You may wander through miles of streets in this quarter and see the same strange sight—the immigrant Jew who has established himself keeping open shop in a dwelling-house all the Sunday through. You may see trade in full tide at eight o'clock in the morning. When midnight has rung out from the churches which still remain as memorials of the vanished Christian population you will still see the shops open and the Rembrandtesque figure of the owner sitting among his wares, waiting for a chance customer. He is perhaps reading a Yiddish paper, printed in Hebrew characters, by the light of a candle, slowly guttering to its last flicker.
"THE ORIENTAL BAZAAR."
But it is not yet night, though the twilight is falling as we turn into Morgan Street, and come suddenly upon a page of the old Orient bound up in the book of modern Western life.
Here is a building which is fitly labelled "The Oriental Bazaar." You are in London, but you might be in Cairo or Mogador. The bazaar or "market" is reached from the street by deep flights of steps. It is open to the sky, and beyond it and above it is a street of houses, and a roadway along which flit now and again Eastern women with gay-coloured shawls over their heads.
The "shops" of the market are built in little recesses. In these sit silent Oriental figures—the dealers. Most of the day's business is over. There are only a few loiterers, and the men and women who keep the little shops sit silent and emotionless as the Arabs among their unsold wares. In one shop the stock has been sold out and the proprietor is sitting in the gloom playing cards with a little party of men friends.
It is a picture for Rembrandt. The only light in the arched recess which forms the shop is that of a candle. Round the candle are grouped half-a-dozen dark, weird-looking men, all intent upon the game.
There is one card to be played. Uttering a little guttural cry, the man who holds it brings it down on the counter with a thud. The game the men are playing is one peculiar to these people. It is called Clabber-yas. The last card played, the ninth trump, adds ten points to the score and wins the game.
And at that moment the distant church bells ring out to call the Christian worshippers to evening prayer.
But the Sabbath evening does not find the Jews undevout. The darkness has fallen now, and we make our way back to the crowded streets of the old Ghetto. Here the long lines of lighted shops are now packed with their evening customers, who are buying meat and groceries and selecting furniture, being measured for new suits, trying on smart hats and cloaks of the latest West-end fashion, and examining the pink and blue and yellow silk petticoats which make such a gay show in the brilliantly-lighted windows of the milliners. We turn into a quiet street where the prevailing note is gloom, and, having secured the friendly escort of a Jewish clergyman's son, without whose presence we should hesitate to intrude, we pass through a dark doorway and find ourselves among a group of men whose features and whose occupations would have delighted the heart of Gustave Doré.