Israel Zangwill

“ Shame on you—you a Gabbai (treasurer) of the Great Synagogue. You see I know you, Joseph Grobstock. Has not the beadle of your Synagogue boasted to me that you have given him a guinea for brushing your spatterdashes? Would you think of offering him a packet? Nay, it is the poor that are trodden on—they whose merits are in excess of those of beadles. But the Lord will find others to take up his loans—for he who hath pity on the poor lendeth to the Lord. You are no true son of Israel."
The Schnorrer's tirade was long enough to allow Grobstock to recover his dignity and his breath. ”

“ Grobstock strove harder.
Wilkinson ended with a weak smile: "Would you believe, sir, I thought at first he brought home your fish! He dresses so peculiarly. He must be an original."
"Yes, yes; an eccentric like Baron D'Aguilar, whom he visits," said Grobstock eagerly. He wondered, indeed, whether he was not speaking the truth. Could he have been the victim of a practical joke, a prank? Did not a natural aristocracy ooze from every pore of his mysterious visitor? Was not every tone, every gesture, that of a man born to rule? "You must remember, too," he added, "that he is a Spaniard." ”

“ But Manasseh did not quail.
"And you shall hear mine," he said, with a quietness that was the more impressive for the President's fury. "Do not forget, Mr. President, that you and I owe allegiance to the same brotherhood. Do not forget that the power which made you can unmake you at the next election; do not forget that if I have no vote I have vast influence; that there is not a Yahid whom I do not visit weekly; that there is not a Schnorrer who would not follow me in my exile. Do not forget that there is another community to turn to—yes! ”

“ You have borrowed a hundred pounds, you—you jackanapes!"
"Silence, sir! How dare you? I should leave this apartment at once, were it not that I cannot go without your apology. Never in my life have I borrowed a hundred pounds—nay, never have I borrowed one farthing. I am no borrower. If you are a gentleman, you will apologise!"
"I am sorry if I misunderstood," murmured the poor President, "but how, then, do you owe the money?"
"How, then?" repeated Manasseh impatiently. "Cannot you understand that I have donated it to the Synagogue?" ”

“ I see life stretching before me like old ground I had been over—in my mother's image like a street one side of which I had walked down. What could the other offer of fresh, of delightful? It is so rarely one side differs from the other: a church for a public-house, a grocer's instead of a bookshop. Conceive the horror of foreknowledge: of having no sensations to learn and few new emotions to feel; to have, moreover, the enthusiasm of youth sicklied over with the prescience of senile cynicism, and the healthy vigour of manhood made flaccid by anticipations of the dodderings of age! ”

“ I was afraid to ask the price of this swell bedroom, and I began to comprehend the meaning of noblesse oblige.
"The sitting-room adjoins," said the hotel-keeper, suddenly opening a door and ushering me into a magnificent chamber, with a lofty ceiling and a dado. The furniture was plush-covered and suggestive of footmen. "I presume you will not be taking your meals in public?"
"H'm! H'm!" I muttered, tugging at my moustache. Then, struck by a bright idea, I said: "What do Mr. Woolwich and Mr. Towers do?"
"They join the table d'hôte, your lordship," said the proprietor. ”

“ One woman—a buxom dame of forty summers, richly clad and jewelled—had risen, and was tiptoeing frantically over the woodwork, her feather waving like a signal of distress. It was Manasseh's wife. The waste of money maddened her, each donation hit her like a poisoned arrow; in vain she strove to catch her spouse's eye. The air seemed full of gowns and toques and farthingales flaming away under her very nose, without her being able to move hand or foot in rescue; whole wardrobes perished at each Benediction. ”

“ Yankelé was pale and trembling. "But he is married!" he urged, with a happy thought.
"THE TREMBLING JEW."
"Dine with him to-morrow," said Manasseh inexorably. "He fares extra royally on the Sabbath. Obtain admission to his table, and you shall be admitted into my family."
"But you do not know the man—it is impossible!" cried Yankelé.
"That is the excuse of the bad Schnorrer. You have heard my ultimatum. No dinner, no wife. No wife—no dowry!"
"Vat vould dis dowry be?" asked Yankelé, by way of diversion. ”

“ Joseph! Remember it is the Sabbath!" cried Mrs. Grobstock.
"I would willingly exchange our Dan Mendoza for your David Levi," said da Costa severely.
David Levi was the literary ornament of the Ghetto; a shoe-maker and hat-dresser who cultivated Hebrew philology and the Muses, and broke a lance in defence of his creed with Dr. Priestley, the discoverer of Oxygen, and Tom Paine, the discoverer of Reason.
"Pshaw! David Levi! The mad hatter!" cried Grobstock. "He makes nothing at all out of his books."
"You should subscribe for more copies," retorted Manasseh. ”

“ Weave your cloud-wrought Utopias, O social reformer, but wherever men inhabit, there jealousy and disunion shall creep in, and this gaudy canvas tent with its tin roofing was a hotbed of envy, hatred, and all uncharitableness. Yet Love was there, too—a stranger, purer passion than the battered Jimmy had ever known; for it had the unselfishness of a love that can never be more than a dream, that the beloved can never even know of. Perhaps, if Jimmy had met Sabra before he left off being a gentleman—! ”

