This is the General. Perhaps, strictly speaking, he does not deserve the title, for he long since was stricken from the Russian army list, and might even meet with condign punishment were he to return to his native land; but once he bore it with full right and authority, and no military shortcoming, no lack of loyalty or courage upon the battlefield was responsible for its forfeiture. It is, therefore, only natural that his friends and neighbors who know his history give him the title. So “the General” he is, and “the General” he will remain, until death calls him to his last long bivouac. What a tremendous change in state and fortune! Once a distinguished military commander, whose slightest behest thousands hastened to obey because of his heroism; beloved by his countrymen and honored by his emperor; the husband of a renowned general’s daughter, and with every prospect promising rapid advancement and eventually loftiest rank; now the humble denizen of an obscure street in the Jewish quarter of New York, his life in nowise different from that of the other long-bearded habitués of the synagogue and the Beth Hammidrash. How came this Jew, son of a proscribed and pariah race, to attain to such distinguished rank in the service of the persecutors of his people? How came he to lose it, and to sink back again into the lowliness from which he sprang? It is a strange tale, showing what sombre romances, what heartrending tragedies Jewish life is still capable of producing in the empire of the Czars. I shall tell it you. Some seventy years ago there lived in one of the western provinces of Russia a young couple. Israel Rabbinowitz was the husband’s name, and Malka Feige that of the spouse. They were a pious and worthy pair. The husband was a respected merchant, whose scrupulous honesty and commercial rectitude were no less esteemed than his unswerving religious fidelity, and the accuracy and extent of the Hebrew scholarship which he displayed in the Talmudic debates of the circle of “learners” in the Beth Hammidrash. Malka Feige was a worthy mate of such a husband. Kindhearted, unwearyingly industrious, and devout, she was a typical Jewish housewife.