TRANSLATED BY
HELENA FRANK

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.

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.

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."

Or How the Rav of Pumpian Tried To Solve A Social Problem

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.

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!"

"Why must it be just in Palestine?"

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 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!"

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!

"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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!"

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.

I

"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."

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:

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.

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."

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.

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.

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.

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....

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:

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."

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

I

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.

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.

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

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.

A nasty smell of sputtered-out candles fills the room. Rochtzi weeps. Bertzi is back on the couch and snores.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Pen name of Isaiah Domaschewitski; born, 1871, near Derechin, Government of Grodno (Lithuania), White Russia; died, 1909, in Warsaw; education, Jewish and secular; teacher of Hebrew in Ekaterinoslav, Southern Russia; in business, in Ekaterinoslav and Baku; editor, in 1903, of Ha-Zeman, first in St. Petersburg, then in Wilna; after a short sojourn in Riga removed to Warsaw; writer of novels and short stories, almost exclusively in Hebrew; contributor to Ha-Meliz, Ha-Shiloah, and other periodicals; pen names besides Berschadski: Berschadi, and Shimoni; collected works in Hebrew, Tefusim u-Zelalim, Warsaw, 1899, and Ketabim Aharonim, Warsaw, 1909.

Forlorn and forsaken she was in her last years. Even when she lay on the bed of sickness where she died, not one of her relations or friends came to look after her; they did not even come to mourn for her or accompany her to the grave. There was not even one of her kin to say the first Kaddish over her resting-place. My wife and I were the only friends she had at the close of her life, no one but us cared for her while she was ill, or walked behind her coffin. The only tears shed at the lonely old woman's grave were ours. I spoke the only Kaddish for her soul, but we, after all, were complete strangers to her!

Pen name of Israel Joseph Zevin; born, 1872, in Gori-Gorki, Government of Mohileff (Lithuania), White Russia; came to New York in 1889; first Yiddish sketch published in JÜdisches Tageblatt, 1893; first English story in The American Hebrew, 1906; associate editor of JÜdisches Tageblatt; writer of sketches, short stories, and biographies, in Hebrew, Yiddish, and English; contributor to Ha-Ibri, Jewish Comment, and numerous Yiddish periodicals; collected works, Geklibene Schriften, 1 vol., New York, 1910, and Tashrak's Beste ErzÄhlungen, 4 vols., New York, 1910.

When I was a little Cheder-boy, my Rebbe, Bunem-Breine-Gite's, a learned man, who was always tormenting me with Talmudical questions and with riddles, once asked me, "What becomes of the hole in a Beigel, when one has eaten the Beigel?"

This riddle, which seemed to me then very hard to solve, stuck in my head, and I puzzled over it day and night. I often bought a Beigel, took a bite out of it, and immediately replaced the bitten-out piece with my hand, so that the hole should not escape. But when I had eaten up the Beigel, the hole had somehow always disappeared, which used to annoy me very much. I went about preoccupied, thought it over at prayers and at lessons, till the Rebbe noticed that something was wrong with me.

At home, too, they remarked that I had lost my appetite, that I ate nothing but Beigel—Beigel for breakfast, Beigel for dinner, Beigel for supper, Beigel all day long. They also observed that I ate it to the accompaniment of strange gestures and contortions of both my mouth and my hands.

One day I summoned all my courage, and asked the Rebbe, in the middle of a lesson on the Pentateuch:

"Rebbe, when one has eaten a Beigel, what becomes of the hole?"

Rosalie laid down the cloth with which she had been dusting the furniture in her front parlor, and began tapping the velvet covering of the sofa with her fingers. The velvet had worn threadbare in places, and there was a great rent in the middle.

Had the rent been at one of the ends, it could have been covered with a cushion, but there it was, by bad luck, in the very centre, and making a shameless display of itself: Look, here I am! See what a rent!

Yesterday she and her husband had invited company. The company had brought children, and you never have children in the house without having them leave some mischief behind them.

