skirts and streaked his complexion with red and white to replace the
promoted second actress, and shaved off his beard.

But in spite of this heroic sacrifice, the gods were unpropitious. They
chaffed the poet in polished Yiddish throughout the first two acts.
There was only a sprinkling of audience (most of it paper) in the
dimly-lit hall, for the fame of the great writer had not spread from
Berlin, Mogadore, Constantinople and the rest of the universe.

No one could make head or tail of the piece with its incessant play of
occult satire against clergymen with four mistresses, Rabbis who sold
their daughters, stockbrokers ignorant of Hebrew and destitute of
English, greengrocers blowing Messianic and their own trumpets,
labor-leaders embezzling funds, and the like. In vain the actor-manager
swept the floor with the besom, beat time with the besom, beat his
mother-in-law with the besom, leaned on the besom, swept bits of white
paper with the besom. The hall, empty of its usual crowd, was fuller of
derisive laughter. At last the spectators tired of laughter and the
rafters re-echoed with hoots. At the end of the second act, Melchitsedek
Pinchas addressed the audience from the stage, in his ample petticoats,
his brow streaming with paint and perspiration. He spoke of the great
English conspiracy and expressed his grief and astonishment at finding
it had infected the entire Ghetto.

There was no third act. It was the poet's first--and last--appearance on
any stage.

CHAPTER XXII.

"FOR AULD LANG SYNE, MY DEAR."

The learned say that Passover was a Spring festival even before it was
associated with the Redemption from Egypt, but there is not much Nature
to worship in the Ghetto and the historical elements of the Festival
swamp all the others. Passover still remains the most picturesque of the
"Three Festivals" with its entire transmogrification of things culinary,
its thorough taboo of leaven. The audacious archaeologist of the
thirtieth century may trace back the origin of the festival to the
Spring Cleaning, the annual revel of the English housewife, for it is
now that the Ghetto whitewashes itself and scrubs itself and paints
itself and pranks itself and purifies its pans in a baptism of fire.
Now, too, the publican gets unto himself a white sheet and suspends it
at his door and proclaims that he sells _Kosher rum_ by permission of
the Chief Rabbi. Now the confectioner exchanges his "stuffed monkeys,"
and