outside the 
 door. 
 
 Wolf made another speech, sealing the impression he had made- 
 Then the poor narrow-chested pious men went home through 
 the cold air to recite the Song of Solomon in their stuffy back- 
 rooms and garrets. '• Behold thou art fair, my love," they 
 intoned in a strange chant. '' Behold thou art fair, thou hast 
 doves' eyes. Behold thou art fair, my beloved, yea pleasant ; 
 also our couch is green. The beams of our house are cedar and 
 
THE HOPE EXTINCT. 249 
 
 our rafters are fir. For lo, the winter is past, the rain is over 
 and gone ; the flowers appear upon the earth ; the time of the 
 singing of birds is come and the voice of the turtle is heard in 
 our land. Thy plants are an orchard of pomegranates, with 
 pleasant fruits, calamus, cinnamon with all trees of frankincense ; 
 myrrh and aloe with all the chief spices ; a fountain of gardens ; 
 a well of living waters and streams from Lebanon. Awake, O 
 north wind and come, thou south, blow upon my garden that the 
 spices thereof may flow out." 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 THE HOPE EXTINCT. 
 
 The strike came to an end soon after. To the delight of Mel- 
 chitsedek Pinchas, Gideon, M. P., intervened at the eleventh 
 hour, unceremoniously elbowing Simon Wolf out of his central 
 position. A compromise was arranged and jubilance and tran- 
 quillity reigned for some months, till the corruptions of competi- 
 tive human nature brought back the old state of things — for 
 employers have quite a diplomatic reverence for treaties and the 
 brotherly love of employees breaks down under the strain of sup- 
 porting families. Rather to his own surprise Moses Ansell 
 found himself in work at least three days a week, the other three 
 being spent in hanging round the workshop waiting for it. It is 
 an uncertain trade, is the manufacture of slops, which was all 
 Moses was fitted for, but if you are not at hand you may miss 
 the "work" when it does come. 
 
 It never rains but it pours, and so more luck came to the 
 garret of No. i Royal Street. Esther won five pounds at school. 
 It was the Henry Goldsmith prize, a new annual prize for gen- 
 eral knowledge, instituted by a lady named Mrs. Henry Gold- 
 smith who had just joined the committee, and the semi-divine 
 person herself — a surpassingly beautiful radiant being, like a 
 princess in a fairy tale — personally congratulated her upon her 
 success. The money was not available for a year, but the neigh- 
 bors hastened to congratulate the family on its rise to wealth. 
 
250 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 Even Levi Jacobus visits became more frequent, though this 
 could scarcely be ascribed to mercenary motives. 
 
 The Belcovitches recognized their improved status so far as to 
 send to borrow some salt ; for the colony of No. i Royal Street 
 carried on an extensive system of mutual accommodation, coals, 
 potatoes, chunks of bread, saucepans, needles, wood-choppers, all 
 passing daily to and fro. Even garments and jewelry were lent 
 on great occasions, and when that dear old soul Mrs. Simons 
 went to a wedding she was decked out in contributions from a 
 dozen wardrobes. The Ansells themselves were too proud to 
 borrow though they were not above lending. 
 
 It was early morning and Moses in his big phylacteries was 
 droning his orisons. His mother had had an attack of spasms 
 and so he was praying at home to be at hand in case of need. 
 Everybody was up, and Moses was superintending the household 
 even while he was gabbling psalms. He never minded breaking 
 off his intercourse with Heaven to discuss domestic affairs, for 
 he was on free and easy terms with the powers that be, and 
 there was scarce a prayer in the liturgy which he would not inter- 
 rupt to reprimand Solomon for lack of absorption in the same. 
 The exception was the A^nidah or eighteen Blessings, so-called 
 because there are twenty-two This section must be said stand- 
 ing and inaudibly and when Moses was engaged upon it, a mes- 
 sage from an earthly monarch would have extorted no reply from 
 him. There were other sacred silences which Moses would not 
 break save of dire necessity and then only by talking Hebrew ; 
 but the Aniidah was the silence of silences. This was why the 
 utterly unprecedented arrival of a telegraph boy did not move him. 
 Not even Esther's cry of alarm when she opened the telegram 
 had any visible effect upon him. though in reality he whispered 
 off his prayer at a record-beating rate and duly danced three 
 times on his toes with spasmodic celerity at the finale. 
 
 " Father, ■•' said Esther, the never before received species of 
 letter trembling in her hand, " we must go at once to see Benjy. 
 He is very ill." 
 
 " Has he written to say so? " 
 
 "No, this is a telegram. I have read of such. Oh! perhaps 
 
THE HOPE EXTINCT. 251 
 
 he is dead. It is always so in books. They break the news by 
 saying the dead are still alive.'" Her tones died away in a sob. 
 The children clustered round her — Rachel and Solomon fought 
 for the telegram in their anxiety to read it. Ikey and Sarah 
 stood grave and interested. The sick grandmother sat up in 
 bed excited. 
 
 " He never showed me his '■ four corners,' " she moaned. 
 " Perhaps he did not wear the fringes at all.'" 
 
 "Father, dost thou hear?" said Esther, for Moses Ansell w^as 
 fingering the russet envelope with a dazed air. "We must go to 
 the Orphanage at once." 
 
 " Read it! What stands in the letter? " said Moses Ansell. 
 She took the telegram from the hands of Solomon. "It 
 stands, ' Come up at once. Your son Benjamin very ill.'' " 
 
 "Tu! Tu! Tu!" clucked Moses. " The poor child. But how 
 can we go up? Thou canst not w^alk there. It will take me 
 more than three hours.'" 
 
 His praying-shawl slid from his shoulders in his agitation. 
 " Thou must not walk, either! " cried Esther excitedly. " We 
 must get to him at once! Who knows if he will be alive when 
 we come ? We must go by train from London Bridge the way 
 Benjy came that Sunday. Oh, my poor Benjy! " 
 
 " Give me back the paper, Esther," interrupted Solomon, taking 
 it from her limp hand. "The boys have never seen a telegram." 
 " But we cannot spare the money," urged Moses helplessly. 
 " We have just enough money to get along with to-day. Solo- 
 mon, go on with thy prayers ; thou seizest every excuse to 
 interrupt them. Rachel, go away from him. Thou art also a 
 disturbing Satan to him. I do not w^onder his teacher flogged 
 him black and blue yesterday — he is a stubborn and rebellious 
 son who should be stoned, according to Deuteronomy." 
 " We must do without dinner," said Esther impulsively. 
 Sarah sat down on the floor and howled " Woe is me! Woe 
 is me! " 
 
 "I didden touch 'er," cried Ikey in indignant bewilderment. 
 "•Tain't Ikey!" sobbed Sarah. "Little Tharah wants 'er 
 dinner." 
 
252 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 "Thou hearest?" said Moses pitifully. "How can we spare 
 the money? " 
 
 " How much is it? "" asked Esther. 
 
 " It will be a shilling each there and back,'' replied Moses, who 
 from his long periods of peregrination was a connoisseur in 
 fares. " How can we afford it when I lose a morning's work into 
 the bargain ? ■" 
 
 " No, what talkest thou ? '' said Esther. " Thou art looking a 
 few months ahead — thou deemest perhaps, I am already twelve. 
 It will be only sixpence for me.'' 
 
 Moses did not disclaim the implied compliment to his rigid 
 honesty but answered : 
 
 "Where is my head? Of course thou goest half-price. But 
 even so where is the eighteenpence to come from ? " 
 
 " But it is not eighteenpence ! " ejaculated Esther with a new 
 inspiration. Necessity was sharpening her wits to extraordinary 
 acuteness. " We need not take return tickets. We can walk back." 
 
 "But we cannot be so long away from the mother — both of 
 us," said Moses. "She, too, is ill. And how will the children 
 do without thee? I will go by myself." 
 
 " No, I must see Benjy! " Esther cried. 
 
 " Be not so stiff-necked, Esther! Besides, it stands in the 
 letter that I am to come — they do not ask thee. Who knows 
 that the great people will not be angry if I bring thee with me? 
 I dare say Benjamin will soon be better. He cannot have been 
 ill long." 
 
 "But, quick, then, father, quick!" cried Esther, yielding to 
 the complex difficulties of the position. " Go at once." 
 
 " Immediately, Esther. Wait only till I have finished my 
 prayers. I am nearly done." 
 
 "No! No!" cried Esther agonized. "Thou prayest so much 
 — God will let thee off a little bit just for once. Thou must go 
 at once and ride both ways, else how shall we know what has 
 happened? I will pawn my new prize and that will give thee 
 money enough." 
 
 " Good! " said Moses. "While thou art pledging the book I 
 shall have time to finish daveningP He hitched up his Talith 
 
THE HOPE EXTINCT. 253 
 
 and commenced to gabble off, " Happy are they who dwell in 
 Thy house ; ever shall they praise Thee, Selah," and was 
 already saying, " And a Redeemer shall come unto Zion," by the 
 time Esther rushed out through the door with the pledge. It 
 was a gaudily bound volume called '* Treasures of Science," and 
 Esther knew it almost by heart, having read it twice from gilt 
 cover to gilt cover. All the same, she would miss it sorely. 
 The pawnbroker lived only round the corner, for like the pub- 
 lican he springs up wherever the conditions are favorable. 
 He was a Christian ; by a curious anomaly the Ghetto does not 
 supply its own pawnbrokers, but sends them out to the provinces 
 or the West End. Perhaps the business instinct dreads the 
 solicitation of the racial. 
 
 Esther's pawnbroker was a rubicund portly man. He knew 
 the fortunes of a hundred families by the things left with him or 
 taken back. It was on his stuffy shelves that poor Benjamin's 
 coat had lain compressed and packed away when it might have 
 had a beautiful airing in the grounds of the Crystal Palace. It 
 was from his stuffy shelves that Esther's mother had redeemed 
 it — a day after the fair — soon to be herself compressed and 
 packed away in a pauper's coffin, awaiting in silence whatsoever 
 Redemption might be. The best coat itself had long since 
 been sold to a ragman, for Solomon, upon whose back it de- 
 volved, when Benjamin was so happily translated, could never 
 be got to keep a best coat longer than a year, and when a best 
 coat is degraded to every-day wear its attrition is much more 
 than six times as rapid. 
 
 '• Good mornen, my little dear," said the rubicund man. 
 ''You're early this mornen." The apprentice had, indeed, only 
 just taken down the shutters. ''What can I do for you to-day? 
 You look pale, my dear; what's the matter?" 
 
 " I have a bran-new seven and sixpenny book," she answered 
 hurriedly, passing it to him. 
 
 He turned instinctively to the fly-leaf. 
 
 " Bran-new book! " he said contemptuously. " ' Esther Ansell 
 — For improvement! ' When a book's spiled like that, what can 
 you expect for it ? " 
 
254 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 "Why, it's the inscription that makes it valuable/' said Esther 
 tearfully. 
 
 " Maybe," said the rubicund man gruffly. " But d'yer suppose 
 I should just find a buyer named Esther Ansell? Do you sup- 
 pose everybody in the world's named Esther Ansell or is capable 
 of improvement ? " 
 
 " No," breathed Esther dolefully. " But I shall take it out 
 myself soon." 
 
 "In this world," said the rubicund man, shaking his head 
 sceptically, "there ain't never no knowing. Well, how much 
 d'yer want ? " 
 
 " I only want a shilling," said Esther, " and threepence," she 
 added as a happy thought. 
 
 "All right," said the rubicund man softened. "I won't 
 'aggie this mornen. You look quite knocked up. Here you 
 are ! " and Esther darted out of the shop with the money 
 clasped tightly in her palm. 
 
 Moses had folded his phylacteries with pious primness and 
 put them away in a little bag, and he was hastily swallowing 
 a cup of coffee. 
 
 " Here is the shilling," she cried. " And twopence extra for 
 the 'bus to London Bridge. Quick!" She put the ticket away 
 carefully among its companions in a discolored leather purse her 
 father had once picked up in the street, and hurried him off. 
 When his steps ceased on the stairs, she yearned to run after 
 him and go with him, but Ikey was clamoring for breakfast and 
 the children had to run off to school. She remained at home 
 herself, for the grandmother groaned heavily. When the other 
 children had gone off she tidied up the vacant bed and smoothed 
 the old woman's pillows. Suddenly Benjamin's reluctance to 
 have his father exhibited before his new companions recurred to 
 her ; she hoped Moses would not be needlessly obtrusive and 
 felt that if she had gone with him she might have supplied tact 
 in this direction. She reproached herself for not having made 
 him a bit more presentable. She should have spared another 
 halfpenny for a new collar, and seen that he was washed ; but 
 in the rush and alarm all thoughts of propriety had been sub- 
 
THE HOPE EXTLVCT. 255 
 
 merged. Then her thoughts went off at a tangent and she saw 
 her class-roonij where new things were being taught, and new 
 marks gained. It galled her to think she was missing both. 
 She felt so lonely in the company of her grandmother, she could 
 have gone downstairs and cried on Dutch Debby's musty lap. 
 Then she strove to picture the room where Benjy was lying, but 
 her imagination lacked the data. She would not let herself 
 think the brilliant Benjamin was dead, that he would be sewn 
 up in a shroud just like his poor mother, who had no literary 
 talent whatever, but she wondered whether he was groaning like 
 the grandmother. And so, half distracted, pricking up her ears 
 at the slightest creak on the stairs, Esther waited for news of 
 her Benjy. The hours dragged on and on, and the children 
 coming home at one found dinner ready but Esther still waiting. 
 A dusty sunbeam streamed in through the garret window as 
 though to give her hope. 
 
 Benjamin had been beguiled from his books into an unaccus- 
 tomed game of ball in the cold March air. He had taken off his 
 jacket and had got very hot with his unwonted exertions. A 
 reactionary chill followed. Benjamin had a slight cold, which 
 being ignored, developed rapidly into a heavy one, still without 
 inducing the energetic lad to ask to be put upon the sick list. 
 Was not the publishing day of Our Own at hand.-* 
 
 The cold became graver with the same rapidity, and almost as 
 soon as the boy had made complaint he was in a high fevei^ and 
 the official doctor declared that pneumonia had set in. In the 
 night Benjamin was delirious, and the nurse summoned the doc- 
 tor, and next morning his condition was so critical that his father 
 was telegraphed for. There was little to be done by science — 
 all depended on the patient's constitution. Alas ! the four years 
 of plenty and country breezes had not counteracted the eight and 
 three-quarter years of privation and foul air, especially in a lad 
 more intent on emulating Dickens and Thackeray than on profit- 
 ing by the advantages of his situation. 
 
 When Moses arrived he found his boy tossing restlessly in a 
 little bed, in a private little room away from the great dormitories. 
 "The matron" — a sweet-faced young lady — was bending ten- 
 
256 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 derly over him, and a nurse sat at the bedside. The doctor 
 stood — waiting — at the foot of the bed. Moses took his boy's 
 hand. The matron silently stepped aside. Benjamin stared at 
 him with wide, unrecognizing eyes. 
 
 ^'- Nu, how goes it, Benjamin?" cried Moses in Yiddish, with 
 mock heartiness. 
 
 " Thank you, old Four-Eyes. It's very good of you to come. 
 I always said there mustn't be any hits at you in the paper. I 
 always told the fellows you were a very decent chap." 
 
 "What says he?" asked Moses, turning to the company. "I 
 cannot understand English." 
 
 They could not understand his own question, but the matron 
 guessed it. She tapped her forehead and shook her head for 
 reply. Benjamin closed his eyes and there was silence. Pres- 
 ently he opened them and looked straight at his father. A 
 deeper crimson mantled on the flushed cheek as Benjamin beheld 
 the dingy stooping being to whom he owed birth. Moses wore 
 a dirty red scarf below his untrimmed beard, his clothes were 
 greasy, his face had not yet been washed, and — for a climax — 
 he had not removed his hat, which other considerations than 
 those of etiquette should have impelled him to keep out of sight. 
 
 " I thought you were old Four-Eyes," the boy murmured in 
 confusion — " Wasn't he here just now? " 
 
 " Go and fetch Mr. Coleman," said the matron to the nurse, 
 half-s*miling through tears at her own knowledge of the teacher's 
 nickname and wondering what endearing term she was herself 
 known by. 
 
 " Cheer up, Benjamin," said his father, seeing his boy had 
 become sensible of his presence. " Thou wilt be all right soon. 
 Thou hast been much worse than this." 
 
 "What does he say?" asked Benjamin, turning his eyes 
 towards the matron. 
 
 " He says he is sorry to see you so bad," said the matron, at a 
 venture. 
 
 " But I shall be up soon, won't I ? I can't have Oiir Own 
 delayed," whispered Benjamin. 
 
 " Don't worry about Our Own., my poor boy," murmured the 
 
THE HOPE EXTINCT. 257 
 
 matron, pressing his foreliead. Moses respectfully made way 
 for her. 
 
 " What says he? '■" he asked. The matron repeated the words, 
 but Moses could not understand the English. 
 
 Old Four-Eyes arrived — a mild spectacled young man. He 
 looked at the doctor, and the doctor's eye told him all. 
 
 " Ah, Mr. Coleman," said Benjamin, with joyous huskiness, 
 " you'll see that Onr Own comes out this week as usual. Tell 
 Jack Simmonds he must not forget to rule black lines around the 
 page containing Bmno's epitaph. Bony-nose — I — I mean Mr. 
 Bernstein, wrote it for us in dog- Latin. Isn't it a lark? Thick, 
 black lines, tell him. He was a good dog and only bit one boy 
 in his life." 
 
 " All right, ril see to it," old Four-Eyes assured him with 
 answering huskiness. 
 
 "What says he?" helplessly inquired Moses, addressing him- 
 self to the newcomer. 
 
 " Isn't it a sad case, Mr. Coleman? " said the matron, in a low 
 tone. " They can't understand each other." 
 
 " You ought to keep an interpreter on the premises," said the 
 doctor, blowing his nose. Coleman struggled with himself. He 
 knew the jargon to perfection, for his parents spoke it still, but 
 he had always posed as being ignorant of it. 
 
 "Tell my father to go home, and not to bother; I'm all right 
 — only a little weak," whispered Benjamin. 
 
 Coleman was deeply perturbed. He was wondering whether 
 he should plead guilty to a little knowledge, when a change of 
 expression came over the wan face on the pillow. The doctor 
 came and felt the boy's pulse. 
 
 " No, I don't want to hear that Maaseh,'''' cried Benjamin. 
 " Tell me about the Sambatyon, father, which refuses to flow on 
 Shabbos.'''' 
 
 He spoke Yiddish, grown a child again. Moses's face lit up 
 with joy. His eldest born had returned to intelligibility. There 
 was hope still then. A sudden burst of sunshine flooded the 
 room. In London the sun would not break through the clouds for 
 some hours. Moses leaned over the pillow, his face working with 
 
258 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 blended emotions. He let a hot tear fall on his boy's upturned 
 face. 
 
 " Hush, hush, my little Benjamin, don't cry," said Benjamin, 
 and began to sing in his mother's jargon : 
 
 " Sleep, little father, sleep, 
 Thy father shall be a Rav, 
 Thy mother shall bring little apples, 
 Blessings on thy little head." 
 
 Moses saw his dead Gittel lulling his boy to sleep. Blinded 
 by his tears, he did not see that they were falling thick upon the 
 little white face. 
 
 " Nay, dry thy tears, I tell thee, my little Benjamin," said 
 Benjamin, in tones more tender and soothing, and launched into 
 the strange wailing melody : 
 
 " Alas, woe is me ! 
 How wretched to be 
 Driven away and banished, 
 Yet so young, from thee." 
 
 "And Joseph's mother called to him from the grave : Be com- 
 forted, my son, a great future shall be thine." 
 
 "The end is near," old Four-Eyes whispered to the father in 
 jargon. 
 
 Moses trembled from head to foot. "My poor lamb! My 
 poor Benjamin," he wailed. " I thought thou wouldst say 
 Kaddish after me, not I for thee." Then he began to recite 
 quietly the Hebrew prayers. The hat he should have removed 
 was appropriate enough now. 
 
 Benjamin sat up excitedly in bed : " There's mother, Esther! " 
 he cried in English. "Coming back with my coat. But what's 
 the use of it now? " 
 
 His head fell back again. Presently a look of yearning came 
 over the face so full of boyish beauty. "Esther," he said. 
 "Wouldn't you like to be in the green country to-day? Look 
 how the sun shines." 
 
 It shone, indeed, with deceptive warmth, bathing in gold the 
 
THE JARGON PLAYERS. 259 
 
 green country that stretched beyond, and dazzling the eyes 
 of the dying boy. The birds twittered outside the window. 
 ''Esther! " he said, wistfully, "do you think there'll be another 
 funeral soon? " 
 
 The matron burst into tears and turned away. 
 
 " Benjamin," cried the father, frantically, thinking the end had 
 come, " say the Shematigy 
 
 The boy stared at him, a clearer look in his eyes. 
 
 " Say the Shemangl " said Moses peremptorily. The word 
 Shemang, the old authoritative tone, penetrated the conscious- 
 ness of the dying boy. 
 
 '" Yes, father, I was just going to," he grumbled, submissively. 
 
 They repeated the last declaration of the dying Israelite to- 
 gether. It was in Hebrew^ '' Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, 
 the Lord is one.''^ Both understood that. 
 
 Benjamin lingered on a few more minutes, and died in a pain- 
 less torpor. 
 
 " He is dead," said the doctor. 
 
 "Blessed be the true Judge," said Moses. He rent his coat, 
 and closed the staring eyes. Then he went to the toilet table 
 and turned the looking-glass to the wall, and opened the win- 
 dow and emptied the jug of water upon the green sunlit grass. 
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 THE JARGON PLAYERS. 
 
 " No, don't stop me, Pinchas," said Gabriel Hamburg. " Pm 
 packing up, and I shall spend my Passover in Stockholm. The 
 Chief Rabbi there has discovered a manuscript which I am anx- 
 ious to see, and as I have saved up a little money I shall speed 
 thither." 
 
 "Ah, he pays well, that boy-fool, Raphael Leon," said Pin- 
 chas, emitting a lazy ring of smoke. 
 
 "What do you mean?" cried Gabriel, flushing angrily. "Do 
 you mean, perhaps, that you have been getting money out of 
 him?" 
 
260 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 " Precisely. That is what I do mean/' said the poet naively. 
 "What else?" 
 
 "Well, don't let me hear you call him a fool. He is one to 
 send you money, but then it is for others to call him so. That 
 boy will be a great man in Israel. The son of rich English 
 Jews — a Harrow-boy, yet he already writes Hebrew almost 
 grammatically." 
 
 Pinchas was aware of this fact ; had he not written to the lad 
 (in response to a crude Hebrew eulogium and a crisp Bank of 
 England note) : "I and thou are the only two people in England 
 who write the Holy Tongue grammatically." 
 
 He replied now : " It is true ; soon he will vie with me and 
 you." 
 
 The old scholar took snuff impatiently. The humors of Pin- 
 chas were beginning to pall upon him. 
 
 "Good-bye," he said again. 
 
 " No, wait yet a little," said Pinchas, buttonholing him reso- 
 lutely. "I want to show you my acrostic on Simon Wolf; ah! 
 I will shoot him, the miserable labor-leader, the wretch who 
 embezzles the money of the SociaHst fools who tmst him. Aha! 
 it will sting like Juvenal, that acrostic." 
 
 " I haven't time," said the gentle savant, beginning to lose his 
 temper. 
 
 "Well, have I time? I have to compose a three-act comedy 
 by to-morrow at noon. I expect I shall have to sit up all niglit 
 to get it done in time." Then, anxious to complete the concili- 
 ation of the old snuff-and-pepper-box, as he mentally christened 
 him for his next acrostic, he added : " If there is anything in 
 this manuscript that you cannot decipher or understand, a letter 
 to me, care of Reb Shemuel, will always find me. Somehow I 
 have a special genius for filling up lacuna in manuscripts. You 
 remember the famous discovery that I made by rewriting the six 
 lines torn out of the first page of that Midrash I discovered in 
 Cyprus." 
 
 " Yes, those six lines proved it thoroughly," sneered the 
 savant. 
 
 "Aha! You see!" said the poet, a gratified smile pervading 
 
THE JARGON PLAYERS. 261 
 
 his dusky features. "But I must tell you of this comedy — it 
 will be a satirical picture (in the style of Moliere, only sharper) 
 of Anglo-Jewish Society. The Rev. Elkan Benjamin, with his 
 four mistresses, they will all be there, and Gideon, the Man-of- 
 the-Earth, M. P., — ah, it will be terrible. If I could only get 
 them to see it performed, they should have free passes.'" 
 
 " No, shoot them first ; it would be more merciful. But w^here 
 is this comedy to be played?" asked Hamburg curiously. 
 
 " At the Jargon Theatre, the great theatre in Prince's Street, 
 the only real national theatre in England. The English stage — 
 Drury Lane — pooh! It is not in harmony with the people; it 
 does not express them." 
 
 Hamburg could not help smiling. He knew the wretched 
 little hall, since tragically famous for a massacre of innocents, 
 victims to the fatal cry of fire — more deadly than fiercest flame. 
 
 " But how will your audience understangl it? " he asked. 
 
 ''Aha!" said the poet, laying his finger on his nose and grin- 
 ning. "They will understand. They know the corruptions of 
 our society. All this conspiracy to crush me, to hound me out 
 of England so that ignoramuses may prosper and hypocrites 
 wax fat — do you think it is not the talk of the Ghetto? What! 
 Shall it be the talk of Berlin, of Constantinople, of Mogadore, 
 of Jerusalem, of Paris, and here it shall not be known? Besides, 
 the leading actress will speak a prologue. Ah! she is beautiful, 
 beautiful as Lilith, as the Queen of Sheba, as Cleopatra! And 
 how she acts! She and Rachel — both Jewesses! Think of it! 
 Ah, we are a great people. If I could tell you the secrets of her 
 eyes as she looks at me — but no, you are dry as dust, a creature 
 of prose! And there will be an orchestra, too, for Pesach Wein- 
 gott has promised to play the overture on his fiddle. How he 
 stirs the soul! It is like David playing before Saul." 
 
 " Yes, but it won't be javelins the people will throw," mur- 
 mured Hamburg, adding aloud : " I suppose you have written 
 the music of this overture." 
 
 "No, I cannot write music," said Pinchas. 
 
 "Good heavens! You don't say so?" gasped Gabriel Ham- 
 burg. " Let that be my last recollection of you! No! Don't 
 
262 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 say another word! Don't spoil it! Good-bye.'" And he tore 
 himself away, leaving the poet bewildered. 
 
 "Mad! mad!" said Pinchas, tapping his brow significantly; 
 " mad, the old snufF-and-pepper-box." He smiled at the recol- 
 lection of his latest phrase. '"These scholars stagnate so. 
 They see not enough of the women. Ha! I will go and see 
 my actress.*' 
 
 He threw out his chest, puffed out a volume of smoke, and 
 took his way to Petticoat Lane. The compatriot of Rachel was 
 wrapping up a scrag of mutton. She was a butchers daughter 
 and did not even wield the chopper, as Mrs. Siddons is reputed 
 to have flourished the domestic table-knife. She was a simple, 
 amiable girl, who had stepped into the position of lead in the 
 stock jargon company as a way of eking out her pocket-money, 
 and because there was no one else who wanted the post. She 
 was rather plain excepj: when be-rouged and be-pencilled. The 
 company included several tailors and tailoresses of talent, and 
 the low comedian was a Dutchman who sold herrings. They 
 all had the gift of improvisation more developed than memory, 
 and consequently availed themselves of the faculty that worked 
 easier. The repertory was written by goodness knew whom, 
 and was very extensive. It embraced all the species enumer- 
 ated by Polonius, including comic opera, which was not known 
 to the Danish saw-monger. There was nothing the company 
 would not have undertaken to play or have come out of with a 
 fair measure of success. Some of the plays were on Biblical sub- 
 jects, but only a minority. There were also plays in rhyme, 
 though Yiddish knows not blank verse. Melchitsedek accosted 
 his interpretess and made sheep's eyes at her. But an actress 
 who serves in a butchers shop is doubly accustomed to such, 
 and being busy the girl paid no attention to the poet, though 
 the poet was paying marked attention to her. 
 
 " Kiss me, thou beauteous one, the gems of whose crown 
 are foot-lights," said the poet, when the custom ebbed for a 
 moment. 
 
 " If thou comest near me," said the actress whirling the chop- 
 per, "I'll chop thy ugly little head off." 
 
THE JARGON PLAYERS. 263 
 
 " Unless thou lendest me thy lips thou shalt not play in my 
 comedy/' said Pinchas angrily. 
 
 " My trouble! " said the leading lady, shrugging her shoulders. 
 
 Pinchas made several reappearances- outside the open shop, 
 with his insinuative finger on his nose and his insinuative smile 
 on his face, but in the end went away with a flea in his ear and 
 hunted up the actor-manager, the only person who made any 
 money, to speak of, out of the performances. That gentleman 
 had not yet consented to produce the play that Pinchas had 
 ready in manuscript and which had been coveted by all the 
 great theatres in the world, but which he, Pinchas, had reserved 
 for the use of the only actor in Europe. The result of this 
 interview was that the actor-manager yielded to Pinchas's solici- 
 tations, backed by frequent applications of poetic finger to poetic 
 nose. 
 
 " But," said the actor-manager, with a sudden recollection, 
 "how about the besom? " 
 
 "The besom! '^ repeated Pinchas, nonplussed for once. 
 
 "Yes, thou sayest thou hast seen all the plays I have pro- 
 duced. Hast thou not noticed that I have a besom in all my 
 plays ? " 
 
 "Aha! Yes, I remember," said Pinchas. 
 
 ^' An old garden-besom it is," said the actor-manager. "And 
 it is the cause of all my luck." He took up a house-broom that 
 stood in the corner. " In comedy I sweep the floor with it — so 
 — and the people grin; in comic-opera I beat time with it as I 
 sing — so — and the people laugh; in farce I beat my mother- 
 in-law with it — so — and the people roar ; in tragedy I lean upon 
 it — so — and the people thrill; in melodrama I sweep away the 
 snow with it — so — and the people burst into tears. Usually I 
 have my plays written beforehand and the authors are aware of 
 the besom. Dost thou think," he concluded doubtfully, "that 
 thou hast sufficient ingenuity to work in the besom now that the 
 play is written ? " 
 
 Pinchas put his finger to his nose and smiled reassuringly. 
 
 "It shall be all besom," he said. 
 
 " And when wilt thou read it to me.'^" 
 
264 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 "Will to-morrow this time suit thee? " 
 
 "As honey a bear.'" 
 
 " Good, then! " said Pinchas ; " I shall not fail." 
 
 The door closed upon him. In another moment it reopened 
 a bit and he thrust his grinning face through the aperture. 
 
 "Ten per cent, of the receipts!" he said with his cajoling 
 digito-nasal gesture. 
 
 " Certainly," rejoined the actor-manager briskly. " After pay- 
 ing the expenses — ten per cent, of the receipts." 
 
 " Thou wilt not forget? " 
 
 "I shall not forget." 
 
 Pinchas strode forth into the street and lit a new cis^ar in his 
 exultation. How lucky the play was not yet written! Now he 
 would be able to make it all turn round the axis of the besom. 
 "It shall be all besom! " His own phrase rang in his ears like 
 voluptuous marriage bells. Yes, it should, indeed, be all besom. 
 With that besom he would sweep all his enemies — all the foul 
 conspirators — in one clean sweep, down, down to Sheol. He 
 would sweep them along the floor with it — so — and grin; 
 he would beat time to their yells of agony — so — and laugh ; he 
 would beat them over the heads — so — and roar ; he would lean 
 upon it in statuesque greatness — so — and thrill ; he would 
 sweep away their remains with it — so — and weep for joy. of 
 countermining and quelling the long persecution. 
 
 All night he wrote the play at railway speed, like a night 
 express — puffing out volumes of smoke as he panted along. 
 " I dip my pen in their blood,'' he said from time to time, and 
 threw back his head and laughed aloud in the silence of the 
 small hours. 
 
 Pinchas had a good deal to do to explain the next day to the 
 actor-manager where the fun came in. "Thou dost not grasp 
 all the allusions, the back-handed slaps, the hidden poniards ; 
 perhaps not," the author acknowledged. " But the great heart 
 of the people — it will understand." 
 
 The actor-manager was unconvinced, but he admitted there 
 was a good deal of besom, and in consideration of the poet 
 bating his terms to five per cent, of the receipts he agreed to 
 
THE JARGON PL A VERS. 265 
 
 give it a chance. The piece was billed widely in several streets 
 under the title of '' The Hornet of Judah/' and the name of Mel- 
 chitsedek Pinchas appeared in letters of the size stipulated by 
 the finger on the nose. 
 
 But the leading actress threw up her part at the last moment, 
 disgusted by the poet's amorous advances ; Pinchas volunteered 
 to play the part himself and, although his offer was rejected, he 
 attired himself in skirts and streaked his complexion with red 
 and white to replace the promoted second actress, and shaved 
 off his beard. 
 
 But in spite of this heroic sacrifice, the gods were unpropitious. 
 They chaffed the poet in pohshed Yiddish throughout the first 
 two acts. There was only a sprinkling of audience (most of it 
 paper) in the dimly-lit hall, for the fame of the great writer had 
 not spread from Berlin, Mogadore, Constantinople and the rest 
 of the universe. 
 
 No one could make head or tail of the piece with its incessant 
 play of occult satire against clergymen with four mistresses. 
 Rabbis who sold their daughters, stockbrokers ignorant of 
 Hebrew and destitute of English, greengrocers blowing Mes- 
 sianic and their own trumpets, labor-leaders embezzling funds, 
 and the like. In vain the actor-manager swept the floor with 
 the besom, beat time with the besom, beat his mother-in-law with 
 the besom, leaned on the besom, swept bits of white paper 
 with the besom. The hall, empty of its usual crowd, was fuller 
 of derisive laughter. At last the spectators tired of laughter and 
 the rafters re-echoed with hoots. At the end of the second act, 
 Melchitsedek Pinchas addressed the audience from the stage, in 
 his ample petticoats, his brow streaming with paint and perspi- 
 ration. He spoke of the great English conspiracy and expressed 
 his grief and astonishment at finding it had infected the entire 
 Ghetto. 
 
 There was no third act. It was the poet's first — and last — 
 appearance on any stage. 
 
266 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 "for AULD LANG SYNE, MY DEAR." 
 
 The learned say that Passover was a Spring festival even be- 
 fore it was associated witli the Redemption from Egypt, but there 
 is not much Nature to worship in the Ghetto and the historical 
 elements of the Festival swamp all the others. Passover still 
 remains the most picturesque of the " Three Festivals " with its 
 entire transmogrification of things culinary, its thorough taboo of 
 leaven. The audacious archaeologist of the thirtieth century 
 may trace back the origin of the festival to the Spring Cleaning, 
 the annual revel of the English housewife, for it is now that the 
 Ghetto whitewashes itself and scrubs itself and paints itself and 
 pranks itself and purifies its pans in a baptism of fire. Now, too, 
 the publican gets unto himself a white sheet and suspends it 
 at his door and proclaims that he sells Kosher 7-u)n by permis- 
 sion of the Chief Rabbi. Now the confectioner exchanges his 
 "stuffed monkeys/' and his bolas and his jam-puffs, and his 
 cheese-cakes for unleavened " palavas," and worsted balls and 
 almond cakes. Time was when the Passover dietary was re- 
 stricted to fruit and meat and vegetables, but year by year the 
 circle is expanding, and it should not be beyond the reach of 
 ingenuity to make bread itself Passoverian. It is now that the 
 pious shopkeeper whose store is tainted with leaven sells his 
 business to a friendly Christian, buying it back at the conclusion 
 of the festival. Now the Shalotten Shammos is busy from 
 morning to night filling up charity-forms, artistically multiplying 
 the poor man's children and dividing his rooms. Now is holo- 
 caust made of a people's bread-crumbs, and now is the national 
 salutation changed to "How do Wv^ Motsos agree with you?" 
 half of the race growing facetious, and the other half finical 
 over the spotted Passover cakes. 
 
 It was on the evening preceding the opening of Passover 
 that Esther Ansell set forth to purchase a shilling's worth of 
 
''FOR AULD LANG SYNE, MY DEARr 267 
 
 fish in Petticoat Lane, involuntarily storing up in her mind 
 vivid impressions of the bustling scene. It is one of the 
 compensations of poverty that it allows no time for mourning. 
 Daily duty is the poor man's nepenthe. 
 
 Esther and her father were the only two members of the 
 family upon whom the death of Benjamin made a deep im- 
 pression. He had been so long away from home that he 
 was the merest shadow to the rest. But Moses bore the 
 loss with resignation, his emotions discharging themselves in 
 the daily Kaddish. Blent with his personal grief was a sor- 
 row for the commentaries lost to Hebrew literature by his boy's 
 premature transference to Paradise. Esther's grief was more 
 bitter and defiant. All the children were delicate, but it was 
 the first time death had taken one. The meaningless tragedy 
 of Benjamin's end shook the child's soul to its depths. Poor 
 lad! How horrible to be lying cold and ghastly beneath the 
 winter snow! What had been the use of all his long prepa- 
 rations to write great novels ? The name of Ansell would now 
 become ingloriously extinct. She wondered wiiether Our Owfi 
 would collapse and secretly felt it must. And then what of 
 the hopes of worldly wealth she had built on Benjamin's genius ? 
 Alas! the emancipation of the Ansells from the yoke of pov- 
 erty was clearly postponed. To her and her alone must the 
 family now look for deliverance. Well, she would take up the 
 mantle of the dead boy, and fill it as best she might. She 
 clenched her little hands in iron determination. Moses Ansell 
 knew nothing either of her doubts or her ambitions. Work 
 was still plentiful three days a week, and he was unconscious 
 he was not supporting his family in comparative affluence. 
 But even with Esther the incessant grind of school-life and 
 quasi-motherhood speedily rubbed away the sharper edges 
 of sorrow, though the custom prohibiting obvious pleasures 
 during the year of mourning went in no danger of transgres- 
 sion, for poor little Esther gadded neither to children's balls 
 nor to theatres. Her thoughts were full of the prospects of 
 piscine bargains, as she pushed her way through a crowd so 
 closely wedged, and lit up by such a flare of gas from the 
 
268 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 shops and such streamers of flame from the barrows that the 
 cold wind of early April lost its sting. 
 
 Two opposing currents of heavy-laden pedestrians were en- 
 deavoring in their progress to occupy the same strip of pavement 
 at the same moment, and the laws of space kept them blocked 
 till they yielded to its remorseless conditions. Rich and poor 
 elbowed one another, ladies in satins and furs were jammed 
 against wretched looking foreign women with their heads 
 swathed in dirty handkerchiefs ; rough, red-faced English bet- 
 ting men struggled good-humoredly with their greasy kindred 
 from over the North Sea; and a sprinkling of Christian yokels 
 surveyed the Jewish hucksters and chapmen with amused supe- 
 riority. 
 
 For this was the night of nights, when the purchases were 
 made for the festival, and great ladies of the West, leaving be- 
 hind their daughters who played the piano and had a subscrip- 
 tion at Mudie's, came down again to the beloved Lane to throw 
 oiT the veneer of refinement, and plunge gloveless hands in bar- 
 rels where pickled cucumbers weltered in their own '■^ riissell,'"' 
 and to pick fat juicy olives from the rich-heaped tubs. Ah, me! 
 what tragic comedy lay behind the transient happiness of these 
 sensuous faces, laughing and munching with the shamelessness 
 of school-girls ! For to-night they need not hanker in silence 
 after the flesh-pots of Egypt. To-night they could laugh and 
 talk over Oloi' hasholom times — " Peace be upon him " times — 
 with their old cronies, and loosen the stays of social ambition, 
 even while they dazzled the Ghetto with the splendors of their 
 get-up and the halo of the West End whence they came. It 
 was a scene without parallel in the history of the world — this 
 phantasmagoria of grubs and butterflies, met together for auld 
 lang syne in their beloved hatching-place. Such violent con- 
 trasts of wealth and poverty as might be looked for in romantic 
 gold-fields, or in unsettled countries were evolved quite naturally 
 amid a colorless civilization by a people with an incurable talent 
 for the picturesque. 
 
 " Hullo! Can that be you, Betsy?" some grizzled shabby old 
 man would observe in innocent delight to Mrs. Arthur Mont- 
 
''FOR AULD LANG SYNE, MY DEAR:' 269 
 
 morenci ; " Why so it is! I never would have believed my eyes! 
 Lord, what a fine woman youVe grown ! And so youVe little 
 Betsy who used to bring her father''s coffee in a brown jug when 
 he and I stood side by side in the Lane! He used to sell slip- 
 pers next to my cutlery stall for eleven years — Dear, dear, how 
 time flies to be sure." 
 
 Then Betsy Montmorenci's creamy face would grow scarlet 
 under the gas-jets, and she would glower and draw her sables 
 around her, and look round involuntarily, to see if any of her 
 Kensington friends were within earshot. 
 
 Another Betsy Montmorenci would feel Bohemian for this 
 occasion only, and would receive old acquaintances' greeting 
 effusively, and pass the old phrases and by-words with a strange 
 sense of stolen sweets ; while yet a third Betsy Montmorenci, a 
 finer spirit this, and worthier of the name, would cry to a Betsy 
 Jacobs : 
 
 "Is that you, Betsy, how are you? How are you? Fm so 
 glad to see you. Won't you come and treat me to a cup of 
 chocolate at Bonn's, just to show you haven't forgot Olov 
 hasholom times ? " 
 
 And then, having thus thrown the responsibility of stand- 
 offishness on the poorer Betsy, the Montmorenci would launch 
 into recollections of those good old " Peace be upon him " times 
 till the grub forgot the splendors of the caterpillar in a joyous 
 resurrection of ancient scandals. But few of the Montmorencis, 
 whatever their species, left the Ghetto without pressing bits of 
 gold into half-reluctant palms in shabby back-rooms where old 
 friends or poor relatives mouldered. 
 
 Overhead, the stars burned silently, but no one looked up 
 at them. Underfoot, lay the thick, black veil of mud, which the 
 Lane never lifted, but none looked down on it. It was impos- 
 sible to think of aught but humanity in the bustle and confusion, 
 in the cram and crush, in the wedge and the jam, in the squeez- 
 ing and shouting, in the hubbub and medley. Such a jolly, 
 rampant, screaming, fighting, maddening, jostling, polyglot, quar- 
 relling, laughing broth of a Vanity Fair ! Mendicants, vendors, 
 buyers, gossips, showmen, all swelled the roar. 
 
270 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 " Here's your cakes ! All yontovdik (for the festival) ! Yon- 
 tovdik — " 
 
 " Braces, best braces, all — " 
 
 '-^Yontovdik I Only one shilling — " 
 
 '^ It's the Rav's orders, mum ; all legs of mutton must be 
 porged or my license — '^ 
 
 " Cowcumbers ! Cowcumbers ! " 
 
 " Now's your chance — " 
 
 "The best trousers, gentlemen. Corst me as sure as I 
 stand — " 
 
 " On your own head, you old — " 
 
 " Arbah Kanfus (four fringes) ! Arbah — " 
 
 " My old man's been under an operation — " 
 
 " H okey Pokey ! Yontovdik ! H okey — '' 
 
 " Get out of the way, can't you — " 
 
 " By your life and mine, Betsy — ■" 
 
 " Gord blesh you, mishter, a toisand year shall ye live." 
 
 " Eat the best Motsos. Only fourpence — " 
 
 " The bones must go with, marm. I've cut it as lean as 
 possible." 
 
 '■^ Charoises (a sweet mixture). Charoisesl Moroire (bitter 
 herb)! Chraine (horseradish)! Pesachdik (for Passover)." 
 
 " Come and have a glass of Old Tom, along o' me, sonny." 
 
 " Fine plaice ! Here y'are ! Hi ! where's yer pluck ! S'elp 
 me — " 
 
 " Bob ! Yontovdik! Yontovdik I Only a bob! " 
 
 " Chuck steak and half a pound of fat." 
 
 "A slap in the eye, if you — " 
 
 " Gord bless you. Remember me to Jacob." 
 
 " Shaink (spare) meer a 'apenny, missis lieben, missis croin 
 (dear) — " 
 
 " An unnatural death on you, you — " 
 
 " Lord! Sal, how you've altered ! " 
 
 " Ladies, here you are — " 
 
 " I give you my word. sir. the fish will be home before you." 
 
 " Painted in the best style, for a tanner — " 
 
 "A spoonge, mister? " 
 
''FOR AULD LANG SYNE, MY DEARr 271 
 
 " ril cut a slice of this melon for you for — " 
 " She's dead, poor thing, peace be upon him." 
 " Yontovdik ! Three bob for one purse containing — " 
 " The real live tattooed Hindian, born in the African Harchi- 
 pellygo. Walk up." 
 
 " This way for the dwarf that will speak, dance, and sing." 
 " Tree lemons a penny. Tree lemons — '^ 
 " A Shtibbiw (penny) for a poor blind man — " 
 " Yontovdik ! Yontovdik ! Yontovdik ! Yontovdik I " 
 And in this last roar, common to so many of the mongers, 
 the whole Babel would often blend for a moment and be swal- 
 lowed up, re-emerging anon in its broken multiplicity. 
 
 Everybody Esther knew was in the crowd — she met them 
 all sooner or later. In Wentworth Street, amid dead cabbage- 
 leaves, and mud, and refuse, and orts, and offal, stood the woe- 
 begone Meckish, offering his puny sponges, and wooing the 
 charitable with grinning grimaces tempered by epileptic fits at 
 judicious intervals. A few inches off, his wife in costly sealskin 
 jacket, purchased salmon with a Maida Vale manner. Com- 
 pressed in a corner was Shosshi Shmendrik, his coat-tails yellow 
 with the yolks of dissolving eggs from a bag in his pocket. 
 He asked her frantically, if she had seen a boy whom he had 
 hired to carry home his codfish and his fowls, and explained 
 that his missus was busy in the shop, and had delegated to him 
 the domestic duties. It is probable, that if Mrs. Shmendrik, 
 formerly the widow Finkelstein, ever received these dainties, 
 she found her good man had purchased fish artificially inflated 
 with air, and fowls fattened with brown paper. Hearty Sam 
 Abrahams, the bass chorister, whose genial countenance spread 
 sunshine for yards around, stopped Esther and gave her a 
 penny. Further, she met her teacher, Miss Miriam Hyams, and 
 curtseyed to her, for Esther was not of those who jeeringly called 
 " teacher " and '' master '' according to sex after her superiors, 
 till the victims longed for Elisha''s influence over bears. Later 
 on, she was shocked to see her teacher's brother piloting bonny 
 Bessie Sugarman through the thick of the ferment. Crushed 
 between two barrows, she found Mrs. Belcovitch and Fann_), 
 
272 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 who were shopping together, attended by Pesach Weingott, all 
 carrying piles of purchases. 
 
 '' Esther, if you should see my Becky in the crowd, tell her 
 where I am,"' said Mrs. Belcovitch. "She is with one of her 
 chosen young men. I am so feeble, I can hardly crawl around, 
 and my Becky ought to carry home the cabbages. She has 
 well-matched legs, not one a thick one and one a thin one." 
 
 Around the fishmongers the press was great. The fish-trade 
 was almost monopolized by English Jews — blonde, healthy- 
 looking fellows, with brawny, bare arms, who were approached 
 with dread by all but the bravest foreign Jewesses. Their scale 
 of prices and politeness varied with the status of the buyer. 
 Esther, who had an observant eye and ear for such things, often 
 found amusement standing unobtrusively by. To-night there 
 was the usual comedy awaiting her enjoyment. A well-dressed 
 dame came up to '' Uncle Abe's "' stall, where half a dozen lots 
 of fishy miscellanaea were spread out. 
 
 "Good evening, madam. Cold night but fine. That lot? 
 Well, you're an old customer and fish are cheap to-day, so I can 
 let you have 'em for a sovereign. Eighteen? Well, it's hard, 
 but — boy ! take the lady's fish. Thank you. Good evening." 
 
 " How much that? " says a neatly dressed woman, pointing to 
 a precisely similar lot. 
 
 " Can't take less than nine bob. Fish are dear to-day. You 
 won't get anything cheaper in the Lane, by G — you won't. 
 Five shillings! By my life and by my children's life, they cost 
 me more than that. So sure as I stand here and — well, come, 
 gie's seven and six and they're yours. You can't afford more? 
 Well, 'old up your apron, old gal. I'll make it up out of the 
 rich. By your life and mine, you've got a Meisiah (bargain) 
 there!" 
 
 Here old Mrs. Shmendrik, Shosshi's mother, came up, a rich 
 Paisley shawl over her head in lieu of a bonnet. Lane women 
 who went out without bonnets were on the same plane as Lane 
 men who went out without collars. 
 
 One of the terrors of the English fishmongers was that they 
 required the customer to speak English, thus fulfilling an impor- 
 
''FOR AULD LANG SYNE, MY DEAR:' 273 
 
 tant educative function in the community. They allowed a 
 certain peicentage of jargon-words, for they themselves took 
 licenses in this direction, but they professed not to understand 
 pure Yiddish. 
 
 " Abraham, 'ow mosh for dees lot," said old Mrs. Shmendrik, 
 turning over a third similar heap and feeling the fish all over. 
 
 "Paws off!''' said Abraham roughly. "Look here! I know 
 the tricks of you Polakinties. Til name you the lowest price and 
 won't stand a farthing's bating. Til lose by you, but you ain't 
 going to worry me. Eight bob! There! " 
 
 " Avroomkely (dear little Abraham) take lebbenpence! " 
 
 "Elevenpence! By G — ," cried Uncle Abe, desperately tear- 
 ing his hair. "I knew it!" And seizing a huge plaice by the 
 tail he whirled it round and struck Mrs. Shmendrik full in the 
 face, shouting, " Take that, you old witch ! Sling your hook or 
 ril murder you." 
 
 "Thou dog!" shrieked Mrs. Shmendrik, falling back on the 
 more copious resources of her native idiom. " A black year on 
 thee! Mayest thou swell and die! May the hand that struck 
 me rot away! Mayest thou be burned alive! Thy father was a 
 Gonof and thou art a Gonof and thy whole family are Gonoviin. 
 May Pharaoh's ten plagues — " 
 
 There was little malice at the back of it all — the mere imas:- 
 inative exuberance of a race whose early poetry consisted in 
 saying things twice over. 
 
 Uncle Abraham menacingly caught up the plaice, crying : 
 
 " May I be struck dead on the spot, if you ain't gone in one 
 second I won't answer for the consequences. Now, then, clear 
 off!" 
 
 "Come, Avroomkely," said Mrs. Shmendrik, dropping sud- 
 denly from invective to insinuativeness. "Take fourteenpence. 
 Shemah, benil Fourteen Shtibbur's a lot of Gelty 
 
 " Are you a-going? " cried Abraham in a terrible rage. "' Ten 
 bob's my price now." 
 
 " Avroomkely, noo^ soog (say now) ! Fourteenpence 'apenny. 
 I am a poor voman. Here, fifteenpence." 
 
 Abraham seized her by the shoulders and pushed her towards 
 
 T 
 
274 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 the wall, where she cursed picturesquely. Esther thought it was 
 a bad time to attempt to get her own shilling's worth — she fought 
 her way towards another fishmonger. 
 
 There was a kindly, weather-beaten old fellow with whom 
 Esther had often chaffered job-lots when fortune smiled on the 
 Ansells. Him, to her joy, Esther perceived — she saw a stack 
 of gurnards on his improvised slab, and in imagination smelt her- 
 self frying them. Then a great shock as of a sudden icy douche 
 traversed her frame, her heart seemed to stand still. For when 
 she put her hand to her pocket to get her purse, she found but 
 a thimble and a slate-pencil and a cotton handkerchief. It was 
 some minutes before she could or would realize the truth that 
 the four and sevenpence halfpenny on which so much depended 
 was gone. Groceries and unleavened cakes Charity had given, 
 raisin wine had been preparing for days, but fish and meat and 
 all the minor accessories of a well-ordered Passover table — these 
 were the prey of the pickpocket. A blank sense of desolation 
 overcame the child, infinitely more horrible than that which she 
 felt when she spilled the soup ; the gurnards she could have 
 touched with her finger seemed far off, inaccessible ; in a moment 
 more they and all things were blotted out by a hot rush of tears, 
 and she was jostled as in a dream hither and thither by the double 
 stream of crowd. Nothing since the death of Benjamin had 
 given her so poignant a sense of the hollowness and uncertainty 
 of existence. What would her father say, whose triumphant con- 
 viction that Providence had provided for his Passover was to be 
 so rudely dispelled at the eleventh hour. Poor Moses! He had 
 been so proud of having earned enougli money to make a good 
 Vofitov, and was more convinced than ever that given a little cap- 
 ital to start with he could build up a colossal business! And 
 now she would have to go home and spoil everybody''s Yontov, 
 and see the sour faces of her little ones round a barren Seder 
 table. Oh, it was terrible! and the child wept piteously, unheeded 
 in the block, unheard amid the Babel. 
 
THE DEAD MONKEY. 275 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 THE DEAD MONKEY. 
 
 An old MaaseJi the grandmother had told her came back to 
 her fevered brain. In a town in Russia lived an old Jew who 
 earned scarce enough to eat, and half of what he did earn was 
 stolen from him in bribes to the officials to let him be. Perse- 
 cuted and spat upon, he yet trusted in his God and praised His 
 name. And it came on towards Passover and the winter was 
 severe and the Jew was nigh starving and his wife had made no 
 preparations for the Festival. And in the bitterness of her soul 
 she derided her husband's faith and made mock of him, but he 
 said, " Have patience, my wife ! Our Seder board shall be spread 
 as in the days of yore and as in former years." But the Festival 
 drew nearer and nearer and there was nothing in the house. 
 And the wife taunted her husband yet further, saying, '' Dost 
 thou think that Elijah the prophet will call upon thee or that the 
 Messiah will come ? " But he answered : '• Elijah the prophet 
 walketh the earth, never having died; who knows but that he 
 will cast an eye my way?" Whereat his wife laughed outright. 
 And the days wore on to within a few hours of Passover and the 
 larder was still empty of provender and the old Jew still full of 
 faith. Now it befell that the Governor of the City, a hard and 
 cruel man, sat counting out piles of gold into packets for the pay- 
 ment of the salaries of the officials and at his side sat his pet 
 monkey, and as he heaped up the pieces, so his monkey imitated 
 him, making little packets of its own to the amusement of the 
 Governor. And when the Governor could not pick up a piece 
 easily, he moistened his forefinger, putting it to his mouth, where- 
 upon the monkey followed suit each time ; only deeming its 
 master was devouring the gold, it swallowed a coin every time he 
 put his finger to his lips. So that of a sudden it was taken ill 
 and died. And one of his men said, '' Lo, the creature is dead. 
 What shall we do with it? " And the Go'vernor was sorely vexed 
 
276 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 in spirit, because he could not make his accounts straight and he 
 answered gruffly, " Trouble me not ! Throw it into the house of 
 the old Jew down the street/'' So the man took the carcass and 
 threw it with thunderous violence into the passage of the Jew's 
 house and ran off as hard as he could. And the good wife came 
 bustling out in alarm and saw a carcass hanging over an iron 
 bucket that stood in the passage. And she knew that it was the 
 act of a Christian and she took up the carrion to bury it when 
 Lo! a rain of gold-pieces came from the stomach ripped up by 
 the sharp rim of the vessel. And she called to her husband. 
 "Hasten! See what Elijah the prophet hath sent us." And 
 she scurried into the market-place and bought wine and unleav- 
 ened bread, and bitter herbs and all things necessary for the 
 Seder table, and a little fish therewith which might be hastily 
 cooked before the Festival came in, and the old couple were 
 happy and gave the monkey honorable burial and sang blithely 
 of the deliverance at the Red Sea and filled Elijah's goblet to the 
 brim till the wine ran over upon the white cloth. 
 
 Esther gave a scornful little sniff as the thought of this happy 
 denouement flashed upon her. No miracle like that would hap- 
 pen to her or hers, nobody was likely to leave a dead monkey on 
 the stairs of the garret — hardly even the " stuffed monkey " of 
 contemporary confectionery. And then her queer little brain 
 forgot its grief in sudden speculations as to what she would think 
 if her four and sevenpence halfpenny came back. She had 
 never yet doubted the existence of the Unseen Power ; only its 
 workings seemed so incomprehensibly indifferent to human joys 
 and sorrows. Would she believe that her father was right in 
 holding that a special Providence watched over him? The spirit 
 of her brother Solomon came upon her and she felt that she 
 would. Speculation had checked her sobs ; she dried her tears 
 in stony scepticism and, looking up, saw Malka's gipsy-like face 
 bending over her, breathing peppermint. 
 
 "What weepest thou, Esther?" she said not unkindly. "I 
 did not know thou wast a gusher with the eyes." 
 
 " Tve lost my purse," sobbed Esther, softened afresh by the 
 sight of a friendly face. 
 
THE DEAD MONKEY. 277 
 
 "Ah, thou Schlemihl! Thou art like thy father. How much 
 was in it ? " 
 
 "Four and sevenpence halfpenny!" sobbed Esther. 
 
 "Tu, tu, tu, tu, tu! '■• ejaculated Malka in horror. "Thou art 
 the ruin of thy father." Then turning to the fishmonger with 
 whom she had just completed a purchase, she counted out thirty- 
 five shillings into his hand. " Here, Esther," she said, " thou 
 shalt carry my fish and I will give thee a shilling." 
 
 A small slimy boy who stood expectant by scowled at Esther 
 as she painfully lifted the heavy basket and followed in the wake 
 of her relative whose heart was swelling with self-approbation. 
 
 Fortunately Zachariah Square was near and Esther soon 
 received her shilling with a proportionate sense of Providence. 
 The fish was deposited at Milly's house, which was brightly illu- 
 minated and seemed to poor Esther a magnificent palace of light 
 and luxury. Malka's own house, diagonally across the Square, 
 was dark and gloomy. The two families being at peace, Milly's 
 house was the headquarters of the clan and the clothes-brush. 
 Everybody was home for Yomtov. Malka's husband, Michael, 
 and Milly's husband, Ephraim, were sitting at the table smoking 
 big cigars and playing Loo with Sam Levine and David Bran- 
 don, who had been seduced into making a fourth. The two 
 young husbands had but that day returned from the country, for 
 you cannot get unleavened bread at commercial hotels, and 
 David in spite of a stormy crossing had arrived from Germany 
 an hour earlier than he had expected, and not knowing what to 
 do with himself had been surveying the humors of the Festival 
 Fair till Sam met him and dragged him round to Zachariah 
 Square. It was too late to call that night on Hannah to be intro- 
 duced to her parents, especially as he had wired he would come 
 the next day. There was no chance of Hannah being at the 
 club, it was too busy a night for all angels of the hearth ; even 
 to-morrow, the even of the Festival, would be an awkward time 
 for a young man to thrust his love-affairs upon a household 
 given over to the more important matters of dietary preparation. 
 Still David could not consent to live another whole day without 
 seeing the light of his eyes. 
 
278 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 Leah, inwardly projecting an orgie of comic operas and dances, 
 was assisting Milly in the kitchen. Both young women were 
 covered with flour and oil and grease, and their coarse hand- 
 some faces were flushed, for they had been busy all day drawing 
 fowls, stewing prunes and pippins, gutting fish, melting fat, 
 changing the crockery and doing the thousand and one things 
 necessitated by gratitude for the discomfiture of Pharaoh at the 
 Red Sea ; Ezekiel slumbered upstairs in his crib. 
 
 " Mother," said Michael, pulling pensively at his whisker as he 
 looked at his card. "This is Mr. Brandon, a friend of Sam's. 
 Don't get up, Brandon, we don't make ceremonies here. Turn 
 up yours — ah, the nine of trumps." 
 
 "Lucky men!" said Malka with festival flippancy. "While I 
 must hurry off" my supper so as to buy the fish, and Miliy and 
 Leah must sweat in the kitchen, you can squat yourselves down 
 and play cards." 
 
 " Yes," laughed Sam, looking up and adding in Hebrew, 
 "Blessed art thou, O Lord, who hath not made me a woman." 
 
 "Now, now," said David, putting his hand jocosely across the 
 young man's mouth. " No more Hebrew. Remember what 
 happened last time. Perhaps there's some mysterious signifi- 
 cance even in that, and you'll find yourself let in for something 
 before you know where you are." 
 
 " You're not going to prevent me talking the language of my 
 Fathers," gurgled Sam, bursting into a merry operatic whistle 
 when the pressure was removed. 
 
 "Milly! Leah!" cried Malka. "Come and look at my fish! 
 Such a Metsiahl See, they're alive yet." 
 
 " They are beauties, mother," said Leah, entering with her 
 sleeves half tucked up, showing the finely-moulded white arms 
 in curious juxtaposition with the coarse red hands. 
 
 " O, mother, they're alive!" said Milly, peering over her 
 younger sister's shoulder. 
 
 Both knew by bitter experience that their mother considered 
 herself a connoisseur in the purchase of fish. 
 
 "And how much do you think I gave for them? "went on 
 Malka triumphantly. 
 
THE DEAD MONKEY. 279 
 
 " Two pounds ten,''' said Milly. 
 
 Malka's eyes twinkled and slie shook her head. 
 
 " Two pounds fifteen," said Leah, with the air of hitting it 
 now. • 
 
 Still Malka shook her head. 
 
 " Here, Michael, what do you think I gave for all this lot? " 
 
 " Diamonds!" said Michael. 
 
 " Be not a fool, Michael," said Malka sternly. " Look here a 
 minute." 
 
 " Eh? Oh! " said Michael looking up from his cards. " Don't 
 bother, mother. My game! " 
 
 "Michael!" thundered Malka. "Will you look at this fish? 
 How much do you think I gave for this splendid lot? here, look 
 at 'em, alive yet." 
 
 " H'm — Ha! " said Michael, taking his complex corkscrew com- 
 bination out of his pocket and putting it back again. " Three 
 guineas ? " 
 
 "Three guineas!" laughed Malka, in good-humored scorn. 
 "Lucky I don't let_y^;/ do my marketing." 
 
 "Yes, he'd be a nice fishy customer! " said Sam Levine with a 
 guffaw. 
 
 "Ephraim, what think you I got this fish for? Cheap now, 
 you know ? " 
 
 "I don't know, mother," replied the twinkling-eyed Pole 
 obediently. "Three pounds, perhaps, if you got it cheap." 
 
 Samuel and David duly appealed to, reduced the amount to 
 two pounds five and two pounds respectively. Then, having 
 got everybody's attention fixed upon her, she exclaimed : 
 
 " Thirty shillings!" 
 
 She could not resist nibbling off the five shilHngs. Every- 
 body drew a long breath. 
 
 " Tu ! Tu! " they ejaculated in chorus. " What a Metsiah ! " 
 
 "Sam," said Ephraim immediately afterwards. "K^/^ turned 
 up the ace." 
 
 Milly and Leah went back into the kitchen. 
 
 It was rather too quick a relapse into the common things of 
 life and made Malka suspect the admiration was but superficial. 
 
280 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 She turned, with a spice of ill-humor, and saw Esther still stand- 
 ing timidly behind her. Her face flushed for she knew the child 
 had overheard her in a lie. 
 
 "What art thou waiting about for?" she said roughly in Yid- 
 dish. "Na! there's a peppermint." 
 
 " I thought you might want me for something else," said 
 Esther, blushing but accepting the peppermint for Ikey. " And 
 I — I — " 
 
 "Well, speak up! I won't bite thee." Malka continued to talk 
 in Yiddish though the child answered her in English. 
 
 "I — I — nothing," said Esther, turning away. 
 
 " Here, turn thy face round, child," said Malka, putting her 
 hand on the girPs forcibly averted head. " Be not so sullen, 
 thy mother was like that, she'd want to bite my head off if I 
 hinted thy father was not the man for her, and then she'd 
 schtjuill and sulk for a week after. Thank God, we have no 
 one like that in this house. I couldn't live for a day with 
 people with such nasty tempers. Her temper worried her into 
 the grave, though if thy father had not brought his mother over 
 from Poland my poor cousin might have carried home my fish 
 to-night instead of thee. Poor Gittel, peace be upon him! 
 Come tell me what ails thee, or thy dead mother will be cross 
 with thee." 
 
 Esther turned her head and murmured : " I thought you might 
 lend me the three and sevenpence halfpenny!" 
 
 "Lend thee — ?" exclaimed Malka. "Why, how canst thou 
 ever repay it? " 
 
 " Oh yes," affirmed Esther earnestly. " I have lots of money 
 in the bank." 
 
 "Eh! what? In the bank! " gasped Malka. 
 
 " Yes, I won five pounds in the school and I'll pay you out of 
 that." 
 
 " Thy father never told me that! " said Malka. " He kept that 
 dark. Ah, he is a regular Sc/inorrer !'''' 
 
 " My father hasn't seen you since," retorted Esther hotly. " If 
 you had come round when he was sitting shiva for Benjamin, 
 peace be upon him, you would have known." 
 
THE DEAD MONKEY. 281 
 
 Malka got as red as fire. Moses had sent Solomon round 
 to inform the Mishpocha of his affliction, but at a period when 
 the most casual acquaintance thinks it his duty to call (armed 
 with hard boiled eggs, a pound of sugar, or an ounce of tea) 
 on the mourners condemned to sit on the floor for a week, 
 no representative of the " family '^ had made an appearance. 
 Moses took it meekly enough, but his mother insisted that 
 such a slight from Zachariah Square would never have been 
 received if he had married another woman, and Esther for 
 once agreed with her grandmother's sentiments if not with her 
 Hibernian expression of them. 
 
 But that the child should now dare to twit the head of the 
 family wdth bad behavior was intolerable to Malka, the more 
 so as she had no defence. 
 
 " Thou impudent of face ! " she cried sharply. " Dost thou for- 
 get whom thou talkest to?" 
 
 " No," retorted Esther. " You are my father's cousin — that 
 is why you ought to have come to see him." 
 
 "I am not thy father's cousin, God forbid!" cried Malka. 
 " I was thy mother's cousin, God have mercy on her, and 
 I wonder not you drove her into the grave between the lot 
 of you. I am no relative of any of you, thank God, and 
 from this day forwards I wash my hands of the lot of you, 
 you ungrateful pack! Let thy father send yoii into the streets, 
 with matches, not another thing will I do for thee." 
 
 "Ungrateful!" said Esther hotly. "Why, what have you 
 ever done for us ? When my poor mother was alive you made 
 her scrub your floors and clean your windows, as if she was 
 an Irishwoman." 
 
 "Impudent of face ! " cried Malka, almost choking with rage. 
 "' What have I done for you ? Why — why — I — I — shameless 
 hussy! And this is what Judaism's coming to in England! 
 This is the manners and religion they teach thee at thy school, 
 eh? What have I — ? Impudent of face! At this very mo- 
 ment thou boldest one of my shillings in thy hand." 
 
 "Take it!" said Esther. And threw the coin passionately 
 to the floor, where it rolled about pleasantly for a terrible 
 
282 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 minute of human silence. The smoke-wreathed card-players 
 looked up at last. 
 
 " Eh ? Eh ? What's this, my little girl," said Michael genially. 
 " What makes you so naughty ? " 
 
 A hysterical fit of sobbing was the only reply. In the bitter- 
 ness of that moment Esther hated the whole world. 
 
 " Don't cry like that! Don't! " said David Brandon kindly. 
 
 Esther, her little shoulders heaving convulsively, put her 
 hand on the latch. 
 
 "What's the matter with the girl, mother?" said Michael. 
 
 " She's ;//^j'//;/^(^z .'" said Malka. "Raving mad!" Her face 
 was white and she spoke as if in self-defence. " She's such a 
 Schlemihl that she lost her purse in the Lane, and I found her 
 gushing with the eyes, and I let her carry home my fish and 
 gave her a shilling and a peppermint, and thou seest how she 
 turns on me, thou seest." 
 
 "Poor little thing!" said David impulsively. "Here, come 
 here, my child." 
 
 Esther refused to budge. 
 
 " Come here," he repeated gently. " See, I will make up the loss 
 to you. Take the pool. I've just won it, so I shan't miss it." 
 
 Esther sobbed louder, but she did not move. 
 
 David rose, emptied the heap of silver into his palm, walked 
 over to Esther, and pushed it into her pocket. Michael got up 
 and added half a crown to it. and the other two men followed 
 suit. Then David opened the door, put her outside gently and 
 said : " There! Run away, my little dear, and be more careful of 
 pickpockets." 
 
 All this while Malka had stood frozen to the stony dignity of a 
 dingy terra-cotta statue. But ere the door could close again on 
 the child, she darted forward and seized her by the collar of her 
 frock. 
 
 " Give me that money," she cried. 
 
 Half hypnotized by the irate swarthy face, Esther made no 
 resistance while Malka rifled her pocket less dexterously than 
 the first operator. 
 
 Malka counted it out. 
 
THE DEAD MONKEY. 283 
 
 "Seventeen and sixpence," she announced in terrible tones. 
 " How darest thou take all this money from strangers, and per- 
 fect strangers? Do my children think to shame me before my 
 own relative? " And throwing the money violently into the 
 plate she took out a gold coin and pressed it into the bewildered 
 child's hand. 
 
 " There! '' she shouted. " Hold that tight! It is a sovereign. 
 And if ever I catch thee taking money from any one in this house 
 but thy mother's own cousin, Fll w'ash my hands of thee for ever. 
 Go now! Go on! I can't afford any more, so it's useless wait- 
 ing. Good-night, and tell thy father I wish him a happy Vo)itov, 
 and I hope he'll lose no more children." 
 
 She hustled the child into the Square and banged the door 
 upon her, and Esther went about her mammoth marketing half- 
 dazed, with an undercurrent of happiness, vaguely apologetic 
 towards her father and his Providence. 
 
 Malka stooped down, picked up the clothes-brush from under the 
 side-table, and strode silently and diagonally across the Square. 
 
 There was a moment's dread silence. The thunderbolt had 
 fallen. The festival felicity of two households trembled in the 
 balance. Michael muttered impatiently and went out on his 
 wife's track. 
 
 "He's an awful fool," said Ephraim. "I should make her 
 pay for her tantrums." 
 
 The card party broke up in confusion. David Brandon took 
 his leave and strolled about aimlessly under the stars, his soul 
 blissful with the sense of a good deed that had only superficially 
 miscarried. His feet took him to Hannah's house. All the 
 windows were lit up. His heart began to ache at the thought 
 that his bright, radiant girl was beyond that doorstep he had 
 never crossed. 
 
 He pictured the love-light in her eyes ; for surely she was 
 dreaming of him, as he of her. He took out his watch — the 
 time was twenty to nine. After all, would it be so outrageous to 
 call? He went away twice. The third time, defying the conve- 
 nances, he knocked at the door, his heart beating almost as 
 loudly. 
 
284 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 THE SHADOW OF RELIGION. 
 
 The little servant girl who opened the door for him looked 
 relieved by the sight of him, for it might have been the Reb- 
 bitzin returning from the Lane with heaps of supplies and an 
 accumulation of ill-humor. She showed him into the study, 
 and in a few moments Hannah hurried in with a big apron and 
 a general flavor of the kitchen. 
 
 "How dare you come to-night.'*" she began, but the sentence 
 died on her lips. 
 
 " How hot your face is," he said, dinting the flesh fondly with 
 his finger. " I see my little girl is glad to have me back." 
 
 "It's not that. It's the fire. Fm frying fish for Yomtov^'' 
 she said, with a happy laugh. 
 
 "And yet you say you're not a good Jewess," he laughed 
 back. 
 
 " You had no right to come and catch me like this," she 
 pouted. "All greasy and dishevelled. I'm not made up to 
 receive visitors." 
 
 "Call me a visitor?" he grumbled. "Judging by your ap- 
 pearance, I should say you were always made up. Why, you're 
 perfectly radiant." 
 
 Then the talk became less intelligible. The first symptom of 
 returning rationality was her inquiry — 
 
 " What sort of a journey did you have back? " 
 
 "The sea was rough, but I'm a good sailor." 
 
 "And the poor fellow's father and mother?" 
 
 " I wrote you about them." 
 
 " So you did ; but only just a line." 
 
 " Oh, don't let us talk about the subject just now, dear, it's 
 too painful. Come, let me kiss that little woe-begone look out 
 of your eyes. There! Now, another — that was only for the 
 right eye, this is for the left. But where's your mother?" 
 
THE SHADOW OF RELIGION. 285 
 
 "Oh, you innocent! '' she replied. "As if you hadn't 
 watched her go out of the house!" 
 
 " Ton my honor, not/' he said smiling. " Why should I 
 now? Am I not the accepted son-in-law of the house, you 
 silly timid little thing? What a happy thought it was of yours 
 to let the cat out of the bag. Come, let me give you another 
 kiss for it — Oh, I really must. You deserve it, and whatever 
 it costs me you shall be rewarded. There! Now, then! 
 Where's the old man? I have to receive his blessing, I know, 
 and I want to get it over." 
 
 " It's worth having, I can tell you, so speak more respect- 
 fully," said Hannah, more than half in earnest. 
 
 '■'■YoH are the best blessing he can give me — and that's worth 
 — well, I wouldn't venture to price it." 
 
 " It's not your line, eh? " 
 
 " I don't know, I have done a good deal in gems ; but where 
 is the Rabbi ? " 
 
 "Up in the bedrooms, gathering the CJioifuttz. You know he 
 won't trust anybody else. He creeps under all the beds, hunting 
 with a candle for stray crumbs, and looks in all the wardrobes 
 and the pockets of all my dresses. Luckily, I don't keep your 
 letters there. I hope he won't set something alight — he did 
 once. And one year — Oh, it was so funny! — after he had 
 ransacked every hole and corner of the house, imagine his 
 horror, in the middle of Passover to find a crumb of bread 
 audaciously planted — where do you suppose? In his Passover 
 prayer-book! ! But, oh!" — with a little scream — "you naughty 
 boy! I quite forgot." She took him by the shoulders, and peered 
 along his coat. "Have you brought any crumbs with you? 
 This room's pesachdik already." 
 
 He looked dubious. 
 
 She pushed him towards the door. "Go out and give your- 
 self a good shaking on the door-step, or else we shall have to 
 clean out the room ail over again." 
 
 "Don't!" he protested. "I might shake out that." 
 
 "What?" 
 
 " The ring." 
 
286 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 She uttered a little pleased sigh. 
 
 " Oh, have you brought that?" 
 
 " Yes, I got it while I was away. You know I believe the 
 reason you sent me trooping to the continent in such haste, 
 was you wanted to ensure your engagement ring being ' made 
 in Germany.' It's had a stormy passage to England, has that 
 ring. I suppose the advantage of buying rings in Germany is 
 that you're certain not to get Paris diamonds in them, they are 
 so intensely patriotic, the Germans. That was your idea, wasn't 
 it, Hannah?" 
 
 " Oh, show it me! Don't talk so much," she said, smiling. 
 
 "No," he said, teasingly. "No more accidents for me! I'll 
 wait to make sure — till your father and mother have taken me 
 to their arms. Rabbinical law is so full of pitfalls — I might 
 touch your finger this or that way, and then we should be 
 married. And then, if your parents said ' no,' after all — " 
 
 "We should have to make the best of a bad job," she finished 
 up laughingly. 
 
 " All very well," he went on in his fun, " but it would be a 
 pretty kettle offish." 
 
