DISCOURSES OF KEIDANSKY

DISCOURSES OF
KEIDANSKY

By Bernard G. Richards

SCOTT-THAW CO.
542 Fifth Avenue
NEW YORK MCMIII

Copyright 1903
by Scott-Thaw Co.
(Incorporated)

First Edition Published
March 1903

The Heintzemann Press Boston

Note

The majority of these papers have appeared in the Boston Evening Transcript, and thanks are extended to the editors not only for their permission to reprint the same, but also for the many kindnesses they have shown my friend Keidansky and myself.

All the papers have undergone many changes, and numerous corrections and additions have been made.

B. G. R.

Introductory

Heretical, iconoclastic, revolutionary; yet the flashing eye, the trembling hand, the stirring voice held us spellbound, removed all differences, and there were no longer any conservatives and extremists; only so many human beings led onward and upward by a string of irresistible words.

"Outrageous heresies," some said, yet those who paused to listen for a moment lingered longer, and as they hearkened to the harangues, marked the words and followed the flights of fancy, it came to them that these dreamers of dreams and builders of all sorts of social Utopias upon the vacant lots of the vague future; these ribald rebels holding forth over their glasses of steaming Russian tea in the cafés, or on the street corners under the floating red flag—that they were but a continuation of the prophets of old in Israel.

Those who paused to listen were loath to depart and some prayed for a perpetuation of the things that came out of a throbbing heart and soaring mind. Faint reflections here of the outpourings of a soul, but mayhap they will shed some little light upon the inner life of that strange cosmos called the Ghetto and point again to the Dream it has harbored and cherished through the harsh realities of the centuries.

"Why perpetuate these things," you wrote to me, "since that life is so fast slipping away from under my feet; practicability is urged on every hand, and to-morrow I may be led under the canopy, perhaps elected to the presidency of a congregation, given full charge of an orthodox paper, or put into a big store on East Broadway, and then, what I said would only stand out to taunt and menace me about the life that could not be. Besides, I may become so radical that I shall not want to say anything." Yes, we change, and the castles we build in the air become tenement houses, and we are either the tenants, or worse, the landlords; but "life has its own theories," and if the fine poetry of youth be reduced to plain prose in later years, and wisdom teach us to be stupid, why, we are still a pace ahead and those who will come after shall put their shoulders to the Dream and move it up at least one inch nearer to life. "And if the dreamer dies," as you said yourself, "will not the Dream live ever on?"

Surely! And let me send you the glad assurance that death will come sooner than the presidency of a synagogue.

You are safe, Keidansky; the orthodox will never forgive you.

We change, yet those who fail also come to their own, and even lost souls make great discoveries. Did you not say that "Life is the profoundest of all platitudes?"

B. G. R.

New York, March, 1903.

Contents

DISCOURSES OF KEIDANSKY

I Keidansky Decides to Leave the Social Problem Unsolved for the Present

The lecture at the Revolutionary Club, Canal street, was over, the audience rose, one by one, and ere their departure, those who made it up, lingered on for awhile and stood in little groups of two, three and four, and earnestly discussed the things that had been, and particularly the things that might have been, said on the subject. The peroration was delivered with fervor and gusto by one of the "red ones" of the Ghetto. It was on "The Emancipation of Society from Government," a theme packed with meaning for those present, and as almost everybody was willing to be interviewed on his or her impressions, there was quite a little exchange of opinion afterwards. The speaker, besieged by a small circle of questioning dissenters and commentators, was holding an informal, compulsory reception. A few hard workers of the sweat-shops, who slumbered peacefully during the discourse, came up towards the platform to tell the speaker how well they liked it.

It was during this hobnob medley of varying voices that I introduced Keidansky to a lady, a friend of mine, who, having heard of the wicked things he says, and the queer things he does, desired very much to meet him.

As she greeted him the lady rather perfunctorily remarked:

"And so you are a dreamer of the Ghetto?"

"No, Madam," Keidansky answered somewhat brusquely; "I am a sad reality."

"A sad reality? Why so?" Smilingly, pityingly, she queried.

"Oh, the reasons are not far to seek, not easy to find, and hard to relate," he said demurely. "Besides, why augment the soporific tendency? We have just listened to a lecture. The monstrous evil of government still exists. The tremendous task of its abolition is still before us."

"Yes, I know; but tell me, please."

"Well, then, if I must speak of myself—and I like nothing better—I will tell you." He cast down his eyes and spoke quickly, as quickly as he could think of the right words, which he was trying to find with evident effort. "A dreamer disillusionized, a great might-have-been become small, a would-be victor vanquished, a social reformer forced by society to reform, a herald of a new dawn lost in the night, a rebel rejected by the rabble, a savior of society without even the ghost of a chance to become a martyr, a visionary grown wise, an enthusiast at last awakened to things as they are, an idealist knocked out by cold, hard facts—don't you think it's a sad reality? I—we—wanted to do so many things and—

"I wanted to change the world, and the world has changed me so that I am beyond recognition. That's a little and belittling way the world has with all who wish to save it. We—my comrades and I—wanted to transform this earth into a Heaven, and we came near going to—the other place. Pardon me, madam, but some of the fellows actually went there, one sent me his regards the other day. He is at court now, working for the king of the ward—assistant chief wire-puller, or something. Good salary; hardly any work to do. Better than Socialism, he says, under which system he would, at least, have to perform a few hours' work a day. But there was a time when he would walk six miles—he had to walk then—to hear a denunciation of the present political parties and the evil powers that be. Now he would talk six miles to win a single vote for them. The others who have gone have not fared so badly as he: they have not grown so wise, have remained poor, and, more or less—honest. But as to the things that might have been. There were great books to be written, which were abandoned because—oh, well, it is so much bother to deal with publishers. There was a powerful educational movement to be started in the Ghetto, which has also been relinquished for the manifold blessings of ignorance.

"Why, I wanted to solve the social problem, and now I do not even see my way clear to do that. You see, we all came here with a smattering of Socialistic ideas and Utopian ideals. We brought them over from Russia—the land of the knave and the home of the slave—and we wanted to see them realized in this country, where the gigantic development of industry and the trusts were illustrating the beautiful possibilities of Socialism. That idea appealed to us Jews, at least, above all others. And we set ourselves with great zeal to the task of its promulgation. The common ownership of all the means of production and distribution of wealth, every member of society contributing to the work of the nation; those who do not work, neither shall they eat, etc.—we had everything down fine—too fine. If we were asked, who shall do the dirty work under Socialism, we answered, the bosses of the present political machines.

"And we demonstrated by all the proofs furnished us by our leaders—at the rate of ten cents a pamphlet—how the great change was inevitable from Marx's material conception of history and our own hysterical conception of materialism. The rich had not as yet consented to the equal distribution of all wealth; but the poor had; they were fast coming our way, and we were all getting ready for the great change. Oh, when a fellow gets the social revolution into his head he can see millions of proletarians marching to victory, and then the Coöperative Commonwealth looms up big before him in all its Bellamy glory. But after awhile, and a few gentle hints in the form of hard knocks—confound it—comes the calm, sober, second or second-hand thought. Socialism? What an arch bureaucracy, what a preposterous attempt to harness life with a monstrous system of rules, regulations and restrictions! What an endless chain of entangling laws, what an appalling monotony of order! The individual gagged, bound hand and foot by an overwhelming mess of statutes; not permitted to tell the truth unless it is officially recognized as truth by the State. Thousands of laws to be broken every day and as many heads to be mended. Heaven save us! you cry out, and you come to realize that it isn't because "a lot of contemptible capitalists have paid him for it"—as it has been alleged by some of us—that Herbert Spencer has declared Socialism to be the coming slavery. Perhaps Spencer wasn't wrong, after all; and the best solution of the social problem you had becomes a terrible problem, and you lay it on the table, or throw it into the waste-basket.

"Then comes communism, as preached by my friend John Most and comrade Peter Kropotkin; individualist anarchism, as presented by Benjamin R. Tucker and others. Beautiful theories these are, enchanting studies; but, alas, only theories, so vague, so fantastic, so far off, so dimly distant, so elusive. And the problem is so stubbornly real, so disagreeably near, so puzzlingly capricious, and so spitefully independent of all solutions, that—oh, well—I haven't as yet solved the social problem, and I don't, as yet, know when I will; but perhaps the problem will stay long enough, until I get ready to do it."

The speaker looked touchingly perplexed as he continued: "I cannot find my way through these things, and don't know the way out. The problem is vexing and vast; the solutions various and voluminous. The solutions are in themselves highly problematic. Our doubts are endless, our ignorance is infinite. Finality is the most fatal folly. Nothing is certain but uncertainty; nothing is constant but change. Even the dream of transformation becomes transformed. Life has its own theories and is regardless of our patented plans. The logic of events makes our own systems illogical. The wind of Time blows out our little labelled lanterns. Time puts all our wisdom to shame. Life is so pitifully brief, and the problem that has troubled the ages cannot be solved in a day."

"But what are you going to do about it?" I interrupted.

"Why, I have decided to leave the social problem unsolved for the present," he answered. "If I could spell English well I would write a book showing why I refuse to solve it for the present; but as it is, those who wish to know what I write will have to learn Yiddish. However, from what I know of the English language, I like it immensely. It is so rich, so big, has so many words; a splendid means for concealing one's thoughts. And the English and Americans, who master it, know it and appreciate the fact. But I see they are putting the lights out. We'll have to leave the hall now. Good-night, good-night. Pleased to have met you."

II He Defends the Holy Sabbath

"We are so happy in this country that we must celebrate even when we don't want to," said a Hester street storekeeper, and then he quoted the words of the Psalms in the traditional monotone: "And they who led us captive requireth of us a song."

He stood on the sidewalk in front of his dreary and dilapidated grocery store. It was Sunday morning. The chosen people of old who have elected to come to the chosen country of to-day moved up and down in large numbers, almost crowding the street. They stood in little groups idly, and conversed loudly in a more or less Americanized Yiddish, often lapsing into a curious English of their own. Their dress and outward appearance denoted the degrees of their Americanization and prosperity. There were those who live in the Jewish street, or in the immediate vicinity, which is also within the Ghetto, and others who, after spending their first years here, have now travelled by the road of success to "nice, high-toned" districts, such as Allen street in the West End. On Sunday they all come down there, for then you can meet everybody, all the "Landsleute," you can hear all the news, and there was a time when Sunday was the liveliest day on the street. Thus these people walked up and down the thoroughfare, while some stood in small gatherings and talked. Women met, chatted for a few minutes, and then took half an hour in parting.

All the stores were closed, all the places of business deserted, and it seemed strange and incongruous to see all these people out on the street. It seemed as if the people were there for no purpose, as if they had nothing to do. One wondered, at first, if it were a holiday; but the absence of even a suggestion of the spirit of Sabbath soon made it clear that there was no religious meaning in this day, so far as the Hebrew people were concerned. Aside from that, the people would not be out so if it were a holiday. They would be at home, observing and celebrating the day. It appeared as if their idleness was forced upon them; they suggested gatherings of workers who are out on a strike, waiting for settlement. Upon investigation the stranger found that this was an enforced idleness, a compulsory holiday. The Christian Sabbath was forced by law upon the Jews, who had celebrated their Sabbath the day before, and they could not begin the week's work until their loving neighbors were through. And this, too, was the week before Passover, the busiest season in the Ghetto.

My friend, the storekeeper, stood upon the sidewalk in front of his emporium and continued his plaint, not without quaint gestures:

"They call this the freest country on earth, and yet here we have been compelled to close up our stores two days in the week for the whole winter. A number of us have already gone out of business, and the Uppermost only knows what will happen with the rest. We cannot make it pay in five days; rent is very high, profits are small, and around here times are always hard. The poor people who trade with us only know prosperity by sight or hearsay.

"We have preserved our Sabbath through all the persecutions and sufferings which we have endured in the past centuries. Our Sabbath is as dear to us as life itself, and now it is endangered by the laws of this free land. We cannot afford to close our stores on both Saturday and Sunday. Sunday used to be one of the best days of the week for business. It is the first day of the week with us. It is the day after our Sabbath, when every household needs a new supply of food. It is also the day on which our people from the country, having a day off, come in to buy their goods—that is, they used to come in when we were permitted to keep our stores open on Sunday. Now all is changed, and the business is going down and down. We will not keep open on Saturday, and the police won't let us keep open on Sunday. It is outrageous, the way they treat us; it is scandalous, I say."

Keidansky, the radical of the Ghetto, is quite a unique, native character. He is the young man who once told me that he had more good ideas than were good for him, and I believe now that he was right. I met him one day in one of his resorts, a "kosher" lunch room of the Jewish district. I asked him for his opinion on the Sunday question, and he told me what follows—among other things—over a few glasses of Russian tea:—

"So far as I'm personally concerned, one day is as good as another for a Sabbath, and we can't have too many of them. Any day on which we can rest and be at our best, is a holiday. I am too religious to be pious. I can sanctify as many days as I can celebrate. The new conception of 'kosher' is whatever is wholesome, digestible and tasteful. To be really happy is to be holy, and those who have lost this world will not be entrusted with another. I hate uniformity, and it's very tiresome to rest when everybody else rests; but since it would be most convenient to suspend business and activity when the majority of the people observe their Sabbath, since the Christians do not want to rest on the same day that the Lord rested, and decided to get ahead of God and repose on the first instead of the seventh day, why, let it be Sunday, then—as far as I am concerned. Convenience is the first step to happiness, and tolerance is the beginning of philosophy. There is nothing intrinsically sacred in any day; it is only an artificial measure of time, and time is only a blank space, absolutely worthless unless we write upon it with our deeds. All days are made holy or unholy by what we do in them. So, you see, so far as I am concerned, Saturday or Sunday, any day, will do. Personally I have never been compelled to close up my store. I have never been so unfortunate as to own a store. This, however, is only my point of view.

