In League with Israel: A Tale of the Chattanooga Conference

CHAPTER VIII.

"You will find me dropping in here quite often," he said to Mr. Edmunds, whom he met coming out of the door. "Since that little cousin of mine is never to be found at home in the day-time any more, I shall have to call on him here. He is my right-hand man in Junior League work."

"Who? Jack?" inquired Mr. Edmunds. "He's the most original little piece I ever saw. Sorry I'm called out just now, Frank. You're always welcome, you know."

Bethany was seated at her typewriter, so intent on her manuscript that she did not notice Mr. Marion's entrance. Jack, in his chair by the window, was working vigorously with slate and pencil at an arithmetic lesson. As Bethany paused to take the finished page from the machine, Jack looked up and saw Mr. Marion's tall form in the doorway.

"O, come in!" he cried, joyfully. "I want you to see how nice everything is here. We have the best times."

Mr. Marion looked across at Bethany, and smiled at the child's delight.

"Tell me about it," he said, drawing a chair up to the window, and entering into the boy's pleasure with that ready sympathy that was the secret of his success with all children.

"Well, you see, Bethany wheels me onto the elevator, and up we come. And it's so nice and cool up here. She hasn't been very busy yet. While she writes I get my lessons, or draw, or work puzzles. Then, when Mr. Edmunds and Mr. Porter go off, and she hasn't anything to do, I recite to her. But the best fun is grocery tales."

"What's 'grocery tales?'" asked Mr. Marion, with flattering interest.

"Do you see that wholesale grocery-store across the street?" asked Jack, "and all the things sitting around in front? There's almost everything you can think of, from a broom to a banana. I choose the first thing I happen to look at, and she tells me a story about it. If it's a tea-chest, that makes her think of a Chinese story; or if it's a bottle of olives, something about the knights and ladies of Spain. Yesterday it was a chicken-coop, and she told me about a lovely visit she had once on a farm. She says when we come to that coil of rope, it will remind her of a storm she was in on the Mediterranean; and the coffee means a South American story; and the watermelons a darkey story; and the brooms something she read once about an old, blind broom-maker. Then I have lots of fun watching people pass. So many teams stop at the watering-trough over there. I like to wonder where everybody comes from, and imagine what their homes are like. It is almost as good as reading about them in a book."

"You are a very happy little fellow," said Mr. Marion, patting his cheek, approvingly. "I am glad you are getting strong so fast, so that you can go out into this big, discontented world of ours, and teach other people how to be happy. I've brought you some more work to do. I want you to look up all these references, and copy them on separate slips of paper for our next meeting. By the way, Bethany," he said, as he rose to go, "I had a letter from our Chattanooga Jew this morning. He is as much in earnest as ever. I wish we could get our League interested in him and his mission."

"It is a very unpopular movement, Cousin Frank," she answered. "Think of the prejudices to overcome. How little the general membership of the Church know or care about the Jews! It seems almost impossible to combat such indifference. Carlyle says, 'Every noble work is at first impossible.'"

"Ah, Bethany," he answered, "and Paul says: 'I can do all things through Christ who strengthened me.' I can't get away from the feeling that God wants me to take some forward step in the matter. Every paper I pick up seems to call my attention to it in some way. All the time in my business I am brought in contact with Jews who want to talk to me about my religion. They introduce the subject themselves. Ray and I have been reading Graetz's history lately. I declare it's a puzzle to me how any one can read an account of all the race endured at the hands of the Christianity of the Middle Ages, and not be more lenient toward them. Pharaoh's cruelties were not a tithe of what was dealt out to them in the name of the gentle Nazarene. No wonder their children were taught to spit at the mention of such a name."

"O, is that history as bad as 'Fox's Book of Martyrs?'" asked Jack, eagerly. "We've got that at home, with the awfullest black and yellow pictures in it of people being burned to death and tortured. I hope, if it is as interesting, sister will read it out loud."

Bethany made such a grimace of remonstrance that Mr. Marion laughed.

"I'll send the books over to-morrow. You'll not care to read all five volumes, Jack; but Bethany can select the parts that will interest you most."

Jack's tenacious memory brought the subject up again that evening at the table.

"Aunt Harry," he asked, abruptly, pausing in the act of helping himself to sugar, "do you like the Jews?"

"Why, no, child," she said, hesitatingly. "I can't say that I take any special interest in them, one way or another. To tell the truth, I've never known any personally."

"Would you like to know more about them?" he asked, with childish persistence. "'Cause Bethany's going to read to me about them when Cousin Frank sends the books over, and you can listen if you like."

"Anything that Bethany reads we shall be glad to hear," answered Miss Harriet. "At first sister and I thought we would not intrude on you in the evenings; but the library does look so inviting, and it is so dull for us to sit with just our knitting-work, since we have stopped reading by lamp-light, that we can not resist the temptation to go in whenever she begins to read aloud."

"O, you're home-folks," said Jack.

Bethany had excused herself before this conversation commenced, and was in the library, opening the mail Miss Caroline had forgotten to give her at noon. When the others joined her, she held up a little pamphlet she had just opened.

"Look, Jack! It is from Mr. Lessing, from Chattanooga. It is an article on 'What shall become of the Jew?' I suppose it is written by one of them, at least his name would indicate it—Leo N. Levi. It will be interesting to look at that question from their standpoint."

"Will I like it?" asked Jack.

"No, I think not," she answered, after a rapid glance through its pages. "We'll have some more of the 'Bonnie Brier-Bush' to-night, and save this until you are asleep."

Bethany read well, and excelled in Scotch dialect. When she laid down the book after the story of "A Doctor of the Old School," she saw a big tear splash down on Miss Harriet's knitting-work, and Miss Caroline was furtively wiping her spectacles.

"Leave the door open," called Jack, when he had been tucked away for the night. "Then I can listen if it's nice, or go to sleep if it's dull."

"Do you really care to hear this?" asked Bethany, picking up the pamphlet.

