man student, with proud
duel-slashes across his cheek; a Viennese student, first fighter in
the University, with a colored band across his shirt-front; a dandy,
smelling of the best St. Petersburg circles; and one solitary
caftan-Jew, with ear-locks and skull-cap, wafting into the nineteenth
century the cabalistic mysticism of the Carpathian Messiah.

Who speaks of the Jewish type? One can only say negatively that these
faces are not Christian. Is it the stamp of a longer, more complex
heredity? Is it the brand of suffering? Certainly a stern Congress,
the speeches little lightened by humor, the atmosphere of historic
tragedy too overbrooding for intellectual dalliance. Even the presence
of the gayer sex--for there are a few ladies among the delegates, and
more peep down from the crowded spectators' gallery that runs sideways
along the hall--only makes a few shots of visual brightness in the
sober scene. Seriousness is stamped everywhere; on the broad-bulging
temples of the Russian oculist, on the egg-shaped skull and lank white
hair of the Heidelberg professor, on the open countenance of the
Hungarian architect, on the weak, narrow lineaments of the neurotic
Hebrew poet; it gives dignity to red hair and freckles, tones down the
grossness of too-fleshy cheeks, and lends an added beauty to
finely-cut features.

Superficially, then, they have little in common, and if almost all
speak German--the language of the Congress--it is only because they
are all masters of three or four tongues. Yet some subtle instinct
links them each to each; presage, perhaps, of some brotherhood of
mankind, of which ingathered Israel--or even ubiquitous Israel--may
present the type.

Through the closed red-curtained windows comes ever and anon the sharp
ting of the bell of an electric car, and the President, anxiously
steering the course of debate through difficult international
cross-roads, rings his bell almost as frequently.

A majestic Oriental figure, the President's--not so tall as it appears
when he draws himself up and stands dominating the assembly with eyes
that brood and glow--you would say one of the Assyrian Kings, whose
sculptured heads adorn our Museums, the very profile of
Tiglath-Pileser. In sooth, the beautiful sombre face of a kingly
dreamer, but of a Jewish dreamer who faces the fact that flowers are
grown in dung. A Shelley "beats in the air his luminous wings in
vain"; our Jewish dreamer dreams along the lines of life;