'Your man called upon me last night, asking for payment for four advertisements of my Passover groceries. But I have changed my mind about them and do not want them, and therefore beg to return the four numbers sent me. You will see I have not opened them or soiled them in any way, so please cancel the claim in your books.
'Yours truly,
'Isaac Wollberg.'
'He evidently thinks the vouchers sent him are the advertisements,' screamed Little Sampson.
'But if he is as ignorant as all that, how could he have written the letter?' asked Raphael.
'Oh, it was probably written for him for twopence by the Shalotten Shammos, the begging-letter writer.'
'This is almost as funny as Karlkammer,' said Raphael.
Karlkammer had sent in a long essay on the 'Sabbatical Year Question,' which Raphael had revised and published, with Karlkammer's title at the head and Karlkammer's name at the foot. Yet, owing to the few rearrangements and inversions of sentences, Karlkammer never identified it as his own, and was perpetually calling to inquire when his article would appear. He brought with him fresh manuscripts of the article as originally written. He was not the only caller. Raphael was much pestered by visitors on kindly counsel bent or stern exhortation. The sternest were those who had never yet paid their subscriptions. De Haan also kept up proprietorial rights of interference. In private life Raphael suffered much from pillars of the Montagu Samuels type, who accused him of flippancy, and no communal crisis invented by Little Sampson ever equalled the pother and commotion that arose when Raphael incautiously allowed him to burlesque the notorious Mordecai Josephs by comically exaggerating its exaggerations. The community took it seriously as an attack upon the race. Mr. and Mrs. Henry Goldsmith were scandalised, and Raphael had to shield Little Sampson by accepting the whole responsibility for its appearance.
'Talking of Karlkammer's article, are you ever going to use up Herman's scientific paper?' asked Little Sampson.
'I'm afraid so,' said Raphael, 'I don't know how we can get out of it. But his eternal kosher meat sticks in my throat. We are Jews for the love of God, not to be saved from consumption bacilli. But I won't use it to-morrow; we have Miss Cissy Levine's tale. It's not half bad. What a pity she has the expenses of her books paid! If she had to achieve publication by merit, her style might be less slipshod.'
'I wish some rich Jew would pay the expenses of my opera tour,' said Little Sampson ruefully. 'My style of doing the thing would be improved. The people who are backing me up are awfully stingy. Actually buying up battered old helmets for my chorus of Amazons.'