On days when things at the school went well, no one gabbled through the weary Prayer-book more conscientiously than he; he said all the things in large type and all the funny little bits in small type, and even some passages without vowels.  Nay, he included the very preface, and was lured on and coaxed on and enticed by his father to recite the appendices, which shot up one after the other on the devotional horizon like the endless-seeming terraces of a deceptive ascent; just another little bit, and now that little bit, and just that last bit, and one more very last little bit.  It was like the infinite inclusiveness of a Chinese sphere, or the farewell performances of a distinguished singer.

For the rest, Solomon was a Chine-ponim, or droll, having that inextinguishable sense of humor which has made the saints of the Jewish Church human, has lit up dry technical Talmudic, discussions with flashes of freakish fun, with pun and jest and merry quibble, and has helped the race to survive (pace Dr. Wallace) by dint of a humorous acquiescence in the inevitable.

His Chine helped Solomon to survive synagogue, where the only drop of sweetness was in the beaker of wine for the sanctification service.  Solomon was always in the van of the brave boys who volunteered to take part in the ceremonial quaffing of it.  Decidedly.  Solomon was not spiritual, he would not even kiss a Hebrew Pentateuch that he had dropped, unless his father was looking, and but for the personal supervision of the Bube the dirty white fringes of his “four-corners” might have got tangled and irredeemably invalidated for all he cared.

In the direst need of the Ansells Solomon held his curly head high among his school-fellows, and never lacked personal possessions, though they were not negotiable at the pawnbroker’s.  He had a peep-show, made out of an old cocoa box, and representing the sortie from Plevna, a permit to view being obtainable for a fragment of slate pencil.  For two pins he would let you look a whole minute.  He also had bags of brass buttons, marbles, both commoners and alleys; nibs, beer bottle labels and cherry “hogs,” besides bottles of liquorice water, vendible either by the sip or the teaspoonful, and he dealt in “assy-tassy,” which consisted of little packets of acetic acid blent with brown sugar.  The character of his stock varied according to the time of year, for nature and Belgravia are less stable in their seasons than the Jewish schoolboy, to whom buttons in March are as inconceivable as snow-balling in July.

On Purim Solomon always had nuts to gamble with, just as if he had been a banker’s son, and on the Day of Atonement he was never without a little tin fusee box filled with savings of snuff.  This, when the fast racked them most sorely, he would pass round among the old men with a grand manner.  They would take a pinch and say, “May thy strength increase,” and blow their delighted noses with great colored handkerchiefs, and Solomon would feel about fifty and sniff a few grains himself with the air of an aged connoisseur.