The Seven-Branched Candlestick: The Schooldays of Young American Jew

d-nearly seventeen. I did not look that old, however; the commandant of the school,

ened my spirits most disproportionately. Especially when I discovered that this roommate wa

ars upon his pillow and crying for his mama-and for kartoffel salat. It was a Friday night, I remember, and it must ha

he ought to be to have a mother at all; that both my father and mother were dead, and I should never see them again, no matter how ho

through the Spanish and Boer wars and now, in times of peace, was reduced to teaching the manual of arms and simple drill formations

made me perform that act and retell the whole story word for word. But he could not change my room until

we did all we could to make you comfortable. We purposely put you in a room wit

y knew it up here, too: I was a Jew, and must be separated fr

he unaccustomed severing from all that was mine: my room at home, the street that I saw from its window, the burly, Irish "cop" who stood on

d tin and battered battlements, and the flanks of steps which went up the hill on which it stood were worn with the tread of the hundreds of boys who had marched upon them, each succeedin

grass was brown and mealy, and a flag pole, sagging slightly to

told me, an American spy was hanged by the British in Revolutionary days-but it may have been only a fable. I have since learned that almost every military school along the

were dimmed, there was a ghostly quality to the rows of white and huddled figures that lay the length of the room. There was never absolute quiet. Sometimes some little boy would be sobbing, somet

gh, almost always hard workers, eager for whatever seemed fair and quick and democratic. But these boys were of wealthy parents, most of them. There were only a few of them who held scholarships, and these did jobs so menial and embarrassing that, even

l. For every inch of muscle that I put on I lost something worth incalculably more: honesty and cleanliness of mind and what little shred of self-reliance I po

e to see me-but scribbled a few empty lines to accuse me o

neering and uncouth. The standard of work in the classroom was very low. At first I did not have any trouble at all in leading the entire school in scholarship; but gradually, under the careless a

on-a great, beefy ox of a boy who lorded it over all of us because he kept his own private horse in the town livery stable and had his room furnished with real mission fu

organization. As a result I soon rose to the magnificence of cadet drum-major, an office which involved a tall, silvered stick and a shako of sweltering bear-skin. Thus, my military training consisted mostly of learning to twirl the

rship. And, of course, as Jewish boys always do, I imagined that the demonstration was just another evidence of race prejudice. Undoubtedly it was,

t marks that were allotted us for our various misdemeanors. Many a time did Sydney, for my sake, forget to reco

ther he had managed to be rid of them all excepting this dignified one of "keeping the books"-and I am sure it must have been a lucrative one, in a small way, for Sydney's room was full of pictures which had b

of the most wonderful of friends: always smiling, always ready to join in upon whatever lark was planning-a bi

accompanying one squad after another. I went to the Episcopal, the Methodist, the Presbyterian-and it was the last that I finally selected for good. There was

. I did not care much about the religious inspiration to be gained from the Hebrew service, but I did think it would be jolly fun to be allowed to go down into the tow

ommandant thought of it, but he pu