, rabbinical lore, theology, magic, and great volumes of
Hebrew literature that looked, when placed beside a modern book, like an
old ducal palace alongside a gingerbread cottage of today. I do not
think he ever felt at home amid the hurry and rush of San Francisco. He
could not adjust himself to the people. He was devout, and they were
intensely worldly. He thundered this sentence from the teacher's desk in
the synagogue one morning: "O ye Jews of San Francisco, you have so
fully given yourselves up to material things that you are losing the
very instinct of immortality. Your only idea of religion is to acquire
the Hebrew language, and you don't know that!" His port and voice were
like those of one of the old Hebrew prophets. Elijah himself was not
more fearless. Yet, how deep was his love for his race! Jeremiah was not
more tender when he wept for the slain of the daughter of his people.
His reproofs were resented, and he had a taste of persecution; but the
Jews of San Francisco understood him at last. The poor and the little
children knew him from the start. He lived mostly among his books, and
in his school for poor children, whom he taught without charge. His
habits were so simple and his bodily wants so few that it cost him but a
trifle to live. When the synagogue frowned on him, he was as independent
as Elijah at the brook Cherith. It is hard to starve a man to whom
crackers and water are a royal feast.

His belief in God and in the supernatural was startlingly vivid. The
Voice that spoke from Sinai was still audible to him, and the Arm that
delivered Israel he saw still stretched out over the nations. The
miracles of the Old Testament were as real to him as the premiership of
Disraeli, or the financiering of the Rothschilds. There was, at the same
time, a vein of rationalism that ran through his thought and speech. We
were speaking one day on the subject of miracles, and, with his usual
energy of manner, he said:

"There was no need of any literal angel to shut the mouths of the lions
to save Daniel; the awful holiness of the prophet was enough. There was
so much of God in him that the savage creatures submitted to him as they
did to unsinning Adam. Man's dominion over nature was broken by sin, but
in the golden age to come it will be restored. A man in full communion
with God wields a divine power in every sphere that he touches."

His face glowed as he spoke, and his voice was subdued into a solemnity
of ton