"One of the most immoral things I know of is to force your own petty brand of morality upon the lives of others, and I can hardly conceive of anything more irreligious than forcing your particular religion upon others. To respect the religion of your neighbors is a deeply religious principle, and those who have no religion at all can almost make up for it by respecting the religion of others. Religious liberty is one of the most precious principles of our country, is it not? And here this fundamental principle is rankly violated by the law, or rather by what I think must be a silly misinterpretation of the law. There are thousands of Jews encumbered by and compelled to rest on, if not to observe, a Christian Sabbath. I do not like to believe with some of the Zionists that the seed of anti-Semitism has been sown in this country and that a good crop will soon be up to encourage the restoration of Israel to the Turk's Palestine. I am rather inclined to think that this idea is anti-Semitic. But certainly the stranger in this country would be extremely surprised at the way the Jews are treated here just now in regard to the observance of Sabbath. Who is to blame? The law or those who enforce it? Oh, the law. But perhaps our people now suffer the consequences of having been among the first to bring laws into the world. When people saw that the world was too good they began to make laws, and ever since they have kept up making and multiplying them faster than even the lawmakers can break them. Why, one can hardly walk two steps before he finds that he is breaking a useless law which it is very tempting to violate. I am not so radical as some of my friends. I do not believe that all the stupidity of the age has been incarnated into our laws. A great deal of it has been left in our customs, traditions and superstitions; but a law that interferes with religious liberty in a free country is bad enough.

"I tell you it is just exasperating to walk through the Ghetto of a Sunday now and see all the places of business closed up and all the public resorts abandoned. The poor housewives of the Ghetto whose cupboards are all empty and who need so many things on Saturday night, after their Sabbath, and have to wait until Monday—it is a great hardship for them. I tell you it's dead wrong to force this blue law upon the people. The Hebrew, to whom the traditional Sabbath is as dear as life, ought to receive due consideration, or rather the right to do as he pleases, in so far as he does not harm others. The law should have nothing to do with Sabbath, anyhow. People can never be made religious by law. If you are going to write about it, tell the whole story and show how ill-treated we are. Perhaps you can convert the Christians to the spirit of Christianity. Let the voice of the chosen people be heard!"

III Sometimes He is a Zionist

Word flashed across the cables that Dr. Theodore Herzl and other leaders of the Zionist movement had held a favorable interview with the Sultan of Turkey, and the followers of the cause—the restoration of Palestine to the Jews—were all in a flutter of gladness. As it was interpreted by the faithful, the vague, meagre cablegram meant that the Sultan was willing, that he was hard up, and that the Holy Land was for sale. And who could doubt when this was announced by the New York Yiddish dailies, under four-column headlines? No one could doubt but the jester. He said that this only proved that the Yiddish papers also had big type in their composing rooms. He said that the truth about a certain movement could not be found in any party organ. In fact, if one wanted the absolute truth about anything he would advise him to go home and sleep it off.

But serious and sane folk will ask no jester for advice. The jester can only add to the sadness of the nations; but he cannot impair the faith of the believers. So the Zionists were rejoicing while their opponents were debating in the lighter vein, and laughing at the mistakes of the so-called new Moses and the errors of his followers.

The news had also reached Keidansky's circle, and the question was taken up again for consideration. They were all at Zarling's on Leverett street, where the "kosher" eatables are inviting, where tea is Russian, the newspapers Yiddish, and the attendant members of one industrious family, ranging from several bright pupils of the grammar school up. The poet, the young lawyer, the short-sighted medical student who has for many years been writing a scientific work, the Anarchist orator in embryo, the flower vendor and undiscovered inventor of an ingenious self-lighting lamp and a wonderful fuel-saving stove—they were all there, and, of course, Keidansky was with them. They all sat about a little round wooden table in a corner of the big dusky store, pouring out wisdom and drinking tea. The long row of "kosher" Vienna wurst hanging over Zarling's brass-railed counter were mocking and menacing the vegetarian of the group as he was munching a cheese sandwich.

They were all heartily opposed to Zionism. Each one had the solution for the social problem, which would also settle the Jewish question, and Keidansky said that it was highly problematic whether there was such a thing as a Jewish problem. However, they all had plans for making this a better world, plans which the Jews were eminently fitted to help to carry out, and the benefits of which they would reap in the form of an ideal state of society, with universal brotherhood, and without racial hatred and anti-Semitism. They took Zionism severely, scathingly to task, and as there was no Zionist present it was an easy victory. The Jewish State was nipped in the bud, or rather abolished ere its establishment. The poet and the orator sailed heavily into the "dubious personality of Dr. Max Nordau," one of the leaders of the movement, and thus again avenged themselves on the man who, in his gentle booklet on "Degeneration," so wantonly threw so much mud on their revolutionary idols. Reference was made to the demolishing review of the Doctor's book by the only and original G. Bernard Shaw, and Whitman and Wagner and the others were saved.

Keidansky listened silently to all that passed, looked into a book and sipped his tea. If the conversation was not good he could find something in his book, and if the book was not interesting he could at least enjoy his tea. So he once said when told that he was not attentive and not true to the spirit of "the order of midnight tea-drinkers."

Everybody had spoken, and I turned to Keidansky for a word. "Sometimes," he said, "I am Zionist, and all longings leave me and I yearn for naught but the realization of the old, long-cherished, holy dream that our people have carried along with them and fondly caressed through their cruel exiles of the ages—the restoration of our never-to-be-forgotten home, Palestine. The passion for the race returns, the old feeling of national pride and patriotism comes back and takes its old place, the consciousness of Israel awakens within me, and I am completely swayed by the mastering desire to see Judea 'emancipated, regenerated and redeemed.'

"I feel again the unity I have forgotten. The old Messianic hope looms up big before me. The Heimweh of the long-lost wanderer, the grief-stricken, menaced nomad takes possession of me. I feel the terrible danger of dissolution: it is so bitter to stare destruction in the face, to contemplate annihilation of so long and so miraculous an existence. I feel that there is no place like his old home. The homeless Jew must return to Palestine. The big world is too small. It has no room for him. Good or bad, he is always offensive, and he is exalted only to be cast down into an abyss of misery. Civilization is not even civil, and it has no hospitality for its earliest light-bearer. The world is a wretched ingrate. We have given everything, including the means of future salvation; we receive nothing but calumny, and are doomed to everlasting damnation. 'We have given you your religion,' we say to the Christians. 'That's nothing,' they answer; 'it has not affected us in the least.' And they prove it. They keep on baiting and persecuting and killing their neighbours, not as themselves. What must we do? Get back our old home, though we have to pay for it. There, at least, will we find 'a crust of bread and a corner to sleep in.'

"We must have a common cause, an object of unity, a centre of gravity, in order to survive as a people, and this is what we can have in the proposed Jewish State.

"And what an inspiring picture it will be of Israel, bruised and bleeding from the travail of his long, futile travels, at last straightening up his back and returning home to rebuild his national life and his temple in Palestine. There he will create an ideal republic, fashioned after the teachings of the prophets and the lessons he has received from the teachers of the nations—a republic that will teach the world justice and righteousness. 'And from Zion shall issue the law, and the word of God shall go forth from Jerusalem,' and our poets to come shall sing new psalms to God on the banks of the Jordan, in the shades of Lebanon and in the beautiful gardens of Sharon and Carmel. I have never been there, and though I have gone through life without a geography, yet I seem to remember all these places. The grand, vigorous Hebrew language shall come to life again and we shall have a glorious literature of Israel's resurrection. Ah, how beautiful the vision that looms up as I contemplate these things! And then—"

Keidansky ceased speaking, paused, and asked for another glass of tea.

"And then?" I asked.

"Then," he continued, "the mood passes, the feeling alters, the picture that a fleeting fancy has thrown upon the canvas of my view, fades, a change comes over the spirit of my dream. I remember that I am no longer the pious little boy praying in the synagogue of Keidan, 'a year hence in Jerusalem.' The greater vision appears before me, the larger ideal comes back, and Keidansky is himself again. Sometimes I am a Zionist, but only sometimes. The rest of the time I am as strongly opposed to it as any of you, because with all my imputed universalism I have great hopes for my people, and because I have marked out a greater role for Israel to play in the history of the future than being a mere little bee building a little hive in a tiny obscure corner of the globe."

Here the medical student protested that a man cannot be both for and against an idea at the same time, that those who are not with us are wrong and against us, and that Keidansky is a "long distance off"—for he said, "scientifically analyzed"—

"Scientifically analyzed, you are a bore," Keidansky broke forth infuriated, "and don't interrupt me when I am solving problems and making history. Be consistent, boys, and do not ask me to be so. Give me, at least, the right that you grant to a character in fiction, the right to be irrational, illogical, and, above all, superbly inconsistent. I am a character in life and nothing is so fictitious. At times, I want to be with all, feel with all, believe with all, see the beauties of all ideals, and also point out the great fact about them—that they are all fatal—and yet that to be without ideals is baneful and deadly. I cannot be partial, and that is why they expelled me from DeLeon's Socialist Labor party. Partiality is destructive to art, and I might have been an artist, if I had had the patience and self-abnegation and a lot of other requisites and things.

"But to return to the larger vision, which eclipses the dreamlet of Zionism. The Jew must not be relegated to an obscure corner of the world, to a little platform whereupon he will recite a piece in an unknown tongue. I want a big stage for him—the world. I want a great play for him—all its multitudinous activities. For he is a wonderful actor. He has versatility, illusion, imagination and dramatic power. It is an inspiring part he plays in the world-drama. So let the play go on, and do not ask him to waste his energies and bargain with the Sultan for a bit of barren land that has been taken from him so long ago. He has a bigger task to perform, a larger mission to fulfil.

"He must live among the nations and help them in their upward struggle for a higher civilization and a nobler life. If there are evils to be abolished he will help abolish them, and if there are dire problems, why, he has brains, which he loans more often than money. And this is the spectacle that I gloat over and glory in seeing: Israel among the nations, the saviour and the outcast, the redeemer and the rejected, the revered teacher and truant student, the honoured guest and persecuted resident, helping nations to make their histories, here and there, writing great words in them, ministering to their arts and helping to humanize humanity. To be persecuted and oppressed by the nations is inconvenient and annoying, but to make music, paint pictures, write books, sing songs, mould statues for them—how superb! Ah, what a tragedy to be a Jew, and yet, how glorious! The nations need the Jew and he must not desert them in their hour of need, and if he is true to his best self and keeps on growing he will not die and vanish as a people. In any case 'tis nobler to die for a good cause than to live in impotence. So let the Jew remain, with whatever nation he abides, and as a good citizen help it grow great and good, and show that Ibsen was right when he called us the aristocracy of the race. Let not, I say to the Zionists, the Jew be like the little boy who runs away from school after he receives a thrashing and before he has taught his teacher a lesson. To sacrifice for Dr. Herzl's scheme our vast opportunities in the world, which owes us so much, and to which we are so indebted, would be selling our birthright for a mess of pottage. So let us remain. We can do so much in so many countries with the teachings and spirit of Judaism. We, too, are frail and have many faults, but we can improve where there's lots of room and plenty of opportunities.

"Life is a melodrama, and in the latter acts the long-lost brothers, Jew and Christian, who have for so long waged war against each other, will recognize, understand each another, and perhaps, things will end happily, after all.

"Meanwhile we will forgive France for the Dreyfus affair, because of her perfect prose and beautiful poetry. I will even forgive Captain Dreyfus for having been such a bore, if he will stop writing books. Let the Jews remain in Russia instead of going to Palestine, for think of the love of freedom that tyranny engenders! Think how good all our oppressions have been in that they made us love liberty and truth. Think what a chance to shed blood for freedom there will yet be in Russia. Our people should remain there. Things are changing. What a fine literature it is producing, and how noble Russia is—underground.

"Away with your petty neutral little State, I say to the Zionist; the State to be bought on the instalment plan from the Sultan, to be built on the soil of superstition, where the Jews will go back to their traditional customs and fall asleep. The land is barren and sterile, and I do not believe in starvation, even on holy land. Even the orthodox must have a religion; but they will never acquire it in Palestine. They will cling to the old. They will not progress. The Bible—and I bow my head in reverence for that great work of fiction—will never be edited and revised as it ought to be, in Palestine. Judaism will not grow in Palestine. The Jews will cling to the letter, and the spirit of it will starve. God save the Jews from Palestine. Judaism there will not grow; it will stagnate and die. The Jews must live among the destroying forces of civilization. It is only when they outgrow their obnoxious superstitions and down-dragging traditions that they become great."

The speaker waxed warm; his eyes flashed with enthusiasm, his voice grew loud.

"I want none of the Jewish State," he said. "The whole world is holy land. Wherever there are good, honest people is holy land, and from every corner of the earth shall issue the law, and the word of God shall go forth from every place, including my garret. Give us a big stage, give us the world, give us the universe, and let me watch it from its centre—my garret at 3 Birmingham Alley; let me watch the great and glorious play with Israel's heroic part in all the activities and growth and progress of the world, and I will 'thank whatever gods there be.' And this is my larger dream; a better, more humane world, created by the brotherhood of men, with Israel as peacemaker and fraternizer. Amen."

IV Art for Tolstoy's Sake

It was at one of a series of lectures given under the auspices of the Social Science Circle during the winter season. The audience which assembled in the gloomy little hall on the third floor of an East Broadway building was rather small in size. In announcing the lecture no rewards had been offered to those who would come to listen to it, as often seemed necessary; the speaker of the evening was only a member of the club, who worked for his ideas, and not an eminent lecturer who lived on his reputation and whose name would "draw a crowd."

The majority of young men and women of the Ghetto would not think of wasting an evening on wisdom; they would commit no such folly, when they could have "such a lovely time" at the near-by dancing schools. Still, the few and the faithful were all present, and those who were thirsting for knowledge came to be saturated. Max Lubinsky was the speaker, and his theme, "Tolstoy's Theory of Art," was teeming with vital import.

