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had ordered claret. One day Thackeray | death made a blank which has never been walked up to our house carrying a rug of filled up. When great men are called very bright, pleasant, and cheerful colors away, the world at large feels their loss, under his arm, which he himself laid down and knows that their places are empty, on the floor of my sister's room, thinking but still have the works of their genius on it would tend to raise her spirits. With which to feed, and by which they may children he was always delightful; with remember them; but to those who have older or with unsympathetic people he loved them, and met them in the easy, could be satirical, cold, and cynical. He kindly intercourse of every-day life, who one day remarked to an acquaintance in have received their love and consolations my hearing that he only liked "second-in time of sorrow, and have mingled with rate books, second-rate women, but firstrate wines."

Mr. Thackeray had talent for drawing, but he was never satisfied with any of his achievements. My father called upon him one morning, and found him fretting over a drawing of his own.

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their tears and laughter, no one can fill for them the empty seats, and the heart goes back in longing to the days they were among us.

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This is but a rough, inadequate sketch, but to those who cherish his memory, even a passing moment with such a man is "Look! he said. "Now G. (mention- worth the most precious place in one's ing some clever draughtsman), by a few remembrance. Thackeray was not touches, throwing some light or shadow character to be hit off with a few broad here and there, would make this a picture. strokes; for there lay underneath the How is it I know not, but I certainly can-ever-varying surface a deep fountain of not do it at all." tenderness, ever ready at the call of need and suffering.

Thackeray sometimes looked worried, and I once heard him say that he suffered from mental depression.

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"My number (Cornhill) is nearly due, and I cannot make it come!" he exclaimed, tapping his forehead. Yes, I would like to rest my head in some quiet corner; I had a nice scene this morning, but 'tis all gone, and I cannot call to mind a bit of it now!

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My father, who was full of intellect, which Thackeray fully appreciated, was a shy, dreamy, unobtrusive man, with a great deal of pride and, perhaps, oversensitiveness. In his time of trouble Thackeray was more than a brother to him. My mother told me that when he heard for the first time of my father's pecuniary loss he was very agitated, and turning to my mother, he asked her what she was going to do.

"I mean to trust to the ravens," she answered.

An expression of pain flitted over the great man's face, but after a few seconds of silence he put his large hand over hers, and in a husky voice said, "And so you may, the ravens are kind friends."

At a large dinner it happened that my father's name was mentioned. Thackeray, who had been very silent, brightened up, and exclaimed: "When Corkran dies, he will go straight to Heaven, and all the angels will turn out and present arms to

him!

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But William Makepeace Thackeray was beckoned away many years before my father was to join the great majority. His

His hatred of humbugs and snobs was proverbial, but he loved all that was simple and sincere.

Amongst guileless, happy children
Thackeray was at his best-

Whose feet are guided thro' the land,
Whose jest among his friends is free,
Who takes the children on his knee,
And winds their curls about his hand.
He plays with threads, he beats his chair
For pastime, dreaming of the sky —
His inner day can never die,
His night of loss is always there.

HENRIETTE CORKRAN.

From The Spectator.

SOME SUPERSTITIONS OF THE SYNA

GOGUE.

THAT, in the course of centuries, many strange superstitions should have taken root in the synagogue, can hardly be matter of surprise to any one acquainted even superficially with the history of mediæval rabbinism. But it is a question, for all that, whether outsiders have any idea of the odd nature of the beliefs that lie at the bottom of many Jewish rites and ceremonies. It is not too much to affirm that one-half of the ritual of the synagogue not, be it understood, in the ignorant East, but in the communities of the cultured West — is based upon superstitions so puerile, so silly, as to provoke only the amused wonderment of rational men. For

