"A wholesale shoe merchant, I believe. He is in that big new building next to Cohen's furniture-store, on Duke Street. But you'll not find him Wednesday night. They have Church in the middle of the week, and he is one of the few Christians whose life is as loud as his profession." David smiled a little bitterly. "Then I shall certainly cultivate his acquaintance for the purpose of studying such a rara avis. It has never been my lot to know a Christian who measured up to his creed." "Do not grow cynical, my lad," answered the old man, gently. "I have made you a dreamer like myself. I have kept you in an atmosphere of high ideals. I have led you into the companionship of all that was heroic in the past, and held you apart as much as possible from the sordid selfishness of the age. O, I grow sick at heart sometimes when I stroll through the great centers of trade, watching the fierce struggle of humanity as they snatch the bread from other mouths to feed their own. "You remember our Hebrew word for teach comes from tooth, and means to make sharp like a tooth. Sometimes I think that primitive idea has become the popular view of education in this day. Anything that will fit a man to bite and cut his way through this hungry wolf-pack is what is sought after, no matter how many of his kind are trampled under foot in the struggle. I am almost afraid for you to step down from the place where I have kept you. When you are thrown with men who care for nothing but material things, who would barter not only their birthrights but their souls for a mess of pottage, I am afraid you will lose faith in humanity." "That is quite likely, Uncle Ezra." "Aye, but I would not have it so, David. The world is certainly growing a little less savage, and in every nature smolders some spark, however small, of the eternal good. No matter how we have fallen, we still bear the imprint of the Creator, in whose likeness we were first fashioned." Rabbi Barthold had been right in calling himself a dreamer. The ability to live apart from his surroundings, had been his greatest comfort. Because of it, the rigor of extreme poverty that surrounded his early life had not touched his heart with its baneful chill. He had gone through the world a happy optimist. He had been trained according to the most strictly orthodox system of Judaism. But even its severe pressure had failed to confine him to the limits of such a narrow mold. He was still a dreamer. In the new world he had cast aside the shackles of tradition for the larger liberty of the Reformed Jew. Now in his serene old age, surrounded by luxuries, he still lived apart in a world of music and literature. His congregation, broken loose from the old moorings, drifted dangerously away towards radicalism, but he stood firm in the belief that the "chosen people" would finally triumph over all error, and found much comfort in the thought.