'Really, Mr. Graham, I think you are wrong about the _kosher_ meat,' said Mr. Henry Goldsmith. 'Our statistics show no falling off in the number of bullocks killed, while there is a rise of two per cent. in the sheep slaughtered. No, Judaism is in a far more healthy condition than pessimists imagine. So far from sacrificing our ancient faith, we are learning to see how tuberculosis lurks in the lungs of unexamined carcases and is communicated to the consumer. As for the members of the _Shechitah_ Board not eating _Kosher_, look at me.' The only person who looked at the host was the hostess. Her look was one of approval--it could not be of æsthetic approval, like the look Percy Saville devoted to herself, for her husband was a cadaverous little man with prominent ears and teeth. 'And if Mr. Graham should ever join us on the Council of the United Synagogue,' added Montagu Samuels, addressing the table generally, 'he will discover that there is no communal problem with which we do not loyally grapple.' 'No, thank you,' said Sidney with a shudder. 'When I visit Raphael, I sometimes pick up a Jewish paper and amuse myself by reading the debates of your public bodies. I understand most of your verbiage is edited away,' he looked Montagu Samuels full in the face, with audacious _naïveté_; 'but there is enough left to show that our monotonous group of public men consists of narrow-minded mediocrities. The chief public work they appear to do, outside finance, is, when public exams. fall on Sabbaths or holidays, getting special dates for Jewish candidates, to whom these examinations are the avenues to atheism. They never see the joke. How can they? Why, they take even themselves seriously.' 'Oh, come!' said Miss Cissy Levine indignantly. 'You often see "laughter" in the reports.' 'That must mean the speaker was laughing,' explained Sidney, 'for you never see anything to make the audience laugh. I appeal to Mr. Montagu Samuels.' 'It is useless discussing a subject with a man who admittedly speaks without knowledge,' replied that gentleman with dignity. 'Well, how do you expect me to get the knowledge?' grumbled Sidney. 'You exclude the public from your gatherings--I suppose to prevent them rubbing shoulders with the swells, the privilege of being snubbed by whom is the reward of public service. Wonderfully practical idea that--to utilise snobbery as a communal force! The United Synagogue is founded on it. Your community coheres through it.' 'There you are scarcely fair,' said the hostess, with a charming smile of reproof. 'Of course there are snobs amongst us, but is it not the same in all sects?' 'Emphatically not,' said Sidney. 'If one of our swells sticks to a shred of Judaism, people seem to think the God of Judah should be thankful; and if he goes to synagogue once or twice a year, it is regarded as a particular condescension to the Creator.'