ren above five years of age. The police
authorities, however, raised no objection, and they permitted Joseph to
attend the public school at Kansk, Yeniseisk province, where the
Strelitski family resided. A year or so afterwards the Yeniseisk
authorities accorded the family permission to reside in Yeniseisk, and
Joseph, having given proof of brilliant abilities, was placed in the
Yeniseisk gymnasium. For nigh three years the boy studied here,
astonishing the gymnasium with his extraordinary ability, when suddenly
the Government authorities ordered the boy to return at once "to the
place where he was born." In vain the directors of the gymnasium, won
over by the poor boy's talent and enthusiasm for study, petitioned the
Government. The Yeniseisk authorities were again ordered to expel him.
No respite was granted and the thirteen-year old lad was sent to Sokolk
in the Government of Grodno at the other extreme of European Russia,
where he was quite alone in the world. Before he was sixteen, he escaped
to England, his soul branded by terrible memories, and steeled by
solitude to a stern strength.

At Sugarman's he spoke little and then mainly with the father on
scholastic points. After meals he retired quickly to his business or his
sleeping-den, which was across the road. Bessie loved Daniel Hyams, but
she was a woman and Strelitski's neutrality piqued her. Even to-day it
is possible he might not have spoken to Gabriel Hamburg if his other
neighbor had not been Bessie. Gabriel Hamburg was glad to talk to the
youth, the outlines of whose English history were known to him.
Strelitski seemed to expand under the sunshine of a congenial spirit; he
answered Hamburg's sympathetic inquiries about his work without
reluctance and even made some remarks on his own initiative.

And as they spoke, an undercurrent of pensive thought was flowing in the
old scholar's soul and his tones grew tenderer and tenderer. The echoes
of Ebenezer's effusive speech were in his ears and the artificial notes
rang strangely genuine. All round him sat happy fathers of happy
children, men who warmed their hands at the home-fire of life, men who
lived while he was thinking. Yet he, too, had had his chance far back in
the dim and dusty years, his chance of love and money with it. He had
let it slip away for poverty and learning, and only six men in Europe
cared whether he lived or died. The sense of his own loneliness smote
him with a sudden aching desolati