The chorus ran: Man nemt awek die chasanim voon die callohs Hi, hi, did-a-rid-a-ree! They tear away their lovers from the maidens, Hi, hi, did-a-rid-a-ree! The air mingled the melancholy of Polish music with the sadness of Jewish and the words hinted of God knew what.
"Old unhappy far-off things And battles long ago." And so over all the songs and stories was the trail of tragedy, under all the heart-ache of a hunted race.

There are few more plaintive chants in the world than the recitation of the Psalms by the "Sons of the Covenant" on Sabbath afternoons amid the gathering shadows of twilight.
Esther often stood in the passage to hear it, morbidly fascinated, tears of pensive pleasure in her eyes.

Even the little jargon story-book which Moses Ansell read out that night to his _Kinder_, after tea-supper, by the light of the one candle, was prefaced with a note of pathos.

"These stories have we gathered together from the Gemorah and the Midrash, wonderful stories, and we have translated the beautiful stories, using the Hebrew alphabet so that every one, little or big, shall be able to read them, and shall know that there is a God in the world who forsaketh not His people Israel and who even for us will likewise work miracles and wonders and will send us the righteous Redeemer speedily in our days, Amen." Of this same Messiah the children heard endless tales.
Oriental fancy had been exhausted in picturing him for the consolation of exiled and suffering Israel.

Before his days there would be a wicked Messiah of the House of Joseph; later, a king with one ear deaf to hear good but acute to hear evil; there would be a scar on his forehead, one of his hands would be an inch long and the other three miles, apparently a subtle symbol of the persecutor.