Children of the Ghetto

its puerility made him facetious. It seemed to smack of the nursery; when a nation expressed its soul thus, the existence of a beverage like ginger-beer could occasion no further surprise.

'You shan't have anything stronger than ginger-beer when we're married,' said Fanny laughingly. 'I am not going to have any drinking.''

'But I'll get drunk on ginger-beer,' Pesach laughed back.

'You can't,' Fanny said, shaking her large fond smile to and fro. 'By my health, not.'

'Ha! Ha! Ha! Can't even get shikkur on it. What a liquor!'

In the first Anglo-Jewish circles with which Pesach had scraped acquaintance, ginger-beer was the prevalent drink; and, generalizing almost as hastily as if he were going to write a book on the country, he concluded that it was the national beverage. He had long since discovered his mistake, but the drift of the discussion reminded Becky of a chance for an arrow.

'On the day when you sit for joy, Pesach,' she said slily. 'I shall send you a valentine.'

Pesach colored up and those in the secret laughed; the reference was to another of Pesach's early ideas. Some mischievous gossip had heard him arguing with another Greener outside a stationer's shop blazing with comic valentines. The two foreigners were extremely puzzled to understand what these monstrosities portended; Pesach, however, laid it down that the microcephalous gentlemen with tremendous legs, and the ladies five-sixths head and one-sixth skirt, were representations of the English peasants who lived in the little villages up country.

'When I sit for joy,' retorted Pesach, 'it will not be the season for valentines.'

'Won't it though!' cried Becky, shaking her frizzly black curls. 'You'll be a pair of comic 'uns.'

'All right, Becky,' said Alte good-humoredly. 'Your turn'll come, and then we shall have the laugh of you.'

'Never,' said Becky. 'What do I want with a man?'

The arm of the specially invited young man was round her as she spoke.

'Don't make schnecks,' said Fanny.

'It's not affectation. I mean it. What's the good of the men who visit father? There isn't a gentleman among them.'

'Ah, wait till I win on the lottery,' said the special young man.

'Then, vy not take another eighth of a ticket?' inquired Sugarman the Shadchan, who seemed to spring from the other end of the room. He was one of the greatest Talmudists in London-a lean, hungry-looking man, sharp of feature and acute of intellect. 'Look at Mrs. Robinson-I've just won her over twenty pounds, and she only gave me two pounds for myself. I call it a cherpah-a shame.'

'Yes, but you stole another two pounds,' said Becky.

'How do you know?' said Sugarman startled.

Becky winked and shook her head sapiently. 'Never you mind.'

The published list of the winning numbers was so complex in construction that Sugarman had ample opportunities of bewildering his clients.

'I von't sell you no more tickets,' said Sugarman with righteous indignation.

'A fat lot I care,' said Becky, tossing her curls.

'Thou carest for nothing,' said Mrs. Belcovitch, seizing the opportunity for maternal admonition. 'Thou hast not even brought me my medicine to-night. Thou wilt find, it on the chest of drawers in the bedroom.'

Becky shook herself impatiently.

'I will go,' said the special young man.

'No, it is not beautiful that a young man shall go into my bedroom in my absence,' said Mrs. Belcovitch blushing.

Becky left the room.

'Thou knowest,' said Mrs. Belcovitch, addressing herself to the special young man, 'I suffer greatly from my legs. One is a thick one, and one a thin one.'

The young man sighed sympathetically.

'Whence comes it?' he asked.

'Do I know? I was born so. My poor lambkin (this was the way Mrs. Belcovitch always referred to her dead mother) had well-matched legs. If I had Aristotle's head I might be able to find out why my legs are inferior. And so one goes about.'

