This evening, I was speaking with an Orthodox Jewish pal outside the Barnes & Noble on Fifth Avenue near 48th Street when my friend suddenly halted his conversation.

"Excuse me, I need to say a bracha," he said. "There's a man approaching who is an unusual shape —"

His eyes flashed toward my right and I looked to see the shortest grown man I've ever seen, a fellow in his 20s or 30s who was about three feet tall.

"— and there's a prayer that one says to thank God for creating a variety of things."

He proceeded to say softly, "Baruch atah Adonai, Eloheinu Melech Haolam, m'shaneh hab'riyos." I believe it means, "Blessed art Thou, O Lord, our God, King of the Universe, who makes the creatures different."

It was a lovely moment and it made me think of Gerard Manley Hopkins' "Pied Beauty":

Glory be to God for dappled things—
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches' wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced—fold, fallow, and plough;
And áll trades, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dím;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:

Praise hím.