Keidansky, as a member of the committee in charge of the literary work of the circle, acted as chairman of the meeting. In introducing the speaker he made a few remarks, somewhat as follows:

"Tolstoy has theories of art. Personally I am rather sorry for this, because if he did not have them he would be a greater artist. Even as theories of life often mar existence, so theories of art impair the artist. Admitting that art with a purpose can help the world, it is certain that art for its own sweet sake can create and re-create worlds. After he had contributed some of the greatest works of art to the literature of Russia, Tolstoy decided to find out just what art was. During his investigations, which lasted many years, he found that the art of the world was in great part lazy, unemployed, corrupt, suffering from ennui, and ministering to the debauched, poor rich people, whom the poor man ever envies; he decided that art should become useful and go to work, and he gave it an employment—the promulgation of his ideas of social regeneration.

"Once, Tolstoy tells us, art was primitive and simple and pious, and it was good art and true; but during the Middle Ages, when the upper class and the nobility became sceptical and pessimistic, and could find no more consolation in religion, art became divorced from the church, because they took it up as an amusement and study. And ever since art got into such bad company—among people of culture and those who understand it, who cherished all its wonderful enfoldments and caressed all its capricious moods—ever since art got into such bad company, it became as beautiful as sin, and so complex, mystic and ambiguous that even the Russian muzhik or peasant cannot understand it. And so—as it seems to me—argues Tolstoy, the fact that the muzhik cannot appreciate 'Tannhäuser' proves conclusively that Wagner never wrote any real music. Then, the dear old master delves deeply into all definitions, origins and explanations of art. He finds no designation, no description that satisfies him; they all hinge on and culminate in beauty—in the production and reproduction of beauty that is in life, in nature, in the worlds within us and without; and Tolstoy is rather shy at mere beauty, and thinks it a temptress, a siren and a song; besides, beauty, he says, changes and depends on taste, and taste varies, and as all these definitions are too far-fetched and vague, he finds one that is still more indefinite. Art is the communication of feeling, the expression of the religious consciousness. Of course it is that, but first and foremost it must have the sterling qualities of art in form and matter.

"Tolstoy, however, would make this the chief basis and standard of art, for his would be an art that would detract men's minds from mere beauty, that would make them helplessly pious, that would unite mankind, make life as monotonous as possible, and convert humanity to Christian Anarchism.

"Every book, picture, statue and composition of music should be degradingly moral. And the question arises, what does he mean by religious consciousness? Walt Whitman expressed his religious consciousness in a manner that shocked the world, and it is not at all pleasing to Tolstoy, and yet Whitman was the most religious man that lived in centuries. The Abbé Prevost wrote "Manon Lescaut" to express his religious consciousness, and Robert Ingersoll delivered his lectures to do the same; to express their religious consciousness, great sculptors mould nude figures of women, out of worship of the divine beauty of the human form; and St. Francis of Assisi expresses the spiritual emotion in quite a different manner. But no, Tolstoy has a certain kind of religious consciousness in mind, and this should be expressed by all art and all artists in a uniform mode until we have gone back to primitive conditions.

"I yield to no one in my admiration of the grand old man of Russia. He is one of the noblest souls that ever walked this earth, and as an artist, when he is at his best and does not preach, he is superb; there are few like him. But when he begins to philosophize and moralize, few can rise to the height of absurdity as quickly as he can. As it seems to me, Tolstoy's position is something like this:

"'Christianity is a colossal failure,' he says, 'so let us all become Christians. Our civilization is dreadfully slow in its advance; it has not as yet outgrown its barbaric primitiveness, so let us all go back to barbarism. All government is evil, so let us be governed solely by the teachings of a man who lived nearly two thousand years ago, a man who was pure and who made no study of the wicked conditions of our time. It is only thus that we can become free—by a circumlocutory process of self-abnegation, self-sacrifice and self-annihilation. Let us become slaves of the theory of minding our neighbors' business and we will be free. The power of will is the greatest thing in the world; he who follows his free will becomes a slave and is doomed to damnation. Let us be ourselves; let us stifle our feelings, become altruists and get away from ourselves. All government is tyranny; let us abolish all government, adopt a rigid, ancient, mystic morality, and let everyone become his own tyrant. Our morality is a failure; it has produced a false art; therefore we must have a true art which will promulgate our morality. Art that exists for mere beauty cannot be understood by the great masses, therefore let us have an art for the masses which will be beautiful. Our Christianity is a failure, therefore we must convert art to Christianity and send it forth as a missionary of the Gospels as I interpret them.' This, as I see it, is the queer position of Tolstoy, but his theories are exceedingly well-meant and highly interesting, and I am glad that we are to have a lecture this evening on Tolstoy's theories of art by one who is a thorough student of Tolstoy and to whom the master's teachings are near and dear.

"I must not forget that I am not the speaker of the evening; I merely wanted to hint at the importance of the subject so that you may give it due attention, but I must not transgress upon the time of the lecturer, for the way of the transgressor, according to Tolstoy and others, is said to be hard. Besides, the chairman is not supposed to have any opinions; his duty is only to eulogize the speaker—in a merciless manner—and to introduce him with a few appropriate, well-chosen and ill-fated remarks. The chairman at best is only a relic of barbarism, and should be abolished."

And Keidansky at last introduced the speaker, his friend, Max Lubinsky, who, after treating his audience to a bit of satire at the expense of "the eloquent and loquacious chairman," proceeded to give a simple, sympathetic and modest interpretation of Tolstoy's "What is Art?" illustrating his talk with copious reading from the book, and now and then referring to his written notes. It was a comprehensive review of Tolstoy's book he gave, and as to his own ideas on art he did not sufficiently differ from Tolstoy to have a formidable opinion on the matter, and he had too much reverence for the great Russian to voice it just then. The presiding officer did not close the meeting without again remarking that "art with a purpose is art with an impediment," and that "the only excuse of art is its uselessness." From what I overheard after the meeting I observed that there was a strong anti-Keidansky feeling in the gathering. He had evidently gone too far, had voiced his notions too freely, and had no right to take up so much time in speaking. Besides, most of those present were social reformers, tremendously in earnest, and they felt, more or less, that Tolstoy was right; that art was only great as an advocate.

As we were walking together, homeward bound, a little later, I said: "My dear fellow, you've got yourself into trouble. They are all up in arms against you and your awful heresies. You have almost delivered the lecture of the evening yourself, and the circle won't stand for it. Next thing you know you'll be court-martialed."

"I almost expected that this would happen," said Keidansky, "but I had to say what I did. It was an imperative duty. I am only sorry that I forgot a few more things I had on my mind to say. Audiences confuse me and make me forget my best points. I suppose they will call a special meeting and pass resolutions to condemn me and my proceedings. But this will only prove the superiority of individuals over society. Before a society can pass resolutions, the individual acts. I suppose they'll say lots of things now. They will say I was trying to make epigrams. Epigrams are always hateful—to those who cannot make a point in a volume. They will say I was uttering platitudes. After you convince people that there are such things as platitudes in the world, they begin to find them in everything you say. I once had an uncle (he is still living, only he is very rich, and so I disowned him), and at one time I explained to him the theory of our moving along the lines of least resistance. A short while after that we had a very intimate interview and my uncle told me that I was a lazy, good-for-nothing visionary; that I did not want to do anything, and moved along the lines of least resistance.

"I had to say what I did because I did not want the people to go off with such crude and false conceptions of art. I knew that Lubinsky would not dare to differ from Tolstoy. He adores the old man. So do I, but I cannot afford to give up my mind to any one—not until I become a respectable member of the synagogue, and join a number of secret orders. Then it does not matter. The worst thing about a charming, noble personality is that our admiration for it gets the better of our reasoning power and we become ready to follow it in all its follies. This is the regrettable influence that Tolstoy has exerted upon Lubinsky. Thus our emancipators enslave us. 'Be yourself,' says Emerson, and you become an Emersonian.

"But there is something else I wanted to say on this question of art. We Jews anticipated and lived in perfect accord with Tolstoy's theory of art—that art must be religious and must be burdened with a message, or a purpose—and the result is that we have no fine arts of our own, except poetry, which has more sighs and sobs and tears and piety than music and beauty. Of course, the reason for the absence of art among us is one of the commandments, which forbids the making of images, and oh, I cannot tell you how sorry I am that this commandment was ever observed. I do not object so much to the other nine commandments, but for this one I can never forgive my people. And here, by the way, is an example of what the religious consciousness can do for art.

"There is a religious consciousness which makes people unconscious of religion. 'The piety of art is the quest of the unattainable,' and the more freedom you give it from missions the greater the mission it will fulfil. One more answer to the theory of art for Tolstoy's sake: Here is a fable that occurred to me as I was listening to the lecture. I have no time to elaborate and polish it, but I give you the right to plagiarize it.

"'You must pardon me,' said Art to Beauty, one day, 'if I do not pay so much attention to you as I used to, but this is a world of evils and problems, and I will have to leave you for awhile and go forth and help to make a better, juster system of society.' And Art went forth to fight the battle of the poor and the oppressed, and Beauty waited wistfully for its return, alone and deserted, withered and faded. After many years Beauty went in quest of her lost lover, Art, who had not returned, and she came upon a field of battle, and there, transformed into rebel warrior, was her lost lover, Art. And even as she gazed, a shot was fired from the enemy, and it pierced the heart of Art, and he lay prostrate and dead before her."

V "Three Stages of the Game"

We had been speaking of "the only law that never changes"—the law of change: of the glorious ascent of the youthful nonconformist, and of the sad descent of the older and wiser compromiser—a theme, by the way, as old as age and yet as new as youth. We all had friends we once looked up to and now looked down upon, and we indulged in a few reminiscences. Every army had its deserters, every cause its traitors, and the crusaders who carried the red flag also changed their minds, lost heart and ran home.

"Oh, the flesh-pots of Egypt. Even the vegetarians cannot forget them," remarked my companion. "They who led the strikes among the sweat-shop workers in the course of time became heartless capitalist bosses; and there were Anarchists, who wanted to abolish all laws, who became lawyers and went into politics. One by one many of the promising young men of the Ghetto broke their promises and left the uplifting movements they brought into existence. Some died, some married for love of money, some took wives unto themselves, some became lawyers and doctors, some dentists, some wire-pullers, some went into politics, and some moved to Brooklyn. Compromise? They all hated that word and then—they compromised.

"Recently I have been thinking of three particular stages of the game—this grim and gruesome little game called life," said Keidansky. "The first is when we sternly demand the truth, the second when we ask for justice, and the third—when we beg for mercy—

"There you are with your eternal questions. It was Zolotkoff who once called the Jew, bent and bowed by his sorrows and fearful of the future—it was he who called the Jew a living interrogation point. You just reminded me of the simile. But no; I cannot tell you at which of the three stages I have arrived. I am at all and at none. What I really want I never ask for, because I hardly know what it is, and cannot formulate the demand. If I knew just what they were, perhaps I wouldn't want these things. Yet sometimes I think if I could play, if I could play the violin, I would express these starved longings and stifled yearnings. I could not only tell, but in the expression perhaps find what I want. In words I cannot do it; they are so formal, definite, rough. The other day my friend, the violinist, came and played for me. 'I'll tell you a story,' he said, and he took his violin and played—a beautiful, thrilling story. The Unknowable was revealed for a moment; and it occurred to me then that if I could play, I, too, might perform the miracle of expression, which proves the divinity of music. As it is, I cannot tell my desires; and yet I want but little here below and I don't want anything up above—"

"You don't mean to renounce your part of the world to come?" I asked.

"I don't know that it is coming to me," said Keidansky. "Besides I am a little bit 'shy' on the world to come. I am afraid it is fashioned too much on the style of this one, and down here, you know, I am sometimes tired of everything. The entire panorama is so farcical, the whole game so monotonous, and our heroics are so ludicrous. The valetudinarians make me sick. I am weary of 'The Book of Jade,' and clever people are awful bores. Yes, I am somewhat afraid of the second story they call the other world, for it may really come, and history might repeat itself, even up there.

"The mortal fear of oblivion makes one crave for immortality; but, perhaps, one life is enough. No matter how sinful, or how saintly, a human being has been, one world is sufficient of a punishment. Virtue is its only reward; evil is its own punishment. The life beyond—is beyond. Let it stay there.

"Promises of Heaven and threats of the Midway do not move me so much now, for the chances are that they are one and the same thing, and this is the only place we are sure of and ought to make the most of. There is some good down here in spite of the reformers. The good is right beside the evil, and we can seldom tell the difference. The saint and the sinner often exchange pulpits and each proves the imperfection of the other. Paradise is right next door to Purgatory; in fact, you want to be careful when you are around that way lest you enter the place you weren't sent to. We ought to make the most of it, I say, and I know I am right, because I have been condemned by a number of orthodox rabbis."

"You contradict yourself," I said.

"I do it to be consistent," said Keidansky.

"But I have digressed and transgressed, and all because of your useless question. As I was saying, when we are young, ignorant, innocent and inexperienced, we sternly demand the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. We come to enlighten this dominion of darkness, to right a world gone wrong and to guide a poor and deluded mankind to the eternal verities. Iconoclasticism becomes our creed, infidelity our religion. We are to repeal the world's laws, to shatter its idols, to demolish its traditions, and we at once reject its standards and ideals because they are not founded on truth.

"We question, investigate, analyze, and the imagination of youth works wonders. We are all gods in our dreams. The re-creation of the world is but an easy task. With all the modern improvements, it can be done in less than seven days, it seems. Glorious quest of truth and the golden goal, enchanting castles in the air, of which youth is the architect! Have you ever been young? I was born old, yet I know something about it. And for the rest, you know what happens. Most of the things in the world end sadly, because in the ending of a thing there is sadness. We find, at last, that what we wanted cannot be had for the asking; that we must pay for it with our lives; that the truth is—there is no truth—that as much of it as we find is often more than we want; that illusion is a necessary element in the composition of the world; that everything is relative and the quest of truth is a relative virtue. I hate the compromiser and deserter and I have nothing to say in their defence, but change is in the very nature of things, and sooner or later we must recognize that absolute truth does not exist, and we must accept the old foundation for building whatever we can in the world, and realize that perfection is a long and laborious process of becoming.

