YIDDISH TALES

TRANSLATED BY
HELENA FRANK

PHILADELPHIA
The Jewish Publication Society of America 1912

Copyright, 1912,
By the Jewish Publication Society of America

This little volume is intended to be both companion and complement to "Stories and Pictures," by I. L. Perez, published by the Jewish Publication Society of America, in 1906.

Its object was twofold: to introduce the non-Yiddish reading public to some of the many other Yiddish writers active in Russian Jewry, and—to leave it with a more cheerful impression of Yiddish literature than it receives from Perez alone. Yes, and we have collected, largely from magazines and papers and unbound booklets, forty-eight tales by twenty different authors. This, thanks to such kind helpers as Mr. F. Hieger, of London, without whose aid we should never have been able to collect the originals of these stories, Mr. Morris Meyer, of London, who most kindly gave me the magazines, etc., in which some of them were contained, and Mr. Israel J. Zevin, of New York, that able editor and delightful feuilletonist, to whose critical knowledge of Yiddish letters we owe so much.

Some of these writers, Perez, for example, and Sholom-Alechem, are familiar by name to many of us already, while the reputation of others rests, in circles enthusiastic but tragically small, on what they have written in Hebrew.[1] Such are Berdyczewski, Jehalel, Frischmann, Berschadski, and the silver-penned Judah Steinberg. On these last two be peace in the Olom ho-Emess. The Olom ha-Sheker had nothing for them but struggle and suffering and an early grave.

The tales given here are by no means all equal in literary merit, but they have each its special note, its special echo from that strangely fascinating world so often quoted, so little understood (we say it against ourselves), the Russian Ghetto—a world in the passing, but whose more precious elements, shining, for all who care to see them, through every page of these unpretending tales, and mixed with less and less of what has made their misfortune, will surely live on, free, on the one hand, to blend with all and everything akin to them, and free, on the other, to develop along their own lines—and this year here, next year in Jerusalem.

The American sketches by Zevin and S. Libin differ from the others only in their scene of action. Lerner's were drawn from the life in a little town in Bessarabia, the others are mostly Polish. And the folk tale, which is taken from Joshua Meisach's collection, published in Wilna in 1905, with the title Ma'asiyos vun der Baben, oder Nissim ve-Niflo'os, might have sprung from almost any Ghetto of the Old World.

We sincerely regret that nothing from the pen of the beloved "Grandfather" of Yiddish story-tellers in print, Abramowitsch (Mendele Mocher Seforim), was found quite suitable for insertion here, his writings being chiefly much longer than the type selected for this book. Neither have we come across anything appropriate to our purpose by another old favorite, J. Dienesohn. We were, however, able to insert three tales by the veteran author Mordecai Spektor, whose simple style and familiar figures go straight to the people's heart.

With regard to the second half of our object, greater cheerfulness, this collection is an utter failure. It has variety, on account of the many different authors, and the originals have wit and humor in plenty, for wit and humor and an almost passionate playfulness are in the very soul of the language, but it is not cheerful, and we wonder now how we ever thought it could be so, if the collective picture given of Jewish life were, despite its fictitious material, to be anything like a true one. The drollest of the tales, "Gymnasiye" (we refer to the originals), is perhaps the saddest, anyhow in point of actuality, seeing that the Russian Government is planning to make education impossible of attainment by more and more of the Jewish youth—children given into its keeping as surely as any others, and for the crushing of whose lives it will have to answer.

Well, we have done our best. Among these tales are favorites of ours which we have not so much as mentioned by name, thus leaving the gentle reader at liberty to make his own.

H. F.

London, March, 1911

The Jewish Publication Society of America desires to acknowledge the valuable aid which Mr. A. S. Freidus, of the Department of Jewish Literature, in the New York Public Library, extended to it in compiling the biographical data relating to the authors whose stories appear in English garb in the present volume. Some of the authors that are living in America courteously furnished the Society with the data referring to their own biographies.

The following sources have been consulted for the biographies: The Jewish Encyclopædia; Wiener, History of Yiddish Literature in the Nineteenth Century; Pinnes, Histoire de la Littérature Judéo-Allemande, and the Yiddish version of the same, Die Geschichte vun der jüdischer Literatur; Baal-Mahashabot, Geklibene Schriften; Sefer Zikkaron le-Sofere Yisrael ha-hayyim ittanu ka-Yom; Eisenstadt, Hakme Yisrael be-Amerika; the memoirs preceding the collected works of some of the authors; and scattered articles in European and American Yiddish periodicals.

Born, 1851, in Wilna (Lithuania), White Russia; went to Roumania after the anti-Jewish riots of 1882, and published a Yiddish weekly, Yehudit, in the interest of Zionism; expelled from Roumania; published a Hebrew weekly, Ha-Zeman, in Cracow, in 1891; then co-editor of the Yiddish edition of Die Welt, the official organ of Zionism; Hebrew critic, publicist, and novelist; contributor to Ha-Lebanon (at eighteen), Ha-Shahar, Ha-Boker Or, and other periodicals; chief work, the novel "Religion and Life."

Pumpian is a little town in Lithuania, a Jewish town. It lies far away from the highway, among villages reached by the Polish Road. The inhabitants of Pumpian are poor people, who get a scanty living from the peasants that come into the town to make purchases, or else the Jews go out to them with great bundles on their shoulders and sell them every sort of small ware, in return for a little corn, or potatoes, etc. Strangers, passing through, are seldom seen there, and if by any chance a strange person arrives, it is a great wonder and rarity. People peep at him through all the little windows, elderly men venture out to bid him welcome, while boys and youths hang about in the street and stare at him. The women and girls blush and glance at him sideways, and he is the one subject of conversation: "Who can that be? People don't just set off and come like that—there must be something behind it." And in the house-of-study, between Afternoon and Evening Prayer, they gather closely round the elder men, who have been to greet the stranger, to find out who and what the latter may be.

Fifty or sixty years ago, when what I am about to tell you happened, communication between Pumpian and the rest of the world was very restricted indeed: there were as yet no railways, there was no telegraph, the postal service was slow and intermittent. People came and went less often, a journey was a great undertaking, and there were not many outsiders to be found even in the larger towns. Every town was a town to itself, apart, and Pumpian constituted a little world of its own, which had nothing to do with the world at large, and lived its own life.

Neither were there so many newspapers then, anywhere, to muddle people's heads every day of the week, stirring up questions, so that people should have something to talk about, and the Jews had no papers of their own at all, and only heard "news" and "what was going on in the world" in the house-of-study or (lehavdil!) in the bath-house. And what sort of news was it then? What sort could it be? World-stirring questions hardly existed (certainly Pumpian was ignorant of them): politics, economics, statistics, capital, social problems, all these words, now on the lips of every boy and girl, were then all but unknown even in the great world, let alone among us Jews, and let alone to Reb Nochumtzi, the Pumpian Rav!

And yet Reb Nochumtzi had a certain amount of worldly wisdom of his own.

Reb Nochumtzi was a native of Pumpian, and had inherited his position there from his father. He had been an only son, made much of by his parents (hence the pet name Nochumtzi clinging to him even in his old age), and never let out of their sight. When he had grown up, they connected him by marriage with the tenant of an estate not far from the town, but his father would not hear of his going there "auf Köst," as the custom is. "I cannot be parted from my Nochumtzi even for a minute," explained the old Rav, "I cannot bear him out of my sight. Besides, we study together." And, in point of fact, they did study together day and night. It was evident that the Rav was determined his Nochumtzi should become Rav in Pumpian after his death—and so he became.

He had been Rav some years in the little town, receiving the same five Polish gulden a week salary as his father (on whom be peace!), and he sat and studied and thought. He had nothing much to do in the way of exercising authority: the town was very quiet, the people orderly, there were no quarrels, and it was seldom that parties went "to law" with one another before the Rav; still less often was there a ritual question to settle: the folk were poor, there was no meat cooked in a Jewish house from one Friday to another, when one must have a bit of meat in honor of Sabbath. Fish was a rarity, and in summer time people often had a "milky Sabbath," as well as a milky week. How should there be "questions"? So he sat and studied and thought, and he was very fond indeed of thinking about the world!

It is true that he sat all day in his room, that he had never in all his life been so much as "four ells" outside the town, that it had never so much as occurred to him to drive about a little in any direction, for, after all, whither should he drive? And why drive anywhither? And yet he knew the world, like any other learned man, a disciple of the wise. Everything is in the Torah, and out of the Torah, out of the Gemoreh, and out of all the other sacred books, Reb Nochumtzi had learned to know the world also. He knew that "Reuben's ox gores Simeon's cow," that "a spark from a smith's hammer can burn a wagon-load of hay," that "Reb Eliezer ben Charsum had a thousand towns on land and a thousand ships on the sea." Ha, that was a fortune! He must have been nearly as rich as Rothschild (they knew about Rothschild even in Pumpian!). "Yes, he was a rich Tano and no mistake!" he reflected, and was straightway sunk in the consideration of the subject of rich and poor.

He knew from the holy books that to be rich is a pure misfortune. King Solomon, who was certainly a great sage, prayed to God: Resh wo-Osher al-titten li!—"Give me neither poverty nor riches!" He said that "riches are stored to the hurt of their owner," and in the holy Gemoreh there is a passage which says, "Poverty becomes a Jew as scarlet reins become a white horse," and once a sage had been in Heaven for a short time and had come back again, and he said that he had seen poor people there occupying the principal seats in the Garden of Eden, and the rich pushed right away, back into a corner by the door. And as for the books of exhortation, there are things written that make you shudder in every limb. The punishments meted out to the rich by God in that world, the world of truth, are no joke. For what bit of merit they have, God rewards them in this poor world, the world of vanity, while yonder, in the world of truth, they arrive stript and naked, without so much as a taste of Kingdom-come!

"Consequently, the question is," thought Reb Nochumtzi, "why should they, the rich, want to keep this misfortune? Of what use is this misfortune to them? Who so mad as to take such a piece of misfortune into his house and keep it there? How can anyone take the world-to-come in both hands and lose it for the sake of such vanities?"

He thought and thought, and thought it over again:

"What is a poor creature to do when God sends him the misfortune of riches? He would certainly wish to get rid of them, only who would take his misfortune to please him? Who would free another from a curse and take it upon himself?

"But, after all ... ha?" the Evil Spirit muttered inside him.

"What a fool you are!" thought Reb Nochumtzi again. "If" (and he described a half-circle downward in the air with his thumb), "if troubles come to us, such as an illness (may the Merciful protect us!), or some other misfortune of the kind, it is expressly stated in the Sacred Writings that it is an expiation for sin, a torment sent into the world, so that we may be purified by it, and made fit to go straight to Paradise. And because it is God who afflicts men with these things, we cannot give them away to anyone else, but have to bear with them. Now, such a misfortune as being rich, which is also a visitation of God, must certainly be borne with like the rest.

"And, besides," he reflected further, "the fool who would take the misfortune to himself, doesn't exist! What healthy man in his senses would get into a sick-bed?"

He began to feel very sorry for Reb Eliezer ben Charsum with his thousand towns and his thousand ships. "To think that such a saint, such a Tano, one of the authors of the holy Mishnah, should incur such a severe punishment!

"But he stood the trial! Despite this great misfortune, he remained a saint and a Tano to the end, and the holy Gemoreh says particularly that he thereby put to shame all the rich people, who go straight to Gehenna."

Thus Reb Nochumtzi, the Pumpian Rav, sat over the Talmud and reflected continually on the problem of great riches. He knew the world through the Holy Scriptures, and was persuaded that riches were a terrible misfortune, which had to be borne, because no one would consent to taking it from another, and bearing it for him.

Again many years passed, and Reb Nochumtzi gradually came to see that poverty also is a misfortune, and out of his own experience.

His Sabbath cloak began to look threadbare (the weekday one was already patched on every side), he had six little children living, one or two of the girls were grown up, and it was time to think of settling them, and they hadn't a frock fit to put on. The five Polish gulden a week salary was not enough to keep them in bread, and the wife, poor thing, wept the whole day through: "Well, there, ich wie ich, it isn't for myself—but the poor children are naked and barefoot."

At last they were even short of bread.

"Nochumtzi! Why don't you speak?" exclaimed his wife with tears in her eyes. "Nochumtzi, can't you hear me? I tell you, we're starving! The children are skin and bone, they haven't a shirt to their back, they can hardly keep body and soul together. Think of a way out of it, invent something to help us!"

And Reb Nochumtzi sat and considered.

He was considering the other misfortune—poverty.

"It is equally a misfortune to be really very poor."

And this also he found stated in the Holy Scriptures.

It was King Solomon, the famous sage, who prayed as well: Resh wo-Osher al-titten li, that is, "Give me neither poverty nor riches." Aha! poverty is no advantage, either, and what does the holy Gemoreh say but "Poverty diverts a man from the way of God"? In fact, there is a second misfortune in the world, and one he knows very well, one with which he has a practical, working acquaintance, he and his wife and his children.

And Reb Nochum pursued his train of thought:

"So there are two contrary misfortunes in the world: this way it's bad, and that way it's bitter! Is there really no remedy? Can no one suggest any help?"

And Reb Nochumtzi began to pace the room up and down, lost in thought, bending his whole mind to the subject. A whole flight of Bible texts went through his head, a quantity of quotations from the Gemoreh, hundreds of stories and anecdotes from the "Fountain of Jacob," the Midrash, and other books, telling of rich and poor, fortunate and unfortunate people, till his head went round with them all as he thought. Suddenly he stood still in the middle of the room, and began talking to himself:

"Aha! Perhaps I've discovered a plan after all! And a good plan, too, upon my word it is! Once more: it is quite certain that there will always be more poor than rich—lots more! Well, and it's quite certain that every rich man would like to be rid of his misfortune, only that there is no one willing to take it from him—no one, not any one, of course not. Nobody would be so mad. But we have to find out a way by which lots and lots of people should rid him of his misfortune little by little. What do you say to that? Once more: that means that we must take his unfortunate riches and divide them among a quantity of poor! That will be a good thing for both parties: he will be easily rid of his great misfortune, and they would be helped, too, and the petition of King Solomon would be established, when he said, 'Give me neither poverty nor riches.' It would come true of them all, there would be no riches and no poverty. Ha? What do you think of it? Isn't it really and truly an excellent idea?"

Reb Nochumtzi was quite astonished himself at the plan he had invented, cold perspiration ran down his face, his eyes shone brighter, a happy smile played on his lips. "That's the thing to do!" he explained aloud, sat down by the table, blew his nose, wiped his face, and felt very glad.

"There is only one difficulty about it," occurred to him, when he had quieted down a little from his excitement, "one thing that doesn't fit in. It says particularly in the Torah that there will always be poor people among the Jews, 'the poor shall not cease out of the land.' There must always be poor, and this would make an end of them altogether! Besides, the precept concerning charity would, Heaven forbid, be annulled, the precept which God, blessed is He, wrote in the Torah, and which the holy Gemoreh and all the other holy books make so much of. What is to become of the whole treatise on charity in the Shulchan Aruch? How can we continue to fulfil it?"

But a good head is never at a loss! Reb Nochumtzi soon found a way out of the difficulty.

"Never mind!" and he wrinkled his forehead, and pondered on. "There is no fear! Who said that even the whole of the money in the possession of a few unfortunate rich men will be enough to go round? That there will be just enough to help all the Jewish poor? No fear, there will be enough poor left for the exercise of charity. Ai wos? There is another thing: to whom shall be given and to whom not? Ha, that's a detail, too. Of course, one would begin with the learned and the poor scholars and sages, who have to live on the Torah and on Divine Service. The people can just be left to go on as it is. No fear, but it will be all right!"

At last the plan was ready. Reb Nochumtzi thought it over once more, very carefully, found it complete from every point of view, and gave himself up to a feeling of satisfaction and delight.

"Dvoireh!" he called to his wife, "Dvoireh, don't cry! Please God, it will be all right, quite all right. I've thought out a plan.... A little patience, and it will all come right!"

"Whatever? What sort of plan?"

"There, there, wait and see and hold your tongue! No woman's brain could take it in. You leave it to me, it will be all right!"

And Reb Nochumtzi reflected further:

"Yes, the plan is a good one. Only, how is it to be carried out? With whom am I to begin?"

And he thought of all the householders in Pumpian, but—there was not one single unfortunate man among them! That is, not one of them had money, a real lot of money; there was nobody with whom to discuss his invention to any purpose.

"If so, I shall have to drive to one of the large towns!"

And one Sabbath the beadle gave out in the house-of-study that the Rav begged them all to be present that evening at a convocation.

At the said convocation the Rav unfolded his whole plan to the people, and placed before them the happiness that would result for the whole world, if it were to be realized. But first of all he must journey to a large town, in which there were a great many unfortunate rich people, preferably Wilna, and he demanded of his flock that they should furnish him with the necessary means for getting there.

The audience did not take long to reflect, they agreed to the Rav's proposal, collected a few rubles (for who would not give their last farthing for such an important object?), and on Sunday morning early they hired him a peasant's cart and horse—and the Rav drove away to Wilna.

The Rav passed the drive marshalling his arguments, settling on what he should say, and how he should explain himself, and he was delighted to see how, the more deeply he pondered his plan, the more he thought it out, the more efficient and appropriate it appeared, and the clearer he saw what happiness it would bestow on men all the world over.

The small cart arrived at Wilna.

"Whither are we to drive?" asked the peasant.

"Whither? To a Jew," answered the Rav. "For where is the Jew who will not give me a night's lodging?"

"And I, with my cart and horse?"

The Rav sat perplexed, but a Jew passing by heard the conversation, and explained to him that Wilna is not Pumpian, and that they would have to drive to a post-house, or an inn.

"Be it so!" said the Rav, and the Jew gave him the address of a place to which they should drive.

Wilna! It is certainly not the same thing as Pumpian. Now, for the first time in his life, the Rav saw whole streets of tall houses, of two and three stories, all as it were under one roof, and how fine they are, thought he, with their decorated exteriors!

"Oi, there live the unfortunate people!" said Reb Nochumtzi to himself. "I never saw anything like them before! How can they bear such a misfortune? I shall come to them as an angel of deliverance!"

He had made up his mind to go to the principal Jewish citizen in Wilna, only he must be a good scholar, so as to understand what Reb Nochumtzi had to say to him.

They advised him to go to the president of the Congregation.

Every street along which he passed astonished him separately, the houses, the pavements, the droshkis and carriages, and especially the people, so beautifully got up with gold watch-chains and rings—he was quite bewildered, so that he was afraid he might lose his senses, and forget all his arguments and his reasonings.

At last he arrived at the president's house.

"He lives on the first floor." Another surprise! Reb Nochumtzi was unused to stairs. There was no storied house in all Pumpian! But when you must, you must! One way and another he managed to arrive at the first-floor landing, where he opened the door, and said, all in one breath:

"I am the Pumpian Rav, and have something to say to the president."

The president, a handsome old man, very busy just then with some merchants who had come on business, stood up, greeted him politely, and opening the door of the reception-room said to him:

"Please, Rabbi, come in here and wait a little. I shall soon have finished, and then I will come to you here."

Expensive furniture, large mirrors, pictures, softly upholstered chairs, tables, cupboards with shelves full of great silver candlesticks, cups, knives and forks, a beautiful lamp, and many other small objects, all of solid silver, wardrobes with carving in different designs; then, painted walls, a great silver chandelier decorated with cut glass, fascinating to behold! Reb Nochumtzi actually had tears in his eyes, "To think of anyone's being so unfortunate—and to have to bear it!"

"What can I do for you, Pumpian Rav?" inquired the president.

And Reb Nochumtzi, overcome by amazement and enthusiasm, nearly shouted:

"You are so unfortunate!"

The president stared at him, shrugged his shoulders, and was silent.

Then Reb Nochumtzi laid his whole plan before him, the object of his coming.

"I will be frank with you," he said in concluding his long speech, "I had no idea of the extent of the misfortune! To the rescue, men, save yourselves! Take it to heart, think of what it means to have houses like these, and all these riches—it is a most terrible misfortune! Now I see what a reform of the whole world my plan amounts to, what deliverance it will bring to all men!"

The president looked him straight in the face: he saw the man was not mad, but that he had the limited horizon of one born and bred in a small provincial town and in the atmosphere of the house-of-study.

He also saw that it would be impossible to convince him by proofs that his idea was a mistaken one; for a little while he pitied him in silence, then he hit upon an expedient, and said:

"You are quite right, Rabbi! Your plan is really a very good one. But I am only one of many, Wilna is full of such unfortunate people. Everyone of them must be talked to, and have the thing explained to him. Then, the other party must be spoken to as well, I mean the poor people, so that they shall be willing to take their share of the misfortune. That's not such an easy matter as giving a thing away and getting rid of it."

"Of course, of course...." agreed Reb Nochumtzi.

"Look here, Rav of Pumpian, I will undertake the more difficult part—let us work together! You shall persuade the rich to give away their misfortune, and I will persuade the poor to take it! Your share of the work will be the easier, because, after all, everybody wants to be rid of his misfortune. Do your part, and as soon as you have finished with the rich, I will arrange for you to be met half-way by the poor...."

History does not tell how far the Rav of Pumpian succeeded in Wilna. Only this much is certain, the president never saw him again.

Pen name of Judah Löb Lewin; born, 1845, in Minsk (Lithuania), White Russia; tutor; treasurer to the Brodski flour mills and their sugar refinery, at Tomaschpol, Podolia, later in Kieff; began to write in 1860; translator of Beaconsfield's Tancred into Hebrew; Talmudist; mystic; first Socialist writer in Hebrew; writer, chiefly in Hebrew, of prose and poetry; contributor to Sholom-Alechem's Jüdische Volksbibliothek, Ha-Shahar, Ha-Meliz, Ha-Zeflrah, and other periodicals.

As my readers know, I wanted to do a little stroke of business—to sell the world-to-come. I must tell you that I came out of it very badly, and might have fallen into some misfortune, if I had had the ware in stock. It fell on this wise: Nowadays everyone is squeezed and stifled; Parnosseh is gone to wrack and ruin, and there is no business—I mean, there is business, only not for us Jews. In such bitter times people snatch the bread out of each other's mouths; if it is known that someone has made a find, and started a business, they quickly imitate him; if that one opens a shop, a second does likewise, and a third, and a fourth; if this one makes a contract, the other runs and will do it for less—"Even if I earn nothing, no more will you!"

When I gave out that I had the world-to-come to sell, lots of people gave a start, "Aha! a business!" and before they knew what sort of ware it was, and where it was to be had, they began thinking about a shop—and there was still greater interest shown on the part of certain philanthropists, party leaders, public workers, and such-like. They knew that when I set up trading in the world-to-come, I had announced that my business was only with the poor. Well, they understood that it was likely to be profitable, and might give them the chance of licking a bone or two. There was very soon a great tararam in our little world, people began inquiring where my goods came from. They surrounded me with spies, who were to find out what I did at night, what I did on Sabbath; they questioned the cook, the market-woman; but in vain, they could not find out how I came by the world-to-come. And there blazed up a fire of jealousy and hatred, and they began to inform, to write letters to the authorities about me. Laban the Yellow and Balaam the Blind (you know them!) made my boss believe that I do business, that is, that I have capital, that is—that is—but my employer investigated the matter, and seeing that my stock in trade was the world-to-come, he laughed, and let me alone. The townspeople among whom it was my lot to dwell, those good people who are a great hand at fishing in troubled waters, as soon as they saw the mud rise, snatched up their implements and set to work, informing by letter that I was dealing in contraband. There appeared a red official and swept out a few corners in my house, but without finding a single specimen bit of the world-to-come, and went away. But I had no peace even then; every day came a fresh letter informing against me. My good brothers never ceased work. The pious, orthodox Jews, the Gemoreh-Köplech, informed, and said I was a swindler, because the world-to-come is a thing that isn't there, that is neither fish, flesh, fowl, nor good red herring, and the whole thing was a delusion; the half-civilized people with long trousers and short earlocks said, on the contrary, that I was making game of religion, so that before long I had enough of it from every side, and made the following resolutions: first, that I would have nothing to do with the world-to-come and such-like things which the Jews did not understand, although they held them very precious; secondly, that I would not let myself in for selling anything. One of my good friends, an experienced merchant, advised me rather to buy than to sell: "There are so many to sell, they will compete with you, inform against you, and behave as no one should. Buying, on the other hand—if you want to buy, you will be esteemed and respected, everyone will flatter you, and be ready to sell to you on credit—everyone is ready to take money, and with very little capital you can buy the best and most expensive ware." The great thing was to get a good name, and then, little by little, by means of credit, one might rise very high.

So it was settled that I should buy. I had a little money on hand for a couple of newspaper articles, for which nowadays they pay; I had a bit of reputation earned by a great many articles in Hebrew, for which I received quite nice complimentary letters; and, in case of need, there is a little money owing to me from certain Jewish booksellers of the Maskilim, for books bought "on commission." Well, I am resolved to buy.

But what shall I buy? I look round and take note of all the things a man can buy, and see that I, as a Jew, may not have them; that which I may buy, no matter where, isn't worth a halfpenny; a thing that is of any value, I can't have. And I determine to take to the old ware which my great-great-grandfathers bought, and made a fortune in. My parents and the whole family wish for it every day. I resolve to buy—you understand me?—earth of Palestine, and I announce both verbally and in writing to all my good and bad brothers that I wish to become a purchaser of the ware.

Oh, what a commotion it made! Hardly was it known that I wished to buy Palestinian earth, than there pounced upon me people of whom I had never thought it possible that they should talk to me, and be in the room with me. The first to come was a kind of Jew with a green shawl, with white shoes, a pale face with a red nose, dark eyes, and yellow earlocks. He commenced unpacking paper and linen bags, out of which he shook a little sand, and he said to me: "That is from Mother Rachel's grave, from the Shunammite's grave, from the graves of Huldah the prophetess and Deborah." Then he shook out the other bags, and mentioned a whole list of men: from the grave of Enoch, Moses our Teacher, Elijah the Prophet, Habakkuk, Ezekiel, Jonah, authors of the Talmud, and holy men as many as there be. He assured me that each kind of sand had its own precious distinction, and had, of course, its special price. I had not had time to examine all the bags of sand, when, aha! I got a letter written on blue paper in Rashi script, in which an unknown well-wisher earnestly warned me against buying of that Jew, for neither he nor his father before him had ever been in Palestine, and he had got the sand in K., from the Andreiyeff Hills yonder, and that if I wished for it, he had real Palestinian earth, from the Mount of Olives, with a document from the Palestinian vicegerent, the Brisk Rebbetzin, to the effect that she had given of this earth even to the eaters of swine's flesh, of whom it is said, "for their worm shall not die," and they also were saved from worms. My Palestinian Jew, after reading the letter, called down all bad dreams upon the head of the Brisk Rebbetzin, and declared among other things that she herself was a dreadful worm, who, etc. He assured me that I ought not to send money to the Brisk Rebbetzin, "May Heaven defend you! it will be thrown away, as it has been a hundred times already!" and began once more to praise his wares, his earth, saying it was a marvel. I answered him that I wanted real earth of Palestine, earth, not sand out of little bags.

"Earth, it is earth!" he repeated, and became very angry. "What do you mean by earth? Am I offering you mud? But that is the way with people nowadays, when they want something Jewish, there is no pleasing them! Only" (a thought struck him) "if you want another sort, perhaps from the field of Machpelah, I can bring you some Palestinian earth that is earth. Meantime give me something in advance, for, besides everything else, I am a Palestinian Jew."

I pushed a coin into his hand, and he went away. Meanwhile the news had spread, my intention to purchase earth of Palestine had been noised abroad, and the little town echoed with my name. In the streets, lanes, and market-place, the talk was all of me and of how "there is no putting a final value on a Jewish soul: one thought he was one of them, and now he wants to buy earth of Palestine!" Many of those who met me looked at me askance, "The same and not the same!" In the synagogue they gave me the best turn at the Reading of the Law; Jews in shoes and socks wished me "a good Sabbath" with great heartiness, and a friendly smile: "Eh-eh-eh! We understand—you are a deep one—you are one of us after all." In short, they surrounded me, and nearly carried me on their shoulders, so that I really became something of a celebrity.

Yüdel, the "living orphan," worked the hardest. Yüdel is already a man in years, but everyone calls him the "orphan" on account of what befell him on a time. His history is very long and interesting, I will tell it you in brief.

He has a very distinguished father and a very noble mother, and he is an only child, of a very frolicsome disposition, on account of which his father and his mother frequently disagreed; the father used to punish him and beat him, but the boy hid with his mother. In a word, it came to this, that his father gave him into the hands of strangers, to be educated and put into shape. The mother could not do without him, and fell sick of grief; she became a wreck. Her beautiful house was burnt long ago through the boy's doing: one day, when a child, he played with fire, and there was a conflagration, and the neighbors came and built on the site of her palace, and she, the invalid, lies neglected in a corner. The father, who has left the house, often wished to rejoin her, but by no manner of means can they live together without the son, and so the cast-off child became a "living orphan"; he roams about in the wide world, comes to a place, and when he has stayed there a little while, they drive him out, because wherever he comes, he stirs up a commotion. As is the way with all orphans, he has many fathers, and everyone directs him, hits him, lectures him; he is always in the way, blamed for everything, it's always his fault, so that he has got into the habit of cowering and shrinking at the mere sight of a stick. Wandering about as he does, he has copied the manners and customs of strange people, in every place where he has been; his very character is hardly his own. His father has tried both to threaten and to persuade him into coming back, saying they would then all live together as before, but Yüdel has got to like living from home, he enjoys the scrapes he gets into, and even the blows they earn for him. No matter how people knock him about, pull his hair, and draw his blood, the moment they want him to make friendly advances, there he is again, alert and smiling, turns the world topsyturvy, and won't hear of going home. It is remarkable that Yüdel, who is no fool, and has a head for business, the instant people look kindly on him, imagines they like him, although he has had a thousand proofs to the contrary. He has lately been of such consequence in the eyes of the world that they have begun to treat him in a new way, and they drive him out of every place at once. The poor boy has tried his best to please, but it was no good, they knocked him about till he was covered with blood, took every single thing he had, and empty-handed, naked, hungry, and beaten as he is, they shout at him "Be off!" from every side. Now he lives in narrow streets, in the small towns, hidden away in holes and corners. He very often hasn't enough to eat, but he goes on in his old way, creeps into tight places, dances at all the weddings, loves to meddle, everything concerns him, and where two come together, he is the third.

I have known him a long time, ever since he was a little boy. He always struck me as being very wild, but I saw that he was of a noble disposition, only that he had grown rough from living among strangers. I loved him very much, but in later years he treated me to hot and cold by turns. I must tell you that when Yüdel had eaten his fill, he was always very merry, and minded nothing; but when he had been kicked out by his landlord, and went hungry, then he was angry, and grew violent over every trifle. He would attack me for nothing at all, we quarrelled and parted company, that is, I loved him at a distance. When he wasn't just in my sight, I felt a great pity for him, and a wish to go to him; but hardly had I met him than he was at the old game again, and I had to leave him. Now that I was together with him in my native place, I found him very badly off, he hadn't enough to eat. The town was small and poor, and he had no means of supporting himself. When I saw him in his bitter and dark distress, my heart went out to him. But at such times, as I said before, he is very wild and fanatical. One day, on the Ninth of Ab, I felt obliged to speak out, and tell him that sitting in socks, with his forehead on the ground, reciting Lamentations, would do no good. Yüdel misunderstood me, and thought I was laughing at Jerusalem. He began to fire up, and he spread reports of me in the town, and when he saw me in the distance, he would spit out before me. His anger dated from some time past, because one day I turned him out of my house; he declared that I was the cause of all his misfortunes, and now that I was his neighbor, I had resolved to ruin him; he believed that I hated him and played him false. Why should Yüdel think that? I don't know. Perhaps he feels one ought to dislike him, or else he is so embittered that he cannot believe in the kindly feelings of others. However that may be, Yüdel continued to speak ill of me, and throw mud at me through the town; crying out all the while that I hadn't a scrap of Jewishness in me.

Now that he heard I was buying Palestinian earth, he began by refusing to believe it, and declared it was a take-in and the trick of an apostate, for how could a person who laughed at socks on the Ninth of Ab really want to buy earth of Palestine? But when he saw the green shawls and the little bags of earth, he went over—a way he has—to the opposite, the exact opposite. He began to worship me, couldn't praise me enough, and talked of me in the back streets, so that the women blessed me aloud. Yüdel was now much given to my company, and often came in to see me, and was most intimate, although there was no special piousness about me. I was just the same as before, but Yüdel took this for the best of signs, and thought it proved me to be of extravagant hidden piety.

"There's a Jew for you!" he would cry aloud in the street. "Earth of Palestine! There's a Jew!"

In short, he filled the place with my Jewishness and my hidden orthodoxy. I looked on with indifference, but after a while the affair began to cost me both time and money.

The Palestinian beggars and, above all, Yüdel and the townsfolk obtained for me the reputation of piety, and there came to me orthodox Jews, treasurers, cabalists, beggar students, and especially the Rebbe's followers; they came about me like bees. They were never in the habit of avoiding me, but this was another thing all the same. Before this, when one of the Rebbe's disciples came, he would enter with a respectful demeanor, take off his hat, and, sitting in his cap, would fix his gaze on my mouth with a sweet smile; we both felt that the one and only link between us lay in the money that I gave and he took. He would take it gracefully, put it into his purse, as it might be for someone else, and thank me as though he appreciated my kindness. When I went to see him, he would place a chair for me, and give me preserve. But now he came to me with a free and easy manner, asked for a sip of brandy with a snack to eat, sat in my room as if it were his own, and looked at me as if I were an underling, and he had authority over me; I am the penitent sinner, it is said, and that signifies for him the key to the door of repentance; I have entered into his domain, and he is my lord and master; he drinks my health as heartily as though it were his own, and when I press a coin into his hand, he looks at it well, to make sure it is worth his while accepting it. If I happen to visit him, I am on a footing with all his followers, the Chassidim; his "trustees," and all his other hangers-on, are my brothers, and come to me when they please, with all the mud on their boots, put their hand into my bosom and take out my tobacco-pouch, and give it as their opinion that the brandy is weak, not to talk of holidays, especially Purim and Rejoicing of the Law, when they troop in with a great noise and vociferation, and drink and dance, and pay as much attention to me as to the cat.

In fact, all the townsfolk took the same liberties with me. Before, they asked nothing of me, and took me as they found me, now they began to demand things of me and to inquire why I didn't do this, and why I did that, and not the other. Shmuelke the bather asked me why I was never seen at the bath on Sabbath. Kalmann the butcher wanted to know why, among the scape-fowls, there wasn't a white one of mine; and even the beadle of the Klaus, who speaks through his nose, and who had never dared approach me, came and insisted on giving me the thirty-nine stripes on the eve of the Day of Atonement: "Eh-eh, if you are a Jew like other Jews, come and lie down, and you shall be given stripes!"

And the Palestinian Jews never ceased coming with their bags of earth, and I never ceased rejecting. One day there came a broad-shouldered Jew from "over there," with his bag of Palestinian earth. The earth pleased me, and a conversation took place between us on this wise:

"How much do you want for your earth?"

"For my earth? From anyone else I wouldn't take less than thirty rubles, but from you, knowing you and of you as I do, and as your parents did so much for Palestine, I will take a twenty-five ruble piece. You must know that a person buys this once and for all."

"I don't understand you," I answered. "Twenty-five rubles! How much earth have you there?"

"How much earth have I? About half a quart. There will be enough to cover the eyes and the face. Perhaps you want to cover the whole body, to have it underneath and on the top and at the sides? O, I can bring you some more, but it will cost you two or three hundred rubles, because, since the good-for-nothings took to coming to Palestine, the earth has got very expensive. Believe me, I don't make much by it, it costs me nearly...."

"I don't understand you, my friend! What's this about bestrewing the body? What do you mean by it?"

"How do you mean, 'what do you mean by it?' Bestrewing the body like that of all honest Jews, after death."

"Ha? After death? To preserve it?"

"Yes, what else?"

"I don't want it for that, I don't mind what happens to my body after death. I want to buy Palestinian earth for my lifetime."

"What do you mean? What good can it do you while you're alive? You are not talking to the point, or else you are making game of a poor Palestinian Jew?"

"I am speaking seriously. I want it now, while I live! What is it you don't understand?"

My Palestinian Jew was greatly perplexed, but he quickly collected himself, and took in the situation. I saw by his artful smile that he had detected a strain of madness in me, and what should he gain by leading me into the paths of reason? Rather let him profit by it! And this he proceeded to do, saying with winning conviction:

"Yes, of course, you are right! How right you are! May I ever see the like! People are not wrong when they say, 'The apple falls close to the tree'! You are drawn to the root, and you love the soil of Palestine, only in a different way, like your holy forefathers, may they be good advocates! You are young, and I am old, and I have heard how they used to bestrew their head-dress with it in their lifetime, so as to fulfil the Scripture verse, 'And have pity on Zion's dust,' and honest Jews shake earth of Palestine into their shoes on the eve of the Ninth of Ab, and at the meal before the fast they dip an egg into Palestinian earth—nu, fein! I never expected so much of you, and I can say with truth, 'There's a Jew for you!' Well, in that case, you will require two pots of the earth, but it will cost you a deal."

"We are evidently at cross-purposes," I said to him. "What are two potfuls? What is all this about bestrewing the body? I want to buy Palestinian earth, earth in Palestine, do you understand? I want to buy, in Palestine, a little bit of earth, a few dessiatines."

"Ha? I didn't quite catch it. What did you say?" and my Palestinian Jew seized hold of his right ear, as though considering what he should do; then he said cheerfully: "Ha—aha! You mean to secure for yourself a burial-place, also for after death! O yes, indeed, you are a holy man and no mistake! Well, you can get that through me, too; give me something in advance, and I shall manage it for you all right at a bargain."

