been said before and the course of true love never did run long.' You have a feeling that it is all histrionic, all acting, all farce, and that we are all overdoing our parts tremendously. Strutting, swaggering, blustering, bombastic swashbucklers all. It is not life. It is an historical novel. It will sink into nothingness. '_O, Thor, du Thor, du prahlender Thor!_' Do you remember Bret Harte's parody on Hugo's 'Les Misérables'? So easily is the sublime tipped over and made ridiculous. 'Tis but a slight step from pathos to bathos. But wait until I address this letter to the New York 'Abend Blatt.' Abe Cahan came over here and spoke for the Socialists this afternoon, so I wrote the thing up. He is in the other room with that blatant crowd of Jewish actors. They are taking him to task for one of his reviews in the 'Arbeiter Zeitung' of a recent performance of theirs. They never know exactly what a critic means except when he does not criticise. They are to give here Gordin's 'Jewish King Lear' to-morrow night. You don't know Cahan? He is one of the brightest, biggest men in our movement. I come in here," Keidansky explained, "because these actors are so ignorant of the conventions, simple and natural, and I like them for it. "There is a story by J. L. Peretz," Keidansky continued, after he had folded up and addressed his communication, "that I want to tell you apropos of what I have been saying. Peretz is one of the literary masters of to-day, but he writes in Yiddish, so the world misses his greatness. The story is about a reformer, a revolutionary, an idealist. He addresses a meeting in behalf of his cause, speaks fervently, passionately, 'spits fire,' waves a sharp sword at his audience and makes a ringing appeal for the truth. In the room where he speaks there is a mirror. Accidentally he looks into it. He sees himself. His enthusiasm leaves him at once, his fervor vanishes, he loses his power of speech, becomes calm, indifferent, and finishes his oration in disgust. He no longer feels the saint and hero he felt. While speaking so excitedly he looked like a murderer in the mirror. After this he has an unearthly dream about the part of hell that is allotted to reformers. When he wakes up he receives a postal card asking him to come to another meeting of the revolutionists. He immediately burns the card. This is giving but the faintest outlines of the story, but you see Peretz, like Heine, also has the sense of humor developed to a tragic extent--to the extent of seeing the absurdity, futility and irony of it all--even our grandest efforts.