influences of home. This was the only kind of wedding tour known to the world in which he had grown up, and the young scholar spent this time studying the Talmud under the guidance of Rabbi Israel, of Salant, perhaps the ablest Talmudist of his time.

Armed with a diploma from the famous scholar, Jacob, shortly after rejoining his wife, accepted a rabbinical position, at first at Valon, and then at a larger town. His fame as a "keen head" spread far and wide, so that by the time he was a man of forty or more he was invited to become the town-preacher" of Wilna, known as the Jerusalem of the Lithuania and the greatest center of Talmudic scholarship in the world.

"

Meanwhile the overflowing immigration of Russian Jews to America, ushered in by the anti-Semitic riots of 1880, had built up on the east side of New York at once the largest and most prosperous Ghetto of modern times. Am. bitious to outstrip the people at home, the refu gees imported many of the celebrities of the old Ghettos of Russia, Poland, Galicia, and Roumania. They did not rest until they had secured the best synagogue singers, the leading wedding band, and every Yiddish actor known to fame.

When it was decided to invite a celebrated Talmudist to become the religious head of the East Side, the choice of the eighteen synagogues which had formed a joint organization for the purpose naturally fell upon the town-preacher of Wilna.

Rabbi Jacob Joseph arrived in New York on July 7, 1888. His advent was hailed as the opening of a new era in the history of American Judaism, as the beginning of a great religious revival not only on the east side of New York, but in the Jewish colony of every city in the United States. There is no hierarchy in the Church of Moses, yet the newly arrived Talmudist was proclaimed chief rabbi, the older orthodox rabbis of New York being expected to recognize his authority of their own accord and out of respect for his superior erudition.

His first sermons on American soil attracted the largest crowds ever seen on similar occasions on the East Side, but while these sermons fully bore out his reputation for learning and acumen, the more far-sighted of his friends came away heavy-hearted.

There were plenty of immigrants from Wilna among those who came to hear him, and somehow the same people who had admired his exhortations at home met them rather lukewarmly in New York.

Rabbi Joseph was the same, but his listeners had changed.

During the three or four years which they had

spent under American influences they had lived more than they had in all the forty or fifty years of their life at home; and although many of them still clung to the essentials of their faith, they had learned to wear short coats and to dispense with their side-locks, or even to shave their beards. They had fallen into the way of going to theaters and reading newspapers; they had attended public evening schools, and picked up a thousand and one of the little things which go to make up modern civilization, and without which life now did not seem to them worth living.

Rabbi Joseph remained the man of the third century he had been brought up to be, while his fellow country people, whom he came here to lead, were in hourly contact with the culture of the nineteenth century. A gap was yawning between the chief rabbi and his people, one which symbolized a most interesting chapter in the history of Israel, but which foreshadowed the tragedy of the newcomer's life in this country.

People who came in contact with him were fascinated by his magnetic personality.

He was a plain-spoken, mild-tempered, unsophisticated, modest man. His heart went out to Lithuania. There are college-bred people in Wilna, too, but there the old-fashioned members of the community still hold sway, while here the modern spirit has taken possession of every nook and cranny of the Ghetto. One cannot wear a longskirted coat without being scoffed at as a " green. horn." The very Yiddish of the people on the East Side is full of English words and phrases to which the imported preacher was a stranger.

The worshippers who attended his sermons found them " green, -a term applied in the New York Ghetto to everything that is not up to the American standard as interpreted by the East Side. They looked down upon his ways as they do upon the man who has not replaced his Russian cap by a Grand Street hat. The cele brated Talmudist strained every effort to adapt himself to his new environment. He took pains to say "street" instead of gass, and "room instead of zimmer; he strove to intersperse his good Lithuanian Yiddish with broken bits of English phraseology, as he saw his followers do; but all this, so far from tending to bridge over the gulf between him and his flock, only seemed to accentuate the unnaturalness of his position. His audiences were gradually thinning out. sermons became few and far between.

His

He was the same Jacob the keen-witted as of yore, but the people to whom he addressed himself had heard scores of effective speakers in Yiddish and in English.

The older rabbis of the Ghetto were not slow

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to appreciate the situation. Not only did they refuse to recognize his superiority, but they even added the title of chief rabbi" to their names. Thus the East Side found itself in possession of as many chief rabbis as it had orthodox religious teachers.

One of the innovations introduced in the name of Rabbi Joseph was a system of supervising the "kosher" slaying of cattle. In order to insure that the meat bought by the faithful was prepared in accordance with the laws of Moses and the Talmud, a force of inspecting rabbis and shochtim (slayers) was appointed. These acted under the supervision of the chief rabbi, and the patrons of those wholesale butchers who submitted to this system received certificates declaring their meat kosher."

