* * *

The elders of the synagogue were met in council.

"He is greater than a Prince," said the Shalotten _Shammos_.

"If all the Princes of the Earth were put in one scale," said Mr.
Belcovitch, "and our _Maggid_, Moses, in the other, he would outweigh
them all. He is worth a hundred of the Chief Rabbi of England, who has
been seen bareheaded."

"From Moses to Moses there has been none like Moses," said old Mendel
Hyams, interrupting the Yiddish with a Hebrew quotation.

"Oh no," said the Shalotten _Shammos_, who was a great stickler for
precision, being, as his nickname implied, a master of ceremonies. "I
can't admit that. Look at my brother Nachmann."

There was a general laugh at the Shalotten _Shammos's_ bull; the proverb
dealing only with Moseses.

"He has the true gift," observed _Froom_ Karlkammer, shaking the flames
of his hair pensively. "For the letters of his name have the same
numerical value as those of the great Moses da Leon."

_Froom_ Karlkammer was listened to with respect, for he was an honorary
member of the committee, who paid for two seats in a larger congregation
and only worshipped with the Sons of the Covenant on special occasions.
The Shalotten _Shammos_, however, was of contradictory temperament--a
born dissentient, upheld by a steady consciousness of highly superior
English, the drop of bitter in Belcovitch's presidential cup. He was a
long thin man, who towered above the congregation, and was as tall as
the bulk of them even when he was bowing his acknowledgments to his
Maker.

"How do you make that out?" he asked Karlkammer. "Moses of course adds
up the same as Moses--but while the other part of the _Maggid's_ name
makes seventy-three, da Leon's makes ninety-one."

"Ah, that's because you're ignorant of _Gematriyah_," said little
Karlkammer, looking up contemptuously at the cantankerous giant. "You
reckon all the letters on the same system, and you omit to give yourself
the license of deleting the ciphers."

In philology it is well known that all consonants are interchangeable
and vowels don't count; in _Gematriyah_ any letter may count for
anything, and the total may be summed up anyhow.

Karlkammer was one of the curiosities of the Ghetto. In a land of
_froom_ men he was the _froomest_. He had the very genius of fanaticism.
On the Sabbath he spoke nothing but Hebrew whatever the inconvenience
and however numerous the misunderstandings, and if he perchance