Candles in The Night

Candles in the Night:
Jewish Tales by Gentile

Authors
Edited by
Joseph L. Baron
Varda Books
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JEWISH TALES BY GENTILE AUTHORS

CANDLES IN THE NIGHT
5761 / 2001
skokie, illinois, usa
VARDA BOOKS
EDITED BY
WITH A PREFACE BY
CARL VAN DOREN

JOSEPH L. BARON
Copyright © 2001 by Varda Books

Original copyright © 1940, by
THE JEWISH PUBLICATION SOCIETY OF AMERICA
All rights reserved.
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To
Bernice Judith
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INTRODUCTION
“I shall light a candle of understanding in thy heart,

which shall not be put out.”—II Esdras 14:25.
I N THE long night of exile, the Jew has been guided

and heartened steadily by the divine beacon of his reli-
gious faith, and occasionally also by a neighbor’s candle
of understanding and sympathy. The history of Israel, so
replete with examples of anti-Jewish persecution and prop-
aganda, records many such gleams in the dark from non-
Jewish hearts. In critical moments, Gentile friends have
often rendered aid and comfort to communities and to in-
dividual members of the martyred people. At times, they
carried the torch in the struggle for equal rights, and es-
poused valiantly the cause of liberty and justice, for the
Jew.
Such pro-Jewish expression by non-Jews is worthy of
note since it invariably reveals extraordinary intellectual
independence and moral courage. The atmosphere of west-
ern society has been hostile to Israel for more than twen-
ty centuries. The classical authors of Greece and Rome
circulated infamous libels against the Judeans, who re-
fused to accept their pagan culture and tyranny. This an-
imosity became intensified with the bitter Jewish rebel-
lions against their Roman conquerors, and was carried
into the European legacy by Gentile Christianity. Fifteen
hundred years of anti-Jewish propaganda, repeated in the
sanctified pages of the New Testament and in the inspired
vii
viii INTRODUCTION
lines of Shakespeare as well as in the vulgar legends of

the folk, left their mark on the mental habits of men.
This explains why Schiller, who could articulate with
matchless beauty Europe’s ecstasy over the Swiss Alps,
which he himself had never seen, could also pen his defama-
tory essay on Judaism (“The Mission of Moses”), of which
he was lamentably ignorant. It explains why Turgenev, fol-
lowing his country’s literary models and social traditions,
produced such a venomous tale as “The Jew;” yet, when
he later came to know the character and lot of the real
Russian Jew, his heart was moved with profound pity for
the unfortunate people whom he had automatically helped
to vilify. Goethe, Jokai, Masaryk, and others depicted graph-
ically how the minds of Europeans are generally conditioned
from early childhood to fear and hate the Jew, and how
they personally struggled to extricate themselves from this
snarl of poisonous superstitions and prejudices.
The annals of history reveal that Cyrus of Persia, Alex-
ander of Macedon, Julius Caesar, and other notables of
antiquity befriended the Jews. Economic considerations
prompted a number of medieval bishops and princes—Fre-
derick Barbarossa, Richard the Lion-Hearted, and
Casimir the Great among others—to extend hospitality and
clearly defined “privileges” to them. The dictates of hu-
manity lifted the voices of St. Bernard of Clairvaux, of
Pope Gregory the Great, and of some other Church digni-
taries in occasional protest against the slaughter of inno-
cent Jewish communities, the destruction of synagogues,
and the ritual-blood libel. The Renaissance and Human-
ism brought the first blossoms of urbanity in the frozen
social climate of Christian Europe, when Giovanni Boc-
caccio published his version of the parable of “The Three
INTRODUCTION ix
Rings,” when scholars and mystics turned diligently to

Hebrew lore, and when Johannes Reuchlin fought gal-
lantly to rescue the Talmud from the Dominicans’ flames.
Ignatius Loyola and Martin Luther alike spoke enthusi-
astically, almost enviously, of the “advantages of the Jew-
ish people” (to borrow a phrase from Pascal), of the glory
of belonging to the race of Jesus and the Prophets, and
these paeans of praise resounded through the works of
Racine and Grotius and Hobbes.
Roger Williams and John Locke made clear and specific
mention of the Jew in their classical pleas for toleration,
and their challenge was followed by the empire builders of
Great Britain and the Netherlands, who, like the Ottoman
Turks at the other end of Europe, welcomed the immigra-
tion of Jews and sought their coöperation in colonial enter-
prise. It was followed also by the champions of the new
social order, the eighteenth century rationalists and
romanticists who fought for the “Rights of Man.” Addison,
Toland, Chesterfield and Cumberland, Kant, Herder, Dohm
and Lessing, Rousseau, Voltaire, Mirabeau and Abbé Gré-
goire, Vico, Pestalozzi, Hahn and Kosciuszko, Washing-
ton, Adams, Jefferson and Madison, all of them repudiated
the old barriers and barbarities against the Jew. The Fa-
ther of the New Republic struck the keynote of the new
idealism, and extended greatly the frontiers of social
progress and political thought when, in 1790, he wrote to
the Hebrew Congregation of Newport, Rhode Island:
The citizens of the United States of America have
a right to applaud themselves for having given to man-
kind examples of an enlarged and liberal policy—a
policy worthy of imitation. All possess alike liberty of
conscience and immunities of citizenship.
x INTRODUCTION
It is now no more that toleration is spoken of as if

it were by the indulgence of one class of people that
another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natu-
ral rights, for, happily, the Government of the United
States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecu-
tion no assistance, requires only that they who live
under its protection should demean themselves as
good citizens in giving it on all occasions their effec-
tual support.
May the children of the stock of Abraham who
dwell in this land continue to merit and enjoy the good
will of the other inhabitants—while every one shall
sit in safety under his own vine and fig tree and there
shall be none to make him afraid.
The struggle continued throughout the nineteenth cen-
tury, in parliaments, at international congresses, and in
courts of law, where victims of anti-Jewish plots had to
defend their faith and lives. The century began with the
emancipation of Jews in France and the Netherlands, fol-
lowed by the Manifesto of Jerome Napoleon in 1808, the
Edict of Frederick William III of Prussia in 1812, and the
consistent advocacy of rights for Jews by Prince von Hard-
enberg. While legislators, like Thomas Kennedy in Mary-
land, fought for the full enfranchisement of the Jews in
America, Macaulay, Peel, Russell, Hazlitt, Daniel
O’Connell, Elizabeth Fry, and others championed the
cause of political equality for the Jew in England. Ameri-
can, British and French statesmen interceded in behalf of
oppressed Jewish minorities in Eastern Europe and in
Mohammedan lands; and each outburst of revolting per-
secution, such as the Czarist massacres and vicious legis-
lation of the eighteen-eighties and nineties, raised a storm
of indignation and protest among the social and political
leaders of the West.
INTRODUCTION xi
Nineteenth century literature reflected the growing liber-

alism of the age. Byron sang his “Hebrew Melodies;” Scott
created his Rebecca; Moore, Wordsworth, Edgeworth, Col-
eridge, Goldsmith, Andersen, Hugo, Hebbel, Gutzkow,
Longfellow, Whittier, Chekhov, Machtet sympathetically
treated Jewish themes; Browning and Aldrich and Perez
Galdos attacked medieval bigotry; Alexis, Lenau, Swinburne
thundered against contemporary malevolence; Wergeland
pleaded in his poetry for the admission of Jews into Scan-
dinavian countries; Ségur, Schieiden, Renan wrote of the
contribution of Jews to civilization; Mickiewicz, Orzesz-
kowa, Szymanski articulated the pathos of Jewish life and
extolled the Jew’s patriotism. National heroes, like Cavour
in Italy and Kossuth in Hungary, espoused in their letters
and conversations the cause of full Jewish participation in
the life and opportunities of their respective countries.
When the monster of anti-Semitism raised its ugly head
in France, Germany, Austria and elsewhere, the finest intel-
lects recoiled against it in unmistaken language. To men-
tion only a few of the men who came out in open repudia-
tion of the madness and disgrace of Jew-baiting and anti-
Semitism during the century, we think readily of Arndt,
Bebel, Bismarck, Blind, Bunsen, Freytag, Fontane, Hum-
boldt, Nietzsche, Raabe, Reuter, Spindler and Stifter, Fré-
mont, Laffitte, Leroy-Beaulieu, Michelet, Painlevé, Quinet,
Saulcy and Thiers, Carlyle, Farrar, Gladstone, Huxley,
Kipling, Lecky, Meredith, Mill, Stevenson and Webb, An-
drassy, Bethlen, Jokai and Liszt, Matthew Arnold, Henry
Ward Beecher, Oliver Wendell Holmes, William James, Sid-
ney Lanier, James Russell Lowell, William Osler, Carl
Schurz, Mark Twain and Zebulon Baird Vance, Pirogov,
Soloviov and Tolstoy, Castelar, Ruiz Zorilla and Sawa,
xii INTRODUCTION
Bonghi, Ferrero and Moleschott, Bjoernson and Ibsen. At

the close of the century, the voices of Clemenceau and
Zola and of Masaryk resounded throughout the world with
their valiant defense of Israel at the notorious trials of
Dreyfus and Hilsner.
The laurels for the finest manifestation of friendship for
the Jew during that century must go to an English wom-
an, a sublime novelist and poetess, Mary Ann Cross, bet-
ter known as George Eliot. Most of the other defenders of
Israel were moved by a spirit of pity for the persecuted
and underprivileged, or by a passion for proselytism, or
by the logic of their social ideologies, or by a common ha-
tred against bigoted clerics and unscrupulous politicians
who had been responsible for the misery of Jews as well
as for the enslavement of other men. We cannot avoid the
feeling, for example, in following the career of Lewis Way,
that he was motivated in his zeal for Israel by the hope of
the conversion of Israel, or in reading the Czech story,
Moralistni Bestie, that Machar’s philo-Semitism was es-
sentially anti-clericalism, or in observing that the Jewish
heroes in the works of the distinguished Ruthenian poet
and novelist, Ivan Franco, are always victims of an oth-
erwise sordid Jewish environment, or that the Jewish hero
of Freytag’s novel Soll und Haben is in no way dis-
tinguishable as a Jew. In fact, many statesmen and au-
thors, like Kossuth and Mommsen, made it clear that their
fervor for Jewish emancipation was contingent on the
readiness of the Jews to abandon their distinctive culture
and to assimilate within the national and racial life of the
dominant peoples.
George Eliot was a friend of the Jews in a far more inti-
mate and spiritual sense. She portrayed the Jew as a Jew,
INTRODUCTION xiii
pleaded for his right to be himself, and presented eloquently

the arguments for the restoration of his ancient homeland
and the revivification of his indigenous culture. Jean Henri
Dunant, Alexandre Dumas, fils, Laurence Oliphant, and
others shared her enthusiasm for a Jewish Palestine and
for a free Israel, but George Eliot’s profound respect for
Jewish personality and her absolute faith in Israel’s sur-
vival value, as well as the force and beauty of her art,
earned for her a unique place in the heart of the modern
Jew. The twentieth century began with the gradual
organization of humanitarian sentiment throughout the
world against the Jew-baiting policies of Czarist Russia
and of Roumania. Liberals of all lands, including Russia,
hailed the abrogation of the Russian trade treaties by
France and the United States, denounced the pogroms
and the ritual-murder trials staged by the St. Petersburg
Government, and approved of the pressure brought by
European and American statesmen on the authorities in
Bucharest. The World War produced insincere proclama-
tions of devotion to Israel by the opposing High Commands
of Russia and the Central Powers, and also the signifi-
cant Balfour Declaration. All the four moulders of the
Versailles Peace, Clemenceau, Lloyd George, Wilson and
Orlando, helped to secure constitutional guarantees for
the civil and religious rights of Jewish minorities in the
Succession States. The revolutionary leaders of Russia,
both Social Democratic and Communist, were likewise
sympathetic to the Jews, enacting the only legislation in
the world which rendered anti-Semitism an offense against
the State, though the Soviet policy has been opposed to
the spiritual traditions of Israel as it has been to religion
and bourgeois culture in general.
xiv INTRODUCTION
The rise of the Ku Klux Klan in the early twenties led

many prominent Americans to express their repugnance
to anti-Semitism and their sense of fellowship with the Jews.
Among those who expressed themselves thus were
Woodrow Wilson, William Howard Taft, Theodore Roose-
velt, Charles Evans Hughes, Robert Lansing, William Jen-
nings Bryan, Newton D. Baker, and the most eminent reli-
gious and literary figures in the land. Similar protests burst
out throughout the world, by distinguished statesmen and
intellectuals everywhere, against the policy of boycott and
humiliation pursued by the social and governmental lead-
ers of the new Poland. But the fullest measure of sympathy
for the Jew and appreciation of his tragic role in history
came with the rise of Hitler to the position of supreme au-
thority in Germany. The gruesome spectacle of a helpless
and glorious minority condemned to extermination, the
shameless perversion of all standards of morality and the
ruthless mobilization of all the instrumentalities of society
for the crushing of the spirit of democracy inherent in the
Judeo-Christian tradition, called forth the stubborn resent-
ment and resistance of all lovers of liberty and decency on
earth. Amidst the poignant suffering endured by Jews to-
day, they are heartened by the knowledge that intellectuals
like Thomas Mann preferred exile with the Jewish refu-
gees to security with the Nazis, that Christian spokesmen
like Pope Pius XI chose to decorate themselves with the
title Semite, and that even from the distant fields of India
came the voice of solace from Mohandas Gandhi.
Mention must be made also of another group of friends
of Israel who, while interested primarily in the quest for
truth, have by their diligent research and scientific
methodology helped to remove much of the superstition
INTRODUCTION xv
and falsehood which sustained Judeophobia through the

ages. Brilliant historians, literary critics, anthropologists
and sociologists have gathered indispensable information
regarding the true character of the Jew and of his role in
civilization, and have demolished forever the possibility
of anti-Semitism among real scientists and among those
who believe in scientific criteria of knowledge. The number
of these teachers and scholars is legion, and it would be
idle to attempt to name them; but specific mention must
be made of men like H. L. Strack in Germany, R. Travers
Herford in England, George Foot Moore in America, and
their numerous colleagues and disciples, who have mani-
fested the courage to review even sacred literature and
Jewish and Christian tradition, and to apply the scientific
technique to all the channels of information which would
yield the true facts and the true understanding of human
relations in the past and present. In the light and through
the process of such investigations, these objective schol-
ars have proven to be the greatest friends of Israel, and
perhaps ultimately the most formidable enemies of the dis-
ease called anti-Semitism.*
* * *
Just now, the clock of history has been turned back,
and a new Dark Age casts its ominous shadow on many
erstwhile centers of culture and progress. The lights of
civilization have indeed been extinguished temporarily, and
the Jew has been overwhelmed by the floods of hatred. At
this time the eloquent and sympathetic portrayal of the
Jew by some of the most distinguished artists and think-
*This introduction contains the substance of a study contributed by the
editor of this anthology to the Universal Jewish Encyclopedia.
xvi INTRODUCTION
ers of the world needs repeated emphasis. It is important

that the pathos and courage of Jewish life, the virtue and
spiritual dignity of Jewish character, as delineated by bril-
liant non-Jews, be brought again and again to the atten-
tion of the public. It is important that Jew and Gentile
alike bear in mind that the cause of the Jew—which is the
cause of Humanity—has been championed by the choic-
est spirits on earth.
With this purpose in view, to keep aglow the candles of
human sympathy in the night which enshrouds us now,
the editor has compiled nearly a thousand items of signifi-
cant non-Jewish literary and historical expression about
the Jew. This volume, which includes twenty-three short
stories and episodes from fourteen different national litera-
tures, is the first offering taken from that larger collec-
tion. It is hoped that additional volumes may be forthcom-
ing before long.
The stories are of unequal size and technical merit, and
their subject-matter ranges from the oriental scene at the
time of the Crusades (Strindberg, Boccaccio) to the subver-
sive infiltration of New York with Nazi propaganda in our
own day (Hunt). The representative character of the col-
lection could be achieved only at the sacrifice of any attempt
at uniformity of viewpoint, style or mood. The main thread
of coherence in the volume is the uniformly sympathetic
approach to the Jewish question, whether the Jew appears
in person as the central figure of the tale (e. g. in Kloster-
mann, Orzeszko) or remains altogether in the background
(e. g. in Ewald, Huch), whether he is essentially endowed
with spiritual dignity and vigor (e. g. in Jokai, Hallström,
Dawson) or is primarily the pitiable victim of a cruel envir-
onment (e. g. in Chekhov, Villiers de l’Isle Adam, Cargiale).
INTRODUCTION xvii
The collection is representative in spite of the omission,

for want of space, of many splendid stories, novelettes and
episodes from the long novels of such eminent authors as
Hans Christian Andersen, Vincent Blasco Ibanez, Guy de
Maupassant, Thomas De Quincey, George Eliot, Victor
Gomulicki, Luigi Pirandello, Boleslaw Prus, Walter Scott,
Francis Hopkinson Smith, William Thackeray, and others.
A number of the items included in this volume are out
of print and not easily accessible to the general public. One
tale (by Lewis) is presented in a reconstructed form. Five
of the stories (by Jokai, Hallström, Klostermann, Orzesz-
ko and Upits) appear here for the first time in English.
While the editor is deeply appreciative of the fine assist-
ance rendered by several translators, whose names are
recorded elsewhere in this book, he is personally respon-
sible for the version of these translations as presented here
to the reader.
The arrangement of the stories follows three central
motives: the plea for toleration (Nos. 1–8), the descrip-
tion of Jewish martyrdom (Nos. 9–15), and the portray-
al of Jewish life and character (Nos. 16–23). While there
is naturally overlapping in this organization of the mate-
rial, and some of the stories may be transposed, there is
this merit to the order: the volume begins and ends with
the lighter and more positive aspect, while the middle
section presents the more somber and tragic side, of the
Jewish question.
* * *
The editor desires to express his appreciation to Dr.
Jacob R. Marcus of Cincinnati, Mr. Louis Rittenberg of
New York, Mr. Szymon St. Deptula of Milwaukee, and
xviii INTRODUCTION
Dr. Solomon Grayzel of Philadelphia for many valuable

suggestions; to the staffs of the Milwaukee Public Library
and of the Milwaukee State Teachers College Library,
especially Mr. John Dulka and the Misses Martha Pod-
lasky, Nettie G. Prideaux and Ruth Shapiro, for expert
and ever courteous service; and to Dr. and Mrs. Maxwell
Freeman, Miss Lillian Friedman, Miss Anna S. Baron,
and Mmes. I. Levinson and Jack W. Boorstein for their
kind assistance in consulting, copying and correcting texts.
Due acknowledgment is made here of the editor’s grat-
itude to the publishers, authors and translators who per-
mitted the republication of their respective works. With-
out their courtesy the production of this anthology would
have been impossible. Full credit to copyright holders is
given in the introductory notes. Unfortunately, all effort
to contact one of the authors in a country now torn by
war has proven futile.
The compilation and redaction of this volume became a
source of pleasure and a true labor of love because of the
whole-hearted encouragement given by a number of
friends, some of whom have watched with enthusiasm also
the progress of the larger collection: Judge and Mrs.
Charles L. Aarons of Milwaukee, Dr. David Philipson of
Cincinnati, Richard E. Gutstadt of Chicago, Leonard V.
Finder of New York, and Maurice Jacobs of Philadelphia.
The editor wishes to utilize this opportunity to convey his
thanks for valuable coöperation to his colleague, Rabbi
Samuel Hirshberg, to Mrs. Harold M. Baum and Messrs.
George P. Ettenheim, Carl Fechheimer, Robert A. Hess,
Leo Mann, Benjamin F. Saltzstein and Nathan M. Stein.
He desires also to commend his friends and co-workers in
the Milwaukee Round Table of the National Conference
INTRODUCTION xix
of Christians and Jews, Bishop B. F. P. Ivins, Drs. Frank

E. Baker, E. LeRoy Dakin, Edward A. Fitzpatrick and J.
Martin Klotsche, Dean J. L. O’Sullivan, and Messrs. Her-
bert N. Laflin, Clifford P. Morehouse, T. M. Pearman and
August Reisweber, whose devotion to the cause of human
brotherhood has been a source of inspiration and an in-
centive to engage in this literary undertaking.
If this volume will succeed in awakening here and there
the dormant sympathy of a non-Jewish reader, and in
strengthening the morale of a Jewish youth, the editor and
all those who have aided in the production of the book
will feel gratified and rewarded for their effort.
Milwaukee JOSEPH L. BARON
June 1, 1940
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PREFACE
A NOTE ON ANTI-SEMITISM
A NTI-SEMITISM, wherever I have observed it, has

invariably been either false thinking or evil feeling,
and usually both.
Benjamin Franklin in 1764 summed up the whole matter
of racial animosity in a biting parallel. Pennsylvania was at
war with the Indians on the Susquehanna and the Ohio.
Certain Scotch-Irish frontiersmen, infuriated by the savage
acts of the red enemy, murdered the friendly Conestoga In-
dians living peacefully near Lancaster. Franklin could find
no excuse for this false and evil refusal to distinguish be-
tween enemies and friends. “If an Indian injures me, does it
follow that I may revenge that injury on all Indians? It is
well known that Indians are of different tribes, nations, and
languages, as well as the white people. In Europe, if the
French, who are white people, should injure the Dutch,
are they to revenge it on the English, because they too are
white people? The only crime of these poor wretches seems
to have been that they had a reddish-brown skin and black
hair; and some people of that sort, it seems, had murdered
some of our relations. If it be right to kill men for such a
reason, then, should any man with a freckled face and red
hair kill a wife or child of mine, it would be right for me to
revenge it by killing all the freckled red-haired men, wom-
en, and children I could afterwards anywhere meet with.”
xxi
xxii PREFACE
To apply the parallel: If a Jew injures me, does it follow

that I may revenge that injury on all Jews? Only savages
reason in this tribal fashion, holding all the members of a
tribe to blame for the acts of any one of them. Civilized
men distinguish between those who have offended and those
who have not. Anti-Semitism is always savage reasoning,
False thinking is a short road to evil feeling. Most of the
people who have animosities against Jews have never been
seriously injured or offended by any Jew. They inherit or
pick up a prejudice, sullenly cherish it, and angrily en-
large it. Hatred is a guilty pleasure. Few human beings
can enjoy it without the excuse of believing that what they
hate is guilty and hateful. They can learn to believe that—
whatever the evidence—if they fanatically desire to, and
can become unjust to the innocent and cruel to the help-
less. Dark minds make bad hearts. Unreasoning haters
damage themselves while they are damaging their victims.
When anti-Semitism goes beyond a mild prejudice it de-
velops into callousness or sickness of mind and heart.
Anti-Semitism might remain a private vice if calculat-
ing men did not encourage the evil for evil ends. If times
are hard and confused, such men look for a villain to blame
for everything, so that responsibility may be shifted from
those whose stupidity or selfishness are really to blame.
The handiest villain is some minority that cannot defend
itself. The Jews in every country are a minority so close-
knit as to be conspicuous and so talented as to be envied.
It seems, to calculating men, easiest and most profitable
to begin their melodrama with the Jews. But tyranny con-
stantly needs fresh victims, and anti-Semitism is only the
first step in persecution. Where the Jews are not safe, no-
PREFACE xxiii
body is safe. Anti-Semitism has organized a malady into

a pestilence.
While Jews are the earliest and worst sufferers from
anti-Semitism, in the long run non-Jews suffer from it too.
Even the most just and humane among them can never
be without some sense of shame and guilt for the lying
and cowardice and cruelty of the non-Jews who rouse the
brutal anti-Semitic mobs. As a non-Jew I have taken more
than a little comfort from this collection of stories so ably
edited by my former student Rev. Dr. Baron. The best non-
Jews have not been unjust or inhumane toward Jews.
Compare the contents of this book with the false and evil
nonsense which is all that could be collected out of the
whole range of anti-Semitic literature.
CARL VAN DOREN
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CONTENTS
PAGE
Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii
Preface, by CARL VAN DOREN. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxi
1. GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO. A Tale of Three Rings. . . . . . . . 3
2. CARL EWALD. My Little Boy. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
3. MAURUS J OKAI. How I Became a Friend of the Jews . . . 15
4. ANTON CHEKHOV. Rothschild’s Fiddle. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
5. MAXIM GORKY . The Little Boy. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
6. RICARDA HUCH. The Jew’s Grave. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
7. ANATOLE FRANCE. An Anti-Semite in the Country. . . . 67
8. THOMAS NELSON PAGE. The Jew and the Christian. . . . 77
9. JOHAN AUGUST STRINDBERG. Peter the Hermit. . . . . . . . 97
10. PER HALLSTRÖM . Arsareth. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
11. VILLIERS DE L’ISLE ADAM. The Torture of Hope. . . . . . . 133
12. I. L. C ARGIALE. The Easter Torch. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143
13. KARL KLOSTERMANN. The Jew of S. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163
14. ADAM S ZYMANSKI. Srul—from Lubartów. . . . . . . . . . . . 179
15. HAMLEN HUNT. The Saluting Doll. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195
16. ELIZA ORZESZKO. “Give Me a Flower!”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209
17. LEOPOLD VON SACHER-MASOCH. Galeb Jekarim. . . . . . . 243
18. ERNESTS BIRZNIEKS-UPÏTS. Seskinš. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 255
19. STEPHEN VINCENT BENÉT. Jacob and the Indians. . . . . . 271
20. MYRA KELLY. Morris and the Honorable Tim. . . . . . . . . 293
21. BEN AMES WILLIAMS. Sheener. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 313
22. SINCLAIR LEWIS. The Life and Death of a God. . . . . . . . . 329
23. CONINGSBY DAWSON. The Unknown Soldier. . . . . . . . . . 365
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GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO
Italian novelist, “the first of the modern story-tellers,” 1313–

1375. The following tale constitutes Novel 3 of the First Day in
the Decameron, a work that has been designated as “the crown of
medieval prose fiction.” The parable of The Three Rings is one of
the most notable classical pleas for tolerance, particularly when
we bear in mind the date of the Decameron, 1348, the year of the
Black Death, one of the darkest moments in the annals of Jew-
ish martyrdom.
The story was utilized by Lessing in his Nathan the Wise, and is
found among the Novelle Antiche (#72). See Italian Novelists, tr. by
Thomas Roscoe, London, Frederick Warns & Co., n. d., p. 17.
The particular version reproduced here is from the anonymous
translation of the Decameron, Hartford, Silas Andrus & Son, 1848.
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A TALE OF THREE RINGS
S ALADIN was so brave and great a man that he had

raised himself from an inconsiderable person to be Sul-
tan of Babylon and had gained many victories over both
the Turkish and Christian princes. This monarch, having
in divers wars, and by many extraordinary expenses, run
through all his treasure, some urgent occasion fell out that
he wanted a large sum of money. Not knowing which way
he might raise enough to answer his necessities, he at last
called to mind a rich Jew of Alexandria, named Melchi-
zedeck, who let out money to interest. Him he believed to
have wherewithal to serve him; but then he was so covet-
ous that he never would do it willingly, and he was unwill-
ing to force him. But as necessity has no law, after much
thinking which way the matter might best be effected, he at
last resolved to use force under some color of reason. He
therefore sent for, and received him in a most gracious man-
ner, and making him sit down he thus addressed him: “Hon-
est man, I hear from divers persons that thou art very wise,
and knowing in religious matters; wherefore I would gladly
know from thee which religion thou judgest to be the true
one, viz. the Jewish, the Mahometan, or the Christian?”
The Jew (truly a wise man) found that Saladin had a
mind to trap him; and perceiving that he must gain his
point should he prefer any one religion, after pondering a
little how best to avoid the snare, his invention at last sup-
3
4 GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO
plied him with the following answer: “The question which

Your Highness has proposed is very curious; and, that I
may give you my sentiments, I must beg leave to tell a
short story. I remember often to have heard of a great and
rich man, who, among his most rare and precious jewels,
had a ring of exceeding great beauty and value; and being
proud of possessing a thing of such worth, and desirous
that it should continue for ever in his family, he declared,
by will, that to whichsoever of his sons he should give this
ring, him he designed for his heir, and that he should be
respected as the head of the family. That son to whom the
ring was given made the same law with respect to his de-
scendants, and the ring passed from one to another in a
long succession, till it came to a person who had three
sons, all virtuous and dutiful to their father, and all equal-
ly beloved by him. And the young men, knowing what de-
pended upon the ring, and ambitious of superiority, began
to entreat their father, who was now grown old, every one
for himself, that he would give the ring to him. The good
man, equally fond of all, was at a loss which to prefer;
and, as he had promised all, and being willing to satisfy
all, privately got an artist to make two others, which were
so like the first, that he himself scarcely knew the true
one; and at his death gave one privately to each of his
sons. They afterwards all claimed the honor and estate,
each disputing them with his brothers, and producing his
ring; and the rings were found so much alike, that the true
one could not be distinguished. To law then they went,
which should succeed, nor is that yet decided. And thus it
has happened, my Lord, with regard to the three laws giv-
en by God the Father, concerning which you proposed
your question: every one believes he is the true heir of
A TALE OF THREE RINGS 5
God, has his law, and obeys his commandments; but which
is in the right is uncertain in like manner as of the rings.”
Saladin perceived that he had escaped the net which was
spread for him; he therefore resolved to discover his neces-
sity to him, to see if he would lend him money, telling him
at the same time what he designed to have done had not his
discreet answer prevented him. The Jew freely supplied him
with what he wanted. Saladin afterwards paid him with a
great deal of honor, made him large presents, besides main-
taining him nobly at his court, and was his friend as long as
he lived.
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CARL EWALD
Danish novelist, 1856–1908. His work, My Little Boy, appeared

originally in 1899. The selection reproduced here is from the
English translation by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos, included
in Alexander Woolcotfs Reader, Scribner’s, 1936. It is reprinted
here with the kind permission of Charles Scribner’s Sons.
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MY LITTLE BOY
T HERE is a battle royal and a great hullabaloo among

the children in the courtyard.
I hear them shouting ‘Jew!’ and I go to the window and
see my little boy in the front rank of the bandits, scream-
ing, fighting with clenched fists and without his cap.
I sit down quietly to my work again, certain that he will
appear before long and ease his heart.
And he comes directly after.
He stands still, as is his way, by my side and says noth-
ing. I steal a glance at him: he is greatly excited and proud
and glad, like one who has fearlessly done his duty.
“What fun you’ve been having down there!”
“Oh,” he says modestly, “It was only a Jew-boy whom
we were licking.”
I jump up so quickly that I upset my chair:
“A Jew-boy? Were you licking him? What had he done?”
“Nothing. . . .”
His voice is not very certain, for I look so queer.
And that is only the beginning. For now I snatch my
hat and run out of the door as fast as I can and shout:
“Come. . . come. . . we must find him and beg his
pardon!”
My little boy hurries after me. He does not understand
a word of it, but he is terribly in earnest. We look in the
courtyard; we shout and call. We rush into the street and
round the corner, so eager are we to come up with him.
9
10 CARL EWALD
Breathlessly, we ask three passers-by if they have not seen

a poor, ill-used Jew-boy.
All in vain: the Jew-boy and all his persecutors are
blown away into space.
So we go and sit up in my room again, the laboratory where
our soul is crystallized out of the big events of our little life
My forehead is wrinkled and I drum disconsolately with my
fingers on the table. The boy has both his hands in his pock-
ets and does not take his eyes from my face.
“Well,” I say, decidedly, “there is nothing more to be
done. I hope you will meet that Jew-boy one day, so that
you can give him your hand and ask him to forgive you.
You must tell him that you did that only because you were
stupid. But if, another time, anyone does him any harm, I
hope you will help him and lick the other one as long as
you can stir a limb.”
I can see by my little boy’s face that he is ready to do
what I wish. For he is still a mercenary, who does not ask
under which flag, so long as there is a battle and booty to
follow. It is my duty to train him to be a brave recruit,
who will defend his fair mother-land, and so I continue:
“Let me tell you, the Jews are by way of being quite
wonderful people. You remember David, about whom
Dirty reads at school: he was a Jew boy. And the Child
Jesus, Whom everybody worships and loves, although He
died two thousand years ago: He was a little Jew also.”
My little boy stands with his arms on my knee and I go
on with my story.
The Old Hebrews rise before our eyes in all their splen-
dor and power, quite different from Dirty’s Balslev. They
ride on their camels in coats of many colors and with long
beards: Moses and Joseph and his brethren and Samson
MY LITTLE BOY 11
and David and Saul. We hear wonderful stories. The walls

of Jericho fall at the sound of the trumpet.
“And what next?” says my little boy, using the expres-
sion which he employed when he was much smaller and
which still comes to his lips whenever he is carried away.
We hear of the destruction of Jerusalem and how the
Jews took their little boys by the hand and wandered from
place to place, scoffed at, despised, and ill-treated. How
they were allowed to own neither house nor land, but could
only be merchants, and how the Christian robbers took
all the money which they had got together. How, never-
theless, they remained true to their God and kept up their
old sacred customs in the midst of the strangers who hat-
ed and persecuted them.
The whole day is devoted to the Jews.
We look at old books on the shelves which I love best to
read and which are written by a Jew with a wonderful
name, which a little boy can’t remember at all. We learn
that the most famous man now living in Denmark is a Jew.
And when evening comes and Mother sits down at the
piano and sings the song which Father loves above all oth-
er songs, it appears that the words were written by one
Jew and the melody composed by another.
My little boy is hot and red when he falls to sleep that
night. He turns restlessly in bed and talks in his sleep.
“He is a little feverish,” says his mother.
And I bend down and kiss his forehead and answer,
calmly:
“That is not surprising. Today I have vaccinated him
against the meanest of all mean and vulgar diseases.”
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MAURUS JOKAI
Foremost Hungarian novelist, 1825–1904. At the age of

seventeen, Mor Jokai wrote The Jewish Boy, a drama which
was acclaimed by the Hungarian Academy, and which he
reconstructed and presented to the public as his first novel in
1845. The autobiographical sketch presented here appeared
in the Mittheilungen aus dem Verein zur Abwehr des Antisemitis-
mus, Berlin, 1898, p. 216, and again in 1904, p. 148 f. It was
translated for this anthology by the editor.
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HOW I BECAME A FRIEND

OF THE JEWS
I MUST confess that I, too, was an anti-Semite in my

youth, just like all undeveloped people. Our domestic
servants put the idea in my head that Jews use the blood
of Christian children on their Passover. The Jewish quar-
ter lay between our house and my school, and butchers
lived there. Daily I saw the slaughtered geese suspended
near the gateway, and my imagination completed the pic-
ture. What terrible things must take place here! Our dog
shared my views completely. How he would jump when a
bearded figure would step into our courtyard! And I was
a bully. How I would stir up the dog, and laugh at the
sight of the Jew retreating in his slippers!
When I was a little older, I was sent to Pressburg to
study German. I observed that at one end of that city there
was a section called Castlehill, which was generally de-
spised and was inhabited exclusively by Jews. It must have
harbored every conceivable crime against God and man,
for if a student were discovered to have been there, he
would be expelled from school. Thus confirmed in my be-
lief, I returned to Komorn, where there was a Gymnasi-
um, not an especially famous one, with three classes.
Until then I had never met a Jew either in the Lyceum
or in the Gymnasium. Why should a Jew study Latin? He
could not adorn an office, nor become a lawyer or an en-
gineer. There was only one scientific vocation open to him,
15
16 MAURUS JOKAI
medicine. When I entered the Komorn Gymnasium, how-

ever,—wonder of wonders!—I found a Jew had also been
admitted into our class. He was over forty years of age,
and was called Koritschoner. He was a calligraphist, taught
penmanship, and wrote a script that looked like engrav-
ing. It was naturally a poorly paying occupation, and so,
in spite of his age, he determined to become a physician.
Grammar and syntax he had studied at home by himself.
His diligence was immense. We boys regarded him, with
his peculiar figure, accent and involuntary eccentricity,
as a comic fellow.
One day he stayed out of school, and when the professor
asked him for the cause of it, he said: “I could not come.
My wife presented me yesterday with a little son.” Imagine
the merrymaking which this remark produced in the class!
The professor remained serious, and excused his absence
also for that day, so that he might remain with his wife.
Once, we two had an argument before the class period.
It was about the question whether the letter “h” in Hun-
garian prosody was a consonant or not. Finally I called
out: “What do you know about it? You are only a Jew.”
To which he replied, “You are only a child.” A horrible
insult, to call a boy of fourteen a child! Nowadays this would
call for a duel. Then I came to an immediate decision. He
was forty-one, I fourteen; he was only a Jew, I a Magyar.
That was justification enough for me to lay hold of him by
the collar and to belabor his back with my fists. As I was
thus establishing the consonantal character of the “h” on
the back of my comrade, the professor entered the room.
He was a stern and just man. He punished me, although I
was his brother-in-law, and on account of my offense I had
to remain in school until evening, a frightful disgrace.
HOW I BECAME A FRIEND OF THE JEWS 17
In the evening, my mother subjected me to a cross-ex-

amination. She had a golden heart, but was as strict as a
soldier. She asked why I had been detained at school. I
told her with indignation about the injustice done to me,
for I knew of a certainty that the “h” was a consonant.
“But must you beat a comrade on that account?”
“It was only a Jew!”
“What!” exclaimed my mother, “only a Jew? Is not a
Jew in your eyes like any other human being? Do you
scorn a person on account of his religion? Do you forget
that our coreligionists were persecuted in this very city
fifty years ago, just as you now persecute the Jew? No,
get going right away, find the Jew whom you beat, ask his
forgiveness, and bring me his pardon in writing!”
I was overwhelmed by her command. “How can I hu-
miliate myself before a Jew?”
“You humble yourself before God, who created the Jew,
just like you, in His own image.”
“But how can I find him now in this big city?”
“That is your affair. You know the street where the Jews
live. Go there from house to house until you find him. Open
your mouth and ask! Komorn is not a forest. Do not come
back before my eyes without his written pardon!”
That was her ultimatum. I had already forgone my
lunch, and now I was to lose also my dinner. But there
was no appeal. What could I do? I had to yield. I was on
the point of starting out in search of my comrade, but,
just as I opened our door, there he stood before me.
With drooping shoulders and bowed head he asked me
in a mild, trembling tone: “Are you angry at me?” I angry
at him! And, as he modestly removed his hat, he contin-
ued: “I have come to ask your pardon.” He to ask pardon
18 MAURUS JOKAI
of me, who insulted him! And no one compelled him to

act that way. He had no stern and just mother to send
him to me, and yet he came. Tears streamed from my eyes.
I pressed him close to my chest.
“No, you must not ask forgiveness. I am the one to ask
pardon of you. Now, please come to my mother and tell
her that we are reconciled for ever!”
“That is why I came here.”
He went to my mother and said: “Madam, I came to
ask your pardon for the aggravation which I caused. It
was my fault, I admit it. Moritz was right: the letter ‘h’ is
a consonant. The professor explained it to me. Excuse me
for making Moritz beat me! His strokes did not hurt me,
for Moritz was right. He has a hardy fist, let him use it in
defence of Jews when they are right.”
At that moment I became a friend of the Jews, a “Phi-
lo-Semite.”
ANTON CHEKHOV
Russian dramatist and novelist, 1860–1904. The following short

story illustrates the liberal Russian’s protest against the stupidity
and meanness of Jew-baiting, and his profound sense of pity for
the victims of the regime of oppression. As Joshua Kunitz points
out(in Russian Literature and the Jew, New York, Columbia Uni-
versity Press, 1929, pp. 108 ff.), “In Chekhov we see how great
artistic intuition, aided by changes in objective conditions, has
ultimately triumphed over a deep-set predisposition to make sport
of the Jew.” The anonymous translation reproduced here was
published in two different collections of Chekhov’s stories: in the
Modern Library Series, Boni and Liveright, no date, and the
Modern Library, 1932. It is included here with the kind permis-
sion of Random House, Inc., New York.
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ROTHSCHILD’S FIDDLE
T HE town was small—no better than a village—and it

was inhabited almost entirely by old people who died
so seldom that it was positively painful. In the hospital,
and even in the prison, coffins were required very rarely.
In one word, business was bad. If Yakov Ivanov had been
coffin-maker in the government-town, he would probably
have owned his own house, and called himself Yakov
Matveyich; but, as it was, he was known only by the name
of Yakov, with the street nickname of “Bronza” given for
some obscure reason; and he lived as poorly as a simple
muzhik in a little, ancient cabin with only one room; and
in this room lived he, Marfa, the stove, a double bed, the
coffins, a joiner’s bench, and all the domestic utensils.
Yet Yakov made admirable coffins, durable and good. For
muzhiks and petty tradespeople he made them all of one
size, taking himself as model; and this method never failed
him, for though he was seventy years of age, there was not
a taller or stouter man in the town, not even in the prison.
For women and for men of good birth he made his coffins
to measure, using for this purpose an iron yardwand. Or-
ders for children’s coffins he accepted very unwillingly, made
them without measurement, as if in contempt, and every
time, when being paid for his work, exclaimed:
“Thanks. But I confess I don’t care much for wasting
time on trifles.”
In addition to coffin-making Yakov drew a small income
from his skill with the fiddle. At weddings in the town there
21
22 ANTON CHEKHOV
usually played a Jewish orchestra, the conductor of which

was the tinsmith Moses Ilyich Shakhkes, who kept more
than half the takings for himself. As Yakov played the
fiddle very well, being particularly skillful with Russian
songs, Shakhkes sometimes employed him in the orches-
tra, paying him fifty kopecks a day, exclusive of gifts from
the guests. When Bronza sat in the orchestra he perspired
and his face grew purple; it was always hot, the smell of
garlic was suffocating; the fiddle whined, at his right ear
snored the double-bass, and at his left wept the flute, played
by a lanky, red-haired Jew with a whole network of red
and blue veins upon his face, who bore the same surname
as the famous millionaire, Rothschild. And even the mer-
riest tunes this accursed Jew managed to play sadly. With-
out any tangible cause, Yakov slowly became penetrated
with hatred and contempt for Jews, and especially for
Rothschild. He began with irritation, then swore at him,
and once even was about to strike him; but Rothschild
flared up, and, looking at him furiously, said:
“If it were not that I respect you for your talents, I
should send you flying out of the window.”
Then he began to cry. So Bronza was employed in the
orchestra very seldom, only in cases of extreme need, when
one of the Jews was absent.
Yakov was never in good humor. He was always over-
whelmed by a sense of the losses which he suffered. For
instance, on Sundays and saints’ days it was a sin to work,
Monday was a tiresome day—and so on; so that in one way
or another there were about two hundred days in the year
when he was compelled to sit with his hands idle. That was
one loss. If anyone in town got married without music, or if
Shakhkes did not employ Yakov, that was another loss.
ROTHSCHILD’S FIDDLE 23
The Inspector of Police was ill for two years, and Yakov
waited with impatience for his death, yet in the end the In-
spector transferred himself to the government-town for the
purpose of treatment, where he got worse and died. Here
was another loss, a loss at the very least of ten rubles, as
the Inspector’s coffin would have been an expensive one,
lined with brocade. Regrets for his losses generally over-
took Yakov at night; he lay in bed with the fiddle beside
him, and, with his head full of such speculations, would
take the bow, the fiddle giving forth through the darkness a
melancholy sound which made Yakov feel better.
On the sixth of May last year Marfa was suddenly tak-
en ill. She breathed heavily, drank much water and stag-
gered. Yet next morning she lighted the stove, and even
went for water. Towards evening she lay down. All day
Yakov had played on the fiddle, and when it grew dark he
took the book in which he inscribed his losses every day,
and, for want of something better to do, began to add them
up. The total amounted to more than a thousand rubles.
The thought of such losses so horrified him that he threw
the book on the floor and stamped his feet. Then he took
up the book, snapped his fingers, and sighed heavily. His
face was purple, and wet with perspiration. He reflected
that if this thousand rubles had been lodged in the bank
the interest per annum would have amounted to at least
forty rubles. That meant that the forty rubles were also a
loss. In one word, wherever you turn, everywhere you
meet with loss, and no profits.
“Yakov,” cried Marfa unexpectedly, “I am dying.”
He glanced at his wife. Her face was red with fever and
unusually clear and joyful; and Bronza, who was accustomed
to see her pale, timid, and unhappy-looking, felt confused. It
24 ANTON CHEKHOV
seemed as if she were indeed dying, and were happy in

the knowledge that she was leaving for ever the cabin, the
coffins, and Yakov. And now she looked at the ceiling and
twitched her lips, as though she had seen Death her deliv-
erer, and were whispering to him.
Morning came; through the window might be seen the
rising of the sun. Looking at his old wife, Yakov some-
how remembered that all his life he had never treated
her kindly, never caressed her, never pitied her, never
thought of buying her a kerchief for her head, never car-
ried away from the weddings a piece of tasty food, but
only roared at her, abused her for his losses, and rushed
at her with clenched fists. True, he had never beaten her,
but he had often frightened the life out of her and left her
rooted to the spot with terror. Yes, and he had forbidden
her to drink tea, as the losses without that were great
enough; so she always drank hot water. And now, begin-
ning to understand why she had such a strange, enrap-
tured face, he felt uncomfortable.
When the sun had risen high, he borrowed a cart from
a neighbor, and brought Marfa to the hospital. There were
not many patients there, and he had to wait only three
hours. To his joy he was received not by the doctor but
the feldscher, Maksim Nikolaich, an old man of whom it
was said that, although he was drunken and quarrelsome,
he knew more than the doctor.
“May your health be good!” said Yakov, leading the old
woman into the dispensary. “Forgive me, Maksim Nikola-
ich, for troubling you with my vain affairs. But there, you
can see for yourself my object is ill. The companion of my
life, as they say; excuse the expression. . .”
Contracting his grey brows and smoothing his whiskers,
the feldscher began to examine the old woman, who sat on

the tabouret, bent, skinny, sharp-nosed, and with open
mouth, so that she resembled a bird that is about to drink.
“So. . .” said the feldscher slowly, and then sighed. “In-
fluenza and maybe a bit of fever. There is typhus now in
the town. . . What can I do? She is an old woman, glory
be to God. . . How old?”
“Sixty-nine years, Maksim Nikolaich.”
“An old woman. It’s high time for her.”
“Of course! Your remark is very just,” said Yakov, smil-
ing out of politeness. “And I am sincerely grateful for your
kindness; but allow me to make one remark: every insect
is fond of life.”
The feldscher replied in a tone which implied that upon
him alone depended her life or death. “I will tell you what
you should do, friend; put a cold compress on her head,
and give her these powders twice a day. And good-bye to
you.”
By the expression of the feldscher’s face, Yakov saw that
it was a bad business, and that no powders would make it
any better; it was quite plain to him that Marfa was be-
yond repair, and would assuredly die, if not to-day, then
tomorrow. He touched the feldscher on the arm, blinked
his eyes, and said in a whisper:
“Yes, Maksim Nikolaich, but you will let her blood.”
“I have no time, no time, friend. Take your old woman,
and God be with you!”
“Do me this one kindness!” implored Yakov. “You your-
self know that if she merely had her stomach out of order,
or some internal organ wrong, then powders and mixtures
would cure; but she has caught cold. In cases of cold the
first thing is to bleed the patient.”
26 ANTON CHEKHOV
But they feldscher had already called for the next pa-
tient, and into the dispensary came a peasant woman with
a little boy.
“Be off!” he said to Yakov, with a frown.
“At least try the effect of leeches. I will pray God eter-
nally for you.”
The feldscher lost his temper, and roared:
“Not another word.”
Yakov also lost his temper, and grew purple in the face;
but he said nothing more and, supporting Marfa with one
arm, led her out of the room. As soon as he had got her
into the cart, he looked angrily and contemptuously at the
hospital and said:
“What an artist! He will let the blood of a rich man, but
for a poor man he grudges even a leech. Herod!”
When they arrived home, and entered the cabin, Marfa
stood for a moment holding on to the stove. She was afraid
that if she were to lie down Yakov would begin to com-
plain about his losses, and abuse her for lying in bed and
doing no work. And Yakov looked at her with tedium in
his soul and remembered that to-morrow was John the
Baptist’s day, and the day after that of Nikolai the Mira-
cle-Worker, and then came Sunday, and after that Mon-
day—another idle day. For four days no work could be
done, and Marfa would be sure to die on one of these days.
Her coffin must be made to-day. He took the iron yard-
wand, went up to the old woman and took her measure.
After that she lay down, and Yakov crossed himself, and
began to make a coffin.
When the work was finished, Bronza put on his specta-
cles and wrote in his book of losses:
“Marfa Ivanovna’s coffin—2 rubles, 40 kopecks.”
And he sighed. All the time Marfa had lain silently with
her eyes closed. Towards evening, when it was growing
dark, she called her husband:
“Rememberest, Yakov?” she said, looking at him joy-
fully. “Rememberest, fifty years ago God gave us a baby
with yellow hair. Thou and I then sat every day by the
river. . . under the willow. . . and sang songs.” And laugh-
ing bitterly she added: “The child died.”
“That is all imagination,” said Yakov.
Later on came the priest, administered to Marfa the
sacrament and extreme unction. Marfa began to mutter
something incomprehensible, and, towards morning, died.
The old women-neighbors washed her, wrapped her in
her winding sheet, and laid her out. To avoid having to pay
the deacon’s fee, Yakov himself read the psalms; and es-
caped a fee also at the graveyard, as the watchman there
was his godfather. Four peasants carried the coffin free,
out of respect for the deceased. Behind the coffin walked a
procession of old women, beggars, and two cripples. The
peasants on the road crossed themselves piously. And Yak-
ov was very satisfied that everything passed off in honor,
order, and cheapness, without offence to anyone. When say-
ing good-bye for the last time to Marfa, he tapped the coffin
with his fingers, and thought, “An excellent piece of work.”
But while he was returning from the graveyard he was
overcome with extreme weariness. He felt unwell, he
breathed feverishly and heavily, he could hardly stand on
his feet. His brain was full of unaccustomed thoughts. He
remembered again that he had never taken pity on Marfa
and never caressed her. The fifty-two years during which
they had lived in the same cabin stretched back to eterni-
ty, yet in the whole of that eternity he had never thought
28 ANTON CHEKHOV
of her, never paid any attention to her, but treated her as

if she were a cat or a dog. Yet every day she had lighted
the stove, boiled and baked, fetched water, chopped wood,
slept with him on the same bed; and when he returned
drunk from weddings, she had taken his fiddle respectful-
ly, and hung it on the wall, and put him to bed—all this
silently, with a timid, worried expression on her face. And
now he felt that he could take pity on her, and would like
to buy her a present, but it was too late. . . .
Towards Yakov, smiling and bowing, came Rothschild.
“I was looking for you, uncle,” he said. “Moses Ilyich
sends his compliments, and asks you to come over to him
at once.”
Yakov felt inclined to cry.
“Begone!” he shouted, and continued on his path.
“You can’t mean that,” cried Rothschild in alarm, run-
ning after him. “Moses Ilyich will take offence! He wants
you at once.”
The way in which the Jew puffed and blinked, and the
multitude of his red freckles, awoke disgust in Yakov. He
felt disgust, too, for his green frock-coat, with its black
patches, and his whole fragile, delicate figure.
“What do you mean by coming after me, garlic?” he
shouted. “Keep off!”
The Jew also grew angry, and cried:
“If you don’t take care to be a little politer I will send
you flying over the fence.”
“Out of my sight!” roared Yakov, rushing at him with
clenched fists. “Out of my sight, abortion, or I will beat
the soul out of your cursed body! I have no peace with
Jews.”
Rothschild was frozen with terror; he squatted down

and waved his arms above his head, as if warding off blows,
and then jumped up and ran for his life. While running he
hopped, and flourished his hands; and the twitching of his
long, fleshless spine could be plainly seen. The boys in the
street were delighted with the incident, and rushed after
him, crying, “Jew! Jew!” The dogs pursued him with loud
barks. Someone laughed, then someone whistled, and the
dogs barked louder and louder. Then, it must have been,
a dog bit Rothschild, for there rang out a sickly, despair-
ing cry.
Yakov walked past the common, and then along the out-
skirts of the town; and the street-boys cried, “Bronza!
Bronza!” With a piping note snipe flew around him, and
ducks quacked. The sun baked everything, and from the
water came scintillations so bright that it was painful to
look. Yakov walked along the path by the side of the river,
and watched a stout, red-cheeked lady come out of the
bathing-place. Not far from the bathing-place sat a group
of boys catching crabs with meat; and seeing him they cried
maliciously, “Bronza! Bronza!” And at this moment there
rose before him a thick old willow with an immense hol-
low, and on it a raven’s nest. . . And suddenly in Yakov’s
mind awoke the memory of the child with the yellow hair
of whom Marfa had spoken. . . Yes, it was the same wil-
low, green, silent, sad. . . How it had aged, poor thing!
He sat underneath it, and began to remember. On the
other bank, where was now a flooded meadow, there then
stood a great birch forest; and farther away, where now
the bare hill glimmered on the horizon, was an old pine
wood. Up and down the river went barges. But now eve-
rything was flat and smooth; on the opposite bank stood
30 ANTON CHEKHOV
only a single birch, young and shapely, like a girl; and on the
river were only ducks and geese where once had floated barg-
es. It seemed that since those days even the geese had be-
come smaller. Yakov closed his eyes, and in imagination saw
flying towards him an immense flock of white geese.
He began to wonder how it was that in the last forty or
fifty years of his life he had never been near the river, or if
he had, had never noticed it. Yet it was a respectable riv-
er, and by no means contemptible; it would have been pos-
sible to fish in it, and the fish might have been sold to
tradesmen, officials, and the attendant at the railway sta-
tion buffet, and the money could have been lodged in the
bank; he might have used it for rowing from country-house
to country-house and playing on the fiddle, and everyone
would have paid him money; he might even have tried to
act as bargee—it would have been better than making cof-
fins; he might have kept geese, killed them and sent them
to Moscow in the wintertime—from the feathers alone he
would have made as much as ten rubles a year. But he had
yawned away his life, and done nothing. What losses! Akh,
what losses! And if he had done all together—caught fish,
played on the fiddle, acted as bargee, and kept geese—what
a sum he would have amassed! But he had never even
dreamed of this; life had passed without profits, without
any satisfaction; everything had passed away unnoticed;
before him nothing remained. But look backward—noth-
ing but losses, such losses that to think of them makes the
blood run cold. And why cannot a man live without these
losses? Why had the birchwood and the pine forest both
been cut down? Why is the common pasture unused? Why
do people do exactly what they ought not to do? Why did
he all his life scream, roar, clench his fists, insult his wife?
For what imaginable purpose did he frighten and insult

the Jew? Why, indeed, do people prevent one another from
living in peace? All these are also losses! Terrible losses!
If it were not for hatred and malice people would draw
from one another incalculable profits.
Evening and night twinkled in Yakov’s brain, the wil-
low, the fish, the dead geese, Marfa with her profile like
that of a bird about to drink, the pale, pitiable face of Roth-
schild, and an army of snouts thrusting themselves out of
the darkness and muttering about losses. He shifted from
side to side, and five times during the night rose from his
bed and played on the fiddle.
In the morning he rose with an effort and went to the
hospital. The same Maksim Nikolaich ordered him to bind
his head with a cold compress, and gave him powders;
and by the expression of his face and by his tone, Yakov
saw that it was a bad business, and that no powders would
make it any better. But upon his way home he reflected
that from death at least there would be one profit; it would
no longer be necessary to eat, to drink, to pay taxes, or to
injure others; and as a man lies in his grave not one year,
but hundreds and thousands of years, the profit was enor-
mous. The life of man was, in short, a loss, and only his
death a profit. Yet this consideration, though entirely just,
was offensive and bitter; for, why in this world is it so or-
dered that life, which is given to a man only once, passes
by without profit?
He did not regret dying, but as soon as he arrived home
and saw his fiddle, his heart fell, and he felt sorry. The fid-
dle could not be taken to the grave; it must remain an or-
phan, and the same thing would happen to it as had hap-
pened to the birchwood and the pine forest. Everything in
32 ANTON CHEKHOV
this world decayed, and would decay! Yakov went to the

door of the hut and sat upon the threshold-stone, pressing
his fiddle to his shoulder. Still thinking of life, full of decay
and full of losses, he began to play, and as the tune poured
out plaintively and touchingly, the tears flowed down his
cheeks. And the harder he thought, the sadder was the
song of the fiddle.
The latch creaked twice, and in the wicket door ap-
peared Rothschild. The first half of the yard he crossed
boldly, but seeing Yakov, he stopped short, shrivelled up,
and apparently from fright began to make signs as if he
wished to tell the time with his fingers.
“Come on, don’t be afraid,” said Yakov kindly, beckon-
ing him. “Come!”
With a look of distrust and terror Rothschild drew near
and stopped about two yards away.
“Don’t beat me, Yakov, it is not my fault!” he said, with a
bow. “Moses Ilyich has sent me again. ‘Don’t be afraid!’ he
said, ‘go to Yakov again and tell him that without him we
cannot possibly get on.’ The wedding is on Wednesday.
Schapovalov’s daughter is marrying a wealthy man. . . It
will be a first-class wedding,” added the Jew, blinking one eye.
“I cannot go,” answered Yakov, breathing heavily. “I
am ill, brother.”
And again he took his bow, and the tears burst from his
eyes and fell upon the fiddle. Rothschild listened attentive-
ly, standing by his side with arms folded upon his chest.
The distrustful, terrified expression upon his face changed
little by little into a look of suffering and grief, he rolled his
eyes as if in ecstasy of torment, and ejaculated “Wachch-
ch!” And the tears slowly rolled down his cheeks and made
little black patches on his green frock-coat.
All day long Yakov lay in bed and worried. With evening
came the priest, and, confessing him, asked whether he
had any particular sin which he would like to confess; and
Yakov exerted his fading memory, and, remembering
Marfa’s unhappy face and the Jew’s despairing cry when
he was bitten by the dog, said in a hardly audible voice:
“Give the fiddle to Rothschild.”
And now in the town everyone asks: Where did Roth-
schild get such an excellent fiddle? Did he buy it or steal
it. . . or did he get it in pledge? Long ago he abandoned his
flute, and now plays on the fiddle only. From beneath his
bow issue the same mournful sounds as formerly came
from the flute; but when he tries to repeat the tune that
Yakov played when he sat on the threshold-stone, the fid-
dle emits sounds so passionately sad and full of grief that
the listeners weep; and he himself rolls his eyes and ejac-
ulates “Wachchch!”. . . But this new song so pleases eve-
ryone in the town that wealthy traders and officials never
fail to engage Rothschild for their social gatherings, and
even force him to play it as many as ten times.
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MAXIM GORKY
Russian novelist and critic, 1868–1936. Gorky was a consist-

ent advocate of Jewish emancipation, and expressed his deep
sympathy with the Jewish masses in many sketches and special
articles. The following story appeared in Shchit, Moscow, 1916,
and in The Shield, edited by Gorky, Andreyev and Sologub, and
translated by A. Yarmolinsky, New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1917.
It is published here with the kind permission of Alfred A. Knopf,
Inc. and Mr. Yarmolinsky.
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THE LITTLE BOY
I T IS hard to tell this little story—it is so simple. When I

was a youth, I used to gather the children of our street
on Sunday mornings during the spring and summer sea-
sons and take them with me to the fields and woods. I
took great pleasure in the friendship of these little people,
who were as gay as birds.
The children were only too glad to leave the dusty, nar-
row streets of the city. Their mothers provided them with
slices of bread, while I brought them dainties and filled a
big bottle with cider, and, like a shepherd, walked behind
my carefree little lambs, while we passed through the town
and the fields on our way to the green forest, beautiful
and caressing in its array of Spring.
We always started on our journey early in the morning
when the church bells were ushering in the early mass,
and we were accompanied by the chimes and the clouds
of dust raised by the children’s nimble feet.
In the heat of the noon, exhausted with playing, my com-
panions would gather at the edge of the forest, and after
that, having eaten their food, the smaller children would lie
down and sleep in the shade of hazel and snowball trees,
while the ten-year-old boys would flock around me and ask
me to tell them stories. I would satisfy their desire, chatter-
ing as eagerly as the children themselves, and often, in spite
of the self-assurance of youth and the ridiculous pride which
it takes in the miserable crumbs of worldly wisdom it pos-
37
38 MAXIM GORKY
sesses, I would feel like a twenty-year-old child in a con-

clave of sages.
Overhead is the blue veil of the spring sky, and before
us lies the deep forest, brooding in wise silence. Now and
then the wind whispers gently and stirs the fragrant shad-
ows of the forest, and again does the soothing silence ca-
ress us with a motherly caress. White clouds are sailing
slowly across the azure heavens. Viewed from the earth,
heated by the sun, the sky appears cold, and it is strange
to see the clouds melt away in the blue. And all around
me—little people, dear little people, destined to partake of
all the sorrows and all the joys of life.
These were my happy days, my true holidays, and my
soul, already dusty with the knowledge of life’s evil, was
bathed and refreshed in the clear-eyed wisdom of child-
like thoughts and feelings.
Once, when I was coming out of the city on my way to
the fields, accompanied by a crowd of children, we met an
unknown little Jewish boy. He was barefooted and his shirt
was torn; his eyebrows were black, his body slim, and his
hair grew in curls like that of a little sheep. He was excit-
ed and he seemed to have been crying. The lids of his dull-
black eyes, swollen and red, contrasted with his face,
which, emaciated by starvation, was ghastly pale.
Having found himself face to face with the crowd of
children, he stood still in the middle of the road, burrow-
ing his bare feet in the dust, which early in the morning is
so deliciously cool. In fear, he half opened the dark lips of
his fair mouth—the next second he leaped right on to the
sidewalk.
“Catch him!” the children started to shout gaily and in
a chorus. “A Jewish boy! Catch the Jew-boy!”
THE LITTLE BOY 39
I waited, thinking that he would run away. His thin, big-

eyed face was all fear; his lips quivered; he stood there amid
the shouts and mocking laughter. Pressing his shoulders
against the fence and hiding his hands behind his back, he
stretched and, strangely, appeared to have grown bigger.
But suddenly he spoke, very calmly and in a distinct
and correct Russian.
“If you wish, I will show you some tricks.”
I took this offer for a means of self-defence. But the chil-
dren at once became interested. The larger and coarser boys
alone looked with distrust and suspicion on the little Jew-
ish boy. The children of our street were in a state of gueril-
la warfare with the children of other streets; in addition,
they were deeply convinced of their own superiority and
were loath to brook the rivalry of other children.
The smaller boys approached the matter more simply.
“Come on, show us,” they shouted.
The handsome, slim boy moved away from the fence,
bent his thin body backward, and touching the ground with
his hands, he tossed up his feet and remained standing on
his arms, shouting:
“Hop! Hop! Hop!”
Then he began to spin in the air, swinging his body lightly
and adroitly. Through the holes of his shirt and pants we
caught glimpses of the greyish skin of his slim body, of his
sharply bulging and angular shoulder-blades, knees and
elbows. It seemed to us as if with one more twist of his
body his thin bones would crack and break into pieces.
He worked hard until the shirt grew wet with sweat about
his shoulders. After each especially daring feat he looked
into the children’s faces with an artificial, weary smile,
and it was unpleasant to see his dull eyes, grown large
40 MAXIM GORKY
with pain. Their strange and unsteady glance was not like
that of a child.
The lads encouraged him with loud outcries. Many im-
itated him, rolling in the dust and shouting for joy, pain
and envy. But the joyous minutes were soon over when
the boy, bringing his exhibition to an end, looked upon the
children with the benevolent smile of a thoroughbred art-
ist and stretching forth his hand said:
“Now give me something.”
We all became silent, until one of the children said:
“Money?”
“Yes,” said the lad.
“Look at him,” said the children.
“For money, we could do those tricks ourselves.”
The audience became hostile toward the artist, and be-
took itself to the field, ridiculing and insulting him. Of
course, none of them had any money. I myself had only
seven kopecks about me. I put two coins in the boy’s dusty
palm. He moved them with his finger and with a kindly
smile said: “Thank you.”
He went away, and I noticed that his shirt around his
back was all in black blotches and was clinging close to
his shoulder-blades.
“Hold on, what is it?”
He stopped, turned about, scrutinized me and said dis-
tinctly, with the same kindly smile:
“You mean the blotches on my back? That’s from fall-
ing off the trapeze. It happened on Easter. My father is
still lying in bed, but I am quite well now.”
I lifted his shirt. On his back, running down from his
left shoulder to the side, was a wide dark scratch which
had now become dried up into a thick crust. While he was
THE LITTLE BOY 41
exhibiting his tricks the wound broke open in several spots

and red blood was now trickling from the openings.
“It doesn’t hurt any more,” said he with a smile. “It
doesn’t hurt, it only itches.”
And bravely, as it becomes a hero, he looked in my eyes
and went on, speaking like a serious grown-up person:
“You think I have been doing this for myself? Upon my
word—I have not. My father. . . there is not a crust of
bread in the house, and my father is lying badly hurt. So
you see, I have to work hard. And to make matters worse,
we are Jews, and everybody laughs at us. Good-bye.”
He spoke with a smile, cheerfully and courageously.
With a nod of his curly head, he quickly went on, passing
by the houses which looked at him with their glass eyes,
indifferent and dead.
All this is insignificant and simple, is it not?
Yet many a time in the darkest days of my life I remem-
bered with gratitude the courage and bravery of the little
Jewish boy. And now, in these sorrowful days of suffering
and bloody outrages which fall upon the gray head of the
ancient nation, the creator of Gods and Religion, I think
again of the boy, for in him I see a symbol of true manly
bravery; not the pliant patience of slaves, who live by un-
certain hopes, but the courage of the strong who are cer-
tain of their victory.
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RICARDA HUCH
Swiss German novelist and poetess, 1864–. The following story

appears in English translation, by H. Steinhauer and H. Jessi-
man, in Modern German Short Stories, London, Oxford University
Press, 1938. Speaking of Ricarda Huch, in the Introduction to
that anthology, H. Steinhauer says: “She shares with (Gottfried)
Keller a wholesome realism softened by a kindly humor, and a
wonderful ability to throw a comic cloak over an action which is
essentially tragic. The Jew’s Grave is worthy to be compared with
the master’s immortal tales about the people of Seldwyla.”
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THE JEW’S GRAVE
I N JEDDAM there was only one Jew and he had

strayed there in this wise: his wife, whom he loved most
loyally, had been born in Jeddam. When her father died,
leaving a considerable estate, it seemed advisable that she
should go in person to take over her inheritance. Home-
sickness awoke within her at the thought of seeing her
childhood’s home; and the whole family, father, mother
and two adolescent children, set out on the long journey.
Seeing Jeddam, which was a village rather than a town,
lying so proudly and pleasantly among its easy slopes, its
fertile fields and green meadows watered by the tiny river
Melk, and since his wife was so happy amid familiar
scenes, the easy-going husband agreed to settle there. To
manage such an estate himself was not to be thought of,
and he engaged a young overseer, while he himself opened
in the town a business of the kind which he had formerly
owned. This was the first of its kind in Jeddam, whose
inhabitants had been accustomed to make their purchas-
es in the nearest city. The shop would therefore have had
a good chance of success if its proprietor had not been a
Jew, a race with whom the people of Jeddam would have
no dealings. There were sales enough made, but few re-
ceipts taken; and when Herr Samuel took his debtors into
court he found to his dismay that the authorities refused
to act on his behalf, so that he had to bear the expense of
litigation without receiving justice. He often thought ap-
prehensively of what might be the end of it all, and he
would gladly have left the place with his family if he could
45
46 RICARDA HUCH
have collected his debts and realized his wife’s estate with-
out too great loss.
Some years passed in this way, until one day Herr Sam-
uel fell ill and sent for the doctor in the next town. The
first call proved fruitless, and when in answer to the sec-
ond he was told that the doctor was very busy and regret-
ted he would not be able to attend him, he began to feel
seriously disturbed. He realized for the first time that he
might perish miserably in this place. To his family who sat
anxiously around his bed taking counsel together, he said,
“The best thing for me, now that I’m ill, would be to die
and leave you in peace, and be happy.” His wife, Rosette,
and the two children, Anitza and Emmanuel, would not
allow him to speak so, declaring that without him they
would be unhappy even in Paradise. Herr Ive, the over-
seer, who was now engaged to Anitza, said that this would
be no solution, in any case, for the people of Jeddam would
be just as bitterly opposed to the apostate wife of a Jew
and his children remaining in their midst.
“But how would it be,” said Anitza, “if we gave out
that you had died, father, and were buried, while you went
back to your own town, and Ive, as our friend and natu-
ral protector, wound up our affairs and then brought us
home to you?”
At first, Herr Samuel would not hear of this scheme,
but when the overseer confidently assured him that it could
be carried out successfully, and since his wife and chil-
dren were gleefully eager for the fun of hoaxing the peo-
ple of Jeddam, he finally agreed to go through with it. As
soon as he was fit to travel, he left Jeddam by night and
managed to reach the nearest seaport unobserved, where
he boarded a ship.
THE JEW’S GRAVE 47
Meanwhile, Frau Rosette and Anitza, with the aid of

