irect
relations with the consistorium of the province, and who is supposed to
exercise a strict supervision over all the parish priests of his
district.]

[Footnote 18: Mr. Melnikof, in a secret report to Grand Duke
Constantine. Wallace's "Russia," p. 58.]

CHAPTER XXVI.

A DAUGHTER OF ISRAEL.

Rabbi Mendel Winenki sat in his study, reading. Before him and within
easy reach stood a massive table covered with books and papers. There
were strewn upon it in motley confusion ancient folios and modern
volumes. It was a comprehensive library which the Rabbi had collected.
There were works on comparative theology, on medicine, on jurisprudence
and philosophy. The _Shulkan-aruch_ and a treatise on Buddhistic
Occultism stood side by side. The Talmud and Kant's "Kritik der reinen
Vernunft" were placed upon the same shelf, and Josephus and Renan's
"Life of Jesus" were near neighbors.

Time was when the Jew who would have exposed a single work printed in
any characters but the ancient Hebrew letters would have been ostracized
by his co-religionists. The Rabbi remembered with a smile how carefully
he had concealed the precious volumes which Pesach Harretzki had given
him, how furtively he had carried them into his bed that he might read
them undetected.

How different now was the condition of things! True, the greater portion
of the Jews of Kief still held tenaciously to their prejudices,
absolutely refusing to learn anything not taught at the _cheder_. In the
eyes of these people Mendel was a renegade and a heretic. The only thing
which prevented them from hurling the ban of excommunication against him
was their recollection of the good he had accomplished.

Mendel's greatest achievement was the introduction of secular education.
Many years elapsed before his ideas took root, but with the spread of
better instruction in the public schools, which were now open to Jewish
youth, there came a desire for greater knowledge and the difficult
problem worked out its own solution. At the time of which we speak many
Jewish lads were pupils of the gymnasium and quite a number of them
students at the University of Kief.

Seated by the side of the Rabbi, and sewing, sat his wife and his
daughter, Kathinka, now a girl of eighteen. Many changes had occurred
in the interval since we last saw our friends. Mendel was now a man of
about forty-five and in the full vigor of contented manhood. A wealth of
coal-black hair shaded his mas