ead of thinking,' laughed the playwright, pushing
forward his case. 'Action is greater than Thought.'

'No, no, no!' Pinchas protested, as he fumbled for the finest cigar.
'Wait till you see my play--you must all come--I will send you all
boxes. Then you will learn that Thought is greater than Action--that
Thought is the greatest thing in the world.'

II

Sucking voluptuously at Radsikoff's cigar, Pinchas plunged from the
steam-heated, cheerful cafe into the raw, unlovely street, still
hummocked with an ancient, uncleared snowfall. He did not take the
horse-car which runs in this quarter; he was reserving the five cents
for a spirituous nightcap. His journey was slow, for a side street
that he had to pass through was, like nearly all the side streets of
the great city, an abomination of desolation, a tempestuous sea of
frozen, dirty snow, impassable by all save pedestrians, and scarcely
by them. Pinchas was glad of his cane; an alpenstock would not have
been superfluous. But the theatre with its brilliantly-lighted lobby
and flamboyant posters restored his spirits; the curtain was already
up, and a packed mass filled the house from roof to floor. Rebuffed by
the janitors, Pinchas haughtily asked for Goldwater. Goldwater was on
the stage, and could not see him. But nothing could down the poet,
whose head seemed to swell till it touched the gallery. This great
theatre was his, this mighty audience his to melt and fire.

'I will await him in a box,' he said.

'There's no room,' said the usher.

Pinchas threw up his head. 'I am the author of "Hamlet"!'

The usher winced as at a blow. All his life he had heard vaguely of
'Hamlet'--as a great play that was acted on Broadway. And now here was
the author himself! All the instinctive snobbery of the Ghetto toward
the grand world was excited. And yet this seedy figure conflicted
painfully with his ideas of the uptown type. But perhaps all
dramatists were alike. Pinchas was bowed forward.

In another instant the theatre was in an uproar. A man in a
comfortable fauteuil had been asked to accommodate the distinguished
stranger and had refused.

'I pay my dollar--what for shall I go?'

'But it is the author of "Hamlet"!'

'My money is as good as his.'

'But he doesn't pay.'

'And I shall give my good seat to a _Schnorrer_!'

'Sh! sh!' from all parts of the house, like water livening, not
killing, a flame. From every side came expostulations in Yiddish and
America