pect, too, was the heir of the peculiar
gifts of his race.

In a little room two flights up in a house next to the Nicolai
churchyard lived one of the acquaintances made by Mendelssohn through
Dr. Gumpertz, a young newspaper writer--Gotthold Ephraim Lessing.
Lessing was at once strongly attracted by the young man's keen,
untrammelled mind. He foresaw that Mendelssohn would "become an honor to
his nation, provided his fellow-believers permit him to reach his
intellectual maturity. His honesty and his philosophic bent make me see
in him a second Spinoza, equal to the first in all but his errors."[79]
Through Lessing, Mendelssohn formed the acquaintance of Nicolai, and as
they were close neighbors, their friendship developed into intimacy.
Nicolai induced him to take up the study of Greek, and old Rector Damm
taught him.

At this time (1755), the first coffee-house for the use of an
association of about one hundred members, chiefly philosophers,
mathematicians, physicians, and booksellers, was opened in Berlin.
Mendelssohn, too, was admitted, making his true entrance into society,
and forming many attachments. One evening it was proposed at the club
that each of the members describe his own defects in verse; whereupon
Mendelssohn, who stuttered and was slightly hunchbacked, wrote:

"Great you call Demosthenes,
Stutt'ring orator of Greece;
Hunchbacked AEsop you deem wise;--
In your circle, I surmise,
I am doubly wise and great.
What in each was separate
You in me united find,--
Hump and heavy tongue combined."

Meanwhile his worldly affairs prospered; he had become bookkeeper in
Bernhard's business. His biographer Kayserling tells us that at this
period he was in a fair way to develop into "a true _bel esprit_"; he
took lessons on the piano, went to the theatre and to concerts, and
wrote poems. During the winter he was at his desk at the office from
eight in the morning until nine in the evening. In the summer of 1756,
his work was lightened; after two in the afternoon he was his own
master. The following year finds him comfortably established in a house
of his own with a garden, in which he could be found every evening at
six o'clock, Lessing and Nicolai often joining him. Besides, he had laid
by a little sum, which enabled him to help his friends, especially
Lessing, out of financial embarrassments. Business cares did, indeed,
bear heavily upon him, and his complaints are truly touc