im overflow with ingenious explanations of the
Bible and the Talmud, with new views and new lights on history,
philology, medicine--anything, everything. And he believed in his ideas
because they were his and in himself because of his ideas. To himself
his stature sometimes seemed to expand till his head touched the
sun--but that was mostly after wine--and his brain retained a permanent
glow from the contact.

"Well, peace be with you!" said Pinchas. "I will leave you to your
customers, who besiege you as I have been besieged by the maidens. But
what you have just told me has gladdened my heart. I always had an
affection for you, but now I love you like a woman. We will found this
Holy Land League, you and I. You shall be President--I waive all claims
in your favor--and I will be Treasurer. Hey?"

"We shall see; we shall see," said Guedalyah the greengrocer.

"No, we cannot leave it to the mob, we must settle it beforehand. Shall
we say done?"

He laid his finger cajolingly to the side of his nose.

"We shall see," repeated Guedalyah the greengrocer, impatiently.

"No, say! I love you like a brother. Grant me this favor and I will
never ask anything of you so long as I live."

"Well, if the others--" began Guedalyah feebly.

"Ah! You are a Prince in Israel," Pinchas cried enthusiastically. "If I
could only show you my heart, how it loves you."

He capered off at a sprightly trot, his head haloed by huge volumes of
smoke. Guedalyah the greengrocer bent over a bin of potatoes. Looking up
suddenly he was startled to see the head fixed in the open front of the
shop window. It was a narrow dark bearded face distorted with an
insinuative smile. A dirty-nailed forefinger was laid on the right of
the nose.

"You won't forget," said the head coaxingly.

"Of course I won't forget," cried the greengrocer querulously.

The meeting took place at ten that night at the Beth Hamidrash founded
by Guedalyah, a large unswept room rudely fitted up as a synagogue and
approached by reeking staircases, unsavory as the neighborhood. On one
of the black benches a shabby youth with very long hair and lank
fleshless limbs shook his body violently to and fro while he vociferated
the sentences of the Mishnah in the traditional argumentative singsong.
Near the central raised platform was a group of enthusiasts, among whom
Froom Karlkammer, with his thin ascetic body and the mass of red hair
that crowned his head like the light of a pha