so simple and natural? And our artist wondered to
himself if it were not possible to animate again the withered form of
the Menorah, to water its roots, as one would a tree. The mere sound
of the name, which he now pronounced every evening to his children,
gave him great pleasure. There was a lovable ring to the word when it
came from the lips of little children.

On the first night the candle was lit and the origin of the holiday
explained. The wonderful incident of the lights that strangely
remained burning so long, the story of the return from the Babylonian
exile, the second Temple, the Maccabees--our friend told his children
all he knew. It was not very much, to be sure, but it served. When the
second candle was lit, they repeated what he had told them, and though
it had all been learned from him, it seemed to him quite new and
beautiful. In the days that followed he waited keenly for the
evenings, which became ever brighter. Candle after candle stood in the
Menorah, and the father mused on the little candles with his
children, till at length his reflections became too deep to be
uttered before them.

When he had resolved to return to his people and to make open
acknowledgment of his return, he had only thought he would be doing
the honorable and rational thing. But he had never dreamed that he
would find in it a gratification of his yearning for the beautiful.
Yet nothing less was his good fortune. The Menorah with its many
lights became a thing of beauty to inspire lofty thought. So, with his
practised hand, he drew a plan for a Menorah to present to his
children the following year. He made free use of the motif of the
eight branching arms projecting right and left in one plane from the
central stem. He did not hold himself bound by the rigid traditional
form, but created directly from nature, unconcerned by other
symbolisms also seeking expression. He was on the search for living
beauty. Yet, though he gave the withered branch new life, he conformed
to the law, to the gentle dignity, of its being. It was a tree with
slender branches; its ends were moulded into flower calyxes which
would hold the lights.

The week passed with this absorbing labor. Then came the eighth day,
when the whole row burns, even the faithful ninth, the servant, which
on other nights is used only for the lighting of the others. A great
splendor streamed from the Menorah. The children's eyes glistened. But
for our friend all this was t