And Levine—the torments that he endured were beyond all description! Of a sensitive temperament, yet endowed with a clear, critical, philosophic intellect, he sought for an explanation and a remedy in a scrutiny of every incident of their married life, in self-analysis, in the keenest introspection, and found nothing but that insurmountable wall. Nothing seemed credible or tangible save that dull gnawing pain in his heart. Once or twice the thought of self-destruction entered his head. Why he thrust it aside he could not say. He was not a coward. The prospect of fighting his way through life with that burden of misery upon his soul possessed infinitely more terrors for him than the thought of suicide. Nor did he pursue the suggestion sufficiently to come to the conclusion that it was unworthy. It was an alien thought, foreign to his nature, and could find no lodgment. That was all. He lived on and suffered. Have you ever heard of Levine, the poet? He is a compositor in the printing-shop of the _Jewish Workingman_ by day—he writes poetry, and, occasionally, short prose articles at night. He is not a genius. He is not a born singer. But his work is strong in its sincerity, and through it all runs a strain—that world-old strain of pleading—of weakness pleading for strength, of the oppressed pleading for justice. He is not a great poet, but among the readers of the _Jewish Workingman_, and among the loiterers in the East Side cafés, he is looked upon as a “friend of the masses.” And what they all marvel at is his prodigious industry. A day’s work in the composing-room of the _Jewish Workingman_ is a task calculated to sap a man’s vitality to its last drop. Yet, this task completed, Levine throws himself with feverish activity into the composition of verse, and writes, and writes, and writes, until the lamp burns low. Sometimes, when he tires, he pauses to listen to the gentle breathing of his wife, who sleeps in the next room. It acts like a spur upon him; with renewed energy he plunges into his work. The poem which the readers of the _Jewish Workingman_ like best of all Levine’s writings is “Phantoms.” It ends—roughly translated from the Yiddish—like this: _And when the deepening gloom of night descends Upon the perilous path and towering heights, And wild storm phantoms crowd each rocky pass— Love sinks exhausted, but grim Toil climbs on!_ A DAUGHTER OF ISRAEL