am of Jewish boys pouring
out of the primary school. They seemed to range in years between eight
and twelve, but even the youngest face wore a stamp of age, and though
the air vibrated with the multiplex chatter which accompanies the
exodus of cramped and muted pupils, the normal elements of joyousness,
of horse-play, of individual freakishness, were absent. It was a
common agitation that loosed all these little tongues and set all
these little ears listening to the passionate harangues of
ringleaders. Instead of hurrying home, the schoolboys lingered in
knots round their favourite orators. A premature gravity furrowed all
the childish foreheads.

With one of these orators David dimly felt familiar, and after
listening for a few minutes to the lad's tirade against the 'autocracy
of the school director' and the 'bureaucratic methods of the
inspector,' it dawned upon him that the little demagogue was his own
landlord's son.

'Hullo, Kalman!' he cried in surprise.

'Hullo, comrade!' replied the boy graciously.

'So you're a revolutionary, eh?' said David, smiling.

'All my class belongs to the Junior Bund,' replied the boy gravely.

'Then you're not so peaceful as papa!'

The lad's aplomb and dignity deserted him. He blushed furiously, and
hung his head in shame of his Moderate parent.

'Never mind, Comrade Kalman,' said another boy, slapping his shoulder
consolingly. 'We've all got some shady relative or another.'

A shrill burst of applause relieved the painful situation. Turning his
head, David found all the childish eyes converged upon a single
figure, a bulging-headed lad who had sprung into a sudden position of
eminence--upon an egg-box. He was clothed in the blue blouse of
Radicalism and irreligion, and the faint down upon his upper lip
suggested that he must be nearing fifteen.

'Comrades!' he was crying. 'In my youth I myself was head boy at this
school of yours, but even in those old days there was the same brutal
autocracy. Your only remedy is a general strike. You must join the
Syndical Anarchists.'

More shrill cheers greeted this fiery counsel. The members of the
Junior Bund waved their satchels frenziedly. Only the landlord's son
stood mute and frowning.

'You don't agree with him,' said David.

'No,' answered the little Bundist gravely. 'I follow Comrade Berl. But
this fellow is popular because he was expelled from the Warsaw
gymnasium as a suspect.'

'You must strike!' repeated the juven