This gave rise to a conflict of interests in the meat business. The Ghetto was torn into factions, the butchers of each faction displaying the certificate of a different chief rabbi" in his window.

The enemies of the new system charged Rabbi Joseph with trying to force upon the poor people a corobka (meat task) like the one imposed upon the Jews in Russia. As a matter of fact, however, he had very little to do with the practical side of the measure. He was neither a man of affairs nor a fighter. He remained absorbed in the intricacies of his Talmud; remained absorbed in the third century, in which he had dwelt all his life. His great desire was to be

allowed to read his holy books undisturbed. But the meat certificate which bore his name proved to have a far greater fascination for the pious housewife of the Ghetto than those of his rivals, and the struggle became more bitter every day. People accused the organization which paid him his salary of acting in league with a butcher trust. and the rabbi himself with serving the rich against the poor. To cap the climax, he delivered several sermons against trade unionism. In one of these, which was delivered upon the death of three Jewish children by fire, he explained the disaster as a manifestation of divine wrath called forth by the large numbers of Jewish workingmen belonging to labor organizations.

Hav

This was the saddest period of his life. ing spent all his former days in the peaceful study of his favorite subject, and amid the cordial reverence of devout men and women, he was now drawn into discussion of practical issues with which he had neither patience nor famili arity.

Chief Rabbi Joseph was the epitome of a world which was and still is, but is doomed not to be. The Talmud, which he knew so well, is the soul of a people; but another soul, the Modern Spirit, is crowding it out of the bosom of life on to the dust-covered shelves of history. In the Ghettos of America this process goes on much more rapidly than it does in Rabbi Joseph's birthplace. The celebrated Talmudist died here like a flower transplanted to uncongenial soil.

THE

HE history of the Jews in America begins with the discovery of the continent by Columbus. It has been established beyond question that at least five Jews were with him on his first voyage. Among the first settlers in

South America and Mexico, at the end of the fifteenth century, were many Jews, mostly refu gees from Spain and Portugal. Some of these again emigrated to the colonies in North Amer ica. Many other Jews came directly from Holland, Spain, and Portugal. There are records showing that there were German and Portuguese Jews in New Amsterdam as early as 1650. At the time of the Revolution the number of Jews in the colonies was comparatively small; in 1818, Mordecai M. Noah estimated their number at 3,000, and Isaac C. Harby put it at 6,000 in 1826. The American Almanac of 1840 speaks of 15,000. The number of Jews in the United States did not materially increase up to 1880, when a committee appointed by the Board of Delegates of the American Israelites estimated them at 230,257. The Russian Jewish immigra tion began at that time, and in 1888 Isaac Markens estimated the American Jewry at 400,000, nearly double that of eight years before. The American Jewish Year Book for 1901-02 shows that in 1900 there were 1,058,133 Jews in America. The largest number, 400,000, is credited to New York; Pennsylvania, with 95,000; Illinois, with 75,000; Idaho and Nevada appear as having the least,-300 Jews each. This estimate is far too low. According to a statistical investigation by Mr. Joseph Jacobs, based on the number of dead interred in Jewish cemeteries, it has lately been calculated that there are at the present time 584, 788 Jews in Greater New York, which is 184,788 more than that of the American Jewish Year Book. The same is probably true of Pennsylvania, Illinois, etc. I think that 1,500,000 is nearer the truth. This means that there are more Jews in the United States than in any other country, excepting Russia and Austria-Hungary. Greater New York, with its 584,788 Jews, has more than Prussia (379,716), France (80,000), and Italy (50,000) combined. When the first Russian-American Congregation was organized in New York, on June 4, 1852, it had less than two dozen members. But since 1882 the number of Russian Jews has been rapidly increasing, and at present their number in Greater New York is estimated at 367,690.

After Alexander II. was assassinated on March, 14, 1881, repeated anti-Jewish riots broke out in various parts of Russia. Thousands of Jewish homes were destroyed, and many Jews who were rich, or at least in easy circumstances, suddenly found themselves reduced to poverty. The police and the military authorities did not, in the ma jority of these riots, make any serious attempts to help the Jews, and in many instances it is known they even assisted in the pillaging of Jewish property. The cause of these riots is known to have been purely political. The constant discontent of the Russian peasants, due to incessant oppression by the Russian authorities and unbearable taxation, endangered the stability of the new government under Alexander III. The govern

ment and the inspired press used the Jew as a means of distracting the minds of the common people from their discontent and revolutionary tendency. They pointed out that many of the younger Jews participated in the revolutionary movement of the Nihilists, and that the Jews were consequently responsible for the death of the Czar-Emancipator."