 " Heavens! " she cried, "so it will be. They will be charred 
 to ashes." And turning tail, she fled to the kitchen, pursued by 
 her lover. There, dead to the surprise of the servant, David 
 Brandon fed his eyes on the fair incarnation of Jewish domes- 
 ticity, type of the vestal virgins of Israel, Alinistresses at the 
 hearth. It was a very homely kitchen ; the dressers glistening 
 with speckless utensils, and the deep red glow of the coal over 
 which the pieces of fish sputtered and crackled in their bath of 
 oil, filling the room with a sense of deep peace and cosy comfort. 
 David's imagination transferred the kitchen to his future home, 
 and he was almost dazzled by the thought of actually inhabiting 
 such a fairyland alone with Hannah. He had knocked about a 
 great deal, not always innocently, but deep down at his heart 
 was the instinct of well-ordered life. His past seemed joyless 
 folly and chill emptiness. He felt his eyes growing humid as 
 he looked at the frank-souled girl who had given herself to him. 
 He was not humble, but for a moment he found himself wonder- 
 
THE SHADOW OF RELIGION. 287 
 
 ing how he deserved the trust, and there was reverence in the 
 touch with which he caressed her hair. In another moment the 
 frying was complete, and the contents of the pan neatly added 
 to the dish. Then the voice of Reb Shemuel crying for Hannah 
 came down the kitchen stairs, and the lovers returned to the 
 upper w'orld. The Reb had a tiny harvest of crumbs in a brown 
 paper, and wanted Hannah to stow it away safely till the morn- 
 ing, when, to make assurance doubly sure, a final expedition in 
 search of leaven would be undertaken. Hannah received the 
 packet and in return presented her betrothed. 
 
 Reb Shemuel had not of course expected him till the next 
 morning, but he welcomed him as heartily as Hannah could 
 desire. 
 
 " The Most High bless you! " he said in his charming foreign 
 accents. " May you make my Hannah as good a husband as 
 she will make you a wdfe." 
 
 " Trust me, Reb Shemuel," said David, grasping his great 
 hand warmly. 
 
 " Hannah says youVe a sinner in Israel," said the Reb, smiling 
 playfully, though there was a touch of anxiety in the tones. 
 "But I suppose you will keep a kosher house." 
 
 " Make your mind easy, sir," said David heartily. " We 
 must, if it's only to have the pleasure of your dining with us 
 sometimes." 
 
 The old man patted him gently on the shoulder. 
 
 "Ah, you will soon become a good Jew," he said. "My Han- 
 nah will teach you, God bless her." Reb ShemuePs voice was a 
 bit husky. He bent down and kissed Hannah's forehead. "I 
 was a bit link myself before I married my Simcha," he added en- 
 couragingly. 
 
 "No, no, not you," said David, smiling in response to the 
 twinkle in the Reb's eye. " I warrant _y^/^ never skipped a Mitz- 
 vah even as a bachelor." 
 
 "Oh yes, I did," replied the Reb, letting the twinkle develop 
 to a broad smile, " for when I was a bachelor I hadn't fulfilled 
 the precept to marry, don't you see? " 
 
 "Is marriage a Mitzvah, then?" inquired David, amused. 
 
288 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 " Certainly. In our holy religion everything a man ought to 
 do is a Miizvah, even if it is pleasant." 
 
 " Oh, then, even I must have laid up some good deeds/' laughed 
 David, " for I have always enjoyed myself. Really, it isn't such 
 a bad religion after all." 
 
 "Bad religion!" echoed Reb Shemuel genially. "Wait till 
 youVe tried it. You've never had a proper training, that's clear. 
 Are your parents alive ? " 
 
 " No, they both died when I was a child," said David, 
 becoming serious. 
 
 "I thought so!" said Reb Shemuel. "Fortunately my Han- 
 nah's didn't." He smiled at the humor of the phrase and 
 Hannah took his hand and pressed it tenderly. " Ah, it will be 
 all right," said the Reb with a characteristic burst of optimism. 
 "God is good. You have a sound Jewish heart at bottom, 
 David, my son. Hannah, get the Yomtovdik wine. We will 
 drink a glass for Mazzoltov, and I hope your mother will be 
 back in time to join in." 
 
 Hannah ran into the kitchen feeling happier than she had 
 ever been in her life. She wept a little and laughed a little, and 
 loitered a little to recover her composure and allow the two men 
 to get to know each other a little. 
 
 "How is your Hannah's late husband?" inquired the Reb 
 with almost a wink, for everything combined to make him jolly 
 as a sandboy. " I understand he is a friend of yours." 
 
 "We used to be schoolboys together, that is all. Though 
 strangely enough I just spent an hour with him. He is very 
 well," answered David smiling. " He is about to marry 
 again." 
 
 " His first love of course,'' said the Reb. 
 
 "Yes, people always come back to that," said David laughing. 
 
 "That's right, that's right," said the Reb. "I am glad there 
 was no unpleasantness." 
 
 "Unpleasantness. No, how could there be? Leah knew it 
 was only a joke. All's well that ends well, and we may perhaps 
 all get married on the same day and risk another mix-up. Ha! 
 Ha! Ha!" 
 
THE SHADOW OF RELIGION. 289 
 
 '' Is it your wish to marry soon, then?" 
 
 " Yes ; there are too many long engagements among our peo- 
 ple. They often go off." 
 
 ^' Then I suppose you have the means?" 
 
 " Oh yes, I can show you my — " 
 
 The old man waved his hand. 
 
 '' I don't want to see anything. My girl must be supported 
 decently — that is all I ask. What do you do for a living? " 
 
 " I have made a little moiTey at the Cape and now I think of 
 going into business." 
 
 "What business?" 
 
 " I haven't settled." 
 
 " You won't open on Shabbos f " said the Reb anxiously. 
 
 David hesitated a second. In some business, Saturday is the 
 best day. Still he felt that he was not quite radical enough to 
 break the Sabbath deliberately, and since he had contemplated 
 settling down, his religion had become rather more real to him. 
 Besides he must sacrifice something for Hannah's sake. 
 
 " Have no fear, sir," he said cheerfully. 
 
 Reb Shemuel gripped his hand in grateful silence. 
 
 " You mustn't think me quite a lost soul," pursued David after 
 a moment of emotion. '' You don't remember me, but I had lots 
 of blessings and halfpence from you when I was a lad. I dare 
 say I valued the latter more in those days." He smiled to hide 
 his emotion. 
 
 Reb Shemuel was beaming. "Did you, really?" he inquired. 
 "I don't remember you. But then I have blessed so many little 
 children. Of course you'll come to the Seder to-morrow evening 
 and taste some of Hannah's cookery. You're one of the family 
 now, you know." 
 
 " I shall be delighted to have the privilege of having Seder 
 with you," replied David, his heart going out more and more to 
 the fatherly old man. 
 
 "What Shool will you be going to for Passover? I can get 
 you a seat in mine if you haven't arranged." 
 
 " Thank you, but I promised Mr. Birnbaum to come to the 
 little synagogue of which he is President. It seems they have a 
 u 
 
290 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 scarcity of Cohoiini, and they want me to bless the congregation, 
 I suppose/' 
 
 "What!" cried Reb Shemuel excitedly. "Are you a Cohen?'''* 
 
 " Of course I am. Why, they got me to bless them in the 
 Transvaal last Yom Kippiir. So you see Fm anything but a 
 sinner in Israel." He laughed — but his laugh ended abruptly. 
 Reb ShemuePs face had grown wdiite. His hands were trem- 
 bling. 
 
 "What is the matter? You are i41," cried David. 
 
 The old man shook his head. Then he struck his brow with 
 his fist. ''Ach, Gottr' he cried. "Why did I not think of 
 finding out before ? But thank God I know it in time." 
 
 " Finding out what ? " said David, fearing the old man's reason 
 was giving way. 
 
 " My daughter cannot marry you," said Reb Shemuel in hushed, 
 quavering tones. 
 
 " Eh ? What ? " said David blankly. 
 
 " It is impossible." 
 
 "What are you talking about, Reb Shemuel?" 
 
 "You are a Co/ieii. Hannah cannot marry a Coheji^ 
 
 "Not marry a Cohetif Why, I thought they were Israel's 
 aristocracy." 
 
 "That is why. A Cohen cannot marry a divorced woman." 
 
 The fit of trembling passed from the old Reb to the young 
 man. His heart pulsed as with the stroke of a mighty piston. 
 Without compreliending, Hannah's prior misadventure gave him 
 a horrible foreboding of critical complications. 
 
 " Do you mean to say I can't marry Hannah ? " he asked almost 
 in a whisper. 
 
 " Such is the law. A woman who has had Gett may not marry 
 a Cohe/iy 
 
 "But you surely wouldn't call Hannah a divorced woman? " 
 he cried hoarsely. 
 
 "How shall I not? I gave her the divorce myself." 
 
 " Great God! " exclaimed David. " Then Sam has ruined our 
 lives." He stood a moment in dazed horror, striving to grasp 
 the terrible tangle. Then he burst forth. "This is some of 
 
THE SHADOW OF RELIGION. 291 
 
 your cursed Rabbinical laws, it is not Judaism, it is not true 
 Judaism. God never made any such law." 
 
 " Hush!" said Reb Shemuel sternly. " It is the holy Torah. 
 It is not even the Rabbis, of whom you speak like an Epicurean. 
 It is in Leviticus, chapter 21, verse 7 : ^ Neither shall they take a 
 woman put away from her husband ; for he is holy unto his God. 
 Thou shalt sanctify him, therefore ; for he offer eth the bread of 
 thy God ; he shall be holy unto thee, for I the Lord which sanctify 
 you a?n holy.'' " 
 
 For an instant David was overwhelmed by the quotation, 
 for the Bible was still a sacred book to him. Then he cried 
 indignantly : 
 
 " But God never meant it to apply to a case like this! " 
 
 "We must obey God's law," said Reb Shemuel. 
 
 " Then it is the deviPs law ! " shouted David, losing all control 
 of himself. 
 
 The Reb's face grew dark as night. There was a moment of 
 dread silence. 
 
 " Here you are, father," said Hannah, returning with the wine 
 and some glasses which she had carefully dusted. Then she 
 paused and gave a little cry, nearly losing her hold of the 
 tray. 
 
 "What's the matter? What has happened?" she asked 
 anxiously. 
 
 "Take away the wine — we shall drink nobody's health to- 
 night," cried David brutally. 
 
 " My God! " said Hannah, all the hue of happiness dying out 
 of her cheeks. She threw down the tray on the table and ran 
 to her father's arms. 
 
 "What is it! Oh, what is it, father?" she cried. "You 
 haven't had a quarrel ? " 
 
 The old man was silent. The girl looked appealingly from 
 one to the other. 
 
 " No, it's worse than that," said David in cold, harsh tones. 
 " You remember your marriage in fun to Sam ? " 
 
 "Yes. Merciful heavens! I guess it! There was something 
 not valid in the Gett after all." 
 
292 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 Her anguish at the thought of losing him was so apparent 
 that he softened a httle. 
 
 " No, not that/'' he said more gently. '' But this blessed 
 religion of ours reckons you a divorced woman, and so you 
 canH marry me because Fm a Cohen.'''' 
 
 " Can't marry you because you're a Cohen ! '' repeated Hannah, 
 dazed in her turn. 
 
 " We must obey the Torah," said Reb Shemuel again, in low, 
 solemn tones. "It is your friend Levine who has erred, not the 
 Torah." 
 
 " The Torah cannot visit a mere bit of fun so cruelly," pro- 
 tested David. "And on the innocent, too.'' 
 
 "Sacred things should not be jested with," said the old man 
 in stern tones that yet quavered with sympathy and pity. "On 
 his head is the sin ; on his head is the responsibility," 
 
 " Father," cried Hannah in piercing tones, " can nothing be 
 done?" 
 
 The old man shook his head sadly. The poor, pretty face 
 was pallid with a pain too deep for tears. The shock was too 
 sudden, too terrible. She sank helplessly into a chair. 
 
 " Something must be done, something shall be done," thun- 
 dered David. "I will appeal to the Chief Rabbi." 
 
 " And what can he do? Can he go behind the Torah?" said 
 Reb Shemuel pitifully. 
 
 " 1 won't ask him to. But if he has a grain of common sense 
 he will see that our case is an exception, and cannot come under 
 the Law." 
 
 " The Law knows no exceptions." said Reb Shemuel gently, 
 quoting in Hebrew, "'The Law of God is perfect, enlightening 
 the eyes.' Be patient, my dear children, in your affliction. 
 It is the will of God. The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh 
 away — bless ye the name of the Lord." 
 
 '- Not I ! " said David harshly. '- But look to Hannah. She 
 has fainted." 
 
 " No, I am all right," said Hannah wearily, opening the eyes 
 she had closed. " Do not make so certain, father. Look at your 
 books again. Perhaps they do make an exception in such a case." 
 
THE SHADOW OF RELIGION. 293 
 
 The Reb shook his head hopelessly. 
 
 "Do not expect that," he said. " Believe me, my Hannah, if 
 there were a gleam of hope I would not hide it from you. Be a 
 good girl, dear, and bear your trouble like a true Jewish maiden. 
 Have faith in God, my child. He doeth all things for the best. 
 Come now — rouse yourself. Tell David you will always be a 
 friend, and that your father will love him as though he were 
 indeed his son." He moved towards her and touched her ten- 
 derly. He felt a violent spasm traversing her bosom. 
 
 "I can't, father," she cried in a choking voice. " I can't. 
 Don't ask me." 
 
 David leaned against the manuscript-littered table in stony 
 silence. The stern granite faces of the old continental Rabbis 
 seemed to frown down on him from the walls and he returned 
 the frown with interest. His heart was full of bitterness, con- 
 tempt, revolt. What a pack of knavish bigots they must all 
 have been! Reb Shemuel bent down and took his daughter's 
 head in his trembling palms. The eyes were closed again, the 
 chest heaved painfully with silent sobs. 
 
 " Do you love him so much, Hannah ? " whispered the old man. 
 
 Her sobs answered, growing loud at last. 
 
 "But you love your religion more, my child?" he murmured 
 anxiously. "That will bring you peace." 
 
 Her sobs gave him no assurance. Presently the contagion 
 of sobbing took him too. 
 
 "O God! God!" he moaned. "What sin have I committed 
 that thou shouldst punish my child thus? " 
 
 " Dotvt blame God!" burst forth David at last. "It's your 
 own foolish bigotry. Is it not enough your daughter doesn't 
 ask to marry a Christian? Be thankful, old man, for that and 
 put away all this antiquated superstition. We're living in the 
 nineteenth century." 
 
 "And what if we are! " said Reb Shemuel, blazing up in turn. 
 "The Torah is eternal. Thank God for your youth, and your 
 health and strength, and do not blaspheme Him because you 
 cannot have all the desire of your heart or the inclination of your 
 eyes." 
 
294 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 " The desire of my heart," retorted David. '* Do you imagine 
 I am only thinking of my own suffering ? Look at your daughter 
 — think of what you are doing to her and beware before it is too 
 late/' 
 
 "Is it in my hand to do or to forbear? " asked the old man. 
 " It is the Torah. Am I responsible for that ? " 
 
 "Yes/' said David, out of mere revolt. Then, seeking to 
 justify himself, his face lit up with sudden inspiration. "Who 
 need ever know? The Maggid is dead. Old Hyams has gone 
 to America. So Hannah has told me. It's a thousand to one 
 Leah's people never heard of the Law of Leviticus. If they had, 
 it's another thousand to one against their putting two and two 
 together. It requires a Talmudist like you to even dream of 
 reckoning Hannah as an ordinary divorced woman. If they did, 
 it's a third thousand to one against their telling anybody. There 
 is no need for you to perform the ceremony yourself. Let her 
 be married by some other minister — by the Chief Rabbi himself, 
 and to make assurance doubly sure I'll not mention that I'm a 
 Cohen!''' The words poured forth like a torrent, overwhelming 
 the Reb for a moment. Hannah leaped up with a hysterical cry 
 of joy. 
 
 " Yes, yes, father. It will be all right, after all. Nobody 
 knows. Oh, thank God! thank God!" 
 
 There was a moment of tense silence. Then the old man's 
 voice rose slowly and painfully. 
 
 "Thank God:" he repeated. "Do you dare mention the 
 Name even when you propose to profane it? Do you ask me, 
 your father, Reb Shemuel, to consent to such a profanation of 
 the Name?" 
 
 "And why not?" said David angrily. "Whom else has a 
 daughter the right to ask mercy from, if not her father?" 
 
 " God have mercy on me ! " groaned the old Reb, covering his 
 face with his hands. 
 
 " Come, come!" said David impatiently. " Be sensible. It's 
 nothing unworthy of you at all. Hannah was never really mar- 
 ried, so cannot be really divorced. We only ask you to obey the 
 spirit of the Torah instead of the letter." 
 
THE SHADOW OF RELIGION. 295 
 
 The old man shook his head, unwavering. His cheeks were 
 white and wet, but his expression was stern and solemn. 
 
 " Just think ! '' went on David passionately. " What am I 
 better than another Jew — than yourself for instance — that I 
 shouldn't marry a divorced woman?" 
 
 " It is the Law. You are a Cohen — a priest." 
 
 "A priest, Ha! Ha! Ha! " laughed David bitterly. "A priest 
 — in the nineteenth century! When the Temple has been de- 
 stroyed these two thousand years." 
 
 "It will be rebuilt, please God," said Reb Shemuel. "We 
 must be ready for it." 
 
 "Oh yes, ril be ready — Ha! Ha! Ha! A priest! Holy unto 
 the Lord — I a priest! Ha! Ha! Ha! Do you know what my 
 holiness consists in? In eating ti'ipha meat, and going to Shool 
 a few times a year ! And I, /am too holy to va^xry your daughter. 
 Oh, it is rich ! " He ended in uncontrollable mirth, slapping his 
 knee in ghastly enjoyment. 
 
 His laughter rang terrible. Reb Shemuel trembled from head 
 to foot. Hannah's cheek was drawn and white. She seemed 
 overwrought beyond endurance. There followed a silence only 
 less terrible than David's laughter. 
 
 " A Cohen,'''' burst forth David again. " A holy Cohen up to 
 date. Do you know what the boys say about us priests when 
 weVe blessing you common people ? They say that if you look 
 on us once during that sacred function, you'll get blind, and if 
 you look on us a second time you'll die. A nice reverent joke 
 that, eh! Ha! Ha! Ha! You're blind already, Reb Shemuel. 
 Beware you don't look at me again or I'll commence to bless 
 you. Ha! Ha! Ha!" 
 
 Again the terrible silence. 
 
 " Ah well," David resumed, his bitterness welling forth in 
 irony. " And so the first sacrifice the priest is called upon to 
 make is that of your daughter. But I won't, Reb Shemuel, 
 mark my words ; I won't, not till she offers her own throat to the 
 knife. If she and I are parted, on you and you alone the guilt 
 must rest. Von will have to perform the sacrifice." 
 
 " What God wishes me to do I will do," said the old man in a 
 
296 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 broken voice. '"What is it to that wliich our ancestors suffered 
 for the glory of the Name ? " 
 
 ''Yes, but it seems you suffer by proxy/' retorted David, 
 savagely. 
 
 " My God ! Do you think I would not die to make Hannah 
 happy? '' faltered the old man. " But God has laid the burden 
 on her — and I can only help her to bear it. And now, sir, I 
 must beg you to go. You do but distress my child." 
 
 "What say you, Hannah? Do you wish me to go?" 
 
 "Yes — What is the use — now?" breathed Hannah through 
 white quivering lips. 
 
 "My child!'' said the old man pitifully, while he strained her 
 to his breast. 
 
 " All right! " said David in strange harsh tones, scarcely recog- 
 nizable as his. " I see you are your father's daughter." 
 
 He took his hat and turned his back upon the tragic embrace. 
 
 "David! " She called his name in an agonized hoarse voice. 
 She held her arms towards him. He did not turn round. 
 
 "David!" Her voice rose to a shriek. " You will not leave 
 
 me 
 
 ? 11 
 
 He faced her exultant. 
 
 "Ah, you will come with me. You will be my wife." 
 "No — no — not now, not now. I cannot answer you now. 
 Let me think — good-bye, dearest, good-bye." She burst out 
 weeping. David took her in his arms and kissed her passion- 
 ately. Then he went out hurriedly. 
 
 Hannah wept on — her father holding her hand in piteous 
 silence. 
 
 " Oh, it is cruel, your religion," she sobbed. " Cruel, cruel! " 
 " Hannah! Shemuel! Where are you?" suddenly came the ex- 
 cited voice of Simcha from the passage. " Come and look at 
 the lovely fowls I've bought — and such Metsiahs. They're 
 worth double. Oh. wliat a beautiful Yointov we shall have!" 
 
SEDER NIGHT. 297 
 
 CHAPTER XXV. 
 
 SEDER NIGHT. 
 
 " Prosaic miles of street stretch all around, 
 Astir with restless, hurried life, and spanned 
 By arches that with thund'rous trains resound, 
 And throbbing wires that galvanize the land; 
 Gin palaces in tawdry splendor stand ; 
 The newsboys shriek of mangled bodies found; 
 The last burlesque is playing in the Strand — 
 In modern prose, all poetry seems drowned. 
 Yet in ten thousand homes this April night 
 An ancient people celebrates its birth 
 To Freedom, with a reverential mirth, 
 With customs quaint and many a hoary rite, 
 Waiting until, its tarnished glories bright. 
 Its God shall be the God of all the Earth," 
 
 To an imaginative child like Esther, Seder night was a 
 charmed time. The strange symbolic dishes — the bitter herbs 
 and the sweet mixture of apples, almonds, spices and wine, the 
 roasted bone and the lamb, the salt water and the four cups of 
 raisin wine, the great round unleavened cakes, with their mottled 
 surfaces, some specially thick and sacred, the special Hebrew 
 melodies and verses with their jingle of rh}'mes and assonances, 
 the quaint ceremonial with its striking moments, as when the 
 finger was dipped in the wine and the drops sprinkled over the 
 shoulder in repudiation of the ten plagues of Egypt cabalistically 
 magnified to two hundred and fifty ; all this penetrated deep into 
 her consciousness and made the recurrence of every Passover 
 coincide with a rush of pleasant anticipations and a sense of the 
 special privilege of being born a happy Jewish child. Vaguely, 
 indeed, did she co-ordinate the celebration with the history en- 
 shrined in it or with the prospective history of her race. It was 
 like a tale out of the fairy-books, this miraculous deliverance of 
 her forefathers in the dim haze of antiquity ; true enough but 
 
298 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 not more definitely realized on that account. And yet not easily 
 dissoluble links were being forged with her race, which has antici- 
 pated Positivism, in vitalizing history by making it religion. 
 
 The Matzoth that Esther ate were not dainty — they were 
 coarse, of the quality called " seconds," for even the unleavened 
 bread of charity is not necessarily delicate eating — but few 
 things melted sweeter on the palate than a segment of a Matso 
 dipped in cheap raisin wine ; the unconventionality of the food 
 made life less common, more picturesque. Simple Ghetto chil- 
 dren into whose existence the ceaseless round of fast and feast, 
 of prohibited and enjoyed pleasures, of varying species of food, 
 brought change and relief! Imprisoned in the area of a few nar- 
 row streets, unlovely and sombre, muddy and ill-smelling, im- 
 mured in dreary houses and surrounded with mean and depressing 
 sights and sounds, the spirit of childhood took radiance and 
 color from its own inner light and the alchemy of youth could 
 still transmute its lead to gold. No little princess in the courts 
 of fairyland could feel a fresher interest and pleasure in life than 
 Esther sitting at the Seder table, where her father — no longer a 
 slave in Egypt — leaned royally upon two chairs supplied with 
 pillows as the Dili prescribes. Not even the monarch's prime 
 minister could have had a meaner opinion of Pharaoh than 
 Moses Ansell in this symbolically sybaritic attitude. A live dog 
 is better than a dead lion, as a great teacher in Israel had said. 
 How much better then a live lion than a dead dog? Pharaoh, 
 for all his purple and fine linen and his treasure cities, was at the 
 bottom of the Red Sea, smitten with two hundred and fifty 
 plagues, and even if, as tradition asserted, he had been made to 
 live on and on to be King of Nineveh, and to give ear to the 
 warnings of Jonah, prophet and whale-explorer, even so he was 
 but dust and ashes for other sinners to cover themselves withal ; 
 but he, Moses Ansell, was the honored master of his household, 
 enjoying a foretaste of the lollings of the righteous in Paradise ; 
 nay, more, dispensing hospitality to the poor and the hungry. 
 Little fleas have lesser fleas, and Moses Ansell had never fallen 
 so low but that, on this night of nights when the slave sits with 
 the master on equal terms, he could manage to entertain a Pass- 
 
SEDER NIGHT. 299 
 
 over guest, usually some newly-arrived Greener, or some nonde- 
 script waif and stray returned to Judaism for tlie occasion and 
 accepting a seat at the board in that spirit of camaraderie which 
 is one of the most delightful features of the Jewish pauper. Seder 
 was a ceremonial to be taken in none too solemn and sober a 
 spirit, and there was an abundance of unreproved giggling 
 throughout from the little ones, especially in those happy days 
 when mother was alive and tried to steal the AJikuinan or Matso 
 specially laid aside for the final morsel, only to be surrendered 
 to father when he promised to grant her whatever she wished. 
 Alas! it is to be feared Mrs. Ansell's wislies did not soar high. 
 There was more giggling when the youngest talking son — it 
 was poor Benjamin in Esther's earliest recollections — opened 
 the ball by inquiring in a peculiarly pitched incantation and with 
 an air of blank ignorance why this night differed from all other 
 nights — in view of the various astonishing peculiarities of food 
 and behavior (enumerated in detail) visible to his vision. To 
 which Moses and the Bnbe and the rest of the company (includ- 
 ing the questioner) invariably replied in corresponding sing- 
 song : " Slaves have we been in Egypt," proceeding to recount 
 at great length, stopping for refreshment in the middle, the 
 never-cloying tale of the great deliverance, with irrelevant digres- 
 sions concerning Haman and Daniel and the wise men of Bona 
 Berak, the whole of this most ancient of the world's extant domes- 
 tic rituals terminating with an allegorical ballad like the " house 
 that Jack built," concerning a kid that was eaten by a cat, which 
 was bitten by a dog, which was beaten by a stick, which was 
 burned by a fire, which w^as quenched by some water, which was 
 drunk by an ox, which was slaughtered by a slaughterer, who 
 was slain by the Angel of Death, who was slain by the Holy One, 
 blessed be He. 
 
 In wealthy houses this Hagadah was read from manuscripts 
 with rich illuminations — the one development of pictorial art 
 among the Jews — but the Ansells had wretchedly-printed 
 little books containing quaint but unintentionally comic wood- 
 cuts, pre-Raphaelite in perspective and ludicrous in draughts- 
 manship, depicting the Miracles of the Redemption, Moses 
 
300 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 burying the Egyptian, and sundry other passages of the text. 
 In one a king was praying in the Temple to an exploding 
 bomb intended to represent the Shechinah or divine glory. 
 In another, Sarah attired in a matronly cap and a fashionable 
 jacket and skirt, was standing behind the door of the tent, a 
 solid detached villa on the brink of a lake, whereon ships 
 and gondolas floated, what time Abraham welcomed the three 
 celestial messengers, unobtrusively disguised with heavy pinions. 
 What delight as the quaffing of each of the four cups of wine 
 loomed in sight, what disappointment and mutual bantering 
 when the cup had merely to be raised in the hand, what chaflf 
 of the greedy Solomon who was careful not to throw awav a 
 drop during the digital manoeuvres when the wine must be 
 jerked from the cup at the mention of each plague. And 
 what a solemn moment was that when the tallest goblet was 
 filled to the brim for the delectation of the prophet Elijah and the 
 door thrown open for his entry. Could one almost hear the 
 rustling of the prophet's spirit through the room? And what 
 though the level of the wine subsided not a barley-corn? 
 Elijah, though there was no difficulty in his being in all parts 
 of the world simultaneously, could hardly compass the greater 
 miracle of emptying so many million goblets. Historians have 
 traced this custom of opening the door to the necessity of 
 asking the world to look in and see for itself that no blood 
 of Christian child figured in the ceremonial — and for once 
 science has illumined naive superstition witli a tragic glow 
 more poetic still. For the London Ghetto persecution had 
 dwindled to an occasional bellowing through the keyhole, as 
 the local rowdies heard the unaccustomed melodies trolled 
 forth from jocund lungs and then the singers would stop for 
 a moment, startled, and some one would say : " Oh, it's only 
 a Christian rough,'' and take up the thread of song. 
 
 And then, when the Afikiimcui had been eaten and the 
 last cup of wine drunk, and it was time to go to bed, what 
 a sweet sense of sanctity and security still reigned. No need 
 to say your prayers to-night, beseeching the guardian of Israel, 
 who neither slumbereth nor sleepeth, to watch over you and 
 
SEDER NIGHT. 301 
 
 chase away the evil spirits ; the angels are with you — Ga- 
 briel on your right and Raphael on your left, and Michael be- 
 hind you. All about the Ghetto the light of the Passover 
 rested, transfiguring the dreary rooms and illumining the gray 
 lives. 
 
 Dutch Debby sat beside Mrs. Simons at the table of that 
 good souPs married daughter; the same who had suckled little 
 Sarah. Esther's frequent eulogiums had secured the poor 
 lonely narrow-chested seamstress this enormous concession 
 and privilege. Bobby squatted on the mat in the passage 
 ready to challenge Elijah. At this table there were two pieces 
 of fried fish sent to Mrs. Simons by Esther Ansell. They repre- 
 sented the greatest revenge of Esther's life, and she felt remorse- 
 ful towards Malka, remembering to whose gold she owed this 
 proud moment. She made up her mind to write her a letter of 
 apology in her best hand. 
 
 At the Belcovitches' the ceremonial was long, for the master 
 of it insisted on translating the Hebrew into jargon, phrase by 
 phrase ; but no one found it tedious, especially after supper. 
 Pesach was there, hand in hand with Fanny, their wedding 
 very near now ; and Becky lolled royally in all her glory, 
 aggressive of ringlet, insolently unattached, a conscious beacon 
 of bedazzlement to the pauper Pollack we last met at Reb 
 Shemuel's Sabbath table, and there, too, was Chayah, she 
 of the ill-matched legs. Be sure that Malka had returned the 
 clothes-brush, and was throned in complacent majesty at Milly's 
 table ; and that Sugarman the S/iadcha?i forgave his monocular 
 consort her lack of a fourth uncle ; while Joseph Strelitski, 
 dreamer of dreams, rich with commissions from " Passover " 
 cigars, brooded on the Great Exodus. Nor could the Shalotten 
 Shcumnos be other than beaming, ordering the complex cere- 
 monial with none to contradict ; nor Karlkammer be otherwise 
 than in the seven hundred and seventy-seventh heaven, which, 
 calculated by Gematriyah, can easily be reduced to the seventh. 
 
 Shosshi Shmendrik did not fail to explain the deliverance to 
 the ex-widow Finkelstein, nor Guedalyah, the greengrocer, omit 
 to hold his annual revel at the head of half a hundred merry 
 
302 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 "pauper-aliens.'" Christian roughs bawled derisively in the 
 street, especially when doors were opened for Elijah ; but hard 
 words break no bones, and the Ghetto w^as uplifted above insult. 
 
 Melchitsedek Pinchas was the Passover guest at Reb Shem- 
 uePs table, for the reek of his Sabbath cigar had not penetrated 
 to the old man's nostrils. It was a great night for Pinchas; 
 wrought up to fervid nationalistic aspirations by the memory of 
 the Egyptian deliverance, which he yet regarded as mythical in 
 its details. It was a terrible night for Hannah, sitting opposite 
 to him under the fire of his poetic regard. She was pale and 
 rigid, moving and speaking mechanically. Her father glanced 
 towards her every now and again, compassionately, but with 
 trust that the worst was over. Her mother realized the crisis 
 much less keenly than he, not having been in the heart of the 
 storm. She had never even seen her intended son-in-law except 
 through the lens of a camera. She was sorry — that was all. 
 Now that Hannah had broken the ice, and encouraged one 
 young man, there was hope for the others. 
 
 Hannah's state of mind was divined by neither parent. Love 
 itself is blind in those tragic silences which divide souls. 
 
 All night, after that agonizing scene, she did not sleep ; the 
 feverish activity of her mind rendered that impossible, and un- 
 erring instinct told her that David was awake also — that they 
 two, amid the silence of a sleeping city, wrestled in the darkness 
 with the same terrible problem, and were never so much at one 
 as in this their separation. A letter came for her in the morn- 
 ing. It was unstamped, and had evidently been dropped into 
 the letter-box by David's hand. It appointed an interview at 
 fen o'clock at a corner of the Ruins ; of course, he could not 
 come to the house. Hannah was out with a little basket to 
 make some purchases. There was a cheery hum of life about 
 the Ghetto ; a pleasant festival bustle ; the air resounded with 
 the raucous clucking of innumerable fowls on their way to the 
 feather-littered, blood-stained shambles, where professional cut- 
 throats wielded sacred knives ; boys armed with little braziers 
 of glowing coal ran about the Ruins, offering halfpenny pyres 
 for the immolation of the last crumbs of leaven. Nobody paid 
 
SEDER NIGHT. 303 
 
 the slightest attention to the two tragic figures whose lives 
 turned on the brief moments of conversation snatched in the 
 thick of the hurrying crowd. 
 
 David^s clouded face lightened a little as he saw Hannah 
 advancing towards him. 
 
 " I knew you would come," he said, taking her hand for a 
 moment. His palm burned, hers was cold and limp. The 
 stress of a great tempest of emotion had driven the blood from 
 her face and limbs, but inwardly she was on fire. As they 
 looked each read revolt in the other's eyes. 
 
 " Let us walk on," he said. 
 
 They moved slowly forwards. The ground was slippery and 
 muddy under foot. The sky was gray. But the gayety of the 
 crowds neutralized the dull squalor of the scene. 
 
 " Well? " he said, in a low tone. 
 
 " I thought you had something to propose," she murmured. 
 
 " Let me carry your basket." 
 
 "No, no; go on. What have you determined?" 
 
 "Not to give you up, Hannah, while I live." 
 
 "Ah!" she said quietly. "I have thought it all over, too, 
 and I shall not leave you. But our marriage by Jewish law is 
 impossible ; we could not marry at any synagogue without my 
 father's knowledge ; and he would at once inform the authorities 
 of the bar to our union." 
 
 " I know, dear. But let us go to America, where no one will 
 know. There we shall find plenty of Rabbis to marry us. 
 There is nothing to tie me to this country. I can start my 
 business in America just as well as here. Your parents, too, 
 will think more kindly of you when you are across the seas. 
 Forgiveness is easier at a distance. What do you say, dear?" 
 
 She shook her head. 
 
 "Why should we be married in a synagogue?" she asked. 
 
 "Why?" repeated he, puzzled. 
 
 "Yes, why?" 
 
 " Because we are Jews." 
 
 "You would use Jewish forms to outwit Jewish laws?" she 
 asked quietly. 
 
304 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 "No, no. Why should you put it that way? I don't doubt 
 the Bible is all right in making the laws it does. After the first 
 heat of my anger was over, I saw the whole thing in its proper 
 bearings. Those laws about priests were only intended for the 
 days when we had a Temple, and in any case they cannot apply 
 to a merely farcical divorce like yours. It is these old fools, — 
 I beg your pardon, — it is these fanatical Rabbis who insist on 
 giving them a rigidity God never meant them to have, just as 
 they still make a fuss about kosher meat. In America they are 
 less strict ; besides, they will not know I am a Cohen y 
 
 "No, David," said Hannah firmly. "There must be no more 
 deceit. What need have we to seek the sanction of any Rabbi? 
 If Jewish law cannot marry us without our hiding something, 
 then I will have nothing to do with Jewish law. You know my 
 opinions ; I haven't gone so deeply into religious questions as 
 you have — " 
 
 " Don't be sarcastic," he interrupted. 
 
 " I have always been sick to death of this eternal ceremony, 
 this endless coil of laws winding round us and cramping our 
 lives at every turn ; and now it has become too oppressive to be 
 borne any longer. Why should we let it ruin our lives? And 
 why, if we determine to break from it, shall we pretend to keep 
 to it? What do you care for Judaism? You eat triphas, you 
 smoke on Shabbos when you want to — " 
 
 "Yes, I know, perhaps I'm wrong. But everybody does it 
 now-a-days. When I was a boy nobody dared be seen riding in 
 a 'bus on Shabbos — now you meet lots. But all that is only old- 
 fashioned Judaism. There must be a God, else we shouldn't be 
 here, and it's impossible to believe that Jesus was He. A man 
 must have some religion, and there isn't anything better. But 
 that's neither here nor there. If you don't care for my plan," he 
 concluded anxiously, " what's yours?" 
 
 " Let us be married honestly by a Registrar." 
 
 " Any way you like, dear," he said readily, " so long as we are 
 married — and quickly." 
 
 "As quickly as you like." 
 
 He seized her disengaged hand and pressed it passionately. 
 
SEDER NIGHT. 305 
 
 " That's my own darling Hannah. Oh, if you could realize what 
 I felt last night when you seemed to be drifting away from me.-' 
 
 There was an interval of silence, each thinking excitedly. 
 Then David said : 
 
 " But have you the courage to do this and remain in London ? " 
 
 " I have courage for anything. But, as you say, it might be 
 better to travel. It will be less of a break if we break away alto- 
 gether — change everything at once. It sounds contradictory, 
 but you understand what I mean.'" 
 
 " Perfectly. It is difficult to live a new life with all the old 
 things round you. Besides, why should we give our friends the 
 chance to cold-shoulder us? They will find all sorts of mali- 
 cious reasons why we were not married'in a S/iooI, and if they hit 
 on the true one they may even regard our marriage as illegal. 
 Let us go to America, as I proposed." 
 
 " Very well. Do we go direct from London?" 
 
 "No, from Liverpool." 
 
 "Then we can be married at Liverpool before sailing?" 
 
 " A good idea. But when do we start ? " 
 
 "At once. To-night. The sooner the better." 
 
 He looked at her quickly. " Do you mean it? " he said. His 
 heart beat violently as if it would burst. Waves of dazzling color 
 swam before his eyes. 
 
 " I mean it," she said gravely and quietly. " Do you think I 
 could face my father and mother, knowing I was about to wound 
 them to the heart? Each day of delay would be torture to me. 
 Oh, why is religion such a curse ? " She paused, overwhelmed 
 for a moment by the emotion she had been suppressing. She re- 
 sumed in the same quiet manner. " Yes, we must break away at 
 once. We have kept our last Passover. We shall have to eat leav- 
 ened food — it will be a decisive break. Take me to Liverpool, 
 David, this very day. You are my chosen husband ; I trust in you." 
 
 She looked at him frankly wdth her dark eyes that stood out 
 in lustrous relief against the pale skin. He gazed into those 
 eyes, and a flash as from the inner heaven of purity pierced his 
 soul. 
 
 " Thank you, dearest," he said in a voice with tears in it. 
 
 X 
 
306 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 They walked on silently. Speech was as superfluous as it was 
 inadequate. Wlien they spoke again their voices were calm. 
 The peace that comes of resolute decision was theirs at last, 
 and each was full of the joy of daring greatly for the sake of 
 their mutual love. Petty as their departure from convention 
 might seem to the stranger, to them it loomed as a violent 
 breach with all the traditions of the Ghetto and their past lives ; 
 they were venturing forth into untrodden paths, holding each 
 other\s hand. 
 
 Jostling the loquacious crowd, in the unsavory by-ways of 
 the Ghetto, in the gray chillness of a cloudy morning, Hannah 
 seemed to herself to walk in enchanted gardens, breathing the 
 scent of love's own roses mingled with the keen salt air that 
 blew in from the sea of liberty. A fresh, new blessed life was 
 opening before her. The clogging vapors of the past were roll- 
 ing away at last. The unreasoning instinctive rebellion, bred 
 of ennui and brooding dissatisfaction with the conditions of her 
 existence and the people about her, had by a curious series of 
 accidents been hastened to its acutest development ; thought 
 had at last fermented into active resolution, and the anticipation 
 of action flooded her soul with peace and joy, in which all 
 recollection of outside humanity was submerged. 
 
 '^ What time can you be ready by?" he said before they 
 parted. 
 
 " Any time,'' she answered. " I can take nothing with me. 
 I dare not pack anything. I suppose I can get necessaries in 
 Liverpool. I have merely my hat and cloak to put on." 
 
 " But that will be enough," he said ardently. " I want but 
 you." 
 
 " I know it, dear," she answered gently. '^ If you were as 
 other Jewish young men I could not give up all else for you." 
 
 " You shall never regret it, Hannah," he said, moved to his 
 depths, as the full extent of her sacrifice for love dawned upon 
 him. He was a vagabond on the face of the earth, but she was 
 tearing herself away from deep roots in the soil of home, as well 
 as from the conventions of her circle and her sex. Once again 
 he trembled with a sense of unworthiness, a sudden anxious 
 
SEDER NIGHT. ' 307 
 
 doubt if he were noble enough to repay her trust. Mastering 
 his emotion, he went on : "I reckon my packing and arrange- 
 ments for leaving the country will take me all day at least. I 
 must see my bankers if nobody else. I shan't take leave of 
 anybody, that would arouse suspicion. I will be at the corner 
 of your street with a cab at nine, and we'll catch the ten o'clock 
 express from Euston. If we missed that, we should have to 
 wait till midnight. It will be dark ; no one is likely to notice 
 me. I will get a dressing-case for you and anything else I can 
 think of and add it to my luggage." 
 
 " Very well," she said simply. 
 
 They did not kiss ; she gave him her hand, and, with a sudden 
 inspiration, he slipped the ring he had brought the day before 
 on her finger. The tears came into her eyes as she saw what 
 he had done. They looked at each other through a mist, feel- 
 ing bound beyond human intervention. 
 
 "Good-bye," she faltered. 
 
 "Good-bye," he said. "At nine." 
 
 " At nine," she breathed. And hurried off without looking 
 behind. 
 
 It was a hard day, the minutes crawling reluctantly into the 
 hours, the hours dragging themselves wearily on towards the 
 night. It was typical April weather — squalls and sunshine in 
 capricious succession. Wlien it drew towards dusk she put on 
 her best clothes for the Festival, stuffing a few precious memen- 
 toes into her pockets and wearing her father's portrait next to 
 her lover's at her breast. She hung a travelling cloak and a hat 
 on a peg near the hall-door ready to hand as she left the house. 
 Of little use was she in the kitchen that day, but her mother was 
 tender to her as knowing her sorrow. Time after time Hannah 
 ascended to her bedroom to take a last look at the things she 
 had grown so tired of — the little iron bed, the wardrobe, the 
 framed lithographs, the jug and basin with their floral designs. 
 All things seemed strangely dear now she was seeing them for 
 the last time. Hannah turned over everything — even the little 
 curling iron, and the cardboard box full of tags and rags of rib- 
 bon and chiffon and lace and crushed artificial flowers, and the 
 
308 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 fans with broken sticks and the stays with broken ribs, and the 
 petticoats with dingy frills and the twelve-button ball gloves 
 with dirty fingers, and the soiled pink wraps. Some of her 
 books, especially her school-prizes, she would have liked to take 
 with her — but that could not be. She went over the rest of the 
 house, too, from top to bottom. It weakened her but she could 
 not conquer the impulse of farewell. Finally she wrote a letter 
 to her parents and hid it under her looking-glass, knowing they 
 would search her room for traces of her. She looked curiously 
 at herself as she did so ; the color had not returned to her 
 cheeks. She knew she was pretty and always strove to look 
 nice for the mere pleasure of the thing. All her instincts were 
 aesthetic. Now she had the air of a saint wrought up to spiritual 
 exaltation. She was almost frightened by the vision. She had 
 seen her face frowning, weeping, overcast with gloom, never 
 with an expression so fateful. It seemed as if her resolution 
 was writ large upon every feature for all to read. 
 
 In the evening she accompanied her father to Shool. She did 
 not often go in the evening, and the thought of going only sud- 
 denly occurred to her. Heaven alone knew if she would ever 
 enter a synagogue again — the visit would be part of her system- 
 atic farewell. Reb Shemuel took it as a symptom of resignation 
 to the will of God, and he laid his hand lightly on her head in 
 silent blessing, his eyes uplifted gratefully to Heaven. Too late 
 Hannah felt the misconception and was remorseful. For the 
 festival occasion Reb Shemuel elected to worship at the Great 
 Synagogue ; Hannah, seated among the sparse occupants of the 
 Ladies' Gallery and mechanically fingering a Machsor, looked 
 down for the last time on the crowded auditorium where the 
 men sat in high hats and holiday garments. Tall wax-candles 
 twinkled everywhere, in great gilt chandeliers depending from 
 the ceiling, in sconces stuck about the window ledges, in cande- 
 labra branching from the walls. There was an air of holy joy 
 about the solemn old structure with its massive pillars, its small 
 side-windows, high ornate roof, and skylights, and its gilt-lettered 
 tablets to the memory of pious donors. 
 
 The congregation gave the responses wdth joyous unction. 
 
SEDER NIGHT. 309 
 
 Some of the worshippers tempered their devotion by petty gos- 
 sip and the beadle marshalled the men in low hats within the 
 iron railings, sonorously sounding his automatic aniens. But 
 to-night Hannah had no eye for the Jiumors that were wont to 
 awaken her scornful amusement — a real emotion possessed 
 her, the same emotion of farewell which she had experienced in 
 her own bedroom. Her eyes wandered towards the Ark, sur- 
 mounted by the stone tablets of the Decalogue, and the sad dark 
 orbs filled with the brooding light of childish reminiscence. 
 Once when she was a little girl her father told her that on Pass- 
 over night an angel sometimes came out of the doors of the Ark 
 from among the scrolls of the Law. For years she looked out 
 for that angel, keeping her eyes patiently fixed on the curtain. 
 At last she gave him up, concluding her vision was insufficiently 
 purified or that he was exhibiting at other synagogues. To-night 
 her childish fancy recurred to her — she found herself invol- 
 untarily looking towards the Ark and half-expectant of the 
 angel. 
 
 She had not thought of the Seder service she would have to 
 partially sit through, when she made her appointment with David 
 in the morning, but when during the day it occurred to her, a 
 cynical smile traversed her lips. How apposite it was! To-night 
 would mark her exodus from slavery. Like her ancestors leav- 
 ing Egypt, she, too, would partake of a meal in haste, staff in 
 hand ready for the journey. With what stout heart would she 
 set forth, she, too, towards the promised land! Thus had she 
 thought some hours since, but her mood was changed now. The 
 nearer the Seder approached, the more she shrank from the 
 family ceremonial. A panic terror almost seized her now, in 
 the synagogue, when the picture of the domestic interior flashed 
 again before her mental vision — she felt like flying into the 
 street, on towards her lover without ever looking behind. Oh, 
 why could David not have fixed the hour earlier, so as to spare 
 her an ordeal so trying to the nerves? The black-stoled choir 
 was singing sweetly, Hannah banished her foolish flutter of alarm 
 by joining in quietly, for congregational singing was regarded 
 rather as an intrusion on the privileges of the choir and calcu- 
 
310 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 lated to put them out in their elaborate four-part fugues unaided 
 by an organ. 
 
 " With everlasting love hast Thou loved the house of Israel, 
 Thy people,'^ she sang : '• a Law and commandments, statutes 
 and judgments hast thou taught us. Therefore, O Lord our 
 God, when we lie dow^n and when we rise up we will meditate on 
 Thy statutes : yea, we will rejoice in the words of Thy Law and 
 in Thy commandments for ever, for they are our life and the 
 length of our days, and will meditate on them day and night. 
 And mayest Thou never take away Thy love from us. Blessed 
 art Thou, O Lord, who lovest Thy people Israel." 
 
 Hannah scanned the English version of the Hebrew in her 
 Machzor as she sang. Though she could translate every word, 
 the meaning of what she sang was never completely conceived 
 by her consciousness. The power of song over the soul depends 
 but little on the words. Now the words seem fateful, pregnant 
 with special message. Her eyes were misty when the fugues 
 were over. Again she looked towards the Ark with its beauti- 
 fully embroidered curtain, behind which were the precious scrolls 
 with their silken swathes and their golden bells and shields and 
 pomegranates. Ah, if the angel would come out now! If only 
 the dazzling vision gleamed for a moment on the white steps. 
 Oh, why did he not come and save her? 
 
 Save her? From what? She asked herself the question 
 fiercely, in defiance of the still, small voice. What wrong had 
 she ever done that she so young and gentle should be forced to 
 make so cioiel a choice between the old and the new? This 
 was the synagogue she should have been married in ; stepping 
 gloriously and honorably under the canopy, amid the pleas- 
 ant excitement of a congratulatory company. And now she 
 .was being driven to exile and the chillness of secret nuptials. 
 No, no ; she did not want to be saved in the sense of being 
 kept in the fold ; it was the creed that was culpable, not 
 she. 
 
 The service drew to an end. The choir sang the final hymn, 
 the Chasaii giving the last verse at great length and with many 
 musical flourishes. 
 
SEDER NIGHT. 311 
 
 " The dead will God quicken in the abundance of His loving 
 kindness. Blessed for evermore be His glorious name." 
 
 There was a clattering of reading-flaps and seat-lids and the 
 congregation poured out, amid the buzz of mutual " Good Yom- 
 tovs.'''' Hannah rejoined her father, the sense of injury and 
 revolt still surging in her breast. In the fresh starlit air, step- 
 ping along the wet gleaming pavements, she shook off the last 
 influences of the synagogue ; all her thoughts converged on the 
 meeting with David, on the wild flight northwards while good 
 Jews were sleeping off the supper in celebration of their Redemp- 
 tion : her blood coursed quickly through her veins, she was in a 
 fever of impatience for the hour to come. 
 
 And thus it was that she sat at the Seder table, as in a dream, 
 with images of desperate adventure flitting in her brain. The 
 face of her lover floated before her eyes, close, close to her own 
 as it should have been to-night had there been justice in Heaven. 
 Now and again the scene about her flashed in upon her con- 
 sciousness, piercing her to the heart. When Levi asked the 
 introductory question, it set her wondering what would become 
 of him? Would manhood bring enfranchisement to him as 
 womanhood was doing to her? What sort of life would he lead 
 the poor Reb and his wife? The omens were scarcely auspi- 
 cious ; but a man's charter is so much wider than a woman's ; 
 and Levi might do much without paining them as she would 
 pain them. Poor father! The wiiite hairs w^ere predominating 
 in his beard, she had never noticed before how^ old he was get- 
 ting. And mother — her face was quite wrinkled. Ah, well; 
 we must all grow old. What a curious man Melchitsedek Pin- 
 chas was, singing so heartily the wonderful story. Judaism 
 certainly produced some curious types. A smile crossed her 
 face as she thought of herself as his bride. 
 
 At supper she strove to eat a little, knowing she would need 
 it. In bringing some plates from the kitchen she looked at her 
 hat and cloak, carefully hung up on the peg in the hall nearest 
 the street door. It would take but a second to slip them on. 
 She nodded her head towards them, as who should say " Yes, 
 we shall meet again very soon.'' During the meal she found 
 
312 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 herself listening to the poet's monologues delivered in his high- 
 pitched creaking voice. 
 
 Melchitsedek Pinchas had much to say about a certain actor- 
 manager who had spoiled the greatest jargon-play of the century 
 and a certain labor-leader who, out of the funds of his gulls, had 
 subsidized the audience to stay away, and (though here the Reb 
 cut him short for Hannah's sake) a certain leading lady, one of 
 the quartette of mistresses of a certain clergyman, who had been 
 beguiled by her paramour into joining the great English con- 
 spiracy to hound down Melchitsedek Pinchas, — all of whom he 
 would shoot presently and had in the meantime enshrined like 
 dead flies in the amber of immortal acrostics. The wind began 
 to shake the shutters as they finished supper and presently the 
 rain began to patter afresh against the panes. Reb Shemuel 
 distributed the pieces of AJikiDnaii with a happy sigh, and, loll- 
 ing on his pillows and almost forgetting his family troubles in 
 the sense of Israel's blessedness, began to chant the Grace like 
 the saints in the Psalm who sing aloud on their couches. The 
 little Dutch clock on the mantelpiece began to strike. Hannah 
 did not move. Pale and trembling she sat riveted to her chair. 
 One — two — three — four — five — six — seven — eight. She 
 counted the strokes, as if to count them was the only means of 
 telling the hour, as if her eyes had not been following the hands 
 creeping, creeping. She had a mad hope the striking would 
 cease with the eight and there would be still time to think. 
 Nine I She waited, her ear longing for the tenth stroke. If it 
 were only ten o'clock, it would be too late. The danger would 
 be over. She sat, mechanically watching the hands. They 
 crept on. It was five minutes past the hour. She felt sure that 
 David was already at the corner of the street, getting wet and a 
 little impatient. She half rose from her chair. It was not a nice 
 night for an elopement. She sank back into her seat. Perliaps 
 they had best wait till to-morrow night. She would go and tell 
 David so. But then he would not mind the weather; once they 
 had met he would bundle her into the cab and they would roll 
 off, leaving the old world irrevocably behind. She sat in a 
 paralysis of volition ; rigid on her chair, magnetized by the warm 
 
SEDER NIGHT. 313 
 
 comfortable room, the old familiar furniture, the Passover table 
 — with its white table-cloth and its decanter and wine-glasses, 
 the faces of her father and mother eloquent with the appeal of a 
 thousand memories. The clock ticked on loudly, fiercely, like 
 a summoning drum ; the rain beat an impatient tattoo on the 
 window-panes, the wind rattled the doors and casements. " Go 
 forth, go forth," they called, " go forth where your lover waits 
 you, to bear you oif into the new and the unknown." And the 
 louder they called the louder Reb Shemuel trolled his hilarious 
 Grace : May He who i?iaketh Peace in the High Heavens, bestow 
 Peace upon us and npoji all Israel and say ye, Aineti. 
 
 The hands of the clock crept on. It was half-past nine. 
 Hannah sat lethargic, numb, unable to think, her strung-up 
 nerves grown flaccid, her eyes full of bitter-sweet tears, her soul 
 floating along as in a trance on the waves of a familiar melody. 
 Suddenly she became aware that the others had risen and that 
 her father was motioning to her. Instinctively she understood ; 
 rose automatically and went to the door ; then a great shock of 
 returning recollection whelmed her soul. She stood rooted to 
 the floor. Her father had filled Elijah's goblet with wine and it 
 was her annual privilege to open the door for the prophefs 
 entry. Intuitively she knew that David was pacing madly in 
 front of the house, not daring to make known his presence, and 
 perhaps cursing her cowardice. A chill terror seized her. She 
 was afraid to face him — his will was strong and mighty; her 
 fevered imagination figured it as the wash of a great ocean 
 breaking on the doorstep threatening to sweep her olT into the 
 roaring whirlpool of doom. She threw the door of the room 
 wide and paused as if her duty were done. 
 
 " iVii, Jiu,^^ muttered Reb Shemuel, indicating the outer door. 
 It was so near that he always had that opened, too. 
 
 Hannah tottered forwards through the few feet of hall. The 
 cloak and hat on the peg nodded to her sardonically. A wild 
 thrill of answering defiance shot through her: she stretched out 
 her hands towards them. " Fly, fly ; it is your last chance," 
 said the blood throbbing in her ears. But her hand dropped to 
 her side and in that brief instant of terrible illumination, Hannah 
 
314 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 saw down the whole long vista of her future life, stretching 
 straight and unlovely between great blank walls, on, on to a 
 solitary grave ; knew that the strength had been denied her to 
 diverge to the right or left, that for her there would be neither 
 Exodus nor Redemption. Strong in the conviction of her weak- 
 ness she noisily threw open the street door. The face of David, 
 sallow and ghastly, loomed upon her in the darkness. Great 
 drops of rain fell from his hat and ran down his cheeks like tears. 
 His clothes seemed soaked with rain. 
 
 "At last!" he exclaimed in a hoarse, glad whisper. "What 
 has kept you ? " 
 
 '''' Bortich Habol (Welcome art thou who arrivest) " came the 
 voice of Reb Shemuel from within, greeting the prophet, 
 
 " Hush! " said Hannah. " Listen a moment." 
 
 The sing-song undulations of the old Rabbi's voice mingled 
 harshly with the wail of the wind : "/*<?//;' out Thy ivj'ath oji the 
 heathen who acknowledge Thee 7iot and npon the Kingdojns which 
 invoke not Thy nanie^ for they have devoured Jacob and laid 
 waste his Temple. Pour out Thy indignation upon them and 
 cause Thy fierce anger to overtake them. Pursue them in wrath 
 and destroy theni from under the heavens of the Lord.'''' 
 
 "Quick, Hannah!" whispered David. "We can't wait a 
 moment more. Put on your things. We shall miss the train." 
 
 A sudden inspiration came to her. For answer she drew his 
 ring out of her pocket and slipped it into his hand. 
 
 " Good-bye ! " she murmured in a strange hollow voice, and 
 slammed the street door in his face. 
 
 "Hannah!" 
 
 His startled cry of agony and despair penetrated the wood- 
 work, muffled to an inarticulate shriek. He rattled the door 
 violently in unreasoning frenzy. 
 
 "Who's that? What's that noise?" asked the Rebbitzin. 
 
 " Only some Christian rough shouting in the street," answered 
 Hannah. 
 
 It was truer than she knew. 
 
 The rain fell faster, the wind grew shriller, but the Children ol 
 
SEDER NIGHT. 315 
 
 the Ghetto basked by their firesides in faith and hope and con- 
 tentment. Hunted from shore to shore through the ages, they 
 had found the national aspiration — Peace — in a country where 
 Passover came without menace of blood. In the garret of 
 Number i Royal Street little Esther Ansell sat brooding, her 
 heart full of a vague tender poetry and penetrated by the 
 beauties of Judaism, which, please God, she would always cling 
 to ; her childish vision looking forward hopefully to the larger 
 life that the years would bring. 
 
 END OF BOOK I. 
 
Book II. 
 THE GRANDCHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE CHRISTMAS DINNER. 
 
 Daintily embroidered napery, beautiful porcelain, Queen 
 Anne silver, exotic flowers, glittering glass, soft rosy light, creamy 
 expanses of shirt-front, elegant low-necked dresses — all the con- 
 ventional accompaniments of Occidental gastronomy. 
 
 It was not a large party. Mrs. Henry Goldsmith professed to 
 collect guests on artistic principles — as she did bric-a-brac — 
 and with an eye to general conversation. The elements of the 
 social saiad were sufficiently incongruous to-night, yet all the 
 ingredients were Jewish. 
 
 For the history of the Grandchildren of the Ghetto, which is 
 mainly a history of the middle-classes, is mainly a history of 
 isolation. " The Upper Ten " is a literal phrase in Judah, whose 
 aristocracy just about suffices for a synagogue quorum. Great 
 majestic luminaries, each with its satellites, they swim serenely 
 in the golden heavens. And the middle-classes look up in wor- 
 ship and the lower-classes in supplication. "The Upper Ten" 
 have no spirit of exclusiveness ; they are willing to entertain roy- 
 alty, rank and the arts with a catholic hospitality that is only East- 
 ern in its magnificence, while some of them only remain Jews for 
 fear of being considered snobs by society. But the middle-class 
 Jew has been more jealous of his caste, and for caste reasons. 
 To exchange hospitalities with the Christian when you cannot 
 eat his dinners were to get the worse of the bargain ; to invite 
 his sons to your house when they cannot marry your daughters 
 were to solicit awkward complications. In business, in civic 
 affairs, in politics, the Jew has mixed freely with his fellow-citi- 
 zens, but indiscriminate social relations only become possible 
 
 319 
 
320 GRANDCHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 through a religious decadence, which they in turn accelerate. A 
 Christian in a company of middle-class Jews is like a lion in a den 
 of Daniels. They show him deference and their prophetic side. 
 Mrs. Henry Goldsmith was of the upper middle-classes, and 
 her husband w^as the financial representative of the Kensington 
 Synagogue at the United Council, but her swan-like neck was 
 still bowed beneath the yoke of North London, not to say pro- 
 vincial, Judaism. So to-night there were none of those external 
 indications of Christmas which are so frequent at " good '' Jew- 
 ish houses ; no plum-pudding, snapdragon, mistletoe, not even a 
 Christmas tree. For Mrs. Henry Goldsmith did not counte- 
 nance these coquettings with Christianity. She would have told 
 you that the incidence of her dinner on Christmas Eve was 
 merely an accident, though a lucky accident, in so far as Christ- 
 mas found Jews perforce at leisure for social gatherings. What 
 she was celebrating was the feast of Chanukah — of the re-dedi- 
 cation of the Temple after the pollutions of Antiochus Epiph- 
 anes — and the memory of the national hero, Judas Maccabaeus. 
 Christmas crackers would have been incompatible with the Cha- 
 nukah candles which the housekeeper, Mary O^Reilly, forced her 
 master to light, and would have shocked that devout old dame. 
 For Mary O'Reilly, as good a soul as she was a Catholic, had 
 lived all her life with Jews, assisting while yet a girl in the 
 kitchen of Henry Goldsmith's father, who was a pattern of 
 ancient piety and a prop of the Great Synagogue. When the 
 father died, Mary, with all the other family belongings, passed 
 into the hands of the son, who came up to London from a pro- 
 vincial town, and with a grateful recollection of her motherliness 
 domiciled her in his own establishment. Mary knew all the 
 ritual laws and ceremonies far better than her new mistress, who 
 although a native of the provincial town in which Mr. Henry 
 Goldsmith had established a thriving business, had received her 
 education at a Brussels boarding-school. Mary knew exactly 
 how long to keep the meat in salt and the heinousness of frying 
 steaks in butter. She knew that the fire must not be poked on 
 the Sabbath, nor the gas lit or extinguished, and that her master 
 must not smoke till three stars appeared in the sky. She knew 
 
THE CHRISTMAS DINNER. 321 
 
 when the family must fast, and when and how it must feast. She 
 knew all the Hebrew and jargon expressions which her employers 
 studiously boycotted, and she was the only member of the house- 
 hold who used them habitually in her intercourse with the other 
 members. Too late the Henry Goldsmiths awoke to the con- 
 sciousness of her tyranny which did not permit them to be 
 irreligious even in private. In the fierce light which beats upon 
 a provincial town with only one synagogue, they had been com- 
 pelled to conform outwardly with many galling restrictions, and 
 they had sub-consciously looked forward to emancipation in the 
 mighty metropolis. But Mary had such implicit faith in their 
 piety, and was so zealous in the practice of her own faith, that 
 they had not the courage to confess that they scarcely cared a 
 pin about a good deal of that for which she was so solicitous. 
 They hesitated to admit that they did not respect their religion 
 (or what she thought was their religion) as much as she did 
 hers. It would have equally lowered them in her eyes to admit 
 that their religion was not so good as hers, besides being disre- 
 spectful to the cherished memory of her ancient master. At first 
 they had deferred to Mary's Jewish prejudices out of good nature 
 and carelessness, but every day strengthened her hold upon 
 them ; every act of obedience to the ritual law was a tacit ac- 
 knowledgment of its sanctity, which made it more and more diffi- 
 cult to disavow its obligation. The dread of shocking Mary 
 came to dominate their lives, and the fashionable house near 
 Kensington Gardens was still a veritable centre of true Jewish 
 orthodoxy, with little or nothing to make old Aaron Goldsmith 
 turn in his grave. It is probable, though, that Mrs. Henry Gold- 
 smith would have kept a kosher table, even if Mary had never 
 been born. Many of their acquaintances and relatives were of 
 an orthodox turn. A kosher dinner could be eaten even by the 
 heterodox ; whereas a tripha dinner choked off the orthodox. 
 Thus it came about that even the Rabbinate might safely stoke 
 its spiritual fires at Mrs. Henry Goldsmith's. 
 
 Hence, too, the prevalent craving for a certain author's blood 
 could not be gratified at Mrs. Henry Goldsmith's Chanukah 
 dinner. Besides, nobody knew where to lay hands upon Edward 
 
 Y 
 
322 GRANDCHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 Armitage, the author in question, whose opprobrious production, 
 Mordecai Josephs., had scandahzed West- End Judaism. 
 
 "Why didn't he describe our circles?" asked the hostess, an 
 angry fire in her beautiful eyes. "It would have, at least, cor- 
 rected the picture. As it is, the public will fancy that we are all 
 daubed with the same brush ; that we have no thought in life 
 beyond dress, money, and solo whist.'' 
 
 " He probably painted the life he knew," said Sidney Graham, 
 in defence. 
 
 "Then 1 am sorry for him," retorted Mrs. Goldsmith. " It's 
 a great pity he had such detestable acquaintances. Of course, 
 he has cut himself off from the possibility of any better now." 
 
 The wavering flush on her lovely face darkened with disinter- 
 ested indignation, and her beautiful bosom heaved with judicial 
 grief. 
 
 " I should hope so," put in Miss Cissy Levine, sharply. She 
 was a pale, bent woman, with spectacles, who believed in the 
 mission of Israel, and wrote domestic novels to prove that she 
 had no sense of humor. " No one has a right to foul his own 
 nest. Are there not plenty of subjects for the Jew's pen with- 
 out his attacking his own people? The calumniator of his race 
 should be ostracized from decent society." 
 
 "As according to him there is none," laughed Graham,"! 
 cannot see where the punishment comes in." 
 
 "Oh, he may say so in that book," said Mrs. Montagu Sam- 
 uels, an amiable, loose-thinking lady of florid complexion, who 
 dabbled exasperatingly in her husband's philanthropic con- 
 cerns from the vain idea that the wife of a committee-man is a 
 committee-woman. "But he knows better." 
 
 "Yes, indeed," said Mr. Montagu Samuels. '*Thc rascal has 
 only written this to make money. He knows it\s all exaggera- 
 tion and distortion ; but anything spicy pays now-a-days." 
 
 "As a West Indian merchant he ought to know," murmured 
 Sidney Graham to his charming cousin, Adelaide Leon. The 
 girl's soft eyes twinkled, as she surveyed the serious little city 
 magnate with his placid spouse. Montagu Samuels was narrow- 
 minded and narrow-chested, and managed to be pompous on a 
 
THE CHRISTMAS DINNER. 323 
 
 meagre allowance of body. He was earnest and charitable (ex- 
 cept in religious wrangles, when he was earnest and uncharitable), 
 and knew himself a pillar of the community, an exemplar to the 
 drones and sluggards who shirked their share of public burdens 
 and were callous to the dazzlement of communal honors. 
 
 "Of course it w^as written for money, Monty," his brother, 
 Percy Saville, the stockbroker, reminded him. "What else do 
 authors write for? It's the way they earn their living." 
 
 Strangers found difficulty in understanding the fraternal rela- 
 tion of Percy Saville and Montagu Samuels; and did not readily 
 grasp that Percy Saville was an Anglican version of Pizer Sam- 
 uels, more in tune with the handsome well-dressed personality 
 it denoted. Montagu had stuck loyally to his colors, but Pizer 
 had drooped under the burden of carrying his patronymic 
 through the theatrical and artistic circles he favored after 
 business hours. Of such is the brotherhood of Israel. 
 
 " The whole book's written with gall," went on Percy Saville, 
 emphatically. " I suppose the man couldn't get into good Jew- 
 ish houses, and he's revenged himself by slandering them." 
 
 " Then he ought to have got into good Jewish houses," said 
 Sidney. " The man has talent, nobody can deny that, and if he 
 couldn't get into good Jewish society because he didn't have 
 money enough, isn't that proof enough his picture is true ? " 
 
 " I don't deny that there are people among us who make 
 money the one open sesame to their houses," said Mrs. Henry 
 Goldsmith, magnanimously. 
 
 '-'■ Deny it, indeed? Money is the open sesame to everything," 
 rejoined Sidney Graham, delightedly scenting an opening for a 
 screed. He liked to talk bomb-shells, and did not often get pil- 
 lars of the community to shatter. " Money manages the schools 
 and the charities, and the synagogues, and indirectly controls 
 the press. A small body of persons — always the same — sits on 
 all councils, on all boards! Why? Because they pay the piper." 
 
 "Well, sir, and is not that a good reason? " asked Montagu 
 Samuels. " The community is to be congratulated on having a 
 few public-spirited men left in days when there are wealthy Ger- 
 man Jews in our midst who not only disavow Judaism, but refuse 
 
324 GRANDCHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 to support its institutions. But, Mr. Graham, I would join issue 
 with you. The men you alhicle to are elected not because they 
 are rich, but because they are good men of business and most 
 of the work to be done is financial." 
 
 " Exactly," said Sidney Graham, in sinister agreement. " I 
 have always maintained that the United Synagogue could be 
 run as a joint-stock company for the sake of a dividend, and 
 that there wouldn't be an atom of difference in the discussions 
 if the councillors were directors. I do believe the pillars of the 
 community figure the Millenium as a time when every Jew shall 
 have enough to eat, a place to worship in, and a place to be 
 buried in. Their State Church is simply a financial system, to 
 which the doctrines of Judaism happen to be tacked on. How 
 many of the councillors believe in their Established Religion? 
 Why, the very beadles of their synagogues are prone to surrep- 
 titious shrimps and unobtrusive oysters! Then take that institu- 
 tion for supplying kosher meat. I am sure there are lots of its Com- 
 mittee who never inquire into the necrologies of their own chops 
 and steaks, and who regard kitchen Judaism as obsolete. But, all 
 the same, they look after the finances with almost fanatical zeal. 
 Finance fascinates them. Long after Judaism has ceased to 
 exist, excellent gentlemen will be found regulating its finances." 
 
 There was that smile on the faces of the graver members of 
 the party which arises from reluctance to take a dangerous 
 speaker seriously. 
 
 Sidney Graham was one of those favorites of society who are 
 allowed Touchstone's license. He had just as little wish to 
 reform, and just as much wish to abuse society as society has 
 to be reformed and abused. He was a dark, bright-eyed young 
 artist with a silky moustache. He had lived much in Paris, 
 where he studied impressionism and perfected his natural talent 
 for causerie and his inborn preference for the hedonistic view of 
 life. Fortunately he had plenty of money, for he was a cousin 
 of Raphael Leon on the mother's side, and the remotest twigs of 
 the Leon genealogical tree bear apples of gold. His real name 
 was Abrahams, which is a shade too Semitic. Sidney was 
 the black sheep of the family ; good-natured to the core 
 
THE CHRISTMAS DINNER. 325 
 
 and artistic to the finger-tips, he was an avowed infidel 
 in a world where avowal is the unpardonable sin. He did 
 not even pretend to fast on the Day of Atonement. Still 
 Sidney Graham was a good deal talked of in artistic circles, his 
 name was often in the newspapers, and so more orthodox people 
 than Mrs. Henry Goldsmith were not averse from having him at 
 their table, though they would have shrunk from being seen at 
 his. Even cousin Addie, who had a charming religious cast of 
 mind, liked to be with him, though she ascribed this to family 
 piety. For there is a wonderful solidarity about many Jewish 
 families, the richer members of which assemble loyally at one 
 another's births, marriages, funerals, and card-parties, often to 
 the entire exclusion of outsiders. An ordinary well-regulated 
 family (so prolific is the stream of life), will include in its bosom 
 ample elements for every occasion. 
 
 '^ Really, Mr. Graham, I think you are wrong about the kosher 
 meat,'' said Mr. Henry Goldsmith. '^ Our statistics show no 
 falling-off in the number of bullocks killed, while there is a rise of 
 two per cent, in the sheep slaughtered. No, Judaism is in a far 
 more healthy condition than pessimists imagine. So far from 
 sacrificing our ancient faith we are learning to see how tuber- 
 culosis lurks in the lungs of unexamined carcasses and is com- 
 municated to the consumer. As for the members of the 
 Shcchitah Board not eating kosher^ look at me.'' 
 
 The only person who looked at the host was the hostess. 
 Her look was one of approval. It could not be of aesthetic ap- 
 proval, like the look Percy SavUle devoted to herself, for her hus- 
 band was a cadaverous little man with prominent ears and teeth. 
 ''And if Mr. Graham should ever join us on the Council of 
 the United Synagogue," added Montagu Samuels, addressing 
 the table generally, '' he will discover that there is no communal 
 problem with which we do not loyally grapple." 
 
 "No, thank you," said Sidney, with a shudder. "When I 
 visit Raphael, I sometimes pick up a Jewish paper and amuse 
 myself by reading the debates of your public bodies. I under- 
 stand most of your verbiage is edited away" He looked 
 Montagu Samuels full in the face with audacious naivete. " But 
 
326 GRANDCHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 there is enough left to show that our monotonous group of pub- 
 lic men consists of narrow-minded mediocrities. The chief 
 public work they appear to do outside finance is, when public 
 exams, fall on Sabbaths or holidays, getting special dates for 
 Jewish candidates to whom these examinations are the avenues 
 to atheism. They never see the joke. How can they? Why, 
 they take even themselves seriously," 
 
 " Oh, come I " said Miss Cissy Levine indignantly. " You often 
 see ' laughter' in the reports." 
 
 " That must mean the speaker was laughing," explained Sid- 
 ney, ''for you never see anything to make the audience laugh. 
 I appeal to Mr. Montagu Samuels." 
 
 " It is useless discussing a subject with a man who admittedly 
 speaks without knowledge," replied that gentleman with dignity. 
 
 " Well, how do you expect me to get the knowledge? " grum- 
 bled Sidney. " You exclude the public from your gatherings. I 
 suppose to prevent their rubbing shoulders with the swells, the 
 privilege of being snubbed by whom is the reward of public ser- 
 vice. Wonderfully practical idea that — to utilize snobbery as a 
 communal force. The United Synagogue is founded on it. 
 Your community coheres through it." 
 
 '• There you are scarcely fair," said the hostess with a charm- 
 ing smile of reproof. " Of course there are snobs amongst us, 
 but is it not the same in all sects?" 
 
 " Emphatically not," said Sidney. '' If one of our swells sticks 
 to a shred of Judaism, people seem to think the God of Judah 
 should be thankful, and if he goes to synagogue once or twice a 
 year, it is regarded as a particular condescension to the Creator." 
 
 " The mental attitude you caricature is not so snobbish as it 
 seems," said Raphael Leon, breaking into the conversation for 
 the first time. '' The temptations to the wealthy and the honored 
 to desert their struggling brethren are manifold, and sad experi- 
 ence has made our race accustomed to the loss of its brightest 
 sons." 
 
 " Thanks for the compliment, fair coz," said Sidney, not with- 
 out a complacent cynical pleasure in the knowledge that Raphael 
 spoke truly, that he owed his own immunity from the obligations 
 
THE CHRISTMAS DINNER. 327 
 
 of the faith to his artistic success, and that the outside world 
 was disposed to accord him a larger charter of morality on the 
 same grounds. '• But if you can only deny nasty facts by account- 
 ing fo'^r them, I dare say Mr. Armitage's book will afford you 
 ample opportunities for explanation. Or have Jews the brazen- 
 ness to assert it is all invention? '' 
 
 " No, no one would do that,'' said Percy Saville, who had just 
 done it'. " Certainly there is a good deal of truth in the sketch 
 of the ostentatious, over-dressed Johnsons who, as everybody 
 knows, are meant for the Jonases." 
 
 " Oh, yes," said Mrs. Henry Goldsmith. '' And it is quite evi- 
 dent that the stockbroker who drops half his h's and all his poor 
 acquaintances and believes in one Lord, is no other than Joel 
 Friedman." 
 
 ^' And the house where people drive up in broughams for sup- 
 per and solo whist after the theatre is the Davises' in Maida 
 Vale," said Miss Cissy Levine. 
 
 "Yes, the book's true enough," began Mrs. Montagu Samuels. 
 She stopped suddenly, catching her husband's eye, and the color 
 heightened on her florid cheek. " What I say is," she concluded 
 awkwardly, " he ought to have come among us, and shown the 
 world a picture of the cultured Jews." 
 
 ^- Quite so, quite so," said the hostess. Then turning to the 
 tall thoughtful-looking young man who had hitherto contributed 
 but one sentence to the conversation, she said, half in sly malice, 
 half to draw him out: "Now you, Mr. Leon, whose culture is 
 certified by our leading university, what do you think of this 
 latest portrait of the Jew?" 
 
 " I don't know, I haven't read it!" replied Raphael apologeti- 
 cally. 
 
 " No more have I," murmured the table generally. 
 
 " I wouldn't touch it with a pitchfork," said Miss Cissy Levine. 
 
 " I think it's a shame they circulate it at the libraries," said 
 
 Mrs. Montagu Samuels. "I just glanced over it at Mrs. Hugh 
 
 Marston's house. It's vile. There are actually jargon words in 
 
 it. Such vulgarity!" 
 
