Children of the Ghetto

shall never forget that slap-it nearly made me adhere to the wall. But now-a-days our children sit on our heads. I gave my Milly all she has in the world-a house, a shop, a husband, and my best bed-linen. And now when I want her to call the child Yosef, after my first husband, peace be on him, her own father, she would out of sheer vexatiousness, call it Yechezkel.' Malka's voice became more strident than ever. She had been anxious to make a species of vicarious reparation to her first husband, and the failure of Milly to acquiesce in the arrangement was a source of real vexation.

Moses could think of nothing better to say than to inquire how her present husband was.

'He overworks himself,' Malka replied, shaking her head. 'The misfortune is that he thinks himself a good man of business, and he is always starting new enterprises without consulting me. If he would only take my advice more!'

Moses shook his head in sympathetic deprecation of Michael Birnbaum's wilfulness.

'Is he at home?' he asked.

'No, but I expect him back from the country every minute. I believe they have invited him for the Pidyun Haben to-day.'

'Oh, is that to-day?'

'Of course. Didst thou not know?'

'No, no one told me.'

'Thine own sense should have told thee. Is it not the thirty-first day since the birth? But of course he won't accept when he knows that my own daughter has driven me out of her house.'

'You say not!' exclaimed Moses in horror.

'I do say,' said Malka, unconsciously taking up the clothes-brush and thumping with it on the table to emphasize the outrage. 'I told her that when Yechezkel cried so much, it would be better to look for the pin than to dose the child for gripes. 'I dressed it myself, Mother,' says she. 'Thou art an obstinate cat's head. Milly,' says I. 'I say there is a pin.' 'And I know better,' says she. 'How canst thou know better than I?' says I. 'Why, I was a mother before thou wast born.' So I unrolled the child's flannel, and sure enough underneath it just over the stomach I found-'

'The pin,' concluded Moses, shaking his head gravely.

'No, not exactly. But a red mark where the pin had been pricking the poor little thing.'

'And what did Milly say then?' said Moses in sympathetic triumph.

'Milly said it was a flea-bite! and I said, 'Gott in Himmel, Milly, dost thou want to swear my eyes away? My enemies shall have such a flea-bite.' And because Red Rivkah was in the room, Milly said I was shedding her blood in public, and she began to cry as if I had committed a crime against her in looking after her child. And I rushed out, leaving the two babies howling together. That was a week ago.'

'And how is the child?'

'How should I know? I am only the grandmother, I only supplied the bed-linen it was born on.'

'But is it recovered from the circumcision?'

'Oh, yes, all our family have good healing flesh. It's a fine, child, imbeshreer. It's got my eyes and nose. It's a rare handsome baby, imbeshreer. Only it won't be its mother's fault if the Almighty takes it not back again. Milly has picked up so many ignorant Lane women who come in and blight the child, by admiring it aloud, not even saying imbeshreer. And then there's an old witch, a beggar-woman that Ephraim, my son-in-law, used to give a shilling a week to. Now he only gives her ninepence. She asked him 'why?' and he said, 'I'm married now. I can't afford more.' 'What!' she shrieked, 'you got married on my money!' And one Friday when the nurse had baby downstairs, the old beggar-woman knocked for her weekly allowance, and she opened the door, and she saw the child, and she looked at it with her Evil Eye! I hope to Heaven nothing will come of it.'

'I will pray for Yechezkel,' said Moses.

'Pray for Milly also, while thou art about it, that she may remember what is owing to a mother before the earth covers me. I don't know what's coming over children. Look at my Leah. She will marry that Sam Levine, though he belongs to a lax English family, and I suspect his mother was a proselyte. She can't fry fish any way. I don't say anything against Sam, but still I do think my Leah might have told me before falling in love with him. And yet see how I treat them! My Michael made a Missheberach for them in synagogue the Sabbath after the engagement; not a common eighteen-penny benediction, but a guinea one, with half-crown blessings thrown in for his parents and the congregation, and a gift of five shillings to the minister. That was of course in our own Chevrah, not reckoning the guinea my Michael shnodared at Duke's Plaizer Shool. You know we always keep two seats at Duke's Plaizer as well.' Duke's Plaizer was the current distortion of Duke's Place.

'What magnanimity,' said Moses overawed.

'I like to do everything with decorum,' said Malka. 'No one can say I have ever acted otherwise than as a fine person. I dare say thou couldst do with a few shillings thyself now.'

Moses hung his head still lower. 'You see my mother is so poorly,' he stammered. 'She is a very old woman, and without anything to eat she may not live long.'

'They ought to take her into the Aged Widows' Home. I'm sure I gave her my votes.'

'God shall bless you for it. But people say I was lucky enough to get my Benjamin into the Orphan Asylum, and that I ought not to have brought her from Poland. They say we grow enough poor old widows here.'

'People say quite right-at least she would have starved in, a Yiddishe country, not in a land of heathens.'

'But she was lonely and miserable out there, exposed to all the malice of the Christians. And I was earning a pound a week. Tailoring was a good trade then. The few roubles I used to send her did not always reach her.'

'Thou hadst no right to send her anything, nor to send for her. Mothers are not everything. Thou didst marry my cousin Gittel, peace be upon him, and it was thy duty to support her and her children. Thy mother took the bread out of the mouth of Gittel, and but for her my poor cousin might have been alive to-day. Believe me it was no Mitzvah.'

Mitzvah is a 'portmanteau-word.' It means a commandment and a good deed, the two conceptions being regarded as interchangeable.

'Nay, thou errest there,' answered Moses. ''Gittel was not a phoenix which alone ate not of the Tree of Knowledge and lives for ever. Women have no need to live as long as men, for they have not so many Mitzvahs to perform as men; and inasmuch as'-here his tones involuntarily assumed the argumentative sing-song-'their souls profit by all the Mitzvahs performed by their husbands and children, Gittel will profit by the Mitzvah I did in bringing over my mother, so that even if she did die through it, she will not be the loser thereby. It stands in the Verse that man shall do the Mitzvahs and live by them. To live is a Mitzvah, but it is plainly one of those Mitzvahs that have to be done at a definite time, from which species women, by reason of their household duties, are exempt; wherefore I would deduce by another circuit that it is not so incumbent upon women to live as upon men. Nevertheless, if God had willed it, she would have been still alive. The Holy One, blessed be He, will provide for the little ones He has sent into the world. He fed Elijah the prophet by ravens, and He will never send me a black Sabbath.'

'Oh, you are a saint, Meshe,' said Malka, so impressed that she admitted him to the equality of the second person plural. 'If everybody knew as much Terah as you, the Messiah would soon be here. Here are five shillings. For five shillings you can get a basket of lemons in the Orange Market in Duke's Place, and if you sell them in the Lane at a halfpenny each, you will make a good profit. Put aside five shillings of your takings and get another basket, and so you will be able to live till the tailoring picks up a bit.' Moses listened as if he had never heard of the elementary principles of barter.

'May the Name, blessed be It, bless you, and may you see rejoicings on your children's children.'

So Moses went away and bought dinner, treating his family to some beuglich, or circular twisted rolls, in his joy. But on the morrow he repaired to the Market, thinking on the way of the ethical distinction between 'duties of the heart' and 'duties of the limbs,' as expounded in choice Hebrew by Rabbenu Bachja, and he laid out the remnant in lemons. Then he stationed himself in Petticoat Lane, crying, in his imperfect English, 'Lemans, verra good lemans, two a penny each, two a penny each!'