modified by a few peculiar
terms used in senses unsuspected by dictionary-makers; in a beautiful
hand, with the t's uncrossed, but crowned with the side-stroke, so as to
avoid the appearance of the symbol of Christianity, and with the dates
expressed according to the Hebrew Calendar, for Karlkammer refused to
recognize the chronology of the Christian. He made three copies of every
letter, and each was exactly like the others in every word and every
line. His bill for midnight oil must have been extraordinary, for he was
a business man and had to earn his living by day. Kept within the limits
of sanity by a religion without apocalyptic visions, he was saved from
predicting the end of the world by mystic calculations, but he used them
to prove everything else and fervently believed that endless meanings
were deducible from the numerical value of Biblical words, that not a
curl at the tail of a letter of any word in any sentence but had its
supersubtle significance. The elaborate cipher with which Bacon is
alleged to have written Shakspeare's plays was mere child's play
compared with the infinite revelations which in Karlkammer's belief the
Deity left latent in writing the Old Testament from Genesis to Malachi,
and in inspiring the Talmud and the holier treasures of Hebrew
literature. Nor were these ideas of his own origination. His was an
eclectic philosophy and religionism, of which all the elements were
discoverable in old Hebrew books: scraps of Alexandrian philosophy
inextricably blent with Aristotelian, Platonic, mystic.

He kept up a copious correspondence with scholars in other countries and
was universally esteemed and pitied.

"We haven't come to discuss the figures of the _Maggid's_ name, but of
his salary." said Mr. Belcovitch, who prided himself on his capacity for
conducting public business.

"I have examined the finances," said Karlkammer, "and I don't see how
we can possibly put aside more for our preacher than the pound a week."

"But he is not satisfied," said Mr. Belcovitch.

"I don't see why he shouldn't be," said the Shalotten _Shammos_. "A
pound a week is luxury for a single man."

The Sons of the Covenant did not know that the poor consumptive _Maggid_
sent half his salary to his sisters in Poland to enable them to buy back
their husbands from military service; also they had vague unexpressed
ideas that he was not mortal, that Heaven would look after his larder,
that if the worst came to the w