It was, indeed, a strange farrago, this romantic drama with which the vast audience had replaced the Sabbath pieties, the home-keeping ritual of the Ghetto, in their swift transformation to American life. Confined entirely to Jewish characters, it had borrowed much from the heroes and heroines of the Western world, remaining psychologically true only in its minor characters, which were conceived and rendered with wonderful realism by the gifted actors. And this naturalism was shot through with streaks of pure fantasy, so that kangaroos suddenly bounded on in a masque for the edification of a Russian tyrant. But comedy and fantasy alike were subordinated to horror and tragedy: these refugees from the brutality of Russia and Rumania, these inheritors of the wailing melodies of a persecuted synagogue, craved morbidly for gruesomeness and gore. The 'happy endings' of Broadway would have spelled bankruptcy here. Players and audience made a large family party--the unfailing result of a stable stock company with the parts always cast in the same mould. And it was almost an impromptu performance. Pinchas, from his proximity to the stage, could hear every word from the prompter's box, which rose in the centre of the footlights. The Yiddish prompter did not wait till the players 'dried up'; it was his role to read the whole play ahead of them. 'Then you are the woman who murdered my mother,' he would gabble. And the actor, hearing, invented immediately the fit attitude and emphasis, spinning out with elocutionary slowness and passion the raw material supplied to him. No mechanical crossing and recrossing the stage, no punctilious tuition by your stage-manager--all was inspiration and fire. But to Pinchas this hearing of the play twice over--once raw and once cooked--was maddening. 'The lazy-bones!' he murmured. 'Not thus shall they treat my lines. Every syllable must be engraved upon their hearts, or I forbid the curtain to go up. Not that it matters with this fool-dramatist's words; they are ink-vomit, not literature.' Another feature of the dialogue jarred upon his literary instinct. Incongruously blended with the Yiddish were elementary American expressions--the first the immigrants would pick up. 'All right,' 'Sure!' 'Yes, sir,' 'Say, how's the boss?' 'Good-bye.' 'Not a cent.' 'Take the elevated.' 'Yup.' 'Nup.' 'That's one on you!' 'Rubber-neck!' A continuous fusillade of such phrases stimulated and flattered the audience, pleased to find themselves on such easy terms with the new language. But to Pinchas the idea of peppering his pure Yiddish with such locutions was odious. The Prince of Palestine talking with a twang--how could he permit such an outrage upon his Hebrew Hamlet?