ke at night--the national hopes tingle like electricity through
me--I bedew my couch with tears in the darkness"--Pinchas paused to take
another slice of bread and butter. "It is then that my poems are born.
The words burst into music in my head and I sing like Isaiah the
restoration of our land, and become the poet patriot of my people. But
these English! They care only to make money and to stuff it down the
throats of gorging reverends. My scholarship, my poetry, my divine
dreams--what are these to a besotted, brutal congregation of
Men-of-the-Earth? I sent Buckledorf, the rich banker, a copy of my
little book, with a special dedication written in my own autograph in
German, so that he might understand it. And what did he send me? A
beggarly five shillings? Five shillings to the one poet in whom the
heavenly fire lives! How can the heavenly fire live on five shillings? I
had almost a mind to send it back. And then there was Gideon, the member
of Parliament. I made one of the poems an acrostic on his name, so that
he might be handed down to posterity. There, that's the one. No, the one
on the page you were just looking at. Yes, that's it, beginning:

"'Great leader of our Israel's host,
I sing thy high heroic deeds,
Divinely gifted learned man.'

"I wrote his dedication in English, for he understands neither Hebrew
nor German, the miserable, purse-proud, vanity-eaten Man-of-the-Earth."

"Why, didn't he give you anything at all?" said the Reb.

"Worse! He sent me back the book. But I'll be revenged on him. I'll take
the acrostic out of the next edition and let him rot in oblivion. I have
been all over the world to every great city where Jews congregate. In
Russia, in Turkey, in Germany, in Roumania, in Greece, in Morocco, in
Palestine. Everywhere the greatest Rabbis have leaped like harts on the
mountains with joy at my coming. They have fed and clothed me like a
prince. I have preached at the synagogues, and everywhere people have
said it was like the Wilna Gaon come again. From the neighboring
villages for miles and miles the pious have come to be blessed by me.
Look at my testimonials from all the greatest saints and savants. But in
England--in England alone--what is my welcome? Do they say: 'Welcome,
Melchitsedek Pinchas, welcome as the bridegroom to the bride when the
long day is done and the feast is o'er; welcome to you, with the torch
of your genius, with the burden of your learning that is rich w