If that be the case, it is foolish to fly from them, Moses Freudenthal! See, they dog your footsteps wherever you go through the narrow gloomy little streets. They whisper in your ear, even though you strive to drown their voices by entering into conversation with the passers-by. They appear before your very eyes in spite of your fixing them upon the votive tablets fastened to the pillars in the house of God! And when you pass through the congregation and take your seat in your accustomed place, they flutter around your head, look at you out of the very letters of your prayer-book, and speak to you in the voice of the officiating minister!... "Praise ye the Lord. Break out into joy, gladness, and song. For He judgeth the world with righteousness and the people with His truth." "And the solitary," cries a secret voice in the heart of the unhappy man, "shall He break in pieces!" His eyes are fixed upon his book, his lips whisper the words of prayer; but he does not pray, he can not! The whole of his past life rises ghost-like before his mental vision, and in such vivid detail as to cause him intense agony.... "He who can no longer pray," his old father had often told him, and now the words involuntarily recur to him,--"He who can no longer pray shall be cast out from before the face of the Eternal." He distinctly remembers the day on which he had first heard those words. He was then a boy of thirteen, and had been allowed to put on the phylacteries for the first time, the sign that he had reached man's estate. The life that opened out before him on that day was not easy and pleasant like that of the fortunate of the earth, but hard and narrow as that endured by his race. In common with every one around him, he had early learned to dedicate his life to two objects, and these were--prayer and money-making. When he was seventeen years of age his father had called him into his room, and had then told him, in a calm matter-of-fact tone, that he was to marry Chaim Gruenstein's daughter Rosele in three months' time. He did not know the girl. He had seen her, it is true, but he had never really looked at her. His father had, however, chosen her to be his wife, and he was satisfied that it was well. Three months later he married Rosele.... Hark! the Chazzan is beginning the ancient Sabbath hymn, whose words, expressive of joy and longing, go straight to the heart--"Lecho daudi likras kalle." And immediately the choir takes up the strain triumphantly, "Lecho daudi likras kalle"--"Come, O friend, let us go forth to meet the Bride, let us receive the Sabbath with joy!"