"Yes," said Miss Caroline, with several emphatic nods. "I'll own I am very ignorant on the subject; and after something so highly entertaining as these sweet Scotch tales, it's no more than right that we should take something improving."

"O sister," called Jack's voice from the next room, "you never told them about Mr. Lessing, did you?"

"No," answered Bethany. "I never told them any of my Chattanooga experiences. Maybe it would be better to begin with them, and then you can understand how I happened to become so interested in the Hebrew people. The pamphlet can wait until another time."

She tossed it back on the table, and settled herself comfortably in a big chair.

"I'll begin at the beginning," she said, "and tell you how I was persuaded into going, and how strangely events linked into each other."

"Can't you just see it all?" murmured Miss Caroline, as Bethany drew a graphic picture of the mountain outlook, the sunrise, and the crowded tent. When she came to Lessing's story, Miss Harriet dropped her work in her lap, and Miss Caroline leaned forward in her chair.

"Dear! dear! It sounds like a chapter out of a romance!" exclaimed Miss Caroline, when Bethany had finished. "That part about the mother's curse and being buried in effigy makes me think of the novels that we used to smuggle into our rooms at school. I wish you could go on and give us the next chapter. It is intensely interesting."

"Ah, the next chapter," replied Bethany, sadly. "I thought of that at the time. What can it be but the daily repetition of commonplace events? He will simply go on to the end in a routine of study and work. He will preach to whatever audiences he can gather around him. That is all the world will see. The other part of it, the burden of loneliness laid upon him because of Jewish scorn and Christian distrust, the soul-struggles, the spiritual victories, the silent heroism, will be unwritten and unapplauded, because unseen."

"I don't wonder you are interested," said Miss Harriet. "Would you believe it, I don't know the difference between an orthodox and a reform Jew? I think I shall look it up to-morrow in the encyclopedia."

She picked up the little pamphlet, and opened at random.

"Here is a marked paragraph," she said. "'The Jew is everywhere in evidence. He sells vodki in Russia; he matches his cunning against Moslem and Greek in Turkey; he fights for existence and endures martyrdom in the Balkan provinces; he crowds the professions, the arts, the market-place, the bourse, and the army, in France, England, Austria, and Germany. He has invaded every calling in America, and everywhere he is seen; and, what is more to the point, he is felt. He runs through the entire length of history, as a thin but well-defined line, touched by the high lights of great events at almost every point.'"

"Where did we leave off with him, sister?" she asked, turning to Miss Caroline. "Wasn't it at the destruction of the temple, somewhere in the neighborhood of 70 A. D.? We shall have to trace that line back a considerable distance, I am thinking, if we would know anything on the subject."

"Let's trace it then," said Miss Caroline, with her usual alacrity.

Several evenings after, when Bethany came home from the office, she found a new book on the table, with Miss Caroline's name on the fly-leaf. It was "The Children of the Ghetto."

"I bought it this afternoon," she explained, a little nervously. "It is one of Zangwill's. The clerk at the bookstore told me he is called the Jewish Dickens, and that it is very interesting. Of course, I am no critic, but it looked interesting, and I thought you might not mind reading it aloud. Several sentences caught my eye that made me think it might be as entertaining as 'Old Curiosity Shop,' or 'Oliver Twist.'"

Bethany rapidly scanned several pages. "I believe it is the very thing to give us an insight into the later day customs and beliefs of the masses."

She read the headings of several of the chapters aloud, and a sentence here and there.

"Listen to this!" she exclaimed. "'We are proud and happy in that the dread unknown God of the infinite universe has chosen our race as the medium by which to reveal his will to the world. History testifies that this has verily been our mission, that we have taught the world religion as truly as Greece has taught beauty and science. Our miraculous survival through the cataclysms of ancient and modern dynasties is a proof that our mission is not yet over.'"

"O, I thought it was going to be a story!" exclaimed Jack, in a disappointed tone.

"It is, dear," answered Bethany. "You can understand part, and I will explain the rest."

So it came about that, after the Scotch tales were laid aside, the little group in the library nightly turned their sympathies toward the children of the London Ghetto, as it existed in the early days of the century.

"I can never feel the same towards them again," said Miss Caroline, the night they finished the book. "I understand them so much better. It is just as the proem says: 'People who have been living in a ghetto for a couple of centuries are not able to step outside merely because the gates are thrown down, nor to efface the brands on their souls by putting off the yellow badges. Their faults are bred of its hovering miasma of persecution.'"

"Yes," answered Bethany, "I am glad he has given us such a diversity of types. You know that article that Mr. Lessing sent me says: 'No people can be fairly judged by its superlatives. It would be silly to judge all the Chinese by Confucius, or all the Americans by Benedict Arnold. If the Jews squirm and indignantly protest against Shylock and Fagin and Svengali, they must be consistent, and not claim as types Scott's Rebecca and Lessing's Nathan the Wise.' Now, Zangwill has given us a glimpse of all sorts of people—the 'pots and pans' of material Judaism, as well as the altar-fires of its most spiritual idealists. I hope you'll go on another investigating tour, Miss Caroline, and bring home something else as instructive."

But before Miss Caroline found time to go on another voyage of discovery among the book-stores, something happened at the office that gave a deeper interest to their future investigations.

Mr. Edmunds sat at the table a few minutes longer than usual, one morning after he had finished dictating his letters, to say: "We are about to make some changes in the office, Miss Hallam. Mr. Porter has decided to go abroad for a while. Family matters may keep him there possibly a year. During his absence it is necessary to have some one in his place; and, after mature deliberation, we have decided to take in a young lawyer who has two points decidedly in his favor. He has marked ability, and he will attract a wealthy class of clients. He is a young Jew, a protege of Rabbi Barthold's. Personally, I have the highest respect for him, although Mr. Porter is a little prejudiced against him on account of his nationality. I wondered if you shared that feeling."

"No, indeed!" answered Bethany, quickly. "I have been greatly interested in studying their history this summer."

