“Talk not thyself thereinto.  Who wouldn’t like to catch hold of thy cloak to go to heaven by?  But Mrs. Simons is too much of an Englishwoman for me.  Your last wife had English ideas and made mock of pious men and God’s judgment took her.  What says the Prayer-book?  For three things a woman dies in childbirth, for not separating the dough, for not lighting the Sabbath lamps and for not—­”

“How often have I told thee she did do all these things!” interrupted Moses.

“Dost thou contradict the Prayer-book?” said the Bube angrily.  “It would have been different if thou hadst let me pick a woman for thee.  But this time thou wilt honor thy mother more.  It must be a respectable, virtuous maiden, with the fear of heaven—­not an old woman like Mrs. Simons, but one who can bear me robust grandchildren.  The grandchildren thou hast given me are sickly, and they fear not the Most High.  Ah! why did’st thou drag me to this impious country?  Could’st thou not let me die in peace?  Thy girls think more of English story books and lessons than of Yiddishkeit, and the boys run out under the naked sky with bare heads and are loth to wash their hands before meals, and they do not come home in the dinner hour for fear they should have to say the afternoon prayer.  Laugh at me, Moses, as thou wilt, but, old as I am, I have eyes, and not two blotches of clay, in my sockets.  Thou seest not how thy family is going to destruction.  Oh, the abominations!”

Thus warned and put on his mettle, Moses would keep a keen look-out on his hopeful family for the next day, and the seed which the grandmother had sown came up in black and blue bruises or, the family anatomy, especially on that portion of it which belonged to Solomon.  For Moses’s crumbling trousers were buckled with a stout strap, and Solomon was a young rogue who did his best to dodge the Almighty, and had never heard of Lowell’s warning,

    You’ve gut to git up airly,
    Ef you want to take in God.

Even if he had heard of it, he would probably have retorted that he usually got up early enough to take in his father, who was the more immediately terrible of the two.  Nevertheless, Solomon learned many lessons at his father’s knee, or rather, across it.  In earlier days Solomon had had a number of confidential transactions with his father’s God, making bargains with Him according to his childish sense of equity.  If, for instance, God would ensure his doing his sums correctly, so that he should be neither caned nor “kept in,” he would say his morning prayers without skipping the aggravating Longe Verachum, which bulked so largely on Mondays and Thursdays; otherwise he could not be bothered.

By the terms of the contract Solomon threw all the initiative on the Deity, and whenever the Deity undertook his share of the contract, Solomon honorably fulfilled his.  Thus was his faith in Providence never shaken like that of some boys, who expect the Deity to follow their lead.  Still, by declining to praise his Maker at extraordinary length, except in acknowledgment of services rendered, Solomon gave early evidence of his failure to inherit his father’s business incapacity.