“I’m sure it is so.  If you would only give me a freer hand, I feel sure I could work up that column.  We can at least make a better show:  I would avoid the danger of discovery by shifting the scene to foreign parts.  I could marry some people in Born-bay and kill some in Cape Town, redressing the balance by bringing others into existence at Cairo and Cincinnati.  Our contemporaries would score off us in local interest, but we should take the shine out of them in cosmopolitanism.”

“No, no; remember that Meshumad” said Raphael, smiling.

“He was real; if you had allowed me to invent a corpse, we should have been saved that contretemps.  We have one ‘death’ this week fortunately, and I am sure to fish out another in the daily papers.  But we haven’t had a ‘birth’ for three weeks running; it’s just ruining our reputation.  Everybody knows that the orthodox are a fertile lot, and it looks as if we hadn’t got the support even of our own party.  Ta ra ra ta!  Now you must really let me have a ‘birth.’  I give you my word, nobody’ll suspect it isn’t genuine.  Come now.  How’s this?” He scribbled on a piece of paper and handed it to Raphael, who read: 

“BIRTH, on the 15th inst. at 17 East Stuart Lane, Kennington, the wife of Joseph Samuels of a son.”

“There!” said Sampson proudly, “Who would believe the little beggar had no existence?  Nobody lives in Kennington, and that East Stuart Lane is a master-stroke.  You might suspect Stuart Lane, but nobody would ever dream there’s no such place as East Stuart Lane.  Don’t say the little chap must die.  I begin to take quite a paternal interest in him.  May I announce him?  Don’t be too scrupulous.  Who’ll be a penny the worse for it?” He began to chirp, with bird-like trills of melody.

Raphael hesitated:  his moral fibre had been weakened.  It is impossible to touch print and not be denied.

Suddenly Sampson ceased to whistle and smote his head with his chubby fist.  “Ass that I am!” he exclaimed.

“What new reasons have you discovered to think so?” said Raphael.

“Why, we dare not create boys.  We shall be found out; boys must be circumcised and some of the periphrastically styled ’Initiators into the Abrahamic Covenant’ may spot us.  It was a girl that Mrs. Joseph Samuels was guilty of.”  He amended the sex.

Raphael laughed heartily.  “Put it by; there’s another day yet; we shall see.”

“Very well,” said Sampson resignedly.  “Perhaps by to-morrow we shall be in luck and able to sing ’unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given.’  By the way, did you see the letter complaining of our using that quotation, on the ground it was from the New Testament?”

“Yes,” said Raphael smiling.  “Of course the man doesn’t know his Old Testament, but I trace his misconception to his having heard Handel’s Messiah.  I wonder he doesn’t find fault with the Morning Service for containing the Lord’s Prayer, or with Moses for saying ’Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.’”