"Well, I have never given their past much thought," responded Mr. Edmunds; "but their relation to the business world has recently attracted my attention. It is wonderful to me the way they are filling up the positions of honor and trust all over the world. Statistics show such a large proportion of them have acquired wealth and prominence. Still, it is only what we ought to expect, when we remember their characteristics. They have such 'mental agility,' such power of adapting themselves to circumstances, and such a resistless energy. Maybe I should put their temperate habits first, for I can not remember ever seeing a Jew intoxicated; and as to industry, the records of our county poor-house show that in all the seventy years of its existence, it has never had a Jewish inmate. People with such qualities are like cream, bound to rise to the top, no matter what kind of a vessel they are poured into."

"Who is this young man?" asked Bethany, coming back to the first subject.

"David Herschel," responded Mr. Edmunds. "You may have met him."

"David Herschel!" repeated Bethany, incredulously. She caught her breath in surprise. Was there to be a deliberate crossing of life-threads here, or had she been caught in some tangle of chance? Maybe this was the opportunity she had prayed for that morning when she had listened to Lessing's story, and caught the inspiration of his consecrated life.

A feeling of awe crept over her, that a human voice could so reach the ear of the Infinite, and draw down an answer to its petition. She was almost frightened at the thought of the responsibility such an answer laid upon her. O, the childishness with which we beat against the portals as we importune high Heaven for opportunities, and then shrink back when the Almighty hands them out to us, afraid to take and use what we have most cried for!

CHAPTER IX.

The sun beat against the tall buildings until the radiated heat of the streets was sickening in its intensity. Clerks went to their work with pale faces and languid movements. Everything had a wilted look, and the watering-carts left a steam rising in their trail, almost as disagreeable as the clouds of dust had been before.

Miss Caroline had insisted on Jack's remaining at home, and Bethany's wearing a thin white dress in place of her customary suit of heavy black. They had both protested, but as Bethany went slowly towards the office she was glad that the sensible old lady had carried her point.

To shorten the distance, she passed through one of the poorer streets of the town. Disagreeable odors, suggestive of late breakfasts, floated out from steamy kitchens. Neglected, half-dressed children cried on the doorsteps and quarreled in the gutters.

A great longing came over Bethany for a breath from wide, fresh fields, or green, shady woodlands. This was the first summer she had ever passed in the city. August had always been associated in her mind with the wind in the pine woods, or the sound of the sea on some rocky coast. It recalled the musical drip of the waterfalls trickling down high banks of thickly-growing ferns. It brought back the breath of clover-fields and the mint in hillside pastures.

A strong repugnance to her work seized her. She felt that she could not possibly bear to go back to the routine of the office and the monotonous click of her typewriter. The longer she thought of those old care-free summers, the more she chafed at the confinement of the present one.

She sighed wearily as she reached the entrance of the great building. Every door and window stood open. While she waited for the elevator-boy to respond to her ring, she turned her eyes toward the street. A blind man passed by, led by a wan, sad-eyed child. The sun was beating mercilessly on the man's gray head, for his cap was held appealingly in his outstretched hand.

"How dared I feel dissatisfied with my lot?" thought Bethany, with a swift rush of pity, as the contrast between this blind beggar's life and hers was forced upon her.

There was no one in the office when she entered. After the glare of the street, it seemed so comfortable that she thought again of the blind beggar and the child who led him, with a feeling of remorse for her discontent.

A great bunch of lilies stood in a tall glass vase on the table, filling the room with their fragrance. She took out a card that was half hidden among them. Lightly penciled, in a small, running hand, was the one word—"Consider!"

"That's just like Cousin Ray," thought Bethany, quickly interpreting the message. "She knew this would be an unusually trying day on account of the heat, so she gives me something to think about instead of my irksome confinement. 'They toil not, neither do they spin,'" she whispered, lifting one snowy chalice to her lips; "but what help they bring to those who do—sweet, white evangels to all those who labor and are heavy laden!"

She fastened one in her belt, then turned to her work. She had been copying a record, and wanted to finish it before Mr. Edmunds was ready to attend to the morning mail. Her fingers flew over the keys without a pause, except when she stopped to put in a new sheet of paper. When she was nearly through, she heard Mr. Edmunds's voice in the next room, and increased her speed. She had forgotten that this was the day David Herschel was to come into the office. He had taken the desk assigned him, and was so busily engaged in conversation with Mr. Edmunds that for a while he did not notice the occupant of the next room. When, at last, he happened to glance through the open door, he did not recognize Bethany, for she was seated with her back toward him.

He noticed what a cool-looking white dress she wore, the graceful poise of her head, and her beautiful sunny hair. Then he saw the lilies beside her, and wished she would turn so that he could see her face.

"Some fair Elaine—a lily-maid of Astolat," he thought, and then smiled at himself for having grown Tennysonian over a typewriter before he had even heard her name or seen her face.

At last Bethany finished the record, with a sigh of relief. Quickly fastening the pages, she rose to take it into the next room. Just on the threshold she saw Herschel, and gave an involuntary little start of surprise.

As she stood there, all in white, with one hand against the dark door-casing, she looked just as she had the night David first saw her. He arose as she entered.

Mr. Edmunds was not usually a man of quick perceptions, but he noticed the look of admiration in David's eyes, and he thought they both seemed a trifle embarrassed as he introduced them.

They had recalled at the same moment the night in the Chattanooga depot, when she had distinctly declared to Mr. Marion that she did not care to make his acquaintance.

For once in her life she lost her usual self-possession. That gracious ease of manner which "stamps the caste of Vere de Vere" was one of her greatest charms. But just at this moment, when she wished to atone for that unfortunate remark by an especially friendly greeting, when she wanted him to know that her point of view had changed entirely, and that not a vestige of the old prejudice remained, she could not summon a word to her aid.

Conscious of appearing ill at ease, she blushed like a diffident school-girl, and bowed coldly.

David courteously remained standing until she had laid the record on Mr. Edmunds's desk and left the room.

Mr. Edmunds glanced at him quickly, as he resumed his seat; but there was not the slightest change of expression to show that he had noticed what appeared to be an intentional haughtiness of manner in Bethany's greeting. But he had noticed it, and it stung his sensitive nature more than he cared to acknowledge, even to himself.

