“Yes, it was only an old one, Simcha,” said the Rabbi deprecatingly.  He took off his high hat and replaced it by a little black cap which he carried in his tail pocket.

“You’ll ruin me, Shemuel!” moaned Simcha, wringing her hands.  “You’d give away the shirt off your skin to a pack of good-for-nothing Schnorrers.”

“Yes, if they had only their skin in the world.  Why not?” said the old Rabbi, a pacific gleam in his large gazelle-like eyes.  “Perhaps my coat may have the honor to cover Elijah the prophet.”

“Elijah the prophet!” snorted Simcha.  “Elijah has sense enough to stay in heaven and not go wandering about shivering in the fog and frost of this God-accursed country.”

The old Rabbi answered, “Atschew!”

“For thy salvation do I hope, O Lord,” murmured Simcha piously in Hebrew, adding excitedly in English, “Ah, you’ll kill yourself, Shemuel.”  She rushed upstairs and returned with another coat and a new terror.

“Here, you fool, you’ve been and done a fine thing this time!  All your silver was in the coat you’ve given away!”

“Was it?” said Reb Shemuel, startled.  Then the tranquil look returned to his brown eyes.  “No, I took it all out before I gave away the coat.”

“God be thanked!” said Simcha fervently in Yiddish.  “Where is it?  I want a few shillings for grocery.”

“I gave it away before, I tell you!”

Simcha groaned and fell into her chair with a crash that rattled the tray and shook the cups.

“Here’s the end of the week coming,” she sobbed, “and I shall have no fish for Shabbos.”

“Do not blaspheme!” said Reb Shemuel, tugging a little angrily at his venerable beard.  “The Holy One, blessed be He, will provide for our Shabbos”

Simcha made a sceptical mouth, knowing that it was she and nobody else whose economies would provide for the due celebration of the Sabbath.  Only by a constant course of vigilance, mendacity and petty peculation at her husband’s expense could she manage to support the family of four comfortably on his pretty considerable salary.  Reb Shemuel went and kissed her on the sceptical mouth, because in another instant she would have him at her mercy.  He washed his hands and durst not speak between that and the first bite.

He was an official of heterogeneous duties—­he preached and taught and lectured.  He married people and divorced them.  He released bachelors from the duty of marrying their deceased brothers’ wives.  He superintended a slaughtering department, licensed men as competent killers, examined the sharpness of their knives that the victims might be put to as little pain as possible, and inspected dead cattle in the shambles to see if they were perfectly sound and free from pulmonary disease.  But his greatest function was paskening, or answering inquiries ranging from the simplest to the most complicated problems of ceremonial ethics and civil law.  He had added