anny entered the bright little room, reached up to turn off the light,
and paused a moment to glance about her. It was an ugly, comfortable,
old-fashioned room that had never progressed beyond the what-not period.
Fanny's eye was caught by certain framed pictures on the walls.
They were photographs of Rabbi Thalmann's confirmation classes.
Spindling-legged little boys in the splendor of patent-leather buttoned
shoes, stiff white shirts, black broadcloth suits with satin lapels;
self-conscious and awkward little girls--these in the minority--in white
dresses and stiff white hair bows. In the center of each group sat the
little rabbi, very proud and alert. Fanny was not among these. She had
never formally taken the vows of her creed. As she turned down the light
now, and found her way down the stairs, she told herself that she was
glad this was so.

It was a matter of only four blocks to the temple. But they were late,
and so they hurried, and there was little conversation. Fanny's arm was
tucked comfortably in his. It felt, somehow, startlingly thin, that arm.
And as they hurried along there was a jerky feebleness about his gait.
It was with difficulty that Fanny restrained herself from supporting him
when they came to a rough bit of walk or a sudden step. Something fine
in her prompted her not to. But the alert mind in that old frame sensed
what was going on in her thoughts.

"He's getting feeble, the old rabbi, h'm?"

"Not a bit of it. I've got all I can do to keep up with you. You set
such a pace."

"I know. I know. They are not all so kind, Fanny. They are too
prosperous, this congregation of mine. And some day, `Off with his
head!' And in my place there will step a young man, with eye-glasses
instead of spectacles. They are tired of hearing about the prophets.
Texts from the Bible have gone out of fashion. You think I do not see
them giggling, h'm? The young people. And the whispering in the choir
loft. And the buzz when I get up from my chair after the second hymn.
`Is he going to have a sermon? Is he? Sure enough!' Na, he will make
them sit up, my successor. Sex sermons! Political lectures. That's it.
Lectures." They were turning in at the temple now. "The race is to the
young, Fanny. To the young. And I am old."

She squeezed the frail old arm in hers. "My dear!" she said. "My dear!"
A second breaking of her new resolutions.

One by one, two by two, they straggled in for the Friday evening
service, these p