I nodded
"Can't you put it off? This is no time for being away," he grumbled
"It can't be helped."
"You're not going out of town, are you?"
"What difference does it make?" After a pause I added: "It isn't on business. It's a private matter."
"Oh!" he uttered, with evident relief. Nothing hurt his pride more than to suspect me of having business secrets from him.
He was a married man now, having, less than a year ago, wedded a sweet little girl, a cousin, who was as simple-hearted and simple-minded as himself, and to whom he had practically been engaged since boyhood. His salary was one hundred and twenty-five dollars a week now. I was at home in their well-ordered little establishment, the sunshine that filled it having given an added impulse to my matrimonial aspirations
I betook myself to the new Antomir Synagogue. The congregation had greatly grown in prosperity and had recently moved from the ramshackle little frame building that had been its home into an impressive granite structure, formerly a Presbyterian church. This was my first visit to the building.
Indeed, I had not seen the inside of its predecessor, the little old house of prayer that had borne the name of my native town, years before it was abandoned. In former years, even some time after I had become a convinced free-thinker, I had visited it at least twice a year-on my two memorial days—that is, on the anniversaries of the death of my parents. I had not done so since I had read Spencer. This time, however, the anniversary of my mother's death had a peculiar meaning for me. Vaguely as a result of my new mood, and distinctly as a result of my betrothal, I was lured to the synagogue by a force against which my Spencerian agnosticism was powerless
I found the interior of the building brilliantly illuminated. The woodwork of the "stand" and the bible platform, the velvet-and-gold curtains of the Holy Ark, and the fresco paintings on the walls and ceiling were screamingly new and gaudy. So were the ornamental electric fixtures. Altogether the place reminded me of a reformed German synagogue rather than of the kind with which my idea of Judaism had always been identified. This seemed to accentuate the fact that the building had until recently been a Christian church. The glaring electric lights and the glittering decorations struck me as something unholy. Still, the scattered handful of worshipers I found there, and more particularly the beadle, looked orthodox enough, and I gradually became reconciled to the place as a house of God