n Simon was discovered reading
'The Pirates of Pechili,' dexterously concealed in his prayer-book,
the boy received a strapping that made his mother wince. Simon's
breakfast lay only at the end of a long volume of prayers; and, having
ascertained by careful experiment the minimum of time his father would
accept for the gabbling of these empty Oriental sounds, he had fallen
back on penny numbers to while away the hungry minutes. The quartering
and burning of these tales in an avenging fireplace was not the least
of the reasons why the whipped youth wept, and it needed several
pieces of cake, maternally smuggled into his maw while the father's
back was turned, to choke his sobs.

III

With the daughters--and there were three before the son and
heir--there was less of religious friction, since women have not the
pious privileges and burdens of the sterner sex. When the eldest,
Deborah, was married, her husband received, by way of compensation,
the goodwill of the Sudminster business, while S. Cohn migrated to the
metropolis, in the ambition of making 'S. Cohn's trouserings' a
household word. He did, indeed, achieve considerable fame in the
Holloway Road.

Gradually he came to live away from his business, and in the most
fashionable street of Highbury. But he was never to recover his
exalted posts. The London parish had older inhabitants, the local
synagogue richer members. The cry for Anglicization was common
property. From pioneer, S. Cohn found himself outmoded. The minister,
indeed, was only too English--and especially his wife. One would
almost have thought from their deportment that they considered
themselves the superiors instead of the slaves of the congregation. S.
Cohn had been accustomed to a series of clergymen, who must needs be
taught painfully to parrot 'Our Sovereign Lady Queen Victoria, the
Prince of Wales, the Princess of Wales, and all the Royal Family'--the
indispensable atom of English in the service--so that he, the expert,
had held his breath while they groped and stumbled along the
precipitous pass. Now the whilom _Gabbai_ and Town Councillor found
himself almost patronized--as a poor provincial--by this mincing,
genteel clerical couple. He retorted by animadverting upon the
preacher's heterodoxy.

An urban unconcern met the profound views so often impressed on Simon
with a strap. 'We are not in Poland now,' said the preacher, shrugging
his shoulders.

'In Poland!' S. Cohn's blood boiled. T