The company murmured assent, and one gentleman, with a rather large
organ, concealed it in a red cotton handkerchief, trumpeting uneasily.

"The Holy One, blessed be He, has given them larger noses than us," said
the _Maggid_, "because they have to talk through them so much."

A guffaw greeted this sally. The _Maggid's_ wit was relished even when
not coming from the pulpit. To the outsider this disparagement of the
Dutch nose might have seemed a case of pot calling kettle black. The
_Maggid_ poured himself out a glass of rum, under cover of the laughter,
and murmuring "Life to you." in Hebrew, gulped it down, and added, "They
oughtn't to call it the Dutch tongue, but the Dutch nose."

"Yes, I always wonder how they can understand one another," said Mrs.
Belcovitch, "with their _chatuchayacatigewesepoopa_." She laughed
heartily over her onomatopoetic addition to the Yiddish vocabulary,
screwing up her nose to give it due effect. She was a small
sickly-looking woman, with black eyes, and shrivelled skin, and the wig
without which no virtuous wife is complete. For a married woman must
sacrifice her tresses on the altar of home, lest she snare other men
with such sensuous baits. As a rule, she enters into the spirit of the
self-denying ordinance so enthusiastically as to become hideous hastily
in every other respect. It is forgotten that a husband is also a man.
Mrs. Belcovitch's head was not completely shaven and shorn, for a lower
stratum of an unmatched shade of brown peeped out in front of the
_shaitel_, not even coinciding as to the route of the central parting.

Meantime Pesach Weingott and Alte (Fanny) Belcovitch held each other's
hand, guiltily conscious of Batavian corpuscles in the young man's
blood. Pesach had a Dutch uncle, but as he had never talked like him