ELIAS speaks of “day-break”; but it can not accurately be said that the day broke at all that morning. The blackness of the night slowly faded into a dismal, lifeless drab. It rained. The wind blew from the north-east. Under it, the branches of the trees, across in the park, swayed strenuously to and fro. The sparrows, with sadly bedraggled plumage, huddled together upon the window-sills, and raised their voices in noisy disputation, as if thereby seeking to screw their courage up, and not mind the%sorry weather. The milkman’s wagon came rattling down the street. The milkman wore a rubber overcoat. His war-whoop sounded less spirited, less defiant, than its wont.

By and by Elias looked at his watch. It was getting along toward seven o’clock. Just then somebody rapped upon his studio door. Elias’s nerves must indeed have been in a bad way. He started, paled, trembled, recovered himself, and called out, “Come in.”

It was the rabbi.

“Good morning, Elias,” the rabbi said.

“Good morning,” responded Elias, with a none too hospitable inflection.

“So, you haven’t been abed? You’ve been sitting up all night?” the rabbi questioned.

“How do you know that?” was Elias’s counter-question.

“I looked for you in your bedroom, and saw that your bed had not been slept in.”

“Oh.”

After a pause, “What have you been doing, up alone all night?” the rabbi asked.

“Lots of things. A man on the eve of his marriage has plenty to do.”

The rabbi stood still for a little while, glancing around the room. Then he sat down. At which, Elias rose.

“If you’ll excuse me,” he said, “I’ll go down stairs. I haven’t taken my bath yet.”

“Have you said your prayers yet?” inquired the rabbi.

But Elias was already beyond ear-shot in the hall.

When, perhaps a quarter hour later, Elias, emerging from his bath, entered his bedroom, he discovered the rabbi established there at the window.

Wheeling about, and facing his nephew, “You didn’t answer my question,” the rabbi said.

“What question?”

“I asked whether you had said your prayers this morning.”

“Oh.”

“Well, have you?”

“No.”

“Perhaps lately you have got out of the habit of saying your prayers—yes?”

Elias made no reply. He appeared not to have heard. He was busy fastening the buttons into a shirt-bosom.

“I’ll wait till you’ve finished dressing,” said the rabbi.

He went to the window, and stood looking out.

The rabbi’s presence troubled Elias exceedingly. But, he thought, considering every thing, the least he could do would be to put up with it as graciously as possible and not grumble. “What do you want with me, any how?” it was his impulse to demand. But he held his tongue, and proceeded with his toilet.

When at last he had tied his cravat and buttoned his coat, “Are you ready now to come down stairs with me?” the rabbi began.

“What for?”

“Several things. Are you ready? Will you come?”

“Oh, I suppose so,” Elias answered, and followed the old man from the room.

To himself: “I don’t care what he does or says. It may be annoying, but it can’t do any serious harm. To-day is the last day; and I’ll let him him have his own way in every thing, no matter how absurd and exasperating it may be. I’ll keep my temper and treat him respectfully, no matter how hard he may try me.”

They had reached the front hall of the house. The rabbi put his hand upon the knob of the front parlor door.

“Oh,” Elias exclaimed, drawing back, “are you going in there?”

“Yes.”

Calling to mind his resolution, Elias gulped down his unwillingness, and said, “Oh, well; all right.” But it cost him an effort to do so.

Even during his mother’s life-time, the front parlor had been but very seldom used. Since her death, it had not been used at all. Indeed, since the day of her funeral, now nearly three years gone by, Elias had not crossed its threshold. The blinds and windows were kept permanently closed, save when, once a week, the servants entered to sweep and dust.

Now the rabbi pushed open the door, and, stepping aside, signalled Elias to pass in. Elias obeyed. The rabbi followed.

It was dark inside. Only a few pallid rays of daylight leaked through at the edges of the curtains. The air was cold and at the same time oppressive—laden with that stuffy, musty odor, which always pervades an uninhabited, shut-up room. At first, Elias could scarcely see an arm’s-length before his face; but, as his eyesight gradually accustomed itself to the obscurity, he was able to make out the forms of the furniture, and to discern upon the walls sundry large black patches which he knew to be pictures.

The rabbi struck a match.

“Take it,” he said to Elias, “and light the gas; I’m not tall enough.”

Elias did as he was bidden.

The gas-burner, from disuse, had got clogged with dust. It shot a long, slim tongue of flame up into the air, and gave off a shrill, continuous whistle. Every now and then the flame had a convulsion, the whistle dropped a note or two; then both returned to their original conditions.

For a New York dwelling-house, it was a spacious room, this parlor; say, in width twenty feet, by forty in depth. The chairs and sofas, scrupulously wrapped in linen, were ranged along the walls. Over the carpet, completely covering it, stretched a broad sheet of grayish crash. The piano wore a rubber jacket, and had its legs swathed in newspapers. The books in the bookcases—books of the decorative, rather than of the readable order, for the most part—were locked up behind glass doors. The tall mirror, between the windows, shone through a veil of pink mosquito-netting. Supplies of the same material had been stretched across all the pictures.

In front of one of these pictures—that which hung above the mantel-piece—the rabbi now paused, and, raising his arm, pointed to it, in silence.

It was the portrait of a gentleman, full length, life-size, done in oils. The gentleman rested one hand upon a pile of ponderous, calf-bound volumes—law-books, or medical works, they looked like—that towered aloft from the floor. In his other hand, he held an unrolled scroll of parchment, upon which big black Hebrew characters were inscribed. Of artistic value the picture had little, or none at all; but it had another sort of value: it was a portrait of Elias’s father.

The rabbi pointed to it in silence. Elias thought the rabbi’s proceeding a little theatrical; but he made no comment.

By and by the rabbi lowered his arm, and faced about. Having done which, he raised his other arm, and this time brought his index finger to bear upon a portrait of Elias’s mother.

Theatrical, certainly; disagreeably so, too; Elias thought.

At this point there befell an interruption which had somewhat the effect of an anti-climax. The breakfast-bell rang.

“Well,” said the rabbi, “let’s go to breakfast.”

Elias turned off the gas. They left the parlor, and went down stairs to the dining-room.

There, having taken their places at the table, the rabbi extracted a handkerchief from his pocket, and with it covered his head. Elias did likewise. Whereupon the rabbi chanted the usual grace before meat. At its conclusion, both he and Elias replaced their handkerchiefs in their pockets, and the maid-servant brought the coffee.

For a while ............