is the Hebraic word for a thistle. I. "`Would a man 'scape the rod?' -- Rabbi Ben Karshook saith, `See that he turns to God The day before his death.' `Ay, could a man inquire When it shall come!' I say. The Rabbi's eye shoots fire -- `Then let him turn to-day!' II. Quoth a young Sadducee, -- `Reader of many rolls, Is it so certain we Have, as they tell us, souls?' -- `Son, there is no reply!' The Rabbi bit his beard: `Certain, a soul have _I_ ---- WE may have none,' he sneer'd. Thus Karshook, the Hiram's-Hammer, The Right-Hand Temple column, Taught babes their grace in grammar, And struck the simple, solemn." -- * So-called, it is asserted, from his childish effort to pronounce a difficult name (Wiedemann). But despite the good authority for this statement, it is impossible not to credit rather the explanation given by Nathaniel Hawthorne, who, moreover, affords the practically definite proof that the boy was at first, as a term of endearment, called "Pennini", which was later abbreviated to "Pen". The cognomen, Hawthorne states, was a diminutive of "Apennino", which was bestowed upon the boy in babyhood because he was very small, there being a statue in Florence of colossal size called "Apennino". [See Mrs. Orr's "Life and Letters of Robert Browning" (now online) for a different opinion. -- A. L., 1996.] -- It was in this year (1855) that "Men and Women" was published. It is difficult to understand how a collection comprising poems such as "Love among the Ruins", "Evelyn Hope", "Fra Lippo Lippi", "A Toccata of Galuppi's", "Any Wife to any Husband", "Master Hugues of Saxe-Gotha", "Andrea del Sarto", "In a Balcony", "Saul", "A Grammarian's Funeral", to mention only ten now almost universally known, did not at once obtain a national popularity for the author. But lovers of literature were simply enthralled: and the two volumes had a welcome from them which was perhaps all the more ardent because of their disproportionate numbers. Ears alert to novel poetic music must have thrilled to the new strain which sounded first -- "Love among the Ruins", with its Millet-like opening -- "Where the quiet-coloured end of evening smiles, Miles and miles On the solitary pastures where our sheep Half asleep Tinkle homeward through the twilight, stray or stop As they crop -- Was the site once of a city great and gay . . ."