Both Sam and she had good ears, and were always first in the field with the latest comic opera tunes.

Leah's healthy vitality was prodigious.

There was a legend in the Lane of such a maiden having been chosen by a coronet; Leah was satisfied with Sam, who was just her match.

On the heels of Sam came several other guests, notably Mrs.Jacobs (wife of "Reb" Shemuel), with her pretty daughter, Hannah.
Mr.Hyams, the _Cohen_, came last--the Priest whose functions had so curiously dwindled since the times of the Temples.

To be called first to the reading of the Law, to bless his brethren with symbolic spreadings of palms and fingers in a mystic incantation delivered, standing shoeless before the Ark of the Covenant at festival seasons, to redeem the mother's first-born son when neither parent was of priestly lineage--these privileges combined with a disability to be with or near the dead, differentiated his religious position from that of the Levite or the Israelite.