f he
were inquired into) dangerous heretic. During that time little Jacob
had advanced into knickerbockers, and into that quickness of
apprehension which has been already made manifest in relation to
hardware and exchange. He had also advanced in attachment to Mordecai,
regarding him as an inferior, but liking him none the worse, and taking
his helpful cleverness as he might have taken the services of an
enslaved Djinn. As for Mordecai, he had given Jacob his first lessons,
and his habitual tenderness easily turned into the teacher's
fatherhood. Though he was fully conscious of the spiritual distance
between the parents and himself, and would never have attempted any
communication to them from his peculiar world, the boy moved him with
that idealizing affection which merges the qualities of the individual
child in the glory of childhood and the possibilities of a long future.
And this feeling had drawn him on, at first without premeditation, and
afterward with conscious purpose, to a sort of outpouring in the ear of
the boy which might have seemed wild enough to any excellent man of
business who overheard it. But none overheard when Jacob went up to
Mordecai's room one day, for example, in which there was little work to
be done, or at an hour when the work was ended, and after a brief
lesson in English reading or in numeration, was induced to remain
standing at his teacher's knees, or chose to jump astride them, often
to the patient fatigue of the wasted limbs. The inducement was perhaps
the mending of a toy, or some little mechanical device in which
Mordecai's well-practiced finger-tips had an exceptional skill; and
with the boy thus tethered, he would begin to repeat a Hebrew poem of
his own, into which years before he had poured his first youthful
ardors for that conception of a blended past and future which was the
mistress of his soul, telling Jacob to say the words after him.

"The boy will get them engraved within him," thought Mordecai; "it is a
way of printing."

None readier than Jacob at this fascinating game of imitating
unintelligible words; and if no opposing diversion occurred he would
sometimes carry on his share in it as long as the teacher's breath
would last out. For Mordecai threw into each repetition the fervor
befitting a sacred occasion. In such instances, Jacob would show no
other distraction than reaching out and surveying the contents of his
pockets; or drawing down the skin of his cheeks to