"Later on we really see that all is for the best, that the pessimists are here as an object lesson, and we conclude that it is folly to be too wise. We cannot repeal the world's laws all at once, but we can break them gradually. There is much wisdom in folly and some truth in falsehood, too. The stupidity of the world is an absolute necessity: the world's work has to be done. So, at least, we decide, and we abandon the impossible quest after the absolute truth and become satisfied with justice, mere justice. We only ask for fair play. At this stage of the game we are already hardened and inured to things, and we manage to get along with justice, such as it is when we get it or buy it in court. At this time, if we are prosperous, we read and relish Omar Khayyam, the philosophy of whom is well expressed by the street urchin when he says, 'I don't give a hang.' And we also laugh at the poor fools who seek after the truth. Later on still, when we grow weary and weak and cannot have justice—are not crafty or strong enough—we come down a little lower and beg for mercy. Thus we reach the third stage of the game."

The speaker paused for a moment, watching a little boy who was trying to float his little boat on the pond—for we were lucubrating in the Park, where we met by accident.

"That's all very well," I said, "but what have you to suggest?"

"Why, nothing that would make a sensation in a newspaper," he said, "but something that by chance or miracle may have some reason in it. It is this: Let the youth continue his noble, heroic, if melodramatic, quest of truth, that those who grow wiser and weaker may get justice. Let the young strive for the impossible and the possible will be attained, and those who ask for justice will really have it. Let them question and analyze and shatter idols and become bombastic and hysterical and build castles, and dream and disturb the order of the world—and let us admire their heilige dumheit—that some day those who have grown feeble may find at least fair play. The more the world will tolerate the extravagances of youth, the more it will benefit by its achievements. Let the wildest imaginations have free play and things will grow fairer and more fair. Let them dream. To be disillusioned is a trifle; but never to have dreamed is terrible. Finally, this earth will be turned into a heaven by all those who have failed to do it.

"And those who have grown older and sadder and merely ask for justice, let them really demand it with all their might, and so shall their efforts not be in vain, and so shall those who beg for mercy receive it—or none beg for mercy. If those who ask for justice would only be just to those who are in the other stages of the game, and if those who beg for mercy would only be merciful! No matter at what stage, let all play fairly and honestly and be tolerant of others, and all things will tend towards ultimate decency. Again, were there more demanding truth, there would be fewer satisfied with mere justice, and none would beg for mercy. At any rate, more truth, more justice; more justice, more mercy, or no need of it at all. If only every one would want something, mean something, do something. Personally I cannot do very much, for you see I am somewhat of a preacher myself. Going on the 'elevated,' are you? Sorry for you. Good-bye."

VI "The Badness of a Good Man"

I was looking for Keidansky, but he was nowhere to be found. He was not at home, and my visits to a few of his favorite resorts were also in vain. Then they told me over at Schur's bookshop on Canal street, that there was an entertainment being given by the Alliance on that evening, and Keidansky was to contribute an essay to the literary programme, a paper on "The Badness of a Good Man." "It serves them right," I said, and I forthwith betook myself to the dreary quarters of the Alliance, which formed the intellectual centre of our Ghetto. The exercises were already in progress. The hall was packed; hardly any standing-room left.

The pictures of Karl Marx and Michael Bakounin—the respective fathers of Socialism and Anarchism—looked down upon a pious and picturesque congregation of people who swore by their names; the same studious, serious, troubled, yet occasionally smiling faces of young men and young women of the Jewish quarter—seekers after light among the people that walk in darkness. The hall was brightly illuminated. The people were in their best. It was Sunday evening. Even Keidansky had condescended, or compromised, and paid some attention to "external appearances," this time. He brushed his clothes "for the occasion," as he once remarked. At any rate, there was some change in his attire differing from his usual negligent appearance. This was an entertainment. There were several readings and they were all teeming with trouble, and propt with problems. The recitations, well given by several young women, were compositions like Hood's "Song of the Shirt," William Morris's Socialist chants; the songs of suffering and joyless toil, sung in Yiddish, were by Edelstatt, Rosenfeld and Goldstein. The people over here enjoy their sorrows, it seems.

Keidansky was already on the platform when I came in; in fact, he was already reading his paper. His paper was a typical utterance of the iconoclast that he is, and craving the indulgence of the reader, I quote here as much of it as I copied then and there, ere we come to the conversation. I do not know what he said before I entered, but after that he hastily and nervously read somewhat as follows:

"He is a good man and a worthy, and a useful member of society. All his neighbors say so, and he stands well in the entire community. His friends are legion. He is always ready to do them a good turn, and they are in turn ever ready to reciprocate. He lives, acts, thinks and speaks like all other good men; and he is exceedingly popular and highly respected. He is tolerant. He agrees with everybody on almost every conceivable subject. He is a good man. This is a free country, and every man has a right to his honest opinion—provided he is not a crank, or eccentric, and does not make himself obnoxious by differing with everybody. In that case, of course, the man is beyond recovery; he is lost to all shame and to the good old political parties and principles.

"He respects every honest opinion and sentiment, and when he does meet a man who differs from him, why, he gently and adroitly changes the subject and smiles irresistibly and talks pleasantly, anyway. Oh, well, we are bound to differ on some things—but what is the difference so long as we both vote the same ticket? Have a cigar? When the man does not vote the same ticket it is really too bad, you know; but there is still a smile and a pleasant word.

"His generous contributions to the charities of the city are well known. The newspapers frequently have paragraphs in praise of his philanthropic deeds. The press is one of our greatest institutions. It is the palladium of our liberties, and a great medium of advertising. There are always good words, cigars and drinks for the newspaper 'boys.' They are a lot of fine, clever, noble fellows—according to the press, and he believes it. He is a good man.

"He travels through life in the good old-fashioned way. He is guided by the morality of our common ancestors, abides by their time-honored customs and reveres their sacred traditions. He thinks as his fathers thought, whose fathers thought as their fathers thought, and whose fathers—never thought anything. He is a good man, and he is agreeable. He once almost agreed with a Christian Scientist—he sold him a parcel of property. Christian Scientists have faith. It is good to do business with people who have faith. There is always much truth in what other people tell him, only we are bound to differ on some things, as he always says.

"He is a patriot and his lungs are ever at the service of his country. It is my country, whatever it does or does not do. Let us give three cheers for the stars and stripes, and hang the social reformers. The people are always right and they know it. He believes in the people, and they have faith in him. They have already sent him to the Board of Aldermen, and there are many other places they may send him to. There is a Congress at Washington, and many good men are sent there. He is persistently honest. His honesty has been brought to the notice of many. 'Honesty is the best policy' is a line ever on his lips. His reputation for veracity is enviable. It pays to tell the truth, he says. He tells the truth as he sees it, and he sees it as everybody else does.

"He is the most active member of the largest congregation in his district, and is considered a strong pillar of the church—even of society at large. He gives aid and succour to the weak and the failures; but he is always on the side of the strong and the successful. It is the largest movement in his community, social, political, or religious, that receives his staunch support. And it so happens that he is ever in accord with the tendencies of the largest movement.

"He is a good man. He is eminently practical, and he harbors a horror for visionaries and their Utopias. He loathes agitators and rebels, disturbers of peace and order. Peace, order, accuracy, submission, obedience, duty—and uniformity is a good word, too. Children, you must always abide by the powers that be, and obey your parents; they know better what is best for you. They have buried many children. Gentlemen, respect the flag. This is a free country, and the Government can do as it pleases with the people.

"Vague, unexpressed longings of a new time, hungry desires of the age, wistful heart-whispers for a freer, higher life, muffled music of far-off seas, stifled and half-drowned voices of the submerged Ego crying 'I'—these do not disturb his dreams. He has no dreams. Far be it from him to be touched by the shapeless, new-born aspirations which are suspended in the air waiting for some one to give them form. He is a man of facts, and lends no credence to far-away fictions. His health is so good that he is not easily affected by theories and books.

"He is consistent and hardly ever changes his mind; at least not more often than do those who draw up the platform of his political party. His intrepid loyalty to his party cannot be forgotten as long as he lives; he stands as solidly within its ranks as a mortared-in brick within a wall. When he says a thing it is said, and he keeps every promise he makes, good or bad. He prizes highly and is keenly jealous of his reputation, and believes in living up to it. He will not differ from you on matters of art or literature, because, well, because, as he says, he is not well up in these things, and besides, it is all a matter of taste, is it not? But he likes a good old-fashioned melodrama; don't you?

"He is a good man. Fathers point him out to their sons as a paragon of virtue. He never swerves nor deviates from the path of duty and righteousness, as he sees it. He is indissolubly linked in the great chain of real, practical, daily events of the world, and he never chases any phantoms—not he. He never fights with fate. He takes things as they come, and many things come his way. Providence seems to be on his side. He never complains of the powers that be in heaven or on earth. God made the world, and no man can ever change it. All that is, is well for the industrious and the successful. There is always room on the top for those who can crawl up. He adapts himself to all circumstances, and profits by most of them. He moves along the lines of least resistance; is ever drifting into his proper niche. He will 'get there.' Where he cannot be aggressive, he is agreeable, and usually gains his end. He never falters, nor fails to fall in line with the rest. It is always safest to be on the safe side. He positively believes in the benefits that accrue to those who are negative.

"He possesses all the negative virtues of his honored ancestors, who now slumber beneath their eulogistically inscribed tombstones. He meekly follows their present example of abstaining from most of the vicious pleasures of life. He is a good and respectable man, and he never lets his desires run loose; they must abide by certain laws.

"He is deeply interested in all matters concerning public improvements. Why? The motive of a man's interest in public affairs is often a private matter; but the impeccable reputation of a good man should be a sufficient shield against the scrutiny of the inquisitive. The inquisitive will never go to heaven, and they will 'get it' here on earth.

"He is modest. He frequently complains of the credit and the honors that are given him by the community—lest his hearers should not know that he bears the burden of demonstrative public admiration. He is profusely grateful for all he receives, which, he constantly protests, is so much more than he deserves. He only tries to do his duty in his humble way. He is effusively cordial and friendly. He has a pervasive, confidence-inspiring smile for all who pass him, known or unknown. He clasps your hand firmly and shakes it long. He is congenial even to the congealing.

"He is a self-made, self-advertised man. He has affluence; he has influence. His exemplary character is worthy of emulation, as the newspaper and his political friends say; and his emoluments are not few nor far between. He is intensely, surprisingly religious. The creed of his fathers is good enough for him. He questions not, nor doubts—not he. A good, devoted churchman, he is a regular attendant; and he never sleeps nor slumbers, no matter how long and how old the sermon be. He is a brave man. The good souls of his district are most lavish in praise of his piety.

"Alas, it is not possible to enumerate all his splendid deeds, his high-classed qualities and his standard virtues. But, then, that is hardly necessary. They speak for themselves, or for their owner. He is a good husband and father, and his word is law unto his wife and children. He is an excellent citizen, a loud-mouthed patriot. He is a good man. He is going to heaven. And, oh, I do wish he would go there soon!"

After I had listened to this scandalous screed and other sombre and shadowy things that were on the programme of the entertainment, I finally overtook the offender, and shook hands with Keidansky. "I've been looking for you," I explained, "and they told me you would be here, so I came, and caught you in the act."

"Glad you showed up," he said; "but I am rather afraid. Do be lenient. I cannot defend nor explain everything."

"Well," I began, leniently, "according to this harangue of yours, we would have to change our conception of goodness and morality, and—"

"No, we don't have to," he answered impatiently; "but we can't help it; it is always, always changing. The good man of one age is the dead man of another. Between vice and virtue there is often no more than a change of mind. Goodness is only a point of view, and morality ceases to be moral after awhile. What's a good thing to do to-day will, in all probability, be the best thing to avoid to-morrow. It's all a question of time; no standard stands forever. Why, the coat of tar and feathers is going out of fashion, and even in New England, it's no longer a crime to be happy. Morality is but an arbitrary agreement, subject to change. It is a catalogue of certain accepted virtues, which should be edited, revised, and reprinted, from time to time; for many of the articles in this booklet go out of fashion, and otherwise become stale, obsolete, and even obnoxious. At best, the goods are not what they are represented to be by the drummers, that is, the preachers, when it comes to their delivery—when it comes down or up to real life. What do you think of virtues that consist either of doing nothing, or of doing things for no other reason than that they have bored other people to death. The catalogue is full of them, and just now we have come to a time when our current conventional morality is a kind of mortality—dead and deadening. It holds us down to outworn, oppressive systems, customs, regulations, and the uniformity of things is stifling.

"It prevents growth, it impedes progress. We cannot live as free, untrammelled individuals. We must be citizens, members of society; we must be what other people call respectable.

"Everybody owns everybody else. Everybody follows, no one leads his own life. No one has any initiative. Everybody examines your moral conduct, and dictates the term of your existence. How can one have a religion, if he must live up to the faith of everybody else? How can we live if we must follow the dull and noble examples of those who are dead and never knew any better? Everybody listens to what the people say, and no one hears his own voice. This is an age of machinery. There are no more individuals; there are automatic walking and working machines which have been wound up by public opinion to run so many hours according to a well-approved system of regulations. 'What's the use of common-sense?' says a character in one of Jacob Gordin's plays. 'What's the use of common-sense when we have a Constitution?' Thousands of fools are kneeling before the fetish of public opinion. 'What will the people say?' they all ask. Nothing, I say, nothing. The people never say anything. They only talk. Individuals say it all. Those who depend upon others, who see strength in union are weaklings. United we fall, divided we stand. Those who dare to tread in the path of freedom, who dare to do things and say things, who own their bodies and never raise any mortgages on their souls, who make their own morality—they are the people who advance the world's progress and help to civilize our civilization. They have nearly always been called bad by their contemptible contemporaries—yet they represented all the goodness worth having. God give us the men who have virtue enough to do as they please, and courage enough to shock their neighbors.

