. Evidently the
dictionary _was_ his fount of inspiration. Without it Niagara was
reduced to a trickle. He seemed indeed quite shy of speech, preferring
to gaze with large liquid eyes.

'But you _have_ managed to live here for ten years,' Barstein pointed
out.

'You see how merciful God is!' Nehemiah rejoined eagerly. 'Never once
has He deserted me and my children.'

'But what have you done?' inquired Barstein.

The first shade of reproach came into Nehemiah's eyes.

'Ask sooner what the Almighty has done,' he said.

Barstein felt rebuked. One does not like to lose one's character as a
holy angel. 'But your restaurant?' he said. 'Where is that?'

'That is here.'

'Here!' echoed Barstein, staring round again.

'Where else? Here is a wide opening for a _kosher_ restaurant. There
are hundreds and hundreds of Greeners lodging all around--poor young
men with only a bed or a corner of a room to sleep on. They know not
where to go to eat, and my wife, God be thanked, is a knowing cook.'

'Oh, then, your restaurant is only an idea.'

'Naturally--a counsel that I have given myself.'

'But have you enough plates and dishes and tablecloths? Can you afford
to buy the food, and to risk it's not being eaten?'

Nehemiah raised his hands to heaven.

'Not being eaten! With a family like mine!'

Barstein laughed in spite of himself. And he was softened by noting
how sensitive and artistic were Nehemiah's outspread hands--they might
well have wielded the forceps. 'Yes, I dare say that is what will
happen,' he said. 'How can you keep a restaurant up two pairs of
stairs where no passer-by will ever see it?'

As he spoke, however, he remembered staying in an hotel in Sicily
which consisted entirely of one upper room. Perhaps in the Ghetto
Sicilian fashions were paralleled.

'I do not fly so high as a restaurant in once,' Nehemiah explained.
'But here is this great empty room. What am I to do with it? At night
of course most of us sleep on it, but by daylight it is a waste. Also
I receive several Hebrew and Yiddish papers a week from my friends in
Russia and America, and one of which I even buy here. When I have read
them these likewise are a waste. Therefore have I given myself a
counsel, if I would make here a reading-room they should come in the
evenings, many young men who have only a bed or a room-corner to go
to, and when once they have learnt to come here it will then be easy
to make them to eat and drink. First I