Herr Ive, stuffed a good-sized dummy, fitted a mask with a
horse-hair beard to its straw head, and placed this figure,
wrapped in a white shroud, on Herr Samuel’s bed. They
covered the face with a handkerchief, but the waxen
hands, adorned with the diamond ring which Herr Samu-
el always wore on his index finger, they left exposed to
view to heighten the deception. The ruse would probably
have been found out, in spite of all, if it had not been that
the Jew’s house was avoided like that of a leper. There
was no lack of curious eyes, to be sure, when the news of
the death spread, but they spied from afar, and only the
servants of the household peeped timidly at the sham
corpse, from the threshold of the death-chamber.
Herr Ive next went to the parish authorities to report
the death and make arrangements for the funeral; but the
councillors sent him to the pastor, who attended to these
matters. This was a man with thick, bushy hair, and a
narrow, board-like forehead surmounting a wide face, who
said little, not from temperament or intention, but because
he had nothing to say. His big eyes flickered anxiously
and fearfully out of the huge void of his skull, but on the
whole he was a stupid and harmless man rather than a
vicious one, except when certain ecclesiastical questions
were at stake. Whenever any matter came up upon which
he had an opinion and on which he could assume any sort
of authority, he seized upon it fiercely, puffing himself up
and spitting venom against any who opposed him, urged
by a hidden impulse to revenge himself for his usual insig-
nificance and uselessness. When Herr Ive called at his
house, he knew already what had happened, and received
him with the words, “What is it, Herr Ive? Something se-
48 RICARDA HUCH
rious, it must be, to bring you to me with it; you don’t usu-
ally bother me, neither in my own house nor in the house
of God. Since those people of yours don’t need any spirit-
ual care, I suppose it’s a question of the inheritance, or
perhaps of marriage.”
Herr Ive made some polite excuses and said that he
merely wanted to report the death of Herr Samuel; it was
his duty as trustee for the family. “And a pretty task you’ve
taken upon yourself,” said the pastor; “don’t you know
that he who touches pitch will be defiled? Don’t talk to
me of your dead Jew, I’ve got nothing to do with it. Leave
me in peace.”
Herr Ive explained that the parish council had sent
him to the pastor, whose usual custom it was to look af-
ter the formalities of funerals. “Yes,” cried the pastor,
flaring up, “the funerals of Christian people, certainly.
Let the rabbis and Pharisees bury the Jew in their own
soil and themselves as well. It would be the best thing for
them and us, too.”
His reverence knew quite well, Herr Ive replied, that
there were neither Pharisees nor Sadducees in Jeddam
and still less a Jewish cemetery, and so it was impossible
to carry out the pastor’s wishes; the deceased Herr Sam-
uel would have to be buried, for good or ill, beside the
departed citizens of Jeddam. Arching his thin eyebrows
above his great rolling eyes, the pastor struck his clenched
fist thrice upon the table and cried, “Nothing of the kind!
Get out with you! Dump your dead Jew where you like,
but don’t show your face with him in our Christian church-
yard.” At this, Herr Ive, whose blood was boiling by this
time, turned about and banged the door behind him, as he
strode furiously back to the parochial authorities.
The councillors laid their heads together and argued

back and forth, until at last Herr Ive forced his way to the
mayor, who did not usually allow himself to be disturbed
in his own affairs. He was a portly gentleman who, be-
neath a suave exterior, concealed a supreme contempt for
the majority of his fellow men and imagined that he had
been chosen mayor solely on account of his intellectual
superiority and his urbanity of manner. His chief concern
was to preserve his reputation for infallibility, and his
popularity; he was therefore as agreeable to talk with as
he was hard to move to any sort of action.
Breathless with anger, Herr Ive related his experience
at the house of the pastor, frequently interrupted by ques-
tions from the mayor upon insignificant details; these inter-
ruptions were intended partly to prove his professional
thoroughness and his human sympathy, and partly to gain
time. When Herr Ive had exhausted all he had to say upon
the matter and was impatiently waiting a decision, the
mayor inclined his head to one side, folded his hands over
his stomach and said thoughtfully, “A pity, a great pity,
that Herr Samuel had to die! An industrious man, a nice
man, a good father and a useful citizen, but a Jew, unques-
tionably a Jew! He ought to have gone on living a while
longer!”
Herr Ive said impatiently, “Your Worship will show that
love of justice for which you are so justly famous; you
will not allow one whom Your Worship yourself describes
as a useful citizen to be thrown into a ditch like rotten
fruit, instead of being given proper burial?”
“Thrown into a ditch like rotten fruit,” cried the mayor in
horror. “That would be an offence which I should punish
severely, yes, indeed. The clergy, as we all know, are some
50 RICARDA HUCH
times carried away by pious zeal, but the civic head of

this community executes incorruptible justice. Never shall
a deceased Jew who has lived a decent life be allowed to
lie in the street like rotten fruit.”
In that case, Herr Ive assumed, the mayor would issue
an order for the proper burial of the deceased man, in the
general burying ground. Certainly, he would do that, an-
swered the mayor, after he had assembled the council and
consulted their wishes. “For,” he added with a smile, “I
have no desire to play the tyrant just because I am in a
position to do so.”
Herr Ive had to content himself with this unsatisfactory
answer, and hurried away to give the Samuel family an ac-
count of the interview. Under the pressure of the moment
he had almost forgotten that his future father-in-law was
not really dead, but the amused faces that met him recalled
this to him, and he had to laugh at the passion the mayor
had worked up over an imaginary situation. The charming
Anitza sank down on a divan and laughed till the tears ran
down her cheeks, stifling her shrieks of amusement with a
cushion. Her mother, a tall, powerful woman who would
stand no nonsense, got up, however, and said, “Ive, you’re
a good fellow, but you’ve got the spirit of a sheep; you don’t
know how to handle these people; it’s no use to treat them
courteously, you must be rude and brazen, because that’s
what they understand. I suppose you waited modestly at
the door and asked for permission, instead of saying, ‘I tell
you we will bury my father-in-law tomorrow, and if you try
to stop me, I will pound you to a jelly with my fists.’”
“I behaved firmly and decidedly as a man should,” said
Herr Ive, whose keen, handsome face had turned bright
scarlet at the accusation of timidity. “I can lay about me,
too, when it is necessary, but I did not think the time had
come for that yet.”
“You know, mamma,” said young Emmanuel, “these
people are within their rights. A Christian cemetery is for
Christians, a Jewish one for Jews. It isn’t so simple a
matter as you imagine.”
Frau Rosette flew into a flaming passion and cried, “I’ve
no patience with your hair-splitting! Your father isn’t a thief
or a murderer, but a better man than all those Jeddam fools,
who ought to feel honored to have such a man buried in
their cemetery. Do you think they would treat you or me
or Anitza with any more respect, although we are good
Christians? But they’ve reckoned without me in this mat-
ter. I’ll take it up with some one very different from a wood-
en-headed parson and that windbag of a mayor.”
Clapping her hands with delight, Anitza said to her
brother, “Mamma would like us both to die, so that she
might spite the parson by making him give us Christian
burial.” And Emmanuel, who loved to tease his mother,
replied, “No, a wife and children take the man’s status,
and I doubt whether we have the right to be buried in
Jeddam cemetery.”
“Idiot,” cried his mother. “My great-grandfather, my
grandfather, and my father are buried there and I’d like
to see the man who can prevent me from lying beside them.
I’ll take the matter to the Emperor, if necessary, just to
show these upstarts where I may be buried!”
Herr Ive did his best to persuade the irate lady to await
the council’s decision, and set out once more to learn what
it might be. Before he was ushered into the council-cham-
ber, where the pastor and the councillors were assembled,
the mayor said to them, “I wouldn’t dream of attempting
52 RICARDA HUCH
any tyrannical perversion of justice, and I realize that le-

gally a Jew may not be buried in our Christian cemetery.
Still, I always remember the Latin motto, and try to be
inflexible in deed but kind and gracious in manner, there-
fore I shall break it as gently as possible to the young man
that the decision is unfavorable.”
So, when Herr Ive was admitted, the mayor received
him graciously and, gently stroking the minute book which
lay open before him, he said, “You are a worthy citizen,
Herr Ive, and so was the deceased Herr Samuel, in so far
as he was a citizen; but from the point of view of religion
he was an alien to me. I put it to you, yourself, is there a
Jewish community in this place?”
The only answer Herr Ive could give to this question
was, “No.” Whereupon the mayor continued, “There is no
Jewish community here, and what amounts to the same
thing, no Jews. Now, if there are no Jews here, there is no
Jew here either, and so Herr Samuel, who was a Jew, nev-
er existed here in a legal sense. His family may weep for
him; his friends—and indeed all feeling hearts—may mourn
his death, but the community as such must regard him as
non-existent and therefore cannot give him burial.”
“Then I should like to ask Your Worship,” cried Herr
Ive fiercely, “where I am to bury him, for bury him some-
where I must.”
“That is certainly desirable, and far be it from me to put
any barrier in the way of the survivors. But the Christian
cemetery must be left out of your plans, and you know as
well as I do that no corpse may remain within the city
limits.”
Herr Ive’s patience came to an end; the blood rushed to
his face as he cried, “If you could tolerate the living Jew
among you, you can also endure the dead one’s presence.
I ask for no tolling of bells or droning of prayers at his
grave, but only a spot of earth where he may lie in peace,
and that he shall have in spite of you. I give you fair
warning that I shall bring him to the burial ground my-
self tomorrow, and I will knock any one down who tries
to stop me.”
These violent words kindled a hot argument which was
interrupted by the sudden entry of Frau Rosette. Tired of
waiting, she had come in person to bring these people to
reason and to put an end to the matter with a few plain
words. As she stood majestically on the threshold, dressed
in black from head to foot, they all fell silent and the may-
or hastened towards her with words of consolation. “No
condolences, Your Worship,” she said waving him off, “I
set no store by them. I ask for nothing but my rights. I
wish to bury my husband in the churchyard where my
father and mother, my grandfathers, and my great-grand-
fathers rest, and I demand of you, that you help rather
than hinder me in this matter.”
“Your late father was my esteemed friend,” said the
mayor, mopping the perspiration from his brow with a
large colored silk handkerchief, “and his grave is honored
in our cemetery. He was a good citizen and a good Chris-
tian, and no more is needed in order to be well received
and buried in Jeddam.”
“I think then,” said Frau Rosette, “that I also have earned
this courtesy. But I desire to lie by my husband’s side one
day, and for that no Christian wife can be blamed.”
The mayor again mopped his brow while he stood think-
ing. The pastor, who had remained silent until now, seized
the opportunity, “Will you bow before this proud and idol-
54 RICARDA HUCH
atrous Jezebel? Woman, you have brought a monster into

your family and into our community, but you shall not
bring him into God’s acre here. There are enough rubbish
heaps on the earth where you may fling your unbelieving
bones, but they shall not enter our consecrated burial
ground.”
Stepping up close to the pastor, Frau Rosette retorted,
“Listen, you, it is a poor honor for me to be buried among
your mouldering skeletons, but I will not allow you to rob
me of what is my right by birth and inheritance, and I
would be willing to die here on the spot, so that you would
have to watch me make my entry into your dirty bone-
yard.” The councillors lost their tempers also at the pointed
remarks of Frau Rosette, and one of them muttered, “A
Jew’s wife has no rights in Jeddam.” “Yes, you greedy
beasts, you would have liked to wolf down my dowry,”
she sneered.
“Better a wolf than a pig,” cried another, for thus Jews
were regarded in Jeddam.
Pale with anger, Frau Rosette cried, “You dog, to insult
the noble dead!” Placing her hand on Herr Ive’s arm, she
drew him away, saying, “Come, we will take our case into
our own hands.”
While the mayor discoursed fluently on how a wise man
and a man of the world behaved in such circumstances,
not using violent language but insisting gently yet firmly
on the letter of the law, the pastor became alarmed lest
the high-handed Frau should secretly smuggle her hus-
band into the churchyard.
She certainly meant to do so; not by stealth, however,
but publicly and ceremoniously, in the light of day, pre-
suming that no one would dare to start a brawl in the
churchyard. But the pastor found time to collect a mob of

villagers and harangue them. “My children,” he said, “this
dead Jew will infect our good earth! You must not suffer
it! Let him lie in the fields, for the ravens and crows. If
you don’t defend yourselves, poison and pestilence and
murrain will follow.” The result was that when the bear-
ers of the coffin that contained the stuffed Samuel reached
the cemetery they found the way barred by a hostile mob
who refused to let them enter. Frau Rosette, Herr Ive,
and the children, who were following in an open carriage,
saw to their astonishment a violent struggle developing in
which their servants, who were outnumbered, were get-
ting the worst of it. For a while Herr Ive watched the skir-
mish with the expert eye of youth and with growing impa-
tience. At last, unable to restrain himself any longer, he
jumped out of the carriage and, pulling off his coat as he
ran, rushed into the fray with a shout. Emmanuel, whose
dark eyes were filling with the lust of battle, was preparing
to follow his brother-in-law, and Frau Rosette had difficul-
ty in restraining him while at the same time admonishing,
by frowns and clutching, the volatile Anitza who was over-
come with merriment at the sight of her lover’s prowess.
Although Frau Rosette viewed with satisfaction and ap-
proval Herr Ive’s action, she nevertheless called on him to
desist for the present, in view of the overwhelming superi-
ority of the enemy’s numbers, and the impossibility of van-
quishing them. Once warmed to the fight, Herr Ive was
unwilling to give up, but he finally realized that she was
right, and led the party back to their home, the children
hilarious and Frau Rosette boiling with fury.
Those who were left kept up the fight with such zeal
that the town police had difficulty in separating them when
56 RICARDA HUCH
night fell. The riot caused such concern to the mayor and
council that they assembled again in a private room of the
inn, which often served as a meeting-place on pressing
occasions, and sought a happy solution for this delicate
problem.
“It cannot be denied,” began the mayor benignly, toy-
ing with the lid of his beer mug, “that a dead man should
be buried somewhere. Nor can we expect that Frau Ro-
sette should bury her husband among her wheat and po-
tatoes.” “On no account,” cried the vicar in threatening
tones, “can he be allowed to contaminate our Christian
ground. Out with him, I say! Away with him. Bury him
outside, as we bury horses and dogs.”
The mayor continued to tap his lid thoughtfully and said,
“I admit, Your Reverence, that a Jew is not a Christian,
but should he therefore be classed with the beasts?”
A long discussion followed, and after much delibera-
tion one of the councillors suggested, “You all know, gen-
tlemen, that there is one corner of the cemetery, overgrown
with weeds, for it is not the caretaker’s business to attend
to it, where those unfortunate infants are buried who were
stillborn, or died before they could receive baptism. These
infants seem to me to be like the Jew in so far as they are
also unbaptized, and it should not be improper to bury
him quietly there.”
Before the mayor could pronounce his qualified approv-
al of this proposal, the pastor broke out, wringing his hands
with vexation, “Is this your Christianity? You talk like
heathen or infidels. Don’t you know that children who
die before, or immediately after birth, are angels? Little
angelic beings who have never opened their bright eyes,
or allowed them to be dimmed by the spectacle of this sin-

ful earth. They have spread their wings upon the thresh-
old of life and flown back into heaven.”
Overcome by his own affecting picture of the state of
these little ones, the pastor’s tears began to flow and a few
of the councillors were also seen to wipe their eyes, while
the mayor protested, “No one is preventing the children
from flying to heaven, nor the Jew from going to hell; nev-
ertheless, from a legal point of view they are both un-
baptized, therefore it seems right and proper to me that
they should be buried in the same place.” He could not
altogether forget that Herr Samuel’s relatives-in-law were
important and well-to-do citizens, who, though they had
had little to do with him in life, might resent any indignity
done to one of the family.
The pastor could make no impression on the council-
lors, who were unanimous, but he took the matter to his
flock, encouraging them to resent the grave injury that
would be done to the community, and to use their fists, in
God’s name, to prevent it. “Would you stand meekly by while
some one brought a wolf into your sheepfold?” he cried.
“Yet they are seeking to bring such a Judas into the midst
of your innocent children, whose angels intercede for sin-
ful men at the throne of the Most High. Pestilence, war,
deluge, fire, and famine will descend upon you if you allow
the hallowed ground to be desecrated by this unbeliever.”
The citizens of Jeddam needed no urging, but rose in a
body and swore that they would annihilate anyone who
tried to bring the dead Samuel to their churchyard. The
most violent of them all was a rich farmer named Pomilko,
a giant of a man with pale blond hair who could have rout-
ed the whole village with his retinue of tenants, relations,
58 RICARDA HUCH
dependants, and servants. True, he hadn’t looked into the

matter, but as soon as word was brought to him had gone
off, cursing and gnashing his teeth, among his fields and
had not returned for two days. Still, he regarded it as a
gross insult that a Jew should be buried near his offspring,
and he declared loudly that neither mayor nor Emperor
could take such liberties with Pomilko, as he would show
should they dare to try. By his first marriage he had a
grown-up daughter named Sorka, a tall, strong girl with
bold, flashing eyes and a handsome mouth with teeth, as
strong as cobblestones, that gleamed like yellow marble.
When this girl had heard that a stepmother would arrive
at the house, she told her father that she would not toler-
ate it, and he had better not attempt it. This only made
him hurry on the marriage. At the first meal Sorka ab-
sented herself and her father called her in, while the step-
mother filled and served her a plateful of soup, very un-
graciously. Sorka pushed away the plate so violently that
the tablecloth was drenched, and cried, with a wicked grin,
“I won’t eat the food that you have cooked.” “Then you
may starve,” retorted her father angrily; “there is no oth-
er food for you.” Laughing disdainfully, Sorka said, “I’ll
seek my own bread, then,” and left the house there and
then, with her belongings.
Having nowhere to go immediately, she took service
with a small farmer and soon became engaged to his son,
meeting with no objection on the part of her master, old
Darinko, who knew that Pomilko could not keep from
the girl what she had inherited from her mother. This af-
fair had filled Pomilko with such ill-humor and vindic-
tiveness, that in his anger he was ready to seize upon any
excuse for quarrelling and attacking someone.
The mayor could not conceal from himself that a veri-

table uprising was brewing among the people, and in his
embarrassment he published a proclamation in which he
said he would place the question of the Jew’s grave in the
hands of the Emperor himself. Meanwhile, they were to
go about their proper business and conduct themselves
quietly, assured that their welfare was safe in his care. He
did not actually go to the Emperor, however, but to the
commander of the garrison in the nearest town. This of-
ficer declared himself in favor of the proposal to bury Herr
Samuel in the corner of the cemetery where the unbaptized
infants lay. He also allowed the mayor a small detach-
ment of troops, to keep the peace in case of any distur-
bance during the funeral.
Frau Rosette was now informed where and how she
might bury her husband, and was also requested to have
the burial performed by night, so as to avoid giving offence.
Her pride was not quite satisfied, but she reminded herself
that it was not her Samuel who was to be buried thus, after
all, but only a stuffed effigy. It might be as well, she ref-
lected, to have the ruse brought to a conclusion before it was
found out, and let it be forgotten as soon as possible. And so
she undertook to carry out the mayor’s instructions.
Faced with the soldiers, Jeddam decided that it would
take no notice of the funeral, but keep out of the way
decently. So the black curtained hearse jogged through
the empty streets by night, as though the village had been
under a spell, or turned to stone. Nothing was heard but
the trotting of the horse and the rolling of the wheels,
except the low voices of Frau Rosette and Herr Ive, who
followed the coffin in a light cart. With the help of the
grave-digger, the bogus Samuel was hastily consigned to
60 RICARDA HUCH
the appointed corner, and the family, whose trunks were

already packed, set out on the journey that would reunite
them with their father. Herr Ive remained behind tem-
porarily, to finish the business which had been the origi-
nal cause of the hoax.
But the feud was by no means over yet. On the day after
the burial, it was found that the wall of the churchyard
surrounding the place where the unbaptized infants lay was
covered with rudely chalked insults, “The Pig-Market,”
“Jeddam Dunghill,” “Dumping Ground,” and other vile
epithets. This soon reached the ears of the parents whose
children were buried there. Chief among the outraged par-
ents was Pomilko, who had sided with the authorities, and
who was convinced that old Darinko, at whose place his
daughter was living, had perpetrated this deadly insult, es-
pecially against him. Thus Darinko became the head of the
clerical party, which continued to protest against the pres-
ence of the late Samuel in the cemetery. Darinko did in-
deed deny that he had chalked up the opprobrious epithets,
but he was not ill-pleased at the prominence into which the
accusation brought him, and he carried on the fight merri-
ly under the protection of the church and the pastor. Grad-
ually both factions forgot the dead Jew who had been the
original cause of contention, and made use of the feud to
fight out old quarrels of all kinds. They harried each other
in every possible way and there were in consequence so
many bloody heads, broken limbs, and blazing barns in
Jeddam, that the police and the barber-surgeon, not to men-
tion the fireman, were kept busy day and night. The mayor
was inclined to support Pomilko, who was easily the rich-
est of his flock, and was moreover fighting for the mayor’s
side, but the clerical party outnumbered the other so far
that he did not dare to offend them either. The pastor,

drunk with his own importance, continually declaimed,
“Fire and conflagration is here! Parricide and fratricide
are here. Did I not prophesy it to you? Did I not warn you
that Jeddam would be infected and poisoned with unbe-
lief. Cast out the festering sore from the midst of Jeddam.
Out with the unbaptized bones of the Jew, lest we all mis-
erably perish! Children, I say unto you, we shall all per-
ish!” He wept aloud as he spoke, convinced that it was so
by his own eloquence. The mayor, also in tears, begged
him to stop making these inflammatory speeches, and rath-
er try to calm the seething mob; but this only infuriated
the pastor the more and he indignantly refused to sell his
Saviour, even for a hundred pieces of gold.
Jeddam might have perished in blood and flames if the
mayor had not sought the aid of the military once more.
The news that the Emperor himself was coming at the head
of a regiment to quell the rebellion paralyzed the villagers
with terror and they slunk home one by one to their work.
“Darinko,” said the pastor that day to the son of the old
farmer who led the clericals, “I promise you that you will
wed Sorka and receive her dowry intact, if you will go to
the cemetery to-night, dig out the Jew from his grave and
throw him into the Melk.”
“I’m quite ready to do that,” said young Darinko. “I
wonder we haven’t done it long ago.”
“Do it to-night,” said the pastor, “and you shall not re-
gret it.” All of this Darinko faithfully related to Sorka,
who volunteered to help her lover. It would have been a
difficult task for him to accomplish alone, for he had to
provide himself with implements not only to open the grave,
but the heavy oak coffin as well, since he could not carry
62 RICARDA HUCH
it to the river. All was dark and silent when they stole
from the farm-yard and set out for the cemetery. They
had a long search for the grave which bore no distinguish-
ing mark, and the perspiration dripped from their brows
as they dug around, until they finally found the large cof-
fin they were seeking. Breathing a sigh of relief they
crouched down together on the heaped-up earth, for they
had the night before them, and Sorka spread out the bread,
cheese, and beer which she had brought to refresh them.
Happy in the prospect of immediate marriage revealed by
the pastor, they shared the food, clasped hands and kissed,
while Sorka declared, “As far as I’m concerned, I don’t
mind if the old Jew was left lying here, just to spite my
father for marrying my stepmother.”
“Was she really such a bad one?” asked Darinko curiously.
“No worse than I am,” shrugged Sorka, “but I didn’t
like her and that’s why I ran away and made fun of her
temper.” She laughed till her yellow teeth shone in the
darkness.
Presently they took up their task again. Opening the
coffin was all the more difficult because they dared not
make much noise. When they had succeeded, Darinko
said, “Now comes the toughest job of all; it’s a pitch black
night and we are all alone with it.” Sorka gave him a sly
look, “Are you nervous?” she asked. “You weren’t nerv-
ous when you kissed me the first time, and I could have
boxed your ears better than a dead Jew.”
Reminded of his own heroism, Darinko’s courage re-
vived; he threw back the lid and grasped the corpse about
the middle. It was his intention to hurry off with it as quick-
ly as possible and throw it in the river without looking at
it. But scarcely had he grasped it when he dropped it again
with a cry, the straw effigy felt so different from the corpse
he expected. Sorka burst into a shout of laughter at his
surprise and bent over the collapsed dummy to see what
was so strange about it. When they realized that they had
only a straw man with waxen face and hands to deal with,
Darinko stood gaping in astonishment, while Sorka threw
herself on the ground and rolled about in a fit of laughter.
“But what can it mean?” said Darinko at last, uncertain
whether magic or the devil’s art had come into play. “What
does it matter to us,” said Sorka. “We can’t throw any oth-
er Jew into the Melk except the one we’ve found here;
whether it’s the right one or not, is no concern of ours.”
She stood up as she spoke and eagerly examined the dia-
mond ring which she had spied on the index finger of the
waxen hand. It had been left there by Frau Rosette, either
because she had forgotten it, or as a freewill offering for
the success of her bold scheme. Sorka now was frightened
in her turn, for Heaven knew what diabolical trap might
be concealed here, she thought. Quickly reviewing the
strange situation, she soon convinced herself that a valua-
ble ring was a valuable ring and nothing more, and that
they were justly entitled to accept the find as a reward for
a difficult piece of work. Pledging themselves to secrecy,
they took possession of the ring, overjoyed at their good
fortune. For a little longer they lay enjoying their happiness
on the cemetery earth, then Darinko dragged the strange
doll over to the Melk while Sorka shovelled the earth into
the empty grave and smoothed it over as it had been before.
The soldiers who marched into Jeddam the next day
found nothing to occupy them and, since it was hard to
discover who were the real incendiaries and leaders in
the various brawls, no severe sentences were imposed.
64 RICARDA HUCH
Some time later, the unsuspecting Herr Samuel, who

had not been told the story of what had happened in Jed-
dam, embraced his loved ones again, his homely face shin-
ing with the joy of reunion, while at the same moment,
the pastor of Jeddam was sitting at the table with the may-
or, who remarked, “It is well known that you, Your Rev-
erence, are wiser than my humble self in theology and all
matters of religion. Yet I cannot help observing that pesti-
lence, fire, and war have ceased in this community since
the soldiers appeared, although the dead Samuel still lies
among the unbaptized infants.”
“That he does not, by Heaven,” exulted the pastor,
striking a resounding blow on the table. “The night be-
fore the soldiers came, I had him dug out of his grave
and thrown into the Melk, which has long ere this swept
him down to the ocean to rot among the dead fish and
other rubbish.”
The mayor was so astonished that he did not know
whether to laugh or be shocked. “Do you really believe,”
he asked at last, “that this is the reason why peace and
prosperity have returned to our midst?”
“What else?” cried the pastor. “The life of the village
was in deadly danger, and I have saved it. Not that I would
boast about it; I give God the glory.” And he raised a full
wine-glass and drank to the mayor who, although piqued
by his defeat, thought it best to drink in silence.
ANATOLE FRANCE
French novelist, critic and academician, 1844–1924. He ex-

pressed his contempt for anti-Semitism in historical novels, sat-
ires and essays. See Marvin Lowenthal, “Anatole France’s Jews,”
in The Menorah Journal, 1925, pp. 14 ff. The following selection
is Chapter 19 of The Amethyst Ring, translated by B. Drillien,
New York, 1922, and is used here by permission of the publish-
ers, Dodd, Mead and Company, Inc.
<< Chapter >>
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AN ANTI-SEMITE IN THE COUNTRY
H AVING risen early one morning, M. Bergeret, Pro-

fessor of Latin Literature, went for a walk into the
country with Riquet.The two loved each other dearly, and
were nearly always together. They had the same tastes,
and both preferred a quiet, uneventful, and simple life.
Riquet’s eyes always followed his master closely on these
walks. He was afraid to let him out of his sight one in-
stant, because he was not very sharp-scented, and, had
he lost his master, could not have tracked him again. His
beautiful, loving look was very engaging as he trotted by
the side of M. Bergeret with an important air quite pretty
to see. The Professor of Latin Literature walked slowly
or quickly according to the trend of his capricious fancy.
As soon as Riquet was a stone’s throw ahead of his mas-
ter, he turned round and waited for him with his nose in
the air, and one of his front paws lifted in an attitude of
attention and watchfulness. It did not take much to amuse
either of them. Riquet plunged into gardens and shops alike,
coming out again as hastily as he had entered. On this par-
ticular day he bounded into the coal-seller’s office, to find
himself confronted by a huge snow-white pigeon that
flapped its wings in the darkness, to his extreme terror.
He came, as usual, to relate his adventure, with eyes
and paws and tail, to M. Bergeret, who said jokingly:
“Yes, indeed, my poor Riquet, we have had a terrible
encounter, and have escaped the claws and beak of a winged
monster. That pigeon was an awe-inspiring creature!”
67
68 ANATOLE FRANCE
And M. Bergeret smiled. Riquet knew that smile, and

knew that his master was making fun of him. This was a
thing he could not bear. He stopped wagging his tail, and
walked with hanging head, hunched-up back, and legs
wide apart, as a sign of annoyance.
“My poor Riquet,” said M. Bergeret to him again, “that
bird, which your ancestors would have eaten alive, alarms
you. You are not hungry, as they would have been, and
you are not as brave as they were; the refinement of cul-
ture has made a coward of you. It is questionable wheth-
er civilization does not tend to make men less courageous
as well as less fierce. But civilized man, out of respect for
his species, affects courage and makes of it an artificial
virtue far more beautiful than the natural one. While, as
for you, you shamelessly display your fear.”
Riquet’s annoyance, to tell the truth, was but slight, and
only lasted a few minutes. All was forgiven and forgotten
when the man and the dog entered the Josde woods just
at the hour when the grass is wet with dew and light mists
rise from the hills.
M. Bergeret loved the woods, and at sight of a blade of
grass would lose himself in boundless reveries. Riquet, too,
loved the woods. As he sniffed at the dead leaves, his soul
was filled with strange delight. In deep meditation, there-
fore, they followed the pathway leading to the Carrefour des
Demoiselles, when they met a horseman returning to the
town. It was M. de Terremondre, the county councillor.
“Good day, M. Bergeret,” he cried, reining in his horse.
“Well! Have you thought over my arguments of yester-
day?”
He had explained the evening before at Paillot’s the rea-
son why he was against the Jews.
AN ANTI-SEMITE IN THE COUNTRY 69
When in the country, especially during the hunting sea-

son, M. de Terremondre’s proclivities were anti-Jewish.
When in Paris he dined with rich Jews, whom he tolerated
to the extent of inducing them to buy pictures at a profit to
himself. At County Council meetings, with due consideration
to the feelings that were paramount in his county town, he
was a Nationalist and an Anti-Semite. But as there were no
Jews in that town, the anti-Jewish crusade consisted princi-
pally in attacks upon the Protestants, who formed a small,
austere, and exclusive community of their own.
“So we are enemies,” went on M. de Terremondre. “I
am sorry for that, because you are a clever man, but you
live quite outside the social movement, and are not mixed
up in public life. If you did as I do, and entered into it,
your sympathies would be anti-Jewish.”
“You flatter me,” said M. Bergeret. “The Jewish race
which peopled Chaldea, Assyria, and Phoenicia in former
times, and which founded cities all along the Mediterra-
nean coast, is composed today of Jews scattered the world
over, and also of the countless Arab populations of Asia
and Africa. My heart is not great enough to contain so
many hatreds. Old Cadmus was a Jew, but I really couldn’t
be the enemy of old Cadmus!”
“You are joking,” replied M. de Terremondre, holding
in his horse, who was nibbling at the bushes. “You know
as well as I do that the anti-Jewish movement is directed
solely against the Jews who have settled in France.”
“Therefore I must hate 80,000 persons,” said M. Berger-
et. “That is still too many; I have not the strength for it!”
“No one asks you to hate them,” said M. de Terremondre.
“But Jews and Frenchmen cannot live together. The an-
tagonism is ineradicable; it is in the blood.”
70 ANATOLE FRANCE
“I believe, on the contrary,” said M. Bergeret, “that the

Jews are particularly assimilable, and have the most plas-
tic and malleable natures in the world. With the same read-
iness that the niece of Mordecai entered the harem of Ahas-
uerus in bygone days, so the daughters of our Jewish fin-
anciers marry nowadays the heirs to the greatest names in
Christian France. After marriages such as these, it is rath-
er late in the day to speak of incompatibility of race. Then,
I think it is a bad thing to make a distinction of race in any
country; it is not the race that makes the nation, and there
is not a single country in Europe that has not been founded
on a multitude of mixed and different races. When Caesar
entered Gaul it was peopled by Celts, Gauls, Iberians, all
differing in origin and religion. The tribes that set up the
cromlechs were not of the same blood as those who hon-
ored bards and druids. Into this human mixture the differ-
ent invasions poured Germans, Romans, Saracens, and out
of the whole a nation arose, the brave and lovable people
of France, who, not so very long ago, were the teachers of
justice, liberty, and philosophy to the entire world. Think
of the beautiful words of Renan; I wish I could remember
them exactly: ‘What makes a nation is the memory of the
great things its people have done together, and the will they
have to accomplish others.’ ”
“Excellent!” said M. de Terremondre. “But as I have
not the will to accomplish great things with the Jews, I
remain an anti-Semite.”
“Are you quite sure that it is possible for your feelings
to be wholly anti-Jewish?” asked M. Bergeret.
“I do not understand you,” replied M. de Terremondre.
“Then I will explain myself,” said M. Bergeret. “There
is one fact that never varies: each time there is an attack
on the Jews, a goodly number of them side with the ene-

my. That is just what happened to Titus.”
At this point in the conversation Riquet sat down in the
middle of the road and looked resignedly at his master.
“You will agree,” went on M. Bergeret, “that between
the years 67 and 70 A.D., Titus was a strong anti-Semite.
He took Jotapata, and exterminated its inhabitants. He
conquered Jerusalem, burned the Temple, and reduced to
ashes and ruins the city which afterwards received the
name of Ælia. Capitolina. The seven-branched candlestick
was carried in his triumphal procession to Rome, and, I
think, without doing you an injustice, I may say that that
was anti-Semitism carried to a degree which you people
can never hope to attain. Well! Titus, the destroyer of
Jerusalem, had many friends among the Jews. Berenice
was deeply attached to him, and you know as well as I do
that it was against his will and against hers that he left
her. Flavius Josephus was his friend, and Flavius was not
one of the least of his nation. He was descended from the
Asmonean kings, lived the life of a strict Pharisee, and
wrote Greek correctly enough. After the demolition of the
Temple and holy city he followed Titus to Rome and be-
came the intimate friend of the Emperor. He received the
freedom of the city, the title of Roman Knight, and a pen-
sion. And do not imagine, Monsieur, that in so doing he
was betraying his race. On the contrary, he remained faith-
ful to the law, and applied himself to the collection of na-
tional antiquities. In short, he was a good Jew in his own
way and a friend of Titus. Now there have always been
men like Flavius in Israel. As you pointed out, I live a se-
cluded life and know nothing of what goes on in the world,
but it would be a great surprise to me if in the present crisis
72 ANATOLE FRANCE
the Jews were not divided amongst themselves, and if a

great number of them were not on your side.”
“Some of them are with us, as you say,” replied M. de
Terremondre. “All the more credit to them.”
“I thought as much,” said M. Bergeret. “And what is
more, I am sure that there are some clever ones among
them who will make their mark in this crusade against
themselves. About thirty years ago a senator, a very clev-
er man, who admired the Jewish faculty for getting on,
and who cited as an example a certain chaplain of Jewish
origin, used the following words, which have since been
much quoted. ‘See,’ said he, ‘here is a Jew who has gone
into the Church, and now he is a Monseigneur. Let us not
revive the prejudices of barbaric times. Let us not ask if a
man is a Jew or Christian, but only if he is an honest man
and capable of serving his country.’ ”
M. de Terremondre’s horse began to plunge, and Riquet,
coming up to his master, begged him, with gentle, loving
look, to continue the interrupted walk.
“Do not run away with the idea,” went on M. de Terre-
mondre, “that I include all Jews in the same blind feeling
of dislike. I have many excellent friends among them, but
my love for my country makes an anti-Semite of me.”
He held out his hand to M. Bergeret, and turned his
horse around. He was quietly proceeding on his way when
the professor called him back.
“Hi! A word in your ear, dear M. de Terremondre! Now
that the die is cast, and that you and your friends have
quarrelled with the Jews, be very careful that you owe
them nothing, and give them back the God you have tak-
en from them—for you have taken their God.”
“Jehovah?” asked M. de Terremondre.
“Yes, Jehovah! If I were in your place, I would beware

of Him. He was a Jew at heart, and who knows whether
He has not always remained a Jew? Who knows whether
at this moment He is not avenging His people? All that
we have seen lately, the confessions that burst forth like
thunder-claps, the plain speaking, the revelations pro-
ceeding from all parts, the assembly of red-robed judges
which you were not able to hinder even when you seemed
all-powerful, who can tell whether Jehovah has not dealt
these crushing blows? They savor of His old biblical style,
and I seem to recognise His handiwork.”
M. de Terremondre’s horse was already disappearing
behind the bushes round the bend of the path, and Riquet
trotted along contentedly through the grass.
“Beware!” repeated M. Bergeret. “Do not keep their
God.”
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THOMAS NELSON PAGE
American diplomat and novelist, 1853–1922. The following

selection consists of chapters 2 and 3 of his novel, John Marvel,
Assistant, New York, 1909, in which Page portrayed a Jew who
gave his life for the social and economic emancipation of the
masses. It is included here with the permission of the publishers,
Charles Scribner’s Sons.
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THE JEW AND THE CHRISTIAN
I ARRIVED rather late and the term had already be-

gun, so that all the desirable rooms had been taken. I
was told that I would either have to room out of college or
take quarters with a young man by the name of Wolffert—
like myself, a freshman. I naturally chose the latter. On
reaching my quarters, I found my new comrade to be an
affable, gentlemanly fellow, and very nice looking. Indeed,
his broad brow, with curling brown hair above it; his dark
eyes, deep and luminous; a nose the least bit too large and
inclining to be aquiline; a well-cut mouth with mobile, sen-
sitive lips, and a finely chiselled jaw, gave him an unusual
face, if not one of distinction. He was evidently bent on
making himself agreeable to me, and as he had read an
extraordinary amount for a lad of his age, and I, who had
also read some, was lonely, we had passed a pleasant evening
when he mentioned casually a fact which sent my heart down
into my boots. He was a Jew. This, then, accounted for the
ridge of his well-carved nose, and the curl of his soft brown
hair. I tried to be as frank and easy as I had been before, but
it was a failure. He saw my surprise as I saw his disappoint-
ment—a coolness took the place of the warmth that had been
growing up between us for several hours, and we passed a
stiff evening. He had already had one roommate.
Next day, I found a former acquaintance who offered to
take me into his apartment, and that afternoon, having
watched for my opportunity, I took advantage of my room-
mate’s absence and moved out, leaving a short note saying
77
78 THOMAS NELSON PAGE
that I had discovered an old friend who was very desirous

that I should share his quarters. When I next met Wolffert,
he was so stiff that, although I felt sorry for him and was
ready to be as civil as I might, our acquaintance thereaf-
ter became merely nominal. I saw, in fact, little of him
during the next months, for he soon forged far ahead of
me. There was, indeed, no one in his class who possessed
his acquirements or his ability. I used to see him for a while
standing in his doorway looking wistfully out at the groups
of students gathered under the trees, or walking alone,
like Isaac in the fields, and until I formed my own set, I
would have gone and joined him or have asked him to
join us but for his rebuff. I knew that he was lonely; for I
soon discovered that the cold shoulder was being given to
him by most of the students. I could not, however, but feel
that it served him right for the “airs” he put on with me.
That he made a brilliant exhibition in his classes and was
easily the cleverest man in the class did not affect our at-
titude toward him; perhaps, it only aggravated the case.
Why should he be able to make easily a demonstration at
the blackboard that the cleverest of us only bungled
through? One day, however, we learned that the Jew had
a roommate. Bets were freely taken that he would not
stick, but he stuck—for it was John Marvel. Not that any
of us knew what John Marvel was; for even I, who, ex-
cept Wolffert, came to know him best, did not divine until
many years later what a nugget of unwrought gold that
homely, shy, awkward John Marvel was!
It appeared that Wolffert had a harder time than any of
us dreamed of.
He had come to the institution against the advice of his
father, and for a singular reason: he thought it the most
THE JEW AND THE CHRISTIAN 79
liberal institution of learning in the country! Little he knew

of the narrowness of youth! His mind was so receptive
that all that passed through it was instantly appropriated.
Like a plant he drew sustenance from the atmosphere
about him and transmuted what was impalpable to us to
forms of beauty. He was even then a man of independent
thought; a dreamer who peopled the earth with ideals, and
saw beneath the stony surface of the commonplace the
ideals and principles that were to reconstruct and resur-
rect the world. An admirer of the Law in its ideal concep-
tion, he reprobated with the fury of the Baptist the gener-
ation that had belittled and cramped it to an instrument of
torture of the human mind, and looked to the millenial
coming of universal brotherhood and freedom.
His father was a leading man in his city; one who, by
his native ability and the dynamic force that seems to be a
characteristic of the race, had risen from poverty to the
position of chief merchant and capitalist of the town in
which he lived. He had been elected mayor in a time of
stress; but his popularity among the citizens generally had
cost him, as I learned later, something among his own
people. The breadth of his views had not been approved
by them.
The abilities that in the father had taken this direction
of the mingling of the practical and the theoretical had, in
the son, taken the form I have stated. He was an idealist:
a poet and a dreamer.
The boy from the first had discovered powers that had
given his father the keenest delight, not unmingled with a
little misgiving. As he grew up among the best class of
boys in his town and became conscious that he was not
one of them, his inquiring and aspiring mind began early
to seek the reasons for the difference. Why should he be

held a little apart from them? He was a Jew. Yes, but why
should a Jew be held apart? They talked about their fam-
ilies. Why, his family could trace back for two thousand
and more years to princes and kings. They had a different
religion. But he saw other boys with different religions
going and playing together. They were Christians, and
believed in Christ, while the Jew, etc. This puzzled him
till he found that some of them—a few—did not hold the
same views of Christ with the others. Then he began to
study for himself, boy as he was, the history of Christ,
and out of it came questions that his father could not an-
swer and was angry that he should put to him. He went to
a young rabbi who told him that Christ was a good man,
but mistaken in His claims.
So, the boy drifted a little apart from his own people,
and more and more he studied the questions that arose in
his mind, and more and more he suffered, and more and
more he grew strong.
The father, too proud of his son’s independence to co-
erce him by an order which might have been a law to him,
had, nevertheless, thrown him on his own resources and
cut him down to the lowest figure on which he could live,
confident that his own opinions would be justified and his
son return home.
Wolffert’s first experience very nearly justified this con-
viction. The fact that a Jew had come and taken one of the
old apartments spread through the college with amazing
rapidity and created a sensation. Not that there had not
been Jews there before, for there had been a number there
at one time or another. But they were members of families
of distinction, who had been known for generations as bear-
ing their part in all the appointments of life, and had con-
sorted with other folk on an absolute equality, so that there
was little or nothing to distinguish them as Israelites ex-
cept their name. If they were Israelites, it was an accident
and played no larger part in their views than if they had
been Scotch or French. But here was a man who proclaimed
himself a Jew; who proposed that it should be known, and
evidently meant to assert his rights and peculiarities on all
occasions. The result was that he was subjected to a spe-
cies of persecution which only the young Anglo-Saxon, the
most brutal of all animals, could have devised.
As the college filled rapidly, it soon became necessary to
double up, that is, put two men in one apartment. The first
student assigned to live with Wolffert was Peck, a sedate
and cool young man—like myself, from the country, and
like myself, very short of funds. Peck would not have mind-
ed rooming with a Jew, or, for that matter, with the Devil, if
he had thought he could get anything out of him; for he had
few prejudices, and when it came to calculation, he was
the multiplication table. But Peck had his way to make,
and he cooly decided that a Jew was likely to make him
bear his full part of the expenses—which he never had any
mind to do. So he looked around, and within forty-eight
hours moved to a place out of college where he got reduced
board on the ground of belonging to some peculiar set of
religionists, of which I am convinced he had never heard
till he learned of the landlady’s idiosyncrasy.
I had incurred Peck’s lasting enmity—though I did not
know it at the time—by a witticism at his expense. We
had never taken to each other from the first, and one
evening, when someone was talking about Wolffert, Peck
joined in and said that that institution was no place for
any Jew. I said, “Listen to Peck sniff. Peck, how did you
get in?” This raised a laugh. Peck, I am sure, had never
read Martin Chuzzlewit; but I am equally sure he read it
afterward, for he never forgave me.
Then came my turn and desertion which I have de-
scribed. And then, after that interval of loneliness, ap-
peared John Marvel.
Wolffert, who was one of the most social men I ever
knew, was sitting in his room meditating on the strange
fate that had made him an outcast among the men whom
he had come there to study and to know. This was my
interpretation of his thoughts: he would probably have said
he was thinking of the strange prejudices of the human
race—prejudices to which he had been in some sort a vic-
tim all his life, as his race had been all through the ages.
He was steeped in loneliness, and as, in the mellow Octo-
ber afternoon, the sound of good-fellowship floated in at
his window from the lawn outside, he grew more and more
dejected. One evening it culminated. He even thought of
writing to his father that he would come home and go into
his office and accept the position that meant wealth and
luxury and power. Just then there was a step outside, and
someone stopped and after a moment, knocked at the door.
Wolffert rose and opened it and stood facing a new stu-
dent—a florid, round-faced, round-bodied, bowlegged,
blue-eyed, awkward lad of about his own age.
“Is this number—?” demanded the newcomer, peering
curiously at the dingy door and half shyly looking up at
the occupant.
“It is. Why?” Wolffert spoke abruptly.
“Well, I have been assigned to this apartment by the
Proctor. I am a new student and have just come. My name
is Marvel—John Marvel.” Wolffert put his arms across

the doorway and stood in the middle of it.
“Well, I want to tell you before you come in that I am a
Jew. You are welcome not to come, but if you come I want
you to stay.” Perhaps the other’s astonishment contained
a query, for he went on hotly:
“I have had two men come here already and both of
them left after one day. The first said he got cheaper board,
which was a legitimate excuse—if true—the other said he
had found an old friend who wanted him. I am convinced
that he lied and that the only reason he left was that I am
a Jew. And now you can come in or not, as you please,
but if you come you must stay.” He was looking down in
John Marvel’s eyes with a gaze that had the concentrated
bitterness of generations in it, and the latter met it with a
gravity that deepened into pity.
“I will come in and I will stay; Jesus was a Jew,” said
the man on the lower step.
“I do not know him,” said the other bitterly.
“But you will. I know Him.”
Wolffert’s arms fell and John Marvel entered and stayed.
That evening the two men went to the supper hall to-
gether. Their table was near mine and they were the ob-
served of all observers. The one curious thing was that
John Marvel was studying for the ministry. It lent zest to
the jokes that were made on this incongruous pairing, and
jests, more or less insipid, were made on the Law and the
Prophets; the lying down together of the lion and the lamb,
etc.
It was a curious mating—the light-haired, moon-faced,
slow-witted Saxon, and the dark, keen Jew with his intel-
lectual face and his deep-burning eyes in which glowed

the misery and mystery of the ages.
John Marvel soon became well known; for he was one
of the slowest men in the college. With his amusing awk-
wardness, he would have become the butt of many jokes
except for his imperturbable good-humor. As it was, he
was for a time a sort of object of ridicule to many of us—
myself among the number—and we had many laughs at
him. He would disappear on Saturday night and not turn
up again till Monday morning, dusty and disheveled. And
many jests were made at his expense. One said that Mar-
vel was practising preaching in the mountains with a view
to becoming a second Demosthenes; another suggested
that, if so, the mountains would probably get up and run
into the sea.
When, however, it was discovered later that he had a
Sunday school in the mountains, and walked twelve miles
out and twelve miles back, most of the gibers, except the
inveterate humorists like myself, were silent.
This fact came out by chance. Marvel disappeared from
college one day and remained away for two or three weeks.
Wolffert either could not or would not give any account of
him. When Marvel returned, he looked worn and ill, as if
he had been starving, and almost immediately he was tak-
en ill and went to the infirmary with a case of fever. Here
he was so ill that the doctors quarantined him and no one
saw him except the nurse—old Mrs. Denny, a wrinkled
and bald-headed, old, fat woman, something between a
light-wood knot and an angel—and Wolffert.
Wolffert moved down and took up his quarters in the
infirmary—it was suggested, with a view to converting
Marvel to Judaism—and here he stayed. The nursing nev-

er appeared to make any difference in Wolffert’s prepara-
tion for his classes; for when he came back he still stood
easily first. But poor Marvel never caught up again, and
was even more hopelessly lost in the befogged region at
the bottom of the class than ever before. When called on
to recite, his brow would pucker and he would perspire
and stammer until the class would be in ill-suppressed con-
vulsions, all the more enjoyable because of Leo Wolffert’s
agonizing over his wretchedness. Then Marvel, excused
by the professor, would sit down and mop his brow and
beam quite as if he had made a wonderful performance
(which indeed, he had), while Wolffert’s thin face would
grow whiter, his nostrils quiver, and his deep eyes burn
like coals.
One day a spare, rusty man with a frowzy beard, and a
lank, stooping woman strolled into the college grounds,
and, after wandering around aimlessly for a time, asked
for Mr. Marvel. Each of them carried a basket. They were
directed to his room and remained with him some time,
and when they left, he walked some distance with them.
It was at first rumored and then generally reported that
they were Marvel’s father and mother. It became known
later that they were a couple of poor mountaineers named
Shiflett, whose child John Marvel had nursed when it had
the fever. They had just learned of his illness and had come
down to bring him some chickens and other things which
they thought he might need.
This incident, with the knowledge of Marvel’s devotion,
made some impression on us, and gained for Marvel, and
incidentally for Wolffert, some sort of respect.
All this time I was about as far aloof from Marvel and
Wolffert as I was from any one in the college.
I rather liked Marvel, partly because he appeared to
like me and I helped him in his Latin, and partly because
Peck sniffed at him and Peck I cordially disliked for his
coldblooded selfishness and his plodding way.
I was strong and active and fairly good-looking, though
by no means so handsome as I fancied myself when I
passed the large plate-glass windows in the stores; I was
conceited but not arrogant except to my family and those
I esteemed my inferiors; was a good poker-player; was
open-handed enough, for it cost me nothing; and was in-
clined to be kind by nature.
I had, moreover, several accomplishments which led to
a certain measure of popularity. I had a retentive memo-
ry, and could get up a recitation with little trouble; though
I forgot about as quickly as I learned. I could pick a little
on a banjo; could spout fluently what sounded like a good
speech if one did not listen to me; could write, what some-
one had said looked at a distance like poetry and, thanks
to my father, could both fence and read Latin. These ac-
complishments served to bring me into the best set in col-
lege and, in time, to undo me. For there is nothing more
dangerous to a young man than an exceptional social
accomplishment. A tenor voice is almost as perilous as a
taste for drink; and to play the guitar about as seductive
as to play poker.
I was soon to know Wolffert better. He and Marvel, af-
ter their work became known, had been admitted rather
more within the circle, though they were still kept near
the perimeter. And thus, as the spring came on, when we
all assembled on pleasant afternoons under the big trees
that shaded the green slopes above the athletic field, even
Wolffert and Marvel were apt to join us. I would long ago
have made friends with Wolffert, as some others have done
since he distinguished himself; for I had been ashamed of
my poltroonery in leaving him; but, though he was affable
enough with others, he always treated me with such
marked reserve that I had finally abandoned my charita-
ble effort to be on easy terms with him.
One spring afternoon we were all loafing under the trees,
many of us stretched out on the grass. I had just saved a
game of baseball by driving a ball that brought in three
men from the bases, and I was surrounded by a group.
Marvel, who was strong as an ox, was second-baseman
on the other nine and had missed the ball as the center-
fielder threw it wildly. Something was said—I do not re-
call what—and I raised a laugh at Marvel’s expense, in
which he joined heartily. Then a discussion began on the
merits in which Wolffert joined. I started it, but as Wolffert
appeared excited, I drew out and left it to my friends.
Presently, at something Wolffert said, I turned to a
friend, Sam Pleasants, and said in a half-aside with a sneer:
“He did not see it; Sam, you—” I nodded my head mean-
ing, “You explain it.”
Suddenly, Wolffert rose to his feet and, without a word
of warning, poured out on me such a torrent of abuse as I
had never heard before or since. His least epithet was a
deadly insult. It was out of a clear sky, and for a moment
my breath was quite taken away. I sprang to my feet and,
with a roar of rage, made a rush for him. But he was ready,
and with a step to one side, planted a straight blow on my
jaw that, catching me unprepared, sent me full length on
my back. I was up in a second and made another rush for
him only to be caught in the same way and sent down

again.
When I rose the second time, I was cooler. I knew that I
was in for it. Those blows were a boxer’s. They came
straight from the shoulder and were as quick as lightning,
with every ounce of the giver’s weight behind them. By this
time, however, the crowd had interfered. This was no place
for a fight, they said. The professors would come on us.
Several were holding me and as many more had Wolffert;
among them, John Marvel, who could have lifted him in
his strong arms and held him as a baby. Marvel was plead-
ing with him with tears in his eyes. Wolffert was cool enough
now, but he took no heed of his friend’s entreaties. Stand-
ing quite still, with the blaze in his eyes all the more vivid
because of the pallor of his face, he was looking over his
friend’s head and was cursing me with all the eloquence of
a rich vocabulary. So far as he was concerned, there might
not have been another man but myself within a mile.
In a moment an agreement was made by which we were
to adjourn to a retired spot and fight it out. Something
that he said led someone to suggest that we settle it with
pistols. It was Peck’s voice. Wolffert sprang at it. “I will, if
I can get any gentleman to represent me,” he said with a
bitter sneer, casting his flashing, scornful eyes around on
the crowd. “I have only one friend and I will not ask him
to do it.”
“I will represent you,” said Peck, who had his own rea-
sons for the offer.
“All right. When and where?” said I.
“Now, and in the railway-cut beyond the wood,” said
Wolffert.
We retired to two rooms in a neighboring dormitory to

arrange matters. Peck and another volunteer represented
Wolffert, and Sam Pleasants and Harry Houston were my
seconds. I had expected that some attempt at reconcilia-
tion would be made; but there was no suggestion of it. I
never saw such cold-blooded young ruffians as all our sec-
onds were, and when Peck came to close the final cartel he
had an air between that of a butcher and an undertaker.
He looked at me exactly as a butcher does at a fatted calf.
He positively licked his chops. I did not want to shoot
Wolffert, but I could cheerfully have murdered Peck. While,
however, the arrangements were being made by our friends,
I had had a chance for some reflection and I had used it. I
knew that Wolffert did not like me. He had no reason to do
so, for I had not only left him, but had been cold and dis-
tant to him. Still, I had always treated him civilly and had
spoken of him respectfully; which was more than Peck had
always done. Yet, here, without the least provocation, he
had insulted me grossly. I knew there must be some misunder-
standing, and I determined on my “own hook” to find out
what it was. Fortune favored me. Just then Wolffert opened
the door. He had gone to his own room for a few moments
and, on his return, mistook the number and opened the
wrong door. Seeing his error, he drew back with an apolo-
gy, and was just closing the door when I called him.
“Wolffert! Come in here a moment. I want to speak to
you alone.”
He re-entered and closed the door, standing stiff and
silent.
“Wolffert, there has been some mistake, and I want to
know what it is.” He made not the least sign that he heard,
except a flash, deep in his eyes, like a streak of lightning

in a far-off cloud.
“I am ready to fight you in any way you wish,” I went
on. “But I want to know what the trouble is. Why did you
insult me out of a clear sky? What had I done?”
“Everything.”
“What! Specify. What was it?”
“You have made my life Hell—all of you!” His face
worked and he made a wild sweep with his arm and
brought it back to his side with clenched fist.
“But I?”
“You were the head. You all have done it. You have
treated me as an outcast—a Jew! You have given me credit
for nothing, because I was a Jew. I could have stood the
personal contempt and insult, and I have tried to stand it;
but I will put up with it no longer. It is appointed once for
a man to die, and I can die in no better cause than for my
people.”
He was gasping with suppressed emotion, and I was
beginning to gasp also—but for a different reason. He went
on:
“You thought I was a coward because I was a Jew, and
because I wanted peace—treated me as a poltroon because
I was a Jew. And I made up my mind to stop it. So this
evening my chance came. That is all.”
“But what have I done?”
“Nothing more than you have always done; treated the
Jew with contempt. But they were all there, and I chose
you as the leader when you said that about the Jew.”
“I said nothing about a Jew. Here, wait! Did you think
I insulted you as a Jew this afternoon?” I had risen and
walked over in front of him.
“Yes.” He bowed.
“Well, I did not.”
“You did—you said to Sam Pleasants that I was a
‘damned Jew.’”
“What! I never said a word like it—yes I did—I said to
Sam Pleasants, that you did not see the play, and said,
‘Sam, you—’ meaning, ‘you tell him.’ Wait. Let me think a
moment. Wolffert, I owe you an apology and will make it.
I know there are some who will think I do it because I am
afraid to fight. But I do not care. I am not, and I will fight
Peck if he says so. If you will come with me, I will make
you a public apology and then, if you want to fight still, I
will meet you.”
He suddenly threw his arm up across his face, and, turn-
ing his back to me, leaned on it against the door, his whole
person shaken with sobs.
I walked up close to him and laid my hand on his shoul-
der helplessly.
“Calm yourself,” I began, but could think of nothing
else to say.
He shook for a moment and then, turning, with his left
arm still across his face, he held out his right hand, and I
took it.
“I do not want you to do that. All I want is decent treat-
ment—ordinary civility,” he faltered between his sobs.
Then he turned back and leaned against the door for he
could hardly stand. And so standing, he made the most
forcible, the most eloquent, and the most burning defence
of his people I have ever heard.
“They have civilized the world,” he declared, “and what
have they gotten from it but brutal barbarism. They gave
you your laws and your literature, your morality and your
religion—even your Christ, and you have violated every.
law, human and divine, in their oppression. You invaded
our land, ravaged our country, and scattered us over the
face of the earth, trying to destroy our very name and
Nation. But the God of Israel was our refuge and consola-
tion. You crucified Jesus and then visited it on us. You
have perpetuated an act of age-long hypocrisy, and have,
in the name of the Prince of Peace, brutalized over his
people. The cross was your means of punishment—no Jew
ever used it. But if we had crucified him it would have
been in the name of Law and Order; your crucifixion was
in the name of Contempt; and you have crucified a whole
people through the ages—the one people who have ever
stood for the one God, who have stood for Morality and
for Peace. A Jew! Yes, I am a Jew. I thank the God of
Israel that I am. For as he saved the world in the past, so
he will save it in the future.”
This was only a part of it, and not the best part; but it
gave me a new insight into his mind.
When he was through, I was ready. I had reached my
decision.
“I will go with you,” I said, “not on your account, but
on my own, and make my statement before the whole
crowd. They are still on the hill. Then, if anyone wants to
fight he can get it. I will fight Peck.”
He repeated that he did not want me to do this, and he
would not go; which was as well, for I might not have
been able to say so much in his presence. So I went alone
with my seconds, whom I immediately sought.
I found the latter working over a cartel at a table in the
next room, and I walked in. They looked as solemn as

owls, but I broke them up in a moment.
“You can stop this infernal foolishness. I have apolo-
gized to Wolffert. I have treated him like a pig and so have
you. And I have told him so, and now I am going to tell
the other fellows.”
Their astonishment was unbounded and, at least, one
of the group was sincerely disappointed. I saw Peck’s face
fall at my words and then he elevated his nose and gave a
little sniff.
“Well, it did not come from our side,” he said in a half
undertone with a sneer.
I suddenly exploded. His cold face was so evil.
“No, it did not. I made it freely and frankly and I am
going to make it publicly. But if you are disappointed, I
want to tell you that you can have a little affair on your
own account. And in order that there may be no want of
pretext, I wish to tell you that I believe you have been
telling lies on me, and I consider you a damned, sneaking
hypocrite.”
There was a commotion, of course, and the others all
jumped in between us. And when it was over, I walked
out. Three minutes later I was on the hill among the crowd,
which now numbered several hundred, for they were all
waiting to learn the result; and, standing on a bench, I
told them what I had said to Wolffert and how I felt I owed
him a public apology, not for one insult, but for a hun-
dred. There was a silence for a second, and then such a
cheer broke out as I never got any other time in my life!
Cheers for Wolffert—cheers for Marvel, and even cheers
for me. And then a freckled youth with a big mouth and a
blue, merry eye broke the tension by saying:
“All bets are off and we sha’n’t have a holiday tomor-

row at all.” The reprobates had been betting on which of
us would fall, and had been banking on a possible holiday.
Quite a crowd went to Wolffert’s room to make atone-
ment for any possible slight they had put on him; but he
was nowhere to be found. But that night, he and Marvel
sat at our table and always sat there afterward. He illus-
trated George Borrow’s observation that good manners
and a knowledge of boxing will take one through the world.
JOHAN AUGUST STRINDBERG
Swedish dramatist and novelist, 1849–1912. The following brief

extract is from his sketch, Peter the Hermit, which appeared in
1907, and is found in his Historical Miniatures, translated from
the 9th German edition by Claud Field, London, G. Allen & Co.,
1913, pp. 232–237. It is republished here with the permission of
George Alien & Unwin, Ltd.
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PETER THE HERMIT
I N THE little town Tiberias, on the shore of the Lake

of Gennesaret, sat the old Jew Eleazar, with his fami-
ly, prepared to celebrate the Passover. It was the four-
teenth day of the month Nisan of the year 1098. The lake
shone clear, and its banks were green; the oleanders were
in blossom, the lilies had sprung up in the pleasant season
when the earth rejoices.
It was evening; all members of the family were dressed
as though for a journey, with shoes on their feet and staves
in their hands. They stood round the covered table on
which the roasted lamb smoked in a dish surrounded by
bitter lettuce. The ancestral wine-cup was filled with wine,
and white unleavened bread laid on a plate close by.
After the head of the family had washed his hands, he
blessed the gifts of God, drank some wine, took some of
the bitter herbs, and ate and gave to the others. After that,
the second cup of wine was served, and the youngest son
of the house asked, according to the sacred custom, “What
is the meaning of this feast?”
The father answered: “The Lord brought us with a
strong hand out of the Egyptian bondage.” Thereafter a
blessing was pronounced on the unleavened bread, and
they sat down to eat. The old Eleazar spoke of past times,
and contrasted them with the present: “Man born of wom-
an lives but a short time, and is full of trouble; he cometh
up like a flower, and is cut down; he fleeth hence like a
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98 JOHAN AUGUST STRINDBERG
shadow, and continueth not. A stranger and a sojourner

is he upon earth, and therefore he should be always ready
for his journey as we are, this holy evening.”
The eldest son, Jacob, who had come home in the evening
after a journey, seemed to wish to say something, but did
not venture to do so till the fourth and last cup was drunk.
“Now, Jacob,” said Eleazar, “you want to talk. You come
from a journey, though somewhat late, and have something
new to tell us. Hush! I hear steps in the garden!”
All hurried to the window, for they lived in troublous
times; but as no one was to be seen outside, they sat down
again at the table.
“Speak, Jacob,” Eleazar said again.
“I come from Antioch, where the Crusaders are be-
sieged by Kerboga, the Emir Mosul. Famine has raged
among them, and of three hundred thousand Goyim, only
twenty thousand remain.”
“What had they to do here?”
“Now, on the roads, they are talking of a new battle
which the Goyim have won, and they believe that the Cru-
saders will march straight on Jerusalem.”
“Well, they won’t come here.”
“They won’t find the way, unless there are traitors.”
“The Christians are misguided, and their doctrine is
folly. They believe the Messiah has come, although the
world is like a hell, and men resemble devils! And it ever
gets worse. . ..”
Then the door was flung open, and on the threshold
appeared a little man, emaciated as a skeleton, with burn-
ing eyes—Peter the Hermit. He was clothed in rags, car-
ried a cross in his hands, and bore a red cross-shaped sign
on his shoulder.
PETER THE HERMIT 99
“Are you Christians?” he asked.