"But it's all system and monotony and imitation with the majorities, and a lot of slavish, knavish, puny and pious little beings, afraid of their own voices and not daring to draw their breath any more often than their neighbors do, and with whom morality and sanity is a matter of majority rule—beings like these are called the good people.

"This idea must be reversed. We must come to realize the utter badness of the conventional, crawling, yours-truly-for-a-consideration, good people. Also we must come to realize the supreme goodness of so-called bad people—people who are too religious to go to church—to whom tyranny of any kind is the height of immorality, and slavery the depth of it. We must have more bad people to save this wicked world. And heaven save us from most of the good people of to-day.

"It is one of those 'dumb-driven cattle' that I tried to pay my respects to in my paper—one of those cattle that here in democratic America become leaders of men. They do not know that the progress of the world has been built upon discarded customs and broken laws—but let us go down the street. I must have a drink of something before I can solve the problem to your satisfaction—or even convince myself that I am right."

VII "The Goodness of a Bad Man"

Perhaps it was to the disgrace of the Alliance that Keidansky's disquisition, his merciless tirade against the good man, was received with some show of hand-clapping favor; and it may be to the credit of the membership that there were those in the audience who were surprised, shocked and startled, who dissented from and resented his utterances. At any rate, the dissenters and commentators stirred up a discussion, and for several days after that it was a topic of conversation and disagreement at the club, at the cafés and such places where our circles would congregate. Those who dissented and disagreed with the man who questioned the very bases of our morality said many, varying things and not all things were said in Keidansky's presence. And he? Sometimes he would say a word in explanation, or his defence, and for the rest he listened, looked wise, smiled and relished every attack made against him. His opponents finally agreed that his was a one-sided, partial view, and they told him that, after all, it was better to have a good man than a bad one.

"But it yet remains to be proved," he argued, "that the average good man is not a whole lot worse than the so-called bad man."

They all dared him to prove it, to present the other side of the case, the goodness of the bad man. "I don't care to prove anything," said Keidansky. "'Even the truth can be proved,'" he quoted a favorite decadent; "but if you want me to, I'll try to show you the other side of the story, as it seems to me. I'll write it to-night or to-morrow, and read it to you all, say, on the evening of the day after to-morrow, at the Alliance." We all agreed to be there, and accordingly assembled at the appointed time, and waited until Keidansky appeared with a folded manuscript sticking out of his coat pocket. He was all out of breath. He had been walking very fast so as to get here "just in time to be late." He had just finished his composition. "My lamp went out last night," he explained, "and so I had to do it all this afternoon, and just got through." And so here is his paper as he read it to us on "The Goodness of a Bad Man."

"He is a bad man, a worthless, useless member of society. Most of his neighbors say so, and he does not stand well in the community. His friends are few, with long distances between. He would not go far out of his way to do a fellow a good turn; does not believe in favours, he says, and nobody cares much for him. He lives, acts, thinks, speaks like a bad man, and to say nothing of popularity—very few of us have any—but who will have any respect for a man that scorns, jeers, sneers and pokes all manner of fun at respectability? Respectability, he says, is a mark of public formality behind which to hide private rascality, and the prettier the mask the more ugly the face.

"He disagrees with nearly everybody on almost every conceivable subject. No matter what other people think of his opinions, he actually believes them to be right. He is a bad man. He is not at all tolerant. When he disagrees with any one—and he does that most of the time—he bluntly and boldly tells him so up and down, and he is ever ready to state his reasons and argue the case. He will not conceal his convictions, even when he is your guest. Of course, this is a free country, and every man is entitled to his opinion—but one should have some tact, politeness, diplomacy, courtesy. If every one had these there would not be so much difference of opinion and discord in our land, and there would be more peace on earth. Polite people do not try to force their opinions upon others.

"Polite people have no opinions that differ from those of others. I doubt whether it is polite to have any opinions at all. The aristocracy is setting a good example. It never thinks. Persons who think too much are ever behind the times. But even if one has a right to his opinion, he certainly has no right to be cranky, eccentric, and disturb the mental peace of the community with his queer, revolutionary notions. Stubborn, stiff-necked, hard-headed, determined, impulsive, he is ever present with that ubiquitous mind of his, ever ready to give everybody a piece of it. Considering the frequency with which he gives everybody a piece of his mind, I wonder that it is not all gone by this time.

"He is a bad man. He is aggressive and arrogant. His faith in himself is offensive, his self-reliance, self-satisfaction unbearable. He has too much respect for himself to follow the dictates of others. His life is a life, he says, and not an apology for living; he will have to pay for it with death and wants to make the most of the bargain—live fully and freely in his own way, however reprehensible. He does not want his neighbors to love and interfere with him—unless he cared for their affection. He says it would be a sin to love his neighbors if they did not deserve his love. The welfare of the community, I heard him say, depends upon the absolute freedom, the self-salvation of each individual. No one can ever do anything for another unless he has made the most of his own life—good or bad. Self-preservation in the end prompts us to do most for others. Selfishness is a pronounced form of sanity. Altruism has enslaved the world. Egoism will save it. And I could quote you such monstrous heresies as will make your hair stand on end. He is a bad man.

"The world belongs to those who take things for granted. He will not take anything for granted and that's why he has to take more hard knocks than anybody else. He impiously questions, doubts, examines, investigates everything on the face of the earth and—God save us—even the things that be in heaven. He is a living interrogation point, ever questioning the wisdom of this world and the promises of the one to come. Nothing is so sacred as to be above his scrutiny; he has little reverence for any of our glorious institutions. He says they are the handiwork of men and often as crude and as useless as men could make them. Whatever has been erected can be corrected, he says. He thinks lightly of our laws; thinks they are at best but a necessary evil and that in the course of human events it becomes necessary to abolish all evil.

"He is a bad man. He does not even recognize the sacred authority of tradition, and has no decent regard for precedent. Precedent, he argues, only proves that some people lived before us and did things in a certain way. He does not even—well, think of a man who doubts the holy right of the majority! He does not believe that the majority is always right; in fact, he contends that it is always wrong. By the time the majority discovers a truth it becomes a falsehood, he avers. The majority only thinks it is always right. The majority is but another word for mediocrity. He does not heed what the people say. The monster called majority, in spite of his many heads, does very little thinking. What the people say seldom amounts to a meaning. Morality, he argues, is that which is conducive to one's happiness, without interfering with or injuring his fellow-men. To be moral is to live fully, freely, completely. Morality has nothing to do with the abnormal stifling, starving, thwarting of instincts and feelings.

"A truth, he told me, is a truth, and a principle is a principle, whether it is held by many or by one. Numbers no more make right than might does.

"'The strongest man on earth,' he says, 'is he who stands alone,' and he always quotes a man named Ibsen. He is a bad case. 'Customs and conventionalities be hanged,' he says, 'I have my own life to live and mean to manage it in my own way. I have laws of my own and must obey them.' I heard him say it myself, and I wonder what he means by these things. There are always those who know better than you what is good for you, but you don't want to mind them, he told me. The most advisable thing in the world is never to take any advice. There may be those, he once remarked, who have lived longer than you have, but they have not lived your life.

"He has a mania for principles. I think that is a chronic disease with him. He imagines it is all one needs in life. There is not a material advantage in the world but he would forfeit it for a moral principle, as he calls it. 'Ideals are very well,' I once said, 'but one must live.' 'Not necessarily,' he answered. 'One must die, if one cannot live honestly.'

"Always he talks about the so-called social problem of the age. I do not know just what that is; but if there is such a thing as a social problem it is how to abolish social reformers. This man is a social reformer, and he has some scheme of his own how to reconstruct society on a basis of what he terms justice and truth. In the promulgation of this scheme of his he foolishly spends much of his spare time and not a little of his money—and Heaven knows he has not any too much. But he says he does it all for his pleasure; that it is out of sheer selfishness that he would uplift the fallen and elevate the lowly. He is a bad man. It is no disgrace to be poor, of course; but it is criminal of the poor not to know their place. I half told him so, but he answered in his usual contradictory way that the poor have no place at all.

"He travels through life very much by his own crooked road, with his own conception of morality, justice and truth. Out of justice to the dead, he argues, we ought to abolish most of the institutions they have left behind. Otherwise they are being disgraced every day by the clumsy workings of the things they have established. If our honored ancestors desired to perpetuate their taboos, fetishes and inquisitions they had no business to die; they should have stayed here. By going to either of the places beyond they have forfeited their right to manage things here below. The dead should give the living absolute home rule.

"He is a bad man. He hardly ever gives any charity. He does not believe in charity; says it creates more misery than it relieves, and perpetuates poverty—the crime of mankind. Charity, he claims, curses both the giver and the receiver. It makes the former haughty and proud and the latter dependent and servile. What he wants is justice and the rights of all to earn the means of subsistence. And there is no use in quoting the Bible, when he talks of poverty. The Bible, he says, is a great book which could be immensely improved by a good editor with a long blue pencil. All the immoral problem-plays pale into pitiful insignificance beside some of the stories told in the Bible—and they are not anywhere half so well told. Did you ever hear such blasphemy? He is an infidel. He does not even believe the newspapers; has little faith in the great power of the press. Most of the newspapers, he told me, are published by the advertisers and edited by the readers. Journalists ever follow public opinion, and they are never sure of what they believe in because it is hard to find out what the people approve. Weather Bureau predictions are often Gospel truths beside editorial convictions. The best papers are yet to be printed. He has such rank disregard of the past and the present that he seems to think that all things really great are yet to come.

"He puzzles and vexes me. I don't know just what he is in politics. I doubt whether he is either a Republican or a Democrat. I suspect he votes for the Anarchist party. What an absurdity! They will never elect a President, and this foolish man has not the ghost of a chance to get an office. He is not at all consistent. He changes his mind very often. No matter how zealous or ardent he is about his ideas he is ever ready to reject them to-morrow and accept other views. He does not believe in the newspapers, in things visible and present, yet he has the utmost faith in far-away fictions, intangible Utopias and the realization of iridescent dreams.

"I dare not repeat all his outrageous blasphemies, and I positively cannot mention his awful heresies as to his religion. He cannot accept the religion of his fathers because they were infidels; infidels who built little creeds out of fear, who were afraid of their shadows, who had monstrous, libellous conceptions of God. He says that he has too much faith to belong to any denomination. Religion is so large that no church can hold it. No one should meddle between man and his Maker. Christ, I have heard him say, may never forgive the Christians for what they have made out of him, for robbing him of his humanity. No church for him. He would rather worship beneath the arched dome of the starry skies and offer up a prayer to the God that dwells in every human heart and thinking brain. He is a bad man.

"He is always on the ungrateful side of the few, the poor, the weak and the fallen; and he even sympathizes with beggars, criminals, fallen women and low persons; is not afraid to mingle with them. And what advantage can he ever derive out of that? Absent-minded, forgetful, engrossed in his queer ideas and impossible ideals, he gets lost in his theories and books, and loses life. He does not realize that millions have found this world as it is and millions more will leave it so. Poor man, he is a dreamer of dreams; and to see the invisible, to hear inaudible voices, is the most expensive thing in life. He sacrifices affluence, influence, power, political office, honor, éclat, applause, the respect of the community, the regard of his neighbors, the praise of the press, the advantages of politics and of the people's approval—sacrifices all these for his pitiful brain-begotten fancies. He is a dreamer of dreams. Yet he seems to like this journey along the lines of most resistance, says it is least resistance to him, and he tells me that he enjoys his poverty and all, immensely. He freely indulges in most of the vain and worldly pleasures of life as he sees them, regardless of all others, considers one day as holy as another and no day so mean as to wear a long and sanctimonious face on, and he says that the only thing which he prohibits is prohibition in any form. His wife does not fear him, does not have to obey him, does as she pleases, and his children are as free and wild as little savages. He is a bad man.

"But what can be done? Ministers and other good men have repeatedly tried to save him, but he evades all their efforts, avoids all their sermons. He would save them the trouble of saving him, he says, because he thinks he can do it so much better himself. What can be done? All things are here to serve him, none to subserve him. He is a law unto himself, and has little or nothing to do with the Government, so he says. He is a bad man. He is not going to heaven—and yet, and yet—if there were more like him this world would be so different, and perhaps no one would ever want to go to heaven."

There was a pause and a silence at the close of the reading, but our essayist was soon spared "the agony of suspense," as he mockingly remarked. Then came comments of varied shades of opinion, approving and disapproving, constructive and destructive, too many to mention, and Keidansky enjoyed them all. At length I ventured to ask him what sort of administrator his friend, the bad man, would make if he was ever elected to office.

"He would never run for office," said Keidansky, "and if he ran he would never be elected; and if he ever was elected he would certainly be a dire failure because he does not believe in managing other people's business. The best of men will not want to, cannot do it, and politics is no test. The man who goes in with or for the crowd ceases to be himself; and therefore we ought to invent our public officials and not make them out of men. However, don't press me, I am not at all sure about these things. I only know that the bad man is coming; that he is here; that he is a dire terror—and will save the world. What I gave you here is a mere suggestion, a hint of a possibility, a premonition. Every conception is spoiled by the description of it. He will come, and time will not tame him. He will come, and the divine institution of police-court morality is doomed. The virtues of the future will be useful. They will be conducive to growth—real happiness.

