He had been speaking for an hour, exhorting the strikers to stand firm, and to bear in patience their burden of suffering. When he dwelt on the prospect of victory, and portrayed the ultimate moment of triumph that would be theirs, if only they stood steadfast, a wave of enthusiasm surged through the audience, and they burst into wild cheers.
“Remember, fellow-workmen,” he went on, “that we have fought before. Remember that we have suffered before. And remember that we have won before.
“How many are there of you who can look back to the famous strike of ten years ago? Do you not remember how, for two months, we fought with unbroken ranks, and after privation and distress far beyond what we are passing through to-day, triumphed over our enemies and won a glorious victory? It was but a pittance that we were striking for, but the life of our union was at stake. With one exception, not a man faltered. The story of our sufferings only God remembers! But we bore them without a murmur, without complaint. There was one dastard—one traitor, recreant to his oath—but we triumphed in spite of him. Oh, my fellow-workers, let us——”
But now a mist gathered before my eyes; the sound of his voice died away, and all that assemblage faded from my sight.
The speaker’s words had awakened in my mind the memory of Urim and Thummim; all else was instantly forgotten.
Urim was a doll that had lost both legs and an arm, but its cheeks, when I first saw it, were still pink, and, in spite of its misfortunes, it wore a smile that never faded. Thummim was also a doll, somewhat more rugged than Urim, but gloomy and frowning, in spite of its state of preservation. Koppel and Rebecca agreed that Urim was by far the more interesting of the two, but the two had come into the household together, and to discard Thummim was altogether out of the question.
Koppel was a cloakmaker, and it was during the big strike that I first met him. Of all the members of that big trades-union he alone had continued to work when the strike was declared, and they all cursed him. Pleading and threats alike were of no avail to induce him to leave the shop; for the paltry pittance that he could earn he abandoned his union and violated his oath of affiliation.
At every meeting he was denounced, his name was hissed, he was an outcast among his kind.
When I tapped upon his door there was no response. I opened it and beheld a child with raven hair, so busily occupied with undressing a doll that she did not look up until I asked: