text:
The Job (Lewis)/The Office/Chapter 14

MRS. ESTHER LAWRENCE was, she said, bored by the general atmosphere of innocent and bounding girlhood at the Temperance Home Club, and she persuaded Una to join her in taking a flat—three small rooms—which they made attractive with Japanese toweling and Russian, or at least Russian-Jew, brassware. Here Mrs. Lawrence’s men came calling, and sometimes Mr. Julius Edward Schwirtz, and all of them, except Una herself, had cigarettes and highballs, and Una confusedly felt that she was getting to be an Independent Woman.

Then, in January, 1909, she left the stiff, gray scrub-rag which symbolized the routine of Mr. Troy Wilkins’s office.

In a magazine devoted to advertising she had read that Mr. S. Herbert Ross, whom she had known as advertising-manager of the Gas and Motor Gazette, had been appointed advertising-manager for Pemberton’s—the greatest manufactory of drugs and toilet articles in the world. Una had just been informed by Mr. Wilkins that, while he had an almost paternal desire to see her successful financially and otherwise, he could never pay her more than fifteen dollars a week. He used a favorite phrase of commuting captains of commerce: “Personally, I’d be glad to pay you more, but fifteen is all the position is worth.” She tried to persuade him that there is no position which cannot be made “worth more.” He promised to “think it over.” He was still taking a few months to think it over—while while her Saturday pay-envelope remained as thin as ever—when Bessie Kraker resigned, to marry a mattress-renovator, and in Bessie’s place Mr. Wilkins engaged a tall, beautiful blonde, who was too much of a lady to take orders from Una. This wrecked Una’s little office home, and she was inspired to write to Mr. S. Herbert Ross at Pemberton’s, telling him what a wise, good, noble, efficient man he was, and how much of a privilege it would be to become his secretary. She felt that Walter Babson must have been inexact in ever referring to Mr. Ross as “Sherbet Souse.”

Mr. Ross disregarded her letter for ten days, then so urgently telephoned her to come and see him that she took a taxicab clear to the Pemberton Building in Long Island City. After paying a week’s lunch money for the taxicab, it was rather hard to discover why Mr. Ross had been quite so urgent. He rolled about his magnificent mahogany and tapestry office, looked out of the window at the Long Island Railroad tracks, and told her (in confidence) what fools all the Gas Gazette chiefs had been, and all his employers since then. She smiled appreciatively, and tried to get in a tactful remark about a position. She did discover that Mr. Ross had not as yet chosen his secretary at Pemberton’s, but beyond this Una could find no evidence that he supposed her to have come for any reason other than to hear his mellow wisdom and even mellower stories.

After more than a month, during which Mr. Ross diverted himself by making appointments, postponing them, forgetting them, telephoning, telegraphing, sending special-delivery letters, being paged at hotels, and doing all the useless melodramatic things he could think of, except using an aeroplane or a submarine, he decided to make her his secretary at twenty dollars a week. Two days later it occurred to him to test her in regard to speed in dictation and typing, and a few other minor things of the sort which her ability as a long-distance listener had made him overlook. Fortunately, she also passed this test.

When she told Mr. Wilkins that she was going to leave, he used another set of phrases which all side-street office potentates know—they must learn these clichés out of a little red-leather manual.... He tightened his lips and tapped on his desk-pad with a blue pencil; he looked grieved and said, touchingly: “I think you’re making a mistake. I was making plans for you; in fact, I had just about decided to offer you eighteen dollars a week, and to advance you just as fast as the business will warrant. I, uh, well, I think you’re making a mistake in leaving a sure thing, a good, sound, conservative place, for something you don’t know anything about. I’m not in any way urging you to stay, you understand, but I don’t like to see you making a mistake.”

But he had also told Bessie Kraker that she was “making a mistake” when she had resigned to be married, and he had been so very certain that Una could never be “worth more” than fifteen. Una was rather tart about it. Though Mr. Ross didn’t want her at Pemberton’s for two weeks more, she told Mr. Wilkins that she was going to leave on the following Saturday.

It did not occur to her till Mr. Wilkins developed nervous indigestion by trying to “break in” a new secretary who couldn’t tell a blue-print from a set of specifications, that he had his side in the perpetual struggle between ill-paid failure employers and ill-paid ambitious employees. She was sorry for him as she watched him putter, and she helped him; stayed late, and powerfully exhorted her successor. Mr. Wilkins revived and hoped that she would stay another week, but stay she could not. Once she knew that she was able to break away from the scrub-rag, that specter of the wash-room, and the bleak, frosted glass on the semi-partition in front of her desk, no wage could have helped her. Every moment here was an edged agony.

In this refusal there may have been a trace of aspiration. Otherwise the whole affair was a hodge-podge of petty people and ignoble motives—of Una and Wilkins and S. Herbert Ross and Bessie Kraker, who married a mattress-renovator, and Bessie’s successor; of fifteen dollars a week, and everybody trying to deceive everybody else; of vague reasons for going, and vaguer reasons for letting Una go, and no reason at all for her remaining; in all, an ascent from a scrub-rag to a glorified soap-factory designed to provide Mr. Pemberton’s daughters-in-law with motors.

So long as her world was ruled by chance, half-training, and lack of clear purpose, how could it be other than a hodge-podge?

She could not take as a holiday the two weeks intervening between the Wilkins office and Pemberton’s. When she left Wilkins’s, exulting, “This is the last time I’ll ever go down in one of these rickety elevators,” she had, besides her fifteen dollars in salary, one dollar and seventeen cents in the savings-bank.

Mamie Magen gave her the opportunity to spend the two weeks installing a modern filing-system at Herzfeld & Cohn’s.

So Una had a glimpse of the almost beautiful thing business can be.

Herzfeld and Cohn were Jews, old, white-bearded, orthodox Jews; their unpoetic business was the jobbing of iron beds; and Una was typical of that New York which the Jews are conquering, in having nebulous prejudices against the race; in calling them “mean” and “grasping” and “un-American,” and wanting to see them shut out of offices and hotels.

Yet, with their merry eyes, their quick little foreign cries and gestures of sympathy, their laughter that rumbled in their tremendous beards, their habit of having coffee and pinochle in the office every Friday afternoon, their sincere belief that, as the bosses, they were not omniscient rulers, but merely elder fellow-workers—with these un-American, eccentric, patriarchal ways, Herzfeld and Cohn had made their office a joyous adventure. Other people “in the trade” sniffed at Herzfeld and Cohn for their Quixotic notions of discipline, but they made it pay in dividends as well as in affection. At breakfast Una would find herself eager to get back to work, though Herzfeld and Cohn had but a plain office in an ugly building of brownstone and iron Corinthian columns, resembling an old-fashioned post-office, and typical of all that block on Church Street. There was such gentleness here as Una was not to find in the modern, glazed-brick palace of Pemberton’s.

Above railroad yards and mean tenements in Long Island City, just across the East River from New York, the shining milky walls of Pemberton’s bulk up like a castle overtowering a thatched village. It is magnificently the new-fashioned, scientific, efficient business institution.... Except, perhaps, in one tiny detail. King Pemberton and his princely sons do not believe in all this nonsense about profit-sharing, or a minimum wage, or an eight-hour day, or pensions, or any of the other fads by which dangerous persons like Mr. Ford, the motor manufacturer, encourage the lazier workmen to think that they have just as much right to rise to the top as the men who have had nerve and foresight. And indeed Mr. Pemberton may be sound. He says that he bases wages on the economic law of supply and demand, instead of on sentiment; and how shrewdly successful are he and his sons is indicated by the fact that Pemberton’s is one of the largest sources of drugs and proprietary medicines in the world; the second largest manufactory of soda-fountain syrups; of rubber, celluloid, and leather goods of the kind seen in corner drug-stores; and the third largest manufactory of soaps and toilet articles. It has been calculated that ninety-three million women in all parts of the world have ruined their complexions, and, therefore, their souls, by Pemberton’s creams and lotions for saving the same; and that nearly three-tenths of the alcohol consumed in prohibition counties is obtained in Pemberton’s tonics and blood-builders and women’s specifics, the last being regarded by large farmers with beards as especially tasty and stimulating. Mr. Pemberton is the Napoleon of patent medicine, and also the Napoleon of drugs used by physicians to cure the effects of patent medicine. He is the Shakespeare of ice-cream sodas, and the Edison of hot-water bags. He rules more than five thousand employees, and his name is glorious on cartons in drug-stores, from Sandy Hook to San Diego, and chemists’ shops from Hong-Kong to the Scilly Isles. He is a modern Allah, and Mr. S. Herbert Ross is his prophet.

Una discovered that Mr. Ross, who had been negligible as advertising-manager of the Gas and Motor Gazette, had, in two or three years, become a light domestic great man, because he so completely believed in his own genius, and because advertising is the romance, the faith, the mystery of business. Mr. Pemberton, though he knew well enough that soap-making was a perfectly natural phenomenon, could never get over marveling at the supernatural manner in which advertising seemed to create something out of nothing. It took a cherry fountain syrup which was merely a chemical imitation that under an old name was familiar to everybody; it gave the syrup a new name, and made twenty million children clamor for it. Mr. Pemberton could never quite understand that advertising was merely a matter of salesmanship by paper and ink, nor that Mr. Ross’s assistants, who wrote the copy and drew the pictures and selected the mediums and got the “mats” over to the agency on time, were real advertising men. No, the trusting old pirate believed it was also necessary to have an ordained advertising-manager like Mr. Ross, a real initiate, who could pull a long face and talk about “the psychology of the utilitarian appeal” and “pulling power” and all the rest of the theology. So he, who paid packing-girls as little as four dollars a week, paid Mr. Ross fifteen thousand dollars a year, and let him have competent assistants, and invited him out to the big, lonely, unhappy Pemberton house in the country, and listened to his sacerdotal discourses, and let him keep four or five jobs at once. For, besides being advertising-manager for Pemberton’s, Mr. Ross went off to deliver Lyceum lectures and Chautauqua addresses and club chit-chats on the blessings of selling more soap or underwear; and for the magazines he wrote prose poems about stars, and sympathy, and punch, and early rising, and roadside flowers, and argosies, and farming, and saving money.