To-day the sun was shining more brightly than ever, and lighting up the whole room. Rosalie took the opportunity to inspect her entire set of furniture. Eight years ago, when she was given the set at her marriage, how happy, she had been! Everything was so fresh and new.

She had noticed before that the velvet was getting worn, and the polish of the chairs disappearing, and the seats losing their spring, but to-day all this struck her more than formerly. The holes, the rents, the damaged places, stared before them with such malicious mockery—like a poor man laughing at his own evil plight.

Born, 1872, in Mohileff (Lithuania), White Russia; refused admission to Gymnasium in Moscow under percentage restrictions; 1889-1891, secretary to Bene Zion in Vitebsk; 1891-1893, student in Vienna; 1893, co-editor of Spektor's Hausfreund and Perez's Yom-tov BlÄttlech; 1893, first sketch published in New York Arbeiterzeitung; 1896, studied philosophy in Berlin; 1899, came to New York, and edited Das Abendblatt, a daily, and Der Arbeiter, a weekly; 1912, founder and co-editor of Die Yiddishe Wochenschrift; author of short stories, sketches, an essay on the Yiddish drama, and ten dramas, among them Yesurun, Eisik Scheftel, Die Mutter, Die Familie Zwie, Der Oitzer, Der eibiger JÜd (first part of a series of Messiah dramas), Der stummer Moschiach, etc.; one volume of collected dramas, Dramen, Warsaw, 1909.

The seventy-year-old Reb Shloimeh's son, whose home was in the country, sent his two boys to live with their grandfather and acquire town, that is, Gentile, learning.

"Times have changed," considered Reb Shloimeh; "it can't be helped!" and he engaged a good teacher for the children, after making inquiries here and there.

"Give me a teacher who can tell the whole of their Law, as the saying goes, standing on one leg!" he would say to his friends, with a smile.

At seventy-one years of age, Reb Shloimeh lived more indoors than out, and he used to listen to the teacher instructing his grandchildren.

"I shall become a doctor in my old age!" he would say, laughing.

The teacher was one day telling his pupils about mathematical geography. Reb Shloimeh sat with a smile on his lips, and laughing in his heart at the little teacher who told "such huge lies" with so much earnestness.

"The earth revolves," said the teacher to his pupils, and Reb Shloimeh smiles, and thinks, "He must have seen it!" But the teacher shows it to be so by the light of reason, and Reb Shloimeh becomes graver, and ceases smiling; he is endeavoring to grasp the proofs; he wants to ask questions, but can find none that will do, and he sits there as if he had lost his tongue.

"When the workmen come, they are to let them in, do you hear!" he said. The teacher promised.

"They will come at nine," added Reb Shloimeh.

In a little while he asked to write his will. After writing the will, he undressed and closed his eyes.

Pen name of Israel Hurewitz; born, 1872, in Gori-Gorki, Government of Mohileff (Lithuania), White Russia; assistant to a druggist at thirteen; went to London at twenty, and, after seven months there, to New York (1893); worked as capmaker; first sketch, "A Sifz vun a Arbeiterbrust"; contributor to Die Arbeiterzeitung, Das Abendblatt, Die Zukunft, VorwÄrts, etc.; prolific Yiddish playwright and writer of sketches on New York Jewish life; dramas to the number of twenty-six produced on the stage; collected works, Geklibene Skizzen, 1 vol., New York, 1902, and 2 vols., New York, 1907.

Ask Shmuel, the capmaker, just for a joke, if he would like to come for a picnic! He'll fly out at you as if you had invited him to a swing on the gallows. The fact is, he and his Sarah once went for a picnic, and the poor man will remember it all his days.

It was on a Sabbath towards the end of August. Shmuel came home from work, and said to his wife:

"Sarah, dear!"

"Well, husband?" was her reply.

"I want to have a treat," said Shmuel, as though alarmed at the boldness of the idea.

"What sort of a treat? Shall you go to the swimming-bath to-morrow?"

"Ett! What's the fun of that?"

"Then, what have you thought of by way of an exception? A glass of ice water for supper?"

"Not that, either."

"A whole siphon?"

Shmuel denied with a shake of the head.

