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‘Eh? Not at all! On the same day.’

‘On the same day! How could that be? The day changes with every move east or west. When it’s day here, it’s night in Australia.’

Darkness began to cloud the presidential brow.

‘Don’t you try to make black white!’ he said angrily.

‘It’s you that are trying to make white black,’ retorted Simeon Samuels. ‘Perhaps you don’t know that I hail from Australia, and that by working on Saturday I escape profaning my native Australian Sabbath, while you, who have been all round the world, and have either lost or gained a day, according as you travelled east or west, are desecrating your original Sabbath either by working on Friday or smoking on Sunday.’

The Parnass felt his head going round–he didn’t know whether east or west. He tried to clear it by a pinch of snuff, which he in vain strove to make judicial.

‘Oh, and so, and so–atchew!–and so you’re the saint and I’m the sinner!’ he cried sarcastically.

‘No, I don’t profess to be a saint,’ replied Simeon Samuels somewhat unexpectedly. ‘But I do think the Saturday was meant for Palestine, not for the lands of the Exile, where another day of rest rules. When you were in India you probably noted that the Mohammedans keep Friday. A poor Jew in the bazaar is robbed of his Hindoo customers on Friday, of his Jews on Saturday, and his Christians on Sunday.’

‘The Fourth Commandment is eternal!’ said the Parnass with obstinate sublimity.

‘But the Fifth says, “that thy days may be long in the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.” I believe this reward belongs to all the first five Commandments–not only to the Fifth–else an orphan would have no chance of long life. Keep the Sabbath in the land that the Lord giveth thee; not in England, which isn’t thine.’

‘Oho!’ retorted the Parnass. ‘Then at that rate in England you needn’t honour your father and mother.’

‘Not if you haven’t got them!’ rejoined Simeon Samuels. ‘And if you haven’t got a land, you can’t keep its Sabbath. Perhaps you think we can keep the Jubilee also without a country.’

‘The Sabbath is eternal,’ repeated the Parnass doggedly. ‘It has nothing to do with countries. Before we got to the Promised Land we kept the Sabbath in the wilderness.’

‘Yes, and God sent a double dose of manna on the Friday. Do you mean to say He sends us here a double dose of profit?’

‘He doesn’t let us starve. We prospered well enough before you brought your wretched example—-‘

‘Then my wretched example cannot lead the congregation away. I am glad of it. You do them much more harm by your way of Sabbath-breaking.’

‘My way!’

‘Yes, my dear old father–peace be upon him!–would have been scandalized to see the burden you carry on the Sabbath.’

‘What burden do I carry?’

‘Your snuff-box!’

The Parnass almost dropped it. ‘That little thing!’

‘I call it a cumbrous, not to say tasteless thing. But before the Almighty there is no great and no small. One who stands in such a high place in the synagogue must be especially mindful, and every unnecessary burden—-‘

‘But snuff is necessary for me–I can’t do without it.’

‘Other Presidents have done without it. As it is written in Jeremiah: “And the wild asses did stand in the high places; they snuffed up the wind.”‘

The Parnass flushed like a beetroot. ‘I’ll teach you to know your place, sir.’ He turned his back on the scoffer, and strode towards the door.

‘But if you’d care for a smaller snuff-box,’ said Simeon Samuels, ‘I have an artistic assortment.’

XV

At the next meeting of the Synagogue Council a notice of motion stood upon the agenda in the name of the Parnass himself:

‘That this Council views with the greatest reprobation the breach of the Fourth Commandment committed weekly by a member of the congregation, and calls upon him either to resign his seat, with the burial and other rights appertaining thereto, or to close his business on the Sabbath.’