"Why do you go on at me with your 'after death,'" I cried angrily. "I want a bit of earth in Palestine, I want to dig it, and sow it, and plant it...."

"Ha? What? Sow it and plant it?! That is ... that is ... you only mean ... may all bad dreams!..." and stammering thus, he scraped all the scattered earth, little by little, into his bag, gradually got nearer the door, and—was gone!

It was not long before the town was seething and bubbling like a kettle on the boil, everyone was upset as though by some misfortune, angry with me, and still more with himself: "How could we be so mistaken? He doesn't want to buy Palestinian earth at all, he doesn't care what happens to him when he's dead, he laughs—he only wants to buy earth in Palestine, and set up villages there."

"Eh-eh-eh! He remains one of them! He is what he is—a skeptic!" so they said in all the streets, all the householders in the town, the women in the market-place, at the bath, they went about abstracted, and as furious as though I had insulted them, made fools of them, taken them in, and all of a sudden they became cold and distant to me. The pious Jews were seen no more at my house. I received packages from Palestine one after the other. One had a black seal, on which was scratched a black ram's horn, and inside, in large characters, was a ban from the Brisk Rebbetzin, because of my wishing to make all the Jews unhappy. Other packets were from different Palestinian beggars, who tried to compel me, with fair words and foul, to send them money for their travelling expenses and for the samples of earth they enclosed. My fellow-townspeople also got packages from "over there," warning them against me—I was a dangerous man, a missionary, and it was a Mitzveh to be revenged on me. There was an uproar, and no wonder! A letter from Palestine, written in Rashi, with large seals! In short I was to be put to shame and confusion. Everyone avoided me, nobody came near me. When people were obliged to come to me in money matters or to beg an alms, they entered with deference, and spoke respectfully, in a gentle voice, as to "one of them," took the alms or the money, and were out of the door, behind which they abused me, as usual.

Only Yüdel did not forsake me. Yüdel, the "living orphan," was bewildered and perplexed. He had plenty of work, flew from one house to the other, listening, begging, and talebearing, answering and asking questions; but he could not settle the matter in his own mind: now he looked at me angrily, and again with pity. He seemed to wish not to meet me, and yet he sought occasion to do so, and would look earnestly into my face.

The excitement of my neighbors and their behavior to me interested me very little; but I wanted very much to know the reason why I had suddenly become abhorrent to them? I could by no means understand it.

Once there came a wild, dark night. The sky was covered with black clouds, there was a drenching rain and hail and a stormy wind, it was pitch dark, and it lightened and thundered, as though the world were turning upside down. The great thunder claps and the hail broke a good many people's windows, the wind tore at the roofs, and everyone hid inside his house, or wherever he found a corner. In that dreadful dark night my door opened, and in came—Yüdel, the "living orphan"; he looked as though someone were pushing him from behind, driving him along. He was as white as the wall, cowering, beaten about, helpless as a leaf. He came in, and stood by the door, holding his hat; he couldn't decide, did not know if he should take it off, or not. I had never seen him so miserable, so despairing, all the time I had known him. I asked him to sit down, and he seemed a little quieted. I saw that he was soaking wet, and shivering with cold, and I gave him hot tea, one glass after the other. He sipped it with great enjoyment. And the sight of him sitting there sipping and warming himself would have been very comic, only it was so very sad. The tears came into my eyes. Yüdel began to brighten up, and was soon Yüdel, his old self, again. I asked him how it was he had come to me in such a state of gloom and bewilderment? He told me the thunder and the hail had broken all the window-panes in his lodging, and the wind had carried away the roof, there was nowhere he could go for shelter; nobody would let him in at night; there was not a soul he could turn to, there remained nothing for him but to lie down in the street and die.

"And so," he said, "having known you so long, I hoped you would take me in, although you are 'one of them,' not at all pious, and, so they say, full of evil intentions against Jews and Jewishness; but I know you are a good man, and will have compassion on me."

I forgave Yüdel his rudeness, because I knew him for an outspoken man, that he was fond of talking, but never did any harm. Seeing him depressed, I offered him a glass of wine, but he refused it.

I understood the reason of his refusal, and started a conversation with him.

"Tell me, Yüdel heart, how is it I have fallen into such bad repute among you that you will not even drink a drop of wine in my house? And why do you say that I am 'one of them,' and not pious? A little while ago you spoke differently of me."

"Ett! It just slipped from my tongue, and the truth is you may be what you please, you are a good man."

"No, Yüdel, don't try to get out of it! Tell me openly (it doesn't concern me, but I am curious to know), why this sudden revulsion of feeling about me, this change of opinion? Tell me, Yüdel, I beg of you, speak freely!"

My gentle words and my friendliness gave Yüdel great encouragement. The poor fellow, with whom not one of "them" has as yet spoken kindly! When he saw that I meant it, he began to scratch his head; it seemed as if in that minute he forgave me all my "heresies," and he looked at me kindly, and as if with pity. Then, seeing that I awaited an answer, he gave a twist to his earlock, and said gently and sincerely:

"You wish me to tell you the truth? You insist upon it? You will not be offended?"

"You know that I never take offence at anything you say. Say anything you like, Yüdel heart, only speak."

"Then I will tell you: the town and everyone else is very angry with you on account of your Palestinian earth: you want to do something new, buy earth and plough it and sow—and where? in our land of Israel, in our Holy Land of Israel!"

"But why, Yüdel dear, when they thought I was buying Palestinian earth to bestrew me after death, was I looked upon almost like a saint?"

"Ê, that's another thing! That showed that you held Palestine holy, for a land whose soil preserves one against being eaten of worms, like any other honest Jew."

"Well, I ask you, Yüdel, what does this mean? When they thought I was buying sand for after my death, I was a holy man, a lover of Palestine, and because I want to buy earth and till it, earth in your Holy Land, our holy earth in the Holy Land, in which our best and greatest counted it a privilege to live, I am a blot on Israel. Tell me, Yüdel, I ask you: Why, because one wants to bestrew himself with Palestinian earth after death, is one an orthodox Jew; and when one desires to give oneself wholly to Palestine in life, should one be 'one of them'? Now I ask you—all those Palestinian Jews who came to me with their bags of sand, and were my very good friends, and full of anxiety to preserve my body after death, why have they turned against me on hearing that I wished for a bit of Palestinian earth while I live? Why are they all so interested and such good brothers to the dead, and such bloodthirsty enemies to the living? Why, because I wish to provide for my sad existence, have they noised abroad that I am a missionary, and made up tales against me? Why? I ask you, why, Yüdel, why?"

"You ask me? How should I know? I only know that ever since Palestine was Palestine, people have gone there to die—that I know; but all this ploughing, sowing, and planting the earth, I never heard of in my life before."

"Yes, Yüdel, you are right, because it has been so for a long time, you think so it has to be—that is the real answer to your questions. But why not think back a little? Why should one only go to Palestine to die? Is not Palestinian earth fit to live on? On the contrary, it is some of the very best soil, and when we till it and plant it, we fulfil the precept to restore the Holy Land, and we also work for ourselves, toward the realization of an honest and peaceable life. I won't discuss the matter at length with you to-day. It seems that you have quite forgotten what all the holy books say about Palestine, and what a precept it is to till the soil. And another question, touching what you said about Palestine being only there to go and die in. Tell me, those Palestinian Jews who were so interested in my death, and brought earth from over there to bestrew me—tell me, are they also only there to die? Did you notice how broad and stout they were? Ha? And they, they too, when they heard I wanted to live there, fell upon me like wild animals, filling the world with their cries, and made up the most dreadful stories about me. Well, what do you say, Yüdel? I ask you."

"Do I know?" said Yüdel, with a wave of the hand. "Is my head there to think out things like that? But tell me, I beg, what is the good to you of buying land in Palestine and getting into trouble all round?"

"You ask, what is the good to me? I want to live, do you hear? I want to live!"

"If you can't live without Palestinian earth, why did you not get some before? Did you never want to live till now?"

"Oh, Yüdel, you are right there. I confess that till now I have lived in a delusion, I thought I was living; but—what is the saying?—so long as the thunder is silent...."

"Some thunder has struck you!" interrupted Yüdel, looking compassionately into my face.

"I will put it briefly. You must know, Yüdel, that I have been in business here for quite a long time. I worked faithfully, and my chief was pleased with me. I was esteemed and looked up to, and it never occurred to me that things would change; but bad men could not bear to see me doing so well, and they worked hard against me, till one day the business was taken over by my employer's son; and my enemies profited by the opportunity, to cover me with calumnies from head to foot, spreading reports about me which it makes one shudder to hear. This went on till the chief began to look askance at me. At first I got pin-pricks, malicious hints, then things got worse and worse, and at last they began to push me about, and one day they turned me out of the house, and threw me into a hedge. Presently, when I had reviewed the whole situation, I saw that they could do what they pleased with me. I had no one to rely on, my onetime good friends kept aloof from me, I had lost all worth in their eyes; with some because, as is the way with people, they took no trouble to inquire into the reason of my downfall, but, hearing all that was said against me, concluded that I was in the wrong; others, again, because they wished to be agreeable to my enemies; the rest, for reasons without number. In short, reflecting on all this, I saw the game was lost, and there was no saying what might not happen to me! Hitherto I had borne my troubles patiently, with the courage that is natural to me; but now I feel my courage giving way, and I am in fear lest I should fall in my own eyes, in my own estimation, and get to believe that I am worth nothing. And all this because I must needs resort to them, and take all the insults they choose to fling at me, and every outcast has me at his mercy. That is why I want to collect my remaining strength, and buy a parcel of land in Palestine, and, God helping, I will become a bit of a householder—do you understand?"

"Why must it be just in Palestine?"

"Because I may not, and I cannot, buy in anywhere else. I have tried to find a place elsewhere, but they were afraid I was going to get the upper hand, so down they came, and made a wreck of it. Over there I shall be proprietor myself—that is firstly, and secondly, a great many relations of mine are buried there, in the country where they lived and died. And although you count me as 'one of them,' I tell you I think a great deal of 'the merits of the fathers,' and that it is very pleasant to me to think of living in the land that will remind me of such dear forefathers. And although it will be hard at first, the recollection of my ancestors and the thought of providing my children with a corner of their own and honestly earned bread will give me strength, till I shall work my way up to something. And I hope I will get to something. Remember, Yüdel, I believe and I hope! You will see, Yüdel—you know that our brothers consider Palestinian earth a charm against being eaten by worms, and you think that I laugh at it? No, I believe in it! It is quite, quite true that my Palestinian earth will preserve me from worms, only not after death, no, but alive—from such worms as devour and gnaw at and poison the whole of life!"

Yüdel scratched his nose, gave a rub to the cap on his head, and uttered a deep sigh.

"Yes, Yüdel, you sigh! Now do you know what I wanted to say to you?"

"Ett!" and Yüdel made a gesture with his hand. "What you have to say to me?—ett!"

"Oi, that 'ett!' of yours! Yüdel, I know it! When you have nothing to answer, and you ought to think, and think something out, you take refuge in 'ett!' Just consider for once, Yüdel, I have a plan for you, too. Remember what you were, and what has become of you. You have been knocking about, driven hither and thither, since childhood. You haven't a house, not a corner, you have become a beggar, a tramp, a nobody, despised and avoided, with unpleasing habits, and living a dog's life. You have very good qualities, a clear head, and acute intelligence. But to what purpose do you put them? You waste your whole intelligence on getting in at backdoors and coaxing a bit of bread out of the maidservant, and the mistress is not to know. Can you not devise a means, with that clever brain of yours, how to earn it for yourself? See here, I am going to buy a bit of ground in Palestine, come with me, Yüdel, and you shall work, and be a man like other men. You are what they call a 'living orphan,' because you have many fathers; and don't forget that you have one Father who lives, and who is only waiting for you to grow better. Well, how much longer are you going to live among strangers? Till now you haven't thought, and the life suited you, you have grown used to blows and contumely. But now that—that—none will let you in, your eyes must have been opened to see your condition, and you must have begun to wish to be different. Only begin to wish! You see, I have enough to eat, and yet my position has become hateful to me, because I have lost my value, and am in danger of losing my humanity. But you are hungry, and one of these days you will die of starvation out in the street. Yüdel, do just think it over, for if I am right, you will get to be like other people. Your Father will see that you have turned into a man, he will be reconciled with your mother, and you will be 'a father's child,' as you were before. Brother Yüdel, think it over!"

I talked to my Yüdel a long, long time. In the meanwhile, the night had passed. My Yüdel gave a start, as though waking out of a deep slumber, and went away full of thought.

On opening the window, I was greeted by a friendly smile from the rising morning star, as it peeped out between the clouds.

And it began to dawn.

Born, 1851, in Samoscz, Government of Lublin, Russian Poland; Jewish, philosophical, and general literary education; practiced law in Samoscz, a Hasidic town; clerk to the Jewish congregation in Warsaw and as such collector of statistics on Jewish life; began to write at twenty-five; contributor to Zedernbaum's Jüdisches Volksblatt; publisher and editor of Die jüdische Bibliothek (4 vols.), in which he conducted the scientific department, and wrote all the editorials and book reviews, of Literatur and Leben, and of Yom-tov Blättlech; now (1912) co-editor of Der Freind, Warsaw; Hebrew and Yiddish prose writer and poet; allegorist; collected Hebrew works, 1899-1901; collected Yiddish works, 7 vols., Warsaw and New York, 1909-1912 (in course of publication).

The small room is dingy as the poverty that clings to its walls. There is a hook fastened to the crumbling ceiling, relic of a departed hanging lamp. The old, peeling stove is girded about with a coarse sack, and leans sideways toward its gloomy neighbor, the black, empty fireplace, in which stands an inverted cooking pot with a chipped rim. Beside it lies a broken spoon, which met its fate in unequal contest with the scrapings of cold, stale porridge.

The room is choked with furniture; there is a four-post bed with torn curtains. The pillows visible through their holes have no covers.

There is a cradle, with the large, yellow head of a sleeping child; a chest with metal fittings and an open padlock—nothing very precious left in there, evidently; further, a table and three chairs (originally painted red), a cupboard, now somewhat damaged. Add to these a pail of clean water and one of dirty water, an oven rake with a shovel, and you will understand that a pin could hardly drop onto the floor.

And yet the room contains him and her beside.

She, a middle-aged Jewess, sits on the chest that fills the space between the bed and the cradle.

To her right is the one grimy little window, to her left, the table. She is knitting a sock, rocking the cradle with her foot, and listens to him reading the Talmud at the table, with a tearful, Wallachian, singing intonation, and swaying to and fro with a series of nervous jerks. Some of the words he swallows, others he draws out; now he snaps at a word, and now he skips it; some he accentuates and dwells on lovingly, others he rattles out with indifference, like dried peas out of a bag. And never quiet for a moment. First he draws from his pocket a once red and whole handkerchief, and wipes his nose and brow, then he lets it fall into his lap, and begins twisting his earlocks or pulling at his thin, pointed, faintly grizzled beard. Again, he lays a pulled-out hair from the same between the leaves of his book, and slaps his knees. His fingers coming into contact with the handkerchief, they seize it, and throw a corner in between his teeth; he bites it, lays one foot across the other, and continually shuffles with both feet.

All the while his pale forehead wrinkles, now in a perpendicular, now in a horizontal, direction, when the long eyebrows are nearly lost below the folds of skin. At times, apparently, he has a sting in the chest, for he beats his left side as though he were saying the Al-Chets. Suddenly he leans his head to the left, presses a finger against his left nostril, and emits an artificial sneeze, leans his head to the right, and the proceeding is repeated. In between he takes a pinch of snuff, pulls himself together, his voice rings louder, the chair creaks, the table wobbles.

The child does not wake; the sounds are too familiar to disturb it.

And she, the wife, shrivelled and shrunk before her time, sits and drinks in delight. She never takes her eye off her husband, her ear lets no inflection of his voice escape. Now and then, it is true, she sighs. Were he as fit for this world as he is for the other world, she would have a good time of it here, too—here, too—

"Ma!" she consoles herself, "who talks of honor? Not every one is worthy of both tables!"

She listens. Her shrivelled face alters from minute to minute; she is nervous, too. A moment ago it was eloquent of delight. Now she remembers it is Thursday, there isn't a dreier to spend in preparation for Sabbath. The light in her face goes out by degrees, the smile fades, then she takes a look through the grimy window, glances at the sun. It must be getting late, and there isn't a spoonful of hot water in the house. The needles pause in her hand, a shadow has overspread her face. She looks at the child, it is sleeping less quietly, and will soon wake. The child is poorly, and there is not a drop of milk for it. The shadow on her face deepens into gloom, the needles tremble and move convulsively.

And when she remembers that it is near Passover, that her ear-rings and the festal candlesticks are at the pawnshop, the chest empty, the lamp sold, then the needles perform murderous antics in her fingers. The gloom on her brow is that of a gathering thunder-storm, lightnings play in her small, grey, sunken eyes.

He sits and "learns," unconscious of the charged atmosphere; does not see her let the sock fall and begin wringing her finger-joints; does not see that her forehead is puckered with misery, one eye closed, and the other fixed on him, her learned husband, with a look fit to send a chill through his every limb; does not see her dry lips tremble and her jaw quiver. She controls herself with all her might, but the storm is gathering fury within her. The least thing, and it will explode.

That least thing has happened.

He was just translating a Talmudic phrase with quiet delight, "And thence we derive that—" He was going on with "three,—" but the word "derive" was enough, it was the lighted spark, and her heart was the gunpowder. It was ablaze in an instant. Her determination gave way, the unlucky word opened the flood-gates, and the waters poured through, carrying all before them.

"Derived, you say, derived? O, derived may you be, Lord of the World," she exclaimed, hoarse with anger, "derived may you be! Yes! You!" she hissed like a snake. "Passover coming—Thursday—and the child ill—and not a drop of milk is there. Ha?"

Her breath gives out, her sunken breast heaves, her eyes flash.

He sits like one turned to stone. Then, pale and breathless, too, from fright, he gets up and edges toward the door.

At the door he turns and faces her, and sees that hand and tongue are equally helpless from passion; his eyes grow smaller; he catches a bit of handkerchief between his teeth, retreats a little further, takes a deeper breath, and mutters:

"Listen, woman, do you know what Bittul-Torah means? And not letting a husband study in peace, to be always worrying about livelihood, ha? And who feeds the little birds, tell me? Always this want of faith in God, this giving way to temptation, and taking thought for this world ... foolish, ill-natured woman! Not to let a husband study! If you don't take care, you will go to Gehenna."

Receiving no answer, he grows bolder. Her face gets paler and paler, she trembles more and more violently, and the paler she becomes, and the more she trembles, the steadier his voice, as he goes on:

"Gehenna! Fire! Hanging by the tongue! Four death penalties inflicted by the court!"

She is silent, her face is white as chalk.

He feels that he is doing wrong, that he has no call to be cruel, that he is taking a mean advantage, but he has risen, as it were, to the top, and is boiling over. He cannot help himself.

"Do you know," he threatens her, "what Skiloh means? It means stoning, to throw into a ditch and cover up with stones! Srefoh—burning, that is, pouring a spoonful of boiling lead into the inside! Hereg—beheading, that means they cut off your head with a sword! Like this" (and he passes a hand across his neck). "Then Cheneck—strangling! Do you hear? To strangle! Do you understand? And all four for making light of the Torah! For Bittul-Torah!"

His heart is already sore for his victim, but he is feeling his power over her for the first time, and it has gone to his head. Silly woman! He had never known how easy it was to frighten her.

"That comes of making light of the Torah!" he shouts, and breaks off. After all, she might come to her senses at any moment, and take up the broom! He springs back to the table, closes the Gemoreh, and hurries out of the room.

"I am going to the house-of-study!" he calls out over his shoulder in a milder tone, and shuts the door after him.

The loud voice and the noise of the closing door have waked the sick child. The heavy-lidded eyes open, the waxen face puckers, and there is a peevish wail. But she, beside herself, stands rooted to the spot, and does not hear.

"Ha!" comes hoarsely at last out of her narrow chest. "So that's it, is it? Neither this world nor the other. Hanging, he says, stoning, burning, beheading, strangling, hanging by the tongue, boiling lead poured into the inside, he says—for making light of the Torah—Hanging, ha, ha, ha!" (in desperation). "Yes, I'll hang, but here, here! And soon! What is there to wait for?"

The child begins to cry louder; still she does not hear.

"A rope! a rope!" she screams, and stares wildly into every corner.

"Where is there a rope? I wish he mayn't find a bone of me left! Let me be rid of one Gehenna at any rate! Let him try it, let him be a mother for once, see how he likes it! I've had enough of it! Let it be an atonement! An end, an end! A rope, a rope!!"

Her last exclamation is like a cry for help from out of a conflagration.

She remembers that they have a rope somewhere. Yes, under the stove—the stove was to have been tied round against the winter. The rope must be there still.

She runs and finds the rope, the treasure, looks up at the ceiling—the hook that held the lamp—she need only climb onto the table.

She climbs—

But she sees from the table that the startled child, weak as it is, has sat up in the cradle, and is reaching over the side—it is trying to get out—

"Mame, M-mame," it sobs feebly.

A fresh paroxysm of anger seizes her.

She flings away the rope, jumps off the table, runs to the child, and forces its head back into the pillow, exclaiming:

"Bother the child! It won't even let me hang myself! I can't even hang myself in peace! It wants to suck. What is the good? You will suck nothing but poison, poison, out of me, I tell you!"

"There, then, greedy!" she cries in the same breath, and stuffs her dried-up breast into his mouth.

"There, then, suck away—bite!"

To sleep, in summer time, in a room four yards square, together with a wife and eight children, is anything but a pleasure, even on a Friday night—and Shmerel the woodcutter rises from his bed, though only half through with the night, hot and gasping, hastily pours some water over his finger-tips, flings on his dressing-gown, and escapes barefoot from the parched Gehenna of his dwelling. He steps into the street—all quiet, all the shutters closed, and over the sleeping town is a distant, serene, and starry sky. He feels as if he were all alone with God, blessed is He, and he says, looking up at the sky, "Now, Lord of the Universe, now is the time to hear me and to bless me with a treasure out of Thy treasure-house!"

As he says this, he sees something like a little flame coming along out of the town, and he knows, That is it! He is about to pursue it, when he remembers it is Sabbath, when one mustn't turn. So he goes after it walking. And as he walks slowly along, the little flame begins to move slowly, too, so that the distance between them does not increase, though it does not shorten, either. He walks on. Now and then an inward voice calls to him: "Shmerel, don't be a fool! Take off the dressing-gown. Give a jump and throw it over the flame!" But he knows it is the Evil Inclination speaking. He throws off the dressing-gown onto his arm, but to spite the Evil Inclination he takes still smaller steps, and rejoices to see that, as soon as he takes these smaller steps, the little flame moves more slowly, too.

Thus he follows the flame, and follows it, till he gradually finds himself outside the town. The road twists and turns across fields and meadows, and the distance between him and the flame grows no longer, no shorter. Were he to throw the dressing-gown, it would not reach the flame. Meantime the thought revolves in his mind: Were he indeed to become possessed of the treasure, he need no longer be a woodcutter, now, in his later years; he has no longer the strength for the work he had once. He would rent a seat for his wife in the women's Shool, so that her Sabbaths and holidays should not be spoiled by their not allowing her to sit here or to sit there. On New Year's Day and the Day of Atonement it is all she can do to stand through the service. Her many children have exhausted her! And he would order her a new dress, and buy her a few strings of pearls. The children should be sent to better Chedorim, and he would cast about for a match for his eldest girl. As it is, the poor child carries her mother's fruit baskets, and never has time so much as to comb her hair thoroughly, and she has long, long plaits, and eyes like a deer.

"It would be a meritorious act to pounce upon the treasure!"

The Evil Inclination again, he thinks. If it is not to be, well, then it isn't! If it were in the week, he would soon know what to do! Or if his Yainkel were there, he would have had something to say. Children nowadays! Who knows what they don't do on Sabbath, as it is! And the younger one is no better: he makes fun of the teacher in Cheder. When the teacher is about to administer a blow, they pull his beard. And who's going to find time to see after them—chopping and sawing a whole day through.

He sighs and walks on and on, now and then glancing up into the sky: "Lord of the Universe, of whom are you making trial? Shmerel Woodcutter? If you do mean to give me the treasure, give it me!" It seems to him that the flame proceeds more slowly, but at this very moment he hears a dog bark, and it has a bark he knows—that is the dog in Vissóke. Vissóke is the first village you come to on leaving the town, and he sees white patches twinkle in the dewy morning atmosphere, those are the Vissóke peasant cottages. Then it occurs to him that he has gone a Sabbath day's journey, and he stops short.

"Yes, I have gone a Sabbath day's journey," he thinks, and says, speaking into the air: "You won't lead me astray! It is not a God-send! God does not make sport of us—it is the work of a demon." And he feels a little angry with the thing, and turns and hurries toward the town, thinking: "I won't say anything about it at home, because, first, they won't believe me, and if they do, they'll laugh at me. And what have I done to be proud of? The Creator knows how it was, and that is enough for me. Besides, she might be angry, who can tell? The children are certainly naked and barefoot, poor little things! Why should they be made to transgress the command to honor one's father?"

No, he won't breathe a word. He won't even ever remind the Almighty of it. If he really has been good, the Almighty will remember without being told.

And suddenly he is conscious of a strange, lightsome, inward calm, and there is a delicious sensation in his limbs. Money is, after all, dross, riches may even lead a man from the right way, and he feels inclined to thank God for not having brought him into temptation by granting him his wish. He would like, if only—to sing a song! "Our Father, our King" is one he remembers from his early years, but he feels ashamed before himself, and breaks off. He tries to recollect one of the cantor's melodies, a Sinai tune—when suddenly he sees that the identical little flame which he left behind him is once more preceding him, and moving slowly townward, townward, and the distance between them neither increases nor diminishes, as though the flame were taking a walk, and he were taking a walk, just taking a little walk in honor of Sabbath. He is glad in his heart and watches it. The sky pales, the stars begin to go out, the east flushes, a narrow pink stream flows lengthwise over his head, and still the flame flickers onward into the town, enters his own street. There is his house. The door, he sees, is open. Apparently he forgot to shut it. And, lo and behold! the flame goes in, the flame goes in at his own house door! He follows, and sees it disappear beneath the bed. All are asleep. He goes softly up to the bed, stoops down, and sees the flame spinning round underneath it, like a top, always in the same place; takes his dressing-gown, and throws it down under the bed, and covers up the flame. No one hears him, and now a golden morning beam steals in through the chink in the shutter.

He sits down on the bed, and makes a vow not to say a word to anyone till Sabbath is over—not half a word, lest it cause desecration of the Sabbath. She could never hold her tongue, and the children certainly not; they would at once want to count the treasure, to know how much there was, and very soon the secret would be out of the house and into the Shool, the house-of-study, and all the streets, and people would talk about his treasure, about luck, and people would not say their prayers, or wash their hands, or say grace, as they should, and he would have led his household and half the town into sin. No, not a whisper! And he stretches himself out on the bed, and pretends to be asleep.

And this was his reward: When, after concluding the Sabbath, he stooped down and lifted up the dressing-gown under the bed, there lay a sack with a million of gulden, an almost endless number—the bed was a large one—and he became one of the richest men in the place.

And he lived happily all the years of his life.

Only, his wife was continually bringing up against him: "Lord of the World, how could a man have such a heart of stone, as to sit a whole summer day and not say a word, not a word, not to his own wife, not one single word! And there was I" (she remembers) "crying over my prayer as I said God of Abraham—and crying so—for there wasn't a dreier left in the house."

Then he consoles her, and says with a smile:

"Who knows? Perhaps it was all thanks to your 'God of Abraham' that it went off so well."

You ask how it is that I remained a Jew? Whose merit it is?

Not through my own merits nor those of my ancestors. I was a six-year-old Cheder boy, my father a countryman outside Wilna, a householder in a small way.

No, I remained a Jew thanks to the Schpol Grandfather.

How do I come to mention the Schpol Grandfather? What has the Schpol Grandfather to do with it, you ask?

The Schpol Grandfather was no Schpol Grandfather then. He was a young man, suffering exile from home and kindred, wandering with a troop of mendicants from congregation to congregation, from friendly inn to friendly inn, in all respects one of them. What difference his heart may have shown, who knows? And after these journeyman years, the time of revelation had not come even yet. He presented himself to the Rabbinical Board in Wilna, took out a certificate, and became a Shochet in a village. He roamed no more, but remained in the neighborhood of Wilna. The Misnagdim, however, have a wonderful flair, and they suspected something, began to worry and calumniate him, and finally they denounced him to the Rabbinical authorities as a transgressor of the Law, of the whole Law! What Misnagdim are capable of, to be sure!

As I said, I was then six years old. He used to come to us to slaughter small cattle, or just to spend the night, and I was very fond of him. Whom else, except my father and mother, should I have loved? I had a teacher, a passionate man, a destroyer of souls, and this other was a kind and genial creature, who made you feel happy if he only looked at you. The calumnies did their work, and they took away his certificate. My teacher must have had a hand in it, because he heard of it before anyone, and the next time the Shochet came, he exclaimed "Apostate!" took him by the scruff of his coat, and bundled him out of the house. It cut me to the heart like a knife, only I was frightened to death of the teacher, and never stirred. But a little later, when the teacher was looking away, I escaped and began to run after the Shochet across the road, which, not far from the house, lost itself in a wood that stretched all the way to Wilna. What exactly I proposed to do to help him, I don't know, but something drove me after the poor Shochet. I wanted to say good-by to him, to have one more look into his nice, kindly eyes.

But I ran and ran, and hurt my feet against the stones in the road, and saw no one. I went to the right, down into the wood, thinking I would rest a little on the soft earth of the wood. I was about to sit down, when I heard a voice (it sounded like his voice) farther on in the wood, half speaking and half singing. I went softly towards the voice, and saw him some way off, where he stood swaying to and fro under a tree. I went up to him—he was reciting the Song of Songs. I look closer and see that the tree under which he stands is different from the other trees. The others are still bare of leaves, and this one is green and in full leaf, it shines like the sun, and stretches its flowery branches over the Shochet's head like a tent. And a quantity of birds hop among the twigs and join in singing the Song of Songs. I am so astonished that I stand there with open mouth and eyes, rooted like the trees.

He ends his chant, the tree is extinguished, the little birds are silent, and he turns to me, and says affectionately:

"Listen, Yüdele,"—Yüdel is my name—"I have a request to make of you."

"Really?" I answer joyfully, and I suppose he wishes me to bring him out some food, and I am ready to run and bring him our whole Sabbath dinner, when he says to me:

"Listen, keep what you saw to yourself."

This sobers me, and I promise seriously and faithfully to hold my tongue.

"Listen again. You are going far away, very far away, and the road is a long road."

I wonder, however should I come to travel so far? And he goes on to say:

"They will knock the Rebbe's Torah out of your head, and you will forget Father and Mother, but see you keep to your name! You are called Yüdel—remain a Jew!"

I am frightened, but cry out from the bottom of my heart:

"Surely! As surely may I live!"

Then, because my own idea clung to me, I added:

"Don't you want something to eat?"

And before I finished speaking, he had vanished.

The second week after they fell upon us and led me away as a Cantonist, to be brought up among the Gentiles and turned into a soldier.

Time passed, and I forgot everything, as he had foretold. They knocked it all out of my head.

I served far away, deep in Russia, among snows and terrific frosts, and never set eyes on a Jew. There may have been hidden Jews about, but I knew nothing of them, I knew nothing of Sabbath and festival, nothing of any fast. I forgot everything.

But I held fast to my name!

I did not change my coin.

The more I forgot, the more I was inclined to be quit of my torments and trials—to make an end of them by agreeing to a Christian name, but whenever the bad thought came into my head, he appeared before me, the same Shochet, and I heard his voice say to me, "Keep your name, remain a Jew!"

And I knew for certain that it was no empty dream, because every time I saw him older and older, his beard and earlocks greyer, his face paler. Only his eyes remained the same kind eyes, and his voice, which sounded like a violin, never altered.

Once they flogged me, and he stood by and wiped the cold sweat off my forehead, and stroked my face, and said softly: "Don't cry out! We ought to suffer! Remain a Jew," and I bore it without a cry, without a moan, as though they had been flogging not-me.

Once, during the last year, I had to go as a sentry to a public house behind the town. It was evening, and there was a snow-storm. The wind lifted patches of snow, and ground them to needles, rubbed them to dust, and this snow-dust and these snow-needles were whirled through the air, flew into one's face and pricked—you couldn't keep an eye open, you couldn't draw your breath! Suddenly I saw some people walking past me, not far away, and one of them said in Yiddish, "This is the first night of Passover." Whether it was a voice from God, or whether some people really passed me, to this day I don't know, but the words fell upon my heart like lead, and I had hardly reached the tavern and begun to walk up and down, when a longing came over me, a sort of heartache, that is not to be described. I wanted to recite the Haggadah, and not a word of it could I recall! Not even the Four Questions I used to ask my father. I felt it all lay somewhere deep down in my heart. I used to know so much of it, when I was only six years old. I felt, if only I could have recalled one simple word, the rest would have followed and risen out of my memory one after the other, like sleepy birds from beneath the snow. But that one first word is just what I cannot remember! Lord of the Universe, I cried fervently, one word, only one word! As it seems, I made my prayer in a happy hour, for "we were slaves" came into my head just as if it had been thrown down from Heaven. I was overjoyed! I was so full of joy that I felt it brimming over. And then the rest all came back to me, and as I paced up and down on my watch, with my musket on my shoulder, I recited and sang the Haggadah to the snowy world around. I drew it out of me, word after word, like a chain of golden links, like a string of pearls. O, but you won't understand, you couldn't understand, unless you had been taken away there, too!

The wind, meanwhile, had fallen, the snow-storm had come to an end, and there appeared a clear, twinkling sky, and a shining world of diamonds. It was silent all round, and ever so wide, and ever so white, with a sweet, peaceful, endless whiteness. And over this calm, wide, whiteness, there suddenly appeared something still whiter, and lighter, and brighter, wrapped in a robe and a prayer-scarf, the prayer-scarf over its shoulders, and over the prayer-scarf, in front, a silvery white beard; and above the beard, two shining eyes, and above them, a sparkling crown, a cap with gold and silver ornaments. And it came nearer and nearer, and went past me, but as it passed me it said:

"It is well!"

It sounded like a violin, and then the figure vanished.

But it was the same eyes, the same voice.

I took Schpol on my way home, and went to see the Old Man, for the Rebbe of Schpol was called by the people Der Alter, the "Schpol Grandfather."

And I recognized him again, and he recognized me!

"Drunk all the year round, sober at Purim," is a Jewish proverb, and people ought to know whence it comes.

In the days of the famous scholar, Reb Chayyim Vital, there lived in Safed, in Palestine, a young man who (not of us be it spoken!) had not been married a year before he became a widower. God's ways are not to be understood. Such things will happen. But the young man was of the opinion that the world, in as far as he was concerned, had come to an end; that, as there is one sun in heaven, so his wife had been the one woman in the world. So he went and sold all the merchandise in his little shop and all the furniture of his room, and gave the proceeds to the head of the Safed Academy, the Rosh ha-Yeshiveh, on condition that he should be taken into the Yeshiveh and fed with the other scholars, and that he should have a room to himself, where he might sit and learn Torah.

The Rosh ha-Yeshiveh took the money for the Academy, and they partitioned off a little room for the young man with some boards, in a corner of the attic of the house-of-study. They carried in a sack with straw, and vessels for washing, and the young man sat himself down to the Talmud. Except on Sabbaths and holidays, when the householders invited him to dinner, he never set eyes on a living creature. Food sufficient for the day, and a clean shirt in honor of Sabbaths and festivals, were carried up to him by the beadle, and whenever he heard steps on the stair, he used to turn away, and stand with his face to the wall, till whoever it was had gone out again and shut the door.

In a word, he became a Porush, for he lived separate from the world.

At first people thought he wouldn't persevere long, because he was a lively youth by nature; but as week after week went by, and the Porush sat and studied, and the tearful voice in which he intoned the Gemoreh was heard in the street half through the night, or else he was seen at the attic window, his pale face raised towards the sky, then they began to believe in him, and they hoped he might in time become a mighty man in Israel, and perhaps even a wonderworker. They said so to the Rebbe, Chayyim Vital, but he listened, shook his head, and replied, "God grant it may last."

Meantime a little "wonder" really happened. The beadle's little daughter, who used sometimes to carry up the Porush's food for her father, took it into her head that she must have one look at the Porush. What does she? Takes off her shoes and stockings, and carries the food to him barefoot, so noiselessly that she heard her own heart beat. But the beating of her heart frightened her so much that she fell down half the stairs, and was laid up for more than a month in consequence. In her fever she told the whole story, and people began to believe in the Porush more firmly than ever and to wait with increasing impatience till he should become famous.

They described the occurrence to Reb Chayyim Vital, and again he shook his head, and even sighed, and answered, "God grant he may be victorious!" And when they pressed him for an explanation of these words, Reb Chayyim answered, that as the Porush had left the world, not so much for the sake of Heaven as on account of his grief for his wife, it was to be feared that he would be sorely beset and tempted by the "Other Side," and God grant he might not stumble and fall.

And Reb Chayyim Vital never spoke without good reason!

One day the Porush was sitting deep in a book, when he heard something tapping at the door, and fear came over him. But as the tapping went on, he rose, forgetting to close his book, went and opened the door—and in walks a turkey. He lets it in, for it occurs to him that it would be nice to have a living thing in the room. The turkey walks past him, and goes and settles down quietly in a corner. And the Porush wonders what this may mean, and sits down again to his book. Sitting there, he remembers that it is going on for Purim. Has someone sent him a turkey out of regard for his study of the Torah? What shall he do with the turkey? Should anyone, he reflects, ask him to dinner, supposing it were to be a poor man, he would send him the turkey on the eve of Purim, and then he would satisfy himself with it also. He has not once tasted fowl-meat since he lost his wife. Thinking thus, he smacked his lips, and his mouth watered. He threw a glance at the turkey, and saw it looking at him in a friendly way, as though it had quite understood his intention, and was very glad to think it should have the honor of being eaten by a Porush. He could not restrain himself, but was continually lifting his eyes from his book to look at the turkey, till at last he began to fancy the turkey was smiling at him. This startled him a little, but all the same it made him happy to be smiled at by a living creature.