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instance, incredible though it may appear, | world faiths and fancies. Take again, for it is nevertheless a fact that the most sol- example, the belief in the significance of emn function of the Jewish Church, the dreams. This has so strong a hold of the sounding of the "shophar," or "ram's Jew, that the ritual dares not ignore it. horn trumpet," on the New Year festival On the five great feasts of the year is prearranged with a view to tricking the Passover, Pentecost, Tabernacles, New arch-accuser, Satan, or, in plain En- Year, and the Day of Atonement-the glish, cheating the devil. The New Year Gentile who has the curiosity to visit a is, according to Jewish belief, the day of synagogue will infallibly be struck by one judgment. On this day, the record of ceremony peculiar to these solemn days. Israel's shortcomings is read before the All the worshippers of priestly descent, heavenly throne; but when the sound of known as "kohanim," station themselves the sacred trumpet is heard, only the in front of the ark of the law, cover their merits and sufferings of the tribes are heads with their praying-scarves, raise remembered, and their transgressions are their hands with the fingers spread twoblotted out. Hence, as the festival ap-and-two together why or wherefore they proaches, it is an object with the arch- do not know-and pronounce a benedicaccuser to prevent the notes of the tion, while the congregants, with bated shophar from reaching the throne of grace, breath and heads averted, repeat a portion or so devout Jews allege; and to circum- of the ritual of the day. The performance vent him, recourse is had to what they looks very imposing to the uninitiated. consider an ingenious device. For a As a matter of fact, the worshippers are month previously during the whole of simply mumbliug over an old cabalistic the month of Ellul, that is the trumpet invocation against bad dreams, of which is blown every morning in the synagogue the most important part is the mental repafter the early service. Satan, on the etition for the words are too sacred for watch, flies upwards when the first notes actual enunciation of some thaumaturreach him, in order to bar the way. And gic names of the Creator, compounded, this he does on each succeeding day when after the usual cabalistic fashion, of the he hears the sound. On the last day of initials of a number of words occurring the month, the day preceding the New in the blessing uttered by the priests. Year, the blowing of the shophar is dis- Those who think that this belief in the continued. Satan thinks it all over, of efficacy of cabalistic formulæ is confined course, and no longer listens for the ob- to the illiterate and fanatical Jews of jectionable tones, and the result is that the south-eastern Europe and Palestine, are next day, which is the true Feast of much in error. A visit to the city of LonTrumpets, the Jews have it all their own don will undeceive them; for in the side way, and the sound without let or hin- streets of Whitechapel, charms to keep drance reaches the seat of mercy. For off the night-witch Lilith may be bought nearly two thousand years, the practice of at the not extravagant price of a penny intermitting the blowing of the shophar apiece. The superstition about Lilith, to on the eve of the New Year L'arbib ha- whom Adam was wedded before Eve was Satan-to use the explanatory phrase created, and who bore him all the demons of the rabbins "to puzzle Satan," has that vexed the ancient world, is as strong been in vogue, and the arch-accuser ought to-day among the great body of believing certainly to be up to the trick by this Jews as it was four thousand years ago time. However, this view of the matter among their ancestors in the plains of does not appear to have struck the modern Shinar. So great is the demand for these Jews, who continue the practice with a documents, that there is one Jewish printchildlike reliance on the simplicity of ing-office in Great Alie Street that turns Satan, and the efficacy of their device for them out by the thousands, one of the circumventing him. most curious products certainly of the modern printing-press. The efficacy of these documents lies in the repetition of the various aliases by which the witch Lilith is known; for a tradition of the holy "Zoar," the text-book of the Kabala, tells us that when Elijah the prophet met the uncanny creature on one of her nocturnal expeditions, he contrived to draw from her the information that in whatso

This is far from being an exceptional instance of the odd beliefs that have found favor in Jewry and acceptance in the ritual of the synagogue. The ceremonial of the Jews is cram full of similar superstitions; it is impossible to turn a page of the Jewish prayer-book, or enter a Jewish house of worship, without being struck by some one or other of these survivals of old

ever place the several names applied to | Folk-lorists would find a good deal to her in the demon world were posted up, she was powerless to enter.

One of the features of the synagogue service is the repetition of a prayer known as the "kaddish," or sanctification. The prayer in itself is a perfectly unobjectionable production, attributing sanctity and honor to the Creator. Rabbinical ingenuity has, however, made it the means of perpetuating among Jews one of the grossest superstitions of crude Judaism, the belief in an actual purgatory. It was one of the early tenets of the synagogue that every soul had to pass a given time in purgatory. One of the rabbis Akiba, if we recollect aright-fixed the term at a period not exceeding twelve months. For the pious, the term was, of course, less in proportion to their piety. Now, it became at once an object to shorten the period of purgation, and it happened that one of the most austere of the Pharisees dreamt that the recitation of the kaddish by the son of the deceased had the effect of helping his father one foot out of purgatory; it was forthwith made an institution of Judaism that for eleven months after the death of a parent, a son should publicly repeat the sanctification in synagogue as often as he could, the rapidity with which the departed got out of purgatory depending entirely upon the frequency with which the prayer was repeated. The reason eleven months was fixed upon as the limit of time for the mourner's kaddish, was due to respect for the deceased. Twelve months being the longest period for which the very wickedest was condemned to suffer, it was deemed only considerate to regard the late-lamented as not quite as bad as he might have been by an amount of wickedness equivalent to a month's confinement in purgatory. And in no part of the world is the punctual saying of the kaddish neglected. On a par with the practice, so far as the superstition that underlies it is concerned, is the custom of keeping a lighted lamp burning in the room where a death has occurred, for seven days after the burial, in order that the soul still hovering about may not feel lonesome; and the yet stranger practice of placing a loaf of bread on the body of a dead person, when for any reason it is necessary to move it on the Sabbath. It is unlawful to move a corpse on the Sabbath, but rabbinical casuistry finds nothing to urge against moving a vessel that contains a loaf of bread on that day.

