Peloni's efforts to organize a company of pilgrims to the New Jerusalem brought him only heart-ache. The very rabbi who had good-naturedly consented to circulate the fantastic foreigner's invitation, tapped his forehead significantly: "A visionary! of good intentions, doubtless, but still--a visionary. Besides, according to our dogmas, God alone knows the epoch of the Israelitish restoration; He alone will make it known to the whole universe, by signs entirely unequivocal; and every attempt on our part to reassemble with any political, national design, is forbidden as an act of high treason against the Divine Majesty. Mr. Noah has doubtless forgotten that the Israelites, faithful to the principles of their belief, are too much attached to the countries where they dwell, and devoted to the governments under which they enjoy liberty and protection, not to treat as a mere jest the chimerical consulate of a pseudo-restorer." "Noah's a madman, and you're an infant," Peloni's friends told him. "Since the destruction of the Temple," he quoted in retort, "the gift of prophecy has been confined to children and fools." "You are giving up a decent livelihood," they warned him. "You are throwing it into the Atlantic." "'Cast thy bread upon the waters and it shall return to thee after many days.'" "But in the meantime?" "'Man doth not live by bread alone.'" "As you please. But don't ask _us_ to throw up our comfortable home here." "Comfortable home!" and Peloni grew almost apoplectic as he reminded them of their miseries. "Persecution?" They shrugged their shoulders. "It comes only now and again, like a snow-storm, and we crawl through it." "That's just it--the lack of manliness--the poisoned atmosphere!" "Bah! The _Goyim_ refuse us equal rights because they know we're their superiors. Let us not jump from the frying-pan into the fire." So Peloni sailed for New York alone. III He was rather disappointed to find no other pilgrim even on the ship. True, there was one Jew, but the business Paradise of New York was his goal across this waste of waters, and of Noah's Ark he had never heard. Peloni's panegyric of Grand Island was rendered ineffective by his own nebulous conception of its commercial possibilities. He passed the slow days in the sailing-vessel polishing up his English, the literature of which he had long studied.