boat was being docked in New York on September 12th, my mother recognized my father energetically pacing the wharf. Minutes seemed like hours.

We did not go directly to Talbotton. Yellow fever was raging in Savannah, and as we had to go through that port en route to Talbotton, we waited in Philadelphia for a few weeks, until the danger was considered over. Even then we avoided entering the city until it was time to board the train for Geneva, where we were to take the stage-coach for the remaining seven miles to Talbotton. The boat docked at Savannah in the morning, and we spent the day until evening in the small shanty that was called the station. When finally we reached Talbotton we found a very comfortable home ready for us. My precocious brother Isidor immediately inspected the whole and thought it odd to be in a house built on stilts, as he called it. The house, typical of that locality, had no cellar, but was supported by an open foundation of wooden pillars about twenty-five feet apart.

Our family was received with kindness and hospitality, so that in a very few years our parents were made to feel much at home. My mother, who had considerable experience in the cultivation of flowers and vegetables, soon had a garden which was very helpful and instructive to her circle of neighbors and friends. My father, always a student and well versed in biblical literature and the Bible, which he read in the original, was much sought by the ministers of the various denominations, several of whom habitually dined at our house when in Talbotton on their circuit. At such times the discussion usually ran along theological lines. One of my earliest recollections is hearing my father take passages from the Old Testament and translate them literally for the information of these ministers.

We were the only Jewish family in the town. This at first aroused some curiosity among those who had never met persons of our race or religion before. I remember hearing some one doubt that we were Jews and remarking to my father, who had very blond hair and blue eyes, that he thought all Jews had black hair and dark complexion.

My brother Isidor and my sister were immediately sent to school, and my second brother and I were sent as soon as we arrived at school age. I was seven years old when I began learning my letters.

My main religious instruction came from conversations with my father and from the discussions the ministers of various denominations had with him, which I always followed with great interest. When my brother Nathan and I were respectively about eleven and eight and a half years old, we were sent to the Baptist Sunday school upon the persuasion of the Baptist minister, who had become an intimate friend of my father's. There we heard the Bible read and were taught principally from the Old Testament. Our teacher was a gunsmith who had more piety than knowledge, and what he lacked in erudition he made up by good intentions which, after all, had a cultural value. We continued our attendance some two years.

At eleven I entered Collinsworth Institute, a higher school for boys, about a mile outside of Talbotton. Isidor had been there, and Nathan was there then. It was not a large school, though it was the best of its kind in our vicinity. The recitation hall or chapel was a little frame building standing in a square, and around that were eight or ten one-story frame houses where boys coming from a distance lived. The pupils ranged in age from about ten to eighteen, and there were three teachers. We were taught the three R's, and the advanced pupils studied the classics.

In our small town, being the county seat, we had gala days each month when the court convened and people came from the surrounding districts as for a holiday. There was much drinking of gin and whiskey by the young country squires, which frequently ended up in some fighting where pistols and knives were freely used. This all left a deep impression on my young mind and made me a prohibitionist long before I knew the meaning of the word. In the North when boys got to fighting they used their fists; in the South they used, besides their fists, sticks and stones, and consequently it was a more serious and dangerous affair. If in the North one boy cursed another or called him a liar, it would not necessarily lead to a fist fight; in fact, it usually stopped at recrimination. In the South that kind of quarreling meant a serious fight. I think because of these facts the Southern boys were much more guarded and polite to each other in speech than was customary among Northern boys. Perhaps much of the so-called Southern politeness had its roots in the use, in boyhood, of milder terms in case of disagreement. I recall one fight between two of the leading men of Talbotton, both deacons in the same church. One took out his pocket knife and cut the other's throat, and he died. After considerable delay the murderer was tried, but because of his high standing in the community he was acquitted, doubtless on the plea of self-defense, and he got off scot-free.

As a boy brought up in the South I never questioned the rights or wrongs of slavery. Its existence I regarded as matter of course, as most other customs or institutions. The grown people of the South, whatever they thought about it, would not, except in rare instances, speak against it; and even then in the most private and guarded manner. To do otherwise would subject one to social ostracism. We heard it defended in the pulpit and justified on biblical grounds by leading ministers. With my father it was different. I frequently heard him discuss the subject with the ministers who came to our house, and he would point out to them that the Bible must be read with discrimination and in relation to the period to which the chapters refer; and it must not be forgotten that it is the history of a people covering more than a thousand years; and that even then there had been no such thing as perpetual bondage, as all slaves were declared free in the year of jubilee.

OSCAR S. STRAUS AT SIX

Looking backward and making comparisons between my observations as a boy in the South and later in the North, I find there was much more freedom of expression in the North than in the South. Few people in the South would venture to express themselves against the current of dominant opinion upon matters of sectional importance. The institution of slavery with all that it implied seemed to have had the effect of enslaving, or, to use a milder term, checking, freedom of expression on the part of the master class only in lesser degree than among the slaves themselves.

In our town, as in all Southern communities, the better families were kind, especially to their household slaves, whom they regarded as members of the family requiring guardianship and protection, in a degree as if they were children. And the slaves addressed their masters by their first names and their mistresses as "miss." My mother, for instance, was "Miss Sara." I recall one of our servants pleading with my mother: "Miss Sara, won't you buy me, I want to stay here. I love you and the white folks here, and I am afraid my master will hire me out or sell me to some one else." At that time we hired our servants from their masters, whom we paid an agreed price. But as the result of such constant pleadings my father purchased household slaves one by one from their masters, although neither he nor my mother believed in slavery. If we children spoke to the slaves harshly or disregarded their feelings, we were promptly checked and