All this doge-like splendor Una discovered, but could scarcely believe, for in his own office Mr. Ross seemed but as the rest of us—a small round man, with a clown-like little face and hair cut Dutch-wise across his forehead. When he smoked a big cigar he appeared naughty. One expected to see his mother come and judiciously smack him. But more and more Una felt the force of his attitude that he was a genius incomparable. She could not believe that he knew what a gorgeous fraud he was. On the same day, he received an advance in salary, discharged an assistant for requesting an advance in salary, and dictated a magazine filler to the effect that the chief duty of executives was to advance salaries. She could not chart him.... Thus for thousands of years have servants been amazed at the difference between pontiffs in the pulpit and pontiffs in the pantry.

Doubtless it helped Mr. Ross in maintaining his sublimity to dress like a cleric—black, modest suits of straight lines, white shirts, small, black ties. But he also wore silk socks, which he reflectively scratched while he was dictating. He was of an elegance in linen handkerchiefs, in a chased-gold cigarette-case, in cigarettes with a monogram. Indeed, he often stopped during dictation to lean across the enormous mahogany desk and explain to Una how much of a connoisseur he was in tennis, fly-casting, the ordering of small, smart dinners at the Plaza.

He was fond of the word “smart.”

“Rather smart poster, eh?” he would say, holding up the latest creation of his genius—that is to say, of his genius in hiring the men who had planned and prepared the creation.

Mr. Ross was as full of ideas as of elegance. He gave birth to ideas at lunch, at “conferences,” while motoring, while being refreshed with a manicure and a violet-ray treatment at a barber-shop in the middle of one of his arduous afternoons. He would gallop back to the office with notes on these ideas, pant at Una in a controlled voice, “Quick—your book—got a’ idea,” and dictate the outline of such schemes as the Tranquillity Lunch Room—a place of silence and expensive food; the Grand Arcade—a ten-block-long rival to Broadway, all under glass; the Barber-Shop Syndicate, with engagement cards sent out every third week to notify customers that the time for a hair-cut had come again. None of these ideas ever had anything to do with assisting Mr. Pemberton in the sale of soap, and none of them ever went any farther than being outlined. Whenever he had dictated one of them, Mr. Ross would assume that he had already made a million out of it, and in his quiet, hypnotizing voice he would permit Una to learn what a great man he was. Hitching his chair an inch nearer to her at each sentence, looking straight into her eyes, in a manner as unboastful as though he were giving the market price of eggs, he would tell her how J. Pierpont Morgan, Burbank, or William Randolph Hearst had praised him; or how much more he knew about electricity or toxicology or frogs or Java than anybody else in the world.

Not only a priest, but a virtuoso of business was he, and Una’s chief task was to keep assuring him that he was a great man, a very great man—in fact, as great as he thought he was. This task was, to the uneasily sincere Una, the hardest she had ever attempted. It was worth five dollars more a week than she had received from Troy Wilkins—it was worth a million more!

She got confidence in herself from the ease with which she satisfied Mr. Ross by her cold, canned compliments. And though she was often dizzied by the whirling dynamo of Pemberton’s, she was not bored by the routine of valeting Mr. Ross in his actual work.... For Mr. Ross actually did work now and then, though his chief duty was to make an impression on old Mr. Pemberton, his sons, and the other big chiefs. Still, he did condescend to “put his O. K.” on pictures, on copy and proof for magazine advertisements, car cards, window-display “cut-outs,” and he dictated highly ethical reading matter for the house organ, which was distributed to ten thousand drug-stores, and which spoke well of honesty, feminine beauty, gardening, and Pemberton’s. Occasionally he had a really useful idea, like the celebrated slogan, “Pemberton’s Means PURE,” which you see in every street-car, on every fourth or fifth bill-board. It is frequent as the “In God We Trust” on our coins, and at least as accurate. This slogan, he told Una, surpassed “A train every hour on the hour,” or “The watch that made the dollar famous,” or, “The ham what am,” or any of the other masterpieces of lyric advertising. He had created it after going into a sibyllic trance of five days, during which he had drunk champagne and black coffee, and ridden about in hansoms, delicately brushing his nose with a genuine California poppy from the Monterey garden of R. L. S.

If Mr. Ross was somewhat agitating, he was calm as the desert compared with the rest of Pemberton’s.

His office, which was like a million-dollar hotel lobby, and Una’s own den, which was like the baggage-porter’s den adjoining the same, were the only spots at Pemberton’s where Una felt secure. Outside of them, fourteen stories up in the titanic factory, was an enormous office-floor, which was a wilderness of desks, toilet-rooms, elevators, waiting-rooms, filing-cabinets. Her own personality was absorbed in the cosmic (though soapy) personality of Pemberton’s. Instead of longing for a change, she clung to her own corner, its desk and spring-back chair, and the insurance calendar with a high-colored picture of Washington’s farewell. She preferred to rest here rather than in the “club-room and rest-room for women employees,” on which Mr. Pemberton so prided himself.

Una heard rumors of rest-rooms which were really beautiful, really restful; but at Pemberton’s the room resembled a Far Rockaway cottage rented by the week to feeble-minded bookkeepers. Musty it was, with curtains awry, and it must have been of use to all the branches of the Pemberton family in cleaning out their attics. Here was the old stuffed chair in which Pemberton I. had died, and the cot which had been in the cook’s room till she had protested. The superstition among the chiefs was that all the women employees were very grateful for this charity. The room was always shown to exclamatory visitors, who told Mr. Pemberton that he was almost too good. But in secret conclaves at lunch the girls called the room “the junk-shop,” and said that they would rather go out and sit on the curb.

Una herself took one look—and one smell—at the room, and never went near it again.

But even had it been enticing, she would not have frequented it. Her caste as secretary forbade. For Pemberton’s was as full of caste and politics as a Republican national convention; caste and politics, cliques and factions, plots and secrets, and dynasties that passed and were forgotten.

Plots and secrets Una saw as secretary to Mr. Ross. She remembered a day on which Mr. Ross, in her presence, assured old Pemberton that he hoped to be with the firm for the rest of his life, and immediately afterward dictated a letter to the president of a rival firm in the effort to secure a new position. He destroyed the carbon copy of that letter and looked at Una as serenely as ever. Una saw him read letters on the desks of other chiefs while he was talking to them; saw him “listen in” on telephone calls, and casually thrust his foot into doors, in order to have a glimpse of the visitors in offices. She saw one of the younger Pembertons hide behind a bookcase while his father was talking to his brother. She knew that this Pemberton and Mr. Ross were plotting to oust the brother, and that the young, alert purchasing agent was trying to undermine them both. She knew that one of the girls in the private telephone exchange was the mistress and spy of old Pemberton. All of the chiefs tried to emulate the moyen-age Italians in the arts of smiling poisoning—but they did it so badly; they were as fussily ineffectual as a group of school-boys who hate their teacher. Not “big deals” and vast grim power did they achieve, but merely a constant current of worried insecurity, and they all tended to prove Mrs. Lawrence’s assertion that the office-world is a method of giving the largest possible number of people the largest possible amount of nervous discomfort, to the end of producing the largest possible quantity of totally useless articles.... The struggle extended from the chiefs to the clerks; they who tramped up and down a corridor, waiting till a chief was alone, glaring at others who were also manœuvering to see him; they who studied the lightest remark of any chief and rushed to allies with the problem of, “Now, what did he mean by that, do you think?”... A thousand questions of making an impression on the overlords, and of “House Policy”—that malicious little spirit which stalks through the business house and encourages people to refuse favors.

Una’s share in the actual work at Pemberton’s would have been only a morning’s pastime, but her contact with the high-voltage current of politics exhausted her—and taught her that commercial rewards come to those who demand and take.

The office politics bred caste. Caste at Pemberton’s was as clearly defined as ranks in an army.

At the top were the big chiefs, the officers of the company, and the heads of departments—Mr. Pemberton and his sons, the treasurer, the general manager, the purchasing-agent, the superintendents of the soda-fountain-syrup factory, of the soap-works, of the drug-laboratories, of the toilet-accessories shops, the sales-manager, and Mr. S. Herbert Ross. The Olympian council were they; divinities to whom the lesser clerks had never dared to speak. When there were rumors of “a change,” of “a cut-down in the force,” every person on the office floor watched the chiefs as they assembled to go out to lunch together—big, florid, shaven, large-chinned men, talking easily, healthy from motoring and golf, able in a moment’s conference at lunch to “shift the policy” and to bring instant poverty to the families of forty clerks or four hundred workmen in the shops. When they jovially entered the elevator together, some high-strung stenographer would rush over to one of the older women to weep and be comforted.... An hour from now her tiny job might be gone.

Even the chiefs’ outside associates were tremendous, buyers and diplomatic representatives; big-chested men with watch-chains across their beautiful tight waistcoats. And like envoys extraordinary were the efficiency experts whom Mr. Pemberton occasionally had in to speed up the work a bit more beyond the point of human endurance.... One of these experts, a smiling and pale-haired young man who talked to Mr. Ross about the new poetry, arranged to have office-boys go about with trays of water-glasses at ten, twelve, two, and four. Thitherto, the stenographers had wasted a great deal of time in trotting to the battery of water-coolers, in actually being human and relaxed and gossipy for ten minutes a day. After the visitation of the expert the girls were so efficient that they never for a second stopped their work—except when one of them would explode in hysteria and be hurried off to the rest-room. But no expert was able to keep them from jumping at the chance to marry any one who would condescend to take them out of this efficient atmosphere.

Just beneath the chiefs was the caste of bright young men who would some day have the chance to be beatified into chiefs. They believed enormously in the virtue of spreading the blessings of Pemberton’s patent medicines; they worshiped the house policy. Once a month they met at what they called “punch lunches,” and listened to electrifying addresses by Mr. S. Herbert Ross or some other inspirer, and turned fresh, excited eyes on one another, and vowed to adhere to the true faith of Pemberton’s, and not waste their evenings in making love, or reading fiction, or hearing music, but to read diligently about soap and syrups and window displays, and to keep firmly before them the vision of fifteen thousand dollars a year. They had quite the best time of any one at Pemberton’s, the bright young men. They sat, in silk shirts and new ties, at shiny, flat-topped desks in rows; they answered the telephone with an air; they talked about tennis and business conditions, and were never, never bored.

