Children of the Ghetto | Page 3

extent
graduated by synagogal contributions, and whoever could afford only a
little offering had it announced as a "gift"--a vague term which might
equally be the covering of a reticent munificence.
Very few persons, "called up" to the reading of the Law, escaped at the
cost they had intended, for one is easily led on by an insinuative official
incapable of taking low views of the donor's generosity and a little deaf.
The moment prior to the declaration of the amount was quite exciting
for the audience. On Sabbaths and festivals the authorities could not
write down these sums, for writing is work and work is forbidden; even
to write them in the book and volume of their brain would have been to
charge their memories with an illegitimate if not an impossible burden.
Parchment books on a peculiar system with holes in the pages and laces
to go through the holes solved the problem of bookkeeping without pen
and ink. It is possible that many of the worshippers were tempted to
give beyond their means for fear of losing the esteem of the Shammos
or Beadle, a potent personage only next in influence to the President
whose overcoat he obsequiously removed on the greater man's annual
visit to the synagogue. The Beadle's eye was all over the Shool at once,
and he could settle an altercation about seats without missing a single
response. His automatic amens resounded magnificently through the
synagogue, at once a stimulus and a rebuke. It was probably as a
concession to him that poor men, who were neither seat-holders nor
wearers of chimney-pot hats, were penned within an iron enclosure
near the door of the building and ranged on backless benches, and it
says much for the authority of the Shammos that not even the Schnorrer
contested it. Prayers were shouted rapidly by the congregation, and

elaborately sung by the Chazan. The minister was Vox et praeterea
nihil. He was the only musical instrument permitted, and on him
devolved the whole onus of making the service attractive. He
succeeded. He was helped by the sociability of the gathering--for the
Synagogue was virtually a Jewish Club, the focus of the sectarian life.
Hard times and bitter had some of the fathers of the Ghetto, but they ate
their dry bread with the salt of humor, loved their wives, and praised
God for His mercies. Unwitting of the genealogies that would be found
for them by their prosperous grandchildren, old clo' men plied their
trade in ambitious content. They were meek and timorous outside the
Ghetto, walking warily for fear of the Christian. Sufferance was still the
badge of all their tribe. Yet that there were Jews who held their heads
high, let the following legend tell: Few men could shuffle along more
inoffensively or cry "Old Clo'" with a meeker twitter than Sleepy Sol.
The old man crawled one day, bowed with humility and clo'-bag, into a
military mews and uttered his tremulous chirp. To him came one of the
hostlers with insolent beetling brow.
"Any gold lace?" faltered Sleepy Sol.
"Get out!" roared the hostler.
"I'll give you de best prices," pleaded Sleepy Sol.
"Get out!" repeated the hostler and hustled the old man into the street.
"If I catch you 'ere again, I'll break your neck." Sleepy Sol loved his
neck, but the profit on gold lace torn from old uniforms was high. Next
week he crept into the mews again, trusting to meet another hostler.
"Clo'! Clo'!" he chirped faintly.
Alas! the brawny bully was to the fore again and recognized him.
"You dirty old Jew," he cried. "Take that, and that! The next time I sees
you, you'll go 'ome on a shutter."
The old man took that, and that, and went on his way. The next day he

came again.
"Clo'! Clo'!" he whimpered.
"What!" said the ruffian, his coarse cheeks flooded with angry blood.
"Ev yer forgotten what I promised yer?" He seized Sleepy Sol by the
scruff of the neck.
"I say, why can't you leave the old man alone?"
The hostler stared at the protester, whose presence he had not noticed in
the pleasurable excitement of the moment. It was a Jewish young man,
indifferently attired in a pepper-and-salt suit. The muscular hostler
measured him scornfully with his eye.
"What's to do with you?" he said, with studied contempt.
"Nothing," admitted the intruder. "And what harm is he doing you?"
"That's my bizness," answered the hostler, and tightened his clutch of
Sleepy Sol's nape.
"Well, you'd better not mind it," answered the young man calmly. "Let
go."'
The hostler's thick lips emitted a disdainful laugh.
"Let go, d'you hear?" repeated the young man.
"I'll let go at your nose," said the hostler, clenching his knobby fist.
"Very well," said the