'On the same day! How could that be? The day changes with every move east or west. When it's day here, it's night in Australia.'
Darkness began to cloud the presidential brow.
'Don't you try to make black white!' he said angrily.
'It's you that are trying to make white black,' retorted Simeon Samuels. 'Perhaps you don't know that I hail from Australia, and that by working on Saturday I escape profaning my native Australian Sabbath, while you, who have been all round the world, and have either lost or gained a day, according as you travelled east or west, are desecrating your original Sabbath either by working on Friday or smoking on Sunday.'
The Parnass felt his head going round—he didn't know whether east or west. He tried to clear it by a pinch of snuff, which he in vain strove to make judicial.
'Oh, and so, and so—atchew!—and so you're the saint and I'm the sinner!' he cried sarcastically.
'No, I don't profess to be a saint,' replied Simeon Samuels somewhat unexpectedly. 'But I do think the Saturday was meant for Palestine, not for the lands of the Exile, where another day of rest rules. When you were in India you probably noted that the Mohammedans keep Friday. A poor Jew in the bazaar is robbed of his Hindoo customers on Friday, of his Jews on Saturday, and his Christians on Sunday.'
'The Fourth Commandment is eternal!' said the Parnass with obstinate sublimity.
'But the Fifth says, "that thy days may be long in the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee." I believe this reward belongs to all the first five Commandments—not only to the Fifth—else an orphan would have no chance of long life. Keep the Sabbath in the land that the Lord giveth thee; not in England, which isn't thine.'
'Oho!' retorted the Parnass. 'Then at that rate in England you needn't honour your father and mother.'