"Statistic-shmistik! We've heard that before. What's the use of it?"
I explained—not exactly to him, but to the community, so that they should all have an idea of what statistics meant.
"Ha-ha-ha!" laughs the Maskil loudly and thickly, "you can get the Tishewitz donkeys to believe that, but you won't get me! Why do you want to put down how a person lives, with a floor, without a floor! What does it matter to you if a person lives in a room without a floor? Ha?"
It matters, I tell him, because people want to show how poor the Jews are; they think—
"They think nothing of the kind," he interrupted, "but let that pass! Why should they want to know exactly how many boys and how many girls a man has? and what their ages are, and all the rest of the bother?"
"They suspect us of shirking military duty. The books, as of course you know, are not correct, and we want to prove—"
"Well, that may be so, for one thing—I'll allow that—but—about licenses! Why do you note down who has them—and what they are worth?"
"In order to prove that the Jews—"
But the Maskil does not allow me to finish my sentence.