Intermingled with this caste were the petty chiefs, the office-managers and bookkeepers, who were velvety to those placed in power over them, but twangily nagging to the girls and young men under them. Failures themselves, they eyed sourly the stenographers who desired two dollars more a week, and assured them that while personally they would be very glad to obtain the advance for them, it would be “unfair to the other girls.” They were very strong on the subject of not being unfair to the other girls, and their own salaries were based on “keeping down overhead.” Oldish men they were, wearing last-year hats and smoking Virginia cigarettes at lunch; always gossiping about the big chiefs, and at night disappearing to homes and families in New Jersey or Harlem. Awe-encircled as the very chiefs they appeared when they lectured stenographers, but they cowered when the chiefs spoke to them, and tremblingly fingered their frayed cuffs.

Such were the castes above the buzzer-line.

Una’s caste, made up of private secretaries to the chiefs, was not above the buzzer. She had to leap to the rattlesnake tattoo, when Mr. Ross summoned her, as quickly as did the newest Jewish stenographer. But hers was a staff corps, small and exclusive and out of the regular line. On the one hand she could not associate with the chiefs; on the other, it was expected of her in her capacity as daily confidante to one of the gods, that she should not be friendly, in coat-room or rest-room or elevator, with the unrecognized horde of girls who merely copied or took the bright young men’s dictation of letters to drug-stores. These girls of the common herd were expected to call the secretaries, “Miss,” no matter what street-corner impertinences they used to one another.

There was no caste, though there was much factional rivalry, among the slaves beneath—the stenographers, copyists, clerks, waiting-room attendants, office-boys, elevator-boys. They were expected to keep clean and be quick-moving; beyond that they were as unimportant to the larger phases of office politics as frogs to a summer hotel. Only the cashier’s card index could remember their names.... Though they were not deprived of the chief human satisfaction and vice—feeling superior. The most snuffle-nosed little mailing-girl on the office floor felt superior to all of the factory workers, even the foremen, quite as negro house-servants look down on poor white trash.

Jealousy of position, cattishness, envy of social standing—these were as evident among the office-women as they are in a woman’s club; and Una had to admit that woman’s cruelty to woman often justified the prejudices of executives against the employment of women in business; that women were the worst foes of Woman.

To Una’s sympathies, the office proletarians were her own poor relations. She sighed over the cheap jackets, with silesia linings and raveled buttonholes, which nameless copyists tried to make attractive by the clean embroidered linen collars which they themselves laundered in wash-bowls in the evening. She discovered that even after years of experience with actual office-boys and elevator-boys, Mr. Ross still saw them only as slangy, comic-paper devils. Then, in the elevator, she ascertained that the runners made about two hundred trips up and down the dark chutes every day, and wondered if they always found it comic to do so. She saw the office-boys, just growing into the age of interest in sex and acquiring husky male voices and shambling sense of shame, yearn at the shrines of pasty-faced stenographers. She saw the humanity of all this mass—none the less that they envied her position and spoke privily of “those snippy private secretaries that think they’re so much sweller than the rest of us.”

She watched with peculiar interest one stratum: the old ladies, the white-haired, fair-handed women of fifty and sixty and even seventy, spinsters and widows, for whom life was nothing but a desk and a job of petty pickings—mailing circulars or assorting letters or checking up lists. She watched them so closely because she speculated always, “Will I ever be like that?”

They seemed comfortable; gossipy they were, and fond of mothering the girls. But now and then one of them would start to weep, cry for an hour together, with her white head on a spotty desk-blotter, till she forgot her homelessness and uselessness. Epidemics of hysteria would spring up sometimes, and women of thirty-five or forty—normally well content—would join the old ladies in sobbing. Una would wonder if she would be crying like that at thirty-five—and at sixty-five, with thirty barren, weeping years between. Always she saw the girls of twenty-two getting tired, the women of twenty-eight getting dry and stringy, the women of thirty-five in a solid maturity of large-bosomed and widowed spinsterhood, the old women purring and catty and tragic.... She herself was twenty-eight now, and she knew that she was growing sallow, that the back of her neck ached more often, and that she had no release in sight save the affably dull Mr. Julius Edward Schwirtz.

Machines were the Pemberton force, and their greatest rivals were the machines of steel and wood, at least one of which each new efficiency expert left behind him: Machines for opening letters and sealing them, automatic typewriters, dictation phonographs, pneumatic chutes. But none of the other machines was so tyrannical as the time-clock. Una admitted to herself that she didn’t see how it was possible to get so many employees together promptly without it, and she was duly edified by the fact that the big chiefs punched it, too.... But she noticed that after punching it promptly at nine, in an unctuous manner which said to all beholders, “You see that even I subject myself to this delightful humility,” Mr. S. Herbert Ross frequently sneaked out and had breakfast....

She knew that the machines were supposed to save work. But she was aware that the girls worked just as hard and long and hopelessly after their introduction as before; and she suspected that there was something wrong with a social system in which time-saving devices didn’t save time for anybody but the owners. She was not big enough nor small enough to have a patent cure-all solution ready. She could not imagine any future for these women in business except the accidents of marriage or death—or a revolution in the attitude toward them. She saw that the comfortable average men of the office sooner or later, if they were but faithful and lived long enough, had opportunities, responsibility, forced upon them. No such force was used upon the comfortable average women!

She endeavored to picture a future in which women, the ordinary, philoprogenitive, unambitious women, would have some way out besides being married off or killed off. She envisioned a complete change in the fundamental purpose of organized business from the increased production of soap—or books or munitions—to the increased production of happiness. How this revolution was to be accomplished she had but little more notion than the other average women in business. She blindly adopted from Mamie Magen a half-comprehended faith in a Fabian socialism, a socializing that would crawl slowly through practical education and the preaching of kinship, through profit-sharing and old-age pensions, through scientific mosquito-slaying and cancer-curing and food reform and the abolition of anarchistic business competition, to a goal of tolerable and beautiful life. Of one thing she was sure: This age, which should adjudge happiness to be as valuable as soap or munitions, would never come so long as the workers accepted the testimony of paid spokesmen like S. Herbert Ross to the effect that they were contented and happy, rather than the evidence of their own wincing nerves to the effect that they lived in a polite version of hell.... She was more and more certain that the workers weren’t discontented enough; that they were too patient with lives insecure and tedious. But she refused to believe that the age of comparative happiness would always be a dream; for already, at Herzfeld & Cohn’s she had tasted of an environment where no one considered himself a divinely ruling chief, and where it was not a crime to laugh easily. But certainly she did not expect to see this age during her own life. She and her fellows were doomed, unless they met by chance with marriage or death; or unless they crawled to the top of the heap. And this last she was determined to do. Though she did hope to get to the top without unduly kicking the shrieking mass of slaves beneath her, as the bright young men learned to do.

Whenever she faced Mr. Ross’s imperturbable belief that things-as-they-are were going pretty well, that “you can’t change human nature,” Una would become meek and puzzled, lose her small store of revolutionary economics, and wonder, grope, doubt her millennial faith. Then she would again see the dead eyes of young girls as they entered the elevators at five-thirty, and she would rage at all chiefs and bright young men.... A gold-eye-glassed, kitten-stepping, good little thing she was, and competent to assist Mr. Ross in his mighty labors, yet at heart she was a shawled Irish peasant, or a muzhik lost in the vastness of the steppes; a creature elemental and despairing, facing mysterious powers of nature—human nature.

title: The Job (Lewis)/The Office/Chapter 14


text:
The Job (Lewis)/The Office/Chapter 15

MR. JULIUS EDWARD SCHWIRTZ was a regular visitant at the flat of Mrs. Lawrence and Una. Mrs. Lawrence liked him; in his presence she abandoned her pretense of being interested in Mamie Magen’s arid intellectualism, and Una’s quivering anxieties. Mr. Schwirtz was ready for any party, whenever he was “in off the road.”

Una began to depend on him for amusements. Mrs. Lawrence encouraged her to appear at her best before him. When he or one of Mrs. Lawrence’s men was coming the two women had an early and quick dinner of cold ham and canned soup, and hastily got out the electric iron to press a frock; produced Pemberton’s Flesh-Tinted Vanisho Powder, and the lip-stick whose use Una hated, but which she needed more and more as she came back from the office bloodless and cold. They studied together the feminine art of using a new veil, a flower, or fresh white-kid gloves, to change one’s appearance.

Poor Una! She was thinking now, secretly and shamefacedly, of the “beautifying methods” which she saw advertised in every newspaper and cheap magazine. She rubbed her red, desk-calloused elbows with Pemberton’s cold-cream. She cold-creamed and massaged her face every night, standing wearily before a milky mirror in the rather close and lingerie-scattered bedroom, solemnly rotating her fingers about her cheeks and forehead, stopping to conjecture that the pores in her nose were getting enlarged. She rubbed her hair with Pemberton’s “Olivine and Petrol” to keep it from growing thin, and her neck with cocoanut oil to make it more full. She sent for a bottle of “Mme. LeGrand’s Bust-Developer,” and spent several Saturday afternoons at the beauty parlors of Mme. Isoldi, where in a little booth shut off by a white-rubber curtain, she received electrical massages, applications of a magic N-ray hair-brush, vigorous cold-creaming and warm-compressing, and enormous amounts of advice about caring for the hair follicles, from a young woman who spoke French with a Jewish accent.

By a twist of psychology, though she had not been particularly fond of Mr. Schwirtz, but had anointed herself for his coming because he was a representative of men, yet after months of thus dignifying his attentions, the very effort made her suppose that she must be fond of him. Not Mr. Schwirtz, but her own self did she befool with Pemberton’s “Preparations de Paris.”

Sometimes with him alone, sometimes with him and Mrs. Lawrence and one of Mrs. Lawrence’s young businessman attendants, Una went to theaters and dinners and heterogeneous dances.

