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"He evidently thinks the vouchers sent him are the advertisements," screamed little Sampson. "But if he is as ignorant as all that, how could he have written the letter?" asked Raphael. "Oh, it was probably written for him for twopence by the Shalotten Shammos, the begging-letter writer." "This is almost as funny as Karlkammer!" said Raphael.
"No," Bessie interposed. "What do you mean?" "At home in my town," said Mr. Belcovitch impressively, "a fish made a noise in the pan one Friday." "Well? and suppose?" said the Shalotten Shammos, passing a fig to the rear, "the oil frizzles." "Nothing of the kind," said Belcovitch angrily, "A real living noise. The woman snatched it out of the pan and ran with it to the Rabbi.
He spent a great deal of his time in avoiding being drawn into the contending factions of the congregation and in steering equally between Belcovitch and the Shalotten Shammos. The Sons only gave him fifty a year for all his trouble, but they eked it out by allowing him to be on the Committee, where on the question of a rise in the Reader's salary he was always an ineffective minority of one.
And the Shalotten Shammos laughed joyously, "Apples," and dived under the table, and his long form reached to the other side and beyond, and graybearded men echoed the joyous cry and scrambled on the ground like schoolboys. "Leolom tikkach always take," quoted the Badchan gleefully. When Sugarman returned, radiant, he found his absence had been fatal. "Piece of fool!
Then there was the Bar-mitzvah breakfast, at which Ebenezer delivered an English sermon and a speech, both openly written by the Shalotten Shammos, and everybody commended the boy's beautiful sentiments and the beautiful language in which they were couched. Mrs. Sugarman forgot all the trouble Ebenezer had given her in the face of his assurances of respect and affection and she wept copiously.
It was probably as a concession to him that poor men, who were neither seat-holders nor wearers of chimney-pot hats, were penned within an iron enclosure near the door of the building and ranged on backless benches, and it says much for the authority of the Shammos that not even the Schnorrer contested it. Prayers were shouted rapidly by the congregation, and elaborately sung by the Chazan.
These strokes of true satire occasioned more merriment and were worth a biscuit to Solomon Ansell vice the son of the Shalotten Shammos. Among the inoffensive guests were old Gabriel Hamburg, the scholar, and young Joseph Strelitski, the student, who sat together. On the left of the somewhat seedy Strelitski pretty Bessie in blue silk presided over the coffee-pot.
"I don't see why he shouldn't be," said the Shalotten Shammos. "A pound a week is luxury for a single man."
I have told you over and over again you confound the air of the Passover Yigdal with the New Year ditto. "Oh no," interrupted Belcovitch. "All the Chazanim I've ever heard do it 'Ei, Ei, Ei." "You are not entitled to speak on this subject, Belcovitch," said the Shalotten Shammos warmly. "You are a Man-of-the-Earth. I have heard every great Chazan in Europe."
Rothschild was a magic name in the Ghetto; it stood next to the Almighty's as a redresser of grievances and a friend of the poor, and the Shalotten Shammos made a large part of his income by writing letters to it. He charged twopence halfpenny per letter, for his English vocabulary was larger than any other scribe's in the Ghetto, and his words were as much longer than theirs as his body.
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