Nothing more passed between them for several days, except the formal morning greeting. Then Jack came back to the office. He had gained rapidly since the new brace had been applied. During his enforced absence on account of the heat, he found that he could wheel himself short distances, and proudly insisted on doing so, as they went through the hall. He was a great favorite in the building. Everybody, from the janitor to the dignified judge on the same floor, stopped to speak to him. He was such a thorough boy, so full of fun and spirits, despite the misfortune that chained him to the chair and had sometimes made him suffer extremely, that the sight of him oftener provoked pleasure than pity. He was so glad to get back to the office that he was bubbling over with happiness. It seemed to him he had been away for an age. The cordial reception he met on every hand made his eyes twinkle and the dimples show in his cheeks.

Mr. Edmunds had not come down, but David was at his desk, busily writing. Bethany paused as they passed through the room.

"Allow me to introduce my little brother, Mr. Herschel," she said. "Jack is very anxious to meet you."

He glanced up quickly. This friendly-voiced girl, leaning over Jack's chair, with the brightness of his roguish face reflected in her own, was such a transformation from the dignified Miss Hallam he had known heretofore, that he could hardly credit his eyesight. He was surprised into such an unusual cordiality of manner, that Jack straightway took him into his affections, and set about cultivating a very strong friendship between them.

One afternoon Bethany was called into another office to take a deposition. She left Jack busy drawing on his slate.

David, who had been reading several hours, laid down the book after a while, with a yawn, and glanced into the next room. The steady scratch of the slate pencil had ceased, and Jack was gazing disconsolately out of the window.

As he heard the book drop on the table he turned his head quickly. "May I come in there?" he asked David eagerly.

David nodded assent. "You may come in and wake me up. The heat and the book together, have made me drowsy."

Jack pushed his chair over by a window, and looked out towards the court house. It was late in the afternoon, and the massive building threw long shadows across the green sward surrounding it.

"I wanted to see if the flag is flying," said Jack. "I can't tell from my window. Don't you love to watch it flap? I do, for it always makes me think of heroes. I love heroes, and I love to listen to stories about 'em. Don't you? It makes you feel so creepy, and your hair kind o' stands up, and you hold your breath while they're a-risking their lives to save somebody, or doing something else that's awfully brave. And then, when they've done it, there's a lump in your throat; but you feel so warm all over somehow, and you want to cheer, and march right off to 'storm the heights,' and wipe every thing mean off the face of the earth, and do all sorts of big, brave things. I always do. Don't you?"

"Yes," answered David, amused by his boyish enthusiasm, yet touched by the recognition of a kindred spirit. "May be you will be a hero yourself, some day," he suggested in order to lead the boy further on.

"No, I'm afraid not," answered Jack, sadly. "Papa wanted me to be a lawyer. He was in the war till he got wounded so bad he had to come home. We've got his sword and cap yet. I used to put 'em on sometimes, and say I was going to go to West Point and learn to be a soldier. But he always shook his head and said, 'No, son, that's not the highest way you can serve your country now.' Then sometimes I think I'll have to be a preacher like my grandfather, John Wesley Bradford, because he left me all his library, and I am named for him. Jack isn't my real name, you know."

"Would you like to be a preacher?" asked David, as the boy paused to catch a fly that was buzzing exasperatingly around him.

"No!" answered Jack, emphasizing his answer by a savage slap at the fly. "Only except when we get to talking about the Jews. You know we are very much interested in your people at our house."

"No, I didn't know it," answered David, amused by the boy's matter-of-fact announcement. "How did you come to be so interested?"

"Well, it started with the Epworth League Conference at Chattanooga. There was a converted Jew up there on the mountain that spoke in the sunrise meeting. Cousin Frank went to see him afterwards. He took Bethany with him to write down what they said in shorthand. O, he had the most interesting history! You just ought to hear sister tell it. You know the two old ladies I told you about, that live at our house. Well, may be it isn't polite to tell you so, but they didn't have the least bit of use for the Jews before that. Now, since we've been reading about the awful way they were persecuted, and how they've hung together through thick and thin, they've changed their minds."

"And you say that it is only when you are talking about the Jews that you would like to be a preacher," said David, as the boy stopped, and began whistling softly. He wanted to bring him back to the subject.

"Yes," answered Jack. "When I think how that man's whole life was changed by a little Junior League girl; how she started him, and he'll start others, and they'll start somebody else, and the ball will keep rolling, and so much good will be done, just on her account, I'd like to do something in that line myself. I'm first vice-president of our League, you know," he said, proudly displaying the badge pinned on his coat.

"But I wouldn't like to be a regular preacher that just stands up and tells people what they already believe. That's too much like boxing a pillow." He doubled up his fist and sparred at an imaginary foe.

"I'd like to go off somewhere, like Paul did, and make every blow count. We studied the life of Paul last year in the League. Talk about heroes—there's one for you. My, but he was game! Thrashed and stoned, and shipwrecked and put in prison, and chained up to another man—but they couldn't choke him off!" Jack chuckled at the thought.

"Did you ever notice," he continued, "that when a Jew does turn Christian he's deader in earnest than anybody else? Cousin Frank told us to notice that. There's Matthew. He was making a good salary in the custom-house, and he quit right off. And Peter and Andrew and the rest of 'em left their boats and all their fishing tackle, and every thing in the wide world that they owned. Mr. Lessing had even to give up his family. Cousin Frank told us about ever so many that had done that way. So that's why I'd rather preach to them than other people. They amount to so much when you once get them made over."

"You might commence on me," said David.

Jack colored to the roots of his hair, and looked confused. He stole a sidelong glance at David, and began to wheel his chair slowly back into the other room.

"I haven't gone into the business yet," he called back over his shoulder, recovering his equanimity with young American quickness, "But when I do I'll give you the first call."

David was so amused by the conversation that he could not refrain from recounting part of it to Bethany when she returned. It seemed to put them on a friendlier footing.

