rimitive trumpet--plain, trembling, wailing; and they were all
sounded in curious mystic combinations, interpolated with passionate
bursts of prayer. The sinner was warned to repent, for the New Year
marked the Day of Judgment. For nine days God judged the souls of the
living, and decided on their fate for the coming year--who should live
and who should die, who should grow rich and who poor, who should be
in sickness and who in health. But at the end of the tenth day, the
day of the great White Fast, the judgment books were closed, to open
no more for the rest of the year. Up till twilight there was yet time,
but then what was written was finally sealed, and he who had not truly
repented had missed his last chance of forgiveness. What wonder if
early in the ten penitential days, the population of the Ghetto
flocked towards the canal bridge to pray that its sins might be cast
into the waters and swept away seawards!

'Twas the tenth day, and an awful sense of sacred doom hung over the
Ghetto. In every house a gigantic wax taper had burnt, white and
solemn, all through the night, and fowls or coins had been waved round
the heads of the people in atonement for their iniquities. The morning
dawned gray and cold, but with the dawn the population was astir, for
the services began at six in the morning and lasted without
intermission till seven at night. Many of the male worshippers were
clad in their grave-clothes, and the extreme zealots remained standing
all day long, swaying to and fro and beating their breasts at the
confessions of sin. For a long time the boy wished to stand too, but
the crowded synagogue reeked with heavy odors, and at last, towards
mid-day, faint and feeble, he had to sit. But to fast till nightfall
he was resolved. Hitherto he had always broken his fast at some point
in the services, going home round the corner to delicious bread and
fish. When he was seven or eight this breakfast came at mid-day, but
the older he grew the longer he fasted, and it became a point of honor
to beat his record every successive year. Last time he had brought his
breakfast down till late in the afternoon, and now it would be
unforgivable if he could not see the fast out and go home, proud and
sinless, to drink wine with the men. He turned so pale, as the
afternoon service dragged itself along, that his father begged him
again and again to go home and eat. But the boy was set on a full
penance. And every now and again he fo