"But, as I say, I don't want to appear dogmatic; nor to be too sure of things. The most useful thing about our theories is that we know them to be useless. The best thing about our ideas is that the world has not accepted them yet. If the world had accepted them these ideas would probably now look like last winter's snow. Better to wait until it is ready for them—then they will not go to waste. Better a bad world than a good world come too early—before the people are ready for it. But what's the use! I've done it, my friends, and my apology for life is—that I never apologize. Come, it's getting close, up here. Come, let us forth into the darkness and pray for eternal night—for night hides all the ugly splendors of the world."

VIII "The Feminine Traits of Men"

"You are as inquisitive as a man," said Keidansky.

"You mean—" I tried to correct him.

"I mean as inquisitive as a man," he repeated.

This was at a social gathering, a Purim festival given by the B'nai Zion Educational Society at Zion Hall. We sat in the little back room adjoining the main hall, which formed the library of the society. There was a good fire in the stove; we were just far enough away from the music and the dance to enjoy it, and also to relish our chat.

I suppose I had gone beyond the point of discretion in my quest of information; that I asked some questions of a rather personal nature which my friend thought best to leave unanswered, and hence the rebuke I received.

"Some one," said Keidansky, "ought to write an essay on 'The Feminine Traits of Men,' and point out in what a pronounced form men possess the traits, objectionable and acceptable, they constantly attribute to women. For centuries women have borne the blame and ridicule and criticism for qualities they either have in the mildest, most insignificant forms, or do not possess at all—when you compare them to men. And it's about time they should be vindicated, and the truth should make them free from this popular misconception. It seems to me that in a certain way men have actually monopolized most of the objectionable traits of women; and to have shifted all the blame on them for all these years was a crying shame—an outrageous wrong.

"Yes, some one ought to write about it; some one who is young, handsome and gallant—so that he may receive the gratitude of the fair sex. For instance, woman is said to be inquisitive. But who, really, is so anxious to know, so peevish, petulant and prurient as man is? Who like him will go to so much trouble to find out the minutest detail about men, women and things that surround him? Who is so eager and diligent in his search of information, knowledge and light? Who like unto him—I mean, his majesty, man—takes such loving interest in his neighbors and pries so pitilessly into their private affairs? Who makes such an excellent reporter, detective, biographer? Who are the successful editors of our newspapers? Men, of course. They are the ones who constantly load you with questions, who are ever endeavoring to peer into your inmost self and who always want to know about your past, present, future, former and later incarnations. I am told, on good authority, that genealogy—which I understand to be the science of proving that your great-grandfather was somebody and that somebody was your great-grandmother—that this science has been nurtured and garnered and brought up to its present state of perfection, or imperfection, by men.

"It's appalling, this curiosity of man," he continued fervently. "He can go sixteen miles out of his way to pick up the smallest scrap of a fact, or fancy. He can collect endless stores of useless information. He fancies nothing so much as facts. His thirst for knowledge cannot be satiated even by flattery. Men not only make encyclopædias, but they actually use them. They not only build and endow libraries, but they actually utilize them—spoil their eyes over musty, misty, mazy volumes. And then, how anxious we all are to be posted on the most unimportant things concerning our friends and the people we meet and know; we are ever attempting to read their minds and their hearts, and if there are none, we put meanings into them. Have not the greatest novelists been men?

"Motke Chabad, the Jewish jester, once came to a strange town near his native city of Wilna, and as he entered the community a patriarchal old Israelite accosted him with the usual Shalom aleichem. Ma simecho? 'Peace be with thee, stranger. What is thy name?'

"'It's none of your business,' answered Motke.

"When asked why he thus rudely acted toward the old man, Motke Chabad explained that had he told the stranger his name the other would have asked where he came from, what his business was, how many children he had, if he was married, how old his father was, if he was still living, if he had any relatives in America, if he ever was blessed by the great rabbi of Wilna, etc., etc., and, said Chabad, 'to say nothing of my morning prayers, I had not as yet had my breakfast, when I met him.'

"Chabad, you see, knew his brother, man. Men curious to know? Rose Dartle is nothing beside Andrew Lang, and he has this advantage over her—that he exists and can find things out. Another instance. You go into your store or factory in the morning. You have a slight toothache. You feel and look rather seedy, and the man who works next to you comes over and sympathetically asks you why it was that she rejected you, why the other fellow won her heart, by what magic charms your rival eclipsed you, etc., and he keeps on with his queries until you tell him—

"Go stand up on the first corner. Take off your hat and cry out: 'Gentlemen, this is a hat, this is a hat! Look into it!' And in a few seconds you will have a big throng of curious men standing about and staring at you. Women who will happen along will pass right on, but men will stand there and stare—like men.

"There was a time when certain things were considered beyond the scrutiny of curious men, when they were held too sacred for investigations and explanations, when the things that were not understood were deemed holy and when men stood in reverence before these things and bowed and took off their thinking caps. But now they want to know everything—even the things that are of prime importance. And there is no use in telling them that nothing really exists—not even the logic of Christian Scientists. They want to know. They must find the facts or make them. What's the use of living if one doesn't know just on what date King Pharaoh died? No news may be good news, but you can't run a newspaper on that principle now-a-days. Whether the things happen or not man wants to know the facts and the details of the cases. They must know. Knowledge is power. To know is to be able to boast of it. And men ever boast of what they know or think they know.

"But why say more? The collected knowledge, the accumulated data and science of the world sufficiently prove the inquisitiveness of men. It is one faculty which works many ways, you know, and these ways are shaped by circumstances and conditions. Now a man peeps through a keyhole to get some material for a bit of gossip, and then he looks up to the stars to make an astronomical observation. But the Darwins and the Newtons and the Herschels prove how curious to know men really are.

"And it is their extreme vanity, too, that makes men so presumptuous, ostentatious and obstreperous. They have so much faith in themselves that no self-respecting person can trust them. They are so confident in their right to know, so convinced of the value of their knowledge, so sure of the absolute necessity of their volubility. They are so unbearably overbearing, self-conscious and self-centred that they forget there are others besides them in this world. It is their vanity that makes men speak in volumes.

"Then they say that women gossip, but you know that they are far outdone, almost totally eclipsed in this respect, too, by men. Men are the real, rapid-transit champion gossips and talkers of the world. It was a dark and dismal night, as the story goes, and we all sat around the fire and the captain said, 'Jack, tell us a story,' and Jack told a number of stories, and so did others, and we all told of divers devilish, wicked things our friends had done, and in our heart of hearts were awfully sorry we did not do these things ourselves, and we made mud-cakes out of good, well-preserved reputations. Oh, how well we can and how we do talk about our neighbors; but you know, people do like to talk about those whom they love. Marie Corelli recently said—now do not scowl because I quote Marie Corelli. She is a very good woman; only she could not resist the temptation to write a few novels, and they may not be so bad, only I could never get myself to read them because I heard that Queen Victoria liked them immensely. Hold on, though; I guess I did read one of these novels in a Yiddish translation; but that was because the translator did not say whose work it was. I think he thought it was original with himself. In fact, he passed it off as his own—which was a brave thing to do, though the book proved to be popular. But I lost my train of thought. Marie Corelli recently said that she never endured such a babel of gossiping tongues as she once heard when being entertained to luncheon at a men's club, and she added, 'nor have I known many more reputations picked to pieces than on that occasion.' But a recent writer told us what awful gossips all the historians have been, and they were all men. We were told that Herodotus, who is the father of history, was also one of the most inveterate of gossips. Saint Simon was considered essentially a gossip, and even therefore a wonderful historian of the time of Louis XV. Pepys, this writer told us, was the greatest gossip that ever lived, also the greatest historian of his time. Even Mommsen, we were told, shows some of the traits of a gossip in his monumental history of Rome. The same was said of Gibbon and many others. Gossip is not only the raw material of history, we were informed, but it is also the raw material of the realistic novel, and as I said before, the finest novels have been produced by the sons of Adam.

"Women are also charged with being loquacious, but that is another trumped-up, false charge. You well know that the loquaciousness of men is prodigious, tremendous. Man is the most wonderful talking machine ever invented, and one of his favorite topics is the talkativeness of woman. Men talk you to mental derangement and death wherever you go. There is no escape. Nearly every man you meet is ready to tell you the sad story of his life—sad, because he is ready to tell it. Many of them write their autobiographies, and what with these and their sermons and orations, novels and essays, histories and philosophies—there will soon be no more room for libraries. And the worst thing about man's garrulity is that he taxes the intellect so heavily, that what he says is loaded with so much meaning. Anything a man says, you know, is in danger of becoming literature. It's appalling. He always makes you think, whereas what little a woman does say is so light and airy, breezy and restive. A woman, too, writes a book, occasionally, but she does not mean anything by it.

"But men are so very bad in this respect, so terribly blatant. They never cease talking. When they don't talk they write, and the pen is worse than the sword. Why am I afraid to ask the man, who stands near me waiting for a car, what time it is? Because he might tell me of his grandfather's heroic exploits in the Civil War. To have gone to war was cruel; but to have left some one behind to boast of it was criminal. Why am I afraid to read the latest short story that I have written to my friend? Because he might show me a poem just done. And I nearly forgot to point out what a monumental proof of naïve garrulity the Talmud is. The Talmud, that strange conglomeration of law, love, legend, gossip, fable, and occasionally a bit of wisdom, which one can find if one searches diligently.

"They say also that women are capricious and changeful; but the progress of the world shows how easily men change their minds. Yes, someone ought to write an essay and point these things out, and vindicate a much-maligned sex. It's a good chance for a man for some interesting gossip on the subject."

"I suppose, then, that you believe in woman's rights," I at length haphazarded an interruption.

"Yes," answered Keidansky, "I believe that women should have all their rights, and should not, as the French cynic would have it, be killed at forty. It's too late. I mean," he added quickly, "that it's too late to talk any more about it."

IX The Value of Ignorance

"What do I know? I don't know anything," said Keidansky, "and I don't care to."

"I thought you were always in quest of knowledge," I remarked.

"I am," he answered: "I am infatuated with the quest, I love it. It is so exhilarating, stirring, full of excitement and fraught with danger."

"Danger? Wherein is that?" I asked.

"The danger," he emphasized, "is in finding the knowledge I am in quest of; for once your search has been answered with success, and you have informed yourself with the facts of the case, the game is up and the fun is over, as the Americans say. The hallucination of the glorious quest is shattered, the suspense is spoiled, the ecstatic expectations are destroyed, and we become fit subjects for illustrations in the Fliegende Blätter. 'A little knowledge is a dangerous thing' and a lot of it is fatal. Yes, knowledge is might, but illusion is omnipotence. So I like to seek information well enough, but I would rather not know."

I became interested, although scandalized, and my companion kept on musing aloud.

"Not to know is to hope, to fear, to be in delightful uncertainty, to dream fair dreams, to imagine the most impossible things, to wonder and marvel at all in childlike innocence, to build the most beautiful castles in the air, to give the imagination full swing, to conjure up the most fantastic mythological melodramas, to stand with deep awe and inspired reverence before all the mighty manifestations of nature, to form the finest idols, to build splendid religions, to have faith and to foster it, to see the invisible, to draw gorgeous rainbows of promise upon the horizon of life, in a word, not to know is to sustain perfect illusion, not to go behind the scenes, is to enjoy the entire performance.

"On the other hand, my dear fellow, to know is to have your wings clipped, to see the distance between the earth and the skies and the difference between you and what you thought yourself to be, to feel your littleness and become dreadfully aware of the absurdity of it all, to have the imagination arrested for trespassing, to be rejected from the castles you built for non-payment of taxes, to be punished for the idleness of your idols, to see your little demigods crumble at the rate of sixteen a minute, to become aware of the futility of the whole business, the shortness of terms given you, the unstability of your credit, to find that you are but a feather blown hither and thither by the whirlwind of the world, that your greatest plan may be demolished by a whim of fate, to learn that the stupid moon really does not look so pale because of your unrequited love, and that the great sun does not shine because you are going to a picnic, to discover that your credulity was the only miracle that ever happened, and that even gods suffer from dyspepsia, to lose faith, become sceptic, abandon religion, move out of the balmy fairyland of tradition and freeze in the realms of right reason. To know is to be deprived even of that little confidence in your power to alter the course of the universe; to recognize how inexorable, inscrutable, indifferent, the powers of life are, and what a common pedigree all things of beauty have; it is to have the dramatic effect of the play spoiled and to vote it all a farce and a failure.

"We are all becoming so educated now-a-days that we no longer know the value of ignorance, and we have nearly forgotten things of goodness and of beauty that it has brought into the world. Ignorance is the mazy mist of morning in which so much is born; it is the mystic dimness wherein all things awe and enchant forever. Ignorance is the beginning of the world; knowledge is the end of it. In the unexplored vastnesses of ignorance the mind soars through all the heavens and works wonders; in the measured spheres of knowledge the mind travels carefully and creates little as far as mythology, theology, religion and poetry are concerned. Were it not for ignorance we would not have had all the wealth of legends and fables and fairy tales and sagas and märchen, strange, weird, wonderful, to intoxicate the imagination of the world and enable us to live for centuries in lands of magic and charm and dreamlike realities. And if you see some works of beauty and nobility in the world to delight you, it is because we have just come out of these lands, and we are imitating and re-creating what we saw there. There are some who still dwell in them, and they send us messages and often bless us with their visits.

"Thank you for stopping me. I should not have liked to be run over before you had listened to the rest of my argument; besides, it makes a mess of one. This is a dangerous crossing—for a debate. But, to continue: Were it not for ignorance—had we known everything about God—Europe would not be dotted with all the beautiful cathedrals and the wonderful treasures of art that are an everlasting source of enchantment and inspiration. Were it not for the same reason we would not have such a beauty spot in Boston as Copley square, with its two imposing churches, Library and Museum of Art. And remembering that all objects to delight the eye, the ear and the mind began at the earliest shrines of worship, we can barely calculate how poor and meagre all our arts would have been were it not for this ignorance. What would poetry—in the largest sense—what would it be were it not for this ignorance concerning Providence? And poetry is the main motive, the quintessence of all the other arts. Religion is the great question mark of the world, and what you ask for religion I ask for ignorance. Whether the makers of the Bible wrote on space or not, no one can deny its high value as a work of poetry and fiction; and as much can be said for all the other sacred books of the great faiths.

