THE conspicuous place which Yiddish occupies as a language to-day, not in European Jewish centres only, but also in those of America as well, is strongly in contrast with its former obscure and lowly position. The very people who utilized it as a medium of expression despised it, maintained toward it an attitude of pity—regarded it, indeed, as a necessary evil, to be discarded at the first opportunity. At the present time this much abused dialect is in the ascendant, its champions glory in the fact that Yiddish is king; its detractors retort by declaring that, forsooth, the “handmaiden hath inherited the throne of her mistress;” for, to a certain, well-defined class of minds, Hebrew is still the mistress of languages to the Jew. Who can deny this? Hebrew will remain the sacred language, the language associated with the classic history of the Jews; the language of prayer, the language of sorrow and suffering and hope, the language of Sacred Writ. What sort of figure is Yiddish likely to cut beside this noble, dignified aristocrat of languages? Yiddish, with its obscure origin, its clumsy features, its harsh, unmusical tones and mongrel parts. It was snatched up by the wandering people as a sort of everyday medium of communication, an expedient in emergencies, a secular dress, as it were, to be donned on ordinary occasions. But the uses of Yiddish grew as time went on. It gained an entrance into the higher, the mental life of the people. It approached, at first being admitted through the back door only, like a poor relative; for a time the kitchen was the extent of its domain, and the ignorant, illiterate servant girl its devotee. The educated, the cultured, carefully held aloof from Yiddish books; to be caught in the act of reading Yiddish would stigmatize one as an ignoramus and vulgarian. Even
when the name of Shomer was beginning to be pronounced by daring lips, even when it was whispered about that Shomer's novels savored of all the sensationalism, the charm and mystery, the love and laughter, beautiful golden-locked heroines and stalwart heroes one meets in the novels of Paul de Kock and Eugen Sue—even then the readers of quality continued their lucubrations in the staid society of dry scientific Hebrew works dealing either with theology, else with pedagogics. Who ventured to read Shomer openly at first? Only the undiscriminating, unesthetic, unlearned to whom Hebrew was unintelligible, or, perhaps, the pronouncedly lax, the weak, imbecile minds. But even these unexemplary, unauthoritative, uncritical readers succeeded, however, unconsciously, in influencing their superiors in such a way as to arose their curiosity concerning the much-discussed books of Shomer. The unpretentious-looking, paper-covered, badly-printed books began to be sought, however secretly, by the erstwhile contemners of Yiddish, the maskilim and pedants. The watchfulness and difficulty which attended the secret readings, only they who have gone through the thrilling experience can well estimate. Like all forbidden things, these stories attracted the most promising Talmud students. These sons of the law who were plighted to the sacred language, would with the fickleness of youth hie themselves to the woods, and in the solitude and secrecy of some quiet nook, tremblingly take out the condemned literature, and hungrily, feverishly, consume its pages. One can picture to himself the variety of emotions which moved the readers. What a novel, unique world was this which Shomer tells of! What a hubbub made over seemingly insignificant things, what importance attached to a boy and girl simply because