dealer in
whose warehouse Daniel Hyams was employed. Gradkoski rivalled Reb
Shemuel in his knowledge of the exact _loci_ of Talmudical remarks--page
this, and line that--and secretly a tolerant latitudinarian, enjoyed the
reputation of a bulwark of orthodoxy too well to give it up. Gradkoski
passed easily from writing an invoice to writing a learned article on
Hebrew astronomy. Pinchas ignored Joseph Strelitski whose raven curl
floated wildly over his forehead like a pirate's flag, though Hamburg,
who was rather surprised to see the taciturn young man at a meeting,
strove to draw him into conversation. The man to whom Pinchas ultimately
attached himself was only a man in the sense of having attained his
religious majority. He was a Harrow boy named Raphael Leon, a scion of a
wealthy family. The boy had manifested a strange premature interest in
Jewish literature and had often seen Gabriel Hamburg's name in learned
foot-notes, and, discovering that he was in England, had just written to
him. Hamburg had replied; they had met that day for the first time and
at the lad's own request the old scholar brought him on to this strange
meeting. The boy grew to be Hamburg's one link with wealthy England, and
though he rarely saw Leon again, the lad came in a shadowy way to take
the place he had momentarily designed for Joseph Strelitski. To-night it
was Pinchas who assumed the paternal manner, but he mingled it with a
subtle obsequiousness that made the shy simple lad uncomfortable, though
when he came to read the poet's lofty sentiments which arrived (with an
acrostic dedication) by the first post next morning, he conceived an
enthusiastic admiration for the neglected genius.

The rest of the "remnant" that were met to save Israel looked more
commonplace--a furrier, a slipper-maker, a locksmith, an ex-glazier
(Mendel Hyams), a confectioner, a _Melammed_ or Hebrew teacher, a
carpenter, a presser, a cigar-maker, a small shop-keeper or two, and
last and least, Moses Ansell. They were of many birthplaces--Austria,
Holland, Poland, Russia, Germany, Italy, Spain--yet felt themselves of
no country and of one. Encircled by the splendors of modern Babylon,
their hearts turned to the East, like passion-flowers seeking the sun.
Palestine, Jerusalem, Jordan, the Holy Land were magic syllables to
them, the sight of a coin struck in one of Baron Edmund's colonies
filled their eyes with tears; in death they craved no higher boon than a
handful