"The mood of ignorance is worth everything: it is wonder, amazement, naïveté, child-like innocence, fairy-like dreaminess.

"In ignorance we trust, trusting we serve, serving we achieve, achieving we glorify our names. Not to know is to long for, to expect everything—and work for it; while to know is to be sure of this or that, and there is something significant in the coupling of the words, 'dead sure.' 'Tis good to have faith; what we believe in is or comes true. The illusion is the thing that makes the play. We are all chasing after phantoms, but the chase is a reality, and it's all in all. The less we know about the results—perhaps the more we do. And not knowing how incapable we are, some of us do remarkable things.

"A Jewish legend tells us that before the human soul is doomed to be born it knows everything, is informed of all knowledge—including, I presume, a knowledge of the Talmudic laws of marriage and divorce—but that at its birth an angel appears, gives the child a schnel in noz, or tap on the nose, which causes the infant to forget everything it knows so that it may be born absolutely ignorant. That is a good angel, I say, who performs a good office, and not like the rest of them, who, according to John Hay, are loafing around the throne. Here is a useful angel. For to give the child its ignorance is to confer a great boon; to make it capable of something in life. It is a valuable gift, though earthly creatures soon spoil the good work of the angel and stuff the child's head full of all sorts of useless knowledge. Soon the mind is clogged, the faculties for thinking, wondering, understanding are turned into a phonographic apparatus for remembering what should never have been learned, and the imagination is nipped in the bud, told to be correct and keep still. With all my inability to learn and disinclination to know, there are still a few things I have been trying to forget all my life, but I cannot do it. At the point of a cane my rabbi drove these things into my head. So if I ever impart any information to you, forgive me for I cannot forget. Here in America and in modernity, where superstition is such that people actually believe in the existence of facts, the schools and colleges form tremendous systems of stupefaction. Poor little heads of innocent children are packed, cramped and crowded with dates and names and all sorts of insignificant data. They teach them everything—except what interests them, and they are made to repeat and to remember all things dry and dull and dreary. 'Facts, facts, facts,' the teachers cry, not knowing that there are no facts in real life. Minds are measured, ideas must be of a certain size, you must think but one thought at a time and remember all things in history that never happened. Thus, fancy, whim, suggestion, imagination are sadly neglected, and the finest faculties are left behind. Everybody knows everything, but no one understands anything.

"'Tis so with people generally—they are all clamoring for what they call facts, explaining things after fixed formulas, making the most astonishing, dead-sure statements; in short, spreading useful knowledge. They all have ideas and theories and philosophies after a fashion; they have sized this universe up, past, present and future, and they can explain everything except themselves. Everybody has found a few 'facts,' and after these fashioned a universal panacea, a little patented plan for solving the social problem. There are so many solutions that it is hard to find just what the problem is. Reform is so much in style that even a corn doctor proclaims himself a social saviour. The social reformers with their sure cures, positive facts and all-saving systems are the plague of the age. There is no escape from these things they call certain and positive and indisputable. Figures and statistics and so-called facts make up the sum of our life. Life is harnessed by systems and we are strangled by statistics. The subtle, the strange, the symbolic, the suggestive, the intuitive, the poetic and imaginative, the flash-lights that make you see eternity in a moment—these are overlooked and neglected. The things really true are forgotten. What is that Persian legend about the man who devoted his life to planting and rearing and raising the tree of knowledge in his garden, and afterwards, in his old age, was hanged thereon? What? There is no such Persian legend? Well, then, some Englishman ought to write it. At any rate this shows the value of knowledge. The fruit of the tree of knowledge is now sweet, now bitter—but mostly bitter. We analyze and examine so much these days that we find within ourselves and in our surroundings the symptoms of all diseases and all evil. To quote a quaint but true Zangwillism, 'Analysis is paralysis, introspection is vivisection, and culture drives us mad.' We measure things so closely and leave no room for the surprising, the spontaneous, the freely flowing, the lifelike. The age of reason has come and we are no longer wise. We have forgotten what we owe to ignorance. 'He knows everything,' said the doctor; 'there is no hope for him.'

"In their ignorance of human nature and natural law idealists have dreamed and created the most unattainable Utopias, and their impossible visions shaped our destiny and made us great. The stirring speech that Lametkin delivered this evening is partly due to his ignorance of things and his blind faith in his panacea, but it enthused his audience immensely, and it will have a wonderful effect upon their lives. The other day I read some beautiful lines by Owen Meredith about the child who cries 'to clutch the star that shines in splendor over his little cot.' The matter-of-fact father says that it is folly, that it is millions of miles away, and that 'the star descends not to twinkle on the little one's bed.' But the mother tenderly tells the child to sleep and promises to pluck the star for it and by-and-by

'Lay it upon the pillow bright with dew,'

and then the child sleeps and dreams of stars whose light

'Beams in his own bright eyes when he awakes.'

"Now in these lines one may find justification for all the idealizations of art, but they are also suggestive of the value of ignorance. So it is. We must learn to see the invisible. We must be oblivious to the obvious, to see anything. We ought not to try to clear up everything. If life were not a problem play it would not interest us so. Let the mystery remain. Intimations of immortality are good enough; proofs would kill our longing for it. Whence? Whither? I rather hope these questions will never be answered. The halo, the maze, the mystery, the shadowy strangeness of it all makes it worth while and gives the fancy freedom to fly. Statistics sterilize the imagination and figures dry up our souls. Do you remember Whitman's 'When I Heard the Learned Astronomers?' The lecturer with his charts and diagrams soon made him unaccountably sick, till rising and gliding out of the lecture room he wandered off by himself 'in the mystical, moist night-air, and from time to time looked up in perfect silence at the stars,' and thus became himself again.

"Let others seek what they call facts: for me the lights and the shades, the dimness and the flash, the chiaroscuro of life. Let others pierce through phenomena and impregnate realities; my favorite amusement is to walk upon the clouds and play ball with the stars. I cannot grasp such details as the size of the earth, the distance between sun and moon. Logic? Lockjaw. Go study your astronomy and let me lie on my back in some verdant field and gaze upon the stars, and I shall be content. Let others study botany, give me but the fragrance of the blooms and flowers and let me gaze upon their gorgeous riots of color. For others the study of anatomy, for me the beauty of the human form to behold. Let others study ornithology, and let me listen to the thrilling music of the winged songsters. Take all the sciences that explain everything away, and give me the things beautiful to behold, sweet to hear and pleasing to touch. And before you run away let me also tell you that there is a mood of contemplation which, for comprehension, passeth all science and analysis.

"But, after all," he added, as we were about to part, "I could only hint at these things, for it takes a very learned man to prove the value of ignorance."

X Days of Atonement

All day the Ghetto was astir. There was a babel of excitement at the markets, an unusual rush and bustle on Allen street. The stores were well filled with bargaining, buying men and women, and the push-cart vendors were centres of attracted crowds. Everywhere housewives were busy washing, clearing, cleaning their homes. The spirit of awe, reverence, expectancy, was in the air. The great day of Rosh Hashona was approaching; New Year's day was drawing nigh.

We stood on the sidewalk in front of Berosowsky's book and periodical emporium, the strange place where you can procure anything from Bernard Feigenbaum's pamphlets against religion, to a pair of phylacteries, from Tolstoy's works in Yiddish to a holy scroll. We stood and gazed on the familiar yet fascinating scene. We had just left the store, wherein we glanced through the current newspapers and other publications. "It is so stupid to read. Let's go out and look at the people," Keidansky exclaimed abruptly as he threw down a eulogy of a Yiddish poet written by himself, in the paper of which he is now editor.

Not far off was heard the short, shrill sound of the ram's horn. It was the "bal tkio," the official synagogue trumpeter practising for the nearing ominous days. Hard by, a cantor and his choir of sweet voices were rehearsing the quaint hymns and prayers of the great fast, singing the strange, tearful, traditional melodies that have never been written, and yet have come down from generation to generation for hundreds of years; the weird musical wailings, the tunes of the cheerless chants, charged with the sighs, groans and laments of centuries of sufferings, flooded the noisy street, mingled with the harsh cries of the hucksters, and were lost in the general buzz and roar of the crowded district.

"The days of awe and of atonement are upon us," said Keidansky, "and these evocative, awakening voices are drawing, drawing me back to the synagogue, back to the days of childhood, faith, hope, ignorance, innocence, peace, and plenty of sleep. A broken note of old music, then a flood of memories, a sway of feeling, and no matter what I have, or have not been, I am again as pious and penitent, and as passionately religious, as I was when a child in the most God-fearing Ghetto in the world.

"Did you say something about free thought, the higher criticism, universal religion, about the law of evolution applied to religion, about all creeds being equally true and equally false? Did you talk to me about these things?

"Well, a scrap of Yom Kippur melody and the faith of my fathers is my faith. Our instincts destroy our philosophies. 'Our feelings and affections are wiser than we are!' The old is preserved for our self-preservation. The new is destructive, bewildering. The old is often worth deserting, yet it is bred in the bone; it is comforting and consoling and easy to live up to. The new is bewitching, but baneful; it breeds discontent, ennui, we can hardly ever live up to it. Blessed are those who live in the world they were born into. They are also damned, but that's not in their time.

"Tradition," Keidansky continued musing aloud, "is far more beautiful than history, and even nature with all her charms has to be improved upon by art, by illusion. In the course of time science may build up some interesting superstitions, but meanwhile it is our poor debtor. It has filled the world with cold facts. It has emptied the heart of its fond fancies. And what do we really know, after all? The greatest philosopher of the age pauses and stands nonplussed before the Unknowable. The densest ignoramus in the world knows it all; knows all about the worlds beneath and beyond—their climates, inhabitants, populations, moral status, tortures and pleasures. What do we know, anyway? Next to nothing, and we feel lonely and desolate and powerless after we have had everything explained to us. Orthodoxy, at least, gives us the consciousness of having some control in the universe; it gives us a sense of shelter and of safety. We know we have a kind of vote in the general management of things. We can accomplish something by our prayers, by fasting. And when the fearful days come, the days in which the destiny of every mortal for the coming year is determined on high, we ask for atonement, and fast and pour out our griefs in mournful prayers and burn candles for the dead. Our voices are heard on high, because we believe they are, and our names are entered in the Book of Life for another year. Do not smile now, nor look so wise. All that is, is well, and whatever we believe in is true. The greatest sacrifice we made to science was our ignorance.

"But whether it is this or that, there is something rooted so firmly and so unfathomably deep within us that calls and pulls us back to all that we have deserted and tried to forget; and when these hallowed days come, we can no longer drown our feelings. No matter how far I went in my radical conceptions—and I often went far enough to be excommunicated by my worthy brethren—no matter how iconoclastic we became, how absorbed we were in our abstractions, and how fearlessly we theorized, the season of awe, beautiful, terrible awe, the judgment days drew near and hearts became heavy and the melody of the song of 'Kol Nidro' invaded our minds and shut out all the other music we ever heard in our lives. It is all a strain of music that, once heard, keeps singing in our memories forever—this faith of our fathers. Go where we will, do what we may, the beauties of the old religion are with us yet and we cannot, we cannot forget.

"Among the radicals of the New York Ghetto there is no more advanced nor brilliant man than is my friend Bahan. He has edited some of the best Jewish publications; he has written much of what was best in them, and he was always on the side of free-thought and new ideas. Like myself, he belonged to the circles that had reformed Judaism altogether. He had not entered a synagogue for purposes of prayer since he left Russia as a youth, and that was many years ago. He is now on one of the best New York papers, and when Rosh Hashona and Yom Kippur arrive, he writes about these holidays so fervidly, feelingly, enthusiastically, with such tears in his eyes that one would think that these unsigned articles are the work of the most pious and orthodox Hebrew in New York. And, perhaps, they are too," Keidansky added, aside, "only if Bahan were accused of orthodoxy he would protest his innocence."

"That was years ago," my friend continued after a pause. "I was young, seeking new worlds to conquer, and so I fell into bad company—among people who think. They are mostly free-thinkers and free-talkers, and in the course of time my religion dwindled and I became as erratic as any of them. The worst thing about one who begins to think is that he also begins to talk. I began to talk, to voice my doubts and heresies, and soon the world, or at least my relatives, were against me. I kept on saying the most unsayable things, and when New Year's came I refused to go to the synagogue, because I had discovered the existence of the Unknowable. We quarrelled, and things came to such a pass that I left my cousin's home, where I had been living, during the Days of Atonement. I knew what I knew and I was ready to make all sacrifices for the right of ranting and raving over the shameful superstitions in which humanity was steeped. The world was before me and so were all my troubles. But even when I refused to go to the synagogue, I was at heart of hearts exceedingly lonely without it, without the beautiful service of Rosh Hoshona. When the eve of Yom Kippur came I did not know what to do with myself. Our circle of friends was to meet at the home of one of its members and spend the evening gayly and happily, though it was the sad and solemn Fast of Atonement. I had promised to come, and so, when all the inhabitants of the Ghetto were wending their way to their respective houses of worship I started with a heavy heart to join my friends, glad that I had made the promise and sorry that I was keeping it. I arrived at my destination, a street in the West End Jewish quarter. When I neared the house I heard a loud, rather boisterous conversation going on. I rang the bell. Even as I did so I heard a number of shouts and loud peals of laughter. I did not wait for the door to open. I turned and walked away. I walked right on, not in the least knowing whither. Before I was barely aware of it, I was in Baldwin place, in front of the Beth Israel Synagogue. The cantor and his choir were just chanting the awe-inspiring, soul-stirring prayer of 'Kol Nidro,' that wonderful product of the Spanish inquisition, written by a Morano during the darkest days of Israel and freighted with the sighs and cries and moans of a suffering people. Those strains of music brought me to my own life again. I entered the synagogue. I had come into my own. I felt such peace and consolation as I had not known for ever so long.

