but the imposing village of Hort, its pretty white houses half
concealed by a wealth of trees and shrubbery.

In this village lived a Jewish bookbinder, Simcha Kalimann, a wit
and bel esprit, the oracle of the entire province, the living
chronicle of his times and people.

Reviewing in reverie the procession of events in his own life,
Kalimann could see, as in a mirror, the phases through which his co-
religionists in Hungary had passed in their efforts toward liberty.
He had lived during that dark period when the Jew dared claim no
rights among his fellow-countrymen. He had suffered evil, he had
endured disgrace, and the storehouse of his memory held many a
tragi-comic picture of the days that were no more. But he had also
lived in times when the spirit of tolerance took possession of men's
minds, and he had been swept along on that tidal movement
inaugurated by Count Szechenyi, the greatest of Hungarians, through
his celebrated book, "Light."

The revolution of 1848 brought about the new Hungarian Constitution,
and put an end to feudal government. Light penetrated into the
darksome streets of the Ghetto, and through the windows opened to
receive the Messiah, a saviour entered proclaiming liberty and
equality to the downtrodden and oppressed.

Crushed and forsaken, as all Israel was, it gratefully responded to
this message of universal brotherhood.

The Hungarian Jew had found a country, and from that moment he had
thrown aside his native timidity, and found the strength to display