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repay them in a study of the Jewish ritual and the various rites and ceremonies of the Jewish Church. In nearly every case, these rest upon a substratum of superstition of no little interest to the collector of early myths and beliefs. And, in the case of the Jews too, some of the superstition embodied in the ritual has come to shadow the house of worship itself. The synagogue is firmly believed to be a meetinghouse for the dead as well as for the liv ing. Hence a Jew never enters an empty synagogue without knocking three times at the door, to warn the ghostly congregants within of the approach of a living person; nor would any worshipper look back over his shoulder as he leaves the house of prayer. A law peculiar to the great synagogue of Posen, in east Prussia, is said to have been published owing to the presence of a number of dead visitors there on the high festival of the year. No Jew there is allowed to cover his head with the praying-scarf, as is the custom in other places. The legend that accounts for this-whatever may be its worth as follows. On a certain New Year, in the days of Rabbi Eger, the congregants were engaged in their devotions with, as usual, their heads covered, when they found themselves cramped for want of room. The crush became terrible, and men could scarcely breathe, when the aged rabbi, moved by the sense of uneasiness apparent in the congregation, turned and saw there, among the living worshippers, the forms and figures of many long passed away. Instantly he called out that all who were alive should remove the praying. scarves from their heads. They did so, and only the dead remained covered. Then the rabbi adjured the souls present, in the name of the living God, to leave the place in peace, and the people to their devotions. Whereupon the dead slowly vanished; and since that time no living worshipper ever covers his head in the Posen synagogue. Whatever be the truth concerning this story, the fact remains that a Jew would no more enter a synagogue without the preliminary knocks to warn the dead of his presence, than he would leave a burial-ground without pluck ing a little grass and casting it over his shoulder, taking care at the same time not to look back, lest he might see the soul of the co-religionist last interred there in the shape of a fire-spark hovering over the new-made grave.

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For EIGHT DOLLARS, remitted directly to the Publishers, the LIVING AGE will be punctually forwarded for a year, free of postage.

Remittances should be made by bank draft or check, or by post-office money-order, if possible. If neither of these can be procured, the money should be sent in a registered letter. All postmasters are obliged to register letters when requested to do so. Drafts, checks, and money-orders should be made payable to the order of LITTELL & Co.

Single Numbers of THE LIVING AGE, 18 cents.

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"Ay, the coble's tight and strong enow, an' I know what the sea-gulls mean, But I left my missus bad up there," and he glanced at the headland green,

Where a red roof hung like a marten's nest, and his bold brown eyes grew dim; With kindly cheer and honest jest, his fellows heartened him.

Or ever the sun was high at noon, the bright blue sky was black,

The wild white horses tossed their crests over the gathering wrack;

Over the grey seas fast and fierce, through the clouds of flying foam,

The squall swept on from the cruel eastboat was far from home.

the

Three women watched from the great pier head, through the black and bitter night; One lay and shivered to hear the blast, as it rushed o'er the rocky height,

And nestled closely to her side lay her little new-born son,

While the women said, "He'll be back to see, long ere the day is done."

But ever the pale cheek flushed and burned, and ever the eyes grew wild;

She bade them take the babe away, "for he'll never see his child."

Many a boat in bootless search flew over the lessening waves,

Many a keen eye strained its sight, from the Head with its crowded graves;

But the April days, in shade and shine, passed in a deepening pain,

And never over the harbor bar came the Whitby Lass again.

Hope sank and rose, and sank and died; the fishermen knew at last,

That from deep-sea harvest and busy staithes, four gallant "hands" had passed.

They found the boat on the flowing tide, ere the year to winter grew;

Her sails were rent, her block was jammed, her strop was half cut through.

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WHEN Clara's little golden head
Is lifted up to greet you, Fred,
If every kiss of hers secures
Just fifteen and a half of yours,
'Tis plain, a constant price for gold
In poorer metal can be told.
But if she rather, as I guess,
Deals

you her kisses, more or less
According as she judges you
Deserve them plentiful or few;
A precious thing, you're forced to say,
Is worth whate'er one's forced to pay.
Or if your richest merchandise
Seems poor and worthless in her eyes,
So that the most that you can give
Can't win you wherewithal to live,
Then Clara may your want supply
Not as of debt, but charity.
Academy.

W. H. S.

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