Philip's attitude towards _shool_ was immediately prejudiced on his mere going thither. For almost from earliest times, not appreciably long, it seemed, after he had discarded the blue wool and tassels of infancy, he had been expected to crown his small figure with a large black bowler hat; and bowler hats, as could not be denied, were _bloody_. He felt stupidly self-conscious as he walked along by his father's side, as if all Doomington stared and jeered. If Reb Monash met a friend and these pursued a common way to the synagogue, Philip would hover behind, remove the bowler hat, and pretend it was somebody else's--he was only "holding it like." There was a brood of young gentlemen very popular among their elders at the _Polisher Shool_. There was Hymie, whose eyes were large and innocent and who helped himself daily from his father's till. His voice was the voice of an exceptionally guileless thrush and he sang Yiddish songs at _Shalla-shudos_, the Saturday afternoon gatherings. There was Moishe, who asked such clever questions so sweetly concerning the weekly portion, that they were answered with delight by the expository old men, excepting when, as they somewhat frequently did, they involved sexual references. Moishe's mind was prematurely a cesspool. Others also there were to whom piety was a paying proposition, and two were pious because they were thus made. Philip could not throw in his lot with this company. And the whole _shool_ remembered how the synagogue-president, the _parnass_, had, some years ago, pressed him to drink of the Sabbath night cup of wine; how Philip had refused it both because he didn't like wine and because he didn't like a public exhibition of a deed tinged with piety; how the pride of the _parnass_ had been aroused and how he endeavoured to force the wine between Philip's lips while the whole _shool_ awaited the issue; how Philip had suddenly thrust aside the foot of the beaker so that the wine fell stickily round the respective trousers of himself and the _parnass_. Philip felt instinctively how everybody stiffened with dislike when he entered the synagogue, a dislike accentuated by the universal honour with which his father was regarded. Had he but been the son of a bootmaker, the Judaic virtues would not have been so prominently expected from him; they would have said "a bootmaker remains a bootmaker, even to his remote posterity!" But being the son of Reb Monash, whose black hair and beard his son was even now dimming with disastrous grey, Philip was a public scorn.