eath to promote the Return (provided the Hebrew manuscripts were
not left behind in alien museums); but the humors of the enthusiasts
were part of the great comedy in the only theatre he cared for. Mendel
Hyams was another silent member. But he wept openly under Strelitski's
harangue.

When the meeting adjourned, the lank unhealthy swaying creature in the
corner, who had been mumbling the tractate Baba Kama out of courtesy,
now burst out afresh in his quaint argumentative recitative.

"What then does it refer to? To his stone or his knife or his burden
which he has left on the highway and it injured a passer-by. How is
this? If he gave up his ownership, whether according to Rav or according
to Shemuel, it is a pit, and if he retained his ownership, if according
to Shemuel, who holds that all are derived from 'his pit,' then it is 'a
pit,' and if according to Rav, who holds that all are derived from 'his
ox,' then it is 'an ox,' therefore the derivatives of 'an ox' are the
same as 'an ox' itself."

He had been at it all day, and he went on far into the small hours,
shaking his body backwards and forwards without remission.

CHAPTER XVI.

THE COURTSHIP OF SHOSSHI SHMENDRIK.

Meckisch was a _Chasid_, which in the vernacular is a saint, but in the
actual a member of the sect of the _Chasidim_ whose centre is Galicia.
In the eighteenth century Israel Baal Shem, "the Master of the Name,"
retired to the mountains to meditate on philosophical truths. He arrived
at a creed of cheerful and even stoical acceptance of the Cosmos in all
its aspects and a conviction that the incense of an enjoyed pipe was
grateful to the Creator. But it is the inevitable misfortune of
religious founders to work apocryphal miracles and to raise up an army
of disciples who squeeze the teaching of their master into their own
mental moulds and are ready to die for the resultant distortion. It is
only by being misunderstood that a great man can have any influence upon
his kind. Baal Shem was succeeded by an army of thaumaturgists, and the
wonder-working Rabbis of Sadagora who are in touch with all the spirits
of the air enjoy the revenue of princes and the reverence of Popes. To
snatch a morsel of such a Rabbi's Sabbath _Kuggol_, or pudding, is to
insure Paradise, and the scramble is a scene to witness. _Chasidism_ is
the extreme expression of Jewish optimism. The Chasidim are the
Corybantes or Salvationists of Judaism. In England their idio