to club our wits together, and dish up a
pocketbook, or an almanac, or something of that sort, and write reviews
at a penny a line, as is now the fashion?

SCHUFT. The devil's in you! you are pretty nearly hitting on my own
schemes. I have been thinking to myself how would it answer were I to
turn Methodist, and hold weekly prayer-meetings?

GRIMM. Capital! and, if that fails, turn atheist! We might fall foul of
the four Gospels, get our book burned by the hangman, and then it would
sell at a prodigious rate.

RAZ. Or we might take the field to cure a fashionable ailment. I know
a quack doctor who has built himself a house with nothing but mercury,
as the motto over his door implies.

SCHWEIT. (rises and holds out his hand to Spiegelberg). Spiegelberg,
thou art a great man! or else a blind hog has by chance found an acorn.

SCHW. Excellent schemes! Honorable professions! How great minds
sympathize! All that seems wanting to complete the list is that we
should turn pimps and bawds.

SPIEGEL. Pooh! Pooh! Nonsense. And what is to prevent our combining
most of these occupations in one person? My plan will exalt you the
most, and it holds out glory and immortality into the bargain.
Remember, too, ye sorry varlets, and it is a matter worthy of
consideration: one's fame hereafter--the sweet thought of immortality--

ROLLER. And that at the very head of the muster-roll of honorable
names! You are a master of eloquence, Spiegelberg, when the question is
how to convert an honest man into a scoundrel. But does any one know
what has become of Moor?

SPIEGEL. Honest, say you? Do you think you'll be less honest then than
you are now? What do you call honest? To relieve rich misers of half
of those cares which only scare golden sleep from their eyelids; to
force hoarded coin into circulation; to restore the equalization of
property; in one word, to bring back the golden age; to relieve
Providence of many a burdensome pensioner, and so save it the trouble of
sending war, pestilence, famine, and above all, doctors--that is what I
call honesty, d'ye see; that's what I call being a worthy instrument in
the hand of Providence,--and then, at every meal you eat, to have the
sweet reflection: this is what thy own ingenuity, thy lion boldness, thy
night watchings, have procured for thee--to command the respect both of
great and small!

ROLLER. And at last to mount towards heaven in the living body, and in
spite of wind and storm, in