Page:Yiddish Tales.djvu/301

 FORLORN AND FORSAKEN 297

And when we were made acquainted with the details of her life, we knew our conjectures to be true. Her history was very simple and commonplace, but very tragic. Perhaps the tragedy of such biographies lies in their being so very ordinary and simple !

She lived quietly and happily with her husband for twenty years after their marriage. They were not rich, but their little house was a kingdom of delight, where no good thing was wanting. Their business was farming land that belonged to a Polish nobleman, a busi- ness that knows of good times and of bad, of fat years and lean years, years of high prices and years of low. But on the whole it was a good business and profitable, and it afforded them a comfortable living. Besides, they were used to the country, they could not fancy themselves anywhere else. The very thing that had never entered their head is just what happened. In the beginning of the "eighties" they were obliged to leave the estate they had farmed for ten years, because the lease was up, and the recently promulgated "tempo- rary laws" forbade them to renew it. This was bad for them from a material point of view, because it left them without regular income just when their children were growing up and expenses had increased, but their mental distress was so great, that, for the time, the financial side of the misfortune was thrown into the shade.

When we made her acquaintance, many years had passed since then, many another trouble had come into her life, but one could hear tears in her voice while she told the story of that first misfortune. It was a bitter