“No,” answered Eleazar, “we are of Israel.”
“Out with you!—down to the lake and be baptized, or
you will die the death!”
Then Eleazar turned to the Hermit, and cried, “No! I
and my house will serve the Lord, as we have done this
holy evening according to the law of our fathers. We suf-
fer for our sins, that is true, but you, godless, cursed man,
pride not yourself on your power, for you have not yet
escaped the judgment of Almighty God.”
The Hermit had gone out to his followers. Those with-
in the house closed the window-shutters and the door.
There was a cry without: “Fire the house!”
“Let us bless God, and die!” said Eleazar, and none of
them hesitated. Eleazar spoke: “‘I know that my Redeemer
liveth, and that He will stand at the latter day upon the
earth. And when I am free from my flesh, I shall see God.
Him shall I see and not another, and for that my soul and
my heart cry out.’ ”
The mother had taken the youngest son in her arms, as
though she wished to protect him against the fire which
now seized on the wall.
Then Eleazar began the Song of the Three Children in
the Fire, and when they came to the words,
‘O thank the Lord, for He is good,
And His mercy endureth for ever,’
their voices were choked, and they ended their days like
the Maccabees.
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PER HALLSTRÖM
Swedish novelist, 1866–. Arsareth is the first story in his collec-

tion Purpur, Norrkoping, M. W. Wallberg & Co., 1895; 3rd ed.,
Stockholm, Albert Bonniers Forlag, 1908. It was translated spe-
cially for this anthology by Bjarne Landa and the editor, and is
included here with the kind permission of Albert Bonnier Pub-
lishing House of New York.
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ARSARETH
O N THE mountains the snow lingered in dirty heaps;

farther down were forests of chestnut trees still dark
and naked; and yet farther down, in the hollow, was the
town. It was only half a day’s journey from the ocean, but
one would not have thought so here. Spring was overdue,
but here the sun shone meagerly, and the soil was more
sluggish than elsewhere. Flitting clouds alone indicated
that the winter was past.
The town was crowded together as in a kettle, and had
only itself to look at. Clinging to rough hillocks and wet
precipices, the dark gray houses nudged one another,
stretched themselves by means of narrow, gloomy gables,
and stared down on each other in sullen haughtiness in
the direction of the river’s ravine across which a similar
aggregation of houses met their glances in defiance. Above
them all was the castle with its rusty-brown wooden roof
and the thin jutty of pinnacles protruding like an old gi-
ant’s teeth. Below them all was the Jews’ quarter.
The last section of town, over-crowded with people and
darkened by the mountain shadow, was the object of every-
body’s ridicule and contempt. There the river made a turn
under a low arch, providing a concourse for the filth which
issued from all the slopes. In summer, the sickening wa-
ter, bubbling yellowish-dark, was speckled with fat and
drew the grounded boats down into the mire. Corpses of
animals lay there with swollen hides and grimaced with
loosened teeth. In floodtime, the water surmounted the
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104 PER HALLSTRÖM
green bridge-planking, rotted the arches, pulled the chain

cables, licked the thresholds and gates, flowed into base-
ments, and drove out wailing humans and beasts. Even
the first snow that fell there was dirty and foul. This whole
section, dense and noisy, sat as it were in the stocks of
disgrace with its limbs pressed together by force, with its
eyes weary and mournful.
Pale men in black cloaks, pale women in black veils, all
of them wore a badge sewed upon their shoulders, a yellow-
ish heraldic lily like those branded on criminals, that their
race might be readily recognized. But that was not enough.
To provoke more mockery and sharpen the disgrace, the
sign was made to resemble a hoof. And this they had to
wear as a constant reproach even in their own quarter.
Above, in the Christian section, they were compelled to
bare the head before anyone they met and bend low to
each glance that coldly and insolently passed over them.
Their presence there was forbidden during the entire Holy
Week, when they were expected to close their ears to the
tolling of the bells. But one of their number, in rotation,
had to appear in the Christian church, to receive a blow
on his ashen cheek for the crime committed of old, and
carry the mark home to his children and relatives as a
remembrance and a warning.
Miserable as their quarter was, it was nevertheless home.
It was the only piece of ground they had. Here they might
at least live, for, within memory, no one had been murdered
here for the sake of one’s nation, except in an occasional
riot. Here they might gather possessions, if they could hide
them well. Here they might eat their bread standing. Here
they might die in peace, and, on a knoll near by, there was
a cemetery with stones raised as close together as arms in
ARSARETH 105
a crowd of people, where they could sleep quietly, await-

ing their Messiah. They believed he was to come soon.
It was far worse abroad, where hate beset them from all
sides: hate and malice from the populace, hate and avidity
from the princes, who pressed blood and gold out of them
and spared them only like cattle for the slaughter. There,
when they fell asleep at night, mental agony had long called
to them out of the dark. From Rome they were struck by
fiery damnations issued by the popes, and were stung with
cunning words uttered with the brutality of the southern
Moor, who burnt the wounds he inflicted. Or they were
harrassed by mobs of Christian soldiers, who murdered for
fun. In the East all was terror and confusion.
Consequently, the Messiah must certainly come soon,
if he was not to come too late. They prayed for him in the
morning before proceeding to their tasks, and, washing
their hands in the evening, they prayed for him again.
He must come, the Messiah, for they needed him so sore-
ly. He must come and tend to his vineyard, whose blos-
soms were lying in the dirt. He was sure to come! Indeed,
many generations before, the sage Rabbi ben Issa had
predicted his arrival, and it was to occur in the two hun-
dred and fifty-sixth cycle of the moon. It could not occur
in any other. They had miscalculated previously, but ben
Issa was wise and never miscalculated. And now, the time
was near, their rabbi told them. All rabbis round about
said so, and sent the word to one another, and shook their
grey heads. They dared not doubt ben Issa, but they also
did not quite believe that the end of their suffering could
really be at hand.
It was almost the evening of the Sabbath. Rachel was
sitting on the threshold of the back-yard leading to the
106 PER HALLSTRÖM
bank of the river. She was waiting for the noise behind
her to quiet down. She was tired of it and of being shut in,
tired of the winter which tarried, and tired of the spring
which was approaching and bringing her nothing. Spring
was not for her and her people. It gave nothing; it only
deprived. It would come with a ray of hope, with a ring in
the air, with joy to be felt, a song to be sung, with beauty
to sparkle and flare, and a yearning to be cried out. But it
was not for them.
How should they give, whose hands were tied? How
should they rejoice, who were weighted down with anxie-
ty; how shine, who were shut into darkness; how com-
plain, whose mouths were closed with blows? No, to rest
their heads in their hands, to stare down at their knees, to
nurse mutely their misery and grief, to hush their voices
and lull themselves to death—that was best. Stillness was
all that was worth something. And it came so seldom.
Crammed together, heaped upon each other, they trem-
bled with each trembling in the mass, saw each other’s
pain and sickness by the mere lifting of the eye, touched
each other’s wounds by the mere moving of a limb. Each
affliction became more oppressive through its echoing in
everybody’s ears. Each beggarly expression of joy sound-
ed the more pitiful through the abundance of discord.
There was no air to breathe that was not already sultry
with sighing and babbling. And at nightfall, when one was
alone with one’s soul, everything trembled with anxiety
and with the dreams that are born of fatigue.
Now and then a succession of screams pierced the still-
ness. When someone from up yonder came down to the
Jewish quarter to hunt for pleasure, there might be the
sound of unspeakable horror to listen to. Or when a woman
ARSARETH 107
brought a new life into the world—that was the most hor-
rible sound of all. Then Rachel would press her hands
over her burning eyes, her future would seem to become
dark and cruel, and she could not understand why she
should live.
And the river—what did it want? Why did it rise, why
did it rush and roar and call? Like a painfully heaving
bosom, it lifted the boats and then let them sink again,
carrying along in its course torn-off stems and bushes; and
it moaned, and it called. And it seemed to Rachel that all
should come to an end soon, and that the river would cov-
er everything. In leaps and bounds it would throw itself
over everything, hurl down houses, thrust the heavy into
the mire, and whirl the light to nothingness in its foam.
And it would be just as well.
Suddenly something whistled up the river, shrilly as a
bird of prey. A boat shot downstream, black on lead-color-
ed foam. A man was standing erect in it, and she knew
from the waving of his hand that she must step aside to let
him jump exactly where she was sitting. Without time to
shudder at his dangerous venture, she recoiled against the
doorpost. He struck the oar so hard against a stone that
the wood broke. Then two black arms were extended to-
wards her. A jump, and he was at her side.
Rachel had never seen him before, and she did not know
him. She pointed to the boat. “Take hold of it, or you will
lose it.”
The man stretched out his foot and kicked the gunwale
so violently that it broke. The boat shot out into the vor-
tex, was thrown forward, shattered itself against the arch
of the bridge, and was drawn down. Rachel looked at him
in amazement as he straightened his back. He was pale,
108 PER HALLSTRÖM
shimmering with perspiration or water, and his eyes stared

wildly.
“Are you one of us?” she asked.
“No,” he answered, without looking at her.
“But your clothing is Jewish—,” she hesitated, not dar-
ing to point to the yellow sign on his shoulder. “You have
been in danger.”
Now he turned his eyes to her. His voice was severe.
“Your speech is Jewish,” he said. “I have not been in dan-
ger. I am of Jewish birth. I come from the grottoes.”
Rachel understood. “Then you are one of the Mourn-
ers of Zion,” she said, trembling at the mere mention of
the name and all the rumors of stern renunciation and
ascetic piety which it conjured up. “Have you always lived
there among the stones, and fasted and prayed? Have you
never been here before?”
He scarcely seemed to hear. He shook the water from
his hair. “I am not one of them now,” he said. “Now all
mourning is at an end. Now is the time of expectation and
silence!” And he stretched his limbs with a strange, test-
ing gesture. It was as though he were forcing back a cry
of triumph and choking down a gleaming spark in the
depth of his glance.
Rachel did not understand him. She was frightened by
the change in his face. “And the boat?” she stammered.
“Why—?”
He turned and stretched his arm toward the vortex of
the water so forcefully that it seemed as though he would
sling her into it. “Because it carried me hither, but is not
to carry me hence. Because my way is new, and behind
me is a wall!” He seized her hand, pulled her up from the
ARSARETH 109
threshold, and said: “Come now. Who are you? Is it far to

your home? Lead me to the rabbi!”
“I am Rachel. My father is Hanan, the rabbi. It is not
far from home; it is here.”
She lifted her arms and shrugged her shoulders in an
expression of fatigue and wretched discontent. But he did
not look her way. He paced rapidly forward with his head
bent and his lips pressed together. Rachel followed. At the
door in the hallway, she took his cloak, and they walked
in quietly.
He stopped before the rabbi and scanned him with
searching eyes. He saw a stooping figure, with shaded,
keen eyes staring themselves into distracted blindness, and
with a mild and resigned mouth. The stranger understood
readily, and let his eye-lids droop.
“My name is Menahem,” he said. “I come from the grot-
toes to stay here for a while. I do not wish to be your guest,
but to follow you into the temple to see.”
Rachel was hurt at the apparent affront, at the stranger’s
indifference to the hospitality of her home, and she left
the room without a farewell. But when she heard his steps
in the street, she walked out softly and followed him to
the temple, to see his countenance there, and to see whom
he would follow home. The low hallway of the women’s
section in the temple was almost empty and quite cold,
but several men were there. The small lamps threw a faint
light on the yellow faces, and shadows crossed each other
on the floor.
The stranger bowed deep before the Holy Ark. He mur-
mured at length and inarticulately. Before raising his head,
his eyes searched hurriedly and sharply. The men he con-
fronted were all alike. They all seemed to be drooping
110 PER HALLSTRÖM
under an oppressive burden. Only one stood erect; it was

the blind Ussia. Perhaps it was because he could not see
that he did not cast down his eyes before his God. His coun-
tenance was a riddle. Rachel noticed that the stranger di-
rected his attention to the blind man. During the singing
and offering, he stood there silent, and afterwards, without
looking around any more, he stepped forward to Ussia, and
went out with him. But Ussia was a severe and scoffing
man, and it grieved Rachel that he was the chosen one.
In the days immediately following, Rachel did not see
him, but she knew that he was there. The atmosphere was
charged with his nearness; it trembled as if close to a flame.
Everything was restless. The voices, the faces quivered.
The air was a panting chase of shadows, and high up mig-
ratory birds stopped and swung their wings lingeringly.
Rachel’s hands shook, her voice was choked with over-
whelming sensations, and she listened and watched with
every nerve in her body. In the streets, everything seemed
to have changed. People did not pass one another silently
and hurriedly on their way to work. They stopped and
conversed fast and low. Crowds filled the alleys. They
neglected to measure and weigh their wares and to attend
to their shops. Strange words from their speech found their
way into her chamber, outcries that escaped in the street
or agitated voices within the rabbi’s house.
In all was the name of Menahem. Like a tempestuous
wind it carried with it age-old echoes of rumors.
And there was also another name, Messiah!
The old name which she and unnumbered generations
before her had heard repeatedly, which had been stamped
on more than a thousand years of suffering, the golden ship
of their dreams sailing on an ocean of tears, the glimmering
ARSARETH 111
spark which only helped to reveal the utterly black and

heavy darkness all around! The old hope against hope,
the ancient faith which was not unmixed with doubt!
Once again the age-old yearning assumed reality. Still,
it was no conviction, absolutely certain of victory. It was
rather a hope-raising rumor, a profound querying, a pas-
sionate anxiety. And everywhere the name of the stranger
was bandied: “Menahem says; Menahem promises; Me-
nahem has seen in a dream; Menahem has heard a Voice!”
A tone of doubt and struggle, as one doubts and struggles
with a possibility, not a fiction.
Menahem stirred up the youth. He enticed them with a
false glitter. He did not know more than they knew. He
was foolish and dangerous. Might not suspicion be aroused
up yonder, in the town and in the castle above? Could it
not be sensed in the very air what perilous adventures
were whispered about? Should not the matter be kept al-
together secret?
Nor could Rachel comprehend what the stranger want-
ed, and she thought he was mad, insane! Yet she was al-
ways drawn by the mention of his name.
Then one day, when the sun was peeping only scantily
through worn, dark blue clouds, she was by the river and
she met him again. He was staring down into the water
and murmuring now softly and inarticulately, now sharp-
ly and shrilly. Once in a while he threw his head back,
laughed against the white gleam in the swells of water and
against something that was living in his vision, and his
eyes and teeth glittered coldly. He saw her, and he scruti-
nized her silently and sadly.
“You come hither often,” he said at last.
Rachel’s voice trembled: “It is only here one can breathe!”
112 PER HALLSTRÖM
He walked up close to her and took her hand, but not to

greet her. He looked at it and held it as though for an in-
spection. Then, in a voice disdainful and severe he said:
“Too white, too white. Within there are hands which
are not white—tired, weak, blue hands which are not even
able to wring themselves in despair. Your hand is too white
and your eyes too dry! Within there are eyes which have
never seen for weeping. You cannot breathe there, you
cannot weep there; therefore, you turn your back to it!
You sit here by the water dreaming of purple shoes, red
flowers, and a place where the weeping cannot be heard.
You dream of a boat with a tent of scarlet that shall carry
you up stream, far, far away. There you shall not be able
to hear anything that disturbs, there where nothing but
purple and sweetness exist, where you may fall into eter-
nal sleep with your head on a soft pillow.
“But the stream rushes downwards, and downwards it
pulls everything. Your ship of dreams crashed in the whirl-
pool underneath there a long time ago. Look, is this the
atmosphere for a ship of dreams? Iron is in the air. The
light comes as a flash of axes and spears. Your sorrow
and your joy are too small for the river. Turn! Within there
is grief like yours. There it is fitting. Here the grief is too
great.” He rejected her hand with a violence that hurt.
“Within the grief is too small for me, and I am not seek-
ing joy here,” said Rachel, scowling. “And you, why are
you here?”
He seemed not to hear her words, and remained silent.
But Rachel continued:
“You also are tired—why not I, then? You have observed
their grief. They count the blows which they receive, and
the big ones are of the same account to them as the small
ARSARETH 113
ones. Counting has become a relief for them. They dull their
senses with noise, and do not hear their own cry. Here I
can see, and here the grief is big, but not complete.”
He bent her head close to his shoulder without moving
his glance, and pointed outward, toward a white gleam.
And she felt her ears become deaf from the din of his voice,
felt herself rocked and transported by its deep sound. She
trembled at the touch of his arm, and rejoiced at being
caught by it.
“Shining spears are marching! The waters stand like a
wall on the right and on the left. No one is frightened out of
his proud silence of victory. They were a people cast in
bondage and despair. Then came a man who stretched out
his arm, and even the night and the sea fled before him.
“Here the joy is great. Can you feel it?
“Can you dance like Miriam, with timbrel in hand, dance
and sing, ‘Praise ye the Lord, for He is highly exalted!
Glorious is the work He hath done!’ Can you see her hair
dart like flames, and her fingers whiten? Can you hear
her tones shoot forth like arrows towards the hills, whence
they are lifted repeatedly by resounding voices, by the re-
sponse of men prancing in freedom? That is the Song of
Victory.”
From a break in the clouds a sunbeam shot forth in
flaming color, and the water appeared as if covered with
golden shells. He released his hold of her, and looked in
the face which he had previously ignored. His eyes were
aglow, so much so that their pupils became almost invisi-
ble. All was consummate rapture. Then he continued:
“A man is coming. He is coming soon. Perhaps he is
here already! Rabbi ben Issa foretold it a thousand years
114 PER HALLSTRÖM
ago, when they waited as they wait now and trembled with
impatience; and Issa, disconsolate and serene, saw clearly.
“Now, this is the time Rabbi ben Issa foretold, and I,
Menahem, have seen, felt, and heard. It has been singing
in my sleep. After fasting for three days, I saw it. It hap-
pened toward morning, as I was sitting tired by the hill,
and the sun suddenly penetrated the darkness, rent the
clouds, and looked at me. Figures glided by quickly, rigid
figures but with faces half-turned in a quest for something,
a silent procession in plaited garments. Behind them it was
coming. I was blinded by the sun. They went by me like
black silhouettes, but it was not black, it shone as blood
and swelled as a large blossom.
“And listen, Rachel! That Messiah who is coming is
greater than Moses. He leads out of serfdom, not into a
thousand years of conflict, but into a thousand years of
glory. Our country, the crown of the earth, lies barren and
forsaken. There our forebears were slaughtered and our
cities were burned to the ground. But greater splendor will
be manifested there. God will stamp its soil, and it shall
bloom under His footsteps. Weeping we shall kiss our land,
and joyously will it kiss us in return, and a blush shall
burn on its cheeks. Eternal peace will be there. No mourn-
er, no slave will be there.”
As he looked into his visions, his face became calm, and
it was as though the outline of that country were drawn
in his eyes. They grew brighter and bigger, and his voice
had a distant clang:
“It was our country. But farther away, still farther away,
behind red rivers and glittering mountains, lies the coun-
try for the few.” He checked himself and paused, but his
ARSARETH 115
eyes still looked into his vision, his voice changed its pitch,
and he spoke with mild disdain:
“You will reach the soil of your fathers; you will see the
Jordan. It shall rob you of your dreams, and you will not
deem it worth walking a step to draw closer to it. The riv-
er will lie as a ribbon of gold. You will see, and you will
wish to do nothing else but see.”
Rachel peered into the distance. She felt her whole be-
ing drink in that remote atmosphere, felt all her desires
take on strong wings, felt her claims on happiness and
wide, clear horizons assume concreteness.
“Is that country only beautiful and pleasant?” she asked
gently. “Is it not compact with voices and glances? Is the
air light to breathe there? Is there nothing there which
ensnares with pleasure and binds with sorrow? Is there
nothing base there? Does no one there look yearningly
beyond the river when the sun rises?”
Menahem looked into her eyes in wild triumph. He
spoke softly as in a sanctuary, but every word had the
weight of certainty:
“That country in the distance, Arsareth! There, the air
is light and cool, and the sun is near, and there is no crowd-
ing on the pathways of men, and it is quiet. There the bush-
es burn in the twilight, as formerly within the sight of
Moses, and no smoke rises from sacrifices. There the Shek-
inah abides, with its great peace-giving power, and the
horizon extends far beyond the yellow mountains.”
“But it is not for women!”
“But you, Rachel, dare you follow to the initial stage?
Would you like to take part? Can you dance and sing like
116 PER HALLSTRÖM
Miriam of old, and feel the joy of victory, or are you afraid
to leave your corner?”
Rachel met his glance. “I am afraid of staying here,”
she said. “Of nothing else!”
Menahem laughed shrilly, and turning around he
stretched both hands toward the gloomy houses. He gave
vent to his victory in a loud voice, but he did not speak to
Rachel. He spoke as if she were not there to hear him.
“A woman is the first one to say it,” he cried out in an
insulting tone. “A woman is the first one. Who has whis-
pered it into her ear? Someone among them was bound to
think so; someone had to understand. Perhaps all of them
think so, and remain silent only to test me. So it isn’t alto-
gether hopeless when even women feel it!” And with
swinging gait and long steps he went away.
Rachel wept at his words, but not for long. She soon
listened to the echo of his voice in her memory and to the
roar of the water, and her meditation led her into his mys-
terious world. Then she was glad and proud that it was
she who had felt the sting of his scorn and seen the gleam
in his eyes.
The following day she saw nothing of him, but she felt
his nearness even more than before. Strangers arrived in
town, fugitives from over the mountains, where new mur-
ders had been perpetrated. Rachel caught a glimpse of their
pale, hollow faces. She heard their coughing voices re-
count the old tale of iron, of lighted wood-piles, of panic
and of flight.
Ordinarily such a tale would have made them bend their
backs in utter resignation, but now there was a restless-
ness in the air, a questioning and counselling—Menahem!
ARSARETH 117
At nightfall it became more quiet than usual, but the si-

lence was pregnant with whispering.
Rachel was not afraid. She trusted Menahem. She did
not know what he was to bring, but she was certain that
his was not an idle faith. And when Menahem appeared
in the door, she turned toward him in splendor and confi-
dence. He was excited as usual, awful in eyes and fea-
ture, as he stood within reach of the interplaying shad-
ows. As he hurried in he seemed scarcely to notice her;
then he stopped quite close to her.
“Rachel,” he said, “tomorrow is Passover.”
Rachel did not answer, but turned to the flaming lamps,
and was full of happiness and peace that he saw her thus.
“In a few days it will be their Easter. Hiskia, whose
turn it is to attend their church, does not want to go. I
talked with him; it is all I have been able to do. But do you
believe, Rachel, that I could rouse his pride? He had none
of it. So I roused his fear. I lied to him. I said that they
planned to burn him afterwards. Then he refused to go.
And would not fire be the only means to cleanse him from
such disgrace? Thus the foundation is laid, and now the
building must come. It ought to be a beautiful building,
Rachel, for the timber is magnificent!”
He paced back and forth like a caged animal, and mur-
mured as though thinking aloud:
“There is only one soul to be found here, and that is
blind. Do you know Ussia? He is blind, and dead, and
lazy, sly and evil. Life has worn him out and consumed
him, and the white ashes make him cold. Yet there is one
burning spark in him. It is still smoldering, and may kin-
dle. Ussia can hate. You others can only bend your backs
and laugh humbly; but he can hate, hate those up there,
118 PER HALLSTRÖM
all of them, including the unborn. He laughs when some

one there dies and their bells whine like whipped dogs. He
hates you down here, and does not even take the pains to
notice your distress. He hates me, whom he would like to
stamp out as a firebrand. But most of all he hates Messiah.
And do you know why? Because we have been lulled to
rest by that name, and no trumpets have awakened us.
Because we have shed tears of joy over it, and have em-
braced it in our grief. Because in the evening, when the sky
is reddest, we have watched, and hoped, and trembled in
our hope, and yet he has not come. And our misery has
grown deeper, and our visions dimmer; young hands have
become weaker, and young hearts cowardly. And all this
has occurred as often as the harvests have ripened.
“And Ussia wants to live only to meet him once in or-
der to be able to tell him, ‘Hosanna, Son of David, Prince
of Righteousness and Victory! Clap your hands, good peo-
ple, and praise the Lord with joyful voices! But do not
tread hard with your feet, lest ye awaken the dead from
their dust!’ These are Ussia’s thoughts, and he thinks them
often; but he has considered only me worthy of being told
about them. Or, perhaps he has not dared to tell others.
Oh, terrible is Ussia!”
He turned to Rachel to observe her terror, but she stood
silently smiling as before. His words did not affect her. He
was close to her, and bliss was around her.
On the morrow, after worship, they gathered to talk
about Hiskia’s revolt. They would not discuss their dis-
grace in the temple—they were ashamed before their God—
and since the paschal feast was to be celebrated in com-
mon, they thronged the rooms and hallway of the rabbi’s
ARSARETH 119
house, where the curtains had been pushed aside to make

one large room, so that many might hear and see. And thith-
er came the men and women. They stood close together on
the thresholds and on the stairways, and the yard below and
the nearby alleys were dark with the waiting multitude.
That evening they had laid aside their black coats with
the mark of shame. They were to celebrate their victory;
they must be free to act and speak. But new rumors were
bruited in the crowd, reports of perseeution close at hand.
And whither were they to turn to escape these threats?
Up toward the wind-beaten, restless sky of spring, or down
in the frozen, black earth? Death was all around.
And beyond them, in the north, it was worse. Peasant
mobs, led by robbers and madmen, and guided by a goose
or a goat on their trek toward the Holy Land, surged ahead
at random. Howling in rude and fierce ecstasy, they threw
themselves on the Jews of the towns and clubbed them to
death. The helpless, bewildered communities cried for their
Messiah, but there was no hope; and men bared their
throats to the knife, and women filled their bosoms with
stones and plunged into the Rhine. The horror of the ru-
mors grew with the morbidness of the people’s imagina-
tion. It seemed unbearably imminent and inevitable.
A sudden murmur rose from the stairways. Menahem
came through, wearing his black cloak, and the yellow
badge burned all eyes as though they had never seen it
before. They whispered and pointed. What did he mean
by this?
Ussia grasped the significance of the whispers and, turn-
ing to his neighbor, he asked, “Has he the mark on?” When
he heard the answer, he nearly choked with laughter. “Good!
120 PER HALLSTRÖM
At our victory celebration! Oh, that I might have done it!

Too bad I cannot see it! Tell me, is he wearing a big yellow
hoof?”
Menahem was in the middle of the room. He stood at
the table, and his voice rose over the din.
“You look at my apparel as though you never saw a
Jew. Have you never worn cloaks, good people? Have you
never felt the stigma on your shoulders? Did not your
wives receive yellow lilies on their wedding days, and did
not your mothers look at these yellow flowers while bear-
ing you in their wombs? Do you believe that God has not
seen them before, that He shrinks from the festive table
on account of this mark of slavery which has proclaimed
your shame for hundreds of years?
“I tell you that He turned away from you in scorn, away
from the mark of the slave in the open places, in your
buying and selling, in your base thoughts and cringing
glances. Would you see a light in His eyes? Then lift the
emblem high with one cry: Here it is! Here we have worn
it, and here we cast it to the ground and trample it under
foot! Here, to Thy glory, O God, our disgrace ends!”
He dropped the cloak and trampled it. Those who saw
it were moved with admiration, but no eye was yet ablaze.
Then Menahem determined, as he swiftly scanned the
crowd, to play his highest card.
“You are not here to commemorate the Passover; eve-
ry one might have done that at home and gone quietly to
bed. You are here to select a man for them up there, a
man to be abused in their church. You know that Hiskia
refuses to go. Does anyone volunteer to take his place?
You Mar Isaac, you Ezra, you Petahia, you Hanan? Is
there one among you who wants to go?”
ARSARETH 121
They all huddled together, oppressed by a keen sense of

shame. It was as though every one named had been touched
with a red hot iron. Then Menahem continued deliberately:
“I, Menahem, will do it, then, if you desire it so. I shall
don my cloak again, walk up hill, and turn my cheek to
them. I shall not smite back. I shall listen to their song,
observe their mockery, restrain my voice, and look not up
to God. I shall press my lips together, turn my cheek, and
accept the shame. Speak, do you want me to do it?”
As if led by one impulse, they rushed forward to him.
That must not happen. It shall not happen, else all would
be lost. They stretched out their hands towards him.
“Speak, do you want me to do it?”
“No, no!”
Menahem burst forth in wild laughter for joy. His lips
crimsoned, his eyes gleamed, and his hands were lifted as
if he were administering a solemn oath:
“And none of you wants to bear that insult?”
“No, no!”
“You are tired of bending, tired of groveling. You are
ready to meet threats with defiance, to set your feet firm
on the ground, to brush the hair away from your faces, to
feel the air play and sing around you!”
His hand dropped, his expression changed, and he extend-
ed his arms in embracing love. His whole soul was in his eyes.
“You have all heard it and said it, but you have not
known it and felt it. The time has come, and it is breaking
forth like a blooming forest. The sun has not yet risen,
and no one can see it. Out, then, to meet it, to see the
dawn! We must throw off the garments of our enslave-
ment, shake off the dust from the field, and leave the coun-
try of our humiliation!
122 PER HALLSTRÖM
“Messiah will not come hither. He is not to crawl under

narrow vaults and knock at filthy doors. He is calling,
and we must come. See the shimmering over all the lands,
the opening of the gates, and the filling of the roads with
jubilation and dancing. There is a rush toward Canaan, a
welling from hills and caves, a flowing together, a flooding
over. There is a roaring toward Canaan!
“You tremble like birds that spread their wings and dare
not fly. You think the road is far and hard. Do you wish
Messiah to be alone in his golden land, the trumpets to
receive only the echo of their call?
“It is Passover. Four of you have staves in your hands,
in accord with the ancient ceremony of the Exodus, but
you have forgotten the day. Now we march, a mere hand-
ful from Nerac. We hurry down the mountain slopes, make
a turn with the river, where a flock from Argonne meets
us. Together we press forward, increasing in number as
we advance. Then we come to the road from the southern
mountains, to Ibarr and Mangeac. The sun rises, and we
are many. The road is open before us, without obstruc-
tion. Shall Messiah be kept waiting alone? Throw away
what is heavy, take one another by the hand, and march!
Do you not want to?”
Did they not want to? They were all his. But, what about
that leap into utter darkness?
The dull tolling of a bell penetrated the air. It was the
signal from the church that they extinguish their fires.
They had been prepared for it and had bolted the win-
dows, but many started automatically to quench the lights.
Menahem swooped on the faint-hearted as a falcon on its
prey, and cried:
“Let their bells rattle! This is Passover! Here our lights
ARSARETH 123
burn like stars of promise! Listen, how hollow and faint

their bells sound. One by one the tones go out and sink
down like tired birds. Darkness overtakes them and sti-
fles them. But there is something else rustling through the
town. Can you hear its strokes along the wall outside?
Can you perceive its breath, the groping of its hands, the
alluring depth of its eyes? It is the Angel of the Lord! Did
you make the sign of the blood on your door? Did you
prostrate yourselves before the Almighty? Stretch your
arms towards the hills, and make ready to leave the place
of His wrath. God will take vengeance after you! March
out into the night in garments of purple, with eyes wide
open toward the east, and with hearts full of gladness and
victory. Before you, God prepares a way!”
The people around him were now like water driven by
the wind, stirred up and swelling. Was the tide to ebb, or
was it to flow on irresistibly? They believed him. Their
eyes and cheeks were aglow. Their hands were clenched,
but somewhere hung a weight of doubt.
Then Rachel, moved and trembling, ran forward and
pleaded. “Take me with you! Take us all with you!”
The high water found an outlet, rushing onward in tu-
mult and joy. “Up, up! Take us all with you!” Menahem
extended his hand to Rachel, supported her for a moment,
and then left her. He had been victorious. Now, away,
away instantly! Were they ready? Yes, yes! With arms
uplifted they sang in their hearts: Away, away! They must
scatter to look to the sick and the little ones, the finest
ornament for the Lord! Then together again, concordant,
swift, and irresistible.
Some spoke for caution, but were checked. “Will you
remain where death and shame abide? Will you remain
124 PER HALLSTRÖM
here in craven fear to be slaughtered?” Doubtful, they

followed. Only Ussia stood composed and scornful.
“Go,” he said. “I shall not follow. I shall wait here for
Messiah. He may perhaps come hither. He knows the way.
The air is cool and good for walking. I am tired and will
sleep a while. Somebody has to be here to greet you when
you come back.”
And they avoided him like the pest, for they were afraid
to listen to his words.
Menahem did not know it. Clothed with the responsi-
bility of power, he gave freely of his courage and faith. He
sent word to prepare and gather the people. He told them
about the road they were to take and the meeting-places
where they were to join their fellow pilgrims. Thus, the
people assembled and the street was filled with hushed
voices. Menahem hurried out on the stairway and cut his
hand against a door-handle. Standing there between two
torches, with the dark crowd beneath and the night clos-
ing in, he laughed triumphantly. There, in the gloom, their
humiliation was cast off like an empty shell. There, all
their baseness and shame were shed. There, only empty
chambers concealed memories of weeping and want. All
their misery was behind them.
Then Menahem gave them a sign. He painted with the
blood of his wounded hand a gigantic cross on the door. It
was their token of farewell and glad riddance from their
house of torment, their expiatory sacrifice to their God of
Vengeance, a mark of their red-flaming victory awaiting the
break of day to shine. Then he pointed with the other hand:
“There! There is the road to the Promised Land! Now,
do not utter a word or look behind! Let me pass through
to the front. Then, out into the darkness!”
ARSARETH 125
Thus they left the town whose walls sighed with the
echo of their steps. Wherever the black mass of humanity
proceeded, it looked as though the earth itself was rising
to give battle to the night, a battle against death, and pave
the way to light and liberty. They walked hand in hand,
rejoicing, helping along the aged, assisting with the babes.
And some had their arms around each other.
The trek downhill was easy, and they seemed to be car-
ried on wings. They marched on, with the steep river bank
on one side and an open stretch of land on the other. The
stars increased in number.
As the night waned, they were no longer afraid of being
discovered. They might talk aloud, only they had nothing
to say. They bent their heads back, breathing deeply. Me-
nahem walked ahead, his eyes fixed upon a distant goal.
Rachel was close behind him, looking only at him, and
changing her position now and then in order that she might
see one of the pale, big stars over his head.
Where the road made a turn across the river, they had
hoped to see their city. They turned their heads and peered
into the dusk, but saw nothing, only gloomy hills in bro-
ken, irregular lines. Perhaps the city disappeared; perhaps
it had never been aught but a tormenting dream. Their steps
resounded on the bridge; a fanfare of sounds arose and died
away on the stones on the other side. Underneath flowed
the heavy, gray stream. Before them stood a gate of trees,
two long rows of dark stems. They marched on.
And Menahem spoke in brief, sharp and abrupt sen-
tences. Those in front heard him and drank in his words,
and when his voice rested, his utterances were passed from
mouth to mouth through the crowd. They were like stro-
phes in a hymn.
126 PER HALLSTRÖM
He spoke of their country, resplendent in the evening

sun, like a burning pyre between the blue walls of a moun-
tain-pass. He saw it, and he wondered who would be the
first there to feel the Cherubim fan away the curse from
one’s bent brow. Who would be the first to lay down the
weary head and sleep oneself to health there within one
night?
He spoke of their sin, their heavy burden of sin, that
must be ground into nothingness on the way, put to flight
into the darkness of the caves, drowned in the gloomy
mountain lakes and somber marshes by the road.
And he spoke of Arsareth, the land of rubies, a name
hewn from the half-forgotten story of Esdras. Arsareth,
high up on the mountain’s yellow stairways, in the spa-
cious atmosphere of stillness! What was it? They did not
comprehend, but they were invigorated by the pride in his
words as by the sound of trumpets.
The procession moved forward. The hours slipped by
as the people went now uphill, now downwards on paths
gleaming with frost. At last they came to the three roads,
the appointed meeting place, but there was no crowd to be
seen, no sound of rejoicing as they approached. Only a
solitary man crept out of the thicket to meet them.
“Menahem,” he cried, “Menahem, turn back. They did
not believe. They dared not come. There are soldiers
abroad who, sensing something amiss, may move hither.”
Then their strength gave way, and their voices grew
faint. “The road is closed. There are soldiers abroad.”
But Menahem cried: “They did not believe. They dared
not. That does not concern us. Forward anew!”
“But the blocked road, and the soldiers!?”
ARSARETH 127
“It is a sign from God, a sign from God. He will work a

miracle before our eyes!” Menahem pointed with both his
hands. “There is the way!”
“But there is the ocean!” Its roar was already in the
sound of their voices.
He cried even louder. “There is the way! There! Did
you never hear of Moses? Did you never hear of Joshua
and the march of his tribes? Did you never hear of Ar-
sareth and the spacious waters? People, there is the way!”
He hastened forward. The final stretch was steep. A cloud
of flapping wings shot out of the dismal thicket, homing birds
finding their way in the darkness. The people followed him.
The ground echoed again with their tramping. But there was
doubt in their hearts. Whither were they going? Would there
be anything but the ocean? Maybe he had a ship awaiting
them. His eyes were so strange, and anything might hap-
pen. Maybe he was leading them to despair. Well, they were
accustomed to that. They were tired, and the road, though
going downhill, became arduous. But Menahem was un-
mindful of it. He walked and spoke as before. And Rachel
followed him, seeing a big, flame-like star over his head.
She had scarcely noticed the interruption, scarcely un-
derstood. If they were to witness a great wonder and to
have great faith, she was ready, calm and glad.
And the vision of Menahem became more intoxicating.
Arsareth in the gleam of purple! On, toward greater won-
ders, forward toward a more glorious goal! Arsareth and
its still, lofty spaces! As worn garments fall from one’s
shoulders, as the involucre drops from the flower, so must
all ties be severed! The world viewed from the perspec-
tive of a mountain-top—blue, distant lines and flickering
lights, and life as a song!
128 PER HALLSTRÖM
The light became brighter. The star above Menahem’s

head had faded away. The sun appeared, and revealed a
mass of faces that were weary to death and eyes staring
in perplexity and ready to weep. But Menahem did not
look behind, nor did Rachel and those close to her.
A wall of mist melted in the horizon, and a glowing ex-
panse met their eyes: the ocean with streaks of flame and
black, the sky with its open fireplace. A glimpse of Ar-
sareth. Arsareth!
But in the rear, there was a cry of anxiety and distress:
no path, no ship, no deliverance, only the ocean! And
Menahem climbed up on a rock, and extended his hand
toward the water.
“Your cry of fear is forgiven you, but have you forgot-
ten the season? Is it not Passover, with the same ordeal
now as then, and the same God?
“‘The waters saw Thee, O God; the waters saw Thee,
they were in pain; the depths also trembled.
“‘Thy way was in the sea, and Thy path in the great
waters, and Thy footsteps were not known.’
“People, O people of Moses. There is the way! There is
the wonder and the day awaited for a thousand years!
Now, follow. Leap into the unknown, and put your trust
in a God of Might! Behind you is endless grief, before you
endless glory. Who will be the first? Who will? Wherever
his foot shall descend, the depth will turn into a cleared
pathway. Forward!”
He jumped off the rock and ran downwards, his cheeks
shining, his eyes beaming. Others followed, hair aflutter
and arms uplifted. They could hardly be discerned in the
glow of the sun.
ARSARETH 129
Horror engulfed the rest, who stopped with despair tug-

ging at their hearts. He was surely a fool, perhaps a de-
mon, an evil power that lured them to death. For a mo-
ment they were numb with fear, hid their faces in their
hands, and fell to the ground. Then they turned and ran,
with terror in pursuit. From behind came the sound of a
splash and a cry, a wild cry of exultation or pain. The
light was more dazzling, for the sun was entirely up; but
few looked back. Fearstricken they fled, climbing preci-
pices with mangled knees and torn hands, crawling back
to the disgrace of Easter and the scorn of Ussia’s greet-
ing, perhaps to plague and death.
Rachel was not among those who returned. Full of
excitement and expectancy she had rushed forward, cling-
ing to Menahem. Ten others were missing, and none
stopped to bewail them. All fled for their lives.
Thus they reached their homes, and lived on as former-
ly, scorned and trampled in dirt, eating their bread in tears.
And at times, when grief made their minds wander, they
reviewed with their inner eyes the joy and the hope of
that night, and their ears were full of the din of tramping
feet, of the surging sound of the song of victory and of
bells, and they could see the water flaming red in the morn-
ing sun, but they knew not whether it was the lure of life
or of death.
Gradually it became customary to say that the young
and faithful ones, who had plunged into the water, had
reached their destination. Not the land of their fathers, to
be sure, for no one had heard of their arrival there; but
the unknown region of broad spaces, where all sorrow is
remote, Arsareth, the strange land of the saga, the land of
rubies, which glitters and beckons at the rising of the sun.
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COUNT VILLIERS de l’ISLE ADAM
French novelist, 1838–89. The story reproduced here, which,

according to Huneker, recalls Poe at his best, is taken from his
volume of fantastic prose-poems, Contes Cruels, and appears,
anonymously translated, in an American collection of tales, from
which it was reprinted in Great Short Stories of the World, collect-
ed by Barrett H. Clark and Maxim Lieber, New York, Robert
M. McBride & Co., 1924, pp. 358–62.
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THE TORTURE OF HOPE
M ANY years ago, as evening was closing in, the

venerable Pedro Arbuez d’Espila, sixth Prior of the
Dominicans of Segovia, and third Grand Inquisitor of
Spain, followed by a fra redemptor and preceded by two fa-
miliars of the Holy Office, the latter carrying lanterns, made
their way to a subterranean dungeon. The bolt of a mas-
sive door creaked, and they entered a mephitic in pace,
where the dim light revealed between rings fastened to the
wall a bloodstained rack, a brazier, and a jug. On a pile of
straw, loaded with fetters and his neck encircled by an iron
carcan, sat a haggard man, of uncertain age, clothed in rags.
This prisoner was no other than Rabbi Aser Abarbanel,
a Jew of Aragon, who—accused of usury and pitiless scorn
for the poor—had been daily subjected to torture for more
than a year. Yet “his blindness was as dense as his hide,”
and he had refused to abjure his faith.
Proud of a filiation dating back thousands of years,
proud of his ancestors—for all Jews worthy of the name
are vain of their blood—he descended talmudically from
Othoniel and consequently from Ipsiboa, the wife of the
last judge of Israel, a circumstance which had sustained
his courage amid incessant torture. With tears in his eyes
at the thought of this resolute soul rejecting salvation, the
venerable Pedro Arbuez d’Espila, approaching the shud-
dering rabbi, addressed him as follows:
“My son, rejoice! Your trials here below are about to
end. If in the presence of such obstinacy I was forced to
133
134 COUNT VILLIERS de l’ISLE ADAM
permit, with deep regret, the use of great severity, my task

of fraternal correction has its limits. You are the fig tree
which, having failed so many times to bear fruit, at last
withered, but God alone can. judge your soul. Perhaps
Infinite Mercy will shine upon you at the last moment!
We must hope so. There are examples. So sleep in peace
tonight. To-morrow you will be included in the auto da fé:
that is, you will be exposed to the quémadero, the symbol-
ical flames of the Everlasting Fire: it burns, as you know,
only at a distance, my son; and Death is at least two hours
(often three) in coming, on account of the wet, iced band-
ages with which we protect the heads and hearts of the
condemned. There will be forty-three of you. Placed in
the last row, you will have time to invoke God and offer to
Him this baptism of fire, which is of the Holy Spirit. Hope
in the Light, and rest.”
With these words, having signed to his companions to
unchain the prisoner, the prior tenderly embraced him.
Then came the turn of the fra redemptor, who, in a low
tone, entreated the Jew’s forgiveness for what he had made
him suffer for the purpose of redeeming him; then the two
familiars silently kissed him. This ceremony over, the cap-
tive was left, solitary and bewildered, in the darkness.
Rabbi Aser Abarbanel, with parched lips and visage
worn by suffering, at first gazed at the closed door with
vacant eyes. Closed? The word unconsciously roused a
vague fancy in his mind, the fancy that he had seen for an
instant the light of the lanterns through a chink between
the door and the wall. A morbid idea of hope, due to the
weakness of his brain, stirred his whole being. He dragged
himself toward the strange appearance. Then, very gently
and cautiously, slipping one finger into the crevice, he drew
THE TORTURE OF HOPE 135
the door toward him. Marvelous! By an extraordinary

accident the familiar who closed it had turned the huge
key an instant before it struck the stone casing, so that
the rusty bolt not having entered the hole, the door again
rolled on its hinges.
The rabbi ventured to glance outside. By the aid of a
sort of luminous dusk he distinguished at first a semi-cir-
cle of walls indented by winding stairs; and opposite to
him, at the top of five or six stone steps, a sort of black
portal, opening into an immense corridor, whose first arch-
es only were visible from below.
Stretching himself flat he crept to the threshold. Yes, it
was really a corridor, but endless in length. A wan light
illumined it: lamps suspended from the vaulted ceiling light-
ened at intervals the dull hue of the atmosphere—the dis-
tance was veiled in shadow. Not a single door appeared in
the whole extent! Only on one side, the left, heavily grat-
ed loopholes, sunk in the walls, admitted a light which must
be that of evening, for crimson bars at intervals rested on
the flags of the pavement. What a terrible silence! Yet,
yonder, at the far end of that passage there might be a
doorway of escape! The Jew’s vacillating hope was tena-
cious, for it was the last.
Without hesitating, he ventured on the flags, keeping
close under the loopholes, trying to make himself part of
the blackness of the long walls. He advanced slowly, drag-
ging himself along on his breast, forcing back the cry of
pain when some raw wound sent a keen pang through his
whole body.
Suddenly the sound of a sandaled foot approaching
reached his ears. He trembled violently, fear stifled him,
his sight grew dim. Well, it was over, no doubt. He
pressed himself into a niche and, half lifeless with terror,

waited.
It was a familiar hurrying along. He passed swiftly by,
holding in his clenched hand an instrument of torture—a
frightful figure—and vanished. The suspense which the
rabbi had endured seemed to have suspended the functions
of life, and he lay nearly an hour unable to move. Fearing
an increase of tortures if he were captured, he thought of
returning to his dungeon. But the old hope whispered in
his soul that divine perhaps, which comforts us in our sor-
est trials. A miracle had happened. He could doubt no long-
er. He began to crawl toward the chance of escape. Ex-
hausted by suffering and hunger, trembling with pain, he
pressed onward. The sepulchral corridor seemed to length-
en mysteriously, while he, still advancing, gazed into the
gloom where there must be some avenue of escape.
Oh! oh! He again heard footsteps, but this time they
were slower, more heavy. The white and black forms of
two inquisitors appeared, emerging from the obscurity
beyond. They were conversing in low tones, and seemed
to be discussing some important subject, for they were
gesticulating vehemently.
At this spectacle Rabbi Aser Abarbanel closed his eyes:
his heart beat so violently that it almost suffocated him;
his rags were damp with the cold sweat of agony; he lay
motionless by the wall, his mouth wide open, under the
rays of a lamp, praying to the God of David.
Just opposite to him the two inquisitors paused under
the light of the lamp—doubtless owing to some accident
due to the course of their argument. One, while listening
to his companion, gazed at the rabbi! And, beneath the
look—whose absence of expression the hapless man did
not at first notice—he fancied he again felt the burning

pincers scorch his flesh; he was to be once more a living
wound. Fainting, breathless, with fluttering eyelids, he
shivered at the touch of the monk’s floating robe. But—
strange yet natural fact—the inquisitor’s gaze was evi-
dently that of a man deeply absorbed in his intended re-
ply, engrossed by what he was hearing; his eyes were
fixed—and seemed to look at the Jew without seeing him.
In fact, after the lapse of a few minutes, the two gloomy
figures slowly pursued their way, still conversing in low
tones, toward the place whence the prisoner had come; he
had not been seen! Amid the horrible confusion of the rab-
bi’s thoughts, the idea darted through his brain: “Can I be
already dead that they did not see me?” A hideous im-
pression roused him from his lethargy: in looking at the
wall against which his face was pressed, he imagined he
beheld two fierce eyes watching him! He flung his head
back in a sudden frenzy of fright, his hair fairly bristling!
Yet, no! His hand groped over the stones: it was the reflec-
tion of the inquisitor’s eyes, still retained in his own, which
had been refracted from two spots on the wall.
Forward! He must hasten toward that goal which he
fancied(absurdly, no doubt) to be deliverance, toward the
darkness from which he was now barely thirty paces dis-
tant. He pressed forward faster on his knees, his hands,
at full length, dragging himself painfully along, and soon
entered the dark portion of this terrible corridor.
Suddenly the poor wretch felt a gust of cold air on the
hands resting upon the flags; it came from under the little
door to which the two walls led.
Oh, Heaven, if that door should open outward. Every
nerve in the miserable fugitive’s body thrilled with hope.
He examined it from top to bottom, though scarcely able

to distinguish its outlines in the surrounding darkness. He
passed his hand over it: no bolt, no lock! A latch! He start-
ed up, the latch yielded to the pressure of his thumb: the
door silently swung open before him.
“Halleluja!” murmured the rabbi in a transport of grati-
tude as, standing on the threshold, he beheld the scene
before him.
The door had opened into the gardens, above which
arched a starlit sky, into spring, liberty, life! It revealed
the neighboring fields, stretching toward the sierras, whose
sinuous blue lines were relieved against the horizon. Yon-
der lay freedom! Oh, to escape! He would journey all night
through the lemon groves, whose fragrance reached him.
Once in the mountains and he was safe! He inhaled the
delicious air; the breeze revived him, his lungs expanded!
He felt in his swelling heart the veni foràs of Lazarus! And
to thank once more the God who had bestowed this mer-
cy upon him, he extended his arms, raising his eyes to-
ward Heaven. It was an ecstasy of joy!
Then he fancied he saw the shadow of his arms ap-
proach him—fancied that he felt these shadowy arms in-
close, embrace him—and that he was pressed tenderly to
someone’s breast. A tall figure actually did stand directly
before him. He lowered his eyes—and remained motion-
less, gasping for breath, dazed, with fixed eyes, fairly
driveling with terror.
Horror! He was in the clasp of the Grand Inquisitor
himself, the venerable Pedro Arbuez d’Espila, who gazed
at him with tearful eyes, like a good shepherd who had
found his stray lamb.
The dark-robed priest pressed the hapless Jew to his heart

with so fervent an outburst of love, that the edges of the
monachal haircloth rubbed the Dominican’s breast. And
while Aser Abarbanel with protruding eyes gasped in agony
in the ascetic’s embrace, vaguely comprehending that all the
phases of this fatal evening were only a prearranged torture, that
of HOPE, the Grand Inquisitor, with an accent of touching
reproach and a look of consternation, murmured in his ear,
his breath parched and burning from long fasting:
“What, my son! On the eve, perchance, of salvation—
you wished to leave us?”
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Home | TOC
I. L. CARGIALE
Roumanian novelist and dramatist, 1852?–1912. The follow-

ing masterpiece depicts graphically the terror that engulfs the
isolated Roumanian Jew, driving the hero of this story to insan-
ity and destruction. The author observes correctly that venge-
ance and murder, even under the emergency of self-defense, are
contrary to the habit of the Jew and the genius of his faith. This
is suggested subtly when Leiba Zibal, crazed by fear and by his
own deed, rises to spiritual dignity and feels that he must go “to
Jassy to tell the rabbi that Leiba Zibal is a Jew no longer.” The
story was translated by Lucy Byng for her Roumanian Stories,
London, 1921, and is included here with the permission of the
publishers, John Lane the Bodley Head Ltd., of London.
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THE EASTER TORCH
L EIBA ZIBAL, mine host of Podeni, was sitting, lost

in thought, by a table placed in the shadow in front
of the inn; he was awaiting the arrival of the coach which
should have come some time ago; it was already an hour
behind time.
The story of Zibal’s life is a long and cheerless one: when
he is taken with one of his feverish attacks it is a diver-
sion for him to analyze one by one the most important
events in that life.
Huckster, seller of hardware, jobber, between whiles
even rougher work perhaps, seller of old clothes, then tai-
lor, and bootblack in a dingy alley in Jassy; all this had
happened to him since the accident whereby he lost his
situation as office boy in a big wine-shop. Two porters were
carrying a barrel down to a cellar under the supervision
of the lad Zibal. A difference arose between them as to
the division of their earnings. One of them seized a piece
of wood that lay at hand and struck his comrade on the
forehead, who fell to the ground covered in blood. At the
sight of the wild deed the boy gave a cry of alarm, but the
wretch hurried through the yard, and in passing gave the
lad a blow. Zibal fell to the ground fainting with fear. Af-
ter several months in bed he returned to his master, only
to find his place filled up. Then began a hard struggle for
existence, which increased in difficulty after his marriage
with Sura. Their hard lot was borne with patience; Sura’s
143
144 I. L. CARGIALE
brother, the innkeeper of Podeni, died; the inn passed into

Zibal’s hands, and he carried on the business on his own
account.
Here he had been for the last five years. He had saved
a good bit of money and collected good wine—a commod-
ity that will always be worth good money. Leiba had es-
caped from poverty, but they were all three sickly, him-
self, his wife, and his child, all victims of malaria; and men
are rough and quarrelsome in Podeni—slanderous, scoff-
ers, revilers, accused of vitriol throwing. And the threats!
A threat is very terrible to a character that bends easily
beneath every blow. The thought of a threat worked more
upon Leiba’s nerves than did his attacks of fever.
“Oh, wretched Gentile!” he thought, sighing.
This “wretched” referred to Gheorghe—wherever he
might be!—a man between whom and himself a most un-
pleasant affair had arisen.
Gheorghe came to the inn one autumn morning, tired
with his walk; he was just out of hospital—so he said—
and was looking for work. The innkeeper took him into
his service. But Gheorghe showed himself to be a brutal
and a sullen man. He swore continually, and muttered to
himself alone in the yard. He was a bad servant, lazy and
insolent, and he stole. He threatened his mistress one day
when she was pregnant, cursing her, and striking her on
the stomach. Another time he set a dog on little Strul.
Leiba paid him his wages at once, and dismissed him.
But Gheorghe would not go: he asserted with violence that
he had been engaged for a year. Then the innkeeper sent
to the townhall to get guards to remove him.
Gheorghe put his hand swiftly to his breast, crying:
THE EASTER TORCH 145
“Jew!” and began to rail at his master. Unfortunately a

cart full of customers arrived at that moment. Gheorghe
began to grin, saying: “What frightened you, Master Leiba?
Look, I am going now.” Then bending fiercely over to-
wards Leiba, who drew back as far as possible, he whis-
pered: “Expect me on Easter Eve; we’ll crack red eggs
together, Jew! You will know then what I have done to
you, and I will answer for it.”
Just then, customers entered the inn.
“May we meet in good health at Easter, Master Leiba!”
added Gheorghe as he left.
Leiba went to the town-hall, then to the sub-prefecture
to denounce the threatener, begging that he might be
watched. The sub-prefect was a lively young man; he first
accepted Leiba’s humble offering, then he began to laugh
at the timid Jew and make fun of him. Leiba tried hard to
make him realize the gravity of the situation, and pointed
out how isolated the house stood from the village and even
from the high road. But the sub-prefect, with a more seri-
ous air, advised him to be prudent; he must not mention
such things, for, truly, it would arouse the desire to do them
in a village where men were rough and poor, ready to break
the law.
A few days later an official with two riders came to see
him about Gheorghe; he was “wanted” for some crime.
If only Leiba had been able to put up with him until the
arrival of these man! In the meanwhile, no one knew the
whereabouts of Gheorghe. Although this had happened some
time ago, Gheorghe’s appearance, the movement as though
he would have drawn something from his breast, and the
threatening words had all remained deeply impressed upon
146 I. L. CARGIALE
the mind of the terror-stricken man. How was it that that

memory remained so clear?
It was Easter Eve.
From the top of the hill, from the village lying among
the lakes about two miles away, came the sound of church
bells. One hears in a strange way when one is feverish,
now so loud, now so far away. The coming night was the
night before Easter, the night of the fulfilment of Gheo-
rghe’s promise.
“But perhaps they have caught him by now!”
Moreover, Zibal only means to stay at Podeni till next
quarter-day. With his capital he could open a good busi-
ness in Jassy. In a town, Leiba would regain his health,
he would go near the police station—he could treat the
police, the commissionaires, the sergeants. Who pays well
gets well guarded.
In a large village, the night brings noise and light, not
darkness and silence as in the isolated valley of Podeni.
There is an inn in Jassy—there in the corner, just the place
for a shop! An inn where girls sing all night long, a Café
Chantant. What a gay and rousing life! There, at all hours
of the day and night, officials and their girls, and other
Christians, will need entertainment.
What is the use of bothering oneself here where busi-
ness keeps falling off, especially since the coming of the
railway which only skirts the marshes at some distance?
“Leiba,” calls Sura from within, “the coach is coming,
one can hear the bells.”
The Podeni valley is a ravine enclosed on all sides by
wooded hills. In a hollow towards the south lie several
deep pools caused by the springs which rise in the hills;
above them lie some stretches of ground covered with
bushes and rushes. Leiba’s hotel stands in the center of

the valley, between the pools and the more elevated ground
to the north; it is an old stone building, strong as a small
fortress: although the ground is marshy, the walls and cel-
lars are very dry.
At Sura’s voice Leiba raises himself painfully from his
chair, stretching his tired limbs; he takes a long look to-
wards the east; not a sign of the diligence.
“It is not coming in; you imagined it,” he replied to his
wife, and sat down again.
Very tired, the man crossed his arms on the table, and
laid his head upon them, for it was burning. The warmth
of the spring sun began to strike the surface of the marsh-
es and a pleasant lassitude enveloped his nerves, and his
thoughts began to run riot as a sick man’s will, gradually
taking on strange forms and colors.
Gheorghe—Easter Eve—burglars—Jassy—the inn in
the center of the town—a gay restaurant doing well—re-
stored health.
And he dozed.
Sura and the child went without a great deal up here.
Leiba went to the door of the inn and looked out on to
the road.
On the main road there was a good deal of traffic, an
unceasing noise of wheels accompanied by the rhythmic
sound of horses’ hoofs trotting upon the smooth asphalt.
But suddenly the traffic stopped, and from Coupu a
group of people could be seen approaching, gesticulating
and shouting excitedly.
The crowd appeared to be escorting somebody: soldiers,
a guard and various members of the public. Curious on-
lookers appeared at every door of the inn.
148 I. L. CARGIALE
“Ah,” thought Leiba, “they have laid hands on a thief.”

