For that reason the Jew is not successful in those forms of business which demand that their commercial features be hidden. He does not make a good life insurance agent, for here one must assume the rôle of a benefactor; nor does he make a good book agent; for in that work one must seem disinterestedly interested in the entire family or sell the book as a great favour to a few cultured people in the community. Although the Jew, especially in America, becomes a fairly clever gambler, he is a poor match for the Gentile in the game of poker, and for a long time to come he will have to keep out of games in which the mask one assumes determines their success; even as he will have to continue to do business in scrap iron and not in railroads, in pawn-shops and not in politics. In my experience with Jewish tradespeople in America, I am convinced that the sense of immediate profit is no less present in the Gentile mind than it is in that of the Jew, and that the Gentile does not always completely conceal it. There is at least one sphere out of which the Jew keeps his business more carefully than does his Gentile competitor, and that is the sphere of religion. I have yet to see Jewish hymnals invaded by advertisements, as are those of some Gentile congregations, and although the Jew is a direct descendant of those traffickers whom Jesus drove out of the temple, he has managed to keep his synagogue much more free from commercialism than his critics have their churches. In the great and solemn moments of life, he is not nearly so practical as the funny papers would have us believe. At the birth of a child, at the marriage feast and at the death-bed, he shows his natural idealism and gives, forgives and forgets. All this is not quite so true of other commercial peoples, notably the Americans. The following instance may not be typical nor may it prove the rule, and would no doubt be attributed to a Jew, had it not occurred in the college town in which I live and where all the clothing dealers are Gentiles, if not Christians. One of them was suddenly taken to a distant city to be operated on for appendicitis, and the next day a local paper contained the following advertisement: "I have gone to Rochester, Minn., to have my appendix cut out. This will be a great cut, but it will not compare with the cut I am making in clothing at my store on the corner of X and Y Streets." After the operation, while the man hovered between the unknown places, a second advertisement appeared. "I am having a hot time holding down a bed in this hospital; but it does not compare with the hot time my competitors will have in meeting my prices in clothing at my store, on the corner of X and Y Streets." My readers will agree with me that this "beats the Jews." The question of business standards is a very different matter, and that I wish to discuss in another chapter.