st soul Miriam echoed this wish of his. She felt
she could like him better at a distance. Beenah Hyams had only one hope
left in the world--to die.

CHAPTER XI.

THE PURIM BALL.

Sam Levine duly returned for the Purim ball. Malka was away and so it
was safe to arrive on the Sabbath. Sam and Leah called for Hannah in a
cab, for the pavements were unfavorable to dancing shoes, and the three
drove to the "Club," which was not a sixth of a mile off.

"The Club" was the People's Palace of the Ghetto; but that it did not
reach the bed-rock of the inhabitants was sufficiently evident from the
fact that its language was English. The very lowest stratum was of
secondary formation--the children of immigrants--while the highest
touched the lower middle-class, on the mere fringes of the Ghetto. It
was a happy place where young men and maidens met on equal terms and
similar subscriptions, where billiards and flirtations and concerts and
laughter and gay gossip were always on, and lemonade and cakes never
off; a heaven where marriages were made, books borrowed and newspapers
read. Muscular Judaism was well to the fore at "the Club," and
entertainments were frequent. The middle classes of the community,
overflowing with artistic instinct, supplied a phenomenal number of
reciters, vocalists and instrumentalists ready to oblige, and the
greatest favorites of the London footlights were pleased to come down,
partly because they found such keenly appreciative audiences, and partly
because they were so much mixed up with the race, both professionally
and socially. There were serious lectures now and again, but few of the
members took them seriously; they came to the Club not to improve their
minds but to relax them. The Club was a blessing without disguise to the
daughters of Judah, and certainly kept their brothers from harm. The
ball-room, with its decorations of evergreens and winter blossoms, was a
gay sight. Most of the dancers were in evening dress, and it would have
been impossible to tell the ball from a Belgravian gathering, except by
the preponderance of youth and beauty. Where could you match such a
bevy of brunettes, where find such blondes? They were anything but
lymphatic, these oriental blondes, if their eyes did not sparkle so
intoxicatingly as those of the darker majority. The young men had
carefully curled moustaches and ringlets oiled like the Assyrian bull,
and figure-six noses, and studs glittering on their