The procession drew nearer. Sura detached herself from
the others, and joined Leiba on the steps of the inn.
“What is it, Sura?” he asked.
“A madman escaped from Golia.”
“Let us close the inn so that he cannot get at us.”
“He is bound now, but a while ago he escaped. He fought
with all the soldiers. A rough Gentile in the crowd pushed
a Jew against the madman and he bit him on the cheek.”
Leiba could see well from the steps; from the stair be-
low Sura watched with the child in her arms.
It was, in fact, a violent lunatic held on either side by
two men: his wrists were tightly bound over each other by
a thick cord. He was a man of gigantic stature with a head
like a bull, thick black hair, and hard, grizzled beard and
whiskers. Through his shirt, which had been torn in the
struggle, his broad chest was visible, covered, like his head
with a mass of hair. His feet were bare; his mouth was full
of blood, and he continually spat out hair which he had
bitten from the Jew’s beard.
Everyone stood still. Why? The guards unbound the
lunatic’s hands. The crowd drew to one side, leaving a
large space around him. The madman looked about him,
and his fierce glance rested upon Zibal’s doorway; he
gnashed his teeth, made a dash for the three steps, and in
a flash, seizing the child’s head in his right hand and Su-
ra’s in his left, he knocked them together with such force
that they cracked like so many fresh eggs. A sound was
heard, a scrunching impossible to describe, as the two
skulls cracked together.
Leiba, with bursting heart, like a man who falls from
an immense height, tried to cry out: “The whole world
abandons me to the tender mercies of a madman!” But

his voice refused to obey him.
“Get up, Jew!” cried someone, beating loudly upon the
table with a stick.
“It’s a bad joke,” said Sura from the doorway of the
inn, “Thus to frighten the man out of his sleep, you stupid
peasant!”
“What has scared you, Jew?” asked the wag, laughing.
“You sleep in the afternoon, eh? Get up, customers are
coming, the mail coach is arriving.”
And, according to his silly habit which greatly irritated
the Jew, he tried to take his arm and tickle him.
“Let me alone!” cried the innkeeper, drawing back and
pushing him away with all his might. “Can you not see
that I am ill? Leave me in peace.”
The coach arrived at last, nearly three hours late. There
were two passengers who seated themselves together with
the driver, whom they had invited to share their table.
The conversation of the travelers threw a light upon
recent events. At the highest posting station, a robbery
with murder had been committed during the night in the
inn of a Jew. The murdered innkeeper should have pro-
vided a change of horses. The thieves had taken them,
and while other horses were being found in the village the
curious travelers could examine the scene of the crime at
their leisure. Five victims! But the details! From just see-
ing the ruined house one could believe it to have been some
cruel vendetta or the work of some religious fanatic. In
stories of sectarian fanaticism one heard occasionally of
such extravagant crimes.
Leiba shook with a violent access of fever and listened
aghast.
150 I. L. CARGIALE
What followed must have undoubtedly filled the driver

with respect. The young passengers were two students,
one of philosophy, the other of medicine; they were re-
turning to amuse themselves in their native town. They
embarked upon a violent academic discussion upon crime
and its causes, and, to give him his due, the medical stu-
dent was better informed than the philosopher.
Atavism; alcoholism and its pathological consequenc-
es; defective birth; deformity; paludism; then nervous dis-
orders! Such and such conquest of modern science—but
the case of reversion to type! Darwin, Häckel, Lombro-
so. At the case of reversion to type, the driver opened wide
his eyes in which shone a profound admiration for the
conquests of modern science.
“It is obvious,” added the medical student. “The so-
called criminal proper, taken as a type, has unusually long
arms, and very short feet, a flat and narrow forehead, and
a much developed occiput. To the experienced eye his face
is characteristically coarse and bestial; he is rudimentary
man: he is, as I say, a beast which has but lately got used
to standing on its hind legs only, and to raising its head
towards the light.”
At the age of twenty, after so much excitement, and af-
ter a good repast with wine so well vinted and so well
matured as Leiba’s, a phrase with a lyrical touch came
well even from a medical student.
Between his studies of Darwin and Lombroso, the
enthusiastic youth had found time to imbibe a little Scho-
penhauer—“towards the sky, towards the light!”
Leiba was far from understanding these “illuminating”
ideas. Perhaps for the first time did such grand words and
fine subtleties of thought find expression in the damp at-
mosphere of Podeni. But that which he understood better

than anything, much better even than the speaker, was
the striking illustration of the theory: the case of rever-
sion to type he knew in flesh and blood, it was the portrait
of Gheorghe. This portrait, which had just been drawn in
broad outline only, he could fill in perfectly in his own
mind, down to the most minute details.
The coach had gone. Leiba followed it with his eyes un-
til, turning to the left, it was lost to sight around the hill.
The sun was setting behind the ridge to the west, and the
twilight began to weave soft shapes in the Podeni valley.
The gloomy innkeeper began to turn over in his mind
all that he had heard. In the dead of night, lost in the dark-
ness, a man, two women and two young children, torn
without warning from the gentle arms of sleep by the hands
of beasts with human faces, and sacrificed one after the
other, the agonized cries of the children cut short by the
dagger ripping open their bodies, the neck slashed with a
hatchet, the dull rattle in the throat with each gush of blood
through the wound; and the last victim, half-distraught,
in a corner, witness of the scene, and awaiting his turn. A
condition far worse than execution was that of the Jew
without protection in the hands of the Gentile—skulls too
fragile for such fierce hands as those of the madman just
now.
Leiba’s lips, parched with fever, trembled as they mech-
anically followed his thoughts. A violent shivering fit seized
him; he entered the porch of the inn with tottering steps.
“There is no doubt,” thought Sura, “Leiba is not at all
well, he is really ill; Leiba has got ‘ideas’ into his head. Is
152 I. L. CARGIALE
not that easy to understand after all he has been doing

these last days, and especially after what he has done to-
day?”
He had had the inn closed before the lights were lit, to
remain so until the Sabbath was ended. Three times had
some customers knocked at the door, calling to him, in fa-
miliar voices, to undo it. He had trembled at each knock
and had stood still, whispering softly and with terrified eyes:
“Do not move—I want no Gentiles here.”
Then he had passed under the portico, and had listened
at the top of the stone steps by the door which was se-
cured by a bar of wood. He shook so that he could scarce-
ly stand, but he would not rest. The most distressing thing
of all was that he had answered Sura’s persistent ques-
tions sharply, and had sent her to bed, ordering her to put
out the light at once. She had protested meanwhile, but
the man had repeated the order curtly enough, and she
had had unwillingly to submit, resigning herself to post-
poning to a later date any explanation of his conduct.
Sura had put out the lamp, had gone to bed, and now
slept by the side of Strul.
The woman was right. Leiba was really ill.
Night had fallen. For a long time Leiba had been sitting,
listening by the doorway which gave on to the passage.
What is that?
Indistinct sounds came from the distance—horses trot-
ting, the noise of heavy blows, mysterious and agitated
conversations. The effort of listening intently in the soli-
tude of the night sharpens the sense of hearing: when the
eye is disarmed and powerless, the ear seems to struggle
to assert its power.
But it was not imagination. From the road leading hither

from the main road came the sound of approaching horses.
Leiba rose, and tried to get nearer to the big door in the
passage. The door was firmly shut by a heavy bar of wood
across it, the ends of which ran into holes in the wall. At
his first step the sand scrunching under his slippers made
an indiscreet noise. He drew his feet from his slippers, and
waited in the corner. Then, without a sound that could be
heard by an unexpectant ear, he went to the door in the
corridor, just as the riders passed in front of it at walking
pace. They were speaking very low to each other, but not
so low but that Leiba could quite well catch these words:
“He has gone to bed early.”
“Supposing he has gone away?”
“His turn will come; but I should have liked—”
No more was intelligible; the men were already some
distance away. To whom did these words refer? Who had
gone to bed or gone away? Whose turn would come an-
other time? Who would have liked something? And what
was it he wanted? What did they want on that by-road—a
road used only by anyone wishing to find the inn?
An overwhelming sense of fatigue seemed to overcome
Leiba. Could it be Gheorghe?
Leiba felt as if his strength was giving way, and he sat
down by the door. Eager thoughts chased each other through
his head, he could not think clearly or come to any decision.
Terrified, he reëntered the inn, struck a match, and light-
ed a small petroleum lamp.
It was an apology for a light; the wick was turned so
low as to conceal the flame in the brass receiver; only by
means of the opening round the receiver could some of
the vertical shafts of light penetrate into a gloom that was
154 I. L. CARGIALE
like the darkness of death—all the same it was sufficient

to enable him to see well into the familiar corners of the
inn. Ah! How much less is the difference between the sun
and the tiniest spark of light than between the latter and
the gloom of blindness.
The clock on the wall ticked audibly. The monotonous
sound irritated Leiba. He put his hand over the swinging
pendulum, and stayed its movement.
His throat was parched. He was thirsty. He washed a
small glass in a three-legged tub by the side of the bar and
tried to pour some good brandy out of a decanter; but the
mouth of the decanter began to clink loudly on the edge of
the glass. This noise was still more irritating. A second
attempt, in spite of his effort to conquer his weakness, met
with no greater success.
Then, giving up the idea of the glass, he let it fall gently
into the water, and drank several times out of the decant-
er. After that he pushed the decanter back into its place;
as it touched the shelf it made an alarming clatter. For a
moment he waited, appalled by such a catastrophe. Then
he took the lamp, and placed it in the niche of the window
which lighted the passage: the door, the pavement, and
the wall which ran at right angles to the passage were
illuminated by almost imperceptible streaks of light.
He seated himself near the doorway and listened intently.
From the hill came the sound of bells ringing in the
Resurrection morning. It meant that midnight was past,
day was approaching. Ah! If only the rest of this long night
might pass as had the first half!
The sound of sand trodden underfoot! But he was sitting
in the corner, and had not stirred; a second noise, followed
by many such. There could be no doubt someone was out-
side, here, quite near. Leiba rose, pressing his hand to his
heart, and trying to swallow a suspicious lump in his throat.
There were several people outside—and Gheorghe! Yes,
he was there; yes, the bells on the hill had rung the Resur-
rection.
They spoke softly:
“I tell you he is asleep. I saw when the lights went out.”
“Good, we will take the whole nest.”
“I will undo the door, I understand how it works. We
must cut an opening—the beam runs along here.”
He seemed to feel the touch of the men outside as they
measured the distance on the wood. A big gimlet could be
heard boring its way through the dry bark of the old oak.
Leiba felt the need of support; he steadied himself against
the door with his left hand while he covered his eyes with
the right.
Then, through some inexplicable play of the senses, he
heard, from within, quite loud and clear:
“Leiba! Here comes the coach.”
It was surely Sura’s voice. A warm ray of hope! A mo-
ment of joy! It was just another dream! But Leiba drew
his left hand quickly back; the point of the tool, piercing
the wood at that spot, had pricked the palm of his hand.
Was there any chance of escape? Absurd! In his burning
brain the image of the gimlet took inconceivable dimensions.
The instrument, turning continually, grew indefinitely, and
the opening became larger and larger, large enough at last
to enable the monster to step through the round aperture
without having to bend. All that surged through such a brain
transcends the thoughts of man; life rose to such a pitch of
exaltation that everything seen, heard, felt, appeared to be
enormous, the sense of proportion became chaotic.
156 I. L. CARGIALE
The work outside was continued with method and perse-

verance. Four times in succession Leiba had seen the sharp
steel tooth pierce through to his side and draw back again.
“Now, give me the saw,” said Gheorghe.
The narrow end of the saw appeared through the first
hole, and started to work with quick, regular movements.
The plan was easy to understand; four holes in four cor-
ners of one panel; the saw made cuts between them; the
gimlet was driven well home in the center of the panel;
when the piece became totally separated from the main
body of the wood it was pulled out; through the opening
thus made a strong hand inserted itself, seized the bar,
pushed it to one side and—Gentiles are in Leiba’s house.
In a few moments, this same gimlet would cause the de-
struction of Leiba and his domestic hearth. The two exe-
cutioners would hold the victim prostrate on the ground,
and Gheorghe, with heel upon his body, would slowly bore
the gimlet into the bone of the living breast as he had done
into the dead wood, deeper and deeper, till it reached the
heart, silencing its wild beatings and pinning it to the spot.
Leiba broke into a cold sweat; the man was overcome
by his own imagination, and sank softly to his knees as
though life were ebbing from him under the weight of this
last horror, overwhelmed by the thought that he must
abandon now all hope of saving himself.
“Yes! Pinned to the spot,” he said, despairingly. “Yes!
Pinned to the spot.”
He stayed a moment, staring at the light by the window.
For some moments he stood aghast, as though in some
other world, then he repeated with quivering eyelids:
“Yes! Pinned to the spot.”
Suddenly a strange change took place in him, a com-

plete revulsion of feeling; he ceased to tremble, his despair
disappeared, and his face, so discomposed by the prolonged
crisis, assumed an air of strange serenity. He straightened
himself out with the decision of a strong and healthy man
who makes for an easy goal.
The line between the two upper punctures of the panel
was finished. Leiba went up, curious to see the working
of the tool. His confidence was more pronounced. He nod-
ded his head as though to say: “I still have time.”
The saw cut the last fiber near the hole towards which
it was working, and began to saw between the lower holes.
“There are still three,” thought Leiba, and with the cau-
tion of the most experienced burglar he softly entered the
inn. He searched under the bar, picked up something, and
went out again as he entered, hiding the object he had in
his hand as though he feared somehow the walls might
betray him, and went back on tiptoe to the door.
Something terrible had happened; the work outside had
ceased—there was nothing to be heard.
“What was the matter? Has he gone? What has hap-
pened?” flashed through the mind of the man inside. He bit
his lower lip at such a thought, full of bitter disappointment.
“Ha, ha!” It was an imaginary deception; the work be-
gan again, and he followed it with the keenest interest, his
heart beating fast. His decision was taken; he was tor-
mented by an incredible desire to see the thing finished.
“Quicker!” he thought, with impatience. “Quicker!”
Again the sound of bells ringing on the hill.
“Hurry up, old fellow, the daylight will catch us!” said a
voice outside, as though impelled by the will of the man
within.
158 I. L. CARGIALE
The work was pushed on rapidly. Only a few more move-

ments and all the punctures in the panel would be united.
At last!
Gently the drill carried out the four-sided piece of wood.
A large and supple hand was thrust in; but before it
reached the bars it sought, two screams were heard, while,
with great force, Leiba enclosed it with the free end of the
noose, which was round a block fixed to the cellar door.
The door was ingeniously contrived: a long rope fas-
tened round a block of wood; lengthwise, at the place
where the sawn panel had disappeared, was a spring-ring
which Leiba held open with his left hand, while at the same
time his right hand held the other taut. At the psycholog-
ical moment he sprang the ring, and rapidly seizing the
free end of the rope with both hands he pulled the whole
arm inside by a supreme effort.
In a second the operation was complete. It was accom-
panied by two cries, one of despair, the other of triumph:
the hand is “pinned to the spot.” Footsteps were heard
retreating rapidly: Gheorghe’s companions were abandon-
ing to Leiba the prey so cleverly caught.
The Jew hurried into the inn, took the lamp and with a
decided movement turned up the wick as high as it would
go: the light concealed by the metal receiver rose gay and
victorious, restoring definite outlines to the nebulous forms
around.
Zibal went into the passage with the lamp. The burglar
groaned terribly; it was obvious from the stiffening of his
arm that he had given up the useless struggle. The hand
was swollen, the fingers were curved as though they would
seize something. The Jew placed the lamp near it—a shud-
der, the fever returning. He moved the light quite close,
until, trembling, he touched the burglar’s hand with the

burning chimney; a violent convulsion of the fingers was
followed by a dull groan. Leiba was startled at the sight of
this phenomenon.
Leiba trembled—his eyes betrayed a strange exaltation.
He burst into a shout of laughter which shook the empty
corridor and resounded in the inn.
Day was breaking.

Sura woke up suddenly—in her sleep she seemed to hear
a terrible moaning. Leiba was not in the room. All that
had happened previously returned to her mind. Something
terrible had taken place. She jumped out of bed and light-
ed the candle. Leiba’s bed had not been disturbed. He had
not been to bed at all.
Where was he? The woman glanced out of the window;
on the hill in front shone a little group of small bright lights,
they flared and jumped, now they died away, now, once
more, soared upwards. They told of the Resurrection. Sura
undid the window; then she could hear groans from down
by the door. Terrified, she hurried down the stairs. The
corridor was lighted up. As she emerged through the door-
way, the woman was astonished by a horrible sight.
Upon a wooden chair, his elbows on his knees, his beard
in his hand, sat Leiba. Like a scientist, who, by mixing var-
ious elements, hopes to surprise one of nature’s subtle se-
crets which has long escaped and worried him, Leiba kept
his eyes fixed upon some hanging object, black and shape-
less, under which, upon another chair of convenient height,
there burnt a big torch. He watched, without turning a hair,
the process of decomposition of the hand which most cer-
tainly would not have spared him. He did not hear the
160 I. L. CARGIALE
groans of the unhappy being outside: he was more inter-

ested, at present, in watching than in listening.
He followed with eagerness each contortion, every
strange convulsion of the fingers till one by one they be-
came powerless. They were like the legs of a beetle which
contract and stretch, waving in agitated movement, vigor-
ously, then slower and slower until they lie paralyzed by
the play of some cruel child.
It was over. The roasted hand swelled slowly and re-
mained motionless. Sura gave a cry.
“Leiba!”
He made a sign to her not to disturb him. A greasy smell
of burnt flesh pervaded the passage: a crackling and small
explosions were heard.
“Leiba! What is it?” repeated the woman.
It was broad day. Sura stretched forward and withdrew
the bar. The door opened outwards, dragging with it Ghe-
orghe’s body, suspended by the right arm. A crowd of vil-
lagers, all carrying lighted torches, invaded the premises.
“What is it? What is it?”
They soon understood what had happened. Leiba, who
up to now had remained motionless, rose gravely to his
feet. He made room for himself to pass, quietly pushing
the crowd to one side.
“How did it happen, Jew?” asked someone.
“Leiba Zibal,” said the innkeeper in a loud voice, and
with a lofty gesture, “goes to Jassy to tell the rabbi that
Leiba Zibal is a Jew no longer. Leiba Zibal is a Chris-
tian—for Leiba Zibal has lighted a torch for Christ.”
And the man moved slowly up the hill, towards the sun-
rise, like the prudent traveler who knows that the long
journey is not achieved with hasty steps.
KARL KLOSTERMANN
Czech novelist, 1848–1923. Klostermann expressed his sym-

pathy with the Jews in a number of works, in his novel Spravedl-
nost lidská (“Human Justice”), in his novelette Potrestán (“Pun-
ished”), and in the short story reproduced here, which appeared
first in the German publication Politik, of Prague, and in the vol-
ume Böhmerwaldskizzen, and then, in 1918, in a revised and im-
proved Czech version, in Topicuv sbornik and in the volume
Šumavské povidky. See H. Waidhas, “Die neuere tschechische
Literatur in ihrer Stellung zu den Juden,” in Slavitische Studien,
dedicated to Franz Spina, p. 161 f.; Oskar Donath, Böhmische
Dorfjuden, Brünn, M. Kral, 1926, pp. 70 ff., 103 ff. The English
translation, done for this anthology by Stella Heineman, is based
on the Czech version, and is included here with the kind permis-
sion of Topic of Prague.
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THE JEW OF S. . .
I N ONE of the free parishes of the Wozd Woods—I shall

designate it only by the initial S. . .— there settled many
years ago a Jewish family, probably the first ever to set
foot on this soil. Whence these people came, what circum-
stances and hopes drove or allured them hither, where
certainly no Promised Land had beckoned them, I can-
not say. I do not even know their name, and I shall con-
tent myself, as did the parishioners, by calling the head of
the family Srul, his mother, who came with them, “the
Old Woman,” and his wife, “the Young Woman.” They
brought three children with them, of whom I remember
only one, a beautiful, black-eyed girl. Of the others I know
absolutely nothing more than what my reader will hear.
Our people are in general good-natured folk, but they
have an unconquerable distrust of strangers. Srul, a small,
weakly person, was the first to arrive, and he went direct-
ly to the burgomaster, with whom he had a long confer-
ence. The burgomaster was quite an enlightened and kind-
hearted man, so it was not at all surprising that, as his
attendants soon reported everywhere, he said to the Jew,
who was taking leave with humble bows: “If you c’n move
up here, you c’n stay. I’ll fix it.”
With this authorization by the head of the community,
which encroached somewhat on the rights and preroga-
tives of the common council, Srul appeared after a few days
with his tribe of five in a rather massive wagon loaded with
163
164 KARL KLOSTERMANN
his not exactly rich belongings. The wagon was topped by

a coarse canvas meant somehow to protect the contents
against rain. It has always been a mystery to me how the
vehicle managed to get up here, considering the condition
of the road and especially of the old nag that pulled the
cart and that threatened, according to eye-witnesses, to
keel over at any moment because of infirmity of age and
emptiness of stomach. This horse did not survive the ar-
rival of Srul in S. . . by more than six weeks, and the con-
duct of the kindly inhabitants of this free parish and the
reception accorded the wretched owner of the unfortu-
nate animal were probably not without blame for it.
It is difficult to describe what happened in S. . . in those
days. Hardly had the news spread through the parish that
a Jew had come, when whole processions began to con-
verge on the inn where he had settled. Men, women, and
children stared for hours at the poor wretch and his fam-
ily. Even the above mentioned nag and wagon were sub-
jected to close inspection, and treated with obvious fear
and aversion. I must note that it was only through the
direct intervention of the burgomaster that Srul and his
family had found quarters in the inn. The good-natured
man (I speak of the innkeeper) had been prevailed upon
after much persuasion to allow the strangers to stay in an
unused, dilapidated stable, observing that they themselves
might repair to the best of their ability the breaches in the
roofless ceiling and walls. But he forbade them to enter
the inn proper, saying, “In here you must not come. This
room is sacred.” During the first few days he provided
them with some food; afterwards he refused to do even
that, as the distrust which he had already harbored in no
slight degree became intensified through outside influence.
THE JEW OF S. .. 165
The attitude toward Srul became very hostile. The peo-

ple were soon not content with mere staring, but resorted
to the kind of talk which, though incredibly absurd, omit-
ted nothing by way of precision. The women were the worst.
According to their aspersions it followed that Srul alone
had instigated and administered the crucifixion of Christ.
Then, one day, there appeared an apostle, Ferdl-Sepp
by name, who used to go down often into the country and
who probably got his inspiration somewhere in Neuern;
and he delivered himself of the following address, which
must have been dictated by a power other than the Holy
Spirit: “I heard down below of Srul. He’s a fine one. The
Jewish elders cursed him. Yes, they pronounced a curse
on his head, his hands, his feet, his wife, and his children.
Such a scoundrel is he. Not even the Jews will have him.
And such a fellow the burgomaster has permitted to settle
here. And do you know why? Because he paid him, paid
him with wages of sin, with money that is bewitched and
that is under an evil spell.”
“Just so,” nodded the men. “Jesus! Jesus!” cried the
women. And some knew that the Jews slaughter Chris-
tian children, counterfeit money, cast a spell on cattle, in-
duce sickness by magic, in short, perpetrate things that
make one shudder.
Such silly yet poisonous talk could not but have its effect.
It led to grandiose deeds of heroism. Night after night large
stones banged against poor Srul’s dwelling, so that the rot-
ted laths creaked and the meager remnants of mortar clat-
tered on the floor. The children screamed, and the women
wept and wailed. Srul dared not appear in the rickety door,
knowing well what fate would await him there. He displayed
the passive valor and persistence which characterize his
race. He said not a word when a gang of young ruffians

threw into his window a sack full of frogs’ forelegs and
yelled variations of the sneering taunt: “Here, fill up on
these, since you Jews won’t feed on hind parts.”
As these cruelties did not induce Srul to move away,
the people began to starve him out systematically. They
would not sell him a pound of flour, a potato, or a drop of
milk. But Srul’s perseverance prevailed again. Under cov-
er of the night he would repair to a hamlet three hours
distant, and lay in supplies for a week at a time. It is hard
to conceive the abject misery in which this family lived,
and it were incredible had not the burgomaster himself
seen it. The latter became tired of the situation and made
an earnest effort to put an end to it. The parson, too, in-
tervened and rebuked the public from the pulpit for their
stupid hard-heartedness.
Maybe the appeal of these two men helped, maybe the
people just wearied of the battle, but the persecution stopped
shortly, and before long Srul dared even to offer for sale to
his neighbors all sorts of articles, needles, thread, combs,
and the like. In turn he bought from them hides, horns,
claws, and similar things for which, before his coming, they
had never been able to find a market. And he was so moder-
ate in his demands, so unpretentious and modest, satisfied
with such slight profits, that even the dullest and most nar-
row-minded folk must have noticed it. He went about his
way quietly, never hurt anyone in any manner, offered his
assistance often to those who would accept it, in short, be-
haved so that his former enemies became in time quite
friendly with him. He could now rent a respectable domi-
cile, establish a small store, and in a few years he fared
tolerably well, according to the circumstances—naturally,
THE JEW OF S. . . 167
in S. . . it was not likely that he would ever become a Roth-

schild. No one could say the slightest thing against him or
his wife or mother. The poor old lady particularly won
the complete confidence of the entire neighborhood. Wom-
en who came on Sundays from a great distance to attend
church could now, to their great satisfaction, bring their
children along: the “Old Woman” undertook to supervise
them while the mothers offered their devotions. She per-
formed this task with a zeal that could not be praised suf-
ficiently.
Thus things stood until, in the year 18—, a terribly hot
summer came. Fallow mists rose from the endless swamps
which, interspersed with dismal forests, surrounded the par-
ish of S. . . for miles. These fogs, like the haze of the north-
ern marshes, lay through the day motionless, coiled up over
their mournful birthplaces, covering the knotty dwarf pines
and the meager black birches with their soiled veils. Then,
toward evening, if a cool wind arose, the vapors moved slow-
ly toward the rim of the plateau and rolled soundlessly, like
the billows of a ghostly cataract, down the valley, and espe-
cially amid the clearings where the forest offered no resist-
ance. These were followed by swarms of terribly harrass-
ing gnats. The noxious insects came in such profusion that
the herds left their grazing plots, the woodsmen fled from
the forests, and neither smoke nor flame could stop the pest.
Sometimes a storm would break; huge quantities of
water would pour over the woods and moors, but they
brought no cooling relief. The heated earth steamed, but
the damp, hot air became more sultry. Green algae gath-
ered about the springs and wells.
After several weeks of terrific humidity, disquieting ru-
mors began to circulate. Here and there were cases of a
sickness which was at first sporadic but soon gained the

momentum of an epidemic. It was insidious and fatal, at-
tacking adults as well as children. A physician found his way
up to the village, and in the report he submitted to the au-
thorities he mentioned putrid dysentery. Scenes of despair
were repeated daily. Whole families and numerous children
were wiped out within a few days. And there was no relief
in sight. Steel-gray clouds discolored the sky: one could look
at the sun with the naked eye, and the same unusual sultri-
ness still filled the air. The stars had lost their glitter, and
hung in the canopy of heaven like the heads of gigantic
brass nails. The moon, resembling a white, lusterless disc,
revealed two, sometimes three, rings of leaden gray.
Day after day the simple, wooden church building was
full of petitioners seeking redress. Processions were held.
The chapel up in the woods was stuffed with ex voto pic-
tures. But it was all in vain. Heaven seemed to be deaf,
and no supplication penetrated its brazen arch. Job’s pest
kept on coming. Even the burgomaster’s brother, the
strongest man in the community, a giant in stature, and
barely forty years of age, was swept away by the plague,
along with two of his children.
Despair broke loose. The doctor, who had come up
again, was driven back with contempt and scorn, and could
thank God that he escaped with his life. In the square be-
fore the church there gathered immediately a crowd of
men and women, gesticulating, shouting, raising a clamor
of curses and lamentation.
“And I tell you,” screeched an inhuman voice, “I tell
you it’s the Jew.” “Yes, yes,” roared an echo, “it’s the Jew.
I have a book at home which tells what they do, those
dogs, those evil beasts. . .” “That’s their curse. They poi-

son the wells. That’s the plague that rages.”
The word was uttered, and an indescribable howl fol-
lowed, pierced by shrill yells. The mob rushed madly to-
ward the nearby house of the unfortunate Srul. He had
been standing in the doorway of his store; and, sensing
trouble, hurried into the adjoining living room, locking the
door behind him. In one move the enraged mob demol-
ished, tore, trampled, and threw out everything in the shop.
The contents of a few floursacks filled the place and cov-
ered them all, so that they looked like millers. Not one
section of the desk was left intact. Then they charged
against the door of the living room, which did not with-
stand the attack for ten seconds. Those in the front broke
in, pushed by the crowd behind.
But the leaders had hardly crossed the threshold when
they fell back in horror, in spite of the pushing mob that
was shouting and howling in the store.
Srul, deathly pale, was leaning against a bed on which
lay a dying child with a vacant stare. Nearby on a stool
sat his wife, with covered face, holding a dead child in her
arms. Her lips quivered and muttered unintelligible words.
The third child, the oldest girl of whom I spoke at the be-
ginning, stood speechless by her father, her big, black eyes
riveted on the intruders.
Perhaps the majesty of Death impressed them. A youth,
whose broad hands had just swung a heavy club, called
out in a thunderous voice: “Back! They are dying here too.
Srul didn’t do it.” Horror showed on the faces of those who
had broken in. “Back, back!” shouted a number of voices.
The surging mob stopped, swayed for several seconds, then
suddenly fell back and ran from the store. A minute later
one or another of these figures, with lowered head might

still be seen slinking away across the church square.
But inside the store, Srul wrung his hands and moaned:
“God All-righteous, Thou hast chastened me sore.”
The following Sunday the parson delivered an impressive
sermon, perhaps the finest of his life. He must have made
some of them understand what Christian duty and neigh-
borly love really meant, because, for a fact, two men went
immediately after the sermon to Srul and, accusing them-
selves, each one said: “Please, Srul, forgive me. I was very
wicked; but, you see, it was temper. How much do you want,
Srul, for the damage?” Srul was so moved that tears came
to his eyes, and he almost begged forgiveness of them. “I
understand,” he sobbed. “Haven’t I, too, lost my children?
One scarcely knows what to do for pain and sorrow.”
They were full of good-will, these “quick-tempered” in-
habitants of S. . .— that cannot be denied. But whether
they compensated poor Srul for the losses which they had
inflicted on him through the destruction of his store, and
whether they wiped away with their penitence the tears
from off the unhappy mother and grandmother and atoned
for the mortal fright they had caused them, are questions
which I shall not venture to answer.
The epidemic had meanwhile reached its peak, and went
as fast as it had come. Srul continued to live quietly in
S. . ., attended to his business, and the utmost favor he
ever requested of his Christian fellow-citizens was to blow
out the light on the eve of his Sabbath. The “Old Woman”
continued to care for the peasant children during the hours
of high mass and of dance-music, earning some gratitude
for her trouble. The family was as far from amassing
wealth now as before. This might have happened only if
Srul had lived in S. . . during “the year of the beetles,”*

when the peasants squandered their money most foolish-
ly. I have always thought also that Srul was not endowed
with the necessary business sense which distinguishes so
many of his coreligionists. He knew skins, but he did not
understand how to buy timber cheap at wholesale; and no
one will say that, after well-nigh thirty years of trading,
he ever cheated any one.
But I must not run ahead of my story. Srul did not live
through the blessed “beetle year” at all, at least not in S. . .
And it happened in this way.
The only daughter left to him—let us call her Mollie—
grew to be, as we have already indicated, an exceedingly
pretty girl. I always saw in her the ideal beauty of the daugh-
ters of Zion, whose charm had been so fateful to the Ro-
mans. This Mollie’s pulchritude did not affect the Romans,
but it captivated the heart of the burgomasters son, much
to the sorrow of the parents of both. The burgomaster was
indeed an enlightened man, and had treated Srul as a hu-
man being, but he would rather have sunk into the ground
than permit a love affair, much less a marriage, between
his son and a Jewess. Such a thing was then, and still is, an
impossibility among our mountaineers. And as for Srul, he
was much too pious a Jew not to maintain the same princi-
ples, mutatis mutandis, with respect to a Christian. He
would not oppose the burgomasters son openly but, know-
ing the nature of women and fearing disaster, he had re-
course to the tactics with which he was most familiar, those
of persistent passive resistance. He locked Mollie up as a
*The scab beetle caused great damage in the Bohemian forest in the seventies
of the last century. Large stretches of woodland had to be cleared. This brought
the inhabitants unusual earnings, which they spent promptly and lavishly.
Turkish pasha would his odalisks, and on the rare occa-

sions when the girl left the house, she was not permitted to
go unaccompanied. Either the “Old Woman” or the “Young
Woman” was ever at her side, to the great chagrin of the
youth, who was constantly loitering about Srul’s house.
The romance of the crownprince of S. . . could not go
unnoticed, and it soon drew comments and criticism in
the manner usual among us. Obscure poets improvized
stanzas, which were circulated orally and soon were on
every tongue, being sung on all occasions, festive and oth-
erwise, in innumerable more or less clever variations.
Sarcastic remarks and biting references made aloud in the
presence of the burgomaster’s son infuriated him so that
he nearly lost his mind. But he swallowed the insults and
would not renounce the object of his adoration.
The affair was enough to drive the burgomaster mad,
and he finally arranged for an interview with Srul. “This
must stop,” he said, “this business ‘tween the lad and the
hussy. What’ll we do, Srul?” “Just as the burgomaster
says,” replied Srul. “It must stop. It can’t go on.” “Well,
what’ll you do, Srul?” asked the burgomaster. “What’ll I
do?” said Srul. “God punish me if I won’t look for a bride-
groom and marry her off.”
Henceforth Srul was in search of a bridegroom for
Mollie. He attended all the fairs in the neighboring villag-
es and towns, far into the Bohemian country. When he
personally could not go, he sent his wife and at times his
mother. But his efforts were without success.
Winter returned. The forests and mountains were shroud-
ed in a glittering white mantle. In W. . . , five hours from
S. . . , there was a fair. This time Mollie had driven there
with the “Old Woman,” and the father awaited their home-
coming. He was not worried, for the two women had gone
with at least ten peasants in a straw-padded wagon, well
protected against the moderate cold. What could happen
to them?
It was past noon. The caravan was expected momen-
tarily, for the people must have certainly departed from
W. . . at daybreak. Srul waited patiently, patience being a
commodity which he always had in reserve.
The supposition that the people had left W. . . quite ear-
ly was correct. But Shoemaker Sepp had sold a pair of
oxen, Martin Franz a calf, Gregory Hans a cow, the poul-
try-farmer, Mrs. Gigerl, ten pieces of linen; in short, they
all had some money and thought that that was reason
enough for them to stop awhile at each village and inn
which they passed. Thus it happened that it was five
o’clock in the afternoon when the party finally reached
the mountain which had to be crossed before entering the
limits of S. . . The road serpentined upward toward a sum-
mit which was connected with many sidepaths. It became
pitch dark, and a rather forceful drift set in.
It became more and more difficult for the wagon to pro-
ceed. The oxen, already over-tired, sank down into the
snow with each step, and struggled in vain.
“It’s no use,” said one of the men. “The beasts can’t
make it. We’ll have to get off the wagon.” “Leave the ‘Old
Woman’ on, or she’ll get stuck in the snow,” said another.
But the “Old Woman” protested that she could climb quite
well, and she got off with the rest.
“Hi, hi,”— the oxen pulled, the company plodded along-
side, talking to each other, and the “Old Woman” and her
granddaughter trailed along behind the others. The storm

became more violent, and it grew darker.
After half an hour, the wagon reached the top, and the
company came with it. Srul heard it rolling in, and he
hurried to meet it. “Where are my women-folk,” he in-
quired. “They were just behind us a while ago. They’ll
come along soon,” said the men, who disappeared into the
tavern at the church square. But no one came along. Srul
ran in the dark, trying to follow the tracks of the wagon,
which the wind quickly covered with fine snow.
In a quarter of an hour he returned, alone. He raised a
loud lament. The inn was quickly emptied of its numerous
guests who hurried, some with torches, down the mountain.
They separated into groups. They called. But all in vain.
Not a sound was heard except for the howling of the wind,
which gathered ever more snow in its drift. All night long
they searched. Poor, unhappy Srul tore his hair in despair.
Not till the third day were the corpses found deep in the
snow. The two women had tarried behind, and in the dark-
ness had slipped into an abrupt though not particularly
deep declivity. The roar of the brook, whose clear waters
streamed toward the mill hanging on the mountain side,
and the blast of the wind had drowned their cries for help.
The “Old Woman” had broken a limb. The young girl,
though but slightly injured, had undoubtedly refused to
leave her grandmother alone. The treacherously mount-
ing snow had then completed its work.
Srul was notified of the dismal find. He stared mutely
at the two bodies when they were brought in. His wife too
stood speechless, wringing her hands and weeping.
They buried their dear ones way down in the valley,
where the Jews had a cemetery.
After the funeral they returned, sat for a week on the

mourners’ stool, and then sold out their business.
They moved away, lonely, unaccompanied, nobody
knowing whither.
The burgomaster’s son appeared at first to be deeply
affected by the loss of his beloved one. Gradually, howev-
er, he seemed to regain his poise, and at the end of about a
year, he married. The nickname Srul clung to him, the
only memento which the poor Jew, who had sojourned in
S. . . for twelve years, left behind.
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ADAM SZYMANSKI
Polish novelist, 1852–1916. In Srul—from Lubartów, written in

1885, the author follows the tradition of Mickiewicz and por-
trays the patriotic sentiments of the Jew. The story was translat-
ed by Else Benecke, and appears in her Tales by Polish Authors,
Oxford, B. H. Blackwell, 1915, pp. 119–136. It is included here
with the permission of the publisher.
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SRUL—FROM LUBARTÓW
I T HAPPENED in the year. . . ; but no matter what year.

Suffice it to say that it happened, and that it happened
at Yakutsk in the beginning of November, about a month
after my arrival at that citadel of frosts. The thermometer
was down to 35 degrees Réamur. I was therefore thinking
anxiously of the coming fate of my nose and ears, which,
fresh from the West, had been making silent but percep-
tible protests against their compulsory acclimatization, and
to-day were to be submitted to yet further trials. These
latest trials were due to the fact that one of the men in our
colony, Peter Kurp, nicknamed Baldyga, had died in the
local hospital two days before, and early that morning we
were going to do him a last service by laying his wasted
body in the half-frozen ground.
I was only waiting for an acquaintance, who was to tell
me the hour of the funeral, and I had not long to wait.
Having wrapped up my nose and ears with the utmost
care, I set out with the others to the hospital.
The hospital was outside the town. In the courtyard,
and at some distance from the other buildings, stood a
small shed—the mortuary.
In this mortuary lay Baldyga’s body.
When the doors were opened, we entered, and the scene
within made a painful impression on the few of us present.
We were about ten people, possibly a few more, and we all
179
180 ADAM SZYMANSKI
involuntarily looked at one another: we were standing

opposite a cold and bare reality, not veiled by any vestige
of pretence. . .
In the shed—which possessed neither table nor stool,
nothing but walls white with hoarfrost and a floor covered
with snow—lay a large bearded corpse, equally white, and
tied up in some kind of sheet or shirt. This was Baldyga.
The body, which was completely frozen, had been
brought near the light to the door, where the coffin was
standing ready.
Never shall I forget Baldyga’s face as I saw it then with
the light full upon it and washed by the snow. There was
something strange and indescribably sad in the rough,
strongly marked countenance; the large pupils and pro-
jecting eye-balls seemed to look far away into the distance
towards the stern frosty sky.
“That man—he was a good sort,” one of those present
said to me, noticing the impression which the sight of Bal-
dyga made on me. “He was always steady and industrious;
people who were hard up used to go to him and he would
help them. But there never was anyone so obstinate as
Kurp; he believed to the last that he would go back to the
Narev. Yet before the end came it was plain that he knew
he would never get there.”
Meanwhile the petrified body had been laid in the cof-
fin, and placed upon the small one-horse Yakut sledge.
Then the tailor’s wife—a person versed in religious prac-
tices—undertook the office of priest for such time as we
could give her, and began to sing Ave Maria, while we
joined in with voices broken with emotion. After this we
proceeded to the cemetery.
We walked quickly; the frost was invigorating, and made
SRUL—FROM LUBARTÓW 181
us hasten our steps. At last we reached the cemetery. We

each threw a handful of frozen earth onto the coffin. . . A
few deft strokes of the spade. . . and in a moment only a
small freshly turned mound of earth remained to bear
witness to Baldyga’s yet recent existence in this world. This
witness would not last long, however—scarcely a few
months. The spring would come, and, thawed by the sun,
the mound on the grave would sink and become even
with the rest of the ground, and grass and weeds would
grow upon it. After a year or two the witnesses of the
funeral would die, or be dispersed throughout the wide
world, and if even the mother who bore him were to
search for him, she would no longer find a trace on earth.
But, indeed, none would seek for the dead man, nor even
a dog ask for him.
Baldyga had known this; we knew it too; and we dis-
persed to our houses in silence.
The day following the funeral the frost was yet more se-
vere. There was not a single building to be seen on the op-
posite side of the fairly narrow street in which I lived, for a
thick mist of snow-crystals overspread the earth, like a
cloud. The sun could not penetrate this mist, and, although
there was not a living soul in the street, the air was so high-
ly condensed through the extreme cold that I continually
heard the metallic sound of creaking snow, the sharp re-
ports of the walls and ground cracking in the frost, or the
moaning song of a Yakut. Evidently those Yakut frosts were
beginning which reduce the most terrible Arctic cold to
insignificance. They fill human beings with unspeakable
dread. Every living thing feels its utter helplessness, and,
although it cowers down and shrinks into itself for protec-
tion, knows quite well—like the cur worried by fierce mas-
182 ADAM SZYMANSKI
tiffs—that all is in vain, for sooner or later the inexorable

foe is bound to be victorious.
And Baldyga was continually in my mind, as if he were
alive. I had sat for hours at my half-finished task. Some-
how I could not stick to work; the pen fell from my hand,
and my unruly thoughts ranged far away beyond the
snowy frontier and frosty ground. In vain I appealed to
my reason, in vain I repeated wholesome advice to myself
for the tenth time. Hitherto I had offered some resistance
to the sickness which had consumed me for several weeks;
to-day I felt completely overcome and helpless. Homesick-
ness was devouring and making pitiless havoc of me.
I had been unable to resist dreaming so many times al-
ready; was it likely I should withstand the temptation to-
day? The temptation was stronger, and I was weaker than
usual.
So begone frost and snow, begone the existence of
Yakutsk! I threw down my pen and, surrounding myself
with clouds of tobacco smoke, plunged into the waters of
feverish imagination.
And how it carried me away!. . . My thoughts flew rap-
idly to the far West, across morasses and steppes, moun-
tains and rivers, across countless lands and cities, and
spread a scene of true enchantment before me. There on
the Vistula lay my native plains, free from misery and
human passions, beautiful and harmonious. My lips can-
not utter, nor my pen describe their charm!
I saw the golden fields, the emerald meadows; the dense
forests murmured their old legends to me.
I heard the rustle of the waving corn; the chirping of
the feathered poets; the sound of the giant oaks as they
haughtily bid defiance to the gale.
And the air seemed permeated by the scent of those

aromatic forests and those blossoming fields, adorned in
virgin freshness by the blue cornflowers and that sweet-
est beauty of Spring—the innocent violet.
. . . Every single nerve felt the caress of my native air. . .
I was touched by the life-giving power of the sun’s rays;
and although the frost outside creaked more fiercely and
showed its teeth at me on the windowpanes more menac-
ingly, yet the blood circulated in my veins more rapidly,
my head burnt, and I sat as if spellbound, deaf, no longer
seeing or hearing anything round me . . .
II
I did not notice that the door opened and someone en-
tered my room, neither did I see the circles of vapor which
form in such numbers every time a door is opened that
they obscure the face of the person entering. I did not feel
the cold: it penetrates human dwellings here with a sort of
shameless, premeditated violence. In fact, I had seen or
heard nothing until suddenly I felt a man close to me, and,
even before catching sight of him, found myself involun-
tarily putting him the usual Yakut question:
“Tcho nado?” (“What do you want?”)
“If you please, sir, I am a hawker,” was the answer.
I looked up. Although he was dressed in ox and stag’s
hide, I had no doubt that a typical Polish Jew from a small
town stood before me. Anyone who had seen him at Los-
sitz or Sarnak would have recognized him as easily in Yakut
as in Patagonian costume. I knew him at once. And since,
as I have said, I was as yet only semi-conscious, and had
asked the question almost mechanically, the Jew standing
184 ADAM SZYMANSKI
before me did not interrupt my train of thought too harshly;

the contrast was, therefore, not too disagreeable. Quite the
reverse. I gazed into the well-known features with a certain
degree of pleasure; the Jew’s appearance at that moment
seemed quite natural, since it carried me in thought and feel-
ing to my native land, and the few Polish words sounded
dear to my ear. Half dreaming still, I looked at him kindly.
The Jew stood still for a moment, then turned, and re-
treating to the door, began to pull off his multifarious cov-
erings.
Then I came to myself, and realized that I had not yet
answered him, and that my sagacious countryman, quite
misinterpreting my silence, was anxious to dispose of his
wares to me. I hastened to undeceive him.
“In heaven’s name, man, what are you doing?” I cried
quickly, “I do not want to buy anything; I am not wanting
anything. Do not unload yourself in vain, and go away
with God’s blessing!”
The Jew stopped undoing his things, and after a mo-
ment’s consideration came towards me with his long fur
coat half trailing behind him, and began to mumble quick-
ly in broken sentences: “It’s all right; I know you won’t
buy anything, sir. I saw you, for I have been here a long
time, a very long time. . . I didn’t know before that you
had come. . .You come from Warsaw, don’t you, sir? They
only told me yesterday evening that you had been here
four months already; what a pity it was such a long time
before I heard of it! I should have come at once. I have
been searching for you today for an hour, sir. I went quite
to the end of the town—and there’s such a frost here—
confound it! . . . If you will allow me, sir—I won’t inter-
rupt for long?. . .Only just a few words. . .”
“What do you want of me?”

“I should only like to have a little chat with you, sir.”
This answer did not greatly surprise me. I had already
come across not a few people, Jews among them, who had
called solely for the purpose of “having a little chat” with a
man recently arrived from their country. Those who came
were interested in the most varied topics imaginable; there
were the inquisitive gossipers pure and simple, there were
the people who only enquired after their relations, and there
were the politicians, including those whose heads had been
turned. Among those who came, however, politics always
played a specially important part. So it did not surprise me,
I repeat, to hear the wish expressed by a fresh stranger,
and although I should have been glad to rid my cottage as
quickly as possible of the unpleasant odor of the ox-hide
coat—badly tanned, as usual—I begged him in a friendly
way to take it off and sit down.
The Jew was evidently pleased. He took a seat beside
me at once and I could now observe him closely.
All the usual features of the Jewish race were united in
the face beside me: the large, slightly crooked nose and
penetrating hawk’s eyes, the pointed beard of the color of
a well-ripened pumpkin, the low forehead, surrounded by
thick hair; all these my guest possessed. And yet, strange
to say, the haggard face expressed a certain frank sincer-
ity, and did not make a disagreeable impression on me.
“Tell me where you come from, what your name is, what
you are doing here, and why you wish to see me?”
“Please, sir, I am Srul, from Lubartów. Perhaps you
know it—just a stone’s throw from Lublin?—Well, at home
everyone thinks it a long way from there, and formerly I
thought so too. But now,” he added with emphasis, “we
186 ADAM SZYMANSKI
know that Lubartów is quite close to Lublin, a mere stone’s

throw.”
“And have you been here long?”
“Very long; three good years.”
“That is not so very long; there are people who have
lived here for over twenty years, and I met an old man
from Vilna on the road, who had been here close upon
thirty years. Those have really been here a long time.”
But the Jew snubbed me. “As to them, I can’t say. I
only know that I have been here a long time.”
“You must certainly live quite alone, if the time seems
so long to you?”
“With my wife and child—my daughter. I had four chil-
dren when I set out, but, may the Lord preserve us, it
was such a long way, we were travelling a whole year.
Do you know what such a journey means, sir?. . . Three
children died in one week—died of travelling, as it were.
Three children! . . . An easy thing to say! . . . There was
nowhere even to bury them, for there was no cemetery
of ours there. . . I am a Husyt,” he added more quietly.
“You know what that means, Sir?. . . I keep the Law
strictly. . . and yet God punishes me like this. . .” He grew
silent with emotion.
“My friend,” I tried to say to console him a little, “no
doubt under such circumstances it is difficult to remem-
ber that it makes no difference; but all earth is hallowed.”
But the Jew jumped as if he had been scalded.
“Hallowed! How hallowed! In what way is it hallowed!
What are you saying, sir? It’s unclean! It’s damned! . . . Hal-
lowed earth?. . . You must not talk like that, sir; you ought
to be ashamed! Is earth hallowed which never thaws? This
earth is cursed! God doesn’t wish human beings to live here;
it wouldn’t have been like this if He had wished it. Cursed!

Bad! Damned! Damned!”
And he began to spit about him, and stamp his feet,
threatening the innocent Yakut earth with tightened lips
and shrivelled hands, and muttering Jewish maledictions.
At last, exhausted by the effort, he fell rather than sat
down at the table beside me.
All exiles, without regard to religion or race, dislike Si-
beria: evidently a fanatic does not learn to hate it so half-
heartedly. I paused until he had calmed himself. Educat-
ed in a severe school, the Jew quickly regained his self-
possession and mastered his emotion, and when I gazed
questioningly into his eyes the next moment, he immedi-
ately answered me:
“You must pardon me; I do not speak of this to anyone,
for to whom should I speak here?”
“Then are there very few Jews here?”
“Those here? Do you call them Jews, sir? They’re such
low fellows, not one of them keeps the Law strictly.”
Fearing another outburst, I would not, however, allow
him to finish, and decided to change the conversation by
asking him straight out what he wanted to talk to me about
now.
“I should like to know the news from there, sir. I have
been here so many years, and I have never yet heard what
is going on there.”
“You are asking a great deal, for I can’t exactly tell
you everything. I don’t know what interests you—poli-
tics, perhaps?”
The Jew was silent.
I concluded that my present guest, like many of the oth-
ers, was interested in politics; but as I myself did not un-
188 ADAM SZYMANSKI
derstand the very elements of the subject, I began to give

the very stereotyped account I had already composed with
a view to frequent repetition of the situation of European
politics, our own, and so forth. But the Jew fidgeted impa-
tiently.
“Then this does not interest you?” I asked.
“I have never thought about it,” he answered candidly.
“Ah, now I know why you have come! I am sure you
wish to know how the Jews are doing, and how trade is
going?”
“They are better off than I am.”
“Exactly. I am sure, under the circumstances, you will
wish to know if living is dear with us, what the market
prices are, how much for butter, meat, etc.”
“What does it concern me if it is ever so cheap there, if
I can get nothing here?”
“Quite right again; but what the devil did you actually
come here for?”
“Since I don’t know myself, I ask you, sir, how am I to
tell you? You see, sir, I often get thinking. . . I think so
much. . . that Ryfka (that’s my wife) asks, ‘Srul, what’s
the matter with you?’ And what can I tell her, for I don’t
know myself what it is. Perhaps some people would laugh
at me?” he added, as if fearing I were amongst them.
But I did not laugh; I was interested. Something, the cause
of which he himself could not explain or express in words,
was evidently weighing on him, and his unusually poor
command of language added to this difficulty. In order to
help him I re-assured him by telling him that I was in no
hurry; as my work was not urgent and there would there-
fore be no harm in our having an hour’s talk, and so on.
The Jew thanked me with a glance, and after a moment’s

thought opened the conversation thus:
“When did you leave Warsaw, sir?”
“According to the Russian calendar, at the end of April.”
“Was it cold there then or warm?”
“Quite warm. I travelled in a summer suit at first.”
“Well just fancy, Sir! Here it was freezing!”
“Then you have forgotten, is that it? Anyway, with us
the fields are sown in April, and all the trees are green.”
“Green?” Joy shone in srul’s eyes. “Why, yes, yes—
green:—and here it was freezing!”
Now at last I knew why he had come to me. Wishing to
make certain, however, I was silent: The Jew was evi-
dently getting animated.
“Well, sir, you might tell me if there is any—with us
now. . . but you see, I don’t know what it’s called; I have
already forgotten Polish,” he apologized shyly, as if he had
ever known it—“it’s white like a pea blossom, yet it’s not a
pea, and in summer it grows in gardens round houses, on
those tall stalks?”
“Kidney beans?”
“That’s just it! Kidney beans! Kidney beans!” he repeat-
ed to himself several times, as if wishing to impress those
words on his memory for ever.
“Of course there are plenty of those. But are there none
here?”
“Here! I have never seen a single pod all these past
years. Here the peas are what at home we should not expect
the. . . the. . .”
“The pigs to eat,” I suggested.
“Well, yes! Here they sell them by the pound, and it’s
not always possible to get them.”
190 ADAM SZYMANSKI
“Are you so fond of kidney beans?”

“It’s not that I am so fond of them, but they are so beau-
tiful that. . . I don’t know why. . . I often get thinking and
thinking how they may be growing round my house. Here
there’s nothing!”
“And now, sir,” he recommenced, “will you tell me if
those small grey birds are still there in the winter—like
this—” and he measured with his hand. “I have forgotten
their names too. Formerly there were a great many, when
I used to pray by the window. They used to swarm round!
Well, whoever even looked at them there? Do you know,
sir, I could never have believed that I should ever think
about them! But here, where it’s so cold that even the
crows won’t stop, you can’t expect to see little things like
that. But they are sure to be there with us? They are there,
aren’t they, sir?. . .”
But I did not answer him now. I no longer doubted that
this old fanatical Jew was pining for his country just as
much as I was, and that we were both sick with the same
sickness. This unexpected discovery moved me deeply, and
I seized him by the hand, and asked in my turn:
“Then that was what you wished to talk to me about?
Then you are not thinking of the people, of your heavy lot,
of the poverty which is pinching you; but you are longing
for the sun, for the air of your native country! . . . You are
thinking of the fields and meadows and woods; of the little
songsters, for whom you could not spare a moment’s atten-
tion there when you were busy; and now that these beauti-
ful pictures are fading from your recollection, you fear the
solitude surrounding you, the vast emptiness which meets
you and effaces the memories you value? You wish me to
recall them to you, to revive them; you wish me to tell you

what our country is like?. . .”
“Oh, yes, sir, yes, sir! That was why I came here,” and
he clasped my hands, and laughed joyfully, like a child.
“Listen, brother. . .”
And my friend, Srul, listened, all transformed by listen-
ing, his lips parted, his look rivetted to mine; he kindled,
he inspired me by that look; he wrested the words from
me, drank them in thirstily, and laid them in the very depth
of his burning heart. . . I do not doubt that he laid them
there, for when I had finished my tale he began to moan
bitterly, “O weh mir! weh mir!” He struck his red beard,
and in his misery tears like a child’s rolled fast down his
face. . . And the old fanatic sat there a long time sobbing,
and I cried with him. . .
Much water has flowed down the cold Lena since that
day, and not a few human tears have rolled down suffer-
ing cheeks. All this happened long ago. Yet in the silence
of the night, at times of sleeplessness, the statuesque face
of Baldyga, bearing the stigma of great sorrow, often rises
before me, and invariably beside it Srul’s yellow, drawn
face, wet with tears. And when I gaze longer at that night-
vision, many a time I seem to see the Jew’s trembling pale
lips move, and I hear his low voice whisper:
“Oh Jehovah, why art Thou so unmerciful to one of
Thy most faithful sons?. . .”
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HAMLEN HUNT
American authoress, 1911–. The following tale appeared orig-

inally in Story, May 1937, was included among the O. Henry Me-
morial Award Prize Stories of 1937, edited by Harry Hansen, Dou-
bleday, Doran & Co., 1937, and is reprinted here with the kind
permission of Story and the The Story Press of New York.
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THE SALUTING DOLL
B ACK of the people hung the tapestrylike room with

books, pictures, bowls of flowers, bowls of fruit, more
books, more furniture, the plum-colored rug, all woven
into a rich, uncrowded design. The things themselves were
beautiful but very much used, for the room, like the peo-
ple who lived in it, was never in display, always at ease.
Helen, whose feet had been blistered by job hunting, lay
on the sofa with her red leather bedroom slippers heel to
heel on the arm of the sofa.
She said, “Hello, I’m afraid if I get up you might take
the sofa.”
“Of course,” said Leo, “I taught you that years ago.”
He sank into a chair and began to talk to the three near-
est people while Janice sat beside Helen and looked around
her peacefully, smelling the duck they would have for din-
ner, lighting a cigarette.
Mrs. Klingman, a massive, handsome woman with wavy
black hair scraped back with a comb from her forehead,
stood before the fireplace talking to her sister. When she
bent to throw another lump of canel coal on the fire the
canary-colored brocade of her house coat undulated and
threw the Chinese landscape into fantastic perspective.
Leo’s father, Jake Klingman, was at the carved oak side-
board between the two big windows that looked out over
Washington Square. It was the nature of that sideboard
to give forth the particular liquor you wanted at the mo-
195
196 HAMLEN HUNT
ment, though you could not have named it for yourself.