"Whatever can it be!" wondered Sarah. "Are you going to fetch a pint of beer?"

"What should I want with beer?"

"Are you going to sleep on the roof?"

"Wrong again!"

"To buy some more carbolic acid, and drive out the bugs?"

It was a stifling summer evening. I had just come home from work, taken off my coat, unbuttoned my waistcoat, and sat down panting by the window of my little room.

There was a knock at the door, and without waiting for my reply, in came a woman with yellow hair, and very untidy in her dress.

I judged from her appearance that she had not come from a distance. She had nothing on her head, her sleeves were tucked up, she held a ladle in her hand, and she was chewing something or other.

"I am Manasseh's wife," said she.

"Manasseh Gricklin's?" I asked.

"Yes," said my visitor, "Gricklin's, Gricklin's."

I hastily slipped on a coat, and begged her to be seated.

Manasseh was an old friend of mine, he was a capmaker, and we worked together in one shop.

And I knew that he lived somewhere in the same tenement as myself, but it was the first time I had the honor of seeing his wife.

"Look here," began the woman, "don't you work in the same shop as my husband?"

"Yes, yes," I said.

The Ginzburgs' first child died of inflammation of the lungs when it was two years and three months old.

The young couple were in the depths of grief and despair—they even thought seriously of committing suicide.

But people do not do everything they think of doing. Neither Ginzburg nor his wife had the courage to throw themselves into the cold and grizzly arms of death. They only despaired, until, some time after, a newborn child bound them once more to life.

It was a little girl, and they named her Dvoreh, after Ginzburg's dead mother.

The Ginzburgs were both free-thinkers in the full sense of the word, and their naming the child after the dead had no superstitious significance whatever.

It came about quite simply.

"Dobinyu," Ginzburg had asked his wife, "how shall we call our daughter?"

"I don't know," replied the young mother.

"No more do I," said Ginzburg.

"Let us call her Dvorehle," suggested Dobe, automatically, gazing at her pretty baby, and very little concerned about its name.

Despite the fact of the winter nights being long and dark as the Jewish exile, the Breklins go to bed at dusk.

But you may as well know that when it is dusk outside in the street, the Breklins are already "way on" in the night, because they live in a basement, separated from the rest of the world by an air-shaft, and when the sun gathers his beams round him before setting, the first to be summoned are those down the Breklins' shaft, because of the time required for them to struggle out again.

The same thing in the morning, only reversed. People don't usually get up, if they can help it, before it is really light, and so it comes to pass that when other people have left their beds, and are going about their business, the Breklins are still asleep and making the long, long night longer yet.

If you ask me, "How is it they don't wear their sides out with lying in bed?" I shall reply: They do rise with aching sides, and if you say, "How can people be so lazy?" I can tell you, They don't do it out of laziness, and they lie awake a great part of the time.

What's the good of lying in bed if one isn't asleep?

Born, 1876, in Kaidanov, Government of Minsk (Lithuania), White Russia; traditional Jewish education; self-taught in Russian language; teacher at fifteen, first in Kaidanov, then in Minsk; first poem published in Perez's JÜdische Bibliothek, in 1891; served in the army, in Kovno, for four years; went to Warsaw in 1900, and to New York in 1911; Yiddish lyric poet and novelist; occasionally writes Hebrew; contributor to Spektor's Hausfreund, New York Abendpost, and New York Arbeiterzeitung; co-editor of Das zwanzigste Jahrhundert; in 1903, published and edited, in Cracow, Das jÜdische Wort, first to urge the claim of Yiddish as the national Jewish language; publisher and editor, since 1911, of Dos neie Land, in New York; collected works (poems and tales), 4 vols., Warsaw, 1908-1912.

Lebele is a little boy ten years old, with pale cheeks, liquid, dreamy eyes, and black hair that falls in twisted ringlets, but, of course, the ringlets are only seen when his hat falls off, for Lebele is a pious little boy, who never uncovers his head.

There are things that Lebele loves and never has, or else he has them only in part, and that is why his eyes are always dreamy and troubled, and always full of longing.

