Page:Yiddish Tales.djvu/571

 THE LAST OF THEM 567

A new baby brought no anxiety along with it. People praised God, carried the pitcher to the well, filled it, and poured a quart of water into the pottage. The newcomer was one of God's creatures, and was assured of his portion along with the others.

And if a Jew had a marriageable daughter, and could not afford a dowry, he took a stick in his hand, donned a white shirt with a broad mangled collar, repeated the "Prayer of the Highway," and set off on foot to Volhynia, that thrice-blessed wonderland, where people talk with a "Chirik," and eat Challeh with saffron even in the middle of the week with saffron, if not with honey.

There, in Volhynia, on Friday evenings, the rich Jewish householder of the district walks to and fro leisurely in his brightly lit room. In all likelihood, he is a short, plump, hairy man, with a broad, fair beard, a gathered silk sash round his substantial figure, a cheery singsong "Sholom-Alechem" on his mincing, "chiriky" tongue, and a merry crack of the thumb. The Lithua- nian guest, teacher or preacher, the shrunk and shrivelled stranger with the piercing black eyes, sits in a corner, merely moving his lips and gazing at the floor perhaps because he feels ill at ease in the bright, nicely- furnished room; perhaps because he is thinking of his distant home, of his wife and children and his marriage- able daughter; and perhaps because it has suddenly all become oddly dear to him, his poor, forsaken native place, with its moiling, poverty-struck Jews, whose week is spent pitch-burning in the forest ; with its old, warm houses-of -study ; with its celebrated giants of the Torah,