His courageous resolution lightened the gloom. His parents opened parcels they had not had the heart to touch. They brought him his new suit, they placed the high hat of manhood on his head, and told him how fine and tall he looked; they wrapped the new silk praying-shawl round his shoulders. "Are the stripes blue or black?" he asked. "Blue--a beautiful blue," said Jossel, striving to steady his voice. "It feels very nice," said Brum, smoothing the silk wistfully. "Yes, I can almost feel the blue." Later on, when his father, a little brightened, had gone off to the exigent boot factory, Brum even asked to see the presents. The blind retain these visual phrases. Zillah described them to him one by one as he handled them. When it came to the books it dawned on her that she could not tell him the titles. "They have such beautiful pictures," she gushed evasively. The boy burst into tears. "Yes, but I shall never be able to read them," he sobbed. "Yes, you will." "No, I won't." "Then I'll read them to you," she cried, with sudden resolution. "But you can't read." "I can learn." "But you will be so long. I ought to have taught you myself. And now it is too late!" V In order to insure perfection, and prevent stage fright, so to speak, it had been arranged that Brum should rehearse his reading of the _Sedrah_ on Friday in the synagogue itself, at an hour when it was free from worshippers. This rehearsal, his mother thought, was now all the more necessary to screw up Brum's confidence, but the father argued that as all places were now alike to the blind boy, the prominence of a public platform and a large staring audience could no longer unnerve him. "But he will _feel_ them there!" Zillah protested. "But since they are not there on the Friday--?" "All the more reason. Since he cannot see that they are _not_ there, he can fancy they _are_ there. On Saturday he will be quite used to them." * * * * * But when Jossel, yielding, brought Brum to the synagogue appointment, the fusty old Beadle who was faithfully in attendance held up his hands in holy and secular horror at the blasphemy and the blindness respectively. "A blind man may not read the Law to the congregation!" he explained. "No?" said Jossel. "Why not?" asked Brum sharply. "Because it stands that the Law shall be read. And a blind man cannot read. He can only recite." "But I know every word of it," protested Brum. The Beadle shook his head. "But suppose you make a mistake! Shall the congregation hear a word or a syllable that God did not write? It would be playing into Satan's hands." "I shall say every word as God wrote it. Give me a trial." But the fusty Beadle's piety was invincible. He was highly sympathetic toward the human affliction, but he refused to open the Ark and produce the Scroll. "I'll let the _Chazan_ (cantor) know he must read to-morrow, as usual," he said conclusively.