and bright
hand-woven rugs. Yet it differed strikingly in two or three details
from the other homes in the Dutch settlement; on the mantle-piece,
above the blue-tiled fire-place, stood two brass candle-sticks for the
Sabbath, while on the eastern wall hung a quaint wood-cut representing
scenes from the Bible; Abraham sacrificing Isaac, Jacob dreaming of
the ladder reaching up to heaven. This _Mizrach_, Samuel's father had
once told him, hung upon the eastern wall of every good Jewish home,
that at prayer all might be reminded to turn toward the east and face
the site of the Temple at Jerusalem. For centuries the Temple had been
in ruins and the children of those who had worshipped there scattered
to the four corners of the earth. Jacob Barsimon himself had wandered
from Spain to Holland, from Amsterdam to Jamaica, from Jamaica to the
Dutch colony of New Amsterdam upon the Atlantic; yet in all his
wanderings he had brought with him the old _Mizrach_; and he still
taught his twelve-year-old son to pray with his face toward the land
of his fathers.

It was before this _Mizrach_ that Jacob Barsimon stood one early
spring morning in the year 1655, when New Amsterdam was still free
from the rule of the English who were to re-name the colony New York.
He stared at it with unseeing eyes, frowning darkly, his long, slender
hands plucking nervously at the buttons of his coat. Samuel, assisting
the young colored slave girl in removing the breakfast dishes, glanced
at his father from time to time a little nervously, although he could
not recall any prank or misdeed on his part that might have angered
him. But his mother, after watching her husband for a few moments from
her low chair at the window where she sat dressing the chubby
two-year-old Rebecca, broke the heavy silence by asking:

"What is wrong, Jacob? What troubles you?"

For a moment Jacob Barsimon said nothing, but frowned more darkly than
ever. At last he spoke. "Have you forgotten that a month from tomorrow
is Samuel's birthday--that he will be thirteen?"

A tender smile played about the mother's mouth. "Surely, I remember
the day he was born as well as though it were yesterday." She sighed a
little, her hands busy with the buttons of the little girl's dress,
her eyes gazing dreamily through the window. "We were still in
Amsterdam, in dear old Holland, with our own people. Do you remember,
Jacob, how on the day when he was made a 'Son of the Covenant,' your
old un