The same thing happened at Minchah and Maariv. In the middle of the Eighteen Benedictions, he could not for the life of him help looking round every minute at the turkey, who continued to smile and smile. Suddenly it seemed to him, he knew that smile well—the Almighty, who had taken back his wife, had now sent him her smile to comfort him in his loneliness, and he began to love the turkey. He thought how much better it would be, if a rich man were to invite him at Purim, so that the turkey might live.

And he thought it in a propitious moment, as we shall presently see, but meantime they brought him, as usual, a platter of groats with a piece of bread, and he washed his hands, and prepared to eat.

No sooner, however, had he taken the bread into his hand, and was about to bite into it, than the turkey moved out of its corner, and began peck, peck, peck, towards the bread, by way of asking for some, and as though to say it was hungry, too, and came and stood before him near the table. The Porush thought, "He'd better have some, I don't want to be unkind to him, to tease him," and he took the bread and the platter of porridge, and set it down on the floor before the turkey, who pecked and supped away to its heart's content.

Next day the Porush went over to the Rosh ha-Yeshiveh, and told him how he had come to have a fellow-lodger; he used always to leave some porridge over, and to-day he didn't seem to have had enough. The Rosh ha-Yeshiveh saw a hungry face before him. He said he would tell this to the Rebbe, Chayyim Vital, so that he might pray, and the evil spirit, if such indeed it was, might depart. Meantime he would give orders for two pieces of bread and two plates of porridge to be taken up to the attic, so that there should be enough for both, the Porush and the turkey. Reb Chayyim Vital, however, to whom the story was told in the name of the Rosh ha-Yeshiveh, shook his head, and declared with a deep sigh that this was only the beginning!

Meanwhile the Porush received a double portion and was satisfied, and the turkey was satisfied, too. The turkey even grew fat. And in a couple of weeks or so the Porush had become so much attached to the turkey that he prayed every day to be invited for Purim by a rich man, so that he might not be tempted to destroy it.

And, as we intimated, that temptation, anyhow, was spared him, for he was invited to dinner by one of the principal householders in the place, and there was not only turkey, but every kind of tasty dish, and wine fit for a king. And the best Purim-players came to entertain the rich man, his family, and the guests who had come to him after their feast at home. And our Porush gave himself up to enjoyment, and ate and drank. Perhaps he even drank rather more than he ate, for the wine was sweet and grateful to the taste, and the warmth of it made its way into every limb.

Then suddenly a change came over him.

The Ahasuerus-Esther play had begun. Vashti will not do the king's pleasure and come in to the banquet as God made her. Esther soon finds favor in her stead, she is given over to Hegai, the keeper of the women, to be purified, six months with oil of myrrh and six months with other sweet perfumes. And our Porush grew hot all over, and it was dark before his eyes; then red streaks flew across his field of vision, like tongues of fire, and he was overcome by a strange, wild longing to be back at home, in the attic of the house-of-study—a longing for his own little room, his quiet corner, a longing for the turkey, and he couldn't bear it, and even before they had said grace he jumped up and ran away home.

He enters his room, looks into the corner habitually occupied by the turkey, and stands amazed—the turkey has turned into a woman, a most beautiful woman, such as the world never saw, and he begins to tremble all over. And she comes up to him, and takes him around the neck with her warm, white, naked arms, and the Porush trembles more and more, and begs, "Not here, not here! It is a holy place, there are holy books lying about." Then she whispers into his ear that she is the Queen of Sheba, that she lives not far from the house-of-study, by the river, among the tall reeds, in a palace of crystal, given her by King Solomon. And she draws him along, she wants him to go with her to her palace.

And he hesitates and resists—and he goes.

Next day, there was no turkey, and no Porush, either!

They went to Reb Chayyim Vital, who told them to look for him along the bank of the river, and they found him in a swamp among the tall reeds, more dead than alive.

They rescued him and brought him round, but from that day he took to drink.

And Reb Chayyim Vital said, it all came from his great longing for the Queen of Sheba, that when he drank, he saw her; and they were to let him drink, only not at Purim, because at that time she would have great power over him.

Hence the proverb, "Drunk all the year round, sober at Purim."

Born, 1859, in Uman, Government of Kieff, Little Russia; education Hasidic; entered business in 1878; wrote first sketch, A Roman ohn Liebe, in 1882; contributor to Zedernbaum's Jüdisches Volksblatt, 1884-1887; founded, in 1888, and edited Der Hausfreund, at Warsaw; editor of Warsaw daily papers, Unser Leben, and (at present, 1912) Dos neie Leben; writer of novels, historical romances, and sketches in Yiddish; contributor to numerous periodicals; compiled a volume of more than two thousand Jewish proverbs.

I was invited to a wedding.

Not a wedding at which ladies wore low dress, and scattered powder as they walked, and the men were in frock-coats and white gloves, and had waxed moustaches.

Not a wedding where you ate of dishes with outlandish names, according to a printed card, and drank wine dating, according to the label, from the reign of King Sobieski, out of bottles dingy with the dust of yesterday.

No, but a Jewish wedding, where the men, women, and girls wore the Sabbath and holiday garments in which they went to Shool; a wedding where you whet your appetite with sweet-cakes and apple-tart, and sit down to Sabbath fish, with fresh rolls, golden soup, stuffed fowl, and roast duck, and the wine is in large, clear, white bottles; a wedding with a calling to the Reading of the Torah of the bridegroom, a party on the Sabbath preceding the wedding, a good-night-play performed by the musicians, and a bridegroom's-dinner in his native town, with a table spread for the poor.

Reb Yitzchok-Aizik Berkover had made a feast for the poor at the wedding of each of his children, and now, on the occasion of the marriage of his youngest daughter, he had invited all the poor of the little town Lipovietz to his village home, where he had spent all his life.

It is the day of the ceremony under the canopy, two o'clock in the afternoon, and the poor, sent for early in the morning by a messenger, with the three great wagons, are not there. Lipovietz is not more than five versts away—what can have happened? The parents of the bridal couple and the assembled guests wait to proceed with the ceremony.

At last the messenger comes riding on a horse unharnessed from his vehicle, but no poor.

"Why have you come back alone?" demands Reb Yitzchok-Aizik.

"They won't come!" replies the messenger.

"What do you mean by 'they won't come'?" asked everyone in surprise.

"They say that unless they are given a kerbel apiece, they won't come to the wedding."

All laugh, and the messenger goes on:

"There was a wedding with a dinner to the poor in Lipovietz to-day, too, and they have eaten and drunk all they can, and now they've gone on strike, and declare that unless they are promised a kerbel a head, they won't move from the spot. The strike leaders are the Crooked Man with two crutches, Mekabbel the Long, Feitel the Stammerer, and Yainkel Fonfatch; the others would perhaps have come, but these won't let them. So I didn't know what to do. I argued a whole hour, and got nothing by it, so then I unharnessed a horse, and came at full speed to know what was to be done."

We of the company could not stop laughing, but Reb Yitzchok-Aizik was very angry.

"Well, and you bargained with them? Won't they come for less?" he asked the messenger.

"Yes, I bargained, and they won't take a kopek less."

"Have their prices gone up so high as all that?" exclaimed Reb Yitzchok-Aizik, with a satirical laugh. "Why did you leave the wagons? We shall do without the tramps, that's all!"

"How could I tell? I didn't know what to do. I was afraid you would be displeased. Now I'll go and fetch the wagons back."

"Wait! Don't be in such a hurry, take time!"

Reb Yitzchok-Aizik began consulting with the company and with himself.

"What an idea! Who ever heard of such a thing? Poor people telling me what to do, haggling with me over my wanting to give them a good dinner and a nice present each, and saying they must be paid in rubles, otherwise it's no bargain, ha! ha! For two guldens each it's not worth their while? It cost them too much to stock the ware? Thirty kopeks wouldn't pay them? I like their impertinence! Mischief take them, I shall do without them!

"Let the musicians play! Where is the beadle? They can begin putting the veil on the bride."

But directly afterwards he waved his hands.

"Wait a little longer. It is still early. Why should it happen to me, why should my pleasure be spoilt? Now I've got to marry my youngest daughter without a dinner to the poor! I would have given them half a ruble each, it's not the money I mind, but fancy bargaining with me! Well, there, I have done my part, and if they won't come, I'm sure they're not wanted; afterwards they'll be sorry; they don't get a wedding like this every day. We shall do without them."

"Well, can they put the veil on the bride?" the beadle came and inquired.

"Yes, they can.... No, tell them to wait a little longer!"

Nearly all the guests, who were tired of waiting, cried out that the tramps could very well be missed.

Reb Yitzchok-Aizik's face suddenly assumed another expression, the anger vanished, and he turned to me and a couple, of other friends, and asked if we would drive to the town, and parley with the revolted almsgatherers.

"He has no brains, one can't depend on him," he said, referring to the messenger.

A horse was harnessed to a conveyance, and we drove off, followed by the mounted messenger.

"A revolt—a strike of almsgatherers, how do you like that?" we asked one another all the way. We had heard of workmen striking, refusing to work except for a higher wage, and so forth, but a strike of paupers—paupers insisting on larger alms as pay for eating a free dinner, such a thing had never been known.

In twenty minutes time we drove into Lipovietz.

In the market-place, in the centre of the town, stood the three great peasant wagons, furnished with fresh straw. The small horses were standing unharnessed, eating out of their nose-bags; round the wagons were a hundred poor folk, some dumb, others lame, the greater part blind, and half the town urchins with as many men.

All of them were shouting and making a commotion.

The Crooked One sat on a wagon, and banged it with his crutches; Long Mekabbel, with a red plaster on his neck, stood beside him.

These two leaders of the revolt were addressing the people, the meek of the earth.

"Ha, ha!" exclaimed Long Mekabbel, as he caught sight of us and the messenger, "they have come to beg our acceptance!"

"To beg our acceptance!" shouted the Crooked One, and banged his crutch.

"Why won't you come to the wedding, to the dinner?" we inquired. "Everyone will be given alms."

"How much?" they asked all together.

"We don't know, but you will take what they offer."

"Will they give it us in kerblech? Because, if not, we don't go."

"There will be a hole in the sky if you don't go," cried some of the urchins present.

The almsgatherers threw themselves on the urchins with their sticks, and there was a bit of a row.

Mekabbel the Long, standing on the cart, drew himself to his full height, and began to shout:

"Hush, hush, hush! Quiet, you crazy cripples! One can't hear oneself speak! Let us hear what those have to say who are worth listening to!" and he turned to us with the words:

"You must know, dear Jews, that unless they distribute kerblech among us, we shall not budge. Never you fear! Reb Yitzchok-Aizik won't marry his youngest daughter without us, and where is he to get others of us now? To send to Lunetz would cost him more in conveyances, and he would have to put off the marriage."

"What do they suppose? That because we are poor people they can do what they please with us?" and a new striker hitched himself up by the wheel, blind of one eye, with a tied-up jaw. "No one can oblige us to go, even the chief of police and the governor cannot force us—either it's kerblech, or we stay where we are."

"K-ke-kkerb-kkerb-lech!!" came from Feitel the Stammerer.

"Nienblech!" put in Yainkel Fonfatch, speaking through his small nose. "No, more!" called out a couple of merry paupers.

"Kerblech, kerblech!" shouted the rest in concert.

And through their shouting and their speeches sounded such a note of anger and of triumph, it seemed as though they were pouring out all the bitterness of soul collected in the course of their sad and luckless lives.

They had always kept silence, had had to keep silence, had to swallow the insults offered them along with the farthings, and the dry bread, and the scraped bones, and this was the first time they had been able to retaliate, the first time they had known how it felt to be entreated by the fortunate in all things, and they were determined to use their opportunity of asserting themselves to the full, to take their revenge. In the word kerblech lay the whole sting of their resentment.

And while we talked and reasoned with them, came a second messenger from Reb Yitzchok-Aizik, to say that the paupers were to come at once, and they would be given a ruble each.

There was a great noise and scrambling, the three wagons filled with almsgatherers, one crying out, "O my bad hand!" another, "O my foot!" and a third, "O my poor bones!" The merry ones made antics, and sang in their places, while the horses were put in, and the procession started at a cheerful trot. The urchins gave a great hurrah, and threw little stones after it, with squeals and whistles.

The poor folks must have fancied they were being pelted with flowers and sent off with songs, they looked so happy in the consciousness of their victory.

For the first and perhaps the last time in their lives, they had spoken out, and got their own way.

After the "canopy" and the chicken soup, that is, at "supper," tables were spread for the friends of the family and separate ones for the almsgatherers.

Reb Yitzchok-Aizik and the members of his own household served the poor with their own hands, pressing them to eat and drink.

"Le-Chayyim to you, Reb Yitzchok-Aizik! May you have pleasure in your children, and be a great man, a great rich man!" desired the poor.

"Long life, long life to all of you, brethren! Drink in health, God help All-Israel, and you among them!" replied Reb Yitzchok-Aizik.

After supper the band played, and the almsgatherers, with Reb Yitzchok-Aizik, danced merrily in a ring round the bridegroom.

Then who was so happy as Reb Yitzchok-Aizik? He danced in the ring, the silk skirts of his long coat flapped and flew like eagles' wings, tears of joy fell from his shining eyes, and his spirits rose to the seventh heaven.

He laughed and cried like a child, and exchanged embraces with the almsgatherers.

"Brothers!" he exclaimed as he danced, "let us be merry, let us be Jews! Musicians, give us something cheerful—something gayer, livelier, louder!"

"This is what you call a Jewish wedding!"

"This is how a Jew makes merry!"

So the guests and the almsgatherers clapped their hands in time to the music.

Yes, dear readers, it was what I call a Jewish Wedding!

They handed Gittel a letter that had come by post, she put on her spectacles, sat down by the window, and began to read.

She read, and her face began to shine, and the wrinkled skin took on a little color. It was plain that what she read delighted her beyond measure, she devoured the words, caught her breath, and wept aloud in the fulness of her joy.

"At last, at last! Blessed be His dear Name, whom I am not worthy to mention! I do not know, Gottinyu, how to thank Thee for the mercy Thou hast shown me. Beile! Where is Beile? Where is Yossel? Children! Come, make haste and wish me joy, a great joy has befallen us! Send for Avremele, tell him to come with Zlatke and all the children."

Thus Gittel, while she read the letter, never ceased calling every one into the room, never ceased reading and calling, calling and reading, and devouring the words as she read.

Every soul who happened to be at home came running.

"Good luck to you! Good luck to us all! Moishehle has become engaged in Warsaw, and invites us all to the wedding," Gittel explained. "There, read the letter, Lord of the World, may it be in a propitious hour, may we all have comfort in one another, may we hear nothing but good news of one another and of All-Israel! Read it, read it, children! He writes that he has a very beautiful bride, well-favored, with a large dowry. Lord of the World, I am not worthy of the mercy Thou hast shown me!" repeated Gittel over and over, as she paced the room with uplifted hands, while her daughter Beile took up the letter in her turn. The children and everyone in the house, including the maid from the kitchen, with rolled-up sleeves and wet hands, encircled Beile as she read aloud.

"Read louder, Beiletshke, so that I can hear, so that we can all hear," begged Gittel, and there were tears of happiness in her eyes.

The children jumped for joy to see Grandmother so happy. The word "wedding," which Beile read out of the letter, contained a promise of all delightful things: musicians, pancakes, new frocks and suits, and they could not keep themselves from dancing. The maid, too, was heartily pleased, she kept on singing out, "Oi, what a bride, beautiful as gold!" and did not know what to be doing next—should she go and finish cooking the dinner, or should she pull down her sleeves and make holiday?

The hiss of a pot boiling over in the kitchen interrupted the letter-reading, and she was requested to go and attend to it forthwith.

"The bride sends us a separate greeting, long life to her, may she live when my bones are dust. Let us go to the provisor, he shall read it; it is written in French."

The provisor, the apothecary's foreman, who lived in the same house, said the bride's letter was not written in French, but in Polish, that she called Gittel her second mother, that she loved her son Moses as her life, that he was her world, that she held herself to be the most fortunate of girls, since God had given her Moses, that Gittel (once more!) was her second mother, and she felt like a dutiful daughter towards her, and hoped that Gittel would love her as her own child.

The bride declared further that she kissed her new sister, Beile, a thousand times, together with Zlatke and their husbands and children, and she signed herself "Your forever devoted and loving daughter Regina."

An hour later all Gittel's children were assembled round her, her eldest son Avremel with his wife, Zlatke and her little ones, Beile's husband, and her son-in-law Yossel. All read the letter with eager curiosity, brandy and spice-cakes were placed on the table, wine was sent for, they drank healths, wished each other joy, and began to talk of going to the wedding.

Gittel, very tired with all she had gone through this day, went to lie down for a while to rest her head, which was all in a whirl, but the others remained sitting at the table, and never stopped talking of Moisheh.

"I can imagine the sort of engagement Moisheh has made, begging his pardon," remarked the daughter-in-law, and wiped her pale lips.

"I should think so, a man who's been a bachelor up to thirty! It's easy to fancy the sort of bride, and the sort of family she has, if they accepted Moisheh as a suitor," agreed the daughter.

"God helping, this ought to make a man of him," sighed Moisheh's elder brother, "he's cost us trouble and worry enough."

"It's your fault," Yossel told him. "If I'd been his elder brother, he would have turned out differently! I should have directed him like a father, and taken him well in hand."

"You think so, but when God wishes to punish a man through his own child going astray, nothing is of any use; these are not the old times, when young people feared a Rebbe, and respected their elders. Nowadays the world is topsyturvy, and no sooner has a boy outgrown his childhood than he does what he pleases, and parents are nowhere. What have I left undone to make something out of him, so that he should be a credit to his family? Then, he was left an orphan very early; perhaps he would have obeyed his father (may he enter a lightsome paradise!), but for a brother and his mother, he paid them as much attention as last year's snow, and, if you said anything to him, he answered rudely, and neither coaxing nor scolding was any good. Now, please God, he'll make a fresh start, and give up his antics before it's too late. His poor mother! She's had trouble enough on his account, as we all know."

Beile let fall a tear and said:

"If our father (may he be our kind advocate!) were alive, Moishehle would never have made an engagement like this. Who knows what sort of connections they will be! I can see them, begging his pardon, from here! Is he likely to have asked anyone's advice? He always had a will of his own—did what he wanted to do, never asked his mother, or his sister, or his brother, beforehand. Now he's a bridegroom at thirty if he's a day, and we are all asked to the wedding, are we really? And we shall soon all be running to see the fine sight, such as never was seen before. We are no such fools! He thinks himself the clever one now! So he wants us to be at the wedding? Only says it out of politeness."

"We must go, all the same," said Avremel.

"Go and welcome, if you want to—you won't catch me there," answered his sister.

There was a deal more discussion and disputing about not going to the wedding, and only congratulating by telegram, for good manners' sake. Since he had asked no one's advice, and engaged himself without them, let him get married without them, too!

Gittel, up in her bedroom, could not so soon compose herself after the events of the day. What she had experienced was no trifle. Moishehle engaged to be married! She had been through so much on his account in the course of her life, she had loved him, her youngest born, so dearly! He was such a beautiful child that the light of his countenance dazzled you, and bright as the day, so that people opened ears and mouth to hear him talk, and God and men alike envied her the possession of such a boy.

"I counted on making a match for him, as I did with Avremel before him. He was offered the best connections, with the families of the greatest Rabbis. But, no—no—he wanted to go on studying. 'Study here, study there,' said I, 'sixteen years old and a bachelor! If you want to study, can't you study at your father-in-law's, eating Köst? There are books in plenty, thank Heaven, of your father's.' No, no, he wanted to go and study elsewhere, asked nobody's advice, and made off, and for two months I never had a line. I nearly went out of my mind. Then, suddenly, there came a letter, begging my pardon for not having said good-by, and would I forgive him, and send him some money, because he had nothing to eat. It tore my heart to think my Moishehle, who used to make me happy whenever he enjoyed a meal, should hunger. I sent him some money, I went on sending him money for three years, after that he stopped asking for it. I begged him to come home, he made no reply. 'I don't wish to quarrel with Avremel, my sister, and her husband,' he wrote later, 'we cannot live together in peace.' Why? I don't know! Then, for a time, he left off writing altogether, and the messages we got from him sounded very sad. Now he was in Kieff, now in Odessa, now in Charkoff, and they told us he was living like any Gentile, had not the look of a Jew at all. Some said he was living with a Gentile woman, a countess, and would never marry in his life."

Five years ago he had suddenly appeared at home, "to see his mother," as he said. Gittel did not recognize him, he was so changed. The rest found him quite the stranger: he had a "goyish" shaven face, with a twisted moustache, and was got up like a rich Gentile, with a purse full of bank-notes. His family were ashamed to walk abroad with him, Gittel never ceased weeping and imploring him to give up the countess, remain a Jew, stay with his mother, and she, with God's help, would make an excellent match for him, if he would only alter his appearance and ways just a little. Moishehle solemnly assured his mother that he was a Jew, that there was no countess, but that he wouldn't remain at home for a million rubles, first, because he had business elsewhere, and secondly, he had no fancy for his native town, there was nothing there for him to do, and to dispute with his brother and sister about religious piety was not worth his while.

So Moishehle departed, and Gittel wept, wondering why he was different from the other children, seeing they all had the same mother, and she had lived and suffered for all alike. Why would he not stay with her at home? What would he have wanted for there? God be praised, not to sin with her tongue, thanks to God first, and then to him (a lightsome paradise be his!), they were provided for, with a house and a few thousand rubles, all that was necessary for their comfort, and a little ready money besides. The house alone, not to sin with her tongue, would bring in enough to make a living. Other people envy us, but it doesn't happen to please him, and he goes wandering about the world—without a wife and without a home—a man twenty and odd years old, and without a home!

The rest of the family were secretly well content to be free of such a poor creature—"the further off, the better—the shame is less."

A letter from him came very seldom after this, and for the last two years he had dropped out altogether. Nobody was surprised, for everyone was convinced that Moisheh would never come to anything. Some told that he was in prison, others knew that he had gone abroad and was being pursued, others, that he had hung himself because he was tired of life, and that before his death he had repented of all his sins, only it was too late.

His relations heard all these reports, and were careful to keep them from his mother, because they were not sure that the bad news was true.

Gittel bore the pain at her heart in silence, weeping at times over her Moishehle, who had got into bad ways—and now, suddenly, this precious letter with its precious news: Her Moishehle is about to marry, and invites them to the wedding!

Thus Gittel, lying in bed in her own room, recalled everything she had suffered through her undutiful son, only now—now everything was forgotten and forgiven, and her mother's heart was full of love for her Moishehle, just as in the days when he toddled about at her apron, and pleased his mother and everyone else.

All her thoughts were now taken up with getting ready to attend the wedding; the time was so short—there were only three weeks left. When her other children were married, Gittel began her preparations three months ahead, and now there were only three weeks.

Next day she took out her watered silk dress, with the green satin flowers, and hung it up to air, examined it, lest there should be a hook missing. After that she polished her long ear-rings with chalk, her pearls, her rings, and all her other ornaments, and bought a new yellow silk kerchief for her head, with a large flowery pattern in a lighter shade.

A week before the journey to Warsaw they baked spice-cakes, pancakes, and almond-rolls to take with her, "from the bridegroom's side," and ordered a wig for the bride. When her eldest son was married, Gittel had also given the bride silver candlesticks for Friday evenings, and presented her with a wig for the Veiling Ceremony.

And before she left, Gittel went to her husband's grave, and asked him to be present at the wedding as a good advocate for the newly-married pair.

Gittel started for Warsaw in grand style, and cheerful and happy, as befits a mother going to the wedding of her favorite son. All those who accompanied her to the station declared that she looked younger and prettier by twenty years, and made a beautiful bridegroom's mother.

Besides wedding presents for the bride, Gittel took with her money for wedding expenses, so that she might play her part with becoming lavishness, and people should not think her Moishehle came, bless and preserve us, of a low-born family—to show that he was none so forlorn but he had, God be praised and may it be for a hundred and twenty years to come! a mother, and a sister, and brothers, and came of a well-to-do family. She would show them that she could be as fine a bridegroom's mother as anyone, even, thank God, in Warsaw. Moishehle was her last child, and she grudged him nothing. Were he (may he be a good intercessor!) alive, he would certainly have graced the wedding better, and spent more money, but she would spare nothing to make a good figure on the occasion. She would treat every connection of the bride to a special dance-tune, give the musicians a whole five-ruble-piece for their performance of the Vivat, and two dreierlech for the Kosher-Tanz, beside something for the Rav, the cantor, and the beadle, and alms for the poor—what should she save for? She has no more children to marry off—blessed be His dear Name, who had granted her life to see her Moishehle's wedding!

Thus happily did Gittel start for Warsaw.

One carriage after another drove up to the wedding-reception room in Dluga Street, Warsaw, ladies and their daughters, all in evening dress, and smartly attired gentlemen, alighted and went in.

The room was full, the band played, ladies and gentlemen were dancing, and those who were not, talked of the bride and bridegroom, and said how fortunate they considered Regina, to have secured such a presentable young man, lively, educated, and intelligent, with quite a fortune, which he had made himself, and a good business. Ten thousand rubles dowry with the perfection of a husband was a rare thing nowadays, when a poor professional man, a little doctor without practice, asked fifteen thousand. It was true, they said, that Regina was a pretty girl and a credit to her parents, but how many pretty, bright girls had more money than Regina, and sat waiting?

It was above all the mothers of the young ladies present who talked low in this way among themselves.

The bride sat on a chair at the end of the room, ladies and young girls on either side of her; Gittel, the bridegroom's mother in her watered silk dress, with the large green satin flowers, was seated between two ladies with dresses cut so low that Gittel could not bear to look at them—women with husbands and children daring to show themselves like that at a wedding! Then she could not endure the odor of their bare skin, the powder, pomade, and perfumes with which they were smeared, sprinkled, and wetted, even to their hair. All these strange smells tickled Gittel's nose, and went to her head like a fume. She sat between the two ladies, feeling cramped and shut in, unable to stir, and would gladly have gone away. Only whither? Where should she, the bridegroom's mother, be sitting, if not near the bride, at the upper end of the room? But all the ladies sitting there are half-naked. Should she sit near the door? That would never do. And Gittel remained sitting, in great embarrassment, between the two women, and looked on at the reception, and saw nothing but a room full of decolletées, ladies and girls.

Gittel felt more and more uncomfortable, it made her quite faint to look at them.

"One can get over the girls, young things, because a girl has got to please, although no Jewish daughter ought to show herself to everyone like that, but what are you to do with present-day children, especially in a dissolute city like Warsaw? But young women, and women who have husbands and children, and no need, thank God, to please anyone, how are they not ashamed before God and other people and their own children, to come to a wedding half-naked, like loose girls in a public house? Jewish daughters, who ought not to be seen uncovered by the four walls of their room, to come like that to a wedding! To a Jewish wedding!... Tpfu, tpfu, I'd like to spit at this newfangled world, may God not punish me for these words! It is enough to make one faint to see such a display among Jews!"

After the ceremony under the canopy, which was erected in the centre of the room, the company sat down to the table, and Gittel was again seated at the top, between the two women before mentioned, whose perfumes went to her head.

She felt so queer and so ill at ease that she could not partake of the dinner, her mouth seemed locked, and the tears came in her eyes.

When they rose from table, Gittel sought out a place removed from the "upper end," and sat down in a window, but presently the bride's mother, also in decolleté, caught sight of her, and went and took her by the hand.

"Why are you sitting here, Mechuteneste? Why are you not at the top?"

"I wanted to rest myself a little."

"Oh, no, no, come and sit there," said the lady, led her away by force, and seated her between the two ladies with the perfumes.

Long, long did she sit, feeling more and more sick and dizzy. If only she could have poured out her heart to some one person, if she could have exchanged a single word with anybody during that whole evening, it would have been a relief, but there was no one to speak to. The music played, there was dancing, but Gittel could see nothing more. She felt an oppression at her heart, and became covered with perspiration, her head grew heavy, and she fell from her chair.

"The bridegroom's mother has fainted!" was the outcry through the whole room. "Water, water!"

They fetched water, discovered a doctor among the guests, and he led Gittel into another room, and soon brought her round.

The bride, the bridegroom, the bride's mother, and the two ladies ran in:

"What can have caused it? Lie down! How do you feel now? Perhaps you would like a sip of lemonade?" they all asked.

"Thank you, I want nothing, I feel better already, leave me alone for a while. I shall soon recover myself, and be all right."

So Gittel was left alone, and she breathed more easily, her head stopped aching, she felt like one let out of prison, only there was a pain at her heart. The tears which had choked her all day now began to flow, and she wept abundantly. The music never ceased playing, she heard the sound of the dancers' feet and the directions of the master of ceremonies; the floor shook, Gittel wept, and tried with all her might to keep from sobbing, so that people should not hear and come in and disturb her. She had not wept so since the death of her husband, and this was the wedding of her favorite son!

By degrees she ceased to weep altogether, dried her eyes, and sat quietly talking to herself of the many things that passed through her head.

"Better that he (may he enter a lightsome paradise!) should have died than lived to see what I have seen, and the dear delight which I have had, at the wedding of my youngest child! Better that I myself should not have lived to see his marriage canopy. Canopy, indeed! Four sticks stuck up in the middle of the room to make fun with, for people to play at being married, like monkeys! Then at table: no Seven Blessings, not a Jewish word, not a Jewish face, no Minyan to be seen, only shaven Gentiles upon Gentiles, a roomful of naked women and girls that make you sick to look at them. Moishehle had better have married a poor orphan, I shouldn't have been half so ashamed or half so unhappy."

Gittel called to mind the sort of a bridegroom's mother she had been at the marriage of her eldest son, and the satisfaction she had felt. Four hundred women had accompanied her to the Shool when Avremele was called to the Reading of the Law as a bridegroom, and they had scattered nuts, almonds, and raisins down upon him as he walked; then the party before the wedding, and the ceremony of the canopy, and the procession with the bride and bridegroom to the Shool, the merry home-coming, the golden soup, the bridegroom brought at supper time to the sound of music, the cantor and his choir, who sang while they sat at table, the Seven Blessings, the Vivat played for each one separately, the Kosher-Tanz, the dance round the bridegroom—and the whole time it had been Gittel here and Gittel there: "Good luck to you, Gittel, may you be happy in the young couple and in all your other children, and live to dance at the wedding of your youngest" (it was a delight and no mistake!). "Where is Gittel?" she hears them cry. "The uncle, the aunt, a cousin have paid for a dance for the Mechuteneste on the bridegroom's side! Play, musicians all!" The company make way for her, and she dances with the uncle, the aunt, and the cousin, and all the rest clap their hands. She is tired with dancing, but still they call "Gittel"! An old friend sings a merry song in her honor. "Play, musicians all!" And Gittel dances on, the company clap their hands, and wish her all that is good, and she is penetrated with genuine happiness and the joy of the occasion. Then, then, when the guests begin to depart, and the mothers of bridegroom and bride whisper together about the forthcoming Veiling Ceremony, she sees the bride in her wig, already a wife, her daughter-in-law! Her jam pancakes and almond-rolls are praised by all, and what cakes are left over from the Veiling Ceremony are either snatched one by one, or else they are seized wholesale by the young people standing round the table, so that she should not see, and they laugh and tease her. That is the way to become a mother-in-law! And here, of course, the whole of the pancakes and sweet-cakes and almond-rolls which she brought have never so much as been unpacked, and are to be thrown away or taken home again, as you please! A shame! No one came to her for cakes. The wig, too, may be thrown away or carried back—Moishehle told her it was not required, it wouldn't quite do. The bride accepted the silver candlesticks with embarrassment, as though Gittel had done something to make her feel awkward, and some girls who were standing by smiled, "Regina has been given candlesticks for the candle-blessing on Fridays—ha, ha, ha!"

The bridal couple with the girl's parents came in to ask how she felt, and interrupted the current of her thoughts.

"We shall drive home now, people are leaving," they said.

"The wedding is over," they told her, "everything in life comes to a speedy end."

Gittel remembered that when Avremel was married, the festivities had lasted a whole week, till over the second cheerful Sabbath, when the bride, the new daughter-in-law, was led to the Shool!

The day after the wedding Gittel drove home, sad, broken in spirit, as people return from the cemetery where they have buried a child, where they have laid a fragment of their own heart, of their own life, under the earth.

Driving home in the carriage, she consoled herself with this at least:

"A good thing that Beile and Zlatke, Avremel and Yossel were not there. The shame will be less, there will be less talk, nobody will know what I am suffering."

Gittel arrived the picture of gloom.

When she left for the wedding, she had looked suddenly twenty years younger, and now she looked twenty years older than before!

I was living in Mezkez at the time, and Seinwill Bookbinder lived there too.

But Heaven only knows where he is now! Even then his continual pallor augured no long residence in Mezkez, and he was a Yadeschlever Jew with a wife and six small children, and he lived by binding books.

Who knows what has become of him! But that is not the question—I only want to prove that Seinwill was a great liar.

If he is already in the other world, may he forgive me—and not be very angry with me, if he is still living in Mezkez!

He was an orthodox and pious Jew, but when you gave him a book to bind, he never kept his word.

When he took a book and even the whole of his pay in advance, he would swear by beard and earlocks, by wife and children, and by the Messiah, that he would bring it back to you by Sabbath, but you had to be at him for weeks before the work was finished and sent in.

Once, on a certain Friday, I remembered that next day, Sabbath, I should have a few hours to myself for reading.

A fortnight before I had given Seinwill a new book to bind for me. It was just a question whether or not he would return it in time, so I set out for his home, with the intention of bringing back the book, finished or not. I had paid him his twenty kopeks in advance, so what excuses could he possibly make? Once for all, I would give him a bit of my mind, and take away the work unfinished—it will be a lesson for him for the next time!

Thus it was, walking along and deciding on what I should say to Seinwill, that I turned into the street to which I had been directed. Once in the said street, I had no need to ask questions, for I was at once shown a little, low house, roofed with mouldered slate.

I stooped a little by way of precaution, and entered Seinwill's house, which consisted of a large kitchen.

Here he lived with his wife and children, and here he worked.

In the great stove that took up one-third of the kitchen there was a cheerful crackling, as in every Jewish home on a Friday.

In the forepart of the oven, on either hand, stood a variety of pots and pipkins, and gossipped together in their several tones. An elder child stood beside them holding a wooden spoon, with which she stirred or skimmed as the case required.

Seinwill's wife, very much occupied, stood by the one four-post bed, which was spread with a clean white sheet, and on which she had laid out various kinds of cakes, of unbaked dough, in honor of Sabbath. Beside her stood a child, its little face red with crying, and hindered her in her work.

"Seinwill, take Chatzkele away! How can I get on with the cakes? Don't you know it's Friday?" she kept calling out, and Seinwill, sitting at his work beside a large table covered with books, repeated every time like an echo:

"Chatzkele, let mother alone!"

And Chatzkele, for all the notice he took, might have been as deaf as the bedpost.

The minute Seinwill saw me, he ran to meet me in a shamefaced way, like a sinner caught in the act; and before I was able to say a word, that is, tell him angrily and with decision that he must give me my book finished or not—never mind about the twenty kopeks, and so on—and thus revenge myself on him, he began to answer, and he showed me that my book was done, it was already in the press, and there only remained the lettering to be done on the back. Just a few minutes more, and he would bring it to my house.

"No, I will wait and take it myself," I said, rather vexed.

Besides, I knew that to stamp a few letters on a book-cover could not take more than a few minutes at most.

"Well, if you are so good as to wait, it will not take long. There is a fire in the oven, I have only just got to heat the screw."

And so saying, he placed a chair for me, dusted it with the flap of his coat, and I sat down to wait. Seinwill really took my book out of the press quite finished except for the lettering on the cover, and began to hurry. Now he is by the oven—from the oven to the corner—and once more to the oven and back to the corner—and so on ten times over, saying to me every time:

"There, directly, directly, in another minute," and back once more across the room.

So it went on for about ten minutes, and I began to take quite an interest in this running of his from one place to another, with empty hands, and doing nothing but repeat "Directly, directly, this minute!"

Most of all I wonder why he keeps on looking into the corner—he never takes his eyes off that corner. What is he looking for, what does he expect to see there? I watch his face growing sadder—he must be suffering from something or other—and all the while he talks to himself, "Directly, directly, in one little minute." He turns to me: "I must ask you to wait a little longer. It will be very soon now—in another minute's time. Just because we want it so badly, you'd think she'd rather burst," he said, and he went back to the corner, stooped, and looked into it.

"What are you looking for there every minute?" I ask him.

"Nothing. But directly—Take my advice: why should you sit there waiting? I will bring the book to you myself. When one wants her to, she won't!"

"All right, it's Friday, so I need not hurry. Why should you have the trouble, as I am already here?" I reply, and ask him who is the "she who won't."

"You see, my wife, who is making cakes, is kept waiting by her too, and I, with the lettering to do on the book, I also wait."

"But what are you waiting for?"

"You see, if the cakes are to take on a nice glaze while baking, they must be brushed over with a yolk."

"Well, and what has that to do with stamping the letters on the cover of the book?"

"What has that to do with it? Don't you know that the glaze-gold which is used for the letters will not stick to the cover without some white of egg?"

"Yes, I have seen them smearing the cover with white of egg before putting on the letters. Then what?"