Finding that she was really making a study of the history of his people, he gave her many valuable suggestions, and several times brought Jewish periodicals with articles marked for her to read.

"My Sunday-school class have become so interested," she told him. "They are very well versed in the ancient history, but this is something so new to them."

"I wish you knew Rabbi Barthold," he exclaimed. "He would be an inspiration in any line of study, but especially in this, for he has thrown his whole soul into it. Ah, I wish you read Hebrew. One loses so much in the translation. There are places in the Psalms and Job where the majesty of the thought is simply untranslatable. You know there are some pebbles and shells that, seen in water, have the most exquisite delicacy of coloring; yet taken from that element, they lose that brilliancy. I have noticed the same effect in changing a thought from the medium of one language to another."

"Yes," answered Bethany, "I have recognized that difficulty, too, in translating from the German. There is a subtle something that escapes, that while it does not change the substance, leaves the verse as soulless as a flower without its fragrance."

"Ah! I see you understand me," he responded. "That is why I would have you read the greatest of all literature in its original setting. Are you fond of language?"

"Yes," she answered, "though not an enthusiast. I took the course in Latin and German at school, and got a smattering of French the year I was abroad. Afterwards I read Greek a little at home with papa, to get a better understanding of the New Testament. But Hebrew always seemed to me so very difficult that only spectacled theologians attempted it. You know ordinary tourists ascend the Rigi and Vesuvius as a matter of course. Only daring climbers attempt the Jungfrau. I scaled only the heights made easy of ascent by a system of meister-schafts and mountain railways."

He laughed. "Hebrew is not so difficult as you imagine, Miss Hallam. Any one that can master stenography can easily compass that. There is a similarity in one respect. In both, dots and dashes take the place of vowels. I will bring you a grammar to-morrow, and show you how easy the rudiments are."

Jack was more interested than Bethany. He had never seen a book in Hebrew type before. The square, even characters charmed him, and he began to copy them on his slate.

"I'd like to learn this," he announced. "The letters are nothing but chairs and tables."

"It was a picture language in the beginning," said David, leaning over his chair, much pleased with his interest. "Now, that first letter used to be the head of an ox. See how the horns branch? And this next one, Beth, was a house. Don't you remember how many names in the Bible begin with that—Beth-el, Beth-horon, Beth-shan—they all mean house of something; house of God, house of caves, house of rest."

Jack gave a whistled "whe-ew!" "It would teach a fellow lots. What are you a house of, Beth-any?"

He looked up, but his sister had been called into the next room.

"Would you really like to study it, Jack?" asked David. "It will be a great help to you when you 'go into the business' of preaching to us Jews."

Jack tilted his head to one side, and thrust his tongue out of the corner of his mouth in an embarrassed way. Then he looked up, and saw that David was not laughing at him, but soberly awaiting his answer.

"Yes, I really would," he answered, decidedly.

"Then I'll teach you as long as you are in the office."

Mr. Marion came in one day and saw David's dark head and Jack's yellow one bending over the same page, and listened to the boy's enthusiastic explanation of the letters.

"I wish we could form a class of our Sabbath-school teachers," said Mr. Marion. "Would you undertake to teach it, Herschel?"

The young man hesitated. "If it were convenient I might make the attempt," he said. "But I do not live in the city. My home is out at Hillhollow."

Then, after a pause, while some other plan seemed to be revolving in his mind, he asked: "Why not get Rabbi Barthold? He is a born teacher, and nothing would delight him more than to imbue some other soul with a zeal for his beloved mother-tongue."

"I'll certainly take the matter into consideration," responded Mr. Marion, "if you will get his consent, and find what his terms are. Bethany, I'll head the list with your name. Then there's Ray and myself. That makes three, and I know at least three of my teachers that I am sure of. I wish George Cragmore were here. Do you know, Bethany, it would not surprise me very much if the Conference sends him here this fall?"

"Not in Dr. Bascom's place," she exclaimed.

"O no, he is too young a man for Garrison Avenue, and unmarried besides. But I heard that the Clark Street Church had asked for him. I hope the bishop will consider the call."

"Don't set your heart on it, Cousin Frank," she answered. "You know what is apt to befall 'the best laid schemes of mice and men.'"

CHAPTER X.

"Isn't it pretty?" said Jack, drawing a spray through his fingers. "It makes me think of your hair, sister. They are both so soft and fuzzy-looking."

"And like the sunshine," added David mentally, wishing he dared express his admiration as openly as Jack. His desk was at an angle overlooking Bethany's, and he often studied her face while she worked, as he would have studied some rare portrait—not so much for the perfect contour and delicacy of coloring as for the soul that shone through it.

She had seldom spoken to him of spiritual things. It was from Jack he learned how interested she was in all her Church relationships. Still he felt forcibly an influence that he could not define; that silent charm of a consecrated life, linked close with the perfect life of the Master.

One day when he was thus idly occupied, the janitor tiptoed into the room, ushering a lady past to Bethany's desk. David looked up as she passed, attracted by her unusual costume. It was all black, except that there were deep, white cuffs rolled back over the sleeves, and a large, white collar. The close-fitting black bonnet was tied under the chin with broad white bows. She was a sweet-faced woman, with strong, capable looking hands.

David heard Bethany exclaim, "Why, Josephine Bentley!" as if much surprised to see her. Then they stood face to face, holding each other's hands while they talked in low, rapid tones.

The stranger staid only a few moments. After she passed out, David strolled leisurely up to Bethany's desk.

"I hope you'll excuse my curiosity, Miss Hallam," he said. "I am interested in the costume of the lady who was here just now. I've seen one like it before. Can you tell me to what order she belongs? Is it anything like the Sisters of Charity?"

"Yes, something like it," she answered. "She is a deaconess. There is this difference. They take no vows of perpetual service to the order, but their lives are as entirely consecrated to their work as though they had 'taken the veil,' as the nuns call it. This friend of mine who was just here, is a visiting deaconess. She goes about doing good in the Master's own way, to rich and poor alike. She came in just now to report a case of destitution she had discovered. I am chairman of the Mercy and Help Department in our League."

