The lack of the spirit of brotherhood that the Jew has encountered from the outside world has found a balance in an increased expression of love within his family. That most atrocious English plan of taking the child from his parents at a tender age and placing him in a boarding-school managed by holluschickies has never been adopted by the Jews.
Fear, repression and shock to vibrating nerves through threats, injunctions and beatings have fixed in the Christian races a whole round of "children's diseases," which in our ignorance we attribute to "the will of God."
Let this fact be stated, that old folks who are sent over the hill to the poorhouse have invited their fate. And conversely, elderly people who are treated with courtesy, consideration, kindness and respect are those who, in manhood's morning, have sown the seeds of love and kindness. Water rises to the height of its source; results follow causes; chickens come home to roost; action and reaction are equal; forces set in motion continue indefinitely in one direction. The laws of love are as exact as the laws of the tides that moan and cry and beat upon the shores, the round world over. A family of ten children born and reared in a noisome Ghetto, and all strong and healthy? Impossible, you say, yet such is the fact, and not a rare exception either. Happiness is the great prophylactic, and nothing is so sanitary as love, even though it be flavored with garlic.
The father of Mayer Anselm was a traveling merchant—call him a pedler, a Jewish pedler, and have done with it. He made trips outside of the Ghetto, and used to come back with interesting tales of adventure that he would relate to the household and neighbors who would drop in.
Not many Jews ventured outside of the Ghetto—to do so was to invite insult, robbery and violence. However, to get out is to grow. This man traded safety for experience and so got out and grew. He evidently knew how to take care of himself. He was courageous, courteous, intelligent, diplomatic. He made money. And always he wore the yellow hat and the yellow patch upon his breast.
In the "Red Shield" there was usually at least one Rabbi. One of the sons of Anselm Moses must be a Rabbi. The parents of little Mayer Anselm set him apart for the synagogue—he was so clever at reciting prayers and so glib with responses. Then he had an eczema for management, and took charge of all the games when the children played Hebrew I-Spy through the hallways and dark corners of the big, rambling and mysterious "Red Shield."
Little Mayer must have been nine years old when his father first took him along on one of his trips. It was a wonderful event—they were gone three days, and when they returned the boy entertained the whole Judengasse with tales, slightly hand-illumined, about the wonderful things they had seen.
One thing he learned, and that was that Christians were not the drunken, fighting, treacherous and bloodthirsty people he had supposed—at least, they were not all bad. Not once were they insulted or molested.
They had called at the great house or castle of the Landgrave to sell handkerchiefs, combs and beads to the servants, and accidentally they had met the Landlord, himself. He it was who owned the "Red Shield." The agent of the Landgrave came every month to collect the rent from everybody. That word "Landgrave" simply meant "Landlord," a term still used even in America, where there are, of course, no Lords, only "ramrods."