 "Shameful!" murmured Percy Saville; "Mr. Lazarus was 
 
328 GRANDCHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 telling me about it. It's plain treachery and disloyalty, this 
 putting of weapons into the hands of our enemies. Of course 
 we have our faults, but we should be told of them privately or 
 from the pulpit.'' 
 
 " That would be just as efficacious," said Sidney admiringly. 
 
 " More efficacious," said Percy Saville, unsuspiciously. " A 
 preacher speaks with authority, but this penny-a-liner," 
 
 "With truth?" queried Sidney. 
 
 Saville stopped, disgusted, and the hostess answered Sidney 
 half-coaxingly. 
 
 " Oh, I am sure you can't think that. The book is so one- 
 sided. Not a word about our generosity, our hospitality, our 
 domesticity, the thousand-and-one good traits all the world 
 allows us." 
 
 '• Of course not ; since all the world allows them, it was 
 unnecessary," said Sidney. 
 
 " I wonder the Chief Rabbi doesn't stop it," said Mrs. Montagu 
 Samuels. 
 
 "My dear, how can he?" inquired her husband "He has no 
 control over the publishing trade." 
 
 " He ought to talk to the man," persisted Mrs. Samuels. 
 
 " But we don't even know who he is," said Percy Saville, 
 " probably Edward Armitage is only a nom-de-phune. You'd 
 be surprised to learn the real names of some of the literary 
 celebrities I meet about." 
 
 "Oh, if he's a Jew you may be sure it isn't his real name," 
 laughed Sidney. It was characteristic of him that he never 
 spared a shot even when himself hurt by the kick of the gun. 
 Percy colored slightly, unmollified by being in the same boat 
 with the satirist. 
 
 " I have never seen the name in the subscription lists," said 
 the hostess with ready tact. 
 
 " There is an Armitage who subscribes two guineas a year to 
 the Board of Guardians," said Mrs. Montagu Samuels. " But 
 his Christian name is George." 
 
 " ' Christian' name is distinctly good for ' George,' " murmured 
 Sidney. 
 
THE CHRISTMAS DINNER. 329 
 
 " There was an Armitage who sent a cheque to the Russian 
 Fund," said Mr. Henry Goldsmith, " but that can't be an author 
 — it was quite a large cheque ! " 
 
 " I am sure I have seen Armitage among the Births, Marriages 
 and Deaths," said Miss Cissy Levnne. 
 
 " How well-read they all are in the national literature," Sidney 
 murmured to Addie. 
 
 Indeed the sectarian advertisements served to knit the race 
 together, counteracting the unravelling induced by the fashion- 
 able dispersion of Israel and waxing the more important as the 
 other links — the old traditional jokes, by-words, ceremonies, 
 card-games, prejudices and tunes, which are more important than 
 laws and more cementatory than ideals — were disappearing be- 
 fore the over-zealousness of a parvenu refinement that had not 
 yet attained to self-confidence. The Anglo-Saxon stolidity of 
 the West-End Synagogue service, on week days entirely given 
 over to paid praying-men, was a typical expression of the uni- 
 versal tendency to exchange the picturesque primitiveness of 
 the Orient for the sobrieties of fashionable civilization. When 
 Jeshurun waxed fat he did not always kick, but he yearned to 
 approximate as much as possible to John Bull without merging 
 in him ; to sink himself and yet not be absorbed, not to be and 
 yet to be. The attempt to realize the asymptote in human 
 mathematics was not quite successful, too near an approach to 
 John Bull generally assimilating Jeshurun away. For such is 
 the nature of Jeshurun. Enfranchise him, give him his own 
 way and you make a new man of him ; persecute him and he is 
 himself again. 
 
 "But if nobody has read the man's book," Raphael Leon 
 ventured to interrupt at last, " is it quite fair to assume his book 
 isn't fit to read? " 
 
 The shy dark little girl he had taken down to dinner darted 
 an appreciative glance at her neighbor. It was in accordance 
 with Raphael's usual anxiety to give the devil his due, that he 
 should be unwilling to condemn even the writer of an anti- 
 Semitic novel unheard. But then it was an open secret in the 
 family that Raphael was mad. They did their best to hush it 
 
330 GRANDCHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 up, but among themselves they pitied him behind his back. 
 Even Sidney considered his cousin Raphael pushed a dubious 
 virtue too far in treating people's very prejudices with the defer- 
 ence due to earnest reasoned opinions. 
 
 " But we know enough of the book to know we are badly 
 treated," protested the hostess. 
 
 "We have always been badly treated in literature," said 
 Raphael. "We are made either angels or devils. On the one 
 hand, Lessing and George Eliot, on the other, the stock dram- 
 atist and novelist with their low-comedy villain." 
 
 "Oh," said Mrs. Goldsmith, doubtfully, for she could not 
 quite think Raphael had become infected by his cousin's pro- 
 pensity for paradox. " Do you think George Eliot and Lessing 
 didn't understand the Jewish character?" 
 
 " They are the only writers who have ever understood it," 
 affirmed Miss Cissy Levine, emphatically. 
 
 A little scornful smile played for a second about the mouth of 
 the dark little girl. 
 
 " Stop a moment," said Sidney. " I've been so busy doing 
 justice to this delicious asparagus, that I have allowed Raphael 
 to imagine nobody here has read Mordecai Josephs. I have, 
 and I say there is more actuality in it than in Daiiiel Dero)ida 
 and Nathan der Weise put together. It is a cmde production, 
 all the same ; the writer's artistic gift seems handicapped by a 
 dead-weight of moral platitudes and highfalutin, and even mysti- 
 cism. He not only presents his characters but moralizes over 
 them — actually cares whether they are good or bad, and has 
 yearnings after the indefinable — it is all very young. Instead of 
 being satisfied that Judaea gives him characters that are interest- 
 ing, he actually laments their lack of culture. Still, what he has 
 done is good enough to make one hope his artistic instinct will 
 shake oiThis moral." 
 
 "Oh, Sidney, what are you saying?" murmured Addie. 
 
 " It's all right, little girl. You don't understand Greek." 
 
 "It's not Greek," put in Raphael. "In Greek art, beauty of 
 soul and beauty of form are one. It's French you are talking, 
 though the ignorant ateliers where you picked it up flatter 
 themselves it's Greek." 
 
THE CHRISTMAS DINNER. 331 
 
 " It's Greek to Addie, anyhow/' laughed Sidney. " But that's 
 what makes the anti-Semitic chapters so unsatisfactory." 
 
 "• We all felt their unsatisfactoriness, if we could not analyze it 
 so cleverly," said the hostess. 
 
 "We all felt it," said Mrs. Montagu Samuels. 
 
 " Yes, that's it," said Sidney, blandly. " I could have for- 
 given the rose-color of the picture if it had been more artistically 
 painted." 
 
 "Rose-color!" gasped Mrs. Henry Goldsmith, " rose-color, 
 indeed!" Not even Sidney's authority could persuade the table 
 into that. 
 
 Poor rich Jews! The upper middle-classes had every excuse 
 for being angry. They knew they were excellent persons, well- 
 educated and well-travelled, interested in charities (both Jewish 
 and Christian), people's concerts, district-visiting, new novels, 
 magazines, reading-circles, operas, symphonies, politics, volun- 
 teer regiments, Show-Sunday and Corporation banquets ; that 
 they had sons at Rugby and Oxford, and daughters who played 
 and painted and sang, and homes that were bright oases of opti- 
 mism in a jaded society ; that they were good Liberals and 
 Tories, supplementing their duties as Englishmen with a solici- 
 tude for the best interests of Judaism ; that they left no stone 
 unturned to emancipate themselves from the secular thraldom of 
 prejudice ; and they felt it very hard that a little vulgar section 
 should always be chosen by their own novelists, and their efforts 
 to raise the tone of Jewish society passed by. 
 
 Sidney, whose conversation always had the air of aloofness 
 from the race, so that his own foibles often came under the lash 
 of his sarcasm, proceeded to justify his assertion of the rose- 
 color picture in Mordecai Josephs. He denied that modern 
 English Jews had any religion whatever ; claiming that their 
 faith consisted of forms that had to be kept up in public, but 
 which they were too shrewd and cute to believe in or to practise 
 in private, though every one might believe every one else did ; 
 that they looked upon due payment of their synagogue bills as 
 discharging all their obligations to Heaven ; that the preachers 
 secretly despised the old formulas, and that the Rabbinate de- 
 
332 GRANDCHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 dared its intention of dying for Judaism only as a way of living 
 by it ; that the body politic was dead and rotten with hypocrisy, 
 though the augurs said it was alive and well. He admitted that 
 the same was true of Christianity. Raphael reminded him that 
 a number of Jews had drifted quite openly from the traditional 
 teaching, that thousands of well-ordered households found in- 
 spiration and spiritual, satisfaction in every form of it, and that 
 hypocrisy was too crude a word for the complex motives of those 
 who obeyed it without inner conviction. 
 
 " For instance," said he, '' a gentleman said to me the other 
 day — I was much touched by the expression — ' I believe with 
 my father's heart.' " 
 
 " It is a good epigram," said Sidney, impressed. " But what 
 is to be said of a rich community which recruits its clergy 
 from the lower classes? The method of election by competitive 
 performance, common as it is among poor Dissenters, empha- 
 sizes the subjection of the shepherd to his flock. You catch 
 your ministers young, when they are saturated with suppressed 
 scepticism, and bribe them with small salaries that seem afflu- 
 ence to the sons of poor immigrants. That the ministry is not 
 an honorable profession may be seen from the anxiety of the 
 minister to raise his children in the social scale by bringing 
 them up to some other line of business." 
 
 " That is true," said Raphael, gravely. " Our wealthy families 
 must be induced to devote a son each to the Synagogue." 
 
 " I wish they would," said Sidney. " At present, every second 
 man is a lawyer. We ought to have more officers and doctors, 
 too. I like those old Jews who smote the Philistines hip and 
 thigh ; it is not good for a race to run all to brain : I suppose, 
 though, we had to develop cunning to survive at all. There 
 was an enlightened minister whose Friday evenings I used to 
 go to when a youth — delightful talk we had there, too ; you 
 know whom 1 mean. Well, one of his sons is a solicitor, and 
 the other a stockbroker. The rich men he preached to helped 
 to place his sons. He was a charming man, but imagine him 
 preaching to them the truths in Mordecai Josephs, as Mr. Saville 
 suggested." 
 
THE CHRISTMAS DINNER. 333 
 
 '■'-Our minister lets us have it hot enough, though/' said Mr. 
 Henry Goldsmith vv'ith a guffaw. 
 
 His wife hastened to obliterate the unrefined expression. 
 
 " Mr. Strelitski is a wonderfully eloquent young man, so quiet 
 and reserved in society, but like an ancient prophet in the 
 pulpit." 
 
 " Yes, we were very lucky to get him,'' said Mr. Henry Gold- 
 smith. 
 
 The little dark girl shuddered. 
 
 "What is the matter?" asked Raphael softly. 
 
 "I don't know. I don't like the Rev. Joseph Strelitski. He 
 is eloquent, but his dogmatism irritates me. I don't believe he 
 is sincere. He doesn't like me, either." 
 
 " Oh, you're both wrong," he said in concern. 
 
 " Strelitski is a draw, I admit," said Mr. Montagu Samuels, 
 who was the President of a rival synagogue. " But Rosenbaum 
 is a good pull-down on the other side, eh ? " 
 
 Mr. Henry Goldsmith groaned. The second minister of the 
 Kensington synagogue was the scandal of the community. He 
 wasn't expected to preach, and he didn't practise. 
 
 " I've heard of that man," said Sidney laughing. " He's a bit 
 of a gambler and a spendthrift, isn't he? Why do you keep him 
 on?" 
 
 " He has a fine voice, you see," said Mr. Goldsmith. '• That 
 makes a Rosenbaum faction at once. Then he has a wife and 
 family. That makes another." 
 
 *'StreHtski isn't married, is he?" asked Sidney. 
 
 "No," said Mr. Goldsmith, "not yet. The congregation 
 expects him to, though. I don't care to give him the hint my- 
 self; he is a little queer sometimes." 
 
 " He owes it to his position," said Miss Cissy Levine. 
 
 " That is what we think," said Mrs. Henry Goldsmith, with 
 the majestic manner that suited her opulent beauty. 
 
 " I wish we had him in our synagogue," said Raphael. 
 " Michaels is a well-meaning worthy man, but he is dreadfully 
 dull." 
 
 "Poor Raphael!" said Sidney. "Why did you abolish the 
 
334 GRANDCHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 old style of minister who had to slaughter the sheep? Now the 
 minister reserves all his powers of destruction for his own flock." 
 
 " I have given him endless hints to preach only once a month," 
 said Mr. Montagu Samuels dolefully. " But every Saturday our 
 hearts sink as we see him walk to the pulpit." 
 
 " You see, Addie, how a sense of duty makes a man criminal," 
 said Sidney. " Isn^t Michaels the minister who defends orthodoxy 
 in a way that makes the orthodox rage over his unconscious 
 heresies, while the heterodox enjoy themselves by looking out for 
 his historical and grammatical blunders ! " 
 
 " Poor man, he works hard," said Raphael, gently. " Let him 
 be." 
 
 Over the dessert the conversation turned by way of the Rev. 
 Strelitski's marriage, to the growing willingness of the younger 
 generation to marry out of Judaism. The table discerned in 
 inter-marriage the beginning of the end. 
 
 " But why postpone the inevitable ? " asked Sidney calmly. 
 " What is this mania for keeping up an effete ism ? Are we to 
 cripple our lives for the sake of a word? It's all romantic fudge, 
 the idea of perpetual isolation. You get into little cliques and 
 mistaken narrow-mindedness for fidelity to an ideal. I can live for 
 months and forget there are such beings as Jews in the world. 
 I have floated down the Nile in a dahabiya while you were beat- 
 ing your breasts in the Synagogue, and the palm-trees and peli- 
 cans knew nothing of your sacrosanct chronological crisis, your 
 annual epidemic of remorse." 
 
 The table thrilled with horror, without, however, quite believ- 
 ing in the speaker's wickedness. Addie looked troubled. 
 
 '' A man and wife of different religions can never know true 
 happiness," said the hostess. 
 
 " Granted," retorted Sidney. '' But why shouldn't Jews with- 
 out Judaism marry Christians without Christianity? Must a Jew 
 needs have a Jewess to help him break the Law? " 
 
 " Inter-marriage must not be tolerated," said Raphael. " It 
 would hurt us less if we had a country. Lacking that, we must 
 preserve our human boundaries." 
 
 " You have good phrases sometimes,," 9,dmitted Sidney. " But 
 
THE CHRISTMAS DINNER, 335 
 
 why must we preserv-e any boundaries ? Why must we exist at 
 all as a separate people ? '^ 
 
 " To fulfil the mission of Israel," said Mr. Montagu Samuels 
 solemnly. 
 
 "Ah, what is that? That is one of the things nobody ever 
 seems able to tell me." 
 
 "We are God's witnesses," said Mrs. Henry Goldsmith, snip- 
 ping off for herself a little bunch of hot-house grapes. 
 
 " False witnesses, mostly then," said Sidney. " A Christian 
 friend of mine, an artist, fell in love with a girl and courted her 
 regularly at her house for four years. Then he proposed; she 
 told him to ask lier father, and he then learned for the first time 
 that the family were Jewish, and his suit could not therefore be 
 entertained. Could a satirist have invented anything funnier? 
 Whatever it was Jews have to bear witness to, these people had 
 been bearing witness to so effectually that a daily visitor never 
 heard a word of the evidence during four years. And this family 
 is not an exception ; it is a type. Abroad the English Jew 
 keeps his Judaism in the background, at home in the back 
 kitchen. When he travels, his Judaism is not packed up among 
 his iinpedunetita. He never obtrudes his creed, and even his 
 Jewish newspaper is sent to him in a wrapper labelled something 
 else. How's that for witnesses? Mind you, Pm not blaming 
 the men, being one of 'em. They may be the best fellows going, 
 honorable, high-minded, generous — why expect them to be 
 martyrs more than other Englishmen? Isn't life hard enough 
 without inventing a new hardship ? I declare there's no narrower 
 creature in the world than your idealist ; he sets up a moral stand- 
 ard which suits his own line of business, and rails at men of the 
 world for not conformmg to it. God's witnesses, indeed! I say 
 nothing of those who are rather the Devil's witnesses, but think 
 of the host of Jews like myself who, whether they marry Chris- 
 tians or not, simply drop out, and whose absence of all religion 
 escapes notice in the medley of creeds. /We no more give evi- 
 dence than those old Spanish Jews^^^^arannos, they were 
 called, weren't they? — who wore the Christian mask for genera- 
 tions. Practically, many of us are Marannos still ; I don't mean 
 
336 GRANDCHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 the Jews who are on the stage and the press and all that, but the 
 Jews who have gone on believing. One Day of Atonement I 
 amused myself by noting the pretexts on the shutters of shops 
 that were closed in the Strand. 'Our annual holiday.'' 'Stock- 
 taking day.' ' Our annual bean-feast.' ' Closed for repairs.' " 
 
 " Well, it's something if they keep the Fast at all," said Mr. 
 Henry Goldsmith. " It shows spirituality is not dead in them." 
 
 "Spirituality!" sneered Sidney. '• Sheer superstition, rather. 
 A dread of thunderbolts. Besides, fasting is a sensuous attrac- 
 tion. But for the fasting, the Day of Atonement would have 
 long since died out for these men. 'Our annual bean-feast'! 
 There's witnesses for you." 
 
 " We cannot help if we have false witnesses among us," said 
 Raphael Leon quietly. " Our mission is to spread the truth of 
 the Torah till the earth is filled with the knowledge of the Lord 
 as the waters cover the sea." 
 
 " But we don't spread it." 
 
 " We do. Christianity and Mohammedanism are offshoots of 
 Judaism ; through them we have won the v.'orld from Paganism 
 and taught it that God is one with the moral law." 
 
 " Then we are somewhat in the position of an ancient school- 
 master lagging superfluous in the school-room where his whi- 
 lom pupils are teaching." 
 
 " By no means. Rather of one who stays on to protest against 
 the false additions of his whilom pupils." 
 
 " But we don't protest." 
 
 " Our mere existence since the Dispersion is a protest," urged 
 Raphael. "When the stress of persecution lightens, we may 
 protest more consciously. We cannot have been preserved in 
 vain through so many centuries of horrors, through the invasions 
 of the Goths and Huns, through the Crusades, through the Holy 
 Roman Empire, through the times of Torquemada. It is not for 
 nothing that a handful of Jews loom so large in the history of 
 the world that their past is bound up with every noble human 
 effort, every high ideal, every development of science, literature 
 and art. The ancient faith that has united us so long must not 
 be lost just as it is on the very eve of surviving the faiths that 
 
THE CHRISTMAS DINNER. 337 
 
 sprang from it, even as it has survived Egypt, Assyria, Rome, 
 Greece and the Moors. If any of us fancy we have lost it, let us 
 keep together still. Who knows but that it will be born again in 
 us if we are only patient? Race affinity is a potent force ; why 
 be in a hurry to dissipate it? The Marannos you speak of were 
 but maimed heroes, yet one day the olden flame burst through 
 the layers of three generations of Christian profession and inter- 
 marriage, and a brilliant company of illustrious Spaniards threw 
 up their positions and sailed away in voluntary exile to serve the 
 God of Israel. We shall yet see a spiritual revival even among 
 our brilliant English Jews who have hid their face from their 
 own flesh.'' 
 
 The dark little girl looked up into his face with ill-suppressed 
 wonder. 
 
 " Have you done preaching at me, Raphael ? "' inquired Sidney. 
 " If so, pass me a banana.'' 
 
 Raphael smiled sadly and obeyed. 
 
 "Em afraid if I see much of Raphael I shall be converted to 
 Judaism,'' said Sidney, peeling the banana. " I had better take 
 a hansom to the Riviera at once. I intended to spend Christmas 
 there ; I never dreamed I should be talking theology in London." 
 " Oh, I think Christmas in London is best," said the hostess 
 unguardedly. 
 
 " Oh, I don't know. Give me Brighton," said the host. 
 " Well, yes, I suppose Brighton is pleasanter," said Mr. Mon- 
 tagu Samuels. 
 
 " Oh, but so many Jews go there," said Percy Saville. 
 "Yes, that is the drawback," said Mrs. Henry Goldsmith. 
 " Do you know, some years ago I discovered a delightful village 
 in Devonshire, and took the household there in the summer. 
 The very next year when I went down I found no less than two 
 Jewish families temporarily located there. Of course, I have 
 never gone there since." 
 
 " Yes, it's wonderful how Jews scent out all the nicest places," 
 agreed Mrs. Montagu Samuels. "Five years ago you could 
 escape them by not going to Ramsgate ; now even the Highlands 
 are getting impossible." 
 z 
 
338 GRANDCHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 Thereupon the hostess rose and the ladies retired to the draw- 
 ing-room, leaving the gentlemen to discuss coffee, cigars and the 
 paradoxes of Sidney, who, tired of religion, looked to dumb show 
 plays for the salvation of dramatic literature. 
 
 There was a little milk-jug on the coifee-tray. It represented 
 a victory over Mary O'Reilly. The late Aaron Goldsmith never 
 took milk till six hours after meat, and it was with some trepida- 
 tion that the present Mr. Goldsmith ordered it to be sent up one 
 evening after dinner. He took an early opportunity of explain- 
 ing apologetically to Mary that some of his guests were not so 
 pious as himself, and hospitality demanded the concession. 
 
 Mr. Henry Goldsmith did not like his coffee black. His 
 dinner-table was hardly ever without a guest. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 RAPHAEL LEON. 
 
 When the gentlemen joined the ladies, Raphael instinctively 
 returned to his companion of the dinner-table. She had been 
 singularly silent during the meal, but her manner had attracted 
 him. Over his black coffee and cigarette it struck him that she 
 might have been unwell, and that he had been insufificiently atten- 
 tive to the little duties of the table, and lie hastened to ask if she 
 had a headache. 
 
 "No, no,'' she said, with a grateful smile. "At least not more 
 than usual.'' Her smile was full of pensive sweetness, which 
 made her face beautiful. It was a face that would have been 
 almost plain but for the soul behind. It was dark, with great 
 earnest eyes. The profile was disappointing, the curves were 
 not perfect, and there was a reminder of Polish origin in the 
 lower jaw and the cheek-bone. Seen from the front, the face 
 fascinated again, in the Eastern glow of its coloring, in the flash 
 of the white teeth, in the depths of the brooding eyes, in the 
 strength of the features that yet softened to womanliest tender- 
 
RAPHAEL LEON. 339 
 
 ness and charm when flooded by the sunshine of a smile. The 
 figure was petite and graceful, set off by a simple tight-fitting, 
 high-necked dress of ivory silk draped with lace, with a spray of 
 Neapolitan violets at the throat. They sat in a niche of the 
 spacious and artistically furnished drawing-room, in the soft 
 light of the candles, talking quietly while Addie played 
 Chopin. 
 
 Mrs. Henry Goldsmith's aesthetic instincts had had full play 
 in the elaborate carelessness of iht euse/nble, and the result was 
 a triumph, a medley of Persian luxury and Parisian grace, a dream 
 of somniferous couches and arm-chairs, rich tapestry, vases, fans, 
 engravings, books, bronzes, tiles, plaques and flowers. Mr. 
 Henry Goldsmith was himself a connoisseur in the arts, his own 
 and his father's fortunes having been built up in the curio and 
 antique business, though to old Aaron Goldsmith appreciation 
 had meant strictly pricing, despite his genius for detecting false 
 Correggios and sham Louis Quatorze cabinets. 
 
 "Do you suffer from headaches.?" inquired Raphael solici- 
 tously, 
 
 "A little. The doctor says I studied too much and worked 
 too hard when a little girl. Such is the punishment of persever- 
 ance. Life isn't like the copy-books." 
 
 " Oh, but I wonder your parents let you over-exert yourself." 
 
 A melancholy smile played about the mobile lips. " I brought 
 myself up," she said. " You look puzzled — Oh, I know! Con- 
 fess you think Pm Miss Goldsmith! " 
 
 " Why — are — you — not ? " he stammered. 
 
 " No, my name is Ansell, Esther Ansell." 
 
 " Pardon me. I am so bad at remembering names in intro- 
 ductions. But Pve just come back from Oxford and it's the first 
 time Pve been to this house, and seeing you here without a cav- 
 alier when we arrived, I thought you lived here." 
 
 " You thought rightly, I do live here." She laughed gently at 
 his changing expression. 
 
 " I wonder Sidney never mentioned you to me," he said. 
 
 " Do you mean Mr. Graham? " she said with a slight blush. 
 
 "Yes, I know he visits here." 
 
340 GRANDCHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 "• Oh, he is an artist. He has eyes only for the beautiful." She 
 spoke quickly, a little embarrassed. 
 
 " You wrong him ; his interests are wider than that." 
 
 " Do you know I am so glad you didn't pay me the obvious 
 compliment?" she said, recovering herself. "It looked as if I 
 were fishing for it. I'm so stupid." 
 
 He looked at her blankly. 
 
 "fm stupid," he said, "for I don't know what compliment I 
 missed paying." 
 
 " If you regret it I shall not think so well of you," she said. 
 "You know I've heard all about your brilliant success at Ox- 
 ford." 
 
 " They put all those petty little things in the Jewish papers, 
 don't they ? " 
 
 " I read it in the Thnes^'' retorted Esther. " You took a 
 double first and the prize for poetry and a heap of other things, 
 but I noticed the prize for poetry, because it is so rare to find 
 a Jew writing poetry." 
 
 " Prize poetry is not poetry," he reminded her. " But, con- 
 sidering the Jewish Bible contains the finest poetry in the world, 
 I do not see why you should be surprised to find a Jew trying 
 to write some." 
 
 " Oh, you know what I mean," answered Esther. " What is 
 the use of talking about the old Jews? We seem to be a differ- 
 ent race now. Who cares for poetry?" 
 
 " Our poet's scroll reaches on uninterruptedly through the 
 Middle Ages. The passing phenomenon of to-day must not 
 blind us to the real traits of our race," said Raphael. 
 
 " Nor must we be blind to the passing phenomenon of to-day," 
 retorted Esther. " We have no ideals now." 
 
 " I see Sidney has been infecting you," he said gently. 
 
 " No, no ; I beg you will not think that," she said, flushing 
 almost resentfully. " I have thought these things, as the Scripture 
 tells us to meditate on the Law, day and night, sleeping and 
 waking, standing up and sitting down." 
 
 " You cannot have thought of them without prejudice, then," 
 he answered, " if you say we have no ideals." 
 
RAPHAEL LEON. 341 
 
 " I mean, weVe not responsive to great poetry — to the mes- 
 sage of a Browning for instance." 
 
 "I deny it. Oaly a small percentage of his own race is 
 responsive. I would wager our percentage is proportionally 
 higher. But Browning's philosophy of religion is already ours, 
 for hundreds of years every Saturday night every Jew has been 
 proclaiming the view of life and Providence in ' Pisgah Sights. ' " 
 
 All's lend and borrow, 
 
 Good, see, wants evil, 
 Joy demands sorrow, 
 
 Angel weds devil. 
 
 "What is this but the philosophy of our formula for ushering 
 out the Sabbath and welcoming in the days of toil, accepting 
 the holy and the profane, the light and the darkness?" 
 
 " Is that in the prayer-book? " said Esther astonished. 
 
 " Yes ; you see you are ignorant of our own ritual while 
 admiring everything non-Jewish. Excuse me if I am frank, 
 Miss Ansell, but there are many people among us who rave over 
 Italian antiquities but can see nothing poetical in Judaism. 
 They listen eagerly to Dante but despise David." 
 
 " I shall certainly look up the liturgy," said Esther. " But 
 that will not alter my opinion. The Jew may say these fine 
 things, but they are only a tune to him. Yes, I begin to recall 
 the passage in Hebrew — I see my father making HavdolaJi — 
 the melody goes in my head like a sing-song. But I never in 
 my life thought of the meaning. As a little girl I always got 
 my conscious religious inspiration out of the New Testament. 
 It sounds very shocking, I know." 
 
 " Undoubtedly you put your finger on an evil. But there is 
 religious edification in common prayers and ceremonies even 
 when divorced from meaning. Remember the Latin prayers of 
 the Catholic poor. Jews may be below Judaism, but are not all 
 men below their creed ? If the race which gave the world the 
 Bible knows it least — " He stopped suddenly, for Addie was 
 playing pianissimo, and although she was his sister, he did not 
 like to put her out. 
 
342 GRANDCHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 " It comes to this," said Esther when Chopin spoke louder, 
 " our prayer-book needs depolarization, as Wendell Holmes says 
 of the Bible." 
 
 " Exactly," assented Raphael. " And what our people need 
 is to make acquaintance with the treasure of our own literature. 
 Why go to Browning for theism, when the words of his '■ Rabbi 
 Ben Ezra ' are but a synopsis of a famous Jewish argument : 
 
 " ' I see the whole design, 
 I, who saw Power, see now Love, perfect too. 
 
 Perfect I call Thy plan, 
 
 Thanks that I was a man ! 
 Maker, remaker, complete, I trust what thou shalt do.' 
 
 " It sounds like a bit of Bachja. That there is a Power out- 
 side us nobody denies ; that this Power works for our good and 
 wisely, is not so hard to grant when the facts of the soul are 
 weighed with the facts of Nature. Power, Love, Wisdom — 
 there you have a real trinity which makes up the Jewish God. 
 And in this God we trust, incomprehensible as are His ways, 
 unintelligible as is His essence. *• Thy ways are not My ways 
 nor Thy thoughts My thoughts.' That comes into collision 
 with no modern philosophies ; we appeal to experience and 
 make no demands upon the faculty for believing things ' because 
 they are impossible.' And we are proud and happy in that the 
 dread Unknown God of the infinite Universe has chosen our 
 race as the medium by which to reveal His will to the world. 
 We are sanctified to His service. History testifies that this has 
 verily been our mission, that we have taught the world religion 
 as truly as Greece has taught beauty and science. Our mirac- 
 ulous survival through the cataclysms of ancient and modern 
 dynasties is a proof that our mission is not yet over." 
 
 The sonata came to an end ; Percy Saville started a comic 
 song, playing his own accompaniment. Fortunately, it was 
 loud and rollicking. 
 
 " And do you really believe that we are sanctified to God's 
 service?" said Esther, casting a melancholy glance at Percy's 
 grimaces. 
 
RAPHAEL LEON. 343 
 
 " Can there be any doubt of it? God made choice of one race 
 to be messengers and apostles, martyrs at need to His truth. 
 Happily, the sacred duty is ours," he said earnestly, utterly un- 
 conscious of the incongruity that struck Esther so keenly. And 
 yet, of the two, he had by far the greater gift of humor. It did 
 not destroy his idealism, but kept it in touch with things mun- 
 dane. Esther's vision, though more penetrating, lacked this 
 corrective of humor, which makes always for breadth of view. 
 Perhaps it was because she was a woman, that the trivial, sordid 
 details of life's comedy hurt her so acutely that she could scarcely 
 sit out the play patiently. Where Raphael would have admired 
 the lute, Esther was troubled by the little rifts in it. 
 
 "But isn't that a narrow conception of God's revelation?" she 
 asked. 
 
 " No. Why should God not teach through a great race as 
 through a great man ? " 
 
 " And you really think that Judaism is not dead, intellectually 
 speaking?" 
 
 "How can it die? Its truths are eternal, deep in human 
 nature and the constitution of things. Ah, I wish I could get 
 you to see with the eyes of the great Rabbis and sages in Israel ; 
 to look on this human life of ours, not with the pessimism of 
 Christianity, but as a holy and precious gift, to be enjoyed heart- 
 ily yet spent in God's service — birth, marriage, death, all holy; 
 good, evil, alike holy. Nothing on God's earth common or pur- 
 poseless. Everything chanting the great song of God's praise ; the 
 morning stars singing together, as we say in the Dawn Service." 
 
 As he spoke Esther's eyes filled with strange tears. Enthu- 
 siasm always infected her, and for a brief instant her sordid 
 universe seemed to be transfigured to a sacred joyous reality, 
 full of infinite potentialities of worthy work and noble pleasure. 
 A thunder of applausive hands marked the end of Percy Saville's 
 comic song. Mr. Montagu Samuels was beaming at his brother's 
 grotesque drollery. There was an interval of general conversa- 
 tion, followed by a round game in which Raphael and Esther 
 had to take part. It was very dull, and they were glad to find 
 themselves together again. 
 
344 GRANDCHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 "Ah, yes," said Esther, sadly, resuming the conversation as if 
 there had been no break, " but this is a Judaism of your own 
 creation. The real Judaism is a religion of pots and pans. It 
 does not call to the souPs depths like Christianity.'" 
 
 " Again, it is a question of the point of view taken. From a 
 practical, our ceremonialism is a training in self-conquest, while 
 it links the generations ' bound each to each by natural piety,' 
 and unifies our atoms dispersed to the four corners of the earth 
 as nothing else could. From a theoretical, it is but an extension 
 of the principle I tried to show you. Eating, drinking, every 
 act of life is holy, is sanctified by some relation to heaven. We 
 will not arbitrarily divorce some portions of life from religion, 
 and say these are of the world, the flesh, or the devil, any more 
 than we will save up our religion for Sundays. There is no 
 devil, no original sin, no need of salvation from it, no need of a 
 mediator. Every Jew is in as direct relation with God as the 
 Chief Rabbi. Christianity is an historical failure — its counsels 
 of perfection, its command to turn the other cheek — a farce. 
 When a modern spiritual genius, a Tolstoi", repeats it, all Chris- 
 tendom laughs, as at a new freak of insanity. All practical, 
 honorable men are Jews at heart. Judaism has never tampered 
 with human dignity, nor perverted the moral consciousness. Our 
 housekeeper, a Christian, once said to my sister Addie, ' Fm so 
 glad to see you do so much charity. Miss ; / need not, because 
 Fm saved already.' Judais?n is the true '- religion of humanity.' 
 It does not seek to make men and women angels before their 
 time. Our marriage service blesses the King of the Universe, 
 who has created 'joy and gladness, bridegroom and bride, mirth 
 and exultation, pleasure and delight, love, brotherhood, peace 
 and fellowship.' " 
 
 " It is all very beautiful in theory," said Esther. " But so is 
 Christianity, which is also not to be charged with its historical 
 caricatures, nor with its superiority to average human nature. 
 As for the doctrine of original sin, it is the one thing that the 
 science of heredity has demonstrated, with a difference. But 
 do not be alarmed, I do not call myself a Christian because I 
 see some relation between the dogmas of Christianity and the 
 
RAPHAEL LEON. 345 
 
 truths of experience, nor even because" — here she smiled, 
 wistfully — "I should like to believe in Jesus. But you are less 
 logical. When you said there was no devil, I felt sure I was 
 right ; that you belong to the modern schools, who get rid of 
 all the old beliefs but cannot give up the old names. You know, 
 as well as I do, that, take away the belief in hell, a real old- 
 fashioned hell of fire and brimstone, even such Judaism as sur- 
 vives would freeze to death without that genial warmth.'" 
 
 *' I know nothing of the kind," he said, ^' and I am in no 
 sense a modern. I am (to adopt a phrase which is, to me, 
 tautologous) an orthodox Jew." 
 
 Esther smiled. " Forgive my smiling," she said. " I am 
 thinking of the orthodox Jews I used to know, who used to bind 
 their phylacteries on their arms and foreheads every morning." 
 
 " I bind my phylacteries on my arm and forehead every morn- 
 ing," he said, simply. 
 
 "What! " gasped Esther. " You an Oxford man!" 
 
 "Yes," he said, gravely. " Is it so astonishing to you?" 
 
 "Yes, it is. You are the first educated Jew I have ever met 
 who believed in that sort of thing." 
 
 "Nonsense?" he said, inquiringly. "There are hundreds like 
 me." 
 
 She shook her head. 
 
 " There's the Rev. Joseph Strelitski. I suppose he does, but 
 then he's paid for it." 
 
 " Oh, why will you sneer at Strelitski? " he said, pained. "He 
 has a noble soul. It is to the privilege of his conversation that 
 I owe my best understanding of Judaism." 
 
 "Ah, I was wondering why the old arguments sounded so 
 different, so much more convincing, from your lips," murmured 
 Esther. "Now I know; because he wears a white tie. That 
 sets up all my bristles of contradiction when he opens his 
 mouth." 
 
 " But I wear a white tie, too," said Raphael, his smile broad- 
 ening in sympathy with the slow response on the girl's serious 
 face. 
 
 " That's not a trade-mark," she protested. " But forgive me ; 
 
346 GRANDCHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 I didn't know Strelitski was a friend of yours. I won't say a 
 word against him any more. His sermons really are above the 
 average, and he strives more than the others to make Judaism 
 more spiritual." 
 
 "Mo;:£ spiritual !" he repeated, the pained expression return- 
 ing. /" Why, the very theory of Judaism has always been the 
 spirituMtzation of the material." 
 
 " And the practice of Judaism has always been the materiali- 
 zation of the spiritual," she answered. 
 
 He pondered the saying thoughtfully, his face growing sadder. 
 
 "You have lived among your books," Esther went on. "I 
 have lived among the brutal facts. I was born in the Ghetto, 
 and when you talk of the mission of Israel, silent sardonic 
 laughter goes through me as I think of the squalor and the 
 misery." 
 
 "God works through human suffering; his ways are large," 
 said Raphael, almost in a whisper. 
 
 " And wasteful," said Esther. " 3pare me clerical platitudes 
 a la Strelitski. I have seen so muchj) 
 
 " And suffered much ? " he asked gently. 
 
 She nodded scarce perceptibly. " Oh, if you only knew my life! " 
 
 " Tell it me," he said. His voice was soft and caressing. 
 His frank soul seemed to pierce through all conventionalities, 
 and to go straight to hers. 
 
 "I cannot, not now," she murmured. "There is so much to 
 tell." 
 
 "Tell me a little," he urged. 
 
 She began to speak of her history, scarce knowing why, for- 
 getting he was a stranger. Was it racial affinity, or was it 
 merely the spiritual affinity of souls that feel their identity 
 through all differences of brain? 
 
 "What is the use?" she said. "You, with your childhood, 
 could never realize mine. My mother died when I was seven; 
 my father was a Russian pauper alien who rarely got work. 
 I had an elder brother of brilliant promise. He died before he 
 was thirteen. I had a lot of brothers and sisters and a grand- 
 mother, and we all lived, half starved, in a garret." 
 
RAPHAEL LEON. 347 
 
 Her eyes grew humid at the recollection ; she saw the spa- 
 cious drawing-room and the dainty bric-a-brac through a mist. 
 
 " Poor child! '' murmured Raphael. 
 
 '^ Strelitski, by the way, lived in our street then. He sold 
 cigars on commission and earned an honest living. Some- 
 times I used to think that is why he never cares to meet my 
 eye ; he remembers me and knows I remember him ; at other 
 times I thought he knew that I saw through his professions of 
 orthodoxy. But as you champion him, I suppose I must look 
 for a more creditable reason for his inability to look me straight 
 in the face. Well, I grew up, I got on well at school, and about 
 ten years ago I won a prize given by Mrs. Henry Goldsmith, 
 whose kindly interest I excited thenceforward. At thirteen I 
 became a teacher. This had always been my aspiration ; when 
 it was granted I was more unhappy than ever. I began to 
 realize acutely that we were terribly poor. I found it difficult to 
 dress so as to insure the respect of my pupils and colleagues ; 
 the work was unspeakably hard and unpleasant ; tiresome and 
 hungry little girls had to be ground to suit the inspectors, and 
 fell victims to the then prevalent competition among teachers 
 for a high percentage of passes. I had to teach Scripture his- 
 tory and I didn't believe in it. None of us believed in it ; the 
 talking serpent, the Egyptian miracles, Samson, Jonah and the 
 whale, and all that. Everything about me was sordid and 
 unlovely. I yearned for a fuller, wider life, for larger knowl- 
 edge. I hungered for the sun. In short, I was intensely mis- 
 erable. At home things went from bad to worse ; often I was 
 the sole bread-winner, and my few shillings a week were our 
 only income. My brother 'Solomon grew up, but could not 
 get into a decent situation because he must not work on the 
 Sabbath. Oh, if you knew how young lives are cramped and 
 shipwrecked at the start by this one curse of the Sabbath, you 
 would not wish us to persevere in our isolation. It sent a mad 
 thrill of indignation through me to find my father daily entreat- 
 ing the deaf heavens." 
 
 He would not argue now. His eyes were misty. 
 
 " Go on! " he murmured. 
 
348 GRANDCHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 " The rest is nothing. Mrs. Henry Goldsmith stepped in as 
 the dea ex machma. Slie had no children, and she took it into 
 her head to adopt me. Naturall}' I was dazzled, though anxious 
 about my brothers and sisters. But my father looked upon it as 
 a godsend. Without consulting me, Mrs. Goldsmith arranged 
 that he and the other children should be shipped to America ; 
 she got him some work at a relative's in Chicago. I suppose she 
 was afraid of having the family permanently hanging about the 
 Terrace. At first I was grieved ; but when the pain of parting 
 was over I found myself relieved to be rid of them, especially of 
 my father. It sounds shocking, I know, but I can confess all my 
 vanities now, for I have learned all is vanity. I thought Para- 
 dise was opening before me ; I was educated by the best masters, 
 and graduated at the London University. I travelled and saw 
 the Continent ; had my fill of sunshine and beauty. I have had 
 many happy moments, realized many childish ambitions, but 
 happiness is as far away as ever. My old school-colleagues envy 
 me, yet I do not know whether I would not go back without 
 regret." 
 
 "Is there anything lacking in your life, then?" he asked 
 gently. 
 
 " No, I happen to be a nasty, discontented little thing, that is 
 all," she said, with a faint smile. " Look on me as a psycholog- 
 ical paradox, or a text for the preacher." 
 
 "And do the Goldsmiths know of your discontent? " 
 
 " Heaven forbid! They have been so very kind to me. We 
 get along very well together. I never discuss religion with them, 
 only the services and the minister." 
 
 " And your relatives ? " 
 
 "Ah, they are all well and happy. Solomon has a store in 
 Detroit. He is only nineteen and dreadfully enterprising. 
 Father is a pillar of a Chicago Chevra. He still talks Yiddish. 
 He has escaped learning American just as he escaped learning 
 English. I buy him a queer old Hebrew book sometimes with 
 my pocket-money and he is happy. One little sister is a type- 
 writer, and the other is just out of school and does the house- 
 work. I suppose I shall go out and see them all some day." 
 
RAPHAEL LEON. 349 
 
 "What became of the grandmother you mentioned? " 
 
 " She had a Charity Funeral a year before the miracle hap- 
 pened. She was very weak and ill, and the Charity Doctor 
 warned her that she must not fast on -the Day of Atonement. 
 But she wouldn't even moisten her parched lips with a drop of 
 cold water. And so she died ; exhorting my father with her 
 last breath to beware of Mrs. Simons (a good-hearted widow 
 wdio was very kind to us), and to marry a pious Polish woman." 
 
 "And did he?'' 
 
 "No, I am still stepmotherless. Your white tie's gone wrong. 
 It's all on one side." 
 
 " It generally is," said Raphael, fumbling perfunctorily at the 
 little bow. 
 
 " Let me put it straight. There! And now you know all about 
 me. I hope you are going to repay my confidences in kind." 
 
 " I am afraid I cannot oblige with anything so romantic," he 
 said smiling. " I was born of rich but honest parents, of a fam- 
 ily settled in England for three generations, and went to Harrow 
 and Oxford in due course. That is all. I saw a little of the 
 Ghetto, though, when I was a boy. I had some correspondence 
 on Hebrew Literature with a great Jewish scholar, Gabriel Ham- 
 burg (he lives in Stockholm now), and one day when I was up 
 from Harrow I went to see him. By good fortune I assisted at 
 the foundation of the Holy Land League, now presided over by 
 Gideon, the member for Whitechapel. I was moved to tears by 
 the enthusiasm ; it was there I made the acquaintance of Stre- 
 litski. He spoke as if inspired. I also met a poverty-stricken 
 poet, Melchitsedek Pinchas, who afterwards sent me his work, 
 MetatoroiCs Flames, to Harrow. A real neglected genius. Now 
 there's the man to bear in mind when one speaks of Jews and 
 poetry. After that night I kept up a regular intercourse with 
 the Ghetto, and have been there several times lately." 
 
 " But surely you don't also long to return to Palestine? " 
 
 " I do. Why should we not have our own country ? " 
 
 "It would be too chaotic! Fancy all the Ghettos of the world 
 amalgamating. Everybody would want to be ambassador at 
 Paris, as the old joke says." 
 
350 GRANDCHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 "It would be a problem for the statesmen among us. Dis- 
 senters, Churchmen, Atheists, Slum Savages, Clodhoppers, Phi- 
 losophers, Aristocrats — make up Protestant England. It is the 
 popular ignorance of the fact that Jews are as diverse as Protes- 
 tants that makes such novels as we were discussing at dinner 
 harmful.'" 
 
 " But is the author to blame for that ? He does not claim to 
 present the whole truth but a facet. English society lionized 
 Thackeray for his pictures of it. Good heavens! Do Jews sup- 
 pose they alone are free from the snobbery, hypocrisy and vul- 
 garity that have shadowed every society that has ever existed?'^ 
 
 " In no work of art can the spectator be left out of account," 
 he urged. " In a world full of smouldering prejudices a scrap of 
 paper may start the bonfire. English society can afford to laugh 
 where Jewish society must weep. That is why our papers are 
 always so effusively grateful for Christian compliments. You 
 see it is quite true that the author paints not the Jews but bad 
 Jews, but, in the absence of paintings of good Jews, bad Jews 
 are taken as identical with Jews." 
 
 " Oh, then you agree with the others about the book?" she 
 said in a disappoinited tone. 
 
 " I haven't read it ; I am speaking generally. Have you? " 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "And what did you think of it? I don't remember your 
 expressing an opinion at table." 
 
 She pondered an instant. 
 
 " I thought highly of it and agreed with every word of it." 
 She paused. He looked expectantly into the dark intense face. 
 He saw it was charged with further speech. 
 
 "Till I met you," she concluded abruptly. 
 
 A wave of emotion passed over his face. 
 
 "You don't mean that?" he murmured. 
 
 "Yes, I do. You have shown me new lights." 
 
 " I thought I was speaking platitudes," he said simply. " It 
 would be nearer the truth to say you have given me new lights." 
 
 The little face flushed with pleasure ; the dark skin shining, 
 the eyes sparkling. Esther looked quite pretty. 
 
RAPHAEL LEON. 351 
 
 "How is that possible?'' she said. "You have read and 
 thought twice as much as I." 
 
 " Then you must be indeed poorly off," he said, smiling. 
 " But I am really glad we met. I have been asked to edit a new 
 Jewish paper, and our talk has made me see more clearly the 
 lines on which it must be run, if it is to do any good. I am 
 awfully indebted to you." 
 
 "A new Jewish paper?" she said, deeply interested. "We 
 have so many already. What is its raison d'etj'ef'' 
 
 " To convert you," he said smiling, but with a ring of serious- 
 ness in the words. 
 
 " Isn't that like a steam-hammer cracking a nut or Hoti burn- 
 ing down his house to roast a pig? And suppose I refuse to take 
 in the new Jewish paper? Will it suspend publication?" He 
 laughed. 
 
 "What's this about a new Jewish paper? "said Mrs. Gold- 
 smith, suddenly appearing in front of them with her large genial 
 smile. "Is that what you two have been plotting? I noticed 
 you've laid your heads together all the evening. Ah well, birds 
 of a feather flock together. Do you know my little Esther took 
 the scholarship for logic at London? I wanted her to proceed 
 to the M. A. at once, but the doctor said she must have a rest." 
 She laid her hand affectionately on the girl's hair. 
 
 Esther looked embarrassed. 
 
 " And so she is still a Bachelor," said Raphael, smiling but 
 evidently impressed. 
 
 "Yes, but not for long I hope," returned Mrs. Goldsmith. 
 " Come, darling, everybody's dying to hear one of your little 
 songs." 
 
 " The dying is premature," said Esther. " You know I only 
 sing for my own amusement." 
 
 " Sing for mine, then," pleaded Raphael. 
 
 " To make you laugh ? " queried Esther. " I know you'll laugh 
 at the way I play the accompaniment. One's fingers have to be 
 used to it from childhood — " 
 
 Her eyes finished the sentence, "and you know what mine 
 was." 
 
352 GRANDCHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 The look seemed to seal their secret sympathy. 
 
 She went to the piano and sang in a thin but trained soprano. 
 The song was a ballad with a quaint air full of sadness and 
 heartbreak. To Raphael, who had never heard the psalmic 
 wails of "The Sons of the Covenant" or the Polish ditties of 
 Fanny Belcovitch, it seemed also full of originality. He wished 
 to lose liimself in the sweet melancholy, but Mrs. Goldsmith, 
 who had taken Esther"'s seat at his side, would not let him. 
 
 " Her own composition — words and music,'' she whispered. 
 " I wanted her to publish it, but she is so shy and retiring. Who 
 would think she was the child of a pauper emigrant, a rough 
 jewel one has picked up and polished? If you really are going 
 to start a new Jewish paper, she might be of use to you. And 
 then there is Miss Cissy Levine — you have read her novels, of 
 course? Sweetly pretty! Do you know, I think we are badly 
 in w^ant of a new paper, and you are the only man in the com- 
 munity who could give it us. We want educating, we poor 
 people, we know so little of our faith and our literature."" 
 
 " I am so glad you feel the want of it," whispered Raphael, 
 forgetting Esther in his pleasure at finding a soul yearning for 
 the light. 
 
 " Intensely. I suppose it will be advanced? " 
 
 Raphael looked at her a moment a little bewildered. 
 
 "No, it will be orthodox. It is the orthodox party that sup- 
 plies the funds." 
 
 A flash of light leaped into Mrs. Goldsmith's eyes. 
 
 "I am so glad it is not as I feared," she said. "The rival 
 party has hitherto monopolized the press, and I was afraid that 
 like most of our young men of talent you would give it that ten- 
 dency. Now at last we poor orthodox will have a voice. It will 
 be wTitten in English ? " 
 
 " As far as I can," he said, smiling. 
 
 " No, you know what I mean. I thought the majority of the 
 orthodox couldn't read English and that they have their jargon 
 papers. Will you be able to get a circulation?" 
 
 "There are thousands of families in the East End now among 
 whom English is read if not written. The evening papers sell 
 as well there as anywhere else in London." 
 
RAPHAEL LEON. 353 
 
 " Bravo!" murmured Mrs. Goldsmith, clapping her hands. 
 
 Esther had finished her song. Raphael awoke to the remem- 
 brance of her. But she did not come to him again, sitting down 
 instead on a lounge near the piano, where Sidney bantered 
 Addie with his most paradoxical persiflage. 
 
 Raphael looked at her. Her expression was abstracted, her 
 eyes had an inward look. He hoped her headache had not got 
 worse. She did not look at all pretty now. She seemed a frail 
 little creature with a sad thoughtful face and an air of being alone 
 in the midst of a merry company. Poor little thing! He felt as 
 if he had known her for years. She seemed curiously out of har- 
 mony with all these people. He doubted even his own capacity 
 to commune with her inmost soul. He wished he could be of 
 service to her, could do anything for her that might lighten her 
 gloom and turn her morbid thoughts in healthier directions. 
 ^ The butler brought in some claret negus. It was the break-up 
 signal. Raphael drank his negus with a pleasant sense of arm- 
 ing himself against the cold air. He wanted to walk home 
 snioking his pipe, which he always carried in his overcoat. He 
 clasped Esther^s hand with a cordial smile of farewell. 
 "We shall meet again soon, I trust,'' he said. 
 " I hope so," said Esther ; " put me down as a subscriber to 
 
 that paper." 
 
 "Thank you," he said; "I won't forget." 
 
 "What's that?" said Sidney, pricking up his ears ; "doubled 
 
 your circulation already? " 
 
 Sidney put his cousin Addie into a hansom, as she did not 
 
 care to walk, and got in beside her. 
 
 " My feet are tired," she said ; " I danced a lot last night, and 
 
 was out a lot this afternoon. It's all very well for Raphael, who 
 
 doesn't know whether he's walking on his head or his heels. 
 
 Here, put your collar up, Raphael, not like that, it's all crumpled. 
 
 Haven't you got a handkerchief to put round your throat? 
 
 Where's that one I gave you? Lend him yours, Sidney." 
 
 "You don't mind if /catch my death of cold; I've got to go 
 
 on a Christmas dance when I deposit you on your doorstep," 
 
 grumbled Sidney. "Catch! There, you duffer! It's gone into 
 
 2A 
 
354 GRANDCHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 the mud. Sure you wonH jump in? Plenty of room. Addie 
 can sit on my knee. Well, ta, ta ! Merry Christmas." 
 
 Raphael lit his pipe and strode off with long ungainly strides. 
 It was a clear frosty night, and the moonlight glistened on the 
 silent spaces of street and square. 
 
 " Go to bed, my dear," said Mrs. Goldsmith, returning to the 
 lounge where Esther still sat brooding. " You look quite worn 
 out." 
 
 Left alone, Mrs. Goldsmith smiled pleasantly at Mr. Gold- 
 smith, who, uncertain of how he had behaved himself, always 
 waited anxiously for the verdict. He was pleased to find it was 
 " not guilty " this time. 
 
 " I think that went off very well," she said. She was looking 
 very lovely to-night, the low bodice emphasizing the voluptuous 
 outlines of the bust. 
 
 " Splendidly," he returned. He stood with his coat-tails to 
 the fire, his coarse-grained face beaming like an extra lamp. 
 "The people and those croquettes were A i. The way Mary's 
 picked up French cookery is wonderful." 
 
 " Yes, especially considering she denies herself butter. But 
 Pm not thinking of that nor of our guests." He looked at her 
 wonderingly. " Henry," she continued impressively, " how 
 would you like to get into Parliament ? " 
 
 "Eh, Parliament? Me? " he stammered. 
 
 " Yes, why not? Pve always had it in my eye." 
 
 His face grew gloomy. "It is not practicable," he said, shak- 
 ing the head with the prominent teeth and ears. 
 
 " Not practicable? " she echoed sharply. " Just think of what 
 you've achieved already, and don't tell me you're going to stop 
 now. Not practicable, indeed! Why, that's the very word you 
 used years ago in the provinces when I said you ought to be 
 President. You said old Winkelstein had been in the position 
 too long to be ousted. And yet I felt certain your superior 
 English would tell in the long run in such a miserable congrega- 
 tion of foreigners, and when Winkelstein had made that delicious 
 blunder about the ' university ' of the Exodus instead of the ' anni- 
 versary,' and I went about laughing over it in all the best circles, 
 
RAPHAEL LEON. 855 
 
 the poor man's day was over. And when we came to London, 
 and seemed to fall again to the bottom of the ladder because our 
 greatness was swallowed up in the vastness, didn't you despair 
 then? Didn't you tell me that we should never rise to the sur- 
 face ? " 
 
 '' It didn't seem probable, did it?" he murmured in self-de- 
 fence. 
 
 " Of course not. That's just my point. Your getting into the 
 House of Commons doesn't seem probable now. But in those 
 days your getting merely to know M. P.'s was equally improb- 
 able. The synagogal dignities were all filled up by old hands, 
 there was no way of getting on the Council and meeting our 
 magnates." 
 
 " Yes, but your solution of that difficulty won't do here. I had 
 not much difficulty in persuading the United Synagogue that a 
 new synagogue was a crying want in Kensington, but I could 
 hardly persuade the government that a new constituency is a 
 crying want in London." He spoke pettishly ; his ambition 
 always required rousing and was easily daunted. 
 
 "No, but somebody's going to start a new something else, 
 Henry," said Mrs. Goldsmith with enigmatic cheerfulness. 
 " Trust in me ; think of what we have done in less than a dozen 
 years at comparatively trifling costs, thanks to that happy idea of 
 a new synagogue — you the representative of the Kensington 
 synagogue, with a ' Sir ' for a colleague and a congregation that 
 from exceptionally small beginnings has sprung up to be the 
 most fashionable in London ; likewise a member of the Council 
 of the Anglo-Jewish Association and an honorary officer of the 
 ShecJiitah Board ; I, connected with several first-class charities, 
 on the Committee of our leading school, and the acknowledged 
 discoverer of a girl who gives promise of doing something nota- 
 ble in literature or music. We have a reputation for wealth, 
 culture and hospitality, and it is quite two years since we shook 
 off the last of the Maida Vale lot, who are so graphically painted 
 in that novel of Mr. Armitage's. Who are our guests now? 
 Take to-night's ! A celebrated artist, a brilliant young Oxford 
 man, both scions of the same wealthy and well-considered fam- 
 
356 GRANDCHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 ily, an authoress of repute who dedicates her books (by permis- 
 sion) to the very first famiUes of the community; and lastly the 
 Montagu Samuels with the brother, Percy Saville, who both go 
 only to the best houses. Is there any other house, where the 
 company is so exclusively Jewish, that could boast of a better 
 gathering?" 
 
 '■'• I don't say anything against the company," said her hus- 
 band awkwardly, " it's better than we got in the Provinces. But 
 your company isn't your constituency. What constituency 
 would have me? " 
 
 "Certainly, no ordinary constituency would have you," ad- 
 mitted his wife frankly. " I am thinking of Whitechapel." 
 
 " But Gideon represents Whitechapel." 
 
 " Certainly ; as Sidney Graham says, he represents it very 
 well. But he has made himself unpopular, his name has 
 appeared in print as a guest at City banquets, where the food 
 can't be kosher. He has alienated a goodly proportion of the 
 Jewish vote." 
 
 "Well?" said Mr. Goldsmith, still wonderingly. 
 
 " Now is the time to bid for his shoes. Raphael Leon is 
 about to establish a new Jewish paper. I was mistaken about 
 that young man. You remember my telling you I had heard he 
 was eccentric and despite his brilliant career a little touched on 
 religious matters. I naturally supposed his case was like that of 
 one or two other Jewish young men we know and that he yearned 
 for spirituality, and his remarks at table rather confirmed the 
 impression. But he is worse than that — and I nearly put my 
 foot in it — his craziness is on the score of orthodo.xy! Fancy 
 that! A man who has been to Harrow and O.xford lonijing for 
 a gaberdine and side curls I Well, well, live and learn. What a 
 sad trial for his parents! " She paused, musing. 
 
 " But, Rosetta, what has Raphael Leon to do with my getting 
 into Parliament? " 
 
 " Don't be stupid. Henry. Haven't I explained to you that 
 Leon is going to start an orthodox paper which will be circulated 
 among your future constituents. It's extremely fortunate that we 
 have always kept our religion. We have a widespread reputation 
 
RAPHAEL LEON. 357 
 
 for orthodoxy. We are friends with Leon, and we can get Esther 
 to write for the paper (I could see he was rather struck by her). 
 Through this paper we can keep you and your orthodoxy con- 
 stantly before the constituency. The poor people are quite 
 fascinated by the idea of rich Jews like us keeping a strictly 
 kosher table; but the image of a Member of Parliament with 
 phylacteries on his forehead will simply intoxicate them." She 
 smiled, herself, at the image ; the smile that always intoxicated 
 Percy Saville. 
 
 " You're a wonderful woman, Rosetta," said Henry, smiling in 
 response with admiring affection and making his incisors more 
 prominent. He drew her head down to him and kissed her lips. 
 She returned his kiss lingeringly and they had a flash of that 
 happiness which is born of mutual fidelity arid trust. 
 
 "Can I do anything for you, mum, afore I go to bed?" said 
 stout old Mary O'Reilly, appearing at the door. Mary was a 
 privileged person, unappalled even by the butler. Having no 
 relatives, she never took a holiday and never went out except to 
 Chapel. 
 
 " No, Mary, thank you. The dinner was excellent. Good 
 night and merry Christmas." 
 
 " Same to you, mum," and as the unconscious instrument of 
 Henry Goldsmith's candidature turned away, the Christmas bells 
 broke merrily upon the night. The peals fell upon the ears of 
 Raphael Leon, still striding along, casting a gaunt shadow on the 
 hoar-frosted pavement, but he marked them not ; upon Addie 
 sitting by her bedroom mirror thinking of Sidney speeding to 
 the Christmas dance ; upon Esther turning restlessly on the 
 luxurious eider-down, oppressed by panoramic pictures of the 
 martyrdom of her race. Lying between sleep and waking, 
 especially when her brain had been excited, she had the faculty 
 of seeing wonderful vivid visions, indistinguishable from realities. 
 The martyrs who mounted the scaffold and the stake all had the 
 face of Raphael. 
 
 "The mission of Israel" buzzed through her brain. Oh, the 
 irony of history! Here was another life going to be wasted on 
 an illusory dream. The figures of Raphael and her father sud- 
 
358 GRANDCHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 denly came into grotesque juxtaposition. A bitter smile passed 
 across her face. 
 
 The Christmas bells rang on, proclaiming Peace in the name 
 of Him who came to bring a sword into the world. 
 
 " Surely," she thought, '• the people of Christ has been the 
 Christ of peoples."' 
 
 And then she sobbed meaninglessly in the darkness. 
 
 CHAPTER HI. 
 "the flag of judah." 
 
 The call to edit the new Jewish paper seemed to Raphael the 
 voice of Providence. It came just when he was hesitating about 
 his future, divided between the attractions of the ministry, pure 
 Hebrew scholarship and philanthropy. The idea of a paper de- 
 stroyed these conflicting claims by comprehending them all. A 
 paper would be at once a pulpit, a medium for organizing effec- 
 tive human service, and an incentive to serious study in the 
 preparation of scholarly articles 
 
 The paper was to be the property of the Co-operative Kosher 
 Society, an association originally founded to supply unimpeach- 
 able Passover cakes. It was suspected by the pious that there 
 was a taint of heresy in the flour used by the ordinary bakers, 
 and it was remarked that the Rabbinate itself imported its Mat- 
 zoth from abroad. Successful in its first object, the Co operative 
 Kosher Society extended its operations to more perennial com- 
 modities, and sought to save Judaism from dubious cheese and 
 butter, as well as to provide public baths for women in accord- 
 ance with the precepts of Leviticus. But these ideals were not 
 so easy to achieve, and so gradually the idea of a paper to preach 
 them to a godless age formed itself. The members of the Soci- 
 etv met in Aaron Schlesinsrer's back office to consider them. 
 Schlesinger was a cigar merchant, and the discussions of the 
 Society were invariably obscured by gratuitous smoke Schle- 
 
''THE FLAG OF JUDAH.'' 359 
 
 singer's junior partner, Lewis De Haan, wlio also had a separate 
 business as a surveyor, was the soul of the Society, and talked a 
 great deal. He was a stalwart old man, with a fine imagination 
 and figure, boundless optimism, a big biceps, a long venerable 
 white beard, a keen sense of humor, and a versatility which en- 
 abled him to turn from the price of real estate to the elucidation 
 of a Talmudical difficult}-, and from the consignment of cigars to 
 the organization of apostolic movements. Among the leading 
 spirits were our old friends, Karlkammer the red-haired zealot, 
 Sugarman the Shadchan, and Guedalyah the greengrocer, to- 
 gether with Gradkoski the scholar, fancy goods merchant and 
 man of the world. A furniture-dealer, who was always failing, 
 was also an important personage, while Ebenezer Sugarman, a 
 young man who had once translated a romance from the Dutch, 
 acted as secretary. Melchitsedek Pinchas invariably turned up 
 at the meetings and smoked Schlesinger's cigars. He was not 
 a member ; he had not qualified himself by taking ten pound 
 shares (far from fully paid up), but nobody liked to eject him, 
 and no hint less strong than a physical would have moved the 
 poet. 
 
 All the members of the Council of the Co-operative Kosher 
 Society spoke English volubly and more or less grammatically, 
 but none had sufficient confidence in the others to propose 
 one of them for editor, though it is possible that none would 
 have shrunk from having a shot. Diffidence is not a mark of the 
 Jew. The claims of Ebenezer Sugarman and of Melchitsedek 
 Pinchas were put forth most vehemently by Ebenezer and Mel- 
 chitsedek respectively, and their mutual accusations of incompe- 
 tence enlivened Mr. Schlesingers back office. 
 
 " He ain't able to spell the commonest English words," said 
 Ebenezer, with a contemptuous guffaw that sounded like the 
 croak of a raven. 
 
 The young litterateur, the sumptuousness of whose Barinitzvah- 
 party was still a memory with his father, had lank black hair, 
 with a long nose that supported blue spectacles. 
 
 "What does he know of the Holy Tongue?" croaked Mel- 
 chitsedek witheringly, adding in a confidential whisper to the 
 
360 GRANDCHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 cigar merchant : " I and you, Schlesinger, are the only two men 
 in England who can write the Holy Tongue grammatically.'" 
 
 The little poet was as insinuative and volcanic (by turns) as 
 ever. His beard was, however, better trimmed and his complex- 
 ion healthier, and he looked younger than ten years ago. His 
 clothes were quite spruce. For several years he had travelled 
 about the Continent, mainly at Raphael's expense. He said his 
 ideas came better in touring and at a distance from the unappre- 
 ciative English Jewry. It was a pity, for with his linguistic genius 
 his English would have been immaculate by this time. As it 
 was, there was a considerable improvement in his writing, if not 
 so much in his accent. 
 
 "What do I know of the Holy Tongue!" repeated Ebenezer 
 scornfully. "Hold yours!" 
 
 The Committee laughed, but Schlesinger, who was a serious 
 man, said, " Business, gentlemen, business." 
 
 "Come, then! Til challenge you to translate a page of Meta- 
 torofi's Flames,'' said Pinchas, skipping about the office like a 
 sprightly flea. " You know no more than the Reverend Joseph 
 Strelitski vith his vite tie and his princely income." 
 
 De Haan seized the poet by the collar, swung him off his feet 
 and tucked him up in the coal-scuttle. 
 
 "Yah!" croaked Ebenezer. "Here's a fine editor. Ho! 
 Ho! Ho!" 
 
 "We cannot have either of them. It's the only way to keep 
 them quiet," said the furniture-dealer who was always failing. 
 
 Ebenezers face fell and his voice rose. 
 
 " I don't see why I should be sacrificed to V;//. There ain't a 
 man in England who can write English better than me. Why, 
 everybody says so. Look at the success of my book, 77ie Old 
 Burgoviaster, the best Dutch novel ever written. The St. Pan- 
 eras Press said it reminded them of Lord Lytton, it did indeed. 
 I can show you the paper. I can give you one each if you like. 
 And then it ain't as if I didn't know 'Ebrew, too. Even if I was 
 in doubt about anything, I could always go to my father. You 
 give me this paper to manage and I'll make your fortunes for you 
 in a twelvemonth ; I will as sure as I stand here." 
 
« THE FLA G OF JUDAH. » 361 
 
 Pinchas had made spluttering interruptions as frequently as 
 he could in resistance of De Haan's brawny, hairy hand which 
 was pressed against his nose and mouth to keep him down in 
 the coal-scuttle, but now he exploded with a force that shook off 
 the hand like a bottle of soda water expelling its cork. 
 
 " You Man-of-the-Earth," he cried, sitting up in the coal- 
 scuttle. " You are not even orthodox. Here, my dear gentle- 
 men, is the very position created by Heaven for me — in this 
 disgraceful country vhere genius starves. Here at last you have 
 the opportunity of covering yourselves vid eternal glory. Have 
 I not given you the idea of starting this paper? And vas I not 
 born to be a Redacteur, a Editor, as you call it? Into the paper 
 I vill pour all the fires of my song — " 
 
 " Yes, burn it up," croaked Ebenezer. 
 
 " I vill lead the Freethinkers and the Reformers back into the 
 fold. I vill be Elijah and my vings shall be quill pens. I vill 
 save Judaism." He started up, swelling, but De Haan caught 
 him by his waistcoat and readjusted him in the coal-scuttle. 
 
 " Here, take another cigar, Pinchas," he said, passing Schle- 
 singer's private box, as if with a twinge of remorse for his treat- 
 ment of one he admired as a poet though he could not take him 
 seriously as a man. 
 
 The discussion proceeded ; the furniture-dealer's counsel was 
 followed ; it was definitely decided to let the two candidates 
 neutralize each other. 
 
 "Vat vill you give me, if I find you a Redacteur?" suddenly 
 asked Pinchas. " 1 give up my editorial seat — " 
 
 " Editorial coal-scuttle," growled Ebenezer. 
 
 "Pooh! I find you a first-class Redacteur who vill not want 
 a big salary; perhaps he vill do it for nothing. How much 
 commission vill you give me ? " 
 
 " Ten shillings on every pound if he does not want a big 
 salary," said De Haan instantly, " and twelve and sixpence on 
 every pound if he does it for nothing." 
 
 And Pinchas, who was easily bamboozled when finance became 
 complex, went out to find Raphael. 
 
 Thus at the next meeting the poet produced Raphael in tri- 
 
362 GRANDCHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 umph, and Gradkoski, who loved a reputation for sagacity, turned 
 a little green with disgust at his own forgetfulness. Gradkoski 
 was among those founders of the Holy Land League with whom 
 Raphael had kept up relations, and he could not deny that the 
 young enthusiast was the ideal man for the post. De Haan, 
 who was busy directing the clerks to write out ten thousand 
 wrappers for the first number, and who had never heard of 
 Raphael before, held a whispered confabulation with Gradkoski 
 and Schlesinger and in a few moments Raphael was rescued 
 from obscurity and appointed to the editorship of the Flag of 
 Jjidah at a salary of nothing a year. De Haan immediately 
 conceived a vast contemptuous admiration of the man. 
 
 " You von't forget me," whispered Pinchas, buttonholing the 
 editor at the first opportunity, and placing his forefinger insinu- 
 atingly alongside his nose. " You vill remember that I expect a 
 commission on your salary." 
 
 Raphael smiled good-naturedly and, turning to De Haan, said : 
 " But do you think there is any hope of a circulation? " 
 
 " A circulation, sir, a circulation ! " repeated De Haan. " Why, 
 we shall not be able to print fast enough. There are seventy 
 thousand orthodox Jews in London alone."" 
 
 '' And besides,"^ added Gradkoski, in a corroboration strongly 
 like a contradiction, " we shall not have to rely on the circulation. 
 Newspapers depend on their advertisements." 
 
 "Do they?" said Raphael, helplessly. 
 
 "Of course," said Gradkoski with his air of worldly wisdom. 
 " And don't you see, being a religious paper we are bound to get 
 all the communal advertisements. Why, we get the Co-opera- 
 tive Kosher Society to start with." 
 
 " Yes, but we ain't going to pay for that," said Sugarman the 
 Shade] I an . 
 
 "That doesn't matter," said De Haan. " It'll look well — we 
 can fill up a wdiole page with it. You know what Jews are — 
 they won't ask ' is this paper wanted?' they'll balance it in their 
 hand, as if weighing up the value of the advertisements, and ask 
 ' does it pay? ' But it w/7/ pay, it must pay ; with you at the head 
 of it, Mr. Leon, a man whose fame and piety are known and re- 
 
''THE FLAG OF JUDAHr 363 
 
 spected wherever a MezuzaJi adorns a door-post, a man who is in 
 sympathy with the East End, and has the ear of the West, a man 
 who will preach the purest Judaism in the best English, with 
 such a man at the head of it, we shall be able to ask bigger 
 prices for advertisements than the existing Jewish papers." 
 
 Raphael left the office in a transport of enthusiasm, full of 
 Messianic emotions. At the next meeting he announced that 
 he was afraid he could not undertake the charge of the paper. 
 Amid universal consternation, tempered by the exultation of 
 Ebenezer, he explained that he had been thinking it over and 
 did not see how it could be done. He said he had been care- 
 fully studying the existing communal organs, and saw that they 
 dealt with many matters of which he knew nothing; whilst he 
 might be competent to form the taste of the community in relig- 
 ious and literary matters, it appeared that the community was 
 chiefly excited about elections and charities. " Moreover," said 
 he, " I noticed that it is expected of these papers to publish 
 obituaries of communal celebrities, for whose biographies no 
 adequate materials are anywhere extant. It would scarcely be 
 decent to obtrude upon the sacred grief of the bereaved relatives 
 with a request for particulars." 
 
 "Oh, that's all right," laughed De Haan. " Fm sure my wife 
 would be glad to give you any information." 
 
 " Of course, of course," said Gradkoski, soothingly. " You will 
 get the obituaries sent in of themselves by the relatives." 
 
 Raphael's brow expressed surprise and incredulity. 
 
 '•And besides, we are not going to crack up the same people 
 as the other papers," said De Haan ; " otherwise we should not 
 supply a want. We must dole out our praise and blame quite 
 differently, and w^e must be very scrupulous to give only a little 
 praise so that it shall be valued the more." He stroked his 
 white beard tranquilly. 
 
 "But how about meetings?" urged Raphael. "I find that 
 sometimes two take place at once. I can go to one, but I can't 
 be at both." 
 
 '•Oh, that will be all right," said De Haan airily. "We will 
 leave out one and people will think it is unimportant. We are 
 
364 GRANDCHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 bringing out a paper for our own ends, not to report the speeches 
 of busybodies.'" 
 
 Raphael was already exhibiting a conscientiousness which 
 must be nipped in the bud. Seeing him silenced, Ebenezer 
 burst forth anxiously : 
 
 " But Mr. Leon is right. There must be a sub-editor." 
 
 " Certainly there must be a sub-editor/' cried Pinchas eagerly. 
 
 " Very well, then," said De Haan, struck with a sudden 
 thought. " It is true Mr. Leon cannot do all the work. I know 
 a young fellow who'll be just the very thing. He'll come for a 
 pound a week." 
 
 " But ril come for a pound a week," said Ebenezer. 
 
 " Yes, but you won't get it." said Schlesinger impatiently. 
 
 ^^ S/ia, Ebenezer," said old Sugarman imperiously. 
 
 De Haan thereupon hunted up a young gentleman, who dwelt 
 in his mind as " Little Sampson," and straightway secured him 
 at the price named. He was a lively young Bohemian born in 
 Australia, who had served an apprenticeship on the Anglo- 
 Jewish press, worked his way up into the larger journalistic 
 world without, and was now engaged in organizing a comic- 
 opera touring company, and in drifting back again into Jewish 
 journalism. This young gentleman, who always wore long curl- 
 ing locks, an eye-glass and a romantic cloak which covered a 
 multitude of shabbinesses, fully allayed Raphael's fears as to the 
 difficulties of editorship. 
 
 " Obituaries!" he said scornfully. ^' You rely on me for that! 
 The people who are worth chronicling are sure to have lived in 
 the back numbers of our contemporaries, and I can always hunt 
 them up in tlie Museum. As for the people who are not, their 
 families will send them in, and your only trouble will be to con- 
 ciliate the families of those you ignore." 
 
 "But about all those meetings?" said Raphael. 
 
 "Fll go to some," said the sub-editor good-naturedly, "when- 
 ever they don't interfere with the rehearsals of my opera. You 
 know of course I am bringing out a comic-opera, composed by 
 myself, some lovely tunes in it ; one goes like this : Ta ra ra ta, 
 ta dee dum dee — that'll knock 'em. Well, as I was saying, I'll 
 
''THE FLAG OF JUDAHr 365 
 
 help you as much as I can find time for. You rely on me for 
 that." 
 
 " Yes/' said poor Raphael with a sickly smile, " but suppose 
 neither of us goes to some important meeting." 
 
 "No harm done. God bless you, I know the styles of all our 
 chief speakers — ahem — ha! — pauperization of the East End, 
 ha! — I would emphatically say that this scheme — ahem! — his 
 lordship's untiring zeal for hum! — the welfare of — and so on. 
 Ta dee dum da, ta, ra, rum dee. They always send on the 
 agenda beforehand. That's all I want, and Fll lay you twenty 
 to one I'll turn out as good a report as any of our rivals. You 
 rely on me for that ! I know exactly how debates go. At the 
 worst I can always swop with another reporter — a prize dis- 
 tribution for an obituary, or a funeral for a concert." 
 
 "And do you really think we two between us can fill up the 
 paper every week?" said Raphael doubtfully. 
 
 Little Sampson broke into a shriek of laugliter, dropped his 
 eyeglass and collapsed helplessly into the coal-scuttle. The 
 Committeemen looked up from their confabulations in astonish- 
 ment. 
 
