Yom Kippur in the Midway. [Volume: 2, Issue: 12, September, 1896, pp. 618-620]

YOM KIPPUR IN THE MIDWAY.
T was in the year 1893, and another Yom Kippur
marked a mile-stone in my life. It was the
first one that I felt myself free-free from: official obligations, free from conventionalties,
free from burdens and ties, free to do as I! | ~pleased, and vet fettered, bound and fascinated
by the great and glorious Day of Atonement.
And as I sat in one of the Temples in Chicago, a stranger amidst
a vast audience, mind and soul enchanted by divine and sacred
melodies, memory began to bring back to me the Yom Kippurs
of former times-the one of my early youth, when I saw my old
father praying, fasting, standing all day in one place-myself a
little girl in the woman's gallery, proud of my resolve to fast from
sunset until sunset, although I had not vet reached the required
age to do so. Oh how big I thought myself on that Yom Kippur
day! And how small I felt when, years later, I publicly fasted
and secretly ate! And after another lapse of time, when the
X-ravs of reform and religious enlightenment penetrated my
brains, they obliterated the last vestige of reverence, and I boasted
Yom Kippur after Yomr Kippur, that I did not fast. And still
later came some Days of Atonement when I considered it quite a
sacrifice to my ancestral religion if I refused to feast publicly. All
this, and much more, memory conveyed to imagination, until the
present was utterly obliterated from my mind. I do not know
how long this revery lasted; but when I awoke from it, and looked
around me, reality was in such contrast to fancy that I had but
one desire-to hasten from the Temple. And as I felt the fresh
air cooling my brow, I did mechanically what I daily did since
months, took the nearest train for the World's Exposition, entered
the gate at the Woinan's Building and turned my steps into the
Midway.
WVas I still under some strange spell? Surely something was
amiss in the gay street! Densely peopled, it seemed devoid of
life; the haggling and hustling at the booths and stands seemed
less ludicrous; the bewitching fascination of yesterday was missing; a maximum of labor seemed combined with a minimum of
pleasure. I pondered over this impression as I walked automatically onwards in the street, "where so much reality was nasty,
and so much nastiness real." Presently I heard a faniliar voice
saying: "You are just the person I wanted to see." I looked up
in "Nickerdown's" grave and serious face. Nickerdown is always