Page:Yiddish Tales.djvu/224

 220 LEENEE

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 mar- riage canopy by himself, and had to ask for help of Eeb 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 : Eeb SeinwiH Bassis, Ezrielk's father, and Eeb Selig Tachshit, his father-in-law, were Hostre Chassidim, and used to drive every year to spend the Solemn Days at the Hostre Eebbe's. They both (not of you be it spoken!) lost all their children in infancy, and, as you can imagine, they pressed the Eebbe 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 Eebbe, long life to him, was in somewhat high spirits, our two Chassidim made