oney. For when three stars appeared in the
sky the Fire-woman sank back into her primitive insignificance, and
the child's father made the _Habdalah_, or ceremony of division
between week-day and Sabbath, thanking God who divideth holiday from
working-day, and light from darkness. Over a brimming wine-cup he
made the blessing, holding his bent fingers to a wax taper to make a
symbolical appearance of shine and shadow, and passing round a box of
sweet-smelling spices. And, when the chanting was over, the child was
given to sip of the wine. Many delicious mouthfuls of wine were
associated in his mind with religion. He had them in the synagogue
itself on Friday nights and on Festival nights, and at home as well,
particularly at Passover, on the first two evenings of which his
little wine-glass was replenished no less than four times with mild,
sweet liquid. A large glass also stood ready for Elijah the Prophet,
which the invisible visitor drank, though the wine never got any
lower. It was a delightful period altogether, this feast of Passover,
from the day before it, when the last crumbs of bread and leavened
matter were solemnly burnt (for no one might eat bread for eight days)
till the very last moment of the eighth day, when the long-forbidden
bread tasted as sweet and strange as cake. The mere change of kitchen
vessels had a charm: new saucepans, new plates, new dishes, new
spoons, new everything, in harmony with the Passover cakes that took
the place of bread--large thick biscuits, baked without yeast, full of
holes, or speckled and spotted. And when the evening table was laid
for the _Seder_ service, looking oh! so quaint and picturesque, with
wine-cups and strange dishes, the roasted shank-bone of a lamb, bitter
herbs, sweet spices, and what not, and with everybody lolling around
it on white pillows, the child's soul was full of a tender poetry, and
it was a joy to him to ask in Hebrew:--"Wherein doth this night differ
from all other nights? For on all other nights we may eat leavened and
unleavened, but to-night only unleavened?" He asked the question out
of a large thin book, gay with pictures of the Ten Plagues of Egypt
and the wicked Pharaoh sitting with a hard heart on a hard throne.
His father's reply, which was also in Hebrew, lasted some two or three
hours, being mixed up with eating and drinking the nice things and the
strange dishes; which was the only part of the reply the child really
understood, for the