o be twitted with Poland, after
decades of Anglicization! He, who employed a host of Anglo-Saxon
clerks, counter-jumpers, and packers! 'And where did _your_ father
come from?' he retorted hotly.

He had almost a mind to change his synagogue, but there was no other
within such easy walking distance--an important Sabbatic
consideration--and besides, the others were reported to be even worse.
Dread rumours came of a younger generation that craved almost openly
for organs in the synagogue and women's voices in the choir, nay, of
even more flagitious spirits--devotional dynamitards--whose dream was
a service all English, that could be understood instead of chanted!
Dark mutterings against the ancient Rabbis were in the very air of
these wealthier quarters of London.

'Oh, shameless ignorance of the new age,' S. Cohn was wont to
complain, 'that does not know the limits of Anglicization!'

IV

That Simon should enter his father's business was as inevitable as
that the business should prosper in spite of Simon.

His career had been settled ere his father became aware that Highbury
aspired even to law and medicine, and the idea that Simon's education
was finished was not lightly to be dislodged. Simon's education
consisted of the knowledge conveyed in seaport schools for the sons of
tradesmen, while a long course of penny dreadfuls had given him a
peculiar and extensive acquaintance with the ways of the world.
Carefully curtained away in a secret compartment, lay his elementary
Hebrew lore. It did not enter into his conception of the perfect
Englishman. Ah, how he rejoiced in this wider horizon of London, so
thickly starred with music-halls, billiard-rooms, and restaurants!
'We are emancipated now,' was his cry: 'we have too much intellect to
keep all those old laws;' and he swallowed the forbidden oyster in a
fine spiritual glow, which somehow or other would not extend to bacon.
That stuck more in his throat, and so was only taken in self-defence,
to avoid the suspicions of a convivial company.

As he sat at his father's side in the synagogue--a demure son of the
Covenant--this young Englishman lurked beneath his praying-shawl, even
as beneath his prayer-book had lurked 'The Pirates of Pechili.'

In this hidden life Mrs. S. Cohn was not an aider or abettor, except
in so far as frequent gifts from her own pocket-money might be
considered the equivalent of the surreptitious cake of childhood. She
would have shared in h