She was dazzled and excited when Mr. Schwirtz took her to the opening of the Champs du Pom-Pom, the latest potpourri of amusements on Broadway. All under one roof were a super-vaudeville show, a smart musical comedy, and the fireworks of one-act plays; a Chinese restaurant, and a Louis Quinze restaurant and a Syrian desert-caravan restaurant; a ballroom and an ice-skating rink; a summer garden that, in midwinter, luxuriated in real trees and real grass, and a real brook crossed by Japanese bridges. Mr. Schwirtz was tireless and extravagant and hearty at the Champs du Pom-Pom. He made Una dance and skate; he had a box for the vaudeville; he gave her caviar canapé and lobster à la Rue des Trois Sœurs in the Louis Quinze room; and sparkling Burgundy in the summer garden, where mocking-birds sang in the wavering branches above their table. Una took away an impressionistic picture of the evening—

Scarlet and shadowy green, sequins of gold, slim shoulders veiled in costly mist. The glitter of spangles, the hissing of silk, low laughter, and continual music quieter than a dream. Crowds that were not harsh busy folk of the streets, but a nodding procession of gallant men and women. A kindly cleverness which inspirited her, and a dusky perfume in which she could meditate forever, like an Egyptian goddess throned at the end of incense-curtained aisles. Great tapestries of velvet and jeweled lights; swift, smiling servants; and the languorous well-being of eating strange, delicious foods. Orchids and the scent of poppies and spell of the lotos-flower, the bead of wine and lips that yearned; ecstasy in the Oriental pride of a superb Jewess who was singing to the demure enchantment of little violins. Her restlessness satisfied, a momentary pang of distrust healed by the brotherly talk of the broad-shouldered man who cared for her and nimbly fulfilled her every whim. An unvoiced desire to keep him from drinking so many highballs; an enduring thankfulness to him when she was back at the flat; a defiant joy that he had kissed her good-night—just once, and so tenderly; a determination to “be good for him,” and a fear that he had “spent too much money on her to-night,” and a plan to reason with him about whisky and extravagance. A sudden hatred of the office to which she would have to return in the morning, and a stronger, more sardonic hatred of hearing Mr. S. Herbert Ross pluck out his vest-pocket harp and hymn his own praise in a one-man choir, cherubic, but slightly fat. A descent from high gardens of moonlight to the reality of the flat, where Lawrence was breathing loudly in her sleep; the oily smell of hairs tangled in her old hair-brush; the sight of the alarm-clock which in just six hours would be flogging her off to the mill. A sudden, frightened query as to what scornful disdain Walter Babson would fling at her if he saw her glorying in this Broadway circus with the heavy Mr. Schwirtz. A ghostly night-born feeling that she still belonged to Walter, living or dead, and a wonder as to where in all the world he might be. A defiant protest that she idealized Walter, that he wasn’t so awfully superior to the Champs du Pom-Pom as this astral body of his was pretending, and a still more defiant gratitude to Mr. Schwirtz as she crawled into the tousled bed and Mrs. Lawrence half woke to yawn, “Oh, that—you—Gold’n? Gawd! I’m sleepy. Wha’ time is’t?”

Una was sorry. She hated herself as what she called a “quitter,” but now, in January, 1910, she was at an impasse. She could just stagger through each day of S. Herbert Ross and office diplomacies. She had been at Pemberton’s for a year and a third, and longer than that with Mrs. Lawrence at the flat. The summer vacation of 1909 she had spent with Mrs. Lawrence at a Jersey coast resort. They had been jealous, had quarreled, and made it up every day, like lovers. They had picked up two summer men, and Mrs. Lawrence had so often gone off on picnics with her man that Una had become uneasy, felt soiled, and come back to the city early. For this Mrs. Lawrence had never forgiven her. She had recently become engaged to a doctor who was going to Akron, Ohio, and she exasperated Una by giving her bland advice about trying to get married. Una never knew whether she was divorced, or whether the mysterious Mr. Lawrence had died.

But even the difficile Lawrence was preferable to the strain at the office. Una was tired clean through and through. She felt as though her very soul had been drained out by a million blood-sucker details—constant adjustments to Ross’s demands for admiration of his filthiest office political deals, and the need of keeping friendly with both sides when Ross was engaged in one of his frequent altercations with an assistant.

Often she could not eat in the evening. She would sit on the edge of the bed and cry hopelessly, with a long, feeble, peculiarly feminine sobbing, till Mrs. Lawrence slammed the door and went off to the motion pictures. Una kept repeating a little litany she had made regarding the things she wished people would stop doing—praying to be delivered from Ross’s buoyant egotism, from Mrs. Lawrence’s wearing of Una’s best veils, from Mr. Schwirtz’s acting as though he wanted to kiss her whenever he had a whisky breath, from the office-manager who came in to chat with her just when she was busiest, from the office-boy who always snapped his fingers as he went down the corridor outside her door, and from the elevator-boy who sucked his teeth.

She was sorry. She wanted to climb. She didn’t want to be a quitter. But she was at an impasse.

On a January day the Pemberton office beheld that most terrifying crisis that can come to a hard, slave-driving office. As the office put it, “The Old Man was on a rampage.”

Mr. Pemberton, senior, most hoarily awful of all the big chiefs, had indigestion or a poor balance-sheet. He decided that everything was going wrong. He raged from room to room. He denounced the new poster, the new top for the talcum-powder container, the arrangement of the files, and the whispering in the amen corner of veteran stenographers. He sent out flocks of “office memoes.” Everybody trembled. Mr. Pemberton’s sons actually did some work; and, as the fire spread and the minor bosses in turn raged among their subordinates, the girls who packed soap down in the works expected to be “fired.” After a visitation from Mr. Pemberton and three raging memoes within fifteen minutes, Mr. S. Herbert Ross retreated toward the Lafayette Café, and Una was left to face Mr. Pemberton’s bear-like growls on his next appearance.

When he did appear he seemed to hold her responsible for all the world’s long sadness. Meanwhile the printer was telephoning for Mr. Ross’s O. K. on copy, the engravers wanted to know where the devil was that color-proof, the advertising agency sarcastically indicated that it was difficult for them to insert an advertisement before they received the order, and a girl from the cashier’s office came nagging in about a bill for India ink.

The memoes began to get the range of her desk again, and Mr. Pemberton’s voice could be heard in a distant part of the office, approaching, menacing, all-pervading.

Una fled. She ran to a wash-room, locked the door, leaned panting against it, as though detectives were pursuing her. She was safe for a moment. They might miss her, but she was insulated from demands of, “Where’s Ross, Miss Golden? Well, why don’t you know where he is?” from telephone calls, and from memoes whose polite “please” was a gloved threat.

But even to this refuge the familiar sound of the office penetrated—the whirr which usually sounded as a homogeneous murmur, but which, in her acute sensitiveness, she now analyzed into the voices of different typewriters—one flat, rapid, staccato; one a steady, dull rattle. The “zzzzz” of typewriter-carriages being shoved back. The roll of closing elevator doors, and the rumble of the ascending elevator. The long burr of an unanswered telephone at a desk, again and again; and at last an angry “Well! Hello? Yes, yes; this ’s Mr. Jones. What-duh-yuh want?” Voices mingled; a shout for Mr. Brown; the hall-attendant yelping: “Miss Golden! Where’s Miss Golden? Anything for Sanford? Mr. Smith, d’you know if there’s anything for Sanford?” Always, over and through all, the enveloping clatter of typewriters, and the city roar behind that, breaking through the barrier of the door.

The individual, analyzed sounds again blended in one insistent noise of hurry which assailed Una’s conscience, summoned her back to her work.

She sighed, washed her stinging eyes, opened the door, and trailed back toward her den.

In the corridor she passed three young stenographers and heard one of them cry: “Yes, but I don’t care if old Alfalfa goes on a rampage twenty-five hours a day. I’m through. Listen, May, say, what d’you know about me? I’m engaged! No, honest, straight I am! Look at me ring! Aw, it is not; it’s a regular engagement-ring. I’m going to be out of this hell-hole in two weeks, and Papa Pemberton can work off his temper on somebody else. Me, I’m going to do a slumber marathon till noon every day.”

“Gee!”

“Engaged!”

—said the other girls, and—

“Engaged! Going to sleep till noon every day. And not see Mr. Ross or Mr. Pemberton! That’s my idea of heaven!” thought Una.

There was a pile of inquiring memoes from Mr. Pemberton and the several department heads on her desk. As she looked at them Una reached the point of active protest.

“S. Herbert runs for shelter when the storm breaks, and leaves me here to stand it. Why isn’t he supposed to be here on the job just as much as I am?” she declaimed. “Why haven’t I the nerve to jump up and go out for a cup of tea the way he would? By jiminy! I will!”

She was afraid of the indefinite menace concealed in all the Pemberton system as she signaled an elevator. But she did not answer a word when the hall-attendant said, “You are going out, Miss Golden?”

She went to a German-Jewish bakery and lunch-room, and reflectively got down thin coffee served in a thick cup, a sugar-warted Kaffeekuche, and two crullers. She was less willing to go back to work than she had been in her refuge in the wash-room. She felt that she would rather be dead than return and subject herself to the strain. She was “through,” like the little engaged girl. She was a “quitter.”

For half an hour she remained in the office, but she left promptly at five-thirty, though her desk was choked with work and though Mr. Ross telephoned that he would be back before six, which was his chivalrous way of demanding that she stay till seven.

Mr. Schwirtz was coming to see her that evening. He had suggested vaudeville.

She dressed very carefully. She did her hair in a new way.

When Mr. Schwirtz came she cried that she couldn’t go to a show. She was “clean played out.” She didn’t know what she could do. Pemberton’s was too big a threshing-machine for her. She was tired—“absolutely all in.”

“Poor little sister!” he said, and smoothed her hair.

She rested her face on his shoulder. It seemed broad and strong and protective.

She was glad when he put his arm about her.

She was married to Mr. Schwirtz about two weeks later.

She had got herself to call him “Ed.” ... “Eddie” she could not encompass, even in that fortnight of rushing change and bewilderment.

She asked for a honeymoon trip to Savannah. She wanted to rest; she had to rest or she would break, she said.

They went to Savannah, to the live-oaks and palmettoes and quiet old squares.

But she did not rest. Always she brooded about the unleashed brutality of their first night on the steamer, the strong, inescapable man-smell of his neck and shoulders, the boisterous jokes he kept telling her.

He insisted on their staying at a commercial hotel at Savannah. Whenever she went to lie down, which was frequently, he played poker and drank highballs. He tried in his sincerest way to amuse her. He took her to theaters, restaurants, road-houses. He arranged a three days’ hunting-trip, with a darky cook. He hired motor-boats and motor-cars and told her every “here’s a new one,” that he heard. But she dreaded his casual-seeming suggestions that she drink plenty of champagne; dreaded his complaints, whiney as a small boy, “Come now, Unie, show a little fire. I tell you a fellow’s got a right to expect it at this time.” She dreaded his frankness of undressing, of shaving; dreaded his occasional irritated protests of “Don’t be a finicking, romantic school-miss. I may not wear silk underclo’ and perfume myself like some bum actor, but I’m a regular guy”; dreaded being alone with him; dreaded always the memory of that first cataclysmic night of their marriage; and mourned, as in secret, for year on year, thousands of women do mourn. “Oh, I wouldn’t care now if he had just been gentle, been considerate.... Oh, Ed is good; he does mean to care for me and give me a good time, but—”

When they returned to New York, Mr. Schwirtz said, robustly: “Well, little old trip made consid’able hole in my wad. I’m clean busted. Down to one hundred bucks in the bank.”

