with its peppering of the phrases of Hester
Street. 'You have too many dead flies on you,' Hamlet's mother told
him. 'You'll get left.' But the nightmare thickened. Hamlet and his
mother opened their mouths and sang. Their songs were light and gay,
and held encore verses to reward the enthusiastic. The actors, like
the audience, were leisurely; here midnight and the closure were not
synonymous. When there were no more encore verses, Ignatz Levitsky
would turn to the audience and bow in acknowledgment of the
compliment. Pinchas's eyes were orbs straining at their sockets; froth
gathered on his lips.

Mrs. Goldwater bounded on, fantastically mad, her songs set to comic
airs. The great house received her in the same comic spirit. Instead
of rue and rosemary she carried a rustling green _Lulov_--the
palm-branch of the Feast of Tabernacles--and shook it piously toward
every corner of the compass. At each shake the audience rolled about
in spasms of merriment. A moment later a white gliding figure, moving
to the measure of the cake-walk, keyed up the laughter to hysteria. It
was the Ghost appearing to frighten Ophelia. His sepulchral bass notes
mingled with her terror-stricken soprano.

This was the last straw. The Ghost--the Ghost that he had laid
forever, the Ghost that made melodrama of this tragedy of the
thinker--was risen again, and cake-walking!

Unperceived in the general convulsion and cachinnation, Pinchas leaped
to his feet, and, seeing scarlet, bounded through the iron door and
made for the stage. But a hand was extended in the nick of time--the
hand he had kissed--and Pinchas was drawn back by the collar.

'You don't take your call yet,' said the unruffled Kloot.

'Let me go! I must speak to the people. They must learn the truth.
They think _me_, Melchitsedek Pinchas, guilty of this _tohu-bohu_! My
sun will set. I shall be laughed at from the Hudson to the Jordan.'

'Hush! Hush! You are interrupting the poesy.'

'Who has drawn and quartered my play? Speak!'

'I've only arranged it for the stage,' said Kloot, unabashed.

'You!' gasped the poet.

'You said I and you are the only two men who understand how to treat
poesy.'

'You understand push-carts, not poesy!' hissed the poet. 'You conspire
to keep me out of the theatre--I will summons you!'

'We had to keep all authors out. Suppose Shakespeare had turned up and
complained of _you_.'

'Shakespeare would have been only too grateful.'

'Hush! The