"Is that all they do?" asked David.

"All!" repeated Bethany. "You should see the Deaconess Home on Clark Street. They have a hospital there, and a Kitchen-garten. It is the work of some of these women to gather in all the poor, neglected girls they can find. They make it so very attractive that the poor children are taught to be respectable little housekeepers, without suspecting that the music and games are really lessons. Homes that could be reached in no other way have some wonderful changes wrought in them."

"You have so many different organizations in your Church," said David. "Seems to me I am always hearing of a new one. There is an old saying, 'Too many cooks spoil the broth.' Did you never prove the truth of that?"

"Now, that's one beauty of Methodism," exclaimed Bethany. "The little wheels all fit into the big one like so many cogs, and all help each other. For instance, here is the deaconess work. It goes hand in hand with the League, only reaching out farther, with our motto of 'Lift Up,' for they have an 'open sesame' that unbars all avenues to them. Of all hard, self-sacrificing lives, it seems to me a nurse deaconess has the hardest. She goes only into homes unable to pay for such services, and whatever there is to do in the way of nursing, or of cleansing these poverty-stricken homes, she does unflinchingly."

"The reason I asked," answered David, "is that one day last week I went down to that terrible quarter of the city near the lower wharves. I wanted to find a man who I knew would be a valuable witness in the Dartmon murder case. I had been told that the only time to find him would be before six o'clock, as he was a deckhand on one of the early boats. I had been directed to a laundry-office in a row of rotten old tenements near the river. I found the room used as an office was down in a damp basement. It was about half-past five when I reached there. I went down the rickety old stairs and knocked several times. You can imagine my surprise when the door was opened by a refined-looking woman, in just such a costume as your friend wore, except, of course, the little bonnet. When I told her my errand, she asked me to step inside a moment. The smell of sewer-gas almost stifled me at first. There was a narrow counter where a few bundles were lying, still uncalled for. I learned afterward, that the laundry had failed, and these were left to await claimants. There was a calico curtain stretched across the room to form a partition. She drew it aside, and motioned me to look in. There was a table, two chairs, a gasoline stove, and an old bed. Lying across the foot of the bed, as if utterly worn-out with weariness and sorrow, lay a young girl heavily sleeping. A baby, only a few months old, was lying among the pillows, as white and still as if it were dead. The woman dropped the curtain with a shudder. 'It is the poor girl's husband you are looking for,' she said. 'He is a rough, drunken fellow, and has been away for days, nobody knows where. The baby is dying. I was called here at three o'clock this morning. A physician came for me, but he said it could not live many hours. O, it was awful! The cockroaches swarmed all over the floor, and the rats were so bad they fairly ran over our feet. The poor girl sank in a heavy stupor soon after I came, from sheer exhaustion. There is nothing to eat in the house, and the milk I brought with me for the baby has soured. It seems a dreadful thing to say, but I dare not leave the baby while she is asleep long enough to get anything—on account of the rats.' Of course I went out and got the things she needed. Then there was nothing more I could do, she said. The wretched poverty of the scene, and the woman's bravery, have been in my thoughts ever since."

"I heard of that case yesterday," Bethany said, when he had finished. "I know the nurse, Belle Carleton. The baby died, and they took the mother to the Deaconess Hospital. She has typhoid fever. Belle told me of another experience she had. Her life is full of them. She was sent to a family where drunkenness was the cause of the poverty. The man had not had steady work for a year, because he was never sober more than a few days at a time. They lived in three rooms in the rear basement of a large tenement-house. Belle said, when she opened the door of the first room, it seemed the most forlorn place she had ever seen. There was a table piled full of dirty dishes, and a cooking-stove covered with ashes, on which stood a wash-boiler filled with half-washed clothes. The floor looked as if it had never known the touch of a broom. The odor of the boiling suds was sickening. A slatternly, half-grown girl, one of the neighbors, stood beside a leaky tub, washing as best she knew how. Four dirty, half-starved children were playing on the bare floor. Their mother was sick in the next room. I couldn't begin to repeat Belle's description of that bedroom, it was so filthy and infested with vermin. She said, when she saw all that must be done, that repulsive creature bathed, the dishes washed, and the floor scrubbed, a great loathing came over her. She felt that she could not possibly touch a thing in the room. She wanted to turn and run away from it all. I said to her, 'O, Belle, how could you force yourself to do such repulsive things?'"

"What did she say?" exclaimed Herschel.

Bethany's face reflected some of the tenderness that must have shone in Belle Carleton's, as she repeated her answer softly, "For Jesus' sake!"

There was a long pause, which Herschel broke by saying: "And she staid there, I suppose, forced her shrinking hands into contact with what she despised, did the most menial services, from a sense of duty to a man whom she had never seen, who died centuries ago? Miss Hallam, how could she? I find it very hard to understand."

"No, not from a sense of duty," corrected Bethany, "so much as love."

"Well, for love then. What was there in this man of Nazareth to inspire such devotion after such a lapse of time? I understand how one might admire his ethical teaching, how one might even try to embody his precepts in a code to live by; but how he can inspire such sublime annihilation of self, surpasses my comprehension. He was no greater lawgiver than Moses, yet who makes such sacrifices for the love of Moses? Peter suffered martyrdom, and Paul; yet who is ready to lay down his life cheerfully and say, 'I do it for the sake of Peter—or Paul?'"

"Mr. Herschel," said Bethany, looking up at him wistfully, "don't you see that it is no mere man who exercises such power; that he must be what he claimed—one with the Father?"

Cragmore's passionate exclamation that day on the train came back to him: "O, my friend, if you could only see my Savior as he has been revealed to me!"

Then he seemed to hear Lessing's voice as they paced back and forth in front of the tent, arm in arm in the darkness.

"Of a truth you can not understand these things, unless you be born again—be born of the Spirit, into a realm of spiritual knowledge you have never yet even dreamed of. Winged life is latent in the worm, even while it has no conception of any existence higher than the cabbage-leaf it crawls upon. But how is it possible for it to conceive of flight until it has passed through some change that bursts the chrysalis and provides the wings?"

