was fair, blue-eyed, and richly endowed with all spiritual charms; but, alas! ill-luck had added to her physical gifts a hump. A chorus of lamentation arose from the angels who minister in these matters. The “pity of it” was so evident. The burden of such a deformity might well outweigh all the other gifts of her beautiful youth, might render her morose, self-conscious, unhappy. If the load now had been but laid on a man! And the angels pondered, wondering, waiting to see if any would volunteer to take the maiden’s burden from her. And I sprang up, and prayed that it might be laid upon my shoulders. And it was settled so.’ There was a minute’s pause, and then, so the story goes, the work was passionately thrown down, and the tender blue eyes were streaming, and the rest we may imagine. The simple, loving heart was won, and Fromet became his wife. They had a modest little house with a pretty garden on the outskirts of Berlin, where a good deal of hospitality went on in a quiet, friendly way. The ornaments of their dwelling were, perhaps, a little disproportionate in size and quantity to the rest of the surroundings; but this was no matter of choice on the part of the newly married couple, since one of the minor vexations imposed on Jews at this date was the obligation laid on every bridegroom to treat himself to a large quantity of china for the good of the manufactory. The tastes or the wants of the purchaser were not consulted; and in this especial instance twenty life-sized china apes were allotted to the bridegroom. We may imagine poor Mendelssohn and his wife eyeing these apes often, somewhat as Cinderella looked at her pumpkin when longing for the fairy’s transforming wand. Possibilities of those big baboons changed into big books may have tantalised Mendelssohn; whilst Fromet’s more prosaic mind may have confined itself to china and yet have found an unlimited range for wishing. However, the unchanged and unchanging apes notwithstanding, Mendelssohn and his wife enjoyed very many years of quiet and contented happiness, and by and by came children, four of them, and then those old ungainly grievances were, it is likely, transformed into playfellows.