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The distressing condition of the Jews became absolutely intolerable on May 15, 1885, when the so-called " May Laws" were enacted in Russia. These consist essentially of the establishment of the Pale of Settlement" of fifteen governments (districts) in Poland, Ukraine, Lithunia,-"All stolen by Russia from other people" (Harold Frederic), in which the Jews may live, and prohibiting them from living in the interior of Russia. In the Pale" the Jews may live only in towns and cities, and not in the villages. All the leases and mortgages held by the Jews on landed estates were canceled by this act. These laws, in addition to older laws exacting from Jews special taxation on property, rents, legacies, breweries, vinegar factories, printing presses, etc., made it practically impossible for the bulk of the Jews to sustain themselves. Even meat killed

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kosher" is taxed in Russia, so that a Jew has to pay for a pound of meat nearly double the price for that which is not "kosher." Jewish children are admitted to the high schools and universities to the extent of only 5 per cent. of the population; and, as there are cities in the "Pale" in which the population consists of more than 50 per cent. of Jews, the benches of the high schools are vacant, while hundreds of the Jewish youth are vainly applying for admission. The re

departed friends, his conversation at the club, are all both adorned and illuminated by martial figures of speech and ideals of a soldier's sense of duty and honor. Indeed, so much does the idea possess him that the soldier's proffer of self for country is of all acts the noblest, that in a passage of singular impressiveness and poignancy, in which he reveals his general agnosticism as to the meaning of the universe and his fear lest all life be illusion, he adds this one fact of which he is sure, namely, "that the faith is true and adorable which leads a soldier to throw away his life in obedience to blindly accepted duty, in a cause which he little understands, in a plan of campaign of which he has no notion, under tactics of which he does not see the use."

Like all gallant gentlemen soldiers, young Holmes had while fighting, and now has, sincere respect for his foes-for their honor and for their bravery. The soldiers of the Civil War," he says, "need no explanations; they can join in commemorating a soldier's death with feelings not different in kind, whether he fell toward them or by their side." Indeed, it is expressly to the "noble enemies" in Virginia, Georgia, and on the Mississippi that he credits his learning a philosophy of life thirty and more years ago, which he still holds, and which may perhaps be quoted as expressing his point of view of human life as well as anything which could be cited, although it lacks some of the negations and questionings of characteristic obiter dicta, which also might well be quoted were there space.

In the strife with Southerners during the Civil War he says that he learned:

That the joy of life is living, is to put all one's powers as far as they will go; that the measure of power is obstacles overcome; to ride boldly at what is in front of you, be it fence or enemy; to pray, not for comfort, but for combat; to keep the soldier's faith against the doubts of civil 1 more besetting and harder to overcome than ah i isgivings of the battlefield, and to remember that duty is not to be proved in the evil day, but then to be obeyed unquestioning; to love glory more than the temptations of wallowing ease, but to know that one's final judge is one's self.

Feeling thus toward the Southern soldier and the cause for which he fought, the South need have no fear that cases coming before the Supreme Court for adjudication in which the Southern point of view is involved will not have a fair hearing. Grant was more of a friend to the South than Stanton the administrator or Sumner the legislator, and Kitchener has done more to make racial unity possible in South Africa than Milner. So Holmes, who fought the South, will judge the South better than Hoar, who knew it only from afar.

In describing the sensations of a soldier's life, Chief Justice Holmes has the gripping, realistic power which Stephen Crane strove after, but with the advantage over Crane of having undergone what he describes; and as one reads the brief, vivid, unforgettable word-pictures of his military career, which Chief Justice Holmes has again and again painted for the benefit of veterans of the Grand Army, or for youths at Harvard, or for disciples in the law, one cannot but wish that he might have found time from his professional toil to have painted on a larger can vas, in the form of fiction, a story of the Civil War, in which his rare powers as an analyst and as a stylist might have found opportunity for full expression.

-as

A man whom "Fate's dark opacity" has made a calm awaiter of personal Destiny. much so as ever Omar the Persian or Marcus Aurelius the Roman were, and a man to whom the martial virtues are the highest, and a jurist who believes that "the present has a right to govern itself so far as it can," and to whom historic continuity with the past is not a duty, it is only a necessity," is not likely to balk at the word Destiny when applied to national policy, or to draw back from a course of action for the nation which involves possible war, or to be overmuch obedient to past interpretations of the Constitution, if it seems to be necessary to adjust judicial decision to the present need, as interpreted by popular vote or by legislative decree. It is natural that there should be speculation as to what course Justice Holmes will follow, after he ascends the Supreme Court bench, in passing upon the military, diplomatic, and legislative history of the nation since 1898. so far as it is amenable to judicial interpretation. One does not need to know how far he was "sounded" by the President ere the appointment was made to be quite certain that he will not prove reactionary or obstructive.