“Why, I thought you were several thousand ahead!”

“Oh—oh! I lost most of that in a little flyer on stocks—thought I’d make a killing, and got turned into lamb-chops; tried to recoup my losses on that damn flying-machine, passenger-carrying game that that —— —— —— —— let me in for. Never mind, little sister; we’ll start saving now. And it was worth it. Some trip, eh? You enjoyed it, didn’t you—after the first couple days, while you were seasick? You’ll get over all your fool, girly-girly notions now. Women always are like that. I remember the first missus was, too.... And maybe a few other skirts, though I guess I hadn’t better tell no tales outa school on little old Eddie Schwirtz, eh? Ha, ha!... Course you high-strung virgin kind of shemales take some time to learn to get over your choosey, finicky ways. But, Lord love you! I don’t mind that much. Never could stand for these rough-necks that claim they’d rather have a good, healthy walloping country wench than a nice, refined city lady. Why, I like refinement! Yes, sir, I sure do!... Well, it sure was some trip. Guess we won’t forget it in a hurry, eh? Sure is nice to rub up against some Southern swells like we did that night at the Avocado Club. And that live bunch of salesmen. Gosh! Say, I’ll never forget that Jock Sanderson. He was a comical cuss, eh? That story of his—”

“No,” said Una, “I’ll never forget the trip.”

But she tried to keep the frenzy out of her voice. The frenzy was dying, as so much of her was dying. She hadn’t realized a woman can die so many times and still live. Dead had her heart been at Pemberton’s, yet it had secreted enough life to suffer horribly now, when it was again being mauled to death.

And she wanted to spare this man.

She realized that poor Ed Schwirtz, puttering about their temporary room in a side-street family hotel, yawning and scratching his head, and presumably comfortable in suspenders over a woolen undershirt—she realized that he treasured a joyous memory of their Savannah diversions.

She didn’t want to take joy away from anybody who actually had it, she reflected, as she went over to the coarse-lace hotel curtains, parted them, stared down on the truck-filled street, and murmured, “No, I can’t ever forget.”

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: The Job (Lewis)/The Office/Chapter 15


text:
Talk:Mike (Wodehouse)

missing chapter titles
Something is going wrong with the list of chapters as transcluded on this page by the tag:  The list on page 14 begins with Chapter XXV, and the list on page 15 begins with Chapter LIV. But both of these are missing from the full list on the rendered page. How should this be fixed? 2605:A601:4040:6400:619C:A86C:81D3:66F9 22:21, 11 July 2016 (UTC)
 * The tables were not properly implemented. I'll see about a fix. --EncycloPetey (talk) 22:28, 11 July 2016 (UTC)

 * ✅ --EncycloPetey (talk) 22:30, 11 July 2016 (UTC)

title: Talk:Mike (Wodehouse)


text: Mike (Wodehouse)/Chapter 1

title: Mike (Wodehouse)/Chapter 1


text: Mike (Wodehouse)/Chapter 2

title: Mike (Wodehouse)/Chapter 2


text: Mike (Wodehouse)/Chapter 3

title: Mike (Wodehouse)/Chapter 3


text: Mike (Wodehouse)/Chapter 4

title: Mike (Wodehouse)/Chapter 4


text: Mike (Wodehouse)/Chapter 5

title: Mike (Wodehouse)/Chapter 5


text: Mike (Wodehouse)/Chapter 6

title: Mike (Wodehouse)/Chapter 6


text: Mike (Wodehouse)/Chapter 7

title: Mike (Wodehouse)/Chapter 7


text: Mike (Wodehouse)/Chapter 8

title: Mike (Wodehouse)/Chapter 8


text: Mike (Wodehouse)/Chapter 9

title: Mike (Wodehouse)/Chapter 9


text: Mike (Wodehouse)/Chapter 10

title: Mike (Wodehouse)/Chapter 10


text: Talk:Psmith in the City

title: Talk:Psmith in the City


text:
Page:Weird Tales volume 30 number 04.djvu/53

By EARL PEIRCE, JR.

What strange compulsion drove an ordinarily gentle and cultured man, on one night of each week, to roam the city streets and commit a ghastly crime?

AM writing this account of my friend Jason Carse in the interests of both justice and psychiatry, and perhaps of demonology as well. There is no greater proof of what I relate than the sequence of murders which so recently shocked this city, the newspaper items regarding the crimes, and especially the official report of the alienists who examined Carse during his trial. I cannot expect to bring Doctor Carse back to life, for he was hanged until dead, but I do 437


text:
Page:Weird Tales volume 30 number 04.djvu/14

By SEABURY QUINN

''A tale of a lover who was pledged to a sweetheart who had been in her grave for more than a century, and of the striking death that menaced him—a story of Jules de Grandin''

HE autumn dusk had stained the sky with shadows and orange oblongs traced the windows in my neighbors' homes as Jules de Grandin and I sat sipping kaiserschmarrn and coffee in the study after dinner. "Mon Dieu" the little Frenchman sighed, "I have the mal du pays, my friend. The little children run and play along the roadways at Saint Cloud, and on the Ile de France the 397


text:
Page:Weird Tales volume 30 number 04.djvu/3

By DAVID H. KELLER

A grim tale of torture, and the blind men who were chained to pillars in an underground cave

HE man tried his best to sell me the house. He was confident that I would like it. Repeatedly he called my attention to the view.

There was something in what he said about the view. The villa on the top of a mountain commanded a vision of the valley, vine-clad and cottage-studded. It was an irregular bowl of green, dotted with stone houses which were white-washed to almost painful brilliancy.

The valley was three and a third miles at its greatest width. Standing at the front door of the house, an expert marksman with telescopic sight could have placed a rifle bullet in each of the white marks of cottages. They nestled like little pearls amid a sea of green grape-vines.

"A wonderful view, Signor," the realestate agent repeated. "That scene, at any time of the year, is worth twice what I am asking for the villa."

"But I can see all this without buying," I argued.

"Not without trespassing."

"But the place is old. It has no running water."

"Wrong!" and he smiled expansively, showing a row of gold-filled teeth. "Listen."

We were silent.

There came to us the sound of bubbling water. Turning, I traced the sound. I found a marble Cupid spurting water in a most peculiar way into a wall basin. I smiled and commented.

"There is one like that in Brussels and another in Madrid. But this is very fine. However, I referred to running water in a modern bathroom."

"But why bathe when you can sit here and enjoy the view?"

He was impossible. So, I wrote a check, took his bill of sale and became the owner of a mountain, topped by a stone house that seemed to be half ruin. But he did not know, and I did not tell him that I considered the fountain alone worth the price that I had paid. In fact, I had come to Italy to buy that fountain if I could; buy it and take it back to America with me. I knew all about that curious piece of marble. George Seabrook had written to me about it. Just one letter, and then he had gone on, goodness knows where. George was like that, always on the move. Now I owned the fountain and was already planning where I should place it in my New York home. Certainly not in the rose garden.

I sat down on a marble bench and looked down on the valley. The real-estate man was right. It was a delicate, delicious piece of scenery. The surrounding mountains were high enough to throw a constant shadow on some part of the valley except at high noon. There was no sign of life, but I was sure that the vineyards were alive with husbandmen and their families. An eagle floated serenely on the upper air currents, automatically adjusting himself to their constant changing.

Stretching myself, I gave one look at my car and then walked into the house.

386


text:
Beyond Lies the Wub

BEYOND LIES THE WUB

By PHILIP K. DICK

They had almost finished with the loading. Outside stood the Optus, his arms folded, his face sunk in gloom. Captain Franco walked leisurely down the gangplank, grinning.

"What's the matter?" he said. "You're getting paid for all this."

The Optus said nothing. He turned away, collecting his robes. The Captain put his boot on the hem of the robe.

"Just a minute. Don't go off. I'm not finished."

"Oh?" The Optus turned with dignity. "I am going back to the village." He looked toward the animals and birds being driven up the gangplank into the spaceship. "I must organize new hunts."

Franco lit a cigarette. "Why not? You people can go out into the veldt and track it all down again. But when we run out halfway between Mars and Earth—"

The Optus went off, wordless. Franco joined the first mate at the bottom of the gangplank.

"How's it coming?" he said. He looked at his watch. "We got a good bargain here."

The mate glanced at him sourly. "How do you explain that?"

"What's the matter with you? We need it more than they do."

"I'll see you later, Captain." The mate threaded his way up the plank, between the long-legged Martian go-birds, into the ship. Franco watched him disappear. He was just starting up after him, up the plank toward the port, when he saw it.

"My God!" He stood staring, his hands on his hips. Peterson was walking along the path, his face red, leading it by a string.

"I'm sorry, Captain," he said, tugging at the string. Franco walked toward him.

"What is it?"

The wub stood sagging, its great body settling slowly. It was sitting down, its eyes half shut. A few flies buzzed about its flank, and it switched its tail.

It sat. There was silence.

"It's a wub," Peterson said. "I got it from a native for fifty cents. He said it was a very unusual animal. Very respected."

"This?" Franco poked the great sloping side of the wub. "It's a pig! A huge dirty pig!"

"Yes sir, it's a pig. The natives call it a wub."

"A huge pig. It must weigh four hundred pounds." Franco grabbed a tuft of the rough hair. The wub gasped. Its eyes opened, small and moist. Then its great mouth twitched.

A tear rolled down the wub's cheek and splashed on the floor.

"Maybe it's good to eat," Peterson said nervously.

"We'll soon find out," Franco said.

The wub survived the take-off, sound asleep in the hold of the ship. When they were out in space and everything was running smoothly, Captain Franco bade his men fetch the wub upstairs so that he might perceive what manner of beast it was.

The wub grunted and wheezed, squeezing up the passageway.

"Come on," Jones grated, pulling at the rope. The wub twisted, rubbing its skin off on the smooth chrome walls. It burst into the ante-room, tumbling down in a heap. The men leaped up.

"Good Lord," French said. "What is it?"

"Peterson says it's a wub," Jones said. "It belongs to him." He kicked at the wub. The wub stood up unsteadily, panting.

"What's the matter with it?" French came over. "Is it going to be sick?"

They watched. The wub rolled its eyes mournfully. It gazed around at the men.