He loves the summer, and sits the whole day in Cheder. He loves the sun, and the Rebbe hangs his caftan across the window, and the Cheder is darkened, so that it oppresses the soul. Lebele loves the moon, the night, but at home they close the shutters, and Lebele, on his little bed, feels as if he were buried alive. And Lebele cannot understand people's behaving so oddly.

It seems to him that when the sun shines in at the window, it is a delight, it is so pleasant and cheerful, and the Rebbe goes and curtains it—no more sun! If Lebele dared, he would ask:

"What ails you, Rebbe, at the sun? What harm can it do you?"

The largest fair in Klemenke is "Ulas." The little town waits for Ulas with a beating heart and extravagant hopes. "Ulas," say the Klemenke shopkeepers and traders, "is a Heavenly blessing; were it not for Ulas, Klemenke would long ago have been 'Äus Klemenke,' America would have taken its last few remaining Jews to herself."

But for Ulas one must have the wherewithal—the shopkeepers need wares, and the traders, money.

Without the wherewithal, even Ulas is no good! And Chayyim, the dealer in produce, goes about gloomily. There are only three days left before Ulas, and he hasn't a penny wherewith to buy corn to trade with. And the other dealers in produce circulate in the market-place with caps awry, with thickly-rolled cigarettes in their mouths and walking-sticks in their hands, and they are talking hard about the fair.

"In three days it will be lively!" calls out one.

"Pshshsh," cries another in ecstasy, "in three days' time the place will be packed!"

It is three months since Yainkele and Berele—two brothers, the first fourteen years old, the second sixteen—have been at the college that stands in the town of X—, five German miles from their birthplace Dalissovke, after which they are called the "Dalissovkers."

Yainkele is a slight, pale boy, with black eyes that peep slyly from beneath the two black eyebrows. Berele is taller and stouter than Yainkele, his eyes are lighter, and his glance is more defiant, as though he would say, "Let me alone, I shall laugh at you all yet!"

The two brothers lodged with a poor relation, a widow, a dealer in second-hand goods, who never came home till late at night. The two brothers had no bed, but a chest, which was broad enough, served instead, and the brothers slept sweetly on it, covered with their own torn clothes; and in their dreams they saw their native place, the little street, their home, their father with his long beard and dim eyes and bent back, and their mother with her long, pale, melancholy face, and they heard the little brothers and sisters quarrelling, as they fought over a bit of herring, and they dreamt other dreams of home, and early in the morning they were homesick, and then they used to run to the Dalissovke Inn, and ask the carrier if there were a letter for them from home.

"Perhaps they wrote, and the carrier won't give us the letter—"

"Ai, that's chatter enough!" Berele was quite cross. "Shut up, donkey! You make me laugh," he went on, to reassure Yainkele, "they are all alive and well."

Yainkele became cheerful again, and all at once he gave a bound into the air, and exclaimed with eager eyes:

"Berele, do what I say! Let's write by the post!"

"Right you are!" agreed Berele. "Only I've no money."

It was in the large synagogue in Klemenke. The week-day service had come to an end. The town cantor who sings all the prayers, even when he prays alone, and who is longer over them than other people, had already folded his prayer-scarf, and was humming the day's Psalm to himself, to a tune. He sang the last words "cantorishly" high:

"And He will be our guide until death." In the last word "death" he tried, as usual, to rise artistically to the higher octave, then to fall very low, and to rise again almost at once into the height; but this time he failed, the note stuck in his throat and came out false.

He got a fright, and in his fright he looked round to make sure no one was standing beside him. Seeing only old Henoch, his alarm grew less, he knew that old Henoch was deaf.

As he went out with his prayer-scarf and phylacteries under his arm, the unsuccessful "death" rang in his ears and troubled him.

"Plague take it," he muttered, "it never once happened to me before."

It was in sad and hopeless mood that Antosh watched the autumn making its way into his peasant's hut. The days began to shorten and the evenings to lengthen, and there was no more petroleum in the hut to fill his humble lamp; his wife complained too—the store of salt was giving out; there was very little soap left, and in a few days he would finish his tobacco. And Antosh cleared his throat, spat, and muttered countless times a day:

"No salt, no soap, no tobacco; we haven't got anything. A bad business!"

