-hearted Zionists----'

It was an arresting conception, and Barstein found himself sitting on
the table to discuss it. The reverence with which Nehemiah listened to
his views was touching and disconcerting. Barstein felt humbled by the
celestial figure he cut in Nehemiah's mental mirror. Yet he could not
suspect the man of a glozing tongue, for of the leaders of Zionism
Nehemiah spoke with, if possible, greater veneration, with an awe
trembling on tears. His elongated figure grew even gaunter, his lean
visage unearthlier, as he unfolded his plan for the conquest of
Palestine, and Barstein's original impression of his simple sincerity
was repeated and re-enforced.

Presently, however, it occurred to Barstein that Nehemiah himself
would have scant opportunity of influential contact with Ottoman
officials, and that the real question at issue was, how Nehemiah, his
wife, and his 'at least eleven children,' were to be supported in
Turkey. He mentioned the point.

Nehemiah waved it away. 'And cannot the Almighty support us in Turkey
as well as in England?' he asked. 'Yes, even in Bursia itself the
Guardian of Israel is not sleepy.'

It was then that the word 'Luftmensch' flew into Barstein's mind.
Nehemiah was not an earth-man in gross contact with solidities. He was
an air-man, floating on facile wings through the aether. True, he spoke
of troublesome tribulations, but these were mainly dictionary
distresses, felt most keenly in the rhapsody of literary composition.
At worst they were mere clouds on the blue. They had nothing in common
with the fogs which frequently veiled heaven from his own vision.
Never for a moment had Nehemiah failed to remember the blue, never had
he lost his radiant outlook. His very pessimism was merely optimism in
disguise, since it was only a personal pessimism to be remedied by 'a
few frivolous pounds,' by a new crumb from the hand of Providence, not
that impersonal despair of the scheme of things which gave the thinker
such black moments. How had Nehemiah lived during those first ten
years in England? Who should say? But he had had the wild daring to
uproot himself from his childhood's home and adventure himself upon an
unknown shore, and there, by hook or crook, for better or for worse,
through vicissitudes innumerable and crises beyond calculation, ever
on the perilous verge of nothingness, he had scraped through the days
and the weeks and the years, fearlessly contributing perhaps more
im