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1845.]

Poor Esteer, the Jewess.

their advance, when presently a fiendish sound, half a laugh and half a shout, bursting from them, sent the blood chilled to the heart of both Christian and Jew. Each wore a sort of short sword or large knife, in a carved silver case, at his side, which they unsheathed, and drawing their fingers along the shining edges, they pointed upward to signify that we should soon be there. As they approached, the cries of Hadzar appeared to enrage them even more than our presence, and the hopeless upturned face of the Jewess they spat upon, for they were within a few yards of us. One more agonized look to the beach, by the misguided ladies whose thoughtlessness had brought them into this peril, seemed the last human effort of hope for the Arabs would have made no bones of despatching them all in cold blood-when the blessed turban of our guard appeared, swift as the wind, and nearing the place where we were. The Arabs followed the direction of our eyes, and instantly on perceiving the approaching rescue, fled through the wood, leaving their murderous work undone. When the Moor reined in his panting steed, whom he had spurred at a single stretch on a swift gallop from the city gate till he overtook us, every tongue was palsied with horror for some minutes; and before any one could tell the tale, the Arabs were out of sight and beyond pursuit. The child looked on in wonder, and threw into Esteer's lap the flowers he had pulled from the bank; but she, for the first time, paid no heed to her little friend, who buried his head in her bosom, as he was wont when troubled, but no tender pressure responded to his caress. Esteer had swooned, and remained for a long time insensible.

After this occurrence, and her recovery, no further accident disturbed the excursion, which had been so near a tragic termination at its very outset. The destination of the party was to a beautiful spot called Einil Adjar, about thirty miles from Mogadore, where a week was to be spent in encampment, with an ample provision of marquees, tents, &c., and all desirable means and appliances, with light hearts and happy spirits, for the enjoyment of a little episode in the routine of life in a Moorish city. Nothing of particular note occurred in connexion with Esteer, within that period. I may only mention that the party committed the serious mistake,

in choosing their spot for encampment,
of disregarding the familiar Arab pro-
verb, "pitch your tent upon a hill."
Extreme beauty of scenery, coupled
with apparent healthiness of situation,
led them to select a spot in a valley; the
consequence of which was the reception
of the seeds of a violent African fever
by two of the party, which compelled
their return on the fourth day to the
city. One of these was Esteer's mis-
tress, who, on the occasion of that fear-
ful fever, came into closer contact with
the angel of death, than it is often the
lot of those who survive to tell of-
having been actually borne out for bu-
rial, and only revived sufficiently, by the
motion and freshness of the air, to awak-
en a faint idea, on the very edge of a
grave dug in African sands, that some
spark of life and hope might yet be lin-
gering. The large and heavy stone
provided for defence against the jackals
of that drear desert, was therefore re-
served for another-and the Democratic
Review now receives a contribution, in
this Reminiscence, which it had well
nigh lost!

On the way back to the city, Esteer was encouraged by the kindness which she had experienced, to beg permission of her mistress to stop for a few moments, on the beach near the harbor landing, where she went aside, in a state of unusual violence of emotion, and remained for some time the prey to a struggle of intense feeling and grief which seemed almost too powerful to be borne. She had left her infant charge meanwhile in her mistress's hands, who waited at a short distance, a witness to the anguish she could neither console nor venture to intrude upon. After a time she returned, and resumed her accustomed duty, with her habitual air of impressive melancholy. The tears shed on that spot-the tribute, apparently, to some memory with which it was particularly associated-did not seem to have brought that relief to the surcharged heart, which it is usually the sweet and gentle ministration of tears to afford.

Whatever was the untold source of poor Esteer's grief, her cup was not yet quite full. Four days had elapsed since our party had sallied forth from the Bebel Exemo. On her approach to the house Esteer cast an eager glance for the old man, her father, in his accustomed place by the outside wall. He was not there. This circumstance alone

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awoke no alarm, as he often wandered off for a whole day when supplied with food. But the kind-hearted old Rammo could give no other tidings of him, than that on the day Esteer had left, she had fulfilled her parting directions and had taken out his food at the usual time; but at the sound of her unaccustomed voice the poor old idiot had crept away, nor could he be prevailed upon to taste the food she tendered him. He clutched eagerly, however, in his skeleton hand, the few fluse his daughter had left to be given to him-departed and returned no more. It seems that the very instinct of food with him was associated with the ministration of it by her hand and voice. He neither begged, nor accepted it from any other; still less did he purchase it with any of the little stock of trifling coins which he must have accumulated. Poor Esteer! She went forth to seek him, sorrowing and alone; and all that remained to her of kindred or friend was a livid corpse which she found amidst the rubbish of a mutilated old tenement, spacious in size, but which had been torn down and left in ruins, in the quarter of the city outside the walls called the "Jews' Town" This had once been Esteer's home-the place of her birth, and of a happy childhood nurtured in the midst of elegance and luxury; and the last instinct of mortal feeling had driven its former master there to die, since the voice seemed lost which, next to money, was the only link that yet bound to human life his shattered mind and enfeebled body.