"How 'what?' That is why we are waiting for the egg."

"So you have sent out to buy an egg?"

"No, but it will be there directly." He points out to me the corner which he has been running to look into the whole time, and there, on the ground, I see an overturned sieve, and under the sieve, a hen turning round and round and cackling.

"As if she'd rather burst!" continued Seinwill. "Just because we want it so badly, she won't lay. She lays an egg for me nearly every time, and now—just as if she'd rather burst!" he said, and began to scratch his head.

And the hen? The hen went on turning round and round like a prisoner in a dungeon, and cackled louder than ever.

To tell the truth, I had inferred at once that Seinwill was persuaded I should wait for my book till the hen had laid an egg, and as I watched Seinwill's wife, and saw with what anxiety she waited for the hen to lay, I knew that I was right, that Seinwill was indeed so persuaded, for his wife called to him:

"Ask the young man for a kopek and send the child to buy an egg in the market. The cakes are getting cold."

"The young man owes me nothing, a few weeks ago he paid me for the whole job. There is no one to borrow from, nobody will lend me anything, I owe money all around, my very hair is not my own."

When Seinwill had answered his wife, he took another peep into the corner, and said:

"She will not keep us waiting much longer now. She can't cackle forever. Another two minutes!"

But the hen went on puffing out her feathers, pecking and cackling for a good deal more than two minutes. It seemed as if she could not bear to see her master and mistress in trouble, as if she really wished to do them a kindness by laying an egg. But no egg appeared.

I lent Seinwill two or three kopeks, which he was to pay me back in work, because Seinwill has never once asked for, or accepted, charity, and the child was sent to the market.

A few minutes later, when the child had come back with an egg, Seinwill's wife had the glistening Sabbath cakes on a shovel, and was placing them gaily in the oven; my book was finished, and the unfortunate hen, released at last from her prison, the sieve, ceased to cackle and to ruffle out her plumage.

Pen name of Shalom Rabinovitz; born, 1859, in Pereyaslav, Government of Poltava, Little Russia; Government Rabbi, at twenty-one, in Lubni, near his native place; has spent the greater part of his life in Kieff; in Odessa from 1890 to 1893, and in America from 1905 to 1907; Hebrew, Russian, and Yiddish poet, novelist, humorous short story writer, critic, and playwright; prolific contributor to Hebrew and Yiddish periodicals; founder of Die jüdische Volksbibliothek; novels: Stempenyu, Yosele Solovei, etc.; collected works: first series, Alle Werk, 4 vols., Cracow, 1903-1904; second series, Neueste Werk, 8 vols., Warsaw, 1909-1911.

The clock struck thirteen!

Don't imagine I am joking, I am telling you in all seriousness what happened in Mazepevke, in our house, and I myself was there at the time.

We had a clock, a large clock, fastened to the wall, an old, old clock inherited from my grandfather, which had been left him by my great-grandfather, and so forth. Too bad, that a clock should not be alive and able to tell us something beside the time of day! What stories we might have heard as we sat with it in the room! Our clock was famous throughout the town as the best clock going—"Reb Simcheh's clock"—and people used to come and set their watches by it, because it kept more accurate time than any other. You may believe me that even Reb Lebish, the sage, a philosopher, who understood the time of sunset from the sun itself, and knew the calendar by rote, he said himself—I heard him—that our clock was—well, as compared with his watch, it wasn't worth a pinch of snuff, but as there were such things as clocks, our clock was a clock. And if Reb Lebish himself said so, you may depend upon it he was right, because every Wednesday, between Afternoon and Evening Prayer, Reb Lebish climbed busily onto the roof of the women's Shool, or onto the top of the hill beside the old house-of-study, and looked out for the minute when the sun should set, in one hand his watch, and in the other the calendar. And when the sun dropt out of sight on the further side of Mazepevke, Reb Lebish said to himself, "Got him!" and at once came away to compare his watch with the clocks. When he came in to us, he never gave us a "good evening," only glanced up at the clock on the wall, then at his watch, then at the almanac, and was gone!

But it happened one day that when Reb Lebish came in to compare our clock with the almanac, he gave a shout:

"Sim-cheh! Make haste! Where are you?"

My father came running in terror.

"Ha, what has happened, Reb Lebish?"

"Wretch, you dare to ask?" and Reb Lebish held his watch under my father's nose, pointed at our clock, and shouted again, like a man with a trodden toe:

"Sim-cheh! Why don't you speak? It is a minute and a half ahead of the time! Throw it away!"

My father was vexed. What did Reb Lebish mean by telling him to throw away his clock?

"Who is to prove," said he, "that my clock is a minute and a half fast? Perhaps it is the other way about, and your watch is a minute and a half slow? Who is to tell?"

Reb Lebish stared at him as though he had said that it was possible to have three days of New Moon, or that the Seventeenth of Tammuz might possibly fall on the Eve of Passover, or made some other such wild remark, enough, if one really took it in, to give one an apoplectic fit. Reb Lebish said never a word, he gave a deep sigh, turned away without wishing us "good evening," slammed the door, and was gone. But no one minded much, because the whole town knew Reb Lebish for a person who was never satisfied with anything: he would tell you of the best cantor that he was a dummy, a log; of the cleverest man, that he was a lumbering animal; of the most appropriate match, that it was as crooked as an oven rake; and of the most apt simile, that it was as applicable as a pea to the wall. Such a man was Reb Lebish.

But let me return to our clock. I tell you, that was a clock! You could hear it strike three rooms away: Bom! bom! bom! Half the town went by it, to recite the Midnight Prayers, to get up early for Seliches during the week before New Year and on the ten Solemn Days, to bake the Sabbath loaves on Fridays, to bless the candles on Friday evening. They lighted the fire by it on Saturday evening, they salted the meat, and so all the other things pertaining to Judaism. In fact, our clock was the town clock. The poor thing served us faithfully, and never tried stopping even for a time, never once in its life had it to be set to rights by a clockmaker. My father kept it in order himself, he had an inborn talent for clock work. Every year on the Eve of Passover, he deliberately took it down from the wall, dusted the wheels with a feather brush, removed from its inward part a collection of spider webs, desiccated flies, which the spiders had lured in there to their destruction, and heaps of black cockroaches, which had gone in of themselves, and found a terrible end. Having cleaned and polished it, he hung it up again on the wall and shone, that is, they both shone: the clock shone because it was cleaned and polished, and my father shone because the clock shone.

And it came to pass one day that something happened.

It was on a fine, bright, cloudless day; we were all sitting at table, eating breakfast, and the clock struck. Now I always loved to hear the clock strike and count the strokes out loud:

"One—two—three—seven—eleven—twelve—thirteen! Oi! Thirteen?"

"Thirteen?" exclaimed my father, and laughed. "You're a fine arithmetician (no evil eye!). Whenever did you hear a clock strike thirteen?"

"But I tell you, it struck thirteen!"

"I shall give you thirteen slaps," cried my father, angrily, "and then you won't repeat this nonsense again. Goi, a clock cannot strike thirteen!"

"Do you know what, Simcheh," put in my mother, "I am afraid the child is right, I fancy I counted thirteen, too."

"There's another witness!" said my father, but it appeared that he had begun to feel a little doubtful himself, for after the meal he went up to the clock, got upon a chair, gave a turn to a little wheel inside the clock, and it began to strike. We all counted the strokes, nodding our head at each one the while: one—two—three—seven—nine—twelve—thirteen.

"Thirteen!" exclaimed my father, looking at us in amaze. He gave the wheel another turn, and again the clock struck thirteen. My father got down off the chair with a sigh. He was as white as the wall, and remained standing in the middle of the room, stared at the ceiling, chewed his beard, and muttered to himself:

"Plague take thirteen! What can it mean? What does it portend? If it were out of order, it would have stopped. Then, what can it be? The inference can only be that some spring has gone wrong."

"Why worry whether it's a spring or not?" said my mother. "You'd better take down the clock and put it to rights, as you've a turn that way."

"Hush, perhaps you're right," answered my father, took down the clock and busied himself with it. He perspired, spent a whole day over it, and hung it up again in its place.

Thank God, the clock was going as it should, and when, near midnight, we all stood round it and counted twelve, my father was overjoyed.

"Ha? It didn't strike thirteen then, did it? When I say it is a spring, I know what I'm about."

"I always said you were a wonder," my mother told him. "But there is one thing I don't understand: why does it wheeze so? I don't think it used to wheeze like that."

"It's your fancy," said my father, and listened to the noise it made before striking, like an old man preparing to cough: chil-chil-chil-chil-trrrr ... and only then: bom!—bom!—bom!—and even the "bom" was not the same as formerly, for the former "bom" had been a cheerful one, and now there had crept into it a melancholy note, as into the voice of an old worn-out cantor at the close of the service for the Day of Atonement, and the hoarseness increased, and the strike became lower and duller, and my father, worried and anxious. It was plain that the affair preyed upon his mind, that he suffered in secret, that it was undermining his health, and yet he could do nothing. We felt that any moment the clock might stop altogether. The imp started playing all kinds of nasty tricks and idle pranks, shook itself sideways, and stumbled like an old man who drags his feet after him. One could see that the clock was about to stop forever! It was a good thing my father understood in time that the clock was about to yield up its soul, and that the fault lay with the balance weights: the weight was too light. And he puts on a jostle, which has the weight of about four pounds. The clock goes on like a song, and my father becomes as cheerful as a newborn man.

But this was not to be for long: the clock began to lose again, the imp was back at his tiresome performances: he moved slowly on one side, quickly on the other, with a hoarse noise, like a sick old man, so that it went to the heart. A pity to see how the clock agonized, and my father, as he watched it, seemed like a flickering, bickering flame of a candle, and nearly went out for grief.

Like a good doctor, who is ready to sacrifice himself for the patient's sake, who puts forth all his energy, tries every remedy under the sun to save his patient, even so my father applied himself to save the old clock, if only it should be possible.

"The weight is too light," repeated my father, and hung something heavier onto it every time, first a frying-pan, then a copper jug, afterwards a flat-iron, a bag of sand, a couple of tiles—and the clock revived every time and went on, with difficulty and distress, but still it went—till one night there was a misfortune.

It was on a Friday evening in winter. We had just eaten our Sabbath supper, the delicious peppered fish with horseradish, the hot soup with macaroni, the stewed plums, and said grace as was meet. The Sabbath candles flickered, the maid was just handing round fresh, hot, well-dried Polish nuts from off the top of the stove, when in came Aunt Yente, a dark-favored little woman without teeth, whose husband had deserted her, to become a follower of the Rebbe, quite a number of years ago.

"Good Sabbath!" said Aunt Yente, "I knew you had some fresh Polish nuts. The pity is that I've nothing to crack them with, may my husband live no more years than I have teeth in my mouth! What did you think, Malkeh, of the fish to-day? What a struggle there was over them at the market! I asked him about his fish—Manasseh, the lazy—when up comes Soreh Peril, the rich: Make haste, give it me, hand me over that little pike!—Why in such a hurry? say I. God be with you, the river is not on fire, and Manasseh is not going to take the fish back there, either. Take my word for it, with these rich people money is cheap, and sense is dear. Turns round on me and says: Paupers, she says, have no business here—a poor man, she says, shouldn't hanker after good things. What do you think of such a shrew? How long did she stand by her mother in the market selling ribbons? She behaves just like Pessil Peise Avròhom's over her daughter, the one she married to a great man in Schtrischtch, who took her just as she was, without any dowry or anything—Jewish luck! They say she has a bad time of it—no evil eye to her days—can't get on with his children. Well, who would be a stepmother? Let them beware! Take Chavvehle! What is there to find fault with in her? And you should see the life her stepchildren lead her! One hears shouting day and night, cursing, squabbling, and fighting."

The candles began to die down, the shadow climbed the wall, scrambled higher and higher, the nuts crackled in our hands, there was talking and telling stories and tales, just for the pleasure of it, one without any reference to the other, but Aunt Yente talked more than anyone.

"Hush!" cried out Aunt Yente, "listen, because not long ago a still better thing happened. Not far from Yampele, about three versts away, some robbers fell upon a Jewish tavern, killed a whole houseful of people, down to a baby in a cradle. The only person left alive was a servant-girl, who was sleeping on the kitchen stove. She heard people screeching, and jumped down, this servant-girl, off the stove, peeped through a chink in the door, and saw, this servant-girl I'm telling you of, saw the master of the house and the mistress lying on the floor, murdered, in a pool of blood, and she went back, this girl, and sprang through a window, and ran into the town screaming: Jews, to the rescue, help, help, help!"

Suddenly, just as Aunt Yente was shouting, "Help, help, help!" we heard trrraach!—tarrrach!—bom—dzin—dzin—dzin, bomm!! We were so deep in the story, we only thought at first that robbers had descended upon our house, and were firing guns, and we could not move for terror. For one minute we looked at one another, and then with one accord we began to call out, "Help! help! help!" and my mother was so carried away that she clasped me in her arms and cried:

"My child, my life for yours, woe is me!"

"Ha? What? What is the matter with him? What has happened?" exclaimed my father.

"Nothing! nothing! hush! hush!" cried Aunt Yente, gesticulating wildly, and the maid came running in from the kitchen, more dead than alive.

"Who screamed? What is it? Is there a fire? What is on fire? Where?"

"Fire? fire? Where is the fire?" we all shrieked. "Help! help! Gewalt, Jews, to the rescue, fire, fire!"

"Which fire? what fire? where fire?! Fire take you, you foolish girl, and make cinders of you!" scolded Aunt Yente at the maid. "Now she must come, as though we weren't enough before! Fire, indeed, says she! Into the earth with you, to all black years! Did you ever hear of such a thing? What are you all yelling for? Do you know what it was that frightened you? The best joke in the world, and there's nobody to laugh with! God be with you, it was the clock falling onto the floor—now you know! You hung every sort of thing onto it, and now it is fallen, weighing at least three pud. And no wonder! A man wouldn't have fared better. Did you ever?!"

It was only then we came to our senses, rose one by one from the table, went to the clock, and saw it lying on its poor face, killed, broken, shattered, and smashed for evermore!

"There is an end to the clock!" said my father, white as the wall. He hung his head, wrung his fingers, and the tears came into his eyes. I looked at my father and wanted to cry, too.

"There now, see, what is the use of fretting to death?" said my mother. "No doubt it was so decreed and written down in Heaven that to-day, at that particular minute, our clock was to find its end, just (I beg to distinguish!) like a human being, may God not punish me for saying so! May it be an Atonement for not remembering the Sabbath, for me, for thee, for our children, for all near and dear to us, and for all Israel. Amen, Selah!"

Twice a year, as sure as the clock, on the first day of Nisan and the first of Ellul—for Passover and Tabernacles—Fishel the teacher travelled from Balta to Chaschtschevate, home to his wife and children. It was decreed that nearly all his life long he should be the guest of his own family, a very welcome guest, but a passing one. He came with the festival, and no sooner was it over, than back with him to Balta, back to the schooling, the ruler, the Gemoreh, the dull, thick wits, to the being knocked about from pillar to post, to the wandering among strangers, and the longing for home.

On the other hand, when Fishel does come home, he is an emperor! His wife Bath-sheba comes out to meet him, pulls at her head-kerchief, blushes red as fire, questions as though in asides, without as yet looking him in the face, "How are you?" and he replies, "How are you?" and Froike his son, a boy of thirteen or so, greets him, and the father asks, "Well, Efroim, and how far on are you in the Gemoreh?" and his little daughter Resele, not at all a bad-looking little girl, with a plaited pigtail, hugs and kisses him.

"Tate, what sort of present have you brought me?"

"Printed calico for a frock, and a silk kerchief for mother. There—give mother the kerchief!"

And Fishel takes a silk (suppose a half-silk!) kerchief out of his Tallis-bag, and Bath-sheba grows redder still, and pulls her head-cloth over her eyes, takes up a bit of household work, busies herself all over the place, and ends by doing nothing.

"Bring the Gemoreh, Efroim, and let me hear what you can do!"

And Froike recites his lesson like the bright boy he is, and Fishel listens and corrects, and his heart expands and overflows with delight, his soul rejoices—a bright boy, Froike, a treasure!

"If you want to go to the bath, there is a shirt ready for you!"

Thus Bath-sheba as she passes him, still not venturing to look him in the face, and Fishel has a sensation of unspeakable comfort, he feels like a man escaped from prison and back in a lightsome world, among those who are near and dear to him. And he sees in fancy a very, very hot bath-house, and himself lying on the highest bench with other Jews, and he perspires and swishes himself with the birch twigs, and can never have enough.

Home from the bath, fresh and lively as a fish, like one newborn, he rehearses the portion of the Law for the festival, puts on the Sabbath cloak and the new girdle, steals a glance at Bath-sheba in her new dress and silk kerchief—still a pretty woman, and so pious and good!—and goes with Froike to the Shool. The air is full of Sholom Alechems, "Welcome, Reb Fishel the teacher, and what are you about?"—"A teacher teaches!"—"What is the news?"—"What should it be? The world is the world!"—"What is going on in Balta?"—"Balta is Balta."

The same formula is repeated every time, every half-year, and Nissel the reader begins to recite the evening prayers, and sends forth his voice, the further the louder, and when he comes to "And Moses declared the set feasts of the Lord unto the children of Israel," it reaches nearly to Heaven. And Froike stands at his father's side, and recites the prayers melodiously, and once more Fishel's heart expands and flows over with joy—a good child, Froike, a good, pious child!

"A happy holiday, a happy holiday!"

"A happy holiday, a happy year!"

At home they find the Passover table spread: the four cups, the bitter herbs, the almond and apple paste, and all the rest of it. The reclining-seats (two small benches with big cushions) stand ready, and Fishel becomes a king. Fishel, robed in white, sits on the throne of his dominion, Bath-sheba, the queen, sits beside him in her new silk kerchief; Efroim, the prince, in a new cap, and the princess Resele with her plait, sit opposite them. Look on with respect! His majesty Fishel is seated on his throne, and has assumed the sway of his kingdom.

The Chaschtschevate scamps, who love to make game of the whole world, not to mention a teacher, maintain that one Passover Eve our Fishel sent his Bath-sheba the following Russian telegram: "Rebyàta sobral dyèngi vezù prigatovi npiyèdu tzàrstvovàtz," which means: "Have entered my pupils for the next term, am bringing money, prepare the dumplings, I come to reign." The mischief-makers declare that this telegram was seized at Balta station, that Bath-sheba was sought and not found, and that Fishel was sent home with the étape. Dreadful! But I can assure you, there isn't a word of truth in the story, because Fishel never sent a telegram in his life, nobody was ever seen looking for Bath-sheba, and Fishel was never taken anywhere by the étape. That is, he was once taken somewhere by the étape, but not on account of a telegram, only on account of a simple passport! And not from Balta, but from Yehupetz, and not at Passover, but in summer-time. He wished, you see, to go to Yehupetz in search of a post as teacher, and forgot his passport. He thought it was in Balta, and he got into a nice mess, and forbade his children and children's children ever to go in search of pupils in Yehupetz.

Since then he teaches in Balta, and comes home for Passover, winds up his work a fortnight earlier, and sometimes manages to hasten back in time for the Great Sabbath. Hasten, did I say? That means when the road is a road, when you can hire a conveyance, and when the Bug can either be crossed on the ice or in the ferry-boat. But when, for instance, the snow has begun to melt, and the mud is deep, when there is no conveyance to be had, when the Bug has begun to split the ice, and the ferry-boat has not started running, when a skiff means peril of death, and the festival is upon you—what then? It is just "nit güt."

Fishel the teacher knows the taste of "nit güt." He has had many adventures and mishaps since he became a teacher, and took to faring from Chaschtschevate to Balta and from Balta to Chaschtschevate. He has tried going more than half-way on foot, and helped to push the conveyance besides. He has lain in the mud with a priest, the priest on top, and he below. He has fled before a pack of wolves who were pursuing the vehicle, and afterwards they turned out to be dogs, and not wolves at all. But anything like the trouble on this Passover Eve had never befallen him before.

The trouble came from the Bug, that is, from the Bug's breaking through the ice, and just having its fling when Fishel reached it in a hurry to get home, and really in a hurry, because it was already Friday and Passover Eve, that is, Passover eve fell on a Sabbath that year.

Fishel reached the Bug in a Gentile conveyance Thursday evening. According to his own reckoning, he should have got there Tuesday morning, because he left Balta Sunday after market, the spirit having moved him to go into the market-place to spy after a chance conveyance. How much better it would have been to drive with Yainkel-Shegetz, a Balta carrier, even at the cart-tail, with his legs dangling, and shaken to bits. He would have been home long ago by now, and have forgotten the discomforts of the journey. But he had wanted a cheaper transit, and it is an old saying that cheap things cost dear. Yoneh, the tippler, who procures vehicles in Balta, had said to him: "Take my advice, give two rubles, and you will ride in Yainkel's wagon like a lord, even if you do have to sit behind the wagon. Consider, you're playing with fire, the festival approaches." But as ill-luck would have it, there came along a familiar Gentile from Chaschtschevate.

"Eh, Rabbi, you're not wanting a lift to Chaschtschevate?"

"How much would the fare be?"

He thought to ask how much, and he never thought to ask if it would take him home by Passover, because in a week he could have covered the distance walking behind the cart.

But as Fishel drove out of the town, he soon began to repent of his choice, even though the wagon was large, and he sitting in it in solitary grandeur, like any count. He saw that with a horse that dragged itself along in that way, there would be no getting far, for they drove a whole day without getting anywhere in particular, and however much he worried the peasant to know if it were a long way yet, the only reply he got was, "Who can tell?" In the evening, with a rumble and a shout and a crack of the whip, there came up with them Yainkel-Shegetz and his four fiery horses jingling with bells, and the large coach packed with passengers before and behind. Yainkel, catching sight of the teacher in the peasant's cart, gave another loud crack with his whip, ridiculed the peasant, his passenger, and his horse, as only Yainkel-Shegetz knows how, and when a little way off, he turned and pointed at one of the peasant's wheels.

"Hallo, man, look out! There's a wheel turning!"

The peasant stopped the horse, and he and the teacher clambered down together, and examined the wheels. They crawled underneath the cart, and found nothing wrong, nothing at all.

When the peasant understood that Yainkel had made a fool of him, he scratched the back of his neck below his collar, and began to abuse Yainkel and all Jews with curses such as Fishel had never heard before. His voice and his anger rose together:

"May you never know good! May you have a bad year! May you not see the end of it! Bad luck to you, you and your horses and your wife and your daughter and your aunts and your uncles and your parents-in-law and—and all your cursed Jews!"

It was a long time before the peasant took his seat again, nor did he cease to fume against Yainkel the driver and all Jews, until, with God's help, they reached a village wherein to spend the night.

Next morning Fishel rose with the dawn, recited his prayers, a portion of the Law, and a few Psalms, breakfasted on a roll, and was ready to set forward. Unfortunately, Chfedor (this was the name of his driver) was not ready. Chfedor had sat up late with a crony and got drunk, and he slept through a whole day and a bit of the night, and then only started on his way.

"Well," Fishel reproved him as they sat in the cart, "well, Chfedor, a nice way to behave, upon my word! Do you suppose I engaged you for a merrymaking? What have you to say for yourself, I should like to know, eh?"

And Fishel addressed other reproachful words to him, and never ceased casting the other's laziness between his teeth, partly in Polish, partly in Hebrew, and helping himself out with his hands. Chfedor understood quite well what Fishel meant, but he answered him not a word, not a syllable even. No doubt he felt that Fishel was in the right, and he was silent as a cat, till, on the fourth day, they met Yainkel-Shegetz, driving back from Chaschtschevate with a rumble and a crack of his whip, who called out to them, "You may as well turn back to Balta, the Bug has burst the ice."

Fishel's heart was like to burst, too, but Chfedor, who thought that Yainkel was trying to fool him a second time, started repeating his whole list of curses, called down all bad dreams on Yainkel's hands and feet, and never shut his mouth till they came to the Bug on Thursday evening. They drove straight to Prokop Baranyùk, the ferryman, to inquire when the ferry-boat would begin to run, and the two Gentiles, Chfedor and Prokop, took to sipping brandy, while Fishel proceeded to recite the Afternoon Prayer.

The sun was about to set, and poured a rosy light onto the high hills that stood on either side of the river, and were snow-covered in parts and already green in others, and intersected by rivulets that wound their way with murmuring noise down into the river, where the water foamed with the broken ice and the increasing thaw. The whole of Chaschtschevate lay before him as on a plate, while the top of the monastery sparkled like a light in the setting sun. Standing to recite the Eighteen Benedictions, with his face towards Chaschtschevate, Fishel turned his eyes away and drove out the idle thoughts and images that had crept into his head: Bath-sheba with the new silk kerchief, Froike with the Gemoreh, Resele with her plait, the hot bath and the highest bench, and freshly-baked Matzes, together with nice peppered fish and horseradish that goes up your nose, Passover borshtsh with more Matzes, a heavenly mixture, and all the other good things that desire is capable of conjuring up—and however often he drove these fancies away, they returned and crept back into his brain like summer flies, and disturbed him at his prayers.

When Fishel had repeated the Eighteen Benedictions and Olenu, he betook him to Prokop, and entered into conversation with him about the ferry-boat and the festival eve, giving him to understand, partly in Polish and partly in Hebrew and partly with his hands, what Passover meant to the Jews, and Passover Eve falling on a Sabbath, and that if, which Heaven forbid, he had not crossed the Bug by that time to-morrow, he was a lost man, for, beside the fact that they were on the lookout for him at home—his wife and children (Fishel gave a sigh that rent the heart)—he would not be able to eat or drink for a week, and Fishel turned away, so that the tears in his eyes should not be seen.

Prokop Baranyùk quite appreciated Fishel's position, and replied that he knew to-morrow was a Jewish festival, and even how it was called; he even knew that the Jews celebrated it by drinking wine and strong brandy; he even knew that there was yet another festival at which the Jews drank brandy, and a third when all Jews were obliged to get drunk, but he had forgotten its name—

"Well and good," Fishel interrupted him in a lamentable voice, "but what is to happen? How if I don't get there?"

To this Prokop made no reply. He merely pointed with his hand to the river, as much as to say, "See for yourself!"

And Fishel lifted up his eyes to the river, and saw that which he had never seen before, and heard that which he had never heard in his life. Because you may say that Fishel had never yet taken in anything "out of doors," he had only perceived it accidentally, by the way, as he hurried from Cheder to the house-of-study, and from the house-of-study to Cheder. The beautiful blue Bug between the two lines of imposing hills, the murmur of the winding rivulets as they poured down the hillsides, the roar of the ever-deepening spring-flow, the light of the setting sun, the glittering cupola of the convent, the wholesome smell of Passover-Eve-tide out of doors, and, above all, the being so close to home and not able to get there—all these things lent wings, as it were, to Fishel's spirit, and he was borne into a new world, the world of imagination, and crossing the Bug seemed the merest trifle, if only the Almighty were willing to perform a fraction of a miracle on his behalf.

Such and like thoughts floated in and out of Fishel's head, and lifted him into the air, and so far across the river, he never realized that it was night, and the stars came out, and a cool wind blew in under his cloak to his little prayer-scarf, and Fishel was busy with things that he had never so much as dreamt of: earthly things and Heavenly things, the great size of the beautiful world, the Almighty as Creator of the earth, and so on.

Fishel spent a bad night in Prokop's house—such a night as he hoped never to spend again. The next morning broke with a smile from the bright and cheerful sun. It was a singularly fine day, and so sweetly warm that all the snow left melted into kasha, and the kasha, into water, and this water poured into the Bug from all sides; and the Bug became clearer, light blue, full and smooth, and the large bits of ice that looked like dreadful wild beasts, like white elephants hurrying and tearing along as if they were afraid of being late, grew rarer.

Fishel the teacher recited the Morning Prayer, breakfasted on the last piece of leavened bread left in his prayer-scarf bag, and went out to the river to see about the ferry. Imagine his feelings when he heard that the ferry-boat would not begin running before Sunday afternoon! He clapped both hands to his head, gesticulated with every limb, and fell to abusing Prokop. Why had he given him hopes of the ferry-boat's crossing next day? Whereupon Prokop answered quite coolly that he had said nothing about crossing with the ferry, he was talking of taking him across in a small boat! And that he could still do, if Fishel wished, in a sail-boat, in a rowboat, in a raft, and the fare was not less than one ruble.

"A raft, a rowboat, anything you like, only don't let me spend the festival away from home!"

Thus Fishel, and he was prepared to give him two rubles then and there, to give his life for the holy festival, and he began to drive Prokop into getting out the raft at once, and taking him across in the direction of Chaschtschevate, where Bath-sheba, Froike, and Resele are already looking out for him. It may be they are standing on the opposite hills, that they see him, and make signs to him, waving their hands, that they call to him, only one can neither see them nor hear their voices, because the river is wide, dreadfully wide, wider than ever!

The sun was already half-way up the deep, blue sky, when Prokop told Fishel to get into the little trough of a boat, and when Fishel heard him, he lost all power in his feet and hands, and was at a loss what to do, for never in his life had he been in a rowboat, never in his life had he been in any small boat. And it seemed to him the thing had only to dip a little to one side, and all would be over.

"Jump in, and off we'll go!" said Prokop once more, and with a turn of his oar he brought the boat still closer in, and took Fishel's bundle out of his hands.

Fishel the teacher drew his coat-skirts neatly together, and began to perform circles without moving from the spot, hesitating whether to jump or not. On the one hand were Passover Eve, Bath-sheba, Froike, Resele, the bath, the home service, himself as king; on the other, peril of death, the Destroying Angel, suicide—because one dip and—good-by, Fishel, peace be upon him!

And Fishel remained circling there with his folded skirts, till Prokop lost patience and said, another minute, and he should set out and be off to Chaschtschevate without him. At the beloved word "Chaschtschevate," Fishel called his dear ones to mind, summoned the whole of his courage, and fell into the boat. I say "fell in," because the instant his foot touched the bottom of the boat, it slipped, and Fishel, thinking he was falling, drew back, and this drawing back sent him headlong forward into the boat-bottom, where he lay stretched out for some minutes before recovering his wits, and for a long time after his face was livid, and his hands shook, while his heart beat like a clock, tik-tik-tak, tik-tik-tak!

Prokop meantime sat in the prow as though he were at home. He spit into his hands, gave a stroke with the oar to the left, a stroke to the right, and the boat glided over the shining water, and Fishel's head spun round as he sat. As he sat? No, he hung floating, suspended in the air! One false movement, and that which held him would give way; one lean to the side, and he would be in the water and done with! At this thought, the words came into his mind, "And they sank like lead in the mighty waters," and his hair stood on end at the idea of such a death. How? Not even to be buried with the dead of Israel? And he bethought himself to make a vow to—to do what? To give money in charity? He had none to give—he was a very, very poor man! So he vowed that if God would bring him home in safety, he would sit up whole nights and study, go through the whole of the Talmud in one year, God willing, with God's help.

Fishel would dearly have liked to know if it were much further to the other side, and found himself seated, as though on purpose, with his face to Prokop and his back to Chaschtschevate. And he dared not open his mouth to ask. It seemed to him that his very voice would cause the boat to rock, and one rock—good-by, Fishel! But Prokop opened his mouth of his own accord, and began to speak. He said there was nothing worse when you were on the water than a thaw. It made it impossible, he said, to row straight ahead; one had to adapt one's course to the ice, to row round and round and backwards.

"There's a bit of ice making straight for us now."

Thus Prokop, and he pulled back and let pass a regular ice-floe, which swam by with a singular rocking motion and a sound that Fishel had never seen or heard before. And then he began to understand what a wild adventure this journey was, and he would have given goodness knows what to be safe on shore, even on the one they had left.

"O, you see that?" asked Prokop, and pointed upstream.

Fishel raised his eyes slowly, was afraid of moving much, and looked and looked, and saw nothing but water, water, and water.

"There's a big one coming down on us now, we must make a dash for it, for it's too late to row back."

So said Prokop, and rowed away with both hands, and the boat glided and slid like a fish through the water, and Fishel felt cold in every limb. He would have liked to question, but was afraid of interfering. However, again Prokop spoke of himself.

"If we don't win by a minute, it will be the worse for us."

Fishel can now no longer contain himself, and asks:

"How do you mean, the worse?"

"We shall be done for," says Prokop.

"Done for?"

"Done for."

"How do you mean, done for?" persists Fishel.

"I mean, it will grind us."

"Grind us?"

"Grind us."

Fishel does not understand what "grind us, grind us" may signify, but it has a sound of finality, of the next world, about it, and Fishel is bathed in a cold sweat, and again the words come into his head, "And they sank like lead in the mighty waters."

And Prokop, as though to quiet our Fishel's mind, tells him a comforting story of how, years ago at this time, the Bug broke through the ice, and the ferry-boat could not be used, and there came to him another person to be rowed across, an excise official from Uman, quite a person of distinction, and offered a large sum; and they had the bad luck to meet two huge pieces of ice, and he rowed to the right, in between the floes, intending to slip through upwards, and he made an involuntary side motion with the boat, and they went flop into the water! Fortunately, he, Prokop, could swim, but the official came to grief, and the fare-money, too.

"It was good-by to my fare!" ended Prokop, with a sigh, and Fishel shuddered, and his tongue dried up, so that he could neither speak nor utter the slightest sound.

In the very middle of the river, just as they were rowing along quite smoothly, Prokop suddenly stopped, and looked—and looked—up the stream; then he laid down the oars, drew a bottle out of his pocket, tilted it into his mouth, sipped out of it two or three times, put it back, and explained to Fishel that he had always to take a few sips of the "bitter drop," otherwise he felt bad when on the water. And he wiped his mouth, took the oars in hand again, and said, having crossed himself three times:

"Now for a race!"

A race? With whom? With what? Fishel did not understand, and was afraid to ask; but again he felt the brush of the Death Angel's wing, for Prokop had gone down onto his knees, and was rowing with might and main. Moreover, he said to Fishel, and pointed to the bottom of the boat:

"Rebbe, lie down!"

Fishel understood that he was to lie down, and did not need to be told twice. For now he had seen a whole host of floes coming down upon them, a world of ice, and he shut his eyes, flung himself face downwards in the boat, and lay trembling like a lamb, and recited in a low voice, "Hear, O Israel!" and the Confession, thought on the graves of Israel, and fancied that now, now he lies in the abyss of the waters, now, now comes a fish and swallows him, like Jonah the prophet when he fled to Tarshish, and he remembers Jonah's prayer, and sings softly and with tears:

"Affofùni màyyim ad nòfesh—the waters have reached unto my soul; tehòm yesovèveni—the deep hath covered me!"

Fishel the teacher sang and wept and thought pitifully of his widowed wife and his orphaned children, and Prokop rowed for all he was worth, and sang his little song:

"O thou maiden with the black lashes!"

And Prokop felt the same on the water as on dry land, and Fishel's "Affofùni" and Prokop's "O maiden" blended into one, and a strange song sounded over the Bug, a kind of duet, which had never been heard there before.

"The black year knows why he is so afraid of death, that Jew," so wondered Prokop Baranyùk, "a poor tattered little Jew like him, a creature I would not give this old boat for, and so afraid of death!"

The shore reached, Prokop gave Fishel a shove in the side with his boot, and Fishel started. The Gentile burst out laughing, but Fishel did not hear, Fishel went on reciting the Confession, saying Kaddish for his own soul, and mentally contemplating the graves of Israel!

"Get up, you silly Rebbe! We're there—in Chaschtschevate!"

Slowly, slowly, Fishel raised his head, and gazed around him with red and swollen eyes.

"Chasch-tsche-va-te???"

"Chaschtschevate! Give me the ruble, Rebbe!"

Fishel crawls out of the boat, and, finding himself really at home, does not know what to do for joy. Shall he run into the town? Shall he go dancing? Shall he first thank and praise God who has brought him safe out of such great peril? He pays the Gentile his fare, takes up his bundle under his arm and is about to run home, the quicker the better, but he pauses a moment first, and turns to Prokop the ferryman:

"Listen, Prokop, dear heart, to-morrow, please God, you'll come and drink a glass of brandy, and taste festival fish at Fishel the teacher's, for Heaven's sake!"

"Shall I say no? Am I such a fool?" replied Prokop, licking his lips in anticipation at the thought of the Passover brandy he would sip, and the festival fish he would delectate himself with on the morrow.

And Prokop gets back into his boat, and pulls quietly home again, singing a little song, and pitying the poor Jew who was so afraid of death. "The Jewish faith is the same as the Mahommedan!" and it seems to him a very foolish one. And Fishel is thinking almost the same thing, and pities the Gentile on account of his religion. "What knows he, yon poor Gentile, of such holy promises as were made to us Jews, the beloved people!"

And Fishel the teacher hastens uphill, through the Chaschtschevate mud. He perspires with the exertion, and yet he does not feel the ground beneath his feet. He flies, he floats, he is going home, home to his dear ones, who are on the watch for him as for Messiah, who look for him to return in health, to seat himself upon his kingly throne and reign.

Look, Jews, and turn respectfully aside! Fishel the teacher has come home to Chaschtschevate, and seated himself upon the throne of his kingdom!

That which Doctor Tanner failed to accomplish, was effectually carried out by Chayyim Chaikin, a simple Jew in a small town in Poland.

Doctor Tanner wished to show that a man can fast forty days, and he only managed to get through twenty-eight, no more, and that with people pouring spoonfuls of water into his mouth, and giving him morsels of ice to swallow, and holding his pulse—a whole business! Chayyim Chaikin has proved that one can fast more than forty days; not, as a rule, two together, one after the other, but forty days, if not more, in the course of a year.

To fast is all he asks!

Who said drops of water? Who said ice? Not for him! To fast means no food and no drink from one set time to the other, a real four-and-twenty-hours.

And no doctors sit beside him and hold his pulse, whispering, "Hush! Be quiet!"

