Children of the Ghetto

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 promoted conversation, and even stocks were discussed in the terrible 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 particular Kaddish if they were mourners, and then thrills of reverence went round the congregation. The social hierarchy was to 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 declaration of the amount was quite exciting for the audience. On Sabbaths and festivals the authorities could not write down these sums, for writing is work 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 Shammos 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 building and ranged on backless benches, and it says much for the authority of the Shammos that not even the Schnorrer contested it. Prayers were shouted rapidly by the congregation, and elaborately sung by the Chazan. The minister was Vox et praeterea nihil. He was the only musical instrument permitted, and on him devolved the whole onus of making the service attractive. He succeeded. He was helped by the sociability of the gathering-for the Synagogue was virtually a Jewish Club, the focus of the sectarian life.

Hard times and bitter had some of the fathers of the Ghetto, 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 content. 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 tremulous chirp. To him came one of the hostlers with insolent beetling brow.

'Any gold lace?' faltered Sleepy Sol.

'Get out!' roared the hostler.

'I'll 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 the 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.

'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 Sol's 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 I'll 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 earnestness, 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 opponent 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 sprawling 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.

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 prepossessing 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 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 stockbrokers, its musicians, chess-players, poets, comic singers, lunatics, saints, publicans, politicians, warriors, poltroons, mathematicians, actors, foreign correspondents, have always been in the first rank. Nihil alienum a se Judaeus putat.

Joe and his friend fell to recalling Dutch Sam's great feats. Each out-vied the other in admiration for the supreme pugilist.