"Yes, then the rich will come to you," said Pinchas, intensely excited. "Ah! it is a great idea, like all yours. Yes, I will come, I will make a mighty speech, for my lips, like Isaiah's, have been touched with the burning coal. I will inspire all hearts to start the movement at once. I will write its Marseillaise this very night, bedewing my couch with a poet's tears. We shall no longer be dumb--we shall roar like the lions of Lebanon. I shall be the trumpet to call the dispersed together from the four corners of the earth--yea, I shall be the Messiah himself," said Pinchas, rising on the wings of his own eloquence, and forgetting to puff at his cigar.
"I rejoice to see you so ardent; but mention not the word Messiah, for I fear some of our friends will take alarm and say that these are not Messianic times, that neither Elias, nor Gog, King of Magog, nor any of the portents have yet appeared. Kidneys or regents, my child?"
"Stupid people! Hillel said more wisely: 'If I help not myself who will help me?' Do they expect the Messiah to fall from heaven? Who knows but I am the Messiah? Was I not born on the ninth of Ab?"
"Hush, hush!" said Guedalyah, the greengrocer. "Let us be practical. We are not yet ready for Marseillaises or Messiahs. The first step is to get funds enough to send one family to Palestine."
"Yes, yes," said Pinchas, drawing vigorously at his cigar to rekindle it. "But we must look ahead. Already I see it all. Palestine in the hands of the Jews--the Holy Temple rebuilt, a Jewish state, a President who is equally accomplished with the sword and the pen,--the whole campaign stretches before me. I see things like Napoleon, general and dictator alike."
"Truly we wish that," said the greengrocer cautiously. "But to-night it is only a question of a dozen men founding a collecting society."
"Of course, of course, that I understand. You're right--people about here say Guedalyah the greengrocer is always right. I will come beforehand to supper with you to talk it over, and you shall see what I will write for the _Mizpeh_ and the _Arbeiter-freund_. You know all these papers jump at me--their readers are the class to which you appeal--in them will I write my burning verses and leaders advocating the cause. I shall be your Tyrtaeus, your Mazzini, your Napoleon. How blessed that I came to England just now. I have lived in the Holy Land--the genius of the soil is blent with mine. I can describe its beauties as none other can. I am the very man at the very hour. And yet I will not go rashly--slow and sure--my plan is to collect small amounts from the poor to start by sending one family at a time to Palestine. That is how we must do it. How does that strike you, Guedalyah. You agree?"