Well, let us hear the tale!

Chayyim Chaikin is a very poor man, encumbered with many children, and they, the children, support him.

They are mostly girls, and they work in a factory and make cigarette wrappers, and they earn, some one gulden, others half a gulden, a day, and that not every day. How about Sabbaths and festivals and "shtreik" days? One should thank God for everything, even in their out-of-the-way little town strikes are all the fashion!

And out of that they have to pay rent—for a damp corner in a basement.

To buy clothes and shoes for the lot of them! They have a dress each, but they are two to every pair of shoes.

And then food—such as it is! A bit of bread smeared with an onion, sometimes groats, occasionally there is a bit of taran that burns your heart out, so that after eating it for supper, you can drink a whole night.

When it comes to eating, the bread has to be portioned out like cake.

"Oi, dos Essen, dos Essen seiers!"

Thus Chaike, Chayyim Chaikin's wife, a poor, sick creature, who coughs all night long.

"No evil eye," says the father, and he looks at his children devouring whole slices of bread, and would dearly like to take a mouthful himself, only, if he does so, the two little ones, Fradke and Beilke, will go supperless.

And he cuts his portion of bread in two, and gives it to the little ones, Fradke and Beilke.

Fradke and Beilke stretch out their little thin, black hands, look into their father's eyes, and don't believe him: perhaps he is joking? Children are nashers, they play with father's piece of bread, till at last they begin taking bites out of it. The mother sees and exclaims, coughing all the while:

"It is nothing but eating and stuffing!"

The father cannot bear to hear it, and is about to answer her, but he keeps silent—he can't say anything, it is not for him to speak! Who is he in the house? A broken potsherd, the last and least, no good to anyone, no good to them, no good to himself.

Because the fact is he does nothing, absolutely nothing; not because he won't do anything, or because it doesn't befit him, but because there is nothing to do—and there's an end of it! The whole townlet complains of there being nothing to do! It is just a crowd of Jews driven together. Delightful! They're packed like herrings in a barrel, they squeeze each other close, all for love.

"Well-a-day!" thinks Chaikin, "it's something to have children, other people haven't even that. But to depend on one's children is quite another thing and not a happy one!" Not that they grudge him his keep—Heaven forbid! But he cannot take it from them, he really cannot!

He knows how hard they work, he knows how the strength is wrung out of them to the last drop, he knows it well!

Every morsel of bread is a bit of their health and strength—he drinks his children's blood! No, the thought is too dreadful!

"Tatinke, why don't you eat?" ask the children.

"To-day is a fast day with me," answers Chayyim Chaikin.

"Another fast? How many fasts have you?"

"Not so many as there are days in the week."

And Chayyim Chaikin speaks the truth when he says that he has many fasts, and yet there are days on which he eats.

But he likes the days on which he fasts better.

First, they are pleasing to God, and it means a little bit more of the world-to-come, the interest grows, and the capital grows with it.

"Secondly" (he thinks), "no money is wasted on me. Of course, I am accountable to no one, and nobody ever questions me as to how I spend it, but what do I want money for, when I can get along without it?

"And what is the good of feeling one's self a little higher than a beast? A beast eats every day, but I can go without food for one or two days. A man should be above a beast!

"O, if a man could only raise himself to a level where he could live without eating at all! But there are one's confounded insides!" So thinks Chayyim Chaikin, for hunger has made a philosopher of him.

"The insides, the necessity of eating, these are the causes of the world's evil! The insides and the necessity of eating have made a pauper of me, and drive my children to toil in the sweat of their brow and risk their lives for a bit of bread!

"Suppose a man had no need to eat! Ai—ai—ai! My children would all stay at home! An end to toil, an end to moil, an end to 'shtreikeven,' an end to the risking of life, an end to factory and factory owners, to rich men and paupers, an end to jealousy and hatred and fighting and shedding of blood! All gone and done with! Gone and done with! A paradise! a paradise!"

So reasons Chayyim Chaikin, and, lost in speculation, he pities the world, and is grieved to the heart to think that God should have made man so little above the beast.

The day on which Chayyim Chaikin fasts is, as I told you, his best day, and a real fast day, like the Ninth of Ab, for instance—he is ashamed to confess it—is a festival for him!

You see, it means not to eat, not to be a beast, not to be guilty of the children's blood, to earn the reward of a Mitzveh, and to weep to heart's content on the ruins of the Temple.

For how can one weep when one is full? How can a full man grieve? Only he can grieve whose soul is faint within him! The good year knows how some folk answer it to their conscience, giving in to their insides—afraid of fasting! Buy them a groschen worth of oats, for charity's sake!

Thus would Chayyim Chaikin scorn those who bought themselves off the fast, and dropped a hard coin into the collecting box.

The Ninth of Ab is the hardest fast of all—so the world has it.

Chayyim Chaikin cannot see why. The day is long, is it? Then the night is all the shorter. It's hot out of doors, is it? Who asks you to go loitering about in the sun? Sit in the Shool and recite the prayers, of which, thank God, there are plenty.

"I tell you," persists Chayyim Chaikin, "that the Ninth of Ab is the easiest of the fasts, because it is the best, the very best!

"For instance, take the Day of Atonement fast! It is written, 'And you shall mortify your bodies.' What for? To get a clean bill and a good year.

"It doesn't say that you are to fast on the Ninth of Ab, but you fast of your own accord, because how could you eat on the day when the Temple was wrecked, and Jews were killed, women ripped up, and children dashed to pieces?

"It doesn't say that you are to weep on the Ninth of Ab, but you do weep. How could anyone restrain his tears when he thinks of what we lost that day?"

"The pity is, there should be only one Ninth of Ab!" says Chayyim Chaikin.

"Well, and the Seventeenth of Tammuz!" suggests some one.

"And there is only one Seventeenth of Tammuz!" answers Chayyim Chaikin, with a sigh.

"Well, and the Fast of Gedaliah? and the Fast of Esther?" continues the same person.

"Only one of each!" and Chayyim Chaikin sighs again.

"Ê, Reb Chayyim, you are greedy for fasts, are you?"

"More fasts, more fasts!" says Chayyim Chaikin, and he takes upon himself to fast on the eve of the Ninth of Ab as well, two days at a stretch.

What do you think of fasting two days in succession? Isn't that a treat? It is hard enough to have to break one's fast after the Ninth of Ab, without eating on the eve thereof as well.

One forgets that one has insides, that such a thing exists as the necessity to eat, and one is free of the habit that drags one down to the level of the beast.

The difficulty lies in the drinking! I mean, in the not drinking. "If I" (thinks Chayyim Chaikin) "allowed myself one glass of water a day, I could fast a whole week till Sabbath."

You think I say that for fun? Not at all! Chayyim Chaikin is a man of his word. When he says a thing, it's said and done! The whole week preceding the Ninth of Ab he ate nothing, he lived on water.

Who should notice? His wife, poor thing, is sick, the elder children are out all day in the factory, and the younger ones do not understand. Fradke and Beilke only know when they are hungry (and they are always hungry), the heart yearns within them, and they want to eat.

"To-day you shall have an extra piece of bread," says the father, and cuts his own in two, and Fradke and Beilke stretch out their dirty little hands for it, and are overjoyed.

"Tatinke, you are not eating," remark the elder girls at supper, "this is not a fast day!"

"And no more do I fast!" replies the father, and thinks: "That was a take-in, but not a lie, because, after all, a glass of water—that is not eating and not fasting, either."

When it comes to the eve of the Ninth of Ab, Chayyim feels so light and airy as he never felt before, not because it is time to prepare for the fast by taking a meal, not because he may eat. On the contrary, he feels that if he took anything solid into his mouth, it would not go down, but stick in his throat.

That is, his heart is very sick, and his hands and feet shake; his body is attracted earthwards, his strength fails, he feels like fainting. But fie, what an idea! To fast a whole week, to arrive at the eve of the Ninth of Ab, and not hold out to the end! Never!

And Chayyim Chaikin takes his portion of bread and potato, calls Fradke and Beilke, and whispers:

"Children, take this and eat it, but don't let Mother see!"

And Fradke and Beilke take their father's share of food, and look wonderingly at his livid face and shaking hands.

Chayyim sees the children snatch at the bread and munch and swallow, and he shuts his eyes, and rises from his place. He cannot wait for the other girls to come home from the factory, but takes his book of Lamentations, puts off his shoes, and drags himself—it is all he can do—to the Shool.

He is nearly the first to arrive. He secures a seat next the reader, on an overturned bench, lying with its feet in the air, and provides himself with a bit of burned-down candle, which he glues with its drippings to the foot of the bench, leans against the corner of the platform, opens his book, "Lament for Zion and all the other towns," and he closes his eyes and sees Zion robed in black, with a black veil over her face, lamenting and weeping and wringing her hands, mourning for her children who fall daily, daily, in foreign lands, for other men's sins.

And he opens his eyes and sees:

A bright sunbeam has darted in through the dull, dusty window-pane, a beam of the sun which is setting yonder behind the town. And though he shuts them again, he still sees the beam, and not only the beam, but the whole sun, the bright, beautiful sun, and no one can see it but him! Chayyim Chaikin looks at the sun and sees it—and that's all! How is it? It must be because he has done with the world and its necessities—he feels happy—he feels light—he can bear anything—he will have an easy fast—do you know, he will have an easy fast, an easy fast!

Chayyim Chaikin shuts his eyes, and sees a strange world, a new world, such as he never saw before. Angels seem to hover before his eyes, and he looks at them, and recognizes his children in them, all his children, big and little, and he wants to say something to them, and cannot speak—he wants to explain to them, that he cannot help it—it is not his fault! How should it, no evil eye! be his fault, that so many Jews are gathered together in one place and squeeze each other, all for love, squeeze each other to death for love? How can he help it, if people desire other people's sweat, other people's blood? if people have not learned to see that one should not drive a man as a horse is driven to work? that a horse is also to be pitied, one of God's creatures, a living thing?——

And Chayyim Chaikin keeps his eyes shut, and sees, sees everything. And everything is bright and light, and curls like smoke, and he feels something is going out of him, from inside, from his heart, and is drawn upward and loses itself from the body, and he feels very light, very, very light, and he gives a sigh—a long, deep sigh—and feels still lighter, and after that he feels nothing at all—absolutely nothing at all—

Yes, he has an easy fast.

When Bäre the beadle, a red-haired Jew with thick lips, came into the Shool in his socks with the worn-down heels, and saw Chayyim Chaikin leaning with his head back, and his eyes open, he was angry, thought Chayyim was dozing, and he began to grumble:

"He ought to be ashamed of himself—reclining like that—came here for a nap, did he?—Reb Chayyim, excuse me, Reb Chayyim!——"

But Chayyim Chaikin did not hear him.

The last rays of the sun streamed in through the Shool window, right onto Chayyim Chaikin's quiet face with the black, shining, curly hair, the black, bushy brows, the half-open, black, kindly eyes, and lit the dead, pale, still, hungry face through and through.

I told you how it would be: Chayyim Chaikin had an easy fast!

"I have a Passover guest for you, Reb Yoneh, such a guest as you never had since you became a householder."

"What sort is he?"

"A real Oriental citron!"

"What does that mean?"

"It means a 'silken Jew,' a personage of distinction. The only thing against him is—he doesn't speak our language."

"What does he speak, then?"

"Hebrew."

"Is he from Jerusalem?"

"I don't know where he comes from, but his words are full of a's."

Such was the conversation that took place between my father and the beadle, a day before Passover, and I was wild with curiosity to see the "guest" who didn't understand Yiddish, and who talked with a's. I had already noticed, in synagogue, a strange-looking individual, in a fur cap, and a Turkish robe striped blue, red, and yellow. We boys crowded round him on all sides, and stared, and then caught it hot from the beadle, who said children had no business "to creep into a stranger's face" like that. Prayers over, everyone greeted the stranger, and wished him a happy Passover, and he, with a sweet smile on his red cheeks set in a round grey beard, replied to each one, "Shalom! Shalom!" instead of our Sholom. This "Shalom! Shalom!" of his sent us boys into fits of laughter. The beadle grew very angry, and pursued us with slaps. We eluded him, and stole deviously back to the stranger, listened to his "Shalom! Shalom!" exploded with laughter, and escaped anew from the hands of the beadle.

I am puffed up with pride as I follow my father and his guest to our house, and feel how all my comrades envy me. They stand looking after us, and every now and then I turn my head, and put out my tongue at them. The walk home is silent. When we arrive, my father greets my mother with "a happy Passover!" and the guest nods his head so that his fur cap shakes. "Shalom! Shalom!" he says. I think of my comrades, and hide my head under the table, not to burst out laughing. But I shoot continual glances at the guest, and his appearance pleases me; I like his Turkish robe, striped yellow, red, and blue, his fresh, red cheeks set in a curly grey beard, his beautiful black eyes that look out so pleasantly from beneath his bushy eyebrows. And I see that my father is pleased with him, too, that he is delighted with him. My mother looks at him as though he were something more than a man, and no one speaks to him but my father, who offers him the cushioned reclining-seat at table.

Mother is taken up with the preparations for the Passover meal, and Rikel the maid is helping her. It is only when the time comes for saying Kiddush that my father and the guest hold a Hebrew conversation. I am proud to find that I understand nearly every word of it. Here it is in full.

My father: "Nu?" (That means, "Won't you please say Kiddush?")

The guest: "Nu-nu!" (meaning, "Say it rather yourself!")

My father: "Nu-O?" ("Why not you?")

The guest: "O-nu?" ("Why should I?")

My father: "I-O!" ("You first!")

The guest: "O-ai!" ("You first!")

My father: "È-o-i!" ("I beg of you to say it!")

The guest: "Ai-o-ê!" ("I beg of you!")

My father: "Ai-e-o-nu?" ("Why should you refuse?")

The guest: "Oi-o-e-nu-nu!" ("If you insist, then I must.")

And the guest took the cup of wine from my father's hand, and recited a Kiddush. But what a Kiddush! A Kiddush such as we had never heard before, and shall never hear again. First, the Hebrew—all a's. Secondly, the voice, which seemed to come, not out of his beard, but out of the striped Turkish robe. I thought of my comrades, how they would have laughed, what slaps would have rained down, had they been present at that Kiddush.

Being alone, I was able to contain myself. I asked my father the Four Questions, and we all recited the Haggadah together. And I was elated to think that such a guest was ours, and no one else's.

Our sage who wrote that one should not talk at meals (may he forgive me for saying so!) did not know Jewish life. When shall a Jew find time to talk, if not during a meal? Especially at Passover, when there is so much to say before the meal and after it. Rikel the maid handed the water, we washed our hands, repeated the Benediction, mother helped us to fish, and my father turned up his sleeves, and started a long Hebrew talk with the guest. He began with the first question one Jew asks another:

"What is your name?"

To which the guest replied all in a's and all in one breath:

"Ayak Bakar Gashal Damas Hanoch Vassam Za'an Chafaf Tatzatz."

My father remained with his fork in the air, staring in amazement at the possessor of so long a name. I coughed and looked under the table, and my mother said, "Favele, you should be careful eating fish, or you might be choked with a bone," while she gazed at our guest with awe. She appeared overcome by his name, although unable to understand it. My father, who understood, thought it necessary to explain it to her.

"You see, Ayak Bakar, that is our Alef-Bes inverted. It is apparently their custom to name people after the alphabet."

"Alef-Bes! Alef-Bes!" repeated the guest with the sweet smile on his red cheeks, and his beautiful black eyes rested on us all, including Rikel the maid, in the most friendly fashion.

Having learnt his name, my father was anxious to know whence, from what land, he came. I understood this from the names of countries and towns which I caught, and from what my father translated for my mother, giving her a Yiddish version of nearly every phrase. And my mother was quite overcome by every single thing she heard, and Rikel the maid was overcome likewise. And no wonder! It is not every day that a person comes from perhaps two thousand miles away, from a land only to be reached across seven seas and a desert, the desert journey alone requiring forty days and nights. And when you get near to the land, you have to climb a mountain of which the top reaches into the clouds, and this is covered with ice, and dreadful winds blow there, so that there is peril of death! But once the mountain is safely climbed, and the land is reached, one beholds a terrestrial Eden. Spices, cloves, herbs, and every kind of fruit—apples, pears, and oranges, grapes, dates, and olives, nuts and quantities of figs. And the houses there are all built of deal, and roofed with silver, the furniture is gold (here the guest cast a look at our silver cups, spoons, forks, and knives), and brilliants, pearls, and diamonds bestrew the roads, and no one cares to take the trouble of picking them up, they are of no value there. (He was looking at my mother's diamond ear-rings, and at the pearls round her white neck.)

"You hear that?" my father asked her, with a happy face.

"I hear," she answered, and added: "Why don't they bring some over here? They could make money by it. Ask him that, Yoneh!"

My father did so, and translated the answer for my mother's benefit:

"You see, when you arrive there, you may take what you like, but when you leave the country, you must leave everything in it behind, too, and if they shake out of you no matter what, you are done for."

"What do you mean?" questioned my mother, terrified.

"I mean, they either hang you on a tree, or they stone you with stones."

The more tales our guest told us, the more thrilling they became, and just as we were finishing the dumplings and taking another sip or two of wine, my father inquired to whom the country belonged. Was there a king there? And he was soon translating, with great delight, the following reply:

"The country belongs to the Jews who live there, and who are called Sefardîm. And they have a king, also a Jew, and a very pious one, who wears a fur cap, and who is called Joseph ben Joseph. He is the high priest of the Sefardîm, and drives out in a gilded carriage, drawn by six fiery horses. And when he enters the synagogue, the Levites meet him with songs."

"There are Levites who sing in your synagogue?" asked my father, wondering, and the answer caused his face to shine with joy.

"What do you think?" he said to my mother. "Our guest tells me that in his country there is a temple, with priests and Levites and an organ."

"Well, and an altar?" questioned my mother, and my father told her:

"He says they have an altar, and sacrifices, he says, and golden vessels—everything just as we used to have it in Jerusalem."

And with these words my father sighs deeply, and my mother, as she looks at him, sighs also, and I cannot understand the reason. Surely we should be proud and glad to think we have such a land, ruled over by a Jewish king and high priest, a land with Levites and an organ, with an altar and sacrifices—and bright, sweet thoughts enfold me, and carry me away as on wings to that happy Jewish land where the houses are of pine-wood and roofed with silver, where the furniture is gold, and diamonds and pearls lie scattered in the street. And I feel sure, were I really there, I should know what to do—I should know how to hide things—they would shake nothing out of me. I should certainly bring home a lovely present for my mother, diamond ear-rings and several pearl necklaces. I look at the one mother is wearing, at her ear-rings, and I feel a great desire to be in that country. And it occurs to me, that after Passover I will travel there with our guest, secretly, no one shall know. I will only speak of it to our guest, open my heart to him, tell him the whole truth, and beg him to take me there, if only for a little while. He will certainly do so, he is a very kind and approachable person, he looks at every one, even at Rikel the maid, in such a friendly, such a very friendly way!

"So I think, and it seems to me, as I watch our guest, that he has read my thoughts, and that his beautiful black eyes say to me:

"Keep it dark, little friend, wait till after Passover, then we shall manage it!"

I dreamt all night long. I dreamt of a desert, a temple, a high priest, and a tall mountain. I climb the mountain. Diamonds and pearls grow on the trees, and my comrades sit on the boughs, and shake the jewels down onto the ground, whole showers of them, and I stand and gather them, and stuff them into my pockets, and, strange to say, however many I stuff in, there is still room! I stuff and stuff, and still there is room! I put my hand into my pocket, and draw out—not pearls and brilliants, but fruits of all kinds—apples, pears, oranges, olives, dates, nuts, and figs. This makes me very unhappy, and I toss from side to side. Then I dream of the temple, I hear the priests chant, and the Levites sing, and the organ play. I want to go inside and I cannot—Rikel the maid has hold of me, and will not let me go. I beg of her and scream and cry, and again I am very unhappy, and toss from side to side. I wake—and see my father and mother standing there, half dressed, both pale, my father hanging his head, and my mother wringing her hands, and with her soft eyes full of tears. I feel at once that something has gone very wrong, very wrong indeed, but my childish head is incapable of imagining the greatness of the disaster.

The fact is this: our guest from beyond the desert and the seven seas has disappeared, and a lot of things have disappeared with him: all the silver wine-cups, all the silver spoons, knives, and forks; all my mother's ornaments, all the money that happened to be in the house, and also Rikel the maid!

A pang goes through my heart. Not on account of the silver cups, the silver spoons, knives, and forks that have vanished; not on account of mother's ornaments or of the money, still less on account of Rikel the maid, a good riddance! But because of the happy, happy land whose roads were strewn with brilliants, pearls, and diamonds; because of the temple with the priests, the Levites, and the organ; because of the altar and the sacrifices; because of all the other beautiful things that have been taken from me, taken, taken, taken!

I turn my face to the wall, and cry quietly to myself.

A man's worst enemy, I tell you, will never do him the harm he does himself, especially when a woman interferes, that is, a wife. Whom do you think I have in mind when I say that? My own self! Look at me and think. What would you take me for? Just an ordinary Jew. It doesn't say on my nose whether I have money, or not, or whether I am very low indeed, does it?

It may be that I once had money, and not only that—money in itself is nothing—but I can tell you, I earned a living, and that respectably and quietly, without worry and flurry, not like some people who like to live in a whirl.

No, my motto is, "More haste, less speed."

I traded quietly, went bankrupt a time or two quietly, and quietly went to work again. But there is a God in the world, and He blessed me with a wife—as she isn't here, we can speak openly—a wife like any other, that is, at first glance she isn't so bad—not at all! In person, (no evil eye!) twice my height; not an ugly woman, quite a beauty, you may say; an intelligent woman, quite a man—and that's the whole trouble! Oi, it isn't good when the wife is a man! The Almighty knew what He was about when, at the creation, he formed Adam first and then Eve. But what's the use of telling her that, when she says, "If the Almighty created Adam first and then Eve, that's His affair, but if he put more sense into my heel than into your head, no more am I to blame for that!"

"What is all this about?" say I.—"It's about that which should be first and foremost with you," says she.—"But I have to be the one to think of everything—even about sending the boy to the Gymnasiye!"—"Where," say I, "is it 'written' that my boy should go to the Gymnasiye? Can I not afford to have him taught Torah at home?"—"I've told you a hundred and fifty times," says she, "that you won't persuade me to go against the world! And the world," says she, "has decided that children should go to the Gymnasiye."—"In my opinion," say I, "the world is mad!"—"And you," says she, "are the only sane person in it? A pretty thing it would be," says she, "if the world were to follow you!"—"Every man," say I, "should decide on his own course."—"If my enemies," says she, "and my friends' enemies, had as little in pocket and bag, in box and chest, as you have in your head, the world would be a different place."—"Woe to the man," say I, "who needs to be advised by his wife!"—"And woe to the wife," says she, "who has that man to her husband!"—Now if you can argue with a woman who, when you say one thing, maintains the contrary, when you give her one word, treats you to a dozen, and who, if you bid her shut up, cries, or even, I beg of you, faints—well, I envy you, that's all! In short, up and down, this way and that way, she got the best of it—she, not I, because the fact is, when she wants a thing, it has to be!

Well, what next? Gymnasiye! The first thing was to prepare the boy for the elementary class in the Junior Preparatory. I must say, I did not see anything very alarming in that. It seemed to me that anyone of our Cheder boys, an Alef-Bes scholar, could tuck it all into his belt, especially a boy like mine, for whose equal you might search an empire, and not find him. I am a father, not of you be it said! but that boy has a memory that beats everything! To cut a long story short, he went up for examination and—did not pass! You ask the reason? He only got a two in arithmetic; they said he was weak at calculation, in the science of mathematics. What do you think of that? He has a memory that beats everything! I tell you, you might search an empire for his like—and they come talking to me about mathematics! Well, he failed to pass, and it vexed me very much. If he was to go up for examination, let him succeed. However, being a man and not a woman, I made up my mind to it—it's a misfortune, but a Jew is used to that. Only what was the use of talking to her with that bee in her bonnet? Once for all, Gymnasiye! I reason with her. "Tell me," say I, "(may you be well!) what is the good of it? He's safe," say I, "from military service, being an only son, and as for Parnosseh, devil I need it for Parnosseh! What do I care if he does become a trader like his father, a merchant like the rest of the Jews? If he is destined to become a rich man, a banker, I don't see that I'm to be pitied."

Thus do I reason with her as with the wall. "So much the better," says she, "if he has not been entered for the Junior Preparatory."—"What now?" say I.

"Now," says she, "he can go direct to the Senior Preparatory."

Well, Senior Preparatory, there's nothing so terrible in that, for the boy has a head, I tell you! You might search an empire.... And what was the result? Well, what do you suppose? Another two instead of a five, not in mathematics this time—a fresh calamity! His spelling is not what it should be. That is, he can spell all right, but he gets a bit mixed with the two Russian e's. That is, he puts them in right enough, why shouldn't he? only not in their proper places. Well, there's a misfortune for you! I guess I won't find the way to Poltava fair if the child cannot put the e's where they belong! When they brought the good news, she turned the town inside out; ran to the director, declared that the boy could do it; to prove it, let him be had up again! They paid her as much attention as if she were last year's snow, put a two, and another sort of two, and a two with a dash! Call me nut-crackers, but there was a commotion. "Failed again!" say I to her. "And if so," say I, "what is to be done? Are we to commit suicide? A Jew," say I, "is used to that sort of thing," upon which she fired up and blazed away and stormed and scolded as only she can. But I let you off! He, poor child, was in a pitiable state. Talk of cruelty to animals! Just think: the other boys in little white buttons, and not he! I reason with him: "You little fool! What does it matter? Who ever heard of an examination at which everyone passed? Somebody must stay at home, mustn't they? Then why not you? There's really nothing to make such a fuss about." My wife, overhearing, goes off into a fresh fury, and falls upon me. "A fine comforter you are," says she, "who asked you to console him with that sort of nonsense? You'd better see about getting him a proper teacher," says she, "a private teacher, a Russian, for grammar!"

You hear that? Now I must have two teachers for him—one teacher and a Rebbe are not enough. Up and down, this way and that way, she got the best of it, as usual.

What next? We engaged a second teacher, a Russian this time, not a Jew, preserve us, but a real Gentile, because grammar in the first class, let me tell you, is no trifle, no shredded horseradish! Gra-ma-ti-ke, indeed! The two e's! Well, I was telling about the teacher that God sent us for our sins. It's enough to make one blush to remember the way he treated us, as though we had been the mud under his feet. Laughed at us to our face, he did, devil take him, and the one and only thing he could teach him was: tshasnok, tshasnoka, tshasnoku, tshasnokom. If it hadn't been for her, I should have had him by the throat, and out into the street with his blessed grammar. But to her it was all right and as it should be. Now the boy will know which e to put. If you'll believe me, they tormented him through that whole winter, for he was not to be had up for slaughter till about Pentecost. Pentecost over, he went up for examination, and this time he brought home no more two's, but a four and a five. There was great joy—we congratulate! we congratulate! Wait a bit, don't be in such a hurry with your congratulations! We don't know yet for certain whether he has got in or not. We shall not know till August. Why not till August? Why not before? Go and ask them. What is to be done? A Jew is used to that sort of thing.

August—and I gave a glance out of the corner of my eye. She was up and doing! From the director to the inspector, from the inspector to the director! "Why are you running from Shmunin to Bunin," say I, "like a poisoned mouse?"

"You asking why?" says she. "Aren't you a native of this place? You don't seem to know how it is nowadays with the Gymnasiyes and the percentages?" And what came of it? He did not pass! You ask why? Because he hadn't two fives. If he had had two fives, then, they say, perhaps he would have got in. You hear—perhaps! How do you like that perhaps? Well, I'll let you off what I had to bear from her. As for him, the little boy, it was pitiful. Lay with his face in the cushion, and never stopped crying till we promised him another teacher. And we got him a student from the Gymnasiye itself, to prepare him for the second class, but after quite another fashion, because the second class is no joke. In the second, besides mathematics and grammar, they require geography, penmanship, and I couldn't for the life of me say what else. I should have thought a bit of the Maharsho was a more difficult thing than all their studies put together, and very likely had more sense in it, too. But what would you have? A Jew learns to put up with things.

In fine, there commenced a series of "lessons," of ouròkki. We rose early—the ouròkki! Prayers and breakfast over—the ouròkki. A whole day—ouròkki. One heard him late at night drumming it over and over: Nominative—dative—instrumental—vocative! It grated so on my ears! I could hardly bear it. Eat? Sleep? Not he! Taking a poor creature and tormenting it like that, all for nothing, I call it cruelty to animals! "The child," say I, "will be ill!" "Bite off your tongue," says she. I was nowhere, and he went up a second time to the slaughter, and brought home nothing but fives! And why not? I tell you, he has a head—there isn't his like! And such a boy for study as never was, always at it, day and night, and repeating to himself between whiles! That's all right then, is it? Was it all right? When it came to the point, and they hung out the names of all the children who were really entered, we looked—mine wasn't there! Then there was a screaming and a commotion. What a shame! And nothing but fives! Now look at her, now see her go, see her run, see her do this and that! In short, she went and she ran and she did this and that and the other—until at last they begged her not to worry them any longer, that is, to tell you the truth, between ourselves, they turned her out, yes! And after they had turned her out, then it was she burst into the house, and showed for the first time, as it were, what she was worth. "Pray," said she, "what sort of a father are you? If you were a good father, an affectionate father, like other fathers, you would have found favor with the director, patronage, recommendations, this—that!" Like a woman, wasn't it? It's not enough, apparently, for me to have my head full of terms and seasons and fairs and notes and bills of exchange and "protests" and all the rest of it. "Do you want me," say I, "to take over your Gymnasiye and your classes, things I'm sick of already?" Do you suppose she listened to what I said? She? Listen? She just kept at it, she sawed and filed and gnawed away like a worm, day and night, day and night! "If your wife," says she, "were a wife, and your child, a child—if I were only of so much account in this house!"—"Well," say I, "what would happen?"—"You would lie," says she, "nine ells deep in the earth. I," says she, "would bury you three times a day, so that you should never rise again!"

How do you like that? Kind, wasn't it? That (how goes the saying?) was pouring a pailful of water over a husband for the sake of peace. Of course, you'll understand that I was not silent, either, because, after all, I'm no more than a man, and every man has his feelings. I assure you, you needn't envy me, and in the end she carried the day, as usual.

Well, what next? I began currying favor, getting up an acquaintance, trying this and that; I had to lower myself in people's eyes and swallow slights, for every one asked questions, and they had every right to do so. "You, no evil eye, Reb Aaron," say they, "are a householder, and inherited a little something from your father. What good year is taking you about to places where a Jew had better not be seen?" Was I to go and tell them I had a wife (may she live one hundred and twenty years!) with this on the brain: Gymnasiye, Gymnasiye, and Gym-na-si-ye? I (much good may it do you!) am, as you see me, no more unlucky than most people, and with God's help I made my way, and got where I wanted, right up to the nobleman, into his cabinet, yes! And sat down with him there to talk it over. I thank Heaven, I can talk to any nobleman, I don't need to have my tongue loosened for me. "What can I do for you?" he asks, and bids me be seated. Say I, and whisper into his ear, "My lord," say I, "we," say I, "are not rich people, but we have," say I, "a boy, and he wishes to study, and I," say I, "wish it, too, but my wife wishes it very much!" Says he to me again, "What is it you want?" Say I to him, and edge a bit closer, "My dear lord," say I, "we," say I, "are not rich people, but we have," say I, "a small fortune, and one remarkably clever boy, who," say I, "wishes to study; and I," say I, "also wish it, but my wife wishes it very much!" and I squeeze that "very much" so that he may understand. But he's a Gentile and slow-witted, and he doesn't twig, and this time he asks angrily, "Then, whatever is it you want?!" I quietly put my hand into my pocket and quietly take it out again, and I say quietly: "Pardon me, we," say I, "are not rich people, but we have a little," say I, "fortune, and one remarkably clever boy, who," say I, "wishes to study; and I," say I, "wish it also, but my wife," say I, "wishes it very much indeed!" and I take and press into his hand——and this time, yes! he understood, and went and got a note-book, and asked my name and my son's name, and which class I wanted him entered for.

"Oho, lies the wind that way?" think I to myself, and I give him to understand that I am called Katz, Aaron Katz, and my son, Moisheh, Moshke we call him, and I want to get him into the third class. Says he to me, if I am Katz, and my son is Moisheh, Moshke we call him, and he wants to get into class three, I am to bring him in January, and he will certainly be passed. You hear and understand? Quite another thing! Apparently the horse trots as we shoe him. The worst is having to wait. But what is to be done? When they say, Wait! one waits. A Jew is used to waiting.

January—a fresh commotion, a scampering to and fro. To-morrow there will be a consultation. The director and the inspector and all the teachers of the Gymnasiye will come together, and it's only after the consultation that we shall know if he is entered or not. The time for action has come, and my wife is anywhere but at home. No hot meals, no samovar, no nothing! She is in the Gymnasiye, that is, not in the Gymnasiye, but at it, walking round and round it in the frost, from first thing in the morning, waiting for them to begin coming away from the consultation. The frost bites, there is a tearing east wind, and she paces round and round the building, and waits. Once a woman, always a woman! It seemed to me, that when people have made a promise, it is surely sacred, especially—you understand? But who would reason with a woman? Well, she waited one hour, she waited two, waited three, waited four; the children were all home long ago, and she waited on. She waited (much good may it do you!) till she got what she was waiting for. A door opens, and out comes one of the teachers. She springs and seizes hold on him. Does he know the result of the consultation? Why, says he, should he not? They have passed altogether twenty-five children, twenty-three Christian and two Jewish. Says she, "Who are they?" Says he, "One a Shefselsohn and one a Katz." At the name Katz, my wife shoots home like an arrow from the bow, and bursts into the room in triumph: "Good news! good news! Passed, passed!" and there are tears in her eyes. Of course, I am pleased, too, but I don't feel called upon to go dancing, being a man and not a woman. "It's evidently not much you care?" says she to me. "What makes you think that?" say I.—"This," says she, "you sit there cold as a stone! If you knew how impatient the child is, you would have taken him long ago to the tailor's, and ordered his little uniform," says she, "and a cap and a satchel," says she, "and made a little banquet for our friends."—"Why a banquet, all of a sudden?" say I. "Is there a Bar-Mitzveh? Is there an engagement?" I say all this quite quietly, for, after all, I am a man, not a woman. She grew so angry that she stopped talking. And when a woman stops talking, it's a thousand times worse than when she scolds, because so long as she is scolding at least you hear the sound of the human voice. Otherwise it's talk to the wall! To put it briefly, she got her way—she, not I—as usual.

There was a banquet; we invited our friends and our good friends, and my boy was dressed up from head to foot in a very smart uniform, with white buttons and a cap with a badge in front, quite the district-governor! And it did one's heart good to see him, poor child! There was new life in him, he was so happy, and he shone, I tell you, like the July sun! The company drank to him, and wished him joy: Might he study in health, and finish the course in health, and go on in health, till he reached the university! "Ett!" say I, "we can do with less. Let him only complete the eight classes at the Gymnasiye," say I, "and, please God, I'll make a bridegroom of him, with God's help." Cries my wife, smiling and fixing me with her eye the while, "Tell him," says she, "that he's wrong! He," says she, "keeps to the old-fashioned cut." "Tell her from me," say I, "that I'm blest if the old-fashioned cut wasn't better than the new." Says she, "Tell him that he (may he forgive me!) is——" The company burst out laughing. "Oi, Reb Aaron," say they, "you have a wife (no evil eye!) who is a Cossack and not a wife at all!" Meanwhile they emptied their wine-glasses, and cleared their plates, and we were what is called "lively." I and my wife were what is called "taken into the boat," the little one in the middle, and we made merry till daylight. That morning early we took him to the Gymnasiye. It was very early, indeed, the door was shut, not a soul to be seen. Standing outside there in the frost, we were glad enough when the door opened, and they let us in. Directly after that the small fry began to arrive with their satchels, and there was a noise and a commotion and a chatter and a laughing and a scampering to and fro—a regular fair! Schoolboys jumped over one another, gave each other punches, pokes, and pinches. As I looked at these young hopefuls with the red cheeks, with the merry, laughing eyes, I called to mind our former narrow, dark, and gloomy Cheder of long ago years, and I saw that after all she was right; she might be a woman, but she had a man's head on her shoulders! And as I reflected thus, there came along an individual in gilt buttons, who turned out to be a teacher, and asked what I wanted. I pointed to my boy, and said I had come to bring him to Cheder, that is, to the Gymnasiye. He asked to which class? I tell him, the third, and he has only just been entered. He asks his name. Say I, "Katz, Moisheh Katz, that is, Moshke Katz." Says he, "Moshke Katz?" He has no Moshke Katz in the third class. "There is," he says, "a Katz, only not a Moshke Katz, but a Morduch—Morduch Katz." Say I, "What Morduch? Moshke, not Morduch!" "Morduch!" he repeats, and thrusts the paper into my face. I to him, "Moshke." He to me, "Morduch!" In short, Moshke—Morduch, Morduch—Moshke, we hammer away till there comes out a fine tale: that which should have been mine is another's. You see what a kettle of fish? A regular Gentile muddle! They have entered a Katz—yes! But, by mistake, another, not ours. You see how it was: there were two Katz's in our town! What do you say to such luck? I have made a bed, and another will lie in it! No, but you ought to know who the other is, that Katz, I mean! A nothing of a nobody, an artisan, a bookbinder or a carpenter, quite a harmless little man, but who ever heard of him? A pauper! And his son—yes! And mine—no! Isn't it enough to disgust one, I ask you! And you should have seen that poor boy of mine, when he was told to take the badge off his cap! No bride on her wedding-day need shed more tears than were his! And no matter how I reasoned with him, whether I coaxed or scolded. "You see," I said to her, "what you've done! Didn't I tell you that your Gymnasiye was a slaughter-house for him? I only trust this may have a good ending, that he won't fall ill."—"Let my enemies," said she, "fall ill, if they like. My child," says she, "must enter the Gymnasiye. If he hasn't got in this time, in a year, please God, he will. If he hasn't got in," says she, "here, he will get in in another town—he must get in! Otherwise," says she, "I shall shut an eye, and the earth shall cover me!" You hear what she said? And who, do you suppose, had his way—she or I? When she sets her heart on a thing, can there be any question?

