choir,
And roam a Jew again.

My staff and hat I'll grasp, then,
And on my breast full low,
By Jewish custom olden
My grizzled beard shall grow.

My days I'll pass in quiet,--
Those left to me on earth--
Nor sing for those who not yet
Have learned a poet's worth."

Thus spake the Jewish poet, and dropped his lyre into the stream--in
song and in life, a worthy son of his time, the disciple of Walther von
der Vogelweide, the friend of Wolfram von Eschenbach--disciple and
friend of the first to give utterance, in German song, to the idea of
the brotherhood of man. Centuries ago, he found the longed-for quiet in
Franconia, but no wreath lies on his grave, no stone marks the
wanderer's resting-place. His poems have found an abiding home in the
memory of posterity, and in the circle of the German minnesingers the
Jew Suesskind forms a distinct link.

In a time when the idea of universal human brotherhood seems to be
fading from the hearts of men, when they manifest a proneness to forget
the share which, despite hatred and persecution, the Jew of every
generation has had in German literature, in its romances of chivalry and
its national epics, and in all the spiritual achievements of German
genius, we may with just pride revive Suesskind's memory.--

On the wings of fancy let us return to our castle on the Saale. After
the lapse of many years, the procession of poets again wends its way in
the sunshine up the slope to the proud mansion of the Trimbergs. The
venerable Walther von der Vogelweide again opens the festival of song.
Wolfram von Eschenbach, followed by a band of young disciples, musingly
ascends the mountain-side. The ranks grow less serried, and in solitude
and sadness, advances a man of noble form, his silvery beard flowing
down upon his breast, a long cloak over his shoulder, and the peaked
hat, the badge of the mediaeval Jew, on his head. In his eye gleams a ray
of the poet's grace, and his meditative glance looks into a distant
future. Suesskind von Trimberg, to thee our greeting!

HUMOR AND LOVE IN JEWISH POETRY

One of the most remarkable discoveries of the last ten years is that
made in Paris by M. Ernest Renan. He maintains as the result of
scientific research that the Semitic races, consequently also the Jews,
are lacking in humor, in the capacity for laughter. The justice of the
reproach might be denied outright, but a statement enunciated w