In League with Israel Part 12

"Well, you see, Bethany wheels me onto the elevator, and up we come. And it's so nice and cool up here. She hasn't been very busy yet. While she writes I get my lessons, or draw, or work puzzles. Then, when Mr.

Edmunds and Mr. Porter go off, and she hasn't anything to do, I recite to her. But the best fun is grocery tales."

"What's 'grocery tales?'" asked Mr. Marion, with flattering interest.

"Do you see that wholesale grocery-store across the street?" asked Jack, "and all the things sitting around in front? There's almost everything you can think of, from a broom to a banana. I choose the first thing I happen to look at, and she tells me a story about it. If it's a tea-chest, that makes her think of a Chinese story; or if it's a bottle of olives, something about the knights and ladies of Spain. Yesterday it was a chicken-coop, and she told me about a lovely visit she had once on a farm. She says when we come to that coil of rope, it will remind her of a storm she was in on the Mediterranean; and the coffee means a South American story; and the watermelons a darkey story; and the brooms something she read once about an old, blind broom-maker. Then I have lots of fun watching people pa.s.s. So many teams stop at the watering-trough over there. I like to wonder where everybody comes from, and imagine what their homes are like. It is almost as good as reading about them in a book."

"You are a very happy little fellow," said Mr. Marion, patting his cheek, approvingly. "I am glad you are getting strong so fast, so that you can go out into this big, discontented world of ours, and teach other people how to be happy. I've brought you some more work to do. I want you to look up all these references, and copy them on separate slips of paper for our next meeting. By the way, Bethany," he said, as he rose to go, "I had a letter from our Chattanooga Jew this morning. He is as much in earnest as ever. I wish we could get our League interested in him and his mission."

"It is a very unpopular movement, Cousin Frank," she answered. "Think of the prejudices to overcome. How little the general members.h.i.+p of the Church know or care about the Jews! It seems almost impossible to combat such indifference. Carlyle says, 'Every n.o.ble work is at first impossible.'"

"Ah, Bethany," he answered, "and Paul says: 'I can do all things through Christ who strengthened me.' I can't get away from the feeling that G.o.d wants me to take some forward step in the matter. Every paper I pick up seems to call my attention to it in some way. All the time in my business I am brought in contact with Jews who want to talk to me about my religion. They introduce the subject themselves. Ray and I have been reading Graetz's history lately. I declare it's a puzzle to me how any one can read an account of all the race endured at the hands of the Christianity of the Middle Ages, and not be more lenient toward them.

Pharaoh's cruelties were not a t.i.the of what was dealt out to them in the name of the gentle Nazarene. No wonder their children were taught to spit at the mention of such a name."

"O, is that history as bad as 'Fox's Book of Martyrs?'" asked Jack, eagerly. "We've got that at home, with the awfullest black and yellow pictures in it of people being burned to death and tortured. I hope, if it is as interesting, sister will read it out loud."

Bethany made such a grimace of remonstrance that Mr. Marion laughed.

"I'll send the books over to-morrow. You'll not care to read all five volumes, Jack; but Bethany can select the parts that will interest you most."

Jack's tenacious memory brought the subject up again that evening at the table.

"Aunt Harry," he asked, abruptly, pausing in the act of helping himself to sugar, "do you like the Jews?"

"Why, no, child," she said, hesitatingly. "I can't say that I take any special interest in them, one way or another. To tell the truth, I've never known any personally."

"Would you like to know more about them?" he asked, with childish persistence. "'Cause Bethany's going to read to me about them when Cousin Frank sends the books over, and you can listen if you like."

"Anything that Bethany reads we shall be glad to hear," answered Miss Harriet. "At first sister and I thought we would not intrude on you in the evenings; but the library does look so inviting, and it is so dull for us to sit with just our knitting-work, since we have stopped reading by lamp-light, that we can not resist the temptation to go in whenever she begins to read aloud."

"O, you're home-folks," said Jack.

Bethany had excused herself before this conversation commenced, and was in the library, opening the mail Miss Caroline had forgotten to give her at noon. When the others joined her, she held up a little pamphlet she had just opened.

"Look, Jack! It is from Mr. Lessing, from Chattanooga. It is an article on 'What shall become of the Jew?' I suppose it is written by one of them, at least his name would indicate it--Leo N. Levi. It will be interesting to look at that question from their standpoint."

"Will I like it?" asked Jack.

"No, I think not," she answered, after a rapid glance through its pages.

"We'll have some more of the 'Bonnie Brier-Bush' to-night, and save this until you are asleep."

Bethany read well, and excelled in Scotch dialect. When she laid down the book after the story of "A Doctor of the Old School," she saw a big tear splash down on Miss Harriet's knitting-work, and Miss Caroline was furtively wiping her spectacles.

"Leave the door open," called Jack, when he had been tucked away for the night. "Then I can listen if it's nice, or go to sleep if it's dull."

"Do you really care to hear this?" asked Bethany, picking up the pamphlet.

"Yes," said Miss Caroline, with several emphatic nods. "I'll own I am very ignorant on the subject; and after something so highly entertaining as these sweet Scotch tales, it's no more than right that we should take something improving."

"O sister," called Jack's voice from the next room, "you never told them about Mr. Lessing, did you?"

"No," answered Bethany. "I never told them any of my Chattanooga experiences. Maybe it would be better to begin with them, and then you can understand how I happened to become so interested in the Hebrew people. The pamphlet can wait until another time."

She tossed it back on the table, and settled herself comfortably in a big chair.