Well, I won't make a long story of it. I hunted up and down with him; we went to the ends of the world, wherever there was a town and a Gymnasiye, thither went we! We went up for examination, and were examined, and we passed and passed high, and did not get in—and why? All because of the percentage! You may believe, I looked upon my own self as crazy those days! "Wretch! what is this? What is this flying that you fly from one town to another? What good is to come of it? And suppose he does get in, what then?" No, say what you will, ambition is a great thing. In the end it took hold of me, too, and the Almighty had compassion, and sent me a Gymnasiye in Poland, a "commercial" one, where they took in one Jew to every Christian. It came to fifty per cent. But what then? Any Jew who wished his son to enter must bring his Christian with him, and if he passes, that is, the Christian, and one pays his entrance fee, then there is hope. Instead of one bundle, one has two on one's shoulders, you understand? Besides being worn with anxiety about my own, I had to tremble for the other, because if Esau, which Heaven forbid, fail to pass, it's all over with Jacob. But what I went through before I got that Christian, a shoemaker's son, Holiava his name was, is not to be described. And the best of all was this—would you believe that my shoemaker, planted in the earth firmly as Korah, insisted on Bible teaching? There was nothing for it but my son had to sit down beside his, and repeat the Old Testament. How came a son of mine to the Old Testament? Ai, don't ask! He can do everything and understands everything.

With God's help the happy day arrived, and they both passed. Is my story finished? Not quite. When it came to their being entered in the books, to writing out a check, my Christian was not to be found! What has happened? He, the Gentile, doesn't care for his son to be among so many Jews—he won't hear of it! Why should he, seeing that all doors are open to him anyhow, and he can get in where he pleases? Tell him it isn't fair? Much good that would be! "Look here," say I, "how much do you want, Pani Holiava?" Says he, "Nothing!" To cut the tale short—up and down, this way and that way, and friends and people interfering, we had him off to a refreshment place, and ordered a glass, and two, and three, before it all came right! Once he was really in, I cried my eyes out, and thanks be to Him whose Name is blessed, and who has delivered me out of all my troubles! When I got home, a fresh worry! What now? My wife has been reflecting and thinking it over: After all, her only son, the apple of her eye—he would be there and we here! And if so, what, says she, would life be to her? "Well," say I, "what do you propose doing?"—"What I propose doing?" says she. "Can't you guess? I propose," says she, "to be with him."—"You do?" say I. "And the house? What about the house?"—"The house," says she, "is a house." Anything to object to in that? So she was off to him, and I was left alone at home. And what a home! I leave you to imagine. May such a year be to my enemies! My comfort was gone, the business went to the bad. Everything went to the bad, and we were continually writing letters. I wrote to her, she wrote to me—letters went and letters came. Peace to my beloved wife! Peace to my beloved husband! "For Heaven's sake," I write, "what is to be the end of it? After all, I'm no more than a man! A man without a housemistress!" It was as much use as last year's snow; it was she who had her way, she, and not I, as usual.

To make an end of my story, I worked and worried myself to pieces, made a mull of the whole business, sold out, became a poor man, and carried my bundle over to them. Once there, I took a look round to see where I was in the world, nibbled here and there, just managed to make my way a bit, and entered into a partnership with a trader, quite a respectable man, yes! A well-to-do householder, holding office in the Shool, but at bottom a deceiver, a swindler, a pickpocket, who was nearly the ruin of me! You can imagine what a cheerful state of things it was. Meanwhile I come home one evening, and see my boy come to meet me, looking strangely red in the face, and without a badge on his cap. Say I to him, "Look here, Moshehl, where's your badge?" Says he to me, "Whatever badge?" Say I, "The button." Says he, "Whatever button?" Say I, "The button off your cap." It was a new cap with a new badge, only just bought for the festival! He grows redder than before, and says, "Taken off." Say I, "What do you mean by 'taken off'?" Says he, "I am free." Say I, "What do you mean by 'you are free'?" Says he, "We are all free." Say I, "What do you mean by 'we are all free'?" Says he, "We are not going back any more." Say I, "What do you mean by 'we are not going back'?" Says he, "We have united in the resolve to stay away." Say I, "What do you mean by 'you' have united in a resolve? Who are 'you'? What is all this? Bless your grandmother," say I, "do you suppose I have been through all this for you to unite in a resolve? Alas! and alack!" say I, "for you and me and all of us! May it please God not to let this be visited on Jewish heads, because always and everywhere," say I, "Jews are the scapegoats." I speak thus to him and grow angry and reprove him as a father usually does reprove a child. But I have a wife (long life to her!), and she comes running, and washes my head for me, tells me I don't know what is going on in the world, that the world is quite another world to what it used to be, an intelligent world, an open world, a free world, "a world," says she, "in which all are equal, in which there are no rich and no poor, no masters and no servants, no sheep and no shears, no cats, rats, no piggy-wiggy————" "Te-te-te!" say I, "where have you learned such fine language? a new speech," say I, "with new words. Why not open the hen-house, and let out the hens? Chuck—chuck—chuck, hurrah for freedom!" Upon which she blazes up as if I had poured ten pails of hot water over her. And now for it! As only they can! Well, one must sit it out and listen to the end. The worst of it is, there is no end. "Look here," say I, "hush!" say I, "and now let be!" say I, and beat upon my breast. "I have sinned!" say I, "I have transgressed, and now stop," say I, "if you would only be quiet!" But she won't hear, and she won't see. No, she says, she will know why and wherefore and for goodness' sake and exactly, and just how it was, and what it means, and how it happened, and once more and a second time, and all over again from the beginning!

I beg of you—who set the whole thing going? A—woman!

Born, 1861, in Chotin, Bessarabia; went to Breslau, Germany, in 1880, and pursued studies at the University; returned to Bessarabia in 1882; co-editor of the Bibliothek Dos Leben, published at Odessa, 1904, and Kishineff, 1905; writer of stories.

Friday evening!

The room has been tidied, the table laid. Two Sabbath loaves have been placed upon it, and covered with a red napkin. At the two ends are two metal candlesticks, and between them two more of earthenware, with candles in them ready to be lighted.

On the small sofa that stands by the stove lies a sick man covered up with a red quilt, from under the quilt appears a pale, emaciated face, with red patches on the dried-up cheeks and a black beard. The sufferer wears a nightcap, which shows part of his black hair and his black earlocks. There is no sign of life in his face, and only a faint one in his great, black eyes.

On a chair by the couch sits a nine-year-old girl with damp locks, which have just been combed out in honor of Sabbath. She is barefoot, dressed only in a shirt and a frock. The child sits swinging her feet, absorbed in what she is doing; but all her movements are gentle and noiseless.

The invalid coughed.

"Kche, kche, kche, kche," came from the sofa.

"What is it, Tate?" asked the little girl, swinging her feet.

The invalid made no reply.

He slowly raised his head with both hands, pulled down the nightcap, and coughed and coughed and coughed, hoarsely at first, then louder, the cough tearing at his sick chest and dinning in the ears. Then he sat up, and went on coughing and clearing his throat, till he had brought up the phlegm.

The little girl continued to be absorbed in her work and to swing her feet, taking very little notice of her sick father.

The invalid smoothed the creases in the cushion, laid his head down again, and closed his eyes. He lay thus for a few minutes, then he said quite quietly:

"Leah!"

"What is it, Tate?" inquired the child again, still swinging her feet.

"Tell ... mother ... it is ... time to ... bless ... the candles...."

The little girl never moved from her seat, but shouted through the open door into the shop:

"Mother, shut up shop! Father says it's time for candle-blessing."

"I'm coming, I'm coming," answered her mother from the shop.

She quickly disposed of a few women customers: sold one a kopek's worth of tea, the other, two kopeks' worth of sugar, the third, two tallow candles. Then she closed the shutters and the street door, and came into the room.

"You've drunk the glass of milk?" she inquired of the sick man.

"Yes ... I have ... drunk it," he replied.

"And you, Leahnyu, daughter," and she turned to the child, "may the evil spirit take you! Couldn't you put on your shoes without my telling you? Don't you know it's Sabbath?"

The little girl hung her head, and made no other answer.

Her mother went to the table, lighted the candles, covered her face with her hands, and blessed them.

After that she sat down on the seat by the window to take a rest.

It was only on Sabbath that she could rest from her hard work, toiling and worrying as she was the whole week long with all her strength and all her mind.

She sat lost in thought.

She was remembering past happy days.

She also had known what it is to enjoy life, when her husband was in health, and they had a few hundred rubles. They finished boarding with her parents, they set up a shop, and though he had always been a close frequenter of the house-of-study, a bench-lover, he soon learnt the Torah of commerce. She helped him, and they made a livelihood, and ate their bread in honor. But in course of time some quite new shops were started in the little town, there was great competition, the trade was small, and the gains were smaller, it became necessary to borrow money on interest, on weekly payment, and to pay for goods at once. The interest gradually ate up the capital with the gains. The creditors took what they could lay hands on, and still her husband remained in their debt.

He could not get over this, and fell ill.

The whole bundle of trouble fell upon her: the burden of a livelihood, the children, the sick man, everything, everything, on her.

But she did not lose heart.

"God will help, he will soon get well, and will surely find some work. God will not desert us," so she reflected, and meantime she was not sitting idle.

The very difficulty of her position roused her courage, and gave her strength.

She sold her small store of jewelry, and set up a little shop.

Three years have passed since then.

However it may be, God has not abandoned her, and however bitter and sour the struggle for Parnosseh may have been, she had her bit of bread. Only his health did not return, he grew daily weaker and worse.

She glanced at her sick husband, at his pale, emaciated face, and tears fell from her eyes.

During the week she has no time to think how unhappy she is. Parnosseh, housework, attendance on the children and the sick man—these things take up all her time and thought. She is glad when it comes to bedtime, and she can fall, dead tired, onto her bed.

But on Sabbath, the day of rest, she has time to think over her hard lot and all her misery and to cry herself out.

"When will there be an end of my troubles and suffering?" she asked herself, and could give no answer whatever to the question beyond despairing tears. She saw no ray of hope lighting her future, only a great, wide, shoreless sea of trouble.

It flashed across her:

"When he dies, things will be easier."

But the thought of his death only increased her apprehension.

It brought with it before her eyes the dreadful words: widow, orphans, poor little fatherless children....

These alarmed her more than her present distress.

How can children grow up without a father? Now, even though he's ill, he keeps an eye on them, tells them to say their prayers and to study. Who is to watch over them if he dies?

"Don't punish me, Lord of the World, for my bad thought," she begged with her whole heart. "I will take it upon myself to suffer and trouble for all, only don't let him die, don't let me be called by the bitter name of widow, don't let my children be called orphans!"

He sits upon his couch, his head a little thrown back and leaning against the wall. In one hand he holds a prayer-book—he is receiving the Sabbath into his house. His pale lips scarcely move as he whispers the words before him, and his thoughts are far from the prayer. He knows that he is dangerously ill, he knows what his wife has to suffer and bear, and not only is he powerless to help her, but his illness is her heaviest burden, what with the extra expense incurred on his account and the trouble of looking after him. Besides which, his weakness makes him irritable, and his anger has more than once caused her unmerited pain. He sees and knows it all, and his heart is torn with grief. "Only death can help us," he murmurs, and while his lips repeat the words of the prayer-book, his heart makes one request to God and only one: that God should send kind Death to deliver him from his trouble and misery.

Suddenly the door opened and a ten-year-old boy came into the room, in a long Sabbath cloak, with two long earlocks, and a prayer-book under his arm.

"A good Sabbath!" said the little boy, with a loud, ringing voice.

It seemed as if he and the holy Sabbath had come into the room together! In one moment the little boy had driven trouble and sadness out of sight, and shed light and consolation round him.

His "good Sabbath!" reached his parents' hearts, awoke there new life and new hopes.

"A good Sabbath!" answered the mother. Her eyes rested on the child's bright face, and her thoughts were no longer melancholy as before, for she saw in his eyes a whole future of happy possibilities.

"A good Sabbath!" echoed the lips of the sick man, and he took a deeper, easier breath. No, he will not die altogether, he will live again after death in the child. He can die in peace, he leaves a Kaddish behind him.

Erev Yom Kippur, Minchah time!

The Eve of the Day of Atonement, at Afternoon Prayer time.

A solemn and sacred hour for every Jew.

Everyone feels as though he were born again.

All the week-day worries, the two-penny-half-penny interests, seem far, far away; or else they have hidden themselves in some corner. Every Jew feels a noble pride, an inward peace mingled with fear and awe. He knows that the yearly Judgment Day is approaching, when God Almighty will hold the scales in His hand and weigh every man's merits against his transgressions. The sentence given on that day is one of life or death. No trifle! But the Jew is not so terrified as you might think—he has broad shoulders. Besides, he has a certain footing behind the "upper windows," he has good advocates and plenty of them; he has the "binding of Isaac" and a long chain of ancestors and ancestresses, who were put to death for the sanctification of the Holy Name, who allowed themselves to be burnt and roasted for the sake of God's Torah. Nishkoshe! Things are not so bad. The Lord of All may just remember that, and look aside a little. Is He not the Compassionate, the Merciful?

The shadows lengthen and lengthen.

Jews are everywhere in commotion.

Some hurry home straight from the bath, drops of bath-water dripping from beard and earlocks. They have not even dried their hair properly in their haste.

It is time to prepare for the davvening. Some are already on their way to Shool, robed in white. Nearly every Jew carries in one hand a large, well-packed Tallis-bag, which to-day, besides the prayer-scarf, holds the whole Jewish outfit: a bulky prayer-book, a book of Psalms, a Likkute Zevi, and so on; and in the other hand, two wax-candles, one a large one, that is the "light of life," and the other a small one, a shrunken looking thing, which is the "soul-light."

The Tamschevate house-of-study presents at this moment the following picture: the floor is covered with fresh hay, and the dust and the smell of the hay fill the whole building. Some of the men are standing at their prayers, beating their breasts in all seriousness. "We have trespassed, we have been faithless, we have robbed," with an occasional sob of contrition. Others are very busy setting up their wax-lights in boxes filled with sand; one of them, a young man who cannot live without it, betakes himself to the platform and repeats a "Bless ye the Lord." Meantime another comes slyly, and takes out two of the candles standing before the platform, planting his own in their place. Not far from the ark stands the beadle with a strap in his hand, and all the foremost householders go up to him, lay themselves down with their faces to the ground, and the beadle deals them out thirty-nine blows apiece, and not one of them bears him any grudge. Even Reb Groinom, from whom the beadle never hears anything from one Yom Kippur to another but "may you be ... "and "rascal," "impudence," "brazen face," "spendthrift," "carrion," "dog of all dogs"—and not infrequently Reb Groinom allows himself to apply his right hand to the beadle's cheek, and the latter has to take it all in a spirit of love—this same Reb Groinom now humbly approaches the same poor beadle, lies quietly down with his face to the ground, stretches himself out, and the beadle deliberately counts the strokes up to "thirty-nine Malkes." Covered with hay, Reb Groinom rises slowly, a piteous expression on his face, just as if he had been well thrashed, and he pushes a coin into the Shamash's hand. This is evidently the beadle's day! To-day he can take his revenge on his householders for the insults and injuries of a whole year!

But if you want to be in the thick of it all, you must stand in the anteroom by the door, where people are crowding round the plates for collections. The treasurer sits beside a little table with the directors of the congregation; the largest plate lies before them. To one side of them sits the cantor with his plate, and beside the cantor, several house-of-study youths with theirs. On every plate lies a paper with a written notice: "Visiting the Sick," "Supporting the Fallen," "Clothing the Naked," "Talmud Torah," "Refuge for the Poor," and so forth. Over one plate, marked "The Return to the Land of Israel," presides a modern young man, a Zionist. Everyone wishing to enter the house-of-study must first go to the plates marked "Call to the Torah" and "Seat in the Shool," put in what is his due, and then throw a few kopeks into the other plates.

Berel Tzop bustled up to the plate "Seat in the Shool," gave what was expected of him, popped a few coppers into the other plates, and prepared to recite the Afternoon Prayer. He wanted to pause a little between the words of his prayer, to attend to their meaning, to impress upon himself that this was the Eve of the Day of Atonement! But idle thoughts kept coming into his head, as though on purpose to annoy him, and his mind was all over the place at once! The words of the prayers got mixed up with the idea of oats, straw, wheat, and barley, and however much trouble he took to drive these idle thoughts away, he did not succeed. "Blow the great trumpet of our deliverance!" shouted Berel, and remembered the while that Ivan owed him ten measures of wheat. "...lift up the ensign to gather our exiles!..."—"and I made a mistake in Stephen's account by thirty kopeks...." Berel saw that it was impossible for him to pray with attention, and he began to reel off the Eighteen Benedictions, but not till he reached the Confession could he collect his scattered thoughts, and realize what he was saying. When he raised his hands to beat his breast at "We have trespassed, we have robbed," the hand remained hanging in the air, half-way. A shudder went through his limbs, the letters of the words "we have robbed" began to grow before his eyes, they became gigantic, they turned strange colors—red, blue, green, and yellow—now they took the form of large frogs—they got bigger and bigger, crawled into his eyes, croaked in his ears: You are a thief, a robber, you have stolen and plundered! You think nobody saw, that it would all run quite smoothly, but you are wrong! We shall stand before the Throne of Glory and cry: You are a thief, a robber!

Berel stood some time with his hand raised midway in the air.

The whole affair of the hundred rubles rose before his eyes.

A couple of months ago he had gone into the house of Reb Moisheh Chalfon. The latter had just gone out, there was nobody else in the room, nobody had even seen him come in.

The key was in the desk—Berel had looked at it, had hardly touched it—the drawer had opened as though of itself—several hundred-ruble-notes had lain glistening before his eyes! Just that day, Berel had received a very unpleasant letter from the father of his daughter's bridegroom, and to make matters worse, the author of the letter was in the right. Berel had been putting off the marriage for two years, and the Mechutton wrote quite plainly, that unless the wedding took place after Tabernacles, he should return him the contract.

"Return the contract!" the fiery letters burnt into Berel's brain.

He knew his Mechutton well. The Misnaggid! He wouldn't hesitate to tear up a marriage contract, either! And when it's a question of a by no means pretty girl of twenty and odd years! And the kind of bridegroom anybody might be glad to have secured for his daughter! And then to think that only one of those hundred-ruble-notes lying tossed together in that drawer would help him out of all his troubles. And the Evil Inclination whispers in his ear: "Berel, now or never! There will be an end to all your worry! Don't you see, it's a godsend." He, Berel, wrestled with him hard. He remembers it all distinctly, and he can hear now the faint little voice of the Good Inclination: "Berel, to become a thief in one's latter years! You who so carefully avoided even the smallest deceit! Fie, for shame! If God will, he can help you by honest means too." But the voice of the Good Inclination was so feeble, so husky, and the Evil Inclination suggested in his other ear: "Do you know what? Borrow one hundred rubles! Who talks of stealing? You will earn some money before long, and then you can pay him back—it's a charitable loan on his part, only that he doesn't happen to know of it. Isn't it plain to be seen that it's a godsend? If you don't call this Providence, what is? Are you going to take more than you really need? You know your Mechutton? Have you taken a good look at that old maid of yours? You recollect the bridegroom? Well, the Mechutton will be kind and mild as milk. The bridegroom will be a 'silken son-in-law,' the ugly old maid, a young wife—fool! God and men will envy you...." And he, Berel, lost his head, his thoughts flew hither and thither, like frightened birds, and—he no longer knew which of the two voices was that of the Good Inclination, and—

No one saw him leave Moisheh Chalfon's house.

And still his hand remains suspended in mid-air, still it does not fall against his breast, and there is a cold perspiration on his brow.

Berel started, as though out of his sleep. He had noticed that people were beginning to eye him as he stood with his hand held at a distance from his person. He hastily rattled through "For the sin, ..." concluded the Eighteen Benedictions, and went home.

At home, he didn't dawdle, he only washed his hands, recited "Who bringest forth bread," and that was all. The food stuck in his throat, he said grace, returned to Shool, put on the Tallis, and started to intone tunefully the Prayer of Expiation.

The lighted wax-candles, the last rays of the sun stealing in through the windows of the house-of-study, the congregation entirely robed in white and enfolded in the prayer-scarfs, the intense seriousness depicted on all faces, the hum of voices, and the bitter weeping that penetrated from the women's gallery, all this suited Berel's mood, his contrite heart. Berel had recited the Prayer of Expiation with deep feeling; tears poured from his eyes, his own broken voice went right through his heart, every word found an echo there, and he felt it in every limb. Berel stood before God like a little child before its parents: he wept and told all that was in his heavily-laden heart, the full tale of his cares and troubles. Berel was pleased with himself, he felt that he was not saying the words anyhow, just rolling them off his tongue, but he was really performing an act of penitence with his whole heart. He felt remorse for his sins, and God is a God of compassion and mercy, who will certainly pardon him.

"Therefore is my heart sad," began Berel, "that the sin which a man commits against his neighbor cannot be atoned for even on the Day of Atonement, unless he asks his neighbor's forgiveness ... therefore is my heart broken and my limbs tremble, because even the day of my death cannot atone for this sin."

Berel began to recite this in pleasing, artistic fashion, weeping and whimpering like a spoiled child, and drawling out the words, when it grew dark before his eyes. Berel had suddenly become aware that he was in the position of one about to go in through an open door. He advances, he must enter, it is a question of life and death. And without any warning, just as he is stepping across the threshold, the door is shut from within with a terrible bang, and he remains standing outside.

And he has read this in the Prayer of Expiation? With fear and fluttering he reads it over again, looking narrowly at every word—a cold sweat covers him—the words prick him like pins. Are these two verses his pitiless judges, are they the expression of his sentence? Is he already condemned? "Ay, ay, you are guilty," flicker the two verses on the page before him, and prayer and tears are no longer of any avail. His heart cried to God: "Have pity, merciful Father! A grown-up girl—what am I to do with her? And his father wanted to break off the engagement. As soon as I have earned the money, I will give it back...." But he knew all the time that these were useless subterfuges; the Lord of the Universe can only pardon the sin committed against Himself, the sin committed against man cannot be atoned for even on the Day of Atonement!

Berel took another look at the Prayer of Expiation. The words, "unless he asks his neighbor's forgiveness," danced before his eyes. A ray of hope crept into his despairing heart. One way is left open to him: he can confess to Moisheh Chalfon! But the hope was quickly extinguished. Is that a small matter? What of my honor, my good name? And what of the match? "Mercy, O Father," he cried, "have mercy!"

Berel proceeded no further with the Prayer of Expiation. He stood lost in his melancholy thoughts, his whole life passed before his eyes. He, Berel, had never licked honey, trouble had been his in plenty, he had known cares and worries, but God had never abandoned him. It had frequently happened to him in the course of his life to think he was lost, to give up all his hope. But each time God had extricated him unexpectedly from his difficulty, and not only that, but lawfully, honestly, Jewishly. And now—he had suddenly lost his trust in the Providence of His dear Name! "Donkey!" thus Berel abused himself, "went to look for trouble, did you? Now you've got it! Sold yourself body and soul for one hundred rubles! Thief! thief! thief!" It did Berel good to abuse himself like this, it gave him a sort of pleasure to aggravate his wounds.

Berel, sunk in his sad reflections, has forgotten where he is in the world. The congregation has finished the Prayer of Expiation, and is ready for Kol Nidré. The cantor is at his post at the reading-desk on the platform, two of the principal, well-to-do Jews, with Torahs in their hands, on each side of him. One of them is Moisheh Chalfon. There is a deep silence in the building. The very last rays of the sun are slanting in through the window, and mingling with the flames of the wax-candles....

"With the consent of the All-Present and with the consent of this congregation, we give leave to pray with them that have transgressed," startled Berel's ears. It was Moisheh Chalfon's voice. The voice was low, sweet, and sad. Berel gave a side glance at where Moisheh Chalfon was standing, and it seemed to him that Moisheh Chalfon was doing the same to him, only Moisheh Chalfon was looking not into his eyes, but deep into his heart, and there reading the word Thief! And Moisheh Chalfon is permitting the people to pray together with him, Berel the thief!

"Mercy, mercy, compassionate God!" cried Berel's heart in its despair.

They had concluded Maariv, recited the first four chapters of the Psalms and the Song of Unity, and the people went home, to lay in new strength for the morrow.

There remained only a few, who spent the greater part of the night repeating Psalms, intoning the Mishnah, and so on; they snatched an occasional doze on the bare floor overlaid with a whisp of hay, an old cloak under their head. Berel also stayed the night in the house-of-study. He sat down in a corner, in robe and Tallis, and began reciting Psalms with a pleasing pathos, and he went on until overtaken by sleep. At first he resisted, he took a nice pinch of snuff, rubbed his eyes, collected his thoughts, but it was no good. The covers of the book of Psalms seemed to have been greased, for they continually slipped from his grasp, the printed lines had grown crooked and twisted, his head felt dreadfully heavy, and his eyelids clung together; his nose was forever drooping towards the book of Psalms. He made every effort to keep awake, started up every time as though he had burnt himself, but sleep was the stronger of the two. Gradually he slid from the bench onto the floor; the Psalter slipped finally from between his fingers, his head dropped onto the hay, and he fell sweetly asleep....

And Berel had a dream:

Yom Kippur, and yet there is a fair in the town, the kind of fair one calls an "earthquake," a fair such as Berel does not remember having seen these many years, so crowded is it with men and merchandise. There is something of everything—cattle, horses, sheep, corn, and fruit. All the Tamschevate Jews are strolling round with their wives and children, there is buying and selling, the air is full of noise and shouting, the whole fair is boiling and hissing and humming like a kettle. One runs this way and one that way, this one is driving a cow, that one leading home a horse by the rein, the other buying a whole cart-load of corn. Berel is all astonishment and curiosity: how is it possible for Jews to busy themselves with commerce on Yom Kippur? on such a holy day? As far back as he can remember, Jews used to spend the whole day in Shool, in linen socks, white robe, and prayer-scarf. They prayed and wept. And now what has come over them, that they should be trading on Yom Kippur, as if it were a common week-day, in shoes and boots (this last struck him more than anything)? Perhaps it is all a dream? thought Berel in his sleep. But no, it is no dream! "Here I am strolling round the fair, wide awake. And the screaming and the row in my ears, is that a dream, too? And my having this very minute been bumped on the shoulder by a Gentile going past me with a horse—is that a dream? But if the whole world is taking part in the fair, it's evidently the proper thing to do...." Meanwhile he was watching a peasant with a horse, and he liked the look of the horse so much that he bought it and mounted it. And he looked at it from where he sat astride, and saw the horse was a horse, but at the selfsame time it was Moisheh Chalfon as well. Berel wondered: how is it possible for it to be at once a horse and a man? But his own eyes told him it was so. He wanted to dismount, but the horse bears him to a shop. Here he climbed down and asked for a pound of sugar. Berel kept his eyes on the scales, and—a fresh surprise! Where they should have been weighing sugar, they were weighing his good and bad deeds. And the two scales were nearly equally laden, and oscillated up and down in the air....

Suddenly they threw a sheet of paper into the scale that held his bad deeds. Berel looked to see—it was the hundred-ruble-note which he had appropriated at Moisheh Chalfon's! But it was now much larger, bordered with black, and the letters and numbers were red as fire. The piece of paper was frightfully heavy, it was all two men could do to carry it to the weighing-machine, and when they had thrown it with all their might onto the scale, something snapped, and the scale went down, down, down.

At that moment a man sleeping at Berel's head stretched out a foot, and gave Berel a kick in the head. Berel awoke.

Not far from him sat a grey-haired old Jew, huddled together, enfolded in a Tallis and robe, repeating Psalms with a melancholy chant and a broken, quavering voice.

Berel caught the words:

Berel looked round in a fright: Where is he? He had quite forgotten that he had remained for the night in the house-of-study. He gazed round with sleepy eyes, and they fell on some white heaps wrapped in robes and prayer-scarfs, while from their midst came the low, hoarse, tearful voices of two or three men who had not gone to sleep and were repeating Psalms. Many of the candles were already sputtering, the wax was melting into the sand, the flames rose and fell, and rose again, flaring brightly.

And the pale moon looked in at the windows, and poured her silvery light over the fantastic scene.

Berel grew icy cold, and a dreadful shuddering went through his limbs.

He had not yet remembered that he was spending the night in the house-of-study.

He imagined that he was dead, and astray in limbo. The white heaps which he sees are graves, actual graves, and there among the graves sit a few sinful souls, and bewail and lament their transgressions. And he, Berel, cannot even weep, he is a fallen one, lost forever—he is condemned to wander, to roam everlastingly among the graves.

By degrees, however, he called to mind where he was, and collected his wits.

Only then he remembered his fearful dream.

"No," he decided within himself, "I have lived till now without the hundred rubles, and I will continue to live without them. If the Lord of the Universe wishes to help me, he will do so without them too. My soul and my portion of the world-to-come are dearer to me. Only let Moisheh Chalfon come in to pray, I will tell him the whole truth and avert misfortune."

This decision gave him courage, he washed his hands, and sat down again to the Psalms. Every few minutes he glanced at the window, to see if it were not beginning to dawn, and if Reb Moisheh Chalfon were not coming along to Shool.

The day broke.

With the first sunbeams Berel's fears and terrors began little by little to dissipate and diminish. His resolve to restore the hundred rubles weakened considerably.

"If I don't confess," thought Berel, wrestling in spirit with temptation, "I risk my world-to-come.... If I do confess, what will my Chantzeh-Leah say to it? He writes, either the wedding takes place, or the contract is dissolved! And what shall I do, when his father gets to hear about it? There will be a stain on my character, the marriage contract will be annulled, and I shall be left ... without my good name and ... with my ugly old maid....

"What is to be done? Help! What is to be done?"

The people began to gather in the Shool. The reader of the Morning Service intoned "He is Lord of the Universe" to the special Yom Kippur tune, a few householders and young men supported him, and Berel heard through it all only, Help! What is to be done?

And suddenly he beheld Moisheh Chalfon.

Berel quickly rose from his place, he wanted to make a rush at Moisheh Chalfon. But after all he remained where he was, and sat down again.

"I must first think it over, and discuss it with my Chantzeh-Leah," was Berel's decision.

Berel stood up to pray with the congregation. He was again wishful to pray with fervor, to collect his thoughts, and attend to the meaning of the words, but try as he would, he couldn't! Quite other things came into his head: a dream, a fair, a horse, Moisheh Chalfon, Chantzeh-Leah, oats, barley, this world and the next were all mixed up together in his mind, and the words of the prayers skipped about like black patches before his eyes. He wanted to say he was sorry, to cry, but he only made curious grimaces, and could not squeeze out so much as a single tear.

Berel was very dissatisfied with himself. He finished the Morning Prayer, stood through the Additional Service, and proceeded to devour the long Piyyutim.

The question, What is to be done? left him no peace, and he was really reciting the Piyyutim to try and stupefy himself, to dull his brain.

So it went on till U-Nesanneh Toikef.

The congregation began to prepare for U-Nesanneh Toikef, coughed, to clear their throats, and pulled the Tallesim over their heads. The cantor sat down for a minute to rest, and unbuttoned his shroud. His face was pale and perspiring, and his eyes betrayed a great weariness. From the women's gallery came a sound of weeping and wailing.

Berel had drawn his Tallis over his head, and started reciting with earnestness and enthusiasm:

These words opened the source of Berel's tears, and he sobbed unaffectedly. Every sentence cut him to the heart, like a sharp knife, and especially the passage:

"And Thou recallest all forgotten things, and openest the Book of Remembrance, and the book reads itself, and every man's handwriting is there...." At that very moment the Book of Remembrance was lying open before the Lord of the Universe, with the handwritings of all men. It contains his own as well, the one which he wrote with his own hand that day when he took away the hundred-ruble-note. He pictures how his soul flew up to Heaven while he slept, and entered everything in the eternal book, and now the letters stood before the Throne of Glory, and cried, "Berel is a thief, Berel is a robber!" And he has the impudence to stand and pray before God? He, the offender, the transgressor—and the Shool does not fall upon his head?

The congregation concluded U-Nesanneh Toikef, and the cantor began: "And the great trumpet of ram's horn shall be sounded..." and still Berel stood with the Tallis over his head.

Suddenly he heard the words:

The words penetrated into the marrow of Berel's bones, and he shuddered from head to foot. The words, "This is the Day of Judgment," reverberated in his ears like a peal of thunder. He imagined the angels were hastening to him with one speed, with one swoop, to seize and drag him before the Throne of Glory, and the piteous wailing that came from the women's court was for him, for his wretched soul, for his endless misfortune.

"No! no! no!" he resolved, "come what may, let him annul the contract, let them point at me with their fingers as at a thief, if they choose, let my Chantzeh-Leah lose her chance! I will take it all in good part, if I may only save my unhappy soul! The minute the Kedushah is over I shall go to Moisheh Chalfon, tell him the whole story, and beg him to forgive me."

The cantor came to the end of U-Nesanneh Toikef, the congregation resumed their seats, Berel also returned to his place, and did not go up to Moisheh Chalfon.

"Help, what shall I do, what shall I do?" he thought, as he struggled with his conscience. "Chantzeh-Leah will lay me on the fire ... she will cry her life out ... the Mechutton ... the bridegroom...."

The Additional Service and the Afternoon Service were over, people were making ready for the Conclusion Service, Neïleh. The shadows were once more lengthening, the sun was once more sinking in the west. The Shool-Goi began to light candles and lamps, and placed them on the tables and the window-ledges. Jews with faces white from exhaustion sat in the anteroom resting and refreshing themselves with a pinch of snuff, or a drop of hartshorn, and a few words of conversation. Everyone feels more cheerful and in better humor. What had to be done, has been done and well done. The Lord of the Universe has received His due. They have mortified themselves a whole day, fasted continuously, recited prayers, and begged forgiveness!

Now surely the Almighty will do His part, accept the Jewish prayers and have compassion on His people Israel.

Only Berel sits in a corner by himself. He also is wearied and exhausted. He also has fasted, prayed, wept, mortified himself, like the rest. But he knows that the whole of his toil and trouble has been thrown away. He sits troubled, gloomy, and depressed. He knows that they have now reached Neïleh, that he has still time to repent, that the door of Heaven will stand open a little while longer, his repentance may yet pass through ... otherwise, yet a little while, and the gates of mercy will be shut and ... too late!

"Oh, open the gate to us, even while it is closing," sounded in Berel's ears and heart ... yet a little while, and it will be too late!

"No, no!" shrieked Berel to himself, "I will not lose my soul, my world-to-come! Let Chantzeh-Leah burn me and roast me, I will take it all in good part, so that I don't lose my world-to-come!"

Berel rose from his seat, and went up to Moisheh Chalfon.

"Reb Moisheh, a word with you," he whispered into his ear.

"Afterwards, when the prayers are done."

"No, no, no!" shrieked Berel, below his breath, "now, at once!"

Moisheh Chalfon stood up.

Berel led him out of the house-of-study, and aside.

"Reb Moisheh, kind soul, have pity on me and forgive me!" cried Berel, and burst into sobs.

"God be with you, Berel, what has come over you all at once?" asked Reb Moisheh, in astonishment.

"Listen to me, Reb Moisheh!" said Berel, still sobbing. "The hundred rubles you lost a few weeks ago are in my house!... God knows the truth, I didn't take them out of wickedness. I came into your house, the key was in the drawer ... there was no one in the room.... That day I'd had a letter from my Mechutton that he'd break off his son's engagement if the wedding didn't take place to time.... My girl is ugly and old ... the bridegroom is a fine young man ... a precious stone.... I opened the drawer in spite of myself ... and saw the bank-notes.... You see how it was?... My Mechutton is a Misnaggid ... a flint-hearted screw.... I took out the note ... but it is shortening my years!... God knows what I bore and suffered at the time.... To-night I will bring you the note back.... Forgive me!... Let the Mechutton break off the match, if he chooses, let the woman fret away her years, so long as I am rid of the serpent that is gnawing at my heart, and gives me no peace! I never before touched a ruble belonging to anyone else, and become a thief in my latter years I won't!"

Moisheh Chalfon did not answer him for a little while. He took out his snuff, and had a pinch, then he took out of the bosom of his robe a great red handkerchief, wiped his nose, and reflected a minute or two. Then he said quietly:

"If a match were broken off through me, I should be sorry. You certainly behaved as you should not have, in taking the money without leave, but it is written: Judge not thy neighbor till thou hast stood in his place. You shall keep the hundred rubles. Come to-night and bring me an I. O. U., and begin to repay me little by little."

"What are you, an angel?" exclaimed Berel, weeping.

"God forbid," replied Moisheh Chalfon, quietly, "I am what you are. You are a Jew, and I also am a Jew."

Born, 1861, in Zwoniec, Podolia, Southwestern Russia; co-editor of die Bibliothek Dos Leben, published at Odessa, 1904, and Kishineff, 1905.

The first night of Passover. It is already about ten o'clock. Outside it is dark, wet, cold as the grave. A fine, close, sleety rain is driving down, a light, sharp, fitful wind blows, whistles, sighs, and whines, and wanders round on every side, like a returned and sinful soul seeking means to qualify for eternal bliss. The mud is very thick, and reaches nearly to the waist.

