He was no philosopher content with metaphysical speculations. He was no Spinoza to be content to grind lenses and subsist on a penny’s worth of Dutch bread and raisins. Unlike the philosopher’s passion for abstract truth, truth was meaningless to Albert unless it colored human life. His asceticism was not that of the monk wilfully denying himself the pleasures of the body but rather that of the pleasure-seeking maiden who silently broods in her chamber because she was left out of a festivity. The world to him was a playground, and he wished to do part of the playing. Of late he had tried to get his first poems published in book form but the publishers could see no merit in them. The verses were too simple to strike the publishers as extraordinary; and though Goethe had given them a lesson in simplicity the Germans were still too bombastic to appreciate any writing unless tumid. Albert felt that as soon as his poems were published the world would be at his feet. He had been to see a publisher who was specializing in books that provoked the censor, but as yet there was nothing in Albert’s poems to provoke any one except a lovesick maiden. One day he decided to have his poems published at any cost, and show his uncle—and Hilda—that he was no mere clerk. But where could he get the money? He only received a salary sufficient for his board and lodgings. Besides, he did not know how to economize. He soon thought of the lottery, the living hope, and the despair, of his father’s existence. Perhaps he might win—somebody won at every drawing! One night he dreamt that he played the lottery and won. He thought this a good omen and the following morning gambled away his last _Pfennig_. II. Eager to have some of his poems published, and finding no publisher to risk his imprint, he sent a few verses to _Hamburg’s Waechter_, a newly founded periodical, whose secret aim was Jew-baiting. The editor of this journal, one Karl Trummer, was one of those pen-patriots who abound in every land in times of great strife and who sell their pens to the highest bidder. After every war there is a feeling present that the bloodshed was useless, and every faction blames the other. In spite of Hegel’s saying that the only thing man learns from history is that he learns nothing from history, certain pen-patriots have learned that laying the blame at the door of one class satisfies all other classes—the same class that bore the brunt when wells were poisoned, when the Black Plague raged, when famine swept the land, when reason dethroned the idols of antiquity. The Jew has always been an atoning scapegoat.