Page:Yiddish Tales.djvu/303

 FOKLORN" AXD FOESAKEX 299

existence. But even so the question of bread and meat was not answered. They still had about six hundred rubles,, but, as they were without a trade, it was easy to foresee that the little stock of money would dwindle day by day till there was none of it left and what then ?

The eldest son, Yossef, aged twenty-one, had gone from home a year before his father's death, to seek his fortune elsewhere; but his first letters brought no very good news, and now the second, Avrohom, a lad of eighteen, and the daughter Eochel, who was sixteen, declared their intention to start for America. The mother was against it, begged them with tears not to go, but they did not listen to her. Parting with them, forever most likely, was bad enough in itself, but worst of all was the thought that her children, for whose Jewish education their father had never grudged money even when times were hardest, should go to America, and there, forgetting everything they had learned, become "ganze Goyim." She was quite sure that her husband would never have agreed to his children's being thus scattered abroad, and this encouraged her to oppose their will with more determination. She urged them to wait at least till their elder brother had achieved some measure of success, and could help them. She held out this hope to them, because she believed in her son Yossef and his capacity, and was convinced that in a little time he would become their support.

If only Avrohom and Eochel had not been so impa- tient (she would lament to us), everything would have turned out differently! They would not have been hustled off to the end of creation, and she would not