"Friends, I cannot preach to you, more than my horse yonder. Everything preaches. Call nothing common or profane; by God's presence all things are holy. See there are the first stars. Is it not a glorious world? Enjoy it; only fools and Rabbis speak of the world as vanity or emptiness. But just as a lover sees even in the jewels of his beloved only her own beauty, so in stars and waters must we see only God." He fell a-puffing again at his pipe, but the expectant crowd would not yet divide for his passage. "Ye fools," he said roughly, "you would make me as you have made the Law and the world, a place for stopping at, when all things are but on the way to God. There was once a King," he went on, "who built himself a glorious palace. The King was throned in the centre of what seemed a maze of winding corridors. In the entrance--halls was heaped much gold and silver, and here the folk were content to stay, taking their fill of pleasure. At last the vizier had compassion upon them and called out to them: 'All these treasures and all these walls and corridors do not in truth exist at all. They are magical illusions. Push forward bravely and you shall find the King.'" But as the crowd still raged about disappointed, pleading for a miracle, the Baal Shem whistled, and his horse flew towards him so suddenly that I nearly fell off, and the crowd had to separate in haste. A paralytic cripple dropped his crutch in a flurry and fell a-running, quite cured. "A miracle! a miracle!" cried a hundred voices. "God be praised!" The shout was taken up all down the street, and eager spectators surrounded the joyous cripple, interrogating him and feeling his limbs. "You see, you see!" I heard them say to each other. "There is witchcraft even in his horse!" As the animal came towards the shafts the human drawers scattered hastily. I hitched the wagon to and we drove through the throng that begged the Baal Shem's blessing. But he only waved them off smilingly. "Bless one another by your deeds," he cried from time to time. "Then Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob will bless you." And so we came to the Ring-Place, and through it, into the structure we sought--a tall two-storied stone building. When we arrived at his daughter's house we found that she rented only an apartment, so that none of us but the woman could be lodged, though we were entertained with food and wine. After supper, when the iron shutters were closed, the Baal Shem's daughter--a beautiful black-eyed girl--danced with such fire and fervor that her crimson head-cloth nearly dropped off, and I, being now in a cheerful mood, fell to envying her husband, who for his part conversed blithely with the rescued woman. In the middle of the gaiety the Baal Sham retired to a corner, observing he wished to say his _Mincha_ prayer, and bidding us continue our merriment and not regard him. "_Mincha!_" I ejaculated unthinkingly, "why, it is too late."