make his eyes look
awful, and rolling his head to complete the effect; or alternately
handling his own nose and Mordecai's as if to test the relation of
their masses. Under all this the fervid reciter would not pause,
satisfied if the young organs of speech would submit themselves. But
most commonly a sudden impulse sent Jacob leaping away into some antic
or active amusement, when, instead of following the recitation he would
return upon the foregoing words most ready to his tongue, and mouth or
gabble, with a see-saw suited to the action of his limbs, a verse on
which Mordecai had spent some of his too scanty heart's blood. Yet he
waited with such patience as a prophet needs, and began his strange
printing again undiscouraged on the morrow, saying inwardly--

"My words may rule him some day. Their meaning may flash out on him. It
is so with a nation--after many days."

Meanwhile Jacob's sense of power was increased and his time enlivened
by a store of magical articulation with which he made the baby crow, or
drove the large cat into a dark corner, or promised himself to frighten
any incidental Christian of his own years. One week he had
unfortunately seen a street mountebank, and this carried off his
muscular imitativeness in sad divergence from New Hebrew poetry, after
the model of Jehuda ha-Levi. Mordecai had arrived at a fresh passage in
his poem; for as soon as Jacob had got well used to one portion, he was
led on to another, and a fresh combination of sounds generally answered
better in keeping him fast for a few minutes. The consumptive voice,
generally a strong high baritone, with its variously mingling
hoarseness, like a haze amidst illuminations, and its occasional
incipient gasp had more than the usual excitement, while it gave forth
Hebrew verses with a meaning something like this:--

"Away from me the garment of forgetfulness.
Withering the heart;
The oil and wine from presses of the Goyim,
Poisoned with scorn.
Solitude is on the sides of Mount Nebo,
In its heart a tomb:
There the buried ark and golden cherubim
Make hidden light:
There the solemn gaze unchanged,
The wings are spread unbroken:
Shut beneath in silent awful speech
The Law lies graven.
Solitude and darkness are my covering,
And my heart a tomb;
Smite and shatter it, O Gabriel!
Shatter it as the clay of the founder
Around the golden image."

In the absorbing enthusiasm with which Mordecai had intoned