'But if he is not there to hear it.'
'Oh, don't listen to Barzinsky. He'll be there right enough. Just give it to him hot!'
'Your sermon was too general,' added Peleg, who had lingered, though his son had not. 'You might have meant any of us.'
'But we must not shame our brother in public,' urged the minister. 'It is written in the Talmud that he who does so has no share in the world to come.'
'Well, you shamed us all,' retorted Barzinsky. 'A stranger would imagine we were a congregation of Sabbath-breakers.'
'But there wasn't any stranger,' said the minister.
'There was Simeon Samuels,' the Parnass reminded him. 'Perhaps your sermon against Sabbath-breaking made him fancy he was just one of a crowd, and that you have therefore only hardened him——'
'But you told me to preach against Sabbath-breaking,' said the poor minister.
'Against the Sabbath-breaker,' corrected the Parnass.
'You didn't single him out,' added Barzinsky; 'you didn't even make it clear that Joseph wasn't myself.'