Mr. Monday and other tales of Jewish Amsterdam

112 Air. Monday and Other Tales of Jewish Amsterdam

Worthless it has become, you tell your wife. Wrong, wrong, wrong! Here, let me show you...I take the stain remover, I add a few drops of water to it, I brush it like this over the spoiled piece of silk, and what sees my ear, what hears my eye, what runs my nose, and what smells my foot...? There, the original colour has come back. See it for yourself, Mister, costs only one quarter, twenty-five cents!"

A few steps further on, a man is standing behind a tall water column. Through the glass in the top of the column a small doll can be seen floating in the water. That doll is "Tiny Thomas". He can tell the future,Tiny Thomas can. You have to buy an envelope from the man and make sure that there's a blank piece of paper inside. When you've paid him, the man places the empty sheet beneath the water column.

"Tiny Thomas is still upstairs," he shouts, "but when your letter lies under the column, Tiny Thomas comes downstairs. He thinks for you, he sees the future of married and unmarried persons, of old and young, of rich and poor!"

As though moved by magic power, the doll sinks to the bottom of the column. Its thinking process takes only a couple of seconds, then Tiny Thomas rises back to the surface, swift as an arrow. Look, look! The blank sheet is now covered with writing! In a clear scrawl a person can read what the future tried to keep hidden from him.

The early birds however have not come to watch stains disappear from silk, they want to remove the stains that cling to Capitalistic Society. True believers they are, not in Tiny Thomas but in Prince Peter Kropotkin who has explained in a book how the workers should take