I denied it—but he did not listen and, raising his crutch, dealt me a stinging blow with the smaller end of it—though, at that, I was let off easy.
Towards our teacher, Mr. Levi, Geoghen and some of the other boys acted with all the pent-up meanness and savagery of mischievous youth. Mr. Levi's manner invited the twitting, perhaps: his pale, thin face bore always a nettled look, his eyes seemed ever hungry with some dark sorrow, and his mouth was always twitching. There was a fine timidity about his way of handling us. He did not seem to be able to scold or be authoritative.
But when he would be teaching us our Roman History, for instance, and would tell us of the beauties of Italian scenery or of Caesar's centurions lost in the dark, tangled German forests or of how Cleopatra came with purple sails—or of how Cleopatra came to meet Mark Antony in a golden barge with purple sails—then his face would light up with a look that was glorious, and even the rattiest, coarsest of us would thrill and be hushed with the thrill—and know, no matter how dimly, that he was in the presence of a great and beautiful spirit.
But those times were rare; and, as a rule, we made life miserable for Mr. Levi. He seemed to feel, I am sure, the handicap of his religion—to know that the Irish boys of the class, and dark, sullen-faced Italians, were thinking it an insult to be taught by a Jew—and that they were only waiting for the opportunity for an outburst.
It came at the end of my year in high school. That last month is always a rebellious one. The spring weather, the sense of approaching vacation make gamins of the quietest of us.
Mr. Levi had been absent from the room for a little while. Geoghen in that time had left his seat, hobbled up to the dais and opened the teacher's desk. This bit of boldness drew a crowd of laughing boys to the front of the room. They rummaged the desk, overturning and scattering its papers, tumbling books to the floor.
Suddenly one of them stooped and picked up a book which lay sprawled with its pages open. There was an immediate shouting, coarse and repellent to hear.
The book of Mr. Levi's which they had found, was a Hebrew prayer book.
Geoghen took it from the other boy. He held it open and up close to his leering face. Then slowly, with the others in his trail, he began to march around the room, making believe to sing a heathenish jargon which he must have thought to resemble Hebrew, twisting his face grotesquely to seem like a Jew's, making lewd gestures—breaking off now and again to shriek with laughter at the comicality of it all.