"I am going to buy a book on Salem street," said my friend, when we suddenly encountered on Tremont Row. "Do you wish to come along?"

I was bent on any adventure, and so we started for the quarter, down through Hanover street. It was but a short distance, and before we had done much chatting in the way of exchanging ideas, we were at the head of the street, facing the pawnshop of No. 1, with the welcome legend of "Money to Loan."

We passed safely the bedecked and bedraggled second-hand clothing stores, though the pullers-in were out in full force. As my companion explained, it is only the seeming strangers who are approached and asked to buy, or sell, but familiar figures and persons in their company are never molested. One of these attendants, a dark, sad-eyed, kind-faced young man, was leaning against the door-post of a store and intently reading a Jewish magazine. We were across the street and we stopped to look. This fellow, who was engaged in the most sordid business, was reading the "Zukunft," the magazine of dreams, ideals and Utopias, published by the New York radicals. An elderly, bearded and stout man came down the street. Without looking up from his booklet the youth mechanically asked: "Any clothing to-day?"

"No," the man shouted, "no clothing to-day, and you'll never sell anything if this is the way you'll attend to your business." It was the proprietor of the store. For a moment the puller-in seemed dazed. Then he shoved his "Zukunft" into his coat pocket. He began to cast his eyes about for customers. He looked a model of sorrow. I was told that it was his idealism, his striving for the impossible, beautiful, that reduced him to the ugly position he was in. We moved on. There were other men reading, if only in snatches, but they apparently owned their stores and had their assistants. One of the pullers pointed out to me is one of the most enthusiastic Zionists in this city. Children were playing on sidewalks and doorsteps, sedately but happily. A school-teacher from one of the neighboring institutions passed through the street. Several little girls recognized and flocked about her. One took the teacher's umbrella, the other asked for the privilege of carrying the young lady's Boston bag. They took hold of her arms and went along dancing and smiling as she talked to them. Above the rumbling of wagons were heard the pleasing notes of a piano and the singing of a sweet-voiced daughter of the tenements.

Farther up the street was more crowded. It was Thursday afternoon. The stores were all activity and bustle, and the pedlers with their wagons and pushcarts were crying their foods and wares for "the Holy Sabbath" in quaint and singing Yiddish phrases. I was reminded by my friend that Abraham Goldfoden, the father of the Jewish stage, in one of his operettas uses a swarming, eve-of-Sabbath market-scene like this very effectively, and makes his hucksters sing beautifully of the things they have to sell. Said my guide: "Of course, in the operetta of 'The Witch' the pedlers are not so ragged and besmeared, and you cannot hear the smell of the meat and the fish, but neither can you buy and eat these things. After all, if art is beautiful, real life is quite useful.

"To our people," said Keidansky, casting his eyes about, "everything here is a matter of course, and there is nothing unusual about it all. The strangest things are the strangers, who come to stare, study and wonder. In fact, the self-concentration of the Jew, probably the secret of his survival, makes this the only place in the world, the temporary Palestine, the centre of the universe. There are other places in this city, but they are only the outskirts, the suburbs of the Ghetto. There are other peoples and religions, but we are the people and ours is the faith. The flattery that children receive from their parents afterwards helps them to bear the brunt of the battle. The consciousness of his being chosen helped Israel to find his way through the dark labyrinth of the centuries. Everything here is as it should be, only a little more on the exclusive and pious European plan. This is more of the old fashioned view, but it is still extant, inasmuch as the Ghetto remains."

Now we were near Bersowsky's book-store which was on the other side of the street and we stopped, facing it. A street-organ was playing in front of the strange emporium and a band of children were dancing gayly to its music. We could see the books and periodicals, phylacteries and newspapers, holy fringe-garments and sheets of Jewish music in the windows from the other side of the street. And as we came nearer we could see the very aged woman, bewigged and kerchiefed, wan, wrinkled and wry—the most familiar figure in the Ghetto—we could see her sitting on her high stool, drinking a glass of tea and selling newspapers. There were several simple prints and chromos in the window, reproductions from pictures of Jewish life. Parents blessing their children on the Day of Atonement, the Feast of Passover, high priests lighting the candles in the temple—these were their subjects. In the windows were also brass candlesticks, such as are being lighted and blessed on the eve of each Sabbath. We stood outside and mused.

