ve refrain of "Save us, we pray
Thee," "Prosper us, we pray Thee." So gay was the minister that he
could scarcely refrain from dancing, and certainly his voice danced as
it sang. There was no other time so gay, except it was Purim--the
feast to celebrate Queen Esther's redemption of her people from the
wicked Haman--when everybody sent presents to everybody else, and the
men wore comic masks or dressed up as women and performed little plays.
The child went about with a great false nose, and when the name of
"Haman" came up in the reading of the Book of Esther, which was intoned
in a refreshingly new way, he tapped vengefully with a little hammer or
turned the handle of a little toy that made a grinding noise. The other
feast in celebration of a Jewish redemption--Chanukah, or Dedication--was
almost as impressive, for in memory of the miracle of the oil that kept
the perpetual light burning in the Temple when Judas Maccabaeus
reconquered it from the Greek gods, the Ghetto lighted candles, one on
the first night and two on the second, and so on till there were eight
burning in a row, to say nothing of the candle that kindled the others
and was called "The Beadle," and the child sang hymns of praise to the
Rock of Salvation as he watched the serried flames. And so, in this
inner world of dreams the child lived and grew, his vision turned back
towards ancient Palestine and forwards towards some vague Restoration,
his days engirdled with prayer and ceremony, his very games of ball or
nuts sanctified by Sandalphon, the boy-angel, to whom he prayed: "O
Sandalphon, Lord of the Forest, protect us from pain."

II

There were two things in the Ghetto that had a strange attraction for
the child: one was a large marble slab on the wall near his house,
which he gradually made out to be a decree that Jews converted to
Christianity should never return to the Ghetto nor consort with its
inhabitants, under penalty of the cord, the gallows, the prison, the
scourge, or the pillory; the other was a marble figure of a beautiful
girl with falling draperies that lay on the extreme wall of the
Ghetto, surveying it with serene eyes.

Relic and emblem of an earlier era, she co-operated with the slab to
remind the child of the strange vague world outside, where people of
forbidden faith carved forbidden images. But he never went outside; at
least never more than a few streets, for what should he do in Venice?
As he grew old enough to be usefu