The Sabbath came round again, but, alas! it brought no balm to the
congregation; rather, was it a day of unrest. The plate-glass window
still flashed in iniquitous effrontery; still the ungodly proprietor
allured the stream of custom.
'He does not even refuse to take money,' Solomon Barzinsky exclaimed
to Peleg the pawnbroker, as they passed the blasphemous window on
their way from the Friday-evening service.
'Why, what would be the good of keeping open if you didn't take
money?' naively inquired Peleg.
'_Behemah_ (animal)!' replied Solomon impatiently. 'Don't you know
it's forbidden to touch money on the Sabbath?'
'Of course, I know that. But if you open your shop----!'
'All the same, you might compromise. You might give the customers the
things they need, as it is written, "Open thy hand to the needy!" but
they could pay on Saturday night.'
'And if they didn't pay? If they drank their money away?' said the
pawnbroker.
'True, but why couldn't they pay in advance?'
'How in advance?'
'They could deposit a sum of money with you, and draw against it.'
'Not with me!' Peleg made a grimace. 'All very well for your line, but
in mine I should have to deposit a sum of money with _them_. I don't
suppose they'd bring their pledges on Friday night, and wait till
Saturday night for the money. Besides, how could one remember? One
would have to profane the Sabbath by writing!'
'Write! Heaven forbid!' ejaculated Solomon Barzinsky. 'But you could
have a system of marking the amounts against their names in your
register. A pin could be stuck in to represent a pound, or a stamp
stuck on to indicate a crown. There are lots of ways. One could always
give one's self a device,' he concluded in Yiddish.
'But it is written in Job, "He disappointeth the devices of the
crafty, so that their hands cannot perform their enterprise." Have a
little of Job's patience, and trust the Lord to confound the sinner.
We shall yet see Simeon Samuels in the Bankruptcy Court.'
'I hope not, the rogue! I'd like to see him ruined!'
'That's what I mean. Leave him to the Lord.'
'The Lord is too long-suffering,' said Solomon. 'Ah, our _Parnass_ has
caught us up. Good _Shabbos_ (Sabbath), _Parnass_. This is a fine
scandal for a God-fearing congregation. I congratulate you.'
'Is he open again?' gasped the _Parnass_, hurled from his judicial
calm.
'Is my eye open?' witheringly retorted Barzinsky. 'A fat lot of good
your preacher does.'
'It was you who would elect him instead of Rochinsky,' the _Parnass_
reminded him. Barzinsky was taken aback.
'Well, we don't want foreigners, do we?' he murmured.
'And you caught an Englishman in Simeon Samuels,' chuckled the
_Parnass_, in whose breast the defeat of his candidate had never
ceased to rankle.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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