"I saw Mr. Whimpole to-day," said Aaron, "and I made him a bow, which he did not return. My Jewish nose offends him. How unfortunate! Yes, my life, no one can dispute that the Jew has a big nose. It proclaims itself; it is a mark and a sign. He himself often despises it--he himself often looks at it in the glass with aversion, 'Why, why have I been compelled to endure this affliction?' he murmurs, and he reflects with envy upon the elegant nose of the Christian. Short-sighted mortal, not to understand that he owes everything to his big nose! A great writer--a learned man who passed the whole of his life in the study of these matters--proclaims the nose to be the foundation or abutment of the brain. What follows? That the larger the nose of a man is the better off for it is the man. Listen, my dear." He took a book from a little nest of bookshelves, and turned over the pages. "'Whoever,' says this learned writer, 'is acquainted with the Gothic arch will perfectly understand what I mean by this abutment; for upon this the whole power of the arch of the forehead rests, and without it the mouth and cheeks would be oppressed by miserable ruins.' He lays down exact laws which govern the beautiful (and therefore large) nose. Its length should equal the length of the forehead, the back should be broad, its outline remarkably definite, the sides well defined, and near the eye it must be at least half an inch in breadth. Such a nose, this great authority declares, is of more worth than a kingdom. It imparts solidity and unity to the whole countenance; it is the mountain--bear in mind, my dear, the mountain--that shelters the fair vales beneath. How proud, then, should I be of my nose, which in some respects answers to this description! Not in all--no, not in all--I am not so vain as to believe that my nose is worth more than a kingdom; but when I am told that a large nose is a sign of sensibility, and of good nature and good humor, I cannot help a glow of conceited satisfaction stealing over me. How many great men have you known with small noses? There are, of course, exceptions, but I speak of the general rule. Our coreligionist, Benjamin Disraeli--look at his nose; look at the noses of all our great Jewish musicians and composers--it is because they are of a proper size that they have become famous. Some time since in London I had the opportunity of looking over a wonderful Bible--six enormous volumes published by Mr. Thomas Macklin nearly a century ago--embellished with grand pictures by the most eminent English artists, and there I saw the figures of Abraham and Jacob and Aaron and Moses, and other ancestors of ours. There is not a small nose on one of the faces of these great patriarchs and prophets; the great painters who drew them had learned from their studies how to delineate the biblical heroes. A big nose is a grand decoration, and I would sooner possess it than a bit of red ribbon in my buttonhole, or a star on my breast.