The Jewish maiden had a nature full of true sentiment and deep feeling, and now it seemed that her heart-strings must break for very desolation. Even her little charge seemed to have lost his infantine power to charm and soothe. The frolic mood of childhood, repelled by that perpetual unresponsive gloom, naturally sought more cheerful faces; and poor Esteer-(she was always called poor Esteer")-her necessary duties ended, would now creep away into a corner to mourn her lot and her unspoken sorrows alone. Many were the superstitious ceremonies she would perform to ward off evil spirits, and when comfort was offered her from Christian lips, with the assurance that there was a Saviour in heaven who cared for every creature on the earth, and most of all for its down-trodden and afflicted;

and who, in the presence of his Father, was accepted a ransom for all flesh:

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Lady," she would answer, "these are the Christian's doctrines, and it may be that all Christians are not idolators and accursed, for have not I met with some from among them who have borne with, and even kindly cherished, one of our despised race? But we await, and must still await the coming of that Messiah, who shall gather us again in rejoicing and triumph to the land of our fathers. Till that glorious day, dearest lady, our only trust must be in the great God of Israel, who led our fathers from cruel bondage; and bade rivers of cool waters to gush forth to quench their thirst; and bread to rain down from Heaven to satisfy their hunger in a barren wilderness. And if thus was the child of Israel cared for of old, He will not now forsake us; and His promises will be fulfilled unto our people, through the remnant He has spared, when their former idolatries and infidelities are atoned for; as it is just and meet they should be atoned for, hard though it be for weak human nature to sustain the grievous burthens beneath which our heads are bowed."

Esteer's mistress, perceiving her faith at once unwavering and not destitute of consolation and hope, forbore to disturb her mind by useless efforts at conversation: but she wondered how even this small stock of information had found its way to her poor handmaiden. She had often observed that she was greatly superior to her fellows; her habits and manners too were very different from those of most of the Barbary Jewesses. The light of knowledge falls faintly and dimly indeed on the women of this country; and less on those of the Jewish than the Moorish race, who are not awarded souls by their turbaned lords at all. Oh, speed, speed the day, when the infinite moral and social good which attends the beautiful steps of our blessed Christianity, may fall, like the universal dew of Heaven, on all humanity of every clime!

The cloud that had again darkened Esteer's spirit unfolded itself anew, and opened afresh to her the light that told the heart within was not yet quite dead. A severe fever seized her little favorite-a remote consequence probably of the excursion to Einil Adjar. None could

pillow the infant's burning head like her whose sweet low voice could best calm his wayward and restless spirit to repose; and the sinking and suffering child now filled her whole heart. Self, with all its griefs, its memories and its despair, bitter as they might be, no longer occupied her thoughts. Like all who lose themselves in others, she seemed to illuminate with love; and the various expressions of her exquisite face, drawn forth by the hopes and fears of the precarious state of the child, made her seem literally another being. It was at this period that a little incident occurred which made a partial revelation of the nature of at least one of the sorrows which united to weigh down poor Esteer's spirit. As the fearful fever was subsiding, when the exhaustion which follows it produced in the child a sleep from which there is often no awaking, the mother, overpowered by long watchfulness and anxiety, sank to rest on a pallet by his side. Such slumber, however, is not sleep, nor was it long before the anxious maternal eye opened, to assure itself of the continued safety of her child, though without any motion or sound to indicate any interruption of her supposed repose. She then beheld Esteer, in whose heart tender emotions were now strongly at work, draw from her bosom a miniature set in gold, on which she gazed with an earnest though melancholy delight, and her mistress could see that the beautiful Jewess was lost in the contemplation of the likeness of a young man. Ah, poor Esteer! A deep breathing from the sufferer, and a restless motion of a little emaciated hand, recalled her from the far excursion in a different world of sweet memories in which she had allowed herself for a few minutes to stray, and the miniature was quickly returned to her bosom-where the presence of such a concealed treasure had never before been suspected by her mistress. The eyes of her favorite no longer glared with the fatal brightness of the fever, but a languid composure told plainly that the crisis of the disease had passed in safety, and that all danger was now at an end. Days and weeks passed in the most careful ministration to the enfeebled child on the part of Esteer, who performed the part of no servant, but of a second mother, till at length health braced again the little frame, and the household resumed its usual routine.