"Do not ask me to explain it, I cannot. If the incurability of religion could be explained it could also be cured. This is what happened, and this is what still happens to me from time to time. It may be strange, but mine is a government of, for, and by moods, and as they come and go I become everything that I have been and that I may be.

"I've been greatly moved by many preachers and teachers and I have followed some of the most advanced advocates of our time, the most universal universalists; but let me hear one of the beautiful old chants, such as 'Kol Nidro,' or 'Unsana Taukeff' and I become a most zealous orthodox. Did I ever tell you about it?

"'Unsana Taukeff' is the most important prayer on the two days of Rosh Hoshona and the Day of Atonement. It is known as the 'Song of a Martyr in Israel!' The story of the prayer is one of the prettiest in Jewish folk tales. It is the song of Rabbi Amnon, who was the rabbi of Metz, in the days of Bishop Ercembud (1011-1017). Rabbi Amnon was of an illustrious family, of great personal merit, rich and respected by Jew and Gentile alike. The bishop frequently pressed him to abjure Judaism and embrace Christianity, but without avail. It happened, however, on a certain day, being more closely pressed than usual and somewhat anxious to be rid of the bishop's importunities, he said hastily: 'I will consider the matter and give thee an answer in three days.'

"As soon as he had left the bishop's presence, however, his heart smote him and an uneasy conscience blamed him for having, even in the remotest manner, doubted his faith. He reached home overwhelmed with grief. Meat was set before him, but he refused to eat, and when his friends visited him he declined their proffered consolation, saying: 'I shall go down mourning to the grave.'

"On the third day, while he was still lamenting his rash concession, the bishop sent for him, but he failed to answer the call. Finally the bishop's messengers seized him and brought him before the prelate by force. 'Let me pronounce my own doom for this neglect,' answered Amnon. 'Let my tongue, which uttered these doubting words, be cut out. It was a lie I uttered, for I never intended to consider that proposition.'

"'Nay,' said the bishop, 'I will not cut out thy tongue, but thy feet, which refused to come to me, shall be cut off, and other parts of thine obstinate body shall also be tormented and punished.'

"Under the bishop's eyes the toes and thumbs of Rabbi Amnon were then cut off, and after having been severely tortured he was sent home in a carriage, his mangled members beside him. Rabbi Amnon bore all this with greatest resignation, firmly hoping and trusting that his earthly torment would plead his pardon with God. The days of awe came round while he was on his death bed, and he desired to be carried to the synagogue. He was conveyed to the house of God, and during the services he asked that he be permitted to utter a prayer. His words, which proved to be the last, given in English, are somewhat as follows:

"'I will declare the mighty holiness of this day, for it is awful and tremendous. Thy kingdom is exalted thereon; Thy throne is established in mercy, and upon it Thou dost rest in truth. Thou art the judge who chastiseth, and from Thee naught may be concealed. Thou bearest witness, writest, sealest, recordest and rememberest all things, aye those which we imagine buried in the past. The Book of Records Thou openest; the great sophor is sounded; even the angels are terrified and they cry aloud: "The day of judgment dawns upon us," for in judgment they, the angels, are not faultless.

"'All who have entered the world pass before Thee. Even as the shepherd causes the flock he numbers to pass under his crook, so Thou, O Lord, causest every living soul to pass before Thee. Thou numberest, thou visitest, appointing the limitations of every creature according to Thy judgment and Thy sentence.

"'On the New Year it is written, on the Day of Atonement it is sealed. Aye, all Thy decrees are recorded; who is to live and who is to die. The names of those who are to meet death by fire, by water, or by sword; through hunger, through thirst, and with the pestilence. All is recorded; those who are to have tranquillity; those who are to be disturbed; those who are to be troubled; those who are to be blessed with repose; those who are to be prosperous; those for whom affliction is in store; those who are to become rich, those who are to be poor; who exalted, who cast down. But penitence, prayer and charity, O Lord, may avert all evil decrees.'

"When he had finished this declaration, Rabbi Amnon expired, dying in God's house, among the assembled sons of Israel.

"I can never forget these prayers, nor these days, go where I will, do what I may," Keidansky continued. "Did you say something about free thought, the higher criticism, universal religion, the law of evolution, the study of comparative religion, the absurdity of superstition? Come, let us go over to yonder house; the cantor and his choir are now singing 'Unsana Taukeff.'"

And I followed him.

XI Why the World Is Growing Better

"The world is growing better than it ever was before," said Keidansky; "we no longer practise what we preach." And before I had time to recover from my surprise and utter any protest, he hastily continued in his exasperating manner: "We still believe in certain doctrines, hold certain theories, advocate certain ideas, preach certain gospels; but we feel different and act much better when it comes to real life. We are far wiser in adjusting our acts to our ends, or rather our deeds are more wisely adjusted to our aims than we know. We do not desecrate these principles we entertain by putting them into practice. We don't feel like doing so. We let the abstractions float above us as vapor in the air. We have human instincts, good motives, noble longings, and our conduct is fairly decent in spite of our conflicting codes.

"From a thousand pulpits we are told to do this, that, and the other; a thousand theories would divide our paths in life; a thousand methods of salvation are presented to us by the only and original authorized agents from on high; but our humanity makes us all akin, our instincts guide us and our yearnings lure us all the same way to perdition and to happiness; and we follow after and pave the way for the ideal world. How widely, vastly different our religious and moral beliefs and our abstractions are. And yet, how nearly alike, how similarly we all act and perform our parts in the world's work. We still differ, dispute and debate over the future, the trend and ultimate aim of things; but we no longer allow these differences to prevent us from acting in unison and harmony in all things that are conducive to our better development and chief good. A dozen men cannot agree upon a Church, so they form another trust; and, aiding the industrial growth of the country, they work out their own salvation, and in the course of time endow colleges and build mansions and pay fabulous sums for great paintings, and even feed the beggars that live on theology. These men agree on one thing, and that is most important of all.

"As I said, we still listen to and believe in many of the crude, incongruous and misty creeds that are preached to us, but we walk upon more solid ground when it comes to life, and all that we want to make of it—which is the most possible. We build wiser than we know, and we disobey the preachers because we can rise above them, do better, and put their advice to shame. Have we discarded the book? Well, we have followed life; and see, this world is quite inhabitable now. That we differ in theology, on legends, myths, is a trifle, but that we agree on the education of the young, hygiene, athletic exercise, morning walks, cold baths, pure diet, music, pictures: that we agree on the value of all these things makes the game worth the candle.

"For instance, we are perpetually urged to, and we half believe it best to, renounce the world, the flesh, and the devil, forfeit all the joys of life, and join the Society for the Prevention of Anything; but in actuality, we are all strenuously engaged in capturing the world, in gratifying the flesh and in getting as much devil into us as is possible in the pitifully brief span of this short life. This is absolutely necessary. The more devil within us the better. A man with no devil in him will not go to heaven, or any other pleasurable resort. By doing and daring and deviling we become strong, and if the world is better to-day than it ever was before, which it certainly is, it is because we no longer practise what we preach—have nearly always practised better. If man did not do things, and do them so much better, sermons would never become obsolete; but as it is, loads of them have to be dumped in some swamp every little while.

"We have also been advised as to the beautiful virtues of humility, meekness, timidity, obedience, submission, self-effacement, self-suppression, wiping yourself off the face of the earth with benzine and a rag, and we have believed in the advice, but fortunately only believed; for a voice from within prompted us to feel and be different and do more wisely. So we cultivated haughtiness, pride, aggressiveness, have given free play to our physical and spiritual forces, have become conscious of our powers, and more powerful still, and the phantom of freedom is becoming a fact and the world is growing fair. We walk with our heads erect nowadays, no matter what conception we have in our minds. We have become so arrogant that we even question the divine right of bishops and policemen. We take off our hats for nothing, known or unknown. No matter what we believe, we feel that obsequiousness is the most disgraceful word in the dictionary. Then we are becoming so self-appreciative and selfish that we refuse to let others save us. The salvation of a soul is a rather delicate matter, and it cannot be done at short order while you wait, by all those whose advertisements we have read. It is not quite so easy a matter as it is to find a watchmaker to put your timepiece into good repair. In fact, we are growing so egoistic that we want to do it ourselves. We no longer want any mark-down bargains, such as salvation for a prayer, a fish dinner or ninety-eight cents in charity. We feel the fraud of bribing our way into heaven. Those are cheated most who get their things cheaply. It is the height of impudence and imbecility to think that putting on a long face, or some other act of piety or penance, will change your destiny, and incidentally, the course of the universe. At least, we feel that these things are wrong, no matter what we think. Life or death or immortality, a man must pay his rent. Everything has its price. What you get for nothing is worth the same. The theological bargains will not wear well at all. You must pay honestly and fairly for everything you receive, and for all you become. What we procure for nothing is not worth while. We are only cheating ourselves miserably when we attempt to get what is best through bribes and pass through the gates on false pretences. Whatever we have been told, we feel that we cannot follow the newspaper advertisements in these things and buy redemption at closing-out bargain sales. No one can grow for another, no one can acquire, no one can become for another, no one can be saved by proxy or buy salvation. Each must work and suffer and struggle his way up.

"I see that you are a little incredulous about these things," he said, after a short silence. "Do you find it hard to follow me? I know exactly what I mean, only the difficulty lies in making you see it as I do. No; don't be in haste. Let's walk a little more. I am afraid your education is being sadly neglected; I haven't talked at you for some time. No; I never hasten. Whenever I am in a great hurry to get to a place of the most urgent necessity I walk into a second-hand book store, like those on Fourth avenue, and look at the titles and read the prefaces of old and odd volumes. Never mind the swarming, surging, scurrying crowds. They are attending to the world's business, and make it possible for me to be idle and look on.

"But what I was driving at is this: That there is one life and many theories of it, that most of these theories are a disgrace even to Sunday schools, that it's all hitting the nail on the finger. While these theories would have us go by various little walks and byways and lanes and alleys, life prompts us to take to the open road that leads to strength and happiness. While these theories would have us thwart and stifle and starve our desires, life forces us to give them full play in spite of all conventions and creeds, and the result is civilization and all its blessings. Way down into the recesses of our souls we are so deeply religious that we all do better than we believe.

"Take three children of different birth; send them to three different schools, instruct them in three different religions, and then, will they not, when they grow up, work and aim and struggle and trade and worry and aspire and get dyspepsia—in short, live and die in very much the same way, and more or less fairly and squarely? Inasmuch as their morals will be useful, will they not be of the same brand? Will they not do better than they respectively believe? There are other illustrations. The leading orthodox rabbi of this city naturally believes in the restoration of Palestine, the regeneration of Judaism, the resurrection of the Hebrew language, and the resuscitation of many things long dead and passed away. In his speeches he is a most ardent advocate of the revival of Hebrew lore, the essence of all wisdom according to him, and the greatest of all tongues, the Hebrew language, which revival, he avers, is the most radiant promise of Zionism. The neglect of the ancient lore in this country is his most woful regret. But his own son he sends to Harvard for a modern education, and the son will become a man of the world and a useful, valuable member of society because his father did better than he believed.

"'A year hence in Jerusalem,' cries the pious Hebrew at the close of his holiday prayer, and then, as soon as the festival is over he buys himself a little house, pays $800 down, raises two mortgages and, trusting in God, he hopes to pay up the entire sum in about ten years, and he and his family are happier and this country is richer and better for their being here. 'A year hence in Jerusalem,' and here we are doing what we can for our own good and for the good of whatever country we abide in, and all of us are well because we act better than we preach and believe. Most of us believed in the colonization of Palestine when we were way back in Russia, yet we came over here feeling that this is the new promised land. Palestine may be a good place for the old to die in, if the superstition is true that the worms will not touch your corpse there, but I don't think it is a promising country for the young to live in. The land that was once flowing with milk and honey now lacks water. No, I don't know in what part of New York they make the Passover wine that they bring from Palestine.

"I am somewhat of a Zionist myself, as you know, but as soon as I can afford it, as soon as my Yiddish play is produced and the New York critics condemn it to a financial success, I will send for my little brother to come from Russia to this country, and as there is no genius in our family, I am sure he will do very well here. Yet I believe in the restoration of Palestine, and so long as the Zionists permit me to live in this country I am willing to support their movement.

"And, let's see, there 's something else. I want to fix you up so that you will never again come to me with that hackneyed plaint that the world is going to the dogs because we do not practise what we preach. We have laws and we all preach against intermarriage, do we not? We all condemn the intermarriage of Jew and Christian, of Protestant and Catholic, of chorus girl and rich college student, of an actress and a minister; we prohibit these things and perhaps rightly, and yet—"

"And yet?" I asked anxiously.

"Do not be alarmed," he answered quickly; "I am not going to advocate intermarriage or assimilation. By this time you will, perhaps, have gathered from what I said that I do not much believe in measures that have to be advocated; rather do I favor the things that heart and soul prompt us to do, whatever our beliefs and theories and in spite of them. The advocacy of a thing, or the supposed necessity of advocating a certain measure, proves the uselessness, untimeliness and futility of it. It is hardly wise to advocate anything. Things must be brought about by conditions to be of vital import. Least of all should any one ever advocate intermarriage, and yet, and yet—do you remember these lines?

"'Two shall be born the whole wide world apart,

And speak in different tongues and have no thought

Each of the other's being, and no heed.

And these over unknown seas to unknown lands

Shall cross, escaping wreck, defying death,

And all unconsciously shape every act

And bend each wandering step to this one end,

That one day, out of darkness they shall meet

And read life's meaning in each other's eyes.'

"Yes," he concluded, as we were about to part, "the world is growing better than it ever was before—and it isn't because we have a more efficient police force either."