"It is through your inspiration that I have discerned what may be my life's task. It is you who have given shape to what, I believe, was an inherited yearning--the effect of brooding, passionate thoughts in many ancestors--thoughts that seem to have been intensely present in my grandfather. Suppose the stolen offspring of some mountain tribe brought up in a city of the plain, or one with an inherited genius for painting, and born blind--the ancestral life would lie within them as a dim longing for unknown objects and sensations, and the spell-bound habit of their inherited frames would be like a cunningly-wrought musical instrument, never played on, but quivering throughout in uneasy mysterious meanings of its intricate structure that, under the right touch, gives music. Something like that, I think, has been my experience. Since I began to read and know, I have always longed for some ideal task, in which I might feel myself the heart and brain of a multitude--some social captainship, which would come to me as a duty, and not be striven for as a personal prize. You have raised the image of such a task for me--to bind our race together in spite of heresy. You have said to me--'Our religion united us before it divided us--it made us a people before it made Rabbanites and Karaites.' I mean to try what can be done with that union--I mean to work in your spirit. Failure will not be ignoble, but it would be ignoble for me not to try."
"Even as my brother that fed at the breasts of my mother," said Mordecai, falling back in his chair with a look of exultant repose, as after some finished labor.

"It is through your inspiration that I have discerned what may be my life's task. It is you who have given shape to what, I believe, was an inherited yearning - the effect of passionate thoughts in many ancestors - thoughts that were intensely present in my grandfather. I have always longed for some ideal task, in which I might feel myself the heart and brain of a multitude - some social captainship, which would come to me as a duty, and not be striven for as a prize. You have raised the image of such a task for me - to bind our race together in spite of heresy. I mean to try what can be done with that union. Failure will not be ignoble, but it would be ignoble for me not to try."
"Even as my brother," said Mordecai, falling back in his chair with a look of exultant repose.
