Over and above these lesser features in his character reigned the great factors truth and justice. He took no credit to himself that he was never guilty of a meanness; it was simply that it was not in his nature to fall so low, and that he walked instinctively in the right path. He had frequently conversed with Rachel upon the doctrine of responsibility, arguing that children born of vicious parents should not be made accountable for their evil acts to the fullest extent. "It is an inheritance," he argued, "and it is not they who are wholly guilty. My parents gave me an inheritance of cheerfulness and good temper, and I am more grateful for it than I should be if they had left me a bag of gold." Upon questions of right and wrong his good sense and his rectitude led him unerringly to the just side, and when his own interests were involved in a decision he was called upon to make in such and such an issue he never for a moment hesitated. To have benefited himself at the expense of justice would have been in his eyes a sin which was not to be forgiven. A sin of unconscious omission could be expiated, but a sin of deliberate commission would have weighed forever on his soul. Could such a man as this, a devout and conscientious Jew, faithful every day of his life in the observances of his religion, with a firm belief in the mercy and goodness of the Eternal God, and with the principles of truth and justice shining ever before him, be guilty of such a sin? It will be presently seen.