"I think it's thirsty," Peterson said. He went to get some water. French shook his head.

"No wonder we had so much trouble taking off. I had to reset all my ballast calculations."

Peterson came back with the water. The wub began to lap gratefully, splashing the men.

Captain Franco appeared at the door.

"Let's have a look at it." He advanced, squinting critically. "You got this for fifty cents?"

"Yes, sir," Peterson said. "It eats almost anything. I fed it on grain and it liked that. And then potatoes, and mash, and scraps from the table, and milk. It seems to enjoy eating. After it eats it lies down and goes to sleep."

"I see," Captain Franco said. "Now, as to its taste. That's the real question. I doubt if there's much point in fattening it up any more. It seems fat enough to me already. Where's the cook? I want him here. I want to find out—"

The wub stopped lapping and looked up at the Captain.

"Really, Captain," the wub said. "I suggest we talk of other matters."

The room was silent.

"What was that?" Franco said. "Just now."

"The wub, sir," Peterson said. "It spoke."

They all looked at the wub.

"What did it say? What did it say?"

"It suggested we talk about other things."

Franco walked toward the wub. He went all around it, examining it from every side. Then he came back over and stood with the men.

"I wonder if there's a native inside it," he said thoughtfully. "Maybe we should open it up and have a look."

"Oh, goodness!" the wub cried. "Is that all you people can think of, killing and cutting?"

Franco clenched his fists. "Come out of there! Whoever you are, come out!"

Nothing stirred. The men stood together, their faces blank, staring at the wub. The wub swished its tail. It belched suddenly.

"I beg your pardon," the wub said.

"I don't think there's anyone in there," Jones said in a low voice. They all looked at each other.

The cook came in.

"You wanted me, Captain?" he said. "What's this thing?"

"This is a wub," Franco said. "It's to be eaten. Will you measure it and figure out—"

"I think we should have a talk," the wub said. "I'd like to discuss this with you, Captain, if I might. I can see that you and I do not agree on some basic issues."

The Captain took a long time to answer. The wub waited good-naturedly, licking the water from its jowls.

"Come into my office," the Captain said at last. He turned and walked out of the room. The wub rose and padded after him. The men watched it go out. They heard it climbing the stairs.

"I wonder what the outcome will be," the cook said. "Well, I'll be in the kitchen. Let me know as soon as you hear."

"Sure," Jones said. "Sure."

The wub eased itself down in the corner with a sigh. "You must forgive me," it said. "I'm afraid I'm addicted to various forms of relaxation. When one is as large as I—"

The Captain nodded impatiently. He sat down at his desk and folded his hands.

"All right," he said. "Let's get started. You're a wub? Is that correct?"

The wub shrugged. "I suppose so. That's what they call us, the natives, I mean. We have our own term."

"And you speak English? You've been in contact with Earthmen before?"

"No."

"Then how do you do it?"

"Speak English? Am I speaking English? I'm not conscious of speaking anything in particular. I examined your mind—"

"My mind?"

"I studied the contents, especially the semantic warehouse, as I refer to it—"

"I see," the Captain said. "Telepathy. Of course."

"We are a very old race," the wub said. "Very old and very ponderous. It is difficult for us to move around. You can appreciate that anything so slow and heavy would be at the mercy of more agile forms of life. There was no use in our relying on physical defenses. How could we win? Too heavy to run, too soft to fight, too good-natured to hunt for game—"

"How do you live?"

"Plants. Vegetables. We can eat almost anything. We're very catholic. Tolerant, eclectic, catholic. We live and let live. That's how we've gotten along."

The wub eyed the Captain.

"And that's why I so violently objected to this business about having me boiled. I could see the image in your mind—most of me in the frozen food locker, some of me in the kettle, a bit for your pet cat—"

"So you read minds?" the Captain said. "How interesting. Anything else? I mean, what else can you do along those lines?"

"A few odds and ends," the wub said absently, staring around the room. "A nice apartment you have here, Captain. You keep it quite neat. I respect life-forms that are tidy. Some Martian birds are quite tidy. They throw things out of their nests and sweep them—"

"Indeed." The Captain nodded. "But to get back to the problem—"

"Quite so. You spoke of dining on me. The taste, I am told, is good. A little fatty, but tender. But how can any lasting contact be established between your people and mine if you resort to such barbaric attitudes? Eat me? Rather you should discuss questions with me, philosophy, the arts—"

The Captain stood up. "Philosophy. It might interest you to know that we will be hard put to find something to eat for the next month. An unfortunate spoilage—"

"I know." The wub nodded. "But wouldn't it be more in accord with your principles of democracy if we all drew straws, or something along that line? After all, democracy is to protect the minority from just such infringements. Now, if each of us casts one vote—"

The Captain walked to the door.

"Nuts to you," he said. He opened the door. He opened his mouth.

He stood frozen, his mouth wide, his eyes staring, his fingers still on the knob.

The wub watched him. Presently it padded out of the room, edging past the Captain. It went down the hall, deep in meditation.

The room was quiet.

"So you see," the wub said, "we have a common myth. Your mind contains many familiar myth symbols. Ishtar, Odysseus—"

Peterson sat silently, staring at the floor. He shifted in his chair.

"Go on," he said. "Please go on."

"I find in your Odysseus a figure common to the mythology of most self-conscious races. As I interpret it, Odysseus wanders as an individual, aware of himself as such. This is the idea of separation, of separation from family and country. The process of individuation."

"But Odysseus returns to his home." Peterson looked out the port window, at the stars, endless stars, burning intently in the empty universe. "Finally he goes home."

"As must all creatures. The moment of separation is a temporary period, a brief journey of the soul. It begins, it ends. The wanderer returns to land and race...."

The door opened. The wub stopped, turning its great head.

Captain Franco came into the room, the men behind him. They hesitated at the door.

"Are you all right?" French said.

"Do you mean me?" Peterson said, surprised. "Why me?"

Franco lowered his gun. "Come over here," he said to Peterson. "Get up and come here."

There was silence.

"Go ahead," the wub said. "It doesn't matter."

Peterson stood up. "What for?"

"It's an order."

Peterson walked to the door. French caught his arm.

"What's going on?" Peterson wrenched loose. "What's the matter with you?"

Captain Franco moved toward the wub. The wub looked up from where it lay in the corner, pressed against the wall.

"It is interesting," the wub said, "that you are obsessed with the idea of eating me. I wonder why."

"Get up," Franco said.

"If you wish." The wub rose, grunting. "Be patient. It is difficult for me." It stood, gasping, its tongue lolling foolishly.

"Shoot it now," French said.

"For God's sake!" Peterson exclaimed. Jones turned to him quickly, his eyes gray with fear.

"You didn't see him—like a statue, standing there, his mouth open. If we hadn't come down, he'd still be there."

"Who? The Captain?" Peterson stared around. "But he's all right now."

They looked at the wub, standing in the middle of the room, its great chest rising and falling.

"Come on," Franco said. "Out of the way."

The men pulled aside toward the door.

"You are quite afraid, aren't you?" the wub said. "Have I done anything to you? I am against the idea of hurting. All I have done is try to protect myself. Can you expect me to rush eagerly to my death? I am a sensible being like yourselves. I was curious to see your ship, learn about you. I suggested to the native—"

The gun jerked.

"See," Franco said. "I thought so."

The wub settled down, panting. It put its paw out, pulling its tail around it.

"It is very warm," the wub said. "I understand that we are close to the jets. Atomic power. You have done many wonderful things with it—technically. Apparently, your scientific hierarchy is not equipped to solve moral, ethical—"

Franco turned to the men, crowding behind him, wide-eyed, silent.

"I'll do it. You can watch."

French nodded. "Try to hit the brain. It's no good for eating. Don't hit the chest. If the rib cage shatters, we'll have to pick bones out."

"Listen," Peterson said, licking his lips. "Has it done anything? What harm has it done? I'm asking you. And anyhow, it's still mine. You have no right to shoot it. It doesn't belong to you."

Franco raised his gun.

"I'm going out," Jones said, his face white and sick. "I don't want to see it."

"Me, too," French said. The men straggled out, murmuring. Peterson lingered at the door.

"It was talking to me about myths," he said. "It wouldn't hurt anyone."

He went outside.

Franco walked toward the wub. The wub looked up slowly. It swallowed.

"A very foolish thing," it said. "I am sorry that you want to do it. There was a parable that your Saviour related—"

It stopped, staring at the gun.

"Can you look me in the eye and do it?" the wub said. "Can you do that?"

The Captain gazed down. "I can look you in the eye," he said. "Back on the farm we had hogs, dirty razor-back hogs. I can do it."

Staring down at the wub, into the gleaming, moist eyes, he pressed the trigger.

The taste was excellent.

They sat glumly around the table, some of them hardly eating at all. The only one who seemed to be enjoying himself was Captain Franco.

"More?" he said, looking around. "More? And some wine, perhaps."

"Not me," French said. "I think I'll go back to the chart room."

"Me, too." Jones stood up, pushing his chair back. "I'll see you later."

The Captain watched them go. Some of the others excused themselves.

"What do you suppose the matter is?" the Captain said. He turned to Peterson. Peterson sat staring down at his plate, at the potatoes, the green peas, and at the thick slab of tender, warm meat.

He opened his mouth. No sound came.

The Captain put his hand on Peterson's shoulder.

"It is only organic matter, now," he said. "The life essence is gone." He ate, spooning up the gravy with some bread. "I, myself, love to eat. It is one of the greatest things that a living creature can enjoy. Eating, resting, meditation, discussing things."

Peterson nodded. Two more men got up and went out. The Captain drank some water and sighed.

"Well," he said. "I must say that this was a very enjoyable meal. All the reports I had heard were quite true—the taste of wub. Very fine. But I was prevented from enjoying this pleasure in times past."

He dabbed at his lips with his napkin and leaned back in his chair. Peterson stared dejectedly at the table.

The Captain watched him intently. He leaned over.

"Come, come," he said. "Cheer up! Let's discuss things."

He smiled.

"As I was saying before I was interrupted, the role of Odysseus in the myths—"

Peterson jerked up, staring.

