ions prayer had ebbed and flowed as
regularly as the tides of the sea, with whose careless rovers the
worshippers did such lucrative business. The synagogue, not the sea,
was the poetry of these eager traffickers: here they wore phylacteries
and waved palm-branches and did other picturesque things, which in
their utter ignorance of Catholic or other ritual they deemed
unintelligible to the heathen and a barrier from mankind. Very
imposing was Solomon Cohn in his official pew under the reading
platform, for there is nothing which so enhances a man's dignity in
the synagogue as the consideration of his Christian townsmen. That is
one of the earliest stages of Anglicization.

II

Mrs. Cohn was a pale image of Mr. Cohn, seeing things through his gold
spectacles, and walking humbly in the shadow of his greatness. She had
dutifully borne him many children, and sat on the ground for such as
died. Her figure refused the Jewess's tradition of opulency, and
remained slender as though repressed. Her work was manifold and
unceasing, for besides her domestic and shop-womanly duties she was
necessarily a philanthropist, fettered with Jewish charities as the
_Gabbai's_ wife, tangled with Christian charities as the consort of
the Town Councillor. In speech she was literally his echo, catching up
his mistakes, indeed, admonished by him of her slips in speaking the
Councillor's English. He had had the start of her by five years, for
she had been brought from Poland to marry him, through the good
offices of a friend of hers who saw in her little dowry the nucleus of
a thriving shop in a thriving port.

And from this initial inferiority she never recovered--five milestones
behind on the road of Anglicization! It was enough to keep down a more
assertive personality than poor Hannah's. The mere danger of slipping
back unconsciously to the banned Yiddish put a curb upon her tongue.
Her large, dark eyes had a dog-like look, and they were set
pathetically in a sallow face that suggested ill-health, yet immense
staying power.

That S. Cohn was a bit of a bully can scarcely be denied. It is
difficult to combine the offices of _Gabbai_ and Town Councillor
without a self-satisfaction that may easily degenerate into
dissatisfaction with others. Least endurable was S. Cohn in his
religious rigidity, and he could never understand that pietistic
exercises in which he found pleasure did not inevitably produce
ecstasy in his son and heir. And whe