them!" This, bear in mind, was soon after our
Civil War, and she received her impression of us doubtless from
Confederates. I did not have the courage to acknowledge my nationality
to her, but diverted the topic to some of the other people she had
mentioned.

The old New England Puritan taught sternly. He was a patriarchal head
of his family. In my boyhood, Saturday evening or perhaps better
Thanksgiving Day, when their descendants all gathered together as long
as either of the grandparents lived, we had an illustration of
something very like Heine's touching picture of an old Jewish peddler
who worked hard through the week, but on Friday night put on his long
black coat and his three-cornered hat, lit the seven candles at the
table, and told his children and grandchildren how Jehovah had led His
people through the wilderness, and how the Egyptians and all the other
naughty people who persecuted them were long since dead, while the
chosen race survived. And so happy in his race was this poor peddler
and so proud of his pedigree that, as Heine says, had the great
Rothschild entered at that moment and asked him what favor he could
do, he would reply simply: "Stand out of my light, that I may finish
telling the law to my children."

_The Eugenics of the Jewish Race_

We Puritans were brought up on the Old Testament, the spirit of which,
far more than that of the New, pervaded the life of old New England.
Every day after breakfast, no matter how busy the season or how late
the breakfast, my grandfather read to the assembled family a chapter
from the Old Testament, and perhaps remarked upon certain passages.
After graduating from college and when I became a tutor in a prominent
Hebrew family in New York, and especially when I had to teach the
children their Sunday school lessons and freshen up the small
knowledge of the Hebrew language that I had, I realized very keenly
how closely related were the Jews to the Yankees,--with this
tremendous difference, that you are increasing in numbers while we are
decreasing.

As I read the Old Testament, the substance of the covenant with
Abraham was that if he kept Jehovah's law, his seed would be
multiplied like the stars of Heaven. This placed society and life in
that early day squarely on a eugenic basis, for it makes the number
and success of good children the supreme test of every human
institution, activity, and every kind of culture. This I take it is
one of the chief char