The reverence for Aristotle enshrined in Yiddish idiom is probably due to his being taken by the vulgar for a Jew. At any rate the theory that Aristotle's philosophy was Jewish was advanced by the mediaeval poet, Jehuda Halevi, and sustained by Maimonides. The legend runs that when Alexander went to Palestine, Aristotle was in his train. At Jerusalem the philosopher had sight of King Solomon's manuscripts, and he forthwith edited them and put his name to them. But it is noteworthy that the story was only accepted by those Jewish scholars who adopted the Aristotelian philosophy, those who rejected it declaring that Aristotle in his last testament had admitted the inferiority of his writings to the Mosaic, and had asked that his works should be destroyed.

When Becky returned with the medicine, Mrs. Belcovitch mentioned that it was extremely nasty, and offered the young man a taste, whereat he rejoiced inwardly, knowing he had found favor in the sight of the parent. Mrs. Belcovitch paid a penny a week to her doctor, in sickness or health, so that there was a loss on being well. Becky used to fill up the bottles with water to save herself the trouble of going to fetch the medicine, but as Mrs. Belcovitch did not know this it made no difference.

'Thou livest too much indoors,' said Mr. Sugarman, in Yiddish.

'Shall I march about in this weather? Black and slippery, and the Angel going a-hunting?'

'Ah!' said Mr. Sugarman, relapsing proudly into the vernacular, 'Ve English valk about in all vedders.'

Meanwhile Moses Ansell had returned from evening service and sat down, unquestioningly, by the light of an unexpected candle to his expected supper of bread and soup, blessing God for both gifts. The rest of the family had supped. Esther had put the two youngest children to bed (Rachel had arrived at years of independent undressing), and she and Solomon were doing home-lessons in copy-books, the candle saving them from a caning on the morrow. She held her pen clumsily, for several of her fingers were swathed in bloody rags tied with cobweb. The grandmother dozed in her chair. Everything was quiet and peaceful, though the atmosphere was chilly. Moses ate his supper with a great smacking of the lips and an equivalent enjoyment. When it was over he sighed deeply, and thanked God in a prayer lasting ten minutes, and delivered in a rapid, sing-song manner. He then inquired of Solomon whether he had said his evening prayer. Solomon looked out of the corner of his eyes at his Bube, and, seeing she was asleep on the bed, said he had, and kicked Esther significantly but hurtfully under the table.

'Then you had better say your night-prayer.'

There was no getting out of that; so Solomon finished his sum, writing the figures of the answer rather faint, in case he should discover from another boy next morning that they were wrong; then producing a Hebrew prayer- book from his inky cotton satchel, he made a mumbling sound, with occasional enthusiastic bursts of audible coherence, for a length of time proportioned to the number of pages. Then he went to bed. After that, Esther put her grandmother to bed and curled herself up at her side. She lay awake a long time, listening to the quaint sounds emitted by her father in his study of Rashi's commentary on the Book of Job, the measured drone blending not disagreeably with the far-away sounds of Pesach Weingott's fiddle.

Pesach's fiddle played the accompaniment to many other people's thoughts. The respectable master-tailor sat behind his glazed shirt-front beating time with his foot. His little sickly-looking wife stood by his side, nodding her bewigged head joyously. To both the music brought the same recollection-a Polish market-place.

Belcovitch, or rather Kosminski, was the only surviving son of a widow. It was curious, and suggestive of some grim law of heredity, that his parents' elder children had died off as rapidly as his own, and that his life had been preserved by some such expedient as Alte's. Only, in his case the Rabbi consulted had advised his father to go into the woods and call his new-born son by the name of the first animal that he saw. This was why the future sweater was named Bear. To the death of his brothers and sisters, Bear owed his exemption from military service. He grew up to be a stalwart, well-set-up young baker, a loss to the Russian army.

Bear went out in the market-place one fine day and saw Chayah in maiden ringlets. She was a slim, graceful little thing, with nothing obviously odd about the legs, and was buying onions. Her back was towards him, but in another moment she turned her head and Bear's. As he caught the sparkle of her eye, he felt that without her life were worse than the conscription. Without delay, he made inquiries about the fair young vision, and finding its