"To go on," the Captain said. "Odysseus, as I understand him—"

title: Beyond Lies the Wub


text: San Tzu Ching/Appendix 1

title: San Tzu Ching/Appendix 1


text: San Tzu Ching/Appendix 2

title: San Tzu Ching/Appendix 2


text: San Tzu Ching/Appendix 3

title: San Tzu Ching/Appendix 3


text: San Tzu Ching/Appendix 4

title: San Tzu Ching/Appendix 4


text: San Tzu Ching/Appendix 5

title: San Tzu Ching/Appendix 5


text: San Tzu Ching/Appendix 6

title: San Tzu Ching/Appendix 6


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AN Annotated Edition of his work was planned by the translator of the Authorised Daily Prayer Book, but the fulfilment of this desire devolved upon me. I was fully acquainted with Mr Singer's intentions, and I have endeavoured to work in the spirit which animated him, so that this edition should be as true a memorial to his name as the original book has proved.

The purpose of the Notes has been mainly devotional. To explain the words of the prayers and to indicate the significance of their—ideas this has been my chief concern. But this end could not be attained without offering some account of the history and some indication of the sources of the component parts of the liturgy. Hence the Notes are historical as well as explanatory.

In the course of the Notes many references are made to authorities, ancient and modern, and I have recorded my obligations. Here, however, it is fitting to put into prominence my constant indebtedness to S. Baer. Just as the text of Mr Singer's Prayer Book was largely founded on Baer's text, so these Notes may be said to be largely founded on Baer's Commentary. Naturally, however, much new liturgical material has become available since Baer wrote in 1868.

It must be clearly understood that the Notes in the present edition are not meant primarily for the student; they are designed for the worshipper. Many however


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 ANNOTATED EDITION OF THE AUTHORISED DAILY PRAYER BOOK


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VI belong to both these categories. Those who conceive themselves to be "unlearned" need not be deterred from reading these Notes because of the frequent use of Hebrew. The Notes have been so written that their sense can, in the vast majority of instances, be assimilated even though the Hebrew in the Notes be left unread. In order to facilitate the reader's work of reference, an alphabetical list has been prefixed of the authorities and terms most frequently quoted. The nature of these and of many other authorities is explained in the body of the Notes, but those most commonly used are repeated in this alphabetical list.

I have had the great advantage of the help of Dr M. Berlin of Manchester in the correction of the proofs. To that scholar very much is owing, and the debt is here gratefully acknowledged. Other friends, among them Mrs N. L. Cohen, have made useful suggestions. Mr C. G. Montefiore has been of assistance in this direction, besides making the publication of this edition possible by a generous contribution to its cost. It was a great pleasure to me to find that the London Dayanim cordially recommended that the Jewish Religious Education Board should cooperate in the publication of this issue of the Prayer Book. The fact of this general approval seems to me good evidence that I have carried out the work in principle as Mr Singer would have wished.

The explanations which so often appear in these Notes are not offered dogmatically. Other explanations might have been given in many cases; I have merely selected or proposed those for which I conceive the historical basis to be soundest. Dealing with so many topics, I am conscious that I cannot have avoided frequent error. Those who best know the difficulties of liturgical


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Rh margin) has throughout been adopted as a basis. Several changes have, however, been made, chiefly in the direction of greater literalness. These are mainly the work of Mr. Claude G. Montefiore. For this service, as well as for much other help, I am greatly indebted to him.

My thanks are also due to the Chief Rabbi, to Dr. Friedlander, Mr. I. Abrahams, and the Rev. Dr. Berlin for the valuable assistance they have rendered me while the book was passing through the press.

The copyright of the book is vested in the Jewish Association for the Diffusion of Religious Knowledge. S. SINGER.

LONDON, Tammuz, 5651—July, 1891.

present Fourth Edition has been carefully corrected and revised. It has been enlarged by the addition of the Service at the Setting of a Tombstone, and the Memorial Service for the Dead, the latter comprising a Prayer composed by the Chief Rabbi.

LONDON, Nisan, 5655—April, 1895.

Editions, numbering 38,000 copies, have already been exhausted of the Authorised Daily Prayer Book of the United Hebrew Congregations of the British Empire. The fact shows how great has been the need of such a volume for the use of English-speaking Jews, and is also a gratifying testimony to the manner in which the Authorised Daily Prayer Book has established itself in the public favour. That it has been possible to keep the selling price of the book at One Shilling is due to the continued generosity of Mrs. Nathaniel Montefiore.

A Sixth Edition, larger than any previous one, is herewith issued.

LONDON, Tammuz, 5660—July 1900.


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Rh investigation will assuredly be among the most merciful critics of this work.

To complete Mr Singer's intentions, there have been added some additional prayers and hymns, and a few extracts from the Books of the Maccabees. Thanks are due to Mrs Lucas, Mrs Salaman, and Mr I. Zangwill, and to their publishers (Messrs Macmillan and Routledge), for permission to use some of their translations. The editor has further to thank Mrs Salaman for kindly making two translations expressly for this work.

Mr Singer loved the Prayer Book. Every line of his translation reveals his delight in the original. I, too, have written not as a critic but as a lover of the traditional liturgy. I have written with affection for the prayers themselves, and for him who, had he lived, would have produced so much finer a commentary.


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Rh NOTE TO THE SEVENTH EDITION.

the appearance of the last Edition (numbering twenty thousand copies; of the, the Community has had to lament the loss of the gracious lady to whom the issue of this volume has been mainly due. The book remains as a monument of the true piety and the wise-hearted generosity of Mrs. Nathaniel Montefiore.

S. SINGER.

London, Tebeth, 5664 — January, 1904.


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Rh

INCE the appearance of the last edition of the Authorised Daily Prayer-book, the Community has had to mourn an irreparable loss in the death of the Rev. Simeon Singer, ע״ה. The Jewish Religious Education Board gratefully records the fact that to his initiative and untiring labours the publication of seven editions, numbering eighty-three thousand copies, is due. The Prayer-book has found a place in nearly every Jewish house in the British Empire, and in many homes in the United States. The translation, couched as it is in terse and prayerful language, is a splendid monument, not merely of his scholarship and mastery of English style, but of his absorbing love of his faith and of his devoted zeal as a Jewish Minister.

HENRY LUCAS,
 * President of the Jewish Religious Education Board.

LONDON, Nissan, 5668.—April, 1908.


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 NIGHT PRAYER FOR YOUNG CHILDREN.

1. Blessed art thou, O Lord our God, King of the universe, who makest the bands of sleep to fall upon mine eyes, and slumber upon mine eyelids.

May it be thy will, O Lord my God and God of my fathers, to suffer me to lie down in peace, and to let me rise up again in peace.

2. Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is One. Blessed be His name, whose glorious kingdom is for ever and ever.

And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might.

3. And these words which I command thee this day shall be upon thine heart: and thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and thou shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up. And thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thine hand, and they shall be for frontlets between thine eyes. And thou shalt write them upon the doorposts of thy house and upon thy gates.

4. Blessed be the Lord by day; blessed be the Lord by night. Blessed be the Lord when we lie down; blessed be the Lord when we rise up.

5. Behold, he that guardeth Israel will neither slumber nor sleep.

6. Into thy hand I commend my spirit: thou hast redeemed me, O Lord God of truth.

7. For thy salvation I hope, O Lord.

 * For Infants, 2, 6, and 7.

THE END.


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ix

INCE the Singer Prayer Book was first issued twenty-two years ago, 108,000 copies have been circulated, and the Eighth edition has now become exhausted. The stereotype plates hitherto used were found to be no longer in a condition to ensure accuracy of printing, and, in order to produce the Ninth edition, much work was found necessary in the correction of defects caused by wear. A committee of members of the Jewish Religious Education Board, under the general direction of the Rev. Michael Adler, have undertaken this duty, gladly availing themselves of the opportunity of thus showing their affection for the memory of the translator.

In the present edition, the Service for Friday Evenings has been printed in complete form, and the Prayer for the Royal Family has been brought up-to-date.

Besides the thick paper and thin paper editions in which the Prayer Book has hitherto appeared, a large paper edition is being prepared which will be bound to suit special requirements. Arrangements have also been made with Mr. Israel Abrahams to issue an annotated edition, for which he has written comments and explanations incorporating materials prepared for the purpose by Mr. Singer.

LONDON, Ab, 5672—July, 1912.


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THE present volume is designed to place within reach of the community at large a complete DAILY PRAYER BOOK, in Hebrew and English, equally suitable for use in Synagogues, families, and schools. It owes its origin to the generosity and public spirit of MRS. NATHANIEL MONTEFIORE, by whom the entire cost of production has been defrayed. It is, therefore, now possible for all who can afford the outlay of ONE SHILLING to obtain a book which could not otherwise have been offered to the public except at a far higher price.

No pains have been spared to render the work of permanent value, and worthy of its place as the Authorised Prayer Book of the United Hebrew Congregations of the British Empire. As it was practically complete before the death of the late Chief Rabbi, Dr. N. M. Adler, it was enabled to receive, and to be issued with the stamp of, his sanction and authorisation.

The main objects kept in view in the production of the book have been to furnish a correct text (founded for the greater part upon S. Baer's Abodath Israel) and a satisfactory translation, and to combine with these fundamental requirements the not insignificant advantages of good paper, clear type, and strong binding.

To render the volume still more suitable for general use, a number of prayers for special occasions have been introduced. Of these, the Prayers to be said at the Consecration of a House, and upon the Sick and Death Bed, were written or arranged by the Rev. Dr. Hermann Adler, Chief Rabbi; the Prayer in the House of Mourning, the Service on the occasion of making Collections for Hospitals, and the Thanksgiving to be offered up by Women after their Confinement are the same that have been in use for some years past, having been drawn up by the late Chief Rabbi. The Marriage Service and Morning and Evening Prayers for Children have also been introduced.

The English translation is entirely new. Its aim has been to unite accuracy and even literalness with due regard to English idiom, and to that simplicity of style and diction which befits the language of prayer. It should be noted that in the translation of the various Biblical passages the Revised Version (text or


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As for me, in the abundance of thy lovingkindness will I come into thy house: I will worship toward thy holy temple in the fear of thee.

Into the house of God we will walk with the throng.

How goodly are thy tents, O Jacob, thy dwelling places, O Israel! As for me, in the abundance of thy lovingkindness will I come into thy house: I will worship toward thy holy temple in the fear of thee. Lord, I love the habitation of thy house, and the place where thy glory dwelleth. As for me, I will worship and bow down: I will bend the knee before the Lord, my Maker. And as for me, may my prayer unto thee, O Lord, be in an acceptable time: O God, in the abundance of thy lovingkindness, answer me in the truth of thy salvation.