Jake would open it up with a flourish, then stand com-
muning with the forest of bottles thus revealed, his head
tilted to hear a secret voice; when it spoke, he would give
a little nod, plunge his hand down unhesitatingly into the
tropics of alcohol and pluck forth blossoms, perhaps an
earthenware jug of kümmel, a bottle of slivovitz, some
light, sweet wine. “This is it,” he would say, handing you
a glass, and it always was. Now he brought Janice some
sherry and gave Leo a round glass half full of whisky and
stood for a moment surveying the roomful of people who
were comfortable, who were laughing and talking, and
who were about to be fed at his table. Anyone who came
to Jake Klingman’s house was instantly his friend; when
his friends were around him, he was happy.
“Did you get that department store you were after?”
Janice asked Helen.
“No,” Helen said, looking at her red-slippered feet,
moving them restlessly. “It seems my name shouldn’t be
Klingman.”
“What do you mean?” Janice cried. “You mean that’s
why you didn’t get it?”
“Yes,” Helen said a little bitterly, “I wish I could find
out beforehand what places don’t want Jews. I’d save time
and blisters.”
“Oh, you’ll get something,” Janice said comfortingly,
though she knew Helen had wanted this particular job badly
and for a long time. It was like the ideal apartment she and
Leo had found in a house where there were no Jewish
names over any doorbell; just as they were about to sign
the lease, they were told someone else had been ahead of
them. It was the first time Janice had regretted her maiden
THE SALUTING DOLL 197
name of Elder. But only the name, she thought, looking

over at Leo.
As if she had heard Helen and were following the train
of thought, Mrs. Klingman said suddenly, “I heard from
Rose—my Berlin sister, you know—yesterday. She has
seen the records and they show Adolf was released two
months ago.”
Janice knew that this Adolf she had never seen had been
in a concentration camp for publishing too radical a maga-
zine. There had been no news of him for months, until
this word today.
“What does that mean?” she asked, confused. “Why
hasn’t he been home then?”
Mrs. Klingman shrugged. “Rose thinks of course he is
dead.”
She was silent for a minute and then she went out to
see about the duck. It was cooked, and everyone gradual-
ly assembled in the dining room for dinner. Conversation
rose in crescendos of interest and fell in lulls of eating but
never quite ceased. Anti-Semitism seemed to be in the air
tonight—sometimes it was politics, sometimes books or the
theater—because Janice heard Sidney Radzek, who de-
signed machinery and made potato pancakes, say, “It’s
amazing to see it spread in this country.”
Someone answered, “It’s true. What fools a lot of peo-
ple is that of course it doesn’t begin with storm troops. At
first, besides the basic causes, it’s just a feeling—just a
few words, little things like all-Gentile apartment houses,
that no one pays attention to. Then it grows.”
Jake Klingman said as he got up to carve again, “Sure, I
get more labor cases these days, more civil liberties cases.
198 HAMLEN HUNT
When people who work are in trouble, Jews are in trou-

ble. Even here.”
After dinner more people came to the Klingmans’ apart-
ment until a party developed, and it was after one when
Janice and Leo got home. Even so, it took them hours to
get around to going to sleep, their hands clasped, their
heads on one pillow, and the next morning they could not
rid themselves of the idea that it should be Sunday. The
only trouble was it was Wednesday; it was a quarter to
nine; they both had jobs. Leo would never get to Brook-
lyn on time nor Janice to Battery Place. She ran down
three flights of stairs, snatched at the mail and raced to-
ward the mines of the subway. The train was piled high
with newly dug humanity and it was a miracle when some
unseen pickax dislodged the man directly in front of Jan-
ice so that she had a place to sit. She picked up the thin
badly printed newspaper he had left and it was still in her
hand when she got to the office.
Miss Case was even later than Janice. She came in hur-
riedly, in a bad temper. “Honestly!” she said. “I never saw
such a crowd as there was this morning! There’s some-
thing about the way Jews push. . .”
Janice didn’t answer, thinking as long as she worked
for Mueller and Kurtz, Importers of Novelties, she might
as well be insensitive to remarks about Jews. Nobody
meant them personally, she reminded herself. Nobody
knew she had a Jewish husband. She kept her maiden
name because she knew the firm preferred unmarried girls
and next year, when their Connecticut acres had been paid
for, she would resign. It would be a pleasure then to an-
nounce that her name was Mrs. Leo Klingman; doing it
now would only cost her a good job.
At her desk she surreptitiously looked through the mail

she had brought from home. Two letters for Leo, one for
her, one for both of them from the Fir Tree Inn in Ver-
mont. They had written for reservations in late June be-
cause they were planning a real vacation this year. “We
regret. . . that we have no vacancies at the time you re-
quest. . .” Mr. Fir Tree Inn said politely. But he added, “P.
S. We cater to a strictly Christian clientele.” Janice could
hardly decide whether to be indignant or amused at the
ambivalent quality of the letter, and as she threw it away
she glanced at the newspaper she had picked up on the
subway. For several seconds the words she read seemed
to be in some language she did not understand. JEWS AGAIN
THREATEN WORLD PEACE ! Aid Spanish Red Government.
CHRISTIAN PARTY ADVOCATES STATE RESERVATIONS FOR JEWS!
Put the Jews back into the Ghetto! Stupidly she turned
over the paper in which she had expected to read simple,
countrified news—the paper was printed in North Caro-
lina—and saw that the back page was devoted to an edito-
rial under the headline AMERICA NEEDS A POGROM !
“It can’t be serious” she insisted to herself, but she
couldn’t make herself believe it was a joke. She crumpled
up the paper, then tore bits out of it, going to the window
to scatter the dirty confetti over the harbor. She was still
watching the wind stand the harbor’s green scales upright
when Mr. Mueller came looking for his secretary. He was
rotund and dark, with a curious meatlike look, as if he
were fresh out of a butcher’s icebox; even his walk was
heavy and slapping, like a fore-quarter being slammed
down on a chopping board.
“So here you are, Miss Elder,” he said.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Mueller.” As she turned a streak of
200 HAMLEN HUNT
sunlight glinted on the club emblem in his lapel and she

thought she saw a tiny black swastika in the central de-
sign. For some reason it almost frightened her, though she
had seen that pin for three years.
He smiled. “I only wanted to show you the new ship-
ment. Some very good novelties this time.”
Janice followed him into the other office where, on the
display table, he had set out samples of the stock unpacked
that day. It was September and these were all things for
the Christmas trade. Mr. Mueller picked up something,
there was a whirring sound, and he set down on the table
a little doll in a brown shirt. It raised and lowered its tin
hand in the Nazi salute and every gesture jerked its paint-
ed black boots across an inch of the table-top.
“You can’t beat the old country,” Mr. Mueller said, wind-
ing up another doll. “They always got something new.”
His face was red with laughter and he could not wind dolls
fast enough or set them down quickly enough. “See,” he
said. “Pretty soon we have a whole regiment saluting.”
By now the first doll’s mechanism had run down and it
stood forlornly with its tin hand held out in pleading. Re-
wound, it finished its salute and stupidly began another.
“Take one home,” Mr. Mueller said. “Free sample.”
She stared down at the saluting doll. Again she was al-
most frightened, as if a lot of unrelated and trivial incidents
had suddenly added up into a significant sum. And then
she began to laugh, looking at the doll, shaking her head at
Mr. Mueller because she could not speak. Here she was,
haunted by pogroms, reading a sinister meaning into casu-
al remarks, even into a club pin, all because she had found
a newspaper on the subway. Now this toy suddenly reduced
the whole notion to its own and rightful six-inch size. She
laughed in delight. “Thank you, I’d love a doll. I have a

friend. . .” She could go no farther for laughter, thinking
of Leo’s face when she brought him home her new toy.
Mr. Kurtz, who was bone to Mr. Mueller’s meat, being
thin and hairless and rigid, smiled and said, “You like our
new toys?”
She said, “Lots of clever things this time.”
“Franz,” Mr. Kurtz asked, “You are leaving early with
me today?”
On Wednesdays both men usually left early because it
was the day their German social club met. They drank
beer and had dinner at one of the Hofbraus in the eighties
and had more beer. On Thursdays the German-speaking
stenographer was kept busy all day long; both men were
very businesslike, perhaps, Janice suspected, to conceal
the fact that they had been too sociable the night before.
“Sure,” Mr. Mueller said. “Let’s take along some of the
dolls, yes? We start the ball rolling.” He laughed half a
dozen resonant ha-ha’s.
When Janice got home that night Leo was not there and
she remembered that he was having dinner with Roy some-
where. She got out a can of sardines and had a dismal
little supper by herself. By the time Leo got home she had
given herself a facial, washed her hair and was letting it
dry over her shoulders because Leo liked to see it that
way, and was rinsing out stockings and socks.
“Have a good time?” she asked.
Leo came into the bathroom and kissed her, then sat on
the tub to talk to her while she finished her washing.
He shrugged. “Interesting, I guess.” He was silent for a
minute until Janice prodded him into speech. A little gossip
202 HAMLEN HUNT
was the least she deserved for having eaten sardines in

solitude.
Leo told her that he had gone to meet his friend, Roy
Jacobs, who was writing an article on propaganda methods,
at the Bavarian Hofbrau on Eighty-Sixth Street. “Want you
to see what goes on there,” he had told Leo. So Leo, who got
there first, found himself a table in the back room. He left
his card with the cashier at the front door and told her he
was expecting a Mr. Jacobs to join him, and then settled
down to watching the other diners. It was a popular place,
for almost every table was filled and waiters in forest-green
knee-pants and peaked felt hats raced back and forth. The
atmosphere was one of hearty, simple merriment.
Tonight a little party was going on in the back room
where Leo sat. About twenty prosperous middle-aged
Germans were eating and drinking and talking. Leo gath-
ered that they ate there regularly—they must be a club of
some sort—for the waiters gave them very good service.
Before each man was a typed report of some kind, a news-
paper and a tin doll which someone was always winding
up and setting in motion, though Leo could not quite see
what the doll did.
Roy was late and he tried to get a waiter to bring him
some beer to drink while he waited. He had very bad luck;
sometimes a waiter glanced almost directly at him and he
made violent motions, but while other people got their beer
steins refilled, and got more butter, he could not get a waiter
to come near him. He began to get impatient, but it was as
if a circle had been drawn around his table that prevented
anyone from coming near him. It was almost as if he were
invisible. At last, out of sheer boredom, he began to listen
to the speeches of the group at the near-by table. They
were in German, a language he happened to know well.

His face grew attentive, his fingers moved cautiously as
he struck a match, and once or twice he drew in his breath
sharply. A waiter carried a birthday cake over to the ta-
ble and a little flag stuck in its center waved frantically.
The men drank a toast, someone made the suggestion and
the rest wound the mechanical dolls in front of them, laugh-
ing and joking, and a ruddy-faced man at the far end of
the table made a long speech.
Roy Jacobs hurried over to Leo’s table. “Damn it, this
is the fourth time I’ve been in here,” he said impatiently.
“I thought you’d gone to the wrong place.”
“I left my card and a message for you,” Leo said. “Any-
way, we’re leaving.”
They walked out of the room, almost deafened by the
amiable clatter of dishes and glasses and voices. At the
cashier’s desk Leo stopped. “This is the friend I was wait-
ing for,” he said. “He says he didn’t get the card I left for
him.”
“You left nothing,” the thin cashier said.
Leo flushed. “Oh, I’m sure I did,” he said politely. “When
I came in, remember?”
“Jews do not come in here,” the cashier said in a flat
unpleasant voice.
The boss suddenly appeared and stood listening to the
conversation. At last he said, “We are very busy tonight.”
Leo said, “We get the idea. In fact to anyone who under-
stands German the whole idea of this place, particularly
that little party back there, is more than plain. Very in-
teresting.”
The boss’s features did not move but his little light eyes
suddenly became watchful. “Ja?”
204 HAMLEN HUNT
“Ja,” Leo said. “Come on, Roy, let’s not give these birds
our business.”
When they were on the subway, Leo said, “Funny, I
don’t seem to be very objective about what’s just hap-
pened.”
Roy shrugged. “I told you it went on openly, didn’t I?”
Leo said, “Yes, but that was an American Nazi
organization—no more, no less. They get out a newspa-
per and spread propaganda—follow very definite instruc-
tions. They were celebrating some new ones they’d got
today along with a shipment of toys, God!”
Under her hand Janice felt his shoulder jerk suddenly
as if he were cold or uncomfortable. “Oh well,” he said,
“just as well to know what goes on.”
They went back into the living room and Leo picked up
the doll from the little table on which the telephone stood.
“Where’d you get this?” he demanded sharply.
“They gave it to me at the office,” Janice said. She
wound it slowly, sorry she had brought it home this particu-
lar evening. “Came in from Germany today. I thought it
would amuse you, but now I’m not so sure.”
Leo said, “God, for a minute I thought it must have fol-
lowed me down from the Hofbrau.”
“What on earth are you talking about?” Janice asked.
“That’s what those guys had for favors,” he said. “I
couldn’t quite make out what it was doing there, but now
I know.”
Janice said slowly, thinking of their lovely acres in Con-
necticut that would now be farther off than ever, “Then I
guess it’s time I got another job. That must be the social
club Mr. Mueller and Mr. Kurtz go to every Wednesday.”
She shivered a little and felt fright swirl around her
again. She remembered words. “At first it’s just little things
nobody pays attention to. . .”
Leo said, “That almost makes a complete circle, doesn’t
it? Gives the incident an air of medieval terror. As if that
tin doll were really dangerous to us this minute.”
He laughed and, as if to convince himself how fantastic
it was to be afraid of a mechanical toy and whatever he
thought it represented, he started it saluting. The doll was
still in his hand when the telephone rang and he put it
down to answer it.
“Yes?” he said. “Yes. Speaking.”
Janice could hear the voice almost as clearly as Leo.
“You should not go where you are not wanted, Jew
Klingman,” the voice said. “Better forget about tonight.
Better you don’t write more dirty red articles. From now
on, Klingman, wherever you go, whatever you are doing,
remember somebody is watching. Somebody who doesn’t
like you and doesn’t care what happens to you, maybe.”
“Oh, no,” Janice whispered, standing close to Leo. “No.
It isn’t true. Of course it isn’t.”
But the circle was complete and it surrounded them.
Mr. Mueller who laughed so much and wore a swastika in
his buttonhole. Mr. Kurtz who was so polite. The German
stenographer who was so busy on Thursdays. The news-
paper in the subway. The saluting doll.
Leo slowly put the receiver back into place. His hand
knocked over the little tin doll, but even after that it went
on saluting for a long time.
<< Chapter >>
Home | TOC
ELIZA ORZESZKO
Polish novelist, essayist, and champion of the underprivileged,

1841–1910. Orzeszko wrote much about the spiritual and economic
struggle of the children of the ghetto. See H. Wilczynski,
´ Yidishe
Tipn in der Poilisher Literatur, Warsaw, Kultur-Lige, 1928, pp. 83–
112; Joshua Kunitz, Russian Literature and the Jew, New York,
Columbia University Press, 1929, p. 93 f. The following story, Daj
Kwiatek, appeared in 1878, and was translated, in a slightly abridged
version, for this anthology by Szymon St. Deptula.
<< Chapter >>
Home | TOC
“GIVE ME A FLOWER!”
T HE streets of Ongród are crowded and noisy. Car-

riages rattle along the center of the roads, while on the
narrow sidewalks, pedestrians jostle one another in the mov-
ing mass Every one is in a hurry to get somewhere, somehow.
In the midst of this crowd, do you, ladies and gentle-
men, notice perchance an old woman slowly creeping
along the far end of the street, keeping close to the brick
houses against which her ragged clothing frequently brush-
es? She stops often for a brief rest, leaning her humped
back against the wall, her breast heaving sharply, and
drops of sweat beading her wrinkled forehead. She is ob-
viously tired, but not simply from the day’s walking. Whole
days, months, years—indeed, all her long life—she wan-
dered about in this fashion, in crowds which have kept
pushing her into the most uncomfortable places, onto the
sharpest cobblestones of the pavement, against the walls
of brick houses when they would be coldest in the winter
or hottest in the summer.
Behold, ladies and gentlemen, how her body has humped
itself, one might say, archwise, how her coarse-skinned face
has thinned and shrivelled, how deeply her yellow lips have
sunk under the protruding cheekbones, how her once dark
eyes have faded, how her lashless lids twitch and blink.
And how many wrinkles there are on her low, dark fore-
head! That forehead looks like a piece of paper that has
209
210 ELIZA ORZESZKO
long been blown about in damp and dark places, that some
hand, mighty and ruthless, has crumpled and twisted out
of all shape and form. Above it, there is no hair visible,
for the head is covered with a kerchief which, though old,
still retains its yellow color. Its ends, tied from behind, fall
on the woman’s back, which is covered by a loose sweater
with motley patches on the sleeves, back, and front.
Her feet, trudging along the sharp cobblestones, are shod
in thin-soled, low shoes and grey stockings, which can be
seen at times from underneath the skirt, fringed at the
bottom with strips of various lengths, as if they were tas-
sels, heavy with the dust and mud of the streets that have
accumulated for years.
So you don’t know this woman, ladies and gentlemen?
I know her quite well. Her name is Chaita, by trade a
ragpicker.
But, dear, dear, will you ever forgive me, ladies and gen-
tlemen, for desiring to acquaint you with a person of so
humble a station? I can hear you say that it’s both im-
proper and unnecessary, for what can there be in com-
mon between you and a ragpicker?
Please forgive me!
I like old Chaita, and whenever I look at her it always
seems to me that there exists one great, unbreakable bond
between her and me. She and I belong to the same im-
mense and unfortunate family called Humanity! So she is
my relative, and—once again let me beg your pardon, la-
dies and gentlemen—yours, too.
As far as her humble station is concerned, if our posi-
tions in life were to be measured by toil and suffering, let
“GIVE ME A FLOWER!” 211
me assure you that Chaita, the ragpicker, would, in the

evening of her life, stand high, very high!
For that matter, she hasn’t always been a ragpicker.
Her past. . . I have a strange, curious impulse to learn,
to discover the past of such creatures with their wrin-
kled foreheads and quivering yellow eyelids which cover
those bloodshot eyes, wet from tears and faded by Time,
by Time that has looked so long into them that it has
absorbed all their color and lustre. I remember once see-
ing such a face on canvas in some foreign art gallery.
Neglecting many beautiful landscapes and marvelous
paintings of ladies in velvet dresses, I stood long before
that old and shriveled face. Looking into her faded eyes,
gazing at her wilted and sunken lips, I smiled sympa-
thetically at her and asked myself: What kind of girl were
you years ago? Where did you live? Whom did you love?
What sufferings, consolations, disappointments, toils,
marked your long road until it led you to the brink of the
grave in which you now rest?
Believe me, ladies and gentlemen, there is nothing in
the world that I would like so much as to know the whole
histories, from beginning to end, of all the humble and poor
ones crushed by Fate and Time, the humped, the wrin-
kled, the weary. Incidentally, this desire has nothing
magnanimous about it. It is far from being altogether al-
truistic. For an acquaintance with such histories enrich-
es the heart of the average human being. To a writer, it
constitutes a living source of wisdom. I even pity any writer
who is neither interested in, nor curious about, such his-
tories. His lute must be poor in strings, and the colors in
his palette quite pale. . .
212 ELIZA ORZESZKO
Chaita wasn’t always a ragpicker. When she was young—

would you believe it, ladies and gentlemen?—she was a slen-
der, lively girl, with a raven braid, and a bloom in her olive
cheeks, and dark eyes whose flaming depths brought to
mind the brightness and warmth of Eastern skies.
She was born in the country—and pardon me, ladies and
gentlemen, for mentioning such a sordid detail—in a tav-
ern. It was a very small tavern, gloomy, quite narrow, with
sloping walls and a rotting roof, but around it spread car-
pets of exquisitely fresh fields, wide plains that in the win-
ter gleamed with a downy covering of immaculately white
snow, and in the summer billowed with golden waves of
grain. Nearby, amidst forget-me-nots, a stream wound its
way, tinkling like silver day and night, and somewhat far-
ther beyond, oak groves disappeared in the evening air be-
hind veils of whitish mists, groves that at dawn were rosy
with the radiance of the morning star. Not more than a few
hundred feet from the little tavern there was also an old,
sprawling, splendid garden. It belonged to the mansion of
the owner of the village who was also the owner of this
small, dingy tavern which was rented by Chaita’s father.
Poor was this tavern and poor was its keeper. He had
many children, and he married them off as best he could—
undoubtedly none too well. When Chaita was fifteen, she
was packed off to the city of Ongród. There she became
the wife of Leibe, a poor man since all he owned was a
horse and wagon, with which he transported heavy sacks
of grain and flour from the mill. It was this flour that made
him look all his life like an albino with a white face and
clothes, white hair and brows. Whenever he stirred, flour
poured from him like snow from one who had been out in
a winter storm.
With her introduction to the city pavements, Chaita sep-

arated forever from the idyllic scene of her childhood, from
the verdant meadows in whose tall grasses she was wont
to sleep, warmed by the May sun and fanned by the
branches of the spreading hawthorn. She parted with the
stream where weeping birches sank their drooping shoul-
ders, on which she would rock slowly, swinging and watch-
ing the incessant flow of the waters that tinkled with
tongues of silver and shimmeringly reflected her own eyes,
as though they were black stars. She parted with the field
in whose waving grain she used to giggle while hiding from
her frolicking brothers, and with the old garden where
she was permitted at times to enter and to stroll about
gravely under the canopy of ancient trees.
She parted with her father’s mean tavern in whose sta-
ble a few goats, her cordial friends, bleated; in whose small
rooms her industrious mother, with faded face, bustled all
day long; and before whose threshold her elder brother
would sit after sunset, and draw out, in the evening calm,
untutored, lingering melancholy sounds from his violin.
Then, sitting on a low bench beside a younger brother,
she would throw her arm around his neck, listen to the
music, and stare into the white mist swirling over the fields
like waters rocked by the wind. As he played, her brother
would often have tears in his eyes. She would then ask
him why he wept, but he never answered her. Neither
knew why the other was so sad. They were ignorant, in-
articulate. They longed after something, they were both
depressed, and a little afraid. . . As Chaita’s brother played
longer, and more dolefully, his small brothers and sisters
would gather at his knees, and lift up attentive faces to-
wards him. In the dark vestibule, his mother sighed aloud,
214 ELIZA ORZESZKO
and his father, red-bearded and somber-eyed, prayed in the

chamber by the window, ever louder, ever more fervently,
with ever more groaning and with quickened intonations. . .
With her first introduction to the city pavements, Chaita
parted with all this, and perhaps with something else be-
sides. . . Perhaps at times, on a torrid summer day, in the
silvery surface of the stream over which she would swing
hanging from a branch of the weeping birch, there had
appeared to her fiery eyes a handsome youth, soft-palmed,
his forehead shining with the wisdom of those great, old
masters of Israel, of whom she had often heard her father
tell her brothers. . . Perhaps—certainly one doesn’t have
to be a princess to dream of happiness. . .
“Happiness! Quel animal est ça?” Chaita might ask to-
day if she knew French. But she doesn’t know French;
and so in her native and very homely jargon, as she stands
daily upon rising at the window of her room, she begins
her prayer with the words:
“Blessed art Thou, O Lord our God, King of the World,
who hast made me according to Thy will!”
The city swallowed her up, just as when a minute atom
falls into an agglomeration of atoms and is together with
them sucked into a pitiless whirlpool. In the human mael-
strom into which she was hurled one foot resented the
encroachment of another, one breast tried to steal every
bit of air from another, one mouth seized every crumb of
nourishment from another; brows burned from drudgery,
and hearts hardened and wilted at the constant impact of
impregnable stones and faded faces that were never
touched by voices, sights, or caresses, however impercep-
tible, of a free and pure nature.
What could she do there in order to survive, to help her
husband—whose likeness, forsooth, the silvery surface of

the stream had not shown her—in his hard work, and to
bring up and feed her children who surrounded her in an
ever more numerous brood? She did a multitude of things.
She delivered parcels about the city, packed in several
small cartons which she hung all over herself so that from
a distance she had the appearance of a hunchback from
the front and from the back; then she delivered fruit in big
baskets, the weight of which made her gait unsteady as if
she were limping badly; then later. . .
But I shall not continue to relate what Chaita was and
what she has done all her long life. I must say one thing
more, though. Very frequently she went to the cemetery,
to that Hebrew cemetery which, about a verst from the
city, looms within a low enclosure like a forest of reddish
stones on sandy soil. Chaita would go often to this sandy
height, and when she went, there rode before her along
the unevenly paved street a rattling wagon with a longish
wooden box. Chaita would follow the wagon, sobbing loud-
ly, and after each of these walks, one stone more would
loom against the horizon of the sandy height. Various
names were spelled out on these stones: those of Chaita’s
husband, of the brother who had been so good to her, of
the mother who had lived with her in her old age, of the
son who had been a jewel in his mother’s cried-out eyes,
and of the daughter who had blossomed like a rose in
Chaita’s thorny garland.
As so often happens with many old people, Chaita had
lost all her children and all but one of her relatives through
death or separation. Some had died, others had gone far
away, still others had grown indifferent towards her. Left
desolate, she was forced to make her way by buying and
216 ELIZA ORZESZKO
selling old clothes. Sometimes she even picked out old rags
from the garbage cans, carried them on her back in a big
willow basket, and sold this unusual merchandise to buy-
ers who were even more unusual; and thus she lived on.
But did she then live without any consolation and pleas-
ure? Was there nothing in the whole wide world to light
up her faded eyes with a glinting sparkle and bring to her
wilted lips a fond smile that was almost joyful? You might
once have seen her bent under the weight of her basket,
moving along the edge of the street, and rubbing her torn
sweater against the walls of the houses.
She half lifted up her head in its yellow kerchief, her
eyes brightened with an almost ardent gleam, she smiled
and in a quavering voice called out:
“Heiemke! Nu, Heiemke!”
A small, six-year old boy, running about in the street,
heard the call, rushed up to her, threw his arms around
her neck as she stooped, loudly kissed her wrinkled fore-
head, and quickly turned his back on her, laughing and
shouting, and chasing after a crowd of older and younger
boys who ran at full speed in the direction of an immense
sign, hung up a few days before, with an enormous giant
in pink pantaloons and a green blouse painted on it. To
enter the temple over which the giant hovered required
an admission fee, but in the pleasure of gazing at the sus-
pended image Heiemke and his companions could indulge
for hours free of charge.
No, Chaita was not alone in the world. Heiemke was
her grandson, left by her youngest daughter, the one rose
in the thorny garland of Chaita’s life. When Death had
swept from the earth the old lagwoman’s rose, Chaita had
seemed to detect her living image in the child left behind.
Heiemke had his mother’s chestnut hair with a wealth of

ringlets, and such eyes as his grandmother had had long
ago, large, black, wide-open, set in a drawn, pallid face.
Heiemke was a pretty child. His clothing attested very
clearly to his grandmothers trade: for a year now he had
been wearing a vest of white percale with black dots, as
well as a coat and cap of percale. A leather visor, quite
crumpled, was sewn to the cap, but Heiemke seldom wore
his cap, because he usually forgot it at home and appeared
on the street in a reddish skullcap which barely covered
the top of his curly hair.
Chaita herself had made Heiemke’s clothes. It’s true that
this happened infrequently, but it was an ever striking sight
to see an old woman with large-sized glasses, whose rims
extended half way up her wrinkled forehead, with a yel-
low kerchief tightly wrapped around her head, sitting on
a low stool by the light of a high-chimneyed lamp, cutting
out, fitting, sewing faded rags with her dark hands. Un-
duly straining her vision, she would now and again mur-
mur to herself.
Talking to herself was an old habit with Chaita.
“Who lives there now?” she sometimes whispered. She
would be thinking then of the dirty little tavern in which
she had been born and brought up.
“Ai! Ai! but they were beautiful!” This was always in
reminiscence of the old trees in the mansion garden un-
der whose shade she had walked at times, as a child.
Sometimes she would smile and shake her head with a
sort of jocular threat. Before her eyes would flow with a
silver tinkle the stream fleetingly reflecting the black eyes
of the girl gazing into it.
218 ELIZA ORZESZKO
At another time, however, she would sigh heavily.

“When he died, he became whiter than that flour which
he always carried on his back! He died young. All his life
he carried heavy sacks to the wagon. . . He became very
tired, and. . . he went. . .”
Then she would add: “Lord of the universe! Unite his
soul with the souls of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and
with all those who are dear to Thee!”
And at other times she would say: “Man is like a breath!
His days vanish like a shadow!” She thought then of her
young daughter, Heiemke’s mother, the rose whom Death
had swept off the earth.
However, there were moments when the thick needle
fell from her hand, and she clenched her fist in great an-
ger, her eyes blazing furiously from behind her glasses:
“Ai! Ai! The bad woman, the thief! the scoundrel! How
she’s robbed me! How she’s deceived me! She took two
zlotys from me for this rag, and who’ll give me so much
for it? Woe is me! She’s ruined me!”
She thought it over, and, as her anger subsided, she add-
ed: “Nu! Who’ll give me so much for it? That girl with
those wealthy people! She doesn’t know anything, and is
always just laughing and skipping about. I’ll sew for her
these shining buttons on the sweater, and I’ll show it to
her not from the side where the holes are but from the
one which has the shining buttons. Maybe she’ll give me
three zlotys yet! O golden profit! Won’t I be happy then!”
Wrapped in the thought of making the immense profit of
a zloty, and smiling cannily to herself at the idea of daz-
zling the silly young chambermaid with the glittering but-
tons, Chaita felt that she was beginning to fall asleep. Her
feet hurt her terribly from the cobblestones over which she
had tramped all day. Deciding to go to bed, she got up, but
felt that somebody was lying at her feet. She took the lamp
in her trembling hand, and bent down towards the floor.
It was Heiemke, who a little while before had been sitting
at her knees, chattering and looking up at the garments
being prepared for him, now lying at her feet, doubled up,
asleep, and in his tightly clenched fist holding the remain-
der of a pretzel. Chaita’s sunken lips parted in a broad
grin. She put the lamp on the table, took her grandson in
her arms, and loudly kissing his face, pink from sleep, said:
“You little sleepyhead! I almost stumbled over you!”
At her last words she laughed lustily, almost guffawing.
Heiemke awoke, opened his sleepy eyes, and with all speed
shoved the uneaten pretzel into his mouth. The grand-
mother put him under the featherbed.
“Granny?” queried the child.
“Nu?” asked the grandmother, busy taking off the
sweater.
“Where is that ten groschen which I got today from the
squire?”
“Where is that ten groschen?” she exclaimed. “I threw
it out of the window. You begged it, and didn’t I tell you
not to beg! I’ll whip you next time you don’t obey me!”
Heiemke no longer heard either his grandmothers re-
proaches or her threats. He was sleeping again, his arm,
covered with a thick, dirty sleeve, thrown over his head.
His dark lashes cast long shadows on his pink cheeks,
and he smiled pleasantly. The old grandmother continued
frowning a moment longer, then took out of her pocket
the coin her grandson had begged, and looked it over from
every angle as if to convince herself that she had not done
anything so senseless as to throw it out of the window. At
220 ELIZA ORZESZKO
the same time she sighed heavily, shook her head sadly,
and, slipping it under the featherbed, muttered: “Nu! what
can one do!”
And she added: “I don’t know! That’s poverty for you!”
At times the grandmother and grandson had a great deal
of fun together, just the two of them. This happened most
frequently when Chaita, quite late at night, returned home
carrying on her back a big basket full of rags which she
had bought or picked out of garbage cans. Chaita’s home
was located in the very center of that labyrinth of alleys
and houses which constituted the Jewish quarter of the
city Ongród. It consisted of a room so small that Chaita
could easily touch with her hand the blackened beams of
the ceiling, and so narrow that the clay stove occupied the
greater part of the space. Through the one narrow win-
dow, made up of tiny panes, virtually no street could be
seen, for the little house stood in the midst of several back-
yards. These back-yards were so many that a stranger
unacquainted with the neighborhood would most likely
have lost his bearings there. Separated by small houses
and rotting fences that leaned forward, they overlapped
one another and possessed the most variegated shapes:
they were long and winding like corridors, and square or
circular with black stables and shops opening out of them,
with high heaps of garbage, with everlasting puddles here
and there midst sharp stones, with piles of old boards on
which, during the day, crowds of children played seesaw,
and which during the night creaked and knocked against
each other in the wind.
It happened sometimes that Heiemke got in from his
wandering about the city pavements before his granny. He
was a very clever child. In the midst of the gloom reigning
in the little room, he would find matches, light the small

lamp, and set it on the window sill so that it might light up
for his grandmother the long, winding passageway, serv-
ing as a yard, which she had to cross. All this he would
do with dignity, slowly, carefully. Then he would begin
his explorations. First he would plunge into the gloomy
regions behind the stove, and from the rustling one could
tell that he was poking about in the pile of old papers;
then he would look under the table, under his grand-
mother’s featherbed and pillow, and under his own little
featherbed lying in a corner on the floor. Sometimes these
searches yielded nothing; frequently, however, Heiemke
found a stale roll, a pretzel, or a piece of bread or cheese
behind the stove or under the featherbed. Then he would
sit down with his booty in a corner of the room and eat
the foraged delicacy with relish as he awaited his grand-
mother’s coming.
Shortly afterwards he would hear from behind the win-
dow the flapping sound of Chaita’s shoes plodding along
the cobblestones. The low door would open wide, and there
would appear through it first the glaring yellow kerchief
wrapped around the old woman’s head, then her bowed
shoulders, and then a large basket brimming over with
varicolored rags and glistening here and there with a met-
al button ornamenting some discarded garment. Heiemke
would jump from the floor, run to his grandmother, help
her lift the burden from her shoulders, and then stretch
out to her his tiny hand with the half-eaten pretzel or piece
of cheese, and exclaim: “Eat, Granny!”
Sometimes Chaita took the proffered food and ate it.
More often, however, she was so tired that with a loud
222 ELIZA ORZESZKO
groan she sank down on the floor beside the basket, and
let her hands fall helplessly. Heiemke would take the lamp
from the window, put it on the floor, sit down opposite his
grandmother, and greedily plunge both his hands into the
basket. Then, what joy! What exclamations of delight
would be heard! Splendor after splendor would issue from
the basket in rapid succession! One night, for instance,
Heiemke’s itchy and impatient hands pulled out, with some
difficulty, a large, long flounced dress of lily-colored mus-
lin. The dress was full of spots and holes, but Heiemke
didn’t see them: he saw only the beautiful lily color and
with gaping mouth he gazed at the leaf pattern. Next a
straw hat appeared, very rumpled, with the lining pulled
out, but ornamented with a large rose and a band of pink
ribbon. At the sight of the rose, Heiemke put both his
hands to his head in sheer admiration, and then, undoubt-
edly to inspect the beautiful object better, placed it on his
grandmothers head. Chaita did not stop him; indeed, her
eyes sparkled and laughed from under the rose overshad-
owing her yellow forehead, while the enchanted Heiem-
ke, gazing at her, shook his little head to and fro, and called
out: “Pretty Granny! Ah! Pretty Granny!”
The hat was followed by a pair of children’s shoes, torn,
dirty, but of bright-red leather. Chaita had not bought them,
but had picked them up in a spacious court-yard near the
window of some fine residence. In the twinkling of an eye
the crimson shoes were on Heiemke’s feet. He hopped
about the room and, bending his head, looked at them with
extreme admiration. Chaita looked at the happy child as
she rested.
“Heiemke, did you get anything while you were out to-
day?” She was evidently ashamed of her own question,
for while she uttered these words, her lips trembled a lit-
tle, and her eyelids quivered nervously.
When to this question Heiemke answered that he had
got nothing, Chaita made no reply. She murmured some-
thing quietly, shook her head, and sighed. But on those
occasions when, as now, he reached into his pocket and
took out a copper or silver coin, the old grandmother
snatched the money from his hand, threw it on the floor,
and fell into a rage.
“You’ve been begging again,” she cried out, getting up
from the ground and stretching her arms ominously to-
ward the child, who retreated to his little featherbed. “And
what have I told you? Haven’t I told you that it’s a shame
and a sin to beg! I’m going to thrash you for this!”
When she carried on in this way, the expression in her
eyes was so fierce and her head and hands shook so much
that although these scenes occurred frequently, they al-
ways filled little Heiemke with such terror that he hid,
head and all, under his featherbed. This time only his lit-
tle feet in their crimson shoes peeped out from under one
end, while through a small opening at the other end a black
eye looked out half-impishly at his grandmother. Chaita
stood before the pair of crimson shoes and expostulated
to them at length about the shame and sin of begging. Fi-
nally she cried out angrily: “Take off those shoes! Did you
think I brought them for you?”
“Granny!” a plaintive voice called from under the
featherbed.
“Nu! Take those shoes off right now!”
“Granny, please let me sleep with them on for just one
night!”
His thin voice sounded so winningly plaintive that Chaita
224 ELIZA ORZESZKO
made an indulgent gesture with her hands, and went to

her own bed. From there she turned once more, and per-
ceived the child’s head, a-riot with chestnut-colored curls,
already looking out from under his little featherbed. He
smiled at her and whispered: “I love you, Granny!”
When Heiemke opened his sleepy eyes the next morn-
ing, the bluish light of daybreak filled the narrow yard
outside the window and permeated the room. Against its
misty background Chaita’s humped body stood out more
clearly, dressed in a sleeveless sapphire-blue sweater, her
face turned towards the window, praying fervently. With
rapid, short bows, she recited half-aloud:
“Blessed art Thou, O Lord our God, King of the Uni-
verse, who raisest up them that are bowed down.
verse, who givest strength to the weary.
verse, who removest sleep from mine eyes and slumber
from mine eyelids.”
Heiemke got out from under this featherbed, and, stand-
ing in his little grey shirt and crimson shoes behind his
grandmother, began to bow like her and to say:
verse, who hast not made me either an idolator or a slave.
verse, who hast made me a man.”
And he continued the morning prayer which the learned
Shimshel, the father of his very dear chum, little Men-
dele, had taught him out of pity for the poor, neglected
child. His old grandmother could not teach him anything,
for not only was she never at home during the day, but
she herself hadn’t the least bit of learning.
Having gazed his fill one afternoon at the painted giant

on the sign, Heiemke went on in the direction of the city
square which, surrounded by a low fence and a few scraw-
ny trees, in Ongród boasted the grandiose name of a boul-
evard. Other children headed in the same direction, but
being older got there quicker. Heiemke and his very dear
friend Mendele, a year younger than he, walked slowly,
holding each other’s hand. On the way, they stopped be-
fore some of the shop windows: here looking at the shin-
ing golden objects in the jeweler’s window, elsewhere smil-
ing with delight at the sight of pyramids of rolls and cres-
cent buns in the bakery window. At the sight of these deli-
cacies, little Mendele, in his pink jacket from under which
the holy white fringes were always dangling, stretched out
his hands. But Heiemke, a year older, explained to him that
one mustn’t covet these rolls and buns, for even if one should
somehow obtain them they would be worthless since they
were not kosher. Mendele was still quite in the dark as to
the exact meaning of kosher. Heiemke knew about it, but
couldn’t explain it to his friend, so he told him that as soon
as they saw Henoch, Mendele’s nine-year old brother, who
had been studying for five years and was already quite
learned and pious, they would ask him about it.
Thus conversing, they reached the boulevard, and saw a
stripling sitting on a bench, wearing a long, grey, tight coat,
and a cap pulled down low over his forehead. This was He-
noch, son of the learned Shimshel and Mendele’s brother.
Around him were grouped a few boys of his own age who,
discoursing, constantly turned towards him as if to an ora-
cle or to their master. Apparently young Henoch, already
famous for his learning and piety, occupied among his equals
the same position that his father, the learned Shimshel, held
226 ELIZA ORZESZKO
among the elders. Considering Henoch’s tender years, this

beginning was auspicious and seemed to prophesy for him
a most splendid future. Only the drawn, beautifully mold-
ed face of the small sage was pale and thin, and his black
eyes, large and deeply sunken, looked out at the world
with a strange expression of mingled suffering and solem-
nity! He looked as if that great store of learning for which
he was famous, collecting in his head, had drained all his
blood, and as though that great piety which distinguished
him at so early an age had produced a sort of inert stiff-
ness in his slender body and created an air of vague mel-
ancholy about him.
Heiemke stood opposite Henoch, resting both his elbows
on the latter’s knees, and lifting up his round, lively face,
framed by wind-tossed chestnut-colored curls, to that of
his grave-faced companion, asked: “Henoch, you tell us,
both Mendele and me, what is trefe and what is kosher?
Why wouldn’t we be allowed to eat those rolls when there
are so many of them in the bakery window?”
Henoch’s face lighted up somewhat at this question, and
he was just about to begin answering the two lads standing
before him, when the other boys, sitting on the bench and
standing behind it, unanimously protested that they knew
all about that already and so did not want to hear it again,
but entreated and demanded that Henoch tell them instead
some interesting story. Henoch knew a whole flock of such
interesting stories. He had learned them in the heder (for
he had already covered the entire Pentateuch and was now
beginning the study of the Talmud with Rashi’s commen-
tary). And so briefly explaining to Heiemke the meaning of
trefe and kosher, he began to describe with grave gestures
the Egyptian plagues that preceded the exodus of Israel
from the house of bondage. It was one of Henoch’s scari-

est stories. Plague after plague succeeded one another, and
each was more terrible than the one before it. The chil-
dren listened in mute astonishment to the account of the
thick darkness in which Egypt had been plunged; the tale
of the locusts swooping down upon Egypt made less of an
impression on them; but Moses’ rod turning into a ser-
pent fascinated them immensely.
Wouldn’t it have been wonderful if they could likewise
have changed various objects into anything they desired!
Little Mendele, for instance, would immediately have
transformed the pebble, lying at his feet, into a beautiful
twisted loaf of bread; and Heiemke would have command-
ed the dry twig, which he was holding in his hand, to be-
come a rose, as beautiful as that which adorned the old
hat which he had found in his grandmothers basket.
Henoch’s lively tale held the interest of his young listen-
ers, but at times, slight incidents, having no connection with
the story, interrupted it. For example, boorish Mordke,
wishing to find himself nearer to the story-teller, pushed
Mendele so hard that the latter swayed, stepped on his dan-
gling fringes, and fell. Heiemke’s eyes blazed with fury at
the wrong done his friend. With clenched fist he punched
Mordke on the back several times, then bent down to help
Mendele up, kissed him on the forehead that was besmeared
with sand, smoothed his cheek wet with tears, and then
putting his arm tightly around him hugged him close. Men-
dele stopped crying, but this incident created a sort of hub-
bub in the group to which, however, Henoch paid not the
least attention; and despite the fact that they were now only
half listening to him, he continued.
This perseverance, as usual, was successful, for when the
228 ELIZA ORZESZKO
narrative reached its climax—that is, the simultaneous

death of all the Egyptian first-born sons—the rapt atten-
tion of the listeners once again returned to the narrator.
The simultaneous deaths of the first-born aroused gen-
eral consternation. They listened to this part with wide-
open mouths, fear and sorrow reflected in their eyes. Ev-
idently these children did not as yet differentiate between
the peoples inhabiting this world, and did not know that
one nation can hate another and rejoice at its misfortunes.
Their wisdom had not yet reached the stage which includes
the consciousness of hatred and revenge. So they were
sorry for the Egyptian first-born, just as much as if they
had been Israelites. But Henoch was already approach-
ing the above-mentioned level of culture, and did not feel
the least pity for the Egyptian children. With gleaming eyes
and sweeping gestures he was just beginning to describe
the wailing and lamentation heard in all parts of Egypt on
that fatal night, when suddenly—
“Look! Look!” shouted all the listeners, pointing their
fingers in one direction, while Heiemke trembled for joy.
A woman wearing a filmy white dress, her dark silken
hair wound round her head in braids, with an immense
bouquet of beautiful flowers in her covered arm, was ap-
proaching the boulevard. She was accompanied by sever-
al handsome and well-dressed gentlemen.
Henoch was now all alone on his bench; but paying no
heed to the fact that his audience had run away, he held
forth with ever greater zeal to the two scrawny trees whose
puny branches swayed above the bench. The beautiful
lady, crossing the boulevard, and the enchanting flowers
which she carried in her arm could arouse no interest in
him, for he had long since put away the glittering vanities
of this world and devoted his whole mind to serious study.
Leaving him and his story, however, the frivolous and
worldly-minded companions of Henoch ran after the spec-
tacle that fascinated them. A cloud of dust rose from un-
der the feet of the gang, and their cries pierced the air.
Heiemke especially couldn’t tear his eyes away from the
gorgeous bouquet. Hitherto he had seen only the flowered
patterns on old dresses stuffed in Chaita’s basket, or those
faded and crumpled, lifeless ornaments which decorated
the hats full of holes that were picked out of garbage cans.
Never before in his life had he seen live flowers. Now they
were before his very eyes, and his whole body was agitat-
ed with inarticulate ecstasy. In his enthusiasm, he even
forgot little Mendele who, unable to keep up with his com-
panion, sat down in the middle of the boulevard sidewalk
and, weeping copiously, shrieked with all his might. The
other boys, not quite so bold, or perhaps less passionately
attracted towards things of beauty, continued to run after
the lady in white, but kept at some distance from her, con-
fining themselves only to pointing with their fingers at her
and her bouquet.
But Heiemke ran in front of her, and, stretching his
hands towards the flowers, lifted entreating eyes at her.
At first she paid no attention either to the child or to his
half-shy, half-rude movements, until Heiemke suddenly
seized her skirt and tugged at it lightly. She stopped and
smilingly looked at the urchin.
Her calm eyes were arrested by the sparkling, diamond-
like look in the child’s black eyes. Stooping somewhat, she
asked: “What do you want, little boy?”
230 ELIZA ORZESZKO
With a shy gesture, Heiemke touched her flowers with

the tip of a finger. She laughed and placed her hand on the
child’s curly locks. “Ask for it nicely,” she said.
Heiemke stood motionless, and with a somewhat fright-
ened glance looked into her eyes. At the same time his
lips began to quiver as if he were about to start crying. No
wonder. He did not understand Polish, the language in
which the lady was speaking to him.
“Little boy, say this: Give me a flower!”
Heiemke guessed that the woman was teaching him to
say some foreign words. Understanding and alertness were
reflected in his eyes, which opened even wider. At first he
stammered and mumbled incoherently, but soon after, with
an outburst of joy and childishly transforming the diffi-
cult words, he exclaimed loudly and distinctly: “Give me
a flower!”
Then the woman in the white dress gaily but keenly
looked into the boy’s eyes, took a large part of her bou-
quet, and gave it to the child. Heiemke clung to her hand,
and covered it with ardent kisses.
A minute later he was running along the street leading
to the Jewish quarter. He held the flowers high above
his head, ran swiftly, did not hear the shouts of his com-
panions chasing him, and defended himself with his hands
and feet from those who caught up with him. In this
manner he ran through a few narrow alleys and several
small yards of various dimensions, and burst into his
grandmother’s room.
The sun was just setting. Its slanting rays struck the
small panes and the decaying framework of the little
window.
May you be blessed, O sun! who gildest at times the dark

walls of such dingy rooms, who embracest with scarlet
streaks such clumsy clay ovens, and who placest a warm
kiss on the wrinkled forehead of such a humped, tired,
old ragpicker!
In the roseate beams of the setting sun, the flowers lift-
ed aloft, the breathless Heiemke stood before his grand-
mother who, seated on a stool, was sorting torn rags with
her palsied hands.
Snow-white lilies, many-petaled roses, forget-me-nots
as blue as the sky, and tall ferns with silvered edges spar-
kled in the sun as though a bit of rainbow had fallen from
the heavens. The intoxicating perfume filled the room from
the blackened ceiling to the earthen floor.
Chaita clapped her hands, opening wide her eyes and
mouth with astonishment. “Heiemke!” she called out, “Ai!
Ai! Heiemke! And where did you get these beauties?
Where did you find such jewels? Give them here to me, I
want to feast my eyes on them! Ai! How they smell!”
A feeling of inarticulate bliss was reflected on Chaita’s
face when, taking the beautiful flowers from her grand-
son, she looked at them at close range and from a dis-
tance, half-closed her eyes, buried almost her whole nose
topped by a large pair of spectacles in a lily cup, and
smoothed the wide silvered ferns with her palm as if they
were beloved children, ever exclaiming: “Ai! Ai! How
pretty they are! And how it smells and gleams!”
It would be difficult to tell which of these two creatures,
child or grandmother, rejoiced more passionately over
these masterpieces of Nature that suddently shone forth
in their dark and stuffy city cell, a glimmer of luxury which
illuminated the gloom of poverty about them. They were
232 ELIZA ORZESZKO
both naively happy and noisy, but the child’s rejoicing last-
ed longer.
A quarter of an hour later, Chaita began to shake her
head sadly, and sighed. “When I was young. . .” she whis-
pered, and continued mumbling something to herself, while
Heiemke sat in the corner on his little featherbed and told
his grandmother about the beautiful lady and how he had
got the flowers from her, and then from time to time he
kissed the roses and the lilies. That night the grandmother
was restless; she woke up in the darkness, groaned, sighed,
and heard the child’s winning plea repeated in his sleep:
“Give me a flower!”
Heiemke dreamt of the woman in white and of the flow-
ers, and no wonder, for he was breathing in the perfume
that was blowing his way. For that night, like another
Heliogabalus, he slept on flowers. Fearing lest they should
disappear somewhere, he put them under his pillow, his
poor little pillow with the blue ticking.
A painful awakening! The next morning, while Chaita
recited her morning prayers as usual, she heard behind
her a loud sobbing. She turned around, and beheld the
following scene.
On a bundle of straw covered with his thin featherbed
sat Heiemke, his hair still disheveled, his knees covered
with a worn nightshirt, and his bare feet strewn over with
dead flowers. Immediately upon awakening, he had reached
under the pillow and got out his treasures, but in what a
state! The velvety leaves of the lilies were torn and yel-
lowed, the roses hung wilted and half-stripped of their
former glory, the wide green ferns were unrecognizable. . .
These were no longer flowers, but faint shadows of them.
With drooping hands, Heiemke looked at them and wept.
His grandmother tried to console him, but all in vain.

She then scolded him, threatening to chastise him. . .
Heiemke neither heard nor saw anything. His large tears
flowed out in a copious stream, and, falling on the wilted
flowers, sprinkled them with a precious dew. There was
still a single spray of forget-me-nots which retained a little
freshness and color. The tiny blue stars with their golden
eyes seemed to look tenderly at the weeping boy. . .
It was a sad autumn evening.

Outside of Chaita’s dingy room, the wind raced through
the narrow courtyard with a melancholy soughing, and
when it died down a moment, one could hear the patter of
the rain falling on the city pavements. Chaita lay in bed,
groaning and sighing. The lamp’s narrow ray of light flick-
ered across the face of Heiemke sleeping beside her. Her
motionless eyes were fixed on that face, and, according to
habit, she mumbled to herself:
“Poor, unfortunate child of mine! What will become of
you when my soul and body part? What will happen to
you when the Eternal will summon my soul to go hence
and join, under the wings of the Shekina, the souls of my
mother and father, my busband Leibe and my brother Ab-
raham, my two sons and my beloved daughter Malka?
And what will I tell my Malka when she will ask me in
that other world: ‘Mammy, what have you done with my
little boy Heiemkele? Did you provide some one to put
bread into his mouth and wisdom into his head?’ When
she will ask me thus, I shall not be able for shame to lift
my eyes to her, to my beloved Malka, only I shall cry my
eyes out for her dear little son Heiemke, whom I shall
have left all alone in this world. . . He is so small, and he
234 ELIZA ORZESZKO
can’t do anything for himself yet. . . His hands are so tiny

that he still can’t earn anything with them, and his mind
is so silly that it will lead him into terrible misfortunes and
evil ways! O poor, miserable me!”
Thus Chaita pondered and lamented.
That particular evening she was thinking of death. Out-
side it was dark and dreary. The wind moaned pitifully.
Her bones ached as did her head, wrapped in its yellow
kerchief, and she felt such a strange pain about her heart
that with each breath she thought a bit of her soul was
already flying away from her body. Moreover, she had been
suffering for some days from bitter remorse. Whether it
was due to her lack of strength for keen competition, or to
the fact that her rival, Yente, both younger and healthier
than she, had outbid her in the bargaining and outstripped
her to the garbage cans, she had earned hardly anything
for a week. She had even told Heiemke openly a few times:
“Nu, try to beg a few pennies today from the gentlemen.”
It was already late, and high time for her to undress
and slip under the featherbed, but the old grandmother
lay in her clothes, mumbling to herself for a long time and
keeping her eyes fixed on the face of the sleeping child.
Then she got up with difficulty, threw a ragged shawl over
her head and shoulders, and, unmindful of the pitchblack
darkness or the rain and wind, left her room.
Bent over, with one hand in front of her, her face beaten
by sheets of rain which soaked her tattered clothing as well,
she crossed winding courtyards and narrow alleys. Her feet
slipped constantly on the sharp cobblestones, or slid into
deep holes full of water. Proceeding very slowly, she finally
reached her destination, entered the dark vestibule of a
small, low house, and knocked on the door which she

found blindly.
“Who’s there?” called out a male voice from within.
Chaita quietly identified herself.
“Come in!”
The room which Chaita entered was quite large but
poorly furnished. At the far end, on a plain stool, before a
table on which was lying a large open folio, there sat a
man in a long worn coat reaching to the floor, his face
swarthy and almost wholly grown over with black hair. It
was clear that he had been deeply engrossed in his read-
ing, for when he lifted up his eyes to view the visitor, they
were vague, seemingly finding it difficult to tear themselves
away from the object of their concentration. But the dis-
turbance did not make him angry, and he asked in a kind
voice:
“What brings you here at such a late hour? Has some
misfortune occurred?”
“Ever since I left my parents’ home, misfortune has al-
ways dogged my footsteps,” whispered the woman.
“That is evidently the will of the Eternal,” he replied
somewhat sternly. “What is it you want?”
Chaita stooped, and seizing his swarthy hand, put it to
her lips. “Rebbe!” she said, “I came to entreat you in be-
half of my grandson, an innocent little child, who may be
very unfortunate if you will not take pity on him!”
Here she began to relate the cares and anxieties with
which the child’s future fate filled her. “Rebbe,” she con-
tinued, “I shall open my heart to you. I’ve committed a
great sin: I myself have taught the child to beg. . . Rebbe!
Let your eye not look down on me with anger. . . It’s hard
236 ELIZA ORZESZKO
for me to make a living. . . I am greatly afraid for that

child. He has already learned to beg, and that’s a bad hab-
it. . . It may eventually make a thief of him! Ai! Ai! Reb-
be! I don’t want that to happen! I’m very much afraid that
that will happen.” And she began to shake as if in a fever.
“Rebbe! I have more than one sin on my conscience! It
sometimes happened that I would sell a poor rag for a good
one, and buy a good rag as if it were worthless; and at
other times I would show my merchandise to the buyer
only from the side which was whole, and hide the tattered
side as best I could! Sometimes I would be very jealous,
nurse a hatred in my heart for Yente, that Yente who also
deals in rags; I would quarrel and fight with her over a
few pennies! You see, Rebbe, I’m opening my whole heart
to you, but pray, don’t look down with anger and scorn
for what I did—because. . . because it’s hard for me to
make a living! . . . But remember, Rebbe, that I don’t want
my Heiemke to have to sin as I have sinned! I’m very
much afraid of that! Take pity on a poor innocent child!
He is so pretty and so smart, though still so young! Take
my grandson, Rebbe, take him under your care as you
have already done with so many other poor children! Let
him study, put some knowledge into his head, so that when
my soul leaves my body, he won’t know the want of bread.
You’re good, Rebbe, you always pity poor people! Your
goodness, like your wisdom, is famous all over the world!
May I, too, find grace in your eyes and mercy in your
heart!”
The rabbi listened attentively and silently to the halting
plea of the old woman. He pondered for a while, and then
he said: “Be calm, woman! I’ll fulfill your request and take
care of your grandson! I’ll take him into my home, take
up a collection for him, send him to a Talmud Torah to study

the Pentateuch, and I myself will teach him!”
Chaita’s face, so full of pain and entreaty a moment
before, shone with joy and inexpressible gratitude. Then
she broke out into loud weeping.
“Why do you cry!” asked the rabbi.
“O, Rebbe! Forgive me these tears! They are silly tears,
but they come right from my heart to my eyes, and I can’t
stop them. When you take my Heiemke into your house,
I shall lose my only child. . . I have no one else in the
world, he is my only possession. . . He and I, we have so
far lived together like two drops of water which the wind
blows into the sand, and which are constantly looking at
each other. When you, Rebbe, will take my Heiemke into
your home, I shall be left without him like a socket with-
out an eye, like a body without a soul. Only allow me,
Rebbe, to come to your house often, and feast my old
eyes on him. . .”
The next day Reb Nohim called on Chaita, and, taking

the freightened and weeping Heiemke by the hand, led
him to his home.
Who is Reb Nohim?
Reb Nohim is widely known among the Jewish people
for his scholarship, piety and charity. He is an exceed-
ingly able Talmudist, and an indefatigably diligent student
of the profound Cabala. Some say that there is nothing
on earth or in heaven hidden from his eyes, but I cannot
vouch for this with certainty. Of his great charity, howev-
er, I have irrefutable proof, for I have seen with my own
eyes some of his deeds and their consequences. I have seen
him often gathering about him crowds of poor, ragged,
238 ELIZA ORZESZKO
hungry Jewish children. I have seen him give his arm for
support to helpless, humped old men. . . But this is no time
to speak of this. . . I shall mention only that phase of Reb
Nohim’s character which, in my opinion, is likely to exert
a strong influence on the education of Heiemke. Reb No-
him, aside from the Hebrew language and the common
Yiddish jargon, neither speaks nor understands a single
word of any other language. Wholly engrossed in religious
studies, especially in the exploration of the secrets of the
Cabala, which work, let me assure you, ladies and gentle-
men, is no trifle, he possibly had no time to learn the lan-
guage of the country which has been the home of his great-
grandparents for centuries. However, I suppose that be-
sides the lack of time there was probably another reason
for this ignorance of Reb Nohim. . .
Heiemke lives with Reb Nohim, attends the Talmud To-

rah, and in the evenings Reb Nohim frequently teaches
him himself. He holds long conversations with the child,
tells him many stories drawn from the holy books of Isra-
el, and that is no small sacrifice, for these conversations
consume precious time and compel him to tear himself
away from his beloved studies and prayers. But what won’t
Reb Nohim do when he sees that some poor creature needs
his help, or when he can arouse in some tiny heart a great
love for the Jewish people and their faith!
The other evening, Reb Nohim was teaching Heiemke.
They sat, facing each other, in the low, grey room: the
swarthy-faced man with the thick growth of beard leaned
his elbow on the table, and lifted his hand high, while the
child with his round, intelligent face sat up straight on a
high stool, his feet dangling, his interlocked hands resting
on the table, diligently paying attention, his large eyes fixed

on the master’s countenance.
Reb Nohim is a mystic. He believes in all the super-
natural beings of which his books tell, but his heart burns
with a specially tender love for certain angels. That
evening he told Heiemke about the angel Sandalphon,
who, standing at the gates of heaven, catches the prayers
soaring from the earth, changes them into flowers of
breathless beauty, and weaves garlands of them which he
places at the feet of Jehovah.
Heiemke listened with intense rapture to the story of
the angel of prayer, and, as if trying to see him, lifted his
eyes heavenwards. Suddenly there appeared in his imag-
ination the woman in white whom he had once seen on
the boulevard. He saw her kind face bending down to him,
her eyes shining like silver, and looking into her face he
entreated loudly and smilingly: “Give me a flower!”
Reb Nohim was greatly puzzled by the foreign words
spoken by the child. . .
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LEOPOLD VON SACHER-MASOCH
Austrian novelist, 1835–1895. The following short story, writ-

ten in French, is included in his Jewish Tales, a selection of twen-
ty-six of his character studies dealing with Jewish life in Central
and Eastern Europe, translated by Harriet Lieber Cohen, and
published in Chicago in 1894. It is included here with the kind
permission of A. C. McClurg & Co. of Chicago.
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CALEB JEKARIM
T WO lights vied with each other in a little attic—the

light of a half consumed candle, and that of the morn-
ing sun, the latter penetrating feebly through a shabby
green curtain. One resembled the last sigh of the dying, the
other the breath of a new-born child; one a spirit about to
take its flight, the other a soul awakening from sleep. The
fulvous, trembling light of the candle fell upon the time-
stained leaves of a large book open on the table, while the
rosy light of dawn caressed the pale forehead of a young
man who had sunk back in a moth-eaten arm-chair and
was so deeply buried in reverie that for him time was not.
His emaciated frame was enveloped in a threadbare
caftan; from beneath a small black velvet cap a mass of
brown, tangled, curly hair fell loosely over a face that had
evidently never known the joys of a happy springtime, a
face the lines of which spoke of suffering, resignation, and
tireless study. His great eyes shone with a glory of their
own—sombre eyes that gazed heavenward, eyes that had
detached themselves from earth, and were turned toward
another world—a world where the sight was not dimmed
by brilliant colors, where there was no sound, no
consciousness of space; a world where mind, freed from
matter, reigned solitary and sublime.
Sick and poor was Galeb Jekarim, this Jewish student
who had sat through the watches of the night poring over
his books, and yet he was happy. He had no mother, his
243
244 LEOPOLD VON SACHER-MASOCH
lips had never touched the perfumed lips of a woman, and

yet he had found a mistress more beautiful than any mor-
tal creature, more richly adorned than all the queens of
the East.
He was so wretchedly poor that he had absolutely noth-
ing he could call his own; even the Talmud before him,
the wellspring of all his delights, did not belong to him; but
when he had lost himself in its yellow, well-thumbed leaves,
the heaviness and oppression of this earth would fall away,
and, yielding to the ecstasy that possessed him, he would
be borne aloft toward radiant heights ever upward, up-
ward into the realms of light and splendor.
The smoke and traffic of cities; narrow, darksome val-
leys; broad, fertile plains; the limitless expanse of waters—
all, all would sink from view, would be lost in the lumi-
nous immensity in which his spirit floated.
He would forget everything—his misery, his solitude,
his yearning for love, the visions of bliss that fluttered to
him from the wings of night. He would forget his sorrows
and the slow fever that consumed him. One thing alone
he could not forget.
When the rays of the sun glided in through the green
curtain and gilded the dilapidated wall, it was as though
an invisible hand was writing in letters of fire these words
of the Spanish Jewish poet, Judah ben Halevi: “Never will
I forget thee, O Jerusalem!”
When the moon flooded the small chamber with its gen-
tle light, a silvered brush painted the same inspiring words
upon the blackened beams.
When day was dying, and the poor student sat, deep-
musing, in the cemetery, a soft wind would stir the cypress,
CALEB JEKARIM 245
and from their topmost boughs mysterious voices sang the

sweet refrain: “Never will I forget thee, O Jerusalem!”
He suffered from nostalgia, a wasting nostalgia. He
longed to set foot in the home of his fathers—a home that
he had never seen; a home that he knew of only from the
sacred writings. His longing to rest in the shadow of its
walls was greater than his love of country or of kin, was
greater than his poverty and destitution.
He was entirely dependent upon his sister for the means
of subsistence. She it was who paid for the bare chamber
he occupied, the scanty food that supplied his needs. There
was not a single being in the world from whom he could
have borrowed the money for such a journey; and yet
when day broke after this night of prayer and reverie his
resolution had been taken, his plans formed.
The sun rose higher in the heavens, filling the silent plain
with its warmth and light. Galeb rose, put on his hat, took
his stick, and went forth into the unknown—into the great
world where envy and hatred are rife, into the great illu-
sive world; for in that way only could he reach the land of
his longing, the promised land, Jerusalem!
Stealthily he crossed the garden, opened the little gate,
and struck into the narrow path that ran through fields
and waving meadows. At the edge of a wood he paused
before a thatched hut occupied by some Jewish laborers.
The men were at work in the fields, and Midotia, the
daughter of the owner of the wretched farm, was pastur-
ing the cows in the brush-wood. Seeing Galeb, she cracked
her whip, and the black eyes that met his were filled with
an expression of mingled compassion and mockery.
“I am glad to see that you have ventured out of your
shell,” she said with a light attempt at banter. “You are
studying too hard, Galeb, you are killing yourself with your
books.”
The young man shook his head, but remained where
he was. He knew that the girl was fond of him, and at the
sight of the bright, pretty creature he was conscious that
his heart beat more loudly, that the blood flowed more
quickly in his veins.
“You do not understand me, Midotia, I am impelled by
a sacred duty.”
“Oh, I know very well what you want. You want a wife,
such a wife as I would make. If you would let me I would
very soon teach you some common sense.”
For reply, Galeb gave a melancholy smile, shook his
head, and pursued his path through the woods. When he
had emerged from their shadow, the sun had pierced the
clouds and spilled his glory on the waves of mist that float-
ed slowly earthward. It was a sublime spectacle. The sol-
emn silence of Morning held sway over Nature. “The Lord
is here!” exclaimed Galeb, in a voice trembling with emo-
tion; then, raising his arms, and turning his pale face to-
ward the sun, he lifted his voice in prayer and thanksgiv-
ing to the Universal Father.
The pilgrim travelled afoot. The grand idea that domi-

