the remaining walls, the Sabbath lamp hung from the
ceiling and thrift and comfort seemed to be thoroughly at home. Rebecca,
the Rabbi's wife, a pleasant-faced, mild-tempered little woman, was busy
arranging the table for the evening meal. There is not much to be said
about her and absolutely nothing against her. To a profound admiration
for her husband's ability, she added charity and benevolence and shared
with him the respect of the congregation. It had pleased the Lord to
deprive her of her three sons and the mother's love and devotion was now
lavished upon her sole remaining child, her daughter Recha.

"My sons would be a great comfort to me," she often sighed, and then
added, with resignation: "the Lord's will be done."

To the right of the entrance lay the staircase leading to the bed-rooms
on the second floor, and to the left a door opened into the
school-rooms, a recent addition to the dwelling, and in which the
Rabbi's fifty-odd pupils were daily instructed in their important
studies.

In the first of these rooms, the elementary department, sat the younger
boys, whose spiritual and mental welfare were entrusted to an assistant,
a young pedagogue, who did not believe in sparing the rod at the expense
of the child, but, mindful of the unmerciful whippings he had received
in his youth, endeavored on his part to inculcate the precepts of the
Pentateuch by means of sound thrashings. The progress of his pupils was
not phenomenal, but their training was eminently useful in aiding them
to bear the blows and trials which the gentile world had in store for
them. The Rabbi occasionally looked in upon the class and added his
instructions to those of the assistant, who in the presence of his
superior concealed his rod and assumed an air of unspeakable tenderness
and loving solicitude towards his charges.

The second school-room was for the more advanced pupils, who had for the
most part passed their _bar-mitzvah_ and now revelled in the mystic lore
of the Talmud. On rough wooden desks, whose surfaces had been engraved
by unskilled hands, huge folios lay open. At the upper end of the room
sat the Rabbi, on whose head the frosts of sixty winters had left their
traces. His snow-white beard covered his breast and his hair hung in
silver locks over his temples. His pale and finely-cut features stamped
him as a man of education and refinement. The venerable patriarch had
for more than thirty years filled the position of Chief