"Do not talk so," said Reb Shemuel, resuming his gravity. "Is it absurd that you should be scorched if you play with fire?"
Hannah did not reply to the question.
"You never told me how you got on at Manchester," she said. "Did you settle the dispute satisfactorily?"
"Oh, yes," said the Reb; "but it was very difficult. Both parties were so envenomed, and it seems that the feud has been going on in the congregation ever since the Day of Atonement, when the minister refused to blow the Shofar three minutes too early, as the President requested. The Treasurer sided with the minister, and there has almost been a split."
"The sounding of the New Year trumpet seems often to be the signal for war," said Hannah, sarcastically.
"It is so," said the Reb, sadly.
"And how did you repair the breach?"
"Just by laughing at both sides. They would have turned a deaf ear to reasoning. I told them that Midrash about Jacob's journey to Laban."
"What is that?"
"Oh, it's an amplification of the Biblical narrative. The verse in Genesis says that he lighted on the place, and he put up there for the night because the sun had set, and he took of the stones of the place and he made them into pillows. But later on it says that he rose up in the morning and he took the stone which he had put as his pillows. Now what is the explanation?" Reb Shemuel's tone became momently more sing-song: "In the night the stones quarrelled for the honor of supporting the Patriarch's head, and so by a miracle they were turned into one stone to satisfy them all. 'Now you remember that when Jacob arose in the morning he said: 'How fearful is this place; this is none other than the House of God.' So I said to the wranglers: 'Why did Jacob say that? He said it because his rest had been so disturbed by the quarrelling stones that it reminded him of the House of God—the Synagogue.' I pointed out how much better it would be if they ceased their quarrellings and became one stone. And so I made peace again in the Kehillah."