At one end of the town of Kamenivke, in the Poor People's Street, which runs along by the bath-house, it is darkest of all, and muddiest. The houses there are small, low, and overhanging, tumbled together in such a way that there is no seeing where the mud begins and the dwelling ends. No gleam of light, even in the windows. Either the inhabitants of the street are all asleep, resting their tired bones and aching limbs, or else they all lie suffocated in the sea of mud, simply because the mud is higher than the windows. Whatever the reason, the street is quiet as a God's-acre, and the darkness may be felt with the hands.

Suddenly the dead stillness of the street is broken by the heavy tread of some ponderous creature, walking and plunging through the Kamenivke mud, and there appears the tall, broad figure of a man. He staggers like one tipsy or sick, but he keeps on in a straight line, at an even pace, like one born and bred and doomed to die in the familiar mud, till he drags his way to a low, crouching house at the very end of the street, almost under the hillside. It grows lighter—a bright flame shines through the little window-panes. He has not reached the door before it opens, and a shaky, tearful voice, full of melancholy, pain, and woe, breaks the hush a second time this night:

"Bertzi, is it you? Are you all right? So late? Has there been another accident? And the cart and the horse, wu senen?"

"All right, all right! A happy holiday!"

His voice is rough, hoarse, and muffled.

She lets him into the passage, and opens the inner door.

But scarcely is he conscious of the light, warmth, and cleanliness of the room, when he gives a strange, wild cry, takes one leap, like a hare, onto the "eating-couch" spread for him on the red-painted, wooden sofa, and—he lies already in a deep sleep.

The whole dwelling, consisting of one nice, large, low room, is clean, tidy, and bright. The bits of furniture and all the household essentials are poor, but so clean and polished that one can mirror oneself in them, if one cares to stoop down. The table is laid ready for Passover. The bottles of red wine, the bottle of yellow Passover brandy, and the glass goblets of different colors reflect the light of the thick tallow candles, and shine and twinkle and sparkle. The oven, which stands in the same room, is nearly out, there is one sleepy little bit of fire still flickering. But the pots, ranged round the fire as though to watch over it and encourage it, exhale such delicious, appetizing smells that they would tempt even a person who had just eaten his fill. But no one makes a move towards them. All five children lie stretched in a row on the red-painted, wooden bed. Even they have not tasted of the precious dishes, of which they have thought and talked for weeks previous to the festival. They cried loud and long, waiting for their father's return, and at last they went sweetly to sleep. Only one fly is moving about the room: Rochtzi, Bertzi Wasserführer's wife, and rivers of tears, large, clear tears, salt with trouble and distress, flow from her eyes.

Although Rochtzi has not seen more than thirty summers, she looks like an old woman. Once upon a time she was pretty, she was even known as one of the prettiest of the Kamenivke girls, and traces of her beauty are still to be found in her uncommonly large, dark eyes, and even in her lined face, although the eyes have long lost their fire, and her cheeks, their color and freshness. She is dressed in clean holiday attire, but her eyes are red from the hot, salt tears, and her expression is darkened and sad.

"Such a festival, such a great, holy festival, and then when it comes...." The pale lips tremble and quiver.

How many days and nights, beginning before Purim, has she sat with her needle between her fingers, so that the children should have their holiday frocks—and all depending on her hands and head! How much thought and care and strength has she spent on preparing the room, their poor little possessions, and the food? How many were the days, Sabbaths excepted, on which they went without a spoonful of anything hot, so that they might be able to give a becoming reception to that dear, great, and holy visitor, the Passover? Everything (the Almighty forbid that she should sin with her tongue!) of the best, ready and waiting, and then, after all....

He, his sheepskin, his fur cap, and his great boots are soaked with rain and steeped in thick mud, and there, in this condition, lies he, Bertzi Wasserführer, her husband, her Passover "king," like a great black lump, on the nice, clean, white, draped "eating-couch," and snores.

The brief tale I am telling you happened in the days before Kamenivke had joined itself on, by means of the long, tall, and beautiful bridge, to the great high hill that has stood facing it from everlasting, thickly wooded, and watered by quantities of clear, crystal streams, which babble one to another day and night, and whisper with their running tongues of most important things. So long as the bridge had not been flung from one of the giant rocks to the other rock, the Kamenivke people had not been able to procure the good, wholesome water of the wild hill, and had to content themselves with the thick, impure water of the river Smotritch, which has flowed forever round the eminence on which Kamenivke is built. But man, and especially the Jew, gets used to anything, and the Kamenivke people, who are nearly all Grandfather Abraham's grandchildren, had drunk Smotritch water all their lives, and were conscious of no grievance.

But the lot of the Kamenivke water-carriers was hard and bitter. Kamenivke stands high, almost in the air, and the river Smotritch runs deep down in the valley.

In summer, when the ground is dry, it was bearable, for then the Kamenivke water-carrier was merely bathed in sweat as he toiled up the hill, and the Jewish breadwinner has been used to that for ages. But in winter, when the snow was deep and the frost tremendous, when the steep Skossny hill with its clay soil was covered with ice like a hill of glass! Or when the great rains were pouring down, and the town and especially the clay hill are confounded with the deep, thick mud!

Our Bertzi Wasserführer was more alive to the fascinations of this Parnosseh than any other water-carrier. He was, as though in his own despite, a pious Jew and a great man of his word, and he had to carry water for almost all the well-to-do householders. True, that in face of all his good luck he was one of the poorest Jews in the Poor People's Street, only——

Lord of the World, may there never again be such a winter as there was then!

Not the oldest man there could recall one like it. The snow came down in drifts, and never stopped. One could and might have sworn on a scroll of the Law, that the great Jewish God was angry with the Kamenivke Jews, and had commanded His angels to shovel down on Kamenivke all the snow that had lain by in all the seven heavens since the sixth day of creation, so that the sinful town might be a ruin and a desolation.

And the terrible, fiery frosts!

Frozen people were brought into the town nearly every day.

Oi, Jews, how Bertzi Wasserführer struggled, what a time he had of it! Enemies of Zion, it was nearly the death of him!

And suddenly the snow began to stop falling, all at once, and then things were worse than ever—there was a sea of water, an ocean of mud.

And Passover coming on with great strides!

For three days before Passover he had not come home to sleep. Who talks of eating, drinking, and sleeping? He and his man toiled day and night, like six horses, like ten oxen.

The last day before Passover was the worst of all. His horse suddenly came to the conclusion that sooner than live such a life, it would die. So it died and vanished somewhere in the depths of the Kamenivke clay.

And Bertzi the water-carrier and his man had to drag the cart with the great water-barrel themselves, the whole day till long after dark.

It is already eleven, twelve, half past twelve at night, and Bertzi's chest, throat, and nostrils continue to pipe and to whistle, to sob and to sigh.

The room is colder and darker, the small fire in the oven went out long ago, and only little stumps of candles remain.

Rochtzi walks and runs about the room, she weeps and wrings her hands.

But now she runs up to the couch by the table, and begins to rouse her husband with screams and cries fit to make one's blood run cold and the hair stand up on one's head:

"No, no, you're not going to sleep any longer, I tell you! Bertzi, do you hear me? Get up, Bertzi, aren't you a Jew?—a man?—the father of children?—Bertzi, have you God in your heart? Bertzi, have you said your prayers? My husband, what about the Seder? I won't have it!—I feel very ill—I am going to faint!—Help!—Water!"

"Have I forgotten somebody's water?—Whose?—Where?..."

But Rochtzi is no longer in need of water: she beholds her "king" on his feet, and has revived without it. With her two hands, with all the strength she has, she holds him from falling back onto the couch.

"Don't you see, Bertzi? The candles are burning down, the supper is cold and will spoil. I fancy it's already beginning to dawn. The children, long life to them, went to sleep without any food. Come, please, begin to prepare for the Seder, and I will wake the two elder ones."

Bertzi stands bent double and treble. His breathing is labored and loud, his face is smeared with mud and swollen from the cold, his beard and earlocks are rough and bristly, his eyes sleepy and red. He looks strangely wild and unkempt. Bertzi looks at Rochtzi, at the table, he looks round the room, and sees nothing. But now he looks at the bed: his little children, washed, and in their holiday dresses, are all lying in a row across the bed, and—he remembers everything, and understands what Rochtzi is saying, and what it is she wants him to do.

"Give me some water—I said Minchah and Maariv by the way, while I was at work."

"I'm bringing it already! May God grant you a like happiness! Good health to you! Hershele, get up, my Kaddish, father has come home already! Shmuelkil, my little son, go and ask father the Four Questions."

Bertzi fills a goblet with wine, takes it up in his left hand, places it upon his right hand, and begins:

"Savri Moronon, ve-Rabbonon, ve-Rabbosai—with the permission of the company."—His head goes round.—"Lord of the World!—I am a Jew.—Blessed art Thou. Lord our God, King of the Universe—" It grows dark before his eyes: "The first night of Passover—I ought to make Kiddush—Thou who dost create the fruit of the vine"—his feet fail him, as though they had been cut off—"and I ought to give the Seder—This is the bread of the poor.... Lord of the World, you know how it is: I can't do it!—Have mercy!—Forgive me!"

A nasty smell of sputtered-out candles fills the room. Rochtzi weeps. Bertzi is back on the couch and snores.

Different sounds, like the voices of winds, cattle, and wild beasts, and the whirr of a mill, are heard in his snoring. And her weeping—it seems as if the whole room were sighing and quivering and shaking....

Forty days before Ezrielk descended upon this sinful world, his life-partner was proclaimed in Heaven, and the Heavenly Council decided that he was to transcribe the books of the Law, prayers, and Mezuzehs for the Kabtzonivke Jews, and thereby make a living for his wife and children. But the hard word went forth to him that he should not disclose this secret decree to anyone, and should even forget it himself for a goodly number of years. A glance at Ezrielk told one that he had been well lectured with regard to some important matter, and was to tell no tales out of school. Even Minde, the Kabtzonivke Bobbe, testified to this:

"Never in all my life, all the time I've been bringing Jewish children into God's world, have I known a child scream so loud at birth as Ezrielk—a sign that he'd had it well rubbed into him!"

Either the angel who has been sent to fillip little children above the lips when they are being born, was just then very sleepy (Ezrielk was born late at night), or some one had put him out of temper, but one way or another little Ezrielk, the very first minute of his Jewish existence, caught such a blow that his top lip was all but split in two.

After this kindly welcome, when God's angel himself had thus received Ezrielk, slaps, blows, and stripes rained down upon his head, body, and life, all through his days, without pause or ending.

Ezrielk began to attend Cheder when he was exactly three years old. His first teacher treated him very badly, beat him continually, and took all the joy of his childhood from him. By the time this childhood of his had passed, and he came to be married (he began to wear the phylacteries and the prayer-scarf on the day of his marriage), he was a very poor specimen, small, thin, stooping, and yellow as an egg-pudding, his little face dark, dreary, and weazened, like a dried Lender herring. The only large, full things about him were his earlocks, which covered his whole face, and his two blue eyes. He had about as much strength as a fly, he could not even break the wine-glass under the marriage canopy by himself, and had to ask for help of Reb Yainkef Butz, the beadle of the Old Shool.

Among the German Jews a boy like that would have been left unwed till he was sixteen or even seventeen, but our Ezrielk was married at thirteen, for his bride had been waiting for him seventeen years.

It was this way: Reb Seinwill Bassis, Ezrielk's father, and Reb Selig Tachshit, his father-in-law, were Hostre Chassidim, and used to drive every year to spend the Solemn Days at the Hostre Rebbe's. They both (not of you be it spoken!) lost all their children in infancy, and, as you can imagine, they pressed the Rebbe very closely on this important point, left him no peace, till he should bestir himself on their behalf, and exercise all his influence in the Higher Spheres. Once, on the Eve of Yom Kippur, before daylight, after the waving of the scape-fowls, when the Rebbe, long life to him, was in somewhat high spirits, our two Chassidim made another set upon him, but this time they had quite a new plan, and it simply had to work out!

"Do you know what? Arrange a marriage between your children! Good luck to you!" The whole company of Chassidim broke some plates, and actually drew up the marriage contract. It was a little difficult to draw up the contract, because they did not know which of our two friends would have the boy (the Rebbe, long life to him, was silent on this head), and which, the girl, but—a learned Jew is never at a loss, and they wrote out the contract with conditions.

For three years running after this their wives bore them each a child, but the children were either both boys or both girls, so that their vow to unite the son of one to a daughter of the other born in the same year could not be fulfilled, and the documents lay on the shelf.

True, the little couples departed for the "real world" within the first month, but the Rebbe consoled the father by saying:

"We may be sure they were not true Jewish children, that is, not true Jewish souls. The true Jewish soul once born into the world holds on, until, by means of various troubles and trials, it is cleansed from every stain. Don't worry, but wait."

The fourth year the Rebbe's words were established: Reb Selig Tachshit had a daughter born to him, and Reb Seinwill Bassis, Ezrielk.

Channehle, Ezrielk's bride, was tall, when they married, as a young fir-tree, beautiful as the sun, clever as the day is bright, and white as snow, with sky-blue, star-like eyes. Her hair was the color of ripe corn—in a word, she was fair as Abigail and our Mother Rachel in one, winning as Queen Esther, pious as Leah, and upright as our Grandmother Sarah.

But although the bride was beautiful, she found no fault with her bridegroom; on the contrary, she esteemed it a great honor to have him for a husband. All the Kabtzonivke girls envied her, and every Kabtzonivke woman who was "expecting" desired with all her heart that she might have such a son as Ezrielk. The reason is quite plain: First, what true Jewish maiden looks for beauty in her bridegroom? Secondly, our Ezrielk was as full of excellencies as a pomegranate is of seeds.

His teachers had not broken his bones for nothing. The blows had been of great and lasting good to him. Even before his wedding, Seinwill Bassis's Ezrielk was deeply versed in the Law, and could solve the hardest "questions," so that you might have made a Rabbi of him. He was, moreover, a great scribe. His "in-honor-ofs," and his "blessed bes" were known, not only in Kabtzonivke, but all over Kamenivke, and as for his singing—!

When Ezrielk began to sing, poor people forgot their hunger, thirst, and need, the sick, their aches and pains, the Kabtzonivke Jews in general, their bitter exile.

He mostly sang unfamiliar tunes and whole "things."

"Where do you get them, Ezrielk?"

The little Ezrielk would open his eyes (he kept them shut while he sang), his two big blue eyes, and answer wonderingly:

"Don't you hear how everything sings?"

After a little while, when Ezrielk had been singing so well and so sweetly and so wonderfully that the Kabtzonivke Jews began to feel too happy, people fell athinking, and they grew extremely uneasy and disturbed in their minds:

"It's not all so simple as it looks, there is something behind it. Suppose a not-good one had introduced himself into the child (which God forbid!)? It would do no harm to take him to the Aleskev Rebbe, long life to him."

As good luck would have it, the Hostre Rebbe came along just then to Kabtzonivke, and, after all, Ezrielk belonged to him, he was born through the merit of the Rebbe's miracle-working! So the Chassidim told him the story. The Rebbe, long life to him, sent for him. Ezrielk came and began to sing. The Rebbe listened a long, long time to his sweet voice, which rang out like a hundred thousand crystal and gold bells into every corner of the room.

"Do not be alarmed, he may and he must sing. He gets his tunes there where he got his soul."

And Ezrielk sang cheerful tunes till he was ten years old, that is, till he fell into the hands of the teacher Reb Yainkel Vittiss.

Now, the end and object of Reb Yainkel's teaching was not merely that his pupils should know a lot and know it well. Of course, we know that the Jew only enters this sinful world in order that he may more or less perfect himself, and that it is therefore needful he should, and, indeed, he must, sit day and night over the Torah and the Commentaries. Yainkel Vittiss's course of instruction began and ended with trying to imbue his pupils with a downright, genuine, Jewish-Chassidic enthusiasm.

The first day Ezrielk entered his Cheder, Reb Yainkel lifted his long, thick lashes, and began, while he gazed fixedly at him, to shake his head, saying to himself: "No, no, he won't do like that. There is nothing wrong with the vessel, a goodly vessel, only the wine is still very sharp, and the ferment is too strong. He is too cocky, too lively for me. A wonder, too, for he's been in good hands (tell me, weren't you under both Moisheh-Yusis?), and it's a pity, when you come to think, that such a goodly vessel should be wasted. Yes, he wants treating in quite another way."

And Yainkel Vittiss set himself seriously to the task of shaping and working up Ezrielk.

Reb Yainkel was not in the least concerned when he beat a pupil and the latter cried and screamed at the top of his voice. He knew what he was about, and was convinced that, when one beats and it hurts, even a Jewish child (which must needs get used to blows) may cry and scream, and the more the better; it showed that his method of instruction was taking effect. And when he was thrashing Ezrielk, and the boy cried and yelled, Reb Yainkel would tell him: "That's right, that's the way! Cry, scream—louder still! That's the way to get a truly contrite Jewish heart! You sing too merrily for me—a true Jew should weep even while he sings."

When Ezrielk came to be twelve years old, his teacher declared that he might begin to recite the prayers in Shool before the congregation, as he now had within him that which beseems a good Chassidic Jew.

So Ezrielk began to davven in the Kabtzonivke Old Shool, and a crowd of people, not only from Kabtzonivke, but even from Kamenivke and Ebionivke, used to fill and encircle the Shool to hear him.

Reb Yainkel was not mistaken, he knew what he was saying. Ezrielk was indeed fit to davven: life and the joy of life had vanished from his singing, and the terrorful weeping, the fearful wailing of a nation's two thousand years of misfortune, might be heard and felt in his voice.

Ezrielk was very weakly, and too young to lead the service often, but what a stir he caused when he lifted up his voice in the Shool!

Kabtzonivke, Kamenivke, and Ebionivke will never forget the first U-mipné Chatoénu led by the twelve-year-old Ezrielk, standing before the precentor's desk in a long, wide prayer-scarf.

The men, women, and children who were listening inside and outside the Old Shool felt a shudder go through them, their hair stood on end, and their hearts wept and fluttered in their breasts.

Ezrielk's voice wept and implored, "on account of our sins."

At the time when Ezrielk was distinguishing himself on this fashion with his chanting, the Jewish doctor from Kamenivke happened to be in the place. He saw the crowd round the Old Shool, and he went in. As you may suppose, he was much longer in coming out. He was simply riveted to the spot, and it is said that he rubbed his eyes more than once while he listened and looked. On coming away, he told them to bring Ezrielk to see him on the following day, saying that he wished to see him, and would take no fee.

Next day Ezrielk came with his mother to the doctor's house.

"A blow has struck me! A thunder has killed me! Reb Yainkel, do you know what the doctor said?"

"You silly woman, don't scream so! He cannot have said anything bad about Ezrielk. What is the matter? Did he hear him intone the Gemoreh, or perhaps sing? Don't cry and lament like that!"

"Reb Yainkel, what are you talking about? The doctor said that my Ezrielk is in danger, that he's ill, that he hasn't a sound organ—his heart, his lungs, are all sick. Every little bone in him is broken. He mustn't sing or study—the bath will be his death—he must have a long cure—he must be sent away for air. God (he said to me) has given you a precious gift, such as Heaven and earth might envy. Will you go and bury it with your own hands?"

"And you were frightened and believed him? Nonsense! I've had Ezrielk in my Cheder two years. Do I want him to come and tell me what goes on there? If he were a really good doctor, and had one drop of Jewish blood left in his veins, wouldn't he know that every true Jew has a sick heart, a bad lung, broken bones, and deformed limbs, and is well and strong in spite of it, because the holy Torah is the best medicine for all sicknesses? Ha, ha, ha! And he wants Ezrielk to give up learning and the bath? Do you know what? Go home and send Ezrielk to Cheder at once!"

The Kamenivke doctor made one or two more attempts at alarming Ezrielk's parents; he sent his assistant to them more than once, but it was no use, for after what Reb Yainkel had said, nobody would hear of any doctoring.

So Ezrielk continued to study the Talmud and occasionally to lead the service in Shool, like the Chassidic child he was, had a dip nearly every morning in the bath-house, and at thirteen, good luck to him, he was married.

The Hostre Rebbe himself honored the wedding with his presence. The Rebbe, long life to him, was fond of Ezrielk, almost as though he had been his own child. The whole time the saint stayed in Kabtzonivke, Kamenivke, and Ebionivke, Ezrielk had to be near him.

When they told the Rebbe the story of the doctor, he remarked, "Ett! what do they know?"

And Ezrielk continued to recite the prayers after his marriage, and to sing as before, and was the delight of all who heard him.

Agreeably to the marriage contract, Ezrielk and his Channehle had a double right to board with their parents "forever"; when they were born and the written engagements were filled in, each was an only child, and both Reb Seinwill and Reb Selig undertook to board them "forever." True, when the parents wedded their "one and only children," they had both of them a houseful of little ones and no Parnosseh (they really hadn't!), but they did not go back upon their word with regard to the "board forever."

Of course, it is understood that the two "everlasting boards" lasted nearly one whole year, and Ezrielk and his wife might well give thanks for not having died of hunger in the course of it, such a bad, bitter year as it was for their poor parents. It was the year of the great flood, when both Reb Seinwill Bassis and Reb Selig Tachshit had their houses ruined.

Ezrielk, Channehle, and their little son had to go and shift for themselves. But the other inhabitants of Kabtzonivke, regardless of this, now began to envy them in earnest: what other couple of their age, with a child and without a farthing, could so easily make a livelihood as they?

Hardly had it come to the ears of the three towns that Ezrielk was seeking a Parnosseh when they were all astir. All the Shools called meetings, and sought for means and money whereby they might entice the wonderful cantor and secure him for themselves. There was great excitement in the Shools. Fancy finding in a little, thin Jewish lad all the rare and precious qualities that go to make a great cantor! The trustees of all the Shools ran about day and night, and a fierce war broke out among them.

The war raged five times twenty-four hours, till the Great Shool in Kamenivke carried the day. Not one of the others could have dreamed of offering him such a salary—three hundred rubles and everything found!

"God is my witness"—thus Ezrielk opened his heart, as he sat afterwards with the company of Hostre Chassidim over a little glass of brandy—"that I find it very hard to leave our Old Shool, where my grandfather and great-grandfather used to pray. Believe me, brothers, I would not do it, only they give me one hundred and fifty rubles earnest-money, and I want to pass it on to my father and father-in-law, so that they may rebuild their houses. To your health, brothers! Drink to my remaining an honest Jew, and wish that my head may not be turned by the honor done to me!"

And Ezrielk began to davven and to sing (again without a choir) in the Great Shool, in the large town of Kamenivke. There he intoned the prayers as he had never done before, and showed who Ezrielk was! The Old Shool in Kabtzonivke had been like a little box for his voice.

In those days Ezrielk and his household lived in happiness and plenty, and he and Channehle enjoyed the respect and consideration of all men. When Ezrielk led the service, the Shool was filled to overflowing, and not only with Jews, even the richest Gentiles (I beg to distinguish!) came to hear him, and wondered how such a small and weakly creature as Ezrielk, with his thin chest and throat, could bring out such wonderful tunes and whole compositions of his own! Money fell upon the lucky couple, through circumcisions, weddings, and so on, like snow. Only one thing began, little by little, to disturb their happiness: Ezrielk took to coughing, and then to spitting blood.

He used to complain that he often felt a kind of pain in his throat and chest, but they did not consult a doctor.

"What, a doctor?" fumed Reb Yainkel. "Nonsense! It hurts, does it? Where's the wonder? A carpenter, a smith, a tailor, a shoemaker works with his hands, and his hands hurt. Cantors and teachers and match-makers work with their throat and chest, and these hurt, they are bound to do so. It is simply hemorrhoids."

So Ezrielk went on intoning and chanting, and the Kamenivke Jews licked their fingers, and nearly jumped out of their skin for joy when they heard him.

Two years passed in this way, and then came a change.

It was early in the morning of the Fast of the Destruction of the Temple, all the windows of the Great Shool were open, and all the tables, benches, and desks had been carried out from the men's hall and the women's hall the evening before. Men and women sat on the floor, so closely packed a pin could not have fallen to the floor between them. The whole street in which was the Great Shool was chuck full with a terrible crowd of men, women, and children, although it just happened to be cold, wet weather. The fact is, Ezrielk's Lamentations had long been famous throughout the Jewish world in those parts, and whoever had ears, a Jewish heart, and sound feet, came that day to hear him. The sad epidemic disease that (not of our days be it spoken!) swallows men up, was devastating Kamenivke and its surroundings that year, and everyone sought a place and hour wherein to weep out his opprest and bitter heart.

Ezrielk also sat on the floor reciting Lamentations, but the man who sat there was not the same Ezrielk, and the voice heard was not his. Ezrielk, with his sugar-sweet, honeyed voice, had suddenly been transformed into a strange being, with a voice that struck terror into his hearers; the whole people saw, heard, and felt, how a strange creature was flying about among them with a fiery sword in his hand. He slashes, hews, and hacks at their hearts, and with a terrible voice he cries out and asks: "Sinners! Where is your holy land that flowed with milk and honey? Slaves! Where is your Temple? Accursed slaves! You sold your freedom for money and calumny, for honors and worldly greatness!"

The people trembled and shook and were all but entirely dissolved in tears. "Upon Zion and her cities!" sang out once more Ezrielk's melancholy voice, and suddenly something snapped in his throat, just as when the strings of a good fiddle snap when the music is at its best. Ezrielk coughed, and was silent. A stream of blood poured from his throat, and he grew white as the wall.

The doctor declared that Ezrielk had lost his voice forever, and would remain hoarse for the rest of his life.

"Nonsense!" persisted Reb Yainkel. "His voice is breaking—it's nothing more!"

"God will help!" was the comment of the Hostre saint. A whole year went by, and Ezrielk's voice neither broke nor returned to him. The Hostre Chassidim assembled in the house of Elkoneh the butcher to consider and take counsel as to what Ezrielk should take to in order to earn a livelihood for wife and children. They thought it over a long, long time, talked and gave their several opinions, till they hit upon this: Ezrielk had still one hundred and fifty rubles in store—let him spend one hundred rubles on a house in Kabtzonivke, and begin to traffic with the remainder.

Thus Ezrielk became a trader. He began driving to fairs, and traded in anything and everything capable of being bought or sold.

Six months were not over before Ezrielk was out of pocket. He mortgaged his property, and with the money thus obtained he opened a grocery shop for Channehle. He himself (nothing satisfies a Jew!) started to drive about in the neighborhood, to collect the contributions subscribed for the maintenance of the Hostre Rebbe, long life to him!

Ezrielk was five months on the road, and when, torn, worn, and penniless, he returned home, he found Channehle brought to bed of her fourth child, and the shop bare of ware and equally without a groschen. But Ezrielk was now something of a trader, and is there any strait in which a Jewish trader has not found himself? Ezrielk had soon disposed of the whole of his property, paid his debts, rented a larger lodging, and started trading in several new and more ambitious lines: he pickled gherkins, cabbages, and pumpkins, made beet soup, both red and white, and offered them for sale, and so on. It was Channehle again who had to carry on most of the business, but, then, Ezrielk did not sit with his hands in his pockets. Toward Passover he had Shmooreh Matzes; he baked and sold them to the richest householders in Kamenivke, and before the Solemn Days he, as an expert, tried and recommended cantors and prayer-leaders for the Kamenivke Shools. When it came to Tabernacles, he trafficked in citrons and "palms."

For three years Ezrielk and his Channehle struggled at their trades, working themselves nearly to death (of Zion's enemies be it spoken!), till, with the help of Heaven, they came to be twenty years old.

By this time Ezrielk and Channehle were the parents of four living and two dead children. Channehle, the once so lovely Channehle, looked like a beaten Hoshanah, and Ezrielk—you remember the picture drawn at the time of his wedding?—well, then try to imagine what he was like now, after those seven years we have described for you! It's true that he was not spitting blood any more, either because Reb Yainkel had been right, when he said that would pass away, or because there was not a drop of blood in the whole of his body.

So that was all right—only, how were they to live? Even Reb Yainkel and all the Hostre Chassidim together could not tell him!

The singing had raised him and lifted him off his feet, and let him fall. And do you know why it was and how it was that everything Ezrielk took to turned out badly? It was because the singing was always there, in his head and his heart. He prayed and studied, singing. He bought and sold, singing. He sang day and night. No one heard him, because he was hoarse, but he sang without ceasing. Was it likely he would be a successful trader, when he was always listening to what Heaven and earth and everything around him were singing, too? He only wished he could have been a slaughterer or a Rav (he was apt enough at study), only, first, Rabbonim and slaughterers don't die every day, and, second, they usually leave heirs to take their places; third, even supposing there were no such heirs, one has to pay "privilege-money," and where is it to come from? No, there was nothing to be done. Only God could and must have pity on him and his wife and children, and help them somehow.

Ezrielk struggled and fought his need hard enough those days. One good thing for him was this—his being a Hostre Chossid; the Hostre Chassidim, although they have been famed from everlasting as the direst poor among the Jews, yet they divide their last mouthful with their unfortunate brethren. But what can the gifts of mortal men, and of such poor ones into the bargain, do in a case like Ezrielk's? And God alone knows what bitter end would have been his, if Reb Shmuel Bär, the Kabtzonivke scribe, had not just then (blessed be the righteous Judge!) met with a sudden death. Our Ezrielk was not long in feeling that he, and only he, should, and, indeed, must, step into Reb Shmuel's shoes. Ezrielk had been an expert at the scribe's work for years and years. Why, his father's house and the scribe's had been nearly under one roof, and whenever Ezrielk, as a child, was let out of Cheder, he would go and sit any length of time in Reb Shmuel's room (something in the occupation attracted him) and watch him write. And the little Ezrielk had more than once tried to make a piece of parchment out of a scrap of skin; and what Jewish boy cannot prepare the veins that are used to sew the phylacteries and the scrolls of the Law? Nor was the scribe's ink a secret to Ezrielk.

So Ezrielk became scribe in Kabtzonivke.

Of course, he did not make a fortune. Reb Shmuel Bär, who had been a scribe all his days, died a very poor man, and left a roomful of hungry, half-naked children behind him, but then—what Jew, I ask you (or has Messiah come?), ever expected to find a Parnosseh with enough, really enough, to eat?

At the time I am speaking of, the above was about forty years old. He was a little, thin Jew with a long face, a long nose, two large, black, kindly eyes, and one who would sooner be silent and think than talk, no matter what was being said to him. Even when he was scolded for something (and by whom and when and for what was he not scolded?), he used to listen with a quiet, startled, but sweet smile, and his large, kindly eyes would look at the other with such wonderment, mingled with a sort of pity, that the other soon stopped short in his abuse, and stood nonplussed before him.

"There, you may talk! You might as well argue with a horse, or a donkey, or the wall, or a log of wood!" and the other would spit and make off.

But if anyone observed that smile attentively, and studied the look in his eyes, he would, to a certainty, have read there as follows:

"O man, man, why are you eating your heart out? Seeing that you don't know, and that you don't understand, why do you undertake to tell me what I ought to do?"

And when he was obliged to answer, he used to do so in a few measured and gentle words, as you would speak to a little, ignorant child, smiling the while, and then he would disappear and start thinking again.

They called him "breadwinner," because, no matter how hard the man worked, he was never able to earn a living. He was a little tailor, but not like the tailors nowadays, who specialize in one kind of garment, for Yitzchok-Yossel made everything: trousers, cloaks, waistcoats, top-coats, fur-coats, capes, collars, bags for prayer-books, "little prayer-scarfs," and so on. Besides, he was a ladies' tailor as well. Summer and winter, day and night, he worked like an ox, and yet, when the Kabtzonivke community, at the time of the great cholera, in order to put an end to the plague, led him, aged thirty, out to the cemetery, and there married him to Malkeh the orphan, she cast him off two weeks later! She was still too young (twenty-eight), she said, to stay with him and die of hunger. She went out into the world, together with a large band of poor, after the great fire that destroyed nearly the whole town, and nothing more was heard of Malkeh the orphan from that day forward. And Yitzchok-Yossel Broitgeber betook himself, with needle and flat-iron, into the women's chamber in the New Shool, the community having assigned it to him as a workroom.

How came it about, you may ask, that so versatile a tailor as Yitzchok-Yossel should be so poor?

Well, if you do, it just shows you didn't know him!

Wait and hear what I shall tell you.

The story is on this wise: Yitzchok-Yossel Broitgeber was a tailor who could make anything, and who made nothing at all, that is, since he displayed his imagination in cutting out and sewing on the occasion I am referring to, nobody would trust him.

I can remember as if it were to-day what happened in Kabtzonivke, and the commotion there was in the little town when Yitzchok-Yossel made Reb Yecheskel the teacher a pair of trousers (begging your pardon!) of such fantastic cut that the unfortunate teacher had to wear them as a vest, though he was not then in need of one, having a brand new sheepskin not more than three years old.

And now listen! Binyomin Droibnik the trader's mother died (blessed be the righteous Judge!), and her whole fortune went, according to the Law, to her only son Binyomin. She had to be buried at the expense of the community. If she was to be buried at all, it was the only way. But the whole town was furious with the old woman for having cheated them out of their expectations and taken her whole fortune away with her to the real world. None knew exactly why, but it was confidently believed that old "Aunt" Leah had heaps of treasure somewhere in hiding.

It was a custom with us in Kabtzonivke to say, whenever anyone, man or woman, lived long, ate sicknesses by the clock, and still did not die, that it was a sign that he had in the course of his long life gathered great store of riches, that somewhere in a cellar he kept potsful of gold and silver.

The Funeral Society, the younger members, had long been whetting their teeth for "Aunt" Leah's fortune, and now she had died (may she merit Paradise!) and had fooled them.

"What about her money?"

"A cow has flown over the roof and laid an egg!"

In that same night Reb Binyomin's cow (a real cow) calved, and the unfortunate consequence was that she died. The Funeral Society took the calf, and buried "Aunt" Leah at its own expense.

Well, money or no money, inheritance or no inheritance, Reb Binyomin's old mother left him a quilt, a large, long, wide, wadded quilt. As an article of house furniture, a quilt is a very useful thing, especially in a house where there is a wife (no evil eye!) and a goodly number of children, little and big. Who doesn't see that? It looks simple enough! Either one keeps it for oneself and the two little boys (with whom Reb Binyomin used to sleep), or else one gives it to the wife and the two little girls (who also sleep all together), or, if not, then to the two bigger boys or the two bigger girls, who repose on the two bench-beds in the parlor and kitchen respectively. But this particular quilt brought such perplexity into Reb Binyomin's rather small head that he (not of you be it spoken!) nearly went mad.

"Why I and not she? Why she and not I? Or they? Or the others? Why they and not I? Why them and not us? Why the others and not them? Well, well, what is all this fuss? What did we cover them with before?"

Three days and three nights Reb Binyomin split his head and puzzled his brains over these questions, till the Almighty had pity on his small skull and feeble intelligence, and sent him a happy thought.

"After all, it is an inheritance from one's one and only mother (peace be upon her!), it is a thing from Thingland! I must adapt it to some useful purpose, so that Heaven and earth may envy me its possession!" And he sent to fetch Yitzchok-Yossel Broitgeber, the tailor, who could make every kind of garment, and said to him:

"Reb Yitzchok-Yossel, you see this article?"

"I see it."

"Yes, you see it, but do you understand it, really and truly understand it?"

"I think I do."

"But do you know what this is, ha?"

"A quilt."

"Ha, ha, ha! A quilt? I could have told you that myself. But the stuff, the material?"

"It's good material, beautiful stuff."

"Good material, beautiful stuff? No, I beg your pardon, you are not an expert in this, you don't know the value of merchandise. The real artisan, the true expert, would say: The material is light, soft, and elastic, like a lung, a sound and healthy lung. The stuff—he would say further—is firm, full, and smooth as the best calf's leather. And durable? Why, it's a piece out of the heart of the strongest ox, or the tongue of the Messianic ox itself! Do you know how many winters this quilt has lasted already? But enough! That is not why I have sent for you. We are neither of us, thanks to His blessed Name, do-nothings. The long and short of it is this: I wish to make out of this—you understand me?—out of this material, out of this piece of stuff, a thing, an article, that shall draw everybody to it, a fruit that is worth saying the blessing over, something superfine. An instance: what, for example, tell me, what would you do, if I gave this piece of goods into your hands, and said to you: Reb Yitzchok-Yossel, as you are (without sin be it spoken!) an old workman, a good workman, and, besides that, a good comrade, and a Jew as well, take this material, this stuff, and deal with it as you think best. Only let it be turned into a sort of costume, a sort of garment, so that not only Kabtzonivke, but all Kamenivke, shall be bitten and torn with envy. Eh? What would you turn it into?"

Yitzchok-Yossel was silent, Reb Yitzchok-Yossel went nearly out of his mind, nearly fainted for joy at these last words. He grew pale as death, white as chalk, then burning red like a flame of fire, and sparkled and shone. And no wonder: Was it a trifle? All his life he had dreamed of the day when he should be given a free hand in his work, so that everyone should see who Yitzchok-Yossel is, and at the end came—the trousers, Reb Yecheskel Melammed's trousers! How well, how cleverly he had made them! Just think: trousers and upper garment in one! He had been so overjoyed, he had felt so happy. So sure that now everyone would know who Yitzchok-Yossel Broitgeber is! He had even begun to think and wonder about Malkeh the orphan—poor, unfortunate orphan! Had she ever had one single happy day in her life? Work forever and next to no food, toil till she was exhausted and next to no drink, sleep where she could get it: one time in Elkoneh the butcher's kitchen, another time in Yisroel Dintzis' attic ... and when at last she got married (good luck to her!), she became the wife of Yitzchok-Yossel Broitgeber! And the wedding took place in the burial-ground. On one side they were digging graves, on the other they were bringing fresh corpses. There was weeping and wailing, and in the middle of it all, the musicians playing and fiddling and singing, and the relations dancing!... Good luck! Good luck! The orphan and her breadwinner are being led to the marriage canopy in the graveyard!

