Children of the Ghetto

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 Rabbis 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 ginger-beer bottle.'

'Yes, but why haven't I 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 were 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 often slipped into the truth. He was a real poet with an extraordinary 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 I. 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 greengrocer.

'No, we cannot leave it to the mob, we must settle it beforehand. Shall we say done?'

He laid his finger cajolingly to the side of his nose.

'We shall see,' repeated Guedalyah the greengrocer, impatiently.

'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 enthusiastically. '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 head fixed in the open front of the shop window. It was a narrow dark bearded face distorted with 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 Hamidrash 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 treasurer 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 omniscience, and at the daring and unscientific guesses which the poet offered 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.

'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 grammatically, 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 manuscript, embodying a useless commentary 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 Harrow boy named Raphael Leon, a scion of a wealthy family. The boy had manifested a strange premature interest in Jewish 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 dedication) 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 locksmith, an ex-glazier (Mendel Hyams), a confectioner, a Melammed 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 country 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