for as if they were a criminal class condemned to pass their lives in circumscribed districts. The ancient Ghetto of the Middle Ages exists for them in some districts of Russia with all its penal severities. They may not own an inch of Russian land ; they may only occupy themselves in certain limited licensed businesses ; they are compelled at intervals to present themselves at certain official stations for the purpose of reporting themselves and renewing their passports ; they are open to insult and derision at the hands of any Christian who chooses morally and physically to wipe his feet upon them. Nevertheless, as a class, they succeed in ekeing out an existence and maintaining a reli- gious independence with an obstinacy that is little less than miraculous. The intensity of their application to the art of money-making also develops, even under the severest conditions, a moneyed class. In every village there is at least one rich Jew a local Shylock who lends money at usury, buys up or mortgages the crops of his urban neigh- bor, rents some noble's distillery, controls the taverns, and commands from his co-religionists the respect which is denied him by his Christian fellow-subjects. The child of a thousand years of ill-treatment, it is not to be expected that he will deal any more charitably with the Christian than the Christian deals with him. If the Christian despises him, be sure he hates the Christian with a deadly hatred. Should his child, under the milder influence of Christian precepts, give way to a proselytizing influence, she or he is considered dead to all intents and purposes, the bitter feeling going so far as to comprehend a funeral service, with an empty coffin and a cemetery record. There is no forgiveness for the deserter among the Russian Jews.
Nathan Klosstock would probably have resented as fiercely as Shylock himself the defection of his only daugh- ter Anna, although in his financial reign at Czarovna he had won the title among the better cjass of Christians of a
