om we were
compelled to excommunicate."

"Do you mean to say that my father was an Epicurean?" asked Belcovitch
indignantly. "The tune was as Greenberg sings it. That there are impious
Jews who pray bareheaded and sit in the synagogue side by side with the
women has nothing to do with it."

The Reformers did neither of these things, but the Ghetto to a man
believed they did, and it would have been countenancing their
blasphemies to pay a visit to their synagogues and see. It was an
extraordinary example of a myth flourishing in the teeth of the facts,
and as such should be useful to historians sifting "the evidence of
contemporary writers."

The dispute thickened; the synagogue hummed with "Eis" and "Ois" not in
concord.

"Shah!" said the President at last. "Make an end, make an end!"

"You see he knows I'm right," murmured the Shalotten _Shammos_ to his
circle.

"And if you are!" burst forth the impeached Greenberg, who had by this
time thought of a retort. "And if I do sing the Passover _Yigdal_
instead of the New Year, have I not reason, seeing I have _no bread in
the house_? With my salary I have Passover all the year round."

The _Chazan's_ sally made a good impression on his audience if not on
his salary. It was felt that he had a just grievance, and the
conversation was hastily shifted to the original topic.

"We mustn't forget the _Maggid_ draws crowds here every Saturday and
Sunday afternoon," said Mendel Hyams. "Suppose he goes over to a
_Chevrah_ that will pay him more!"

"No, he won't do that," said another of the Committee. "He will remember
that we brought him out of Poland."

"Yes, but we shan't have room for the audiences soon," said Belcovitch.
"There are so many outsiders turned away every time that I think we
ought to let half the applicants enjoy the first two hours of the sermon
and the other half the second two hours."

"No, no, that would be cruel," said Karlkammer. "He will have to give
the Sunday sermons at least in a larger synagogue. My own _Shool_, the
German, will be glad to give him facilities."

"But what if they want to take him altogether at a higher salary?" said
Mendel.

"No, I'm on the Committee, I'll see to that," said Karlkammer
reassuringly.

"Then do you think we shall tell him we can't afford to give him more?"
asked Belcovitch.

There was a murmur of assent with a fainter mingling of dissent. The
motion that the _Maggid's_ application be refused was put to t