Nothing more, meanwhile, was ever seen of the hidden but cherished miniature, the existence of which had been thus betrayed, until on one genial afternoon in the very early spring, a trio, consisting of Esteer, mother and child, were seated by “The Well,” a short walk from the city, where, as is usual, a shed was erected to protect the cool bright water from the drifting sand, while a bucket was provided, secured by a chain, from which the camel might drink, and a wooden dipper for man also to quench his parching thirst. An example for Christian men to follow, to help God's gifts to fulfil the end for which they were designed, the good of his creatures. No Musulman ever passed this or any other spring of water, without audibly and devoutly thanking the good Allah for the blessing. At this spot again Esteer appeared a prey to a similar emotion, to that she had exhibited when she turned aside near the harbor landing and looked forth on the ocean, on the return from the memorable excursion to Einil Adjar. Her color came and went, a violent flush being succeeded by a deadly paleness, while the quivering of the beautiful curve of her lips preluded the tears which nature could no longer restrain from flowing.

An intuitive confidence had by this time sprung up between Esteer and her mistress, not only from the general intimacy of their intercourse, but especially from the one strong sympathy that had lately sprung up between her and her employer, as both had watched with seemingly equal and emulous care and love, by the side of the same bed of touching suffering and fearful peril. So that her mistress now ventured, with a gentle kindness which annihilated the barriers of distinction between the Christian lady and the despised and down-trodden Barbary Jewess, to inquire the secret of her sorrow; and what the latter a few months ago would have buried in the profoundest silence she now freely told, and was the happier for having unbound the secret chord so long and painfully tightened round her heart.

"Alas! my poor Esteer! And are you indeed the young affianced bride whose parting, in rich array and costly jewels, from her betrothed, I witnessed three years ago?"

"The same, dear lady! and that farewell was the last I have ever seen or

shall ever again see of Benaliel! who then took his departure in a ship which already waited for him. It bore him to other lands; and this miniature which came back to me a few months afterwards, is all I can ever know of him more. I parted from him, you remember, on the beach-and it was on this spot, at the Well, we met the day before he sailed, when he told me that even if our parents had not so ordered our union he would never have wed or loved another than me. We had grown up together; and at the time when the Emperor drove out all of Israel's race from their homes in the Moorish city, with out an hour's warning, or the slightest regard to the sick or dying, he bore me, then an infant, outside the gates, while my father cared for the lifeless but yet unburied body of my mother. His mother too nursed me and if I loved Benaliel Zaguery, her son, from my infancy, how could I otherwise? If I differ, too, somewhat from the maidens of my race, and especially of my present condition, as you sometimes have said, dear lady, it is to Benaliel that I owe it; for he had been taught by one who had learned much wisdom and knowledge in your own Christian lands, and he loved to talk to me of distant countries and strange things, and to impart to me all that he himself possessed. Our parents were both very rich, notwithstanding the frequent and heavy demands made on them by the Emperor to pay his troops; and ever since my memory serves me, we dwelt in houses adjoining; the comfort and luxuriousness of our homes equalling, if not surpassing those of any of our people in the Jews' Town.'

"The internal wars of late years have multiplied the frequency and heaviness of the Emperor's demands upon the Jews of Swarrah for the payment of his troops, until wailing and lamentation have filled their houses, and few have been left unimpoverished. When a body of soldiers were sent at six in the morning to be paid at noon, even though at half-past eleven there appeared no hope of a possibility, yet it must be done! My poor father had accumulated great wealth; and, next to me, his only child, he loved nothing so well, and it wrung his heart to be thus ruthlessly pillaged. At last all seemed to have gone, and to the severest threats and searches he replied by pleading entire destitution, having been already stripped of every

thing. One day an Emperor's friend' appeared at our door with a peremptory demand, to which he opposed the usual reply. The Moor made no reply, but with a stern countenance strode away, and presently returned with the Cadi and a band of soldiers; by whom, after being stripped of all but the humblest clothing, and loaded with insults and even blows, we were thrust forth, with no other resource than charity for very bread; and scarcely were we beyond the very threshold when the work of demolition commenced. My father looked on with composure until they reached the garret; and when a shout from within announced that they had discovered the secret receptacle for his treasure of gold and jewels (still vast after all the drains upon it) which he had contrived within the rafters and beams of the roof, his nature gave way-without a word or a moan he sank in a swoon at my feet; and when, after a long time, he was at last recalled to life, it was to rise up the hopeless and helpless idiot who so long, dear lady, fed from your bounty; and who, at last, returned to expire upon the ruins which had once been the home of his happiness, his pride and his wealth.

