Hearts, in folk-lore, have been eaten for revenge, as in the grim story of the lover's heart told by Boccaccio. The jealous husband forces his wife, whose fidelity he doubts, to make a meal of her supposed lover's heart. In the story of the great bird's egg, again, the brother who eats the heart becomes rich, but not wise. Various motives, no doubt, are assigned in other _Maerchen_ for choosing the heart; but in these particular Hebrew fables, it is merely regarded as a _bonne bouche_. Possibly the Talmudic caution, that eating the heart of a beast brings forgetfulness, may have a moral significance; it may mean that one who admits bestial passions into his soul will be destitute of a mind for nobler thoughts. This suggestion I have heard, and I give it for what it may be worth. As a rule, there is no morality in folk-lore; stories with morals belong to the later and more artificial stage of poet-lore. Homiletical folk-lore, of course, stands on a different basis. Now, in the _Yalkut_ version of the fox and the lion fable, all that we are told is, "The fox saw the ass's heart; he took it, and ate it." But Berechiah leaves us in no doubt as to the fox's motive. "The fox saw that his heart was fat, and so he took it." In the remaining version, "The fox saw that the heart was good, so he ate it." This needs no further comment. Of course, it has been far from my intention to dispute that the heart was regarded by Jews as the seat both of the intellect and the feelings, of all mental and spiritual functions, indeed. The heart was the best part of man, the fount of life; hence Jehudah Halevi's well-known saying, "Israel is to the world as the heart to the body." An intimate connection was also established, by Jews and Greeks alike, between the physical condition of the heart and man's moral character. It was a not unnatural thought that former ages were more pious than later times. "The heart of Rabbi Akiba was like the door of the porch [which was twenty cubits high], the heart of Rabbi Eleazar ben Shammua was like the door of the Temple [this was only ten cubits high], while our hearts are only as large as the eye of a needle." But I am going beyond my subject. To collect all the things, pretty and the reverse, that have been said in Jewish literature about the heart, would need more leisure, and a great deal more learning, than I possess. So I will conclude with a story, pathetic as well as poetical, from a Jewish medieval chronicle.