Thus Meckisch lived at peace with God and man, till one day the fatal thought came into his head that he wanted a second wife.  There was no difficulty in getting one—­by the aid of his friend, Sugarman the __ soon the little man found his household goods increased by the possession of a fat, Russian giantess.  Meckisch did not call in the authorities to marry him.  He had a “still wedding,” which cost nothing.  An artificial canopy made out of a sheet and four broomsticks was erected in the chimney corner and nine male friends sanctified the ceremony by their presence.  Meckisch and the Russian giantess fasted on their wedding morn and everything was in honorable order.

But Meckisch’s happiness and economies were short-lived.  The Russian giantess turned out a tartar.  She got her claws into his savings and decorated herself with Paisley shawls and gold necklaces.  Nay more!  She insisted that Meckisch must give her “Society” and keep open house.  Accordingly the bed-sitting room which they rented was turned into a salon of reception, and hither one Friday night came Peleg Shmendrik and his wife and Mr. and Mrs. Sugarman.  Over the Sabbath meal the current of talk divided itself into masculine and feminine freshets.  The ladies discussed bonnets and the gentlemen Talmud.  All the three men dabbled, pettily enough, in stocks and shares, but nothing in the world would tempt them to transact any negotiation or discuss the merits of a prospectus on the Sabbath, though they were all fluttered by the allurements of the Sapphire Mines, Limited, as set forth in a whole page of advertisement in the “Jewish Chronicle, the organ naturally perused for its religious news on Friday evenings.  The share-list would close at noon on Monday.

“But when Moses, our teacher, struck the rock,” said Peleg Shmendrik, in the course of the discussion, “he was right the first time but wrong the second, because as the Talmud points out, a child may be chastised when it is little, but as it grows up it should be reasoned with.”

“Yes,” said Sugarman the Shadchan, quickly; “but if his rod had not been made of sapphire he would have split that instead of the rock.”

“Was it made of sapphire?” asked Meckisch, who was rather a Man-of-the-Earth.

“Of course it was—­and a very fine thing, too,” answered Sugarman.

“Do you think so?” inquired Peleg Shmendrik eagerly.

“The sapphire is a magic stone,” answered Sugarman.  “It improves the vision and makes peace between foes.  Issachar, the studious son of Jacob, was represented on the Breast-plate by the sapphire.  Do you not know that the mist-like centre of the sapphire symbolizes the cloud that enveloped Sinai at the giving of the Law?”

“I did not know that,” answered Peleg Shmendrik, “but I know that Moses’s Rod was created in the twilight of the first Sabbath and God did everything after that with this sceptre.”