umble quite instant
request to support me by Your merciful aid, and please to
respond me as soon as possible according to Your generous very
philanthropy in my urgent extreme immense difficulty.

'Your obedient servant respectfully,
'NEHEMIAH SILVERMANN,
'_Dentist and Restaurateur._'

Such a flood of language carried away the last remnants of Barstein's
melancholia; he saw his imagined statue showering adjectives from its
cornucopia. 'It is the cry of a dictionary in distress!' he murmured,
re-reading the letter with unction.

It pleased his humour to reply in the baldest language. He asked for
details of Silvermann's circumstances and sorrows. Had he applied to
the Russo-Jewish Fund, which existed to help such refugees from
persecution? Did he know Jacobs, the dentist of the neighbouring
Mansel Place?

Jacobs had been one of Barstein's fellow-councillors in Zionism, a
pragmatic inexhaustible debater in the small back room, and the
voluble little man now loomed suddenly large as a possible authority
upon his brother-dentist.

By return of post a second eruption descended upon the studio from the
'dictionary in distress.'

'3A, THE MINORIES, E.

'MOST HONOURABLE AND ANGELICAL MR. LEOPOLD BARSTEIN,

'I have the honour now to thank You for Your kind answer of my
letter. I did not succeed here by my vital experience in the
last of ten years. I got my livelihood a certain time by my
dental practice so long there was not a hard violent
competition, then I had never any efficacious relief,
protection, then I have no relation, then we and the time are
changeable too, then without money is impossible to perform
any matter, if I had at present in my grieved desperate
position L4 for my restaurant, then I were rescued. I do not
earn anything, and I must despond at last, I perish here, in
Russia I was ruined, please to aid me in Your merciful
humanity by something, if I had L15 I could start off from
here to go somewhere to look for my daily bread, and if I had
L30 so I shall go to Jerusalem because I am convinced by my
bitter and sour troubles and shocking tribulations here is
nothing to do any more for me. I have not been in the
Russo-Jewish fund and do not know it where it is, and if it is
in the Jewish shelter of Leman Street so I have no protection