The silence was growing oppressive. David shook his head, rose, and slowly walked out of the room.

"Sister," said Jack, a few days after, as she wheeled him homeward from the office at noon-time, "Mr. Herschel keeps teasing me all the time about something I said once about preaching to the Jews. He brings it up so often, that if he doesn't look out I'll begin on him sure enough."

Whatever answer Bethany might have made was interrupted by Miss Caroline, who met them as they turned a corner.

"Do tell!" she exclaimed in surprise. "You were in my mind just this minute. I wondered if I might not chance to meet you."

"Where have you been, Aunt Carrie?" asked Jack, seeing that she carried several small parcels.

"Shopping," she said. "Just think of it! Caroline Courtney actually out shopping in the dry-goods stores."

"What's the occasion?" asked Bethany. "It must be something important. I can't remember that you have done such a thing before since I have known you. Have you been invited to a ball, a wedding, or a wake?"

Miss Caroline beamed on them through her spectacles. "Really, my dears, that is just what I would like to know myself. That's why I had to make these purchases. Your cousin Ray came in this morning, just after you had gone, to invite us all to go to her house at half-past six this evening. She wouldn't tell us what sort of an occasion she was planning, only that it was a surprise for everybody, Mr. Marion most of all. He has been gone a week on a business trip, but will get home to-night at six. Sister and I have been trying to think what kind of an occasion it could be. I know it isn't their wedding anniversary, nor her birthday. Maybe it is his. So you see we couldn't decide just how we ought to dress—whether to wear our very best dove-colored silks and point lace, or the black crepon dresses we have had two seasons. Sister absolutely refuses to carry her elegant fan that she got in Brussels, although I want very much to take mine, especially if we wear the gray dresses. My second best is broken, and of course we wouldn't want to carry a palm-leaf. There was no other way but to take the second best fan down and match it. Then she had lost one of the bows of ribbon that was on her gray dress, and I had to match that, in case we decided to wear the grays. Here I have spent the whole morning over my fan and her ribbon."

"Dear me!" said Jack. "Why don't you carry your Brussels fan and wear your gray dress, and let her wear her black dress and take the kind of fan she wanted?"

"O, my child!" exclaimed Miss Caroline, "Neither of us would have taken a mite of comfort so. You don't understand how it feels when there are two of you. When you have spent—well, a great many years, in having things alike, you don't feel comfortable unless you are in pairs."

It was arranged that Jack should not go back to the office that afternoon. The sisters volunteered to take him with them.

Bethany hurried through her work, but it seemed to her she had never had so many interruptions, or so much to do.

It was after six when she closed her desk. Mr. Edmunds noticed the tired look on her flushed face, and said:

"Miss Hallam, my carriage is waiting down stairs. I have to stay here some time longer to meet a man who is late in keeping his engagement. Jerry may as well take you home while he is waiting." He went down on the elevator with her, and handed her into the carriage.

"Better stay out in the fresh air a little before you start home," he said, kindly. "It will do you good."

Bethany sank back gratefully among the cushions. Jerry had been her father's coachman at one time. He grinned from ear to ear as she took her seat.

"We'll take a spin along the river road," she said. "Give me a glimpse of the fields and the golden-rod, and then take me to Mrs. Marion's, on Phillips Avenue."

"Yes, miss," said Jerry, touching his hat. "I know all the roads you like best!"

The impatient horses needed no urging. They fairly flew down the beaten track that led from the noisy, bouldered streets into the grassy byways. On they went, past suburban orchards and outlying pastures, to the sights and sounds of the real country.

Bethany heard the slow, restful tinkle of bells in a quiet lane where the cows stood softly lowing at the bars. She heard the coo of doves in the distance, and the call of a quail in a brown stubble-field near by. Then the wind swept up from the river, now turning red in the sunset. It put new life into her pulses, and a new light in her eyes. The weariness was all gone. The wind had blown the light, curly hair about her face, and she put up her hands to smooth it back, as they came in sight of Mrs. Marion's house.

"It doesn't make any difference," she thought. "I can run up into Cousin Ray's room and put myself in order before any one sees me."

As the carriage stopped, some one stepped up quickly to assist her alight. It was David Herschel.

"Of all times!" she thought; "when I am literally blown to pieces. How queerly things do happen in this world!"

To her still greater wonderment, instead of closing the gate after her and going on down the street, he followed her up the steps.

"Cousin Ray said this was to be a surprise," she thought. "This must be part of it."

Miss Harriet and Miss Caroline had just smoothed their plumage in the guest-chamber, and were coming down the stairs hand in hand as David and Bethany entered the reception-hall.

This was their first glimpse of David. They had been very curious to see him. Jack had talked about him so much that they recognized him instantly from his description.

Miss Caroline squeezed Miss Harriet's hand, and said in a dramatic whisper, "Sister! the surprise."

"Look at Bethany," remarked Miss Harriet. "How unusually bright she looks, and yet a little flushed and confused. I wonder if he has been saying anything to her. They came in together."

"Pooh!" puffed Miss Caroline. Then they both moved forward with their most beaming "company smile," as Jack called it, to meet Mr. Herschel.

"Come in here," said Mrs. Marion, leading the way into the drawing-room, while Bethany made her escape up stairs.

"Mrs. Courtney, allow me to introduce Mrs. Dameron."

"Sally Atwater!" fairly shrieked Miss Caroline and Miss Harriet in chorus, as a tall, thin woman, with gray hair and sharp, twinkling eyes rose to meet them; "Sally Atwater, for the land's sake! how did you ever happen to get here?"

"It's an old school friend of theirs," explained Mrs. Marion to David, as the twins stood on tiptoe to grasp her around the neck and kiss her repeatedly between their exclamations of joyful surprise. "They haven't seen her since they were married. I'll present you, and then we'll leave them to have a good old gossip."

During the introductions in the drawing-room, Mr. Marion came into the hall, with his gripsack in his hand.