President Roosevelt himself is not a more confirmed advocate of the strenuous life than Chief Justice Holmes. Both his own thrilling joy in the struggle of the Civil War, the passion of which still seems to him most glorious, and his domination by the scientific temper of his day. lead him to say that the struggle for life is the order of the world, at which it is vain to repine. . . . Sooner or later we shall fall; but meantime it is for us to fix our eyes upon the point to be stormed, and to get there if we can. . . We need it (strife or war) everywhere and at all times, for high and dangerous action teaches us to believe as right beyond dispute things for which our doubting minds are slow to find words of proof. Out of heroism grows faith in the

worth of heroism. The proof com.es later, and even may never come. Therefore I rejoice at every dangerous sport which I see pursued." It is for uttering such sentiments as these to Harvard students on patriotic holidays that Chief Justice Holmes, along with President Roosevelt and Senator Lodge, has incurred the ban of the coterie of the academic circle, which deprecates extolment of the martial virtues or emphasis on athletics.

Of course no man born, bred, and educated as Chief Justice Holmes has been could or would undervalue the intellectual side of life; and he will bring to the Supreme bench not only capac ity for prodigious industry, but learning, brilliant penetration, still more striking gifts of expression, a theory of law which draws its postulates and its justification from science," and a knowledge of anthropology, economics, penology, and allied themes which few, if any, judges now on the bench possess. But neither his intellectual attainments nor his occasional exaltation of intellect above feeling can obscure the fact that he is fundamentally a man of feeling. Life for him is forever being seen and defined in terms of passion and action, not of reason and contemplation. A bench full of such judges would be dangerous; a bench adorned and supplemented by one such may somehow seem less distant and superhuman and coldly abstract than it often seems to be now. When human sympathy, a stern sense of duty, moral courage to run counter to precedent, and to declare the feelings and hopes of men are joined in one person with intense hunger for facts, the ideal of science in formulating generalizations, long experience,-Chief Justice Holmes ascended the bench in 1882,-and a very vivid, realistic, human way of formulating opinions, then a judge of exceptional quality is at hand. And such a one is the subject of this sketch. The masses are quite right in feeling that his judicial opinions on the Massachusetts bench have shown him to be one who will conserve the rights of man as well as those of property; and if it be the policy of the administration to use the powers of the executive department to curb the undue power of vast aggregations of property, it is most fortunate that the federal judiciary in its highest court is about to be reënforced by one who has remained a democrat amid surroundings making for distrust and contempt of the masses.

That Justice Holmes will now and then, in the future as in the past, say audacious, unconven

tional words is to be expected. The man who can tell Harvard alumni and undergraduates assembled in Memorial Hall that all that Harvard did in the Civil War was to send a few gentlemen into the field who died there becomingly," or who can tell graduates of the Law School assembled in honor of Prof. C. C. Langdell that none of them can deny that half the criminal law does more harm than good, and who, at the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts' ceremony in honor of John Marshall, ventured to intimate that Marshall's work as a judge proved nothing more than that he was a strong intellect" and had a good style, personal ascendancy in his court, courage, justice, and the conviction of his party,"—such a man may now and then disturb conventional circles in Washington, whether legal or political.

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While intensely American in the best sense, Chief Justice Holmes is a cosmopolite in his his reading, in personal acquaintance, in his sympathies, and in his ideals as a jurist. For his own as well as for his father's sake, he has been taken into European circles which few American jurists have penetrated. He knows Continental literatures. He is alive to Italian pioneer investigation in jurisprudence based on science.

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Socially he will adorn the cosmopolitan society of the national capital. And in the sacred confines of the court room, whether when under public scrutiny or when the justices are by themselves," he will not be found lacking in that father-wit which so often goes along with the judicial temperament. Of the five requisites of success in the calling to which he has given so much of his life, as defined by the late Justice Joseph P. Bradley of the United States Supreme Court, moral sense, brains, learning, tact, and experience, Chief Justice Holmes has at least four strongly marked. In addition, he has what Chief Justice Bradley said must be added to natural aptitude, -viz., "power of intense and persistent labor." That he is a Papinian, a Cujas, a Coke, a Hale, a Mansfield, a Blackstone, à Marshall,in short, a genius such as arises now and then to put talent to shame and dazzle the legal profession, none of his most ardent admirers in Massachusetts will claim. Nor will those who question most the wholeness of his vision as judge fail to pay homage to the insight of his partial views, or the moral courage and lofty purposes of the man.