the week went by, with no lull in the storm, though the plate-glass window was unshaken by the gusts. it maintained its flaunting seductiveness, assisted, people observed, by simeon samuels' habit of [127]lounging at his shop-door and sucking in the hesitating spectator. and it did not shutter itself on the sabbath that succeeded.

the horror was tinged with consternation. the strange apathy of the pavement and the sky, the remissness of the volcanic fires and the celestial thunderbolts in face of this staring profanity, lent the cosmos an air almost of accessory after the fact. never had the congregation seen heaven so openly defied, and the consequences did not at all correspond with their deep if undefined forebodings. it is true a horse and carriage dashed into peleg, the pawnbroker's, window down the street, frightened, peleg maintained, by the oilskins fluttering outside simeon samuels' shop; but as the suffering was entirely limited to the nerves of mrs. peleg, who was pious, and to the innocent nose of the horse, this catastrophe was not quite what was expected. solomon barzinsky made himself the spokesman of the general dissatisfaction, and his remarks to the minister after the sabbath service almost insinuated that the reverend gentleman had connived at a breach of contract.

the rev. elkan gabriel quoted scripture. 'the lord is merciful and long-suffering, and will not at once awaken all his wrath.'

'but meantime the sinner makes a pretty penny!' quoth solomon, unappeased. 'saturday is pay-day, and the heathen haven't patience to wait till the three stars are out and our shops can open. it is your duty, mr. gabriel, to put a stop to this profanation.'

the minister hummed and ha'd. he was middle-aged, and shabby, with a german diploma and accent and a large family. it was the first time in his five years [128]of office that one of his congregants had suggested such authoritativeness on his part. elected by their vote, he was treated as their servant, his duties rigidly prescribed, his religious ideas curbed and corrected by theirs. what wonder if he could not suddenly rise to dictatorship? even at home mrs. gabriel was a congregation in herself. but as the week went by he found barzinsky was not the only man to egg him on to prophetic denunciation; the congregation at large treated him as responsible for the scandal, and if the seven marine-dealers were the bitterest, the pawnbrokers and the linen-drapers were none the less outraged.

'it is a profanation of the name,' they said unanimously, 'and such a bad example to our poor!'

'he would not listen to me,' the poor minister would protest. 'you had much better talk to him yourself.'

'me!' the button-holer would ejaculate. 'i would not lower myself. he'd think i was jealous of his success.'

simeon samuels seemed, indeed, a formidable person to tackle. bland and aloof, he pursued his own affairs, meeting the congregation only in synagogue, and then more bland and aloof than ever.

at last the minister received a presidential command to preach upon the subject forthwith.

'but there's no text suitable just yet,' he pleaded. 'we are still in genesis.'

'bah!' replied the parnass impatiently, 'any text can be twisted to point any moral. you must preach next sabbath.'

'but we are reading the sedrah (weekly portion) [129]about joseph. how are you going to work sabbath-keeping into that?'

'it is not my profession. i am a mere man-of-the-earth. but what's the use of a preacher if he can't make any text mean something else?'

'well, of course, every text usually does,' said the preacher defensively. 'there is the hidden meaning and the plain meaning. but joseph is merely historical narrative. the sabbath, although mentioned in genesis, chapter two, wasn't even formally ordained yet.'

'and what about potiphar's wife?'

'that's the seventh commandment, not the fourth.'

'thank you for the information. do you mean to say you can't jump from one commandment to another?'

'oh, well——' the minister meditated.