 "Fill up the paper! Ho! Ho! Ho!" roared little Sampson, 
 still doubled up. " Evidently yoii've never had anything to do 
 with papers. Why. the reports of London and provincial ser- 
 mons alone would fill three papers a week." 
 
 "Yes, but how are we to get these reports, especially from the 
 provinces? " 
 
 "How? Ho! Ho! Ho!" And for some time little Sampson 
 was physically incapable of speech. "Don't you know," he 
 gasped, "that the ministers always send up their own sermons, 
 pages upon pages of foolscap ? " 
 
 "Indeed? " murmured Raphael. 
 
 "What, haven't you noticed all Jewish sermons are eloquent?" 
 
 " They write that themselves?" 
 
 "Of course; sometimes they put 'able,' and sometimes 
 ' learned,' but, as a rule, they prefer to be ' eloquent.' The 
 nm on that epithet is tremendous. Ta dee dum da. In holi- 
 day seasons they are also very fond of ' enthralling the audience,' 
 
366 GRANDCHILDREN OF THE GHETTO: 
 
 and of '■ melting them to tears/ but this is chiefly during the Ten 
 Days of Repentance, or when a boy is Bannitzvah. Then, think 
 of the people who send in accounts of the oranges they gave 
 away to distressed widows, or of the prizes won by their children 
 at fourth-rate schools, or of the silver pointers they present to 
 the synagogue. Whenever a reader sends a letter to an evening 
 paper, he will want you to quote it ; and, if he writes a paragraph 
 in the obscurest leaflet, he will want you to note it as ^ Literary 
 Intelligence.'' Why, my dear fellow, your chief task will be to 
 cut down. Ta, ra, ra, ta! Any Jewish paper could be entirely 
 supported by voluntary contributions — as, for the matter of that, 
 could any newspaper in the world." He got up and shook the 
 coal-dust languidly from his cloak. 
 
 " Besides, we shall all be helping you with articles,'^ said De 
 Haan, encouragingly. 
 
 " Yes, we shall all be helping you," said Ebenezer. 
 
 " I vill give you from the Pierian spring — bucketsful," said 
 Pinchas in a flush of generosity. 
 
 " Thank you, I shall be m.uch obliged," said Raphael, heartily,, 
 " for I don't quite see the use of a paper filled up as Mr. Sampson 
 suggests." He flung his arms out and drew them in again. It 
 was a way he had when in earnest. '' Then, I should like to 
 have some foreign news. Where's that to come from?" 
 
 " You rely on me for that^ said little Sampson, cheerfully. " I 
 will write at once to all the chief Jewish papers in the world, 
 French, German, Dutch, Italian, Hebrew, and American, asking 
 them to exchange with us. There is never any dearth of foreign 
 news. I translate a thing from the Italian Vessillo Israelitico^ 
 and the Israelitische Nieuwsbode copies it from us ; Der Israelii 
 then translates it into German, whence it gets into Hebrew, in 
 Hamagid, thence into DUnivers Israelite^ of Paris, and thence 
 into the American Hebrew. When I see it in American, not 
 having to translate it, it strikes me as fresh, and so I transfer it 
 bodily to our columns, whence it gets translated into Italian, and 
 so the merry-go-round goes eternally on. Ta dee rum day. You 
 relv on me for your foreign news. Why, I can get you foreign 
 telegrams if you'll only allow me to stick ' Trieste, December 
 
''THE FLAG OF JUDAH:' 367 
 
 21,' or things of that sort at the top. Ti, turn, tee ti.'' He went 
 on humming a sprightly air, then, suddenly interrupting himself, 
 he said, " but have you got an advertisement canvasser, Mr. De 
 Haan?'' 
 
 "No, not yet," said De Haan, turning around. The committee 
 had resolved itself into animated groups, dotted about the office, 
 each group marked by a smoke-drift. The clerks were still writ- 
 ing the ten thousand wrappers, sw'earing inaudibly. 
 
 " Well, when are you going to get him ? " 
 
 " Oh, we shall have advertisements rolling in of themselves," 
 said De Haan, with a magnificent sweep of the arm. '•' And we 
 shall all assist in that department! Help yourself to another 
 cigar, Sampson." And he passed Schlesinger's box. Raphael 
 and Karlkammer were the only two men in the room not smok- 
 ing cigars — Raphael, because he preferred his pipe, and Karl- 
 kammer for some more mystic reason. 
 
 " We must not ignore Cabalah," the zealot's voice was heard 
 to observe. 
 
 '• You can't get advertisements by Cabalah," drily interrupted 
 Guedalyah, the greengrocer, a practical man, as everybody knew. 
 
 "No, indeed," protested Sampson. " The advertisement can- 
 vasser is a more important man than the editor." 
 
 Ebenezer pricked up his ears. 
 
 " I thought you undertook to do some canvassing for your 
 money," said De Haan. 
 
 " So I will, so I will ; rely on me for that. I shouldn't be sur- 
 prised if I get the capitalists who are backing up my opera to 
 give you the advertisements of the tour, and I'll do all I can in 
 my spare time. But I feel sure youll want another man — only, 
 you must pay him well and give him a good commission. It'll 
 pay best in the long run to have a good man, there are so many 
 seedy duffers about," said little Sampson, drawing his faded cloak 
 loftily around him. " You want an eloquent, persuasive man, 
 with a gift of the gab — " 
 
 " Didn't I tell you so ? " interrupted Pinchas, putting his finger 
 to his nose. " I vill go to the advertisers and speak burning 
 words to them. I vill — " 
 
368 GRANDCHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 ^'Garn! They'd kick you out! "" croaked Ebenezer. " They'll 
 only listen to an Englishman." His coarse-featured face glis- 
 tened witli spite. 
 
 " My Ebenezer has a good appearance," said old Sugarman, 
 "and his English is fine, and dat is half de battle." 
 
 Schlesinger, appealed to, intimated that Ebenezer might try, 
 but that they could not well spare him any percentage at the 
 start. After much haggling, Ebenezer consented to waive his 
 commission, if the committee would consent to allow an original 
 tale of his to appear in the paper. 
 
 The stipulation having been agreed to, he capered joyously 
 about the office and winked periodically at Pinchas from behind 
 the battery of his blue spectacles. The poet was, however, rapt 
 in a discussion as to the best printer. The Committee were 
 for having Gluck, who had done odd jobs for most of them, 
 but Pinchas launched into a narrative of how, when he edited a 
 great organ in Buda-Pesth, he had effected vast economies by 
 starting a little printing-office ofhis own in connection with the 
 paper. 
 
 "You vill set up a little establishment," he said. "I vill 
 manage it for a few pounds a veek. Then I vill not only print 
 your paper, I vill get you large profits from extra printing. Vith 
 a man of great business talent at the head of it — " 
 
 De Haan made a threatening movement, and Pinchas edged 
 away from the proximity of the coal-scuttle. 
 
 " Cluck's our printer! " said De Haan peremptorily. " He has 
 Hebrew type. We shall want a lot of that. We must have a lot 
 of Hebrew quotations — not spell Hebrew words in English like 
 the other papers. And the Hebrew date must come before the 
 English. The public must see at once that our principles are 
 superior. Besides, Cluck's a Jew, which will save us from the 
 danger of having any of the printing done on Saturdays." 
 
 " But shan't we want a publisher?" asked Sampson. 
 
 " That's vat I say," cried Pinchas. " If I set up this office, 
 I can be your publisher too. Ve must do things business- 
 like '' 
 
 ••Nonsense, nonsense! We are our own publishers," said De 
 
''THE FLAG OF JUDAH.'' 369 
 
 Haaii. "Our clerks will send out the invoices and the subscrip- 
 tion copies, and an extra office-boy can sell the papers across 
 the counter." 
 
 Sampson smiled in his sleeve. 
 
 "All right. That will do — for the first number," he said 
 cordially. " Ta ra ra ta." 
 
 " Now then, Mr. Leon, everything is settled," said De Haan, 
 stroking his beard briskly. " I think I'll ask you to help us 
 to draw up the posters. We shall cover all London, sir, all 
 London." 
 
 "But wouldn't that be wasting money? " said Raphael. 
 
 " Oh, we're going to do the thing properly. I don't believe 
 in meanness." 
 
 " It'll be enough if we cover the East End," said Schlesinger, 
 drily. 
 
 " Quite so. The East End is London as far as we're con- 
 cerned," said De Haan readily. 
 
 Raphael took the pen and the paper which De Haan tendered 
 him and wrote The Flag of Judah^ the title having been fixed at 
 their first interview. 
 
 "The only orthodox paper! " dictated De Haan. "Largest 
 circulation of any Jewish paper in the world! " 
 
 " No, how can we say that? " said Raphael, pausing. 
 
 "No, of course not," said De Haan. "I was thinking of the 
 subsequent posters. Look out for the first number — on Friday, 
 January ist. The best Jewish writers! The truest Jewish teach- 
 ings! Latent Jewish news and finest Jewish stories. Every 
 Friday. Twopence." 
 
 "Twopence?" echoed Raphael, looking up. "I thought you 
 wanted to appeal to the masses. I should say it must be a 
 penny." 
 
 " It will be a penny," said De Haan oracularly. 
 
 "We have thought it all over," interposed Gradkoski. "The 
 first number will be bought up out of curiosity, whether at a 
 penny or at twopence. The second will go almost as well, for 
 people will be anxious to see how it compares with the first. 
 In that number we shall announce that owing to the enormous 
 
 2B 
 
370 GRANDCHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 success we have been able to reduce it to a penny ; meantime 
 we make all the extra pennies." 
 
 " I see/' said Raphael dubiously. 
 
 "We must have Chochma,^'' said De Haan. "Our sages 
 recommend that.''' 
 
 Raphael still had his doubts, but he had also a painful sense 
 of his lack of the '■'■ practical wisdom " recommended by the 
 sages cited. He thought these men were probably in the right. 
 Even religion could not be pushed on the masses without busi- 
 ness methods, and so long as they were in earnest about the 
 doctrines to be preached, he could even feel a dim admiration 
 for their superior shrewdness in executing a task in which he 
 himself would have hopelessly broken down. Raphael's mind 
 was large ; and larger by being conscious of its cloistral limita- 
 tions. And the men were in earnest ; not even their most 
 intimate friends could call this into question. 
 
 " We are going to save London," De Haan put it in one of 
 his dithyrambic moments. " Orthodoxy has too long been 
 voiceless, and yet it is five-sixths of Judaea. A small minority 
 has had all the say. We must redress the balance. We must 
 plead the cause of the People against the Few."' 
 
 Raphael's breast throbbed with similar hopes. His Messianic 
 emotions resurged. Sugarman's solicitous request that he should 
 buy a Hamburg Lottery Ticket scarcely penetrated his conscious- 
 ness. Carrying the copy of the poster, he accompanied De 
 Haan to Gluck's. It was a small shop in a back street with jar- 
 gon-papers and hand-bills in the window and a pervasive heavy 
 oleaginous odor. A hand-press occupied the centre of the inte- 
 rior, the back of which was partitioned off and marked " Private." 
 Gluck came forward, grinning welcome. He wore an unkempt 
 beard and a dusky apron. 
 
 "Can you undertake to print an eight-page paper?" inquired 
 De Haan. 
 
 '• If I can print at all, I can print anything," responded Gluck 
 reproachfully. " How many shall you want? " 
 
 "It's the orthodox paper we've been planning so long," said 
 De Haan evasively. 
 
''THE FLAG OF JUDAH:' 371 
 
 Gluck nodded his head. 
 
 " There are seventy thousand orthodox Jews in London alone/' 
 said De Haan, with rotund enunciation. '•' So you see what you 
 may have to print. ItUl be worth your while to do it extra 
 cheap.'" 
 
 Gluck agreed readily, naming a low figure. After half an 
 hour's discussion it was reduced by ten per cent. 
 
 "Good-bye, then," said De Haan. "So let it stand. We 
 shall start with a thousand copies of the first number, but where 
 we shall end, the Holy One, blessed be He, alone knows. I will 
 now leave you and the editor to talk over the rest. To-day's 
 Monday. We must have the first number out by Friday week. 
 Can you do that, Mr. Leon?" 
 
 " Oh, that will be ample," said Raphael, shooting out his arms. 
 
 He did not remain of that opinion. Never had he gone 
 through such an awful, anxious time, not even in his prepara- 
 tions for the stififest exams. He worked sixteen hours a day at 
 the paper. The only evening he allowed himself off was when 
 he dined with Mrs. Henry Goldsmith and met Esther. First 
 numbers invariably take twice as long to produce as second num- 
 bers, even in the best regulated establishments. All sorts of 
 mysterious sticks and leads, and fonts and forms, are found 
 wanting at the eleventh hour. As a substitute for gray hair-dye 
 there is nothing in the market to compete with the production of 
 first numbers. But in Gluck's establishment, these difficulties 
 were multiplied by a hundred. Gluck spent a great deal of time 
 in going round the corner to get something from a brother 
 printer. It took an enormous time to get a proof of any article 
 out of Gluck. 
 
 " My men are so careful," Gluck explained. " They don't like 
 to pass anything till ifs free from typos." 
 
 The men must have been highly disappointed, for the proofs 
 were invariably returned bristling with corrections and having a 
 highly hieroglyphic appearance. Then Gluck would go in and 
 slang his men. He kept them behind the partition painted 
 " Private." 
 
 The fatal Friday drew nearer and nearer. By Thursday not a 
 
372 GRANDCHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 single page had been made up. Still Gluck pointed out that 
 there were only eight, and the day was long. Raphael had not 
 the least idea in the world how to make up a paper, but about 
 eleven little Sampson kindly strolled into Gluck's, and explained 
 to his editor his own method of pasting the proofs on sheets of 
 paper of the size of the pages. He even made up one page him- 
 self to a blithe vocal accompaniment. . When the busy composer 
 and acting-manager hurried off to conduct a rehearsal, Raphael 
 expressed his gratitude warmly. The hours flew ; the paper 
 evolved as by geologic stages. As the fateful day wore on, 
 Gluck was scarcely visible for a moment. Raphael was left 
 alone eating his heart out in the shop, and solacing himself with 
 huge whiffs of smoke. At immense intervals Gluck appeared 
 from behind the partition bearing a page or a galley slip. He 
 said his men could not be trusted to do their work unless he was 
 present. Raphael replied that he had not seen the compositors 
 come through the shop to get their dinners, and he hoped Gluck 
 would not find it necessary to cut off their meal-times. Gluck 
 reassured him on this point ; he said his men were so loyal that 
 they preferred to bring their food with them rather than have the 
 paper delayed. Later on he casually mentioned that there was 
 a back entrance. He would not allow Raphael to talk to his 
 workmen personally, arguing that it spoiled their discipline. By 
 eleven o'clock at night seven pages had been pulled and cor- 
 rected ; but the eighth page was not forthcoming. The Flag 
 had to be machined, dried, folded, and a number of copies put 
 into wrappers and posted by three in the morning. The situa- 
 tion looked desperate. At a quarter to twelve, Gluck explained 
 that a column of matter already set up had been "pied" by a 
 careless compositor. It happened to be the column containing 
 the latest news and Raphael had not even seen a proof of it. 
 Still, Gluck conjured him not to trouble further ; he would give 
 his reader strict injunctions not to miss the slightest error. 
 Raphael had already seen and passed the first column of this 
 page, let him leave it to Gluck to attend to this second column ; 
 all would be well without his remaining later, and he would 
 receive a copy of the Flag by the first post. The poor editor, 
 
''THE FLAG OF JUDAH.'' 373 
 
 whose head was sphtting, weakly yielded ; he just caught the 
 midnight train to the West End and he went to bed feeling 
 happy and hopeful. 
 
 At seven o'clock the next morning the whole Leon household 
 was roused by a thunderous double rat-tat at the door. Addie 
 was even heard to scream. A housemaid knocked at Raphael's 
 door and pushed a telegram under it. Raphael jumped out of 
 bed and read : " Third of column more matter wanted. Come at 
 once. Gluck.'" 
 
 " How can that be? " he asked himself in consternation. " If 
 the latest news made a column when it was first set up before 
 the accident, how can it make less now? " 
 
 He dashed up to Gluck's office in a hansom and put the co- 
 nundrum to him. 
 
 " You see we had no time to distribute the ' pie,' and we had 
 no more type of that kind, so we had to reset it smaller," 
 answered Gluck glibly. His eyes were blood-shot, his face 
 was haggard. The door of the private compartment stood 
 open. 
 
 "Your men are not come yet, I suppose," said Raphael. 
 
 "No," said Gluck. "They didn't go away till two, poor 
 fellows. Is that the copy? " he asked, as Raphael handed him a 
 couple of slips he had distractedly scribbled in the cab under the 
 heading of " Talmudic Tales." " Thank you, it's just about the 
 size. I shall have to set it myself." 
 
 " But won't we be terribly late?" said poor Raphael. 
 
 " We shall be out to-day," responded Gluck cheerfully. "We 
 shall be in time for the Sabbath, and that's the important thing. 
 Don't you see they're half-printed already?" He indicated a 
 huge pile of sheets. Raphael examined them with beating heart. 
 " We've only got to print 'em on the other side and the thing's 
 done," said Gluck. 
 
 " Where are your machines ? " 
 
 "There," said Gluck, pointing. 
 
 "That hand-press!" cried Raphael, astonished. "Do you 
 mean to say you print them all with your own hand? " 
 
 "Why not?" said the dauntless Gluck. "I shall wrap them 
 
374 GRANDCHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 up for the post, too.'" And he shut himself up with tlie last of 
 the ^' copy." 
 
 Raphael having exhausted his interest in the half-paper, fell to 
 striding about the little shop, when w'ho should come in but Pin- 
 chas, smoking a cigar of the Schlesinger brand. 
 
 *' Ah, my Prince of Redacteurs,"" said Pinchas, darting at 
 Raphael's hand and kissing it. '' Did I not say you vould pro- 
 duce the finest paper in the kingdom? But vy have I not my 
 copy by post? You must not listen to Ebenezer ven he says I 
 must not be on the free list, the blackguard,''' 
 
 Raphael explained to the incredulous poet that Ebenezer had 
 not said anything of the kind. Suddenly Pinchas's eye caught 
 sight of the sheets. He swooped down upon them like a hawk. 
 Then he uttered a shriek of grief. 
 
 " Vere's my poem, my great poesie ? " 
 
 Raphael looked embarrassed. 
 
 " This is only half the paper," he said evasively. 
 
 "Ha, then it vill appear in the other half, hemf'' he said with 
 hope tempered by a terrible suspicion. 
 
 " N — n — o," stammered Raphael timidly. 
 
 "No? " shrieked Pinchas. 
 
 "You see — the — fact is, it wouldn''t scan. Your Hebrew 
 poetry is perfect, but English poetry is made rather differently 
 and Eve been too busy to correct it.'"' 
 
 "But it is exactly like Lord Byron's!" shrieked Pinchas. 
 " Mein GottI All night I lie avake — vaiting for the post. At 
 eight o'clock the post comes — but The Flag of Judah she vaves 
 not! I rush round here — and now my beautiful poem vill not 
 appear.'" He seized the sheet again, then cried fiercely : " You 
 have a tale, ' The Waters of Babylon,' by Ebenezer the fool-boy, 
 but my poesie have you not. Gott in Hiinmel l''"' He tore the 
 sheet frantically across and rushed from the shop. In five min- 
 utes he reappeared. Raphael was absorbed in reading the last 
 proof. Pinchas plucked timidly at his coat-tails. 
 
 " You vill put it in next veek? " he said winningly. 
 
 "I dare say," said Raphael gently. 
 
 "Ah, promise me. I vill love you like a brother, I vill be 
 
THE TROUBLES OF AN EDITOR. 375 
 
 grateful to you for ever and ever. I vill never ask another favor 
 of you in all my life. Ve are already like brothers — Jiein? I 
 and you, the only two men — " 
 
 "Yes, yes/' interrupted Raphael, " it shall appear next week." 
 
 "God bless you! ''said Pinchas, kissing Raphael's coat-tails 
 passionately and rushing without. 
 
 Looking up accidentally some minutes afterwards, Raphael 
 was astonished to see the poet's carneying head thrust through 
 the half-open door with a finger laid insinuatingly on the side of 
 the nose. The head was fixed there as if petrified, waiting to 
 catch the editor's eye. 
 
 The first number of The Flag of Judah appeared early in the 
 afternoon. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE TROUBLES OF AN EDITOR. 
 
 The new organ did not create a profound impression. By the 
 rival party it was mildly derided, though many fair-minded per- 
 sons w^ere impressed by the rather unusual combination of rigid 
 orthodoxy with a high spiritual tone and Raphael's conception 
 of Judaism as outlined in his first leader, his view of it as a happy 
 human compromise between an empty unpractical spiritualism 
 and a choked-up over-practical formalism, avoiding the opposite 
 extremes of its offshoots, Christianity and Mohammedanism, was 
 novel to many of his readers, unaccustomed to think about their 
 faith. Dissatisfied as Raphael was with the number, he felt he 
 had fluttered some of the dove-cotes at least. Several people 
 of taste congratulated him during Saturday and Sunday, and it 
 was with a continuance of Messianic emotions and with agree- 
 able anticipations that he repaired on Monday morning to the 
 little den which had been inexpensively fitted up for him above 
 the offices of Messrs. Schlesinger and De Haan. To his sur- 
 prise he found it crammed with the committee ; all gathered 
 round little Sampson, who, with flushed face and cloak tragically 
 folded, was expostulating at the top of his voice. Pinchas stood 
 at the back in silent amusement. As Raphael entered jauntily, 
 
376 GRANDCHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 a change came over the company ; a low premonitory roar issued 
 from a dozen lips, the lowering faces turned quickly towards him. 
 Involuntarily Raphael started back in alarm, then stood rooted 
 to the threshold. There was a dread ominous silence. Then 
 the storm burst. 
 
 " Du Shegetz ! Dii Pasha Yisroile I " came from all quarters 
 of the compass. 
 
 To be called a graceless Gentile and a sinner in Israel is not 
 pleasant to a pious Jew; but all Raphael's minor sensations were 
 swallowed up in a great wonderment. 
 
 " We are ruined ! '' moaned the furniture-dealer, who was 
 always failing. 
 
 " You have ruined us ! " came the chorus from the thick, sen- 
 suous lips, and swarthy fists were shaken threateningly. Sugar- 
 man's hairy paw was almost against his face. Raphael turned 
 cold, then a rush of red-hot blood flooded his veins. He put out 
 his good right hand and smote the nearest fist aside. Sugarman 
 blenched and skipped back and the line of fists wavered. 
 
 " Don't be fools, gentlemen," said De Haan, his keen sense 
 of humor asserting itself. " Let Mr. Leon sit down." 
 
 Raphael, still dazed, took his seat on the editorial chair. 
 "Now, what can I do for you?" he said courteously. The fists 
 dropped at his calm. 
 
 " Do for us," said Schlesinger drily. " YouVe done for the 
 paper. It's not worth twopence." 
 
 " Well, bring it out at a penny at once then," laughed little 
 Sampson, reinforced by the arrival of his editor. 
 
 Guedalyah the greengrocer glowered at him. 
 
 " I am very sorry, gentlemen, I have not been able to satisfy 
 you," said Raphael. " But in a first number one can't do much." 
 
 "Can't they?" said De Haan. "You've done so much dam- 
 age to orthodoxy that we don't know whether to go on with the 
 paper." 
 
 " You're joking," murmured Raphael. 
 
 " I wish I was," laughed De Haan bitterly. 
 
 "But you astonish me," persisted Raphael. "Would you be 
 so good as to point out where I have gone wrong? '^ 
 
THE TROUBLES OF AN EDITOR, 377 
 
 " With pleasure. Or rather with pain," said De Haan. Each 
 of the committee drew a tattered copy from his pocket, and 
 followed De Haan's demonstration with a murmured accompani- 
 ment of lamentation. 
 
 " The paper was founded to inculcate the inspection of cheese, 
 the better supervision of the sale of meat, the construction of 
 ladies' baths, and all the principles of true Judaism,*" said De 
 Haan gloomily, "and there's not one word about these things, 
 but a great deal about spirituality and the significance of the 
 ritual. But I will begin at the beginning. Page i — " 
 
 " But that's advertisements," muttered Raphael. 
 
 " The part surest to be read! The very first line of the paper 
 is simply shocking. It reads : 
 
 ^' Death : On the 59th ult., at 22 Buckley St., the Rev. Abra- 
 ham Barnett, in his fifty-fourth — " 
 
 "But death is always shocking; what's wrong about that?" 
 interposed little Sampson. 
 
 "Wrong I" repeated De Haan, witheringly. "Where did you 
 get that from ? That was never sent in." 
 
 " No, of course not," said the sub-editor. " But we had to 
 have at least one advertisement of that kind, just to show we 
 should be pleased to advertise our readers' deaths. I looked 
 in the daily papers to see if there were any births or marriages 
 with Jewish names, but I couldn't find any, and that was the 
 only Jewish-sounding death I could see." 
 
 " But the Rev. Abraham Barnett was a Mes/uijnad,'^ shrieked 
 Sugarman the Shadchan. Raphael turned pale. To have in- 
 serted an advertisement about an apostate missionary was 
 indeed terrible. But little Sampson's audacity did not desert 
 him. 
 
 " I thought the orthodox party would be pleased to hear of 
 the death of a Meshuniad,^' he said suavely, screwing his eye- 
 glass more tightly into its orbit, " on the same principle that 
 anti-Semites take in the Jewish papers to hear of the death 
 of Jews." 
 
 For a moment De Haan was staggered. "That would be all 
 very well," he said ; " let him be an atonement for us all, but 
 
878 GRANDCHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 then you've gone and put 'May his soul be bound up in the 
 bundle of life.' " 
 
 It was true. The stock Hebrew equivalent for R. I. P. glared 
 from the page. 
 
 "Fortunately, that taking advertisement of kosher trousers 
 comes just underneath,"" said De Haan, " and that may draw 
 off the attention. On page 2 you actually say in a note that 
 Rabbenu Bachja's great poem on repentance should be incor- 
 porated in the ritual and might advantageously replace the ob- 
 scure Piyiit by Kalir. But this is rank Reform — it's worse 
 than the papers we come to supersede." 
 
 " But surely you know it is only the Printing Press that has 
 stereotyped our liturgy, that for Maimonides and Ibn Ezra, for 
 David Kimchi and Joseph Albo, the contents were fluid, that — "" 
 
 "We don't deny that,"' interrupted Schlesinger drily. "But 
 we can't have any more alterations now-a-days. Who is there 
 worthy to alter them ? You ? " 
 
 " Certainly not. I merely suggest." 
 
 "You are playing into the hands of our enemies," said De 
 Haan, shaking his head. "We must not let our readers even 
 imagine that the prayer-book can be tampered with. It's the 
 thin end of the wedge. To trim our liturgy is like trimming 
 living flesh ; wherever you cut, the blood oozes. The four 
 cubits of the Halacha — that is what is wanted, not changes in 
 the liturgy. Once touch anything, and where are you to stop? 
 Our religion becomes a flux. Our old Judaism is like an old 
 family mansion, where each generation has left a memorial and 
 where every room is hallowed with traditions of merrymaking 
 and mourning. We do not want our fathers' home decorated in 
 the latest style ; the next step will be removal to a new dwelling 
 altogether. On page 3 you refer to the second Isaiah." 
 
 " But I deny that there were two Isaiahs." 
 
 " So you do ; but it is better for our readers not to hear of 
 such impious theories. The space would be much better occu- 
 pied in explaining the Portion for the week. The next leader- 
 ette has a flippant tone, which has excited unfavorable comment 
 among some of the most important members of the Dalston 
 
THE TROUBLES OF AN EDITOR. 379 
 
 Synagogue. They object to humor in a rehgious paper. On 
 page 4 you have deliberately missed an opportunity of puffing 
 the Kosher Co-operative Society. Indeed, there is not a word 
 throughout about our Society. But I like Mr. Henry Gold- 
 smithes letter on this page, though ; he is a good orthodox man 
 and he writes from a good address. It will show we are not 
 only read in the East End. Pity he^s such a Man-of-the-Earth, 
 though. Yes, and that's good — the communication from the 
 Rev. Joseph Strelitski. I think he's a bit of an Epikoiiros, but 
 it looks as if the whole of the Kensington Synagogue was with 
 us. I understand he is a friend of yours : it will be as well for 
 you to continue friendly. Several of us here knew him well in 
 Olov HasholoDi times, but he is become so grand and rarely 
 shows himself at the Holy Land League Meetings. He can 
 help us a lot if he will." 
 
 "Oh, Fm sure he will,'' said Raphael. 
 
 "That's good," said De Haan, caressing his white beard. 
 Then growing gloomy again, he went on, "• On page 5 you have 
 a little article by Gabriel Hamburg, a well-known Epikoiiros.'''' 
 
 " Oh, but he's one of the greatest scholars in Europe! " broke 
 in Raphael. "I thought you'd be extra pleased to have it. He 
 sent it to me from Stockholm as a special favor." He did not 
 mention he had secretly paid for it. " I know some of his views 
 are heterodox, and I don't agree with half he says, but this article 
 is perfectly harmless." 
 
 " Well, let it pass — very few of our readers have ever heard 
 of him. But on the same page you have a Latin quotation. I 
 don't say there's anything wrong in that, but it smacks of Reform. 
 Our readers don't understand it and it looks as if our Hebrew 
 were poor. The Mishna contains texts suited for all purposes. 
 We are in no need of Roman writers. On page 6 you speak of 
 the Reform Shool, as if it were to be reasoned with. Sir, if we 
 mention these freethinkers at all, it must be in the strongest lan- 
 guage. By worshipping bare-headed and by seating the sexes 
 together they have defiled Judaism." 
 
 "Stop a minute! "' interrupted Raphael warmly. "Who told 
 you the Reformers do this ? " 
 
380 GRANDCHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 " Who told me, indeed ? Why, if s common knowledge. That's 
 how they've been going on for the last fifty years." " Everybody 
 knows it," said the Committee in chorus. 
 
 " Has one of you ever been there ? " said Raphael, rising in 
 excitement. 
 
 " God forbid! " said the chorus. 
 
 " Well, I have, and it's a lie," said Raphael. His arms whirled 
 round to the discomfort of the Committee. 
 
 " You ought not to have gone there," said Schlesinger severely. 
 " Besides, will you deny they have the organ in their Sabbath 
 services ? " 
 
 "No, I won't!" 
 
 "Well, then!" said De Haan, triumphantly. "If they are 
 capable of that, they are capable of any wickedness. Orthodox 
 people can have nothing to do with them." 
 
 "But orthodox immigrants take their money," said Raphael. 
 
 " Their money is kosher] they are tripha^'''' said De Haan sen- 
 tentiously. "Page 7, now we get to the most dreadful thing of 
 all!" A solemn silence fell on the room. Pinchas sniggered 
 unobtrusively. 
 
 " You have a little article headed, ^Talmudic Tales.' Why in 
 heaven's name you couldn't have finished the column with bits 
 of news I don't know. Satan himself must have put the thought 
 into your head. Just at the end of the paper, too! For I 
 can't reckon page 8, which is simply our own advertisement." 
 
 " I thought it would be amusing," said Raphael. 
 
 "Amusing! If you had simply told the tales, it might have 
 been. But look how you introduce them ! ' These amusing tales 
 occur in the fifth chapter of Baba Bathra, and are related by 
 Rabbi Bar Bar Channah. Our readers will see that they are 
 parables or allegories rather than actual facts.' " 
 
 " But do you mean to say you look upon them as facts ? " cried 
 Raphael, sawing the air wildly and pacing about on the toes of 
 the Committee. 
 
 "Surely!" said De Haan, while a low growl at his blasphe- 
 mous doubts ran along the lips of the Committee. 
 
 "Was it treacherously to undermine Judaism that you so eagerly 
 
THE TROUBLES OF AN EDITOR. 381 
 
 offered to edit for nothing ? '' said the furniture-dealer who was 
 always failing. 
 
 "But listen here!" cried Raphael, exasperated. " Harmez, 
 the son of Lilith, a demon, saddled two mules and made them 
 stand on opposite sides of the River Doneg. He then jumped 
 from the back of one to that of the other. He had, at the time, 
 a cup of wine in each hand, and as he jumped, he threw the wine 
 from each cup into the other without spilling a drop, although a 
 hurricane was blowing at the time. When the King of demons 
 heard that Harmez had been thus showing off to mortals, he 
 slew him. Does any of you believe that?" 
 
 " Vould our Sages (their memories for a blessing) put any- 
 thing into the Talmud that vasn't true?" queried Sugarman. 
 " Ve know there are demons because it stands that Solomon 
 knew their language." 
 
 "But then, what about this?" pursued Raphael. "'I saw a 
 frog which was as big as the district of Akra Hagronia. A sea- 
 monster came and swallowed the frog, and a raven came and ate 
 the sea-monster. The raven then went and perched on a tree.' 
 Consider how strong that tree must have been. R. Papa ben 
 Samuel remarks, ' Had I not been present, I should not have 
 believed it.' Doesn't this appendix about ben Samuel show that 
 it was never meant to be taken seriously?" 
 
 " It has some high meaning we do not understand in these 
 degenerate times," said Guedalyah tlie greengrocer. " It is not 
 for our paper to weaken faith in the Talmud." 
 
 "Hear, hear!" said De Haan, while '■^ Epikou?'os''' rumbled 
 through the air, like distant thunder. 
 
 "Didn't I say an Englishman could never master the Talmud? " 
 Sugarman asked in triumph. 
 
 This reminder of Raphael's congenital incompetence softened 
 their minds towards him, so that when he straightway re- 
 signed his editorship, their self-constituted spokesman besought 
 him to remain. Perhaps they remembered, too, that he was 
 cheap. 
 
 " But we must all edit the paper," said De Haan enthusiasti- 
 cally, when peace was re-established. " We must have meetings 
 
382 GRANDCHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 every day and every article must be read aloud before it is 
 printed." 
 
 Little Sampson winked cynically, passing his hand pensively 
 through his thick tangled locks, but Raphael saw no objection to 
 the arrangement. As before, he felt his own impracticability 
 borne in upon him, and he decided to sacrifice himself for the 
 Cause as far as conscience permitted. Excessive as was the zeal 
 of these men, it was after all in the true groove. His annoyance 
 returned for a while, however, when Sugarman the Shadchan 
 seized the auspicious moment of restored amity to inquire insinu- 
 atingly if his sister was engaged. Pinchas and little Sampson 
 went down the stairs, quivering with noiseless laughter, which 
 became boisterous when they reached the street. Pinchas was 
 in high feather. 
 
 "The fool-men!" he said, as he led the sub-editor into a pub- 
 lic-house and regaled him on stout and sandwiches. " They 
 believe any Narrischkeit. I and you are the only two sensible 
 Jews in England. You vill see that my poesie goes in next week 
 — promise me that! To your life! "'' here they touched glasses. 
 " Ah, it is beautiful poesie. Such high tragic ideas! You vill 
 kiss me when you read them!"* He laughed in childish light- 
 heartedness. "Perhaps I write you a comic opera for your com- 
 pany — Jiein? Already I love you like a brotiier. Another glass 
 stout? Bring us two more, thou Hebe of the hops-nectar. You 
 have seen my comedy ^The Hornet of Judah ' — No? — Ah, she 
 vas a great comedy, Sampson.- All London talked of her. She 
 has been translated into every tongue. Perhaps I play in your 
 company. I am a great actor — /leinf You know not my forte 
 is voman's parts — I make myself so lovely complexion vith red 
 paint, I fall in love vith me." He sniggered over his stout. 
 " The Redacteur vill not redact long, hein?'''' he said presently. 
 "He is a fool-man. If he work for nothing they think that is 
 what he is worth. They are orthodox, he, he!" 
 
 " But he is orthodox too," said little Sampson. 
 
 "Yes," replied Pinchas musingly. "It is strange. It is very 
 strange. I cannot understand him. Never in all my experience 
 have I met another such man. There vas an Italian exile I 
 
THE TROUBLES OF AN EDITOR. 383 
 
 talked vith once in the island of Chios, his eyes were like Leon's, 
 soft vith a shining splendor like the stars vich are the eyes of the 
 angels of love. Ah, he is a good man, and he writes sharp ; he 
 has ideas, not like an English Jew at all, I could throw my arms 
 round him sometimes. I love him like a brother." His voice 
 softened. '• Anotlier glass stout ; ve vill drink to him." 
 
 Raphael did not find the editing by Committee feasible. The 
 friction was incessant, the waste of time monstrous. The second 
 number cost him even more headaches than the first, and this, 
 although the gallant Gluck abandoning his single-handed emprise 
 fortified himself with a real live compositor and had arranged 
 for the paper to be printed by machinery. The position was in- 
 tolerable. It put a touch of acid into his dulciferous mildness! 
 Just before going to press he was positively rude to Pinchas. It 
 would seem that little Sampson sheltering himself behind his cap- 
 italists had refused to give the poet a commission for a comic 
 opera, and Pinchas raved at Gideon, M. P., who he was sure was 
 Sampson's financial backer, and threatened to shoot him and 
 danced maniacally about the office. 
 
 " I have written an attack on the Member for Vitechapel," he 
 said, growing calmer, " to hand him down to the execration of pos- 
 terity, and I have brought it to the Flag. It must go in this veek." 
 
 '' We have already your poem," said Raphael. 
 
 " I know, but I do not grudge my work, I am not like your 
 money-making English Jews." 
 
 "There is no room. The paper is full." 
 
 " Leave out Ebenezer's tale — with the blue spectacles." 
 
 " There is none. It was completed in one number." 
 
 " Well, must you put in your leader ? " 
 
 " Absolutely ; please go away. I have this page to read." 
 
 " But you can leave out some advertisements ? " 
 
 " I must not. We have too few as it is." 
 
 The poet put his finger alongside his nose, but Raphael was 
 adamant. 
 
 "Do me this one favor," he pleaded. "I love you like a 
 brother ; just this one little thing. I vill never ask another favor 
 of you all my life." 
 
384 GRANDCHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 " I would not put it in, even if there was room. Go away," 
 said Raphael, almost roughly. 
 
 The unaccustomed accents gave Pinchas a salutary shock. 
 He borrowed two shillings and left, and Raphael was afraid to 
 look up lest he should see his head wedged in the doonvay. 
 Soon after Gluck and his one compositor carried out the forms 
 to be machined. Little Sampson, arriving with a gay air on his 
 lips, met them at the door. 
 
 On the Friday, Raphael sat in the editorial chair, utterly dis- 
 pirited, a battered wreck. The Committee had just left him. A 
 lieresy had crept into a bit of late news not inspected by them, 
 and they declared that the paper was not worth twopence and 
 had better be stopped. The demand for this second number 
 was, moreover, rather poor, and eacli man felt his ten pound 
 share melting away, and resolved not to pay up the half yet 
 unpaid. It was Raphael's first real experience of men- — after 
 the enchanted towers of Oxford, where he had foregathered 
 with dreamers. 
 
 His pipe hung listless in his mouth ; an extinct volcano. His 
 first fit of distrust in human nature, nay, even in the purifying 
 powers of orthodoxy, was racking him. Strangely enough this 
 wave of scepticism tossed up the thought of Esther Ansell, and 
 stranger still, on the top of this thought, in walked Mr. Henry 
 Goldsmith. Raphael jumped up and welcomed his late host, 
 whose leathery countenance shone with the polish of a sweet 
 smile. It appeared that the communal pillar had been passing 
 casually, and thought heM look Raphael up. 
 
 " So you don't pull well together,'' he said, when he had 
 elicited an outline of the situation from the editor. 
 
 "No, not altogether," admitted Raphael. 
 
 " Do you think the paper'll live? " 
 
 " I can't say,'' said Raphael, dropping limply into his chair. 
 " Even if it does, I don't know whether it will do much good if run 
 on their lines, for although it is of great importance that we get 
 kosher food and baths, I hardly think they go about it in the right 
 spirit. I may be wrong. They are older men than I and have 
 seen more of actual life, and know the class we appeal to better." 
 
THE TROUBLES OF AN EDITOR. 385 
 
 " No, no, you are not wrong/' said Mr. Goldsmith vehemently. 
 " I am myself dissatisfied with some of the Committee's contribu- 
 tions to this second number. It is a great opportunity to save 
 English Judaism, but it is being frittered away," 
 
 " I am afraid it is," said Raphael, removing his empty pipe 
 from his mouth, and staring at it blankly. 
 
 Mr. Goldsmith brought his fist down sharp on the soft litter 
 that covered the editorial table. 
 
 " It shall not be frittered away! " he cried. '' No, not if I have 
 to buy the paper! " 
 
 Raphael looked up eagerly. 
 
 "What do you say?" said Goldsmith. "Shall I buy it up 
 and let you work it on your lines ? " 
 
 " I shall be very glad," said Raphael, the Messianic look re- 
 turning to his face. 
 
 " How much will they want for it? " 
 
 "Oh, I think they'll be glad to let you take it over. They say 
 it's not worth twopence, and Fm sure they haven't got the funds 
 to carry it on," replied Raphael, rising. " I'll go down about it 
 at once. The Committee have just been here, and I dare say 
 they are still in Schlesinger's office." 
 
 "No, no," said Goldsmith, pushing him down into his seat. 
 " It will never do if people know I'm the proprietor." 
 
 "Why not?" 
 
 " Oh, lots of reasons. I'm not a man to brag ; if I want to 
 do a good thing for Judaism, there's no reason for all the world 
 to know it. Then again, from my position on all sorts of com- 
 mittees I shall be able to influence the communal advertise- 
 ments in a way I couldn't if people knew I had any connection 
 with the paper. So, too, I shall be able to recommend it to my 
 wealthy friends (as no doubt it will deserve to be recommended) 
 without my praise being discounted." 
 
 " Well, but then what am I to say to the Committee? " 
 
 " Can't you say you want to buy it for yourself? They know 
 you can afford it." 
 
 Raphael hesitated. " But why shouldn't I buy it for myself?" 
 
 " Pooh! Haven't you got better use for your money? " 
 2 c 
 
886 GRANDCHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 It was true. Raphael had designs more tangibly philan- 
 thropic for the five thousand pounds left him by his aunt. And 
 he was business-like enough to see that Mr. Goldsmith's money 
 might as well be utilized for the good of Judaism. He was not 
 quite easy about the little fiction that would be necessary for the 
 transaction, but the combined assurances of Mr. Goldsmith and 
 his own common sense that there was no real deception or 
 harm involved in it, ultimately prevailed. Mr. Goldsmith left, 
 promising to call again in an hour, and Raphael, full of new 
 hopes, burst upon the Committee. 
 
 But his first experience of bargaining was no happier than 
 the rest of his worldly experience. When he professed his 
 willingness to relieve them of tlie burden of carrying on the 
 paper they first stared, then laughed, then shook their fists. 
 As if they would leave him to corrupt the Faith! When they 
 understood he was willing to pay something, the value of The 
 Flag of JiidaJi went up from less than twopence to more than 
 two hundred pounds. Everybody was talking about it, its repu- 
 tation was made, they were going to print double next week. 
 
 " But it has not cost you forty pounds yet?'' said the aston- 
 ished Raphael. 
 
 "What are you saying? Look at the posters alone!'' said 
 Suijarman. 
 
 " But you don't look at it fairly,'^ argued De Haan, whose 
 Talmudical studies had sharpened wits already super-subtle. 
 " Whatever it has cost us, it would have cost as much more if 
 we had had to pay our editor, and it is very unfair of you to 
 leave that out of account." 
 
 Raphael was overwhelmed. " It's taking away with the left 
 hand what you gave us with the right," added De Haan, with 
 infinite sadness. " I had thought better of you, Mr. Leon." 
 
 '' But you got a good many twopences back," murmured 
 Raphael. 
 
 " It's the future profits that we're losing," explained Schle- 
 singer. 
 
 In the end Raphael agreed to give a hundred pounds, which 
 made the members inwardly determine to pay up the residue on 
 
THE TROUBLES OF AN EDITOR. 387 
 
 their shares at once. De Haan also extorted a condition that 
 the Flag should continue to be the organ of the Kosher Co- 
 operative Society, for at least six months, doubtless perceiving 
 that should the paper live and thrive over that period, it would 
 not then pay the proprietor to alter its principles. By which 
 bargain the Society secured for itself a sum of money together 
 with an organ, gratis, for six months and, to all seeming, in per- 
 petuity, for at bottom they knew well that Raphael's heart was 
 sound. They were all on the free list, too, and they knew he 
 would not trouble to remove them. 
 
 Mr. Henry Goldsmith, returning, was rather annoyed at the 
 price, but did not care to repudiate his agent. 
 
 *' Be economical," he said. ''I will get you a better office and 
 find a proper publisher and canvasser. But cut it as close as 
 you can.'' 
 
 Raphael's face beamed with joy. '• Oh, depend upon me," he 
 said. 
 
 "What is your own salary? " asked Goldsmith. 
 
 " Nothing," said Raphael. 
 
 A flash passed across Goldsmith's face, then he considered a 
 moment. 
 
 '' I wish you would let it be a guinea," he said. " Quite nom- 
 inal, you know. Only 1 like to have things in proper form. 
 And if you ever want to go, you know, you'll give me a month's 
 notice and," here he laughed genially, " I'll do ditto when I want 
 to get rid of you. Ha! Hal Ha! Is that a bargain?" 
 
 Raphael smiled in reply and the two men's hands met in a 
 hearty clasp. 
 
 " Miss Ansell will help you, I know," said Goldsmith cheerily. 
 "That girl's got it in her, I can tell you. She'll take the shine 
 out of some of our West Enders. Do you know I picked her 
 out of the gutter, so to speak ? " 
 
 " Yes, I know," said Raphael. " It was very good and dis- 
 criminating of you. How is she ? " 
 
 " She's all right. Come up and see her about doing some- 
 thing for you. She goes to the Museum sometimes in the after- 
 noons, but you'll always find her in on Sundays, or most Sundays. 
 
388 GRANDCHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 Come up and dine with us again soon, will you? Mrs. Gold- 
 smith will be so pleased/' 
 
 " I will," said Raphael fervently. And when the door closed 
 upon the communal pillar, he fell to striding feverishly about 
 his little den. His trust in human nature was restored and the 
 receding wave of scepticism bore off again the image of Esther 
 Ansell. Now to work for Judaism! 
 
 The sub-editor made his first appearance that day, carolling 
 joyously. 
 
 " Sampson," said Raphael abruptly, '' your salary is raised by 
 a guinea a week.'" 
 
 The joyous song died away on little Sampson's lips. His eye- 
 glass dropped. He let himself fall backwards, impinging noise- 
 lessly upon a heap of '• returns '' of number one. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 A woman's growth. 
 
 The sloppy Sunday afternoon, which was tlie first opportunity 
 Raphael had of profiting by Mr. Henry Goldsmith's general invi- 
 tation to call and see Esther, happened to be that selected by the 
 worthy couple for a round of formal visits. Esther was left at 
 home with a headache, little expecting pleasanter company. She 
 hesitated about receiving Raphael, but on hearing that he had 
 come to see her rather than her patrons, she smoothed her hair, 
 put on a prettier frock, and went down into the drawing-room, 
 where she found liim striding restlessly in bespattered boots and 
 moist overcoat. When he became aware of her presence, he 
 went towards her eagerly, and shook lier hand with jerky 
 awkwardness. 
 
 "How are you?" he said heartily. 
 
 " Very well, thank you," she replied automatically. Then a 
 twinge, as of reproach at the falsehood, darted across her brow, 
 and she added, "A trifle of the usual headache. I hope you are 
 well." 
 
A WOMAN'S GROWTH. 389 
 
 " Quite, thank you,''' he rejoined. 
 
 His face rather contradicted him. It looked thin, pale, and 
 weary. Journalism writes lines on the healthiest countenance. 
 Esther looked at him disapprovingly ; she had the woman's 
 artistic instinct if not the artist's, and Raphael, with his damp 
 overcoat, everlastingly cnmipled at the collar, was not an aesthetic 
 object. Whether in her pretty moods or her plain, Esther was 
 always neat and dainty. There was a bit of ruffled lace at her 
 throat, and the heliotrope of her gow^n contrasted agreeably with 
 the dark skin of the vivid face. 
 
 " Do take off your overcoat and dry yourself at the fire,'' she 
 said. 
 
 While he was disposing of it, she poked the fire into a big 
 cheerful blaze, seating herself opposite him in a capacious arm- 
 chair, where the flame picked her out in bright tints upon the 
 dusky background of the great dim room. 
 
 "And how is The Flagofjiidahf'^ she said. 
 
 " Still waving," he replied. "It is about that that I have 
 come." 
 
 "About that?" she said wonderingly. " Oh, I see; you want 
 to know if the one person it is written at has read it. Well, 
 make your mind easy. I have. I have read it religiously — No, 
 I don't mean that ; yes, I do ; it's the appropriate word." 
 
 "Really? " He tried to penetrate behind the bantering tone. 
 
 " Yes, really. You put your side of the case eloquently and 
 well. I look forward to Friday with interest. I hope the paper 
 is selling?" 
 
 " So, so," he said. " It is uphill work. The Jewish public 
 looks on journalism as a branch of philanthropy, I fear, and Sid- 
 ney suggests publishing our free-list as a ' Jewish Directory.' " 
 
 She smiled. "' Mr. Graham is very amusing. Only, he is too 
 well aware of it. He has been here once since that dinner, and 
 we discussed you. He says he can't understand how you came 
 to be a cousin of his, even a second cousin. He says he is 
 L Homme qui rit, and you are VHonifne qui prie^ 
 
 " He has let that off on me already, supplemented by the ex- 
 planation that every extensive Jewish family embraces a genius 
 
390 GRANDCHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 and a lunatic. He admits that he is the genius. Tlie unfortu- 
 nate part for me," ended Raphael, laughing, "is, that he is a 
 genius.'" 
 
 " I saw two of his little things the other day at the Impres- 
 sionist Exhibition in Piccadilly. They are very clever and 
 dashing." 
 
 " I am told he draws ballet-girls," said Raphael, moodily. 
 
 " Yes, he is a disciple of Degas." 
 
 "You don't like that style of art?" he said, a shade of con- 
 cern in his voice. 
 
 " I do not," said Esther, emphatically. " I am a curious mixt- 
 ure. In art, I have discovered in myself two conflicting tastes, 
 and neither is for the modern realism, which I yet admire in 
 literature. I like poetic pictures, impregnated with vague roman- 
 tic melancholy ; and I like the white lucidity of classic statuary. 
 I suppose the one taste is the offspring of temperament, the other 
 of thought ; for, intellectually, I admire the Greek ideas, and was 
 glad to hear you correct Sidney's perversion of the adjective. I 
 wonder," she added, reflectively, " if one can worship the gods 
 of the Greeks without believing in them." 
 
 " But you wouldn't make a cult of beauty?" 
 
 " Not if you take beauty in the narrow sense in which I should 
 fancy your cousin uses the word ; but, in a higher and broader 
 sense, is it not the one fine thing in life which is a certainty, the 
 one ideal which is not illusion?" 
 
 " Nothing is illusion," said Raphael, earnestly. " At least, not 
 in your sense. Why should the Creator deceive us?" 
 
 " Oh well, don't let us get into metaphysics. We argue from 
 different platforms," she said. " Tell me what you really came 
 about in connection with the Flag^ 
 
 " Mr. Goldsmith was kind enough to suggest that you might 
 write for it." 
 
 "What!" exclaimed Esther, sitting upright in her arm-chair. 
 ''I? I write for an orthodox paper?" 
 
 " Yes, why not ? " 
 
 " Do you mean Tm to take part in my own conversion?" 
 
 " The paper is not entirely religious," he reminded her. 
 
A WOMAN'S GROWTH. 391 
 
 " No, there are the advertisements." she said slily- 
 
 '" Pardon me," he said. '• We don't insert any advertisements 
 contrary to the principles of orthodoxy. Not that we are much 
 tempted." 
 
 '■'■ You advertise soap," she murmured. 
 
 "Oh, please! Don't you go in for those cheap sarcasms." 
 
 " Forgive me," she said. '' Remember my conceptions of 
 orthodoxy are drawn mainly from the Ghetto, where cleanli- 
 ness, so far from being next to godliness, is nowhere in the 
 vicinity. But what can I do for you?" 
 
 " I don't know. At present the staff, the /7^^-staff as Sidney 
 calls it, consists of myself and a sub-editor, who take it in turn 
 to translate the only regular outside contributor's articles into 
 English." 
 
 "Who's that?" 
 
 " Melchitsedek Pinchas, the poet I told you of." 
 
 " I suppose he writes in Hebrew." 
 
 " No, if he did the translation would be plain sailing enough. 
 The trouble is that he will write in English. I must admit, 
 though, he improves daily. Our correspondents, too, have the 
 same weakness for the vernacular, and I grieve to add that when 
 they do introduce a Hebrew word, they do not invariably spell it 
 correctly." 
 
 She smiled ; her smile was never so fascinating as by fire- 
 light. 
 
 Raphael rose and paced the room nervously, flinging out his 
 arms in uncouth fashion to emphasize his speech. 
 
 " I was thinking you might introduce a secular department of 
 some sort which would brighten up the paper. My articles are 
 so plaguy dull." 
 
 "Not so dull, for religious articles," she assured him. 
 
 " Could you treat Jewish matters from a social standpoint — 
 gossipy sort of thing." 
 
 She shook her head. " Pm afraid to trust myself to write on 
 Jewish subjects. I should be sure to tread on somebody's 
 corns." 
 
 "Oh, I have it! " he cried, bringing his arms in contact with a 
 
392 GRANDCHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 small Venetian vase which Esther, with great presence of mind, 
 just managed to catch ere it reached the ground. 
 
 " No, I have it," she said, laughing. " Do sit down, else 
 nobody can answer for the consequences." 
 
 She half pushed him into his chair, where he fell to warming 
 his hands contemplatively. 
 
 " Well ? " she said after a pause. " I thought you had an idea." 
 
 " Yes, yes," he said, rousing himself. " The subject we were 
 just discussing — Art." 
 
 " But there is nothing Jewish about art." 
 
 ^' All noble work has its religious aspects. Then there are 
 Jewish artists." 
 
 "Oh yes! your contemporaries do notice their exhibits, and 
 there seem to be more of them than the world ever hears of. 
 But if I w'ent to a gathering for you how should I know which 
 were Jew's? " 
 
 "By their names, of course." 
 
 " By no means of course. Some artistic Jews have forgotten 
 their own names." 
 
 " That's a dig at Sidney." 
 
 " Really, I wasn't thinking of him for the moment," she said a 
 little sharply. " However, in any case there's nothing worth 
 doing till May, and that's some months ahead. I'll do the 
 Academy for you if you like." 
 
 "Thank you. Won't Sidney stare if you pulverize him in The 
 Flag of Jndah ? Some of the pictures have also Jewish subjects, 
 you know." 
 
 " Yes, but if I mistake not, they're invariably done by Chris- 
 tian artists." 
 
 " Nearly always," he admitted pensively. " I wish we had a 
 Jewish allegorical painter to express the high conceptions of our 
 sages." 
 
 " As he would probably not know what they are," — she mur- 
 mured. Then, seeing him rise as if to go, she said: "Won't 
 you have a cup of tea? " 
 
 "No, don't trouble," he answered. 
 
 "Oh yes, do!" she pleaded. "Or else I shall think you're 
 
A WOMAN'S GROWTH. 393 
 
 angry with me for not asking you before." And she rang the 
 bell. She discovered, to her amusement, that Raphael took two 
 pieces of sugar per cup, but that if they were not inserted, he did 
 not notice their absence. Over tea, too, Raphael had a new idea, 
 this time fraught with peril to the Sevres tea-pot. 
 
 " Why couldn't you write us a Jewish serial story?'' he said 
 suddenly. ''That would be a novelty in communal journalism.'" 
 
 Esther looked startled by the proposition, 
 
 " How do you know I could? '' she said after a silence. 
 
 " I don't know," he replied. '• Only I fancy you could. Why 
 not?" he said encouragingly. "You don't know what you can 
 do till you try. Besides you write poetry." 
 
 "The Jewish public doesn't like the looking-glass," she an- 
 swered him, shaking her head. 
 
 "Oh, you can't say that. They've only objected as yet to the 
 distorting mirror. You're thinking of the row over that man 
 Armitage's book. Now, why not write an antidote to that book? 
 There now, there's an idea for you." 
 
 " It is an idea! " said Esther with overt sarcasm. " You think 
 art can be degraded into an antidote." 
 
 " Art is not a fetish," he urged. " What degradation is there 
 in art teaching a noble lesson? " 
 
 " Ah, that is what you religious people will never understand," 
 she said scathingly. "You want everything to preach." 
 
 "Everything does preach something," he retorted. "Why 
 not have the sermon good ? " 
 
 " I consider the original sermon was good," she said defiantly. 
 " It doesn't need an antidote." 
 
 " How can you say that? Surely, merely as one who was born 
 a Jewess, you wouldn't care for the sombre picture drawn by this 
 Armitage to stand as a portrait of your people." 
 
 She shrugged her shoulders — the ungraceful shrug of the 
 Ghetto. "Why not? It is one-sided, but it is true." 
 
 " I don't deny that ; probably the man was sincerely indig- 
 nant at certain aspects. I am ready to allow he did not even 
 see he was one-sided. But \i you see it, why not show the world 
 the other side of the shield? " 
 
394 GRANDCHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 She put her hand wearily to her brow. 
 
 '• Do not ask me," she said. " To have my work appreciated 
 merely because the moral tickled the reader's vanity would be a 
 mockery. The suffrages of the Jewish public — I might have 
 valued them once ; now I despise them." She sank further back 
 on the chair, pale and silent. 
 
 "Why, what harm have they done you?" he asked. 
 
 "They are so stupid," she said, with a gesture of distaste. 
 
 " That is a new charge against the Jews." 
 
 "' Look at the way they have denounced this Armitage, saying 
 his book is vulgar and wretched and written for gain, and all 
 because it does not flatter them." 
 
 "Can you wonder at it? To say ^youVe another' may not be 
 criticism, but it is human nature." 
 
 Esther smiled sadly. " I cannot make you out at all," she said. 
 
 "Why? What is there strange about me?" 
 
 " You say such shrewd, humorous things sometimes ; I won- 
 der how you can remain orthodox." 
 
 "Now I can't understand /<?//," he said, puzzled. 
 
 "Oh well. Perhaps if you could, you wouldn't be orthodox. 
 Let us remain mutual enigmas. And will you do me a favor?" 
 
 "With pleasure," he said, his face lighting up. 
 
 " Don't mention Mr. Armitage's book to me again. I am sick 
 of hearing about it." 
 
 "So am I," he said, rather disappointed. "After that dinner 
 I thought it only fair to read it, and although I detect consider- 
 able crude power in it, still I am very sorry it was ever published. 
 The presentation of Judaism is most ignorant. All the mystical 
 yearnings of the heroine might have found as much satisfaction 
 in the faith of her own race as they find expression in its poetry." 
 
 He rose to go. "Well, I am to take it for granted you will 
 not write that antidote?" 
 
 " I'm afraid it would be impossible for me to undertake it," 
 she said more mildly than before, and pressed her hand again to 
 her brow. 
 
 "Pardon me," he said in much concern. "I am too selfish. 
 I forgot you are not well. How is your head feeling now?" 
 
A WOMAN'S GROWTH. 395 
 
 "About the same, thank you/'' she said, forcing a grateful 
 smile. " You may rely on me for art ; yes, and music, too, if 
 you like.'" 
 
 "Thank you/' he said. " You read a great deal, don't you? " 
 
 She nodded her head. "Well, every week books are published 
 of more or less direct Jewish interest. I should be glad of notes 
 about such to brighten up the paper.''' 
 
 "For anything strictly unorthodox you may count on me. If 
 that antidote turns up, I shall not fail to cackle over it in your 
 columns. By the by, are you going to review the pofeon? Ex- 
 cuse so many mixed metaphors," she added, with a rather forced 
 laugh. 
 
 "No, I shan't say anything about it. Why give it an extra 
 advertisement by slating it? " 
 
 " Slating," she repeated with a faint smile. " I see you have 
 mastered all the slang of your profession." 
 
 " Ah, that's the influence of my sub-editor," he said, smiling 
 in return. "Well, good-bye.'"' 
 
 " You're forgetting your overcoat," she said, and having 
 smoothed out that crumpled collar, she accompanied him down 
 the wide soft-carpeted staircase into the hall with its rich bronzes 
 and glistening statues. 
 
 " How are your people in America?" he bethought himself to 
 ask on the way down. 
 
 "They are very w^ell, thank you," she said. "I send my 
 brother Solomon The Flag of Judah. He is also, I am afraid, 
 one of the unregenerate. You see I am doing my best to 
 enlarge your congregation." 
 
 He could not tell \vhether it was sarcasm or earnest. 
 
 "Well, good-bye," he said, holding out his hand. "Thank 
 you for your promise." 
 
 "Oh, that's not worth thanking me for," she said, touching 
 his long white fingers for an instant. "Look at the glory of 
 seeing myself in print. I hope you're not annoyed with me 
 for refusing to contribute fiction," she ended, growing suddenly 
 remorseful at the moment of parting. 
 
 "Of course not. How could I be?" — > 
 
396 GRANDCHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 " Couldn't your sister Adelaide do you a story? " 
 
 "Addie?" he repeated laughing. "Fancy Addie writing 
 stories! Addie has no literary ability." 
 
 "That's always the way with brothers. Solomon says — " 
 She paused suddenly. 
 
 " I don't remember for the moment that Solomon has any 
 proverb on the subject/' he said, still amused at the idea of 
 Addie as an authoress. 
 
 " I was thinking of something else. Good-bye. Remember 
 me to your sister, please." 
 
 " Certainly," he said. Then he exclaimed, " Oh, what a block- 
 head I ami I forgot to remember her to you. She says she 
 would be so pleased if you would come and have tea and a chat 
 with her some day. I should like you and Addie to know each 
 other." 
 
 " Thanks, I will. I will write to her some day. Good-bye, 
 once more." 
 
 He shook hands with her and fumbled at the door. 
 
 "Allow me!" she said, and opened it upon the gray dulness 
 of the dripping street. "When may I hope for the honor of 
 another visit from a real live editor? " 
 
 " I don't know," he said, smiling. " I'm awfully busy. I have 
 to read a paper on Ibn Ezra at Jews' College to-day fortnight." 
 
 "Outsiders admitted?'' she asked. 
 
 " The lectures at'e for outsiders," he said. " To spread the 
 knowledge of our literature. Only they won't come. Have }ou 
 never been to one ? " 
 
 She shook her head. 
 
 "There!" he said. "You complain of our want of culture, 
 and you don't even know what's going on." 
 
 She tried to take the reproof with a smile, but the corners 
 of her mouth quivered. He raised his hat and went down 
 the steps. 
 
 She followed him a little way along the Terrace, with eyes 
 growing dim with tears she could not account for. She went 
 back to the drawing-room and threw herself into the arm-chair 
 where he had sat, and made her headaciie worse by thinking 
 
A WOMAN'S GROWTH. 397 
 
 of all her unhappiness. The great room was filling with 
 dusk, and in the twilight pictures gathered and dissolved. 
 What girlish dreams and revolts had gone to make that 
 unfortunate book, which after endless boomerang-like returns, 
 from the publishers, had appeared, only to be denounced by 
 Jewry, ignored by its journals and scantily noticed by outside 
 criticisms. Mordecai Josephs had fallen almost still-born from 
 the press ; the sweet secret she had hoped to tell her pa- 
 troness had turned bitter like that other secret of her dead 
 love for Sidney, in the reaction from which she had written 
 most of her book. How fortunate at least that her love had 
 flickered out, had proved but the ephemeral sentiment of a 
 romantic girl for the first brilliant man she had met. Sidney 
 had fascinated her by his verbal audacities in a world of nar- 
 row conventions ; he had for the moment laughed away spirit- 
 ual aspirations and yearnings with a raillery that was almost 
 like ozone to a young woman avid of martyrdom for the 
 happiness of the world. How, indeed, could she have expected 
 the handsome young artist to feel the magic that hovered 
 about her talks with him, to know the thrill that lay in the 
 formal hand-clasp, to be aware that he interpreted for her 
 poems and pictures, and incarnated the undefined ideal of 
 girlish day-dreams? How could he ever have had other than 
 an intellectual thought of her ; how could any man, even the 
 religious Raphael? Sickly, ugly little thing that she was! She 
 got up and looked in the glass now to see herself thus, but 
 the shadows had gathered too thickly. She snatched up a 
 newspaper that lay on a couch, lit it, and held it before the 
 glass ; it flared up threateningly and she beat it out, laughing 
 hysterically and asking herself if she was mad. But she 
 had seen the ugly little face ; its expression frightened her. 
 Yes, love was not for her ; she could only love a man of 
 brilliancy and culture, and she was nothing but a Petticoat 
 Lane girl, after all. Its coarseness, its vulgarity underlay 
 all her veneer. They had got into her book ; everybody said 
 so, Raphael said so. How dared she write disdainfully of 
 RaphaePs people? She an upstart, an outsider? She went 
 
398 GRANDCHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 to the library, lit the gas, got down a volume of Graetz's history 
 of the Jews, which she had latterly taken to reading, and turned 
 over its wonderful pages. Then she wandered restlessly back 
 to the great dim drawing-room and played amateurish fantasias 
 on the melancholy Polish melodies of her childhood till Mr. and 
 Mrs. Henry Goldsmith returned. They had captured the Rev. 
 Joseph Strelitski and brought him back to dinner. Esther 
 would have excused herself from the meal, but Mrs. Goldsmith 
 insisted the minister would think her absence intentionally dis- 
 courteous. In point of fact, Mrs. Goldsmith, like all Jewesses 
 a born match-maker, was not disinclined to think of the popular 
 preacher as a sort of adopted son-in-law. She did not tell her- 
 self so, but she instinctively resented the idea of Esther marry- 
 ing into the station of her patroness. Strelitski, though his 
 position was one of distinction for a Jewish clergyman, was, 
 like Esther, of humble origin ; it would be a match wliich she 
 could bless from her pedestal in genuine good-will towards both 
 parties. 
 
 The fashionable minister was looking careworn and troubled. 
 He had aged twice ten years since his outburst at the Holy Land 
 League. The black curl hung disconsolately on his forehead. 
 He sat at Esther's side, but rarely looking at her, or addressing 
 her, so that her taciturnity and scarcely-\'eiled dislike did not 
 noticeably increase his gloom. He rallied now and again out of 
 politeness to his hostess, flashing out a pregnant phrase or two. 
 But prosperity did not seem to have brought happiness to the 
 whilom poor Russian student, even though he had fought his 
 way to it unaided. 
 
 CHAPTER VL 
 
 COMEDY OR TRAGEDY? 
 
 The weeks went on and Passover drew nigh. The recurrence 
 of the feast brought no thrill to Esther now. It was no longer a 
 charmed time., with strange things to eat and drink, and a com- 
 
COMEDY OR TRAGEDY? 399 
 
 parative plenty of them — stranger still. Lack of appetite was 
 the chief dietary want now. Nobody had any best clothes to 
 put on in a world where everything was for the best in the way 
 of clothes. Except for the speckled Passover cakes, there was 
 hardly any external symptom of the sacred Festival. While the 
 Ghetto was turning itself inside out, the Kensington Terrace was 
 calm in the dignity of continuous cleanliness. Nor did Henry 
 Goldsmith himself go prowling about the house in quest of va- 
 grant crumbs. Mary O'Reilly attended to all that, and the 
 Goldsmiths had implicit confidence in her fidelity to the tradi- 
 tions of their faith. Wherefore, the evening of the day before 
 Passover, instead of being devoted to frying fish and provision- 
 ing, was free for more secular occupations ; Esther, for example, 
 had arrano^ed to go to see the debut of a new Hamlet with Addie. 
 Addie had asked her to go, mentioned that Raphael, who was 
 taking her, had suggested that she should bring her friend. For 
 they had become great friends, had Addie and Esther, ever since 
 Esther had gone to take that cup of tea, with the chat that is 
 more essential than milk or sugar. 
 
 The girls met or wrote every week. Raphael, Esther never 
 met nor heard from directly. She found Addie a sweet, lovable 
 girl, full of frank simplicity and unquestioning piety. Though 
 dazzlingly beautiful, she had none of the coquetry which Esther, 
 with a touch of jealousy, had been accustomed to associate with 
 beauty, and she had little of the petty malice of girlish gossip. 
 Esther summed her up as Raphael's heart without his head. It 
 was unfair, for Addie's own head was by no means despicable. 
 But Esther was not alone in taking eccentric opinions as the 
 touchstone of intellectual vigor. Anyhow, she was distinctly 
 happier since Addie had come into her life, and she admired her 
 as a mountain torrent might admire a crystal pool — half envying 
 her happier temperament. 
 
 The Goldsmiths were just finishing dinner, when the expected 
 ring came. To their surprise, the ringer was Sidney. He was 
 shown into the dining-room. 
 
 "Good evening, all," he said. "Fve come as a substitute for 
 Raphael." 
 
400 GRANDCHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 Esther grew white. " Why, what has happened to him ? '' she 
 asked. 
 
 " Nothing. I had a telegram to say he was unexpectedly de- 
 tained in the city, and asking me to take Addie and to call for 
 you." 
 
 Esther turned from white to red. How rude of Raphael! 
 How disappointing not to meet him, after all ! And did he think 
 she could thus unceremoniously be handed over to somebody 
 else? She was about to beg to be excused, when it struck her a 
 refusal would look too pointed. Besides, she did not fear Sid- 
 ney now. It would be a test of her indiiference. So she mur- 
 mured instead, "What can detain him?" 
 
 " Charity, doubtless. Do you know, that after he is fagged 
 out with upholding the Flag from early morning till late eve, he 
 devotes the later eve to gratuitous tuition, lecturing and the 
 like." 
 
 " No," said Esther, softened^ "■ I knew he came home late, 
 but I thought he had to report communal meetings." 
 
 "That, too. But Addie tells me he never came home at all 
 one night last week. He was sitting up with some wretched 
 dying pauper." 
 
 " He'll kill himself," said Esther, anxiously. 
 
 " People are right about him. He is quite hopeless," said 
 Percy Saville, the solitary guest, tapping his forehead signifi- 
 cantly. 
 
 "' Perhaps it is we who are hopeless," said Esther, sharply. 
 
 "I wish we were all as sensible," said Mrs. Henry Goldsmith, 
 turning on the unhappy stockbroker with her most superior air. 
 " Mr. Leon always reminds me of Judas Maccabaeus." 
 
 He shrank before the blaze of her mature beauty, the fulness 
 of her charms revealed by her rich evening dress, her hair radi- 
 ating strange, subtle perfume. His eye sought Mr. Goldsmith's 
 for refuge and consolation. 
 
 " That is so," said Mr. Goldsmith, rubbing his red chin. " He 
 is an excellent young man." 
 
 " May I trouble you to put on your things at once. Miss 
 Ansell?" said Sidney. "I have left Addie in the carriage, and 
 
COMEDY OR TRAGEDY? 401 
 
 we are rather late. I believe it is usual for ladies to put on 
 ^things/ even when in evening dress. I may mention that there 
 is a bouquet for you in the carriage, and, however unworthy a 
 substitute I may be for Raphael, I may at least claim he would 
 have forgotten to bring you that." 
 
 Esther smiled despite herself as she left the room to get her 
 cloak. She was chagrined and disappointed, but she resolved 
 not to inflict her ill-humor on her companions. 
 
 She had long since got used to carriages, and when they 
 arrived at the theatre, she took her seat in the box without 
 heart-fluttering. It was an old discovery now that boxes had 
 no connection with oranges nor stalls with costers' barrows. 
 
 The house was brilliant. The orchestra was playing the over- 
 ture. 
 
 " I wish Mr. Shakspeare would write a new play," grumbled 
 Sidney. "All these revivals make him lazy. Heavens! what 
 his fees must tot up to! If I were not sustained by the presence 
 of you two girls, I should no more survive the fifth act than most 
 of the characters. Why don't they brighten the piece up with 
 ballet-girls ? " 
 
 "Yes, I suppose you blessed Mr. Leon when you got his tele- 
 gram," said Esther. " What a bore it must be to you to be sad- 
 dled with his duties!" 
 
 " Awful ! " admitted Sidney gravely. " Besides, it interferes 
 with my work." 
 
 "Work?" said Addie. "You know you only work by sun- 
 light." 
 
 " Yes. that's the best of my profession — in England. It gives 
 you such opportunities of working — at other professions." 
 
 "Why, what do you work at?" inquired Esther, laughing. 
 
 " Well, there's amusement, the most difficult of all things to 
 achieve! Then there's poetry. You don't know what a dab I 
 am at rondeaux and barcarolles. And I write music, too, lovely 
 little serenades to my lady-loves and reveries that are like dainty 
 pastels." 
 
 "All the talents!" said Addie, looking at him with a fond 
 smile. " But if you have any time to spare from the curling of 
 
 2D 
 
402 GRANDCHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 your lovely silken moustache, which is entirely like a delicate 
 pastel, will you kindly tell me what celebrities are present?'' 
 
 " Yes, do,'' added Esther. '' I have only been to two first 
 nights, and then I had nobody to point out the lions." 
 
 "Well, first of all I see a very celebrated painter in a box — a 
 man who has improved considerably on the weak draughtsman- 
 ship displayed by Nature in her human figures, and the amateur- 
 ishness of her glaring sunsets." 
 
 "Who's that?" inquired Addie and Esther eagerly. 
 
 "I think he calls himself Sidney Graham — but that of course 
 is only a noin de pinceau.'''' 
 
 "Oh! " said the girls, with a reproachful smile. 
 
 " Do be serious! " said Esther. " Who is that stout gentleman 
 with the bald head?" She peered down curiously at the stalls 
 through her opera-glass. 
 
 "What, the lion without the mane? That's Tom Day, the 
 dramatic critic of a dozen papers. A terrible Philistine. Lucky 
 for Sliakspeare he didn't flourish in Elizabethan times." 
 
 He rattled on till the curtain rose and the hushed audience 
 settled down to the enjoyment of the tragedy. 
 
 " This looks as if it is going to be the true Hamlet," said 
 Esther, after the first act. 
 
 "What do you mean by the true Hamlet?" queried Sidney 
 cynically. 
 
 "The Hamlet for whom life is at once too big and too little," 
 said Esther. 
 
 " And who was at once mad and sane," laughed Sidney. 
 "The plain truth is that Shakspeare followed the old tale, and 
 what you take for subtlety is but the blur of uncertain handling. 
 Aha! You look shocked. Have I found your religion at last?" 
 
 " No ; my reverence for our national bard is based on reason," 
 rejoined Esther seriously. "To conceive Hamlet, the typical 
 ninteenth-century intellect, in that bustling picturesque Eliza- 
 bethan time was a creative feat bordering on the miraculous. 
 And then, look at the solemn inexorable march of destiny in his 
 tragedies, awful as its advance in the Greek dramas. Just as the 
 marvels of the old fairy-tales were an instinctive prevision of 
 
COMEDY OR TRAGEDY? 403 
 
 the miracles of modern science, so this idea of destiny seems to 
 me an instinctive anticipation of the formulas of modern science. 
 What we want to-day is a dramatist who shall show us the 
 great natural silent forces, working the weal and woe of human 
 life through the illusions of consciousness and free will/' 
 
 "What you want to-night, Miss Ansell, is black coffee," said 
 Sidney, ''and Fll tell tlie attendant to get you a cup, for I 
 dragged you away from dinner before tlie crown and climax of 
 the meal ; I have always noticed myself that when I am inter- 
 rupted in my meals, all sorts of bugbears, scientilic or otherwise, 
 take possession of my mind/' 
 
 He called the attendant. 
 
 "Esther has the most nonsensical opinions," said Addie 
 gravely. "As if people weren't responsible for their actions! 
 Do good and all shall be well with thee, is sound Bible teaching 
 and sound common sense." 
 
 " Yes, but isn't it the Bible that says, ' The fathers have eaten 
 a sour grape and the teeth of the children are set on edge'?" 
 Esther retorted. 
 