"I'll begin at the beginning," she said, "and tell you how I was persuaded into going, and how strangely events linked into each other."

"Can't you just see it all?" murmured Miss Caroline, as Bethany drew a graphic picture of the mountain outlook, the sunrise, and the crowded tent. When she came to Lessing's story, Miss Harriet dropped her work in her lap, and Miss Caroline leaned forward in her chair.

"Dear! dear! It sounds like a chapter out of a romance!" exclaimed Miss Caroline, when Bethany had finished. "That part about the mother's curse and being buried in effigy makes me think of the novels that we used to smuggle into our rooms at school. I wish you could go on and give us the next chapter. It is intensely interesting."

"Ah, the next chapter," replied Bethany, sadly. "I thought of that at the time. What can it be but the daily repet.i.tion of commonplace events?

He will simply go on to the end in a routine of study and work. He will preach to whatever audiences he can gather around him. That is all the world will see. The other part of it, the burden of loneliness laid upon him because of Jewish scorn and Christian distrust, the soul-struggles, the spiritual victories, the silent heroism, will be unwritten and unapplauded, because unseen."

"I don't wonder you are interested," said Miss Harriet. "Would you believe it, I don't know the difference between an orthodox and a reform Jew? I think I shall look it up to-morrow in the encyclopedia."

She picked up the little pamphlet, and opened at random.

"Here is a marked paragraph," she said. "'The Jew is everywhere in evidence. He sells vodki in Russia; he matches his cunning against Moslem and Greek in Turkey; he fights for existence and endures martyrdom in the Balkan provinces; he crowds the professions, the arts, the market-place, the bourse, and the army, in France, England, Austria, and Germany. He has invaded every calling in America, and everywhere he is seen; and, what is more to the point, he is felt. He runs through the entire length of history, as a thin but well-defined line, touched by the high lights of great events at almost every point.'"

"Where did we leave off with him, sister?" she asked, turning to Miss Caroline. "Wasn't it at the destruction of the temple, somewhere in the neighborhood of 70 A. D.? We shall have to trace that line back a considerable distance, I am thinking, if we would know anything on the subject."

"Let's trace it then," said Miss Caroline, with her usual alacrity.

Several evenings after, when Bethany came home from the office, she found a new book on the table, with Miss Caroline's name on the fly-leaf. It was "The Children of the Ghetto."

"I bought it this afternoon," she explained, a little nervously. "It is one of Zangwill's. The clerk at the bookstore told me he is called the Jewish d.i.c.kens, and that it is very interesting. Of course, I am no critic, but it looked interesting, and I thought you might not mind reading it aloud. Several sentences caught my eye that made me think it might be as entertaining as 'Old Curiosity Shop,' or 'Oliver Twist.'"

Bethany rapidly scanned several pages. "I believe it is the very thing to give us an insight into the later day customs and beliefs of the ma.s.ses."

She read the headings of several of the chapters aloud, and a sentence here and there.

"Listen to this!" she exclaimed. "'We are proud and happy in that the dread unknown G.o.d of the infinite universe has chosen our race as the medium by which to reveal his will to the world. History testifies that this has verily been our mission, that we have taught the world religion as truly as Greece has taught beauty and science. Our miraculous survival through the cataclysms of ancient and modern dynasties is a proof that our mission is not yet over.'"

"O, I thought it was going to be a story!" exclaimed Jack, in a disappointed tone.

"It is, dear," answered Bethany. "You can understand part, and I will explain the rest."

So it came about that, after the Scotch tales were laid aside, the little group in the library nightly turned their sympathies toward the children of the London Ghetto, as it existed in the early days of the century.

"I can never feel the same towards them again," said Miss Caroline, the night they finished the book. "I understand them so much better. It is just as the proem says: 'People who have been living in a ghetto for a couple of centuries are not able to step outside merely because the gates are thrown down, nor to efface the brands on their souls by putting off the yellow badges. Their faults are bred of its hovering miasma of persecution.'"

"Yes," answered Bethany, "I am glad he has given us such a diversity of types. You know that article that Mr. Lessing sent me says: 'No people can be fairly judged by its superlatives. It would be silly to judge all the Chinese by Confucius, or all the Americans by Benedict Arnold. If the Jews squirm and indignantly protest against Shylock and f.a.gin and Svengali, they must be consistent, and not claim as types Scott's Rebecca and Lessing's Nathan the Wise.' Now, Zangwill has given us a glimpse of all sorts of people--the 'pots and pans' of material Judaism, as well as the altar-fires of its most spiritual idealists. I hope you'll go on another investigating tour, Miss Caroline, and bring home something else as instructive."

But before Miss Caroline found time to go on another voyage of discovery among the book-stores, something happened at the office that gave a deeper interest to their future investigations.

Mr. Edmunds sat at the table a few minutes longer than usual, one morning after he had finished dictating his letters, to say: "We are about to make some changes in the office, Miss Hallam. Mr. Porter has decided to go abroad for a while. Family matters may keep him there possibly a year. During his absence it is necessary to have some one in his place; and, after mature deliberation, we have decided to take in a young lawyer who has two points decidedly in his favor. He has marked ability, and he will attract a wealthy cla.s.s of clients. He is a young Jew, a protege of Rabbi Barthold's. Personally, I have the highest respect for him, although Mr. Porter is a little prejudiced against him on account of his nationality. I wondered if you shared that feeling."

"No, indeed!" answered Bethany, quickly. "I have been greatly interested in studying their history this summer."