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Samuel sometimes rose at night to watch the heavens, and he fancied he heard the voices of the "young-eyed cherubins." He dreamed of a world where Jessicas and Portias were to be met, of a world where Jews were as proud as Shylock, as vindictive as Shylock, and, as Shylock, ate the hearts of their enemies for revenge.

"When the funds have been low we have often been led to wonder and adore the love that placed our burdens upon the hearts of others, causing them to consider Him who loved them, and who had enjoined us to go forth and sympathise with the 'Christies' grinding their old organs, and the 'Jessicas, with broken hearts, crying for bread in the alleys of our great city.

Our guide was picturesque, but the most helpless and inconclusive cicerone I ever knew; and while his long, hooked Hebrew nose caught my idle fancy, and his soft blue eyes excused a great deal of inefficiency, the aimless fashion in which he mounted dirty staircases for the keys of the synagogue, and came down without them, and the manner in which he shouted to the heads of unctuous Jessicas thrust out of windows, and never gained the slightest information by his efforts, were imbecilities that we presently found insupportable, and we gladly cast him off for a dark-faced Hebrew boy who brought us at once to the door of the Spanish synagogue.

Are you showing sympathetic insight or merely conceit? You'll meet plenty of Jessicas who are easier to condemn than to understand. Don't lose your friends by a lack of loving understanding. Be grateful for them; they are your most precious possessions. Love them for the best that is in them. "There, that's a longer sermon than usual.