 Addie looked perplexed. "It sounds contradictory," she said 
 honestly. 
 
 "Not at all, Addie," said Esther. "The Bible is a literature, 
 not a book. If you choose to bind Tennyson and Milton in 
 one volume that doesn't make them a book. And you can't 
 complain if you find contradictions in the text. Don't you 
 think the sour grape text the truer, Mr. Graham?" 
 
 "Don't ask me, please. Tm prejudiced against anything that 
 appears in the Bible." 
 
 In his flippant way Sidney spoke the truth. He had an almost 
 physical repugnance for his fathers' ways of looking at things. 
 
 " I think youVe the two most wicked people in the world," 
 exclaimed Addie gravely. 
 
 "We are," said Sidney lightly. "I wonder you consent to 
 sit in the same box with us. How you can find my company 
 endurable I can never make out." 
 
 Addie's lovely face flushed and her lip quivered a little. 
 
 " It's your friend who's the wickeder of the two," pursued 
 
404 GRANDCHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 Sidney. " For she's in earnest and Pm not. Life's too short 
 for us to take the world's troubles on our shoulders, not to speak 
 of the unborn millions. A little light and joy, the flush of sun- 
 set or of a lovely woman's face, a fleeting strain of melody, the 
 scent of a rose, the flavor of old wine, the flash of a jest, and 
 ah, yes, a cup of coffee — here's yours. Miss Ansell — that's the 
 most we can hope for in life. Let us start a religion with one 
 commandment : ' Enjoy thyself.' " 
 
 " That religion has too many disciples already," said Esther, 
 stirring her coff'ee. 
 
 " Then why not start it if you wish to reform the world," 
 asked Sidney. "All religions survive merely by being broken. 
 With only one commandment to break, everybody would jump 
 at the chance. But so long as you tell people they mustn't enjoy 
 themselves, they will. It's human nature, and you can't alter that 
 by Act of Parliament or Confession of Faith. Christ ran amuck 
 at human nature, and human nature celebrates his birthday with 
 pantomimes." 
 
 "Christ understood human nature better than the modern 
 young man," said Esther scathingly, "and the proof lies in the 
 almost limitless impress he has left on history." 
 
 "Oh, that was a fluke," said Sidney lightly. "His real influ- 
 ence is only superficial. Scratch the Christian and you find the 
 Pagan — spoiled." 
 
 " He divined by genius what science is slowly finding out," 
 said Esther, "when he said, ' Forgive them for they know not 
 what they do ' ! — " 
 
 Sidney laughed heartily. "That seems to be your King 
 Charles's head — seeing divinations of modern science in all the 
 old ideas. Personally I honor him for discovering that the 
 Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. Strange 
 he should have stopped half-way to the truth!" 
 
 "What is the truth?" asked Addie curiously. 
 
 "Why, that morality was made for man, not man for moral- 
 itv," said Sidnev. " That chimera of meaningrless virtue which 
 the Hebrew has brought into the world is the last monster left 
 to slay. The Hebrew view of life is too one-sided. The Bible 
 
COMEDY OR TRAGEDY? 405 
 
 is a literature without a laugh in it. Even Raphael thinks the 
 great Radical of Galilee carried spirituality too far." 
 
 "Yes, he thinks he would have been reconciled to the Jewish 
 doctors and would have understood them better," said Addie, 
 " only he died so young." 
 
 "That's a good way of putting it!" said Sidney- admiringly. 
 " One can see Raphael is my cousin despite his religious aberra- 
 tions. It opens up new historical vistas. Only it is just like 
 Raphael to find excuses for everybody, and Judaism in every- 
 thing. I am sure he considers the devil a good Jew at heart ; 
 if he admits any moral obliquity in him, he puts it down to the 
 climate." 
 
 This made Esther laugh outright, even while there were tears 
 for Raphael in the laugh. Sidney's intellectual fascination re- 
 asserted itself over her; there seemed something inspiring in 
 standing wdth him on the free heights that left all the clogging 
 vapors and fogs of moral problems somewhere below ; where the 
 sun shone and the clear wind blew and talk was a game of bowls 
 with Puritan ideals for ninepins. He went on amusing her till 
 the curtain rose, with a pretended theory of Mohammedology 
 which he was working at. Just as for the Christian Apologist 
 the Old Testament was full of hints of the New, so he contended 
 was the New Testament full of foreshado wings of the Koran, 
 and he cited as a most convincing text, " In Heaven, there shall 
 be no marrying, nor giving in marriage." He professed to think 
 that Mohammedanism was the dark horse that would come to 
 the front in the race of religions and win in the west as it had 
 won in the east. 
 
 " There's a man staring dreadfully at you, Esther," said Addie, 
 when the curtain fell on the second act. 
 
 "Nonsense!" said Esther, reluctantly returning from the 
 realities of the play to the insipidities of actual life. " Who- 
 ever it is, it must be at you." 
 
 She looked aiTectionately at the great glorious creature at her 
 side, tall and stately, with that winning gentleness of expression 
 which spiritualizes tlie most voluptuous beauty. Addie wore 
 pale sea-green, and there were lilies of the valley at her bosom, 
 
406 GRANDCHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 and a diamond star in her hair. No man could admire her 
 more than Esther, who felt quite vain of her friend^s beauty and 
 happy to bask in its reflected sunshine. Sidney followed her 
 glance and his cousin's charms stiiick him with almost novel 
 freshness. He was so much with Addie that he always took 
 her for granted. The semi-unconscious liking he had for her 
 society was based on other than physical traits. He let his 
 eyes rest upon her for a moment in half-surprised appreciation, 
 figuring her as half-bud, half-blossom. Really, if Addie had 
 not been his cousin and a Jewess! She was not much of a 
 cousin, when he came to cipher it out, but then she was a good 
 deal of a Jewess ! 
 
 " Tm sure it's you he's staring at," persisted Addie. 
 
 " Don't be ridiculous," persisted Esther. " Which man do 
 you mean ? " 
 
 "There! The fifth row of stalls, the one, two, four, seven, 
 the seventh man from the end! He's been looking at you all 
 through, but now he's gone in for a good long stare. There! 
 next to that pretty girl in pink." 
 
 " Do you mean the young man with the dyed carnation in his 
 buttonhole and the crimson handkerchief in his bosom ? " 
 
 " Yes, that's the one. Do you know him ? " 
 
 " No," said Esther, lowering her eyes and looking away. 
 But when Addie informed her that the young man liad renewed 
 his attentions to the girl in pink, she levelled her opera-glass at 
 him. Then she shook her head. 
 
 " There seems something familiar about his face, but I cannot 
 for the life of me recall who it is." 
 
 " The something familiar about his face is his nose," said 
 Addie laughing, " for it is emphatically Jewish." 
 
 " At that rate." said Sidney, '' nearly half the theatre would 
 be familiar, including a goodly proportion of the critics, and 
 Hamlet and Ophelia themselves. But I know the fellow." 
 
 "You do? Who is he?" asked the girls eagerly. 
 
 " I don't know. He's one of the mashers of the Frivolity. 
 I'm another, and so we often meet. But we never speak as we 
 pass by. To tell the truth, I resent him." 
 
COMEDY OR TRAGEDY? 407 
 
 rit's wonderful how fond Jews are of the theatre/' said 
 EstlTer, •' and how they resent other Jews going/' 
 
 " Thank you/' said Sidney. " But as Fm not a Jew the arrow 
 glances off." 
 
 "Not a Jew? " repeated Esther in amaze. 
 
 " No. Not in the current sense, (j^lways deny Fm a Jew." 
 
 " How do you justify that? " said Addie incredulously. 
 C" Because it would be a lie to say I was. It would be to pro- 
 duce a false impression. The conception of a Jew in the mind 
 of the average Christian is a mixture of Fagin, Shylock, Roths- 
 child and the caricatures of the American comic papers. I am 
 certainly not like that, and Fm not going to tell a lie and say 
 I am. In conversation always think of your audience. It takes 
 two to make a truth. If an honest man told an old lady he was 
 an atheist, that would be a lie, for to her it would mean he was 
 a dissolute reprobate. To call myself ' Abrahams ' would be to 
 live a daily lie. I am not a bit like the picture called up by 
 Abrahams. Graham is a far truer expression of myself." / 
 
 " Extremely ingenious," said Esther smiling. " But ought you 
 not rather to utilize yourself for the correction of the portrait of 
 Abrahams ? " 
 
 Sidney shrugged his shoulders. " Why should I subject my- 
 self to petty martyrdom for the sake of an outworn creed and a 
 decaying sect? " 
 
 "We are not decaying," said Addie indignantly. 
 
 " Personally you are blossoming," said Sidney, with a mock 
 bow. " But nobody can deny that our recent religious history 
 has been a series of dissolving views. Look at that young 
 masher there, who is still ogling your fascinating friend ; rather, 
 I suspect, to the annoyance of the young lady in pink, and 
 compare him with the old hard-shell Jew. When I was a lad 
 named Abrahams, painfully training in the way I wasn't going 
 to go, I got an insight into the lives of my ancestors. Think 
 of the people who built up the Jewish prayer-book, w^ho added 
 line to line and precept to precept, and whose whole thought 
 was intertwined with religion, and then look at that young 
 fellow with the dyed carnation and the crimson silk handker- 
 
408 GRANDCHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 chief, who probably drives a drag to the Derby, and for aught 
 I know runs a music hall. It seems almost incredible he should 
 come of that Puritan old stock." 
 
 " Not at all," said Esther. " If you knew more of our history, 
 you would see it is quite normal. We were always hankering 
 after the gods of the heathen, and we always loved magnifi- 
 cence ; remember our Temples. In every land we have produced 
 great merchants and rulers, prime- ministers, viziers, nobles. 
 We built castles in Spain (solid ones) and palaces in Venice. 
 We have had saints and sinners, free livers and ascetics, martyrs 
 and money-lenders. Polarity, Graetz calls the self-contradiction 
 which runs through our history. I figure the Jew as the eldest- 
 born of Time, touching the Creation and reaching forward into 
 the future, the true blase of the Universe ; the Wandering Jew 
 who has been everywhere, seen everything, done everything, led 
 everything, thought everything and suffered everything." 
 
 " Bravo, quite a bit of Beaconsfieldian fustian," said Sidney 
 laughing, yet astonished. '' One would think you were anxious 
 to assert yourself against the ancient peerage of this mushroom 
 realm." 
 
 "It is the bare historical truth," said Esther, quietly. "We 
 are so ignorant of our own history — can we wonder at the 
 world's ignorance of it? Think of the part the Jew has played 
 — Moses giving the world its morality, Jesus its religion, Isaiah 
 its millennial visions, Spinoza its cosmic philosophy, Ricardo its 
 political economy, Karl Marx and Lassalle its socialism, Heine 
 its loveliest poetry, Mendelssohn its most restful music, Rachael 
 its supreme acting — and then think of the stock Jew of the 
 American comic papers! Tliere lies the real comedy, too deep 
 for laughter." 
 
 " Yes, but most of the Jews you mention were outcasts or 
 apostates," retorted Sidney. " There lies the real tragedy, too 
 deep for tears. Ah, Heine summed it up best : ' Judaism is not 
 a religion ; it is a misfortune.' But do you wonder at the intol- 
 erance of every nation towards its Jews? It is a form of hom- 
 age. Tolerate them and they spell ' Success,' and patriotism is 
 an ineradicable prejudice. Since when have you developed this 
 
COMEDY OR TRAGEDY? 409 
 
 extraordinary enthusiasm for Jewisli history ? I always thought 
 you were an anti-Semite." 
 
 Esther blushed and meditatively sniffed at her bouquet, but 
 fortunately the rise of the curtain relieved her of the necessity for 
 a reply. It was only a temporary relief, however, for the quiz- 
 zical young artist returned to the subject immediately the act 
 was over. 
 
 " I know you're in charge of the aesthetic department of the 
 Flag^'' he said. " I had no idea you wrote the leaders." 
 
 "Don't be absurd! " murmured Esther. 
 
 " I always told Addie Raphael could never write so eloquently ; 
 didn't I, Addie ? Ah, I see you're blushing to find it fame, Miss 
 Ansell." 
 
 Esther laughed, though a bit annoyed. " How can you sus- 
 pect me of writing orthodox leaders? " she asked. 
 
 '•Well, who else /i- there? " urged Sidney, with mock naivete. 
 " I went down there once and saw the shanty. The editorial 
 sanctum was crowded. Poor Raphael was surrounded by the 
 queerest looking set of creatures I ever clapped eyes on. There 
 was a quaint lunatic in a check suit, describing his apocalyptic 
 visions ; a dragoman with sore eyes and a grievance against the 
 Board of Guardians ; a venerable son of Jerusalem with a most 
 artistic white beard, who had covered the editorial table with 
 carved nick-nacks in olive and sandal-wood ; an inventor who 
 had squared the circle and the problem of perpetual motion, but 
 could not support himself; a Roumanian exile with a scheme for 
 fertilizing Palestine ; and a wild-eyed hatchet-faced Hebrew poet 
 who told me I was a famous patron of learning, and sent me his 
 book soon after with a Hebrew inscription which I couldn't read, 
 and a request for a cheque which I didn't write. I thought I just 
 capped the company of oddities, when in came a sallow red- 
 haired chap, with the extraordinary name of Karlkammer, and 
 kicked up a deuce of a shine with Raphael for altering his letter. 
 Raphael mildly hinted that the letter was written in such unin- 
 telligible English that he had to grapple with it for an hour 
 before he could reduce it to the coherence demanded of print. 
 But it was no use ; it seems Raphael had made him say some- 
 
410 GRANDCHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 thing heterodox he didn't mean, and he insisted on being 
 allowed to reply to his own letter! He had brought the counter- 
 blast with him ; six sheets of foolscap with all the t's uncrossed, 
 and insisted on signing it with his own name. I said, ' Why 
 not? Set a Karikammer to answer to a Karlkammer/ But 
 Raphael said it would make the paper a laughing-stock, and 
 between the dread of that and the consciousness of having done 
 the man a wrong, he was quite unhappy. He treats all his visit- 
 ors with angelic consideration, when in another newspaper office 
 the very office-boy would snub them. Of course, nobody has a 
 bit of consideration for him or his time or his purse." 
 
 " Poor Raphael! " murmured Esther, smiling sadly at the gro- 
 tesque images conjured up by Sidney's description. 
 
 " I go down there now whenever I want models,'' concluded 
 Sidney gravely. 
 
 " Well, it is only right to hear what those poor people have to 
 say," Addie observed. " What is a paper for except to right 
 wrongs?" 
 
 '' Primitive person! " said Sidney. "A paper exists to make 
 a profit." 
 
 "Raphael's doesn't," retorted Addie. 
 
 " Of course not," laughed Sidney. " It never will, so long as 
 there's a conscientious editor at the helm. Raphael flatters 
 nobody and reserves his praises for people with no control of 
 the communal advertisements. Why, it quite preys upon his mind 
 to think that he is linked to an advertisement canvasser with a 
 gorgeous imagination, who goes about representing to the unwary 
 Christian that the Flag has a circulation of fifteen hundred." 
 
 ''Dear me!" said Addie, a smile of humor lighting up her 
 beautiful features. 
 
 " Yes," said Sidney, " I think he salves his conscience by an 
 extra hour's slumming in the evening. Most religious folks do 
 their moral book-keeping by double entry. Probably that's why 
 he's not here to-night." 
 
 ''It's too bad!" said Addie. her face growing grave again. 
 '" He comes home so late and so tired that he always falls asleep 
 over his books." 
 
COMEDY OR TRAGEDY? 411 
 
 "I don't wonder,"' laughed Sidney. "Look what he reads! 
 Once I found hhn nodding peacefully over Thomas a Kempis." 
 
 '• Oh, he often reads that,'' said Addie. " When we wake him 
 up and tell him to go to bed, he says he wasn't sleeping, but 
 thinking, turns over a page and falls asleep again.'' 
 
 They all laughed. 
 
 "Oh, he's a famous sleeper," Addie continued. " It's as diffi- 
 cult to get him out of bed as into it. He says himself he's an 
 awful lounger and used to idle away whole days before he in- 
 vented time-tables. Now, he has every hour cut and dried — he 
 says his salvation lies in regular hours." 
 
 " Addie, Addie, don't tell tales out of school," said Sidney. 
 
 "Why, what tales?" asked Addie, astonished. "Isn't it 
 rather to his credit that he has conquered his bad habits?" 
 
 " Undoubtedly ; but it dissipates the poetry in which I am 
 sure Miss Ansell was enshrouding him. It shears a man of his 
 heroic proportions, to hear he has to be dragged out of bed. 
 These things should be kept in the family." 
 
 Esther stared hard at the house. Her cheeks glowed as if 
 the limelight man had turned his red rays on them. Sidney 
 chuckled mentally over his insight. Addie smiled. 
 
 "Oh, nonsense. I'm sure Esther doesn't think less of him 
 because he keeps a time-table." 
 
 " You forget your friend has what you haven't — artistic instinct. 
 It's ugly. A man should be a man, not a railway system. If I were 
 you, Addie, I'd capture that time-table, erase lecturing and substi- 
 tute ' cricketing.' Raphael would never know, and every afternoon, 
 say at 2 p.m., he'd consult his time-table, and seeing he had to 
 cricket, he'd take up his stumps and walk to Regent's Park." 
 
 "Yes, but he can't play cricket," said Esther, laughing and 
 glad of the opportunity. 
 
 "Oh, can't he?" Sidney whistled. "Don't insult him by tell- 
 \\\Z him that. Whv, he was in the Harrow eleven and scored 
 his century in the match with Eton ; those long arms of his send 
 the ball flying as if it were a drawing-room ornament." 
 
 " Oh yes," affirmed Addie. " Even now, cricket is his one 
 temptation." 
 
412 GRANDCHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 Esther was silent. Her Raphael seemed toppling to pieces. 
 The silence seemed to communicate itself to her companions. 
 Addie broke it by sending Sidney to smoke a cigarette in the 
 lobby. "Or else I shall feel quite too selfish," she said. "I 
 know you're just dying to talk to some sensible people. Oh, 
 I beg your pardon, Esther." 
 
 The squire of dames smiled but hesitated. 
 
 " Yes, do go," said Esther. " There's six or seven minutes 
 more interval. This is the longest wait." 
 
 " Ladies' will is my law," said Sidney, gallantly, and, taking a 
 cigarette case from his cloak, which was hung on a peg at the 
 back of a box, he strolled out. " Perhaps," he said, " I shall 
 skip some Shakspeare if I meet a congenial intellectual soul to 
 gossip with." 
 
 He had scarce been gone two minutes when there came a 
 gentle tapping at the door and, the visitor being invited to come 
 in, the girls were astonished to behold the young gentleman 
 with the dyed carnation and the crimson silk handkerchief. He 
 looked at Esther with an affable smile. 
 
 "Don't you remember me?" he said. The ring of his voice 
 woke some far-off echo in her brain. But no recollection came 
 to her. 
 
 " I remembered you almost at once," he went on, in a half- 
 reproachful tone, " though I didn't care about coming up while 
 you had another fellow in the box. Look at me carefully, 
 Esther." 
 
 The sound of her name on the stranger's lips set all the chords 
 of memory vibrating — she looked again at the dark oval fiice 
 with the aquiline nose, the glittering eyes, the neat black mous- 
 tache, the close-shaved cheeks and chin, and in a^ash the past 
 resurged and she murmured almost incredulously,V" Levi ! " 
 
 The young man got rather red. "Ye-e-s!" he stammered. 
 ''Allow me to present you my card." He took it out of a little 
 ivory case and handed it to her. It read, "Mr. Leonard 
 JameTA 
 
 An^used smile flitted over Esther's face, passing into one of 
 welcome. She was not at all displeased to see him. 
 
COMEDY OR TRAGEDY? 413 
 
 "Addie/'she said. "This is Mr. Leonard James, a friend I 
 used to know in my girlhood." 
 
 " Yes, we were boys together, as the song says/' said Leonard 
 James, smiling facetiously. 
 
 Addie inclined her head in the stately fashion which accorded 
 so well with her beauty and resumed her investigation of the 
 stalls. Presently she became absorbed in a tender reverie 
 induced by the passionate waltz music and she forgot all about 
 Esther's strange visitor, whose words fell as insensibly on her 
 ears as the ticking of a familiar clock. But to Esther, Leonard 
 James's conversation was full of interest. The two ugly duck- 
 lings of the back-pond had become to all appearance swans 
 of the ornamental water, and it was natural that they should 
 gabble of auld lang syne and the devious routes by which they 
 had come together again. 
 
 "You see, Fm like you, Esther," explained the young man. 
 " Em not fitted for the narrow life that suits my father and 
 mother and my sister. TheyVe got no ideas beyond the house, 
 and religion, and all that sort of thing. What do you think my 
 father wanted me to be? A minister! Think of it! Ha! ha! 
 ha! Me a minister! I actually did go for a couple of terms to 
 Jews' College. Oh, yes, you remember! Why, I was there 
 when you were a school-teacher and got taken up by the swells. 
 But our stroke of fortune came soon after yours. Did you never 
 hear of it? My, you must have dropped all your old acquaint- 
 ances if no one ever told you that! Why, father came in for a 
 couple of thousand pounds! I thought Ld make you stare. 
 Guess who from?" 
 
 " I give it up," said Esther. 
 
 " Thank you. It was never yours to give," said Leonard, 
 laughing jovially at his wit. "Old Steinwein — you remember 
 his death. It was in all the papers; the eccentric old buffer, 
 who was touched in the upper story, and used to give so much 
 time and money to Jewish affairs, setting up lazy old rabbis in 
 Jerusalem to shake themselves over their Talmuds. You remem- 
 ber his gifts to the poor — six shillings sevenpence each because 
 he was seventy-nine years old and all that. Well, he used 
 
414 GRANDCHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 to send the pater a basket of fruit every Yointov. But he 
 used to do that to every Rabbi, all around, and my old man had 
 not the least idea he was the object of special regard till the old 
 chap pegged out. Ah, there's nothing like Torah, after all." 
 
 " You don't know what you may have lost through not becom- 
 ing a minister," suggested Esther slily. 
 
 "Ah, but I know what IVe gained. Do you think I could 
 stand having my hands and feet tied with phylacteries?" asked 
 Leonard, becoming vividly metaphoric in the intensity of his 
 repugnance to the galling bonds of orthodoxy. " Now, I do as 
 I like, go where I please, eat what I please. Just fancy not 
 being able to join fellows at supper, because you mustn't eat 
 oysters or steak? Might as well go into a monastery at once. 
 All very well in ancient Jerusalem, where everybody was rowing 
 in the same boat. Have you ever tasted pork, Esther?" 
 
 " No," said Esther, with a faint smile. 
 
 " I have," said Leonard. " I don't say it to boast, but I have 
 had it times without number. I didn't like it the first time — 
 thought it would choke me, you know, but that soon wears off. 
 Now I breakfast off ham and eggs regularly. I go the whole 
 hog, you see. Ha! ha! ha! " 
 
 " If I didn't see from your card you're not living at home, 
 that would have apprised me of it," said Esther. 
 
 " Of course, I couldn't live at home. Why the guvnor couldn't 
 bear to let me shave. Ha! ha! ha! Fancy a religion that 
 makes you keep your hair on unless you use a depilatory. I 
 v/as articled to a swell solicitor. The old man resisted a long 
 time, but he gave in at last, and let me live near the office." 
 
 " Ah, then I presume you came in for some of the two thou- 
 sand, despite your non-connection with Torah ? " 
 
 "There isn't much left of it now," said Leonard, laughing. 
 " What's two thousand in seven years in London ? There were 
 over four hundred guineas swallowed up by the premium, and 
 the fees, and all that." 
 
 "Well, let us hope ifll all come back in costs." 
 
 "Well, between you and me," said Leonard, seriously, "I 
 should be surprised if it does. You see, I haven't yet scraped 
 
COMEDY OR TRAGEDY? 415 
 
 through the Final ; they're making the beastly exam, stiffer 
 every year. No, it isn't to that quarter I look to recoup myself 
 for the outlay on my education." 
 
 "No?" said Esther. 
 
 "No. Fact is — between you and me — I'm going to be an 
 actor." 
 
 "Oh!" said Esther. 
 
 " Yes. I've played several times in private theatricals ; you 
 know we Jews have a knack for the stage ; you'd be surprised 
 to know how many pros are Jews. There's heaps of money to 
 be made now-a-days on the boards. Tm in with lots of 'em, and 
 ought to know. It's the only profession where you don't want 
 any training, and these law books are as dry as the Mishna the 
 old man used to make me study. Why, they say to-night's 
 'Hamlet' was in a counting-house four years ago." 
 
 " I wish you success," said Esther, somewhat dubiously. 
 "And how is your sister Hannah? Is she married yet?" 
 
 "Married! Not she! She's got no money, and you know 
 what our Jewish young men are. Mother wanted her to have 
 the two thousand pounds for a dowry, but fortunately Hannah 
 had the sense to see that it's the man that's got to make his way 
 in the world. Hannah is always certain of her bread and 
 butter, which is a good deal in these hard times. Besides, she's 
 naturally grumpy, and she doesn't go out of her way to make 
 herself agreeable to young men. It's my belief she'll die an old 
 maid. Well, there's no accounting for tastes." 
 
 " And your father and mother? " 
 
 "They're all right, I believe. I shall see them to-morrow 
 night — Passover, you know. I haven't missed a single Seder at 
 home," he said, with conscious virtue. "It's an awful bore, you 
 know. I often laugh to think of the chappies' faces if they could 
 see me leaning on a pillow and gravely asking the old man why 
 we eat Passover cakes." He laughed now to think of it. " But 
 I never miss ; they'd cut up rough, I expect, if I did." 
 
 " Well, that's something in your favor," murmured Esther 
 gravely. 
 
 He looked at her sharply ; suddenly suspecting that his auditor 
 
416 GRANDCHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 was not perfectly sympathetic. She smiled a little at the images 
 passing through her mind, and Leonard, taking her remark for 
 badinage, allowed his own features to relax to their original 
 amiability. 
 
 " YouVe not married, either, I suplpose,"" he remarked. 
 
 "No,"'' said Esther. " Fm like your sister Hannah." 
 
 He shook his head sceptically. 
 
 " Ah, I expect you'll be looking very high," he said. 
 
 " Nonsense," murmured Esther, playing with her bouquet. 
 
 A flash passed across his face, but he went on in the same 
 tone. "Ah, don't tell me. Why shouldn't you? Why, you're 
 looking perfectly charming to-night." 
 
 " Please, don't," said Esther. " Every girl looks perfectly 
 charming when she's nicely dressed. Who and what am I? 
 Nothing. Let us drop the subject." 
 
 " All right ; but you must have grand ideas, else you'd have 
 sometimes gone to see my people as in the old days." 
 
 "When did I visit your people? You used to come and see 
 me sometimes." A shadow of a smile hovered about the tremu- 
 lous lips. " Believe me, I didn't consciously drop any of my old 
 acquaintances. My life changed; my family went to America; 
 later on I travelled. It is the currents of life, not their wills, that 
 bear old acquaintances asunder." 
 
 He seemed pleased with her sentiments and was about to say 
 something, but she added : " The curtain's going up. Hadn't 
 you better go down to your friend? She's been looking up at us 
 impatiently." 
 
 " Oh, no, don't bother about her." said Leonard, reddening a 
 little. "She — she won't mind. She's only — only an actress, 
 you know. I have to keep in with the profession in case any 
 opening should turn up. You never know. An actress may 
 become a lessee at any moment. Hark! The orchestra is strik- 
 ing up again ; the scene isn't set yet. Of course I'll go if you 
 want me to! " 
 
 " No, stay by all means if you want to,'' murmured Esther. 
 "We have a chair unoccupied." 
 
 "Do you expect that fellow Sidney Graham back?" 
 
COMEDY OR TRAGEDY? 417 
 
 "Yes, sooner or later. But how do you know his name?'' 
 queried Esther in surprise. 
 
 " Everybody about \o\\\\ knows Sidney Graham, the artist. 
 Why, we belong to the same dub — the Flamingo — though he 
 only turns up for the great glove-fights. Beastly cad, with all 
 due respect to your friends, Esther. I was introduced to him 
 once, but he stared at me next time so haughtily that I cut him 
 dead. Do you know, ever since then Fve suspected he's one of 
 us; perhaps you can tell me, Esther? I dare say he's no more 
 Sidney Graham than I am." 
 
 "Hush! " said Esther, glancing warningly towards Addie, who, 
 however, betrayed no sign of attention. 
 
 "Sister?" asked Leonard, lowering his voice to a whisper. 
 
 Esther shook her head. "Cousin; but Mr. Graham is a 
 friend of mine as well and you mustn't talk of him like that." 
 
 "Ripping fine girl! " murmured Leonard irrelevantly. "Won- 
 der at his taste." He took a long stare at the abstracted Addie. 
 
 "What do you mean? " said Esther, her annoyance increasing. 
 Her old friend's tone jarred upon her. 
 
 "Well, I don't know what he could see in the girl he's en- 
 gaged to." 
 
 Esther's face became white. She looked anxiously towards 
 the unconscious Addie. 
 
 " You are talking nonsense," she said, in a low^ cautious tone. 
 " Mr. Graham is too fond of his liberty to engage himself to any 
 girl." 
 
 "Oho!" said Leonard, with a subdued whistle. "I hope 
 you're not sweet on him yourself." 
 
 Esther gave an impatient gesture of denial. She resented 
 Leonard's rapid resumption of his olden familiarity. 
 
 " Then take care not to be," he said. " He's engaged privately to 
 Miss Hannibal, a daughter of the M. P. Tom Sledge, the sub-edi- 
 tor of the Cor}iwrant, told me. You know they collect items about 
 everybody and publish them at what they call the psychological 
 moment. Graham goes to the Hannibals' every Saturday after- 
 noon. They're very strict people ; the father, you know, is a prom- 
 inent Wesleyan and she's not the sort of girl to be played with." 
 
 2 E 
 
418 GRANDCHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 " For Heaven's sake speak more softly," said Esther, though 
 the orchestra was playing fortissimo now and they had spoken 
 so quietly all along that Addie could scarcely have heard without 
 a special effort. " It can't be true ; you are repeating mere idle 
 gossip." 
 
 " Why, they know everything at the Cormorant^' said Leonard, 
 indignantly. " Do you suppose a man can take such a step as 
 that without its getting known? Why, I shall be chaffed — envi- 
 ously — about you two to-morrow! Many a thing the world 
 little dreams of is an open secret in Club smoking-rooms. Gen- 
 erally more discreditable than Graham's, which must be made 
 public of itself sooner or later." 
 
 To Esther's relief, the curtain rose. Addie woke up and 
 looked round, but seeing that Sidney had not returned, and that 
 Esther was still in colloquy with the invader, she gave her atten- 
 tion to the stage. Esther could no longer bend her eye on the 
 mimic tragedy ; her eyes rested pityingly upon Addie's face, and 
 Leonard's eyes rested admiringly upon Esther's. Thus Sidney 
 found the group, when he returned in the middle of the act, to 
 his surprise and displeasure. He stood silently at the back of 
 the box till the act was over. Leonard James was the first to 
 perceive him ; knowing he had been telling tales about him, he 
 felt uneasy under his supercilious gaze. He bade Esther good- 
 bye, asking and receiving permission to call upon her. When 
 he was gone, constraint fell upon the party. Sidney was moody ; 
 Addie pensive, Esther full of stifled wrath and anxiety. At the 
 close of the performance Sidney took down the girls' wrappings 
 from the pegs. He helped Esther courteously, then hovered 
 over his cousin with a solicitude that brought a look of calm hap- 
 piness into Addie's face, and an expression of pain into Esther's. 
 As they moved slowly along the crowded corridors, he allowed 
 Addie to get a few paces in advance. It was his last opportunity 
 of saying a word to Esther alone. 
 
 " If I were you. Miss Ansell, I would not allow that cad to 
 presume on any acquaintance he may have." 
 
 All the latent irritation in Esther's breast burst into flame at 
 the idea of Sidney's constituting himself a judge. 
 
COMEDY OR TRAGEL'Y? 419 
 
 " If I had not cultivated his acquaintance I should not have 
 had the pleasure of congratulating you on your engagement," 
 she replied, almost in a whisper. To Sidney it sounded like a 
 shout. His color heightened ; he was visibly taken aback. 
 
 '"What are you talking about?" he murmured automatically. 
 
 "About your engagement to Miss Hannibal." 
 
 "That blackguard told you!" he whispered angrily, half to 
 himself. " Well, what of it ? I am not bound to advertise it, 
 am I? It's my private business, isn't it? You don't expect me 
 to hang a placard round my breast like those on concert-room 
 chairs — ' Engaged ' ! " 
 
 " Certainly not," said Esther. " But you might have told your 
 friends, so as to enable them to rejoice sympathetically." 
 
 " You turn your sarcasm prettily," he said mildly, " but the 
 sympathetic rejoicing was just what I wanted to avoid. You 
 know what a Jewish engagement is, how the news spreads like 
 wildfire from Piccadilly to Petticoat Lane, and the whole house 
 of Israel gathers together to discuss the income and the pros- 
 pects of the happy pair. I object to sympathetic rejoicing from 
 the slums, especially as in this case it would probably be ex- 
 changed for curses. Miss Hannibal is a Christian, and for a Jew 
 to embrace a Christian is, I believe, the next worse thing to his 
 embracing Christianity, even when the Jew is a pagan." His 
 wonted flippancy rang hollow. He paused suddenly and stole a 
 look at his companion's face, in search of a smile, but it was pale 
 and sorrowful. The flush on his own face deepened ; his feat- 
 ures expressed internal conflict. He addressed a light word to 
 Addie in front. They were nearing the portico ; it was raining 
 outside and a cold wind blew in to meet them ; he bent his head 
 down to the delicate little face at his side, and his tones were 
 changed. 
 
 " Miss Ansell," he said tremulously, " if I have in any way 
 misled you by my reticence, I beg you to believe it was uninten- 
 tionally. The memory of the pleasant quarters of an hour we 
 have spent together will always — " 
 
 "Good God!" said Esther hoarsely, her cheeks flaming, her 
 ears tingling. " To whom are you apologizing? " He looked at 
 
420 GRANDCHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 her perplexed. "Why have you not told Addie?'' she forced 
 herself to say. 
 
 In the press of the crowd, on the edge of the threshold, he 
 stood still. Dazzled as by a flash of lightning, he gazed at his 
 cousin, her beautifully poised head, covered with its fleecy white 
 shawl, dominating the throng. The shawl became an aureole 
 to his misty vision. 
 
 " Have you told her? " he whispered with answering hoarseness. 
 
 "No," said Esther. 
 
 " Then don't tell her," he w^hispered eagerly. 
 
 "I must. She must hear it soon. Such things must ooze 
 out sooner or later." 
 
 "Then let it be later. Promise me this." 
 
 " No good can come of concealment." 
 
 " Promise me, for a little while, till I give you leave." 
 
 His pleading, handsome face was close to hers. She won- 
 dered how she could ever have cared for a creature so weak and 
 pitiful. 
 
 " So be it," .she breathed. 
 
 " Miss Leon's carriage," bawled the commissionaire. There 
 was a confusion of rain-beaten umbrellas, gleaming carriage- 
 lamps, zigzag reflections on the black pavements, and clattering 
 omnibuses full inside. But the air was fresh. 
 
 " Don't go into the rain, Addie," said Sidney, pressing for- 
 wards anxiously. " You're doing all my work to-night. Hallo! 
 where ^xdiyou spring from? " 
 
 It was Raphael who had elicited the exclamation. He sud- 
 denly loomed upon the party, bearing a decrepit dripping 
 umbrelhi. "1 thought I should be in time to catch you — and 
 to apologize,'' he said, turning to Esther. 
 
 " Don't mention it," murmured Esther, his unexpected appear- 
 ance completing her mental agitation. 
 
 " Hold the umbrella over the girls, you beggar," said Sidney. 
 
 " Oh, I beg your pardon," said Rapliael, poking the rim 
 against a policeman's helmet in his anxiety to obey. 
 
 " Don't mention it." said Addie smiling. 
 
 " All right, sir," growled the policeman good-humoredly. 
 
COMEDY OR TRAGEDY? 421 
 
 Sidney laughed heartily. 
 
 "Quite a general amnesty/' he said. ^*Ah! here's the car- 
 riage. Why didn't you get inside it out of the rain or stand 
 in the entrance — youVe wringing wet.'' 
 
 "I didn't think of it," said Raphael. "Besides, I've only 
 been here a few minutes. The 'busses are so full when it rains 
 I had to walk all the way from Whitechapel." 
 
 " You're incorrigible," gmmbled Sidney. " As if you couldn't 
 have taken a hansom." 
 
 "Why waste money?" said Raphael. They got into the 
 carriage. 
 
 "Well, did you enjoy yourselves?" he asked cheerfully. 
 
 "Oh yes, thoroughly," said Sidney. " Addie wasted two 
 pocket-handkerchiefs over Ophelia ; almost enough to pay for 
 that hansom. Miss Ansell doated on the finger of destiny and 
 I chopped logic and swopped cigarettes with O'Donovan. I 
 hope you enjoyed yourself equally." 
 
 Raphael responded with a melancholy smile. He was seated 
 opposite Esther, and ever and anon some flash of light from the 
 street revealed clearly his sodden, almost shabby, garments and 
 the weariness of his expression. Ke seemed quite out of har- 
 mony with the dainty pleasure-party, but just on that account 
 the more in harmony with Esther's old image, the heroic side of 
 him growing only more lovable for the human alloy. She bent 
 towards him at last and said : " I am sorry you were deprived of 
 your evening's amusement. I hope the reason didn't add to the 
 unpleasantness." 
 
 " It was nothing," he murmured awkwardly. "A little unex- 
 pected work. One can always go to the theatre." 
 
 " Ah, I am afraid you overwork yourself too much. You 
 mustn't. Think of your own health." 
 
 His look softened. He was in a harassed, sensitive state. 
 The sympathy of her gentle accents, the concern upon the eager 
 little face, seemed to flood his own soul with a self-compassion 
 new to him. 
 
 " My health doesn't matter," he faltered. There were sweet 
 tears in his eyes, a colossal sense of gratitude at his heart. He 
 
422 GRANDCHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 had always meant to pity her and help her ; it was sweeter to be 
 pitied, though of course she could not help him. He had no 
 need of help, and on second thoughts he wondered what room 
 there was for pity, 
 
 '■' No, no, don't talk like that/' said Esther. " Think of your 
 parents — and Addie." 
 
 CHAPTER Vn. 
 
 WHAT THE YEARS BROUGHT. 
 
 The next morning Esther sat in Mrs. Henry Goldsmith's bou- 
 doir, filling up some invitation forms for her patroness, who often 
 took advantage of her literary talent in this fashion. Mrs. Gold- 
 smith herself lay back languidly upon a great easy-chair before 
 an asbestos fire and turned over the leaves of the new number of 
 the AcadcBum. Suddenly she uttered a little exclamation. 
 
 "What is it?" said Esther. 
 
 " They've got a review here of that Jewish novel.'" 
 
 "Have they?" said Esther, glancing up eagerly. "I'd given 
 up looking for it." 
 
 "You seem very interested in it," said Mrs. Goldsmith, with a 
 little surprise. 
 
 "Yes, I — I wanted to know what they said about it," explained 
 Esther quickly; "one hears so many worthless opinions." 
 
 " Well, I'm glad to see we were all right about it," said Mrs. 
 Goldsmith, whose eye had been running down the column. " Lis- 
 ten here. 'It is a disagreeable book at best; what might have 
 been a powerful tragedy being disfigured by clumsy workman- 
 ship and sordid superfluous detail. The exaggerated unhealthy 
 pessimism, which the very young mistake for insight, pervades 
 the work and there are some .spiteful touches of observation 
 which seem to point to a woman's hand. Some of the minor 
 personages have the air of being sketched from life. The novel 
 can scarcely be acceptable to the writer's circle. Readers, how- 
 ever, in search of the unusual will find new ground broken in 
 this immature study of Jewish life.'" 
 
WHAT THE YEARS BROUGHT. 423 
 
 " There, Esther, isn't that just what Fve been saying in 
 other words ? '' 
 
 " It's hardly worth bothering about the book now," said 
 Esther in low tones, " it's such a long time ago now since it 
 came out. I don't know what's the good of reviewing it now. 
 These literary papers always seem so cold and cruel to unknown 
 writers." 
 
 ''Cruel, it isn't half what he deserves," said Mrs. Goldsmith, 
 "or ought I to say she? Do you think there's anything, Esther, 
 in that idea of its being a woman? " 
 
 " Really, dear, I'm sick to death of that book," said Esther. 
 " These reviewers always try to be very clever and to see 
 through brick walls. What does it matter if it's a he, or a 
 she?" 
 
 " It doesn't matter, but it makes it more disgraceful, if it's 
 a woman. A woman has no business to know the seamy side 
 of human nature." 
 
 At this instant, a domestic knocked and announced that Mr. 
 Leonard James had called to see Miss Ansell. Annoyance, 
 surprise 'and relief struggled to express themselves on Esther's 
 face. 
 
 " Is the gentleman waiting to see me?" she said. 
 
 " Yes, miss, he's in the hall." 
 
 Esther turned to Mrs. Goldsmith. "It's a young -man I 
 came across unexpectedly last night at the theatre. He's the 
 son of Reb Shemuel, of whom you may have heard. I haven't 
 met him since we w^re boy and girl together. He asked per- 
 mission to call, but I didn't expect him so soon." 
 
 " Oh, see him by all means, dear. He is probably anxious 
 to talk over old times." 
 
 " May I ask him up here ? " 
 
 "No — unless you particularly want to introduce him to me. 
 I dare say he would rather have you to himself." There was 
 a touch of superciliousness about her tone, which Esther rather 
 resented, although not particularly anxious for Levi's social rec- 
 ognition. 
 
 " Show him into the library," she said to the servant. " I will 
 
424 GRANDCHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 be down in a minute." She lingered a few minutes to finish 
 up the invitations and exchange a few indifferent remarks with 
 her companion and then went down, wondering at Levi's pre- 
 cipitancy in renewing the acquaintance. She could not help 
 thinking of the strangeness of life. That time yesterda}' she 
 had not dreamed of Levi, and now she was about to see him for 
 the second time and seemed to know him as intimately as if they 
 had never been parted. 
 
 Leonard James was pacing the carpet. His face was per- 
 turbed, though his stylishly cut clothes were composed and 
 immaculate. A cloak was thrown loosely across his shoulders. 
 In his right hand he held a bouquet of Spring flowers, which he 
 transferred to his left in order to shake hands with her. 
 
 '• Good afternoon, Esther,"' he said heartily. " By Jove, you 
 have got among tip-top people. I had no idea. Fancy you 
 ordering Jeames de la Pluche about. And how happy vou 
 must be among all these books! Tve brought you a bouquet. 
 There! Isn't it a beauty? I got it at Covent Garden this 
 morning.'" 
 
 ''It's very kind of you," murmured Esther, not so pleased as 
 she might have been, considering her love of beautiful things. 
 " But you really ought not to waste your money like that." 
 
 " What nonsense, Esther! Don't forget I'm not in the posi- 
 tion my father was. I'm going to be a rich man. No, don't 
 put it into a vase ; put it in your own room where it will remind 
 you of me. Just smell those violets, they are awfully sweet and 
 fresh. I flatter myself, it's quite as swell and tasteful as the 
 bouquet you had last night. Who gave you that, Esther?" 
 The "Esther" mitigated the off-handedness of the question, 
 but made the sentence jar doubly upon her ear. She might 
 have brought herself to call him " Levi " in exchange, but then 
 she was not certain he would like it. "-Leonard" was impos- 
 sible. So she forbore to call him by any name. 
 
 ''I think Mr. Graham brought it. Won't you sit down?" 
 she said indifferently. 
 
 "Thank you. I thought so. Luck that fellow's engaged. 
 Do you know, Esther. I didn't sleep all night." 
 
WHAT THE YEARS BROUGHT. 425 
 
 "No?" said Esther. "You seemed quite well when I saw 
 you." 
 
 " So I was, but seeing you again, so unexpectedly, excited 
 me. You have been whirling in my brain ever since. I hadn't 
 thought of you for years — " 
 
 " I hadn't thought of you," Esther echoed frankly. 
 
 "No, I suppose not," he said, a little ruefully. "But, any- 
 how, fate has brought us together again. I recognized you the 
 moment I set eyes on you, for all your grand clothes and your 
 swell bouquets. I tell you I was just struck all of a heap ; of 
 course, I knew about your luck, but I hadn't realized it. There 
 wasnH any one in the whole theatre who looked the lady more — 
 'pon honor; you'd have no cause to blush in the company of 
 duchesses. In fact I know a duchess or two who don't look 
 near so refined. I was quite surprised. Do you know, if any 
 one had told me you used to live up in a garret — " 
 
 "Oh, please donH recall unpleasant things," interrupted 
 Esther, petulantly, a little shudder going through her, partly at 
 the picture he called up, partly at his grating vulgarity. Her 
 repulsion to him was growing. Why had he developed so 
 disagreeably? She had not disliked him as a boy, and he cer- 
 tainly had not inherited his traits of coarseness from his father, 
 whom she still conceived as a courtly old gentleman. 
 
 "Oh well, if you don't like it, I won't. I see you're like me; 
 I never think of the Ghetto if I can help it. Well, as I was say- 
 ing, I haven't had a wink of sleep since I saw you. I lay tossing 
 about, thinking all sorts of things, till I could stand it no longer, 
 and I got up and dressed and walked about the streets and 
 strayed into Covent Garden Market, where the inspiration came 
 upon me to get you this bouquet. For, of course, it was about 
 you that I had been thinking." 
 
 " About me ? "' said Esther, turning pale. 
 
 "Yes, of course. Don't make Schnecks — you know what I 
 mean. I can't help using the old expression when I look at 
 you ; the past seems all come back again. They were happy 
 days, weren't they, Esther, when I used to come up to see 
 you in Royal Street ; I think you were a little sweet on me in 
 
426 GRANDCHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 those days, Esther, and I know I was regular mashed on 
 you." 
 
 He looked at her with a fond smile. 
 
 " I dare say you were a silly boy," said Esther, coloring un- 
 easily under his gaze. ''However, you needn't reproach yourself 
 now." 
 
 '•Reproach myself, indeed! Never fear that. What I have 
 been reproaching myself with all night is never having looked 
 you up. Somehow, do you know, I kept asking myself whether 
 I hadn't made a fool of myself lately, and I kept thinking things 
 might have been different if — "" 
 
 " Nonsense, nonsense," interrupted Esther with an embar- 
 rassed laugh. "You've been doing vei-y well, learning to know 
 the world and studying law and mixing with pleasant people." 
 
 " Ah, Esther," he said, shaking his head, " it's very good of 
 you to say that. I don't say Fve done anything particularly 
 foolish or out of the way. But when a man is alone, he some- 
 times gets a little reckless and wastes his time, and you know 
 what it is. I've been thinking if I had some one to keep me 
 steady, some one I could respect, it would be the best thing that 
 could happen to me." 
 
 "Oh, but surely you ought to have sense enough to take care 
 of yourself. And there is always your father. Why don't you 
 see more of him ? " 
 
 " Don't chaff a man when you see he's in earnest. You know 
 what I mean. It's you I am thinking of." 
 
 "Me? Oh well, if you think my friendship can be of any use 
 to you I shall be delighted. Come and see me sometimes and 
 tell me of your struggles." 
 
 " You know I don't mean that," he said desperately. " Couldn't 
 we be more than friends? Couldn't we commence again — where 
 we left off? " 
 
 " How do you mean? " she murmured. 
 
 "Why are you so cold to me?" he burst out. "Why do you 
 make it so hard for me to speak? You know I love you, that I 
 fell in love with you all over again last night. I never really 
 forgot you; you were always deep down in my breast. All that 
 
WHAT THE YEARS BROUGHT. 427 
 
 I said about steadying me wasn't a lie. I felt that, too. But 
 the real thing I feel is the need of you. I want you to care for 
 me as I care for you. You used to, Esther; you know you did." 
 
 "I know nothing of the kind/' said Esther, "and I can't 
 understand why a young fellow like you wants to bother his 
 head with such ideas. You've got to make your way in the 
 world — " 
 
 " I know, I know ; that's why I want you. I didn't tell you 
 the exact truth last night, Esther, but I must really earn some 
 money soon. All that two thousand is used up, and I only get 
 along by squeezing some money out of the old man every now 
 and again. Don't frown ; he got a rise of screw three years ago 
 and can well afford it. Now that's what I said to myself last 
 night ; if I were engaged, it would be an incentive to earning 
 something." 
 
 " For a Jewish young man, you are fearfully unpractical," said 
 Esther, with a forced smile. "Fancy proposing to a girl without 
 even prospects of prospects." 
 
 "Oh, but I have got prospects. I tell you I shall make no end 
 of money on the stage." 
 
 " Or no beginning," she said, finding the facetious vein easiest. 
 
 " No fear. I know Eve got as much talent as Bob Andrews 
 (he admits it himself), and he draws his thirty quid a week." 
 
 " Wasn't that the man who appeared at the police-court the 
 other day for being drunk and disorderly? " 
 
 " Y-e-es," admitted Leonard, a little disconcerted. " He is a 
 very good fellow, but he loses his head when he's in liquor." 
 
 " I wonder you can care for society of that sort," said Esther. 
 
 " Perhaps you're right. They're not a very refined lot. I tell 
 you what — Ed like to go on the stage, but Em not mad on it, 
 and if you only say the word Ell give it up. There! And Ell 
 go on with my law studies ; honor bright, I will." 
 
 " I should, if I were you," she said. 
 
 "Yes, but I can't do it without encouragement. Won't you 
 say 'yes'? Let's strike the bargain. I'll stick to law and you'll 
 stick to me." 
 
 She shook her head. " I am afraid I could not promise any- 
 
428 GRANDCHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 thing you mean. As I said before, I shall be always glad to see 
 you. If you do well, no one will rejoice more than I." 
 
 "Rejoice! What's the good of that to me? I want you to 
 care for me ; I want to look forward to your being my wife.''' 
 
 " Really, I cannot take advantage of a moment of folly like 
 this. You don't know what youVe saying. You saw me last 
 night, after many years, and in your gladness at seeing an old 
 friend you flare up and fancy youVe in love with me. Why, who 
 ever heard of such foolish haste? Go back to your studies, and 
 in a day or two you will find the flame sinking as rapidly as it 
 leaped up." 
 
 " No, no! Nothing of the kind! " His voice was thicker and 
 there was real passion in it. She grew dearer to him as the hope 
 of her love receded. " I couldn't forget you. I care for you 
 awfully. I realized last night that my feeling for you is quite 
 unlike what I have ever felt towards any other girl. Don't say 
 no! Don't send me away despairing. I can hardly realize that 
 you have grown so strange and altered. Surely you oughtn't 
 to put on any side with me. Remember the times we have had 
 together." 
 
 " I remember," she said gently. " But I do not want to marry 
 any one; indeed, I don't." 
 
 "■ Then if there is no one else in your thoughts, why shouldn't 
 it be me? There! I won't press you for an answer now. Only 
 don't say it's out of the question." 
 
 "I'm afraid I must." 
 
 " No, you mustn't, Esther, you mustn't," he exclaimed 
 excitedly. "Think of what it means for me. You are the 
 only Jewish girl I shall ever care for ; and father would be 
 pleased if I were to marry you. You know if I wanted to 
 marry a Shiksah there'd be awful rows. Don't treat me as if 
 I were some outsider with no claim upon you. I believe we 
 should get on splendidly together, you and me. We've been 
 through the same sort of thing in childhood, we should 
 understand each other, and be in sympathy with each other 
 in a way I could never be with another girl and I doubt if 
 you could with another fellow." 
 
WHAT THE YEARS BROUGHT. 429 
 
 The words burst from him like a torrent, with excited 
 foreign-looking gestures. Esther^s lieadache was coming on 
 badly. 
 
 "What would be the use of my deceiving you?'' she said 
 gently. " I don't think I shall ever marry. Tm sure I could 
 never make you — or any one else — happy. Won't you let me 
 be your friend ? " 
 
 "Friend!" he echoed bitterly. "I know what it is; I'm 
 poor. I've got no money bags to lay at your feet. You're 
 like all the Jewish girls after all. But I only ask you to 
 wait ; I shall have plenty of money by and by. Who knows 
 what more luck my father might drop in for? There are lots 
 of rich religious cranks. And then I'll work hard, honor 
 bright I will." 
 
 " Pray be reasonable," said Esther quietly. " You know you 
 are talking at random. Yesterday this time you had no idea 
 of such a thing. To-day you are all on fire. To-morrow you 
 will forget all about it." 
 
 "Never! Never!" he cried. "Haven't I remembered you 
 all these years? They talk of man's faithlessness and woman's 
 faithfulness. It seems to me, it's all the other way. Women 
 are a deceptive lot." 
 
 " You know you have no right whatever to talk like that to 
 me," said Esther, her sympathy beginning to pass over into 
 annoyance. " To-morrow you will be sorry. Hadn't you 
 better go before you give yourself — and me — more cause 
 for regret ? " 
 
 "Ho, you're sending me away, are you?" he said in angry 
 surprise. 
 
 " I am certainly suggesting it as the wisest course." 
 
 "Oh, don't give me any of your fine phrases!" he said 
 brutally. "I see what it is — I've made a mistake. You're 
 a stuck-up, conceited little thing. You think because you 
 live in a grand house nobody is good enough for you. But 
 what are you after all? 2i Schnorrer — that's all. A ScJinorrer 
 living on the charity of strangers. If I mix with grand folks, 
 it is as an independent man and an equal. But you, rather 
 
430 GRANDCHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 than marry any one who mightn't be able to give you carriages 
 and footmen, you prefer to remain a ScJinorrery 
 
 Esther was white and her hps trembled. "Now I must ask 
 you to go," she said. 
 
 "All right, don't flurry yourself!" he said savagely. "You 
 don't impress me with your airs. Try them on people who 
 don't know what you were — a Schnorrer's daughter. Yes, 
 your father was always a ScJmorrer and you are his child. 
 It's in the blood. Ha! Ha! Ha! Moses Ansell's daughter! 
 Moses Ansell's daughter — a peddler, who went about the 
 country with brass jewelry and stood in the Lane with 
 lemons and schnorred half-crowns of my father. You took 
 jolly good care to ship him off to America, but 'pon my honor, 
 you can't expect others to forget him as quickly as you. 
 It's a rich joke, you refusing me. You're not fit for me 
 to wipe my shoes on. My mother never cared for me to 
 go to your garret ; she said I must mix with my equals and 
 goodness knew what disease I might pick up in the dirt ; 
 'pon my honor the old girl was right." 
 
 " She was right," Esther was stung into retorting. " You 
 must mix only with your equals. Please leave the room now or 
 else I shall." 
 
 His face changed. His frenzy gave way to a momentary 
 shock of consternation as he realized what he had done. 
 
 " No, no, Esther. I was mad, I didn't know what I was say- 
 ing. I didn't mean it. Forget it." 
 
 "I cannot. It was quite true," she said bitterly. " I am only 
 a Sc/uiorrer^s daughter. Well, are you going or must I ? " 
 
 He muttered something inarticulate, then seized his hat sulkily 
 and went to the door without looking at her. 
 
 " You have forgotten something," she said. 
 
 He turned ; her forefinger pointed to the bouquet on the table. 
 He had a fresh access of rage at the sight of it, jerked it con- 
 temptuously to the floor with a sweep of his hat and stamped 
 upon it. Then he rushed from the room and an instant after 
 she heard the hall door slam. 
 
 She sank against the table sobbing nervously. It was her first 
 
THE ENDS OF A GENERATION. 431 
 
 proposal! A Schno?'rer and the daughter of a Schnorrer. Yes, 
 that was what she was. And she had even repaid her bene- 
 factors with deception! What hopes could she yet cherish? In 
 literature she was a failure ; the critics gave her few gleams of 
 encouragement, while all her acquaintances from Raphael down- 
 wards would turn and rend her, should she dare declare herself. 
 Nay, she was ashamed of herself for the mischief she had 
 wrought. No one in the world cared for her ; she was quite 
 alone. The only man in whose breast she could excite love or 
 the semblance of it was a contemptible cad. And who was she, 
 that she should venture to hope for love? She figured herself 
 as an item in a catalogue ; '• a little, ugly, low-spirited, absolutely 
 penniless young woman, subject to nervous headaches." Her 
 sobs were interrupted by a ghastly burst of self-mockery. Yes, 
 Levi was right. She ought to tliink herself lucky to get him. 
 Again, she asked herself what had existence to offer her. Grad- 
 ually her sobs ceased ; she remembered to-night would be Seder 
 night, and her thoughts, so violently turned Ghetto-wards, went 
 back to that night, soon after poor Benjamin's death, when she 
 sat before the garret fire striving to picture the larger life of the 
 future. Well, this was the future. 
 
 CHAPTER Vni. 
 
 THE ENDS OF A GENERATION. 
 
 The same evening Leonard James sat in the stalls of the 
 Colosseum Music Hall, sipping champagne and smoking a che- 
 root. He had not been to his chambers (which were only round 
 the corner) since the hapless interview with Esther, wandering 
 about in the streets and the clubs in a spirit compounded of out- 
 raged dignity, remorse and recklessness. All men must dine ; 
 and dinner at the Flamingo Club soothed his wounded soul and 
 left only the recklessness, which is a sensation not lacking in 
 agreeableness. Through the rosy mists of the Burgundy there 
 began to surge up other faces than that cold pallid little face 
 
432 GRANDCHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 which had hovered before him all the afternoon like a tantaliz- 
 ing phantom ; at the Chartreuse stage he began to wonder what 
 hallucination, what aberration of sense had overcome him, that 
 he should have been stirred to his depths and distressed so 
 hugely. Warmer faces were these that swam before him, faces 
 fuller of the joy of life. The devil take all stuck-up little saints! 
 
 About eleven o'clock, when the great ballet of Venetia was 
 over, Leonard hurried round to the stage-door, saluted the door- 
 keeper with a friendly smile and a sixpence, and sent in his card 
 to Miss Gladys Wynne, on the chance that she might have no 
 supper engagement. Miss Wynne was only a humble coryphee^ 
 but the admirers of her talent were numerous, and Leonard 
 counted himself fortunate in that she was able to afford him the 
 privilege of her society to-night. She came out to him in a red 
 fur-lined cloak, for the air was keen. She was a majestic being 
 with a florid complexion not entirely artificial, big blue eyes and 
 teeth of that whiteness which is the practical equivalent of a 
 sense of humor in evoking the possessor's smiles. They drove to 
 a restaurant a few hundred yards distant, for Miss Wynne detested 
 using her feet except to dance with. It was a fashionable restau- 
 rant, where the prices obligingly rose after ten, to accommodate 
 the purses of the supper-^//>«/^/^. Miss Wynne always drank 
 champagne, except when alone, and in politeness Leonard had 
 to imbibe more of this frothy compound. He knew he would 
 have to pay for the day's extravagance by a week of comparative 
 abstemiousness, but recklessness generally meant magnificence 
 with him. They occupied a cosy little corner behind a screen, 
 and Miss Wynne bubbled over with laughter like an animated 
 champagne bottle. One or two of his acquaintances espied him 
 and winked genially, and Leonard had the satisfaction of feeling 
 that he was not dissipating his money witliout purchasing 
 enhanced reputation. He had not felt in gayer spirits for 
 months than when, with Gladys Wynne on his arm and a ciga- 
 rette in his mouth, he sauntered out of the brilliantly-lit restau- 
 rant into the feverish dusk of the midnight street, shot with 
 points of fire. 
 
 " Hansom, sir!" 
 
THE ENDS OF A GENERATION. 433 
 
 A great cry of anguish rent the air — Leonard's cheeks burned. 
 Involuntarily he looked round. Then his heart stood still. 
 There, a few yards from him. rooted to the pavement, with stony 
 staring face, was Reb Shemuel. The old man wore an un- 
 brushed high hat and an uncouth unbuttoned overcoat. His 
 hair and beard were quite white now, and the strong countenance 
 lined with countless wrinkles was distorted with pain and aston- 
 ishment. He looked a cross between an ancient prophet and a 
 shabby street lunatic. The unprecedented absence of the son 
 from the Seder ceremonial had filled the Reb's household with 
 the gravest alarm. Nothing short of death or mortal sickness 
 could be keeping the boy away. It was long before the Reb 
 could bring himself to commence the Hagadah without his son 
 to ask the time-honored opening question ; and when he did he 
 paused every minute to listen to footsteps or the voice of the 
 wind without. The joyous holiness of the Festival was troubled, 
 a black cloud overshadowed the shining table-cloth, at supper 
 the food choked him. But Seder was over and yet no sign of 
 the missing guest ; no word of explanation. In poignant anxi- 
 ety, the old man walked the three miles that lay between him 
 and tidings of the beloved son. At his chambers he learned 
 that their occupant had not been in all day. Another thing he 
 learned there, too ; for the Mezuzah which he had fixed up on 
 the door-post when his boy moved in had been taken down, and 
 it filled his mind with a dread suspicion that Levi had not been 
 eating at the kosher restaurant in Hatton Garden, as he had 
 faithfully vowed to do. But even this terrible thought was 
 swallowed up in the fear that some accident had happened to 
 him. He haunted the house for an hour, filling up the intervals 
 of fruitless inquiry with little random walks round the neighbor- 
 hood, determined not to return home to his wife without news of 
 their child. The restless life of the great twinkling streets was 
 almost a novelty to him ; it was rarely his perambulations in 
 London extended outside the Ghetto, and the radius of his hfe 
 was proportionately narrow, — with the intensity that narrowness 
 forces on a big soul. The streets dazzled him, he looked blink- 
 
 2F 
 
434 GRANDCHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 ingly hither and thither in the despairing hope of finding his 
 boy. His lips moved in silent prayer ; he raised his eyes be- 
 seechingly to the cold glittering heavens. Then, all at once — 
 as the clocks pointed to midnight — he found him. Found him 
 coming out of an unclean place, where he had violated the Pass- 
 over. Found him — fit climax of horror — with the "strangle 
 woman '' of The Proverbs, for whom the faithful Jew has a hered- 
 itary hatred. 
 
 His son — his, Reb Shemuers! He, the servant of the Most 
 High, the teacher of the Faith to reverential thousands, had 
 brought a son into the world to profane the Name! Verily his 
 gray hairs would go down with sorrow to a speedy grave! And 
 the sin was half his own ; he had weakly abandoned his boy in 
 the midst of a great city. For one awful instant, that seemed an 
 eternity, the old man and the young faced each other across the 
 chasm which divided their lives. To the son the shock was 
 scarcely less violent than to the father. The Seder, which the 
 day's unwonted excitement had clean swept out of his mind, re- 
 curred to him in a flash, and by the light of it he understood the 
 puzzle of his father's appearance. The thought of explaining 
 rushed up only to be dismissed. The door of the restaurant had 
 not yet ceased swinging behind him — there was too much to ex- 
 plain. He felt that all was over between him and his father. It 
 was unpleasant, terrible even, for it meant the annihilation of his 
 resources. But though he still had an almost physical fear of 
 the old man, far more terrible even than the presence of his 
 father was the presence of Miss Gladys Wynne. To explain, to 
 brazen it out, either course was equally impossible. He was not 
 a brave man, but at that moment he felt death were preferable to 
 allowing her to be the witness of such a scene as must ensue. 
 His resolution was taken within a few brief seconds of the tragic 
 rencontre. With wonderful self-possession, he nodded to the 
 cabman who had put the question, and whose vehicle was drawn 
 up opposite the restaurant. Hastily he helped the unconscious 
 Gladys into the hansom. He was putting his foot on the step 
 himself when Reb ShemuePs paralysis relaxed suddenly. Out- 
 raged by this final pollution of the Festival, he ran forward and 
 
THE FLAG FLUTTERS. 435 
 
 laid his hand on Levi's shoulder. His face was ashen, his heart 
 thumped painfully ; the hand on Levi's cloak shook as with 
 palsy. 
 
 Levi winced; the old awe was upon him. Through a blind- 
 ing whirl he saw Gladys staring wonderingly at the queer-looking 
 intruder. He gathered all his mental strength together with a 
 mighty effort, shook off the great trembling hand and leaped 
 into the hansom. 
 
 •' Drive on ! " came in strange guttural tones from his parched 
 throat. 
 
 The driver lashed the horse ; a rough jostled the old man 
 aside and slammed the door to ; Leonard mechanically threw 
 him a coin ; the hansom glided away. 
 
 " Who was that, Leonard ? " said Miss Wynne, curiously. 
 
 " Nobody ; only an old Jew who supplies me with cash." 
 
 Gladys laughed merrily — a rippling, musical laugh. 
 
 She knew the sort of person. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 THE FLAG FLUTTERS. 
 
 The Flag of Jiidah^ price one penny, largest circulation of 
 any Jewish organ, continued to flutter, defying the battle, the 
 breeze and its communal contemporaries. At Passover there 
 had been an illusive augmentation of advertisements proclaim- 
 ing the virtues of unleavened everything. With the end of 
 the Festival, most of these fell out, staying as short a time as 
 the daffodils. Raphael was in despair at the meagre attenuated 
 appearance of the erst prosperous-looking pages. The weekly 
 loss on the paper weighed upon his conscience. 
 
 "We shall never succeed," said the sub-editor, shaking his 
 romantic hair, " till we run it for the Upper Ten. These ten 
 people can make the paper, just as they are now killing it by 
 refusing their countenance." 
 
436 GRANDCHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 " But they must surely reckon with us sooner or later," said 
 Raphael. 
 
 " It will be a long reckoning, I fear ; you take my advice and 
 put in more butter. It'll be kosher butter, coming from us." 
 The little Bohemian laughed as heartily as his eyeglass per- 
 mitted. 
 
 " No ; we must stick to our guns. After all, we have had some 
 very good things lately. Those articles of Pinchas's are not bad 
 either." 
 
 " They're so beastly egotistical. Still his theories are ingen- 
 ious and far more interesting than those terribly dull long letters 
 of Henry Goldsmith, which you will put in." 
 
 Raphael flushed a little and began to walk up and down the 
 new and superior sanctum with his ungainly strides, puffing furi- 
 ously at his pipe The appearance of the room was less bare ; 
 the floor was carpeted with old newspapers and scraps of letters. 
 A huge picture of an Atlantic Liner, the gift of a Steamship 
 Company, leaned cumbrously against a wall. 
 
 " Still, all our literary excellencies," pursued Sampson, " are 
 outweighed by our shortcomings in getting births, marriages and 
 deaths. We are gravelled for lack of that sort of matter. What 
 is the use of your elaborate essay on the Septuagint, when the 
 public is dying to hear who's dead?" 
 
 "■ Yes, I am afraid it is so," said Raphael, emitting a huge vol- 
 ume of smoke. 
 
 " Tm sure it is so. If you would only give me a freer hand, I 
 feel sure I could work up that column. We can at least make a 
 better show ; I would avoid the danger of discovery by shifting 
 the scene to foreign parts. I could marry some people in Bom- 
 bay and kill some in Cape Town, redressing the balance by 
 bringing others into existence at Cairo and Cincinnati. Our 
 contemporaries would score off" us in local interest, but we should 
 take the shine out of them in cosmopolitanism." 
 
 "No, no; remember that Meshujuad^^'' said Raphael, smiling. 
 " He was real ; if you had allowed me to invent a corpse, we 
 should have been saved that coiitretonps. We have one ■ death ' 
 this week fortunately ; and I am sure to fish out another in tlie 
 
THE FLAG FLUTTERS. 437 
 
 daily papers. But we haven't had a ' birth "' for three weeks run- 
 ning; it's just ruining our reputation. Everybody knows that 
 the orthodox are a fertile lot, and it looks as if we hadn't got the 
 support even of our own party. Ta rara ta! Now you must 
 really let me have a ' birth.' I give you my word, nobody'll sus- 
 pect it isn't genuine. Come now. How's this?" He scribbled 
 on a piece of paper and handed it to Raphael, who read : 
 
 " Birth, on the 15th inst. at 17 East Stuart Lane, Kennington, 
 the wife of Joseph Samuels of a son." 
 
 "There!" said Sampson proudly, "Who would believe the 
 little beggar had no existence ? Nobody lives in Kennington, and 
 that East Stuart Lane is a master-stroke. You might suspect 
 Stuart Lane, but nobody would ever dream there's no such place 
 as East Stuart Lane. Don't say the little chap must die. I begin 
 to take quite a paternal interest in him. May I announce him ? 
 Don't be too scrupulous. Who'll be a penny the worse for it? " 
 He began to chirp, with bird-like trills of melody. 
 
 Raphael hesitated : his moral fibre had been weakened. It is 
 impossible to touch print and not be defiled. 
 
 Suddenly Sampson ceased to whistle and smote his head with 
 his chubby fist. "Ass that I am! " he exclaimed. 
 
 " What new reasons have you discovered to think so ? " said 
 Raphael. 
 
 "Why, we dare not create boys. We shall be found out; 
 boys must be circumcised and some of the periphrastically styled 
 'Initiators into the Abrahamic Covenant' may spot us. It was 
 a girl that Mrs. Joseph Samuels was guilty of." He amended 
 the sex. 
 
 Raphael laughed heartily. "Put it by; there's another day 
 yet ; we shall see." 
 
 "Very well," said Sampson resignedly- " Perhaps by to-mor- 
 row we shall be in luck and able to sing ' unto us a child is born, 
 unto us a son is given.' By the way, did you see the letter 
 complaining of our using that quotation, on the ground it was 
 from the New Testament? " 
 
 " Yes," said Raphael smiling. " Of course the man doesn't 
 know his Old Testament, but I trace his misconception to his 
 
438 GRANDCHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 having heard HandePs Messiah. I wonder he doesn't find fault 
 with the Morning Service for containing the Lord's Prayer, or 
 with Moses for saying • Tliou shalt love thy neighbor as thy- 
 self.' '' 
 
 " Still, that's the sort of man newspapers have to cater for," 
 said the sub-editor. " And we don't. We have cut down our 
 Provincial Notes to a column. My idea would be to make two 
 pages of them, not cutting out any of the people's names and 
 leaving in more of the adjectives. Every man's name we men- 
 tion means at least one copy sold. Why can't we drag in a couple 
 of thousand names every week?" 
 
 '• That would make our circulation altogether nominal/' laughed 
 Raphael, not taking the suggestion seriously. 
 
 Little Sampson was not only the Mephistopheles of the office, 
 debauching his editor's guileless mind with all the wily ways of 
 the old journalistic hand ; he was of real use in protecting Ra- 
 phael against the thousand and one pitfalls that make the edi- 
 torial chair as perilous to the occupant as Sweeney Todd's ; 
 against the people who tried to get libels inserted as news or 
 as advertisements, against the self-puffers and the axe-grinders. 
 He also taught Raphael how to commence interestmg corre- 
 spondence and how to close awkward. The Flag played a part 
 in many violent discussions. Little Sampson was great in invent- 
 ing communal crises, and in getting the public to believe it was 
 excited. He also won a great victory over the other party every 
 three weeks ; Raphael did not wish to have so many of these 
 victories, but little Sampson pointed out that if he did not have 
 them, the rival newspaper would annex them. One of the earli- 
 est sensations of the Flag was a correspondence exposing the 
 misdeeds of some communal officials ; but in the end the very 
 persons who made the allegations ate humble pie. Evidently 
 official pressure had been brought to bear, for red tape rampant 
 might have been the heraldic device of Jewish officialdom. In 
 no department did Jews exhibit more strikingly their marvellous 
 powers of assimilation to their neighbors. 
 
 Among the discussions which rent the body politic was the 
 question of building a huge synagogue for the poor. The Flag 
 
THE FLAG FLUTTERS. 439 
 
 said it would only concentrate them, and its word prevailed. 
 There were also the grave questions of English and harmoniums 
 in the synagogue, of the confirmation of girls and their utilization 
 in the choir. The Rabbinate, whose grave difficulties in recon- 
 ciling all parties to its rule, were augmented by the existence of 
 the Flag^ pronounced it heinous to introduce English excerpts 
 into the liturgy ; if, however, they were not read from the 
 central platform, they were legitimate ; harmoniums were per- 
 missible, but only during special services ; and an organization 
 of mixed voices was allowable, but not a mixed choir ; children 
 might be confirmed, but the word " confirmation " should be 
 avoided. Poor Rabbinate! The politics of the little community 
 were extremely complex. What with rabid zealots yearning for 
 the piety of the good old times, spiritually-minded ministers 
 working with uncomfortable earnestness for a larger Judaism, 
 radicals dropping out, moderates clamoring for quiet, and schis- 
 matics organizing new and tiresome movements, the Rabbinate 
 could scarcely do aught else than emit sonorous platitudes and 
 remain in office. 
 
 And beneath all these surface ruffles was the steady silent drift 
 of the new generation away from the old landmarks. The syna- 
 gogue did not attract ; it spoke Hebrew to those whose mother- 
 tongue was English ; its appeal was made through channels 
 which conveyed nothing to them ; it w^as out of touch with 
 their real lives ; its liturgy prayed for the restoration of sacri- 
 fices which they did not want and for the welfare of Babylonian 
 colleges that had ceased to exist. The old generation merely 
 believed its beliefs ; if the new as much as professed them, it 
 was only by virtue of the old home associations and the inertia 
 of indifference. Practically, it was without religion. The Reform 
 Synagogue, though a centre of culture and prosperity, was cold, 
 crude and devoid of magnetism. Half a century of stagnant 
 reform and restless dissolution had left Orthodoxy still the Estab- 
 lished Doxy. For, as Orthodoxy evaporated in England, it was 
 replaced by fresh streams from Russia, to be evaporated and 
 replaced in turn, England acting as an automatic distillery. 
 Thus the Rabbinate still reigned, though it scarcely governed 
 
440 GRANDCHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 either the East End or the West, For the East End formed 
 a Federation of the smaller synagogues to oppose the dominance 
 of the United Synagogue, importing a minister of superior ortho- 
 doxy from the Continent, and the Flag had powerful leaders on 
 the great struggle between plutocracy and democracy, and the 
 voice of Mr. Henry Goldsmith was heard on behalf of White- 
 chapel. And the West, in so far as it had spiritual aspirations, 
 fed them on non-Jewish literature and the higher thought of the 
 age. The finer spirits, indeed, were groping for a purpose and a 
 destiny, doubtful even if the racial isolation they perpetuated 
 were not an anachronism. While the community had been 
 battling for civil and religious liberty, there had been a unifying, 
 almost spiritualizing, influence in the sense of common injustice, 
 and the question ciii bow had been postponed. Drowning men 
 do not ask if life is worth living. Later, the Russian persecu- 
 tions came to interfere again with national introspection, sending 
 a powerful wave of racial sympathy round the earth. In England 
 a backwash of the wave left the Asmonean Society, wherein, for 
 the first time in history, Jews gathered with nothing in common 
 save blood — artists, lawyers, writers, doctors — men who in pre- 
 emancipation times might have become Christians like Heine, 
 but who now formed an effective protest against the popular 
 conceptions of the Jew, and a valuable antidote to the dispropor- 
 tionate notoriety achieved by less creditable types. At the 
 Asmonean Society, brilliant free-lances, each thinking himself 
 a solitary exception to a race of bigots, met one another in 
 mutual astonishment. Raphael alienated several readers by 
 uncompromising approval of this characteristically modern move- 
 ment. Another symptom of the new intensity of national brother- 
 hood was the attempt towards amalgamating the Spanish and 
 German communities, but brotherhood broke down under the 
 disparity of revenue, the rich Spanish sect displaying once again 
 the exclusiveness which has marked its history. 
 