"Thus beggared and broken down,we were spurned by the parents of Benaliel since which, after a few weeks of wretched wandering, I found a shelter in your house-myself able to bear up under the burthen of life only for the sake of what remained to me of a father. Benaliel's miniature was the only thing I had saved; worn next to my bosom, it alone escaped the robbery which plundered us of everything else. But he is now nothing to me. His parents despise me; nor one word of greeting or pity has come, or can ever again come, to me from him. And when you leave, what will become of Esteer?"

"Would, Esteer, that you had a Christian's solace in adversity," was the lady's reply, after listening to this sad narrative. "I well remember the ceremony of parting between you and your betrothed, which I was invited to witness, for its interest as one of the usages of your people. When the bowl of milk was poured into the wave that bore the boat from the shore, I was told that it was an emblem alike of purity and of constancy, not to be forfeited till the milk should collect itself again from the briny deep, where, in a few moments,

all appearance of its whiteness, even, had been lost. Can a promise so solemly pledged be broken by your people?"

"Alas! How can Benaliel take to the home of his proud house, a beggar and a menial-even if he did retain any memory of the love he once felt? I could almost wish I were a Christian if your people are always true when fortune flies-tell me, dear lady, is it so?"

The Christian made no answer to the probing question thus artlessly put; but turning her head aside and blushing for her people, she rose, and pointing to the lengthening shadow which already made that of the child as tall as a full grown man, she proceeded back to the city, to shun the dangerous chill and dew of the evening-wishing in her heart that all who bear that blessed title dared answer in truth, and prove by their example to Jew and Infidel, that they merit it!

Ón their return, they dropped each a stone on the huge pile near the "Sainthouse," where reposed the bones of an idiot-an innocent, not knowing good from ill-such being the only Saints known to the Musulman reverence.

On the following morning Hadzar broke another tumbler-in sign of "good luck;" and sure enough, a sail appeared in the offing of the harbor that day. This was an event which always created a great excitement and stir in the establishments of the two or three Christian merchants of Mogadore. Her approach and anchorage were anxiously watched from the turret of the house which has been the chief scene of this narrative. She bore the welcome flag of the stars and stripes of the United States, and proved to be a vessel from Gibraltar, freighted by and consigned to Jews. After receiving her due visit from the pratique boat, her own boat was lowered from the stern, and two gentlemen were rowed ashore with lusty oars that seemed to quiver with impatience to reach the strand.

That evening the Christian lady above spoken of, sat alone-when Hadzar bowed in a stranger with his best flourish. Esteer's voice had been chanting the legends of her people by the side of the couch of her charge, making a sweet music to the mother's ear as she turned the pages of a book; but for some time it had ceased to make

itself heard. To shorten a tale already too long, the stranger announced himself as Benaliel Zaguery; he had come in all faith and love to claim his affianced bride. He had already learned her fate and present situation, and shame clouded his dark and expressive features, as he sought to excuse the cruel conduct of his parents to poor Esteer. He spoke out his whole case frankly and manfully; said that the ship would be ready to sail again in a week or two, and that he intended to start at daybreak to-morrow for Morocco (the capital) to purchase the Emperor's permission to carry off his affianced wife with him-(the privilege of egress from the country is not easily to be obtained in Morocco, and only by heavy purchase). He did not ask in words to see Esteer, but after he had concluded his recital, listened to with an interest I need not describe, he paused, evidently in anxious expectation.

Without replying in words, the Christian lady rose, and proceeded into the adjoining apartment. Esteer had fallen asleep by the side of the sleeping child. she had been lulling with her low sweet songs. Her head rested on its pillow, in an attitude of all her own peculiar grace, her cheek upon the cherished miniature-for which indeed poor Esteer seemed to revive in her own person all the old tendencies to idolatry which had brought so many and fearful woes upon her people. The light of a lampon a small stand near the head of the couch revealed one of the loveliest tableaux vivants her mistress's eye, or any other eye, has ever beheld. Returning softly into the other room, where she had left her unexpected visitor, she conducted him back with her, and after introducing him beyond the threshold, she simply pointed to the scene that there lay in all the silent beauty and holiness of the sleep of innocence-the equal innocence of infancy and of the maturity of womanly loveliness,-and then gently retreated, closing the door behind her, and leaving to Benaliel to make his own announcement of himself. She herself ascended to the turret, to see the moon glitter on the rippling waves of the now motionless bay-to watch the graceful sweep of its beach and low curving shores-and to look up to the quiet stars, with a heart overflowing with all sweet thoughts; and wonder if in their circuit round half the globe that night, they

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