Antosh had no prospect of earning anything in the village. The one village Jew was poor himself, and had no work to give. Antosh had only one hope left. Just before the Feast of Tabernacles he would drive a whole cart-load of fir-boughs into the little town and bring a tidy sum of money home in exchange.

He did this every year, since buying his thin horse in the market for six rubles.

"When shall you have Tabernacles?" he asked every day of the village Jew. "Not yet," was the Jew's daily reply. "But when shall you?" Antosh insisted one day.

"In a week," answered the Jew, not dreaming how very much Antosh needed to know precisely.

From behind the curtain came low moans, and low words of encouragement from the old and experienced Bobbe. In the room it was dismal to suffocation. The seven children, all girls, between twenty-three and four years old, sat quietly, each by herself, with drooping head, and waited for something dreadful.

At a little table near a great cupboard with books sat the "patriarch" Reb Selig Chanes, a tall, thin Jew, with a yellow, consumptive face. He was chanting in low, broken tones out of a big Gemoreh, and continually raising his head, giving a nervous glance at the curtain, and then, without inquiring what might be going on beyond the low moaning, taking up once again his sad, tremulous chant. He seemed to be suffering more than the woman in childbirth herself.

"Lord of the World!"—it was the eldest daughter who broke the stillness—"Let it be a boy for once! Help, Lord of the World, have pity!"

"Oi, thus might it be, Lord of the World!" chimed in the second.

And all the girls, little and big, with broken heart and prostrate spirit, prayed that there might be born a boy.

Reb Selig raised his eyes from the Gemoreh, glanced at the curtain, then at the seven girls, gave vent to a deep-drawn Oi, made a gesture with his hand, and said with settled despair, "She will give you another sister!"

When he first came to the place, as a boy, and went straight to the house-of-study, and people, having greeted him, asked "Where do you come from?" and he answered, not without pride, "From the Government of Wilna"—from that day until the day he was married, they called him "the Wilner."

In a few years' time, however, when the house-of-study had married him to the daughter of the Psalm-reader, a coarse, undersized creature, and when, after six months' "board" with his father-in-law, he became a teacher, the town altered his name to "the Wilner teacher." Again, a few years later, when he got a chest affection, and the doctor forbade him to keep school, and he began to deal in fruit, the town learnt that his name was AvrÒhom, to which they added "the orchard-keeper," and his name is "AvrÒhom the orchard-keeper" to this day.

AvrÒhom was quite content with his new calling. He had always wished for a business in which he need not have to do with a lot of people in whom he had small confidence, and in whose society he felt ill at ease.

People have a queer way with them, he used to think, they want to be always talking! They want to tell everything, find out everything, answer everything!

Born, 1876, in Msczczonow, Government of Warsaw, Russian Poland, of Hasidic parentage; traditional Jewish education in the house of his grandfather; went to Warsaw in 1898; at present (1912) in America; first literary work appeared in 1900; writer of stories, etc., in Hebrew and Yiddish; co-editor of Ha-Zofeh, Der Freind, Ha-Boker; contributor to Ha-Zeman, Heint, Ha-Dor, Ha-Shiloah, etc.; collected works, 5 vols., Warsaw, 1908-1911.

The Sabbath midday meal is over, and the Saken Rav passes his hands across his serene and pious countenance, pulls out both earlocks, straightens his skull-cap, and prepares to expound a passage of the Torah as God shall enlighten him. There sit with him at table, to one side of him, a passing guest, a Libavitch Chossid, like the Rav himself, a man with yellow beard and earlocks, and a grubby shirt collar appearing above the grubby yellow kerchief that envelopes his throat; to the other side of him, his son Sholem, an eighteen-year-old youth, with a long pale face, deep, rather dreamy eyes, a velvet hat, but no earlocks, a secret Maskil, who writes Hebrew verses, and contemplates growing into a great Jewish author. The Rebbetzin has been suffering two or three months with rheumatism, and lies in another room.

