ow-Jew and one in companionable rags.

Maimon made inquiries from him about the roads and whither they led,
and gathered with some surprise that his companion was a professional
_Schnorrer_.

"Are not you?" asked the beggar, equally surprised.

"Certainly not!" cried Maimon angrily.

"What a waste of good rags!" said the _Schnorrer_.

"What a waste of good muscle!" retorted Maimon; for the beggar was a
strapping fellow in rude health. "If I had your shoulders I should
hold my head higher on them."

The _Schnorrer_ shrugged them. "Only fools work. What has work brought
you? Rags. You begin with work and end with rags. I begin with rags
and end with meals."

"But have you no self-respect?" cried Maimon, in amaze. "No morality?
No religion?"

"I have as much religion as any _Schnorrer_ on the road," replied the
beggar, bridling up. "I keep my Sabbath."

"Yes, indeed," said Maimon, smiling, "our sages say, Rather keep thy
Sabbath as a week-day than beg; you say, Rather keep thy week-day as a
Sabbath than be dependent on thyself." To himself he thought, "That is
very witty: I must remember to tell Lapidoth that." And he called for
another glass of whisky.

"Yes; but many of our sages, meseems, are dependent on their
womankind. I have dispensed with woman; must I therefore dispense with
support likewise?"

Maimon was amused and shocked in one. He set down his whisky,
unsipped. "But he who dispenses with woman lives in sin. It is the
duty of man to beget posterity, to found a home; for what is
civilization but home, and what is home but religion?" The wanderer's
tones were earnest; he forgot his own sins of omission in the lucidity
with which his intellect saw the right thing.

"Ah, you are one of the canting ones," said the _Schnorrer_. "It
strikes me you and I could do something better together than quarrel.
What say you to a partnership?"

"In begging?"

"What else have I to offer? You are new to the country--you don't know
the roads--you haven't got any money."

"Pardon me! I have a thaler left."

"No, you haven't--you pay that to me for the partnership."

The metaphysical Maimon was tickled. "But what do I gain for my
thaler?"

"My experience."

"But if so, you gain nothing from _my_ partnership."

"A thaler to begin with. Then, you see, your learning and morality
will draw when I am at a loss for quotations. In small villages we go
together and produce an impression of widespread misery: we sp