gy, face
flushing spiritedly. 'You call yourself a leader, and you don't know
your A B C!'

There was a laugh, and Benjamin Tuch scowled.

'They can't stand for everything,' he said.

'No--they can't stand for "Bowery Tough,"' admitted Pinchas; and the
table roared again, partly at the rapidity with which this linguistic
genius had picked up the local slang. 'But as our pious lunatics think
there are many meanings in every letter of the Torah,' went on the
pleased poet, 'so there are meanings innumerable in every letter of my
name. If I am playwright as well as poet, was not Shakespeare both
also?'

'You wouldn't class yourself with a low-down barnstormer like
Shakespeare?' said Tuch sarcastically.

'My superiority to Shakespeare I leave to others to discover,' replied
the poet seriously, and with unexpected modesty. 'I discovered it for
myself in writing this very play; but I cannot expect the world to
admit it till the play is produced.'

'How did you come to find it out yourself?' asked Witberg, the young
violinist, who was never sure whether he was guying the poet or
sitting at his feet.

'It happened most naturally--order me another cup of chocolate,
Witberg. You see, when Iselmann was touring with his Yiddish troupe
through Galicia, he had the idea of acquainting the Jewish masses with
"Hamlet," and he asked me to make the Yiddish translation, as one
great poet translating another--and some of those almond-cakes,
Witberg! Well, I started on the job, and then of course the discovery
was inevitable. The play, which I had not read since my youth, and
then only in a mediocre Hebrew version, appeared unspeakably childish
in places. Take, for example, the Ghost--these almond-cakes are as
stale as sermons; command me a cream-tart, Witberg. What was I
saying?'

'The Ghost,' murmured a dozen voices.

'Ah, yes--now, how can a ghost affect a modern audience which no
longer believes in ghosts?'

'That is true.' The table was visibly stimulated, as though the
chocolate had turned into champagne. The word 'modern' stirred the
souls of these refugees from the old Ghettos like a trumpet; unbelief,
if only in ghosts, was oxygen to the prisoners of a tradition of three
thousand years. The poet perceived his moment. He laid a black-nailed
finger impressively on the right side of his nose.

'I translated Shakespeare--yes, but into modern terms. The Ghost
vanished--Hamlet's tragedy remained only the internal incapacity