Page:The poems of Emma Lazarus volume 1.djvu/37

Rh Breaking the outward crust, she pierced to the heart of the faith and &quot; the miracle &quot; of its survival. What was it other than the ever-present, ever-vivifying spirit itself, which cannot die,—the religious and ethical zeal which fires the whole history of the people, and of which she herself felt the living glow within her own soul? She had come upon the secret and the genius of Judaism,—that absolute interpenetration and transfusion of spirit with body and substance which, taken literally, often reduces itself to a question of food and drink, a dietary regulation, and again, in proper splendor, incarnates itself and shines out before humanity in the prophets, teachers, and saviors of mankind.

Those were busy, fruitful years for Emma Lazarus, who worked, not with the pen alone, but in the field of practical and beneficent activity. For there was an immense task to accomplish. The tide of immigration had set in, and ship after ship came laden with hunted human beings flying from their fellow-men, while all the time, like a tocsin, rang the terrible story of cruelty and persecution,—horrors that the pen refuses to dwell upon. By hundreds and thou sands they flocked upon our shores,—helpless, innocent victims of injustice and oppression, panic-stricken in the midst of strange and utterly new surroundings.

Emma Lazarus came into personal contact