David was about to repeat what the Rabbi had said the night he consented to take the Hebrew class, but his pride checked him: "What are we coming to, my son? Protestantism is having a wonderful awakening in regard to the study of the Bible. Never has there been such a widespread interest in it as now. But among our people, how many of the younger generation make it a text-book of daily study? Such negligence will surely write its 'Ichabod' upon the future of our beloved Israel."
"What a discussion we have drifted into!" exclaimed Mr. Marion. "I had only intended dropping in here to ask you a simple question. Come to think, I believe I have not answered yours. You asked me my opinion of Rabbi Barthold. Well, I think he is a sincere, noble soul, a true seeker of the truth, and a man whose friendship I would value very highly."
Herschel looked much pleased.
"I hope you may be able to hear him on 'Yom Kippur,'" he said.
"I shall certainly try to be there," Marion answered.
As his footsteps died away in the hall, David said to himself: "If every Gentile were like that man, and every Jew like Uncle Ezra, what an ideal state of society there would be! But then," he added as an after-thought, "what would become of the lawyers? We would starve."
In the waning light of the afternoon, that Day of the Atonement, there was no more devout worshiper in all the temple than George Cragmore. He had just finished reading a book of M. Leroy Beaulieu's, "Israel Among the Nations," and as he turned the leaves of the prayer-book some one handed him, he was impressed with the truth of this sentence which recurred to him:
"The Hebrew genius was confined to a narrow bed between two rocky walls, whence only the sky could be seen; but it channeled there a well so deep that the ages have not dried it up, and the nations of the four corners of the earth have come to slake their thirst at its waters."