Born, 1879, in a village near Pereyaslav, Government of Poltava, Little Russia, of Hasidic parentage; educated in Kieff, where he acquired the trade of carpenter in order to win the right of residence; studied medicine; began to write in 1906; came to New York in 1908; writer of stories to the number of about fifty, which have been published in various periodicals; wrote also Der Sod, and Dr. Makower.

A Prose Poem

Hedged round with tall, thick woods, as though designedly, so that no one should know what happens there, lies the long-drawn-out old town of Pereyaslav.

To the right, connected with Pereyaslav by a wooden bridge, lies another bit of country, named—Pidvorkes.

The town itself, with its long, narrow, muddy streets, with the crowded houses propped up one against the other like tombstones, with their meagre grey walls all to pieces, with the broken window-panes stuffed with rags—well, the town of Pereyaslav was hardly to be distinguished from any other town inhabited by Jews.

Here, too, people faded before they bloomed. Here, too, men lived on miracles, were fruitful and multiplied out of all season and reason. They talked of a livelihood, of good times, of riches and pleasures, with the same appearance of firm conviction, and, at the same time the utter disbelief, with which one tells a legend read in a book.

Born, about 1880, in the Government of Kieff, Little Russia; came to Chicago in 1906, and to New York for a short time in 1907-1908; now (1912) in business in Switzerland; contributor to Die Zukunft, New York; collected works, Novellen, 1 vol., Warsaw, 1910.

Yes, it was a terrible dream! But when one is only nine years old, one soon forgets, and Meyerl was nine a few weeks before it came to pass.

Yes, and things had happened in the house every now and then to remind one of it, but then Meyerl lived more out of doors than indoors, in the wild streets of New York. Tartilov and New York—what a difference! New York had supplanted Tartilov, effaced it from his memory. There remained only a faint occasional recollection of that horrid dream.

If it really was a dream!

It was this way: Meyerl dreamt that he was sitting in Cheder learning, but more for show's sake than seriously, because during the Days of Penitence, near the close of the session, the Rebbe grew milder, and Cheder less hateful. And as he sat there and learnt, he heard a banging of doors in the street, and through the window saw Jews running to and fro, as if bereft of their senses, flinging themselves hither and thither exactly like leaves in a gale, or as when a witch rises from the ground in a column of dust, and whirls across the road so suddenly and unexpectedly that it makes one's flesh creep. And at the sight of this running up and down in the street, the Rebbe collapsed in his chair white as death, his under lip trembling.

Born, 1881, in Kutno, Government of Warsaw, Russian Poland; Jewish education and Hasidic surroundings; began to write in 1900, earliest works being in Hebrew; Sippurim was published in 1903, and A StÄdtel in 1904; wrote his first drama in 1905; distinguished for realism, love of nature, and description of patriarchal Jewish life in the villages; playwright; dramas: Gott von Nekomoh, Meschiach's Zeiten, etc.; collected works, Schriften, Warsaw, 1908-1912 (in course of publication).

Feigele, like all young girls, is fond of dressing and decking herself out.

She has no time for these frivolities during the week, there is work in plenty, no evil eye! and sewing to do; rent is high, and times are bad. The father earns but little, and there is a deal wanting towards her three hundred rubles dowry, beside which her mother trenches on it occasionally, on Sabbath, when the family purse is empty.

"There are as many marriageable young men as dogs, only every dog wants a fat bone," comes into her head.

She dislikes much thinking. She is a young girl and a pretty one. Of course, one shouldn't be conceited, but when she stands in front of the glass, she sees her bright face and rosy cheeks and the fall of her black hair. But she soon forgets it all, as though she were afraid that to rejoice in it might bring her ill-luck.

Sabbath it is quite another thing—there is time and to spare, and on Sabbath Feigele's toilet knows no end.

The mother calls, "There, Feigele, that's enough! You will do very well as you are." But what should old-fashioned women like her know about it? Anything will do for them. Whether you've a hat and jacket on or not, they're just as pleased.

In the evening comes Eleazar.

"Well, what are you doing?"

