announced to his congregation that he
was going to resign. Startled, they sent to him a delegate, who asked,
in the name of the congregation, why he was leaving them. 'Because,'
answered the Rabbi, 'this is the first question any one has ever asked
me!'"

"Tell Mr. Pinchas your repartee about the donkey," said Hannah, smiling.

"Oh, no, it's not worth while," said the Reb.

"Thou art always so backward with thine own," cried the Rebbitzin
warmly. "Last Purim an impudent of face sent my husband a donkey made of
sugar. My husband had a Rabbi baked in gingerbread and sent it in
exchange to the donor, with the inscription 'A Rabbi sends a Rabbi.'"

Reb Shemuel laughed heartily, hearing this afresh at the lips of his
wife. But Pinchas was bent double like a convulsive note of
interrogation.

The clock on the mantelshelf began to strike nine. Levi jumped to his
feet.

"I shall be late for school!" he cried, making for the door.

"Stop! stop!" shouted his father. "Thou hast not yet said grace."

"Oh, yes, I have, father. While you were all telling stories I was
_benshing_ quietly to myself."

"Is Saul also among the prophets, is Levi also among the story-tellers?"
murmured Pinchas to himself. Aloud he said: "The child speaks truth; I
saw his lips moving."

Levi gave the poet a grateful look, snatched up his satchel and ran off
to No. 1 Royal Street. Pinchas followed him soon, inwardly upbraiding
Reb Shemuel for meanness. He had only as yet had his breakfast for his
book. Perhaps it was Simcha's presence that was to blame. She was the
Reb's right hand and he did not care to let her know what his left was
doing.

He retired to his study when Pinchas departed, and the Rebbitzin
clattered about with a besom.

The study was a large square room lined with book-shelves and hung with
portraits of the great continental Rabbis. The books were bibliographical
monsters to which the Family Bibles of the Christian are mere pocket-books.
They were all printed purely with the consonants, the vowels being
divined grammatically or known by heart. In each there was an island of
text in a sea of commentary, itself lost in an ocean of super-commentary
that was bordered by a continent of super-super-commentary. Reb Shemuel
knew many of these immense folios--with all their tortuous windings of
argument and anecdote--much as the child knows the village it was born
in, the crooked by-ways and the field paths. Such and such a Rabbi gave