1. Magnified and praised be the living God: he is, and there is no limit in time unto his being.

2. He is One, and there is no unity like unto his unity; inconceivable is he, and unending is his unity.

3. He hath neither bodily form nor substance: we can compare nought unto him in his holiness.

4. He was before anything that hath been created—even the first: but his existence had no beginning.

B 2


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Rh kitchen two peasants sat, an old man and an old woman. They rose as I entered.

"Who are you?" I asked in English.

They simply smiled and waved their hands. I repeated my question in Italian.

"We serve," the man replied.

"Serve whom?"

"Whoever is the master."

"Have you been here long?"

"We have always been here. It is our home."

His statement amused me, and I commented, "The masters come and go, but you remain?"

"It seems so."

"Many masters?"

"Alas! yes. They come and go. Nice young men, like you, but they do not stay. They buy and look at the view, and eat with us a few days and then they are gone."

"And then the villa is sold again?"

The man shrugged. "How should we know? We simply serve."

"Then prepare me my dinner. And serve it outside, under the grapevine, where I can see the view."

The woman started to obey. The man came nearer.


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Index talk:Annotated Edition of the Authorised Daily Prayer Book.djvu

As part of the Open Siddur Project a free-culture initiative and digital humanities project to digitize Jewish liturgy and encode its semantic data in an open standard XML format, we are exploring using Wikisource as the transcription and proofreading platforms for ultimately encoding multilingual, BiDi texts into TEI XML.

This transcription and proofreading project begin when J.B. Hare of the Internet Sacred Text Archive scanned a copy of the Standard Prayer Book (1915), an adaptation of the Authorised Daily Prayer Book of the United Hebrew Congregations of the British Empire (translated by Rabbi Simeon Singer, and popularly known as the Singer Siddur), and transcribed it. (J.B. Hare's proofread text for pages 1-339 is also available at here.)

We hope to complete J.B. Hare's transcription of the original English edition of Rabbi Singer's prayerbook, by proofreading his text and by including Singer's masterful commentary, posthhumously edited and prepared by Israel Abrahams. Aharonium (talk) 16:08, 20 June 2012 (UTC)


text: 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Armilla

title: 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Armilla


text: 1922 Encyclopædia Britannica/Krobatin, Alexander, Freiherr von


text: 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Arminius

title: 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Arminius


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 CONTENTS

PAGE

HISTORICAL AND EXPLANATORY NOTES. i

II. EXTRACTS FROM THE "BOOKS OF THE MACCABEES". . . . . . ccxxxv

III. PRAYERS FOR VARIOUS OCCASIONS. . ccxliv

IV. TABLE HYMNS. . . . . . cclix


text: 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Arminius, Jacobus


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 ALPHABETICAL LIST OF AUTHORITIES

. David son of Joseph Abudarham (or Abudrahim), of Seville, wrote a Commentary on the Prayer Book in the year 1340. The first edition appeared in Lisbon, 1489; it has often been reprinted.

son of Sheshna, the Gaon, head of the Sura School. The date of his birth is uncertain; he died about 875. Among his most important works was his Seder or Prayer Book. Amram was the first to compile a full liturgy, and his work had great influence on Synagogue usages. The extant copies of Amram's Seder contain later additions. The book was first published in Warsaw, in 1865; a new edition has been included in the Prayer Book of L. Frumkin (Jerusalem, 1912).

. The name Ashcenaz (Genesis x. 3) was applied to Germany in the middle ages. The Ashcenazim are the Jews who use the German liturgy, which (with certain variations described as belonging to Poland) is practically the liturgy represented in the Authorised Daily Prayer Book. (The reader will observe that in the transliteration of this word, as in all other cases in these Notes, the c must be pronounced hard as in cantor.)

. S. Baer, born 1830, died 1897, was a famous authority on Masorah (see below). He also compiled various liturgical works, among them his celebrated edition of the Prayer Book (Seder Abodath Israel) which appeared in Roedelheim in 1868.

. The meaning of this word is literally All is in it. The work cited by that name is a comprehensive collection of laws and customs. It is based on earlier codifications, and probably dates from the late fourteenth century. It includes much liturgical material.

. In these notes, the French rite denotes the liturgy as found in various Manuscripts of French origin; this rite agreed in the main with the Ashcenazic, and only differed in detail.


text: 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Astrakhan (government)


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XII, Gaonic age. The title Gaon, or Excellency, was given to the heads of the two Babylonian Colleges at Sura and Pumbeditha. The Gaonic age opens with the seventh century and continues till the eleventh. During a large part of that period the Gaonim exercised great authority over the whole of the Jews. (The spelling Gaonim has been used instead of Geonim for the plural of Gaon to make reference more simple.)

. The word literally means hiding, or hiding-place, with special reference to the Synagogue store-room in which were placed fragmentary and worn-out copies of various Hebrew scrolls, volumes, and documents. The Genizah often quoted in this volume is the Cairo store house, whence were derived a great mass of mediæval literary fragments.

. Abraham ben Nathan was named Yarḥi, i.e. of Lunel. He is often cited in these notes as Yarḥi or Ibn Yarḥi. He lived in the second part of the twelfth century, and his book Ha-manhig (the Guide) contains much liturgical information. , literally tradition. The word is specifically applied to mystical doctrines and literature. These doctrines and works had considerable influence on Jewish liturgy at various periods. One of the chief literary products of the Kabbalah is the Zohar, a work compiled at the end of the thirteenth century.

. The followers of Anan (eighth century), who rejected the Rabbinic traditions, were named Karaites, because they rested their practices exclusively on the Bible (Kera or mi-kra, from Kara to pronounce, or read).

. L. Landshuth was born in 1817 and died in 1887. He was the author of several liturgical works. The book often referred to in these notes was the Prayer Book called Siddur Hegyon-Leb, published in 1845 with notes by Hirsch Edelmann and additions by Landshuth, after whom the whole work is commonly cited.

. Jacob son of Moses Molin, called Maharil (1365-1427). The work cited as Maharil is a record


text: 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Astrakhan (town)


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Rh of his religious and liturgical customs, and contains much valuable information as to the German rites of his age.

. Moses son of Maimon was born in 1135 and died in 1204. Three of his works are often cited in these notes: (i) Commentary on the Mishnah, completed in 1168; (2) the Code of Laws, called Yad Haḥazakah and also Mishneh Torah, completed in 1180, in this is also contained a complete Prayer Book; (3) the Guide for the Perplexed, completed in 1190.

. This word is derived from masar to hand over. It is specifically applied to the system, now traditional, by which the Hebrew text of the Scriptures was fixed. The system of masorah goes back to ancient times; the tenth century marked the close of the masoretic activity.

, from darash to examine or expound, is the term applied to the Interpretation of Scriptures. The compilations known as Midrash are of various dates; those cited in the Notes chiefly include the Mechilta on Exodus; Siphra on Leviticus; Siphre on Numbers and Deuteronomy; Rabba and Tanḥuma on the Pentateuch; the Pesiktoth on special sections; the Pirke de R. Eleazar.

is derived from shanah to repeat, hence to study or teach. The Mishnah is the Code compiled by R. Jehudah ha-Nasi, at about the year 200 of the current era.

. Isaac son of Solomon of Troyes (known as Rashi) was born in 1040 and died in 1105. Among other works were his famous commentaries on the Bible and Talmud. His Prayer Book (Siddur Rashi) was recently edited by S. Buber for the Mekiṣe Nirdamim Society (Berlin, 1910-11).

. This is the title of an ethical work by Eleazar of Worms; it includes much ritual and liturgical matter. The author was born about 1176; he died in 1238.

. Saadiah son of Joseph was Gaon of Sura. He was born in 892 and died in 942. He was the author of


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XIV Biblical and philosophical works. Among his writings was a Prayer Book which is cited in these Notes chiefly from the description of the Manuscripts by J. Bondi (Frankfurt a. M. 1904).

. The Sepharad of the Scriptures (Obadiah 20) was identified with Spain; hence the Sephardim are the Spanish. The Sephardic liturgy is so named because it was developed by the Jews of Spain. It is widely used by Oriental Jews, and in many European congregations.

. The Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, begun in Alexandria in the third century preceding the current era. Septuagint literally means seventy; the translation, it was said, was executed by seventy-two scholars appointed for the purpose.

. The Code compiled, on the basis of older Codes, by Joseph Karo (1488-1575). It contains four parts: Oraḥ Ḥayyim, Yoreh Deah, Eben Ha-Ezer and Ḥoshen Ha-mishpaṭ.

. The word literally means Scribes. The Rabbinic tractate so named deals with the regulations as to preparation of the Scrolls of the Law by the scribes. The tractate also includes many rules as to the reading of the law, besides much else of a liturgical nature. In its present form, the tractate is probably of the eighth century, but much of the material contained in it is far older.

. Literally teaching. The Talmud consists of the Mishnah with the commentary called Gemara. There are two compilations, the Palestinian or Jerusalem Talmud (cited in the Notes as TJ.) and the Babylonian (cited as T.B.). The Babylonian Talmud was completed in Babylonia by the end of the fifth century; the Palestinian was compiled about a century earlier.

. The Aramaic translation of the Hebrew Bible.

. A collection of early Rabbinic passages, belonging in character to the Mishnah, but not included in that Code. Tosephta literally means addition.

. The Code of Rabbinic law and ritual compiled by Jacob Asheri (1283-1340) was entitled by him the Four


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Rh Rows; Ṭur signifies a row. Thus the stones of the High-Priest's breastplate were arranged in four rows (arba ṭurim). The four parts of the Ṭurim bear the same designations as do the four parts of the Shulḥan Aruch which was based upon the work of Jacob Asheri.

. This is the name of a place in the Marne Department, France. Simḥah son of Samuel of Vitry compiled, under the direction of his teacher Rashi, the Rabbinic and liturgical work known as Maḥzor Vitry. Though the work which has come down to us contains additions up to the thirteenth century, it is of first-rate importance for the history of the liturgy. The Maḥzor Vitry was edited by S. Hurwitz for the Mekiṣe Nirdamim Society (Berlin, 1889-1893).

. Yemen is the district S.W. of Arabia. The liturgy of the Yemenites has been published (Jerusalem, 1894-1897), and presents many important features. It bears resemblances to the liturgy of Saadiah.

. Leopold Zunz (1794-1886) was the pioneer in liturgical as in many other branches of Hebraic research. His works are often cited in these Notes.