"What should I be doing? Wait, I'll show you something."

"What sort of thing?"

She rises from her place, goes to the chest that stands in the stove corner, takes something out of it, and hides it under her apron.

"Whatever have you got there?" he laughs.

"Why are you in such a hurry to know?" she asks, and sits down beside him, brings from under her apron a picture in fine woolwork, Adam and Eve, and shows it him, saying:

"There, now you see! It was worked by a girl I know—for me, for us. I shall hang it up in our room, opposite the bed."

"Yours or mine?"

They feel so happy, so light at heart.

Everything in the house has taken on an air of kindliness, there is a soft, attractive gloss on every object in the room, on the walls and the table, the familiar things make signs to her, and speak to her as friend to friend.

The two are silent, lost in their own thoughts.

"Look," she says to him, and takes her bank-book out of the chest, "two hundred and forty rubles already. I shall make it up to three hundred, and then you won't have to say, 'I took you just as you were.'"

"Go along with you, you are very unjust, and I'm cross with you, Feigele."

"Why? Because I tell you the truth to your face?" she asks, looking into his face and laughing.

He turns his head away, pretending to be offended.

"You little silly, are you feeling hurt? I was only joking, can't you see?"

So it goes on, till the old mother's face peeps out from behind the curtain, warning them that it is time to go to rest, when the young couple bid each other good-night.

Reb Yainkel, Feigele's father, fell ill.

The mother came out of the bride's chamber, and cast a piercing look at her husband, who was sitting beside a finished meal, and was making pellets of bread crumbs previous to saying grace.

"You go and talk to her! I haven't a bit of strength left!"

"So, Rochel-Leoh has brought up children, has she, and can't manage them! Why! People will be pointing at you and laughing—a ruin to your years!"

"To my years?! A ruin to yours! My children, are they? Are they not yours, too? Couldn't you stay at home sometimes to care for them and help me to bring them up, instead of trapesing round—the black year knows where and with whom?"

"Rochel, Rochel, what has possessed you to start a quarrel with me now? The bridegroom's family will be arriving directly."

"And what do you expect me to do, Moishehle, eh?! For God's sake! Go in to her, we shall be made a laughing-stock."

The man rose from the table, and went into the next room to his daughter. The mother followed.

The market lies foursquare, surrounded on every side by low, whitewashed little houses. From the chimney of the one-storied house opposite the well and inhabited by the baker, issues thick smoke, which spreads low over the market-place. Beneath the smoke is a flying to and fro of white pigeons, and a tall boy standing outside the baker's door is whistling to them.

Equally opposite the well are stalls, doors laid across two chairs and covered with fruit and vegetables, and around them women, with head-kerchiefs gathered round their weary, sunburnt faces in the hottest weather, stand and quarrel over each other's wares.

"It's certainly worth my while to stand quarrelling with you! A tramp like you keeping a stall!"

Yente, a woman about forty, whose wide lips have just uttered the above, wears a large, dirty apron, and her broad, red face, with the composed glance of the eyes under the kerchief, gives support to her words.

"Do you suppose you have got the Almighty by the beard? He is mine as well as yours!" answers Taube, pulling her kerchief lower about her ears, and angrily stroking down her hair.

A new customer approached Yente's stall, and Taube, standing by idle, passed the time in vituperations.

So that you should not suspect me of taking his part, I will write a short preface to my story.

It is written: "A man never so much as moves his finger, but it has been so decreed from above," and whatsoever a man does, he fulfils God's will—even animals and birds (I beg to distinguish!) carry out God's wishes: whenever a bird flies, it fulfils a precept, because God, blessed is He, formed it to fly, and an ox the same when it lows, and even a dog when it barks—all praise God with their voices, and sing hymns to Him, each after his manner.

And even the wicked who transgresses fulfils God's will in spite of himself, because why? Do you suppose he takes pleasure in transgressing? Isn't he certain to repent? Well, then? He is just carrying out the will of Heaven.

And the Evil Inclination himself! Why, every time he is sent to persuade a Jew to sin, he weeps and sighs: Woe is me, that I should be sent on such an errand!

