Poor little lad! his brave resolves were soon to be put to a severe test. In the early part of 1742, Rabbi Frankel accepted the Chief Rabbinate of Berlin, and thus a summary stop was put to his pupil’s further study. There is a pathetic story told of Moses Mendelssohn standing, with streaming eyes, on a little hillock on the road by which his beloved master passed out of Dessau, and of the kind-hearted Frankel catching up the forlorn little figure, and soothing it with hopes of a ‘some day,’ when fortune should be kind, and he should follow ‘nach Berlin.’ The ‘some day’ looked sadly problematical; that hard question of bread and butter came to the fore whenever it was discussed. How was the boy to live in Berlin? Even if the mind should be nourished for naught, who was to feed the body? The hard-working father and mother had found it no easy task hitherto to provide for that extra mouth; and now, with Frankel gone, the occasion for their long self-denial seemed to them to cease. In the sad straits of the family, the business of a hawker began again to show in an attractive light to the poor parents, and the pedlar’s pack was once more suggested with many a prudent, loving, half-hearted argument on its behalf. But the boy was by this time clear as to his vocation, so after a brief while of entreaty, the tearful permission was gained, the parting blessing given, and with a very slender wallet slung on his crooked shoulders, Moses Mendelssohn set out for Berlin. It was a long tramp of over thirty miles, and, towards the close of the fifth day, it was a very footsore, tired little lad who presented himself for admission at the Jews’ gate of the city. Rabbi Frankel was touched, and puzzled too, when this penniless little student, whom he had inspired with such difficult devotion, at last stood before him; but quickly he made up his mind that, so far as in him lay, the uphill path should be made smooth to those determined little feet. The pressing question of bed and board was solved. Frankel gave him his Sabbath and festival dinners, and another kind-hearted Jew, Bamberger by name, who heard the boy’s story, supplied two everyday meals, and let him sleep in an attic in his house. For the remaining four days? Well, he managed; a groschen or two was often earned by little jobs of copying, and a loaf so purchased, by dint of economy and imagination, was made into quite a series of satisfying meals, and, in after-days, it was told how he notched his loaves into accurate time measurements, lest appetite should outrun purse. Fortunately poverty was no new experience for him; still, poverty confronted alone, in a great city, must have seemed something grimmer to the home-bred lad than that mother-interpreted poverty, which he had hitherto known. But he met it full-face, bravely, uncomplainingly, and, best of all, with unfailing good humour. And the little alleviations which friends made in his hard lot were all received