'You rely on me for _that_,' said Little Sampson cheerfully. 'I will
write at once to all the chief Jewish papers in the world, French,
German, Dutch, Italian, Hebrew, and American, asking them to exchange
with us. There is never any dearth of foreign news. I translate a
thing from the Italian _Vessillo Israelitico_, and the _Israelitische
Nieuwsbode_ of Amsterdam copies it from us; _Der Israelit_ then
translates it into German, whence it gets into Hebrew, in _Hamagid_,
thence into _L'Univers Israélite_ of Paris, and thence into the
_American Hebrew_. When I see it in American, not having to translate
it, it strikes me as fresh, and so I transfer it bodily to our
columns, whence it gets translated into Italian, and so the
merry-go-round goes eternally on. Ta-dee-rum-day. You rely on me for
your foreign news. Why, I can get you foreign telegrams if you'll only
allow me to stick "Trieste, December 21," or things of that sort at
the top. Ti-tum, tee-ti.' He went on humming a sprightly air, then
suddenly interrupting himself, he said, 'But have you got an
advertisement canvasser, Mr. De Haan?'
'No, not yet,' said De Haan, turning round. The committee had resolved
itself into animated groups, dotted about the office, each group
marked by a smoke-drift. The clerks were still writing the ten
thousand wrappers, swearing inaudibly.
'Well, when are you going to get him?'
'Oh, we shall have advertisements rolling in of themselves,' said De
Haan, with a magnificent sweep of the arm. 'And we shall all assist in
that department. Help yourself to another cigar, Sampson.' And he
passed Schlesinger's box. Raphael and Karlkammer were the only two men
in the room not smoking cigars--Raphael because he preferred his pipe,
and Karlkammer for some more mystic reason.
'We must not ignore Cabbalah,' the zealot's voice was heard to
observe.
'You can't get advertisements by Cabbalah,' dryly interrupted
Guedalyah the Greengrocer, a practical man, as everybody knew.
'No, indeed,' protested Sampson. 'The advertisement canvasser is a
more important man than the editor.'
Ebenezer pricked up his ears.
'I thought _you_ undertook to do some canvassing for your money,' said
De Haan.
'So I will, so I will; rely on me for that. I shouldn't be surprised
if I get the capitalists who are backing up my opera to give you the
advertisements of the tour, and I'll do all I can in my spare time.
But I feel sure you'll want another man--only you must pay him well
and give him a good commission. It'll pay you best in the long-run to
have a good man, there are so many seedy duffers about,' said Little
Sampson, drawing his faded cloak loftily around him. 'You want an
eloquent, persuasive man, with a gift of the gab----'
'Didn't I tell you so?' interrupted Pinchas, putting his finger to his
nose. 'I vill go to the advertisers and speak burning words to them. I
vill----'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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