vision. To
which Moses and the _Bube_ and the rest of the company (including the
questioner) invariably replied in corresponding sing-song: "Slaves have
we been in Egypt," proceeding to recount at great length, stopping for
refreshment in the middle, the never-cloying tale of the great
deliverance, with irrelevant digressions concerning Haman and Daniel and
the wise men of Bona Berak, the whole of this most ancient of the
world's extant domestic rituals terminating with an allegorical ballad
like the "house that Jack built," concerning a kid that was eaten by a
cat, which was bitten by a dog, which was beaten by a stick, which was
burned by a fire, which was quenched by some water, which was drunk by
an ox, which was slaughtered by a slaughterer, who was slain by the
Angel of Death, who was slain by the Holy One, blessed be He.

In wealthy houses this _Hagadah_ was read from manuscripts with rich
illuminations--the one development of pictorial art among the Jews--but
the Ansells had wretchedly-printed little books containing quaint but
unintentionally comic wood-cuts, pre-Raphaelite in perspective and
ludicrous in draughtsmanship, depicting the Miracles of the Redemption,
Moses burying the Egyptian, and sundry other passages of the text. In
one a king was praying in the Temple to an exploding bomb intended to
represent the Shechinah or divine glory. In another, Sarah attired in a
matronly cap and a fashionable jacket and skirt, was standing behind the
door of the tent, a solid detached villa on the brink of a lake, whereon
ships and gondolas floated, what time Abraham welcomed the three
celestial messengers, unobtrusively disguised with heavy pinions. What
delight as the quaking of each of the four cups of wine loomed in sight,
what disappointment and mutual bantering when the cup had merely to be
raised in the hand, what chaff of the greedy Solomon who was careful not
to throw away a drop during the digital manoeuvres when the wine must be
jerked from the cup at the mention of each plague. And what a solemn
moment was that when the tallest goblet was filled to the brim for the
delectation of the prophet Elijah and the door thrown open for his
entry. Could one almost hear the rustling of the prophet's spirit
through the room? And what though the level of the wine subsided not a
barley-corn? Elijah, though there was no difficulty in his being in all
parts of the world simultaneously, could hardly compass the greater
mir