'Was it treacherously to undermine Judaism that you so eagerly offered to edit for nothing?' said the furniture-dealer who was always failing.
'But listen here!' cried Raphael, exasperated.
'"Harmez, the son of Lilith, a demon, saddled two mules and made them stand on opposite sides of the river Doneg. He then jumped from the back of one to that of the other. He had, at the time, a cup of wine in each hand, and as he jumped he threw the wine from each cup into the other without spilling a drop, although a hurricane was blowing at the time. When the king of demons heard that Harmez had been thus showing off to mortals, he slew him." Do any of you believe that?'
'Vould our sages—their memories for a blessing!—put anything into the Talmud that vasn't true?' queried Sugarman. 'Ve know there are demons because it stands that Solomon knew their language.'
'But, then, what about this?' pursued Raphael. '"I saw a frog which was as big as the district of Akra Hagronia. A sea-monster came and swallowed the frog, and a raven came and ate the sea-monster. The raven then went and perched on a tree. Consider how strong that tree must have been. R. Papa Ben Samuel remarks: Had I not been present, I should not have believed it." Doesn't this appendix about Ben Samuel show that it was never meant to be taken seriously?'
'It has some high meaning we do not understand in these degenerate times,' said Guedalyah the Greengrocer. 'It is not for our paper to weaken faith in the Talmud.'
'Hear, hear!' said De Haan, while 'Epikouros!' rumbled through the air like distant thunder.
'Didn't I say an Englishman could never master the Talmud?' Sugarman asked in triumph.
This reminder of Raphael's congenital incompetence softened their minds towards him, so that when he straightway resigned his editorship, their self-constituted spokesman besought him to remain. Perhaps they remembered, too, that he was cheap.
'But we must all edit the paper,' said De Haan enthusiastically, when peace was re-established. 'We must have meetings every day, and every article must be read aloud before it is printed.'