courses, and beginning with _hors d'oeuvres_ may _will_ him everything
by turns and nothing long; making him soup and sweets, joint and
_entrée_, and even ices and coffee, for in the millennium the harassing
prohibition which bars cream after meat will fall through. But, however
this be, it is beyond question that the bulk of the faithful will
mentally fry him, and though the Christian saints, who shall be
privileged to wait at table, hand them plate after plate, fried fish
shall be all the fare. One suspects that Hebrews gained the taste in the
Desert of Sinai, for the manna that fell there was not monotonous to the
palate as the sciolist supposes, but likewise mutable under volition. It
were incredible that Moses, who gave so many imperishable things to his
people, did not also give them the knowledge of fried fish, so that they
might obey his behest, and rejoice, before the Lord. Nay, was it not
because, while the manna fell, there could be no lack of fish to fry,
that they lingered forty years in a dreary wilderness? Other delicious
things there are in Jewish cookery--_Lockschen_, which are the
apotheosis of vermicelli, _Ferfel_, which are _Lockschen_ in an atomic
state, and _Creplich_, which are triangular meat-pasties, and _Kuggol_,
to which pudding has a far-away resemblance; and there is even _gefüllte
Fisch_, which is stuffed fish without bones--but fried fish reigns above
all in cold, unquestioned sovereignty. No other people possesses the
recipe. As a poet of the commencement of the century sings:

The Christians are ninnies, they can't fry Dutch plaice,
Believe me, they can't tell a carp from a dace.

It was while discussing a deliciously brown oblong of the Dutch plaice
of the ballad that Samuel Levine appeared to be struck by an idea. He
threw down his knife and fork and exclaimed in Hebrew. "_Shemah beni_!"