Jonah, prophet and whale-explorer, even so he was but dust and ashes for other sinners to cover themselves withal; but he, Moses Ansell, was the honored master of his household, enjoying a foretaste of the lollings of the righteous in Paradise; nay, more, dispensing hospitality to the poor and the hungry.  Little fleas have lesser fleas, and Moses Ansell had never fallen so low but that, on this night of nights when the slave sits with the master on equal terms, he could manage to entertain a Passover guest, usually some newly-arrived Greener, or some nondescript waif and stray returned to Judaism for the occasion and accepting a seat at the board in that spirit of camaraderie which is one of the most delightful features of the Jewish pauper. Seder was a ceremonial to be taken in none too solemn and sober a spirit, and there was an abundance of unreproved giggling throughout from the little ones, especially in those happy days when mother was alive and tried to steal the Afikuman or Matso specially laid aside for the final morsel, only to be surrendered to father when he promised to grant her whatever she wished.  Alas! it is to be feared Mrs. Ansell’s wishes did not soar high.  There was more giggling when the youngest talking son—­it was poor Benjamin in Esther’s earliest recollections—­opened the ball by inquiring in a peculiarly pitched incantation and with an air of blank ignorance why this night differed from all other nights—­in view of the various astonishing peculiarities of food and behavior (enumerated in detail) visible to his vision.  To which Moses and the Bube and the rest of the company (including the questioner) invariably replied in corresponding sing-song:  “Slaves have we been in Egypt,” proceeding to recount at great length, stopping for refreshment in the middle, the never-cloying tale of the great deliverance, with irrelevant digressions concerning Haman and Daniel and the wise men of Bona Berak, the whole of this most ancient of the world’s extant domestic rituals terminating with an allegorical ballad like the “house that Jack built,” concerning a kid that was eaten by a cat, which was bitten by a dog, which was beaten by a stick, which was burned by a fire, which was quenched by some water, which was drunk by an ox, which was slaughtered by a slaughterer, who was slain by the Angel of Death, who was slain by the Holy One, blessed be He.

In wealthy houses this Hagadah was read from manuscripts with rich illuminations—­the one development of pictorial art among the Jews—­but the Ansells had wretchedly-printed little books containing quaint but unintentionally comic wood-cuts, pre-Raphaelite in perspective and ludicrous in draughtsmanship, depicting the Miracles of the Redemption, Moses burying the Egyptian, and sundry other passages of the text.  In one a king was praying in the Temple to an exploding bomb intended to represent the Shechinah or divine glory.  In another, Sarah attired in a matronly