“ The Rabbi covered his face with his hands. "Then poor Solomon's wife is a widow. I hope he left her enough to live upon."
"No, but it doesn't matter," said Yankelé.
"It matters a great deal," cried the Rabbi.
"She is dead," said Yankelé.
"Rebecca Schwartz dead!" screamed the Rabbi, for he had once loved the maiden himself, and, not having married her, had still a tenderness for her.
"Rebecca Schwartz," repeated Yankelé inexorably. ”

“ One more hour of aching suspense, scarcely dulled by the task of making hot coffee, and cutting bread and butter for his returning womankind; then Flutter-Duck came back. Alone!
Came back in her cab, her fading features flushed with the joy of life, with the artificial flowers in her false chignon, and the pink wrap over her head.
"Where is Rachel?" gasped poor Lewis, meeting her at the street-door.
"Rachel! isn't she here? I left her with you," answered Flutter-Duck, half sobered. ”

“ The pillar of the Synagogue felt as if his paunch were shrinking.
"But the others—" he murmured deprecatingly. "I have not shed their blood—have I not given freely of my hard-earned gold?"
"For your own diversion," retorted the Schnorrer implacably. "But what says the Midrash? There is a wheel rolling in the world—not he who is rich to-day is rich to-morrow, but this one He brings up, and this one He brings down, as is said in the seventy-fifth Psalm. Therefore, lift not up your horn on high, nor speak with a stiff neck." ”

“ These chairs are for the gentlemen of the Mahamad."
"And being gentlemen," added Manasseh crushingly, "they know better than to keep an old man on his legs any longer."
"If you were a gentleman," retorted the Chancellor, "you would take that thing off your head."
"If you were not a Man-of-the-Earth," rejoined the beggar, "you would know that it is not a mark of disrespect for the Mahamad, but of respect for the Law, which is higher than the Mahamad. The rich man can afford to neglect our holy religion, but the poor man has only the Law. It is his sole luxury." ”

“ By this time Grobstock could control his face no longer, and the last episodes of the lottery were played to the accompaniment of a broad grin. Keen and complex was his enjoyment. There was not only the general surprise at this novel feat of alms; there were the special surprises of detail written on face after face, as it flashed or fell or frowned in congruity with the contents of the envelope, and for undercurrent a delicious hubbub of interjections and benedictions, a stretching and withdrawing of palms, and a swift shifting of figures, that made the scene a farrago of excitements. ”

“ The Council Chamber was of goodly proportions, and was decorated by gold lettered panels, inscribed with the names of pious donors, thick as saints in a graveyard, overflowing even into the lobby. The flower and chivalry of the Spanish Jewry had sat round that Council-table, grandees who had plumed and ruffled it with the bloods of their day, clanking their swords with the best, punctilious [110] withal and ceremonious, with the stately Castilian courtesy still preserved by the men who were met this afternoon, to whom their memory was as faint as the fading records of the panels. ”

“ Yankelé had his roguish twinkle. "At first," he admitted, "but de Schnorrer vaits his time."
Manasseh shook his head. "Schnorring is the only occupation that is regular all the year round," he said. "Everything else may fail—the greatest commercial houses may totter to the ground; as it is written, 'He humbleth the proud.' But the Schnorrer is always secure. Whoever falls, there are always enough left to look after him. If you were a father, Yankelé, you would understand my feelings. How can a man allow his daughter's future happiness to repose on a basis so uncertain as work? ”

“ If people lived for ever, Schnorrers could not live at all."
"Hush! The world could not exist without Schnorrers. As it is written, 'And Repentance and Prayer and Charity avert the evil decree.' Charity is put last—it is the climax—the greatest thing on earth. And the Schnorrer is the greatest man on earth; for it stands in the Talmud, 'He who causes is greater than he who does.' Therefore, the Schnorrer who causes charity is even greater than he who gives it."
"Talk of de devil," said Yankelé, who had much difficulty in keeping his countenance when Manasseh became magnificent and dithyrambic. ”

“ And then, recovering himself, and addressing the courtiers, he said: "The gods have enabled me to discover my youngest son. If they will only now continue as propitious, so that I may discover the elder of the other two, I shall die not all unhappy."
"'THE GODS HAVE ENABLED ME TO DISCOVER MY YOUNGEST SON.'"
But the Black Prince could repress his astonishment no longer. "Am I dreaming, sire?" he cried. "Surely I have proved myself the eldest, not the youngest!"
"Thou forgettest that thou hast come off successful," replied the King in astonished reproof. ”

“ I have had to give my word of honour to try to set you on your legs again as soon as possible."
"You couldn't have come at a more opportune moment," I cried, remembering how he had found me. "You are a good as well as a great-grandfather, and I am proud of my descent. Won't you have a cigar?"
"Thank you, I never smoke—on earth," said the spirit hurriedly, with a flavour of bitter in his accents. "Let us to the point. You have been reduced to the painful necessity of earning your living."
I nodded silently, and took a sip of lemon-squash. A strange sense of salvation lulled my soul. ”

“ I repeat, you are a knave and a jackanapes. You—a pauper—a beggar—with a wife and children. How can you have the face to go and spend two [16] guineas—two whole guineas—all you have in the world—on a mere luxury like salmon?"
Manasseh elevated his arched eyebrows.
"If I do not buy salmon when I have two guineas," he answered quietly, "when shall I buy salmon? As you say, it is a luxury; very dear. It is only on rare occasions like this that my means run to it." There was a dignified pathos about the rebuke that mollified the magnate. ”