like Hillel
had always held that it is after the spirit rather than the letter we
should strive, and that in running after the latter we are apt to lose
the former, and he accepted the first opportunity to admonish Joseph,
who listened in amazement, wondering what had befallen his father, whom
he had never heard speak like this before. All the same he hearkened to
these warnings and laid them in his memory, and fell to considering his
father as one who had just jogged along the road that he and his
ancestors had come by, without much question. But if his father had set
himself to consider religions, and with that seriousness they deserved,
he would not keep back any longer the matter on which he had long
desired to speak to him.

The young men to whom he had just bidden good-bye were all going to
Jerusalem, whither Dan was accustomed to go every year for the Feast of
the Passover, but last year the journey thither had fatigued him unduly,
and it seemed to Joseph that this year he should go to Jerusalem in his
father's place; and when he broached the subject, Dan, who had been
thinking for some time that he was not feeling strong enough for this
journey, welcomed Joseph's proposal--a most proper presence Joseph's
would be at the Feast. Joseph had come to the age when he should visit
Jerusalem, but he did not readily understand this sudden enthusiasm. If
he wanted to go to Jerusalem to the Feast of the Passover, why had he
not said so before? And Dan, whose thoughts reached back to the
discussion overheard in the yard, was compelled to ask Joseph if it were
for the purpose of discussing the value of certain minute points of law
that he wished to go to Jerusalem. At which Joseph was astonished that
his father should have asked him such a thing.... Yet why not? For
awhile back he was discussing such very points with some young gossips.
His tongue wagged as was its wont on all occasions, though his mind was
away and he suddenly stopped speaking; and when the stirring of his
father's feet on the floor awakened him, he saw his father sitting pen
in hand watching him and no doubt asking himself of what great and
wonderful thing his son was thinking.

Once again actuality disappeared. He stood engulfed in memories of
things heard in Azariah's house: or things only half heard, for he had
never thought of them since. The words of the Jews he met there had
fallen dead at the time, but now he remembered things that had passed
over