"Why, hello, Jack!" he called cheerily. "How are you, my boy? I'm so glad to see you."

He hung up his hat, and went forward to clap him on the shoulder and hold the little hands lovingly in his big, strong ones. While he still sat on the arm of Jack's chair, there was a sudden parting of the portieres behind them, a swift rustle, and two white hands met over his eyes and blindfolded him.

"O! O!" cried Jack ecstatically, and then clapped his hand over his mouth as he heard a warning "Sh!"

"It's Ray, of course," said Mr. Marion, laughing and reaching backwards to seize whoever had blindfolded him. "Nobody else would take such liberties."

"O, wouldn't they?" cried a mocking voice. "What about Ray's younger sister?"

He turned around, and catching her by the shoulders, held her out in front of him.

"Well, Lois Denning!" he exclaimed in amazement. "When did you get here, little sister? I never imagined you were within two hundred miles of this place."

"Neither did Ray until this morning. I just walked in unannounced."

When he had given her a hearty welcome she said: "O, I'm not the only one to surprise you. Just go in the other room, Brother Frank, and see who all's there, while I talk with this young man I haven't seen for a year."

Lois Denning had been Jack's favorite cousin since he was old enough to fasten his baby fingers in her long, brown hair. In her yearly visits to her sister she had devoted so much of her time to him, and been such a willing slave, that he looked forward to her coming even a shade more eagerly than he watched for Christmas.

There was one thing that remained longest in the memory of every guest who had ever enjoyed the hospitality of the Marion home. It was the warm welcome that made itself continually felt. It met them even in the free swing of the wide front door that seemed to say, "Just walk right in now, and make yourself at home."

There was an atmosphere of genial comfort and cheer that cast its spell on all who strayed over its inviting threshold. It made them long to linger, and loath to leave.

David Herschel was quick to appreciate the warm cordiality of his greeting. He had not been in the house five minutes until he felt himself on the familiar footing of an old friend. At first he wondered at the strange assortment of guests, and thought it queer he had been asked to meet the elderly twins and their old friend, who were so absorbed in each other.

Then Mrs. Marion brought in her sister, Lois Denning—a slim, graceful girl in a white duck suit, with a red carnation in the lapel of the jaunty jacket. She was a lively, outspoken girl, decided in her opinions, and original in her remarks.

"That red carnation just suits her," said David to himself, as they talked together. "She is so bright and spicy."

"Isn't it time for dinner, Ray?" asked Mr. Marion, anxiously. "It's getting dark, and I'm as hungry as a schoolboy."

"Yes, and your guests will think you are as impatient as one," she answered, laughingly. "We must wait a few minutes longer. Mr. Cragmore hasn't come yet."

"Cragmore!" cried Mr. Marion, starting to his feet.

"O dear," exclaimed his wife, "I didn't intend to tell you he was coming. I knew you hadn't seen the report from Conference yet, and I wanted to surprise you. He has been sent to the Clark Street Church. I met him coming up from the depot this morning, and asked him to dine with us to-night."

"Now I do wish I were a school-boy!" exclaimed Mr. Marion, "so that I might give vent to my delight as I used to."

"I remember how loud you could whoop when you were two feet six," remarked Mrs. Dameron. "I should not care to risk hearing you, now that you are six feet two."

There was a quick ring at the front door, and the next instant Frank Marion and George Cragmore were shaking hands as though they could never stop.

"I'm going to see if they fall on each other's necks and weep a la Joseph and his brethren," said Lois, tiptoeing towards the hall. "I've heard so much about George Cragmore, that I feel that I am about to be presented to a whole circus—menagerie and all."

"And how are ye, Mistress Marion?" they heard his musical voice say.

"Will ye moind that now," commented Lois in an undertone. "How's that for a touch of the rale auld brogue?"

He was introduced to the old ladies first, then to the saucy Lois and Jack. Then he caught sight of Herschel. They met with mutual pleasure, and were about cordially to renew their acquaintance, begun that day on the car, when Cragmore glanced across the room and saw Bethany.

Both Lois and David noticed the way his face lighted up, and the eagerness with which he went forward to speak to her.

That evening was the beginning of several things. The Hebrew class was organized. Mr. Marion had found only two of his teachers willing to undertake the work, but Lois cheerfully allowed herself to be substituted for the third one he had been so sure would join them.

"I'll not be here more than long enough to get a good start," she said, "but I'm in for anything that's going—Hebrew or Hopscotch, whichever it happens to be."

The twins declined to take any part. "I know it is beyond us," sighed Miss Harriet. "The Latin conjugations were always such a terror to me, and sister never did get her bearings in the German genders."

When it came time for the merry party to break up, Frank Marion would not listen to any good-nights from Cragmore.

"You're not going away. That's the end of it," he declared. "I'll walk down with you to the hotel, and have your trunk sent up. You're to stay here until you get a boarding place to suit you. I wouldn't let you go then, if I did not know it was essential for you to live nearer your congregation."

Mr. Marion walked on ahead, pushing Jack's chair, with Miss Caroline on one side, and Miss Harriet on the other.

Bethany followed with George Cragmore. There was a brilliant moonlight, and they walked slowly, enjoying to the utmost the rare beauty of the night.

"Come in a moment, George," called Mr. Marion, as he wheeled Jack up the steps. "I want to finish spinning this yarn."

They all went into the hall.

Bethany opened the door into the library and struck a match. Cragmore took it from her and lighted the gas.

But Mr. Marion still stood in the hall with his attentive audience of three.

"I'll be through in a moment," he called. The sisters dropped down in a large double rocker.

"You might as well sit down, too, Mr. Cragmore," said Bethany. "His minute may prove to be elastic."

Cragmore looked around the homelike old room, and then down at the fair-haired woman at his side. "Not to-night, thank you," he responded; "but I should like to come some other time. Yes, I think I should like to come here very often, Miss Hallam."

The admiration in his eyes, and the tone, made the remark so very personal that Bethany was slightly annoyed.

"O, our latch-string is always out to the clergy," she said lightly, and then led the way back to the hall to join the others.