includes the smaller and that the smaller can never
circumscribe the bigger. Such money as was indispensable for the
endowment of research he earned by copying texts and hunting out
references for the numerous scholars and clergymen who infest the Museum
and prevent the general reader from having elbow room. In person he was
small and bent and snuffy. Superficially more intelligible, Joseph
Strelitski was really a deeper mystery than Gabriel Hamburg. He was
known to be a recent arrival on English soil, yet he spoke English
fluently. He studied at Jews' College by day and was preparing for the
examinations at the London University. None of the other students knew
where he lived nor a bit of his past history. There was a vague idea
afloat that he was an only child whose parents had been hounded to
penury and death by Russian persecution, but who launched it nobody
knew. His eyes were sad and earnest, a curl of raven hair fell forwards
on his high brow; his clothing was shabby and darned in places by his
own hand. Beyond accepting the gift of education at the hands of dead
men he would take no help. On several distinct occasions, the magic
name, Rothschild, was appealed to on his behalf by well-wishers, and
through its avenue of almoners it responded with its eternal quenchless
unquestioning generosity to students. But Joseph Strelitski always
quietly sent back these bounties. He made enough to exist upon by
touting for a cigar-firm in the evenings. In the streets he walked with
tight-pursed lips, dreaming no one knew what.

And yet there were times when his tight-pursed lips unclenched
themselves and he drew in great breaths even of Ghetto air with the huge
contentment of one who has known suffocation. "One can breathe here,"
he seemed to be saying. The atmosphere, untainted by spies, venal
officials, and jeering soldiery, seemed fresh and sweet. Here the ground
was stable, not mined in all directions; no arbitrary ukase--veritable
sword of Damocles--hung over the head and darkened the sunshine. In such
a country, where faith was free and action untrammelled, mere living was
an ecstasy when remembrance came over one, and so Joseph Strelitski
sometimes threw back his head and breathed in liberty. The
voluptuousness of the sensation cannot be known by born freemen.

When Joseph Strelitski's father was sent to Siberia, he took his
nine-year old boy with him in infringement of the law which prohibits
exiles from taking child