nated him inspired courage and endurance such as his
weak frame had never known. The sun was his guide. He
knew that the sea lay beyond him, and beyond the sea,
Jerusalem. He crossed Galicia, Bukowina, and entered
Moldavia. Scorching sun-rays burned fiercely on his head,
rain and hail lashed his weary back, the lightning played
madly about him, uncharitableness and ill-nature met his
CALEB JEKARIM 247
timid approaches; he was insensible to all, his goal lay

before him, he plodded onward, ever onward.
At nightfall, if he were happy enough to discover a house
whose door-post was inscribed with a verse from the Bible,
he would beg a night’s lodging and a morsel of food, and on
such occasions the wanderer found open doors and open
hearts. Fortune, however, was not always ready to serve
him, and at times the greenwood would be his couch, the
sky his canopy, while again he would have to sleep in the
open field, lying close to a sheaf for warmth and protection.
In one of the narrow valleys of the Carpathians, he fell
into the hands of brigands. It did not occur to him to pro-
tect himself; he simply said: “I am a pilgrim on my way to
Jerusalem!”
The holy calm of the pale face touched the hearts of the
robbers.
“To Jerusalem!” repeated the captain.
Curiosity and veneration were depicted on the faces of
the lawless band.
The chief motioned Galeb to follow, and they stood in
front of a great cavern before which a fire crackled boister-
ously. The brigands offered their prisoner food and shel-
ter, and the next morning, putting him on the right path,
the chief said:
“When you reach Jerusalem, pray for me; there is but
one God above us all.”
The Danube was reached at last. A little farther jour-
neying and then—the sea! The sea! That vast watery plain
with its silver foam, its fair, glistening sails, and its shad-
owy coasts fading into the horizon.
Here our wanderer embarked on a Turkish vessel, pay-
ing his way by doing what work he could on board; but on
the second night of the passage, a storm arose, the boat

was wrecked and fell into the hands of a Tripolitan cor-
sair. The pirate thanked Allah for capturing such a prize
as our pious pilgrim, and took him straightway to the slave
market in one of the small towns of Asia Minor. There he
was purchased by a rich Mohammedan who made him
his gardener. A gardener! Poor Galeb Jekarim, the only
flowers he had seen grow were those that blossomed in
the verses of the Bible or in the legends of the Talmud.
A wild overgrown garden was it that Galeb was set to

cultivate: flowers grew in rank profusion, spreading cy-
press cast their gloomy shade, narcotic plants filled the
air with their heavy perfume, the tireless waves of the sea
beat against its banks.
The pilgrim worked faithfully at his task, and yet how
often would he gaze upon the silvery sea with all the pas-
sion of longing, and, as his eyes rested upon the distant,
white-winged boats, his lips would murmur with a sigh:
“Never will I forget thee, O Jerusalem!” How often would
burning tears course down his hollow cheeks as he
watched the moon rise in solemn splendor and float ma-
jestically over the vast expanse!
Frequently, at set of sun, a veiled woman enveloped in
a thick bernouse would take her evening walk in the gar-
den, and on these occasions her glances fell with a more
than kindly sympathy upon the slave who bowed pro-
foundly before his mistress. One cloudless moonlight night,
the unhappy captive was standing on the beach, his eyes
gazing heavenward, his lips moving in silent prayer. Sud-
denly a warm, soft hand was laid upon his shoulder, and
turning around, he saw the Turkish woman at his side.
CALEB JEKARIM 249
“Silence!” she murmured. “Answer my questions quick-

ly. You are unhappy. Have you left behind you a wife or a
sweetheart?”
Galeb shook his head.
“Why do you weep, then?”
“I was making a pilgrimage to Jerusalem when I was
taken prisoner by a pirate. I feel that the Angel of Death
is approaching, and I may not die until I have kissed the
Holy Land.”
The woman looked at him in blank amazement. Slowly
she threw back her veil and let her bernouse fall from her
shoulders.
“Am I not beautiful?” she asked.
“Yes, you are as beautiful as a dream.”
“Then give me your heart, for you have won mine.”
She clasped her jewelled arms about his neck, and gazed
lovingly into his eyes.
Galeb shuddered at her touch.
“Ask my life,” he said in a stifled voice, “but not my
heart. My whole soul has gone out to the Temple whose
spires reach heavenward and invoke Jehovah’s blessings
upon his People. My heart belongs to Jerusalem, and I
cannot love you.”
The woman bent her head, and a tear stole down her
pretty cheek; then, suddenly standing erect, she gathered
her veil about her, and moving on, signed the pilgrim to
follow. At a turn in the brushwood she pointed to a boat
swinging on its chain, and said under her breath: “Take
the oars; save yourself.”
Galeb threw himself on his knees, kissed her feet, and
then jumping into the boat pushed out into the stream.
For a long time he saw his fair deliverer on the shore,
waving her veil, then shadows supervened, a light fog

shrouded the moonlight, and soon the figure of the wom-
an, the waving cypress, the turrets of the house, all faded
into nothingness. He was alone on the sea, the studded
arch overhead, the friendliness of the night about him,
hope singing her song in his breast.
An English vessel took the fugitive on board and landed

him at Jaffa. Once more he continued his journey afoot,
along stony, sun-beaten paths, through cactus thickets,
across arid wastes of sand. Occasionally, he would see some
straggling village in the distance, and from time to time he
chanced upon a well where he might slake his thirst.
A slow fever consumed him, his strength was failing
him, but his enthusiasm never slackened; he journeyed
on. He dared not rest for any length of time for fear of
falling into the sleep that knows no waking. His indomita-
ble courage defied heat, hunger, thirst, exhaustion.
At night, his fever would summon spectres to his side;
but these spectres were arrayed in white, and they hov-
ered about him with their angel wings, and pointed out
the way to the Promised Land.
Awaking one morning from a restless sleep, he descried
in the distance the walls of the Sacred City.
Jerusalem!
Galeb Jekarim threw himself upon the ground, kissed
the holy soil, then rising in all reverence he hastily resumed
his journey. He was no longer conscious of fatigue, thirst,
or hunger. The morning sun cast a wondrous light upon
the gilded domes. The olive and cactus woods, the luxuri-
ant flowers, the waving grasses all seemed to bow and do
him homage as he passed. The fields were alive with beau-
CALEB JEKARIM 251
ty and color. The soft breath of heaven whispered sweetly

in his ear, the air, freighted with the perfume of roses and
myrrh, gently caressed his burning face.
Jerusalem!
He looked neither to the right nor to the left. He pressed
onward. Another hundred paces. At last! The holy wall,
the last remains of the mighty pile that has crumbled be-
neath man’s shortsightedness and Time’s ruthless march.
The pilgrim sank exhausted at its foot, but with a supreme
effort he lifted himself and grasped the stones for support.
A prayer escaped his lips. Was it not rather a cry of joy
from the depths of his soul?
Once more he sank to earth, this time to rise no more.
Before him stood the guardian angel who had led him
onward; an invisible choir sang in unison with his soul;
light was everywhere. Again he pressed the holy wall, and
with a sigh of rapturous content his lips parted and
breathed forth, “Jerusalem!”
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¯
ERNESTS BIRZNIEKS-UPITS
Lettish novelist, 1871–. From his childhood days on, the author
came in close contact with Jews, whom he portrays with sympathy
in his Diary. He treats with the same tenderness the hero of the
following sketch, translated into English by the editor of this anthol-
ogy, and published here with the kind permission of the author and
the formal approval of the Latvian Chamber of Letters and Arts.
See Jidn un Lotvisn, by H. Etkins, Riga, Logos, 1938, pp. 81–95.
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SESKINŠ
I DO NOT know what his real name was. In our

neighborhood he was called Seskin. In fact, all the
Jewish peddlers in the vicinity were known by nicknames,
as, for example, “The Cap,” “Smearer,” “Dusk.” Perhaps
he was dubbed so because of his eager quest for polecat*
furs. But there was no insinuation of malodor about this
appelation. Everybody called him so to his face, and even
he always referred to himself by that name: “Well, dear
friends, Seskin brought you kerchiefs of the latest style. . .
Surely you won’t let Seskin depart this time without a sale.
. . Seskin will stay here with you over night. . .”
I always greeted Seskin’s arrival with joy. There were
many pretty things in his pack, and I loved to look at them.
I was always in the very front when he laid his bundle on
the table, and I watched intently how he first opened the
little black case, put aside his prayer-shawl sack, and then
started to unfold small wooden boxes.
“It is useless, Seskin, for you to open your pack. We need
nothing,” one of the women would say, and then she her-
self would come over to view its contents. Seskin would
not let himself be discouraged or dissuaded. His task was
to bring and display his wares in each household, and for
the display he charged nothing. “Whoever needs something
will buy, and whoever doesn’t need anything won’t buy,”
was his retort, while he calmly unwrapped the paper and
*Seska means a pole-cat, fitchew.
255
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256 ERNESTS BIRZNIEKS-UPITS
put one little box next to the other. But Seskin’s exhibits
were never in vain: Trina suddenly developed an appetite
for hooks, Jeva, the maid, discovered a need for leaden
buttons, Lizzie’s daughter wanted yarn, and Kate the shep-
herdess a knitting-needle. And there was never an occa-
sion for much haggling: “Seskin’s hooks, Trina’s pennies;
let each keep his own.” Seskin would then calmly replace
the merchandise in his pack.
After tying the pack and preparing to leave, Seskin would
often take a seat at the table, and, without looking directly
at any one in particular, he would begin to talk, as if to
himself: Mrs. Druyvin wanted Seskin to stay for dinner,
but he did not stay. He said it was necessary to hurry on to
Lejeniekes, where people were waiting for him.
That meant that Seskin was hungry, and the housekeep-
er gave him some ready food, usually herring with bread,
and, sometimes, a drink of milk. Here, again, was some-
thing to behold. I knew that he would first wash his hands,
offer a benediction, take a bite of bread, and then sit down
to his meal—nevertheless, I could not take my eyes off
him all the while. He ate with much relish. His long gray
beard swayed in rapid rhythm. Before departing, he would
leave something for the food, a box of matches or the like.
I used to look forward to Seskin’s visits with special de-
light at the time of New Year. He would then bring new
calendars. Mother bought from him each year a copy of
Stephenhagen’s Concerning the Times, Old and New, and I
managed to read through also The Vidzeme Almanac before
nightfall. That was a real event. I usually perused it during
the afternoon, and at night, when all would gather after
work in the house, I reread it aloud for everybody, not
omitting the articles on “True Love,” and on “The Ruins
SESKINŠ 257
of Cesis Castle.” Seskin, too, listened attentively to the

very end, though the sack of straw was ready for him on
the stove-couch. I had to go through the whole almanac,
with all its announcements and weather forecasts, before
we thought of retiring.
Seskin would then wrap the almanac with the other cal-
endars in a paper and put it in his hat. I don’t know why,
but he always carried two or three calendars in his hat.
Perhaps it was the almanac that made us feel closer to
Seskin than to other Jews. When he spent a night at our
house and boiled potatoes as the sole ingredient of his sup-
per, I brought him kindling and assisted to the best of my
ability. For this he would promise to tell me about “Ivan
and the Gray Wolf.” Evidently that was the only tale he
knew. He would tell it over and over again, and each time
I would listen to it intently, though I knew it by heart and
corrected him whenever he omitted a detail. He also taught
me Hebrew script, dots and curved lines, written from right
to left. This continued until I went to school. Then I had
less leisure, and we would no longer occupy ourselves with
the story of “Ivan and the Gray Wolf,” or with Jewish let-
tering. Instead he would tell me about his sons, the oldest
of whom had left for America, while the rest studied at
home. The emigrant had written letters that he was doing
well, that his prospects were bright, and that the middle
son would follow him to the New World by spring. “The
trip,” Seskin explained, “lasts about a month—that’s how
far it is.”
The following spring, the middle son departed, and Se-
skin was left with his youngest son and two grown-up
daughters. Concerning the latter, he would sometimes
observe that it were better had they been sons: then he
¯
would indeed have no further worry. They, too, would now

be in America, or Australia. I did not understand him.
“Aren’t you at all sorry that your sons are so far away?”
“Sorry? A father is not sorry when his children fare
well. I pitied them as long as they were still at home. . .”
And his long, white beard shook with excitement when
he described how anxiously he used to look at his grown-
up sons and think of the future that awaited them here, a
future so much like their father’s past. He himself had to
put a heavy pack on his back while he was still a very
young lad, and thus, with a stick in his hand, stooping
under the burden, he had been trudging along ever since,
forever dodging dogs, dogs that drove him off with threat-
ening barks from the one house and dogs that encoun-
tered him with threatening barks at the other. His fare—
dry bread, the tail of a herring, and a pitcher of water. A
piece of butter and a drop of milk were rarities. His bed-
ding—a thick, black sack of straw, that had to be spread
out anew each night in a different place. Coming home
once in two weeks, he never brought with him as much as
half of what he really needed for his subsistence even on
the bare cobblestones of his town.
“We have nothing of our own growing here, nothing that
is worth even as little as a hair. Our nest is on a rock. We
must pay even for each bit of wood out of the miserable
pennies that we collect on our wanderings. Can I antici-
pate with confidence and serenity such a future for my
children?”
Conditions grew worse daily, he would say. More and
more stores were constantly opening up, and his sales
dropped accordingly. Nevertheless, thank God, he was
doing better than the rest. He had been endowed with a
SESKINŠ 259
quick mind, and he was therefore received better than the

others.
That was true. He was accorded better treatment in our
house. We would often manage somehow to get along with-
out an article, and wait for Seskin’s visit. No other Jewish
peddler was even mentioned.
From that day on Seskin assumed for me the appear-
ance of a very old and pathetic figure. His gray hair seemed
all the more gray, the old face all the more wrinkled, the
nose even more pointed, the brown eyes more deeply sunk-
en, the back altogether bent, almost curved, the shoulders
protruding in a droop. His long woolen coat did not fit,
and hung down to the ground in broad folds. The tops of
his boots slumped down, and stood off at his ankles.
In later years, Seskin spoke only about his sons in

America. That was to him a most wonderful land. He
knew each of his sons’ letters by heart. Much he did not
comprehend realistically, yet he insisted that it was exact-
ly as he imagined it. America is the largest and mightiest
country in the world. Its metropolis teems with millions
of human beings. In our capital, Jews are forbidden entry
even when sick and in need of medical care; but there, all
Jews live freely wherever they please, whether in the cap-
ital city or elsewhere. The buildings there are twenty sto-
ries high, and everybody rides home in a train. There are
no serfs there, only gentlemen; and all work. His sons earn
about twenty dollars a week, and have sent travelling ex-
penses for the older sister and a dowry for the younger
one, who has a fiancé in Warsaw.
I shared in Seskin’s joy, and I suggested that he would
¯
no longer need to wander about with his pack. His sons

would support him. But he would not hear of it. It would
be enough if they would assist the youngest one to go to
America. Let them take care of themselves. It was time
that they should get married and think about their own
future. He and his wife needed very little and he would
manage that. From the children he would accept nothing
as long as he was able to earn something for himself.
In a couple of years Seskin remained alone with his wife.
All his children had left the nest, and had flown away: four
to America, and one to Warsaw. Old Seskin now walked
quite slowly, with not so heavy a pack, without rushing.
He walked a little, supported the bundle on his unpainted
cane, straightened out his back, rested a while, and pro-
ceeded further. Coming into a house, he displayed his wares,
as was his wont, but did not hurry to depart. He waited for
some one to ask about America and about his sons; and
when nobody inquired, he volunteered the information:
“In America people live wherever they please. My sons
are in the very capital, and each one of them earns about
twenty dollars a week.” He was proud of his sons, and he
now had a higher regard for himself. He did not take it
amiss when he was called Seskin, but he no longer re-
ferred to himself by that nickname. Now, if anybody hag-
gled about the price, he said: “My wares, your money; let
each keep his own.”
I was about to be confirmed. I attended the last winter

of school.
It was during the Lenten season. We made a thorough
review of our sacred studies, for all of us were to appear
for an examination at the pastor’s house during the last
SESKINŠ 261
week before Easter. To be prepared all the more adequate-

ly, I remained at school altogether for an entire week. On
one Monday, however, I went home after school, for all
the men had departed for several days in connection with
their work, and I, as the only male, had to tend the colts
and to assist the women when necessary. It snowed very
heavily all that day, and I was up to my knees in the snow
as I trudged along toward home. The whole plain was cov-
ered with the white, soft blanket, not a trace of anything
else being visible. The trees were sparkling white, the
branches drooping under their thick load. The uneven
house-tops seemed to have been levelled out. The chim-
neys were completely buried beneath the snow, and blue
streaks of smoke stuck out of them like congealed threads.
Two narrow crooked lanes, one leading to the store and
the other to the cattle-barn, indicated that people had not
slept there for nearly three centuries. The sparrows ut-
tered a chirp, then nestled close to each other in the straw
under the roof. They anticipated the frost of the approach-
ing night. The cold awakened me that night in my sleep.
A blizzard was coming from the north, the wind tearing
at the shutters and beating at the dampers of the ovens. I
pulled the fur-piece over my shoulders and fell asleep again.
In the morning I found the window looking out into the
courtyard half immersed in the snow. In front of all the
buildings were large mounds. The spot of the pump was
noticeable only by the bent pole that protruded from it. Of
the shrubs by the pond there was not a sign left to view.
The task of clearing the doorways, paths and hedges
dragged on from early morning till noon, and there was
no question of going to school that day. In the afternoon,
notice came that one male member of each household must
¯
appear early the next morning near the old inn with a shov-
el to clear the road. Thus I was to miss school the next
day too, and to dig the snow if the men should happen not
to return home from their work that evening. The pros-
pect did not please me at all, not because the work might
be too hard, nor because that would involve absence from
school, but because I had never yet taken part in any public
function of the community. I would not know how to be-
have. There would be many strangers, perhaps Jurke*
Silin, and he would make fun of me, as he always made
fun of everybody.
Jurke Silin was a grown-up young man, to whom there
still clung the title Jurke, which was bestowed upon him
when he was a mere youngster but already known
throughout the district as a particularly clever harmonica
player. It was because of this talent that everybody en-
joyed being near him, though otherwise people detested
him for his sharp tongue.
The men did not return home, and very early on
Wednesday morning, I was at the old inn with my shovel
in hand. More than twenty people gathered, mostly youths,
but there were a few middle-aged men, and even a couple
of old men. The older ones were left to work right near
the tavern, and fourteen of us, the young ones, or “green
ones,” as the leader called us, he took along to dig at the
edge of the forest. The snow was still soft and unsettled,
so that it was easy to shovel, and the work proceeded brisk-
ly. Besides, the leader knew how to bolster our energy,
bracing up now the one now the other. At midday, there
was only about a verst left to shovel.
* Jurke means boor.

SESKINŠ 263
At noon we gathered in the old inn for a bite. Some ate

dry things, a few ordered beer. We all sat about the table
in the large room, eating and chattering aloud, Jurke Sil-
in talking more than all the rest to some of the young work-
ers with whom he had become quite chummy during the
morning. When we were about through, one of them called
out: “How about us green ones ordering some half dozen
bottles of beer?” The majority agreed, but I was annoyed,
first of all, because I had never drunk in a tavern, second-
ly, because I did not have a penny with me. While the sub-
ject was still under discussion, I tied up my breadsack
quietly, closed the knife, left the table, and walked over to
the window.
“Lead not my children astray on the path of wicked-
ness,” I heard someone proclaim. Unwittingly I turned,
for it reminded me strongly of my teacher’s words, and I
saw Jurke standing, his hand uplifted, and his finger point-
ing at me. It was evident he was mimicking the teacher
and addressing me. I blushed, and that only increased the
laughter. My eyes became filled with tears, so that I could
see nothing. Fortunately, someone left the room just then,
and I followed him automatically. I heard only a few more
comments about the schoolboy.
Outside, I calmed down quickly, though my heart ached

for a long time. Why should they ridicule the teacher? Were
they not all his pupils recently, and did he not wish and do
them well? They might laugh at me, but why slur him?
I brooded over the matter, and I chided myself for acting
improperly. Indeed, I should not have sneaked out of the
place; I should have voiced my objection plainly, stating
¯
that I did not care to take part in the proposed action, that
I had no money. Then they would have had no reason to
mock me. As soon as Jurke Silin had spoken, I should
have upbraided him openly, protesting that he had no right
to hold a teacher up to scorn. Let him confine his ridicule
to me, if I deserved it. These thoughts kept on revolving
in my mind, and I was greatly dissatisfied with myself.
I was standing with the older men in the afternoon when
the green youths passed on their way toward their assigned
location, and I trailed along in the rear. The leader re-
mained at the tavern, admonished us to shovel vigorous-
ly, and promised to join us soon.
We spread out in a long row and started to shovel. The
field alongside of the road was quite elevated and much
snow accumulated on it. The heaped up snow on the edge
became a veritable bulwark, and the cleared road stretched
like a gigantic garden-bed over the white broad plain. Traf-
fic began to appear. A neighboring peasant passed by in a
wagon from the side of the old tavern. From the edge of
the forest came the courier of the district, and went to the
inn. A moment later another figure emerged from the side
of the forest, walking slowly. From behind the piles of snow
one could see only the pedestrian’s gray head gradually
moving forward. The man approached the other end of
the line of shovelers, and then I heard a sudden outburst
of laughter, resounding sneers, and a few voices bellow-
ing repeatedly: “Lei-be, Lei-be!”
I grasped the situation at once. I had heard that Jurke
Silin and his companions hooted like that whenever they
saw a Jew. This time most of them yelled in unison. The
head of the passer-by, the victim of these jeers and gibes,
SESKINŠ 265
moved on slowly behind the snow, without hurrying but

also without halting. “Lei-be, Lei-be!” the taunts mingled
in the uproar. Now I saw the pedestrian quite clearly. It
was Seskin, stooping, with a long cane in his gloved hand,
the skirts of his coat tucked under the belt, crawling step
by step over the melted snow without looking to either
side. His mittened left hand hung down from the shoulder
to the ground, and moving slowly helped him little by little
to steer his way forward. The cracked legs of his old boots
flapped at each step. . .
Such a sight of him must have evoked only sympathy
and pity in the bosom of every one individually, but the
individual’s sentiments were quite dulled in the mass, and
over the still, snowy plain resounded the cry, “Seskin,
Seskin!”
My shovel struck my foot, but I felt no pain. I was burn-
ing up with shame and inner distress. He, who through-
out his long life had never harmed us by a hair, who had
done me only good, should find me among the scoffers,
the tormentors.
He walked through the workers’ camp as through a gaunt-
let, not like a criminal but like a martyr. His wrinkled old
face was pallid, his eyes were cast down but they saw all.
The long gray beard hung over his breast, and trembled at
each footstep. He passed by very close to me, but did not
look at me. He showed no sign of having observed me. And
slowly, step by step, he wandered away on the cleared road.
Only after passing a considerable distance did he halt for a
brief while; he leaned the pack on the long stick, straight-
ened his back, rested, and then, without looking back, he
walked on. His composure gave him the air of a hero who
¯
towers high above the masses and to whom the disdain of

the mob does not cling. And I, I seemed to shrink in my
own eyes and appear so miserably small, so pitiably in-
ane. I did not even have the courage to tell my comrades
how indecent and vile their conduct was. Throwing the
shovel over my shoulder, I left my work and went home.
All through the winter I could not remove from my mind
the thought of Seskin and the snow-diggers. The scene
would reappear before my eyes frequently, each time pro-
ducing a blush on my face. Once I saw Seskin in a dream:
He had large gray wings, he climbed up on high wooden
stilts, and he began to soar. His hollow eyes gazed mo-
tionlessly on the high snow over the field, and I knew that
he was gazing at his sons in America, that he saw them
and longed to come near them. He lifted himself on his
wings, but we, the entire mob together with Jurke Silin,
held him back by the long unpainted stick which he would
not let go, and we pulled him back into the snow. I was
aware even in my dream that we were doing him wrong,
yet I helped in holding the stick, though my heart ached.
I did not see Seskin the entire winter, but I had an in-
tense desire to meet him, to beg his pardon, to tell him
something pleasant, to show him my sympathy. I was ab-
solutely convinced that I would see him before confirma-
tion; but the day of confirmation came and went, and Se-
skin did not appear.
On the Saturday before Easter I took a trip to town
with my father. He left on a train, and I remained there
all day to await his return the same evening. I passed my
time promenading on the streets, and I found myself be-
fore the synagogue. Here it occurred to me that Seskin
might be attending services. . .
SESKINŠ 267
I paced up and down the sidewalk opposite the Jewish

house of study, waiting for the worshipers to depart, and
indeed, after most of them had left, Seskin emerged. But
it was not the Seskin that I had seen the last time. A new
black hat adorned his head, and he was dressed in a very
long black gaberdine, white socks and new shoes. He ap-
peared to me so much more venerable and more cheerful.
I paused and involuntarily stared at him. He recognized
me at once and seemed greatly pleased at the meeting. I
accepted his invitation to come home with him, where he
promised to show me the latest photographs of his sons
and their letters.
At his residence, we were received by an old, stout, neatly
dressed woman with a glossy black wig over her head. I
guessed she was his wife. The house was not big, but clean
and pleasantly furnished. On the table near the window
were two shining brass candlesticks with glass ornaments,
and between the candlesticks lay several letters bearing
foreign stamps. It was evident that these documents were
there that day for public display. Seskin went away for a
moment to the other end of the dwelling, behind the cur-
tain, and she, knowing exactly the purpose of my visit, at
once took some photographs from the envelopes and
showed them to me. This is the older one, and this is his
wife; this is the middle son, and this is his fiancée; and here
is the youngest, who left but recently, still a youngster.
Seskin returned presently. He opened several letters, writ-
ten in Yiddish script, and as I could not read these, he re-
counted their contents, that there in America they have twen-
ty-story houses, and that everybody rides home in a train.
His sons had sent him money before Passover and had prom-
ised to send a regular monthly allowance of fifteen, twenty
¯
dollars. They did not want him to wander about any more.
He did not fail to add also that Jews live there wherever
they please, even in the capital. Happiness radiated from
the faces of the old couple.
That day, too, I did not muster the courage to refer to
that which had happened at the shoveling of the snow.
STEPHEN VINCENT BENÉT
American poet and novelist, 1898–. The following story, which

appeared in the Saturday Evening Post, May 14, 1938, is repro-
duced here, with the author’s kind permission, from Tales Before
Midnight, published by Farrar & Rinehart, Inc., and copyright-
ed, 1935, 1937, 1938, 1939, by Stephen Vincent Benét.
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JACOB AND THE INDIANS
I T GOES back to the early days—may God profit all

who lived then—and the ancestors.
Well, America, you understand, in those days was dif-
ferent. It was a nice place, but you wouldn’t believe it if
you saw it today. Without busses, without trains, without
states, without Presidents, nothing!
With nothing but colonies and Indians and wild woods
all over the country and wild animals to live in the wild
woods. Imagine such a place! In these days you children
don’t even think about it; you read about it in schoolbooks,
but what is that? And I put in a call to my daughter, in
California, and in three minutes I am saying “Hello, Ro-
sie,” and there is Rosie and she is telling me about the
weather, as if I wanted to know! But things were not al-
ways that way. I remember my own days, and they were
different. And in the time of my grandfathers grandfather,
they were different still. Listen to the story.
My grandfathers grandfather was Jacob Stein, and he
came from Rettelsheim, in Germany. To Philadelphia he
came, an orphan in a sailing ship, but not a common man.
He had learning—he had been to the heder—he could have
been a scholar among the scholars. Well, that is the way
things happen in this bad world. There was a plague and
a new grand duke—things are always so. He would say
little of it afterward—they had left his teeth in his mouth,
but he would say little of it. He did not have to say—we
271
272 STEPHEN VINCENT BENÉT
are children of the Dispersion—we know a black day when

it comes.
Yet imagine—a young man with fine dreams and learn-
ing, a scholar with a pale face and narrow shoulders, set
down in those early days in such a new country. Well, he
must work, and he did. It was very fine, his learning, but
it did not fill his mouth. He must carry a pack on his back
and go from door to door with it. That was no disgrace; it
was so that many began. But it was not expounding the
Law, and at first he was very homesick. He would sit in
his room at night, with the one candle, and read the preach-
er Koheleth, till the bitterness of the preacher rose in his
mouth. Myself, I am not sure that Koheleth was a great
preacher, but if he had had a good wife he would have
been a more cheerful man. They had too many wives in
those old days—it confused them. But Jacob was young.
As for the new country where he had come, it was to
him a place of exile, large and frightening. He was glad to
be out of the ship, but, at first, that was all. And when he
saw his first real Indian in the street—well, that was a
day! But the Indian, a tame one, bought a ribbon from
him by signs, and after that he felt better. Nevertheless, it
seemed to him at times that the straps of the pack cut into
his very soul, and he longed for the smell of the heder and
the quiet streets of Rettelsheim and the good smoked goose-
breast pious housewives keep for the scholar. But there is
no going back—there is never any going back.
All the same, he was a polite young man, and hard-
working. And soon he had a stroke of luck—or at first it
seemed so. It was from Simon Ettelsohn that he got the
trinkets for his pack, and one day he found Simon Ettel-
sohn arguing a point of the Law with a friend, for Simon
JACOB AND THE INDIANS 273
was a pious man and well thought of in the Congregation

Mikveh Israel. Our grandfather’s grandfather stood by
very modestly at first—he had come to replenish his pack
and Simon was his employer. But finally his heart moved
within him, for both men were wrong, and he spoke and
told them where they erred. For half an hour he spoke,
with his pack still upon his shoulders, and never has a
text been expounded with more complexity, not even by
the great Reb Samuel. Till, in the end, Simon Ettelsohn
threw up his hands and called him a young David and a
candle of learning. Also, he allowed him a more profita-
ble route of trade. But, best of all, he invited young Jacob
to his house, and there Jacob ate well for the first time
since he had come to Philadelphia. Also he laid eyes upon
Miriam Ettelsohn for the first time, and she was Simon’s
youngest daughter and a rose of Zion.
And after that, things went better for Jacob, for the pro-
tection of the strong is like a rock and a well. But yet things
did not go altogether as he wished. For, at first, Simon
Ettelsohn made much of him, and there was stuffed fish
and raisin wine for the young scholar, though he was a
peddler. But there is a look in a man’s eyes that says “H’m?
Son-in-law?” and that look Jacob did not see. He was
modest—he did not expect to win the maiden overnight,
though he longed for her. But gradually it was borne in
upon him what he was in the Ettelsohn house—a young
scholar to be shown before Simon’s friends, but a scholar
whose learning did not fill his mouth. He did not blame
Simon for it, but it was not what he had intended. He be-
gan to wonder if he would ever get on in the world at all,
and that is not good for any man.
Nevertheless, he could have borne it, and the aches and
pains of his love, had it not been for Meyer Kappelhuist.

Now there was a pushing man! I speak no ill of anyone,
not even of your Aunt Cora, and she can keep the De
Groot silver if she finds it in her heart to do so; who lies
down in the straw with a dog, gets up with fleas. But this
Meyer Kappelhuist! A big, red-faced fellow from Holland
with shoulders the size of a barn door and red hair on the
backs of his hands. A big mouth for eating and drinking
and telling schnorrer stories—and he talked about the
Kappelhuists, in Holland, till you’d think they were made
of gold. The crane says, “I am really a peacock—at least
on my mother’s side.” And yet, a thriving man—that could
not be denied. He had started with a pack, like our grand-
father’s grandfather, and now he was trading with the In-
dians and making money hand over fist. It seemed to Jacob
that he could never go to the Ettelsohn house without
meeting Meyer and hearing about those Indians. And it
dried the words in Jacob’s mouth and made his heart burn.
For, no sooner would our grandfathers grandfather be-
gin to expound a text or a proverb than he would see Meyer
Kappelhuist looking at the maiden. And when Jacob had
finished his expounding, and there should have been a si-
lence, Meyer Kappelhuist would take it upon himself to
thank him, but always in a tone that said: “The Law is
the Law and the Prophets are the Prophets, but prime
beaver is also prime beaver, my little scholar!” It took the
pleasure from Jacob’s learning and the joy of the maiden
from his heart. Then he would sit silent and burning, while
Meyer told a great tale of Indians, slapping his hands on
his knees. And in the end he was always careful to ask
Jacob how many needles and pins he had sold that day;
and when Jacob told him, he would smile and say very
smoothly that all things had small beginnings, till the maid-
en herself could not keep from a little smile. Then, desper-
ately, Jacob would rack his brains for more interesting
matter. He would tell of the Wars of the Maccabees and
the glory of the Temple. But even as he told them, he felt
they were far away. Whereas Meyer and his accursed In-
dians were there, and the maiden’s eyes shone at his words.
Finally he took his courage in both hands and went to
Simon Ettelsohn. It took much for him to do it, for he had
not been brought up to strive with men, but with words.
But it seemed to him now that everywhere he went he
heard of nothing but Meyer Kappelhuist and his trading
with the Indians, till he thought it would drive him mad.
So he went to Simon Ettelsohn in his shop.
“I am weary of this narrow trading in pins and nee-
dles,” he said, without more words.
Simon Ettelsohn looked at him keenly; for while he was
an ambitious man, he was kindly as well.
“Nu,” he said. “A nice little trade you have and the peo-
ple like you. I myself started in with less. What would you
have more?”
“I would have much more,” said our grandfathers
grandfather stiffly. “I would have a wife and a home in
this new country. But how shall I keep a wife? On nee-
dles and pins?”
“Nu, it has been done,” said Simon Ettelsohn, smiling a
little. “You are a good boy, Jacob, and we take an interest
in you. Now, if it is a question of marriage, there are many
worthy maidens. Asher Levy, the baker, has a daughter.
It is true that she squints a little, but her heart is of gold.”
He folded his hands and smiled.
“It is not of Asher Levy’s daughter I am thinking,” said

Jacob, taken aback. Simon Ettelsohn nodded his head and
his face grew grave.
“Nu, Jacob,” he said, “I see what is in your heart. Well,
you are a good boy, Jacob, and a fine scholar. And if it
were in the old country, I am not saying. But here, I have
one daughter married to a Seixas and one to a Da Silva.
You must see that makes a difference.” And he smiled the
smile of a man well pleased with his world.
“And if I were such a one as Meyer Kappelhuist?” said
Jacob bitterly.
“Now—well, that is a little different,” said Simon Ettel-
sohn sensibly. “For Meyer trades with the Indians. It is
true, he is a little rough. But he will die a rich man.”
“I will trade with the Indians too,” said Jacob, and
trembled.
Simon Ettelsohn looked at him as if he had gone out of
his mind. He looked at his narrow shoulders and his schol-
ars hands.
“Now, Jacob,” he said soothingly, “do not be foolish. A
scholar you are, and learned, not an Indian trader. Per-
haps in a store you would do better. I can speak to Aaron
Copras. And sooner or later we will find you a nice maid-
en. But to trade with Indians—well, that takes a different
sort of man. Leave that to Meyer Kappelhuist.”
“And your daughter, that rose of Sharon? Shall I leave
her, too, to Meyer Kappelhuist?” cried Jacob.
Simon Ettelsohn looked uncomfortable.
“Nu, Jacob,” he said. “Well, it is not settled, of course.
But—”
“I will go forth against him as David went against Goli-
ath,” said our grandfathers grandfather wildly. “I will go
forth into the wilderness. And God should judge the bet-
ter man!”
Then he flung his pack on the floor and strode from the
shop. Simon Ettelsohn called out after him, but he did not
stop for that. Nor was it in his heart to go and seek the
maiden. Instead, when he was in the street, he counted
the money he had. It was not much. He had meant to buy
his trading goods on credit from Simon Ettelsohn, but now
he could not do that. He stood in the sunlit street of Phila-
delphia like a man bereft of hope.
Nevertheless, he was stubborn—though how stubborn
he did not yet know. And though he was bereft of hope,
he found his feet taking him to the house of Raphael
Sanchez.
Now, Raphael Sanchez could have bought and sold Si-
mon Ettelsohn twice over. An arrogant old man he was,
with fierce black eyes and a beard that was whiter than
snow. He lived apart in his big house, with his grand-
daughter, and men said he was learned, but also very dis-
dainful, and that to him a Jew was not a Jew who did not
come of the pure Sephardic strain.
Jacob had seen him, in the Congregation Mikveh Isra-
el, and to Jacob he had looked like an eagle, and fierce as
an eagle. Yet now, in his need, he found himself knocking
at that man’s door.
It was Raphael Sanchez himself who opened. “And
what is for sale today, peddler?” he said, looking scornful-
ly at Jacob’s jacket where the pack straps had worn it.
“A scholar of the Law is for sale,” said Jacob in his
bitterness, and he did not speak in the tongue he had
learned in this country but in Hebrew.
The old man stared at him a moment.
“Now am I rebuked,” he said. “For you have the tongue.

Enter, my guest,” and Jacob touched the scroll by the door-
post and went in.
They shared the noon meal at Raphael Sanchez’s ta-
ble. It was made of dark, glowing mahogany and the light
sank into it as sunlight sinks into a pool. There were many
precious things in that room, but Jacob had no eyes for
them. When the meal was over and the blessing said, he
opened his heart and spoke, and Raphel Sanchez listened,
stroking his beard with one hand. When the young man
had finished, he spoke.
“So, scholar,” he said, though mildly, “you have crossed
an ocean that you might live and not die, and yet all you
see is a girl’s face.”
“Did not Jacob serve seven years for Rachel?” said our
grandfathers grandfather.
“Twice seven, scholar,” said Raphael Sanchez dryly,
“But that was in the blessed days.” He stroked his beard
again. “Do you know why I came to this country?” he
said.
“No,” said Jacob Stein.
“It was not for the trading,” said Raphael Sanchez. “My
house has lent money to kings. A little fish, a few furs—
what are they to my house? No, it was for the promise—
the promise of Penn—that this land should be an habita-
tion and a refuge, not only for Gentiles. Well, we know
Christian promises. But so far, it has been kept. Are you
spat upon in the street here, scholar of the Law?”
“No,” said Jacob. “They call me Jew, now and then.
But the Friends, though Gentiles, are kind.”
“It is not so in all countries,” said Raphael Sanchez,
with a terrible smile.
“No,” said Jacob quietly, “it is not.”

The old man nodded. “Yes, one does not forget that,”
he said. “The spittle wipes off the cloth, but one does not
forget. One does not forget the persecutor or the perse-
cuted. That is why they think me mad, in the Congrega-
tion Mikveh Israel, when I speak what is in my mind. For,
look you”—and he pulled a map from the drawer—“here
is what we know of these colonies, and here and here our
people make a new beginning, in another air. But here is
New France—see it?—and down the great river come the
French traders with their Indians.”
“Well?” said Jacob in puzzlement.
“Well?” said Raphael Sanchez. “Are you blind? I do
not trust the King of France—the king before him drove
out the Huguenots, and who knows what he may do? And
if they hold the great rivers against us, we shall never go
westward.”
“We?” said Jacob in bewilderment.
“We,” said Raphael Sanchez. He struck his hand on
the map. “Oh, they cannot see it in Europe—not even their
lords in parliament and their ministers of state,” he said.
“They think this is a mine, to be worked as the Spaniards
worked Potosi, but it is not a mine. It is something begin-
ning to live, and it is faceless and nameless yet. But it is
our lot to be part of it—remember that in the wilderness,
my young scholar of the Law. You think you are going
there for a girl’s face, and that is well enough. But you
may find something there you did not expect to find.”
He paused and his eyes had a different look.
“You see, it is the trader first,” he said. “Always the
trader, before the settled man. The Gentiles will forget that,
and some of our own folk too. But one pays for the Land
of Canaan; one pays in blood and sweat.”
Then he told Jacob what he would do for him and dis-
missed him, and Jacob went home to his room with his
head buzzing strangely. For at times it seemed to him that
the Congregation Mikveh Israel was right in thinking
Raphael Sanchez half mad. And at other times it seemed
to him that the old man’s words were a veil, and behind
them moved and stirred some huge and unguessed shape.
But chiefly he thought of the rosy cheeks of Miriam Ettel-
sohn.
It was with the Scotchman, McCampbell, that Jacob
made his first trading journey. A strange man was
McCampbell, with grim features and cold blue eyes, but
strong and kindly though silent, except when he talked of
the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel. For it was his contention
that they were the Indians beyond the Western Mountains,
and on this subject he would talk endlessly.
Indeed, they had much profitable conversation,
McCampbell quoting the doctrines of a rabbi called John
Calvin, and our grandfather’s grandfather replying with
Talmud and Torah till McCampbell would almost weep that
such a honey-mouthed scholar should be destined to eter-
nal damnation. Yet, he did not treat our grandfather’s grand-
father as one destined to eternal damnation, but as a man,
and he, too, spoke of cities of refuge as a man speaks of
realities, for his people had also been persecuted.
First they left the city behind them, and then the out-
lying towns and, soon enough, they were in the wilder-
ness. It was very strange to Jacob Stein. At first he would
wake at night and lie awake listening, while his heart
pounded, and each rustle in the forest was the step of a
wild Indian, and each screech of an owl in the forest, the

whoop before an attack. But gradually this passed. He
began to notice how silently the big man, McCampbell,
moved in the woods; he began to imitate him. He began to
learn many things that even a scholar of the Law, for all
his wisdom, does not know—the girthing of a pack-saddle
and the making of fires, the look of dawn in the forest and
the look of evening. It was all very new to him, and some-
times he thought he would die of it, for his flesh weak-
ened. Yet always he kept on.
When he saw his first Indians—in the woods, not in the
town—his knees knocked together. They were there as he
had dreamt of them in dreams, and he thought of the spirit,
Agrath bath Mahlath, and her seventy-eight dancing de-
mons, for they were painted and in skins. But he could not
let his knees knock together before heathens and a Gen-
tile, and the first fear passed. Then he found they were grave
men, very ceremonious and silent at first, and then, when
the silence had been broken, full of curiosity. They knew
McCampbell, but him they did not know, and they discussed
him and his garments with the frankness of children, till
Jacob felt naked before them, and yet not afraid. One of
them pointed to the bag that hung at Jacob’s neck—the bag
in which, for safety’s sake, he carried his phylacteries—
then McCampbell said something and the brown hand
dropped quickly, but there was a buzz of talk.
Later on, McCampbell explained to him that they, too,
wore little bags of deerskin and inside them sacred ob-
jects—and they thought, seeing his, that he must be a per-
son of some note. It made him wonder. It made him won-
der more to eat deer meat with them, by a fire.
It was a green world and a dark one that he had fallen
in—dark with the shadow of the forest, green with its

green. Through it ran trails and paths that were not yet
roads or highways—that did not have the dust and smell
of the cities of men, but another scent, another look. These
paths Jacob noted carefully, making a map, for that was
one of the instructions of Raphael Sanchez. It seemed a
great labor and difficult and for no purpose; yet, as he had
promised, so he did. And as they sank deeper and deeper
into the depths of the forest, and he saw pleasant streams
and wide glades, untenanted but by the deer, strange
thoughts came over him. It seemed to him that the Ger-
many he had left was very small and crowded together; it
seemed to him that he had not known there was so much
width to the world.
Now and then he would dream back—dream back to
the quiet fields around Rettelsheim and the red-brick hous-
es of Philadelphia, to the stuffed fish and the raisin wine,
the chanting in the heder and the white twisted loaves of
calm Sabbath, under the white cloth. They would seem
very close for the moment, then they would seem very far
away. He was eating deer’s meat in a forest and sleeping
beside embers in the open night. It was so that Israel must
have slept in the wilderness. He had not thought of it as
so, but it was so.
Now and then he would look at his hands—they seemed
tougher and very brown, as if they did not belong to him
any more. Now and then he would catch a glimpse of his
own face, as he drank at a stream. He had a beard, but it
was not the beard of a scholar—it was wild and black.
Moreover, he was dressed in skins, now; it seemed strange
to be dressed in skins at first, and then not strange.
Now all this time, when he went to sleep at night, he
would think of Miriam Ettelsohn. But, queerly enough,

the harder he tried to summon up her face in his thoughts,
the vaguer it became.
He lost track of time—there was only his map and the
trading and the journey. Now it seemed to him that they
should surely turn back, for their packs were full. He
spoke of it to McCampbell, but McCampbell shook his
head. There was a light in the Scotchman’s eyes now—a
light that seemed strange to our grandfathers grandfa-
ther—and he would pray long at night, sometimes too
loudly. So they came to the banks of the great river, brown
and great, and saw it, and the country beyond it, like a
view of the Jordan. There was no end to that country—
it stretched to the limits of the sky and Jacob saw it with
his eyes. He was almost afraid at first, and then he was
not afraid.
It was there that the strong man, McCampbell, fell sick,
and there that he died and was buried. Jacob buried him
on a bluff overlooking the river and faced the grave to the
west. In his death-sickness, McCampbell raved of the Ten
Lost Tribes again and swore they were just across the river
and he would go to them. It took all Jacob’s strength to
hold him—if it had been at the beginning of the journey,
he would not have had the strength. Then he turned back,
for he, too, had seen a Promised Land, not for his seed
only, but for nations yet to come.
Nevertheless, he was taken by the Shawnees, in a sea-
son of bitter cold, with his last horse dead. At first, when
misfortune began to fall upon him, he had wept for the loss
of the horses and the good beaver. But when the Shawnees
took him, he no longer wept; for it seemed to him that he
was no longer himself, but a man he did not know.
He was not concerned when they tied him to the stake

and piled the wood around him, for it seemed to him still
that it must be happening to another man. Nevertheless
he prayed, as was fitting, chanting loudly; for Zion, in the
wilderness he prayed. He could smell the smell of the hed-
er and hear the voices that he knew—Reb Moses and Reb
Nathan, and through them the curoius voice of Raphael
Sanchez, speaking in riddles. Then the smoke took him
and he coughed. His throat was hot. He called for drink,
and though they could not understand his words, all men
know the sign of thirst, and they brought him a bowl, filled.
He put it to his lips eagerly and drank, but the stuff in the
bowl was scorching hot and burned his mouth. Very an-
gry then was our grandfather’s grandfather, and without
so much as a cry he took the bowl in both hands and flung
it straight in the face of the man who had brought it, scald-
ing him. Then there was a cry and a murmur from the
Shawnees and, after some moments, he felt himself un-
bound and knew that he lived.
It was flinging the bowl at the man while yet he stood at
the stake that saved him, for there is an etiquette about
such matters. One does not burn a madman, among the
Indians; and to the Shawnees, Jacob’s flinging the bowl
proved that he was mad, for a sane man would not have
done so. Or so it was explained to him later, though he
was never quite sure that they had not been playing cat-
and-mouse with him, to test him. Also they were much
concerned by his chanting his death-song in an unknown
tongue and by the phylacteries that he had taken from its
bag and bound upon brow and arm for his death hour, for
these they thought strong medicine and uncertain. But in
any case, they released him, though they would not give
him back his beaver, and that winter he passed in the lodg-
es of the Shawnees, treated sometimes like a guest, but
always on the edge of peril. For he was strange to them,
and they could not quite make up their minds about him,
though the man with the scalded face had his own opin-
ion, as Jacob could see.
Yet when the winter was milder and the hunting better
than it had been in some seasons, it was he who got the
credit for it, and the holy phylacteries also; and by the end
of the winter, he was talking to them of trade, though dif-
fidently at first. Ah, our grandfather’s grandfather, selig,
what woes he had! And yet it was not all woe, for he
learned much woodcraft from the Shawnees and began
to speak in their tongue.
Yet he did not trust them entirely; and when spring came
and he could travel, he escaped. He was no longer a schol-
ar then, but a hunter. He tried to think what day it was by
the calendar, but he could only remember the Bee Moon
and the Berry Moon. Yet when he thought of a feast he
tried to keep it, and always he prayed for Zion. But when
he thought of Zion, it was not as he had thought of it be-
fore—a white city set on a hill—but a great and open land-
scape, ready for nations. He could not have said why his
thought had changed, but it had.
I shall not tell all, for who knows all? I shall not tell of
the trading post he found deserted and the hundred and
forty French louis in the dead man’s money belt. I shall
not tell of the half-grown boy, McGillvray, that he found
on the fringes of settlement—the boy who was to be his
partner in the days to come—and how they traded again
with the Shawnees and got much beaver. Only this re-
mains to be told, for this is true.
It was a long time since he had even thought of Meyer

Kappelhuist—the big pushing man with red hairs on the
backs of his hands. But now they were turning back to-
ward Philadelphia, he and McGillvray, their packhorses
and their beaver; and as the paths began to grow familiar,
old thoughts came into his mind. Moreover, he would hear
now and then, in the outposts of the wilderness, of a red-
haired trader. So when he met the man himself, not thirty
miles from Lancaster, he was not surprised.
Now, Meyer Kappelhuist had always seemed a big man
to our grandfather’s grandfather. But he did not seem such
a big man to him when met in the wilderness by chance,
and at that Jacob was amazed. Yet the greater surprise was
Meyer Kappelhuist’s, for he stared at our grandfather’s
grandfather long and puzzledly before he cried out, “But
it’s the little scholar!” and clapped his hand on his knee.
Then they greeted each other civilly and Meyer Kappel-
huist drank liquor because of the meeting, but Jacob drank
nothing. For, all the time they were talking, he could see
Meyer Kappelhuist’s eyes fixed greedily upon his packs of
beaver, and he did not like that. Nor did he like the looks of
the three tame Indians who traveled with Meyer Kappel-
huist and, though he was a man of peace, he kept his hand
on his arms, and the boy, McGillvray, did the same.
Meyer Kappelhuist was anxious that they should travel
on together, but Jacob refused, for, as I say, he did not like
the look in the red-haired man’s eyes. So he said he was
taking another road and left it at that.
“And the news you have of Simon Ettelsohn and his
family—it is good, no doubt, for I know you are close to
them,” said Jacob before they parted.
“Close to them?” said Meyer Kappelhuist, and he looked

black as thunder. Then he laughed a forced laugh. “Oh, I
see them no more,” he said. “The old rascal has promised
his daughter to a cousin of the Seixas, a greeny, just come
over, but rich, they say. But to tell you the truth, I think
we are well out of it, scholar—she was always a little too
skinny for my taste,” and he laughed coarsely.
“She was a rose of Sharon and a lily of the valley,” said
Jacob respectfully, and yet not with the pang he would
have expected at such news, though it made him more
determined than ever not to travel with Meyer Kappelhu-
ist. And with that they parted and Meyer Kappelhuist went
on his way. Then Jacob took a fork in the trail that McGill-
vray knew of, and that was as well for him. For when he
got to Lancaster, there was news of the killing of a trader
by the Indians who traveled with him; and when Jacob
asked for details, they showed him something dried on a
willow hoop. Jacob looked at the thing and saw the hairs
upon it were red.
“Scalped all right, but we got it back,” said the frontiers-
man, with satisfaction. “The red devil had it on him when
we caught him. Should have buried it, too, I guess, but
we’d buried him already and it didn’t seem feasible.
Thought I might take it to Philadelphy, sometime—might
make an impression on the governor. Say, if you’re going
there, you might—after all, that’s where he came from.
Be a sort of memento to his folks.”
“And it might have been mine, if I had traveled with
him,” said Jacob. He stared at the thing again, and his
heart rose against touching it. Yet it was well the city
people should know what happened to men in the wil-
derness, and the price of blood. “Yes, I will take it,” he

said.
Jacob stood before the door of Raphael Sanchez, in
Philadelphia. He knocked at the door with his knuckles,
and the old man himself peered out at him.
“And what is your business with me, frontiersman?”
said the old man, peering.
“The price of blood for a country,” said Jacob Stein. He
did not raise his voice but there was a note in it that had
not been there when he first knocked at Raphael
Sanchez’s door.
The old man stared at him soberly. “Enter, my son,” he
said at last, and Jacob touched the scroll by the doorpost
and went in.
He walked through the halls as a man walks in a dream.
At last he was sitting by the dark mahogany table. There
was nothing changed in the room—he wondered greatly
that nothing in it had changed.
“And what have you seen, my son?” said Raphael
Sanchez.
“I have seen the Land of Canaan, flowing with milk
and honey,” said Jacob, scholar of the Law. “I have
brought back grapes from Eshcol, and other things that
are terrible to behold,” he cried, and even as he cried he
felt the sob rise in his throat. He choked it down. “Also
there are eighteen packs of prime beaver at the warehouse,
and a boy named McGillvray, a Gentile, but very trusty,”
he said. “The beaver is very good and the boy under my
protection. You will not lose on the journey. And McCamp-
bell died by the great river, but he had seen that land and
I think he rests well. The map is not made as I would

have it, but it shows new things. And we must trade with
the Shawnees. There are three posts to be established—I
have marked them on the map—and later, more. And be-
yond the great river there is country that stretches to the
end of the world. That is where my friend McCampbell
lies, with his face turned west. But what is the use of talk-
ing? You would not understand.”
He put his head in his arms, for the room was too quiet
and peaceful, and he was very tired. Raphael Sanchez
moved around the table and touched him on the shoulder.
“Did I not say, my son, that there was more than a girl’s
face to be found in the wilderness?” he said.
“A girl’s face?” said Jacob. “Why, she is to be married
and, I hope, will be happy, for she was a rose of Sharon.
But what are girls’ faces beside this?” and he flung some-
thing on the table. It rattled dryly on the table, like a cast
snakeskin, but the hairs upon it were red.
“It was Meyer Kappelhuist,” said Jacob childishly, “and
he was a strong man. And I am not strong, but a scholar.
But I have seen what I have seen. And we must say Kad-
dish for him.”
“Yes, yes,” said Raphael Sanchez. “It will be done. I
will see to it.”
“But you do not understand,” said Jacob. “I have eaten
deer’s meat in the wilderness and forgotten the month of
the year. I have been a servant to the heathen and held
the scalp of my enemy in my hand. I will never be the
same man.”
“Oh, you will be the same,” said Sanchez. “And no
worse a scholar, perhaps. But this is a new country.”
“It must be for all,” said Jacob. “For my friend

McCampbell died also, and he was a Gentile.”
“Let us hope,” said Raphael Sanchez and touched him
again upon the shoulder. Then Jacob lifted his head and
he saw that the light had declined and the evening was
upon them. And even as he looked, Raphael Sanchez’s
granddaughter came in to light the candles for Sabbath.
And Jacob looked at her, and she was a dove, with dove’s
eyes.
MYRA KELLY
Mrs. Allan MacNaughton, Irish American author and educator,–

1910. Myra Kelly depicted “with charming sympathy and humor”
the pathos of life among the immigrants on the lower East Side of
New York. The following selection is a chapter in her Little Citizens,
New York, McClure, Phillips & Co., 1904, and is republished here
with the kind permission of Peter Smith, Publisher, of New York.
<< Chapter >>
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MORRIS AND THE HONORABLE TIM
O N THE first day of school, after the Christmas

holidays, teacher found herself surrounded by a
howling mob of little savages in which she had much diffi-
culty in recognizing her cherished First-Reader Class. Isi-
dore Belchatosky’s face was so wreathed in smiles and for-
eign matter as to be beyond identification; Nathan Spider-
witz had placed all his trust in a solitary suspender and
two unstable buttons; Eva Kidansky had entirely freed her-
self from restraining hooks and eyes; Isidore Applebaum
had discarded shoe-laces; and Abie Ashnewsky had bar-
tered his only necktie for a yard of “shoestring” licorice.
Miss Bailey was greatly disheartened by this reversion
to the original type. She delivered daily lectures on nail-
brushes, hair-ribbons, shoe polish, pins, buttons, elastic,
and other means to grace. Her talks on soap and water
became almost personal in tone, and her insistence on a
close union between such garments as were meant to be
united, led to a lively traffic in twisted and disreputable
safety-pins. And yet the First-Reader Class, in all other
branches of learning so receptive and responsive, made
but halting and uncertain progress toward that state of
virtue which is next to godliness.
Early in January came the report that “Gum Shoe Tim”
was on the war-path and might be expected at any time.
Miss Bailey heard the tidings in calm ignorance until Miss
Blake, who ruled over the adjoining kingdom, interpreted
293
294 MYRA KELLY
the warning. A license to teach in the public schools of

New York is good for only one year. Its renewal depends
upon the reports of the Principal in charge of the school
and of the Associate Superintendent in whose district the
school chances to be. After three such renewals the li-
cense becomes permanent, but Miss Bailey was, as a teach-
er, barely four months old. The Associate Superintendent
for her vicinity was the Honorable Timothy O’Shea,
known and dreaded as “Gum Shoe Tim,” owing to his
engaging way of creeping softly up back-stairs and appear-
ing, all unheralded and unwelcome, upon the threshold of
his intended victim.
This, Miss Blake explained, was in defiance of all the
rules of etiquette governing such visits of inspection. The
proper procedure had been that of Mr. O’Shea’s predeces-
sor, who had always given timely notice of his coming and
a hint as to the subjects in which he intended to examine
the children. Some days later he would amble from room
to room, accompanied by the amiable Principal, and fol-
lowed by the gratitude of smiling and unruffled teachers.
This kind old gentleman was now retired and had been
succeeded by Mr. O’Shea, who, in addition to his unex-
pectedness, was adorned by an abominable temper, an
overbearing manner, and a sense of cruel humor. He had
almost finished his examinations at the nearest school
where, during a brisk campaign of eight days, he had
caused five dismissals, nine cases of nervous exhaustion,
and an epidemic of hysteria.
Day by day nerves grew more tense, tempers more un-
sure, sleep and appetite more fugitive. Experienced teach-
ers went stolidly on with the ordinary routine, while be-
ginners devoted time and energy to the more spectacular
MORRIS AND THE HONORABLE TIM 295
portions of the curriculum. But no one knew the Honora-

ble Timothy’s pet subjects, and so no one could specialize
to any great extent.
Miss Bailey was one of the beginners, and Room 18 was
made to shine as the sun. Morris Mogilewsky, Monitor of
the Gold-Fish Bowl, wrought busily until his charges
glowed redly against the water plants in their shining bowl.
Creepers crept, plants grew, and ferns waved under the
care of Nathan Spiderwitz, Monitor of the Window Box-
es. There was such a martial swing and strut in Patrick
Brennan’s leadership of the line that it inflamed even the
timid heart of Isidore Wishnewsky with a war-like glow
and his feet with a spasmodic but well-meant tramp. Sadie
Gonorowsky and Eva, her cousin, sat closely side by side,
no longer “mad on theirselves,” but “mit kind feelings.”
The work of the preceding term was laid in neat and dock-
eted piles upon the low book-case. The children were en-
joined to keep clean and entire. And Teacher, a nervous
and unsmiling Teacher, waited dully.
A week passed thus, and then the good-hearted and
experienced Miss Blake hurried ponderously across the
hall to put Teacher on her guard.
“I’ve just had a note from one of the grammar teachers,”
she panted. “‘Gum Shoe Tim’ is up in Miss Green’s room!
He’ll take this floor next. Now, see here, child, don’t look
so frightened. The Principal is with Tim. Of course you’re
nervous, but try not to show it, and you’ll be all right. His
lay is discipline and reading. Well, good luck to you!”
Miss Bailey took heart of grace. The children read sur-
prisingly well, were absolutely good, and the enemy under
convoy of the friendly Principal would be much less terrify-
ing than the enemy at large and alone. It was, therefore,
296 MYRA KELLY
with a manner almost serene that she turned to greet the

kindly concerned Principal and the dreaded “Gum Shoe
Tim.” The latter she found less ominous of aspect than she
had been led to fear, and the Principal’s charming little speech
of introduction made her flush with quick pleasure. And
the anxious eyes of Sadie Gonorowsky, noting the flush,
grew calm as Sadie whispered to Eva, her close cousin:
“Say, Teacher has a glad. She’s red on the face. It could
to be her papa.”
“No. It’s comp’ny,” answered Eva sagely. “It ain’t her
papa. It’s comp’ny the whiles Teacher takes him by the
hand.”
The children were not in the least disconcerted by the
presence of the large man. They always enjoyed visitors,
and they liked the heavy gold chain which festooned the
wide waistcoat of this guest; and, as they watched him,
the Associate Superintendent began to superintend.
He looked at the children all in their clean and smiling
rows; he looked at the flowers and the gold-fish; at the pic-
tures and the plaster casts; he looked at the work of the
last term and he looked at Teacher. As he looked he swayed
gently on his rubber heels and decided that he was going to
enjoy the coming quarter of an hour. Teacher pleased him
from the first. She was neither old nor ill-favored, and she
was most evidently nervous. The combination appealed
both to his love of power and his peculiar sense of humor.
Settling deliberately in the chair of state, he began:
“Can the children sing, Miss Bailey?”
They could sing very prettily and they did.
“Very nice, indeed,” said the voice of visiting authority.
“Very nice. Their music is exceptionally good. And are
they drilled? Children, will you march for me?”
Again they could and did. Patrick marshaled his line in

time and triumph up and down the aisles to the evident
interest and approval of the “comp’ny,” and then Teacher
led the class through some very energetic Swedish move-
ments. While arms and bodies were bending and
straightening at Teacher’s command and example, the door
opened and a breathless boy rushed in. He bore an un-
folded note and, as Teacher had no hand to spare, the boy
placed the paper on the desk under the softening eyes of
the Honorable Timothy, who glanced down idly and then
pounced upon the note and read its every word.
“For you, Miss Bailey,” he said in the voice before which
even the school janitor had been known to quail. “Your
friend was thoughtful, though a little late.” And poor pal-
pitating Miss Bailey read:
“Watch out! ‘Gum Shoe Tim’ is in the building. The
Principal caught him on the back-stairs, and they’re go-
ing round together. He’s as cross as a bear. Greene in dead
faint in dressing-room. Says he’s going to fire her. Watch
out for him, and send the news on. His lay is reading and
discipline.”
Miss Bailey grew cold with sick and unreasoning fear.
As she gazed wide-eyed at the living confirmation of the
statement that “Gum Shoe Tim” was “as cross as a bear,”
the gentle-hearted Principal took the paper from her nerve-
less grasp.
“It’s all right,” he assured her. “Mr. O’Shea understands
that you had no part in this. It’s all right. Your are not
responsible.”
But Teacher had no ears for his soothing. She could
only watch with fascinated eyes as the Honorable Timo-
298 MYRA KELLY
thy reclaimed the note and wrote across its damning face:
“Miss Greene may come to. She is not fired.—T. O’S.”
“Here, boy,” he called; “take this to your teacher.” The
puzzled messenger turned to obey, and the Associate
Superintendent saw that though his dignity had suffered
his power had increased. To the list of those whom he
might, if so disposed, devour, he had now added the name
of the Principal, who was quick to understand that an
unpleasant investigation lay before him. If Miss Bailey
could not be held responsible for this system of inter-class-
room communication, it was clear that the Principal could.
Every trace of interest had left Mr. O’Shea’s voice as he
asked:
“Can they read?”
“Oh, yes, they read,” responded Teacher, but her spirit
was crushed and the children reflected her depression.
Still, they were marvelously good and that blundering note
had said, “Discipline is his lay.” Well, here he had it.
There was one spectator of this drama, who, understand-
ing no word nor incident therein, yet dismissed no shade of
the many emotions which had stirred the light face of his
lady. Toward the front of the room sat Morris Mogilewsky,
with every nerve tuned to Teacher’s, and with an appreci-
ation of the situation in which the other children had no
share. On the afternoon of one of those dreary days of wait-
ing for the evil which had now come, Teacher had endeav-
ored to explain the nature and possible result of this ordeal
to her favorite. It was clear to him now that she was trou-
bled, and he held the large and unaccustomed presence of
the “comp’ny mit whiskers” responsible. Countless gener-
ations of ancestors had followed and fostered the instinct
which now led Morris to propitiate an angry power. Lucki-
ly, he was prepared with an offering of a suitable nature.