 Amid these internal problems, the unspeakable immigrant was 
 an added thorn. Very often the victim of Continental persecu- 
 tion was assisted on to America, l^ut the idea that he was hurtful 
 to native labor rankled in the minds of Englishmen, and the Jew- 
 
THE FLAG FLUTTERS. 441 
 
 ish leaders were anxious to remove it, all but proving him a boon. 
 In despair, it was sought to anglicize him by discourses in Yid- 
 dish. With the Poor Alien question was connected the return 
 to Palestine. The Holy Land League still pinned its faith to 
 Zion, and the Flag was with it to the extent of preferring the 
 ancient father-land, as the scene of agricultural experiments, to 
 the South American soils selected by other schemes. It was 
 generally felt tliat the redemption of Judaism lay largely in a 
 return to the land, after several centuries of less primitive and 
 more degrading occupations. When South America was chosen, 
 Strelitski was the first to counsel the League to co-operate in the 
 experiment, on the principle that half a loaf is better than no 
 bread. But, for the orthodox the difficulties of regeneration by 
 the spade were enhanced by the Sabbatical Year Institute of the 
 Pentateuch, ordaining that land must lie fallow in the seventh 
 year. It happened that this septennial holiday was just going 
 on, and the faithful Palestine farmers were starving in volun- 
 tary martyrdom. The Flag raised a subscription for their bene- 
 fit. Raphael wished to head the list with twenty pounds, but on 
 the advice of little Sampson he broke it up into a variety of small 
 amounts, spread over several weeks, and attached to imaginary 
 names and initials. Seeing so many other readers contributing, 
 few readers felt called upon to tax themselves. The Flag 
 received the ornate thanks of a pleiad of Palestine Rabbis for 
 its contribution of twenty-five guineas, two of which were from 
 Mr. Henry Goldsmith. Gideon, the member for Whitechapel, 
 remained callous to the sufferings of his brethren in the Holy 
 Land. In daily contact with so many diverse interests, Raphael's 
 mind widened as imperceptibly as the body grows. He learned 
 the manners of many men and committees — admired the gen- 
 uine goodness of some of the Jewish philanthropists and the 
 fluent oratory of all ; even while he realized the pettiness of their 
 outlook and their reluctance to face facts. They were timorous, 
 with a dread of decisive action and definitive speech, suggesting 
 the differential, deprecatory corporeal wrigglings of the mediaeval 
 few. They seemed to keep strict ward over the technical privi- 
 leges of the different bodies they belonged to, and in their capac- 
 
442 GRANDCHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 ity of members of the Fiddle-de-dee to quarrel with themselves 
 as members of the Fiddle-de-dum, and to pass votes of condo- 
 lence or congratulation twice over as members of both. But 
 the more he saw of his race the more he marvelled at the omni- 
 present ability, being tempted at times to allow truth to the view 
 that Judasim was a successful sociological experiment, the moral 
 and physical training of a chosen race whose very dietary had 
 been religiously regulated. 
 
 And even the revelations of the seamy side of human character 
 which thrust themselves upon the most purblind of editors were 
 blessings in disguise. The office of the Flag was a forcing-house 
 for Raphael ; many latent thoughts developed into extraordinary 
 maturity. A month of the Flag was equal to a year of experi- 
 ence in the outside world. And not even little Sampson him- 
 self was keener to appreciate the humors of the office when no 
 principle was involved ; though what made the sub-editor roar 
 with laughter often made the editor miserable for the day. For 
 compensation, Raphael had felicities from which little Sampson 
 was cut off; gladdened by revelations of earnestness and piety in 
 letters that were merely bad English to the sub-editor. 
 
 A thing that set them both laughing occurred on the top of 
 their conversation about the reader who objected to quotations 
 from the Old Testament. A package of four old Flags arrived, 
 accompanied by a letter. This was the letter; 
 
 " Dear Sir : 
 
 •"Your man called upon me last night, asking for payment 
 for four advertisements of my Passover groceries. But I have 
 changed my mind about them and do not want them ; and 
 therefore beg to return the four numbers sent me You will see 
 I have not opened them or soiled them in any way, so please 
 cancel the claim in your books 
 
 " Yours truly, 
 
 " Isaac Wollberg." 
 
 " He evidently thinks the vouchers sent him are the adver- 
 tisements,"' screamed little Sampson. 
 
THE FLAG FLUTTERS. 443 
 
 " But if he is as ignorant as all that, how could he have written 
 the letter?" asked Raphael. 
 
 " Oh, it was probably written for him for twopence by the 
 Shalotten Sham;nos, the begging-letter writer." 
 
 "This is almost as funny as Karlkammer! " said Raphael. 
 
 Karlkammer had sent in a long essay on the Sabbatical 
 Year question, which Raphael had revised and published with 
 Karlkammer's title at the head and Karlkammer's name at the 
 foot. Yet, owing to the few rearrangements and inversions of 
 sentences, Karlkammer never identified it as his own, and was 
 perpetually calling to inquire when his article would appear. He 
 brought with him fresh manuscripts of the article as originally 
 written. He was not the only caller; Raphael was much pes- 
 tered by visitors on kindly counsel bent or stern exhortation. 
 The sternest were those who had never yet paid their subscrip- 
 tions. De Haan also kept up proprietorial rights of interference. 
 In private life Raphael suffered much from pillars of the Montagu 
 Samuels type, who accused him of flippancy, and no communal 
 crisis invented by little Sampson ever equalled the pother and 
 commotion that arose when Raphael incautiously allowed him 
 to burlesque the notorious Mordecai yosephs by comically ex- 
 aggerating its exaggerations. The community took it seriously, 
 as an attack upon the race. Mr. and Mrs. Henry Goldsmith 
 were scandalized, and Raphael had to shield little Sampson by 
 accepting the whole responsibility for its appearance. 
 
 *' Talking of Karlkammer's article, are you ever going to use 
 up Herman's scientific paper?" asked little Sampson. 
 
 " Fm afraid so," said Raphael ; '■' I don't know how we can 
 get out of it. But his eternal kosher meat sticks in my throat. 
 We are Jews for the love of God, not to be saved from con- 
 sumption bacilli. But I won't use it to-morrow; we have Miss 
 Cissy Levine's tale. It's not half bad. What a pity she has 
 the expenses of her books paid! If she had to achieve publica- 
 tion by merit, her style might be less slipshod." 
 
 " I wish some rich Jew would pay the expenses of my opera 
 tour," said little Sampson, ruefully. " My style of doing the 
 thing would be improved- The people who are backing me up 
 
444 GRANDCHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 are awfully stingy, actually buying up battered old helmets for 
 my chorus of Amazons." 
 
 Intermittently the question of the sub-editor^s departure for 
 the provinces came up ; it was only second in frequency to his 
 " victories." About once a month the preparations for the tour 
 were complete, and he would go about in a heyday of jubilant 
 vocalization ; then his comic prima-donna would fall ill or 
 elope, his conductor would get drunk, his chorus would strike, 
 and little Sampson would continue to sub-edit The Flag of 
 Jiidah. 
 
 Pinchas unceremoniously turned the handle of the door and 
 came in. The sub-editor immediately hurried out to get a cup 
 of tea. Pinchas had fastened upon him the responsibility for 
 the omission of an article last week, and had come to believe 
 that he was in league with rival Continental scholars to keep 
 Melchitsedek Pinchas's effusions out of print, and so little 
 Sampson dared not face the angry savant. Raphael, thus de- 
 serted, cowered in his chair. He did not fear death, but he 
 feared Pinchas, and had fallen into the cowardly habit of bribing 
 him lavishly not to fill the paper. Fortunately, the poet was in 
 high feather. 
 
 " DonH forget the announcement that I lecture at the Club on 
 Sunday. You see all the efforts of Reb Sliemuel, of the Rev. 
 Joseph Strelitski, of the Chief Rabbi, of Ebenezer vid his blue 
 spectacles, of Sampson, of all the phalanx of English Men-of-the- 
 Earth, they all fail. Ah, I am a great man." 
 
 '' I wonH forget," said Raphael wearily. '' The announcement 
 is already in print." 
 
 "Ah, I love you. You are the best man in the vorld. It is 
 you who have championed me against those who are thirsting 
 for my blood. And now I vill tell you joyful news. There is a 
 maiden coming up to see you — she is asking in the publisher's 
 office — oh such a lovely maiden!" 
 
 Pinchas grinned all over his face, and was like to dig: his editor 
 in the ribs. 
 
 "What maiden? " 
 
 " I do not know; but vai-r-r-y beaudiful. Aha, I vill go. 
 
ESTHER DEFIES THE UNIVERSE. 445 
 
 Have you not been good \.0 7He? But vy come not beaudiful 
 maidens to ;//<?.^" 
 
 " No, no, you needn't go," said Raphael, getting red. 
 
 Pinchas grinned as one who knew better, and struck a match 
 to rekindle a stump of cigar. "No, no, I go write my lecture — 
 oh it vill be a great lecture. You vill announce it in the paper! 
 You vill not leave it out like Sampson left out my article last 
 week." He was at the door now, with his finger alongside his 
 nose. 
 
 Raphael shook himself impatiently, and the poet threw the 
 door wide open and disappeared. 
 
 For a full minute Raphael dared not look towards the door for 
 fear of seeing the poet's cajoling head framed in the opening. 
 When he did, he was transfixed to see Esther AnselPs there, 
 regarding him pensively. 
 
 His heart beat painfully at the shock ; the room seemed flooded 
 with sunlight. 
 
 " May I come in ? " she said, smiling. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 ESTHER DEFIES THE UNIVERSE. 
 
 Esther wore a neat black mantle, and looked taller and more 
 womanly than usual in a pretty bonnet and a spotted veil. There 
 was a flush of color in her cheeks, her eyes sparkled. She had 
 walked in cold sunny weather from the British Museum (where 
 she was still supposed to be), and the wind had blown loose a 
 little wisp of hair over the small shell-like ear. In her left hand 
 she held a roll of manuscript. It contained her criticisms of the 
 May Exhibitions. Whereby hung a tale. 
 
 In the dark days that followed the scene with Levi, Esther's 
 resolution had gradually formed. The position had become 
 untenable. She could no longer remain a Schnorrer ; abusing 
 the bounty of her benefactors into the bargain. She must leave 
 the Goldsmiths, and at once. That was imperative ; the second 
 
446 GRANDCHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 step could be thought over when she had taken the first. And 
 yet she postponed taking the first. Once she drifted out of her 
 present sphere, she could not answer for the future, could not be 
 certain, for instance, that she would be able to redeem her prom- 
 ise to Raphael to sit in judgment upon the Academy and other 
 picture galleries that bloomed in May. At any rate, once she 
 had severed connection with the Goldsmith circle, she would not 
 care to renew it, even in the case of Raphael. No, it was best to 
 get this last duty off her shoulders, then to say farewell to him 
 and all the other human constituents of her brief period of par- 
 tial sunshine. Besides, the personal delivery of the precious 
 manuscript would afford her the opportunity of this farewell to 
 him. With his social remissness, it was unlikely he would call 
 soon upon the Goldsmiths, and she now restricted her friend- 
 ship with Addie to receiving Addie's visits, so as to prepare for 
 its dissolution. Addie amused her by reading extracts from Sid- 
 ney's letters, for the brilliant young artist had suddenly gone off 
 to Norway the morning after the debut of the new Hamlet. Es- 
 ther felt that it might be as well if she stayed on to see how the 
 drama of these two lives developed. These things she told her- 
 self in the reaction from the first impulse of instant flight. 
 
 Raphael put down his pipe at the sight of her and a frank 
 smile of welcome shone upon his flushed face. 
 
 " This is so kind of you ! " he said ; '' who would have thought 
 of seeing you here? I am so glad. I hope you are well. You 
 look better." He was wringing her little gloved hand violently 
 as he spoke. 
 
 " I feel better, too, thank you. The air is so exhilarating. 
 Fm glad to see you're still in the land of the living. Addie has 
 told me of your debauches of work." 
 
 " Addie is foolish. I never felt better. Come inside. Don't 
 be afraid of walking on the papers. They're all old." 
 
 "I always heard literary people were untidy," said Esther 
 smiling. '■'■You must be a regular genius." 
 
 "Well, you see we don't have many ladies coming here," said 
 Raphael deprecatingly, '"though we have plenty of old women." 
 
 " It's evident you don't. Else some of them would go down 
 
ESTHER DEFIES THE UNIVERSE. 447 
 
 on their hands and knees and never get up till this litter was 
 tidied up a bit." 
 
 "Never mind that now, Miss Ansell. Sit down, won't you? 
 You must be tired. Take the editorial chair. Allow me a min- 
 ute.'" He removed some books from it. 
 
 "Is that the way you sit on the books sent in for review?" 
 She sat down. "Dear me! It's quite comfortable. You men 
 like comfort, even the most self-sacrificing. But where is your 
 fighting-editor? It would be awkward if an aggrieved reader 
 came in and mistook me for the editor, wouldn't it ? It isn't safe 
 for me to remain in this chair." 
 
 "Oh, yes it is! We've tackled our aggrieved readers for to- 
 day," he assured her. 
 
 She looked curiously round. " Please pick up your pipe. It's 
 going out. I don't mind smoke, indeed I don't. Even if I did, 
 I should be prepared to pay the penalty of bearding an editor in 
 his den." 
 
 Raphael resumed his pipe gratefully. 
 
 " I wonder though you don't set the place on fire," Esther 
 rattled on, "with all this mass of inflammable matter about." 
 
 " It is very dry, most of it," he admitted, with a smile. 
 
 " Why don't you have a real fire ? It must be quite cold 
 sitting here all day. What's that great ugly picture over 
 there ? " 
 
 "That steamer! It's an advertisement." 
 
 "Heavens! What a decoration. I should like to have the 
 criticism of that picture. I've brought you those picture-galleries, 
 you know ; that's what I've come for." 
 
 "Thank you! That's very good of you. I'll send it to the 
 printers at once." He took the roll and placed it in a pigeon- 
 hole, without taking his eyes off her face. 
 
 "Why don't you throw that awful staring thing away?" she 
 asked, contemplating the steamer with a morbid fascination, 
 " and sweep away the old papers, and have a few little water- 
 colors hung up and put a vase of flowers on your desk. I wish I 
 had the control of the office for a week." 
 
 "I wish you had," he said gallantly. "I can't find time to 
 
448 GRANDCHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 think of those things. I am sure you are brightening it up 
 already." 
 
 The little blush on her cheek deepened. Compliment was 
 unwonted with him ; and indeed, he spoke as he felt. The sight 
 of her seated so strangely and unexpectedly in his own humdrum 
 sanctum ; the imaginary picture of her beautifying it and evolv- 
 ing harmony out of the chaos with artistic touches of her dainty 
 hands, filled him with pleasant, tender thoughts, such as he 
 had scarce knowm before. The commonplace editorial chair 
 seemed to have undergone consecration and poetic transforma- 
 tion. Surely the sunshine that streamed through the dusty win- 
 dow would for ever rest on it henceforwards. And yet the whole 
 thing appeared fantastic and unreal. 
 
 " I hope you are speaking the truth," replied Esther with a 
 little laugh. "You need brightening, you old dry-as-dust phi- 
 lanthropist, sitting poring over stupid manuscripts when you 
 ought to be in the country enjoying the sunshine." She spoke 
 in airy accents, with an undercurrent of astonishment at her 
 attack of high spirits on an occasion she had designed to be 
 harrowing. 
 
 "Why, I haven^t looked at your manuscript yet," he retorted 
 gaily, but as he spoke there flashed upon him a delectable vision 
 of blue sea and waving pines with one fair wood-nymph flitting 
 through the trees, luring him on from this musty cell of never- 
 ending work to unknown ecstasies of youth and joyousness. 
 The leafy avenues were bathed in sacred sunlight, and a low 
 magic music thrilled through the quiet air. It was but the dream 
 of a second — the dingy walls closed round him again, the great 
 ugly steamer, that never went anywhere, sailed on. But the 
 wood-nymph did not vanish ; the sunbeam was still on the edi- 
 torial chair, lighting up the little face with a celestial halo. And 
 when she spoke again, it was as if the music that filled the vision- 
 ary glades was a reality, too. 
 
 " It^s all very well your treating reproof as a jest," she said, 
 more gravely. " Can''t you see that it's false economy to risk a 
 break-down even if you use yourself purely for others? You're 
 looking far from well. You are overtaxing human strength. 
 
ESTHER DEFIES THE UNIVERSE. 449 
 
 Come now, admit my sermon is just. Remember I speak not 
 as a Pharisee, but as one who made the mistake herself — a 
 fellow-sinner."" She turned her dark eyes reproachfully upon him. 
 
 "I — I — don't sleep very well/' he admitted, "but otherwise 
 I assure you I feel all right." 
 
 It was the second time she had manifested concern for his 
 health. The blood coursed deliciously in his veins ; a thrill 
 ran through his whole form. The gentle anxious face seemed 
 to grow angelic. Could she really care if his health gave way? 
 Again he felt a rush of self-pity that filled his eyes with tears. 
 He was grateful to her for sharing his sense of the empty cheer- 
 lessness of his existence. .He wondered why it had seemed so 
 full and cheery just before. 
 
 "And you used to sleep so well," said Esther, slily, remem- 
 bering Addie's domestic revelations. " My stupid manuscript 
 should come in useful." 
 
 "Oh, forgiv.e my stupid joke!" he said remorsefully. 
 
 " Forgive mine ! " she answered. " Sleeplessness is too ter- 
 rible to joke about. Again I speak as one who knows." 
 
 "Oh, Pm sorry to hear that!" he said, his egoistic tender- 
 ness instantly transformed to compassionate solicitude. 
 
 "Never mind me ; I am a woman and can take care of myself. 
 Why don't you go over to Norway and join Mr. Graham?" 
 
 "That's quite out of the question," he said, puffing furiously 
 at his pipe. "' I can't leave the paper." 
 
 "' Oh, men always say that. Haven't you let your pipe go 
 out? I don't see any smoke." 
 
 He started and laughed. " Yes, there's no more tobacco in 
 it." He laid it down. 
 
 " No, I insist on your going on or else I shall feel uncomfort- 
 able. Where's your pouch?" 
 
 He felt all over his pockets. " It must be on the table." 
 
 She rummaged among the mass of papers. " Ha! There are 
 your scissors! " she said scornfully, turning them up. She found 
 the pouch in time and handed it to him. " I ought to have the 
 management of this office for a day," she remarked again. 
 
 " Well, fill my pipe for me," he said, with an audacious inspi- 
 
 2 G 
 
450 GRANDCHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 ration. He felt an unreasoning impulse to touch her hand, to 
 smooth her soft cheek with his fingers and press her eyelids 
 down over her dancing eyes. She filled the pipe, full measure and 
 running over ; he took it by the stem, her warm gloved fingers 
 grazing his chilly bare hand and suffusing him with a delicious 
 thrill. 
 
 "Now you must crown your work,'' he said. ''The matches 
 are somewhere about.'" 
 
 She hunted again, interpolating exclamations of reproof at the 
 risk of fire. 
 
 "They're safety matches, I think," he said. They proved to 
 be wax vestas. She gave him a liquid glance of mute reproach 
 that filled him with bliss as overbrimmingly as his pipe had 
 been filled with bird's eye ; then she struck a match, protecting 
 the flame scientifically in the hollow of her little hand. Raphael 
 had never imagined a wax vesta could be struck so charmingly. 
 She tip-toed to reach the bowl in his mouth, but. he bent his tall 
 form and felt her breath upon his face. The volumes of smoke 
 curled up triumphantly, and Esther's serious countenance relaxed 
 in a smile of satisfaction. She resumed the conversation where 
 it had been broken off by the idyllic interlude of the pipe. 
 
 " But if you can't leave London, there's plenty of recreation to 
 be had in town. I'll wager you haven't yet been to see Ha)nlet 
 in lieu of the night you disappointed us." 
 
 " Disappointed myself, you mean," he said with a retrospective 
 consciousness of folly. " No, to tell the truth, I haven't been 
 out at all lately. Life is so short." 
 
 " Then, why waste it ? " 
 
 " Oh come, I can't admit I waste it," he said, with a gentle 
 smile that filled her with a penetrating emotion. " You mustn't 
 take such material views of life." Almost in a whisper he 
 quoted : " To him that hath the kingdom of God all things shall 
 be added," and went on : " Socialism is at least as important as 
 Shakspeare." 
 
 " Socialism," she repeated. " Are you a Socialist, then? " 
 
 " Of a kind," he answered. " Haven't you detected the 
 cloven hoof in my leaders? I'm not violent, you know; don't 
 
ESTHER DEFIES THE UNIVERSE. 461 
 
 be alarmed. But I have been doing a little mild propagandism 
 lately in the evenings ; land nationalization and a few other 
 things which would bring the world more into harmony with the 
 Law of Moses. " * 
 
 "What! do you find Sociahsm, too, in orthodox Judaism?" 
 
 " It requires no seeking." 
 
 " Well, you're almost as bad as my father, who found every- 
 thing in the Talmud. At this rate you will certainly convert me 
 soon; or at least I shall, like M. Jourdain, discover Fve been 
 orthodox all my life without knowing it." 
 
 " I hope so," he said gravely. " But have you Socialistic 
 sympathies ? " 
 
 She hesitated. As a girl she had felt the crude Socialism 
 which is the unreasoned instinct of ambitious poverty, the indi- 
 vidual revolt mistaking itself for hatred of the general injustice. 
 When the higher sphere has welcomed the Socialist, he sees he 
 was but the exception to a contented class. Esther had gone 
 through the second phase and was in the throes of the third, to 
 which only the few attain. 
 
 " I used to be a red-hot Socialist once," she said. " To-day I 
 doubt whether too much stress is not laid on material conditions. 
 High thinking is compatible with the plainest living. ' The soul 
 is its own place and can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.' 
 Let the people who wish to build themselves lordly treasure- 
 houses do so, if they can alford it, but let us not degrade our 
 ideals by envying them." 
 
 The conversation had drifted into seriousness. Raphael's 
 thoughts reverted to their normal intellectual cast, but he still 
 watched with pleasure the play of her mobile features as she 
 expounded her opinions. 
 
 "Ah, yes, that is a nice abstract theory," he said, " But what 
 if the mechanism of competitive society works so that thousands 
 don't even get the plainest living? You should just see the sights 
 I have seen, then you would understand why for some time the 
 improvement of the material condition of the masses must be the 
 great problem. Of course, you won't suspect me of underrating 
 the moral and religious considerations," 
 
452 GRANDCHILDREN OF THE GHETTO, 
 
 Esther smiled almost imperceptibly. The idea of Raphael, 
 who could not see two inches before his nose, telling her to ex- 
 amine the spectacle of human misery would have been distinctly 
 amusing, even if her early life had been passed among the same 
 scenes as his. It seemed a part of the irony of things and the 
 paradox of fate that Raphael, who had never known cold or hun- 
 ger, should be so keenly sensitive to the sufferings of others, while 
 she who had known both had come to regard them with philo- 
 sophical tolerance. Perhaps she was destined ere long to renew 
 her acquaintance with them. Well, that would test her theories 
 at any rate. 
 
 "Who is taking material views of life now?" she asked. 
 
 " It is by perfect obedience to the Mosaic Law that the kingdom 
 of God is to be brought about on earth," he answered. "And 
 in spirit, orthodox Judaism is undoubtedly akin to Socialism." 
 His enthusiasm set him pacing the room as usual, his arms work- 
 ing like the sails of a windmill. 
 
 Esther shook her head. "Well, give me Shakspeare," she 
 said. " I had rather see Ha)nlet than a world of perfect prigs." 
 She laughed at the oddity of her own comparison and added, 
 still smiling : " Once upon a time I used to think Shakspeare a 
 fraud. But that was merely because he was an institution. It is 
 a real treat to find one superstition that will stand analysis." 
 
 " Perhaps you will find the Bible turn out like that," he said 
 hopefully. 
 
 " I have found it. Within the last few months I have read it 
 right through again — Old and New. It is full of sublime truths, 
 noble apophthegms, endless touches of nature, and great poetry. 
 Our tiny race may well be proud of having given humanity its 
 greatest as well as its most widely circulated books. Why canH 
 Judaism take a natural view of things and an honest pride in its 
 genuine history, instead of building its synagogues on shifting 
 sand? " 
 
 "In Germany, later in America, the reconstruction of Judaism 
 has been attempted in every possible way ; inspiration has been 
 sought not only in literature, but in archaeology, and even in 
 anthropology ; it is these which have proved the shifting sand. 
 
ESTHER DEFIES THE UNIVERSE. 453 
 
 You see your scepticism is not even original." He smiled a 
 little, serene in the largeness of his faith. His complacency 
 grated upon her. She jumped up. " We always seem to get 
 into religion, you and I," she said. "I wonder why. It is cer- 
 tain we shall never agree. Mosaism is magnificent, no doubt, 
 but I cannot help feeling Mr. Graham is right when he points 
 out its limitations. Where would the art of the world be if the 
 second Commandment had been obeyed? Is there any such 
 thing as an absolute system of morality? How is it the Chinese 
 have got on all these years without religion? Why should the 
 Jews claim the patent in those moral ideas which you find just 
 as well in all the great writers of antiquity? Why — ?" she 
 stopped suddenly, seeing his smile had broadened. 
 
 "Which of all these objections am I to answer? "he asked 
 merrily. "Some I'm sure you don't mean." 
 
 "I mean all those you can't answer. So please don't try. 
 After all, you're not a professional explainer of the universe, 
 that I should heckle you thus." 
 
 " Oh, but I set up to be," he protested. 
 
 "No, you don't. You haven't called me a blasphemer once. 
 I'd better go before you become really professional. I shall be 
 late for dinner." 
 
 "What nonsense! It is only four o'clock," he pleaded, con- 
 sulting an old-fashioned silver watch. 
 
 "As late as that!" said Esther in horrified tones. "Good- 
 bye! Take care to go through my 'copy' in case any heresies 
 have filtered into it." 
 
 " Your copy? Did you give it me?" he inquired. 
 
 "Of course I did. You took it from me. Where did you put 
 it? Oh, I hope you haven't mixed it up with those papers. It'll 
 be a terrible task to find it," cried Esther excitedly. 
 
 " I wonder if I could have put it in the pigeon-hole for 
 ' copy,' " he said. " Yes! what luck! " 
 
 Esther laughed heartily. " You seem tremendously surprised 
 to find anything in its right place." 
 
 The moment of solemn parting had come, yet she found her- 
 self laughing on. Perhaps she was glad to find the farewell 
 
454 GRANDCHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 easier than she had foreseen. It had certainly been made easier 
 by the theological passage of arms, which brought out all her 
 latent antagonism to the prejudiced young pietist. Her hostility 
 gave rather a scornful ring to the laugh, which ended with a 
 suspicion of hysteria. 
 
 " What a lot of stuff youVe written/' he said. " I shall never 
 be able to get this into one number." 
 
 " I didn't intend you should. It's to be used in instalments, 
 if it's good enough. I did it all in advance, because Pm going 
 away." 
 
 "Going away!" he cried, arresting himself in the midst of an 
 inhalation of smoke. "'Where.'*" 
 
 " I don't know," she said wearily. 
 
 He looked alarm and interrogation. 
 
 " I am going to leave the Goldsmiths," she said. " I haven't 
 decided exactly what to do next." 
 
 " I hope you haven't quarrelled with them." 
 
 " No, no, not at all. In fact they don't even know I am going. 
 I only tell you in confidence. Please don't say anything to any- 
 body. Good-bye. I may not come across you again. So this 
 may be a last good-bye." She extended her hand; he took it 
 mechanically. 
 
 " I have no right to pry into your confidence," he said anx- 
 iously, " but you make me very uneasy." He did not let go her 
 hand, the warm touch quickened his sympathy. He felt he 
 could not part with her and let her drift into Heaven knew what. 
 " Won't you tell me your trouble ? " he went on. " I am sure it 
 is some trouble. Perhaps I can help you. I should be so glad 
 if you would give me the opportunity." 
 
 The tears struggled to her eyes, but she did not speak. They 
 stood in silence, with their hands still clasped, feeling very near 
 to each other, and yet still so far apart. 
 
 "Cannot you trust me?" he asked. "I know you are un- 
 happy, but I had hoped you had grown cheerfuller of late. You 
 told me so much at our first meeting, surely you might trust me 
 yet a little farther." 
 
 " I have told you enough," she said at last. " I cannot any 
 
ESTHER DEFIES THE UNIVERSE. 455 
 
 longer eat the bread of charity ; I must go away and try to earn 
 my own living." 
 
 '"' But what will you do ? " 
 
 " What do other girls do ? Teaching, needlework, anything. 
 Remember, Fm an experienced teacher and a graduate to boot." 
 Her pathetic smile lit up the face with tremulous tenderness. 
 
 " But you would be quite alone in the world," he said, solici- 
 tude vibrating in every syllable. 
 
 " I am used to being quite alone in the world." 
 
 The phrase threw a flash of light along the backward vista of her 
 life with the Goldsmiths, and filled his soul with pity and yearning. 
 
 " But suppose you fail ? " 
 
 " If I fail — " she repeated, and rounded off the sentence with 
 a shrug. It was the apathetic, indifferent shrug of lAIoses Ansell ; 
 only his was the shrug of faith in Providence, hers of despair. 
 It filled Raphael's heart with deadly cold and his soul with sin- 
 ister forebodings. The pathos of her position seemed to him 
 intolerable. 
 
 " No, no, this must not be ! " he cried, and his hand gripped 
 hers fiercely, as if he were afraid of her being dragged away by 
 main force. He was terribly agitated ; his whole being seemed 
 to be undergoing profound and novel emotions. Their eyes 
 met ; in one and the same instant the knowledge broke upon her 
 that she loved him, and that if she chose to play the woman he 
 was hers, and life a Paradisian dream. The sweetness of the 
 thought intoxicated her, thrilled her veins with fire. But the 
 next instant she was chilled as by a gray cold fog. The realities 
 of things came back, a whirl of self-contemptuous thoughts blent 
 with a hopeless sense of the harshness of life. Who was she to 
 aspire to such a match? Had her earlier day-dream left her no 
 wiser than that? The Sch)ion'er''s daughter setting her cap at 
 the wealthy Oxford man, forsooth! What would people say? 
 And what would they say if they knew how she had sought him 
 out in his busy seclusion to pitch a tale of woe and move him by 
 his tenderness of heart to a pity he mistook momentarily for 
 love? The image of Levi came back suddenly; she quivered, 
 reading herself through his eyes. And yet would not his crude 
 
456 GRANDCHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 view be right ? Suppress the consciousness as she would in her 
 maiden breast, had she not been urged hither by an irresistible 
 impulse? Knowing what she felt now, she could not realize she 
 had been ignorant of it when she set out. She was a deceitful, 
 scheming little thing. Angry with herself, she averted her gaze 
 from the eyes that hungered for her, though they were yet unlit 
 by self-consciousness ; she loosed her hand from his, and as if 
 the cessation of the contact restored her self-respect, some of 
 her anger passed unreasonably towards him. 
 
 " What right have you to say it must not be ? '• she inquired 
 haughtily. " Do you think I can't take care of myself, that I 
 need any one to protect me or to help me? '^ 
 
 "No — I— I — only mean — " he stammered in infinite dis- 
 tress, feeling himself somehow a blundering bi*ute. 
 
 " Remember I am not like the girls you are used to meet. \ 
 have known the worst that life can offer. I can stand alone, 
 yes, and face the whole world. Perhaps you don't know that I 
 wrote Mordecai Josephs, the book you burlesqued so mercilessly! " 
 
 ''You wrote it!" 
 
 "Yes, I. I am Edward Armitage. Did those initials never 
 strike you? I wrote it and I glory in it. Though all Jewry cry 
 out ' The picture is false,' I say it is true. So now you know the 
 truth. Proclaim it to all Hyde Park and Maida Vale, tell it to 
 ail your narrow-minded friends and acquaintances, and let them 
 turn and rend me. I can live without them or their praise. 
 Too long they have cramped my soul. Now at last I am going 
 to cut myself free. From them and from you and all your petty 
 prejudices and interests. Good-bye, for ever." 
 
 She went out abruptly, leaving the room dark and Raphael 
 shaken and dumbfounded ; she went down the stairs and into 
 the keen bright air, with a fierce exultation at her heart, an 
 intoxicating sense of freedom and defiance. It was over. She 
 had vindicated herself to herself and to the imaginary critics. 
 The last link that bound her to Jewry was snapped ; it was 
 impossible it could ever be reforged. Raphael knew her in her 
 true colors at last. She seemed to herself a Spinoza the race 
 had cast out. 
 
GOING HOME. 457 
 
 The editor of The Flag of Judah stood for some minutes as if 
 petrified ; then he turned suddenly to tlie litter on his table and 
 rummaged among it feverishly. At last, as with a happy recol- 
 lection, he opened a drawer. What he SQught was there. He 
 started reading Mordecai Josephs, forgetting to close the drawer. 
 Passage after passage suffused his eyes with tears ; a soft magic 
 hovered about the nervous sentences ; he read her eager little 
 soul in every line. Now he understood. How^ blind he had 
 been! How could he have missed seeing? Esther stared at 
 him from every page. She was the heroine of her own book; 
 yes, and the hero, too, for he was but another side of herself 
 translated into the masculine. The whole book was Esther, the 
 whole Esther and nothing but Esther, for even the satirical 
 descriptions were but the revolt of Esthers soul against mean 
 and evil things. He turned to the great love-scene of the 
 book, and read on and on, fascinated, without getting further 
 than the chapter. 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 GOING HOME. 
 
 No need to delay longer ; every need for instant flight. Esther 
 had found courage to confess her crime against the community 
 to Raphael ; there was no seething of the blood to nerve her to 
 face Mrs. Henry Goldsmith. She retired to her room soon after 
 dinner on the plea (w'hich was not a pretext) of a headache. 
 Then she wrote : 
 
 "Dear Mrs. Goldsmith: 
 
 "When you read this, I shall have left your house, never to 
 return. It would be idle to attempt to explain my reasons. I 
 could not hope to make you see through my eyes. Suffice it 
 to say that I cannot any longer endure a life of dependence, 
 and that I feel I have abused your favor by writing that Jewish 
 novel of which you disapprove so vehemently. I never intended 
 
458 GRANDCHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 to keep the secret from you, after publication. I thought the 
 book would succeed and you would be pleased ; at the same time 
 I dimly felt that you might object to certain things and ask to 
 have them altered, and I have always wanted to write my own. 
 ideas, and not other people's. With my temperament, I see now 
 that it was a mistake to fetter myself by obligations to anybody, 
 but the mistake was made in my girlhood when I knew little of 
 the world and perhaps less of myself. Nevertheless, I wish you 
 to believe, dear Mrs. Goldsmith, that all the blame for the un- 
 happy situation which has arisen I put upon my own shoulders, 
 and that I have nothing for you but the greatest affection 
 and gratitude for all the kindnesses I have received at your 
 hands. I beg you not to think that I make the slightest reproach 
 against you ; on the contrary, I shall always henceforth reproach 
 myself with the thought that I have made you so poor a return 
 for your generosity and incessant though tfulness. But the sphere 
 in which you move is too high for me ; I cannot assimilate with 
 it and I return, not without gladness, to the humble sphere whence 
 you took me. With kindest regards and best wishes, 
 
 I am. 
 
 Yours ever gratefully, 
 
 Esther Ansell." 
 
 There were tears in Esther's eyes when she finished, and 
 she was penetrated with admiration of her own generosity in 
 so freely admitting Mrs. Goldsmith's and in allowing that 
 her patron got nothing out of the bargain. She was doubtful 
 whether the sentence about the high sphere was satirical or 
 serious. People do not know what they mean almost as often 
 as they do not say it. 
 
 Esther put the letter into an envelope and placed it on the open 
 writing-desk she kept on her dressing-table. She then packed a 
 few toilette essentials in a little bag, together with some Ameri- 
 can photographs of her brother and sisters in various stages of 
 adolescence. She was determined to go back empty-handed as 
 she came, and was reluctant to carry off the few sovereigns of 
 
GOING HOME. 459 
 
 pocket-money in her purse, and hunted up a little gold locket 
 she had received, while yet a teacher, in celebration of the mar- 
 riage of a communal magnate's daughter. Thrown aside seven 
 years ago, it now bade fair to be the corner-stone of the temple ; 
 she had meditated pledging it and living on the proceeds till she 
 found work, but when she realized its puny pretensions to cozen 
 pawnbrokers, it flashed upon her that she could always repay 
 Mrs. Goldsmith the few pounds she was taking away. In a 
 drawer there was a heap of manuscript carefully locked away ; 
 she took it and looked through it hurriedly, contemptuously. 
 Some of it was music, some poetry, the bulk prose. At last she 
 threw it suddenly on the bright fire which good Mary O'Reilly 
 had providentially provided in her room ; then, as it flared up, 
 stricken with remorse, she tried to pluck the sheets from the 
 flames ; only by scorching her fingers and raising blisters did 
 she succeed, and then, with scornful resignation, she instantly 
 threw them back again, warming her feverish hands merrily at 
 the bonfire. Rapidly looking through all her drawers, lest per- 
 chance in some stray manuscript she should leave her soul naked 
 behind her, she came upon a forgotten faded rose. The faint 
 fragrance was charged with strange memories of Sidney. The 
 handsome young artist had given it her in the earlier days of 
 their acquaintanceship. To Esther to-night it seemed to belong 
 to a period infinitely more remote than her childhood. When 
 the shrivelled rose had been further crumpled into a little ball 
 and then picked to bits, it only remained to inquire where to go ; 
 what to do she could settle when there. She tried to collect her 
 thoughts. Alas! it was not so easy as collecting her luggage. 
 For a lono; time she crouched on the fender and looked into the 
 fire, seeing in it only fragmentary pictures of the last seven years 
 • — bits of scenery, great Cathedral interiors arousing mysterious 
 yearnings, petty incidents of travel, moments with Sidney, draw- 
 ing-room episodes, strange passionate scenes with herself as 
 single performer, long silent watches of study and aspiration, 
 like the souls of the burned manuscripts made visible. Even 
 that very afternoon's scene with Raphael was part of the "' old 
 unhappy far-off things " that could only live henceforwards in 
 
460 GRANDCHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 fantastic arcades of glowing coal, out of all relation to future real- 
 ities. Her new-born love for Raphael appeared as ancient and 
 as arid as the girlish ambitions that had seemed on the point of 
 blossoming when she was transplanted from the Ghetto. That, 
 too, was in the flames, and should remain there. 
 
 At last she started up with a confused sense of wasted time 
 and began to undress mechanically, trying to concentrate her 
 thoughts the while on the problem that faced her. But they 
 wandered back to her first night in the fine house, when a sepa- 
 rate bedroom was a new experience and she was afraid to sleep 
 alone, though turned fifteen. But she was more afraid of ap- 
 pearing a great baby, and so no one in the world ever knew 
 what the imaginative little creature had lived down. 
 
 In the middle of brushing her hair she ran to the door and 
 locked it, from a sudden dread that she might oversleep herself 
 and some one would come in and see the letter on the writing- 
 desk. She had not solved the problem even by the time she 
 got into bed ; the fire opposite the foot was burning down, 
 but there was a red glow penetrating the dimness. She had 
 forgotten to draw the blind, and she saw the clear stars shining 
 peacefully in the sky. She looked and looked at them and they 
 led her thoughts away from the problem once more. She 
 seemed to be lying in Victoria Park, looking up with innocent 
 mystic rapture and restfulness at the brooding blue sky. The 
 blood-and-thunder boys' story she had borrowed from Solomon 
 had fallen from her hand and lay unheeded on the grass. Solo- 
 mon was tossing a ball to Rachel, which he had acquired by a 
 colossal accumulation of buttons, and Isaac and Sarah were 
 rolling and wrangling on the grass. Oh, why had she deserted 
 them? What were they doing now, without her mother-care, 
 out and away beyond the great seas? For weeks together, the 
 thought of them had not once crossed her mind ; to-night she 
 stretched her arms involuntarily towards her loved ones, not 
 towards the shadowy figures of reality, scarcely less phantasmal 
 than the dead Benjamin, but towards the childish figures of the 
 past. What happy times they had had together in the dear old 
 garret ! 
 
GOING HOME. 461 
 
 In her strange half-waking hallucination, her outstretched 
 arms were clasped round little Sarah. She was putting her to 
 bed and the tiny thing was repeating after her, in broken 
 Hebrew, the children's night-prayer : " Suffer me to lie down 
 in peace, and let me rise up in peace. Hear O Israel, the Lord 
 our God, the Lord is one,'' with its unauthorized appendix in 
 baby English : '' Dod teep me, and mate me a dood dirl, orways." 
 
 She woke to full consciousness with a start ; her arms chilled, 
 her face wet. But the problem was solved. 
 
 She would go back to them, back to her true home, where 
 loving faces waited to welcome her, where hearts were open and 
 life was simple and the weary brain could find rest from the 
 stress and struggle of obstinate questionings of destiny. Life 
 was so simple at bottom ; it was she that was so perversely com- 
 plex. She would go back to her father whose naive devout 
 face swam glorified upon a sea of tears ; yea, and back to her 
 father's primitive faith like a tired lost child that spies its home 
 at last. The quaint, monotonous cadence of her father's prayers 
 rang pathetically in her ears ; and a great light, the light that 
 Raphael had shown her, seemed to blend mystically with the 
 once meaningless sounds. Yea, all things were from Him who 
 created light and darkness, good and evil ; she felt her cares 
 falling from her, her soul absorbing itself in the sense of a 
 Divine Love, awful, profound, immeasurable, underlying and tran- 
 scending all things, incomprehensibly satisfying the soul and jus- 
 tifying and explaining the universe. The infinite fret and fume 
 of life seemed like the petulance of an infant in the presence of 
 this restful tenderness diifused through the great spaces. How 
 holy the stars seemed up there in the quiet sky, like so many 
 Sabbath lights shedding visible consecration and blessing! 
 
 Yes, she would go back to her loved ones, back from this 
 dainty room, with its white laces and perfumed draperies, back 
 if need be to a Ghetto garret. And in the ecstasy of her aban- 
 donment of all worldly things, a great peace fell upon her soul. 
 
 In the morning the nostalgia of the Ghetto was still upon her, 
 blent with a passion of martyrdom that made her yearn for a 
 lower social depth than was really necessary. But the more 
 
462 GRANDCHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 human aspects of the situation were paramount in the gray chill- 
 ness of a bleak May dawn. Her resolution to cross the Atlantic 
 forthwith seemed a little hasty, and though she did not flinch 
 from it, she was not sorry to remember that she had not money 
 enough for the journey. She must perforce stay in London till 
 she had earned it ; meantime she would go back to the districts 
 and the people she knew so well, and accustom herself again to 
 the old ways, the old simplicities of existence. 
 
 She dressed herself in her plainest apparel, though she could 
 not help her spring bonnet being pretty. She hesitated between 
 a hat and a bonnet, but decided that her solitary position de- 
 manded as womanly an appearance as possible. Do what she 
 would, she could not prevent herself looking exquisitely refined, 
 and the excitement of adventure had lent that touch of color to 
 her face which made it fascinating. About seven o'clock she 
 left her room noiselessly and descended the stairs cautiously, 
 holding her little black bag in her hand. 
 
 " Och, be the holy mother. Miss Esther, phwat a turn you gave 
 me," said Mary O'Reilly, emerging unexpectedly from the dining- 
 room and meeting her at the foot of the stairs. "Phwat's the 
 matther ? " 
 
 " Pm going out, Mary," she said, her heart beating violently. 
 
 " Sure an' it's rale purty ye look. Miss Esther ; but it's divil a 
 bit the marnin' for a walk, it looks a raw kind of a day, as if the 
 weather was sorry for bein* so bright yisterday." 
 
 " Oh, but I must go, Mary." 
 
 "Ah, the saints bliss your kind heart!" said Mary, catching 
 sight of the bag. '• Sure, then, it's a charity irrand you're bent 
 on. I mind me how my blissed old masther, Mr. Goldsmith's 
 father, Olov Has/iolo;/i, who's gone to glory, used to walk to Shool 
 in all winds and weathers ; sometimes it was five o'clock of a 
 winter's marnin' and I used to get up and make him an iligant 
 cup of coffee before he wint to Selkhoth ; he niver would take 
 milk and sugar in it, becaz that would be atin' belike, poor dear 
 old ginthleman. Ah the Holy Vargin be kind to him!" 
 
 " And may she be kind to you, Mary," said Esther. And she 
 impulsively pressed her lips to the old woman's seamed and 
 
GOING HOME. 463 
 
 wrinkled cheek, to the astonishment of the guardian of Judaism. 
 Virtue was its own reward, for Esther profited by the moment of 
 the loquacious creature's breathlessness to escape. She opened 
 the hall door and passed into the silent streets, whose cold pave- 
 ments seemed to reflect the bleak stony tints of the sky. 
 
 For the first few minutes she walked hastily, almost at a run. 
 Then her pace slackened ; she told herself there was no hurry, 
 and she shook her head when a cabman interrogated her. The 
 omnibuses were not running yet. When they commenced, she 
 would take one to Whitechapel. The signs of awakening labor 
 stirred her with new emotions ; the early milkman with his cans, 
 casual artisans with their tools, a grimy sweep, a work-girl with 
 a paper lunch-package, an apprentice whistling. Great sleeping 
 houses lined her path like gorged monsters drowsing voluptu- 
 ously. The world she was leaving behind her grew alien and 
 repulsive, her heart went out to the patient world of toil. What 
 had she been doing all these years, amid her books and her music 
 and her rose-leaves, aloof from realities ? 
 
 The first 'bus overtook her half-way and bore her back to the 
 Ghetto. 
 
 The Ghetto was all astir, for it was half-past eight of a work- 
 a-day morning. But Esther had not walked a hundred yards 
 before her breast was heavy with inauspicious emotions. The 
 well-known street she had entered was strangely broadened. In- 
 stead of the dirty picturesque houses rose an appalling series of 
 artisans' dwellings, monotonous brick barracks, whose dead, dull 
 prose weighed upon the spirits. But, as in revenge, other streets, 
 unaltered, seemed incredibly narrow. Was it possible it could 
 have taken even her childish feet six strides to cross them, as she 
 plainly remembered? And they seemed so unspeakably sordid 
 and squalid. Could she ever really have walked them with light 
 heart, unconscious of the ugliness? Did the gray atmosphere 
 that overhung them ever lift, or was it their natural and appro- 
 priate mantle? Surely the sun could never shine upon these 
 slimy pavements, kissing them to warmth and life. 
 
 Great magic shops where all things were to be had ; pepper- 
 
464 GRANDCHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 mints and cotton, china-faced dolls and lemons, had dwindled 
 into the front windows of tiny private dwelling-houses ; the 
 black-wigged crones, the greasy shambling men, were uglier and 
 ofreasier than she had ever conceived them. Thev seemed cari- 
 catures of humanity ; scarecrows in battered hats or draggled 
 skirts. But gradually, as the scene grew upon her, she perceived 
 that in spite of the " model dwellings '^ builder, it was essentially 
 unchanged. No vestige of improvement had come over Went- 
 worth Street ; the narrow noisy market street, where serried bar- 
 rows flanked the reeking roadway exactly as of old, and wdiere 
 Esther trod on mud and refuse and babies. Babies! They were 
 everywhere ; at the breasts of unwashed women, on the knees of 
 grandfathers smoking pipes, playing under the barrows, spraw'l- 
 ing in the gutters and the alleys. All the babies'' faces were 
 sickly and dirty with pathetic, childish prettinesses asserting 
 themselves against the neglect and the sallowness. One female 
 mite in a dingy tattered frock sat in an orange-box, surveying 
 the bustling scene with a preternaturally grave expression, and 
 realizing literally Esther's early conception of the theatre. There 
 was a sense of blankness in the wanderer's heart, of unfamiliarity 
 in the midst of familiarity. What had she in common with 
 all this mean wretchedness, with this semi-barbarous breed of 
 beings? The more she looked, the more her heart sank. There 
 was no flaunting vice, no rowdiness, no drunkenness, only the 
 squalor of an oriental city without its quaintness and color. She 
 studied the posters and the shop-windows, and caught old 
 snatches of gossip from the groups in the butchers' shops — all 
 seemed as of yore. And yet here and there the hand of Time 
 had traced new inscriptions. For Baruch Emanuel the hand of 
 Time had written a new placard. It was a mixture of German, bad 
 English and Cockneyese, phonetically spelt in Hebrew letters : 
 
 Mens Solen Und Eelen, . . . 2/6 
 Lydies Deeto, . . . . .1/6 
 Kindersche Deeto, . . . .1/6 
 Hier wird gemacht 
 Aller Hant Sleepers 
 
 Fur Trebbelers 
 Zu De Billio^sten Preissen. 
 
GOING HOME. 465 
 
 Baruch Emanuel had prospered since the days when he wanted 
 "lasters and riveters^' without being able to afford them. He 
 no longer gratuitously advertised Mordecai Schwartz in envious 
 emulation, for he had several establishments and owned five two- 
 story houses, and was treasurer of his little synagogue, and spoke 
 of Socialists as an inferior variety of Atheists. Not that all this 
 bourgeoning was to be counted to leather, for Baruch had devel- 
 oped enterprises in all directions, having all the versatility of 
 Moses Ansell without his catholic capacity for failure. 
 
 The hand of Time had also constructed a " working-men's 
 Metropole" almost opposite Baruch EmanuePs shop, and papered 
 its outside walls with moral pictorial posters, headed, "Where 
 have you been to, Thomas Brown?" "-Mike and his moke,'' and 
 so on. Here, single-bedded cabins could be had as low as four- 
 pence a night. From the journals in a tobacconist's window 
 Esther gathered that the reading-public had increased, for there 
 were importations from New York, both in jargon and in pure 
 Hebrew, and from a large poster in Yiddish and English, an- 
 nouncing a public meeting, she learned of the existence of an off- 
 shoot of the Holy Land League — "The Flowers of Zion Society 
 — established by East-End youths for the study of Hebrew and 
 the propagation of the Jewish National Idea." Side by side with 
 this, as if in ironic illustration of the other side of the life of the 
 Ghetto, was a seeming royal proclamation headed V. R., inform- 
 ing the public that by order of the Secretary of State for War 
 a sale of wrought- and cast-iron, zinc, canvaS; tools and leather 
 would take place at the Royal Arsenal, Woolwich. 
 
 As she wandered on, the great school-bell began to ring ; 
 involuntarily, she quickened her step and joined the chattering 
 children's procession. She could have fancied the last ten 
 years a dream. Were they, indeed, other children, or were they 
 not the same that jostled her when she picked her way through 
 this very slush in her clumsy masculine boots? Surely those 
 little girls in lilac print frocks were her classmates! It was hard 
 to realize that Time's wheel had been whirling on, fashioning 
 her to a woman ; that, while she had been living and learning 
 and seeing the manners of men and cities, the Ghetto, unaffected 
 
 2H 
 
466 GRANDCHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 by her experiences, had gone on in the same narrow rut. A 
 new generation of children had arisen to suffer and sport in 
 room of the old, and that was all. The thought overwdielmed 
 her, gave her a new and poignant sense of brute, blind forces ; 
 she seemed to catch in this familiar scene of childhood the 
 secret of the gray atmosphere of her spirit. It was here she 
 had, all insensibly, absorbed those heavy vapors that formed 
 the background of her being, a permanent sombre canvas be- 
 hind all the iridescent colors of joyous emotion. What had 
 she in common with all this mean wretchedness ? Why, every- 
 thing. This it was with wiiich her soul had intangible affinities, 
 not the glory of sun and sea and forest, '• the palms and temples 
 of the South.'' 
 
 The heavy vibrations of the bell ceased ; the street cleared ; 
 Esther turned back and walked instinctively homewards — to 
 Royal Street. Her soul was full of the sense of the futility 
 of life ; yet the sight of the great shabby house could still give 
 her a chill. Outside the door a wizened old woman with a 
 chronic sniff had established a stall for wizened old apples, but 
 Esther passed her by heedless of her stare, and ascended the 
 two miry steps that led to the mud-carpeted passage. 
 
 The apple-woman took her for a philanthropist paying a sur- 
 prise visit to one of the families of the house, and resented her 
 as a spv. She was discussing the meanness of the thing with 
 the pickled-herring dealer next door, while Esther was mount- 
 ins: the dark stairs w-ith the confidence of old habit. She was 
 making automatically for the garret, like a somnambulist, with 
 no definite object — morbidly drawn towards the old home. 
 The unchanging musty smells that clung to the staircase flew 
 to greet her nostrils, and at once a host of sleeping memories 
 started to life, besieging her and pressing upon her on every 
 side. After a tumultuous intolerable moment a childish figure 
 seemed to break from the gloom ahead — the figure of a little 
 girl with a grave face and candid eyes, a dutiful, obedient 
 shabby little girl, so anxious to please her schoolmistress, so 
 full of craving to learn and to be good, and to be loved by God, 
 so audaciously ambitious of becoming a teacher, and so confi- 
 
GOING HOME. 467 
 
 dent of being a good Jewess always. Satchel in hand, the little 
 girl sped up the stairs swiftly, despite her cumbrous, slatternly 
 boots, and Esther, holding her bag, followed her more slowly, 
 as if she feared to contaminate her by the touch of one so 
 weary-worldly-wise, so full of revolt and despair. 
 
 All at once Esther sidled timidly towards the balustrade, with 
 an instinctive movement, holding her bag out protectingly. 
 The figure vanished, and Esther awoke to the knowledge that 
 "Bobby" was not at his post. Then with a flash came the 
 recollection of Bobby's mistress — the pale, unfortunate young 
 seamstress she had so unconscionably neglected. She won- 
 dered if she were alive or dead. A waft of sickly odors surged 
 from below ; Esther felt a deadly faintness coming over her ; 
 she had walked far, and nothing had yet passed her lips since 
 yesterday's dinner, and at this moment, too, an overwhelming 
 terrifying feeling of loneliness pressed like an icy hand upon 
 her heart. She felt that in another instant she must swoon, 
 there, upon the foul landing. She sank against the door, beat- 
 ing passionately at the panels. It was opened from within ; she 
 had just strength enough to clutch the door-post so as not to 
 fall. A thin, careworn woman swam uncertainly before her 
 eyes. Esther could not recognize her, but the plain iron bed, 
 almost corresponding in area with that of the room, was as of 
 old, and so was the little round table with a tea-pot and a cup 
 and saucer, and half a loaf standing out amid a litter of sewing, 
 as if the owner had been interrupted in the middle of breakfast. 
 Stay — what was that journal resting against the half-loaf as for 
 perusal during the meal ? Was it not the London Journal f Again 
 she looked, but with more confidence, at the woman's face. A 
 wave of curiosity, of astonishment at the stylishly dressed visitor, 
 passed over it, but in the curves of the mouth, in the movement 
 of the eyebrows, Esther renewed indescribably subtle memories. 
 
 "Debby!" she cried hysterically. A great flood of joy 
 swamped her soul. She was not alone in the world, after all! 
 Dutch Debby uttered a little startled scream. " I've come back, 
 Debby, I've come back," and the next moment the brilliant girl- 
 graduate fell fainting into the seamstress's arms. 
 
468 GRANDCHILDREN OF THE GHETTO, 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 A SHEAF OF SEQUELS. 
 
 Within half an hour Esther was smiHng pallidly and drinking 
 tea out of Debby^s own cup, to Debby's unHmited satisfaction. 
 Debby had no spare cup, but she had a spare chair without a 
 back, and Esther was of course seated on the otlier. Her bon- 
 net and cloak were on the bed. 
 
 " And where is Bobby ? '' inquired the young lady visitor. 
 
 Debby's joyous face clouded. 
 
 " Bobby is dead," she said softly. " He died four years ago, 
 come next Sheviios .'''' 
 
 " I'm so sorry," said Esther, pausing in her tea-drinking with 
 a pang of genuine emotion. " At first I was afraid of him, but 
 that was before I knew him." 
 
 " There never beat a kinder heart on God's earth," said 
 Debby, emphatically. " He wouldn't hurt a fly." 
 
 Esther had often seen him snapping at flies, but she could 
 not smile. 
 
 " I buried him secretly in the back yard," Debby confessed. 
 " See! there, where the paving stone is loose." 
 
 Esther gratified her by looking through the little back window 
 into the sloppy enclosure where washing hung. She noticed a 
 cat sauntering quietly over the spot without any of the satisfac- 
 tion it might have felt had it known it was walking over the 
 grave of an hereditary enemy. 
 
 " So I don't feel as if he was far away," said Debby. " I can 
 always look out and picture him squatting above the stone 
 instead of beneath it." 
 
 " But didn't you get another? " 
 
 '■'■ Oh, how can you talk so heartlessly? " 
 
 "Forgive me, deaj^; of course you couldn't replace him. And 
 haven't you had any other friends?" 
 
 " Who would make friends with me, Miss Ansell ? " Debby 
 asked quietly. 
 
A SHEAF OF SEQUELS. 469 
 
 " I shall '■ make out friends ' with you, Debby, if you call me 
 that/' said Esther, half laughing, half crying. " What was it we 
 used to say in school? I forget, but I know we used to wet our 
 little fingers in our mouths and jerk them abruptly toward the 
 other party. That's what I shall have to do with you." 
 
 "Oh well, Esther, don't be cross. But you do look such a 
 real lady. I always said you would grow up clever, didn't I, 
 though ? " 
 
 "You did, dear, you did. I can never forgive myself for not 
 having looked you up." 
 
 " Oh, but you had so much to do, I have no doubt," said 
 Debby magnanimously, though she was not a little curious to 
 hear all Esther's wonderful adventures and to gather more 
 about the reasons of the girl's mysterious return than had yet 
 been vouchsafed her. All she had dared to ask was about the 
 family in America. 
 
 " Still, it was wrong of me," said Esther, in a tone that 
 brooked no protest. " Suppose you had been in want and I 
 could have helped you ? " 
 
 " Oh, but you know I never take any help," said Debby stiffly. 
 
 "I didn't know that," said Esther, touched. "Have you 
 never taken soup at the Kitchen?" 
 
 " I wouldn't dream of such a thing. Do you ever remember 
 me going to the Board of Guardians? I wouldn't go there to 
 be bullied, not if I was starving. It's only the cadgers who 
 don't want it who get relief. But, thank God, in the worst 
 seasons I have always been able to earn a crust and a cup of 
 tea. You see I am only a small family," concluded Debby with 
 a sad smile, " and the less one has to do with other people the 
 better." 
 
 Esther started slightly, feeling a strange new kinship with this 
 lonely soul. 
 
 "But surely you would have taken help of me," she said. 
 Debby shook her head obstinately. 
 
 "Well, I'm not so proud," said Esther with a tremulous smile, 
 " for see, I have come to take help of you." 
 
 Then the tears welled forth and Debby with an impulsive 
 
470 GRANDCHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 movement pressed the little sobbing form against her faded 
 bodice bristling with pin-heads. Esther recovered herself in a 
 moment and drank some more tea. 
 
 " Are the same people living here ? " she said. 
 
 " Not altogether. The Belcovitches have gone up in the 
 world. They live on the first floor now." 
 
 " Not much of a rise that,'' said Esther smiling, for the Belco- 
 vitches had always lived on the third floor. 
 
 " Oh, they could have gone to a better street altogether,'' ex- 
 plained Debby, " only Mr. Belcovitch didn't like the expense of 
 a van." 
 
 " Then, Sugarman the Shadchaii must have moved, too," said 
 Esther. •' He used to have the first floor." 
 
 " Yes, he's got the third now. You see, people get tired of liv- 
 ing in the same place. Then Ebenezer, who became very famous 
 through writing a book (so he told me), went to live by himself, 
 so they didn't want to be so grand. The back apartment at the 
 top of the house you used once to inhabit," — Debby put it as 
 delicately as she could — " is vacant. The last family had the 
 brokers in." 
 
 "Are the Belcovitches all well? I remember Fanny married 
 and went to Manchester before I left here." 
 
 " Oh yes, they are all well." 
 
 " What ! Even Mrs. Belcovitch ? " 
 
 " She still takes medicine, but she seems just as strong as 
 ever." 
 
 " Becky married yet ? " 
 
 " Oh no, but she has won two breach of promise cases." 
 
 " She must be getting old." 
 
 " She is a fine young woman, but the young men are afraid of 
 her now." 
 
 "Then they don't sit on the stairs in the morning any more? " 
 
 " No, young men seem so much less romantic now-a-days," 
 said Debby, sighing. " Besides there's one flight less now and half 
 the stairs face the street door. The next flight was so private." 
 
 " I suppose I shall look in and see them all," said Esther, 
 smiling. "But tell me. Is Mrs. Simons living here still?" 
 
A SHEAF OF SEQUELS. 471 
 
 "No.'' 
 
 "Where, then? I should like to see her. She was so very 
 kind to little Sarah, you know. Nearly all our fried fish came 
 from her." 
 
 "She is dead. She died of cancer. She suffered a great 
 deal." 
 
 " Oh ! " Esther put her cup down and sat back with face grown 
 white. 
 
 " I am afraid to ask about any one else/' she said at last. " I 
 suppose the Sons of the Covenant are getting on all right ; they 
 can't be dead, at least not all of them." 
 
 " They have split up," said Debby gravely, " into two commu- 
 nities. Mr. Belcovitch and the Shalotten Shammos quarrelled 
 about the sale of the Mitzvahs at the Rejoicing of the Law two 
 years ago. As far as I could gather, the carrying of the smallest 
 s-croll of the Law was knocked down to the Shalotten Shainnios^ 
 for eighteenpence, but Mr. Belcovitch, who had gone outside a 
 moment, said he had bought up the privilege in advance to pre- 
 sent to Daniel Hyams, who was a visitor, and whose old father 
 had just died in Jerusalem. There was nearly a free fight in the 
 Shool. So the Shalotten Shanunos seceded with nineteen fol- 
 lowers and their wives and set up a rival Chevrak round the 
 corner. The other twenty-five still come here. The deserters 
 tried to take Greenberg the Chazan with them, but Greenberg 
 wanted a stipulation that they wouldn't engage an extra Reader 
 to do his work during the High Festivals ; he even offered to do 
 it cheaper if they would let him do all the work, but they wouldn't 
 consent. As a compromise, they proposed to replace him only 
 on the Day of Atonement, as his voice was not agreeable enough 
 for that. But Greenberg was obstinate. Now I believe there is 
 a movement for the Sons of the Covenant to connect their 
 CJievrah with the Federation of minor synagogues, but Mr. 
 Belcovitch says he won't join the Federation unless the term 
 'minor' is omitted. He is a great politician now." 
 
 " Ah, I dare say he reads The Flag of Jiidah^'' said Esther, 
 laughing, though Debby recounted all this history quite seriously. 
 " Do you ever see that paper? " 
 
472 GRANDCHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 " I never heard of it before," said Debby simply. " Why should 
 I waste money on new papers when I can always forget the Lon- 
 don y^;/r;/rtr/ sufficiently? Perhaps Mr. Belcovitch buys it; I 
 have seen him with a Yiddish paper. The ' hands ' say that 
 instead of breaking off suddenly in the m4ddle of a speech, as of 
 old, he sometimes stops pressing for five minutes together to 
 denounce Gideon, the member for Whitechapel, and to say that 
 Mr. Henry Goldsmith is the only possible saviour of Judaism in 
 the House of Commons." 
 
 "Ah, then he does read The Flag of Jiidahl His English 
 must have improved." 
 
 " I was glad to hear him say that," added Debby, when she 
 had finished struggling with the fit of coughing brought on by 
 too much monologue, " because I thought it must be the husband 
 of the lady who was so good to you. I never forgot her name." 
 
 Esther took up the London Journal to hide her reddening 
 cheeks. 
 
 " Oh, read some of it aloud," cried Dutch Debby. " It'll be 
 like old times." 
 
 Esther hesitated, a little ashamed of such childish behavior. 
 But, deciding to fall in for a moment with the poor woman's 
 humor, and glad to change the subject, she read : " Soft scents 
 steeped the dainty conservatory in delicious drowsiness. Re- 
 clining on a blue silk couch, her wonderful beauty rather 
 revealed than concealed by the soft clinging draperies she wore, 
 Rosaline smiled bewitchingly at the poor young peer, who could 
 not pluck up courage to utter the words of flame that were scorch- 
 ing his lips. The moon silvered the tropical palms, and from 
 the brilliant ball-room were wafted the sweet penetrating strains 
 of the '■ Blue Danube ' waltz — " 
 
 Dutch Debby heaved a great sigh of rapture. 
 
 " And you have seen such sights ! " she said in awed admira- 
 tion. 
 
 "I have been in brilliant ball-rooms and moonlit conservato- 
 ries," said Esther evasively. She did not care to rob Dutch 
 Debby of her ideals by explaining that high life was not all pas- 
 sion and palm-trees. 
 
A SHEAF OF SEQUELS. 473 
 
 "I am so glad/' said Debby affectionately. "I have often 
 wished to myself, only a make-believe Avish, you know, not a 
 real wish, if you understand what I mean, for of course I know 
 it's impossible. I sometimes sit at that window before going to 
 bed and look at the moon as it silvers the swaying clothes-props, 
 and I can easily imagine they are great tropical palms, especially 
 when an organ is playing round the corner. Sometimes the 
 moon shines straight down on Bobby's tombstone, and then I 
 am glad. Ah, now you're smiling. I know you think me a 
 crazy old thing." 
 
 " Indeed, indeed, dear, I think you're the darlingest creature 
 in the world," and Esther jumped up and kissed her to hide her 
 emotion. "But I mustn't waste your time," she said briskly. 
 "I know you have your sewing to do. It's too long to tell you 
 my story now ; suffice it to say (as the London Journal says) 
 that I am going to take a lodging in the neighborhood. Oh, 
 dear, don't make those great eyes! I want to live in the East 
 End." 
 
 " You want to live here like a Princess in disguise. I see." 
 
 " No you don't, you romantic old darling. I want to live here 
 like everybody else. I'm going to earn my own living." 
 
 "Oh, but you can never live by yourself." 
 
 "Why not? Now from romantic you become conventional. 
 You've lived by yourself." 
 
 "Oh, but I'm different," said Debby, flushing. 
 
 "Nonsense, I'm just as good as you. But if you think it im- 
 proper," here Esther had a sudden idea, " come and live with 
 me." 
 
 " What, be your chaperon ! " cried Debby in responsive excite- 
 ment; then her voice dropped again. " Oh, no, how could I?" 
 
 " Yes, yes, you must," said Esther eagerly. 
 
 Debby's obstinate shake of the head repelled the idea. " I 
 couldn't leave Bobby," she said. After a pause, she asked tim- 
 idly : " Why not stay here ? " 
 
 " Don't be ridiculous," Esther answered. Then she examined 
 the bed. "Two couldn't sleep here," she said. 
 
 " Oh yes, they could," said Debby, thoughtfully bisecting the 
 
474 GRANDCHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 blanket with her hand. '^'And the bed's quite clean or I 
 wouldn't venture to ask you. Maybe ifs not so soft as youVe 
 been used to." 
 
 Esther pondered ; she was fatigued and she had undergone 
 too many poignant emotions already to relish the hunt for a 
 lodging. It was really lucky this haven offered itself. •• Til stay 
 for to-night, anyhow,'' she announced, while Debby's face lit up 
 as with a bonfire of joy. "To-morrow we'll discuss matters fur- 
 ther. And now, dear, can I help you with your sewing?" 
 
 " No, Esther, thank you kindly. You see there's only enough 
 for one," said Debby apologetically. '• To-morrow there may 
 be more. Besides you were never as clever with your needle as 
 your pen. You always used to lose marks for needlework, and 
 don't you remember how you herring-boned the tucks of those 
 petticoats instead of feather-stitching them? Ha, ha, ha! I have 
 often laughed at the recollection." 
 
 " Oh, that was only absence of mind," said Esther, tossing her 
 head in affected indignation. " If mv work isn't good enough 
 for you, I think I'll go down and help Becky with her machine." 
 She put on her bonnet, and, not without curiosity, descended 
 a flight of stairs and knocked at a door which, from the steady 
 w'hirr going on behind it, she judged to be that of the work- 
 room . 
 
 " Art thou a man or a woman ? "' came in Yiddish the well- 
 remembered tones of the valetudinarian lady. 
 
 "A woman! " answered Esther in German, She was glad she 
 learned German ; it would be the best substitute for Yiddish in 
 her new-old life. 
 
 '•'■ Herein l'^ said Mrs. Belcovitch, with sentry-like brevity. 
 
 Esther turned the handle, and her surprise was not diminished 
 when she found herself not in the work-room, but in the invalid's 
 bedroom. She almost stumbled over the pail of fresh water, 
 the supply of which was always kept there. A coarse bouncing 
 full-figured young woman, with frizzly black hair, paused, with her 
 foot on the treadle of her machine, to stare at the newcomer. 
 Mrs. Belcovitch, attired in a skirt and a night-cap, stopped aghast 
 in the act of combing out her wig, which hung over an edge 
 
A SHEAF OF SEQUELS. 475 
 
 of the back of a chair, that served as a barber's block Like the 
 apple-woman, she fancied the apparition a lady philanthropist — 
 and though she had long ceased to take charity, the old instincts 
 leaped out under the sudden shock. 
 
 " Becky, quick rub my leg with liniment, the thick one,'' she 
 whispered in Yiddish. 
 
 " It's only me, Esther Ansell! " cried the visitor. 
 
 " What ! Esther ! " cried Mrs. Belcovitch. " Gott in Himmell " 
 and, throwing down the comb, she fell in excess of emotion 
 upon Esther's neck "I have so often wanted to see you," cried 
 the sickly-looking little woman who hadn't altered a wrinkle. 
 "Often have I said to my Becky, where is little Esther? — gold 
 one sees and silver one sees, but Esther sees one not. Is it not 
 so, Becky? Oh, how fine you look! Why, I mistook you for 
 a lady! You are married — not? Ah well, you'll find wooers 
 as thick as the street dogs. And how goes it with the father 
 and the family in America?" 
 
 "Excellently," answered Esther. " How are you, Becky? " 
 
 Becky murmured something, and the two young women shook 
 hands. Esther had an olden awe of Becky, and Becky was now 
 a little impressed by Esther. 
 
 " I suppose Mr, Weingott is getting a good living now in Man- 
 chester?" Esther remarked cheerfully to Mrs. Belcovitch. 
 
 " No, he has a hard struggle," answered his mother-in-law, 
 " but I have seven grandchildren, God be thanked, and I expect 
 an eighth. If my poor lambkin had been alive now, she would 
 have been a great-grandmother. My eldest grandchild, Hertzel, 
 has a talent for the fiddle. A gentleman is paying for his lessons, 
 God be thanked. I suppose you have heard I won four pounds 
 on the lotter^^. You see I have not tried thirty years for nothing! 
 If 1 only had my health, I should have little to grumble at. Yes, 
 four pounds, and what think you I have bought with it? You 
 shall see it inside. A cupboard with glass doors, such as we left 
 behind in Poland, and we have hung the shelves with pink paper 
 and made loops for silver forks to rest in — it makes me feel as 
 if I had just cut off my tresses. But then I look on my Becky 
 and I remember that — go thou inside, Becky, my life! Thou 
 
476 GRANDCHILDREN OF THE GHETTO, 
 
 makest it too hard for him. Give him a word while I speak with 
 Esther." 
 
 Becky made a grimace and shrugged her shoulders, but disap- 
 peared through the door that led to the real workshop. 
 
 '"A fine maid!" said the mother, her eyes following the girl 
 with pride. " No wonder she is so hard to please. She vexes 
 him so that he eats out his heart. He comes every morning 
 with a bag of cakes or an orange or a fat Dutch herring, and now 
 she has moved her machine to my bedroom, where he can't follow 
 her, the unhappy youth." 
 
 " Who is it now ? " inquired Esther in amusement. 
 
 " Shosshi Shmendrik." 
 
 " Shosshi Shmendrik! Wasn't that the young man who mar- 
 ried the Widow Finkelstein? " 
 
 "Yes — a very honorable and seemly youth. But she pre- 
 ferred her first husband," said Mrs. Belcovitch laughing, " and 
 followed him only four years after Shosshi's marriage. Shosshi 
 has now all her money — a very seemly and honorable youth." 
 
 " But will it come to anything?" 
 
 '" It is already settled. Becky gave in two days ago. After 
 all, she will not always be young. The Taiiann will be held 
 next Sunday. Perhaps you would like to come and see the 
 betrothal contract signed. The Kovna Mags^id will be here, and 
 there will be rum and cakes to the heart's desire. Becky has 
 Shosshi in great affection ; they are just suited. Only she likes 
 to tease, poor little thing. And then she is so shy. Go in and 
 see them, and the cupboard with glass doors." 
 
 Esther pushed open the door, and Mrs. Belcovitch resumed 
 her loving manipulation of the wig. 
 
 The Belcovitch workshop was another of the landmarks of the 
 past that had undergone no change, despite the cupboard with 
 glass doors and the slight difference in the shape of the room. 
 The paper roses still bloomed in the corners of the mirror, the 
 cotton-labels still adorned the wall around it. The master's new 
 umbrella still stood unopened in a corner. The " hands " were 
 other, but then Mr. Belcovitch's hands were always changing. 
 He never employed "union-men," and his liirelings never stayed 
 
A SHEAF OF SEQUELS. ^11 
 
 with him longer than they could help. One of the present batch, 
 a bent, middle-aged man, with a deeply-lined face, was Simon 
 Wolf, long since thrown over by the labor party he had created, 
 and fallen lower and lower till he returned to the Belcovitch 
 workshop whence he sprang. Wolf, who had a wife and six 
 children, was grateful to Mr. Belcovitch in a dumb, sullen w^ay, 
 remembering how that capitalist had figured in his red rhetoric, 
 though it was an extra pang of martyrdom to have to listen 
 deferentially to Belcovitch's numerous political and economical 
 fallacies. He would have preferred the curter dogmatism of 
 earlier days. Shosshi Shmendrik was chatting quite gaily with 
 Becky, and held her finger-tips cavalierly in his coarse fist, with- 
 out obvious objection on her part. His face was still pimply, 
 but it had lost its painful shyness and its readiness to blush 
 without provocation. His bearing, too, was less clumsy and 
 uncouth. Evidently, to love the Widow Finkelstein had been a 
 liberal education to him. Becky had broken the news of Esther's 
 arrival to her father, as was evident from the odor of turpentine 
 emanating from the opened bottle of rum on the central table. 
 Mr. Belcovitch, whose hair was gray now, but who seemed to 
 have as much stamina as ever, held out his left hand (the right 
 was wielding the pressing-iron) without moving another muscle. 
 
 "iV//, it gladdens me to see you are better off than of old," 
 he said gravely in Yiddish. 
 
 "Thank you. I am glad to see you looking so fresh and 
 healthy," replied Esther in German. 
 
 " You were taken away to be educated, was it not ? " 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " And how many tongues do you know? " 
 
 " Four or five," said Esther, smiling. 
 
 "Four or five!" repeated Mr. Belcovitch, so impressed that 
 he stopped pressing. "Then you can aspire to be a clerk! I 
 know several firms where they have young women now." 
 
 " Don't be ridiculous, father," interposed Becky. " Clerks 
 aren't so grand now-a-days as they used to be. Very likely 
 she would turn up her nose at a clerkship." 
 
 " Pm sure I wouldn't," said Esther. 
 
478 GRANDCHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 "There! thou hearest!'' said Mr. Belcovitch, with angry sat- 
 isfaction. "It is thou who hast too many flies in thy nostrils. 
 Thou wouldst throw- over Shosshi if thou hadst thine own 
 way. Thou art the only person in the world who listens not 
 to me. Abroad my word decides great matters. Three times 
 has my name been printed in The Flag of Jiidah. Little 
 Esther had not such a father as thou, but never did she make 
 mock of him." 
 
 "Of course, everybody's better than me," said Becky petu- 
 lantly, as she snatched her fingers away from Shosshi. 
 
 " No, thou art better than the whol^ world," protested Shosshi 
 Shmendrik, feeling for the fingers. 
 
 "Who spoke to thee? " demanded Belcovitch, incensed. 
 
 "Who spoke to thee? "echoed Becky. And when Shosshi, 
 with empurpled pimples, cowered before both, father and daughter 
 felt allies again, and peace was re-established at Shosshi's ex- 
 pense. But Esther's curiosity was satisfied. She seemed to see 
 the whole future of this domestic group : Belcovitch accumulat- 
 ing gold-pieces and Mrs. Belcovitch medicine-bottles till they 
 died, and the lucky but henpecked Shosshi gathering up half the 
 treasure on behalf of the buxom Becky. Refusing the glass of 
 rum, she escaped. 
 
