like drinking champagne, smelling tuberoses, inhaling laughing-gas,
going to the opera, all at one time, and, if you once take it in your
hand, nothing short of a stroke of lightning could rend it away, I am
convinced. Do read it, sir, to please me, and retract your
denunciation."

"Never," he said firmly, solemnly even, "and I counsel you, Miriam, in
turn, to seek your draughts of soul from our pure 'wells of English
undefiled,' rather than such high-flown fancies and maudlin streams as
flow from the pen of this accomplished Hebrew. There is a little too
much of the Jeremiah and Isaiah style about such extracts as I have
seen, to suit my taste."

"The idea of a Jew writing novels!" said Evelyn, derisively as she
sipped her wine.

"Or the grandest poem in the world!" added Mr. Bainrothe, who was dining
with us that day, coming to the rescue quite magnanimously as it seemed,
and for once receiving as his recompense a grateful look from the stray
lamb of the tribe of Judah, reposing quietly in a Christian fold.

"What poem do you allude to?" said Evelyn, superciliously. "'Paradise
Lost?'--Oh, I thought Milton was a Unitarian, not quite a Jew; almost as
bad though!"

"No, the book of Job," replied Mr. Bainrothe. "It was that I alluded
to."

"And the Psalms," I added, breathlessly.