from its own inner light and
the alchemy of youth could still transmute its lead to gold. No little
princess in the courts of fairyland could feel a fresher interest and
pleasure in life than Esther sitting at the _Seder_ table, where her
father--no longer a slave in Egypt--leaned royally upon two chairs
supplied with pillows as the _Din_ prescribes. Not even the monarch's
prime minister could have had a meaner opinion of Pharaoh than Moses
Ansell in this symbolically sybaritic attitude. A live dog is better
than a dead lion, as a great teacher in Israel had said. How much better
then a live lion than a dead dog? Pharaoh, for all his purple and fine
linen and his treasure cities, was at the bottom of the Red Sea, smitten
with two hundred and fifty plagues, and even if, as tradition asserted,
he had been made to live on and on to be King of Nineveh, and to give
ear to the warnings of Jonah, prophet and whale-explorer, even so he was
but dust and ashes for other sinners to cover themselves withal; but he,
Moses Ansell, was the honored master of his household, enjoying a
foretaste of the lollings of the righteous in Paradise; nay, more,
dispensing hospitality to the poor and the hungry. Little fleas have
lesser fleas, and Moses Ansell had never fallen so low but that, on this
night of nights when the slave sits with the master on equal terms, he
could manage to entertain a Passover guest, usually some newly-arrived
Greener, or some nondescript waif and stray returned to Judaism for the
occasion and accepting a seat at the board in that spirit of
_camaraderie_ which is one of the most delightful features of the Jewish
pauper. _Seder_ was a ceremonial to be taken in none too solemn and
sober a spirit, and there was an abundance of unreproved giggling
throughout from the little ones, especially in those happy days when
mother was alive and tried to steal the _Afikuman_ or _Matso_ specially
laid aside for the final morsel, only to be surrendered to father when
he promised to grant her whatever she wished. Alas! it is to be feared
Mrs. Ansell's wishes did not soar high. There was more giggling when the
youngest talking son--it was poor Benjamin in Esther's earliest
recollections--opened the ball by inquiring in a peculiarly pitched
incantation and with an air of blank ignorance why this night differed
from all other nights--in view of the various astonishing peculiarities
of food and behavior (enumerated in detail) visible to his