He had meant to enjoy it for yet a few days, and then to
give it to Teacher. She was such a sensible person about
presents. One might give her one’s most cherished posses-
sion with a brave and cordial heart, for on each Friday
afternoon she returned the gifts she had received during
the week. And this with no abatement of gratitude.
Morris rose stealthily, crept forward, and placed a bright
bromo-seltzer bottle in the fat hand which hung over the
back of the chair of state. The hand closed instinctively
as, with dawning curiosity, the Honorable Timothy stud-
ied the small figure at his side. It began in a wealth of
loosely curling hair which shaded a delicate face, very
pointed as to chin and monopolized by a pair of dark eyes,
sad and deep and beautiful. A faded blue “jumper” was
buttoned tightly across the narrow chest; frayed trousers
were precariously attached to the “jumper,” and impossi-
ble shoes and stockings supplemented the trousers. Glanc-
ing from boy to bottle, the “comp’ny mit whiskers” asked:
“What’s this for?”
“For you.”
“What’s in it?”
“A present.”
Mr. O’Shea removed the cork and proceeded to draw
out incredible quantities of absorbent cotton. When there
was no more to come, a faint tinkle sounded within the
blue depths, and Mr. O’Shea, reversing the bottle, found
himself possessed of a trampled and disfigured sleeve link
of most palpable brass.
“It’s from gold,” Morris assured him. “You puts it in
your—’scuse me—shirt. Wish you health to wear it.”
300 MYRA KELLY
“Thank you,” said the Honorable Tim, and there was a

tiny break in the gloom which had enveloped him. And
then, with a quick memory of the note and of his anger:
“Miss Bailey, who is this young man?”
And Teacher, of whose hobbies Morris was one, an-
swered warmly: “That is Morris Mogilewsky, the best of
boys. He takes care of the gold-fish, and does all sorts of
things for me. Don’t you, dear?”
“Teacher, yiss ma’an,” Morris answered. “I’m lovin’
much mit you. I gives presents on the comp’ny over you.”
“Ain’t he rather big to speak such broken English?”
asked Mr. O’Shea. “I hope you remember that it is part of
your duty to stamp out the dialect.”
“Yes, I know,” Miss Bailey answered. “But Morris has
been in America for so short a time. Nine months, is it not?”
“Teacher, yiss ma’an. I comes out of Russia,” respond-
ed Morris, on the verge of tears and with his face buried
in Teacher’s dress.
Now Mr. O’Shea had his prejudices—strong and deep.
He had been given jurisdiction over that particular district
because it was his native heath, and the Board of Educa-
tion considered that he would be more in sympathy with
the inhabitants than a stranger. The truth was absolutely
the reverse. Because he had spent his early years in a large
old house on East Broadway, because he now saw his birth-
place changed to a squalid tenement, and the happy hunt-
ing grounds of his youth grown ragged and foreign—swarm-
ing with strange faces and noisy with strange tongues—
Mr. O’Shea bore a sullen grudge against the usurping race.
He resented the caressing air with which Teacher held
the little hand placed so confidently within her own and
he welcomed the opportunity of gratifying his still ruffled
temper and his racial antagonism at the same time. He

would take a rise out of this young woman about her little
Jew. She would be comforted later on. Mr. O’Shea rather
fancied himself in the role of comforter, when the sufferer
was neither old nor ill-favored. And so he set about creat-
ing the distress which he would later change to gratitude
and joy. Assuredly the Honorable Timothy had a well-
developed sense of humor.
“His English is certainly dreadful,” remarked the voice
of authority, and it was not an English voice, nor is O’Shea
distinctively an English name. “Dreadful. And, by the way,
I hope you are not spoiling these youngsters. You must
remember that you are fitting them for the battle of life.
Don’t coddle your soldiers. Can you reconcile your present
attitude with discipline?”
“With Morris—yes,” Teacher answered. “He is gentle
and tractable beyond words.”
“Well, I hope you’re right,” grunted Mr. O’Shea, “but
don’t coddle them.”
And so the incident closed. The sleeve link was tucked,
before Morris’s yearning eyes, into the reluctant pocket
of the wide white waistcoat, and Morris returned to his
place. He found his reader and the proper page, and the
lesson went on with brisk serenity; real on the children’s
part, but bravely assumed on Teacher’s. Child after child
stood up, read, sat down again, and it came to be the duty
of Bertha Binderwitz to read the entire page of which the
others had each read a line. She began jubilantly, but soon
stumbled, hesitated, and wailed:
“Stands a fierce word. I don’t know what it is,” and
Teacher turned to write the puzzling word upon the black-
board.
302 MYRA KELLY
Morris’s heart stopped with a sickening suddenness and

then rushed madly on again. He had a new and dreadful
duty to perform. All his mother’s counsel, all his father’s
precepts told him that it was his duty. Yet fear held him in
his little seat behind his little desk, while his conscience
insisted on this unalterable decree of the social code: “So
somebody’s clothes is wrong it’s polite you says ‘ ’scuse’
and tells it out.”
And here was Teacher whom he dearly loved, whose
ideals of personal adornment extended to full sets of but-
tons on jumpers and to laces in both shoes, here was his
immaculate lady fair in urgent need of assistance and ad-
vice, and all because she had on that day inaugurated a
delightfully vigorous exercise for which, architecturally,
she was not designed.
There was yet room for hope that some one else would
see the breach and brave the danger. But no. The visitor
sat stolidly in the chair of state, the Principal sat serenely
beside him, the children sat each in his own little place,
behind his own little desk, keeping his own little eyes on
his own little book. No. Morris’s soul cried with Hamlet’s:
“The time is out of joint;—O cursed spite,
That ever I was born to set it right!”
Up into the quiet air went his timid hand. Teacher,
knowing him in his more garrulous moods, ignored the
threatened interruption of Bertha’s spirited résumé, but
the windmill action of the little arm attracted the Honora-
ble Tim’s attention.
“The best of boys wants you,” he suggested, and Teach-
er perforce asked:
“Well, Morris, what is it?”
Not until he was on his feet did the Monitor of the Gold-
Fish Bowl appreciate the enormity of the mission he had
undertaken. The other children began to understand, and
watched his struggle for words and breath with sympathy
or derision, as their natures prompted. But there are no
words in which one may politely mention ineffective safe-
ty-pins to one’s glass of fashion. Morris’s knees trembled
queerly, his breathing grew difficult, and Teacher seemed
a very great way off as she asked again:
“Well, what is it, dear?”
Morris panted a little, smiled weakly, and then sat down.
Teacher was evidently puzzled, the “comp’ny” alert, the
Principal uneasy.
“Now, Morris,” Teacher remonstrated, “you must tell
me what you want.”
But Morris had deserted his etiquette and his veracity,
and murmured only:
“Nothings.”
“Just wanted to be noticed,” said the Honorable Tim.
“It is easy to spoil them.” And he watched the best of boys
rather closely, for a habit of interrupting reading lessons,
wantonly and without reason, was a trait in the young of
which he disapproved.
When this disapprobation manifested itself in Mr.
O’Shea’s countenance, the loyal heart of Morris interpret-
ed it as a new menace to his sovereign. No later than yes-
terday she had warned them of the vital importance of
coherence. “Every one knows,” she had said, “that only
common little boys and girls come apart. No one ever likes
them,” and the big stranger was even now misjudging her.
Again his short arm agitated the quiet air. Again his
304 MYRA KELLY
trembling legs upheld a trembling boy. Again authority

urged. Again Teacher asked:
“Well, Morris, what is it, dear?”
All this was as before, but not as before was poor har-
assed Miss Bailey’s swoop down the aisle, her sudden tak-
ing Morris’s troubled little face between her soft hands,
the quick near meeting with her kind eyes, the note of
pleading in her repetition:
“What do you want, Morris?”
He was beginning to answer when it occurred to him
that the truth might make her cry. There was an unstead-
iness about her upper lip which seemed to indicate the
possibility. Suddenly he found that he no longer yearned
for words in which to tell her of her disjointment, but for
something else—anything else—to say.
His miserable eyes escaped from hers and wandered to
the wall in desperate search for conversation. There was
no help in the pictures, no inspiration in the plaster casts,
but on the blackboard he read, “Tuesday, January twen-
ty-first, 1902.” Only the date, but he must make it serve.
With teacher close beside him, with the hostile eye of the
Honorable Tim upon him, hedged round by the frightened
or admiring regard of the First-Reader Class, Morris
blinked rapidly, swallowed resolutely, and remarked:
“Teacher, this year’s nineteen-hundred-and-two,” and
knew that all was over.
The caressing clasp of Teacher’s hands grew into a grip
of anger. The countenance of Mr. O’Shea took on the beau-
tiful expression of the prophet who has found honor and
verification in his own country.
“The best of boys has his off days and this is one of
them,” he remarked.
“Morris,” said Teacher, “did you stop a reading lesson

to tell me that? Do you think I don’t know what the year
is? I’m ashamed of you.”
Never had she spoken thus. If the telling had been diffi-
cult to Morris when she was “glad on him,” it was impos-
sible now that she was a prey to such evident “mad feel-
ings.” And yet he must make some explanation. So he
murmured: “Teacher, I tells you ‘scuse. I know you knows
what year stands, on’y it’s polite I tells you something,
und I had a fraid.”
“And so you bothered your Teacher with that non-
sense,” said Tim. “You’re a nice boy!”
Morris’s eyes were hardly more appealing than Teach-
er’s as the two culprits, for so they felt themselves, turned
to their judge.
“Morris is a strange boy,” Miss Bailey explained. “He
can’t be managed by ordinary methods—”
“And extraordinary methods don’t seem to work today,”
Mr. O’Shea interjected.
“And I think,” Teacher continued, “that it might be bet-
ter not to press the point.”
“Oh, if you have no control over him—” Mr. O’Shea
was beginning pleasantly, when the Principal suggested:
“You’d better let us hear what he has to say, Miss Bai-
ley; make him understand that you are master here.” And
Teacher, with a heart-sick laugh at the irony of this ad-
vice in the presence of the Associate Superintendent,
turned to obey.
But Morris would utter no words but these, dozens of
times repeated: “I have a fraid.” Miss Bailey coaxed,
bribed, threatened and cajoled; shook him surreptitiously,
306 MYRA KELLY
petted him openly. The result was always the same: “It’s
polite I tells you something out, on’y I had a fraid.”
“But, Morris, dear, of what?” cried Teacher. “Are you
afraid of me? Stop crying now and answer. Are you afraid
of Miss Bailey?”
“N-o-o-oh m-a-a-an.”
“Are you afraid of the Principal?”
“Are you afraid,”—with a slight pause, during which a
native hue of honesty was foully done to death—“of the
kind gentleman we are all so glad to see?”
“Well, then what is the matter with you? Are you sick?
Don’t you think you would like to go home to your mother?”
“N-o-o-oh m a-a-an; I ain’t sick. I tells you ‘scuse.”
The repeated imitation of a sorrowful goat was too much
for the Honorable Tim.
“Bring that boy to me,” he commanded. ‘Til show you
how to manage refractory and rebellious children.”
With much difficulty and many assurances that the
gentleman was not going to hurt him, Miss Bailey suc-
ceeded in untwining Morris’s legs from the supports of the
desk and in half carrying, half leading him up to the chair
of state. An ominous silence had settled over the room.
Eva Gonorowsky was weeping softly, and the redoubta-
ble Isidore Applebaum was stiffened in a frozen calm.
“Morris,” began the Associate Superintendent in his
most awful tones, “will you tell me why you raised your
hand? Come here, sir.”
Teacher urged him gently, and like dog to heel, he went.
He halted within a pace or two of Mr. O’Shea, and lifted a
beseeching face toward him.
“I couldn’t to tell nothing out,” said he. “I tells you

‘scuse. I’m got a fraid.”
The Honorable Tim lunged quickly and caught the terri-
fied boy preparatory to shaking him, but Morris escaped
and fled to his haven of safety—his Teacher’s arms. When
Miss Bailey felt the quick clasp of the thin little hands, the
heavy beating of the over-tired heart, and the deep con-
vulsive sobs, she turned on the Honorable Timothy O’Shea
and spoke:
“I must ask you to leave this room at once,” she an-
nounced. The Principal started and then sat back. Teach-
er’s eyes were dangerous, and the Honorable Tim might
profit by a lesson. “You’ve frightened the child until he
can’t breathe. I can do nothing with him while you re-
main. The examination is ended. You may go.”
Now Mr. O’Shea saw he had gone a little too far in his
effort to create the proper dramatic setting for his clem-
ency. He had not expected the young woman to “rise” quite
so far and high. His deprecating half-apology, half-eulogy,
gave Morris the opportunity he craved.
“Teacher,” he panted; “I wants to whisper mit you in
the ear.”
With a dexterous movement he knelt upon her lap and
tore out his solitary safety-pin. He then clasped her tight-
ly and made his explanation. He began in the softest of
whispers, which increased in volume as it did in interest,
so that he reached the climax at the full power of his boy
soprano voice.
“Teacher, Missis Bailey, I know you know what year
stands. On’y it’s polite I tells you something, und I had a
fraid the while the ‘comp’ny mit the whiskers’ sets und
308 MYRA KELLY
rubbers. But, Teacher, it’s like this: your jumper’s stick-

ing out and you could to take mine safety-pin.”
He had understood so little of all that had passed that
he was beyond being surprised by the result of this com-
munication. Miss Bailey had gathered him into her arms
and had cried in a queer helpless way. And as she cried
she had said over and over again: “Morris, how could you?
Oh, how could you, dear? How could you?”
The Principal and “the comp’ny mit whiskers” looked
solemnly at one another for a struggling moment, and had
then broken into laughter, long and loud, until the visiting
authority was limp and moist. The children waited in po-
lite uncertainty, but when Miss Bailey, after some indeci-
sion, had contributed a wan smile, which later grew into a
shaky laugh, the First-Reader Class went wild.
Then the Honorable Timothy arose to say good-by. He
reiterated his praise of the singing and reading, the black-
board work and the moral tone. An awkward pause en-
sued, during which the Principal engaged the young Go-
norowskys in impromptu conversation. The Honorable
Tim crossed over to Miss Bailey’s side and steadied him-
self for a great effort.
“Teacher,” he began meekly, “I tells you ‘scuse. This
sort of thing makes a man feel like a bull in a china shop.
Do you think the little fellow will shake hands with me? I
was really only joking.”
“But surely he will,” said Miss Bailey, as she glanced
down at the tangle of dark curls resting against her breast.
“Morris, dear, aren’t you going to say good-by to the gen-
tleman?”
Morris relaxed one hand from its grasp on his lady and
bestowed it on Mr. O’Shea.
“Good-by,” said he gently. “I gives you presents, from

gold presents, the while you’re friends mit Teacher. I’m
loving much mit her, too.”
At this moment the Principal turned, and Mr. O’Shea,
in a desperate attempt to retrieve his dignity, began: “As
to class management and discipline—”
But the Principal was not to be deceived.
“Don’t you think, Mr. O’Shea,” said he, “that you and I
had better leave the management of the little ones to the
women? You have noticed, perhaps, that this is Nature’s
method.”
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BEN AMES WILLIAMS
American journalist and novelist, 1889–. The following story,

which appeared in Collier’s Weekly, July 10, 1920, and in the Best
Short Stories of 1920, edited by Edward J. O’Brien, Boston, Small,
Maynard & Co., 1921, is taken, by permission of the publisher, from
Williams’ Thrifty Stock, published and copyrighted by E. P. Dutton
& Co., Inc., New York, 1923.
<< Chapter >>
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SHEENER
W HEN he was sober the man always insisted that his

name was Evans, but in his cups he was accustomed
to declare, in a boastful fashion, that his name was not Evans
at all. However, he never went further than this, and since
none of us was particularly interested, we were satisfied to
call him Evans, or, more often, Bum for short. He was the
second assistant janitor; and whereas, in some establish-
ments, a janitor is a man of power and place, it is not so in a
newspaper office. In such institutions, where great men are
spoken of irreverently and by their first names, a janitor is a
man of no importance. How much less, then, his second as-
sistant. It was never a part of Evans’s work, for example, to
sweep the floors. There is something lordly in the gesture of
the broom. But the janitor’s first assistant attended to that;
and Evans’s regular duties were more humble, not uncon-
nected with such things as cuspidors. There was no man so
poor as to do him honor; yet he had always a certain lofti-
ness of bearing. He was tall, rather above the average height,
with a long, thin, bony face like a horse, and an aristocratic
stoop about his neck and shoulders. His hands were slen-
der; he walked in a fashion that you might have called a
shuffle, but which might also have been characterized as a
walk of indolent assurance. His eyes were wash-blue, and
his straggling mustache drooped at the corners.
313
314 BEN AMES WILLIAMS
Sober, he was a silent man, but when he had drunk he

was apt to become mysteriously loquacious. And he drank
whenever the state of his credit permitted. At such times
he spoke of his antecedents in a lordly and condescending
fashion which we found amusing. “You call me Evans,”
he would say. “That does well enough to be sure. Quite
so, and all that. Evans! Hah!”
And then he would laugh, in a barking fashion that with
his long, bony countenance always suggested to me a
coughing horse. But when he was pressed for details, the
man—though he might be weaving and blinking with liq-
uor—put a seal upon his lips. He said there were certain
families in one of the Midland Counties of England who
would welcome him home if he chose to go; but he never
named them, and he never chose to go, and we put him
down for a liar by the book. All of us except Sheener.
II
Sheener was a Jewish newsboy; that is to say, a repre-

sentative of the only thoroughbred people in the world. I
have known Sheener for a good many years, and he is worth
knowing; also, the true tale of his life might have inspired
Scheherazade. A book must be made of Sheener some day.
For the present, it is enough to say that he had the enter-
prise which adversity has taught his people; he had the
humility which they have learned by enduring insults they
were powerless to resent, and he had the courage and the
heart which were his ancient heritage. And—the man
Evans had captured and enslaved his imagination.
He believed in Evans from the beginning. This may have
been through a native credulity which failed to manifest
SHEENER 315
itself in his other dealings with the world. I think it more

probable that Evans and his pretensions appealed to the
love of romance native to Sheener. I think he enjoyed be-
lieving, as we enjoy lending ourselves the illusion of the
theater. Whatever the explanation, a certain alliance devel-
oped between the two; a something like friendship. I was
one of those who laughed at Sheener’s credulity, but he told
me, in his energetic fashion, that I was making a mistake.
“You got that guy wrong,” he would say. “He ain’t al-
ways been a bum. A guy with half an eye can see that.
The way he talks, and the way he walks, and all. There’s
class to him, J’m telling you. Class, bo.”
“He walks like a splay-footed walrus, and he talks like
a drunken old hound,” I told Sheener. “He’s got you buffa-
loed, that’s all.”
“Pull in your horns; you’re coming to a bridge,” Sheen-
er warned me. “Don’t be a goat all your life. He’s a gent;
that’s what this guy is.”
“Then I’m glad I’m a roughneck,” I retorted; and Sheen-
er shook his head.
“That’s all right,” he exclaimed. “That’s all right. He
ain’t had it easy, you know. Scrubbing spittoons is enough
to take the polish off any guy. I’m telling you he’s there.
Forty ways. You’ll see, bo. You’ll see.”
“I’m waiting,” I said.
“Keep right on,” Sheener advised me. “Keep right on.
The old stuff is there. It’ll show. Take it from me.”
I laughed at him. “If I get you,” I said, “you’re looking
for something along the line of Noblesse Oblige! What?”
“Cut the comedy” he retorted. “I’m telling you, the old
class is there. You can’t keep a fast horse in a poor man’s
stable.”
“Blood will tell, eh?”

“Take it from me,” said Sheener.
It will be perceived that Evans had in Sheener not only
a disciple; he had an advocate and a defender. And Sheen-
er in these roles was not to be despised. I have said he
was a newsboy; to put it more accurately, he was in his
early twenties, with forty years of experience behind him,
and with half the newsboys of the city obeying his com-
mands and worshipping him like a minor god. He had full
charge of our city circulation and was quite as important,
and twice as valuable to the paper, as any news editor
could hope to be. In making a friend of him, Evans had
found an ally in the high places; and it became speedily
apparent that Sheener proposed to be more than a mere
friend in name. For instance, I learned one day that he
was drawing Evans’s wages for him, and had appointed
himself in some sort a steward for the other.
“That guy wouldn’t ever save a cent,” he told me when
I questioned him. “I give him enough to get soused on,
and I stick five dollars in the bank for him every week.
Say, you wouldn’t know him if you run into him in his
glad rags.”
“How does he like your running his affairs?” I asked.
“Like it?” Sheener echoed. “He don’t have to like it. If
he tries to pull anything on me, I’ll poke the old coot in
the eye.”
I doubt whether this was actually his method of dominating
Evans. It is more likely that he used a diplomacy which oc-
casionally appeared in his dealings with the world. Certain-
ly the arrangement presently collapsed, for Sheener con-
fessed to me that he had given his savings back to Evans.
We were minus a second assistant janitor for a week as a
SHEENER 317
consequence, and when Evans tottered back to the office

and would have gone to work I told him he was through.
He took it meekly enough, but not Sheener. Sheener
came to me with fire in his eye.
“Sa-a-ay,” he demanded, “what’s coming off here, any-
how? What do you think you’re trying to pull?”
I asked him what he was talking about, and he said:
“Evans says you’ve given him the hook.”
“That’s right,” I admitted. “He’s through.”
“He is not,” Sheener told me flatly. “You can’t fire that
guy.”
“Why not?”
“He’s got to live, ain’t he?”
I answered, somewhat glibly, that I did not see the ne-
cessity, but the look that sprang at once into Sheener’s
eyes made me faintly ashamed of myself, and I went on to
urge that Evans was failing to do his work and could de-
serve no consideration.
“That’s all right,” Sheener told me. “I didn’t hear any
kicks that his work wasn’t done while he was on this bat.”
“Oh, I guess it got done all right. Someone had to do it.
We can’t pay him for work that someone else does.”
“Say, don’t try to pull that stuff,” Sheener protested.
“As long as his work is done, you ain’t got any kick. This
guy has got to have a job, or he’ll go bust, quick. It’s all
that keeps his feet on the ground. If he didn’t think he was
earning his living, he’d go on the bum in a minute.”
I was somewhat impatient with Sheener’s insistence,
but I was also interested in this developing situation.
“Who’s going to do his work, anyhow?” I demanded.
For the first time in our acquaintance I saw Sheener

look confused. “That’s all right, too,” he told me. “It don’t
take any skin off of your back, long as it’s done.”
In the end I surrendered. Evans kept his job; and Sheen-
er—I once caught him in the act, to his vast embar-
rassment—did the janitor’s work when Evans was unfit
for duty. Also Sheener loaned him money, small sums that
mounted into an interesting total; and furthermore I know
that on one occasion Sheener fought for him.
The man Evans went his pompous way, accepting
Sheener’s homage and protection as a matter of right, and
in the course of half a dozen years I left the paper for
other work, saw Sheener seldom, and Evans not at all.
III
About ten o’clock one night in early summer I was wan-

dering somewhat aimlessly through the South End to see
what I might see, when I encountered Sheener. He was
running, and his dark face twisted with anxiety. When he
saw me he stopped with an exclamation of relief, and I
asked him what the matter was.
“You remember old Bum Evans?” he asked, and add-
ed: “He’s sick. I’m looking for a doctor. The old guy is just
about all in.”
“You mean to say you’re still looking out for that old
tramp?” I demanded.
“Sure, I am,” he said hotly; “that old boy is there. He’s
got the stuff. Him and me are pals.” He was hurrying me
along the street toward the office of the doctor he sought.
I asked where Evans was. “In my room,” he told me. “I
found him on the street. Last night. He was crazy.
SHEENER 319
The D.T.’s. I ain’t been able to get away from him till
now. He’s asleep. Wait. Here’s where the doc hangs out.”
Five minutes later the doctor and Sheener and I were
retracing our steps toward Sheener’s lodging, and pres-
ently we crowded into the small room where Evans lay
on Sheener’s bed. The man’s muddy garments were on
the floor; he himself tossed and twisted feverishly under
Sheener’s blankets. Sheener and the doctor bent over him,
while I stood by. Evans waked, under the touch of their
hands, and waked to sanity. He was cold sober and des-
perately sick.
When the doctor had done what could be done and gone
his way, Sheener sat down on the edge of the bed and rubbed
the old man’s head with a tenderness of which I could not
have believed the newsboy capable. Evans’s eyes were open;
he watched the other, and he at last said huskily:
“I say, you know, I’m a bit knocked up.”
Sheener reassured him. “That’s all right, bo,” he said.
“You hit the hay. Sleep’s the dose for you. I ain’t going
away.”
Evans moved his head on the pillow, as though he were
nodding. “A bit tight, wasn’t it, what?” he asked.
“Say,” Sheener agreed. “You said something, Bum. I
thought you’d kick off, sure.”
The old man considered for a little, his lips twitching
and shaking. “I say, you know,” he murmured at last.
“Can’t have that. Potter’s Field, and all that sort of busi-
ness. Won’t do. Sheener, when I do take the jump, you
write home for me. Pass the good word. You’ll hear from
them.”
Sheener said: “Sure I will. Who’ll I write to, Bum?”
Evans, I think, was unconscious of my presence. He
gave Sheener a name; his name. Also, he told him the

name of the family lawyer, in one of the Midland cities of
England, and added certain instructions. . .
When he had drifted into uneasy sleep Sheener came
out into the hall to see me off. I asked him what he meant
to do.
“What am I going to do?” he repeated. “I’m going to
write this guy’s lawyer. Let them send for him. This is no
place for him.”
“You’ll have your trouble for your pains,” I told him.
“That old soak is a plain liar; that’s all.”
Sheener laughed at me. “That’s all right, bo,” he told
me. “I know. This guy’s the real cheese. You’ll see.”
I asked him to let me know if he heard anything, and he
said he would. But within a day or two I forgot the matter,
and would hardly have remembered it if Sheener had not
telephoned me a month later.
“Say, you’re a wise guy, ain’t you?” he derided when I
answered the phone. I admitted it. “I got a letter from that
lawyer in England,” he told me. “This Evans is the stuff,
just like I said. His wife run away with another man, and
he went to the devil fifteen years ago. They’ve been look-
ing for him ever since his son grew up.”
“Son?” I asked.
“Son. Sure! Raising wheat out in Canada somewhere.
They give me his address. He’s made a pile. I’m going to
write to him.”
“What does Bum say?”
“Him? I ain’t told him. I won’t till I’m sure the kid’s
coming after him.” He said again that I was a wise guy;
and I apologized for my wisdom and asked for a share in
what was to come. He promised to keep me posted.
SHEENER 321
IV
Ten days later he telephoned me while I was at supper

to ask if I could come to his room. I said: “What’s up?”
“The old guy’s boy is coming after him,” Sheener said.
“He’s got the shakes, waiting. I want you to come and
help me take care of him.”
“When’s the boy coming?”
I promised to make haste; and half an hour later I joined
them in Sheener’s room. Sheener let me in. Evans himself
sat in something like a stupor, on a chair by the bed. He
was dressed in a cheap suit of ready-made clothes, to which
he lent a certain dignity. His cheeks were shaved clean,
his mustache was trimmed, his thin hair was plastered
down on his bony skull. The man did not look toward me
when I came in; and Sheener and I sat down by the table
and talked together in undertones.
“The boy’s really coming?” I asked.
Sheener said proudly: “I’m telling you.”
“You heard from him?”
“Got a wire the day he got my letter.”
“You’ve told Bum?”
“I told him right away. I had to do it. The old boy was
sober by then, and crazy for a shot of booze. That was
Monday. He wanted to go out and get pied; but when I
told him about his boy, he begun to cry. And he ain’t
touched a drop since then.”
“You haven’t let him?”
“Sure I’d let him. But he wouldn’t. I always told you
the class was there. He says to me: ‘I can’t let my boy see
me in this state, you know. Have to straighten up a bit. I’ll
need new clothes.’”
“I noticed his new suit.”

“Sure,” Sheener agreed. “I bought it for him.”
“Out of his savings?”
“He ain’t been saving much lately.”
“Sheener,” I asked, “how much does he owe you? For
money loaned and spent for him.”
Sheener said hotly: “He don’t owe me a cent.”
“I know. But how much have you spent on him?”
“If I hadn’t have give it to him, I’d have blowed it some-
how. He needed it.”
I guessed at a hundred dollars, at two hundred. Sheen-
er would not tell me. “I’m telling you, he’s my pal,” he
said. “I’m not looking for anything out of this.”
“If this millionaire son of his has any decency, he’ll make
it up to you.”
“He don’t know a thing about me,” said Sheener, “ex-
cept my name. I’ve just wrote as though I knowed the old
guy, here in the house, see. Said he was sick, and all.”
“And the boy gets in to-night?”
“Midnight,” said Sheener, and Evans, from his chair,
echoed: “Midnight!” Then asked with a certain stiff anxi-
ety: “Do I look all right, Sheener? Look all right to see
my boy?”
“Say,” Sheener told him. “You look like the Prince of
Wales.” He went across to where the other sat and gripped
him by the shoulder. “You look like the king o’ the world.”
Old Evans brushed at his coat anxiously; his fingers
picked and twisted; and Sheener sat down on the bed be-
side him and began to soothe and comfort the man as
though he were a child.
SHEENER 323
The son was to arrive by way of Montreal, and at elev-

en o’clock we left Sheener’s room for the station. There
was a flower stand on the corner, and Sheener bought a
red carnation and fixed it in the old man’s button-hole.
“That’s the way the boy will know him,” he told me. “They
ain’t seen each other for—since the boy was a kid.”
Evans accepted the attention querulously; he was tremb-
ling and feeble, yet held his head high. We took the sub-
way, reached the station, sat down for a space in the wait-
ing room.
But Evans was impatient; he wanted to be out in the train
shed, and we went out there and walked up and down be-
fore the gate. I noticed that he was studying Sheener with
some embarrassment in his eyes. Sheener was, of course,
an unprepossessing figure. Lean, swarthy, somewhat flashy
of dress, he looked what he was. He was my friend, of
course, and I was able to look beneath the exterior. But it
seemed to me that the sight of him distressed Evans.
In the end the old man said, somewhat furtively: “I say,
you know, I want to meet my boy alone. You won’t mind
standing back a bit when the train comes in?”
“Sure,” Sheener told him. “We won’t get in the way.
You’ll see. He’ll pick you out in a minute, old man. Leave
it to me.”
Evans nodded. “Quite so,” he said with some relief.
“Quite so, to be sure.”
So we waited. Waited till the train slid in at the end of
the long train shed. Sheener gripped the old man’s arm.
“There he comes,” he said sharply. “Take a brace now.
Stand right there, where he’ll spot you when he comes

out. Right there, bo.”
“You’ll step back a bit, eh, what?” Evans asked.
“Don’t worry about us,” Sheener told him. “Just you
keep your eye skinned for the boy. Good luck, bo.”
We left him standing there, a tall, gaunt, shaky figure.
Sheener and I drew back toward the stairs that led to the
elevated structure, and watched from that vantage point.
The train stopped, and the passengers came into the sta-
tion. At first in a trickle and then in a stream, with por-
ters hurrying before them, baggage-laden.
The son was one of the first. He emerged from the gate,
a tall chap, not unlike his father. Stopped for a moment,
casting his eyes about, and saw the flower in the old man’s
lapel. Leaped toward him hungrily.
They gripped hands, and we saw the son drop his hand
on the father’s shoulder. They stood there, hands still
clasped, while the young man’s porter waited in the back-
ground. We could hear the son’s eager questions, hear the
older man’s drawled replies. Saw them turn at last, and
heard the young man say: “Taxi!” The porter caught the
bag. The taxi stand was at our left, and they came almost
directly toward us.
As they approached, Sheener stepped forward, a cheap,
somewhat disreputable figure. His hand was extended to-
ward the younger man. The son saw him, looked at him
in some surprise, looked toward his father inquiringly.
Evans saw Sheener too, and a red flush crept up his gaunt
cheeks. He did not pause, did not take Sheener’s extended
hand; instead he looked the newsboy through and through.
Sheener fell back to my side. They stalked past us, out
to the taxi stand.
SHEENER 325
I moved forward. I would have halted them, but Sheen-

er caught my arm. I said hotly: “But see here. He can’t
throw you like that.”
Sheener brushed his sleeve across his eyes. “Hell,” he
said huskily. “A gent like him can’t let on that he knows a
man like me.”
I looked at Sheener, and I forgot old Evans and his son.
I looked at Sheener, and I caught his elbow and we turned
away.
He had been quite right, of course, all the time. Blood
will always tell. You can’t keep a fast horse in a poor man’s
stable. And a man is always a man, in any guise.
If you still doubt, do as I did. Consider Sheener.
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SINCLAIR LEWIS
American novelist, 1885–, awarded the Nobel Prize in Litera-

ture (1930). In a letter to the editor, Mr. Lewis wrote: “I think my
own chief contribution to Jews in fiction is the character of Max
Gottlieb, who appears in Arrowsmith as something like a god.” At
his suggestion, the following sketch was constructed, by Mr. Irwin
Kroening, for this anthology out of excerpts from Arrowsmith, cop-
yright, 1925, by Harcourt, Brace and Company, Inc.
<< Chapter >>
Home | TOC
THE LIFE AND DEATH OF A GOD
“
O H, UH, Professor Gottlieb, will you please sit down
there at the far end of the table?” called President
Truscott.
Then Gottlieb was aware of tensions. He saw that out
of the seven members of the Board of Regents, the four
who lived in or near Zenith were present. He saw that
sitting beside Truscott was not the dean of the academic
department but Dean Silva. He saw that however easily
they talked, they were looking at him through the mist of
their chatter.
President Truscott announced: “Gentlemen, this joint
meeting of the Council and the regents is to consider charg-
es against Professor Max Gottlieb preferred by his dean
and by myself.”
Gottlieb suddenly looked old.
“These charges are: Disloyalty to his dean, his presi-
dent, his regents, and to the State of Winnemac. Disloyal-
ty to recognized medical and scholastic ethics. Insane ego-
tism. Atheism. Persistent failure to collaborate with his
colleagues, and such inability to understand practical af-
fairs as makes it dangerous to let him conduct the impor-
tant laboratories and classes with which we have entrust-
ed him. Gentlemen, I shall now prove each of these points,
from Professor Gottlieb’s own letters to Dean Silva.”
He proved them.
329
330 SINCLAIR LEWIS
The chairman of the Board of Regents suggested, “Gott-

lieb, I think it would simplify things if you just handed us
your resignation and permitted us to part in good feeling,
instead of having the unpleasant—”
“I’m damned if I will resign!” Gottlieb was on his feet, a
lean fury. “Because you all haf schoolboy minds, golflinks
minds, you are twisting my expression, and perfectly ac-
curate expression, of a sound revolutionary ideal, which
would personally to me be of no value or advantage what-
efer, into a desire to steal promotions. That fools should
judge honor—!” His long forefinger was a fish-hook,
reaching for President Truscott’s soul. “No! I will not re-
sign! You can cast me out!”
“I’m afraid, then, we must ask you to leave the room
while we vote.” The president was very suave, for so large
and strong and hearty a man.
Max Gottlieb was a German Jew, born in Saxony in 1850.

Though he took his medical degree, at Heidelberg, he was
never interested in practising medicine. He was a follower
of Helmholtz, and youthful researches in the physics of
sound convinced him of the need of the quantitative meth-
od in the medical sciences. Then Koch’s discoveries drew
him into biology. Always an elaborately careful worker, a
maker of long rows of figures, always realizing the pres-
ence of uncontrollable variables, always a vicious assail-
ant of what he considered slackness or lies or pomposity,
never too kindly to well-intentioned stupidity, he worked in
the laboratories of Koch, of Pasteur, he followed the early
statements of Pearson in biometrics, he drank beer and wrote
vitriolic letters, he voyaged to Italy and England and Scan-
dinavia, and casually, between two days, he married (as he
THE LIFE AND DEATH OF A GOD 331
might have bought a coat or hired a housekeeper) the pa-

tient and wordless daughter of a Gentile merchant.
Then began a series of experiments, very important, very
undramatic-sounding, very long, and exceedingly
unappreciated. Back in 1881 he was confirming Pasteur’s
results in chicken cholera immunity and, for relief and pas-
time, trying to separate an enzyme from yeast. A few years
later, living on the tiny inheritance from his father, a petty
banker, and quite carelessly and cheerfully exhausting it,
he was analyzing critically the ptomain theory of disease,
and investigating the mechanism of the attenuation of vir-
ulence of microörganisms. He got thereby small fame. Per-
haps he was over-cautious, and more than the devil or star-
vation he hated men who rushed into publication unprepared.
Though he meddled little in politics, considering them the
most repetitious and least scientific of human activities, he
was a sufficiently patriotic German to hate the Junkers. As
a youngster he had a fight or two with ruffling subalterns;
once he spent a week in jail; often he was infuriated by
discriminations against Jews; and at forty he went sadly
off to the America which could never become militaristic
or anti-Semitic—to the Hoagland Laboratory in Brooklyn,
then to Queen City University as professor of bacteriology.
His dearest dream, now and for years of racking re-
search, was the artificial production of antitoxin—its pro-
duction in vitro. Once he was prepared to publish, but he
found an error and rigidly suppressed his notes. All the
while he was lonely. There was apparently no one in Queen
City who regarded him as other than a cranky Jew catch-
ing microbes by their little tails and leering at them—no
work for a tall man at a time when heroes were building
bridges, experimenting with Horseless Carriages, writing
332 SINCLAIR LEWIS
the first of the poetic Compelling Ads, and selling miles of

calico and cigars.
In 1899 he was called to the University of Winnemac,
as professor of bacteriology in the medical school, and here
he drudged on for a dozen years. Not once did he talk of
results of the sort called “practical;” not once did he cease
warring on the post hoc propter hoc conclusions which still
make up most medical lore; not once did he fail to be hat-
ed by his colleagues, who were respectful to his face,
uncomfortable in feeling his ironic power, but privily joy-
ous to call him Mephisto, Diabolist, Killjoy, Pessimist,
Destructive Critic, Flippant Cynic, Scientific Bounder
Lacking in Dignity and Seriousness, Intellectual Snob,
Pacifist, Anarchist, Atheist, Jew. They said, with reason,
that he was so devoted to Pure Science, to art for art’s
sake, that he would rather have people die by the right
therapy than be cured by the wrong.
Professor Gottlieb was the mystery of the university. It
was known that he was a Jew, born and educated in Ger-
many, and that his work on immunology had given him
fame in the East and in Europe. He rarely left his small
brown weedy house except to return to his laboratory, and
few students outside of his classes had ever identified him,
but every one had heard of his tall, lean, dark aloofness. A
thousand fables fluttered about him. It was believed that
he was the son of a German prince, that he had immense
wealth, that he lived as sparsely as the other professors
only because he was doing terrifying and costly experiments
which probably had something to do with human sacrifice.
It was said that he could create life in the laboratory, that
he could talk to the monkeys which he inoculated, that he
had been driven out of Germany as a devil-worshiper or

an anarchist, and that he secretly drank real champagne
every evening at dinner.
He was, in fact, an authentic scientist. He was of the
great benefactors of humanity. There will never, in any
age, be an effort to end the great epidemics or the petty
infections which will not have been influenced by Max
Gottlieb’s researches, for he was not one who tagged and
prettily classified bacteria and protozoa. He sought their
chemistry, the laws of their existence and destruction, basic
laws for the most part unknown after a generation of busy
biologists.
It is possible that Max Gottlieb was a genius. Certainly
he was mad as any genius. He did a thing more preposter-
ous than any of the superstitions at which he scoffed.
He conceived that there might, in this world, be a med-
ical school which should be altogether scientific, ruled by
exact quantitative biology and chemistry, with spectacle-
fitting and most of surgery ignored, and he further con-
ceived that such an enterprise might be conducted at the
University of Winnemac! He tried to be practical about it;
oh, he was extremely practical and plausible!
“I admit we should not be able to turn out doctors to
cure village bellyaches. And ordinary physicians are admir-
able and altogether necessary—perhaps. But there are too
many of them already. And on the ‘practical’ side, you gif
me twenty years of a school that is precise and cautious,
and we shall cure diabetes, maybe tuberculosis and can-
cer, and all these arthritis things that the carpenters shake
their heads at them and call them ‘rheumatism.’ So!”
He did not desire the control of such a school, nor any
334 SINCLAIR LEWIS
credit. He was too busy. But at a meeting of the American

Academy of Sciences he met one Dr. Entwisle, a youngish
physiologist from Harvard, who would make an excellent
dean. Entwisle admired him, and sounded him on his will-
ingness to be called to Harvard. When Gottlieb outlined his
new sort of medical school, Entwisle was fervent. “Noth-
ing I’d like so much as to have a chance at a place like
that,” he fluttered, and Gottlieb went back to Mohalis tri-
umphant. He was the more assured because (though he
sardonically refused it) he was at this time offered the med-
ical deanship of the University of West Chippewa.
So simple, or so insane, was he that he wrote to Dean
Silva politely bidding him to step down and hand over his
school—his work, his life—to an unknown teacher in
Harvard! A courteous old gentleman was Dad Silva, a fit
disciple of Osler, but this incredible letter killed his pa-
tience. He replied that while he could see the value of ba-
sic research, the medical school belonged to the people of
the state, and its task was to provide them with immediate
and practical attention. For himself, he hinted, if he ever
believed that the school would profit by his resignation he
would go at once, but he needed a rather broader sugges-
tion than a letter from one of his own subordinates!
Gottlieb retorted with spirit and indiscretion. He damned
the People of the State of Winnemac. Were they, in their
present condition of nincompoopery, worth any sort of
attention? He unjustifiably took his demand over Silva’s
head to that great orator and patriot, Dr. Horace Greeley
Truscott, president of the University.
President Truscott said, “Really, I’m too engrossed to
consider chimerical schemes, however ingenious they
may be.”
“You are too busy to consider anything but selling honor-

ary degrees to millionaires for gymnasiums,” remarked
Gottlieb.
Next day he was summoned to a special meeting of the
University Council.
Gottlieb rode his wavering bicycle to the laboratory. It

was by telephone message from a brusque girl clerk in the
president’s office that he was informed that “his resigna-
tion had been accepted.”
He agonized, “Discharge me? They couldn’t! I’m the
chief glory, the only glory, of this shopkeepers’ school!”
He required peace and a laboratory, at once.
They’d see what fools they were when they heard that
Harvard had called him!
He was eager for the mellower ways of Cambridge and
Boston. Why had he remained so long in raw Mohalis?
He wrote to Dr. Entwisle, hinting that he was willing to
hear an offer. He expected a telegram. He waited a week,
then had a long letter from Entwisle admitting that he had
been premature in speaking for the Harvard faculty.
Gottlieb wrote to the University of West Chippewa that,
after all, he was willing to think about their medical dean-
ship. . . and had answer that the place was filled, that they
had not greatly liked the tone of his former letter, and they
did not “care to go into the matter further.”
At sixty-one, Gottlieb had saved but a few hundred dol-
lars—literally a few hundred. Like any bricklayer out of
work, he had to have a job or go hungry. He was no long-
er a genius impatient of interrupted creation, but a shab-
by schoolmaster in disgrace.
336 SINCLAIR LEWIS
He prowled through his little brown house, fingering

papers, staring at his wife, staring at old pictures, staring
at nothing. He still had a month of teaching—they had
dated ahead the resignation which they had written for
him—but he was too dispirited to go to the laboratory. He
felt unwanted, almost unsafe. His ancient sureness was
broken into self-pity. He waited from delivery to delivery
for the mail. Surely there would be aid from somebody
who knew what he was, what he meant. There were many
friendly letters about research, but the sort of men with
whom he corresponded did not listen to intercollegiate fac-
ulty tattle nor know of his need.
He could not, after the Harvard mischance and the West
Chippewa rebuke, approach the universities or the scien-
tific institutes, and he was too proud to write begging let-
ters to the men who revered him. No, he would be busi-
ness-like! He applied to a Chicago teachers’ agency, and
received a stilted answer promising to look about and in-
quiring whether he would care to take the position of teach-
er of physics and chemistry in a suburban high school.
Before he had sufficiently recovered from his fury to be
able to reply, his household was overwhelmed by his wife’s
sudden agony.
She had been unwell for months. He had wanted her to
see a physician, but she had refused, and all the while she
was stolidly terrified by the fear that she had cancer of the
stomach. Now when she began to vomit blood, she cried to
him for help. The Gottlieb who scoffed at medical credos,
at “carpenters” and “pill-mongers,” had forgotten what he
knew of diagnosis, and when he was ill, or his family, he
called for the doctor as desperately as any backwoods lay-
man to whom illness was the black malignity of unknown

devils.
In unbelievable simplicity he considered that, as his
quarrel with Silva was not personal, he could still sum-
mon him, and this time he was justified. Silva came, full
of excessive benignity, chuckling to himself, “When he’s
got something the matter, he doesn’t run for Arrenhius or
Jacques Loeb, but for me!” Into the meager cottage the
little man brought strength, and Gottlieb gazed down on
him trustingly.
Mrs. Gottlieb was suffering. Silva gave her morphine.
Not without satisfaction he learned that Gottlieb did not
even know the dose. He examined her—his pudgy hands
had the sensitiveness if not the precision of Gottlieb’s skel-
eton fingers. He spoke to Gottlieb not as to a colleague or
an enemy but as a patient to be cheered.
“Don’t think there’s any tumorous mass. As of course
you know, Doctor, you can tell such a lot by the differenc-
es in the shape of the lower border of the ribs, and by the
surface of the belly during deep breathing.”
“Oh, yes-s-s.”
“I don’t think you need to worry in the least. We’d bet-
ter hustle her off to the University Hospital, and we’ll give
her a test meal and get her X-rayed and take a look for
Boas-Oppler bugs.”
She was taken away, heavy, inert, carried down the
cottage steps. Gottlieb was with her. Whether or not he
loved her, whether he was capable of ordinary domestic
affection, could not be discovered. The need of turning to
Dean Silva had damaged his opinion of his own wisdom.
It was the final affront, more subtle and more enervating
338 SINCLAIR LEWIS
than the offer to teach chemistry to children. As he sat by

her bed, his dark face was blank, and the wrinkles which
deepened across that mask may have been sorrow, may
have been fear. . .
Silva diagnosed it as probable gastric ulcer, and placed
her on treatment, with light and frequent meals. She im-
proved, but she remained in the hospital for four weeks,
and Gottlieb wondered: Are these doctors deceiving us?
Is it really cancer, which by their mystic craft they are
concealing from me who knows naught?
Robbed of her silent assuring presence on which night
by weary night he had depended, he fretted over his daugh-
ters, despaired at their noisy piano-practice, their inabili-
ty to manage the slattern maid. When they had gone to
bed he sat alone in the pale lamplight, unmoving, not read-
ing. He was bewildered.
One day he went to Chicago to see the teachers’ agency.
The firm was controlled by a Live Wire who had once
been a county superintendent of schools. He was not much
interested. Gottlieb lost his temper: “Do you make an en-
deavor to find positions for teachers, or do you merely
send out circulars to amuse yourself? Haf you looked up
my record? Do you know who I am?”
The agent roared, “Oh, we know about you, all right,
all right! I didn’t when I first wrote you, but—You seem to
have a good record as a laboratory man, though I don’t
see that you’ve produced anything of the slightest use in
medicine. We had hoped to give you a chance such as you
nor nobody else ever had. John Edtooth, the Oklahoma
oil magnate, has decided to found a university that for plant
and endowment and individuality will beat anything that’s
ever been pulled off in education—biggest gymnasium in
the world, with an ex-New York Giant for baseball coach!

We thought maybe we might work you in on the bacterio-
logy or the physiology—I guess you could manage to teach
that, too, if you boned up on it. But we’ve been making
some inquiries—from some good friends of ours, down
Winnemac way. And we find that you’re not to be trusted
with a position of real responsibility. Why, they fired you
for general incompetence! But now that you’ve had your
lesson—Do you think you’d be competent to teach Practi-
cal Hygiene in Edtooth University?”
Gottlieb was so angry that he forgot to speak English,
and as all his cursing was in student German, in a creaky
dry voice, the whole scene was very funny indeed to the
cackling bookkeeper and the girl stenographers. When he
went from that place Max Gottlieb walked slowly, with-
out purpose, and in his eyes were senile tears.
No one in the medical world had ever damned more

heartily than Gottlieb the commercialism of certain large
pharmaceutical firms, particularly Dawson T. Hunziker
& Co., Inc., of Pittsburgh. The Hunziker Company was
an old and ethical house which dealt only with reputable
doctors—or practically only with reputable doctors. It fur-
nished excellent antitoxins for diphtheria and tetanus, as
well as the purest of official preparations, with the plain-
est and most official-looking labels on the swaggeringly
modest brown bottles. Gottlieb had asserted that they pro-
duced doubtful vaccines, yet he returned from Chicago to
write to Dawson Hunziker that he was no longer inter-
ested in teaching, and he would be willing to work for them
on half time if he might use their laboratories, on possibly
important research, for the rest of the day.
340 SINCLAIR LEWIS
When the letter had gone he sat mumbling. He was cer-

tainly not altogether sane. “Education! Biggest gymnasi-
um in the world! Incapable of responsibility. Teaching I
can do no more. But Hunziker will laugh at me. I haf told
the truth about him and I shall haf to—Dear Gott, what
shall I do?”
Into this still frenzy, while his frightened daughters
peered at him from doorways, hope glided.
The telephone rang. He did not answer it. On the third
irascible burring he took up the receiver and grumbled,
“Yes, yes, vot iss it?”
A twanging nonchalant voice: “This M. C. Gottlieb?”
“This is Dr. Gottlieb!”
“Well, I guess you’re the party. Hola wire. Long dis-
tance wants yuh.”
Then, “Professor Gottlieb? This is Dawson Hunziker
speaking. From Pittsburgh. My dear fellow, we should be
delighted to have you join our staff.”
“I—But—”
“I believe you have criticized the pharmaceutical hous-
es—oh, we read the newspaper clippings very efficient-
ly!—but we feel that when you come to us and understand
the Spirit of the Old Firm better, you’ll be enthusiastic. I
hope, by the way, I’m not interrupting something.”
Thus, over certain hundreds of miles, from the gold and
blue drawing-room of his Sewickley home, Hunziker
spoke to Max Gottlieb sitting in his patched easy-chair,
and Gottlieb grated, with a forlorn effort at dignity: “No,
it iss all right.”
“Well—we shall be glad to offer you five thousand dol-
lars a year, for a starter, and we shan’t worry about the
half-time arrangement. We’ll give you all the space and
technicians and material you need, and you just go ahead

and ignore us, and work out whatever seems important to
you. Our only request is that if you do find any serums
which are of real value to the world, we shall have the
privilege of manufacturing them, and if we lose money on
’em, it doesn’t matter. We like to make money, if we can
do it honestly, but our chief purpose is to serve mankind.
Of course if the serums pay, we shall be only too delighted
to give you a generous commission. Now about practical
details—”
Gottlieb, the placidly virulent hater of religious rites, had
a religious-seeming custom.
Often he knelt by his bed and let his mind run free. It
was very much like prayer, though certainly there was no
formal invocation, no consciousness of a Supreme Being—
other than Max Gottlieb. This night, as he knelt, with the
wrinkles softening in his drawn face, he meditated, “I was
asinine that I should ever scold the commercialists! This
salesman fellow, he has his feet on the ground. How much
more aut’entic the worst counter-jumper than frightened
professors! Fine dieners! Freedom! No teaching of imbe-
ciles! Du Heiliger!”
But he had no contract with Dawson Hunziker.
In the medical periodicals the Dawson Hunziker Com-

pany published full-page advertisements, most starchy and
refined in type, announcing that Professor Max Gottlieb,
perhaps the most distinguished immunologist in the world,
had joined their staff.
And Max Gottlieb, with his three young and a pale, slow-
moving wife, was arriving at the station in Pittsburgh, tug-
ging a shabby wicker bag, an immigrant bundle, and a
342 SINCLAIR LEWIS
Bond Street dressing-case. From the train he had stared

up at the valiant cliffs, down to the smoke-tinged splendor
of the river, and his heart was young. Here was fiery en-
terprise, not the flat land and the flat minds of Winnemac.
At the station-entrance every dingy taxicab seemed radi-
ant to him, and he marched forth a conqueror.
In the Dawson Hunziker building, Gottlieb found such
laboratories as he had never planned, and instead of stu-
dent assistants he had an expert who himself had taught
bacteriology, as well as three swift technicians, one of them
German-trained. He was received with acclaim in the pri-
vate office of Hunziker, which was remarkably like a mi-
nor cathedral. Hunziker was bald and business-like as to
skull but tortoise-spectacled and sentimental of eye. He
stood up at his Jacobean desk, gave Gottlieb a Havana
cigar, and told him that they had awaited him pantingly.
In the enormous staff dining-room Gottlieb found scores
of competent young chemists and biologists who treated
him with reverence. He liked them. If they talked too much
of money—of how much this new tincture of cinchona
ought to sell, and how soon their salaries would be in-
creased—yet they were free of the careful pomposities of
college instructors. As a youngster, the cap-tilted young
Max had been a laughing man, and now in gusty argu-
ments his laughter came back.
Six months passed before he realized that the young
technical experts resented what he considered his jolly
thrusts at their commercialism. They were tired of his
mathematical enthusiasms and some of them viewed him
as an old bore, muttered of him as a Jew. He was hurt, for
he liked to be merry with fellow workers. He began to ask
questions and to explore the Hunziker building.
He discovered now that the Dawson Hunziker Compa-

ny was quite all he had asserted in earlier days. They did
make excellent antitoxins and ethical preparations, but they
were also producing a new “cancer remedy” manufactured
from the orchid, pontifically recommended and possessing
all the value of mud. And to various billboard-advertising
beauty companies they sold millions of bottles of a com-
plexion-cream guaranteed to turn a Canadian Indian guide
as lily-fair as the angels. This treasure cost six cents a bot-
tle to make and a dollar over the counter, and the name of
Dawson Hunziker was never connected with it.
It was at this time that Gottlieb succeeded in his master-
work after twenty years of seeking. He produced antitox-
in in the test-tube, which meant that it would be possible
to immunize against certain diseases without tediously
making sera by the inoculation of animals. It was a revo-
lution, the revolution, in immunology. . . if he was right.
He revealed it at a dinner for which Hunziker had cap-
tured a general, a college president, and a pioneer avia-
tor. They applauded him and for an hour he was a Great
Scientist.
Hunziker summoned him to the office next day.
“I lay awake half the night thinking about your dis-
covery, Dr. Gottlieb. I’ve been talking to the technical di-
rector and sales manager and we feel it’s the time to strike.
We’ll patent your method of synthesizing antibodies and
immediately put them on the market in large quantities,
with a great big advertising campaign—you know—not
circus it, of course—strictly high-class ethical advertising.
We’ll start with anti-diphtheria serum. By the way, when
you receive your next check you’ll find we’ve raised your
honorarium to seven thousand a year.” Hunziker was a
344 SINCLAIR LEWIS
large purring pussy, now, and Gottlieb death-still. “Need I

say, my dear fellow, that if there’s the demand I anticipate,
you will have exceedingly large commissions coming!”
Hunziker leaned back with a manner of “How’s that
for glory, my boy?”
Gottlieb spoke nervously: “I do not approve of patent-
ing serological processes. They should be open to all labo-
ratories. And I am strongly against premature production
or even announcement. I think I am right, but I must check
my technique, perhaps improve it—be sure. Then, I should
think, there should be no objection to market production,
but in ve-ry small quantities and in fair competition with
others, not under patents, as if this was a dinglebat toy for
the Christmas tradings!”
“My dear fellow, I quite sympathize. Personally I
should like nothing so much as to spend my whole life in
just producing one priceless scientific discovery, without
consideration of mere profit. But we have our duty to-
ward the stockholders of the Dawson Hunziker Compa-
ny to make money for them. Do you realize that they
have—and many of them are poor widows and orphans—
invested their Little All in our stock, and that we must
keep faith? I am helpless; I am but their Humble Serv-
ant. And on the other side: I think we’ve treated you rath-
er well, Dr. Gottlieb, and we’ve given you complete free-
dom. And we intend to go on treating you well! Why, man,
you’ll be rich; you’ll be one of us! I don’t like to make
any demands, but on this point it’s my duty to insist, and
I shall expect you at the earliest possible moment to start
manufacturing—”
Gottlieb was sixty-two. The defeat at Winnemac had
done something to his courage. . . And he had no contract

with Hunziker.
He protested shakily, but as he crawled back to his labo-
ratory it seemed impossible for him to leave this sanctuary
and face the murderous brawling world, and quite as im-
possible to tolerate a cheapened and ineffective imitation
of his antitoxin. He began, that hour, a sordid strategy which
his proud old self would have called inconceivable; he be-
gan to equivocate, to put off announcement and production
till he should have “cleared up a few points,” while week
on week Hunziker became more threatening. Meantime
he prepared for disaster. He moved his family to a small
house, and gave up every luxury, even smoking.
Among his economies was the reduction of his son’s
allowance.
Robert was a square-rigged, swart, tempestuous boy,
arrogant where there seemed to be no reason for arrogance,
longed for by the anemic, milky sort of girl, yet ever super-
cilious to them. While his father was alternately proud and
amiably sardonic about his own Jewish blood, the boy con-
veyed to his classmates in college that he was from pure
and probably noble German stock. He was welcomed, or
half welcomed, in a motoring, poker-playing, country-club
set, and he had to have more money. Gottlieb missed twen-
ty dollars from his desk. He who ridiculed conventional
honor had the honor, as he had the pride, of a savage old
squire. A new misery stained his incessant bitterness at
having to deceive Hunziker. He faced Robert with, “My
boy, did you take the money from my desk?”
Few youngsters could have faced that jut of his hawk
nose, the red-veined rage of his sunken eyes. Robert splut-
tered, then shouted:
346 SINCLAIR LEWIS
“Yes, I did! And I’ve got to have some more! I’ve got to
get some clothes and stuff. It’s your fault. You bring me
up to train with a lot of fellows that have all the cash in
the world, and then you expect me to dress like a hobo!”
“Stealing—”
“Rats! What’s stealing! You’re always making fun of
these preachers that talk about Sin and Truth and Hon-
esty and all those words that’ve been used so much they
don’t mean a darn’ thing and—I don’t care! Daws Hun-
ziker, the old man’s son, he told me his dad said you could
be a millionaire, and then you keep us strapped like this,
and Mom sick—Let me tell you, back in Mohalis Mom
used to slip me a couple of dollars almost every week and—
I’m tired of it! If you’re going to keep me in rags, I’m go-
ing to cut out college!”
Gottlieb stormed, but there was no force in it. He did
not know, all the next fortnight, what his son was going to
do, what he himself was going to do.
Then, so quietly that not till they had returned from the
cemetery did they realize her passing, his wife died, and
the next week his oldest daughter ran off with a worthless
laughing fellow who lived by gambling.
Gottlieb sat alone. Over and over he read the Book of
Job. “Truly the Lord hath smitten me and my house,” he
whispered. When Robert came in, mumbling that he would
be good, the old man lifted to him a blind face, unhearing.
But as he repeated the fables of his fathers it did not occur
to him to believe them, or to stoop in fear before their God
of Wrath—or to gain ease by permitting Hunziker to de-
file his discovery.
Out of the dimness which obscured the people about

him, Miriam emerged.
She was eighteen, the youngest of his brood, squat, and
in no way comely save for her tender mouth. She had al-
ways been proud of her father, understanding the mys-
terious and unreasoning compulsions of his science, but
she had been in awe till now, when he walked heavily and
spoke rarely. She dropped her piano lessons, discharged
the maid, studied the cook-book, and prepared for him the
fat crisp dishes that he loved. Her regret was that she had
never learned German, for he dropped now and then into
the speech of his boyhood.
He eyed her, and at length: “So! One is with me. Could
you endure the poverty if I went away—to teach chemis-
try in a high school!”
“Yes. Of course. Maybe I could play the piano in a movie
theater.”
He might not have done it without her loyalty, but when
Dawson Hunziker next paraded into the laboratory, de-
manding, “Now look here. We’ve fussed long enough. We
got to put your stuff on the market,” then Gottlieb an-
swered, “No. If you wait till I have done all I can—maybe
one year, probably three—you shall have it. But not till I
am sure. No.”
Hunziker went off huffily, and Gottlieb prepared for
sentence.
Then the card of Dr. A. DeWitt Tubbs, Director of the
McGurk Institute of Biology, of New York, was brought
to him.
Gottlieb knew of Tubbs. He had never visited McGurk
348 SINCLAIR LEWIS
but he considered it, next to Rockefeller and McCormick,

the soundest and freest organization for pure scientific
research in the country, and if he had pictured a heavenly
laboratory in which good scientists might spend eternity
in happy and thoroughly impractical research, he would
have devised it in the likeness of McGurk. He was mildly
pleased that its director should have called on him.
“Dr. Gottlieb, this is a pleasure. I have heard your pa-
pers at the Academy of Sciences but, to my own loss, I
have hitherto failed to have an introduction to you.”
Gottlieb tried not to sound embarrassed.
“It has come to our attention, by a curious chance, that
you are on the eve of your most significant discovery. We
all wondered, when you left academic work, at your deci-
sion to enter the commercial field. We wished that you
had cared to come to us.”
“You would have taken me in? I needn’t at all have come
here?”
“Naturally! Now from what we hear, you are not giv-
ing your attention to the commercial side of things, and
that tempts us to wonder whether you could be persuaded
to join us at McGurk. So I just sprang on a train and ran
down here. We should be delighted to have you become a
member of the Institute, and chief of the Department of
Bacteriology and Immunology. Mr. McGurk and I desire
nothing but the advancement of science. You would, of
course, have absolute freedom as to what researches you
thought it best to pursue, and I think we could provide as
good assistance and material as would be obtainable any-
where in the world. In regard to salary—permit me to be
business-like and perhaps blunt, as my train leaves in one
hour—I don’t suppose we could equal the doubtless large
emolument which the Hunziker people are able to pay

you, but we can go to ten thousand dollars a yaer”—
“Oh, my God, do not talk of the money! I shall be wit’
you in New York one week from to-day. You see,” said
Gottlieb, “I haf no contract here!”
The McGurk Building. A sheer wall, thirty blank sto-

ries of glass and limestone, down in the pinched triangle
whence New York rules a quarter of the world.
Ross McGurk was at the time a man of fifty-four, sec-
ond generation of California railroad men; a graduate of
Yale; big, suave, dignified, cheerful, unscrupulous. Even
in 1908, when he had founded the Institute, he had had
too many houses, too many servants, too much food, and
no children, because his wife considered “that sort of thing
detrimental to women with large responsibilities.” In the
Institute he found each year more satisfaction, more ex-
cuse for having lived.
When Gottlieb arrived, McGurk went up to look him
over. McGurk had bullied Dr. Tubbs now and then; Tubbs
was compelled to scurry to his office as though he were a
messenger boy; yet when he saw the saturnine eyes of
Gottlieb, McGurk looked interested; and the two men, the
bulky, clothes-conscious, powerful, reticent American and
the cynical, simple, power-despising European, became
friends. McGurk would slip away from a conference af-
fecting the commerce of a whole West Indian Island to sit
on a high stool, silent, and watch Gottlieb work.
Gottlieb had found his own serenity. In the Seventies
he had a brown small flat, smelling of tobacco and leather
books. His son Robert had graduated from City College
and gone bustlingly into business. Miriam kept up her
350 SINCLAIR LEWIS
music while she guarded her father—a dumpling of a girl,

holy fire behind the deceptive flesh.
To the McGurk Institute there came now Martin Arrow-
smith, one of Gottlieb’s former students at the University
of Winnemac. Between the two there had existed a bond
of mutual devotion. When the young bacteriologist first
entered the reception-room of the Institute, he was uncon-
scious of the room, of the staccato girl attendant, of every-
thing except that he was about to see Max Gottlieb, for
the first time in five years.
At the door of the laboratory he stared hungrily.
Gottlieb was thin-cheeked and dark as ever, his hawk
nose bony, his fierce eyes demanding, but his hair had gone
gray, the flesh round his mouth was sunken, and Martin
could have wept at the feebleness with which he rose. The
old man peered down at him, his hand on Martin’s shoul-
der, but he said only:
“Ah! Dis is good. . .Your laboratory is three doors down
the hall. . . But I object to one thing in the good paper you
send me. You say, ‘The regularity of the rate at which the
streptolysin disappears suggests than an equation may be
found—”
“But it can, sir!”
“Then why did you not make the equation?”
“Well—I don’t know. I wasn’t enough of a mathema-
tician.”
“Then you should not have published till you knew your
math!”
“I—Look, Dr. Gottlieb, do you really think I know
enough to work here? I want terribly to succeed.”
“Succeed? I have heard that word. It is English? Oh,
yes, it is a word that liddle schoolboys use at the University
of Winnemac. It means passing examinations. But there

are no examinations to pass here. . . Martin, let us be clear.
You know something of laboratory technique; you have
heard about dese bacilli; you are not a good chemist, and
mathematics—pfui!—most terrible! But you have curiosity
and you are stubborn. You do not accept rules. Therefore
I t’ink you will either make a very good scientist or a very
bad one, and if you are bad enough, you will be popular
with the rich ladies who rule this city, New York, and you
can gif lectures for a living or even become, if you get to
be plausible enough, a college president. So anyvay, it will
be interesting.”
Half an hour later they were arguing ferociously, Mar-
tin asserting that the whole world ought to stop warring
and trading and writing and get straightway into labora-
tories to observe new phenomena; Gottlieb insisting that
there were already too many facile scientists, that the one
thing necessary was the mathematical analysis (and of-
ten the destruction) of phenomena already observed.
It sounded bellicose, and all the while Martin was bliss-
ful with the certainty that he had come home.
Gottlieb interrupted their debate: “Perhaps I am a crank,
Martin. There are many who hate me. There are plots
against me—oh, you t’ink I imagine it, but you shall see! I
make many mistakes. But one thing I keep always pure:
the religion of a scientist.
“To be a scientist—it is not just a different job, so that a
man should choose between being a scientist and being
an explorer or a bond-salesman or a physician or a king
or a farmer. It is a tangle of ver-y obscure emotions, like
mysticism, or wanting to write poetry; it makes its victim
all different from the good normal man. The normal man,
352 SINCLAIR LEWIS
he does not care much what he does except that he should

eat and sleep and make love. But the scientist is intensely
religious—he is so religious that he will not accept quar-
ter-truths, because they are an insult to his faith.
“He wants that everything should be subject to inexor-
able laws. He is equally opposed to the capitalists who
t’ink their silly money-grabbing is a system, and to liber-
als who t’ink man is not a fighting animal; he takes both
the American booster and the European aristocrat, and
he ignores all their blithering. Ignores it! All of it! He hates
the preachers who talk their fables, but he iss not too kind-
ly to the anthropologists and historians who can only make
guesses, yet they have the nerf to call themselves scien-
tists! Oh, yes, he is a man that all nice good-natured peo-
ple should naturally hate!
“He speaks no meaner of the ridiculous faith-healers
and chiropractors than he does of the doctors that want
to snatch our science before it is tested and rush around
hoping they heal people, and spoiling all the clues with
their footsteps; and worse than the men like hogs, worse
than the imbeciles who have not even heard of science,
he hates pseudo-scientists, guess-scientists—like these
psychoanalysts; and worse than those comic dream-sci-
entists he hates the men that are allowed in a clean king-
dom like biology but know only one textbook and how to
lecture to nincompoops all so popular! He is the only real
revolutionary, the authentic scientist, because he alone
knows how liddle he knows.
“He must be heartless. He lives in a cold, clear light.
Yet dis is a funny t’ing: really, in private, he is not cold nor
heartless—so much less cold than the Professional Opti-
mists. The world has always been ruled by the philanthro-
pists: by the doctors that want to use therapeutic methods

they do not understand, by the soldiers that want some-
thing to defend their country against, by the preachers that
yearn to make everybody listen to them, by the kind man-
ufacturers that love their workers, by the eloquent states-
men and soft-hearted authors—and see once what a fine
mess of hell they haf made of the world! Maybe now it is
time for the scientist, who works and searches and never
goes around howling how he loves everybody!
“But once again always remember that not all the men
who work at science are scientists. So few! The rest—sec-
retaries, press-agents, camp-followers! To be a scientist is
like being a Goethe: it is born in you. Sometimes I t’ink you
have a liddle of it born in you. If you haf, there is only one
t’ing—no, there is two t’ings you must do: work twice as
hard as you can, and keep people from using you. I will try
to protect you from Success. It is all I can do. So. . . I should
wish, Martin, that you will be very happy here. May Koch
bless you!”
Then came the War, and America’s entry in the War.

