The Trade

In the month when we increase our joy, that time of melting snows, ruined roads and much mud, the Children of Israel go about their settlements wearing a great band of filth on the hems of their garments. In this season of our joy, a letter reached me from one of my colleagues encouraging me to come visit him with my pack and bundles of books in order to swap for new merchandise: anthologies and hymnals, drawings and psychological stories, economic, social and political works and the like, pleasant matters for the spirit and taste of the times. This gentleman worked at many occupations – part bookseller, part middleman, part author, part publisher and, in all of them, a complete pauper. I had known him for a long while. At a time of need, I’m sorry to say, he would lie and permit himself vain talk, like the other merchants who boast of the quality of their merchandise and run down that of others, for in business, where one considers only one’s own pocket and one’s own advantage, one is permitted some leeway. Therefore, when I saw in his letter that he was disparaging the old merchandise, which was in my possession, and praising the new, I knew that these claims were not necessarily so, but were exaggerations for the good of his business. Even so, his words entered my heart and I decided that it was incumbent upon me to travel there.

I very much wanted to make my way immediately so...