story from beginning to end. If the setting had been in Jerusalem,
Esther could not have preached the noble doctrine, "When in Rome, don't
do as Rome does, but be true to the old ideals of home and race."

_Plot_. "Esther" seems to me the best-told story in the Bible. Observe
how the note of empty Persian bigness versus simple Jewish faith is
struck at the very beginning and is echoed to the end. Thus, Ahasuerus
ruled over one hundred and twenty-seven provinces, the opening banquet
lasted one hundred and eighty-seven days, the king's bulletins were as
unalterable as the tides, the gallows erected was eighty-three feet
high, the beds were of gold and silver upon a pavement of red and blue
and white and black marble, the money wrested from the Jews was to be
eighteen million dollars, etc. The word "banquet" occurs twenty times in
this short story and only twenty times in all the remaining thirty-eight
books of the Old Testament. In other words, Ahasuerus and his
trencher-mates ate and drank as much in five days as had been eaten and
drunk by all the other Old Testament characters from "Genesis" to
"Malachi."

Note also the contrast between the two queens, the two prime ministers,
the two edicts, and the two later banquets. The most masterly part of
the plot is the handling of events between these banquets. Read again
from chapter v, beginning at verse 9, through chapter vi, and note how
skillfully the pen is held. In motivation as well as in symmetry and
naturalness the story is without a peer. There is humor, too, in the
solemn deliberations over Vashti's "No" (chapter i, verses 12-22) and in
the strange procession led by pedestrian Haman (chapter vi, verses
6-11).

The purpose of the story was to encourage the feast of Purim (chapter