 The dinner which Debby (under protest) did not pay for, con- 
 sisted of viands from the beloved old cook-shop, the potatoes 
 and rice of childhood being supplemented by a square piece of 
 baked meat, likewise knives and forks. Esther was anxious to 
 experience again the magic taste and savor of the once coveted 
 delicacies. Alas! the preliminary sniff failed to make her mouth 
 water, the first bite betrayed the inferiority of the potatoes used. 
 Even so the unattainable tart of infancy mocks the moneyed 
 but dyspeptic adult. But she concealed her disillusionment 
 bravely. 
 
 "Do you know," said Debby, pausing in her voluptuous 
 scouring of the gravy-lined plate with a bit of bread, " I can 
 hardly believe my eyes. It seems a dream that you are sitting 
 at dinner with me. Pinch me, will you?" 
 
 "You have been pinched enough," said Esther sadly. Which 
 
A SHEAF OF SEQUELS. 479 
 
 shows that one can pun with a heavy heart. This is one of the 
 things Shakspeare knew and Dr. Johnson didn't. 
 
 In the afternoon, Esther went round to Zachariali Square. 
 She did not meet any of the old faces as slie walked through 
 the Ghetto, though a little crowd that blocked her way at one 
 point turned out to be merely spectators of an epileptic perform- 
 ance by Meckisch. Esther turned away, in amused disgust. 
 She wondered whether Mrs. Meckisch still flaunted it in satins 
 and heavy necklaces, or whether Meckisch had divorced her, or 
 survived her, or something equally inconsiderate. Hard by the 
 old Ruins (which she found '' ruined '' by a railway) Esther was 
 almost run over by an iron hoop driven by a boy with a long 
 swarthy face that irresistibly recalled Malka's. 
 
 " Is your grandmother in town? '' she said at a venture. 
 
 " Y — e — s,"" said the driver wonderingly. " She is over in 
 her own house.'" 
 
 Esther did not hasten towards it. 
 
 " Your name's Ezekiel, isn't it? " 
 
 "Yes," replied the boy; and then Esther was sure it was the 
 Redeemed Son of whom her father had told her. 
 
 " Are your mother and father well ? " 
 
 " Fathers away travelling."" Ezekiel's tone was a little im- 
 patient, his feet shuffled uneasily, itching to chase the flying 
 hoop. 
 
 "How's your aunt — your aunt — I forget her name." 
 
 "Aunt Leah. She's gone to Liverpool." 
 
 "What for?" 
 
 " She lives there ; she has opened a branch store of granma's 
 business. Who are you?" concluded Ezekiel candidly. 
 
 "You won't remember me," said Esther. "Tell me, your 
 aunt is called Mrs. Levine, isn't she?" 
 
 "Oh yes, but," with a shade of contempt, "she hasn't got any 
 children." 
 
 " How many brothers and sisters have yoit got?" said Esther 
 with a little laugh. 
 
 " Heaps. Oh, but you won't see them if you go in ; they're 
 in school, most of 'em." 
 
480 GRANDCHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 "And why aren't you at school?" 
 
 The Redeemed Son became scarlet. •' Tve got a bad leg," 
 ran mechanically off his tongue. Then, administering a savage 
 thwack to his hoop, he set out in pursuit of it. " It's no good 
 calling on mother," he yelled back, turning his head unexpect- 
 edly. " She ain't in." 
 
 Esther walked into the Square, where the same big-headed 
 babies were still rocking in swings suspended from the lintels, 
 and where the same ruddy-faced septuagenarians sat smoking 
 short pipes and playing nap on trays in the sun. From several 
 doorways came the reek of fish frying. The houses looked 
 ineffably petty and shabby. Esther wondered how she could 
 ever have conceived this a region of opulence ; still more how 
 she could ever have located Malka and her family on the very 
 outskirt of the semi-divine classes. But the semi-divine persons 
 tli^mselves had long since shrunk and dwindled, 
 ^he found Malka brooding over the fire ; on the side-table 
 was the clothes-brush. The great events of a crowded decade 
 of European history had left Malka's domestic interior untouched. 
 The fall of dynasties, philosophies and religions had not shaken 
 one china dog from its place ; she had not turned a hair of hef 
 wig ; the black silk bodice might have been the same ; the gold 
 chain at her bosom was. Time had written a few more lines on 
 the tan-colored equine face, but his influence had been only skin 
 deep. Everybody grows old ; few people grow. Malka was of 
 the majority^ 
 
 It was only with difficulty that she recollected Esther, and she 
 was visibly impressed by the young lady's appearance. 
 
 " It's very good of you to come and see an old woman," she 
 said in her mixed dialect, which skipped irresponsibly from Eng- 
 lish to Yiddish and back again. " It's more than my own Kinder 
 do. I wonder they let you come across and see me." 
 
 "I haven't been to see them yet," Esther interrupted. 
 
 "Ah, that explains it," said Malka with satisfaction. "They'd 
 have told you, • Don't go and see the old woman, she's vie- 
 shiiggah, she ought to be in the asylum.' I bring children into 
 the w'orld and buy them husbands and businesses and bed- 
 
A SHEAF OF SEQUELS. 481 
 
 clothes, and this is my profit. The other day my Milly — the 
 impudent-face! I would have boxed her ears if she hadn't been 
 suckling Nathaniel. Let hei^ tell me again that ink isn't good 
 for the ring-worm, and my five fingers shall leave a mark on her 
 face worse than any of Gabriel's ring-worms. But I have washed 
 my hands of her; she can go her way and FU go mine. I've 
 taken an oath I'll have nothing to do with her and her children 
 — no, not if I live a thousand years. It's all through Milly's 
 ignorance she has had such heavy losses." 
 
 "What! Mr. Phillips's business been doing badly? I'm so 
 sorry." 
 
 "No, no! my family never does bad business. It's my Milly's 
 children. She lost two. As for my Leah, God bless her, she's 
 been more unfortunate still ; I always said that old beggar- 
 woman had the Evil Eye! I sent her to Liverpool with her 
 Sam." 
 
 " I know," murmured Esther. 
 
 "But she is a good daughter. I wish I had a thousand such. 
 She writes to me every week and my little Ezekiel writes back ; 
 English they learn them in that heathen school," Malka inter- 
 rupted herself sarcastically, "and it was I who had to learn him 
 to begin a letter properly with • I write you these few lines hop- 
 ing to find you in good health as, thank God, it leaves me at 
 present;' he used to begin anyhow — " 
 
 She came to a stop, having tangled the thread of her discourse 
 and bethought herself of offering Esther a peppermint. But 
 Esther refused and bethought herself of inquiring after Mr. 
 Birnbaum. 
 
 " My Michael is quite well, thank God," said Malka, " though 
 he is still pig-headed in business matters! He buys so badly, 
 you know ; gives a hundred pounds for what's not worth 
 twenty." 
 
 " But you said business was all right ? " 
 
 "Ah, that's different. Of course he sells at a good profit, — 
 thank God. If I wanted to provoke Providence I could keep 
 my carriage like any of your grand West-End ladies. But that 
 doesn't make him a good buyer. And the worst of it is he 
 
 21 
 
482 GRANDCHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 always thinks he has got a bargain. He won't listen to reason 
 at all," said Malka, shaking her head dolefully. ^' He might be 
 a child of mine, instead of my husl^nd. If God didn't send him 
 such luck and blessing, we might come to want bread, coal, and 
 meat tickets ourseh-es, instead of giving them away. Do you 
 know I found out that Mrs. Isaacs, across the square, only specu- 
 lates her guinea in the drawings to give away the tickets she 
 wins to her poor relations, so that she gets all the credit of char- 
 ity and her name in the papers, while saving the money she'd 
 have to give to her poor relations all the samel Nobody can 
 say I give my tickets to my poor relations. You should just see 
 how much my Michael vows away at Shool — he's been Parnass 
 for the last twelve years straight off; all the members respect 
 him so much ; it isn't often you see a business man with such 
 fear of Heaven. Wait! my Ezekiel will be Barmitzvah in a few 
 years ; then yoii shall see what I will do for that Shool. You 
 shall see what an example of Yiddishkeit I will give to a link 
 generation. Mrs. Benjamin, of the Ruins, purified her knives 
 and forks for Passover by sticking them between the boards 
 of the floor. Would you believe she didn't make them red hot 
 first? I gave her a bit of my mind. She said she forgot. But 
 not she! She's no cat's head. She's a regular Christian, that's 
 what she is. I shouldn't wonder if she becomes one like that 
 blackguard, David Brandon ; I always told my Milly he was not 
 the sort of person to allow across the threshold. It was Sam 
 Levine who brought him. You see what comes of having the 
 son of a proselyte in the family! Some say Reb Shemuel's 
 daughter narrowly escaped being engaged to him. But that 
 story has a beard already. I suppose it's the sight of you brings 
 up Olov Hasholotn times. Well, and how are you?" she con- 
 cluded abruptly, becoming suddenly conscious of imperfect 
 courtesy. 
 
 "Oh, I'm very well, thank you," said Esther. 
 
 " Ah, that's right. You're looking very well, iinbesJweer. 
 Quite a grand lady. I always knew you'd be one some day. 
 There was your poor mother, peace be upon him! She went 
 and married your father, though I warned her he was a 
 
A SHEAF OF SEQUELS. 483 
 
 Schnorrer and only wanted her because she had a rich family ; he'd 
 have sent you out with matches if I hadn't stopped it. I remem- 
 ber saying to him, ' That little Esther has Aristotle's head — let 
 her learn all she can, as sure as I stand here she will grow up to 
 be a lady ; I shall have no need to be ashamed of owning her for 
 a cousin.' He was not so pig-headed as your mother, and you 
 see the result.'" 
 
 She surveyed the result with an affectionate smile, feeling 
 genuinely proud of her share in its production. " If my Ezekiel 
 were only a few years older," she added musingly. 
 
 " Oh, but I am not a great lady," said Esther, hastening to 
 disclaim false pretensions to the hand of the hero of the hoop, 
 " Fve left the Goldsmiths and come back to live in the East 
 End." 
 
 " What! " said Malka. " Left the West End! " Her swarthy 
 face grew darker ; the skin about her black eyebrows was 
 wrinkled with wrath. 
 
 " Are you Meshiiggah ? " she asked after an awful silence. "Or 
 have you, perhaps, saved up a tidy sum of money?" 
 
 Esther flushed and shook her head. 
 
 " There's no use coming to me. Fm not a rich woman, 
 far from it ; and I have been blessed with Kinder who are 
 helpless without me. It's as I always said to your father. 
 '• Meshe,' I said, ' you're a Schnorrer and your children'll grow 
 up Schnorrers.'' " 
 
 Esther turned white, but the dwindling of Malka's semi-divin- 
 ity had diminished the old woman's power of annoying her. 
 
 " I want to earn my own living," she said, with a smile 
 that was almost contemptuous. " Do you call that being a 
 Schnorrer ? '' 
 
 '< Don't argue with me. You're just like your poor mother, 
 peace be upon him!" cried the irate old woman. "You God's 
 fool! You were provided for in life and you have no right to 
 come upon the family." 
 
 " But isn't it Schnorring to be dependent on strangers ? " 
 inquired Esther with bitter amusement. 
 
 "Don't stand therewith your impudence-face! " cried Malka, 
 
484 GRANDCHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 her eyes blazing fire. " You know as well as I do that a 
 Schnorrer is a person you give sixpences to. When a rich 
 family takes in a motherless girl like you and clothes her and 
 feeds her, why it's mocking Heaven to run away and want to 
 earn your own living. Earn your living. Pooh! What liv- 
 ing can you earn, you with your gloves? You're all by your- 
 self in the world now ; your father can't help you any more. He 
 did enough for you when you were little, keeping you at school 
 when you ought to have been out selling matches. You'll starve 
 and come to me, that's what you'll do.''' 
 
 '' I may starve, but I'll never come to you," said Esther, now 
 really irritated by the truth in Malka's words. What living, 
 indeed, could she earn! She turned her back haughtily on the 
 old woman ; not without a recollection of a similar scene in her 
 childhood. History was repeating itself on a smaller scale than 
 seemed consistent with its dignity. When she got outside she 
 saw Milly in conversation with a young lady at the door of her 
 little house, diagonally opposite. Milly had noticed the strange 
 visitor to her mother, for the rival camps carried on a system of 
 espionage from behind their respective gauze blinds, and she 
 had come to the door to catch a better glimpse of her when she 
 left. Esther was passing through Zachariah Square without any 
 intention of recognizing Milly. The daughter's flaccid per- 
 sonality was not so attractive as the mother's ; besides, a visit 
 to her might be construed into a mean revenge on the old 
 woman. But, as if in response to a remark of Milly's, the young 
 lady turned her face to look at Esther, and then Esther saw that 
 it was Hannah Jacobs. She felt hot and uncomfortable, and 
 half reluctant to renew acquaintance witli Levi's family, but with 
 another impulse she crossed over to the group, and went through 
 the inevitable formulae. Then, refusing Milly's warm-hearted 
 invitation to have a cup of tea, she shook hands and walked 
 away. 
 
 "Wait a minute, Miss Ansell," said Hannah. "Til come 
 with you." 
 
 Milly gave her a shilling, with a facetious grimace, and she 
 rejoined Esther. 
 
A SHEAF OF SEQUELS. 485 
 
 " Tm collecting money for a poor family of Greeners just 
 landed/' she said. "• They had a few roubles, but they fell 
 among the usual sharks at the docks, and the cabman took all 
 the rest of their money to drive them to the Lane. I left 
 them all crying and rocking themselves to and fro in the street 
 while I ran round to collect a little to get them a lodging." 
 
 "Poor things! " said Esther. 
 
 "Ah, I can see you've been away from the Jews," said Hannah 
 smiling. " In the olden days you would have said Achi nebbich.'''' 
 
 "Should I?" said Esther, smiling in return and beginning to 
 like Hannah. She had seen very little of her in those olden 
 days, for Hannah had been an adult and well-to-do as long as 
 Esther could remember ; it seemed amusing now to walk side by 
 side with her in perfect equality and apparently little younger. 
 For Hannah's appearance had not aged perceptibly, which was 
 perhaps why Esther recognized her at once. She had not be- 
 come angular like her mother, nor coarse and stout like other 
 mothers. She remained slim and graceful, with a virginal charm 
 of expression. But the pretty face had gained in refinement ; it 
 looked earnest, almost spiritual, telling of suiTering and patience, 
 not unblent with peace. 
 
 Esther silently extracted half-a-crown from her purse and 
 handed it to Hannah. 
 
 " I didn't mean to ask you, indeed I didn't," said Hannah. 
 
 "Oh, I am glad you told me," said Esther tremulously. 
 
 The idea of her giving charity, after the account of herself she 
 had just heard, seemed ironical enough. She wished the trans- 
 fer of the coin had taken place within eyeshot of JVIalka; then 
 dismissed the thought as unworthy. 
 
 " You'll come in and have a cup of tea with us, won't you, after 
 we've lodged the Greeners ? " said Hannah. " Now don't say no. 
 It'll brighten up my father to see ' Reb Moshe's little girl.' " 
 
 Esther tacitly assented. 
 
 "I heard of all of you recently," she said, when they had hur- 
 ried on a little further. '• I met your brother at the theatre." 
 
 Hannah's face lit up. 
 
 " How long was that ago? " she said anxiously. 
 
486 GRANDCHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 " I remember exactly. It was the night before the first Seder 
 night.'' 
 
 "Was he well.?" 
 
 " Perfectly." 
 
 " Oh, I am so glad." 
 
 She told Esther of Levi's strange failure to appear at the 
 annual family festival. •' My father went out to look for him. 
 Our anxiety was intolerable. He did not return until half-past 
 one in the morning. He was in a terrible state. 'Well/ we 
 asked, 'have you seen him?' 'I have seen him,' he answered. 
 ' He is dead.' " 
 
 Esther grew pallid. Was this the sequel to the strange epi- 
 sode in Mr. Henry Goldsmith's library? 
 
 " Of course he wasn't really dead," pursued Hannah to Es- 
 ther's relief. " My father w'ould hardly speak a word more, but 
 we gathered he had seen him doing something very dreadful, 
 and that henceforth Levi would be dead to him. Since then we 
 dare not speak his name. Please don't refer to him at tea. I 
 went to his rooms on the sly a few days afterwards, but he had 
 left them, and since then I haven't been able to hear anything 
 of him. Sometimes I fancy he's gone off to the Cape." 
 
 " More likely to the provinces with a band of strolling players. 
 He told me he thought of throwing up the law for the boards, 
 and I know you cannot make a beginning in London." 
 
 " Do you think that's it?" said Hannah, looking relieved in 
 her turn. 
 
 " I feel sure that's the explanation, if he's not in London. But 
 what in Heaven's name can vour father have seen him doinor?" 
 
 " Nothing very dreadful, depend upon it,'' said Hannah, a 
 slight shade of bitterness crossing her wistful features. " I 
 know he's inclined to be wild, and he should never have been 
 allowed to get the bit between his teeth, but I dare say it was 
 only some ceremonial crime Levi was caught committing." 
 
 "Certainly. That would be it," said Esther. "He confessed 
 to me that he was very li)ik. Judging by your tone, you seem 
 rather inclined that way yourself," she said, smiling and a little 
 surprised. 
 
A SHEAF OF SEQUELS. 487 
 
 "Do I? I don't know," said Hannah, simply. "Sometimes 
 I think Fm very f root n.''"' 
 
 " Surely you know what you are ? '^ persisted Esther. Hannah 
 shook her head. 
 
 " Well, you know whether you believe in Judaism or not ? " 
 
 "I don't know what I believe. I do everything a Jewess 
 ought to do, I suppose. And yet — oh, I don't know." 
 
 Esther's smile faded ; she looked at her companion with fresh 
 interest. Hannah's face was full of brooding thought, and she 
 had unconsciously come to a standstill. " I wonder whether 
 anybody understands herself," she said reflectively. " Do you? " 
 
 Esther flushed at the abrupt question without knowing why. 
 "I — I don't know," she stammered. 
 
 " No, I don't think anybody does, quite," Hannah answered. 
 "I feel sure I don't. And yet — yes, I do. I must be a good 
 Jewess. I must believe my life." 
 
 Somehow the tears came into her eyes ; her face had the look 
 of a saint. Esther's eyes met hers in a strange subtle glance. 
 Then their souls were knit. They walked on rapidly. 
 
 " Well, I do hope you'll hear from him soon," said Esther. 
 
 " It's cruel of him not to write," replied Hannah, knowing she 
 meant Levi ; "he might easily send me a line in a disguised 
 hand. But then, as Miriam Hyams always says, brothers are so 
 selfish." 
 
 "Oh, how is Miss Hyams? I used to be in her class." 
 
 " I could guess that from your still calling her Miss," said 
 Hannah with a gentle smile. 
 
 " Why, is she married? " 
 
 " No, no ; I don't mean that. She still lives with her brother 
 and his wife ; he married Sugarman the Shadchait's daughter, 
 you know." 
 
 " Bessie, wasn't it? " 
 
 " Yes ; they are a devoted couple, and I suspect Miriam is a 
 little jealous ; but she seems to enjoy herself anyway. I don't 
 think there is a piece at the theatres she can't tell you about, and 
 she makes Daniel take her to all the dances going." 
 
 " Is she still as pretty? " asked Esther. " I know all her girls 
 
488 GRANDCHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 used to rave over her and throw her in the faces of girls with 
 ugly teachers. She certainly knew how to dress. '^ 
 
 " She dresses better than ever," said Hannah, evasively. 
 
 " That sounds ominous,'"' observed Esther, laughingly. 
 
 "Oh, she's good-looking enough! Her nose seems to have 
 turned up more ; but perhaps that's an optical illusion ; she talks 
 so sarcastically now-a-days that I seem to see it." Hannah 
 smiled a little. " She doesn't think much of Jewish young men. 
 By the way, are you engaged yet, Esther?" 
 
 " What an ideal " murmured Esther, blushing beneath her 
 spotted veil. 
 
 "Well, you're very young," said Hannah, glancing down at 
 the smaller figure with a sweet matronly smile. 
 
 " I shall never marry," Esther said in low tones. 
 
 "Don't be ridiculous, Esther! There's no happiness for a 
 woman without it. You needn't talk like Miriam Hyams — at 
 least not yet. Oh yes, I know what you're thinking — " 
 
 " No, I'm not," faintly protested Esther. 
 
 "Yes, you are," said Hannah, smiling at the paradoxical de- 
 nial. " But who'd have me? Ah, here are the Greeners l"" and 
 her smile softened to angelic tenderness. 
 
 It was a frowzy, unsightly group that sat on the pavement, 
 surrounded by a semi-sympathetic crowd — the father in a long 
 grimy coat ; the mother covered, as to her head, with a shawl, 
 which also contained the baby. But the elders were naively 
 childish and the children uncannily elderly ; and something in 
 Esther's breast seemed to stir with a strange sense of kinship. 
 The race instinct awoke to consciousness of itself. Dulled by con- 
 tact with cultured Jews, transformed almost to repulsion by the 
 spectacle of the coarsely prosperous, it leaped into life at the ap- 
 peal of squalor and misery. In the morning the Ghetto had 
 simply chilled her ; her heart had turned to it as to a haven, and 
 the reality was dismal. Now that the first ugliness had worn off, 
 she felt her heart warming. Her eyes moistened. She thrilled 
 from head to foot with the sense of a mission — of a niche in the 
 temple of human service which she had been predestined to fill. 
 Who could comprehend as she these stunted souls, limited in 
 
A SHEAF OF SEQUELS. 489 
 
 all save suffering? Happiness was not for her ; but service re- 
 mained. Penetrated by the new emotion, she seemed to herself 
 to have found the key to Hannah's holy calm. 
 
 With the money now in hand^, the two girls sought a lodging 
 for the poor waifs. Esther suddenly remembered the empty 
 back garret in No. i Royal Street, and here, after due negotia- 
 tions with the pickled-herring dealer next door, the family was 
 installed. Esther's emotions at the sight of the old place were 
 poignant ; happily the bustle of installation, of laying down a 
 couple of mattresses, of borrowing Dutch Debby's tea-things, 
 and of getting ready a meal, allayed their intensity. That little 
 figure with the masculine boots showed itself but by fits and 
 flashes. But the strangeness of the episode formed the under- 
 current of all her thoughts ; it seemed to carry to a climax the 
 irony of her initial gift to Hannah. 
 
 Escaping from the blessings of the Greeners, she accompanied 
 her new friend to Reb ShemuePs. She was shocked to see the 
 change in the venerable old man; he looked quite broken up. 
 But he was chivalrous as of yore : the vein of quiet humor was 
 still there, though his voice was charged with gentle melancholy. 
 The Rebbitzin's nose had grown sharper than ever ; her soul 
 seemed to have fed on vinegar. Even in the presence of a 
 stranger the Rebbitzin could not quite conceal her dominant 
 thought. It hardly needed a woman to divine how it fretted 
 Mrs. Jacobs that Hannah was an old maid ; it needed a woman 
 like Esther to divine that Hannah's renunciation was voluntary, 
 though even Esther could not divine her history nor understand 
 that her mother's daily nagging was the greater because the 
 pettier part of her martyrdom. 
 
 They all jumbled themselves into grotesque combinations, the 
 things of to-day and the things of endless yesterdays, as Esther 
 slept in the narrow little bed next to D:itch Debby, who squeezed 
 herself into the wall, pretending to revel in exuberant spacious- 
 ness. It was long before she could get to sleep. The ex- 
 citement of the day had brought on her headache ; she was 
 depressed by restriking the courses of so many narrow lives ; the 
 
490 GRANDCHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 glow of her new-found mission had already faded in the thought 
 that she was herself a pauper, and she wished she had let the 
 dead past lie in its halo, not peered into the crude face of reality. 
 But at bottom she felt a subtle melancholy joy in understand- 
 ing herself at last, despite Hannah's scepticism ; in penetrating 
 the secret of her pessimism, in knowing herself a Child of the 
 Ghetto. 
 
 And yet Pesach Weingott played the fiddle merrily enough 
 when she went to Becky's engagement-party in her dreams, and 
 galoped with Shosshi Shmendrik, disregarding the terrible eyes 
 of the bride to be ; when Hannah, wearing an aureole like a 
 bridal veil, paired off with Meckisch, frothing at the mouth with 
 soap, and Mrs. Belcovitch, whirling a medicine-bottle, went 
 down the middle on a pair of huge stilts, one a thick one and 
 one a thin one, while Malka spun round like a teetotum, throw- 
 ing Ezekiel in long clothes through a hoop ; what time Aloses 
 Ansell waltzed superbly with the dazzling Addie Leon, quite 
 cutting oat Levi and Miriam Hyams, and Raphael awkwardly 
 twisted the Widow Finkelstein, to the evident delight of Sugar- 
 man the Shadc/ian, who had effected the introduction. It was 
 wonderful how agile they all were, and how dexterously they 
 avoided treading on her brother Benjamin, who lay unconcern- 
 edly in the centre of the floor, taking assiduous notes in a little 
 copy-book for incorporation in a great novel, while Mrs. Henry 
 Goldsmith stooped down to pat his brown hair patronizingly. 
 
 Esther thought it very proper of the grateful Greeners to go 
 about offering the dancers rum from Dutch Debby's tea-kettle, 
 and very selfish of Sidney to stand in a corner, refusing to join 
 in the dance and making cynical remarks about the whole thing 
 for the amusement of the earnest little figure she had met on 
 the stairs. 
 
THE DEAD MONKEY AGAIN. 491 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 THE DEAD MONKEY AGAIN. 
 
 Esther woke early, little refreshed. The mattress was hard, 
 and in her restricted allowance of space she had to deny herself 
 the luxury of tossing and turning lest she should arouse Debby. 
 To open one's eyes on a new day is not pleasant when situa- 
 tions have to be faced. Esther felt this disagreeable duty could 
 no longer be shirked. Malka"s words rang in her ears. How, 
 indeed, could she earn a living? Literature had failed her; 
 with journalism she had no point of contact save The Flag of 
 yudah, and that journal was out of the question. Teaching — 
 the last resort of the hopeless — alone remained. Maybe even 
 in the Ghetto there were parents who wanted their children to 
 learn the piano, and who would find Esther's mediocre digital 
 ability good enough. She might teach as of old in an elemen- 
 tary school. But she would not go back to her own — all the 
 human nature in her revolted at the thought of exposing herself 
 to the sympathy of her former colleagues. Nothing was to be 
 gained by lying sleepless in bed, gazing at the discolored wall- 
 paper and the forlorn furniture. She slipped out gently and 
 dressed herself, the absence of any apparatus for a bath making 
 her heart heavier with reminders of the realities of poverty. It 
 was not easy to avert her thoughts from her dainty bedroom 
 of yesterday. But she succeeded ; the cheerlessness of the little 
 chamber turned her thoughts backwards to the years of girl- 
 hood, and when she had finished dressing she almost mechani- 
 cally lit the fire and put the kettle to boil. Her childish dexterity 
 returned, unimpaired by disuse. When Debby awoke, she awoke 
 to a cup of tea ready for her to drink in bed — an unprecedented 
 luxury, which she received with infinite consternation and 
 pleasure. 
 
 "Why, it's like the duchesses who have lady's-maids," she 
 said, " and read French novels before getting up." To complete 
 
492 GRANDCHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 the picture, her hand dived underneatli the bed and extracted a 
 London Journal^ at the risk of upsetting the tea. " But ifs you 
 who ought to be in bed, not me.''"' 
 
 " Fve been a shiggard too often,"" laughed Esther, catching 
 tlie contagion of good spirits from Debb3''s radiant delight. 
 Perhaps the capacity for simple pleasures would come back to 
 her, too- 
 
 At breakfast they discussed the situation. 
 
 " I'm afraid the bed's too small,"' said Esther, when Debby 
 kindly suggested a continuance of hospitality. 
 
 " Perhaps I took up too much room," said the hostess. 
 
 ''No, dear; you took up too little. We should have to have 
 a wider bed, and, as it is, the bed is almost as big as the room." 
 
 '"There's the back garret overhead! It's bigger, and it looks 
 on the back yard just as well. I wouldn't mind moving there," 
 said Debby, '* though I wouldn't let old Guggenheim know that 
 I value the view of the back yard, or else he'd raise the rent." 
 
 " You forget the Greeners who moved in yesterday." 
 
 " Oh, so I do! " answered Debby with a sigh. 
 
 " Strange," said Esther, musingly, ''that I should have shut 
 myself out of my old home." 
 
 The postman's knuckles rapping at the door interrupted her 
 reflections. In Royal Street the poor postmen had to mount to 
 each room separately ; fortunately, the tenants got few letters. 
 Debby was intensely surprised to get one. 
 
 " It isn't for me at all," she cried, at last, after a protracted 
 examination of the envelope ; " it's for you, care of me." 
 
 " But that's stranger still," said Esther. " Nobody in the 
 world knows my address." 
 
 The mystery was not lessened by the contents. There was 
 simply a blank sheet of paper, and when this was unfolded a 
 half-sovereign rolled out. The postmark was Houndsditch. 
 After puzzling herself in vain, and examining at length the 
 beautiful copy-book penmanship of the address, Esther gave up 
 the enigma. But it reminded her that it would be advisable to 
 apprise her publishers of her departure from the old address, and 
 to ask them to keep any chance letter till she called. She be- 
 
THE DEAD MONKEY AGAIN. 493 
 
 took herself to their offices, walking. The day was bright, but 
 Esther walked in gloom, scarcely daring to think of her position. 
 She entered the office, apathetically hopeless. The junior part- 
 ner welcomed her heartily. 
 
 " I suppose youVe come about your account," he said. " I 
 have been intending to send it you for some months, but we are 
 so busy bringing out new things before the dead summer season 
 comes on." He consulted his books. "Perhaps you would 
 rather not be bothered," he said, " with a formal statement. I 
 have it all clearly here — the book's doing fairly well — let me 
 write you a cheque at once ! " 
 
 She murmured assent, her cheeks blanching, her heart throb- 
 bing with excitement and surprise. 
 
 "There you are — sixty-two pounds ten," he said. "Our 
 profits are just one hundred and twenty-five. If you'll endorse 
 it, ril send a clerk to the bank round the corner and get it 
 cashed for you at once." 
 
 The pen scrawled an agitated autograph that would not have 
 been accepted at the foot of a cheque, if Esther had had a 
 banking account of her own. 
 
 " But I thought you said the book was a failure," she said. 
 
 " So it was," he answered cheerfully, " so it was at first. But 
 gradually, as its nature leaked out, the demand increased. I 
 understand from Mudie's that it was greatly asked for by their 
 Jewish clients. You see, when there's a run on a three-volume 
 book, the profits arc pretty fair. I believed in it myself, or I 
 should never have given you such good terms nor printed seven 
 hundred and fifty copies. I shouldn't be surprised if we find 
 ourselves able to bring it out in one-volume form in the autumn. 
 We shall always be happy to consider any further work of yours ; 
 something on the same lines, I should recommend." 
 
 The recommendation did not convey any definite meaning to 
 her at the moment. Still in a pleasant haze, she stuffed the 
 twelve five-pound notes and the three gold-pieces into her purse, 
 scribbled a receipt, and departed. Afterwards the recommenda- 
 tion rang mockingly in her ears. She felt herself sterile, written 
 out already. As for writing again on the same lines, she won- 
 
494 GRANDCHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 dered what Raphael would think if he knew of the profits she 
 had reaped by bespattering his people. But there! Raphael 
 was a prig like the rest. It was no use worrying about his 
 opinions. Affluence had come to her — that was the one im- 
 portant and exhilarating fact. Besides, had not the hypocrites 
 really enjoyed her book? A new wave of emotion swept over 
 her — again she felt strong enough to defy the whole world. 
 
 When she got " home/' Debby said, '• Hannah Jacobs called 
 to see you." 
 
 ^' Oh, indeed, what did she want ? " 
 
 " I don't knoAv, but from something she said I believe I can 
 guess who sent the half-sovereign." 
 
 "Not Reb Shemuel?" said Esther, astonished. 
 
 " No, your cousin Malka. It seems that she saw Hannah 
 leaving Zachariah Square with you, and so went to her house 
 last night to get your address." 
 
 Esther did not know whether to laugh or be angry ; she com- 
 promised by crying. People were not so bad, after all, nor the 
 fates so hard to her. It was only a little April shower of tears, 
 and soon she was smiling and running upstairs to give the half- 
 sovereign to the G-reeners. It would have been ungracious to 
 return it to Alalka, and she purchased all the luxury of doing 
 good, including the effusive benedictions of the whole family, 
 on terms usually obtainable only by professional almoners. 
 
 Then she told Debby of her luck with the publishers. Pro- 
 found was Debby's awe at the revelation that Esther was able to 
 write stories equal to those in the London JournaL After that, 
 Debby gave up the idea of Esther living or sleeping with her ; 
 she would as soon have thought of ofifering a share of her bed to 
 the authoresses of the tales under it. Debby suffered scarce any 
 pang when her one-night companion transferred herself to Reb 
 Shemuel's. 
 
 For it was to suggest this that Hannah had called. The idea 
 was her father's ; it came to him when she told him of Esther's 
 strange position. But Esther said she was going to America 
 forthwith, and she only consented on condition of being allowed 
 to pay for her keep during her stay. The haggling was hard, 
 
THE DEAD MONKEY AGAIN. 495 
 
 but Esther won. Hannah gave up her room to Esther, and 
 removed her own belongings to Levi's bedroom, which except at 
 Festival seasons had been unused for years, though the bed was 
 always kept ready for him. Latterly tlie women had had to 
 make the bed from time to time, and air the room, when Reb 
 Shemuel was at synagogue. Esther sent her new address to her 
 brothers and sisters, and made inquiries as to the prospects of 
 educated girls in the States, hi reply she learned that Rachel 
 was engaged to be married. Her correspondents were too taken 
 up with this gigantic fact to pay satisfactory attention to her 
 inquiries. The old sense of protecting motherhood came back 
 to Esther when she learned the news. Rachel was only eigh- 
 teen, but at once Esther felt middle-aged. It seemed of the fit- 
 ness of things that she should go to America and resume her 
 interrupted maternal duties. Lsaac and Sarah were still little 
 more than children, perhaps they had not yet ceased bickering 
 about their birthdays. She knew her little ones would jump for 
 joy, and Isaac still volunteer sleeping accommodation in his new 
 bed, even though the necessity for it had ceased. She cried 
 when she received the cutting from the American Jewish paper ; 
 under other circumstances she would have laughed. It was 
 one of a batch headed " Personals," and ran : '• Sam Wiseberg, 
 the handsome young drummer, of Cincinnati, has become en- 
 gaged to Rachel Ansell, the fair eighteen-year-old type-writer 
 and daughter of Moses Ansell, a well-known Chicago Hebrew. 
 Life's sweetest blessings on the pair ! The marriage will take 
 place in the Fall.'" Esther dried her eyes and determined to be 
 present at the ceremony. It is so grateful to the hesitant soul 
 to be presented with a landmark. There was nothing to be 
 gained now by arriving before the marriage ; nay, her arrival 
 just in time for it would clench the festivities. Meantime she 
 attached herself to Hannah's charitable leading-strings, alter- 
 nately attracted to the Children of the Ghetto by their misery, 
 and repulsed by their failings. She seemed to see them now in 
 their true perspective, correcting the vivid impressions of child- 
 hood by the insight born of wider knowledge of life. The accre- 
 tion of pagan superstition was greater than she had recollected. 
 
496 GRANDCHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 Mothers averted fever by a murmured charm and an expectora- 
 tion, children in new raiment carried bits of coal or salt in their 
 pockets to ward off the evil-eye. On the other hand, there was 
 more resourcefulness, more pride of independence. Her knowl- 
 edge of Moses Ansell had misled her into too sweeping a gener- 
 alization. And she was surprised to realize afresh how much 
 illogical happiness flourished amid penury, ugliness and pain. 
 After school-hours the muggy air vibrated with the joyous 
 laughter of little children, tossing their shuttlecocks, spinning 
 their tops, turning their skipping-ropes, dancing to barrel-organs 
 or circling hand-in-hand in rings to the sound of the merry tra- 
 ditional chants of childhood. Esther often purchased a penny- 
 worth of exquisite pleasure by enriching some sad-eyed urchin. 
 Hannah (whose own scanty surplus was fortunately augmented 
 by an anonymous West-End Reform Jew, who employed her as 
 his agent) had no prepossessions to correct, no pendulum-oscilla- 
 tions to distract her, no sentimental illusions to sustain her. /She 
 knew the Ghetto as it was ; neither expected gratitude froinflTe 
 poor, nor feared she might " pauperize them,"' knowing that the 
 poor Jew never exchanges his self-respect for respect for his 
 benefactor, but takes by way of rightful supplement to his in- 
 come. She did not drive families into trickery, like ladies of the 
 West, by being horrified to find them eating meat. If she pre- 
 sided at a stall at a charitable sale of clothing, she was not dis- 
 heartened if articles were snatched from under her hand, nor did 
 she refuse loans because borrowers sometimes merely used them 
 to evade the tallyman by getting their jewelry at cash prices. 
 She not only gave alms to the poor, but made them givers, or- 
 ganizing their own farthings into a powerful auxiliary of the insti- 
 tutions which helped them. Hannah's sweet patience soothed 
 Esther, who had no natural aptitude for personal philanthrop^j^ 
 the primitive, ordered pieties of the Reb^s household helping to 
 give her calm. Though she accepted tlie inevitable, and had 
 laughed in melancholy mockery at the exaggerated importance 
 given to love by the novelists (including her cruder self), she 
 dreaded meeting Raphael Leon. It was very unlikely her where- 
 abouts would penetrate to the West ; and she rarely went out- 
 
SIDNEY SETTLES DOWN. 497 
 
 side of the Ghetto by day, or even walked within it in the 
 evening. In the twilight, unless prostrated by headache, she 
 played on Hannah's disused old-fashioned grand piano. It had 
 one cracked note which nearly always spoiled the melody ; she 
 would not have the note repaired, taking a morbid pleasure in a 
 fantastic analogy between the instrument and herself. On Fri- 
 day nights after the Sabbath-hymns she read The Flag of Judah. 
 She was not surprised to find Reb Shemuel beginning to look 
 askance at his favorite paper. She noted a growing tendency 
 in it to insist mainly on the ethical side of Judaism, salvation 
 by works being contrasted with the salvation by spasm of popu- 
 lar Christianity. Once Kingsley's line, " Do noble things, not 
 dream them all day long," was put forth as " Judaism versus 
 Christianity in a nut-shell ; " and the writer added, " for so 
 thy dreams shall become noble, too." Sometimes she fancied 
 phrases and lines of argument were aimed at her. Was it the 
 editor's way of keeping in touch with her, using his leaders as a 
 medium of communication — a subtly sweet secret known only 
 to him and her? Was it fair to his readers? Then she would 
 remember his joke about the paper being started merely to con- 
 vert her, and she would laugh. Sometimes he repeated what he 
 already said to her privately, so that she seemed to hear him 
 talking. 
 
 Then she would shake her head, and say, " I love you for your 
 blindness, but I have the terrible gift of vision." 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 SIDNEY SETTLES DOWN. 
 
 Mrs. Henry Goldsmith's newest seaside resort had the 
 artistic charm which characterized everything she selected. It 
 was a straggling, hilly, leafy village, full of archaic relics — hu- 
 man as well as architectural — sloping down to a gracefully 
 curved bay, where the blue waves broke in whispers, for on 
 summer days a halcyon calm overhung this magic spot, and the 
 
 2 K 
 
498 GRANDCHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 great sea stretched away, unwrinkled, ever young. There were 
 no neutral tones in the colors of this divine picture — the sea 
 was sapphire, the sky amethyst. There were dark-red houses 
 nestling amid foliage, and green-haired monsters of gray stone 
 squatted about on the yellow sand, which was strewn with quaint 
 shells and mimic earth-worms, cunningly wrought by the waves. 
 Half a mile to the east a blue river rippled into the bay. The 
 white bathing tents which Mrs. Goldsmith had pitched stood 
 out picturesquely, in harmonious contrast with the rich boscage 
 that began to climb the hills in the background. 
 
 Mrs. Goldsmith's party lived in the Manse; it was pretty 
 numerous, and gradually overflowed into the bedrooms of the 
 neighboring cottages. Mr. Goldsmith only came down on Sat- 
 urday, returning on Monday. One Friday Mr. Percy Saville, 
 who had been staying for the week, left suddenly for London, 
 and next day the beautiful hostess poured into her husband's 
 projecting ears a tale that made him gnash his projecting teeth, 
 and cut the handsome stockbroker off his visiting-list for ever. 
 It was only an indiscreet word that the susceptible stockbroker 
 had spoken — under the poetic influences of the scene. His 
 bedroom came in handy, for Sidney unexpectedly dropped down 
 from Norway, via London, on the very Friday. The poetic in- 
 fluences of the scene soon infected the newcomer, t6o. On the 
 Saturday he was lost for hours, and came up smiling, with Addie 
 on his arm. On the Sunday afternoon the party went boating 
 up the river — a picturesque medley of flannels and parasols. 
 Once landed, Sidney and Addie did not return for tea, prior to 
 re-embarking. While Mr. Montagu Samuels was gallantly hand- 
 ing round the sugar, they were sitting somewhere along the 
 bank, half covered with leaves, like babes in the wood. The 
 sunset burned behind the willows — a fiery rhapsody of crimson 
 and orange. The gay laughter of the picnic-party just reached 
 their ears ; otherwise, an almost solemn calm prevailed — not a 
 bird twittered, not a leaf stirred. 
 
 ^' It'll be all over London to-morrow,'' said Sidney in a de- 
 spondent tone. 
 
 '' I'm afraid so," said Addie, with a delicious laugh. 
 
SIDNEY SETTLES DOWN. 499 
 
 The sweet English meadows over which her humid eyes wan- 
 dered were studded with simple wild-flowers. Addie vaguely 
 felt the angels had planted such in Eden. Sidney could not 
 take his eyes off" his terrestrial angel clad in appropriate white. 
 Confessed love had given the last touch to her intoxicating 
 beauty. She gratified his artistic sense almost completely. But 
 she seemed to satisfy deeper instincts, too. As he looked into 
 her limpid, trustful eyes, he felt he had been a weak fool. An 
 irresistible yearning to tell her all his past and crave forgiveness 
 swept over him. 
 
 " Addie/' he said, " isn't it funny I should be marrying a 
 Jewish girl, after all?" 
 
 He wanted to work round to it like that, to tell her of his 
 engagement to Miss Hannibal at least, and how, on discovering 
 with whom he was really in love, he had got out of it simply 
 by writing to the Wesleyan M. P. that he was a Jew — a fact 
 sufficient to disgust the disciple of Dissent and the claimant 
 champion of religious liberty. But Addie only smiled at the 
 question. 
 
 " You smile," he said : " I see you do think it funny." 
 
 " That's not why I am smiling." 
 
 "Then why are you smiling?" The lovely face piqued him; 
 he kissed the lips quickly with a bird-like peck. 
 
 " Oh — I — no, you wouldn't understand." 
 
 "That means _y(?/^ don't understand. But there! I suppose 
 when a girl is in love, she's not accountable for her expression. 
 All the same, it is strange. You know, Addie dear, I have come 
 to the conclusion that Judaism exercises a strange centrifugal 
 and centripetal effect on its sons — sometimes it repulses them, 
 sometimes it draws them ; only it never leaves them neutral. 
 Now, here had I deliberately made up my mind not to marry a 
 Jewess." 
 
 " Oh! Why not? " said Addie, pouting. 
 
 " Merely because she would be a Jewess. It's a fact." 
 
 "And why have you broken your resolution?" she said, look- 
 ing up naively into his face, so that the scent of her hair thrilled 
 him. 
 
500 GRANDCHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 " I don't know," he said frankly, scarcely giving the answer 
 to be expected. " C est plus fort que moi. IVe struggled hard, 
 but Tm beaten. Isn't there something of the kind in Esther — 
 in Miss AnselPs book? I know I've read it somewhere — and 
 anything that's beastly subtle I always connect with her." 
 
 " Poor Esther!" murmured Addie. 
 
 Sidney patted her soft warm hand, and smoothed the finely- 
 curved arm, and did not seem disposed to let the shadow of 
 Esther mar the moment, though he would ever remain grateful 
 to her for the hint which had simultaneously opened his eyes to 
 Addie's aflfection for him, and to his own answering affection so 
 imperceptibly grown up. The river glided on softly, glorified by 
 the sunset. 
 
 " It makes one believe in a dogged destiny," he grumbled, 
 "shaping the ends of the race, and keeping it together, despite 
 all human volition. To think that I should be doomed to fall 
 in love, not only with a Jewess but with a pious Jewess! But 
 clever men always fall in love with conventional women. I 
 wonder what makes you so conventional, Addie." 
 
 Addie, still smiling, pressed his hand in silence, and gazed at 
 him in fond admiration. 
 
 "Ah, well, since you are so conventional, you may as well 
 kiss me." 
 
 Addie's blush deepened, her eyes sparkled ere she lowered 
 them, and subtly fascinating waves of expression passed across 
 the lovely face. 
 
 "They'll be wondering what on earth has become of us," she 
 said. 
 
 "It shall be nothing on earth — something in heaven," he 
 answered. " Kiss me, or I shall call you unconventional." 
 
 She touched his cheek hurriedly with her soft lips. 
 
 " A very crude and amateur kiss," he said critically. " How- 
 ever, after all, I have an excuse for marrying you — which all 
 clever Jews who marry conventional Jewesses haven't got — 
 you're a fine model. That is another of the many advantages of 
 my profession. I suppose you"ll l)e a model wife, in the ordi- 
 nary sense, too. Do you know, my darling, I begin to under- 
 
SIDNEY SETTLES DOWN. 501 
 
 stand that I could not love you so much if you were not so 
 religious, if you were not so curiously like a Festival Prayer- 
 Book, with gilt edges and a beautiful binding." 
 
 "Ah, I am so glad, dear, to hear you say that," said Addie, 
 with the faintest suspicion of implied past disapproval. 
 
 " Yes," he said musingly. " It adds the last artistic touch to 
 your relation to me." 
 
 " But you will reform! " said Addie, with girlish confidence. 
 
 "Do you think so? I might commence by becoming a vege- 
 tarian — that would prevent me eating forbidden flesh. Have 
 I ever told you my idea that vegetarianism is the first step in a 
 great secret conspiracy for gradually converting the world to 
 Judaism? But Fm afraid I can't be caught as easily as the 
 Gentiles, Addie dear. You see, a Jewish sceptic beats all 
 others. Corruptio optiDii pessinia, probably. Perhaps you 
 would like me to marry in a synagogue?" 
 
 " Why, of course ! Where else ? " 
 
 "Heavens!" said Sidney, in comic despair. "I feared it 
 would come to that. I shall become a pillar of the synagogue 
 when I am married, I suppose." 
 
 "Well, you'll have to take a seat," said Addie seriously, 
 " because otherwise you can't get buried." 
 
 "Gracious, what ghoulish thoughts for an embryo bride! 
 Personally, I have no objection to haunting the Council of 
 the United Synagogue till they give me a decently comfortable 
 grave. But I see what it will be! I shall be whitewashed by 
 the Jewish press, eulogized by platform orators as a shining 
 light in Israel, the brilliant impressionist painter, and all that. 
 I shall pay my synagogue bill and never go. In short, I shall be 
 converted to Philistinism, and die in the odor of respectability. 
 And Judaism Avill continue to flourish. Oh, Addie, Addie, if 
 I had thought of all that, I should never have asked you to be 
 my wife." 
 
 " I am glad you didn't think of it," laughed Addie, ingenuously. 
 
 "There! You never will take me seriously!" he grumbled. 
 " Nobody ever takes me seriously — I suppose because I speak 
 the truth. The only time you ever took me seriously in my life 
 
502 GRANDCHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 was a few minutes ago. So you actually think Fm going to sub- 
 mit to the benedictions of a Rabbi." 
 
 " You must/' said Addie. 
 
 " ni be blest if I do/' he said. 
 
 '' Of course you will/'' said Addie, laughing merrily. 
 
 " Thanks — Fm glad you appreciate my joke. You perhaps 
 fancy it's yours. However, Fm in earnest. I won't be a respect- 
 able high-hatted member of the community — not even for your 
 sake, dear. Why, I might as well go back to my ugly real name, 
 Samuel Abrahams, at once." 
 
 " So you might, dear," said Addie boldly, and smiled into "his 
 eyes to temper her audacity. 
 
 " Ah, well, I think it'll be quite enough if yoii change your 
 name," he said, smiling back. 
 
 '^ It's just as easy for me to change it to Abrahams as to Gra- 
 ham," she said with charming obstinacy. 
 
 He contemplated her for some moments in silence, with a 
 whimsical look on his face. Then he looked up at the sky — the 
 brilliant color harmonies were deepening into a more sober mag- 
 nificence. 
 
 " Fll tell you what I will do. I'll join the Asmoneans. There ! 
 that's a great concession to your absurd prejudices. But you 
 must make a concession to mine. You know how I hate the 
 Jewish canvassing of engagements. Let us keep ours entirely 
 entre noits a fortnight — so that the gossips shall at least get their 
 material stale, Jtnd we shall be hardened. I wonder why you're 
 so conventional," he said again, when she had consented without 
 enthusiasm. "You had the advantage of Esther — of Miss 
 Ansell's society." 
 
 "Call her Esther if you like; / don't mind," said Addie. 
 
 " I wonder Esther didn't convert you," he went on musingly. 
 " But I suppose you had Raphael on your right hand, as some 
 prayer or other says. And so you really don't know what's be- 
 come of her?" 
 
 "Nothing beyond what I wrote to you. Mrs. Goldsmith dis- 
 covered she had written the nasty book, and sent her packing. 
 I have never liked to broach the subject myself to Mrs. Gold- 
 
SIDNEY SETTLES DOWN. 503 
 
 smith, knowing how unpleasant it must be to her. Raphael's 
 version is that Esther went away of her own accord; but I can't 
 see what grounds he has for judging." 
 
 " I would rather trust Raphael's version/' said Sidney, with an 
 adumbration of a wdnk in his left eyelid. '^ But didn't you look 
 for her? " 
 
 "Where? If she's in London, she's swallowed up. If she's 
 gone to another place, it's still more difficult to find her." 
 
 " There's the Agony Column ! " 
 
 " If Esther wanted us to know her address, what can prevent 
 her sending it? " asked Addie, with dignity. 
 
 " I'd find her soon enough, if I wanted to," murmured Sidney. 
 
 "Yes; but I'm not sure we want to. After all, she cannot be 
 so nice as I thought. She certainly behaved very ungratefully 
 to Mrs. Goldsmith. You see what becomes of wild opinions." 
 
 "Addie! Addie! '' said Sidney reproachfully, "how can you be 
 so conventional? " 
 
 "I'm not conventional!" protested Addie, provoked at last. 
 "I always liked Esther very much. Even now, nothing would 
 give me greater pleasure than to have her for a bridesmaid. 
 But I can't help feeling she deceived us all." 
 
 " Stuff and nonsense ! " said Sidney warmly. "An author has 
 a right to be anonymous. Don't you think I'd paint anony- 
 mously if I dared? Only, if I didn't put my name to my things 
 no one would buy them. That's another of the advantages of 
 my profession. Once make your nanie as an artist, and you can 
 get a colossal income by giving up art." 
 
 " It was a vulgar book! " persisted Addie, sticking to the point. 
 
 "Fiddlesticks! It was an artistic book — bungled." 
 
 "Oh, wtII!" said Addie, as the tears welled from her eyes, 
 "if you're so fond of unconventional girls, you'd better marry 
 them." 
 
 " I would," said Sidney, " but for the absurd restriction against 
 polygamy." 
 
 Addie got up with an indignant jerk. " You think I'm a child 
 to be played wdth ! " 
 
 She turned her back upon him. His face changed instantly; 
 
504 GRANDCHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 he stood still a moment, admiring the magnificent pose. Then 
 he recaptured her reluctant hand. 
 
 " Don't be jealous already, Addie," he said. " It's a healthy 
 sign of affection, is a storm-cloud, but don't you think it's just a 
 wee, tiny, weeny bit too previous?" 
 
 A pressure of the hand accompanied each of the little ad- 
 jectives. Addie sat down again, feeling deliciously happy. She 
 seemed to be lapped in a great drowsy ecstasy of bliss. 
 
 The sunset was fading into sombre grays before Sidney broke 
 the silence ; then his train of thought revealed itself. 
 
 " If you're so down on Esther, I wonder how you can put up 
 with me! How is it?" 
 
 Addie did not hear the question. 
 
 ^' You think Tm a very wicked, blasphemous boy," he insisted. 
 " Isn't that the thought deep down in your heart of hearts? " 
 
 " I'm sure tea must be over long ago," said Addie anxiously. 
 
 "Answer me," said Sidney inexorably. 
 
 " Don't bother. Aren't they cooeying for us? " 
 
 " Answer me." 
 
 "I do believe that was a water-rat. Look! the water is still 
 eddying." 
 
 " I'm a very wicked, blasphemous boy. Isn't that the thought 
 deep down in your heart of hearts?" 
 
 " You are there, too," she breathed at last, and then Sidney 
 forsrot her beautv for an instant, and lost himself in unaccus- 
 tomed humility. It seemed passing wonderful to him — that he 
 should be the deity of such a spotless shrine. Could any man 
 deserve the trust of this celestial soul? 
 
 Suddenly the thought that he had not told her about Miss 
 Hannibal after all, gave him a chilling shock. But he rallied 
 quickly. Was it really worth while to trouble the clear depths 
 of her spirit with his turbid past? No ; wiser to inhale the odor 
 of the rose at her bosom, sweeter to surrender himself to the 
 intoxicating perfume of her personality, to the magic of a moment 
 that must fade like the sunset, already grown gray. 
 
 So Addie never knew. 
 
FROM SOUL TO SOUL. 505 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 FROM SOUL TO SOUL. 
 
 On the Friday that Percy Saville returned to town, Raphael, 
 in a state of mental prostration modified by tobacco, was sitting 
 in the editorial chair. He was engaged in his pleasing weekly 
 occupation of discovering, from a comparison with the great 
 rival organ, the deficiencies of Tlie Flag of Jjidah in the matter 
 of news, his organization for the collection of which partook of 
 the happy-go-lucky character of little Sampson. Fortunately, 
 to-day there were no flagrant omissions, no palpable short- 
 comings such as had once and again thrown the office of the 
 Flag into mourning when communal pillars were found dead in 
 the opposition paper. 
 
 The arrival of a visitor put an end to the invidious comparison. 
 
 " Ah, Strelitski! " cried Raphael, jumping up in glad surprise. 
 ^^What an age it is since I've seen you!" He shook the black- 
 gloved hand of the fashionable minister heartily ; then his face 
 grew rueful with a sudden recollection. " I suppose you have 
 come to scold me for not answering the invitation to speak at 
 the distribution of prizes to your religion class?" he said; "but 
 I have been so busy. My conscience has kept up a dull pricking 
 on the subject, though, for ever so many weeks. YouVe such an 
 epitome of all the virtues that you can't understand the sensation, 
 and even I can't understand why one submits to this undercur- 
 rent of reproach rather than take the simple step it exhorts one 
 to. But I suppose it's human nature." Fie puffed at his pipe in 
 humorous sadness. 
 
 " I suppose it is," said Strelitski wearily. 
 
 "But of course FU come. You know that, my dear fellow. 
 When my conscience was noisy, the advocatiis diaboli used to 
 silence it by saying, ^Oh, Strelitski'll take it for granted.' You 
 can never catch the advocatiis diaboli asleep," concluded Raphael, 
 lauofhinof. 
 
506 GRANDCHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 "No," assented Strelitski. But he did not laugh. 
 
 " Oh! " said Raphael, his laugh ceasing suddenly and his face 
 growing long. " Perhaps the prize-distribution is over? " 
 
 Strelitski's expression seemed so stern that for a second it really 
 occurred to Raphael that he might have missed the great event. 
 But before the words were well out of his mouth he remembered 
 that it was an event that made " copy,'' and little Sampson would 
 have arranged with him as to the reporting thereof. 
 
 "No; ifs Sunday week. But I didn't come to talk about my 
 religion class at all," he said pettishly, while a shudder traversed 
 his form. " I came to ask if you know anything about Miss 
 Ansell." 
 
 Raphael's heart stood still, then began to beat furiously. The 
 sound of her name always affected him incomprehensibly. He 
 began to stammer, then took his pipe out of his mouth and said 
 more calmly : 
 
 " How should I know anything about Miss Ansell?" 
 
 " I thought you would," said Strelitski, without much disap- 
 pointment in his tone. 
 
 " Why ? " 
 
 " Wasn't she your art-critic?" 
 
 " Who told you that ? " 
 . "Mrs. Henry Goldsmith." 
 
 "Oh!" said Raphael. 
 
 " I thought she might possibly be writing for you still, and so, 
 as I was passing, I thought Fd drop in and inquire. Hasn't 
 anything been heard of her? Where is she? Perhaps one could 
 help her." 
 
 " I'm sorry, I really know nothing, nothing at all," said Ra- 
 phael gravely. " I wish I did. Is there any particular reason 
 why you want to know ? " 
 
 As he spoke, a strange suspicion that was half an apprehen- 
 sion came into his head. He had been looking the whole time 
 at Strelitski's face with his usual unobservant gaze, just seeing it 
 was gloomy. Now, as in a sudden flash, he saw it sallow and 
 careworn to the last degree. The eyes were almost feverish, the 
 black curl on the brow was unkempt, and there was a streak or 
 
FROM SOUL TO SOUL. 507 
 
 two of gray easily visible against the intense sable. What 
 change had come over him? Why this new-born interest in 
 Esther? Raphael felt a vague unreasoning resentment rising in 
 him, mingled with distress at Strelitski's discomposure. 
 
 " No ; I don't know that there is any particular reason why 
 I want to know," answered his friend slowly. " She was a mem- 
 ber of my congregation. I always had a certain interest in her, 
 which has naturally not been diminished by her sudden depart- 
 ure from our midst, and by the knowledge that she was the 
 author of that sensational novel. I think it was cruel of Mrs. 
 Henry Goldsmith to turn her adrift ; one must allow for the 
 effervescence of genius.'" 
 
 "Who told you Mrs. Henry Goldsmith turned her adrift?" 
 asked Raphael hotly. 
 
 " Mrs. Henry Goldsmith," said Strelitski with a slight accent 
 of wonder. 
 
 "Then it's a lie! " Raphael exclaimed, thrusting out his arms 
 in intense agitation. "A mean, cowardly lie! I shall never go 
 to see that woman again, unless it is to let her know what I 
 think of her." 
 
 "Ah, then you do know something about Miss Ansell? " said 
 Strelitski, with growing surprise. Raphael in a rage was a new 
 experience. There were those who asserted that anger was not 
 among his gifts. 
 
 "Nothing about her life since she left Mrs. Goldsmith ; but I 
 saw her before, and she told me it was her intention to cut her- 
 self adrift. Nobody knew about her authorship of the book ; 
 nobody would have known to this day if she had not chosen to 
 reveal it." 
 
 The minister was trembling. 
 
 " She cut herself adrift ? " he repeated interrogatively. "But 
 why?" 
 
 "I will tell you," said Raphael in low tones. "I don't think 
 it will be betraying her confidence to say that she found her posi- . 
 tion of dependence extremely irksome ; it seemed to cripple her 
 soul. Now I see what Mrs. Goldsmith is, I can understand bet- 
 ter what life in her society meant for a girl like that." 
 
508 GRANDCHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 " And what has become of her? '^ asked the Russian. His face 
 was agitated, the hps were ahnost white. 
 
 " I do not know/^ said Raphael, ahnost in a whisper, his voice 
 failing in a sudden upwelling of tumultuous feeling. The ever- 
 whirling wheel of journalism — that modern realization of the 
 labor of Sisyphus — had carried him round without giving him 
 even time to remember that time was flying. Day had slipped 
 into week and week into month, without his moving an inch 
 from his groove in search of the girl whose unhappiness was yet 
 always at the back of his thoughts. Now he was shaken with 
 astonished self-reproach at his having allowed her to drift per- 
 haps irretrievably beyond his ken. 
 
 " She is quite alone in the world, poor thing! " he said after a 
 pause. " She must be earning her own living, somehow. By 
 journalism, perhaps. But she prefers to live her own life. I am 
 afraid it will be a hard one." His voice trembled again. The 
 minister's breast, too, was laboring with emotion that checked 
 his speech, but after a moment utterance came to him — a strange 
 choked utterance, almost blasphemous from those clerical lips. 
 
 " By God ! " he gasped. " That little girl ! " 
 
 He turned his back upon his friend and covered his face with 
 his hands, and Raphael saw his shoulders quivering. Then his 
 own vision grew dim. Conjecture, resentment, wonder, self-re- 
 proach, were lost in a new and absorbing sense of the pathos of 
 the poor girl's position. 
 
 Presently the minister turned round, showing a face that made 
 no pretence of calm. 
 
 '' That was bravely done," he said brokenly. '' To cut herself 
 adrift! She will not sink; strength will be given her even as 
 she gives others strength. If I could only see her and tell her! 
 But she never liked me ; she alwa\s distrusted me. I was a 
 hollow windbag in her eyes — a thing of shams and cant — she 
 shuddered to look at me. Was it not so? You are a friend of 
 hers, you know what she felt." 
 
 " I don't think it was you she disliked," said Raphael in won- 
 dering pity. "Only your ofifice." 
 
 "Then, by God, she was right!" cried the Russian hoarsely 
 
FROM SOUL TO SOUL. 509 
 
 "It was this— this that made me the target of her scorn." He 
 tore ofif his white tie madly as he spoke, threw it on the 
 ground, and trampled upon it. " She and I were kindred in suf- 
 fering; I read it in her eyes, averted as they were at the sight of 
 this accursed thing! You stare at me — you think I have gone 
 mad. Leon, you are not as other men. Can you not guess that 
 this damnable white tie has been choking the life and manhood 
 out of me? But it is over now. Take your pen, Leon, as you 
 are my friend, and write what I shall dictate." 
 
 Silenced by the stress of a great soul, half dazed by the 
 strange, unexpected revelation, Raphael seated himself, took his 
 pen, and wrote : 
 
 " We understand that the Rev. Joseph Strelitski has resigned 
 his position in the Kensington Synagogue." 
 
 Not till he had written it did the full force of the paragraph 
 overwhelm his soul. 
 
 " But you will not do this ? " he said, looking up almost in- 
 credulously at the popular minister. 
 
 "I will; the position has become impossible. Leon, do you 
 not understand? I am not what I was when I took it. I have 
 lived, and life is change. Stagnation is death. Surely you can 
 understand, for you, too, have changed. Cannot I read between 
 the lines of your leaders ? " 
 
 "Cannot you read in them?" said Raphael with a wan smile. 
 " I have modified some opinions, it is true, and developed others ; 
 but I have disguised none." 
 
 " Not consciously, perhaps, but you do not speak all your 
 thought." 
 
 "Perhaps I do not listen to it," said Raphael, half to himself. 
 " But you — whatever your change — you have not lost faith in 
 primaries?" 
 
 " No ; not in what I consider such." 
 
 " Then why give up your platform, your housetop, whence you 
 may do so much good? You are loved, venerated." 
 
 Strelitski placed his palms over his ears. 
 
 "Don^t! don't!" he cried. "Don't you be the aduocatus 
 diabolil Do you think I have not told myself all these things 
 
510 GRANDCHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 a thousand times ? Do you think I have not tried every kind 
 of opiate? No, no, be silent if you can say nothing to 
 strengthen me in my resolution ; am I not weak enough already? 
 Promise me, give me your hand, swear to me that you will put 
 that paragraph in the paper. Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tues- 
 day, Wednesday, Thursday — in six days I shall change a hun- 
 dred times. Swear to me, so that I may leave this room at 
 peace, the long conflict ended. Promise me you will insert it, 
 though I myself should ask you to cancel it." 
 
 " But — ■" began Raphael. 
 
 Strelitski turned away impatiently and groaned. 
 
 ''My God!" he cried hoarsely. "Leon, listen to me/' he 
 said, turning round suddenly. " Do you realize what sort of a 
 position you are asking me to keep? Do you realize how it 
 makes me the fief of a Rabbinate that is an anachronism, the 
 bondman of outworn forms, the slave of the SJiulcan Ariich 
 (a book the Rabbinate would not dare.^Dublish in English), the 
 professional panegyrist of the rich ? v^Oyrs is a generation of 
 whited sepulchres." He had no difficulty about utterance now; 
 the words flowed in a torrent. "How can Judaism — and it 
 alone — escape going through the fire of modern scepticism, 
 from which, if religion emerge at all, it will emerge without its 
 dross? Are not we Jews always the first prey of new ideas, 
 wdth our alert intellect, our swift receptiveness, our keen critical 
 sense? And if we are not hypocrites, we are indifferent — which 
 is almost worse. Indiff"erence is the only infidelity I recognize, 
 and it is unfortunately as conservative as zeal. Indiff"erence and 
 hypocrisy between them keep orthodoxy alive — while they kill 
 Judaism. r 
 
 " 0\\/l can't quite admit that," said Raphael. " I admit that 
 scepticism is better than stagnation, but I cannot see why ortho- 
 doxy is the antithesis to Judaism Purified — and your own 
 sermons are doing something to purify it — orthodoxy — " 
 
 " Orthodoxy cannot be purified unless by juggling with w^ords," 
 interrupted Strelitski vehemently. "Orthodoxy is inextricably 
 entangled with ritual observance ; and ceremonial religion is 
 of the ancient world, not the modern." 
 
FROM SOUL TO SOUL. 611 
 
 " But our ceremonialism is pregnant with sublime symbolism, 
 and its discipline is most salutary. Ceremony is the casket of 
 religion/^ 
 
 '" More often its coffin," said Strelitski drily. " Ceremonial 
 religion is so apt to stiffen in a rigor mortis. It is too dangerous 
 an element ; it creates hypocrites and Pharisees. All cast-iron 
 laws and dogmas do. Not that I share the Christian sneer at 
 Jewish legalism. Add the Statute Book to the New Testament, 
 and think of the network of laws hampering the feet of the 
 Christian. No ; much of our so-called ceremonialism is merely 
 the primitive mix-up of everything with religion in a theocracy. 
 The Mosaic code has been largely embodied in civil law, and 
 superseded by it." 
 
 "That is just the flaw of the modern world, to keep life and 
 religion apart," protested Raphael ; " to have one set of prin- 
 ciples for week-days and another for Sundays ; to grind the 
 inexorable mechanism of supply and demand on pagan princi- 
 ples, and make it up out of the poor-box." 
 
 Strelitski shook his head. 
 
 "We must make broad our platform, not our phylacteries. It 
 is because I am with you in admiring the Rabbis that I would 
 undo much of their work. Theirs was a wonderful statesman- 
 ship, and they built wiser than they knew ; just as the patient 
 labors of the superstitious zealots who counted every letter of 
 the Law preserved the text unimpaired for the benefit of modern 
 scholarship. The Rabbis constructed a casket, if you will, 
 which kept the jewel safe, though at the cost of concealing its 
 lustre. But the hour has come now to wear the jewel on our 
 breasts before all the world. The Rabbis worked for their time 
 — we must work for ours. Judaism was before the Rabbis. 
 Scientific criticism shows its thoughts widening with the process 
 of the suns — even as its God, Yahweh, broadened from a local 
 patriotic Deity to the inelTable Name. For Judaism was worked 
 out from within — Abraham asked, ' Shall not the Judge of all the 
 earth do right?' — the thunders of Sinai were but the righteous 
 indignation of the developed moral consciousness. In every age 
 our great men have modified and developed Judaism. Why 
 
512 GRANDCHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 should it not be trimmed into concordance with the cuhure of 
 the time? Especially when the alternative is death. Yes, death! 
 We babble about petty minuti^ of ritual while Judaism is dying! 
 We are like the crew of a sinking ship, holy-stoning the deck 
 instead of being at the pumps. No, I must speak out ; I cannot 
 go on salving my conscience by unsigned letters to the press. 
 Away with all this anonymous apostleship!" 
 
 He moved about restlessly with animated gestures as he deliv- 
 ered his harangue at tornado speed, speech bursting from him 
 like some dynamic energy which had been accumulating for 
 years, and could no longer be kept in. It was an upheaval of the 
 whole man under the stress of pent forces. Raphael was deeply 
 moved. He scarcely knew how to act in this unique crisis. 
 Dimly he foresaw the stir and pother there would be in the com- 
 munity. Conservative by instinct, apt to see the elements of 
 good in attacked institutions — perhaps, too, a little timid when 
 it came to take action in the tremendous realm of realities — he 
 was loth to help Strelitski to so decisive a step, though his whole 
 heart went out to him in brotherly sympathy. 
 
 "Do not act so hastily,'^ he pleaded. '"Things are not so 
 black as you see them — you are almost as bad as Miss Ansell. 
 Don't think that I see them rosy ; I might have done that three 
 months ago. But don't you — don't all idealists — overlook the 
 quieter phenomena? Is orthodoxy either so inefficacious or so 
 moribund as you fancy? Is there not a steady, perhaps semi- 
 conscious, stream of healthy life, thousands of cheerful, wtII- 
 ordered households, of people neither perfect nor cultured, but 
 more good than bad ? You cannot expect saints and heroes to 
 grow like blackberries." 
 
 "Yes; but look what Jews set up to be — God's witnesses!" 
 interrupted Strelitski. " This mediocrity may pass in the rest of 
 the world." 
 
 "And does lack of modern lights constitute ignorance?" went 
 on Raphael, disregarding the interruption. He began walking 
 up and down, and thrashing the air with his arms. Hitherto he 
 had remained comparatively quiet, dominated by Strelitski's supe- 
 rior restlessness. " I cannot help thinking there is a profound 
 
FROM SOUL TO SOUL. 513 
 
 lesson in the Bible story of the oxen who, unguided, bore safely 
 the Ark of the Covenant. Intellect obscures more than it 
 illumines.'" 
 
 "Oh, Leon, Leon, you^ll turn Catholic, soon!" said Strelitski 
 reprovingly. 
 
 " Not with a capital C," said Raphael, laughing a little. " But 
 I am so sick of hearing about culture, I say more than I mean. 
 Judaism is so human — that's why I like it. No abstract meta- 
 physics, but a lovable way of living the common life, sanctified 
 by the centuries. Culture is all very well — doesn't the Talmud 
 say the world stands on the breath of the school-children? — but 
 it has become a cant. Too often it saps the moral fibre." 
 
 "You have all the old Jewish narrowness," said Strelitski. 
 
 " rd rather have that than the new Parisian narrowness — the 
 cant of decadence. Look at my cousin Sidney. He talks as if 
 the Jew only introduced moral headache into the world — in face 
 of the corruptions of paganism which are still flagrant all over 
 Asia and Africa and Polynesia— the idol worship, the abomina- 
 tions, the disregard of human life, of truth, of justice." 
 
 " But is the civilized world any better? Think of the dishon- 
 esty of business, the self-seeking of public life, the infamies and 
 hypocrisies of society, the prostitutions of soul and body! No, 
 the Jew has yet to play a part in history. Supplement his He- 
 braism by what Hellenic ideals you will, but the Jew's ideals 
 must ever remain the indispensable ones," said Strelitski, becom- 
 ing exalted again. "Without righteousness a kingdom cannot 
 stand. The world is longing for a broad simple faith that shall 
 look on science as its friend and reason as its inspirer. People 
 are turning in their despair even to table-rappings and Mahatmas. 
 Now, for the first time in history, is the hour of Judaism. Only 
 it must enlarge itself; its platform must be all-inclusive. Juda- 
 ism is but a specialized form of Hebraism ; even if Jews stick to 
 their own special historical and ritual ceremonies, it is only 
 Hebraism — ■ the pure spirituaj kernel — that they can offer the 
 world." 
 
 " But that is quite the orthodox Jewish idea on the subject," 
 said Raphael. 
 
 2L 
 
514 GRANDCHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 "Yes, but orthodox ideas have a way of remaining ideas,'^ 
 retorted Strelitski. "Where I am heterodox is in thinking the 
 time lias come to work tliem out. Also in thinking that the 
 monotheism is not the element that needs the most accentuation. 
 The formula of the religion of the future will be a Jewish for- 
 mula — Character, not Creed. The provincial period of Judaism 
 is over, though even its Dark Ages are still lingering on in Eng- 
 land. It must become cosmic, universal. Judaism is too timid, 
 too apologetic, too deferential. Doubtless this is the result of 
 persecution, but it does not tend to diminish persecution. We 
 may as well try the other attitude. It is the world the Jewish 
 preacher should address, not a Kensington congregation. Per- 
 haps, when the Kensington congregation sees the Avorld is listen- 
 ing, it will listen, too,"" he said, with a touch of bitterness. 
 
 " But it listens to you now," said Raphael. 
 
 " A pleasing illusion which has kept me too long in my false 
 position. With all its love and reverence, do you think it for- 
 gets lam its hireling? I may perhaps have a little more prestige 
 than the bulk of my fellows — though even that is partly due to 
 my congregants being rich and fashionable — but at bottom 
 everybody knows I am taken like a house — on a three years' 
 agreement. And I dare not speak, I cannot, while I wear the 
 badge of office ; it would be disloyal ; my own congregation 
 would take alarm. The position of a minister is like that of a 
 judicious editor — which, by the way, you are not; he is led, 
 rather than leads. He has to feel his way, to let in light wher- 
 ever he sees a chink, a cranny. But let them get another man 
 to preach to them the echo of their own voices ; there will be no 
 lack of candidates for the salary. For my part, I am sick of this 
 petty Jesuitry ; in vain I tell myself it is spiritual statesmanship 
 like that of so many Christian clergymen who are silently brmg- 
 ing Christianity back to Judaism."" 
 
 " But it is spiritual statesmanship," asserted Raphael. 
 
 "Perhaps. You are wiser, deeper, calmer than I. You are 
 an Englishman, I am a Russian. I am all for action, action, 
 action! In Russia I should have been a Nihilist; not a philos- 
 opher. I can only go by my feelings, and I feel choking. 
 
FROM SOUL TO SOUL. 515 
 
 When I first came to England, before the horror of Russia 
 wore ofif, I used to go about breathing in deep breaths of air, 
 exulting in the sense of freedom. Now I am stifling again. Do 
 you not understand? Have you never guessed it? And yet I 
 have often said things to you that should have opened your eyes. 
 I must escape from the house of bondage — must be master of 
 myself, of my word and thought. Oh, the world is so wide, so 
 wide — and we are so narrow! Only gradually did the web 
 mesh itself about me. At first my fetters were flowery bands, 
 for I believed all I taught and could teach all I believed. In- 
 sensibly the flowers changed to iron chains, because I was 
 changing as I probed deeper into life and thought, and saw my 
 dreams of influencing English Judaism fading in the harsh day- 
 light of fact. And yet at moments the iron links would soften 
 to flowers again. Do you think there is no sweetness in adula- 
 tion, in prosperity — no subtle cajolery that soothes the con- 
 science and coaxes the soul to take its pleasure in a world of 
 make-believe? Spiritual statesmanship, forsooth!" He made 
 a gesture of resolution. " No, the Judaism of you English 
 weighs upon my spirits. It is so parochial. Everything turns 
 on finance ; the United Synagogue keeps your community or- 
 thodox because it has the funds and owns the burying-grounds. 
 Tnily a dismal allegory — a creed whose strength lies in its 
 cemeteries. Money is the sole avenue to distinction and to 
 authority ; it has its coarse thumb over education, worship, 
 society. In my country — even in your own Ghetto — the Jews 
 do not despise money, but at least piety and learning are the 
 titles to position and honor. Here the scholar is classed with 
 the Schnorrer ] if an artist or an author is admired, it is for his 
 success. You are right ; it is oxen that carry your Ark of the 
 Covenant — fat oxen. You admire them, Leon; you are an 
 Englishman, and cannot stand outside it all. But I am stifling 
 under this weight of moneyed mediocrity, this regime of dull 
 respectability. I want the atmosphere of ideas and ideals." 
 
