ellow cloth were badges of shame to mark off the Jews from the other
people. He did not even know that all little boys did not wear under
their waistcoats "Four-corners," colored shoulder-straps with squares
of stuff at each end, and white fringes at each corner, and that they
did not say, "Hear, O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One,"
as they kissed the fringes. No, the Ghetto was all his world, and a
mighty universe it was, full of everything that the heart of a child
could desire. What an eager swarm of life in the great sunny square
where the Venetian mast towered skywards, and pigeons sometimes
strutted among the crowd that hovered about the countless shops under
the encircling colonnade--pawnshops, old-clo' shops, butcher-shops,
wherein black-bearded men with yellow turbans bargained in Hebrew!
What a fascination in the tall, many-windowed houses, with their
peeling plastered fronts and patches of bald red brick, their green
and brown shutters, their rusty balconies, their splashes of
many-colored washing! In the morning and evening, when the padlocked
well was opened, what delight to watch the women drawing water, or
even to help tug at the chain that turned the axle. And on the bridge
that led from the Old Ghetto to the New, where the canal, though the
view was brief, disappeared round two corners, how absorbing to stand
and speculate on what might be coming round either corner, and which
would yield a vision first! Perhaps there would come along a sandolo
rowed by a man standing at the back, his two oars crossed gracefully;
perhaps a floating raft with barefooted boys bestriding it; perhaps a
barca punted by men in blue blouses, one at front and two at the back,
with a load of golden hay, or with provisions for the Ghetto--glowing
fruit and picturesque vegetables, or bleating sheep and bellowing
bulls, coming to be killed by the Jewish method. The canal that
bounded the Ghetto at the back offered a much more extended view, but
one hardly dared to stand there, because the other shore was foreign,
and the strange folk called Venetians lived there, and some of these
heathen roughs might throw stones across if they saw you. Still, at
night one could creep there and look along the moonlit water and up at
the stars. Of the world that lay on the other side of the water, he
only knew that it was large and hostile and cruel, though from his
high window he loved to look out towards its great unknown spaces,
myste