“If I talk like a French novel,” returned Elias, “I talk, at least, as I feel. I mean every word I say. The one conviction that abides with me all the time, lies heavily upon my conscience day and night, is the conviction of my utter uselessness and worthlessness in the world. Why, the cook in our kitchen, the man who looks after our furnace, does more practical good, has a better claim to his bread and butter, than I. I have lived twenty-seven years. All that I have been able to accomplish in all that time, is the irretrievable ruin of an innocent young girl's life. That's the one ponderable result of my twenty-seven years' existence--the one thing I've got to show for it.” “And your pictures? Do your pictures count for nothing?” “Oh!” cried Elias, with a sudden outburst of passion, “don't talk to me of my pictures. I should like to burn every stitch of canvas that I have ever put my hand to, and spoiled for better purposes. I _have_ burned all that remained in my possession. As long as I live, I shall never touch a brush again.” From which it would appear that our hero had wrought himself into a very unenviable, frame of mind. To narrate at length what followed would be melancholy; and it would be superfluous. Tillie and Elias became engaged. Their engagement was cele-brated by three redoubtable dinners--one at the Sternbergs', one at the Kochs', and one at the dark house on Stuyvesant Park. Their wedding was set down for the following January. Then, according to the regular Jewish custom, for three successive Sunday afternoons, they were “at home” at the residence of the prospective bride. Hither flocked scores, even hundreds, of their friends, and offered their congratulations--their friends, and their friends' friends, and the friends of all relatives and connections, far and near. Much wine was drunken at these receptions, much cheese-cake eaten, much tobacco smoked; and oh, what a quantity of talk, in what a variety of accents, from best to worst, roused cacophonic echoes in the walls and ceiling! Among our New York Jews, it may be said with material literalness, a subtle chain of countless rings the next unto the farthest brings. If one had wished to obtain a bird's-eye-view of the metropolitan Jewish world, to behold in indiscriminate procession all sorts and conditions of Jews and Jewesses, one could not have done better than arrive early and remain till the end of one of these Sunday afternoons. Old and young, good and bad, wise and foolish, rich and poor, savage and civilized; fat Jews and lean Jews, shabby Jews and shoddy Jews, gentlemanly Jews and rowdy Jews; petty tradesmen, banker princes, college professors, commercial travelers, doctors, lawyers, students, musicians: all came, accompanied by their wives and their children, their parents, and their parents-in-law, and their brothers and sisters-in-law, to add their quota to the great jubilation. And such a