He will never forget with what gusto, she, his bride, the first night after their wedding, ate, drank, and slept—the whole of the wedding-supper that had been given them, bridegroom and bride: a nice roll, a glass of brandy, a tea-glass full of wine, and a heaped-up plate of roast meat was cut up and scraped together and eaten (no evil eye!) by her, by the bride herself. He had taken great pleasure in watching her face. He had known her well from childhood, and had no need to look at her to know what she was like, but he wanted to see what kind of feelings her face would express during this occupation. When they led him into the bridal chamber—she was already there—the companions of the bridegroom burst into a shout of laughter, for the bride was already snoring. He knew quite well why she had gone to sleep so quickly and comfortably. Was there not sufficient reason? For the first time in her life she had made a good meal and lain down in a bed with bedclothes!

The six groschen candle burnt, the flies woke and began to buzz, the mills clapt, and swung, and groaned, and he, Yitzchok-Yossel Broitgeber, the bridegroom, sat beside the bridal bed on a little barrel of pickled gherkins, and looked at Malkeh the orphan, his bride, his wife, listened to her loud thick snores, and thought.

The town dogs howled strangely. Evidently the wedding in the cemetery had not yet driven away the Angel of Death. From some of the neighboring houses came a dreadful crying and screaming of women and children.

Malkeh the orphan heard nothing. She slept sweetly, and snored as loud (I beg to distinguish!) as Caspar, the tall, stout miller, the owner of both mills.

Yitzchok-Yossel Broitgeber sits on the little barrel, looks at her face, and thinks. Her face is dark, roughened, and nearly like that of an old woman. A great, fat fly knocked against the wick, the candle suddenly began to burn brighter, and Yitzchok-Yossel saw her face become prettier, younger, and fresher, and overspread by a smile. That was all the effect of the supper and the soft bed. Then it was that he had promised himself, that he had sworn, once and for all, to show the Kabtzonivke Jews who he is, and then Malkeh the orphan will have food and a bed every day. He would have done this long ago, had it not been for those trousers. The people are so silly, they don't understand! That is the whole misfortune! And it's quite the other way about: let someone else try and turn out such an ingenious contrivance! But because it was he, and not someone else, they laughed and made fun of him. How Reb Yecheskel, his wife and children, did abuse him! That was his reward for all his trouble. And just because they themselves are cattle, horses, boors, who don't understand the tailor's art! Ha, if only they understood that tailoring is a noble, refined calling, limitless and bottomless as (with due distinction!) the holy Torah!

But all is not lost. Who knows? For here comes Binyomin Droibnik, an intelligent man, a man of brains and feeling. And think how many years he has been a trader! A retail trader, certainly, a jobber, but still—

"Come, Reb Yitzchok-Yossel, make an end! What will you turn it into?"

"Everything."

"That is to say?"

"A dressing-gown for your Dvoshke,—"

"And then?"

"A morning-gown with tassels,—"

"After that?"

"A coat."

"Well?"

"A dress—"

"And besides that?"

"A pair of trousers and a jacket—"

"Nothing more?"

"Why not? A—"

"For instance?"

"Pelisse, a wadded winter pelisse for you."

"There, there! Just that, and only that!" said Reb Binyomin, delighted.

Yitzchok-Yossel Broitgeber tucked away the quilt under his arm, and was preparing to be off.

"Reb Yitzchok-Yossel! And what about taking my measure? And how about your charge?"

Yitzchok-Yossel dearly loved to take anyone's measure, and was an expert at so doing. He had soon pulled a fair-sized sheet of paper out of one of his deep pockets, folded it into a long paper stick, and begun to measure Reb Binyomin Droibnik's limbs. He did not even omit to note the length and breadth of his feet.

"What do you want with that? Are you measuring me for trousers?"

"Ett, don't you ask! No need to teach a skilled workman his trade!"

"And what about the charge?"

"We shall settle that later."

"No, that won't do with me; I am a trader, you understand, and must have it all pat."

"Five gulden."

"And how much less?"

"How should I know? Well, four."

"Well, and half a ruble?"

"Well, well—"

"Remember, Reb Yitzchok-Yossel, it must be a masterpiece!"

"Trust me!"

For five days and five nights Yitzchok-Yossel set his imagination to work on Binyomin Droibnik's inheritance. There was no eating for him, no drinking, and no sleeping. The scissors squeaked, the needle ran hither and thither, up and down, the inheritance sighed and almost sobbed under the hot iron. But how happy was Yitzchok-Yossel those lightsome days and merry nights? Who could compare with him? Greater than the Kabtzonivke village elder, richer than Yisroel Dintzis, the tax-gatherer, and more exalted than the bailiff himself was Yitzchok-Yossel, that is, in his own estimation. All that he wished, thought, and felt was forthwith created by means of his scissors and iron, his thimble, needle, and cotton. No more putting on of patches, sewing on of pockets, cutting out of "Tefillin-Säcklech" and "little prayer-scarfs," no more doing up of old dresses. Freedom, freedom—he wanted one bit of work of the right sort, and that was all! Ha, now he would show them, the Kabtzonivke cripples and householders, now he would show them who Yitzchok-Yossel Broitgeber is! They would not laugh at him or tease him any more! His fame would travel from one end of the world to the other, and Malkeh the orphan, his bride, his wife, she also would hear of it, and—

She will come back to him! He feels it in every limb. It was not him she cast off, only his bad luck. He will rent a lodging (money will pour in from all sides)—buy a little furniture: a bed, a sofa, a table—in time he will buy a little house of his own—she will come, she has been homeless long enough—it is time she should rest her weary, aching bones—it is high time she should have her own corner!

She will come back, he feels it, she will certainly come home!

The last night! The work is complete. Yitzchok-Yossel spread it out on the table of the women's Shool, lighted a second groschen candle, sat down in front of it with wide open, sparkling eyes, gazed with delight at the product of his imagination and—was wildly happy!

So he sat the whole night.

It was very hard for him to part with his achievement, but hardly was it day when he appeared with it at Reb Binyomin Droibnik's.

"A good morning, a good year, Reb Yitzchok-Yossel! I see by your eyes that you have been successful. Is it true?"

"You can see for yourself, there—"

"No, no, there is no need for me to see it first. Dvoshke, Cheike, Shprintze, Dovid-Hershel, Yitzchok-Yoelik! You understand, I want them all to be present and see."

In a few minutes the whole family had appeared on the scene. Even the four little ones popped up from behind the heaps of ragged covering.

Yitzchok-Yossel untied his parcel and—

"Wuus is duuuusss???!!!"

"A pair of trousers with sleeves!"

Born, 1863, in Lipkany, Bessarabia; died, 1907, in Odessa; education Hasidic; entered business in a small Roumanian village for a short time; teacher, from 1889 in Jedency and from 1896 in Leowo, Bessarabia; removed to Odessa, in 1905, to become correspondent of New York Warheit; writer of fables, stories, and children's tales in Hebrew, and poems in Yiddish; historical drama, Ha-Sotah; collected works in Hebrew, 3 vols., Cracow, 1910-1911 (in course of publication).

The two young fellows Maxim Klopatzel and Israel Friedman were natives of the same town in New Bessarabia, and there was an old link existing between them: a mutual detestation inherited from their respective parents. Maxim's father was the chief Gentile of the town, for he rented the corn-fields of its richest inhabitant; and as the lawyer of the rich citizen was a Jew, little Maxim imagined, when his father came to lose his tenantry, that it was owing to the Jews. Little Struli was the only Jewish boy he knew (the children were next door neighbors), and so a large share of their responsibility was laid on Struli's shoulders. Later on, when Klopatzel, the father, had abandoned the plough and taken to trade, he and old Friedman frequently came in contact with each other as rivals.

They traded and traded, and competed one against the other, till they both become bankrupt, when each argued to himself that the other was at the bottom of his misfortune—and their children grew on in mutual hatred.

A little later still, Maxim put down to Struli's account part of the nails which were hammered into his Savior, over at the other end of the town, by the well, where the Government and the Church had laid out money and set up a crucifix with a ladder, a hammer, and all other necessary implements.

And Struli, on his part, had an account to settle with Maxim respecting certain other nails driven in with hammers, and torn scrolls of the Law, and the history of the ten martyrs of the days of Titus, not to mention a few later ones.

Their hatred grew with them, its strength increased with theirs.

When Krushevan began to deal in anti-Semitism, Maxim learned that Christian children were carried off into the Shool, Struli's Shool, for the sake of their blood.

Thenceforth Maxim's hatred of Struli was mingled with fear. He was terrified when he passed the Shool at night, and he used to dream that Struli stood over him in a prayer robe, prepared to slaughter him with a ram's horn trumpet.

This because he had once passed the Shool early one Jewish New Year's Day, had peeped through the window, and seen the ram's horn blower standing in his white shroud, armed with the Shofar, and suddenly a heartrending voice broke out with Min ha-Mezar, and Maxim, taking his feet on his shoulders, had arrived home more dead than alive. There was very nearly a commotion. The priest wanted to persuade him that the Jews had tried to obtain his blood.

So the two children grew into youth as enemies. Their fathers died, and the increased difficulties of their position increased their enmity.

The same year saw them called to military service, from which they had both counted on exemption as the only sons of widowed mothers; only Israel's mother had lately died, bequeathing to the Czar all she had—a soldier; and Maxim's mother had united herself to a second provider—and there was an end of the two "only sons!"

Neither of them wished to serve; they were too intellectually capable, too far developed mentally, too intelligent, to be turned all at once into Russian soldiers, and too nicely brought up to march from Port Arthur to Mukden with only one change of shirt. They both cleared out, and stowed themselves away till they 'fell separately into the hands of the military.

They came together again under the fortress walls of Mukden.

They ate and hungered sullenly round the same cooking pot, received punches from the same officer, and had the same longing for the same home.

Israel had a habit of talking in his sleep, and, like a born Bessarabian, in his Yiddish mixed with a large portion of Roumanian words.

One night, lying in the barracks among the other soldiers, and sunk in sleep after a hard day, Struli began to talk sixteen to the dozen. He called out names, he quarrelled, begged pardon, made a fool of himself—all in his sleep.

It woke Maxim, who overheard the homelike names and phrases, the name of his native town.

He got up, made his way between the rows of sleepers, and sat down by Israel's pallet, and listened.

Next day Maxim managed to have a large helping of porridge, more than he could eat, and he found Israel, and set it before him.

"Maltzimesk!" said the other, thanking him in Roumanian, and a thrill of delight went through Maxim's frame.

The day following, Maxim was hit by a Japanese bullet, and there happened to be no one beside him at the moment.

The shock drove all the soldier-speech out of his head. "Help, I am killed!" he called out, and fell to the ground.

Struli was at his side like one sprung from the earth, he tore off his Four-Corners, and made his comrade a bandage.

The wound turned out to be slight, for the bullet had passed through, only grazing the flesh of the left arm. A few days later Maxim was back in the company.

"I wanted to see you again, Struli," he said, greeting his comrade in Roumanian.

A flash of brotherly affection and gratitude lighted Struli's Semitic eyes, and he took the other into his arms, and pressed him to his heart.

They felt themselves to be "countrymen," of one and the same native town.

Neither of them could have told exactly when their union of spirit had been accomplished, but each one knew that he thanked God for having brought him together with so near a compatriot in a strange land.

And when the battle of Mukden had made Maxim all but totally blind, and deprived Struli of one foot, they started for home together, according to the passage in the Midrash, "Two men with one pair of eyes and one pair of feet between them." Maxim carried on his shoulders a wooden box, which had now became a burden in common for them, and Struli limped a little in front of him, leaning lightly against his companion, so as to keep him in the smooth part of the road and out of other people's way.

Struli had become Maxim's eyes, and Maxim, Struli's feet; they were two men grown into one, and they provided for themselves out of one pocket, now empty of the last ruble.

They dragged themselves home. "A kasa, a kasa!" whispered Struli into Maxim's ear, and the other turned on him his two glazed eyes looking through a red haze, and set in swollen red lids.

A childlike smile played on his lips:

"A kasa, a kasa!" he repeated, also in a whisper.

Home appeared to their fancy as something holy, something consoling, something that could atone and compensate for all they had suffered and lost. They had seen such a home in their dreams.

But the nearer they came to it in reality, the more the dream faded. They remembered that they were returning as conquered soldiers and crippled men, that they had no near relations and but few friends, while the girls who had coquetted with Maxim before he left would never waste so much as a look on him now he was half-blind; and Struli's plans for marrying and emigrating to America were frustrated: a cripple would not be allowed to enter the country.

All their dreams and hopes finally dissipated, and there remained only one black care, one all-obscuring anxiety: how were they to earn a living?

They had been hoping all the while for a pension, but in their service book was written "on sick-leave." The Russo-Japanese war was distinguished by the fact that the greater number of wounded soldiers went home "on sick-leave," and the money assigned by the Government for their pension would not have been sufficient for even a hundredth part of the number of invalids.

Maxim showed a face with two wide open eyes, to which all the passers-by looked the same. He distinguished with difficulty between a man and a telegraph post, and wore a smile of mingled apprehension and confidence. The sound feet stepped hesitatingly, keeping behind Israel, and it was hard to say which steadied himself most against the other. Struli limped forward, and kept open eyes for two. Sometimes he would look round at the box on Maxim's shoulders, as though he felt its weight as much as Maxim.

Meantime the railway carriages had emptied and refilled, and the locomotive gave a great blast, received an answer from somewhere a long way off, a whistle for a whistle, and the train set off, slowly at first, and then gradually faster and faster, till all that remained of it were puffs of smoke hanging in the air without rhyme or reason.

The two felt more depressed than ever. "Something to eat? Where are we to get a bite?" was in their minds.

Suddenly Yisroel remembered with a start: this was the anniversary of his mother's death—if he could only say one Kaddish for her in a Klaus!

"Is it far from here to a Klaus?" he inquired of a passer-by.

"There is one a little way down that side-street," was the reply.

"Maxim!" he begged of the other, "come with me!"

"Where to?"

"To the synagogue."

Maxim shuddered from head to foot. His fear of a Jewish Shool had not left him, and a thousand foolish terrors darted through his head.

But his comrade's voice was so gentle, so childishly imploring, that he could not resist it, and he agreed to go with him into the Shool.

It was the time for Afternoon Prayer, the daylight and the dark held equal sway within the Klaus, the lamps before the platform increasing the former to the east and the latter to the west. Maxim and Yisroel stood in the western part, enveloped in shadow. The Cantor had just finished "Incense," and was entering upon Ashré, and the melancholy night chant of Minchah and Maariv gradually entranced Maxim's emotional Roumanian heart.

The low, sad murmur of the Cantor seemed to him like the distant surging of a sea, in which men were drowned by the hundreds and suffocating with the water. Then, the Ashré and the Kaddish ended, there was silence. The congregation stood up for the Eighteen Benedictions. Here and there you heard a half-stifled sigh. And now it seemed to Maxim that he was in the hospital at night, at the hour when the groans grow less frequent, and the sufferers fall one by one into a sweet sleep.

Tears started into his eyes without his knowing why. He was no longer afraid, but a sudden shyness had come over him, and he felt, as he watched Yisroel repeating the Kaddish, that the words, which he, Maxim, could not understand, were being addressed to someone unseen, and yet mysteriously present in the darkening Shool.

When the prayers were ended, one of the chief members of the congregation approached the "Mandchurian," and gave Yisroel a coin into his hand.

Yisroel looked round—he did not understand at first what the donor meant by it.

Then it occurred to him—and the blood rushed to his face. He gave the coin to his companion, and explained in a half-sentence or two how they had come by it.

Once outside the Klaus, they both cried, after which they felt better.

"A livelihood!" the same thought struck them both.

"We can go into partnership!"

It was quite early in the morning, when Sossye, the scribe's daughter, a girl of seventeen, awoke laughing; a sunbeam had broken through the rusty window, made its way to her underneath the counterpane, and there opened her eyes.

It woke her out of a deep dream which she was ashamed to recall, but the dream came back to her of itself, and made her laugh.

Had she known whom she was going to meet in her dreams, she would have lain down in her clothes, occurs to her, and she laughs aloud.

"Got up laughing!" scolds her mother. "There's a piece of good luck for you! It's a sign of a black year for her (may it be to my enemies!)."

Sossye proceeds to dress herself. She does not want to fall out with her mother to-day, she wants to be on good terms with everyone.

In the middle of dressing she loses herself in thought, with one naked foot stretched out and an open stocking in her hands, wondering how the dream would have ended, if she had not awoke so soon.

Chayyimel, a villager's son, who boards with her mother, passes the open doors leading to Sossye's room, and for the moment he is riveted to the spot. His eyes dance, the blood rushes to his cheeks, he gets all he can by looking, and then hurries away to Cheder without his breakfast, to study the Song of Songs.

And Sossye, fresh and rosy from sleep, her brown eyes glowing under the tumbled gold locks, betakes herself to the kitchen, where her mother, with her usual worried look, is blowing her soul out before the oven into a smoky fire of damp wood.

"Look at the girl standing round like a fool! Run down to the cellar, and fetch me an onion and some potatoes!"

Sossye went down to the cellar, and found the onions and potatoes sprouting.

At sight of a green leaf, her heart leapt. Greenery! greenery! summer is coming! And the whole of her dream came back to her!

"Look, mother, green sprouts!" she cried, rushing into the kitchen.

"A thousand bad dreams on your head! The onions are spoilt, and she laughs! My enemies' eyes will creep out of their lids before there will be fresh greens to eat, and all this, woe is me, is only fit to throw away!"

"Greenery, greenery!" thought Sossye, "summer is coming!"

Greenery had got into her head, and there it remained, and from greenery she went on to remember that to-day was the first Passover-cake baking at Gedalyeh the baker's, and that Shloimeh Shieber would be at work there.

Having begged of her mother the one pair of boots that stood about in the room and fitted everyone, she put them on, and was off to the Matzes.

It was, as we have said, the first day's work at Gedalyeh the baker's, and the sack of Passover flour had just been opened. Gravely, the flour-boy, a two weeks' orphan, carried the pot of flour for the Mehereh, and poured it out together with remembrances of his mother, who had died in the hospital of injuries received at their hands, and the water-boy came up behind him, and added recollections of his own.

"The hooligans threw his father into the water off the bridge—may they pay for it, süsser Gott! May they live till he is a man, and can settle his account with them!"

Thus the grey-headed old Henoch, the kneader, and he kneaded it all into the dough, with thoughts of his own grandchildren: this one fled abroad, the other in the regiment, and a third in prison.

The dough stiffens, the horny old hands work it with difficulty. The dough gets stiffer every year, and the work harder, it is time for him to go to the asylum!

The dough is kneaded, cut up in pieces, rolled and riddled—is that a token for the whole Congregation of Israel? And now appear the round Matzes, which must wander on a shovel into the heated oven of Shloimeh Shieber, first into one corner, and then into another, till another shovel throws them out into a new world, separated from the old by a screen thoroughly scoured for Passover, which now rises and now falls. There they are arranged in columns, a reminder of Pithom and Rameses. Kuk-ruk, kuk-ruk, ruk-ruk, whisper the still warm Matzes one to another; they also are remembering, and they tell the tale of the Exodus after their fashion, the tale of the flight out of Egypt—only they have seen more flights than one.

Thus are the Matzes kneaded and baked by the Jews, with "thoughts." The Gentiles call them "blood," and assert that Jews need blood for their Matzes, and they take the trouble to supply us with fresh "thoughts" every year!

But at Gedalyeh the baker's all is still cheerfulness. Girls and boys, in their unspent vigor, surround the tables, there is rolling and riddling and cleaning of clean rolling-pins with pieces of broken glass (from where ever do Jews get so much broken glass?), and the whole town is provided with kosher Matzes. Jokes and silver trills escape the lively young workers, the company is as merry as though the Exodus were to-morrow.

But it won't be to-morrow. Look at them well, because another day you will not find them so merry, they will not seem like the same.

One of the likely lads has left his place, and suddenly appeared at a table beside a pretty, curly-haired girl. He has hurried over his Matzes, and now he wants to help her.

She thanks him for his attention with a rolling-pin over the fingers, and there is such laughter among the spectators that Berke, the old overseer, exclaims, "What impertinence!"

But he cannot finish, because he has to laugh himself. There is a spark in the embers of his being which the girlish merriment around him kindles anew.

And the other lads are jealous of the beaten one. They know very well that no girl would hit a complete stranger, and that the blow only meant, "Impudent boy, why need the world know of anything between us?"

Shloimehle Shieber, armed with the shovels, stands still for a minute trying to distinguish Sossye's voice in the peals of laughter. The Matzes under his care are browning in the oven.

And Sossye takes it into her head to make her Matzes with one pointed corner, so that he may perhaps know them for hers, and laughs to herself as she does so.

There is one table to the side of the room which was not there last year; it was placed there for the formerly well-to-do housemistresses, who last year, when they came to bake their Matzes, gave Yom-tov money to the others. Here all goes on quietly; the laughter of the merry people breaks against the silence, and is swallowed up.

The work grows continually pleasanter and more animated. The riddler stamps two or three Matzes with hieroglyphs at once, in order to show off. Shloimeh at the oven cannot keep pace with him, and grows angry:

"May all bad...."

The wish is cut short in his mouth, he has caught a glance of Sossye's through the door of the baking-room, he answers with two, gets three back, Sossye pursing her lips to signify a kiss. Shloimeh folds his hands, which also means something.

Meantime ten Matzes get scorched, and one of Sossye's is pulled in two. "Brennen brennt mir mein Harz," starts a worker singing in a plaintive key.

"Come! hush, hush!" scolds old Berke. "Songs, indeed! What next, you impudent boy?"

"My sorrows be on their head!" sighs a neighbor of Sossye's. "They'd soon be tired of their life, if they were me. I've left two children at home fit to scream their hearts out. The other is at the breast, I have brought it along. It is quiet just now, by good luck."

"What is the use of a poor woman's having children?" exclaims another, evidently "expecting" herself. Indeed, she has a child a year—and a seven-days' mourning a year afterwards.

"Do you suppose I ask for them? Do you think I cry my eyes out for them before God?"

"If she hasn't any, who's to inherit her place at the Matzes-baking—a hundred years hence?"

"All very well for you to talk, you're a grass-widow (to no Jewish daughter may it apply!)!"

"May such a blow be to my enemies as he'll surely come back again!"

"It's about time! After three years!"

"Will you shut up, or do you want another beating?"

Sossye went off into a fresh peal of laughter, and the shovel fell out of Shloimeh's hand.

Again he caught a glance, but this time she wrinkled her nose at him, as much as to say, "Fie, you shameless boy! Can't you behave yourself even before other people?"

Hereupon the infant gave account of itself in a small, shrill voice, and the general commotion went on increasing. The overseer scolded, the Matzes-printing-wheel creaked and squeaked, the bits of glass were ground against the rolling-pins, there was a humming of songs and a proclaiming of secrets, followed by bursts of laughter, Sossye's voice ringing high above the rest.

And the sun shone into the room through the small window—a white spot jumped around and kissed everyone there.

Is it the Spirit of Israel delighting in her young men and maidens and whispering in their ears: "What if it is Matzes-kneading, and what if it is Exile? Only let us be all together, only let us all be merry!"

Or is it the Spring, transformed into a white patch of sunshine, in which all have equal share, and which has not forgotten to bring good news into the house of Gedalyeh the Matzeh-baker?

A beautiful sun was preparing to set, and promised another fine day for the morrow.

"Ding-dong, gul-gul-gul-gul-gul-gul!"

It was the convent bells calling the Christians to confession!

All tongues were silenced round the tables at Gedalyeh the baker's.

A streak of vapor dimmed the sun, and gloomy thoughts settled down upon the hearts of the workers.

"Easter! Their Easter is coming on!" and mothers' eyes sought their children.

The white patch of sunshine suddenly gave a terrified leap across the ceiling and vanished in a corner.

"Kik-kik, kik-rik, kik-rik," whispered the hot Matzes. Who is to know what they say?

Who can tell, now that the Jews have baked this year's Matzes, how soon they will set about providing them with material for the next?—"thoughts," and broken glass for the rolling-pins.

Born, 1863, in Lodz, Russian Poland, of a family of merchants; education, Jewish and secular, the latter with special attention to foreign languages and literatures; has spent most of his life in Warsaw; Hebrew critic, editor, poet, satirist, and writer of fairy tales; translator of George Eliot's Daniel Deronda into Hebrew; contributor to Sholom-Alechem's Jüdische Volksbibliothek, Spektor's Hausfreund, and various periodicals; editor of monthly publication Reshafim; collected works in Hebrew, Ketabim Nibharim, 2 vols., Warsaw, 1899-1901, and Reshimot, 4 parts, Warsaw, 1911.

Once upon a time three people ate. I recall the event as one recalls a dream. Black clouds obscure the men, because it happened long ago.

Only sometimes it seems to me that there are no clouds, but a pillar of fire lighting up the men and their doings, and the fire grows bigger and brighter, and gives light and warmth to this day.

I have only a few words to tell you, two or three words: once upon a time three people ate. Not on a workday or an ordinary Sabbath, but on a Day of Atonement that fell on a Sabbath.

Not in a corner where no one sees or hears, but before all the people in the great Shool, in the principal Shool of the town.

Neither were they ordinary men, these three, but the chief Jews of the community: the Rabbi and his two Dayonim.

The townsfolk looked up to them as if they had been angels, and certainly held them to be saints. And now, as I write these words, I remember how difficult it was for me to understand, and how I sometimes used to think the Rabbi and his Dayonim had done wrong. But even then I felt that they were doing a tremendous thing, that they were holy men with holy instincts, and that it was not easy for them to act thus. Who knows how hard they fought with themselves, who knows how they suffered, and what they endured?

And even if I live many years and grow old, I shall never forget the day and the men, and what was done on it, for they were no ordinary men, but great heroes.

Those were bitter times, such as had not been for long, and such as will not soon return.

A great calamity had descended on us from Heaven, and had spread abroad among the towns and over the country: the cholera had broken out.

The calamity had reached us from a distant land, and entered our little town, and clutched at young and old.

By day and by night men died like flies, and those who were left hung between life and death.

Who can number the dead who were buried in those days! Who knows the names of the corpses which lay about in heaps in the streets!

In the Jewish street the plague made great ravages: there was not a house where there lay not one dead—not a family in which the calamity had not broken out.

In the house where we lived, on the second floor, nine people died in one day. In the basement there died a mother and four children, and in the house opposite we heard wild cries one whole night through, and in the morning we became aware that there was no one left in it alive.

The grave-diggers worked early and late, and the corpses lay about in the streets like dung. They stuck one to the other like clay, and one walked over dead bodies.

The summer broke up, and there came the Solemn Days, and then the most dreadful day of all—the Day of Atonement.

I shall remember that day as long as I live.

The Eve of the Day of Atonement—the reciting of Kol Nidré!

At the desk before the ark there stands, not as usual the precentor and two householders, but the Rabbi and his two Dayonim.

The candles are burning all round, and there is a whispering of the flames as they grow taller and taller. The people stand at their reading-desks with grave faces, and draw on the robes and prayer-scarfs, the Spanish hoods and silver girdles; and their shadows sway this way and that along the walls, and might be the ghosts of the dead who died to-day and yesterday and the day before yesterday. Evidently they could not rest in their graves, and have also come into the Shool.

Hush!... the Rabbi has begun to say something, and the Dayonim, too, and a groan rises from the congregation.

"With the consent of the All-Present and with the consent of this congregation, we give leave to pray with them that have transgressed."

And a great fear fell upon me and upon all the people, young and old. In that same moment I saw the Rabbi mount the platform. Is he going to preach? Is he going to lecture the people at a time when they are falling dead like flies? But the Rabbi neither preached nor lectured. He only called to remembrance the souls of those who had died in the course of the last few days. But how long it lasted! How many names he mentioned! The minutes fly one after the other, and the Rabbi has not finished! Will the list of souls never come to an end? Never? And it seems to me the Rabbi had better call out the names of those who are left alive, because they are few, instead of the names of the dead, who are without number and without end.

I shall never forget that night and the praying, because it was not really praying, but one long, loud groan rising from the depth of the human heart, cleaving the sky and reaching to Heaven. Never since the world began have Jews prayed in greater anguish of soul, never have hotter tears fallen from human eyes.

That night no one left the Shool.

After the prayers they recited the Hymn of Unity, and after that the Psalms, and then chapters from the Mishnah, and then ethical books....

And I also stand among the congregation and pray, and my eyelids are heavy as lead, and my heart beats like a hammer.

"U-Malochim yechofézun—and the angels fly around."

And I fancy I see them flying in the Shool, up and down, up and down. And among them I see the bad angel with the thousand eyes, full of eyes from head to feet.

That night no one left the Shool, but early in the morning there were some missing—two of the congregation had fallen during the night, and died before our eyes, and lay wrapped in their prayer-scarfs and white robes—nothing was lacking for their journey from the living to the dead.

They kept on bringing messages into the Shool from the Gass, but nobody wanted to listen or to ask questions, lest he should hear what had happened in his own house. No matter how long I live, I shall never forget that night, and all I saw and heard.

But the Day of Atonement, the day that followed, was more awful still.

And even now, when I shut my eyes, I see the whole picture, and I think I am standing once more among the people in the Shool.

It is Atonement Day in the afternoon.

The Rabbi stands on the platform in the centre of the Shool, tall and venerable, and there is a fascination in his noble features. And there, in the corner of the Shool, stands a boy who never takes his eyes off the Rabbi's face.

In truth I never saw a nobler figure.

The Rabbi is old, seventy or perhaps eighty years, but tall and straight as a fir-tree. His long beard is white like silver, but the thick, long hair of his head is whiter still, and his face is blanched, and his lips are pale, and only his large black eyes shine and sparkle like the eyes of a young lion.

I stood in awe of him when I was a little child. I knew he was a man of God, one of the greatest authorities in the Law, whose advice was sought by the whole world.

I knew also that he inclined to leniency in all his decisions, and that none dared oppose him.

The sight I saw that day in Shool is before my eyes now.

The Rabbi stands on the platform, and his black eyes gleam and shine in the pale face and in the white hair and beard.

The Additional Service is over, and the people are waiting to hear what the Rabbi will say, and one is afraid to draw one's breath.

And the Rabbi begins to speak.

His weak voice grows stronger and higher every minute, and at last it is quite loud.

He speaks of the sanctity of the Day of Atonement and of the holy Torah; of repentance and of prayer, of the living and of the dead, and of the pestilence that has broken out and that destroys without pity, without rest, without a pause—for how long? for how much longer?

And by degrees his pale cheeks redden and his lips also, and I hear him say: "And when trouble comes to a man, he must look to his deeds, and not only to those which concern him and the Almighty, but to those which concern himself, to his body, to his flesh, to his own health."

I was a child then, but I remember how I began to tremble when I heard these words, because I had understood.

The Rabbi goes on speaking. He speaks of cleanliness and wholesome air, of dirt, which is dangerous to man, and of hunger and thirst, which are men's bad angels when there is a pestilence about, devouring without pity.

And the Rabbi goes on to say:

"And men shall live by My commandments, and not die by them. There are times when one must turn aside from the Law, if by so doing a whole community may be saved."

I stand shaking with fear. What does the Rabbi want? What does he mean by his words? What does he think to accomplish? And suddenly I see that he is weeping, and my heart beats louder and louder. What has happened? Why does he weep? And there I stand in the corner, in the silence, and I also begin to cry.

And to this day, if I shut my eyes, I see him standing on the platform, and he makes a sign with his hand to the two Dayonim to the left and right of him. He and they whisper together, and he says something in their ear. What has happened? Why does his cheek flame, and why are theirs as white as chalk?

And suddenly I hear them talking, but I cannot understand them, because the words do not enter my brain. And yet all three are speaking so sharply and clearly!

And all the people utter a groan, and after the groan I hear the words, "With the consent of the All-Present and with the consent of this congregation, we give leave to eat and drink on the Day of Atonement."

Silence. Not a sound is heard in the Shool, not an eyelid quivers, not a breath is drawn.

And I stand in my corner and hear my heart beating: one—two—one—two. A terror comes over me, and it is black before my eyes. The shadows move to and fro on the wall, and amongst the shadows I see the dead who died yesterday and the day before yesterday and the day before the day before yesterday—a whole people, a great assembly.

And suddenly I grasp what it is the Rabbi asks of us. The Rabbi calls on us to eat, to-day! The Rabbi calls on Jews to eat on the Day of Atonement—not to fast, because of the cholera—because of the cholera—because of the cholera ... and I begin to cry loudly. And it is not only I—the whole congregation stands weeping, and the Dayonim on the platform weep, and the greatest of all stands there sobbing like a child.

And he implores like a child, and his words are soft and gentle, and every now and then he weeps so that his voice cannot be heard.

"Eat, Jews, eat! To-day we must eat. This is a time to turn aside from the Law. We are to live through the commandments, and not die through them!"

But no one in the Shool has stirred from his place, and there he stands and begs of them, weeping, and declares that he takes the whole responsibility on himself, that the people shall be innocent. But no one stirs. And presently he begins again in a changed voice—he does not beg, he commands:

"I give you leave to eat—I—I—I!"

And his words are like arrows shot from the bow.

But the people are deaf, and no one stirs.

Then he begins again with his former voice, and implores like a child:

"What would you have of me? Why will you torment me till my strength fails? Think you I have not struggled with myself from early this morning till now?"

And the Dayonim also plead with the people.

And of a sudden the Rabbi grows as white as chalk, and lets his head fall on his breast. There is a groan from one end of the Shool to the other, and after the groan the people are heard to murmur among themselves.

Then the Rabbi, like one speaking to himself, says:

"It is God's will. I am eighty years old, and have never yet transgressed a law. But this is also a law, it is a precept. Doubtless the Almighty wills it so! Beadle!"

The beadle comes, and the Rabbi whispers a few words into his ear.

He also confers with the Dayonim, and they nod their heads and agree.

And the beadle brings cups of wine for Sanctification, out of the Rabbi's chamber, and little rolls of bread. And though I should live many years and grow very old, I shall never forget what I saw then, and even now, when I shut my eyes, I see the whole thing: three Rabbis standing on the platform in Shool, and eating before the whole people, on the Day of Atonement!

The three belong to the heroes.

Who shall tell how they fought with themselves, who shall say how they suffered, and what they endured?

"I have done what you wished," says the Rabbi, and his voice does not shake, and his lips do not tremble.

"God's Name be praised!"

And all the Jews ate that day, they ate and wept.

Rays of light beam forth from the remembrance, and spread all around, and reach the table at which I sit and write these words.

Once again: three people ate.

At the moment when the awesome scene in the Shool is before me, there are three Jews sitting in a room opposite the Shool, and they also are eating.

They are the three "enlightened" ones of the place: the tax-collector, the inspector, and the teacher.

The window is wide open, so that all may see; on the table stands a samovar, glasses of red wine, and eatables. And the three sit with playing-cards in their hands, playing Preference, and they laugh and eat and drink.

Do they also belong to the heroes?

Born, 1865, in Berschad, Podolia, Southwestern Russia; educated in Yeshibah of Volozhin; studied also modern literatures in his youth; has been living alternately in Berlin and Breslau; Hebrew, Yiddish, and German writer, on philosophy, æsthetics, and Jewish literary, spiritual, and timely questions; contributor to Hebrew periodicals; editor of Bet-Midrash, supplement to Bet-Ozar ha-Sifrut; contributed Ueber den Zusammenhang zwischen Ethik und Aesthetik to Berner Studien zur Philosophie und ihrer Geschichte; author of two novels, Mibayit u-Mihuz, and Mahanaim; a book on the Hasidim, Warsaw, 1900; Jüdische Ketobim vun a weiten Korov, Warsaw; Hebrew essays on miscellaneous subjects, eleven parts, Warsaw and Breslau (in course of publication).

"They look as if they'd enough of me!"

So I think to myself, as I give a glance at my two great top-boots, my wide trousers, and my shabby green uniform, in which there is no whole part left.

I take a bit of looking-glass out of my box, and look at my reflection. Yes, the military cap on my head is a beauty, and no mistake, as big as Og king of Bashan, and as bent and crushed as though it had been sat upon for years together.

Under the cap appears a small, washed-out face, yellow and weazened, with two large black eyes that look at me somewhat wildly.

I don't recognize myself; I remember me in a grey jacket, narrow, close-fitting trousers, a round hat, and a healthy complexion.

I can't make out where I got those big eyes, why they shine so, why my face should be yellow, and my nose, pointed.

And yet I know that it is I myself, Chayyim Blumin, and no other; that I have been handed over for a soldier, and have to serve only two years and eight months, and not three years and eight months, because I have a certificate to the effect that I have been through the first four classes in a secondary school.

Though I know quite well that I am to serve only two years and eight months, I feel the same as though it were to be forever; I can't, somehow, believe that my time will some day expire, and I shall once more be free.

I have tried from the very beginning not to play any tricks, to do my duty and obey orders, so that they should not say, "A Jew won't work—a Jew is too lazy."

Even though I am let off manual labor, because I am on "privileged rights," still, if they tell me to go and clean the windows, or polish the flooring with sand, or clear away the snow from the door, I make no fuss and go. I wash and clean and polish, and try to do the work well, so that they should find no fault with me.

They haven't yet ordered me to carry pails of water.

Why should I not confess it? The idea of having to do that rather frightens me. When I look at the vessel in which the water is carried, my heart begins to flutter: the vessel is almost as big as I am, and I couldn't lift it even if it were empty.

I often think: What shall I do, if to-morrow, or the day after, they wake me at three o'clock in the morning and say coolly:

"Get up, Blumin, and go with Ossadtchok to fetch a pail of water!"

You ought to see my neighbor Ossadtchok! He looks as if he could squash me with one finger. It is as easy for him to carry a pail of water as to drink a glass of brandy. How can I compare myself with him?