om his, by far, but no less full.

I shall only say by way of preface that they numbered seven. There were
two of them at high school, one at a military school on the Hudson, and
four at our city's university.

Seven in all. Because they were not altogether happy, I have no right to
think of them as lean years. For each one of them meant much to
me--means as much now as I look back and am chastened and strengthened
by their memory. Each is as a lighted candle in the dark of the past
that I look back upon. And I like to imagine that, since there are seven
of them, they are in the seven-branched candlestick which is so stately
and so reverent a symbol of my Faith.

For it was my school days which gave me that Faith.

Born a Jew, I was not one. And this I can blame on no person excepting
myself. Before my parents' death, they had urged me, pleaded with me to
go to Sunday school at our reformed synagogue, to attend the Saturday
morning services, to study the lore, that I might be confirmed into the
religion of my fathers. That they did not absolutely insist upon it was
because they wanted me to come to my God gratefully, voluntarily,
considering his worship an exercise of love, of gladness, and not a task
of impatient duty. I know that it must have grieved them--I know it now,
even if I only half-guessed it then in that distorted but instinctive
way that boys do guess things--and yet they said little to me of it.

Once or twice a year they took me with them to a Friday night service. I
was too young, perhaps. I am willing to use my youth as an excuse for my
falling asleep, or for my sitting uneasily, squirming, yawning,
heavy-eyed, uninterested, unmoved ... hungry only to be out into the
streets again, and back in my own room at home, with my copy of
"Pilgrim's Progress," or "The Talisman," between my knees.

At best, I can excuse myself only because I lived in a neighborhood
distinctly Christian. It was on one of those old, quiet streets of the
Columbia Heights section of Brooklyn that our house stood. There was a
priggish sedateness to it. There was much talk on either hand of
"family": the Brooklyn people--of that neighborhood, anyhow--seem to set
much stock by their early settling ancestors. Near our house was a
preparatory school for girls and another for boys; they were hotbeds of
snobbery and prejudice, these schools. The students who attended them
had to pass down our block on their way home from school. Often,