FORWARD FROM BABYLON BY LOUIS GOLDING 1921 MOFFAT, YARD & COMPANY NEW YORK FOR MY FATHER _A Glossary of some Yiddish words is given on p._ 308. CONTENTS BOOK I FORWARD FROM DOOMINGTON WALLS CHAPTER I II III IV V BOOK II FORWARD FROM PHYLACTERIES VI VII VIII IX X BOOK III APHRODITE XI XII XIII XIV XV XVI FORWARD FROM BABYLON BOOK I FORWARD FROM DOOMINGTON WALLS CHAPTER I Russia--here was the first Babylon. Sitting on the metal stool, his second-hand velvet suit fraying against the heat of the oven, Philip's big eyes were round with horror of this immense, inscrutable place. Everything they said was portentous, not wholly real. Many of their words attained a meaning only after laborious thinking. "_Kossacken_--big as trees!" "Big spikes in front of the Gubernator's house! Babies stuck! Rachel, the parchment-maker's daughter, caught up on a white horse! Never heard of again!" "Blood in the streets, thick!" A fear and a helpless rage seized the faces there, always only half seen in the gloom of the kitchen. By day, beyond the bars which uselessly scowled against the small glass panes, the drab walls of the house next door kept away everything but a dirty and dubious light. By night, the flare of the coal-gas jet distorted his father, Reb Monash, and his own feet on the fender, and the sofa into things of blurred, awkward lines. It must be confessed that Reb Monash Massel was not wholly unconscious of his power to produce this atmosphere where terrible and impalpable presences flowed from his lips in a shadowy rout. Sabres flashing! Hilarious ponderous blasphemies tangled in the beards of _Kossacken_ storming onward and away!