The other was called _Ha-Shachar_ (“The Dawn”), and made its first appearance in Vienna in 1868, under the editorship of Peter (or Perets) Smolensky, an excellent writer of classical Hebrew prose. His own sketches were remarkable both for humour and pathos, and have a certain ring of Thackeray about them. Among the contributors to _The Dawn_ may be noted Rapoport, Jellinek, and Juda Löb Gordon (1830–92). The latter was an excellent poet and humorist, whose collected Hebrew verses were published in 1884 by Baron Ginsburg, of St. Petersburg, in memory of their deceased author. Several of them had previously appeared in _The Dawn_, and as they are pretty and rich in humour the following free prose translation of one of them may serve here as an appropriate specimen. It has a highly orthodox Russian Rabbi for its subject, and runs as follows:— “On a sultry Sabbath afternoon a middle-aged Rabbi was sitting in his study dozing over a large folio of the Talmud. Suddenly an extremely religious member of his flock rushed in full of excitement, and told him that a Jewish lad had just been caught in the act of desecrating the holy Sabbath by carrying a watch in the open street. On hearing this shocking news the Rabbi gave orders that the young culprit should at once be brought into his presence, that he might receive his well-deserved chastisement for openly breaking one of the Rabbinical laws. When the boy was brought in, the Rabbi looked at him, and lo and behold! he was no other than his own little son, who had furtively gone into the street, carrying in his waistcoat pocket the watch which had been given to him as a ‘Bar-Mitzwah^[178-1]’ present. The Rabbi was for a moment rather perplexed, but soon a happy thought struck him, and turning abruptly to the excited crowd of bystanders, he addressed them as follows:—‘Rabbothay’ (gentlemen), he said, ‘I have just come to the conclusion that my boy is guiltless of the charge you have brought against him. For, had you been as well versed in the Rabbinical writings as I am, you would have known that a watch is but an ornament, which is allowed to be worn by a Jew or a Jewess on a Sabbath day even in the open street. Thus my boy had only done what was right, and therefore deserves no punishment whatever.’ When the people left the Rabbi's house, a wit among them observed to his neighbour, with a sly twinkle in his eye, that their ‘Rav’ was a cunning man, indeed, and knew how to turn matters to his own advantage, or to that of his near relatives. Thus, when a son-in-law of his ordered a cargo of citrons from Corfu, the ‘Rav’ forbade the members of his flock on the Feast of Tabernacles to use citrons grown in Palestine; and he also interdicted them from buying any ordinary wine after one of his married daughters had opened a shop for the sale of cheap raisin wine.”