Millennium is far distant, and a Bishop of Sadagora and a Goldwin Smith may never, perhaps, lie in the same bed, or sup at the same banquet, for both of them represent that antagonism which inflamed England in King John's time, or is rampant to-day with Pastor Stoecker in King William of Prussia's reign. "Every country has the Jews it deserves," writes Franzos, quoting the most direful of sayings. God help, in his infinite mercy, American-born Jews if, in generations to come, this cruel speech had ever an application! It might arise from their own errors, and the faults of their surroundings. It would mean, however, nothing less than the political degradation of that country in which Christian and Jew live. Mr. Froude has been much blamed, little lauded, for what he wrote in regard to an oppressed race. It was somewhat as follows: that those who could not fight for their freedom did not deserve it. It sometimes happens that fiction produces effects where facts fail. It is believed, then, that Franzos's stories will not only be of interest to numerous readers, but in the hands of the reformed Jew, by means of the lessons it teaches, help him in his earnest efforts to save his race from retrogression. BARNET PHILLIPS. PREFACE. The following stories, the scene of which is laid in the Podolian Ghetto, were my first literary attempt. They were for the most part written while I was at the university, and were published in various journals. Owing to circumstances, another and later book--"Aus Halb-Asien"--was the first to come out; for this youthful work was not published as a whole until 1876. I mention this, although it is visible from internal evidence, to explain my choice of subjects. The preface to that edition gives a further account of this, and from it I make the following quotations: