" 'S-sh! Let's listen."
Madame Klesmer was playing the part of a girl in a modern Russian town. She declaimed her lines, speaking like a prophetess in ancient Israel, and I liked it extremely. I was fully aware that it was unnatural for a girl in a modern Russian town to speak like a prophetess in ancient Israel, but that was just why I liked it. I thought it perfectly proper that people on the stage should not talk as they would off the stage. I thought that this unnatural speech of theirs was one of the principal things an audience paid for. The only actor who spoke like a human being was the comedian, and this, too, seemed to be perfectly proper, for a comedian was a fellow who did not take his art seriously, and so I thought that this natural talk of his was part of his fun-making. I thought it was something like a clown burlesquing the Old Testament by reading it, not in the ancient intonations of the synagogue, but in the plain, conversational accents of every-day life
During the intermission, in the course of our talk about Madame Klesmer, Jake said: "Do you know, Levinsky, I don't think you really love her."
"I love her as much as you, and more, too," I retorted
"How much do you love her? Would you walk from New York to
Philadelphia if she wanted you to do so?"
"Why should she? What good would it do her?"
"But suppose she does want it?"
"How can I suppose such nonsense?" "Well, she might just want to see how much you love her."
"A nice test, that."
"Oh, well, she might just get that kind of notion. Women are liable to get any kind of notion, don't you know."