over his tired eyes, like one returning from a far mental
journey; then rose, and came forward to the pulpit. He
began, in Hebrew, the opening words of the memorial service,
and so on to the prayers in English, with their words of
infinite humility and wisdom.

"Thou hast implanted in us the capacity for sin, but not sin
itself!"

Fanny stirred. She had learned that a brief half hour ago.
The service marched on, a moving and harrowing thing. The
amens rolled out with a new fervor from the listeners.
There seemed nothing comic now in the way old Ben Reitman,
with his slower eyes, always came out five words behind the
rest who tumbled upon the responses and scurried briskly
through them, so that his fine old voice, somewhat hoarse
and quavering now, rolled out its "Amen!" in solitary
majesty. They came to that gem of humility, the mourners'
prayer; the ancient and ever-solemn Kaddish prayer. There
is nothing in the written language that, for sheer drama and
magnificence, can equal it as it is chanted in the Hebrew.

As Rabbi Thalmann began to intone it in its monotonous
repetition of praise, there arose certain black-robed
figures from their places and stood with heads bowed over
their prayer books. These were members of the congregation
from whom death had taken a toll during the past year.
Fanny rose with her mother and Theodore, who had left the
choir loft to join them. The little wheezy organ played
very softly. The black-robed figures swayed. Here and