Children of the Ghetto

you any information.'

'Of course, of course,' said Gradkoski, soothingly. 'You will get the obituaries sent in of themselves by the relatives.'

Raphael's brow expressed surprise and incredulity.

'And besides, we are not going to crack up the same people as the other papers,' said De Haan; 'otherwise we should not supply a want. We must dole out our praise and blame quite differently, and we must be very scrupulous to give only a little praise so that it shall be valued the more.' He stroked his white, beard tranquilly.

'But how about meetings?' urged Raphael. 'I find that sometimes two take place at once. I can go to one, but I can't be at both.'

'Oh, that will be all right,' said De Haan airily. 'We will leave out one and people will think it is unimportant. We are bringing out a paper for our own ends, not to report the speeches of busybodies.'

Raphael was already exhibiting a conscientiousness which must be nipped in the bud. Seeing him silenced, Ebenezer burst forth anxiously:

'But Mr. Leon is right. There must be a sub-editor.'

'Certainly there must be a sub-editor,' cried Pinchas eagerly.

'Very well, then,' said De Haan, struck with a sudden thought. 'It is true Mr. Leon cannot do all the work. I know a young fellow who'll be just the very thing. He'll come for a pound a week.'

'But I'll come for a pound a week,' said Ebenezer.

'Yes, but you won't get it,' said Schlesinger impatiently.

'Sha, Ebenezer,' said old Sugarman imperiously.

De Haan thereupon hunted up a young gentleman, who dwelt in his mind as 'Little Sampson,' and straightway secured him at the price named. He was a lively young Bohemian born in Australia, who had served an apprenticeship on the Anglo-Jewish press, worked his way up into the larger journalistic world without, and was now engaged in organizing a comic-opera touring company, and in drifting back again into Jewish journalism. This young gentleman, who always wore long curling locks, an eye-glass and a romantic cloak which covered a multitude of shabbinesses, fully allayed Raphael's fears as to the difficulties of editorship.

'Obituaries!' he said scornfully. 'You rely on me for that! The people who are worth chronicling are sure to have lived in the back numbers of our contemporaries, and I can always hunt them up in the Museum. As for the people who are not, their families will send them in, and your only trouble will be to conciliate the families of those you ignore.'

'But about all those meetings?' said Raphael.

'I'll go to some,' said the sub-editor good-naturedly, 'whenever they don't interfere with the rehearsals of my opera. You know of course I am bringing out a comic-opera, composed by myself, some lovely tunes in it; one goes like this: Ta ra ra ta, ta dee dum dee-that'll knock 'em. Well, as I was saying, I'll help you as much as I can find time for. You rely on me for that.'

'Yes,' said poor Raphael with a sickly smile, 'but suppose neither of us goes to some important meeting.'

'No harm done. God bless you, I know the styles of all our chief speakers-ahem-ha!-pauperization of the East End, ha!-I would emphatically say that this scheme-ahem!-his lordship's untiring zeal for hum!-the welfare of-and so on. Ta dee dum da, ta, ra, rum dee. They always send on the agenda beforehand. That's all I want, and I'll lay you twenty to one I'll turn out as good a report as any of our rivals. You rely on me for that! I know exactly how debates go. At the worst I can always swop with another reporter-a prize distribution for an obituary, or a funeral for a concert.'

'And do you really think we two between us can fill up the paper every week?' said Raphael doubtfully.

Little Sampson broke into a shriek of laughter, dropped his eyeglass and collapsed helplessly into the coal- scuttle. The Committeemen looked up from their confabulations in astonishment.

'Fill up the paper! Ho! Ho! Ho!' roared little Sampson, still doubled up. 'Evidently you've never had anything to do with papers. Why, the reports of London and provincial sermons alone would fill three papers a week.'

'Yes, but how are we to get these reports, especially from the provinces?'

'How? Ho! Ho! Ho!' And for some time little Sampson was physically incapable of speech. 'Don't you know,' he gasped, 'that the ministers always send up their own sermons, pages upon pages of foolscap?'

'Indeed?' murmured Raphael.

'What, haven't you noticed all Jewish sermons are eloquent?'.

'They write that themselves?'

'Of course; sometimes they put 'able,' and sometimes 'learned,' but, as a rule, they prefer to be 'eloquent.' The run on that epithet is tremendous. Ta dee dum da. In holiday seasons they are also very fond of 'enthralling the audience,' and of 'melting them to tears,' but this is chiefly during the Ten Days of Repentance, or when a boy is Barmitzvah. Then, think of the people who send in accounts of the oranges they gave away to distressed widows, or of the prizes won by their children at fourth-rate schools, or of the silver pointers they present to the synagogue. Whenever a reader sends a letter to an evening paper, he will want you to quote it; and, if he writes a paragraph in the obscurest leaflet, he will want you to note it as 'Literary Intelligence.' Why, my dear fellow, your chief task will be to cut down. Ta, ra, ra, ta! Any Jewish paper could be entirely supported by voluntary contributions-as, for the matter of that, could any newspaper in the world.' He got up and shook the coal-dust languidly from his cloak.

'Besides, we shall all be helping you with articles,' said De Haan, encouragingly.

'Yes, we shall all be helping you,' said Ebenezer.

'I vill give you from the Pierian spring-bucketsful,' said Pinchas in a flush of generosity.

'Thank you, I shall be much obliged,' said Raphael, heartily, 'for I don't quite see the use of a paper filled up as Mr. Sampson suggests.' He flung his arms out and drew them in again. It was a way he had when in earnest. 'Then, I should like to have some foreign news. Where's that to come from?'

'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 copies it from us; Der Israelit then translates it into German, whence it gets into Hebrew, in Hamagid, thence into L'Univers Israelite, 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 around. 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 Cabalah,' the zealot's voice was heard to observe.

'You can't get advertisements by Cabalah,' drily 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