“But it was faith in Judaism that made him what he was. If I—if all Jews could only believe in the religion of their fathers as he believed—what an example to mankind Israel would be! “My friend, I thank you. You have come with me—you have listened to my story. I must attend to my friend. May the peace of God be with you!” The Reverend Thomas Gillespie (although, as I said, it may have been William) bowed, and, without a word, walked slowly out of the room. His lips trembled slightly. The “second outdoor meeting of the Reverend Gillespie’s Mission to the East Side Jews” has never taken place. WITHOUT FEAR OF GOD The thread on which the good qualities of human beings are strung like pearls, is the fear of God. When the fastenings of this fear are unloosed the pearls roll in all directions and are lost, one by one. —_The Book of Morals._ Be pleased to remember that this tale points no moral, that there is absolutely nothing to be deduced from it, and that in narrating it I am but repeating a curious incident that belongs to the East Side. It is a strange place, this East Side, with its heterogeneous elements, its babble of jargons. Its noise and its silence, its impenetrable mystery, its virtues, its romance, and its poverty—above all, its poverty! Some day I shall tell you something about the poverty of the East Side that will tax your credulity. * * * * * There lived on the East Side once a man who had no fear of God. His name was Shatzkin, and there had been a time when he was a learned man, skilled in the interpretation of Talmudic lore, fair to look upon and strong. Like many another outcast he had come with his story and his mystery out of the “poisonous East,” and there was no tie between him and his neighbours save the tie of Judaism. It is a wonderful bond between men, this tie of Judaism, a bond of steel that it has taken four thousand years of suffering and death to forge, and its ends are fastened to men’s hearts by rivets that are stronger than adamant, and the rabbis call these rivets “The fear of God.” The heat of summer came on. You who swelter in your parlour these sultry days—do you know what the heat of summer means to two families chained by poverty within a solitary room in a Ghetto tenement, where there is neither light nor air, where the pores of the walls perspire, where the stench of decay is ever present, where there is nothing but heat, heat, heat? You who have read with horror the tale of the Black Hole of Calcutta—have you seen a child lie upon a bare floor, gasping, and gasping and gasping for breath amid the roomful of silent people who are stitching for bread? I would give a year of my life to wipe out a certain memory that is awakened each time I hear a child cry—it was terrible. But I was telling you the story of Shatzkin.