the only drop of
sweetness was in the beaker of wine for the sanctification service.
Solomon was always in the van of the brave boys who volunteered to take
part in the ceremonial quaffing of it. Decidedly. Solomon was not
spiritual, he would not even kiss a Hebrew Pentateuch that he had
dropped, unless his father was looking, and but for the personal
supervision of the _Bube_ the dirty white fringes of his "four-corners"
might have got tangled and irredeemably invalidated for all he cared.

In the direst need of the Ansells Solomon held his curly head high among
his school-fellows, and never lacked personal possessions, though they
were not negotiable at the pawnbroker's. He had a peep-show, made out of
an old cocoa box, and representing the sortie from Plevna, a permit to
view being obtainable for a fragment of slate pencil. For two pins he
would let you look a whole minute. He also had bags of brass buttons,
marbles, both commoners and alleys; nibs, beer bottle labels and cherry
"hogs," besides bottles of liquorice water, vendible either by the sip
or the teaspoonful, and he dealt in "assy-tassy," which consisted of
little packets of acetic acid blent with brown sugar. The character of
his stock varied according to the time of year, for nature and Belgravia
are less stable in their seasons than the Jewish schoolboy, to whom
buttons in March are as inconceivable as snow-balling in July.

On Purim Solomon always had nuts to gamble with, just as if he had been
a banker's son, and on the Day of Atonement he was never without a
little tin fusee box filled with savings of snuff. This, when the fast
racked them most sorely, he would pass round among the old men with a
grand manner. They would take a pinch and say, "May thy strength
increase," and blow their delighted noses with great colored
handkerchiefs, and Solomon would feel about fifty and sniff a few
grains himself with the air of an aged connoisseur.

He took little interest in the subtle disquisitions of the Rabbis, which
added their burden to his cross of secular learning. He wrestled but
perfunctorily with the theses of the Bible commentators, for Moses
Ansell was so absorbed in translating and enjoying the intellectual
tangles, that Solomon had scarce more to do than to play the part of
chorus. He was fortunate in that his father could not afford to send him
to a _Chedar_, an insanitary institution that made Jacob a dull boy by
cutting off his play-time and his