 He tore at his high clerical collar as though suffocating 
 literally. 
 
 Raphael was too moved to defend English Judaism. Besides, 
 
516 GRANDCHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 he was used to these jeremiads now — had he not often heard 
 them from Sidney? Had he not read them in Esther's book? 
 Nor was it the first time he had listened to the Russian''s tirades, 
 though he had lacked the key to the internal conflict that em- 
 bittered them. 
 
 "But how will you live?" he asked, tacitly accepting the 
 situation. "You will not, I suppose, go over to the Reform 
 Synagogue?" 
 
 " That fossil, so proud of its petty reforms half a century ago 
 that it has stood still ever since to admire them! It is a syna- 
 gogue for snobs — who never go there." 
 
 Raphael smiled faintly. It was obvious that Strelitski on the 
 war-path did not pause to weigh his utterances. 
 
 " I am glad you are not going over, anyhow. Your congrega- 
 tion would — " 
 
 " Crucify me between two money-lenders ? " 
 
 " Never mind. But how will you live ? " 
 
 " How does Miss Ansell live? I can always travel with cigars 
 • — I know the line thoroughly." He smiled mournfully. "But 
 probably I shall go to America — the idea has been floating in 
 my mind for months. There Judaism is grander, larger, nobler. 
 There is room for all parties. The dead bones are not wor- 
 shipped as relics. Free thought has its vent-holes — it is not 
 repressed into hypocrisy as among us. There is care for litera- 
 ture, for national ideals. ^And one deals with millions, not petty 
 thousands. This English community, with its squabbles about 
 rituals, its four Chief Rabbis all in love with one another, its 
 stupid Sephardim, its narrow-minded Reformers, its fatuous self- 
 importance, its invincible ignorance, is but an ant-hill, a negli- 
 gible quantity in the future of the faith. Westward the course of 
 Judaism as of empire takes its way^from the Euphrates and 
 Tigris it emigrated to Cordova and Toledo, and the year that 
 saw its expulsion from Spain was the year of the Discovery ot 
 America. Ex Oriente lux. Perhaps it will return to you here 
 by way of the Occident. Russia and America are the two 
 strongholds of the race, and Russia is pouring her streams into 
 America, where they will be made free men and free thinkers. 
 
FROM SOUL TO SOUL. 517 
 
 It is in America, then, that the last great battle of Judaism will 
 be fought out ; amid the temples of the New World it will make 
 its last struggle to survive. It is there that the men who have 
 faith in its necessity must be, so that the psychical force con- 
 served at such a cost may not radiate uselessly away. Though 
 Israel has sunk low, like a tree once green and living, and has 
 become petrified and blackened, there is stored-up sunlight in 
 him. Our racial isolation is a mere superstition unless turned to 
 great purposes. We have done nothing as yews for centuries, 
 though our Old Testament has always been an arsenal of texts 
 for the European champions of civil and religious liberty. We 
 have been unconsciously pioneers of modern commerce, diflfusers 
 of folk-lore and what not. Cannot we be a conscious force, 
 making for nobler ends? Could we not, for instance, be the link 
 of federation among the nations, acting everywhere in favor of 
 Peace? Could we not be the centre of new sociologic move- 
 ments in each country, as a few American Jews have been the 
 centre of the Ethical Culture movement? '' 
 
 "You forget,'' said Raphael, " that, wherever the old Judaism 
 has not been overlaid by the veneer of Philistine civilization, we 
 are ah-eady sociological object-lessons in good fellowship, unpre- 
 tentious charity, domestic poetry, respect for learning, disrespect 
 for respectability. Our social system is a bequest from the an- 
 cient world by which the modern may yet benefit. The de- 
 merits you censure in English Judaism are all departures from 
 the old way of living. Why should we not revive or strengthen 
 that, rather than waste ourselves on impracticable novelties? 
 And in your prognostications of the future of the Jews have you 
 not forgotten the all-important factor of Palestine ? " 
 
 " No ; I simply leave it out of count. You know how I have 
 persuaded the Holy Land League to co-operate with the move- 
 ments for directing the streams of the persecuted towards 
 America. I have alleged with truth that Palestine is imprac- 
 ticable for the moment. I have' not said what I have gradually 
 come to think — that the salvation of Judaism is not in the national 
 idea at all. That is the dream of visionaries — and young men,'' 
 he added with a melancholy smile. "May we not dream nobler 
 
618 GRANDCHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 dreams than political independence? For, after all, political 
 independence is only a means to an end, not an end in itself, 
 as it might easily become, and as it appears to other nations. 
 To be merely one among the nations — that is not, despite 
 George Eliot, so satisfactory an ideal. The restoration to Pal- 
 estine, or the acquisition of a national centre, may be a political 
 solution, but it is not a spiritual idea. We must abandon it — 
 it cannot be held consistently with our professed attachment to 
 the countries in which our lot is cast — and we have abandoned 
 it. We have fought and slain one another in the Franco- 
 German war, and in the war of the North and the South. 
 Your whole difficulty with your pauper immigrants arises from 
 your effort to keep two contradictory ideals going at once. As 
 Englishmen, you may have a right to shelter the exile ; but not 
 as Jews. Certainly, if the nations cast us out, we could draw 
 together and form a nation as of yore. But persecution, expul- 
 sion, is never simultaneous ; our dispersal has saved Judaism, 
 and it may yet save the world. For 1 prefer the dream that we 
 are divinely dispersed to bless it, wind-sown seeds to fertilize its 
 waste places. To be a nation without a fatherland, yet with a 
 mother-tongue, Hebrew — there is the spiritual originality, the 
 miracle of history. Such has been the real kingdom of Israel in 
 the past — we have been ••' sons of the Law''' as other men have 
 been sons of France, of Italy, of Germany. Such may our 
 fatherland continue, with ' the higher life ' substituted for ' the 
 law' — a kingdom not of space, not measured by the vulgar 
 meteyard of an Alexander, but a great spiritual Republic, as 
 devoid of material form as Israel's God, and congruous with 
 his conception of the Divine. And the conquest of this king- 
 dom needs no violent movement — if Jews only practised what 
 they preach, it would be achieved to-morrow ; for all expressions 
 of Judaism, even to the lowest, have common sublimities. And 
 this kingdom — as it has no space, so it has no limits; it must 
 grow till all mankind are its subjects. The brotherhood of 
 Israel will be the nucleus of the brotherhood of man." 
 
 "It is magnificent,'" said Raphael; -but it is not Judaism. 
 If the Jews have the future you dream of, the future will have no 
 
FROM SOUL TO SOUL. 519 
 
 Jews. America is already decimating tliem with Sunday-Sab- 
 baths and English Prayer-Books. Your Judaism is as eviscer- 
 ated as the Christianity I found in vogue when I was at Oxford, 
 which might be summed up : There is no God, but Jesus Christ 
 is His Son. George Eliot was right. Men are men, not pure 
 spirit. A fatherland focusses a people. Without it we are but 
 the gypsies of religion. All over the world, at every prayer, 
 every Jew turns towards Jerusalem. We must not give up the 
 dream. The countries we live in can never be more than ' step- 
 fatherlands ' to us Why, if your visions were realized, the 
 prophecy of Genesis, already practically fulfilled, ' Thou shalt 
 spread abroad to the west and to the east, and to the north and 
 to the south ; and in thee and in thy seed shall all the families 
 of the earth be blessed,' would be so remarkably consummated 
 that we might reasonably hope to come to our own again accord- 
 ing to the promises.'"' 
 
 " Well, well," said Strelitski, good-humoredly, '• so long as you 
 admit it is not within the range of practical politics now." 
 
 " It is your own dream that is premature," retorted Raphael ; 
 "at any rate, the cosmic part of it. You are thinking of throw- 
 ing open the citizenship of your Republic to the world. But 
 to-day's task is to make its citizens by blood worthier of their 
 privilege." 
 
 " You will never do it with the old generation," said Strelitski. 
 " My hope is in the new. Moses led the Jews forty years through 
 the wilderness merely to eliminate the old. Give me young men, 
 and I will move the world." 
 
 "You will do nothing by attempting too much," said Raphael ; 
 " you will only dissipate your strength. For my part, I shall be 
 content to raise Judaea an inch." 
 
 " Go on, then," said Strelitski. " That will give me a barley- 
 corn. But I've wasted too much of your time, I fear. Good- 
 bye. Remember your promise." 
 
 He held out his hand. He had grown quite calm, now his 
 decision was taken. 
 
 " Good-bye," said Raphael, shaking it warmly. " I think I 
 shall cable to America, ' Behold, Joseph the dreamer cometh.' " 
 
520 GRANDCHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 "Dreams are our life," replied Strelitski. " Lessing was right 
 — aspiration is everything." 
 
 " And yet you would rob the orthodox Jew of his dream of Jeru- 
 salem! Well, if you must go, don't go without your tie," said 
 Raphael, picking it up, and feeling a stolid, practical Englishman 
 in presence of this enthusiast. " It is dreadfully dirty, but you 
 must wear it a little longer." 
 
 " Only till the New Year, which is bearing down upon us," 
 said Strelitski, thrusting it into his pocket. " Cost what it may, 
 I shall no longer countenance the ritual and ceremonial of the sea- 
 son of Repentance. Good-bye again. If you should be writing 
 to Miss Ansell. I should like her to know how much I owe her." 
 
 '' But I tell you I don't know her address," said Raphael, his 
 uneasiness reawakening. 
 
 " Surely you can write to her publishers?" 
 
 And the door closed upon the Russian dreamer, leaving the 
 practical Englishman dumbfounded at his never having thought 
 of this simple expedient. But before he could adopt it the door 
 was thrown open again by Pinchas, who had got out of the habit 
 of knocking through Raphael being too polite to reprimand him. 
 The poet tottered in, dropped wearily into a chair, and buried 
 his face in his hands, letting an extinct cigar-stump slip through 
 his fingers on to the literature that carpeted the floor. 
 
 "What is the matter?" inquired Raphael in alarm. 
 
 " I am miserable — vairy miserable." 
 
 " Has anything happened?" 
 
 "Nothing. But I have been thinking vat have I come to 
 after all these years, all these vanderings. Nothing! Vat vill 
 be my end? Oh, I am so unhappy." 
 
 " But you are better off than you ever were in your life. You no 
 longer live amid the squalor of the Ghetto ; you are clean and well 
 dressed ; you yourself admit that you can afford to give charity 
 now. That looks as if you'd come to something — not nothing." 
 
 "Yes," said the poet, looking up eagerly, "and I am famous 
 through the vorld. Metatarojis Flajiies vill shine eternally." 
 His head drooped again. "I have all I vant, and you are the 
 best man in the vorld. But I am the most miserable." 
 
FROM SOUL TO SOUL. 521 
 
 "Nonsense! cheer up," said Raphael. 
 
 "I can never cheer up any more. I vill shoot myself. I have 
 realized the emptiness of life. Fame, money, love — all is Dead 
 Sea fmit.'" 
 
 His shoulders heaved convulsively ; he was sobbing. Raphael 
 stood by helpless, his respect for Pinchas as a poet and for him- 
 self as a practical Englishman returning. He pondered over the 
 strange fate that had thrown him among three geniuses — a 
 male idealist, a female pessimist, and a poet who seemed to 
 belong to both sexes and categories. And yet there was not 
 one of the three to whom he seemed able to be of real service. 
 A letter brought in by the office-boy rudely snapped the thread 
 of reflection. It contained three enclosures. The first was an 
 epistle ; the hand was the hand of Mr. Goldsmith, but the voice 
 was the voice of his beautiful spouse. 
 
 "Dear Mr. Leon: 
 
 " I have perceived many symptoms lately of your growing 
 divergency from the ideas with which The Flag of Judah was 
 started. It is obvious that you find yourself unable to empha- 
 size the olden features of our faith — the questions of kosher 
 meat, etc. — as forcibly as our readers desire. You no doubt 
 cherish ideals which are neither practical nor within the grasp 
 of the masses to whom we appeal. I fully appreciate the 
 delicacy that makes you reluctant — in the dearth of genius 
 and Hebrew learning — to saddle me with the task of finding 
 a substitute, but I feel it is time for me to restore your peace 
 of mind even at the expense of my own. I have been thinking 
 that, with your kind occasional supervision, it might be possible 
 for Mr. Pinchas, of whom you have always spoken so highly, to 
 undertake the duties of editorship, Mr. Sampson remaining sub- 
 editor as before. Of course I count on you to continue your 
 purely scholarly articles, and to impress upon the two gentlemen 
 who will now have direct relations with me my wish to remain 
 
 in the background. 
 
 " Yours sincerely. 
 
 "Henry Goldsmith. 
 
522 GRANDCHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 *' P.S. — On second thoughts I beg to enclose a cheque for 
 four guineas, which will serve instead of a formal month's notice, 
 and will enable you to accept at once my wife's invitation, like- 
 wise enclosed herewith. Your sister seconds Mrs. Goldsmith in 
 the hope that you will do so. Our tenancy of the Manse only 
 lasts a few weeks longer, for of course we return for the New 
 Year holidays." 
 
 This was the last straw. It was not so much the dismissal 
 that staggered him, but to be called a genius and an idealist 
 himself — to have his own orthodoxy impugned — just at this 
 moment, was a rough shock. 
 
 "Pinchas!"he said, recovering himself Pinchas would not 
 look up. His face was still hidden in his hands. ''Pinchas, 
 listen! You are appointed editor of the paper, instead of me. 
 You are to edit the next number." 
 
 Pinchas's head shot up like a catapult. He bounded to his 
 feet, then bent down again to Raphael's coat-tail and kissed it 
 passionately. 
 
 "Ah, my benefactor, my benefactor!" he cried, in a joyous 
 frenzy. " Now vill I give it to English Judaism. She is in my 
 power. Oh, my benefactor!" 
 
 " No, no," said Raphael, disengaging himself. " I have noth- 
 ing to do with it." 
 
 ''But de paper — she is yours!" said the poet, forgetting his 
 English in his excitement. 
 
 '"No, I am only the editor. I have been dismissed, and you 
 are appointed instead of me." 
 
 Pinchas dropped back into his chair like a lump of lead. He 
 hung his head again and folded his arms. 
 
 '' Then they get not me for editor," he said moodily. 
 
 "Nonsense, why not? "said Raphael, flushing. 
 
 "Vat you think me?" Pinchas asked indignantly. " Do you 
 think I have a stone for a heart like Gideon M. P. or your Eng- 
 lish stockbrokers and Rabbis ? No, you shall go on being edi- 
 tor. They think you are not able enough, not orthodox enough 
 — they vant me — but do not fear. I shall not accept." 
 
LOVE'S TEMPTATION. • 523 
 
 "But then what will become of the next number?" remon- 
 strated Raphael, touched. " I must not edit it." 
 
 "Vat you care? Let her diel " cried Pinchas, in gloomy com- 
 placency. "You have made her; vy should she survive you? 
 It is not right another should valk in your shoes — least of all, I." 
 
 "But I don't mind — I don't mind a bit," Raphael assured 
 him. Pinchas shook his head obstinately. "If the paper dies, 
 Sampson will have nothing to live upon," Raphael reminded 
 him. 
 
 " True, vairy true," said the poet, patently beginning to yield. 
 " That alters things. Ve cannot let Sampson starve." 
 
 "No, you see! " said Raphael. "So you must keep it alive." 
 
 "Yes, but," said Pinchas, getting up thoughtfully, "Sampson 
 is going off soon on tour vith his comic opera. He vill not need 
 the Flagy 
 
 " Oh, well, edit it till then." 
 
 " Be it so," said the poet resignedly. " Till Sampson's comic- 
 opera tour." 
 
 " Till Sampson's comic-opera tour," repeated Raphael con- 
 tentedly. 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 love's temptation. 
 
 Raphael walked out of the office, a free man. Mountains of 
 responsibility seemed to roll off his shoulders. His Messianic 
 emotions were conscious of no laceration at the failure of this 
 episode of his life ; they were merged in greater. What a fool 
 he had been to waste so much time, to make no effort to find the 
 lonely girl! Surely, Esther must have expected him, if only as a 
 friend, to give some sign that he did not share in the popular 
 execration. Perchance she had ah-eady left London or the coun- 
 try, only to be found again by protracted knightly quest! He 
 felt grateful to Providence for setting him free for her salvation. 
 He made at once for the publishers' and asked for her address. 
 
524 ' GRANDCHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 The junior partner knew of no such person In vain Raphael 
 reminded him that they had published Mordecai Josephs. 
 That was by Mr. Edward Armitage. Raphael accepted the con- 
 vention, and demanded this gentleman's address instead. That, 
 too, was refused, but all letters would be forwarded. Was Mr. 
 Armitage in England? All letters would be forwarded- Upon 
 that the junior partner stood, inexpugnable. 
 
 Raphael went out, not uncomforted. He would write to her 
 at once. He got letter-paper at the nearest restaurant and 
 wrote, "Dear Miss Ansell." The rest was a blank. He had 
 not the least idea how to renew the relationship after what 
 seemed an eternity of silence. He stared helplessly round the 
 mirrored walls, seeing mainly his own helpless stare. The pla- 
 card " Smoking not permitted till 8 p.m.," gave him a sudden 
 shock. He felt for his pipe, and ultimately found it stuck, half 
 full of charred bird's eye, in his breast-pocket. He had appar- 
 ently not been smoking for some hours. That completed his 
 perturbation. He felt he had undergone too much that day to 
 be in a fit state to write a judicious letter He would go home 
 and rest a bit, and write the letter — very diplomatically — in 
 the evening. When he got home, he found to his astonishment 
 it was Friday evening, when letter-writing is of the devil. 
 Habit carried him to synagogue, where he sang the Sabbath 
 hymn, "Come, my beloved, to meet the bride,'' with strange 
 sweet tears and a complete indifference to its sacred allegorical 
 signification. Next afternoon he haunted the publishers' door- 
 step with the brilliant idea that Mr Armitage sometimes crossed 
 it. In this hope, he did )iot write the letter; his phrases, he 
 felt, would be better for the inspiration of that gentleman's pres- 
 ence. Meanwhile he had ample time to mature them, to review 
 the situation in every possible light, to figure Esther under the 
 most poetical images, to see his future alternately radiant and 
 sombre. Four long summer days of espionage only left him with 
 a heartache, and a specialist knowledge of the sort of persons 
 who visit pubhshers. A temptation to bribe the office-boy he 
 resisted as unworthy. 
 
 Not only had he not written that letter, but Mr. Henry Gold- 
 
LOVE'S TEMPTATION. 525 
 
 smith's edict and Mrs. Henry Goldsmitli's invitation were still 
 unacknowledged. On Thursday morning a letter from Ad die 
 indirectly reminded him both of his remissness to her hostess, 
 and of the existence of The Flag of Judah. He remembered 
 it was the day of going to press ; a vision of the difficulties of 
 the day flashed vividly upon his consciousness ; he wondered 
 if his ex-lieutenants were finding new ones. The smell of the 
 machine-room was in his nostrils ; it co-operated with the appeal 
 of his good-nature to draw him to his successor's help. Virtue 
 proved its own reward. Arriving at eleven o'clock, he found 
 little Sampson in great excitement, with the fountain of melody 
 dried up on his lips. 
 
 "Thank God!" he cried. " I thought you'd come when you 
 heard the news." 
 
 " What news ? " 
 
 " Gideon the member for WhitechapePs dead. Died suddenly, 
 early this morning." 
 
 "How shocking! " said Raphael, growing white. 
 
 "Yes, isn't it?" said little Sampson. "If he had died yester- 
 day, I shouldn't have minded it so much, while to-morrow would 
 have given us a clear week. He hasn't even been ill," he 
 grumbled. " I've had to send Pinchas to the Museum in a 
 deuce of a hurry, to find out about his early life. I'm awfully 
 upset about it, and what makes it worse is a telegram from 
 Goldsmith, ordering a page obituary at least with black rules, 
 besides a leader. It's simply sickening. The proofs are awful 
 enough as it is — my blessed editor has been writing four col- 
 umns of his autobiography in his most original English, and he 
 wants to leave out all the news part to make room for 'em. In 
 one way Gideon's death is a boon ; even Pinchas'll see his stuff 
 must be crowded out. It's frightful having to edit your editor. 
 Why wasn't he made sub?" 
 
 " That would have been just as trying for you," said Raphael 
 with a melancholy smile. He took up a galley-proof and began 
 to correct it. To his surprise he came upon his own paragraph 
 about Strelitski's resignation : it caused him fresh emotion. 
 This great spiritual crisis had quite slipped his memory, so 
 
526 GRANDCHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 egoistic are the best of us at times. " Please be careful that 
 Pinchas's autobiography does not crowd that out/' he said. 
 
 Pinchas arrived late, when little Sampson was almost in 
 despair. " It is all right," he shouted, waving a roll of manu- 
 script. "I have him from the cradle — the stupid stockbroker, 
 the Man-of-the-Earth, who sent me back my poesie, and vouid 
 not let me teach his boy Judaism. And vhile I had the inspira- 
 tion I wrote the leader also in the Museum — it is here — oh, 
 vairy beautiful ! Listen to the first sentence. '• The Angel of 
 Death has passed again over Judaea; he has flown off vith our 
 visest and our best, but the black shadow of his ving vill long 
 rest upon the House of Israel!' And the end is vordy of the 
 beginning. He is dead ; but he lives for ever enshrined in the 
 noble tribute to his genius in Metatoroti's FlainesT 
 
 Little Sampson seized the " copy " and darted with it to the 
 composing-room, where Raphael was busy giving directions. 
 By his joyful face Raphael saw the crisis was over. Little 
 Sampson handed the manuscript to the foreman, then drawing 
 a deep breath of relief, he began to hum a sprightly march. 
 
 "I say, you're a nice chap!" he grumbled, cutting himself 
 short with a staccato that was not in the music. 
 
 " What have I done? " asked Raphael. 
 
 "Done? You've got me into a nice mess. The guvnor — 
 the new guvnor, the old guvnor, it seems — called the other day 
 to fix things with me and Pinchas. He asked me if 1 was satis- 
 fied to' go on at the same screw. 1 said he might make it two 
 pound ten. 'What, more than double?' says he. 'No, only 
 nine shillings extra,' says I, 'and for that I'll throw in some 
 foreign telegrams the late editor never cared for.' And then it 
 came out that he only knew of a sovereign, and fancied I was 
 trying it on." 
 
 "Oh, I'm so sorry," said Raphael, in deep scarlet distress. 
 
 " You must have been paying a guinea out of your own 
 pocket!" said little Sampson sharply. 
 
 Raphael's confusion increased. *' I — I — didn't want it my- 
 self," he faltered. " You see, it was paid me just for form, and 
 you really did the work. Which reminds me I have a clieque 
 
LOVE'S TEMPTATION. 527 
 
 of yours now," he ended boldly. " That'll make it right for the 
 coming month, anyhow. '^ 
 
 He hunted out Goldsmith's final cheque, and tendered it 
 sheepishly. 
 
 "Oh no, I can't take it now," said little Sampson. He folded 
 his. arms, and drew his cloak around him like a toga. No 
 August sun ever divested little Sampson of his cloak. 
 
 "Has Goldsmith agreed to your terms, then?" inquired 
 Raphael timidly. 
 
 "Oh no, not he. But — " 
 
 " Then I must go on paying the difference," said Raphael 
 decisively. " I am responsible to you that you get the salary 
 you're used to ; it's my fault that things are changed, and I must 
 pay the penalty " He crammed the cheque forcibly into the 
 pocket of the toga. 
 
 " Well, if you put it in that way," said little Sampson, " I 
 won't say I couldn't do with it. But only as a loan, mind." 
 
 "All right," murmured Raphael. 
 
 "And you'll take it back when my comic opera goes on tour. 
 You won't back out ? " 
 
 "No." 
 
 "Give us your hand on it," said little Sampson huskily. 
 Raphael gave him his hand, and little Sampson swung it up and 
 down like a baton. 
 
 " Hang it all! and that man calls himself a Jew! " he thought. 
 Aloud he said: " When my comic opera goes on tour." 
 
 They returned to the editorial den, where they found Pinchas 
 raging, a telegram in his hand. 
 
 " Ah, the Man-of-the-Earth ! " he cried. " All my beautiful 
 peroration he spoils." He crumpled up the telegram and threw 
 it pettishly at little Sampson, then greeted Raphael with effusive 
 joy and hilarity Little Sampson read the telegram. It ran as 
 follows : 
 
 " Last sentence of Gideon leader. ^ It is too early yet in this 
 moment of grief to speculate as to his successor in the constitu- 
 ency. But, difficult as it will be to replace him, we may find 
 some solace in the thought that it will not be impossible. The 
 
528 GRANDCHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 spirit of the illustrious dead would itself rejoice to acknowledge 
 the special qualifications of one whose name will at once rise to 
 every lip as that of a brother Jew whose sincere piety and genu- 
 ine public spirit mark him out as the one worthy substitute in 
 the representation of a district embracing so many of our poor 
 Jewish brethren. Is it too much to hope that he will be induced 
 to stand?' Goldsmith." 
 
 " That's a cut above Henry," murmured little Sampson, who 
 knew nearly everything, save the facts he had to supply to the 
 public. "He wired to the wife, and it's hers. Well, it saves 
 him from writing his own puffs, anyhow. I suppose Goldsmith's 
 only the signature, not intended to be the last word on the sub- 
 ject. Wants touching up, though; can't have 'spirit' twice 
 within four lines. How lucky for him Leon is just off the box 
 seat! That queer beggar would never have submitted to any 
 dictation any more than the boss would have dared show his 
 hand so openly." 
 
 While the sub-editor mused thus, a remark dropped from the 
 editor's lips, which turned Raphael whiter than the news of the 
 death of Gideon had done. 
 
 " Yes, and in the middle of writing I look up and see the maiden 
 — oh, vairy beautiful! How she gives it to English Judaism 
 sharp in that book — the stupid heads, — the Men-of-the-Earth ! 
 I could kiss her for it, only I have never been introduced. Gid- 
 eon, he is there! Ho! ho!" he sniggered, with purely intellec- 
 tual appreciation of the pungency. 
 
 " What maiden ? What are you talking about ? " asked Raphael, 
 his breath coming painfully. 
 
 "Your maiden," said Pinchas, surveying him with affectionate 
 roguishness. " The maiden that came to see vou here. She was 
 reading ; I walk by and see it is about America." 
 
 "At the British Museum?" gasped Raphael. A thousand 
 hammers beat " Fool ! " upon his brain. Why had he not thought 
 of so likely a place for a litterateur ? 
 
 He rushed out of the office and into a hansom. He put his pipe 
 out in anticipation. In seven minutes he was at the gates, just 
 in time — heaven be thanked ! — to meet her abstractedly descend- 
 
LOVE'S TEMPTATION, 529 
 
 ing the steps. His heart gave a great leap of joy. He studied 
 the pensive little countenance for an instant before it became 
 aware of him ; its sadness shot a pang of reproach through him. 
 Then a great light, as of wonder and joy, came into the dark 
 eyes, and glorified the pale, passionate face. But it was only a 
 flash that faded, leaving the cheeks more pallid than before, the 
 lips quivering. 
 
 " Mr. Leon! " she muttered. 
 
 He raised his hat, then held out a trembling hand that closed 
 upon hers with a grip that hurt her. 
 
 " Pm so glad to see you again!" he said, with unconcealed 
 enthusiasm. "I have been meaning to write to you for days — 
 care of your publishers. I wonder if you will ever forgive me! " 
 
 " You had nothing to write to me," she said, striving to speak 
 coldly. 
 
 ''Oh yes, I had!" he protested. 
 
 She shook her head. 
 
 "Our journalistic relations are over — there were no others." 
 
 " Oh ! " he said reproachfully, feeling his heart grow chill. 
 " Surely we Avere friends? " 
 
 She did not answer. 
 
 " I wanted to write and tell you how much," he began desper- 
 ately, then stammered, and ended — "how much I liked Mor- 
 decai Josephsy 
 
 This time the reproachful "Oh!" came from her lips. "I 
 thought better of you," she said. "You didn't say that in The 
 Flag of JudaJi ; writing it privately to me wouldn't do me any 
 good in any case " 
 
 He felt miserable ; from the crude standpoint of facts, there 
 was no answer to give. He gave none. 
 
 " I suppose it is all about now ? " she went on, seeing him 
 silent. 
 
 "Pretty well," he answered, understanding the question. 
 Then, with an indignant accent, he said, " Mrs. Goldsmith tells 
 everybody she found it out, and sent you away." 
 
 " I am glad she says that," she remarked enigmatically. 
 "And, naturally, everybody detests me?" 
 
 2M 
 
630 GRANDCHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 " Not everybody/' he began threateningly. 
 
 " Don't let us stand on the steps/' she interrupted. '' People 
 will be looking at us." They moved slowly downwards, and 
 into the hot, bustling streets. "Why are you not at the Flag? 
 I thought this was your busy day." She did not add, " And so 
 I ventured to the Museum, knowing there was no chance of your 
 turning up ; " but such was the fact. 
 
 "I am not the editor any longer," he replied. 
 
 "Not?" She almost came to a stop. "So much for my criti- 
 cal faculty ; I could have sworn to your hand in every num- 
 ber." 
 
 " Your critical faculty equals your creative," he began. 
 
 "Journalism has taught you sarcasm." 
 
 "No, no! please do not be so unkind. I spoke in earnestness. 
 I have only just been dismissed." 
 
 "Dismissed!" she echoed incredulously. "I thought the 
 Flag was your own?" 
 
 He grew troubled. "I bought it — but for another. We — 
 he — has dispensed with my services." 
 
 "Oh, how shameful!" 
 
 The latent sympathy of her indignation cheered him again. 
 
 "I am not son-y," he said. "I'm afraid I really was outgrow- 
 ing its original platform." 
 
 "What?" she asked, with a note of mockery in her voice. 
 " You have left off being orthodox ? " 
 
 " I don't say that. It seems to me, rather, that I have come 
 to understand I never was orthodox in the sense that the ortho- 
 dox understand the word. I had never come into contact with 
 them before. I never reahzed how unfair orthodox writers are to 
 Judaism, But I do not abate one word of what I have ever said 
 or written, except, of course, on questions of scholarship, which 
 are always open to revision.*' 
 
 "But what is to become of me — of my conversion?" she said, 
 with mock piteousness. 
 
 "You need no conversion!" he answered passionately, aban- 
 doning without a twinge all those criteria of Judaism for which he 
 had fought with Strelitski. " You are a Jewess not only in blood, 
 
LOVE'S TEMPTATION. 531 
 
 but in spirit. Deny it as you may, you have all tiie Jewish ideals, 
 — they are implied in your attack on our society." 
 
 She shook her head obstinately. 
 
 " You read all that into me, as you read your modern thought 
 into the old naive books.'" 
 
 " I read what is in you. Your soul is in the right, whatever 
 your brain says." He went on, almost to echo Strelitski's words, 
 " Selfishness is the only real atheism ; aspiration, unselfishness, 
 the only real religion. In the language of our Hillel, this is the 
 text of the Law ; the rest is commentary. You and I are at one 
 in believing that, despite all and after all, the world turns on 
 righteousness, on justice " — his voice became a whisper — " on 
 love." 
 
 The old thrill went through her, as when first they met. Once 
 again the universe seemed bathed in holy joy. But she shook 
 off the spell almost angrily. Her face was definitely set towards 
 the life of the New World. Why should he disturb her anew? 
 
 "Ah, well, Fm glad you allow me a little goodness," she said 
 sarcastically. "It is quite evident how you have drifted from 
 orthodoxy. Strange result of The Flag of Judah ! Started to 
 convert me, it has ended by alienating you — its editor — from 
 the true faith. Oh, the irony of circumstance! But don't look 
 so glum. It has fulfilled its mission all the same ; it /las con- 
 verted me — I will confess it to you." Her face grew grave, her 
 tones earnest. " So 1 haven't an atom of sympathy with your 
 broader attitude. I am full of longing for the old impossible 
 Judaism. " 
 
 His face took on a look of anxious solicitude. He was uncer- 
 tain whether she spoke ironically or seriously. Only one thing 
 was certain — that she was slipping from him again. She seemed 
 so complex, paradoxical, elusive — and yet growing every mo- 
 ment more dear and desirable. 
 
 "Where are you living?" he asked abruptly 
 
 " It doesn't matter where," she answered. " I sail for America 
 in three weeks." 
 
 The world seemed suddenly empty. It was hopeless, then — 
 she was almost in his grasp, yet he could not hold her. Some 
 
 A 
 
532 GRANDCHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 greater force was sweeping her into strange alien solitudes. A 
 storm of protest raged in his heart — all he had meant to say to 
 her rose to his lips, but he only said, " Must you go?" 
 
 " I must. My little sister marries. I have timed my visit so 
 as to arrive just for the wedding — like a fairy godmother." She 
 smiled wistfully. 
 
 " Then you will live with your people, I suppose ? " 
 
 "I suppose so. I dare say I shall become quite good again. 
 Ah, your new Judaisms will never appeal like the old, with all its 
 imperfections. They will never keep the race together through 
 shine and shade as that did. They do but stave off the inevi- 
 table dissolution. It is beautiful — that old childlike faith in the 
 pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night, that patient 
 waiting through the centuries for the Messiah who even to you, 
 I dare say, is a mere symbol." Again the wistful look lit up her 
 eyes. "That's what you rich people will never understand — it 
 doesn't seem to go with dinners in seven courses, somehow." 
 
 " Oh, but I do understand," he protested. " It's what I told 
 Strelitski, who is all for intellect in religion. He is going to 
 America, too," he said, with a sudden pang of jealous appre- 
 hension. 
 
 "On a holiday?" 
 
 " No ; he is going to resign his ministry here." 
 
 "What! Has he got a better offer from America? " 
 
 "Still so cruel to him," he said reprovingly. "He is resign- 
 ing for conscience' sake." 
 
 "After all these years?" she queried sarcastically. 
 
 "Miss Ansell, you wrong him! He was not happy in his 
 position. You were right so far. But he cannot endure his 
 shackles any longer. And it is you who have inspired him to 
 break them " 
 
 " I ? " she exclaimed, startled. 
 
 " Yes, I told him why you had left Mrs. Henry Goldsmith's — 
 it seemed to act like an electrical stimulus. Then and there he 
 made me write a paragraph announcing his resignation. It will 
 appear to-morrow." 
 
 Esther's eyes filled with soft light. She walked on in silence : 
 
LOVE'S TEMPTATION. 533 
 
 then, noticing she had automatically walked too much in the 
 direction of her place of concealment, she came to an abrupt 
 stop. 
 
 "We must part here/' she said. "If I ever come across my 
 old shepherd in America, I will be nicer to him. It is really 
 quite heroic of him — you must have exaggerated my own petty 
 sacrifice alarmingly if it really supplied him with inspiration. 
 What is he going to do in America?" 
 
 " To preach a universal Judaism. He is a born idealist ; his 
 ideas have always such a magnificent sweep. Years ago he 
 wanted all the Jews to return to Palestine." 
 
 Esther smiled faintly, not at Strelitski, but at Raphael's call- 
 ing another man an idealist. She had never yet done justice to 
 the strain of common-sense that saved him from being a great 
 man ; he and the new Strelitski were of one breed to her. 
 
 " He will make Jews no happier and Christians no wiser," she 
 said sceptically. " The great populations will sweep on, as little 
 affected by the Jews as this crowd by you and me. The world 
 will not go back on itself — rather will Christianity transform 
 itself and take the credit. We are such a handful of outsiders. 
 Judaism — old or new — is a forlorn hope." 
 
 " The forlorn hope will yet save the world," he answered 
 quietly, "but it has first to be saved to the world." 
 
 " Be happy in your hope," she said gently. " Good-bye." 
 She held out her little hand. He had no option but to take it. 
 
 " But we are not going to part like this," he said desperately. 
 " I shall see you again before you go to America? " 
 
 "No, why should you?" 
 
 " Because I love you," rose to his lips. But the avowal seemed 
 too plump. He prevaricated by retorting, " Why should I not? " 
 
 " Because I fear you," was in her heart, but nothing rose to her 
 lips. He looked into her eyes to read an answer there, but she 
 dropped them. He saw his opportunity. 
 
 " Why should I not ? " he repeated. 
 
 " Your time is valuable," she said faintly. 
 
 "I could not spend it better than with you," he answered 
 boldly. 
 
534 GRANDCHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 "Please don't insist," she said in distress. 
 
 " But I shall ; I am your friend. So far as I know, you are 
 lonely. If you are bent upon going away, why deny me the 
 pleasure of the society I am about to lose for ever? " 
 
 "Oh, how can you call it a pleasure — such poor melancholy 
 company as I am ! " 
 
 " Such poor melancholy company that I came expressly to 
 seek it, for some one told me you were at the Museum. Such 
 poor melancholy company that if I am robbed of it life will be a 
 blank." 
 
 He had not let go her hand ; his tones were low and passion-^ 
 ate ; the heedless traffic of the sultry London street was all 
 about them. 
 
 Esther trembled from head to foot ; she could not look at 
 him. There was no mistaking his meaning now ; her breast 
 was a whirl of delicious pain. 
 
 But in proportion as the happiness at her beck and call dazzled 
 her, so she recoiled from it. Bent on self-effacement, attuned to 
 the peace of despair, she almost resented the solicitation to be 
 happy ; she had suff'ered so much that she had grown to think 
 suffering her natural element, out of which she could not breathe ; 
 she was almost in love with misery. And in so sad a world was 
 there not something ignoble about happiness, a seltish aloofness 
 from the life of humanity? And, illogically blent with this ques- 
 tioning, and strengthening her recoil, was an obstinate conviction 
 that there could never be happiness for her, a being of ignomini- 
 ous birth, without roots in life, futile, shadowy, out of relation to 
 the tangible solidities of ordinary existence. To offer her a 
 warm fireside seemed to be to tempt her to be false to something 
 — she knew not what. Perhaps it was because the warm fireside 
 was in the circle she had quitted, and her heart was yet bitter 
 against it, finding no palliative even in the thought of a trium- 
 phant return. She did not belong to it ; she was not of Raphael's 
 world. But she felt grateful to the point of tears for his incom- 
 prehensible love for a plain, penniless, low-born girl. Surely, it 
 was only his chivalry. Other men had not found her attractive. 
 Sidney had not ; Levi only fancied himself in love. And yet 
 
LOVE'S TEMPTATION. 535 
 
 beneath all her humility was a sense of being loved for the best 
 in her, for the hidden qualities Raphael alone had the insight to 
 divine. She could never think so meanly of herself or of hu- 
 manity again. He had helped and strengthened her for her 
 lonely future ; the remembrance of him would always be an 
 inspiration, and a reminder of the nobler side of human nature. 
 
 All this contradictory medley of thought and feeling occupied 
 but a few seconds of consciousness. She answered him without 
 any perceptible pause, lightly enough. 
 
 " Really, Mr. Leon, I don't expect you to say such things. 
 Why should we be so conventional, you and I ? How- can your 
 life be a blank, with Judaism yet to be saved?" 
 
 " Who am I to save Judaism ? I want to save you," he said 
 passionately. 
 
 '' What a descent ! For heaven's sake, stick to your earlier 
 ambition! " 
 
 ''■ No, the two are one to me. Somehow you seem to stand 
 for Judaism, too. I cannot disentwine my hopes ; I have come 
 to conceive your life as an allegory of Judaism, the offspring of 
 a great and tragic past with the germs of a rich blossoming, yet 
 wasting with an inward canker I have grown to think of its 
 future as somehow bound up with yours. I want to see your 
 eyes laughing, the shadows lifted from your brow ; I want to 
 see you face life courageously, not in passionate revolt nor in 
 passionless despair, but in faith and hope and the joy that 
 springs from them. I want you to seek peace, not in a despair- 
 ing surrender of the intellect to the faith of childhood, but in 
 that faith intellectually justified. And while I want to help you, 
 and to fill your life with the sunshine it needs, I want you to help 
 me, to inspire me when I falter, to complete my life, to make me 
 happier than I had ever dreamed. Be my wife, Esther. Let me 
 save you from yourself." 
 
 '• Let me save you from yourself, Raphael. Is it wise to w^ed 
 with the gray spirit of the Ghetto that doubts itself? " 
 
 And like a spirit she glided from his grasp and disappeared in 
 the crowd. 
 
536 GRANDCHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 THE PRODIGAL SON 
 
 The New Year dawned upon the Ghetto, heralded by a month 
 of special matins and the long-sustained note of the ram's horn. 
 It was in the midst of the Ten Days of Repentance which find 
 their awful climax in the Day of Atonement that a strange letter 
 for Hannah came to startle the breakfast-table at Reb ShemuePs. 
 Hannah read it with growing pallor and perturbation. 
 
 "What is the matter, my dear?^' asked the Reb, anxiously. 
 
 " Oh, father,*' she cried, '■- read this! Bad news of Levi." 
 
 A spasm of pain contorted the old man's furrowed counte- 
 nance. 
 
 '• Mention not his name!" he said harshly " He is dead.'' 
 
 " He may be by now! " Hannah exclaimed agitatedly. " You 
 were right, Esther. He did join a strolling company, and now 
 he is laid up with typhoid in the hospital in Stockbridge. One 
 of his friends writes to tell us. He must have caught it in one 
 of those insanitary dressing-rooms we were reading about." 
 
 Esther trembled all over. The scene in the garret wlien the 
 fatal telegram came announcing Benjamin's illness had never 
 faded from her mind. She had an instant conviction that it 
 was all over with poor Levi. 
 
 "My poor lamb!" cried the Rebbitzin, the coffee-cup drop- 
 ping from her nerveless hand. 
 
 " Simcha," said Reb Shemuel sternly, " calm thyself; we have 
 no son to lose. The Holy One — blessed be He! — hath taken 
 him from us. The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh. Blessed 
 be the name of the Lord." 
 
 Hannah rose. Her face was white and resolute. She moved 
 towards the door. 
 
 "Whither goest thou?" inquired her father in German. 
 
 " I am going to my room, to put on my hat and jacket," replied 
 Hannah quietly. 
 
 "Whither goest thou?" repeated Reb Shemuel. 
 
THE PRODIGAL SON. 637 
 
 "To Stockbridge. Mother, you and I must go at once." 
 
 The Reb sprang to his feet. His brow was dark ; his eyes 
 gleamed with anger and pain. 
 
 " Sit down and finish thy breakfast/' he said. 
 
 " How can I eat? Levi is dying/' said Hannah, in low, firm 
 tones. "Will you come, mother, or must I go alone? " 
 
 The Rebbitzin began to wring her hands and weep. Esther 
 stole gently to Hannah's side and pressed the poor girl's hand. 
 " You and I will go," her clasp said. 
 
 "Hannah!" said Reb Shemuel. "What madness is this? 
 Dost thou think thy mother will obey thee rather than her 
 husband? " 
 
 "Levi is dying. It is our duty to go to him." Hannah's 
 gentle face was rigid. But there was exaltation rather than defi- 
 ance in the eyes. 
 
 " It is not the duty of women," said Reb Shemuel harshly. 
 " I will go to Stockbridge. If he dies (God have mercy upon 
 his soul!) 1 will see that he is buried among his own people. 
 Thou knowest women go not to funerals. " He reseated himself 
 at the table, pushing aside his scarcely touched meal, and began 
 saying the grace. Dominated by his will and by old habit, the 
 three trembling women remained in reverential silence. 
 
 " The Lord will give strength to His people ; the Lord will 
 bless His people with Peace," concluded the old man in unfalter- 
 ing accents. He rose from the table and strode to the door, 
 stern and erect "Thou wilt remain here, Hannah, and thou, 
 Simcha," he said. In the passage his shoulders relaxed their 
 stiiiness, so that the long snow-white beard drooped upon his 
 breast. The three women looked at one another. 
 
 " Mother," said Hannah, passionately breaking the silence, 
 "are you going to stay here while Levi is dying in a strange 
 town ? " 
 
 " My husband wills it," said the Rebbitzin, sobbing. " Levi is 
 a sinner in Israel. Thy father will not see him ; he will not go to 
 him till he is dead." 
 
 " Oh yes, surely he will," said Esther. " But be comforted. 
 Levi is young and strong. Let us hope he will pull through." 
 
538 GRANDCHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 "No, no!" moaned the Rebbitzin. "He will die, and my 
 husband will but read the psalms at his death-bed. He will not 
 forgive him ; he will not speak to him of his mother and sister." 
 
 " Let 7ne go. I will give him your messages," said Esther. 
 
 "No, no," interrupted Hannah. "What are you to him? 
 Why should you risk infection for our sakes?" 
 
 " Go, Hannah, but secretly," said the Rebbitzin in a wailing 
 whisper. " Let not thy father see thee till thou arrive ; then he 
 will not send thee back. Tell Levi that I — oh, my poor child, 
 my poor lamb! " Sobs overpowered her speech. 
 
 " No, mother," said Hannah quietly, " thou and I shall go. I 
 will tell father we are accompanying him." 
 
 She left the room, while the Rebbitzin fell weeping and terri- 
 fied into a chair, and Esther vainly endeavored to soothe her. 
 The Reb was changing his coat when Hannah knocked at the 
 door and called " Father, " 
 
 " Speak not to me, Hannah," answered the Reb, roughly. " It 
 is useless." Then, as if repentant of his tone, he threw open the 
 door, and passed his great trembling hand lovingly over her hair. 
 "Thou art a good daughter," he said tenderly. "Forget that 
 thou hast had a brother." 
 
 " But how can I forget? " she answered him in his own idiom. 
 "Why should I forget? What hath he done? " 
 
 He ceased to smooth her hair — his voice grew sad and stern. 
 
 " He hath profaned the Name. He hath lived like a heathen ; 
 he dieth like a heathen now. His blasphemy was a by-word in 
 the congregation. I alone knew it not till last Passover. He 
 hath brought down my gray hairs in sorrow to the grave." 
 
 " Yes, father, I know," said Hannah, more gently. " But he 
 is not all to blame! " 
 
 " Thou meanest that I am not guiltless ; that I should have 
 kept him at my side? " said the Reb, his voice faltering a little. 
 
 " No, father, not that! Levi could not always be a baby. He 
 had to walk alone some day." 
 
 "Yes, and did I not teach him to walk alone? " asked the Reb 
 eagerly. " My God, thou canst not say I did not teach him Thy 
 Law, day and night." He uplifted his eyes in anguished appeal. 
 
THE PRODIGAL SON. 539 
 
 " Yes, but he is not all to blame,'" she repeated. " Thy teach- 
 ing did not reach his soul ; he is of another generation, the air is 
 different, his life was cast amid conditions for which the Law 
 doth not allow." 
 
 " Hannah ! '' Reb ShemuePs accents became harsh and chiding 
 again. "What sayest thou? The Law of Moses is eternal; it 
 will never be changed. Levi knew God's commandments, but 
 he followed the desire of his own heart and his own eyes. If 
 God's Word were obeyed, he should have been stoned with 
 stones. But Heaven itself hath punished him ; he will die, for 
 it is ordained that whosoever is stubborn and disobedient, that 
 soul shall surely be cut off" from among his people. ^ Keep My 
 commandments, that thy days may be long in the land,' God 
 Himself hath said it. Is it not written : ' Rejoice, O young man, 
 in thy youth, and let thy heart cheer thee in the days of thy 
 youth, and walk in the ways of thine heart and in the sight of 
 thine eyes ; but know thou that for all these things the Lord 
 will bring thee into judgment'? But thou, my Hannah," he 
 started caressing her hair again, ''art a good Jewish maiden. 
 Between Levi and thee there is naught in common. His touch 
 would profane thee. Sadden not thy innocent eyes with the 
 sight of his end. Think of him as one who died in boyhood. 
 My God! why didst thou not take him then? " He turned away, 
 stifling a sob. 
 
 " Father," she put her hand on his shoulder, "we will go with 
 thee to Stockbridge — I and the mother." 
 
 He faced her again, stern and rigid. 
 
 " Cease thy entreaties. I will go alone." 
 
 "No, we will all go." 
 
 " Hannah," he said, his voice tremulous with pain and aston- 
 ishment, "dost thou, too, set light by thy father?" 
 
 " Yes," she cried, and there was no answering tremor in her 
 voice. "Now thou knowest! I am not a good Jewish maiden. 
 Levi and I are brother and sister. His touch profane me, for- 
 sooth! " She laughed bitterly. 
 
 "Thou wilt take this journey though I forbid thee?" he cried 
 in acrid accents, still mingled with surprise. 
 
540 GRANDCHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 " Yes ; would I had taken the journey thou wouldst have for- 
 bidden ten years ago!" 
 
 " What journey? thou talkest madness." 
 
 " I talk truth. Thou hast forgotten David Brandon ; I have 
 not. Ten years last Passover I arranged to fly with him, to 
 marry him, in defiance of the Law and thee." 
 
 A new pallor overspread the Reb's countenance, already ashen. 
 He trembled and almost fell backwards. 
 
 " But thou didst not? " he whispered hoarsely. 
 
 " I did not, I know not why," she said sullenly ; " else thou 
 wouldst never have seen me again. It may be I respected thy 
 religion, although thou didst not dream what was in my mind. 
 But thy religion shall not keep me from this journey." 
 
 The Reb had hidden his face in his hands. His lips were 
 moving : was it in grateful prayer, in self-reproach, or merely 
 in nervous trembling? Hannah never knew. Presently the Reb's 
 arms dropped, great tears rolled down towards the white beard. 
 When he spoke, his tones were hushed as with awe. 
 
 ''This man — tell me, my daughter, thou lovest him still?" 
 
 She shrugged her shoulders with a gesture of reckless despair. 
 
 " What does it matter? My life is but a shadow." 
 
 The Reb took her to his breast, though she remained stony to 
 his touch, and laid his wet face against her burning cheeks. 
 
 "My child, my poor Hannah I I thought God had sent thee 
 peace ten years ago ; that He had rewarded thee for thy obedi- 
 ence to His Law." 
 
 She drew her face away from his. 
 
 " It was not His Law ; it was a miserable juggling with texts. 
 Thou alone interpretedst God's law thus. No one knew of the 
 matter." 
 
 He could not argue ; the breast against which \\z held her was 
 shaken by a tempest of grief, which swept away all save human 
 remorse, human love. 
 
 "My daughter," he sobbed, "I have ruined thy life!" After 
 an agonized pause, he said : " Tell me, Hannah, is there nothing 
 I can do to make atonement to thee?" 
 
 " Only one thing, father," she articulated chokingly ; " forgive 
 Levi." ' 
 
THE PRODIGAL SON. 541 
 
 There was a moment of solemn silence. Then the Reb spake. 
 
 " Tell thy mother to put on her things and take what she 
 needs for the journey. Perchance we may be away for days." 
 
 They mingled their tears in sweet reconciliation. Presently, 
 the Reb said : 
 
 '' Go now to thy mother, and see also that the boy's room be 
 made ready as of old. Perchance God will hear my prayer, and 
 he will yet be restored to us." 
 
 A new peace fell upon Hannah's soul. '' My sacrifice was not 
 in vain after all," she thought, with a throb of happiness that was 
 almost exultation. 
 
 But Levi never came back. The news of his death arrived on 
 the eve of Yoni Kippiir^ the Day of Atonement, in a letter to 
 Esther who had been left in charge of the house. 
 
 " He died quietly at the end," Hannah wrote, " happy in the 
 consciousness of father's forgiveness, and leaning trustfully upon 
 his interposition with Heaven ; but he had delirious moments, 
 during which he raved painfully. The poor boy was in great 
 fear of death, moaning prayers that he might be spared till after 
 Yoni Kippur, when he would be cleansed of sin, and babbling 
 about serpents that would twine themselves round his arm and 
 brow, like the phylacteries he had not worn. He made father 
 repeat his ' Verse ' to him over and over again, so that he might 
 remember his name when the angel of the grave asked it ; and 
 borrowed father's phylacteries, the headpiece of which was much 
 too large for him with his shaven crown. When he had them 
 on, and the Talith round him, he grew easier, and began mur- 
 muring the death-bed prayers with father. One of them runs : 
 ' O may my death be an atonement for all the sins, iniquities and 
 transgressions of which I have been guilty against Thee!' I 
 trust it may be so indeed. It seems so hard for a young man 
 full of life and high spirits to be cut down, while the wretched 
 are left alive. Your name was often on his lips. I was glad to 
 learn he thought so much of you. ' Be sure to give Esther my 
 love,' he said almost with his last breath, 'and ask her to forgive 
 me.' I know not if you have anything to forgive, or whether 
 this was delirium. He looks quite calm now — but oh! so worn. 
 
642 GRANDCHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 They have closed the eyes. The beard he shocked father so by 
 shaving off, has sprouted scrubbily during his ilhiess. On the 
 dead face it seems a mockery, like the Talith and phylacteries 
 that have not been removed.'" 
 
 A phrase of Leonard James vibrated in Esther's ears : " If the 
 chappies could see me! " 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 HOPES AND DREAMS. 
 
 The morning of the Great White Fast broke bleak and gray. 
 Esther, alone in the house save for the servant, wandered from 
 room to room in dull misery. The day before had been almost 
 a feast-day in the Ghetto — everybody providing for the mor- 
 row. Esther had scarcely eaten anything. Nevertheless she 
 was fasting, and would fast for over twenty-four hours, till the 
 night fell. She knew not why. Her record was unbroken, and 
 instinct resented a breach now. She had always fasted — even 
 the Henry Goldsmiths fasted, and greater than the Henry Gold- 
 smiths! Q. C.'s fasted, and peers, and prize-fighters and actors. 
 And yet Esther, like many far more pious persons, did not think 
 of her sins for a moment. She thought of everything but them 
 — of the bereaved family in that strange provincial town ; of her 
 own family in that strange distant land. Well, she would soon 
 be with them now. Her passage was booked — a steerage pas- 
 sage it was, not because she could not afford cabin fare, but from 
 her morbid impulse to identify herself with poverty. The same 
 impulse led her to choose a vessel in which a party of Jewish 
 pauper immigrants was being shipped farther West. She thought 
 also of Dutch Debby, w'ith whom she had spent the previous 
 evening ; and of Raphael Leon, who had sent her, via the pub- 
 lishers, a letter which she could not trust herself to answer 
 cruelly, and which she deemed it most prudent to leave unan- 
 swered. Uncertain of her powers of resistance, she scarcely 
 ventured outside the house for fear of his stumbling across her. 
 
HOPES AND DREAMS. 543 
 
 Happily, every day diminished tlie cliance of her whereabouts 
 leaking out through some unsuspected channel. 
 
 About noon, her restlessness carried her into the streets. 
 There was a festal solemnity about the air. Women and chil- 
 dren, not at synagogue, showed themselves at the doors, pranked 
 in their best. Indifferently pious young men sought relief from 
 the ennui of the day-long service in lounging about for a breath 
 of fresh air ; some even strolled towards the Strand, and turned 
 into the National Gallery, satisfied to reappear for the twilight 
 service. On all sides came the fervent roar of prayer which 
 indicated a synagogue or a Chevra/i, the number of places of 
 worship having been indefinitely increased to accommodate those 
 who made their appearance for this occasion only. 
 
 Everywhere friends and neighbors were asking one another 
 how they were bearing the fast, exhibiting their white tongues 
 and generally comparing symptoms, the physical aspects of the 
 Day of Atonement more or less completely diverting attention 
 from the spiritual. Smelling-salts passed from hand to hand, 
 and men explained to one another that, but for the deprivation 
 of their cigars, they could endure Vcvn Kippur with complacency. 
 
 Esther passed the Ghetto school, within which free services 
 were going on even in the playground, poor Russians and Poles, 
 fanatically observant, foregathering with lax fishmongers and 
 welshers ; and without which hulking young men hovered un- 
 easily, feeling too out of tune with religion to go in, too con- 
 scious of the terrors of the day to stay entirely away. From 
 the interior came from sunrise to nightfall a throbbing thunder 
 of supplication, now pealing in passionate outcry, now subsid- 
 ing to a low rumble. The sounds of prayer that pervaded the 
 Ghetto, and burst upon her at every turn, wrought upon Esther 
 strangely ; all her soul went out in sympathy with these yearn- 
 ing outbursts ; she stopped every now and then to listen, as in 
 those far-off days when the Sons of the Covenant drew her with 
 their melancholy cadences. 
 
 At last, moved by an irresistible instinct, she crossed the 
 threshold of a large Chevrah she had known in her girlhood, 
 mounted the stairs and entered the female compartment without 
 
544 GRANDCHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 hostile challenge. The reek of many breaths and candles nearly 
 drove her back, but she pressed forwards towards a remembered 
 window, through a crowd of be-wigged women, shaking their 
 bodies fervently to and fro^ 
 
 This room had no connection with the men's ; it was simply 
 the room above part of theirs, and the declamations of the un- 
 seen cantor came but faintly through the flooring, though the 
 clamor of the general masculine chorus kept the pious an cour- 
 ani with their husbands. When weather or the whims of the 
 more important ladies permitted, the window at the end was 
 opened ; it gave upon a little balcony, below which the men's 
 chamber projected considerably, having been built out into 
 the back yard. When this window was opened simultaneously 
 with the skylight in the men's synagogue, the fervid roulades 
 of the cantor were as audible to the women as to their masters. 
 
 Esther had always affected the balcony ; there the air w^as 
 comparatively fresh, and on fine days there was a glimpse of 
 blue sky, and a perspective of sunny red tiles, where brown 
 birds fluttered and cats lounged and little episodes arose to 
 temper the tedium of endless invocation ; and farther off there 
 was a back view of a nunnery, with visions of placid black- 
 hooded faces at windows ; and from the distance came a pleas- 
 ant drone of monosyllabic spelling from fresh young voices, to 
 relieve the ear from the monotony of long stretches of meaning- 
 less mumbling. 
 
 Here, lost in a sweet melancholy, Esther dreamed away the 
 long gray day. only vaguely conscious of the stages of the 
 service — morning dovetailing into afternoon service, and after- 
 noon into evening ; of the heavy-jowled woman behind her 
 reciting a jargon-version of the Atonement liturgy to a devout 
 coterie ; of the prostrations full-length on the floor, and the 
 series of impassioned sermons ; of the interminably rhyming 
 poems, and the acrostics with their recurring burdens shouted 
 in devotional frenzy, voice rising above voice as in emulation, 
 with special staccato phrases flung heavenwards ; of the wailing 
 confessions of communal sin, with their accompaniment of sobs 
 and tears and howls and grimaces and clenchings of palms 
 
HOPES AND DREAMS. 545 
 
 and beatings of the breast. She was lapped in a great ocean 
 of sound that broI<:e upon her consciousness like the waves upon 
 a beach, now with a cooing murmur, now with a majestic crash, 
 followed by a long receding moan. She lost herself in the roar, 
 in its barren sensuousness, while the leaden sky grew duskier 
 and the twilight crept on, and the awful hour drew nigh when 
 God would seal what He had written, and the annual scrolls of 
 destiny would be closed, immutable. She saw them looming 
 mystically through the skylight, the swaying forms below, in 
 their white grave-clothes, oscillating weirdly backwards and 
 forwards, bowed as by a mighty wind. 
 
 Suddenly there fell a vast silence ; even from without no 
 sound came to break the awful stillness. It was as if all creation 
 paused to hear a pregnant word. 
 
 "Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One!" sang 
 the cantor frenziedly. 
 
 And all the ghostly congregation answered with a great cry, 
 closing their eyes and rocking frantically to and fro : 
 
 " Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One!" 
 
 They seemed like a great army of the sheeted dead risen to 
 testify to the Unity. The magnetic tremor that ran through the 
 synagogue thrilled the lonely girl to the core ; once again her 
 dead self woke, her dead ancestors that would not be shaken 
 off lived and moved in her. She was sucked up into the great 
 wave of passionate faith, and from her lips came, in rapturous 
 surrender to an overmastering impulse, the half-hysterical pro- 
 testation : 
 
 " Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One! " 
 
 And then in the brief instant while the congregation, with 
 ever-ascending rhapsody, blessed God till the climax came with 
 the sevenfold declaration, " the Lord, He is God," the whole 
 history of her strange, unhappy race flashed through her mind 
 in a whirl of resistless emotion. She was overwhelmed by the 
 thought of its sons in every corner of the earth proclaiming to 
 the sombre twilight sky the belief for which its generations had 
 lived and died — the Jews of Russia sobbing it forth in their 
 pale of enclosure, the Jews of Morocco in their mellah, and of 
 
 2 N 
 
546 GRANDCHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 South Africa in their tents by the diamond mines ; the Jews 
 of the New World in great free cities, in Canadian backwoods, 
 in South American savannahs ; the AustraHan Jews on the 
 sheep-farms and the gold-fields and in the mushroom cities ; 
 the Jews of Asia in their reeking quarters begirt by barbarian 
 populations. The shadow of a large mysterious destiny seemed 
 to hang over these poor superstitious zealots, whose lives she 
 knew so well in all their everyday prose, and to invest the un- 
 conscious shuffling sons of the Ghetto with something of tragic 
 grandeur. The gray dusk palpitated with floating shapes of 
 prophets and martyrs, scholars and sages and poets, full of a 
 yearning love and pity, lifting hands of benediction. By what 
 great high-roads and queer by-ways of history had they travelled 
 hither, these wandering Jews, '"sated with contempt," these 
 shrewd eager fanatics, these sensual ascetics, these human para- 
 doxes, adaptive to every environment, energizing in every field 
 of activity, omnipresent like some great natural force, inde- 
 structible and almost inconvertible, surviving — with the in- 
 curable optimism that overlay all their poetic sadness — Babylon 
 and Carthage, Greece and Rome ; involuntarily financing the 
 Crusades, outliving the Inquisition, illusive of all baits, unshaken 
 by all persecutions — at once the greatest and meanest of races? 
 Had the Jew come so far only to break down at last, sinking in 
 morasses of modern doubt, and irresistibly dragging down with 
 him the Christian and the Moslem ; or was he yet fated to out- 
 last them both, in continuous testimony to a hand moulding 
 incomprehensibly the life of humanity? Would Israel develop 
 into the sacred phalanx, the nobler brotherhood that Raphael 
 Leon had dreamed of, or would the race that had first proclaimed 
 — through Moses for the ancient world, through Spinoza for the 
 modern — 
 
 " One God, one Law, one Element," 
 
 become, in the larger, wilder dream of the Russian idealist, the 
 main factor in 
 
 " One far-off divine event 
 To which the whole Creation moves" ? 
 
HOPES AND DREAMS. 547 
 
 The roar dwindled to a solemn silence, as though in answer to 
 her questionings. Then the ram's horn shrilled — a stern long- 
 drawn-out note, that rose at last into a mighty peal of sacred 
 jubilation. The Atonement was complete. 
 
 The crowd bore Esther downstairs and into the blank indiffer- 
 ent street. But the long exhausting fast, the fetid atmosphere, 
 tlie strain upon her emotions, had overtaxed her beyond endur- 
 ance. Up to now the frenzy of the service had sustained her, 
 but as she stepped across the threshold on to the pavement she 
 staggered and fell. One of the men pouring out from the lower 
 synagogue caught her in his arms. It was Strelitski. 
 
 ********** 
 
 A group of three stood on the saloon deck of an outward- 
 bound steamer. Raphael Leon was bidding farewell to the man 
 he reverenced without discipleship, and the woman he loved 
 without blindness. 
 
 "Look!" he said, pointing compassionately to the wretched 
 throng of Jewish emigrants huddling on the lower deck and scat- 
 tered about the gangway amid jostling sailors and stevedores 
 and bales and coils of rope ; the men in peaked or fur caps, the 
 women with shawls and babies, some gazing upwards with 
 lacklustre eyes, the majority brooding, despondent, apathetic. 
 " How could either of you have borne the sights and smells of 
 the steerage? You are a pair of visionaries. You could not 
 have breathed a day in that society. Look! " 
 
 Strelitski looked at Esther instead ; perhaps he was thinking 
 he could have breathed anywhere in her society — nay, breathed 
 even more freely in the steerage than in the cabin if he had sailed 
 away without telling Raphael that he had found her. 
 
 " You forget a common impulse took us into such society on 
 the Day of Atonement," he answered after a moment. '• You 
 forget we are both Children of the Ghetto." 
 
 " I can never forget that," said Raphael fervently, " else Esther 
 would at this moment be lost amid the human flotsam and 
 jetsam below, sailing away without you to protect her, without 
 me to look forward to her return, without Addie''s bouquet to 
 assure her of a sister's love " 
 
548 GRANDCHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. 
 
 He took Esthers little hand once more. It lingered confid- 
 ingly in his own. There was no ring of betrothal upon it, nor 
 would be, till Rachel Ansell in America, and Addie Leon in Eng- 
 land, should have passed under the wedding canopy, and Raphael, 
 whose breast pocket was bulging with a new meerschaum too 
 sacred to smoke, should startle the West End with his eccentric 
 choice, and confinn its impression of his insanity. The trio had 
 said and resaid all they had to tell one another, all the reminders 
 and the recommendations. They stood without speaking now, 
 wrapped in that loving silence which is sweeter tlian speech. 
 
 The sun, which had been shining intermittently, flooded the 
 serried shipping with a burst of golden light, that coaxed the 
 turbid waves to brightness, and cheered the wan emigrants, and 
 made little children leap joyously in their mothers"* arms. The 
 knell of parting sounded insistent. 
 
 " Your allegory seems turning in your favor, Raphael,'' said 
 Esther, with a sudden memory. 
 
 The pensive smile that made her face beautiful lit up the dark 
 eyes. 
 
 "What allegory is that of Raphael's ?"" said Strelitski, reflect- 
 ing her smile on his graver visage. " The long one in his prize 
 poem? '' 
 
 " No," said Raphael, catching the contagious smile. " It is 
 our little secret." 
 
 Strelitski turned suddenly to look at the emigrants. The 
 smile faded from his quivering mouth. 
 
 The last moment had come. Raphael stooped down towards 
 the gentle softly-flushing face, which was raised unhesitatingly 
 to meet his, and their lips met in a first kiss, diviner than it is 
 given most mortals to know — a kiss, sad and sweet, troth and 
 parting in one : Ave et vale, — •' hail and farewell." 
 
 " Good-bye, Strelitski," said Raphael huskily. " Success to 
 your dreams." 
 
 The idealist turned round with a start. His face was bright 
 and resolute ; the black curl streamed buoyantly on the breeze. 
 
 " Good-bye,"" he responded, with a giant's grip of the hand. 
 "Success to your hopes." 
 
HOPES AND DREAMS. 549 
 
 Raphael darted away with his long stride. The sun was still 
 bright, but for a moment everything seemed chill and dim to 
 Esther AnselTs vision. With a sudden fit of nervous foreboding 
 she stretched out her arms towards the vanishing figure of her 
 lover. But she saw him once again in the tender, waving his 
 handl:erchief towards the throbbing vessel that glided with its 
 freight of hopes and dreams across the great waters towards the 
 New World. 
 
GLOSSARY. 
 
 H, = Hebrew. G. = German. 
 
 Gk. = Greek. 
 c. = corrupt. 
 
 R. = Russian. S. = Spanish. 
 
 Achi-nebbich {etymology obscure), 
 Alas, poor thing(s). 
 
 Afikuman {Hebraicized Gk.), por- 
 tion of a Passover cake taken at 
 the end of Sedermeal {q.v.). 
 
 Agadah (//.), narrative portion of 
 the Tahiiud; Passover-eve ritual. 
 
 Amidah (//.), series of Benedictions 
 said standing. 
 
 Arbah Kanfus (//.), lit., four corners ; 
 a garment consisting of two shoul- 
 derstraps supporting a front and 
 back piece with fringes at each 
 corner (Numbers xv. 37-41). 
 
 Ashkenazim (//.), German; hence, 
 also, Russian and Polish Jews. 
 
 Badchan (//.), professional jester, 
 Bensh (?), say grace. 
 Beth Din {H.), court of judgment. 
 Beth Medrash (//.), college. 
 Bube {G.), grandmother. 
 
 Cabbalah (//.), Cabbulah {c), lit., 
 tradition ; mystic lore. 
 
 Callah {H. ), hnde ; Jiancee. 
 
 Chazan (//.), cantor. 
 
 Chevra (//.), small congregation; a 
 society. 
 
 Chine (//.), playful humor; humor- 
 ous anecdote. 
 
 Chocham (//.), wise man. 
 
 Chomutz (//.), leaven. 
 
 Chosan (//.), bridegroom; fiance. 
 
 55 
 
 Chuppah (//.), wedding canopy. 
 Cohen (//.), priest. 
 
 Dayan (//.), rabbi who renders de- 
 cisions. 
 Din (//.), law, decision. 
 Droshes (//.), sermons. 
 
 Epikouros {H. from Gk.), heretic, 
 scoffer; Epicurean. 
 
 Froom (c. G.), pious. 
 
 Gelt (c. G.), money. 
 
 Gematriyah i^Hebraicized Gk.), mys- 
 tic, numerical interpretation of 
 Scripture. 
 
 Gomorah (//.) , part of the Talmud. 
 
 Gonof (//.), thief. 
 
 Goyah (//.), non-Jewess. 
 
 Halacha (//.), legal portion of the 
 Talmud. 
 
 Havdolah {H^, ceremony separating 
 conclusion of Sabbath or Festival 
 from the subsequent days of toil. 
 
 Imbeshreer {c. G. ohne beschreien) , 
 without bewitching; unbeshrewn. 
 
 Kaddish (H.), prayer in praise of 
 God ; specially recited by male 
 mourners. 
 
 Kehillah (//.), congregation. 
 
552 
 
 GLOSSARY. 
 
 Kind, Kinder (G.)i child, children. 
 Kosher (//.), ritually clean. 
 Kotzon (//.), rich man. 
 
 Link (G.), lit., left, i.e. not right; 
 hence, lax, not pious. 
 
 Longe verachum ((?. and c. //.), lit.. 
 The long " and He being merci- 
 ful." A long, extra prayer, said on 
 Mondays and Thursdays. 
 
 Lulov (//.), palm branch dressed 
 with myrtle and willow, and used 
 at the Feast of Tabernacles. 
 
 Maaseh (i¥.), story, tale. 
 
 Machzor (//.), Festival prayer-book. 
 
 Maggid (//.), preacher. 
 
 Mazzoltov (//.), good luck, con- 
 gratulations. 
 
 Megilhih (//.), lit., scroll. The Book 
 of Esther. 
 
 Meshuggah, Meshuggene {^H.^, mad. 
 
 Meshumad (//.), apostate. 
 
 Metsiah (//.), lit., finding; cp. Fr., 
 trouvaille ; bargain. 
 
 Mezuzah (//.), case containing a 
 scroll, with Hebrew verses (Deut- 
 eronomy vi. 4-9, 13-21) affixed to 
 every door-post. 
 
 Midrash (//.), Biblical exposition. 
 
 Mincha (//.), r.fternoon prayer. 
 
 Minyan (//.), quorum often males, 
 over thirteen, necessary for public 
 worship. 
 
 Mishpochah (//.), family. 
 
 Mishna, Mishnayis (//.), collection 
 of the Oral Law. 
 
 Misheberach (//.), synagogal bene- 
 diction. 
 
 Mitzvah (//.), a commandment, i.e. 
 a good deed. 
 
 Mizrach (//.), East; a sacred picture 
 hung on the east wall in the direc- 
 tion of Jerusalem, to which the 
 face is turned in praying. 
 
 Narrischkeit {c. G.), foolishness. 
 
 Nasch {c. G.), pilfer (dainties). 
 
 Nevirah (//.), sin. 
 
 Niddah (//.), Taimudical tractate on 
 
 the purification of women. 
 Nu (/e.), well. 
 
 Olov hasholom {//.), Peace be upon 
 him ! (loosely applied to deceased 
 females also). 
 
 Omer (//.), the seven weeks between 
 Passover and Pentecost. 
 
 Parnass (//.), president of the con- 
 gregation. 
 
 Pesachdik (//.), proper for Passover. 
 
 Pidyun haben (//.), redemption of 
 the first-born son. 
 
 Piyut {^Hebraicized Gk.), liturgical 
 poem. 
 
 Pollack {c. G.), Polish Jew. 
 
 Potch (c. G.), slap. 
 
 Rashi (//.), Rabbi Solomon ben 
 Isaac, whose commentary is often 
 printed under the Hebrew text of 
 the Bible. 
 
 Schlemihl (//.), unlucky, awkward 
 person. 
 
 Schmuck {c. G.), lubberly person. 
 
 Schmull {c. G. sckmollefi), pout, sulk. 
 
 Schnecks (? G. Schnake, gay non- 
 sense), affectations. 
 
 Schnorrer {c. G.), beggar. 
 
 Seder (//.), Passover-eve ceremony. 
 
 Selaim (//.), old Jewish coins. 
 
 Sephardim (//.), Spanish and Portu- 
 guese Jews. 
 
 Shaaloth u tshuvoth (//.), questions 
 and answers ; casuistical treatise. 
 
 Shabbos (//.), Sabbath. 
 
 Shadchan (//.), professional match- 
 maker. 
 
 Shaitcl (c. G.), wig worn by married 
 women. 
 
 Shammos {c. //.), beadle. 
 
GLOSSARY. 
 
 653 
 
 Shass ^H. abbreviation), the six 
 sections of the Talmud. 
 
 Shechitah (//.) , slaughter. 
 
 Shemah beni (//.), Hear, my son! 
 = Dear me 1 
 
 Shemang (//.), confession of the 
 Unity of God. 
 
 Shidduch (//.), match. 
 
 Shiksah (//.), non-Jewish girl. 
 
 Shnodar (//.), offer money to the 
 synagogue. (An extraordinary in- 
 stance of Jewish jargon, — a com- 
 pound Hebrew word meaning 
 "who vows," — being turned into 
 an English verb, and conjugated 
 accordingly, in ed and ing.) 
 
 Shochet (//). official slaughterer. 
 
 Shofar (//.), trumpet of ram's horn, 
 blown during the penitential sea- 
 son. 
 
 Shool {c. G.) , synagogue. 
 
 Shulchan aruch (//.), a sixteenth- 
 century compilation, codifying 
 Jewish law. 
 
 Simchath Torah {H.), festival of the 
 rejoicing of the Law. 
 
 Snoga {S.) , Sephardic synagogue. 
 
 Spiel {G.), play. 
 
 Takif {H.), rich man, swell. 
 
 Taiith (//.), 3- shawl with fringes, worn 
 
 by men during prayer. 
 Tanaim (//.), betrothal contract or 
 
 ceremony. 
 Terah, Torah (.//.), Law of Moses. 
 Tephillin (//.), phylacteries. 
 Tripha (//.), ritually unclean. 
 
 Wurst {G.), sausage. 
 
 Yiddish, Yiddishkeit {c. G.), Jewish, 
 Judaism. 
 
 Yigdal (//.), hymn summarizing the 
 thirteen creeds drawn up by 
 Maimonides. 
 
 Yom Kippur (//.), Day of Atone- 
 ment. 
 
 Yom tof (//.) , lit., good day ; Festival. 
 
 Yontovdik (^hybrid H.), pertaining to 
 the Festival. 
 
 Yosher-Kowach {c. //.), May your 
 strength increase ! = Thank you ; 
 a formula to express gratitude — 
 especially at the end of a reading. 
 
 THE END. 
 
BY THE SAME AUTHOR. 
 
 THE KING OF SCHNORRERS. 
 
 GROTESQUES AND FANTASIES. 
 
 BY 
 
 I. ZANGWILL. 
 Illustrated. 12mo. Cloth. $1.50. 
 
 " He has incarcerated the floating tradition of the Jewish 
 Schnorrer, who is as unique among beggars as Israel among 
 nations." — Hartford Times. 
 
 " Mr. Zangwill has disclosed to us an inviting field never 
 before exploited in fiction, and the sketches he has printed 
 are in a kindly and humorous vein true to life and highly 
 entertaining." — Table Talk. 
 
 " The audacity of this ' King of Schnorrers ' is some- 
 thing unequalled, and it is enhanced by the pithy and 
 original style in which the author writes." — Boston Budget. 
 
 MACMILLAN & CO., 
 
 66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEViT YORK. 
 
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