After this little preface, I will tell you the story itself.

Formerly, before the thing happened, he was called Reb AvrÒhom, but afterwards they ceased calling him by his name, and said simply the Sinner.

Born, 1885, in Slutzk, Government of Minsk (Lithuania), White Russia; was in America for a short time in 1908; contributor to Die Zukunft; co-editor of Ha-Olam, Wilna; Hebrew and Yiddish writer; collected works: Yiddish, Gesammelte Schriften, Warsaw, 1910; Hebrew, Sippurim, Cracow, 1910.

Feivke was a wild little villager, about seven years old, who had tumbled up from babyhood among Gentile urchins, the only Jewish boy in the place, just as his father Mattes, the Kozlov smith, was the only Jewish householder there. Feivke had hardly ever met, or even seen, anyone but the people of Kozlov and their children. Had it not been for his black eyes, with their moody, persistent gaze from beneath the shade of a deep, worn-out leather cap, it would have puzzled anyone to make out his parentage, to know whence that torn and battered face, that red scar across the top lip, those large, black, flat, unchild-like feet. But the eyes explained everything—his mother's eyes.

They went by the great Kozlov wood, wherein every tree stood silent and sad for its faded and fallen leaves. Feivke dropped behind his father, and stepped aside into the wood. He wondered: Should he run away and hide in the wood? He would willingly stay there for the rest of his life. He would foregather with Nasta, the barrel-maker's son, he of the knocked-out eye; they would roast potatoes out in the wood, and now and again, stolen-wise, milk the village cows for their repast. Let them beat him as much as they pleased, let them kill him on the spot, nothing should induce him to leave the wood again!

But no! As Feivke walked along under the silent trees and through the fallen leaves, and perceived that the whole wood was filled through and through with a soft, clear light, and heard the rustle of the leaves beneath his step, a strange terror took hold of him. The wood had grown so sparse, the trees so discolored, and he should have to remain in the stillness alone, and roam about in the winter wind!

Mattes the smith had stopped, wondering, and was blinking around with his sick eyes.

"Feivke, where are you?"

Feivke appeared out of the wood.

"Feivke, to-day you mustn't go into the wood. To-day God may yet—to-day you must be a good boy," said the smith, repeating his wife's words as they came to his mind, "and you must say Amen."

They had been Rabbonim for generations in the Misnagdic community of Mouravanke, old, poverty-stricken Mouravanke, crowned with hoary honor, hidden away in the thick woods. Generation on generation of them had been renowned far and near, wherever a Jewish word was spoken, wherever the voice of the Torah rang out in the warm old houses-of-study.

People talked of them everywhere, as they talk of miracles when miracles are no more, and of consolation when all hope is long since dead—talked of them as great-grandchildren talk of the riches of their great-grandfather, the like of which are now unknown, and of the great seven-branched, old-fashioned lamp, which he left them as an inheritance of times gone by.

For as the lustre of an old, seven-branched lamp shining in the darkness, such was the lustre of the family of the Rabbonim of Mouravanke.

The power of man's imagination, said my Grandmother, is very great. Hereby hangs a tale, which, to our sorrow, is a true one, and as clear as daylight.

Listen attentively, my dear child, it will interest you very much.

Not far from this town of ours lived an old Count, who believed that Jews require blood at Passover, Christian blood, too, for their Passover cakes.

The Count, in his brandy distillery, had a Jewish overseer, a very honest, respectable fellow.

The Count loved him for his honesty, and was very kind to him, and the Jew, although he was a simple man and no scholar, was well-disposed, and served the Count with heart and soul. He would have gone through fire and water at the Count's bidding, for it is in the nature of a Jew to be faithful and to love good men.

The Count often discussed business matters with him, and took pleasure in hearing about the customs and observances of the Jews.

One day the Count said to him, "Tell me the truth, do you love me with your whole heart?"

"Yes," replied the Jew, "I love you as myself."

"Not true!" said the Count. "I shall prove to you that you hate me even unto death."

"Hold!" cried the Jew. "Why does my lord say such terrible things?"