"This," Keidansky explained, "is the leading Jewish book-store in Boston, and it is in a sense also the spiritual centre of this Ghetto. If any one were to ask me what is to-day the moral condition of the Jews, their spiritual state, what are their intellectual status and religious aspirations, if any one should ask me—I would take them into this store and let them see what it contains. Religion, history, literature—it is all in here—at least in all its physical manifestations. Pentateuchs, Bibles, prayer-books, all books of religious instruction, books of piety and penance, volumes of the Talmud and of Mishna, phylacteries and holy scrolls, covers for the scrolls and curtains for the Holy Ark, ram's horns to sound on New Year's, knives wherewith to kill cattle according to a merciful ritual, candle-sticks and show-threads which the Jews were commanded to wear at the bottom of their garments (and some of them now wear under their garments)—in a word, all that stands to preserve the old faith is here. All the symbolism of our old faith is here incarnated. And yet side by side with these are the things which tend towards the transformation or dissolution of the ancient religion—the publications of the radicals, the destroying utterances of the revolutionists. Here come the orthodox for prayer-books and the anti-religious for free-thought pamphlets. Here you find the organs of the patriots and Zionists, who wish to preserve and regenerate the Jewish people, and also the organs of the Socialists and Anarchists who are fighting against all national ideas and for an assimilated humanity. Come in and I'll show you. There is the 'Zukunft' (Future), the best literary and scientific monthly we ever had, which is published by the Socialists. It was formerly edited by Abe Cahan, now Dr. Caspe has charge of it. And look! 'Die Freie Arbeiter Stimme,' the Anarchist weekly, ably edited by S. Yanofsky, one of the cleverest Yiddish writers.

"And," my friend whispered, "this old lady, who stands for all that is pious and ancient, handing out the 'Freie Arbeiter Stimme' and the Socialist 'VorwÄrts,' is to me as strongly dramatic and as profoundly symbolic a picture as any thing in life and literature. Mr. Bersowsky, who started this store, now sells books, it is hoped, in a better world. Look at this young old woman—his widow—and see if hearts ever break around here. The aged lady is his mother, and she would not be in any other place in the world, except where her husband, and afterwards her son spent their last days. So she stays here all the time the store is open, and sells papers and books in spite of protests.

"The Jew is so practical that he always looks ahead; he is chronically optimistic, and his imagination creates everything that the world denies him. Dreamer he has been ever since the prophets, and even before their time. It must have been superb idealism and beautiful faith which enabled him to loan money to his neighbors during the Middle Ages. It still requires fine imagination to do it to-day.

"Between the sordid and the sublime stands the Jew, who is either one or the other, or both, as circumstances shape his destiny. You can see this in all his literature, from the stories of Motke Chabad to the plays of Jacob Gordin.

"Is it not strange how quickly we adapt ourselves, and how soon we come up to date and ahead of date? But yesterday we had no literature except our religious guides, our only beacon lights in the old-world Ghettos; and now we have splendid modern works, both in Hebrew and Yiddish, all breathing the modern spirit. Many standard works from all European tongues have been translated for us; but we have a number of great masters of our own. It is such a short time ago that we had no fiction to speak of us (except the sermons of our preachers); and now there is Abromowitz and Peretz, Spector and Rubenowitz, and so many others. There is a whole group of modern poets, who have also grown up in no time. And the struggle between the old and the new, which this literature represents, the striving for the modern, and the longing for the ancient—that is what makes it so painful and pleasant—so stirring, and therefore such good art. All grades of feeling and believing, thinking and non-thinking, are in the books and periodicals that you find in this store. And the men and women who come here, living in the same Ghetto, are often millions of miles apart in their ideas."

My guide asked for his book, a Hebrew story, by L. M. Lillenblum. The elderly man, who is a relative of the family and a partner in the business, knew all about it, found it after a long search, and made my friend happy. The story, I was told, was written about twenty years ago by a native of Keidan. At that time there was a general literary awakening, and many talented men wrote profane and useful books in the holy language, and shocked the orthodox Jews of Russia. In Keidan, they wanted to excommunicate the author of "The Follies of My Youth"; but the rabbi of Kovno telegraphed, saying that the infidel was a great man, and should be left alone—with his book. An old man came in, and after much bargaining, bought a silk praying-shawl. Several persons came in for papers. A young man bought the "Zukunft" and "The Merchant of Venice" translated in blank verse, by Joseph Bovshover.

He wore glasses, long hair, carried an umbrella and a green bag; in fact, one might have met him in a vegetarian restaurant. He was pointed out to me as a noted radical, a dreamer, who writes for the "VorwÄrts," works as a tailor in a sweat-shop, and is said to be writing a book. A comely young maiden, with a madonna-like face, came near the store. She had a few mayflowers in her hand—and gave them to a ragged little child standing there. She came in and bought a paper. She did not read Yiddish; but it was for her father. She was a college student, I was told, of advanced ideas, but deeply in love with the people of the Ghetto and their beliefs—was planning to devote her life to settlements and social reform work—one of the many dreamers who came into this store.

"Once," said my guide, "I told her that I would put her into a book. 'Thank you,' she answered. 'I don't want to sink into oblivion so soon.' But she is an idyl of the Ghetto just the same. Look; here are the poems of David Edelstaat. He sleeps now in a lonely grave in the Jewish cemetery at Denver, Colorado, by the side of the fence, for he was a delinquent in Israel. He went there by way of the corroding sweat-shop and a damp cellar in New York, where he edited a little communist weekly. Many of our idealists go to Denver this way. It is the only time they travel and take a vacation. The hospitals there are crowded. But Edelstaat's poems, they are a sacred treasure among the Jewish working people."