existence wander about naked
in the streets, and even attend to the wants of nature in public, let
me testify that though the Master considered the body and all its
functions holy, yet did he give no countenance to such exaggerations;
and though in his love for the sun and the water and bodily purity--to
him a celestial symbol--he often bathed in retired streams, yet was he
ever clad becomingly in public; and though he regarded not money, yet
did he, when necessary, strive to earn it by work, not lolling about
smoking and vaunting his Perfection, pretending to be meditating upon
God, while others span and toiled for him.

For in his work too, my Master lived in the hourly presence of God;
and of the patriarchs and the prophets, the great men of Israel, the
Tanaim and the Amoraim, and all who had sought to bring God's Kingdom
upon earth, that God and Creation, Heaven and Earth, might be at one,
and the Messiah might come and the divine peace fall upon all the
world. And when he prayed and wept for the sins of his people, his
spirit ascended to the celestial spheres and held converse with the
holy ones, but this did not puff him up with vanity as it doth those
who profess to-day to make soul-ascensions, an experience of which I
for my own part, alas! have never yet been deemed worthy. For when he
returned to earth the Baal Shem conducted himself always like a simple
man who had never left his native hamlet, whereas these heavenly
travellers feign to despise this lower world, nay, some in their
conceit and arrogance lose their wits and give out that they have
already been translated and are no longer mortal. My Master did,
indeed, hope to be translated in his lifetime like Elijah, for he once
said to me, weeping--'twas after we returned from his wife's
funeral--"Now that my wife is dead I shall die too. Such a saint might
have carried me with her to Heaven. She followed me unquestioningly
into the woods, lived without society, summer and winter, endured pain
and labor for me, and but for her faith in me I should have achieved
naught." No man reverenced womankind more than the Master; in this, as
in so much, his life became a model to mine, and his dear daughter
profited by the lesson her father had taught me. We err grievously in
disesteeming our women: they should be our comrades not our slaves,
and our soul-ascensions--to speak figuratively--should be made in
their loving companionship.

My Master believed that the br