Then said a middle-aged lady, much loved and respected by all the listeners:  “How often has many a marriage not turned out well, even when as young people a husband and wife had a passionate love for each other.  The seed of love may be sown before or after marriage; but, unless carefully cultivated during married life by both husband and wife, through deeds of kindness and thoughtfulness and forbearance and mutual sympathy and understanding, the tender plant may soon wither and die.  The old customs of our race, which this letter shows are still kept up in Palestine and I believe in other parts where ghetto life still obtains, if they are not carried to extremes, are, I think, very wise; but, unfortunately, our people are very tempted to go to extremes, and a good custom can thus be distorted and brought to ridicule.”

“True, true,” murmured some of the older people.

“In all things moderation and balance are safe guides to follow,” said Mr. Jacobs.

The next book will be all about Millie’s love affairs and marriage and her life, impressions, and tribulations in Palestine.

APPENDIX

THE CELEBRATION OF THE JUBILEE OF ZORACH BARNETT

(Translated from the Palestine Daily Mail of Friday, December 2nd, 1921).

Those who felt stirred to celebrate the jubilee of this illustrious old pioneer did very well indeed.  For a young man who leaves all his business enterprises far behind him in London and who migrates to Eretz-Israel over fifty years ago—­at a time when Jaffe did not posses even a Minyan foreign Jews; and at a time when the way from Jaffe to Jerusalem was a very long and tedious one—­aye, a way fraught with all possible dangers, and moreover, teeming with robbers, a journey which lasted three whole days, such a Jew is indeed entitled to some mark of appreciation and respect.

A Jew who has worked for the re-building of our land for over fifty consecutive years in which period he visited the lands of the Diaspora fifteen times and all that he did and profited there was afterwards invested in the re-building of Eretz-Israel such a Jew has indeed merited to be praised even during his life-time.

A Jew who was one of the first to found the colony of Petah-Tikvah and therefore merited that people in Jerusalem should mark him out as an object of derision and scorn because he was a dreamer—­a man who built the first house in this Petah-Tikvah—­who was one of the founders of the “Me’ah Shearim in Jerusalem—­who constructed perfect roads in Jaffe—­who founded Zionist Societies in the lands of the Diaspora at a time when Zion did not occupy such a foremost part in the heart of the Jew—­such a Jew is indeed worthy that a monument of his splendid achievement be erected for him even during his life-time!”

It must, moreover, be mentioned that Z. Barnett and his wife are one of the remnant of those noble men who participated in that famous assembly of Kattovitz—­that noble gathering of illustrious men which can be verily described as the Aurora as the Dawn of the conception of the Restoration of the land of Israel.