Always, in Paris or in Bonn, Max Gottlieb had looked
to America as a land which, in its freedom from royalist
tradition, in its contact with the realities of cornfields and
blizzards and town-meetings, had set its face against the
puerile pride of war. He believed that he had ceased to be
a German, now, and become a countryman of Lincoln.
The European War was the one thing, besides his dis-
charge from Winnemac, which had ever broken his sar-
donic serenity. In the war he could see no splendor nor
hope, but only crawling tragedy. He treasured his months
of work and good talk in France, in England, in Italy; he
354 SINCLAIR LEWIS
loved his French and English and Italian friends as he

loved his ancient Korpsbrüder, and very well indeed be-
neath his mocking did he love the Germans with whom
he had drudged and drunk.
His sister’s sons—on home-craving vacations he had seen
them, in babyhood, in boyhood, in ruffling youngmanhood—
went out with the Kaiser’s colors in 1914; one of them be-
came an Oberst, much decorated, one existed insignificantly,
and one was dead and stinking in ten days. This he sadly
endured, as later he endured his son Robert’s going out as
an American lieutenant, to fight his own cousins. What
struck down this man to whom abstractions and scientific
laws were more than kindly flesh was the mania of hate
which overcame the unmilitaristic America to which he
had emigrated in protest against Junkerdom.
Incredulously he perceived women asserting that all
Germans were baby-killers, universities barring the lan-
guage of Heine, orchestras outlawing the music of
Beethoven, professors in uniform bellowing at clerks, and
the clerks never protesting.
It is uncertain whether the real hurt was to his love for
America or to his egotism, that he should have guessed so
grotesquely; it is curious that he who had so denounced
the machine-made education of the land should yet have
been surprised when it turned blithely to the old, old, me-
chanical mockeries of war.
When the Institute sanctified the war, he found himself
regarded not as the great and impersonal immunologist
but as a suspect German Jew.
When Gottlieb insisted to Tubbs at lunch, “I am villing
to admit every virtue of the French—I am very fond of
that so individual people—but on the theory of probabil-

ities I suggest that there must be some good Germans out
of sixty millions,” then Col. Dr. Tubbs commanded, “In
this time of world tragedy, it does not seem to me particu-
larly becoming to try to be flippant, Dr. Gottlieb!”
In shops and on the elevated trains, little red-faced
sweaty people when they heard his accent glared at him,
and growled one to another, “There’s one of them damn’
barb’rous well-poisoning Huns!” and however contemptu-
ous he might be, however much he strove for ignoring
pride, their nibbling reduced him from arrogant scientist
to an insecure, raw-nerved, shrinking old man.
He had almost recovered from the anxieties of Win-
nemac and the Hunziker factory; he had begun to expand,
to entertain people—scientists, musicians, talkers. Now
he was thrust back into himself. He trusted only Miriam
and Martin and Ross McGurk; and his deep-set wrinkle-
lidded eyes looked ever on sadness.
After the Armistice, Dr. Tubbs, now magnificent with

the ribbon of the Legion of Honor, went off on a new en-
thusiasm, the most virulent of his whole life: he was orga-
nizing the League of Cultural Agencies. He was going to
standardize and coordinate all mental activities in Amer-
ica by the creation of a bureau which should direct and
pat and gently rebuke and generally encourage chemistry
and batik-making, poetry and Arctic exploration, animal
husbandry and Bible study, Negro spirituals and business-
letter writing.
There were rumors. Dr. Billy Smith whispered that he
had gone in to see Tubbs and heard McGurk shouting at
356 SINCLAIR LEWIS
him. The morning after, when Martin ambled to his labo-

ratory, he discovered a gasping, a muttering, a shaking in
the corridors, and incredulously he heard:
“Tubbs has resigned!”
“No!”
“They say he’s gone to his League of Cultural Agen-
cies. This fellow Minnigen has given the League a scad of
money, and Tubbs is to get twice the salary he had here!”
Instantly, for all but the zealots like Gottlieb and Mar-
tin, research was halted. There was a surging of factions,
a benevolent and winning buzz of scientists who desired
to be the new Director of the Institute.
Rippleton Holabird, Yeo the carpenter-like biologist,
Gillingham the joky chief in bio-physics, Aaron Sholtheis
the neat Russian Jewish High Church Episcopalian, all
of them went about with expressions of modest willing-
ness. They were affectionate with everybody they met in
the corridors, however violent they were in private dis-
cussions. Added to them were no few outsiders, profes-
sors and researchers in other institutes, who found it nec-
essary to come and confer about rather undefined mat-
ters with Ross McGurk.
The whole Institute fluttered on the afternoon when the
Board of Trustees met in the Hall for the election of a
Director. They were turned from investigators into board-
ing-school girls. The Board debated, or did something an-
noying, for draining hours.
At five, past doors made of attentive eyes, the Board of
Trustees marched to the laboratory of Max Gottlieb.
When the Board had gone, Martin ran into Gottlieb’s
laboratory and found the old man standing by his bench,
more erect than he had seen him for years.
“Is it true—they want you to be Director?” panted Mar-

tin.
“Yes, they have asked me.”
“But you’ll refuse? You won’t let ’em gum up your
work!”
“Vell. . . I said my real work must go on. They consent
I should appoint an Assistant Director to do the detail.
You see—Of course nothing must interfere with my im-
munology, but dis gives me the chance to do big t’ings and
make a free scientific institute for all you boys. And those
fools at Winnemac that laughed at my idea of a real med-
ical school, now maybe they will see—Do you know who
was my rival for Director—do you know who it was, Mar-
tin? It was that man Silva! Ha!”
So Max Gottlieb took charge of the McGurk Institute
of Biology.
In St. Hubert, an isle of the southern West Indies, there

broke out a plague.
No one on the island dared speak of it, but they heard,
almost without hearing, of this death—and this—and an-
other. No one liked to shake hands with his oldest friend;
every one fled from every one else, though the rats loyally
stayed with them; and through the island galloped the
Panic, which is more murderous than its brother, the
Plague.
Still there was no quarantine, no official admission. Dr.
Inchape Jones vomited feeble proclamations on the inad-
visability of too-large public gatherings, and wrote to Lon-
don to inquire about Haffkine’s prophylactic, but to Sir
Robert Fairlamb, the Governor of St. Hubert, he pro-
tested, “Honestly, there’s only been a few deaths, and I
358 SINCLAIR LEWIS
think it’s all passed over. As for the suggestion of Stokes

that we burn the village of Carib, merely because they’ve
had several cases—why, it’s barbarous! And it’s been con-
veyed to me that if we were to establish a quarantine,
the merchants would take the strongest measures against
the administration. It would ruin the tourist and export
business.”
But Stokes, medical director of St. Swithin’s parish,
secretly wrote to Dr. Max Gottlieb, Director of the McGurk
Institute, that the plague was ready to flare up and con-
sume all the West Indies, and would Dr. Gottlieb do some-
thing about it?
It was rumored that Arrowsmith of McGurk had some-
thing which might eradicate plague. Then Ross McGurk,
over a comfortable steak, hinted, not too diffidently, that
this was the opportunity for the Institute to acquire world-
fame.
Whether it was the compulsion of McGurk or the demands
of the public-spirited, or whether Gottlieb’s own imagination
aroused enough to visualize the far-off misery of the blacks
in the canefields, he summoned Martin and remarked:
“It comes to me that there is pneumonic plague in Man-
churia and bubonic in St. Hubert. If I could trust you,
Martin, to use the phage with only half your patients and
keep the others as controls, under normal hygienic condi-
tions but without the phage, then you could make an abso-
lute determination of its value, as complete as what we
have of mosquito transmission of yellow fever, and then I
would send you down to St. Hubert. What do you t’ink?”
Martin swore by Jacques Loeb that he would observe
test conditions; he would determine forever the value of
phage by the contrast between patients treated and un-
treated, and so, perhaps, end all plague forever; he would

harden his heart and keep clear his eyes.
“We will get Sondelius to go along,” said Gottlieb. “He
will do the big boom-boom and so bring us the credit in
the newspapers which, I am now told, a Director must
obtain.”
The afternoon before the Commission sailed, Gottlieb
spoke to Arrowsmith with hesitation. He looked perplexed;
he peered at Martin as though he did not quite recognize
him, and begged:
“Martin, I grow old—not in years—it is a lie I am over
seventy—but I have my worries. Do you mind if I give
you advice as I have done so often, so many years? Though
you are not a schoolboy now in Queen City—no, at Win-
nemac it was. You are a man and you are a genuine work-
er. But—
“Be sure you do not let anything, not even your own
good kind heart, spoil your experiment at St. Hubert. I do
not make funniness about humanitarianism as I used to;
sometimes now I t’ink the vulgar and contentious race
may yet have as much grace and good taste as the cats.
But if this is to be, there must be knowledge. So many
men, Martin, are kind and neighborly; so few have added
to knowledge. You have the chance! You may be the man
who ends all plague, and maybe old Max Gottlieb will have
helped, too, hein, maybe?
“You must not be just a good doctor at St. Hubert. You
must pity, oh, so much the generation after generation yet
to come, that you can refuse to let yourself indulge in pity
for the men you will see dying.
“Dying. . . It will be peace.
360 SINCLAIR LEWIS
“Let nothing, neither beautiful pity nor fear of your own

death, keep you from making this plague-experiment com-
plete. And as my friend—If you do this, something will
yet have come out of my Directorship. If but one fine thing
could come, to justify me—”
As the St. Buryan was warped out into the river, as
Martin was suggesting to his Commission, “How about
going downstairs and seeing if we can raise a drink?” there
was the sound of a panicky taxicab on the pier, the sight
of a lean, tall figure running—but so feebly, so shakily—
and they realized that it was Max Gottlieb, peering for
them, tentatively raising his thin arm in greeting, not find-
ing them in the line at the rail, and turning sadly away.
Before Martin Arrowsmith took leave of St. Hubert he

had to assemble the notes of his phage experiment; add
the observation of the other doctors to his own first pre-
cise figures.
As the giver of phage to some thousands of frightened
islanders, he had become a dignitary. He was called, in
the first issue of the Blackwater Guardian after the quar-
antine was raised, “the savior of all our lives.” He was
the universal hero.
No one heeded a wry Scotch doctor, diligent but undra-
matic through the epidemic, who hinted that plagues have
been known to slacken and cease without phage.
When Martin was completing his notes he had a letter
from the McGurk Institute, signed by Rippleton Holabird.
Holabird wrote that Gottlieb was “feeling seedy,” that
he had resigned the Directorship, suspended his own
experimentation, and was now at home, resting.
Though Martin had watched Gottlieb declining, it was
a shock that he could be so unwell as to drop his work

even for a few months.
He forgot his own self as it came to him that in giving
up his experiment, playing the savior, he had been a trai-
tor to Gottlieb and all that Gottlieb represented. When he
returned to New York he would have to call on the old
man and admit to him, to those sunken relentless eyes,
that he did not have complete proof of the value of the
phage.
The morning after his return he had telephoned to Gott-

lieb’s flat, had spoken to Miriam and received permission
to call in the late afternoon.
All the way up-town he could hear Gottlieb saying, “You
were my son! I gave you eferyt’ing I knew of truth and
honor, and you haf betrayed me. Get out of my sight!”
Miriam met him in the hall, fretting, “I don’t know if I
should have let you come at all, Doctor.”
“Why? Isn’t he well enough to see people?”
“It isn’t that. He doesn’t really seem ill, except that he’s
feeble, but he doesn’t know any one. The doctors say it’s
senile dementia. His memory is gone. And he’s just sud-
denly forgotten all his English. He can only speak Ger-
man, and I can’t speak it, hardly at all. If I’d only studied
it, instead of music! But perhaps it may do him good to
have you here. He was always so fond of you. You don’t
know how he talked of you and the splendid experiment
you’ve been doing in St. Hubert.”
“Well, I—” He could find nothing to say.
Miriam led him into a room whose walls were dark with
books. Gottlieb was sunk in a worn chair, his thin hand
lax on the arm.
362 SINCLAIR LEWIS
“Doctor, it’s Arrowsmith, just come back!” Martin

mumbled.
The old man looked as though he half understood; he
peered at him, then shook his head and whispered, “Ver-
steh’ nicht.” His arrogant eyes were clouded with ungov-
ernable slow tears.
Martin understood that never could he be punished now
and cleansed. Gottlieb had sunk into his darkness still
trusting him.
CONINGSBY DAWSON
English and American poet and novelist, 1883–, In The Un-

known Soldier, published by Hutchinson & Co., London, and by
Doubleday, Doran & Co., Garden City, N. Y., 1929, and repub-
lished here with the author’s kind permission, Dawson attempt-
ed to answer the question, “What would Christ have thought of
the Somme if He had been there in khaki?” Dawson chose, quite
fittingly, a young Jewish tailor from the East Side of New York
to represent Jesus and play the role of the hero in this tale.
<< Chapter >>
Home | TOC
THE UNKNOWN SOLDIER
E XTRACT from an anonymous letter:

“Once he trod our streets—perhaps the very pave-
ments which we daily travel. It never entered his head
that he would become a symbol of sacrifice and his tomb
a shrine of pilgrimage. If anyone had foretold as much to
him, how he would have laughed! If anyone were to re-
veal to us who he really was—that he had been a cashier
in a New York bank or a taxi-driver in Chicago—would
he still retain his power so deeply to move us? Who was
he, this Unknown Soldier, whom we have exalted out of
humanity into sainthood?”
The letter continues startingly: “By a series of accidents,
I have come to possess the secret of his identity. Since I am
a regular-army officer and therefore forbidden to issue pub-
lished statements—still more because I doubt my own abil-
ity to make a statement of this sort read effectively—I am
passing on my information, leaving the decision to your dis-
cretion as to what use, if any, should be made of it. My
excuse for this shifting of responsibility is that the urge to
confess has become intolerable. During the years while I
have maintained my silence, I have been oppressed by the
accusation of an unperformed duty. Perhaps I have been
afraid lest the price of frankness might be ridicule. . .”
A page of justification for preferring to remain anony-
mous follows. Then, “At this point I wish to emphasize
that my assertions are not made recklessly. In other coun-
tries besides our own the best minds have been at work
365
366 CONINGSBY DAWSON
on this same problem. France, for instance, has shown

an almost irreverent curiosity in her attempt to solve the
riddle of her Unknown. The wildest guesses have been rife:
that the body interred with State honors beneath the Arc
de Triomphe belonged formerly to an apache; that it be-
longed to a German spy; that it is not a man’s but a wom-
an’s. In the confusion of romantic imaginings one conjec-
ture recurs with significant persistence: that in every coun-
try where an Unknown Soldier has been enshrined, in
his known life he was the same sort of person—so similar
that, save for differences of nationality, he might have been
in all instances the same person. Which provokes a mys-
tic fancy: that we Americans, French, British, Italians
buried replicas of a master man who fought and died in all
armies—as a doughboy, a poilu, a tommy. Carrying the
extravagance a step further, if one admits the possibility
of such a phenomenon, it is conceivable that he also fought
and died a comrade-inarms of our recent enemies; so that,
had the Austrians imitated the Allies in thus elevating an
Unknown Soldier, another replica of him would be en-
tombed as a patriot in Vienna. Mad as such a surmise must
sound, I beg you not to lose patience. This is a case of
there being more things in heaven and earth than are
dreamed of in the average philosophy. Herewith I forward
for your inspection my unadorned narrative, leaving you
free to edit, destroy, or employ it as you deem advisable.
However you decide, I shall not trouble you further. My
concern is ended, now that I have cleared my conscience.”
Enclosed was a typed manuscript, bearing no clue to its
authorship. It is here produced exactly as received, in the
belief that its simple directness will prove the best advo-
cate of its sincerity.
THE UNKNOWN SOLDIER 367
In October, 1917, I was acting-adjutant of a skeleton

battalion, my duties being to allot newly drafted civilians to
companies which as yet existed in name only. I suppose,
had I been of an imaginative turn of mind, I might easily
have permitted myself to become emotional. From morn-
ing to night men from every walk of life tramped past me,
some of them slicked up in holiday attire, others wearing
the rough clothes of humble occupations which varied all
the way from working comfort to the rags of poverty. They
came burdened with hand-baggage of every size and descrip-
tion, from suitcases, purchased specially for the occasion, to
bundles wrapped in newspaper. I had to steel my heart to
maintain a correct deportment of military aloofness. Had I
not done so, the procession would have been halted inter-
minably. Beneath their surface smiling—and most of the
recruits grinned nervously—there wasn’t one who wasn’t
feeling lost and lonely. At the slightest sign of sympathy
each was willing to recount his life’s history, his hopes, his
fears, and the dependents he had left behind him. Poor lads
with their bright eyes, so determined to make a brave show-
ing, yet so obviously panic-stricken, none of them knowing
or capable of visualizing whither he was going!
In the extemporized orderly room, constructed of rough
pine, I was seated at my table one morning, typewriters
clicking, a clerk at my elbow, whose job it was to produce
for instant perusal the enlistment papers of each newly
drafted man as his name was called and he was paraded.
As a rule the routing proceeded without variations; when
everything concerning the man had been found correct,
he was issued his serial number, appointed to a company,
and given in charge of a sergeant to be marched off to the
Quartermaster’s Department that he might be outfitted
with a uniform, mess-kit, blankets, etc., which was the in-

itial step in his transformation from a civilian to a soldier.
On this particular morning a delay occurred when the name
of one, Jake Cohen, had been called. I did not notice the
delay at first, nor did I look up, for I was busy completing
entries of the last man who had filed before me.
“This one’s a bit out of the ordinary, sir,” the clerk whis-
pered, thrusting beneath my nose a larger bunch of pa-
pers than I was in the habit of receiving with a single
individual.
Still without looking up, I fell to digesting their contents.
Jake Cohen, it appeared, was by occupation a tailor and
had been recruited from the lower East Side of New York.
Recruited is scarcely the word; he had been drafted out of
his turn in lieu of being sent to jail for making seditious
utterances. Then came the specific charge against him:
during the lunch hour, when sweatshops emptied, he had
formed the practice of preaching pacifism to his fellow-
workers at street corners. At first the police, not under-
standing his language, had dispersed his meetings and moved
him on. Then someone had laid information against him; he
had been caught red-handed and arrested. The magistrate
before whom he had been brought had taken a more leni-
ent view of his offence than might have been expected. Dis-
covering that the prisoner was of military age and require-
ments, he had ordered that he be drafted forthwith into the
army—the result being that he had been conducted to my
orderly room in the charge of an armed escort.
I wanted to be just. Above all, I was anxious to display
no prejudice. I tried to view his predicament as he himself
probably regarded it. As a foreigner he was out of touch
with the wave of patriotism which had swept the country.
The issues involved in the war were remotely apprehended

by him. In preaching pacifism he had had no idea that he
was committing a crime which recent legislation had decreed
to be as outrageous as burglary. He’d understood that Amer-
ica was a free country and had considered himself well with-
in his rights in expressing an opinion. Possibly he was tinged
with socialism, as had been most of our prominent divines
up to the day of our declaration of hostility. He’d only been
repeating at an inexpedient moment what statesmen had
been saying for the best part of three years, namely, that
the United States rose superior to petty hatreds of Europe-
an politics. His sole folly had been the vanity of the half-
baked idealist. Swaying audiences had lent the illusion of
spaciousness to his otherwise cramped existence.
As I studied his brief history, I became imperceptibly
affected by the personality of the man who stood before
me. As yet I had not glanced at him. I seemed to hear the
pompous magistrate who had condemned him getting off
his windy periods concerning the nobility of patriotism. But
why should patriotism be obligatory on a man of the pris-
oner’s traditions? Patriotism entailed love of country. . .
Either he or his parents had crossed the Atlantic, fleeing
from persecution in the shape of organized massacres.
America’s gift to him had been the lingering death of the
sweatshop, for which meagre hospitality he was being com-
pelled to make restitution by presenting his body as a tar-
get. The bargain was unjust. Something of this sort, pro-
claimed carelessly at a street corner, had caused his ar-
rest. My duty as his military superior necessitated that I
adopt a severe demeanor.
Turning abruptly to my sergeant, I ordered the room to
be cleared. I was reluctant to shame the man before regu-
larly drafted recruits who were to be his companions.

While my instructions were being carried out, I pretended
to continue examining his papers. When the shuffling feet
had exited and all had grown quiet, I began gravely:
“Well, my man, so you’re Jake Cohen?”
“It’s the name they have given me.”
A peculiarly gentle voice. Scarcely cultured. Different.
A winning voice, slightly Russian in its intonation. For
the first time my eyes crept up his body, progressing slow-
ly. At his hands they paused. His hands warned me that
his face would come as a surprise. His hands were deli-
cate and pointed. I don’t know anything about art, but I
imagine they may have resembled a sculptor’s. And yet I
could see the needle-pricks on his fingers and the skin cal-
loused with drawing the thread.
“By occupation you’re a tailor?”
“They say that, too.”
“But look here,” I protested with unpremeditated geni-
ality. “I’m not questioning inquisitively. I have to ask to
make certain that your papers are correct.”
I raised my eyes and found that his were smiling. His
smile is impossible to describe: it was one of sheer friend-
ship, as though he had known and been fond of me al-
ways. He was as un-Americanized as if he had just land-
ed at Ellis Island, wearing the silky beard and ringleted
hair of a young rabbi.
“You’re in the army now,” I said by way of pleasantry.
“The first thing you’ll have to do is to get a shave and a
haircut.”
“I shall have to do many things to which I’ve been unac-
customed,” he responded.
“You’re in an awkward fix. I’m sorry for you,” I went

on conversationally. “The army’s the last place for which
you’re fitted. Not that it’ll do you any harm if you sur-
vive. Wholesome food and setting-up exercises will improve
you. I should judge you’ve often been hungry.”
“You judge rightly.”
“What I’m trying to say,” I explained, “is that worse
things could have befallen you. Of course the method of
your drafting is disgraceful. If your fellow-soldiers knew,
they might make things awkward. That was why I cleared
the room while we had this talk.”
“I guessed as much and thank you.”
“I’m not keen on being thanked.” I resumed by brusque-
ness: “My object was to give you a fair start. As far as I’m
concerned I shall do my best to repress your previous bad
record. As long as you play the game, it’ll be as though it
hadn’t happened. If you let me down—”
“I shan’t.”
“Then, since I can trust you, let’s hope you’ll redeem
your honor on the field of battle.”
“Let’s hope so.” He spoke as an equal, still smiling curi-
ously.
Feeling that I wasn’t holding my end up, I cut short the
interview by summoning the next man on the list of the
recruited.
For some weeks, in the rush of mobilizing a raw battal-
ion, the memory of Jake Cohen faded from my mind. Then
one day, in crossing the parade ground, I was saluted by a
slim young soldier, graceful and almost girlish in his trim-
ly fitting khaki. Having passed him, I halted a non-commis-
sioned officer.
“What’s that man’s name?”
“Jake Cohen, sir. The men call him ‘Lily.’ ”

“Why?”
“Because of his hands. It was his hands that started it.
They aren’t shaped for killing. The nickname’s stuck on
account of—well, I might say his purity.”
“How d’you mean?”
“He don’t swear, sir, and he don’t tell certain stories.”
“That’s to his credit. I hope it doesn’t affect his popu-
larity.”
“I wouldn’t call him popular, sir. He hasn’t got our sense
of humor; the men play jokes on him.”
“How’s he shaping as a soldier?”
“Awkward, sir, Sort of left-handed. Not but what he
does his best.”
“He looks different since he’s visited the barber,” I made
light of my curiosity. Then, on the point of parting, “See
here, Sergeant, there’s to be no persecution. There’s noth-
ing breaks a man’s heart sooner than nagging.”
It may have been three weeks later that the same ser-
geant tapped at the door of my orderly room, inquiring if
he might have a word with me. It was after nightfall and I
was alone, stooped above the table beneath a lamp, get-
ting off a long-delayed batch of private correspondence.
There was the breath of frost on the man’s tunic, I re-
member, as he entered. He saluted promptly, standing stiff-
ly to attention.
“We’re off parade, Sergeant,” I looked up. “You must
be tired with so much standing. Choose a chair and tell
me what’s brought you.”
“About this man, Jake Cohen, sir. You asked me to keep
an eye on him.”
“What have you learned?”
“I don’t feel the fellow’s getting a square deal, sir. Some-

how, I don’t know how, the news has got abroad of how
he was drafted. That and his oddness don’t make things
easy for him. As regards his superiors—there’s nothing
gained by mincing words—they pick on him.”
“How do they pick on him?”
“He gets more fatigues and guard duties than are his
share. Why I’ve come to you, sir, is that I’ve remembered
what you said about breaking a man’s heart with nagging.
In the army you either break his heart or you change a
willing man into a barrack-room lawyer.”
“Then what you’re really telling me is that Jake Co-
hen’s becoming a ringleader of malcontents?”
“Not exactly, sir; he’s in danger of becoming. He has a
sense of justice; then he’s intelligent beyond the average.
And lastly, he has the reputation for having been a paci-
fist. He doesn’t seek out the trouble-makers—not what
I’ve noticed; but fellows who’ve landed themselves in trou-
ble go to him.”
“Hmph!” I pondered the situation.
“To tell the truth,” the sergeant added, “it’s his air of
knowing more than you do that does the damage. That’s
what gets the goat of the N.C.O.’s placed over him.”
“And you have a suggestion?”
“I have, sir. That he be given a chance. Why not make
him a regimental tailor? Tailoring used to be his occupa-
tion. He might be happier at that.”
I took the sergeant’s advice, wondering why I hadn’t
thought of so practical a solution. From time to time I made
inquiries as to Jake Cohen’s progress—I had to be careful
lest I be accused of playing favorites. From all I could
gather he was giving satisfaction, though there was little
doubt that with the men he was no more popular. Per-

haps less so, because he worked in comparative comfort
while they were roughing it on route marches and digging
imitation trenches. Anyhow, I’d done my best. A camp
wasn’t a nursery.
At Christmas something happened to raise his prestige.
Entertainments were being arranged and talent hunted.
It was discovered that Jake Cohen played the violin
marvellously—it was said better than any professional in
New York. The picture lives in my memory of his strange,
poetic countenance, alight with ecstasy as he swayed above
his instrument, making men dream like children. Playing
a violin, however, wouldn’t get him far when it came to
fighting.
With the New Year, rumors began to circulate that we
were to be sent overseas within a week, within two weeks,
within a month. Sometimes the false alarms were official,
their purpose being either to test the efficiency of our pre-
paredness or else to deceive the enemy spies who we had
been warned were among us. At last in April, to our im-
mense excitement, the alarm was not false. We embarked
under cover of darkness, landed at Liverpool, entrained
for Dover, and were shipped to Calais, whence we were
hurried to a reserve position in the rear of the British lines,
which the enemy was then pounding with the Channel ports
as his objective. Here we gained our first glimpse of war-
fare, not as a means of wasting time but as a tragic reality:
German prisoners, toiling like slaves, attended by armed
guards; Red Cross hospitals packed with wounded; nightly
raids by bombing planes. It was the German prisoners who
brought Jake Cohen again to my attention. The Military
Police reported that he had been heard speaking to them
in their own language. More suspicious still, he had been

caught making them presents and even sharing with them
his rations. While as yet there was nothing pinned on him,
we were advised that he would bear watching. Because of
my earlier sympathy for the man and because he had
pledged me his honor to play the game, I sent for him.
The moment he was in my presence I fell under his spell.
All the annoyance with which I had been boiling oozed
from me. I suppose my actual sensation was that it would
be prejudging him to display anger. With a trustfulness
which was reprehensible, I handed to him the adverse
report marked Confidential.
He glanced up. “I’m sorry, sir. Is it an offence to be
kind?”
“I’m afraid it is.” I attempted sarcasm, but in effect dis-
paraged the authority of which I was the vehicle. “You
see, Cohen, the world’s changed. It’s no longer a virtue to
love your enemies. You and I, as soldiers, are expected to
hate our enemies—to mistreat them whenever circum-
stances forbid us to slaughter them.”
“I see,” he nodded. “Makes things difficult, doesn’t it,
sir, when it’s one’s nature to be pitiful?”
“It does that,” I affirmed. “But when everyone’s drunk
with blood and there’s a war raging, not to disguise one’s
finer feelings leads to complications.”
“I’ve caused complications for you, sir,” he divined
acutely. “Please believe me when I say it was the last thing
I intended.”
“I don’t doubt it,” I assured him earnestly. “But here’s
how matters stand: I’ve rather shielded you, Cohen. With
all this spy-fever abroad, if anyone stacked the cards against
you—But I don’t need to continue. It would be serious for
me as an adjutant after the leniency I’ve shown you.”

“Of course it would, sir.”
“But why is it, Cohen, when you and I can understand
each other so perfectly, that you’ve cultivated this knack
of getting up the shirts of the majority?”
He smiled luminously, the way I’d seen him smile when
he’d stooped above his violin.
“The majority are affronted by my purity.”
“Couldn’t you modify your purity?”
He shook his head slowly.
“You know, sir, that’s not possible. Here’s what I can
do, if it’ll help you: I can cease to be a tailor and become a
combatant.”
I stared at him.
“But you wouldn’t like—?”
“We’re not here to do what we like,” he reproached me
gently. “I’m willing, if it’ll spare your honor.”
When he had gone and I realized the nature of our con-
versation, I grew indignant. What had persuaded me to
act so preposterously? I was the adjutant of the battalion,
a man under discipline and dispensing discipline. In pam-
pering a delinquent, whom it had been my duty to repri-
mand, I had been guilty of the grossest laxity. There could
be only one explanation: the moment the man came near
me, he hypnotized me. To repair my error, I lost no time
in restoring him to the ranks of active fighters where eve-
ry hour his conduct would be under close surveillance.
After that in the hurry of events I lost sight of him. Any
day we were expecting to man the trenches and receive
our baptism of fire. Orders came through that our regi-
ment was to lose its identity by being brigaded with the
British. We were, in fact, on the point of being broken up
and employed for the replacement of British casualties,

when the orders were countermanded. In their stead we
were entrained in our entirety and transported southward
to a secret destination. It proved to be a sector in Lor-
raine, which till now had been regarded as quiet.
Only once on the journey did I come across my embar-
rassing acquaintance. During our fraternizing with the
British, our men had adopted certain of their expressions.
We had reached our railroad terminus and were route-
marching. I was trotting at the head of the column with
my major, when I heard an N.C.O., named Corporal Tri-
umph, exclaim brutally “None of your bloody pacifism.”
Turning in my saddle, I saw that the rebuked private was
Jake Cohen. So he was still at his old game, doing his ut-
most to be unpopular, provoking persecution! He tossed
back my glance, smiling his recognition. But I was through
with protecting him. If he refused to learn sense, he must
take his medicine.
While we officers were familiarizing ourselves with the
trench system we were immediately to take over, our regi-
ment was billeted in and about a ruined village; not so
ruined, however, as to be entirely depopulated. Those of
the original inhabitants who remained were, as in most
battle areas, the least reputable. During the early stages
of the war the village had been occupied by the enemy,
then victorious; events had happened which were
unrepeatable in their shame and horror. These memories
and the cruel years of hope deferred had bludgeoned the
villagers into a dull acceptance of degradation. They had
ceased to be self-respecting—ceased even to be thrilled by
their proximity to heroism. The motive that urged them to
stay on, facing gas attacks and shell fire, was avarice. They
catered to their defenders’ vices. Every peasant peddled in-

toxicants; there was no way of stopping the traffic. Femi-
nine chastity, except among the undesired, seemed a forgot-
ten virtue. For us to have posted orders for the restoration
of morality would have branded us as invaders and tyrants.
Had we tried to suppress the estaminets, the community
would have protested that they were kept open for civilians,
though why girls of amorous dispositions should be employed
as servitors might have proved a difficult question to answer.
The most we could do, as a regiment billeted on the neigh-
borhood, was to restrict the hours during which liquor could
be publicly served to men whom we commanded.
The night previous to the one on which we took over the
line these hours were relaxed, with the consequence that
the village became the scene of bacchanalia. It was natural
enough that men imperilled by extinction, and most of them
young, should grow frenzied to slake their thirst for life, while
life was still available. One estaminet, called poetically The
Silver Moon, had gained a deserved notoriety. It had a danc-
ing floor of sorts, a slot machine which made mechanical
music, and, to crown its attraction, whoever purchased
champagne could claim Marie as a partner. Marie was a
genuine beauty, sweet and sly, possessed of laughing eyes
which caressed or mocked in proportion to the customer’s
lavishness. She had lips ripe for kisses and a mass of pal-
est hair, which seemed always on the point of tumbling.
Somehow she had retained such a disarming air of inno-
cence that it was impossible to credit the tales that were
narrated of her. Perhaps her secret was that she had grown
to girlhood among conditions so abnormal that her con-
science had never had the chance to trouble her. It was to
The Silver Moon that those who could afford its charges
thronged on that final night. Others, whose funds were

meagre, peered through its steaming windows or content-
ed themselves with humbler places of entertainment.
It was a great occasion for Marie and no less for Marie’s
proprietors. Till our coming, their village had experienced
nothing but poilus, to whom a few francs represented a
month’s savings; whereas a doughboy flung away more
money than a French officer. Short as our stay had been,
she had acquired innumerable admirers, the most ardent
of whom was Corporal Triumph, the N.C.O. whom on
the line of march I had heard upbraiding Jake Cohen.
According to the story as I gleaned its details later, he
grew increasingly possessive of her as the evening ad-
vanced. Other slatterns of the village were present; but
not enough to supply a tithe of the soldiers with partners.
The slot machine, which ground out music, was kept con-
tinuously going. Men were compelled to dance together.
Corporal Triumph’s anxiety to annex the only beauty was
entirely understandable. Moreover, he had reached that
pitch of jealousy at which he was persuaded he had a pre-
mier right to her.
For some inscrutable reason Jake Cohen, who was in
Triumph’s platoon, had squeezed his way into the estami-
net. It was the last place one might have expected to find
him. Having paid his entrance by purchasing food, he nei-
ther danced nor drank; he merely stood crushed against the
wall, watching but not participating. Wherever Marie strayed,
his dark eyes followed her. The evidence is unanimous that
at no time did he attempt to speak or interfere with her.
As the spectacle increased in riot, she grew restive un-
der his scrutiny. There were times when, with evident defi-
ance, she surrendered herself more whole-heartedly to the
abandon; there were others when she paused, disturbed

and puzzled, glancing back at him. How long this contin-
ued I have no way of guessing, but there can be no doubt
that gradually his gaze tormented her.
Corporal Triumph had won her again and was pressing
her close as he danced; suddenly she stopped dead, thrust-
ing him from her. Before she could be recaptured, she had
darted across the floor and had flung herself at the feet of
Jake Cohen. There she clung to his knees, her hair stream-
ing loose, crushed and shaken with sobbing. Sheer amaze-
ment at her grief was sobering; it produced an instant si-
lence. The slot machine droned to the end of its tune; no
one volunteered to renew its music. As it ceased to wheeze,
Marie’s broken voice could be heard pleading—pleading,
of all things, for Jake Cohen’s forgiveness. How she sup-
posed she had offended was not stated. He alone seemed
unsurprised by her contrition and bending over her, whis-
pered. Those who were nearest insist his words were,
“Neither do I condemn thee”—evidently a quotation from
the Bible. As he was raising her, Corporal Triumph ap-
proached, hurling insulting epithets against Cohen’s race
and former pacifism. When he found himself ignored, as
much as if he had not spoken, he endeavored to reach
Cohen with his fists and would have succeeded if other
N.C.O.’s had not prevented him. Then the Military Police
entered. Someone knocked out the lights and there was a
scamper for the exits. When the lamps were restored, the
participants in the quarrel had vanished.
Of this happening we in authority knew nothing till af-
ter the court-martial. But I run ahead of my story.
Next evening our relief of the French division which
had been holding the line was set in progress. Naturally
every precaution had been taken to prevent the enemy from

getting wind of such a movement. With regard to our own
location, we had every reason to suppose that the Germans
believed our regiment to be still in the north, supporting the
British. This illusion was rudely dispelled at the hour when
night was darkest and trenches most thronged with Ameri-
can companies moving up and French companies withdraw-
ing. A bombardment of such depth and intensity descend-
ed as to leave no doubt that it was the herald of worse to
follow. Crossroads, regimental and battalion headquarters
were targeted with paralyzing accuracy. Practically every
important telephone wire was cut, making communication
impossible. Toward dawn the enemy deluged us with gas.
Then to witness our confusion he sent bombing planes,
which dropped propaganda, together with leaflets warning
us that all our movements were an open book, our strength,
our strong points, even the names of our officers.
Rumors of spies, which had died down on our journey
southward, were whipped into a frenzy. How could the
enemy have learned so much if some of his agents, disguised
in American uniforms, were not among us? My first
thought was of Jake Cohen and of the leniency I had
shown him. I was so conscience-stricken by my careless-
ness that, at the first opportunity, I set inquiries afoot to
ascertain his whereabouts. I discovered that he was man-
ning the front line with his company. As communications
were re-established, news began to arrive. An enemy at-
tack had been launched by Sturm Truppen. They had been
beaten off; our men had pursued them into No Man’s
Land, coming to such close quarters that there had been
bayonet fighting. Now that the situation had grown nor-
mal, German machine-gunners were preventing our
stretcher-bearers from venturing out to the rescue of the

wounded. It was planned to wait till nightfall—then to
crawl through the wire to their succor. Volunteers were
being called for. I was so nervous that I requested infor-
mation as regards Jake Cohen’s conduct. Word was sent
back that he had been one of the first to volunteer to car-
ry water, etc., to his wounded comrades.
There was a shuffling next morning on the stairs of the
dugout in which battalion headquarters had been estab-
lished. The O.C. of the battalion and his staff were at
breakfast. I looked up to see Jake Cohen, stripped of his
accoutrements and escorted between guards with fixed
bayonets. He was perfectly calm—as calm as on that first
day of his drafting, when he had been led into my orderly
room similarly escorted. He had the bearing of one fully
in control of the situation—either that or incapable of re-
alizing the seriousness of his predicament.
The charge laid against him was that of communicating
with the enemy. Creeping out through the front-line wire
after dark, he had carried help in the shape of bandages,
food, and water, not only to our own wounded, but to the
enemy’s. He had been seen and, when he returned for fresh
supplies, had been cautioned against such unprofitable hu-
manitarianism. On his second trip into No Man’s Land,
Corporal Triumph had undertaken to track him and had
surprised him in a shell-hole, handing papers to a German.
Corporal Triumph had shot the German and conducted
Private Cohen as a prisoner back to our front line. When
Cohen had been searched, further incriminating documents
had been found in his possession. These documents, on
being examined, turned out to be rough maps of the dispo-
sitions of our troops and machine-gun emplacements. When
Cohen was invited to speak in self-defence, he professed

that he had nothing that he cared to add. This being the
case, his guilt was as good as proven, and he was slated
for court-martial.
That he might be made an example to other spies who
might be among us, his trial was hurried forward. Instead
of sending him back of the lines, where the discipline of his
punishment would lose in terror by distance, it was deter-
mined to try him summarily and on the spot, so that his
own regiment might be the witness of his penalty. The court
was convened in the village where he had been billeted.
The trial took place in the estaminet of The Silver Moon,
which must have been a source of satisfaction to Corporal
Triumph. Among the character witnesses I was summoned.
My evidence was very much as here stated: the manner of
Cohen’s enlistment; how his lack of aptitude for soldier-
ing had caused me to appoint him as regimental tailor;
how, when suspicion had fallen on him, I had restored
him to the fighting ranks, where he would be under more
close surveillance. While I was talking, his eyes never trav-
elled from my face. I sought to avoid them—was actually
compelled to struggle against their fascination. At last,
when I had delivered myself and it was safe to regard him,
I found that his expression was utterly unreproachful; that
he was smiling at me in friendship, almost as though I had
done him a favor—certainly as though he had always loved
me and was still fond of me. Save for my uniform and
duty, I could easily have copied Marie’s example by fling-
ing myself at his feet and imploring forgiveness.
But Marie—I have forgotten her. From the moment she
learned of Cohen’s plight, she was as one demented. She
went from officer to officer, waylaying even the General,
begging that mercy be shown. More than once she created

a disturbance by forcing her way into the court which, as I
have said, was held in the estaminet which had been the
scene of her amorous exploits. Shortly after the trial had
commenced, a second attack was launched by the enemy,
on a more ambitious scale than the first which had wel-
comed us when we had taken over the sector. News kept
pouring in of trenches lost; of how the division on our right
had left our flank exposed, so that there was danger of the
enemy working round behind us. The village was under
bombardment; the noise was deafening. Through it all the
crack of rifle-fire was drawing nearer, telling more elo-
quently than words how our troops were falling back and
the situation was becoming more menacing. The court
martial was speeded up and the hearing completed by
Corporal Triumph’s testimony. It was his testimony that
drove the final nail into Cohen’s coffin. The verdict was
rendered—that he was to be shot at dawn as a traitor.
As a matter of record, he was not. When the court rose,
the enemy had already gained the outskirts of the village.
Soon there would be street fighting. To make certain of jus-
tice being carried out, a firing squad was hastily summoned;
Jake Cohen was put against the estaminet wall and execut-
ed. When that happened, I had rejoined my battalion. I have
been told that where his body dropped, it was left; no one
had the leisure to bury it. That day, having evacuated the
civilian population, we were swept from the village. It took
a week to recover it; after which history wrote itself so fast
that, till the Armistice, we had no time to remember.
We were guarding the bridgeheads of the Rhine and
wondering how many of us, if any, would be sent home
for Christmas, when an incident occurred to revive Jake
Cohen’s memory. Having gone through the war unscathed,

Corporal Triumph had contracted pneumonia. He sent an
urgent request for me. The moment I entered his pres-
ence, I could see that he was dying—a gasping skeleton
propped up with pillows. He beckoned me to approach
his bedside. In a hoarse whisper he intimated that he had
something to confess. What he told me impressed me at
first as the hallucination of delirium. That was what I
wanted to believe it. If I believed otherwise, I became his
partner in having sent an innocent man to execution.
According to Corporal Triumph, he had detested Pri-
vate Cohen from the moment he had clapped eyes on him.
His relations with him had never been less than hostile.
The climax had been reached on that night at The Silver
Moon when Cohen had parted him from Marie. He had
decided then and there to get him. Cohen had played into
his hands by his humanity to the German wounded. He
had discovered him in a shell-hole, binding up an enemy.
He had shot the German and, as he was arresting Cohen,
had smuggled evidence of treachery into his tunic. When
I inquired how it had happened that he was carrying such
evidence, the vilest part of his infamy came to light: that
he himself had been an enemy agent, but had since gone
straight, deterred by the prompt example of Cohen’s court-
martial. In an attempt to whiten his own character he as-
sured me that he had turned religious. Scarcely a day had
passed when he had not read his Bible. Probably owing to
this belated piety, he had acquired glibness in handling
Scripture phrases, for when I asked him why Cohen had
not accused him before his judges, he answered, “ ‘As a
sheep before her shearers is dumb, so opened he not his
mouth.’ ” Before I could get a sworn record of his retrac-
tion, he expired. For the easing of my own conscience, in

what seemed to me an obvious miscarriage of justice, I
forwarded an account of the occurrence to Headquarters,
hoping that it might clear Cohen’s memory and produce a
posthumous reversal of the verdict. Whether the account
went astray in labyrinths of red tape or whether it was
deemed wisest to regard the matter as closed, I do not
know. Possibly the unattested ravings of a dying man were
not considered sufficiently trustworthy. At any rate, till
the time the regiment sailed back to America to be demo-
bilized, no action had been taken.
I was on temporary duty in Washington, detailed to serve
on the guard of honor to the Unknown Soldier and await-
ing the arrival of the body, when I stumbled on the first
clue of his identity. As the guest of a club, I fell into con-
versation with an officer. It developed that he had been
one of the commission which had selected the anonymous
hero whose sacrifice we were about to commemorate. I
was naturally curious to learn by what process of elimi-
nation the commission had made its choice. If I remem-
ber clearly, he told me that all the battlefields where great
engagements had been fought by our troops had been vis-
ited, and possible candidates for the distinction disinterred
and conveyed back to a central depot. The final decision
as to which was to become the symbol for the rest had
been arrived at by lottery. It had been a tedious mission
and a gruesome one. He wouldn’t undertake it again, even
though he were cashiered for his refusal. He narrated
some of the incidents that he had experienced, among
which was the following:
They were at the last stage of their tour; only one more
unknown soldier remained to be reclaimed to make up
their quota for the final selection. They had reached a vil-
lage toward the hour of sunset—a village so battered that
hardly one stone was left upon another. Their purpose
had been to go farther, when suddenly they had espied a
white cross above a grave carefully tended with flowers.
Its sacred peace in a scene of such utter desolation was
what had drawn their attention. Alighting, they had found
that the cross bore the legend, Soldat americain, inconnu.
Their travels were ended; they at once set about the body’s
disinterment. They had completed their task and were on
the point of departure when, seemingly from nowhere,
since they had supposed the village deserted, a girl had
appeared. At sight of what they had done she had begun
to weep broken-heartedly. For a reason best known to
herself, she had regarded the grave as her personal prop-
erty. She had been evil, she asserted; the man who had
rested there had made her good. With her own hands she
had buried him. They were stealing him. Where were they
taking him?
It had been too late to alter their plans. Everything save
the transportation of the body had been accomplished.
Hurriedly they had explained who they were and their
rights in the matter: that they had not committed a sense-
less desecration; that very possibly her unknown soldier
would be laid to rest in a grander tomb in America, which
would become a shrine of pilgrimage, just as the stone slab
beneath the Arc de Triomphe was a shrine of pilgrimage
for the French nation. She had proved inconsolable and
had followed them weeping till, outdistanced by their fast-
er going, she had faded to a speck and finally had been
lost to view in the gathering shadows.
I inquired the name of the village.
“And which of the candidates for the honor did they

select?”
“That’s a secret—or it’s supposed to be a secret.” The
officer bent toward me. “All the same, I can make a
shrewd guess, for on the last body there were initials
worked on the tunic. The tunic of the unknown soldier
who was chosen bore the same initials. He must have been
a brave man, for all his wounds were in his breast.”
“And what were the initials?”
The officer hesitated.
“That’s information I ought to keep under my hat. The
initials were J. C., however.”
It seemed scarcely possible, yet the suspicion grew that
Jake Cohen, to whom the world had denied justice and
had executed as a traitor, was the hero for whose home-
coming so much pomp was preparing. Suddenly, as though
he were not dead, he sprang to life in my imagination.
Again he stood before me, regarding me with those friendly
eyes which I had feared to gaze into too long, lest they
should hypnotize me. He had been persecuted for paci-
fism and we were honoring him as an example of milita-
rism. His purity had ostracized him. His kindness to pris-
oners had made him seem disloyal. The sarcastic speech I
had made to him came back: “It’s no longer a virtue to love
your enemies. You and I, as soldiers, are expected to hate
our enemies—to mistreat them whenever circumstances
forbid us to slaughter them.” In the truest sense he had
died for showing pity to his wounded enemies, when pity
had run contrary to his military duty. The cruel absurdity
dawned on me of the way in which we had misused him.
Putting a man with his eyes into a uniform hadn’t changed
his nature. Even pushing a rifle into his hands hadn’t

turned him aside from loving.
But I might be mistaken. I strove to believe I was. It
was too much to attribute to the long arm of circumstance,
that to-morrow I would be acting guard of honor to the
pacifist tailor whom my testimony had helped to send to
his unmerited punishment.
All the details of his reception stand clear cut in memo-
ry: statesmen to whom, while living, he had meant less
than nothing, generals who had concurred in his condem-
nation, making speeches over him. Everybody attributing
to him soldierly virtues which he had not coveted and ac-
tually had striven not to acquire. Bands playing martial
music. Flags flying for him who had possessed no flag.
The Allied Nations piling his coffin high with floral trib-
utes. And when he had died, if he were Jake Cohen, no
friend, save Marie, had spared time to bury him. If they
only knew; and did I know? These were my thoughts as I
heard his praises. If my guess were correct, one other per-
son knew: Marie, the courtesan, whom he had forgiven.
Perhaps I was going mad. Perhaps I am mad. I admit
this here by way of warning, for I am arriving at the
strange termination of my story. Recalling Marie created
the illusion that I saw her. I looked again, quite certain I
had seen her; but now she had vanished in the swaying of
the crowd.
At last, to the beat of muffled drums and boom of can-
non, we bore the Unknown to his final rest. Having piled
his tomb high with wreaths and posted sentries, we left him.
Next day, in the mist of early morning, as I was
approaching the cemetery on my tour of inspection, I saw
a woman. This time I recognized her unmistakably as

Marie. She was coming toward me, walking gladly, her
face ecstatic. As in a trance, she would have passed me.
“Marie!”
She knew me. My features, as seen in the court-room,
swearing away the life of the man she loved, must have
branded themselves into her memory.
“How did you come here?” I questioned.
When they had taken him from her, she had spent her
all that she might follow him.
“But,” I protested, “you couldn’t be certain; there were
so many unknown soldiers collected from all the battle-
fields. How could you possibly guess that his body would
be the one—?”
“He is risen,” she clutched my hands. “That was what
I asked myself; how could I possibly guess? All night I
longed to approach him, but the guards kept me back.
Toward dawn, when the crowds had melted, I drew near-
er. This time nobody stopped me. The sentries stood on
duty, like men of stone. I came to the mountain of flowers
they had piled over him to weigh him down. There I knelt
weeping, praying that I might have him back in the little
grave, small as a cradle, which my own hands had dug for
him. In the silence I heard a stirring. I was frightened,
Monsieur, for it seemed to me that the sentries, staring
with their unseeing eyes, were all dead. The thing that
was happening was unbelievable. The mountain of flow-
ers was heaving, as though someone who was underneath
was striving to thrust them back. I hid my face; then I
heard his voice, ‘Marie.’ There he stood, Monsieur, in his
old khaki uniform, his steel helmet on his head, the gap-
ing wounds in his breast where the volley had struck him.
“ ‘Marie,’ he said again, ‘why weepest thou? I ascend

unto my Father and your Father; to my God and your
God.’ ”
I have lost sight of Marie. I have no way of knowing

whether what I have recorded is hallucination or fact. Day
and night I rehearse the details. I can think of little else. I
am troubled, which is the reason for my anonymous con-
fession. Whom did we bury as our Unknown Soldier? Is
he still there? Did they bury the same man in London at
Westminster Abbey and again beneath the Arc de Triom-
phe in Paris? To me it seems all so likely—so natural.
Ought not Christ to have suffered these things? While the
world was suffering, how could He have remained in His
glory? And then that one clue to the Unknown’s identi-
ty—J. C. were the initials sewn on his tunic.
The text of this book was set in the composing rooms of The
Press of the J EWISH P UBLICATION S OCIETY OF A MERICA on
the monotype in Caslon Old Style. The original letter on which
this type is based was cut by William Caslon about 1720.
The paper is Monoplane Antique book paper, made by the

P. H. Glatfelter Company, Spring Grove, Penna., especially
for this edition.
Electrotyped, printed and bound by the Haddon Craftsmen,

Incorporated, Camden, New Jersey.

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Candles in the Night:

Jewish Tales by Gentile

JEWISH TALES BY GENTILE AUTHORS

CARL VAN DOREN

Copyright © 2001 by Varda Books

All rights reserved.

New ISBN 1-59045-417-0 Library PDF

No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in

Prepared as an ebook by Varda Graphics, Inc.

“I shall light a candle of understanding in thy heart,

I N THE long night of exile, the Jew has been guided

lines of Shakespeare as well as in the vulgar legends of

Rings,” when scholars and mystics turned diligently to

It is now no more that toleration is spoken of as if

Nineteenth century literature reflected the growing liber-

Bonghi, Ferrero and Moleschott, Bjoernson and Ibsen. At

pleaded for his right to be himself, and presented eloquently

The rise of the Ku Klux Klan in the early twenties led

and falsehood which sustained Judeophobia through the

ers of the world needs repeated emphasis. It is important

The collection is representative in spite of the omission,

Dr. Solomon Grayzel of Philadelphia for many valuable

of Christians and Jews, Bishop B. F. P. Ivins, Drs. Frank

A NTI-SEMITISM, wherever I have observed it, has

To apply the parallel: If a Jew injures me, does it follow

body is safe. Anti-Semitism has organized a malady into

Preface, by CARL VAN DOREN. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxi

1. GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO. A Tale of Three Rings. . . . . . . . 3

2. CARL EWALD. My Little Boy. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

3. MAURUS J OKAI. How I Became a Friend of the Jews . . . 15

4. ANTON CHEKHOV. Rothschild’s Fiddle. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21

5. MAXIM GORKY . The Little Boy. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37

6. RICARDA HUCH. The Jew’s Grave. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45

7. ANATOLE FRANCE. An Anti-Semite in the Country. . . . 67

8. THOMAS NELSON PAGE. The Jew and the Christian. . . . 77

9. JOHAN AUGUST STRINDBERG. Peter the Hermit. . . . . . . . 97

10. PER HALLSTRÖM . Arsareth. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103

11. VILLIERS DE L’ISLE ADAM. The Torture of Hope. . . . . . . 133

12. I. L. C ARGIALE. The Easter Torch. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143

13. KARL KLOSTERMANN. The Jew of S. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163

14. ADAM S ZYMANSKI. Srul—from Lubartów. . . . . . . . . . . . 179

15. HAMLEN HUNT. The Saluting Doll. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195

16. ELIZA ORZESZKO. “Give Me a Flower!”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209

17. LEOPOLD VON SACHER-MASOCH. Galeb Jekarim. . . . . . . 243

18. ERNESTS BIRZNIEKS-UPÏTS. Seskinš. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 255

19. STEPHEN VINCENT BENÉT. Jacob and the Indians. . . . . . 271

20. MYRA KELLY. Morris and the Honorable Tim. . . . . . . . . 293

21. BEN AMES WILLIAMS. Sheener. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 313

22. SINCLAIR LEWIS. The Life and Death of a God. . . . . . . . . 329

23. CONINGSBY DAWSON. The Unknown Soldier. . . . . . . . . . 365

JEWISH TALES BY GENTILE AUTHORS

Italian novelist, “the first of the modern story-tellers,” 1313–

A TALE OF THREE RINGS

S ALADIN was so brave and great a man that he had

plied him with the following answer: “The question which

A TALE OF THREE RINGS 5

Danish novelist, 1856–1908. His work, My Little Boy, appeared

T HERE is a battle royal and a great hullabaloo among

Breathlessly, we ask three passers-by if they have not seen

and David and Saul. We hear wonderful stories. The walls

Foremost Hungarian novelist, 1825–1904. At the age of

HOW I BECAME A FRIEND